Island Girl (27 page)

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Authors: Lynda Simmons

BOOK: Island Girl
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I felt my face warm and kept my eyes on the screen. “Because that’s where my son is buried.”
Flwrs alwys
, came back followed by,
Want a pic?
Jocelyn stared at me. “You had a son?”
I nodded.
“What was his name?”
“William,” I whispered, because that’s what I always do. Because my mom doesn’t like me to talk about him. Because that’s dredging up the past and I’ll only get sad all over again.
The phone jingled. Liz asked one more time.
Want a pic?
“She wants to send you a picture of the grave?” Jocelyn pointed at the screen. “Now that’s creepy.”
“It’s not creepy. She knows I’ve never seen it.”
A mother with two little boys stared at Jocelyn as they went past. Jocelyn smiled and gave them the finger. “You haven’t seen your own son’s grave? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
I pushed her hand down and mouthed
Sorry
to the mom. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wasn’t allowed.”
“Not allowed? You’re an adult. He was your kid. Who could possibly stop you?”
“You’d be surprised.”
I realized my palms were sweaty. Did I want to see a picture? Did I want to
dredge up the past
? I automatically turned and checked the dock. Half-expecting to see my mom shaking her head, telling me no, making my mind up for me. Only she wasn’t there. I had to decide for myself.
I wiped my hands on my shorts, swallowed the first trace of a lump in my throat, and typed,
I think so
before I could change my mind.
The picture was in front of me so fast it felt like magic. A small bronze plaque on a board with a bunch of other small bronze plaques. There wasn’t much information. No room to say that he’d had a beautiful smile and a real belly laugh that made everyone who heard it laugh too. But his name was written out in full. William James Donaldson. Named for his great-great grandfather.
Liz sent another picture. The flowers she brought for him. White daisies. “The happiest flowers in the world,” she always said, and even in winter she took white daisies and scattered the petals on our boy.
“That’s not a grave,” Jocelyn said, tipping her head to the side. “What is that?”
“A plaque. He was cremated, like all the other Donaldsons.”
Only his ashes weren’t buried in the garden with Great-Grandma Lucy and Granny Rose. William’s ashes had been left there in St. James Cemetery. Tossed in the Scattering Garden because it was better for me that way. No daily reminders of what I’d lost.
I’d never seen the garden, so Liz’s third picture was a surprise. The thing looked more like a concrete bathtub than a garden to me. But the roses inside it were pretty, and the petals from Liz’s happy flowers looked like snow on the ground around them.
That lump in my throat got bigger and the end of my nose started to sting and if I didn’t put the phone down I was going to cry. And you don’t cry in a swan. That’s a rule. You can cry on the Ferris wheel or on the sky ride but not in a swan. That would ruin everything.
I typed as fast as I could.
Got to go Call U later
Say hi to Mark 4 me.
I closed the phone and slipped it into my pocket and wished I had a water bottle with me. “We should go in now,” I said to Jocelyn, pointing the swan at the dock.
“Thank God.” She leaned back with her hands behind her head. “You can send that picture to your e-mail you know. Save it on your computer and print it if you want.”
“I can’t do that. My mom would say it’s morbid and make me take it down.”
“Then leave it on the desktop as wallpaper.”
“I can’t do that either. She checks my computer to see what I’ve been doing. She doesn’t know I know, but I do, so I have to be really careful.”
“Or you could use a password.”
“I’ve tried that. She always finds a way in.”
“She won’t if you use one of my passwords, guaranteed.” We were almost at the dock when suddenly she sat up straight and said, “Oh shit,” and then ducked down into the bottom of the swan. “Turn us around! Turn us around!”
I made a hard left, taking us back out into the lagoon. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“My friends are there by the ticket booth.”
Sure enough, a group of four kids around Jocelyn’s age were standing in line. Two boys and two girls, wearing jeans and T-shirts. No stop-sign red hair, no black eyeliner. Only Jocelyn had both of those. Funny how she’d gone to so much trouble to stand out, and now all she wanted to do was disappear.
“What are they doing?” she asked.
“I think they’re buying tickets.”
She groaned. “Why can’t they ever just do what they say they’re going to do?”
“What did they say they’d do?”
“Send me a message as soon as they got here.”
“Maybe they’re giving you a little more time.”
“Maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced. “Give me that tissue again.” She started rubbing the rest of the black off her cheeks. “What are they doing now?”
“Getting tickets.” I glanced down at her. “What difference does it make if they see you anyway? I thought you didn’t care what other people think.”
“They’re not people, they’re my friends.” She kept rubbing. “Are they gone?”
“Nope, in fact they’re coming this way. Maybe they’re going to ride the swans too.”
“That would not be good.” She huddled deeper into the bottom. “I can’t believe this. They’re supposed to be here to see the mockingbird, not ride a stupid swan. And they weren’t even supposed to come in the day. They were supposed to come tonight to hear him singing.”
“Maybe it’s better they’re here now. Maybe he won’t sing at night now that the lady mockingbird has found him,” I grinned at her. “It’ll be fun to find out.”
“Or maybe it’ll be so boring they’ll never come back. And if my dad doesn’t let me start taking the ferry on my own soon, I’ll be stuck riding this swan all summer.” She glanced up at me. “No offense. It’s just not doing for me what it does for you. How’s my face?”
“You’ve got a bit right there. And I’m sure your friends will have a good time with you no matter what.”
“That’s because you don’t know my friends. Are they in line for a swan?”
“No, they’re walking away.” I smiled at her. “It’s safe to come up now.”
She poked her head up and took one last look around before getting back into the seat. As soon as she was settled, she whipped her head around and pointed a finger at the man in the swan beside us. “What the fuck are you looking at?”
The family who had been watching us turned their swan away as quickly as they could and headed for the dock.
“He’s probably going to report you for using bad words. Happened to Liz all the time.”
“So what? We’re done here anyway.” She knocked my hand off the tiller. “We’re going in now. How’s my face?”
“Fine,” I said, dabbing at one last spot of black on her cheek.
When we reached the dock, Ryan said the man had definitely reported her, but he didn’t care. We could keep going if we wanted. I shook my head, told him thanks but we had to go, so he reached out with his hook and hauled us into the dock. The moment her feet were on the ground, Jocelyn took out her phone and started hitting the buttons. “I need to find out where they are,” she said, her head bent over the phone as we walked up the ramp. “Get them to meet me at the fountain.”
“That won’t work,” I said, “because they’re right there.”
She snapped her head up. “What? Where?”
“By the tree.” I started to raise a hand to show her, but she slapped it down.
“I see them. Shit. And they see me too. Shit again.”
The taller of the two boys called, “Hey, Goth girl. How’s it going?”
“Good,” she called back, and I watched her face soften and her smile turn shy as the four of them came toward us. “Do not follow me,” she muttered, and walked away.
I understood her need for privacy, but I was curious, I couldn’t help it. So I took out my phone and practiced my texting skills while I listened. I found out that the taller boy’s name was Sean and the girls’ names were Alex and Courtney. The two of them giggled the way some girls do, and Jocelyn smiled and nodded with them, but her eyes kept returning to the shorter of the two boys. His name was Josh—the one who’d had the party.
“You’re so lucky,” the one named Courtney said. “It would be so cool to spend the summer on the Island.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you had to be here.” Jocelyn turned that shy little smile to Josh. “How was the party?”
He was thin but good-looking. Clean-cut, my mother would have said. The kind you should instinctively mistrust. Then again, you were supposed to be watchful around long-hairs, business types, tradesmen, men who were unemployed, and anyone who worked at the park, so what difference did it make? But Josh seemed okay. He had a nice smile and when he said, “It would have been more fun if you’d been there,” and put an arm around her shoulder, Jocelyn looked surprised but she didn’t pull away, so I figured he must be a nice boy.
“Let’s go see that bird,” he said, but as they turned to go, the girl named Alex glanced over at me. Her eyes flicked down from my face to my shoes and back up again, pausing a moment to read my WHAT WOULD BUDDHA DO? T-shirt before returning to my face. “Is that the retard?”
Jocelyn’s face went as red as her hair. “Her name’s Grace. Let’s get out of here.”
She glanced back once as they walked away. And I was the only one who saw the little wave of her fingers.
RUBY
 
Within a few hours of my meltdown, I was fine again. Medicated, exercised, and more than lucid enough to grasp the full impact of the disaster I’d created. Mark kept me away from the house for the rest of the day, canoeing in the lagoons, hiding out in the café, even napping at his place. Anywhere was fine by me as long as I didn’t have to face Grace’s tears or tell Mary Anne the truth or think about clients who might or might not come back again. If Mark was hurting from his run-in with the taxi, he kept it to himself while we paddled and ate and talked—about the Boy Scout jamboree on Snake Island, the flashy new sailboats at the yacht clubs, the fabulous food at the Rectory Café. Anything but what had happened or what it meant, while Big Al sat smugly between us, smiling and waiting for my next performance.
It was almost dark when Mark finally took me home. Jocelyn and her friends were there, the five of them huddled around the bird-in-a-box while the other one, the healthy one, sat up high in the lilac bush singing for them. Someone needed to shoot that thing.
Grace was there too, of course, sitting alone by the birdbath, still tiptoeing around me, giving me a wide berth, as though I might bite if she got too close. Mary Anne must have been at her window all day because the moment Mark opened my gate, she came trotting over with a box of my favorite cookies—white chocolate and macadamia nut—to have our little chat.
I sighed and let her follow us into the house, let her make tea and set out her cookies. When the first cookie was halfway to her lips, I finally said the three little words that would change everything forever. “I have Alzheimer’s.”
Her face froze for a heartbeat and then it began. The falling cookie, the watery eyes, the gentle, fluttering touch—that god-awful sympathy I’d been dreading since the diagnosis.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, sliding her chair closer.
“I didn’t tell anyone.” I stared at her hand on mine. Wanted to pick it up, put it back where it belonged, and tell her to stuff her sympathy. But it seemed a lot of bother for nothing.
“You obviously told Mark,” she said, her tone only a little accusing, only slightly hurt.
“Just a few days ago,” he said. “And only because she needed a lawyer.”
“Liz knows too,” I said. “For all the good it did.” I met those watery eyes again. “But Grace still hasn’t been told and I want to keep it that way. You can’t say a word to her or anyone else, do you understand?”
“But—”
“Mary Anne, I’ll make it public when I’m ready.”
Which might be tomorrow. The story of my meltdown was probably all over the Island by now anyway, so what difference did it make.
I got to my feet. “I’m going to bed. Tell Grace I said good night. And tell her I don’t bite.”
“She’s just afraid you’re still angry with her,” Mary Anne said. “You really scared her.”
“That makes two of us.” I went up the stairs, leaving her and Mark to discuss me, my condition, my prognosis, anything that made them feel better while I popped an extra sleeping pill and hoped it kept me from hearing that goddamn mockingbird.
The next morning I slept in, waking up at nine to the sun streaming through my window and the mockingbird still in good voice. Ignoring my own notes and signs, I didn’t pull on my shorts and T-shirt. Didn’t tie up my hair. Didn’t do anything but close the bedroom door and go down the stairs. Mark was there already, or perhaps he’d never left, standing at the stove flipping French toast with cinnamon, another favorite. Mary Anne was there too, sitting at the table, sworn to secrecy and twitching with questions. She rose and hugged me, kissed my cheek, asked how my night had been.

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