Laura van den Berg - The Isle of Youth - Stories

“We’re going to Sri Lanka next,” our mother said. “We’re going to ride elephants.”

“Mom?” we said. “Did you hear what we just told you?”

“This wasn’t an emergency,” she whispered before hanging up.

On the second night, we watched a TV special called “Preying on the Elderly” that featured our father and a con man right here in Florida, who had defrauded a whole retirement home full of seniors last winter. They showed one of our father’s victims, a hunched old man named Reginald. He was leaning into a walker, a tiny white dog at his feet. The program offered a list of tips for elders: Don’t give out personal information over the phone. Be suspicious if someone says you’ve won a fabulous prize. Get-rich-quick schemes never make you rich. Do background checks on everyone you meet. Julia pointed out that it sounded like the elderly were in need of private detectives. I nodded. I hoped Reginald was watching the same thing we were.

Later, while Julia was in the shower, I realized that after our father was arrested, the postcards had stopped coming. I decided they hadn’t been from my husband at all, and was surprised by my disappointment. I didn’t say anything to my sister at first. I stood by the closed bathroom door and listened to the water. I took a beer from the fridge and drank it standing up. When Julia emerged from the shower, I suggested we watch a movie. I picked up the remote and started clicking through the channels. Beverly Hills Cop was on. All night, I kept my secret.

On the third night, I couldn’t stop myself from telling Julia about my theory. My husband hadn’t sent the cards. It had been our father all along.

“It makes sense,” I said. “A bunch were postmarked in Nevada.”

“I should have known.” Julia was on the couch in a long T-shirt and socks. “A typewriter didn’t seem like your husband’s style. Too romantic.”

I sat next to her. The news was on. Julia turned down the volume. The cards were stacked on the coffee table. He knew where we lived. He had kept track of us. Was it out of love, or a calculation, keeping tabs on his family in case he ran out of strangers to con? More questions we couldn’t answer. I wondered if he knew about my divorce and Julia’s stint in jail, if he had seen Mr. Defonte on the news and knew it had to do with us.

“I think this one goes here.” Julia picked up the image of the gorge and placed it in the middle of the table. We put the sky and the clouds above it. The river to the left, the ledge to the right. We played with the positioning of the cards, tried to complete the sentence that began with WISH YOU.

“Wish you well?” I said.

“Wish you luck?”

“Wish you were here?”

Julia looked at me. “If that’s what it says, I’m glad we’re not.”

In the end, the puzzle didn’t tell us much. We still didn’t have enough pieces to know what it was for sure. We could tell it was a big dusty valley of some kind. Someplace out west, we figured. That part of the country was foreign to us.

“The Grand Canyon?” I suggested.

“Is it rocky enough?” Julia leaned over the coffee table, her head tilted. “What about Death Valley? That’s in Nevada, right?”

I remembered hearing about the salt flats in Death Valley on TV. Badwater, they were called. The only animal that could survive there was some kind of snail. “Or the Mojave, in California? Do deserts have riverbeds?”

Julia scooped up the cards and stacked them on the table.

Years ago, when we were kids, we often played in the woods behind our childhood home. Somehow these nights had the same feeling as our games. At a certain point, Julia would always drop whatever we were doing and bolt into the woods. I would chase her, call after her, but she would just run and run. Finally I would climb the oak in our backyard and search for the peak of her head moving through the trees. I hardly ever found her. Usually I had to wait until she was ready to come out. Sometimes that took minutes; other times, hours.

My sister stared at the TV. I heard sirens. At first it sounded like they were right outside, but after a while, they began to fade.

“Here’s a story,” she said. “About two little girls who tried to make something out of nothing.”

* * *

By Monday, Julia had reached her limit. That night she muted the TV and lay on the couch, her head in my lap. I nestled my fingers in her hair. It was thick and tangled and smelled like her coconut shampoo.

“I can’t stay in this place anymore,” she said.

At first I thought she was talking about Opa-locka and felt a wash of relief. “It’s about time. Where do you want to go?”

Julia didn’t seem to hear me. “Mom was right. From now on, we should just pretend he’s dead.”

I pulled my fingers out of her hair. “How can we pretend that? He’s right there on the news.”

“It’s like being in a maze,” she said. “We’re never going to get anywhere.”

She was right. Between Mr. Defonte and our father, I could feel myself being consumed by mystery. But that was beside the point. It didn’t even feel like a choice, to wade into all of this. I didn’t understand how she could decide to stop.

“I have to let it go.” She sat up and rubbed her forehead. “I just have to.”

A still of our father was on TV. It was from when he had just arrived in Nevada. He wore a yellow polo shirt and was smiling broadly, a neat crest of gray hair arcing over his forehead. It might have been under the worst circumstances possible, but he was back in our lives.

“Look at him, Julia.” I leaned toward her and pressed my palm against her cheek. “He’s right there.”

“I know he is,” she said. “And I wish he wasn’t.”

After that night, she went back to working with the shady private investigators. She started coming home smelling like whiskey and smoke, a gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans, even though we’d lost the firearm license. Just in case , she told me. She got a pager and it buzzed constantly. She lost weight. Her hair thinned. The spaces beneath her eyes hollowed out. She looked the same as she did in jail, weary and sad. Once I heard her screaming at someone in our parking lot. By the time I looked out the window, my sister was alone and sitting on the ground, her face in her hands. I went downstairs and crouched in front of her, stepping in a small pool of gasoline. I placed my hands on her knees. Julia , I said. Look at me. She sighed and tipped her head back, and for a moment I thought she was going to break out of whatever it was she’d fallen into. But then she jumped to her feet, went upstairs, and locked herself in her room. A few mornings later, I found her asleep on the couch, fully clothed, the gun on the coffee table. Her brown hair fell over her shoulders; her hands were folded under her chin. Her lips were parted in the exact same way our father’s had been in the photo we found online; they even had the same long, slender shape. On the couch, Julia was free of the sadness. She looked innocent and sweet and most people would have no idea what she was capable of. But I knew, because she was my sister. I knew she was keeping things from me.

* * *

Here was what I kept from Julia: Twice a month, I would go to Boca Raton for Mrs. Defonte’s rehearsals. By late July, they were in final preparations for Don Giovanni. They had done the last two rehearsals in full costume; the stage held a pair of elaborate gold balconies connected by a wide staircase. The steps were covered by a plush red rug. A chandelier hung from the ceiling. It was like seeing the opera on opening night, minus the audience. I almost felt bad that I hadn’t paid anything.