Little Wrecks Read online

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to its readers

  Epigraph

  I too have bubbled up, floated the measureless float,

  and been wash’d on your shores;

  I too am but a trail of drift and debris,

  I too leave little wrecks upon you, you fish-shaped

  island.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Resistance One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Reality One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Resurrection One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Acknowledgments

  Back Ad

  About the Author

  Books by Meredith Miller

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  RESISTANCE

  one

  PEOPLE GET FROGS in their pools. The frogs think the pools are ponds, jump in, and can’t get out again. Invisible chlorine seeps through their skin and kills them. On spring mornings, the more fortunate citizens of Highbone wake up to find their swimming pools full of dead or struggling frogs. They stand in their bathrobes with pool nets, fishing them out while their coffee gets cold.

  Only Isabel and the frog-fishers are awake now. She walks barefoot through the empty streets around Harbor Ridge, spreading her toes and pushing off the ground with every step, trying to feel everything at once. It’s early and the grass is still wet. The sun slants along the ground and the drops on the spiderwebs are glinting in the bushes. She’s wearing her blue cotton skirt, the flouncy one that shows her thighs and reminds her of the sky. Over that, she has on a secondhand Navy sweater that’s almost as long as the skirt. One of the frog-fishers stands there with her pool net dripping and stares at Isabel’s sweater and her bare feet. Isabel just laughs.

  Doesn’t the lady realize how she looks, doing ridiculous frog maintenance on her perfect life that looks exactly like the perfect life next door? Factory-made and totally meaningless, pretending to be paradise and full of road kill.

  Everyone pretends the water is clear. Those pools might as well be full of girls instead of frogs. Bleeding, barefoot girls, floating facedown with the soles of their feet staring up at the sky. The collateral damage of all that pretending.

  She turns her back on the frog-fishers and heads towards the heavier air down the hill. The onshore breeze is full of salt and the smell of ocean green blowing over Highbone Harbor. The pavement is gathering heat from the early sun and sending it up through the soles of Isabel’s feet. She breathes. It could always be like this. If everyone would just take their shoes off and breathe in, the day could stay like this. But already the traffic is starting up. Slamming car doors echo down Main Street. She has to move out of the way so a Highbone cop can drive past her. He turns his siren on, drives through the red light at the bottom of the hill, then turns it off again.

  Mariner’s Maps and Books isn’t open yet. Mr. Lipsky is never too worried about being on time. When he shows up, she can get the copy of Under a Glass Bell he ordered for her. One day, Isabel is going to live on a houseboat like Anaïs Nin. Right now, she can hear the shackles on the sails in the harbor, ringing like bells against aluminum masts. She can feel the shelves of poetry behind the window at her back, the thousands of miles there are to travel in every direction. She knows how beautiful it all is, and that’s what makes her different than everyone else in Highbone. She’ll never understand why people trade in their souls for pool nets and sprinkler systems.

  The cop parks between Isabel and the sun, then gets out and stands looking down at her legs.

  “Waiting for someone, young lady?” he says to her thighs.

  “Yep.” She stands up and pulls her skirt down. “Is that a problem?”

  The cop jerks his head away from her sixteen-year-old legs like suddenly they offend him.

  “Where are your shoes?” he says, as if her bare feet are what he was staring at.

  “Don’t have any. Pawned ’em for a train ticket out of this hole.”

  The cop just stands there for a while, looking at the harbor and doing his cop silence.

  Whatever. Isabel is going to get out. They’re all going to get out, her and Magdalene and Ruth. None of them are supposed to be here. They all know it, and that’s why they get each other; that’s why they’re friends.

  Isabel has a plan. As soon as she’s eighteen, she’ll get a job working at the Lagoon. They have bouncers, and the girls wear cutoff shorts, so it’s just topless. They rake it in; that’s what Vicky says. Vicky works at Dunkin’ Donuts now, because they won’t let her work at the Lagoon anymore. She won’t say why, but she did say when she was there she brought home a hundred bucks after six hours, on a good night. A year of that kind of money and Isabel could live for ages on a houseboat.

  The cop is inside the diner now, sitting at the counter drinking free coffee and eating free pie. He’s so arrogant he left the car window open with a wallet sitting right on the passenger seat. Isabel looks both ways before she reaches in and grabs the wallet. She puts it under her skirt and sits back down in the doorway. Then she laughs.

  After her heart stops pounding she scoots farther into the doorway, pulls the wallet out, and opens it. Inside there are two five-dollar bills and a picture of some boring kids with braces. That’s it. What was she hoping for? Something to make her feel better about being leered at and then made invisible by a cop, whatever that might be. There isn’t even a badge, which would have been cool.

  The door of Mariner’s Maps and Books opens at Isabel’s back and the little bell tinkles.

  “You coming in, or what?” Mr. Lipsky says.

  When Mr. Lipsky turns his back to head inside, she pulls out the ten bucks and throws the cop’s wallet over the curb. It falls right between the grating of a storm drain and down into the deep dark underneath Main Street.

  Perfect shot.

  Inside, Mr. Lipsky looks down at Isabel’s sweater like it worries him. Well, it has a couple of holes where she ripped the Navy patches off, and it is much too big. So obviously he doesn’t get it. The Navy sweater is like armor, or maybe like wearing your bed all day. It makes her feel safe, anyway. Besides, Mr. Lipsky can’t really look at her like that, since his khaki pants are always too big for him and his shirts hang out at the back. He dresses like he can’t quite handle being a grown-up, which is nice.

  “Come on in. I’ll make coffee.” He disappears into the back.

  Isabel climbs all the way into the bay window and pushes up one sleeve so she can pet Gaius Pollio, the cat. She just robbed a cop; maybe Saturday morning isn’t so bad after all. You get one life; it’s full of things that taste and smell and make people feel. Your mission, obviously, is to taste and smell and feel as much of that as you can. Daydreaming should be a job. People should be paid to do it for the good of society.

  It takes a lot of daydreaming to counteract Highbone, though. Stay here lon
g enough and you’re certifiable, that’s for sure. Isabel’s mother is living proof of that. One day, Isabel will have a mooring on a river somewhere, maybe in France, maybe in Mexico. The boat will have a musty cabin and a single bed and a typewriter. Little waves will rock her and sound will do comforting things at night, traveling over the surface of different water.

  When Mr. Lipsky comes back out with two mugs in one hand and a half-pint milk carton in the other, Isabel is sitting with Gaius Pollio in her lap. He hands her the coffee and puts Under a Glass Bell down in the bay next to her, then pulls up the captain’s chair from behind the counter for himself.

  “Tell me again about the kinds of hell,” Isabel says.

  “Let’s see . . . for the flatterers, there’s this pit where they’re all plunged up to their necks in excrement. What do you think?”

  “For saying something nice to someone when it isn’t true, you spend eternity swimming in shit? That’s a little much.”

  “I think Dante was worried about people who fawn over politicians and corrupt people with lots of power. Why don’t you let me order you a copy and you can read it yourself?”

  “I like listening to you tell it. Also, the coffee is good. My dad’s coffee sucks.”

  “Any time, kiddo. But you should read Dante before you go to college.”

  “I don’t know about college. And anyway, I need to get through these first.” She holds up her new book. “Anaïs Nin and those people weren’t all caught up by money and jobs. They just lived. They paid attention to everything.”

  “They had trust funds.”

  “That’s why I need to go straight to work, Mr. Lipsky. I need money.”

  “You need to read everything you can. Trust me. How’s your mother?”

  “My mother is the same. You know, fine. She just sits around all day in Castle Gloom, eating cheese and crackers and reading about some fat guy named Nero Wolf.”

  “Castle Gloom?” He raises his eyebrows. “Your mother is a very smart lady, Isabel. I learned more from her in high school than I learned from some of my teachers.”

  “My house is kind of dark and depressing. My friends named it Castle Gloom. Magda and Ruth seem to think it has fairy-tale potential. They don’t have to live there, obviously. And yeah, my mom knows lots of stuff. Sometimes she tells me it, but mostly she doesn’t say anything.”

  “All right, well. I just know it’d make her happy if you read the important stuff.”

  “Okay, okay, but it’s not gonna be today, Mr. Lipsky. I need to meet Magda.”

  “Magda is Magdalene Warren, right? Your friend? My dad knew her grandparents.”

  “We’re going up to the mall. Fucking mall named after a poet!” He doesn’t even blink when she curses. That’s one reason why Isabel decided to be friends with Mr. Lipsky.

  “Don’t worry, Isabel. There is an extra special hell for town planners who build shopping malls and name them after poets.”

  “I already decided. I’m voting for the one where they’re buried upside down in the rock with their feet on fire.”

  People out on the sidewalk are looking twice at the front window of Mariner’s Maps and Books, wondering why there’s a teenager dressed like a homeless person sitting in it with a cat and a cup of coffee. Mr. Lipsky stares straight back through the glass and smiles.

  two

  COMING DOWN THE hill on Seaview Road, Ruth can see everything stretched out below her, the water shining in the Sound and the traffic on 25A, cutting the village off from everywhere else. You can see the dividing lines, the different worlds of Highbone. Ruth lives on the other side, away from the beach and the bluffs and the old arts and crafts houses. When she looks down on Highbone from here, everything seems clear and inevitable. The divisions between herself and everyone else are just part of the pattern of the world. In the fading light, it all looks as fixed and distant as the end of time.

  Sometimes lately, the veil over everything falls away and the meaning is suddenly obvious. Ruth’s stomach lurches; she loses her breath and the world comes into a new kind of focus. For the first time, she doesn’t need anyone else to see things for her. Turning onto Main Street, she comes up behind Isabel and Magda, heading towards Highbone Harbor in the almost dark.

  “My space goes two ways together, twilight’s forever,” Ruth sings out behind them, and Isabel joins in without turning around. Ruth falls into her usual place, three steps behind.

  They’re all way too old and way too cynical for jump rope songs, but this one is special. Isabel says it’s actual poetry, whatever actual means. What about the girl who first made up that rhyme though, maybe a hundred years ago? It’s like she was describing them. Was her life just like theirs, if you leave out the details? Can’t be denied; those words fit the situation.

  The three of them pass by the weird mix of preppies and homeless people sprinkled around outside Flannagan’s Bar, and walk, singing, past the floating docks by the playground. They pass all the broken men returned from Vietnam, twitching and hallucinating on the benches at the bottom of Main Street. It’s four years since the war really ended, but the human wreckage is still lying around everywhere. It doesn’t match with the Rhode Island types in their sailboats, moored in the harbor, the picture-postcard park and the Victorian shop fronts.

  Ruth watches from behind, dragging her old lace dress on the sidewalk while Magda and Isabel move right through it all without paying attention. None of it is new. They see it most days, but to Ruth it’s impossible to ignore, impossible not to feel it all the time. Two ways together, twilight’s forever.

  She waves at Lefty, on a bench reciting poetry into the air while his friend Robert looks for cigarette butts along the curb. Lefty waves back with his one whole arm, and Ruth follows Magda and Isabel behind the bushes at the back of the park.

  “This is the worst possible spot. We are so gonna get caught,” Magda says. But even as she says it, she throws down her Army Navy Store backpack and sits on the grass.

  “The cops are too lazy to check back here,” Isabel says. “Anyway, it’s time for a bonfire; we all agreed. Safety valve. Escaping steam. Not exploding, that’s the plan. You know that as well as I do, so what did you bring, Magda?”

  Magdalene reaches into her backpack, takes out a book, and hands it over to Isabel.

  “The New Eden: Mythopoesis and Westward Expansion? Cool title.” Isabel turns the book over. “And this book deeply offends you why? I’m not sure how I feel about book burning.”

  Magdalene jabs a finger at the cover. “Read it.”

  “John W— Oh! I kind of knew your dad wrote books, but I didn’t know they were cool books. Mythopoesis, I love that word.”

  “Fuck you, Isabel.”

  “Okay, your dad’s an asshole, I get it. No reason to be nasty. Remember our first bonfire?”

  “Yep,” Magda says. “It was at Fiddler’s Cove. We made a fire at the beach, like normal people. That must have been before you turned into a crazy person and convinced us to start a fire in the park.”

  “That was only about two months after we met.” Isabel lights a match for no reason, holding it up until it burns her fingers.

  “After we met you, Isabel. I met Magda before I could talk.”

  Ruth checks behind her and then lies down, closing her eyes so all she has to deal with is the sound of them. It’s enough.

  “I’m just saying, we weren’t even halfway through ninth grade. Ruth was still in middle school. This is bonfire number six. Six, in not even two years. I think they’re getting more frequent. Does that mean things are getting worse?”

  “No,” Magda says. “It means we notice more, we’re fighting back more. We’re not as oblivious. Especially you, Isabel. If it weren’t for us, you’d still be floating around two inches off the ground thinking the whole world is wonderful and all made just for you.”

  “And that would be a bad thing why? You’re bragging because you made me mad at everything? You jaded me?”

/>   “I’m not bragging,” Magda says. “I’m just pointing out that because of us you started noticing what really goes on in this place and why we need to get the hell out.”

  “Ruth, where’d you get the cool dress?” Isabel tugs on the hem. She can’t stand anyone not looking at her. Ruth opens one eye.

  “Stole it from Attic Antiques.”

  “You went without me? No fair! Anyway, you guys liked me, admit it. You liked me right away.”

  “It’s true,” Magda says. “You have some excellent qualities. You just needed a push in the right direction.”

  “Yeah, also, I have resources.”

  Isabel pulls a half pint of blackberry brandy out from under her sweater and waves it at them.

  “See?” Magda says. “Always prepared, that’s an excellent quality. Girl Scouts’ve got nothing on you.”

  “I was thinking more cowgirl than Girl Scout. Fire, flask of moonshine. We could be cattle rustling.”

  “Does moonshine taste like cough syrup?” Ruth grabs the bottle, leans on her elbow, and screws off the cap.

  “Cowgirls in the wilds of Highbone.” Isabel draws a pretend six-shooter and aims at Ruth, straight between the eyes. “The Highbone Gang, thieves and guns for hire.”

  “Westerns never have chicks in them,” Ruth says.

  “Yeah, also”—Magda reaches for the bottle, but Isabel grabs it first—“the Indians are always white guys with terrible makeup and a three-word vocabulary.”

  “So, we need to make a new kind of western.” Isabel blows the smoke off the tip of her invisible gun, then pours some brandy down her throat.

  “Slow down there, Stagecoach Mary.” Magda takes the bottle. “So the heroine of our movie will start out all demure and proper, then her parents die and she turns into a bank-robbing saloon singer.”

  “Dibs on the title,” Ruth says. “It’s gonna be Tulip. That’ll be the main chick’s name.”

  “That’ll have to be you, Miss Blonde-with-Tits,” Isabel says. “I’ll be a dime novelist, touring the West to soak up the atmosphere. Then I fall in with you and get drawn into the life of sin I’ve always written about. What about Magda?”