These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  She froze. The driver leaned back hard, as if putting all his weight and strength to the brake.

  The next moments warped and stretched themselves into and out of focus, as though viewed in a poorly silvered mirror. Time and sight became unreliable, so that what seemed a full minute was only a fraction of a second. What appeared a blinding flash of lightning from a cloudless sky was only a glint from the truck’s windshield.

  In the distended seconds it took for the truck to reach her, Cathryn saw herself as the driver would see her… oman not young, not old, flushed with the heat, perspiration glistening on her upper lip, white hands pulling up a bicycle. A tall woman with dark hair standing dumbly in the wrong place. Alive, but only for the next abbreviated moment.

  The heavy vehicle skidded on the loose gravel, spewing small stones and jets of dust from beneath each of its locked tires. There was no time to swerve, probably no time to consider swerving, she knew that much. Had she been just a few yards farther down the road, there might have been enough distance between herself and the truck for some action. The driver might have steered his truck in the only direction possible away from her, over the cliff, to become airborne for the last moment of his life. Or she could have dived to the side of the road to safety. But there wasn’t enough distance between them, no split second for such options, no time for response of any kind.

  The tires of the truck found temporary purchase, but it was too heavy. The sound of tumbling stones was layered with the sickening keening of brakes. Cathryn found herself looking steadily at the driver, into the last face she would certainly ever see.

  Well, that’s that.

  Eyes locked, nothing between them but dust and her last breath. Cathryn took in the man’s green eyes, his other features indistinct, blurred planes of flesh that fell away, unimportant. You poor man, I am so sorry.

  Cathryn and the driver blinked at the same instant. This tandem gesture released them from their trance, and she closed her mouth and eyes. The truck lurched, skidded. Suddenly, the moan emitting from the vehicle changed pitch and the truck jumped and came to an abrupt, angry stop. A mad dog at the end of its chain.

  Cathryn opened her eyes. As the engine died, stillness settled on the road, a silence broken only by the sound of distant crickets delivered on a hot, rolling wind. The chrome grill of the truck was an inch from her chin. Her nostrils flared at the heat of the engine; the distinct tang of oil and gasoline and the acrid smell of ground metal filled the breath she took. The air was thick with grit roiled loose from the road.

  The driver and Cathryn stared at each other. The cab door squealed open and he climbed down to walk in measured steps to where she stood, each footfall distinct in its graveled wake.

  The man took a huge breath before firmly peeling Cathryn’s fingers from the handlebars. The bicycle bounced to the ground, one tire spinning lamely. He took her by the arm and steered her to the side of the road, where he was able to bend her into a sitting position on a boulder.

  He crouched low in front of her and looked up to her face. “You,” he said, gently resting one hand on each of her knees as though to settle their knocking, “are a stupid, stupid woman.”

  Cathryn nodded, unable to speak. The man waited. “My name is Jack Reese.”

  Cathryn nodded again. “I’m a ranger.”

  He pointed up to the fire tower. “Forest service.”

  Shakily she touched the embroidered pine tree on the shoulder patch of his khaki shirt. He looked at her closely. She was disheveled, dust on her forehead riven by two clear lines of perspiration. Her body slumped like a rag doll. When he examined her profile, Cathryn’s eyes followed his, not breaking his gaze.

  “Are you a mute?”

  Cathryn opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head.

  Jack settled on the boulder next to her. “Well, how about if I talk for a while, you listen, and maybe you’ll remember how?”

  Cathryn nodded.

  Jack cleared his throat. “I’m a ranger… right, I already said that… ”

  He pointed out to the lake. “I live just over that ridge, past Granite Point. I have a small cabin there, on an island about a mile into the Maze. Not far by water, from Mr. and Mrs. Malley’s place.”

  Hearing her name, Cathryn looked at the man with alarm and sat straighter.

  He grinned. “Everyone knows who you are.”

  Cathryn sat dumb while the man talked. His voice was a balm, settled her shaking, and as her heart calmed, she found herself listening intently, as if each small thing the man said was of vast importance.

  He told her about the young ranger stationed in the tower up the road, a new fellow he’d suspected of drinking on the job. He’d brought the kid a deck of playing cards, a stack of newspapers from Duluth, and some jigsaw puzzles.

  “I know what it can be like up there, days with no human contact… ”

  Jack brushed the wavy hair away from his forehead. As his hand dropped to his thigh, Cathryn examined his broad fingers and the fine blond hairs on the back of his hand, the same golden shade cuffing the outsides of his square wrists.

  She smiled. He was making conversation for her sake.

  “With such a dry spring I can’t afford having a man up there doing less than his job.”

  He waved at the air shimmering over the hood of the truck and the valley beyond. “This could all go up in an hour with the right wind.”

  When Cathryn shuddered he quickly recovered the conversation and pointed to the tower. “If you’re up there very long, you’ve got to find something to do. I studied botany myself, wanted to use some of that Latin from school. I read, of course.”

  “What did you read?”

  At Cathryn’s first words, Jack smiled. “There you are.”

  He patted her hand and continued.

  “What did I read? Philosophy, mostly. Works we’d only touched on in the seminary.”

  “Seminary? But you’re not a priest.”

  “No.”

  He shook his head, dropping it a little. “No, never made it that far.”

  Cathryn edged closer. “What else did you read?”

  “Oh, the usual stuff. Novels. Poetry.”

  “Poetry!”

  Cathryn lightly touched his open palm.

  They compared poets they read, but after a time words fell away, as something unnamed but fierce edged aside their conversation to possess the air between them.

  They sat, unsure of what to say or do, certain only that neither wanted to be the first to rise, to make any movement that might stretch the distance between them, break the closeness.

  Soon enough the sound of a car labouring up the road forced them apart. Cathryn stood and picked up her bicycle, feeling self-conscious and oddly guilty as the car appeared. She gave its occupants a halfhearted wave without seeing their faces. Jack jumped into the truck and rolled it to the edge of the road to make way. Only after the sound of the car died away did they dare to look at each other again.

  Jacked leaned out the cab window. “Meet me tomorrow?”

  His eyes were pure intent, there was nothing to misconstrue.

  “Yes.”

  She straightened up and climbed onto the bicycle. “Where?”

  “Here.”

  She did not remember her ride home. She bathed in the lake and made dinner for Liam as though it were a regular Tuesday evening.

  Cathryn laughed. “God knows what Jack must’ve thought of me.”

  Isobel would later come to know exactly what Jack Reese thought. He’d written it all in the letter she found hidden in the satchel that Cathryn, in her flight, had left behind.

  “We met the next day, of course, and the day after. When I haven’t been here at the shop I’ve been with Jack. At first I cycled out to places to meet him, and later, after you taught me to drive, I’d take the car, but only on days Liam was out of town with the company truck. I couldn’t risk being seen in the car if he was around.”

  Isobel
leaned forward. “So, these last two weeks? While Liam’s been in Michigan… ?”

  “I’ve been staying in Jack’s cabin.”

  Isobel’s hand drifted to her mouth. Cathryn smiled. “We’re lovers.”

  As Cathryn sat down next to her, Isobel quickly rose. She paced a distance away. When she did turn back she could only stare at Cathryn’s hands, unwilling to meet her eye. In the silence she watched Cathryn’s hands work the handkerchief in her slim fingers, the gold wedding band glinting through the lace edging. The hands finally settled for the briefest moment before Cathryn stood, her voice oddly high.

  “Right. Well, I really ought to be going.”

  She made no move to the door.

  Isobel blinked. Cathryn had told the story so vividly, so eagerly, and with such relief. She should respond somehow… but none of her words would coalesce into clear sentences. None of her responses would be what Cathryn wanted to hear.

  “I suppose you should.”

  They both turned at a sound, and Isobel saw a flash of blond under the pants press.

  “Louisa?”

  She walked over to peer underneath. “Oh Lord. You’ve been here this whole time?”

  Louisa squirmed in place, as if hoping for some distraction… ustomer, anything — so she could slip away. “I wasn’t spying, Momma, I was just here.”

  “Come out. Now, please.”

  Isobel branded a look toward Cathryn. “What did you hear?”

  The girl scooted out and stood, looking from one face to the other. “Um, everything, I guess.”

  “And how much… ”

  Isobel fought the tremor on her lip. “Just how much do you understand?”

  The girl held up two fingers. “Two commandments’ worth. Auntie Cathryn has broken two, I think. But I can’t remember the order.”

  Cathryn closed her eyes. “Jesus Christ.”

  The girl shrugged. “That makes three, for sure.”

  Isobel grabbed the girl’s wrist with a harder grip than she’d intended. She opened her mouth, faltered, and turned to Cathryn.

  “You explain this. I’m still trying to understand, but I can’t. Not yet. You can’t expect me to make sense of this for her? You explain.”

  She let go of Louisa.

  “Louisa, I’ll see you at home.”

  The tear in her friend’s eye did not stop Isobel. At the door she turned. “Lock up when you leave.”

  She walked. She found herself a mile from town before realizing she was headed nowhere. She was in the hills above the mine, moving quickly under great arms of pine boughs. Her legs moved her along with a will she did not feel. The air was sharp with pitch and needles snapping underfoot. The smell brought her back to the many times she’d raced along the same paths as a child. A thousand years before. She pressed over the length of a ridge until the trail began a slow decline through a birch forest north of town.

  She was out of breath. In love. She recalled Cathryn’s ecstatic voice relaying the impossible encounter with a stranger who now held her in thrall.

  She could not shake the image of Liam’s face, his earlier warnings to her. Did he know? Nor could she shake her overriding sense that even with the confession, Cathryn had not told her everything. As she trudged through thicket she broke her way through one image after another. The day she found Cathryn on the floor under a table, curled into… nd red-faced, claiming she’d only just fallen asleep there. The time Cathryn had Louisa in her lap, arms around the girl, when her focus had fallen suddenly away, her limbs taking on some sort of rigid somnambulance. She wouldn’t let the girl go, seemingly couldn’t, as if her suffocating embrace was involuntary, robotic. Louisa only laughed, thinking it was a game, had called herself Houdini and eventually wormed her way free.

  What were the actions of a woman in love?

  Only when she found herself on the trail leading back to the shore of Lake Cypress did Isobel tally how far she might have gone, how many hours she’d been wandering.

  She couldn’t think anymore. The sun began its drop and was just skimming the trees by the time she made it back to the band shell in the park.

  It was completely dark by the time she opened her front door.

  Louisa was asleep on the couch, her head in Cathryn’s lap.

  “Isobel,” she whispered, “where’ve you been?”

  Isobel’s folded arms fell to her sides. “Walking.”

  Her dress was damp with perspiration. “Thinking, trying to sort this out.”

  She had planned to be patient, give Cathryn the opportunity to volunteer more, but her composure fissured, and the questions she’d planned to ask fell away behind terse accusations.

  “You lied to me. I taught you how to drive. I was your alibi, wasn’t I? I provided you an alibi, daily.”

  She was shaking as she hissed, “Why didn’t you tell me about Jack Reese before today?”

  Cathryn eased herself out from under Louisa and stood. “That wouldn’t have been fair.”

  “Fair?”

  She smoothed the wrinkles of her skirt. “It wouldn’t have been fair to put you in the middle of things.”

  “In the middle?”

  “Yes, in the middle. Where you are right now, upset. I wanted to spare you this.”

  Isobel nodded stiffly at the couch. “And Louisa?”

  “We talked. She’s a bright child, Isobel. She understands more than you think.”

  “Don’t tell me about my own… what do you know of children?”

  She went to the couch and gathered the sleeping girl up, sorry she had spoken. “Never mind.”

  At the foot of the stairs she shifted Louisa’s weight in her arms and turned. “It’s been a long day, Cathryn.”

  Only after putting Louisa to bed did Isobel remember Cathryn would be making her way home in the dark. She rushed back down the stairs and opened the front door, to find Cathryn was already out of sight. She hurried over the still-warm pavement to the corner, but the streetlight illuminated only the smallest circle of night. Turning in the dim disk she could make out nothing beyond, her movements as feeble as the light cast from above.

  ~ ~ ~

  Isobel’s hand tired of holding the magnifying glass Thomas had brought for her. Her weak arm could only hold down the pages like a weight, while the other alternately held the heavy glass and turned the pages.

  As a figure moved into the room Isobel dropped the book in exasperation. Nurses. Doctors. Forever sneaking up behind you. She sighed and closed her eyes as a cheerful voice commenced.

  “Hello there. What’s that you’re reading?”

  Isobel placed the voice. She did not turn, but answered curtly. “A poem, Dr. Hertz. A poem, in fact, about a patient being etherized upon a table.”

  “Ah, even I know that one.”

  “Are you here for blood? If you are, please make it quick.”

  “They don’t let me take blood. We have staff vampires for that. But I’ll check your arm, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine. Just don’t muss me — the nurses have me all bathed and powdered. I want to stay fresh.”

  She straightened herself on her pillows. “Perhaps they could bring me a bed of ice.”

  She was beginning to find the man annoying. He laughed at his own jokes, but not hers.

  “Where’s my son?”

  “Thomas? I just saw him in the hall, sent him down to have coffee.”

  “Why?”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and lightly pinched the loose skin over the bones of her hand. “Nurse’s report says you’ve sent back your trays untouched. Dietary confirms that.”

  She watched what he was doing to her hand. “I’m still drinking.”

  Their eyes met. “Fluids aren’t enough.”

  “I’m not going home again. I know that. It’s a nursing home after this, right?”

  “Probably. Yes.”

  “You have a grandmother, Joel?”

  “I could order an IV.”

&
nbsp; “But you wouldn’t have to.”

  He didn’t answer. “You know how old I am.”

  “Everyone in this hospital knows how old you are.”

  When she shifted under the covers the book fell to the floor. He leaned down to sweep it up and laid it back on her lap. A rigid corner of tan stuck out between pages.

  “Let me show you something. My bookmark.”

  “It’s a photo?”

  “Yes, one I took myself.”

  She handed him the overexposed, yellowed square.

  The image showed a couple sitting in a small wooden sailboat in glaring sunlight. The woman’s hair was swept up in a mass held by broad ivory combs. She wore tiny round sunglasses and the sleeves of her kimono drifted out from the stern, silk wings just brushing the water. She reclined, facing the camera, one slender foot resting on the man’s knee. He was in profile, looking intently at the woman from beneath a curl fallen over his brow. The canvas sail swagged limp against the mast. The scene was reflected over a skin of water so still the photograph was halved into dual images, identical boats, twin couples.

  “So that’s him. The man who looks like me.”

  “You mean you look like him.”

  “So he does exist.”

  “I know you’ve doubted me. I’m frail, not addled.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m of my own mind.”

  “Yes. Yes, you are.”

  Joel held the photo gently. “It’s very old.”

  He handed it back. “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Isobel looked at the faces, the real Jack and Cathryn and their warped equivalents, the palest of reflections. She shrugged. “I do not know.”

  She set the photo on the bedside table and closed her eyes.

  Thomas got up and shut the door against the corridor sounds of nurses’ rubber-soled shoes, the nasal drone of the PA system.

  “You’ve talked in your sleep again, Mother.” He was agitated.

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”