The Inconceivable Life of Quinn

by Marianna Baer

  And somehow, this didn’t make her feel more vulnerable, like the periwinkle. No, Quinn had the distinct sense that coming out of hiding would make her stronger.

  After a little over an hour, the ferry docked near Southaven’s village. The sun had set during the trip, making it feel later than it was. Quinn and Ben picked up supplies at Davis & Derry’s, the one real grocery store, where she was relieved not to bump into anyone they knew. When they visited last May, it seemed like there weren’t that many people they’d known who still lived here. Her mother had said that the island didn’t have as many year-rounders as it used to. More wealthy summer people, instead.

  Once back in the car for the final leg of the trip, Quinn felt like her body was a shaken bottle of seltzer. Even in the dark, she knew where the drive was taking them: first through the area with old Victorian houses, past the island’s public school, library, and graveyard, and then into the stretches with mostly wooded areas and the occasional cottage or farmhouse in a clearing. Each twist in the road brought a different landmark that signaled they were getting closer to home: the sign for Big Bottom Quarry—the quarry where everyone swam nude, whose name made Quinn’s family joke that you had to have a big bottom to swim there; the house with hundreds of old lobster traps in the yard; the hidden path to the island’s lighthouse . . .

  When they rounded the large curve in Upper Haven Road that passed the spot where Quinn had found Haven as a kitten, and then saw the three small signs at a narrow turnoff—the wooden CUTLER/WELLS sign her mother had made underneath the painted metal one that said CAVANAUGH, and the official DEAD END sign—Quinn thought her chest might explode, her heart was beating so fast. Ben slowed the car and they shuddered over the bumpy dirt surface, down a hill and up again, first past the driveway for the Cavanaughs’ and then, farther down, left at the turnoff into their own drive.

  The two houses were on a peninsula, about a mile long and a halfmile wide, with only the one dirt road down it. Woods filled most of the land around and between the houses, which both sat on clearings that went down to the water. Narrow paths wound through the woods connecting destinations: the Cutlers’ house and the Cavanaughs’ were about a half mile apart. And about midway between was the path to Holmes Cove, more of a real beach than the waterfronts close to the houses, which had large rocks that were good for climbing, but not for swimming.

  As Ben pulled up to the weathered-shingle cottage, illuminating it in the headlights, it looked asleep . . . unaware. No one had stayed in it all summer. Quinn unbuckled her seatbelt, opened the door, felt the gravel press through the soles of her shoes, and was home.

  NICOLE ANDERSON

  In front of the Cutlers’ Park Slope house, Nicole was squatting down, picking up offerings that had been blown off the fence and were now littering the sidewalk—snapshots mostly, a few wilted flowers, prayer cards—when Samuel, the plaidcoated leader of the Entitled, came huffing up the street. Nicole stood.

  “She’s at their other house,” he said breathlessly to the group.

  He had been staking out the block behind the Cutlers’ and had followed Quinn’s mother as she walked to her car, during which he overheard part of a phone conversation.

  “I didn’t hear where the house is,” he said. “Or who she’s with.”

  Angry murmurs spread. They can’t take her away. It isn’t their right. God’s grace isn’t something you can choose not to share.

  “Maine,” someone said after a few moments. “One of the articles says they have a house—”

  “An island,” another woman chimed in, holding up her phone. “It says here. Southaven island, Maine.”

  Nicole moved aside, not liking any of this—not liking the angry energy or the idea that Quinn had been so scared of them she had to leave. Because Nicole was sure that’s what had happened after the disaster yesterday. Who wouldn’t have been scared? And after the window was broken . . . Both things had happened too quickly for Nicole to stop them. She had failed.

  And now she listened with increasing alarm as the group decided it was their right to go there, to follow her. They began researching options to figure out the best way to get to the island and how to find the Cutlers’ house.

  “What should I do?” Nicole asked her husband. She’d stepped a ways down the block to talk on the phone privately.

  “Go with them, of course.”

  “But Quinn left to get away from all of this. I’m sure. You should have seen how everyone attacked her yesterday. It was horrible.”

  “She’s not ‘Quinn’ to us,” her husband said. “You can’t see her that way. She’s the Virgin carrying the child we’re here to protect. What if her parents are planning to move her from there to somewhere else, somewhere we don’t know about? To never give the baby back to the world? I’ve been reading about that family, and I don’t trust them. They’re not good people, Nicole. Definitely not God’s people. They’re the ones we need to protect the baby from. That’s why God sent you to New York.”

  Nicole thought about what he was saying. Although she wasn’t sure about Quinn’s parents being the enemy, he was right about one thing: Somehow, she’d become attached to Quinn as a person. And her responsibility was larger than that, because at the end of the day, Quinn was not the important one. The baby was. That was what she had to remember.

  QUINN

  After settling in, building a fire, and having a quick, canned soup dinner, Quinn told Ben she was ready to go down to Holmes Cove.

  “Want me to go with you?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “I need to do it alone.”

  Outside, she lay down on the wooden deck where she and Jesse had watched the movie after the bonfire. The air was cold and damp enough tonight that it could have bitten her bare cheeks and ears, but instead, it just made her skin feel more alive. She almost couldn’t hear her own thoughts because the chorus of the air, ocean, forest, and stars was filling her head.

  But she couldn’t pay attention to all of that now. She closed her eyes and thought back to last May, to the moment she’d decided she needed to swim. Although . . . why would she even have considered swimming if it wasn’t high tide? It didn’t make sense. In her (fantasy) memory, she’d felt a pull, an excited buzz in her body, a delicious sense of knowing the water was waiting and she was about to do something bold and crazy and forbidden . . . But if she’d known it was low tide, known she couldn’t swim, what would the pull have been?

  She took a deep breath of the salty, piney air and tried to tamp down her frustration. It wouldn’t be good to arrive at the beach already discouraged. She stood and headed toward the trees.

  In May, she’d run down the forest path in the dark, without a flashlight. Tonight, her feet weren’t feeling steady enough to run, and how had she ever been able to run in the dark without tripping? So she turned on her flashlight and shone the beam on the mossy, rootwoven path. The trees and forest animals were watching her, whispering encouragement. We’re here, they said. You’re safe.

  It was a clear night with enough moon that when she emerged from the forest at Holmes Cove and turned off the flashlight, the seascape lit up in front of her.

  She walked onto the beach, pebbles and broken shells crunching under her feet, and surveyed the scene, her heart beating fast. Here. It had happened here. How would this work? Was something going to come at her all of a sudden? A vision? Or a whole memory of the night, playing in her head like a movie? The memory lived in these rocks and shells and the water. She was sure of it. The question was whether it would appear all at once, like a crab startled out of hiding, or ease up slowly, like the tide.

  She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with the sweet-brine air. It smelled like childhood—like digging for clams, clambering over rocks, watching for seals, poking through tide pools . . . And swimming and swimming and swimming . . . (She couldn’t stop herself from remembering the swimming happening with friends, even knowing that she hadn’t had any real ones. Her memories
of being down here had no element of loneliness.)

  Her ears filled with the gentle lapping of the ocean on a calm night. The sea breeze against her face was colder and stronger than at the house, but it still felt good. Her skin breathed here in a way it never did in Brooklyn. Do you feel the difference in the air? she asked the baby. And do you know where we are? Do you remember?

  It was beautiful.

  She saw herself in the black water, swimming with stars . . . Her body began to relax.

  Then . . . wait . . . a noise. From behind her. She spun around, switched on the flashlight, and shone it toward the woods. But there was nothing. It must have been an animal. Fox, probably.

  She turned back around and took another deep breath of the ocean air, trying to relax again, when she realized: these smells, sounds, feelings . . . they were the sensations of home and happiness in her mind. Which also meant that, at this moment, they were part of the problem. These fantasies—about having friends as a kid, about swimming that night in May—they were the stories covering up the truth.

  Quinn pulled back inside herself and focused on why she was here. She had to be in a mind frame to remember. She had to strip away all the fantasies she’d constructed and try to remember the reality—the ugly reality—of what happened that night.

  She walked carefully over the flattish part of the beach and climbed onto the rock where Marco had seen her. Swimming Rock, she had always called it, because it was the best rock for swimming off during high tide. She sat down, legs outstretched.

  Since she couldn’t remember what had drawn her to the beach, she tried to remember why she took her clothes off once she was down here. Had someone told her to do it? Forced her to do it? Or had she done it for someone (Marco?) willingly? Again, all she could come up with was the false memory she’d had this whole time. It was so stubbornly lodged in her mind—the feeling of freedom as she discarded her clothes by the trees and walked out to her rock, naked. Months of thinking about it had etched it into her brain, like grooves on vinyl.

  She tried to imagine someone coming out of the woods—Marco, Foley, or just a faceless male figure, who had either seen her at the Cavanaughs’ party and followed her or stumbled on her accidentally. She pictured the beach, no water to swim in, and tried to think where something might have happened. If she’d been here, on the rock, she’d have been bruised the next day, probably. And scratched up by the barnacles. Maybe up at the edge of the path, where the ground was softer? Maybe she went down to the rock after, in shock? And that’s when Marco saw her? Or . . .

  Nothing. Nothing was coming.

  God, get over it, Quinn! Just deal with it! Forgetting wasn’t going to change what had happened! Not knowing was worse than anything. Not knowing meant she was still ruining everything, that she was defective, that she was weak. Not only had she been victimized then, but she was too weak to remember now. She saw Preston Brown’s face, heard all of the people on the show talking about how damaged someone like her must be, remembered all of the comments on the articles, people talking about what a strange girl she’d been, how sad it was that there was something so very, very wrong with her.

  And as these destructive thoughts crashed into her brain, she found anger rising up inside her. Anger at everything. Anger at the stupid beach, at the pine trees and ocean, at the air, at herself. Anger at the scene that had stolen her memory and replaced it with fantasy. Why wasn’t this working? This was supposed to be it! This beach! It was supposed to hold the answer. This smell and sound and touch was supposed to take away the fake memory and bring back the real one.

  Because what was she supposed to do if it didn’t? What was she supposed to do, as the world out there concocted their stories about her and as someone out there knew what the answer was and wasn’t telling her? Because there was someone who knew. That was the one indisputable fact. Someone out there knew.

  Maybe it was Marco. Maybe the paternity test would prove it. But maybe not. And even if it did, she wanted the memory. She wanted to remember what really happened, not have someone tell her. She wanted to know it, really know it, inside of herself. No matter how ugly it was.

  She stood and closed her eyes and screamed as loudly as possible. All her anger and frustration roared out of her, waking sleeping crabs and seals and even mussels in their shells. And once she started, she couldn’t stop. She screamed and screamed, hoping that it was being heard wherever memory was kept.

  When her throat hurt and she’d emptied herself out, she opened her eyes and was momentarily disoriented. The tide seemed noticeably closer than when she’d looked before. Closer than it should be. Had she been standing here long enough for it to move that much? She really was losing her mind. She watched the small waves washing toward her and imagined walking out into it and never stopping. Because what was she supposed to do now? She was so tired. Deathly tired. She wanted to walk out and sink, sink, sink to the bottom.

  Then it occurred to her: That’s what her dreams were telling her to do, weren’t they? The dreams were telling her to give up, to find peace at the bottom of the ocean, just like her grandmother had. Because peace wasn’t going to come to her on land. Underwater was where she’d be safe, like her father said in the dreams. That’s why it was so beautiful down there. Because it was away from all of this.

  The water was closer; the tide was rushing in. A wave poured up the beach. The young Deeps, coming to explore.

  All of a sudden, Quinn’s body seized up. Her pulse rocketed and her whole body switched to flight mode. She tried to breathe through it, but anxiety gripped every cell and no, she couldn’t be here. She couldn’t be here. If she stayed here, she might do something. Something might happen. Her skin was twitching and she was hyperventilating and couldn’t stay one moment longer. She turned and ran.

  Her mother arrived on the late morning ferry the next day, after flying to Portland and renting a car so Gabe could drive up later. He had some meeting that he couldn’t miss or reschedule and would also be the one to drop off Lydia at a friend’s house in Westchester, where she would stay for the nights he and Katherine were away. Ben drove onto the same ferryboat that Katherine arrived on, to go the opposite direction across the water, heading back down to the city. Quinn felt guilt as deep as the Mariana Trench telling Ben and her mother that nothing had become any clearer during her visit to the beach. She’d made such a production of coming here, with all her assurances that it was going to give them the answers.

  After she and her mother got home from the ferry landing, she sat in one of the old Adirondack chairs on the screened-in porch, bundled in coat and hat. She stared out at the slices of ocean interspersed between trees in front of the house. She didn’t trust herself to go back to the beach, even though she wanted to. Its depths had beckoned last night in her dreams, and now when she was awake, too—she heard her name being called with every roar of a wave. She didn’t know if she’d be able to resist walking straight out into the water and never coming back.

  SAMUEL FERRIS

  The bus seat vibrated under Samuel’s thighs. Motion. Finally. There’d been some problem with the door, and it seemed like they might be stuck longer in Boston. But God had fixed it.

  Samuel had been angry when the Virgin was taken away; now he knew the challenge would make it even better when they were with her again. Getting to prove their worth. That was God’s plan, obviously. Show her they couldn’t be shoved aside. Not after all the time they’d put in. All the crappy hours standing out there getting nothing. Not to mention the four-hour bus ride to Boston at six this morning, and now this four-and-a-half-hour ride to the ferry terminal in Maine. Bet the Three Wise Men had it easier than this, he thought.

  Samuel didn’t have a phone. Pissed him off not to be involved in the planning. The two guys sitting across the aisle from him were figuring the route they’d take once they got to the island. Samuel made them pass it over and show him the map. The Virgin’s house was at the end of a long drive, the closest n
eighbors something like half a mile away. That was good. Space to camp near the house.

  There’d be books written about this, Samuel was sure. A new Bible. And Samuel Ferris was damned if he wouldn’t be in it.

  QUINN

  “I can’t figure out where anything is,” Katherine muttered, opening and closing the painted teal cabinets in the kitchen area. “I know we left stuff, like a nice food processor and china . . .”

  “There were renters here for nine years,” Quinn said. “Maybe stuff broke.” She was on the sofa, wrapped in her satiny blue comforter, with a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude in her hand but not really reading.

  “Ah!” her mother said. “That’s it.”

  She went into her bedroom for a moment, and when she came back out, she had her set of keys to the house. Fumbling a bit, she unlocked the triangular storage space under the stairs. “We thought we’d be coming back in the summers,” she explained to Quinn. “So we stored some of our stuff we didn’t want them using under here.” She ducked through the low door and emerged with a cardboard box.

  Quinn stood up, letting the slippery duvet slide off her onto the couch, and padded over to her mother. She poked her head into the dark storage area. It smelled of musty pine and mildew. Behind some loose stuff, like a lamp and a tall, wood-framed mirror, there were several other stacked boxes.

  “What else is in here?” Quinn said, wondering if there would be things from her childhood, not sure whether she’d want to go through them if there were. “More stuff you left?”

  “Stuff of your grandmother’s that we packed up when we first moved in. Books, mostly, I think. Probably stuff we should have just thrown away, but you know that’s not my strong suit.”