Eight households remained on St. Jerome island. And almost half of the twenty-five remaining souls were considering a move mainland. Year after year, the already small landmass off California’s Central Coast shrunk as the Pacific Ocean’s lapping transformed to mastication. More land was on the market than owned—small plots scattered around an increasingly jagged coastline. Buyers could see the future, and for sale signs swung endlessly in ocean breezes. Though everyone understood St. Jerome’s fate, no one did much, save shake their heads and say, “It’s a shame. It really is a shame.”
Maeve’s situation, however, was delicate. She wasn’t thinking of leaving, not yet. Her husband Bill died a few years ago, suffered a heart attack in the heart of the house during an intense storm, and after his death, she planted his ashes in a garden in the front yard. The ground, always somewhat sacred, became fully hallowed. The property had been in Bill’s family for decades, but it had taken Maeve and Bill until retirement to arrange their lives in order to live there full-time. The island was the only place they had ever wanted to be.
In recent years, a slew of reporters had visited St. Jerome; it enjoyed a level of notoriety that residents both reveled in and reviled. Increasing loss of ice in Western Antarctica accelerated sea-level rise in California, and along with that, storms became more severe while animals on the island and in its surrounding waters suffered. Anyone who lived there could tell you wistfully how it used to be. Their stories were so moving that at one time talk began of filming a reality series about them, Shrinking Island, but after a few focus groups responded poorly to the premise itself, the idea died.
Maeve preferred less attention rather than more. She and her husband fell in love with the island for its tiny endemic foxes, its cormorants and pelicans, its succulents, its panoramic views, the sunlight that seemed endless, and, of course, the solitude. Island life hadn’t always been easy. She could remember times when she felt so alone, there on the edge of North America, a ferry ride from the rest of civilization. Disagreements and annoyances with neighbors were common in such an isolated community. But she had adopted a movement, an animal kindness, that carried her at all times, eschewing conflict and becoming a center of neutrality amongst her neighbors. Her husband did the same, and they were well-liked, though sometimes ridiculed for their lack of engagement in island politics.
Now, with the number of people dwindling and the coastline crumbling, a bond had formed among the residents, a camaraderie, a fake sense of joy—like family members visiting a dying patient and trying to pretend everything would be OK. Once a week, a group gathered at someone’s house for a barbeque or wine and beer. Attendees varied, but Maeve was always there. This week, it was her turn to host. She fixed a green salad, some sandwiches and snacks, and put out a box of wine she hoped hadn’t gotten too old. One by one, her neighbors filed in.
“Anyone walk over to the old Longfellow place?” Jim asked before filling his mouth with tortilla chips.
“Yeah, I went over there last week,” said Carol, the island’s other widow. “Back screen porch fell clean off the house. I saw a board floating in the water.”
“Longfellow always complained about that sticky back door,” someone else chimed in.
The group laughed and then fell silent, given the situation. The silence was soon interrupted when from off to the right, the laughter of children rang out. A collective smile broke across the group. It was the Peterson children, the only kids on the island, playing a spirited game of tag. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson gave each other a look—love and joyous conspiracy—and ran off to give their babies chase. The Peterson family was the life of the island.
“I have something to say,” Jim said, after the Petersons were out of earshot. He stood up, took a long swig of his glass of wine.
“Well?” Maeve said. A pregnant pause before giving news was never a good thing.
“I’m leaving. And so are the Johnsons and the Lopez family. We’ll leave our houses as they are, and we’ll accept the consequences. I suppose we may come back to vacation here at some point if our houses are standing, but all of us are considering moving east of the coast, maybe even further north.”
The group murmured; Maeve and Carol got up and refilled their wine glasses. Maeve noticed the wine did have a funk to it.
“And then there were five,” she said, raising her glass to the group. She felt a pang of sickness as she said it, as though she were a child being forced to eat lima beans. The party dissipated soon after, only Carol sticking around to help her finish the souring wine.
“Are you thinking about it?” Maeve asked when it was just the two of them.
“Not like the others are. You?”
“No. This is my retirement. This was the whole point of being retired.”
“You ever glad your husband’s dead? I mean so that he wouldn’t have to see this exodus?”
“I’m jealous.” They were sitting outside still, watching the sun sink in its orange glory. A small fox lingered at the edge of the yard, nosing the coarse grass for scraps. Maeve tossed a few crackers toward it. “Lucky bastard. I’m not really fit for starting over.”
“It’s looking like we aren’t going to have a choice. Could be sooner rather than later.”
Maybe it was the way the little fox looked desperate or the way Carol’s comment set with Maeve, but she felt a bolt run through her.
“There is always a choice. I am sick of people acting like there isn’t a damn choice,” she said. Then she got up and went in the house, leaving Carol and the fox to sit alone in the coming darkness.
Maeve was tired, though when she lay down it was clear she wouldn’t sleep. She got up, turned on the television, and sat in her husband’s old recliner. She put a leftover sandwich on a plate and bit into it but couldn’t swallow. The bland ball of bread and cheese wouldn’t go down, and she spit it into a napkin after chewing for too long. The dated wood end table next to her had a drawer, and in it was a magic 8 ball, an old thing her husband had for years. At parties he pulled it out, passing it around the table to guests, who laughed, their faces ruddy, high on beer and wine. They asked it many questions and for years after, Maeve and Bill talked about all the potential implications of those nights, whose marriages, whose children, whose careers had hinged on shakes of the magic 8 ball? The memory made her tear up a little. She hadn’t touched the thing since Bill died, and now she inspected it for fingerprints, his fingerprints, a sign of his hands which were not his anymore but belonged to the small flower garden in front of the house.
She held the toy to her breast, closed her eyes, and shook it gently. Before she opened them to look down at the ball, a thought pedestrian enough to shock her entered her mind: the island was complicit in Bill’s death. Had they not been on the island, help would have arrived in time. She would not have had to hold him as life left his body, would not have had to watch the reflection of the dumb ceiling fan spin in his locking eyes. She would not have had to open a window to let him free when she was sure he was gone. He might still be here, a stent in place, a low-sodium diet and an exercise routine in order. She opened her eyes. You may rely on it, the magic 8 ball read.
She shoved the toy back in the drawer and stood up. Tomorrow, she decided, first thing, she’d make arrangements to take the ferry back to the mainland. She had friends in Ventura, she had friends in Santa Barbara, she had friends in Portland. There had to be a place for her, another way of living that could be hers. She regretted leaving Carol out there alone earlier. It wasn’t like Maeve to act that way. That was someone else, some wounded animal on the defense.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stormed off like a little baby,” Maeve said. She was standing on Carol’s doorstep, the morning sun warming her back.
“It’s OK. Emotions are running high for everyone,” Carol said. “Come in for coffee.”
Over coffee, the women made a plan to spend a couple days in Ventura. They’d shop, look for apartments, and maybe even part-time jobs. “Just to help us meet people,” Carol said.
When she left Carol’s, she felt good, hopeful even. Whereas it seemed life had been progressing towards a full stop, now she imagined there would only be a pause and then a continuance. As she packed a small suitcase, she pushed images of Bill out of her mind, the way he had sat in his recliner and closed his eyes, just listening to the ocean. “This is paradise,” he used to mumble before drifting off.
“No,” she said to herself. “This isn’t paradise. It isn’t paradise at all.”
The next day, they arrived in the city, Carol slightly seasick and Maeve on edge from a poor night of sleep. But she felt better after stepping off the boat and onto land. The beach was beautiful, and their hotel was near it. They cleaned up at the hotel, walked around to a few shops downtown, and then went to dinner at an upscale restaurant, Carol having made arrangements for them to meet up with some of her old friends. Maeve tried and failed to reach the couple people she knew in town, and she regretted not keeping in better contact now. With Bill on the island, it hadn’t seemed to matter whether or not she reached out. Everything she needed was right there.
The restaurant Carol chose featured craft cocktails and an extensive menu filled with fine cuisine.
“I don’t know what half of this shit is,” Maeve whispered across the table.
Carol laughed and then looked back at her menu.
“Do you?”
But before Carol could answer, her friends showed up—a man and two women, apparently a widower and his sisters. All three were near Carol and Maeve’s age. The man slid into the booth next to Carol—very close to Carol in Maeve’s opinion. Amidst their introductions and chatter, the server brought water and cocktails. Maeve sipped hers slowly, waiting for the ice to melt and cut the alcohol so she could actually drink it.
“These are amazing, aren’t they?” Carol said.
The widower and his sisters nodded, but Maeve shrugged her shoulders.
All four of them stared at her.
“You don’t like it?” the widower said. “If you don’t like it, let’s get you something else.”
“No, that’s OK—really.” Maeve and Bill hadn’t been ones to complain at restaurants, didn’t like the attention. But before she could strengthen her objection, the server was there, and the widower had ordered her a different drink.
“So I hear you are thinking about moving?” said one of the sisters. The others were in a conversation about the Getty Museum in L.A. and its collection of ancient manuscripts. Maeve had never even set foot in Los Angeles.
“I suppose you could say that,” Maeve said. “You know where we live. There seems to be a time limit on it.”
“What brought you out there in the first place? It’s a little off the beaten path.”
Maeve took a sip of her new drink, some bitter concoction that tasted like Robitussin. She closed her eyes as she swallowed, and a dozen images passed through her mind. How do you describe falling in love with land, with watching its arc across time? Even now she could hear the ocean beneath the din of the restaurant. Home is here, here is home, home is here, it said, the syllables expanding across rocks and sand.
She opened her eyes.
“It’s the land,” she paused. “I just love the land.”
The woman said nothing for a moment, and then, “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Such a damn shame.”
Maeve just nodded and took a drink of water to rinse the cocktail’s aftertaste from her mouth. The woman turned her attention to the table’s other conversation.
What had felt like a joint endeavor with Carol soon proved not to be. It was clear something was building between Carol and the widower.
“You don’t mind, do you?” Carol said as she blotted bright pink lipstick while waiting for the widower to pick her up the next morning. “I don’t want to just leave you alone.”
“No, I don’t,” Maeve said. “I’m a grown woman.” And she meant it, too.
As the widower and Carol’s breakfast turned into an all-day affair, she walked the streets of Ventura and then out to the pier. She ate tacos from a seaside restaurant and threw stones into the ocean. I’m having a good time, she thought. Yes, I’m having a good time. But she couldn’t even think herself into that being true. The truth was she missed her foxes and birds, she missed her small white house with its sticky doors and slightly tilted floors, and she missed the pull of the moon on the tide below her.
On the ferry ride back to the island, Maeve and Carol spoke very little. It was clear what would happen; the only question was when.
The next month proved unkind to the island. In fact, it was the worst month the community had ever seen. A cliff on the shoreline collapsed, sending a house straight into the water. But it wasn’t an abandoned house. It was the Peterson’s house, where Mel and Shaw lived with their two sons, Edwin and Beau, ages 7 and 9. The house slipped into the ocean around 7 am. Maeve had woken with a start, wondering if she had dreamed the sound or actually heard it. She sat straight up in bed, her heart working hard, and she was immediately compelled to go outside. She looked across the cove, and then she saw that where the Peterson’s house had been, it wasn’t anymore. Maeve called 911, but someone had already reported the disaster. Helpless and shaken, she walked to the edge of the Peterson’s driveway, where their mailbox stood, its flag raised at attention. Soon nearly everyone on the island was gathered there, and they, including Maeve, still in her bathrobe, stood silently for quite some time watching the house break apart in that perfect blue water as Coast Guard boats and helicopters searched for any signs of life.
The bodies of the family were recovered a day later and a news report said they had been wearing matching pajamas, blue plaid shirts and pants. The youngest boy had a stuffed monkey—the kind with Velcro paws—hanging around his neck. A flurry of reporters made a trip out to the island that week, and of course, they knocked on everyone’s doors to ask when they were going to leave. Headlines read Californians to become climate refugees and Should they stay or should they go? A few politicians mentioned the island in their stump speeches, political fodder, and always everyone remarked about what a shame it was. Then nothing changed, and no one did anything.
When everything calmed down, the remaining islanders created a memorial for the family, a small thing with a wreath from Maeve and a sapling planted at the edge of the driveway. No one touched the mailbox or lowered its flag.
When Carol showed up one morning at the end of that month, Maeve knew what she was going to say.
“You’re leaving,” Maeve said before even saying hello.
Tears started in Carol’s eyes. “I just keep thinking about those babies being swallowed up by the sea. I can’t handle it. I don’t like it here anymore. I keep wondering when it will be one of us.”
Maeve nodded. They were good friends, friends who had been through a lot together: moving to the island, one soon after the other, the death of their husbands, and now this.
“I can’t keep stalling,” said Carol. “Not even because I love this place, or because I have a good friend here.”
“I understand.”
“Why don’t you come with me? I found a place already. Those friends in Ventura set me up. You could stay with me for a while.”
“And then what?” Maeve asked. She could feel her temper flaring, and she knew she needed to control it. “I will have no house and live on a fixed income. You know I don’t have anything but this place. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to be one of those old people eating cat food.”
“Jesus, really? Enough with the melodrama, you need to get out. We all do. You know the others are right behind me. They’re making plans as we speak. What would you do out here all alone? Things are going to start going to hell really fast when everyone goes.”
“The sooner the better,” Maeve said. Then she shut the door. She leaned her back against it, waiting to feel Carol retreat. Her hands were shaking. After a minute, she sat in Bill’s chair to calm herself. The ocean lapped at the land below, as innocent as ever. She took out the magic 8 ball. She asked it the question, shaking it harder than she needed to. Without a doubt, it said. But she heard the words in Bill’s voice. Tears came into her eyes. She hugged the eight ball to her chest again, imagining Bill’s strong arms reaching around her, pulling her into the safety of his body.
Carol wasn’t wrong. Within a few more weeks, the leaving began. There was a party preceding each exit, but Maeve chose not to attend them. Instead she watched from a distance as the residents and hired help loaded boxes onto ferries. When it was Carol’s turn to leave, she almost couldn’t bear to watch. But she forced herself to, standing out front when she was sure that the last of Carol’s things were being moved. Carol stood with her back to the water and waved, a gesture Maeve was sure was meant for her. She told her arm to raise, told her hand to cut the wind, but neither limb nor palm would obey, so she spun around and went back inside her house, slamming the door.
Then she was totally alone.
It was strange being the only one on the island at first. But over the next month, she became accustomed to it. Often times when she stepped outside in the morning, a fox was in the yard. “Here, foxy,” she called, throwing it bread or leftover scraps of meat and eggs. Soon it was there every day. If she still felt lonely after her morning visit with the fox, she went to Carol’s house or one of the other abandoned houses on the island and sat in all the different rooms, smelled all the scents that had become so familiar to her. She spent time remembering, living in a strange mix of past, present, and future.
It was not a secret she was alone out there, and several media outlets contacted her, wanting to tell her story. But there wasn’t much to be said: she had loved a man who loved this land and died here. She loved the land, too. She had been asked repeatedly if she was scared. “My husband died in my arms,” she said. “Now I’m not afraid of anything.” Then when pushed further by a nosy woman from CNN about when she would give up, when she would give in, she finally just said, “Would you abandon your child?” After that incident, the media turned its attention elsewhere, to some shiny new thing for readers to click on. An old woman alone on an island wasn’t news; it was just a shame.
The first year alone on the island passed quickly and aside from a few bad storms, rather smoothly. Occasionally, one of her former neighbors came back for a visit. The visits were pleasant, and when they ended, Maeve retreated inward abruptly, spending a few days feeling depressed and questioning herself. After those visits, she always found herself arranging a boat to pick to up her and take her to the mainland, even if it wasn’t yet time for her monthly visit to Ventura for groceries and mail. She always looked forward to the trip, as though she would find something missing but then immediately hated being there. Carol had married the widower, and they lived in a small bungalow with a giant oak tree in the front yard. They were miles away from the beach, and their house was so close to their neighbors’ houses that most of the time they had to keep their blinds closed. When she saw Carol’s life, she was content to go back to the island.
The second year, however, was more difficult. The island’s erosion accelerated. She felt uneasy. Two houses tumbled into the sea within a few months after an extremely heavy rainfall caused a mudslide, and a chunk of Maeve’s back yard disappeared. She had tried planting a row of trees to stave off erosion a few years prior, but their roots weren’t nearly strong enough to fight the pull of the water. An earthquake rattled the island in the middle of the night. It damaged her plumbing, and she was unable to find a plumber willing to come to the island to repair her bathroom. She used Carol’s bathroom for a while until it too failed. Then she hauled water back with her from Ventura and converted an old shed into a makeshift outhouse. She shaved her long white hair to stubble and bathed in the ocean.
But that earthquake had made her jumpy. She used bacon to lure the fox inside her house at night as a comfort. When the ocean was choppy, phantom waves crashed through her. She went outside and watched the water for hours, chiding herself for becoming milquetoast in old age. What would watching the water do anyway? When rain pelted the island and lightning cracked, she silently asked Bill to help her get home easily. At 73, she was no longer afraid of death, but she didn’t want to suffer.
One night, unable to sleep, she wandered out to the living room to sit in Bill’s chair and pulled out the magic 8 ball. She turned it around and around in her hands, inspecting the black plastic beneath the lamp but knew that Bill’s fingerprints had long been erased by her own. She felt desperate, stupid. Her face reddened, though the nearest human being was miles away. She closed her eyes and shook the toy. A question wasn’t in her mind so much as a feeling.
Outlook not so good, the 8 ball said.
The following year was worse still. Another house lost to the sea. No dolphins in the cove. No cormorants landing. As the landmass continued to shrink, she only saw one other fox aside from the one she had tamed. She felt guilty for taming the fox; now there was no chance of more foxes being born, if there even had been in the first place. She started to feel claustrophobic. The only cure was lying on her back and looking up at the sky—losing herself in the drift of clouds during the day and the rise of stars at night. Sometimes she wondered if anyone could see her, if anyone was watching.
The high point of that year was that after reaching her breaking point with the bathroom situation, she finally found a plumber who agreed to come by boat and fix her house. But it cost a pretty penny, and she could tell by the look in the man’s eye he thought she was crazy for staying out there. She baked him banana bread and fed him cans of Budweiser while he worked. The work took a couple days, and over that time, his attitude improved, and he agreed he’d make a trip back if she needed help again.
She continued to stay in touch with Carol who begged her to move to Ventura and into that small bungalow. The widower, it turned out, had fleeced Carol, and now she was struggling to get by. She picked up part-time work at a grocery store handing out samples, her varicose veins aching as she stood on the concrete floor for hours at a time, smiling widely. Maeve visited her at the store once, watched as Carol stole a glance at herself in a hand mirror, checking for a burst of lipstick on her teeth. She had to turn away from her friend then, ashamed of the look she knew was on her face.
“I’ll think about it,” Maeve finally said one day, just to put Carol off. But in her heart of hearts, she knew she was in too deep to leave. She was determined to be the last witness of St. Jerome. The island was hers, and she was the island’s. She wouldn’t leave, couldn’t leave it now.
Besides, someone had to take care of the fox.
Not the next year or the next, but another year after a particularly savage drought followed by torrential rain, a Coast Guard helicopter would fly over the island, its flight crew observing the bodies of dead trees scattered on the low side of the island. On the high side, they saw a white house, half of which had been swept into the sea by mud. It was splayed open, a doll’s house, a cutaway of life. One of the rescuers, a young nurse with exceptional eyesight, swore he saw a person inside. It was a woman, he guessed, sitting in what appeared to be a living room, holding something in her arms, something he could have sworn was a dog.
Not the next year or the next, but another year after a particularly savage drought followed by torrential rain, a Coast Guard helicopter would fly over the island, its flight crew observing the bodies of dead trees scattered on the low side of the island. On the high side, they saw a white house, half of which had been swept into the sea by mud. It was splayed open, a doll’s house, a cutaway of life. One of the rescuers, a young nurse with exceptional eyesight, swore he saw a person inside. It was a woman, he guessed, sitting in what appeared to be a living room, holding something in her arms, something he could have sworn was a dog.
DARCI SCHUMMER is a writer and educator living in Duluth, Minnesota. Primarily a fiction writer, she is the author of the story collection Six Months in the Midwest (Unsolicited Press), co-author of the poetry/prose collaboration Hinge (broadcraft press), and her work has appeared in Ninth Letter (web edition), Folio, Jet Fuel Review, Matchbook, American Fiction 17, Necessary Fiction, Midway Journal, and Pithead Chapel, among other places. She has been nominated both for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and her work has also been selected as a Longform Fiction Pick of the Week. She teaches writing and edits The Thunderbird Review at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College and lives in a big old house with her husband Tanner, pitbull Turnip, and cat Cokie Roberts. Currently, Darci is working on a novel, another short story collection, and a chapbook of poetry. For more information about Darci visit her website www.darcischummer.com
