We all looked through the open door to Baby B’s room, where Cole’s duffel bag sat empty on the rug. I went into the room, opened the drawers, saw his clothes folded inside. In the closet, his shirts were hanging. Stacked on the dresser, his creased newspaper, his notebook with the torn pages, where I’d first seen his scribbled notes, the words She Is Alive traced and traced until they were darker than all the other writing.
“You’re not welcome here,” I said.
“I invited him,” Lucas said. They were the first words he’d spoken to me since he’d run away.
“I’m uninviting him,” I said.
“Too late,” Lucas said. I didn’t know if he meant the hour—nearing eleven—or if he meant something more permanent.
“What will you do?” Cole said to me, smiling. “I wonder. Will you carry my clothes out and throw them into the bay? Will you try to drag me down the stairs? I wouldn’t if I were you, I’m far stronger. Will you call the police? I’d love to see that giant idiot who brought Lucas home trying to figure out whether I’m doing anything illegal or not. Hint? I’m not. No, you won’t call the police. You know better than that. I’m wondering if maybe you aren’t going to do anything.”
His face had arranged itself into an expression of sympathy, but underneath, like some awful palimpsest, was suppressed glee glimmering through, and another layer, too, of smooth cruelty.
What could I do? He was right. George Samson wouldn’t be able to help—Cole wasn’t doing anything wrong on the surface; he was Lucas’s invited guest.
But if he was staying here, then I wasn’t.
I turned my back to them and walked down the stairs, through the kitchen, and out into the night. I left the fucking car. I didn’t need it. I walked along the beach, toward the landing.
The girl at the front desk of the Island Inn, the one who was afraid of room eleven, looked surprised as I approached her.
“You want a room?” she said to me. “Uh-oh. Is everything okay?”
“What? Fine! I just want a vacation,” I said. “For like one night.”
“Here?” she said. “A mile from your house?”
I looked around at this world of big soft chairs. It wasn’t like the rest of the island. It was rich and new. Clean and constructed. People came and went all year long leaving nothing behind. I felt like the opposite of that—burdened by all the trappings of my life, weighed down by the past, and not just my past! I was carrying all of it. Lucas’s past. My mother’s past.
“Room eleven,” I said.
“Seriously?” she said.
The room had a huge, clean bed with white sheets, a velvety, rich-feeling bedspread. I sat on the bed and looked out at the harbor. If I stood right up against the window, I could see down Clara Day Street, see all the familiar roofs and windows, see the light spilling from windows out onto the street, all of which looked less and less familiar as the lights began to blink out and the night grew darker.
I got into the vast bed. I desperately missed the feeling of drifting off in my own bed, knowing what the morning would bring, knowing that things were good between Lucas and me. Knowing that we didn’t have many people to love, but we had each other, and that was something to count on. I wanted to find my way into that world again. I wanted it so badly, I could taste the wanting, like blood on my tongue.
I woke in the dark with Cole beside me. I recognized his smell, felt his breath and his feverish heat against my back. I heard him whispering in the faintest paper breath of a voice. I was frozen, as if in a nightmare, but it wasn’t a dream. My senses were sharp and raw. There was salt on the air, and on his skin. I heard gentle waves in the harbor outside.
“It was many, many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea,” he whispered, and the skin of my neck crawled. “I was a child and she was a child, in this kingdom by the sea. But we loved with a love that was more than love.”
I couldn’t catch every word, but I heard the rhymes, the incantation.
“Neither the angels in heaven above, nor the demons down under the sea, can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”
Then I recognized it completely. We’d learned the poem in high school, along with “Bells” and “The Raven.” He recited into my ear, so I felt the poem as well as heard it, each breath a small hot gust—“For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams. And the stars never rise but I feel her bright eyes.” His forceful breath over and over with every consonant. “All the night-tide, I lie down by the side of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride, in her tomb by the sounding sea.”
Then his breath was the only thing I could hear.
I was frozen with fear, unable to move or even think.
“Cole?” I said finally—I hardly recognized my own voice, it was so quiet, muted with fear.
He pulled my hips against him, nuzzled his face into the back of my neck. “We belong together,” he said. “Lucas will come around, I promise you. He knows the nature of tides as well as you do. Then we can all be together.” I twisted to look over my shoulder at his face, which was defenseless and bare. I’d wanted to see vulnerability in him, sure it would make him more human, frail in some way. But it only made him desperate. It meant he would do anything. “You belong to me,” he said in a low, raw voice. “Sleep,” he said. “I’ll watch over you.”
He was soft, limp, quiet. But if I moved at all, his arms clamped over me, holding me in place. “Shh,” he said. “You’re safe.”
An hour later the light changed subtly, the grainy sky showing over the harbor out the strange window. The room was so quiet, the sky outside dark and still and lovely, it seemed unbelievable that my thoughts could speed with such intensity. I told myself to keep still—I told myself when the sun flooded the room all would be different. He would click into the Cole I knew from daylight, the careful, controlled Cole. I told myself Lucas would feel that something was wrong and come looking for me, but I knew he wouldn’t.
Then, just as dawn was about to break in earnest, he rose quietly from the bed, dressed, and left the room. When the latch of the door clicked into place, I sat up in bed. I looked around the dark, strange room.
My eyes were gritty, and my head ached. I felt cold, and I didn’t get out of bed for a long time. Where would I go? I thought about the kingdom by the sea. I thought about his name. I thought about his warm body and felt a terrible rushing sense of loss. Whoever I’d thought he was, that person was slipping away from me, swept right out to sea. Whoever he really was, he was strong, and lawless, and undeterrable.
19
In the morning, I went to the police station, with a tiny desperate hope that they could help after all, although I had a hard time piecing together what I would say to them. How could I possibly explain how we’d arrived at this point? I imagined George Samson looking at me like I was crazy. I imagined what he’d say: so now tell me again—really slowly—why were you sleeping at a hotel? And why exactly did you think he might be your dead brother? And what exactly made him think he could climb in bed beside you?
The police station was homey in a way I did not expect. There were yellow-and-white-checkered curtains in the windows, and a kind of reading nook in one corner, with an old gray armchair and a bookshelf full of books and magazines, and one lamp giving off a warm glow. On the counter in front of George was a collection of Hummel figurines. It was warm and smelled like microwave popcorn.
“Can I help you?” someone said, and suddenly I understood the yellow curtains and collection of Hummel figurines. The receptionist was short and round and very sweet. Her sweetness was almost aggressive, the way she clasped her plump hands and leaned forward to listen to me.
“I’m Lydia Moore,” I began. “I—I live here.”
“Marlene Hart,” she said. “I’ve been here—” she thumped her palm on the desk “—since 1972. Now I’m surprised
I don’t know you. I usually know all the kids on the island. They usually show up here at least once or twice.”
“Well, I never got in trouble,” I said.
“That explains it then.”
“But my brother is Lucas Moore.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Now, how is he?” She looked sympathetic, expecting the worst apparently.
“Well, I think we need help. Lucas and I both. It’s hard to explain.”
We were interrupted by the bells on the door as it swung open, and Stephanie Conn walked in with Eva Cardoza. Stephanie, of course, was married to Stephan, both of whom I knew from the island school. They were the ones I often saw together at Jack’s late at night, looking into each other’s eyes, still so lost in the romantic bubble of first love they could hardly hear when someone spoke directly to them. I’d envied them so often. I’d wanted that kind of love, that intensity of belonging.
Now Stephanie was sporting a puffy black eye and a long gash on her cheek. She was crying, noisily, like a little kid, an unabashed sound, guttural, indulgent. Eva Cardoza, who was leading her by the elbow, looked like the sound hurt her ears.
“Again?” Marlene said. “I don’t know why you keep bringing her here. Honey, you have to go to the doctor. You might need stitches.”
“What do I know?” Eva Cardoza said. “I don’t know what to do. I’m just the neighbor. We try the clinic, no one answers. Dr. Lyle is sleeping in, because I happen to know he is drinking all night at the bar. So I bring her here, and now you can have her.”
“But what happened?” I said, aghast.
“You shush,” Marlene Hart said to me. She picked up the phone and dialed. “It’s Marlene down at the police station,” she said, in the same cheerful voice. “Yes, we need the clinic. Well, go next door and wake him up, would you, dear?” she said. “You know where the key is. If he doesn’t answer, just go right in and shake him awake.”
“Did Stephan do this?” I said.
“He does it once a week,” Eva Cardoza said. “She cries and cries and then next day she’s so in love again.”
“He does this once a week? Oh my god. Why doesn’t anyone stop him?”
“This is what their love looks like,” Eva said, shrugging.
Marlene had found an ice pack in the back and was holding it to Stephanie’s face.
“There you go. You hold this right here. I don’t think this is going to need stitches after all, honey,” Marlene said. “Isn’t that good news?” She turned to me and gave me an accusing look as if I were somehow responsible. “No one’s perfect. But I think you already know that.”
I walked out into the weak sunlight, desperate to get away from Stephanie and her swollen eye, bloody cheek, her terrible crying. And worse still was Eva Cardoza’s casual shrug. He does it once a week. I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t want to see below the surface if this was the kind of thing I would find. And—I was seeing something else that maybe I’d known all along—George Samson wasn’t going to sweep in and save the day. He hadn’t done anything for Stephanie, not in all these years. What could he possibly do for me?
No one was going to save me.
That was the truth, and it landed in my gut like a rock.
* * *
The rhythm of the poem was in my head all day. I thought of the notebook paper I’d found in Cole’s room weeks ago. She is alive. That sentence marched along beside the poem, making a chaotic mess of the tomb by the sounding sea. A voice as clear as the autumn air called out to me: Which do you want to be? Alive? Or in a tomb by the sea? I wondered if it was my mom.
I walked down to the landing. The afternoon light turned the sand to gold. My face and fingertips burned. Clint had his bagpipe on the dock, and it sang and sang. I heard the lines from the poem as my own heart beat in rhythm. I imagined the tomb by the sounding sea but I didn’t shiver. I felt a warm rebellion deep in my gut.
This wasn’t me. I didn’t lie still while a thief took all that was mine. I was someone who fought back. I was slowly filling up with something, a large, warm sensation. It was courage, coursing through my veins. I planted my feet in the sand and lifted my arms above my head, lifted them to the golden sun sagging in the west. Things were going to change, because I was different now. I felt the change like a turning tide. I was scared of Cole, yes, and I was sad about the past, but I was also brave. All this time I’d been waiting for someone to throw me a life buoy, but I didn’t need the buoy. I was a strong swimmer, a fierce swimmer, and I knew how to fight against a current.
20
I made three changes when I returned home from the Inn, and I implemented them like they were my job.
First, I installed a lock on my door, a sliding lock I could secure from the inside, and I stashed a bottle of spray cleaner under my bed, which I could use to blind him, I thought, if I needed to. Even so, I had a hard time sleeping, and when I did my dreams woke me up.
Often I heard knocking, but when I went to the door no one was there.
Often I saw twin creatures running across the lawn, raccoons, or foxes, or stray dogs.
I dreamed Cole was telling me secrets.
“It’s the same every time,” he said. “It’s you and me in a dark place—together. I’m inside you. Over and over.”
“What are we talking about?”
“The dream. The most perfect dream I’ve ever had.”
He touched me with one finger, letting it run along my throat, my collarbone, my breasts, first one, then the other, his fingernail as light as wind, on my rib cage, my stomach, my hip. I felt myself sinking, submerged.
“Can I ask you something?” I said. “What’s your real name?”
He laughed. “Colin,” he said.
“Is this a dream?” I asked, just to be sure.
The palm of his hand on the outside, then the inside, of my thigh. I was out of breath. I was slipping underwater.
The second change: I made an appointment with Dr. Brent, a psychologist whose office was at the small medical center inland, to talk about my panic attacks and how to manage them.
“I didn’t realize what they even were,” I told her, “until suddenly I was passed out in Carson Cove. I have to be able to get off the island. I mean, if I ever really needed to. Can you write me a prescription, something I can take to manage them?”
“Drugs are good. Drugs are fine,” she said. “But there may be other ways. Meditation really helps some people. And you might want to sign up for a yoga class?”
“Oh god,” I said. “You really do turn into your mother.”
Dr. Brent said, “I knew your mother. I’m sorry you had to lose her. And you were just a teenager.”
“I was twenty when she died.”
“That’s too young to be without a mother.”
I wanted to cry, knowing someone had noticed what was happening to me back then. People had sent flowers and come to her funeral, but afterward, everyone had gone back to their lives, the business of cooking meals, and cleaning rooms, and fixing rain gutters, and bathing children—and Lucas and I had been forced to cobble together a life of cleaning and cooking and paying bills and caring for each other, without really knowing how to do it.
I shook my head, pressed my fingertips against my eyes. “I guess I’d like to be normal,” I told Dr. Brent. “You were wondering about my goal. That’s my goal. I want to live a normal life.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “I mean, what’s normal? What is it you’d like to do that you think normal people do?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but I did know. I knew one thing I wanted to do. “I’d like to go to Carson Cove and walk around. Without, you know—”
“Perfect,” she said. “Let’s make an action plan.”
Dr. Brent’s action plan involved small, every other day trips to Carson Cove. The idea was to re
wire my brain to associate Carson Cove with something other than fear. Once I’d experienced the town without panic, it would be easier and easier to step off the ferry, get into a car, drive toward the highway.
I was glad for the excuse to return to Carson Cove because I was anxious to be away from home, away from Cole with his smile, his muscles, arms, mouth, chest, ears, neck, the smell of his sweat. His fingernails. His breath in my ear. I’d begun to think of him as something other than human, but not a ghost. Something flesh and bones, but complicated by the heft and history of myth and fairy tale. A wolf. All teeth and hunger. All ripping, tearing, cunning trickery. It was as if the beast the island was named for had returned to claim all that was his. Names matter.
I was also glad to return to Carson Cove because I wanted to see Tuck again, his bright smile that had nothing to do with what was happening at home.
I wanted to give myself a few days, a chance to catch my breath before I risked another panic attack in Carson Cove, so in the meantime I concentrated on the third change. In addition to the lock and my sessions with Dr. Brent, I rented a safety-deposit box at the Island Bank. I planned to systematically go through the various files in the house and make sure the important papers—the deed to the house, the copies of our parents’ wills—were locked up where Cole couldn’t find them.
I hadn’t paid attention to these things before. The house was paid off. Once a year, a tax bill appeared, and we paid it. When the electric bill came, we wrote a check for that. I deposited my paycheck and Lucas’s paycheck into our checking account at the island bank every two weeks. There was usually enough to pay our water and electricity, to buy groceries. When something came up, we went to our savings account—which our mother had left for us when she died. It was slowly getting smaller, but I had always assumed it would last until—until it ran out, and then we would figure something else out.
It was all stunningly simple. Bills came and we paid. Now things felt more complicated. I was aware suddenly of all we had to lose.
Goodnight Stranger Page 14