Last Resort

It turned out there were two vacation spots in coastal Maine boasting the name Anchorage. One was the quaint, upscale resort along the Marginal Way in Ogunquit that was my mother’s favorite place on earth. The other, located in York, was a somewhat janky overpriced motel where I had inadvertently made reservations using my mother’s credit card. She had put me in charge of organizing our beach vacation, as she often did, and I completely screwed it up.

The woman who answered the phone had a no-nonsense deep New England accent. “Ankrage,” she said.

I spoke softly because my mother was in the kitchen and the small rooms in her condo were right on top of each other. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I somehow made reservations at the wrong place. I meant to book a room at the Anchorage in Ogunquit and—”

She cut me off before I could finish my explanation—clearly she’d heard this sob story before. “All resahvations ah final,” she told me. “No refunds.”

My mother stood at the kitchen window, picking at a bagel she knew she should eat but wouldn’t be able to finish. The doctors had warned her if she wanted to travel, she needed to keep her weight above 100 pounds. It was a hot day in August, too hot for the prickly feel of the wig we’d bought only a few days earlier. Her bald head hovered in silhouette above the sink.

“Listen,” I said, walking up the stairs in an attempt to keep the conversation hidden. At the top of the stairs my six-year-old was still sleeping in the guest bedroom, which left only my mother’s room as a safe space to raise my voice if necessary. I sat on the edge of the tall four-poster bed that had been my grandmother’s, my feet dangling awkwardly in mid-air. “My mother’s sick,” I told the woman. “This is probably her last vacation, and she wants to go to Ogunquit.”

The voice coming through the line was flat. “No refunds.”

At $300 per night, the price was the only aspect of the room at the York Anchorage Motel that could be described as large. Two damply sheeted queen beds filled the space so thoroughly that when I pushed open the door it struck the end of one mattress, and I had to lift our suitcases off their wheels and toss them over the corner of the bed to get them in. The carpet exuded the mildewy smell of a bucket full of seashells left to rot in the garage. In the closet-sized bathroom, a torn shower curtain hung off the rod like a lopsided grimace.

My mother, who had sat through hours of chemotherapy without complaint, who could still smile despite losing her hair and most of her vision, who wouldn’t say “shit” if she stepped in it, observed wryly, “This place is a fucking dump.”

I spent the weekend trying to make up for my monumental mistake. What kind of daughter books the wrong place for her mother’s final vacation? I woke early on the first morning to get donuts and coffee from the diner next door, pulling on shorts and a tank top in the bluish light while my mother snored, open-mouthed, as she had throughout my life. The loud revving noise gave me hope that a strong engine was still purring in her chest.

Careful not to bump either mattress, I sidled between the beds, pausing to look down first at my daughter’s face, and then at my mother’s. Despite being perched at opposite ends of life, their faces shared a common structure, and I could see my mother’s questioning eyebrows and pale freckles mirrored on my six-year-old’s slumbering features. The future slowly blossoming from the past.

At some point during this weekend getaway, I was hoping my mother and I would engage in a deep end-of-life conversation, like those I’d seen on TV. In my fantasy scenario, we’d say the emotional things we didn’t typically share with each other at the mall or over lunch in the condo. I’d tell her she was wonderful at what I knew was her most cherished role—being a mother. I’d thank her for every sacrifice she’d made for me growing up, and we’d embrace after saying a tearful goodbye. Somehow, I believed some kind of closure would make her passing away easier to bear. Establishing the depth of our bond would mean our physical presence, or absence, wouldn’t matter so much. I had tried and failed to start this conversation on the phone, in the car, and at the cancer treatment center. Our seaside escapade swelled in importance and loomed like a last chance.

When I came back to the room with breakfast, sunlight was climbing the pinkish walls. My daughter had crawled up into my mother’s bed and was leaning in close to whisper in her ear. They went silent after I pushed the door open, and my daughter put a finger to her lips.

“Good morning,” I said brightly, making my way to the small wood-laminate table wedged into the corner under a grimy window. “I brought everyone’s favorite, and it looks like it’s going to be a perfect beach day.” With what I hoped was a bright smile, I placed a jelly donut on a napkin for my daughter and handed my mother a cup of black coffee.

My ever-sweet mother took a sip and tried to hide the look of distaste that pursed her lips.

“Thank you,” she said gently, but she put the Styrofoam cup on the table, and I noticed she didn’t touch it again. Meanwhile, my daughter dove into her breakfast with abandon, wearing red jelly and sugar proudly on her face.

Wiping the granulated sugar off my daughter’s mouth, I put on my best cheery camp counselor voice. “Let’s hit the beach, ladies!” We bumped into each other as we donned suits, rounded up towels and sunscreen. My daughter laughed, loving the cramped quarters, but my heart felt heavy as I watched my mother’s slow movements. As we walked across the crowded parking lot toward the busy street that divided the hotel from the shoreline, my mother shuffled in her sandals, her white linen shirt and pants hanging from her body like laundry on a line. My daughter skipped circles around her, calling, “Come on, Grammy. Let’s look for shells!” My mother smiled.

Once we’d made our camp, placing shoes carefully at the corners of the towels to keep the wind from ruining the smoothness of our space, my mother lowered herself carefully onto the bright blue towel and stuck her legs out straight. My whole life she had done just this—insisting on sitting as close to the sand as possible. No beach chairs or other elaborate camping gear for us. We were a towel-and-sheet family. My mother liked to feel the warmth of the sand against her body, loved to feel the ground give way and embrace her shape.

Her back hunched, she reached her two hands out and began to sift through the sand, lifting up fistfuls and letting it pour back through her fingers. Over and over, she dug and dropped, probably not even conscious she was doing it. Meanwhile, my daughter took her plastic shovel and began to excavate a hole near my mother’s feet.

I wanted to ask, “Do you have any regrets, Mom, something you wish you had done?” but that felt too much like admitting the end was near, so what came out was, “How do you feel?”

She kept her eyes on the cascading sand and gave me the answer she knew I wanted. “I’m fine, lovey. Stop worrying.” Once again, she was taking care of me, and I was failing to make the cosmic connection. If I had booked the right hotel, we might have been able to saunter along the Marginal Way, a gorgeous cliffside path with stunning ocean views, the perfect place for sentimental bonding. Instead, we were sharing a strip of dingy beach with loud families, squawking seagulls, and ketchupy snack bar trash.

Her work completed, my daughter dropped her shovel and grabbed my mother by the hand, tugging her upward. “Be careful!” I warned. “Grammy might be tired.”

“I want to swim,” my daughter demanded.

“I’ll take you,” I said, but she just pulled harder on my mother’s bony arm.

“I want to go with Grammy!” she insisted. It took a while for my mother to raise herself up from the towel, but my daughter waited, uncharacteristically patient, and chattered brightly as they made their slow progress to the shoreline. Their steps—my daughter’s short ones and my mother’s hesitant feet—synchronized perfectly.

When they reached the water, I saw my daughter extend her arm and gesture across the horizon, her cupped hand reaching toward a stone jetty at one end of the bay and sliding toward a small sailboat at the other, like a waiter offering a tray of hors d’oeuvres at a party. My mother nodded.

I smiled at the bond they shared, considered joining them but the warmth of the towel invited me to rest. The six months since my mother’s first lung scan had been a gauntlet of doctors, tests, and treatments. Somehow the sun and salt air erased the years and brought me back to my childhood, trips to the beach with my own grandmother. Steamed clams for dinner, swishing the bodies in the melted butter in an attempt to coat the sour taste of the bellies. My mother told me the bellies were the best part, the indication that we were getting fresh seafood rather than the stringy strips served in many restaurants, but the truth was I mostly just liked the butter, and the bellies made me a little sick.

When I looked back toward the water, I saw two shapes way out past where most of the other bathers were riding waves on their boogie boards. They were isolated, too far from the lifeguard’s chair positioned in the middle of the beach. As I got to my feet, it looked like the two shapes turned to face each other, then the shape that was my mother leaned over as my daughter gently poured a handful of water on her grandmother’s head.

I jumped up and strode toward the waves, intent on saving my mother from a chilly saltwater shower. The sun bounced blinding arrows off the sea, and I couldn’t make out details, but I watched as my daughter scooped another two handfuls of ocean and dribbled them over my mother’s thinly tufted head. Squinting, I tried to rush forward, but my legs moved like cement posts as I dragged them through the icy water.

“Hey,” I called, my voice barely able to compete with the pounding sound of the Atlantic. “Let’s not get Grammy wet, okay?”

Close up, I could see my mother’s white linen shirt clinging to her skin like a bandage, and she must have been shivering in the frigid Maine surf, but she wore a smile I hadn’t seen since before the diagnosis. With a serene glow, she kept her head down and close to the water, inviting the dousing. I stopped in my tracks and watched as my daughter reached up again to bless her grandmother.

As I made my way back to our towels, I placed my wet fingers in my mouth, savoring the salty taste I loved as a child. I remembered my mother warning me not to drink the ocean water, saying the salinity would make my thirst worse. Somehow I could never resist.

Later when I tossed our clothes—all of which were somehow damp, even our pajamas—into the suitcases crammed in the corner of the room, I saw a note on the sticky table still decorated with the sugary remains of breakfast. A small pad of paper boasted the Anchorage logo, a tacky sailboat riding a cartoon wave that highlighted my failure. But in my daughter’s crooked elementary- school handwriting, a message glowed like redemption: “It is good here.”

A native New Englander, Annamaria Formichella currently teaches in the English department at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Her creative work has been published in several collections and magazines, including Gyroscope Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Litbreak Magazine, and Anacapa Review. Her dreams include returning to the ocean and writing stories that hit the reader with a quiet crash.