Birdlane Island, page 1
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PROLOGUE
I never thought much about the geese that flew over Birdlane Island. The sound of them seemed to rise from the earth and climb to the sky. Usually I would look up and turn to watch them flying until they disappeared, but I never made more of it than what Daddy had told me in his quick, matter-of-fact manner: winter was coming to Maine, and the geese were heading south. They usually did their fall migration in September and October.
This year was a little warmer than usual, and they flew over Birdlane Island closer to November. I always wondered what it would be like feeling as free as a bird, unafraid of leaving the island—or any land, for that matter. Watching them turn and glide filled me with such longing. I had reasons to feel restricted, entrapped.
But besides all that, I thought having a bird’s-eye view of us was an exciting image. How could I come close to having that? I wondered. And then one morning I remembered that there was a place that could give anyone an idea of what it was like for the birds.
Even though I was forbidden from going there by myself, I was determined to venture to the high cliff on Birdlane to watch the geese disappear off to my right this year. The south loomed as a mysterious place that just had to be filled with birds. I imagined that if they all flew at the same time during the day, it would look like night. I didn’t just want to look up at them today; I wanted to look at them, look to see if I could see the world through their eyes and, for a moment at least, feel the wonder they did. The only possible place from which to do that was the high cliff.
The cliff was known to the islanders as the Birdlane Crow’s Nest, the highest point, because from there you could see all around the island. You could see the ocean all the way to the horizon. Big ships like the one Mommy had worked on slid along as if the sky was a wall of ice. I often imagined myself to be right beside her, the wind blowing through our hair, the sea embracing us.
I don’t know why it suddenly became so important for me to go see the geese this particular morning, but it was one of the first things I thought about when I woke up. I had celebrated my tenth birthday on the last day of May, and although it was months ago, I was still enjoying the fuss, especially the fuss Grandfather had made over me.
Every birthday for me was a milestone. I tried to ignore the reason and do my best not to answer any questions about it. No one outside of my family talked very much about it, except maybe Aunt Frances, Daddy’s younger sister, who was a private-duty nurse. She always seemed to dwell on sad or troubling news. I didn’t believe that was natural for a nurse who saw so many people suffering from one thing or another. I had met many nurses who were completely the opposite of Aunt Frances. Fortunately for me, she worked mainly in Bar Harbor and lived there.
Actually, she no longer had close friends here. Whenever she was here and brought up my health issue, Daddy would rage at her. Supposedly, they were twins, but I didn’t see a close resemblance, maybe because she had always been so much thinner, with big, beady black eyes. Arguing was almost ninety percent of their conversation. Once, he asked her to leave our house. That happened shortly before my birthday, and when my birthday came, maybe fortunately, she was on an assignment, nursing a wealthy elderly lady who lived just outside Bar Harbor, so she couldn’t attend. She would surely have said something to infuriate or annoy my mother and ruin my party.
We had a barbecue, and many of our neighbors had been invited. With several of Grandfather’s and Daddy’s important employees and their wives in attendance, I had never heard “Happy Birthday” sung so loudly. It was truly as if we were shouting down fate because of what I had learned about myself. Mommy’s face was a full moon of happiness. Daddy, who disliked showing his emotions, at least looked very satisfied. I thought the laughter and the music still hung over our house.
I particularly recalled how Grandfather Charlie laughed and pinched my cheek. He wanted me to sit on his lap even at the age of ten. He had bought me the most expensive present, a beautiful new bedroom set he and Mommy had secretly chosen. Maybe Daddy was told, but he acted like he thought it was too expensive. And then he said, “She had a perfectly adequate bedroom set.”
Grandfather scowled and said, “Which was why I bought it. She deserves more than simply adequate.”
Daddy quickly retreated. Sometimes I thought our family was like a cobweb of nasty comments. You could ignore them or stay stuck to them all day.
That one comment about my bedroom was the only unpleasant moment at my party, but Mommy and I were used to Grandfather and Daddy bickering. Mommy said Daddy resented Grandfather for making him work his way from the bottom up in the business. We couldn’t blame any of that on Grandmother Harriet’s having died six years before I was born. She’d had an unexpected heart attack. But according to Mommy, Daddy and his father had always argued. With Daddy’s sister, Aunt Frances, also having nasty chats with her father and Daddy, it did sound like an unpleasant family world.
This morning I didn’t want to think about any of that, and anyway, the geese suddenly pushed aside my birthday memories. I had heard them calling to me in my dreams. Dreams were as hard as geese to capture and hold. Sometimes I was sorry I had awoken; I wanted to stay in my dream. Perhaps that was what I was doing that particular morning, trying to stay in my dream.
“Where are you going, Lisa?” Jamie Fuller asked when I burst out of our house as if the wind was behind me and lifting me down the few short concrete steps at our entryway, which was the only one in our neighborhood that had a distinctive dark-oak oval door. It closed so softly that Mommy often thought it was still open.
Right now, Daddy was at work and Mommy was busy with our company’s business paperwork. Grandfather had hired her to assist with the business accounting. She had agreed as long as she could work from home. Daddy told her, “He hired you to keep an eye on me.” She didn’t disagree.
As always, I shouted to her that I was going out, and, as always, she replied with “Don’t go far.”
Everyone my age was annoyed with all the warnings and restrictions the adults threw at us. I often felt as if there was an invisible leash and collar on my neck. I know it made me angry and defiant, but always a little afraid, too. Today I was not going to be.
Jamie stood absolutely still, waiting for my answer.
“I want to go to the Birdlane Crow’s Nest to wait for the geese,” I told him. “They’re going to fly over soon. You can see them so much better there.”
He looked toward our house. He was surprised because going to the top of the Birdlane Crow’s Nest was somewhat of a dangerous thing to do, especially alone, even if you were older, very strong, and one hundred percent healthy.
“Your parents know?”
“Not exactly. Daddy is at work, and my mother is busy. I just said I was going out. She said okay.”
I didn’t like lying to Jamie and told myself that, technically, I wasn’t. But I hadn’t added that she had said not to go far. All mothers say that, I thought. It was what he’d think, too. In fact, what drew me to Jamie was the way he could voice what I was thinking or feeling. Sometimes it was like he could crawl inside me and see the world as I saw it.
“Oh. Okay,” he said.
The foot of the cliff was nearly a mile west. I had wanted to go there many times, but Daddy, especially, told me, “You can’t do those sorts of things. I don’t need any extra problems right now.”
He never did. When Mommy advised me against doing strenuous things, I could feel her love and concern; when Daddy did, I always felt he was worrying more about himself and how I could put an extra burden on him. Mommy was soft and gentle with her restrictions. With Daddy, it felt more like doors being slammed shut in my face. Mommy never let me feel like any sort of extra weight on our family.
“That’s a steep climb, you know,” Jamie said. He suddenly sounded more like my father.
“So? Don’t make me afraid, Jamie Fuller.”
I squinted at him with as much fire in my eyes as I could manage. He knew that when I was determined to do something, I would do it.
“Okay,” he said. “But just wait a minute. I’m not letting you go by yourself.”
I smiled to myself. I knew he would say that, but even so, I loved hearing it, hearing how much he cared for me and about me.
He was tightening the chain on his bicycle. He was always good at fixing things. His mother had told my mother that Jamie was born with a wrench in his hand. When I was five, I believed it. Jamie was nearly a year older than me and lived with his parents only three houses away from ours on Slope Street. I can’t remember the exact day we began to do things together, but I do recall that Mommy was much happier about it than Daddy, who kept threatening to build a larger house closer to the sea “so that people recognize we’ve risen above being an ordinary fisherman’s family.”
“Why? To compete with your father and live in a mansion, too? You can be such a snob sometimes, Melville.” Mommy called him a snob so often, I began to think of it as his first name.
Jamie’s father owned three lobster-fishing boats but was still ent
Daddy didn’t like to be called that even though he had grown up here. He was proud of our family business, despite his complaining that his father didn’t give him the authority he deserved. He often complained about not getting enough recognition from Baxter employees. Maybe he really did think we should be treated like royalty. I know he wanted to look very wealthy and tried to have only very wealthy friends.
“We should be sendin’ Lisa to the Montessori School in Bar Harbor,” I had just heard him say yesterday. “We have more in common with those parents, and she will certainly have more in common with those children than the children of people on the fringes of poverty.”
“You were once one of those children,” Mommy reminded him. “The son of a lobster fisherman.”
“But I’m not now.”
“Thanks to your father,” Mommy muttered loud enough to be heard.
“Even so, nothin’ wrong with bein’ proud and livin’ like it.”
“We’re not sending her to the mainland school,” Mommy had insisted. We often called Bar Harbor “the mainland” because you had to cross Frenchman Bay to get there. After a moment, she had firmly added, “You know why we can’t do that.”
They were both silent, so I imagined Daddy had walked away; however, Mommy had realized that I had overheard them arguing about my being sent to a “proper” school. She saw me outside the living room door, practically crouching in a corner.
“Don’t pay any attention to your father’s bluster,” she had told me. She hugged me without saying another word. Later that day, when I told Jamie what Daddy had wanted, he looked upset.
“You’re no mainland kid,” he had said. He said that from time to time as if he was afraid I would want to be.
As the years went by, Jamie spent more time with me than he did with other kids in his class, especially the boys. I knew that they often mocked him about it. Rarely did he react. He would simply shrug and walk off, come over to join me, just as he did that day I had decided to go to the high cliff to watch for the geese like some barrelman in a crow’s nest.
Our parents wouldn’t be happy we had climbed our way up there. There was practically a natural stairway of grooves that had formed since the Ice Age. That was what Jamie said. He knew lots more about Birdlane than I did. He told me that archaeologists had found the remains of stone and bone tools in Frenchman Bay, some of which went back thousands of years and lots of which were exhibited in the Abbe Museum in downtown Bar Harbor. Most of it was from the Native people in Maine, the Wabanaki. I hadn’t been there yet, but Jamie had. Even though it took only ten minutes to cross the bay, Mommy had always wanted me close to home when I was very young.
If Daddy tried to take me along on one of his business trips, she would say no. “You won’t keep your eyes on her, Melville Howard Baxter.” His close friends, most of them business associates, called him Mel, but Mommy never did.
Of course, now I knew what she meant and why she was so firm about her decisions concerning me, as firm as the legs of an old pier planted hundreds of years ago in the bay. But back then I thought she was being a little unfair to Daddy. And to me!
Jamie periodically looked back as we walked toward the cliff. I was sure he was worried that we’d be seen and maybe he would be blamed. His parents would be just as mad about it as mine would be. I felt a little guilty about having him go with me. I wouldn’t want to hurt Jamie even accidentally. We walked on, him checking every once in a while to see if I really wanted to do it. But I didn’t hesitate, not even for a moment.
The grooved steps were narrow, and there was nothing to hold on to if you got dizzy or stumbled. Even older boys had fallen, the most famous one being Gibson Carper, who fell halfway down and broke his neck. He was nearly fifteen. But that was nearly twenty years ago and more like an old wives’ tale to me.
Once we reached the top of the cliff, Jamie and I sat on a small flat area not far from the edge and waited. All those high bluffs we saw would lovingly shield the house on the island that was, curiously enough, shaped like a bird in flight. Winter’s breath was already in the air. The surf roared more loudly with the waves splashing higher on the rocks, some of them so washed they glistened like jewels. Many were jagged and looked dangerous. Sometimes the sea looked angry, but most of the time it looked inviting, beckoning. Walking on the beach and being dazzled by the leaping spray was always exciting.
Jamie and I sat closer, enjoying the aura of warmth around our young bodies. My hair danced around my head, and as he gazed at the sky spotted with long, thin clouds that looked like they had been spread over the darkening azure with a butter knife, he squinted; his eyes were an amber color with a copper tint to them. Of course I didn’t know everyone’s eye color, but Mommy once said that Jamie’s eyes were the only eyes that shade on the island. Maybe there were only a few more like his in the whole state of Maine.
I didn’t pay as much attention to other boys’ faces as I did to Jamie’s. His smile always began in his eyes and rippled down to his lips the way the seawater at high tide ventured over the rocks at the shore and, like tiny fingers, tried to touch shiny stones farther and farther inland.
Sure enough, this morning, as my dream had told me, the geese appeared. At first they were nothing more than a smudge against the sky, a shifting shape that looked like a fast-moving cloud approaching; they were that close together. At this height we could see their eyes, steadily focused on where they were going. With the distinct black markings on their necks giving them an air of quiet authority, they flew in a sharp V, each bird following the last without hesitation. Their feathers gleamed, and their pale underbellies caught the light as they passed overhead. They were Canada geese, travelers of great distances. As they soared, I watched their wings, broad and sturdy, lift them higher, and their eyes seemed to hold quiet determination. Mommy had told me that they could sleep with one eye open and one eye shut, watching for predators. Their eyelids shut from bottom to top, so it was easy to think they didn’t have eyelids at all.
I used to try to sleep with one eye open but couldn’t do it for more than a minute, if that.
“How do they know winter’s coming?” I asked Jamie, who wore a small smile of wonder at how accurately I had predicted their coming, his lips just barely softening.
He brushed his hair back and turned a little to get a better view. He was already fighting with his father, who thought his dark brown hair was too long. There were only a handful of boys in our school who defied their Birdlane parents to wear their hair anywhere near as long as he did, even seniors. They wanted to be more like boys on the mainland who modeled themselves after rock stars.
Jamie said his father had told him the geese had a built-in thermometer. Of course I knew that wasn’t exactly true.
What really interested me was wondering what would happen if any one goose didn’t go with the flock.
“He’d hafta go,” Jamie said as they disappeared off to our right.
“Why? ’Cause he’d freeze?”
“No,” he said, “because he’d be lonely.”
“Lonely,” I repeated, and looked at them all disappearing, fixed on the horizon toward the south. Their flight was accompanied by a melodic chorus of honks among them. How sad that made me feel. I knew there were tears in my eyes from the imagined vision of one goose losing the flock and drifting in the wind.
Loneliness.
In the end, that made the most sense. It was really why you did most things: to avoid being alone and having your own echoing voice be the only voice you heard.
After which there would be the silence or the emptiness of your own thoughts searching fruitlessly for someone to hear them.
And that was when you were most afraid.
So I knew that I always would smile at the geese honking together, refusing to remain in the wrong season at the wrong time.
