Thirteen

The man left, locking the door behind him. Sheri closed her eyes and thought of the postcard above her desk at home. She wondered if it was still there, with its foggy harbor, a wharfman’s little green house perched above its own reflection, the wooden pier beneath waiting for the tide to change. There were seventeen red lobster buoys, each with a horizontal yellow stripe, queued across the white trim. On the shore an old blue sailboat slept, its wooden deck covered with pine needles and sap. The deep keel that once held her steady at sea now laid her low against the rocky, tree-lined coast.

She and Daniel had taken a summer trip to the Maine shore. The memory was a luxury now, and it met her unbidden in a grey meadow of half-sleep. He looked at her from the driver’s side, his long, straight lashes unable to veil the steel blue intensity of the one hundred and eight things that he wanted to say but couldn’t. They talked about his parents’ dog instead—a polar bear of an animal whose not-entirely-straight tail waved a furry white flag of joyous surrender and whose appetite occasionally ran to socks. Later, as they walked along the jagged beach, she’d said that God was a pointillist whose creatures were his medium, each tiny dot wondering what the picture looked like. “A marshmallow peep,” he said without blinking. “A fried marshmallow peep.”

The remembrance of laughter brought her once again to wakefulness. She stretched her free arm and reached for the roll. It tasted fresh and sweet, and the smell of it reminded her that she was hungry. Still, the postcard stayed with her as she ate. She had no idea where he’d gotten it, but the postmark read “Boothbay Harbor.” On the back, he’d written, “You’re the peeps” next to a stick-figure chicken. It was funny and she’d loved it, and it had been hanging above her desk ever since. If she ever made it back, she thought, she’d turn it postmark-side out and never forget him again.