The Diviner's Tale

by Bradford Morrow

  One last thing. As hard as it might be for Morgan and Jonah to do me this favor, I wanted them to promise never to bring up the subject of their father again. They knew the whole story now, so further questions would only lead us in unhappy circles. For the most part they abided by my wish.

  This was the best I could manage. Of course, over the years we'd had to contend with the rumors kids at school had picked up from their magpie parents that challenged the credibility of my story. One day I would have to tell them the truth, I knew. How many times I found myself wishing that Niles hadn't fallen in love with Melanie Lyons, now Melanie Hubert, as I believed he was the one man who would have been capable of raising my sons with me. Under the circumstances, he did what he could. And the boys, initially growing up in the same house as I did, before I saved enough money to make a down payment on my modest place on Mendes Road, turned out better than in my most optimistic fantasies. They were finer, more intricate companions than I might ever have imagined.

  The butcher-block counter was scrubbed. The zinc sink scoured. The window glass washed. The shelves of canned foods tidied, tins of Nep's favorite Norwegian sardines in mustard stacked high. The kitchen table was polished. The pine floor mopped. I joined Jonah and Morgan upstairs to finish preparations in the bedrooms and bath, then came back down where together we spruced up the greatroom with its worn but lovely kilim rugs and antique furniture left from Henry Metcalf's days. Wound the old brass ship's clock on the mantel. Arranged a nosegay of wildflowers from the yard. Rosalie's dominion was ready.

  Outside, the fog had thinned. Sun soon broke through as an offshore zephyr picked up. Since we didn't know exactly when they were going to arrive, we decided to take a late lunch down to the dock and wait while those mermaids' scarves blew away to Newfoundland and a rich aquamarine sky was unveiled in their wake.

  We packed two baskets with more food than we'd ever need. Bread, cheese, olives, some salmon cakes left over from an earlier dinner, almonds, oranges, even a can of Nep's favorite sardines. Jonah took his dragon kite, Morgan his fishing rod. I told them I'd be down shortly to join them. Just wanted to change my clothes. Off they went with the baskets and other gear. I watched out the greatroom window as they filed down the narrow path around the edge of the island and out of sight. Beyond them stretched a sea so blue it seemed unreal somehow, as if I were inventing it.

  Upstairs, I changed into a white poplin sundress Rosalie had bought for me last year. Put on the charm bracelet Nep gave me when we first visited Covey, a piece of jewelry that was a necklace way back then and now served, twice wound around, as jangly wrist jewelry. Brushed out my hair, which was wavier up here by the ocean than back in Corinth County. The face I regarded in the mirror was not as rested or settled as I might have hoped. I tried smiling, but the effect seemed strained. Yet I knew it was important that I recover as much of that blessed serenity I'd experienced on arriving at Covey as I possibly could. I gave it another try and saw, just on the other side of the veil of distress, a truly smiling Cassandra.

  That's more like it, I thought.

  Time had come for me to join the twins on the dock. I arranged a straw sun hat on my head, as now it was bright outdoors, put on sunglasses, and headed down the path. The breeze blew in wavelike crests so all the low foliage on either side of the path—oysterleaf and cinquefoil and innumerable others—was lashing and switching. I took in a deep breath of the pristine, polished air. Because of the earlier chowder fog, few sails were to be seen, even though the afternoon had developed into a perfect one for sailing. Lobster boats were chugging around, making up for lost time. I rounded the corner of the bluff and caught sight of Jonah's kite aloft toward the southwest, and Mount Desert beyond. Then I remembered I'd forgotten my camera. Even though yesterday was indeed never going to be today and the images I wanted to capture would never be more than mere memory jogs, I still had it in mind to document the occasion. In all my focus on looking nice, I had left it on the bench by the front door. Wouldn't take but a moment to retrieve. When I turned to run back up to the cottage, I saw a young girl, pale as an albino, standing slightly above me beneath the towering lone white pine that grew beside the path, a wind-blasted skeleton of a tree with stiff straight green-fringed arms pointing in all directions. She was staring at me as if I were an unusual sighting. As if I were what birdwatchers call an accidental. Half-smiling, half-frowning. Though I didn't recognize her, I assumed she must have strayed over from the other side of the island, but that didn't quite add up, given I had found no one there. She was wearing a blindingly bright pink shirt tucked into orange clamdiggers, an outfit whose neonlike colors made her stand out against the backdrop of short sage scrub and pale stone. Blue-black hair cropped ragged across her forehead, cut in such a way that she appeared to have wisps of sideburns. A boyish little girl with gray eyes and narrow lips pink as the inside of a conch shell. Barefoot. She might have been impish but for the slightly impatient jut of her jaw.

  "Hello there," I said, taking off my sunglasses.

  She said nothing in return but continued to eye me with undisguised curiosity, as if I were the stranger, the trespasser, the oddity. It almost seemed like she was, how to describe this, colorized. As if she were in a restored film whose tinting was oversaturated and just a tad out of focus. She made the surrounding landscape appear subdued.

  "And who are you?"

  Still no response, except that she tipped her head, birdlike herself now, to one side. Maybe she was shy, or had been told not to speak to strangers. Maybe she was a mute.

  "Are you looking for somebody? You lost?" I asked in a gentle, motherly voice, but to no avail. She continued to gaze into my eyes with that quizzical look on her face.

  A mood came over me that I didn't expect or like. Suddenly, I didn't want her to be there. Puzzled, I glanced away, out toward the Cranberries, long thin green-brown conjoined smears on the shimmering plate of ocean, then returned her stare.

  Moving as slowly as if she were underwater, she held out her hand no higher than her waist, palm up, as her half-smile widened a touch. Cradled there was what looked like a skipping stone, mottled gray and white with something akin to a face on its flat surface. Now, black as wet tarmac, a large dog appeared out of the underbrush to sit beside her. Panting like it had run a long distance and wanted to rest in the shade. He seemed a sweet enough mutt, wore a wide wet smile, as panting dogs do. I was inclined to reach out and pet him but didn't dare.

  Were it not for my monster, this encounter wouldn't have been cause for alarm. Mild surprise, yes, since to my recollection no one had ever ventured from the north end of the island over to our side. Perhaps also some wonder about how oddly luminous she seemed against the landscape, though this could be a simple feint of light. But the sharp dread I felt made me worry I had become downright paranoiac. Whoever this girl was, I didn't have the strength of heart to find out. Didn't want to know. My parents' landing on Covey and the first images of our family's reunion would have to be left to individual and collective memories. No way was I going back to fetch my camera.

  "Well, okay, goodbye," I said, in a falsely cheerful voice.

  She continued to smile, sort of, and said not a word.

  I turned around on the path, the wind picking up some, and my feet led me away from the cottage, the androgynous girl, the huffing black dog. I hoped she would remain silent, not say goodbye. Walked hurriedly, stumbling once, then again on a narrowing in the rocky trail, wanting to look back to see if she was still there and somehow assuming she wasn't. She made no utterance and her dog didn't bark. There were no sounds beyond my fast shallow breathing and those of wind and waves. Soon I saw Jonah's colorful dragon kite cutting quick arabesques in the stiff breezes above the beach, and as I rounded the precipice Morgan came into view at the end of the dock, casting into the surf. Beyond the twins, so far out toward Mount Desert that they couldn't see it yet, I was certain I glimpsed the white of the bow-ripped jade water and the small silhouette of th
e boat carrying my parents toward my sons and me.

  Halfway down the rock path to the dock I did turn and look back. As I might have expected and had certainly hoped, the pallid girl was gone. So was her smiling dog. I closed my eyes hard, rubbing them with my fingertips to clear my head, then opened them again. Nothing loomed before me but the path, the sage scrub, the pine with its long bows tousled by the wind. As I turned and continued down toward the landing to join the twins, it occurred to me that I hadn't even noticed whether the waif and her black mutt had cast shadows.

  15

  HOW OFTEN DO WE use other people as screens upon which to project our obsessions? Our discontents, dreams, desires, and fears? Well, I always thought, often enough that it's a wonder the whole waking world isn't simply viewed as an endless improvised film. One with as many screenwriters, producers, and directors as there are actors.

  Imagine. The history of the world as an endless stream of simultaneous epics, with all the humans who ever lived acting as both stars in their own autobiographical pictures and extras in the movies of everybody they ever met. Most of us like to think of ourselves as working in the realist tradition, making our movies true to life. But there are times in each of our countless films when the celluloid jumps its sprocket or the digitalization cascades and crashes, and we are left with something unrecognizable, a story that bears no immediate resemblance to what had been the prior throughline. We want to send the scene back for redraft. Something's wrong with the plot, we cry out. The dialogue is flawed. There's a continuity gaffe. The acting isn't believable. We need another take. Cut! we want to shout into the mouthpiece of our tin megaphone. But, nothing doing. The shot is already in the can, ephemeral as memory itself because memory is its medium.

  Not knowing whether the girl was real, to use that mysterious word, left me walking the rest of the way down to the shore in full recognition my movie threatened to veer even deeper into the fantastic. But for all my love of myth, I had no desire to traffic in fantasy. I wanted my personal film to be the simple, straightforward story of a young woman who has her problems but is blessed with two brilliant children, loving parents, and maybe somewhere in her future a man to complete the standard architecture of the cast. I wanted my movie to be interesting, but also ordinary. No Martine de Berthereau-like tale with all its drama and tragedy. A film whose true profundity lies in its deep ordinariness. But that didn't seem to be the way my life was arcing.

  Jonah's dragon kite was still curling boldly in the breezes high above the stone beach and Morgan was still casting from the end of the dock. The boat was a good quarter-hour away, what with the strong headwinds prevailing. And so I decided to challenge the validity of this documentary of mine. That girl hadn't the right to frighten me away from my own house, I decided, and probably hadn't intended to do so. I went back for the camera, chiding myself.

  It lay where I'd left it on the front porch bench. The house was undisturbed. I met no one along the way up or back down. Nor should I have expected otherwise, although I was determined to have another look, when Rosalie and I would take our traditional walk the next day, to see if anyone was staying with Mrs. Milgate. If so, in case she had forgotten, it would be prudent to tell her about the dangers of the lighthouse, which wasn't in good repair and was certainly no place for children to go exploring. Our few No Trespassing signs—they still read "Lands of Henry Metcalf"—were nailed to trees across the meridian ridge of the isle, not because we were worried about intruders but rather because we couldn't afford to spend the thousands it would cost to repair and insure the old tower. One downside of being on an island without phones was that if anyone needed immediate medical attention, it wasn't the easiest matter to arrange.

  I looked behind me up at this imposing lighthouse of ours. So white there in its tapering maleness. Imagining my mother seeing it from the boat as she gazed our way, I felt a mild twinge of daughterly anxiety. It had been some time since we lived under the same roof, and I could easily divine what her response might be if I shared all I had seen, all that had been happening to me. Nep's less active presence in my life only redoubled my sense of vulnerability.

  Was I intimidated by Rosalie? Perhaps the religion she so comfortably wore was off-putting, dismaying somehow, and daunting in its certitudes, at least to one who saw the world as a place in which the lack of certitudes was the only thing to be sure about. Not that she was ever overly pushy about her Methodism. She wasn't some pious pedagogue with a cross in one hand and a strop in the other. My mother was far more subtle than that. And, never to forget, she had lived for more than three and a half decades with a man who was as secular as the gadgets he repaired and the earth he walked with his fragile diviner's twig. No, I wasn't afraid of her as such. Just aware of the warp and weave and tangle that was our relationship.

  Nep looked years younger when he stepped down the seesawing plank, his cheeks wildly aglow from wind and sun. Mr. McEachern helped him off after Rosalie had come ashore, and the boys hoisted their bags from the boat.

  Whether because of the fresh soft air or because his mind was calmed by arriving at the island, Nep looked to be having one of his good days. His eyes were quick and clear. In profile he appeared as distinguished as a sea hawk, sharp-featured and worldly. His illness weathered him, but less in a diminishing than in an ennobling way. An ivory cable-knit sweater was draped over his shoulders, tied loosely by the sleeves at his neck. His mane of white hair streamed back over his finely boned head. He was wearing a pair of faded blue dungarees, a beige linen shirt, and some old docksiders, sockless as a schoolboy. I snapped a photograph of him for my permanent album. This was one of those moments I knew I would need to remember.

  "How was the trip? You must be exhausted," I said, as Jonah and Morgan accepted their grandmother's embraces and shook Nep's hand, all very manly and dignified.

  "Flew by like a breeze," my father replied.

  "A breeze for him, maybe," Rosalie said, "but that drive isn't getting any shorter."

  She thanked Mr. McEachern, whom she had known since her childhood days up here, with a kiss on each cheek. He, in turn, thanked her for the chocolates she'd brought for his wife.

  "Tell her I'm sorry they're a little melted from being on the road all day," she added. Nep reached for his wallet to pay for the ride out, but Mr. McEachern would hear none of it, boarded his boat, and powered off back toward the main island.

  We sat on large smooth blue rocks that had served many a generation as natural seats down here near the water while Nep and Rosalie rested, found their land legs after the choppy transit, and had something to eat before venturing up to the cottage. To everyone's delight, Morgan made a grand display of his casting techniques and Jonah got his kite back into the sky. For that brief hour it was as if time had turned backward and I was allowed, against all rules, the chance for a peaceful scene in my Cassandra Productions film to be crafted precisely as I wished it. Contented children playing under the admiring eyes of their mother and grandparents; calm solicitude among the tribal elders; the weightlessness of easy banter among people who were used to one another. A respite.

  Eventually, we made our way up the hill in fits and starts. The boys took the lead, lugging the bags. With stops to rest and admire the flowers and the shimmering islands in the distance, my parents and I followed behind. Furtive, hoping Rosalie didn't notice, I scanned either side of the path for the neon girl and her dog, her silent smiling black dog that looked, it dawned on me, just like the one that used to traipse around behind Christopher's gang. How they loved that beaming mutt, Roy Skoler's hunting dog. Though the world was crawling with black dogs, I knew there was no point in inquiring at Mrs. Milgate's whether any children were visiting her. My heart sank at the recognition.

  Doing my best to set my worries aside, I threw myself into the reunion that night in the cottage, and for the next few days that followed. We sailed the boat one afternoon to Otter Cliffs and Thunder Hole, where the sea spouted straight up into the sk
y. We sailed to our favorite unpeopled island and musseled the shallows of Lamb's Bay, whose sea wrack Nep called "wrack of lamb." We stargazed together from the flats above the cottage, the lighthouse blocking out the lower constellations that went wheeling into the black sea. We puttered, weeded the perennial garden, played board games.

  It seemed like the sweet ordinariness I longed for had settled over me like fairy dust, except for a brief moment when I could have sworn I smelled cigarette smoke through my open window before turning off the bedside lamp to sleep. I sat stunned in the dark. There was nothing to do, was there. Having discovered the fresh butts at the cottage and in the dilapidated house, I should have asked Jonah and Morgan if the stranger had been smoking. Too late now, though. By asking, I would only provoke more questions from everyone, Nep included, and I didn't want to do that. Best to just let matters unfold as they would, bide my time until I could clearly see if there was fire behind that smoke.

  16

  NEXT DAY, MY MOTHER and I set out as we always did for our trek around Covey's shores. This usually took us several hours, less because of the hike's length than the sheer ruggedness of the shingle that edged land and sea, not to mention our habit of lingering over every little treasure we found. A clump of beach peas, a spider web woven in a rummage of rocks, some pineweed whose flowers were tiny as diamonds. The sky was calm and the face of the water was flat as a fallow field. A few clouds shaped like white mushrooms edged the eastern horizon; otherwise we walked beneath an inverted bowl of paling indigo. Nep and the boys stayed behind to do their thing. They had made noises about fixing one of the propane pilots on the stove and maybe doing some fishing.