The Islanders (20 page)

Zoey smiled at Nina, still holding her hand. “Don't worry so much. It's Benjamin. Which, by the way, has advantages. You don't have to worry about long, lingering looks deep into each other's eyes. Also, you can go the whole night with a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth without him ever noticing.”

“Yeah.”

“It will all be fine. You won't panic and you won't hurl.”

“It's not like I don't feel all those romantic kind of things,” Nina said in a dreamy, reflective voice. “I do. I mean, you know, all those things you feel about guys.”

“Yes, I know those things,” Zoey said dryly. She thought back to the first time she had kissed Lucas. And the most recent time. She sighed.

“Mmm. Um, Zoey?”

“Yes?”

“We're still holding hands. I mean, I like you and all, but . . .”

 

Good TV shows for a blind person are, first of all, talk shows. Obviously. They're mostly
conservation
conversation and not much reliance on visuals. Also, comedy of any kind except juggling.

Nature shows, documentaries, anything on the Discovery Channel, you can forget. Ten minutes at a time of the sounds of wind whistling across the savannah and then the narrator comes on and says, “The lion pride has moved off through the trees,” followed by another ten minutes of wind sounds.

By the same token, there are people who are good for blind people and others
hwo
who aren't. What you want are people who talk, and when they talk they have something to say. Generally, girls are better at expressing themselves in words, and so I've tended to have more female friends than male.

Convenient, huh?

Take Lucas. I like him, but the guy doesn't have a lot to say most of the time. Jake is even worse. He could be in the room for an hour and I wouldn't know it unless he
farted or cleared his throat or something. Whereas when my sister's around, she usually has something to say and she says it well. She'll make a good writer someday
because
because when you ask her to describe something, she can make it come alive.

Her friend Aisha is the exception to the rule about girls. Very internalized, which may be great for her, but makes her almost invisible to me at times.

Now, Nina, as my father would say in one of his flashback-to-the-seventies moments, is a trip. Listening to Nina is almost like hearing a performance of some sort. She has fun with words. Her own, mine, anyone's. It's one of the reasons I love to have her read to me. She doesn't just read; she interprets. She sort of
acts
the book, although I don't think she's even aware of it.

Then there's Claire. Not a very talkative person, really. She only makes small talk to be polite. Claire keeps her secrets, and the biggest secret she keeps is her real self. Why I was ever interested in her to begin with, I
coulnd't
couldn't say. Maybe
because
she was so withdrawn. I couldn't look into her eyes, or read her expression, or interpret her body language. I could only listen to her words and from those few clues try to understand a girl
who did not want to be understood.

Later, though, there was touch. And not even Claire can conceal the meaning of a racing pulse, a tremor, a soft yielding, a sudden sharp intake of breath.

ON TUESDAY NIGHT CHRISTOPHER LEFT
Passmores', the restaurant owned by Zoey's parents, at eleven twenty-five, after sending out the last late order, changing the fat in the deep fryers, stoning the grill, finishing up the dishwashing, prepping pancake batter for the morning shift, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, mopping out the walk-in, turning off the lights, and locking the doors.

He rode his bike to his apartment, watched the Top Ten list on
Letterman
, and fell asleep just before midnight, the remote control still in his hand.

Three hours later, his alarm went off. He made a cup of coffee, spooned up a bowl of Grape-Nuts, showered, dressed, and was on his bike, heading toward the ferry landing by three twenty-five
A.M
.

The bundled newspapers from Weymouth, Portland, and Boston, and of course the
Wall Street Journal
, lay wrapped in heavy plastic on the dock. It was still pitch-black out, and he
was the only person awake in North Harbor or any other part of Chatham Island. It was cold enough to make his breath steam, and his hands had grown numb during the brief bike trip. Tomorrow he would have to remember gloves. And when it got really cold in the hard winter months, well, he had no idea what he'd do. He'd probably have to buy an island car.

He divided the newspapers. The heavy
Boston Globe
s in his backpack, the other papers apportioned in the two saddlebags.

He rode the easy parts of the route first, following level, smoothly paved Lighthouse Road, throwing a rubber-banded
Portland Press-Herald
here, a
Weymouth Times
there. Claire and Nina's house, dark and silent, got all four. Mr. Geiger liked plenty to read on his morning ferry ride to work.

Gradually the load grew lighter, and Christopher took on the teeth-rattling cobblestoned streets and the steep slopes that circled the base of the hill.

The two-thirds point in his route was Aisha's home. It was up a backbreaking hill, winding to the top of the ridge. He always paused and rested after reaching it. He deposited their two newspapers and rested his bike against the fence.

He had never been in Aisha's room, but he thought he knew where it was from her casual descriptions. It was around the right and toward the back.

Feeling a little foolish, he walked through the garden across
frosted pine needles that crunched like cornflakes and located her two windows. He was disappointed to see that there was no light from inside. He would have loved to have looked at her. He had this fantasy that someday she would start setting her alarm for this time of morning. She would welcome him through her window and into her warm bed. Then he would go on with his route and she would go back to sleep, both of them happy and satisfied.

“Not likely,” he muttered under his breath.

He headed back to his bike and finished the outer reaches of his route, the long easy coast back down the hill, the big, extended circle going down along the eastern shore around Big Bite Pond, then back to his apartment on the western shore.

By five he was done. He parked his bike and fell into his bed facedown.

He slept until seven, got up, biked to an empty house on Coast Road where he was installing storm shutters, worked till nine, rode to the ferry landing, and caught the water taxi over to Weymouth. The water taxi was free to him for the season, in exchange for work he had done during the summer, scraping and repainting the boat. On the trip over he caught fifteen minutes' sleep hunched over on the bench.

He arrived at Weymouth High just before ten and immediately began organizing the sports equipment room, cleaning
balls, replacing torn basketball nets, and running equipment out to the field for the boys' and girls' gym classes.

On good days, this was his easy job, affording him ten minutes of sleep here, fifteen minutes there, crashed out on a soft pile of gym mats between classes.

He was scheduled to cook that night, and at the end of the workday at school he would catch the next ferry or water taxi and start setting up the kitchen for his shift.

He usually had one or two evenings a week free, but this wasn't one of them.

Not counting the work he did around the apartment building in exchange for reduced rent, he averaged seventy-five hours a week of work, earning a total take-home income of about four hundred dollars a week. So far he had saved nearly three thousand dollars. By the end of next summer he would have the tuition, room, and board for his first year of college.

Then, with hard studying and a clean academic record, he could go for student loans and grants and even a scholarship. He would have to overcome a weak high school record to make it into a good college. Without anyone's help. Without relying on anyone but himself.

It was a hard life, and he was entitled, he felt, to a little comfort where and when he could get it. Something Aisha just didn't seem to understand. He wasn't trying to pressure Aisha
into it because the truth was, someday, way down the road, he could see the two of them together. Married, maybe. It was possible.

But what was not possible was that monogamy would start now. Especially a celibate monogamy. The pursuit of his goals already denied him any kind of life, and that was all the self-denial he could take.

Right now, living this life, he felt he needed more than promises of someday, someday. . . .

Nina finished telling her story and looked as boldly as she could manage at the psychiatrist. Dr. Kendall nodded several times and looked at her thoughtfully.

“And what is being done now about your uncle?”

Nina shrugged. “My dad has his lawyer talking to a lawyer in Minnesota about talking to the prosecutor there. Legal stuff. My dad said we might not know anything definite for quite a while.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“Claire warned me you liked to ask that question.”

Dr. Kendall smiled. “How is Claire? She's stopped coming.”

“Well, you know Claire. Actually, you
do
know Claire. Nothing gets my sister down for long. She always copes. But then, who am I to tell you this, right?”

“Actually, that's pretty close to my own feelings about Claire. Considering the death of your mother and the events of the accident and all that followed . . .” She raised her eyebrows philosophically. “She's a very adaptive person.”

“How about me? Will I be needing shock therapy? I hear it's kind of a fun high.”

Dr. Kendall looked alarmed, then laughed uneasily. “No, I don't think electroconvulsive therapy is necessary, Nina. I think maybe just weekly sessions for a while.”

“The truth is, I feel fine. I mean, actually, I feel better than I usually do. If anything, I've been kind of up, you know? People keep coming over to me all droopy-eyed, asking me how I'm doing, and half the time I forget what they're talking about. Then it's like, oh yeah,
that.
I was hoping to be able to tell them all I was getting shock therapy, then kind of give a little spaz.” She demonstrated, jerking her neck to one side and twisting her mouth. “I guess I could still
tell
them I was getting the juice.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

Nina smiled. “My
other
therapist is an expert in getting people to drop the pity routine. He's blind.”

“The same boy your sister was seeing?”

“Benjamin, right. There aren't a lot of blind guys around in school, just him. When he went blind, he started making a thing of it, you know? Like in his room he has posters up on the
walls, only half of them are upside down. When people come over for the first time, he'll talk about how proud he is of this great art print and it will be like a map of Poland or something. Some people are very slow to get the joke, or else they'll play along because they think he'll have a breakdown if they tell him the truth.”

“I see. He makes a joke out of his blindness.”

“Yeah, but it's
his
joke. No one can make fun of him because whatever they're going to say, Benjamin's already said it better and funnier.” Nina smiled and for a moment almost forgot where she was. “He's basically the coolest human being I know. His parents pay me to read to him sometimes and he's just so . . . I don't know. He's just very, very cool.”

“Is there some romantic interest here?”

Nina snapped back to reality. The word
romantic
surprised her. “We're going out on a date this weekend,” she admitted.

“Do you feel comfortable going out on a date so soon after what's happened?”

Nina nodded. “With Benjamin, sure. It's not like he's going to try and drag me off to a Motel 6.”

“He's someone you can trust.”

“Yes,” Nina said softly. “I trust Benjamin.”

“And your sister?”

“No, I don't trust her at all,” Nina said quickly, although
what the shrink meant was obvious.

“I meant to say is this a comfortable thing between you and Claire, that you're going out with her former boyfriend?”

“He told me he's still kind of in love with her,” Nina admitted. “Of course, so are half the guys in school.”

Dr. Kendall glanced at her watch. “Our hour is about up, Nina. I think we've had a very productive first session. I want to leave you with one thing to bear in mind—you may be a little vulnerable right now. Incest and molestation are not minor events. You won't be able to just put them behind you as easily as you'd like.”

Nina nodded.

“In the meantime, go slow with this boy Benjamin, okay? Give yourself some time to adjust to normal relationships with members of the opposite sex.”

“I've given myself sixteen years, so far,” Nina said.

“Mmm. Don't be in a hurry. But have fun.”

“Okay.” Nina stood up and stretched up on her toes. She rarely sat still for this long. “So, before I go, just tell me one thing. When they do the shock treatment, do they stick something in your mouth so you don't bite your tongue off?”

ZOEY'S MOTHER HAD SPENT THE
afternoon at the oral surgeon having a molar removed. She was high on codeine and not in a condition to work. Mrs. Toombs, who worked as a waitress, was in Lewiston visiting her son and her daughter-in-law. Christopher was cooking, which left Zoey to handle the restaurant for the night, waiting on any tables and tending the bar.

Her father had asked whether she could handle it so he could stay home with her mother. Zoey had said yes, she could handle it as long as she got bartender pay, which was higher than waiter pay.

To Zoey's annoyance, there was a strong early dinner rush that had her running like a rat in a maze from dining room to bar to kitchen and around again. But by eight it had calmed down considerably. In fact, there was just one table occupied and some regulars at the bar who wouldn't mind pouring their own drinks if Zoey wasn't handy.

She pushed open the kitchen door, tore the top slip off the ticket, and slapped it down on the stainless steel counter that
separated her from Christopher.

“Ordering,” she said.

“You got much more out there, Zo?” Christopher asked, reading the ticket. His hands began to move automatically, pulling a metal plate of fish from the reach-in, bending over to get a steak and tossing it casually onto the grill, checking to see if he had sufficient baked potatoes. “I'll give 'em two small lobsters, okay? All I have left are small.”

“They won't mind that,” Zoey said wearily. “This will probably be the last table unless we're just cursed. Thanks for coming out there and busing those tables. You didn't have to do that, although if you hadn't, I'd be dead by now.”

“No prob.”

Zoey slid up onto the counter, grateful for the opportunity to take the load off her feet for a moment. She picked at a run in her panty hose. “It's times like this I wished I smoked or drank or something. Some little ritual so I would know I was taking a break.”

Christopher checked the steak, glanced at the fish, and began methodically garnishing the plates. “So, Zoey. What has Aisha told you?” He kept his eyes down on his work, trying to look uninterested.

Zoey shrugged. “She mentioned you were more or less broken up.”

“More or less? She said more or less?”

“Actually, closer to
more.
But I don't think I should be talking to you about this. Aisha's my friend.”

“And I'm not?” He smiled winningly.

“You're my friend, too,” Zoey said quickly, wishing she could just avoid this. She was sure to end up pissing off either Christopher or Aisha. Or maybe both of them. “It's a girl thing.”

“Yeah, well, you know, I'm crazy about Aisha. I wish we could work something out.” He was back to concentrating on his work. He moved away to turn the steak and poke at the lobsters. “I mean, I don't want it to end like this. It wasn't my idea.”

Zoey started to say something, then stopped herself. Then she said it anyway. “Wasn't there some other girl?”

He shrugged. “That didn't mean anything.”

“Then why was she in your room if she didn't mean anything?” Zoey demanded in exasperation.

He shrugged again. “She was hot-looking.”

“Well, then, I guess you were totally helpless. What could you do if she was hot-looking?”

“I never told Aisha it was a strict one-on-one thing,” Christopher pointed out.

“You never told her it wasn't, either. You should have figured out she'd be hurt.”

Christopher winced. “That's just about exactly what your boyfriend told me.”

“Lucas?”

“Do you have another?”

“Lucas knew you were seeing this other girl?” Zoey asked.

Christopher made a face. “Oh. Suddenly I have the feeling I should have kept my mouth shut.”

Lucas knew? And he hadn't told
her
? He'd let Aisha walk into that scene and be humiliated? In a flash she remembered the way Lucas had sort of done a double take the day Aisha had shown up on the verge of tears and mentioned another girl. Part of her was relieved. She'd wondered if Lucas was reacting out of some personal guilt.

“It was a guy thing,” Christopher explained helpfully.

“I'd better go check on the dining room,” Zoey said, hopping down from the counter.

“Great, now Lucas will be pissed at me, too.”

“I won't tell him you told me,” Zoey promised.

“Look, Zo, what I really wanted to ask was whether maybe you could talk to Aisha. You know, see if there's any way we can maybe get past this.” He shook his head ruefully. “I miss her. I'd appreciate it if you'd tell her that for me. That's all, just tell her I miss her.”

“Okay. Scenario one,” Nina said. She was in her room, lying on her bed, feet propped on the wall, staring up at a poster of the Black Keys. Her laptop was playing a One Republic song, just loudly enough that no one would be able to hear her talking to herself.

“It's Saturday night, we're supposed to meet at the ferry, he decides not to show up. There I am, standing around with Zoey and Lucas and Jake and Eesh. And Claire, who laughs and says, ‘What did you expect? Like Benjamin would want to go out with you?'”

Nina considered the scenario for a moment. Not so bad, really. A little humiliating, but she could get over it and the real pressure would be off.

“Okay. Something better. Scenario two. Um, we go to the dance, we walk in together, the music stops, everyone stops talking and stares at us. Then they start laughing.”

The humiliation level would be much higher because it would involve a lot more people. And they would all be thinking
Oh, look, Nina's pretending to like guys. Isn't Benjamin sweet to play along with her
?

Still, as unpleasant as that was, it wasn't getting to what really scared her.

“Scenario three. And you'll like this one, Dan,” she told the
poster. “We go to the dance, and then we have to slow dance, he puts his arms around me, and boom, flashback time. All the feelings start and I panic. I run screaming from the room while waves of laughter mixed with pity pursue me. Yeah, that's more like it.”

Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to completely dismiss the scenario. In the recesses of her mind, a male's touch, any male, meant only one thing. She'd been eleven years old when her uncle had begun two months of almost nightly abuse. Old enough to know what was going on. Old enough to form detailed, precise, lurid memories full of his touch and the sound of his voice. Memories of shame and self-loathing, of wishing she were dead, of wishing she were horribly disfigured so that he wouldn't want her anymore. Memories that haunted her sleep and came boiling up to the surface whenever she felt sexually threatened. And a threat could be something very innocuous. At those times she felt like some timid wild creature like a deer, easily startled, ready to run from anything in blind panic.

Once a guy, a perfectly nice guy, had tried to kiss her, and she'd nearly thrown up. It was one of the events that had people believing she was gay. Or else wondering if she really was as crazy as she sometimes pretended to be.

“Scenario four. The dreaded kiss. We've danced, we've joked around, we've done whatever, and now he wants to kiss
me. Or else he really doesn't want to but he figures it's the polite thing to do after the date. He leans close, and it's suddenly like I'm back
there
.”

The image alone was deeply disturbing. It was a strange, churning mix of conflicting feelings. Part of her wanted Benjamin to kiss her. Really, really wanted. But another part of her grew sick at the thought of a man's mouth pressed against her own. Of a man's hands on her body.

“Stop it!” Nina cried. She rolled over and off the bed. She went to the laptop and turned the music off. Then she sat down in a chair and leaned forward, keeping her head between her knees to fight off the wave of nausea.

This was how she would behave on Saturday night. She could feel it. She could see the moment as if it had already happened. It would be the end. Not even Benjamin was that tolerant or patient. No guy ever would be.

Zoey was out of the restaurant by ten, leaving it to Christopher to close up for the night. She left carrying the zippered plastic deposit bag with the night's receipts. There was a tiny bank branch on the circle, installed there by Mr. Geiger as a convenience for his fellow Chatham Islanders.

The cobblestoned streets were deserted and dark, even at this relatively early hour. The only nightlife the island had was
in the two restaurants, her parents' and Topsider's, which was just closing as she passed by.

She trudged on bruised feet up Exchange, feeling the sense of safety that was one of the best things about living on an island. Over in Weymouth there might be the occasional holdup or rape, but even the densest criminals knew better than to try to operate on an island with three hundred residents and the only escape route by ferry.

She reached the garish, fluorescent automatic teller machine and the drop box. She fished out the key and slid the bank bag inside. Then she headed toward home, circumnavigating the circle.

Something caught her eye, a movement from the grassy center of the circle. She peered closely and, even in the mix of streetlight and starlight, could see that it was Jake.

“Hey, Zoey,” he said, raising a languid hand. He sat slumped back on a bench.

Zoey smiled awkwardly. Since their breakup, she and Jake had steered clear of each other—as much as you could when you both had to take the same ferry twice a day and share three classes.

She wasn't sure if he was just being polite or if he expected her to stop by. She decided the polite and decent thing to do was cross into the circle.

“You're out late,” he said. “Work?”

“Yeah. My mom had some work done on her teeth.”

“Uh huh. How's biz?”

She shrugged. It was odd, talking to him without other people around. Once they would have been sitting here together, making out and planning what they were going to do the next day or the rest of their lives. “I did okay on tips.” She jangled the money stuffed in her pockets, a wad of quarters and singles and a few fives. “What are you doing out here?”

“Not a damned thing,” he said flatly.

“Taking it easy, huh?”

“Yep. I guess that's it. I guess I'm taking it easy.”

Again she was at a loss for something to say. Jake seemed like he'd been drinking, or else he was just very tired. His eyes were sad, but the rest of his face was frozen in a blank expression. He was breathing heavily, as though the air was thick.

“That was a pretty strange scene last weekend, huh? You know, with Nina and all,” Zoey finally said.

He dropped his head forward and jerked it up and down twice in a nod. “Yeah. Yeah.”

“Well. I guess I'd better head on home.” She forced a tinny laugh. “See if my mom's OD'd on painkillers yet. She hates going to the dentist.”

Jake said nothing, just stared down at the sparse grass.

“Anyway. Bye.” She turned and took two steps before stopping and turning back. “Jake, are you okay?”

“Okay?” He lifted his head. “I'm always okay, Zoey.”

“It's just that you seem depressed.”

“Now, why would I be depressed?” There was the telltale edge of sarcasm in his voice, but even that was tired.

Zoey felt a flash of anger. It wasn't like Jake to wallow in self-pity. Look how Nina was dealing with her problems. She wasn't turning into a drunk and feeling sorry for herself. Or Lucas. And his life wasn't exactly a day at Disney World.

But in hot pursuit of her anger came guilt. She had been the one to dump Jake. Then, in almost no time at all, his relationship with Claire had fallen apart. He'd been on a real roller coaster emotionally, and at least a part of that was her fault.

“Look, Jake, I'm sorry things worked out the way they did for you. You're the nicest guy on earth, and you deserve better.”

“No. Wade was the nicest guy on earth,” he said. Now the slur in his speech was obvious.

He was drunk. Again. If he kept this up, he was going to develop a problem. Maybe he already had. “Look, I know he was your brother and all, but he wasn't very nice, really. Wade was a bully. I used to hate the way he treated you.”

Jake stared at her like she was talking gibberish. “He was tough, see? He was—” He hesitated, at a loss for words. “He
always said I was a wuss.”

“He was wrong, Jake. He was just giving you a hard time.”

“He was
right
.” Jake emphasized the point by stabbing his finger at her.

“Jake, have you been drinking? You never used to drink.”

“I've discovered I have a talent for it,” he said, grinning.

Again Zoey realized how out of place she felt. It was amazing that such a wall could grow up so quickly between two people who had been close. “Jake, if you ever want to just talk . . . I'm still your friend.”

“Thanks, Zo,” he said softly.

“You should head home. School tomorrow and all.” She clasped her arms tightly around herself to show that she was cold. “Besides, you don't want to get pneumonia.”

“I'll do that, Zoey,” he said. “I'll head home in just a little while.”

“Good night,” she said.

He didn't answer.