AFTER THE BIRTH, I did what I had to do: be a good mother and a good daughter. I cleared out all the junk I had accumulated in my studio to make the red-marker route. I put it all in boxes, sealed with duct tape, and labeled them: “Chris’s Trips.” Then I crossed out trips and wrote trip, because it was always the same one. Then I crossed out Chris’s and finally I crossed out trip. It was hard for me to label all that, to put a name to it. It was better that way, as a blur, a crossed-out part of my life. But Ruby’s birth had restored me back to life. I had been in limbo, halfway between the living and the dead. Ruby guided me to the positive side of life. The luminous side. She slept well, ate well, and soon began smiling. It seemed like a reward for the suffering I’d gone through. Before long I went out to run every morning, putting Ruby in a light, three-wheeled stroller that Tricia had given me. I started off doing two miles until eventually I made it to six, the exact diameter of Robin Island, curiously enough. Was I unconsciously preparing myself for something? At midday, we went to Mommy and Me Yoga classes, ideal for reconnecting with your body while you enjoy your baby. And in the evenings, I did hypopressive exercises to rehabilitate my perineum and pelvic floor. I got my figure back quickly.
Once in a while, I surprised myself by thinking that at some point, I should try to rebuild my sentimental life, which invariably provoked feelings of sorrow and defeat. But the fact was, I was thirty-three years old. I still was young, and people in my family lived a long time. If disaster didn’t strike again, I had almost two-thirds of my life left. It seemed only logical that there would be other men. I missed loving and being loved. I liked living as a couple, sharing. Watching TV series in bed with someone beside me, after making love, if possible. But it turned my stomach to think of anyone but Chris in those circumstances. I concluded that I had already experienced everything that I ever would as far as the love of men was concerned. And that didn’t even bother me.
Strangely, when I felt the worst was when people were around. The emergency bubble I had built had alienated me from reality. At first, that had been necessary, but now I couldn’t get past it. I wanted to be more connected to my friends, colleagues and family. I wanted to laugh and share moments, dinners, anecdotes. And I did, of course. Every day there was someone at the house. People came, brought something to eat; we talked about the same old stuff, that is, everything and nothing; and the day ended. Yet I was still there without being there. Normally, in such situations, night is the most fragile time. Ghosts stalk you in the darkness, in every silent corner. But it was my favorite time. To sleep, to fall asleep and disappear. This was my refuge. Sleep hadn’t abandoned me. On the contrary, it had accepted its responsibility, its inherent importance in this new phase of my life. Nobody took my eight hours from me. Four and four. I woke and breastfed Ruby, she went to sleep, and I went to sleep.
But despite the appearance of normalcy, while everyone thought I was doing well and getting over everything little by little, inside I felt a void that weighed heavily on me. It didn’t get better with time. It got bigger. It’s not that I wasn’t well; it’s that I wasn’t there. Postmortem depression? Should I go to the psychologist? Take antidepressants? Don’t be hard on yourself, Alice; it’s normal to feel a void. The void Chris has left inside you. It’s part of the process. You’ll fill it in, one bit at a time. Or if not, you’ll get used to the void; it will become part of you, an additional room. And it won’t necessarily be something dark or bad. You can decorate it, put flowers inside. No, plants, they don’t wilt.
One day, I looked for Diego on Facebook. More to provoke myself than anything else. I did it almost apathetically, while I was breastfeeding Ruby. I wanted to lash my emotions, to stir something up inside. Diego Sánchez Sanz. I found him. That’s the good part about Spanish people having two last names. It makes them easier to find. Diego used to laugh at me because I was incapable of pronouncing the Castilian Zs in his name. I hardly reacted when I saw his Facebook page, even though he was living in New York. Less than four hours away by car. It seemed like things were going well for him. His photos—public—were of an exhibit of his at an art gallery in Chelsea in Manhattan. The exhibit was entitled The Ones Who Looked at Me. They were hyperrealistic portraits, enormous, six by six feet. Close-ups of people who had passed through his life, all of whom were looking straight at the camera. Might I be there? I didn’t deserve to be, of course. I had left him promising we’d meet again. We cried, broken-hearted, in Madrid-Barajas Airport, unable to let each other go. Once back home, I planned on applying for a scholarship to study in Spain. I was going to do what I’d always wanted: Get to know other cultures. Be an artist. We had decided to spend the summer together, crossing Europe with a rail pass until we made it to Greece. There, on an island, we would paint and love one another. But I disappeared. Chris was waiting for me at T. F. Green Airport in Warwick, with a bouquet of red and yellow roses in honor of the Spanish flag. And all of a sudden, everything I had lived through in Madrid was in the past, far away, like those dreams you experience so intensely but forget upon waking. A week later, I wrote an email to Diego telling him I’d gotten back with Chris, that we wanted to give things a second chance, and that, even though what we’d had was very special and marvelous, well . . . goodbye, Diego Sánchez Sanz.
Suddenly, I wanted to go to his successful exhibit in New York because, of course, I must have left an indelible mark on his life. He must have been traumatized, and the picture of me must have been a cry in the desert, a desperate message in a bottle, hoping to recover a love as brief as it was intense. And then I saw myself. The Two Alices, the picture was called. I remembered the moment vividly. We were in his miniscule attic in the La Latina neighborhood in Madrid. It was hot. We had argued and then had made love. One after the other, the sex mingled with the still latent anger. Just after we reached orgasm, almost simultaneously, he grabbed his camera. He had me sit on the bed right then, to take advantage of that moment, because according to him, there was only a brief interval when the setting sun would filter in through the window. I got mad, but I obeyed him. How unromantic! You could have held me for a moment after coming, I said to him.
He ignored me. He moved me until I was situated right at the dividing line between light and shadow. The sun literally split me in two. The two Alices. The bright side and the dark side, he said, taking his camera and focusing.
I don’t have a dark side, I replied impudently—though in fact I was pleased.
We all have a dark side. And he snapped the photo. I was holding on to my right leg, hiding my nudity, my chin resting on my still-sweaty knee, with tear streaks and mascara running down my face. A single shot. He put down the camera. He stretched out in the bed, hugged me, and we had sex again.
I didn’t friend him on Facebook. I didn’t like his photos. I wrote down the gallery’s phone number, then called and asked about the piece. It hadn’t sold. The price: $20,500. I was envious that he’d managed to fulfill his dreams and become a successful artist. And you, Alice? Did you even try? Diego looked good. Even better than before. Mature, with his beard—he didn’t have one before—and his first gray hairs. Get in touch with him. Go see him in New York. A coffee. A reunion. You’ll tell him your story, all of it. He’ll be your confidant. You’ll cry, and he’ll console you. It’ll be nice, that’s all. Nothing has to happen. He probably has a girlfriend. Normal. Better. A walk in the park. You’ll hold hands and remember old times. A kiss at sundown. Maybe a fuck. A fuck without blame, without consequences. It won’t be sex; it will be tenderness. And you’ll go on with your life. Life. That’s what I saw in the photo. It was full of life. I was full of life. I bought it without thinking twice, while I burped Ruby and she threw up milk on my shoulder and stained my T-shirt. I didn’t even make the excuse that it could be a good investment. I didn’t want Diego to track me down, but since he didn’t know my married name, there was no danger. They told me they couldn’t send it to me until the exhibit was over, in a month and a half. That seemed fine. The picture would never arrive at my home in Providence.
My slow trajectory along the highway of normalcy took an abrupt turn the day I took the girls to the cemetery, and the poison entered me again. The poison of needing/wanting to know. Maybe it wasn’t poison; maybe it was a lifesaving antidote. I wanted Chris to meet Ruby, who had just turned one month old and for the four of us to share a moment as a family. A picnic at his grave.
“Where are we going, Mommy?” Olivia asked me once we were in the car.
“You remember when we said goodbye to Daddy?”
“That place with the swans?”
“Right. That’s where we’re going.”
“I like the swans.”
We had to stop and go back home. Olivia wanted to take one of her drawings to her father. She ran into the house. She came out a minute later with a number of pictures, because she didn’t know which one she wanted to give him, and wearing her fluorescent pink jacket.
“Honey, it’s hot out. You’re going to roast yourself.”
It didn’t matter. She associated her father with cold. At home, we couldn’t use the air conditioner. And she refused to enter anywhere cold, which in the middle of summer basically eliminated any restaurant that lacked outdoor seating, as well as supermarkets, stores and movie theaters. Even Frozen was no longer her favorite movie. She had stopped watching it, though the Christmas before, she had had it on loop and dreamed of being Princess Elsa. What would happen to her—to us—after the autumn? Would she have gotten over it by then?
True to its name, Swan Point had a lovely lake filled with ducks and swans. Chris was buried in a plot his family had purchased, beside his grandfather Richard, in the grave that would naturally have gone to his father. His tombstone wasn’t the typical sort, but a rough block of marble that had been hewn by his deceased grandfather, a stonemason. He had given it to Chris with a hammer and chisel so that he could carve it through the years, sculpting his dreams, polishing his ideas, getting out his frustrations, reflecting, making decisions, quashing his fears. It was a multipurpose stone, a stone that had helped Chris forge his character. Chris was very attached to it. He kept it in his parents’ garden, and when we got married and moved to our present home, it was the first thing he brought with him. He turned to it to ward off the bad and celebrate the good. His rock was his totem, his oracle, his confessional, his pet, his faithful companion. Chris was a creature of habit, and every day he was home, he passed a little time with his rock. If only it could have spoken. Something tells me that rock knew things that I didn’t. Moreover, I confess that after his death, I went over it meticulously to see if I might find some clue in one of its cracks or hollows.
I laid out a blanket at the foot of the grave. Sandwiches, juice, assorted sweets and the Big Smelly Bear. Still in her down jacket, sweating like a pig, Olivia did another drawing—she decided the ones she had brought with her weren’t good enough. I breastfed Ruby discreetly. The few people who walked by smiled at us, with a bit of pity and perhaps skepticism. While we were there, I thought: If I miss him, someone else must miss him too. Click. Poison/antidote. Rage/curiosity. Torture/diversion. Void/fullness. The vicious cycle started up again. What was Chris doing on the island? That question hogged all the headlines in my mind. I imagined that someone else, who must have had to live through all of this in silence, alone, would want to go see him, to cry for him, to say goodbye. Why was I taking it for granted that there was someone else, that the secret/mystery/lie concealed a second life, a lover, a story with another woman? Maybe one of the girls he hooked up with during our six-month parenthesis in college?
Olivia finished her drawing. Her father on the back of a swan flying among the clouds, and the three of us greeting him—or saying goodbye—from the ground. But that wasn’t what I saw; it’s what she told me she’d drawn. I saw a giraffe suspended in the sky with a gnome on its humped back and three angry rats with sharp teeth on the ground looking up, as if waiting for gravity to bring their prey back to the ground so they could devour it. My hope of having a child prodigy for a daughter had completely dissolved. At that point, the keys of the piano in the living room were being eaten away by the termites of indifference.
We gave the rest of the sandwiches to the swans to eat, though feeding the animals was prohibited, and left.
A few days later, taking advantage of the fact that Chris’s parents had taken Olivia with them to see a couple of second cousins her age who lived in Berlin, Vermont, I went back to the spy shop, Night Eyes.
Antonio recognized me as soon as I walked in. I had Ruby in a baby carrier, with her head leaning on my breast.
“Blondie! Nice see you! Already have baby! Much congratulations! How she called?” he asked, lowering his voice and motioning for me to be quiet, because Ruby was fast asleep.
“Hi, Antonio. Her name’s Ruby.” Should I have told him another name? Come on, Alice, don’t be paranoid.
“As pretty as mother.”
“Thanks.”
“So what do you want? More security camera footage?”
“No, now I want to buy a camera.”
“Ah. Very good . . . Your turn become spy. Take action.”
“Yeah, more or less . . .”
“Not your husband? I hope not typical story of husband have kid and lose interest. Look at other women. I can’t believe anyone cheat on beautiful woman like you. If I was husband, I would put video cameras because I no believe you would stay with me.”
At that moment, I deeply regretted driving almost two hours to buy a simple camera I could have gotten on the internet in complete privacy. But I didn’t want to leave a single trace of my steps and actions. Was what I was doing wrong? Illegal, maybe, but wrong? Maybe it was wrong, too. But that wasn’t what was on my mind just then. Chris hadn’t left a trace (almost). And I didn’t want to either. If he had been so careful to erase every possible clue, it must have been for a reason. Yeah, Alice, to keep you from finding out.
“Sorry, I lose myself; I doesn’t need explanations. Here no explanation never,” Antonio corrected himself once he saw he was losing me. “Tell me what you want, and I tell you what you need.”
“A security camera. A small one.”
“There are hundreds of models of cameras: India, Kerala, pinhole, button, keychain, belt, webcam, wireless, night vision, motion sensor. Where you want to put it? And what use? Photo? Video? Both. I say again: you tell me what you want, and I tell you what you need.”
I felt just as overwhelmed as when I’d looked on the net.
“I don’t know, small, easy to hide, to take photos of people who pass by or go to a specific place. One I can leave there and not have to change the battery. You know, long-lasting. Oh, and for outside shots.”
The winner was a camouflage Bushnell Trophy Cam that Antonio told me was used for big-game hunting. He saw that I was hunting something as well. It was the size of a small radio and cost $290. Completely waterproof, made to withstand the most adverse weather conditions, with eight megapixels, a motion sensor, and a 64 GB flash memory card, it was capable of holding twenty-two thousand photos in HD. With eight AA batteries that could easily last more than a year on standby. Antonio formatted the memory card and set the camera up to take photos—it took video as well—at three-second intervals whenever it detected movement, with the date and time marked. That way no animal with horns cheat and get away, he said. I thought if anyone had cheated, it had been Chris, but I just smiled and paid, in cash, obviously.
In the car, I told myself: Great, you’ve got your toy, now go home, think about it a little, and . . . My internal dialogue stopped there, because I had decided to go straight to the cemetery and set it up. Every day counted. Maybe someone else was already there crying for him.
In front of Chris’s grave was a thick perennial shrub with solid branches. A guard passed by and waved at me cordially. I waved back. When he was gone, I approached the shrub. The camera had a clip to help mount it. I placed Ruby’s stroller—she was sleeping inside—in front of the tombstone to have a reference point that would help me set the frame. But I wasn’t convinced. The stroller’s short, it doesn’t work, an adult is much taller. I looked around and saw a rake several graves away. I grabbed it and placed it against the stroller, taking pains not to wake Ruby. I stood beside it. All right, more or less the same height. Would he have looked for a woman the same size as me? Why do you keep insisting it’s another woman? Too obvious. I returned to the shrub and aimed, then shook the branch to make sure the camera was secure. Perfect, it didn’t come undone. I turned it on. And thus was immortalized the first of thousands of images to come.
I don’t know exactly when I decided to move to the island. Maybe it was just after setting up the camera in the cemetery. That rush of adrenaline that surged through my entire body when I pressed the button and took the first test shot. That feeling of being awake, interested in something, alive—really, it felt more like an antidote than a poison. Or maybe it was a few weeks later, after going to the cemetery every day—changing the course of my daily walk to pass by there—and clicking compulsively through the photos on the camera without finding anything remotely interesting, till I got frustrated and realized I couldn’t wait for the person to come. I would have to go find whoever it was on the island. So I organized in my mind, in chronological order, all the steps, little and big, that I would take toward my new destiny.
In any case, I had made my decision, following one of Chris’s golden rules. A Zen rule that said something like that you had to treat matters of vital importance with ease and easy matters as vitally important.
One day I searched on the internet for Robin Island Real Estate Agency and the first hit that came up was McCarthy Realty.
Then, another day, I called on Miriam McCarthy, the owner of the only agency on the island. When she saw me with Ruby in the baby backpack, she put two and two together, and said, “You’re the redhead that set foot on the island and gave birth, right?” I nodded and she added, “You’re already famous on Robin Island. It only makes sense you’d want to come live here.” I smiled, shook her hand and told her my name was Alice Dupont and that all I wanted for now was to take a look around, that no matter what, even if I found something, I’d only be renting for a year. Miriam explained to me that there were no rental properties there, that the island was like a co-op and the neighbors had made the unanimous decision to prohibit any kind of renting or subleasing to keep tourism at bay—there was only a single six-room inn. Despite my reticence, she insisted on showing me a few of the houses, trying all the while to convince me that renting was throwing money down the drain and that I should take the opportunity to buy. The area had suffered damage when Hurricane Sandy swept through, and since there were more homes for sale than ever now, prices had plummeted. But the market was already heating up again.
Then, another day, I went to the courthouse and changed my name back to Dupont, my maiden name, which made me feel absolutely terrible, but I thought it was necessary for me to pass unnoticed on the island. I also changed the name on my bank account.
Then, another day, I looked for a nearby school where I could register Olivia and found out there was a very good one in Nantucket, the Nantucket Lighthouse School, and that a little seaplane came every morning to pick the children up and take them there, just like a school bus.
Then, another day, I asked Olivia if she’d like to live on that pretty island we went to visit one day, and she said, “Which? The one with Kissing Tree Mountain?” And I said yes, that one. And she responded, very excitedly, “Yes, I love it there, and I didn’t have the time to put my initials on the tree.”
Then, another day, I told my father about my plans to move, before my mother, because I knew he would understand me and because my head was burning up and I was afraid.
Then, another day, I started to choke, as if I’d forgotten to breathe, and I wound up in the emergency room and they told me I’d had an anxiety attack and I decided the fault lay with all that madness and I let it drop and I tried to forget the whole idea.
Then, another day, I choked again, and I ended up back in the emergency room.
When it happened a third time, I didn’t go to the emergency room because they had given me an anxiolytic—Xanax—for my anxiety attacks.
Then, another day, it happened again, and my father told me that most likely what provoked the anxiety attacks wasn’t the idea of leaving, but the idea of staying. Honey, you’re no Captain Ahab, and you’re no Moby Dick either. You’re young Ishmael. It’s your story. You’re the one who survives, he said, addressing a doubt I’d never examined. I cried on his shoulder and told him I loved him very much.
Then, another day, I returned to Robin Island, and Miriam, the woman from the agency, once again showed me the three houses I had liked most and that were best suited to my needs—after an obsessive examination of all the details—and I fell in love, definitively, with a Victorian-style home, two stories plus an attic, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a garden, and a porch with views of the beach. Miriam thought it was wonderful because it was next door to her house and she loved the idea of having me for a neighbor.
Then, another day, they called me from the art gallery in Chelsea, in Manhattan, to tell me the exhibit was over and they were going to mail me Diego’s picture.
Then, another day, Miriam called to tell me she’d gotten an offer on the house I’d liked so much, and I thought she was bluffing, but I took a Xanax because I was afraid of losing it.
Then, another day, I put down a deposit to buy myself a bit of time.
Then, that same night, I said to myself: Alice, why do you want to buy more time? That’s wasting time; buy the house and go; that’s what you want to do. Every day counts, remember? Each day that passes makes it harder to resolve the mystery/secret/lie.
Then, the next day, I walked into the bank to let them know I would be making a sizable withdrawal.
Then, two days later—the time the bank needed to complete my request—I bought the house on Robin Island, with a $785,000 bank check, and I didn’t have an anxiety attack partly because I held on for dear life to a phrase Miriam said as she winked at me: In a year, I can assure you it will be worth between nine hundred thousand and a million, at the least. That’s a hell of an investment, neighbor.
Then, that same day, I called the art gallery and gave them the Robin Island address—48 Shelter Road—so they could send the painting to me there. And I thought: What a pretty name for the street where I will live my new life.
Then, another day, I told my mother, and she almost died from disapproval, and she got very angry with me and even more with my father for encouraging me and especially because I didn’t tell her earlier. Because I’m sure you told your father before; I’m sure of it!
Then, another day, I thought about having a going-away party, but I decided that no, I didn’t want too many people to know I was going, or where.
Then, another day, I thought about dyeing my hair since a redhead always attracts more attention—and I was looking to do the opposite—but in the end, I decided not to, because I was already known on the island as “the redhead who set foot on the island and gave birth” and a change of color would have been suspicious. I did cut it, a lot, shorter than I ever had in my life, much to the displeasure—once again—of my mother.
Then, another day, I spoke with Nick Preston, the principal, and told him I was leaving my position at the Seekonk River School, and he understood I needed a change of scenery, and he got excited and then sad and told me my job was for life and I could have it back whenever I wanted, and he took leave of me with a soft kiss that grazed the corner of my lips and told me how good the new haircut looked on me.
Then, another day, my mother insisted on coming to live with us even if it was just for a few months to help me get set up, and I thanked her and told her it wasn’t necessary.
Then, practically every day, I thought that I was running away, until the very morning of the move, when I decided, who knows if just from a pure instinct for survival, that no, running away was staying there, running away was doing nothing.