Anne of a Different Island

1

Anne

April 2022

"Name?" The barista's marker poised above the cup.

"Anne. With an e," I added.

I waited for the answering glimmer that would identify the girl at the airport coffee shop as a kindred spirit. Any sort of recognition, I told myself, would be a sign. A connection, like a message from my dad.

When I was eight, my father brought a copy of Anne of Green Gables home from the library's used-book sale. I'd been sick for a week, some kind of flu that left me confined to the house, antsy and bored. My easygoing father was useless in the sickroom, my mother said. (Uselessness, in her eyes, was a sin, like greed or envy or forgetting to take off your shoes in the house.) He'd stood there awkwardly in the door of my small room, his big carpenter's hand wrapped around a battered green paperback with a red-haired girl on the cover, and I'd been overwhelmed with love.

He was not a reader, my dad. But somehow he'd understood (or been told by my English teacher, Mrs. Powell) that I needed Anne Shirley in my life. She became my fictional best friend, my inspiration, reassurance that a strange girl with a big imagination and a bigger mouth could find her place in the world.

Of course, I could never truly be Anne. I wasn't Canadian, for one thing. Or a natural redhead. Or an orphan. But as soon as I turned eighteen, I had an Anne Shirley quote tattooed on my right arm, paid for with savings from working in my mother's fudge shop over the summer: Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.

"Looks like a mistake to me," my mother said when I'd proudly revealed my new ink.

The barista scrawled on the cup. "Anything else?"

Her voice broke into my memories. I blinked, abruptly recalled to the present. Around us, the terminal rang with footsteps, rattling wheels, and echoing flight announcements bouncing off the cavernous ceiling. "Oh. No. Thanks."

"Receipt?"

I shook my head wordlessly, stuffing a dollar into the tip jar. I was already running late. Again. I couldn't miss my connecting flight. I grabbed my drink, glancing at the name written on the side of the cup. E-N-N.

Stupid tears pricked my eyes.

"Not everyone thinks Anne Shirley is a cultural icon," Chris sometimes pointed out with gentle logic.

But Chris wasn't here.

A lump lodged in my throat. Neither was Dad. Not here. Ever again. Gone. Another echo in the emptiness of my heart.

I was going home to my father's funeral. Alone. Without my boyfriend.

It wasn't Chris's fault, I told myself as I sprinted for the gate, my carry-on bag banging behind me.

On Tuesday night, my mother had called, her voice uncharacteristically soft. Subdued. ("It's your father. His heart . . .") Chris had come straight from his shift, holding me as I ugly cried, plying me with mugs of tea and boxes of tissues. He'd rearranged his schedule so we could make the long drive together from Chicago to St. Ignace for the funeral. But then, at the last moment, one of his patients-a little boy with Ewing sarcoma-was readmitted to the hospital.

"I want to be there for you," Chris had said in his best bedside manner, holding both my hands.

The but was unspoken, like so many things between us.

But my work comes first.

But my patients need me more than you do.

Chris was a pediatric oncologist. He treated children with leukemia. Teens with brain tumors. Only a monster would insist that his presence at the funeral of a man he'd barely met was somehow more important.

His hands were smooth and warm. A doctor's hands, calm and capable. I'd squeezed them back. "It's okay," I lied. "I'll be fine."

I admired his dedication so much. But (also unspoken) I needed him, too. I wanted him with me this weekend. Or maybe, now that Dad was gone, I just wanted to feel like I came first with somebody.

The lump was back, a red-hot ache in my throat.


The Mackinac Island ferry loomed above the dock, its steel hull dirty white against the choppy gray water and leaden sky.

There were three kinds of people on Mackinac. The tourists and day-trippers who swarmed the island for six months every year, buying fudge and souvenirs, renting bikes and taking selfies. The wealthy part-timers with their private airplanes and Victorian-style summer homes overlooking the water. And the locals who waited on them, who cleaned their houses and hotel rooms, who carried their bags and watched their kids, who worked for the stables or the park service.

Oh, and the fourth kind. My kind. The ones who went away.

I surrendered my bag to a dockworker and scuttled inside the cabin, taking shelter from a raw wind that cut through my puffer jacket. The temperature was twenty degrees colder than in Chicago, the April sky heavy with the threat of snow.

By habit, I took a seat in one of the back rows with the rest of the locals. A dozen teenagers with athletic bags and water bottles milled around, accompanied by a handful of adults-the track team with their chaperones. I recognized Mrs. Mosley, who gave me detention for setting the snake in science class free, and Principal Olson.

I shrank into my coat. I was a teacher now, the grown-up in charge, the adult in the room. But without Chris beside me, I had nothing to show for my expensive college education and all my big talk of becoming a famous writer. Nothing to prove I had changed from the weird kid who refused to grow up, who stared out the window and talked too much in class, who invented elaborate histories for her dolls and played horses in the woods long after other girls had given up pretending.

The ship shuddered to life.

"Hey there, Annie."

I extended my neck out of my jacket. "Mr. Bartok. Hi!"

George Bartok had been a ferryman since my dad used to take me to the mainland to practice for my driver's license. His son was married to my best friend.

He took off his feed cap, running a hand over his thinning hair. "Terrible thing about Rob."

Emotion rushed in and clogged my throat. I didn't know what to say. Chris would know. He talked to patients' families about death and grief all the time. I searched my jumbled brain for an appropriate response and finally came up with, "Thanks."

The bridge slid away behind us. The engine rattled and throbbed underfoot. The ride to the island took twenty minutes in winter. I pulled out my phone to text Chris-my port in the storm, my refuge.

Landed!

My thumbs hovered over the screen. Smiley face? No. I was on my way to my father's funeral. Kissy face? Maybe. Wish you were here? My mind skittered like a squirrel in traffic before I finally added a heart and hit send.

No reply. Which was totally fine. He was at the hospital, saving lives.

"Look, honey, a lighthouse!" a woman in a fur collar said to her companion.

Beyond it, the humped back of the island rose like a turtle from the great lake.

Home.

The word slid unbidden into my brain. It wasn't my home. Not any longer. The island was my parents' home. My breath hitched. My mother's home.

My father was dead.

I huddled deeper into my seat, jiggling my leg along to the vibration of the boat. My mom made me take baths and do my homework. She fed me when I came in from playing, grubby and sweaty and covered with bug bites. She went to parent-teacher conferences and took me to doctors' appointments. But during the summer months, she was gone-working at her fudge shop-from the time I woke up until she put supper on the table at six or seven o'clock. And when she was home, my constant fidgeting, my ability to lose track of time, and my tendency to blurt out whatever was in my head grated on her like fingernails on a chalkboard. "Less talking, more doing," she would say as she nudged me to clear the table, to put away my shoes / book bag / mess, to sit down and be quiet.

But Dad listened. When Mom shooed me out from underfoot, he took me with him to his jobsites, nodding along as I chattered, grunting occasionally in encouragement. Now my anchor was gone. Who was I, without his belief in me? And how would Mom and I get along without his buffering presence?

The engines churned as the boat maneuvered into the harbor. I heard the freight doors rumble open and stood, clutching the back of my seat for balance, as the passengers filed ashore.

The dock was almost empty.

Motor vehicles were banned on Mackinac. There was a police car, of course. An ambulance, a couple of fire and utility trucks, and the snowmobiles we rode in winter when the roads became impassable for bikes.

But today, only a single carriage waited to take guests to the inn. A flatbed dray was being loaded with plastic-wrapped shopping totes, pallets of groceries, and cartons of summer merchandise. For the next few weeks, the island still belonged to the islanders. There was no waiting fleet of bicycle porters, strapping luggage to their handlebars with bungee cords. No line of horse-drawn taxis. No welcoming committee.

No Mom.

I grabbed my rollaway bag and bumped down the gangway, shivering a little with grief and cold.

A cream-colored dog with a heavy coat left the knot of workmen waiting around the freight ramp and approached, waving its fluffy tail.

"Well, hello," I said. "Whose little girl are you?"

The dog bumped its head-warm, soft-against my fingers and then stuck its nose in my crotch.

"Honey! Heel."

That voice . . .

The back of my arms prickled. I dropped my hand.

That guy, there, his long, rangy body obscured by heavy boots and a bulky jacket, a faded cap over his thick brown hair. A dark beard covered half his face, but I recognized him. Joe Miller, my father's former apprentice and the bane of my childhood existence.

"Is that your special pet name? Or her actual dog name?" I asked.

"Dog name." Was it possible he colored slightly under the beard? The dog left off sniffing me and trotted over to him. "My sister named her."

He had a half sister, I remembered. Hannah? Hailey? She must be in her teens by now.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

His deep brown eyes met mine. "Could say I came to meet you." My jaw must have dropped, because his mouth curled in a near smile. "I'm picking up some windows for a job on Bogan Lane."

Dad wasn't an ordinary builder-he was a rebuilder, specializing in restoration carpentry. Memory stabbed me: eight-year-old me perching on somebody's front porch steps, prattling away as my father painstakingly replaced rotted balusters while teenage Joe watched and handed him tools. He called me the Pest. I thought he was a jerk. Four years ago, Dad had made him a partner in the business.

I stuck out my chin. "Don't let me stop you."

"I won't." He lifted my bag smoothly and loaded it into his utility cart.

I could wrestle him for it. I didn't need his help. But I didn't want my mother's neighbors to see me scuffling-with an older boy!-within five minutes of landing in town. Not that they'd be surprised. Oh, Annie, Mrs. Mosley would sigh. Or, It's that Gallagher girl again. I winced.

Plus, it was over a mile to Harrisonville, aka the Village, where the year-round residents lived. No big deal, unless you were dragging a hard-wheeled rollaway over crumbling asphalt.

"Thanks," I said.

He nodded shortly. Conversation over. The dog settled at his feet and sighed. They made a funny pair, the dark, surly man and the cheerful golden dog. He should have had a Doberman. A Rottweiler. I shivered again.

"So. I'll see you." I shoved my hands deep in my pockets and started up the hill.

"Sorry your dad died," he said behind me.

Something stuck like an awl in my throat. Gratitude, maybe, that he'd spoken the awful truth.

I was sick of people avoiding the subject, pussyfooting around died and dead as if my father's death was something dirty and unspeakable. As if saying the words out loud would summon their own mortality, like Voldemort. But no polite euphemisms-passed, gone, lost-mitigated the terrible reality.

Dad was dead.

It was a relief to have someone acknowledge it. Even Joe.

I waggled my fingers over my shoulder and continued on my way without looking back.

Through the quiet downtown, past quaint storefronts and shuttered restaurants on Main Street. A new coffee shop (closed). A new restaurant (help wanted). Thirteen Moons, the gift shop owned by my best friend Daanis's family.

My mother's teal-and-white shop-Maddie's Candies-was ahead. The big picture windows, where she made fudge in summer to a sidewalk audience, were dark, but down the street, the lights were on in the Mustang Lounge. My mother declared eating out was for tourists. But sometimes Dad would take me to the Mustang after work. I'd suck pop through a straw, my legs dangling from a bar stool, feeling grown-up and special, while he ordered a beer he never finished. Sometimes, to my secret resentment, he invited Joe along.

It occurred to me Dad's death must be a loss for him, too. For Joe. Dad had been his mentor as well as his business partner.

The road climbed past stately Victorian houses and million-dollar mansions, winding under trees and along the cemetery. Patches of ice lingered in the ditches and shadows. I breathed in. The mineral scent of the soil, the earth waking from its winter sleep, stirred something inside me, instinct or guilt.

When I'd left the island, five months into the pandemic, Mom told me not to come back. But I could have visited more often. I should have stayed longer at Christmas. Dad had said he understood, but we never got the chance to say goodbye. Another stab.

I swung open our gate and walked up the cracked sidewalk. The fence had gaps like broken teeth. The siding was peeling. The wishing well Dad had built years ago was rotting, shingles lying on the grass like leaves. My father's talent for restoration had never included home improvement projects. But there were obvious signs of recent efforts to fix things up. The sagging gutters had been cleaned and reattached. The step at the bottom of the stairs, broken as long as I could remember, had been repaired.