Uncharted (30 page)
Shaken, trembling, and humiliated, Lisa made her way back to the shelter of the cave. Her face flamed every time she thought about her confession to Kevin, but the emotional trauma had taken her mind off physical agony.
The others had moved out, probably to search for water or food. She walked up the sloped entrance of the first cavern, then paused in the opening to the chamber where they had tried to sleep. Without the others, the dim space felt unwelcoming and stark.
She looked down the winding tunnel, then followed it. The curving passageway extended farther than she had imagined, turning to the left as it narrowed, bending to the right, then forking into two separate tunnels. She hesitated at the fork, afraid of losing her way, then decided to choose the right-hand passage at this and every other junction. Finding her way back would be easy if she was consistent.
She shuffled carefully along the path, noticing that gray light penetrated even these winding channels. How was that possible? Other openings had to exist in the porous walls; perhaps they lay in the twisting passages that penetrated the stone high above her head. No matter how far she walked, she could still hear the steady crash and rumble of breaking waves.
She kept walking, remembering a summer she had spent in Ogunquit, a small town on the coast of Maine. One afternoon she’d sat on the deck of a restaurant and studied a rocky outcropping. With every incoming wave, water streamed over the stones and blasted through water-worn tunnels, ejecting dozens of tiny crabs, wayward lobsters, and spiny sea urchins. Each wave brushed up against life.
Odd, then, that the only living things they’d seen on this island were ants. No crabs, lobsters, or fish. Had all the larger life forms been poisoned?
She paused at the threshold of another cavern. Unlike the dimly lit passageway, the space beyond was dark, impossible for her eyes to penetrate. She was about to turn away when she heard her mother’s voice: “Leeee-saaa?”
The hair on her arms stood erect as the darkness brightened. Shifting shadows arranged themselves into the furniture of her living room: her father’s easy chair, the plaid Herculon sofa, the braided rug on the floor. The scent of Pine-Sol wafted on the air as the flesh-and- blood forms of her parents trembled into actuality.
Her father lifted his hand and gestured toward the
TV Guide
on the coffee table. “Sugar, will you hand that to me?”
Her mother lowered her plastic fork, grabbed the book, and tossed it across the room. Her aim was off, though, and the magazine landed at her father’s feet, not in his lap.
Lisa chewed her lip as the old man leaned forward, his fingers straining for the book, then tumbled onto the floor. Spittle flew from her mother’s mouth. “Leeee-sa! Come quick!”
Lisa’s breath was whipped away as
she
appeared in the room, her jaw tight, her eyes hard and blue. “Why can’t you sit still?” she screamed, striding across the rug. “Why can’t you let me have five minutes without interruption?”
Her alter ego knelt by her father, placed her hands under his arms, and pulled him into his chair with more resentment than tenderness. “There.” She backed away, regarding him through narrowed eyes. “Do you think you can stay put
now
?”
“Lisa!” Her mother’s lower lip trembled. “That’s no way to speak to your father.”
“It’s the way you speak to me,” the other Lisa snapped. She pulled a worn sheet from a laundry basket and tugged at the hem, ripping it into two pieces. “Maybe I’ll tie you into this chair; do you think
that’ll
keep you in your place?”
“Lisa,” her father began, but the raging Lisa didn’t listen. She knotted two lengths of fabric together, then placed the knot on the old man’s chest. “How am I supposed to get anything done,” she said, her words coming at double speed, “if I have to keep coming in here to take care of you two? I have a half dozen kids in the daycare room, I have parents to please, and I have three different church meetings this week. I have to come up with an idea for the mother-daughter banquet, plan a fund-raiser for the women’s missionary meeting,
and
find a way to make a contribution to the building program—as if
you
cared about any of this.”
Lisa watched, horrified, as her evil twin tied her father into the easy chair, then pressed down on the back, abruptly tipping her father into a reclining position.
“There!” She propped her hands on her hips. “That should hold you.”
“But, Lisa,” her mother said, chin quivering, “what if he has to go to the bathroom? You can’t expect me to get him out of that—”
The stranger wearing Lisa’s flesh walked over and slapped the old woman, knocking her sideways onto the sofa with the force of her blow.
The evil Lisa showed her teeth in an expression that was not a smile. “That’s what adult diapers are for. Now shut up and eat your lunch before I take it away.”
A flicker of shock widened her mother’s eyes before those faded blue orbs filled with tears.
Lisa pressed her hand to her mouth and backed away from the cavern as a sludge of nausea filled her belly. What was
this
? Her eyes must be playing tricks on her; something on this polluted island had affected her brain. Either that or the very
air
on this island was hallucinogenic.
She slid down the wall, the rough rock scraping at the back of her blouse. The horrible things she’d seen couldn’t be real. She had never tied her father into a chair, never slapped her mother.
But you’ve wanted to.
“No,” she whispered.
And then, like the buzzing of insects, a cloud of voices echoed from the cavern.
“You’re the most selfless woman I know.”
“What a joy you must be to your parents.”
“The salt of the earth, Lisa Melvin—that’s you.”
“When people want to know what a Christian does, they’ll look at you.”
“With appreciation for your dedication to the preschool department of Seattle Baptist Church, we’d like to present you with this award.”
Trembling, she peered into the cavern, which now blazed with light. The scene had changed; instead of tormenting her parents, the woman who bore her name was torturing her day-care students, screaming at one child while she held another by the hair. “Just wait until twelve o’clock, you stinking brats! I can’t wait to hand you over to your stupid parents!”
“No!” She turned and hid her face, refusing to watch. “I never did those things; I never said those things.”
But you wanted to
.
May God forgive her, she couldn’t deny it.
Beset by a sense of hopelessness as strong as the tide that dragged her to this place, Susan stumbled along the shore and choked on rasping sobs. She’d like nothing better than to throw herself down and weep a bucketful of tears, but her eyes were as dry as a dead man’s scalp.
A lens, Karyn had told her when they passed outside the cave. Mark had said he could build a signal fire if they could find a lens.
“Might as well wish for the moon while you’re wishing, princess.”
Susan’s father’s voice rolled through the years on a tide of memory. “
Take a
deep breath, now. Blow out those candles, and we’ll see if your wish came true!”
Her childhood wishes had always been fulfilled. On various birthdays she had wished for a canopy bed and pink bedroom walls and a white dress and ballet slippers and a pony—and every wish had been granted almost as soon as she uttered it. Her father wasn’t a rich man, and her mother didn’t work, but whatever Susie wanted, Susie got.
She’d felt almost guilty about it when she grew old enough to realize that her father had worked overtime to fulfill her requests. She promised herself she wouldn’t wish for frivolous things, but for every dance or date she needed a new dress and matching shoes. “After all, Daddy,” she told him once, “a girl feels extra-pretty the first time she wears a dress. I want to feel pretty all the time.”
He’d melted and reached for the checkbook, handing her a check for fifty dollars along with his blessing to spend it however she liked. She’d thanked him with a hug, all the while ignoring the strained expression on her mother’s face. She knew they’d make do. They always did.
Her parents had managed to send her to Florida State when money was tight. Susan had been too busy enjoying her social life to apply for the scholarship her guidance counselor kept mentioning. But getting to FSU and
staying
at FSU were two different matters. Though her parents managed to come up with the funds for tuition, room, and board, Susan found herself scraping for money to buy clothing and makeup. That’s why she’d answered John Watson’s ad.
That’s why she was here now—no longer poor and no longer a pretty princess.
She batted at a buzzing cloud of flies and waded into a section of littered beach, tightening the knot of her head scarf before beginning to pick through the rubbish. This area abounded with clothing—crusted, wrinkled, and faded, but some of the items were things she might have worn as recently as last season. She picked up a white cotton shirt, tugged it into shape, and found a Ralph Lauren tag at the collar. Size eight. What a waste.
She tossed the shirt over her shoulder and nearly tripped over a scarred Louis Vuitton handbag. She recognized it; the bag had been the centerpiece of last spring’s collection. She had bought two and mailed one to her sister.
She halted as something shiny caught her eye, then she scrambled over another pile of discarded clothing and pulled a broken pair of glasses from the sand. One earpiece and one lens were missing, but the other lens was intact.
An unexpected feeling of hope welled within her. Giddy with relief, she was about to slide the broken frame onto her nose, but the touch of the organza spurred another round of painful memories.
“But, Mama, I don’t want to wear glasses!”
“You need to see, Susan.”
“But they make me look ugly!”
“They look fine—besides, it’s important to do well in school. You can take
them off when you get home.”
She shuddered and slid the broken glasses into her skirt pocket. She had hated wearing glasses, hated wearing anything that came between her and the world that loved to admire her. At sixteen, with the proceeds of her first paycheck, she’d bought contacts. At thirty-five she’d invested in LASIK surgery.
She didn’t need glasses now, but Mark did, and she’d found a pair. “Which only goes to prove,” she whispered, threading her way through the strewn trash, “that even ugly things can serve a purpose.”
Weary and restless, Kevin wandered into the cave and followed the winding tunnel. Mark hadn’t found any cisterns in the spaces beyond, but Kevin wanted to explore them for himself.
He passed the cavern where they had tried to rest and continued through the passageway. The sand was no longer smooth in the tunnel; several pairs of feet had disturbed the sand. He stopped to listen, but other than the relentless sound of the surf, he heard nothing.
He was near the opening of another grotto when the world went fuzzy and the stone walls began to shift. He stopped and braced himself against a rock. Mark had warned them that dehydration could result in dizziness, so it was a wonder they weren’t all reeling.
When the world around him had regained its edges, Kevin noticed a single footprint in the sand—someone else had passed this way, someone with a small foot. He followed the trail until the tunnel split into two channels, then he checked the ground. The sand here was hard packed and unmarked. Impossible to tell which way his predecessor went.
He listened but heard only the distant rumble of the sea and the soughing of the wind. With nothing but instinct to guide him, he turned to the left and followed a narrower tunnel as it twisted through other caverns and grottos.
He stopped when the passageway ended at a black cavern. For a moment he feared he was standing at the precipice of a pit, then the space beyond lightened. He watched, fascinated, as the black faded to gray, then brightened to the greenish lights of the fluorescents in the Genuine Old Time Candy Company boardroom.
Was this another symptom of dehydration? A tremor of mingled fear and anticipation shot through him as shaded outlines morphed into three-dimensional characters. The silence filled with the creak of chairs. He breathed in the scents of paper and furniture polish as he recognized the men around the table: Thomas Barton, company president; Harold Jewell, chief financial officer; various other department heads; and . . . Kevin Carter, chief marketing officer.
