I turn to look at the island from the porch and as I do, I have a sudden flash of memory, much clearer than the others. An image of Jasper, maybe ten years old, helping me swim to the shore, and my mother already there, walking out of the trees to greet us on the beach.
I walk toward the water and stare at the island. It’s thick with trees, but surrounded by a sand and rock beach on this side. I can’t tell how big it is, but the foliage is dense enough that even I can’t see through to the other side. I look around to make sure nobody is watching me and realize how remote the house is. I see only a few lit windows dotting up and down the beach. I strip off my t-shirt and sneakers. I pull off my jeans and leave them all in a little pile on an ancient wooden beach chair that looks ready to crumble. I wade into the water. It’s bitingly cold, but nothing my body can’t handle. I swim to the island and the entire time it’s like some crazy déjà vu is taking place. I feel somehow myself and ancient and also six years old all at once. At the shore I look back toward the cottage and realize I have definitely seen it from this perspective before. In fact, my strongest memory of the cottage is from this exact angle. I look behind me into the trees. What was I doing here at six years old? I follow the tug on my insides deeper into the woods. The moon is not full and it’s faint, but bright enough with my vision to guide me through the woods, though a bank of clouds is making things more complicated. I push through trees and bushes for nearly ten minutes before I stumble into a clearing and as soon as I do the clouds vanish and the moon shines much more brightly down onto me. It’s a not a particularly large space, no more than a dozen feet wide, with trees rising up dramatically on all sides. As I step out of the woods and into the clearing I hit stone, not soft ground. The second my foot touches the stone I know I’ve hit whatever has been pulling on me since, well, I’m not entirely sure when it started, but it might have started as far back as Penn Station, otherwise why would I have bought the ticket to Rockport in the first place? The energy I’m feeling is like a pulsating beat that reverberates through my entire body. I get on my hands and knees and sweep the nettles and dead brush off the ground. As I do it I can feel the grooves in the stone, and without even looking I know they’re the same as the carving in the cottage’s front door. Once the stone is cleared off, I step back and take it all in. It’s a huge piece of rock, something, more than ten feet across and intricately carved with the same three intertwined circles and bird image. I kneel down and spread my fingers out across the stone. It’s so powerful, but I can’t access it. It feels important; it feels pulsing with something, but it’s like I’m missing a key, or a password, or something. It feels locked. It drew me here, I know it did. But now that I’m here it’s almost like it’s singing to me that I’m not ready.
But what will make me ready?
I lie down on the stone, arms out, for what must be an hour, hoping something will come to me, but all that comes to me is the cold from the rock seeping into my skin, then deeper, into my stone-like bones. I finally give up and head back through the brush to the shore. My bare flesh is prickled with cold and cut up from walking through the trees. I wade into the water and look toward the cottage and see a woman standing on the porch.
It’s my mother.
•
Liz shakes visibly when she answers me. “Lola, you’re really late.” She looks at her watch, as if she doesn’t know exactly what time it is already. “I’m sorry, but it’s just way too late, I can’t stay, I have somewhere I have to be.” She can’t look me in the eye and her voice is thick with fear. I lean against the doorjamb, almost touching her, close, like we’re intimate friends.
“I’m gonna have to insist, Liz,” I say. She bristles and tries to be firm.
“Insist on what, Lola? You’re hardly in a place to insist anything. This is not a negotiation. Your appointment was for six. It is now,” she pauses to check her watch again, “Nearly nine. I’ve been lenient in the past about you being late, but this is too late, and I have other commitments.”
“You’re wrong, Liz.”
“Wrong about what? I most certainly have somewhere to go.”
“You’re wrong about me not being in a place to insist anything. I think we both know exactly what place I’m in. So get back inside the goddamn office,” I say, pushing the door open wider and smiling a mouth full of shiny teeth. She shudders slightly but slides back inside the door. When we get inside the waiting room Liz takes out her mobile phone and holds up her finger as if to tell me to give her a moment.