by Deb Caletti
Isabelle has been up all night. After Jane finally went to bed, Isabelle stayed up on Jane’s computer, which is set up on a corner desk in her kitchen. Isabelle’s laptop is at Henry’s house, whoever Henry is. When she types in his name, she sees who he is, or, at least, she sees an entirely different version of the man she knows. It’s horrifying. His name is in news headlines, and he’s there in photographs, too. He’s walking down courthouse steps, and standing behind a lectern, wiping away tears. There is the name of the other woman, his girlfriend—no fiancée—from years and years ago, Virginia Arsenault, and her picture. She has a narrow pixie face, fragile cheekbones and poetic eyes, and she appears to be at a picnic; she sits at a wooden table with a checked cloth.
And there is Sarah, slightly more familiar. Isabelle knows only a little about her, because Henry doesn’t like to talk about the past. Well, yeah! Of course not! Doesn’t that make sense now! She previously had these facts (if they’re facts at all, who knows, who can say?): Sarah, the perhaps cheating wife, left him, never to be heard from again. She worked at the university where they met. She had a master’s degree in biology from Boston College, a doctorate in ornithology. He was attracted to her vivaciousness, her intelligence, but she was flirtatious and unpredictable. They fought. The relationship was tumultuous. They were married for just a few years. Aside from that, there was only a sprinkling of detail: She had money, she gardened, she liked jazz; the peach tart he still makes was her recipe.
But now here she is. She stands on the deck of a boat. Her hair is blowing; her smile is wide on her broad, confident face. Colleagues talk about her, their words in quotation marks in news articles: She increasingly kept to herself. She seemed withdrawn, secretive. There is a photo of the dinghy, washed ashore.
It is horrible. It is all so, so horrible. And there is more. There are video clips and interviews with relatives, and news updates, but it’s all too much, and Isabelle finally flees the kitchen and heads to the guest room. She lies in bed. It’s still raining. The wind still howls and whistles. Has this all been one day, really? Is it possible that so much can happen in just twenty-four hours? No. It is now the early hours of the next day, according to the red numbers of Jane’s clock, but still.
Isabelle stares at the ceiling, and then at the rain racing down the window. The drops are made silvery by the moonlight. She gets up again, paces the room. She goes back to bed, stares more at the torturing clock. She is exhausted, but it feels possible that she might never sleep again. She’ll just stay awake forever in this weird, nightmare world.
The women—Virginia and Sarah, they don’t sleep, either. They are so alive in Isabelle’s head. Virginia hikes on that trail with a lunch in her backpack. Henry hikes beside her. Isabelle plays the scene many ways—a slip and a fall. A sudden, despondent leap. Henry pushing—well, she just can’t see this scenario. She wants to, she should, but she can’t. He’d never.
But, then—Sarah. She sees her on the boat. She and Henry, on the deck, arguing. They struggle—no. They argue. Henry goes to bed. Sarah is pissed enough to leave. She is unpredictable. She is flirtatious. Someone is waiting for her onshore. Or else she’s drunk. She takes off. She falls in. She is never seen or heard from again.
Isabelle sits in bed, trembling. She clutches her pillow. No wonder he is drawn to the dark and misunderstood Poe, with all his own dead women, circling around him like spirits.
Isabelle runs to the bathroom and throws up.
—
She finally sleeps. There are vague sounds before she wakes in this strange place—a toilet flushing, a shower running, dog toenails click-clicking against wood floors. A bark, a shush. There’s the lingering scent of coffee. She puts her crane robe on over the Bonnie Raitt concert T-shirt. There’s a note from Jane on the coffeepot—Eat something—and a muffin on a plate covered in Saran Wrap. There are two sets of eager eyes peering up at her, a pair of muffin fans with wagging tails.
The horror of her now-life settles in her stomach. Of course she can’t eat. Rosie and Button share the pastry. Her terrible luck has become their good fortune.
Isabelle is still in shock. It is a gray, immovable block. She is paralyzed and sickened. She has no idea what to do, none. Every task she’ll now have to complete—it’s more than she can take in. She’ll have to find somewhere to live. Pack and unpack again. And she’ll have to talk to Henry. She’ll have to arrange to get her things. The idea terrifies her. She’s scared of him, that man in the news articles from last night.
Guilty people keep secrets, Jane said.
Isabelle remembers a few times when she has kept secrets and told lies: in second grade, when she broke her thermos from her Spider-Man lunchbox, hid it under her bed, and fake-cried to her mother that it had been stolen. In junior high, when she bragged to Jeremy Knight that her father wasn’t around because he was a roadie for Guns N’ Roses. In high school, when she told her mother that she and her best friend Heather were going to Anacortes to go to the outlet malls, when they really went to Planned Parenthood to get birth-control pills. In the fall when she met Evan, when she altered the number of guys she slept with, because of his surprising jealous streak.
You could say she kept these secrets and told these lies because she was guilty. Or you could say she kept these secrets and told these lies because she was afraid, ashamed, and because there was a greater good involved.
Her own Henry, the one she knows—he would be waking up now on the mattress they’d just brought over from her house. He’d be making coffee on a morning that was supposed to be the first of their new life together. He would be crushed. He would be destroyed. He would be torn up and heartbroken.
This is how your good sense leaves you. In small bits of twisted reasoning at an early hour, when so much has been lost that you’re wearing someone else’s shirt. When so much is at stake that you can almost feel sorry for what terrifies you.
Chapter 14
It is dusk. Weary is watching Simone and Yves on the same branch of the same tree in their roost. They’re a pair. A couple, if you will. Yves moves his head in, kisses Simone’s slightly open beak with his. She stretches her neck, and he twirls feather upon feather of hers, preening. Strengthening their bond.
Weary knows, though, that all is not the Disney Channel in the world of Corvus. Yves has snuck off on more than one occasion to have extracurricular fun with Little Black and Corbie. The sneaking shows intent. Exceptionally intelligent animals like Corvus, like Homo sapiens, will use their exceptional intelligence to get what they need most. They’ll scheme and lie for sex, and they’ll recruit one of their own to conquer an enemy, and they’ll perch over a lame animal, waiting for the kill they know is coming. When the kill doesn’t happen soon enough, they’ll lead a wolf or another predator to the ready mark, because sometimes you’ve got to be the one to get the job done.
They see the big picture, the possibilities. They watch. They act, when the time is right.
Weary shifts position, shakes a locked knee. He watches Simone, that sucker. He scritches a few notes in his pad. He wants to write revenge, revenge, revenge on every line on every page. Or else, justice, justice, justice, which is a less satisfying word, but perhaps a more technically correct one. He wants to rip out the pages and toss them in the air or burn them while shouting, Got you, fucker! He wants to pounce and gnash his teeth and tear and destroy and triumph. But he just crouches in the jungle, silent and careful, waiting, even though it kills him.
Darkness is falling, and Simone and Yves settle in for the night. Weary crunches and snaps his way back out of the forest. He tidies up the office, shuts off the lights. He locks the door. The top is down on the Jeep, as it’s a warm evening. He’s looking forward to the leftover green pawpaw curry from last night’s dinner.
As he drives, he breathes to remain calm, to quiet the thrum of drumbeats in his body. The drumbeats are there and this tumble and rush of feelings are there, because he’s been carrying a kernel of informatio
n that’s a seed beginning to sprout. Wow, such serene and unruffled wording! Kernel, seed, sprout? Explosive device, hand grenade, neutron bomb! He must keep his emotions in check. He must not move too fast.
The seed: a charge on the Visa after all this silence, from Flowers.com.
Yes, it could be many things, perhaps, but Weary knows it isn’t. He remembers the huge bouquet that came to the university for Sarah after Henry first told her the tragic story of Virginia. The size of that bouquet! How much that thing must have cost! She loved it, too. After she’d found out about Virginia, she felt sick and stunned and full of doubt. She considered never seeing Henry again. Oh, Weary can practically see her now, trying to work. Staring off, unable, walking away with her lunch at the cafeteria and forgetting to pay. She was a mess.
But then those flowers came. The sweet words. The reassurances. It was Henry being Henry, the man she’d come to love; the man she knew. She felt sorry for him! He was practically a widower, and then he’d waited so long to love again. Virginia sounded like a whackjob, to be honest. Sarah wasn’t like her, not one bit. Isn’t that the way it goes? You’re nothing like the one that came before, until you realize you’re uncomfortably similar to the one that came before.
After that, there was a swift change to the other side. A fierce loyalty to Henry. She wouldn’t hear a bad word against him. She shut out her own questioning voice. Weary gets it, but Jesus! It breaks his heart. There was the hastily planned wedding, the ceremony with only their nearest and dearest, and there weren’t many of those. Henry’s brothers. The few people from the university who loved her most. An old aunt. A self-involved nephew. She’d gotten too isolated. Before Henry, she’d had a few failed relationships with assholes, even a broken engagement, and that gets to be humiliating, doesn’t it? Bad decisions become embarrassing to share, and friends drift off after no communication. The circle around them was small. But she looked beautiful. What’s the bride-word? Radiant. She believed her whole life would open up after that, Weary remembers.
He also remembers the slightly sick feeling he had that day, though, the faint echoey dread he felt when North slipped the ring on Sarah’s finger. It looked like a tiny noose on a little neck.
“Why, why, why?” he mourns loudly to the jungle bumping by him. He pounds the steering wheel of the Jeep with his fist. Why had she been so stupid? Yet why is anyone so stupid? Who can understand the sneaky way the past whispers in our ears and leads us toward catastrophe? Some dark piece crooks its wicked finger and you follow, because the finger looks familiar. Childhood is the far-off radio you’re not sure if you hear, Weary knows. Childhood is the strong perfume you stopped smelling. But your trusty subconscious is never not on the job, no. It hears; it smells. You ignore its warnings. You follow its urgings.
Sarah, with her fuming father and trembling mother…She didn’t have a chance! Of course Henry North looked like Prince Charming, riding in to the rescue. Sarah was a lost child, and there were poisoned apples and haunted trees. After Prince Charming kissed the princess, she awoke to find he had the eyes of the crone with the candy house, and the hands of the father that allowed his daughter to sweep ashes. Weary is not just angry at one man. He is angry at all the people who are somehow larger and make others smaller, who use their power over those more powerless, whose dark psyches twist and ruin the small, bright spirits of others.
The Jeep bumbles and careens down the road, and Weary is whipped and lashed by foliage that he swears has grown overnight. It smells like rotting fruit and night falling out there, and the jungle feels suddenly hazardous. The worst dangers here are in the sea, but he still imagines snakes looping down from trees and scorpions skittering up pant legs and bad men with machetes. He must watch his mood, with the flowers on the Visa and all of these memories and thoughts crashing in. He’s getting the creeps. He wishes the top were up on the Jeep.
He grips the gearshift, to remember his own command. He is not small and powerless! He can’t change the past, but he can alter the future. The point is…He’s driving. Downshifting. Making purposeful moves.
“Action, Jackson,” he says to himself, cheerleading. He thinks of the real mob guy by that name, enforcer, debt collector. The time for tears and fears is done, Mister. No trembling violets in this Jeep!
Weary must focus on what happened after the ceremony. Most critical: remembering what Virginia’s friends and relatives did after they heard about the wedding. Virginia’s sister, Mary; Virginia’s friends, Florence and Shelby from Chelsea—they were no Weary. They did not follow North’s every move with Weary’s studiousness and dedication. They read about Henry and Sarah in the paper. The morning paper (they still had those then, how quaint), the local morning paper! Without the news splashed smack in front of their noses, they’d have never known he married.
When they found out, though, they descended. They swooped in, black feathers raised and flapping, hooked feet gripping hard. Too hard. There was too much flapping, too much screeching. It looked unhinged. It looked crazy. The way they called and called, trying to tell Sarah things she didn’t want to hear, trying to warn her…They had nothing on North, not really. Suspicions. All that noise and urging just looked like pain, trying to find a purpose. Weary thinks of his own father, with his endless paranoia and his battles with neighbors and electric companies and government offices. The focus on an enemy just made his father’s empty, aching life bearable, that’s what it seemed.
The crucial fact: Those women were easy to dismiss because of their approach, and Sarah paid the price. Well, not easy. Weary remembers the way Sarah slammed file cabinet drawers and left her purse on the bus and stared down into her yogurt cup as the dire warnings spun around her. She fought with one of her last loyal friends, Hannah, and then stopped taking any calls with a Lexington area code. No one could talk sense into her after that. Sarah was stubborn. My God, she was stubborn, and while it can be a fabulous trait, a trait that brings loyalty and dedication to a goal, it can also be a terrible one. A blind and narcissistic one, leading down a road to snowballing ruin.
Oh, Sarah.
He misses her so much. He loved her, he really did. But he should have loved her more, and he should have looked out for her. That’s the kind of love she deserved—solid, clear, steadfast. His love is a lost love. A too-little-too-late love.
He won’t make these same mistakes again, any of them. He won’t love too little, and he won’t panic or act in a way that will make Isabelle shut her eyes and clap her hands over her ears. One should never swoop. One should never screech. One should never flap and fly around in pain and anxiety.
One should move carefully and slowly. One should watch from the tree branch until the time is right. One should lead Homo sapiens to their own conclusions, same as Corvus leads the wolf to the lame animal. The wolf will save face and then make a powerful choice.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. This all might be folly. It might be very dangerous folly. Weary may be that crow out on a limb, but with her small, delicate hands, Isabelle is no wolf.
Overhead, the sky is immense and dark. Foreboding. But Weary forces himself to notice that it is brilliant, also. There are voracious, venomous centipedes, but the lovely nocturnal kagus, too, with their gray plumage and red legs. He takes in a big lungful of New Caledonia night air, which is not just dank and rotting, but sweet with ripening coconuts and leaves folding into sleep. This has been a healing place, a lush and welcoming one. It’s a sheltering haven of palm fronds and clear waters and good people. He misses being near what Sarah loved, what might bring her closer—that coffee shop, Très Largo, where he can still imagine her with her own hands around one of their big cups, and her own home, where he can envision her in her athletic attire, chattering away, sipping a cold drink after a hard run.
She is gone, though. He must relish his life; cherish the bounty. The stars shine like mad. The crickets and the giant coconut grasshoppers thrum and chirp. He is almost home. It’s
good, so good, to be alive, and he tries to tell himself that this joy is a truer truth than the terror brushing up the soft hairs of his arms.
Chapter 15
Before Isabelle heads to Island Air, she dumps the bouquet into Jane’s trash can. The roses have gone crunchy and the water has turned into a smelly, murky brew. She slams the lid. The arrangement was so large, the flowers took up much of the dresser in Jane’s guest room. Jane herself glared in their direction whenever she passed.
Isabelle couldn’t throw them away, though, until now. The roses were small artworks of nature in every color, beautiful, velvety, innocent of wrongdoing. Isabelle felt some duty toward them. Not to Henry, but to them—to the growing and traveling they’d done to get here. Now her duty is done. Farewell, good riddance.
Today, Isabelle will leave work early to look at an apartment above Randall and Stein Booksellers. After a few weeks at Jane’s, it’s time to find a permanent place to live. Jane has been more than generous, but in spite of her repeated reassurances that Isabelle is welcome to stay as long as she needs, Isabelle is starting to see the strain as she bumps into Jane in the kitchen, and as her late-night television watching awakens Jane, even with the sound turned low. She is disrupting Rosie and Button’s usual schedule, too. They don’t go to bed until she does, when their job of watching her is finished, and in the morning, they straggle around like hungover partygoers. It seems like Isabelle is exhausting everyone. Probably, she’s just very tired of herself.
The place above Randall and Stein Booksellers may be Isabelle’s only option. There’s not much available, rental-wise, on Parrish. Joe offered his pullout couch, and Eddie said his buddy might be moving, but these are both temporary and uncertain solutions. On top of everything else, it’s the tourist season. It kills her that her own house is lost to her, that she is basically homeless, that she’ll have to move again and pull stuff out of storage and buy some of the same things she’s just sold or given away. She’s mad about this. It’s not Henry-anger, though, or other-anger, something finally mobilizing and powerful. It’s self-anger, which is a short slide into self-hatred. When she had to downsize to her place in Queen Anne after Evan left, she swore she’d never move in with a man again unless it was going to be permanent. This speaks to how much she believed in Henry, which is why she is so furious at herself now.