Chapter 8 - The Cliffs of the Algarve
In Lagos, the world was made of three things: ochre stone, white foam, and an ocean so vast and blue it made everything that had happened in Ohio seem like an argument between ants on a sidewalk.
Joyce and I took a small wooden boat out to the Ponta da Piedade on Tuesday morning.
The boat was piloted by an old man named Manuel, whose skin had been cured by fifty years of salt and sun until it resembled an old leather boot. He took us through sea arches that looked like the flying buttresses of submerged cathedrals, the green water so clear we could see the brown kelp swaying six fathoms below us like trees in an underwater wind.
"Look at that, Myrna," Joyce said, pointing her camera toward a natural chimney where the waves roared into a dark cavern and burst out the top in a cloud of diamond-colored spray. "You would have missed this."
"I would have," I said.
I would have been sitting at the kitchen island, checking the red folder to see if Maggie was allowed to have oat milk instead of whole milk, while the clock ticked its little brass tongue into the cogs.
Manuel cut the engine in a quiet cove protected by three towering sea stacks of golden limestone. The boat rocked gently in the swell, the water making a low, hollow *chug-chug* against the wooden hull.
I reached into my bag and pulled out four smooth, flat pebbles I had picked up from the beach at Praia da Rocha that morning.
One was pink granite, speckled with quartz. That was for Chloe. One was dark gray, with a white band running through its center like a racing stripe. That was for Finn. One was a deep, rough sea-green, heavy for its size. That was for Eli.
And the last was a tiny, perfect white shell, no bigger than a thumbnail, shaped like a fan, with edges so delicate you could see the sun through them. That was for Maggie.
Five years ago, when Charles died, I thought my life had become an estate that was being settled.
I thought that after seventy, the only work left was to be careful, to be available, to make sure that the things Charles had built didn't fall down, and to help Caleb keep his own life from wobbling. I had thought that love was an endless willingness to be inconvenienced.
Manuel reached out with a gnarled hand, took a small wooden box from beneath his seat, and handed Joyce and me two small glasses of medronho—a clear, fiery fruit brandy made from wild strawberry trees in the hills behind the coast.
"To the sea," Manuel said in broken English, lifting his glass.
"To the sea," Joyce echoed, downing hers in one go and immediately coughing until her face turned the color of Pena Palace.
I lifted mine to my lips. It smelled of smoke, honey, and wild berries. It burned all the way down, hot and sweet and fierce, settling in the pit of my stomach like an ember.
"To being dangerous," I whispered.
May you like
Manuel smiled, showing three gold teeth. He didn't understand the words, but he understood the look in an old woman's eyes when she realizes that the water beneath the boat is deep enough to carry her anywhere she wants to go.
***
