by Deb Caletti
She’s down on the deck with one leg dangling where it’s only down, down, down below and it’s raining hard now, drenching her hair and her satin-clad shoulders, and when she looks up, she sees him, the man who shoved Virginia down that cliff.
“Oh, shit,” he says. “Goddamn it. Oh, Isabelle. Sweet Izzy…”
“Get out,” she says.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.” He reaches his hand out to help her up, but she only grapples for bearings, gets on her knees. She struggles to her feet.
“Get out.”
He turns. There’s the fierce whistle of his exhale as he storms off. She hears his keys, swiped from the counter. The door slams and the house shudders.
Inside, Isabelle shudders, too, when her mother’s car spits gravel and screams down the street. She slides the door shut, locks it. The room is cold from the night and the storm and the anger. The will and the tarp are tossed on the ground, and her leg is bleeding. Her leg is a mess.
She limps to the front door and locks that, too.
She dab-dabs the blood with a washcloth, but it keeps coming. She cleans out the splinters, runs water over her leg as the slash in her skin gushes. She’s made a trek of blood drops like breadcrumbs to the bathroom. The cut is right there on the shin, where the skin is thin. The washcloth looks like a leopard pelt with spots of blood, so she gets a towel, holds it there until it soaks and finally stops.
The washcloth, the towel, they are disturbing to look at. Without them, and without the will and the tarp and trek of drops, it could almost be any other night. Look, there are the glasses of amaretto with their milky residue, and the chocolates on a plate. She could trick herself into thinking he’s in the other room, looking at home-repair videos, or deciding which movie to watch. But she can’t trick herself anymore. She can’t unsee what she saw so clearly.
She knows. She knows without question. There could be some mysterious watch and a photo and his own petty jealousies and God, even that shove—but then there was his face. And his face changes everything.
The hatred in his eyes. A jury could never see that, could they? But she did. She did, and the regret pours in, and the remorse, and the knowing, and the fear. Jesus, she has been so stupid, and careless, and she is so sorry, to everyone, to herself, to Virginia and Sarah. She is so, so sorry, and, now, so afraid.
She shoves the towel and the washcloth in the back of her closet, into her zippered-open suitcase. She can’t bear to look at them. There. Gone.
She peeks out the front door. She takes the will and the tarp out into the rain. She opens the garbage can lid, and drops them in. Not good enough. She covers them with the last bag of kitchen garbage. She is scared out there—she looks up and down the street, which is empty, shiny black with rain. The dark, dewy trees loom overhead. They tell her what a fool she’s been. They tell her she’s in much, much trouble now. She hurries back inside.
She locks the door again. Her phone is vibrating. Buzz, buzz. Buzz, buzz. A text. God, she doesn’t even want to touch that phone.
Staying at Bayshore Inn for the night. Talk tomorrow.
Bayshore Inn—just above the restaurant where she and Henry and Dr. Mark and Jerry had dinner. It could have all been over then.
For the night.
Talk tomorrow.
The beast she must manage is much larger than she ever thought, and much more dangerous. But she’ll never spend another night with him under the same roof again.
She calculates. She doesn’t want to respond at all, but if she doesn’t answer, he might return. If she says too much or too little the beast might pace and stomp and drive her mother’s car back into the night and come into this house.
Okay, she types. It’s such a strange little word. So small. What word would be big enough for what she knows now?
She sits wide awake on their bed. She is sure she hears things. Cars driving up, doorknobs rattling. She remembers the key hidden under a flowerpot, set there in case they got locked out. Oh, God! She runs outside in her nightgown, retrieves it. So many ways we aren’t safe! She goes back to her bed. Gets up again. She shoves the entry table against the front door like they do in bad movies. The kind of movies where women get punished with violence for stupid decisions like staying in a creepy house with a monster in it, or leaving a creepy house with a monster in it. Either way, she’s stupid, because the monster is waiting, and either way it’s her fault because she doesn’t keep him away.
Her thoughts replay: He grips her robe, he shoves; she’s down. He grips Virginia’s T-shirt, the one with the winged heart, and he shoves, and then Virginia’s body smacks and bumps against rocks, and her arms flail, and her hands grab. Virginia, Sarah, Virginia, Sarah, her mind urges. It is trying to speak to her, to give her answers, but fear makes it too loud to hear anything else.
Isabelle doesn’t know what will happen next. So she just sits there in the dark with her eyes wide open until she finally sleeps.
—
What happens next is a phone call. Just after she finally dozes, sometime after five in the morning, her phone rings. Oh, it’s awful, that moment when you wake and the reality of your life rushes in. Is it true? Is this what’s happened? Is this her life? It is, it is. The whole disastrous mess, because it’s him calling, and it’s her calculating again.
She answers. There’s his voice, and he’s crying. She can almost imagine the smell of bacon coming up into Henry’s room from the Bayshore restaurant.
“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I’m so sorry I lost my temper. That will—I mean, wow. You didn’t tell me you got this thing in the mail…You hid it…You kept secrets from me. I mean, I thought you trusted me. We love each other! Don’t we? I love you. I mean, you’re going to be my wife! It’s understandable I lost my temper, isn’t it?”
She doesn’t know what to say, so she says nothing.
“Don’t you think it’s understandable?” he cries. “You can’t just hide something like that…”
“I need some time, Henry. To sort this through…”
He starts to sob.
She’s buying time.
“You can stay in the house,” he says. “I’ll stay here for a while. Until we can figure this out. Whatever you need. I’ll come by in the morning and get some things while you’re at work. Don’t give up on us. Please, Iz.”
“Henry, maybe it’s best if I went to a hotel. It’s your house…”
“No! It’s our house. And if you leave, you might never come back. You stay there. Please, Izzy.”
“All right.”
“I’m sorry, Iz. I’m sorry for losing my temper. Try to understand. Don’t leave me. I don’t know if I could go on if you leave me. Just stay there, at home. Our home. Until we sort this out. We can get counseling or something. Couples counseling.”
“All right.”
“Just don’t leave. Take your time. We’ll figure this out.”
This is the plan for now. At least, this is what he thinks is the plan.
Maggie is silent. Maybe from fear or shock, or because Isabelle is finally seeing clearly. Or maybe Maggie’s just holding her breath.
—
Joe is back on Parrish, but he can’t fly with those ribs. Things are a mess minus him and one plane, and Jane’s going nuts with schedule changes and calls to contract pilots. Tourist season is starting to pick up. Still, Isabelle calls in sick.
“It’s fine, Isabelle. It’s fine,” Jane says. Jane just wants her off the phone. At this point, Isabelle is more hindrance than help.
Isabelle heads into town, but it’s all sneaking and spy moves. When she drives down these familiar streets, she’s looking left and right, left and right, fearing she’ll glimpse her mother’s old car. There’s a creepy city park in the center of town—at least, it’s dark from the shade of its large evergreens, and there are park bathrooms with wet floors and the lingering smell of cigarettes. In high school, they had end-of-the-year parties here, and the moss-thick lawn would fill up with
parents and food on picnic tables, columns of smoke rolling up from the small grills set into concrete squares. Kids would sneak beer, and some band that would break up two weeks later would play on the top of the hill. But now Isabelle drives into the lot, parks near the volleyball pit, empty save for a drooping net and a rectangle of damp sand. No one will see her car here.
She makes a lurking rush for it, the police station. She’s been here only once before when she was maybe ten years old. Then, she was with her mother after they’d had a break-in at Island Air, back in the day when they had an actual cash register with actual money in it.
Inside the station, there’s a water cooler set next to two chairs, and one of those machines with old weird candy from the late 1970s. Rosemary Milligan, Jed Milligan’s mom, is at the front desk.
“Isabelle! How great to see you! What can I do for you?”
Rosemary Milligan, with her big cushy breasts and her blunt gray hair—she stares Isabelle right in the eyes. She knows.
“I was wondering if I could speak with Officer Beaker.”
“You’re in luck. He’ll be here any minute.”
Isabelle waits beside his desk. On it, there’s only a single file folder, and a neat stack of paper napkins, and a photo of a cat under a Christmas tree. In the trash is a burger box from Pirate’s Plunder and a soda cup with a plastic lid and a straw, fiercely crushed. Ricky Beaker actually hitches his waistband when he sees her, as if he’s the sheriff in an old western. He smells like he’s just come from a shower. There’s the tart waft of that green Irish soap. She stands a good three inches above him.
“Well, look who’s here,” he says.
—
She tells him about the shove. She tells him about the will and the jealousy. She shows him the watch and the photo.
It’s nothing they don’t already know. He looks at her as if she’d gone to a party and was somehow shocked to find that people were drunk. He taps a pen, waiting for something significant.
“Well, I’ll tell the Boston folks, but I doubt it’ll change anything.”
“He shoved me, Officer. Like he shoved her.”
“You should get a restraining order,” he says. “Want me to take those?” He’s referring to the watch and the photo.
“Will they help?”
“You got them from some stranger in the mail.”
“Never mind, then. I’ll keep them.” He shrugs. Virginia’s life seems to have come to that: a shrug.
“What’s going to happen?” she asks.
“He’ll get away with it. He already has.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“He’ll get away with it, unless he does it again.”
—
Henry said he’d come by in the morning when she wouldn’t be there, but she’s nervous going back to the house. It’s late afternoon, and there’s no car in the drive, but still. She unlocks the door, looks for signs that he’s been home. The kitchen’s been cleaned. The counter is shiny, and the coffee cup that she left in the sink that morning has been put away. The bed has been made.
It’s a silly thought, but there regardless: If she wanted to put her dirty cup away, she would have put her dirty cup away. Okay? Thank you.
She opens his closet. She can’t tell what’s missing, so not much is. In the office, his laptop is gone.
With the precious poems! Little ego glories! Florid eulogies for dead lovers!
Her anger is stretching out, like it’s suddenly gotten more closet space. God, she’s pissed. That shrug…She wants to only use the word murderer when she thinks of Henry, but his humanity makes the truth more complicated than that, makes his wrongdoings both larger and smaller. He is a coward and a bully, a soul thief, a spirit robber. But Ricky Beaker’s shrug says Henry has won, that he’s bigger than everyone. That he’s a murderer who has gotten away with it. Henry has diminished and destroyed in order to feel larger, and he is larger. She’s here, still scared of him. She is terrified. And the law shrugs.
This isn’t her house. It’s Henry’s. No, it’s Remy’s, and before that, it was Clyde Belle’s. Powerless Clyde Belle—how these walls must have closed in on him, too. How tormented he must have been by that gray sea, forever stretching outside these windows. Waves going in, waves going out, paying his misery no mind.
She can’t stay in here. It’s only late afternoon, and the long evening is ahead of her. She puts on her swimsuit, takes her wetsuit out of the closet. She hikes the steep trail down to the cove, with the rubber suit a soulless body over her arm. Down at the beach, she puts it on.
She plunges in. Dear God, the water is icy on her face. It is arctic and blasting. It is the elements of survival in remote places, smacking her a good one. She strokes. The waves push and shove and she shoves against them. Here, this is who is boss, the shoves say. She kicks, because this is who can kick back.
She has to stop for air and a rest. She floats there in the sea. She can see the lighthouse at the tip of Deception Point. The light looks small, but it’s large enough to save sailors from drowning.
No more.
Funny, it’s not Maggie’s voice but her own. It’s loud. It comes out of her like a serpent, a hydra, a devil whale. She could rise from that sea and breathe fire. She could wrap herself around evil ships and crush them with her body. No more, you asshole. You bitch. You tyrant.
She bobs there. Bobs—such a friendly word, a little party of a word, but this is not what she feels inside. Oh, finally, the pieces have shifted and shown themselves, recognized each other; connected to form one creature. It’s anger, and more anger. It’s fed-fucking-up. The sun will set soon, and the crows will come home en masse. But, look. There is one now, flying away. He’s going the wrong direction. He’s leaving this place, fighting against the high current with his wings and his will. Maybe no one will ever see him again.
She beats the water currents back to shore with her own will. The cold has brought fury and some mobilizing energy. Henry is more powerful, as all the more powerful people in her life have been. Larger, stronger, more in the ways that make badness win, but fine. Bring me down fighting, at least. At least, I can kick and scream on my own behalf.
What makes the monster finally emerge? What finally gives him life? No idea, but once he’s there, he’s there. He is gloriously, viciously, permanently there.
Take that, you bully, says Isabelle, a long-ago age three. You can’t make me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age six. You don’t scare me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age ten. You’re not the boss of me, says Isabelle, a long-ago age fifteen. Fuck you, says Isabelle, age now.
She almost reaches shore, when a new word appears. Oh, it shines like steel in the heat of the sun.
Hate.
She tries it out. I hate you.
She is on the beach now. She should be breathless, but—surprise—all that swimming has made her strong after all. She screams, yells. Her voice fights the wind but is louder than the wind.
Again: I hate you! And You will not ruin me!
It’s almost beautiful. Frightening, but powerful. Wow, how it shimmers, how it throws bolts.
How it makes her see the picture, stunningly clear all at once.
The watch, the photo, the journal.
The will.
The hate.
Take that, you bully.
Can it be?
Giddiness rises. It can be.
It is, she’s sure of it.
Oh, wow. Oh, beautiful strength and triumph. Beautiful retribution. Yes. Take that, and that!
Dear God, the joy fills her along with the realization, no, the hope does—the hope of the underdog, who might actually pull off the win. Not alone, though. She has to be the one to help. Her will, joining another’s will; her final act joining another’s actions, because she knows who sent those packages, yes she does. Yes! she thinks. Yes! Yes! Yes!
She is flying when she reaches the trail. There are a lot of steps, and it is a long way up after tha
t, but she’s got this. Her muscles pull and remind: A body is a force. Her own is small and it’s been both harmed and ill-used, but just because something was doesn’t mean it always will be.
Back home, she sheds her suit. She changes into dry clothes and gets back into her car. She heads to the Front Street Market, checking over her shoulder. She buys a disposable phone, because she sees the whole story. She has always been good at seeing the whole story—she’s a reader and an English major and an editor. But more than that, she’s smart. She remembers how smart.
At the house again, with the locks clicked shut and the table shoved against the front door, she pours herself a glass of wine for the last of the necessary courage. Maybe soon she won’t need the wine, but not yet. Maybe she’ll always need a little support when she must be this brave, but who cares? Who wouldn’t? She calculates the time difference. She makes a call.
That night, Ricky Beaker is back out on her street, and between him and that swim in the sea and the rise of the underdogs, she sleeps like the dead.
Chapter 34
There are so many different kinds of calls. There’s the noisy outcry of rival crows before a fight, and the continuous cawing of a murder of crows as they mob the source of their thrill and peril. There are the short bursts of caws followed by silence, which make up the companion calls; and the sub-song mixtures involving coos, rattles, and clicks. There is the car-car-cockle-cockle gargle, often from a young bird begging for food, as Bébé Noir is doing now. Tahlia scritches on her clipboard, and Weary watches, listens.
Of course, there is the liquid coi-ou of courtship. And the far, far quieter call: the hidden sound of passion called the whisper song.
But one should never forget the most intriguing Corvus call of all—the ones in which the birds pretend to be other birds. The crows are such good mimics, they can even pretend to be humans speaking human words.
