Ashes (14 page)

"She's the same as ever," Karen said.

"Aren't we all?" John looked at the handles
of the steak knives. They almost formed the outline of a letter of
the alphabet.

"I don't know why I'm here. I really
shouldn't be here."

"Don't say that. It's really good to see
you."

John pictured her as a metal dolphin, leaping
from the water, drops falling like golden rust against the sunset.
Frozen in a moment of decision. A single framed image that he could
never paint.

He looked at the oil of Karen. The endless
work in progress. Maybe if he ran a streak of silver along that
left breast, the angle of the moonlight would trick the viewer.

If Karen weren't here, such a moment of
inspiration would have brought a mad rush for brushes and paints.
Now, he felt foolish.

Because Karen was here after all. This was
life, not art. This was life, not art. This was life, not art.

He clenched one fist behind his back.

Ah.

Untitled.

Sharon in the trunk of his Toyota.

"The sky was two-dimensional," John said.

"What?"

"That day."

"John." She picked up his fluter, a wedged
piece of metal. Nobody touched his fluter.

"What?"

She nodded toward The Painting, the one that
showed most of her nude body. "Did you like painting me just
because you could get me naked that way?"

A question that had two possible answers. Yes
or no.

The artist always chose the third possible
answer.

"Both," he said. "How's Henry?"

"I think he goes by 'Hank' now. At least
that's what his boyfriend calls him." Karen wiggled her hands into
the pockets of her blue jeans. Tightening the fabric.

John's fingers itched.

"So, how's the job?" he asked.

As if he had to ask. Accounting. The same as
always.

"The same as always," she said. "I got
another raise last year."

The ladder and how to climb it. Karen knew
the book by heart, learned by rote at the feet of Henry who called
himself Hank. Or was it Hank who changed his name to Henry?

Such confusion.

So many sharp edges and reflections.

"Why are you here?" John asked.

"I already told you."

"No. I mean, really."

She picked up a piece of colored glass, a
remnant from a miniature church John had built and then smashed.
She held the glass to her eye and looked through. Blue behind
blue.

"I got to wondering about you," she said.
"How you were getting along and all that. And I wanted to see how
famous artists lived."

Famous artists didn't live. All the most
famous artists were long dead, and the ones who swayed the critics
during their own lifetimes made John suspicious.

"I'm the most famous artist nobody's ever
heard of," he said.

She rubbed her thumb along the edge of the
glass. "That's one thing I don't miss about you. Your
insecurity."

"Artists have to go to dangerous places. You
can't get too comfortable if you want to make a statement."

Karen put the piece of blue glass on the desk
beside his mallet. She went to the portrait again. She pointed to
the curve of her painted hip. "Maybe if you put a little more red
here."

"Maybe."

She turned. "This is really sad, John. You
promised you were going to throw yourself into your work and make
me regret ever breaking up with you."

He hated her for knowing him so well. Knowing
him, but not understanding. That was something he'd never been able
to forgive her for.

But then, she wasn't perfect. She was a work
in progress, too.

"You can't even finish one lousy painting,"
she said.

"I've been working on my crow
collection."

"Crow collection? What the hell is that?"

"Shiny stuff. Spiritual stuff."

"I thought you were going to make that series
of twelve that was going to be your ticket to the top."

He looked out the window. The room smelled of
kerosene and decay.

She waved her hands at the mess on the
workbench. "You gave up me for this."

No. She left him for Hank or Henry. John
never made the choice. She wanted him to give up art. That was
never an option.

"I guess I'd better get going," she said.

He thought about grabbing her, hugging her,
whispering to her the way he had in the old days. He wanted her
naked, posing. Then, perhaps, he could finish the portrait.

"It was really good to see you," he said.

"Yeah." Her face was pale, a mixture of peach
and titanium white.

She paused by the studio door and took a last
look at The Painting. "Frozen in time," she said.

"No, it's not frozen at all. It's a work in
progress.

"See you around."

Not likely, since she lived two thousand
miles away. The door closed with a soft squeak, a sigh of
surrender.

John looked at the portrait again.

Karen here before him.

Not the one who walked and breathed, the one
he could never shape. This was the Karen he could possess. The real
Karen. The Painting.

He possessed them all. Anna under the
floorboards. Cynthia beneath the canvas. Sharon in the trunk of his
Toyota.

John hurried to the bench and grabbed up his
tools.

The Muse had spoken. He realized he'd never
wanted to build himself, or dream himself alive. Art wasn't about
sacrificing for the good of the artist. Art was about sacrificing
for others.

For Karen.

She was the real work in progress, the one
that could be improved. The canvas awaited his touch.

John uncovered Cynthia and went to work. By
midnight, The Painting was finished.

It was perfection.

###

SHE CLIMBS A WINDING STAIR

Outside the window, a flat sweep of sea. The
ocean's tongue licks the shore as if probing an old scar. Clouds
hang gray and heavy, crushed together by nature's looming anger. In
the distance is a tiny white sail, or it might be a forlorn
whitecap, breaking too far out to make land.

I hope it is a whitecap.

Because she may come that way, from the
lavender east. She may rise from the stubborn sandy fields behind
the house, or seep from the silver trees beyond. She could arrive a
thousand times, in a thousand different colors, from all directions
above or below.

I can almost her hear now, her soft footsteps
on the stairs, the whisper of her ragged lace, the mouse-quick
clatter of her fingerbones on the railing.

Almost.

It's not fear that binds my limbs to this
chair, for I know she's not bent on mortal vengeance. If only I
could so easily repay my sins.

Rather, I dread that moment when she appears
before me, when her imploring eyes stare blankly into mine, when
her lost lips part in question.

She will ask me why, and, God help me, I will
have no answer.

I came to Portsmouth in my position as a
travel writer on assignment for a national magazine. In my career,
I had learned to love no place and like them all, for it's
enthusiasm that any editor likes to see in a piece. So neither the
vast stone and ice beauty of the Rockies, the wet redwood cliffs of
Oregon, the fiery pastels of the Southwestern deserts, the worn and
welcoming curves of the Appalachians, nor the great golden plains
of the central states tugged at my heart any more or less than the
rest of this fair country. Indeed, much of my impression of this
land and its people came from brief conversations and framed
glances on planes, trains, and the occasional cab or boat.

So the Outer Banks held no particular place
in my heart as I ferried across Pamlico Sound to Ocracoke. To the
north was the historic Hatteras Lighthouse, the tallest in the
country, which was currently being moved from its eroding base at a
cost of millions. I thought at the time that perhaps I could swing
up to Hatteras and cover the work for a separate article. But
assignments always came before freelance articles, because a
bankable check feeds a person much better than a possibility
does.

So on to bleak Portsmouth for me. At
Ocracoke, I met the man who was chartered to take me to Portsmouth.
As I boarded his tiny boat with my backpack and two bags, my laptop
and camera wrapped against the salt air, he gave me several looks
askance.

"How long you going to stay?" he asked, his
wrinkled face as weathered as the hull of his boat.

"Three days, though I'm getting paid for
seven," I said. "Why?"

"You don't look like the type that roughs it
much, you don't mind me saying." His eyes were quick under the bill
of his cap, darting from me to the open inlet to the sky and then
to the cluttered dock.

"I'll manage," I said, not at all pleased
with this old salt's assessment of me. True, I was more at home in
a three-star hotel than under a tent, but I did hike a little and
tried to be only typically overweight for a middle-aged
American.

The man nodded at the sea, in the distance
toward where I imagined Portsmouth lay waiting. "She can be harsh,
if she's of a mind," he said. Then he pushed up the throttle and
steered the boat from the dock in a gurgle and haze of oily
smoke.

We went without speaking for some minutes, me
hanging on the bow as the waves buffeted us and Ocracoke diminished
to our rear. Then he shouted over the noise of the engine, "Hope
you brought your bug repellent."

"Why?" I said, the small droplets of ocean
spray making a sticky film on my face.

"Bugs'll eat you alive," he said.

"Maybe I can borrow some at the ranger
station," I said.

The man laughed, his head ducking like a sea
turtle's. "Ain't no rangers there. Not this time of year."

"What do you mean?"

"Hurricane season. That, and federal cuts.
Government got no business on that island no way. Places like that
ought to be left alone."

My information must have been wrong.
Portsmouth was now administered by the National Parks Service,
since the last residents had left thirty years before. An editorial
assistant had assured me that at least two rangers would be on duty
throughout the course of my stay. They had offices with
battery-operated short-wave radio and emergency supplies. That was
the only reason I had agreed to take an assignment to such a
desolate place.

Not for the first time, I silently cursed the
carelessness of editorial assistants. "The forecasts are for clear
weather," I said, not letting the boatman know that I cared one way
or another.

"You should be all right," he said. "Least as
far as the weather's concerned. Still, they blow up quick
sometimes."

I looked around at the great blue sea. The
horizon was empty on all sides, a far cry from the past glories of
this area's navigational history. In my research, I had learned
that this inlet was one of the first great shipping routes in the
south. Decades before the Revolutionary War, ships would come to
the shallow neck and offload their goods to smaller boats. Those
boats then distributed the cargo to towns across the mainland
shore. Spurred by this industry, Portsmouth had grown up from the
bleak gray-white sands.

"A lot of shipwrecks below?" I asked, more to
keep the old man talking than to fill any gaps in my background
knowledge.

"Hells of them," he said. "Got everything
from old three-mast schooners to a few iron freighters. Some of
them hippie divers from Wood's Hole said they saw a German U-boat
down there, but they was probably just smoking something
funny."

"So the bottom's not too deep here?"

"Depends. The way the sand shifts here from
one year to the next, could be fifteen feet, could be a hundred.
That's why the big boys don't come through here no more."

And that's why Portsmouth had died. As the
inlet became shallower, ships no longer wanted to risk getting
stranded or else breaking up on the barrier reefs. The town had
tried to adapt to its misfortune, and was once an outpost for ship
rescue teams near the end of the 19th century. More than a few of
the town's oarsmen were lost in futile rescue or salvage
attempts.

Then ships began avoiding the area entirely,
and the town residents left, family by family. The population
dwindled from its height of 700 to a few dozen in the 1950s. The
stubborn Portsmouth natives continued to cling to their home soil
despite the lack of electricity, no steady food supply, irregular
mail service, and a dearth of doctors and teachers. But even the
hardiest finally relented and moved across the sound to a safer and
less harsh existence, leaving behind a ghost town, the buildings
virtually intact.

"There she is," the boatman said, and I
squinted against the sparkling water. The thin strand came slowly
into view. The beach was beautiful but bleak, a scattering of gulls
the only movement besides the softly swaying seagrass. Low dunes
rolled away from the flat white sands.

"Used to be a lot of wrecks right along this
stretch," the boatman said.

"I read that they'd go out in hurricanes to
rescue shipwrecked crews," I said.

"Brave folks, they was," he said, nodding.
"'Course, you'd have to be brave to set down roots in that soil, or
else crazy. My people came from here, but they left around the
First World War, when the getting was good. They's still lots of
them on the island, though."

I was confused. "I thought the town was
abandoned, except for the rangers."

He gave his dolphin-squeak of laughter. "Them
that's under the sand, I mean. In the cemeteries. Got left where
they was buried."

He guided the boat toward a crippled dock
that was barely more than black posts jutting from the shallow
water. The engine dropped to a groaning whine as he eased back the
throttle. When we came broadside to the dock, he tied off with his
crablike hands. I climbed out onto the slick, rotted planks.