FIFTEEN MILES south of Seattle and halfway across Puget Sound to the west is Maury Island. Shaped like an arrowhead aimed at the mainland, green as the inner fold of a grass blade, it can be seen from the air cradled in the crook of an elbow of water. Tourists ride over on ferries to watch for whales and UFOs. Jets turn around overhead on their final approach to the airport. Even on days when there is no rain, mist filters through the evergreens until it pulls apart like threadbare cloth and burns off.
The wedding was to be held in the afternoon at Point Robinson, the site of an old fog-signal station that once housed a steam whistle fed by coal fire and water to warn away ships. In 1897, at the dawn of massive capital expansion and speculation, the whistle sounded for five hundred and twenty-eight hours, nearly killing the man who had to shovel the thirty-five tons of coal. The cargo had to be kept from the rocks, but who can halt the lumbering desires of the world?
In 1915, the lighthouse with its state-of-the-art, fifth-order Fresnel lens was built. Powered initially by oil vapor lamps, its beacon could be seen for twelve miles. The lens was the perfect manifestation of Victorian technology, replacing simple flat lenses with faceted, crystal domes, prisms cut into tiers that made it both astonishingly beautiful and a breakthrough in optics. The Fresnel lens had a theoretically infinite capacity to capture diffuse light and, by way of internal reflection, cast it like a spear through darkness. It lit stages and celluloid, Polaroid shots and retinas for ID scans, and on Point Robinson, it lit Puget Sound.
These days, every modern ship has a GPS and the little lighthouse is just a decoration on a brochure, a destination for a grade-school field trip. The mechanisms that rotated the original lantern remain on the first floor, which is now a tiny museum of technology with gauges and wheels and iron bolted into the base with lines that lead nowhere and do nothing.
Back across the sound in Seattle, Livy looked out the window of her basement apartment. Her father was getting married that afternoon, and though it was already late April, a cold, wet breeze still whistled through the gaps in the caulking turning her skin to gooseflesh. A few feet away stood her sister, Cheyenne, poorly slept but already dressed.
“I’m freezing,” said Cheyenne. “I’m turning on the space heater.”
“Turn on the oven. They charge us for electricity,” Livy said.
Cheyenne rolled her eyes but went over to the little white gas stove. Cranking the temperature to broil, she leaned back against the oven door so she could feel the heat on her hamstrings while the oven warmed.
Yesterday they’d spent the whole day picking rocks out of Livy’s landlord’s garden in trade for a patch of soil near the sunny side of the fence so that Livy could grow food. It wasn’t political. Livy didn’t care about pesticides or permaculture. She was just the cheapest person Cheyenne had ever known. She lived off past-date groceries. She washed her clothes once a month with a teaspoon of dish soap in a tub. She made her own bras. Cheyenne was pretty sure she would have rinsed and reused dental dams if she thought it would work. Recently, Livy had become convinced she could feed herself off three square yards of land. It was ridiculous, but since Cheyenne had appeared out of nowhere and moved in on her without warning or rent, she didn’t have much of a say.
Taller and unfreckled, Cheyenne had chosen a rose-colored capped-sleeve shirt with eyelets and a pair of black pinstriped suit pants. She could pass in the crowd they’d be in today. Her secondhand clothes came off as vintage, while her misadventures in body art made her seem a fine vase, badly cracked and chipping but a gritty accent to any room.
“Cyril didn’t come to my wedding,” Cheyenne said. “Why should I go to his?”
“Did you invite him?”
“Hell no. He would have arrived like a lord and expected to walk me down the aisle. Here. Let me give you away. Oh hey Dad, I’m pretty sure you did that.”
“You’re right. He would have,” said Livy.
“So why are we even going?”
“I have a day off work and it’s cheaper than a movie. I’m tired of ramen and hot dogs and there’ll be rich-people food so I’m taking Tupperware.”
“Please don’t make it obvious,” said Cheyenne. “We’re already going to look so out of place.”
“Because you have jailhouse tats of hearts and clubs on your knuckles? Or because I don’t shave and look like a landscaper?”
Cheyenne spread the fingers of her left hand. “Not just clubs and hearts. The one on my thumb is a diamond and the pinkie is a spade. You just can’t tell anymore.”
Livy crossed to where she’d laid out her newly washed blue painter’s pants and pulled them on over her long johns. “I’m going to the wedding because it’s a show of support that costs me nothing. I have never thought of him as a dad so I don’t care. At his worst he’s just a big blank. A disappointment. He gets a clean slate. That’s my wedding present. A pass. It’s the only decent move.”
“I shot my better angels,” said Cheyenne.
“They’re angels. You can’t kill them.”
“If they were real you could.”
Livy could feel Cheyenne’s eyes burning holes in her ribs. She zipped her fly and flattened her pockets.
“I have clothes if you want to borrow something,” said Cheyenne.
Livy froze for a second then bent down to roll the cuffs, making sure they were perfectly even on both sides and all the way around. “I have a white shirt. It has buttons. I can tuck it in,” she said.
“What do you think his bride will be like?” asked Cheyenne.
“A full-blown voodoo narcissist like him.”
“He couldn’t take the competition. I predict Anglo geisha.”
“I can see that,” said Livy.
“We should at least get drunk before we go.”
“I’d rather do it on his dime,” said Livy.
“I bet inviting us isn’t even his idea. I’ll bet it’s the bride’s.”
Livy smiled. “Maybe he has cancer and his doctor warned him that guilt suppresses the immune system.”
Cheyenne propelled herself off the stove with her back foot.
“Yes!” she said. “No.” She held up her hand. “Wait,” she said, “I have it. He found God…and God said unto him,” Cheyenne threw her arms wide and boomed, “Stop being such a dick! A dick, a dick, dick…echo, echo, echo…”
Neither sister had seen their father since they were fourteen. The wedding invitation had arrived only two weeks before the date of the ceremony, just on the heels of Cheyenne’s reappearance, something their mother, Kirsten, considered prophetic. It was obvious from the short window that the decision to include them was, at best, the result of a long debate or, at worst, an afterthought. Their initial instinct had been to ignore it and the invitation was repurposed as a coaster for days before it was seriously considered. But in the end they could not ignore it. It tapped at a hidden door…Shh…he is a king in a castle; he has only stashed us away in the village to keep us safe; someday he will call for us, claim us, and make everything right.
“I kind of understand why we’re going to the wedding,” said Cheyenne, “but why is Mom going?”
“For her own reasons.”
“Without a doubt.”
Livy’s eyes met Cheyenne’s for a second then moved to the clock. “What time is Mom picking you up?” she asked.
A car honked outside.
“Now,” said Cheyenne.
Kirsten’s twenty-year-old Toyota was stopped in the middle of the street with the hazards on blocking half the road. She was wearing a black velvet camisole with a long black skirt and black cardigan. There was a ring on every finger and totemic silver jewelry hung around her neck. Tiny zircon studs pierced the indigo blue sun and the crescent moon tattooed on her earlobes. Cheyenne took one look at her and knew that her mother was totally prepared to make an awkward situation more awkward.
“Get in or we’ll miss the ferry,” said Kirsten.
The dashboard of Kirsten’s car rattled with the engine.
“Keep the window rolled down,” she said. “The defroster doesn’t work.”
Kirsten and Cheyenne hadn’t spent any time alone since Cheyenne returned so Cheyenne had agreed they would go out to the wedding together, while Livy rode in with their brother, Essex. The minute Cheyenne got into the car, though, she regretted it. Kirsten had questions. About Cheyenne’s failed marriage. About its aftermath. About Cheyenne’s spiritual analysis of this moment in her life. Cheyenne tried to change the subject to one of Kirsten’s many interests—domestic violence legislation, her coven, what books she was reading—but it always turned back to Cheyenne’s psyche and the archetypal trauma that must be feeding her cycles of disintegration. Cheyenne told her mother she was tired and pretended to sleep but Kirsten talked anyway.
“You’re a mystic by nature,” Kirsten said as they drove onto the ferry. “You’re drawn to shadowlands.”
Cheyenne rolled over and fell into a deep fake nap.
When they arrived, Kirsten went to find out where they were supposed to park. She saw Cyril, dressed in white, in the distance by the edge of the water. Walking over, Kirsten noted that his black hair was still long in front and combed behind his ears as it had been when she’d first met him, a rail-thin twenty-four-year-old holding forth about social norms and Hesse, quoting the Dalai Lama. It had all turned out to be plumage.
She’d never held him to any kind of child support outside the occasional hospital bill, but recently her attitude about that shifted. She didn’t expect anything out of him, but maybe the girls should. She wasn’t sure. Cyril was one of those rich people who viewed his wealth as the natural fruit of his spiritual voyage.
The rain had stopped but the air was chilled and her shoes were wet by the time she reached him.
Cyril kissed her on both cheeks.
“Thanks for coming early,” he said.
“You said you had something for the girls.”
“Yes, but not now. I’ve set aside time before things get too hectic,” he said.
Kirsten watched a large foamy wave burst into a white star on the rocks behind him.
“I’m not young anymore,” she said. “I could have cancer or drop dead of some zoonotic disease and you’d be their only blood relative.”
He smiled. “I have faith in your immune system.”
“Won’t save me from getting hit by a bus or shot by some teenager with an AR-15.”
“That’s a little dramatic,” he said.
She eyed him without expression, then laughed.
“I just hope it’s good,” she said. “Whatever you’re giving them. Like a house. Or an education.”
He turned to the water. Facing the sound, the breeze caught his hair.
He raised his hand to point at something and Kirsten walked off. Such a fucking Leo. Returning to the car, she knocked on the window to rouse Cheyenne.
Guests began to arrive in taxis. They clustered by the lighthouse, wandered as far as the radio tower, then came back to the catering tents where the bartender was stocking the open bar.
Around one, Livy arrived with Essex. They drove up in a beater AMC Eagle that Essex had borrowed from his landlord. Essex had brought a date, a honey-haired stripper who happened to be his cash fare one night. Livy brought an empty cooler. Kirsten met them at the car window and told them where to park, then directed Essex to take all their things to a small house on the edge of the sound. By now the caterers had set up the tables and were unloading white folding chairs onto the grass, which was freshly cut and verdant, save for a few raised knuckles of brown earth where it had been mown to the mud. Cheyenne stood on one of those like a pitcher on a mound. Livy saw her and walked over.
“What’s the lowdown?” asked Livy.
Cheyenne pointed at Cyril, who was chatting with friends near the lighthouse.
“Have you talked to him?” Livy asked.
Cheyenne shook her head. “I still think this whole thing is a bad idea.”
“Any sign of the bride?”
“No, they keep her stashed away until he signs the paperwork and gets to keep her.”
Livy smiled, but it was show. Cheyenne’s eyes darted everywhere except in the direction of Cyril. The back of Livy’s hands itched. At the last minute she had gotten nervous about how she was dressed and made Essex stop by Kirsten’s so she could change. But borrowing clothes from Kirsten’s closet had been a terrible mistake. Standing now, planted on the grass in a sleeveless floral print dress that exposed both the worker’s tan she had from the elbows down and the eggshell white of her muscled upper arms, she was miserable. She hadn’t worn socks and her mother’s black cotton Chinese slippers were soaked from the dew. Although she’d done her hair as usual, two braids pinned across her head like a wreath, she’d braided it too tight and it was giving her a headache. She narrowed her eyes at Cheyenne, who was now fidgeting with the leather bracelet on her wrist, with her head hung crown-down, hair shaggy in her face.
“Let’s get this done,” said Livy. “Then we can fade into the background.”
As they approached him, Cyril stepped away from his friends and opened his arms.
“Cheyenne, Livy. I’m so glad you could come.”
He kissed them each on the cheek and rested his hand on Livy’s shoulder until his friends excused themselves.
His cell phone rang and he answered it.
“I don’t go to weddings,” whispered Livy. “What happens now?”
“People come. Someone reads something by Hafiz or Rumi. There is an original vow contest, then everyone gets drunk.”
Cyril hung up and turned to them.
“I was hoping we could spend a few minutes together before the ceremony. I’m really excited for you to meet May. She’s heard all about you.”
Livy coughed. Cheyenne started to say something but Cyril turned to the panorama behind him. He’d chosen the spot for its view of the mountains across the sound. The lighthouse was an accent. A Dutch windmill in the tulips. A Scottish manor in the background. Something to decorate the moment but not a part of it.
“Stunning, isn’t it? The Indians believed these mountains were made to divide those who were greedy from those who weren’t because the people had forgotten to be grateful. The gods locked the ungrateful ones on the dry side of the mountains where nothing grows. A lesson.” He turned back to them. “We’re all so lucky. You two most of all. So few concerns.”
Behind him, a wind-shaped, hundred-year-old apple tree flowered at the brink of land, each petal that fell from it a skiff sailing uncaptained to the underworld.
“Cheyenne.” He smiled at her. “Kirsten said you were divorced? I’m sorry it didn’t work out. I hope it didn’t go too badly.” He squeezed Livy’s shoulder. “Any young man of yours I need to meet?”
“She doesn’t like men,” said Cheyenne.
Cyril dropped his hand.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. Forgive me. Well,” he scanned the sweeping coastal range with the pride of ownership, “we all have our own road. Pardon me. I have to go take care of a few things. I’ll come find you in a bit and we can visit a little more.”
Kissing each of them again he walked back toward the small parking lot.
“How can he not know you’re gay?” said Cheyenne. “Half of our first-grade class knew you were gay.”
Essex emerged from one of the houses and shaded his eyes. Livy smiled and waved him over.
“You know he’s been waiting,” Livy said. “You can’t dodge him anymore.”
“I’m not dodging him. Some people you have to be in the mood for,” said Cheyenne.
“I’m pretty sure you’re one of those people,” said Livy.
Cheyenne smiled a little but kept her eyes on Essex. Abandoning his date, he came toward them. She hadn’t seen him for two years and only sporadically for several years before that. She was struck by how much bigger he was in person than in her memory. This dissonance between the Essex in her mind and the real Essex was familiar but still jarring. Always in his presence she saw a large and broad-shouldered, if clumsy, man, but as soon as he was out of sight, he became the eleven-year-old boy she’d found on the street and dragged home when she was a teenager. She saw him beaming as he got closer and winced. You don’t get out of saving someone from themselves.
Reaching her, Essex wrapped her up in his arms, lifting her slightly in a hug. She kissed him and stepped back. He’d dyed his hair but the roots had since grown out so that from his scalp to the top of his ears it was light brown and from there to his chin, black. It reminded Cheyenne of a two-tone leather van seat.
“Where’s your date?” asked Livy.
Essex pointed to a drink table.
“Livy said you broke up with her,” said Cheyenne.
“Different girl,” said Essex.
He glanced at the ground, then squinted at Cheyenne, tilting his head, causing a short curtain of hair to fall across half his face.
“Do you think being here is a good idea? He’s never done a thing for you guys,” he said.
“At least he’s related to us,” said Cheyenne. “You have no excuse.”
“I’m here to tell him what an asshole he is,” said Essex.
“Bet you don’t,” said Livy.
“Watch me.”
Cheyenne peered into his blue eyes. He flinched. She shook her head. “You won’t. None of us will. We should and we won’t,” she said.
Livy folded her arms tight against her body. “He’s not worth it,” she said.
Essex saw Cyril heading toward the lighthouse and he turned and walked toward him. The sisters looked on. From their spot across the lawn they could see Essex’s mouth begin to move until Cyril put his hand on his shoulder and smiled. Essex smiled back.
“Coward,” said Cheyenne under her breath.