Before I disappeared, I spent most of the time in Mrs. Martin’s neutral position. I had no power to help her or hurt her and she was too busy dealing with the threat of Emma, the lightning rod, to even notice me. When I returned, things were all mixed up. First, when she thought I was crazy but no one else could see it and they were all believing me and feeling sorry for me, she hated me. I could feel it, even through her plastic smiles and bony hugs. But now—now that she was the dutiful mother whose long-lost daughter was mentally disturbed and in need of help, now that the things I said were not a threat to her, she could love me again, and this was a great relief to her.
“I know you were in your room that night,” she kept saying that day. “You weren’t hiding in Emma’s car. You didn’t go with her to the beach, did you? You’ll remember when you get well.” She said this with a smile while our nails were drying.
I knew when this was over, the switch would move again. And that it would move for the last time.
Later that day, Richard Foley’s boat was identified. The owner of the boat ran a commercial dock in New Harbor, leasing slips and watercraft—long-term rentals for local residents and lobstermen, and seasonal rentals for the tourists and vacationers. The boat had been found six days before that off the coast near Rockland over thirty nautical miles north of the dock where it wasfrom. But it was not until day four of my return that the dock owner put the pieces together and contacted the FBI. He said his wife saw the story and the picture of Richard Foley on a news show that morning. They had been renting a boat to Foley for five years, but under a different name. He paid cash, even for the six-thousand-dollar security deposit.
I could barely contain my excitement, and my fear. I knew they would find the island now and I could taste the vengeance that was growing closer. But this news had done nothing to upset my mother, and I was beginning to think that nothing would. She had grown stronger without us here, without Emma constantly chipping away at her façade of perfection. And even though I had been proved sane, she had convinced herself that people doubted me because I had taken the test in the first place. And so there was just as much fear as excitement.
There was also something else when I heard the news about Richard Foley being identified and his boat being found. It was so easy to answer that one question.Were you and the boatman intimate?But there had been nothing easy about it, and I could not chase the memories from my brain when I heard the news, and when I heard his full name.
I was Richard Foley’s lover for 286 days. I will say very little about this because it is still mixed up in my head. When I think about it, I feel sick in my stomach with shame and disgust and also from the knowledge that there is evil in the world and that evil can dress up as love so convincingly that it blinds you to the truth. Those are all very sickening things and I don’t like to feel them.
I knew three things about Richard Foley. First, he was not easily conquered by that kind of power Mrs. Martin had taught me about. However strong his desire was, his will not to give in to it was even stronger. The second thing had to do with hisexperience in Alaska witnessing the assault of that woman. He had a conscience, and he had morality. He had been so disturbed by what he saw that he became a drug addict just to shut it out of his brain. And he had then cleaned up and made amends by returning to Alaska and telling the story to the newspaper with the names of the men who had done it. The third thing I knew about Richard Foley was that the first two things fit together like a hand and glove.
It was not complicated. I started taking long walks at the times I knew the boat was coming with supplies or to take Bill to the mainland. I waited until Rick was alone on the trail, and I would be there as well, not every day, but many days. Our paths crossing had to appear coincidental. And on those days, I walked slowly, with my arms folded around my body, and my face swollen with despair. Sometimes I would be sitting on the dock, staring out at the ocean that held me prisoner, silent pleas flowing down my cheeks. I would not look at him or even acknowledge him for several weeks. I did not speak until he did.
It began in March one and a half years after we’d first arrived there in his boat. I was on the path to the dock, the ground packed with snow. The trees bare. I had stopped walking and crouched against a tree, knees to chest, rocking back and forth with violent shivers. Rick saw me and stopped for a second, like I had startled him and then shocked him. He got a hold of himself and walked past me, but then he stopped, turned and, for the first time in all that time, spoke to me.
You should get back to the house. The rain’s coming. And it’s too cold out here.
I looked up at him, met his eyes, and then reached out my hand. He hesitated, but took it and helped me to my feet. I had been crying, so it was not hard to start again, to make the tearsfall and the breath heave in and out. He started to let go, but I reached out and grabbed both his forearms. I grabbed them tight like they were ropes from a lifeboat trying to drift away and leave me to drown. I pulled on those arms and pulled myself closer to him and then I rested just the very top of my forehead on his chest. I did not move any closer than that. I did not try to hold him or make him hold me. I waited for him to push me away, but he didn’t. He just let me hold his arms, the top of my head on his chest, until I had finished crying.
When I was done, I looked up at him again for a second only, wiped my face and then marched back to the house.
I had learned a lot from Mrs. Martin, and from Emma. I had gotten smarter from them. Everybody needs something. And what Rick needed was to do what he had failed to do years before on that fishing boat. He needed to save the woman. So I became a woman he could save. I let him save me with small moments like the one on that trail. And then he saved me some more by listening to me talk and keeping me company on my walks. And then he saved me the most by loving me and letting me love him.
Now, at the same time I had planted the seeds to undermine his loyalty to the Pratts. That is the part I told to Dr. Winter and Agent Strauss. Nothing I had to offer would have been enough to overcome that loyalty, so I had to break its back first. I did not take any chances. And I was patient. So incredibly patient.
There were many days when I thought I didn’t have one more drop of patience. My desire to leave, to be free and seek revenge, was growing too big. Every day, seeing Lucy with the baby, pretending it didn’t make me want to kill her, stealing moments with the baby because I loved her as much as I loved Emma. Maybe even more. I loved her smell. I loved her laugh. I loved her pudgyarms and bright blue eyes. It was the first love that I knew was pure because she was too little to do anything to force me to love her, or trick me into loving her. I loved her so much that it was torture to see her so close and not be able to hold her. From that wretched day on the dock, it took 247 days to break Richard Foley. And then it took those 286 days more to conquer that loyalty so he would help me leave. I held this painful desire all that time.
I don’t know exactly when it happened, but my wanting Richard Foley to manipulate and control him so I could escape the island blurred into just wanting Richard Foley. I had to truly want him to make him believe me. And so with every interaction, every look, every moment getting ready to see him—brushing my hair, choosing my clothes, pinching my cheeks so they would be flushed with pink—I thought of nothing else but his hands on my body, his mouth on my mouth, his skin touching my skin. I thought about him at night. I thought about him when the air turned warm or the sunlight reached my face. The desire to leave became all mixed up with the desire to have this man.
I can see him now, his tortured face as he held my cheeks in his strong hands. He did not want to do it, but he was too beaten down to fight me anymore. I had done that; I had beaten him down with my words and my power. I looked at him with desire, and it was pure and true, even though I made myself pretend to pull away. He held my face even stronger and drew it to his. It was a kiss I will never forget, and not only because it was my first kiss, but also because we were both starving, drowning, dying, and this kiss was all that could save us.
We lay down in the tall grass just before the rocks on the west side of the island. He stopped looking at me and I felt as though the connection that had been in that place, in our eyes and ourthoughts and our words, shifted to our bodies and that was where it would stay for all those days we were lovers. I would be waiting for him somewhere—the grass, the dock, the shed that held the generator. And he would kiss me and remove my clothes and place me where he wanted me. Sometimes face-to-face. Sometimes he was behind me. But I was always beneath him, feeling his power over me the way I had used my power over him. It’s hard to describe. It’s hard to think about now. But he was gentle with his power, no matter how much rage he wanted to unleash in those moments. And he could have. He could have raged on my body—with the rage that had driven him from his home when he was young and the rage of hatred for himself for not helping that woman on that fishing boat. Holding back the rage somehow healed him, bit by bit like little drops of water seeping from a large pool.
On day four of my return, my thoughts turned to being with Richard Foley. My body missed his body. And my mind was twisted in knots. That is where desire begins, and it does not just vanish the minute we command it to. I felt things I didn’t want to feel. Longing. Hunger. Disgust. I thought I had left those feelings on the island, and so I wondered that morning if these feelings had been with me here as well, in this house, waiting here for my return.
I took a shower, a long shower, to wash them all away.
***
The war in our house after the incident with the photographs had hot periods and cold periods. The cold periods were not moments of peace, but rather moments of regrouping, rearming and strategizing. Cold war. I don’t know exactly when Hunter found out that his father had taken the pictures of Emma with her dresspulled down, but it was during the three weeks after they were taken and the time Hunter posted them on that Web site. I think it all happened quickly, and was driven by his fury at Emma and his father. As much as Mr. Martin worshipped and adored his son, Hunter idolized and admired his father. He loved to tell embellished stories about Mr. Martin’s business conquests and wealth, and even insinuated that his father had side dealings with organized crime. His father had wounded him deeply by coveting Emma and giving in to his desires. And Emma had been vicious by using his father as a weapon against him.
Posting those pictures was done without much thought or planning. Hunter paid the price by having his face punched by Witt and being blamed for everything by Mrs. Martin. I think if he had not been driven by his emotions, his own fierce rage, he would have come up with a better plan.
He learned from this mistake.
The cold war in our house went on for months, with Mr. Martin avoiding Emma so he didn’t have to think about her breasts, Hunter staying at school as much as he could to punish his father, and Emma gloating at her victory in the last battle, even though it had cost her the boy she’d met over the summer.There are always more boys,she said. The cold war ended with a devastating attack over spring break when we all went as a family to St. Barts. It was a quick and decisive strike. Yet it was so subtle that I nearly missed it myself—and I had devoted myself to observing the war as a matter of survival.
I can see that now, being older and having been through everything that happened on the island.
The teachers at the Soundview Academy told us that human beings have a natural desire to learn. What I think is more accurate is that human beings have a natural desire to learn the thingsthey have to learn to survive. On the island, that meant learning about people—what motivates them, what their expressions mean, what causes them to act and react. And what they desire in their darkest, most secret places. These were things that could not be found in the textbooks Lucy bought, but I still managed to learn them. And I did it without even knowing I was doing it.
When I finally came home, it felt as though someone had injected my brain with this knowledge. I don’t know how to describe it, exactly. It felt like I had put on ice skates for the first time and somehow just knew how to land a triple jump. I used this knowledge to help them find the island, and to find my sister. But I also used it on every memory that rushed into my brain. Things that had not made sense to me were now clear. Things that were done, by my mother, Mr. Martin, Hunter, Emma and even myself were now understood for what they were.
Not forgiven. But understood.
