She picked out twenty of her favorite pieces. She felt guilt—of all her poaching, perhaps this was the most inappropriate, because, unlike honey or a brush, they weren’t replaceable. That said, the jars had been hidden, dusty and forgotten. She also figured that she could simply undo any silver wrapping she was about to try, and could put the pieces back in the jars. Nothing she was doing was altering the sea glass permanently. She could, if needed, leave no trace. Except for one thing—which was to leave the key in the lock, so that some future person, Nan hopefully, could access the contents within.
She went back to the shack and read furiously and with intense interest. Sea glass, she discovered, took about fifty or sixty years to “make”—to be tossed in the ocean until smooth and frosted, which made these pieces about as old as she was, and also made her think about the people who’d tossed a bottle or had their house swiped into the sea long ago, when she was a child. She learned it was the acidity of the water that caused the frosting—which meant that sea glass looked different if it was in Lake Erie or the Tasman Sea. Another thing she hadn’t realized was just how rare it was now. In the ’70s, people would pick up sea glass up by the bucketful. Now, though, with so much being made of plastic, there was far less of it.
She looked up from her book and pictured Nan as a child, walking the beaches and collecting sea glass. How could this little girl have known that someday, a strange woman from America would be sifting through it, dreaming of her?
—
Aroha, it turned out, was one-fourth Māori, and informed Ammalie that the nearest art supply store of any quality was back in Auckland, where she went every other Tuesday for food, to visit her mother, and to attend a Māori gathering.
Ammalie was invited along for the ride, and she accepted. The winding drive on the extremely narrow road was too fast and panic-inducing, but safe in terms of conversation. Just as she had hoped, they simply chitchatted about America and New Zealand and joked about the road signage and quirkiness of New Zealand humor. Ammalie kept quiet and stammered a lot—which was not too hard, given her nervousness. She revealed only that she was undergoing a kind of identity crisis, which was true.
Once in Auckland, while Aroha attended to her own activities, Ammalie went into a shop filled with boxes of glorious beads and wires of every metal and size, wandering the store and poking around. For nearly an hour, she simply looked. She wanted to be patient and let ideas form. Finally, she started committing to decisions. She put an enormous charge on her credit card—something she hadn’t done this entire trip, save the flights to get here. But this purchase mattered very much to her immediate future, and she felt a zinging joy in taking a risk on herself. She bought glass beads, Czech crystal beads, semiprecious stones, pliers that curved, pliers that flattened, clasps, wire cutters, tweezers, ribbon clamps, pinch clasps, with most of her money spent on quality sterling silver wrap. She chose several gauges, and a lot of it, so that she could make mistakes. She had to allow herself to make mistakes; she needed the freedom of that.
As she checked out, she thought, What a gamble! She’d have to abandon all this if she had to run—and it cost so much money. But wasn’t all of life a gamble? Some gambles were just bigger than others—and she was in the mood to Go Big. Be Interesting. Be Bold. She was a jeweler-in-residence, after all. Artists needed supplies.
On the ride home, she kept the discussion focused on finding out about Nan and the residency, which she pretended to know very little about. She also found out that Aroha was single, childless, and had a small dog named GingerBeer. Besides her shop, and taking care of her mother, she spent her time volunteering at the Māori cultural center and guiding hikes at the regional park. She also loved adventuring—glowworm caves and the islands on the other side of Auckland were favorite destinations. She declared herself a content woman, which meant that her life had enough content, a line she’d heard was from Shakespeare: To be content, one must have content.
Ammalie felt a tug of shame or sorrow or jealousy, she wasn’t sure which. She and Aroha were the same age, approximately, but worlds apart, because Aroha had exactly what Ammalie wanted. To feel secure that one was living a full life, one with a seriousness of purpose and with some fun to boot.
Before Aroha dropped her off at the base of the driveway, it being too steep and rocky for her car, she said, “You know about the dick, yes? Don’t go out on the dick.”
Ammalie bit her lip to keep from snorting. “Ahhh—the dick?” She scanned her brain but arrived at nothing.
“Aye.”
“The dick?”
“The thing outside the house.”
“Oh! The deck!” She burst out laughing. “You New Zealanders. You flatten vowels, and you miss your r’s.”
“So, like lova, I should be saying love-er?”
“Lover, yes.”
“Aye. Lover.” Aroha enunciated the final r with emphasis, rolling it on her tongue, and gave Ammalie a wink.
Ammalie flushed, and to recover, blurted, “My dead husband used to collect mussels here. Can I do that? If I’m hungry? I don’t see anyone ever collecting them.”
Aroha smiled and let the look go. “No, not anymore. There’s the rāhui.”
“Rāhui?”
“In Māori culture, a rāhui is a form of tapu, and it means restricting the use of an area or resource. Wise use. You see? Self-control. For the sake of the world. But if you’re hungry, I can make you dinner at my place.”
“Oh, no. No, thanks. I’m off to design and create!” Ammalie shut the door quickly and waved and picked up her bags. No, she could not make a friend, or more-than-a-friend, if that’s what Aroha was intending.
—
She wanted to be bold, but not stupid. For example, she didn’t want the few locals seeing her on the beach all the time, so she woke when it was still dark and went for her first walk before sunrise, so that when the morning walkers were out, she was already back at the picnic table, working on jewelry. Never having been much of a morning person, she’d seen more sunrises on this trip than she’d seen the entire rest of her life, and she knew that Venus appeared in the west in the evening and in the east in the morning. She tracked the Southern Cross, and she learned about dark constellations, much more common in the southern sky, and which were patterns and shapes defined by the absence of stars.
She even made an effort to swish away her footprints on the one path that took her to the beach, using an old paddle she’d discovered thrown upon the rocks by the sea. But she was also brazenly not invisible: During the morning walks, she began to make beach art on the side of beach farthest from her but closest to the other houses. Some days, she used the great glistening ropes of bull kelp that washed up, and other days she used the paddle, dragging it to make huge swirls and swoops inspired by the Pasifika and Māori designs she’d seen. Other days she wrote messages like Cheers for a Lovely Day, Lovelies, or sometimes, with a small stick, she’d write her favorite bit of poetry from Stephen Crane, which she’d had to memorize in middle school:
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“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.
—
