The Islanders

by Meg Mitchell Moore

  “No! Not everything. Some of it. Well, not so much a lie as a—as a withholding of some of the truth.”

  “What a pretty way to put it,” she snapped. “I can tell you’re a writer!” She picked up a stone and hurled it toward the water.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I don’t know what else I can say, Joy. I came here at the beginning of the summer and I was broken. Completely broken. My ex-wife wouldn’t—” He was trying to persuade her now, but she wasn’t going to let herself be persuaded.

  “Not ex. You’re not divorced, remember?”

  “You’re right. Not yet. I will be, but not yet. Anyway, I came here just to hide, to lick my wounds, and to figure out what was next, and I didn’t want to meet anyone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I was hiding. That’s why I chose this place, I thought I could be invisible for a while, until I got enough strength to return to the real world.”

  This made Joy even angrier. How dare he consider her world, her island, not the real world? She hurled another stone. “This is the real world, for some people. This is my real world. This is Maggie’s real world. You can’t just step into it and . . .” She put her fist to her mouth and bit down hard on her knuckles. She wanted so badly to stop herself from crying, but she was just so, well . . . so disappointed. “You can’t step into it and play with it, and step right out like it’s nothing.”

  When Anthony spoke again his voice was gentler, conciliatory. The desperation was gone, and he was speaking tenderly. “I know I can’t,” he said. “I mean, I know I did, but I shouldn’t have. I know it’s bullshit. If I could just make you see, Joy, how broken I was at the time. How heartbroken.”

  “Well, bully for you. Everybody is heartbroken.” She couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. She turned her face away and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  Anthony stepped closer to her. “Not you, Joy. You’re not heartbroken.”

  “Says who?”

  “You’re the strongest person I know. That day my car broke down and you drove up and you were this beautiful vibrant person, so alive and strong, zooming around in your Jeep, with your delicious little whoopie pies . . .”

  No. She wasn’t going to let him bring the pies into this. That made it all seem too easy. There were still moments that Joy’s heart felt like an open, weeping wound. Dustin had found another wife, had produced another child, and in those momentous gestures plus plenty of smaller ones that came before and after, he was saying, I tried you, Joy, and you weren’t good enough. She knew heartbreak as well as anyone. She said, “You don’t own heartbreak, you know.”

  “I never said I did!”

  “You’re acting like you do.”

  He bristled at that. The tenderness was dissolving. Good. Let it. Joy wanted Anthony to feel bad, just as she felt bad. “I am not,” he said.

  “You are too, Anthony not-Jones. You walk around here with your head low, like the world has dealt you a bad hand, all hangdog, like we’re all supposed to feel sorry for you.”

  Something in his face changed, got harder. “I’m not acting like anything. Maybe I actually am sad. Maybe I’ve had a pretty shitty year and when I got here the only person who wanted to talk to me from my old life was Shelly Salazar, of all people . . .”

  Joy snorted.

  “And I’ve destroyed my relationship with my father, my wife, and my son, and probably also my mother, who called me every day until she gave up on me too . . . All I did was make one stupid mistake. I have to lose everything over it? Everything?”

  “I’m sorry,” Joy said, “if I didn’t RSVP to your pity party, but I’m having a very, very hard time with all of this.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “That’s a great line,” he said. Then, more softly, like he was whispering a secret, he repeated, “I’m sorry if I didn’t RSVP to your pity party.” He patted his pockets—was he searching for a notebook?

  “Don’t,” she said. “You can’t use it, you don’t have permission. That’s my line.” Joy inhaled deeply. It was a lot to take in, all at once. “Let me see if I have this straight,” she said. “Your wife left you when you got caught for plagiarism?”

  “No.” Anthony rubbed his eyes: he suddenly looked very tired. “My wife started sleeping with someone else long before I got caught. Probably even before I plagiarized. But she officially kicked me out after I was caught, yes. And the money dried up, and everything dried up. I’m in a deep, deep hole. Yes.” He shook his head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, I knew you wouldn’t understand. I knew you wouldn’t get it.”

  “And why not?” She breathed in deeply. She felt her anger crystallize. “Why wouldn’t I get it?”

  “Nothing.” He shook his head again. “It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “Your divorce was amicable. The relationship you have with Dustin, the way you handle Maggie together—it’s different. It’s smooth. You wouldn’t get what it’s like for me, not really. You have it easier.”

  This made Joy seethe on both the inside and the outside. “Are you kidding me? The nerve you have!” She thought about all the lonely nights when Maggie was asleep and the winter wind was howling. “You think it’s been smooth sailing the whole way, that it was just no problem to have a two-year-old and no money and be on my own, starting over in a new place? It’s taken me a decade to get where I am, Anthony. A decade. And almost none of it has been easy.”

  “Well, but . . .” His face twisted; she could tell that he was struggling to say what he wanted to say the right way. “What I mean is, you’re tough. You know what you want, and you just . . . go after it. In that way I think it’s been easier for you. Because of who you are, the kind of person you are. Which is what I admire about you, Joy.”

  He might be trying to flatter her, but every word was just making Joy more angry. “Then you don’t understand anything,” she said. Growing up wealthy with a famous father, having his own path mapped out for him, then willfully throwing it away—no, he didn’t deserve Joy’s sympathy, and she wouldn’t give it. “Maybe instead of acting like such a victim, you should figure your own shit out. That’s what I had to do. And it hurt plenty along the way. You don’t own pain, Anthony Puckett. You don’t own the whole world of pain.”

  He was silent for a minute. She could see her words settling in.

  “You’re right,” he said finally. His voice was more conciliatory and he stepped toward her. “I’m sorry. Joy, I really am. I’m sorry I disappointed you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the whole story. I’m sorry I didn’t have everything figured out when I bumped into you. I never meant to get attached to this place, or anyone here. It never seemed . . . real to me.”

  Couldn’t he see that with every sentence Anthony was only getting himself deeper in the hole? “Excuse me all over the place,” said Joy. “But like I said before. This is my real world. This is mine and Maggie’s real world every day, year-round. And you cannot come into it and make me fall in love with you under false pretenses.”

  His mouth twitched; she’d almost made him laugh. But Joy had no more patience for this. Why had she opened her soul, her home, her bed to this man, who wasn’t who he said he was? She should have known it was too good to be true. Everything was. Joy walked back to the wildlife refuge sign and un-leaned her bike.

  Dangerous Riptides! said the sign. No kidding, thought Joy.

  Anthony followed and opened the door of his car.

  “Joy—” he said.

  “No,” said Joy. Her heart was breaking into a thousand little pieces. “No, Anthony. No more. We’re all done here. Forever.” She turned her back while he got in the car, and when the Le Baron pulled out of its parking spot she gave no indication that she knew the car was there at all.

  If Anthony said anything out the window, she didn’t let herself hear.

  She did hear one sound, though. The sound of her f
oot crunching on something—what? A phone. Anthony’s phone, which must have fallen out of his pocket. Well, served him right. She picked it up and put it in her own pocket. She buckled the strap of her helmet under her chin. And then she pedaled away, with the Sound on one side of her and the Atlantic on the other, and the long, sometimes hilly Corn Neck Road ahead of her.

  Chapter 34

  Lu

  The Block Island Airport was a pretty gray building that made Lu think of a fancy highway rest stop. She’d heard the restaurant there was very good, with prizewinning chowder and fantastic omelets, but she knew Nancy wanted to take the boys there for the first time, so she abstained, even though they were driving right by and they were all hungry. Maggie had to help her mother out at the shop, so Lu and the boys had gone to West Beach to hunt for sea glass. They hadn’t found any, which made Lu feel like a loser. Maggie had told her a person could always find sea glass at West Beach.

  Lu was hoping to stick the boys in front of a nice long movie when they got home so she could get some work done. She’d try to get them not to tell Jeremy. He wasn’t a fan of daytime movies; he’d want them learning a foreign language or taking a stab at pre-algebra. If she put on a movie Chase might even nap; even now he was doing the head-jerking, almost-sleeping of the overtired child. She was tired too, but she wasn’t allowed to do the head jerk while she was driving. Obviously.

  She heard her phone ping in the console next to her—the text sound she’d set for Jeremy. She resisted the urge to check it. The boys were all over her about looking at her phone while she was driving.

  When they were younger, and first dating, before they lived together, Jeremy called Lu at the end of every shift, no matter the time, and Lu lived for those phone calls, no matter how disruptive. Now there were times when a call from Jeremy felt like an intrusion or a reproach. She felt like he was checking up on her.

  She looked quickly at the text once she’d made sure the boys weren’t watching her.

  How r u holding up, Jeremy texted like a teenage girl.

  If she hadn’t been driving she might have texted back, I feel like crap. Was there an abbreviated version of that? Probably CRP.

  It was a sweet text, really. He meant because of Chase’s nightmare the night before. Lu had been up for hours with him. She knew she could have and should have been grateful for Jeremy’s concern but instead she was irritated: irritated that she’d been the only one Chase had wanted, irritated that she was always the one Chase wanted, irritated that it was only one out of approximately seven nightmares that Jeremy witnessed so that even when he was trying to be kind he never really saw the whole picture.

  The evening had started benignly enough. Dinner, bedtime for the boys, a little television. In bed, Jeremy reached for Lu, rubbing her back, the back of her neck, the space behind her right ear. Lu recognized his classic seduction moves, but had an anxious feeling about being behind on the blog. If she was being honest with herself she’d been hoping instead that Jeremy would fall asleep early so she could sneak down and get some work done.

  No such luck.

  What had Queen Victoria’s mother told Victoria? Close your eyes and think of England? Okay, fine. Lu closed her eyes and thought of avocado-and-cucumber salad with a light balsamic dressing; of homemade lassi and tikka masala; of her author photo on the book jacket of her very own cookbook.

  After, she lay in the dark, listening to Jeremy’s breathing, waiting for it to even and deepen so she could sneak downstairs for her laptop. Out of nowhere came the noise that meant Chase was having a nightmare. It always started long and desolate, like the lowing of a disgruntled cow, and progressed from there to a wail, and sometimes a shriek.

  “I’ll go,” she said, already starting to rise from the bed.

  Jeremy grasped her hand. His fingers were soft and warm against hers. “Don’t,” he said quietly, half asleep. “Stay here with me. He’ll go back to sleep in a minute.”

  “He won’t. I can tell.” When Chase got really revved up he sounded like a fisher-cat caught in a fox trap; if he got to that point he’d wake Sebastian, and then nobody would get any sleep. Better to go now.

  “Want me to go?” Jeremy was half mumbling—he had the medical school survivor’s gift of being able to sleep in any situation.

  “That’s okay,” she whispered. “I know the drill.”

  She was able to quiet Chase quickly, but she had to climb in bed with him to do it, and he threw one arm across her chest and kept it there before falling into a deep sleep. She thought again about her laptop. Every time she tried to slide out from under Chase’s arm he tightened his hold on her, and she didn’t think she could get out without waking him. It felt not so different from trying to work herself loose from Jeremy’s hand earlier so she could go to Chase. If she freed herself from Chase, would somebody else grab her next?

  She felt tricked, but the truth was she’d been tricked for years. After Sebastian was born she’d fallen under the spell of his steady infant gaze and the feel of his tiny hand grasping her thumb. Stay with me, his gaze had said. Don’t let us ever be parted. She’d acquiesced, and in acquiescing she’d joined the long line of women who had laid down their work and picked up their children.

  She wondered if Chase might one day tell his therapist that when he was young his mother had one eye on him and his brother and the other on the screen of her laptop.

  In the end, anyway, she’d fallen asleep on her side of the twin bed and had woken with a crick in her neck, Jeremy gone.

  “Hey!” said Sebastian now, pointing to the airport parking lot. “It’s the cookie truck! Can we stop?”

  Lu glanced over. Yes, the telltale French flag, the even more telltale line of people.

  “Not now, sweetie, okay?” She had posted only once in the past three days; she knew if she didn’t get something up soon her readers would start to wander. It was the relentless pace of the really good blogs that made them successful: the relentless pace, and the fact that they made it look easy. (Sort of like motherhood.) “I really need to get home,” she told the backseat.

  Chase was fully awake now. “I see Maggie!”

  “No,” said Lu. “You can’t see Maggie, Maggie is helping her mom at Joy Bombs.”

  “But I do. She’s right there.”

  “She is,” confirmed Sebastian. “I see her too.”

  Lu slowed to a crawl and squinted. There was a knot of teenagers off to the side of the food truck, and, yes, there was Maggie. There was the French boy who worked in the food truck; there was Maggie’s friend Riley. There were clouds of smoke rising around them, and a flash of black as Maggie handed something to Riley.

  “Oh, Maggie,” Lu said. “Maggie, no.”

  “What are they doing?” asked Sebastian.

  “Nothing,” said Lu sharply.

  Chapter 35

  Joy

  Joy was in a wretched mood, tired and out of sorts, when Lu, Maggie’s employer, came into the shop. She replayed her fight with Anthony again and again. In romantic comedies, the false start always led to the Big Epiphany, the Grand Declaration. But they’d stopped at the false start.

  Because life was not actually a romantic comedy, she reminded herself. Their false start had been a real end.

  They sat. Joy listened to everything Lu told her, and then she shook her head and said, “I’m sorry . . .” Her head was all cobwebby; maybe she’d misunderstood. “I’m sorry . . . are you telling me you think Maggie was vaping?”

  “I don’t know if she specifically was vaping,” said Lu. “I just know that the kids around her were.”

  Joy was not going to admit that she wouldn’t recognize vaping if vaping walked up and tapped her on the top of the head. She’d do Google Images when she got back to her office. “Who was she with?” She felt a panicky feeling rise. “Maggie doesn’t know any kids who do vaping.”

  Lu smiled. “It’s just called vaping,” she said. “Not doing vaping. Maggie doesn’t know any kids w
ho vape.” Joy found the smile a touch condescending even as she understood that Lu probably meant for it to be inclusive. “Anyway, I’m sure it’s going to be all right. I didn’t mean for you to get all worked up. I just wanted you to know.”

  “I’m not all worked up!” cried Joy, who was feeling very worked up. In her mind she was already texting Holly. Call me, she’d say. Right away.

  “It’s just that . . .” Lu leaned forward conspiratorially and put her hands on the table. “When you’re young, it’s easy to make yourself vulnerable. Didn’t you ever make yourself vulnerable when you were young? Especially when you had a crush on someone?”

  Ha! Had Joy ever! When she was twenty-two and Dustin was the lead singer of the Chiclets she’d spent fourteen nights straight tossing her hair around at venues up and down New England. Club Babyhead and Lupo’s in Providence. The Paradise in Boston. T.T. the Bear’s in Cambridge. She would have jumped off a bridge for Dustin, off a cliff, out of a moving train. Vulnerable was an understatement. But she’d been twenty-two, not thirteen!

  Out of the corner of her eye Joy noticed Olivia Rossi pause in the wiping of the counter, the way you pause when you don’t want to miss a word of what someone around you is saying. “Olivia,” said Joy, in a slightly fake voice, “could you just run into the storage closet and see how many boxes of coffee stirrers we have? I forgot I have to put in my order by four o’clock today.”

  Olivia disappeared into the back—was she walking more slowly than she needed to, maybe a little reluctantly?—and Lu said, “And especially when the crush is on someone older . . .”

  “Right,” said Joy, because she couldn’t very well say, I don’t know what you’re talking about and I’m worried my daughter likes you and your nuclear family more than she likes me.

  “I mean, he’s adorable,” Lu went on. “I don’t blame her. She’s got great taste! But we don’t want her to get her heart broken.”