Homeplace by Joann Ross

stronger.
    “You’re not thinking about Amy.”
    His words seemed to echo in the empty house. The falling-down house he’d tried to tell Peg was larger than they’d ever need. But she’d proven surprisingly assertive those last months of her life, insisting that after all those years living in a Seattle townhouse, they needed a “real home.” When he’d realized that she wasn’t about to give in, he’d reluctantly acquiesced, even though they both knew that she’d never live to see it properly renovated.
    “It’s yourself you’re feeling so fucking sorry for.” The gloom he’d thought he’d put behind him settled over his shoulders. The roof had found a new place to leak; rain was tapping an annoying rhythm on the hand-pegged wooden floor. “Shit, nothing like a goddamn pity party to cap off a less than spectacular day.”
    He pushed himself to his feet, unlocked the small cedar chest and chose a videotape at random from the stacks Peg had created. He shoved the tape into the VCR, moved the wastepaper basket he kept for such purposes beneath this new leak, then flopped back onto the couch.
    It was one of the tapes Peg had made outdoors, on the rugged coastline strewn with piles of driftwood she’d claimed always made her think of Sasquatch playing a game of pick-up-sticks. She was laughing, with her gentle eyes and her generous mouth, as she related the legend of Big Foot, that huge, hairy Pacific Northwest version of the Abominable Snowman, to her daughter, who’d someday be watching this tape.
    Groaning, Jack shut his eyes against the pain. Then, unable to resist, reluctantly opened them again and watched his wife as she strolled down the beach, pausing to point out the wonders found in tide pools. She could have been any mother taking a lazy summer day to share her world with her child. She could have had all the time in the world. But sometimes pictures lied, Jack thought. And appearances could definitely be deceiving.
    In the background the rising tide roared, gulls and cormorants wheeled over the towering offshore sea stacks and although he couldn’t hear it on the tape, Jack remembered the sough of the wind in the fir trees atop the cliff. That same wind that was ruffling the fiery auburn bob beneath Peg’s Seattle Mariners baseball cap.
    The hair was a dazzling flourescent red color never seen in nature, too bright to be real, which it wasn’t. Claiming wigs were too hot, but unwilling to go out in public looking like, as she’d put it, “a transvestite Yul Brynner,” she’d sewn strands from a cheap vinyl wig into the cap. And somehow, on her, it had looked just right.
    Jack found himself reluctantly smiling back at his wife. Just as he knew she’d intended when she’d begun the ambitious legacy in the first place. As if Mother Nature couldn’t remain immune to such a warm heart, the sun swept from behind a low-hanging pewter cloud and lit the gunmetal sea to shimmering sapphire.
    A dizzying tumble of images appeared on the screen, disjointed scenes of sky and surf that had Jack remembering dropping the camera. For a long time the unblinking camcorder eye stared at the gray sand. A crab scuttled sideways into view, then disappeared again. Iridescent bubbles sparkled, then winked out like fallen stars. The frothy white foam seemed to be growing closer with each succeeding wave that washed onto shore.
    “Jack!” Her voice was breathless. With laughter, and, he remembered, lingering passion from the kiss they shared after he dropped the camera. “It’s going to get wet!”
    There was a disorienting image of Peg’s slender hands scooping it from the sand. Her gold wedding band gleamed, reminding Jack of the until-death-do-us-part promise that had seemed so far away on that sun-blessed Saturday afternoon they’d exchanged vows.
    “We should get that on tape,” she was saying.
    He grumbled in the background.
    “No, it’ll be perfect,” she coaxed prettily, turning the camera on him,