by Courtney Ebert
The families never stay long. They usually drive away a week later, sunburnt and bloated, and the innkeeper strips the beds and scrubs the floors. Sometimes they leave things at the inn and she keeps them for herself. A shed on the side of the house holds a collection of left-behind striped beach chairs and sandy skim boards, goggles, snorkels, and mismatched flip flops—one still attached to the dismembered foot of a husband. Once, while she was cleaning the first-floor guest suite, she found a red plastic case on the bathroom floor. She opened it to reveal a clear plastic retainer. She knew the family would not return. They would fight about the expense of a replacement for months until the issue was dropped, their child’s teeth crooked once more. Couples came to eat and drink and writhe under each other then leave something behind. Sometimes, they left the thing that brought them there together.
This family appears much the same. They amble around in athleisure wear. The Husband greets the innkeeper with a booming Hi, nice to meet you, hand outstretched in a vaguely threatening manner. His tennis shoes are grass-stained atop the white porch. She takes the hand in hers and he squeezes it a bit too tightly—flashes a toothy grin. The Wife is more difficult to place. She smiles softly, but her eyes say something else. They are so blue that it is difficult to meet her gaze.
The family eats at all the same restaurants, drinks at all the same bars, shops at the same outlets, stumbles along the same boardwalks. At night, she can hear the Husband and Wife bickering through the walls. The girls are too spoiled, too loud, too obstinate, says the Husband. They are only children, says the Wife. Doors slam and the Husband yells. Why were you touching his hair? The Wife yells back. Something bangs against the wall then thuds onto the floor.
The innkeeper’s chest rises and falls.
She closes her eyes—dreams of a bright sun, blue water and bluer skies, floating with her silver belly up, buoyant and light, she fills her lungs with air, holds it there, then longer—empties her mind, heart, lungs, belly, then fills them up again—flips her fin away from the surface down into a streamline toward the deep until the sun cannot reach her.
The next morning, she watches the family from her kitchen window as they apply suntan lotion to supple skin and bask for hours on worn beach towels. Seagulls glide above their heads scouting for garbage. She makes tomato sandwiches with olive oil, mayonnaise, salt, pepper. The Husband and Wife’s books become waterlogged—sand wedges between binding and spine. The tomatoes are big and juicy. The knife slides easily through delicate skin. She slices them into thick cuts and rubs salt and oil onto their flanks like cuts of meat. When the sun gets too high above the beach, the family returns, dragging heavy beach chairs across hot sand. The Husband is far ahead of them, scowling. She sees his mouth open and close like a fish. Hurry up girls, she imagines. She chops at stalks of parsley. Or maybe, Pick up the pace—I don't have all day. Chop. Chop. Chop. The girls have their hair set in braids with little bows, wind–blown and disheveled. One of the girls drops her chair in the sand, begins to cry. The Husband turns, says something to the Wife that the innkeeper cannot see because the Wife nods and hangs her head slightly. The Husband elbows her aside and grabs the chair from the sand and drags the cooler to the side of the shed—disappears out of view. She hears the SUV’s front door open and close, turn on, back out of the drive. The innkeeper licks salt from her lip.
When she is sure the Husband is gone, she carries the sandwiches down the tiered porch to the bottom floor. The Wife has left only the screen door closed so that the innkeeper can see inside the kitchen. There is a stack of dishes in the sink and some empty beer cans on the counter. The cheap kind. She can hear the Wife turn on the bath for the children down the hall. She raises a fist to the side of the screen door and knocks. The Wife walks down the hall with a look of confusion, perhaps irritation. She wipes her wet hands off on a beach towel that she carries with her. The innkeeper holds up the sandwiches in offering, softens her smile. The Wife opens the door.
I saw these in your garden, the Wife says. She takes a sandwich from the plate with her thumb and index finger and takes a large bite. Her nails glisten red and a ring of pearl set in a daisy of diamonds gleams off the window light.
The Wife inspects the kitchen with her cold gaze while she chews. She points casually to an old wooden carving hanging on the wall of a fish–tailed woman. My girls love that story, the Wife says. The innkeeper smiles and nods. Have you heard about the one here? The Wife scoffs, rolls her eyes. Is there one here? Every town has one. Their gaze meets across the table. Would you like to hear it? The Wife nods—the innkeeper begins.
She swam for decades avoiding killer whale and shark, cruise and cargo ship, crabber and fisher. She was strong. But then the water warmed and northern animals began to starve to the bone and fish stomachs started to bulge with small plastic pellets. Their blood tasted acidic and toxic. The seal woman picked over their carcasses for what little meat they had left until she decided to swim south with a large jellyfish bloom. She ended up on this beach. It was a terrible summer—the air was thick and hot. She spent her days watching families come and go in swarms. She paddled through waves and sunbathed on warm sandbars. She dove for oysters, fish, crab—ate them raw. She ate until her own stomach bulged, full and round like the moon.
She did this until one foggy morning she found a man face-down in the rolling surf. She carried him on her strong back and dragged him ashore by the collar of his shirt with her sharp teeth. When she looked at him, she saw that he was handsome. He had long, dark hair and a square jaw. His muscular arms were covered in colorful ink of reds and blues and greens and his torn shirt revealed a chest and belly covered in curly hair. He stank of alcohol. When two women walking along the beach found him, the seal woman retreated into the ocean.
That night, the man sat at a bar with the two women at his side and his large hand wrapped round a cold glass, nursing a headache. He caught on to what the seal woman was from stories told round by fishermen in the bar. Yes, others had seen her that summer and taken notice. A strange seal, so far south. Was that normal? Never seen it before. She freed nets of fish off fishing boats. She stole crab from cages. When she sunbathed, she looked almost—womanly. The man decided that he must have her for himself.
The man tracked and followed her. He watched from a distance and saw that she noticed him. He left her gifts and offerings, platters of crab and fish and one milky pearl. He did this for weeks into the fall until she grew plump and comfortable and relied on him for everything. One day, he did not show up. She waited three days then decided to shed her skin to find him. She tucked the skin beneath the sand and canvassed the beach for hours. She did not feel shame in her naked body. Her legs grew tired and weak. She was slow and sluggish and hungry. When she was about to give up her search, she saw him beyond the dune where she had buried her skin. He waited for her, holding her skin up to the orange moon. She was tired and relieved that it was him who had found it. He held out his hand, all she had to do was take it.
The seal woman walked with the man, arm in arm, through humid breeze to shaded beach bar. They drank wine and strong spirit. It had been so long since she had talked to a man. At first, she struggled to find the words and then she slipped into his life and under his skin. Seaweed tangled through her hair and a trail of sand followed her. Men watched her behind pints, she looked wild and free, and they wanted to take it for themselves. The seal woman talked and danced with everyone. Locals laughed louder than vacationers, but they fought louder too. When the man took her home, his skin tasted like salt and warm sunlight beneath her hungry tongue. Afterward, they lay in bed quiet for some time, then he made her his.
When her belly grew round, they moved to a stilted yellow house on top of white sand, just like this one. He administered a thick murky broth that made her dreamy. She slept through memories of riptides and swells. She felt the current breathe and swell beneath her. She lost track of days. He began calling her by a name that was not hers until she was. She learned that if she did what he said, it made things easier. He told her he was helping her, making her better. He told her to clean the kelp from her hair, to wear shoes, a bra. He taught her that she was beautiful, but it could be taken from her. That she shouldn’t let anyone see her body—it was his. He told her to stop furrowing her brow, sit up straight—straighter. He told her to stop talking that way.
On nights she could not sleep she sat on the back screened porch and listened to the waves. They carried with them empty plastic bottles and cans, lost sunglasses and tarnished jewelry, the living and the dead. Cockroaches crawled across the moonlit deck and under its cracks. They avoided the light of day feasting on decaying fish and rotted trash. She counted the nights she had been there with every crashing swell.
The moon waxed and waned; she gave birth. Everything changed. He took the pup’s skin and sewed it to hers. She let him. When he finished, he folded the skin small and tucked it away into a dark corner of himself.
Sometimes, in the middle of the night when she lay awake in the bedroom where there was only darkness and the sound of the ocean’s beating heart, she heard him try to put it on. The skin tugged and pulled with resistance. He lathered oil to the soles of his feet, up and down his shins, thighs, crotch, torso. So beautiful, he sighed. The seal skin could throw iridescent shades of purple, green, pink, and blue at the right angle. His shadow illuminated long from a crack between the bathroom door, it twisted and turned against the far wall as he regarded his mangled form in the tall mirror. The skin did not fit properly. He did not understand it, only how to keep it for himself. He peeled it down from his muscular thighs and caressed it in his lap on the cold ceramic tile. So beautiful. He sighed. The air–conditioner hummed in the dark corner next to her while the ceiling fan cast kaleidoscopic shadows as it turned collecting dust.
It only took time for her to realize that she had always known what to do. She planned it slowly and carefully. A storm came in strong and the hour was late. The man had returned stinking of cheap drink and expensive perfume. She stood over him where he slept. Thunder clapped loudly, the surf hit the beach hard. She held a short knife carved from bone she found at the sea foam. As a flash of lighting illuminated the rage behind her eye, she stabbed the bone where his heart pulsed against his neck. He woke in shock, eyes and mouth wide and dark as night. He clawed up at her, but she had bound his wrists and ankles with rope to the bed posts. Thick blood pooled in his mouth. His mouth that was so greedy, so false, so insatiable. She ripped the bone out and the blood poured like a horrible fountain. Please, he mouthed up at her like a drowning fish, perhaps for the first time in his life. He pawed toward his neck, but it was no use. Then she stabbed him in the abdomen and pulled the knife across his belly and gutted him until he lay still. When she caught her breath, she began to search for her skin. First, she looked in his heart, but it was not there. She ripped open his liver, spleen, stomach. She cracked open his skull with a smooth stone and searched there but found nothing. Then, deep in his bowels, covered in darkness, she found it. She carefully ripped her daughter’s skin from hers and mended them with needle and thread. When she was satisfied, she put the needle down and ate the man with her small sharp teeth until all that was left was bone. She put her skin back on. It felt good and she remembered the feeling of water all around her. She remembered the sea. She remembered where she came from.
In the morning, the sky is bright and blue. The innkeeper had returned to her apartment late in the night after helping the Husband onto the couch. The couch in her upstairs apartment. He sleeps there still in his wrinkled clothes. She feels greedy with want. She tells the Wife she has not seen him. She knows that he walked back because he arrived with her daughter. She saw to it. Her daughter looks so much like she used to. Wild and unpredictable. The Wife packs their suitcases and puts them in the trunk of an Uber waiting outside. She carries her sleeping girls one by one on her strong back to the backseat of the car, buckles them in, brushes the hair from their warm foreheads. The driver stands along the side of the house smoking a cigarette where he thinks no one can see. He tosses it onto the sand where two seagulls scuffle over it. One of them pecks at the eye of the other. The innkeeper waits for the Uber to pull away. She knows they won’t be back. The winner pokes at the filter for a moment, picks it up, then takes flight.
Courtney Ebert graduated from the NEOMFA program through Cleveland State University and has work published in Atticus Review.