Promise Bound

by Anne Greenwood Brown

  “I didn’t want to wake anyone,” I said. “Were you reading my journal?”

  “No. Of course not. I was getting you something warm to put on, and I knocked it off your dresser.”

  Liar. “I didn’t leave it on my dresser.” Jeez, what did he read?

  “Well, someone put it there. Probably your mom trying to clean up this pigsty.” He braced me as he walked me closer to the bed. “Have you been writing any new poetry?”

  “Not much.” I picked up my journal and buried it in my underwear drawer.

  “Lily, can I ask you something?”

  I closed my eyes and exhaled, turning away from him. “Not now, Calder. I’m really tired.”

  “Just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Are you planning something behind my back?”

  My bedding was a jumbled mess. I straightened the blankets as if I cared how things looked. “Like what?”

  “Are you planning something with Pavati? Are you going to join her? Permanently? In the lake?”

  “Not without you. Although I wish you’d …” I almost said, Consider it. But as much as I hated the idea that I was the cause of his severed family relations, I couldn’t put that on him. After all he’d been through, I couldn’t guilt him into it. Instead, I said, “I would never do that without you.”

  He traced the shadows under my eyes with his thumbs, then reached behind my neck. My muscles tightened as he undid the clasp that held the pendant around my neck.

  “No,” I said, grabbing his wrists. His eyes gazed into mine, and … reluctantly … I released my grasp. He laid the pendant gently on my bedside table. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, only inches away and yet so distant.

  “Just for a while,” he said. “You’ll sleep better.”

  “You’ll stay with me?”

  “Just for a little bit. Until you fall asleep. I don’t want your dad to get the wrong idea.”

  We crawled into bed, and Calder pulled the covers up tight around my chin. I pressed my back against his chest; he pulled his knees up behind mine until we fit together like puzzle pieces. He kissed my hair. I waited for him to fall asleep.

  The clock slowly changed its digital numbers as Calder’s body—just as slowly—grew warmer and heavier behind me. When the weight of his arm was too much to bear, I rolled out from under it and waited to see if he’d notice me missing.

  His face was smooth and guiltless. Maybe he really had been cleaning my room, but still, I pulled out MY SCRIBBLINGS to see what he might have read.

  I flipped through the pages, finally stopping at a Tennyson poem I’d copied down in an attempt to memorize it. A couple of the lines had hit me hard at the time, and I’d circled them in red ink.

  In vain; a favourable speed

  Ruffle thy mirror’d mast, and lead

  Thro’ prosperous floods his holy urn.

  My Arthur, whom I shall not see

  Till all my widow’d race be run;

  More than my brothers are to me.

  —Tennyson, In Memoriam, IX

  Those circled lines echoed things Nadia had shown me in my dreams, though I couldn’t quite piece it together. Just when I thought I could grab on to a coherent thought, it evaporated like the dream itself. I dropped my journal on the floor and fastened Nadia’s pendant back around my neck. A piece of me was missing when I wasn’t wearing it. I knew it would bring on the dreams, but I couldn’t sleep without it. And I was so very, very tired …

  It has been many years since I last saw Tom Hancock, yet I still watch the vacant house, the dark windows, the rotting dock. Grass grows high in the yard and tangles in the wind. A wild and hungry vine steals along the porch railings, threatening to someday overtake it all. If the place crumbles to the ground, it won’t be too soon for me.

  I leave the reminder of all I have lost and swim aimlessly for hours, traversing the great expanse of Gitche Gumee, which burns colder than ever.

  I ignore the dull pallor of my scales, the fragile transparency of my fluke—thin as last year’s spiderwebs. When I surface again, a familiar silhouette perches, knees pulled to chin, atop a rock that sits at the point where the waves meet the sand. The faint hint of sunken footprints marks the path to her perch.

  The Thin Woman, as I have come to think of her, is at her post again, staring out across the lake. Even as the years have passed and her face has aged, even though her body has softened, there has always been something thin about her.

  We have never spoken—the Thin Woman and I. In part because she is so focused on the one she seeks that I am as invisible to her as the boats that sail through her field of vision, or the butterfly that lands on her knee.

  But mainly it’s because I am to blame for her pain. And I don’t know how to repent.

  Still, I know the Thin Woman because I know loss. Perhaps that’s what makes me brave. Before I can change my mind, I set foot on the mainland and steal a white terry bathrobe from her clothesline. It hangs on my body like an empty sail.

  “Mind if I sit?” I ask.

  She looks up, her eyes unfocused, still not really seeing me. Too many seconds pass before she sidles to her right, offering me a place beside her on the rock. Waves crash at its base, sending spindrift into the air. The sky is a hazy yellow. It’s been a dry summer. There’s a forest fire somewhere in the provinces.

  It takes me a second to find the right muscles to sit like her—humanlike, contorting my body into stiff right angles: ankles, knees, waist. Now we sit in silence, both of us staring at the water, which makes it impossible for me to look directly into her eyes and project the message I want so much to send.

  Finally I say, “Beautiful.”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “And lonely,” I say.

  “Yes.” A silver tear bobs at the corner of her eye before falling into her hair. I take her fingers in mine, and she startles at my touch.

  “How old would he be?” I ask. I have lost track.

  She flashes with anger. How dare I intrude on her grief? But she regains her composure and says, “He’d be eighteen today.”

  Eighteen, I think. I’m surprised so many summers have passed. It’s easy to forget how the cold lake slows our bodies’ aging. In reality, Calder has matured to no more than eight human years.

  The woman says, “I lost my boy fifteen years ago. I know he’s gone, but I can’t let myself believe it—even after all this time. I can still feel him in my bones. To my very center, I can feel him breathing.”

  I nod, wondering how I can make this right. “I’m sure he’s a beautiful boy,” I say, “and that every day he makes you proud.”

  The woman’s face is granite hard. Her eyes are storm gray. “Who are you? You have no right.”

  I keep my eyes on a pair of black-speckled loons beyond the breakers. One dives. The other follows. “I lost my son, too. He’s out there … somewhere … and I am very proud of him. I still hope he will come back to me. Perhaps, someday, your son will, too.”

  The Thin Woman groans. “What is hope?”

  “A mother’s sustenance,” I say. “If it were in my power to bring him back to you, I would.”

  She smiles wanly, touches the terry loops of the bathrobe I am wearing, then looks curiously at my face. “If it were in anyone’s power to bring him back,” she says, “I’d be home making a birthday cake. It’s not nice to taunt me with impossible promises.”

  I don’t know why I do it. Perhaps it’s because I want the same promise in return. But before I can think things through clearly, I hear myself say, “If it is ever in my power, I promise to send him back.”

  A wave crashes onto the rock, soaking Nadia and the Thin Woman. When the water subsides, decades have passed. Nadia is now with Calder. He looks twelve or thirteen. His arms are long and sinewy, with the strange angularity of new adolescence.

  Through Nadia’s eyes, I watch the pale legs of swimmers kicking furiously for shore. Maris pulls one from their ranks. Calder
reaches out and holds Nadia’s hand.

  Nadia says, “Calder, when it is time, when you know it’s time, you need to go home.”

  “But you’re my home,” he says. His dark hair covers his eyes, and he pushes it aside to watch the bubbles rising from Maris’s wake.

  “I’m speaking of your first mother. No matter what happens to me, you must go home.”

  He seems to be only half-listening, watching Maris snake away with her prey. “I don’t want to.”

  “Someday, someone who loves you will show you how. When it’s time. And when you’re ready.” Before she finishes, the vague lilt of a lullaby slowly filters through my consciousness:

  The child-starved heart; the hands wrung dry, o’er the waves Mick Elroy cries.

  With a ragged gasp I was back in my own body … awake … pajamas clinging to my sweat-drenched skin, the pendant sizzling on my chest. Calder was still asleep in my bed.

  His arms and legs were a tangled mess with mine, as if there were extra limbs that no one knew what to do with. He looked beautiful. Not much different than the little boy in my dream. Sweet. And sensitive. And motherless.

  I loved him. I didn’t want to do it, but I knew what Nadia wanted me to do.

  11

  CALDER

  As I regained consciousness, I laid my hand flat on Lily’s mattress, feeling the cool smoothness of the cotton sheets, slowly focusing on the void Lily’s absence left. I was alone in her bed?

  “Damn it!” How had I let myself fall asleep? How had I not woken up? How could I betray Jason and Mrs. H’s trust like this? They had to know. It had to be obvious the sofa bed had gone untouched. I cursed under my breath. Now I was trapped in Lily’s room with no inconspicuous means of escape. I considered the window.

  Through it, the morning sun hit the wall where Lily had plastered a series of dead poet portraits she’d copied out of a book. Some of the tape had come loose and the portraits curled at the corners. One dangled perilously from its top right corner, threatening to fall to the floor with the slightest disturbance.

  “Lily,” I whispered, but there was no answer. Downstairs, pots and pans clanked against the kitchen stove. Queen blared from the stereo. Sophie sang along in the living room. Someone was running the water in the upstairs bathroom.

  “Lily?” I called, only slightly louder. “Are you up here?”

  There was still no answer, except for more clanking in the kitchen. I sat up in bed, relieved for a second to see Lily standing in the doorway.

  “I feel kinda funny,” she said, her eyes glossy. “I … I …” Her back arched, and her knees buckled as she clung to the molding around the doorframe. I leapt from the bed in time to catch her before she hit the floor.

  “Whoa, Lily. Your skin’s all clammy. Are you all right?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Tell me.” I wiped my hand across her forehead, brushing back the hair that stuck to her face.

  “I know what Nadia wants,” she said, her voice full of apology.

  “That’s enough. No more talk about this.”

  Lily shook her head and started to cry. I lifted her off her feet and cradled her in my arms. The back of her neck was sticky against my arm. I laid her in bed and pulled up the sheet.

  “You stay here,” I told her. “I’m going to go out and come back through the front door.” She turned over, and I retucked the blankets around her tighter. I kissed her hair. A red strawberry of heat burned in the center of her pale cheek. “Back in a minute.”

  I opened the window and threw one leg over the sash, then the other. The porch roof felt rough and wet under my bare feet, almost like the shoreline itself. It gave me pause—a hesitation I couldn’t afford—because just as I turned to close the window, Jason opened Lily’s bedroom door, saying, “You up, hon?” I caught his eye in the split second before I jumped to the ground, feeling his disappointment in every inch of my fall.

  I ran.

  Twenty minutes later, still barefoot and now hungry, I opened the door to the only sanctuary I’d ever known in town, and the only thing open this early. Bells jangled as I entered the Blue Moon Café. Mrs. Boyd stuck her head out of her office, and I dropped into a lime-green chair.

  Mrs. Boyd’s face lit up in a way that felt out of place with how I was feeling. “Good Lord, Calder, you’re a mess. Have you been running for your life?”

  “Maybe,” I said with a huff.

  She wetted a towel in the sink and came to sit in front of me. She wiped the sweat off my face and mumbled, “You’re not even wearing shoes.”

  “Lots of people run barefoot,” I said.

  “Sure. Kenyan marathoners maybe. Is someone giving you trouble?”

  “Actually, I think I make enough on my own.”

  “That’s a good boy,” she said, pinching my cheek hard. Her wrist smelled like citrus, and it brought a flash of memory I couldn’t place. Lily maybe? Or something with Tallulah? “This town could use a little drama now and then.” Mrs. Boyd slapped the towel over my head and returned to the counter. “Can I make you something? Coffee? Get you a muffin? I have some warm ones just out of the oven.”

  “Yeah. Sounds great.”

  She sighed. “I miss you around here. Lily, too. How’s she doing?”

  “She’s fighting a bug.”

  “That girl is always sick. You deserve someone with a stronger constitution.”

  I pinched my lips together to keep from saying too much. First, I doubted such a girl existed. She’d be a fearsome creature. Second, I didn’t deserve Lily, or anyone else for that matter. The disappointed look on Jason’s face as I crept out of Lily’s bedroom … Well, it still burned like salt in an open wound.

  Mrs. Boyd set my double espresso on the counter. She still knew what I liked. I walked up to get it.

  “Tell you what,” she said, taking my face between her hands. It was such an unexpected gesture. I didn’t want to offend her by pulling back, but I felt awkward and strange being held like that by my former boss. “You come down to visit me more often, and I’ll help you find a girl who can keep up with you. Maybe another barefoot runner, hmm? In fact, there’s a new girl working the ferry this summer. She grew up on the island. You two could be cute together.”

  I took her wrists and lowered her hands to the counter as politely as I could. “I promise I’ll come down and visit, but for now how about a box of muffins instead of a setup? I think I owe the Hancocks a peace offering.”

  “Oh, now we’re getting somewhere. What happened?”

  “Just a misunderstanding.”

  “Then you’ll want the chocolate chunk. They make the best apologies.”

  I understand some people complain about washing dishes. Not me. Since coming to live with the Hancocks, washing dishes had become my favorite task. Not only was it amazingly normal and … human, but with as much time as I was spending out of the lake, keeping my hands in the warm water had a calming effect on my nerves. It was a perfect way to end a day, or start a day if it started a little bumpy. Like this one.

  Jason and I found ourselves doing dishes together. I washed. He dried. Neither of us spoke about that morning.

  Sun streamed through the windows, reflecting off the stainless steel surfaces of the newly remodeled kitchen. A watercolor self-portrait, signed By Lily, age 5, hung in a red frame under the cabinets. The real Lily slept upstairs in her bed. I hoped her early sojourn into the lake hadn’t made her too sick.

  After several minutes of strained silence, I said, “It wasn’t what it looked like.”

  Jason took a sudsy plate from me and wiped it off. “If there was nothing to feel guilty about, why jump out the window?”

  When he said it like that, I could see how incriminating it looked. “We just fell asleep. It won’t happen again.”

  The corners of Jason’s mouth pulled up. “I was nineteen once, too,” he said. “Just try to be a little more discreet. For Carolyn’s benefit, at least.”

  I rin
sed the plate I was holding and handed it to Jason. We repeated this exercise a few more times, then he said, “Lily asked me something the other night that caught me off guard.” His towel was getting too wet to do much good, and he placed a slightly damp plate in the cupboard.

  “Yeah?”

  “She asked me if I would ever join up with your sisters,” Jason said, clearly selecting his words with care to see how I’d react. He opened a drawer and took out a dry towel. “Have you two ever talked about that?”

  “They’re your sisters. Not mine,” I said. “And no. We haven’t.”

  Jason raised his eyebrows, calling me out on my lie.

  “Fine,” I said, sighing heavily. “Pavati brought it up to Lily in a letter, but it’s out of the question. We’re not having some big, happy family reunion. And whatever Pavati wants, she’s not going to make Lily her designated party planner.”

  Mrs. H wheeled herself into the kitchen. “Someone’s planning a party?” she asked, looking first at her husband and then at me. Mrs. H’s smile made my stomach flip-flop. Sometimes I thought it was the glimpses of Lily I saw in her: the way her eyes crinkled when she teased me, or the way she chewed her lip when she was working out a problem.

  Jason dried his hands and folded his arms over his chest. “I was asking Calder about reuniting with his sisters.”

  “Your sisters,” I said again. The plate slipped from my hands and landed in the dishwater, sloshing the counter.

  “No!” cried Sophie, running from the living room to the kitchen. “Not yet! Not without me.”

  “You’re not really planning on leaving, are you?” asked Mrs. H.

  I leaned my back against the counter. “We’re not leaving. None of us. I won’t let that happen. Ever.”

  Mrs. H’s shoulders relaxed. “Good. Don’t scare me like that.”

  “Of course we wouldn’t leave you,” Jason said. “But a reunion doesn’t mean leaving home. I’d like to hear more about this.” He returned to the sink, putting both his hands in the sudsy water, and exhaled. “It could be a good thing. Maybe Pavati’s right.”