S
am doesn’t feel anything at first. After Mena leaves he takes two of the capsules with a glass of wine and waits. Finn is listening to music in his room. He can hear it wafting up to him in the loft. It reminds Sam of California.
Sublime,
he thinks. When he’s sure that Finn is in for the night, he starts looking for something to help things along.
He’s got no pornography here. No Internet. No magazines. He’d tried this before, a few months back when they were still in California, one night when the house was empty. He’d browsed the Internet for hours. He’d looked at tame stuff: supermodels, bikini models, even artists’ models.When that didn’t work, he’d looked at hardcore stuff too: women with other women, women with objects, women with animals (though that was the result of an accidental click of the mouse). He remembers how it made him sweat, as if he were twelve and stumbling upon one of his father’s
Playboy
s. How it made him blush. But despite his efforts, there was simply nothing. He felt nothing. He had turned the computer off finally, his skin raw from rubbing. His eyes wet.
He picks a book off the shelf.
Anaïs Nin
. The old standby. He’d found a tattered copy of
A Spy in the House of Love
at a yard sale when he was a teenager. There were many nights when he went to bed curled up with Sabina. He could remember the quiet anxiety of turning the lock on his bedroom door in case his father came checking on him. He could remember the headlights from the dirt road cutting through his room in sharp white flashes. He can almost remember the way it felt to be sixteen. Alive. And tonight, as he scans the paragraphs, he does feel something familiar. A relic of some other time. A tingle. An ache. A whisper of desire.
Desire,
his old friend. He closes his eyes and concentrates.
As he reads, his heart is pounding hard in his chest, his mind is reeling. He can’t stay focused on anything long enough. Not the words on the page, not on his own flesh in his hands. Nothing. God, this is fucking misery. It’s as if someone has flipped a switch, turned everything that was once electric inside him off. And in this awful darkness, he can’t find the breaker to restore things. He’s stumbling around without a flashlight in an unfamiliar house. Everything is treacherous.
When he hears the screen door open, he sits up, trembling. He shoves the book back on the shelf. Straightens himself up. His heart is pounding hard in his chest.
“You home?” he asks.
“Uh-huh.”
He wonders when they both started keeping secrets. He used to hate secrecy. He promised Mena early on that with him there was nothing to discover. That he would always tell her the truth. But this was before there were things that could hurt between them. Before there was a need to keep things to himself. She does it too, this concealing. It’s as if they are both constantly, constantly protecting each other from harm. Tonight, he doesn’t know where Mena has been. He doesn’t even feel like he has a right to ask. The rules are different now. Everything has changed.
He hears Mena getting ready for bed: the running of water, the brushing of teeth, all of the lights getting clicked off downstairs. He hears her feet padding down the hallway toward their room. He imagines her undressing, her skin, exposed in its entirety for a moment before she pulls her nightgown over her head. He imagines the way she used to wait for him.
He makes his way down the ladder with only a small light in the hallway to guide him. But when he crawls into bed next to her, she is already asleep. He considers waking her, thinks about giving it a shot. His body is still trilling with the pills, though he’s not sure if there’s any connection between this feeling and that other one. Besides, her body is curled away from him: a fiddlehead fern, spiraling inward. Every night she makes a protective shell of her body, at the edges of the bed, and she doesn’t unfurl until morning, and then she sneaks out of bed when she thinks he is still sleeping.
She has left the light on his side of the bed on: at least she is still considerate. He almost always reads himself to sleep these days. The book is his signal to her that he is preoccupied, otherwise engaged. Sometimes he’ll read until his eyes are crossing, falling asleep with a book across his chest.
He worries that she has finally given up on him.
He looks at her, in her pale blue nightgown, at the gentle curve of her body. He remembers tracing her edges, memorizing the slope of shoulders, waist, hips. He used to love when she slept turned away from him. It used to mean that she wanted him to press his body against hers, to feel the front of him against that glorious expanse of her back. But now it only means,
Leave me alone. This is too much for me
.
When he touches her, it feels illicit.
He remembers once as a child when his father drove him all the way to Philadelphia to the Rodin Museum. He was maybe seven, old enough to know better, but one of the sculptures had moved him so much, he couldn’t resist. He had reached out and touched the cold marble, just for a second before withdrawing his hand as if burned. The security guard scolded him, and he’d felt ashamed. He couldn’t explain that the impulse, to touch that beauty, was too strong to resist. Instead, he’d nodded, mumbled his apologies.
He touches her.
He allows his hand to follow the path her spine makes, the curvature of bone beneath fabric and skin. And when his fingers reach the place at the bottom of the trail of bones, her body reacts. Just a shiver. He could have imagined it, this response. But there it is again: a twitch of skin, a tremble. He nods and nods. She is not dead. They are not dead.
M
ena got the call from Lisa as she was making sandwiches for their picnic. Effie and Devin had offered them their rowboat when Sam mentioned that they used to go to the island on the Fourth of July. What Mena didn’t expect is that he would take them up on it. The idea of a family picnic seemed almost laughable these days. Of course, they used to take the kids out when they were younger. Have picnics. Spend the afternoon exploring. Mena would pack enormous lunches: sandwiches, homemade potato chips, individual berry cobblers made with blueberries they’d picked, a large thermos of sun tea. On the Fourth of July they would go out to the island and stay until the sun set, until the sky was exploding with lights, the air above them cracking, the shells hissing as they hit the water.
“You didn’t tell us you were a professional actress,” Lisa said.
“Oh, I’m not a professional. Not anymore.” Mena felt disappointment swelling up inside her, certain they had already cast someone else. “I let my Equity contract expire more than ten years ago.”
“I know. I checked. I hope you don’t mind. Our stage manager, Anne, saw
The Hour of Lead
recently, coincidentally, and recognized you,” Lisa said. “And so ... on that note ... we’d love to have you play May. Are you still available?”
“Yes,” Mena said, blood rushing hot to her cheeks. “Absolutely. Thank you so much.”
“I haven’t spoken to the others yet, so please don’t say anything, but we plan to offer the role of the Old Man to Hank James, Kyle Smith will play Martin, and Eddie will be played by Jake Rogers. He’s the second guy you read with. The one with the beard.”
“I remember,” Mena said. “Thank you again.”
“Rehearsals start next Tuesday. At seven o’clock. Have a terrific holiday.”
Mena finishes making the sandwiches: chicken pesto
pan-ninis
. The bread is still warm; she baked it at five o’clock this morning. She found a patch of basil growing on the side of the house, probably from a previous tenant of the cottage. She puts everything in a picnic basket: sandwiches, fresh fruit from the Quimby Farmers’ Market, and a bottle of wine. She digs around in the cupboard for paper cups. Napkins.
On the way out to the island, Sam is talkative. Finn is not.
“Remember when you used to swim the last quarter mile to the island?” Sam asks, digging the oars into the water. “You think you could still do that?”
Finn and Franny both became good swimmers. They almost always dove off the boat as they approached the island, racing each other to the shore. It made Mena nervous, but they were strong, strong swimmers. Little fish.
It’s one of those rare clear-sky days at the lake. No clouds, and the sun is almost oppressive. Mena can feel it beating on the back of her neck. She wishes she had brought a hat for shade.
“How long are we going to be out here?” Finn asks, swatting at a mosquito that has landed on his arm.
“I don’t know. Maybe three, four weeks,” Sam says. “Hope you brought a change of clothes.”
“Ha. Ha,” Finn says. “We’ll be back by tonight, right? For the fireworks?”
“You don’t want to stay? Like we used to?”
Finn shakes his head.
They glide through the water toward the island. Mena watches Sam’s thin arms, the muscles flexing and retracting as he moves the oars. He is wearing the boat shoes Mena bought him the first summer they came to Gormlaith. She spent a lot of money on them; they are still in perfect condition.
When they get to the center of the lake, Sam lifts the oars into the boat and pulls a pair of binoculars out of his backpack. He peers through them for a second. The sun is so hot.
“I think I see a pair of loons,” he says. “They’ve got a baby.”
Mena takes a deep breath. “I’m going to be in a play.”
“What’s that?” Sam asks, peering into the distance at the three loons.
“A play.
Fool for Love.
The Quimby Players are putting on a production of it. I’m going to be May. That’s where I was the other night. I didn’t want to tell you about the audition in case I didn’t get the part. But I did.” Mena feels nervous. “Get the part.”
Sam is quiet. He puts the binoculars back in the bag and picks up the oars. They creak in the oarlocks.
“Sam?”
“Huh?”
“What do you think?” she asks. “You know how much I’ve always wanted to do this show,” Mena says, feeling defensive, already defeated.
“That’s great,” Sam says, but she knows what he’s going to say next before he says it. “So I guess you’ll be gone a lot now. Most nights?”
“Well, rehearsals are four nights a week. And Saturday afternoons.”
Sam nods, keeps rowing.
Mena feels herself getting angry.
“I’ll make sure that there’s still dinner every night, if that’s what you’re worried about,” she says. “You’re up in the loft doing whatever it is you’re doing every night anyway.”
“Writing,” Sam says. “I’m up there writing.”
“Sure,” she says. Her eyes sting.
Mena looks at Finn. He is staring down into the water. He dips his hand in, watches the light catching in his fingers when he pulls it back out. He is quiet. But still, Mena can’t stop. “It’s not like I’m
abandoning
you two. I’m alone in the house at night anyway. Finn’s locked in his room or off God knows where. And you’re, you’re ...” She sighs.
“So, basically you’re checking out,” Finn says quietly.
“What?” she asks, feeling her heart pounding in her throat.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“
What,
Finn?” she asks.
“This was a stupid idea,” he says.
“
I’m
checking out? Christ.
Fine
. Just forget it. I won’t do it. I’ll stay home.” It’s too late, she’s ruined everything. This happens all the time lately. She goes too far. When did she lose control of her words?
On the island, Mena gets out of the boat, almost tripping on a slippery rock. She slams the picnic basket down and stomps off. She’s not hungry anymore. While Sam and Finn devour the meal, she walks as far away from them as she can get. But it’s an island. She’s surrounded by water, stuck here with them. And she realizes this is what she’s been feeling for a long time. Like she’s stuck on some terrible island. Deserted but not alone. And one of these days one of them is going to try to swim away. She just hadn’t planned before that it might be her. Maybe Finn was right. But so what if he was?
This island is completely undeveloped, too small for a house, too remote for visitors. The island used to be nameless but in recent years it was named after a dead child. A stillborn baby that belonged to someone who spent their summers at Gormlaith. The decision to give the island the baby’s name was unanimous; the Vermont Board of Libraries accepted their petition without hesitation. As she wanders through the brush, the brambles scratching her bare legs, her face, her hands, she starts to cry. She wants to feel sympathy for that family, for their loss, but now she only feels anger. They stole the island. They named it. Made it their own. The island’s namesake never breathed this air. Never stepped foot on this grass. Never swam off this island’s shore. Franny. This was always Franny’s island. And Franny lived here, still lives here.
Mena finds a willow tree that has been split down the middle (a lightning strike most likely) and sits down next to it. And she lets herself, just for a moment, remember. Franny. Another Fourth of July, before:
“Mommy,” Franny said, holding out the sparkler to her. It crackled and sparked, the light illuminating Franny’s face. “Make a wish.”
“It’s not my birthday, honey,” she said.
“No, but it’s America’s birthday. Make a wish for America.” Her eyes were as blue and as wide as water. She was seven years old.
Mena closed her eyes, concentrated, and then made a wish. But she was selfish. The wish was not for America at all, but for herself:
keep them safe
.
Today, they stay on the island for only an hour or so. Finn and Sam are both pouting when she finds them sitting among the wreckage of her carefully prepared picnic.
“Let’s just go home,” Sam says finally, looking defeated.
“It’s not home,” mumbles Finn.
Mena sweeps the debris into a plastic bag, and they all climb back into the boat again. No one says a word the entire way back to the cabin. When they get back, she considers calling Lisa and telling her that she can’t take the part. She even dials the number, which she has scratched on a piece of paper. But then when Finn slams the front door and Sam disappears up the ladder to the loft, she puts the phone back on the cradle. She needs this.