2000
I’m on my island run. Slower than I once was, but still strong, and the air is April crisp—not quite cold and not yet humid. My body is grateful for the rhythm, my brain for the singular focus. I run the same route every day, and I pretend the island is my dollhouse, my mind placing people and objects just so—the director of my own live-action thriller. Yesterday, for example, Mr. Cooper was out front of his store as I passed. A middle-aged tourist was driving her golf cart too swiftly toward him, her yellow sunhat flapping dangerously in the breeze, and I imagined the worst—her swerving as she tried to keep her ridiculous hat on her head, just as Mr. Cooper stepped forward to drop his cigarette into the gutter. As he leaned out, the cart swerved, the front colliding with his head, and the smash of his skull against the plastic of the frame was like a bat to a rotten Halloween pumpkin. Huge and wet and splattering.
This didn’t happen. They glided past each other grumpy but unharmed. I ran by and tried not to feel disappointed. Ms. Millie, the woman who curated the museum before me and chose me as her successor, never left the museum, so certain was she that we Curators were telepathic puppeteers, capable of directing mischief and mayhem with just our imaginations. Ms. Millie was a bit on the crazy side. She said that only those prone to “a particular kind of narcissism and a tendency to self-aggrandize” could curate this island. She claimed that Eileen Fowler—the first Island Curator—was telepathic. That she and her sister, Elizabeth, could throw thoughts back and forth. Before she died, Eileen had also begun to be able to move objects with her mind. Ms. Millie believed some diluted bit of that ability was passed down to herself and to me. We were chosen as Curators not only because we were solitary people, organized, and thoughtful, but because we had this “little kernel of potential.” I’ve always pictured it the size and shape of a candy corn lodged sweetly in my frontal cortex.
“I saw it in you first thing,” Ms. Millie said to my little-kid self. “Your daddy is clueless, but you looked right at me, and I saw the island magic in you.”
She was crotchety, old Ms. Millie, a little scary, but I loved her. I loved too that she saw me as special even though I didn’t believe a word of it. I wanted the museum and the island. So when she said she saw herself in me, I did not immediately think of her bad qualities, nor did I bother to look up narcissism. I wanted the island to be mine, the pieces of it to make up a chessboard where I could quietly move the pieces.
Today I know half of what Ms. Millie said was nonsense, so I focus on my run. I need my wits about me since it is the start of Masquerade. From the museum, I head north on Division Street until I hit the glacial grooves and the surrounding state park. Then the island begins its curve east through the campsites and the three yurts the state installed to allow camping season to stretch further into the fall. The paved road—State Route 13—leads to the wealthier houses that sit out on the northeast peninsula, but I avoid these neighborhoods, having worn my own dirt path that skirts the coast before it turns south. I curve south, curling back into the island before the fence for the abandoned fun park is on my right and the land drops off sharply to my left, the lake splashing against the cliffs. The quarry comes next, although the foliage keeps it from view since I stick to the coast, and then there’s the long quiet stretch of beach before the ferry dock.
Today is also James’s funeral—the suddenness of his death has triggered an island change that I’m struggling to understand—and I can’t say I’m sad he’s gone. He and I hadn’t spoken in depth in a decade, not since I found him waiting for me on the small dock that July in 1989. I was returning the fishing boat Carrie and I “borrowed” to take us off island, and I could see James standing there like a busted lighthouse from a mile out.
“You had no right,” he said, waiting until I secured the boat to the dock. His hair disheveled, his eyes shot through with red. James is a handsome man, or at least he was. Tall with a broad chest, thick hair, a kind of Superman cleft to his chin hidden under an unkempt beard. He had a strong, certain voice perfect for reading his poetry aloud but obnoxious in conversation, where the patient quality of his intonation was just plain condescending. He also had, for many years, a fortitude I admired, swearing he would not reproduce, telling the Island Council the Volt line would end with him. He made it into his forties before he fell in love with Olivia Rose, a woman I never trusted, but maybe that was just because she so clearly didn’t trust me. Then there was Carrie.
I wait until my feet are on the dock to say, “Where are the girls?”
“Home,” he says, but I can tell he doesn’t know that. “Why didn’t Carrie come back with you?”
“James,” I say, exhausted. His name heavy in my mouth. I haven’t slept since we left the island, not really.
“Why would she do this?” He pulls at his hair with his hands. “You could have talked her out of it.”
“She’d already made up her mind.” I used to feel sorry for James. His circumstances seemed so beyond his control—he didn’t have the choice to step into his role like I did—but I see it differently now. He has choices—he always has. “Besides, you’re their father. It’s your job to protect them, above all else.”
“That seems a bit sexist, doesn’t it? What about Carrie? What’s her job?”
“Carrie doesn’t have the whole story and you know it,” I snap. Once, after Olivia Rose died, James confessed to me that he’d told her “everything.” I could only imagine what he had said, since he and every Volt before him refused to tell anyone anything. Anyhow, it was clear, at the time, that he thought the knowledge he’d handed her had somehow led to her death, like he was the serpent and Olivia Rose was Eve. I found it preposterous and egomaniacal, just as I do now.
I don’t need confrontation. I need sleep. I picture my bed. The soft white sheets. The bookish smell of the loft. I want him to go away so badly I can taste it. He takes a step back away from me.
“You haven’t told Carrie the whole story!” he shouts at me, and all his fatigue goes away. His eyes clear, his shoulders grow square, his fists clench. Fear rises in my throat.
“I’m not allowed,” I say. I know it’s a weak response.
“Exactly which rules are you paying attention to, Sonia?” I know what he’s implying. I’m a home-wrecker. A borrower. A thief. A peripheral parasite. “You’re the Curator. You. Your only job is to make sure island secrets are kept on island. That, and find your successor. But you overstep every damn time.”
He’s right in most ways, but people have long mistaken external passivity for weakness, when really what I do is quite active. “The three Cs,” Millie called them. Collect. Conduct. Conceal. The Volts—according to Millie—have long disregarded the Island Curator, but what sits between James and I is uglier than ever before.
Back when I was a kid being groomed for the job, Ms. Millie conveyed the number one rule to me straightaway and with frequency: Never get involved. She didn’t. She stayed inside and out of trouble. Island Counsel meetings came to her, so she never had to leave the museum. I ran her errands for her—even made sure the quarry cliffs were clean of debris. But I didn’t heed her advice. I got involved as soon as I was invited in. The door was open. That much I know for sure. Left wide open, and I could hear baby B.B. inside crying, wailing. I could hear James banging away at his typewriter to drown her out. The beloved Olivia Rose was newly dead, and baby B.B. was alone and terrified. Her father was distracted by a volatile and angry grief that he was trying to get under control. B.B. was screaming. I had to walk in. When nothing happened, when there was no zap at the entrance, no crumbling of the island, I went back again and again and again. I placed myself in the scene and moved us all about, little island puppets, imagining the best outcome rather than the worst. I dubbed B.B. my successor, getting James to agree to it at a time when he might have agreed to just about anything.
“There are consequences for changing the story,” James said angrily.
“You promised us, all of us, it would end with you.” I gesture at the island. One great betrayed thing.
“You don’t understand the ecosystem of the island, Sonia. I didn’t understand back then either. I thought I did, but I didn’t. Olivia Rose thought if we had a girl, well, that we could change the course of things, but…”
“Ha!” I say, loud enough to interrupt him. “I call bullshit, James. You can’t plan the gender of a baby. You didn’t know girl or boy until the day Beatrice was born. Maybe you and Olivia Rose decided to rewrite what you did, justify it after the fact, but I know that’s nonsense. The two of you were selfish.”
“You didn’t know Olivia Rose like I did,” he says. “No one did. None of that matters now. We know now that the girls are still vulnerable. So, this time, we would have a boy. And now the chance of that boy setting the whole thing back on track is gone. You made sure of that. And, it seems to me, that it’s you, always directing the story. You claim you sit back, collect, do no harm, but you stepped in to try to write our story from the start. Why can’t you make your own life and leave ours alone?”
It isn’t as if this thought hasn’t occurred to me before. The guilt of it keeps me up at night. Washes over me as Carrie sleeps, unaware, in my bed. My own happiness is a sign of something rotting, but hearing it from James does not make me feel worse. A little seed of something powerful is growing in me.
“I do my job for the island and you do yours, James. I have as little choice as you do.”
“Now I call bullshit.” He spits the word into my face. “As soon as you got your hands on B.B., came into my house, things changed. You did something. Changed the course, and now you’ve done it again, convincing Carrie to run off and do what she’s done.”
“They love me, James. Your family. Maybe more than they love you.” The shock of it, of saying it and meaning it, takes the green seed of jealousy inside me and warms it, waters it, until I feel it grow.
For a second, he looks surprised, then like he’s going to launch himself at me, tackle me on the dock.
“I’m as important to this island as you.”
“You are not.”
“Eileen Fowler was the first Curator, and I am the current. This is my story whether you like it or not, James. I choose my successor.”
“You mean our story. Not yours and not mine. The eldest is meant to take over for me, Sonia, and you know it. You’ve done something. And what about Henrie? If B.B. is Curator, what else shifts?” He is speaking quickly, fiercely, little flecks of spit coming out at the corners of his mouth. It’s less anger than it is pure panic.
“If the baby had been a girl, you’d have full-blooded sisters. If the baby had been a boy, you would have loved him just as much as your girls and fought for him as hard as you’ve fought for your daughters. There’s no easy out, James. Carrie did the right thing.”
The anger that was rising up in him, making his body expand, is gone. He shrinks instead, and I see the old man in him again. The gray in his beard. The bruised skin around his eyes. He turns away. Moves off the dock and back onto the island.
And now James is dead. It’s been more than a decade since that conversation, and I’ve learned to do what I was too greedy to do then. To live alone, to trudge on without expectations. To stay in my place and need no one and want less. To ignore that “kernel” in my mind that wants to move and direct and control. To be the observer Ms. Millie taught me to be. I keep my machinations hidden even from myself.
And so, I run. The island, like time, curves away from that long-ago conversation. A breeze rolls in off the water and balances the bright heat of the sun. I’m usually out for my run much earlier in the day, but Masquerade means every islander pitches in, cleaning up Main Street: hosing down vomit and piss from the night before, restocking shelves, helping the drunk and disheveled back to their own beds.
The weather is always kind on Masquerade weekend, as if it knows we islanders need the income. We came up with the idea for Masquerade after the island moved from undiscovered gem to a place known for disappearances—women last seen stepping off the ferry. There was one young woman who jumped, just sixteen, whose mother showed up after the fact. She was a wreck. Gorgeous though. The kind of woman people notice and listen to. She made quite a fuss before she overdosed in the Island Inn. Apparently she was an addict. Her death brought the press running. After that the tourists fell away, leaving only voyeurs who wanted to see the haunted quarry.
“What’s your mile time?” Old Mr. Albertson startles me even though this holler is a part of our routine. He’s putting folding chairs at the edge of his property to keep tourists from parking on the grass.
“Too slow!” I run faster.
Get on with yourself, his wave says.
The breeze shifts, hits my face, and I smell fried dough. Big greasy cakes of it with powdered sugar dumped on top. The ferry whistle blows, a boat approaching the dock. My feet quicken. I’m more than halfway through my ten-mile run. The ferry dock is at the southernmost tip of the island, then the downtown springs up along the coast with its shops that spread out into the midland. A hundred little side streets with vacation homes, some luxurious but most modest, spring out from town, but I ignore those routes most days and run north past the VFW and Quarry Road until I’m back home at the museum.
Today I hear the bang of metal to rubber as the ferry boat settles into the dock. The second tier of the boat is packed. Playful shrieking comes next.
The ferry has been running strong since yesterday morning, dumping ungodly amounts of people onto our small island. It reminds me that we need to station someone in the quarry tonight. It will probably have to be me. I run faster.
Cars begin to drive off the ferry and my stomach tightens.
Carrie will probably be coming to the island with Henrie. I am prettier than I used to be. More confident, leaner. My skin pale with the island winter but also smooth and clear. I was still very much a kid when Carrie knew me. Old enough to rent a car but not old enough to know better than to fall in love with someone else’s wife.
Things I remember about her: blue eyes, sad stare. She loved oranges, her fingers were always sticky with them—the skin of the fruit caught under her nails. In her final island years, she spent more time with me at the museum than at home. How will it feel to see her again? I head up Division to my museum home, using every piece of my body to push myself forward. I stayed with her off island for three days and four nights. She didn’t want to be touched, but I stayed close. Curled on the bed next to her or resting on the sofa across the room.
When I reach my lawn, I drop onto the grass. I often allow myself this indulgence at the end of my run. On my back, I close my eyes to the sun and try to find my breath. I imagine her shoulders, the soft white skin, the round bump of a scar where she’d fallen from a tree house as a kid, a nail sliding in to nick her clavicle.
“Hey.” A figure stands over me, looking down. I’m startled, my skin fizzing against my tired muscles, and I sit up too quickly. The world blurs for a minute, but her voice pushes on. “I don’t want you there today.”
Beatrice. I work my way to kneeling. The individual blades of grass pressure their pattern into my kneecaps. Beatrice is tall as a tree from this angle. More beautiful than Olivia Rose ever was. When B.B. was just one year old and newly motherless, I moved into Quarry Hollow to take care of her. It was only for two years—the years before James met Carrie—but it was the best of my life. She was already walking, already talking. Her blond hair was curly then in a way that wouldn’t last but bounced around her face and wisped in front of her eyes. She loved stuffed animals, her favorite thing was putting them to bed, singing them a little song, then covering them up with a dish towel or Kleenex. I’d find these little lovelies all over the house, resting peacefully wherever she’d tucked them in.
“Are they here? Henrie and Carrie?”
B.B. shakes her head no. “I told Henrie not to bring her.”
I wrinkle my brow, a question.
“Carrie didn’t love James. Not anymore. What could she possibly want from the funeral?”
“To see you,” I say, no question in my voice.
“Fuck that.”
Little B.B. was a caregiver. She adored her stuffed animals, her father, and her sister. There was even a time when she adored me. She had this fierceness, and it felt good to be included in that bubble with her, like she was your shield. The woman in front of me is using that same strength to keep us all away. I want so badly to hug her, to make her remember that there was a time when I got to play at being her mother and when she wanted to be with me, like me.
“If you don’t want me at the funeral, I won’t go.”
“Thank you,” she says, but I hear doubt in her voice. I’ve agreed too quickly.
“How are you?” I ask her as I get to my feet. It’s hard to reconcile how much she hates me with the little girl I once knew.
“How do you think I am?” The anger is back, perhaps never gone.
“You’re going back to Boston after this?” My voice rises too high at the end.
“They said I can finish up here. I don’t have to be on campus.”
“You’re still writing?” B.B. had long wanted to be like her father, but she’s more like me. Her writerly voice is strong and consistent. She conveys story competently, but it isn’t poetry. She sets the stage, moves the pieces, but the voice is not unique. There is no flare. She is a perfect Curator.
“Of course, I’m still writing. It’s a fucking MFA.”
Even when she was tiny, tucking in her stuffies, B.B. would sit outside James’s office door and pretend to type when he typed. Her little fingers punching at the floor, a secret smile on her face that meant she was onto something good. “You used to let me read your stories. Do you remember?”
“I was a teenager. Of course I remember.”
“I’d love to help again. I could read your thesis for you. We could even clear the museum. You could have a reading.” I dust off my knees, as if the impressions there are grass clippings.
“Don’t be desperate,” she says. Her disgust so well played that I shrink a little. “I do have a question for you, though.”
“Okay.” Something in her announcement makes it clear she’s been working up her nerve to ask me.
“My mother. Does she have to stay here?”
I laugh loudly. It is the wrong thing to do so I say, “Your mother is dead.” Another wrong thing.
“No shit,” she says, like I’m the dumbest person she’s ever met.
“Wait,” I say. My brain is slow but a new worry blooms in me. “Can you hear her? And the others? Are they talking to you now?”
“Forget it.” She starts to walk away so she won’t have to answer my question.
I grab her arm, and in that moment of touch, I feel a decade of space burn between us. She rips herself away.
“Hold on. What are you asking and why are you asking it?”
“Mom is in the house, like the others. We used to talk to her all the time. Well, Henrie was the one who could hear her, but I know she was … is there.”
We’ve never discussed this. I’ve told them the stories, the legends. But James never wanted them to know what really happened to Olivia Rose. Their whole childhood was spent visiting an empty grave, and then, when he did tell them, he did a shoddy job. A story half-told. Details never expressed or explained.
“You shouldn’t trust her,” I say, and immediately regret it. Olivia Rose was loved by everyone. Tall and calm. She took to the island immediately. Knew everyone. But there was something I never liked about her. Once I hinted at this to Carrie, but Carrie only laughed at me, saying, “You sound as jealous of her as I am.” And that is likely all it is. Jealousy. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. But, B.B., has something changed for you?”
“Fuck you,” she says, turning to leave.
A little desperate part of me panics. “Yes!”
“Yes what?” She’s stopped moving away from me.
“I believe the ghosts are there. And if Henrie said so, then Olivia is surely one of them.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You want to know if she has to stay in that house? I don’t know. Honestly, I have no idea.”
“But what’s your guess? You know this island as well as anyone. Tell me what you think.”
“I think you are capable of just about anything, Beatrice. Like me, if you want something, you can make it happen.”
“When have you ever made anything happen?” B.B. asks me.
It’s cruel, but maybe she’s right. Long ago I saw myself as defiant. I was taking the gifts passed on to me by Ms. Millie and using them to define the world around me. But how long ago was that? What am I now?
“I’m going to ignore that bit of meanness, but I do believe you can do whatever you set your mind to.”
“Really?”
My compliment means something to her even if she won’t apologize for being cruel, and I let myself feel that for a moment. The warmth of it floods me with a brief but all-consuming joy.
“Your mother may have left you. But I never did.” It is more than I meant to say, and I see I’ve lost her again.
“My mother never left me, the island took her, and so I won’t leave her.” It’s more a statement than a question. B.B.’s back straightens, resolved.
“You could always just give the house a shove, push it right over the edge into the quarry. It’s headed that way anyway!” I force a laugh and it sounds so insecure—she should hate me.
She stops, spins on her heels, and marches back up to me. Her face to mine. “You think I haven’t tried destroying it? Burning it down, for example? Do you realize it’s been a decade since Carrie and Henrie left?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember that night?”
“What night?” My voice sounds feeble. Of course I remember.
“You were there. I’m sure of that now. We were in the quarry. You, me, Henrie, Carrie. Henrie was drowning. I had to pull her out of the water. Or I tried to. Or something. I can’t remember the details, not exactly. It’s a big gray, rainy fog. But they left. Without me. Dad stayed, physically, anyway. But he would never talk about that night. No one would. They all left me so they wouldn’t have to.”
“That’s not true, B.B. I tried. You wouldn’t talk to me.”
“But you were the adult. I was the kid. I needed you to try harder.” She spits the last sentence, and the anger is wet and hot on my cheeks, hitting in a dozen small places.
The job of Curator is passed down from woman to woman—Ms. Millie trained me, and before that there was Alice and before that Nora, all the way back to Eileen. We are meant to be trackers of island history, dispassionate observers. All except for me. I broke that barrier, rewrote it, pushed on it to test its give. I broke it for the first time when I fell in love with little B.B. I let myself believe I was her mother. I started breaking rules a long time ago. I took a break for a while there. Stayed in my lane. Maybe it’s time to bring the old me back out. Maybe it’s time to stop censoring myself.
“Beatrice Bethany Volt. You listen to me,” I say and grab her right wrist, tight enough to make her jump and pin her in place. “I love you. I always have and I always will. It’s unconditional, so it doesn’t matter if you hate me. I’m done sitting back and watching you flail. There are things you need to know. Your father’s dead. He had his chance to teach you and he didn’t do it. It’s my job now to give you what I know, and if you don’t let me help you, you’ll all be in danger.”
“You’re full of shit,” she says. “Let go of me.” It’s a hiss that leaks out from between her teeth, but I don’t let go. I study her face.
“I’m serious, Beatrice.” We are in unchartered territory. James is dead. B.B. is the first female heir, and Henrie is on her way back.
“Okay,” she says softly, and I see now that her eyes are filling with tears. I let go of her wrist. “Later. We’ll talk later. Right now, I have to go.”
“I want to teach you everything I know. I’ve been saving it for you.” My power is fading. “I love you, Beatrice. Like my own.”
“I heard you.” Her voice is soft this time. Absent of anger and accusation, and I tell myself it’s a victory. She turns away from me, heading in the direction of Quarry Hollow.