by Sarah Blake
“Min?” she called.
“Out here.”
Min was sitting on the green bench, her coffee resting at her side.
“What are you doing?”
Min turned to look at her. “Sitting.”
Evie pushed out the front door.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Min asked.
“Why?”
“You were shouting.”
Evie exhaled. “Just a dream.”
Min nodded.
Evie stood a minute longer, her hand on the lilac bough. Min had been right, she thought irrelevantly, looking up into the leaves, the lilac was in glorious bloom. She came down the steps and sat beside Min on the bench. The Polaroid of their mothers and their uncle was lying on the wood in the sun.
Evie bent and picked it up.
“They were happy,” Min remarked.
Evie nodded. “They were girls. They were half our age.”
Min sipped her coffee. “I loved your mum. I became a shrink because of your mum.”
“You’re joking.”
“‘It’s not enough to see the truth. You have to do something about it,’ she said to me one night drying dishes. I was just thinking about that out here.”
Evie shook her head, mystified. “But what did my mother ever do?”
Min looked back at her and didn’t answer.
“Honestly.” Evie reached and picked up the Polaroid again. “Look at these two. We’ve spent days and days up here, and I realize I don’t know anything more about her at all. I remember her up here. But the facts, what she was thinking, what she did and laughed at—” Her voice caught. “It’s obvious, absurdly obvious, but I have spent my life in the archives, with records and diaries, births and marriages, deaths—receipts, bills of sale. Travel documents. Life caught in fistfuls of paper, in scraps.”
“And you make a plausible life,” Min teased her gently. “Remember?”
Evie nodded and crossed her arms. “But I can’t seem to make one for her,” she said softly.
Min didn’t answer.
“That dream I had this morning,” Evie said. “It’s not the first time, you know. Mum keeps coming to me. And she’s angry at me. She never got angry about anything.”
“What had you done?” Min turned to look at her.
“I buried her in the graveyard. Instead of out on the rocks.”
Min considered this.
“Why there, do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Evie said. “But she said she told me why.”
“And you don’t remember?”
Evie turned to Min. “No. I don’t.”
Min looked at her and stood up from the bench. “Let’s walk,” she said. “Let’s get into the woods. I’ve got to stretch my old bones.”
* * *
THE FOREST PATH plunged away from the house, veering from the water and deeper into the woods. In here the light cataracted through the tree trunks and hanging branches, dimmed, the sharp pine mixing with the slow creak of the trees, swaying like the masts of ships they would never become. Their roots grew above the pine floor in long, thin shafts like the bones in an old lady’s hand.
The two of them walked without speaking, following the blazes cut by their grandfather in the thirties, stopping to clip branches threatening to block the path, inscribing the way forward as they had been taught to do every summer, clearing and cutting for everyone to come. It was close in the woods, and the air was heavy, and Evie started to sweat, her body loosening in the heat as she cleared the brush and walked. A woodpecker worked hard above them, punching the clock, over and over and over, the knock in the air.
The path wound along the backside of the Island and then hugged the water, sticking to the granite coastline all the way back in the direction of the house, ending at a cleared area, now long overgrown, that had been the picnic grounds once, whose meadow ran down to a rim of granite boulders, a cliff at low tide, and a ledge when the water was high facing the Narrows. As children, they had always slowed down right here, wanting to stop, but none of the grandchildren had been allowed to swim off these rocks, though it was a perfect pool below at the right tide. Naturally, this meant that as teenagers every single one of them had gone and dove from the top. The image of her grandmother on these walks moving quickly past these rocks, not looking at the spot, not turning her head, deliberate and intent, rose fully now in Evie’s mind.
Evie and Min looked at the spot before them, the picnic tables given to lichen and rot. One big firepit remained, though the rock walls had crumbled. It was high tide. The water sucked gently at the shore. From here they could see the blue ridge of the Camden Hills on the mainland in one direction, and then in the other, the vast empty line of the sea. The tide was turning and the water swelled slowly beneath them, slapping the rock.
“Do you think it’s true what Charlie Levy said?” Min asked.
“What part?”
“That this is where Uncle Moss died?”
Evie shook her head. From here she could see through the trees to her grandparents’ old dock. Her father had sold the place after his father died. Her grandfather Weld used to stage treasure hunts for all of them in those trees.
Someone across the way was raising the sails of a dinghy.
“The last time Aunt Joan came to see Mum, they fought, you know,” Min said softly.
Evie turned. “Is that why you wouldn’t let Mum come say goodbye at the end, when Aunt E was dying?”
“Dad wouldn’t. He said your mum was too upsetting.”
Evie sighed. “She was so hurt not to say goodbye.”
They were quiet.
“What was that fight about?”
“This stone she wanted. Mum thought Joan wanted to punish her.”
“Punish her?”
“That’s what she said,” Min answered, slowly, remembering. “‘You want to rub my nose in it, you want to make me pay.’”
“Pay for what?” Evie frowned.
Min shook her head. “I don’t know, but your mum was so—”
“What?”
“Fierce.” Min shook her head, trying to bring the conversation back. “Fierce, and furious.”
“Go on,” Evie prodded.
“I think Mum asked why should they be reminded all the time.”
“And?”
Min looked at her straight.
“‘Because it happened,’ your mother said. ‘It happened there. Right there. And I was alive.’”
“What?” Evie’s eyes widened.
Min nodded.
Evie looked away, her eyes filling.
Min was quiet.
The dinghy across the Thoroughfare slowly glided from its mooring.
“And it doesn’t bother you that we’ll never know why?” Evie asked after a little while.
“Honestly?” Min turned to her. “It doesn’t. There is never any bottom to a why.”
Evie smiled and sniffed, shaking her head. “I’m so tired of it, though. All the quiet and the half-saids, the unsaids. And I used to love uncertainty, the fact that the past was a mystery that could be turned and turned again, that that might lead you to some kind of truth that you hadn’t seen, just over the ridge of a hill, just to the side of a page—
“Now I just want an answer, a direction. I want sunlight and words, because I’m stuck in the woods. I wish there was a hand in the sky, a finger pointing, saying, There. That was the moment. There was the turn. Here is the reason—go back,” she went on. “Or go forward. Right now, everywhere I look I just see the end, the end, the end, and I can’t figure how to get past it, how to get out of these woods. I can’t see what I’m supposed to do now.”
“Now, you bury your mum,” Min said gently.
Evie’s throat closed.
“Bury her in an unmarked grave?”
“It’s not unmarked, it just doesn’t say her name.”
“Here?”
“It’s what she wanted.”
“One wo
rd for a whole life?”
“I thought that was your specialty,” Min said quietly.
Evie nodded. The dinghy’s sails luffed and stalled as the man at the tiller came about to find the better tack.
“Fuck.” She cleared her throat after a moment. “It’s all so lonely.”
Min glanced over at her. “What is?”
“The past,” Evie said.
Min snorted.
“I mean,” Evie went on, “do we all mostly just rise up, wave a little, and vanish without anyone seeing?”
“Jesus,” Min said. “What did you eat this morning?”
Evie smiled and straightened. “Gruel.”
Beside her, Min shook her head. “You miss your mother, Evie, that’s all.”
The sails had filled and caught, and now the dinghy ran before the wind on a straight tack, free as an arrow shot from its bow. The cousins watched it all the way down the reach in quiet.
“What about Henry?”
“Fuck Henry,” said his sister with a wide grin.
“Min.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to Henry.”
Evie nodded, and the cousins turned from the picnic grounds and started back through the trees to the house.
When they emerged from the woods Min and Evie stood a minute on the rise, looking across the field to the boathouse and the water beyond. The flag waved from the flagpole, and Jimmy Ames was mowing down at the bottom of the lawn. The wind had shifted and the salt air moved toward them on the hill.
And Charlie Levy was just coming out of the boathouse. Behind him, walking slowly, was Posy, and leaning on her arm was a slight black man.
Forty-four
“THERE THEY ARE,” CHARLIE said. “See them? Up on the hill.”
Reg lifted his hand to shade his eyes. The two women had started toward them.
“Hello,” Charlie shouted, walking forward. “Have we missed tea?”
The blond one lifted her hand and waved.
After Len died, when Charlie had told Reg of his father’s irrational request and of Charlie’s equally irrational promise, Reg had said nothing. When Charlie came back from a weekend in the spring and said he thought he had found the Milton island, had seen the rocks, he didn’t say Yes, of course that’s the place, of course those are the people, he’d only listened. When Charlie called him and said he was going to rent the island at the end of the summer, and would he like to come, Reg hadn’t answered.
But when Posy and Charlie had come back from their little impromptu visit the other day and Posy showed him the picture she had taken of the two women standing in front of the house, his breath stopped.
Now, as Len’s child walked down the hill toward him, he hadn’t any idea why he’d agreed to come. He wanted to see her. And he wanted to turn around. All these years Len had never known. Reg crossed his arms against the angry tangle in his heart. But Len had been happy, Len had shoved off from here and made his own tremendous life, as big as his broad shoulders, his hands.
Oh god, Reg thought. I am old.
And this place still hurts.
“Hello, hello again.” Charlie closed the distance between the women and themselves.
“Evie,” he said. “Min.”
The women smiled back at him. The blond one looked over Charlie’s shoulder at Reg, and Charlie turned.
“Yes,” he said. “I brought my godfather—”
Reg stepped toward them.
“Reg Pauling.” He put out his hand to greet the blond one.
Her eyes widened. “Pauling?”
The two women halted, though only for an instant, before the blonde recovered herself and shook Reg’s hand.
“You must be Evelyn’s,” he said politely.
“Her eldest daughter.” Min nodded, adding, “And this is my cousin Eve Milton.”
Reg looked at her at last. And there was Len staring down at him, a silver-haired woman with his straight-ahead eyes, that upright body, honest and true. But her smile was her mother’s.
“Reg Pauling” was all he could manage.
“Mr. Pauling.” She smiled and took his hand. “You knew our uncle Moss.”
It wasn’t a question. He shook her hand. She was studying him.
“I showed him the picture I took of you the other day.” Posy squinted up through her hair at Evie and Min proudly. “He wanted to meet you—”
“That’s true.” Reg nodded at the girl. “Without Posy, I wouldn’t have come.” His gaze wandered up the hill to the Big House. “I never imagined I’d be here again.”
“You’ve been here before?” Charlie asked, surprised.
“Yes.”
“With Dad?” Charlie asked.
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t sign the guest book,” Posy prodded. “You weren’t with Granddad.”
“No.” Reg folded his arms. “No. I’m not in there.”
They all stood looking up at the house.
“So?” Min asked into the little quiet. “Tea?”
“Yes,” Charlie answered. “Great.”
“But Dad.”
“Oh, right.” Charlie looked at his daughter and nodded. “Actually, Posy was wondering if she could go for a swim first—”
“On the big rocky beach,” the girl said to Min. “Around the cove. We sail by it all the time.”
Min looked over at Evie. “Gravelly Beach, we call it.”
Evie nodded at the girl. “The tide should be good for a swim.”
“Uncle Reg?” Posy asked him.
“You go on.” Reg shook his head. “I’ll wait for you, right up there.” He pointed to the green bench.
“Keep inside the line of the beach,” Charlie said to his daughter. “And no farther than where you can still touch the bottom.”
“Okay.” She grinned and started down the hill to find the path.
“Shouldn’t someone go with her?” Evie asked.
“She’ll be all right. She’s on the swim team at home.” Charlie took hold of Reg’s arm again and they climbed the rest of the lawn up to the house, the others following slowly after.
“Would you keep me company out here?” Reg looked up at Evie as he sank down onto the wooden seat.
“Sure,” she said, glancing at Min.
“I’ll make the tea,” Min offered.
“I’ll help,” Charlie said.
The screen door slapped behind them. Evie went to sit beside Reg. He leaned back against the bench. The two of them watched Posy disappear into the trees, her red shirt slipping in and out of the patches of late-afternoon sunlight and shade. The line slapped against the flagpole. The tops of the grasses ruffled. Reg shifted his weight on the hard seat.
“I’ve tried to write about this place, you know. For years.”
“I’d imagine that’s true.” Evie nodded appreciatively. “Everyone who comes here feels it’s heaven.”
That breezy comfort. He had almost forgotten.
“You sound like your grandmother.”
Evie looked at him, puzzled. “That doesn’t entirely sound like a good thing.”
“No.” He looked away.
“The good thing here,” he said after a little, “was your uncle Moss.”
Moss, whom he had loved, and hated that he loved, with the blind fervor of the young. Moss, whom he had wanted to punish and wanted the sweetness that would come in forgiving, not taking back what he had said, but taking Moss’s hand. Moss, whom Reg had left that night at the beginning of an argument—not the end, never meaning it to be the end.
And why had Moss been out that night? What was he doing, rowing out there in the dark? What could have taken him out onto the water?
“Your uncle,” Reg said softly, “was an extraordinary man. And we broke his heart.”
“Who did?” Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “How?”
He studied the woman beside him, who was staring at him now with the same open need as Mrs. Milton long ago, needing him to tell her who
she was—this woman who was mixed and didn’t know it, had been protected from that simple single truth all her life. The Milton quiet went on and on and on.
“He couldn’t hold all the pieces together.”
“All what pieces?”
So, Reg thought. Begin.
“Moss had been trying to write a song,” he heard himself tell her, “a song—an impossible song about this country that no one could hear yet, a song with new notes, as he called them, and he said to Len and me, ‘Come and see, come and see it’s possible, come up, come out and ring the bell on that dock down there and stay.’ And so we came, Len and I, though I found myself all tangled up and blue from the moment we set foot on that dock down there.”
He didn’t look at her. He could feel her listening beside him and he went on talking.
He told her about Moss and Evelyn and Dickie, about the fog and the piano. He told her about the morning and the lunch, about the afternoon, and the twilight, and the party and the barn at night. He told her all of that and knew he hadn’t told her anything, but saw how she was listening, really listening to his voice, and so he went right on. He told her what her grandmother had told him. Right here on this bench, he said, right here, she told me what she had done. What she had said to the Jewish woman. He told her about the boy.
And then he kept telling Evie past her shock, kept right on telling her what her grandfather had also done, and what he’d said to Len when Len had asked him, and how the two of them had carried right on into the party as if they had said nothing to anyone, as if nothing had happened. As if they had done nothing. The two of them had sung songs and cracked lobsters, and the party went on and on, until some of them left. He paused—not telling her, he wouldn’t tell her that.
“Some of us went rowing. And by that time I had had enough. That’s when I took Moss’s song and I tore it in two—there was no such thing as new notes, no matter how much you might wish them—showed it had been nothing but a paper dream. I ripped it. I wanted to punish the dreamer for dreaming he was different—hell, I wanted to punish them all. All those people.”
He shook his head.
“And by then, we were down there on those rocks at the picnic grounds, and your grandmother, so noble, queenly even still, tried to cast us—Len and me—away, and so I reminded her of what she had told me about that little boy, I had the gall to dare her to say out loud to them what she had said to me, say it in front of them all, so they all knew what she had done, and instead she looked right at me and slapped me across the face.”
