Every Pond Has a Woman in White

From a distance, it was evident Sandy and Cal weren’t going to make it, but, being their sailing coach, Martin had no way to break it to them. By not making it, he didn’t mean drowning in some horrible capsizing accident. No, the ponds and inlets they sailed were sheltered. For the rare open ocean regattas, they were extra cautious about wind speeds and shark sightings.

Martin meant as a couple, their teenage relationship withering before him, the two sitting at a distance on sagging wooden benches, tugging drysuits on over sweatpants and thermal t-shirts.

He heard rumors from the other sailors, conversations he pretended went unnoticed. Those were the moments he slipped through the clubhouse’s backdoor, retreating to the weather-beaten deck, the view of Pleasant Bay stretching before him. Pine trees lined the distant shore. The mile or so of water in between was brushed with gusts, small whitecaps churning. An eighteen-hole golf course stood atop the hill behind him, the occasional thwick of a ball being driven from a tee cutting through the air.

The committee boat bobbed at the end of the dock, waiting for him to set up the day’s racing course.

Did you hear about what she did after the movies Friday?

I saw her with Tim Sunday morning. You know what that means?

What’s her number up to now?

Whenever talk drifted to the rumors, Martin would descend to the dock, an assortment of orange buoys and anchors in hand, and plan the day’s challenges based on wind direction. Martin wanted to protect the kid, but knew intervention would most likely alienate Cal further.

He left the sailors to rig the boats on their own. Halfway through a season, they should know what they’re doing, Martin told himself, untying his Boston Whaler from the dock. He’d give them twenty minutes before sounding the foghorn, tearing them away from the latest gossip, calling them to the water, main sails raised.

***

Martin had made it to the final round for fifteen teaching jobs throughout Cape Cod. He was dual certified in English and history, grades five through twelve. His father told him a master’s degree in education would guarantee employment. He never specified how good that employment would be.

Out of the fifteen potential jobs, the only one offered was as a teacher’s aide at Monomoy Middle School. Part of him blamed it on his youth, the fact he looked barely older than high school students with his short brown hair and plastic-framed glasses. He resembled an older brother rather than an authority figure.

After health insurance, he brought home a little over two hundred and fifty dollars a week, which accounted for why he coached the high school sailing team, despite mediocre skills and his fear of the open ocean.

After his grandmother died, he bought her cottage from the family trust. The mortgage for the pond-side cabin was far below what anyone else would have paid, but it was still a staggering amount considering his diminutive paystubs. Nothing had been updated. A wood stove heated the four rooms through the winter. The not-so screened-in porch bred mosquitos and Junebugs throughout the summer. The warped wooden floors sagged, slanting north.

But the view from his bedroom window made up for it. Goose pond was quiet ten months of the year, scrub pines casting the cottage in perpetual shade. He told himself he’d work on updates when he climbed the employment ladder. Pave the dirt drive, install a dishwasher, figure out an alternative heating source that didn’t require hours of backbreaking labor. That’s what he tried to tell Tosha before she left anyway.

They’d lived in the house for three years before she accepted a marketing job in Western Mass. She hadn’t told Martin she’d been applying, her unhappiness something neither spoke of. He was blindsided by her departure.

That was nearly four months ago. Martin still found her auburn hair curled in the corners of every room, odd smears of make-up crusted to bathroom fixtures. Before she blocked him on social media, he noticed the appearance of a tall guy named Jasper creeping into her photos, some of which were timestamped weeks before Tosha’s exodus. Jasper looked older, maybe thirty-five to their twenty-eight. Martin didn’t want to think too deeply into things, but he related to Cal in some way, even if the boy wouldn’t acknowledge the similarities.

***

“Did you hear about…” Terry began to say.

Those words usually ferried Martin through the clubhouse door. He paused, hand on the knob, while Terry informed a huddle of sophomore girls, half-clad in fluorescent red drysuits, about the latest gossip.

“…the woman in white?”

Tension drained from Martin’s spine, his hand falling from the doorknob. For once the talk wasn’t about Cal and Sandy’s relationship woes.

“The one James mentioned last week?” Livia asked.

“I mean, maybe,” Terry replied. “How many other ghost brides hang around the bay?”

“Every pond has a woman in white,” Sandy said from across the room, pulling her dyed-blond hair into a ponytail. She eavesdropped on everyone’s conversations. Martin watched her do it, even the not-so-flattering recitations of her weekend recaps. “Long Pond’s got one. And Sheep’s too. Go out to the dunes in Wellfleet and you’ll see Goody Hallet if you’re there on the right night.”

“Is that what you were doing out there?” Livia asked, the rest of the girls snickering.

Cal stood on the opposite side of the clubhouse, tightening a lifejacket around his chest, his brown hair held back by a yellow bandanna. He bristled, his scrawny shoulders raising to his ears. Martin knew he was prepping himself for another dialogue he’d bleach from memory.

“Sometimes,” Sandy replied, unfazed. “Ghost hunting’s one of my hobbies. So, yes, I’ve heard about the Lady of Pleasant Bay. People say she drowned herself after she lost her baby. Now she walks the shores searching for her child’s spirit, begging for him to join her.”

“If you’re not too careful,” Livia interjected, “They’re going to have a story like that about you one of these…”

Martin pressed down the release on his foghorn, filling the small cabin with a burst of sound. Everyone’s hands raised to their ears. As the echo thrummed, Martin propped open the clubhouse door, pointing to the pile of sails.

“Hey, we needed to get on the water like fifteen minutes ago. Get your stuff and get out there,” Martin said, shaking his head. The students grumbled, but proceeded to funnel past, slinging rolled sails over their shoulders.

Cal had been on the sailing team for three years. Sandy had only joined a few months back. Cal reminded Martin of himself, aged sixteen, gangly limbs and directionless, innocent in that nice-guys-finish-last sort of way.

As the final sailors crossed before him, Cal pulled up short, sail limp under his arm. From the look on his face, Martin knew he wanted to say something.

“Are you ok, Cal?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine. You don’t need to do that next time,” he answered, averting his eyes. “It’s not like you’re going to scream over everything they say.”

Martin stepped back. He hadn’t expected the reply. Maybe a thank you, or a moment of connection, not anger.

Without a word, Cal passed, descending the wooden stairs to the beach, jogging to catch up with the rest of the sailors rigging their 420s for the day’s meet.

***

They were up two races. Cal and Sandy, skipper and crew respectively, placed first twice. The wind was up, whipping brackish froth into the air, crew members eternally bailing waterlogged 420s with repurposed detergent jugs. A flock of gulls hung overhead, screeching commentary, announcing boats rounding the downwind mark. From shore, the faintest outlines of parents lined the beach, binoculars pressed to their eyes, attempting to sort one set of sails from another.

With each bellow from the foghorn, Martin’s mind left the water, contemplating what he needed to say to Cal, what would make things right. He should have been barking strategies to the three Monomoy boats, but they were managing fine on their own. One more race and they’d have the win.

With the ten-second warning, the six boats lined up before the starting buoy, not letting the wind push them into their neighbors, which would result in a penalty. They let their sails luff, the slack canvas jarred back and forth by the wind, waiting to be hauled tight, setting the boat coursing through the water, bows tacking upwind.

Martin sounded the foghorn. Boats shot from the line, crew members hiking over the side, keeping the boats flattened out, their feet looped beneath woven straps keeping them from tumbling into the waves. Sandy’s hair brushed the water. She was good at what she did, never afraid to put her shoulders into the surf, jib lines taut in hand. The tighter the sails, the faster the boat would go, and she made sure she did everything perfectly as Cal maneuvered the rudder, rolling through tacks when they needed to adjust their angle of approach.

Martin’s hands were frigid through his thin gloves. He knew he’d need to offer Cal a lifeline, the opportunity to stop by his theoretical office, a small desk at the back of the clubhouse in what used to be a broom closet, if he ever needed to talk.

When his attention drifted back, two of Monomoy’s boats were already over the finish line. First and second place. It no longer mattered where the last boat finished, the race would go to them. Cal and Sandy let their sails out as they drifted in the current. Another first place meant they could relax. They leaned close. Martin couldn’t tell if they were kissing or talking. He wondered what they were saying, if Cal confronted her about her Friday night haunts or if she continued to spin more ghostly-woman tales, calling the translucent specters up from folklore and myth.

“You want to do one more?” the other team’s coach asked from the back of the committee boat.

“No, I think we should head in. There’s supposed to be a storm breaking today. I’d prefer to not be out here when it does,” he lied to the bearded man in his foul-weather gear, waterproof waders hiked up his chest.

“Fair enough,” the coach replied, bringing a whistle to his lips. He bleated five rapid bursts, then paused, then gave another five. A whoop went up from Monomoy’s team. No one ever wanted to sail a final match after the regatta was decided. Victory laps never held the glory of the actual thing.

***

The JV members from each team undid the rigging, dropping sails, folding them on the weeded lawn by the clubhouse. Cal and Sandy were exempt from the cleanup, as were the other varsity sailors. They slipped off to the clubhouse to get out of their drysuits.

“Can you watch them as they finish up?” Martin asked the other coach. “I need to check in with a few of my guys.”

He pointed to the clubhouse on its sandy promontory.

“Sure, do what you’ve got to do,” the man replied, walking off to criticize a freshman’s inability to tie jib lines correctly.

Inside the clubhouse, Martin found Cal and Sandy sitting before the large windows overlooking the bay. She was laughing, he was blushing. A few other sailors joined them. Martin could tell it was good natured, that no one dredged rumors up for display after their victory. He felt bad pulling Cal away, but if he waited, he’d descend into one of his anxiety attacks, the one’s that flourished after his separation from Tosha.

“You did great out there today, Cal,” he said, standing over the kid. “Can I have a word with you for a second?”

“Sure,” Cal said, looking up as he undid his bandana, letting his salt-caked hair down.

When the boy didn’t stand, Martin had to clarify he meant to do so away from the team.

“Why?” Cal asked.

Martin didn’t expect the rebuke. He was the coach. His students were supposed to go along with instructions. It was probably the age thing again.

“Because it needs to be in private,” Martin stuttered.

“Can it wait?” Cal asked. “I’m pretty wiped from all of that,” he said pointing out the window towards the water. “How about next practice?”

“I mean, I guess so,” Martin replied, stumbling over his own tongue.

Sandy gave a little laugh and Cal smiled.

“When you guys are all changed, find your parents and head home. No sense putting off dinner any longer than you have to,” Martin recovered.

“Sweet,” Cal and Sandy said in unison as they rolled their dry-suits, pressing the remaining air from the gaskets so they’d fit snugly inside gym bags.

Martin didn’t know how to proceed, so he left them to their work, returning to the deck to watch over his freshmen as they tromped through the dunes and scrub pines, sails in tow.

***

There was a sweet spot in the middle of spring where Martin’s screened-in porch was habitable. He sat on an old wooden rocker, a cup of tea steaming in one hand, his cellphone in the other. Tosha’s number flashed on the screen. He knew she’d blocked him from her social media, but he had yet to try her cell.

He’d never purposely done anything to wrong Tosha. She’d joke about his aloofness, his inability to remain in the present. At some point the humor soured and he hadn’t noticed. Martin assumed life wasn’t heading in the direction she thought it should and couldn’t figure out how to right the course. He was an anchor, welded to the cabin and his familial land, a land where few job opportunities existed for young professionals.

Martin’s throat was dry, an acidic burn at the root of his tongue. He’d failed earlier to make the connection with Cal that might save him months of suffering. He needed some answer to get him through the night, some illumination of how his life had so thoroughly unraveled over the last four months, self-doubt plaguing him like the ever-present caw of gulls.

Wind whistled through the porch’s mesh. Goose pond was rumpled and gray, catspaws scratching across the surface with each gust. Martin pressed send, dialing her number. After a series of beeps, an automated voice responded: The number you are trying to reach is currently unavailable. Sorry. Goodbye.

The robotic dismissal felt like a personal insult.

Martin was about to toss his phone through the screen, adding to the other tears marring the material, but another message flashed into life. It was from Principal Rourke. They’d shared contacts in case of sailing match cancellations or capsizing injuries. The man’s texts never came with good news. Martin swore under his breath as he opened it.

Can you stop by my office tomorrow on your way to the clubhouse? We need to talk about something.

Martin swore again, this time sending sparrows flying from nearby pines.

Sure, totally, Martin wrote back. Can I ask about what specifically?

There was a pause, then the principal’s message came through. It will be easier to discuss in person. See you tomorrow.

Martin’s stomach dropped. His mind ran out before him, speeding through the awkward conversations lying ahead. Had Cal said something to his mother about his attempt to help? Had he taken it the wrong way? Another teacher at the middle school had been fired months before for being too friendly with the students. That sort of thing had never been Martin’s intention. He was only trying to help.

***

“Someone’s been breaking into the club house at night,” Principal Rourke said once Martin dropped into the cushioned chair before the man’s expansive desk.

“What?” Martin stammered, the expected line of questioning evaporating.

“Yes. The owners of the golf course have seen people out there after dark. They said they found a stash of beer cans by the first tee the other day. They think it’s your kids. They’re threatening to revoke our use of the clubhouse."

The golf course had been kind enough to let the school use the clubhouse before their own sailing program began during the summer. The town let them write it off their taxes. The truce between the two entities was always tense, kids calling insults as retirees putted for birdies, angered business execs purposely shanking balls towards kids rigging boats.

“So what should I do?” Martin asked.

“Talk to your kids and figure out what’s happening. Get them to stop. If you get any names, send them my way.”

“Okay, I can do that,” Martin replied, thumb worrying the skin of his palm. “Anything else you need?”

“No, just that. The golf course people also mentioned something else, but it isn’t related,” the principal added.

“That’s a little ominous.”

“That’s one way to phrase it. Apparently, someone saw a lady dressed in white moving between the boats a few nights back. They said it looked like she walked into the water and never came out. I wouldn’t take it too seriously. Their bar’s open pretty late. Golfers aren’t always the best at handling their liquor.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that,” Martin replied, mentally silencing the story Sandy shared the day before.

Martin always found it difficult to talk to the principal. The man interviewed him for five of the fifteen jobs he’d been up for. He determined promotions. Camaraderie between them was unexpected.

“Shouldn’t we call the cops or something? If a woman drowned herself…”

“Nope. It’s on their time. If they didn’t call, we’re not going to call. We don’t need to get the school’s name in the papers over this.”

“But, what if…”

“It’s just drunks rambling. You haven’t lived here long enough to understand. Trust me. Let me know what you find, alright?”

“Of course,” Martin replied.

***

The boats were left unrigged. Martin gathered his team of twenty inside the clubhouse, circled round on plastic chairs and sagging benches. Cal and Sandy sat with their hands intertwined, but silent, as if inhabiting separate worlds only brushing one another’s peripherally. The salted mildew scent of the place was overwhelming. The race posters from the seventies hanging on the walls were speckled with brown circles of fungus, the regatta flags dangling from the ceiling wore similar attire, their once fluorescent colors sickly faded.

“So, what’s up?” Livia asked.

Martin sighed. “You all know we’re guests here, right? This isn’t our property. The only reason we’re allowed to sail Pleasant Bay is because the guys up at the golf course get a tax rebate. It’s not because they like us.”

The group nodded. They’d heard the spiel before.

“Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page. Apparently, someone’s been hanging around at night, drinking beers on the green. Anyone want to take credit? If you speak up, now or after practice, there will be no repercussions. I promise. But if one of you, or a bunch of you, whatever it is, is going to mess this up for the rest of the team, you’re going to have to talk with Principal Rourke.”

Martin hated to play strict, but he had little choice. If they lost the sailing space, the team would be finished for the year, and he had budgeted for another month and a half of his stipend. Mortgage payments wouldn’t float themselves.

“Anyone feel like talking?” Martin asked.

As he spoke a dozen eyes shifted to Sandy, mouths pressed tight. Martin couldn’t tell if they were accusing based on facts or gossip. In his experience, scapegoats were the most common trope of high school life. He wouldn’t call her out in front of the group. That was cruel. If she stopped by after practice, maybe they could figure things out, set her on the right path, whatever that was. He wasn’t there to play psychologist. He just wanted his kids to be honest with one another, to not drag each other’s feelings through the mud on a weekly basis.

“Okay, fine. If anyone wants to talk, I’ll be around. Like I said, don’t be that one person who screws over everyone else. Now go get the boats in the water,” Martin said, turning from the group, moving off to the desk at the back of the clubhouse. He didn’t want the kids to see how red his face was becoming.

The heat beneath his skin was unbearable. Things were bubbling over. Nothing had been stable since Tosha left. He thought he had a direction: date, move in, marry, kids, etcetera. His life’s road map was all crossed out. The scenes he thought would be behind him still played out before his eyes. Entry level job, mold infested house, loveless existence. The positives column felt empty as far as he could see.

***

When no one came forward after practice, Martin climbed a rickety ladder, hammer in hand, the old trail cam his father used to monitor his grandma’s cottage tucked in his pocket. When he was high enough, Martin drove nails into the bark of the pine, mounting the cam at the perfect angle to catch movement in and out of the clubhouse and a small stretch of the beach beyond. An app on his phone let him monitor the device remotely. Whenever so much as a squirrel tripped the sensor, he’d get a notification and be able to see what went on before the camera.

***

She’d left him no contact information. Tosha had never been the type for secrets. They’d laid out plans for the coming years, the life he thought they intended to share. Sitting on the threadbare sofa before the mute flatscreen, Martin recalled nights they’d wasted draped over one another, watching some garbage on a streaming channel, hours endlessly ticking by while they should have been doing something more with their love. Night walks around the pond. Beach jaunts. Horticulture classes. Actually form that band they’d joked about.

Days bled together, events indistinguishable from the next. He kept promising himself some spark would come, the starting whistle for the new life they’d both envisioned. But years never rolled that stone into place. The couch never changed. He never even took Tosha sailing, the one interesting thing to happen in his life since they moved to Cape. The thought never crossed his mind.

He understood why she left. He’d given up on novelty, thoughts lost to worry rather than joy.

Date nights died in transit, despite the ideas Tosha continually suggested. They’d relived the same sequence of events and she was tired of the repetition. He couldn’t fault her. The pressures of life had gotten to him. Credit card payments. Mortgages. Fifty plus hour workweeks for little reparation. It was what he saw everyone else doing around him. Why question their logic?

Martin wasn’t much of a drinker, but three empty beer bottles rolled about the floor at his feet. The taste of hops coated his tongue, his sight wavering around the edges. His phone chirped and a notification blossomed on the screen. Something tripped the trail cam.

Martin punched in the passcode. The app opened. The shot was grainy, black and white, everything filtered through a static fuzz. The silhouette of the clubhouse was backlit by a waning moon. The door was closed, windows lightless. At first, he didn’t notice anything out of place, a vague alcoholic numbness slowing cognition. Then the wind stirred, pushing the branches of nearby pines, dragging a woman’s hair like reeds along the banks of a river.

Martin almost fell out of his seat, his heart in his throat. There was a woman, dressed in white, seated on the deck’s railing, looking out over the bay.

Martin wished he could call through the camera, that there was a speaker function. But there wasn’t. The thought of calling the police flashed through his mind before he decided against it. They’d only think he was a lunatic, another drunk, discounting his concern.

He grabbed his car keys and was out the door before considering alternate routes. The woman remained seated, the image on the screen unwavering, before it faded to black.

***

The golf course’s parking lot was abandoned. Martin left his Subaru in a shaded corner, the limbs of an oak protruding overhead. Phone in hand, he crept down the gravel path, keeping to the soft shoulder where his footsteps wouldn’t disturb the stones. The smell of salt water swelled as he neared. He looked at his phone. The camera image showed a blank screen, the woman having wandered off, hopefully in the opposite direction Martin now stalked. He hadn’t thought far enough ahead if the inverse was true. His pulse throbbed in his ears, the shock of adrenaline sobering.

Down the steep slope, Martin had a wide view of the bay. The water was calm, only the slightest waves pressing up against the shore. The moon reflected silver, creating a near mirror sheen. The woman’s figure stood a ways out, knee deep in water, head tilted back to the sky. She wasn’t translucent as Martin assumed she would be. Her skin was skin, her white dress opaque instead of ethereal. She had a familiar gait, the way her shoulders slumped, something about the way she tilted her head. The woman made him think of Tosha in her oversized sleeping t-shirts, drifting in and out of their bedroom, backlit by the light above the kitchen stove. Those memories were clipped, half formed. He knew it couldn’t be her, but who else could it be? He thought, before movement in the trees caught his eye.

He hadn’t noticed Cal, wearing his bright blue sailing sweatshirt, standing thirty feet away, half-crouched behind a copse of pine trees. The kid hadn’t missed his approach. Cal stared up at Martin, waving him off, frantically drawing his hand across his throat.

There was no way Martin was going to leave, especially not after such gesticulation.

“What the hell are you doing?” Martin asked when he reached Cal’s side, stepping into the shadowed recesses of the trees.

“I turned on share location on our phones. I don’t think she noticed,” Cal said, eyes following the woman as she drifted further into the water, the hem of her dress soaked.

It was Sandy.

“You know you shouldn’t be doing this…” Martin began.

“You think I don’t know that?”

“If you thought she was cheating, you should have talked about it. Following her here is just weird.”

“We did. That’s not why I turned on the tracker. She cheated a year ago, twice. We talked about it and we’re past that. It’s everyone else who isn’t. All those rumors. Ninety-five percent of the time, she’s with me when someone claims they saw her sucking some guy off at the playground. If she wanted to do that, then whatever, we’d call it a day. But it’s this that I’ve been worrying about,” Cal said, pointing to Sandy who now stood waist deep, arms outstretched, mimicking a crucifix.

“Why does she do it?” Martin asked.

“Rumors get to her, even though she says they don’t. This is her way of getting people talking about something else, some other tragedy. If the dead walk the bay, why would anyone want to talk about our relationship?”

“Why track her if you already know that?”

“There’s a lot of lakes around the Cape. A lot of bays. She visits different ones on different nights. I don’t like to think about how someone else might react to seeing her like this, what they might do.”

“Sorry about the other day, I shouldn’t have...” Martin began to say as Sandy waded back to shore, loping in the direction of the boats.

“Hey, I get it,” Cal interjected. “That’s what you’re supposed to do. Mandatory reporter or whatever.”

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“Not really. You were worried. You believed those other girls. I’m not angry. Just next time, maybe stick up for Sandy, tell them to shut up. This issue goes both ways.”

“I guess it does,” Martin said, leaning back into the pines, the scent of sap thick around them.

Sandy continued to drift in and out of the water, splashing through inarticulate dance steps in the dim moonlight. Martin imagined what the image would look like from out on the water, a late-night fisherman returning to the docks, illegal quahoggers taking advantage of the moonlight.

The myth had always been there. The raving woman, the slighted woman, the unfaithful woman. Their names filled people’s mouths, making up for the lack of substance in their own lives, the unexamined monotony most inhabited. Because small town coastal life was dull ten months of the year, kids fixated on Sandy, her perceived promiscuity, and ran wild with it, despite any thought of how it might affect her. The lack of compassion got to Martin. He had only wanted to be helpful and kind. But he had nudged Sandy, just as much as the rest of them, into the waves. Remaining inactive was no longer an option.

Martin took out his phone, flipped on the camera, and took a few grainy shots of the young girl with her back to them. In the dim light, her features were blurred. No one could tell it was her. Sandy’s reflection on the water made her seem taller and slimmer than humanly possible, an elongated phantom drifting over the shallows.

“What are you doing?” Cal said, swiping at Martin’s phone.

“I’ll send you these. Show them to kids around school. If enough people see, I’m sure they’ll forget about you and Sandy. Tell them she was with you when you took the shots. If that’s why she’s out here, why not nudge the thing along?” Martin asked.

“I could do that,” Cal replied, understanding dawning. “Are you going to tell the principal?”

“No. I’ll say it must have been someone else leaving the beer cans. He doesn’t want to talk about the woman in white. That’s not his concern.”

“It shouldn’t be anyone’s. Just Sandy’s,” Cal replied.

Martin nodded, eyes tracing the girl’s steps as she drifted farther down the shoreline. She almost looked back to where they crouched in the trees, whispering under their breath, but she didn’t. She was alone in her tableau, an actor without an audience. Only the pictures would bring her the notoriety she simultaneously sought and avoided.

The sound of Sandy’s feet treading the water rose, a subtle splash and slap as she maneuvered across the ungainly ground. She stumbled over slick stones before catching her balance. She laughed, pushing hair out of her face, the sound replacing the water’s churn, so far removed from the emotions Martin thought he’d unearth on the other side of the camera lens.