Alice's Island, page 11
I saw Julia and felt the impulse to go over. But there seemed to be a warning signal in her look: Keep away. The fact that Olivia skipped out of the hydroplane, running toward me, saying goodbye to Oliver, Ginger, Tracy, Ryan, Britney, and a few others, gave me back one of the points I had lost as a mother.
When she got to the Cherokee, Olivia walked around it in a circle, counting the wheels. One, two, three, four.
“Olivia, what are you doing?”
And then she did it in the opposite direction, counting them again. One, two, three, four. Then she got in the car.
“Yep, they’re all there; we didn’t lose one on the way,” I said without giving it any particular importance, thinking it must be some game she’d learned in school. “How’d it go, honey?”
When I listened to her hurried, delighted tale, some of the anguish that reigned over much of my life was replaced by a milder sorrow—which I was thankful for, since it was easier to handle. I was a teacher. I should have been giving classes, making the first day of school memorable for lots of frightened children. Making memories, creating adventures. Molding character. Discovering virtues and smoothing out defects. Preparing them for life.
* * *
Half an hour earlier I had left the dog alone in the house, attached to a pretty leash that was now destroyed. In brief, this was the message she seemed to want to send to the world, to us: I deceived you, accompanied by a malevolent laugh. She had shit and pissed all over, which she hadn’t done in the car or on the ferry or when we got home or after I fed her and gave her water or after a short walk up the street or after playing in the yard. She was holding it in for a higher purpose. The great final battle, annihilation and destruction. Cushions, shoes and remote controls destroyed. Unopened boxes that the dog had decided it was time to unpack and drag out their contents all over the place. The Tasmanian devil reincarnated in a midsized dog that looked at us very serenely, with floppy ears and her tail between her legs, knowing that she hadn’t behaved well. And worst of all: she had the Big Smelly Bear in her jaws, one arm torn off and one eye MIA. Surprise!
“Smelly!” Olivia shouted, and leapt at the dog with the same determination and absence of fear as a mother protecting her baby from an evildoer.
* * *
Two hours later, Olivia was shut up in her room, still glum. I went in with Big Smelly Bear, now better, his eye and arm freshly reattached. I imitated Smelly’s voice: “Hello, Olivia, look, I’m good as new. What a scare we had, right? But it wasn’t the dog’s fault, it was me, I started playing with her, and things got out of control.”
The dog peeped timidly through the door. She seemed genuinely sorry, a little angel coming over slowly.
“Look who’s coming to ask for forgiveness . . .”
“I don’t want a dog. You told me you were going to buy me a pony.” She hammed it up, hugging Smelly tight.
I was about to tell her I’d never promised her anything of the sort and that I hadn’t inherited the promises made by her deceased father. But it didn’t seem appropriate or right.
“It’s not a dog. It’s a pony. Look at her closely. A black-and-white pony. A precious pony. Look at her.”
I got on my knees, crouching down behind the dog. I grabbed her front legs and lifted them up, as though she was rearing back and neighing.
“Giddy up, pony, giddy up!”
Under normal conditions, Olivia would have cracked up and told me: Let me, Mommy, it’s my turn now! But this time, nothing.
“We can’t have dogs, Mommy.” She cut me short, and I smelled what was coming next. “Daddy gets sick from them.”
I know, Oli, but Daddy’s not here. That would have been the logical thing to say. But how could I say something like that to my daughter?
“She’s a good girl, Oli. She’s going to bring us lots of love and happiness. And I promise you she won’t hurt Smelly again. She was scared because it was her first day in the house. Just like you when you went to school.”
“I didn’t tear up the school and eat some kid’s arm.”
“We’re going to name her. What do you want to call our pony?”
“She’s not a pony.”
“What if we call her Pony, then? Do you like it?”
“No, because she’s not a pony.”
“OK, fine. But we have to call her something, whatever kind of animal she is. Come on, choose a name you like.”
“She’s not a pony.”
“I know, Olivia, you’ve made that very clear.”
“No, that’s what I want her name to be.”
“To be what?”
“Shesnotapony. That’s her name.”
It was the first sarcastic comment she made in her life.
* * *
To top things off, it turned out Pony had social phobia. She didn’t like to be around other dogs. So our walks through Bark Park were an unmitigated disaster.
After a few days of living together, I understood she hadn’t tricked me, hadn’t sucked up to me, hadn’t carried out some elaborate scheme to escape her mortal fate by presenting a different image from what she was, she had just become a puppy again. She had to learn everything over, good and bad. She had erased all the suffering she must have gone through in the course of her five years. A defense mechanism. Like a person who forgets a trauma to be able to go on living.
SEPTEMBER 24–29
YOU REALLY WANT to solve this issue you’ve got on your hands? It’s simple, Alice. Take a photo of Chris, one you like, more or less recent, one where he’s recognizable. The one you keep in your wallet, for example. Scan it, blow it up and put underneath:
Do you know this man?
Reward for information.
Respond to Alice Dupont.
(The redhead who set foot on the island and gave birth)
Print out a hundred or two hundred copies, paste them up all over the island, and that’s that. You’ll see, you’ll get immediate results, and you’ll stop feeling paralyzed.
I am looking at the photo of Chris I always carry with me. My favorite one. Recently I have hardly looked at it because it submerged me in nostalgia and loneliness. But I needed to feel it and have it close. That photo for me was my ground, meaning, necessity. I had taken the photo of Chris during a trip we’d made to Charmingfare Farm, a petting zoo in Candia, New Hampshire. He was looking enrapturedly at Olivia, who had gone off on her own to feed a little goat. She got scared and laughed when the animal tried to bury its muzzle into the bundle of hay she held in her hand. She went over, laughter, bleating; she stepped back, shriek, bleating. And of course, once the test was over, she wanted us to take the goat home. Later she rode a pony for the first time in her life. On the animal’s back, with her father holding the reins at her side and me taking photos, Olivia wouldn’t stop saying: I want a pony, I want a pony . . . And of course, her father promised her one.
That night, in the cabins at the petting zoo with their odor of stables, I got mad at him for promising her things we weren’t going to be able to give her. Then I told him there was a slight delay—a little out of nowhere. I went to a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test as well as two scented candles. We lit them in a little makeshift love ritual, invoking Venus, the goddess of love, beauty and fertility, because we both wanted another baby. The test came out negative. We went back home, and Chris left for a week on one of his supposed business trips. Was he on the island? I’d say yes. But I couldn’t trace anything concrete for that date. When he came back, we made love, I told him I still hadn’t gotten my period, we had dinner, and we repeated the pregnancy test—this time without any rituals. It came out positive. Come on, remember, Alice. Did you notice anything weird when he returned? When you fucked, was it just because it was time to do it, the kind of sex you give in to because if you don’t, it will arouse too many questions, insecurities and doubts that will take up more energy than twenty minutes’ physical effort (which has a bonus included)? Was it one of those fucks? Because obviously you had fucked like that, who hasn’t? And the foreplay? And the cuddling after? And the happiness about the pregnancy? Was there some shadow of anxiety? Come on, Alice, waste your time looking for answers that will make the questions multiply; feed into your chaos. Why won’t you just keep things perfect? Everything was perfect, and that’s that. It was perfect because you made it perfect. And you could do that again. That’s it. Rest. You need rest before climbing back to the top. Alice, you were a mountain climber of love. You can reach the top whenever you want. Go up, not down.
I returned the photo to my wallet, and instead of the wanted poster, I made this one:
Private classes at your home.
Painting and visual art.
For all ages.
Individual or group lessons.
Discover your artistic side.
Reasonable prices. First class free.
ALICE
48 Shelter Road
email: paintingwithalice@gmail.com
I didn’t need it. The money, I mean. At least not for now. All I wanted was to get into their homes. Everyone’s. And go through their private dirty laundry. Because the really important things happen behind closed doors. Anyway, I was up for it. The school year had started, and I had the itch. I felt a kind of inner resentment every time I dropped Olivia off at the hydroplane.
I printed a hundred copies. I went from one establishment to the next. I asked permission nicely; they always gave it. I put notices in windows or on doors, and I left some loose ones on the counters, at the same time checking out possible homes for the Master Key—that was the only tangible thing I had to hold on to—while I gathered information, useful facts about the owners, their families, their respective occupations.
Dime Bank. Conrad, the manager. Single or divorced, still to be determined. A bulldog, overweight and struggling to breathe. I opened a checking account, paid for a safe deposit box—the key didn’t look anything like the Master Key—and chatted amiably with Conrad, asking if the children in the photo were his, and he said, “No, they were his nieces and nephews.” I tried various ways to seduce him to find out if Chris had an account there and left asking myself what happens to the money in a checking account if you die.
Le Café. Mindy Bishop. Married to Matt Bishop, owner of Bishop Oysters. I had an espresso and bought ground coffee from Colombia.
Post office. Lina. Her husband, Martin, maintained the water tower. I rented a PO Box, and wondered whether Chris could have had one. Why would he? The Master Key didn’t fit in any of those boxes either.
Grocery store. Cung and Michelle Nguyen. They have fifteen-year-old twins, Leyna and Han. I bought dark chocolate to fend off the anxiety, fruit and vegetables to compensate, and a big bowl of Ca Kho To, a Vietnamese soup of caramelized fish slow roasted in a clay pot, which Michelle had made following her grandmother’s recipe.
O’Gorman Liquors. Jodie and Keevan. Children to be determined. Dog, Tootsie. I bought a bottle of Russian Valley Pinot Noir.
Burr’s Marine. Sales and rentals, leisure boats, golf carts and electric bicycles. Rodney Burr. Father of Alex, Amanda’s fiancé. The people from the proposal at the Labor Day picnic. I rented a golf cart and an electric bicycle, both for a year, though Rodney insisted it would work out better for me to buy it or rent to own. A year, Alice, whatever you don’t find out in a year, you’ll never find out. The Master Key didn’t fit in the golf cart ignition or the electric bike.
Nursery. Lorraine and Peter Southcott. Two children, fifteen and ten. A boxer dog. I bought an African violet.
Presbyterian church. Father Henry. Widower with five children. Twenty-dollar donation.
McCarthy Realty. Miriam. Daughter, Chloe. My beloved neighbor. We chatted about her ex and what a son-of-a-bitch he was while I thought about how to get my hands on her files. I needed to find out if Chris owned any properties. Absolute priority.
Police station. Chief Margaret. She asked me how I was making out and gave me her personal cell number and said not to hesitate to call if anything came up. She liked to keep busy. In part because Robin Island had an almost nonexistent crime rate, just trifling little acts of vandalism. Miriam had stressed that to me when I was considering moving to the island with the girls. Since the ferry was the only way of getting there—and it stopped running at nine at night in the summer, at eight in the spring and fall, and at seven in winter—it was like a residential neighborhood on the peninsula, but protected by the Atlantic Ocean. Chief Margaret boasted of having the most marvelously boring job in the world. Even so, she said she never let down her guard. I left thinking it was impossible that Chris’s presence on the island could have gone unnoticed.
Veterinary clinic and pet store, Family Pet Land. Frank Rush. Father of Barbara, girlfriend of Jeffrey the pilot. Owners of the horse ranch Horse Rush Farm. I bought chew toys for Pony and a guppy, which Olivia had been itching for. Why do you want a fish at home if we’re surrounded by fish? I asked her. You’ve already got a pet, Pony. And she said: Shesnotapony isn’t my pet; she’s your pet. There was no convincing her. She called the fish Flint, in honor of Captain Flint from Treasure Island.
Karen’s Petite Maison. Karen and John. Son, Rick. Cat, Dingleberry. I gave her an African violet, though I’m sure she would have preferred a bottle of white wine. I noticed the office with the computer where the record of guest registrations was stored. I’d have to find out if Chris had stayed there.
Pharmacy. Gail. Certified nursing assistant and chief of the volunteer fire department, whose brother was one of the ferry captains. I bought diapers for Ruby and met the woman who was so glamorously eating a hot dog at the Labor Day picnic and whose husband was in a coma. The one with the young, gorgeous babysitter niece who was probably already pregnant. I had a brief conversation with her. She told me her name was Jennifer, and I encouraged her to sign up for the classes, but she told me that she didn’t see herself painting, that she wouldn’t know where to find inspiration. I quoted a phrase of Edward Hopper’s: “Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist.” But it didn’t seem to have any effect.
* * *
In the meantime, I started painting an enormous mural in the attic, a cave painting. Alice, the troglodyte, painting the island on a thirteen-by-ten-foot wall, with the priceless assistance of the Street View feature on Google Maps—which only covered the main roads—and my journeys across the island, cell phone in hand, taking photos left and right, with Olivia, of course, who thought the whole thing was a game. So while she painted ships, clouds, seagulls and other things on the periphery of the island, where she didn’t interrupt my labor, I mapped out all the streets and the main points of interest: the lighthouse, the ferry, the Wampanoag Indian tribe’s totem pole with the robin on top, the beaches, Haven Creek—a little stream that bisected the island—the mill that looked straight out of a Van Gogh painting, Kissing Tree Mountain. A giant game board, where little by little I would place the pieces/houses/people who were going to battle. Me against them all. Me going after the phantom king, Chris. And his queen?
But despite the fact that the island’s dimensions were small and that by now I could close my eyes and trace out its perimeter from memory, I still found it completely unmanageable. That’s why I decided the time had come to make a list of suspects. People I could center my attention on a little more than the rest. I thought that everyone I met was hiding a secret relationship with Chris. And that couldn’t be. It made my head ache and sent me into a paranoid spiral that could never turn out well. I needed to pin everything down a bit. Write it on a chalkboard. Give it a place.
Suspect 1: Miriam, recently separated, fighting with her ex, with a one-year-old girl. Young, pretty, nice, with big boobs, which Chris loved. Did he have something to do with their separation? And that girl, Chloe, were her eyes honey-colored like his?
Suspect 2: Julia Ponsky. Depressed. Tyrannical relationship with her husband, Mark, who also travels regularly to New York. Could his trips to New York coincide with Chris’s to the island? Was her depression due to Chris’s disappearance/death?
I knew they were dicey justifications, lacking consistency, and that my reasons lacked weight. That everything was based on conjectures, not clues. And that more than suspects, they looked like rejects. That it couldn’t be something so obvious, so visible at first glance. But it’s also true that when I began writing my list of suspects on the chalkboard, my headache passed, and I felt a twinge of delight in my belly, which didn’t strike me as appropriate at all.
OCTOBER 3
GOING OUT RUNNING on the island in the mornings at the beginning of autumn was an experience as useful as it was liberating. In the beginning I never ran the same route twice, because my course was designed to help me get the lay of the land. Once I had a grip on it, I developed a pattern, choosing the most attractive route, the one that made me feel best. I always wound up in front of the lighthouse. I’d stop there, catch my breath, drink water, make sure Ruby was all right in her stroller, usually sleeping with her arms around Pony, and then head back home. At first I tried to get Pony to run with me and get a little exercise, but it was impossible. She was stubborn, and anywhere that wasn’t home or the pet store seemed hostile to her. She’d lie down flat on the ground, and good luck getting her to move an inch.
“Are you looking for the island’s emergency exit?”
Mark caught up to me from behind. His words didn’t frighten me. They were swathed in the roar of the waves and the light wind from the southwest. I was observing the pile of eroded rocks at the base of the lighthouse. A miniscule island. It had the shape of a skull. The waves and the passage of time had carefully sculpted the eye sockets, nose, jaw, cheekbones and chin. A skull from a pirate ship. Was I the only one who saw it?
“Have you noticed the rocks on the . . .”
