The Fog (12 page)

Blake said, “Anya, tell me how you got that big bruise on your leg. And the cuts on your knee.” Anya said nothing. Blake lifted the hem of Anya’s skirt to show Christina the bruise.

Christina sucked in her breath. “Anya is sleepwalking,” she said dubiously, although she did not want anybody to know. It sounded crazy; she was afraid a catalog Maine person like Blake would abandon Anya if she sounded insane. Blake would stick by Anya because he was in the mood to oppose his mother and father; but he wouldn’t if everybody else said she was a nut case. Christina stared at the bruise. She could not remember either of them falling, and there had been no crashes among the huffing sounds.

“Listen,” whispered Anya. “The sea. It sounds as if it’s in chains.”

“It’s just the tide,” said Blake. “It always sounds like that.”

“Can’t you hear?” Anya cried. “Chains scraping. Ankles caught. Children choking.”

“It’s the sand,” protested Blake. “When the waves go back out, sand is dropped along the way.”

Anya shuddered. “It sounds like dead armies marching.”

Blake looked at her in despair.

“I will never sleep again,” she told him. “You didn’t hear the sea last night. All the dead beneath the waves began breathing again.”

Ffffffffff,
Christina remembered.

“It must have been the wind in the shutters,” Blake said.

That night they did their homework at the kitchen table. Anya was writing an essay. “Write about young love,” said Christina. “Write about Blake’s car.”

But Anya was writing about the tide in Candle Cove.

Every twelve hours (plus twenty minutes) the tide licks the barnacles, inching toward the village. Then a queer sickening whisper begins. Fffffff — puffing out a candle. And the entire ocean, laughing because it caught you by surprise, hurls itself into the Cove. You cannot get away. It has you. If you are in Candle Cove, wading, rowing a dinghy, digging for clams, you will die. Candle Cove is the Atlantic Ocean’s toy. Like a birthday present, it opens itself every day, hoping, hoping, hoping, to catch you by surprise. And drown you.…

Mrs. Shevvington, like the English teacher she was, said, “Anya, two errors here. First, you refer to the sea as if it is a person. As if it thinks and plans. This is called personification. Attributing humanity to things or animals.”

“I never said the sea had humanity,” said Anya. “The sea is psychotic. The sea is a mass murderer.”

“Your second error is pronouns,” said Mrs. Shevvington. She was smiling. As if Anya had finally gotten the lesson right. “The reader cannot tell who the victim is.”

“Me,” said Anya. “The sea wants me.”

“M
OTHER?” CHRISTINA SAID, CLINGING
to the telephone. “Oh, Mother, I’m so glad to hear your voice.”

There had been a phone line out to Burning Fog Isle all of Christina’s life, but not during her parents’ childhoods. They had had to use ship to shore radio. Christina blessed the telephone. She just hoped Mrs. Shevvington wouldn’t come home and catch her in the forbidden living room before she had a chance to explain everything. “Mother, it’s so awful here. I need you,” cried Christina. “Please come.”

There was a curious pause. It was not like her mother. For a moment Christina thought the connection had been broken, and she imagined the fingers of the sea, taking the underwater cable, tearing it asunder, laughing beneath the waves.

“Christina,” said her mother in a queer voice, “the Shevvingtons have talked to us. They were on the telephone with us late last night. Honey, how could you behave like this? How could you forget your upbringing? Rude in school, lying about your homework, frightening Anya, refusing to eat the meals Mrs. Shevvington labors over? Christina, your father and I hardly know what to think.”

The black-and-gold peacocks mocked Christina. “Mother, that’s not what it’s like.” The telephone shook in her hand.

Her father got on the extension. She could see them, her mother in the kitchen, fragrant from baking; her father in the bedroom, sweaty from playing tennis. “Christina, when you left the island we were so proud of you, and now look. Cheating and yarning and refusing to obey authority! We don’t know what’s the matter with you, but luckily you’re with people who are used to dealing with difficult adolescents. The Shevvingtons are going to handle it.”

“
It!
” cried Christina. “You mean
me
? It isn’t like that. The Shevvingtons are cruel people. I think they hate girls. I think they choose a new one each year, and this year it’s Anya. The Shevvingtons made us fill out forms about what we’re afraid of — acid, or rats! You have to — ”

“You’re making that up, Christina,” her father said. “Christina, honey, no teacher, no principal, would ever hand a form like that to a child.”

“No, no. It’s true. And this house — I’m sure that the sea captain’s bride — or maybe it’s the poster, the poster of the sea — ”

“Stop it!” shouted her father. “Christina, I won’t have this! Mrs. Shevvington told us that you and Anya have some sort of sick game about that poster on your wall. Now you listen to me. When I was a kid, I had a hard time finding my place at the mainland school, too, and so did your mother, and so did everybody else, but we didn’t resort to making up ridiculous stories and placing blame on other people, and pretending that the finest, most caring principal the school has ever had is cruel! We just worked harder, Christina. We obeyed the rules! And that’s what we expect from you, too.”

The phone crackled.

It’s the sea listening in, thought Christina. The sea knows what’s going on. The sea started it.

Mrs. Shevvington came into the room. She did not look powerful enough to control Christina’s parents across the water. But she was. She took the phone, smiling her corncob smile. She told Christina’s parents that visits would not be a good idea and phone calls would be worse. There should be no communication between Christina and her parents until Christina had learned to behave.

Christina willed her parents to refuse. Believe in me! she thought.

“Fine,” said Mrs. Shevvington. “Arnold and I will keep in touch. The important thing is not to worry.” Her smile stretched long and thin and yellow. “We are in complete control of Christina.”

Dolly’s first tape arrived.

Dolly was bored; it was no fun being the oldest in school; she had to help with the little kids, and this year the kids were really little: five-, six-, and seven-year-olds. Dolly missed Christina. Dolly was sure Christina was having a perfect year. Because that was the only reason Dolly could think of that Christina wasn’t sending tapes — she was too busy and too happy.

Christina had a blank tape. Benj had bought it for her. But what could she say to Dolly?

Dear Dolly, Remember my school daydream? Best friends, laughter, shared snacks, phone calls, compliments, a boyfriend?

I sit alone at lunch. Mrs. Shevvington punishes me for everything. Mr. Shevvington smiles and says I need mental counseling. As for your brothers, Benj won’t listen to me; Michael never comes near me; word got around school that I’m weird, and he’s afraid it’s catching.

I sleep alone in a dark green room that talks to me at night. Mrs. Shevvington took my flashlight, and the light switch for the bedroom is on the far side of the room from my bed, and the light switch for the hall is all the way around the other side of the balcony. I just get under the covers in the dark and hope Anya doesn’t jump out her window.

Anya said you can’t tell anybody if it’s hard; they just worry and they can’t do anything anyway. I want everybody on Burning Fog Isle worried about me. But the Shevvingtons took care of that. Nobody’s worried. Just mad.

Anya doesn’t sleep much any more. She’s afraid the seaweed on the window was a sign that the waves are going to come right into the room for her. Her grades are slipping. She breaks down in Public Speaking class and sobs. Mr. Shevvington comes in to give her moral support. She’s always thanking him for being so good to her. He’s not good to her! He’s the one who put her in there to start with.

Mr. Shevvington wrote Anya’s parents, Dolly.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Rothrock, Anya continues to work far below her capacity. Just what immaturity causes this, I do not seem to be able to find out. Instead of growing more mature, contributing more in class, acquiring and using skills, Anya moves steadily backward. …

I hate Mr. Shevvington, Dolly. You go to junior high to learn government, begin algebra, increase your vocabulary, start a foreign language. Me, I’m learning to hate.

I cornered Robbie. I asked about his sister. Robbie was afraid, but he told me in the end. Val was sweet and friendly once. Sang in the choir, won prizes in the art fair.

“Ordinary,” Robbie told me. “But nice.” He frowned; this was the real stumbling block. Val had been nice. … She became nothing. It wasn’t that she stopped being nice. She stopped being anything.

Val slipped during her senior year; forgot to do homework, stopped washing her hair, avoided her friends, ate strange things, like Spaghetti-O’s cold from a can. She adopted a single outfit
—
torn corduroy pants and an old shirt of her father’s
—
and wore it daily for weeks. She was not on drugs, Dolly. She was not on booze.

She’s locked up now. The Shevvingtons recommended a really good adolescent mental hospital.

Jonah has fallen in love with me. I know. I wanted to have a boy fall in love with me. But I wanted to choose what boy. Jonah is overflowing with emotions that I do not share. I have to ask for instructions. “How do you feel now?” he asks. I say to him, “How should I feel?” He loves to hear me talk about the island, and whenever I finish my stories he laughs. I can’t tell if he’s laughing at me or with me. I want to be friends with the real kids! Like Vicki and Gretch. But they don’t pay any attention to me. Except when they’re laughing at me.

Oh, Dolly, it’s so awful. The only good thing is you are safe on Burning Fog. I know you hate sixth. I hated it last year, too. But sixth grade is safe.

Sometimes when Anya wakes up at night, and slips into bed with me, her feet cold, her hands cold, and she says that the fingers of the dead are walking on her back
—

We hang onto each other, Dolly, but I can’t hold on forever. One of us is going to fall.

Well, of course she couldn’t send a tape like that to Dolly.

So she sent nothing.

“I have to give a speech about the ocean,” said Anya, twitching with nerves. They were up in Anya’s bedroom, Anya staring into the poster of the sea, Blake and Christina staring into Anya. In the afternoon Blake was always at the Schooner Inne now. The Shevvingtons stayed late at the high school, Michael had soccer practice, and Benj had a job pumping gas at the Mobil station.

“Who says it has to be about the ocean?” demanded Christina. “Talk about the sky, or the grocery store, or Blake’s catalog clothes.”

Blake was sprawled on the floor of Anya’s room. Christina was never afraid when Blake was there. She did not know what it was about Blake that kept away the fingers of the sea. Was it that he was a boy? That he was in love? That it was daylight?

“Mr. Shevvington says I have to overcome my fears. He says I have to tackle the scariest topics of all.” Anya whispered to the poster. “He knows all my fears.”

If I had those forms, thought Christina, if I showed them to my mother and father, then they would believe! Then they would realize that Mr. Shevvington is the one who is sick, not me.

She wondered where the forms were kept. Who else had read them? Who else had had to fill them out? What about Val’s forms? What had Val been afraid of? How had Mr. Shevvington destroyed Val?

Anya ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it down over her face to hide herself. Blake sighed and pulled Anya off her bed and down on top of him, putting her hands and hair away from her face. “Anya, stop being so worried. It’s only a high school class. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll forget your speech and have to sit down.”

Anya burst into tears. She quivered when anybody raised a voice around her now. Mr. Shevvington never raised his voice, so she skipped a lot of her classes and huddled near his desk. “Blake, don’t yell at me. I can’t date a person who yells at me.”

“I’m not yelling at you!” yelled Blake.

“Anyway,” said Anya, “Benj is not afraid of anything. If I have a job, I won’t be afraid, either. So I’m quitting school, too. I found a wonderful job. Where the water is all locked up.”

“What?” shouted Blake. “Quit school? Are you out of your mind? You
will
end up a wharf rat then.”

Christina had thought romance would be fast red cars, billowing black hair, long drives down the coast, alone together, kissing, and in love. That’s what Blake thinks, too, she realized, watching him watch Anya. But Anya — the most romantic-looking person in Maine — Anya doesn’t even know.

Blake changed subjects. Perhaps he thought he could change Anya as easily. “I made you a present,” said Blake pleadingly. “It’s a calendar. Full of our dates. Nothing but our dates.”

He had drawn the squares and the months himself. Each week was illustrated with cartoons cut from the newspaper —
Far Side, Funky Winkerbean, Peanuts, Cathy, Garfield
— cartoons about love and romance and boys and girls. Each Friday and Saturday listed a movie, a drive, or a dance that Blake would take Anya to.

“That’s so romantic!” said Christina, hugging herself.

“A paper calendar?” muttered Anya. She never talked in a normal voice any more; she just whispered to herself or to the sea. “Silly little squares with numbers on them. The only true calendar is the tide. It speaks to you; it ordains the time.”

“Anya,” said Christina nervously, “when the tide speaks to you, don’t answer.”

Blake got up off the floor. Christina could feel his rage. No, no, Blake, don’t leave her! Don’t break up! You’re all she has. I don’t count. I’m just the seventh-grader in the other bedroom! She needs you!