Zodiac Signs · Sagittarius: Наталья И-ва

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The woman in the mural above the bus depot had been holding her bow drawn since 1936. The centaur next to her had been running for the same amount of time and had got as far as a crack in the plaster.

My mother used to say this was typical of Sagittarius. She was a Sagittarius herself. She kept a suitcase under the bed with a bathing suit in it, though we lived three hundred miles from the ocean and she couldn’t swim.

One November the town sold the depot clock to a man from Portland. He took it down on a Tuesday. On Wednesday morning the woman in the mural let go of her arrow.

It went straight through the hole where the clock had been and landed in the far end of the waiting room, in a door nobody remembered seeing before.

The arrow quivered. The door swung open.

On the other side was a beach. A little wave came in and wet the corner of the rubber mat that said WELCOME. The ticket clerk moved the mat. It was the sort of thing he knew how to do.

I called my mother.

“Is the water cold?” she asked.

I put my hand in it. It was cold enough to make the bones in my fingers feel individually employed.

“Pretty cold,” I said.

“Good. I’ll bring a sweater.”

She came down with the suitcase. On the beach she took off her shoes and walked into the water up to her ankles. Then she came back, dried her feet with the sweater and asked if I’d like an egg sandwich.

We ate sitting in the doorway, with our feet on the beach and our backs against the bus depot. Every so often a wave came close enough for us to lift our heels.

After a while she handed me the suitcase. I thought she wanted me to carry it home. She wanted me to open it.

Inside were two bathing suits. The smaller one had a whale on it. I remembered the whale. I had picked it out myself when I was six.

“Think it’ll fit?” she said.

I held it up. The whole Pacific Ocean was behind it.

“Maybe the whale,” I said.

She laughed, and we stayed until the ticket clerk knocked on the doorframe and told us he had to lock up. By then my mother had found a flat white stone. She put it in the suitcase beside the two bathing suits.

On the way home she asked me what time it was. I looked up at the empty place on the wall.

“We’ve got time,” I said.

So we went back for her shoes.