Island Page 8

  “Hi,” said Donald, laying his arm across the page that contained the words, Glittering on my finger is the dust/Surely from some swift-flying angel’s wing.

  Belinda and Meredith returned his greeting and gazed at the Kahlua bottle encircled by yellow paper balls on the table. “Thanks for driving me,” Meredith said.

  “No problem. Enjoy your book.” Belinda waited until Meredith had wheeled herself out of the room. Then she slid into the chair beside Donald’s. A door shut in the other part of the house.

  “Writer’s block?” Belinda asked.

  “No, just off to a slow start. Is Meredith okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah. She’s fine. She and Carole had a little tiff, that’s all. Nothing that won’t take care of itself.” Belinda took a cigarette from the pack in her breast pocket and lit it. “Don’t worry,” she exclaimed, touching Donald’s arm. “It was nothing, just a little tiff” She removed her hand and studied the tip of her Camel. “So, what are you trying to write?”

  “Poem.”

  Belinda laughed and tapped her ashes into a paper-ball crevice.

  “And the fishing? Is that going well?”

  “No one’s caught anything yet. I doubt anyone will. The water’s rough today.”

  “Maybe you’ll be lucky.”

  “Maybe they will. I don’t think I’m going back. Mind if I hang around the creation field here long enough to have myself a cup of coffee?”

  “I’ll get it for you,” said Donald, rising. He poured her a cup of coffee and took an ashtray from the drain board. Then he sat down quickly, re-positioning his arm across the pad.

  “I’ll have some Kahlua in mine too. What the hell, right? We’re on vacation.”

  Donald lifted the nearly empty Kahlua bottle carefully over the paper balls and passed it.

  “You know,” said Belinda as she poured the Kahlua, “I can still remember some of the poems you wrote back in the old days when we all lived in West Virginia. You never had to struggle with your poetry then. In fact, I can still remember you writing a poem in one night once when you were staying over on the mountain.”

  Donald snapped to attention. “I’m not struggling! I broke my pencil point and had to carve a new one. I had to try it out several times before …”

  They both looked at the paper balls. There were nine of them.

  “Don’t be so defensive, Donald, I’m only teasing you. So, do you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “The poem I’m talking about. The one you wrote in one night up on the mountain. Shit, maybe you’d rather I didn’t bring it up, huh?”

  “Why would I rather that?”

  Belinda thought for a moment. “Yeah, why? What the hell, right? I mean, I shouldn’t bring it up because … But that was a long time ago and we were kids then. It was that mushy one where you talked about the force that moves the sun around.”

  “I wrote a mushy poem about gravity?”

  Belinda laughed. “No, Donald. The poem was about love. You used gravity as a metaphor. You’re pulling my leg, right? You must remember the poem I’m talking about.”

  Donald shook his head. His lips quivered slightly. “I can’t remember it,” he said.

  “Donald, it was right before you started dating Elaine. You’d come out to the mountain. Roscoe was away visiting his father. We had dinner. Then I went to bed, and you stayed up and wrote a poem. You must remember.”

  Donald blushed. “I don’t remember it.”

  Belinda stared at him speechlessly for a moment. “Here,” she snapped, recovering. She reached for his yellow pad and pulled it out from under his arm. “Give me your pencil. I’ll write the damned thing down for you.”

  Ignoring Donald’s two lines at the top of the page, Belinda wrote her own in a large, circular script. When she was done, she slid the pad back in Donald’s direction.

  “Why, it’s a Petrachan sonnet!” he exclaimed after an initial inspection.

  “Whatever,” Belinda said dully.

  “No, see here,” he said. “The rhyme scheme … ABBA, ABBA, and then this, the sestet, CDCDCD. The meters are lousy, though … My God. But the celestial flavor …”

  “Look, Donald. I just thought you might remember it. I didn’t want a lecture on form and meter.”

  “Oh,” said Donald, blushing. “I’m sorry. I really don’t remember writing it, although it looks very much like the sort of thing I wrote during that time period … You must have liked it,” he added as though he had only just realized that she had memorized it.

  “Yeah, well.”

  “It was …” Donald scratched his head and then nodded. “It was nice of you to remember it after all these years.”

  “Yeah,” said Belinda, straightening in her chair. “I guess it was my favorite. But now that I think about it … Can I see that again?” Donald passed her the pad. She ripped off the top page and dropped the rest of the pad onto the table. “Yeah, look at this thing,” she said, snapping her long, painted fingernails against the paper. “You’re absolutely right. The meters are terrible. I don’t know how I never noticed it before. Ah, youth, huh? You know what? This thing is only going to wind up discouraging you from whatever it is that you’re trying to work on now. Let’s get rid of it.” She crumbled the page into a tight paper ball and tossed it toward the others. Then she put the Kahlua bottle back into the center of the paper-ball circle. “There,” she said, getting up. “Let all the rejects pay homage to the big empty bottle.”

  “Where—”

  “Back fishing,” Belinda called over her shoulder.

  Donald sat with his mouth opened and his gaze alternating between the final paper ball and the doorway through which his old friend Belinda had just gone. When he heard her van start up in the driveway, he retrieved the last paper ball and opened it carefully. He used the side of his hand to smooth it out. Then he read it aloud a few times.

  “What time is it?” Meredith called from the window in her room.

  Donald started. Then he turned in his chair and looked at the clock on the wall above the sink. “Eleven,” he said.

  In mid-afternoon the fishers returned. They found Donald and Meredith at the kitchen table playing Monopoly. There was a heap of paper bills and real estate cards on Meredith’s side of the table. On Donald’s, there were only a few paper bills, but these were neatly stacked in ascending valuations.

  “You won’t believe it!” Roscoe declared excitedly from the breezeway where he was setting down his tackle. “Your wife caught us dinner for tonight and tomorrow night.”

  “Can you believe it, Donald?” Carole cried, bringing the bucket over for his inspection.

  “Beginner’s luck,” Belinda said flatly.

  “I thought I’d just crab while they fished because we only had the two poles. But then the tide came in and I didn’t see many crabs. And then, when Belinda went to drive Meredith home, I thought I’d fool with her pole until she got back. And I caught one right away! It was so exciting, Donald. Even more than the crabbing and the clamming. Look at him here. He’s a nice big blue. Roscoe thinks he must go about ten pounds. I’ll tell you, by the fight he gave me coming in, I thought he was going to be even bigger. I swear, I thought I was pulling in a barracuda for a while there.”

  Donald looked into the bucket and saw the reproachful eye of the fish staring back at him. “Nice,” he said.

  “Would you like me to fillet him for you?” Roscoe asked.

  “No, I want to try it myself. But I’d love it if one of you would come with me and make sure I don’t screw it up.”

  “I’m going to take a nap,” Belinda said as she turned and left the room.

  “She’s been a grump all day,” Roscoe said when she was gone.

  “She seemed upset when she brought Meredith back earlier,” Donald said. “I thought perhaps I had upset her somehow.”

  “I doubt it,” Roscoe replied as he looked through the drawers for a fillet knife. “It’s the fishin
g. She always gets grumpy when she doesn’t catch anything.”

  “There’s a little table out back,” Carole said. “And a hose. We can take him out there.”

  When Carole and Roscoe had gone, Meredith said, “I don’t want to play anymore. I’m going to lie down before dinner too.”

  “But you were winning!”

  “I’m tired, Father.”

  “Is it possible that you’re a little grumpy too?” Donald asked as he collected the paper bills.

  “No, just thoughtful.”

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “No. I know you know I had a problem with Carole this morning. I heard Belinda tell you about it. But I don’t want to talk about it. Father?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you know that there’s a storm coming?”

  “I heard there was a tropical depression out in the Atlantic. But that was two days ago. Why? Did you hear something on the radio?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Donald chuckled. “Okay, Cassandra.”

  “Don’t laugh, Father. This is serious. Now listen to me for a moment. I want you to do me a favor. I want you to promise me that if a storm comes, you will stay here with me, on the island, no matter what.”

  “I’ll promise if you promise to be a little nicer to Carole.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Meredith, I listened to your radio for a while earlier. I didn’t hear anything about any storm. And even if there was, the chances that—”

  “But you promise?”

  “Yes, yes. Try not to fight with Carole anymore.”

  Meredith nodded and wheeled herself out of the room. Donald collected the dice and the playing pieces and folded up the game board. Then he put everything into the Monopoly box and brought the box onto the breezeway. He slid it between the cooler and a high pile of sandy seashells. Then he went into his bedroom and lay down on the bed.

  Carole joined him a few moments later. She smelled like fish. “Who won?” she asked.

  “Monopoly? We didn’t finish. But she would have won. She always wins. She’d make a great businesswoman. Hey, I’m glad you had such a nice day today.”

  “It wasn’t so nice until I caught the fish. I had things on my mind that I couldn’t seem to shake. But then, when I was engaged in the battle with the fish, everything else was blotted out. I wish I could explain how it felt. I felt sort of guilty for enjoying killing something so much. But it didn’t feel like I was killing something. It felt more like I was somehow connected to … to something. I can’t explain it.”

  “‘The living rod,’ Hemingway called it.”

  “The living rod. I like that. I wish I could connect with Meredith the way I connected with the fish, so that for a moment or two we could have a living rod between us.”

  “Belinda said something about an argument. What happened?”

  Carole got up on an elbow. “Belinda didn’t tell you? Nor Meredith?”

  “No. No one tells me anything lately.”

  She studied her husband’s features for a moment. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “We drove out to the north point—which is apparently a good place for fishing, because there were more people there than I’ve seen on the beach at one time since we’ve been here. And they were all fishing. There were “no swimming” signs around, in fact. Somebody said something about rip tides. Anyway, as soon as we were settled, Roscoe offered Meredith his pole. He said he’d show her how to cast, and then she could practice for an hour or so, and then he’d take it back for a while. But Meredith said she didn’t want to fish. She was staring out at the horizon, just sitting there with her bucket of sea-water on her lap, looking miserable.

  “Then some boys came along and set themselves up maybe twenty yards away from where we were. There were two of them, about Charlie’s age, I’d say. They kept looking over at Meredith. You could tell they found her attractive. After a while, one of them walked over and said that he had an extra pole. He’d brought it along because a friend of his had said he might meet them at the point, but the friend hadn’t shown up and he doubted he would anymore. So he wanted to know if we wanted to borrow the pole since we were four and only had two poles between us. The boy was talking to me, but he kept glancing at Meredith. You could see that he really wanted to talk to her, but apparently he was too shy. I said, ‘Meredith, do you want a pole?’ But she simply shook her head and never took her eyes off the horizon. The boy and I talked for a few moments longer. He told me a little about the island. He was born here and his father owns one of the shrimp boats I’ve been seeing in the mornings. He said there are only four hundred people on the island year-round. Can you imagine? And only one school, and one clinic …

  “Anyway, when he started walking back toward his friend, Meredith turned to look at him with what I took to be regret in her expression. I said, ‘Meredith, why don’t you go over and make friends with them?’ She didn’t answer me, so I went into this whole big thing about how she never takes advantage of opportunities that might turn out to be fun for her. I guess I should have kept my big mouth shut, but they seemed like such nice boys, and I thought, Here she is, stuck with four adults, and not even Charlie around to spend time with. She hasn’t said a word about Charlie, but I know she misses him.…

  “I thought she was listening to me, considering my advice, because she didn’t get that angry look in her eyes like she does sometimes, and she didn’t interrupt. But then, when I was done, she turned on me. She screamed! I mean, really screamed. She said, ‘They won’t like me. You know they won’t like me. You just want to humiliate me.’ Donald, I was flabbergasted. But I thought it was good, that emotion—better than her usual indifference anyway. I said, ‘How do you know they won’t like you if you don’t give yourself a chance? You pretend you don’t need anybody or anything, but I know better. I know you’ve got a heart beating in there.’ It was a stupid thing to say, but that’s what I said. And she said, ‘And what would you like me to do? Go over there and rip myself open and show them my heart, and say, Like me, like me?’

  “She turned to Belinda then and asked for a ride home. I could see she was on the verge of tears. I felt just awful for getting her so upset. I said, ‘I’ll take you home. Belinda’s fishing.’ But she said, ‘Please, Belinda,’ like I wasn’t even there, like she couldn’t stand to hear the sound of my voice. Belinda looked at me to see if it was okay. And then they left. And that’s what happened.

  “I went about it all wrong with her, Donald. There’s a better way to deal with her. I just know there is.”

  “She’s a difficult child,” Donald whispered.

  “She worships you. If you had been there, maybe she would have gone over and made friends.”

  “I would have had to carry her. Someone would have had to drag the chair behind us.”

  “No, Donald. I took all that into consideration. The sand was hard-packed there on the point—not at all like where we’ve been swimming. We were able to drive the car right up to the water. Everybody had their cars right behind them. She could have gone herself I’m sure of it. That’s why it was such a shame.”

  Donald shook his head and bit his bottom lip. Carole rolled over on to her back. Together they both watched the ceiling fan’s leisure rotations. Even with it on, the heat at this hour was oppressive.

  “I have something for you,” Donald said softly some time later.

  Carole got up on both elbows.

  “It’s there,” he said, indicating the snack table with a jerk of his head.

  Carole reached over and picked up the folded yellow paper by one corner. “This?”

  Donald laughed. “Doesn’t look very remarkable, does it? Open it.”

  She unfolded the paper. Her bright eyes scanned its contents quickly. “Donald,” she cried. “Is this what you stayed behind to do today?”

  Donald nodded.

  Turning to him suddenly, she covered his face and chest with careless k
isses. “Don’t,” he said laughing. “You smell like a fish.”

  “Will you read it to me?” she asked, pulling back.

  “It’s not as good as I would have liked—”

  “Please read it.”

  Donald took the paper from her. In her excitement, she had rumpled it. He gave her a playful admonishing glance and snapped it back into shape. Then he cleared his throat and read it slowly and carefully.

  She kissed him again, holding his face in both her hands. Tears were in her eyes. “It’s lovely,” she said. “You can’t imagine what it means to me. I’ve been feeling, see, sort of … And when you wrote me the other poem, you really didn’t even know me. This means so much to me, Donald. You just can’t know. It makes everything so much easier.”

  “Easier? Is something wrong? I mean besides Meredith?”

  Carole rolled back onto her back. “No. no. Everything is just fine.”

  Still smiling, she snuggled up against him and put her head on his chest. Eventually her breathing became deep and regular. With the poem still in his hand, Donald closed his eyes too. But then he opened them again, and for a long time he watched the shadow of the spinning ceiling fan.

  Later, he awoke to the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. He shook Carole’s shoulder lightly. She awoke, as always, with a startled look, as though her dreams had taken her far away and it was a shock now to return from them. “I’d better take a shower,” she said.

  When dinner was over and the table was cleared, Roscoe, who was still wearing his orange hat, asked if anyone had thought to bring along a pencil and writing pad.

  “Oh God,” Belinda mumbled as she uncorked the evening’s second wine bottle.

  “May I have some, too?” Meredith asked, removing her earphones from her head. “I didn’t get any at dinner. I drank milk while the rest of you were enjoying …”

  “One glass,” Donald called out over his shoulder as he headed for the bedroom. “And only if you promise not to listen to your Walkman at the table. It’s rude.”

  Meredith put her Walkman on her lap. In a moment her father returned with his pencil and much-diminished pad of lined yellow paper. “Belinda,” he whispered as he passed her. “Could you not mention—”