Barrier Islands

by Jeffrey Anderson

9

  The day after New Year’s dawned clear and cold.

  After breakfast Brooke bundled Jodie in her ski jacket and knit cap and carried her the few yards to her in-laws house then unbundled her to leave her with Lil. Just yesterday, at the combined New Year’s Day and Brooke-Jodie Christmas at Miss Polly’s, Jodie had suddenly decided to start crawling. And, once started, she wouldn’t stop. She’d crawled all around Miss Polly’s living room, then around their apartment last night, and now was crawling around Lil’s den this morning. She couldn’t get enough crawling. While Brooke was amazed and delighted to see this development in her daughter, she was also anxious that Jodie would crawl somewhere she shouldn’t go or get into something she shouldn’t get into. This mobile Jodie was a new adventure and responsibility. She was reluctant to leave Jodie but also felt, after almost two weeks of near constant attention to her baby, the need for some time apart. And she trusted Lil as a careful and attentive babysitter. She grabbed Jodie in mid-crawl, gave her a hug and a kiss, then set her in Lil’s lap.

  “Don’t let her out of your sight, please,” she said to her mother-in-law.

  Lil laughed. “Are you kidding?”

  Brooke shrugged. “Sorry. This crawling stuff has me freaked out.”

  “Get used to it. Only gets worse.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Once outside Brooke cut through the back yards of several neighbors (all members of the extended Howard clan), followed a narrow road of planks laid across the sand to the one paved road on the island, crossed that road and climbed over several tall dunes, then descended the final dune to the ocean and the long stretch of Park Service beach that ran to the northern tip of the island. The shoreline was empty far as she could see. For the first mile or so, there was one set of tracks just below last night’s high-water line—probably Mutt Erwin out at dawn to check for salvage—then those tracks turned inland and left her utterly alone. In the old days and even as recently as last fall, such stark emptiness would have unnerved Brooke. She’d always needed people—partly as audience, partly as assurance—however much she chafed at some of their rules and hypocrisies. But recently she’d begun to crave small doses of solitude, preferably outdoors, away from the reminders of commitment and obligation. Today especially she felt such an urge, and now breathed in the cold and pristine air and soaked in the seemingly infinite expanse of water and white shoreline.

  Yesterday’s party had gone smoothly enough. Onion had appeared late in the morning to shower and change. He’d not said a word about the previous night, and she chose not to bring it up. The words they exchanged were all carefully selected to be neutral, and mostly focused on which presents went to which clan member. Brooke meticulously wrapped each gift and included ribbon accents and flourishes of curly-cues and hearts on the labels. At the party, the large crowd was jovial if a little muted in the wake of all the recent celebrations. There were only a few references to Brooke and the baby’s absence over Christmas, and these were all gushingly diplomatic—“We so missed you last week!” and “Santa arrived looking for little Jodie and had to take all those presents back to the North Pole” to which someone added “With poor Rudolph crying all the way!” to which Samuel, Jodie’s six-year-old cousin, asked “Is that why his nose is red?” to gales of laughter.

  Brooke kept a smile pasted on face the entire time, and was enthusiastically thankful for their many gifts—genuinely so in several instances. But she couldn’t shake a feeling of claustrophobia, no doubt instigated by the too warm and too crowded house. She hardly saw her husband, as he spent most of his time outside on the porch or in the converted garage playing pool. When she did see him, as when he was summoned to sit beside her on the couch and help open the presents given to both of them, she felt a mix of anger and hurt. She still wondered where he’d been before he came home last night, and where he’d gone when he’d stormed out; but she didn’t dare broach the subject—certainly not here, maybe not ever. Daphne could provide some clues, or maybe outright answers to these questions; but she made a conscious choice not to put her sister-in-law in the middle of their marital tensions. All of these bottled up emotions had fed into Brooke’s craving for solitude and wide-open spaces.

  And that craving was fulfilled here beside the ocean. She walked quickly and resolutely along the firm sand just above the lapping waves. A stiff and cold north wind blew directly into her face, sometimes carrying with it a peppering dose of sand, other times a saltwater spray. She hunkered her face down into the upturned collar of her canvas field coat (a Christmas gift from Leah) yet was secretly glad for this assault of nature as it distracted her from more painful and complex contemplations. She felt that if the shoreline was indeed as infinite as it looked, she would never stop walking, never return to the close nest and net that held her so tightly.

  But the shoreline didn’t go on forever, not this one nor any. This particular stretch ended some miles out at the tip of the island where a channel of deep and fast-moving water marked the sound’s exit into the sea. Across the channel, the mainland was brightly visible, seemed almost close enough to touch in the brittle air though it was in fact a mile away beyond choppy and treacherous water. No boats were out in this channel, now or ever, as the shifting shoals and violent cross currents made it impossible to navigate. Sometimes diehard surf casters worked these waters for their rich mix of sport fish, but none today. There was a lone figure just this side of the island-end’s parking turnout, walking back and forth with a plastic pail and a short-handled rake over a stretch of freshly exposed beach. Brooke identified the figure as her Aunt Greta from her slate-gray lobsterman’s hat and matching calf-high rubber boots, working her favorite stretch of beach for shells and driftwood. At first she’d resented the sight of another human on this day but had a change of heart when she identified her. She’d seen Greta at her grandparents’ house the day after Christmas for the annual Fulcher holiday reunion. She’d seemed unusually quiet and withdrawn that day, and Brooke had never caught her alone to try to find out why. So her frown was replaced by a grin as she approached from behind, her aunt bent over and gently raking back some broken shells to see what lay beneath.

  Brooke was only a few feet away when her aunt turned suddenly and yelled, “Stop!” She thrust her rake forward like a weapon.

  Brooke jumped back. “Jeez, Greta! I’m not a thief.”

  Greta’s menacingly glare held unbroken. “Only thieves and misfits out on a day cold as this!”

  “What about you?”

  “Misfit from Day One!” Her scowl eased yet still she held out her rake, its sharp and sand-scoured tines glinting in the sun.

  Brooke held up her hands. “Then me too—misfit, that is. No thief!”

  “You sure?”

  Brooke hesitated a moment to try to determine Greta’s meaning but gave up. “Only a giving heart,” she said, more earnest than she expected.

  “That’s your curse,” Greta said.

  Brooke took one stride toward giving her aunt a hug but was again halted by the rake. “Greta!”

  Greta smiled finally. “Hold your horses, deary.” She let the rake fall to the sand then tilted its handle away from her. The action unearthed a near-flawless sand dollar that had been invisible to Brooke’s glance. Greta gently tapped the rake against the ground to let bits of sand fall away then dropped the sand dollar off the rake and into her pail in a flash. “Now give me that hug,” Greta said. “But no kisses—picked up this scratchy throat from Andy.”

  Brooke closed the few feet between them and leaned over for an awkward hug around the rake and bucket and lobsterman’s cap. She noticed her aunt had a scarf wrapped around her head and neck, and a bulky sweater beneath her windbreaker. “Happy New Year,” she said as she stood upright.

  “They say it is,” Greta replied. “We’ll have to see.”

  “We can hope.”

  “We can.”

  They stood together looking over the channel until a p
articularly fierce gust of wind blew sand and salt spray into their eyes, which in turn triggered a coughing fit in Greta. Once her coughing subsided, Brooke shouted over the wind, “Lovely day!”

  Greta said, “It is except for this damn wind. You want to warm up in the jeep?”

  Brooke nodded and followed her aunt to the parking lot between the dunes and the old Army-surplus jeep sitting there like the scarred remains from a lost battle. Though the wind whistled through the cracks between the doors and the canvas top, the interior was much quieter and well-warmed by the sun’s captured rays. They breathed audible sighs as Brooke latched her door against its bucking with the wind. Greta pulled off her lobsterman’s hat but left the scarf pulled over her hair.

  Attired like that and with her weathered and creased face fully lit by the sun, she looked almost ancient to her niece who was more used to seeing her as young and of boundless enthusiasm and energy. When had she turned old? “I’m sorry I didn’t get to talk to you at Mim and Pap’s,” she said.

  Greta shrugged. “I see you all the time. They don’t.”

  “But we’ve got to maintain a united front—islanders against the world!”

  Greta scoffed. “You fit right in with them.”

  “Of course—been there every year of my life, except last year.”

  “I never fit.”

  “I know. That’s why you always fascinated me.”

  “And now you know the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That I’m a lonely outcast.”

  “Greta!”

  “I am. And I need to apologize to you.”

  “For what?”

  “For bringing you here.”

  “I was dying to come!”

  Greta held up her hand to still her niece, then softly confessed what had been troubling her since before Brooke and Onion had got married. “I needed you, see?”

  Brooke shook her head. No, she didn’t ‘see.’ Greta was, and had always been, the most self-sufficient person she’d ever known.

  Greta chuckled and shook her head. “Fooled you like all the rest. I followed Andy out here the summer after he graduated like some lost puppy. He let me know in every gentle way he could that I shouldn’t have come, but I came anyway. Then he let me know in a very hard way the folly of my choice by getting engaged to Barb. That should have done it, right?—sent me back to the mainland and school, maybe with my tail between my legs but still with a chance at a future.

  “But I refused to leave. I told myself I was a martyr to love, wanting to be as close to Andy as possible even if he wouldn’t publicly acknowledge his love for me. But I knew there was more to the choice than just some romantic idealism lifted from a fairy tale. I’d been quietly rebelling against Mom and Mary far back as I could remember and decided to use the excuse of love to make a complete break. A better balanced and more mature soul would have found a less radical way to express independence, but who ever said I was well-adjusted or mature?”

  She paused and laughed then continued. “But it wasn’t enough for me to crash my life. As the months turned into years, I needed affirmation of my choice, a vindication of my paltry life. It wasn’t loneliness that haunted me. For some reason, I’ve never felt lonely; and Andy and I found ways to get together soon enough. But what I missed was approval, the very thing I’d rebelled against.

  “And that’s where you came in. I saw in you my rebelliousness, and so did Mary. And in her full sight, I gradually presented to you a view of my life and of this island that would appeal to that rebelliousness.”

  “But you loved it out here!” Brooke exclaimed.

  Greta laughed. “With you watching, I could almost convince myself that I did.”

  “The paintings, the driftwood frames, the shell necklaces!”

  “Mysteries from another world.”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes.”

  “A lie?”

  “Let’s call it a one-sided presentation.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “For Jodie. I don’t want you perpetuating the myth to her. Fate blessed me by not giving me a child.” She paused and reconsidered. “Or maybe not. Maybe a child would have forced me to see my life for what it was.”

  “And that is?”

  “A coward’s escape. Mom and Mary were tough, and I don’t agree with their heavy-handed methods. But I see now they were mainly trying to point me toward a life with real opportunity, chances to go along with the responsibilities. I just didn’t wait long enough to discover them.”

  “You still can. You’re hardly forty.”

  “Forty-two in mainland years but good as a hundred out here—stuck in my island identity beyond changing.”

  “No, Greta!”

  “Yes, Brooke.” She leaned over and kissed her niece on the forehead then leaned back and sighed. “Maybe it is a happy new year after all.”

  Brooke stared at her aunt a long time before whispering, “Yeah, maybe.”

  Greta donned a big smile and said, “If you wait here for me to get my gear, I’ll drive you back to town and heat up a pot of my chowder for lunch.”

  Without looking up, Brooke shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ll walk back—could use the air.”

  Greta recognized the tactic but chose not to fight it. “Plenty of air out there today.”

  “Yeah, one thing we have in spades.” Brooke opened the door and clenched the handle to keep the door from being wrenched from her hand by the wind. Standing beside the Jeep, she glanced around at what suddenly seemed an unfamiliar world. It was literally unfamiliar—the parking turnout bordered on three sides by low dunes. But somehow the strangeness extended beyond the immediate environs, hung over the whole island and its encircling blue boundaries—a new stark and brittle encampment. She turned and leaned into the vehicle. “Take care of that cold.”

  Greta laughed. “Thanks. Forgot for a minute I had it. Borrowed some of your youthful vigor.”

  “Keep it,” Brooke said. “I’ll make more.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  Brooke started toward the village, pointed south, the sun in her face and the wind at her back. But instead of climbing the near dune and returning to walk along the ocean, she exited the turnout on the hard asphalt and walked along the lonely two-lane road that cut through the dunes. She told herself it was to minimize the wind and give herself a change of venue, but in fact at that moment she was terrified of the prospect of confronting the sea, its limitless blue sweep with the solitary set of tracks along its edge. On the pavement she would leave no tracks nor be confronted with infinity. There was some reassurance in those restrictions, though the black line of road did blur in the distance into a haze of wind-blown sand and glare.

  She was a good way into the trek when she heard a vehicle approaching from behind. She resolved not to turn or leave the pavement. The car could go around. She figured it was Greta and didn’t want to encourage another invitation to lunch, one she might not find the strength to decline. She’d wave without looking up as the vehicle passed and continue on her solitary walk.

  But the vehicle slowed as it passed then stopped a few feet in front of her, forcing her to look up. It wasn’t Greta’s Jeep but a shiny white pickup sitting high in the air on big tires. There were several tall surf-casting poles in pipes between the bed and the cab, the lures and leaders at their tips sparkling in the sun. Brooke immediately recognized the truck as belonging to Dave Weldon, a distant cousin of Onion’s who had a fishing boat he hired out to tourists in season. During the winter he kept busy as a mechanic—boats and trucks—and did a little lobstering on the side when his late-night carousing and frequent bed-hopping didn’t have him pre-engaged. She and Dave had had an alcohol-fueled one-nighter shortly after she’d arrived on the island, well before she’d settled on Onion as her permanent and lone partner. Ever since, she’d returned Dave’s unabashed stares with a kind of amused but forthright “hands off” gaze of her ow
n, though lately she’d taken to avoiding his glances and his presence as much as possible.

  The passenger door of the truck swung open as she approached. She’d have to swerve into the soft sand of the shoulder to pass. Instead, she walked up and stopped at the open door.

  “Get in,” Dave said. He patted the vinyl seat that was at her chest height. “I’ll give you a ride back to town.” His eyes sparkled like the lures on his poles. His grin was disarming.

  “That all you’re offering?” she asked with a voice from a distant past.

  He didn’t miss a beat, reached through the open sliding rear window and between the poles and patted the white top to the blue cooler in the bed. “Have a few full ones left.”

  “They cold?”

  Dave laughed long and hard.

  Brooke climbed into the cab using the chrome foot step and handle. The door closed behind with a solid thud. A Boz Scaggs song she used to sway to at Center was playing on the radio. Dave popped the top on a beer and handed it to her, then cracked one for himself. They sat for a few seconds sipping the near frozen liquid and staring ahead at the windswept road with its small drifts of sand gathered in the lees.

  “So where to?” Dave asked in a low purr.

  “Driver’s choice,” she said, her voice gently rising.

  Still he didn’t put the truck in gear. Its big motor idled beneath their feet. “What you doing way out here on a day cold as this?” he asked.

  “Walking. You?”

  He laughed. “Fishing.”

  “Any luck?”

  “No. Too cold for fish.”

  “Yeah. For humans too.”

  He shifted into gear and let out the clutch but kept the transmission in first, leaving the truck creeping along at only a few miles per hour, holding his beer can and the wheel with his left hand, his right hand cradling the shift knob. “By the way, Happy New Year,” he said.

  “Likewise.”

  Without looking toward her, his hand floated from the shift knob and came to rest on her knee. She looked down at that hand jutting out from the frayed and stained cuff of his beige canvas coat, the hand’s skin weathered and still tan despite the season. When had she last seen a hand look like this? Almost imperceptibly to them both, she flared her left leg toward the gear shift, causing his unmoving hand to slide up her jean-covered thigh.

  The truck came astride a beach turnout locals called “The Black Hole” because, unlike the other three along the highway, this one was not paved and regularly swallowed tourists’ cars in its soft sand despite signs warning “Beach Vehicles Only.” Dave’s truck, its hubs locked in four-wheel-drive, easily navigated over the narrow access lane to the dune-shielded and empty parking area beyond. He switched off the truck’s engine, set his beer on the dash, set her beer beside it then climbed atop her on the wide seat as she leaned back against the passenger door. As she stared at the white and round dome light beyond his shoulder she giggled at the thought of the one hundred forty-four condoms under her bed at the apartment and not a single one available to her now. Dave solved that problem by reaching under the seat and pulling out a foil-wrapped packet. She grabbed the packet, tore it open, and one-handedly unrolled the latex sheath over its destination with a practiced ease from some former life.