by Deb Caletti
Stupid, stupid, dead mother Maggie says.
Will she ever shut up? Probably not. She’s in the ground, and louder than ever.
Now that the stinking flowers are in the trash, Isabelle hauls the can to the curb. It’s garbage day, and the least she can do for Jane is wrestle the waste bin to the end of the road, which has been swallowed by the morning fog. It’s some flower-trash-garbage-day metaphor, but she’s too depressed to care about anything clever. Hey, Henry could write a pathetic poem about it! Dead beauty with curlicues, and prim, forgotten words, whatever whatever. Talk about the King of Horror.
There it is: that glimmer of fury that appeared after her mother died. It skipped off like a schoolgirl when love blossomed between her and Henry. And it has been hiding in professional deference to the self-hatred and blame that’s been consuming her lately.
It’s there, and then it’s gone.
—
That morning, the fog lies low over the whole island. When Isabelle brushes off her hands and walks back up the drive to her car, she can’t see the crows overhead, but she can hear them. There are hundreds of birds up there somewhere, leaving their roost and heading to their feeding ground for the day. They kawkawkawkaw, navigating through the blindness.
The main road has disappeared, too, and the street signs have turned into spirits. As Isabelle drives, there are only two beams of headlights disappearing into white. Isabelle fears she’ll see Jane’s truck upended in a ditch, wheels spinning. She and Jane both make it to work in one piece, though, because there’s Jane’s truck parked safely in a spot in the Island Air lot when Isabelle finally arrives.
Inside, pilots Eddie, Joe, Liz, Kit, and Louise are all business. There’s none of the usual joking and sharing of last night’s movie or what Louise’s cat did, or Kit’s usual bullshit big talk, which is just as common on the company’s radio frequency as it is on land. The conversation is all about reports and route recommendations, and whether Joe should take a plane up to scout and radio back his yay, nay, or maybe. Eddie, a former bush pilot, who often starts his opinions with, “Hell, in Alaska, we’d…,” thinks it doesn’t look bad at all, but Maggie’s presence hovers here, too. She’d always been unimpressed by anyone wanting to shoulder their way through a fog delay. Maggie’s mother, the intrepid Agnes, used to let pilots decide for themselves, but this frustrated dispatchers, who ended up with a mess on their hands, and it confused the passengers who were left waiting while others departed. Federal weather minimums applied to everyone, Maggie always said, and they’d take off as a team or be grounded as a team. It pissed off veteran pilots like Eddie and Kit, but Maggie was boss.
This morning, they’re all a bunch of junior high kids with the substitute teacher, seeing what they can get away with.
“Let me just go take a look,” Joe says. “Worse that can happen is I crash into the side of a mountain and the business tanks.” He chuckles like a sicko.
“In Alaska, we’d have been outta here an hour ago,” Eddie says. He always has a story about a bear encounter, a vomiting passenger, or a damaged plane in an isolated location.
“We’re holding,” Jane declares.
Kit, who’s nearing sixty and has seen plenty of fog in his days, makes a disgusted noise.
There’s nothing to do but make more coffee until better weather arrives, so that’s what Isabelle does. She brings a cup to the small customs trailer, where the officer, Ray, waits for the Air Canada plane from Victoria. Back outside, she can hear the slosh of the waves against the dock. A few seagulls cry, the sound of abandoned babies, and in this grim gray-white, a foghorn moans. The fog is thick enough that it’s wet against Isabelle’s face.
Her phone vibrates in her pocket. The ringer has been off since the pilot meeting earlier. But she’s kept it off before that, too, because she didn’t want to hear Henry calling or not calling. For the first two days, he phoned repeatedly, but lately he’s stopped. Henry hasn’t called; no one has, really. Only Thomas Sedgewick, who’s rung her up from her childhood home, wondering if there was a key somewhere to the back door. It makes Isabelle realize how small her world has gotten.
Now Isabelle checks her messages. It’s just Bonnie Randall, owner of Randall and Stein Booksellers, needing to delay their meeting until tomorrow. Fine. Moving into a small apartment in town after all the space of her mother’s house with those views and the comforts of familiarity…The thought of it fills her with dread.
When her phone immediately vibrates a second time, she expects to see Bonnie’s number again. But this time, Oh, shit, it’s him. It’s Henry. Something clutches her heart—fear, longing, unfinished business, who knows what. She doesn’t answer.
She’s seen him since that horrible night with Ricky Beaker. She had to go back there, to get her laptop and a suitcase full of clothes, since most of her stuff was at his place. He promised he’d be away and would leave the door unlocked, but he was there, and he followed her around and pleaded with her to look at him and listen.
But when she looked at him and listened, it was strange, because weird words about a dead woman and a missing wife were coming from Henry’s mouth, the mouth she kissed. He looked oddly like the Henry she knew. She shoved these thoughts away. She was sure that Henry was gone forever.
She also saw him once in town, pumping gas at Eugene’s. Strangely, he was not surrounded by police cars or news media helicopters. He was just putting his wallet into his back pocket. She saw him once more, out at Point Perpetua Park. At least, she glimpsed the flash of his jacket, his familiar gait, as she drove past. She slowed and then parked and watched him for a while. He didn’t look like a killer or a maniac. He looked like a man with a lot on his mind. He looked like a brokenhearted man, actually.
Now here’s Henry’s voice, coming out of her phone and into her ear as she stands at the end of the Island Air dock, which looks out into a sea of white and more white. She used to swim in these waters, out by Maggie’s house, out by Remy/Louella’s/the musician/Henry’s house. She’d practice for her high school swim meets, slicing through the choppy, cold waves. It made her feel strong. She hasn’t felt strong like that in a long while.
Someone I want you to meet. Dinner. Just that. If tonight doesn’t convince you…The Bayshore. Our favorite, right? Please. I deserve that, I think. We do.
She sighs. She rubs her head. It is suddenly aching. She feels slightly sick. What’s odd is that Henry just sounds like himself.
He’s a liar! Maggie reminds.
But Isabelle lacks the energy required to either agree or not. The moving, the loss of her mother and her home, the shock of Henry’s past and the way she found out—plus Evan, God, Evan, the loss of him and their life in Seattle, and the vast question of what she should do now—it’s all exhausted her. She’s so weary. She could almost slip off her clothes and edge into that fog and swim out to the far place where the whales slumber. She could almost just let the waves take her.
—
The weather finally clears, and the company takes off, looking like a friendly toy fleet off to happily conquer in the play war. Joe is returning a couple to Seattle; Liz has two sisters who’ve just sprinkled their father’s ashes. Eddie is island-hopping with a businessman and his camera. In the late afternoon, there are arrivals. Joe brings a family that needs restaurant recommendations and a babysitter. Kit’s hipster couple has a Visa that’s declined. Liz returns with a doctor and his wife who are visiting family. Louise brings a “VIP” who turns out to be an aging child star from the old Eight Is Enough show. No one can remember her until Liz caves in and googles.
Isabelle ties down planes and hauls luggage and completes payments and arranges for a car service for the celebrity and the doctor. “Car service”—ha. It’s Jason Meadows with his father’s black Buick with the tinted windows. When the day is done, she heads back to Jane’s. She has not made a decision about Henry’s invitation and the mysterious person he wants her to meet. She thinks maybe she’ll just read in
her room with Button and Rosie. But when she gets back to the house, she gets a clean, plump towel from Jane’s cupboard. She strips off her clothes and gets in the shower. She chooses something nice, the least wrinkly thing in her suitcase, and before she knows it, she’s wearing lipstick.
Lipstick has its own ideas.
Isabelle leaves a note for Jane, who’s having drinks and burgers with Kit and their pal Terry at Bud’s Tavern. Isabelle lies. Going to see old friends, she writes. Might be late.
People who lie have secrets, Maggie now reminds. You’re a fool.
She doesn’t even care. Her mother never trusted anyone.
—
Henry and his guests stand when she arrives. Isabelle is surprised to find that they’ve already met—it’s Dr. Mark and his wife, Jerry Kennedy. Ms. Kennedy made the Island Air reservation and paid with her own card, so Isabelle did not see the North name. Pilot Liz just dropped this couple off three hours ago, and Isabelle shook their hands and rolled Jerry’s expensive metal suitcase up the dock, while they chatted about the fog delay and waited for Jason Meadows in the Buick.
“Isabelle, I’d like you to meet my brother Mark. And his wife, Jerry,” Henry says. He’s wearing that blue linen shirt, the one she’s unbuttoned many times. Henry looks nervous. Also, exhausted. He’s aged since she’s seen him, if that’s possible. Or else he’s just lost weight, and the skin of his face hugs his cheekbones.
“We’ve already met!” Dr. Mark says, taking her hand. “This is the Isabelle?”
“The one and only,” she says. She remembers Mark from Henry’s family stories, the brothers playing lacrosse, making forts, Mark as Batman to Henry’s Joker, while their youngest brother, Jack, had to be the audience. She can see the resemblance now. Mark is younger than Henry, but they have the same forehead, the same something around the eyes.
“I’m an idiot,” Henry says. “It didn’t even occur to me—your flight coming in…”
“Well, we changed our plans at the last minute. You were likely thinking of all that talk about ferry schedules. I couldn’t stomach the thought of that boat,” Jerry says. Jerry is a marketing consultant for a “major corporation,” a fact that she worked into the conversation earlier that day, as if providing her résumé at the outset would settle any pesky questions about social hierarchy. Isabelle has no idea what a marketing consultant even does, though the words major corporation make it sound like Jerry is keeping state secrets for government leaders. Jerry wears a buttoned suit jacket and has the sort of aggressive manicure that suggests she returned her original engagement ring for the larger one she now wears. The diamond is big enough to have crashed on earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.
“I’m confused,” Mark says. “Henry said you were an editor.”
“I can’t remember what I told you and what I didn’t…” Henry says.
“He tells us nothing.” Jerry waves a hand, a casual demonstration of their superior intimacy.
“I was an editor. When I lived in Seattle.”
Isabelle sits in the empty seat next to Henry. Now they’re a couple across from another couple at dinner. What’s strange is that Mark has sweet eyes, and he’s wearing the sort of cartoon tie favored by pediatricians; when Isabelle’s vision adjusts to the dim light of the restaurant, she sees that the pattern is a parade of tiny Tweety Birds.
“Of course you forgot! This guy walks around with his head in the clouds half the time,” Mark says, in an affectionate, arm-socking tone. “Mom always said, if she asked him to go get his coat, she’d find him in his room, building a rocket out of LEGOs.”
“I haven’t seen calamari as an appetizer since 1999,” Jerry says as she peruses the menu.
They order drinks. If anyone seems capable of committing a crime, it’s Jerry, who asks for sparkling water with a small lime cut in quarters, two pieces squeezed in, two left whole on the side. Isabelle wrestles with that disorienting sense of unreality that results when facts collide. They are in a regular restaurant and talking about regular things. The waitress comes by to take their orders. Water slides from a silver pitcher into their glasses, and ice cubes clink.
Sitting beside Isabelle, Henry looks like his once-beloved self. There’s his same profile, the one she’s used to seeing in the car seat beside her, or on the couch, or in bed. At one moment, his knee touches hers, and she almost grabs it playfully, forgetting completely about what’s happened and all that she subsequently read online.
After everything in those articles, after his lies, she’d stuck him in a box labeled bad—evil, fraud, deceiver, maybe even murderer—and she’d taped it shut. But now he’s somehow out of that box and mildly passing her a basket of dinner rolls. It is true, it is very true, that he may be completely innocent, the victim of bad luck and terrible heartache, and this is now seeming not just possible but likely, with his familiar right hand around a silver knife, spreading a chilled square of butter. The articles about Sarah’s disappearance, the story of how they’d gone boating in Rockport and had tied up for the night and how they’d been drinking and were heard arguing, and then how he went to bed only to wake and find her gone…It all seems a horrible tragedy that he’s somehow survived.
And yet hands are deceiving, aren’t they? They tuck you in and wrap thoughtful gifts and make a meal and they slap and hit and grab your hair and yank your head back. How do you read their guilt or innocence or their whole history as they turn a key or plink a keyboard or set down a knife at an angle against the plate? She can’t forget all of those articles and video clips she saw in Jane’s kitchen that awful night and in the following days, as she searched on her own laptop set against her knees. After Sarah disappeared, there was the breaking news of the long-ago death of Henry’s previous girlfriend, Virginia Arsenault, a presumed accident, and a flurry of accompanying outrage. There were Virginia’s friends, talking to a reporter about how they never believed Virginia had jumped. There was an incensed leader of a Stop Violence Against Women group. There was Henry, with his bent head, walking into the station to be questioned. There was Henry’s lawyer, protesting innocence, claiming victimization and suffering. There were the words open investigation and remains a suspect and then a dwindling of reports.
There was that horrible clip of Henry himself; it was a little over two years ago, and he looked so much younger, wearing a suit she’d never seen before, and a gold wedding band she’d never seen before, either, but it was still undeniably Henry. And it was dreadful, too, because he was sobbing and choking through his words, turning his head to blow his nose, begging Sarah to come back. Isabelle’s heart cracked at his grief. Weirdly, she wanted to hold that crying man whom she suddenly remembered she loved. He was clearly devastated.
There was a quieter feeling, though, as she watched that clip, perhaps brought on by all that she read, or by the fact that he’d lied to her, or maybe it was something else, something about Henry on that tape, although it was impossible to tell which of these it was. The feeling was doubt.
Is he faking it?
So she’d made him evil. She set him in a clear, tidy place in her mind labeled No More. But now here he is, or, rather, here she is, and dishes of food have arrived, and this kind man, this brother, this pediatrician, is reaching toward Isabelle’s hand, setting his on top of hers.
“Henry asked us to come to talk about the elephant in the room,” Dr. Mark says.
The words sock her in the gut. She has no idea how she got here and how this has become her life. If Evan hadn’t finally pressed for divorce because she felt more like a sister and because they were two different people, she’d be ordering Pagliacci Pizza at their old apartment and opening a bottle of wine. It seems like proof of some sort. Proof that life can have its own current, speeding you past the scenery of its choice, snagging you on one particular overhanging branch. A branch that—for whatever messed-up reason—is meant.
“It’s an outrage,” Jerry says, sawing her steak with coldhearted efficienc
y. “What this poor guy has been through…”
Henry stares at his plate.
“I know, I know, this is shocking,” Dr. Mark says, and the funny thing is, he’s taken the tone of a doctor. He’s being the firm physician, relaying the sad news of the tumor and the reasons to be hopeful. “I know a person asks oneself how there can be such a coincidence. I asked it myself. I can only tell you that there can be and that there was.”
“I didn’t know Virginia, but Sarah was nuts, trust me.” Jerry pops the steak into her mouth, dabs her lips with the napkin.
“Henry wouldn’t hurt a fly. This man”—Dr. Mark points his finger across the table at his brother—“has been through hell. I wouldn’t wish the past years on my worst enemy, let alone on Henry. He has a heart of gold. You wouldn’t believe how strong he’s been during this unimaginable ordeal. I could never have been as strong. Henry, I couldn’t.”
There’s a noise beside her. An ah of pain, cut off before it becomes a sob. Henry is trying not to cry. He has his fingertips pressed hard to his eyes. God, it’s awful.
“There is no evidence, no reason to think anything happened except what did happen. Henry has never once deviated from his story. Not once. Virginia was a sad, frail, despairing young woman, and Sarah was an unhappy, dramatic one. She stirred up trouble.”
She didn’t sound like she stirred up trouble, though, not from what Isabelle read. “People said, people who worked with her, that she was conscientious. Devoted. Extremely intelligent,” Isabelle says. And somewhat wealthy. Isabelle doesn’t mention this, but people in the articles do. This fact is always attached to the word motive. Isabelle hasn’t eaten a thing. Her shrimp lie on her plate, looking suddenly like a very wrong choice, the most wrong, with their pink, bare flesh, and the way they curl into themselves as if in protection.