Elma

Short Fiction

Greetings, Talebones Readers…

Hark, a short story!

As I mentioned in my most recent housekeeping post, I’m feeling very compelled to get back into shorter single-post fiction again, and this very stubborn idea has been kicking around in my head lately. I wrote a couple of iterations of it before finding this version, which I really enjoy. Kind of feels like there could be more here? But I liked this enough as a standalone to want to share it with you!

I don’t want to say much more here, but let it speak for itself.

I hope you enjoy!

If you like this story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!

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Photo by Jake Hill on Unsplash

I.

When Martin Hauser was led through the library doorway of Oakhurst Sanatorium, a private hospital tucked away in the little town of Elma, Tuuli Laine was already there waiting for him.

She sat on the sofa under the wide window in a simple linen shift that she appeared to have made herself, ornate with hand-embroidered details, a red cardigan draped over her sloping shoulders. Her hair had been cut to make it easier to care for. Martin had remembered it long and dark, but it was silver-gray now, and pinned away from her face as she leaned over a sketchpad on her lap, sweeping a nub of artist’s charcoal across the paper.

She looked up, and for a moment—only a moment—Martin felt a frisson of vague terror pass through him at the steely, focused expression on her face. But then a smile lit her up from chin to scalp, and he saw the woman he remembered, only thirty years older.

“Martin,” Tuuli said with a squeak of glee, shifting in her seat, setting the sketchpad aside, “Martin, Martin, what a delight to see you! It’s been so long! Stand still, let me look at you.”

He obliged, pausing for only a smiling moment before he removed his hat and crossed the space to take her offered wrinkled hand in his, kissing the back of it.

“Handsome,” she said, as Martin settled into the chair beside the sofa. “You’re a handsome young man. And successful too, I bet.”

Martin shrugged that away. “Not really.”

“But still an artist?”

“Oh yes,” he assured her. “Yes. I’m working mostly in tempera these days, when I have time. The gallery runs me ragged.”

“Robert Thurston’s place.” It was not a question, and she did not look at him when she said it.

He nodded. “Yes, and he sends his regards.”

To this, she did not respond. Martin glanced around the room, pleased that the library seemed such a comfortable space, airy and bright. The word “sanatorium” had such gothic implications that he truly hadn’t been sure what to expect when he arrived.

“It’s a lovely place,” he said. “Kind of them to allow us use of the library for our meeting.”

“Oh sure, Oakhurst is nice enough.” She gestured vaguely over her shoulder, through the wide window that looked out onto the grounds. “In the mornings the fog rolls in off the ocean. Can’t see the water from here, more’s the pity.”

Tuuli’s family had lived in the States since she was a teenager, but she still had a soft pull to her vowels, arrhythmic to Martin’s ear, as if her solitude spent in this place had only deepened her Scandinavian roots. He didn’t remember her accent being quite this strong when she taught art to children, back when he was her student.

“So,” she said, pulling the sketchpad back into her lap and tapping a fleck of charcoal away from the page. “You got my letter.”

“I did.” He smiled kindly; Tuuli’s letter-writing had become a bit of a regional joke. She was prolific, constantly sending correspondence to everyone she had ever known whose address she remembered. Even celebrities she had met in her career’s zenith, glittering local dignitaries, the wealthy whose homes boasted her most expensive work on their walls. He doubted anyone ever wrote back.

“I’m only sorry that I didn’t get your previous ones,” he added. “They ended up at my mother’s house, and she has a habit of ignoring mail not addressed to her. I happened to be visiting home when this one arrived, and I’m glad. Though…”

He paused. She had resumed drawing and did not look up.

“I was…a little surprised,” he said. “To hear from you.”

“No doubt Robert has told half of Seattle that I’m too crazy to write in coherent sentences.”

Martin was a little surprised at the venom in her voice. “Not at all. Robert speaks very highly of you.”

She looked up finally, studying Martin’s face, as if searching for something.

“Small blessings,” she said, her tone complicated. Then, without preamble, “I’m dying, Martin.”

He blinked. “You’re…”

“I’m dying. It’s weeks, not months. Something that wastes the body. Cancer, maybe. They don’t explain in this place.”

Martin’s heart squeezed. This was not the reunion he had imagined. “I don’t know what to say, Tuuli. I’m so sorry.”

The old woman smiled, but it was a gesture of soft pity for him, not for her. “Don’t be sorry about that. There are plenty of worthier things to be sorry about. In fact, I could use your help. A favor for an old woman and an old friend.”

“Tell me.”

“I should like to see the ocean again,” she said. “One more time, before I…well, before I go. I’ve always felt most myself by the water, in the water. I’ve always lived within sight of it. My house…is my little house still standing, Martin?”

He hadn’t expected the question, and he opened his mouth, but no sound came out. As far as he knew, her little condemned shack in Magnolia—what once had been a very bohemian little cabin, victim to lack of upkeep—had long since collapsed down the bluff, her belongings and art raided by neighbors and collectors.

“Nevermind,” Tuuli said. “I’d rather not know what those vultures did to it.”

The blood rushed to Martin’s cheeks in sympathetic shame. She had no idea, and maybe that was for the best. She had no idea what her madness had done, the utter implosion it had caused. What began as artistic eccentricity had calcified into public outbursts, bizarre rumors, hallucinatory wandering, hysterical behavior, obsessions—and how embarrassing. How poised on the edge of ruin she had left everyone with something to gain, the amount of money at stake, wealth pouring through the blossoming city of Seattle like cold rainwater…

“You’d like to see the ocean,” he said, prompting her out of the terrible silence.

“Yes.” She turned back to her drawing. “I would like to see the ocean, once more before I go. But the doctors here…they won’t let me go without someone to take me. A chaperone, I suppose, or at least someone to be responsible for me. Not that I can get into much trouble these days, but they aren’t staffed for outings, you see. Would you take me to the seaside, Martin?”

Martin wasn’t sure what he had expected her to ask, but it wasn’t that. He nodded. “Well of course. I would be happy to take you to the seaside, dear Tuuli. It would be a privilege. Just tell me when you would like to go and I’ll make the arrangements.”

She smiled wide and patted his knee, leaving a faint dust of charcoal on his suit pants.

“Thank you,” she said. “You have no idea how grateful I am.”

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II.

The drive from Elma to the coastal beach of Grayland took about an hour by car. Martin drove carefully, stealing glances in the rearview mirror at Tuuli, wrapped up warm in her thickest coat and scarf against the early spring chill, her eyes glued to the window so she could look out at the passing scenery. Beside her on the seat was a packed picnic lunch from the sanatorium’s kitchen and a blanket to sit on.

They had left Oakhurst in a hushed silence, as if afraid that someone from the office would chase them down and refuse to let them leave. It had all seemed too easy, Martin signing Tuuli out for the day. But once they left the town limits of Elma, the thrill of freedom settled over the car, and Tuuli was the first to speak over the roar of the engine.

“Do you have a family now, Martin?”

Martin cleared his throat. “Oh. Aside from my mother? No.”

“Any lady friends?”

Martin glanced at her in the rearview mirror, unsure how to answer. He had not yet found the right way to say it aloud, even to himself. “I don’t think…a lady friend is in the cards for me, Tuuli.”

“Lack of prospects?”

“Lack of…interest.”

Their eyes met in the mirror and her features softened.

“I see,” she said, turning back to the window with a mischievous grin and a shrug. “There’s love out there for all that want it.”

He saw her there, again. A flicker of the woman he had idolized thirty years ago. Back then she taught art to small-town children, to make ends meet. None of his classmates had ever seemed at all interested in what Tuuli had to say, but he had hung on her every word. When she left teaching to pursue the glitz of Seattle’s art scene, Martin had watched her ascension from afar with nothing but pride. Tuuli Laine, headlining major art shows and gallery showings. Tuuli Laine, interviewed in the newspaper. Tuuli Laine at society parties, meeting the president’s wife, laughing over champagne with famous actors and singers and the newborn rich of the post-Depression city. Her art hung on the walls of every fine home in the region.

Martin wondered how many of those dignitaries remembered her, now, this tiny dying woman sitting in the back of his car, wrapped to her ears in wool.

When they arrived in Grayland, the sky was pale slate and the ocean was a shattered mirror, a steady roar of unsatisfied waves. The mighty Pacific had no rhythm here, only noise.

Martin had rented a little cottage on the beach side of the road, a place for him to sleep over the next few days before returning to Seattle, and an easy place for Tuuli to rest if sitting on the beach became too cold or wearisome for her during this day-trip. When he opened the car door for Tuuli to climb out, she did not give the cottage another glance. She only had eyes for the water.

As she made her way toward the beach, Martin unpacked their lunch and the blanket from the car, following her with a hand hovering by her elbow, to catch her in case she tripped.

When they reached the beach, long and dark and smooth, Tuuli stood at the edge of the sand as though afraid. She looked out at the water, and Martin found a good dry place to sit in front of a thick sun-bleached driftwood log, spreading the blanket out.

He carefully guided her down to sit, resting her back against the log. When he finished setting up the blanket and basket and sat down next to her, he saw that her gray eyes were full of tears.

“Oh, how I missed it,” she said. “I wish I had asked earlier, to come and see it.”

He poured a cup of tea from the thermos provided by the sanatorium and handed it to her. She held it in her trembling hands without really knowing it was there, the steam rising up to tangle in her silver hair before whisking away on the wind.

After what seemed like an hour of sitting in silence, just watching the waves and the gulls and the little shorebirds that skitter in the shallows, Tuuli turned to Martin.

“You’ve done a good thing for me, Martin. You always were a kind boy. Good-hearted.”

“And you were always my favorite teacher,” he said. “I don’t think I ever told you.”

But she didn’t seem to hear the compliment. There was something strange in her eyes. Martin had only ever heard the stories about her public displays, her madness laid bare. She set the cup down on the blanket where it teetered dangerously, the tea gone cold, and reached out to take Martin’s face in both hands.

“Don’t let that Robert Thurston take your kindness from you,” she said fiercely. “You must promise me you’ll remain yourself.”

Martin blinked. “I don’t know what you mean—”

“I have spent the last twenty years of my life in Oakhurst because of Robert Thurston,” she said. And even though her fingers were strong on his cheeks, her voice was calm. “I was ill. I had no family. No one to speak for me. Robert wanted my work, that was all, and I was an embarrassment. I know that. At any point in the last twenty years, someone could have spoken for me, released me. Anyone. But they were afraid. I understand—no one wants to speak against Robert. But I could have lived, Martin…”

She licked her lips, tasting the salt spray that had landed on them. “Don’t let Robert Thurston steal anything more. Not from you, not from anyone. Promise me.”

Then she released him, lowering her hands where they nested in her lap.

“Would you be a lamb,” she said, brittle, delicate, “and retrieve my gloves? I must have left them in the car.”

Martin sat still for a moment, the words she had spoken jumbling in his head. Robert Thurston was the sort of man everyone wants to know. Generous, well-spoken, intelligent. He ran the most exclusive gallery in Seattle and invested in several others. He was a fixture, a staple. In the years he had worked for him, Martin had never known Robert to be vindictive or cruel.

But still…

Gloves. Tuuli’s request finally reached him, and he nodded and stood, brushing the sand from his trousers. All the way back up the beach to the car her words continued to twist like a knife in his head. Had there not been papers Robert kept private? Ledgers he allowed no one to see? Phone calls he took only after dismissing everyone from the room? A certain air of too genuine he adopted, a hidden weapon?

Martin reached the car parked outside the cottage and opened the rear door. He saw no gloves. Not on any seat, not on the floor.

A sudden terror seized him, and he turned swiftly to look back at the beach.

In the time since he left her, Tuuli had crossed the expanse of the beach in her awkward, limping gait and was nearing the water. She did not look back. She had wanted him gone.

“Tuuli!” he shouted, but it was carried away by the wind, just another gull’s cry. He ran, his expensive dress shoes entirely wrong for running on sand and stone.

She entered the water, the waves rising around her ankles, her calves. She did not balk at the cold, she did not slow.

“Tuuli!” he screamed again.

She continued, deeper. The waves roared. Martin blinked against his panic, throwing off his sport coat and letting it flutter to the damp sand, loosening his tie.

Impossibly, she was not bowled over by the water. And Martin was not fast enough.

He finally reached the water’s edge when the white crown of her head dipped under, yards away.

Without hesitation, Martin threw himself in, keeping the spot where she disappeared always in front, like a star to follow. He had never fancied himself a strong swimmer, but the adrenaline urged him forward. Desperately he cast about for her, dipping under the water, the undertow drawing him back and back like the sliding hand of a great god, threatening to pull him out into the deep water beyond.

He surfaced, shouting her name until he was hoarse. But she was gone.

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III.

For three days, Martin Hauser stayed in the cottage on the beach.

The fallout after Tuuli’s disappearance had been a farce. The police, upon hearing that she was an elderly hospice patient at the nearby sanatorium, seemed less than inclined to look too hard for her. The nurses at Oakhurst who had known Tuuli were sorry, even grieved in their own way, but the institution seemed unbothered, even satisfied.

After all, Tuuli’s bill had been paid, and on time.

Martin lingered in the cottage, staring out at the ocean, drinking strong coffee in the mornings and switching to scotch at night. Grayland was an aptly named place, and the spring sun seemed unable to pierce through the clouds.

It was beautiful, too, in its own stark way. If he had brought his paints with him, he might have tried to capture it. But as it was, he could only watch the water in haunted silence, picturing the white moon of her hair setting below the waves.

On the morning of the third day, Martin drove into town to make a collect call at the local store. The heavy old phone hung on the back wall next to the bait fridge, and the curious locals stole glances at him while they pretended to peruse the shelves of canned soup and candy.

“Thurston Galleries, Robert Thurston speaking.”

“Mr. Thurston, it’s Martin.”

“Martin! How’s the beach?”

Martin swallowed hard. “Tuuli Laine is dead.”

He hadn’t given himself permission to say it out loud yet, and the word tasted dull on his tongue. Heavy. There was a quiet on the other end of the line—surrounded by a sound like the ocean, frothy and hissing—but it was mercifully brief.

“Damn,” said Robert.

Martin waited. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to hear. Robert and Tuuli had been colleagues and close friends, once. Even lovers, if the rumors were true. Martin waited to hear it in Robert’s voice. The regret, the grief.

“Poor old Tuuls. She was a once in a lifetime talent, and she’ll be missed. Do you happen to know if Oakhurst kept her latest?”

“Latest?”

“Paintings, Martin. Sketches. She was working, from what they told me. Now that she’s dead, whatever’s left will sell, even if it’s mostly sentimental stuff. She lost her edge but the name’s what’s important. Nevermind, I’ll call Oakhurst and find out for myself. When are you coming back to the city?”

Martin’s heart pounded. The idea of driving back to Seattle suddenly felt akin to hopping a plane to the Amazon Rainforest—distant, unfamiliar, dangerous. Teeming with venomous animals.

But he said, “I’ll head back as soon as I can. Tomorrow, probably.”

“Good. See you soon. Thanks for the call.”

Martin hung up the phone and headed back to the cottage as if in a daze.

*******

That night, darkness did nothing to quiet the low roar of the ocean, whispering ceaselessly through the walls of the cottage. There was no moon; even if there had been, the clouds would never have allowed a glimpse of it.

Martin slept in an armchair drawn up beside the small woodstove, a glass of scotch nearly empty on the table by his elbow. The fire had died in the grate from neglect, just a scattering of embers glowing bright with every draw of the marine air through the chimney.

Into the murmuring silence came a knocking, light and swift, upon the cottage door.

Martin did not stir, not at first. Not until the knocking moved from the door to the window behind him, a gentle but earnest rapping.

He lifted his head, fuzzy from the drink, and looked around him. All was country-dark; he had forgotten to light a lamp, and this cottage had very little electricity. He rummaged for a match and lit the nearest kerosene lantern, raising the flame as high as it would go.

The knocking came again, no less soft, no less hopeful, and this time back at the door where knocking belonged.

Martin crossed to the door and opened it, letting the lantern light spill over the strange figure that stood there: it was a woman. Around Martin’s age, if he was any judge, or maybe a little younger.

She was naked. Droplets beaded on her new skin like tiny translucent feathers. Her dark hair, soaked through, clung to her shoulders and breasts, and her gray eyes were wide and wild.

“You’re still here,” she said, with something like wonder, tinged with gratitude. “May I come in?”

Martin, unsure if he was dreaming or just drunk, moved aside to let her enter the cottage. Her footprints left wet spots on the floorboards, and she brought the scent of the tide with her. She walked carefully to the armchair, swaying a little, and sat down, as Martin busied himself grabbing a blanket to drape over her, and feeding the stove with more kindling.

“Are you…where did you…” Martin shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“It’s me, Martin,” she said. “It’s Tuuli.”

He knew it, even if he didn’t believe it. It was Tuuli, younger than he had ever known her. Tuuli, reborn.

“How?” he asked, voice raspy with shock.

She smiled as the firelight, re-ignited, leapt in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “Last I knew, we were sitting together on the beach. And my body was dying. But I’ve always felt myself by the water. In the water. I don’t know.”

Martin sat on the floor in front of the hearth, legs too weak with fear to allow him to stand. “You’re…everyone thinks you’re dead,” he said. “You’re dead.”

Tuuli laughed. “Oh well.”

“What will you do?”

She looked at her hands, crinkled from her time in the water, the blood returning to the skin after the sea-cold’s alchemy. When she spoke again, her voice was rich. Hardened. Resolved.

“I want it all back,” she said. “Everything that was taken from me. But I don’t know the rules of this new body, and I’m afraid.”

She looked up at Martin, and there she was. The woman he had idolized. The woman discarded by the world. She was still there, but changed.

“Will you help me, Martin?” she asked. “You’re the only one I trust.”

He stared into the fire. Through the haze of scotch and sorrow he could still feel Tuuli’s hands—her old hands, wrinkled and wiry—fierce upon his face. He could hear Robert’s mockery over the phone, the dismissal of this woman’s pain, her talent, her torment—

I have spent the last twenty years of my life in Oakhurst because of Robert Thurston.

Don’t let him steal anything more.

No one spoke for her, in all that time. It would have taken only one, but they were all afraid.

I promised.

He turned to meet her eyes. They were Tuuli’s eyes, all right—mad and magic and strange and feral, but clear as glass and gray as the sea.

He nodded, taking her cold hand.

“What will we call you? No one will believe the truth, whatever miracle or mystery this is.”

She paused, cocking her head like an animal to hear the wind’s whistle in the chimney, the whisper of the waves through the walls.

“Call me Elma,” she said.

And her laughter was a portent, a slow roll of ocean thunder preceding the storm.

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END

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Author’s Note:

Even though this is pure fiction (obviously), some of the rough inspiration for this story came from the real and deeply tragic life of midcentury Pacific Northwest artist Helmi Juvonen.

I was haunted by Helmi’s life when I read about it, and this story was, I suppose, an attempt to exorcise some of those disturbed feelings. Even though I changed quite a bit to fit the speculative Talebones-esque narrative I personally wanted to tell, a single detail about this story is true to life: one person—one advocate—could have changed everything for Helmi.

And in Martin, in fiction, I wanted to give her that.

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