This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Alice Hoffman
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There are those who insist that mothers are born with love for their children and place them before all other things, including their own needs and desires. This was not the case with us. My mother’s name was Nora Ivie, and mine was Adeline. I had been named after a soap she’d once seen in a fancy shop, Adeline Lilac Soap, made in Paris. My mother said naming me so had been a mistake because now I thought I was better than she. She said it like a curse. Actually, she was correct, but there was a reason for this. She had ruined my father’s life, and mine, and she didn’t seem to notice. She was the sort of person who saw only herself and her shadow, and the rest of us disappeared in the bright sunlight.
In the year when I turned twelve, our lives suddenly changed. My father became ill and was unable to work. He was kindhearted and trusting, two qualities I did not inherit. He was patient as well, another trait I could not claim for myself. He’d been to sea when he was young and had collected shells from the shores of India and Africa. When he fell ill, he began to create a sailor’s valentine for my mother, setting shells into the shapes of hearts and flowers. During the time of his illness, my mother went out every night and left us alone. When my father sent me to search for her, I would always discover her in the tavern down the street with other men. She acted as though I were a stranger when I appeared. “Did you want something?” she would ask. Yes, I felt like saying. A mother.
“I need help getting home,” I’d announce, as if I were a poor orphan, not a difficult part for me to play. I did this for my father’s sake, because he didn’t deserve a wife like my mother. But I also did so because I knew she would be furious when she had to leave the tavern. She’d seem hard-hearted to her boyfriends if she shooed me away, and I suppose she wanted them to think she was something more than she was, so she went with me. Once home, she’d stop me before we went in the door.
“Don’t you tell your father a thing,” she’d warn me. “It would kill him. You’d do better if you kept your mouth shut.”
I was alone with my father when it happened, a quiet death, with no complaints. He told me I was the light of his life and that I must look after my mother when he was gone. Afterward, I sat beside him and wept. I knew that anything that might be good in my life had left along with his spirit. He’d been to places where the beaches were made of black sand with shells as large as a man’s hand or as tiny as a flea, and I hoped he had one of those beaches in mind in his last moments on earth. He’d quit the sea when he met my mother and became a cobbler to ensure he would always be close to home. It was likely the tanning chemicals had made him ill. He’d told me that my mother was so beautiful when he met her, he’d made her a pair of red shoes. Only a true beauty could get away with wearing such shoes, he said. Perhaps he was a fool, because even after all she’d done, he was most likely still in love with her on the day he died. He never did finish his valentine made of seashells.
When I went to the constable’s office to tell them my father had passed, they sent a sheriff to escort me back to our rooms. There was my mother, finally come home, playing the part of a grieving widow. She might have been an actress. She would have been good at that. The sheriff asked if she could support herself and me, and she had no answer. She had always turned to men for such things. Her boyfriends gave her trinkets and money, and she thought she was a queen because of that. But not one of them seemed to want to take her on now that she was available. What good was a widow with a child to them? After all, they had wives of their own.
My mother was sent to the local church and given a list of jobs where a woman such as herself was needed. That was how she came to be the housekeeper at the lighthouse. She was convinced a lighthouse would be exciting, better than the scullery or tavern jobs she could get in Boston. Naturally, she didn’t ask my opinion, and if she had, I wouldn’t have answered. She had told me often enough to keep my mouth shut, and now I did exactly that. I abolished all language on the day of my father’s funeral. I did it to honor my father and outrage my mother, who slapped me when I refused to answer her. Let her, I thought. She still couldn’t make me cry.
“You’ll regret this, Miss Adeline,” she said, mocking me.
Well, maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t, but after a day and a night of self-imposed silence, I didn’t know if I could speak even if I tried.
My mother’s job took us to an island in Essex County, forty miles north of Boston, at the tip of Cape Ann. Thacher Island was made up of fifty acres of rocks, a place consumed by woe from the start. In 1635, Anthony Thacher and his beloved wife were the only ones to survive a shipwreck when a storm came up and sank the Watch and Wait as it traveled from Ipswich to Marblehead. The tragedy claimed twenty-one souls, including their own four children, along with seven of their nieces and nephews. What can you expect to build on such sorrow? Only more sorrow to come.
By the time we arrived, in 1908, there weren’t many who would bind their lives to such a remote and desolate place. The winters were brutal, with sheets of ice falling down from the sky, a pelting so sharp and brittle it could draw blood if a person was hit directly. Snowdrifts could be eight feet high, a luminous mixture of water from both the sea and the sky, so salty and heavy it was nearly impossible to shovel the paths. Ice had to be chipped off the windows of the lighthouse so that the lanterns could be seen out at sea, a job that would freeze a man’s hands in under twenty minutes. There were storms in the summer as well, astounding electrical storms that illuminated the sky with crackling blue light and caused trees to burn up when they were struck.
Two lighthouses had been built here, each with exactly 156 steps, and three lighthouse keepers were employed; a senior fellow named Jonas Ford and two others, along with their families, were the only inhabitants. No one came to meet us when we arrived from Boston on the train, so we walked three miles to the harbor in a downpour. Rain was spitting from the sky as we made our way to Loblolly Cove. I was soaking wet, and water sloshed inside my shoes. With every step I took, I hated my mother more.
“I didn’t know if I could speak even if I tried.”
A skiff had been sent to the mainland to transport us, but the man at the wheel seemed in a bad humor, likely due to having to come out in the dreadful weather on behalf of two strangers, although he glanced at my mother once or twice. I was worried when I saw how his gaze lingered. My mother had worn her finest clothes, even though we had to walk through the rain, and she acted as if she weren’t the least bit wet. I had long dark hair and was tall for my age. People didn’t think I was twelve because of the look in my eyes. I looked wild, the kind of girl who would jump out a window or leap from the skiff that was bringing us to an island of rocks. I thought about doing so, but I held myself back. The water was so cold, even in the summertime, it would probably freeze a person’s blood before they drowned. That was no way to die, for it would surely be painful to become
a block of ice under your very own skin.
The fellow who brought us to the island came with his son. Father and son had the same name: Rowan. The elder Rowan Ballard was a man in his forties. He was strong and agile, and when he smiled at my mother his gloomy face changed and even I could see how handsome he was. He was the third lighthouse keeper; there were two men above him, he explained. That was why he wore the number 3 on the lapel of his uniform.
“Someone has made a mistake if you’re the third in line,” my mother said.
She was twenty-nine and still beautiful. I never noticed that about her, but other people did. Men certainly noticed. She had long dark hair; like mine, I suppose, although hers was thicker and wavy and mine was straight as sticks. Her complexion was rosy and she had pale-blue eyes, so pale you could fall into them. The lighthouse keeper stared at her when she made that remark. He narrowed his eyes, as if he wasn’t sure what she meant, and she made a face at him. “I’m never wrong, you know,” she told him. “I see big things for you.”
“Do you now?” Rowan said.
I saw how interested he was. I could tell about such things. When men were interested, they had a faraway look, as if they were trying to figure out their attraction. Was it a dream, or was it real? Did they want a woman, body and soul, or was it only the body that appealed to them? Sometimes it took them a while to figure it out, sometimes only minutes.
The third lighthouse keeper’s son, the other Rowan, who I came to call Billy Goat when I knew him better since he was always chasing after the goats on the island, was a few years younger than I. He was shy with most people but not with me. The fact that I didn’t talk brought out his chatty side. “I’m not sure your mother will like it here,” he told me. He said the conditions were so rough in the sea around us that Charlotte Fuller, the wife of Travis, the number two keeper, had her baby in a rowboat on the way to the doctor in town. The waves were so high and the current so daunting, they’d been forced to turn the boat around and come back. When they arrived, Charlotte had her baby in her arms. They named him Thacher Warren. Thacher after the island, Warren for a great-grandfather who himself had been taken by the sea.
“You think your ma could have a baby in a rowboat?” young Rowan asked me.
I shrugged and said nothing. A woman like my mother shouldn’t have children.
“My ma hates it here,” he went on. “The day she’s free of Thacher Island is the day of her redemption. She begs my father to go back to Boston.”
That made sense to me. Mrs. Ballard sounded very wise, although how a wise woman could end up here was anyone’s guess. All the same, I suspected that this woman and I would be great friends, and so it turned out to be, which rescued both of us from this rock in the sea that I soon enough learned was known as Thacher’s Woe. Some of the lost from the shipwreck were buried here, beneath the pear trees. One of the nieces must have been especially loved, and someone had built a cairn of stones over her grave, not just any stones, only the polished white ones that were not easy to find. Once I was settled in, Billy Goat and I brought flowers to her grave and stood there with our heads bowed. The sea was a dangerous enemy, and we were surrounded by it. But I remembered what my father had told me. You could grow to love something so strong and elemental, but you’d have to value the beauty of it more than you did your own life. Whenever I found a white stone, I thought of my father, and sometimes I imagined him sitting beside me, watching the glory of the sea.
The lighthouse keepers and their families shared one house. There was the man in charge, Mr. Jonas Ford, his wife, Elizabeth, their two boys and two daughters, and of course the Fullers, famous for their rowboat baby. Then there was the Ballard family. The children went to school by rowboat in the fall, and the older ones boarded with families in town, coming back to the island on Friday afternoons. My mother and I were to have a one-room cottage near the cow barn. It was a low blow to her, for the cottage was filthy and airless, but the view was remarkable. The last housekeeper to live here had lasted six months. Though the island was made of rocks, there were meadows and woods, as well as a garden planted in 1836 by a former lighthouse keeper who’d had a way with such things. Every time he’d gone to town, he’d brought back another specimen until he had created a kind of Eden. It was quite miraculous to be in the middle of the sea and yet still have pear and quince and apple trees, wild currants and gooseberries and blackberries, along with grapevines. Lupines grew wild, and there were sweet peas everywhere, pink and fragrant all summer long. The milk from the seven cows he kept were said to have saved the crews of the Ann Maria and the Royal Tarr, ships stranded on the rocky reef people called the Londoner, which had caused hundreds of shipwrecks. There were still cows, out in the pasture, and a few wild goats, impossible to catch, though Billy Goat and I tried often enough. There were seven children, and I was the oldest. It was my job to watch over the others, save for the baby, who was rarely out of his mother’s arms. My mother’s job was to help with the cooking and the heavy cleaning and laundry, which she minded a great deal. She cursed when she made their meals up in the big house. In truth, she had no talent for cookery; all the same the third lighthouse keeper, Rowan, always said it was the best food he’d ever eaten.
His wife didn’t seem to agree. Her name was Julia, and all that summer, she wrote out proper recipes for my mother. She gave my mother a black book in which to record her menus. Julia also kept an eye on me. She had seen my mother slap me when I refused to kill a chicken for supper, for it was not in my nature to do such a thing. Frankly, I’d rather starve than murder the patient hen that followed me through the grass. Julia found me crying out by the coop, holding the poor startled hen in my lap. The waves were high and a rainstorm was moving in and I wished myself to be somewhere else. I wished it so much I thought about jumping into the water. Perhaps my blood wouldn’t freeze and I would peacefully drown. My father had said he’d seen men drown and when they were recovered each seemed to have found peace. My despair was likely written all over my face, even though I tried to reveal nothing. Julia knelt beside me.
“I’ll take care of it,” she told me. She brought the hen into the barn, then brought its lifeless body to my mother so that she could pluck its feathers. “You’re the housekeeper,” I heard her say. “This is your duty to perform. If we’re to have a chicken dinner, you wring its neck.”
I quickly came to prefer Julia to my mother. I think she knew this, because whenever I came to her kitchen door to bring Billy Goat back from a day at the shore, she would give me a slice of pie.
“If you have any difficulties,” she advised, “just come to me.”
From then on, I was her accomplice.
The two lighthouses on the island had been built to distinguish their beacons from the single Boston Light, down the coast, and Plymouth Light, which was to the north, and save ships from the Londoner. The current brought ships toward the reef, and in the dark, at high tide, it was the perfect trap. The lighthouses were the warning signs in the inky night, and even in the fog sailors knew to stay away. As the summer passed, I began to feel free. I had time to myself, and I enjoyed watching over the children. I felt a sort of joy I’d never felt before. I was so unaccustomed to such emotions it took some time before I realized I was happy. The sea was ever changing, ever interesting, and I felt closer to my father. I now loved the ocean, as he had. The island was a sort of paradise for children in fine weather. I watched over the young boys and girls by the shore as they jumped in the pools left by the high tide and dug for mussels and hermit crabs. We collected seashells and bags of white stones to bring to Thacher’s niece’s grave. It was a spectacular and lonely landscape that I wished my father could see. I wished he could take off his shoes and climb over the rocks and wave to me and that he would be here in this world once again, if only for a few hours.
The children became used to me, and I suppose my not speaking came to seem quite natural; it was likely preferable. They prattled on and on to me, knowin
g that I was a good listener and that I never judged them. The truth of the matter was I was incapable of saying a cruel word.
“I was so unaccustomed to such emotions it took some time before I realized I was happy.”
The lighthouse keepers were too busy to have much to do with the children, and even the women had chores that would exhaust an ordinary person, from making jam to sewing their family’s clothing. My mother was to do the heavier work, cleaning the lighthouses, which must always be a brilliant white, washing floors, seeing to the mounds of laundry. I noticed that Rowan had time for my mother, despite his work. He stood in our kitchen watching her peel potatoes, a glass of whiskey in his hand, as if he were lord and master. Sometimes, on bright days, he helped her hang the laundry on the line. He slipped into our house late at night, and I saw what they did when they thought I was asleep on a pallet on the floor. They were all over each other and said things a girl my age shouldn’t hear. But I wasn’t surprised. That very first day, while he showed her our cottage, my mother had kissed him, just like that, as if they were the only two people in the world and I wasn’t standing right there, holding my suitcase.
“Oh her,” my mother said when the third lighthouse keeper had glanced at me, concerned, after their kiss. He still had some heart and soul back then. “She doesn’t even speak.”
My mother and the lighthouse keeper wrote to each other in the black book Julia had given her to plan menus. That was my mother’s way. Give her a gift and she’d grab hold with two hands and take it as she pleased. Their plans had nothing to do with recipes. They wrote about what their lives would be like if they could be together, and they made fun of Julia, calling her a cow and a dolt, amused that she had no idea of what was happening right under her nose. The book was kept hidden in the barn. It was a game, their secret to share, but they weren’t the only ones to read the messages scrawled inside. I read their words to each other, how every kiss was heaven, how nothing else in the world mattered to them. Their foul notes were filled with sex and longing and words I wasn’t supposed to say out loud, had I been able to, which thankfully I was not. How she would go down on her knees for him, how he would have her in his marriage bed, how many times in an hour they could do it, how when she drank him in, he tasted like the sea and filled her completely, how she was like a peach, a plum, a pear ready for him to eat. I suppose this is what they considered to be love. Sometimes when I sat on the floor of the barn and read their pathetic love offerings, I nearly laughed out loud. Rowan could think as he pleased, but I knew my mother. Had anyone else been around, a man with more to offer her, my mother wouldn’t have looked at Rowan twice, despite that smile of his. But he was there, and he was the only option. Mr. Ford was an old-fashioned, serious man who had been in the navy, and Travis was in love with his pretty young wife, and so she took Rowan. She took him whole, she all but swallowed him, she took him without any intention of giving him back, and after a while, it showed.
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