What the Waves Know (10 page)

By the time I got downstairs the next morning, every hall in the house was filled with the sweet smell of maple syrup, which Grandma Jo had simmered to a warm golden froth on the stove. Remy Mandolin was teetering precariously on a Windsor chair while edging the last of the storm windows into its frame in the living room, and Grandma Jo had come up behind her with a bottle of Windex and a rag.

“That's what they're saying,” she was telling my grandmother. “They have three propaganda videos from the Symbionese Liberation Army and it's Patty Hearst speaking on all of them. It may be that she wasn't kidnapped, after all. She may have gone of her own free will.”

Luke wiggled free of my arm and scampered up beside them with a whine.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Grandma Jo twittered, lifting the rag into the air as Luke tried to snatch it.

“More like Rip Van Winkle. The day's half gone,” Remy mumbled, snapping the window secure. “Your mother's sending you off to Herman's with me on a grocery run. So, if you're having breakfast, you'd better have at it.”

“I'd go myself,” my mother said, coming into the room and sniffing the remnants of the gallon of milk she'd brought from home and wrinkling her nose up at it. “But, I've got—”

“A ton of work to finish up before the weekend,” Grandma Jo and Remy finished in unison. “We know.”

“Actually, I was going to say
no car
.” She gazed at Remy, who ignored her. “I'm the only person on Tillings running a tab with a taxi—and a perfectly good car of my own across the bay.”

I suspected the real reason my mother refused to go herself was that she did not want to admit defeat by depending on a ride from Remy while her car sat doubling as a beach chair for Telly.

“First, you are not the only one,” Remy corrected. “Second, I told you I'll bring it as soon as I can. That ferry's packed tighter than a wad of chewing tobacco until the festival is over. And third, I'm already tired of listening to you whine on about it. Give it a rest. It isn't like I haven't got better things to do than plop storm windows into your frames and cart you around hell's half acre.”

“At least you're getting paid for your misery,” my mother grumbled under her breath. She turned to look at me.
“Maybe Grandma Jo would like to go with you.” There was a hopeful tone in her voice.

“It's an island, darling. She's not going to get lost. You let that puppy out more than her. Give the child a break from all of us. She's a teenager; they need open space to air out.”

“Hear, hear,” Remy quipped.

“Maybe she'll meet some kids her own age instead of being cooped up in this house with a bunch of antiques.”

“I brought pictures, Mom, not the actual antiques.”

“I wasn't talking about your musty old furniture.” Grandma Jo laughed. “I was referring to us, or more frankly, you. Besides, I'm going to take a stroll down to the beach. Remy says there's a great place to do yoga not far from here.”

“Oh, that sounds nice.” My mother's voice perked up. “Iz, grab a pen and make a list for me, will you?”

Still sleepy, I stumbled over to the journal Grandma Jo had brought, tore a page free, and flopped into a chair at the table.

Buried under six layers of clothes like a summer onion, my mother made her way back into the kitchen and began scuttling from cabinet to cabinet calling off items for a grocery list.

“Pasta,” she called. Then, “linguini,” as though one were not the other. I shook my head at the soft risen dough of Remy's rear end waggling in the woodbin as she tossed a load of kindling in. Although it was not a kinship she
admitted to, I felt sure somewhere in my mother's lineage there was a shot of Italian blood. Dinner—when it was not cereal—meant pasta, the only difference being the sauce she poured over it and the chunks of meat tossed in for texture.

“Chicken and honey.” With her face shoved in the icebox, my mother sounded as if she were chewing sand. There was a tinkle of ice cubes followed by the light thud of the icebox door swinging shut.

“Izabella and I got honey yesterday.” Grandma Jo went to the kitchen, returning with a crock containing the slab of honeycomb.

From her chair, Remy studied the waxy blob with a sour face.

“What?” Grandma Jo looked at the crock. “It's organic.”

“So is horse shit, but I don't eat it on crackers,” Remy quipped, turning back to the window. “Real honey comes in little jars shaped like bears with the bee poop cooked out of it.”

Grandma Jo laughed as she stuck her pinky into the crock and poked it in the air at Remy. “Just try it!”

“Not on your life,” Remy answered without turning around.

Grandma Jo marched over to me and stuck her finger in my mouth. I rolled my eyes and licked the remnants from my top lip. It was the sweetest honey I'd ever tasted.

“Well, I'm going to need more than that for honey chicken anyway, so grab another,” my mother intervened.

“Tofu,” Grandma Jo called over her shoulder.

“What the hell is toe food?” Remy scooped up the stack of screens she had freed from the windows and stuck them outside the front door.

“
Tofu.
You know, bean curd.”

“I don't know that Herman's carries bean turd.” Remy glanced at my grandmother as if she might be insane.

“Bean
curd
.” Grandma Jo laughed. “Oh, and whole wheat pasta. I'm going to make Izabella my famous homemade macaroni and cheese.”

“I'll buy it.” My mother came back through the kitchen doorway. “So long as I don't have to eat it.”

“You will eat it, and you will love it,” Grandma Jo said.

“Can Iz pay with a check?”

“Cash,” Remy called from the front step. “Maynard Herman only takes local checks.”

We had passed Herman's Market, a small storefront with a red and white awning and a broom leaned up against the wall, coming in two days earlier. I vaguely remembered seeing the crooked old man standing on the stoop with a shock of white hair slicked back as smooth as bleached vinyl to his scalp. He'd waved politely as we passed, but deep lines etched his expression into a permanent scowl.

My mother dug three twenties free from her wallet, tossing them beside the list.

“Get a sweater before you leave.” I rolled my eyes, looking down at the shirt Grandma Jo had brought me. I knew
she just wanted it covered up. “Iz, I'm not in the mood. Just do it.”

Untangling my ankles from Luke's paws, I ran upstairs, pulling on the accompanying sweater, knowing my mother wouldn't dare say anything in front of Grandma Jo, even if she disapproved.

Walking over to the mirror, I tugged the shirttails of my blouse the way Grandma Jo had done the night before, letting them poke out from under the bottom of the sweater. Looking back at me was a snaky tendrilled Medusa with skin the color of curdled cream. Instead of brushing through the knotted uncombed spirals hanging to my waist, I grabbed an elastic band, pulling them into a messy mop at the back of my neck and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to make the word “hideous” come alive in my throat. Even that was just an ugly small hiss of air. Against my pale complexion, the spatter of freckles passed down by my father looked more like a splash of mud that refused to wash away.

Sometimes, I pretended the girl in the mirror was someone else. I brushed through the loose curls until they softened and the light played off them in shocks of auburn. When she smiled back at me, shallow dimples appeared at the corners of her mouth in a way that was one part playful, two parts flirty. Her eyes said she knew something the rest of the world did not. But, all it took was a single shift of light and she always morphed back into me—silent as the moon strung over the world like a
fat pearl and not nearly as pretty. Today, she was all me—awkward beyond the help of cheeks pinched pink and lip gloss, one part gawky and two parts weird.

“Gotta go!” Remy called from downstairs.

Sighing, I pulled on a pair of Nikes and trotted out to the driveway, slipping into the passenger seat.

“Okay, kiddo. I'll drop you at Herman's then run to the landing to help Mr. O'Malley unload passengers and come back around for you in about an hour. You okay for that long?”

I nodded.

“If you finish early, there's a soda fountain at the White Whale. Go around to the side and Mrs. Barrett's got a small ice cream shop, any kind of soda you want. But don't go anywhere off Main Street, okay? Your mom'll have apoplexy if I lose you.” Remy gave me a sidelong glance. “You remember this place at all? I mean, you were pretty little last time you were here, so . . .”

I gazed out the window at the fields and cottages spinning past as we drove along in the taxi and shook my head. It wasn't entirely true that I didn't remember; there was something hauntingly familiar about it all, but it wasn't anything tangible, just a soft echo bouncing around inside me of something long gone.

“Mr. O'Malley said last time you were here my mother brought you a rag doll for your birthday.” She looked at me as if waiting for a response. When she didn't get one, she shrugged. “Well, that's what he said. Who knows,
sometimes his memory is like Swiss cheese. Old moldy Swiss cheese.” She laughed. “And she used to make rag dolls for a lot of kids on the island.” Outside the window, a horse nibbled at the tall tips of alfalfa blowing back and forth in the breeze.

My mind skated back to my room in Tuckertown, where a rag doll with charcoal yarn for hair and a button nose sat covered in dust on my bookshelf. Somehow, I always thought it was from Grandma Jo, one of the kazillion dolls she'd brought back to me from her travels. But there was only one rag doll; I'd named her Mitsey. There was an inky smudge on her dress, the fabric on her left arm was worn, and the stitching had been pulled loose from my dragging her behind me through a good slice of my childhood.

I can't say why the fact that I might have met Mr. and Mrs. O'Malley, not to mention Remy, on one of our trips to the cottage had never occurred to me. Of course, it made perfect sense. I'd been to the island several times when I was little, and they lived right next door. But Remy seemed a person one couldn't forget—ever.

“Of course, I wasn't around,” she said, as if she'd read my mind. “Too busy raising hell on the mainland and all.” There was a snag in her voice like a scratched record. “Anyway, even if she had, it was a long time ago; it's probably long gone by now.”

No
, I wanted to tell her. I loved that doll, had slept with it every night after my father left, imagining she could
read the thousand thoughts racing through my mind even if I had no words to bring them to life. But I didn't tell her that. Instead, I studied the sunlight dancing off the purple nose of the Thunderbird, trying to yank the memory of Mrs. O'Malley free from the rock it was stuck under.

“Alrighty, here we are.” Remy guided the Purple Monster up to the curb. “You remember how to get to the soda fountain?”

I nodded, slipping out the passenger door and making a mental note to hold back a few dollars for it. Anxious to have an hour to explore the village, I intended to rush through the shopping so I'd have time to do so. Up and down Main Street, men with white coveralls armed with paintbrushes were slathering the sides of buildings with a fresh coat of color. A small movie theater was changing its marquee from
The Sting
to
The Godfather Part II.
Marlon Brando had been amazing in the first
Godfather
, but my heart belonged to Al Pacino. I decided maybe I'd ask Grandma Jo to bring me. On the corner, two teenagers wrestled with a brass letter
R,
trying to affix it to a sign that read, USTY
NAIL
TAVERN
.
Tourists were already beginning to land on the island and it was clear every resident was busy with last-minute preparations for the festival.

“You know,” Remy leaned across the front seat, her skin sticking to the vinyl, “I've got a bike in the garage. Got it a year and a half ago with the idea I might take up cycling and fit back into those size eights I refuse to throw away.
Both the bike and the jeans still have the tags hanging from their seats.” She laughed her smoky deep chuckle. “You're welcome to cut 'em off if you want. I'd like to think it will get ridden by someone at least once.”

I gave her a nod that said I was just the girl to do it and waved goodbye.

Ten minutes later, I found myself fighting with a sticky wheel on an ancient grocery cart that seemed intent on knocking over Mr. Herman's displays while he eyed me suspiciously over a box of Granny Smiths from the produce aisle. I finished the list in less than half an hour, making my way to the woman at the register amid a mountain of boxed dry pasta, the contents of which shook and
shish
ed like a baby's rattle every time the wheel caught, skidding stubbornly over Mr. Herman's polished floors.

“What ya running?” The checkout girl, a gangly thing with stringy auburn hair and eyes the color of creamed coffee, snapped her gum, examining the items on the belt. “A day-care center? Let me guess: tomorrow's macaroni-art day.” Leaning over to turn up the volume on the small eight-track player beside her register, she tapped her finger to the counter, keeping time with Terry Jacks as he sang “Seasons in the Sun.” When I didn't answer, she flashed a mouthful of braces that nearly blinded me on the spot in the fluorescent light.

Handing her the three twenties and taking three dollars back, I plucked the two paper bags off the belt before heading toward the front door.

“Honey!”

Taken aback at her friendliness, I turned to find her rushing after me, waving in the air the plastic bear full of honey I'd left behind.

Outside, Mr. Herman's broom leaned into the corner of the stoop beside an advertisement soaped onto the front window, reading: P
ORK
L
OINS ¢.90 LB
O
NE
D
AY
O
NLY.
I stepped off the concrete stoop eager to taste one of Mrs. Barrett's root beer floats. The White Whale was difficult to miss, but the reason that I almost did was because the sign with a picture of a harpooned white whale was hanging from two cast iron hooks directly over my head. I only happened to look up as I passed when the breeze caught it, sending out an obnoxious squeak.