These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  “Stop it!”

  Her tears were mixed now, and her answer was a hiccough. “B-b-because I’ve wet myself.”

  She slapped his chest. “You’ve made me… I’ve peed on Mrs. Perlin’s sidewalk!”

  They both started laughing then, but hers was thin, and as she walked awkwardly away she gave him an accusing look. “Having three babies will do that to you.”

  “Aye.”

  The accent thickened. “Wonder what four’d do, lassie?”

  She looked at him with disbelief before pulling free of his arm. “Victor, not everything is a joke.”

  Steadying herself against a sudden wind from the lake, Isobel gingerly climbed down from atop the car, taking the hand he offered her. The gravel was a shock after the smooth metal of the hood, and as she limped to her shoes she brushed off her skirt in sudden industry.

  He was reminded of her demeanor in the shop, her movements there swift and economical. She had worked nearly every day since Thomas, their youngest, had started school. She’d bring lunch, and while he ate she’d work on the account books or wait on customers. If she had a dress order or alteration or was sewing something for the children, she bent quietly over her machine through the afternoon, rising promptly at the sound of the school bell so she could rush home to greet the children.

  She glanced at the lake, at the far speck of the island, before turning to look into her husband’s eyes.

  “I’ve seen it. Now take me home.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ~ 1999 ~

  Isobel felt herself rising through dark water. It was a slow ascent from slate depths, light teasing in a far shimmer above. Air bubbles trapped on the underside of the boat gleamed like wriggling snails. Victor was leaning over the gunwale, his face wavering just over the surface, beckoning to her, his fingertips dents of mercury in the water.

  She kicked with all her strength, and with each kick she was leaving the dark below. Finally she was freed to the foaming surface, revealed into the heat of summer. Breathing air blanched with sunlight, she reached out for the boat and he caught her hands. His flesh was warm, his fingers twining comfort through hers as her body rose, weightless and rescued.

  I’ve missed you, Victor. You don’t know how.

  Finally here.

  With you.

  But as she mouthed the words, his fingers slipped from hers and she sank back with the weight of years. When she closed her eyes she could hear her name being called as though through a shell. For a long time she rested there, somewhere near the silty bottom. An uneasy sea creature, suspended.

  Deep and curled.

  And later her name called again.And again.

  She opened her eyes to a great dryness, and through the kind haze of her cataract wavered the profile of a man. Not Victor. But someone. Someone she knew once. He had her wrist, was holding it lightly between his fingers. She began to cry, but tears were cinders stopping at the corner of her eye.

  She pulled away. Who? She could not name him. His features faded in and out of a bright glare. When she tried raising a hand to shield her eyes from the reflected sunlight, she found her hand fast on the gunwale, frozen there as if to steady herself and the shifting canoe. A different boat altogether.

  “You’re awake.”

  The timbre of the man’s voice matched his face, rugged and broad, matched an echo from bright years past. Who? Silver calipers somehow clasped about his neck. Isobel blinked. Strange thing to wear in a boat.

  The man leaned in, his voice washing over her. “Isobel, can you speak? I just have a few questions.”

  She turned and peered at him.

  Don’t we all?

  He spoke a few more words, all running together in a stream save one. Stroke.

  She tried to hoist herself up. Somehow she was in the canoe, no longer beneath it.

  Where’s my paddle?

  “Isobel, can you tell me when and where you were born?”

  Stupid question.

  She stared at his neck, at the curious silver hooks pinching his flesh. He had the muscled neck of a man who worked with his body. When he cocked his head, sunlight assaulted her. She squinted, trying to raise her arm, but it wouldn’t move. The man turned his back to her and made a sweeping motion with his hand. Light crumbled.

  It took a moment for Isobel to adjust to the sudden dimness. The unbroken horizon and the expanse of water were transformed, condensed into stiff lines until they took on the dimensions of an ordinary room. With the pulling of a shade, Isobel’s boat squared itself into a narrow bed. Her hand on the gunwale was a mottled talon clutching a metal safety railing. Fluorescent light flickered above her head with a static hum, and the strange ornament worn by the man formed itself into a common stethoscope.

  A doctor. Of course. Still, that did not explain the man’s familiar shadow. A name nearly came to her and slipped as suddenly from her possession as the boat had. As Victor had.

  With the slow revelation of her circumstances, Isobel felt a sting of remorse. She was not dead after all, only groggy. Alive enough to feel aversion at the nasty film coating her lower teeth. Someone… urse? — had removed her upper plate so that when she ran her tongue over her gums their nakedness surprised her. Stroke? She wanted to go back to her dream, the cool satin of her floating space.

  The man impatiently repeated his question. “Isobel, do you know your birth date? Your birthplace?”

  Birth date, birthplace. What did he really want? She had been in the hospital before. There would be examinations, tests. They seemed to be forever testing her, drawing vials of blood from the parchment crooks of her arms, strapping her body onto metal gurneys to run her through churning and blinking machines, as though she were being processed. During those grim moments Isobel always felt an uncharacteristic paranoia; that the essence of her was being shifted or manipulated somehow. The technicians tended to say her name overoften during the more uncomfortable moments of these procedures, as if hearing her name like a mantra would reassure her. Of what? That she was not breaking down, cell by cell? That her destiny — and theirs, for that matter — was not set, that they would all somehow, through some series of miracles, escape their arid fates of bone and ash.

  Reduced by a wind.

  Afterward, safe in her bed, Isobel always felt a little foolish for her drama and chastised herself for acting like a child. Or worse, an old woman.

  Stroke.

  Perhaps if she was polite, obedient, the man might go away. Isobel cleared her throat with a gummy croak and answered, lisping a little without the wall of her upper incisors.

  “May seventeenth, 1900, in Cypress.”

  Nodding, the man bent to make a note on the chart, frowned, and looked back at her. “Cyprus? You mean the island near Turkey?”

  Isobel heard his question clearly, but the tug of sleep was stronger than any desire to correct him. She smiled and closed her eyes against the blur of his curious face.

  By the third day, Isobel was nearly herself. She’d grown accustomed to being alive; she even felt resolve, a near optimism about continuing on. As she took in the room’s false cheer of yellow wallpaper and orange plastic chairs, she remembered the fleeting moments of her stroke.

  Seized. Seconds of clarity, a series of impressions etched into crisp scenes she could run through her head like a reel of vignettes. First there was the pain. Hit! she had thought. Hit from behind, right here in my kitchen. She felt a ping somewhere just up-brain of her ear, and her eyelid shuttered itself fast. Flesh prickled along her cheekbone and down her neck, the invisible force that was peeling her hand from its mooring leapt to her leg and tried to trip her.

  No one’s hit me. I’m alone. Dying. It’s crawling on me. Finally. Finally I’m giving way. But why now?

  Oh God oh dear God.

  But as she clutched the cabinet, starting her slow slide to the floor, she experienced wonder — even awe — the type she hadn’t felt since childhood, mostly at the irony that she had questions
even as she was slipping down to her death.

  Now?

  Now. At the drainboard, putting away a coffee mug I’ve always hated?

  The mug had a stylized M, as part of the insurance company’s logo, and the letter resembled a textbook diagram of fallopian tubes and ovaries.

  Why have I never thrown the thing away? Sun glinted on the handle as the mug fell from her open hand.

  In daylight? Ridiculous. Nobody should have to die at midday! Like childbirth, wouldn’t dying be more appropriate in the solitude and cover of night?

  She felt a puzzling satisfaction that questions resolved themselves as quickly as she could form them. They simply didn’t matter.

  Death? It suddenly seemed more a courteously posed invitation than a frightening inevitability. Willing resignation came over her, and she suddenly craved the rest her new state would offer. Yes. Death. Willing as a bride. When she let go her grip on the countertop, she had felt — instead of the hard smack of linoleum and ensuing blackness… piraling sensation of peace, warm and comforting as any embrace.

  Sitting up now and dressed in a wrinkled nightgown and thin hospital robe, Isobel took a spoonful of watery Cream of Wheat and wondered aloud whether her son Thomas had remembered to stop by her apartment and water her orchids.

  “Yes, Mother. This morning.”

  At the voice she smiled. “Oh, you’re here. I thought you left ages ago.”

  “That was yesterday.”

  He lowered his newspaper and tucked a pencil above his ear. As the paper fell to reveal Thomas’s face, Isobel realized with a start that she’d almost expected a gap-toothed nine-year-old to emerge from behind the comics to snap his gum. She’d expected the green-eyed boy who’d been able to wring her heart with a wink. He could do that before things shattered for him. For them all.

  She blinked and looked again. The overhead light reflected in the sheen of his high forehead. Her son was greyhaired and tired-looking; his tie was pulled loose down his starched shirt. His wife takes such care of him, Isobel mused, can’t she keep him from looking so old?

  Another male voice came to her from the foot of her bed. “Good morning, Isobel.”

  When she glanced up, the spoon fell from her hand with a clatter, lukewarm porridge splashing over her knuckles. Creamy dabs peppered the brown liver spots on the crepe of her skin.

  The doctor held a chart, the rubbery loops of his stethoscope dangled from the pocket of his white coat. Underneath he wore a plaid shirt, blue and green hatched with grey.

  “My name is Dr. Hertz.”

  His eyes were puffy and his hair had not been combed.

  It took her a moment to find her voice. “I believe we’ve met.”

  She recovered her spoon. “Dr. Hertz, you say?”

  “Uh huh.”

  The old woman peered at him, leaned forward. After the three of them shared an awkward silence, Isobel laid the spoon away and drummed the fingers of her working hand on the plastic tray. “Since you are on a first-name basis with me, perhaps it should be reciprocal?”

  “Hmm?”

  At first the doctor did not catch the bite in her tone. He had been listening for signs of slurring.

  “Doctor? Your first name?”

  “You are better, aren’t you? Joel. My name’s Joel.”

  Isobel looked into the doctor’s face and motioned with a hooked finger for him to come closer. “Since I’m old enough to be your grandmother, great-grandmother, I’ll call you Joel. And if you like, you may call me Mrs. Howard.”

  Thomas grinned, watching the exchange. She was reeling in another one.

  The doctor reddened slightly and ran a hand through his sandy hair. “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  He tried to suppress a smile, dimples appearing at the corners of his mouth.

  Isobel’s brow arched. “You still remind me of someone.”

  “Still?”

  He checked a tube on the IV snaking into her vein-riddled hand. “Anyone special?”

  When he glanced up she was staring out the window. He waited for her to continue, but she seemed to have lost her train of thought.

  His tone was a little weary. “I take it you know where you are now?”

  Isobel sighed. “St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul. Geriatric wing, I suppose. And I believe today’s date is September the second, maybe third?”

  “Close enough. So, how are you feeling, Mrs. Howard?”

  Isobel looked at him. “Call me Isobel.”

  Her smile was a lopsided display of unnaturally white dentures. Her uppers had been located. “I’m fine. Aside from this arm, I’m feeling fine. And how are you?”

  The doctor blinked. “I’m fine too, thank you.”

  With his pen he made a few stabs at the chart, then he hung it at the end of the bed. “I’ll be back later to check on you.”

  He shifted away and nodded to Thomas on his way out. “Your mother’s doing very well, considering.”

  Isobel suddenly rolled to her side. “Joel?”

  He stopped in midstride and turned. He had rounds to make. “Yes, Mrs.… Isobel?”

  “I remember now.”

  “Your stroke?”

  She waved the air in dismissal. “Never mind that. I remember who you remind me of. Your hair, your profile, even that shirt you’re wearing. You look very much like someone I knew when I was your age.”

  Isobel could tell he was fighting the urge to look at his watch.

  “No kidding. Who do I remind you of?”

  “Now, why can’t I say his name? I know it.”

  She poked her temple. “It’s right here… the man who disappeared.”

  Thomas righted himself in his chair and leaned toward her. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped short, biting his mustache. Dr. Hertz stepped forward. “Disappeared where? In Cyprus?”

  “Oh! What was his name?”

  Isobel raked at the blanket.

  “No, not in Cypress. It was at the lake, near Cypress.”

  “Ah.”

  The doctor nodded knowingly and retreated to the door of the room. “Good-bye, then.”

  As he turned away he shook his head. Dementia. From what he remembered from his geography, Cyprus was a bone-dry crust of earth surrounded by ocean. Not likely to have any lakes.

  ~ ~ ~

  Plaid shirt. Plaid shirt. Isobel’s eyes would not move above the collar of his shirt. She recognized the fabric as Pendleton. Quality wool. She reached tentatively to shake the hand of the man wearing it. She’d been almost afraid to look at his face, but when Cathryn’s arm tightened around her shoulders she looked up.

  He had deep-set green eyes under a thatch of wavy blond hair. Certainly good-looking enough, Isobel thought. He did not look nervous or guilty as Isobel expected he might. As he should. She slowly pulled her hand away. When the man spoke it was with a deep and even tenor, the voice of a public speaker, a politician, an unexpected voice for an ordinary man.

  “My name is Jack Reese.”

  Isobel recalled Cathryn’s saying he had studied in the seminary. She could imagine him at the pulpit, where his voice and stature would serve him well. Cathryn poured tea and hovered near, uncharacteristically quiet as her lover and her friend became acquainted.

  They sat near the back of the tailor shop. Isobel had locked the door and flipped the sign to the Closed side. She’d pulled the shades and took the further precaution of placing the trio of chairs well away from the windows. She perched uncomfortably on the edge of hers, warily eyeing Jack, hands knitted to her knee.

  Jack cleared his throat and began, immediately deflecting attention from himself by asking Isobel a number of friendly questions. He asked about Victor’s tailoring business. He asked after her new millinery work, her children. How did she think her husband and sons were faring out on the island? Isobel glanced icily at Cathryn, then back to Jack.

  “It seems as if you already know enough about me.”

  His manner rema
ined genial as he persisted. At first Isobel’s answers were curt and unembellished. He had so many questions, all asked with a genuine sincerity, as if he were truly interested in her life. He pressed her to elaborate on certain points and edged his chair close to hers, leaning forward to lightly touch her arm whenever she faltered or paused. Without realizing it, Isobel began talking more freely. After an hour it dawned on her that while she had been talking, not one of her rehearsed questions had been asked. Suddenly impatient, she interrupted to ask him about his own life.

  “You have family?”

  “Yes, mostly in Philadelphia. My father was killed in Belgium in ’18, but my mother’s still alive, and I have a brother in Cleveland. I don’t see them often enough.”

  Isobel couldn’t stop herself, the question faltered at her lips and stuttered out. “Have you d-done this before? With a married woman, I mean?”

  He shook his head, not breaking her gaze. “I understand your concern.”

  He didn’t flinch. “You’ve a perfect right to ask. Of course not. Never.”

  After a moment she continued, this time her voice a bit more mellow. She asked about his work with the forest service, about the isolation of the job.

  “Not so different from the seminary, really,” he said. “Alone in a tower, waiting, or alone in a cell, waiting and praying… for what, I’m not sure. Clarity, I suppose.”

  He laughed. “Perhaps my failure in the seminary had something to do with the fact that I had no clear idea what I was looking for.”

  Isobel surprised herself by placing a hand over his to encourage him. “But there must have been something that drew you to the Church. Something must have made you want to become a priest.”

  “To be honest, I’m no longer sure. I thought I would be needed.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “I supposed that I would save souls.”

  “Save souls — from what?”

  He leaned in, his face growing serious. “Why, from hopelessness. From loss of faith.”

  Isobel nodded wryly. “And now you’re a ranger. That must’ve been quite a change for you.”