by Deb Caletti
It’s 4:45 P.M. in New Caledonia, eighteen hours ahead of Parrish Island. It’s almost like seeing into Henry North’s future.
Professor Weary sighs, satisfied. If he were the type to rub his hands together in glee, he’d do that, too, but it’s overkill. Now that the cyclone season is nearly over and the strong winds have stopped, a swim sounds nice. A swim before a lovely dinner of the leftover cassoulet with maybe a glass of wine. (Maybe? Who is he kidding.) The pool looks so inviting. In this hillside cottage with a view of the Coral Sea and Mont Dore, only the mynahs will see him in his swimsuit. He may be aging, but aren’t we all? In spite of everything, he’s fighting the good fight, damn it. He still tries to stay in great shape. Vanity is a curse.
Professor Weary drops his robe on the wooden deck of the pool. Birds twitter, as birds always do in Grande Terre. It is humid and warm. On Parrish, Isabelle climbs into the cool sheets that smell of her mother’s linen closet. She settles in to that complicated time before sleep, when competing thoughts crash and battle, when good sense and future mistakes fight each other using the jagged pieces of your sorry psyche. She tries to talk herself out of the everlasting thought of the overly responsible and anxiety-ridden—that she needs to pee again—as Professor Weary takes the plunge. This sounds like the title of a children’s book, which pleases him.
He pops up, slicks his hair back. He keeps it a little too long, long enough for one of those inadvisable yet somehow alluring ponytails streaked with gray, a concession to his younger self and the longed-for days of the past. After a few easy laps, he gets out and quickly wraps a towel around himself. He’s starving. It’s the exercise, and the excitement.
It’s the anticipation.
After these hard, hard years, this time of loss and heartbreak, his luck may be changing at long last. Henry North is on the move. He’s migrating. And while birds migrate to find better climates and avoid predators, they also change locations to feed and breed. Now Weary will just have to wait, which is the hard part. Wait and watch, just as he watches Grande Terre’s Corvus moneduloides.
Weary does not yet know about Isabelle, finally drowsing before the lurch that comes with dreams of falling. He is still only wondering who it will be—who Henry North will choose this time. If she’ll be a blonde, or another brunette. If she’ll be delicate, like Virginia, or more sturdy and broad, like Sarah. Either way, it’ll be tragic. Either way, it’ll be the thing he most wants, finally happening.
Chapter 3
On Isabelle’s desk—no, correct that, on her mother’s desk—there is a stack of death certificates. Who knew you’d have to order them practically in bulk? She never had to settle anyone’s estate before. Settle sounds like flannel pajamas and a cup of tea. Settle sounds like a permanent landing spot. All of these papers and bills and accounts feel more like a treacherous pile of tasks and questions building to a mountainous migraine.
She crunches a triangle of toast. Yes, a few moments before, she cut it on the neat diagonal. Triangle toast makes her feel like she’s in a hotel. You should take in every small pleasure, Isabelle believes, the first jab of a knife into peanut butter, warm laundry out of the dryer held against your face, new PJs. Life is rough enough without these little rewards.
She sips her coffee. After she “settles” the end of her mother’s life, she’ll have to focus on hers. The questions feel as stacked as that paperwork—what she wants, and where she wants it. Who to be, now that the plan’s changed. God, beginning again is exhausting. It’s unfair how many beginnings a life sometimes requires.
The view out that window is familiar, but even so, it compels her. After all this time, she’s still drawn to the curved bay of Point Perpetua, the lighthouse, and the waters of the sound. Orcas and porpoises have been leaving and coming back home here for hundreds of years. Right this minute, as she gazes outside, they’re slumbering beneath the smooth surface. The water is as still as a mirror, reflecting evergreen trees and the pewter sky of early hours. She’s slept through the morning crow commute, but no matter. Nature is still spread out before her, doing its astonishing business of eating and warring and procreating.
It’s quieter here than it is on the other side of the island. Over there, there’s the ferry terminal, and the seaplane landing strip, and the restaurants and shops of town. But here it’s almost dead silent. There’s the call of a gull, and a clock ticking downstairs, but that’s all. Tourists occasionally come to climb along the beach, but the wind gets cold and you need a sure step on the rocks. The sound waters are calm only in the bay. Beyond that, they are notoriously rough, rough enough for terrible old stories of shipwrecks. There are terrible old stories that took place on shore, too. Some years ago, a man shot himself out there by the lighthouse, and you can still see the blood on the rocks if you look close enough.
The fog is slowly clearing, a tidy fog metaphor. Isabelle brushes the crumbs from her lap, from the silk robe embroidered with a crane that she found in a box in her mother’s closet, a gift for Isabelle’s now-passed birthday, judging from the card inside. Happy 37th, Izzy! Well, she loves it, so thank you. The horrible undertow of grief Isabelle thought for sure was permanent has eased a little in recent days. Enough that she notices what else is on the desk, right next to the remnants of her mother’s life—that small piece of folded paper, the one with Henry North’s address on it. Remy’s house. One of Remy’s houses. Of course she knows which house it is. You grow up here, and you know every house. Clyde Belle lived with his wife there, before he walked down to the beach and put that gun to his head.
It doesn’t say some big, bad thing about the place. It’s not like Clyde Belle did it in the bedroom. Louella Belle, his wife, what a sweetheart, what a great woman—she stayed on for a while after, and then came the Greggory family with their two little daughters, and then that rich guy who lived alone with his guitars until Remy booted him out when he painted the porch black. Houses, like humans, have long histories, and they’re never all bad.
If she leans far enough over, Isabelle can see a corner of that house’s flat roof, and a sliver of its east side. It lies low and long, a mostly glass house, with a few salt-grayed shingles. After the rich musician, Remy started to get a little haphazard with her upkeep. She’s eighty, for God’s sake, she’s allowed. But people complain. Henry North should be careful out on that deck.
Enough! What’s gotten into her? She stops sneaking looks at that place, but honestly, this is not the first time she’s done it. There was that midnight peek to see if the light was still on in Clyde and Louella Belle’s old bedroom, too. After Evan, come on! It’s ridiculous. A little argument ensues in her head. Words get thrown around. The chorus says mean stuff, like What are you, one of those women who go from one relationship to the next? and Why did you even stay with Evan so long? A guy that doesn’t want to get married after six years is a guy that doesn’t want to get married, period and You shouldn’t trust yourself when it comes to men. It’s all the righteous and judgy things usually said by people with a different childhood than hers. People with well-adjusted, happily married parents, who grow up thinking that anyone who makes bad relationship choices is stupid and annoying besides, beyond comprehension, same as irritating third world inhabitants who just keep having more babies.
Wait—no.
She recognizes that tone. That particular taunting lilt, it’s her mother’s voice. Maggie, not dead after all; very much alive, in Isabelle’s head, anyway.
The voice shames her. Well, Maggie was good at that, whether with her words, her silence, or her unpredictable fury. A smacking hand is always shaming and never forgotten, just ask any family dog.
Isabelle stares at that desk, and for a moment, a weird moment, her blood pumps hard and she imagines setting the whole thing on fire. Or, God, smashing it to smithereens with a sledgehammer. Isabelle is a thoughtful, gentle person. She was a be-seen-and-not-heard child, a straight-A student, an English major! She has lovely flats in all colors, and swerves t
o avoid hitting animals already dead on the road. Her cleavage is demure; she has never worn a white bathing suit, after her mother’s warnings of what happens when they get wet. She has enough backbone to say no to band students collecting money for foreign trips she herself has never been on, but she still feels guilty about it. And she had enough backbone to hire a tough lawyer for her divorce, which only meant she paid a lot of money to get her half of the furniture. It means something to her to be a good person in the world, so she overlooks cranky old people who say biting things, and she never glares at screaming children in grocery stores the way her mother would. She did not slash Evan’s tires or write him a hundred furious emails. There was some raw weeping alone in the car after her solo appearance in court, but luckily, she had that handy package of Kleenex that she keeps in her purse for emergencies.
And yet lately…lately. Offshore currents of anger have been appearing in her own distant weather system. They feel like a haboob, a mistral, a monsoon, mysterious and sudden storms of dust, wind, or water. The spinning cloud of white on the map is far off. Possibly, it will change direction entirely, not hit the shore at all. Still, something is building out there. It’s not just Evan, and the ways her trust was splattered. It’s every Evan in the world, and every superior Nordstrom saleswoman, and every creepy guy who hits on her, and every parent she sees gripping a child’s arm too hard. It feels like her heart or her soul or some other unknown piece of her is rumbling, coming loose. Maybe she’s just stuck in the fury part of grief, or maybe, now that her mother is dead, she can finally strike a match without bending ten of them first.
—
She’s on her way to Island Air when she sees him, this stranger who’s been making the occasional appearance in her head. There he is—right by the side of the road, off of Deception Loop. This is how it generally works on an island this size. A couple flies in from Canada, and you see them on the weekend in the Front Street Market choosing a bottle of wine. You welcome a young family, and there they are at Honey B’s Bakery, ordering croissants and hot chocolate, or at the beach, hunched and shivering because they imagined California. Now, here’s Henry North. He’s standing in front of an old Thunderbird with the hood up, looking inside at the engine as if he’s started the surgery but doesn’t know where to go from here.
Isabelle was never late for work at Evergreen Publishing in Seattle, where she used to sift through submissions and handle difficult authors and proof manuscripts about boat building and bird watching and the Northwest’s best hikes. But she can be late now. She pulls over.
That Thunderbird…She’d laugh, but it wouldn’t be nice.
Isabelle’s tires crunch in the gravel. She parks, gets out.
“Need help?”
“I thought that was you.” Henry North is casually dressed this morning. He wears a nice-fitting pair of jeans and a soft, tucked-in T-shirt. The running shoes are clean enough that they might be newly bought. He looks relaxed, in spite of the car trouble. It makes him seem familiar.
“Don’t tell me you bought that from Kale Kramer.”
“I did. There was a sign in—”
“The window of Boss Donuts.”
“The window of Boss Donuts,” he says. “I’ve been had?”
“You and, like, a hundred other people.”
“Shit.”
“I think he buys it back from Ron at the tow truck place for a case of beer.” Kale Kramer was a sleaze in high school, and he’s still a sleaze. “It’s not specifically illegal. The police have been trying for years to catch him doing something they can actually arrest him for, but…” She gestures with a flat hand, scooting it beneath an imagined fence.
“He slips under the radar.”
“He slips under the radar. And, wait. Police? What am I saying? We basically have Tiny Policeman, who’s five-foot-five, and a couple of deputies. Welcome to Parrish?”
“Oh, wow.” Henry runs his hand through his hair. “I thought it was too good of a deal.”
“How much did you give him?”
“I shouldn’t even tell you. Two hundred?”
“That’s it? Two hundred? I think he usually asks five,” Isabelle says. “My mother always said you get what you pay for.”
“Guilty,” he says, and holds up his hands. “I thought it was a steal. And I was right.” He laughs. She sees a flash of a filling, from the time they used to be silver. She wonders how old he is. Older than her by a good five or ten years, which she admits she finds attractive, especially after Evan, the man-child. Isabelle likely has mother issues and father issues, and if she had any siblings, she’d probably have issues with them, too. Honestly, who doesn’t?
He folds his arms, appraising the situation. “I guess I’m too trusting.”
“It was a good-looking car in 1986,” she says.
“You’re right,” he says and sighs. “Gold is for retirees, anyway.”
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
“That’d be great. The library?”
“Sure. No problem.”
The library! Isabelle’s holds are always maxed, she’s a book person, and so this seems sweetly promising. She could like Henry North. Maybe she could like him a lot. Those who fault her for her naïveté, who roll their eyes at her hope, can go back to their ice-cold cave to eat more nails, in her opinion, because it’s the people who destroy hope that should be blamed, not the ones who have it.
“I thought I’d try a new place to work. The house is pretty isolated.”
“Oh, I hear you. You’re basically alone out there. It takes some getting used to.”
“Let me get my valise.”
As he does, she gets back in her car, leans over to unlock the passenger door. He slides in beside her.
“Valise?” She grins. Maybe it’s his upright demeanor, the clean hands and slightly accented voice (From where, though? Somewhere east? Somewhere coastal?), but teasing him comes easy. It never came easy with the athletic and concrete Evan. You don’t tease a brick pile.
“Briefcase? I don’t know. I think those are for bankers.”
“I guess you have a point. Who’s a valise for?”
“Poets. Poets and dashing men of mystery.”
Nice. She likes this, too. The only time the word dashing left Evan’s lips was when he got drunk at holiday parties and sang that Christmas song.
Of course she hears it. That voice in her head again. The mean one. The cutting one. The cynical, dream-squashing, shame-inducing one. The one she never fought back against and now never would. Don’t be stupid, Isabelle, her mother says.
—
Isabelle turns onto Horseshoe Loop, heads into town. “What kind of work do you do?” She almost doesn’t ask. There’s something about the way he sits there with that valise on his lap that makes him seem like a private person, but they’ve passed Rufaru School of Marimba, and Bud’s Tavern, and the police station, and no one’s said anything in a while, and she feels uncomfortable. It’s a bad habit, filling silence with chatter and ill-advised confessions just to ease her anxiety.
“Me? I’m a professor. On sabbatical. Boston University? I decided to take some time off. Finish a book I’ve been working on.”
“Wow.”
The wow is not actually a true expression of astonishment or admiration. It’s caution. Her former job at the small press taught her one thing: Everyone is either writing a book or wants to, and when you hear that claim, it can mean anything. It can mean a children’s story with images of scary, badly painted teddy bears, or a Story of Survival about one’s grandfather in the war, which sounds like everyone else’s Story of Survival of their grandfather in the war. It can mean three pages of an already awkward mystery heading for the glut of self-publishing, or six hundred pages of self-aggrandizing holding forth. Wow is Isabelle’s professionally trained response, a deflection. It’s also a test. If nothing more is said, the writer just might be serious enough to keep his work to himself until it is good. That’s a
rarity.
But Henry North says nothing more.
She waits, but there is still only nothing and more nothing. Maybe he’s the real deal, she thinks. It gives her a little shiver. Also, it makes sense, in some fateful-universe way. She spent years searching for the real deal at her old job, and now one just shows up when she isn’t even looking.
She pulls over to the curb in front of the library steps. “Here we are.”
“Really appreciate it,” he says. “But, before you go…Know where I can get a car that actually works?”
“Well, if you don’t want to take the ferry into Anacortes, I’d ask over at Eugene’s. The gas station? Two blocks over, one block up.”
Then it hits her. “Wait. What am I saying? I’ve got an almost new Acura that I need to get rid of, sitting right in my driveway.”
It’s out before she can take it back. Regret washes in, with a nice undertow of guilt. The political analysts in her head debate the issues. She’ll have to sell it sometime, so why not now, when the solution is right here in front of her? Yes, but she shouldn’t forget the old cake plate. It had so many bad, sad birthday memories that Isabelle threw it away. Tried to throw it away—she had to fetch it back out of the garbage because she could hear that cake plate shouting what a bad daughter she was from underneath the coffee grounds and browning lettuce. She’s not at the getting-rid-of stage yet. If she’ll ever be at the getting-rid-of stage. Probably, she should just figure it out now, how to strap all of her mother’s stuff on her back so she can carry it around for the rest of her life.
Henry is out of the car, leaning in the open door. “Perfect. I’ll take it.”
“Wait, though. It’s way more than two hundred dollars.”
“You get what you pay for.” He smiles. Behind him, a girl chains her bike to a lamppost and heads up the library stairs, and a good dog sits outside, waiting patiently. “How about if we have dinner? Then we can discuss the details.”
Perhaps she could just sell the car. Her mother barely had it a year. Mom would have just kept her old clunker if she knew she was going to have a heart attack and die. The Acura holds no memories for Isabelle. She never even saw her mother drive it, so it could be anyone’s. It’s not the cake plate, or the records, or the clothes, or the shampoo bottles, or the garden gloves.
