The Nelligan Review

Orcas Island by Anna Oberg

 

“Later, what I remembered most was the way he’d said my name.

He said it like he believed he knew me.”

—Rachel Kushner, from The Flamethrowers

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***

I wait for the phone to ring. It’s after midnight, Eastern Time. D. calls from the other side of the country—Bellingham, Washington—after he gets off work. I settle in—cross my legs, stuff my knees up inside my t-shirt, and sit on my feet to ward off the chill in the empty living room. From the sofa, I peep through the gap in the window sheers. Darkness swallows the hedge on the other side of the road.

The distance between D. and I takes on a color in my memory—it’s the same hue as the pool of light at the foot of the streetlamp across the street—and as the shadow beyond it.

***

D. works as a temp, cleaning offices after hours. He has a DUI and can’t drive, so his mom or brother drop him off wherever he’s supposed to work. Later, when he calls me from the spare bedroom at his parents’ house, I stare at the streetlamp, asking questions.

What is it like? To clean those places? How is it where you are? Do the clouds blow in low and dark off the Pacific right before night falls? Does the rain lash the window, beads of darkness rolling down the glass? Do you feel the shame of your circumstances? What does any of this mean? Who are we together?

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These, and all my other questions, D. doesn’t wish to answer or doesn’t have answers for—I understand, now. All I know then is the way his narrative plays out in my imagination from far, far away. A darkened city scene. An office building, with a single light on. I stand at street level, watching—in my mind’s eye—D. work as he describes his labor to me. There he is: the only character in his own story. A wall of windows, and through the greenish glass, tinted to block the rare sunshine, I watch. There is D. in a dingy white t-shirt and ripped khaki shorts emptying the waste basket, dumping coffee from a mug. Cleaning out the refrigerator. Scrubbing the microwave. Fluorescent light echoes into the night above me.

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As I sit on the couch late into the night talking to D, our separateness solidifies, calcifies. In me, it turns white hot, a vibrating anxiety, and in D. it becomes a certain soft cruelty that surfaces when he least means for it to. But, it arrives nonetheless.

 

***

I visit D. over a long weekend in February. It’s the second semester of my senior year of college, and I’m exhausted by everything familiar to me. Mostly, though, I’m tired of the distance, tired of napping during the day, so I can stay up talking on the phone.

I fly to Seattle, and after driving north to his parents’ house in Bellingham, D. and I board a ferry bound for Orcas Island.

It’s cold, gray. Off season. The rooms are cheap. The plan is to stay two nights. D. and I depart Anacortes in the afternoon, and by the time we reach the island, it’s dark. We drive to the place we’re staying, and then out to a tiny grocery story for wine, cheese, and some odds and ends for breakfast the next day. Back at the room, I can hear the ocean through the pitch-black night. The darkness heightens my other senses and makes me afraid, even though there is nothing to fear.

 

***

Orcas Island is an unfamiliar wilderness, one of several islands—the San Juans—scattered like jewels in the Salish Sea. It’s difficult to remember a place I’ve been only once. I look at a map of the archipelago, but it doesn’t jog my memory as much as make me understand each memory I hold, I’ve built in hindsight. The past takes on a sense of discovery this way, like flipping through a jumble of loose photos in my mind. Most of the images have no bearing on each other, just isolated shots, minor instances. The island is cordoned off, too—it exists alone—a terrain bearing no resemblance to the shore we disembark from or the port the ferry returns us to days later.

 

***

The next morning, I go for a run. I follow a thin road, unpaved but smooth. At one point, the way is so narrow the sea sloshes onto both sides. There is no margin for error. I wonder what happens if the ocean becomes angry, if this low isthmus floods at the first sign of a storm. If the rising water keeps anyone from coming or going. I stand in the middle of the road for a long time before I notice the pale waves, the way the sun looks as it slices the milky blue tide. I turn full circle, observe the ongoingness of water. The way it fills where the land falls away.

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I realize then what it means to occupy an island—how water is an empire and it’s difficult to go anywhere else, to navigate away from the waterlocked shore. How it’s not easy to leave or stay in a place so encompassed. Suddenly, I’m thinking of D., wondering if he is a difficult place to be, a place I can’t stay or leave. If I am encircled by the thought of him. The ocean is briefly lit. The thought passes. A sunbeam splits the clouds, and I know I’ll never see this color again—the milky blue green of this sea. I have no words for it.

 In my mind, it becomes Orcas Island blue. I’ve never seen it anywhere else.

 

***

Before nightfall, D. and I stroll the shore outside our hotel room. The waves, lit rose gold as the sun sets, are cold flames. Threads of light carve the storm clouds, braid to the shadows in the water below. The Pacific pounds the rocks as the last daylight bleeds through the pines. The ocean roars, loud and red like a burning down of everything else. I am surprised D. and I don’t turn to stone, there, wading in the frigid water. It’s as if we become statues in my memory. Pillars of salt, still and believing, though the future is hidden from us.

When it’s too dark to see, D. and I return to the room and fall into bed. Afterwards, I lay on top of the covers, noticing the darkness. No blinds cover the sliding door that opens to the stairs outside. A partition separates each room’s access to the balcony, so no one can see in. It’s not yet six o’clock, but a thick, moonless night looms over the sea beyond the rail.

 

***

It’s quiet, except for the unending sound of waves pounding the shore. D. leaves to get ice or smoke a cigarette—I can’t recall the detail with certainty. I’m still naked on the bed, young and naïve about the unwashed filth on the hotel coverlet. After he’s been gone a while, I hear a loud thump, like a gigantic bird smashing into the windowpane. A hooded shape springs from the darkness, and a man’s face peers in at my naked form. His tight fists pummel the glass.

Immediately, I’m terrified.

***

My body remembers a night at high school swim practice, walking from the locker room to the pool. A man emerges from the darkness, steps up to the glass wall, and presses his bare genitals against the window. The violation is quiet, a calm moment ruined, as I mentally prepare to swim. Suddenly, I’m describing what I’ve seen to complete strangers at the front desk. Their kind voices attempt to reassure me: they are calling the police. Fear jolts through me again later, though, as I cross the dim parking lot alone. Who lurks in the shadow, beyond the edge of the streetlamp’s watery light?

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In a flash, I remember again, a time in college: a man drives alongside the paved trail where I run, hovering beside me in his Jeep, masturbating to the time of my footsteps. I get lost that afternoon, trying to find a different way home, praying he’s not still following me. It's the same, somehow, the shape each violation carves in me, an emptiness that sickens me, makes me ask: am I disposable?

D. knows about these experiences. The rawness they leave behind. Something is set off in me when I realize he is the one banging against the glass of our hotel room, trying to scare me—as a joke. Some seed is planted, a thing that frightens me more than the idea of a stranger prowling outside. It creates a wave of premonition that won’t settle or still or flatten for a long time—until D. and I are over, until after he tells me months later, “I don’t love you. I never did.” This knowledge that D. holds power—to strike fear in me and enjoy doing so—fills me with shame. It takes only an instant for me to exile myself from myself—one moment of weakness, my own vulnerability—to know I won’t trust myself for a long time.

 

***

Our excursion to Orcas Island feels like a dream now, a watery memory I can’t entirely make out. There are so few details—what I do remember grows faint with time and age. The fragments coalesce, knit a tapestry worn transparent by time. It is woven of thin partialities—nothing is whole, except the clarity of that hotel room, me naked on the bed, seared by the thought of D. seeing me in a moment when my consent is withdrawn. I still wonder how long he watches me before he makes his presence known. For as long as I watched him, in my mind, while we talked on the phone, asking questions about his life?

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Fear has a clarifying effect. This terror from long ago has lost most of its authority, but the feeling of the moment when I realize I’m being watched still carries weight. It’s complex—in my mind, I think my relationship with D. means I can trust him. Now that I’ve lived longer and seen more, I understand love doesn’t equal trust. It’s a different process. Trust grows from an accumulation of moments proven, from repeated assurance my walls no longer need to stay up. Love itself doesn’t preclude anything.

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This is the work of my artist’s mind—to create something huge and monstrous out of the smallest instant, the tiniest detail. The thread is fine, but it is sewn into my psyche. From this moment in the hotel room, fear occupies a piece of my consciousness when I consider intimacy.

***

Even now, remembering Orcas Island makes me uncomfortable. It’s the premise of the story—it’s all wrong from the start. I’m uneasy with the context, the whole thing. Would I have been so frightened if I was clothed when D. flung himself up against the glass? Doubtful. I would have been more likely to reach for some blunt object to strike an intruder with. My vulnerability—my nakedness—makes me both angry and shrink into the shadow of shame. It’s infuriating, even now.

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It galls me to look back and observe my primary reaction as fear—but not fear for myself or my wellbeing. I am afraid after D. watches me jump up and tear the blanket from the bed as I try to hide, that he won’t love me anymore. What bothers me most is seeing myself be seen—seeing myself through D.’s eyes: young and scared and small in my terror.

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I am far from it now—but, the memory of my fear still occasionally renders me motionless. Panic rises in my body, even though I know the circumstances of Orcas Island are gone, and I haven’t loved D. for a very long time. This is the only kind of secret I can keep: one that hurts me not to speak of.

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In the hotel room, my fear is fleeting, gone almost as soon as it arrives. A wave of sorrow arrives in its place, gutting me. Still naked, I cry big tears into the dirty comforter. My body heaves, as though some floodgate has opened into the innermost territory of me, and I cannot shut it.

***

The next morning, D. and I pack our things to depart. On our way to the ferry, we visit Mt. Constitution, nestled inside a park with a lush green lawn rolling out like carpet toward the ocean. On top of the mountain, there is an old structure, a stone fire tower, providing a way to see danger coming from land or by sea . There, I expect some sort of  action. I want something to happen. I will something—anything—to go wrong, so I can yell about it. I’m in a mood. I go quiet as we walk uphill to the lookout. I remove my hand from D.’s.

My expectation that something will happen is another mistake. Something already happened, the night before, when I lay on the bed studying the darkness, not expecting to be seen. The ball is in my court, but I don’t move to retrieve it. I don’t create the action I seek. I don’t leave. I don’t walk away.

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From the window of the lookout: the skin of the sea is a map—its only destination a marked vastness. I see nothing on the horizon. It is a straight line: all points are available. I could move toward any of them, toward any place at all. Out there is the curve of the earth. Out there is what I want—it is unreachable, infinite. Shame keeps me wondering what could possibly be next.  

 

***

I keep sifting through, searching for meaning in what happened on Orcas Island. When I write about D., so often I skip to the finale, to the part where pain fully enters our story, and we are gone from each other for good. But, more than half a year passes between when D. slams himself against the glass window of our hotel room and when he tells me, “I don’t love you. I never did.” It is a season of denial, of me thinking D. is what love looks like. On Orcas Island, he pulls the rug from under me. It becomes evidence—the first cut—when he tells me what I already know but am unwilling to see. When he finally says aloud that he never loved me, the words are a redundancy, an echo I wish I’d listened to in that seaside hotel room.

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Even after all these years, sometimes I try to give D. the benefit of the doubt. I think about it—play it over in my mind. Maybe he doesn’t mean the words quite how he says them. I don’t love you. I never did. Maybe he doesn’t mean to slam the door as hard as he does, make the walls shake, pictures fall. But, when I remember my terror on Orcas Island, I know he means everything. It is all intentional. He wishes for the knife to pierce exactly as deep as it does.

***

Now, in my current work as a photographer, I’m often asked why I take nude photos of myself. I haven’t landed on a solid, knowable answer, but my fear in the hotel room on Orcas Island comes to mind. With my camera in hand, I have the power to preempt this moment. I take a photo and edit it. I can control what people see, how they see it. How they see me. With my camera, I can forestall shame’s inevitable arrival. The camera is my defense against ever feeling defenseless.

 

***

I’ve written about the failure of my relationship with D. for more than a decade and a half. I always come back to it, both fascinated and horrified by my need to study our unraveling. There still lives in me the shame of looking back so often. I see myself in the room in D.’s parents’ house, months after Orcas Island, sitting on the edge of the bed as he tells me, “I don’t love you. I never did,” and I can’t beg my way out of it. I can’t get him to love me. After he says what he says, I beg anyway, compounding my mortification.

It seems the world D. and I once occupy will always interest me, because of how thoroughly it disappears when he drives away that foggy August morning on the road between the pines. The shadow of his shadow, the ghost of his ghost—they gather in my memory, begin the long task of following me home.

***

This sound haunts me: shallow water, lapping at the edge of a rocky shore. Waves crashing on a jagged beach at night, no one to see. Really, what disturbs me is the memory of silence when I expect something else—when I expect to hear the whir of a car in reverse, turning around, coming back for me through the fog, the tall pines, the same way it left.

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What happened on Orcas Island is artifact. Something in me fears writing it will make it disintegrate, fall apart. Another part hopes it will. This is the material of memory—it is made of desire—desire to resurrect who I was back then. To bring myself back to life. When I think of Orcas Island, the ocean is the only context. The dark sea howls into the inky blackness. I look out, and I can’t see it—but, I can hear it roar. This is also the way I know the past—as a place gone dark. I can no longer see it, but it exists in my mind, reminding me what is there is there to stay, even as it shifts and moves, ebbs and flows with the crashing tide.