Emiel broke the pedestal into pieces and fanned his books across the floor, along the base of the dresser, both sides of the bed, and a few near the door. The bed was made with the sheets tucked in under the mattress. He untucked the sheets and pulled the cover back. Tomasin didn’t seem like a girl who tucked sheets in. She didn’t seem like a girl who made her bed. More like a girl who lost things in her own room and never found them.
He chose the long front dock because it was built high over the water and sounded out his footsteps in loud knocks. Maybe there was a script for this; maybe he’d memorized it so deeply he was following it unconsciously. The knocking was encouraging. Maybe he did know what he was doing. At the end of the dock was a pile of clothes. This seemed to make sense to him, though it didn’t. It was five o’clock in the morning – still no sun, but there were patches of stars where no cloud blocked them out. He couldn’t see the water under his feet. He held up a piece of the clothing, a shirt.
At first the shirt didn’t tell Emiel anything. He couldn’t tell if it was a boy’s or girl’s. But then he put his face to it and the smell was unmistakable: it was his smell. He gathered all the clothes in his arms, leaving only her boots. They were black leather ankle boots with the bottoms cracked like old paperbacks. He’d never managed to do that to a pair of shoes. Before his shoes disintegrated, he bought a new pair. He’d never slept with someone who wore shoes like this.
Cradling her clothes in his arms, he went to shore and took cover behind a bank of rock, kneeling down. When she didn’t get out of the water for a long time – she loved this, he thought – Emiel sat down on the ground, holding her clothes for warmth now.
Tomasin moved through the water quickly but quietly, kicking under the waves. She didn’t lounge, but pulled herself in full front strokes, far out beyond where people swam in the day. She cut across the boat channel until the water was hundreds of feet deep below. Holding her breath made her remember how good it was just to breathe and she felt better, diving down to feel the cold water around her shoulders and down her back to the backs of her legs.
When she finally came to shore and pulled herself onto the dock, she felt clean, resolved, and very cold. She didn’t want her clothes but clean clothes or new clothes. She looked for them, bent down and ran her hands across the dock boards. But found only the rough planks. She found the gaps between the planks, stuck her fingers in there. Then she found her boots further from the edge than she’d left them.
She leapt back in under the water’s cover.
‘I can see you, Tristan,’ she whispered, surfacing. He was the only person she could imagine out this late.
Emiel thought she could see him.
‘Tristan, you son of a bitch,’ she said. It could only be him. She wanted to shout but the sound would carry up the path and into the cabins. It would unfurl in the ears of the sleepers like ferns at first sun, or like flowers. His name would bloom if she called it out. ‘Tristan,’ she whispered, ‘I can see you.’ Maybe he was gone.
Did she think his name was Tristan? It was possible. There had been no formal introduction. He held her clothes tightly against his chest, as if they were trying to get away from him, as if by some witchcraft she could pull at them. He felt afraid of her, this night swimmer, and held the clothes close. She whispered with her mouth just above the water. It was a dangerous amalgam: she was unreasonable and at his mercy. She was a teenager without clothes. He was holding her clothes, which her mother must have bought for her. Emiel dropped them. But then dropping them didn’t make him feel better, so he picked them back up.
‘Tomasin,’ he said with restraint, ‘it’s me.’
‘What?’ She couldn’t hear.
‘It’s me. It’s Emiel here.’
‘Where?’
‘Here.’
‘Why are you hiding? I can’t see you.’
‘I’m not hiding.’
‘You are,’ she cried.
He came out and put her clothes down finally.
‘I was trying to be funny,’ he said.
‘I thought I was talking to someone else.’
‘Is your boyfriend going to come after me?’
‘I don’t have a boyfriend.’
‘He’ll come at me with his pocket knife,’ Emiel said condescendingly. ‘Who’s Tristan?’
Tomasin’s feet slid along the laddered logs of the dock’s front crib. She slid closer to him. ‘I don’t have a boyfriend,’ she said, ‘but if I did, he would come for you.’
‘Who’s Tristan?’
‘Leave me alone.’ She didn’t want to talk about Tristan.
‘Is the water cold?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Is the water not cold? It must be.’
‘It seemed cold at first, before, but I don’t feel it anymore.’
‘How long have you been in there? Will you come out?’
‘You’re standing on my clothes.’
Trying to see more of her, he’d come forward and stepped on them and stood there without feeling them bundled under his feet.
In return for the hummingbird, Marie slipped a necklace into the bottom of Tristan’s tackle box. He found it tangled in line and loose hooks, a necklace of white string with two metal washers. The washers slid down the string and tapped as he picked it up.
No one was supposed to give him anything. But Tristan thought that if Tomasin was giving him a peace offering, then he would take it. He knew her. He knew that if he didn’t put the necklace on, she would put it on for him. So he tied it around his neck and tucked the washers inside his shirt, where they tapped against his chest.
All the time, he was waiting for her. Down at the docks, under the verandah where they used to sit, down every path he walked. Working out on the water was the worst, because he couldn’t keep a lookout. He had no thought or feeling for doing anything else. People talked to him, but he didn’t answer. He wandered the island hoping to find her. If he walked down a path and broke all the spiderwebs, he knew she wasn’t there. She had seen him that night at Stella’s. She had pressed the door of the cabin into him for a long time. She had crawled up onto the bed, kneeled over that woman, her shorts riding high, and never looked back. He tapped the washers through his shirt and they clicked and stuck, cool against his skin, and he did it again. The blood was rushing to his head from looking down, making it hard to breathe through his broken nose. He breathed through his mouth, wanting to spit or cry. But he would not spit or cry. He was busy waiting.
He was falling asleep, leaning over his tackle box, his hands in his lures. If only Tomasin had come, then he would have been able to stop this and rest. When Tomasin was with him, there was no such thing as waiting.
‘I found you,’ said a familiar voice. He’d heard no footsteps on the dock, but Keb was standing over him. ‘Hello?’
‘Here I am,’ Tristan answered, picking through his lures.
Keb put a bow saw on the dock beside the tackle box. He told Tristan the island had burned through its firewood during the last days of rain, and gave him an order for at least three birch trees cut into four-foot lengths – more if the boat would hold it. ‘Take one of the fishing boats,’ Keb said. ‘The wood will be too fresh, but they won’t know the difference.’
The boy didn’t answer, but he always did his work, so Keb left him with his lures.
The lake was a mess. Whitecaps hung over black troughs. The black and white clashed. Tristan untied and threw the ropes into the boat, jumping in without starting the motor. The waves picked him up right away, pulling him off the dock and threatening to ram him onto the island, but he worked fast and got the motor humming, opening the throttle all at once and clenching his neck against the whiplash. Tristan usually looked back to see his wake split and the island grow smaller, but not today. All he could do was get away.
He drove to the nearest huge cove and looked for a beaver dam to save work. The beavers chopped down birch trees to eat their tenderest branches and l
eaves, often leaving the meat of the tree on land to rot, or in the water, where the branches made lush shelters for schools of minnows and fish. Tristan combed the shore looking for these offerings.
There was blood on the stump of the first one, where the beaver had cut its teeth. The blood wasn’t dark yet, so the tree must have fallen earlier that morning or in the night. Cutting at the base, Tristan knew birch trees were his mother’s favourite, but not to burn. She liked the sound of their ten thousand leaves in autumn shushing the sky. She liked their leaves in winter, she’d told him, when they were only an idea. Tristan moved up the length of the tree, cutting it in pieces as fast as he could, making the bow saw sing. At the water, he stopped, seeing the whole head of the tree submerged. The branches weren’t stripped yet. They were unbroken and billowed out like lungs, as if they were still breathing. The water made the shuddering leaves look brighter green. There was shade in the cove, but the leaves held an eerie evening glow. It was the glow of flowers just after sunset, or the glow of flowers at night by flashlight. It was the glow of a fire when you blow on it. Everybody talked about the wind in the pines, but what about the water blowing through these branches? And the branches of ten thousand ghost trees like it? When Tristan heard the wind, he knew it was more complicated than people said. He knew what he was listening to. He wanted to tell Tomasin.
Stella’s eyelids were glazed like a breakfast pastry. Tomasin wanted to touch them to see if she could wick the glaze off.
‘I’ll speak with my eyes shut, okay.’
‘All right.’
‘It’s something new, something I like,’ she said. ‘You should try it.’
‘Sometime.’
‘Anyway, you look pitiful. Do you have to come to me like this?’
‘I was working. I should have cleaned up but I wanted to come here more than I wanted to get clean.’
‘Your sweat’s so particular.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘I remember when my sweat was like yours. I had flat shoes and spoke with an accent.’
‘Who?’
‘I did.’
‘What accent?’
‘I had to rub it out of my tongue. It was like a pulled muscle, you know?’ Stella opened her good eye, then both eyes, smiling at Tomasin. ‘You know, you should prepare yourself to come to me. You should come as if you might be coming to a lover. Come that way, and I won’t be distracted like this, by your sweat and crumpled shirt.’
‘All right.’
‘You remind me of so many things it makes me sick.’
‘You’re supposed to keep your eyes shut to rest them.’
‘I died young, you know. But it’s not tragic. There are no tragedies, only things that happen to some people. I went from stealing cream in plastic packets, pocketing them for snacks a dozen or two dozen at a time, to a life where everything was free. I could have cartons of cream, and I did.’
‘Drinking cream is gross.’
‘Not when you’re hungry. Do you understand me?’
‘I want to.’
‘That’s good enough.’
‘What happened?’
‘I just told you. I wanted to be so rich and powerful in cream packets that I would have to be assassinated. I would be a great man, I imagined.’
‘You didn’t die, you just changed.’
‘It’s a kind of death when you don’t go home the same.’
‘Well, I don’t want to go home.’
‘Don’t say that. Life’s exciting enough.’
‘I would die like you.’
‘Don’t, please. It’s impossible to control. We never die exactly.’
‘How am I supposed to do it then?’
‘Are you listening to me?’
‘I’m trying.’
‘I wasn’t talking about you.’
Jer LaFleur kept saying, ‘I can’t feel my hands.’
‘He can feel them,’ said Adrian.
‘He can feel them,’ the others said.
Tristan covered his head. He could see Jer’s legs, his blue jeans wet and ragged around the cuff. He thought about uncovering his head and grabbing the legs.
Jer put his foot under Tristan’s hip and tried to flip him over. ‘Are you okay?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Tristan answered, grabbing at the legs suddenly, but more in affection than anything.
Jer laughed loudly, the way he always laughed, and put a hand on Tristan’s shoulder. ‘It’s over,’ he said between his laughter. ‘It’s over, ducky,’ he said, using one of his family’s terms of endearment.
‘No,’ Tristan answered.
Jer wondered what to do with him. ‘Mercy!’ he cried out, with Tristan hugging his legs. ‘I give up!’ And everyone laughed.
‘No,’ said Tristan again. There was something better than mercy.
The swelling around Stella’s eye was down, the puncture wounds tight and dry, but she was drunk and forgot she was healed.
‘Tell me a story to distract me.’
‘I don’t know any,’ Tomasin said defensively.
‘That’s not right, you don’t know anything else.’
‘I can’t think of anything.’
She couldn’t rouse herself, not even for Stella. Her nights were days now. She never slept, only watched a small block of the night sky out the window. People followed the sun east to west, but few followed the moon. Tomasin did both. It was something she could do now that she couldn’t sleep. The moon sometimes moved across and down her window like a tear losing its shape.
‘I don’t care if I’ve heard it before,’ said Stella. ‘My face feels hideous, the mask of Mephistopheles! I don’t like to touch it. It feels thick. And you can’t think of anything to distract me?’
Stella put her hands behind her head, and her elbows and the soft sides of her arms framed her face gently. Tomasin thought she was very beautiful and looked at her favourite thing: how Stella’s bottom lip bumped out and she tended to hold her mouth a little open. The swelling in her cheek had come down and returned her face to its fearful symmetry.
‘Win your pardon,’ she said. She could always tell how the girl was feeling.
Trying to be interesting, Tomasin kept finding herself talking about Tristan. She told Stella that he was trying to hurt himself. He kept fighting against all the boys. He was trying to change his face, she thought, by having people hit it: ‘A face isn’t something you break in. You just break it.’
‘The boy on the dock?’
Tomasin wanted Stella to condemn Tristan, because then she would feel better about doing it.
‘He’s a guide,’ she offered.
‘Is he good?’
‘Is he a good person?’
‘No, a good guide?’
‘He knows the water. He showed me.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘maybe here.’
‘How can you not know that if he’s your friend? Haven’t you asked him?’
‘I never asked him anything.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘I don’t know, I can’t remember.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I don’t think we did anything.’ She didn’t want to say.
‘Will you bring him to me?’
‘I don’t see him anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘We were just pretending.’
‘Pretending what?’
‘We pretended to know each other. People do that. But he didn’t know me.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘I know enough.’
‘Help me to understand,’ said Stella. ‘First you pretended to know each other?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now you’re pretending you don’t know each other?’
‘Wait,’ said Tomasin.
But Stella didn’t wait. ‘What did you do to him?’
‘I didn’t do anything. He does it to himself. That’s what ma
kes me so uncomfortable.’
‘That’s why you’re here,’ said Stella, liking this. ‘You’re full of feeling.’
‘I’m like you.’
‘No,’ Stella told her, ‘I’m not like that anymore.’
Tomasin didn’t understand. She was too tired to talk to Stella today.
‘Don’t feel sorry for yourself.’
‘I don’t,’ said Tomasin.
‘You must suffer now. It’s suffering time.’
‘Don’t you think it’s wrong?’
‘What?’
‘Tristan and what he does. He says he’ll fight then doesn’t put up his hands.’
‘I could argue either way. I’m good at arguments. Want me to judge him?’
‘I think so.’
‘Are you sleeping with him?’
‘No, I never would.’
‘You never would. But are you?’
Tomasin turned from Stella and went to the window. She didn’t look out but at the glass patinaed by smears where birds had flown into it. Did Stella mean Tristan or Emiel? Why was she still lying down when her face was better? It was a late August day, the sun was weak but pervasive. The light seemed to come not only through the window but the walls and in under the door. Tomasin felt that if she leaned, she might fall through the wall, as if it were a curtain. Maybe it was a way out.
‘Hello?’ said Stella.
Tomasin put her hand out and it hit the wall, jamming her wrist. It was a day that said: summer is over. She felt stressed at the passing of another season without her consent. She didn’t agree to any of this: to the morning, the wall like a curtain, her throbbing hand.
‘Are you sleeping with him?’
‘Who?’
‘Emiel,’ Stella said.
‘You asked about Tristan.’
‘I did and then I didn’t,’ she said.
‘I would throw up but I haven’t eaten anything. I feel sick,’ said Tomasin.
‘Sit down beside me.’
‘Don’t make fun of me.’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘I thought you were.’
‘So Emiel?’
‘The answer’s no.’
‘The answer is also yes. I understand both things can be true.’
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