Barrier Islands Read online

24

  Two weeks later was Jodie’s first birthday. Though her actual birthday was on a Sunday, Miss Polly closed the restaurant after lunch that Saturday and had the Howard clan and a few (about two dozen) privileged friends over for a party. They put out pink and white streamers that morning after breakfast then unleashed a hundred pink and white helium-filled balloons (Malc had to order a second canister of helium) after the lunch crowd had exited. With all that pink and white and spring sun streaming through the windows, the dining room looked as cheerful and bright as ever, and all for Jodie. Outside on the porch was almost as festive, with more streamers and clustered balloons tied to the railing posts and a Happy Birthday banner over the steps and Bridge’s gift of a home-made and hand-painted rocking horse covered with ribbons and bows in the middle of the floor. Miss Polly had floated the idea of Salt bringing a pony over on the ferry, but Brooke (through Onion) had nixed that plan, saying that Jodie was way too young for a pony ride and terrified of any animal larger than a medium-sized dog.

  Jodie herself was gaily attired in a new pink jumpsuit and matching sun hat, all hand-sewed by Lil, and white knit booties from Miss Polly. She looked cute as could be with her brown curls flowing from under the hat and her round face all smiles and giggles, her dark eyes dancing. Perhaps somehow knowing this was a special occasion and she was the center of attention, Jodie was animated and alert, talking up a storm (though still mainly gibberish) and pointing to all the newly added decorations as well as some of the old familiar favorites—a hand-carved bluefish, a stuffed deer head—hanging on the walls.

  Though Brooke had always freely shared Jodie at these celebrations, today she insisted on keeping her close, holding her on her hip or shoulder as they made their way through the greeting crowd gathered on the porch and bouncing her on her knees as they sat beside the center table with its four-layered cake and the presents laid out all around it. This new and unprecedented possessiveness startled and annoyed the numerous guests who approached with outstretched arms. Brooke deflected these requests with the claim that Jodie was recovering from being sick. She’d had a runny nose last week; but that had been a chronic condition through the damp winter, used as a convenient excuse now. Brooke didn’t know why she was suddenly so protective, though it was surely more for her sake than her daughter’s, as Jodie responded to those outstretched and welcoming arms with a reciprocal gesture, adding to the guests’ frustration. On being denied holding privileges, Miss Polly got so mad she stormed off into the kitchen and didn’t return for twenty minutes. Onion glared at Brooke before chasing after his grandmother.

  Though she didn’t give up Jodie, Brooke did politely greet each of the guests as they streamed by. She’d not had such an opportunity to speak with her extended family of in-laws and their inner circle of island acquaintances since the wedding a year and a half ago, and on that day she was far too caught up in the rush and wonder of events to pay attention to the faces that streamed past in the receiving line. Back then they seemed almost ethereal in their quiet and unassuming presence, fellow occupants in this new Eden. Today those same people were all too human with sea-weathered faces, bloodshot eyes, and lop-sided grins shaped around cooing baby talk. They all focused on Jodie with a desperation that surprised and frightened Brooke. She understood why they didn’t look directly at her. She was still, perhaps permanently, marked by Greta’s death and now Daphne’s departure. Brooke the mainland bride had become Brooke the tainted interloper. Maybe such a transformation was inevitable, and maybe she was at fault; but for the life of her, Brooke couldn’t understand why. She clung tightly to Jodie, smiled up at each guest even if they wouldn’t meet her eyes, and thanked them for coming and for the gifts that would be opened later.

  Late in the party, after the singing of “Happy Birthday” and the blowing out of the candles (Jodie watched in wonder as Brooke and Onion blew out the dozens of small candles surrounding the tall candle in the shape of the number “1”) and the sharing of slices of cake with vanilla ice cream scooped from the big tub, Brooke felt the familiar trickle of wetness between her legs. She instinctively checked the color of her pants—jeans in a dark blue denim, probably safe—before looking around for someone to hand Jodie to.

  Miss Polly had returned from the kitchen for the singing and cake cutting and was standing at the head of the serving table overseeing the final stages of the party, confirming that there were still enough napkins and forks and that the used plates were being cleared (by Joanne, a new waitress hired to cover this private party) and that the ice cream sitting in the ice filled cooler wasn’t melting too fast. She would have loved to claim Jodie and hold her aloft as the day’s prize, and deserved as much for all the preparations and effort. But when she looked toward Brooke with censure, Brooke quickly looked away.

  She saw Lil sitting off in a corner, not talking to anyone and gazing out the window at the restaurant’s back yard with the row of trashcans partially hid by the big black cast-iron pig cooker. She’d not been doing well since Daphne’s departure and the sudden and unexpected dose of empty nest blues that came with it. Few on the island had ever experienced such a condition, and Lil never thought she’d have to. But here it was, ready or not.

  Brooke stood, glanced quickly at her jeans and was relieved to see no mark there—yet. She walked over to her mother-in-law and asked, “Would you hold Jodie while I visit the little ladies’ room?”

  Lil glanced up in surprise then smiled broadly as Jodie extended her arms toward her. “Mee-mee.”

  Lil laughed. “At your service, Precious.”

  Brooke knew the service and the endearment were directed toward her daughter and was fine with that, felt a sudden swell of munificence. “Take care of your Mee-mee for me,” she said to Jodie as she passed her into the arms of Lil. She then scurried to the bathroom.

  The nearer public toilet, the one where she’d had the incident on Easter, was occupied. So she pushed through the swinging doors and passed through the empty kitchen to the employee restroom at the back. She pulled the door shut and dropped the hook into the eye to lock it and switched on the light and the fan. She pulled down her jeans and her panties and saw in the crotch the familiar smear of brown-tinged red. This was her first period since the bleeding after her fall and confirmed what her body had been telling her—that she’d miscarried the early-term fetus, and that her body was returning to its former monthly cycling. Her first response was relief—that her body was O.K., not irreparably scarred. But this relief quickly gave way to a mix of intense and contradictory emotions. Part of her was deeply saddened not to be pregnant. She loved being a mother and wanted more kids. But not now, not here. This prompted a deeper relief—that she’d not have to make the impossible choice to terminate her pregnancy. Finally, the face that stared back at her from the small square mirror was tinged with an unfamiliar guilt—that she’d so thoroughly mismanaged her life as to instigate a sequence of calamitous events: multiple reckless couplings, an unplanned pregnancy, and the drunken fall that ended it.

  She turned from that guilt-ridden visage. She had no purse and therefore no tampon or pad available. She considered carefully folding multiple layers of toilet paper and placing that wad in her panties, a bulky and uncomfortable temporary solution she’d not used since high school. Then she remembered a secret and reached up under the wall-hung sink. Sure enough, there it was—a plastic holder wedged behind the plumbing that held two tampons. Daphne had showed it to her that first summer out here, one night when they were working together. “Just in case,” she’d said. At the time, Brooke had wondered that this skinny flat-chested girl had ever had a period, but thanked her for the tip. She’d not used it back then, being on the pill at the time and regular and meticulously prepared. But here it was now, a late gift from a faraway sister-in-law. Then Brooke realized that Daphne herself hadn’t needed tampons recently, all the while without Brooke knowing. The wry grin that stared back from the mirror was both poignant and forlorn.

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  The next morning Brooke was again holding Jodie on her hip. These days it seemed all she was doing, or wanted to do, during waking hours. In familiar spaces, Jodie had grown impatient with being held, wanted to get down so she could try out her newfound walking skills or drop to her hands and knees to race around and explore. She was becoming so willful and insistent! I wonder where she got that from? Brooke thought to herself.

  But this morning Jodie was happy for the comfort and reassurance of being in her mother’s grasp. They were at the stern railing of the ferry as it cleared the harbor breakwater and began its resolute thrust toward the mainland. Brooke had insisted on visiting her family as part of Jodie’s birthday celebrations—“She’s a year old, Onion; and my family has seen her all of once!” And Onion had reluctantly consented, though he refused to join them. “Can’t miss that much training,” he’d said.

  They were traveling on the near-empty Sunday morning crossing—just three cars of early departure weekenders headed to who knows what lives inland, and all of them holed up tight in their vehicles eating cereal-bar and canned-soda breakfasts or catching a few extra minutes of sleep. So mother and daughter had the aft deck to themselves.

  Brooke gazed at the receding village. The spring sun washed those worn buildings in a freshening light. Surrounded by sparkling blue water, it seemed a quaint and self-contained scene from a highly detailed diorama or one of those intricately crafted Christmas snow globes, as if she could give the whole world a good, firm shake, watch all those tiny white specks swirl and blur the vision, only to have the particles slowly drift earthward, again revealing the quaint and rustic island village in morning sun. Whatever she had once seen in that village, felt in it, was now gone, lost forever in that swirl.

  Brooke knew she was leaving the island for good. She couldn’t say about Jodie. In moments of calmer reflection, she was committed to a shared but unequal custody that would keep Jodie with her for the school year—an absolute must—but would give her time with her father and Howard kin during summer vacations and every other Christmas. But this morning she didn’t want to think about such negotiations. She held Jodie tight as the village receded in the distance, turned into a brown smudge on the horizon, then disappeared altogether.

  She turned toward the front of the boat, toward Leah waiting at the mainland ferry dock, toward Momma and Father waiting back home, the crib still set up in her old room from Christmas.