The Ocean Blue

A Story by Tabby H.

Silver rosaries and bloody windshields. Dark brown curls and Rosemary. Pain.

She held the little silver cross in her hands as if it was all she had left to hold on to.

A...rosary. That's what her mother had called it. Nice. A nice name. It sounded kind of like her mother's name, Rosemary. Rosemary's rosary.

She supposed it was her rosary now. Ira's rosary. It didn't sound nearly as nice.

Tears slipped down her cheeks in shiny rivulets.

Her rosary, now, because her mother was gone. Her mother was gone, and she wasn't coming back. Forever in some place where Ira couldn't go.

The paramedics had given it to her afterwards. They had said it was the only thing they had found, besides her clothes. Of course. She never took that necklace off.

She had told Ira, once, what it was. A string of beads people used to count their prayers.

"Why don't we count our prayers, Momma?" Ira had asked.

"Not everyone counts their prayers, baby," Rosemary replied. "I don't, and my mother didn't, but your grandma's mother did. She used to say, if you held them very tightly, and you closed your eyes, that everything would fade away and you would here the angels singing."

So she closed her eyes and she listened, but there were no angels.

She held her baby brother so tightly that day.

Everyone was in black, staring at them, talking in hushed voices.

"I heard the other driver walked away just fine."

"They usually do. Rosie's poor kids. Isn't their father enlisted for another six months?"

"Yeah, that's what I heard."

Ira heard everything they said. And with each word, she just held Luca tighter. There was nothing more that she could do.

She pulled at her itchy black dress and she hugged Luca and she stared at her mother's closed coffin. She wished her dad had become anything but a marine and that a man named Steve McGregor had decided not to drink too much that night.

And she gripped her rosary in her hands and wished she heard the angels singing.

Ira ran her hands through her mother's carpet. It was white and soft, and the walls were red. Red was Rosie's favorite color.

She hated going into that room. Everything smelled like that Chanel perfume she used to love and felt warm like she used to be. Her clothes were lined up in her closet, her bed rumpled. It was like she had never left. And it hurt too much. It was all too much.

She felt big, wet tears fall on her folded legs and wondered when she'd started crying. She felt her shoulders heave and wondered when she'd started sobbing. It didn't seem to matter. Everything was blurred and messy and unfair.

"Ira?"

Her head snapped up. It was Luca. He was crying quietly, little fists balled up, dark, curly brown hair tangled and unkempt.

She wiped her tears away quickly and held her arms out to him. He came to her immediately, folding into her embrace. He was shaking, just enough to be noticed, and her heart broke.

She thought, absently, how horrible an age five was to lose your mother. Of course, fifteen wasn't much better.

"Why won't anybody tell me where Momma's at? Do you know where Momma went?"

Her dark, deft fingers weaved through his hair. "No, baby, I don't. I just know she isn't coming back."

He nodded his head thoughtfully. Silent tears still slipped down his cheeks. "Why did she have to leave?"

"I-I don't know. I wish I knew."

They sat in silence for a very long time. Ira's tears wet Luca's dark, wild curls and his stained her shirt.

"Ira?"

"Hmm?" she hummed absentmindedly.

"I hope she's somewhere nice."

Her throat closed up and she choked back the lump rising there. "Yeah. Me too, Luca. Me too."

She couldn't even bear to look at the bindings of the scrapbooks on the shelves until two months after.

Two months after, she was thinking about her mother's pretty face and the way her hands looked when she was braiding Ira's hair. She thought about how fast and deftly they moved, practiced as they were. Then she thought about the way her eyes rolled in amusement when Luca said or did something only an imaginative five year old could think up when she realized, with horror, that she couldn't remember the exact shade of Rosie's dark brown eyes.

Panic ran through her, sudden and strong. She wouldn't let herself forget anything.

She bolted into the living room, nearly knocking down a lamp and a kitchen chair in her haste. She ran to the shelf in the back corner of the room and grabbed every single one of their scrapbooks. All of them. There was nothing she could forget; absolutely nothing.

She opened the first one in her line of sight, and immediately closed it, cringing. She hadn't seen a picture of her mom since the funeral. Ira hadn't thought to prepare herself, mentally, beforehand, and it was hard to see pictures of the way things used to be.

But she opened it again, anyway.

It was her baby book. The first picture on the page was one of her mother 8 months pregnant with her.

She had her hands wrapped around her bulging belly, the way mother's do, and was laughing as she attempted to bend down and tie her shoes. Her dark, tight curls, the ones she, her mother, and Luca shared, were pulled half up, little tendrils framing her glowing face and dark skin. Rosemary had been beautiful, along with an amazing mother and wife.

Ira flipped the book closed and found another one.

This one was from about eleven years ago, when she had been four. They had taken a trip to the beach. Her dad had taken hundreds of pictures; pictures of the waves crashing up against the west coast shore, the purple and pink sunsets, but most of all, dozens and dozens of snapshots of Rosie and Ira.

There was a picture of little Ira, smiling hugely up at the camera as she displayed her lopsided sandcastle. There was one of Rosemary with a happy, laughing Ira on her shoulders. Ira was reaching up and up and up towards the sky, like she was trying to catch the sun as it fell behind the dunes.

But her favorite, one she hadn't known even existed, lay in the very back of the book untouched.

She and her mother were sitting with their legs crossed on the sand, totally relaxed. They had always looked very similar, and this picture proved no different; they had the same dark, untamable curly hair and skin the color of coffee. Their eyes were brown, too, though Ira's had always been just a little bit wider. Rosemary had drawn a heart in the sand between them, and was leaning forward, kissing Ira's nose. The toddler laughed against her mother's touch, leaning into it.

It was so beautiful; her mother looked so beautiful and they both looked so happy.

Tears slipped onto the photograph, blurring it until it became unrecognizable.

Their father called as often as he could.

She knew this, and yet she still resented the fact that he wasn't there with them, in this time when they needed him most. She dreaded the month ahead of her; it would be long and tedious, and her father would seem so horribly far away.

The trial had been the previous month. And oh, how badly she had wished for her father then.

She didn't understand much of anything they said. She had never been one who was very fond of Judge Judy or Cops, but she wished she had been. It would have benefit her, sitting in the court, waiting for her mother's drunken killer to succumb to the system.

When the jury gave the verdict, she almost lost the very little lunch she had eaten all over the prosecution.

Twenty-five years for manslaughter. That was all he would get. Twenty-five years for the life he had taken.

It wasn't nearly enough. It would never be enough.

It was finally time. Finally, finally time.

Ira's dad was coming home today.

She was nervous and fidgety, waiting at the airport, holding Luca's hand. She had missed him so much, but so much had changed so quickly. She couldn't tell if she was going to run into his arms or stand there awkwardly or completely break down. She couldn't tell. She couldn't tell, and he was almost here, almost right in front of her.

She waited and waited for what felt liked hours but was really only minutes. She looked at all the different people, waited for a flash and green or brown or something, when all the sudden, he was there.

In the flesh. For the first time in a year. Alive. He was alive. They weren't alone.

"Daddy!" Ira yelled. She threw Luca on her hip and ran to him.

"Dad! Dad!" Luca was yelling, reaching his pudgy little baby's hands out to him.

And suddenly they were there, in his arms for what felt like the very first time. She threw her arms around his neck and cried into his fatigues.

Things weren't good. They weren't okay, and they certainly wouldn't be for a long time. But for the first time in six months she had hope that one day she'd wake up and feel okay. Not good, but maybe she could greet Luca with her first genuine smile and make pancakes without crying. Maybe one day, she would wake up and the first thing on her mind would be Luca's first day of kindergarten and not her mother's smile.

Maybe.