Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories

by Thomas Lynch

  Now Aisling’s head was pounding and she was confused. She didn’t want to get in his car. The other passengers were making their way to the car park. They had their own vehicles and places to go. She backed up and sat down on the bench by the boat. She was feeling pushed to a decision she didn’t want to make. How could she get in a car with a perfect stranger? Why would the airlines cancel a flight? The day was clearing. Conditions were fine. Why should she have to change her plans?

  “I’m sorry, I can’t go now. It’s quite impossible. Kindly leave me my bags.” She took a twenty-dollar bill from her purse. “For your trouble, please…I really can’t go. I won’t. Impossible.”

  “Whatever you say, ma’am. Customer’s always right.” And he muttered something under his breath. He refused the gratuity and left her bags beside her and got in his minivan and drove away.

  After a few moments to gather herself, Aisling moved to the shade of the Arnold Line ticket office. She sat in the pavilion wondering what it was she should feel. Outrage? Relief? A secret thrill? When questioned by the ticket agent about her plans, she bought a one-way ticket for the ten o’clock boat back to the island and retraced her morning’s journey back to the hotel.

  When she presented herself in Michael Musser’s office, he congratulated her on the decision to stay. He was sorry for the trouble in traveling but pleased that it had returned her to the Grand. The room she had vacated was being tidied for another incoming guest but he would find her a room as fine or nicer for the same rate as her old room. She was welcome at the Grand for as long as she’d like. He took her up on the elevator to inspect the suite.

  “A stroke of luck,” he said when she approved the new quarters. “We had a cancellation this very morning. It’s the economy. Like a plague. No confidence. Everyone is cutting back. Of course, they always claim a death in the family, or a sickness. I understand.” Then, catching himself as the purveyor of doom, he made hasty apologies and backed out of the room.

  Aisling settled herself in the tall wingback chair by the bank of windows that looked out to the Straits, amazed at the morning’s happenstance, and a little peeved at herself for her vacillations, irked at her ignorance of her own desires. She would have to let the department know about her delay in returning. She composed the email in her head, not wanting to talk to the department in person. She would amplify the matter of a canceled flight and hope that no one thought it strange that she had stranded herself within two hundred and fifty miles of the university. How, after all, could she explain herself to them. She could hardly make sense of it all herself. She could have rented a car herself, driven down the interstate at a leisurely pace and been home before evening. Both her graduate workshop and undergraduate seminar met once a week for a three-hour session. So after missing the first week’s duties tomorrow, she’d have a full week to get herself reconfigured and make her way home. She sat trying to clear her mind of contingencies and nodded off in the wingback into a restless sleep.

  NOW THE poet gave herself over to the chance unwinding of the days before her and to the pursuit of beauty outside of the forms her training and temperament had always used. Rather than put the hours to work over sonnets or sestinas or the further cataloguing of her husband’s work, rather than plan further lectures, assignments, classroom exercises or review her students’ writing samples, rather than send new work out to the better journals or plan a conference for the coming year, she sat for hours gazing at the water and the way the daylight worked upon it. She succumbed to her preoccupation with the young Jamaican, working her schedule around the girl’s schedule. When she was working the afternoon teas, Aisling partook of the afternoon teas. When she was working the dining room, Aisling lingered there. When she was out for the day with the young coachman, Aisling just followed on foot as the young couple shopped among the stalls in town, or toured the massive summer “cottages”—Queen Annes and Greek Revivals and Carpenter Gothics—on bluffs overlooking both ends of town. These were summer homes with names like “Far View” and “Tootle Cottage,” “Ingleneuk” and “Windemere,” built by the moguls of another age, Midwest capitalists who made their fortunes in textiles or railroads, lumber or banking; doctors and soldiers and clergymen. The cupolas and turrets, widow’s walks and towers rose over the broad porches to look out on Lake Huron and the Straits and west of the great bridge in the distance, all down the long blue edge of summer in Michigan. Aisling, of course, tried to keep her distance, but it wasn’t long before she could tell that Bintalou and her paramour—though of that she was not yet certain—had become aware of her pursuit. There was no good way to explain how it was she was always happening to be in their vicinity. What would she eventually tell whoever it was who might eventually ask? That she was transfixed by the vision of the girl; that the girl seemed in every one of her aspects, utterly sublime, and that since gazing upon her beauty, all other ruminations on the theme of beauty seemed poor imitations and wastes of time. She had made studies in her notebook, hoping to draw out some verse on this theme, but it was useless. On the subject of beauty Aisling could wax eloquent, but in the presence of it she was smitten to silence. All she could do was follow on, solitary in her pursuit, hoping to get some succor for the hunger it whetted in her for more of the same. She had grown more sleepless, more mindless of her resolve to rest, more mindful of the madness the girl had ignited in her. But she was helpless to do anything about it. She asked the hotel physician for a palliative for her constant headache, which now only sharpened when the girl was nowhere to be found. Aisling had confined her time downstairs in the hotel to the times Bintalou was working. On the girl’s days off, Aisling searched out her whereabouts, checking the hotel environs first, often asking one of the coachman’s fellow drivers where might Blake Shields be that day—for she had researched his name and other particulars—knowing that they would likely be together.

  The daily papers were full of concerns over the mortgage crisis and home foreclosures. While waiting for a sighting of Bintalou one late morning, Aisling Black sat out on the hotel porch reading about the steep decline in home values over the recent months—some by as much as 25 percent—and the “negative equity” many homeowners now had in their properties. There were gathering worries over banking and insurance, the stock market losses near 40 percent, and the rising rate of unemployment over 7 percent across the country, nearing 10 percent in Michigan. Aisling could only wonder what it all meant, having never considered the threat of ruin. She couldn’t help noticing the declining occupancy at the Grand. A rear section of the dining room was now closed off. The hotel’s usual population of guests and staff seemed in decline. There were fewer golfers on the golf course, swimmers in the pool, revelers in the bars, old-timers at tea. The traffic in bikes and horse buggies was noticeably thinner. The fudge shops were closing earlier, the ferryboat schedules condensing, the souvenir shops discounting their trinkets, first by 10 percent, then by 25. The days were growing shorter irretrievably.

  One night after the dining room had closed Aisling followed Bintalou and Henry Goodison and Blake Shields to the ferry docks, where they took the boat over to St. Ignace, the nearest port on the Upper Peninsula. Aisling could not help but follow, so much it had become her custom now, seating herself several rows behind the trio on the lower deck of the ferry and following them from the dockside to the casino that was their destination. It was owned by the Chippewa Indians and offered banks of slot machines, keno, roulette and poker, blackjack and craps. She watched as they settled into their games. She took a seat at the blackjack table next to the one where the headwaiter was playing and Bintalou was sipping a soda behind him. Blake Shields was trying his luck with nickel slots. Aisling was perfectly positioned to watch the girl overlooking her father’s cards, her face changing with his changing fortunes. Henry Goodison was well known and evidently well regarded in St. Ignace. Suited officials from the casino’s management stopped to greet him on their rounds. Cocktail waitresses brought him drinks. Sev
eral of his fellow gamers stopped to pay respects. He introduced them all to his daughter, who seemed more than delighted to be out with her dad, hugging him around his shoulders, kissing his large ears, and cheering when he won, offering consolations when he lost. Aisling envied their easy endearments, having long since grown distant from her own father. She found it hard to concentrate on the cards she was being dealt and kept losing more money than she ever intended, but was enthralled, nonetheless, with the proximity of the beautiful child and the games of chance. Aisling was amazed at the crowd of gamblers packed into the igloo-shaped casino. They were elderly, many were disabled, some of them looked near the edge of ruin. She imagined herself among them, in a venue out of Dante as people wagered not from their plenty but from their want. And in among the blinking lights and flashing machineries, Bintalou and her distinguished father hugged and giggled and smiled as he won.

  It was after the last ferryboat back to the island by the time Henry Goodison was ready to call it a night. Aisling followed the trio to the docks, where they invited her to share a ride back on a private boat and to split the cost of the passage with them. It was as near as Aisling had ever been to the girl, who smiled shyly but kept up her talk with her father in their own patois, which was, like all local brogues and dialects, indecipherable to their fellow travelers.

  “Greek to me, too,” said Blake Shields, seeing Aisling straining to make some sense of the Jamaicans’ talk. “I get bits and pieces of it now and then.” He was trying to be courteous, leaning in closely to be heard in the open boat taking them back to the island. “Are you enjoying your stay on the island?”

  Aisling praised the peace and tranquillity, confessed that she’d stayed past her time, had missed another week of classes downstate but couldn’t seem to work up the will to leave. He told her he’d be leaving in a week, that the community college he went to in Petoskey always started later because all the students worked the season in northern Michigan.

  “What about your girlfriend?” Aisling asked, as if she were only making conversation.

  “Binta?” he said, as if it wasn’t certain, the nature of their relationship. “She’s missed a week already too. She attends an all-girls college—really it’s a high school—in Jamaica. But her father’s letting her stay until I leave next week. My folks will get her to the airport.”

  The young man kept talking about how he had a bad case of island fever, couldn’t wait to get back to the mainland, was disappointed with the tips this summer—“Everyone’s down twenty, thirty percent”—but Aisling was elsewhere in her private thoughts. She was looking out into the dark water as the hum of inboard motor dulled their voices. She was thinking of what she would do without her, trying to imagine them both back to their separate lives. She closed her eyes and could see young schoolgirls in the Lesser Antilles where Nigel had taken her over Christmas and New Year’s not long after the pregnancy. He’d rented a villa overlooking Cruz Bay on the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. She could see Bintalou now, as she remembered them, black schoolgirls in their baggy uniforms—yellow cotton blouses over pleated blue skirts, loose neckties, and white anklets—moving like pretty schools of fish in unison through the village on their way to and from school, mornings, afternoons, how he had been so perfectly solicitous of her, so tender, bringing her orchids and poems and bottled water, trying to hasten her heart’s slow healing.

  IN THE fourth week of her stay on Mackinac, Professor Aisling Black made certain observations about the world around her. The panic in the press, local and national, was growing more fraught with every day. There were rumors of banks on the brink of collapsing, an insurance carrier and a well-known investment house had bellied up, the candidates for the coming elections were full of dire predictions and promises. “Toxic assets” and “derivatives” had entered the talk among townspeople and merchants. The manicurist in the hotel salon told Aisling that last week a family of guests had been asked to leave when the fees for their stay far exceeded the limit on the credit card they’d provided at check-in. A yacht in the harbor had been repossessed: everywhere were signs of what the woman called “a contagion” among the moneyed set. And while Aisling’s own interests had never included money or concerns over solvency, her instincts as a scholar triggered an appetite for researchable data. She spent a day on the Internet examining the financial press and their websites, emailing her own accountant, checking her online bank accounts. She would have called her father but they’d grown distant over the years since her mother’s death and she could not imagine a conversation that would allow either one of them to reengage.

  What was worse was the knowledge of Bintalou’s coming departure. Aisling tried to imagine her life after the girl was gone. She had come to see herself almost entirely as an acolyte to the incarnate beauty.

  By now she had figured out the predictable elements of Bintalou’s routines. She knew, for example, that Sunday mornings would find her at worship in the Little Stone Congregational Church on the edge of the golf course between her dormitory lodge and the hotel. And though Aisling had given up any practice of religion, she attended the services, sang the old hymns along with the faithful, was generous when the basket was passed, and watched closely as the light through the stained glass illumined the angelic visage of her beloved. The pastor of the church was a man with a trained preaching voice, a toupee, and a precision about his clerical dress which, like the rest of the island, labored to seem from ages past. He preached about the gifts of the body and the spirit—good health and contentedness, fitness and fidelity—“things beyond the purchase of any treasure!” Then he led the congregation in song, their voices rising to “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling,” which Aisling sang with real conviction and during which Bintalou, singing along with the rest of the church, turned and looked Aisling deep in her eyes, which had gone blurry with tears at the penultimate verse of the hymn:

  Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing,

  Passing from you and from me;

  Shadows are gathering, deathbeds are coming,

  Coming for you and for me.

  That is when she knew that the long weeks of her pursuit of beauty might soon be coming to an end.

  Thereafter, like any lover preparing to please her lover, Aisling took more time with her selection of costume, accessories, jewelry, and fragrance. She spent abundantly in the hotel shops and spa, in the latter of which she gave herself over to a full day of ministrations, from the Age Defying Purification Facial to the Herbal Stimulating Body Wrap and Hot Stone Massage. Considering herself in the full-length mirror, wrapped in a terrycloth and satin towel, the sight of her graying hair made her grimace.

  When she returned to her room, coiffure and cosmetics perfectly done, she seemed a much-restored version of herself, from years before, in the weeks and months of her courtship with Nigel, readied and willing and eager to love. A version of the future that continued to take shape in Aisling’s imagination was the one that involved an approach to Henry Goodison and the offer to take his daughter on as her personal assistant. The girl could come to live with her in Ann Arbor. The house in Burns Park was surely sufficient. Aisling would enroll the girl in Greenhills School, one of the best preparatory academies in the country, and eventually, of course, at the university. She would further agree to winter holidays in Jamaica and summers on Mackinac, but Bintalou would get the best of educations, eventual citizenship, a generous stipendium, and better prospects for the future. She could assist Aisling with the household duties, cooking and correspondence, shopping and social obligations. She would travel with Aisling on the widening circuit of literary duties, seeing the country and the world. It would be a remarkable tuition for a young woman and increase her own chances measurably; surely Henry would see the wisdom in all of this. Surely he’d want what was best for his daughter. They could share mealtimes, intellectual pursuits, even clothing—Aisling was sure all her things would fit—daily hopes and little heartbreaks. She could
become the sister, daughter, mother, and partner, now that she thought of it, she never had. It was hereabouts that the revelation of this plan would begin to obscure itself in Aisling’s contemplations.

  It was mid-September—long past the time she should have returned to school—when the professor rented one of the hotel’s bicycles and followed at a distance while Bintalou and her young coachman rode ponies out to the north side of the island. All the August crowds were gone. The senior citizen tours remained in town, taking in the blacksmith’s shop and Beaumont Museum, browsing for bargains in the stores, rummaging among the kitsch and knockoffs, the replicas of former treasures, the knickknacks and copied curios.

  By the time they turned northwestward around Mission Point, out past the Arch Rock and Voyageur’s Bay, there was no one on the road but the pair on horseback and Aisling on her bike in pursuit. The late morning was warm and windless and bright blue, the lake water glistening and smooth. Aisling felt like a girl again on the Schwinn coaster pedaling along Lake Shore Road, further and further from the town. It was four miles to Point aux Pins—the tail of the turtle the island was shaped like—and as Aisling turned south she found the ponies tied to a picnic table off the road. This end of the island was heavily forested with white cedars and silver birches and the land pushed out overlooking the lake. Aisling settled her bike in the woods and walked through the trees toward the water past the remnants of an abandoned log cottage, coming to a high promontory out of which trees grew at angles and the land beneath gave way to a high bank going down to the lake. She could hear their voices rising up from below. There was no sign of the footpath they must have taken and Aisling was about to double back to the old cottage to see if she could find a way when she considered the base of a cedar tree growing out at an angle of forty-five degrees and another one next to it, their dense branches interlacing forming something of a natural observatory. Crawling out astraddle the trunk of the one tree, first balancing off the other tree, then bending forward to embrace the first, she found herself hidden in the leaning trees fifty feet overhead a patch of sandy beach the couple below her had found on an otherwise rocky shoreline. The outgrowth of arborvitae, its flat filigree spray of leaves, provided perfect cover. She could see them and could not be seen.