Chapter Forty
ANDA
The water’s been tempting me, electrifying my skin and inviting me in with an irresistible welcome that’s hard to ignore. But I can’t. Not yet.
I don’t know what to tell Father. He’s full of questions—I can see it in the wrinkles of his face, driven deeper by concern. But how do I explain it? How do I explain me?
I could let Mother explain. But she never shows herself to him anymore. She is a memory to Father.
Luckily, Hector asks questions while I cling to the side of the boat.
“Where are we going?” he hollers over the engine drone and splashing.
“Menagerie Island. It’s one of the smaller islands around Isle Royale. The Isle Royale Lighthouse is there, but the house itself has been abandoned for decades. People aren’t allowed to visit. It’s private and out of the way. No one will find you.”
“When you say ‘you,’ you mean only Anda. Right?”
“Right,” he hollers. But he doesn’t glance at Hector when he speaks. Father’s eyes meet mine, and I know what he’s thinking. No one sees me, usually. But because of Hector, everything is uncertain. All the rules about me may have changed. Father is afraid. After an hour of the boat bumping us up and down endlessly, I gather my courage. I have to shout my words.
“Why have you come early?”
“I heard about the Jenny. One survived.” He clamps his mouth shut, afraid to speak within earshot of Hector.
“He knows,” I tell him.
Father’s shoulders slump. I may have given him the worst news of all. He finally looks at me, his eyes almost hurt.
“You never leave a survivor on a wreck that small. Never. Something was wrong. I came as soon as the Coast Guard cleared out and the news died down. He has to leave, Anda. He’s a distraction, and he’s dangerous.”
Dangerous. Father doesn’t mean that Hector might hurt me with a knife or a slap. He’s worried about a different kind of danger. Visitors and park people are on the island half the year when I’m there, and it’s never a problem. They’ve never really seen me. But I have never, ever had meaningful interactions with any human except for Father. I have never been emotionally…compromised.
Father knows how to be around me. But he can’t know how Hector’s been, or how I’ll react. And by react, he means possibly creating a glacier in a lake that hasn’t seen one for ten thousand years. Or killing an island full of vacationers if I suddenly weep in June.
“He has to leave,” Father says again.
Hector doesn’t even try to fight Father’s wishes. He turns away from both me and my father, and stares instead at the shoreline in silence. He’s already miles and miles away.
It takes almost another full hour before our destination comes into view. By then, I’m boat-weary and my arms are jelly from holding on to the rails for so long.
Menagerie Island is a small, isolated sliver of bedrock. The jagged, reddish rise is sparsely decorated with a handful of stubborn evergreen trees. An octagonal whitewashed lighthouse proudly juts into the graying sky, next to a two-story brick house.
Lighthouses make my skin crawl.
I wonder at why my father brought me here. There are lots of lone islands sprinkled around Isle Royale. Perhaps he chose Menagerie Island because of its particular remoteness, knowing that no one comes here anymore. You even need a telephoto lens to see it from the nearest passing ferry. Or…maybe my father is trying to punish me somehow. He knows how lighthouses and I get along. Which is to say, we don’t.
“Why Menagerie Island?” I ask him.
Father quiets the motor and we drift over shallow aqua water in the gathering dusk. The water is so clear, you can see the architecture of stone beneath it, solid and unchangeable after a millennium. The boat bottom scrapes against stone as Father heaves a plow-shaped anchor overboard.
I climb out onto a stony beach only fifteen feet long, flanked by boulders coming straight out of the lake bed along the edges of the island. Hector and I carry our bags and climb the hill up to the red house, only twenty feet away. While Hector carefully steps back down to help my father with the rest of his satchels, I introduce myself to the buildings.
The lighthouse is still working. I know this, because I’ve seen its bright beam penetrating ten miles into the night’s darkness. No lighthouse keeper is needed anymore; the weather and isolation successfully pushed them away. No hearts beat here to keep ships from crashing. Only a solar-charged battery. But this doesn’t quell my bad feeling. The lighthouse itself is a mighty force. After all, good intentions were mixed into the mortar and laid with each red sandstone brick.
When I tread around its base carefully, I repeatedly trip on nothing. And when I touch the painted brick, a thin curl of peeling paint tries to slice my fingertip. It’s unhappy with my presence. It doesn’t care that I’ve kept things alive on Isle Royale for much of the year. It only knows what I’ve done in November, what my sisters have done. To the lighthouse, I am the enemy.
“Let’s go inside,” my father says as he and Hector carry the bulk of our bags with them. For a moment, Father stands silhouetted against the setting sun, a melting, oozing yolk around his shoulders. He sees me hesitating. “Don’t worry, Anda. The house won’t bite.”
Ha. Don’t be so sure, I want to say.
Before I step forward, he looks over his shoulder to make sure Hector has rounded the corner. He drops his voice.
“Are you okay, Anda?”
I blink. I don’t know how to answer that.
“Did he harm you?”
My eyes flicker up and I study Father’s face. There are visions in his head that I can’t get to, but I sense the sick, unchaste thoughts that worry him. I don’t have words for them, but whatever they are, those particular evils have not touched my skin. As if Hector were even capable of such things. As if anyone had that kind of power over me. “Of course not.”
But I wait for the rest of his question, fearful. Anda, did you harm him? But he doesn’t ask. Doesn’t care, perhaps. I’m relieved that I don’t need to answer.
We round the house on the east side. A metal shack rests against the narrow passageway from the house to the lighthouse, where the acetylene used to be stored, back when the lights burned on fuel. Half the windows are covered up with white-painted metal, and the house looks like one of those old-timey cartoon characters, with dead white circles for eyes, all agog as we attempt to break in.
“How are we going to get inside?” Hector asks. “I have a knife. We can use a rock, maybe, to knock off the doorknob.”
“Or we could use the key,” Father says dully, and fishes a ring of keys from his pocket.
“Where did you get that?” I ask quietly.
“This island belongs to Isle Royale. The park management keeps a set of keys for emergencies, and I volunteer for them every year. I took it from the office safe.”
He unlocks the door and opens it with a creak. The smell of dust and dampness frowns upon us, and Father leans down to turn on a portable lamp. Dim light shows we are in a hallway that leads to four small rooms. Dust is strewn over thick, warped wooden floorboards underfoot. None of the rooms is furnished, and the bare brick walls ooze with coldness and anger.
Keeping my hands and arms close to my body (I’m afraid I’ll get nipped if I reach out too far), I find the only staircase. I take a few tentative steps up to see the half story above, claustrophobic beneath the gabled roof. I don’t like it, and scoot back downstairs quickly.
“C’mon. Sun’s going to set soon. We should try to eat and then go to sleep.”
“And then?” Hector asks.
“Right now, you’re the last person who should be asking questions,” he says gruffly, and shuts the door behind us, encasing us in gloom.
...
There’s a working fireplace, so we put the tiny cooking apparatus there and Hector gets to work making a pot of reconstituted beef stew, while I make sweet tea for everyone with the first pot of boiled water. Father watches me set the enamel plates and pour the tea—not too bitter, not too light. He seems shocked at the things I’ve learned in such a short period of time. Almost hurt.
When I hand him a steaming cup, he says, “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I say back, pleased at my good manners. And once again, Father stares like he doesn’t recognize me.
At first, nobody speaks the questions we all have. We know the answers will come in time, but I’m terrified of them. Of what Hector might learn about me. We sit around the fireplace for a long time.
The truth is—I’m not really that hungry. Not for food. But I want my actions to soothe Hector with normalcy, and I want my father to see what I can become. Acting is a respite, somehow. Not having to be myself. I’m trying to convince anybody that I can be like this, or stay like this. The truth is—I don’t know what I want.
I do.
“Shhh…” I say.
“What is it?” Hector asks, reaching to put a hand on my back. Father sees every movement we make, even in the low light of the flaming cooking fuel.
“It’s the wind. It’s rising.”
From outside, it begins as a low, shuddering moan. It shivers through the eaves of the roof, winds its way down the chimney and curls around my feet, like a lost kitten. It’s missed me, as I’ve missed it.
Now that I’m no longer in the interior of the island, now that I’m sitting on nothing but a rise of rock in the lake, it’s become impossible to ignore Mother. My vision blurs a little. I can’t concentrate and be the Anda I’ve been lately with Hector. There is insistent buzzing in my ears. I shake my head, but it refuses to be ignored.
Father cocks his head, listening to the rising wind. “I think there’s a draft coming in from the roof. We should try to fix it, in case a storm comes.” He clears his throat. “Anda, I would love some more tea. Maybe you could make us some, while Hector and I check it out?”
I nod, my eyes wide with understanding. As they exit the room and their footsteps creak up the groaning staircase, I wrap my arms around myself. My teeth chatter uncontrollably.
I know what’s coming. Father is going to tell Hector everything. Hector will tell Father everything, too.
And then I’ll lose them both.