“She must be crazy!” he said incredulously.
“Who?”
“She’s got Jessie out there in the raft with an offshore wind like this.” He wheeled around in fury. “Where’s Roma?”
“I... I sent him to call Jessie.”
Mr. Roma was beside the old shed hanging up the cowbell on its nail.
He turned at the sound of Mark’s feet running across the driveway.
“Jessie doesn’t come. I rang and rang...”
“She’s out in the raft with Mrs. Wakefield.”
“The raft?” Mr. Roma shook his head in bewilderment. “But it’s too rough, Mrs. Wakefield should know that. The small craft warnings are up all the way from Point Concepción, I heard it on the radio.”
“We’ll have to go after them.”
“Better to phone the Coast Guard and say urgent.”
“There isn’t time.” He grabbed Mr. Roma’s arm and shouted, “They’re headed out to sea, deliberately. They’re not just out joyriding. They’re going some place!”
“There’s no place to go. Only the island.”
“That’s miles away!”
“Twenty miles.” The whites of Mr. Roma’s eyes seemed to be swelling like balloons. “And there’s nowhere to land. Just the straight cliff, and the tide caves...”
“For Christ’s sake!” Mark said helplessly. “For Christ’s sake!”
“We’ll go after them in the rowboat. Wait, and I’ll get a blanket.”
Seconds later he came running out of the kitchen door with two blankets over his arm, and Carmelita at his heels screaming at him in Spanish. He paid no attention.
Racing to the edge of the cliff behind Mark, he threw the blankets over. They began to climb down, half-sliding, half-falling, clutching at jutting roots and chaparral to slow their descent. Almost simultaneously they fell sprawling on the beach in a landslide of rock and earth.
Mark’s hands were bleeding and there was a spot on the back of his head that was already starting to swell. “Are you all right, Roma?”
“Yes.”
“The boat doesn’t look too good.”
“It is, though.”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
They eased the rowboat off the rock into the sand and carried it down to the water. Mr. Roma fitted the oars into the rusted locks.
“I’ll row,” he said.
“No. I’m going to.”
“Better for me to do it. Your hands...”
“They don’t bother me. Get in.”
The boat lurched wildly through the breakers. Leaning forward, Mr. Roma shielded the blankets with his body to keep them dry. Except for the cut on his cheek that was bleeding slowly, his face had a mauve tinge, and his eyes still seemed ready to burst like the eyes of a fish reeled up suddenly from the vast pressure at the bottom of the sea. He didn’t speak. He sat huddled over the blankets, his gaze fixed on the bottom of the boat, where the water that had splashed over the bow rolled back and forth across his boots.
“Why did she do this, Roma?”
“I... I don’t know exactly.”
“Maybe she doesn’t realize the danger.”
“She must. But she doesn’t care. She told me, she said she had been cheated, that she was entitled to anything she could lay her hands on.”
“What did she mean?”
Mr. Roma raised his head and looked out toward the little raft. “I guess she meant the — the child.”
“What else?” Mark screamed above the wind. “Tell me what else...”
“She said Jessie was all hers.”
“Hers?”
“I think she meant she would take Jessie away with her some place.”
“But there isn’t any place to take her.”
“The island.”
“They’d never get to the island in that thing!”
“She doesn’t care,” Mr. Roma said again.
There was rage and fear now behind every pull of the oars. The boat was catching up easily with the clumsy rubber raft, but neither Mrs. Wakefield nor Jessie had turned around and seen it. They seemed inexorably headed for a destination.
Mrs. Wakefield looked so funny with her hair streaming and her dress puffing in and out with the wind, that Jessie could hardly stop laughing. Wind-tears and laughter-tears squeezed out of her eyes and dried saltily on her blotched cheeks.
“My arms are getting tired,” Jessie said.
“Rest a while then. I will, too.”
“Will we find seals there, do you think?”
“Certainly.”
“I’d like to catch a baby one to take home with me. I bet the kids at school wouldn’t believe their eyes.”
“Home?” Mrs. Wakefield half-turned, so that Jessie could see how very still her face had become. Her hair blew, her dress fluttered, but her face was quiet as stone. “Where’s home?”
“Manhattan.”
“Manhattan.” She spoke with her fingers pressed against her mouth. “That’s an island, too, isn’t it?”
“A city-island.”
Shivering, Jessie hugged her arms together to warm them. The sun had disappeared and a flock of clouds was blowing across the sky. The sea was changing color, from blue to green, and silver to slate. She was a little awed by all the changes, and she looked toward the island to see how close they were getting, and how soon they would be arriving.
But the island had vanished. There was only the sea, going on and on and on.
“It’s gone,” she shouted. “The island’s gone!”
“No, no, it hasn’t. It’s still there, only we can’t see it. The weather’s changed.”
“But we’re getting closer to it. We should see it better. It should be bigger.”
“It’s only hiding behind the weather.”
“Hiding?” She leaned forward straining her eyes, but there was nothing hiding out there. The sleeping giant had wakened and walked away.
She remembered the mystery of the puddles on the highway. It had been a sunny day, and she was out driving with her father when she noticed on the pavement ahead of her shining wet puddles. But no matter how fast her father drove he never caught up with the puddles, they had always dried up and disappeared by the time the car reached them.
“Why can’t we catch them?” she had asked.
“Because they’re not there,” Mark said. “It’s only the reflection of the sun’s rays.”
“But I see them, I see them with my own eyes!”
“It’s an illusion.”
“But...”
“See that one right now beside the maple tree? When we get to the tree we’ll stop and you can get out and look.”
She got out and looked, and there was no puddle. She picked a maple leaf off the ground to take home and wax, as a souvenir.
“There isn’t any island,” she said in a hard tight little voice.
“Jessie, I’ve told you...”
“It’s like the puddles. I looked and they weren’t really there.”
“I don’t understand. Jessie dear, listen...”
She climbed over the seat and put her arms coaxingly around the resisting child. Then she saw, not more than fifty yards behind the raft, Mr. Roma and Mark in the old rowboat. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said harshly. “There isn’t any island.”
“It was all pretend?”
“Yes.”
“And we can go home?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t play jokes like that on people,” Jessie said righteously. “It isn’t nice.”
“I see that now.”
“You won’t do it anymore?”
“No, Jessie. Never.”
“That’s a promise.”