Folly

by Laurie R. King

  It sounds to me like you could have a lot of fun with this project. If it would help, I’d be happy to take photographs, or make you a map, whatever you need. Between your search engines and Internet and libraries and my actually being here, between us we could write a small book. In fact, that’s not a bad idea. If you type it up all pretty on your computer, I could have a friend of mine bind it for you, in leather. Shall we put your name in gold?

  By a funny coincidence, when Ed brought your letter I was digging out the foundation, after days of cutting my way through the brush like some explorer in a jungle movie, and almost immediately I began to find things in the soil—an old canning jar, a bunch of silver forks, the mostly rotted covers of half a dozen books, various lumps of metal. All of them your great-great-uncle’s possessions—I feel like an archaeologist. I cleaned them off and have set them aside for you to look at.

  And that brings me to the second part of your letter. Petra—of course I would love to have you come here for a couple of weeks in June or July, but it’s not as easy as what either of us want. What do your parents say about it? When you talk to them (your letter didn’t say if you had yet or not) please let your mother read this letter so she knows my reaction. And I am also including a letter for you to give her.

  But to tell you the truth, my dear, you might think long and hard about whether a trip to the island is really what you want right now. It’s not a summer camp here, you realize. I sleep on a hard cot, eat dull food, work long hours of dirty, hard labor. You saw my privy— I still don’t have a flush toilet or a proper shower. I have to heat water on the stove, so I don’t even try to stay clean. There are mice and insects everywhere (and more, come June). I don’t have a boat, so you’re stuck here. I’d like to say I could take a week off and spend it going on hikes and picnics and swims with you, but I know I’m not going to be able to, and considering the wildness of the island, I can’t even say that you’d be fee to take off and wander as you like. And, you wouldn’t be able to bring Bounce, because, this being a nature preserve, the authorities frown on dogs running around and worrying the nesting boobies or whatever.

  Maybe we should think about next summer, when the house is finished and my only work is hoeing some tomato plants? I’d even have a boat then, I’m sure. Or maybe Christmas vacation, which would allow you to use the trip for the eighth-grade segment of the project. Still, it’s your decision. Think about it, talk to your parents, give them these letters, and let me know.

  Love,

  Gran

  P.S. I’m sticking in two rolls of film that I’ve taken here on the island, to see if any of the shots might be useful for the project. Why don’t you have two sets of prints made, and keep one for yourself.

  April 18

  Dear Tamara,

  I’ve asked Petra to give you the letter I wrote her, so I don’t have to copy it over again. As you can see, I’ve tried to discourage her with realism—life here is no holiday, and Petra is not used to roughing it.

  Not that I wouldn’t love to have her here, but I don’t imagine the idea pleases you too greatly.

  If the deciding factor is emergency communication, I could find out if cell phones will work here, and would agree to allow her to bring one—if she agrees that it is only for emergency use. If you have other specific objections, ones we could work out, let me know. If your objections are more general, well, I suppose I could understand that. Perhaps in the future we could talk about it again.

  I have spent many quiet hours here, thinking about you and all the ways I have failed you as a mother. I hope it is not too late for us to begin again. Yet again.

  I love you, Tamara.

  Mom

  Nineteen

  Rae folded the two letters away, leaving the bulky envelope unsealed. She was not at all sure about the wording, but she was too tired to think about it any more tonight. Tomorrow she would read them both again, before giving the packet to Ed on Tuesday.

  An unsettling day. The feeling of having one foot in the waters of sleep had persisted, as had the memory of looking down the beach to see the man, woman, and child materializing from the fog. She had not quite managed to finish the excavation work, because first the wheel had come off the barrow and it took a while to dig up a replacement nut, and then the ramp had fallen apart and she had to remake it. Mostly, though, she’d just been a weird combination of lethargic and jumpy, a sensation that bore a worrying similarity to the beginnings of one of her downward cycles, yet not the same. There were no voices, for one thing.

  Yet.

  However, even if she was sure that she was slipping, there was little she could do about it. All she could do was wait, and in the meantime, work.

  Tomorrow she ought to reach the back wall.

  So why had she agreed to spend the middle of the day being ferried around by that young woman?

  Rae sat back in her wooden chair and dropped her hands away from her face, and as she did so, her eyes lit on her journal. She pulled it over in front of her and reluctantly opened it to the last entry, a scrawl of mad words disturbingly like the scattered lists that had filled her house and her mind in the weeks following the funeral service. Hundreds of them, there had been. Tamara, taking on the job of clearing the house while Rae was hospitalized, had not known what to do with them; in the end she put them all into a couple of big grocery bags, to be saved or dumped as Rae chose.

  Those scribbled sheets of paper, deep on every surface in the house by the time Sheriff Escobar came for her, were as clear a sign of trouble as blown leaves were of a windstorm, a last-ditch attempt to impose order onto her decomposing mental process, as if the definitions of words and the relationship between objects and events might restore meaning to her life.

  She might have thought that stability was restoring itself, here in the tranquility of Folly, but she was in truth only a narrow step from quivering mutely in the corner: Last night’s journal entry was evidence of that. She reached out to tear the offending pages from the book, and stayed her hand. Psychiatric honesty, she had said, was the journal’s purpose, and honesty could not be had through censorship. She looked at the list of words, then ripped the two pages out.

  And folded them in half to stick in the back of the journal.

  A good hour before dawn, Rae was up and brewing coffee, impatient to finish the clearing. She had slept fitfully, but felt rested, or at any rate felt ready to begin.

  However, there was no point in digging and sorting debris that she couldn’t see. When the coffee was made, she took it out to the promontory to try and hurry the sunrise.

  She’d done this so often, it was becoming a ritual, its varied elements assembling themselves out of the crepuscular light like the individual instruments in a tuning orchestra.

  The waves were first. Rae had spent enough hours with them to tell, by hearing alone, which way the tide was moving. This morning the water was crisply nibbling its way up dry rock, so the tide was coming in. Then would come the foghorns—although this morning the sky was clear, with no mist to obscure the warning beacons or the stars, which were fading until only the brightest persisted. The air seemed to change, gathering itself to greet the day; the first birds stirred in the branches, and the early-rising humans. She was coming to know the various engines of her neighborhood: the rough-sounding motor chugging its Roche Harbor–bound owner to work and home again; a small, shy outboard heard only at low tide; a floatplane that passed over regularly; the big commuter ferry to Sidney. She heard the Orca Queen plying the nearby waters from time to time, usually at a distance, and although she couldn’t have said what was distinctive about its engines, her ears twitched whenever her daughter’s paid spy, genial as he might be, passed by Folly.

  No motors this morning, though, just a gradual, pleasing discord of smells and sounds, raising her spirits and her anticipation until the crescendo came with the appearance of the sun.

  Sunrise was a little after six. At nine o’clock Rae reached the bac
k wall of the foundation, where she made a pair of interesting discoveries that she had no time to investigate because just then a new and unfamiliar engine intruded itself into her consciousness. She stood up and saw a Parks Department launch entering her cove, at its helm a petite figure with a cap of gleaming red hair. Rae looked down at herself, patched clothes caked with dirt, and sighed. Then she looked at the object she was holding and decided that, since the first time she’d met the woman she’d had a gun in her hand, maybe this time it would be better to be empty-handed. She dropped the corroded hunk of metal that had been Desmond’s pistol back to the ground, kicked some soil over it, and climbed out of the foundation.

  At the tent, Rae stood scrubbing the soil from her hands and watching Nikki Walls approach. She wore her ranger’s uniform today, and looked like a pixie with a gun belt; all Rae could think was, How had this enticing creature managed to remain a single mother for as much as two weeks? Nikki was, granted, too fey for conventional beauty—her extraordinary looks, Rae knew, might even work against her, considering what conservative souls men were—but she was also neat, intelligent, and bursting with energy. Rae suddenly felt old and clumsy, like something that ought to crawl back under its rock.

  “Morning,” Nikki called, and held out a paper bag, its neck gathered in her child-sized fist. “I brought you that bird book you asked for, and also some apples. Last year’s, of course, but they’ve been in cold storage and they’re still good. I hope you like pippins. Knowing Ed, he doesn’t bring you much fruit.” She put the small bag on Rae’s table, her quick gaze flicking into the nooks and crannies of the campsite as she did so. “I know I’m a little early, but I got to thinking that I wasn’t sure about the depth of your cove, and there’s a big minus tide around three. I’d hate to get stuck. It looks really bad when Parks Department employees screw up that way.” Nikki’s heart-shaped face ended in a pointed chin below a slightly secretive mouth that radiated innocent mischief when she smiled, as she did now.

  Rae nodded. “Probably a sensible precaution. Do we have time for me to change?” She wanted to get out of her work clothes, but God forbid she should delay so long that she found the inquisitive redhead trapped on Folly until the next high tide freed her boat’s hull.

  “Oh, sure. Shouldn’t take us more than an hour to make the circuit.”

  Rae ducked into the tent to drop her filthy clothes in a heap on the grubby canvas, exchanging them for something several degrees less disreputable. She came out to find Nikki carefully scrubbing the apples under the water tap, one of Rae’s bowls from her storage boxes sitting ready to receive them, and not one book, but three (birds, trees, and wildlife of the San Juans) stacked to one side. Rae couldn’t decide if Nikki was just chronically overhelpful or if she was expressing puppylike devotion to the owner of Folly Island. Whatever it was, it was beginning to make her nervous. Maybe she should have asked Ed to buy her a bird book, instead.

  However, Rae had to admit that the apples looked good in the blue bowl; more than that, they looked appetizing, smooth and green and glistening with drops of water. She picked one up as she headed down to the boat, and crunched into it. Almost too tart for comfort and crisp as if it had just come from the tree, the fruit made her whole mouth feel alive. How long since she had tasted something that intense? How long, come to think of it, since she had actually tasted anything at all?

  She climbed into the boat after Nikki, most of her attention on the apple. As soon as they were clear of the cove mouth, the ranger opened throttle, and they roared out to sea. Rae sucked the last juicy scraps from the core and dropped the remains overboard.

  “Thanks,” she told Nikki. “That was good.”

  Nikki just grinned at Rae, balancing herself on the balls of her feet with the bumps and sway of the boat, openly inviting Rae to make fun of the pride the boat’s captain felt over her abilities. And they were considerable—Rae could feel that, even if all they were doing was speeding in a straight line away from the island. Nikki was a natural, an extension of the boat; she would also be absolutely fearless.

  “Why’d you become a park ranger?” Rae asked, shouting over the engine noise.

  Nikki throttled back a bit and veered the boat to run parallel to the island’s shore before she answered. “Basically, for the fresh air. I go nuts if I don’t get outside regularly. I was born here, moved to L.A. to go to college, came back when Caleb was little, and swore I’d never live in a city again. I’ve been posted various places, managed to wangle this assignment a year and a half ago. With Caleb small and needing my family, I could plead hardship. I try not to let them know how happy I am here, or they’ll send me to Yakima or Olympia, or have me designing computer programs somewhere. What happened to your arm?”

  Rae glanced down at the arm braced against the boat’s motion, its sleeve creeping back from the wrist. It was not the three scars on the inside of her wrist that Nikki had seen, but the straight surgical scar along the side. One of the surgeons had suggested plastic surgery to make it and the other scars less prominent, but tidy skin was not at the time high on Rae’s priorities.

  “I broke my arm a year and a half ago; they had to put a plate in it to hold it straight.” Not that it was any of Nikki’s business. Then Rae remembered the sheriff saying that Nikki had married a violent abuser. Maybe this was her way of asking if Rae too belonged to that sorority? No, thought Rae, let’s nip these personal revelations in the bud. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Just a circle. Jerry said you didn’t know why your island is so difficult to get close to. You see those ripples?” She pointed to one patch of rough water among many, this one offshore of some scrawny trees.

  “Er, rocks?”

  “Bad reef. Great if you’re into skin diving, but not if you want to get close in. It wraps around the point up there before going out. The divers anchor offshore, don’t try to swim through it. Not more than once, anyway, and they usually only stay a couple hours at a time, around slack water. Current gets strong once the tide gets under way—it’ll pull a light anchor right up.”

  To her passenger’s relief, Nikki kept well clear of the reef, and around the point came the other barrier the sheriff had mentioned, a sheer cliff face that dropped like a highway retaining wall into the sea. The boat’s powerful engines throbbed at low power as they chugged along against the full flow of the retreating waters, Nikki pointing out landmarks as if she owned them. They saw a bald eagle perched in a half-bare tree over the cliff face, Nikki spotting it as soon as they came around the bend, although it took a while before Rae could make out its white head against the foliage, even with Nikki’s massive binoculars. Rae could see the lightning-split tree over the spring, and showed it to Nikki as one of her two contributions to the tour.

  The bare cliff face ended sharply in a forested spit that came out into the water like a bent arm, a miniature version of her campsite promontory, only this one was covered with huge, low-limbed cedars that brushed the water. To the right, a delicate waterfall marked the entrance of the spring waters to the sea. In front of the wooded arm, Nikki pointed out another submerged reef awaiting unwary hulls and wetsuits, and gave it wide berth. As they turned to follow the island’s north shore, the sun shifted from their backs to their right sides. Rae closed her eyes and raised her face to the warmth.

  “I saw that show,” Nikki said abruptly. Rae reluctantly turned her head and opened her eyes. “That traveling show a couple of years ago? Women woodworkers, something like that.”

  “Women in Wood.” The summer before the end of things.

  “Right. Your big piece just blew me away. The small one, too, but especially the figure. Lacy something—Lacy Runner, that’s it.”

  Rae had to smile at the subtle difference it made to put the emphasis on the second word, as Nikki had, rather than on the first as Rae herself did. The piece had taken her the better part of a year, and at the end had become something far more than the wooden figure in running shoes that she ha
d originally envisioned. Its very submission into the show had been cause for heated debate and protests by those who saw it as being too close to conceptual art, even containing elements of performance art, for a dignified show of fine woodworking techniques.

  The figure was that of a slightly larger-than-life woman in running shorts and a stretch top. She was a portrait of Rae’s grandmother, wife of the tyrant William, who had died when Rae was six years old, less than a year after Rae and her newly widowed father had returned to the family mansion in Boston where he had grown up. Rae had rendered Lacy in woods as light as she had been in life, birch and yellowing white pine, with mother-of-pearl for her eyes.

  The name of the piece, as far as most people were concerned, came from the arch over the runner’s head, an intricate lace table runner that had belonged to the woman herself. Only Rae’s family and close friends knew about the play on words, since Lacy’s name had not been mentioned in any of the promotional material about the show. Rae had stiffened the lace into rigidity with a plastic resin and curved it on a frame, so that it resembled a garden arch—or a finish line. The key element of the piece was that the woman herself was composed entirely of drawers, large and small, of myriad shapes and angles. With all the compartments in place, the figure was simply a runner with a wide band of lace arched over her upper body. When the drawers were all removed, from the side she remained the same, a running profile veiled by a lace archway, but from the front she was revealed as empty, a ghostly presence made of delicate wooden lace. Some of the drawers also had objects in them, inlaid or fastened down or lying loose—again, several of them had personal meaning for Rae alone, having belonged either to Lacy herself or to Rae’s mother. Every day, the gallery would transform the wooden woman at least once, removing and replacing the drawers and changing the objects they contained. A person could see Lacy Runner a dozen times and never catch the same exact figure twice.