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What Grief Has Made, Part Four
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Out on the water, past the breakers, past the buoys, boats the size of toys bobbed at anchor on the horizon. Early fishers, late night partiers, a diver or two maybe. Out there, on the water, where Marina wanted to be. But not on it. In it, beneath it, beyond it, scoured by it, freed and reclaimed by it, made whole and clean again.
She’d gone to the sea in autumn once, the Mediterranean, and walked into it wearing a thin turquoise sundress and no bra, surprised at how large her nipples looked as they poked through the wet fabric when the cold penetrated her skin and woke up all her senses. A few steps farther, and Francesca need not have rescued her at all. Until now, she had never regretted not taking those few more steps.
Maybe it was just the wine, but standing ankle deep in the briny foam and feeling the sand wash out from under the soles of her feet, she couldn’t quite seem able to find her way back to her life, a place where anything in the last several months made sense.
She’d meant none of it to happen, at least certainly not in a way that would cost her so dearly. She could play off leash while Francesca was away, which was often, but they were just dalliances, distractions to fill up the empty spaces of her life with attention, affection, a few laughs, a little sex, and when it was over, it was over. She never gave, nor took, any more than that.
But Jenny. It was so different. From the first look, the first few sentences, that first impulsive kiss that, for one brief moment, verged on becoming so much more right there, right then, until Jenny pulled back, but only for a time.
She understood why. It was a relationship without humiliation, without the constant reminders of how much she owed – financially, emotionally, sexually – or the niggling, belittling criticisms flung at her back, the sarcasm driven deep beneath her skin.
She knew she was in deep when Francesca came back, and she just couldn’t walk that line with her anymore. All she wanted was Jenny. And Francesca knew it. And made clear her intention to punish her, to strip her of everything that mattered … the house, The Planet, the dream life which was never much more than the fantasy of a kept woman anyway.
All that she could have given up, just to keep Jenny in her life, in her bed, in her heart. But for that one moment of raging jealousy and fearsome panic, when she thought Robin might take what she most wanted, what she only wanted. Instead, she herself had thrown it away.
The wind kicked up at her back, whipped her hair around her face, and shoved her into the waves. She stumbled, regained her balance. Then step by step, she waded forward, eyes on the horizon. Out there, where she wanted to be. In the sea, beneath it, beyond it, scoured by it, freed and reclaimed by it, made whole and clean again. Baptism and redemption.
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Will alway read. People alway do some stupid thing in their life and Marina just admited hers thanks