Downstairs, I let the kitchen door slam so he would know I was approaching.
His eyes were closed, his face lustrous from sweat. His body was not a body used to being in the sun. I got a sudden flash of Cole behind a desk, unhappy, bored, rolling from place to place on his office chair, his hands full of blindingly white paper. Here he was different, peaceful.
“Meditating?” I asked.
“You could call it that.” He tilted his face toward me, his eyes squinted against the afternoon sun.
“Why do you sit like that?”
“Like what?”
“With your hand on your neck.”
He dropped his hand and turned toward me completely. “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess because it’s comfortable. Why do you ask?”
“It’s how my mother used to sit,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Your mother,” he said. “Do I look like her?”
“No, not at all. She was blonde. You just—remind me of her sometimes. Or remind me of someone.”
“You remind me of someone, too,” he said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Someone from a dream.”
I sat, letting my feet hang over the edge of the dock. Down below eel grass waved and silversides darted past. Barnacles covered the legs of the dock like gooseflesh. Cole stretched out on his back beside me. His ribs rose like the arches of some city. I didn’t know what to say to him. I reminded him of someone from a dream? What did that mean? I would have laughed a week ago, but now I didn’t feel like laughing. Instead I changed the subject.
“What did you and Lucas do this morning anyway?”
Cole pushed himself up on one elbow and shielded his eyes from the sun so he could look at me. “Lucas took me clamming. Dinner will be a feast.”
I could feel the heat radiating off his body as if his skin were saturated with sunlight. I could see light shimmering on him. I looked away.
The water was blue-black, the little red houseboat sweet and forlorn by itself out there. When we were little, a family had vacationed in it. There were two kids our age, a sister and a brother, and we could see them from the dock or the porch, hanging out their towels and swimsuits on the railing, sitting in little folding chairs in the sun. The parents seemed silent and detached. But we thought we would like the kids. The boy wore a straw hat all the time, even in the rain. The girl had short hair like Peter Pan. I thought about swimming out to meet them, but I was too shy.
And then—the sister died. She drowned. Not here, but off Block Island at the end of one summer. The family came back the following summer, but it was different. They were too sad, even from a distance we could see that. The boy spent hours alone on the deck of the houseboat staring at the water, the horizon, the shore. That was the last we’d seen of them. The boat had been empty ever since.
I shivered.
“Someone walking over your grave?” Cole said.
“I’m still alive.”
“The place where your grave will be. Haven’t you ever heard that?”
“Where did you say you live?” I asked. “New York?”
He paused for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “But I gave up my apartment there. There was no reason to stay.”
“So you’re just planning to start over...here?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe. It depends.”
“Won’t you miss city life?”
He gave a dry laugh. “Not really. I’ll miss the coffee at my favorite diner. What’s worth missing? Stuff? No, just people.”
“That’s true, I guess.” But I was thinking of the college applications hidden in the pantry. There were things to miss that weren’t people, and weren’t stuff. Experiences. Dreams for ourselves. There were things I missed, was missing every day.
I looked over at him. The skin of his stomach was so taut, it folded when he sat, like a hem. My chest tightened into a tough twist of sorrow that I didn’t quite understand, a longing for the past, the future, a longing for him in some complicated way I didn’t like at all.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said.
“I’m not afraid.”
“I can see your heart beating.”
I clapped my hands over my chest. “I’m not afraid.”
I felt an electric sensation coursing through me, as if I’d swallowed ocean water bright with bioluminescence. I could feel those water-stars gliding up and down the avenues of my body.
All evening, I felt electrified, my nerves raw. I cut my finger chopping vegetables for dinner. I put my finger in my mouth and the taste of the blood reminded me of rocks pulled out of the sea. I was transported to a time when my young self—five? six?—lifted rocks into the sunlight, smooth or slick with green growing things, and I tasted the salt and greenness. The act of recollection flooded me with pleasure. The sorting and cataloging of those old thoughts, collecting again, recollecting. Rocks, saltwater, the starburst of light on the surface of the water.
But then the door from the living room opened suddenly, and I knocked over a glass of water.
“What’s wrong with you?” Lucas said.
“I cut myself.” I held up my finger.
“I’ll get a bandage.”
He carefully wrapped a too-big Band-Aid around my finger and then mopped up the spilled water.
Cole entered the room, and my chest tightened and relaxed and tightened again, a bird trying out its wings. He looked at us, the spilled water, and the cut finger.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Lucas said. “Just Lydia being Lydia.”
* * *
“Hello, hello!” Eddie didn’t bother to knock, just stuck his head inside the kitchen door. Behind him, his wife, Kim, was holding a jean jacket closed at her throat, though the night wasn’t cold. I beckoned them in and dried my hands on a dishcloth.
“Hi,” I said. “You’re here. I didn’t think you were really going to—”
“We wanted to come,” Kim said. I was surprised that Kim had come along, and I tried to read her face. Was she just looking for a chance to observe Eddie and me together? But no, her expression was inquisitive but not suspicious as she glanced around the kitchen. Islanders were innately wary of newcomers, and Cole had burst so suddenly into our lives, I didn’t blame her for being curious.
“I haven’t been over here since—” Eddie broke off.
Since when? I wondered. Since Eddie and some other kids from middle school came over to do yard work, a way to offer condolences when my father died? I had watched from an upstairs window while they raked leaves into piles, too scared, too sad, too shy to go down.
“Where is he?” Eddie said.
“Cole? He’s in the living room, but please don’t—”
Eddie walked through the swinging door, with Kim scurrying behind. Cole was looking through the New Yorker. Lucas was bent over the table in the corner where he kept material for making elaborate little faux-insects for fishing. Cole put down his magazine and looked at Eddie in a friendly way.
“This is Eddie,” I said. “And Kim. Sit down, you guys.”
“I will do that, Lydia. Thank you so much,” Eddie said. He turned to Cole. “So I hear you’ve been reincarnated from these guys’ dead brother.”
Cole laughed, glanced at me, at Lucas. “That’s one way to put it.”
“I have to tell you, my friend,” Eddie said, “I’m suspicious of all this.”
“I don’t blame you,” Cole said. “It sounds wild, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds,” Eddie said, “like you’re trying to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes.”
Lucas gave me a terrible look.
“Eddie, you’ve got it wrong,” I said.
Cole held up his hand. “I think Ed and I should
talk privately. Would you all excuse us? Just for a moment.”
“It’s okay, Lyd,” Eddie said.
What were they going to do? I wondered. Fight? Lucas scooted out of the room, and Kim and I followed him into the kitchen.
“They’re going to walk out here in a few minutes best friends,” Kim said. “He just has that way with people.”
I felt the familiar feeling Kim always evoked in me. I hated her for marrying Eddie. But I also didn’t want to hurt her, and felt guilt and regret and resentment squeezing the walls of my throat. “Want some wine while we wait?” I asked.
I found a bottle in the pantry and Kim and I sat at the table drinking out of mason jars. We used to have wineglasses, but they broke over the years, and we never replaced them.
“Cheers,” I said to Kim, holding up my jar. She laughed. She was a laugher. She finished every sentence with a laugh, whether it was funny or not. She made everyone happy.
Lucas leaned on the counter, too shy to sit down next to Kim, too interested in what was happening behind the living room door to leave the room altogether. We heard their voices, but not what they were saying. A word or two floated at us, but never enough to make meaning.
“Why would you tell him?” Lucas asked after a while. Kim looked at me with interest, but I didn’t answer.
They were in there for half a bottle of wine. I microwaved some popcorn and we were snacking on that when they appeared through the swinging door.
“Sorry I can’t stay longer, Lydia,” Eddie said. “I promised I’d get back to the bar before nine.” He turned to Cole.
“Glad to have had this talk,” Cole said.
“Likewise,” Eddie said, and they shook hands.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll walk you guys out.”
I stood with Eddie and Kim outside in the dark and the wind. The night had grown chilly after all. I pulled my hands into the sleeves of my sweatshirt.
“What was that little one-on-one about?” I said.
Eddie shrugged. “I just didn’t want him to think you were all alone,” he said. “And I’m glad I came over. Because, Lyd, something’s not right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“For one thing, he wouldn’t say a word about where he came from. He just said he’s looking for family.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing on the surface, but it’s what’s under the surface that worries me.”
“I think you’re worrying for nothing.”
“There was another very weird thing, Lyd. We were chitchatting. I told him he had to try all the island cuisine while he’s here, you know just trying to be friendly. And I started listing my favorite places. And then—I don’t even know why I said it—I told him he should try the Quahog Pit.”
“The Pit? They closed ten years ago.”
“Yeah, but I told him he couldn’t miss it. And he said, Just look for the giant quahog, right?”
“That sign’s been down for ages,” Kim said.
“Righto,” Eddie said. “So how did he know about it?”
“Was he joking?” I said. “Like just guessing that someplace called the Quahog Pit would have a giant quahog out front?”
“It didn’t sound like he was joking. Or guessing. It seemed like he knew the place.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Unless Lucas told him about it.”
“Can I ask you a question...?” Eddie hesitated. “I don’t want to offend you or anything. This isn’t something I would have thought of normally, but Kim and I were talking last night—”
“We were,” she said.
“About Lucas, and if you guys ever, you know, had him looked at.”
I felt instantly deflated. “You’re wondering if he’s crazy?”
“No, shut up. I wouldn’t say that. I just know he has some challenges...”
“There’s a whole history,” I said, a little sharply. “We have had him looked at, if you really want to know.”
“I didn’t mean to say it like that,” he said.
“Things just come out wrong for Eddie,” Kim said. “It happens all the time.”
“It’s just anxiety,” I said. “Like in social situations. The same thing a million other people have. For Lucas it’s just really intense. My mom—well, you knew my mom—she was adamantly against medication of any kind. My dad was always pushing to get, you know, a psychiatrist to help him. With his shyness. Do you remember my dad?”
“Of course. Who didn’t love your dad?”
I looked at him. “You loved my dad?” I said. “How did you even know him?”
“You’re kidding, right? He was our Scout leader.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Boy Scouts?” he said.
“My dad?” I said.
“For like three years. The whole troop loved him.”
“How did I not know this?”
He shrugged. “Well, it was for boys, so you wouldn’t have been there. And Lucas never wanted to do—”
“No, he wouldn’t have.”
“Don’t you remember at his funeral?” Eddie said. “We were all there.”
“I thought you were just being neighborly or something.”
“I cried,” he said. “He was the first person I knew who died.”
“And then my mom,” I said.
“Oh, by then a bunch of other people had died,” Kim said. “Remember Mrs. Ainsley? And a couple grandparents had already gone. And that fourth grader who had leukemia?”
I nodded.
“The point is,” Eddie said, “Kim reads all those medical magazines. She says there are basically drugs for everything and anything now.”
She nodded solemnly. “There are.”
“All that stuff with the lighthouse,” Eddie said.
“Listen,” I said. “I’m not going to drug my brother. There hasn’t been any stuff with the lighthouse for years. He’s, you know, quirky, yes. But he doesn’t need drugs. And there’s nothing to worry about with Cole. You’re just—”
I was going to say jealous. But I stopped myself in time. I glanced at Kim, and she nodded at me, her eyes big and trusting. Poor Kim. What was wrong with me? I immediately remembered Eddie’s hands on my hips, and felt my neck go hot.
“He says he’s trying to start over,” I said, looking away from both of them.
Eddie shook his head. “Be careful, Lyd. That’s all I’m saying. You don’t know anything about him.”
The wind blew a branch against the back of the house over and over. A few pale clouds scuttled across the dark sky. The evening felt full of secret things, skunks, and fireflies, and sudden gusts.
“I’m always careful,” I said, a little stiff.
“Are you mad at me?” Eddie asked.
I was. Or mad at myself. Or at Kim. I knew there was something strange about Cole—the way he said he recognized the island, what he said about knowing me from a dream. Maybe he was caught up in Lucas’s fairy tale—and that was my fault. I’d asked him to play along. But I wasn’t scared, and I didn’t want Eddie giving me advice about Cole, or Lucas, or anything else.
Cole was at the kitchen table when I slipped back inside. I stood with my back against the door, wondering if he’d heard us talking. “I like that guy,” he said.
“Everyone likes Eddie.”
I sat down, he slid a mason jar toward me, and I raised it to my mouth and drank. When I set it down, Cole was already reaching for the bottle to refill. The wine fell into the jar in a bright stream, and Cole tipped the bottle so the last drops could rain down, and the action was like something we’d memorized long ago. I put the jar on the table and ran my finger around the rim, faster and faster.
“Where’s Lucas?” I said.
“I don’t kn
ow.” Cole looked once around the room as if Lucas might have been there the whole time without his having realized it. “He’ll turn up if he wants to. Meanwhile, tell me about Ed Frank.”
I laughed. I felt my anger disappearing. I forgot about the Quahog Pit. I guess I liked his attention. When was the last time anyone had said to me, “So tell me about...?”
“I used to be in love with him, if you must know. When I was twelve. And thirteen and fourteen and fifteen.”
He leaned back in his chair, waiting for me to go on.
“He was just a big deal in high school. Like huge laugh, huge personality. And, I don’t know, he always seemed kind of grown up, even when he was a kid. Like he always asked about my mother, the way adults do. He would tell these really dirty jokes and then look abashed when he realized there were girls listening. Like really filthy jokes.”
The truth was I’d longed to be the one to make him laugh. I used to imagine his big hands touching my face. Kissing him under a streetlight. Or in front of a fireplace. I imagined kissing him so often and so vividly I couldn’t actually stand to be near him. He would definitely know what I had been thinking. That love, which I kept to myself for as long as possible, was the longest love of my life.
By the time we graduated I assumed nothing could happen between Eddie and me. Then a few years years later he started going out with Kim, who was seventeen and pretty, with a long ponytail and the kind of smooth, round features no one remembers. She laughed at everything he said. Of course he loved her. Of course he married her.
But maybe that explains why it was so easy to be with him years later—old loves don’t die easy. But now—well, it didn’t feel at all the way I’d imagined.
“He never knew how I felt, and please don’t tell him,” I said to Cole. “That would be incredibly awkward now.”
“I’m sure Kim wouldn’t like to hear it. But I don’t think he would mind,” Cole said. He looked at me. “I would want to know—if it were me you loved. I never would have let you go to begin with. If you were mine.”
Goodnight Stranger Page 5