Chapter 17
THE VISIT
I scrambled up the polished wooden stairs to the bedroom as soon as Aster dismissed me. My head spun as I processed the daylight flowing through the windows and the stiffness in my own joints. I was tired, disoriented. I had been sitting behind that desk for a long time.
I still refused to believe that Aster had warped time around us in our trip to the wreck.
We had spent the greater part of an hour at the bottom of the sea.
I couldn’t doubt my own experiences. It was coming back out of it that confused me, waking up here somehow, back behind the laptop, typing again.
I still didn’t understand what Aster had done to me, how he was able to energize me from within.
My life grew blurry the more I looked at it.
Typing, eating, talking, sleeping waking up—it all fed into a cycle that swirled around me as the days on the calendar ticked by.
We could have gone to the wreck last night, or we could have gone almost a month ago.
The lighthouse at Illumination Point stood against time, after all.
When I checked my phone, I ran a quick calculation and realized that a little over a week had passed since I had last assigned myself a date. Aster was right. If my parents were still coming, I expected them to arrive right about now.
Another thing I saw when I checked my phone was a string of messages and voicemail recordings updating me on their location and when they expected to arrive.
A sickening guilt crawled into my gut. What did they think when I didn’t pick up the phone?
What did I think, knowing that I hadn’t heard it or even remembered my phone in such a long time?
For the first time, the concept of cost occurred to me.
Aster and everything he had given me came with a cost. Yes, I could write now, and everything that barred my progress before—even those elusive tripping points that messed with my sense of confidence—no longer impeded me. But neither of us were free.
I was missing time with Aster, clear and simple. And time was one thing I could never get back.
When I showered, I took extra care to rinse out the oily buildup in my hair. My heart beat irregularly, speeding at random and then slowing again. I stood still in the water and placed an uneasy hand over my chest. Either I was ascending to something beyond human or losing what humanity I had left.
When I turned off the water, I took a couple deep breaths of steam and ignored the fact that I felt dizzy, that the walls of the bathroom shifted even as I dried my hair and slipped on a set of clean clothes.
The small porcelain doll watched me from her stand.
Her eyes glittered in the light more than usual until I felt the need to look away.
I didn’t know how to greet my parents. They would want a tour of the lighthouse and dinner at one of the local restaurants, preferably something with view of the shore.
And I wanted to impress them. If Aster decided to play nice, he might pour them some of his indulgent wine and we could end the evening sitting out on the porch overlooking the ocean.
Then there was the question about Aster, about how to introduce him and explain his presence.
Lying came more readily than telling the truth when it came to Aster.
I could already hear myself explaining that my guest was a local boy, my tour guide who knew a thing or two about sinking ships and storms at sea.
He helped me with research, and all great writers needed to research, right?
But every time I thought of Aster, a new feeling flooded my chest. Hunger. Desperation. Shame?
No. Why would I be ashamed of someone who had helped me so much?
Shame implied guilt and wrongdoing, and our work couldn’t have been better.
But increasingly I saw an element of self-consciousness and a departure from nature in our relationship.
To us. I thought of the scene we shared on the ocean floor, the way he removed my clothes and made love to me there on the wreck of a sunken ship.
My knees buckled at the reality of the sensation, at the clarity of my memory from a supposedly invented encounter.
The steam on the mirror had begun to lift, revealing a stain of pink blushing across my cheeks.
I looked away from the mirror and took a breath, and my heart calmed.
Before I ran down the stairs again, I pulled a tag from the armpit of my shirt and realized that I’d never worn these clothes before.
So many of my plans had changed that I hardly recognized myself from three months prior.
Even last year felt like another lifetime ago.
Aster had been the only person in my life since June, and I hardly knew how to prepare for the presence of anyone else.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs, a car door slammed shut. I looked for Aster, but he had disappeared.
“Aster?” I asked out loud, already aware that he had chosen this time to disappear. So much for finding a way to stay alone. He preferred to hide when the pressure grew too strong.
The lighthouse was an old structure, even a historic site, and as such the lighthouse quarters had no working doorbell installed. I waited until after I heard the knocks to open it, and all the while my heart pounded with all the anxiety that would have come with meeting someone for the first time.
Then I opened the door, and when I saw my parents, a tremor worked its way down my limbs.
Mom stood taller than Dad, thin in a long, vintage dress and bonnet.
She looked so impressionistic that Winslow Homer might as well have included her in his painting on the living room wall.
Dad had a tanning line I could already see forming around the thick black frames of his sunglasses.
Both appeared as strangers, distant and unfamiliar.
It wasn’t just that I felt a distance between myself and them. It was that they both looked different now, glossy like the pages in a magazine. And I was a person holding the magazine, outside and with the ability to flip it shut.
“Hello,” I said. The word fell flat on my lips.
It was anticlimactic, estranged, but for all of my experience writing and finding ways to convey feelings, I couldn’t imagine anything else I could have said.
My thoughts raced with Aster and all Aster and I had done and the fact that I didn’t feel rightly human anymore.
My mom hugged me, a move which I reciprocated only partially. She said something nice and cookie-cutter for a greeting. Scripted.
My dad entered the room without bothering with a conventional greeting, an equally scripted appearance.
He hadn’t come here to see me, as I should have figured before they came in.
My mom’s script revolved around generic friendliness and social obligations.
My dad’s centered around atmosphere, things—comfort, curiosities, abnormalities.
Still predetermined. More and more I felt like we were all puppets and that Aster had given me the ability to see the strings that controlled our movements.
“I love the view,” my dad said, pointing out of a back window to the beach. “Can we go up to the tower? Do they let you up there?”
“They let me everywhere,” I said.
Then he moved to the shipwreck cross on the wall, skimming the plaque nearby and touching the rough wood with his fingers. My chest burned when I saw him touch it, and instinctively I searched for a way to distract him.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll show you around outside.”
Aster came down the stairs then, quiet and catlike. I turned around and looked at him and almost introduced him, but he put a finger to his lips to signal for silence. I’ve fixed it so they can’t see me, he said. It’s better this way. Go on and show them around. I’ll follow.
I nodded at Aster, trusting him, and proceeded to lead my parents outside.
While we walked around to the back of the house, Aster coached me in a series of pleasant lies to describe how I’d spent my time since my arrival in June.
I couldn’t have asked for better weather. It’s been sunny every day, and the beach is completely private. Sometimes I’ll sneak out here during the evenings as well and relax under the stars. We have a good view of the Milky Way.
We—I’d used we. I was thinking of Aster and I in the plural.
The slip passed unnoticed, even by the muse.
“Have you been writing, though?” My mom had taken her shoes off when we reached the sand. Now she stood with the water lapping around her toes, turning back to me while facing the horizon.
I saw the strings prompting my own reply, and I studied Aster in frustration.
He was kneeling and removing his sandals to walk more easily on the beach.
When he saw me, he nodded for me to continue.
Whenever I’m not out here, I’m writing. And I think it helps, being alone like this. Having the beach and the wind…
He nodded abruptly. “And all the history. That helps too.” I was surprised he didn’t already know a list of the wrecks in the area or facts about Illumination Point itself. He was a walking encyclopedia.
I almost tripped over a loose rock. Why did their presence set me so ill at ease? I felt forced. I should have mentioned Aster to them by now. I still could, and I wanted to. But it felt wrong, dragging him into a setting where he didn’t belong.
“Tell us all about it,” said my mom. “What are you writing? Is it a novel?”
A novel? Yes, I began. Too close—we were getting too close to Aster. Ahead of us, he waded ankle-deep in the water and leaned his head back as the waves lapped around him. His words appeared unspoken in my brain. It might not be much good. I think I’ll need to keep at it long after I leave.
I was getting too good at lying about things. Aster’s subtlety was so sleek, so automatic that the words he fed me sounded more convincingly like me than anything I actually felt at the moment.
“What’s it about?”
My cheeks flushed. It’s complicated. A literary piece. Not any conventional story, you know. The writing is its own adventure.
I didn’t know if my answer set my parents ill at ease or made them more curious.
My dad kept his eyes on the tower above and said something about wanting to climb it.
I accepted the distraction, ran back inside of the house and took the keys from the small basket on the kitchen counter where I kept them.
It felt strange to climb up the lighthouse without Aster. It felt like he owned this place, like I was only here as his guest. Still I thought of how I’d introduce them if he stepped in, but when I led my parents up the stone spiral stairs to the top, the air sounded hollow without his voice.
“Have you been alone here this whole time?” asked my dad.
I turned around. I’d pressed my hand to the stone wall of the tower and now I leaned into it. Yes, I said. But I’ve been so busy I’ve hardly noticed.
“Then you might want to keep your eyes open,” my mom jested from the back. Her voice echoed in the darkness behind us. “I thought I saw someone else here as we stepped into your house.”
It could be a ghost, I suggested. Illumination Point has seen its share of shipwrecks. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few lost sailors stopped in from time to time to remember what home felt like.
Now at last we reached the top. I stood in the back of the room with the open Maine countryside at my back. This space had an uncanny way of making me feel like an eye, a raw spark of soul looking out on the sea on a sunny day.
My parents both made adoring comments, but instead of responding I began to fixate compulsively on how little real communication there was between us, like my life was a play and I was merely a character expected to recite the same lines as always.
After the tour, my parents drove away. They left behind a care packet of snacks and hot chocolate mixes, as well as a set of wood-engraved coasters of the Illumination Point lighthouse that they found in a nearby tourist shop.
Aster stepped as well, claiming that he needed time to clear his head after the visit.
When I was alone, I took out the coasters and looked at them for a long moment in silence.
Now everything came to my head—my work, Aster, the stars, our trip to the bottom of the Atlantic.
I celebrated Aster’s absence and the moments I could claim all for myself.
I needed this time to connect to myself.
My head felt clearer now, like the fresh air had blown a breeze of sanity into my brain.
Aster didn’t return for the rest of the day, and after I ate a makeshift sandwich for lunch, my exhaustion hit me with full force. The spell he’d cast on me felt long ago and far away, a relic from a determined daydream.
But my bed felt empty that night and uncomfortably cold. While I left the window open at first, I soon got up and slid the glass shut before pulling the thin white curtains over it. I had the strangest feeling that some of the stars outside were awake, and that they were watching me in my solitude.
In my sleep I didn’t dream. It was the deepest I’d slept all summer, and for the first time I didn’t care if I needed to sleep in late in the morning.