Island of Lost Girls

by Jennifer McMahon

  As he lowered himself down to sit on the edge of her bed, she wondered how so much could have changed, thought how unfamiliar his body seemed to her now. His stomach hung over his jeans, his shoulders slouched forward. When did he start to slouch? He had always stood up so straight, so defiant. He crushed out his cigarette in her glass ashtray like it was an effort.

  He leaned back and laid himself down on her bed, his arms clasped behind his head. His faded black T-shirt was tucked into jeans with holes at the knees. He wore basketball sneakers, black canvas high-tops, the kind he’d worn all his life. It was like he’d worn the same outfit through boyhood and it was just now wearing thin at the edges, the fabric finally giving from years of growth.

  Sometimes, like right then, as he lay on her bed, she imagined he was flirting with her—teasing her, reminding her of the power he still held over her. Some days, she flirted back in her own awkward way—allowing herself to touch his arm, laugh a little too loud at something he’d said, brush the hair away from his forehead and place a finger on his scar. But it always made her feel pathetic, second best.

  “I’m glad you’re drawing again,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s just a little weird, ya know? A strange choice of subject matter. Couldn’t you do a bowl of fruit or something?”

  “Do you think it really looks like Lizzy? Did I get it right?” Rhonda asked, studying the drawing taped to her wall.

  “You got it right. I knew just who it was.” Peter looked up at her as he spoke. There was such tenderness in his face. He looked so at ease, there on her bed. She let herself imagine, for an instant, that it was his bed too. That he was just getting into bed after a long day, into their bed where they slept night after night.

  “Don’t you ever wonder about her?” Rhonda asked, letting herself look down at Peter’s face again. “Don’t you ever hope that maybe someday she’ll come back and explain everything?”

  “What is there to explain?” Peter asked, shifting his weight, sounding a little exasperated.

  “I don’t know…why she left, I guess. What she’s been doing with herself all these years. Maybe she’s married and has kids. You could be an uncle! Don’t you ever wonder what she does every day, what she sees each morning when she gets up?”

  “Of course I wonder, but it’s her choice that we don’t know.”

  Her choice. Rhonda thought about the different choices they had all made—how much conscious decision had gone into any of them?

  “Doesn’t that seem unfair to you?” she asked him.

  “Ronnie, a lot of things are unfair. What happened to Ernestine Florucci was unfair.” He looked up at the ceiling, breaking eye contact with her. “Lizzy wasn’t kidnapped by a rabbit though. We lost her, but not like that. That’s what I don’t get about the drawing.”

  “Loss just feels like loss,” Rhonda said. “Maybe that’s what the drawing is supposed to be about. How easily one loss just blurs into the next.” She bit her lip, stared down at him—him, Peter, perhaps her greatest loss of all.

  “Do you remember,” Rhonda asked, “how much Lizzy wanted to be a Rockette? How she was always practicing that high kick and doing all this crazy stuff so that she’d grow tall enough?”

  Peter nodded.

  “Maybe she’s a dancer?” Rhonda said.

  “Ronnie, I don’t think any of us grew up to live the life we dreamed we’d be living. Did we?”

  Rhonda thought a moment. “Tock did,” she said.

  “And what was it Tock wanted?” Peter asked, shaking his head.

  “You,” Rhonda said. “She wanted to grow up and be with you.”

  Their eyes met and Peter took in a breath like he was going to say something, but instead, he held it. Rhonda looked away.

  “Tock’s really pissed at you, you know?” Peter said finally.

  “She’s overreacting, Peter, can’t you see that? I didn’t set out to traumatize Suzy. She’s a smart kid, it’s not like she hasn’t noticed what’s going on. Jesus, it’s probably good for her to talk about it.”

  “And what were you doing at Laura Lee’s?” he asked.

  “Just visiting,” she said.

  “Right.” Peter narrowed his eyes.

  “Anyway,” Rhonda said, desperate to change the subject, “what have you been up to? Are you working?”

  “I’ve been fixing up my mom’s place. We’ve decided to put it on the market.”

  “You are not!”

  “It’s not like Mom’s ever going to use it again. And Tock and I have our house. Seems a shame to have a perfectly good house just sitting vacant. Besides, the taxes are killing us, and we could use some cash.” Rhonda nodded. “Speaking of cash, have you done anything about a job yet?”

  “God, you sound like my father!” Rhonda moaned.

  “Maybe he’s got a point,” Peter said.

  “Yeah, I know. He’s right. You’re both right…” Rhonda trailed off. “Peter, can I ask you something?”

  “What?”

  “Why did you decide to take the day off to go hiking? You know, the day Ernie was kidnapped?”

  Peter blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know, Ronnie. I guess I figured I needed some alone time. So I packed some trail mix, put on my hiking boots, and headed for Gunner’s Ridge. What’s the big deal?”

  Rhonda bit her lip. “I thought you said you were at Sawyer’s Pond. When Tock and Suzy went to find you, your truck wasn’t at the trailhead by Gunner’s Ridge.”

  “What I meant was,” Peter said, sounding more than a little flustered, “I headed for Gunner’s Ridge, then decided at the last minute to do something different. Christ, can’t a guy be spontaneous?”

  What, Rhonda wondered, would Peter say if she asked him about the missing keys she found in the cemetery? The keys were in the pocket of her jeans, and she stuck her hand in, stroked the rabbit’s foot as Peter lay sprawled out on her bed. Another day, she decided.

  Peter laid his head back on the pillow, let out a little sigh. Then he frowned.

  “What’s this?” Peter said, twisting, sliding his hand under the pillow. He withdrew a claw hammer with a worn wooden handle and nicked, black-painted head. Peter regarded it with the same look he’d used for her drawing and Lizzy’s postcards—squinting, confused. He turned the hammer in his hand, as if it was an object he was unfamiliar with. As if he were not a mechanic but a man from another galaxy.

  Rhonda stepped back, alarmed at first. Then she remembered, and her face flushed. As she spoke, the story sounded made-up, even to her ears.

  “Oh, that!” She gave a nervous little laugh, looked away. “Uh, I had a bad dream last night…after the submarine dream. The, um—” she flapped her hand at the hammer, “made me feel safe. I guess it worked, just knowing it was there. I fell right back to sleep.”

  Peter turned the battered old hammer in his hands, felt its weight. He gave her a look she knew well. It was his worried look. His poor, pitiful Rhonda look. He stood up from the bed and walked out into the hallway, taking the hammer with him. She watched as he put it back where it belonged, in the kitchen drawer.

  “Want my advice?” he called back to her as he came out of the kitchen and turned to leave. “Stick to drawing fruit. You’ll sleep better.”

  Rhonda stood in the doorway to the bedroom, watching the front door to her apartment close, listening to his footsteps on the stairs. She heard the motor of his truck turn over, the engine revving a little too hard and fast as he put it in gear, the tires squealing. Peter never had been good at good-byes.

  She turned around and eyed the drawing above her bed from a distance, pitying the girls trapped in the submarine. She stared hard at the ghost faces swirling, dancing around the submarine. And—was it her imagination?—the largest face, the cruelest, the one that hovered, looming large over the submarine, staring in at the girls, giving them an evil, screaming wink, looked an awful lot like Peter.

  JUNE 30, 1993

  I SAVED M
ONEY ALL through high school for this car,” Clem told her. They were side by side in Clem’s abandoned convertible beside the stage. The car had been turned into a pirate ship complete with a painted skull-and-crossbones flag that flapped from a pole lashed to the middle of the front seat. Clem had the wheel and was turning it gently with the remaining three fingers of his right hand. Rhonda thought that maybe bodies held memories; maybe when he put his hand on the wheel, he could feel all his fingers there, just as they’d been the summer after high school, when he cruised the open roads with the top down.

  “A ’61 Impala. A true classic. When I got it, it was a wreck. Daniel and I worked nights and weekends on it, restoring it. I’m telling you, Ronnie, when we were through, it was a beauty. I was so proud of this damn car.”

  Rhonda nodded, fiddled with the glove compartment. Usually, she loved it when her father told her stories about his past. He got all dreamy-eyed and lost in his own memories, and sometimes he’d seem to almost forget she was there. It made her feel special; like there was a secret window into her father’s past and Rhonda was the only one he’d open it up for. Her mother wasn’t much of a talker. She preferred to read Rhonda stories out of books: fairy tales about handsome princes and fair maidens. Not much different from the romance novels she lost herself in each day.

  This time was different, though. Clem was going to tell her something she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.

  “I used to take Aggie for rides. Back when I first met her. When she worked at the mill. Daniel would come along, too, sometimes. We’d go fishing. We’d all three sit around a little campfire by the stream, frying up trout, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, thinking, This is as good as it gets.” Clem gave a wistful little smile that made Rhonda’s stomach ache. This was not her story, but the story of what might have been, and how Rhonda almost wasn’t. It was the story of a time when Clem had imagined his life whole and perfect without either Rhonda or her mother in it.

  “I was nineteen years old when I asked Aggie to marry me. I took her out to the middle of Nickel Lake in this old aluminum canoe I had. Water had pooled there and soaked through my pants. I pulled the ring in its velvet box from the pocket of my fishing vest. I couldn’t believe it when she said yes.”

  When Rhonda was a very little girl, one of her favorite stories was how her parents met. Clem took a trip to Hanover, New Hampshire, in the spring of 1981 to go to a forestry conference. Justine was the desk clerk at the hotel. She was ten years older than Clem and he was immediately taken by her green eyes and the faint lines around them. He thought she looked patient, kind, and wise. When she asked if he needed help getting his bags up to his room, he winked and said only if she promised not to drop them. This made Justine laugh, and it got Rhonda laughing too, hearing the story told and re-told when she was a little girl. Justine called a bellhop to help with the bags, and Clem asked if she would join him for a drink later in the hotel lounge. By the end of the week, he’d talked her into going away with him the next weekend. She got to pick where. She picked Niagara Falls, and he proposed to her there, two weeks after they’d met. Love is love, he told her, down on his knee.

  “HOW LONG WERE you and Aggie married?” Rhonda asked.

  “Not long. Less than two years.”

  “When was this?”

  “A long time ago. Before I met your mother.”

  “But what year?”

  “Aggie and I were married September 9, 1978.”

  Rhonda frowned as she did the math.

  Peter and Lizzy came crashing through the woods, up the path from their house, arguing.

  “There’s no way to make it work,” Lizzy was saying.

  “Come on,” Peter said. “I’m Peter Pan. If I say I want to fly, I’ll find a way.”

  “I guess I should get out of here and let you kids rehearse,” Clem said, putting a hand on Rhonda’s knee before jumping out over the stuck door.

  1978, Rhonda was thinking. And then Peter was born in July of 1979, which means…

  “We’ll talk again later,” Clem promised.

  Are you Peter’s father?

  DANIEL’S IDEA THAT spring and summer, the latest scheme that was going to make him rich, was coffins. His own father had died over the winter (no one had been very upset about this, least of all Peter and Lizzy, who were never allowed to see their grandfather), and Daniel had been appalled when he was shown the coffins in the funeral home—the expense, the luxury. Daniel insisted that his father would have spat in his face if he’d been laid to rest in creamy, cushioned satin. So Daniel had his father buried in a simple pine box he built himself. (With sufficient bullying, the funeral director admitted that, strictly speaking, there was no legal requirement that Mr. Shale be interred in one of the elegant, affordable caskets available from Arceneaux and Sons Funeral Home.)

  Daniel felt sure he was onto something, an untapped market. Vermonters in particular would surely want to save money and maintain their dear departed loved ones’ dignity with a handmade, unpretentious casket. He made himself a sign, using a router and a slab of pine—SHALE COFFINS—and hung it on the shed. He put a few flyers up in town. He got two orders right away, one from a college student who wanted to use the coffin as a coffee table, another from an old widower who wanted to have things all prepared when he went. Daniel built coffins all spring and summer, stacking the finished ones in eerie rows on the cement floor of the shed. He waited for the rush of orders. He waited, and every afternoon, he diligently went out to the shed and got to work building more. This was where Peter and Rhonda found him that afternoon—bent over the table saw, tool belt strapped to his waist, radio turned up loud to a classic rock station.

  “Hiya, Dad,” Peter shouted.

  Daniel looked up, smiled, flipped off the saw.

  “What brings you to the mad scientist’s lab this fine afternoon?” Daniel asked.

  “We want to fly,” Peter said.

  “Fly?”

  “For the play,” Peter explained. “We want to be able to fly.”

  Daniel nodded. “I could make you some wings,” he said.

  Peter grinned. “Would it work?”

  “Of course,” Daniel said. He looked around the workshop. “Ronnie, hand me one of those two-by-twos piled up there. And Peter, we’re gonna need that heavy-duty roll of plastic we bought to cover the windows in the winter. Go get it from the basement, would you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Peter said.

  “Where’s your sister?” Daniel asked as Peter turned to go.

  Peter shrugged. “She and Tock took off on their bikes. She said figuring out a way to fly was impossible.”

  Daniel grinned. “Well, we’ll show her, won’t we? Now go on and get that plastic.”

  DANIEL WORKED ON the wings all afternoon, and just before dinner, they were finished. They looked a little like bat wings. Daniel had cut thin strips of wood for the frame and covered it in plastic, stapled on. They attached to Peter’s body with a crude harness made from an old belt of Daniel’s.

  “That should do it,” Daniel said, slapping Peter on the back.

  “I’m gonna go grab a beer.” He turned and loped back toward the house, where they watched him head in through the cellar door—Daniel kept a second fridge in the basement, for the sole purpose of beer storage.

  “It’s not going to work,” whispered Lizzy who had just pulled up on her bike and stood watching, dressed, as usual, in her Captain Hook outfit. It seemed that Lizzy never changed out of it anymore. She even slept in the shirt with the puffy sleeves, the satin pants tied at the waist with a gold rope that had once held curtains open, her wire coat-hanger hook resting carefully on the bureau beside her. She was, she explained, living the life of a true pirate, getting deeper into her character every day. She swore and spat and refused to bathe or brush her teeth, claiming that pirates were notoriously filthy. Whenever they complained about her smell, there was Tock to back her up: She’s a pirate, for Christ’s sake! She’s supposed to st
ink!

  “Besides,” continued Lizzy, “Peter Pan doesn’t have wings—he flies by magic.”

  “These are real wings!” Peter said. “I bet they’ll work just like a hang glider.”

  Lizzy laughed. “You wish.”

  “Dad said they would!” Peter told her.

  “Well, Dad says lots of stuff,” Lizzy said. She toed the ground with her scuffed black motorcycle boots. Then she cleared her throat and spat.

  “Come on,” Rhonda said. “Let’s get back to the stage. You can try jumping off.”

  “I’ll never get enough wind under me for it to work right,” Peter said.

  Rhonda watched in horror as Peter grabbed a stepladder from the workshop, positioned it against the building, and climbed, pulling himself up onto the shingled roof of the garage.

  “What are you doing?” Rhonda asked. “Come down!”

  “You’re going to crack your skull, matey,” Lizzy said, though she didn’t sound too worried. “Your brains will ooze all over the driveway!”

  “God, you are sick,” Rhonda told Lizzy.

  Peter walked to the front edge and looked down, then backed up all the way to the other side to get a running start.

  “Walk the plank, matey!” Lizzy called up to him.

  “Would you shut up,” Rhonda hissed at her. “Peter, don’t do it!” Rhonda yelled up. It was a stupid stunt just to prove allegiance to his father, who probably wasn’t his real father after all.

  A sick feeling washed over her like a polluted wave, toxic waste and biohazardous needles in the current. She was in love with her own brother, which was not only disgusting but probably illegal.

  “Climb back down and I’ll tell you a secret,” Rhonda promised.