Island Read online

  I sat down in the empty seat between Roscoe and Meredith. Meredith was wearing her earphones. I could hear a trace of the broadcaster’s voice, and I knew by his tone that he was talking about the hurricane. Charlie. I hadn’t let myself call it that all day. “Her work is very much like Grandma Moses’, don’t you think?” I asked. “Oh, it really is,” Belinda said. Donald and Roscoe nodded. I was glad Meredith hadn’t told them that the painting had been a gift and began babbling about the particularities that gave the painting its feeling of innocence. When I was done, Meredith removed her earphones and said she was going to bed. I waited for her to wheel herself out of the room and then, to everyone’s apparent surprise, I said good night too.

  As I lay on my back on the bed I had the queer sensation that the bed was moving, tossing gently, as though it were floating on a wave. If it wants to move, let it, I thought. What do I care anymore? I had seen the clock strike six and my anxieties had vanished. Maybe this was all part of the experience of the sublime. After a while the movement of the bed seemed to stop. I waited to see if it would begin again. I willed it to and when it didn’t, I told myself that it had never moved at all, that I was only lightheaded from lack of sleep. I thought about God and wanted to say a prayer, but I didn’t have the energy. I wondered if the reason some prayers didn’t get answered was because when you prayed, you connected yourself with another world, almost like a long-distance phone call, to a place where good and evil sit side by side in their pure forms, and maybe evil could answer your call as easily as good—and you would never know the difference.

  I got out of bed and went to check on Meredith. She had fallen asleep with her earphones on. I removed them, taking care to turn off the radio first so that I wouldn’t hear any of the broadcast. She was curled on her side with her arm around the little toy dolphin she always sleeps with. I pulled the sheet up to cover them both. Then I turned on her ceiling fan and shut her door.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” I said in the kitchen to their mildly surprised faces. I asked for the latest storm coordinates, but nobody knew them. They hadn’t listened to the radio since before dinner. They wanted to experience the storm, if it came, without the distracting voices of the National Weather Service—who would ultimately make it something it was not—in the background. In the morning they were all going to get up early and drive down to the beach and look at the sky. They hoped, of course, that I would join them.

  I was standing behind Donald’s chair. My hand was resting on its back, only inches away from his head. “Are you nervous, Belinda?” I asked.

  She spread one hand over her face and then removed it. Her nails were painted a purplish color. Yesterday they had been red. “God, yeah!” she said. “I’ve never been so nervous in my life. But I’m also very excited. It’s hard to explain. I feel completely alive, completely alert.” She threw her hands out. “Look at me!” she exclaimed. “I’m not even drinking!” Then her expression changed and she said, “We didn’t see you much today. We were all a little concerned. How are you doing?”

  “I’m pregnant,” I said. I watched Donald’s shoulder muscles tighten. When I looked up, I saw that Belinda and Roscoe were paralyzed with shock. I had broken the aura of calm that had permeated our beautiful island house. I had thrown a handful of mud into the sublime. I was glad.

  I walked around the table and sat down across from Donald, but I spoke to Belinda. “I had a test before coming to the island,” I said. “Actually two tests. The first was to confirm my pregnancy. I’ve never been very regular and I didn’t feel any different, so I didn’t think I was. With Charlie I felt pregnant right away. I blew up with Charlie, and I was hungry all the time … But I am pregnant. Four months’ worth. The second test was a CVS, to make sure the baby is going to be okay.” I hesitated long enough to make everybody nervous. “She’s not okay. She’s going to have Downs.” There, it was over. I had said it. I was relieved and yet horrified. I could feel my jaw quivering.

  Belinda was still batting her eyes at me in disbelief. Roscoe was looking at me curiously, as if he were trying to figure me out. Donald was looking in my direction, but I think he was actually staring at the wall behind me. His gaze was unfocused, like the night before, only tonight he wasn’t drunk.

  “You’re going to abort, right?” Belinda asked.

  “Aw, Jeez,” Roscoe said. He shook his head at the ceiling.

  “Oh God!” Belinda cried. “Roscoe the moralist. I forgot.” She looked at me and whispered, “We can’t discuss abortions in front of Roscoe. He freaks out.”

  “Look,” Roscoe began defensively. “I know it’s fashionable for you women to say, It’s my body and no one else can decide what happens—”

  “That’s right,” Belinda said. “It’s her body. She’s obviously set on an abortion or she wouldn’t have gone for the test in the first place. So don’t lay your morals on her. I’m sure she has enough on her mind.”

  “I agree completely,” Roscoe said. He watched himself make a fist. Then he clamped his lips together and brought the fist down lightly on the table. “I agree that no one has the right to tell a woman she can or can’t abort. A law against abortion in this day and age would be absurd. Look what happened before ’73! Wire hangers and all that. And then again a lot of women wanted abortions but didn’t have them only because it was illegal and they didn’t know how to go about … I agree that if a woman chooses to abort she should be free to do so. No government should tell her she can’t. And if she chooses not to abort, then it shouldn’t be because she’s forbidden. It should be because she appeals to a higher law.”

  “Oh, Roscoe,” Belinda cried. “A higher law? Please! The mother’s decision is the highest law involved here. Now Carole here takes good care of herself. That’s obvious. She doesn’t drink, she doesn’t smoke, she eats well, and she gets a hell of a lot of exercise. So if her fetus is marred, it’s one of those fluke things, plain old bad luck. Lots of women have marred fetuses because they take drugs or drink polluted water or don’t eat right. There’s no higher law involved in that. That’s just logic. And there’s no higher law involved in plain old bad luck either. I mean, God doesn’t go around saying, You, you, and you. It’s environmental. Or sometimes it’s genetic. Or it’s a matter of how many mistakes a woman makes in her life. And who suffers if these women don’t abort? The kids do, that’s who.”

  “It’s not the kids that suffer,” Roscoe replied. “It’s the parents. The parents don’t want to be seen on the street with their less than perfect kids. They don’t go well with their Volvos and MBA’s. And it costs more to raise retarded kids. Now that they’re so easy to get rid of, no one wants to pay taxes for the special programs—”

  “It’s cheaper to raise them,” Belinda interrupted. “They don’t go to college or off to parties or off to get married. They suffer, I tell you. Because they’re on the outside all the time, looking in. I don’t know how you can talk about higher laws and then not look at the higher law involved in bringing a child into the world who’s not wanted, who will never be understood by anyone. You’re so insensitive, Roscoe.”

  “That’s bullshit! If they’re understood by their families, they’re happy. It doesn’t take very much to—”

  “Oh yeah?” Belinda lit a cigarette hurriedly. “And you know so many, don’t you? And besides that, you’re contradicting yourself. You just said the parents don’t want them interfering in their Yuppie lives. Now you’re saying the parents’ understanding of them makes everybody else’s lack of okay. I’ll tell you what. You go ask Meredith about suffering. And she’s had parental love and understanding. Look at what Elaine gave up to stay home with her when she was little! And Donald adores her. And now she’s got Carole. You go ask her if all that makes her feel any better about herself. Go ahead. Wake her up and ask her if she ever wishes she’d never been born.”

  “And you call me insensitive!” Roscoe cried.

  Donald put his hand out like a traffic cop. “Wait,”
he whispered hoarsely. But Belinda and Roscoe took no notice of him.

  “Go ahead. Ask her,” Belinda insisted.

  “Roscoe laughed sarcastically. “Yeah, Belinda. I’ll ask her. That should make her feel real good, to know that we think there’s some chance—”

  Donald stood up. “I’m going to check on her,” he declared.

  “Shit,” Roscoe said softly when he’d left the room. “Listen to us.”

  “God, I forgot he was here.”

  They were silent for a moment, but then Roscoe said in a low voice, “Okay, you want to extract the hardship from the world? That’s what you want to do, right? Then how about this? How about getting rid of all the people already in the world who are suffering hardships. Poor people? Poverty’s a hardship for sure. Schizos? Out with ’em. Manic depressives? Minority groups? Let’s put them all out of their misery. See what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I see,” Belinda said. “You’re saying the people with problems should be made to grin and bear it for the sake of the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, so the rest of us lucky suckers can learn compassion. I mean, we’ve got the technology to see into the future, and that’s a very scary thing. Soon we’ll be able to identify, in the womb, people who are likely to get certain diseases, people who are likely to lose their marbles before a certain age … whatever. I mean, what if, a hundred years from now, our society decides it can’t tolerate shy people? No, hear me out, Belinda. It’s a real easy to do it now, see, because we’ve been doing it right along and we’re all fine, outstanding citizens. I mean, we’re talking specifically about abortions where the fetuses are deformed. But what else do those tests tell nowadays? Sex? Eye color? I mean, say your kid’s got too many fat cells. Surely in a hundred years we’ll have the technology to know something as elementary as that! No one wants a kid who’s a porker! I mean, we’ve got the technology to do good or bad at our fingertips. That makes us responsible with a capital R.”

  Belinda laughed. “You’re verging on the ridiculous now. I can’t even argue with you when you get like this. The crucial thing here is that nobody knows when life begins. And if nobody knows, then it’s up to the individual to take a guess.”

  “Ah, bullshit.”

  “And furthermore, some couples just don’t want kids, perfect or not. That’s worse than any of your scenarios. Nobody can survive unwanted, at least not happily.”

  “Belinda, people don’t know what they want. Look at what’s her name, the surrogate mother who made a big stink about getting her kid back … And then, how many folks do you know who can’t wait to have a kid, and then when they get it, they abuse it. People don’t know what they want. That’s where the higher law comes in.”

  “Oh Christ! The higher law again.”

  “Yes, the higher law. And Him too. Because if you want to get to the bottom of this, you’ve got to get metaphysical.”

  Donald came back in and sat down. “Look,” he said, touching his forehead. “That’s my daughter in there.”

  Belinda said, “I’m really sorry, Donald. It’s all my fault.”

  Roscoe reached out and patted Donald’s shoulder.

  “Is she asleep?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, looking up at me with a question in his eyes. We stared at each other. I could feel Roscoe and Belinda watching us.

  I turned to Roscoe. “I didn’t know you were religious,” I said, hoping to ensure that the subject of abortions was ended.

  Roscoe opened his mouth to respond, but before he could answer, Belinda’s eyes darted over to me. “He’s not,” she said, her eyes already returning to him. She looked for a moment like she wanted to say more, but then she sighed and said, “I’m going to bed.” She stood up. “Tomorrow’s going to be a hectic day,” she added.

  “I’m not exactly religious,” Roscoe said. “But sometimes I wish I was.”

  I nodded and looked at Donald. He was staring at the table, a million miles removed from the conversation. I was overwhelmingly sorry for what I had said, for what I had set into motion here. “You can be moral without being religious,” Roscoe was saying to me, “and spiritual too. And some churchgoing folks are neither. But I went to church for three months straight once, and I can tell you this. I felt more moral then than before or since.”

  Belinda laughed. She was still standing, but now with one leg folded on the chair, as if she couldn’t decide if she should go or stay. “Oh, yeah? So how come you don’t go anymore?” she asked.

  “I’m lazy.” Roscoe got up and rinsed out his wineglass at the sink.

  “He’s all talk,” Belinda said to me.

  “Yeah, I’m all talk,” Roscoe admitted, turning from the sink. “Sometimes I think I say things just to get a rise.”

  “You mean you didn’t mean any of what you said about—” I began.

  “Yeah, I did. In theory I believe all that. Now if we had a kid coming who had a problem … Of course we’ll never find that out. Belinda can’t have any kids.”

  I turned to look at Belinda. She shrugged.

  Roscoe took Belinda’s arm and pulled her to both feet. He was smiling. As they went down the hall Roscoe said something that I couldn’t hear and Belinda laughed. I looked at Donald. His head was still down. To get him to lift it I said, “I didn’t know that Roscoe was such a moralist.”

  When he looked up at me I saw that his eyes were moist. He kept them on me as he got up slowly and cleared his and Belinda’s cups from the table. Then he turned and left the room.

  I stared for a long time at the point in the breezeway where he had disappeared, startled as much by his indifference as by what I’d done to bring it about. Then I put my head down on the table and began to cry. It felt good to get it out, all the mixed-up feelings that had been colliding inside me all day. Once I started, I realized I had been wanting—needing—to cry all day. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. And then, finally, as if you thought you could bring me some comfort, you woke up.

  Meredith

  Into my sea-dreams the sirens came screaming. I opened my eyes to see drizzle beyond me, but also above me where Carole was standing with her fish eyes bulging and her wet hair dripping and my not-awake arm slack in her grip. Yank though she did she was unable to lift me, but when she fell back whimpering, worn from the struggle, I lifted myself and slid into my chair.

  She had been out to confer with the ambulance driver and had come here to say, she said to me, that the ferry that would take us from doom to salvation was due to cast off in an hour or so. I pointed my finger and firmly advised her to cast off herself. And then when I saw that that was not her intention, I held out my legs so she could not but behold them, and told her bluntly, for the time had now come, that it was I myself who had called forth the storm, with my little red bucket and my sea-green thoughts, and all because some divine blunder had caused me to be born not down in the sea-depths where I belong but here on the hard earth where I do not, and how I was prepared to myself right the wrong, and that if she missed the ferry, I would be happy to have her standing beside me, witness to my transformation when the great wave came rolling. She listened to all with her usual patience, and when I was finished she took up my hand and slid off my bed onto her knees and begged me to see that the way she saw it, when the great wave came, I would merely drown.

  I laughed in her face and told her how Charlie, her precious Charlie, had long ago promised that he would go with me into the sea-world, and if she hadn’t let him rush off to the father whom we all knew was unworthy, he’d be here now, sitting beside me, bidding her farewell. And she laughed too, a laugh I have heard laughed by hysterics, and told me that Charlie had humored me only, that she knew for a fact that Charlie didn’t want to die. And she went on to say that I was a fool and lacked sufficient courage to do the best with what I had. And then she got to her feet and backed to the threshold and said she was going, with or without me, that for Charlie’s sake, if for nothing else, she had to return. But
what, queried I, if he has decided to stay with his father? And how I laughed to see how she shuddered to hear her own thoughts thus exposed. And after taking a moment to gain control of her distorted features, she said, I’ll take that chance. And what, I continued, about my father, your husband? Is not your place here at his side? Tell me one thing, she said in a whisper. Was it your father who first put into your head this notion of mermaids with his books and his poems, perhaps to bring you comfort on days you were low? And I told her truly that yes, he had read me the stories of my sea-bound sisters when I was quite small. But this he did not so much to bring me comfort, though that was never far from his mind, as to let me know that he knew that I knew and would understand when one day … Then out she shouted, Surely your father loves you completely, but keep in mind also that he tends to tell lies! Lies? said I. Lies, said she, as you yourself proved in the case of the poem. And then she declared that though she didn’t read much, she seemed to remember Andersen’s mermaid from a long time ago. And if she was not now somehow mistaken, the mermaid there was ready and willing to relinquish her fin as well as her sea-life all for the chance of becoming real and having a soul. You, she cried, are the same little mermaid swimming in reverse, for real you are now and yet you want to abandon your realness to … No. Say it, said I. And she said, To die.

  She came back then and placed her hands on my shoulders and shook me gently and with tears in her eyes. Do you know that saying, asked she, about how there is in the tunnel light enough for those who want to see and darkness enough for those who do not? I know it, said I, and furthermore I can even tell you who … I don’t care who, she said. The point is that you must come to realize that you are seeing darkness where you might be seeing light. And I tried to explain once and for all that what would soon happen, when the great wave came rushing over the island, was my light! Oh no, she cried, that is not your light! That is some demon you created out of the darkness! And then she looked at her watch suddenly, as though my dark demons had turned her thoughts elsewhere, and she ran from my room, bumping into the bureau in her haste.