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A Novel
by Kathleen MacMahon
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The planes are so uch a feature of the landscape that Addie seldom
notices them. The same with the smoke from the chimneys at
Poolbeg, the same with the car ferries lunking their way along the
horizon towards Dun Laoghaire.The clouds and the seabirds and the
sea itself. Addie takes no notice of any of these things. She’s so caught
up in her own head, she doesn’t notice anything else.
The beach is where she was born, pretty much.
She was five days old when they brought her home. She was carried
out of the car in her mother’s arms, a tiny bundle wrapped up in a
purple angora blanket, a wool hat pulled down over her forehead and
her ears. Her mother climbed the steps up to the front door, pausing
at the top to turn back to face the sea.
Her father had the door open already. He had stepped into the
hall and he was beckoning for her mother to follow. Come on in,
woman, for God’s sake, he said. You’ll freeze out there.
But her mother stood on the steps for another moment with
Addie in her arms, gulping in the cold sea air. It was heaven after
the sticky heat of the hospital and she couldn’t get her fill of it. It
never occurred to her that her newborn daughter too was drinking
in that salty air, that she was pulling it down into her spongy little
lungs. Some of it must have made its way right down into her
soul.
That’s how Addie feels now. She feels as if the beach is a part of
her. It’s her special place, it’s probably what’s keeping her sane.
The beach is deserted at this hour of the morning, there’s nobody
around but herself and the little dog. The tide is out and the
clouds are hanging low over the sand, you can almost feel the pressure
of them on your head. The forecast is for rain, but there’s no
sign of it yet.
Addie walks straight for the waterline. She’s half a mile out and
still the sea seems no closer. It must be a very low tide. There are
some puddles now, more and more of them, so she doesn’t go any farther.
She doesn’t want to get her feet wet. It’s starting to get cold, and
she really should be wearing her boots. But she doesn’t, she prefers
to wear her runners. That way she can feel the ridges of the sand
through the soles of her shoes. It makes her feel solid, the sensation
of the hard sand under her feet.
All her life Addie has had the feeling that there’s a black cloud
following her around. These days she feels like that cloud has finally
caught up with her. The beach is the only place where she has the
sense that she can outwalk it.
Out on the beach she can talk to herself. She can sing along to
her iPod and no one can hear her. She can scream if she wants to and
sometimes she does. She screams and then she laughs at herself for
screaming. Out on the beach, she can think about all the things that
have happened. She can sift them, backwards and forwards in her
head. She can cry hot tears of self-pity. She feels guilty about crying
in front of the dog, but afterwards she feels much better. She feels almost
content.
The dog is scrabbling in the sand for something that isn’t there.
She’s shoveling wet sand with her front paws, tossing it back between
her hind legs. A big pile is building up behind her and her whole underbelly
is filthy, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Addie stands there
and watches the dog working away at her pointless task. Sure let her
at it, she thinks, isn’t she happy.
Addie throws her head back and looks up at the sky. She’s studying
it, as if she’s looking for something up there. It occurs to her that
she’d love to travel out into space, she’d love to look down at the
world from out there. If she could see the world from the outside,
maybe then she’d be able to gain a bit of perspective on her situation.
She turns and faces back towards the shore. Even from here, she’s
able to pick out the house. It’s the putty-colored one in the middle
of a terrace of smudgy pastels. Three large windows looking out over
the sea, two upstairs, one down.
Excerpted from This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon. Copyright © 2012 by Kathleen MacMahon. Excerpted by permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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