Off-Island

by Marlene Hauser

  “For what?”

  “Any transgression.”

  Again she turned to leave.

  “Please, wait,” Krista whispered. “I think this might be important for me.”

  The priest looked directly at her.

  “What if you haven’t transgressed, or sinned, or whatever?” asked Krista. “Or, at least, you’re told that you have not.”

  “Then,” the woman laughed, “you’re canonized.”

  Where do I begin? No, better not try to explain, Krista decided.

  “What if you just want peace? What if what you chose to do was not against the law, but still you felt pain and remorse? And also loss,” she continued. “My father died sixteen years ago. My grandmother eighteen months ago.”

  “I see. Well, bereavement can be—”

  “It’s not just their deaths. It’s my abortion too,” Krista told her, making up her mind to tell it all to this woman with her kindly eyes.

  “Sit down here for a moment,” the priest told her and led the way.

  They sat together on the altar step. Krista looked down at the carpet rather than meet those frank blue eyes. It would be unbearable to see any change in them after her admission.

  “Do you think it was a sin?” the priest queried, keeping her voice low and averting her face slightly so that anyone who happened to come into the church would not realize the significance of this discussion.

  “No,” Krista answered immediately. “I mean… I don’t know. I hurt. It hurt me incredibly, and I could have had the child.” The priest crossed her leg towards Krista, brushing the hem of her poplin skirt. Krista looked out at the sunlight beyond the wide-open door. “I knew the minute I conceived. I asked for it. I didn’t really believe I had that power. Do you know what I mean?”

  “You weren’t ready,” was the soothing response. “You look very young still.”

  “No, I wasn’t ready for a baby, the pain, any of it,” she agreed. “But I’m not asking for forgiveness.”

  “I know. You want peace.”

  Krista wanted to run. She wanted to be on the bridge overlooking the marsh again. “The abortion was the first right decision I ever made. I don’t think I even made a decision before that. I thought it was the right thing to do, but it caused pain to more than one person. I felt a life taken from me. At its beginning there was this white, searing sort of light.”

  The priest nodded.

  “Other women have told me the same thing.”

  “But no one told me! I didn’t know, I really didn’t. And no one warned me about the pain.”

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” the priest said. “And it’s not something most women talk about.”

  Krista frowned.

  “But why don’t they?”

  “From fear, I expect. Because what does pain imply? Guilt, punishment, some sort of wrongdoing. Some women can’t verbalize the pain, and others are afraid it might fuel the argument that abortion is unlawful. They think only preserving silence will protect their right to choose.”

  Krista considered this for a while.

  “Growing up,” she said, “is a challenge. Recognizing the power you have to shape your own life, and the responsibility that brings with it.”

  Inside the church everything was still, expectant. The sounds of everyday life being conducted outside filled the vacuum. A lawnmower droned in the distance. Pigeons crooned throatily and made occasional desperate-sounding flurries in the eaves outside. Someone honked impatiently, caught by the stop sign just yards from the door.

  “I have a sense of being a different person since the abortion,” Krista confided.

  “How are you different?”

  “I have a better understanding of love, maybe. And compassion. I don’t understand how a decision I thought was so right could turn out to have caused so much hurt. It changed me. I felt terror, death, loss, like never before. But today on the beach I felt joy. Deep, unalloyed joy.”

  The frown line between the priest’s eyes eased slightly. “That’s good to hear. God has blessed you. If you’ve found joy, peace cannot be far off.”

  “What about forgiveness?”

  “For what?”

  “Not for taking life but for being careless with it. I think, before this, I was living my life carelessly.”

  The priest lifted the bifocals that dangled from a chain about her neck and put them on. Her magnified eyes studied Krista closely for a moment: the graceful lines of her long limbs, tangled mass of hair, clothes that seemed fit only for the trash. The sweetness and seriousness of youth.

  “You’re forgiven, my dear, when you can forgive yourself,” her confessor told her.

  Krista’s shoulders twitched. She could feel the burden under which she had labored easing and slipping away.

  “I am so sorry to have kept you,” she murmured.

  “Heavens, don’t be! It’s what I’m here for. And I have a few minutes yet.”

  “Thank you,” Krista told her as they walked to the door together.

  “Take care of yourself,” the priest said they parted.

  “I will, but don’t I have to do something first? I mean, penance of some kind?”

  “Oh, yes. I know… your penance is to tell someone you know about this. The pain and what you learnt from it.”

  Outside in the radiant afternoon Krista guessed the priest’s reconciliation service would be running late until she noticed the arrival of a middle-aged man. He strode purposefully up the path, smiling and tipping his black cap with its Red Ball insignia to her as he stepped past her into the church. Krista stood with her hands thrust into the pockets of her grandmother’s jeans. Her loose shirt tails flapped in the breeze. She marveled at everything. The weather, the church, the man going in to unburden himself of his pain. Life. But most of all the infinite capacity of the human heart to learn and to love.

  Chapter Twelve

  For the second time that day Krista thought of Priscilla, the old Morgan. How many times had she passed the horse crossing sign on the West Tisbury Road? Hundreds. Instead of returning to the house to close up, she took a left off the highway. She felt she must drive to Scrubby Neck Farm. She had a premonition. She thought there might be a chance, albeit a slim one, that the stable owner would still have Priscilla. Could he, after all these years? Krista also wanted to take in the beach trail in the same way she had taken in the Bend in the Road and Lighthouse Beach. She wanted to look back, before looking ahead.

  The black Morgan was still at the farm.

  “Best trail horse we have,” the manager said. “Take her.” He handed Krista the tack. “Looks like she must know you, just a little.” He laughed as Priscilla nodded vigorously in her box, pawing the sawdust.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Krista nearly kissed the old man.

  She slipped off the horse’s halter.

  “Just have her back by four. I have riders coming in then.” He paused and studied her ragbag clothes. “If you want those boots in the tack room, use them.”

  “No problem. She will be back in good time.”

  Krista left the barn and walked the horse under a canopy of oaks. They rode towards Watcha Path. Everything appeared familiar yet brand new. Again, Krista felt as if she were biting into a fresh red apple. She gripped the horse gently with the insides of her thighs and calves. Priscilla, with her ears pricked forward, fell into an easy, familiar rhythm.

  *

  Krista reined the old Morgan to the left, where the tall encroaching oaks gave way to scrub and the shoreline woods opened up. Krista savored the sight of the low, rolling terrain, the landscape she knew so well. Earth crumbled away underfoot as they picked their way, crab-like, down the side of a gully.

  At the far side of the ditch, Krista and Priscilla crossed a meadow towards a forest of pine. Breaking off a
grass head, Krista inhaled deeply before tossing it over her shoulder.

  “First I must forgive myself,” she said against the sound of the sea roaring in the distance and the breeze setting the pines sighing.

  Forgiveness. What was that exactly? Krista felt that there was something the priest had left unsaid. She descended into a cool hollow spiced with the scent of bayberry. Long Point Cove rose up over the next hill. In the pine grove, Krista patted the side of the mare’s neck. She barely tapped her with her heels and Priscilla broke into a canter, scattering a trio of blue jays.

  I cannot forgive myself.

  The horse stumbled and Krista brought her to a halt.

  How do I forgive myself?

  “By forgiving others.”

  Krista looked around. It was her grandmother’s voice again.

  “Ilsa?”

  The sound of the breaking waves intensified.

  Forgive others? Who?

  “Stop cutting people out of your life.”

  But who? Helen. Michael. My father. Yes, even him. In all my searching, all my daydreaming, I never once allowed him to be who he truly was. I hated him for his disappearance. I did cut him out.

  “Krista, you cut everyone out.”

  “How, Ilsa? Please tell me,” she said aloud.

  “By not being yourself.”

  Clusters of goldenrod and wild carrot bordered the trail. Rider and horse approached Long Point Cove. Priscilla stepped gingerly around the shrubby vegetation. Cutting off, cutting out. That is how I deal with pain. Krista thought of the previous day when she had wanted to die.

  “Okay,” she said, “I forgive…”

  The horse tugged at the reins.

  “… anyone who ever asked it of me.”

  Priscilla eased herself into a trot.

  “And myself. I forgive myself.”

  I accept myself.

  Krista realized she wanted to see Michael again. I want to go home. The path wound its way alongside the pond, through low-lying grasses and past an otter trail to the dunes. If I learn to forgive others, I can forgive myself. If I learn to accept myself, I can accept others.

  “Priscilla,” she said to her old friend, “I am not sure how this all works but I am getting there.”

  Krista listened to the mare’s steady breathing, drawing deeply into the wind off the ocean. I forgive myself for my carelessness. For taking life for granted.

  “I forgive myself,” she said aloud.

  Beyond the dunes the haze rose off the horizon. Thundering surf shattered her reverie. Priscilla drank from a freshwater pond. The wind picked up. The grasses parted to reveal the rosehips waiting to be harvested.

  The sea churned and the sun cast its light across the Atlantic like a net. Krista kept the horse still while she drank in the sight. This is better than any dream, better than any longing for what I do not have, she realized. She urged Priscilla into a canter, splashing through the sea grass and sidestepping a late blooming butter ‘n’ eggs. We come of age when we come of age. As she rode through the shimmering marsh hay, Krista remembered Ilsa’s iridescent landscapes. Her inspiration was not so hard to find. Then she rode without thinking, drawing in great draughts of fresh autumn air as if she had just learned to breathe.

  Priscilla broke into a lather. Krista dismounted and led the horse over to the lee of a small hill. She saw two figures sunbathing in the distance, and recognized Deirdre. A small child in a swimsuit played with a bucket, spilling seashells onto the sand. For a moment Krista felt frightened of approaching her old friend.

  She will know.

  I forgive… I forgive myself.

  Deirdre spotted her and windmilled her arms around. Her hair, darkened from its childhood blondness, lifted in the breeze. Her short cotton dress billowed.

  “Kris!” She ran towards horse and rider. “I can’t believe it’s you.”

  “It’s me. Though I can’t believe it either,” said Krista, sliding from the saddle. The two women kissed.

  “Just last night I was thinking about you – that it was a shame your house was empty.” Deidre hugged her friend and turned towards her daughter, “Look, Justine. This is Mother’s friend, from when we were babies.”

  Krista smiled and knelt before the small child, who seemed impressed only with the black Morgan, who was only impressed with the grass. The two women sat on a piece of driftwood. While Krista loosely tied Priscilla’s reins to the branch end of the bleached log, she watched Deidre persuade her little girl to pull on a sundress over her swimsuit and a floppy-brimmed hat. Tired of the horse, she had returned to placing mussel shells around a mound of sand.

  “What are you doing on Priscilla?” asked Deidre.

  “Riding.”

  “No! I mean, what are you doing here?”

  “Came in search of some ocean air. On the seven o’clock boat.”

  Krista carefully didn’t say which day.

  “This morning?” Deidre asked, and Krista crossed her fingers.

  “Yes, this morning.”

  “Why didn’t you come over to the house?”

  “I did. Your carpenter said you went to the beach.”

  “We’re leaving today,” Deidre said, pulling a face. “We were going to go earlier, but when the mist burned off, I just knew it would be a beach day.”

  “It can’t last forever,” Krista said. They both laughed, and watched Justine embellish her castle.

  “So this is just time out for you?” asked Deidre.

  “Not exactly.”

  Deidre looked closely at her friend. “Then what is it exactly?”

  “I had an abortion.”

  “Kris! I am so sorry.”

  “Afterwards I ran away. It was so painful, I felt as if my insides had been ripped out. I wanted to die.”

  “I know,” said Deirdre. “I had one two years ago, around this time of year. In fact, just now – funny – I was thinking about that baby. How old it would be if I’d… But I had to do it, Krista. Can you imagine? Unmarried, with two children?”

  Justine poured buckets of dry sand over her castle. She then ran to retrieve a plastic shovel from beside the wicker picnic basket, asking Deirdre for an orange simultaneously. A low-flying helicopter on the horizon startled her. She dropped her fruit instantly and tried desperately to shelter between her mother’s knees. Deirdre embraced her, lowering her own head, looking up from under her brow at the Coast Guard helicopter.

  “She hates those things. They fly low all the time. She always panics,” Deidre explained to Krista.

  The child sheltered behind her mother’s comforting arms until the helicopter receded down the beach. Then she returned to her sandy fortress.

  “I wonder what to teach her when she comes of age,” Deidre mused aloud. “About abortion.”

  “She should know about the pain.”

  “It’s not knowable.”

  “Yes, but there should at least be some sort of warning. They do it for cigarettes.”

  “But it’s unknowable until it happens to you. With both her birth and the abortion, I didn’t know – I couldn’t have known – until they happened.”

  “I still think a warning…”

  “Don’t you think anyone did?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you didn’t hear it. With your mother, there wasn’t anything that wasn’t discussed.”

  “It didn’t register with me before this that I am capable of creating life. That sex leads to that.”

  “It all starts before we know which end is up.”

  “I actually asked for it. Life. Then there was this sort of white heat, like a light flipping on.”

  “Me too, both times!”

  “They ought to put that in a manual.”

  Krista’s voice trailed off. She was
thinking about My Body, My Body.

  “You won’t believe what else I did.”

  “What?”

  “I burnt all Helen’s books!”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t spoken with her since.”

  Krista rolled up her jeans and took off her riding boots. Deirdre looked longingly at Priscilla.

  “Do you think I could take her for a ride?”

  “Of course. Not for too long, though. Priscilla needs to be back by four.”

  “Righto,” Deirdre answered. She yanked on the boots then trotted off on the Morgan along the private beach.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The little girl walked towards Krista. She stood and watched her mother canter up the ridge above the pond.

  “Momma – where’d she go?”

  The child looked at Krista. Her lower lip quivered. She turned right and left as if looking for a pair of knees to hide between.

  “Come on, Justine.”

  Krista walked towards a dune scattered with mussel shells. Sandpipers scurried at the edge of the surf. Gulls lifted and landed. Justine skittered when a low-flying bird brushed too close. Krista continued to talk, not giving the child a chance to cry.

  “What are these?” she asked.

  “Shells,” the little girl answered confidently.

  “If we put two together,” Krista rearranged the shells, “we have butterflies – butterflies to protect the castle. A legion of Monarchs.”

  The child crouched down, intent on making butterflies.

  “Butterfly.”

  Krista found a stick, a handful of shells, a piece of coral and a blue jay feather. The child emulated her every move, placing objects the exact same way. Across the top of the dune Krista carved a path with a stick and placed a column of mussel shells in pairs upon it. She poked the feather into the sand at the far end of the column. It stirred in the breeze, giving the impression that the line of shells was a string of wings ready for take-off. Justine handed Krista a crab shell with one claw still intact. They placed it in the column. White stones were placed in a double file.