We all got very merry over dinner, and I advised Hugh and Helga to go ahead, live together, take us as their ideal couple if they wanted to because that’s exactly what we were, we were even thinking of getting married as soon as things calmed down a little bit. James beamed at me, his dark eyes soft with contentment. I drank enough wine so that the last leap of that fish no longer haunted me, I no longer even thought about it. It was James who said it: Who can be perfect in an imperfect world?
It’s early summer when Emile and I take Denis to Plover Island. My parents have never gotten rid of the cabin: in order to sell it, they would have had to talk about it, and they never do—at least, my father never does. Every year, my mother writes a check for the taxes on the place. I told her once that I was glad they still owned it, that it seemed to me a sort of memorial to Robbie—I didn’t like the idea of selling it to some jolly family who would spruce it up and have good times there. My mother just looked at me.
No one but seagulls, as far as I know, has been there in the nearly eight years since Robbie shot himself.
“It’s ridiculous,” Emile has been saying almost since we were married. “There’s this incredibly beautiful island, your family actually owns a piece of it, and nobody ever goes there.”
He won’t let it be. He’s always trying to convince me of things, most of them outrageous. We should move to France, we should buy the red MG convertible he saw at an auto show, we should start looking now for a horse farm in Virginia to possibly retire to someday.
This is not outrageous, Emile says. It makes sense. Why should we pay so much for vacations? We shell out money to go to Vermont for a week every summer, or to the Cape, and here’s Plover Island for free. He appreciates what we’ve all been through, he can even understand why my parents don’t want to set foot in the place—but why couldn’t we just go up for a weekend? Yes, the memories might be disturbing, it would be a sad pilgrimage, he can see that. But eight years have gone by, and he’ll be with me, and little Denis would love it so much.
“We’ll exorcise all the ghosts, Christine,” he says to me. “It will do you good to face this.”
He says these things to me over and over, and finally we drive up the day after Denis’s day-care center closes for the summer. A man named Tom, from the marina in Camden, takes us to the island in his outboard. Emile talks about getting a boat, he asks Tom’s advice, he tries to sound knowledgeable. There is a ferry, Tom tells us, and if we intend to become regulars we can arrange for it to make stops until we get ourselves a boat. I remember the ferry from the time my mother and I retreated to the motel; it must have run more regularly then. I tell Tom the story, and he laughs, slapping his thigh with his huge red hand. (Denis watches him, slaps his own skinny little thigh.) Tom tells us about the other people who live on the island—mostly old-timers who have been coming there for years. He says nothing about our place, the tragedy, though he must be aware of it.
“First time up here for me and the boy,” Emile says. “And my wife’s only been here once, years ago.”
“Twice, actually.”
“Twice?” He gives me a look. I stare down into the ridged green water. I wonder if, later, or tomorrow, he’ll ask me to explain—if he cares enough to do that. I wonder what I would say.
Denis puts out his hand and laughs when the icy spray soaks his whole arm, his sleeve.
The island seems new to me: I’m used to the tamer coast of Connecticut, the Sound. I’ve forgotten what real ocean is like, the rocky wildness of it. The day is overcast, rain threatening, and the cold, choppy sea that exhilarates Denis frightens me. Even the cabin seems like a wild place, something made by nature—a pile of driftwood thrown up by the waves. Tom says, “I’ll see you folks tomorrow, I should be getting here around three,” and we wave at him from the dock, Emile holding Denis up so he can watch the boat become a speck in the distance.
“I like Tom,” Denis says.
“Someday we’ll have a boat just like his,” Emile tells him. “Maybe bigger.” I imagine the boat replacing the MG and the apartment in Paris.
He agrees to approach the cabin first. Denis and I wait out on the rocks, watching the sea birds gather on the beach below us. Denis asks me what they are. I tell him I don’t know. Plovers, maybe. In his solemn, scholarly way, he says, “I want to find out.” My son has immediately adopted the place, and I try to imagine coming here summer after summer—becoming regulars. The desolation seems immutable: can we really keep it at bay with lamps and lawn chairs? I turn my back to the cabin, and to the frightening immensity beyond it, and I keep my eyes on the mainland where I can see a motel sign, the spire of a church, the marina with its litter of boats.
Emile shouts from the cabin, beckons us with his arm. “It’s okay,” he says when we reach him—meaning that there is nothing I need to fear, no traces of Robbie. We go in: dust and mildew and mouse droppings. The spider webs that drape the windows and hang from the ceilings are delicately beautiful in the light. The windows have stayed intact, and there is surprisingly little damage. Someone has cleaned up—maybe the police, or maybe time has kindly erased whatever Robbie left behind: food, bloodstains, books, the stink of a rotting corpse.
In the doorway, Emile looks questioningly into my eyes.
“I’m all right,” I tell him.
“You sound surprised.”
“I dreaded this. I thought it would be horrible. But it’s fine, I have almost no memory of this place. It’s good to be here.” I have to force myself to say that. It’s not entirely true. But inside is, strangely, better than outside.
“I shouldn’t have made you come.” It’s his way, to get what he wants and then apologize and be extra nice. “Forgive me,” he says. “I really wanted to see it. And it’s what I expected, it’s wonderful. Look at Denis, he loves it already.” He hugs me. “And it’s just for this one night. Just check it out.”
We are planning to sleep on the island, then continue by car across the state of Maine and into Quebec where Denis can hear French spoken.
“You’re sure it’s okay?”
“I’m sure.”
We have brought a bag of cleaning supplies, and we clean. Denis would prefer to be outside in the wind, picking up thumbnail shells on the beach or exploring the jagged shelf of rock that extends from the cabin door down to the dock. But we keep him with us, and he amuses himself knocking down cobwebs with the toy broom we brought for him. He has no fear of anything—spiders, rocks, the ocean rolling up to the shore, the overcast sky. We have to watch him every minute.
The cabin is small, just two rooms divided by a flimsy partition. There is no plumbing and no outhouse, but we find some dishes and glasses neatly put away in a mouseproof metal box, and a chamberpot in a corner of the far room. (Denis is enchanted with the idea of a chamberpot, and immediately piddles, then toddles outside to empty it under a prickly bush we don’t know the name of.) There are two camp chairs, an ancient wicker armchair, a wooden stool, a stand with a drawer in it, a rickety table with mouse-gnawed legs, and a crude bookcase probably made by Uncle Bill. There are no books in it. In the drawer of the stand, Denis finds a rabbit’s foot: the fur has moldered away except for one white tuft, and what’s left are the long bones of the foot, as crisp and dainty as the hand of an elegant doll.
When darkness approaches, the wind dies down and a belated red sun comes out. The air warms up. We have a picnic on the beach: bread, cheese, salami. Emile and I have wine. From here, none of the cottages are visible. The beach is clean and windswept, but it seems creepy to me, not because of Robbie but because of the isolation: we have seen no other people, no boats. The sky presses down. The sun makes a path like fire across the water. The scene suggests a movie to me: something coming up out of the water, some evil presence.
I can almost, almost understand why Robbie chose this particular place to do what he did.
Denis runs until he’s exhausted, and then he asks questions: How did the mice get here? Can we
build a lookout in that big tree? How much did Tom’s boat cost? Why do we have to put in a toilet? What are the birds doing now? What’s this? What’s that?
We watch the sun begin to set behind the church steeple and the motels. Denis can hardly stay awake long enough to use the chamber pot again. Long before dark, we put him to sleep in his Big Bird sleeping bag. He passes out instantly, and Emile and I make love in the outer room. For a while, we’re fond of each other (this is a feeling that comes and goes), and we fall asleep in each other’s arms.
I dream of water, of going under again and again, of green darkness and no air, of water invading my lungs and eyes and veins, and I wake up screaming.
Dear Maman,
By now you must be knowing the Yale news. This is certainly super! Although it is hard to believe that I will be really living in America, only a few five or six months away from now. It will be good to be in your city, which Papa has told me is not such a great city, but I have a feeling I will like it. How much crime and danger is there? Papa says these are excessive. However, these are not the kinds of things I consider worries. The Yale photos make it look very beautiful. Do you have further Yale photos besides the ones they send? I like very much to see more, I like to look at my new home. Maman, I look forward to seeing you so much, and I am told the Yale band is a very good one, a very funny place to be in …
I told James I was sick of coming home on the late train. I told him I might even find a way to stay overnight sometimes. I told him that I needed to be more adventurous. I told him that if I were ever going to make it as a painter I needed to be more in touch with what other painters were doing. I told him my visits to the museums and galleries gave me more energy to paint. I told him I’d been stuck out in the boonies too long.
He asked me, “Are you having an affair with that fucking Drescher?”
Pierce picks up a sturdy old picnic basket at a junk shop in Manlius, and we take it with us up to Plover Island. Charlie is supposed to go too, but his grandfather has died and he has to be home with his family, so it’s just Pierce and Robbie and me in Pierce’s VW.
Charlie and Pierce are rooming together in New Haven, thinking about joining the Peace Corps or hitchhiking through Europe. Pierce is between jobs, and he’s been staying with us in Jamesville that summer for a couple of weeks, working at the motel and refusing to take any salary—a fact that almost succeeds in impressing my father, who is not an easy man to impress.
When we pull out of the driveway, Dad says, “Have fun, kids. I wish I was going with you,” and he punches Robbie on the arm. “We’ll have to get up there again before the end of the summer, you and me.”
Robbie says, “Sure, Dad. Why not?”
In the picnic basket Pierce has packed a fifth of vodka, a fifth of tequila, a small plastic bag of marijuana, and a hash pipe.
Pierce drinks a lot of vodka in the car. We play Botticelli, and when Pierce gets drunk enough he sings “Bull Cow Blues” and “You Can’t Tell the Difference After Dark” and “Please Warm My Weiner.” He buys me the wind-up penguin in a souvenir shop in Ogunquit when we stop for food. We sit in a diner where the penguin keeps walking off the tabletop and Robbie and I try to force Pierce to drink black coffee. Pierce pulls over outside Portland and tells me I’d better drive. In the back seat, Robbie sits slumped with his eyes half-closed, smoking my cigarettes and trying not to show how relieved he is.
We’ve missed the last ferry, and we have to pay a preppy couple at the marina ten dollars to let us leave the car there and then take us out to the island. They bitch all the way about what a favor they’re doing us, and about how some kids trashed somebody’s summer place on one of the other islands. Robbie tries to make conversation with them. Pierce sits in silence, smoking, looking bored and gloomy.
The island is a dark, angular shape against a dark sky. When we arrive, there is very little light left. All three of us stumble getting out of the boat, and end up soaked to the knees. The mosquitoes are fierce, and we’re too loaded down with bags and duffels to swat at them.
But we cheer up when we get to the cabin. It’s in good shape. Since our disastrous family trip, my father and Robbie have been there several times, and they have left lanterns, a charcoal grill and a bag of briquettes, a couple of cheap aluminum lawn chairs, some cushions, an L. L. Bean catalog, and a book called A Guide to the Atlantic Seacoast. There is a jug of bottled water, enough beef jerky for an army, and a roll of toilet paper for each chamber pot.
Pierce looks around with approval and says, “What a dump! What movie is that from?”—which is roughly the first line from Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in which he once almost got the part of George.
Robbie is glad to be out of Pierce’s car, and he laughs at all his jokes. We have brought steaks, which we cook on the grill by the light of two kerosene lanterns. It takes forever, and by the time they’re ready we are almost too tired to eat. We go inside, and while Robbie goes back out for his duffel, Pierce suddenly, out of the blue, kisses me. We would share a sleeping bag if Robbie wasn’t there; that, at least, is what we say, standing there half asleep with our arms around each other. “We’re doomed never to make it,” Pierce says.
“We haven’t really tried all that hard,” I point out.
“Maybe we think about it too much,” Pierce says.
This is one of those remarks I will mull over for a long time: I will pull it apart and analyze it endlessly before I figure out that it really doesn’t mean much.
I put my head on his shoulder. He smells like kerosene and charcoal smoke.
The next day I walk around the island sketching while Pierce and Robbie mess around: they’re like little boys, they build a fort out of driftwood, they try to identify different kinds of seaweed with the guidebook, they catch crabs and then don’t know what to do with them. I meet another artist on my walk, a woman in a smock with an easel set up on a rocky point. She and I smile shyly but don’t speak. I meet a couple of red-faced old men who tell me they’re brothers, both retired, both widowed, they spend every summer on the island. They look like fishermen, but one was a pharmacist and the other an insurance executive. The pharmacist gives me three plums.
For lunch we have plums and beef jerky and cold canned stew and tequila. We sit in the hot sun on the rocky, sandy beach. Robbie dozes off, and I begin doing drawings of the patterns the seaweed makes drying on the sand. Pierce gets bored and goes inside for the picnic basket. He takes out the pipe, but neither of us is in the mood, and then he takes out a paper bag, and inside it is the .38, wrapped in a red bandanna.
I feel no fear, we’ve been friends so long, but the gun makes me uneasy. He has changed since college. His life is no longer going well. For years, he got what he wanted, or nearly: Oberlin instead of Harvard, B’s instead of A’s—Horatio instead of Hamlet, perhaps, but still a great part. Now he has to struggle, and somewhere he has lost the will.
“Why do you have that, Pierce?” I ask him.
“For protection in the big bad city.” He gives me the sly look, narrowing his eyes against the sun. He ties the red bandana around his head. “It’s full of bad guys,” he says. “Me among them.”
“This isn’t the big bad city. You really didn’t have to bring that damn thing.”
“I didn’t like leaving it behind,” he says. “This damn thing cost me half a week’s pay.” He raises the gun and points at a seagull posing on a rock. “Ka-boom, little guy.”
“Pierce. Please.”
Robbie wakes up as Pierce is aiming at another gull. “Jesus Christ,” he says, and looks at me: your friend, where did you get this jerk.
“Relax,” Pierce says. “It’s not loaded. I’m not entirely crazy.”
“Just don’t aim that fucking thing at me,” Robbie says.
Pierce aims it at him and says, “Ka-boom.”
It’s not a good place for swimming. The water is deep and clear green, but the rocks are brutal except around the bend, and over there the seawe
ed is thick and the water full of crabs. Robbie and I are used to our tame little backyard pond. Pierce grew up on the coast, but he hates the water, hates slimy things and things that crawl. We decide not to bother going in. We sit on the warm rocks, letting the water cool our feet, and eventually we get out the marijuana and smoke it in Pierce’s little clay pipe. The sun gets lower in the sky. We will stay one more night, and then on Sunday morning the people from the marina will pick us up because the ferry doesn’t run on Sundays. “But you’ll have to wait until after church,” they said, looking with distaste at Robbie’s long hair, looking at me and imagining a drunken gang bang.
“People like that are what’s wrong with this country,” Pierce says. “People like that are what’s running it, that’s the scary part. You know what I mean? He looks at us and thinks: draft dodgers, punks, hippies. But catch that guy over in Vietnam charging up some hill with his M-1.”
“You’re not doing that either, buddy,” Robbie points out amiably.
“I’ve been lucky,” Pierce says. “But I’m not hiding out up here in America’s vacationland doing the holier-than-thou routine in my madras-plaid Bermuda shorts. What was this guy doing when we were marching on Washington? Painting the boat, man. Shopping for new deck shoes.”
I don’t point out that what Pierce and Charlie did in Washington was get stoned in the Georgetown apartment of one of our old college pals. “Don’t argue,” I say. “I don’t want anybody to argue.”
Pierce puts his arm around me, and we sit looking at the sky just beginning to get pink over the town back on shore. The windows of the buildings shine gold, the hills behind them are purple. The only sound is the surf’s gentle crash against the rocks, and us sucking on the pipe. I could stay there forever, much longer than the weekend. I think of telling Robbie I’d like to come up there with him and Dad next time, but it’s too much trouble to talk. Then Pierce says, “Let’s play a game.”
Vigil for a Stranger Page 12
