The Four Lives of Amelia Ecker
by Alexandra Otto
1954
Amelia
Amelia Ecker rides her new Schwinn bicycle home on the last day of third grade at Beach Haven Elementary. She knows she needs to be home before dinner, but after a year spent indoors studying fractions and sentence diagramming, she yearns to hear the clackety-clack of bicycle tires on boardwalk slats, feel the mist of salt-spray on her bare arms.
Turning left onto Smith Road, she rides her brakes until the dune grass tickles her bicycle spokes. The beach is empty. She dismounts and tucks her bicycle within a hefty patch of grass, the red of her handlebars barely peeking through the sturdy strands. The ocean has always felt like a living thing to Amelia: its waves thrum like a heartbeat. While her school friends spend their time jumping rope or playing hopscotch, she spends her time wondering what secrets the sea holds. Do ridges reveal the age of a seashell like rings on a tree? Does kelp sleep at night like she does? One day, she’ll become a scientist and study the ocean’s mysteries. But today she’ll just dip her fingers and toes in to greet the sea. Like a handshake.
The water both stings and sings when her bare feet first hit it. The coldness nips at her toes but the swish-whoosh soothes her like a lullaby. She only intends to stay in for a minute and then ride home. Her mother will be plating up meatloaf soon like she does every Friday. But something shimmers a few feet ahead, and Amelia steps forward to investigate. Maybe she can pick it up and make something for her mother with it. It’s some kind of shell she hasn’t seen before, something glittery, green-grey like her eyes, and —
The riptide yanks her under fast, pulling her far from shore.
Amelia claws her way to the surface and gasps in a lungful of air.
She spies her red handlebars on the shore and swims forcefully toward them. She tries to remember what her grandpa taught her last summer: body up, use your arms as paddles.
But the current snatches her back, pulling her deeper this time, until her handlebars become a speck of red as tiny as a ladybug in the distance.
For a long time, she floats. She’s safe now. She exhales, relaxes.
It’s a game of tug of war with nature. One more hard pull in either direction can determine the winner. Amelia remembers the time at recess that the girls almost lost at tug of war, and then she gave one last hard tug, pulling the marker across the center line to win. She jerks her body now with that same force.
Just then, the sea gets the final tug, swallowing her, pulling her down in victory. It churns back and forth, back and forth, Amelia now a part of it forever.
The sea spits her limp body out like a boxer spitting out his own bloody tooth: a discard, tinged with loss. She’s found by passersby on their way to a picnic an hour later. An hour too late.
Later, her mother Barbara would wish she had a newspaper clipping of a murderer’s photo to scream at and tear to shreds. She’d throw the pieces into a fire and watch them burn, hoping the paper shreds suffered as they scorched. Instead, her daughter’s killer is water. For the rest of her life, every time Barbara waters her peonies or washes her hands, bile will rise in her mouth. A serial killer. She wonders sometimes how many other lives it has claimed. But only one life matters to her, and visions of her daughter ebb and flow in every task Barbara now does, much like the sea itself.
1961
Barbara
Barbara stretches her arms toward the sunlight above Chichen Itza. Its warmth feels good on her arms, and she wonders if the stone temples absorb and feel the same energy from the sun. She’s never been a particularly religious person, preferring practicality to piety, but these ancient structures evoke a feeling of reverence in her. This civilization spent years and fortunes and lives to build towering temples which honor something unseen. That’s faith.
Barbara lifts her tool bag and strolls toward the sacred cenote. Its blue waters shimmer deceptively. One could find it beautiful by forgetting that it houses the dead. Or maybe that’s what makes it so stunning. Does it preserve the life force of all who perished in it?
She’s here to recover relics: images of snake gods etched into jade bowls and jaguar gods carved into scepters. Would the Mayan gods consider her as curious as she considers them? A female archaeologist in the wild is almost as rare of a find as a golden bowl in the cenote. Her favorite god, if she had to pick one (like picking a favorite finger; they all served a purpose) was Q’uq’umatz, the feathered serpent. How could he fly if he’s a snake? How could he slither if he’s a bird? He defied expectations. The questions she now asks echo the questions she’s been asked. How can you be an archaeologist if you’re a wife? How can you be a wife if you’re an archaeologist? The male gods had it easy, just having one identity. One job. But maybe this god understood.
People never asked how she could be a mother and an archaeologist.
She wonders if people remember Amelia. Do they feel it’s impolite to inquire about the dead? Or do they not remember that she existed, like a long forgotten dream? Barbara reaches a hand to her throat, stroking the necklace made of an Atlantic moon snail, the one found in Amelia’s hand when she passed. She preserved the shell by forming it into a necklace pendant. This is what drew Barbara to archaeology; she finally found a field that understood that when pain becomes unbearable, it can be channeled into an obsessive desire to preserve the past.
She picks up her blueprints and rulers. She’ll map the cenote, look for evidence of relics. A subtle change in the water’s coloration could indicate where calcium from bone deposits has leached. An unevenness to limestone walls that one too many living things grasped. For years, she avoided assignments near bodies of water, keeping a careful distance from Amelia’s killer, but this only left her feeling empty. When she finally accepted riverside field work, she relished plunging her hands into the cold murk. Water was the last thing to touch her daughter in life. Barbara imagines that evaporated water from the ocean where Amelia drowned rose up into clouds, and now travels the world to rain down wherever she wanders.
Something flickers by the water’s edge. A tiny disturbance. Barbara measures its distance from the cenote’s border and marks it on her map.
The flicker grows into a ripple.
Barbara lies belly-down on the ground to get a closer look.
A fish leaps out of the water onto the cenote’s edge.
Barbara flinches, then laughs at herself for being so startled by a creature so small. She doesn’t recognize the species, but the fish is less than a foot long. It flounders, flopping violently, fighting for life.
She gently lifts the fish, about to toss it back, then stops. The fish is slippery, and she’s certain she’s never felt the slime of a fish’s underbelly before. But it’s also strangely familiar. The fish calms itself in her hands, full of life, yet unafraid. Barbara grips it tightly with both hands. The fish wriggles against her palms, studying her. Its eyes are green-grey, the color of the sea after a storm, just like . . .
No, it couldn’t be.
She and the fish stare at each other. In that moment, Amelia’s laughter tinkles; her bicycle wheels rustle as if through morning winds. Barbara refuses to release the fish or the sacredness of this moment. The fish wriggles less, stilling. The only way to preserve it is to throw it back into the water. She does.
The fish plinks against the cenote’s surface, then plunges down. Perhaps it’s too late. Her stomach lurches, roiling. Again, the water determines life or death.
The cenote is still. A bird flies overhead. The sun hangs heavy in the sky. The water is glass.
A splash bursts from the cenote, and the fish leaps into an airborne arc. Barbara will never know how much longer it will live, or even if it’s the same fish or not, but she believes it is. Its eyes meet Barbara’s for a tiny moment in what Barbara imagines to be a look of gratitude before it sinks back into the cenote’s depths, darting among the cenote’s other relics of life and death.
1982
Amelia
Jennifer’s fifteenth birthday arrives just like her fourteenth: with a birthday cake ordered from some fancy bakery and five crisp hundred-dollar bills beside it. Her nanny, Evelyn, sets it on the table at the steakhouse at the Milford Shopping Mall. The writing on the cake reads, “Happy birthday, daughter!” Daughter. Her mother couldn’t even bother to order a cake with Jennifer’s name on it. She sometimes wonders if her mother even remembers Jennifer’s name.
“Your mom’s really sorry she’s on tour during your birthday, but she made sure you got chocolate: your favorite!”
Jennifer forces a smile. “Thanks”
Who is Evelyn kidding? They both know that Jennifer’s mother didn’t order the cake: Evelyn did. Jennifer’s favorite flavor is chocolate. But Patisserie only makes chocolate and vanilla cakes. So knowing Jennifer’s “favorite flavor” is a flip of the coin, nothing more.
Evelyn slivers the cake. Maybe Evelyn’s been advised to ensure that Jennifer maintains her figure in case she’s ever photographed with her famous mother. Then Jennifer realizes that no one puts that much thought into her.
“I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be back,” Jennifer says.
Once inside, she locks the door. It’s a one-person stall. She stares at her reflection. She has her mother’s perfect features, the high cheekbones that graced her mother’s first magazine cover when Storm hit number one on music charts. She remembers being so excited and waiting to celebrate with her mother, just the two of them. Maybe somewhere by the ocean.
She’s still waiting.
In the meantime, she opens her purse for her own birthday celebration. She retrieves a flask and tips it back into her mouth, the liquor washing away her grief in ebbs and flows. She sometimes wonders if the universe got it wrong and she was born to the wrong mother. In some other life, she’s with a mother who sits with her at the beach and who cooks her favorite meal (boring old meatloaf instead of a fancy steak).
Someone knocks. “You okay in there, Jennifer? Your cake is waiting!” Evelyn says.
Jennifer doesn’t answer right away. She swigs the liquid from her flask until her throat burns. She wants to drink every drop of alcohol she can; she’d swallow an ocean full of it. Soon the room will spin for her like an eddy.
“I’m fine.”
They both know she isn’t.
Barbara
The sights and sounds of the Milford Shopping Mall overwhelm Barbara. Pacman blares wakawakawaka from the arcade; outside of Sears, teenagers flock to a giant screen displaying a pink neon logo for a new channel called MTV. A lifetime of studying the past as an archaeologist hasn’t prepared her for this future.
“Grandma! Can I go to the arcade? Please?” Mikey asks.
Barbara laughs and twirls her necklace. “Only if you quit using those puppy dog eyes. Twelve’s too old for that.” She hands him a dollar.
Her husband, Charles, winks. “Better make it a five. Inflation.” Charles gives five dollars to his grandson. Mikey grabs the money and runs off, shouting a thank you over his shoulder before he vanishes into a cave of teenage hormones and flashing lights.
Barbara looks at Charles with a “now what?” expression. Since retirement, she hasn’t quite known what to do with herself. Charles retired five years earlier. He’s since discovered the joys of golfing and playing bridge. Her son, Jonathan, finally convinced her that Mikey would love to have more time with his grandma, so she resigned. But Barbara struggles to let go of digging up the past. Letting go of the past means facing an empty future. She isn’t ready for that.
She reminds herself that her future isn’t empty. Charles supported her throughout her archaeological career, always thrilled to hear about Amazonian clay pots or Saharan giraffe bones. She’s excited to reconnect with him. They can have dates, like they did when he courted her many years ago. She’ll make meatloaf and they’ll dance in the kitchen to oldies. Mikey isn’t too old yet to think it’s uncool to spend the night with his grandparents. And when Jonathan and his wife, Stacy, return from the record store, they’ll have some new cassettes to play at Sunday suppers.
But something’s missing. She and Charles both know it. Barbara’s sure that Charles struggled with Amelia’s death as much as she did. But he spun his grief inward and upon itself like a whirlpool, while hers washed over her like a wave.
Before they leave, Mikey convinces them to take a picture in a photo booth. Mikey sticks his tongue out just as the shutter clicks. They’ve all crammed in tightly for the photo, but when Barbara looks at it later, she still sees an empty space.
2006
Amelia
Rachel sits beside a glass table in the cafe of the newly built Beach Haven Yacht Club. She’s looking forward to diving into a novel while her husband, Brian, tinkers on his father’s boat at the marina. Rachel smiles and waves at him through the two-story window. He blows her a kiss. A sunburst of newlywed bliss envelops them. At twenty-one, she’s still figuring out what career she’ll have and whether she’ll want children, but love is something she’s confident in. She doesn’t know why, but her heart senses that love can stretch into forever, into the unseen. That’s faith.
A waitress approaches Rachel’s table with a notepad. “I’m Becca and I’ll be your server. Would you like a beverage?”
“Lemonade, please,” Rachel says.
The server nods and walks away. Rachel’s old enough to drink alcohol, but chooses not to. She doesn’t feel the need to overexplain her aversion to alcohol. Her gut chides her away from it, as if the wisdom of an addict spoke through her. Her parents aren’t drinkers, but someone in her past may have been. Maybe an ancestor.
Once her lemonade arrives, Rachel sips on it and loses herself in her novel for an hour. She stretches her legs, growing restless. She sets cash on her table and exits. She’s never been a “beach person” — she’s always been intimidated by the vastness and power of the ocean. But with a new husband who loves boating, maybe it’s time to face her anxiety.
She descends the steps to the beach. Though the yacht club is new, its owners decided to keep Beach Haven’s historic boardwalk. She walks along it, passing ice cream stands and pizzerias, but keeps a safe distance from the sea.
Rachel reaches the end of the boardwalk, an area that developers haven’t built up. Neglected. A relic. She’s about to turn around when she spies a hint of red peeking through a tuft of dune grass. She walks toward it, curious. Something’s buried in the tangles of grass. But life has grown around the depression; dune grass grows thick and strong around the red relic. Rachel digs through the grass. For some reason, she’s anxious, but she can’t stop herself. She pulls hard, loosening the item from its tethers of grass, just barely, and studies it.
It’s a rusted red bicycle. A child’s bicycle, an older one. The bicycle’s sparkly red tubes are remarkably well preserved, but time and weather have corroded the chain. Rachel recoils as if she’s stumbled upon a dead body in the woods. She tries to talk herself through her sudden anxiety and does some four-count breathing exercises that her therapist taught her. It’s just the red frame of a bicycle. Not the red blood of a murder scene. But she gently covers up the bicycle with its grasses again, leaving it as she found it. Rachel walks away reverently, feeling a strange kinship with whomever the bike belonged to.
Rachel walks beside the boardwalk this time, keeping the boardwalk as a barrier between herself and the sea. Ahead, an old woman sits on a bench, staring seaward. Something about her feels inviting. Rachel approaches the bench.
“Mind if I sit also?” Rachel asks.
The woman turns toward Rachel. Her eyes are clouded with cataracts, but they’re kind. A sort of green-grey color, almost like her own.
“I’m Barbara,” the woman says. She pats the empty spot on the bench.
“Rachel,” she says, settling in beside her.
They sit in shared silence. Rachel doesn’t feel the need to overexplain herself, just like with her lemonade. Kids screech in delight on the beach as they play tag. Seagulls caw. Waves crash and retreat.
Rachel wants to ask Barbara if they’ve met before. But she knows they haven’t. Rachel suspects she would remember meeting someone with her exact eye color.
Barbara absentmindedly twirls a seashell on her necklace.
“I like your necklace,” Rachel says.
A thin smile crosses Barbara’s lips, a crescent moon. “Thanks. My daughter found the shell.”
“It’s gorgeous. What’s her name?” Rachel studies the opalescent shell. Maybe she and Brian can beachcomb, search for beach gems like scattered shells, before venturing deeper into the ocean. A gateway drug to exploring the sea together safely.
“Her name was Amelia.” Barbara reaches into her pants pocket and retrieves a wallet. With shaky hands, she pulls out small photos: a faded photo of a cenote, a wedding photo, a photo-booth picture of a younger Barbara with a boy sticking his tongue out, and finally, a black and white photo of a girl smiling on a beach. Her name was Amelia. Was. Rachel doesn’t ask questions, but smiles as she’s passed each photo.
“She’s adorable,” Rachel says.
Barbara nods, her eyes elsewhere, and puts the photos and wallet away. She resumes sitting quietly, her palm face-up on the bench. Open. Rachel reaches her own open hand across gently, like a whisper. The women clasp hands, closing the space between their palms, filling the gap between them as the sea churns on.