Jobs, Mother once told him, had been so scarce after the Crash that his father would take a room wherever he could find work and came home to Augusta once a month. Their trip to see him must have been a holiday, because Frank, whose hair was still shiny black, had spent the whole afternoon with them.
In Portland, they took a streetcar downtown, then walked to a little sand beach at the foot of Munjoy Hill where they watched the boats with their fine white sails tacking back and forth in the harbor. High above them, the gulls glided and swooped, calling to one another in roller-coaster cries. George had never been to the coast before, never seen seashells, smelled salt air, or put his feet in the ocean. He told his mother it was the most beautiful place he’d ever seen. Ethel laughed at her husband’s jokes and touched his knee when she spoke. His father told them the names of all the waterbirds, and after lunch he bought George a grape Nehi.
Before they boarded the train home, Frank shook his son’s hand, told him to look after his mother. George held her arm the whole ride back, keeping her safe, as the train ran north out of Portland. Through the window, he watched the city thin to country as clusters of tall buildings gave way to barns, fences, and fields dotted with evergreens, boulders, and dairy herds. Then the train jigged inland and followed the river north to the capital. By the time they stepped down to the platform of the Augusta depot, Portland was just a dream.
George opened his eyes when he heard the clang of crossing bells in the distance. A train whistle lowed, the platform vibrated, and a cloud passed overhead, covering George in a reprieve of shade. When he looked up he saw it was not a cloud but a man between him and the sun, his father, dressed in his summer suit, fedora, and dusty dress shoes.
“You talk to your mother?”
It occurred to George that his father must have left his coveralls at the print shop, that he’d never seen him wearing his work clothes. He knew about the coveralls only because Frank brought them home to be washed on Fridays.
George closed his book and grunted in reply, looking past his father to the tracks, where waves of heat shivered up and disappeared into a sky that seemed too high. Before he could speak, Frank said, “She wants me to try and stop you going. Went down to the recruiter after you left this morning. He said you could still change your mind.”
George was surprised his mother had left the house. “She better?”
“Probably back in the bed by now.”
George stowed his book and stood. He wanted to be eye level with his father but couldn’t think of anything to say. Conversation with the old man, such as it was, came a lot easier when they were shouting.
Frank lifted his hat and scratched his head, moving a single gray strand out of place, then smoothing it back. George stared over his father’s shoulder to the tracks, wishing the train would pull in, fill the silence and the space.
Frank continued, “She wasn’t like that when we got married, you know, sad all the time. It just happened, later, after you were born.” He looked up at the sky, down at his shoes, anywhere but at his son, then said, “You didn’t tell her about…”
George shook his head. The feeling of power over his father was unfamiliar, unsettling. He should have enjoyed it, but it made him feel small and tight.
A gust of hot air jostled him as the train rolled in and screeched to a stop. He hoisted the bag onto his shoulder. A peach bumped him, just below the ribs. That morning, Jimmy’s mother had filled his bag with food for the trip. He pushed from his mind the memory of the O’Connell family gathered around him in their tiny front room a few hours before. He’d be damned if he’d cry in front of his father.
The passengers were disembarking, some stretching their legs in the sun, others being gathered up by friends or family.
“Always thought I’d see the world one day,” Frank said. He extended an ink-stained hand; it held a brown paper bag. “Got you these for the trip. If you’re going to be a navy man, you’d better learn to hold your liquor.”
George took the bag and looked inside. Two bottles of ale. He shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other, looked at his shoes.
“You got a church key?” Frank asked.
George shook his head.
“Well, take this, then. It’ll do in a pinch and you probably ought to have one anyway. I got others.” He held out his pocketknife, but George didn’t take it. Frank waved it at him, once, twice, then bridged the gulf between them with his arm and dropped the knife into George’s shirt pocket and gave it a tap with his forefinger.
After a moment, he said, “Listen, son, I, uh … Drink up.” He closed his mouth and cleared his throat. He started to wipe the toe of his shoe on the hem of his trousers but stopped and returned his foot to the platform. He pulled out his handkerchief, tilted his hat back, and mopped his forehead. George thought he might have passed the cloth over his eyes.
The conductor bellowed the all aboard.
George had been wondering if he should extend his hand, but his father’s fists were deep in his trouser pockets. Frank said, “Enjoy the beer, George, ’cause it’s the last thing you’ll get from me.”
George walked to his train car and climbed aboard. His fingertips searched for the velvet of the seat cover but found leather instead. As the train pulled out of the station, the last thing George saw was his father’s back. Frank Lawson, leaning against the station wall, his hat still on his head with the brim crushed in on one side, looked lost inside his dusty suit. George thought he saw his father’s shoulders shake, but he would never be sure.
STARVATION DIET
Liliane stands in the dark kitchen, staring out the window at the snow and the shallow footprints that skirt the edge of the woods at the back of the house where the door is bolted against the night. Beneath the dense growth of evergreens, there is only a dusting of snow, but from the tree line to the house, in the open space of the backyard, it deepens to more than a foot. There the individual steps of the path merge and cut a trench, leaving a frozen wake where the walker became a wader.
When she left the house earlier in the evening, the snow lay undisturbed, mean jags of sleet bouncing off the icy crust. The sleet turned to snow while she was out, then stopped, and now the sky is clear. The light of the three-quarter moon cloaks her world in shades of blue, from deepest navy to a dreary bleu celeste, a lifeless version of the Mediterranean sky before a rain. At the moment, however, Liliane is more concerned with who or what has walked through the woods than with fleeting memories of summer in Antibes. Her gaze flicks from the door to the top of the refrigerator where she keeps the shotgun, while her hand eases open the drawer that holds the shells. She thinks of her children safely asleep at Agnes’s house tonight and offers silent thanks to God.
Mason first put the Remington in her hands six years ago, right before he shipped out the first time. Though she’d seen plenty of weapons back in France during the war, she’d never actually held a gun and initially refused to even pick it up. He insisted, though, and showed her how to load it and carry it broken over her forearm. Eventually she’d taken a shot and to her great surprise found she liked the smell of hot metal and burning gunpowder, the weight of the stock snugged into her shoulder, and the kick of the recoil. With the gun in her hands, she feels competent, powerful, less alone. She practices often and seldom misses.
* * *
“May I have another lump?” Liliane asked her mother-in-law a week before the night at the window.
“Well of course, dear.” Edith Baines pushed the sugar bowl just past the middle of the kitchen table. “Lord almighty, Lillian, I don’t know how you stay so thin with all that sugar. I can’t stand a sweet drink.”
Behind a smile that fooled no one, she thought, If I had anything resembling coffee in this cup, I wouldn’t want sugar either. She dropped two lumps into the thin brown swill and watched the chipped blue sugar bowl slide back to the other side of the table. Next time she’d ask for tea.
Liliane said, “Merci, Edith,”
intentionally using the French pronunciation, AyDEET. Tit for tat, she told herself. Her mother-in-law had been mispronouncing her name as Lillian since the first day they met, and she believed it was deliberate, an unsubtle way of demeaning her and her foreignness.
Of course, most of the people in Wellbridge had trouble with her name and ended up calling her Lil or Lili instead, which was fine. Her closest friend and three-times-a-week housekeeper, Agnes Juke, tried to French it up by exaggerating the final syllable. The result was something along the lines of LillyON, which was even harder on the ear than the version her in-laws used. Still, Liliane appreciated the effort.
After a perfunctory “You’re welcome,” Edith removed her black cat’s-eyes, huffed on each lens, and polished them with the edge of the well-worn yellow tablecloth. Though red-rimmed, her eyes were an astonishing watery blue, nearly translucent. Liliane thought of the wedding photo in the living room. Edith had been such a pretty woman when she was young. Is this what fifty years of gray skies and snow does, she wondered, dry you up, freeze you, chip you to a shard?
Outside, the arthritic tree limbs scratched against the low clouds of the endless Maine winter. Not for the first time that day, Liliane thought longingly of yellow sunlight, café au lait, ripe tomatoes drizzled in olive oil, and the supple give of white sand beneath her feet on the beach at La Garoupe.
To make up for the sigh she was unable to suppress, she said, “On Sunday I take a call from Mason.”
“Ship to shore?” Edith asked, straightening in her chair and slipping her glasses back in place. “Where is he?”
“Dakar, in Africa. He has a room in the hotel there while they load up. He will stay for a few days before they gonna ship out to Lisbon. He say the voyage is about—”
“He says, Lillian, not he say,” Edith interrupted with a smile that could have frozen the churning reach behind the house.
“Ah? Yes, excuse me, Edith. He says he will be home in March but he doesn’t yet know the day.”
While she was speaking, an image came to mind of her handsome husband lying shirtless on an unmade bed with the hot, spice-heavy breeze in his hair. The first time she saw Mason Baines, she knew he was the one. Strong jawed and slim, looking like an American movie star in his merchant marine uniform, he strode through the door of the translation office in Antibes as if he were taking center stage. She’d been passing by the front desk on her way to an Italian transcription assignment but stopped to help the receptionist, who was struggling to understand the peculiar accent of the handsome officer with the wide white smile and the sad brown eyes. English was the weakest of Liliane’s languages, and it took several sentences for her to figure out which one he was speaking. At first she thought he might be Scottish—they were always impossible—but he said no.
“Pardon me, but your accent is very, er, unusual,” she said. In fact, it was nearly unintelligible, but she wouldn’t say that to a potential customer, especially such a good-looking one.
“I’m American, from Maine,” he said, speaking slowly and enunciating. “Do you know where that is?”
“No, I’m sorry.”
He borrowed a pen from the receptionist, flipped over his business card, and drew the outline of the United States, then colored in the mitten shape that intruded way up into eastern Canada. “Here,” he said, smiling at Liliane. “You are going to love it.”
And that was it. The afternoon’s flirtation led to a dinner date, which stretched well into the next day, then became a monthlong courtship, conducted mostly in his hotel room. When Mason shipped out, she thought she’d never see him or his blend of cocksure arrogance and small-town charm again, but after eight weeks away, he sailed back into port as promised and proposed. Liliane was nearly three months pregnant and worried his family wouldn’t approve, but Mason told her that both his mother and sister-in-law had delivered their first child well before the nine-month mark.
“Listen, Lil, I’ve already got a piece of land. It overlooks a pretty little cove. We’ll dig clams and have a garden in summer. My buddy’s a builder. He can start on a house next month. It’ll be ready by the end of April. What do you say?”
Of course she said yes. In 1958, who wouldn’t have wanted to leave shabby old Europe for a sparkling new life in America? She was twenty-two years old and madly in love. He brought her to Maine in the late spring, to the sweet smell of lilacs and the wind’s whispered promise of summer. But summer was always an illusion in this place. Fleeting, green, and soft, it was merely a glorious prelude to the main event, the slap of cold, the sting of snow, the agony of winter. And always the absence—of family, of friends, laughter, and the life together her husband had promised.
Liliane managed to swallow an ugly laugh and forced her thoughts away from Mason and back to his mother.
“He’s been away long enough, and Lord knows his father could use some help on the boat. Henry’s not s’young as he used to be, you know, and those traps don’t pull themselves.”
The books don’t unbalance themselves either, Liliane thought, but instead she forced the corners of her mouth up and said, “Is it not lucky he has Eldridge, then?”
“Oh Lord, Eldridge can’t do that kind of work. Last week his back was so bad he could barely get out of bed. ’Course his health’s always been iffy, and the way Margery feeds him probably makes him spleenier than normal.”
“Maybe he should visit Dr. Norden,” Liliane suggested. Or stop drinking and get to work, she thought. Mason’s younger brother was a big-pawed puppy of a man who’d been content to drift along in his brother’s wake as long as Liliane had been around.
The older woman took a deep drag on her cigarette and leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across the rough brown cardigan that insulated her bony torso. She closed her eyes. Her lips were pulled tight, and it looked like she was using her tongue to extract a scrap of food from her dentures. When she spoke, she formed her words carefully and slowly, as if she were explaining the importance of not running into the street to an idiot child.
“Doctor visits are expensive, dear, and Margery and Eldridge don’t have the kind of money coming in that you and Mason do. The pound’s their only business, you know, and they’ve got three children to support, not two. They can’t just run off to Doc Norden every time they have an ache or a pain.”
Liliane murmured, “Um-hm.” She didn’t bother pointing out that if Eldridge spent less on beer, his family might have more for doctors.
“Looked like you had a nice chat with the doctor at the party,” Edith said, referring to the anniversary celebration they’d both attended two days before.
“Yes, he and his wife are very sympathetic. They love to visit in France, you know. In the spring they will go to Paris and Nice.”
“Well, la-di-da. Those doctors really rake it in, don’t they? I suppose I’ll have to hear all about it when I go in for my checkup. Speaking of parties, you remember we’re having the potluck on Saturday?”
“A dinner party, no?”
This time Liliane was unable to swallow her sigh. Another grudging, obligatory invitation from her in-laws. Most of the guests would ignore her, and she’d have to keep her back to the wall once Uncle Denton had a few drinks. Edith would make little grunting sounds every time Liliane misspoke, and then there would be her father-in-law. Henry Baines would be tight before anyone arrived and slurring by dessert.
“Ayuh, buffet style, but it’s a cocktail, so no kids. Just our family, plus some of Margery’s people, a few others, Caspar Titcomb. Have you met his friend? That new caretaker over at the Ridgeback place. What’s his name, George?”
“Lawson, no? George Lawson. I met him couple weeks ago. At Caspar’s place. He seem very nice—” Edith broke in just as Liliane was about to mention how well this newcomer spoke French.
“Well, I hope Cap doesn’t drag him along. Big gaum with a beard—anyway we’re starting around six-thirty. Nothing fancy, you know.”
And there it was, th
e inevitable implied criticism: fancy. Fancy was code for French, for your way of doing things, Lillian. For complicated, oddly spiced courses with wine instead of beer or milk next to a single plate of boiled everything. For a relaxed dinner at eight instead of a brief, joyless obligation at five-thirty. For treating food as nourishment for the soul, not just fuel for the tank. For all the ways you are different and all the reasons you think you are better than us, Lillian. Nothing fancy.
“What would you like that I make?” Liliane could hear the defeat in her voice.
“We’re having casseroles. I’m making my seafood Newburg, and Margery’s bringing her pineapple cake so there’s a dessert. I don’t know, maybe you could do a vegetable? I’ve got a recipe for green bean casserole that’s good for a crowd. People always like creamed spinach or squash. Or maybe a tossed salad? I’m sure we’ll like whatever you bring, dear.”
“I’ll have a look at the Foodland. Maybe Agnes can watch the kids, but I don’t know.”
“I’m sure you could drop them by Margery’s place. Her girls’d love to babysit.”
Wasn’t their middle daughter, Earlene, running around with that Moody boy? Imagining what went on while Margery and Eldridge were away was even more disturbing than the state her children would be in after four hours in the filthy chaos of their house trailer and a steady diet of Tang and Pop-Tarts, but Liliane knew better than to say anything. Instead, she looked at her watch and excused herself on the pretext of needing to get to the market and relieve the babysitter.
Liliane picked her way across the dirty snow of the driveway. From the yard, there was a clear view of the Northern Reach and the bay beyond with its dreadful, freezing gray water. Days like this, she could almost feel the clouds pressing on her neck and shoulders. She kept her eyes down, watching out for slippery patches in her path.
* * *
Every trip to the Foodland was a little worse than the last, especially in winter. Droopy carrots, hard tomatoes that never ripened, flavorless iceberg lettuce, no fresh herbs except parsley, and those bitter green peppers the local people put in everything from salad to stews. The produce was wrapped in cellophane and sanitized into tastelessness. The meat was worse, and the pantry items were hopeless—white or apple cider vinegar only, olive oil that smelled like it had leaked from an engine block, and bright yellow mustard that looked, and tasted, like paint. She couldn’t even bear to think about the cheese. If not for the fresh garlic and the occasional mushroom, she’d have given up long before.
The Northern Reach Page 7