On Hurricane Island Read online

  He swings both feet to the floor, and feels around for the leather slippers Melissa gave him one birthday, back when she still spoke to him. In the bathroom, he plugs in the lamp made from the bumpy round shell of a sea urchin. The lavender light is luminous, otherworldly. Cat gave it to him for their fifth wedding anniversary. “When one of us turns it on,” she instructed, “it’s an invitation to seduction.” He feels a flash of guilt using their special lamp for himself, but pushes the thought away. There is nothing wrong about this.

  He stands in front of the linen closet. Years of marriage have defined their separate spaces, but he still worries that in a fit of menopausal energy Cat will decide to rearrange the old beach towels and sleeping bags stored on his shelf and discover his hidden things. He digs under the camping tarp for the wooden box that once held his father’s fishing gear. He retrieves the key from the bottom of his cracked leather dopp kit, turns it slowly and jiggles. The lock is rusty; it requires babying, but he takes his time and jiggles it just right and it clicks. He sits naked on the fluffy pink toilet lid cover and opens the box.

  The new underwear mail-ordered from California has curvy padding over the buttocks and a gaff to flatten his dick. Garter belt attachments dangle front and back. Then, silk stockings. Real silk. Carefully, he brings the sheer stocking to the toes of his left foot and eases it over the nails and along the instep, careful not to snag it on the callus on his heel. The fabric caresses his calf. Some guys shave their legs to enhance the smooth feeling, but Henry loves the soft crackle of silk on hair. Loves the coming together of opposites, how a few square yards of French silk and lace transforms his body from awkward and clumsy to graceful and elegant. Eloquent, even. Draped in jade satin, his body speaks its hidden sweetness. Whispers it with the rustle of fine fabrics.

  The stockings pull up smooth over his thighs. He attaches them to the hooks and stands with his back to the mirror on the bathroom door, looking over his shoulder. Bending down, he straightens the dark seams to bisect the back of each leg, admiring the way the stockings swell over his calves. He loves the smooth slither of a stockinged foot slipping into high heels, his newest pair, gold sequins sparkling in the soft light. Then the black lace brassiere.

  Finally, he shivers into the sleek satin dress. The deep teal color vibrates in the low light. He urges up the back zipper. His chest expands and opens, and the last tendrils of ache dissolve. He regards himself in the bathroom mirror, shoulders to toes, ignoring his face with his five-o’clock shadow. He turns again to admire the low scoop neckline in back and smiles at his reflection. He looks good, like a person who is fully himself, even if himself is dressed like a herself. He does not fully understand, but it is obviously right.

  Admiring himself in the mirror isn’t quite enough. He loves himself like this and he loves Cat. She’s a good person, and they have a strong marriage. She will be okay with this.

  Leaving the sea urchin light on, he cracks open the bathroom door and listens to her breathing. At the threshold to the bedroom, he steps out of the gold shoes and walks to the bed, relishing the slight crunching sound of stockings on carpet. He stands by the bed, inches from Catherine’s right arm.

  He wants to touch her. To say, Look at me. Open your eyes and see me. Like the blog he read online last week, written by a man who finally shared his secret with his wife, and she embraced it. That couple wasn’t any younger than Cat and him, or any hipper.

  He can picture it perfectly. A romantic dinner on the good china in the dining room, not melamine plates at the kitchen table. Candles and soft music. After dessert they will dance, draped together with a shared velvet stole. They will sway to the music, satin rustling against silk. He will unwrap their shawl, and she’ll slowly unzip the long back closure of his dress. Then he’ll unbutton her satin blouse, kissing her breasts. One by one, four spike heels will slither off silk-stockinged feet, teeter, and drop onto the rug.

  He hesitates. Once Cat knows, there’s no going back to this perfect, untarnished moment. A wormy feeling in his chest cautions him that maybe this isn’t the right time. Maybe he should tell her when they are walking together, comfortably dressed as man and woman, on the rocky beach they both love. But he can’t wait, not when he feels so lonely in his beautiful clothes. He pushes the cautions away and reaches down to take off her sleep mask. The elastic strap gets tangled in her hair.

  She opens her eyes, blinks. Her face is unfocused, sleepy.

  “Honey,” Henry says.

  “Hmmmm?” She closes her eyes and starts to turn over.

  “Cat.” He makes his voice serious. “Look at me.”

  She blinks. “What’s wrong? Is it Lissa?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. Everything is fine. I’m fine. Please, look at me.” He takes her hand and places it on his chest. The satin is glossy in the dim light spilling from the bathroom.

  She looks and this time her eyes stay open. She touches the fabric, pushing her fingertips into the silicone falsies, and jerks her hand back. “What’s going on? Why are you dressed like that?”

  “I want to share this with you. I like to dress up. Like you do.”

  She cradles her hand, the one that touched him, against her neck, cupping it with her other hand as if it’s an injured bird. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s good.” He strokes her inner arm, the soft sleeve of extra flesh. “Trust me. It’s not creepy. I promise.” His chest swells with love for her. It is good. Cat is good and she loves him. She will understand and accept. She will be one of the good wives. He leans down to kiss her.

  She turns her face away and reaches for the lamp on the bedside table. When she switches it on, Henry leans back slightly, and Cat’s eyes widen.

  “I don’t understand. Are you gay? Or one of those men who wants to be a woman?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m your same old Henry. It’s all okay.”

  She puts both hands on his chest. At first, he thinks her touch is tender, an embrace, but she shoves him away, hard. He falls against the wall.

  “It’s not okay,” she cries. “It’s sick.”

  He scrambles to stand up. “It’s still me.”

  “No.” She throws off the quilt and stands facing him in her worn flannel nightgown with rosebuds. “My Henry is a man. He wears button-down shirts and trousers. This is not the person I fell in love with.”

  Uh-oh. It’s not going well. He reaches for her again. “I promise you. Nothing is different.”

  Cat is wide awake now. He knows that look. “So,” she says, her voice getting icy, “has it all been a lie? Our marriage and Melissa and everything?”

  He grabs her shoulders. He has to stop her saying these things. She tries to shake him off, but he grips her harder. “No lies,” he pleads. “This is me.”

  The sob starts deep in her throat, gathers volume, and explodes into a howl. Startled, he drops his hold on her shoulder. She runs into the bathroom and slams the door behind her. He hears the lock click.

  He stands alone in their bedroom. His arms hang stiffly by his side, hands not touching the teal satin.

  Outside, the wind groans.

  24. AUSTIN, 11:58 P.M.

  Outside her bedroom window, the wind drums a loose shutter against the shingles in a fierce staccato beat. Austin can’t sleep. Images of Gandalf haunt her, blue-tinged skin and fake boob bouncing on the cement floor.

  She tries to summon her usual nighttime dreamscape—her dad. Because it isn’t fair. Everyone has a father even if he joined the Marines or never sends a penny to help out and always forgets their birthdays. Even Tobias has a father who toured the facility her first week on the job. Austin was already suspicious that beneath Tobias’s sexy camouflage lurked a true slime ball, but his dad kept touching his shoulder saying, “Good work, Son. Your country thanks you.”

  It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate her grandparents. They raised her and she loves them. But they are old, and old-fashioned. Sometimes she builds fantasies—she kn
ows they’re childish but she can’t stop—about what her life would be like if her parents stayed together. Not on the island, someplace more exciting, Portland or Bangor or even Boston. She and her mom would shop together for cool clothes. Her dad would declare Sunday father-daughter day, and they’d go to the aquarium one week, roller-skating the next. No, the three of them would do that together, her mom spinning circles in the inner ring where the really good skaters dance and twirl, while she and her dad hug the outer rail and gawk. On school vacations her dad would take her backpacking, maybe they’d even do the Knife’s Edge trail on Katahdin.

  Austin switches on the light. Her only photo of her dad, handsome in his lobster garb, leans against the lamp on her bedside table. Listening to the wind wail, Austin looks at his open face and pictures him warm and dry in Texas. She has daydreamed the scene so many times—ringing his doorbell, leaning her backpack against the wall of his apartment. Or he could have a ranch in Texas, where she can learn to ride horses and brand cattle. First, she has to save some money. She made the mistake of sharing her Texas travel plans with her college boyfriend. He said that her dad might be angry if she showed up at his ranch, that he probably left because he didn’t want to be her father. But what did the boyfriend know? He turned out to be a grade-A jerk. He’ll probably grow up to be like Tobias.

  Spinning fantasies about her dad isn’t working tonight. Instead, other images keep butting in—the purple line across Gandalf’s chest and Tobias’s crude comments, the initials on the quarry wall and romance and mystery, plus whatever it is that makes Gran hate the place. It’s too much of a coincidence—there’s got to be a connection between the people with the initials and whatever happened to them in 1914, and the awfulness on Hurricane Island now.

  Grabbing her quilt, Austin walks into the living room. She has looked at Gran’s family photo albums many times, but always haphazardly. And she has never searched specifically for people with the initials MEC and AF. She might as well try, because there’s no way she’s going to sleep much tonight.

  She settles on the sofa with Gran’s albums stacked on the coffee table. This time she’ll start at the beginning and look at every single photo, even the fuzzy old ones from before her mom was born. Thorough and systematic, that’s what Henry claims leads to success in life and work. Tobias rolled his eyes when Henry said that, standing on the side of the training classroom where his boss couldn’t see his expression. Of course, maybe there’s no connection between finding clues about people long dead and getting sensitive information from a criminal. Not that Gandalf—she just can’t think of her as #524—seems at all like a criminal, not after the interrogation session. But what does Austin know about that stuff? Nothing, that’s what.

  Austin has never wasted much time on the oldest album. The photos are faded brownish and way old—even Gran can’t identify everyone, and they’re probably all dead anyway. But tonight she’s determined to be thorough and look at every single picture. She turns the fragile pages. The black triangles holding the corners of the photos on the page are coming unstuck, the glue dried out and worthless.

  Halfway through, she stops to study a photograph of five stair-step children posed left to right, tallest to smallest. The two freckled boys in the middle make a wider step, identical twins it looks like. The children are slim and fair with big eyes, except the sixth, the smallest—an infant curled up in the arms of the oldest girl. The baby has the same saucer eyes, but her skin is olive-toned, and the hair caught up in a ribbon is jet-black.

  Austin eases the photo from the three remaining black corners and turns it over. Under the date, 1915, six names are scrawled in a round, girlish script, in the same configuration as the people in the photograph. From left to right are Margaret Elizabeth, Carrie Ann, John Edward, Joseph, Thomas, and Angelina. Angelina’s name is written on the far right, in the appropriate position for her size, but an arrow loops back to under Margaret’s name, as if someone wanted to be absolutely certain that everyone was correctly identified.

  Margaret Elizabeth? Gran’s maiden name was Carter. Could Margaret be MEC?

  That’s probably nuts, but Austin can’t shake the feeling of familiarity. Then she remembers the framed photo on the mantel and fetches it to compare—both have the same old-timey coloring and the same stair-step children. But the one on the mantel is taken in front of the potbelly stove in the living room where she stands in her pajamas. Judging from the age of the people, the one on the mantel was taken about five years later. The littlest girl, dark-haired Angelina, stands in her rightful place in the hierarchy of birth order. And the big sister—Margaret Elizabeth—is missing.

  Austin looks back at the photo in the album, the one with the baby. She may not recognize the faces, but she knows those cliffs in the background. She sees them every day at work. Austin makes a mental note to nag Gran again in the morning about the two photos. MEC has got to be Margaret, and she’s got to be related to Gran. Why else would Gran have gotten so upset when Austin asked about the initials? So, whatever happened out on Hurricane that was such a big deal—that shaped her, Pops said—it must have something to do with Margaret and AF.

  A strong gust of wind rattles the windows. How nice it would be to forget about Hurricane Island and Tobias. To sleep late in the morning, cocooned in her warm bed while the hurricane rages. To erase the image of Gandalf alone in that interrogation room. Naked, with the lights on and music blaring, air conditioning blasting, and the ocean damp seeping in through flimsy wooden walls, the woman might not survive the night. Austin shivers and draws the quilt tighter around her shoulders. She closes her eyes to squeeze the tears back. She should have done something—anything—to help. Not just left her alone to freeze.

  SATURDAY

  SEPTEMBER 10

  25. RAY, 12:47 A.M.

  Something loud wakes Ray. A loose shutter, or maybe a tree banging against the roof. He better check. It’s blowing hard out there, and even a small gash in the shingles in this downpour could mean disaster.

  Downstairs, Austin sits on the sofa in a warm circle of light from the lamp, surrounded by the family photo albums. Ray watches her for a moment before she looks up.

  “Did I wake you?” she asks.

  “No. The storm did. What’s wrong?”

  She wipes her eyes. “I can’t sleep.”

  “It’s blowing something fierce. Did you hear a bang out there?” He adds a log to the stove and sits next to her on the sofa. “You might not be able to get over to work tomorrow. Today.”

  Austin buries her head in her hands.

  Ray pats her shoulder. “I wish you wouldn’t go back. Nettie’s right. That place is still causing trouble a hundred years later.”

  “What happened out there anyway?”

  “Lives were ruined.”

  “Ruined how?”

  “You know the story. When the granite industry was booming, the company brought stone workers over from Europe. They settled here, had families. Then the quarry business went sour.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone invented reinforced concrete, and it was cheaper to build with. Granite orders stopped coming, and there was no work. People here were furious.”

  “At the owners?” Austin asked.

  “Some. But the owners blamed the Italians, because their union demanded safer working conditions. Increased expenses for safety made it even harder to compete with the concrete. The union threatened to strike.”

  “Did they?”

  “They didn’t get the chance. In the middle of one night the foreigners were rounded up, loaded onto boats, and sent back to Europe. That was in 1914, at the beginning of the war. People say the German submarines torpedoed them, sunk a couple of the boats. But the Italians didn’t go easily. The night they were sent away, that’s when the bomb destroyed the quarry office. The company claimed the union was all socialists and anarchists.”

  Austin hands him the faded photograph with the quarry cliffs. “This was taken o
ver there. Who are they?”

  “The baby is Angelina, Nettie’s mother.”

  “Gran’s family lived on Hurricane?”

  “Until the quarry closed, after the bombing. Then everyone left.”

  “That makes Angelina my great-grandmother, right? She’s so exotic-looking. If these are her brothers and sisters, why isn’t Margaret in that photo?” Austin points to the framed picture from the mantel.

  “What do you know about Margaret?” Ray asks.

  Austin turns over the photo and points to the writing on the back. “Just her name. And that she’s missing in the photo Gran keeps on the mantel.”

  Ray lowers his voice. “Nettie doesn’t talk about Margaret. Folks say she was an odd girl, stormy and mysterious and totally obsessed about the little island. Apparently she used to row over there and wander for hours around the quarry. One day she disappeared.”

  “Disappeared how?”

  “A dingy was missing. The family figured she … well, they thought she might’ve taken her own life. She had never been happy.” Ray hesitates. He doesn’t want to lie to Austin, but it’s not his story to tell.

  Austin touches Margaret’s face in the photo, then looks at Ray. “Do you think Margaret is MEC?”

  Ray doesn’t know what to say. Austin should be having this discussion with her grandmother. But even four generations later, Nettie is still hurt, or ashamed, or whatever those feelings are.

  “Yes,” he says. “I have suspected that.”

  “Who is AF?”

  Ray shakes his head. He has no idea about that. “Some boy she loved, who didn’t love her back maybe, or went off to war and never returned?”

  “When Margaret disappeared, she didn’t leave a note or anything?”