The Writer

by D. W. Ulsterman

  “Why did you choose me to for your first interview after so many years of silence? Why pick some college girl with hardly a resume to her name?”

  Decklan’s eyes softened as he folded his arms across his chest.

  “Is that how you see yourself, Ms. Plank? As merely some naïve and inexperienced college girl?”

  Adele did in fact wonder what Decklan Stone saw when he looked at her. She knew she was somewhat attractive, more cute than beautiful; though, she was unable to shed a nagging ten pounds she felt made her more “round” than she would like. Her medium length, brown hair was most often kept back in a ponytail. What little makeup she wore was both simple and subtle, and her attire, such as it was, rarely went beyond a comfortable pair of blue jeans and a sweatshirt.

  High class she was not.

  “I know I’m not really a reporter yet. A few stories in my college newspaper but that’s about it. You could have a New York or Los Angeles or Seattle reporter up here the next day if you told them you were going to grant an interview, right?”

  Decklan shrugged. It was such a slight and simple gesture and yet it elicited a silent revelation from Adele.

  He’s elegant. I’ve never thought of a man as elegant but that’s what he is.

  “Perhaps they might after they get on that Internet thing and find out who I am, or rather, who I was.”

  It was Adele’s turn to shake her head.

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Decklan. I looked up your author ranking. Manitoba still sells thousands of copies a year.”

  The author finished his tea and then set the cup down onto its saucer on the coffee table.

  “Ah, I guess that explains why those royalty checks keep making their way to me!”

  “You haven’t answered my question, Decklan. Why me?”

  Decklan shifted his left leg over his right and pretended to straighten the crisp crease of his khakis as he considered the question.

  “I liked your letter, the one you sent to my publicist requesting the interview. It was friendly without being pretentious, had a hint of the curious but not overly fawning, and most important, you sounded sincere. The older I get, the more I value sincerity. I would add the timing of your letter helped as well, it being thirty years since Manitoba’s publication. I don’t necessarily care for overtly maudlin reflection, but I’m not entirely immune to it, either.”

  Adele felt her heart pounding inside her chest. The interview was proceeding. Decklan Stone was talking and she knew it was her job to keep him doing so.

  “Why haven’t you published anything since Manitoba?”

  The tips of the author’s fingers on his right hand lightly massaged his right temple. His lips pursed and then he refolded his arms over his chest.

  “I guess it’s because I didn’t feel I had anything left in me to say after Calista’s death, at least not anything of value. I could have faked it like so many other writers do, but that would have been a betrayal of her, and I had already betrayed her enough. She was a big part of Manitoba’s success, you know. She pushed me to continue working on it, revising it, and then to have the courage to put it out there in the hopes someone would be willing to publish it. Manitoba was my story, but we wrote it together. When it was turned down the first time, she told me to keep trying. Then it was turned down for a second time, and a third, and yet her belief in me and the story never diminished. Not even a little. She was more than I deserved.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  Decklan’s eyes lowered slightly as the right corner of his mouth curled slightly upward.

  “You’ve researched me, my history and reputation when I was a younger man?”

  Adele nodded.

  “Yes, you were greatly admired following Manitoba’s success. That must have been a lot of pressure for someone still so young. You loved your wife, but you loved other women too?”

  For the first time since they met, Adele detected a hint of anger in Decklan’s voice.

  “NO, I never loved anyone but Calista. None of the others meant anything to me. I was vain, arrogant, pathetically insecure and incomprehensibly inconsiderate. And yet despite all that, her belief in my potential remained. It’s partly what brought us here from New York, to the islands, to this island.”

  Adele remained silent, allowing the author to gather his thoughts again before proceeding. Decklan’s mind had retreated into the mist of memory. It was a journey he had struggled to avoid for a very long time.

  “Manitoba was published just weeks before our marriage, and in the chaos of doing interviews and signings and other publicity obligations, we neglected to make time for a honeymoon. Actually I’m not being entirely honest. I should say that I neglected to make time. The novel’s success had been the culmination of what was then my life’s dream. I embraced it like a starving man would a banquet laid out before him. I gorged myself on that success, became drunk off of it, and for a few precarious months, nearly lost myself entirely to it. If not for Calista, I most certainly would have. She was my figurative island, and then following our eventual honeymoon that brought us to this place, this became our literal island together. By then the novel was a bestseller, the money was beyond anything either of us could have thought possible, and our life here was…”

  Decklan’s voice trailed off and his eyes closed as he lifted his head slightly upward.

  “What was your life here, Decklan?”

  The author’s eyes remained closed. He grunted softly and then opened them. He was on the verge of tears.

  “It was perfect.”

  Decklan paused again to wipe the corner of his left eye. He appeared unembarrassed over the show of emotion. There was no self-awareness, only sadness.

  “Calista took to designing the house with such enthusiasm. We were free from the daily obligations and temptations of New York life. At that time there was no phone here. We had to take a small boat to Deer Harbor and use theirs so that I could check in with my publicist. Beyond that, our time was truly our own, and we felt like we had all the time in the world. And then when the dock was completed, we decided to purchase a larger boat to allow us to explore the entirety of the surrounding islands. We became frequent guests at Roche Harbor, Friday Harbor, Fisherman Bay, that wonderful resort in Rosario, and occasionally we journeyed to the Gulf Islands in Canada. We would fish and crab, explore beaches, and watch the whales, the birds, and the storms that made the waters churn and the skies darken like some great work of antediluvian art. I was as happy and content as any man could possibly be. She loved the boat, the water, the undeniable and mysterious beauty of this place, and we loved each other. We had become, quite literally, an island unto ourselves.”

  This time it took both of Decklan’s hands to wipe the tears from his eyes.

  “In the winter we would sit on a blanket in front of the fireplace there and happily empty a bottle of wine that we brought back from one of our boating excursions. Sometimes we would talk of things great and small, while other times we said very little and simply enjoyed the moment to ourselves. If I was particularly quiet, Calista would tease me that the world would shake its head if it were to learn that someone who so many perceived to be a man of great words was in fact such a mute. I would tell her that I would rather be a great man of few words, than simply another man of too many. She would fill this house with her laughter and declare me hopelessly convinced of my own intellectual superiority.”

  The author looked to the outside world beyond the windows again as his voice lowered to a barely audible whisper.

  “I have missed her laughter for a very long time.”

  Decklan cleared this throat, as though trying to stem the bleeding of a particularly painful emotional wound.

  “Calista was much loved among the people of the San Juans. Her inherent light would shine upon anyone fortunate enough to know her. She was far more than merely the wife of the man everyone took to calling, The Writer. She had a unique knack, perhaps with no more tha
n a smile or a kind word, to leave others feeling better having experienced her. If the locals took a vote to decide which of us could remain in the islands, I am certain I would have been the one forced from here every time.”

  “I’ve only seen pictures of course, but she was a beautiful woman.”

  Decklan nodded and then stood up from his chair.

  “Yes, yes she was. I would like to show you some of her real beauty, Ms. Plank. Would you mind if we took a bit of a walk?”

  Adele looked up at the author with an expression that spoke to her confused curiosity.

  “You mean outside?”

  Decklan held out his right hand as he nodded.

  “Yes, outside, as that is where I am able to feel her presence the most. I think it might help you to better understand my own story.”

  Adele felt Decklan’s hand lightly grip her own. She delighted in the strength she felt as he easily pulled her up from the chair. His right arm encircled her shoulders while his left hand pointed to the hallway that Adele knew connected to the kitchen. Adele was mildly disappointed in the almost fatherly way he gently led her along, devoid of even a hint of sexual attraction.

  “Right this way.”

  And what a kitchen it was. The author quickly took note of how it impressed his guest.

  “Ah, yes, it’s another extension of Calista. Inside the house, this was truly her place. She loved to cook, to take her coffee there at the breakfast nook with the view of the trees just outside. And look here at this sink!”

  Adele found herself unable to resist sharing in her host’s enthusiasm for the large, stone-lined sink to the left of the high-end stainless stove.

  “She discovered this on our way up to Martha’s Vineyard the summer before we were married. We later found out it was the sink from a colonial-era home in Boston. Can you imagine! It was one of those little roadside knick-knack shops, and they had this sink sitting outside, nearly overgrown with grass. Calista was instantly drawn to it. It wasn’t much to look at then, but she demanded we buy it. We brought it back to New York, and then eventually it found its way here where one of the local artisans updated it to accommodate plumbing. She considered it the centerpiece for the entire kitchen. I would hear water running, and Calista singing softly as she cleaned vegetables, or watered a plant, or prepared a pot of coffee or some tea.”

  Decklan turned the cold-water faucet on and let it run for a few seconds, smiling at the sound it made as the water hit the highly polished stone of the sink’s interior. Then the smile faded as his hand lingered on the faucet handle for a moment longer.

  “There is so much melancholy involved with remembering, isn’t there? We have this ability to recall the things we once loved above all else, but lack the ability to actually relive those moments. It’s like the cruelest of mirages. We see it as it was, but know it shall never be again. It makes one wish to never have remembered it at all.”

  Adele stood silently looking at the author’s hand that remained resting atop the faucet handle. She found herself unable to adequately respond to an admission of such profound pain and so instead chose to simply wait for the dark cloud to pass and the light to once again return.

  And so it did. Decklan sighed, smiled, and then pointed to a single white door at the back left corner of the kitchen.

  “All right then, outside we go.”

  4.

  Adele delighted in the crisp, saltwater air that surrounded her outside Decklan Stone’s home. He slowly led her on the narrow, packed-earth paths that cut through the small island. She was fascinated by how quietly enthusiastic the author was when he stopped to show her a plant and explained why his wife had chosen it so many years earlier. Every location had a story, a memory, an integral piece of the woman with whom Decklan had so deeply loved.

  He brought Adele down to the partially hidden cove she had noticed upon her arrival, and spoke about the diminutive runabout he kept on the cove’s beach.

  “It’s a 1961, built nearby in Bellingham. I chose it because it was the very same year as the Chris Craft. Many times Calista would remain here on the island seeing to her plants and her gardens, while I took the runabout to set crab pots, pick up a bottle of wine from Deer Harbor, or, if I was feeling particularly adventurous, risk the larger waters off Point Doughty to the north and fish for salmon. She would scold me upon my return, and beg that I please be more careful when out on the water alone.”

  The college journalist was smitten by the little watercraft and its graceful lines. She also noted how the grooves its bow cut into the beach’s sand appeared relatively fresh and that the small outboard engine on the back looked new.

  “You still take it out, don’t you?”

  Decklan ran his right hand along the side of the runabout and then gave his guest a sheepish grin.

  “Yes, quite often actually, my hermitic existence is somewhat exaggerated by the locals. I am on the water two or three days a week, in fact. So much time has passed since Calista’s death that some years ago I realized for those who come to the islands to merely vacation, I am as much a stranger to them as anyone else. I can visit the artists selling their wares at Roche Harbor, enjoy a fine meal in Friday Harbor, or even travel to the mainland in Anacortes in relative obscurity. I tasted notoriety, fame, and the admiration of many. For some time now I’ve also experienced obscurity. I prefer obscurity. It allows me to be myself and not have to consider what others would have me be.”

  The author’s eyes suddenly widened, and he knelt down and gently picked up an inch-long piece of emerald green sea glass. He held it in his right hand, looking it over with eyes that gleamed like an excited boy who has just discovered something uniquely wonderful to the world. Decklan then took Adele’s right hand, turned it over, and placed the glass in her palm.

  “Here, something to remember me by.”

  Adele smiled, but a whisper of warning sounded from within her as she told the author “thank you.” She couldn’t quite determine what it was that made her so uneasy at that moment. Then the discomfort passed and Decklan made his way up the trail that led away from the beach.

  She placed the sea stone into her pocket as the author called back to her.

  “I saved the best for last! Let me show you Calista’s special place.”

  Adele struggled to keep up as Decklan weaved between a pair of large tree trunks before finding yet another of the island’s many trails. She noted how much easier it had become for the author to speak of his wife in just the short time she had been there.

  This is some kind of therapy for him, likely years of bottled up pain and regret that he’s finally letting out.

  “It’s right over here!”

  Adele looked up to see Decklan standing between two age and weather-stained chairs that sat precariously close to a steep cliff that overlooked the waters directly below.

  The college student paused several feet from the chairs as she felt a familiar tightening in her stomach.

  “Uh, I’m afraid of heights.”

  The author attempted a reassuring smile and waved Adele toward him.

  “It’s OK, I promise. Please, I’d like you to sit in one of the chairs. If you wish to understand more of who I was, and perhaps who I still am, you need to do this.”

  Adele took a half step backward.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t. If I look down from there, I’ll freak out. I’m not kidding.”

  The sound of water hitting the exposed rocks below drifted upward to Adele’s ears, making her discomfort that much worse. Decklan extended his right hand outward toward her.

  “Here, take my hand. It’s OK. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Why is he being so insistent about this? Why does he want me so close to the cliff?

  Adele began to wonder if Decklan Stone could in fact be a dangerous man capable of murder even as the more reasonable part of her mind refused the suggestion.

  For god’s sake, I’m acting like a frightened baby. I’m pathetic!

/>   “These chairs were custom made by a local artist. She’s did several locations throughout the islands. She handcrafted them and then bolted them right into the cliff rock. Calista would often sit out here in the late afternoon and watch the sun go down. Sometimes during a storm, we would both sit and look out at the lightning and feel the thunder as it shook the sky over our heads and listen as the waves crashed against the rocks below. During the busy summer months we would admire all the different boats coming into Deer Harbor and wave at them as they passed our island. Just a few steps and you can look out and see it as she did.”

  Adele took yet another step back from what was feeling more and more like a decidedly dangerous brink from which she would never return.

  “I said no!”

  The author’s eyes widened and his mouth turned downward, marking his disappointment, not in Adele, but rather himself.

  “I apologize. I frightened you. I had no intention of doing so.”

  Adele focused on keeping her breathing steady and relaxed the tension that had momentarily overtaken the entirety of her body.

  Decklan took two cautious steps toward her.

  “Ms. Plank, are you OK?”

  Adele gave a quick nod.

  “Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry but my fear of heights can be pretty overpowering. I feel a bit foolish.”

  The author held up both his hands with the palms facing outward toward Adele.

  “No, it was my fault. As soon as you indicated you weren’t comfortable I should have listened. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had a guest here and I fear my enthusiasm overcame good manners and proper consideration.”

  Decklan tilted his head to the left and his eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Do you hear something?”

  Adele did hear something.

  “Yes, it sounds like a horn.”

  Decklan grunted as he moved past Adele and began to make his way swiftly back toward the house.

  “I think you’re right. It sounds as if it’s coming from the dock.”