DURING THE FOLLOWING weeks, I thought seriously about leaving. Abandoning the island. I could finally go back now. Dismantle everything. But I didn’t. Where would I go back to? I had a house, a mill, two girls, two ponies, a dog and a guppy in frail health. I had lots of questions to resolve. I had resolved one, the ancestor, the mother of all questions, but I felt I still wasn’t done. Help me continue, Julia had asked me. Those words didn’t stop resounding in my mind. I also wanted that, to continue. I needed it.
I had an inevitable sensation of emptiness. No, weightlessness. Because it was a good feeling, like when you do a top-to-bottom cleaning and throw out the useless things you’ve been piling up. Because the majority of the space in my head had been taken up by dirty, heavy things. Noise. I was glad for that feeling of lightness. The diaphanous space Chris had given me. But also, I was afraid of getting lost, of not having an objective. My motivations had changed, transforming, growing, setting down roots that were still furtively clutching me. I had found something that suited me. Something I liked. It wasn’t just a way out; it was a path toward life. My life. Miraculously, I had stopped judging myself, at least for the moment.
I met with Miriam so she could show me places for rent. We had spent a few weeks without seeing each other, letting a prudent amount of time pass so everything would settle in a natural way. To avoid talking about spy clocks or my intentions. To clear up our friendship and resume it without black spots. But no matter how much we pretended everything was OK between us, nothing was like before; there wasn’t the same feeling of connection. And there was only one way to make it better. Just like she had made a grand gesture toward me—rebuilding the clock and putting it back up in the kitchen—I had to do the same for her. And there was only one that was good enough: telling her the truth. Not what I had been doing on the island, but what had brought me there. To tell her about Chris, about Barbara, about the mill.
Weeks later, when I finally got the lease at a really good price for a shop right in front of Le Café on Grand Avenue, I decided to tell her. But while we uncorked a bottle of champagne and toasted to celebrate, Miriam jumped the gun and told me she considered the deal she’d just given me—not taking her commission—a going-away present, because she was leaving, abandoning the island, going away to live in Pasadena, California. She needed to start from scratch, as far as possible from her terrible ex. Then she smiled at me and told me she could see I had found whatever it was I was looking for on the island and that she was really glad, but that she hadn’t found whatever it was she was looking for. We hugged a long time and promised each other we’d never lose contact.
I didn’t tell her what I was supposedly going to tell her.
After I threw Frank out of my house so rudely, he hadn’t shown back up. And it had been some time since the fishbowl in Family Pet Land had burned out. I was worried and I felt bad.
I kept looking at his Victrola portable record player, the one he had left at the house, the one he always brought over. It was precious, to tell the truth. A vintage jewel. Too bad it didn’t work. I thought I might be able to use it somehow.
“Hi, Frank,” I said, entering Family Pet Land with Ruby and Pony. Olivia was on the farm with Barbara just then, riding Panda.
“Hello, Alice, Ruby and Pony. How can I help you?” he answered a little curtly. I could see he was still hurt.
“We’re not here to buy anything. We’re here to give you a present.”
“Me, why? It’s not my birthday, far as I know. But there are times lately when I don’t even know what year I’m living in.”
“No, it’s not your birthday, not as far as I know either. But it doesn’t have to be for you to get a present, right? Because the other day Barb told me Rose used to live in our house when she was a girl. Is that right?”
“You live at Forty-eight Shelter Road?” he asked me, as if he’d never been there before. I nodded. He immediately relaxed. “Well then, yeah, what a nice coincidence.”
“The thing is, see, I was going through the attic, where I keep my junk, and it’s a wreck because I barely ever go in there. I found something. And I said, hey, this isn’t mine. So I thought, we should see if it belonged to Rose.”
“What did you find?”
I showed him the record player case. He recognized it immediately.
“The Victrola! My Lord, what memories this thing brings back.”
“I plugged it in at home to see if it worked, but no luck.”
“It ended up breaking from so much usage. We cranked it up so her parents wouldn’t hear us while we were kissing and canoodling,” he said, excited. I’d managed to rescue that naughty, lovesick little boy. I missed him.
“Well, with your and Rose’s permission, I took the liberty of making a few modifications to it. You have a plug?”
I went behind the counter, where Frank had pointed, and plugged in the record player. I put it on the table and opened the lid.
I had replaced the old turntable with a translucent hard plastic one with a rose—painted by me—right in the middle. Yeah, it was a little corny, but I couldn’t think of anything better.
“Now when you turn it on, you won’t be able to listen to your favorite songs, but you’ll at least be able to remember Rose’s light.”
I turned it on and the rose lit up, filling the room with a warm light.
“And here, where you used to change the RPM, now it changes the shade of light it emits.”
Frank was visibly touched.
“Thank you, dear. You’re a great daughter,” he said. And this time, it didn’t bother me.
“Oh, and when you want to come by the house to remember old times, you don’t have to knock on the door or bring the record player. It’s best if it stays here.”
Then Jennifer met someone. That was fast, I thought. But it turned out it was an old friend of Stephen’s who had phoned Jennifer to offer his condolences when he found out about the death. After that courtesy they exchanged a few emails and calls—sometimes via Skype. He went on vacation to Nantucket. And since it was so close, they met to have a coffee. They connected. They started to see each other once a week. He’d go get her on his boat, and they would sail around with Berta, because Jennifer didn’t like the gossip on the island. It irritated me because even though this Chad Miller was attentive, well-mannered, rather attractive—if less so than Stephen—there was something about the way he acted, his prissy correctness, that grated on me. Everything about him seemed to be a little forced. I couldn’t trust that man. I really cared for Jennifer. She’d had a very tough time and it had taken her a long time to put her life back together and I’d have been happy for her to fall in love again, obviously. I just wanted to be sure that it was with the right guy, not just the first one who showed up around the corner in Nantucket.
And so I decided to track him and put a snitch on his boat. I wasn’t going to let my friend be with the wrong man. Not on my watch.
Then Mark came back from his boat trip down the East Coast to spend a few weeks with Oliver, shut down his practice and get his things before moving permanently to New York.
Julia was very sad. She wasn’t taking antidepressants because of the pregnancy and had given up on her novel. She confessed to me that she still hadn’t told Mark she was pregnant, because she didn’t want it to affect his decision and force him to stay out of a sense of obligation. To complete the picture, it turned out Olivia was very upset because lately Oliver didn’t want to see her or play with her. I asked her why, and in a sea of tears and a chaos of arguments, she said things like: Because he says I don’t have a father . . . And maybe he’s going to end up without a father and it’s my fault . . . Because I told him things about not having a father . . . And now those things are going to happen to him . . . And he doesn’t want us to be friends anymore. Do I scare fathers, Mommy . . . ?
That relationship, that family, was a complete wreck. I felt that it had been slightly my fault. First for my intervention; then for my absence. Everything seemed so far away to me. As if it was something I’d done in another life. Till then, all my interventions had had positive results for some people—Miriam, Frank, Jennifer, for example—but with Julia and Mark, it had failed. I still remembered that image of them during the Labor Day picnic, seated under a parasol, their backs to each other. An incredibly graphic portrait of the lack of communication and crisis in a couple. I intervened, I got in the middle, and for a while, I managed to make everything better for each of us separately and for the three of us as a group. And now we were back where we started. No, it was worse. Much worse. Julia, pregnant and depressed. Mark leaving the island with not a clue as to his wife’s pregnancy. Oliver in the middle of all that, suffering. And me? And me, what? You count, too, Alice. How do you feel about this situation?
I had been searching for the perfect equilibrium between Mark and Julia, a way to position myself to not lose either of them. And when I realized that couldn’t be, I stepped aside. But it seemed a little unfair, as if I had been playing, using them, and then getting rid of them without caring about the consequences. My abandonment had caused hardships, and so I felt obliged to do something. For months I hadn’t done anything because I didn’t know which path to take. And there was just one reason for that: I hadn’t decided how I wanted this story to end—or to continue.
My mind veered toward the most immediate thing, the biggest. Chris. Chris and Barbara. That story. That experience had to have taught me something; open your eyes. That was where I needed to find my answer. Every trip that’s really worth it leaves its traces.
Then I realized that I hadn’t finished the journey. I had followed the path that led to the mill, but I hadn’t reached the end. Not till I read the letters.
Barbara had them set aside in order in a small box, and she was not surprised when I went to visit her at the farm and asked her for them. On the contrary, she knew it would end up happening. “You have copies? Just in case I destroy them,” I said, trying to make the moment seem less heavy.
“No, I don’t have copies. Take them home. Read them and do whatever you have to do with them.”
Without a doubt, it was the most intense moment I had lived through since Ruby was born. And I say lived through because it was tied to life, not to death—as was becoming the custom up to then. And because it was also like giving birth. It was pulling out something that had been gestating inside me for more than thirteen months. Because I saw him. I saw Chris. In front of me. The real Chris. The one I loved madly. The one who had disappeared. He wasn’t the distorted figure full of question marks that I had lived with since his death. I saw him more intensely than when I looked over his photos and videos. It was as if he was in another dimension. I could touch him, caress him, hug him, kiss him and even slap him, scream at him, curse him, for leaving us. I couldn’t stop crying. And I wanted to hate him, I really tried. I wanted to get out all the rage and aversion I felt when I read some parts. I thought it was necessary to get rid of all the rancor and rejection to be able to go on with my life. But I couldn’t hate him—maybe because it was something I’d already done. Just as I couldn’t destroy those letters. Painful as it was to admit it, it was probably the best treasure I had found. But that treasure wasn’t mine.
The day after I read the letters, I went to see Mark at The Office. I had to let myself be carried off by that river of energy and emotions.
I thought I was going to say goodbye to Mark, untie the moorings. It wasn’t easy for me, because I still wanted him, emotionally and sexually. But I was going to reestablish our equilibrium because that was what I had decided to do. Mark, what we had wasn’t a love story; it was a survival story, I considered telling him. But of course, love stories, the good, true ones, never start out as such.
On the way to the sailboat, contradictory phrases kept ringing in my head. Where I’m going, I can’t take you, Mark, and even less where I’m coming from, but where I am. I need you. We’re not compatible. It’s not a question of compatibility, it’s a question of desire, of wanting, of what you need. Are you going to finish or keep going? Think in the now.
Seeing him checking out the rigging, all those phrases melted together and the knot of doubts and fears about Mark came undone.
At some point, when I had asked Mark why he hadn’t told me about Julia’s affair, he said something that was the closest thing to a declaration of love: When you like someone a lot, you try to hide your defects at all costs.
So while he still had his back turned to me and hadn’t yet noticed my presence, I decided to paraphrase him:
“I’ve also hidden some of my defects, mistakes, errors, weak points, shit, call it what you want. Almost all of it.”
Mark didn’t turn around until I’d finished. His eyes connected with mine without the need for more words. He must have understood all that as my way of replying to his declaration of love, because under the thick beard he’d let grow, a smile crossed his face. And I felt the closest thing to butterflies in my stomach that I could allow myself just then.
“Shall we take a ride?” he proposed.
I nodded.
Once we were far from the island, we made love. I knew it would happen. I had thought everything over and made my decision. Because everything went in one direction: farewell.
And he sensed it.
“I have the feeling you’re saying goodbye to me. That we’re saying goodbye. Are we?”
Then I realized you had to say goodbye to some things to keep moving forward.
“Yes, we’re saying goodbye . . . but to be able to continue.”
And when I was sure he’d understood the positive side of my words, I added something fundamental for that continuation to be possible:
“I can’t be your Samantha. And you can’t be my Paul.”
“I know . . .” he said without a glimmer of frustration. “I’m happy with you being my Alice. And me your Mark. I don’t mean today or even tomorrow. Because I know you can’t right now. And I can’t either, to tell the truth. But I’d like to think that someday it will be possible for us to sail together, not just in the boat. You think it could be possible?”
I answered him with a look. A look that was neither planned nor practiced. A look I framed with the breeze from the sea. For him.
I believed I had come up with a lovely goodbye, and it turned out I had arranged an emotional future. Far from frightening me or putting me on the defensive, it comforted me, and I let myself go. It made me feel a drunkenness that had little to do with the glass of wine I was having on the prow with Mark, naked, covered only with a blanket, the same blanket. I rested my head on his shoulder, grabbed his arm and said, “I think it’s time to go back home.”
Four days later, I went to the beach to spend the day with my girls, and I was able to see Mark and Julia in the distance, walking along the seashore in silence with Oliver in the middle, holding—or clutching—his parents’ hands, forming a circuit between them. They had just told him the good news: he was going to have a sister, and there were going to be two houses on the island, Mom’s house and Dad’s house. All the good stuff in two houses. Twice. At some point, I don’t know if before, during or after they crossed in front of me, Julia, with a barely noticeable but growing belly, turned to me and smiled at me in a way as minimal as it was significant. That was the day Mark was supposed to have left the island for good.
Toward the end of summer, I changed my route when I went running every morning so that I always ended up at the mill. I hadn’t gone back inside since the day I went with my children. It still intimidated me. And every time I got there, while I drank water and recovered before turning back, I wondered whether to turn the mill into my new base. Until one day, I cast the idea aside because that wasn’t Chris’s purpose. He wouldn’t have liked it. It was going to serve the end it was conceived for. A place for personal realization.
I met with Barbara to formalize the transfer of the mill, and she told me one of the conditions she had given Chris when she sold it to him was that he couldn’t change the name, and he had agreed, but now she did want to change it and call it Chris Mill.
“You like it?” she asked me.
Chris Mill. The X on the map, the treasure I had looked so long for.
“I like it,” I answered.
I wanted it to stop being Chris’s island. To give his name to such a concrete thing in such a concrete place freed the rest of the island for me to take possession. To make it mine.
I rescued the Diego Sánchez Sanz picture, which was still exiled against a wall in the garage, and took it to the attic in the mill. I didn’t mind looking at myself there. After I hung it, I took the lock off the door.
Then I swam nude in the sea. There was no one there. I took the Master Key off the necklace and threw it far away, the farthest I could, to the depths of Nantucket Sound. I didn’t need it anymore.
“Hey, Oli, one question. Now that we’ve been living on the island for over a year, do you still like it?”
“Of course.”
“More or less than the last time I asked you?”
“More, because now I have Sunset and Panda.”
“I’m glad. But you know, we’ve still got a deal. And if you ever decide you want us to go back to Providence, you tell me and we’ll go. Deal?”
“Deal. But one thing, Mom.”
“Shoot.”
“Could you show me God’s game?”
“What do you mean, God’s game?”
“Yeah, because you play with God.”
“What do you mean?”
“Because you bring Flint back to life all the time. Every time he dies, you bring him back. He’s dead in the water, I touch him with my finger and he doesn’t move, and when I get back from school, he’s alive again. You bring him back.”
I look at Olivia as if I didn’t know what she was talking about. She laughs.
“I caught you, Mommy! Every time you do something good or bad, I know.”
I want to hug her, kiss her and tell her how smart, as well as obsessive and compulsive, she is. But I decide to teach her a little lesson.
“Oli, we live on an island. We’re surrounded by thousands of fish. Why do you want to have a fish in a fishbowl?”
She’s the one who teaches me a lesson:
“Because we’re like Flint. We live in a fishbowl. We’re fishes and the island is our fishbowl.”