Right Here

Right Here

Jacob floats on his back in the water and watches the clouds. They’re puffy white today, like oversized pieces of popcorn, and they scud across the sky with the breeze. On shore, Jacob’s mother is pretending to read a book, but Jacob knows she isn’t really reading by the way her eyes glaze over, taking on that faraway look.

His sister Lulu has hardly been to the beach the whole vacation. She’s spent the week doing dance exercises, using the spindly railing of the porch as a barre. Jacob wonders if anyone else has noticed how skinny she’s gotten, the delicate bones of her collarbone jutting out at sharp angles, her hip bones poking through the thin fabric of the leotard.

Frankie didn’t come with them this summer, informing their parents just a week before the trip that he had preseason for football and would stay at a friend’s house instead of coming to the Cape. There was yelling and slammed doors and a few threats, but as usual, Frankie had gotten his way. Besides, Frankie had turned eighteen in June, so what could his parents do, really?

If Jacob’s father were here, he would have tossed a tennis ball around in the water with him. But someone needed to stay home with Lulu, even though she’s twelve and should be old enough to stay by herself. But Lulu is full of fears and one of them is staying alone.

If only Nicky were here—Nicky who was only two years older than Jacob and always played with him without needing to be asked. Nicky, who liked catching fireflies in jam jars at night and stayed up late with Jacob, reading aloud by the light of the flashlight from one of the dusty old Hardy Boys books left in the rental. But Nicky is dead, gone for six years, long enough that the ache of losing him is no longer a surprise, long enough that Jacob sometimes wondered if he’d dreamt him up.

And so it’s just Jacob and his mother at the beach today. This is the first time they’ve rented the big white Victorian since Nicky died and everywhere Jacob turns, he sees his brother. Nicky is in the other twin bed in the bedroom they shared, the one painted deep blue with nautical print curtains. Nicky is lurking in the hydrangea bushes in the early evening as the four of them play manhunt. Nicky is sneaking extra cookies up to their bedroom to eat beneath the covers, leaving crumbs in the bed that their mother will pretend not to see. Nicky may be gone, but he’s everywhere.

It's late August, only six days till the start of school. Jacob wishes they’d taken the vacation in July instead. The heavy foreboding of the new year is already upon him, the tight choking feeling he gets in English class when the teacher makes them read aloud, the letters swimming before Jacob’s eyes, moving across the page like a row of ants. Jacob wishes he could make them stay still, has even tried to press a finger against the page to catch them, but the words slide out in a slow-moving trail anyway.

Jacob flips from his back to his belly, dunking his head beneath the water. He’s wearing a pair of goggles he found in a junk drawer of the rental. They’re child-sized and too tight across his forehead and temples, but Jacob hates the feeling of water in his eyes. And he likes to see the world beneath the water’s surface—silver minnows and slow-moving crabs, slippery tentacles of seaweed that unfurl like ropes of hair. There’s a stillness underwater that he rarely finds on land. His thoughts can finally slow down, instead of shooting around his brain like they usually do, darting in all directions like the little white pinball in the machine down at the arcade.

Jacob swims out further, but there is a sandbar, and the water still only comes up to his waist. He dips his head back under, eyes trawling the bottom of the ocean floor. He and Nicky used to pretend they were deep sea divers on a mission to locate buried treasure. Usually all they’d find were bottle caps and plastic sand toys, though sometimes they’d find coins washed to a sparkly silver by the salt water. Once Nicky found a ring, a gold band with a tiny encrusted diamond. Jacob wanted to keep it, but Nicky made them show it to their mother who drove them to the police station to turn it in. Jacob had hoped whoever it belonged to would give them a reward for finding it, but no one ever contacted them and then they had to leave the Cape a few days later anyway. Jacob wondered if the owner had ever come in to claim it or if the ring is still in a drawer at the station.

His mother continues to sit in her beach chair pretending to read her book, still wearing the dowdy beach coverup she’s had forever. She doesn’t look up, even when Jacob waves at her. He swims out deeper, past the sandbar to where the water is a darker murkier blue. Even with the goggles, it’s hard to see. Bits of green algae drift in the water and tendrils of seaweed reach out to touch him like gentle fingers as he swims. When he comes up for air, he sees how far he’s swum. He can no longer touch the ocean floor and the people on shore are smaller now, his mother just a tiny figure in her blue striped beach chair,.

Jacob feels a wave of panic overtake him—he’s swum too far, out into the blue-black waters where sharks swim. The summer before Nicky got sick, they’d watched Jaws on the VHS tape Frankie found on a shelf in the living room of the house. It was evening and their parents were out on the porch watching the flickering fireflies light up the yard. Jacob was only seven, Lulu just five, and they’d gotten through half the movie before their mother came inside and saw what they were watching. She’d hit the roof, threatened Frankie with her weak arsenal of weapons—grounding and no dessert or video games when they got home. It was too late though, the damage already done. Jacob, Lulu and Nicky didn’t swim in the water for the rest of the vacation. Even now, all these years later, he stills hears the music when he swims out too far—dun dun, dun dun. He imagines the dark shape of a shark moving towards him.

He swims toward shore, kicking his feet as fast as he can, heart beating wildly in his chest until he’s back in the sandbar where the water is clear and children splash with their parents. He’s getting bored—it’s no fun swimming alone and he wishes, that Lulu had come to the beach, even though she rarely plays games with him anymore. He’s just getting ready to swim to shore to ask his mother if they can stop for ice cream on the way home when he sees a flash beneath the water. A sparkle of silver, glittering in the midday sun. He pulls the goggles back over his eyes, feels the pinch of them across the bridge of his nose, and goes down to explore. His hand roots around in the sand. He assumes it will be nothing—a balled up piece of aluminum foil or maybe, if he’s lucky, a quarter. But his fingers close across something more substantial than an old sandwich wrapper and bigger than a coin. Whatever it is feels smooth and solid as his fingers close over it. He withdraws his hand from the water and brings it out to inspect.

It's a watch. A heavy silver watch with a round face in midnight blue and a slinky chain strap. Jacob’s heart beats faster, leftover from swimming too deep, but also with the thrill of this discovered treasure. He slides it onto his wrist. It’s cold and heavy against his skin. He slips it off again and turns it over in his hands, examining it more closely. The time is stopped at one-o-four. There’s a little knob on the side and Jacob winds it, but nothing happens. He flips the watch over, to look at the back of the face and that’s when he sees it.

Initials engraved in looping script across the center. N-A-H.

They are Nicky’s initials.

Jacob’s heart seizes in his chest. He rubs a thumb along the engraving, as if it might wipe off, as if the letters have perhaps rearranged themselves as they sometimes do, but they remained fixed.

N-A-H.

Nicholas Augustus Halloran.

The watch does not belong to Nicky. Jacob knows this. He would remember if Nicky owned something like this. And it’s a man’s watch, not a child’s. It’s substantial and weighty, a watch for the man Nicky will never become.

Yet Jacob feels as if his brother has reached out a hand to touch him. Poked him from across the grave with a finger. I’m right here, Nicky says.

Jacob looks to the beach. His mother has finally put the book away. She’s standing by the shoreline, ankle deep in the water. She sees Jacob and waves, and Jacob waves his fingers automatically closing over the watch. Perhaps he should show it to her. But would she understand? Or would she make him bring it to the police station like she did the ring? Jacob can’t explain why he needs to keep it. He can’t explain how the discovery of the watch has suddenly made him feel less alone.

He won’t tell her. He won’t tell Lulu or Frankie either. It’s a secret, one between him and Nicky. He knows he can’t wear it—his mother would notice and ask him where it came from. But he can keep it in the shoebox under his bed, the one where he keeps old baseball cards and the little silver army soldiers he’s too old to play with but can’t bring himself to throw away. He can bring the watch out every now and then on a bad day, a day when his thoughts won’t stay still and the letters run across the page and it feels as if there’s something wrong with him that no one else can see. On those days, Jacob will hold the watch. He’ll rub his thumb across the smooth silver, feel the etching of the letters beneath the pad of his thumb. I’m right here, Nicky will whisper and Jacob will feel better.

His mother has finally taken off her beach coverup. She’s up to her knees now and her fingers flutter lightly along the water’s surface. She seems Jacob watching her and she smiles at him. Jacob clutches the watch in his fist and begins to swim toward shore.