The Second Mother

by Jenny Milchman

  Julie shook her head. “We don’t have the funds.”

  Laura looked pleased. “An hour-long ferry ride to the mainland, often over choppy seas.” Tick. “In bad weather, the ferry stops running and supplies at Perry’s—the grocery store—can dwindle alarmingly before someone makes it across to resupply. We stockpile,” Laura added. “For slim times.” Tick, tick, then she switched hands. “No cars.”

  That one did give Julie pause, which Laura seemed to notice.

  “There are basically no motorized vehicles of any sort on-island,” Laura said. “Two pedicabs—driven by the island teens for extra cash—take summer people who require assistance from the dock to points of interest. And by points of interest I mean trailheads, the lighthouse, our resident baker’s shop—nothing like a golf course or amusement park.” Laura paused. “Construction work and agriculture are achieved almost entirely by hand. Tools are shared; goats, pigs, and chickens are farmed collectively. A few families raise rabbits for eating. Slim times,” she reminded.

  Julie let the picture take shape in her mind. “You mentioned summer people,” she said at last. “Tourism is an industry I know well—it keeps my town alive. But is there anything else the year-round population does?”

  Laura refolded her hands. “Tourism is a source of revenue for us certainly. But places like Monhegan and Deer Isle are better known for it. No, Mercy’s biggest industry is lobstering. Most of the parents of your students will be lobster fishermen.”

  Your students, Julie heard. She smiled. “Well, now I believe we have departed from anything I’m familiar with in the mountains.” She took a moment, then added, “It sounds like a way of life I would love getting used to.”

  Laura’s face relaxed just a tinge. “If you heard all of that and can say so,” she said, “then you may do just fine on Mercy.” Laura wheeled her chair back from the desk. “You’ll also probably enjoy the next thing I have to share.”

  She opened a drawer and withdrew a late-model tablet. Tapping a few sleek keys, Laura flipped the screen so Julie could see.

  It was a video reel, but nothing created by a slick marketing firm or tourism bureau, instead a montage made by people clearly in love with their unique way of life. First, nature shots scrolled by: a forest of deep green, the inverted cones of fir trees; surf rolling against a dark cliff face, beating its base to rubble; lobster traps stacked in towers, their edges perfectly aligned; a sea captain’s mansion, imposing and proud. Then came pictures of people: men in raincoats thick as rhino hide; women with enormous coils of rope on their laps and needles fit for a giant; kids crouched to study tide pools or splashing in the ocean; a circle of teenagers building a bonfire.

  “That’s an interesting shot,” Julie remarked, pointing to the screen.

  Laura struck a key, and the reel paused on a photo of a regal woman, striding along a sandy road en route to a glistening curl of ocean surf. Her birch-white hair was smoothed back in a bun, which Julie squinted at for a second. Something about that hair stood out, besides its striking color. The woman walked pied-piper-like in front of a troop of assorted grown-ups and children also making their way to the water. The other people’s hair flew about, covering faces, sticking to mouths, as if caught in a wind. But the woman at the helm seemed to inhabit a bubble with its own unique weather system. As Julie kept looking, the feeling persisted, although it had to be an illusion, of course, some trick of the air currents close to the sea.

  Laura gazed at the screen as well, her expression rapt. “That’s Maryanne Hempstead,” she told Julie. “You’ll meet her soon enough. A legend really, the lioness at the head of a family that’s lived on-island forever. She’s wonderful.” This last spoken in the tone of voice normally reserved for a star of some sort, or perhaps a prophet or priest.

  Julie found it rather charming, especially considering that the person meriting the accolades was, in fact, an elderly woman.

  Laura blinked then, as if coming back to herself, and struck a key so that the reel continued to play. While Julie kept watching, a second shot prompted her to take a closer look. She knew that man on the lobster boat, fiddling with the contents of a trap.

  Chapter Nine

  Or she recognized him at least. Had recently seen him? That was the sense she had.

  The man’s face hovered right at the edges of memory, an impossible specter since Julie had never in her life encountered any lobstermen. She didn’t want to ask Laura to pause the reel again. The man’s face had been pitched back as he held out a lobster to avoid the clamp of its claws, his chin thrust forward in a way that probably distorted his features, made him look familiar when he was not.

  The reel started looping anew, and Laura minimized it on the screen. “Let’s move on to your professional background. Have you had experience with special needs?”

  Julie didn’t hesitate. “I have. In a district like Wedeskyull, the budget is tight, and so we do our best to maintain children in a mainstream setting. There’s a contained classroom in the school, and I haven’t taught there—I don’t have the necessary certification—but the truth is,” she concluded on a note of pride, “I never once had to recommend that one of my kids transfer out.”

  Laura looked as gratified by the statement as Julie had been to deliver it. “We love our children. All folks do, of course, but on a small island, there’s a dimension you may not be aware of.”

  Julie nodded her on.

  “Shrinking population,” Laura said. “Every year, the school sees a diminished enrollment. During Mercy’s heyday, four teachers were employed, and the student body numbered in the triple digits. Now, you’ll instruct less than a fifth of that.”

  The number was miniscule, even by Wedeskyull standards.

  “It’s difficult to keep folks on an island,” Laura explained. “Young people with children are the future of any healthy community, but they’re the rarest of our populace. Teenagers leave to attend high school, then college, they find spouses from away, or seek careers and means of employment not available on Mercy.”

  Julie tilted her head. “We face a similar situation in my town. Although not at the same scale.” The other difference in Wedeskyull was that year-round recreation, and a contingent of techies who could work remotely, had brought new people to the area.

  “What this means is that every single island child is precious,” Laura went on fervently. “Not just in the post-bullying, all-kids-deserve-to-be-valued sense of the term, but because each child is a resource on Mercy Island. One we must at all costs preserve. Without young people, a community can’t thrive, go forward into tomorrow.”

  Children as commodities, as stock options, as futures—almost literally.

  “Depression is a condition that more and more children fall prey to nationwide,” Laura continued. “The dark days on an island can instill a mental fog as well as a physical one. Suicidality is something we need our teacher to be aware of as a risk.”

  “One of my best friends in town lost a colleague to suicide, and we teachers all had to attend a weeklong training afterward, focused on identifying copycat signs.”

  Laura swiveled the tablet back around in her own direction, using a finger to scroll across the screen. Then she looked up and said, “Timothy Lurcquer.”

  Julie had trouble maintaining her interview-smooth face. “Yes. That’s right. How did you know that?”

  Laura turned a smile on Julie that plumped up her cheeks, temporarily erasing each one’s web of thin lines. “As I mentioned already, we are intent on getting the right fit for this position. Ideally, we’d like the teacher to continue her tenure long past the first year. So we did some research, just as I’m sure you did when you applied.”

  “Of course,” Julie said. “I did, but—”

  “We live in a world of waning privacy, don’t we?” Laura interjected. “Social media, the worldwide web, cell phones all link
us together, whether we want to be connected or not. A place like Mercy allows us to avoid some of that.”

  Julie swallowed. “How long have you lived there?”

  “Oh, I don’t live on-island myself,” Laura said. “I haven’t for a while. But I love Mercy. It will always be home. That’s why I took charge of this hiring process.”

  Julie nodded.

  Laura glanced at the tablet again. “On your application, you didn’t fill in the box about children.”

  Julie looked away. “I wasn’t sure what to…how to do that exactly.” She interrupted herself, trying to come up with a better way in. “What I mean is, something happened that made a clear answer hard to provide—”

  Laura broke in gently. “I know what happened.”

  Of course you do, Julie thought. She wasn’t sure whether to feel perturbed or relieved that she was spared having to offer an explanation.

  “The news about your daughter was sadly made public. Local human-interest articles, and you also have a fairly popular mommy blogger in your town. Per our discussion, nowadays such things are all too readily found.”

  Julie stared down at her lap, shielding the sight of budding tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Laura added. “I should’ve offered my condolences first.”

  But she didn’t look all that sorry. In fact, in the midst of expressing empathy, Laura’s face had twitched with a smile again. It lit her eyes like twin suns.

  “All I really need to know in terms of this position is whether you’re up for it, despite the tragedy you suffered,” Laura went on.

  Julie fought to summon a reply, settling on a nod she hoped would signal certainty. Laura didn’t even live on Mercy. Who cared if she was a bit dogged in her search, obsessive when it came to finding the right candidate for the job?

  “Good,” Laura said. “That brings me to one piece of personal information I couldn’t procure. I was expecting your husband to accompany you today. As the form you filled out stated, we like to meet the spouses or family members of anyone coming to live on Mercy.”

  The requirement sounded a bit over-the-top, stringent, stated baldly like that. Still, Julie knew she had better get this over with. One big gulp, like a pill going down.

  “We’ve decided to separate,” she told Laura. “It’s been a long time coming.” True for David, if not Julie. And it wouldn’t do to appear blindsided.

  “I see.” Laura looked down at the keyboard, concealing her face from view. “Typically we find that being part of a family—a couple at least—makes the transition to island living easier. But that isn’t always the case.”

  “I actually think this may work better for me. I can focus on the kids.”

  Laura nodded thoughtfully. “We’re a close and supportive community. You won’t lack for company, if you want it.”

  Julie flashed a quick smile of her own. “I have a dog. A big one.”

  Laura had woven her fingers tightly together, but freed them then. “I hope he likes to swim,” she said, closing the tablet with a decided click. “Well, Ms. Mason—or is there another name I should call you by now?”

  Just a second’s hesitation before she answered. It slipped back on like an old shoe, an identity that wasn’t entirely becoming, but one she’d never fully meant to shed either. “Julie Weathers. But please—make it Julie.”

  “Well, Julie,” Laura began again. “I need to check out the references you supplied, and finish running your background check. But my hunch is that it won’t be premature to say…”

  She rose and Julie did too.

  Laura extended a cool, dry hand. “Welcome to Mercy.”

  Chapter Ten

  Over the next three weeks, Julie accomplished more than she had in the whole last year.

  In order of difficulty, least to most, she—

  • Read everything she could find online about Mercy Island and signed the commitment letter as soon as it arrived, officially offering her the job. She would be given a place to live, and a more than decent salary, given the lack of housing expenses.

  • Adapted to the morning and afternoon walks Depot required, which carved a few pounds she couldn’t afford to lose from her frame. Previously, she and David had split this task, but since losing their daughter, whole days had gone by, weeks even, when Julie didn’t take her share because she never left the house.

  • Packed the belongings she’d be bringing, stored the rest in her aunt’s basement, while ordering items so alien, they constituted proof that she was really leaving. Waterproof gear made out of a dense, slick substance, like sealskin, for oversea crossings, rainstorms, and daily life. A pillow whose fill claimed anti-mold properties; islands were damp places. Anti-frizz remedies for her thick, wavy hair (ditto). Dramamine as well as a holistic treatment for seasickness.

  • Listed the house for rent. With a divorce pending, it wouldn’t do to sell it, which was just as well. Julie didn’t want to sever her tie to Wedeskyull so definitively.

  • Told the few people who’d remained in her circle despite Julie’s best attempts to push them away—some colleagues, her principal, and a couple of sets of parents whose children had graduated—of her decision, thereby ensuring that the news was soon known throughout town.

  The last of which explained why, one afternoon, the sun having returned to Wedeskyull after six days of rain, filling the house with light while Julie scrubbed the upstairs bathroom in preparation for a showing, Depot let out a volley of barks.

  * * *

  Depot had two person-approaching barks. One for someone he knew, whose presence might or might not be expected. The other signified a stranger.

  Since this was the first kind of bark, Julie gave the dog a reassuring pat, then knee-walked over the swath of suds that had spilled from the tub she’d been scouring, to lift the curtain on the window.

  “It’s just Vern,” she told Depot, getting to her feet and heading for the stairway. She took the steps at a run, Depot thudding behind at her heels.

  Julie opened the door.

  “Hi, Uncle Vern,” she said.

  Her father’s oldest brother had always been a commanding man, wide in build, with a deep voice that didn’t know how to whisper. But the years, and his fall from grace as police chief, had shrunk him. Vern was wizened now, his thick, white hair reduced to wisps on his head. It was strange to see him out of uniform, though he had long since lost the right to wear it. Still, jeans and rolled-up shirtsleeves didn’t suit him.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” Vern said.

  Julie stepped aside to allow her uncle entrance. Depot sniffed at him, which Vern tolerated, administering a pat to the dog’s big head. Once he would’ve shoved Depot aside, not meanly, just with the impatience of a man who had too much to do and a small world counting on him to do it.

  Vern paused in the hallway, crossing his arms over his chest and taking a look around. His chest was narrower now, the meat on his exposed forearms loose.

  “Sometimes the gossip mill gets it right,” he said.

  Julie turned to take in the taped cartons and draped furniture.

  “I was going to call you,” she said on a note of apology.

  It had been awkward, talking to her uncle over the years. A halo of shame surrounded him once he left the job, the persistent shadow of a downed regime, one that his crooked ways, and his daddy’s before him, had been responsible for toppling. In practical terms, her uncle had beat a retreat, leaving Julie’s aunt behind in town while he eked out a subsistence level living in a cabin he’d built in the woods. He emerged only for items he couldn’t hunt, grow, or make.

  Vern lifted sunken shoulders in a shrug. “I made it in time to say goodbye.”

  “Come in,” Julie invited.

  He followed her to the kitchen, the room she had left for last to pack up so that she could continue to pre
pare simple meals. Julie scooped coffee grounds into a filter and added water. She depressed the button to start the machine and got down two mugs.

  “Black, right?” she asked.

  Depot padded in and Julie refreshed the water in his bowl. All three of them drank for a while, Depot noisily, with splashes, Vern and Julie in silence.

  Then her uncle said, “What’s this I hear about an island?”

  Once Vern would’ve sounded scoffing, might even have forbidden Julie from going, although her parents would’ve restored permission; they’d always wanted her to be a teacher. But Vern would’ve believed he had the right, the jurisdiction over her and everybody else in his fiefdom. What had changed was the frailness of his query.

  Julie relayed the details of her new position, keeping information about Mercy itself to a minimum to make her move sound less extreme.

  Vern drained the last of his coffee, then shoved his cup aside. It was the first authoritative gesture she’d seen him make.

  “I know something about escape,” he said. “It don’t always work out like you want it to.”

  Julie looked at him over the rim of her half-full cup. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard the saying,” Vern replied. “Wherever you go, there you are. Are you looking to get away from Wedeskyull—or what you think happened here?”

  “It did happen here,” Julie said. The coffee sizzled in her stomach, and she set her cup on the table with a thwack. “I’m looking to get away from the memories I relive every time I do the same thing in the same place or in the same way that I did it with Hedley. And David now too,” she added on an accusatory note, as if Vern might bring his former, misused reach to punish her abandoning husband.

  “I heard about that,” her uncle said. “Gossip mill’s got him in its clutches too. I’m sorry, sweetheart. Marriages can be brittle things. Too much strain and they break.”

  Julie emptied the coffee pot into Vern’s mug, but her uncle ignored the refill.