The Portside Pen
Chloe’s Cut
NOTE: “Chloe’s Cut” is an excerpt from Michael Kirshtein’s 2023 novel The C. Shephard, available to purchase online at Amazon, Books-A-Million, Walmart and other booksellers.
I moved in with Chris and his dad when I was eleven. Chris, or Chrissy to me, had already turned twelve. Four years earlier, he had lost his mom. His dad, Pop, then married my mom. I’m still unsure exactly how they met, but it didn’t really matter.
Six months after they married, she left. I didn’t see her leave, but I knew she wasn’t coming back. She was the thunderstorm that arose from the fever of the day with rush and gall. I didn’t cry.
I didn’t cry because Pop became my father, and Chrissy became my brother. They became my safe harbor, and I wove myself into their unbroken thread. Pop adopted me not long after my mother left, which kept me from the clutches of a foster home and in the hands of the Shephard home. My adoption ceremony was the best day of my life.
“Chloe, will you do us the honor of becoming Ms. Chloe Shephard, the first Shephard girl in the history of our world?” asked Pop. He got down on one knee in the sand, under a tapestry canopy, on the southernmost point of Sullivan’s Island. He and Chrissy made a whole ceremony of it.
“I would like to be your Pop and for you to be Chrissy’s one and only sister,” he continued. “We promise to love you and care for you all the days of our lives. We promise to give you your own room to decorate as you choose. We promise to try and not do gross guy things.”
“BURP,” burped Chrissy as he laughed.
“OK, so I promise not to do gross guy things,” corrected Pop. “You would become a Shephard.”
Chris chimed in, “Yeah, we won’t even have to change the initials on our towels and stuff.”
“Right,” Pop continued. “We promise to all live happily ever after. If you agree, then please place your hand on this first edition copy of Little Women, which I will gift to you, and repeat after me. ‘I, Chloe…’”
“I, Chloe,” I repeated.
“… do solemnly swear to uphold the ancient traditions of Shepharding.”
“Don’t worry, we don’t have any ancient traditions,” whispered Chrissy in my ear.
“Thanks,” I said.
“… and to forever be a loving member of our family,” he concluded.
“… and to forever be a loving member of our family,” I repeated.
We walked a little further down the warm sands of Sullivan’s Island, and Pop recited a poem to me called “May You,” which was filled with wishes and expectations.
“See that?” he said, pointing out toward the harbor. “That inlet is now and forever going to be called Chloe’s Cut. May it never run dry, and may your path always be lit, from generation to generation.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant because I wasn’t used to people talking like that. He must’ve read my expression.
“This is your home now, forever, angel,” he said.
I understood that. Then he collected some sand dollars. Chrissy showed me how to one-seam it on its side like a change-up. We all aimed in the direction of a sand bar where hundreds of pelicans stood sleeping. They took flight in squadrons.
“Those are your white doves, my angel,” Pop said.
Chrissy and I exchanged a glance. Only Pop could turn pelicans into doves.
Some took off in a V formation, while others flew in line, hovering just above the waves in the slope drift. I closed my eyes and held my breath. When I reopened them, something remarkable had happened.
Everything was just as it had been moments before, but I was home. I was Chloe Shephard.
Chrissy and I now shared a house and a father, though we had washed ashore from different storms. I had found a home in the wake of loss. He was searching for what loss had taken. Pop and I were the color in his life, but ever since his mom died, a part of him had remained ashen and dull, like the sand.
There are certain holes that a sister and a father can’t fill; only a mother can.
I didn’t have that void. I had the Chrises. I was glad my mom was gone.
Chris had told me once that baseball seemed to fit him best. As he stood atop his island, the mound, he felt closest to her. He felt her there pitching sand dollars and baseballs with him. She loved setting those sea biscuits sailing, he told me. He was an island, and within each pitch and upon every swing burned the conflict of loss, love, and fury. He threw hard, and he swung big, each time trying to dig out more of the sand that filled the hole in his heart. But there is always more sand, no matter how deeply we dig.
I tried to fill those holes with love and mischief, like only a sister could. I watched him throw many pitches over the next four years, but my adoption ceremony on the beach that day was the last time I saw him throw a sand dollar.
