THE DOOR TO the attic was stuck. It must have gone so long without being opened that the wood had swollen from the humidity. A hard push with the shoulder. Ow. Another. And it opened. I heard something scurrying off, scratching wood as it fled. Mice, I thought. I wouldn’t kill them. I’d patiently hunt them down and take them outside. Since my incident with the cuckoo looking at me as if it were Chris at that intersection, I had turned sensitive toward the fauna surrounding me. I didn’t believe in reincarnation—at least, not before then—but I thought that Chris’s spirit could inhabit any creature in the animal kingdom, so I wouldn’t even kill a fly or a spider or any unpleasant pest. The only ones that didn’t get a reprieve were cockroaches.
The attic was dark, with a wooden table in the center, an old chalkboard that had been poorly erased and a broken chair. Sheets were nailed to the window frames to keep out the light, which gave the attic the feel of some dreadful crime scene.
I pulled down the sheets, and light and dust filled the room. More noise from frightened feet looking for a hiding place. Easy, little mouse, I won’t hurt you. I just want to evict you, but the nice way.
When I turned around, I screamed: rabid-looking teeth were threatening me. A raccoon was standing between me and the door, ready to defend to the death what it considered its den. Only one of us gets out alive, it seemed to be saying.
I had never heard Olivia scream so loudly or at such a high pitch. She had just come to see what I was doing upstairs. Her shriek caught the raccoon so much by surprise that it took off, escaping the girl, in my direction.
Its claws dug into my left forearm. God, it’s pissed, I thought. But instead of frightening me, it made me react. I got mad. A loose chair leg. A blunt, well-aimed blow. Pow. Chris, I hope you’re not inside this raccoon.
We had to bury the animal with all the honors. Olivia felt she was to blame for its death. When she saw it inert on the ground, the first thing she said was, Oh, how pretty, it’s so puchi puchi . . . Is it going to wake up now, Mommy? Great, there we go, another trauma for the kid. We dug a hole in the yard; we buried it; we put a cross there with its name inscribed: Puchi Puchi.
The attic was going to be my center of operations, but first, I needed it completely clean. Speaking of, what are you going to use it for, Alice? To paint. Look at the view: trees, vegetation creeping up toward the edge of the sea, land and water, green and blue, facing east to enjoy the sunrise, the clouds, the dunes, the sailboats, the birds . . . You can’t take refuge in a dark basement like in Providence or say you don’t have views that inspire you. No more excuses. How long has it been since you’ve painted, Alice? Why did you give up your dreams of being a great painter? No, I didn’t give up, but my great references let what was nearby inspire them, almost without leaving home. Wyeth and Hopper would have painted marvels without moving from the basement. Right, so why haven’t you tried? Why didn’t you manage to make that fit in with your wonderful life? Was your life wonderful?
I decided to take Diego Sánchez Sanz’s picture up there. I was uncomfortable looking at it in the living room. Too big. In my bedroom? In the hallway? No point. I didn’t like it anywhere. It was the image. Not the one portrayed there, but the one it brought back to me. The abysmal distance—at all levels—between that moment and the present.
I set to work on the attic, using bleach and ammonia to clean every corner and burn away all the thoughts that kept me from my objective.
I liked the chalkboard—it was big, majestic, intelligent, as if it had memorized and stored away all that had been written on it. That chalkboard would be my ally, helping me organize my thoughts, my discoveries. There was a little box with broken chalk in various colors. I chose white. I stood back a few feet and looked at the board. It seemed very important to me to meditate on what was going to be the first thing I wrote, as if I would be marking out a path I couldn’t stray from. I thought. What did I want to find out? What was my objective? If I had to sum it up in a single phrase, what would it be?
WHAT WAS CHRIS DOING ON THE ISLAND?