by Karis Walsh
With Casey’s attention on the gulls and clouds scooting overhead, Iris gave herself the rare permission to observe her without restraint. Her body was slender and strong, and the way she was standing gave her shape and curve even in her bulky red sweatshirt. The wind ruffled her short hair, and Casey swiped at it with a gesture that had become familiar to Iris. She let Casey’s words blend into the background sounds of the slurp and splash of waves against the ferry as she imagined running her fingers through Casey’s hair and down her neck, tracing the outline of her small, beautiful breasts and her tight stomach.
Iris realized Casey had stopped talking, but Iris’s imaginary hands were still moving lower. She closed her eyes for a moment and opened them again to find Casey watching her.
“What?” Iris asked. “I didn’t catch that.”
“What part did you miss?” Casey’s voice sounded rougher than normal, as if she understood that Iris hadn’t missed a single part of her body even though she hadn’t heard many of her words.
The ferry’s horn signaled their arrival at Orcas, and Iris gladly pushed away from the railing and started walking back to the truck. “Most of it,” Iris admitted over her shoulder as they walked down the stairs. She wasn’t about to admit why she hadn’t been listening.
“I just said that once we have faults mapped out and learn how they affect each other, we’ll be better able to predict where earthquakes will happen and how the damage will extend from the hypocenter.”
Iris wove through the tightly packed cars. “Is this breakthrough going to happen soon?”
“When you say soon, are you talking in geologic time? If so, yes.”
“How about in normal human time?” Iris got in the truck and put on her seat belt.
“Not so much. But we’re trying.”
“You’re a dreamer,” Iris said as they eased their way off the ferry and past the handful of buildings making up Orcas Landing. An inn and restaurant—both closed for the season, not because of the earthquake—a square ferry terminal, and a convenience store, each painted white with a rust-colored roof. Unlike Friday Harbor, where tourists were dropped right into the lap of the largest town, Orcas Island hid its more populated villages from first glance. Iris had always noticed the dichotomy on this island, where the population seemed torn between a desire to welcome paying visitors to its quaint shops, galleries, and inns and a more pressing hope that everyone would just leave them alone to enjoy their beautiful and remote island in peace.
“I’m more practical than you,” Iris continued. “So let me know when your fantasies come true and your seismo-thingies can do more than measure earthquakes as they happen. Or when you find a mythical unicorn that can predict the future using the glitter on its horn.”
Iris smiled as she watched the tree-lined road slip past as they headed deeper onto the U-shaped island from the landing at the tip of the northern arm. She assumed they were going to Eastsound, the largest village that was situated on the inner elbow of the island. Maybe they could skip her hastily prepared picnic lunch and eat at the wonderful seafood restaurant at the marina. And she could show Casey through her favorite art gallery, where the specialty was blown glass in a variety of colors and patterns. And she could browse in the bookstore and find…
Casey turned left on Deer Harbor Road instead of continuing toward the top of the U and Eastsound. “You’re the artistic one, not me. I’m scientific. Logical. I understand that we need to study the earth systematically for years before we can learn everything we need to know. No relying on unicorns or leprechauns. Just hard facts and miles of data.”
“Please,” Iris said with a snort. “I thought you were nothing but cold logic when we met, but I realized I was wrong when I saw you get all mushy about Chert.”
“I do not get mushy about anything. Except maybe a strikingly beautiful granite outcropping, but who doesn’t? If anyone is sentimental in this truck, it’s the poet sitting next to me.”
“I write seasonal greeting cards for money. I’m like an assembly line, churning out holiday sayings like clockwork. I’ve always been practical,” Iris repeated. The conversation had begun as a playful one, but she was starting to feel uncomfortable. She wished she was more spontaneous and brilliant, like Casey was. Why was she fighting so hard to be defined as efficient and unimaginative, even though she knew it was true? She was the type to call ahead for reservations no matter where she went. The kind who filled her freezer with meals prepared just in case. Of course, they had come in handy this week, but usually she just ended up inviting Agatha and Leo over to help her finish them off.
Iris decided to drop the conversation, and she was relieved that Casey didn’t seem interested in pursuing it further, either. They were silent until Casey pulled into a parking spot near the West Sound marina.
“Come on, I want to show you something.”
Iris looked through her window at the gray, cold outdoors. “What? Can I see it from inside here, where it’s warm?”
Casey came around the truck and opened the passenger door, grabbing Iris’s hand and pulling her out. “I doubt it. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Reassuring,” Iris muttered. She zipped her jacket up to her throat, but as soon as they began walking she noticed it wasn’t as cold as it had been on the ferry, where the winds had seeped through her clothes and chilled the skin underneath. Casey kept her hand for a few moments, and the contact with her was more likely responsible for Iris’s sudden warmth than the sheltered location of the small harbor village.
“When there aren’t this many clouds, you can see a lovely view of Mount Baker from here,” Iris said, gesturing toward the east. To the south, across the eastern edge of a small bay, she could see the distant ferry that had brought them here departing from Orcas Landing.
Casey laughed, giving Iris’s hand a squeeze before she let it go. “Typical Washington State tour guide,” she said. She mimicked the lilting voice of a tour operator. “If it weren’t so cloudy, you’d have a spectacular view of Mount Rainier. If it weren’t raining, Mount St. Helens would be visible to the south. Do these places really exist, or do the locals just make them up?”
Iris played along, although she knew Casey had scaled her share of mountains searching for fault lines and interesting rocks along the Pacific Crest Trail, and that she knew exactly how real they were. “Shh. We’re not supposed to talk about this with non-locals, but if work dries up in the greeting card business, I’m going to take a job as an illustrator for travel brochures. You can make a fortune if you come up with catchy new mountain names for each one you draw.”
Casey laughed. “And if people come here and want to climb one of these fake mountains, you can earn extra cash painting Closed because of avalanche signs. Oh, look!”
She jogged over to a shelf of gray-green rock, and Iris followed behind, her tennis shoes sliding over the smooth and rounded stones making up the shoreline. She slipped once, bracing her hand against the polished trunk of a tree that had been weathered to the soft gray of driftwood. Once she had her balance again, she caught up to Casey and stood beside her, trying to figure out what she found so absorbing. As far as Iris could tell, nothing interesting was on top of the tilted, rectangular rock. She squinted and looked closer, expecting an ancient cave painting or rare fossil to appear. But it was just a rock.
“Don’t tell me this is your idea of sightseeing,” Iris said, mentally comparing this to the day she had envisioned at the Eastsound village. “It’s just a rock, and not a very pretty one at that.”
Casey turned toward Iris and held up both hands as if to ward off her words. “I am going to pretend I didn’t hear what you just said.” She picked up a small chunk of black-and-white speckled rock with undertones of the same olive drab color of the larger one, and handed it to Iris. Iris hefted it in her hand, still unimpressed by the coarse-grained rock.
“This is diorite. A lot of the rocks on Orcas are from the
Devonian to Permian eras, from two hundred fifty to about four hundred million years ago. But below them is a layer called the Turtleback Basement Complex, and parts of it are exposed because of erosion of the younger rocks. You’re likely holding something in your hand that is over five hundred forty million years old.”
Casey put her hand over Iris’s and tilted it until Iris could see the crystalline facets of the rock glint in the diffused sunlight. Casey watched the movement with a reverence that was almost palpable to Iris. “When magma cools slowly, deep in the earth, it forms igneous rocks with large crystals like this one has. These rocks are ancient, Iris. They’ve been hidden for millions of years, waiting for the relentless waves and wind and rain to erode the blanket of stone above them and expose them to view. They hold all the secrets to the earth’s past and future. If we can be as silent and patient as they are, we can see what they’re trying to tell us and read the story of our world in their shape, composition, and placement.”
Casey let go of Iris’s hand again, and Iris nearly dropped the small rock as she felt jolted back to reality by the absence of Casey’s touch. Instead, she put it in the pocket of her jeans and felt its sharp edges press against her inner thigh, pushing against her with the residual sensation of Casey’s fingers.
“See?” Iris said. “You’re the one who should be a poet. The only thing I could do with rocks is make terrible puns for greeting cards, like Thank you for being so gneiss, or Happy birthday to someone who grows boulder every year. Shale I go on?”
Casey laughed and jabbed Iris playfully with her elbow. “Stop, or I’ll diorite now.”
Iris joined in her laughter, wondering when she had ever felt inclined to be goofy and silly with someone like she did with Casey. From the start, Casey had been able to draw smiles and lightness out of Iris. Those tendencies must always have been there because they felt as natural to Iris as breathing or packing freezers with food, but she had needed a catalyst like Casey to pull them from her.
Iris looked at the rectangular formation again, with a different sort of understanding, and she watched it transform from a clump of nondescript rock into something entirely new. Casey had been slowly eroding Iris’s protective shell since she came to the islands, using her unique and wonderful blend of science and something approaching prayer, of a deep respect for the past and a joyous hope for what sorts of understanding the future might bring. Iris was the present, embedded in the here-and-now because she was afraid to be disappointed by her hope for more or paralyzed by her regrets from the past.
She backed up until her legs bumped against the large hunk of driftwood and she pulled herself up so she was sitting on it with her feet dangling a few inches from the ground. She took her notepad and pen out of the large grocery bag and held the bag toward Casey, never taking her eyes off the rock because she didn’t want the words forming in her mind to sink below the surface again.
“Food. And a blanket,” she said. Casey hurried over and took the bag from her, luckily not saying a word to break the spell. Iris uncapped her pen and started to write.
And didn’t stop until lines had drained out of her and onto the page, arranged and rearranged until they were where they belonged. She looked around—startled by reality for a moment—and saw Casey watching her from the ledge of rocks that separated the parking area from the lower sea level. She was wedged between two large boulders, partly sitting on the blanket and partly wrapped in it.
“You must be freezing,” Iris said, wondering how long she had been writing. She never could tell if it had been minutes or hours until she looked at a clock. “I’m sorry I kept you here for…how long has it been?”
“Only an hour and a half,” Casey said. “And don’t be sorry. I loved watching you being so intense and focused on creating. It reminded me of—”
She stopped and looked away, her face flushing slightly as if she was embarrassed or surprised that she had been about to admit something to Iris. Iris understood, though. When she wrote like this, she sometimes felt like she was casting a spell. The world grew more intimate and boundaries were lowered. Casey must have been drawn into the feeling after watching Iris in silence for so long.
“What?” she prompted. “What did you remember?”
“My mom. She liked to play the piano, and she’d get the same faraway expression on her face like you had. Not distant, but like the world was expanding into something larger and more magical than it normally was.”
Iris turned to a new page and wrote Casey’s words on it. “I’m going to keep notes of things you say. Someday I’ll show them to you and prove that you’re the one who should be the poet.”
“Will you let me read what you just wrote?” Casey asked, with a tentative note in her voice. She seemed to understand what a personal request she was making, and she gave Iris space to say no.
“On one condition,” Iris said. A question had come to her while she was writing, and she wanted to know the answer. “If I can ask you some things about your childhood.”
Casey shrugged, giving the impression that sharing the details of her life was no big deal to her, but Iris felt the currents of stress beneath Casey’s casual gesture. “Sure. Go ahead.”
She got up and handed Iris a wedge of crusty rye bread, slathered with a thick layer of cream cheese and topped with a few slivers of coral-colored smoked salmon. “Eat first, though. You must be starving after writing so furiously.”
Her hand brushed against Casey’s as she took the open-faced sandwich from her, and they seemed to linger together for a few seconds beyond what was necessary. Iris took a huge bite of food, telling herself it was only the tanginess of cream cheese that was making her mouth water.
“You’re obviously fascinated with the earth’s past,” Iris said, picking a piece of the salmon off her bread and eating it separately, letting the flavors of sea and smoke permeate her mouth, like the memory of a late-night bonfire on the beach. “But you seem more reluctant to talk about your own. What was it like? Were you happy?”
“Happy. Hmm.” Casey bent her knees and hugged them close. “I suppose. I went to great schools and had opportunities most kids aren’t given. If I ever wanted a book or chemistry lab set or anything, my father and grandparents got it for me.”
“But no dog.” Iris didn’t wait for an answer. Casey had already told her about the no-pets rule. “What were you like as a child?”
“Very well-behaved,” Casey said with an impish grin. “I saved all my rebellion for college and graduate school. I admittedly went a little wild during those years, but never at the expense of my grades. Controlled rebellion, I suppose.”
“Was everyone in your family a scientist?” Iris felt like she was interrogating Casey, but she was prepared to keep asking questions until Casey’s story started to flow on its own, without prompting. Then Iris might learn something to help her understand Casey better.
“My dad is a psychiatrist. Not the kind who sees patients, but more of a researcher with drug companies. Antidepressants and all that. I sometimes wondered if I was such a good child because he was mashing up some experimental meds in my applesauce.” Casey laughed sharply and waved her hand. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m kidding. I was just as well-mannered when I was with my mom, and she’d never have done that. Of course, if I hadn’t been so good, he might have been tempted.”
Iris laughed along with Casey, but she felt saddened by what she said. Not because she really thought Casey’s father had drugged her—she was obviously joking about it—but because she seemed to have been the type of child who wanted to please people and felt she had to behave well or else approval would have vanished.
“My grandparents were both neurobiologists. They met in a research lab and worked together for years, until they retired. They were always together.”
“And your mom?”
Casey frowned. “She was a teacher, but I’m not really sure what kind. I’ve always guessed she would have been great with younger kids, i
n elementary school, but I don’t know for certain. No one talked about her much.” Casey sighed and drew her knees even closer. “I understand why, as an adult. My dad was out of the picture before I was born, so he’d had no experience raising a child when I arrived. My grandparents were busy with work and weren’t prepared for me, either. Suddenly I arrived, not just an unexpected four-year-old child to take care of, but a grieving one. They wanted to make me feel better, and they did it by helping me find ways to deal with sadness by focusing on other things. They barely mentioned her, and they’d distract me with questions or mathematical problems to solve if I brought her up. I guess I got pretty good at refocusing, because I can usually turn off memories like flicking off a light switch.”
Casey paused and stared out toward the bay while Iris fumed inside. She was glad to hear that Casey’s dad wasn’t seeing patients and giving them the advice he had given his own child. She hated that Casey hadn’t been allowed to remember her mother.
“It’s different here,” Casey finally said, “with Chert and the shelter animals, and with the people I’ve met here. With you. Memories of my mom seem closer. Maybe it’s because I’m having to slow my usual pace to match island time. Or maybe it’s because cooking and pets and hiking in the woods provide triggers that bring her to mind.” She added her next sentences in a quieter voice, as if admitting to a dark secret. “I tried to push the memories away at first, but I don’t anymore. I want more of them. I wish I hadn’t forgotten so much.”
She grew silent, and Iris decided to stop asking questions and give Casey a break. She stood up and handed the notebook to Casey before stopping to pack the remains of their lunch back into the bag.
“Why don’t I drive us back to the ferry landing so you can read my poem.”
Casey got up and wrapped her blanket covered arms around the notepad. “Thank you,” she said. She put her arm across Iris’s shoulders as they walked to the truck, sharing the warmth of the blanket and her body as she curved close.