AS THE DAYS passed, the fishbowls continued to die. Only four remained active. I was running out of lives to observe, and that only raised my level of anxiety. I was becoming afraid to go out, to go shopping or to walk Ruby and Pony. So I found myself shut up at home more and more, only going out when it was absolutely necessary and, if possible, only at times when few people were out. I felt like a ship in the middle of rough seas. The island was rocking beneath my feet, Mom’s Island was sinking, and I didn’t know what to do to keep it afloat. Well, I did know, but I didn’t dare to do it.
Olivia had been having lots of nightmares despite her redoubled efforts at rolling over and over in the bed. I finally had to give in as far as the horse ranch went. I couldn’t keep her away from there. Maureen, Kendall’s mother, picked Olivia up and brought her back the following Saturday and Sunday. I’m happy to do it; that way I can stay on Barbara’s case, she said to me. Maureen and her husband, Pat Heise, had been after Barbara for a long time because they wanted to buy a plot of land that adjoined theirs, in order to build a golf course, but Barbara refused. (Which, though I didn’t like to admit it, I thought was a good thing.)
A series of linked events ultimately forced me to come out of my shell, the physical one and the inner one. Stephen died. Jennifer unplugged him. It happened a week after Summer left once and for all, dispelling Jennifer’s fear that she might take the baby with her. The baby that Jennifer and her husband had always wanted and had never been able to have. Jennifer didn’t need Stephen in order to hold on to life anymore. After many years living side by side with death, she could finally embrace life. She did it with the assistance of a doctor from Cape Cod Hospital and in the presence of Reverend Henry. Jennifer asked me if I could be there with her. I accepted, honored and relieved to have something to pull me out of my vicious circle.
Jennifer placed the baby on Stephen’s lap. They had sedated him for the extubation to avoid seizures and unpleasant episodes. Stephen went in a matter of minutes, in peace. It was the first time I had witnessed a death, and despite my familiar fear that I might faint, it was an emotional and powerful experience. Full of love. A lesson in life and overcoming that made me reflect on letting go, on leaving things behind that we can no longer have, people that we can no longer be with, loves that have to remain in the past for us to be able to go on with our lives, move forward and grow and love.
Just after the doctor had certified the time of death, Reverend Henry baptized the baby on the spot: Bertha Stephanie Fay.
Jennifer didn’t give me an explanation for why she was keeping the baby, just that Summer didn’t want the responsibility, had changed her mind, something like that. And of course, I didn’t ask her. She probably knew that I knew. The father is dead, Summer had said. It was a clear reference to Stephen. But even without snitches or fishbowls or paternity tests, I could have figured that out. Jennifer and Stephen had always wanted to have a child. Which they had tried to do, without success. What started off seeming like his problem, because of his age, ended up being her problem. Until Stephen had the brain aneurysm on the sailboat and their dream was left unfulfilled. Then Summer appeared, the crazy one in the family, to spend some time away from her problems, and Jennifer got the idea of proposing that Summer, in exchange for a large sum of money, become a surrogate mother, Jennifer’s little oven.
It had been two weeks since I’d heard from Miriam. Nothing since I’d given her the pen drive with the recording of Mike. Then one day, her fishbowl lit up. Miriam had gone to the trouble of putting the clock in her kitchen back together with the spy camera back in its place, charging the battery, and turning it on. She looked straight at the camera. Serious, as if she were making sure everything was in its place or preparing evidence to turn me in to the police. The overwhelming fear came back, this time even heavier. Until she smiled. And spoke. I didn’t hear because the microphone had given out, but I could read her lips perfectly because she only uttered a single message: Take care of me. Then she left the clock in its original place.
Minutes later, I saw Sandy the dog running happily around the kitchen. She’d gotten her back. Had she used the video? Yes, or at least part of it, because that same night I discovered that someone had slashed all the tires on the Cherokee, the golf cart and the bikes. In addition to breaking off my sideview mirrors and literally taking a shit on my front porch. I didn’t care, because at that point, I was still in a state of shock and had no capacity to react. Nor did I want to file a report. Better to leave things as they were. I wanted to stop the chain of reprisals. Not turning him in was a way of accepting the punishment, showing we were at peace, and if I stopped bothering him, he would do the same. And so it was. I called a mechanic from off the island, to keep from causing rumors or raising suspicions, and had him change the tires and replace the mirrors. Almost $2,000 for my antics.
I had stopped going to my daily date with Julia at Le Café. So one day she decided to pay me a surprise visit.
When the doorbell rang, my heart started racing. I thought it might be Frank, or even worse, Barbara. When I saw it was Julia, I thought that, given my recent series of misfortunes, she had come to tell me she had found out I’d hacked her computer or that I was spying on her or that she knew about me and Mark. It wasn’t that, but almost.
I invited her to have an iced tea in the garden.
“No progress on the novel?”
I had stopped peeking into her computer to look at her novel. Another result of photo 4,209.
Julia shook her head softly.
“I’ve lost the story. It’s slipping out of my hands. And I feel like I can’t do anything to avoid it.”
“But why? I don’t understand; Julia, the novel is magnificent. Write an ending and be done with it.”
“Remember when I asked you for help with the ending?”
“Yeah, of course, I remember, and I’d really like to, but I can’t do that.”
“You’re right. I made a mistake. I don’t want you to help me finish. I want you to help me keep going.”
What was she talking about, her novel or her relationship?
“Mark’s leaving. He’s going to take his boat and sail down the East Coast, to the Gulf of Mexico, cross the Panama Canal, and who knows what else. But that’s the deal: he’s going to be gone for two months . . . before he’s gone forever.”
“What do you mean, forever?”
“We’re splitting up. When the summer’s over, he’s moving to New York.”
Julia started crying. And I almost did too.
“Don’t ask me whose decision it was, because I wouldn’t know how to answer. Well, yeah, I do know. It’s both of ours. We made it years ago, when we tried to be Samantha and Paul. But obviously that ended up being a burden, for me and for him. I hide behind my fiction to complete my reality. He has done the same. The fantasy of finding his Samantha is so great, so unreal, that it can’t be a single woman, a single relationship.”
She frightened me when she looked up through her tears at me.
“I don’t want him to go, Alice. Not because I want us to get back together. I’m not looking for that. I stopped looking for that a long time ago. But . . .” After a pause, she said, vulnerable and small as I had never seen her before, “I’m pregnant.”
My head didn’t have the resources to process all that information.
“Have you told him?”
Julia shook her head.
“Well, tell him. If you do, I’m sure he’ll stay.”
“Yeah, I know. And I know he would without blinking. But he wouldn’t be happy. Because these concessions, even though you convince yourself when you make them, always come with a price. I know; I know him. And it’s not a question of him staying. It’s a question of the island not burning him alive. Because right now, that’s what the island is doing to him.”
That concept sounded familiar to me.
“Why don’t you talk to him?” she proposed.
“Even though you never talk to me about him, I know . . . that you get along. That you did get along.” When she corrected the tense of the verb, I knew she was aware of our fling. Or should I say affair, as she did? “When you got to the island, it was really good for him. It was good for us . . .”
For the first time in my life, I wanted to faint. I wanted my phobia to take charge of the situation and get me out of there.
“I don’t understand very well what it is you want me to do.”
“I told you, help me continue,” she answered, composed now, so it wouldn’t look like a desperate or impulsive request. Quite the contrary, it was very well considered.
Was she insinuating she knew I was the woman from the messages, the frustrated escapade in New York, his lover? And not only that, but more importantly, that she was fine with it, that she was giving me the green light, that she was getting out of the way. Did she really think the healthiest and best thing for her was for her husband to stay on the island with another woman while she was pregnant?
And me? What was it I wanted? I must not have known very well, because I could barely hold back my almost feverish desire to see Mark. To take refuge on his boat, in his arms and in his love. But I knew that if I did that, it would break me. I would crumble in front of him. And I knew he would have loved that: picking up my pieces and putting them back together, saving me one more time, as he already had before. And I would let myself be saved. But where would that get me? Where would that take us? What does all that matter, Alice? That doesn’t change anything. That doesn’t erase photo 4,209 of Barbara. That doesn’t solve any of your issues.
Until one night I couldn’t take it anymore, and I went to the port with the intention of seeing Mark on his boat. It wasn’t there anymore. He had gone. I cried all the way back home.
I slept in the bed still wrapped in a towel after emerging from the shower, exhausted, and not exactly from the physical effort. I woke up hours later, soaked in sweat, disoriented. It took me a moment to figure out where I was. My stomach was upset, my chest was burning, and I was itching. I’d gotten a rash. While I looked at my chest in the mirror and tried to decide whether to make myself vomit to alleviate my unease, all the different lines of thinking about Barbara suddenly opened up. They started working at full output, like when someone opens the floodgates of a dam that’s about to overflow. Phrases of Barbara’s that shot through me:
I’m sure the owner won’t show up here today.
No problem, she can go on riding Panda. Hardly anyone comes around here until spring.
You just let her ride and then we’ll see. It’s no problem if she gets attached to the animal. It’s not going anywhere . . .
Panda the pony. She was Chris’s, I was convinced. In part because just as I had this conviction, the clock on my cell phone struck 12:01 AM.