Sink or Swim
Christine Maree Reid
The mailbox on Main Street was green. This in itself was unusual as every other mailbox in the small town of Trillmore was red. No one was quite sure when it had been put there, nor did they know who that putter had been. Mr. Barnaby, the grizzled man who owned the barber shop on the block where the mailbox stood, swore up and down that it had just appeared overnight.
Kit Sink, Kathryn to her grandmother, approached the mailbox on the way to Trillmore Library on Saturday morning. She stopped beside the metal box, her head barely cresting its curved roof. Pony-tail still swaying, her brown eyes narrowed. In the way that eight-year-olds inherently understand certain things that are beyond the reach of adults, she knew that writing a letter to her father and posting it via this particular mailbox was the way to answer some questions she had. Sam Sink had gone out for cigarettes four months before and had failed to reappear. Kit nodded once and decided the library could wait for tomorrow.
She wrote the letter using the special paper and matching envelope her mother had gifted her last Christmas. Using her very best manners, she urged her father to please come home. Sam Sink was a no-nonsense man when it came to manners and Kit had borne more than one cuff across the face from failing to use her please, thank you, and yes Sir. Not knowing her father’s current address or any detail of his whereabouts, she simply wrote, ‘Samuel Sink’, on the front of the envelope. Kit carefully slipped the letter through the opening of the green mailbox that afternoon and, just to make sure, slid her small hand around the inside of the gap to ensure the letter had indeed dropped properly inside. The rest of Kit’s week did not allow her time to worry over the letter, she was busy learning her seven and eight multiplication tables (the hardest of all) and swimming in the Trillmore Pond with the other Trillmore children. So, when a letter appeared in the small, white mailbox attached to the Sink front fence on Friday afternoon Kit was delighted. Kit never received mail. Her mother routinely allowed her to open the Christmas cards that arrived in December. Together they’d read them and place them up on the window sill as part of a festive ritual, but the envelopes were always addressed to ‘The Sink Family’ or ‘S and S Sink’, never to Kit herself.
‘There’s a letter for me,’ she called to her mother as she walked in through the back door, ‘it even says Kit on the front and not Kathryn!’ She waved the bright white envelope above her head as she dropped into a kitchen chair.
‘Who can it be from?’ her mother mused aloud.
‘It has to be from Daddy,’ Kit explained, ‘I wrote him last weekend and told him he needs to come home.’ She inserted her finger under the flap of the envelope and began to tear, taking little notice of her mother’s tensing shoulders and widening eyes.
‘Kit,’ her mother started, but she was cut off by her daughter reading the letter aloud —
My darling Kit,
I cannot return to you due to circumstances beyond my control. I miss you though. You be a good girl for your mother. Remind her that she shouldn’t swim without me,
Much love my girl
Daddy Sinks
‘Silly Daddy,’ Kit giggled, ‘he spelled our name with an S on the end,’ she rolled her eyes at the mistake.
Reading over Kit’s shoulder, her mother’s eyes somehow got wider,
‘Yes. Silly Daddy,’ Sophie agreed as she sunk into the chair next to her daughter. She glanced at Kit,
‘Kit, we need to talk about Daddy my darling,’ Sophie started, not really sure how to put the words together, nor how her daughter would react. ‘Daddy cannot come back to be here with us.’ Thank God her daughter was still young enough to manipulate, she thought, then admonished herself because that was just an awful thing to think. She kept her eyes on Kit and wondered if she was old enough to grasp the importance of the secret she was about to ask her to keep.
‘Oh, I know that, he said so in his letter,’ Kit answered, her young brow wrinkled and Sophie noted the uncanny resemblance to Sam that her daughter held.
‘Yes, he did say that.’ Sophie thought for a moment about what she was trying to achieve. She had told her daughter many untruths over the years, stories about the tooth fairy, outlandish cautionary tales about speaking to strangers, and explanations for bruised arms and thighs. I don’t need to tell her, she realised. No one ever needs to know. But that letter. Sophie got up and stepped behind Kit and wrapped her arms around her daughter. Kit leaned back comfortably, the little girl smell of sweaty afternoon hair crept up to Sophie,
‘Kit, the mailbox you said you posted the letter for Daddy, where did you say it was?’
*
What Kit Sink did not know was that Sam had not left unaided. In fact, Sophie thought, Sam was technically still in Trillmore. His whispered words had come back to her as Kit read the letter,
‘Sink or Swim Sophie,’ his gravelly voice held low in a whisper, chin against her shoulder, hot breath in her ear. The implications of this frequently repeated maxim were both advice and warning in one, choose him, Samuel Sink, or he would make her life a misery. She had few fond memories of life with Sam. He had been a newcomer to Trillmore during her last year of school. For a girl who had lived and rarely left the same tiny town for her whole life, Sam Sink was the handsome, mysterious, and interesting stranger that she had frequently read about. Their young relationship progressed quickly, turning mean shortly after their nuptials. He would hide things and insist she had lost them. He would grab her roughly, though always gentle enough to beg accident or overreaction.
Even early in their marriage thoughts of leaving Sam flittered through Sophie’s mind like sparrows, but they were always followed by crow-like doubts. Where would she go? Who would she be? Fear of leaving the only town she had ever known and all the familiar people it contained. Sophie had lived in Trillmore her whole life, Trillmore was a part of her, and she was in turn a part of it. And then Kit came along. The idea of raising her child anywhere else but in Trillmore seems ludicrous. She chose to stay where she considered herself safe, Sam being a lesser evil than the big outside world.
Despite his constant prodding, Sam’s death had been an accident really. Sophie had been standing in a daydream, staring out of the window at the kitchen sink. He had already been three beers in, entering the kitchen after steering Kit towards bed. Though she had been aware of him, his hands startled her. Hard fingers working into her collar bones. She had jumped and turned, the heavy knife, its blade still speckled with remnants of dinner and lemon-scented foam, held forward in her hand. Sam stepped towards her, whether to deliver a quick jab to her ribs or embrace her, she would never know. The knife entered his abdomen just below the ribs. There was a moment of pause, husband and wife standing by the sink, a comfortable, domestic scene. The smell of his breath wafted toward her, stale beer and barbecue sauce. She looked down to the place where their bodies were interlaced, his hands wrapped around hers, hers wrapped around the knife. Sophie drew in a sharp breath and Sam Sink came back to himself. She watched as he took two steps back and then one forward. She had the perverse memory of him, drunk at their wedding, saucily dancing the Cha Cha to Duffy’s ‘Mercy’. One final step back saw his feet tangle beneath him and he came down, a sickening crack as temple met table. If anyone had cared to look towards the Morgan Trail the night they would have seen Sophie Sink, pulling her daughter’s red wagon along towards Trillmore Pond.
*
Sophie Sink was proud to say that she possessed an open mind. Trillmore was a place where things sometimes happened, unusual things, it was what she loved best about the tiny town. She had heard stories about Amberley House, over on the rich side of Main Street, being haunted. She had heard gossip about the things in the Woods. She had been a member of the well-known book club at Trillmore Library when the extraordinary novels by deceased authors that should never have existed appeared. Her particular favourite had been a sequel to ‘We Have Always Lived In The Castle’, Shirley Jackson never did disappoint. So, when Kit explained about posting the letter via the green mailbox on Main Street, Sophie accepted it as one of Trillmore’s ubiquitous oddities that were never entirely explainable.
Just as Kit had described, the mailbox stood in front of Mr. Barnaby’s barber shop. Deep, mossy green. Not a scratch or a fingerprint nor a spot of red, vibrant against the black shop fronts and grey pavement. Sophie reached forward timidly, touching the side with her fingertips. The metal was solid and cold, and very real. Sophie nervously giggled,
‘What to do now,’ she thought aloud. Even though she knew what she was going to do —
Dear Sam,
I have decided to swim and leave you to sink. Please leave us alone. Stay dead. Let us live,
Sophie Sink
Sophie jabbed the envelope through the slot and hoped this would be the last time she would have to think of Sam Sink.
*
It took four days for the letter to arrive. Alone at home, Kit off swimming with her school friends, Sophie saw the yellowing envelope leaning against the inside of their white letterbox and the world spun for a moment. Black invaded her vision and she very nearly passed out in clear view of every person on Watson Road. Gripping the fence she extracted the epistle, and holding it delicately made her way back up the path.
In the kitchen, Sophie tried not to look at the corner of the table. Tried to block out the sound of the crunch that had been echoing in her ear for four months. The new yellow tablecloth looked cheerful in the afternoon sunlight, a replacement for the pale blue one she had wrapped around Sam’s head that night. The one now in the murky depths at the bottom of the pond. She gingerly lowered herself into a chair, placing the envelope on the table in front of her. It looked utterly comfortable among the bric-a-brac, notes from school, an envelope stamped red overdue, and a small pile of wildflowers carried in by Kit three days ago and left to unwittingly dry and fade. To look at the envelope it seemed such a small thing, a slight breeze could pick it up and carry it away. But Sophie felt its heaviness, like a yoke around her shoulders, this tiny thing frightened her, its contents could shatter her life, and Kit’s as well.
Steeling herself she picked up the envelope and resolutely peeled open the flap. Dirty marks sullied the paper inside and she could not help but wonder if the dirt was dried mud —
To my darling wife,
You forget that I am still close by and that she is part of me, even in death. You cannot keep me from my daughter.
Your Loving Husband
Sam Sink
The page fell from Sophie’s hands and a groan escaped her throat. Sam was not known to make empty threats. How does a mother keep her daughter safe from someone who is, for all intents and purposes, dead? The pond… Sophie thought. She shot up, the chair she had been seated on tipping over, landing with a crash on the linoleum floor. Sam was in the pond. Kit was swimming in the pond. Sophie was running down Watson Road before the kitchen screen had time to swing shut.
*
Sophie met Trillmore’s third-grade students on the Morgan Trail, dripping wet and heading for town. Kit’s face was absent from the group. She pushed past them, the dirt under her bare feet changing to wooden slats as she ran along the jetty. The water was warm after months of summer heat, Sophie plunged straight down, recalling the descent of Sam’s body and following the same course, eyes searching for Kit’s tiny form. Yellow sunlight filtered through the surface, creating a nightmare world where shadows rippled and aquatic plants reigned. Her palm made contact with the pliant body of her daughter. Sophie’s eyes registered the vibrant purple swimsuit Kit had demanded in the changing room of ‘Little Lottie’s’ three weeks ago. Sophie had said ‘no’ after looking at the price tag. Tears and an unbecoming tantrum ensued; Sophie hated that swimsuit. Hated that her daughter was wearing that swimsuit at this moment. Anger tightened her chest, then turned to terror when she recognised Sam’s pallid face peering over Kit’s shoulder, his teeth on show between lips curving in a maniacal grin.
When faced with the unexplainable and the danger of losing a beloved child, it is most often the case that a parent will put aside questions of what is real and what is possible and meet the danger head-on. Sophie was no exception. She reached out and grasped her daughter's small wrist, it was warm and she could feel a pulse fluttering against her fingers. Turning, Sophie began to swim to the surface. How long had Kit been down here floating in the gloom? Kit hated the dark. Sophie felt a downward tug and Kit’s arm disappeared like a magic trick. Circling back Sophie grabbed again at Kit, noticing this time the strong arms that encircled her daughter’s waist. Sam’s face twitched and Sophie would later swear that his dead grin widened slightly.
Sophie’s eyes were drawn by slow movement, shadows were beginning to dance behind Sam. Deep green threads of kelp untangled itself. Twisting black ribbons that made their way over his shoulders and tenderly wrapped around his forearms, forcing him to release his grip on her daughter. Again, Sophie perceived a twitch on Sam’s face, eyes somewhat widening, and then a violent kick as he was dragged down beneath the black silt.
Kit’s small body had begun to float up, buoyed by a current that should not exist in a pond with no inlet. Sophie wasted no time, replacing her late husband's arms with her own, she kicked toward the surface. Dragging Kit’s water-logged body behind her Sophie broke through to daylight. Thirty seconds, that’s all the time that has passed, thirty seconds, she thought.
*
Only three of Trillmore’s residents remarked upon the disappearance of the green mailbox. Mr Barnaby breathed a sigh of relief as he unlocked the door of his establishment on Tuesday morning. That green mailbox just hadn’t sat right with him, no siree. Kit glanced at the spot where it had stood as she made her way along Main Street to school. Her stomach flip-flopped as her father's face flickered into her mind. And finally, Sophie, who raised her eyebrows and breathed in the biggest breath she had ever taken in her life. She continued down Main Street, grateful for Trillmore and everything in it.
THE END
Christine Maree Reid resides in Sydney, Australia, though most frequently exists within invented worlds and daydreams. She is a writer of fiction, poetry, and periodic peculiarities. Christine was shortlisted for the 2023 Future Leaders Writers Prize for her short story ‘Sink or Swim’.
