The Northern Reach

by W. S. Winslow

  “… and you’d think Earlie was born a Moody, not just married to one. Well, lie down with dogs and all that. I told her this morning, I says, ‘Earlene, you’re no kid and even if you were, you warn’t ever rhythmic enough to get away with that.’”

  “I don’t expect she liked that, did she?”

  “No sir, she did not. Got all huffy. Said if she wanted advice from me, she’d say so.”

  “She probably had a big head and wasn’t in a mood to talk,” Marlene offered.

  “I guess she did, and Millhouse, too, if you want to know. I can’t think what got into her. Our people might take a drink at parties, but those damn Moodys never saw a bottle they wouldn’t crawl inside of, day or night. I swear Millhouse was three sheets to the wind before the ceremony even started. Of course that’s what you get with an evening wedding—people looking for an excuse to get up to something.”

  “I imagine people’re as likely to carry on in daytime as night. Mostly a question of whether anyone’s looking.” Marlene shifted on her stool to check the oven timer. Five more minutes.

  “I guess everybody got an eyeful once Earlene and Millhouse started that, what do you call it, Congo line.”

  Cora had dragged her husband home shortly after the conga started, sick no doubt of witnessing behavior that would not only sully the Baines family name but also undermine her standing as a deaconess of the First Parish Congregational Church in the town their ancestors helped found. Marlene had always wondered at Cora’s inordinate pride in their family’s roots, since the truth was most of their relatives were still as dirt-poor as the first Baines had been upon arriving on the coast of Maine two centuries before.

  “The bride was at the head of the line, and the groom’s father was right behind her, so everyone was guilty there,” Marlene said. “I love evening affairs, getting dressed up and mingling. Guy and I loved to go out at night.”

  “Just an excuse for drunken shenanigans if you ask me. Brings out the worst in people.”

  From the other end of the line, Marlene heard the scream of a teakettle and a thud as her sister’s feet hit the floor and plodded across the kitchen to the stove. Though she was a slight woman, Cora had always walked on her heels; even in house slippers she sounded like a moose at half-trot.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that, Cora. I don’t see much difference between drinking at home or out at a party. When Guy’s sisters got married, the parties went all night long. Everybody’d start dancing and the supper’d be late, sometimes not till ten o’clock at night! It was an awful lot of fun.”

  “Lord almighty, those Frenchmen love a spectacle, don’t they? They still do that foolish duck dance at weddings?” Cora asked, sounding distracted.

  “It’s not a spectacle when everyone’s having fun, Cora, and the duck dance is just for the kids, you know. Anyway, what’s the harm in a little foolishness from time to time?”

  “I don’t know, you’d have to ask Earlene. Seems to be her specialty these days. That’s why we’re having the Memorial Day cookout at lunchtime instead of later. My hypoglycemia’s acting up, and I can’t take that Moody tribe running amok in my house all night long. Hold on a second.” Cora smacked the phone down. Marlene heard a cupboard door slam on the other end of the line.

  My house. It always rankled. True enough, Cora had been the one to inherit the Baines family farm, but that was only because Mother had signed the entire package, house and land, over to Cora. They said it was so that the property wouldn’t have to be sold to pay for a nursing home for Mother, but Margery Baines died at home, never even went to look at the rest home.

  After Pop died, Mother had never discussed her will, but Marlene had expected at least to get part of the property. With all that ocean frontage, it was worth more than Marlene would ever see in one place. Earlie didn’t seem to care, but then again, she didn’t need the money. Cora kept promising to have her sisters’ names added to the deed but somehow never got around to it. Last month, she’d gone ahead and sold a piece of land to their cousin Suzanne without even asking anyone’s permission or offering to share the money. Actually she sold it to that New York lawyer Suzanne married. He probably paid a ridiculous price. It wasn’t fair, but Marlene didn’t like to keep bringing it up.

  Marlene and Guy had talked about moving back home when Mother got the Parkinson’s diagnosis, just ten months after Pop died, it was. They certainly could have used a year or two without rent, but Mother couldn’t stand Marlene’s Canuck husband, with his greasy mechanic’s nails and slippery grip on English. And anyway, it would have been hard to be so far from town with three kids in school and Guy working two jobs.

  Between her brood of jug-eared toad killers and that little niece of Millhouse’s they’d taken in, Earlene had her hands full, too. No, Cora had been the best choice to see to Mother’s care since she didn’t have any children, except that one poor baby girl that died. Just stopped breathing for no good reason when she was barely two months old. Margery Rose they’d named her, for Mother. Marlene’s throat constricted at the memory of the tiny casket being lowered through the snow into the frigid black ground all those years ago.

  After the funeral, Cora never talked about her daughter again, except to say, just once, that there would be no more children. Poor Wayne, Marlene thought, slowly freezing to death in his wife’s bed, tangled up with her in the sticky grief of their loss. It was no wonder he was so miserable. And poor Cora, you had to say, too, dragging that empty cold around ever since.

  Cora came back on the line.

  Marlene pulled her thoughts into the present and said, “Don’t worry about Earlie’s boys; she’ll keep them on a short leash.”

  “After yesterday’s performance, it’s not Earlie’s boys I’m worried about, it’s her husband. Millhouse Moody’s a drunken fool, and always has been.”

  Everyone knew Cora never liked Millhouse, and neither had Mother, who couldn’t get over him coming from the lowest white-trash clan in town, even after he bought Chet Barker’s Chevrolet dealership and started making money hand over fist. No, Millhouse never had a chance with his in-laws, what with being Catholic and a Moody.

  Cora’s husband, on the other hand, had walked on water as far as Mother was concerned. She always referred to Wayne as a “college man” and a “professional” even though he’d barely made it through junior college and never worked anywhere but his father’s well-drilling company. Still, Marlene thought, she’d never met a man who smelled as good, and somehow he’d managed to stick with Cora all these years, which had to count for something.

  “What time do you want me at the house?” Marlene asked, even though she could see the notation on her kitchen calendar. Three minutes left on the oven timer. A breeze blew in the open window and ruffled the kitchen curtains. Outside, the forsythia she and Norm planted twelve years before waved its yellow arms. The first sign of spring. The lilacs had begun to bud but wouldn’t bloom for a couple of weeks yet. Then would come the lupines and the berries, the soft shells and the corn, and before you knew it, the foliage would flame and summer would die. No more long days, no smell of cut grass and rugosa, no tickety-tack of the lawn sprinklers, no more morning heat.

  “Half-past eleven, just like I told you yesterday,” Cora replied with more than a trace of irritation. “I’m making a pot of beans and potato salad and strawberry shortcake. Earlie’s bringing hot dogs and hamburgs, and Mill’s tending the grill. I only hope he stays sober enough not to burn the whole place down. Charlotte’s going to make her special…”

  Cora continued to run down the menu, but her recitation was lost in a cacophony of clanking glass.

  “I can’t hear a word you’re saying with all that racket.”

  “I’m just looking for my bread-and-butter pickles. Wayne’ll be hungry when he gets back from the club. I don’t know how he works up such an appetite golfing, he rides around in a cart, for God’s sake. I can’t think where he might be—probably on the nineteenth hole. I ca
lled the club, but they couldn’t find him.” She expelled a wire-brush sigh. “Anyway, when he gets back I’ll give him a ham salad sandwich and some pickles to hold him over till supper.”

  “I thought Wayne hated pickles.”

  “Now why on earth would you say that, Marlene? He’s always loved my bread-and-butters.”

  “I must be confusing him with someone else. Must be Mill who doesn’t like pickles.”

  “I imagine it probably is.”

  Marlene knew every croak and squeak that house made, and there was no way Cora was down cellar looking for canned goods. She’d have heard the old steps groan, and the cordless phone would be hissing by now. Instead, through the crystal-clear line, she heard a china mug hit the slate counter, followed by the crack of a bottle cap being twisted for the first time. She tried to recall how much had been left in the fifth of Canadian Mist hidden under Cora’s sink when she’d checked it the week before. Marlene pictured her sister adding the first of several bumps to her tea that day.

  “So, as I was about to say, if you’ll bring the potato chips and dip and the soda, that should about do it. Oh, and if you’d return Mother’s punch bowl like I asked, I’d appreciate it. You know, Marlene, I left you a message about this on your answerphone this morning when you didn’t pick up. Where were you, anyway? I didn’t see you in church.”

  “This morning? Oh. I went over to Bucksport to go to St. Bernadette’s with Guy’s sister. You remember Marie, the youngest? We had coffee at her house afterwards. She makes the most delicious banana cake you’ve ever—”

  “You went to Mass? I don’t know how you can keep track of all that up and down and answering back. More like an exercise class than a church service if you ask me. Anyway, isn’t it a sin to go to the Catholic church if you’re not Catholic?”

  “I don’t know, Cora, it’s really all the same, isn’t it? Forgive me, Father, for I’ve sinned, and here’s a dollar for the collection plate. Listen, I’ve got to get along. I said I’d bring a rhubarb pie to the carnival at the high school—for the baseball team fundraiser, you know—and I haven’t even rolled out the crust yet.”

  “Well, you’d best get to it. You always were a last-minute-Lucy, Marlene. Let me scoot. That’s the call-waiting, probably Wayne on the other line.”

  “I doubt it,” Marlene said to the cat on the clock after she hung up the phone. Standing in the overheated kitchen with her hand on the receiver, Marlene closed her eyes while the image of a teenage Wayne Houghton sitting in math class came together in her mind. He’d been too lazy to study or do his homework, so he had to repeat algebra, which was how they’d got to know each other in high school even though he was in the class above hers. Marlene was good at math. Sometimes she’d let him copy her answers when the teacher’s back was turned. Of course she’d been silly to think he’d invite her to his junior prom—he always went around with older girls—but it had been just plain mean of Cora to ask him to go to the senior dance with her that year. That was Cora all over, never wanted anything until she thought someone else might like to have it.

  Marlene’s gaze shifted to the tidy blue bedroom she and Guy shared for almost fifteen years. Hanging on the closet door, shrouded once again in the dry cleaner’s plastic, was the sea-green party dress that looked so pretty next to the auburn rinse in her hair. Below it, posed with the heels together and one of the toes pointing out like in the magazines, were the matching shoes that made her ankles look so slim. The soles were barely scuffed. At the reception last night, she’d taken a twirl with Millhouse, but no one else asked her to dance.

  She ran her hand over her hair. Yesterday’s French twist was still good, not too mussed at all. The oven timer pinged. The cat marked time. She turned away from the telephone, then opened the door of the yellow oven, pulled out the pie, and set it on the stove to cool next to Mother’s old carrier basket.

  “Last-minute-Lucy, my ass,” she muttered as she stuffed the oven mitt back in the drawer and gave it a slam. Then she turned to face the silent phone and said in a louder voice, “And for your information, Coralene, Wayne hates your goddamned pickles. And so do I.”

  Marlene crossed the kitchen to the gray Formica dinette. She picked up the golfing glove she’d found on the floor at Bunker’s Fairway Motel that morning and rubbed the soft leather between her thumb and forefinger, slipped it on her left hand along with the wedding band she’d found right next to it. Both were far too big; the ring jiggled on her finger. She lifted her palm to her face and covered her mouth and nose, breathing in the animal smell of cowhide and sweat mixed with cologne and cut grass. The tip of her tongue tasted salt. A tingle ran up her spine. She closed her eyes and swayed to the music in her head. Marlene, Marlene, Marlene, Mar-LENE, I’m begging of you, please don’t take my man … Dolly Parton singing, just for her.

  She pulled off the glove and dropped it in her handbag, considered holding on to the ring but instead put it in her change purse. If she hurried, she’d be able to drop them both at the country club on her way to the school, but first she needed a bath. She wanted to change her clothes and get the smell of Old Spice off her neck.

  PLANTING TIGER

  Wake

  “Jesus Christ, Merton, look at that. When Chubby walks, her ass looks just like two pigs fightin’ in a feed bag.”

  This was the first thing Victoria Moody heard as she entered her father’s wake, and she felt as if God Himself were using her great-uncle Bud’s words to remind her why she’d left the town of Wellbridge the day after high school graduation and why, in the ten years since, she’d returned only for command performances like this one. Peering through the gloom of the funeral home, she spied the backside of her aunt Chubby. Victoria had to admit, it had expanded pretty spectacularly.

  “Well, Vicky, fancy meeting you here,” said Bud. He lurched in to give her a one-armed hug. “Been quite a while since we seen you, ain’t it, Mert?”

  “Ayuh, prob’ly four or five years.” For Merton, this was a soliloquy.

  “Um-hmm,” Victoria replied. “Where’s Frenchie?”

  “With Millhouse. Right down front there,” Bud said, indicating the row closest to the casket where Frenchie Moody rocked slowly, her elder son’s arm around her narrow shoulders.

  “Your grandmother’s a pretty tough bird, but this is an awful hard thing,” Bud said. She supposed it was.

  At Victoria’s approach, Frenchie looked up with ill-concealed surprise and patted an empty chair. Her left hand, nails lacquered as always in Rouge Red, clutched a mascara-smeared lace handkerchief.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Victoria lied. “Hello, Uncle Mill. How are you holding up, Frenchie?”

  Victoria’s fiancé had found it odd that she referred to her grandmother as Frenchie, and when he asked what their children would call their great-grandmother, Victoria had opted to fabricate a title rather than admitting that Frenchie was what everyone, including her children, called Magdalene Mere-Marie Gagnon Moody, just one of the many members of Victoria’s family she had no intention of ever introducing to any children she might have, let alone her fiancé, Tino. Thank God she’d been able to convince him to stay behind in Portland, three hours away and safely removed from this horror show.

  Frenchie blew her nose and in the Quebecois-colored English Victoria hadn’t realized she missed said, “I’m okay me, but I don’t know about Chubby. She just cry and cry for her brother. You go see your daddy now, Vicky. He look so peaceful. You go and say bye-bye to my Tiger.”

  There was nothing Victoria wanted less than to approach her father’s corpse, but Frenchie had given her a little push out of her seat, and Millhouse nodded, so up she trudged. The casket was wide-open, surrounded by a shrine to Tiger’s life: a lurid velvet painting of the Crucifixion she recognized from Frenchie’s living room, several childhood photos of her grinning father (including one of him holding a BB gun in one hand and a dead rat by the tail in the other at what appeared to be the town dump), and a mass
ive floral arrangement in the form of a pack of Camel unfiltered. Below lay a smirking Tiger Moody propped at exactly the same angle as when she’d last seen him alive.

  Thirteen years before, on Mother’s Day, Mill and Earlie had insisted she go with them to visit her grandmother in Moodyville, a dozen swampy, overgrown acres no one else in Wellbridge wanted and which the Moody family had been infesting for generations. Surrounding the brand-new double-wide trailer Mill had just bought Frenchie was a collection of shacks, car parts, campers (both abandoned and inhabited), rusted-out logging equipment, disused outhouses, active outhouses, toolsheds, road signs, gas pumps, dogs, cats, and raccoons, as well as any number of things Victoria would rather not have known or thought about. It was a crap plantation of the first order, like so many others throughout the state, but singular in both its expanse and its decrepitude.

  Coming from the place was tough enough to swallow, but the icing on that stale cake of a day was arriving at Frenchie’s to find Tiger stretched out on the plastic-covered sofa, watching the wrestling and downing a little hair of the dog. This was her last memory of her father, and it came roaring back at the sight of him in the coffin. Although his Cat Power cap was tatty, the navy cotton turtleneck and flannel shirt he wore looked brand new, and he was cleaner than she’d ever seen him. He looked better dead than alive.

  As Victoria dropped to the kneeler, she noticed that someone had tucked a sixteen-ounce can of Colt 45 malt liquor and a battered copy of Ass Pirate (Seize the backdoor booty!) into the crook of his arm. “Animals,” she said to no one but herself.