Editor’s note: The following short story appears in Talk Vomit’s winter ‘23-’24 quarterly, which was published in January. Print copies are still available (as well as bundled with spring pre-orders at a steep discount) here. Read this essay on the website here.
By Meg McIntyre
Cora Lee Candor was afraid of the water.
She saw no use for ice cubes or paddling pools; a day of rain was a day she stayed inside. Even bathing was a tedious affair — the almost-damp washcloths she used to scrub herself each night were hardly soluble, saturated instead with a harsh cleansing oil that left her skin looking deceivingly moist.
You can imagine Cora Lee Candor’s disappointment when the ceremonial gift bequeathed to her for fifteen years of service at Bronson Building and Loan was a three-day trip to the seaside. A trip for two, by the way, not that she had anyone to invite along. Not anymore. Cora Lee talked herself hoarse trying to finagle some other token of appreciation out of her boss. Even a scarf or a hat would do quite nicely. But no — Mr. Bronson simply pulled at his bushy mustache and insisted Cora needed the time away. Truthfully, Cora suspected it was Mr. Bronson who needed the time away from her. Her dedication to her role could be tiresome, she knew, especially to a man like Mr. Bronson who was so easily distracted by pretty faces and short skirts. Neither of these interests were on Cora Lee’s resume.
She even called the booking company in a last-ditch attempt to switch out her destination for somewhere less… clammy. It was no good. “No cancellations and no substitutions,” the surly receptionist told her, enunciating each word carefully through the static-struck line. So Cora Lee simply straightened her notepad and pushed in her chair, making sure to brush the dust from the empty desk next to hers, where the other secretary used to sit before Bronson Sr. had retired five years ago and taken the need for the position with him. Cora Lee had been proud beyond measure to be the one they kept on. How the younger Mr. Bronson would survive without her for three days, Cora Lee couldn’t be sure.
She resolved to shut herself in her apartment and return to work three days later raving about the freshness of the salt air. But on the morning she was scheduled to leave, she found herself rising early and neatly folding three of her favorite dresses into the olive green suitcase she kept for the unlikely possibility of travel. Just as she laid the last crisply starched silhouette inside, the bell rang. There stood the younger Mr. Bronson, mustache shiny with finger-grease, ready to personally see her to the station himself.
For the whole of the four-hour train journey, Cora Lee calculated in her head. Subtracting the travel time at each end, she only had to endure this for fifty-two hours. Was holing up in a hotel room so different from doing the same in her own apartment? She resolved to read or listen to music, only leaving in search of food or fresh towels.
But as soon as Cora Lee stepped off at Seaside Station, she knew her calculations wouldn’t add up. The air itself was wet, weighed down and tepid in her lungs. She felt it circulating through her body like a school of tadpoles. There would be no escaping the sea.
Worse yet, she hurried the three miles to her hotel only to discover that it was balanced on a cliff, overlooking the very thing she hated most in the world. Cora Lee tried not to look as frothy gray fingers of surf carved threats into the unsuspecting sand. She ran to her room and drew all the curtains, turning the television all the way up to drown out the sound of the waves.
There was plenty to hate about city water — its smell, its color, its penchant for forming puddles directly in Cora Lee’s path. But she had never known it to be so loud. Soon she had the radio going, too, until the cacophony wrapped her in its arms and muffled the sloshing in her brain.
By the second evening, Cora Lee was growing dazed. She knew she could subsist for only so long on the packets of nuts and candy she’d purchased on the train. When she could stand it no longer, she picked up the phone on the bedside table, steeling herself for the exorbitant cost of ordering room service. Instead, all she heard was a busy tone, no matter how many times she pressed down on the switch hook.
No sooner had she hung up than a knock sounded on the door. Cora Lee froze, unsure for a moment whether she’d actually heard it. She padded to the door and swung it open to find a sandwich waiting for her on a chipped dinner plate.
A tentative bite revealed that the bread was soggy, gluing itself to the roof of her mouth. The sweetness of the peanut butter mingled with the sting of bile and Cora Lee ran to the bathroom, letting her guts loose into the sink. When she was done retching after what felt like hours, she crawled back into the main room and collapsed on the bed. That was how she fell asleep, spread-eagled and fully clothed, her dress sticking to her skin with a sick, humid slickness.
The water came for her in her dreams.
It was the same nightmare as always — dark tendrils of hair suspended like lazy snakes around a pale face that looked so like her own, only prettier. Eyes half-lidded and eternally flat, a few stray bubbles floating listlessly from a motionless mouth. And Cora Lee’s hands, knuckles white, the strength of her grip sending ripples across her sister’s cheeks. She could almost feel the icy cold of the water creeping up her wrists, as if her proximity to the real thing had emboldened the version in her dreams.
Cora Lee sat straight up in the dark. It was quiet, she realized as she roused. Somehow, the television and the radio had switched off.
But it was not quite silent. Not really. Those goddamned waves were still crashing and receding, attacking and retreating. Some small part of her could swear they were almost calling her name, breaking again and again as if punctuating that last syllable. Cooo-ra. Cooo-ra. If she closed her eyes, she could swear she recognized the voice. One she had not heard in five years, not since the desk beside hers had become vacant. Not since she had made certain that she would be the secretary chosen to stay on at Bronson Building and Loan.
Without thinking, Cora Lee Candor rose from the dank sheets and walked straight through the door. She took the winding staircase one step at a time down the cliffside, nearly slipping on the mist-laden stone in her stocking feet.
By the time she finally reached the little overlook about halfway down, her skeleton was soaked clean through, dark hair bound to her slimy forehead like a promise.
As Cora Lee stood looking out at the roiling black waves, she raised her arms high above her head and let out a scream, spitting fury into the fog. For two days, she had wished for nothing but quiet, true quiet, and now her mind was so full of staticky sorrow that she could not distinguish between the waves on the shore and the ones in her head. She stood thinking of dark curls and empty desks, grateful that she had left hers in an orderly state. She knew, somehow, that she had sat in that chair for the last time.
There, standing saturated with the judgment of the sea, Cora Lee Candor raised her arms and dove.
And in the end, she got her wish.
Because when Cora Lee dove, there was no splash.
Just the soft, sated sound of crashing waves.
Meg McIntyre is a writer, editor, and recovering newspaper journalist living in southern Vermont. Her reporting has appeared in WBUR, Input, New England Public Media, and The Daily Yonder, among others, while her creative work has been published by Foothills and Creative Guts. Meg’s other interests include “Murder, She Wrote,” her cat, Penny, and things that go bump in the night.