What's Become of Her

by Deb Caletti

  Out the window, Isabelle can see Cora Lee from the Theosophical Society taking a hundred years to cross the street. She sees the spot where she hit Clive Weaver’s mail truck during her driver’s test. Whenever she’s visited Parrish as an adult, Isabelle feels like time had stopped, like she’s still fifteen years old, still hiding in her room, plotting escape, kissing the occasional boy underneath the stadium bleachers. Only now, these last few weeks since she’s been seeing Henry—the place looks old and new, too. It could maybe hold her past plus her future. She could maybe change and grow and move forward here, which never seemed possible before.

  The point is—Jane’s blue eyes piercing hers, the excitement in them, the papers, the talk of all the years of understanding—Isabelle knows where this is heading. She’s not sure it’s somewhere she wants to go.

  “You want to buy the business.”

  “I do. I have for a while. Your mother talked of retiring…I don’t want to retire. I told her then that I’d be—”

  “God, Jane…I don’t know! I mean, if you’d asked me a few weeks ago…”

  Jane leans back in her chair. She folds her hands together. Her excitement jets off to a safer place. “So you’ve decided to stay?”

  “For now.”

  “Okay. I understand. And, I mean, I’m disappointed, but I get it. Look at this place. Is this the most gorgeous place on earth? You go anywhere else, and when you come back here, you feel so damn grateful.”

  It’s more complicated than that for Isabelle. Sure, Parrish is beautiful. It’s stunning, with its moody beaches and towering evergreens majestically keeping nature’s secrets; with its shimmering water turning steely gray when the weather comes in and the sky darkens. A place that melodramatic and rich takes your breath away on a regular basis. But her child-self was formed here, and that child-self is a troublemaker and a sneak, a brat with yellowing bruises who still draws Isabelle into dark corners. It might be better, honestly, not to keep her on this temperamental island where she thrives. But what if Isabelle could actually get rid of that scared, problematic child-self for good? Fling her from the rocks of this very island, so she’s never seen again? Start anew, maybe even with Henry? There’s power in the idea. A full-circle rightness. “I’m just not through here, I guess.”

  Jane gathers up the papers. “We’ve agreed, though, we should pay off the loan for the 185? If she’d gone to the bank, the interest would be half that…”

  “Do it.”

  “If you change your mind…”

  “Better believe it. If I change my mind, there’s only one person I’d ever sell to.”

  They are outside now, standing on the street in front of Nick’s place. Isabelle is sad to have let Jane down, because she loves Jane and she owes her, and Jane is a great, solid person, and a dear friend. A rare person, the kind who actually deserves the word deserves. Jane hunts for her car keys, finds them in her pocket. “Before you go. I gotta ask. Is this about Joe?”

  “Joe?”

  “The reason for the glowing face? The new desire to stay? Our Joe? Eva used to make me feel like that.”

  “God, no, Jane. That was eons ago. Plus, we work together now.”

  “I just thought…I don’t know. Who else? There’s no one here! And I remember you two in high school, both in those overalls you guys always wore. You were adorable.”

  Joe is one of their pilots. Joe was also one of the boys Isabelle kissed underneath the bleachers. The best one—the most important one. She adores Joe. He’s still got the same lean frame and dark curls as he had years ago, and they still have the easy back-and-forth they’ve had since they were fifteen. But Isabelle is clear about past loves. After she met Dan, her old college sweetheart, for drinks, and found out he still raced his ATV every weekend and wrestled on an over-thirty team, she understood that it was only her younger, trusting self that she really wanted back.

  “Overalls! I miss overalls. And Joe is a great guy, but we’re just friends.”

  “Too bad. I love Joe.”

  Jane blows a kiss, gets into her car, and slams the door shut. She drives off, gives a little wave.

  “Someone else,” Isabelle says then.

  No one hears. The words are a whisper. It’s all she says, too, because she’s in that time when you first meet a person, when it feels possible to break a spell with only a name, with the wrong move, with the truth about yourself, edging in.

  —

  After work, he’s there waiting. She’s hardly been able to concentrate all day. They’ve already had many phone conversations late into the night, a few beach walks, and another dinner, at The Bayshore this time. She’s confirmed that Henry is smart, funny, generous, and elusive enough to be interesting. There have been only a few, dropped details about his wife and marriage: His wife’s name was Sarah Banks. They did a lot of outdoorsy things together. She worked at the same university as he did. There have been hints of a betrayal before the leaving. They were married for three years; he apparently had a fiancée before that. That leaves a lot of history, a lot of time, unaccounted for, but he’s not the sort of man who likes to live in the past. Elusive only means a person has secrets, but it’s easy to forget that when you’re drawn into the delicious mystery of a person. What’s secret-keeping and what’s discretion when you first meet, anyway?

  What’s he doing way out here? her mother says. Have you noticed? Parrish Island is the farthest point on the map from Boston. God, the Maggie voice is a pain in the ass. And the real Maggie—she would have found out exactly why Henry chose to come to this distant spot. She would have done all she could—googling, stalking, lurking—to unearth every dirty detail about him, anything to avoid the slight chance of being had. When Isabelle first fell for Evan, her mother bought an online background check of him, something Isabelle found out only afterward. Maggie discovered Evan’s arrest for a minuscule amount of pot and a small-claims court dispute over a bill for a storage unit and that was all, but Isabelle had been furious with her. And she refuses to be anything like her. She will not google, stalk, and lurk. Isabelle wants to trust, to relax, to let things unfold naturally. Plus, Henry’s shine is so bright she has to shield her eyes, and even then he’s still all glow and warm rays coming down.

  Now: She runs to the car, her mother’s Acura, and gets in. She isn’t sure what it is—the spring day, the run to the car—but it all feels familiar, like school is out and summer is starting and time is wide and generous. Henry kisses her, and then she doesn’t feel like a girl anymore. She remembers quite clearly that she’s a woman who wants things.

  “Where are we headed? A surprise, you said.” Henry starts the engine.

  “A place only the locals know.”

  “Nice. A secret.”

  “You got that right.”

  The key ring is still her mother’s—it’s a pair of outstretched silver wings, and it clacks against the dash when he hits a bump. Isabelle looks away. Also, she realizes that she forgot to clean out the glove box, and so it’s still likely filled with the fast-food napkins and the Latin music CD Corazon that her mother had in there. Does it matter? It doesn’t matter. Even if she can picture Maggie with the windows down, shimmying her big, cushy chest to the beat.

  Isabelle directs Henry to the far north side of the island, the Delgado Strait, with its harbor docks packed with sailboats and cruisers that come to tie up for the night or weekend. The Hotel Delgado is perched on a small hilltop and overlooks the scene. Teddy Roosevelt supposedly once stayed there. The hotel is one of those places that has been so present throughout your life that you don’t even really see it anymore. She hasn’t really taken a good look at it in years, but now, with Henry beside her, she sees it through his eyes. It’s gotten a little dilapidated. Maybe it’s just because this season’s ivy hasn’t grown in yet, but the paint looks chipped and faded. It’s tired. Seen with some generosity, though, the hotel has charm, with its white clapboard with shutters and a big rocking-chair porch. The staff
sets tables outside in the summer for lingering, candlelit dinners.

  As always, the harbor is busy. It’s worse on the weekends, when it gets packed and there are parties aboard the boats. After any San Juan Island regatta, this is the spot to be. The alcohol flows, the music thumps. Now the boats only rock and clank, and a fisherman appraises his catch. A huge sailboat swoops in, and the two men on board navigate the maneuver. There’s muffled shouting, and then a clear “Fuck you, Captain Ed,” and a laugh. It smells like seaweed and deep water out there, beachy dead stuff (Isabelle loves that smell), and onions frying from the hotel restaurant.

  Isabelle takes Henry’s hand. They’re having a regular day together, outside in the real world, and his face is feeling so familiar lately, too, and so is that hand in hers. His camera hangs from his neck and bumps against his chest as they walk. It’s the old kind of camera with the huge, professional lens. There are no quick shots from his phone for Henry. She’s learned this about him, plus more. The way he expects quality. The way he likes things done right. It’s admirable. She respects that.

  He smiles at her eagerness, at the way she pulls him toward the trail marked with the wooden sign HISTORIC SITE. Sometimes she has the sense that he’s indulging her, and it feels both shameful and fantastic. She wants to feel both big and small with a person, powerful and powerless. Clearly, it’s a doomed desire.

  “Come on!” she calls.

  “Here?” He’s understandably skeptical. The trail is damp and dark. It’s the pathway of fairy tales involving talking trees and menacing stepmothers. Of course, he might just be worried about wrecking those new running shoes.

  “I should have warned you it might be muddy.”

  “You should have warned me it might be muddy.”

  She pays no attention to the small jab. Actually, her brain shoots the words down its complicated machine of turns and flippers, transforms them to something harmless, a joke. Her brain has performed this trick all her life. She barely notices Henry’s critical edge. With Evan she didn’t notice the critical edge until he was shoving her off of it, but this is what happens when you’ve been raised to fall short. Isabelle drank criticism from her baby bottle. It’s got to be pretty strong stuff before she even tastes it.

  She punches his arm playfully. “Hurry up, old man.”

  “Old man, huh? Where are you taking me? Can I trust you, or are you going to bring me out in the middle of nowhere and take advantage of me?”

  “Henry North, Henry North,” she sings.

  It’s dark in there, and the woods close in; the evergreen trees spread their wide boughs overhead. She forgot this part. It’s a little creepy, and that’s why high school stoners and people doing things they shouldn’t were the only ones who ever came here.

  “Are we there yet, Mom?”

  “It’s a lot farther than I remembered.”

  They’re speaking low and quiet. The path is thick with rotting leaves and pine needles, and it is now the sort of dark-alone that requires hushed tones and soft steps. A branch cracks. Isabelle looks over her shoulder. It’s time for the knife-wielding rapist to run out and for the audience to scream.

  “Come on,” she says.

  Henry stops as if he, too, has heard something. He pulls her in close and kisses her. Isabelle moves her hands up the back of his shirt and feels his bare skin, slick with sweat from the walk. It’s getting crazy with him, the want. After the beach walks and dinners, how much more waiting can a person stand? She breaks away and tugs his sleeve. They’re almost there.

  And now…Here they are. It’s always sudden and surreal even when she’s seen it many times before: that stone table with the stone chairs around it, all set on a high wooden platform turned a forever-green from moss. Each chair has the name of a dead McKinnon etched on it, and each has a dead McKinnon buried beneath it. The scene looks like something from the time of knights and ancient kings. It’s a mystical place; dreamlike, and strange enough that you can believe you’ve stepped into another era. But it’s a tomb from only a hundred years ago. McKinnon family mourners would walk that same trail while carrying a coffin on their shoulders.

  “Ta-da,” she says.

  “Incredible.”

  Henry removes his lens cap and begins to snap photos. He walks a slow circle, bends low to get the entire table in the frame, steps up to capture the name Walter on the back of one stone chair.

  It’s damp out there, though, and getting cold as late afternoon turns to evening. Isabelle rubs her bare arms.

  “Chilly?” he asks. “I wish I had a jacket for you.”

  “I forgot how eerie it is here.”

  “ ‘Each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor…’ ”

  “Poe?” Of course, Poe. Lately, she knows more about the poet than she ever could have imagined she would. How he lost both parents before he was three. How he was once so poor he had to burn his furniture. How he had his heart broken by a fickle fiancée and a dying wife, whom he married when she was fourteen. Not the most cheerful guy to spend your life on, if you ask Isabelle. Still, she respects this, too, his knowledge and experience and passion.

  “Mmm-hmmm. Indeed.”

  “I wonder if the McKinnons even come anymore.”

  “Great spot for a family reunion!”

  Isabelle laughs at Henry’s joke and is rewarded. “You are much too far away,” he says.

  She goes to him. He wraps his arms around her. God, it feels good. He has the kind of big hands she likes. “You know, this place is very, very odd but amazing.”

  “Strange, right? In high school, this was where you went if you wanted to do something and not get caught.”

  “Stop giving me ideas.”

  He lifts her chin and kisses her. Wow, she’s attracted to him. The kiss is so sweet and soft and quiet, but then the key is in the lock and the lock clicks and the door swings open, and finally, finally, after that frustrating make-out session last time in front of The Bayshore with the diners watching from their padded banquette seats, he’s shoving his hands roughly up her blouse and her hands are under his T-shirt, and nothing is sweet and soft anymore. It’s hard and fast and who can stand to do anything but shove and pull until you’re closer and closer still.

  He pulls her to that platform. “We don’t have a blanket,” she says.

  “Shh. No one’s here.” He doesn’t care about mess or propriety now. He only lifts his shirt and lays that down, and it’s enough, it’s fine, because finally there’s no more waiting. He’s above her, and so are the wing-branches of trees and the geometric pieces of blue sky. She unbuttons his jeans and yanks the zipper and shoves them down, and he’s got her jeans off, and he’s inside her and she’s moving with him and crying out and he’s crying out before she even realizes the pain in her elbows and tailbone.

  “Oh, God,” he says. His weight is on top of her, his breath hot on her neck. “I couldn’t wait.”

  “Oh, Henry,” Isabelle says. And then, “Ow, ow, I have to get up.”

  There’s that twisting and adjusting of clothes. “Look where we are,” he says. “This is all your fault. All that ‘not getting caught’ talk.”

  “We are weird! We are so weird!”

  She is laughing, and so is he. “Let’s go,” he says. He takes her hand. They run. It’s time to do that again more slowly, and in the crisp, clean sheets of Henry’s bed.

  —

  In his room, she wakes with a startle—something has its hands around her neck. Jesus, she’s suffocating! She tries to bolt upright, but she’s tangled in a sheet, which has wound tight around her. It’s just dream-truth, the choking.

  He stirs. The moon shines through the big windows. She wishes the room had blinds to close—you can feel watched with all that glass. She notices that his nightstands are nearly empty. There are no photos, no personal history, no telling bottles of aspirin or tubes of ChapStick. There’s only a clock, which probably belonged to the musician. “I better go,” she
says when she sees the time.

  He kisses her forehead, so sweet. “I’ll miss you.”

  Back in her own bed later that night, Isabelle feels the sharp bruise on her tailbone, a reminder now of their first time together by the stone table. She replays the intensity of the moment, the urgency. A crass thought pops into her head. Her head is the only place she’s crass. She thinks: The dead watched us fuck.

  Right there in the woods at Walter’s feet. It’s the crazy kind of thing you do when you’re not thinking rationally. When love makes you totally lose yourself.

  That bruise—it hurts whenever she moves wrong.

  Chapter 8

  Weary’s assistant, Lotto, names the new crow Roussette. Rouss, for short. It’s what the locals call the flying fox, a species of fruit bat. Lotto’s mother used to cook roussette, and that’s what Lotto said he felt like doing to the bird when they finally captured him after all those weeks. Mama Yeiwene would take the creature and boil it, strip its skin off, and then cook the flesh again in coconut cream.

  Their Rouss is too smart to be boiled, though, Weary knows, almost too smart to be caught at all. Corvus is one of the most intelligent creatures on earth, and Rouss was pissed, oh, boy, when it happened. When the mist net came down over the top of him, he flapped and cawed in fury. Damn it! he seemed to say. Damn it, damn it! A person could almost feel bad about the yellow plastic tags newly around his foot and the satellite transmitter, which now mark him as a prisoner, never to be completely free again.