Lori Sambol Brody

Before we leave Carlos’ and Mark’s little cliffside house, they warn us about sneaker waves. Carlos is a third-grade teacher, and he’s schooling Jonah and me, visitors from calmer beaches down south. He says, If someone gets caught by a sneaker wave, don’t jump in to help. You are unlikely to survive.

I’m jumping in because I can’t live without you, Mark says to Carlos.

Don’t save me, Carlos says.

Please, you know you’d try to save me. Mark throws his hands up.

Jonah and I don’t say anything, don’t look at each other, but his hand fumbles toward mine and clasps my palm. We’ve been married as long as Carlos and Mark, seven years. Carlos was my man of honor, and I was his best woman.  

We take Carlos’ Prius to Agate Beach, Jonah in the front because he has long legs, me squished in the back behind Carlos with no leg room at all. Mark stays in their house, tottering on the cliff’s edge, watching kayakers and fishermen in the bay below with his telescope. A bout of COVID six months ago left him with a transformed sense of smell, and the ocean now smells of rot and kerosene to him. He can barely stand to go outside to their garden. Carlos said we will need to reassess if his sense of smell doesn’t return. He didn’t say what they would need to reassess.

The beach is wide and flat, and there’s no sand, only pebbles. Agate, Carlos tells us.We carry our flip-flops and bury our toes in the rocks—smaller pebbles further from the ocean and bigger pebbles are worn smooth and soft below the tideline. Even though fog hangs over the horizon, the stones warm my bare feet. 

Need me to hold your shoes? Jonah says.

I shake my head. I dig my fingers into the pebbles and wash them over my hands. The surfaces are smooth and powdery, like talc. I slip a pale grey stone with rust-red stripes into the pocket of my windbreaker. Pebbles sheened and rainbowed with water are always pretty on the beach, but when I take the rocks home, they’re drab and lusterless; I wonder why I even picked them up.

I balance a large stone with a hole through it—the perfect weight. For what? For throwing at someone? I know these are magical stones. Look through hagstones, and you can see the truth, see through the disguises of witches and fairies. I hold it up to my eye like a monocle. Jonah’s near the water’s edge, the cuffs of his khakis rolled up, squinting because he never remembers his sunglasses.

I don’t see any truth. I just see him.

I turn to Carlos and gaze at him through the hagstone. Mark used to love the beach, he says. He glows in sunlight, filtering through the clouds and the stone’s hole. He cups his hands together and looks back at me through the open space between his palms. What truth does he see?

Agate forms in cavities caused by bubbles in volcanic rock. In the empty spaces.

Carlos sits on the beach, his baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. I wander away from him and Jonah, eyes on the beach. The pebbles: pale green, dried-blood-red crazed with white veins, half white and half black, orange marbled with gray and white, pale grey streaked darker gray and black, matte white. My pockets fill with agate smoothed by the force of the waves. I imagine a jar of pebbles on a windowsill above the kitchen sink, in the house I share with Jonah now, or in another house far away.

I look back, and I’m pretty far from Jonah now. He peers through his binoculars at the oystercatchers he likes so much. He’s not watching the ocean or the waves. Anything could sneak up on him. Carlos warned us to stay away from the water, watch the surf, and not turn our back to the ocean.

I expect him to turn his head and look through his binoculars at me, but he doesn’t. 

A wave breaks and washes to my toes, then pulls back—Lacey foam tatted by the force of the water. Jonah still isn’t looking at the ocean, beguiled by what is apparently an exceptionally beautiful bird, when a wave moves diagonally and sweeps the beach near him, roiling water headed toward where he stands. I run toward him. My pockets are heavy with agate, clinking like broken glass, the wine glass we broke under our heels during our wedding ceremony, the shards still stored inside a heart-shaped box in the back of our bedroom closet. I throw pebbles from my pocket, great scoops of them, a trail behind me so they don’t weigh me down. Just six inches of moving water can pull someone off their feet, and this wave is deeper. The wind throws his name back to me when I call for him. The wave is almost upon Jonah, lapping at his feet, ready to trip him, sweep him into the ocean. I imagine him swept away by the current, the gray-green water, arms flailing, the stones he collected weighing him down, and hypothermia in ten minutes. I’m standing at the ocean’s edge, beyond the reach of the tide (do I take a step forward?) and –

And then the wave recedes.

When I reach him, he lowers his binoculars. What’s up, he says.

I’m panting. The wave – I say.

I’ve been watching the ocean, he says. His tone annoyed.

When we return to the house on the cliff, Carlos lies on the couch with his head in Mark’s lap, and Jonah takes Mark’s kayak down to the bay and paddles around moored fishing boats and sea stacks wild with birds and moss. I follow Jonah through Mark’s telescope. In the round circle of the eye piece: There he is. There he is.

Lori Sambol Brody lives in the mountains of Southern California. Her short fiction has been published in Smokelong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Tin House Flash Fridays, the New Orleans Review, Craft, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Her stories have been chosen for the Best Small Fictions 2018 and 2019 and Best Microfiction 2021 anthologies, Longform Pick of the Week, and Wigleaf Top 50. She can be found on social media at @LoriSambolBrody and her website is lorisambolbrody.wordpress.com