the saltbox house

THREE: A LOVELY JEWEL

The weather was perfect for sailing. It was warm and bright, but the most crisp, salt filled breeze sprayed us slightly as we sailed.
The sound of the waves hitting our now stalled boat was calming. I focused in on the sounds as I looked out to see Emerald Isle in the distance.
Shannon came and sat next to me. Her skin was dark and warm, the evidence of a summer well spent.
"You've been quiet lately." Shannon softly said.
I glanced at her and fixed my gaze back on the distant land. "There's a lot to think about lately."
"Like what?"
"How different life would be without Emerald Isle." I broke my gaze to meet Shannon's blue eyes who curiously stared at me. She had a slight furrowed brow.
"Explain."
"Think about it. Emerald Isle has shaped and molded us into these perfected people who live on a perfected isle. Imagine how different we would all be had it not been there in the first place."
She seemed to understand because she broke her gaze away from me and sighed. "Perfection is subjective. Your perception of perfection is far different from what I believe perfection is, even what Stella or Claire believes. Who even knows if perfection exists."
Shannon was a deep thinker. In the past I would simply nod and smile, mindlessly. Now I payed attention, the words she spoke were valuable. "I guess that's true."
"You don't have to be Emerald Isle to the core, yanno?" Shannon said with a slight hint of a smile at her mouth.
"I guess I don't know how to be anything else." I sighed. "I don't know if I want to be something else anyway. Emerald Isle is simple. It's beautiful. Who wouldn't..."
"A lot of people wouldn't want this. I'm one of them." Shannon cut in. I looked at her curiously.
"You've never been enamoured with Emerald Isle."
She smiled gently. "It's beautiful but tragic. You all gather here, silently weeping in a sunlit room. You all take the same drug but the result is the same. A dwindling, unabating high. It's only going to work the first few hundred times, Inez. I hope you can see that sooner than later."
The intense splash of Stella exiting the water and entering the boat broke our conversation.
Did she know what she was interrupting?
"How was the water, Stel?" Shannon said smiling.
"Cold." Stella shivered almost as if on cue. "..but it's getting warmer. A few more weeks and we'll get our 80 degree water girls."
"Only we'll be enjoying the 80 degree water in Italy instead." Claire corrected from the deck. She basked in that sunlight that was soaking through her glistening and ever tanning body.
Shannon squealed with excitment. "I cannot believe we're really going to Italy! How dreamy and alluring is that? Italy for the whole summer, ahh I never thought I would get there so soon."
I smiled. "It's going to be.. incredible."
"Understatment of the year, Inez. It's our last summer before official adulthood. We have to make it more than incredible." I smiled even bigger at Stella who smiled at me.
It was a custom at Emerald Isle that after you graduated high school your family would typically give you a grand trip to a place of your choice free of hovering parents and an endless amount to spend.
Each year it seemed like that competitive nature of the Isle would come out due to these elaborate holidays and send-offs. One year, Lanie and Julie Carlons went to Fiji, to top that the following year, the Oakins sent Dustin and his group of friends to Forest of Knives, Madagascar. The following year, Hunter to Morocco, Lillie to Barbados, and Taylor to Australia.
When our turn came to pick the holiday of our dreams, we unanimously chose Italy.
So it happened. They bought an oddly placed white saltbox house in Santa Marinella, Italy right on the coast.
The house had previously been owned and built by Stella's great grandparents in the 30's, sold and then bought again by Stella's parent's where we would go and spend our summer until August 22nd where we would then promptly return to Emerald Isle to then go our separate ways and begin and tend to the ways of adulthood as an Emerald Isle native.
We had one more week till we left and we couldn't wait. It felt like a distant dream that would soon become a reality. How beautiful that life produces these moments for us.
"Gelato or gondola's first?" Stella asked?
"How about both? Eat gelato on the gondola!" Claire bursted out.
We all started laughing as we sat on the wood floor of the boat, soaking in the sun, without a care in the world.
A few hours later, Stella and I found ourselves walking back to our big white houses on the corner of Ocean Drive and Jackson Avenue.
We had been neighbors since forever. Our mothers were best friends since grade school and our fathers, business partners. We would always do co-joined holidays together, big parties with chandeliers and sparking white wine. Our genuine friendship, that wasn't forced by commonalities and expectations however; started on an overly humid day in July, our ninth summer.
That summer of our ninth year was one that would end up meaning the most to Stella and I.
There is a patch of trees across the street from Stella's house. When you enter in the midst of them it's beyond magical. It's quiet and a lush green and it's almost as if you disappear from Emerald Isle all-together.
Those trees are where we pretended to have sword fights as our pirate ships sunk in the sea of deep, forest green grass. Scrumptious tea parties in our absolute best dresses we owned, were hosted there.
That place was a host of the figment of our imaginations but we wouldn't have had it any other way.
On that particularly humid day in July, I was riding my bike down the street. I biked past those trees and as I did, I saw Stella walking into them, pointe shoes in hand, all by herself. I had ended up going back and forth on my bike, just staring at the trees debating if I should go in or not.
Besides, at that time Stella and I weren't best friends. We were well acquainted but we never actively and willingly built a genuine friendship. It was going to be awkward and uncomfortable.
Those lush green tree mocked me. I had finally halted my bike and stared at them intensely. I wanted to see what Stella was doing. I wanted to be in those trees because it was a place I had never been in before. It seemed thrilling. At some point in my mind between going to and fro, I had built up the courage.
There she was.
Those old pointe shoes that were once in her hand were now on her feet. She was dancing in the forest like some old folklore fairy.
It was whimsical.
It was dreamy.
It was exactly something Stella would do and I loved it.
I inched my way closer and when she had recognized I was there and she was no longer alone, she immediately stopped. We stared at each other for a while but finally Stella broke the silence.
"Do you want to join?"
I reluctantly nodded my head and just as we began looking and practicing the steps, our friendship began growing little by little.
From then on out we would see each other most every day. Meeting in that same patch of trees, doing the same variation from Swan Lake, and enjoying the luxuries of childhood.
Back then we thought the things happening to and around us were difficult, but they weren't. It was easy back then. We really didn't have to worry about anything. No standards to uphold, no expectations, just us being kids. As it always should be.
We passed those same grove of trees when Stella's giggle invaded my thoughts.
I looked at her inqiusitevely. "What?"
"Remember that summer?" She said smiling.
"I was just thinking about it. We thought we would become professional ballerinas back then. Only difference now is, you actually are."
"Ballet really brought us together, Inez. Those summers were magical. I always felt like a fairy dancing in the forest like that. It feels like just yesterday."
"It really does. Now you're about to attend American Ballet Theater. I guess all those Swan Lake variations really paid off." I said smiling.
"Something like that." She looked at her feet as we walked. "Are you scared for the future?"
We got to the corner of her house and stopped. "Frightenengly scared. But I know we're all going to accomplish so much. I mean you're going to become a principle dancer sooner than you think. Claire is going to become a social emblem standing up for the environment and advocating for socialism to come back. Shannon... well..."
Stella finished my sentence. "She'll be living her free spirited lifestyle wherever she chooses to go. And you? What are you going to do?"
I looked down at the ground flustered. Truth is, I wasn't sure. I know what I should say, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to say that. "Law."
Stella could see right through my facade. "Is that really what you want to do?"
Our eyes locked. "I mean I find it fascinating. It's good money and Princeton is an amazing college! It will be.. great." I feebly smiled. Stella gave me that look. That look that made me want to crawl into myself, never to surface again. It wasn't quite disappointment, but not quite excitement.
"I'll see you tomorrow Inez." She threw me a quick smile and walked up the cobblestone pathway to her big black door.
I walked the rest of the way home alone, which wasn't a long walk but it felt like a lifetime till I saw the familiarly of the house I had grown up in here in Emerald Isle. For the first time in my life, it's sophistication intimidated me. Was this lifestyle really what I wanted for the rest of my life?
I shook my head to hopelessly remove these thoughts out of my head. I was an Emerald Isle patron. There is nothing greater or grander. I should be grateful. It is a privelage.
I reached for the door handle of my front door and all I felt was shame. My lifeless frame continued to grasp that brass frame. What was this idea of
me? Who really was I?
Inez LaRue Simmons.
An ever sophisticated, privelaged, lovely jewel.