The Map of True Places

by Brunonia Barry

  That summer Finch had been offered a teaching post at Amherst at their summer theater, where they would be performing The Scarlet Letter. The college production included a newly created dramatic reading from the young Hawthorne himself, which they had invited Finch to compose. He was excited by the prospect of a summer of Hawthorne, immersed as usual in his hero’s life, but away from the classroom and in western Massachusetts, very close to the place Hawthorne had spent so many of his later years.

  But, as she admitted to Zee, it wasn’t a good time for Maureen. As she found herself becoming more and more obsessed with the house and its history, she began to hear it talking to her and would sometimes answer directly in the middle of a conversation about something else.

  And though he had planned to take her with him to Amherst, Finch found himself not telling Maureen about his offer. He couldn’t bring her along, not in her current condition, and he was starting to fantasize about escape. He did love her, that was true, but for him it had always been in the way one loves a beautiful painting or Bernini’s sculpture of Daphne and Apollo. It was love of the feminine ideal, and not based in everyday life. In their daily life, he was beginning to see how troubled she was. Finch had always wanted children. It hadn’t happened, and he was growing distant, unable to be near her now, sleeping separately in the downstairs guest room.

  But then spring hit and, with it, the lengthening days and bright sunshine. Maureen’s mood brightened as well. She began to gather the things they would need at the island cottage: blankets for warmth, seeds for planting summer corn and tomatoes. Knowing his dream of having children, Maureen went to Finch’s bed at night. She brewed him tea and whispered to him in the dark about the beautiful and brilliant children they would have. They made love. But when Finch began to relax and told her of the summer appointment he had accepted without her knowledge, Maureen refused to go. It was a betrayal, she said. Moving that far from the sea would surely kill her.

  And so, Maureen told Zee, Finch went to Amherst, and she went to Baker’s Island. But halfway through the summer, she realized that she was pregnant. She left the island and made her way to Amherst, announcing her impending motherhood in front of the entire cast, one of whom looked stricken, a student playing the young Hawthorne, a beautiful boy who, when in costume, achieved the haunted beauty of Hawthorne himself.

  “I should have seen it then,” she often confessed to Zee. “I should have seen what was coming.”

  BUT SHE DIDN’T SEE IT for a while, and neither did Finch. The pregnancy itself agreed with Maureen. She had never been as happy, she said. And Finch’s joy was so great that she rode her mania throughout the months of her pregnancy, not descending into sadness with the winter light, and almost to summer before the postpartum depression hit her so hard that she had to be hospitalized.

  Maureen was diagnosed as manic-depressive. These days she would have been labeled as bipolar 1, with full-on hallucinations. Maureen heard voices, she saw spirits.

  After her diagnosis Finch took over as caregiver, and when Maureen came home, he treated her as one might treat a priceless statue, fussing over her but not getting too close, fearing that the slightest touch might break her.

  Maureen came home from the hospital only to remove herself the following summer to the island, where she accepted no visitors, not even Finch. She begged to be left alone, and Finch obliged, partly because he didn’t know what else to do and partly because Maureen had left Zee behind, and it was all he could manage to care for his new daughter.

  In the two months that followed, Finch could do little but have neighbors check on Maureen’s safety and make sure she had food. She threw herself into her writing and produced several more fairy tales.

  When she returned in September, Finch asked no questions. He was so happy to have his family restored and to have Maureen excited both about her new career and (at long last) about her new child that it never occurred to him that what he’d been witnessing for the last several years was the onset of Maureen’s mental illness, or so he had often told Zee.

  Over the next several years, Finch tried his best to get Maureen the help she needed, but treatment was of an era, and though she tried the medications of the time, each new one left her hazy and sluggish and more depressed than the last. Eventually she rejected them all in favor of the wildly manic episodes that fueled her creative energy even as they left her family devastated and exhausted.

  One big thing that evolved out of Maureen’s untreated illness was a strange and inappropriate mother-daughter relationship that only got more disturbing as Zee grew older. Sometimes unable to attach to her child, at other times Maureen treated Zee as a best friend, confiding much more than a mother should ever relate to a young daughter, outrageous facts and stories that were more embarrassing than helpful: the far-too-early uncensored facts of life from periods to promiscuity, and even sex tricks and methods of seduction to use on boys, details that no normal mother would ever share with a daughter and that Zee had no business knowing. Such confidences assured two things: that Zee would seldom bring a friend into the house and that, at some point much too early in her childhood, Zee and Maureen would switch roles, with Zee becoming the mother figure and Maureen reverting to adolescence.

  Maureen had three more breakdowns that required hospitalization during Zee’s childhood. The first two were short stays, less than a month in duration. And the last one was the long one, when Melville came into their lives.

  13

  TODAY ZEE WAS THINKING about Finch’s affair with Melville, the relationship that had ultimately put an end to the substance of their marriage if not the form.

  She was still angry about the Yeats book she’d seen this morning at Melville’s house. The long months of darkness leading up to Maureen’s death had been something she had tried for years to forget. Seeing the book brought it all back to her, that and Lilly’s suicide.

  She wasn’t angry at Melville—she was angry at Finch. How dare he give Melville the same book he’d once given to her mother! Sometimes she thought she hardly knew Finch. She knew he had ultimately won Maureen with Yeats. That much her mother had told her. Perhaps that was the way he won all of his conquests, she thought.

  She wondered about the boy at Amherst, the one who played the young Hawthorne. Had he been given a volume of Yeats as well? Perhaps Finch had purchased many copies and made it part of his romantic ritual. The thought made her angrier. But it didn’t make much sense. Zee knew in her heart that there weren’t several copies of Yeats that Finch had doled out to potential partners; there was only the one copy. The book she had seen protruding from Melville’s suitcase was the same book Finch had given to Maureen. It had sat for years on top of the bed at Baker’s Island in a room that was no longer used as a bedroom but as Maureen’s writing room.

  Desperate to lift her mother’s spirits, she had gone to Baker’s Island that last day to get the book of Yeats for Maureen. Zee’s original idea had been to take Maureen out there for the day, and she had even borrowed Uncle Mickey’s dory to get them there, but Maureen refused to go, saying she was sick and opting to stay upstairs in her bed. Frustrated, Zee went by herself. If she could only get the book to her mother, something Maureen had wished for aloud on many occasions, maybe it would do the trick.

  It was something she had always blamed herself for. Had she not gone to the island that day, or had she gotten back earlier, she might have saved her mother’s life. As it was, Zee got back sooner than her mother had expected, soon enough to watch her agony but not soon enough to save her.

  Zee often talked about her guilt in her sessions with Mattei. But while her mentor would always listen to her rehashing the story, she would not let her take the blame for her mother’s suicide.

  “Clinging to this idea makes you responsible,” Mattei said. “You make yourself guilty and then ruin your own life because you’re too afraid to be happy when your mother was not so lucky. It’s the easy way out, and it keeps you from having a g
ood life. Frankly, it’s beneath you.”

  Zee had been angry and guilty for years. Though she blamed herself, she also blamed her father and Melville, and in good part she blamed her mother, too. It was that anger and blame that she was working on these days with Mattei. When asked to be more specific about her anger as well as her other feelings about her family, Zee was not able. In a family that had erased the boundaries between parent and child, she had never known exactly where she fit in. She knew that it was this undirected anger and the resultant guilt that had propelled her headlong into a career that she was beginning to doubt she was suited for, especially in light of what had just happened with Lilly Braedon.

  Since Lilly died, Zee found that her anger had quickly begun to focus on more specific recipients. She was angry at Michael, though she had no real reason for this except that he so clearly knew what he wanted in all areas of his life, while she couldn’t seem to make as simple a choice as whether or not to serve sushi at the wedding. And when she saw the book in Melville’s suitcase, all the unresolved anger she felt for her father came flooding back.

  “Girls marry their fathers” was another favorite psychological cliché that Mattei was fond of quoting. Michael and Finch were in many ways very similar. Zee wondered how much of her reluctance to make her wedding plans was somehow related to her unexpressed and poorly directed anger toward her father. But just as it was difficult to be angry with Maureen, who had unquestionably been ill, it was almost impossible to be angry at Finch when she looked at him now. She wanted to scream at him. How dare he give Melville the book her mother had treasured? How could he be that cold? But when she looked at Finch now, she didn’t feel anger, she felt sad. In a very real sense, the man she was angry at no longer existed. Any anger she felt for Finch, she now directed at the disease that was consuming him.

  She needed to talk to Mattei, and to Michael. But she couldn’t go back to Boston. Not yet. Not until Melville returned or they figured out some other means of caring for her father.

  ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON ZEE LEFT another message for Michael. Then, tired of waiting for him to call back, and getting antsy sitting around the house, she asked Finch if he wanted to take a ride.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  “Up Route 127,” she said.

  He looked doubtful.

  “We can turn back anytime you like, if you get tired,” she said.

  He still wasn’t sure.

  “I’ll buy you ice cream,” she offered.

  “Done deal,” he said.

  They drove up through Prides Crossing, and then on through Manchester-by-the-Sea. When they passed Singing Beach, Finch wanted to stop. They tried walking in the sand, but it was too difficult for him, so they returned to their car and sat with the windows rolled down. She remembered the night she got stuck here, remembered Finch in those pirate days. It was hard to reconcile that man with the one who sat next to her now. She felt many emotions when she looked at him today, the largest of which was empathy. She realized to her surprise that this Finch was easier for her to understand; his vulnerability sparked something in her, perhaps some misplaced maternal instinct she’d been unaware she had.

  ZEE HAD NEVER WANTED CHILDREN, a fact that Michael knew and didn’t seem worried about, but one that Mattei had found troublesome for a number of reasons.

  “Why aren’t you worried?” Zee asked Michael just after he proposed.

  “Because you’ll get over it,” he said, confident.

  “You don’t think it’s possible that I might never want them?” She had been frustrated by his lack of concern. “I know you want to be a father.”

  “When the time is right,” he said.

  Zee doubted seriously if the time would ever be right. Though Michael refused to talk about it, she and Mattei spent the next four sessions discussing children. At the end of the month, Zee was confused but unchanged.

  “What do you want instead?” Mattei had asked her.

  “I want a life,” Zee said.

  “What kind of life?” Mattei had asked.

  Zee had once known exactly what kind of life she wanted. Now she drew a complete blank.

  THEY DROVE AS FAR AS Hammond Castle before they turned back. Zee bought Finch a coffee ice cream in a cup at Captain Dusty’s on their way back through Manchester, and she drove out to the point where there was a clear view of Baker’s Island.

  “We should sell that house,” Finch said, frowning.

  “No,” she said too quickly, realizing only now that it was the one place that was really hers, though she hadn’t been there for years. It had been left first to Maureen and then to Zee with Finch as trustee. “It has some good memories,” she said. “Even for you.”

  “I never set foot on that godforsaken island,” he said.

  She knew better. But she also knew enough not to argue with a man who in her opinion was beginning to show signs of dementia. Finch’s temper had quickened. She had no idea what was going to set him off these days. If his quick and apparently permanent dismissal of Melville for some old grievance was any indication, Zee thought it better not to risk any such confrontation.

  She realized suddenly that she had forgotten to give him his three-o’clock meds, then cursed herself for not giving them to him before the ice cream. She got some bottles of water from the ice-cream shop and went back for a paper cup when she realized that Finch could no longer coordinate the use of a straw.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said after a few minutes.

  He was too stiff to navigate, so they parked in the handicapped spot, hoping not to get a ticket. Realizing he wasn’t going to make it alone, she steered him toward the ladies’ room. If he noticed, he didn’t say so.

  The door to the stall didn’t lock, and she held it closed for him. Several women came in and out.

  “Do you need help?” she asked Finch.

  “No,” he said.

  She stayed, leaning against the door for what seemed a long time. After several more minutes, she let the door open slightly and peered into the stall. Finch sat, pants around his ankles, looking as if he were about to cry. The diaper he’d been wearing was now half on, half off and hanging into the toilet.

  Oh, God, she should have been helping him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” she answered. She gathered up the soiled diaper and stuffed it into the box marked FEMININE HYGIENE. She wiped him clean and helped him pull up his pants. “We’ll get you a shower when we get home,” she said.

  He nodded.

  When they exited the stall, Zee noticed a grandmother standing at the row of sinks with her grandchild, watching while the girl washed her hands. Zee walked Finch to the sink next to them and helped him with the soap dispenser.

  “There’s an old man in the ladies’ room,” the little girl said to her grandmother.

  Finch’s face flushed.

  The grandmother gave Zee an apologetic look.

  “Men are supposed to use the men’s room,” the little girl said to him.

  “Be quiet, now,” the grandmother said.

  “But they are.”

  “Hush,” the grandmother said, trying to distract the girl.

  “But they are!”

  Zee had never wanted to slap a child before, but she wanted to now.

  Instead she took Finch’s arm and walked him outside. As she let him into the car, she was trying hard not to cry. Things were hard enough for her father without her falling apart.

  FINCH FELL ASLEEP IN THE car on the way back to the house. He refused dinner, saying he just wanted to go to bed. She felt bad about doing it, because he said he was too cold, but she made him shower first, not washing him completely, just using the sprayer to wash his lower region. It was the first time she ever remembered seeing her father completely naked. His skin hung in folds, no fat on his frame, his muscles rapidly disappearing. He was wasting away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she toweled him off
.

  They walked together to the bed. Zee tucked him in and kissed his cheek.

  He smiled up at her. “‘Life is made up of marble and mud,’” he said, quoting Hawthorne.

  “Sleep well,” she said.

  THERE WERE NO MESSAGES FROM Michael. He hadn’t called her back. She knew he was angry with her, not only about the wedding planner but about the fact that she’d told him not to come. She guessed that she was being punished.

  She opened another bottle of wine and drank more than half of it before she was finally calm enough to sleep.

  ON MONDAY MORNING SHE CALLED one of the other psychologists and asked her to cover her patients. Then she called Mattei and left a message on her voice mail.

  “Hi. It’s Zee. I’ve forgotten, maybe you’re at the clinic this morning. I wanted to talk to you live. I’m in Salem with my father. He’s not doing well. He and Melville broke up, which no one bothered to tell me, and, long story short, Finch was having some kind of reaction to his meds, a really bad reaction with full-on hallucinations.” She paused, realizing she was saying more than was necessary. “Call me when you can. I need to take some time off. I already asked Michelle Berman to cover my patients for the next week, or to cancel them, which she said she was fine with.” A long pause. “I need to stay. At least until I can sort out what’s going on here.” She struggled for more words. “Just call me, okay?”

  At one o’clock Mattei called back.

  “What’s going on, Zee?”

  “Did you listen to my message?”

  “I did. How’s Finch?”

  “Not good,” she said, her eyes filling up again as she heard her words.

  “I figured something was wrong. Otherwise you would have been here. Michael is not being his normal, social self.”