Undercurrent (Object Inspired Writing)

(A/N this piece was inspired by a shell passed around in my Creative Writing class. Word count: 1004.)

            The drive had been a long one – Mallory and I fought most of the way – luckily her anger subsided a few state lines back. I glanced in the rear view mirror at my young daughter, Ana, her chubby face scrunched by her safety restraints, and then to my wife asleep in the seat beside me. My grip on the steering wheel tightened. If it weren’t for our child, she probably would have left me for even trying to move her away from the West Coast.

            When we drove by the sign that signaled we were exiting New Hampshire, I knew we were close to our new home; a better home for our daughter in the small, port town of South Hill, Maine. The sound of Ana sucking hungrily on her sippy cup jolted me from my day dreams, and the rest of the ride flew by as I flipped through tracks on a Disney CD trying to entertain her.

            Mallory awoke just as we were pulling into the new neighborhood. All of the houses were small, but rustic and shore side. As her eyes landed on the thick morning fog over the ocean, I heard a small gasp escape her lips and for once in the entire trip she looked enthusiastic about the change. I smiled too, as I prayed for my family to thrive here.

            A few days went by, and as we got settled into our home the community embraced us with whole hearts. Mallory befriended a younger woman in the neighborhood who agreed to watch Ana during the day. I got a job at the shipment docks. It was brute labor, but the guys I worked with made the time fly by. The three of us had never been this functional in California. It was a 180 change for the better.

            Once autumn turned the corner, my wife and my roles switched for a while. Mallory taught first grade; so she was busy setting up things for her classroom. This meant that I was the one who would get Ana ready in the morning for the sitters.

            I remember that it was a foggy morning – much like when we’d first moved-and as I looked to Ana in the rear view mirror I had a small case of déjà vu of that day. Her purple coat hood was pulled up over her head, and she was playing with a matching plastic pail in her lap. Her sitter had told me the day before that she was planning on taking the kids for a walk on the beach. Ana loved collecting shells, so I made sure to send her with a bucket.

            The rest of the day went by as normal. I said goodbye to my daughter at daycare, went to work, met my wife for my lunch break, and then went back to work. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until I went to pick up Ana that afternoon.

            There were police cars lined up and down the block, and officers were searching everywhere. Ana's sitter was shaking hysterically on her porch. I ran up to her, frantic about the safety of my daughter. When she told me what had happened, I don’t remember how I responded. Things went black. By the time I came too, I was restrained on the ground by two officers. I didn’t mean to lash out. I just didn’t understand how someone could lose a three year old at the beach.

            A full scale investigation was launched. Witnesses and known child offenders were drawn from hundreds of miles away for questioning, but as the days ticked by nothing was giving us any leads.

            Mallory lost her mind when we lost Ana. I should have known that moving wasn’t going to save our marriage. That little girl was the only thing that kept that woman in my life, and without her I was as worthless in her eyes. When Mallory moved out, the scotch and Jack moved in. 

            Drinking helped me forget my pain; drinking helped me sleep. Sometimes when I slept I dreamed about Ana. Her wonderful curiosity and glowing personality. I remember the first week that we’d lived there, Ana made me take her to the beach every morning to pluck shells out of the sand.

            I don’t remember what compelled me to do it, but one morning I left our back patio and wandered down to the beach in nothing but my bathrobe and a bottle of liquor in my hand. I didn't care that it was storming. Maybe I felt that being there would help me relive that dream and feel close to my daughter, but I ended up just screaming at the violently crashing waves until my throat burned instead.

I started to cry sometime during my stumbled walk, I’d like to say the tears were provoked by loss, but it could have just as easily been the salty winds off the ocean assaulting my eyes; maybe a mix of the two. I’m not sure. I had too much fire in my stomach to distinguish between physical pain and emotion.

            As I went to take another drink, my foot caught on a piece of drift wood buried in the sand. I tripped and cursed sharply, as I watched my liquor spill in front of me. As I turned to flip off the log in a drunken rage, my eyes spotted something else in the sand a few meters away.

            My eyes narrowed in on the object – half buried, it was hard to distinguish at first- then the color settled with me… Bright purple. I crawled shakily to the object, and god the smell was rancid, but I needed to see it; I needed to see her. I rolled my daughter’s small, bloated body over to look at her face. It was pale from the cold, and her lips were a deep blue. As I sobbed, I pulled her close to me and watched as a single shell fell from her small, lifeless grip.