‘Hello again,’ she said, though there’d been no first hello. ‘Do they hurt?’
‘Does what hurt?’
‘Your cheeks,’ said Stella, ‘of course they do.’
Tomasin’s cheeks didn’t hurt.
‘They looked better before. But how would you know? Well, they were pale, only days ago, and the paleness made you look clear.’
Tomasin had never seen this woman.
Stella put her hand over the girl’s right cheek and ear. ‘I can’t see through the burn. It’s like you’re blushing,’ she said.
Tomasin passed the test by letting her face rest in Stella’s hand.
‘I know your cheeks are burnt and that you’re not blushing, but that’s what it looks like. I keep asking myself if you’re blushing from pleasure. Is it because of me she blushes? Am I embarrassing you? I don’t want to.’
Tomasin didn’t understand what she was talking about and didn’t care. She’d never met anyone so at ease with themselves. Tomasin loved her loose white dress cinched with a black belt. She could only think that somehow she’d been chosen. Usually, she did the choosing.
‘And what’s your name?’
‘Tomasin.’
‘It is,’ Stella said in confirmation, as if she’d just taught the girl her name.
What use could she be? Stella wondered, holding the awning of her hat against the sun. It was her favourite hat, straw with a tight weave. It was a gift from an Englishman who’d come to the same play she was in for many weeks. He always sat near the front and stared at her with an anguished look on his bare face. Stella remembered seeing him implore his wife to give up her hat so he could make a sudden gift of it. His wife had put her hand on top of her head, right on top of the hat, and leaned away from him. But again he asked her. Stella read his lips: ‘Please, she’s not another woman, she’s an actress.’
§
‘I’ll see you later, like before,’ Tomasin said.
She’d almost crossed him on the wide path to the lodge, but he stood in front of her holding a stringer of lake trout, their speckled sides and black tails still wet.
‘Where?’ he asked.
‘I always know where you are,’ she told him, looking at his fish.
‘I’m here now.’
‘You have your hands full.’
He swung and gently laid the fish down on the pine-needle path, freeing his hands. Tomasin wouldn’t come later. She didn’t come anymore.
‘I heard what you did,’ he said to make her stay. ‘Yesterday,’ he said.
‘Tell me what I did.’
One of the fish flicked its tail and made them jump.
‘That’s just its nerves,’ Tristan said.
‘Just its nerves? What does that mean?’
Now the fish lay quiet.
‘I’m talking about yesterday,’ he told her.
‘Why do you need to know everything I do?’
Her eyes, as usual, looked sore, like she’d slept too long or needed to sleep now. If they were green eyes, they were green like water: black when you’re swimming through it, but clear poured over your hand. There was nothing in her eyes to reassure him. If there was anything there, it was languor.
‘I don’t know what you’re accusing me of,’ said Tomasin calmly, looking back at him. It was all easier for her than it was for him, and it had something to do with what she was made of.
‘You went out in a boat with people.’
‘I did.’
He was the one who took her out on the water. He had overheard the boys saying she’d gone out with a woman, and that Keb had taken them to Cross Inlet, and the woman had given her drinks out of a flask etched with a skull wearing a flower crown, and she’d been drunk and had smoked a cigarette so thin no one knew the brand. No one had seen a cigarette that thin. It was so special Tomasin had wanted to put it in her pocket, to show the boys later. The woman made her smoke it right there, put it in her mouth and lit it. Tomasin didn’t smoke, but she smoked past the silver and light blue bands of the filter, tore across them like long-distance ribbons.
‘I was with Stella,’ she said, which meant nothing to him but sounded bad.
Tristan had never been to Cross Inlet. He had heard the shore was made of white quartz. He didn’t think he should have to ask her, she should tell him.
‘Do you know what she said? She said she liked my face better before. She doesn’t like my face as much now.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Stella. Is it bad?’
‘Your face? You’re sunburnt.’
‘I never see myself here. There are no mirrors, have you noticed that?’
‘Why do you care what she says?’
‘I don’t decide if I care what someone says. It’s not a decision I make. I care or I don’t.’
‘She doesn’t care what you say to her, I bet.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because they don’t care what we say. I’m a guide,’ said Tristan. ‘You’re not even a guide, you work in the kitchen.’
‘You’re religious. You’re more religious than ever today.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I’m going out with her again. You can’t come with us.’
‘I don’t want to come. I wouldn’t go.’
‘No?’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘You’re jealous.’
‘I am not,’ he said, picking up his fish to go. They felt heavier than before.
‘Maybe you see your hands. You can see the front of your jeans and shirt. You see that, fine. But you don’t know what you look like to me. I see your face. I see what you’re doing. You can’t not be seen by me.’
Tristan turned his face.
Tomasin saw him trying to take himself back from her.
‘I keep seeing,’ she said. ‘I’m leaving now and I’ll still see.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Don’t ask me that.’
He would take her somewhere, if she would come with him.
‘I’m going,’ she said.
He felt like kicking her legs out. He wanted her to stay. He would agree to everything. He would defend her against herself. There were people here who would take advantage of her and she would let them do it. She would help them.
‘You don’t come around anymore. You just do what you want,’ he said after her.
‘You don’t think I should do what I want?’
‘That’s not it,’ he said, walking quickly to stay close. He could still trip her.
‘Then what are you saying?’
Tristan put his free hand on one of her hips and pulled it back. ‘You know who you remind me of?’ he said.
‘I hate that,’ she answered, finally turning.
‘What?’
‘Comparing people. I’m not like anyone.’
She was probably right.
‘I hate that idea. Never do that to me.’
‘I won’t,’ he agreed. He would agree to everything, she should know that.
‘Okay, now you have to tell me. Who am I like?’
There were so many things he needed to tell her. ‘You’re not like anyone.’
‘Tell me or I won’t talk to you again.’
‘My mother,’ he said. There was no feeling in him.
‘What?’
‘I don’t know what I’m saying,’ he said.
‘This is stupid.’ He was making her feel stupid. ‘Your mother?’
‘You made me say it.’
‘Do you know why I don’t come around anymore? Maybe it’s because you make me feel like this. Tristan, I feel sick.’ He loves me, she thought. How can I be free of him then? She couldn’t let him do it anymore. She didn’t ask herself how to be free if she loved him.
‘You make me feel guilty and I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she said.
‘You haven’t done anything, I never said you did.’
‘Do you know what I’m sayin
g these days?’
‘What?’
‘I’m saying fuck you, basically.’
‘What else?’
‘I’m not saying the rest to you. The rest is for other people.’
He felt close to a fire where the air is eaten up. He wanted to get closer, to gather the locks of flame, coals, and blackened spit below. He would pick up the smoke and carry it.
It had been August for others, now it was August for him. The ghost flower was his harbinger, growing in the hollows of the pine roots on the back of the island. They stood shin-high, stalks of bare white holding out against the dark tide of the forest floor. There could be no better surprise. It was only for him. No one else came here, and the ghost flower was the strangest plant or animal on Prioleau’s shore. Only long, round-bellied trout pulled from deep down rivalled them in otherworldliness. Root tip to flower, they looked lit from within. He picked one and tore it in half to see if it was white inside: it was. It made him remember something he didn’t know, that he couldn’t know, because he’d never asked Rachel. ‘What happened to you?’ he might have said. ‘Did something happen?’ There had been months on end he’d thought of asking but never did. He somehow knew his mother would never tell him. Then more time passed and he didn’t see it anymore – the scar pitched under her eye like a tent over rough ground – and maybe that meant he didn’t see her anymore. The skin under her eye was the same living white as this flower. It was a gift she’d given him: to know that not everything needed to be understood. Not every story wanted to be told. It was crude to remember everything. His stories didn’t want anything. What’s this flower for? he wondered, thinking nothing would dare to eat it, and nothing ever did; it just rose and fell like a weird wind. All it did was remind him of her. What did she look like now? He couldn’t remember her face, and even if he could, what for? As if a face was for something.
§
Tomasin swore off Tristan dispassionately. That’s how she remembered it, standing at the counter between Anuta and Marie.
‘Have you come to work?’ Anuta asked her.
‘What else would I come here for?’
Marie had thought about Tomasin the night before while undressing. As she took off her clothes, they not only lost shape, as usual, but seemed to deteriorate. Tomasin was always in a state of undress. How she looked – was that how she felt? Standing over her crumpled clothes, Marie had felt akin to Tomasin. But if this feeling of wanting to throw everything away was anything like Tomasin’s general feeling, it didn’t feel good.
‘Do you know what hubris means?’ Anuta asked Tomasin.
Tomasin put her hands on the counter in surrender. ‘No,’ she said, ‘sounds bad.’
Marie wanted to whisper the answer. Why did she have to be the witness? She looked at the kitchen floor and saw dirt and flour – the half-cup of flour Tomasin had just spilled, maybe on purpose. It looked like dirty snow and would be satisfying to sweep up.
‘It means pride,’ said Anuta.
Tomasin’s hands flat on the counter were her answer.
Tomasin was a girl like a gang of boys. But wasn’t she as harmless as Marie? Anuta had a growing confidence in Tomasin’s defiance, since it thrummed like a boat crossing the bay – the more staunch the waves, the more steadily it banged on. She was the same every day and would be. What Anuta disliked was a woman who changed. She thought Tomasin would never change.
‘I’m going to set the tables,’ said Anuta, picking up a heavy basket of linens for the dining room. ‘You two do your work.’
Tomasin looked at her hands resting on the counter and had to admire them. A girl didn’t have hands like this for nothing. Her body was shy of maturing, she knew, but her hands were ahead, her fingers long and narrow. How come Tristan had never noticed them? He would regret it. She would show him her hands.
‘Your forehead,’ said Marie, looking at her hard.
‘What?’
‘It’s tight and your eyes are red. You’ll give yourself a headache. Can I help you?’
‘Why would I need your help?’
‘I don’t know.’
Tomasin was supposed to cut a lot of fruit, but it was hard to care. She never cut her own. She just bit into it and turned the fruit over. If it was hard to eat, that was the best – to bring her teeth down on a pocket of seeds or a pit, to spit that out and feel the juice on her wrist. With her forefinger and thumb, she picked up a cherry and put it in her mouth, then closed her eyes and tongued the pit out.
‘Placebo,’ she said, spitting the pit onto the counter.
‘Are you okay?’
‘All better, Marie,’ she answered, opening her eyes languidly. ‘I haven’t needed your help all my life. I don’t need it suddenly.’
As Marie moved in to halve and pit the whole bowl of cherries, Tomasin pushed back, took a few more and ate them, spitting the pits out onto the counter like dice, as if their arrangement might tell her fortune.
The cherries came from down south and were expensive, Marie knew. They were too suggestive, her mother had told her. Marie often smelled them, dark and sour, on her fingers, but she’d never put one in her mouth. Because they weren’t allowed to eat the cherries. As Tomasin spat another pit out, Marie imagined turning on her heel, reaching out, and nicking Tomasin in the side of the neck with the paring knife. The blade would cut as it touched. She provokes me, thought Marie, testing and rolling on her heel. That’s all she would have to tell people, ‘She provoked me,’ and they would agree.
Looking at the stain under her fingernails, Marie suddenly felt guilty, as if she’d gone ahead and swiped the knife. She imagined putting her hand on Tomasin’s neck and pressing the wound.
‘What are you thinking?’ Tomasin asked. ‘You should work instead of daydreaming, Marie. You love to work.’
Let her eat the cherries, thought Marie. She cannot help it.
‘Hello?’ said Tomasin.
‘I’m sorry, I’m here.’
‘There you go again.’
‘What?’
‘You’re always sorry.’
‘I am?’
‘Yes.’
Tomasin put her hands back on the counter and looked at them.
Marie tried it too, put her hands out. But she didn’t like them. Every time she cut cherries the stain washed off, but that never stopped her from wondering if this time it wouldn’t.
That night, Tristan sat under the verandah and rolled cigarettes. He would smoke them one by one and leave after smoking the tenth. If Tomasin didn’t come by ten cigarettes, she wasn’t coming. But she would come. She didn’t mean a lot of what she said.
The night across his forehead felt like a cool washcloth. Tomasin had held a washcloth to his face after Sean broke his nose, and it felt like this, he remembered.
He didn’t end up smoking the last ones but let them burn in his hand. The tenth he held close to his ear and listened while the thin rolling paper ashed like dragonfly wings rolled between his fingers. Dragonflies were easy to catch these days because the nights were cold and it made them slow on the dock in the morning. Their wings crumpled even when he was trying to be gentle. They flaked along the seams like late autumn leaves. It would be autumn. Soon she would go back home. He would still be here. The dance floor above his head was more subdued than usual.
The dancers stepped as if manoeuvring around a pool of water with soft sides, afraid to slide in. Did they see their reflections and not want to disturb them? He fell asleep sitting up, like an old man.
Her eyes were closed but she could still see the sun. Some of us are part god, Stella was thinking. It’s my eyes or eyelids. Maybe the skin across my forehead. She put her hand there and it felt cool.
‘What do you think?’ she turned to ask Emiel, who was sitting in the chair beside her, reading his book. She’d abandoned Richter for his son to survive her vacation.
‘About what?’
‘What do you think of me, Emiel?’
‘I don�
��t like that question.’ He did not look up. ‘Not this afternoon.’
‘It’s a perfect afternoon.’
‘There’s a lot of sun. There’s sun all over these pages. I can barely see.’
‘Well, you don’t have to see me. What do you think of me, I said. It’s not complicated.’
‘You always ask me the same thing.’
‘I forget what you say.’
‘You don’t listen. You only want to ask the question.’
Emiel tried to be clear with Stella. If he left anything ambiguous, some little phrase or feeling, she would take it up, take off and be gone, dragging him behind her into the orchard of her imagination where strange things grew and stranger things decayed. If she handed him something to taste, Emiel knew to carry it for a little while, then put it down at first chance, but not so soon she’d notice.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ she agreed, ‘maybe I don’t listen to you. If you started talking now, it’s possible I’d ignore it.’
‘Fear, Stella,’ said Emiel. He wasn’t reading anymore.
‘What?’
‘I don’t think about you so much as fear you. I go from there.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s not good or bad. It’s how I’ve always felt. In general, I fear you. I also fear you in particular.’
‘What else?’
‘I like it. I think I must like it, or I wouldn’t be sitting here. I only want to sit with you.’
Stella sighed, almost satisfied.
‘Why are you sighing like that?’
‘I just felt sorry for you suddenly,’ she said.
‘Don’t feel sorry for me. You never have.’
Stella would have said something more, but they were interrupted by Tomasin standing at the foot of their chairs. She was serving tea and coffee. And she was also doing something else, Stella thought. The girl was coming to her.
But she didn’t want the girl right now. ‘Come back later,’ she told her. ‘Come back later, but go now.’
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