Local Girls

by Jenny O'Connell

  “It applies to everyone.”

  At this point I expected Shelby to give me some sort of sign she’d had enough of my ramblings, but when she reached over to help me with the picnic orders, I decided I’d go on as long as she’d let me. After all, now she knew some pretty personal stuff about me and I figured it was her turn to reciprocate. “So what happened? Why’d you quit college?”

  “I didn’t quit. I left,” she clarified, as if the small distinction made all the difference in the world. “It just wasn’t for me.”

  “Why?” Obviously Shelby wasn’t pregnant, that much I could tell. She wasn’t a big stoner in high school, although anything can happen in college. I was figuring either she flunked out or did something to get kicked out.

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “I mean, I’d think getting out of here would be great. I, for one, can’t wait.”

  “And where are you going?” she wanted to know.

  “California. Stanford, if I get in.”

  Shelby laughed. “Really?”

  “Yep. Really,” I repeated. “I’m getting as far away as possible.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I’ve seen the same faces and places for seventeen years. I’m ready for some new scenery.”

  “To each her own,” was Shelby’s response. She let the last of the picnic basket lids fall shut, the sound of the slamming wicker sounding very similar to the slamming of a judge’s gavel. And it had the same effect. Shelby had officially ended our first conversation.

  I thought telling Shelby about Mona would help, and it did, a little. Of course, I wished she’d told me I was totally right to be pissed at Mona, but she didn’t. Then again, she didn’t know Mona well enough, or me either, for that matter. She didn’t know Mona before she moved to Boston, before she moved into Malcolm’s house. I was thinking about that on my way home, trying to remember what it was like before, when Mona lived with Poppy, as my bus approached the stop near Poppy’s house. Before I even realized what I was doing, I’d gotten off the bus and was walking down Mona’s old driveway toward the house that had once felt like a second home to me.

  Although Poppy’s house was off the main road, the gravel driveway was so long you couldn’t even see the house from the street. I walked quickly down the driveway, anxious to see the house after all this time, but once it came into view I wasn’t prepared for the empty feeling that rushed over me. The same curtains hung in the windows, the hydrangeas in the front garden were blooming, and butterflies hovered over the bushes just like they did every summer. It didn’t look like anything had changed even though everything had changed. I followed the slate path around the side of the house to the back patio. The wrought iron patio furniture was still there, had probably been left out all winter without Poppy there to move it into the barn once fall had arrived.

  The last time I was at the house, there were people gathered on the patio. It was early October and the leaves were just beginning to change, the tips of their curled edges turning golden orange. I remember standing next to Mona and watching Izzy greet friends who’d come back to the house after the funeral. As we stood there on the patio, a leaf fell from a branch and landed in Mona’s hair. She’d reached up and taken it out, but held on to it as we stood there, absentmindedly twirling its stem. Later on, when the guests were gone, Mona and I joined Malcolm in the kitchen, where he was wrapping cold cuts in Saran Wrap and placing leftover pasta salad in Tupperware containers. I was dumping the remains of the three-bean salad into the garbage can when I noticed Mona placing the leaf into a sandwich-size Ziploc bag. After making sure the curled edges of the leaf didn’t crack, she carefully ran her fingers along the top, sealing the leaf inside.

  I didn’t ask Mona what she was doing, and she’d left the island the next day with Izzy and Malcolm. But now I wondered what she did with that leaf and why, at the time, it was so important for her to preserve it.

  After the funeral I figured Izzy would put the house up for sale and that would be it. Everything I knew of Mona gone. The summers we used to explore the woods behind her house, the winters we’d sit in front of the potbellied stove in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate with mini marshmallows, while her grandfather stacked the split firewood into a neat triangle, all gone as soon as the FOR SALE sign was replaced with four letters—SOLD.

  But no FOR SALE sign ever went up, and now, eight months later, the trees were once again green and full, and the spot next to the woods where Poppy kept the firewood was overgrown with tall grass, a few wildflowers with yellow blooms poking up between the logs in search of sunlight.

  I pulled one of the chairs out from the patio table and sat down. The legs wobbled, just like they always did. I was there when Poppy put the patio set together, cursing under his breath as he tried to figure out which leg was part A and which armrest was part C. We always used to make fun of him, pretending to fall backward or sideways off the chairs that he’d never quite figured out how to level. While I sat there remembering, a bird floated down toward me and landed on the rim of the birdbath beside the back door. It was then, as I looked past the bird, that I noticed the doors to the barn were open, creating a shadow on the grass from the light inside.

  It wasn’t a real barn, although it probably was at one time. As long as I’d been coming to Mona’s house it was just used for extra storage space, where Poppy kept the lawn mower and tools for the yard. If the doors had been left open all winter, there was no doubt a family of raccoons living inside now.

  The sound of me standing up startled the bird and it flew away, high up into the branches of the tree, until it disappeared. I left the chair wobbling from leg to leg and went to check out the barn.

  Before I even made it to the double doors I could see something moving inside. I probably should have been scared, at least a little. I was all alone down a long driveway and nobody even knew where I was. But the whole scene was so familiar. I knew this house as well as my own. I couldn’t imagine being afraid.

  “Hello?” I called out, and then took the final steps toward the doorway, prepared to jump out of the way if a family of raccoons decided I wasn’t welcome.

  But instead of raccoons, there she was, in a pair of paint-splattered jeans and what looked like one of Malcolm’s faded Edgartown Yacht Club T-shirts. “Izzy?”

  She turned around, her ponytail skimming the paintbrush in her hand and leaving a streak of blue in her blonde hair. “Kennie, what are you doing here? I didn’t hear you.”

  I stepped into the barn and was immediately enveloped in the slightly tangy smell of oil paint. “I just came by to see the house.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did, I didn’t even get to say good-bye to you when you left the other day,” she told me. “I hope we’ll be seeing more of you this summer.”

  “Well, I’m working almost every day, so I don’t have much free time,” I explained, hoping she wouldn’t press the issue and make me tell her about my fallout with Mona. “I didn’t know anyone was here, there were no cars out front.”

  “Malcolm dropped me off on his way to the ferry this morning. I’ll call Mona or Henry to pick me up when I’m ready.” Izzy waved me over to her. “Come, tell me what you think.”

  Canvases were scattered throughout the barn; huge squares and rectangles, some taller than me, leaned against the weathered walls. I didn’t know what you’d call Izzy’s painting style; it wasn’t completely abstract, because I always recognized places and objects, but it wasn’t exactly realistic, either. No matter what you called it, one thing was for sure. Izzy always worked big. Only, unlike the large blossoming flowers she’d painted for as long as I could remember, the images on these canvases weren’t magnified versions of petals and pistils and stems, they were faces. Magnified faces filled canvases like close-ups on a movie screen, but unlike the realistic faces in movies, Izzy’s were drawn loosely, fluidly, their features exaggerated.

  “I didn’t know you still painted.”


  “Of course I still paint. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I guess I thought you’d stop once you moved to Boston.”

  “God, no. I could never stop.” She placed the brush in her mouth and stared at the still-wet canvas. That explained the bite marks along the handle. “So tell me, do you think it’s working?”

  “It’s Poppy.”

  “Well, at least you could tell who it was, so that’s a start.”

  “It looks like him,” I told her, but then stepped back. “But it doesn’t look exactly like him.”

  “Good. I wasn’t really trying for something too literal.”

  “Is he in front of the potbellied stove?”

  Izzy’s mouth dropped open. “How did you ever figure that out?”

  “I don’t know, something about the light here.” I pointed to some dark shadowing where I saw a reddish glow reflected. “It looks like it’s warm.”

  “What else do you see?” she wanted to know, and I took another step back to get the full effect.

  Izzy frowned as she watched me stare at the canvas. “What? Is it really awful? You can tell me the truth, I can take it.”

  It wasn’t awful. It was wonderful, like Poppy was magnified a hundred times, every part of him more vivid than anything in real life.

  “He looks like he’s getting ready to laugh.”

  She tipped her head to the side and tapped the narrow end of the paintbrush on her thigh. “I guess he is.”

  “It’s not awful, Izzy, it’s just . . .” I hesitated, wondering if I should believe that she really wanted to know the truth. “Isn’t it a little weird to be painting him now?”

  Meaning, of course, now that he was gone.

  Izzy shook her head at Poppy and smiled. “Actually, no. That’s sort of why I started painting him in the first place, as a way to remember. Not just as my dad, or Mona and Henry’s grandfather or the guy everyone knew from the bank, but to try to understand who he really was. I guess I thought it would help.”

  “Has it?”

  She nodded. “Maybe not right away, but now, I think so somewhat.”

  “When did you start working on it?”

  “Around Christmas. Christmas was tough.”

  “I thought you were going to sell the house.”

  “Me, too. I guess I thought there was really no reason to keep it. Without my dad it would never be the same.”

  “Malcolm’s house is definitely big enough for everyone,” I said.

  “That’s true, but that’s not what I meant. If anything, being with Malcolm meant I didn’t have to sell it. So when I came back in January to clean out the house and get it ready to put on the market, I decided to keep it, even if it’s just so I can have the barn. It’s nice being here. Do you think I’m crazy?”

  I shook my head. It seemed Izzy and I felt the same way. “Not at all.”

  “This isn’t the only one I’ve been working on by any means.” Izzy stepped back from the canvas and waved her hands around the barn. “Go ahead and take a look at the rest of them. I haven’t completed any, so they’re all works in progress, but you’re more than welcome to explore.”

  I accepted Izzy’s invitation and walked around the barn to look at the other portraits. The portrait of Malcolm was nearly complete, as was the one of Henry, his hair slightly matted and damp, his cheeks flushed a rosy pink. Even without recognizing the colors surrounding him, I knew Izzy had decided to paint what Henry looked like after a hockey game.

  I continued wandering, recognizing a few faces here and there, friends of Izzy’s I’d met at the house and a woman I recognized as Mona’s grandmother—from the photo they’d kept on a bookshelf in the living room. There had to be at least fifteen paintings leaning against the barn walls, some stacked in front of others, so I had to remove the front one to see what was behind it.

  I walked up to one of the canvases, a four-by-four-foot square tucked behind a portrait of a woman. “Who’s this?”

  Izzy looked up from the canvas of Poppy and paused for a minute. “Oh, nobody in particular. I was just fooling around. I’m still working this whole thing out. I wanted a new challenge, but portraits are a lot harder than I thought, actually. Especially when working from memory. Like this . . .” Izzy started explaining something about Poppy’s lips, and even though I was sure she had a very valid point, I couldn’t take my eyes off the unknown boy on the canvas in front of me. He looked to be around my age or a little older. The background had a wash of color but the rest of his face was simply an outline. There was something familiar about the eyes, even though the pupils and lashes were just rough gray strokes of pencil. Maybe it was the way his eyes crinkled in the corners as if squinting against the sun. He was definitely outside, with vivid turquoise blues and greens and hints of yellow reflected behind him. Whoever he was, Izzy had painted him looking away, as if something caught his attention and he’d turned toward it.

  “Do you see what I mean?” Izzy asked.

  I hadn’t been listening, so I had no idea what she meant. “No, show me.”

  Izzy went on explaining something about how she wanted to capture the essence of the person, not necessarily a physical likeness. And even though I knew Poppy, and even loved him like a grandfather myself, it was the boy in the corner behind the other canvas that kept my attention. Because even though I couldn’t put my finger on it, I felt like I knew him.

  I watched Izzy paint a little longer and she told me more about Boston and how she’d come back to the island every week since January, sometimes without even telling anyone.

  “Why?” I wanted to know. I couldn’t imagine my mother going somewhere two hours away every day and not even knowing about it.

  “I guess I just wanted to have something to myself. I love our place in the city, but it still feels a little like Malcolm’s. This still feels a little more like home.”

  I knew that’s how my parents felt, that the island was home, which was probably why they never even considered moving, although my dad had an opportunity to transfer to a post office in Hyannis when I was in middle school. I remember hearing them talk about it, my mom and dad weighing the pros and cons. As far as I was concerned, there were plenty of pros (which included things like shopping at places I could only get to on the Internet, and being able to go more than twelve miles without getting on a ferry) and few cons, leaving Mona pretty much the only one I could come up with. It wasn’t like they were debating whether to pack up and move to another continent, it was just Cape Cod! Fifty miles away and you would have thought it required a passport and vaccinations. Needless to say, they chose to stay on the island.

  “Do me a favor, don’t tell Mona I was here,” I asked Izzy when I started to leave.

  Although I expected her to, she didn’t ask me for an explanation. I guess if anyone understood about keeping secrets, it was Izzy. “If that’s what you want, okay.”

  “Your paintings are amazing, Izzy. Really, I love them.”

  “Thanks, Kennie. You’re more than welcome to come and visit anytime. There are days I could use the company.”

  With the summer just beginning, I was sure there would be days I could use the company, too.

  Chapter 9

  Henry was picking me up at five o’clock, and when you’ve been up all night tossing and turning, five o’clock comes early. And fast. First, I was afraid I’d oversleep. I kept reaching over to make sure my alarm clock was set for an ungodly hour, and then I’d lie there debating whether I should set the alarm for music or the buzzer. Second, I still hadn’t decided what I should wear. Granted, it was just Henry, but in another way he was no longer just Henry. Our mornings together had taken him out of a familiar context; it was like suddenly viewing someone you previously knew only in black-and-white in a whole new range of colors. And because I wasn’t used to actually talking to Henry at any length, or without Mona there to mediate, part of me was afraid we’d used up all our good stuff in the baking aisle of Stop & Shop. What
if I spent two hours sitting on the bank of the pond watching Henry fish in silence? What if he took one look at the dark circles that would undoubtedly be ringing my eyes and decided that not only was I really not a morning person, but I was actually not meant to be seen in public that early?

  At 4:29 I leaned over my night table and turned off the alarm before it even buzzed. My bedroom window was open just a crack, but I could feel the morning chill coming into the room, which made me want to get into a hot shower all that much faster.

  I thought half an hour would be plenty of time to get ready. It was fishing, not the prom. It wasn’t even a date. It was sitting on dirt next to a bucket of worms. But as I pulled my sweatshirt on it occurred to me that it would be the first time all summer that Henry would see me in something other than my yellow polo shirt and khakis. And that made me reevaluate my choice of clothing. Then I remembered that Henry was used to seeing girls who wore lip gloss and bronzer to the beach. And that made me wonder if I should try to hide the dark circles under my eyes with a little concealer. While I was at it, maybe I should put on some mascara. And blush. And eyeliner.

  With ten minutes to go I began to wish I’d gotten up at four o’clock instead. Which, in addition to being hindsight and therefore useless, was also crazy. I ended up putting my wet hair in a ponytail and sticking with my blue shorts and sweatshirt. But I went with the concealer. It couldn’t hurt.

  At 4:59 there I was, sitting outside on our front steps, watching the sky begin to lighten in the east. And at five o’clock sharp I heard Henry’s truck pulling up our driveway, his windshield wipers moving from side to side as they pushed away the dew that had collected overnight.

  I opened the passenger-side door and slid in next to Henry. Usually I placed my Stop & Shop purchase on the seat between us, but this morning there was nothing separating me from him.

  “I was almost sure you’d still be sleeping,” he told me, and all of a sudden I was even more conscious of the small amount of empty space between us.