Ellison Island

   “I like to keep some thoughts to myself.”

   “Some? You keep everything to yourself. We’ve been engaged for five years, and I hardly know you.”

   Avis frowned and hugged her knees. She was perched on the kitchen counter and Ben stared at her.

   “Aren’t you even going to answer me?” He drummed expectant fingers on the countertop. It needed cleaning. The grout had turned grey and peeling between the yellow tiles.

   “What for? You always know what to say.”

   “Well, I think you should at least give me the respect of an answer. Why don’t you tell me things?” His finger trailed over her hand. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for you to include me in your life.”

   “But you don’t really want to be included in my life, you want me to show you my soul, Ben. That’s the part of me you want.”

   “And is there anything wrong with that? Is it too much to ask?” He reached for her hand and she let him hold it but her fingers were cold.

   “How can I show you something you can’t possibly understand?” She turned dark, half-closed eyes to him.

   “Aren’t you being a little dramatic? I’ll understand.”

   “Oh, Ben. Sweet, Ben.” She toyed with the collar of his button-down shirt. “There’s a side of people you just can’t see and even if you saw, you wouldn’t know what you were seeing. I don’t know how to talk more. I don’t know how to show you more. It just doesn’t work.”

   “Well this isn’t working either.” He pulled away and then stopped, his hand reaching behind her neck. His fingers slipped through her hair and she let him kiss her. And then she dropped her head against his shoulder and smelled the sweet smell of his cologne. He only used one kind. She looked up and counted the freckles on his face with her fingertips.

   “Teach me to see the world through rose-colored glasses like you. Promise me you will.”

   “I wish I could,” he said. Avis frowned.

   “I’d be a good student, I promise.”

   “It’s no use. I’ve tried to understand and you’ve tried to explain but it’s –”

   “Yes – but I …”

   “Avis, I thought with enough time we could blend and both understand each other. But time stands still for you, and I can’t live that way.” The freckles stood stark on his face and she caught herself counting them – fourteen, fifteen, sixteen – and trying not to hear the words he was saying.

   “Are you listening to me?” His hands on her shoulders brought her back to reality.

To the dirty yellow kitchen and the grey city-light creeping in the window. To the pigeon hopping along the fire escape, its orange claws missing a toe. To the man in front of her with his freckles and his honesty and his blue eyes that kept her awake when she should be sleeping. To the collar of his shirt, unbuttoned after she’d fiddled with it. It was always the same with Ben. There was a rare and beautiful regularity to him that most people misunderstood for monotony. But she knew its value. The real difficulty in life was committing to anything, putting down roots long enough to see them grow.

   “Avis, listen to me.” His fingers were tighter now.

   “Sorry, what were you saying?”

   “This is over. I’m done.”

   “What?”

   “I want my ring back.”

***

   There was salt in the air on Ellison Island. Salt and the smell of pluff mud baking in the sun and thunderstorms lingering over the marsh grass. Not that Avis noticed. She was too busy looking at the ring tan around her finger where Ben’s diamond had rested for the past five years. Her hand looked awkward without it.

   She glanced back up at the road and saw a faded sign decorated with palm trees announcing to the few cars “Welcome to Ellison Island”. How she had ended up here, she didn’t exactly remember. Only that she had panicked and time had blurred after Ben left and with a scramble she had shoved all her things into boxes and suitcases and locked the door of her apartment and drove away.

   The streetlights and city lights and stoplights had mixed together through the night as she drove. Three bottles of chocolate milk, two packs of Oreos, and no sleep, and here she was driving onto some tiny island off the coast of South Carolina.

She pulled her dented car onto the main street. Three restaurants and a café. Compared to Boston, this whole island was about the size of a small neighborhood. There was a post office with a flag bigger than the building, a fire station with a handful of long-armed boys washing down the trucks and a barbershop so tiny she wondered if they only served one person at a time.

   She needed to see the sunrise. With still partly numb toes, she drove around the island looking for the perfect spot. Streaks of blue cut across the purple clouds.

She passed big houses with small, white fenced yards and little houses with big white fenced yards. Every upright thing – from mailbox posts to pillars to railings – was covered in a white, sickly sweet jasmine. On this end of the island the houses were beautiful, hemmed in by marsh grass before finally reaching the water.

   She paused when she saw a sign, dipping down to almost touch the ground after some careless driver had run into it, that said Piper’s Lane. It was a good name and the road meandered behind an old stone church with stained-glass windows, so she took it.

The suitcases and boxes rattled in the backseat, as she turned sharp. A house, an enormous, white monstrosity, caught her attention first. And then she saw it and the breath sucked out of her lungs and her fingers gripped tight on the steering wheel.

   It was an old house, across the street, with faded blue paint and dull, weathered shingles falling off the roof. A screen door hung crooked on its rusted hinges. A long neglected picket fence, paint peeling, held in a yard full of waist-high weeds.

   Avis leaned in the backseat and fished a battered red notebook from her pile of books and smattering of clothes. She slipped out of the car and through the open gate. Weeds and the occasional wildflower scratched her legs as she walked up to the front porch. The floorboards had buckled with age but the posts holding it up still looked solid. She looked around to see if there was a way up. Holding her notebook in her mouth, her pencil behind her ear, she climbed up on the porch railing, and then inched her way up the pillar and scraped her way onto the roof.

   Here she could see all the way across the water to the hazy land on the other side. Marsh grass bent to accommodate the breeze. The sun, a mass of glowing potential, crept up, pushing back the clouds. Its yellow offspring spread fingers through the darkness slowly and then shattered it in a sudden flash of color.

She turned her face to the sun and closed her eyes.

   “Excuse me?”

   She looked up but up there was only clouds and blue sky and a lazy pelican.

   “Hey, excuse me – what’re you doing?”

   She looked down. A tall, tan man, in his late thirties, shirtless in his pajama bottoms, with yellow hair brushing his shoulders, stood below her, looking up at the roof.

   “Hello,” she said.

  “Wait – what are you doing?”

  “Writing. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Sitting on my roof.” He sounded annoyed.

  “Is this your house?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Well then, yes, I am sitting on your roof. I thought it was empty.” And she went back to writing.

  “But, who are you? Why –”

   “You’ll have to shout louder. I can’t hear you,” she said

   “I said who are you – oh, never mind. I’ll come up.”

   She watched him go inside and then pop up through an attic window. He hoisted himself onto the roof and stopped. She turned to him and he had the feeling he was looking at something he couldn’t understand. He suddenly remembered he was only in his pajamas.

   “I’m Rafe Eaton.”

   “I’m Avis Foster.”

   “What brings you to Ellison Island?” He walked over and sat down beside her. She looked at him, at the flames leaping back from his left wrist and the sultry mermaid further up his arm.

  “You have tattoos,” she said.

   “Yeah, I do.”

   “Why?”

   “I like them.”

   “What about them? The pain or the permanence or the feeling that you’re tough now?” She closed her notebook and stared at him. The way she was watching him made him feel strange.

   “I don’t know exactly why, I didn’t philosophize much before I got them.”

   “At least you didn’t get any on your chest, they ruin the look of a man.”

   “Do they?”

   “Yes.” Her deadpan voice intrigued him. Rafe tried to make sense of the droop of her mouth and the frown of her heavy eyebrows. She bent back over her notebook, as if they were old friends or not friends at all, and there was no need to talk more.

   “So … what brought you here?”

   “I’m still trying to decide.”

   “You sure you aren’t just running away from home? You look young enough.”

   She fixed her eyes on him and he coughed and decided to change the subject.

   “Why’d you climb up on my roof anyway?” He leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. The faded blue and white stripes of his pajamas fit with the old roof and old house.

   “To write the sun up.” The words were so quiet he hardly caught them. She focused her eyes on her page. She had never told anyone her secret ritual, but there was an honesty to him she couldn’t ignore.

  “Kind of like the Indians sang the sun up,” he mused. “I like it. Do you do it every morning?”

   “Mostly.” She still stared at her notebook, afraid if she looked at him, she would see him laughing at her.

   “Why’d you pick me?”

   “What?”

   “I mean, my roof. Why mine?”

   “You have the best view on the island. I drove around to find it.”

   “Really? I haven’t watched it from the roof before, but I trust you.” He stood up and glanced at her. “I’m glad you picked me and my roof, Avis.”

   “Just your roof.”

   “Well, either way, I’m glad you came.” He smiled. “Where are you staying?”

   “Doesn’t matter.”

   “You’re right, none of my business.” He walked over to the attic window. “But if you ever want a place a little roomier than that front seat of your car, let me know.” At the surprised look on her face he smiled. “I saw the boxes in the back and the blanket in the front and the shadows under your eyes and put one and one and one together. Makes three.”

   And he disappeared through the window.