“MOTHER?” CHRISTINA SAID, CLINGING to the telephone. “Oh, Mother, I’m so glad to hear your voice.”
There had been a phone line out to Burning Fog Isle all of Christina’s life, but not during her parents’ childhoods. They had had to use ship to shore radio. Christina blessed the telephone. She just hoped Mrs. Shevvington wouldn’t come home and catch her in the forbidden living room before she had a chance to explain everything. “Mother, it’s so awful here. I need you,” cried Christina. “Please come.”
There was a curious pause. It was not like her mother. For a moment Christina thought the connection had been broken, and she imagined the fingers of the sea, taking the underwater cable, tearing it asunder, laughing beneath the waves.
“Christina,” said her mother in a queer voice, “the Shevvingtons have talked to us. They were on the telephone with us late last night. Honey, how could you behave like this? How could you forget your upbringing? Rude in school, lying about your homework, frightening Anya, refusing to eat the meals Mrs. Shevvington labors over? Christina, your father and I hardly know what to think.”
The black-and-gold peacocks mocked Christina. “Mother, that’s not what it’s like.” The telephone shook in her hand.
Her father got on the extension. She could see them, her mother in the kitchen, fragrant from baking; her father in the bedroom, sweaty from playing tennis. “Christina, when you left the island we were so proud of you, and now look. Cheating and yarning and refusing to obey authority! We don’t know what’s the matter with you, but luckily you’re with people who are used to dealing with difficult adolescents. The Shevvingtons are going to handle it.”
“It!” cried Christina. “You mean me? It isn’t like that. The Shevvingtons are cruel people. I think they hate girls. I think they choose a new one each year, and this year it’s Anya. The Shevvingtons made us fill out forms about what we’re afraid of — acid, or rats! You have to — ”
“You’re making that up, Christina,” her father said. “Christina, honey, no teacher, no principal, would ever hand a form like that to a child.”
“No, no. It’s true. And this house — I’m sure that the sea captain’s bride — or maybe it’s the poster, the poster of the sea — ”
“Stop it!” shouted her father. “Christina, I won’t have this! Mrs. Shevvington told us that you and Anya have some sort of sick game about that poster on your wall. Now you listen to me. When I was a kid, I had a hard time finding my place at the mainland school, too, and so did your mother, and so did everybody else, but we didn’t resort to making up ridiculous stories and placing blame on other people, and pretending that the finest, most caring principal the school has ever had is cruel! We just worked harder, Christina. We obeyed the rules! And that’s what we expect from you, too.”
The phone crackled.
It’s the sea listening in, thought Christina. The sea knows what’s going on. The sea started it.
Mrs. Shevvington came into the room. She did not look powerful enough to control Christina’s parents across the water. But she was. She took the phone, smiling her corncob smile. She told Christina’s parents that visits would not be a good idea and phone calls would be worse. There should be no communication between Christina and her parents until Christina had learned to behave.
Christina willed her parents to refuse. Believe in me! she thought.
“Fine,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Arnold and I will keep in touch. The important thing is not to worry.” Her smile stretched long and thin and yellow. “We are in complete control of Christina.”
Dolly’s first tape arrived.
Dolly was bored; it was no fun being the oldest in school; she had to help with the little kids, and this year the kids were really little: five-, six-, and seven-year-olds. Dolly missed Christina. Dolly was sure Christina was having a perfect year. Because that was the only reason Dolly could think of that Christina wasn’t sending tapes — she was too busy and too happy.
Christina had a blank tape. Benj had bought it for her. But what could she say to Dolly?
Dear Dolly, Remember my school daydream? Best friends, laughter, shared snacks, phone calls, compliments, a boyfriend?
I sit alone at lunch. Mrs. Shevvington punishes me for everything. Mr. Shevvington smiles and says I need mental counseling. As for your brothers, Benj won’t listen to me; Michael never comes near me; word got around school that I’m weird, and he’s afraid it’s catching.
I sleep alone in a dark green room that talks to me at night. Mrs. Shevvington took my flashlight, and the light switch for the bedroom is on the far side of the room from my bed, and the light switch for the hall is all the way around the other side of the balcony. I just get under the covers in the dark and hope Anya doesn’t jump out her window.
Anya said you can’t tell anybody if it’s hard; they just worry and they can’t do anything anyway. I want everybody on Burning Fog Isle worried about me. But the Shevvingtons took care of that. Nobody’s worried. Just mad.
Anya doesn’t sleep much any more. She’s afraid the seaweed on the window was a sign that the waves are going to come right into the room for her. Her grades are slipping. She breaks down in Public Speaking class and sobs. Mr. Shevvington comes in to give her moral support. She’s always thanking him for being so good to her. He’s not good to her! He’s the one who put her in there to start with.
Mr. Shevvington wrote Anya’s parents, Dolly.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rothrock, Anya continues to work far below her capacity. Just what immaturity causes this, I do not seem to be able to find out. Instead of growing more mature, contributing more in class, acquiring and using skills, Anya moves steadily backward. …
I hate Mr. Shevvington, Dolly. You go to junior high to learn government, begin algebra, increase your vocabulary, start a foreign language. Me, I’m learning to hate.
I cornered Robbie. I asked about his sister. Robbie was afraid, but he told me in the end. Val was sweet and friendly once. Sang in the choir, won prizes in the art fair.
“Ordinary,” Robbie told me. “But nice.” He frowned; this was the real stumbling block. Val had been nice. … She became nothing. It wasn’t that she stopped being nice. She stopped being anything.
Val slipped during her senior year; forgot to do homework, stopped washing her hair, avoided her friends, ate strange things, like Spaghetti-O’s cold from a can. She adopted a single outfit — torn corduroy pants and an old shirt of her father’s — and wore it daily for weeks. She was not on drugs, Dolly. She was not on booze.
She’s locked up now. The Shevvingtons recommended a really good adolescent mental hospital.
Jonah has fallen in love with me. I know. I wanted to have a boy fall in love with me. But I wanted to choose what boy. Jonah is overflowing with emotions that I do not share. I have to ask for instructions. “How do you feel now?” he asks. I say to him, “How should I feel?” He loves to hear me talk about the island, and whenever I finish my stories he laughs. I can’t tell if he’s laughing at me or with me. I want to be friends with the real kids! Like Vicki and Gretch. But they don’t pay any attention to me. Except when they’re laughing at me.
Oh, Dolly, it’s so awful. The only good thing is you are safe on Burning Fog. I know you hate sixth. I hated it last year, too. But sixth grade is safe.
Sometimes when Anya wakes up at night, and slips into bed with me, her feet cold, her hands cold, and she says that the fingers of the dead are walking on her back —
We hang onto each other, Dolly, but I can’t hold on forever. One of us is going to fall.
Well, of course she couldn’t send a tape like that to Dolly.
So she sent nothing.
“I have to give a speech about the ocean,” said Anya, twitching with nerves. They were up in Anya’s bedroom, Anya staring into the poster of the sea, Blake and Christina staring into Anya. In the afternoon Blake was always at the Schooner Inne now. The Shevvingtons stayed late at the high school, Michael had soccer practice, and Benj had a job pumping gas at the Mobil station.
“Who says it has to be about the ocean?” demanded Christina. “Talk about the sky, or the grocery store, or Blake’s catalog clothes.”
Blake was sprawled on the floor of Anya’s room. Christina was never afraid when Blake was there. She did not know what it was about Blake that kept away the fingers of the sea. Was it that he was a boy? That he was in love? That it was daylight?
“Mr. Shevvington says I have to overcome my fears. He says I have to tackle the scariest topics of all.” Anya whispered to the poster. “He knows all my fears.”
If I had those forms, thought Christina, if I showed them to my mother and father, then they would believe! Then they would realize that Mr. Shevvington is the one who is sick, not me.
She wondered where the forms were kept. Who else had read them? Who else had had to fill them out? What about Val’s forms? What had Val been afraid of? How had Mr. Shevvington destroyed Val?
Anya ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it down over her face to hide herself. Blake sighed and pulled Anya off her bed and down on top of him, putting her hands and hair away from her face. “Anya, stop being so worried. It’s only a high school class. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll forget your speech and have to sit down.”
Anya burst into tears. She quivered when anybody raised a voice around her now. Mr. Shevvington never raised his voice, so she skipped a lot of her classes and huddled near his desk. “Blake, don’t yell at me. I can’t date a person who yells at me.”
“I’m not yelling at you!” yelled Blake.
“Anyway,” said Anya, “Benj is not afraid of anything. If I have a job, I won’t be afraid, either. So I’m quitting school, too. I found a wonderful job. Where the water is all locked up.”
“What?” shouted Blake. “Quit school? Are you out of your mind? You will end up a wharf rat then.”
Christina had thought romance would be fast red cars, billowing black hair, long drives down the coast, alone together, kissing, and in love. That’s what Blake thinks, too, she realized, watching him watch Anya. But Anya — the most romantic-looking person in Maine — Anya doesn’t even know.
Blake changed subjects. Perhaps he thought he could change Anya as easily. “I made you a present,” said Blake pleadingly. “It’s a calendar. Full of our dates. Nothing but our dates.”
He had drawn the squares and the months himself. Each week was illustrated with cartoons cut from the newspaper — Far Side, Funky Winkerbean, Peanuts, Cathy, Garfield — cartoons about love and romance and boys and girls. Each Friday and Saturday listed a movie, a drive, or a dance that Blake would take Anya to.
“That’s so romantic!” said Christina, hugging herself.
“A paper calendar?” muttered Anya. She never talked in a normal voice any more; she just whispered to herself or to the sea. “Silly little squares with numbers on them. The only true calendar is the tide. It speaks to you; it ordains the time.”
“Anya,” said Christina nervously, “when the tide speaks to you, don’t answer.”
Blake got up off the floor. Christina could feel his rage. No, no, Blake, don’t leave her! Don’t break up! You’re all she has. I don’t count. I’m just the seventh-grader in the other bedroom! She needs you!
But Blake was trembling; his muscles quivered strangely, and she could not tell if he wanted to hit something or hug somebody.
“I’m putting an end to this,” said Blake. He slammed the window down, hard enough to break the glass. He yanked the paper shade so it snapped on the roller like a gunshot and jerked the thin cotton curtains closed.
“You can’t get rid of the sea that easily,” said Anya dreamily.
“Anya, I don’t know what’s happened to you. But it makes me nervous. And my parents — listen, the screwy way you talked in front of them this afternoon — Anya, it didn’t help us any. What is going on?”
Anya turned very slowly, like a ballerina. She arched onto her toes and with a long, slow wave of her own, pointed to the poster of the sea. “Ask it,” she said. “It knows.”
How big he is, thought Christina. She was filled with admiration for him, for his body and muscles and anger.
Blake attacked.
For one horrible minute she thought she would witness a homicide after all, that Blake would kill Anya with his bare hands. His fingers were huge and curled, like the souvenir woman’s, like Mrs. Shevvington’s, like the waves on the poster of the sea.
Blake ripped the poster off the wall. Sliding his fingers under the paper, he tore it off in great strips and chunks. The sound filled the room, like the huffing of night, the sound of mutilating. He threw the strips of poster behind him. Bits of green ocean and blue wave fell in the four corners of the room.
Anya jumped onto her bed, getting off the floor, as if the bits of poster were rats about to bite her bare feet. “I didn’t do it,” she cried. “It wasn’t me!”
“Who are you talking to, Anya?” shouted Blake, shredding the poster. “This thing was printed by the thousands in some factory in Boston. It’s nothing. Nothing. See? I tore it up. It’s gone.”
Why didn’t I think of that? wondered Christina. I could have torn it up myself. How clever Blake is.
The bedroom door was flung open, hitting the wall. The last strip of torn poster hung on the handle like a Christmas tree decoration.
“What is going on here?” Mrs. Shevvington said in a tight thin voice. “Anya, what are you doing, bringing young men up to your bedroom? Christina, why are you in this room? You have your own room, as I recall. Blake Lathem, I thought better of you. Since you have been associating with these island girls, your behavior has become worse and worse. I plan to address your parents about this. They have been discussing the idea of boarding school with Mr. Shevvington, to remove you from Anya’s influence, and I see that they were very probably right.”
Anya cried out, draping herself over the bed like some old damp towel. Blake went white.
“Nothing has happened,” said Christina. “Nothing was going to happen. We were just watching the tide.” She hated how people yielded to Mrs. Shevvington. Why didn’t they kick her in the shins? Why didn’t Blake, who had enough rage in him to break windows, attack her?
“Oh, you were, were you?” Mrs. Shevvington smiled. It was a brighter, more challenging smile than any she had directed at Christina before.
War, thought Christina. We’re at war now.
“Anya, Blake, go downstairs immediately. Christina, clean up the mess in this room.”
They were gone, Mrs. Shevvington pushing Blake and Anya downstairs like a high wind shifting driftwood.
Christina was alone with the shreds of poster. From the bathroom she got the whisk broom and dustpan. She began sweeping up the bits of paper.
Ffffffffffff, began the house.
She brushed.
Ffffffffffff, said the house.
Fffffffffff, said the walls and the floor and the glass.
Christina tried to stand up but there was weight on her, as if she were standing under water.
If I can just get downstairs … she thought. With the others. With Blake and Benj. I know it’s just the tide. I know it funnels sounds up through the foundations and between the cracks and inside the cupola windows. I know it’s just Candle Cove.
She dropped the whisk and dustpan in the hall. She grabbed the banister. She could not remember the way to the stairs. “I’m granite,” she whispered, “it’s Anya who is the tern.” She felt herself tip, as if her granite was only a facade, and indoors, inside her rib cage, under her skin, she was as weak and scared as Anya.
She heard the ocean clapping with delight. It’s the waves against the rocks, she told herself.
She smelled the sweat of the sea. It’s just the salt spray, she told herself.
She fell, clinging to the rope, eyes squeezed shut against the salt water, praying for help.
“Christina,” said Michael, laughing. “You look so funny hanging onto the banister like that. You know we’re not supposed to run down these stairs. They’re too steep.” He helped her up. He said, “I’ve heard dumb rumors about you in seventh grade, Chrissie. You’ve got to shape up. What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to fit in? You’re giving island kids a bad name. You of all people!”