“And Samantha is your grandchild.”
Charlotte just stared.
“She’s your grandchild,” Diana said again. “And she still is a child. Stephen is not.”
“He’s eighteen years old,” Charlotte said. “And he is my child.”
“Nineteen,” said Diana. “And he has serious problems.”
Charlotte put her hands on the table, making to stand. “We’re just going to have to finish this conversation another time. I’m not going to sit here and listen to the two of you yell at me.”
Diana looked at her father again, her eyes pleading. He covered for her mother constantly, whenever she lied, but he couldn’t now. He couldn’t possibly now. It was too much. Too far.
“Charlotte, you should at least talk to him,” he said. “See what he says. If he did do this, he’s going to need help.”
“If he did do this, so what?” Charlotte said at last. “All boys do it. It’s a stage they go through. Experimenting. The rest of your brothers all did it, all the time” she said to Diana. “And your uncles.”
“Not in front of people!” Diana said. “Not in front of little kids!”
“Yes, they did,” said Charlotte.
Diana reared back. “Who?”
“You,” said Charlotte. “And your little sister. You were all in therapy for it. You just don’t remember.”
Phillip was standing with his mouth hanging open. “What … are … you … talking … about?”
Diana shook her head. “That never happened, Ma.”
Charlotte’s jaw dropped open. “You just don’t remember. That’s the problem with you. You remember things that never happened, and you don’t remember things that did.” She looked at Phillip. “And now you have this one covering for you.”
“I’ve never done anything like that, Ma,” Phillip said. “That’s not fair.”
“You just don’t remember,” Charlotte said. “The therapist hypnotized you. He thought it would be for the best. Everyone hypnotized, no one remembers, no one is hurt. No harm done.”
Diana was sobbing now, wanting to run, afraid to move. She wondered if her mother had given Stephen a heads-up, told him to get out of the house for a while. Diana had hinted at what was coming on the phone, but not told her the whole thing. But her mother was intuitive when she wanted to be.
Her father took another breath. “You at least need to talk to him.”
Charlotte cut him with her eyes. “I’ve talked to him plenty of times. He tells me everything.”
“Not everything,” said Diana.
“He tells me enough.” Charlotte stood. Her eyes had switched again, even a bit emptier than they had been before, and Diana suddenly realized there would be no getting through. Nobody was home now. Charlotte was gone. “And I’m not going to stand here and listen to this in my own house. And I’m not going to have this asshole you’re shacking up with coming around and accusing my children of awful things.”
“He was trying to help,” said Diana.
“My ass,” said Charlotte. “He’s filling her head with lies.”
Diana shook her head. “No. He’s not.”
“He is not welcome here, Diana.”
“We’re going to be married,” Diana said, and even as she did, she wondered if it were really true.
Charlotte was silent a moment. “Then you need to choose,” she said at last.
“What?” Diana said.
“You need to choose, Diana. Him or me. Us,” she said looking at Diana’s father.
“Don’t make me,” Diana said.
Charlotte shook her head. “I’m not making you do anything, dear.”
“Then I can’t stay here,” Diana said.
Charlotte hesitated. “You do what you have to do, dear. I’ll pray for you.”
She walked out of the room then, and Diana’s father stared down at his hands, flat out on the table. Phillip had his head down. Diana glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall. The bird hadn’t come out since she was small, and now she wondered if it had ever worked, or she just thought she remembered it working. Her mother had hung a garland of pine around the clock, and above it a picture of the Baby Jesus. Floating in the air and swaddled in a diaper. Palms open to the sky. The angels forming the words in the sky above him. Joy to the World.
6
Ford had caught the ferry out of Woods Hole. It wasn’t any trouble getting his car over this time of year, and the boat was almost empty. The old lady had been ninety-five years old. Imagine that, he thought. Even he didn’t know she was that old. Sections of the harbor were still frozen, and he saw an ice cutter in the distance when he stepped outside on the top deck. The cold didn’t bother him much, not even out here with the wind and the sea. Ford reached inside coat and took out his flask.
He wondered if any of his siblings would be here—the old lady wasn’t subtle when it came to her feelings about Big Daddy, so he doubted he would see his mother and father—but he was too late for the church, and when he got to the cemetery behind the old house, he recognized no one. And there weren’t many to recognize. Just a few old codgers in heavy coats and hats, more than likely distant cousins he had never met or friends from another time. Diana had wanted to come with him, but he had said no. He had been nice about it. This was something he had to do alone. He had spent most of his time with the old lady alone, so it was only fitting, he say goodbye to her alone.
The barren tree limbs were still lined with snow from the week before, as were the headstones, the tombs. The minister was small and round with thick glasses and his face red in the cold, and his voice boomed in the thin winter air. His aunt’s name had already been chiseled beneath that of her husband’s, Edward, but just the beginning date, not the end. Not yet. Dorothy Evelyn Barlow, November 23, 1898–. They had draped the ground around the casket with artificial green carpet, and Ford was a little surprised when he saw the backhoe waiting in the distance, engine quietly rumbling. He wouldn’t have thought they could break the earth this time of year, but then again he supposed that was a thing of the past. Storing bodies in the squat stone building in the corner of the graveyard to wait out the winter. The newly dead whispering back and forth to one another throughout the cold dark nights.
Whispering.
Ford looked over the headstones at the house in the distance, and even though he knew it was now empty, he couldn’t help feeling there was someone in there watching them, watching this. One more added to the ranks. The thought was crazy. Stupid. There was no one in there, and other than the occasional visitor, there had been no one except the old lady for the past sixty years. All the more reason to give it a quick walk through after this was over.
Ford tried to pray, but it felt false, phony. He couldn’t believe there was anyone listening. Couldn’t believe there was anyone out there anywhere.
The minister said his final words, and as he did, his face to the sky, it started to snow. Ford waited until the old people had cleared away, and once they did he walked over and placed a single rose on the casket. A rose like the rose of the wolf in the lattice. The house. His house. Now. It was going to be just what they needed.
7
The house had been in his family forever, he told Diana. He used to visit in the summer, and the old aunt had taken a liking to him, saying that he looked like her brother. Despite the work he had done for her though, he hadn’t been expecting anything when she died, and so the house came as something of a shock. But it was a shock they needed, he said, since they couldn’t yet afford a house on their own. And there was a hospital on the island, and Diana could eventually look into getting a job there. Ford himself had already requested a transfer to the post office in Vineyard Haven, and it looked as if it were going to go through.
“It will be for the best,” he said. “That way it can be just the three of us. We don’t need anybody else. And if we don’t take her away from here, Diana, away from that environment, we would be as bad as he is. It would be cri
minal.”
Criminal. Diana didn’t mind moving, but the fact that it was an island made it seem all that more distant, and it unsettled her some to cut away from her family completely. She still hadn’t spoken to her mother, but she would miss her father, she thought, her elderly aunt, and a few of her brothers and Ford’s sister Cybil. But she rationalized that the ride to the ferry was only an hour or so down 495 and Route 28, and then another forty minutes or so on the water. It wasn’t like moving to the other side of the world.
“It’s not,” Cybil had agreed. She had given Diana a gift certificate for a manicure and pedicure for her birthday, and the two of them sat side by side in the salon with two small sisters painting their toes. “We used to get down there in a about an hour and a half, including the ferry. I think it just feels that way because it is an island. I felt bad that I couldn’t make the funeral service, but I couldn’t get coverage for my shift.”
Cybil was a nurse, too, and she had a fierce independent streak. She had put herself through college, and through grad school and had been supporting herself since she was eighteen. She and Diana had got close quickly shortly after she had met Ford, and she had attached herself to Samantha nearly immediately, always around to keep a watchful eye on things. She was a year older than Diana with auburn hair, breasts that still turned up, a thin waist and just enough hips. Picture-blue eyes and a small scar on her chin. She said she got the scar sledding as a child, but the more Diana learned about her family, the more she wondered. She had a slight sneer to her lip that might make a lip reader maybe think much of what she said was said with sarcasm, and sometimes it was.
“That’s the thing,” Diana said. “It’s an island. I’m just worried that I don’t know anybody. I mean, it’s probably going to get lonely.”
“Believe me,” Cybil had said. “You get a house on the Vineyard, you’re going to have people wanting to visit you all the time—more than you want to deal with. And besides, my boyfriend Norman’s family has a house down in Hyannis. We’re down there all the time in the summer, so we can just jump on the ferry and come over and visit as much as you want. We’ll make sure you’re not lonely. And with everything that has happened, with my family and your family, I think it will be the best thing for you to create a little distance. For both you and Ford.” Cybil was quiet a moment. “I think you’ve been good for him,” she said. “And I think he can be a good man if given the chance.”
Diana smiled. “Can be?” she said.
Cybil had turned and looked into her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Can be.”
8
1994
Saturday. Ford hadn’t come home for lunch the night before—at least not that Diana had heard—and she was up before he got home for good. He passed her in the back parlor before heading upstairs but he hadn’t said anything. Just threw his new chart book onto the stairs, and then kept moving. He always said it was a great thing about the night shift—if things were slow, he got to study his books. And on the island in the winter, everything was slow.
Diana took Samantha out to push on the swing Ford had hung from the oak in their backyard early last summer. The tree was enormous and beautiful, nearly perfectly shaped, with ancient initials and dates carved into the trunk some ten feet off the ground, the letters and numbers risen in the bark and healed over like scars. Diana loved the tree, perfectly placed between the house and the cemetery, and Samantha would stay on the swing for an hour at a time if she let her. Now she was talking about the dolls again, the china dolls. Diana’s heart sinking a little more as she recited the name she had given each—Claudia, Sabrina, Ariel, Jewel, Cinderella, and Diana, named after her Mummy, she said. Diana knew nothing good would come of the dolls, the more she played with them, the more it would give Ford something to complain, rant, about—but the little girl loved the dolls, and keeping her away from them just seemed cruel. When she started to get loud, squealing as she swung higher, Diana gazed up at the house, and then she took Samantha to the cemetery to run about. Preserving the quiet.
The cemetery was flat and open and it made it easy to keep an eye on her. Samantha had been an early reader, and she would often read the names of the graves, ask Diana questions, and sometimes make up stories about the people beneath. Now she ran ahead of Diana, and vaulted the iron pipe fence, broken and sagging, that separated their yard from the graves.
There was a wind today, shaking what little remained of the leaves in the trees, blowing the little girl’s hair across her face, and Diana hugged her arms tight about herself to ward off the chill. The grass was brown and dead, and even the potted flowers left among the headstones had frozen and wilted. The cemetery stretched far into the distance, and was spotted with oak trees. Diana heard a tree limb creaking above her, and when she turned back to the house she thought she saw a shadow pass in the rear window, overlooking the outdoor shower. Samantha’s room. There for a moment, and then it was gone. Ford, she thought, but Ford usually didn’t get up once he was down to sleep for the day, not this early. It was more likely her mind playing tricks on her. Samantha called out to her and Diana turned back to the cemetery.
Samantha peeked around the tomb of Captain Isaiah Hawes Norton.
“How it the captain today?” Diana asked.
“He says you’re very pretty, Mummy.”
“He does?” said Diana. “Well, tell the captain I said thank you.”
“Okay.” Sam looked off into the distance for a moment, then looked at Diana and smiled. “I told him. But, he’s in a bad mood, Mummy.”
“He is?” said Diana. “Why is that?”
“Because,” she said. “He’s mad at Mr. Fallon.”
“And who pray tell is Mr. Fallon?” Diana asked.
“He’s a varmint. A filthy little pig.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Diana laughed a little. “What did he do?”
“Well, he’s the recruiter.”
“The recruiter.?”
“It’s his job to get men for the ship and negotiate their pay. They are supposed to sail this Tuesday, but they’re still short seven men.”
Diana hesitated. She opened her mouth to speak, looking at the little girl, trying to read her eyes. Negotiate? Recruiter? Sam was precocious, but as much as she liked to make up stories, they were stories that usually involved fairies and leprechauns, elves, and small animals. Sometimes princesses. Maybe Ford had said something to her. Talk about whaling ships? It was possible, but if Ford talked to her at all these days, it was usually to scold her for something, explaining why what she did was wrong.
“Well, I think the captain’s sailing days are probably long behind him,” Diana said at last.
Sam looked at the tombstone again, silent, and then turned back to Diana.
She smiled. “He can never leave the sea, Mummy.”
Sam reached out and pressed her open palm against the tomb, and then she turned and scurried away. Probably hoping Diana would chase her. And maybe she would, maybe in a minute, but right now she was thinking. The little girl had friends in her preschool, but she wondered if she was lonely. Making up friends, carrying on conversations. Or maybe it was anxiety. Listening to Diana and Ford argue, listening to Ford lose his temper. That could do it, she had read about it. This was the first time she had pretended she was actually talking to someone in the cemetery, but it was becoming more and more frequent in the house. The house. She would often clam up when she was talking to her imaginary friend and Diana walked in, but lately she seemed less guarded about it, more comfortable, and sometimes when Diana did walk in, even she herself couldn’t help feeling something. Eyes on her. Someone watching.
Something.
And it had been just a few days before that Sam had found the journal.
Diana had been down the cellar doing laundry and cleaning up a bit, and Sam had been investigating some of the boxes on the shelves—antique small appliances, faded statues, knickknacks, and postcards. She had even found an old pamphlet from the mid-nin
eteenth century Methodist camp meetings at Trinity Park. Yellow with time and torn at the binding. Drawings inside of people in Victorian garb—women with wide dresses cinched tight and hats with feathers and men in shirt vests or suits. There were also several dusty old books, all hardcover, ancient and faded and coming apart at the seams: The Second Great Awakening, The Book of Offices, A Pictorial History of the Island of Martha’s Vineyard, and Reverend Dr. Thomas Coke—A Life in Worship. The Night Side of Nature, or Ghosts and Ghost-Seers, by Catherine Crowe, and three by a man named Paschal Beverly Randolph: The Grand Secret, Seership! The Magnetic Mirror, and Love and the Master Passion. But it had been in an ancient nineteenth-century atlas, the binding broken and middle pages cut out to hide a treasure, that she had found the journal.
Samantha had pulled it out and flipped through the pages. “This one isn’t a real book.”
Diana put down her broom, and tussled the little girl’s hair. “No?”
“No,” she said. “Somebody wrote the words in it. There’s a couple of pictures though, there aren’t many pictures in the others.”
Diana lifted the journal from Samantha’s lap. Hardened brown leather, the pages browned, and the smell immediately musty and old. Diana flipped quickly through it. Along with the written entries, it also contained sketches. Drawings of the island. The house here, or what looked to be their house, minus the trees, half of the front porch. Houses in the Trinity Park, and an enormous hotel by the water, and people strolling along the peer. And glued to the inside cover was a photograph. A woman in a long, dark dress, and her hair parted tight in the middle and pulled up in a bun in back. Hands folded in her lap. A high white collar. She was a pretty woman with the same lost eyes as the woman in the wedding picture above the work-bench. Had to be the same woman, except here she was a little older, maybe thirty.
The name was written in longhand on the first page. Elizabeth Veronica Steebe. And then the year, 1871.
Sam looked at the picture and smiled. “Cassie,” she said.
In the Midst of the Sea Page 7