The Island House, page 19
“Oh, please, Quinn, that’s not the way to think of it, and it’s certainly not the way Susanna meant it—”
“Maybe not. But I’m certain that’s the way Christabel interpreted it.”
“Quinn.” She moved toward him. “I got us off on the wrong subject entirely. I don’t want to fuss about Christabel.”
Quinn’s expression softened. “All right. I’m sorry to be so defensive. Let’s start over. Here, sit down with me.” He led her to the sofa. They sat side by side, but did not touch. “I’ll go first. Robin, I love you. I want to start my life with you. I agreed to teach here another year so I can be near you while you make up your mind about leaving.”
His desire, and his need, were so palpable, almost a color in the air, a swirl of darkness between them, and Robin could with one word make the darkness disappear.
And yet. And yet, there it was again, Quinn’s attitude, his complete confidence that what he wanted—to leave the island—was the only possible choice for him and Robin to be together. His complete disregard—gentle, but disregard all the same—for Robin’s continued insistence that she wanted to live on the island all her life.
Softly, she said, “I wish you could say ‘while you make up your mind about leaving or while I make up my mind to stay.’ ”
Quinn gave her the look he might give a recalcitrant student. “We’ve gone over all this before, so often, haven’t we, love?”
“We have.” She rubbed her hands together, a nervous gesture, she knew. “Quinn? I need to tell you something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Not at all. Something wonderful. If I tell you, Quinn, you have to keep it a secret. You have to promise not to tell anyone, especially my mother and father. Not Christabel, either. No one.”
“Are you pregnant?”
“God, no!” She felt his body recoil, as if she’d hit him, and in a way she had, almost insulting him with her reply. “No,” she repeated softly, sweetly. “It’s something you can’t imagine. Well, I couldn’t have imagined it before it happened. Quinn—let me tell you about it all at once.” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes I take my boat out at night into the ocean, far out. I turn off the motor, and simply sit there, all alone in this amazing world of sea and sky.”
“Okay. That sounds dangerous, but nice.”
“It’s amazing. So quiet, so unearthly. And, Quinn, sometimes, not always, but often, um—don’t laugh, this is real—whales visit me.”
“What do you mean?”
“They approach the boat. One of them—I know it’s the same one because of the pattern of callosities on her head—likes to lie next to the boat looking up at me. I talk to her. She seems to listen. She likes me, I know she likes me—”
“For god’s sake, Robin,” Quinn scoffed. “You can’t expect me to believe—”
“But it’s true. And yes, I suppose it’s rather dangerous and I admit being out in a small boat on the deep ocean in the night is kind of frightening, but it gives me a delicious sense of disconnection from the noisy, pretentious people world. It allows me to sort of enter a world humans don’t often connect with.”
“Robin. What you’re saying frightens me for you.”
“I can understand that. It terrifies me sometimes. But when I’m out there, out on the deep water, and I hear a knock on the boat and look down to see the whale, this mammoth, breathing, unimaginable being, when I’m connecting with her, I’m not afraid. I’m…I’m lifted up. Words can’t explain it. It’s like a zone of bliss—”
Quinn took Robin by the shoulders and smiled indulgently. “Stop it, Robin. That’s the stuff of fairy tales, not real life.”
“But, Quinn, it’s true! It’s real.”
Quinn rose from the sofa. He paced the room, shaking his head. “My darling Robin. What you’re telling me is, frankly, absurd. You sound like a little girl with an imaginary playmate.”
Robin shot up off the sofa, hands clenched at her sides. “Are you saying I’m hallucinating? Making this up? Because it’s true. Those whales are real.”
Quinn turned from her and walked toward the window. He stared out for a long time before returning to Robin.
“If what you’re saying is true, Robin, that is yet another reason you need to leave the island.”
“What? Why?”
He held her shoulders so that she faced him as he spoke. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the whales are real. Do you not see how dangerous the situation is for you? What if one of these whales accidentally hit your boat so hard it capsized? What if you fell in the water out there, among your friendly mammals? Do you imagine that one of them will swoop under you and give you a ride safely back to shore?”
She caught the derision in his voice, and yet what he was saying was something she’d thought of herself. Accidents happened all the time, even among friends.
Quinn’s voice became honeyed. “I love you, Robin. I want to marry you. And this is how much I love you. If you’ll promise to stop seeing the whales, I’ll stop pressing you to move off the island.”
Robin gasped. He did love her, she realized, he must love her, to agree to remain on the island. Her heart swelled with hope, with love.
It would be crazy of her not to agree to this. Even she understood how she was romanticizing those few fortuitous and perilous moments out in the dark water when she saw the whales. What were those meetings compared to the chance to marry the man she loved and remain on the island she loved?
Still, she hesitated. To agree to this was like agreeing to shut the door on an experience so magnificent, so literally awesome it shone in her memory like a constellation of stars. She loved Quinn. But she loved that part of her life as well.
“It would make me sad to give up my nights out there,” she said softly.
“Yes, I’m sure.” Quinn smiled. “On the other hand, you could spend all your nights with me, here on the island, and I can provide you with a few sensations your fantastical friends can’t.”
Robin let him put his arms around her and hold her tight. He was strong, and warm, and good. He had made an enormous concession, agreeing to remain on the island. He loved her. “Okay,” she said. “It’s a deal.”
Late in the afternoon, Courtney lay in bed with James, her nakedness covered by a sheet. A light summer breeze fluttered the air, but here, in James’s bedroom, even with the windows open, it was hot and humid.
“I can’t get up,” Courtney murmured, her voice muffled by the way she lay, facedown. “I can’t even move.”
“We ate too much at lunch,” James said. “We’ve become a pair of sloths. All we do is eat and have sex.”
“Do sloths have a lot of sex?” Courtney wondered.
“I don’t know. I’ll Google it if I ever get out of bed.”
Courtney slithered around to lie on her side facing James. She put her hand on her stomach. “I definitely ate too much at lunch. If we continue this celebrating, I’ll look like Jacob.”
James laughed. “What a terrifying thought. Will you get all hairy, too? Because I can handle the weight, but the hair situation not so much.”
“We’re both getting stupid, too,” Courtney murmured. “Our conversational skills have plummeted since we started sleeping together.”
“You said plummeted. That’s a nice word. And conversational. Very cool. Five syllables.”
“Maybe we should nap,” Courtney suggested, snuggling into her pillow.
“We did that when we got back from lunch. It’s almost dinnertime,” James informed her.
“We could skip dinner.”
“Right. So your plan is we’ll lie here and sleep and have sex for the rest of our lives.”
“Oh, what a good idea.” Courtney nestled in James’s arms. After a moment, she said, “Showers. We should add showers to our list.” Smiling into his chest, she said, “I’ve never had sex in a shower with anyone.”
“And that’s not going to happen for you today,” James told her. “You might be a rapacious, sex-crazy female, but males have a more elegant biology.”
“You mean I’ve used you up,” Courtney clarified.
“Definitely. I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to stagger to the bathroom.”
“Mmm,” Courtney cooed. “Then I’ll get the first shower.”
Courtney rolled away from his hot, sweat-slicked body.
In the bathroom with the cool water cascading over her, she regained her senses. She washed her hair. She laughed at how silly they were and closed her eyes and let her head fall back as she remembered having lunch at Cru and making love this afternoon. Twice. She’d entered a zone of pleasure, she was a child at a carnival, a kite in the air.
Dripping, clean, and fully awake, she wrapped herself in a towel and combed her hair out to dry naturally in the warm summer air.
James came into the bathroom as she went out. She heard the shower running while she pulled on panties and a sundress and brushed her hair. No makeup needed—her lips and cheeks were rosy from kissing.
James walked out of the bathroom, nude and clean. He pulled on his boxers and shorts and yanked a rugby shirt over his head. Dressed, he seemed different to Courtney. She looked at herself in the mirror. She looked different, too. Somehow in the last few moments they had become more adult, more actual. They were no longer merely lovers. They were lovers with decisions to make.
“James,” Courtney said, “we need to talk. About where this is going—about your fears about children.”
“We can talk,” James said calmly, “but I won’t change my mind, Courtney.”
Her heart kicked in her chest. “But you should!” she protested.
“Courtney—”
“This is wrong. You are wrong! You say you refuse to have children, you won’t even discuss it with me, but you should discuss it with me! I’ve read tons of articles about bipolar syndrome, and I’m not afraid to have your children. I want your children!”
“Courtney—”
“James, life is hard for everyone. Everyone is slightly eccentric one way or the other. Look at your precious Christabel! She’s not bipolar, but she has been traumatized by her mother leaving her so abruptly and so very thoroughly. In a way, Christabel is traumatized every day, because every day her mother is still alive, still in Europe, still not interested in making contact with Christabel. So she’s weird. She dresses like a child porn star. She causes scenes. And she expects you to take care of her.”
“Is this about Christabel? You know she’s like a sister to me. But if that’s what’s bothering you—”
“No, no, this isn’t about Christabel. It’s about being eccentric, being odd. It’s about thinking we can control our lives. You don’t want to have children because you’re afraid they’ll be bipolar, and—”
“Stop right there, Courtney, and think about what you’re saying. Have you ever spoken with Henry about his illness? Have you ever sat down and listened to him? He has gone through years of trying different medications, and some of them have made his head feel like it’s on fire, and some of them have made him drowsy, and some have made him nauseous. Maybe the same gene that makes him bipolar also makes him the genius doctor that he is, but Henry has had a hell of a hard time with this illness, and he’s caused his entire family a lot of pain.”
Courtney nodded. “Yes. I know that. I mean, I haven’t spoken with him privately, seriously, at length, but I have read about it. I get it. Still, I’ve read the literature and there is no proof that you’ve got the gene or that you can pass it on to your children or whether it will be debilitating or merely bothersome. Look at all Henry has achieved! If I’m willing to take the risk, why aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” James said, his voice sad, his eyes shadowed. “I just can’t, Courtney. I won’t.”
“James, listen to me.” Courtney leaned close to him. “Do you think Susanna wishes Henry had never been born?”
James flinched. “Of course not. But I’m sure she wishes he weren’t bipolar.”
“But we don’t get to pick and choose the qualities of our children, James. We can’t order a child like a meal: I want a tall blond with no freckles or moles or unruly tendencies.”
James shook his head. Rising, he crossed to stare out the window for a while. He came back and sat on the bed next to Courtney, not quite touching her.
“Courtney, I love you. I want to marry you. I’m willing to adopt or try some kind of in vitro so we can have children. Isn’t that enough?”
After a moment, Courtney said bleakly, “No. It’s not enough, James. I love you with all my heart. But you’ve made up your mind, and so have I.”
They sat in silence. Within her heart a tiny speck of hope still beat, flashing like a beacon, waiting to emerge into a full-blown explosion of joy.
But James simply stood up without speaking, and walked away, and left the room. She heard his steps going down the stairs. Courtney sat bereft, and the speck of hope shriveled and died.
Tuesday morning, life returned to normal, or what passed for normal in the Vickerey household.
Robin joined her father in his study to help him begin writing his memoirs. It was a daunting task. They had boxes of files, case notes, letters, and torn pieces of paper marked “absolutely necessary” and almost completely illegible.
Susanna planned to join a friend for lunch in town and then spend two hours on Main Street hawking raffle tickets for the church fair.
Henry and Valerie were at the hospital, working until late afternoon, when they vowed to return to Henry’s room and sleep for three days straight.
Iris and Pearl coated themselves with sunblock and drove off to the good beach at Nobadeer for the day.
James secluded himself to work on his medical translations and deal with dozens of emails.
Courtney gave herself a lecture and biked to the library in town. She’d find a good book to read, something to clear her mind. Maybe Kate Chopin’s The Awakening or Anita Diamant’s The Boston Girl.
The historic Atheneum with its white fluted columns had always drawn her to it, for books, CDs, DVDs, lectures, and especially for its hushed and tranquil rooms, so different from the Vickerey house. She scanned the new fiction arrivals, browsed through the stacks, checked out two books, and wandered upstairs to the Great Hall, where she settled at a table in a cozy nook.
She opened the book…and instantly flashed back to this morning, when she and James had made love. It had been hurried and intense, with no time for talking.
But there was nothing new to be said. He loved her. He wanted to marry her. She loved him, and wanted to marry him, to be with him forever and ever.
But never to have his children? Could she make that compromise?
Frustrated, she packed up her books and went back out into the sunshine. Sometimes walking helped her think, broke up the logjam of thoughts in her frenzied mind.
Outside, she sat on a bench in the library’s garden. It was shady here, and on the velvet green lawn, children were playing with a Frisbee, or lying belly down in the grass, chin propped on elbows, reading. Two little boys were climbing on the crooked limbs of crab apple trees. Courtney had always marveled that these two trees, short and not very thick, could support the weight of children, but the trees seemed to flourish under their athletic attention.
They ran shrieking from each other, they yelled, they fell down, and from a stroller a baby wailed. They were noisy and spirited and as unmanageable as a herd of colts. They wore candy-colored clothing or spotless white with navy blue trim. Of course these were fortunate children, brought here on vacation or living on the island, being carefully watched by parents or nannies.
Courtney had always assumed she would have a family at some unimaginable point in her life. In her early twenties, she’d been focused on getting her master’s, teaching, reading, riding her horse in Kansas and swimming on a Nantucket beach. But later this year she would turn thirty. A milestone. A turning point.
Restless, she rose and left the garden, strolling around the small historic town, letting her thoughts idle while she walked past the neat brick post office, The Hub with its windows full of seashells and toy sailboats, Christmas ornaments of whales wearing Santa hats or wooden doors with holly wreaths, up past the Bartlett’s Farm truck with its bounty of ripe red tomatoes, sweet sugar corn, heads of lettuce, and broccoli, all fresh today.
Susanna was sitting outside the Nantucket Pharmacy, a card table in front of her, a poster of a handmade Nantucket-themed quilt on the table. She wore a floppy straw hat to shade her from the sun, and a sea-blue sundress.
“Would you like to buy a raffle ticket for this quilt?” she asked Courtney.
“Sure,” Courtney said. And this was a freedom for Courtney, and a sign of her adulthood, because when she first came here, she had needed to save every dollar of her hard-earned money for school. “How are sales going?” she asked companionably.
“It’s early days yet. The real crowds come in July and August.” Susanna checked her watch. “By now, most people will be on the beach, craving a swim and a lie in the sun after our ghastly winter. What are you doing?”
“I was trying to read in the library, but I couldn’t concentrate. It’s such a gorgeous day. I sat for a while and watched the children climbing those hardy crab apple trees.”
Susanna chuckled. “Oh, I love those trees. I used to bring my kids in when they were little, to get books from the children’s room, and then to play in the yard. There’s really no other public green space in town.”
Courtney hadn’t planned to say it, and surprised herself when the question popped out of her mouth: “Do you think Henry and Valerie will have children?”
Susanna studied Courtney’s face before she answered. “I hope they will.”
“Even with Henry’s bipolar problems?”
Susanna turned to say hello to a passing friend. An older couple with a golden retriever pulling on its leash walked past, and a young man with a goatee rushed in the other direction, and then the space around them was quiet. Courtney chided herself for bringing up private matters in such a public space, but on second thought decided she might get more privacy here, with strangers strolling past and none of Susanna’s children or summer children interrupting or overhearing.
