In Hovering Flight

by Joyce Hinnefeld

  They were all together in Cider Cove for Christmas that year Scarlet lived with Cora, Karl, and Bobby, after Brian Kent’s arrest and Addie’s return to Burnham. Tom and Addie seemed subdued, for reasons Scarlet thought she could imagine but had no interest in pursuing. Cora and Karl, though still mourning Richard’s death a year before, worked to be gracious hosts; there were carols on the stereo and hot mulled cider. It even snowed. By the day after Christmas, Bobby and Scarlet were both desperate to get out of the house and away from their parents, and he proposed a trip to the mall to redeem their gift certificates.

  Driving home in her old Volvo, Scarlet chattered, nervous in Bobby’s brooding company, about her college applications. She had applied to three colleges in Maine, none of which she’d visited, or even knew very much about, simply because Maine was the last place she could recall feeling happy—purely, uncomplicatedly happy—during the month she, Tom, and Addie had spent on the coast, when she was fourteen.

  Apparently Bobby wasn’t troubled by Scarlet’s fairly flimsy grounds for choosing a school (a year and a half later he himself would, after all, choose SUNY-Albany because that was where his best supplier of marijuana planned to go). He only nodded and stared out his window before turning to her to say, “They’ll talk about Richard, you know, now that we’re not there.” For all his dark silences, Bobby was always a remarkable reader of people, of their emotional blind spots, their ducks and dodges and blunderings.

  “Really?” was all Scarlet could think of to say at first. Then, “What do you think they’ll say?”

  “Oh, all about whose fault it was—my mom will say it was hers, my dad will get all restless and uncomfortable and go work on building up the fire or something, and your mom will probably start talking about how toxic New Jersey is, and then your dad will try to calm her down.” They both laughed then. It was an undeniably accurate portrait of their parents.

  And indeed, back at the house, they walked into an eerily quiet living room: fire actually dying down, cider cold in half-filled cups, nothing playing on the stereo. Both Cora and Addie had clearly been crying. Karl sat in his recliner, chin resting on his hand, staring into the fireplace. And Tom stood at the window, staring out, as if willing a bird, any bird, to alight at Cora’s feeder.

  Bobby and Scarlet exchanged a quick glance and, without a word, hurried upstairs to their respective rooms, to listen, on their respective Walkmans, to the music they’d just purchased at the mall. While Scarlet had no memory of what it was, Bobby would later insist that he’d bought REM, and she’d opted for some dreadful compilation of piano classics.

  “You said you didn’t want to hear any more words,” he told her, and she believed him; she could hear her seventeen-year-old self saying that very thing.

  The winter that followed brought a lot of snow, and calls back and forth to Burnham to get various financial aid forms completed. At Christmas Tom and Addie had asked if Scarlet wanted to return to Burnham with them for her last semester of high school. “I think it’d be easier just to finish here,” she’d told them, rather coldly it seemed to her later. Neither of them tried to change her mind.

  Scarlet could see that something had happened, at Christmas, between Addie and Cora—presumably something about Richard, if Bobby was right. Cora said nothing, and Scarlet didn’t ask. But a few weeks later, when a package arrived for Cora from Addie, Scarlet prowled around the first-floor room (not yet called her studio) where Cora spent her days to get a glimpse of what it was: The Diary and Letters of Kaethe Kollwitz. Scarlet read it, secretly and hungrily, late at night, after Cora had gone to bed.

  When she went to Burnham for her spring-break week in March, Scarlet was amazed to see the work Addie was doing with the dead birds she’d been collecting for more than a year. Amazed, but also a little sickened. And completely unable, at that point, to make any kind of connection between her mother and Käthe Kollwitz—who, along with Cora, had become the ultimate artist-mother in Scarlet’s eyes.

  During her last summer in Cider Cove Scarlet cleaned hotel rooms again in the mornings, then waitressed several evenings a week. Bobby seemed to have turned almost nostalgic at the thought of her leaving, and he found time to go to the beach with her now and then, for old times’ sake. So she arrived for freshman orientation at Bates with a suntan, like many of her peers.

  Most of those tans, though, had come from summers spent in places like Mount Desert Island, Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod. Scarlet learned quickly, that first year, to keep quiet about her summers on the lowly Jersey shore. She also went on to spend some summers of her own in tonier beach climes—Provincetown that first summer, Nantucket the next. One could always waitress, she discovered; that was a skill that translated well, even from New Jersey.

  But she never lost her love for Cider Cove, for what had always been, for Pennsylvania girl Scarlet, the glorious, not the lowly, Jersey shore. The sleepy, overlooked quality of a town like Cider Cove (it was no accident that one of the most romantic locales of Scarlet’s lonely, dreamy adolescence was the boarded-up Main Street Diner), the faded-glory feeling of so much of Cape May, the taffy and fudge and ski-ball joints, the smells of dead fish and cotton candy and whipping sea air: She loved it all.

  It was the new development at the edges of both towns—the Days Inn and Denny’s in Cider Cove, the pricey condos in Cape May—that she hated; she was her mother’s daughter, after all. And her father’s as well, and so she loved watching diving cormorants on those evening walks with Cora, and scanning the roped-off sections of dunes and beach grasses, glowing orange in the setting sun, for a rare glimpse of a family of nesting plovers.

  That curving, crowded shore, that embattled bay—so much complicated coexistence. Addie might have considered New Jersey one of the more reckless, poisoned states in the union, but she loved that shoreline too; in the end, when she, Tom, and Scarlet ventured beyond their sheltered valley along Nisky Creek, across the wide, wide Delaware and to the coast, none of them could ever quite stomach the pristine beaches they found elsewhere.

  “The domain of the entitled,” Addie would say on a pure white beach at the tip of Long Island or along the northeastern edge of Cape Cod. Though of course it was hard to argue when Tom pointed out, on their various excursions through the years, that only the entitled had the resources to preserve such stunning pieces of habitat.

  “Imagine having been able to buy that piece of land before Bert Schafer had even sniffed it out,” he said once, looking downright wistful. “There could have been a whole family of owls there by now.”

  By age seventeen, and for a couple years after, Scarlet thought that what she needed, more than anything, was to find a place of her own on those clean, protected, entitled grounds—to leave behind her peculiar Pennsylvania childhood, her period of hiding on the Jersey shore, those years of nothing, really, but books, and work, and Cora, and sometimes Bobby. A change of habitat.

  She also decided she should arrive for her first semester of college life armed with not only a suntan, but also the shield of her lost virginity. And so the night before she left Cider Cove, she asked Bobby for help with this particular task. They’d spent the afternoon and evening on the beach; he’d been sweet and solicitous, dribbling sand over her belly, watching a ladybug make its slow course over that smooth brown expanse. Scarlet had grown daring enough to wear a bikini that summer; she was thin and tanned, and she wanted something to happen. Bobby agreed that she shouldn’t enter college a virgin, and he gallantly offered to spring for condoms when Scarlet acknowledged that she had no other form of protection. That night they carried Scarlet’s old sleeping bag with them to the still boarded-up diner.

  Bobby had learned some things since the last time they’d ventured into this strange territory, the year before. While Scarlet had moved on from gangly young outcast status to a sullen retreat into work and books, Bobby had embraced his new status as a cool stoner—dark-eyed and brooding, ironic and hip. And suddenly, very cute. He was no
w in demand, and those fast—and older—Cider Cove girls had taught him well.

  Scarlet often thought she couldn’t have asked for a better first time. Despite the distance between her and Bobby that last year, she trusted him, and she could tell, when he kissed her, that he was—for just that moment, just those couple hours that night—letting down his guard. They kissed, seated together in a crowded booth, for a while, just as they’d done a year before. But their tongues and teeth were a little less in the way this time, and it felt marvelous to Scarlet to explore Bobby’s mouth, which tasted of mint and a trace of smoke.

  She could have gone on kissing much longer, but eventually Bobby pulled away from her, stooping down to unroll her sleeping bag. When he looked away from her, Scarlet felt her nerve eroding; she had to will herself not to collapse in nervous giggling and tell him she’d been joking.

  But then he looked up at her and grinned, his sweet, goofy grin—the most soothing sight in the world to her. She grinned back, and said, “I think I’m nervous.”

  He shrugged. “Me too,” he said. “But if we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?” And when he said that, she was out of the booth in an instant, kissing him again, pulling him onto the sleeping bag, pulling off her clothes, reaching for his.

  “Slow down,” he told her, laughing. “We’ve got time.” And so she did slow down, and she let Bobby finish undressing her, slowly, and watched as he explored her naked body, slowly, then grinned at her again. We’ve got time, she thought; maybe this night won’t end. In the years that followed, Scarlet found that few people seemed to understand the value of taking time the way Bobby did that night.

  After they’d slept for a while, wrapped tightly together inside the sleeping bag, they woke up and talked about Richard. Scarlet didn’t ask Bobby what it had been like to find Richard’s ruined body; she didn’t have to. Eventually, at dawn, they crawled, shivering, out of each other’s arms. While Scarlet dressed and Bobby rolled up the sleeping bag, they both cried. And they both tried to hide their tears. They were quiet as they walked back to the house, and he held her hand.

  Later Scarlet ate breakfast with Cora while Bobby slept. He was still asleep when she threw her last things into the Volvo and pulled away, driving to Burnham for a night at the cottage before Tom and Addie would drive her to Maine the next day.

  It was strange to keep a secret like that from Cora. But Scarlet never told her. Beyond the obvious reasons, there was this sure awareness on her part: Cora would know it was all really about Richard somehow. And it would make her terribly sad.

  And eventually, seventeen years later, Scarlet had another secret. The one she’d kept from everyone but Tom and Addie, who held her daughter’s face in her thin, dry hands and gave her her blessing and, before she died, cried because she wouldn’t get to see her grandchild.

  IV

  zugunruhe

  fourteen

  MAY 2002

  “I CALLED JOHN THIS morning,” Tom says when Scarlet returns from the bathroom. She has never been close to her uncle—he and Addie rarely spoke—but still she feels a pang at hearing his name, realizing she has barely thought of him over the past few days. Shouldn’t a brother and sister, a niece and her uncle, shouldn’t any and all family members, share a stronger connection than this?

  She tilts her head expectantly and looks to Tom for more. “And?”

  “He wanted to know when the service would be, and where to send flowers.”

  Lou lets out a snort of laughter, and Cora smiles.

  Scarlet is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and porch, feeling restless, reluctant to sit again. A few minutes ago, when Cora had returned with a fresh pot of coffee, she’d felt free, finally, to take a bathroom break, knowing she wouldn’t be leaving Tom and Lou alone. She wandered through the rooms of the old house—filled now with old farmstead furniture and thick rugs, beds made up with crisp white sheets and warm duvets, Cora’s bowls and vases tucked discreetly into corners here and there, a few adorning the mantels over the three fireplaces. Now, as a bed-and-breakfast, the house is in considerably better shape than in the days when Scarlet, Tom, and Addie first visited Cider Cove—the walls painted a clean white, new windows installed throughout, the old wood floors polished and gleaming.

  The floors still creak and slope, though, and sand still gathers in the cracks between the smooth planks. Breathing in as she roamed through the rooms, Scarlet savored the house’s familiar smell—the mix of coffee and something baking, and behind that the fresh sea breeze. No matter the season, Cora always opens up the windows first thing in the morning and hangs everyone’s bedding out to air in the sun, or the fog, even on occasion a light snow. After her upstairs tour Scarlet stepped outside for a moment, careful to avoid Dustin and his ceaseless sawing and hammering. She listened for the sound of the waves and watched all the quilts (most, if not all, from beds that hadn’t been slept in last night) flapping in the breeze, like so many flags of surrender.

  Now, back on the sunporch, Scarlet is surprised to see the three of them, still in the same chairs as before, still drinking coffee, as noon approaches. Her stroll into the yard has reminded her that there’s a world outside, and time is moving on. How long can they hide out here, lazily talking, avoiding what has to be faced now?

  “But you know,” Lou says as Scarlet steps onto the porch, “some sort of memorial something-or-other would be good, don’t you think?” She’s leaning forward in her chair, serious now. “I mean, she did have her various and sundry friends and admirers, from all over the place, especially these last few years. We could do something at my house, maybe. . . .”

  Cora laughs. “You little Washington hostess, you,” she says.

  Lou looks mildly annoyed for a moment, then shrugs and smiles, leaning back again and kicking off her sandals.

  “Addie was adamant about not wanting anything like that,” Scarlet says, recalling her mother’s remarks from two days before. “No taking turns ‘eulogizing’ me or something ridiculous like that,” she’d said. “No public reading of poems—not even yours, darling, much as I love them. And for God’s sake, no cut-flower arrangements.”

  In fact Scarlet did read two of her poems, but only to Addie and at her request, yesterday morning—the two Addie loved most, not surprisingly: “All the Bilge and Ruin” (Scarlet’s tribute to Käthe Kollwitz, and indirectly to her mother) and “American Bittern,” that poem of the middle-of-the-Massachusetts-night revelation. This, Addie said, was surely preferable to a reading for a roomful of listeners without the proper context. And a reading that, being dead, she herself wouldn’t even get to hear.

  “In fact,” Scarlet says now, thinking it’s time they finally get to the business at hand, if—surely—that’s what they’ve gathered there on Cora’s sunporch to do, “she was very explicit about what she did and didn’t want to have happen now, and I think we’d better try to figure out what we’re actually going to do about some of her ideas—” She is silenced by a look from Tom.

  “We know what we’re going to do, Scarlet,” he says softly.

  We do? she thinks. She can’t imagine what he means. Can he mean that they are going to break laws in two states (not that there’s been time to research this at all), and put his entire career and reputation at risk, all because of Addie’s fury at Bert Schafer and Burnham College, her need to make one final point, even when she’s dead?

  “Have you been talking about this?” she asks.

  “Well, no,” Tom says, giving her a look that she can’t decipher. “Not specifically. We’ve just been remembering Addie, ‘memorializing’ her in the way I think she’d like, sitting and talking and reminiscing. I do think this is the sort of thing she’d want, don’t you, love?” he says, patting the chair next to him. Signaling his daughter, apparently, to sit down and be quiet about less pleasant topics.

  “You know,” he goes on as Scarlet takes her seat next to him, “John also reminded me that their parents had purchased
burial plots for both Addie and me, next to theirs.”

  “In Scranton?” Scarlet can’t imagine a less likely burial site for either of her parents. “Did you know about this?”

  “Yes,” Tom says, calmly sipping his coffee, “I did, though I’d forgotten about it. Addie told me about it a long time ago. They bought plots for the whole family, back when your grandfather became ill. I have to say her reaction to the whole thing surprised me. ‘Don’t you want to tell your parents we’ll surely prefer to be cremated?’ I asked her, and she said no. ‘Why trouble them with thinking about that,’ she said. ‘They’re likely to die well before we do; they won’t know what happens to those other plots.’ ”

  In fact both had died before Addie, her father when Scarlet was twelve, her mother three years ago.

  “It always surprised me, how protective she was of her parents,” Cora says.

  “Or afraid of them,” Scarlet says.

  “Well, neither of those seems quite right to me,” Tom says. “But I do think she cared more about them than she ever let on.” He takes another sip of coffee, then says, “There’s even a plot for you in the church cemetery in Scranton, Scarlet.”

  At hearing this, Scarlet laughs, then abruptly stops. She’s actually never given it a thought—whether she’ll be cremated or buried, or where. Were these the kinds of things she needed to start thinking about, she wondered, as a parent-to-be? Pondering it now, briefly, it occurs to her that next to her sweet old grandparents, in a cemetery in Scranton, might not be so bad. More feasible, certainly, than a place next to her mother—if Addie has her way.

  “Can you sell a burial plot back?” Scarlet asks then, only half kidding.

  “I don’t know,” Tom answers, sounding genuinely puzzled. “I never thought to ask.”