The House on Fripp Island

by Rebecca Kauffman

  “We wouldn’t even know if they were brainwashing us,” Kimmy said, “so we definitely wouldn’t know how to stop them.”

  Ryan said, “Some people think there’s a way.”

  “To stop yourself from being brainwashed?” Kimmy said.

  Ryan nodded.

  “Well, what the heck is it?”

  “If the government is sending things to our brainwaves electromagnetically, some people think you can stop them by putting tinfoil over your head.”

  Kimmy’s nose wrinkled. “Really? Like make a little hat out of it?”

  Ryan nodded. “Haven’t you ever seen that in the movies?”

  Kimmy looked at Alex. “We should do that, so the government stops making us think stuff and say stuff.”

  Poppy rose from her seat. “Let me go check on the ice cream, and I’ll look into some tinfoil while I’m in there.”

  Inside, Lisa was dishing up ice cream and Scott was nowhere in sight.

  Poppy said, “Did you send him to bed without dessert?”

  “He didn’t put up much of a fight,” Lisa said wearily. “Pop, I’m sorry about him going after Ryan like that. I don’t know what crawled up his butt. He looks sunburned, I imagine he’s dehydrated, the whiskey went straight to his head. He’s annoying as hell when he’s been drinking, but he’s usually not a mean drunk.”

  Poppy waved her hand dismissively. “It’s nothing. Ryan’s fine, takes a lot to ruffle his feathers. They’re already on to something new out there. Tinfoil hats, matter of fact. Do we have some?”

  “There’s a roll in the drawer next to the sink.”

  Back outside, Ryan helped Kimmy and Alex fashion tinfoil hats while they all ate ice cream.

  The sun had set, and the sky was a deep but electric blue with stars winking through, appearing to pulse at different rhythms.

  Rae asked her mother, “Did you make Dad go to bed because he was being obnoxious?”

  Lisa started to meander through a diplomatic answer about how tired he was, but Rae interrupted her: “Oh, save it.” She ate a bite of ice cream and left her spoon dangling from her lips.

  Kimmy tightened the point on the tip of her hat. “Daddy is one rude dude,” she said.

  Lisa took some pictures of Alex and Kimmy in their foil hats. Kimmy took hers off and tried to force it onto Rae’s head, but Rae batted it away and smoothed her hair.

  Eventually, Kimmy and Alex tired of the hats and crumpled them into little foil balls, which they flicked across the table into L-shaped finger goalposts.

  Lisa and Poppy cleaned up the dinner dishes together, and Ryan announced that he was going to go for a night swim in the pool. He went to change into his swim trunks, and Kimmy turned to Alex. “We should have him teach us how to snorkel in the pool, since we kept getting ocean water down the pipes this afternoon,” she said. “It’ll be easier to learn without waves.”

  Alex agreed. The girls went to Ryan’s bedroom and were surprised to find his door locked, so they bonked on the door and hollered in their request for snorkel gear.

  Rae changed into her string bikini, which was made of spandex but designed to look like acid-washed denim. She met the others down at the pool and settled herself at the corner of it, on the second step of the entry point with the balance bar, so that she was submerged in water up to her chest but her hair remained dry. She sat cross-legged on the narrow stair.

  The warm pool water was brightly illuminated from below, and chlorine steam lifted off the surface into the sultry night. The gentle churning of the ocean was faint, and a breeze glided through dry reeds. The air felt like a dangerous magic.

  Ryan had two snorkels, and he was giving Kimmy and Alex their second lesson of the day, since their earlier attempt to learn in the choppy ocean had been disastrous. The girls giggled at each other’s appearance in the full gear, goggles oversized and steamed up, the mouthpieces stretching their small mouths into cartoonish rectangles.

  Ryan taught them how to paddle about, adjusting the pipe to the level and current of the water, to keep from getting a mouthful of it.

  In the corner of the pool, Rae tipped her chin up to observe the sky and gazed in various directions, as though identifying constellations, thinking that Ryan would probably find this pose impressive. She recalled their conversation at the dinner table—fake moon, brainwashing. What was it that Ryan said he liked thinking about? Mysteries? She could be a mystery.

  Alex and Kimmy slithered around the pool like bottom feeders, their ragged nervous breathing audible and mildly disturbing through the pipes.

  Ryan dunked, then rose from the water and slicked his black hair back from his face. The golden lighting that rose from beneath the surface was majestic across his wet chest and face. He looked at Rae. “Is your swimsuit made out of jeans?”

  “No,” Rae said, her voice coming out shrill with nerves. “It’s just made to look like that. It’s normal swimsuit material, see?” She snapped one of the spaghetti straps to demonstrate.

  “Nice,” Ryan said. “You wanna give the snorkel a shot once one of them’s had their fill?”

  “Oh, well . . .” Rae paused. “No, I’ve used one before, I already know how.”

  “Gotcha.” Ryan dove back into the water.

  This was not true—Rae had never snorkeled before—but she didn’t want to put that goofy mask on her face, and she didn’t particularly want to get her hair wet.

  Ryan stayed underwater for quite a while, and when he reappeared at the surface, he slapped his chest, took a few heaving breaths, and said to Rae, “Do you know how long it’s possible to hold your breath for?”

  “Hmm.” Rae pictured the tunnel her family had driven through that morning, with Kimmy insisting that everyone try to hold their breath for the entire length of it. Rae hadn’t participated at all, Lisa gave up about ten seconds in, and Kimmy and Scott both claimed to have made it the whole way, gasping for air when the car emerged at the mouth of the tunnel and sunlight flooded them. Of course, it was obvious to Rae they had both cheated and breathed through their noses.

  “Maybe two minutes?” Rae guessed.

  “Times ten,” Ryan said.

  Rae stared at him. “Someone held their breath twenty minutes?”

  Ryan nodded. “Twenty-one is the world record. They say you pretty much train yourself to go to sleep, like hypnosis, to get yourself relaxed and your heart rate low enough.”

  “Wow,” Rae marveled, pleased that Ryan had chosen to share this fact and this conversation with her and her alone, as Kimmy and Alex were still both fully submerged and out of earshot.

  Rae thought quickly, grappling for a way to continue the conversation. She said, “I wonder if the guy with the record has lungs that are normal-sized, or if they grow when you do something like that.” She thought this was an intelligent thing to wonder.

  But before Ryan could respond, Kimmy, who had been looming closer and closer to Rae like a shark assessing its prey, suddenly burst to the surface. She spat the mouthpiece from her lips and yanked the goggles off. A deep pink ring surrounded her eye sockets and her lips were swollen.

  “You just peed!” Kimmy shrieked at her sister, incredulous and full of glee. “I saw it!”

  Rae’s heartbeat surged. She felt heat flood her whole face. “No I didn’t,” she snapped. “I would never.”

  “I saw it!” Kimmy said. Water dripped from her hair to her bare shoulders. All her muscles were tight with the excitement of her discovery. “It was yellow and swirling like oil,” she said, “and it came out from you and it was coming in my direction, like right at me!”

  Rae tried to stay cool even as humiliation beat against her ribs like an animal. It was true, she had released a small stream into the pool. Who hadn’t? Who didn’t?

  Rae said again, “I would never.”

  Kimmy turned to Ryan for validation, as Alex was still under the water. “I saw it,” Kimmy said to Ryan. “Didn’t you?”

  Ryan wore a half-grin. He d
iplomatically offered, “It might’ve been me. It’s so easy in the pool, just slips out sometimes.”

  Kimmy cocked her head to the side, eyes narrow, unconvinced. “I really thought I saw it come out from between Rae’s legs,” she said. “I was staring at Rae’s knee when the yellow came out.”

  Ryan said, “It was probably my pee and just floated over that way.” He gave Rae a nice soft look.

  Rae tried to smile. Her ears felt full of something.

  Ryan offered Kimmy a dopey shrug. “So I peed in the pool. Sue me!”

  Kimmy laughed a little. She finally seemed satisfied with this explanation, albeit disappointed that the drama of her observation had so quickly dissolved upon Ryan’s confession.

  When Alex popped up to the surface a minute later, Kimmy said halfheartedly, “I saw your brother’s pee in the water, it was floating toward me,” and Alex giggled, but really all the fun was gone.

  The two of them deposited their snorkels on the side of the pool and headed toward the deep end for somersaults. Ryan didn’t initiate any more conversation with Rae, but contentedly stayed at her end of the pool and made sprays of water with his cupped fist.

  Rae didn’t know what to think. Could a boy like a girl who peed in the pool? Her mom wouldn’t even pee in the same bathroom while her dad was taking a shower. Would Ryan go back to Wheeling and laugh with his friends about the girl in the swimsuit made of jeans who peed in the pool, right at her little sister’s face? Oh God, Oh God. She would have to believe that Ryan was telling the truth, that he too had peed. The alternative—that he lied because he pitied Rae or couldn’t bear her secondhand humiliation—was simply too awful to consider. I hate my life, Rae thought. Again and again she thought this.

  John, Lisa, and Poppy were playing Spades inside, and once the children had changed out of swimwear and into pajamas, they joined for a few hands until John became too tired to continue.

  Before dispersing for bed, they discussed plans for the next day.

  John suggested a fishing trip; Barry had recommended a strip between Fripp and Pritchards Islands where someone had pulled in a bunch of flounder the other day. There were places where they could rent crab pots too, John said. Alex said she wanted to join him for that.

  Lisa was hoping to check out the art gallery and maybe rent some bikes later in the week. She guessed that Scott would probably want to get another round of golf in.

  Kimmy said, “Can I go into your room and put a tinfoil hat on Daddy while he’s sleeping?”

  Lisa said, “Let’s just let Daddy sleep.”

  Scott was shirtless in bed, mouth agape, snoring lightly. The room smelled bad, of gas.

  As Lisa got ready for bed, her thoughts turned to her conversation with Scott back in January when they had decided to invite John and Poppy on this vacation. She couldn’t believe Scott had had the gall to accuse John of having a drinking problem. Scott had never once breathed a word of concern for any of his heavy-drinking friends, who frequently behaved as Scott had tonight; men in their forties and fifties egging each other on and drinking until they puked, a bunch of washed-up and depressing overage frat brothers. And John was the one with the problem? The hypocrisy was astounding. Of course, people were less inclined to toss the word “alcoholic” around when your drink of choice was twenty-five-year-old Scotch or a nice Bordeaux rather than Evan Williams or a forty. As in every facet of life, wealth wasn’t only money, it was also protection, the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, Lisa couldn’t tell Poppy what Scott had said about John back in January—Poppy would flip her shit. Better to save that anecdote for after the divorce.

  Lisa brushed her teeth and leaned close to the mirror to examine a flaky bit of skin under her eye. Salt water always caused this. She spat into the sink and then applied cream to the dry spot.

  She crawled into bed and squeezed foam plugs into her ears. She was a light sleeper, couldn’t tolerate any noise from Scott. She faced away from him, toward the wall, which displayed a pastel watercolor painting of a gull standing at the water’s edge, gazing stoically out at whitecaps and a pink sunrise or sunset. She closed her eyes.

  Typically, Lisa loved this time of the day, when it was over, when there was officially no more that could possibly be accomplished or discussed. But tonight she found herself downright miserable in the silence of the room, with her own thoughts suddenly magnified. She realized she was feeling something she hadn’t expected to feel on this trip: deeply, deeply sad. So sad, she was finding it difficult to breathe right. Her throat seemed too long or too narrow. She hadn’t felt this sad and this far away from everything and everyone since the days following her mom’s diagnosis. How could this be? She had thought that spending time with Poppy would be pure joy, that these days together would be a blissful reprieve from daily drudgery at home. But instead she was finding Poppy’s radiant energy cruel in the way that it illuminated her own misery. Poppy was living a good life—that was undeniable. It wasn’t a life that Lisa desired, at least not on its surface, not that husband or that home or that tax bracket. It was Poppy herself who had something that Lisa desperately wanted. Earlier, when she had asked Poppy if she ever imagined herself in another life, Poppy had said no without hesitation, almost incredulous at the question, as though it were rhetorical. This was what Lisa wanted most. She wanted to be so sure she was living the right life that that question seemed absurd. She wanted to stop feeling that somehow she’d gotten confused, fallen off course, and the right path forward had vanished altogether. She wanted to stop feeling like she was doomed, like all that lay before her were different wrong lives, and she was on the brink of committing herself to one of these seriously wrong lives for the rest of her days, leaving no possibility for escape or a redo. Lisa didn’t want to feel that she was on the brink. She wanted to know that her life could be her home.

  In their bedroom, Poppy changed into the old extra-large Mobil gas T-shirt of John’s that she always slept in, and John lay in bed bare-chested, wearing only a pair of briefs with elastic that was frayed around the thighs. He had turned the TV on and was clicking absently through the channels. Eventually, he settled on The X-Files.

  Poppy turned off the light and crawled into bed. The air conditioning was cranking, the room was cold. She watched Mulder poke at a skull with the tip of a pen. She said, “We’ve seen this one.”

  “Have we?” John handed her the remote.

  Poppy said, “I wish I had more white clothing.”

  “Why?” John said, although he too had observed throughout the day that everyone on the island wore white. “You drop one pepperoni and the thing’s ruined.”

  “Is that why we don’t wear white?” Poppy said. “Because we drop pepperonis and they don’t?”

  John laughed. “No,” he said. “It’s because they can afford to replace everything they own, times ten, without a thought. Don’t make any sense for us to buy things that can be ruined so easy.”

  “You’re right,” Poppy said. “Did you have a fun time golfing with Scott?”

  “Guy’s a self-centered loser,” John said.

  Poppy snickered. She propped up some pillows behind her so that she was elevated enough to comfortably watch TV.

  John said, “I hope fishing’s gonna get me out of golf for at least a day or two.”

  Poppy said, “Maybe his new friends from the north end of the course will invite him to go with them tomorrow.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice.” John turned onto his side, facing Poppy, threw a heavy arm across her waist, and closed his eyes.

  Poppy studied her husband’s profile. His five-o’clock shadow, practically a full beard by this hour, was speckled with gray. He had a few curled dark hairs sprouting off the backs of his ears. One coming out of a small mole on his neck. Hair everywhere—he couldn’t keep up with it, like trick candles on a birthday cake.

  “Did you take your pills?” Poppy said.

  “Mm.”

  Soon John’s breathing became heavy.
His fingertips fluttered.

  Poppy watched TV for another hour and a half. When she started to doze off, she was awakened by footsteps in the hallway. Every room in the house had its own adjoining bathroom, so why would anyone have to be out wandering through the house? Maybe someone was up for a midnight snack. She was too sleepy to investigate. She turned off the TV, discarded the extra pillow from behind her, and snuggled into John. In his sleep, he made minor adjustments to his posture to accommodate her. Her bottom was tucked warm and tight against his crotch, his arm crossed up over her waist and chest, a comforting weight, a seat belt, and his nose pressed into the back of her neck. In the darkness, the cream-colored walls were gray, the blue curtains were gray, the green carpet was gray. Poppy formed herself into the curve of her husband’s body and prayed the only thing she ever prayed, which was not so much a prayer as it was a threat.

  When John went in for his back surgery a year earlier, he’d had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia. The doctors had quickly gotten it under control and he came out fine, but the scare was enough to rattle Poppy. Ever since and despite her best efforts, she was consumed by thoughts of her husband’s death. It didn’t help that he’d had such a tough go of it since the surgery, his continued pain a constant reminder of his mortality. If John had a bug bite on his neck, Poppy feared it was a tumor. If he scraped himself up at work, Poppy smeared the affected area with enough alcohol to sanitize a bullet wound. And now with the painkillers she had a whole new set of obsessions and concerns. John didn’t fit the profile of high risk for addiction, but not all of them did. Poppy had been surprised by plenty of the people they knew at home who’d gone down that road. People with all the things you thought would insulate them, or at the very least help them rein it in: kids, church, newly renovated kitchens, committees, etc. You never knew. Well, anyway. She trusted John with her life, but could you blame a wife for counting the pills in her husband’s bottle each night, just to make sure?

  The only thing that brought Poppy any measure of comfort when she was up in the night was addressing Death himself. Don’t you take him from me, she admonished as she curled even tighter into her husband’s big, warm, sleeping shape in that gray, artificially chilled bedroom. Don’t you dare take him from me. See, Poppy didn’t care when or how she went, so long as she was the first to go. This was her only demand. Take me first.