Mating for Life (28 page)

15

Black-Throated Loon
(
Gavia arctica
)

It is widely believed that pairs of loons mate for life, but this is not true. A typical adult loon is likely to have several mates during its lifetime because of territorial takeover. Each breeding pair must frequently defend their territory against other adult loons trying to evict at least one owner and seize the breeding site. Territories that have produced chicks in the past year are especially prone to takeovers. One-third of all territorial evictions result in the death of one of the males; in contrast, female loons usually survive.

I
sabel hadn't wanted to go back to the cottage at first. “But we're not going to
that
cottage,” her dad had said. “We're going to the cottage next door.”

“Same difference,” Isabel had replied. Then Liane had come into her room later that day and sat down on her bed.

“Hey,” Liane had said, and Isabel had made an effort not to feel annoyed by her very presence.

Liane tried too hard, that was the thing. Isabel and her friend Mykayla, who also had a stepmother (they called her the step
monster
), had discussed it. Even though technically she was being nice, trying too hard was simply annoying. “Like a boy who likes you too much and, like, texts you every five minutes,” Mykayla had said. “Ick.” “Ick,” Isabel had repeated, and
they had laughed so hard Mykayla had snorted peppermint latte out her left nostril and then they had laughed harder, all the while glancing to the corner of the coffee shop, where Matt Tillson and his crowd were seated. Isabel had had a crush on Matt for as long as she could remember (in reality, for about a year) and he had never paid her any attention. But now he was watching Mykayla, with her long dark hair and the ability to somehow make mint-flavored milk coming out her nose look cute, and Isabel felt jealous. Boys always liked Mykayla. Mykayla knew what she was talking about when she said, “It's like when a boy likes you too much.” Isabel could laugh along with her, but had never actually had the experience. Now she looked away from Matt, and from Mykayla now noticing Matt looking at her, and down at the coffee-spattered table.

“You know, though . . .” Mykayla had tossed a length of hair over her shoulder. “She's not a bitch. Not like the stepmonster. That's the one thing she has going for her.”

“True. She's not a bitch,” Isabel had said.

“Let's say the jury's still out on this one. Maybe she'll start taking you out shopping and buying you great clothes and we can chalk it up as a victory.”

“I think she's poor. She's, like, an assistant teacher at university.”

“Oh. Bummer. It's too bad she's not a bitch. Then we could just hate her with impunity.”

Now Isabel tried to smile at Liane. “Hey,” she said back.

“I just wanted to tell you that I really think you're going to have fun at my mom's cottage. It's a really nice place. I mean, you know the lake, and it's a fantastic lake, and my mom, Helen, she's actually renting a boat, which may not seem like a big deal to you, but she's anti-watercraft, and my sisters and I always begged for a boat so we could go water-skiing, so . . . that'll be really fun.”

“No one goes water-skiing anymore,” Isabel said.

“Right. Oh. No one does?”

“No. People wakeboard. I've done it before, tons of times.” This wasn't true; she'd done it once, at her friend Anna's cottage in the Kawarthas, and had been terrible at it, and had fallen off into a huge patch of seaweed, and Anna's brother, Chad, had shouted at her that she was probably going to be eaten by a muskie, and she had panicked and swum back to the boat, thinking of the photos on the wall of the cottage of Chad and Anna's father holding up impossibly enormous­-looking fish, all caught in the lake she was swimming in.

“Well, I doubt Helen has a wakeboard. But I know she has old skis. And maybe the twins or Eliot will have one,” Liane said.

Right, the twins or Eliot. Boys. There were going to be
boys
at the cottage. And this was the only reason Isabel wasn't flat-out refusing to go. “But what if they're total geeks?” she had said to Mykayla.

“They're from New York, right?”

“Well, outside of it.”

“Hmm. I think there's still the possibility that they're totally hot. And if they're not, well, it's only a few days.”

“Three days. Without cell phone reception.”

“Yeah, you're totes going to die. Maybe send smoke signals?”

Isabel thought about asking Liane whether her nephews were cute. But she couldn't, there was no way. Then Liane would probably think they were best friends or something. So instead she said, “I'm going to start packing my bag.” And Liane smiled at her so gratefully that Isabel felt the “ick” feeling again and turned away. Eventually Liane left the room.

“She's definitely coming,” she heard Liane say to her dad in the hallway, as if
she
had had something to do with it. Isabel rolled her eyes but kept packing, carefully choosing her outfits and packing the bikini she knew her dad hated.

• • •

Now they were in the car, driving toward Muskoka. Isabel had her headphones in, mostly to drown out the sound of Beatrice, who was going through a very whiny stage—although, to be honest, every one of Bea's stages so far in her life had seemed like whiny ones to Isabel.

Her father reached back and touched her arm. She turned down the music. “It's too loud, Iz,” he said. “You're going to damage your eardrums, and also, I can hear it. When someone else can hear the music from your personal listening device, it is no longer a personal listening device.”

“It's not a personal listening device. Dad, this isn't 1982. It's an iPod, for Christ's sake.”

“Isabel! Your language.”

“What? It's not like we go to church or anything.”

“But your sister. I don't want your sister walking around saying things like ‘for Christ's sake,' all right?”

As if to prove this point, Bea said, “Chrissakes, chrissakes,” and Isabel hid her smile with her hand.

“See!” Laurence said. “Thanks, Iz.”

“Dad,
you're
the one who said it again, and then she said it—it wasn't
my
fault!”

Her dad opened his mouth to say something, but Liane put her hand on his leg and squeezed. “Don't,” she said. “Bea will forget she even heard it.”

Now Bea was whining again.

“I don't understand why I have to sit back here with the whiner and Liane gets to sit up there,” Isabel said.

“Well, why don't we trade at the next rest stop?” Liane said. “And . . . why don't we listen to some music that we
all
like? And then you won't have to listen to your . . . personal listening device.” She leaned back and tried to share a complicit smile with Isabel, but Isabel didn't smile back at her.

“We don't like the same music.”

“I think we like some of the same music. You like Jake Bugg, and I have some of his music on my iPod. And we both like the Decemberists and Jack White.”

Stop trying to be cool!
Isabel wanted to shout. But instead she said nothing.

“We could play
your
iPod,” Liane said.

“Don't you mean my personal listening device? Sure, fine,” Isabel said, handing it forward and staring out the window at the familiar scenery that made her sad.

• • •

When they got to the marina, the woman, Helen, was waiting with the boat she had apparently rented from the owner of the marina, and a tanned blond man named Johnny was attempting to give her driving instructions and laughing at her.

“You, lady, are a prime example of why they really shouldn't give boating licenses out online,” Isabel heard him saying to her as they approached. The woman looked like an old hippie, with long blond hair streaked with gray, a makeup-­free face, and a long peasant skirt with a tan tank top that made her look topless from a distance. It was weird, the whole thing, Isabel decided. Beatrice was holding Isabel's hand and walking beside her.

“Aha! They've arrived. Laurence, darling, tell me you know how to drive a boat.” Isabel was pretty sure this woman had maybe met her dad once before, but she was acting like they were old friends.

“I can probably drive it better than
you
can,” her dad said, allowing the woman to embrace him and kiss him on both cheeks and say, “I'm so glad you're here.”

“Me, too,” Laurence said, then turned to Isabel. “And these are my daughters. Isabel and Beatrice.”

“Gorgeous! Adorable! So wonderful to make your acquaintance. You're going to have loads of fun. The boys have already arrived. Cole and Beckett—who by the way are strapping and handsome youngsters who will doubtless be thrilled to meet you, Isabel—and their brother Eliot.”

“Hel
en,
” Liane murmured. “She's only fourteen . . .”

“And so are
they,
” Helen said, smiling. “Now come, let's get your stuff loaded, let's get some firewood and eggs, and let's go.”

Isabel realized she was blushing. She took out her phone and sent a final text to Mykayla while she still could.
About to head into the land of no cell phone reception, wish me luck. Some crazy old hippie lady just said the twins are “strapping and handsome youngsters.” Feel like this is definite confirmation that they are losers. Help!

Then she put her phone in her shoulder bag and went to get her overnight case.

Helen talked loudly over the motor as Isabel's father steered the boat toward the island. Beatrice sat in Liane's lap, sucking her thumb. Once the initial “you're not my mommy” shock had worn off, Bea, little traitor that she was, had warmed right up to Liane. Isabel's mom had even expressed concern about it. “What do you want me to do?” Isabel had overheard her dad ask, exasperated, one night when he was picking the girls up for his week with them. “Do you want me to encourage her
not
to like Liane?” “Well, I
am
her mother, not Liane,” Gillian had said. “Liane's not trying to be her mother. She's just trying to be nice,” Laurence had said, and Isabel had been tempted to poke her head in the kitchen door and say snidely,
Yeah, and she's trying pretty damn hard. Daniel could take some notes from her, in fact
. But she stayed silent. Daniel: there was a whole other story. He didn't try at all, either because he didn't want to, or because he was too boring to do anything but talk about the research he did with
her mom or how smart he thought she was. It was beyond Isabel what her mom saw in him. “It's
because
he's the opposite of your father,” Mykayla, who seemed to know everything about everything, had once explained. “Also, your mom is clearly impervious to the ‘ick' factor.”

“Ilsa's not coming,” Helen said. “I told her she should, I told her she needs this, but she said she's trying to get settled. Maybe one year,
eventually,
we'll get us all back together here again.”

“Yes, we talked the other day. She seems good, though. She seems . . . well, let's talk about it later.” Liane glanced at Isabel, and Isabel realized that was because she considered what they were talking about too grown-up for Isabel to hear. Isabel remembered meeting Ilsa, months before, when she had come to visit in the winter, and being mildly fascinated by her. She was nothing like Liane. She was interesting. She was worldly. “And she's so sexy,” Mykayla had said later, when they were in her room. “My
lord
. I didn't think it was possible for a woman over thirty to be that sexy.” From what Isabel had already overheard her dad and Liane discussing, Ilsa had recently left her husband and was living in her art studio. And meanwhile, Liane's other sister, who also wasn't coming for the weekend, was apparently in the middle of some sort of desperate marriage situation, too. “These women don't have a very good track record,” she had said to Mykayla, who had waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Who does, these days?”

They were approaching the island and Isabel reached into her bag for some lip gloss, put some on, saw Liane watching her, and felt embarrassed. She took out her phone to check if there was still service. There was: a text from Mykayla had come in.
OMG. MATT ASKED ME OUT
. Isabel felt her eyes blur with sudden tears. She turned the phone off and put it in her bag.

“This is a first: Isabel has turned off her phone,” her dad, who had been slowing the boat down and glancing backward, announced. Isabel was grateful she was wearing sunglasses. She could see a person on the dock. A boy. But as they came closer she realized it had to be the younger one, Eliot. He was scrawny and definitely geeky, which did not bode well for his brothers.

The boat bumped into the dock and Isabel sat still.

Liane stood and passed Beatrice to Helen, who was already on the dock. Laurence got out and started tying the boat up.

“Coming, Iz?” Liane asked.

Ick,
Isabel thought.
Please don't call me Iz. Only my dad calls me Iz.

Helen introduced her to the boy, who was indeed Eliot, the youngest. “Where are your brothers?” Helen asked him.

“Inside, playing video games.”

“Which is all they ever seem to do,” she said. The group followed her up the stone steps.

“You and Beatrice are in Ilsa's room,” Helen was saying as they walked toward the cottage. Isabel wrinkled her nose and glanced at her father, trying to indicate that she didn't want to bunk with Bea, but he was walking ahead, hand in hand with Liane.

The cottage was dark, dingy, and outdated. What the big deal about it had been, Isabel had no idea. Liane had talked about it like it was a palace. So what if it was the oldest cottage on the island? That was the operative word:
old.