Five Photographs

The sand glitters like a sea of tiny crystals.  I press the soles of my feet against it. How many footprints are here beside mine? The salty ocean comes and whisks them away. It carries them out into the nave of its waters, where all of the seashells and memories go. I used to think I could stop it. I could keep Eirny with me. I see now that I was wrong as I watch the water form little folds near my feet. Nothing is safe is in this world.


"Why are you frowning?" I ask. Eirny doesn't frown. My lips form the words, but I don't think that she's heard me. She's standing at the gate, watching me with an emotion I can't place. Sadness, I think. She has the face of defeat. I'm frozen in place for an awkward moment, watching Eirny watch me. Then I blink back to the scope of Dunning Beach. My sand castle stands limply by the rocks. It's too close. I misjudged the distance, and the waves are edging in. It takes a split second for the shore to swipe my model away. There goes a day's work. When I turn back, she's gone, too.

Her hair falls like satin over a soft, red dress. Her grandmother sent her it for her birthday, I remember. Eirny was proud to finally be ten. I'm chasing after her now, half-stumbling over the rocky land. Where are we going? Where is there even to go?

Eirny stops at the door to the country club. It's vacant in the summers. The electricity has been turned off and the rooms cleared. I look, surprised, as she pulls out a key. The doors swing open to either side, sunlight pouring through the space in-between. Everything is dusty. This place is quiet, apart from the hum of the wind. A leaf from the porch steps blows in.

"Close the door," Eirny whispers. I smile. We're acting secretive, as if someone might hear. I've been here at the country club once before. It looked lustrous then, full of life. That's a good stretch from its present state. The chandeliers don't sparkle now. Neither do the misty blues of my friend's eyes.

I follow as she takes the stairs, chooses a room. We kneel opposite each other on a rug and Eirny pulls out a keepsake box. "I left it here in May," she says. She handles it with a delicate touch, taking five playing cards and spreading them out between us. I study each one: two queens, two kings, and a blank.2

"Tell me what they mean," I ask, watching impatiently.

Eirny eyes me blankly. "They're pictures."

"No they're not," I protest, simply because I can see them, and they aren't. What can she see that I can't? Eirny frowns, betrayed. She sets her keepsake box on the sill of the window and leaves, leaving me speechless, the five cards still positioned before me.

We don't speak after that. She leaves Dunning without a good-bye. Eirny's family, as it happens, moves away that same day. What do you have if you lose your one friend?



The first time that she comes to visit, it's June. The heat makes my gray flannel shirt stick to my skin. I ask about life in Portland, and if she misses North Dakota, at all. Eirny says "yes". She lies to please me. We walk along the sand in our bare feet and pretend nothing's changed. Some things haven't. When she goes to find her keepsake box, I follow suit. The sunlight that escapes the curtains lights her face like a flame. She's beautiful now. Or maybe she always has been. Her hair is a darker brown. It smells like honey and wildflowers as a strand brushes my cheek. "Jack," Eirny whispers. I pretend I haven't heard. I kiss her, taste the ocean on her lips. This could be the last time that I see her, I tell myself. I won't make the same mistake twice.


There's an expression that says that life isn't fair. We aren't accepted to the college want, or the job we applied to. We fall in love with people that we can't have. I unfold the letter. "Dunning Beach Country and Club and Resort," the heading reads. It's an invitation to a fancy black-tie event. Five years ago, I would have laughed. I was part of a simple, middle-class family. When it came to these prestigious events, I'd get as far as the gate. It was people like Eirny who always belonged.

Somewhere between those years and now, I grew up. I went to Columbia Law School and discovered life beyond the beach. Falling in love with New York hadn't been part of my plan. I live with a couple of friends there, but I'm in Dunning for a trip. For old times' sake.

"Nice turnout," says a professor, Todd. The foyer is made to look like a ballroom. Couples dance cozily to the tunes a pianist a plays. It's here that I see her. My oldest friend stands alone. She's in a strapless, silk dress, a black bow tied in the front that reminds me of her old blouse.

"Eirny", I call, crossing in front of her. I'm close enough here to see it: a perfect, gold ring. "You're married," I whisper. Neither of us moves. She stares me with the same, sad expression that I can't place. A cultured man in a tuxedo takes her hand and steers her away.

The expression is true. Life's not fair. You can be a perfect gentleman, a saint, but life stills deals you a bad hand. I pull the five cards from my wallet and throw them away. I've never understood them. I kept them because I knew that there was something there that I was too blind to see. Eirny was never wrong. She knew the weather, and how to build a sandcastle where nothing could wash it way. But this was more complicated than that.



"Why did you do it?" Eirny whispers. It's snowing. Today is my last day before I leave for New York. The country club glows like a lighthouse behind her. I'm several steps behind, where she's pretending she can't see me.

"Caught me," I murmur. The air is as cold as I ever remember it being. The seagulls are hiding in some, secret place. I can't look Eirny in the eye, out of fear of what I might find there. I'm watching the sand. Counting footprints and imagining the people who left them.

She holds out a neat stack of cards. "You didn't answer the question."

"Because I didn't understand it," I whisper. I take a card in my hands. It's the blank one that comes at the end of a deck. Not your ordinary gift.

Eirny looks small under her white, fleece coat. I think of Summer, 1983, and of watching helplessly as her father's car pulled away. "You didn't think you'd see me again," she volunteers. That's true. Her eyes fill with stars. "I wanted to tell you that you would. I'd be back when I was older, when I could drive myself here."

"Why didn't you?" I say. Her warm hands graze mine.

"I couldn't find the words." She blinks down at the cards. "And you weren't listening. Pictures were the only way I could think of to make you remember me." Eirny smoothes the fold of the red queen. "What does this remind you of?"

I spy it carefully. "It reminds me of you. Every time I looked at it, I thought of the day that you left." I take the second card. "And the time that you returned." The third card. "When you were standing in the foyer." The fourth. "Where we're standing now." I understand now. They are pictures. The cards were the piece of an old friend that I always kept with me.

Eirny holds the fifth away from my reach. It's the blank card, the unsolved mystery. "That settles it then," she says sweetly. "Here's for the fifth." And for a precious moment, we break the rules. I forget that she has a ring, or that I have a new life in a faraway town. She kisses me, and we're ten years old again.

Everything will be gone tomorrow. The day will be washed ashore by the blue-gray waves. If I forget what it's like to be in love, though, I won't frown. I'll pull out my old, buckskin wallet. Tucked there is her gift: five photographs.

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