The Sandcastle
Nancy Xu
1
She had felt, rather than watched, him die.
It was in the office, in a room with blindingly white walls and a group of men with combed hair and glittered wrists where she suddenly wrenched herself up from her seat, muttering about the restroom and promptly collapsing outside the door. Her eyes shut tight with pain as she shrunk into herself, arms and legs recoiling, trembling all the way through. Ten minutes, and it was over. She stepped back inside, smoothing down the wrinkles caught in her slacks as she went.
She visited the apartment immediately after work, as she regularly did on Sundays. It was their night, a designated red circle on her weekly calendar otherwise littered with crossed-out blocks she fondly labeled Task Time, Self-Improvement Showdown, and Wonderful Work, all ending with a cluster of exclamation points. He was the one who, earlier that year, after another missed birthday gathering, gently took the weathered agenda out of her hands and carefully outlined a box of time on Sunday, flipping through the pages and drawing in his presence again and again until he reached the end. He tucked it back into her leather bag, satisfied.
“There,” he said, smile curling at the edge of his lips, twinkle in his eye. “Now it’s the law. Now you’re obligated.”
She reached the end of the staircase. The carpet was worn and green, and the light illuminating the hall was always flickering, casting a yellow tint over everything.
A woman was backing out of the apartment, twisting the key into a new, silver lock transplanted onto the grimy door. She turned around at the approaching footsteps, giving a start before schooling her expression into something uncomfortably sympathetic, features shifting around to their rightful places.
“Oh, Mary,” she said. It was Sarah, the landlord. Her voice was soft, unusual. “I’m glad I caught you.”
“The power give out again?” Mary asked. It was only polite to ask, and to prompt, she thought. But the musty scent of the hallway was grating at her, and her feet were tired. She nodded at the door. “Mind letting me inside?”
“I — I just switched out the locks,” said Sarah, tilting her head to the side.
“Well, why?”
“He doesn’t live here, not anymore since —”
“That so? He moved out in the last week without a word?”
“Mary,” Sarah cut in, impatience breaking through. She then stopped herself suddenly, readjusting. “Your mother didn’t speak with you already?” Her voice was strained. She leaned her frame against the door, and her tongue came up to run across her yellow teeth. The craggy white strands of her graying hair stuck out, rough and messy.
“Why are you asking?” Mary stood upright now, stiff. She dug her heel against the fraying edge of the discolored, dewy carpet, impatient. This was nonsense. She only wanted to get inside.
“Oh,” said Sarah. Soft and delicate, like Mary was glass. And then again, softer, yellow teeth gleaming, “Oh, Mary. No one told you?”
She huffed, and uncrossed her arms. “Well! Will you do the honors, then?”
“He died.”
Mary stared at her. Sarah continued, the dam opening and the words rushing out, “Drowned, earlier today. Your mother called. Said his tracker went silent in the afternoon.”
Everything was still. And then slowly, it was like the weight of the sky was pushing down on Mary’s head, her shoulders, sinking her deeper, crumbling and suffocating. Her vision cracked, eyes flitting over the drab, disgusting, stifling hallway. Everything, all of it — it was all wholly dirty. Sarah’s teeth, her hair, the carpet, the dust and cobwebs and flies swarming around the ugly, yellow light. She must be lying, a filthy, cheating liar, and Mary opened her mouth to tell her as much.
Sarah spoke faster, her tone now harsh and tired, all at once. “Talk to her, if you don’t believe me.” She shrugged. “The locks are switched. I've got someone moving in early tomorrow.”
She finally stepped away from the door. The new lock was stark and handsome against the chipped, fading paint. It glared at Mary, beckoning.
“I — I'm sorry for your loss, really. I wish my brother loved me as much as..." Sarah paused, and sighed. "It’s late, and I’ve got paperwork to finish up. Let me walk you out, Mary.”
Mary did phone her mother, afterwards. When he died, she was sitting on the shining white floors outside the boardroom. There was no body to recover, and three days later, they held the funeral.
2
There was an insurance payout.
They decided to split it down the middle, even and fair, as he was. He was always prattling on about how he loved both his mother and sister equally — the same amount he loved everyone else in the world.
It was exactly enough for their mother to retire. Mary wondered, if this was all some kind of sick joke, a sacrifice of his life for their supposed freedom. But she felt as chained as ever, the burden of his death crushing her, shrinking her with such force each passing day she nearly choked on it.
Her first purchase afterwards was a new calendar book, its unmarked pages full of promise, the Sunday evenings free for herself, to be filled in with Wonderful Work. She spent the rest of the wealth harvesting her own business, as she had left her job at the prim, clean office. Somewhere there existed a deep ache for him, strangled in the guilt of her loose commitment — the feeble displays of care and affection, her failure to make time for him.
It was thus necessary for her to be better, to live better, to earn more, faster and at greater sums than ever before. To reach an end, so she could then lift the weight off her shoulders and spare herself the time to think. About what, she did not know. But this life was grating at her, cutting in deeper, and then deeper, each passing year. There was nothing else more right to do, and so she threw herself into her work, ink blotting out the pages of her agenda, more enthusiastic than ever before.
“Mary,” her mother begged. “Haven’t you had enough?”
She hadn’t, not even at the end, because it wasn’t — it was never enough.
3
When she died, peaceful and alone, he felt it. He came to greet her, but he was large and hard to look at. It was his kingdom. She saw him and stepped back, cowering.
“It’s me,” he pleaded. “Mary, it’s me.”
Slowly, she raised her head. And it was him — the same callused hands that wrote himself into her time, the same eyes that she had missed looking into all those years after, it was him, whole and present and alive. Tilting her head upwards, she breathed in deeply and held it, her body reawakening. The air, at last, was new again. It burned inside of her, sharp, and she relished in it, wanting to hold onto its novelty as long as she could. A pressure she had carried all this time lifted.
Oh, I had forgotten what it was like to breathe, she thought. She felt wonderful and terrible all at once. A sob escaped her, dissonant and loud, echoing around them.
His eyes were pained and distant. “I forgive you,” he said, gentle and quiet. “But why did you?”
It occurred to Mary then, that he knew about her life after his death, that he had been watching all this time. The suffering, the pain, the stagnant nature of it all. He loomed over her, and stretched his hand out. His fingers were larger than her whole frame.
“Why did I?” she cried. “How could I have done otherwise?” It was too bright, he was glowing. But she looked at him, even though it hurt, and realized that he was not the same as he was then, after all. He was not alive as he was then.
The weight came back over her like a wave, slamming into her. Mary stumbled under it, hurt that she needed to carry it again after thinking herself free. The new air tasted stale and spoiled.
“How else...,” she said, then stopped, bitter and frail. “How else could I have lived? I tried — I tried to gain enough, to have enough, to stop all of this pain and hurt, but I could never quite reach that far. That’s how it is.” She looked at him, and murmured again, softly and almost to herself, “That’s how it is for all of us.”
Mary knew then, also, that he was not capable of fixing any of it, and that he did not want to fix it — that life had long gone, the suffering now forgotten and meaningless. It struck her that this was forever, that they now had time, had it completely, a speck marked into her palm, stretching itself outwards, infinite. A guarantee. She buried her face in her hands and wished for anything else.
Written as part of the 2020 TRELS Summer Research program under the guidance of Dr. Jordan Crandall.