WHILE I TRIED to mentally sort out what I’d found out about John Rushlow and decide how to proceed without hurrying things, I reined in my impatience by opening a new line of investigation. Once I’d decided Chris hadn’t bought a house on the island, my mind turned immediately to the possibility that he had bought or rented a boat and a space at the marina. Could the Master Key open the main cabin or some other part of a boat? I didn’t have any memory of Chris knowing how to drive a boat or even having any special interest in the sea. But supposedly he hated Cape Cod, and there I was, living on an island by the Cape, because he had been sneaking around there for more than two years. So any certainties were under quarantine until further notice.
Burr’s Marine wasn’t as easy to get into as Miriam’s real estate agency. It was a modern building with large windows that featured brand-new leisure boats on display. The interior was protected by motion sensors and alarms. Impregnable, in other words. Anyway, even if Chris had bought a boat, he may not have bought it there. He could have bought it at another dealership or secondhand from a private individual. What was clear was that if he spent time on a boat on Robin Island, he would most likely have moored it at the port.
Pat Heise was the owner of the marina, Heise Harbor Waterway and Boatyard.
“Hello, Mr. Heise.”
“Hiya, Alice. Call me Pat; don’t make me feel old, please.”
I told him that since I’d come to the island, I’d gotten the itch to have a little boat of my own. Something simple to take my girls out for a ride in the bay. Pat was very helpful and nice to me. In his office he had a chart with an outline of the port and all the numbered berths, each with a red, orange or green pin. I saw that red and orange were for different types of rentals, and green was for open berths. I memorized a few positions and their colors to confirm the layout in situ. There were no filing cabinets: instead, there was a locked closet that I presumed must contain the contracts, documentation, etc. And a computer, of course, which was undoubtedly protected with various passwords as well. Plus, rear access was blocked off by a number of locks and a wrought-iron bar across the door. The main door had double locks. So Chris’s X-ray wasn’t going to cut it.
Pat explained I’d need to take a class if I wanted to get a captain’s license, but I could take it online and it was really easy. As far as the marina went, it depended on the type of boat, but from what I was telling him, he figured it would be around $1,500 a year.
“If you’re just getting started, it’s best for you to begin with something small, without spending too much money. You can find secondhand boats in perfect condition for a really good price. In fact, I’ve got several here for sale or for rent. Would you like to see them?”
“Now?”
“Yeah, now. Unless you got something to do.”
“No, no, sure. Perfect.”
Pat showed me several types of boats with names I didn’t know: pontoons, zodiacs, semi-rigids and fiberglass. The prices ranged from $10,000 to $20,000. All of them were small, designed for fun or for taking a quick spin. Not for living in. Pat had taken my requirements too literally.
“So, Pat, these are all great, but could you also show me some bigger boats? The kind you can spend a couple of days in, where you can sleep, cook, you know, live in. Not for now, but just to get an idea.”
He showed me other, more commodious ones. Among them was the one belonging to Stephen, Jennifer’s husband, who was in a coma. Not because it was for sale, but just as a curiosity—for the sake of gossip. Jennifer hadn’t set foot back in it, but she still paid the rent scrupulously. For Pat, that was a little macabre, not getting rid of the boat, keeping Stephen alive . . . Not to me. I would have done the same. To tell the truth, I was, in a certain way. I was keeping Chris alive as well.
“And this poor thing is homeless as well,” he told me, pointing to another boat. “A Rio 800 Cabin Fish. Thirty feet. Complete bathroom, bedroom with a queen bed, external shower, a sofa that converts to a double bed, sink, stove and fridge. A really nice fishing and leisure boat.”
“Why’s it homeless?”
“Well, the owners disappeared. They haven’t been here in almost a year.”
Owners? A couple? Almost a year? How long ago did Chris die? I always kept scrupulous count of the days that had passed, but suddenly I didn’t know what day it was. A hundred seventy something. No, it hasn’t been almost a year. It’s been half a year, more or less. But Pat, when you say almost a year, is that really almost a year or a way of saying several months have passed?
“I called them. Nothing. No one answers.” I had Chris’s voicemail on. If Pat had called, he would have left a message identifying himself and warning about the outstanding debt. But of course, Chris could have had another phone. “Now, if I’m honest with you, it’s not that I’d wish anything bad on them, God forbid, but far as I’m concerned, it’s for the best. If they don’t appeal or pay up in eighteen months, then it’s my property. And I’d give you a good price on it, of course.”
He went on showing me other vessels but I no longer listened. What was the boat called? You will know it by its name. The Call of the Wild, like the Jack London novel, one of Chris’s favorite books when he was a teenager. It’s about a lazy domestic dog that lives in a mansion in California and is kidnapped and sold as a sled dog in the freezing backlands of Alaska during the Gold Rush, and it has to make use of its ancestral instincts to survive in a savage, hostile world. That seemed closer to my reality than to Chris’s lie.
That night I went back to the port. I repeated the same MO: golf cart, Ruby, Pony, baby monitor in Olivia’s bedroom, nerves, adrenaline, guilty conscience, excitement and remorse. The complete package. Limit: thirty minutes.
I left Ruby in the golf cart, sleeping in her basket. Pony moaned a little when I jumped onto the boat. I tried the Master Key in the cabin’s lock. It didn’t fit. I used a small, unidirectional LED flashlight to peek in one of the windows. I didn’t see anything. Nothing that wasn’t the boat’s interior. Nothing that could identify the owners. No personal element in sight. I then looked through another window and saw a photo of a dog, an Alaskan malamute in an oval frame, with the word Buck written underneath, like the dog in the novel. It couldn’t be Chris’s; he was allergic to dogs. Unless he had lied to me about that, too, which, really, who knows? I looked closer and saw that there was dog hair on the cushions.
When I left, I felt the slight urge to celebrate my non-discovery. It comforted me to dismiss things. Far from frustrating me, it made me feel I was furtively getting closer.
Since Halloween, I had run into Mark a number of times. Almost always taking Olivia to school and picking her up. Julia very rarely went, and when she did, she stayed in the car. If I didn’t know she was depressed, I would have thought she was an unbearable diva. But maybe she was an unbearable depressed diva? I chatted with Mark as much as a person could chat for three or four minutes, usually with some other father or mother in the middle. About whatever vegetables, fruits and fish were in season, what the children had done wrong or right, sports and the weather.
Another time, we saw each other while shopping at the Shoreline Park market, and he told me that if I ever needed more provisions, making clear reference to Valium, I knew who to turn to. By appointment only, I said, smiling.
Well, you can always come by The Office. No advance notice required there. Was he propositioning me? But suddenly, instead of holding my gaze for that nanosecond that would have confirmed it, he glanced over at some kabocha squash and went over to snatch them up before they were gone.
It disconcerted me, the constant push and pull. Cordial, distant. Close, cold. Now I want to; now I don’t. I can, but I don’t want to. I like you, so I’m pulling away. You pull your breast out to feed your baby on my boat, that means you don’t like me; I don’t make you uncomfortable; I don’t interest you. Bye. Sometimes he made me feel special, like there was a connection; other times he was just normal, with a good neighbor’s friendliness, and that’s all. Not that I wanted to hook up with him—I couldn’t handle the thought of it—but finding out he was Karen’s cousin opened a cranny I could creep into to find out more about John and his possible connection to Chris.
One day we ran across each other running in the morning. We were going in opposite directions. He had his headphones on; I had on mine. We smiled and waved. I went on. Ten seconds later, I flinched when he touched my back. He had turned around and caught up with me. Without stopping, I said I couldn’t hear him. I took off my headphones.
“What did you say?”
“I said I don’t like your route. I know everyone has their own way and that’s sacred, but the path you take is pretty lame. I had to tell you like the good neighbor I am.”
“Right. Well, thanks a lot, neighbor; that’s very friendly of you. Will you tell me what’s wrong with my route, then?”
“Well, it doesn’t pass by the prettiest place on the island.”
“Oh yeah? Where’s that?”
“Where you almost gave birth, where we met: Kissing Tree Mountain.”
“I prefer skirting the ocean coast and looking at the sea to the interior. Anyway, how do you know my route? Have you been following me?”
“If I followed you, it would be really boring. You can’t really call what you do running; it’s more like someone with a walker.”
“Are you trying to rile me up so I’ll race you?”
“I guess so.”
“Ready when you are, then.”
“How about now?”
“I’ve already been running half an hour.”
“Me, forty-five minutes.”
“I’ve got a baby carriage and a dog.”
Mark stopped me. He took Pony out of the carriage and cradled her in his arms.
“Now we’re even,” he said. “Up to Kissing Tree Mountain. One, two, three, go.”
And he took off without waiting for a response. It took me a few seconds to react. Still, I smoked him.
Kissing Tree Mountain got its name from Nathaniel Haven, a merchant from a sugar company on the island of Barbados. In 1652, he bought the island for 1,500 pounds of sugar from Thomas Mayhew after a leptospirosis epidemic killed off the entire Wampanoag tribe, and the first thing Haven did upon reaching his new domain was climb to the top of the highest point with his seventeen-year-old fiancée, Grizzel, to scan the terrain and decide where he would build their home. After choosing a creek with potable water at the southernmost point of the island—Haven Creek, which would carry his name forever, and at the mouth of which was a beautiful Dutch-style mill—they kissed under the sumptuous oak and carved their initials there inside a heart. With time, what was no more than a little hill came to be called a mountain to give the place more significance, and all the islanders and occasional visitors would pass through there to attest to their love.
Since we moved to the island, I had been there only once, with Ruby and Olivia, who of course asked me to carve her and Oliver’s initials inside a heart. Now you and Daddy, Mommy. Come on! I did it to keep from irritating her, with a bit of nostalgia and lots of love, as if I were carving into my own skin with that knife, because I thought that maybe Chris had been there, carving his initials with those of another woman on some corner of that tree tattooed with other people’s loves.
Mark arrived with his tongue hanging out and Pony on his back, legs splayed, happy for someone to carry her and give her attention.
We stayed there silent for a moment, listening to the sea, the gulls and a red-tailed hawk that felt it was more special than the rest. It really was beautiful seen from up there; with a 360-degree panorama, you could look down on all parts of the island. Chris, where are you? I know you’re there. I know that right now I’m looking at some place you’ve been going to for over two years.
Mark told me the story of Nathaniel Haven, which I didn’t know, and how, after his death, his two sons, Nathaniel Jr. and Giles, each inherited half the island, divided where the family home at Haven Creek lay, and how a civil war broke out between the two of them to determine the borders of their property and assign exclusive use of the creek, instead of sharing it like the brothers they were. The struggle was resolved with the mysterious death of both brothers from a strange illness. Legend says that their mother, Grizzel, weary from the constant, violent confrontations—which their father would never have tolerated—poisoned them with Abrus precatorius, a plant that grew in the sand near the beach, the seeds of which contained an alkaloid called abrin. Ingesting a single seed can kill a child. And according to Grizzel, that’s what they were: spoiled children. From that moment on, it was the three women—the mother and the two widowed wives—who raised their families, creating a true sense of community and making the island into a prosperous, neighborly and peaceful community. Since then, Robin Island was known popularly as Mom’s Island in honor of Mama Grizzel, who, by the way, was a redhead like myself. That was the explanation Dan Sr. had refused to give me. But for me, at that moment, it was Dad’s Island. Chris’s Island. And little else.
We were sweating. The northwest wind was kicking up, and it was getting cold. We turned, went down the mountain and ran separately, both to our own homes. Only right before our paths forked off did he say, at full stride, “I’m still waiting for you to come visit me at The Office.” He went on running without waiting for a response.
That same afternoon, when I went to the hydroplane to pick up Olivia, I found him talking to Lorraine, the owner of the nursery, about her Baby Blue geraniums. Whether she had noticed holes in the stems. Not even a furtive glance. Whether the plants were a little translucent. I came closer. Lorraine was afraid it was a damned budworm. He must have seen me by then, out of the corner of his eye. Those damn worms live inside the stalk and feed on the sap. “Hey,” I called from the distance. He should come by the nursery later and she’d give him a special insecticide to take care of the pests.
He waved to me quickly. “Thanks a lot, Lorraine, we’ll see if I can save my little girls.”
Why am I so affected by what he says, or doesn’t say? Because you’re attracted to him, Alice. You don’t know how much or in what sense, but the fact is, you feel bad about it, because you just lost your husband, because he’s married and has a kid, because it’s been a long time since you’ve really looked at a man except for Chris and because he came to your rescue in the middle of your crises on the island—twice, when you gave birth and when you had that anxiety attack on the beach—and we all know how things like that bring people together. It’s unnerving and distressing but also stimulating. And obviously he’s been sending you signals. He clearly likes you. Is he playing with you? I don’t know. I don’t think so. Probably he’s got his own personal battle as well. Anyway, if you need an excuse to justify your attraction, just think that Mark can serve as a bridge to John. And from John to Chris.
“I get the feeling you need some of this.”
Before going to Mark’s Office, I passed by the nursery to buy a bottle of insecticide for the budworms affecting the geraniums. Wow, looks like we’ve got an infestation, Lorraine said. It was an excuse to go see him and make clear that yes, I was there, so close I could hear the conversation, and knew that he decided to ignore me, but as he could see, I didn’t hold it against him.
Mark looked at the bottle. He seemed confused by everything: my sudden visit and my knowledge of his drama with the geraniums.
“Thanks,” was all he managed to say.
“Why are you nice to me sometimes and then you suddenly stop?”
I was so tired of my internal debate that it came out soft and affectionate. Easy.
“I think to answer that question I need to open a bottle of wine.”
“Just open it?”
“Well, open it and drink a glass.”
I smiled. I was also in the mood for my daily eight-ounce dose.
Between the first and the second glass of wine, I asked Mark if he was close to his cousin Karen.
“Julia can’t stand Karen. And Karen can’t stand Julia. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Who knows.”
“I’ve never seen you with John either.”
“When you get to know him a little better, you’ll see why.”
“Don’t scare me, I’m going to have dinner with Karen at the inn next week.”
Since we had moved to the island, I had invented all sorts of friendly excuses to put off her invitation, but after finding out about a possible link between Chris and John, I decided to accept. It was the perfect occasion to carry out a plan I’d been mulling over in my mind for some time.
Between the second and third glass of wine, Mark finally spoke to me for the first time about Julia and her depression. Everything came out after a single question, which up to then, for the sake of discretion, I hadn’t dared to ask: What’s with Julia? A question that Mark latched onto. It was obvious he needed to cut loose.
“Sometimes I think she’s depressed because I let her be. I’ve taken over her role in the family. I handle everything, so she can wallow in her misery without there being any consequences. And maybe there aren’t any, at least with Oliver, because with him she’s really caring, of course, and more or less normal. But . . .” He paused. “You know? I think it’s a lie. I don’t think she’s depressed or in a creative crisis. Because I know she’s writing. She shuts herself up in her office for hours and hours. I hear her typing on her laptop. And believe me, it’s been a long time since she’s written much in the way of emails. She even broke things off with her editor and agent after the second novel. It’s like she was reinventing herself, changing. That seems good to me. But I don’t understand why she doesn’t share it with me. Before we used to read what she had written during the day together every night in bed. She’d come in; she’d hand me the sheets of paper, usually three or four pages. I’d read them; I’d comment, give my opinion. And if I liked them, she’d be really happy, and . . . just that. And if not, then I’d have to cheer her up, and then . . . you know, that. Now that that is ancient history.”
“Have you asked her to let you read what she’s writing?”
“No. That’s not the kind of thing you ask for. With Julia, there’s a thin line between showing interest and badgering. It’s very much her thing.”
“But you don’t want to take a look, even secretly, without her knowing?” Don’t project, Alice.
“No. In part from respect and in part . . . I’m not interested. It doesn’t make me curious . . .” He poured his third glass of wine and refilled mine, which was half-empty. “And you know the worst thing?” He drank. “I’m here blaming my wife when I’m the one who’s been losing it.” He drank. “Apathetic. Distant. Without wanting to . . . you know, that.” He drank. “Maybe I’m the one who’s depressed. Maybe I infected my wife.” He drank. “I listen to myself and it makes me want to bash my face in.” He finished the glass. “I think I’m trying to make you feel sorry for me.”
“Why?” I asked him, but I knew the response perfectly well. And he knew that I knew. We stayed there looking at each other. I felt bad. I didn’t like that. “Making people feel sorry for you never works,” I said to him. Though in this case it had, a little bit. And I knew that he knew.
Back home, I asked myself why Mark hadn’t answered the question that had led to the bottle being opened. Even so, I figured it didn’t matter. I hoped that when I went to the hydroplane to pick up Olivia the next afternoon, I would find him again talking to Lorraine about the budworm and avoid seeing in his face the reflected guilt, shame and barely masked discomfort of my own desire.