“What kind of a reason is that?”
“She says because we went to Ireland without her.”
“If I hear one more word about Ireland!”
“Shh. I know.”
“I hope you were forceful, Mother. I hope you said no.”
“I was forceful. I said no.”
“But what?”
“But nothing.”
“No, I can see by your face it’s something. What?”
“She’s insisting.”
“So? We’re going to allow the child to make the decisions?”
“She said something about turning eighteen.”
“Oh, so she’s going to play that card!”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why does she really want to go?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy.”
“What’s in Barcelona?”
“Nothing. It’s not Fryeburg, not Brownfield, not Maine.”
“So why doesn’t she go to Canada? We’ll drive her to Montreal. It’s only a few hours away. In another country. We’ll leave her and Hannah there, then pick them up a few days later.”
“Yeah. Well. I haven’t told you the half of it.”
There was rustling, cooing, small giggles. “You haven’t heard my half of it, sweet potato. It’ll give you and me a chance to stay in a hotel. Like newlyweds.”
“Jimmy, don’t be bad.”
More rustling. Even some grunting.
“Jimmy, come on …”
Sweet God. Chloe couldn’t even eavesdrop on her parents’ conversation about her without it becoming a study in her own mortification.
“But seriously,” her father said. The cooing had stopped, thank God. “We can’t let her go.”
“I agree. How do we stop her?”
“We’ll just tell her she can’t go.”
“I look forward to our spicy pork chops tonight over which you tell her.”
“I’ve never liked that Hannah. Why couldn’t that no-good father of hers have gotten custody instead?”
“I think the answer is built into your very question.”
“That Terri is a piece of work. Doesn’t she know what’s going on with her own kids? I hear Jason is always in trouble up in Portland. By the way, the raccoons got to her garbage again.”
“I saw. I smelled.”
“Did you talk to her about cleaning it up? Or am I going to have to?”
“She told me this morning the animals have to eat, too.”
“I’m going to shoot them next time I hear them near her cans. They’re a rabid nuisance.”
“Jimmy, carry the potatoes. She better come home soon. Dinner is ready.”
“Should I go get her? Did you drive her?”
“No, I didn’t drive her to Hannah’s house. It’s forty yards away.”
There was silence. “I didn’t drive her, Jimmy. She’s fine. She’s next door.” Chloe heard the pot being placed on the table.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Talk some sense into her. She listens to you. You’re her father.”
“If she listened to me, she’d never ask for something so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid, Jimmy, it’s just kids being kids.”
“I never did nothing like that.”
“Okay. We did some stuff too.”
“Not like that.”
“Worse. We were young, too.”
“Hmm.”
“You remember Pembina? The paleo flood in the Red River in ’77? All right, Mr. Comedian. I know you remember. We were so bad. We didn’t need to go to Barcelona.”
“We never needed to go anywhere, sweet potato.”
“Get the drinks. I’ll go get her.”
Pembina was where Lang was from. Pembina, North Dakota, less than two miles south of the Canadian border. The Red River is slow and small. It doesn’t have the energy to cut a gorge. It meanders through the silty bottomlands. Yet every few years it floods catastrophically through the marsh at its delta. It causes immense destruction. In 1977, the river flooded, and the National Guard was called in to help the locals cope. Jimmy Devine, National Guard, met Lang Thia, whose father was a prominent local businessman who made hearing aids.
Her mother didn’t need a hearing aid. She came to the window near which Chloe was hiding and said into the screen, “Chloe, come to the table. Dinner is served.”
With a great sigh, Chloe peeled away from the wood shingles and walked, head hung, to the door.
5
The Irish Inquisition
LANG TURNED ON THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SMALL RECTANGULAR table. They sat silently, their hands folded. They blessed their food. Jimmy said amen. Chloe asked him to pass the potatoes. Jimmy poured Lang a jasmine ice tea. Lang poured Jimmy a beer. They cut into their pork chops. The silence lasted two or three minutes. Jimmy had to get some strength before he began, though he looked pretty strong already. He was a big Irish guy, blond-haired once, now gray, blue-eyed, direct, no nonsense. He was funny, he was easy, but he also had a temper, and he never forgot anything, neither a favor nor a slight. It was almost his undoing, the merciless blade of his memory. Sometimes he had to dull it with whiskey. Sometimes he had to dull many things with whiskey. Tonight Lang eased him into Chloe’s summer plans by letting him eat for a few minutes in peace while she grilled Chloe on irrelevant matters.
“Did you do your homework?”
“I didn’t have any. It’s senior year, Mom. No one gives homework anymore.”
“Then what do they give you a fourth quarter grade for?”
“Showing up mostly.”
“So no tests, no quizzes, no overdue projects, no missing labs, no oral presentations, no incomplete class assignments?”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Enough nonsense,” said Jimmy, having fortified himself on meat. “What’s this your mother tells me about Barcelona?”
Her father looked straight at her, and Chloe had no choice but to stare back. “Did my mother tell you that she wants me to enter into a story contest? Ten thousand dollar prize.”
“She mentioned something about that, yes. I don’t see how the two are related.”
“I have nothing to write about.”
“Come to work with me for a day or two. You’ll get three books out of it.” Jimmy Devine was the Fryeburg chief of police, like his father and grandfather before him. Fryeburg, Maine. Pop. 3500. Settled in 1763 by General Joseph Frye and incorporated in 1777, exactly two hundred years before the bad luck of the paleo floods two thousand miles away, and now Chloe sat impaled on the stake of parental disapproval.
“Really,” she said, irritated. “Books on what, breaking up domestic arguments and littering?”
“Nice. So now even my work, not just your mother’s, is denigrated?”
Chloe regrouped. “I’m not denigrating, Dad. But our hearts are set on Spain. Hannah and I have been talking about it for years.”
“You told your mother you thought of going just today. So which is it? An impulse or a lifelong dream?”
Chloe didn’t reply. They were denigrating her!
“How in the world can Hannah afford Barcelona?” Jimmy asked. “Her mother is at the bank every other day asking for an overdraft increase. And your friend, who abandoned you to do Meals on Wheels by yourself on Saturdays because she claims she has a job, often skips out on the one lousy four-hour shift she has at China Chef. So where’s her half of the money going to come from?”
Chloe hated that her dad knew everything about everybody’s business. It was terrifying. She stopped eating and stared at her father, the last bite of pork chop lodged in her dry throat. Did he know why Hannah was skipping out on China Chef? Oh God, please, no. A demoralized Chloe couldn’t withstand even two minutes of modest interrogation.
“Why do you want to go so much? Tell your mother and me.”
Chloe said nothing. Her entrails in knots, she felt like a scoundrel.
“Is it becau
se we went without you that time to Kilkenny?” Jimmy said. “You’re lucky you didn’t go. Funerals are not for kids.”
And just like that the three of them were swallowed up by silent oceans. Jimmy awkwardly picked up his fork only to drop it. Lang nursed her jasmine tea. Sickened by the ghastly turn of the already difficult conversation, Chloe tried to right the course.
“It’s not about that. It’s not about funerals,” Chloe said. “It’s not about anything. It’s just awesome Spain. Why do you think I’ve been taking Spanish these last six years? I’m the only senior still taking a language. That’s why. Dad, I’m not a child anymore.”
“If you’re such an adult,” said Jimmy, “then what are you talking to us for?”
“I need your help with the passport.”
“Oh, now she needs us,” Jimmy said. “Just a signature. No help, no advice. No money. You have everything now, big girl. You’ve got it all figured out.”
“I don’t, but … it’s just a few weeks in Europe, Dad. Lots of kids do it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe stumbled. “Lots of kids.” No one from her school.
“It’s the worst place, by the way, to have a vacation,” Lang cut in.
“Why is it the worst place? It’s the best place! Have you been there, Mom?”
“I don’t need to go to Calcutta to know I don’t want to go to Calcutta.”
“Calcutta? Can we calm down? It’s Barcelona! It’s on the sea. It’s nice. It’s fun. It’s full of young people.”
“Did I hear your mother correctly?” Jimmy asked. “The two junkyard wildings down the road want to go with you?”
Well, at least it was out there. The pit in her stomach couldn’t get any bigger. “Why wildings? It’s Blake and Mason. You like them.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth or feelings into my heart.”
“You do like them. Mr. Haul is still your friend. Despite everything.” Chloe took a breath. “You help him out with money, you lend him your truck, you barbecue with him. You exchange Christmas presents. Mom gives them tomatoes.”
“What does that prove? Your mother gives tomatoes to everyone, even the Harrisons who tried to kill Blake’s dog. And in my line of work, I’m forced to talk to a lot of unsavory characters.”
“Mr. Haul is not one of them. And Mom and Mrs. Haul are friends.”
“Don’t get carried away,” said Lang. “I drive to ShopRite with her. She is not the executor of my will. So don’t hyperbolize.”
After a pause, Chloe said, “Now who’s hyperbolizing?”
“I don’t know why anyone, especially my daughter, would want to go to Spain of all places,” Jimmy said, getting up from the table, as if done with the conversation he was himself continuing. “Do you think there’s any place more beautiful than coastal Maine? Than the White Mountains of New Hampshire?” He snorted as he scraped the remains of his dinner into the trash. “You have staggering beauty outside your own door.”
“That’s what I told her, Jimmy.”
“Would that I had a chance to compare,” said Chloe.
“I’m telling you how it is.”
“So I have to take your word for it? I want to see for myself, Dad!”
“Where did this crazy idea even come from? Lang, did you know about this?”
“Jimmy,” said Lang, “she doesn’t know anything about Barcelona. If she did, she wouldn’t want to go. Believe me.”
How did one not raise one’s voice when confronted by a mother such as Chloe’s mother? “Mom,” Chloe said slowly, which was her equivalent of a raised voice. The slower the speech, the more she wanted to shout. At the moment, she was positively hollering. “I know you think I might not know anything about Barcelona. But what in the world do you possibly know about Barcelona?”
“Chloe! Be respectful to your mother.”
“That wasn’t respectful?” If only her parents could hear how Hannah talked to her mother.
Lang raised her hand. She was still at the table, across from Chloe. “No, no. Chloe makes a valid point. Clearly she thinks Barcelona has virtues Maine doesn’t.”
“I think it because it’s true,” Chloe said. “It has stunning architecture. Art. History. Culture.”
“You think we don’t have architecture?” Jimmy bellowed.
“Houses are not the same as architecture, Dad!”
“Don’t shout! Since when do you care about architecture? It’s the first time in my life I’ve heard you use that word. Now you want to go halfway around the globe to learn more about house design?”
Chloe found it difficult to speak through a clenched mouth. “Art. Culture. History.”
“So go visit Boston,” Lang said, pushing away from the table. “There’s a big city for you. It has Art. Culture. History. It has architecture.”
“Maine has history too.” Jimmy tried not to sound defensive about his home state. “What about the Red Paint People?”
“Dad, okay, history is not why I want to go to Spain.”
“Why then?”
“I bet it’s to lie on the beach all day,” said Lang.
“And what’s wrong with the beach?”
“You can lie on a beach in Maine!” Jimmy yelled.
“Chloe! Look what you did. You’ve upset your father. Jimmy, shh.” Walking over, Lang put a quieting hand on her husband.
Taking hold of Lang’s hand, Jimmy continued. They both stood a few feet away from Chloe, near the sink, united in their flummoxed anxiety. Chloe continued to sit and stare into her cold, half-eaten chop. “What about York Beach?” he said. “We’ve got five hundred miles of spectacular sandy coastline. How many miles does Barcelona have?”
“Is it warm?” said Chloe. “Is it beachy? Is it Mediterranean?”
“Do you see?” Lang said. “She doesn’t even know where Barcelona is. It’s on the Balearic Sea, for your information.”
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She groaned. Clearly, in between grilling swine and sugar-dusting Linzer tarts, her mother had opened an encyclopedia and was now using some arcane knowledge to … Chloe didn’t know what.
“Mom,” Chloe said, so slowly it came out as mommmmmmmmm. A raw grunt left her throat. “The Balearic Sea is part of the Mediterranean. Look at the map. Don’t do this.”
Undeterred, her mother continued. “They didn’t even have any beaches fifteen years ago. They built them for the Olympic Games. That’s your history right there. Don’t pretend you’re all about the Barcelona sand. Maine has had beaches for five hundred years.”
Chloe blinked at her mother. Lang blinked back defiantly. “Mom, so what? What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with me going or not going?”
“Don’t raise your voice to us,” Jimmy said. “So if it’s not for the beach, why do you want to go? Do you want to prove something?”
“I don’t want to prove anything. To anybody,” Chloe said through closed teeth. “I. Just. Want. To. Go. That’s it. You want to know why Barcelona and not Rome or Athens or some other place? Okay, I’ll tell you. Because while you were gallivanting through the glens of Kilkenny and I stayed with Hannah and her mom, Blake bought me a magazine.”
“Oh, well, if Blake bought you a magazine …”
“A National Geographic,” Chloe continued through the sarcasm. “There was an article on Barcelona in it. It sounded nice. So Hannah and I said to each other we’d go when we graduated.”
“So you want to go to Barcelona to punish us, is that it?”
Chloe wanted to scream. “Why would I want to punish you?” she said. “Do you want to punish me? Is that why you’re doing this? It’s not about you. It’s not about anything. Hannah and I fell in love with it when we were kids. We thought it would be fun to go when we grew up. And here we are. All grown up. Her mother is letting her go. Her mother is treating her like an adult. And yet my mother and father are still treating me like I’m eleven years old!”
“Ca
n you act like an adult,” Lang said, “and stop being so melodramatic?”
No one spoke for a moment. Then her father did.
“All I know about Barcelona,” he said, turning toward the sink, “is that in Spain, the drivers are considered the worst in the world.” His back was to his wife and daughter. He didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t face them as he spoke. “It’s a well-known, established fact. The worst drivers in the world.”
Putting her soothing hand on Jimmy, Lang glared at Chloe, as if to say, do you see what you’ve done?
Chloe opened her hands. “I won’t be driving, Daddy. I promise.” Her feeble voice oozed with pity and penitence. The fight had gone out of her.
“You’ll be walking, though, won’t you,” Jimmy said, “while others are driving, poorly.” He lowered his head.
“Not even, Jimmy,” said Lang, caressing her husband’s squared back. “Didn’t you hear her? She’ll be lying on a brand-new beach. Admiring the architecture.”
6
Mottos
EVERYONE HAD A MOTTO. CHLOE’S MOTHER’S WAS: “CAST your bread upon the water.”
Her grandmother’s was, “How I envy the handicapped in their wheelchairs who can push themselves around. They don’t know how lucky they are.”
And Chloe’s? Once, to go miniature golfing, Courtney and Crystal arrived at Chloe’s green cabin wearing slinky hot pink dresses and clangy bangles. Lang took one squinted glimpse at the two and stage-whispered to Chloe, “Where are they going to, a parade at a bordello?”
That became Chloe’s motto: To avoid at all costs such an assessment by anyone’s mother, including her own, or by, God forbid, a boy.
Okay, no, that wasn’t Chloe’s motto. That was her wish. You know what Chloe’s motto was?
On the blank canvas of your life with bold colors paint.
Maybe not so much a motto as an unattainable goal.
Chloe just wanted to know who she was. Not who she wanted to be. But who she actually was.
Up in the loft attic open to the living room, she lay on her bed with the ballerina-pink fluffy down quilt and soft pillows, clutching a tattered 1998 National Geographic to her chest, the one with the precious Barcelona article in it. When Polly, the old wizened woman who owned the Shell gas station in Fryeburg, decided to go into the used book selling business, running it out of her garage, Blake, out with his dad one afternoon, picked up a worn copy of the magazine. He paid two dollars of his allowance to buy it for Chloe when she was eleven and he was twelve. Reading about Barcelona burst her heart into a flame.
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