Chapter 16
“Mr. McGrath!”
God, the girl was screeching! Quick, turn the boat away, head toward the causeway.
He kept his head rigidly still, face impassive, in spite of his panic. He didn’t want to give any sign he had seen or heard her. How he could have missed the girl, flailing her arms like that and screaming his name on the top of her lungs? What did she want? It didn’t matter. All that mattered is that she stayed away, especially now.
Could things get any worse? Today should have been one of their good days. October on Captain's was Rose’s favorite time. The island was all theirs, the colors golden and mellow, the sounds soft and sighing. On days like this, Rose used to get dressed early and walk outside to raise their flag. Then, she would look up and down the empty boardwalk with a big smile on her face, stretch her arms out wide and exclaim, “Mine! All mine!”
He loved that exuberant Rose, her possessiveness. They both called the island “our island” to strangers. You would think no one else lived on the island but them, which was always true in October. Except for this year.
But the trouble this morning couldn’t be pinned on the O’Brien girl. Rose still didn’t know she was here. Phil, having half a brain, didn’t tell her and used every excuse to keep them up-island every day when they went fishing and for walks. They had always sailed their Vanguard 15 on the north end of the island, usually heading out of the Bay to open waters, so that wasn’t a problem. But Rose not knowing about Hannah didn’t stop what had been slowly happening to her, the changes, the sickness that had been sucking her down.
This morning he heard Rose get up first, dress and go downstairs to make coffee. All the usual sounds, her pumping water at the kitchen sink, grinding the beans in the battery-operated grinder, drifted up from the kitchen. He relished them, digging deeper into their warm bed and thinking about the wonderful night they’d had together.
They weren’t big drinkers. A glass of wine occasionally in a good restaurant. Champagne on New Year’s. But, desperate to pull her out of the funk she had been in for the last week, Phil had run out yesterday and bought a bottle of extremely expensive champagne and a selection of good cheeses and crackers to surprise her with at sunset. It had been a beautiful day, but Rose had spent it sitting on their screened-in porch, brooding over her fashion magazines. Somehow, he was able to convince her to go for a sunset ride on their little powerboat, and he surprised her there with the champagne pulled from the cooler and a little platter he’d arranged of the crackers and cheeses.
He could still see her face open up, her sudden girlish delight. She loved surprises. He was thrilled because, for once, she went off her rigid diet and sampled the cheeses, even asking for a second glass of champagne. They had toasted each other and talked the way they used to; wandering comfortably from subject to subject, interested in what the other had to say. Rose’s recent obsessions about aging and youth didn’t interrupt them. At one point, Rose actually laughed a real belly laugh at a little joke he’d made. It made him want her again, want to feel her underneath him. When she opened her arms to him in bed later, he felt as if a long war had ended and they were both the victors.
After almost a full year without sex, being with Rose had been both familiar and strange. She felt different, hard and muscular from her hours spent daily at the gym. All the softness was gone. But she smelled and tasted the same, she moved the way she always moved with him, eyes closed. Their old routine in bed, the one that took years to perfect, felt a little rusty but worked the same way it always did. He was triumphant. He had finally found the solution, the way in to her after a year of watching her pull farther and farther away. Originally, he had thought the solution was Captain’s in October, and for the first few days it had seemed that he was right.
Upon arrival, Rose had swung into her usual Captain’s rituals: putting up their flag, going for a swim as soon as they finished unpacking in spite of the cold air and cooling water, wandering the island looking for wildflowers to cut for all the small vases she placed around the house. She had made the blueberry muffins she always made on the first day there and even let herself have a little butter on one with their first cup of coffee in the house.
He had been pleased to see the butter, saw it as a sign of the return of the part of Rose who could have some fun, loosen up a little. Recently, it had been fat-free everything, organic everything, whole-food everything. It was deathly boring eating steamed vegetables with brown rice every night. He missed his steaks and the puddles of butter in his baked potato. A sugar-filled blueberry muffin with a smear of butter was like a shout to him: it will be okay!
It was their new neighbors, Jackie and Nat Lloyd, who had tipped the balance for the worse. Before they moved in next door, Rose had started to get peculiar about things, picky. She had started reading all the books on health and nutrition she could get her hands on. She said to Phil, “I will not get old, Phil. Will not!” It was said with triumph and confidence, as was everything she said, but it was an odd statement for her. Of course they would grow old. They used to relish the little stories they told each other about how their golden years would be together. Only in their forties and solidly middle-aged, it was a fairly long way off to decrepitude, but it was something they used to enjoy the thought of. Someday they would take walks in charming woodsy parks holding hands and letting other younger couples admire them. They would take up ballroom dancing and wow everyone. They would be that happy and vibrant elderly couple you pointed at and yearned to be someday.
Rose somehow struck up a conversation with Jackie shortly after they moved in, Phil couldn’t remember the details, but he could remember exactly what he thought when the Lloyds invited them over for their housewarming party a few weeks later. First, it was the twin Prius's sitting in the two-car garage with the doors open unnecessarily, both cars plastered with stridently liberal bumper stickers. Then it was the ridiculous crystal chandelier in the kitchen. Then it was them, smug and smiling that fake kind of smile that never reached the eyes.
The Lloyds were the type of people who had to be on top. Rose was like that, too, but she was charming about it. The Lloyds were simply insufferable with their up-to-the-minute gadgets that they made a point of showing off. Hypocritically, this rampant consumerism was paired with their highly-touted “Green” lifestyle where everything was recycled and organic. They spoke of Mother Earth as if she was a close relative of theirs they had just visited. Jackie Lloyd, apparently, had decided to recycle her face too. It was pulled taut to the point of looking painful. Rose told him later that Jackie had already had two facelifts. The result was a surprised windblown look worsened by Botox-immobilized eyebrows that would not move even under the greatest duress. Phil thought the woman looked hideous.
Rose terrified him by asking Jackie for her “beauty secrets” every time they spent time with them, which was more and more frequent to Phil’s great displeasure. He despised the way Nat talked with his nose constantly in the air, eyes often closed, clearly enjoying hearing his own voice. When it became apparent that every weekend was going to be spent with the other couple, Phil hurriedly took up golf. It didn’t completely spare him as they often dined with the Lloyds on Saturday nights, but it worked to get him out of day trips to visit small organic farms to learn about the many uses of manure, to orchards to pick their own organic fruit, to the co-op they all belonged to now that smelled like patchouli, mold, and sawdust.
Then Rose, in addition to fully adopting their Green lifestyle and macrobiotic diet, started seeing Jackie’s dermatologist and therapist. She started looking worse and worse every time she came home from the dermatologist and acting stranger and stranger every time she came home from Jackie’s therapist, Dr. Omin. The man’s name both disturbed Phil and made him laugh uneasily. Dr. Omin had suggested that Rose use rituals to calm her anxiety about aging, so now everything was a ritual with magical words and special steps she had to take to do everything from brush her teeth to prepare the recycling. Rose latched on to this practice with enthusiasm, and hearing her go about her day was like being in a psychiatric unit specializing in patients with OCD. “Beauty inside, beauty outside,” she’d repeat over and over.
When Rose started talking about getting a facelift that spring, Phil begged her to wait until after their annual vacation on Captain’s.
“Why? What does that have to do with it?” Rose had said, her bright look of excitement fading. She had practically crowed when she told him of her plans. It would be the same doctor Jackie used. He’d had a cancellation and could fit her in next week!
“Can you just do this for me? I really think once you’ve had some R & R, you’ll love how you look. You just need a break,” Phil said. A break from that psychotic bitch, Jackie, he thought.
She had relented, but with a caveat. “All right, but once we get back I’m getting this thing scheduled. I need it.”
Lying in bed that morning, the sun streaming in, the sounds of his happily puttering wife below, Phil was exultant. It had worked. The magic of this place, the time away from the Lloyds. Next, he would have to find a way to protect Rose from Jackie. There had to be something he could do…
Suddenly, there was a crash from downstairs. Phil’s eyes popped open. Wailing rose through the floorboards. He sat up. Did she fall? What happened?
He leapt out of bed and, wearing only his boxers, ran down the icy wooden stairs to the first floor. Rose was crouched in the corner of the living room near the front door. A mirror that used to hang next to the front door was gone and on the floor, silver reflective shards lay everywhere around where Rose cowered, her hands over her face, wailing.
“What? What happened?” Phil shouted.
Rose wailed louder.
Phil ran over to her, careful to step around the pieces of glass and wishing he had stopped to put on shoes. The floor was so cold, it hurt. Then he felt a piece of glass pierce his foot. “Ow! Shit!” He lifted up his right foot and saw a dark sliver sticking out of the skin near his little toe. He plucked it out and watched the blood swell and spill from the wound. It was just a little cut; he’d deal with it later. He gingerly put his bleeding foot back down on the floor and took the last few steps. He squatted down next to Rose.
Close up, he could see that she wasn’t just covering her face, she was digging her nails into it, scratching the skin, creating long raw shallow scrapes on her forehead that were bleeding lightly.
“Stop that!” Phil grabbed at her hands. She was surprisingly strong, her hands fighting, clawing to get back at her face. He would pull away one, but the other would gain purchase on her face, making more marks. Her wails changed to shrieks.
“Leave me alone!” Rose cried, grabbing at her face. “Leave me alone, you bastard! You bastard!”
Phil grabbed harder at her hands, all gentleness gone. He couldn’t let her do this to herself. “Stop! That! Now!” Using all of his strength, he was able to pry her hands away and hold her arms down.
“Nooooo!” Rose screamed and then sobbed.
Her face was scored from her fingernails, but now he could see what might have happened. Her eyes were swollen. Probably from the alcohol and the salty cheese and crackers. But no, she was vain, but this wasn’t vanity. This was insanity.
“What’s going on, honey? What happened?”
Rose sobbed, catching her breath. “Can’t you…, can’t you…, can’t you see? See?”
Phil felt a stillness. “Your eyes?”
She sighed and said, “Yes! Yes! I’m hideous! How can you love me? How can anyone love me? Look at me!”
The stillness within stayed, but he made himself respond. “Of course I love you. Everyone loves you. Come here.” He released her wrists and wrapped his arms around her from the side. She slumped in surrender and began crying again, softly now.
He had no idea what to do. Before he had seen solutions, answers to what was happening with his wife. Now, even though the living room had been cleaned up and his wife’s self-inflicted wounds washed, disinfected and bandaged, he didn’t know what to do with the zombie sitting with her face wrapped in gauze on the porch of their house poring over those goddamn fashion magazines.
He’d left the house, gone for a boat ride to clear his head. He felt like he was going a little crazy, too. Then he saw the O’Brien girl striding down the boardwalk in the direction of their house as if she was heading there. He couldn’t believe it. He’d almost responded to her before he realized that the last thing to do was to engage her. He couldn’t take another set of problems, and he was pretty certain she had problems or she wouldn’t be out here alone on Captain’s in October. He wasn’t worried about her throwing parties anymore. He was more worried that he might have two mental patients on his hands and not just one.
Steering the boat away from her, he could feel Hannah’s eyes on him. He thought back to their initial conversation on the community dock. She said she wanted to be alone. He was struck by sudden hilarity, an uncontrollable urge to laugh aloud. It was so ridiculous, all this Garbo-esque posturing that some women engaged in. Especially when you realized that what they really wanted was attention, the polar opposite of what they said.
He tried to fight the laughter, afraid Hannah might see. But it bubbled up inside, little bursts coming out of his mouth as he shook, trying to stay still. Alone! She vants to be alone! Ha! Ha!
Shaking with uncontrollable laughter and terror, he steered the boat blindly away from the island and prayed that Hannah would give up, go home to wherever she lived. No good could come from her being on the island, and if Rose found out…, Phil didn’t want to think about that.
Go home, Hannah! He prayed. Please, go home!