That house is where I remember you best. I remember your thin shape curled on the couch, book in hand. I remember your voice raised in song, echoing down the hall from the shower. Each room is a treasure trove of unexpected recollections. Any little thing — an object, an odor, a sound — might trigger a memory, jolting me into the past. A laundry basket might remind me of your hands, working deftly to fold the clothes. The squeal of a cabinet opening might bring back a chance conversation you and I once had while sitting in the kitchen. The sky on a stormy afternoon, clouds mounting outside, might call up an image of you dashing around the house, closing all the windows in anticipation of a hard rain.
There was a postcard for me on board the ferry, by the way. Miss you, my father had written. Two words only.
THE NEXT DAY, I found myself on the roof. There was a good reason for this: a leak had appeared in the cabin. At noon, a storm struck without warning. It rained wildly, desperately, as though the sky had something to prove. The gutters overflowed. The air was filled with so much moisture that when the wind blew, it rippled like the sea. Lunch was spoiled by a miniature waterfall. Though Charlene and I knew nothing about carpentry, we were the two who could be spared to tackle the problem. Lucy had disappeared on Bird Watch as soon as the storm blew over. Mick wanted to check on an injured sea lion and document its progress — to record whether it would survive or perish. Forest had finally solved a glitch in the video camera and was hoping to catch a few sharks on film. Andrew was probably asleep. Galen handed me the necessary items: tar paper, tiles, a hammer, and a sad collection of bent, mismatched nails. He explained where to find the ladder. As an afterthought, he reminded me not to fall.
To be honest, I didn’t mind being up there. In fact, I wished I could have brought one of my cameras. Any new perspective on an established landscape can shake loose inspiration. The sea, the seals, the coast guard house — they all looked diminished now, unreal. The pictures would have been striking. But I could not risk dropping my camera from such a height. It would never survive the fall, and I did not think I would be able to tolerate the death of another of my precious instruments.
Charlene and I crawled around, crablike, hammering down anything that seemed loose. She had brought a caulking gun, which she squirted at the slightest provocation. The shingles were rough to the touch. We found a few chinks that required maintenance. We got into a confused debate about which rooms were beneath us at any given time. We discovered a chimney. Then we relaxed for a while, gazing across the sea.
As always, I was slightly baffled by the fact that I could not see California. I could see nothing beyond the ocean’s edge. There is nowhere more alone than the Farallon Islands. The rest of the world might disappear — the human race wiped out by a pandemic, a meteor strike, a zombie uprising — and we would be the last to know anything about it. We would be the only ones spared. The day was fine, despite a cold, breathy breeze. October had crept in without my notice. The grass was yellowing at the corners like mildew on cloth. The mice were spending more time underground now, their scuffle and scamper less constant. The two trees near us were wilting, no longer embracing. Maroon leaves tumbled across the stones.
For the first time, Charlene opened up to me. In the manner of the very young, she chattered on about herself, never realizing that she hadn’t asked me any questions. This was not exactly narcissism. She was at the age in which her own personality fascinated her so much that it eclipsed everything else. Her own capacity for creativity. Her own brand of intelligence. She did not seem to heed the unspoken rule that talk of the past was verboten here. I heard about her family’s farm in Minnesota. Without guile, she mentioned something about an aunt who had disappeared for a time and returned with a new name, claiming to have suffered amnesia. Before I could process the oddness of this — particularly when described in Charlene’s upbeat cadence, as though it were not odd at all — she had already moved on. She was free-associating, leaping from idea to idea. She told me about her college roommate at Berkeley. She told me about the sweet-tempered boyfriend she had left behind, perhaps permanently, perhaps not.
This seemed like a good opportunity. When she paused for breath, I broke in. With every semblance of nonchalance, I asked if she had any idea whether Mick might be single.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really.” Charlene shot me a worried look. “In fact, I’m sure he isn’t.”
“Ah.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Oh,” I said. “No reason. Still learning about everyone.”
There was a pause. Charlene was playing with her bangs. Her hair was the sort of fiery red that always made me do a double take. Day by day, I felt the need to check the pallor of her skin, the profusion of her freckles, trying to verify whether such a shade could possibly be real. I did that a lot here generally. The islands were a place that seemed to exist in fantasy, ever-changing and harsh.
Suddenly Charlene stiffened. A look of horror crossed her face. Gazing past my shoulder, she murmured, “Oh no.”
“What?”
She pointed behind me. I pivoted with some care, trying not to dislodge any shingles. My feet scrabbled for purchase on the slanted roof.
In the distance, I glimpsed a boat on the water. The Lunchbox was bobbing in the calm surf near Mirounga Bay. There was only one passenger. To my surprise, I saw that it was Lucy. Evidently she had rowed out alone.
“I hate it when she does this,” Charlene said. “I just hate it.”
I peered at the rowboat’s faraway contours. Lucy’s work — observing, tagging, and cataloging the birds — did not necessitate travel on the water. Galen and Forest, the shark boys, could often be found on the briny blue, but in Lucy’s case, a pair of binoculars would suffice. Still, her inquisitiveness might have gotten the better of her. Maybe she had decided to row to the Drunk Uncle’s Islets. Maybe she wanted to visit Arch Rock, which was shaped like a gigantic lock with an old-fashioned keyhole. From there, she would be able to see the burrowing owls and cormorants right under her nose.
And yet, as I looked closer, I saw that Lucy was wearing a neoprene wetsuit. Her body seemed different, wrapped in rubber. Usually she obscured her curves beneath layers of clothing, but now I could see the fleshy arc of her hips, the full measure of her generous bosom. She held a snorkeling mask up to her eyes, adjusting the strap. Beside her on the deck was a bulky breathing apparatus, a snaky hose coiling among the benches. Lucy lifted the end of this tube and stuck it between her teeth. Then she sat down and tugged on a pair of bright blue flippers.
“Is she doing what I think she’s doing?” I asked.
Charlene sighed. “It’s her hobby, believe it or not. She’s a diver. She goes down there and looks for anemones. She collects sea urchins and shells. She likes to see them up close.”
With a splash, Lucy plunged into the water. For a moment she was visible in the surf, pushing her mask into a better position. A swell washed over her, and she disappeared.
“But the sharks,” I said.
The rowboat, abandoned, slid back and forth on the waves. I could hear the smack of the surf on the hull. Lucy’s breathing hose was unrolling slowly, spooling over the side.