by James, Ella
Then I go into the kitchen, open the cutlery drawer. They’re there on the countertop, though—knives encased in a wood block. I choose a chef’s knife and an apple. Wash the apple. Wash my arm. I prop it on the counter, palm up. Shut my eyes as I run the tip over the soft hump of my veins. Median cubital…cephalic. Old friends.
I get a good, deep breath just feeling that slight sting. I can’t put it where I want it, though—not if I want to wear short sleeves when I help dig trenches for the cable.
I roll up my shirt sleeve to the shoulder. My heart pounds. My lungs lock up.
With my fingers bent around the blade and the tip held at a slight angle, I press down, take a deep, slow breath, and draw a line around the inside of my bicep. The release is not unlike what Finley’s hands did for me. In the rush I get right after, I laugh. Didn’t even check for gauze…
But she’s got some. I wrap it. Think of taking Advil for the joint pain, then decide I want to feel it.
I clean the knife off. Slide it back into the block. Then I use the paring knife to peel the apple.
I like apples.
I like cigarettes.
I put my boots back on and head into the dark.
* * *
Finley
“And then?”
“And then he kissed me!” Holly grins like a naughty child, and I stop breathing—and walking—on the right side of Upper Lane.
“Did he really?” I ask when I can breathe.
Baby presses against my legs, reminding me I still possess them.
Holly nods, still smiling smugly.
“He kissed you on the lips?” The gray clouds tilt.
“Well, no—not on the lips of course. How forward would that be? His mouth was here…” She points to her forehead, and I begin to burn.
“As you were dancing?”
She nods, red lips still upturned smugly. “As we were dancing.”
Holly whirls and skips ahead of me, her yellow skirt bouncing around her lean legs. “Homer Carnegie kissed me,” she sing-songs.
We’re en route to the Brauns’ cottage, so I’ve no choice but to follow along behind her. “And you were drinking liquor?”
“Just a bit.” She grins over her shoulder. “Dot saw, too. You should have seen her green eyes.”
Holly’s smirk makes me feel as if I’m running out of air. I tug at my collar.
“Why…would he be doing that?” It’s asked more to myself than her.
“Well, he is an athlete,” she says, “but I’ve heard athletes can be quite unruly off the field. Maura told Blair and me that she looked him up just weeks ago back on the café computer and the world wide web still painted him as quite the bad boy.”
Holly gives a little growl, complete with cat-scratch miming. “Blair danced with him near as much as I did. Little trollop. She’s so twiggy, though, and all the acne…” Holly shrugs, and I gape at her back.
“I can’t believe you said that.”
“Well I’m only speaking truth! She’s lovely on the inside, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Not for dancing…”
I’d quite like to strangle Holly.
My new…ignited feeling doesn’t leave me. Not as we wash the sore on Mr. Braun’s foot nor as we pretend to savor Mrs. Braun’s flavorless porridge. Nor when we walk back to the clinic, where we work our way through several more appointments. Holly stands as my assistant at times. Today she offered. I know why now.
When she leaves at four-thirty to “get a soak” in preparation for the night’s festivities, I drop into a crouch and rub Baby around her soft ears.
“Everything is horrid. Simply horrid,” I whisper against her fluff.
Declan never dropped by the clinic on that first day we were back. The next morning, I had planned to seek him out after I stopped at the warehouse to get a bit more washing soap. There I heard Tad Price and Weston Green discussing how they’d spent time at the bar with “Homer.” Maura laughed behind the counter, revealing she was there as well.
“Some of us were there much later than you teenieboppers,” she said, haughty. “Mr. Brenton didn’t lock the door till half past two. He’s quite enamored with our new friend, much as anyone. He had Homer signing cards.”
I left the depot with a sinking feeling, but that didn’t stop me seeking him out. I’m the fill-in for Doctor, therefore it’s my duty to check up on Declan. I found his green Land Rover parked at Mrs. White’s and later heard he’d taken an interest in her orchids. After that, he and Mayor Acton walked the village, charting a course for the new cable. I lost track of him during a house call, but someone said he’d been invited to supper with Rachel’s older sister and her husband, Steven, the village electrician.
The next day, Monday, the crew began digging trenches right at dawn and worked quite late. That was the first night Holly saw him at the bar, although I suppose he might have gone before.
Yesterday, I walked over to the digging site—they’re moving slowly along Lower Lane—and delivered some of the goodies people baked for me. I’ll never eat them all. Some of the men thanked me, but Declan scarcely looked up.
Now, having heard what Holly reported, I feel…horrid. There’s no other word. My throat aches. I feel ill at ease in my own skin.
When the phone rings, I rush over to it. I don’t feel the normal flare of dread accompanying calls that come when Doctor’s gone, because there’s dread inside my heart already.
I answer, and who is it but the man himself?
“Finley. How are you?”
“I’m quite well. How are you?”
“Head above water,” he says. “Went on a short trip, so I’ve been away the last two days. I had my mobile phone of course.”
“I didn’t call.”
“How are you faring? How is everything?” He means the patients.
“Everyone is well enough. Mr. Braun has got another foot sore. Holly helped me irrigate it.”
“Is there pus?”
“Not much at all. We caught it early, and I applied the Bacitracin.”
“Very well then.” There’s a pause in which my senses prickle. Then he says, in low tones, “What of our Homer?”
I swallow at his use of the word our. “Honestly…I don’t quite know. I asked him to the clinic for a check-up and he never dropped in.”
Static cracks between us. I imagine a line stretching over the ocean. “Wonder if he’s got something from somewhere else.”
“Something?” I ask.
“A sort of painkiller. Tell me there was nothing at your Gammy’s house.”
“Of course not. Why would there be? I’d have moved it here if there had been.”
“At least you’ve some sense.”
I swallow my retort. It’s always better not to anger Doctor.
“Is he draining the bar dry?”
“I’m not sure. I don’t go there, you know.”
“Yes, but have you ears?”
I grit my teeth. “I’ve not heard that. That he’s draining it dry.”
“But is he going?”
“That I have heard.”
“Well, it makes a bit of sense, then. If he doesn’t want a check-up, you can’t force him. Let him be.”
“I will.”
We talk a bit more before someone knocks on the door. It’s a fine excuse to end the call. I find Anna on the porch, holding a foil-covered plate, wearing a tired smile.
“Give me refuge. Kayti won’t stop wailing. I had to get out or I’d have gone mad.” She holds the plate out. “I made friendship bread. And iced it.”
She gives me a wry smile, and I tug her inside. “It’s cold and wet out. Take off your coat and sit a bit. We’ll walk over—” I gesture to the adjoining house— “and I’ll make you some chamomile with sugar,” I say, teasing her in return for her icing jab.
“We need our sugar,” she agrees. “It’s all that keeps me going some days.”
She leans down to stroke Baby. When she stands back up, she
tilts her head, giving me a curious look. “You look like you need the icing, love. Why aren’t you eating?”
“Oh, sod off, I’m eating plenty.”
“You’re a wretched liar.”
“You’re just wretched.”
We step through the door into the house. Baby’s hooves click on the hardwood floor behind us. Of all the homes here on the island, only Doctor’s has hardwood. The rest have mostly cement flooring. I suppose the wood is meant to lure physicians. I find the clicking sound of it a bit unpleasant.
I fill the teapot and Anna slumps down at the kitchen table. She runs her hand over a braided placemat. “I like these. Where did they come from?”
“Gammy’s. I thought they added a bit of something.”
“Certainly. Makes the place more homey.” She sighs. “Tell me, Finley. Tell me what’s the matter. I can see it plainly.”
I set the teapot on the stove, glad for an excuse to put my back to her. “Nothing is.”
“You’ve had quite a week. Are you terribly tired?” When I turn around, her lovely Anna face is soft. “Are you lonely? Was it very frightening to be below the ground? You never really told me.”
My eyes fill with tears, and Anna rushes up to hug me. “Oh, I’m sorry, dearie.”
I weep only for a moment. When she pulls away, her freckled face is filled with understanding. “It makes perfect sense that it…reminded you.”
I nod and swallow, staring at the floor.
“It’s good at least you weren’t alone. Freddy helped with the digging today and said Declan is a humble, kind man. Not at all like what you might imagine.”
I nod.
“Have you spoken much with him? Are you two dear friends now?”
I press my lips together and shrug. I have to summon all my courage to lie compellingly to Anna. “We are friends, I would say. It was good to have him with me. He was always kind and understanding, just as Freddy said.”
“I’m so glad of that. I suppose you heard about the dinner tomorrow?”
“Come again?”
“They’re doing a dinner for you—for the two of you. Celebratory. It’s at the Burger Joint.” Anna laughs, and I realize I’m scowling.
“Don’t you want to tell the story one more time?” She grins. “About the Atkins bars and how you dug fair Declan out?”
“I didn’t dig him out.”
She shrugs. “That’s what he told Freddy. We all know you can be overmodest. At times,” she teases.
“Do you think I ought to go?”
Anna chortles as she uncovers the plate she brought. “You’ll have to at least stop in, you goose. You can sit with Freddy and me. Holly’s working on the setup, and you can guess where she’s seating herself.”
I groan, and Anna makes a sympathetic face. “I know that’s got to gnaw at you a bit. It’s understandable.”
I nod once. I’ve confided in Anna about my feelings regarding Declan’s father and my mother. The strangeness of knowing Mum was telling me Prince Declan stories just before he and his father arrived. And she’d been writing letters to Charles Carnegie. It’s quite difficult to name the feeling it brings me. I suppose it’s one of…fate. Making me think of the oddness of it. If they’d survived the outing on the boat, would I have grown up in America?
I can’t put my thoughts into words, so I nod again. “I can’t imagine losing Holly or Dot,” I say softly.
“I can’t imagine being swept away.” She smiles, a bit dreamy, and I think of the seething ocean—not of Declan—as I say, “I wouldn’t want to be.”
I make Anna’s tea, and we eat too much friendship bread. She heads home a bit after nine, and I tuck in early, falling right away into a dream in which I’m locked inside the clinic, pacing the wide room alone as my hair grows down past my backside and turns gray. Doctor grabs my backside, his hand squeezing.
Sometime after midnight, noise breaks through the dreaming. I open my eyes to find Baby curled up on the rug beside the bed. As I sink back into dreamland, I hear it once more: the sound of someone knocking. A peek out the door reveals an empty stoop.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Declan
“So how was she?”
I stop with my foot on the shovel and look across the trench at Mark. He’s got his cap off, re-tying the red bandana he wears as a sweatband underneath.
“How was who?” I get another scoop of dirt and toss it over my shoulder.
“Oh, you know…the doctor’s lady.”
I frown. “Finley?”
He nods, fitting his cap back over the bandana. He goes back to digging on his side. I look up and down the trench. With the island’s only mechanical digger broken, we’ve spread out, one person digging every four or five feet on opposite sides of the trench.
“What’re you getting at?” I ask quietly, because I don’t want to draw more eyes and ears.
He gives a chuckle, as if he knows my uncouth implication. “I’m asking how is she. Did she give an ordinary sort of appearance? I only ask because the missus and I are seldom ill, and so I’ve never heard her speak.”
I hold my breath a second, trying not to let frustration cross my face. Sometimes it’s hard to understand the thick Tristanian accent, and I’ve got a searing headache. “I’m not sure I get it, man.”
“Finley—she’s the mute.”
“What?”
He smiles. “Ahh, so then you hadn’t heard. I suppose I’ve answered my own question.” He looks satisfied and resumes digging.
I dig for another minute while my head throbs and my body does that shit where it feels like it’s flickering. Then I can’t help myself. “Mark—what did you say?”
He looks up. “What part then? Ms. White Coat being mute?”
“You said mute?”
“Not anymore of course. That’s been a few years past. Before her time in the schoolhouse ended, Doctor arrived, she got helping at the clinic, and she resumed speaking. When she was a younger girl, she didn’t speak. I don’t suppose she told you.”
My throat tightens. “No.” I keep digging, harder now. I wrap my hand around the shovel’s handle till my knuckles ache. “She didn’t speak at all?” I ask him tightly.
“It was the queerest thing. Her parents—they both passed on in sort of tragic fashion. Drowned with her there in the boat when she was just a wee one. Though I suppose your father and you were here visiting when that went on. I remember that. Do you?”
I nod. “I was six, so I remember some of it.”
“When we got her back, she wasn’t right up there.” He points to his head, and my stomach does a slow roll.
“What do you mean?”
He throws some dirt over his shoulder. “Didn’t speak a word for I don’t know how long, suppose near ten years.”
Ten years.
My hands shake so hard I can barely hold the shovel.
“So what, then one day she just…started talking?”
“Something like that. Her grandmother was a lovely woman. Helped her quite a bit. I’ve heard she passes as quite ordinary now, but I’ve never spoken to her. Wondered if she had a voice at all.”
“She has a voice.” His bushy brows lift, and I realize my tone was too sharp. I force a laugh to cover for it. “Trust me on that.”
That gets me a chuckle. “All the woe-men do.”
I feign another laugh and dig as fast and hard as I can. By lunchtime, I’ve run through all the dirt in my path. I pull my jeans off, revealing running shorts, and swap my boots for Nike sneaks.
“Be back,” I tell the group’s de facto leader as I pass him.
He gives me a thumbs up, and I’m gone. We’re at the Patches side of Lower Lane, and this time, I take off out that way. Other days, I’ve run up to the cottage, beyond a small plateau on top of the cliffs that rise up just behind it, past the hardened black lava field—a relic from the 1961 eruption—and toward the ponds. I’ve done that run a few times, and I know I can make it back to the
trench spot inside an hour.
Today, though, I don’t want to pass the clinic on the other side of Lower Lane, so I run along the lonely road that points toward the Patches. On my right, the ocean swirls and simmers like a vat of acid. Overhead, the thin clouds shift. Everything is cast in pale green light.
I run until my toes feel numb and the air seems to tremble. My heart hammers like it might explode behind my ribs. On the way back toward the village, I get sick beside some rocks. Small price to pay for a clear mind.
* * *
Using the shovel makes my shoulder hurt, which keeps my detox dick down. But the drive home gets me every fucking time. The car bounces over the rocky road, getting me half hard. The walk from the car to the cottage’s front door drags my boxer briefs over my head and shaft. Then I’m standing in the living room, sweaty and shaking from the long day, feeling weird and empty and not real, my dick ripping a hole in the briefs.
I’ve got a routine going. Kick off boots, get some water, limp back to the bathroom. By then I feel like I’m rolling with some blue diamond on board. Once, I almost blew before I got my pants off. Run the bathtub water, sink into the tub, and finally, I get a chance to squeeze it.
I run the water hot so it’ll burn and I’ll last longer. Never works. I squeeze my head and stroke my shaft. My fingers wander over my big, puffed-out balls, and that’s all I’m good for.
It’s intense. So much so, I don’t think much. There’s no time to work up fantasies. I imagine shoving inside a hot, slick pussy, but it’s just a pussy. Ghost pussy. Belongs to no one.
If I’m lucky, I’ll pass out for a few minutes. Slip into the water…slip into a fifteen minute dream state. When it’s over, I feel rested. That’s where I am now. Fifteen minutes of good shut-eye is a game changer.
I climb out of the tub feeling more alert than I have all day. I dry off with one of the good-smelling towels and lie on her sweet-smelling bed and cover myself with the blankets she tucked around me that afternoon when we first got back. I just have to hold on for an hour, until it’s late enough to not stick out for being at the bar.
