These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  Louisa’s presence was so unobtrusive that one Saturday Isobel closed up the shop, locking the girl in for an hour before realizing what she had done. Racing back, she stopped short at the door. Louisa — wearing a hat recently finished for Cathryn—was pinching the handle of a teacup, pinkie extended, murmuring and nodding to her invisible companion while the gramophone scratched out the strains of a distant aria.

  It occurred to Isobel that she did not miss the rest of her family as much as she should. She admitted this to Father Thiery during confession. His deep laugh drifted through the confessional screen.

  “But you’re working so hard, child, your mind is taken up. They’ll be back soon enough.”

  Her penance had been one Hail Mary.

  Isobel tried to picture the island she had only glimpsed in a blurred photograph and once at a great distance through opera glasses. What could they be doing out there all this time? She imagined the boys swimming for hours, blue with cold, no one sensible enough to pull them from the frigid lake. She did not fear they might drown — unlike herself and Louisa, they all swam like otters. But one of them was bound to catch a chill, get sick.

  Then they’ll be home. The minute one of them gets ill, they’ll be back. Isobel’s chest tightened at the thought.

  No, no. Victor was very competent. Isobel told herself that he would most certainly take charge were anything to happen.

  As if to allay her fears, a packet of letters arrived from the mail boat. Henry wrote in terse fashion, recounting the daily routine of island life.

  I’ve learned to cook in a Dutch oven buried in coals. I’ve made camp bread, but could use a better recipe. Thomas is being a pain, eats half the berries I send him out to pick. The mail boat brings drinking water out twice a week, we boil the rest out of the lake. We miss the icebox. My kingdom for a Choco-Bar!

  I’m fine how are you? Must be very bored without us, huh?

  Victor’s letter was brief.

  Fishing is good, we’ve had Walleye or Perch for dinner nearly every night. They complain a little and ask for chicken and cheese and cold milk, but mostly they are good sports. We’re reading Twain aloud each night.

  I carved a cribbage board from a piece of maple I found, but it was too green and it warped before I even finished sanding it. The thing rocks on the camp table every time someone pegs a point. They think it’s hilarious, that’s the thing about kids, Izzy, they’ll laugh at the same joke a thousand times. Miss you, V. —

  Isobel noticed how he had signed off, not Love, but Miss you.

  She saved Thomas’s letter for last. As she looked at the wide crayon scrawl, the paper was overlaid with an image of his chubby hand.

  Dear Momma,

  Sometimes we sleep out side. There are Lightening Bugs and the dragonflies are like fairies. Henry says No Such Animal. Daddy says yes there is, and that If I’m lonely for you not to be too sad, maybe you fly over the water and visit us while we sleep. So now you are a Fairy over my bed!

  Love and a lot of Kisses,

  Thomas Arthur Howard

  She could almost see Victor leaning over the boy, their two faces shadowed in concentration beneath the dim light of a lantern, Thomas curled around his crayon as Victor coached him on and helped with the spelling.

  She folded the letter into a tight square and tied a ribbon around it. She would put it in her bottom drawer along with the pouch of milk teeth, locks of baby hair, and the handmade Mother’s Day cards. She laid out clean stationery and dipped her pen in fresh ink. She wrote a brief note to Henry and a somewhat longer letter to Thomas, decorating the margin of his with a sketch of a dragonfly with the profile of a woman’s face in its wings. She wrote that she had made a new friend, and that Louisa was fine but missed them all very much (even though Louisa showed no such sign, except for the night she’d had a bad dream and had climbed into Thomas’s empty bed).

  As she sat down to write to Victor, she despaired at the blankness of the page before her. She could have described Cathryn and her new friendship, she was eager to, but she couldn’t think how without disclosing what she’d done in the shop. It occurred to her that she wanted the millinery to be her secret, a surprise. She realized what a long time it had been since she’d had anything interesting to offer Victor. He always had a story to tell over the dinner table, while she usually had only reportage and dry facts: what needed to be done around the house, how much a pound of beef cost at Sima’s, concerns over the children’s grades or health, or what mischief they’d gotten into, what they needed in the way of clothes or school supplies.

  The letter she finally began seemed just as dry.

  Dear Victor,

  Things are going well. Louisa’s watching the Hokkanens’ twins in the mornings and helping me in the afternoons. The garden is a lost cause even though we water every day. This weather!

  With so little to do at home I’ve reopened the shop. A few customers have asked after you. I measured Mr. Vincent for a coat — he said he’d wait for the trousers until you got back (I believe he’d rather you took his inseam measurement!).

  It sounds as if you’re having a time out there. I’m sending a package back with Doug Green — lemons and apples and a few vegetables, some chicken on dry ice I hope will keep. With luck the chocolate won’t melt all over everything. The yeast packets are for Henry.

  It’s been an interesting summer so far. I hope you are all right.

  Love,

  Isobel

  As usual her writing did not express her emotions, as if there were a stutter somewhere between her thoughts and the hand moving her pen, a missed connection. She wanted to say something more, wanted something of herself to emerge. She laid her hands flat on either side of the page. A piece of petrified varnish that had dislodged itself from the ceiling earlier sat glittering near the edge of the table. She had meant to throw it away, but now she picked it up and held it to the light, smiling. She tucked it into the envelope along with her letter. An old private joke. Better than words.

  Isobel and Cathryn speculated on what styles and colours might be in fashion the following spring. Cathryn brought recent magazines sent from Chicago and they pored over the pages, their heads bent in happy collusion. Isobel made a few more sample pieces with what scraps she could scrounge… axed linen boater, a felt cloche. Easy pieces. Good millinery was more intricate than dressmaking, and not something blithely resumed. It took weeks for her fingers to limber to their former dexterity, to recall the cadences and intricacies of the work, to develop the proper calluses and strengths.

  When the long-awaited crates of supplies arrived she and Cathryn tore open the wrappings and ran their hands over the hard bolts of felts and silk linings. Cathryn plucked up the inventory list, and in a dramatic posture, one hand sweeping toward the precious pile, she trilled, “Dusty-Olive, Vivid-Midnight, Forest Fawn, Berry-Brown, Brandy-Wine, Pomegranate, Violet Sky, Pearl, Ecru, Et Ceterahhhh!”

  The new tools fascinated Louisa, who endlessly worked the shiny crimpers and punches on her own collection of paper cutout hats.

  In the mornings, while Isobel formed and steamed and tacked, Cathryn read aloud the daily excerpts from a serialized novel in the newspaper, that summer it was So Big, by Edna Ferber. Louisa and Isobel became caught up in the daily travails of the protagonist, hapless, sophisticated Selena, who stubbornly insisted her life would be beautiful even though she’d wound up on a Dutchman’s fallow vegetable farm south of Chicago.

  Bits of the novel took place in the city, and Louisa was continually interrupting Cathryn’s reading.

  “Have you seen that hotel, Auntie Cathryn? Have you been to that street?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it grand?”

  “Grand enough.”

  “And the shops, are they grand too?”

  “Not so grand as this one. Louisa, I’ve never heard you ask so many questions. I guess I’ll just have to bring you to Chicago myself. Show you the sights.”

  She
began to read again, but was soon interrupted by Isobel.

  “This Selena character, she has so much promise. How could she let herself give in like that?”

  “Give in?”

  “You know, to her fate.”

  Cathryn put the newspaper down. “Is it a matter of giving in? Don’t we choose our fates, after a fashion?”

  Cathryn brought books for Isobel to read, volumes of Tennyson, Teasdale, and e. e. cummings, translations of Rainer Rilke.

  At night Isobel lay in bed, holding the slender bindings tentatively, afraid she might not understand or even like what she read, afraid she would be expected to talk about the poems with Cathryn in a vernacular she did not possess and could not grasp. She’d left school at sixteen for the trades, and while she could lay linoleum so it wouldn’t bubble, care for a colicky baby, or alter a wedding dress to make a bride five months gone appear virginal, she sometimes felt a delicate chasm between herself and Cathryn which exhibited itself not in the disparity of their social standings, but in language. In the same way she felt set apart from the immigrants of Cypress, with their accents and odd phrasing, she felt duly separated from Cathryn’s world. In conversation Cathryn seemed to float just out of Isobel’s reach on a cloud of sophisticated adjectives, words she herself understood only after hearing them repeatedly in context. Like a dinner guest waiting to see which fork the hostess will pick up next, Isobel tested new vocabulary aloud only after sure of putting it to proper use.

  Cathryn read voraciously. Isobel concluded literature might be the doorway into the world Cathryn inhabited. She reasoned that if she read what Cathryn did, she might gain some insight into her friend’s character, the ecstatic moods, the often pained silences.

  She read. She didn’t understand all of the poetry, but she found herself drawn to the economy of words. She was equally intrigued by the silences between these words and what they summoned or did not summon. A few poems she found beautiful for what they managed to evoke without being overt, and these she liked best, could even recognize bits of herself in them. Others made her uneasy, and she felt the poets had been indiscreet when they laid their pained, raw hearts open for all to examine.

  In the late nights, after Louisa was asleep, Isobel would straighten her pillows and tip the lamp to send light pooling into her lap. She let herself fall into the volumes, her lips sometimes moving along, whispering those lovely lines that reached her.

  One Saturday Isobel left Cathryn to watch the shop and boarded a train for Duluth with Louisa. She needed a few things and was too anxious to wait the time the post would take. After finishing up at the fabric supply house, they walked down the hill to the Pasal Millinery. Her old friends Kathleen and Ruth still worked there, and when they heard who was in to buy supplies they rushed to the front.

  Kathleen had grown fat, her Irish rosiness aged to ruggedness, as if she’d spent the last sixteen years working fields of rye.

  “Isobel Marie, look at you!”

  She opened her massive arms. “You’re little as a bird. I’ll crush the breath from you. And this can’t be your daughter!”

  Ruth was more formal, shaking hands so that Isobel had to abandon her intended embrace. She looked so worn and haggard Isobel barely recognized her.

  “Oh, Ruthie!”

  Her reply was a rebuke. “Izzy, you’ve not changed one bit.”

  They made a fuss over Louisa, showing her the workrooms while Isobel picked out canvas linings and floss. She found it difficult to concentrate, and as she plucked up random colours of thread, she realized she’d half expected that Ruth and Kathleen would have remained girls, that living unmarried and childless would have somehow preserved them.

  Later Kathleen served tea and admired Isobel’s appearance, pinching at her waistline in disbelief. “You’ve had three, did you say? Tell us their names again!”

  They leaned in, hungry for news. Isobel felt slightly guilty, suspecting suddenly that her life might, as they had insisted, agree with her. She said little of the new millinery and nothing about being free for the summer. She grew anxious to leave suddenly and said something vague about the time of the train. As she said good-bye to Ruth she pulled her into the hug she’d intended earlier. Ruth felt dry and stiff, and her return embrace was feeble.

  When Kathleen wrapped her arms around Isobel she whispered, “Now, don’t be a stranger.”

  She suddenly lifted Isobel off her feet, and even Ruth laughed.

  Isobel gathered her parcels and stepped away. When Ruth and Kathleen stood side by side she remembered them as they had been, two girls with nothing ahead of them but possibilities. Ruth wanted to be a buyer for a big department store; she would travel and see the country. Kathleen was determined to marry and have babies, perhaps move back to Donegal one day.

  Once outside she did not look back through the window. Instead she bent as though to speak to Louisa, averting her gaze, knowing they were still standing there, knowing they had hardly moved.

  Was a person really able to choose their own fate? It seemed there were two paths to a fate — the one you chose, or the one you allowed to choose you.

  She wondered if Cathryn had decided her own fate. As she walked east along Superior Street, Isobel thought about the path she herself was on. Had she chosen it, or had it chosen her?

  The return train wasn’t until early evening. They had a late lunch at the Hotel Duluth. It was Louisa’s first fancy restaurant, and she surprised Isobel by being prim but friendly with the waiter, ordering with a sophistication that belied her age.

  “And tea, please. A cup for my mother too.”

  “With lemon or milk, miss?”

  Louisa blinked. “Both, if you don’t mind.”

  Isobel caught a familiar mannerism and smiled into her napkin. Louisa was playing the role of Cathryn. After lunch they roamed Canal Park and the lakeside garden, but they still had over two hours until the train. A man hawking tickets offered to let them ride up the aerial lift bridge for half price. Louisa pointed. “You mean that bridge, the one that goes up like an elevator over the water?”

  “The very one, miss.”

  “But why would anyone want to do that?”

  The man was taken aback. “Well, I… ”

  “Thank you, sir, but I don’t think so. My mother would regurgitate.”

  “Re-what?”

  “And I would too, probably. Have a nice afternoon.”

  As the man walked away he stuffed the tickets into his pockets and grumbled.

  “Why are you laughing, Momma? Wasn’t that more polite than saying vomit?”

  Heading for the depot they found a tiny bookshop on a side street. As Isobel stood among the shelves she was attracted to an olive-coloured binding. When she picked up the book it fell open to a poem, complete on its two pages.

  She gave Louisa a coin and sent her next door to the soda fountain. After finding a chair near the back of the shop she read the poem twice. Glancing around to make sure she was alone, she read its lines again in a low whisper.

  As she dug into her handbag, she realized it was the first book she’d ever bought herself. She blushed when asking the clerk, “Do you think I could have it gift wrapped?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday morning Isobel walked into the shop to find Cathryn standing over the shards of a broken vase, palms pressed to her eyes as if to hold them in place. Purple columbine and white iris lay amid a pool of water slowly soaking into the floorboards.

  Isobel knelt. The vase was shattered as if it had been hurled to the floor, not merely dropped. The stems of the flowers were broken and the irises looked as if they’d been crushed.

  “They were so beautiful, and the vase… and now it’s broken. I’ve broken it.”

  Cathryn’s shoulders convulsed. “I’ve ruined it!”

  Isobel stood and looked curiously into her friend’s swollen face, but Cathryn turned away. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  When Cathry
n began to rock, shifting from one foot to another, Isobel saw white petals sticking to the heels of her shoes.

  She steered Cathryn to a chair near the window. “Cathryn, it’s all right.”

  She covered her eyes again. “Do you hear me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. It’s just a vase. See? Look.”

  She pried Cathryn’s hands downward. “It’s just a broken vase and some silly flowers. It’ll only take a minute to clean it up.”

  By the time she’d swept and mopped up the mess and made a pot of tea, Cathryn had washed her face, reapplied her lipstick, and was doing the crossword puzzle in the Cypress Tribune as if nothing had happened, her voice steady and bright when she asked, “Izzy, what’s a five-letter word for ‘fanciful journey’?”

  Isobel, balancing a teacup and a plate of shortbread, stared at Cathryn. “I don’t know… dream?”

  “Ha! Wrong, but that’s good. I like that, Izzy, a dream really is a journey after all, isn’t it? A somnambulant journey.”

  “A som — ?”

  Cathryn ignored her. “Ah. Jaunt, I think. Yes, that fits.”

  She read clues and checked off words as she filled in the squares of her puzzle, drinking her tea and rapping her pencil in a beat whenever she became stuck.

  After a half-hour she abandoned the unfinished puzzle and began pacing the length of the shop.

  Isobel kept watch from the corner. “Cathryn, you’ll wear these floorboards to slivers.”

  She dutifully sat down and worked on her embroidery, but popped up out of her chair after only a few minutes to stand next to Isobel and watch her fit a muslin lining into a beret.

  “Izzy?”

  “Hmm?”