Enchanted Islands (23 page)

I had also learned by now how to start a fire without matches, to twist my wrist just so to make the stones spark, where to hold them in relation to the wind so that the smallest wisps would catch, and how to blow on these newborn flames so that their larger siblings would begin to burn.

Ainslie took a while coming back from the radio, but I thought nothing of it. We had dinner; he didn't even complain the way he usually did when I served anything except meat. I took his silence for exhaustion.

After dinner, I knew whether we would need to put the fire out or if it would burn down on its own, not threatening us while we slept. And I thought now of all the things I used to know like this back in my old life. I knew what time the cable car would come. I knew how far in advance to turn the water on so that it would run hot when I got into my bath. And before that, I knew how to stroke a chicken before I wrung its neck so that it would be calm in my arms. I knew how to make my ideas seem like they were Mrs. Keane's. And even before that, I knew how hot the iron was by the sizzle of my spit. I could braid Rosalie's hair into plaits so smooth they might have been corn silk. It seems that with enough practice, we can get to know just about anything.

The next day Ainslie was several hours longer than he'd said he'd be. As dusk fell, I began to worry. My thoughts turned back to my previous jealousy. He was meeting with Genevieve, sleeping with her. A young man has needs, needs that I was certainly not meeting. But I wanted him to sleep with me if he slept with anyone, and certainly not the horse-toothed drama-lover Genevieve.

Maybe he was sleeping with Genevieve to find out her secrets, I reasoned. She did not hide the fact that the way into her confidences was through flattery. I wished he'd have told me, though. But perhaps he didn't want me to act differently around her.

Should I have known or guessed? Probably. But do not forget I was lying to myself about so many things. Lies were my entire life at that point. I had lied about my real name, my religion. I lied about being ready to travel halfway around the world to an island on the edge of nowhere. Ainslie and I lied to everyone we met, and when there was no one to meet, we lied to ourselves.

I knew our relationship was a sham. And I knew that we had only ever shared a bed as man and wife once. But I wanted so badly for that to be just an oddity of our marriage. I had fallen for Ainslie. Who didn't? His charm, his jolliness, which I rarely saw deflated, his humor, his capabilities. Even the way he spent what little leisure time he had improving a road that no one would ever use. I found that all adorable instead of exasperating.

Could he have been helping me instead of building his highway to nowhere? Yes. I was worked to the bone. I had grown so thin my short pants were held up by some rope that we needed for our home, but it was tie them up or walk around in my underthings. The mirror I had brought from the mainland had shattered, but in its fragments, strung up with fishing line in our garden to entertain birds (they were designed to discourage them but merely charmed them), showed partial views of a wan, pale woman with reddened, sunken cheeks. But I found his dedication to the craft as a sign that he was an enlightened being, like those monks who spend years crafting sand paintings only to sweep them away once they've finished. Now I see he was keeping himself busy, keeping the demons at bay. But demons are not dissuaded by oceans or preferences; they stow away like sea lice, unwanted visitors from another place, coming ashore with you wherever you go.

I said nothing to him about needing help. His affection for me felt so tenuous that I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it. I knew enough of love to know it didn't work this way, but I still fantasized that if I could just catch him at the right moment Ainslie might want me as I wanted him. Did I want to be intimate? Well, yes and no. I wanted to sleep next to him, to breathe in his scent when I awoke. I wanted to be close to him. I felt unloved but only in the sense that Ainslie could not love me, not that I could not be loved, if that makes sense. So I took what love he offered and the two of us pretended that it was enough, that it was all right. We were playacting anyway: A schoolteacher pretending to be a government agent. A Jew pretending to be a Gentile. A man masquerading as a husband. The circles of deception were endless, the spiral of a master hypnotist.

The signs of an affair, which women's magazines love to list, are not applicable on a desert island. There are no collars, let alone lipstick stains. There are no receipts, no late nights at the office, no suspicious business travel. Still, something had changed. Ainslie was lighter, there's no other way to put it. He whistled all the time, signaling his approach like a cat with a bell. He joked more. He was even a bit more physically affectionate toward me. And a woman always knows. I knew. I thought I knew.

So is it coincidence that I neglected to put his sandwich in his bag one day? I think I legitimately forgot, but the subconscious has a funny way of making volition seem like coincidence.

So, armed with a Galápagos sandwich (sandcakes with dried meat), I climbed after Ainslie to his road. It was not a short walk, about an hour each way. But when I reached the end of the improved road, hot and tired, I was surprised to not see him there. Perhaps he had gone another way. Perhaps he had decided to go hunting. By this time I was hungry, and so I ate half the sandwich and drank half the water. On my way back down, I stopped to remove a stone from my shoe, and I saw, oddly, Ainslie's kerchief tied in a knot around an acacia tree. I stopped to untie it before I even thought about what it might be doing there. Silly Ainslie, leaving everything everywhere, as though there were maids to pick up after him.

But tied around a tree? And leaving his poor neck bare to be burned by the sun? It made no sense. The nearby brush had been disturbed by something, animal or human, the branches bent back and slanted, pointing. My feet began to follow the tamped-down undergrowth. I didn't stop to consider what might be waiting for me at the end. I snagged my shirt on a thorn and paused to extricate myself. I had the flash of an image—Ainslie and Genevieve, him kissing her horsey mouth and pawing at her enormous breasts. I gulped down air. I could turn around, I thought. I could just pretend I hadn't seen the handkerchief. But there is no unseeing something once you've seen it.

I was prepared for the tangle of naked limbs, the sweat-soaked sounds of heaving breath, but I was not prepared to see that the second body belonged to Victor. What was most shocking was that they were kissing, passionately.

Of course, I had lived for many years in San Francisco, and I understood the rudiments of homosexual relations. But I never considered that they would do it face-to-face, like they loved each other, and it might have been this realization that hurt most.

They sprang apart at my shocked cry, and I was catapulted back to that moment in Chicago when I saw Rosalie and Zeke together. That discovery changed my life. It was hard to imagine this one wouldn't as well.

I ran madly back to the house, arriving with torn clothes and a skinned knee. I was too upset to cry. I began to breathe heavily. There wasn't enough oxygen in my lungs; my vision was a camera lens that was narrowing rapidly. My heart beat wildly, and I could feel the blood rise to my ears, throbbing. I gasped for air, leaning over. I was sure I was going to die. Can you die from shock? A surge of panic, and the pinhole through which I was seeing the world narrowed to black.

“Shh, shh.” I heard Ainslie's voice. He took my wrist, not hard, but firmly. “Shh, calm down. Breathe. Just concentrate on breathing. Here, with me. One, in. Two, out. One, in. Two, out.” He urged my head between my knees, like he did the last time this happened, in Carmel.

The air began to return to my lungs, and my brain lost its balloon feeling. I sobbed, covering my face with my hands. I didn't want Ainslie's comfort, but there was no one else. He held me to his chest, where I breathed in the familiar scent of his sweat. Then I remembered what had provoked this panic attack, and I pushed him away.

“I don't know what you think you saw,” Ainslie said, “but it's not—”

I held up my hand. I didn't want to speak right now. I didn't want to listen. I just wanted to be away, anywhere but here. But an island is ironically a terrible place to be alone. You are too alone, always, and therefore it offers no respite, no cover. I parted the mosquito netting and lay down on my bed, the first time I'd lain down during daylight since we arrived.

When I awoke, I saw Ainslie struggling with the fire. He was blowing too hard, and the flames were suffocating from too much air. Without speaking, I walked over and pulled him back, blowing softly. The fire recovered. “Thanks,” Ainslie said. “I'm not too good at women's work.” He was trying to jolly me out of my mood, but this time his jocularity wouldn't suffice. I was numb. Were I to hammer my finger I wouldn't even feel it.

I ate Ainslie's terrible cooking staring off into the middle distance. I know he was worried I was punishing him, and undoubtedly that was a part of the silent treatment, but mostly I felt empty of words, like I was an iguana with a reptilian brain, who could only perform basic bodily functions. Afterward, I left Ainslie to wash up and I lay back down in bed. Mercifully, it got dark quickly. As I was falling asleep, I wondered if I were sick. I had the same separated-from-my-body feeling I had when I ran a fever.

In the middle of the night I awoke and went outside to relieve myself. When I got back to my bed, I could hear from his breathing that Ainslie was not asleep. It was only then that I allowed myself to examine my emotions.

I was hurt. Jealous. Scared. I had cast my lot with Ainslie, and now I realized how little I knew him. I reviewed the history of our relationship. And in the new light of realizing why it was that he didn't want to share a bed with me, I examined every time he came home late, every evening in the company of his navy buddies, every interaction he had with someone of his own sex. And I knew then that everything I had thought had been a lie. I was a useless spy, keeping information even from myself.

I could hear Ainslie breathing. Far away, and yet so close. “Ainslie?” I said. “Was it like this always?”

“Always,” I heard him whisper.

I said nothing more.

The light came up slowly that morning. Because of the dense vegetation, day usually sprung up on us as soon as the sun crested the trees, but it was overcast and so it was impossible to distinguish dawn from day. Ainslie and I ate breakfast in silence. We spoke only the necessary words to get on with our day. Ainslie told me his plans while I warmed coffee, and then he was gone, so obviously relieved to be away from me that I wanted to throw something at his retreating back. This was not my fault. I was not the one lying to him.

My anger grew along with the heat. By lunchtime I had broken the handle of our only pan. This was actually close to tragedy, as without it, we would have no means of cooking our food, and of course we had no way of fixing it. By midmorning, the anger had blossomed into rage. I cursed the sun, the chickens, the damn mongoose that wouldn't leave us alone, because who brought a mongoose to an island? It's an invasive species, for God's sake. People were always doing that, compounding their problems like a cumulative children's song: the mongoose to eat the rats, the cats to eat the mongoose, the people to kill the cats, the people to spy on the other people…

How dare Ainslie start a relationship with the enemy? I turned my personal hurt into righteous indignation. That was the first lesson in Spy 101: no relationships (except the ones they forced you into). Relationships left you vulnerable emotionally, as well as made you a target for blackmail. It gave away for free the leverage Ainslie was always warning against. I had distanced myself from Rosalie for this very reason, and now he had violated one of the basic tenets of our mission and put us in danger as a result.

Ainslie came back for lunch, signaling his approach by his whistle, which completely unhinged me from my supposed sanity.

“How can you whistle?” I screamed in greeting. “How can you just whistle?”

“It's my habit,” he said quietly. “It relaxes me.”

“Relaxes you.” I snapped the cloth I was using to wipe dishes. “You seem to be finding a lot of methods of relaxation.”

“If you're ready to talk,” he said, “we can talk.” He took out his pipe and began to chew on it.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“Oh I've smoked all my life.” I glared at him. I was not amused. “A week or two.” Ainslie sat in his chair. He traced patterns on the dirt floor with his feet. “I didn't mean for it to, Franny, it just did, somehow.”

“And there have been others?”

“Not on Floreana.” He grimaced. “Ever since I can remember, it's been…I tried the military, but there were as many people like me in there as there were out. Then I tried intelligence, but that just taught me how to lie even better. I've never been caught. Until now.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. My anger was gone, replaced with a sadness so heavy I might have ingested glue. I sat down next to him on the bench.