Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

by Ann Hood

  “I couldn’t run away. He should be willing to go to prison for what he believes.”

  “Prison!” Suzanne said.

  “This is Howard’s decision,” Claudia said. “Besides, he may like the school and it will all work out.”

  Elizabeth looked as if she might cry. “I don’t know what I would do.”

  “When the time comes we’ll be there,” Suzanne said. “Even if you run off to New York and follow Howard to the wilds of Canada, we’ll be there for you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “We just discussed it last night and it’s been on my mind. Life without Howard would be—”

  “Like life without us!” Suzanne laughed.

  “All right, Suzanne,” Claudia said. “Confess. What’s your secret?”

  “I already told you one.”

  “That doesn’t count. That’s a sex secret and I’ve told you a million of those,” Claudia said.

  “I want to move to a big city, like Boston, maybe, and get a fantastic job and make lots of money,” Suzanne said.

  “You horrible capitalist!” Elizabeth said.

  “I’m afraid it’s true.”

  “What about Abel?” Claudia asked.

  “He’ll come too. He’ll teach writing. I’ll buy him a tweed jacket and a pipe.”

  “That’s not a secret.”

  “It is to Abel,” Suzanne laughed.

  “Let’s sign our names in blood or something,” Claudia said. “Like a pact.”

  “We don’t need to do that,” Suzanne said.

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth said. “We’re friends.”

  They smiled at each other. “Let’s seal it in ice cream!” Claudia shouted.

  And they piled into Abel’s fluorescent green VW van and drove to the twenty-four-hour Howard Johnson’s. There was only one waitress and the restaurant was full. Later, they argued over who got up and started taking orders first, Elizabeth or Claudia. They could agree that it wasn’t Suzanne, who had to be convinced and then ended up getting the biggest tip, $3.00 from a man who said she was the only waitress in there that didn’t look like some crazy hippie. “That’s right,” Elizabeth had told him, “she’s a capitalist pig.”

  “We’ll get lobsters,” Suzanne said on their way home after she counted their tips. “We’ll get lobsters and cook them at Abel’s house. I mean, at Abel’s and my house. We can cook them right on the beach and they’ll be delicious.”

  Suzanne, 1970•

  SHE COULD HAVE SAT in the Portland bus station for two hours to get a bus that required only one change, in Boston. Or she could get on a bus right away and change three times—Boston, Providence, and New Haven.

  “I want to leave now,” Suzanne said to the ticket seller. He stood behind bars, like a man in a Monopoly jail.

  “Honey, the later bus still gets to New York earlier. And that’s with a two-hour wait! It’s crazy to leave now.”

  Suzanne slipped the money through an opening at the bottom of the bars.

  “Honey, listen, three bus changes. You could get lost. Or delayed and miss one of those connections. It happens, you know.”

  She pushed the money farther through the opening. The man shook his head, passed a ticket back through to her.

  The thing was, she had to keep moving. If she sat there for two hours, she might cave in, lose control. This way, there was action, movement. She would get on the bus and keep moving toward New York. Getting off the bus and finding the next one was good. It would keep her mind on something else. Moving through the different bus stations, buying newspapers and gum and small bags of potato chips and cream soda for the ride, looking at the bums who crowded each station—it would all keep her busy. And in the end, she would be in New York and Elizabeth would be there waiting. Then she would collapse. But not until then.

  Suzanne was afraid that the actual time on the buses would be the worst part of the trip. She thought Abel’s presence might crowd her then, as New England sped by her. “Boston?” he had said. “Me in Boston with a wife and baby? Suzie, you know me better than that.” Images did flicker through her mind, but they were made-up ones. Abel happy about the baby, asking when it was coming. Abel dressed in a tweed jacket and knit tie, kissing her good-bye as he went off to work. There she would be, radiantly pregnant, round and smiling, waving good-bye. That’s what she thought of through Maine and New Hampshire. The other images, the true ones, did not surface.

  Instead, she kept her mind moving. She read each city’s newspaper from the front page to the funnies. Race riots in Boston schools. The Young Rascals play the Rhode Island Auditorium. The Red Sox beat the Yankees. And Charlie Brown struck out over and over at baseball in each city. “Good Grief!” he moaned in the Boston Globe and the Providence Journal. She read through Massachusetts and Rhode Island and half of Connecticut.

  When she changed buses in New Haven, afraid to be idle as the new one pulled away, she tried to do the crossword puzzles and word jumbles. The clues didn’t make sense to her and she turned to her horoscope. “Don’t travel today. Watch out for domestic quarrels,” one warned her. “Good day for travel,” she read in another newspaper. “Harmony with loved ones.”

  Suzanne surprised herself by fantasizing about Ken Farrel, who was starting law school in the fall in Washington, D.C. She imagined them moving there together, to a town house in Georgetown. They would have a small backyard with a patio where they could have barbecues. She would get a couple of cats, long-haired gray ones that would sit on the windowsill and look out. In this fantasy there was no baby. There were two cats and fraternity brothers coming over for spaghetti dinners with their wives, and a silver Volvo, and Sunday brunches, where she and Ken would eat fluffy omelets filled with Gruyère and apples.

  When the bus pulled into Port Authority, Suzanne was slightly confused. And then she saw Elizabeth waving to her, looking just pregnant enough to jolt her back into remembering what had happened and why she had come all this way. As soon as she saw Elizabeth, in a paint-spattered smock, her stomach jutting out slightly, her hair frizzy from the early summer humidity, Suzanne broke down.

  The act of moving downtown toward Elizabeth’s apartment soothed her somewhat. The subway station was hot and smelled of urine. A man stood in front of Elizabeth and rubbed his stomach suggestively. “Oooooh, Mama,” he whispered through broken teeth. On the train, clutching swaying straps, Elizabeth kept asking her, “Are you okay?”

  “No,” Suzanne answered, over and over. “No.”

  Elizabeth guided her off the train, up the stairs, and through the streets. Suzanne tried to concentrate on her legs as they moved up and down on the pavement. She felt control seeping out of her like sweat. Tears fell on her cheeks again, hot and fast. There was an old freight elevator up to the loft, and it squeaked and groaned as it moved them slowly upward. Suzanne began to whimper. Elizabeth pulled the heavy gates open and led Suzanne down a dark hallway and into the loft.

  Inside, there was sunlight. It smelled of paint. Everywhere there were stretched canvases, some blank, others completed. Elizabeth brought Suzanne to a futon in a far corner and as soon as she sat, as soon as she stopped moving, Suzanne began to weep. Her crying was loud and hard. Her body shook. She felt Elizabeth’s arm around her and collapsed against her body.

  THERE HAD BEEN NO question of going to Claudia with this. When it had happened to her, Peter had done the noble thing. They had gotten married and moved to a little apartment over the garage at a friend’s farm. It had seemed to Suzanne that Claudia, who was always wildly searching for something, had found it with Simon. She had another baby, Henry, almost right away. Claudia strapped them to her back and brought them everywhere—classes, hiking, even to Abel and Suzanne’s, where they climbed on the furniture and pulled Abel’s moustache.

  How could she ever tell Claudia that Abel didn’t want their baby? Didn’t even really want her. Claudia would tell her to have it and the hell with Abel. “I would have had Simon on
my own,” she had said often enough. And then she would pick up her son and bask in his very existence.

  But the fact was, she did marry Peter. She hadn’t had to have Simon on her own. And she could go ahead with all her plans. In the fall they were moving the whole family to Amherst and she would go to graduate school in ancient Greek history. She talked about going to a Greek island for a year or so, to study. They would eat fresh fish from the sea and swim in the Aegean, and she and Peter would drink ouzo and maybe, she laughed, make more babies. What a wonderful place to make a baby, she said.

  Suzanne wondered where this baby, her baby, had begun. She liked to think it was on a night on the beach, under the stars. There had been nights like that. And afterward, Abel would whisper love poetry to her, softly in her ear, brushing the sand from her hair as he spoke. If she did have the baby, that’s the story she would tell it of its beginnings. The sand in her hair and the poetry and the love. How could she tell a child that its own father hadn’t wanted it? Or her? No, this child’s beginnings would have to be a secret. Suzanne would have to be silent, and the thought began a new wave of sobs. Howard brought tea and the night wore on.

  THE VOICES OF THE workmen from outside drifted upward.

  “I’m opening this bag, and if it’s a salami and provolone sandwich inside, I’m going back home and making my wife eat it.”

  The sun slowly filled the loft.

  “That’s it. I’m going all the way back to Sheepshead Bay and throwing this goddamn sandwich in her face.”

  Suzanne’s eyes felt heavy. She sniffled, looked up.

  The thought she had suddenly was of the baby as the only remnant of her and Abel’s love.

  She got up and walked over to the stove, where Elizabeth was making wholewheat pancakes. “I don’t think I should have an abortion,” she said.

  Elizabeth turned to her. “I had one,” she said. “In high school.”

  “Tell me about it,” Suzanne said.

  “I had this boyfriend in high school who looked like James Dean. At least to me he did.”

  Suzanne smiled, the first smile since she had arrived. Her head was beginning to clear.

  “His mother worked nights and I’d go to his house while she was gone. We’d drink wine and make love. And then one night we went out to dinner, to Vallee’s Steakhouse. It was right after I found out I was pregnant. We ordered all this food and drank martinis and hardly spoke at all. We had so little in common. I mean, there was no question about having the baby. At least not for me.”

  “He wanted it?”

  “Well, I don’t know if he really wanted it. He didn’t want me to go away to school that fall. He tried to paint this wonderful picture of the life we could have together.”

  Suzanne nodded. She thought of the wonderful life she had described to Abel. “We’re just too different,” he had said. “All I want, Suzie, is to sit here and watch the tide come in and write some poems. That’s all.”

  “He told me a story,” Elizabeth said. “A Chinese legend about lovers being separated. These two lovers were exiled to different galaxies and were heartbroken. But once a year they were reunited by crossing a bridge in the sky made completely of sparrows.”

  “What an image,” Suzanne said. “Two lovers crossing a bridge of sparrows after being separated for a year. It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s the Milky Way, really. Connecting galaxies.”

  Not even the Milky Way could connect Abel and me again, Suzanne thought.

  “He wants to sit on the beach and watch the ocean,” she said.

  “What do you want?” Elizabeth asked softly.

  “To go to business school. I could get such a great job afterward, with an MBA. I could have a very good life.”

  If she didn’t have the baby, Suzanne thought, she could start a new life in Boston. Forget Abel altogether. “Everyone has one true love,” he had told her. “And you are mine.” The thought of not having the baby, of erasing Abel from her life, sent a sharp pain through her. Suzanne imagined those first months of school, when she had made all her choices. They all seemed wrong now. She thought of walking past Claudia and Elizabeth and feeling drawn to them, pulled in a different direction. She had done it all wrong.

  Maybe, she thought, this baby is a girl and I can show her all the right choices, be sure she makes them. She could start now by making her own right choices. She could put the past behind her, not dwell on her mistakes. But she would have the baby as a reminder, always, of where she had been.

  Suzanne stood shakily. “I…I have to go.”

  “Go?” Elizabeth said.

  “I want to go to Boston. I have so much to do.”

  And even as Elizabeth directed her out, bewildered, Suzanne was looking beyond her. This time, she took a direct train to Boston. Suzanne walked out of South Station and hailed a cab. The first thing she would do, she decided, after checking into a hotel room, was to get a haircut. She wrapped a strand around her finger tightly, remembered Abel’s large hands in her hair, brushing off sand, then froze the image like a snapshot, and stored it away.

  Elizabeth, 1972•

  SASKATCHEWAN. ALBERTA. NOVA SCOTIA. The names jumped at them from the map. Howard’s finger traced the shape of Canada.

  “Saskatchewan,” Elizabeth said.

  From their apartment, they heard trucks pull in and out of the warehouse below them. The workmen shouted to each other. In the distance, a siren sounded.

  “Ottawa,” Elizabeth said.

  She bounced Rebekah on her knee. The baby’s mouth was always turned down, as if she were constantly on the verge of tears.

  “I never thought we’d get such a cranky baby,” Elizabeth said as Rebekah squirmed.

  “Maybe we got the wrong one,” Howard smiled.

  Elizabeth thought she could live in that smile, crawl into it and shape herself against it. And his eyes. Howard’s eyes were so blue that strangers sometimes stopped him and told him he had the most beautiful eyes they’d ever seen.

  Rebekah twisted her body uncomfortably. She disliked being held, but when they put her down she screamed until she was picked up again. At night she sometimes whimpered even as she slept, her hands clenched into tiny fists. Elizabeth had been sure they would have a boy, a gentle baby with Howard’s smile. This baby had been born scowling. She had lots of thick black hair that stood around her head like a permanent that went wrong. Already there were creases between her eyes from frowning.

  “Do you want to take her back? Exchange her for a different model?” Howard said.

  “No,” Elizabeth said, “let’s keep her. I understand I wasn’t such a lovable baby either. Colicky.”

  Howard took the baby in his arms.

  “Hello, Rebekah,” he said. “What’s the matter there, kiddo?”

  Rebekah’s face relaxed a little. All of her smiles were saved for her father.

  Elizabeth picked up the map and looked at Howard.

  “You think it’s running away, don’t you?” he said.

  Rebekah pulled at his chin.

  “Don’t you?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I’m not married to Joan Baez,” he said. “No one will take notice if I go to prison.”

  “I’ll notice. And someday this cantankerous kid of ours will grow up and she’ll notice. She’ll know we didn’t run away.”

  Rebekah wrapped her fingers in Howard’s hair. Sometimes Elizabeth would find them asleep like that, the baby’s fingers clutching her father’s hair.

  “There is, of course—” he began.

  “Another option.”

  “Going.”

  “A C.O.”

  “That is what I am,” he said. “A conscientious objector.”

  “You could go and shuffle papers somewhere.”

  “That’s why I left graduate school. I didn’t want to shuffle any more papers.”

  “How about mopping floors in a hospital?” Elizabeth looked at the map. Bay of Fundy.

  “I t
alked to Bob. From the deli. You know who I mean?”

  Elizabeth nodded, pictured the man who filled hero sandwiches with tuna salad or corned beef, his long hair held back by a powder blue hairnet.

  “They put him in Special Services. He speaks Thai. His mother’s from Thailand and he lived there for a while. They sent him to learn Vietnamese and he went over as an interpreter. He never had to fight.”

  They looked at each other. Rebekah whimpered as she fell asleep, tightened her grip on Howard’s hair.

  “He told me that he feels he helped get peace in a peaceful way.”

  “You speak Japanese,” Elizabeth said.

  Howard smiled.

  Oh, please, Elizabeth thought, let me climb into that smile and stay there forever.

  “Do you remember,” Howard said, knowing that of course she remembered, “what I told you on our very first date?”

  Beer and pizza at the local college hangout. I’ve never seen such gorgeous eyes, she had said. Pizza with olives and mushrooms, the same combination they got now at Arturo’s on Houston Street.

  “I spent six months in Japan,” Howard had said that night, “learning the language and the philosophy. I was in a motorcycle accident when I got back and on the admittance form I listed my religion as Buddhist. They thought I was being sassy.” He had laughed then. “I’m probably the only guy who took his language requirement for grad school in Japanese.”

  “You told me to eat quickly because you wanted to take me home and kiss every inch of my body,” Elizabeth said.

  “I believe I was true to my word.”

  “If you go as a C.O. and they put you in Special Services like they did with Bob from the deli—”

  “He said he felt like he helped achieve peace in a peaceful way. And through the system.”

  “Will you come back in one piece?”

  “How could I not come back?” Howard said softly.

  He disentangled Rebekah’s fingers from his hair. As soon as her fingers were free, she grabbed Howard’s forefinger and held on tight. Elizabeth wanted to grab his hand, too, and hold it so tightly he wouldn’t be able to leave unless he took her with him.