And with that, they began to row like crazy, separating and pushing hard toward the shore. Hollering at each other in half sentences, zipping the life vests they’d thought unnecessary but took anyway at Red’s insistence.
Rowing so hard her shoulders burned, Beatrice called out. “You think he coulda’ warned us, or something!”
“Whose stupid idea was this?” Victoria hollered as a wave washed over the side of her kayak.
Then they went silent as they each rowed as hard and fast as they could without barely moving an inch. Slowly, and sometimes cursing, they reached the edge of the sandy beach one by one. Almost to shore, Victoria’s kayak flipped over and spilled her into the shallows. Sputtering and laughing, she rose from the water like a sea creature, her long hair hanging in threads and her bathing suit pulled sideways so that one breast, white and pendulous, was exposed. She didn’t even notice as she stumbled to the shore.
“Oh my God, that was thrilling!” She laughed as she fell to the sand. “What a ride.” She reached up and pulled at what was now obviously a hair extension and threw it into the water. Then another.
The other friends looked at each other, and Beatrice spoke for them all. “Who are you and what have you done with our friend who can’t stand to have her hair messed up and her manicure chipped?”
Victoria lay flat, gazing up at the sky. “I have no idea. A Bird of Paradise who is discovering an island life?”
They laughed and then Beatrice spoke slowly, as if finding her words with every step she took. “I’m going to propose to him,” she said, sliding the kayak up to the soft grassy area littered with pinecones and fallen palmetto leaves.
Daisy sat in the sand, catching her breath. “And how is that? It doesn’t seem to go with our romantic narrative, does it? I mean . . .” she grinned. “It wasn’t Eliza Doolittle who wooed Henry Higgins back with a song about growing accustomed to his face. It was the other way around.”
Beatrice thought about this for a long silent moment, about the end of all the romantic narratives strung through their lives, about women having their own agency and choosing what was right for them instead of taking the best of what is offered. She thought about the men she never called because it wasn’t proper or the suggestions she never gave because she just needed to wait her turn.
She dropped the kayak and turned to her friends, her face aflame with something more than heat and hard rowing. “Eliza Doolittle. You know she didn’t stay, right? In the real version; in the book Pygmalion, she left. She found her worth and she left.”
“Well,” Daisy said and then took a breath, “what kind of messed-up story is it that they fed us the other version—the one where she stays because he sings her a little song about being accustomed to her.”
“Exactly!” Beatrice felt the truth moving closer. “What kind of story did they feed us, showing us that being accustomed and safe was enough?”
As Daisy and Beatrice batted these thoughts back and forth between them, Victoria and Rose watched as if at a tennis match, sitting not in bleachers but on their kayak flipped upside down.
Victoria picked up the ball. “So what does that mean for you? Lachlan has never just said he’s accustomed to you.”
“But that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Beatrice said. “He’s never treated me poorly and then come back with some sob story about how he misses me and loves me and now knows how much he really loves me. That’s the old story. Lachlan is the new story, and I just kept looking for the old story, the one where there needs to be drama and breakup and diminishing worth so the guy can swoop in and save me.” She slams her hand onto the side of a tree, the bark breaking the skin where blood seeps.
Victoria stood up and walked to Beatrice, took her hand, and stared at the blood and then into Beatrice’s bluest eyes. “You know, you never really needed us. You had the answers all along.”
Beatrice shook her head. “Oh, that’s not even remotely true. Sometimes, or maybe all the time, we see the truth with those we love most.”
“What will you say?” Rose piped up, sitting quietly on the kayak. “How will you ask?”
“I don’t know,” Beatrice said. “I haven’t gotten that far in this whole scenario. Any ideas?”
They glanced one to the other until Rose said, “You’ll think of something. You always do.”
And with that, they pulled the kayaks up to the soft sandy yard as Red came outside to inform them he was ready to take them across the water and toward home.
Victoria stood, tucked her breast back into her bathing suit, and slipped on a T-shirt. “Can you take me last? I want just a bit more time.”
“Of course. I can only take three at the most anyway.” He glanced around at the kayaks spread about like tossed shells. “Did you enjoy your rides?”
The friends looked at each other and burst into simultaneous laughter. Damn, it was good to be together, Beatrice thought. Even if nothing had been fixed in their lives, or problems solved, even if the tide had almost taken them to sea, even if Lachlan never answered her call, it was good to know that love and stories and art remained with her birds.
Epilogue
What Happens Next
Six Months Later
After Beatrice’s weekend on the island, it had taken a few tortuous weeks for her to figure out how to answer Lachlan’s proposal: with her own. She’d taken those quiet weeks and written down their love story; from the day they met in the art museum to the day she showed up at his door carrying the pages like a diamond ring in a blue velvet box. She’d written the story by hand, every word in careful cursive, and bound it by hand at the Art School’s bindery. She’d hand-sewn every stitch and she’d painted the wooden cover with two doves—birds she hadn’t yet painted, this time a first—curled tightly in a nest.
When she’d taken the book to his house, he hadn’t answered the door. She knew he was home; she felt his presence shuffling behind the closed door of his house and his heart. She’d left the package on his brick stoop wrapped in thick brown paper, simple string tying it together with the tag: For Lachlan. The last line, on the last page didn’t state “The End,” instead she’d typed, “I wonder what happens next.”
She could give him no more than this—their story, her heart, and the truth. And she waited.
For three days she waited.
For eternity she waited.
She checked her email and her phone and her texts and her mailbox. She began to arrive at the truth that he hadn’t only changed his mind, but also his heart. And there was nothing she could do to change it. That was the very thing with hearts—you can love them but you can’t make them love back. You can adore them, but you can’t convince with logic; you can’t, absolutely can’t, talk a heart into any-damn-thing.
Logic was never the answer, not in love or art.
So she’d thought a story would have to suffice, and if it didn’t, it didn’t.
On the third day, near midnight, when despair had turned to resignation and sorrow, a knock came to her door. She’d opened the door, and before she flicked on the porch light, he said only one word.