Sea Glass by Anita Shreve Page B

the room. He has his sale; if he lingers, Rowley might change his mind. “I think I’d like to get that money over to the contractor this afternoon before my wife and I leave for Taft,” Sexton says. “He says he’ll get a start on our project tomorrow if I can get the money to him.”
    “That so?” Rowley asks, furrowing his brow. “Over the weekend?”
    Sexton blinks and instantly sees his mistake. He’s moved too fast, and if he isn’t careful, he’ll lose the deal. He makes a show of relaxing. He crosses his legs, leans back in his chair, studies his drink. He lets the silence play itself out.
    “Say, did you read about that French airman yesterday?” Sexton asks. “The one who was forced down into the sea halfway across the Atlantic?”
    Sexton opens the door of the Buick so fast that Honora jumps. “Gosh,” she says, sitting up straight on the navy mohair upholstery. “You startled me.”
    “Oh, baby,” Sexton says. He kneels on the driver’s seat, leans over and kisses his wife so hard that he bends her neck back over the seat.
    “Well,” she says when she can breathe. “I take it your appointment went okay.”
    “Beautiful,” he says, twisting into his seat.
    “What did you sell?” she asks.
    “A Copiograph and two Eights,” he says.
    “That’s wonderful,” she says.
    Sexton puts the clutch in and adjusts the power lever. He pushes the starter button with his foot. Now if he can just make it to Franklin by four o’clock, he’ll be set. Norton will be waiting with the paperwork for the mortgage, Sexton now has the cash for the down payment, and with any luck, by four-thirty, he and his wife will own their own house.

  Honora
    When Sexton is away, Honora practices cooking. She plans a spring garden and walks to the store with a dime in her pocket to buy a dozen eggs. She darns Sexton’s socks and unravels a sweater she doesn’t like and begins an argyle vest for him that she hopes to finish before it turns too cold. She takes up yard work because she knows that he doesn’t enjoy it. She rakes years’ worth of leaves out from under the hedges and trims the bushes with a pair of clippers she found in the cellar. She tries to cut the beach roses back, but some of the thicker stalks resist the dull blades. She weeds the walkway and mows the lawn with a machine Jack Hess has lent them. She likes the dune grass out front because it doesn’t need tending. She studies the scarred patch at the side of the house. In its center is a marble bench. In the spring, she thinks, she might plant a rose garden there. The marble bench will make a pleasant place to sit.
    In the afternoons and early evenings when the tide has drawn off, Honora looks for sea glass. She finds a slim sliver of amethyst and a jewel-like bit of cobalt. She picks up a thick chunk that looks like dirty ice after a long winter, ice that has been skated on and has gone cloudy with use. She fingers a piece the color of young dandelions and finds shards that look like flower petals: hyacinth and wisteria and lilac. She puts the pieces in her pocket and takes them home and lays them on a windowsill.
    She finds a piece that once was a bottle neck. She picks up a delicate shell-like shape with scalloped edges. She touches a shard the color of mint sauce, another that is ice blue and reminds her of a waterfall frozen in winter. She finds an olive-green that resembles the state of New York, another shard that seems to be made of the salt film that once coated the windows of the house. She discovers whites that are not white at all, but rather blond and eggshell and ivory and pearl. One day she almost misses a piece because it so closely resembles sand. When she picks it up and holds it to the light, she sees that it is a translucent golden color, seemingly ancient.
    She finds scraps of celadon and cucumber and jade, specks of pea and powder and aquamarine. Once she comes upon a chunk that reminds her of dishwater in a sink. She