The Ocean House. Mary-Beth Hughes

we get in the car?

      Come, she said. Come on. Hurry up!

      So many important-looking black cars already lined up along Ocean Avenue it looked like a funeral. A whole gang of policemen lounged at the gate of the ocean house between the cypress trees. Ruth knew her rights, she said, but the police did not agree. Besides, who were the little girls? This was no place for children. Someone might get hurt. Already the bulldozers were aimed at the turret side of the house.

      This is illegal, said Ruth, which made the policemen smile.

      Such an enormous house and it took no time to come tumbling down. The rot through and through, said a fireman later, smoking a cigar, stale and sour by the smell of it. He’d taken it upon himself to guard Ruth and the girls from harm. In the end they were allowed to stand just inside the old gate once Ruth had convinced them that the girls were the rightful owners. It was their mother’s house, she said. And there was a sheepish squint of recognition in the fireman as he looked first at Paige then less certainly at Courtney. All right, he said.

      Then a fireman with black hair swirling on his forearms came over and explained the methodology to Ruth. Turning his face close to the cypress and out of the wind. Basically I could have knocked it over with my fist, he said. So we didn’t need a lot of fancy machinery. Before the sky was fully dark the house lay tucked inside its foundation.

      Ruth had some old red cocktail napkins stuffed into her capri pant pockets. Here, she said to the girls, gesturing to their noses, and she did the same herself. The wind off the ocean had shifted and caught up the debris dust from the house like spray and a contaminated wet breeze now prickled their skin.

      Oh, you know what? said Paige. I forgot to tell you, her eyes serious over the mask of the red cocktail napkin. Eddie asked me to give you a message.

      Courtney looked at her.

      He said to tell you, no offense, but you stink like dog farts.

      Courtney looked back to the jetty. Completely visible now where the house had once been. So surprising how small and crumbling it was without the house to protect it.

      That was the last of the ocean house, a collapse of rubble in a deep pit, doused by spray coming across the rocks. For good measure the firemen directed their hoses toward any flighty timber. Whatever might be caught up by wind or vandalized was soaked until useless.

      Someone said, You’d think they’d want to save those precious windows.

      But Ruth shook her head. You start parsing this and that and you’re never done.

      Does Ruth hate the house? Courtney asked Paige. It’s not that, Paige said. It’s you. She told Daddy you were the worm in their happy cabbage. She said it’s a shame you’re not more like me.

      You? said Courtney. You? People can just rummage around your underpants whenever they feel like it. This was a lame insult and Courtney tried to think of something better.

      But there were shouts and the dousing firemen dropped their hoses and scampered back from the pit just as a leap of flame shot up from the center and died right down, a bit of gas trapped in the line flaring, that’s all, but Paige burst out crying. She was suddenly sobbing and couldn’t be calmed. They left then, and Ruth put her to bed with an aspirin and a cool towel for her eyes.

      Courtney, you bunk in the den tonight, Ruth said. And all night long the tweed nubs of the couch stung at Courtney’s cheeks like the flying debris.

      Paige didn’t recover right away. And the second night of the fever, Courtney went upstairs and found Paige out of the sheets, her nightgown flung up and her legs sprawled. At first Courtney was stunned and then she argued in her mind like a prayer to go forward to help Paige. And her feet obeyed. She touched Paige’s arm, which was hot as a dish from the oven. Does it hurt? she asked, and Paige moaned and said no. I’m just burning up. I caught fire.

      No, you didn’t, said Courtney. You couldn’t. We were standing too far away.

      I was supposed to, said Paige. And I did.

      I think it’s only supposed to happen for a short time, then stop.

      On the third night, Ruth said, Fever or not, it’s time to rejoin the living. And when their father came home it was like the girls were watching a beautiful show. It had nothing to do with them. Paige, pale and sulky in her green pajamas, at the dinner table. Their father was telling Ruth the big news from the courthouse. The town council. His lawyers had finally severed the witch’s head.

      What head? asked Courtney.

      Her father couldn’t hear her. That conniving bitch, he said to Ruth. She thought she’d just go on strangling me from hell.

      Who?

      Sweetheart? their father said to Ruth. Pausing like the sheriff, finally about to choose the right saloon girl, the most virtuous. Sweetheart, they dropped the charges.

      Ruth put her hands together and closed her eyes.

      What charges? asked Courtney.

      And.

      And?

      He’d been offered a variance to build a tower.

      Ruth burst out laughing. No!

      Yes.

      Now won’t those Beach Club pokey-pokes be singing a different tune.

      Pokey-pokes? asked their father, delighted. That’s cute.

      Each apartment in their father’s new tower had a balcony with hurricane-resistant glass. This was a big point in the design. So the inhabitants, forty families on the ocean side, could sit in the comfort of their living rooms and not be looking at a steel barricade. They were paying for the view after all. The hurricane glass in standard green was nearly an inch thick and cost one hundred dollars a square foot and would weather any storm. How had the crab-claw etchings and the pale-pink glass roses survived all those years?

      The ocean house had been built on rocks, on sand, but the tower required an excavation so deep, so reinforced, it would double as a bomb shelter for the families during the Cold War. Each apartment had access to impermeable individual kiosks like concrete cages with slats in the wall for bunk beds. Most of the families kept junk there, stuff they couldn’t fit in the apartment. The oxygen tanks hanging at intervals lost pressure over the years. And despite claims, water seeped in and pooled. When Courtney was fifteen, she led Eddie through the sub-basements as dark and shadowy as the catacombs where the Christian martyrs hid or just waited for death, and she felt the warm silky nub of his bluish penis for the first time there. Her sneakers getting wet. He pushed up hard against her until his heart beat inside the cage of her own chest like love.