“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

It was true. It was humans’ obligation to make their own existence meaningful. She believed that now. “I exist,” she would sometimes write in the sand. “I exist. I exist. I exist.”

—

One afternoon when the Lonelies got her, the Pierces had descended, and the Sea Creature was swimming sadly around her heart, she took her chances and packed a picnic and went to the beach at midday. Few people were out, and besides, who would question her? Aroha had said that Nan was traveling and unavailable, and surely the average person wasn’t going to call Nan to ask about the artist-in-residence anyway. She’d stick with the story of her being a jeweler if anyone asked.

The weather was the best it had been—the wind quiet, the sky blue, the sun warm—and she wanted just a little more time before fleeing. It was simply too gorgeous to go. She read a book by Katherine Mansfield she’d found on the cluttered bookshelf in the front room and rested on a blanket and considered the clouds, which looked like hyacinths smeared across the sky.

The land that jutted out looked exactly like a reclining woman, with a face and breasts and hips and legs extending inland, and so Ammalie lay her own spine against the sand parallel to hers, so that they could be lined up, Earth Woman and Ammalie Woman, each taking in the purple hazy clouds, the salt-thick air. Her eyes followed the woman’s hipbone, her breasts, her throat, all made of green forest.

These Alone Days, as she’d come to call them, built her up. She felt a very real sense that she had the ability to stand alone. Yes, she’d lost her husband, her job, her role as mother. And sure, she could spend the rest of her life looking for ways she did not belong, and she would always find them. But instead, she could look for ways to happily be alone—and simultaneously belong.

She sat up and turned around so as to gaze at the sea. Oddly, the waves looked like white clouds, but the real clouds looked like waves caught in the moment of curl. The Good Life, she thought, is living in paradox. Key and keyhole.

—

After a week, and many failed attempts that left abandoned scraps of silver wrapping on every surface, she had a rudimentary style of pendant worked out, one which involved wire-wrapping a large piece of sea glass with a swoop flourish. Her one epiphany was embracing a rustic look, which meant that her limited skill set matched the aesthetic. Her creations were not uniform or balanced—she wanted a messy and free look for messy and free middle-aged women. Playful. Random.

She felt, for brief moments, that she was an actual artist at an artist residency. That she was not a liar, she was just not the artist who had applied and been accepted. That person, according to the calendar Ammalie had found by the phone, would be there on February first, and her name was Brumby and she was from Brussels. Ammalie decided she had a week more, maybe even ten days of heaven. She’d leave in plenty of time. Besides Aroha, no one seemed to take notice of her, and Aroha didn’t know her full name or any real details. Ammalie was invisible.

She was surprised by the lack of people in general in this community, but also by the state of relaxedness about everything, including the lack of a caretaker on the property. But she understood now that was how things operated here—a little bit hazy, much like the salt spray from the sea.

Besides Aroha, she saw only one other person regularly, a man always in an off-white shirt walking by himself. Richard, Aroha had said. He looked sixtyish and had a white trimmed beard. During the moments when lonely or lust descended—and they did most days, she feeling lustier than she had in some time—she masturbated, thinking of him or Kit or Dan or Levi rocking into her in all sorts of places and positions. Her fantasies were intense and involved lusty fucking, as opposed to softer lovemaking, probably because she was horny and it was the act of sex and not the love of sex she seemed to want, which was contrary to most of her repertoire of fantasies in her previous life. She wasn’t sure why, or what was going on for her, but was glad for the release, glad her sex drive was not gone, glad to feel the sparks of desire, glad to feel a bit like an animal. Sometimes the orgasm made her feel a little wistful for a man and his actual arms around her, but still, she preferred feeling something to nothing.

It was friendship she yearned for; her chest ached for the want of it. She was cognizant of this shift—that as she came into herself, she was coming more into the world, that she was working herself out of isolation. She was nearly ready to reengage. She wanted quite badly to invite the locals over for dinner, share her true self, learn from others. Someday, somewhere, soon, soon.

—

She spent dawn hours walking, mornings on jewelry, afternoons walking in the bush along an abandoned, hardly visible path, and evenings cooking and reading and talking to the cat, if it appeared. She weeded the garden out back, and, when it was raining, as it often was, she went back inside to sift through sea glass. She found the pure small lake that Aroha had spoken of and swam in it naked.

Some days she walked the six miles to the bridge with the eels in the stream beneath, past the sign that said Slippery When Frosty, and she’d stare at the thick, somewhat horrifying tangle of eels floating in the shade. “Hullo, googlies,” she’d say, “Oh, what a big ugly googly you are! Yes you are! You’re a credit to yourselves!” and other such nonsense, and if there was one advantage to older age, it was that she didn’t care what others thought of her, and if she wanted to fucking baby-talk to eels, she would. She made simple meals, usually a salad and thin bread and avocado and nuts, and a baguette from the pizza shop, where she got food occasionally, such as the little odd “takeaway” sandwiches in the display case. She’d lost weight and now looked like the person she remembered from her thirties, though with all the sunspots and sags of age. But she felt good. She did planks and stretched and read and dozed often and slept more hours than ever she had in her life.

Once more she went to the library to email her peeps that she was fine, and she wrote postcards to everyone, including one to the mayor in Colorado, addressing it simply “The Mayor” with the town and the zip code.

She became obsessed with the pohutukawa flowers, covered in bees. She learned that if she held her hand beneath a bunch and shook it with the other, fragrant honey landed on her palm in clear, sweet droplets. Astonishing. She also read up on New Zealand edibles—watercress in streams, beach asparagus, even puha, a type of sow thistle, which she washed, then rubbed the stalk to remove any bitterness. She always ate gingerly and only a little, but as her bravery grew, she mixed them in more often with the rice or beans she’d bought in Auckland.

Before falling asleep each night, she’d wander around the house and make sure everything was in order and confirmed that her Survival Kit was packed and ready by the door, although everything seemed to have fallen into a safe, sweet, predictable pattern. In bed, she’d take stock of her day and take note of what she’d done—noting how opposite her days here felt from her days in Chicago, where she’d been forever astonished by how little she’d done, how the hours had blurred together.

She dreamed of designing necklaces. It reminded her of the puzzle she’d done in Colorado, how her brain had continued the work of the day. She dreamed of colors, of gems and glass and the sea, and she often dreamed in the color green. This felt rather stunning: Her mind had changed. Once upon a time, it had circled around daydreams of relationships that did not exist, or around bitterness or anger or frustrations or fears. Now she was presenting it with a worthwhile challenge—how to make beauty, be in beauty, be in peace.

—

But life was life, which meant sometimes she took several steps backward. One night she woke to a noise, or perhaps it had been because of a ping of pain. A sudden throb stabbed at her lower left abdomen—probably a burst ovarian cyst. She gasped and rubbed at the area and then sat up. Her breathing was shallow and her heart felt weird, like it had forgotten its regular beat. When was this perimenopause hell going to end?

Body, why? Why, body?

She put her head back on the wall. Suddenly the Sea Creature stormed anxiously through her and the silence of the room and her life buzzed more than usual. Eighteen minutes—that’s how long these random anxiety attacks usually lasted. She’d have to wait it out. She got up to heat a hot water bottle, old and faded, that she’d found under the sink, wincing the whole time.

Even as she suffered through the cramp and the panic attack—which descended on her body simultaneously—a small part of her had to admit that this was the first night in so long that she’d felt this way. Finally, she fell asleep, dreaming of a car crash and a windshield that was shattered and she was trying to collect the little pieces of glass, knowing that she wanted them for jewelry. In the dream, someone was telling her, “Spend more time looking ahead, not back. Look through the front windshield; too much looking in the rearview mirror will cause you to crash. Go forward. I’m sorry a good bit of your life is over. But it is. There is no old self to find. There is only the future self to create. Create. Create your future self.”

The next morning, before sunrise, without really knowing why, she skipped the walk on the beach and instead did yoga, and ended by simply standing, straightening her spine like a string of pearls, as instructed by the yoga book she’d found. Then she cleaned all the windows at the community center with newspaper and vinegar in a spray bottle she’d found under the kitchen sink. Because it was still dark, she couldn’t see the streak marks, but surely the windows would be cleaner. Surely her efforts would help someone, someday, have a clear view.

CHAPTER 19

“Morning, kia ora, Apolena,” she heard Aroha say one evening. Ammalie was sitting in the corner of the restaurant since it was raining outside, and reading The Bone People, one of her favorite New Zealand books thus far. She looked up, startled. Apolena. She saw a young woman, probably about twenty-five, standing at the counter ordering food. Ammalie could see her only from behind—lean and tanned legs, a long recent red cut down the back of one calf, a dark shimmery ponytail. The two women chatted and Ammalie pretended to go back to her book, but something was amiss with the Sea Creature, who was suddenly tumbling around her heart at top speed.

Then the door dinged and the young woman was gone, carrying a little paper bag filled with takeaway. She got up and approached Aroha. “Who was that young woman? I feel like I know her somehow…”

Aroha looked up from the till. “That’s Apolena Sis. She comes in a lot; you’ve probably seen her. She’s lived here her whole life. Loves to paddleboard. Or windsurf. She’s the one you see out there most every day, just past the breakers.”

“Oh! I have seen her! It’s like watching an artist out there.”

Aroha laughed. “Exactly. Pure grace. It’s gold. To watch her.”

“And her parents?”

Aroha shrugged. “Her whanau. The Sises. Live up in the bush. Farmers. Good people, although they do have Ponsonby tractors.”

“Okay, I don’t know what Ponsonby tractors are.”

“Rich-people four-wheel drives. But she’ll be right.”

Ammalie blinked. It continued to surprise her, how the shared language of English did not always guarantee understanding. “It’s an unusual name, Apolena.”

“I suppose so. I like it.”

“My dead husband’s grandmother was an Apolena.”

Aroha’s eyebrows shot up and she said, “Crikey!”

“Yes,” Ammalie blundered on. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. My husband’s dead. It still feels pretty fresh.”

“I’m just so sorry! How horrible.”

“A stroke.” A part of Ammalie wanted to add, I was going to ask for a divorce, and so it’s complicated, just to make sure she was telling an honest story, but it felt awkward and exhausting, so she went to the back room to do the dishes, being done with eating herself. She was still hoping to maintain an air of quiet awkwardness. But now, from the back, she raised her voice to ask, “Why don’t I ever see you walking on the beach?”

“I actually live in Karekare, nearby, where the movie The Piano was filmed. You seen it?”

“Yes, actually. I hadn’t realized! You drive here each day?”

“It’s a beautiful movie. And yes, it’s an odd drive—there’s no road along the coast. You have to drive toward Auckland and then head back into the bush. That’s why the café is only open Thursday through Sunday. It’s a bit of a long haul for me.”

“Oh, no wonder I never see you!”

“The movie,” Aroha said. “It’s about a unique form of love and passion and loneliness. About fantasy. Is that how you remember it too? And about flirting with the idea of love in unexpected places.” Aroha leaned in and winked at her. “You know one thing I’ve noticed about growing older?”