Wendell stood on the roof of his cottage house in a swell of moonlight, shells piled at his feet and a homemade bat across his shoulder. Conch, whelk, olive, pen, tulip, cockle. One by one they cracked off the end of the bat and sailed into a flowering yucca that grew past the other side of the roof, or burst into a spray and flew in all directions. He felt wounded by Iris Dunleavy’s dismissal. He was just trying to warn her, because he liked her. She was different from most of the other patients. Sharp eyes and a quick temper and a stubborn will. He didn’t love her the way he had loved Penelope, but he felt the same wish to protect her. Iris didn’t understand how things could turn. He’d seen it before. Dangers would come up in an instant. Life could perform its cold-blooded acrobatics in the blink of an eye, resulting in sudden and irretrievable loss.
Penelope.
His father had noticed his fixation on the young woman and had taken him aside one day. “Wendell, it’s a fact of nature that some birds have to stay in the shallows because their legs are so short, and other birds—like herons or the great egrets—have longer legs and can go into deep water.” His father had tapped the side of his forehead with two fingers. “Penelope wasn’t built for deep water.”
Wendell was bewildered by the metaphor, and it only endeared him further to the addled girl.
The chef was more direct. “Listen,” he told Wendell one day when the boy was helping him pull weeds from the castor bean garden. “Miss Penelope, she’s not for you. You stay away, hear?”
“She’s nice.”
“Nice, sure, but crazy as a loon. Whooo-whoooo-whoooo.”
He wanted to tell the chef that he was crazy too, in fact a depraved private-fondler of the lowest order, but he had kept the confession to himself.
The first time he set eyes on Penelope, she was standing on the beach, keening and pointing out at the water. Three guards hovered near the girl. Wendell had been looking for shells, but he abandoned the task in favor of this new intrigue. He moved in closer to the spectacle, putting himself within earshot.
“Save her!” Penelope cried, still pointing at the waves. Wendell squinted. A doll bobbed out in the waves.
“We’re not going in there,” a guard said. “You’re the one who threw her in. Why did you throw her in?”
“Because she’s crazy?” another guard suggested, and the three of them laughed.
“She’s drowning!” Penelope took off toward the waves, running awkwardly, her feet sinking in the sand. The guards grabbed her, pulling her back.
“Where do you think you’re going?” one of them asked. “You’re not going anywhere!”
Penelope struggled in their arms. “Let me go! Please! I’m her mother!” Her voice was so wounded, so desperate, that Wendell ran down to the water’s edge and kept going, forgetting even to remove his shoes.
“Hey!” the guards shouted. “Hey!”
But he was already fighting the waves, the water soaking through his clothes, his shoes sinking into the soft ocean floor. He pulled his feet from the sucking grasp of the sand and began to swim, water going down his throat. Coughing, sputtering, he forced his arms and legs to move, the waves pushing him back, but finally he reached out his hand and touched the fabric of the doll’s dress.
He turned around and swam back to shore, the doll held tightly under one arm. As he staggered out of the water, he held the doll above his head and Penelope, who had collapsed in a heap in the sand, now stood and clapped.
The guards scowled at him.
“You’re a fool, boy, diving in after some stupid doll with all your clothes on.”
Wendell handed the doll to Penelope and spat a mouthful of briny water onto the sand. He glared at the guards. “Go away, or I’ll tell my father you were mean to her.”
“We’re not afraid of your father,” one of them shot back, but he slid a glance at the other two, and the three of them turned and shuffled back toward the asylum.
Penelope had sunk to her knees and set the doll down on its back, its crystal-blue eyes sparkling in the sun. Wendell knelt next to her as she gently removed a sprig of seaweed from the wet yarn of the doll’s hair. His hair was plastered to his head. He could feel rivulets of water running down his body, down his arms, and off his fingers, starting two dark pools in the sand. He watched as the girl leaned forward and kissed the doll’s cheek, then straightened out the wet petticoats under its dress.
“Why did you throw it in the water?” Wendell asked.
She turned to him, her expression ferocious. “I didn’t! They threw her in the water! But no one will ever believe me.”
“I believe you.”
Her lashes were red. Red and very long. He would remember that always. The length of her eyelashes and their color in the sun. Like a flame.
More water dripped down his body. The sun was high overhead, but he shivered in the sea breeze.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“Wendell.”
“Randall?”
“Wendell.”
“Randall, I’m Penelope. I’m seventeen years old. I tried to hang myself with the sash of my nightgown. I like the way rabbits jump.”
He didn’t know what to say in response to that, what information to give. He thought hard. “I like shells,” he said at last.
She touched the doll’s lips. “I saw a girl who drowned. She lived down the street from me. She fell into a dairy pond. I was there when her father and her uncles dragged her out. Her father started to cry and they let her lie down in the grass. He closed her eyes with the tips of his fingers. Like this.”
Gently, she closed the doll’s lids. She moved her hand away and the doll’s eyes sprang open with a tiny squeak, the eyes crystalline once again. “Her father said her name so sweet and covered her with a quilt. When I die, I want someone to be nice to me that way. Say my name, and cover me with a quilt.”
Wendell could feel his hair drying. The slight tickle as sprigs of it stood up one by one. It all seemed to mean something just beyond his grasp. If he thought hard enough, he was sure he could figure it out. He and Penelope looked out at the sea together. When he finally stood up, his clothes were dry and his pants were stiff in the knees.
Wendell tossed another shell into the air and swung the bat with all his might. He was rewarded with a pinging sound as the shell sailed away into darkness. This new woman, Iris, seemed so sad and yet so dignified. He had seen every variety of lunatic in his short life, but never one who so yearned for escape. Like himself. He had to protect her, had to show her never to lower her guard. He had been fine until he fell in love. Watching Iris with the soldier, he had seen her faraway smile and knew she had no real understanding of the man who sat across from her.
The world was cruel and sudden. This he knew for sure. Relax for a moment, breathe in the scent of a rose, rest in the shade, pet a dog, take a sip of lemonade, fall in love with a dreamy-eyed girl or a haunted-faced man, and you are just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Buzzing around the lemonade, you’ll find flies. Follow the flies and you’ll find death.
Wendell threw down his bat. It hit the roof with a loud thump and rolled off into the darkness.
Mary Cowell’s eyes flew open. She sat straight up in bed and shook her husband awake.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Dr. Cowell mumbled.
“Something’s on the roof!”
“Nothing’s on the roof. For God’s sake, go back to sleep.”