Which was not to say, of course, that it was a fait accompli. Lota knew that she couldn’t forget that. She knew that she had to feel—really feel—the way that, at every moment, absolutely anything could happen. That, Kurtz had told them, was the principle of total revolution. The possibleness of each moment had to tremble inside them. They had to feel that possibleness, had to act upon that.
She picked up the comb again and began to tackle the knots that had collected at the back of her hair.
Because possibleness could go any which way. Yes, there was always the chance, Lota reminded her reflection, that something unforeseen would interrupt, throw them completely off course…
The comb snagged. Lota tugged harder. She always got a little stuck on this point; preferred to close her eyes and see the future already arranged, in little patterns. When she was forced to admit the presence of the unanticipated, the unforeseen, she began to feel irritated in the same way she did whenever her mother or Auntie G mentioned God—or whenever her brother Marcus, who’d been recruited ten years ago to join the Empire’s Pacific Command, mentioned freedom, patriotism, or the promotion system for enlisted navy men.
And yet, at the same time she knew there came a point when there was nothing more they could do in advance, nothing more they could prepare. She’d reminded them all of this fact just last week, when Verbal—recently promoted to chief of staff, though he was barely older than she was and had less balls—had argued that the date be pushed back again, this time to the beginning of July.
Kurtz was reasonable. She never cut in or shut anyone down. She’d just nodded when Verbal said this. “Verbal has suggested that we push our date back again.” It was what she always did when anyone spoke in session—an aggravating habit, but one that, on other occasions, Lota understood.
This time, though, she was unable to restrain herself. “But…but that’s ridiculous!” She’d turned first toward Verbal, then toward Kurtz. “What now? We can’t possibly take everything into account.”
She’d never spoken out like that in session before, and her own voice startled her. Usually it was only Norma or, on rare occasions, Mr. Joshua or Hal who interrupted Kurtz or challenged her in any way. But Lota had particular cause to be irritated that morning. Less than an hour before, Verbal had caught up with her on her way to the station.
“I—I think we could have something special,” he’d told her. Between bites of a sandwich.
“What’s that?”
“…Special.”
Lota pretended not to know what he was talking about. She’d known Verbal all her life. They’d played together as kids, swapped comic books, jumped off cement breakers down at the wharf. They’d even kissed clumsily once, several years ago now, after a hotly contested game of Bust, which Lota had won. Lota had lurched back, her face burning. She’d made some excuse or other—she couldn’t remember what now—and ran all the way home.
Later, by way of apology, she’d told Verbal about the Army and suggested, in a roundabout way, that he join. Almost immediately, he did. Ever since, they’d been polite to each other, nothing more.
“We should talk,” Verbal said, still chewing his sandwich.
“We are talking.”
“No, I mean…” He stopped and grabbed Lota’s wrist so that she was forced to stop, too. Her stomach leapt. Her palms sweated. The little salivary glands under her tongue began to leak.
Verbal took a step toward her and Lota stepped back. How, she wondered, at a time like this…
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said quickly.
“Lota,” Verbal said. “Lota, listen to me.”
She’d been attempting to shake her wrist free, but now she paused—surprised. No one from the Army ever used her real name. She’d been Zilla, not Lota, for such a long time that hearing her old name gave her a physical jolt.
So maybe she was lying when she said there was nothing to talk about; she wasn’t made out of stone. But it just didn’t make sense, Verbal talking to her like this. Between bites of his sandwich. It didn’t make sense, him deliberately reminding her of who she was, or had been—as if he actually wanted to get them stuck in the past.
Again, Lota tried to shake herself free.
“Listen,” Verbal said. “Lota, listen. I love you.”
Lota tried to wrench her wrist back. “No,” she said, after an excruciating pause. “You don’t.”
Verbal let her wrist drop. Lota did not immediately retract it. She looked at her semi-open hand that now held, and was held by, nothing. She felt suddenly very sorry for herself, and for Verbal. For her own hand.
“It’s just…it’s just…not now.” Her voice was thick and low and Verbal did not immediately understand. Then his eyes flickered. He grabbed her wrist again and, in an exuberant voice—as if the whole thing, whatever it was between them, had been settled—said, “Fine!”
When nothing had been settled—nothing at all.
Lota retracted her hand a second time. “What I mean…” She’d found her voice again. It established itself, a hard edge between them. “What I mean is, we shouldn’t be thinking about this right now. It…it isn’t the point.”
Verbal was grinning at her.
Lota started walking—more quickly than necessary. “We’ll be starting all over again,” she said. “Everything will be different.” She shook her head as she walked. “It’s impossible to know what we’ll want then. What we’ll need…”
Verbal had caught up to her. He leaned in carefully—their bodies didn’t touch. Lota could feel the pressure, the particular shape of the distance between them.
“Some things won’t change,” Verbal said. His tone was light, teasing even, but Lota didn’t hear it. She whipped around.
“That’s not true,” she said fiercely.
Very briefly, the distance between them collapsed entirely. They collided. It was Verbal this time who took a step back. They stood looking at each other, both of them angry now, their faces just inches apart.
Verbal’s eyes were set very close, Lota noticed. Like two deep pools. It was remarkable, she thought, how easy it would be just to—disappear.
“That’s not true, Verbal,” Lota said again. Her jaw was clenched now and her lips trembled. “Everything will change,” she said, hardly trusting her voice. “You’ve got to understand that. All right? Everything!”
TWO
Rachel stared at her phone: no message. She’d called Ray just before she’d gone to bed, a little after midnight island time. She’d be up for another hour or more, she’d said, but he should call any time—shouldn’t worry about waking her.
Rachel tapped the voicemail icon and for the tenth time in an hour saw that there were no new messages. She tapped the recents icon and saw—again—that there hadn’t been any calls since the previous day, and no calls from Ray since the day before that. She’d caught him briefly on Wednesday, just before he headed out to drop Zoe at school. They’d spoken for less than two minutes. A blustery “Oh, hi, Rachel.” (For some reason Ray always sounded surprised these days when he picked up the phone.) “Everything good? Sure, yes, everything fine here. In a bit of a rush, of course.” (A laugh.)
Rachel had clenched and unclenched her jaw, had refused to be brushed off. “How’s Zo?” she’d asked. Her voice loud, suddenly—falsely upbeat.
“Good, good,” Ray had answered quickly. “She wants to talk to you, of course, but we’re on our way out the door. Zoe? Yes, now. All right. Thanks, Rachel. We’ll talk later. Bye.” He’d hung up.
Rachel pushed her phone across the table. It did not slide far.
Had he actually thanked her? Rachel replayed the conversation in her mind, but even with the help of her willing imagination, she couldn’t manage to end the exchange on a different note.
Now it was Friday. Thursday in the capital. She’d called three times, left two voice messages, and still there’d been no response. What on earth, she wondered—midday on a Thursday, when they
hadn’t spoken to each other properly in a week—was preventing Ray from calling back?
She shook her head and poured another few mouthfuls of cereal into the milk left at the bottom of her bowl, then ate them quickly. She was going to be late.
Well, who cared? She hated being late. Hated arriving flustered, out of breath, hated starting the day out apologizing. But this was her last day in the office. By this time next week she’d be back in the capital. Whatever subtle reproach she might feel this morning from Monique downstairs or from Bradley when she passed him on the way to her own office, next door—none of it would matter.
Her worries about Ray and Zoe would disappear, too. Yes, very soon now she’d be laughing at herself over how she’d let her imagination get the better of her; over how much meaning she’d given to the simplest things. She’d get off the plane and everything would come into focus. Ray would be there, waiting. A fresh haircut probably, and his spring coat on (it would still be brisk in the capital, even in early May). And there Zoe would be, beside him. Looking a little older, of course—but still looking exactly like Zoe. She’d be grinning—showing off her missing front tooth, which she’d already proudly revealed over a video chat last Tuesday.
After all, it wasn’t as though this hadn’t happened before. Whenever Rachel and Ray had spent time apart, they’d always felt the distance. Ray would grow increasingly abrupt—to the point of being downright terse. Rachel, in reaction, would become more sensitive.
“It’s like walking on eggshells with you,” Ray would say. “You take everything so seriously.”
It rankled Rachel more than it should when he said things like this. Of the two of them, it was Ray who was the worrier, the serious one. It frankly annoyed her, embarrassed her sometimes: how needlessly anxious Ray could become—even in the most relaxed of social gatherings, among friends. She could see it even when no one else could. His eyes would brighten. He’d raise his voice, tell jokes that were purposely bad—sometimes even be a little mean.
It was quite amazing, actually, Rachel had observed, how many people in the foreign service were not especially cut out to deal with other human beings. Increasingly, as she moved up the ranks, she’d noticed it. At least half of them were clearly diagnosable.
At least with Ray, though—at least at the beginning—there was a sense that where the “edges showed” there was also the possibility of getting through. She remembered the thrill of it the first few times he let his guard down with her: it was like stepping through a curtain. But it had been a long time since she’d felt like that with Ray. She needed physical proximity, she needed to touch him, to feel that ripple—something moving underneath.
She wiped her mouth and deposited her bowl in the sink. It was not gone, she told herself. Something like that didn’t disappear. It only got hidden for a time, submerged beneath all the distracting details on the surface of a life. All of which—she was quite certain—would dissolve instantly the moment she and Ray actually saw each other again.
Rachel ran the water and watched the last of her cereal milk disappear in a single stream down the drain. No, they’d never really been able to do abstract, but because of it there was nothing sweeter than those first few hours in one another’s company. It was like sinking into a warm bath. They’d barely speak; they wouldn’t need to.
She glanced around. The place looked exactly as it had when she’d first stood in the doorway with Zoe and Ray, nearly two years ago now. She recalled her feelings in that moment: it was as if she’d just had the wind knocked out of her—and she’d been on the island for less than an hour.
Her mood had improved when the boxes arrived. She’d dedicated six straight hours to unpacking; then—feeling pleased—had poured both Ray and herself a drink and toasted to making “the most” of everything.
She was proud of her ability to make a home for herself and her family wherever they went. Also, she just loved unpacking. When she was younger it had even embarrassed her: the undeniable pleasure she took in objects. In their physical weight, in the way they could both lend shape to and—at the same time—be shaped by a room. Someone like her, she figured—someone who basically lived out of a suitcase and hadn’t had a paying job till she was nearly twenty-five—shouldn’t care about things. But then, of course (as she was quite comfortable reasoning with herself now), they never really were just things. They were an archive, a record, a way of keeping in touch with the parts of her life that might otherwise have simply disappeared.
In any case, Rachel had taken pleasure in moving her possessions into the apartment at the beginning of her stay and now she was taking even greater pleasure in moving them out. She’d sent the bulk of everything ahead by post. Except for a few changes of clothes, the rest had been carefully tucked into her suitcase—which had now been lying open on the bedroom floor for several weeks.
She gazed contentedly at the clutter-free marble breakfast bar, at the glass coffee table that, for the first time in months, she could see through—clear to the lacquered parquet floor. Earlier that morning, she’d taken down the family photos and, because she hadn’t yet put back the ultra-glossy hotel art they’d replaced, the walls, too, were pleasingly bare.
The framed photographs she’d stacked in a pile and slid into her carry-on bag. There was a picture of herself posing proudly in front of her first bicycle, one of her parents in the early days of their courtship, an awkward portrait of Ray and his extended family on the steps of his grandparents’ colonial home. Then there was a series of Ray and Rachel from before Zoe was born. There they were: leaning their heads in and grinning into the camera in front of Angkor Wat, in front of the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower. After Zoe came along, the photographs were all of her. Zoomed in, so that she appeared to have no context.
Rachel’s phone buzzed; her pulse quickened. But it was only her driver downstairs, indicating that she was already late.
Right. And besides (Rachel tried to assure herself, as she slid her phone and a set of keys into her purse and made her way to the hall), it was still only yesterday. For Ray, that is, as for everyone else back in the capital, it was only slightly past two on the previous afternoon. There was still time. He was probably waiting for the evening—hoping to find a quiet moment, a time when he wasn’t either rushing between the office and the school, or the school and the office, or standing in the checkout line, or…
Rachel paused in front of the mirror by the door. She looked at herself with her lips slightly pursed, smoothed her hair, and applied a tiny bit of powder to her cheeks. It was a little secret she had, just between herself and the mirror: she was incredibly vain.
She glanced sideways, as though to catch her own reflection off guard. She appreciated the curve of her slim neck, the slant of a high cheekbone. It was just that she’d been such a late bloomer—had taken so long to feel comfortable in her own skin. Sadly, by the time she had, her beauty, such as it was, had already started to fade. But then maybe that was part of it. Maybe she only ever really started to feel at home in a place once she knew she wasn’t going to get to stay there very long.
She pursed her lips again at the mirror and, satisfied, stepped out the door. The door shut and locked automatically behind her.
Though from the beginning of her stay there’d been talk at the embassy of a “proper” residence, the plan—like almost every other plan that had been spoken of over the course of the twenty-one months she’d spent on the island—had not moved even a provisional step closer toward realization. Everyone still spoke of it as though it were only a matter of time. The hotel suite was just a “temporary” measure—like just about everything else on the island.
Rachel’s tenure, too, was only ever supposed to have been “temporary.” After a one-year contract, she’d been asked to stay on. Three more years. Anyone can do anything, she remembered Ray saying shortly after she’d accepted the position, for three years. And besides, it wasn’t as if (Ray pointed out) they had a choice. She’d b
een offered a tremendous promotion—to the position of first secretary—at this point in her career.
Still, Rachel had replied cautiously, it simply wasn’t worth it if the risks began to outweigh the gains. She could still talk to headquarters, let them know that under the circumstances a three-year term on the island simply wasn’t tenable—wasn’t safe.
“The circumstances?” Ray had asked, his face purposely blank.
Rachel had felt her face get hot. She hated it when he did this—made her spell things out for him. But he always seemed to insist.
“It’s one thing to choose not to recognize the risks for yourself,” she’d said firmly, “but it’s another thing not to recognize them for Zoe. Honestly, Ray, do you think all of this is going over her head? She gets called names every single day, Ray, and you know yourself”—she raised a finger at him—“you must know that it’s just a matter of time before it’s more than just names. Goddammit, Ray…” Her hands flew to her face. She stood there, massaging her temples, shaking her head at him, blinking back tears.
When she could trust her voice again, finally, she said, “I don’t want to live like this, Ray. I don’t want to just sit around like this, just…waiting.”
These were the circumstances: Ray had the blackest skin anyone on the island had ever seen, Rachel some of the whitest. Zoe’s was—similar to many of the islanders—somewhere in between, but because of it she’d been taunted near relentlessly ever since their arrival. Several times each week she came home from school reporting “bad words” that referred either to the colour of Ray’s skin or to the fact that Rachel’s had practically no colour at all. And still Ray had continued to insist that the problem had nothing to do with the colour of anyone’s skin.
“Well, how could it?” he’d said. “She looks exactly like the other little girls. And besides”—he’d paused, shrugged, purposely averted his eyes—“this isn’t the first time Zo’s been picked on and it won’t be the last.”
Island Page 2