Our Homesick Songs by Emma Hooper

Author:Emma Hooper [Hooper, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781501124525
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2018-08-14T07:00:00+00:00

Finn stretched the phone cord the other way, out along the hall, around the door and into Cora’s room. There were no lights on in their house or any house, no boat lights on the water. He sat on the floor, back against her bed.

More? asked Mrs. Callaghan.

Please, said Finn. Please.

(1974)

After their journey, once everyone was back and things were normal and Aidan was out fishing again for long nights and days and nights, after that, when he came in to drop off his catch in wet and shining piles like pirate treasure, then, before going home, before seeing his mother, Aidan would row over to Big Running, to Martha. She would meet him on the shore, working nets, or, sometimes, if she saw him coming a long way off, in her own boat, she would row out to meet him. It was almost always morning, almost always early.

In clenched fists, Martha would bring Aidan sea glass, round and smooth and blue and green and clear as sky. Mermaid’s tears, they called them, in the Runnings. Cried for people left back onshore, hardened by distance.

So many tears, said his mother. Aidan arranged the glass on the mantel over their fireplace, sorting it so no two of the same color were next to each other. When the fire was lit the light shone through them and onto the walls and ceiling and onto their hands and cheeks and mouths, blue, green, clear as sky.

In buckets of cold seawater, Aidan would bring Martha the strangest, most wonderful things he found in his nets. A tiny, bright red fish like a spark. A sea snake black as tar spiraling around and around itself. An explosion of a sea urchin like a living firework.

Martha built rock cages for her creatures. She’d wade into the water and use small and medium rocks to build circular cages in the shallows. She poured the fish, the snake, the urchin out into these. She made them in a row so she could walk along, like a zoo. She brought Molly down to see. Do you think it’s cruel? she asked, the water pushing and pulling into the rock cages, in and out, against their calves, bare, trousers rolled up.

I don’t know, said Molly. Do they escape?

They all do, eventually, said Martha. Does that make it better or worse?

Hm, said Molly. I’m not sure. Better, I guess.

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