Charles De Lint - Memory and Dream

I

Wren Island, September 1992

Alan had been surprised at Isabelle’s reaction to his call earlier that morning. She’d seemed somewhat distracted, it was true, but genuinely friendly, as though the funeral and the five years since she’d stopped speaking to him had never occurred, as though she were still living on Waterhouse Street and he was simply phoning her at her old apartment, across the street from his own. When he told her that he had a proposition for her, one that he preferred to make in person rather than over the phone, she’d agreed to see him and then given him the somewhat complicated instructions he needed to get out to her place.

Wren Island was a two-hour drive east of the city. After leaving the highway, he had to navigate a twist of narrow roads that eventually became little more than cart paths, weeds growing thigh-high except for the two ribbons of dirt wheel tracks that finally deposited him on the shore of the lake. A bright red Jeep was parked under a pine tree that towered skyscraper-high, its immense limbs overhanging the shore. The only other man-made artifacts were the island’s power and phone lines and the rickety wooden dock that pointed out into the lake toward the island. When he pulled up between the dock and the Jeep, he leaned on his car horn as he’d been instructed and then got out of the car to wait.

If it hadn’t been for the vehicles and power lines, he might have felt transported to an earlier century.

There was a sense of timelessness about the narrow roads, the old dock and its surrounding woods.

Shading his eyes, he looked toward the island, but could see no sign of habitation except for another decrepit wharf pointing back to where he was standing. A small rowboat was moored alongside it.

Just when he considered giving the car horn another try, he spied a figure come out of the island’s woods and step onto the dock. His pulse quickened as he watched Isabelle untie the rowboat and get into it, knowing that within minutes they would finally be seeing each other again. Five years was a long time, though sometimes it still seemed as though it was only yesterday that the three of them were sitting around a table in one of the small Crowsea cafes, deep in conversation, or sprawled out together for a picnic lunch in Fitzhenry Park: Isabelle in her bohemian blacks, Kathy her exact opposite with a rainbow array of Indian print patches on her jeans and her tie-dyed tops. He still wore the same commonsensical jeans and cotton shirts that he had back then, the jeans always in one piece and a touch too rich an indigo to make much of a fashion statement, the shirts varying only in terms of the lengths of their collars, which was due to availability rather than any particular choice of his own.

He felt nervous as he saw Isabelle push off from the dock and head his way. Too late to back out now, he told himself.

“Whatever you do,” Marisa had warned him when he called her that morning, “don’t get into whatever it was that set the two of you at odds with each other in the first place. Don’t talk about it, don’t apologize, and don’t expect her to. And don’t go dragging all sorts of old baggage along with you.

Just take it one moment at a time.”

“But I can’t just tuck all the memories away,” Alan had countered. “My mind doesn’t work that way and Isabelle’s probably doesn’t either.”

“Just try, Alan. Deal with the Isabelle of now, not the one you remember, because I doubt that one even exists anymore.”

“I’ll try,” Alan had promised her, but he knew it would be hard. Marisa was basically telling him to treat Isabelle as a stranger, and he had never been comfortable with strangers.

The distance was too great for him to be able to make out her features, to see how and if she had changed. All that was visible from where he stood was a smudge of a face surrounded by unruly dark hair as it fell past her shoulders. He could tell she was wearing faded blue jeans and a red-and-black plaid flannel shirt, so he knew that her wardrobe had expanded. Her rowing had good form, the strokes all firm and strong, but then she’d always been physically fit. It wasn’t until she came within comfortable hailing distance and turned her head to call out a quick hello that he could finally make out her features.

They hadn’t changed at all and, just like that, he could feel himself falling in love with her all over again.

For a moment he thought of Marisa and had a pang of unexpected guilt, but he refused to acknowledge it. If she hadn’t been married, if Marisa had ever managed to deal with the problems that being married entailed for her, things might have worked out differently. But they hadn’t and seeing Isabelle now, he wasn’t sure that they ever would. He realized that his heart had probably belonged to Isabelle from the first day Kathy had introduced them to each other in the Student Center and not even that disastrous day at the funeral could change that.

The funeral. A dark cloud of memories expanded inside him, and it was only with a great effort that he managed to put them away.

Isabelle reached the dock at that moment. With a few quick oar strokes, she expertly turned the boat until both she and its squared-off stern were facing him. For a long moment all they could do was look at each other. Seeing her like this brought Kathy’s death home to Alan in a way that it never had before. He wondered if whenever he saw Isabelle, he would think of Kathy; wondered, too, if it would be the same for Isabelle.

“It’s been a long time,” Isabelle said finally, and that was enough to break the sensation Alan had of their experiencing a fleeting stay in time’s relentless march from one moment to the next.

“Too long,” he said. “Country life still seems to suit you. You look great.”

“Yes, well ...”

She was still quick to blush, Alan saw. The rowboat’s transom bumped against the dock.

“Did you have any trouble finding the place?” she asked.

“None at all.”

“Good.” She gave him an expectant look, then added: “Well, hop in.”

“Oh. Right.”

Alan couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on the water. Except for riding the ferry out to Wolf Island, it might have been years. He felt completely out of his element as he got into the boat and it began to dip under the addition of his unbalanced weight. Isabelle leaned forward and caught his hand just when he was sure he was going over the side. She steered him to the seat in the stern. As he smiled his thanks, he could feel a hot flush rise up the back of his neck. Isabelle wasn’t the only one who’d always been quick to feel self-conscious.

“Urn, can I help with the rowing at all?” he asked to cover his embarrassment.

She cocked an eyebrow. “Do you know how?”

“Well, theoretically. There was a rowboat at my grandparents’ cottage ....”

“They had a place on the Kickaha River, didn’t they? I remember we ...” She paused, then cleared her throat. “We all went up there one weekend ....”

Alan desperately wanted to talk about Kathy. It had been so long since he’d been with someone who had known her as well as he had. He was tired of talking about her work, of all that was entailed in getting the omnibus published, fighting Kathy’s parents, going to court, the book’s design, paperback rights. The Kathy that got discussed then wasn’t real. That Kathy was only one small facet of someone far more important to him. But he remembered Marisa’s warning, so he didn’t take up where Isabelle’s voice had trailed off.

“Of course, I was just a kid back then,” he said instead, “and all my parents would let me do was splash around with the oars along the shore.”