Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

by Ann Hood

  Rebekah stretched out under the tree, looked up at the clear blue sky. Rebekah Morgan got a nose job, everyone had whispered. At lockers and in gym class and in notes hastily scribbled during English. Rebekah Morgan got a nose job. Rebekah knew she must go inside and tell her parents she was wrong, that it had all been a big mistake. She must continue to work at the pottery store to repay the rest of the money. She must write to Henry and apologize for misleading him. She would probably even return all the bears. Her hand traced her nose, lingered on the spot where the bump used to be. There was so much she had to do. But first, she had to just lie there, under the oak tree, and cry.

  Howard and Elizabeth, 1985•

  ALL THAT HOWARD COULD think of was the water bed they had when they first moved into their house. Elizabeth had never liked it. She used to say that if she wanted to sleep on water, she’d take a trip on the Queen Mary. But he had loved that bed. It was like being lulled to sleep each night. He liked the way he could feel Elizabeth beside him, her movements registering with tiny sloshes. Now, on this sturdy mattress, in the dark, he couldn’t tell if she was even beside him at all.

  Then her voice came through the darkness.

  “Let’s talk about the farm,” Elizabeth said.

  Oh, God, Howard thought. This is bad. What is happening here is so bad.

  But he said, “All right.”

  He heard her sigh.

  “Should I put on a light?” he said.

  He heard a match strike, and watched in its glow as Elizabeth lit a candle beside the bed.

  “You know,” she said, the candle sending a small shadow across her face, “all the time you were in Vietnam and Rebekah and I were in New York, I kept getting these letters from Claudia about how beautiful the Berkshires were. I remember in one of them she described going to an outdoor concert, at Tanglewood, with Simon. She described the smells and the way the hills looked and how beautiful the music sounded, clean and pure, she said. They ate freshly picked strawberries and blueberries. I read that letter and looked out our window onto Broome Street with all the trucks and noise and soot and I thought how nice a farm would be.”

  Howard thought back to when Jesse was a baby. One night, his temperature was so high that he went into convulsions. They sat in the hospital waiting room while the doctors packed him in ice to bring the fever down. Sitting there, they never talked about Jesse being so sick, or what would they do if something happened to him. Instead, they talked about the farm.

  Howard felt Elizabeth waiting for him to say something.

  “When you showed me those letters from Claudia,” he said, “I could still smell the jungle on my skin. The idea of starting over in the country was like an answered prayer.”

  Elizabeth’s hand reached for his under the covers. He traced the fingers, the palm. Sometimes, he thought, prayers are answered. Jesse had been all right that terrible night they rushed him to the hospital.

  “When you were gone,” Elizabeth was saying, “I remember getting some paintings ready for my show at the gallery and I was furious at you for not being with me. I thought, I’ve got this cranky kid and paintings to finish and bills to pay. How dare he not be here? How dare he be so far away?”

  “But,” he said, “we would never have bought the farm if I hadn’t gone to Vietnam. I would have stayed at Columbia until we turned into the perfect academic couple. Of course, you could have played with your painting as a side thing.”

  She laughed. “I make terrible martinis. Our cocktail parties for the dean and professors would have been terrible flops.”

  “And your canapes aren’t so great either.”

  “You know, whenever I think of New York, it’s never of me alone there with Rebekah while you were in Vietnam. It’s always of the time when all three of us were there. The other time seems like a dream. How did we get through it?”

  “I was so afraid to die,” he said without thinking.

  Their eyes met briefly.

  “Let’s talk about the farm,” she said.

  “Yes.” He put his arms around her tightly. “I’ll never forget the first time we saw it. Claudia and Peter were standing in front when we drove up and their kids were playing with those soft balls—” “Nerf balls.”

  “That’s right. Nerf balls. I remember that crab-apple tree was full of fruit. It smelled so wonderful.”

  “Later we made jam from it.”

  “The farm was just what we were looking for.”

  “It was. A dream—”

  “A dream come true.”

  There was was a brief silence.

  “What was your favorite thing there?” Elizabeth asked at last.

  Howard didn’t answer right away. Instead, he was flooded with images and smells that he kept tucked away for nights like this one. He let them all surge forward now: the feel of the water on his naked body as he swam in the pond at night; the smell of the air there after a summer rain, like newly laundered clothes; the way the moonlight filled their bedroom with a strangely tree-filtered white light; Elizabeth’s body in that light, tiny freckles on her arms and back and the salty taste of her.

  He shook his head to clear the images. Howard knew that he must answer, he must keep Elizabeth talking. There were difficult things to discuss. Yet his head felt like one of those plastic bubbles on Rebekah’s bureau. A tiny town sat under the dome—a miniature white church and a red house around a pond with a lone skater on it. When the bubble was turned upside down, snow fell. Howard felt like that single skater, out alone on the ice with the bubble turned upside down.

  “The pond,” he answered finally. “I loved to swim at night there. To take off all my clothes and jump in naked.” Once he said this, Howard realized it was probably not the best thing to have chosen. This day, he thought, is too haunted. Too many ghosts.

  But Elizabeth smiled. “Yes,” she said, “the pond. One time, one of the boys—Henry, I think—got a frog from there and put it in Rebekah’s bed while she was sleeping. She’s still afraid of frogs to this day.”

  “Those boys tortured her so.”

  “Do you know what I liked best?”

  Howard shook his head.

  “Of course there was so much I loved. Like painting in that loft in the barn. And the pond too. It was wonderful having the pond. But best of all I liked Rebekah’s bedroom. When I was a little girl, I wanted a room just like that one. Pale blue walls with puffy white clouds painted on them…and a ceiling with silver stars and all the planets. I used to like to pretend I was a bird, you know. I would fly all around, spreading my arms for wings. I wanted a room that would make me feel like I was in the sky flying.”

  Howard remembered Elizabeth painting those stars and planets on Rebekah’s bedroom ceiling.

  “I never wanted,” she continued, “the basic little-girl pink gingham and white eyelet and gilt-trimmed mirrors.”

  Howard smiled. Elizabeth would be the little girl who wanted to lie in bed at night and gaze at the stars, who pretended to be a bird and spread her arms to fly.

  “Not Rebekah, though,” Elizabeth said. “Rebekah wants all the gingham and gilt she can get. She’s so much like my mother. My mother always worried about what people would say or think.” She sat up now and looked at him. “What will happen to Rebekah?”

  “She’ll grow up to be beautiful and intelligent. Maybe she won’t frown so much then.”

  “Without me. She’ll grow up without me.”

  The words fell from her mouth like the sharpest arrows, sticking deep into him, forcing him to sit up also.

  “Hey,” he said when he caught his breath, “I thought we were talking about the farm.”

  “I’m going to die,” she said for the first time out loud.

  “The doctor said…” They both knew what the doctor had said.

  “You can do all the right things,” she said, “but it just doesn’t matter.”

  Howard wanted to say something that would make it all better. He wanted to offer
her hope or tell her that as long as they were together nothing would happen. The doctor had said it could be a very long time. But they both knew the other half was that it could be a very short time. There are no guarantees, he thought. Simon was seven when he drowned. Still a little boy, really. Or today, Howard thought, today he could walk out of this room and get hit by a falling brick. There were no guarantees. But he didn’t say any of this. He just looked up at the ceiling and wished there were silver stars there, and white clouds on the walls around him.

  HOWARD NOTICED THAT SINCE they’d been to the doctor in New York, Elizabeth moved slower, more deliberately. She brushed her hair with long, deliberate strokes, spent hours arranging a single vase of flowers. In the two weeks since their visit to Sloan-Kettering, Elizabeth had worked on just one item in the pottery workshop, a teapot. She spent days mixing colors, finally settling on a flat chalky blue and a pink the color of raspberries. She would paint a border, she explained to him, and small splashes of chubby pink flowers.

  Today she polished the dining room table. She slowly rubbed linseed oil into its cracks, massaged the wood in firm, swirling motions. Howard was mesmerized by her hands. They were slightly shiny and tinged brown from the oil.

  “Would you hang a bird feeder outside the bedroom window?” she asked.

  Howard had read an article on death and dying that broke it into seven different steps. He was in the stage of denial. By not thinking about it, it didn’t seem real at all. It was as if Elizabeth weren’t even sick. Until she said something like that. He knew she was alluding to a time when she would be too sick to go to the bedroom window and look out. A bird feeder would bring the birds right to the window. But he pushed that thought to the back of his mind.

  “Sure,” he said casually as he concentrated on her hands. Round and round, they rubbed the oil into the table.

  ELIZABETH HAD GOTTEN SICK very quickly. One day she was fine, talking about a trip to Mexico at Christmastime, and the next day she found lumps under her arms and at the back of her neck. Suddenly their lives were consumed with doctor’s visits, blood cell counts, sonograms, and waiting rooms. They had even spent a week in New York visiting a specialist. Every time they had gone for tests or to see the doctor, Howard brought a small pad with him, to sketch ideas for new pieces of pottery, or new patterns. But he could never concentrate on work, and always ended up reading the old People magazines that littered the waiting room. He knew more about Joan Collins than he had ever thought possible.

  They found a new doctor in Boston that they both liked. He was young, with bright red hair and freckles. His nose was peeling from a sunburn. He sailed every weekend, he explained. His wife was also a doctor and they lived in Marblehead. The doctor in New York had spoken in a clipped tone. This Boston doctor, Dr. Squires, talked as if he were at a barbecue. His voice was upbeat and cheerful and he chuckled a lot. Howard kept expecting him to ask them if they wanted a hot dog or a hamburger. Dr. Squires told them about the house he and his wife had restored. They discovered a fireplace in the bedroom that had been completely covered up. Now it was in working order. Howard wondered if Elizabeth was like that fireplace. Perhaps Dr. Squires would discover something that the other doctor hadn’t seen, and put her back in working order.

  “It isn’t good,” Dr. Squires told them. “But I think radiation treatments may arrest it.”

  The doctor in New York had mentioned radiation. But his voice had offered no hope at all. “See a doctor in Boston,” he had told them. Dr. Squires brought them a sense of hope. He ordered a CAT scan, more blood tests, and an appointment with a nutritionist. They would see him again in two days. Elizabeth had suggested they stay in Boston rather than drive back home. They left the doctor’s office and walked out into the bright September sunlight. Everything seemed better. There were more tests, new doctors. Anything was possible. Howard felt that if he looked away from Elizabeth for a minute she might disappear. He tried this. He watched the traffic inch down the street, studied a car as someone tried to parallel-park. When Howard looked back at Elizabeth, she smiled at him and took his hand. She was still there. She had not vanished at all. He lifted her hand to his lips, and gently kissed it.

  HOWARD AND ELIZABETH SPENT the two days until their next appointment wandering the streets of Boston. It was unseasonably warm for the middle of October. They pretended they were tourists. They walked the Freedom Trail, followed its crooked red path through the city streets. Elizabeth insisted on going inside the Old North Church. Howard waited on the sidewalk for her. When she came out, she smiled at him. “How about a pizza at the European?”

  He agreed but felt angry at her for going into a church. Everything was going to be okay. She didn’t need to ask for a little extra help. It’s going to be okay, he thought for the hundredth—no, thousandth—time.

  THEY WALKED HAND IN hand through the crowds at Quincy Market. Elizabeth bought some lemony potpourri for Rebekah and a Red Sox shirt for Jesse. They bought food at each stall they passed and then sat outside to eat it. For almost a month, Elizabeth had been consumed with her own mortality. She would lie in bed at night and picture the cancer growing inside of her. Now, after seeing Dr. Squires, she could at last see beyond that. She could pretend that they were on a little vacation. “We’re here on vacation,” she said to herself. “That’s all.”

  After a while they walked to a small park near the water. They sat on a bench. The air was salty and there were no crowds here, just a few people sitting on the grass reading or looking at the water. Elizabeth tossed peanuts to the gulls that circled nearby. She watched them pick up nuts in their mouths and fly away, into the sky. She followed one bird’s flight until it disappeared into the clouds.

  DR. SQUIRES’S NOSE WAS peeling more heavily now. He greeted them with a smile. Elizabeth felt relaxed. There had been a mistake, she was sure.

  “The news is good?” Howard asked.

  Dr. Squires hesitated before he answered. “The progress of the disease seems to have slowed. Its early growth was apparently much more rapid.”

  “And?”

  “I still recommend radiation. It may even arrest the growth altogether for a time.”

  Elizabeth felt weak. The pretending was over. Once more her life was being measured in terms of limited time.

  “How long is a time?” Howard managed to say.

  “I don’t know,” Dr. Squires said in his barbecue-host voice. “I’ve seen remissions that last as long as two or three years.”

  “What if there’s no remission?” Elizabeth asked.

  “There may very well be one.”

  “And there may not.”

  Dr. Squires nodded. “That’s right. There may not.”

  THE WEATHER SUDDENLY TURNED cool. As they drove west, toward home, they saw multi-colored leaves everywhere. It seemed as if the Mass Pike had been tie-dyed. They did not speak. Radiation treatments had been set up at a hospital closer to home, prescriptions had been filled. Now they would go home and wait for a remission to happen. Or not.

  As they pulled into the driveway with the rental car, Elizabeth said, “We have to tell them now.”

  Jesse ran out of the house.

  “Neat car!” he shouted. “You look so funny driving, Dad.”

  Elizabeth put her arm around her son. He was ten, short for his age, his head a mass of black curls, his eyes clear blue.

  “Rebekah was a real pain,” he said as they went inside.

  “Where is she?” Howard asked.

  “I don’t know. Reading somewhere. She wouldn’t let me do anything at all. I was her prisoner. A slave.”

  Rebekah entered the kitchen then. Ever since she had sneaked off and had her nose fixed, Elizabeth was startled whenever she saw her. She looked younger with this new nose, her eyes seemed farther apart, her face thinner.

  “Please don’t ever leave me here alone with him again,” she said. She was wearing one of Howard’s sweaters and holding a library copy of Princess Daisy.
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  Elizabeth sank into a chair.

  “A guy just called,” Rebekah said. “Dr. Squires.”

  “A doctor,” Jesse asked. “Who’s sick?”

  “I am,” Elizabeth answered softly.

  ONLY A WEEK LATER and the children looked at Elizabeth as if she were a freak. Jesse kept reaching over and touching her hair, then quickly pulling his hand away. Rebekah sat far from her, as if the cancer were contagious. No one said the words cancer or dying out loud. No one said much of anything at all.

  Elizabeth lay beside Howard in bed. She felt that her life was all behind her now. Nothing was definite or permanent anymore. There may or may not be a remission. In another year she might still be lying in this bed. Maybe she would be here in another two years. Or more. Or less. All the years leading up to this moment seemed like nothing. Growing up, meeting Howard, their life in New York, living on the farm, starting the pottery business, all of it added up to this moment, this time of lying here and trying not to die.

  Claudia, 1985•

  CLAUDIA WAS UNDER A TREE at the bottom of the hill near the pond where Simon had drowned. Sometimes, if she lay real still—as she was now—she could actually hear the sounds of children laughing and splashing in the water. She could hear the boys, her sons, as they chased and teased Rebekah. Claudia could make herself believe that the sounds were real. She could picture herself in the kitchen of the farmhouse with Elizabeth. The two families still lived together in her daydreams. It is 1974, she imagines. Early summer. And she and Elizabeth are making a pesto sauce. As Claudia chops the dark green basil leaves, their rich smell is released and she inhales deeply. It is so good to be alive, she says.

  Claudia liked to imagine she and Simon are having a picnic. The two of them used to sneak away together and go to the pond with a bag full of their favorite treats, things none of the others liked or food that didn’t really go together—sweet gherkins, fig newtons, bananas, applesauce.