“THE POSTER,” SAID CHRISTINA for the third time, “was torn into pieces. Blake ripped it off the wall. Now it’s together again. That’s why Anya dropped out of high school. That’s why she’s working in the laundromat.”
Christina’s father jammed his hands into his jeans pockets and stared out the window. Christina’s mother began crying quietly.
Mr. Shevvington said, “Thirteen is a vulnerable age. There is often borderline behavior. I think we can be grateful that your daughter is not into drugs or alcohol. I think her personality can be saved.” He paused. “I’m trying to think of a way to phrase this gently. But there is no gentle way. Island life is very isolating. Ingrown. Naive and unsophisticated. When a young emotional girl, full of hormones, full of dreams, finds herself facing reality for the first time, with classmates who are better prepared, more in touch with the times, better dressed, and so forth, it isn’t surprising that there’s a collapse.”
Christina’s mother had buried her face in the crook of her elbow. Christina’s father had now turned his back completely. Mrs. Shevvington was smiling. Neither of the Romneys saw it. Mr. Shevvington’s soothing, serene voice droned on and on. How much he was able to bring into it! Drugs, violence, “the times in which we live,” “teenagers today,” even the entire twentieth century.
Christina interrupted him, for which her parents scolded her. She said, “I have thought about it and thought about it. The only people who could have put up a new poster are the Shevvingtons. And they could have put a bit of seaweed on the inside of the window, and they could have told Anya story after story about the sea captain’s wife stepping through the cupola and they could have — ”
She stopped. She was frozen like a Stone Tag statute by the look on her parents’ faces. “Do you seriously believe,” said her father, through gritted teeth, “that a high school principal is going to do silly, childish things like switch posters in the middle of the night in order to frighten a vulnerable seventeen-year-old girl?”
Christina stared at him. That was exactly what she believed. She had said it over and over now. Why weren’t they listening to her? She could make the facts no clearer.
“I feel so guilty!” Christina’s mother burst out. “I thought we were doing so well by our daughter!”
“And you tried,” said Mr. Shevvington sympathetically. “I believe that all parents do the best they can. Unfortunately, as in situations like this, the best is sometimes not enough.”
Mrs. Shevvington had set the table in the Oriental dining room, amid the golden peacocks and the black gardens. She served a wonderful meal. She had a standing rib roast, with a delicious, smooth, dark brown gravy, and oven-gold potatoes. She had yellow squash, green beans, and brown bread and, even if you didn’t like vegetables, the table was colorful and smelled delicious and looked thankful, like November, like harvest, like love.
The room gave off an aura of love, the way only a feast and a family can do, and only Christina knew it was false. Her parents thought it was kind and thoughtful, full of effort and preparation.
“Mr. Romney,” said the Shevvingtons gently. “Mrs. Romney.” They sounded as if they were addressing an election crowd. “Although we do not wish to jump to conclusions, it looks as if Christina has always been very jealous of Anya. They were unable to share a room and had to be separated. Soon after that Christina even felt she had to take away Anya’s boyfriend. Now it would be nice to think that Christina just flirted, but evidence is that Christina tempted Blake to show off. To save a life, supposedly. Some man in a wet suit that nobody else saw.”
“Blake saw him,” said Christina. She felt like a piece of wood. They could have nailed her to the front of a sailing vessel now and used her for a figurehead, and she would last through any weather. She felt varnished and she thought, That souvenir woman with the leathery skin. Anya said if she touched her she would turn to leather. I’ve turned.
“Blake,” Mrs. Shevvington reminded them all, “was whisked away to boarding school the moment he could be taken out of the hospital. According to Blake’s poor parents, the boy hardly knew what he was talking about.”
“He knew,” said Christina. She could not bear thinking of Blake and yet she could think of little else. He seemed to be beside her, talking to her, touching her. The Shevvingtons were right about one thing — she had had a crush on Blake. A crush that began as they ran down Breakneck Hill and lasted only that short, terrifying afternoon. Blake had been badly bruised, his shoulder dislocated when the summer person — some birder with binoculars — had jerked him to safety. Christina had not been allowed to see him. Anya had not been allowed to see him. When they telephoned the Lathems, Blake’s parents hung up on them. “Don’t harass us,” they said. They told the Shevvingtons (or at least the Shevvingtons said so) that those two island girls were such a terrible influence and so dangerous that they had to move their son immediately. And they did.
Move him where? Christina thought constantly. Where is he living? What school is he going to? Does he think about us? Is he worried about Anya? Does he remember he was chasing the brown wet suit? Or does he truly, actually, think that I talked him into a suicidal run down the cove ladder?
Oh, how she yearned to see him! She thought of him so often and yet sometimes she could not quite remember his features; the more she thought of him the more his face eluded her.
Blake’s scrape with death had been too much for Anya. The fingers of the sea had truly grabbed him. Christina was unable to convince Anya that the fingers of a real person — a birder walking by — had rescued him. That real people won! And so could Anya, if she got tough with her fears.
There was no toughness in her.
She had quit high school. She was working at the laundromat. Her parents had come to talk to the Shevvingtons. The Shevvingtons had very graciously agreed to keep Anya with them even though she was no longer going to public school and not rightly an island boarder. Perhaps she needs a year off, said the Shevvingtons sympathetically to Anya’s horrified, heartsick parents. Every morning now when she left for the laundromat, in her ill-fitting jeans and unmatched blouse and sagging sweater they said to her, “This is good for you, this is right for you.”
And Anya believed them.
Christina, remembering what Robbie had said, looked very hard into Anya’s soul. She was not sure there was one left. Anya was empty, like an old Coke bottle in the recycling pile. The Shevvingtons were recycling her, all right. But into what?
Christina had made Robbie come to the laundromat to look at Anya. “Yes,” Robbie had said, “that’s just like my sister. Nothing left.”
“Do your parents blame the Shevvingtons?” asked Christina.
“Of course not,” Robbie had said bitterly. “They think the Shevvingtons are the ones who helped her last as long as she did. They think the Shevvingtons are kind and understanding.”
All parents are alike then, thought Christina, looking at hers. They are actually grateful to the Shevvingtons! My own mother and father are probably going to end this dinner by thanking them!
Mr. Shevvington continued. “Christina knew better than anybody when the tide would come in; Christina is obsessed by that tide and by Candle Cove. She even pretends there is a tide right in her bedroom,” said Mr. Shevvington sadly. “Brought us a piece of seaweed she claimed landed on that window sixty feet above the highwater mark.” Mr. Shevvington paused. He had a wonderful sense of timing, Christina would grant him that. He said to her parents, “Christina knew Blake would reach that ladder just as the tide thundered in.”
Nobody talked about that terrible sentence. It just lay there, implying terrible things.
Christina said to her parents, “Listen to me! Listen to me!”
But it never occurred to Christina’s parents that the Shevvingtons might lie. The Shevvingtons were Authority, they were The Principal, and The Teacher, and The Innkeeper. They told The Truth. They Knew Things, they had Experience, they were Understanding and Caring.
Her mother, weeping, said, “We have spent thirteen years listening to you, Christina. I guess we made a lot of poor choices. Now it’s time to listen to the people in charge of you.”
Her parents went back to the island. Without her. They cried, and they hugged her, and they promised to write and send her presents and they begged her to “shape up” and they said they loved her … but they left.
Christina thought, some people on islands are naive and innocent. Not me — but my own parents. There is evil in this house, and they didn’t feel it. It took Anya, as it took Val, and now they’re going to try to take me. Well, they won’t. I am granite.
In English Mrs. Shevvington discussed a poem by Carl Sandburg. It was very short.
Christina did not consider it a poem. It was called “The Fog.” She made a face at it.
“Christina?” said Mrs. Shevvington. “You have a thought to contribute?”
They waged war unceasingly now. The class knew it was war, and had divided into teams. Gretch and Vicki of course joined Mrs. Shevvington, bringing along with them every other girl in the class. The boys just loved a fight, any fight, and goaded Christina continually.
Christina thought she might not actually be the loneliest person on earth, but it certainly felt like it. She had had Dolly for a best friend all her life. To have nobody, nobody at all — and yet rows of girls sitting inches away from her! — it was the worst thing on earth.
“Fog comes like wall to wall carpet, suffocating the view,” said Christina, who had known more fog, more intimately, than any of them. She remembered vividly the day when she was five, out with her parents, suddenly caught at sea in a fog so thick they couldn’t see each other, let alone navigate. Her parents began story-telling to keep their little girl calm; that was the day she learned about their courtship, how they saved money to buy their first couch, how her grandmother had given them the family’s only wonderful antique, the Janetta clock.
But she said none of this. Anything she said would be used as a weapon against her.
“Time for our weekly extemporaneous essay, class. Put all books beneath the desks or on the floor. Take a fresh sheet of paper and a pencil.” The class obeyed with the speed that always followed Mrs. Shevvington’s requests, as if they were infantrymen saluting. Mrs. Shevvington got out her stopwatch. “Ready?” she said.
“Ready,” they chorused, although none of them were. They hated spontaneous writing. Mrs. Shevvington had scheduled it every Friday until kids starting getting sick on Fridays just to miss it. Now she would spring the essay any time.
The topics were chosen to upset Christina; she could tell by the smirk on Mrs. Shevvington’s face.
The fourth week in September — the morning after Blake — Mrs. Shevvington had said, smiling at Christina, “Two page essay. How Will It Feel to Die?”
The whole class looked at Christina — had not Mrs. Shevvington foretold what would happen? Had not their respected teacher told them how Christina was descended from murderers?
The following week, which was the first week in October — “One page essay. Noises in the Night.”
Now it was the second week in October. The children shivered, knowing the topic would be scary. Sometimes Christina thought they liked it — it was kind of like participating in a horror movie.
“What if,” said Mrs. Shevvington, pausing suspensefully, “what if your parents … decided … to abandon you?”
The class shuddered in delicious fear.
But what was Christina to write? Because her parents had abandoned her!
One parent of one child — only one — had come in to argue about the choice of writing topics. The parent left convinced that Mrs. Shevvington was a very creative teacher, with meaningful topics that made children think and produce. Now the parent went around town telling people what a splendid teacher Mrs. Shevvington was.
Sick, thought Christina, The Shevvingtons are sick. She looked at the blank piece of paper in front of her. What to write about? She had to pass in a paper or her failure to cooperate would be one more thing to tell her parents. She ignored Mrs. Shevvington’s topic and titled her essay, “What is it like to live on an island?” It was important to write something that could be shared with the class, because Mrs. Shevvington always picked Christina’s paper to read aloud.
She wrote, “Anything that happens on an island is important. A broken plank on the town dock, a large mail delivery to the Swansons, a litter of kittens at the Rothrocks, a new rope on the tire swing at the school. Everybody knows, and everybody cares.”
The timer went off. Mrs. Shevvington picked up the papers with her sick, gloating smirk. Then she did an unusual thing: she read and corrected each paper on the spot. “Why, Brandi,” she said, “I like this sentence. ‘If my parents deserted me, I would collapse.’ Now I want you to add two more sentences of description to that. How would you collapse? Describe your body and your mind in a state of collapse.” She handed the paper back to Brandi. Her eyes were bright, hoping, perhaps that Brandi would collapse right then and there.
Brandi, however, had broken the point on her pencil and could think of nothing to add and the mood was not conveyed to her.
“Why, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington, frowning over what Christina had written. “Having trouble?”
“Why, no,” said Christina. “Whatever made you think that, Mrs. Shevvington?”
The rest of the class sat up in anticipation.
Not one child had ever told their parents about this war. Not one ever would. It was just something that happened in seventh grade — one person got picked on, and at least Christina could give back as much as she got. Besides, she was different anyway; she was from the island and probably expected to be picked on.
“A great big reader like you, Christina, ought to enjoy writing as well,” said the teacher.
Christina thought this was ridiculous. Why should somebody who liked reading books also like writing papers? That was like saying somebody who liked watching basketball should also like playing it. What if you were three feet tall and crippled? Which was how Christina felt when she had to write something down.
The door to the classroom opened.
The class turned as one to look.
It was the eyes you saw first: eyes like drowned Peg’s — blue husky dog eyes. Eyes like a doll’s, rotating mindlessly in the sockets. It was the clothing you saw second — leathery, heavy stuff, like armor. And third — third — you saw the hands. Hands that were twin to Mrs. Shevvington’s. Hands that curled and beckoned like a hawk’s talons. Heavy with rings, shining stones that sparkled, the fingers laced across the chest, ten spikes looking for something to stake.
“Ah, yes, Miss Frisch,” said Mrs. Shevvington, her s’s hissing like snakes or sea water. “Christina? This is your mental health counselor. Misssssss Frisssssch.”
They had brought the counselor right into the classroom.
Right in front of Vicki and Gretch and Robbie and Jonah.
“Christina?” said Mrs. Shevvington. Today she was wearing an emerald green suit. The green was a splat in front of the chalkboard. “I am so sorry you will be missing the rest of English class. Vicki will bring you your assignment. Vicki, she will be in the nurse’s office.”
“Oh, dear,” said Vicki. “Are you sick, Christina?”
Christina sat locked to her chair. It was the souvenir creature, or her sister. I can’t get up, she thought. I can’t go anywhere with that.
The class was staring at her. Their eyes were wide, accusing holes, saying, Are you sick? Crazy sick, demented sick, deranged sick?
“Why, Christina,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “I seem to recall you saying one day that you were a horse in the granite.” She laughed. “Island children have such quaint sayings. Come, Christina. Be a horse in the granite for us.”
She managed to slide out from under the desktop and straighten up.
No seventh-graders spoke.
They just watched.
And smiled.
Christina wet her lips. She tried to find her books on the floor beneath her seat, but they seemed too far away to reach. Her hands were too chilled to move and would not close around the edges of the texts.
Robbie got out of his seat to retrieve the books for her. The class giggled and became seventh-graders again, teasing cruelly in loud, high voices. “Robbie likes Christina, Robbie likes Christina, nanny nanny boo boo.”
Robbie whispered, “Christina, that’s the one they sent my sister to. Be careful.”