Reaction Times
“Colornea_2024” by Cynthia Yatchman
It is not her day to have him, and Jonah is surprised and delighted to see her when she collects him from the crèche. He bursts out the door, a firework of excitement, of small desires. ‘Yes,’ she says, they can go to the beach, get ice cream, play trains. But he’ll still be sleeping in Daddy’s house the way he always does on Mondays. Just, Daddy can’t collect him today, because – and here she can’t supply the reason, her ex hadn’t actually given a reason, had he? Some vague thing about work? Taking, taking, taking, as ever.
They head to a beach near the crèche, Jonah finishing his snack of crackers in his car seat as she drives. It is a beach they have never been to – closer to her ex’s place than hers. See, she can be spontaneous, playful; Jonah will tell his father about this interlude – ‘and then we went to the beach’ – and her ex’s eyes will widen in surprise, maybe even admiration.
Jonah skips ahead on the twisting path down from the clifftop carpark, his light-up trainers flashing as he bounces along. She is slower: wrong shoes, no grip. The path circles out from behind a screen of trees and the sea and sky are visible all at once from this height, meeting at a distance. When they reach ground level, the horizon is closer, the sky bigger. A small strip of sand skirts the seawall that rises with granite stubbornness behind them, and is tracked with ripples of seaweed, black and brackish.
It occurs to her to check the tide timetable, but her phone has no signal. Blocked, probably, by the granite wall stretching thirty feet up the cliffs. Above their heads. Her head. Jonah has kept running along the curve of the wall, past the outcrop of rocks, out of sight. The small, curved bays nest against each other like scalloped lace. She hurries to catch up, rounds the rocky point that separates the bays, sees him further away than he could possibly be, still running, closer to the water than he should be. She runs, shouts, runs. He turns from the water, comes back towards her with wet, bare feet, a hand stretched out bearing treasure – small stones gleaming gem-like in their wetness, razor-bill shells. She squats to examine them, moves back from an encroaching wave, exclaims extravagantly. A quick glance around shows her there’s no one to witness her motherhood.
The damp sand is compact, perfect for a sandcastle he wants to build. She shows him how to heap the sand in handfuls, building a lumpen shape together that they crown with the shells and stones that dot the shore. The cloud cover thins enough for a lemon disc of sun to burn through, to find the sparkle in the wet stones, the pearly insides of mussel shells, the domed lumps of dead jellyfish.
Her thighs burn and she straightens up, notices the shrunken beach, the water crashing around the rocks. If she hurries, they can still make it back to the path, the only way off the beach. Jonah’s feet are now breaded with sand. He wails when she insists on brushing off the sand with a damp sock, wails when she forces the socks and shoes back on. Wails, lying on the pale, damp sand, as she tries to lift him.
The curved points of the little bay, the rocky corners, are now underwater, cutting them off from the pathway back to the road, the carpark. There is no other exit, and the water is too deep to wade through. She can see, on the wall, marks showing how high the tide will rise before dropping back again. She knows this; resists the knowledge. Refuses to think about how her ex will tell this story against her. The racing sea has reached the other point of the little bay, leaving only a sickle-moon of sand at the base of granite retaining wall.
The water nips further up towards the seawall, and she backs away, lifting Jonah onto her hip. Clear mucus runs from his nose, and he wipes it on his coat. He has stopped crying though and looks at the diminishing sand – ‘where’s the beach gone, mama?’ The sea is already licking at the wall. They are no longer on sand; there is no longer sand.
She shouts. The carpark is at the top of the cliff, above them. The sea and the wind whip her words away. She looks at her watch. It is late, but not yet the time when Jonah’s father will be home from work, expecting him. The water sloshes around her feet, sucks at the hem of her jeans.
At a distance, the town is visible. At such a distance. This beach, sharply below the road, is hidden from view. Out at sea, where she might reasonably hope to see a boat, grey water and grey sky meet each other emptily. No one is coming to save them, and the water is getting deeper.
‘Piggyback Jonah,’ she says, swings him around onto her back. His arms are tight across her throat, a feeling she hates. It’s something she must tolerate. She faces the wall, tries to find a toehold in the granite, pulls on brambles growing from cracks. Her hands are reefed by thorns, her ballet flats slide uselessly down the foot of rock she has climbed. ‘Mama bleeding’ – Jonah cries, tightening his grip. ‘Mama is fine,’ she says. A lie, but necessary. Instead of despair, rage boils in her. Already, in her head, she is thinking of what she will say, what Jonah will say – ‘and then Mama saved me’ – and her ex’s eyes will glow with something, maybe even affection. She kicks off the useless shoes, clamps her bare feet onto the wall, feels for a branch without thorns and climbs.
About the Author
Fiona McKay is the author of the Novella-in-Flash The Top Road, AdHoc Fiction (2023), and the Flash Fiction collection Drawn and Quartered, Alien Buddha Press (2023). The Lives of the Dead, a Novella-in-Flash, is forthcoming from AdHoc Fiction (2025). Her Flash Fiction is in Bath Flash, Gone Lawn, New Flash Fiction Review, Pithead Chapel, The Forge, Ghost Parachute, trampset, Bending Genres, and others. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions 2024. She lives in Dublin, Ireland. She is on X (formerly Twitter) @fionaemckayryan and Bluesky @fionamckay.bsky.social
about the artist
Cynthia Yatchman is a Seattle based artist and art instructor. She shows extensively in the PaciNic Northwest. Past shows have included Seattle University, the Tacoma and Seattle Convention Centers and the PaciNic Science Center. Her art is housed in numerous public and private collections.