1. It''s always windy here. I live on the Oregon coast in a one-hundred-year-old wooden building that was supposed to store fishing stuff. At some point, a bathroom was put in. Then later what my mom calls "the worst kitchen in the world" was added. Mom says when she closes her eyes, she smells all the years of salty, slimy fishing nets. I don''t want to break it to her, but you can smell the past in here with your eyes open too. What we call the boathouse, even if it never held a boat, sits high up the bank five hundred yards from where the Siuslaw River hits the Pacific Ocean.
But when we look out the front window, we don''t see water. Our view is of the Big House, which is the fancy place that the McKern family owns. This is their second home and they visit only a few times a year. In August, they always show up for ten days. That''s when Oregon weather can fool a person. It''s warm, but never hot. The rain and cold air go on a short summer vacation and the fog that normally pushes down on my town disappears. People drive up from California and some of them make a big mistake and buy property here.
It''s called "buyer''s remorse" when you realize you messed up like that. Remorse is one of the words people don''t really say very much. Re means "again" in Latin. And morse comes from the Latin "to bite." So, remorse means to bite again, which could be the pain from something you''d like to change. I bet the McKerns have remorse, only I''m just guessing. Mom says we should be grateful that there are people who make popular video games in California and get fooled into thinking a big house on the Oregon coast in the small town of Florence is something they want to own, because it means that we can live at their place. The McKerns call Mom their property manager.
She doesn''t get a salary, but we don''t have to pay rent or any of the utility bills, and when things here break, we can use their credit card to fix them. That''s good because there''s a lot falling apart. One whole category of problems are the doors. The knobs, which are made of old purple glass, look great but they''re always coming off. Besides that, you can only open the oven door partway because it hits the wall. And the refrigerator door is hinged in the wrong direction, so you need to squeeze into the corner to get something out. Also, the roof leaks, which is why we keep buckets on the kitchen counter. I''m used to the sound of the drips.
Mom says the slope is wrong and there isn''t good drainage. She must be right, because last April they took off the old roof and started over. But it didn''t fix the problem. If you have bad drainage, you will always have bad drainage. We''re supposed to be keeping an eye on the property. I do that by staring through the cloudy front window and wondering why we can''t go into the Big House to watch something on one of the large TVs, or play a game of pool in what''s called the "rec room." But only Mom is allowed inside. She has a routine where she walks around and checks the windows and doors.
Once a day she flushes the toilets. She always turns on a few lights. She picks different ones each day to let people know things aren''t just on timers. Every week she runs the water for two straight minutes in the four showers and the two bathtubs. Plumbing, I guess like most things, doesn''t do so great left alone. The McKerns have internet, which we share, only it can be spotty for us in the boathouse. I think we should ask about getting a signal booster, but Mom says we''ve got a good thing going and not to complain. If I want to watch a show on Mom''s computer without a lot of stopping and starting, I go sit on the Big House back deck, which looks out onto the water.
It doesn''t matter what time of year, I always wear my heavy coat and a knit hat and I bring a blanket. But even if it''s raining (which it is most days), the overhang of the roof keeps me dry. It''s loud under the alcove. The wind comes across the sand dunes on the other side of the water and blows hard. It''s like a whistle. And there''s also the roaring sound of the river and the crashing of the ocean waves. The noise of rain hitting the deck of the Big House blends into the drops pinging on the Siuslaw. A drizzle on water can be louder than heavy rainfall, which doesn''t seem right but has something to do with bubbles that break on the river''s surface from the smaller drops.
I''m not any kind of scientist, but I pay attention to things. We didn''t always live here. Two years and four months ago we were renting a house on Buckskin Bob Road, which sounds like a joke but was the name of my old street. It was in Dunes City, just south of Florence. We were only two blocks from Siltcoos Lake. Our house was light yellow with blue trim, and our roof didn''t leak. The rental had three bedrooms and there was a fenced-in backyard, which was to keep out the deer. There was old wall-to-wall carpeting that felt soft on my bare feet.
We had a washer and dryer in the garage and an island in the kitchen. Mom says she never thought a kitchen island was important until we didn''t have one. Two years and four and a half months ago my little brother, Geno, and I also had a dad. But on April 4, very early in the morning, there was The Accident, which is what we call what happened. If Dad hadn''t been on his boat in the dark pulling up crab pots, he wouldn''t have hit the sand bar, which cracked the hull of the boat, and the sneaker wave wouldn''t have knocked him into the freezing water. And everything in the world would be different. My dad was a commercial crab fisherman, which is why his hands had a lot of calluses. He grew up in this part of Oregon and he was carrying on his family''s tradition, even though his parents had moved away.
Dad''s mother and father got divorced when he was little and his mom moved to Alaska after he finished high school. He was an only child. Pop-Pop, my grandfather, turned the crabbing business over to Dad once he thought he was ready. After that, Pop-Pop got rid of his stuff, gave Dad his truck, and rode off on a motorcycle that had a lot of chrome. I was little and didn''t understand. I guess I still don''t. I remember Pop-Pop, but I guess what I''m remembering are pictures I''ve seen, not the real person. Mom wasn''t able to find Pop-Pop to tell him about The Accident.
Sometimes I think that''s better because for Pop-Pop, Dad is still alive (even though I wonder how close they really were--it''s not like he''s been checking in on any of us). Mom didn''t grow up here. Her family is from Coos Bay, which is also on the coast but an hour''s drive south. They weren''t water people. They worked driving logging trucks. But none of them are in Coos Bay anymore. One of Mom''s brothers, Caleb, moved up to Spokane, Washington, and Uncle Mike and his wife split up and he lives in Texas now. After her brothers left, Mom''s parents bought a used RV and they started traveling around, mostly in Arizona.
Mom says that when you get older you can only take so much sadness and you don''t think your heart will hold out if you hear any more bad news. I don''t know if that''s what happened, but they didn''t come back after The Accident. They told Mom to move us to Arizona. Grandma Carol said they weren''t going to spend another minute being "rainy-day people." It''s too bad because my little brother and I could use a grandma and grandpa or some aunts, uncles, and cousins. After The Accident we put Dad''s ashes in the Siuslaw River under the bridge. Geno thinks this means most of him settled down into the sandy bottom, but I watched the gray powder float away on top of the water. I think it washed straight out into the ocean, because he would have wanted that.
My father used to say I was a Daughter of the Sea. He meant it in a good way because he loved the ocean and he was hoping he''d passed that feeling down to me. Only I don''t love the sea. I used to be okay with it, but since The Accident I''m afraid of the waves. My little brother, Geno, likes to throw sticks into the river and watch them get swept away. I wonder if he''s thinking about Dad, but I never ask. Geno is more than four years younger than me and he doesn''t have red hair like I do. Or gray eyes.
When someone is talking about him, they usually say "Geno is the sweetest boy." I would find this super annoying, except it''s true. He is sweet and I guess either you''re born that way or you''re not. Geno''s real name is Genesis, which is a brand of car and an old rock band and a famous religious writing. It''s also a healthcare system, a chain of gyms, and a company that makes loudspeakers. We call him Geno because it''s less confusing, but we''re not Italian. I''m lucky that my name doesn''t have that kind of history. I''ve never heard of anyone with the name Cordy, so I have to repeat it a bunch of times when I first meet someone.
My actual name is Cordelia, but no one on the planet has ever called me that. I like my name, even though every now and then someone calls me Corky. That is not okay. I wish there was the letter z in my name. That letter is worth ten points in Scrabble. I always hope I get the z tile when I play that game. If you have a z in your name, it might mean you''re lucky. Until The Accident, I never thought much about good luck or bad luck.
Now it''s always on my mind. What happened to my dad was very, very, very bad luck. I''m waiting for a run of very, very, very good luck. I try to force myself to believe that could happen. We''ve been on a roll of bad luck for a while now. Before The Accident, Mom had been taking classes at Lane Community College. She''d been studying to be a nurse. Onc.