These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the voice of Cathryn’s illness, her haunting blackness. Did the greyness and darkness of Cezanne’s shifting dots represent the bleak periods Cathryn endured, her episodes? The book had a few colour plates scattered throughout, as joyous as the others were bleak. Did those rich colour renderings paint her high and energetic periods?

  Isobel wondered where the book was now. At the shop? In the ash of Granite Point?

  She wrung the sponge over her face. Why didn’t she tell me?

  She didn’t have to. From the very first day there was something just off in the light of Cathryn’s eye, beautiful but damaged, a chipped prism.

  Padding along the hall and down the stairs, Isobel tried to concentrate on her footing, feeling the polished wood with the balls of her clean feet. As if putting her flesh to something solid might keep her from drifting, each step an anchor to keep herself from floating away. She could nearly make out the grain of the risers with her toes.

  She turned off the lights. She locked the back door and made her way to the front hall, stopping suddenly in the foyer to look through the small window in the door. Storm clouds moved briskly over the face of the moon. The air was tinged with a dirty orange light. The moon glowed and then disappeared altogether as more clouds swept over.

  Was Cathryn at the mercy of her mind in the same way as the moon had no control over what obscured its face? Isobel steadied herself by putting her back to the door. What was she doing? Walking through her house, locking doors. She slid to the floor and tipped the weight of her head into her hands.

  The next morning Isobel walked to the shop. Louisa trailed a few steps behind. The scene they encountered after turning onto Main Street jarred them. A search party of bedraggled men had gathered outside Jem’s Diner, their trousers and boots blackened and wet from walking the charred woods. They drank from dented thermoses and bent their heads in consultation with the fresh crews going out. The new recruits appeared anxious to move on, shuffling in place like restrained horses. Spent men drooped against parked trucks; Isobel recognized a few as miners, but most wore forest service uniforms.

  Two men who had been braced against a wall straightened when they saw Isobel approach. Their eyes were expectant, as if she might address them, give them something, a word, some clue. She reached for Louisa’s hand and kept walking. One man stepped forward to stand in her path. She did not slow her pace, and as she walked toward him she stared defiantly at his questioning face. She had no answers for him. She had none for herself. When she was upon him he turned from her gaze and stepped away, suddenly examining the smoke curling from his cigarette.

  New crews put sandwiches and bottles of lemonade into their packs. At a signal, they hoisted their gear in unison and adjusted the weight of their loads. One man balanced a long bundle of dowels and canvas over his shoulder. Isobel swallowed. A stretcher.

  They walked to the edge of the town, where they spread to form a line. Isobel stood motionless as, one after another, the men dropped from the road to the ditch and then scrambled up the opposite side into a thicket of birch.

  Louisa tugged at her arm and pointed to the window of Jem’s Diner. Isobel turned to see two dozen faces crowding the window, looking out at her. As she met their stares, some turned away, went back to their tables or to the counter, but others continued to gaze.

  The smell of fire clung to the evaporating dew, and the air was vague with drifting ash. The flag at the post office was grey with it, hanging limply from its pole. Several merchants had swept up whatever had settled on their stoops overnight. A few had even washed their windows, and they gleamed to reflect the scene in the street. The mercantile had enameled wheelbarrows parked out on the sidewalk, and a neat line of pitchforks leaned against the brick.

  As if nothing had happened. As if it were just another day. Isobel unlocked her door and walked in, her exhalation jagged in the silence. As if it matters they sell a rake or a can of paint. Her footsteps echoed on the bare floors. Louisa squeezed past to put the kettle on for tea. Isobel locked the door and walked to the large front windows, yanking down each canvas shade. She surveyed the mess at the base of the counter. When she picked up the adding machine, its crank snapped away in her hand. She put it in the trash and gathered up the strewn account books. She swept the pieces of broken coffee mug and plucked up scattered pencils.

  Louisa left a cup of tea for her on the counter. The girl found her sketch pad and settled back among the bolts of fabric where she had taken refuge the night before.

  “Louisa, what are you doing? Come out from there.”

  “But won’t that scary man come back?”

  “Mr. Malley?”

  Isobel crouched down to look into her daughter’s face. “I don’t think so, sweetheart. Besides, he’s not scary, he’s just sad.”

  “He won’t hurt us?”

  “Of course not, he won’t hurt anybody.”

  “How can we be sure?”

  Isobel gently pulled her daughter into her arms. “Listen, Lulu. You’re safe with me. Always. Now stand up. I’ve got a chore for you.”

  She put the girl to work tagging and rolling bolts. “Start with the smallest number, pull the bolts, reroll them, and arrange them all in a row. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  She looked to the corner where Cathryn kept her things: a paintbox and a slender folding easel, a stack of books on a chair, the gramophone records in their winecoloured cases. Leaning against the chair was the scuffed satchel Cathryn always seemed to be lugging around.

  “Louisa?”

  “It’s going to take me a long time, Momma.”

  “It will, but you’ll do a fine job, sweetheart.”

  Isobel picked up the satchel. “Listen, Momma has to do some work in the back for a while, all right?”

  She walked the length of the storage hall, beads of light glinting off brass Cathryn had polished. Sitting crosslegged on the floor, she lifted the satchel to her lap. She examined its tiny keyhole and lock. There were small sewing machine tools and curved darning needles she might try to pick the lock with. She could do it. But when she tested the clasp with her thumbnail, the latch sprang with a sharp click, startling her.

  Cathryn hadn’t locked it.

  Her hopes fell. If it wasn’t locked, it couldn’t hold much in the way of clues. She took a breath and opened the satchel. Reaching in, she took out the items one by one and placed them around her. A bottle of Evening in Paris, two polished round stones, a handkerchief with Cathryn’s initials embroidered in spidery floss, two brown envelopes with Cathryn’s name written in a hand Isobel did not recognize, a small, leather-covered notebook, and a loose receipt.

  One of the envelopes held two small cardinal feathers, one brilliant, the other the duller hue of the female. The other envelope held the thinnest layer of birch bark, nearly translucent. It had been intricately folded and patterned, then unfolded and smoothed flat. She recognized it as an Ojibwa pattern for beadwork. The designs were made not with tools, but with the gentle indentations of human teeth. Isobel had once seen these being made when she was a girl, the folded arrows of chalky bark slipping in and out of the squaws’ lips, the women measuring and spacing their bites with little more than the rhythms of some ancient chant, as if singing the designs. Isobel held the bark to the light to expose its floral pattern. She had never known the proper name for the craft, but had assigned it one with her childhood vocabulary: mouth lace.

  She laid aside the birch bark and feathers and picked up the receipt. American Custom Box. The receipt was stapled to a card with the outlined silhouette Isobel recognized as the one from her own hatboxes. It read:

  SPECIAL ORDER

  12 dozen rib-band 18-inch round, stripe/gold braid

  Customer to provide artwork — to be returned

  Custom embossing of silhouette 175.00

  Raw boxes 75.00

  Total 250.00

  She gasped at the amoun
t and lifted the card to examine the black-ink silhouette Cathryn had drawn.

  How could she not have noticed before? It was her own profile, unmistakable. Cathryn had taken the liberty of sweeping her hair to a style more elegant than Isobel would normally have worn, but the face and neck were definitely her own, the sloping brow, the evenness of the nose, the narrow upper lip.

  She could not cry now, there was no time.

  Isobel tucked the artwork and receipt back into the satchel and picked up the last item, a slim leather journal with lined pages, about half of them filled in with Cathryn’s small handwriting. Alternate pages were adorned with small designs and sketches.

  The first pages described Cathryn’s arrival in Cypress. As Isobel read, she detected a petulant quality in the writing, as if Cathryn had come to Cypress grudgingly.

  The best thing about this strange house, Granite Point, is that it is away from prying eyes. I’m glad Liam didn’t rent a place in town, but why couldn’t he have let me stay home in Oak Park?

  Some passages were barely structured, muddled with Cathryn’s random musings and snatches of unfinished thoughts. Nonsense. On these pages the pen had been pressed harshly, letters nearly cut through. Here and there lines were crudely inked out.

  The writing in the middle section of the journal was more lucid. A very sweet description of Louisa and some cursory notes on the visual highlights of the town, along with a list of sites to consider painting: the old teepee out at Chalmer’s Point, an abandoned fishing shack near the boat landing, a Finnish farmstead south of town. The next two pages were missing, followed by a section briefly describing Isobel.

  The charming milliner with magic hands, who cannot sing to save her life, but can do nearly anything else. I envy her capable ways, her naive heart.

  There was nothing about Jack except one cryptic passage.

  Today I nearly died. Should have been killed. I woke up in one place, and now I go to sleep in a different world, another place altogether.

  All pages beyond this passage had been torn out.

  Isobel let the book fall to her lap. It offered no clue as to where they might be now. There was nothing to tell the sheriff when he came. Nothing to offer Liam.

  Sighing, she rested her head against the cupboards. She should find something for Louisa to eat. She’d not made any breakfast, couldn’t think of food. She idly turned the book in her hands.

  She noticed the back cover was slightly thicker than the front. She pressed it and felt a bubble of something under the leather. When she ran a thumbnail along the edge, it came easily unglued, to reveal thin stationery. She peeled back the flap to expose a letter. She carefully eased it out and unfolded the page. It was penned by the same hand that had written Cathryn on the envelopes containing the feathers and birch bark.

  Jack’s hand.

  Isobel took a deep breath as she smoothed the letter flat on the floor.

  A typical love letter, flowery, almost embarrassing. My dearest, Until a month ago my life was ordained to be common, though I sought splendor it eluded me… She scanned down the page.

  … A fate can change in an instant, as mine did when our two fates became one.

  It all happened so fast, yet in my mind that moment was slow and fluid as a dream. I’d rounded the curve, driving too fast, I knew that much. And there you were. The sight of you burned itself into me. I see it still, the scene outlined in surreal colour. The red of your bicycle, your pale hands, the impossible green of trees behind you. I noticed your posture, the fact that your face was flushed, a strand of hair along the edge of your cheek, caught there by perspiration. I remember being surprised at that detail, so fine. Your blue skirt had dust caked on the hem, a pattern of low hills. Your lips were slightly parted, and I marveled that your expression was not one of terror, quite simply, you looked as if you had misplaced something and were about to become annoyed. Your eyes though said something different. They were the eyes of a woman about to die. But when they looked into mine I saw — of all things — pity.

  You would be killed, of that I had no doubt, but more, I understood I was looking into the eyes of my fate. The truck would strike you, there was nothing I could do about that. My plan formed in a fraction of a fraction of a second. After you were struck I would press my foot to the gas, deliberately turn the wheel of the truck, and drive over the cliff to my own death. My only regret was that we would die separately, you broken and alone on the road, and me down among rocks and scrub pine. I wanted our death bloods to mingle, hated that our ends would not be simultaneous, that you would precede me, if only by an instant.

  But the truck stopped. I’ve gone over it in my mind a hundred times and I can find no logical reason why a two-ton vehicle on a slope of gravel would come to stop so suddenly. It’s inexplicable. Intervention? Reprieve? I wonder what else we will escape? I no longer question fate.

  In Delirium Amorus.

  Jack

  Isobel shivered at his Latin closing. At the bottom of the letter there was a line added in Cathryn’s handwriting. What else can I be, in the face of such revelations, but powerless? Willing. To go anywhere with you. Anywhere.

  Isobel reread the letter. “No.”

  She spoke aloud, her voice echoing in the emptiness of the hall. “It’s not enough. It proves nothing.”

  She placed the letter back in its hiding place, pressed the glued edge back.

  “Nothing.”

  She hid the satchel in the farthest cupboard.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ~ ~ ~

  “Did you believe she was powerless, as she claimed?” Isobel grew thoughtful. After a moment she turned to her son. “I saw a television program once, I think it was during the Vietnam War, some panel discussion. Four famous and respected men were asked for their personal definitions of power. The writer said, ‘Beauty,’ the general said, ‘Fearlessness,’ the rabbi said, ‘Madness,’ and the businessman said, ‘Money.’ Does that answer your question?”

  “I suppose it does.”

  “Jack and Cathryn left me something that summer, something that to this day I cannot define. It was a different view, an awareness that life was bigger. It seemed they left open some portal — perhaps the very one they escaped through — and I was left with this open gap where a wind carrying all the racket and texture of life came rushing back at me.”

  Thomas rolled his pen back and forth over the surface of Isobel’s bedside table.

  “I couldn’t ignore much of anything after that. Life grew bigger after them, at least it seemed so.”

  He opened his mouth to ask a question, but she drifted on. “In a lot of ways things were easier before them. I didn’t have so much to think about.”

  Isobel tapped her temple. “Memory. Stubborn contraption, isn’t it? Most of what I try to remember now is a blur. I have to scrape for the simplest things… elephone number, whether or not I’ve taken my pills, the name of a street I’ve walked a thousand times. But some memories come racing from nowhere of their own accord — those are like visitations. Clear as glass, more detailed as I grow older. Isn’t that strange?”

  Her voice was out of sync, as if the oxygen tent delayed her words.

  Thomas whispered, “Not so strange, I expect.”

  “I can remember every nuance, every angle of light at certain moments. The sudden rising of mist on the lake after a storm, the feel of your father’s palm against my ankle while I stood on that old Ford. That time you fell from the big maple out back! I thought you’d broken your neck.”

  She wheezed, and reached under the plastic to touch his elbow where the pin had been set. “I was in the kitchen when I heard you scream. I can remember the sound of my feet pounding the porch floor, the blades of grass you lay on, the fact that the clover near your head was blooming and the flower matched the white of your face. I was afraid to touch you. I dropped down to lay my ear over your heart, but just then you opened your eyes and looked at me — and I remember this so clearly — yo
u said, ‘It’s beating fine, Momma, don’t worry. It’s not my heart that’s busted, but you should take a look at my arm.’”

  Thomas grinned. “Snapped like a twig. Do you remember the blue sling you sewed to match my scout uniform?”

  Isobel frowned. “You were never a scout. That was Henry.”

  “Yes,… ”

  Thomas cocked his head, paused. “Never mind.”

  “Thomas, have you been here all day?”

  “No. Not all day. I was working this morning.”

  “But I thought you retired.”

  “I did. Last Friday.”

  “Oh, your party. How was it?”

  “Embarrassing.”

  “Oh, yes, the whatzit? Karaoke? Did they make you sing karaoke?”

  Thomas picked up his pen and let it dangle between his fingers like Sinatra’s cigarette. “Wanna hear a few bars?”

  He plucked an imaginary microphone from the air and began to sing into it. “I’m gonna waaaake up… in a city that ne-ver sleeps… ”

  “Enough.”

  Isobel’s weak laugh turned into a racking cough. “You’re every bit as gifted as me.”

  She gave in to the weight of her head and sank into her pillow.

  “The proud mother.”

  Thomas poked the plastic. “You should sleep.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have a few errands.”

  Thomas bent over the railing. “That reminds me. I won’t be here tomorrow. I have to go out of town for the day.”

  “Where?”

  He reached into the tent to tuck her blanket back up over her sharp collarbone. “Only Chicago, in and out. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”

  She grasped his fingers, suddenly anxious. “Tomorrow night?”

  “It’s okay.”

  He pulled his hand away gently. “Just a day trip.”