Off-Island

by Marlene Hauser

  Not really knowing why, she took the rake from against the garage door and the wheelbarrow from beside the compost pile. For a moment she pictured herself as a small girl helping her grandmother to pick up apples. She leaned the rake against the tree in readiness. Through its bare branches she caught a tantalizing glimpse of the sky and appraised it as she had learned to do over so many summers. It was a deep, unbroken china blue. Beach day, she decided, and left the apples to be raked later.

  In the garage the car started instantly. Through its open windows she could hear the maples and oaks rustling to either side of the road. She drove quickly through Vineyard Haven, then Oak Bluffs. Passing the small firehouse, she glanced at the dark plate glass. Empty. How many years had it been? The sight of the squat little pepper-pot gazebo on the Edgartown Road pleased her as it always did. The shorefront houses were boarded up. The sea lashed the sea wall, spilling over here and there. At the Bend in the Road, an old favorite, she stopped and parked the car, leaving her sandals on the already sandy boards.

  We used to swim here.

  Krista thought of her grandmother delicately treading the narrow path through the dunes to the spot where grass, stiff and yellowing, waved in the sea breeze. From there the sand seemed to stretch away in infinitely graduated colors, all the way down to the waterline, where a border of seaweed lay drying in the sun. This was the time of year when Ilsa would haul back sacks of seaweed to mulch the garden. Krista walked down to where the sea met the shore.

  Northern waters.

  A tall ship was visible on the horizon, catching the wind in its sails and moving fast. Krista watched it. A ghost from another time. Nine knots, she guessed, recalling a sail she once took on an old twelve-gun sloop of war. The sand was warm. She sat down and rolled the legs of her grandmother’s jeans up and over her shins. She wondered where Deirdre might be. Would she have Justine with her?

  Krista had not seen her friend’s little girl since she was born. The last summer the two friends had been here together, the one before Ilsa’s death, when Krista had hidden by the walkway and listened to Deirdre’s lament, Justine had been in Boston with her grandmother. Remembering that now, Krista wondered again about the fetus she had aborted. My child would have been born in May. In May, will I think of the baby I chose not to have? Will I always count the missed birthdays? With a sigh, she supposed that now and again she would. Isn’t it only natural to wonder how things might have turned out if I had made a different choice?

  A car braked on the far side of the dune. A man and a young child came running along the path. They nodded at Krista and turned left where she had turned right. A tiny red-and-orange float dangled from the end of the child’s miniature fishing rod, keeping time with the dark silver weight dancing from the rod propped over the man’s shoulder. They both had the same walk, the same blue jeans rolled up over the ankles.

  Too cold to go in the water today.

  Krista watched them walk down the beach together and choose a patch of the shoreline close to the water. The child was intent on being a fisherman, casting his short line out, never once grazing the water. His father stood behind him, patiently teaching him to cast, until the boy shrugged him off.

  Krista lay back on the sand, ignoring the cool breeze that sought her out and tugged at her shirt and hair. With eyes closed, she pictured the pink floats that had marked off the swimming area – hauled in from the sea this late in the season. She remembered being proud of swimming with her thin, attractive grandmother as the two of them walked past the harassed mothers and their charges, left their towels neatly on dry sand, dropped their beach robes at the water’s edge and walked right into the gentle surf. Krista recalled that it was Ilsa who had taught her to dive, go right beneath the waves, get her head wet and open her eyes only once she was back up at the surface.

  Grandmother and grandchild would swim far out beyond the designated swimming area, then turn around and float back to shore. There they would sit on the sand for a few moments to take in the scene before toweling off and returning to the car. Ilsa would deftly untie her wet halter-neck suit and slip it off while still wearing the robe. They used to laugh about her knack for doing that and her habit of not bothering to put on underwear while she was still damp from the sea. It was yet another secret they loved to share. No one ever suspected that after swimming the Bourne girls shopped all but naked at the A&P, as well as the fruit stand on the highway.

  Krista took a deep breath and sat up. There were many other places she wanted to revisit on the Island. She wanted to be grateful for everything: the Bend in the Road, the safe harbor, the toddler beach. Everything. Every moment of her childhood. What had happened, what had not. Of all the places she could think of at that moment, the destination that appealed to her the most was Lighthouse Beach.

  Driving slowly through Edgartown, Krista admired the closely built houses along Main Street, their bright colors in the sun, their evenness and order. A few late roses blossomed on white picket fences. The courthouse was open; the sidewalks not yet emptied of tourists, though signs in shop windows already read: See you next summer.

  She drove by the paper store, the Catholic church, the whaling church, the deli and the bank. Turning left at the drugstore, Krista remembered the candy store at the end of the next block. She parked by the long paved footpath that meandered its way to the wooden boardwalk. Looking at the harbor, she could recognize individual craft at their moorings. The fishing boats had unloaded their morning catch: the scent of it hung in the air, salty and alien. A yacht refueled. A guitar player strummed on the deck with a bilge pump for accompaniment. Krista walked unhurriedly towards the lighthouse.

  No one swam in this water. She reminisced about the many times she’d visited this place with her father and the rare occasions when Helen had accompanied them. Her parents took one hand each and swung her off her feet at every third step, saying, “One, two, three… fly!” Several times she and her dad went to the lighthouse in the evening long after her normal bedtime. The moon was full. They stripped, then splashed in the low, incoming tide. She recalled the phosphorescence that she believed her father made just for her with the steady strokes of his arms as they powered through the water.

  “It’s a beach day,” she said again, and understood that what she was really saying was: life is good. She undid the top buttons of her shirt.

  Looking back towards the harbor, then the houses, restaurants and hotels bordering the front, she thought the scene resembled a beautiful tapestry. The autumn light was clear and golden, casting crisp-edged shadows. This is better than any dream, she decided, then wondered where Michael might be, knowing it would be impossible to track him down. She would have to wait for him to come back to the house, if he came back at all.

  Letting one handful of sand after the next sift through her fingers, Krista felt free. She was not sure why. She dug her toes into the warm sand. She felt safe. At home. Stretching, straight-armed, out and over her toes, she felt her whole body elongate and then relax. It feels great to be alive, right here, right now, she realized.

  Krista raced down to the water. She ran as far as the lighthouse and hopped onto the concrete plinth encircling it. Placing her hands on her hips she leaned back, looking up to the lantern room at the top, then across the harbor to Chappy, the point farthest out on the horizon. The air tasted so sweet she felt she might just bite into it. A beachcomber in a plaid jacket walked across the small bridge through the marsh hay further down the beach. Krista walked in his direction. They met the dead center of the sand.

  “Do you have the time?” she asked.

  “Noon,” he answered, glancing at his watch, then up towards the Harbor View Hotel. “It’s a shame they should want to build here,” he added.

  Krista looked in that direction. The ground had been leveled and marked off with string and red flags. The man continued on his way. The small pond under the bridge reflecte
d the sky and the tall grasses bowing before the wind. Krista held on to the railing of the bridge, leaning all her weight in the other direction then pivoting round to switch hands on the railing and lean out again. This whole day, she decided, tasted as sweet and wholesome as an apple.

  Krista leaned over the railing, changing her stretch. Then she threw one leg over it. She saw the reflection of her face in the water. For a split second the sight threw her off guard then she laughed. Not bad, considering. Not bad at all. She swung the leg back over the rail, brought her ankles together and dismounted in a cushion plié. Walking gingerly off the bridge, she pretended to be on a high wire, placing one foot directly in front of the other.

  Stepping off the bridge and into the sand, Krista noticed a small, furry black mound in the reeds with the water slowly lapping over it. A dead puppy lay in a fetal position, its eyes closed. Krista knelt beside the animal. She imagined the bitch that had carried it down to the sea. Had it been born dead? The tide would eventually take it. She noticed how the dog’s body flattened out in the water. She wanted to walk away but could not.

  Her stomach rumbled. The abortion seemed a lifetime ago. She recalled her reflection in the tidal pond. Her sorrow was immeasurable; her surrender deep. I cannot bring you back. Krista closed the reeds over the puppy. Looking out over the marsh, to the bridge, the shore and the horizon, she acknowledged her absolute powerlessness in the face of death.

  She thought of all the things over which she had no control, all the things greater than herself. God. Winter. Rain. Sun. Earth. Sky. Other people. Then, for the first time, she gave thanks for the power she did have. I said yes to something and I said no to something. I did think of myself and I thought of another. The decision had to be made. It didn’t just happen to me.

  Krista understood her weakness and her courage, her fear and her bravery. She sensed that the boundary between right and wrong, and good and evil, was often indistinct. She sensed also that somehow, stumblingly, unconsciously, she had, for the first time in her adult life, made a commitment to do something and stuck by it. She idly watched the marsh hay dancing in the wind, recalling when the grasses had seemed to her like a dense, overwhelming jungle since she was not tall enough to see over their stems.

  Walking back up the embankment to the asphalt road, she climbed over a steel gate half covered with swarming blackberry canes. The thought of the dead pup stirred her emotions again but this time it was not sadness she felt. It was compassion.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Krista drove along Summer Street towards Main Street, she recognized St Andrew’s, the small brick Anglican church she had sometimes attended with Ilsa. The funerals, Ilsa’s and her father’s, took place there. The processions, which had seemed interminably long, had then wound their way down Pease Point Way to the cemetery at its end. Identical striped canopies had sheltered each grave and the massive granite slab that bore great-great- grandfather Bourne’s name at the top of the list dominated the family plots. Other names were chiseled below his, as on a war memorial. The patriarch had bought a large enough site for ten generations. At the moment it looked as though Krista’s would be the last.

  Some impulse directed her to park the car. She found a space in front of the doctor’s office directly across from the small church.

  I will only be a minute. Just a short prayer. I want to bury my dead. Don’t I owe her… him… that much?

  The building seemed smaller than she remembered. Outside, a painted iron sign read Open for Prayer and Meditation. Adjacent to the church, the pastor’s door stood ajar. Krista was almost tempted to go in and seek him out. Instead, she stepped into the church. Inside it appeared positively diminutive. Krista could not recall the church being so small before or herself feeling so large. The feeling brought to mind a drawing she had seen in an edition of Alice In Wonderland years ago: Alice’s neck bent under the weight of the ceiling.

  Daylight filtered through the stained-glass windows to either side and behind the altar. It felt cooler in here than it had in the fall sunshine outside. Krista chose to sit. Take a rest. Her eyes and ears adjusted to the church’s interior. She noticed someone busying herself around the pulpit, elaborately carved to resemble the prow of a boat. It always drew her attention during every service and each funeral. Sailing away.

  From her seat on the back pew, Krista leaned back against the paneled wall. She thumbed through a hymnal and the Book of Common Prayer, drawing comfort from its familiarity.

  “May I help you?” the white-haired woman asked as she descended from the pulpit.

  “I’m here to reflect,” Krista told her, and the woman nodded her head in understanding and left her to it, while she herself went to the front of the church, lifting red cushions off the pews in the choir stall then busily shaking and replacing them. The church’s interior smelled of furniture polish, wax, flowers and the sea breeze.

  Krista touched the wooden seat beneath her. When was the last time I was in church? For Ilsa’s funeral? She and Michael had gone to a church on Park Avenue one Saturday, just for fun. She had asked him if he could guess her religion.

  “Anglican?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No. I believe in the planets spinning in their fields of gravity all around the sun, electrons dancing around a nucleus, you around me.”

  “What about you around me?”

  Then Krista remembered the last time she had been in church. It was Easter at Riverside Church. There had been a trumpet fanfare and afterwards a full orchestra playing; Reverend Coffin and six hundred men – men of the ages, they were called – carved into the walls. The face of Hippocrates graced the panel dedicated to science, as did Einstein’s. Helen had taken her there in one of her increasingly random attempts at motherhood. Krista could not help smiling at the memory. It had been a good performance, if not entirely successful. Afterwards they discussed the service, the building, the rector, over lunch in a restaurant with pink tablecloths. They might just as well have been to a Broadway show.

  Krista felt the gratitude she’d experienced earlier extending even as far as her mother, the one woman she had come close to believing she hated. In that moment Krista wished Helen were with her. She wanted her to say something, even if it were only a suggestion that her daughter read this or that. She pictured Helen admonishing her, as she gulped freshly squeezed orange juice, popped a multivitamin, got ready to run to another class, a seminar, a meeting with an editor.

  “Kris, don’t sweat it. You made a decision. Good for you.”

  Then she would return to the old, old theme.

  “You had a choice. Imagine how it was for me. At your age, I had no choice. Try imagining no choice.”

  Krista could not fathom not having a choice. She sighed, leaned forward and rested her forehead on the back of the pew in front of her. It is not the decision I regret. It is this feeling of death, of loss. She let her thoughts wander, and her eyes roam over the brick walls, the Stations of the Cross, the American flag, the black numerals on the board for the hymns sung last week. She stood up. There was nothing here that could bring back…

  Krista could not finish her thought. What is it? What do I want to bring back? Looking up at the floor-to-ceiling pipes of the organ, she asked herself again and again: What is it? Not my father. Not the glitter I once saw on the ceiling.

  Her eyes filmed over with tears. What am I doing here? What do I want? Forgiveness? Mercy? For what? She straightened her spine, feeling like a defendant awaiting sentence.

  She imagined her mother again, giving judgment.

  “You made a decision – with your own best interest at heart.”

  Krista felt herself caught up in a sort of perpetual twilight. She felt like the last person at a wake. Even the body of the dead had been carted off.

  Is my crime, my sin, not about an unborn child at all but a denial of my
self and life as it might have unfolded for me?

  Krista did not know and realized it was unknowable.

  I will never know the outcome of a choice I did not make. And for that I am sincerely sorry.

  The white-haired woman was busily searching for something, Krista belatedly realized. She walked up the aisle.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Some notes.”

  “Notes?”

  “For a sermon.”

  “Do you want some help?”

  The woman beamed at her with gratitude.

  “That would be very kind of you.”

  Krista began the hunt, searching the prow of the pulpit a second time and under cushions. Amazingly, she found the index cards, perched on the corner of the linen-covered altar.

  “My eyes, they just don’t work like they used to,” the woman told her apologetically. They were bright and blue, friendly-looking.

  “They were hidden in plain sight,” Krista told her. “White on white. That’s tough for anyone to see.”

  “Well, thank you so much for finding them. I have a reconciliation to perform shortly and I wouldn’t want to do it without these.”

  “Are you a priest?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ordained?”

  The woman smiled at her, obviously used to explaining.

  “It’s not so unusual, you know. I was ordained in 1978.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  “By what?”

  “The fact that you’re a priest.”

  The woman started to excuse herself, obviously eager to prepare for the ceremony.

  “No, wait. What is a reconciliation?” Krista asked.

  “An act of forgiveness.”