Island Read online

  Beyond the beach, between it and the highway, are the dunes. In some areas there are two and three rows of them, but more often there is only one. Pale soft breasts, like mine, he said. But when I touched his hand, he stiffened, embarrassed. On the dunes grow sea oats and other beach grasses, swaying like hula dancers in the breeze that never stops.

  On the other side of the highway there are scrubby live oaks and red cedars, forced by the breeze into stunted, contorted shapes, like witches huddled together chanting. Beyond them are the salt marshes, the tidal flats, and then the sound. I went to the sound the first morning. Using my feet to feel along its silty bottom, I discovered several large clams which I tucked into my bathing suit, against my flesh. The water was very calm and warm. Moving through it, I thought of you. When I had enough clams to make a good sauce, I turned to head back, and to my surprise I found I had walked out more than a half a mile in the shallow water. No, “walked” is not the right word. Drifted. One step at a time stopping to make circles with my feet, first one, then the other, feeling, not seeing anything because all my mind, the part that reasons and part that imagines, was concentrated on the bottom where the clams might or might not be. On the way in, I discovered a scallop bed. But I couldn’t gather any because my bathing suit was already full. I’ll have to go back for them. I also found a huge cockle. It was beautiful—brown and orange, perfectly formed. I brought it back to show Donald. Are you going to eat that? I’m not sure whether they’re edible. You don’t take things out of the sea that you don’t intend to eat. And you never put anything into the sea that you didn’t get from it in the first place. It’s people like you who are responsible for the bacteria that’s breaking down the porpoises’ immune systems, and polluting the ocean generally. It was only one cockle. Only one cockle. What if everyone—But then he said, That’s enough. Meredith, and she went off to her room in a huff. I cry so easily these days. Let’s have a look at it, he said coming behind me.

  Clams and crabs and cockles and fish, Little One. Life where we can see it, and life where we can’t see it but can feel it with our feet, and life where we can’t see it or feel it, but have reason to believe that it’s there. I know it’s not of much interest to you. So many sea words, you are thinking. But think of this. It’s my recent link with all this life on and around the island that’s responsible for our communication now. You see, I have been ignoring you. But I guess I don’t have to tell you that. And then today, when the coquinas came out of the sand, when I looked down and saw them all surrounding me, some even under me, where I didn’t expect to see anything, let alone tiny jewels, I said to myself, Life all around me, wonderful life. And yet I can’t bring myself to marvel at the life within me. Why?

  When Charlie was floating in the wet, dark nook where you are now, I used to tell him everything that happened in a day. Tom laughed when I explained that I was not just sitting, staring at nothing, but talking to our child, not face to face but soul to soul, an intimacy we might never achieve again. But as days went by Tom stopped laughing when he passed me sitting quietly in the rocker telling all the day’s events without ever saying a word. I think my quiet communication with Charlie disgusted him. And then I began to wonder if I was making up both parts, Charlie’s and mine, because I had never heard other women say that they could hear the thoughts of their unborn rising up in the silence. But one day, when Charlie was six or seven, we were sitting in the kitchen. I was making egg rolls and he was watching. We were talking about Chinese food. And all at once I remembered how I had had such a craving for egg rolls during my pregnancy. I told Charlie. He said, I know that, Ma. I remember you ate four of them one night and threw up so bad you thought you might throw me up too. I concentrated for a long time, but I could only remember telling Charlie about that incident one time, and that was when he was like you, more soul than body, soul becoming but not yet contained by body, his and mine living in one body, sharing it, mine getting his ready, preparing it for the transition. Ha ha, I would have said to Tom if he hadn’t been long gone by then. Charlie at the airport, holding onto my wrist under my sweater folded across my arm, where no one could see it, sitting stiffly, looking ahead with hard eyes. What do you suppose she’ll be like, Ma? Not asking about his father, whom he hasn’t seen since he was a baby, but asking about his father’s wife. Why do you ask about her? Shrug. Why would he ask about her, Donald? in the car, holding back tears on the way home. I guess he thinks he knows what his father’s like. But I never told him, couldn’t bring myself to say anything good, so I didn’t say anything. Charlie made him up out of your silence. And how I gasped, because that had never occurred to me before. But I digress. What do you care about Charlie or Charlie’s father? You have your own father to think about, and we must decide together whether or not you’ll meet him. You are no more than a fish or a clam or a scallop. A cockle in my hands! You may and you may not. Who knows? Things change. Look at us, for example. I didn’t think I’d ever deal with you like this. I heard you calling out for me, but with work, and Charlie getting ready to leave, and us packing, and Meredith always so angry … And Donald, so loving one minute and so distracted the next, so that I never know … No, I couldn’t deal with you on top of all that. And I didn’t want to hear you calling from inside me. Now I can deal with you—now, here. You don’t need to call me anymore.

  I’ve said more than I wanted to, and I see I’ve made you sad. I have a big mouth, you might as well know that. I try to keep things in, but just when I think I’m in control, something pops out that I promised myself I wouldn’t say. We could get married, agreeing to commit ourselves only to … I promised myself I wouldn’t tell your father about you until we get home. He waited so long for this vacation. I’ve kept my secret this long. A few more weeks won’t make much of a difference. I’m glad you understand. That makes me feel better. I only wish I could ask you … could ask her … Meredith, do you ever wish …

  Okay. I’m sorry. I keep doing it, getting off the track. I promised myself I would only tell you good things, things to sweeten your dreams. Let me tell you about the house. Would you like that? Good. We share the house with several colonies of small black ants. We must keep all our boxed foods—cereals, pasta, etc.—in the refrigerator. But we don’t mind most of the time that the house is infested with ants—there are also crickets and at least one roach—because the house is otherwise charming. According to the woman who rented it to us, it was built by a sea captain over a hundred years ago. Actually, it’s not one structure but two, both under one roof and connected by a breezeway. The first structure contains four bedrooms, two on either side of a long, wide hall. Each of the bedrooms has a ceiling fan. The ceilings are high throughout. The back bedrooms have windows opening onto the breezeway. The long paneled hallway is my favorite part of this first house. There is one chandelier hanging midway down the hall, but it doesn’t give off enough light to keep the hallway from being constantly dim. When I stand in the hallway I feel very young and small. When I walk in it, I go on tiptoe, listening to my footsteps.

  Then there is the breezeway, also long and wide. The bathroom is at one end of it, taking up half its breeze space. The structure on the other side of the breezeway contains only a kitchen and a porch. It is on the porch that I—we—are sitting now. There is no living room. The kitchen is a nice big cheerful room with yellow walls and a large round table in the center. It is the room where you would go to relax instead of the living room. The porch is large and screened-in all around, except for where it is attached to the kitchen. It is even screened overhead. I’m looking up at the stars while I’m talking to you, Little One. Looking up at the stars and listening to the crickets who tap out the seconds all day and all night. And feeling the breeze that never stops.

  I have already made several sketches of the house, some of the inside, and some of the outside showing the scrubby oaks hugging it all around. I have also begun a sketch of this porch and of Donald and me squeezed into this lawn chair as we wer
e last night after Meredith went to bed. Meredith’s bedroom is one of the back bedrooms. One of its windows opens out onto the breezeway, and therefore onto the kitchen and porch. Donald came in quietly last night with a bottle of wine and I made room for him. Miss Glass, I love you. Just like that. Miss Glass, I love you. And how I could see right away that he had to be a very lonely man to say such a thing to a stranger. What did he know of me but what he saw staring all the time over his hamburger deluxe? He was making me up, like Charlie … Oh, I see that now. Making me up when he sent me that poem. Now there are two of us, one to compare to the other … We were lying side by side, Little One, looking up at the stars through the screening. I was glad to know that Meredith was within earshot because I was thinking of you and I didn’t want to tell him and ruin his vacation. Not that you would ruin his vacation. That’s not what I mean … We could see so many stars beyond the screening. Donald told me all about Pegasus, not the constellation which I already knew about, but the horse whose mother was a monster with snakes in her hair, and whose father was a god of the sea. And while he was still talking … his voice always so low and comforting … I thought about how the universe is expanding, but how, if its density is too great, it is without escape velocity, and one day its expansion velocity will decrease and it will come to a halt until gravity takes over and everything starts going in reverse. Then the winged horse will have to go back into the snake-headed monster, as if the hero who freed him had never existed. And what would Medusa think when she saw the thing she had given birth to—somewhat monstrous itself—coming back toward her, backwards … We will all have to take back our creations then, and when we see them coming at us, maybe then we will know what God had in His mind when the impulse to create—which He passed down to his creations—came upon Him, for He too will have to take it all back, take us all back, all of us flying through spacetime backwards … Meredith, do you ever wish … do you ever wish you had never been born?

  Belinda

  I hid his flute in with the wooden spoons in the jar on the counter in the kitchen while he was in the bedroom packing. Then I marched back in and told him, “Either you leave your bag of tricks behind, or you leave your flute. You can’t bring both.” He went out into the hall with his underwear in his arms and looked over at the telephone table where his flute had been lying five minutes earlier. Then he looked at me. I said, “That’s right, bud. I hid it. Now you make your choice.” That did the job, because Roscoe credits his flute for what he mistakeningly thinks of as his charmed life; he believes the thing is magical. So he made his choice, and I gave him back his flute, but of course he was sulky the whole way up, as sulky as a four-year-old, pushing our poor old van to speeds she’d never seen before, making her quiver like a wanton woman. Between the radio and the rattling, I could hardly hear myself think.

  When we were just north of Jacksonville, and had pulled off the road to rest for a few hours, Roscoe said he hadn’t been planning to go out on the beach, in public; he’d just wanted to be able to entertain the kid. I said, “Yeah, Roscoe. Sure, Roscoe. That’s how it starts. But I know you just a little better than that. First it would have been the kid, then the adults, and then you’d be out on the beach, stringing up your ropes between the lifeguards’ chairs, juggling your doo-dahs, and eating your flames, and carrying on like a monkey on a string. And everybody’d know the great Roscoe Creedmoor was in town. The crowds would gather as fast as gulls at a picnic, oohing and aahing for the great Roscoe Creedmoor, pitching him quarters as charitably as the picnickers throw the gulls their crumbs.” Then he started in again about how I was ashamed of him and the way he makes his living, how I was missing the fact that it was a blessing to be able to make an honest buck in this day and age, warming people’s hearts no less. And I said, “Yeah, Roscoe. You’re blessed all right. You’re as blessed as goddamn Jesus Christ. But this is a vacation, and you’re supposed to leave your blessed work behind you, if not for your sake, then at least for mine. If I wanted to vacation with Jesus, I would have asked him.” He listened, without hearing, nodding, looking out at the side-view mirror, at the darkness on the exit ramp.

  I didn’t see why we were going to an island for a vacation anyway, us living on one. Day in, day out, it’s always the same on Key West, and most likely it wouldn’t be much different at this place either. At home the fishing boats go out in the morning, and in the evening the crowds gather on the pier to be entertained by Roscoe and the others until the sun drops into the sea. The tourists come and go like the news, touching us, but not changing anything. Roscoe is well-known on the pier, well-known on the island. He is considered to be talented. But off the island, people look down their noses at him. Off the island, he’s—we’re—trash. Of course they don’t say “trash.” They say “quaint,” or something else. They want to see the show maybe, because it won’t cost them anything but the change that’s tangled in with the lint at the bottom of their pockets, but then they want the show to hit the road again. No lingering. No loitering. No trash.

  If we had to go someplace, I’d just as soon have gone somewhere inland, for a real change of scenery. Arizona, say, or New Mexico. But the great Professor Bartlett decides he wants to see us after all these years, and we have to run. Roscoe said, “You’ve got a crab up your ass. You never liked Donald.” I said, “Oh yes I did. I liked Donald plenty. You’re better off if you never come to know how much I liked Donald, or how much he liked me either for that matter. If I’ve got a crab up my ass, it’s not Donald’s doing.” So he sulked.

  We stopped again, at a rest area in South Carolina, in the morning, after driving most of the night. Roscoe took a towel and lay out under a tree, not sleeping, but with his head propped up on his fist, staring at some kids who were making a racket over by the water fountain. I crawled into the back of the van and went to sleep. When I woke up, a few hours later, it was close to noon and I was wet all over from the heat. I went up front and there was Roscoe, still out on his towel, still staring at the kids playing by the water fountain, only now it was a different group of kids splashing and screeching, but like the first, they were dressed in smart, colorful short-sets, all crisp and cool-looking. I hit the horn and Roscoe sat up and looked at me, like I was a stranger, like he’d forgotten I was with him, or even that we were going anywhere. Then he got to his feet and wiped the back of his neck with his towel. When he got into the van, I said, “You should have let me cut your hair before we left. You wouldn’t be so sticky and sweaty now.”

  We drove for a few more hours, and then we took the ferry from the mainland. We both slept on the ferry. When we arrived on the island, I was wishing there was a place where we could shower up, a campground shower or something, but there wasn’t. It was late in the afternoon when we finally found the house, an old, battered-looking thing hidden behind a jungle of creepy-looking trees. As we were pulling into the driveway, Donald came bursting out from the porch, the screen door slamming behind him. I said, “Roscoe, can that be Donald?” because he was heavier than I remembered, and although he was as bald at the crown as ever, the rest of his hair, which I remembered as being yellow-brown and tidy, was now gray-brown, and curling haphazardly about his neck. The porch door slammed again, and I had my first glimpse of the new wife, a small, mousey-looking thing with dark savage hair falling over her breasts. She was nothing like I’d expected, nothing like Elaine. I said to Roscoe, “Looks like they both stuck their fingers in the same electrical socket.” Roscoe said, “Shut up,” through his teeth, because they were almost upon us, and he was giving them his famous I’m-happy-as-hell smile. Then, next thing I knew, the doors of the van were being thrown open, and Donald was throwing his arms around Roscoe and laughing, and the new wife was holding out her hand to me, saying, “I’m Carole. You must be Belinda. I’m so happy to meet you.” Then Donald came around to my side, laughing, thrilled into speechlessness. He hugged me so tight my feet left the ground, while the little one stood back with her arms folded, working
me over with her eyes.

  We all went inside, with Donald still laughing, and the little wife declared that they’d waited lunch for us. Then she opened the refrigerator and began to take out one salad after the other, potato salad, coleslaw, egg salad, and a beautiful scallop salad on a bed of lettuce, topped with parsley and green pepper. Roscoe looked from one to the other with eyes as big as sand dollars, like he’d never seen food before. I said, “Honey, what do you do for a living?” because only a woman with lots of time on her hands would have acquired the habit of garnishing her salads just so like that. I figured her for one of those old-fashioned women who somehow missed out on the movement, the kind that spend their days smiling and yes-dearing their husbands, watching soaps whenever they can. Or maybe, given her hairdo—or lack of one—which can tell a lot about a person, maybe she was one of those women who thinks she’s some kind of a writer or artist, the kind that put their pads and easels away at noon and call it a day. She pulled out the last salad—on my father’s grave, it was a fruit salad done up in two pineapple halves—and handed it to me to put on the table. She said, “I’m a waitress.” Well! I nearly dropped her precious pineapples on the floor! And here I’d thought …