2000
It’s been nearly three months since I met the devil, and I alternate between moments in which it seems like it never happened and moments when it seems that the seconds in which I am currently living are the ones that never happened. Either way, my changing body brings me back to reality anytime I drift too far off.
I am in the Quarry Hollow kitchen surrounded by my people. It’s easy, with so many people around me, to stop worrying about the babies growing in my tummy, how fast they are pushing out my skin, how much they seem to move.
“But it’s not too hot for soup!” Henrie is shouting in response to something Joshua has said, some niggling comment meant to make her laugh. He loves her. We can all see it. Their argument is playful.
“Joshua’s right. It is too hot for soup,” Wally offers. “I’m sweating.”
The house feels big tonight. The doors seem to hang more loosely on their hinges; the front door is rarely shut. In fact, it swings open on its own, as does the back door. As if every frame in the house has widened to invite more people inside. With the exception of Henrie’s darkroom, which she keeps locked, and Daddy’s study, which I keep locked, we leave everything that can be opened open. And people come. They stop by. They say hi. They stay for dinner. Tonight, the house is fat with people.
We gather for dinner regularly now. It’s our third meal together, but it feels like we’ve done it a dozen times. We’ve fallen into a rhythm that is both familiar and familial. Carrie, Henrie, Joshua, Wilde, Wally, and Sonia.
“You’d be sweating soup or no soup,” Ms. Sonia, laughing, teases Wally. Flirting? I think yes. There are quiet tensions in this kitchen. So much smaller than they were before we began to gather, but they are here all the same, and the one between Wally and Ms. Sonia is decidedly sexual. I had hoped Carrie and Sonia would hook up again. It would have kept Carrie more distracted, but the house seems to be keeping her plenty preoccupied, so I let it be.
“What can I say? I have an advanced cooling system,” Wally says, flirting back. The corners of her mouth lift.
“It’s definitely too hot for soup,” Carrie offers. She’s sitting to my right, always a little too close for my comfort, as if she intends to never let me out of her sight. She’s taken up knitting, a hobby absurd for the summer temperatures, and the thick blue yarn she’s learning with is unspooling on the kitchen table, the length of it spilling over and sticking to her bare thighs. “Dammit, I dropped a stitch,” she mutters to herself, then looks around at us, as if someone in the kitchen magically knows more about it than she does and will step in and help.
After Carrie and Henrie left the island years ago and it was just me and Daddy in a too-quiet house, I worried I was turning into Carrie. That, even though the connection isn’t biological, I was growing into the spitting image of her. Desperate and sad and always walking around like I was exhausted. The house pushing down on my shoulders just as it had hers, like we were the only two people in the world capable of holding up its roof beams. I feared that like her I’d be too afraid to leave the island and also too scared to stay. But then I left for college and graduate school, and it was fine. I didn’t have to ditch completely. I came and went as I pleased for years. Dad took care of the island, and I took care of myself. And I realized I don’t need the island or any of the people on it. I don’t even need my sister. I can stand on my own without anyone else. Henrie can lie to me all she wants. I’ll always know more, be more, than her.
“Come on now, people,” I offer. “Everyone knows a hot summer soup cools the soul.
“Too bad we don’t have freshly knit scarves to go with it.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Beatrice Bethany. Meal consumption hasn’t even begun yet. Besides, you’re one to talk,” Joshua says, from where he stands by the stove next to Henrie. “You’re baking bread! Wilde, what are you offering, tonight?”
“Frittata. It’s super-easy,” Wilderness says. “Like an omelet but with a good crust on it. The bread will be perfect with it.”
“Thank you, my love,” I offer, adding, “He’s an amazing chef.”
“I’m all right.” It’s clear by the upward pull on the right side of Wilderness’s mouth that he likes the attention, but he is no good with praise, so he quickly busies himself by moving to the sink and filling it with soapy water for dishes. His posture gives away his emotions. His pride and shyness evident in the stretch of his shoulders to the ceiling in one moment and then the slope of them toward the floor in another.
And, like she’s read my mind, Henrie asks, “So, when is this supposed wedding?”
My sister is staring at me hard. The question is a challenge that I didn’t know was coming. There is an easy answer: Wilde and I decided—or rather I led Wilde to the right answer—but I count a few beats, considering why she is asking, a hint of aggression in her voice. I decide I don’t care and answer, “July Fourth. It’s soon but also the long weekend so off-island folks can come. Plus, we can pretend the fireworks are for us, can’t we, Wilde?”
“They will be for us,” Wilderness says, pausing in his washing of dishes to give my shoulder a squeeze. He leaves bubbles behind that Henrie’s eyes flick to. Let them take their time soaking into my T-shirt, I think. “The fireworks are gorgeous here in a small-town kind of way. They have a barge they fire them from.” Wilde’s talking mostly to Wally now, but Henrie hasn’t been here in over a decade, nor has Carrie. “It’s done off the north side of the island, where that old Fun Land Park is. B.B., now that you two own all that land outright, maybe we could open up the parking lot to the public? Let them gather there to watch? When the water is really calm, it works like a mirror, so the fireworks seem to be above and below the island. Plus, I’m in charge of approving the fireworks. I can approve a bigger order this year. Make it more special.”
“That’s my birthday,” Henrie says flatly, any aggression gone.
“That’s right,” I say, as if I hadn’t already thought of that. I remember smeared red icing on too-sweet grocery-store cake. We used to imagine we’d catch the fireworks, or rather the hundreds of little illusions of light they created that danced on the water. I used to tell her we’d gather those pulses of light and fashion them into a birthday crown—pink and green and purple sparkles for her head. We’d watch from the glacial grooves. Lie on our backs in the pockets of the grooves while all the other island inhabitants cluttered Fun Land Park.
“We wanted to check with you, of course,” Wilderness rushes in, always trying to make peace. “It’s just that it’s the long weekend so our friends won’t be able to say they can’t make it. Would it be okay with you?”
My sister wants to say no. She wants to stop the wedding. Make all of this go away. I keep my eyes on her, dare her to say it’s not okay. She’s holding her breath now, the soupspoon in her hand and the steam of the pot pressing on her throat, her face. She takes a deep breath and says, “Of course it’s okay. I can’t remember the last time I bothered to celebrate my birthday. It’s not like I’d have anything planned.”
“I’ll throw you a mini-party,” Joshua says, reaching out to hold her hand. “We’ll get two cakes. One wedding cake and one birthday cake.”
“Excellent. It’ll be a crazy mishmash of celebrations.”
And just like that there is so much chatter and conversation about babies and weddings and quarry walks that any direct or solitary communication between me and my sister is lost to the commotion. Still, when a drop of something hits the center of the kitchen table, I see Carrie look up. She leans in to whisper to me, “Do you hear that?”
Hearing nothing, I ask, “What?”
“James. Like typewriter keys.”
“Shall we go see if he’s ready for dinner?” I ask Carrie with a smirk on my face.
She looks at me horrified and drops a knitting needle into her lap. She leaves it there.
No one else has heard this exchange. It’s just me and Carrie in a little bubble of communication that feels like it’s been created for us by the house. Or maybe I’ve created it. Maybe I’m that powerful now. I feel that powerful, so I lock eyes with Carrie. Hold them tight.
“That’s not funny, Beatrice.”
“It’s not meant to be, Caroline.”
“Why is his office locked? Why won’t you let anyone go in there?”
“No one has asked to go in.” Which is true. They haven’t. I haven’t had to do anything but keep the door locked. Easy peasy. “Would you like me to let you in, Carrie?”
I can tell her hands are shaking below my line of vision, so I look down at them. Stare and then lift my eyes back to hers. She tucks them under her thighs in a gesture that makes her seem childlike, unprepared, but then her face changes. She bites the interior of her lip, and the sharp little pain must be strong enough to steady her.
“Sure. Let’s go,” she says.
“Now?” I ask. She’s called my bluff, and I hear the quiver in my voice as soon as it is too late to contain it.
“Yes. Now.” She puts her knitting on the table and stands. “Be right back,” she says to the group, but they are all busy eating and serving themselves food. No one cares.
“I have to pee!” I announce, and follow Carrie out of the kitchen.
Carrie stops at the bottom of the stairs, and I see that none of this is actually about wanting to go in Dad’s office, or even if it were, she is too scared to see it through. With her hand on the banister to hold herself steady, she looks at me.
“I ran into that lawyer. Dennis something. Your father’s lawyer.”
“So,” I say, but my heart rate speeds up.
“So, he recognized me. Introduced himself. I thanked him for all he’s done for my girls.” She says my girls as a manipulation. I’m sure of it. She doesn’t give a shit about me. Not really. “Anyway, I told him I was curious about restrictions on the sale of the house and land. I said Henrie, at least, would want to sell her half. Do you know what he told me?”
“Henrie has not said that she wants to sell,” I say.
“He said that none of it was left to Henrie. None of it.”
“Huh.”
“Why would you lie about that?”
“I have a plan, Carrie.”
“That’s manipulative, B.B., and I don’t like it.”
“You don’t have to like it. You don’t have to be involved at all.”
“Beatrice.”
“Yes, Mother.”
I think she is about to tell me not to call her that but thinks better of it. “I love you, Beatrice, but I don’t trust you. You aren’t making good decisions, and even if you won’t tell me what you’re thinking, you should tell your sister.”
“This is not your business.” I feel anger rising in me, an old and childish anger.
“If you don’t tell her, I will.”
I step forward and force her to stumble back. She sits down hard on the second stair. I tower over her, and I feel that anger mature, rise up in me into something violent. It feels good, this adult version of my old outrage, and I let it bloom, redden my face as I bend down and point my finger in her face.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I say. It’s a snarl. It comes up from deep in my throat, guttural and full of blood, and I see that she is looking at me in horror. I feel it then. The creature I am becoming, and I wonder if it is similar to what my father was. If Henrie and I would twin in our monstrous shapes. It’s the first time I’ve actually felt it coming on, been sure that the deal I made with the devil wasn’t just about my babies but also about my body. The power of it moving through me is fantastic. I breathe. Slow it down. It is not the time. Calmer, I stay leaned into Carrie’s face and add, “Stay out of my way, Carrie. Stay the fuck out of my way.”
I stand tall and turn on the pads of my feet, walking back to the kitchen, laughing as I enter the room, ready to eat.