What's Become of Her

by Deb Caletti

  Jane returns. She says nothing about her chat with Ricky Beaker, but Isabelle notices that he is not gone. Not at all. In fact, he’s everywhere she is, even more.

  —

  Driving home that night, she thinks about the times she’s been truly afraid. She isn’t counting the times Northwest nature had been the one to do the frightening, with raging storms, a car sliding on ice, a huffing bear outside by the garbage cans, a bobcat crossing her path. She is thinking of the human-to-human sort of afraid. And not the sort of human-to-human stuff of empty parking garages, or approaching footsteps on silent streets, or the uneasy-for-no-apparent-reason first date, but the large and immediate kind. The fear that’s raw and primal, because the cause is right there, shouting in your face. There was her mother with the golf club. And the times when she was a child, with her back against her bedroom door, while Maggie pounded on the other side. Later, when she was older, after that diary, and after small moments of rebellion. She can still feel her hair gripped tight in a fist, rug burns on her elbows, the burn of a smack. There was one boyfriend after Joe, too, who screamed at her in an enclosed car and grabbed her under her chin and squeezed, so very, very close to her throat. She stayed quiet and agreed with him until she could get back home. After that, she locked her door and never saw him again. Evan once got drunk and angry and chased her until she shut herself in their bedroom.

  When your face is so near to a gnashing animal like that, a dangerous beast, what is petty fury about pen swirls on a page? What is a bashed ego at a Christmas tree farm? What is ferryboat fighting? Nothing. Nothing like golf clubs or upraised hands.

  It’s all maybes and mights. It’s all some glimpse into a slightly opened door, but it isn’t the door swung open, baring the ugly contents of a terrible room.

  This supposed fear is just her, she thinks, as she takes the dark bends of Possession Loop. Her weakness, her scared-nervous self, her usual clouded vision. It’s all coming from her own head, her overactive imagination, aided greatly by some creepy sender of packages who won’t even say who he is. Some fear of fear is not actual fear. Some worry of danger is not danger. It is not being face to face with someone’s rage. It is not true peril.

  The problem she has with anger—it’s large in scope, see? Because it’s not just about her anger, but about everyone else’s, too. Childhood fear smashes the original parts, leaving them either destroyed entirely or wonky and askew, no repairs available for that particular model. What is reasonable anger? What does it even look like? What is fair in the anger world? And what sort of anger should make you afraid? Gnashing teeth? Shouting? That horrible flashing in the eyes? Undercurrents? Do undercurrents even count? And what does one do with the “I’m not angry” angry people? They send the wonky parts into some terrible squeak and confused spin, an are-they-or-aren’t-they muck. Every version of anger could make her afraid, was the problem, and not afraid enough.

  Which means—action is difficult. It’s impossible. Isabelle stands at the machine that measures tremors underground, she looks down at the squiggles and blips that say an earthquake is coming, and she sees only the unreadable but lovely-come-to-think-about-it design. Look at the red peaks and valleys! She hears a beeping, but what is that? It sounds far away. Maybe it’s a truck backing up.

  Something is broken, understand? When it comes to anger and danger and self-protection, there’s just a general haze and a muffled sound. It’ll take the earthquake itself; it’ll take a piece of the roof actually falling on her head to truly grasp the danger.

  She pulls up in front of her and Henry’s house. She’s arrived. She collects her purse and her jacket. She imagines all the people who would judge her for walking up to that door, turning the knob, going in; all those people who’d say I would never do that! Not superior me, not fortunate me, not ever-knowing and evolved me! Apparently, this part of her anger is working perfectly. This is where one right wire connects cleanly to the other, because, if you ask her, people who judge without knowing can go fuck themselves.

  “I’m home,” she calls.

  —

  The photo joins the watch in the hiking boot. Another problem is that Henry is mostly fine. She and Henry—they are. They do regular stuff—they talk about their days, they sift through the mail, and take the garbage to the curb. They make morning coffee, and pay bills. It rains. It rains and rains, and it storms. Henry writes, and he even briefly takes a painting class from old Jenny Sedgewick before dropping out. He feels stared at, he tells Isabelle. He feels restless. Will this winter last forever? (Yes, pretty much.) Will it always be this gray? (Uh-huh.) His restlessness makes her feel bad. The weather seems like her responsibility. The power goes out multiple times. There are candles and flashlights and cold, cold sheets and sudden bursts of light at midnight. He needs to find something else to do with his day. Writing isn’t enough. He has too much time on his hands. He’s climbing the walls, just waiting for her to come home. What does “climbing the walls, just waiting for her to come home” look like? His occasional irritation. Slightly suffocating attention. Discontent, which becomes a permanent boarder in their house. It also looks like great meals and warm welcomes. Suffocating attention can be sweet attentiveness. There is no roof beam smacking her head. There is only the sort-of-maybe fact of the watch and that photo and his history and her sense of something…What? Something not good about to happen. Foreboding, which feels like a permanent pressure in the chest.

  Penny for your thoughts?

  Oh, nothing! Just watching the sky.

  Just watching the sky?

  It’s a…moving canvas, she lies.

  You seem so far away, he says. Don’t go too far.

  They walk on the beach at Deception Point. They can see Officer Ricky Beaker’s patrol car parked up on the cliff.

  “Honestly, I’m going to strangle that asshole,” Henry says. He kicks at a watery tube of seaweed on the beach.

  The atmosphere feels tumultuous, plump with suppressed rage waiting for an outlet. The morning was already bad-electric and wrong because it was one of those restless Sundays where you stay in bed too long, where you force yourself to get up and go out, but find you’ve gone beyond the point of no return. All morning, no food was right and nothing was on TV and there was nothing good to read or do, in spite of so many options in the wide world. And then came the car ride and Ricky Beaker, and now Isabelle’s ears feel funny, like before a storm. The palette outside is the same as it’s been for months, gray with gray with gray, broken up with blue-tinged rocks and silver-white sky.

  “Tiny has nothing else to do. There hasn’t been any real crime here since Vince MacKenzie offed his lover’s ex.”

  “ ‘Crime here since.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Are you implying something?”

  There’s a bloated seal on the beach, flies buzzing around it. She and Henry step in a circle to avoid the corpse. By the time Isabelle’s on the other side of the doomed animal’s body, the atmosphere plus death plus Ricky Beaker plus the direction of life in general has spiraled her into a worse, reckless mood.

  “I’m not implying anything. Jesus, Henry.”

  Her sharp tone is only a lob of the dullest spear, but to Henry it’s a missile. It’s always a missile! He drops her hand. His body goes rigid next to her. “Don’t take it out on me,” she says. “It’s not my fault he follows us everywhere.”

  “You know, you’re right. Life with me just sucks. Life with me is every awful thing.”

  Yeah. Sometimes, yeah! “Let’s not fight.”

  “This place…I thought it was going to be a retreat! A sanctuary. A creative, restful sanctuary! But, Jesus! I don’t know if I can take it. Small asshole cops plus depressing rain, rain, rain. This weather will drive a person mad.”

  “It’s not that bad, Henry. It’s cozy. You can get a lot done.”

  “Cozy? Oppressive! That’s what it is. We need to think about moving. Maybe back to the East Coast. Not Boston,
not after that hell, but…”

  “I have a business here.”

  “Sell it! Come on! Think of the freedom. Think of all the choices we’d have…”

  He stops walking. In an instant he sees her face and what she is thinking. How, how, how does he do it? He can see that his idea is not freedom to her, before she even knows it herself. Leaving with him, leaving what little is hers and going to the east coast with only him to hold her aloft is perhaps more accurately…captivity. She has not even clarified this for herself. The words have not even formed. It is as substantial as that foam curving up to the shore, but he spots it.

  “Isabelle,” he whispers.

  “Henry, I just…”

  “Are you ever going to marry me? Are you ever going to commit?”

  From where they stand, Isabelle can see the blip-shine of glass from their house, and the brown splotch of shingles from her childhood home just beyond. Two homes, one cliff. It’s almost more than she can bear. They stand in the soft, sinking part of the sand, the metaphor part, where land meets water and your footprints fill up and then disappear. All at once, every hidden thing rises. Every tip and toe, every bit of care and every denial she’s used while trying to build a good life—they show themselves and then crumble and sink, and something else shoulders in. Out! she thinks. Done! Suddenly, the scorecard of what she gets versus what she’s given flashes, and the crowd boos. Suddenly, there’s a glimpse of life alone, and as dim and dire as that might look, it’s better than this. Suddenly, that solitary new maybe-life is a joy party in comparison, and alone is shininess beaming down, a relief. There are suddenlys upon suddenlys, because that’s how it works with nice people like Isabelle, nice people with those particular broken parts. The done, finished, enough comes all at once, and when it does, it crashes down like a wave and makes things vanish. The tiny flame inside, the one that’s been steady the whole time, it’s hotter and more powerful than she knows.

  “Am I ever going to commit?” her breath comes out in a sarcastic puff. It’s cold out there.

  “I mean, I wonder, okay? If this is about more than me and my past. You were with Evan five years. Maybe, you just…”

  “Maybe I just what? Have some issues about committing? I do have some issues about committing. To you! I need time to think…I have some issues about trusting this whole—”

  He grabs her wrist. “Don’t say anything you can’t take back, Isabelle. Calm down! Stop right now.”

  He grabs her wrist. He grips it hard. His fingertips squeeze her veins; press her pulsing artery.

  And now, with that…He’s done it. He’s crossed the ultimate boundary of hers. He’s put a hand on her in anger, which brings up every hand on her in anger, and all those memories plus the right now smash together like a multiple car pileup. She twists her arm to get free. Calm down? They are standing by the shoreline, and as she pulls away hard, the woven bracelet she is wearing breaks and drops to the sand. A wave crawls in fast and snatches it and out it goes. It is a meaningless bracelet, something she bought at an art fair for a few dollars; she has others at home. But it suddenly (suddenly!) feels crucial. Beloved, even. She splashes in to retrieve it, even though the water is icy, even though the bracelet is already too far out.

  “Isabelle, are you insane? Get out of there! What are you doing? This is nuts! Stop acting crazy!”

  And suddenly, too, she sees it: The story that could be told of her. The unstable woman, the unhappy woman, the dramatic woman, the woman who couldn’t commit. The crazy, deranged woman.

  She is up to her knees. The water is so cold that her legs go numb. The waves play rough. The surf pulls hard. Her hands reach for the bracelet and for balance both, lurching upward like a toddler learning to walk. Her jacket is getting soaked.

  His arm hooks around her, firmly yanks her back to shore. But not before she makes one desperate grab and snags the bracelet.

  “Jesus Christ, Isabelle! What has gotten into you?”

  Her jeans weigh a million pounds. Now sand adheres to the wet, adding a million more. Her shoes and socks are too sodden to walk in. She struggles with the wet laces, manages to haul off her shoes. Her crumpled, soaked socks look irrational and defeated.

  “Is that silly bracelet worth hypothermia? Being pulled out to sea in this weather? What are you thinking! Come on. Let’s get you home. My God, what a day. Let’s just go make a fucking fire and get out of this gloom. Why are we even fighting when we love each other? I told you, this place! Makes you insane. Look at you!”

  They trudge back up the beach, up the trail that hugs the cliff. Tiny Policeman still sits in his cruiser. Henry glares at Tiny. Where was Ricky Beaker when she needed him? Clearly, only she can look after herself. Isabelle tries to wipe the sand off of her clothes but it’s sand on pants and coat and now sand on hands. Henry is disgusted with her, but he’s also being oddly gentle. He takes her hand, which is freezing. He places his own coat over her shoulders. She knows why he’s being gentle. That grab of her wrist. Oh, she knows that game, the way the nicey-nice gestures of unspoken apology come after someone’s gone too far.

  When Isabelle gets back home, she puts the bracelet in the boot with the watch. She understands that they are broken in the same way.

  Chapter 28

  On this warm day, Weary relaxes. His pool is private, protected by the isolation of his property and by the large bamboo gate and the palms. How peaceful it is. What an exhale.

  He stretches on the teak lounger with the towel on top. It’s a rare occasion, a day to just unwind and sip a cool drink and swim when the temperature rises. It’s the hottest time of the year but also the rainiest, so when a shower passes overhead, briefly dropping warm, soft rain before moving on, it’s an expected and welcome interlude, even if this month’s copy of Behavioral Ecology gets soaked. Poor Behavioral Ecology—it’s momentarily forgotten until too late only because of what hasn’t been forgotten: Sarah’s journal. Weary snatches it up fast when the first drop hits his cheek. He grabs it and wraps it in the towel and holds it close, safe and sheltered, as the cloud sprinkles the sweet holy water from the oceans over them both. Both, because the journal is what’s left of Sarah. Her voice is there, her experiences. It’s evidence that she existed.

  It gets hot again, and so he swims, and he does something uncharacteristic then, maybe because he feels so good lately, so hopeful for the future, so reborn. He slips free of his suit. Well, all right, not slips. Getting out of a wet bathing suit is always more of a twisting, pulling battle. He drops the bundle of wet by the side of the pool. This is uncharacteristic, as Weary has always been somewhat modest regardless; it’s his usual insecurity, he’s had it his whole life, and he’s made peace with that fact. He’s in fine shape really, all that trudging on mountainsides, and as he swims, he feels good. Sleek as a moray eel (Muraena to the locals), smart as a tiger shark; hidden and rare and secretive as the nautilus, that rare mollusk of New Caledonia. He may—yes indeed, with a little luck—prove to be as poisonous as the tricot rayé, the striped sea snake of the region, whose venom is deadly and for which there is no serum. He has survived and endured, same as the Grande Terre reef itself. Life is good, in other words, in one of the most stunning places on earth. Even if he has worries, even if the clock ticks and so much is out of his hands, he must remember to take in the beautiful fact of being alive.

  He towels off. He decides to stay naked. Why not? He sips his guava juice. Now there’s the sun again, warming his whole body, loosening his mind. His thoughts drift in the manner of the pool’s plastic chlorine dispenser, shaped like a space capsule, which always ends up bumping against the same corners by the stairs. He thinks of Isabelle and Sarah and Virginia, and he thinks of birds, of Corvus.

  He thinks of the three species that look most alike to the common observer—the crows and the ravens and the rooks. And they are alike, but they are different, too. The ravens, for example, are larger than crows, while the rooks are slightly smaller. Raven feathers a
re somewhat pointed, whereas a crow’s are rounder, and a rook’s are particularly silky. Tail feathers vary, and so do calls, habitat, and such, and yet, Weary thinks…They are corvids, all three, family, with a shared fossil record dating to the mid-Miocene, seventeen million years ago.

  Sarah, now she would be the raven, with her larger size and flatter chest and throaty voice, and Isabelle would be the crow, medium build, perfectly proportioned, with her neat, upright demeanor, and Virginia would be a young rook, with her small size and pale white face, a young rook, though, before they plump up and gain their baggy trousers. She never had the chance for that.

  This is silliness, he knows, the worst sort of anthropomorphism, but it’s his day off, and he doesn’t need to be a scientist every minute. The recent photos on ShutR, and, now, rereading Sarah’s journal—it’s all made his mind swirl and knock. In a few of the new images that have appeared, Isabelle swims, too. She’s in a pool, and she’s in the sea. And she’s strolling beneath palm trees, and sipping drinks at a bar on the beach. Weary knows exactly where they are.

  The Visa card showed the purchase of the tickets to Riviera Maya, but even without that information, Weary would recognize La Casa Que Canta, where North and Sarah also went, just after Sarah found that photo in a box in their garage marked Electrical. At first, Sarah thought Electrical was just Henry’s linguistic whimsy, because there were a few letters from his overbearing and critical father in there, too, and a running medal he earned in school, though he was humiliated by sports growing up. But then, as she riffled through, she saw that photograph of Virginia at the bottom, covered by everything else. And when she did, she immediately matched the watch in the photo to the ripped watch in the box in his underwear drawer, and that’s when she knew. She knew. Well, maybe she always secretly knew, that’s what Weary thinks, but the photo was proof. Enough proof for her, if not for any detective or prosecutor.