This Time Might Be Different

by Elaine Ford

  The steamy August morning she was released from Mt. Auburn he picked her up and drove her downtown to the bus terminal, his Beetle bouncing painfully over potholes. Without saying anything directly, both of them understood this would be the end of it. Impossible to go on as if nothing had happened. After he shoved her suitcase onto the rack above her seat he muttered something unintelligible; she willed herself not to watch him leave the platform. All the way to Portland, Bangor, and at last Caribou, she wept quietly, secretly, her bottom sore from the stitches, her breasts aching with milk that was just coming in. How was she going to hide from her mother these dismaying changes in her body, which nobody had told her about and which she’d never anticipated? How was she going to live without Cal, even if he was a rat who’d forsaken her? On the bright side, Helen thought, doing her best to console herself, she and the child wouldn’t have to go through life called Turnipseed.

  “So what do you want from me?” Cal asks now.

  “Aren’t you curious about him? Don’t you ever wonder how he turned out?”

  The glasses go back onto his nose. “Helen, let me tell you something,” he says under his breath. “When we agreed to give him up I made a deliberate decision not to think about him, and I’ve stuck to that resolve. In no way did that baby belong to me, legally or otherwise.”

  “You made damn sure of that.”

  “We made damn sure of that. You were the one who signed the papers, don’t forget.”

  “What choice did I have?”

  “You had choices, Helen. You opted for the sensible way out of the mess, just as I did.”

  “Sensible. As euphemisms go, that takes the cake.”

  “What word would you use?”

  “Craven,” she says, tears sharp in her eyes.

  His voice tight, he says, “Have it your way,” and she thinks absurdly of all the times they ate at Hayes-Bickford’s in the Square and he’d invariably have the ninety-nine-cent special, no matter what it was that day, because if the meal cost more than ninety-nine cents the state of Massachusetts charged a tax, but she’d order the hamburg plate, so delicious with fried onions and a scoop of mashed potatoes under mushroom gravy and a side dish of baby pickled beets swimming in their red juice, and he’d pay for the meal of her choice without grumbling, even if he had to pony up the tax.

  For the first time this afternoon they look one another in the face. Can this old man whom she scarcely knows anymore and doesn’t even like have been that generous ice cream and hamburger-provider and the father of her firstborn child? His anger shows in the pinched white area around his mouth. She remembers the one time he hit her, during an argument over a book he’d borrowed from her and carelessly lost, an argument that was actually about far bigger issues—sexual pressure and mutual obligation and heedfulness and moral responsibility—but she was too shy and muddled to articulate them. She almost thinks he’d be capable of hitting her now, if not for the guard ghosting the periphery of the room and the pair of suburban matrons who have materialized and are inspecting a Philadelphia highboy. “Fabulous,” one of them says. “I’d give my eye teeth to own that.”

  “Original brasses, obviously.”

  “And just look at the patina. My God, it takes centuries to get a patina like that.”

  “Don’t touch, or the alarm will go off.”

  Cal reaches for his umbrella as if he’s going to get up and walk out. Good riddance, she thinks. But then, apparently changing his mind, he places the umbrella between his knees and, leaning forward, grips the bentwood handle. She guesses that, like hers, his spine is bothering him, sitting without back support. He stares straight ahead, perhaps at a portrait of a dark-browed young woman in silk, perhaps at nothing. Amid freckles and liver spots on his left hand is a small sore with a yellowing bruise around it. From her own fibroids surgery she recognizes the wound: an IV tube ran into that vein a short time ago. Europe, indeed.

  After a while the matrons from Brookline or Newton move out of earshot and their calm chatter at the far end of the gallery seems to dissipate the tension. A cell phone rings; someone laughs out in the corridor. Cal extracts a handkerchief from his trousers pocket and mops his forehead.

  Wearily he says, “I didn’t come here to fight.”

  “Nor I.”

  “When I read your email,” he continues, stuffing the crumpled cloth back into his pocket, “it didn’t occur to me that the boy was the subject of this meeting. It never dawned on me that he’d popped up out of nowhere, after all this time. He’s not a boy, for Chrissake. He’s pushing fifty.”

  “What else could I have wanted to talk about?”

  He hesitates. “People our age sometimes have an impulse to tidy up loose ends before it’s too late. They might have health problems—a bad heart, say. Or cancer.”

  “I don’t have either. I’m not about to croak.”

  “I’m happy to hear it, and that’s the truth.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’m fine,” he says shortly. “Fine.”

  Well, okay, she’s just as glad to take him at his word. “So you figured you were one of my loose ends?”

  “I assumed the idea was for us to wish each other Godspeed, or something of the sort.”

  Helen mulls this over. Godspeed. Maybe he has something there. Maybe a gentle farewell is precisely what she’s wanted all along, and the letter from the agency was the excuse she needed to go hunting for him on the internet. In spite of a mostly compatible (if ho-hum) marriage and three dear (if at times disappointing) children, she never quite got over the crushing loss of her firstborn child and her first love. Not that she and Cal could ever have made a go of it, even if he’d been as willing to spring for a wedding ring as he was for a meal at the Bick. If she didn’t know that then, she does now.

  “I’ll be frank,” he says. “It’s always been like a pebble in my shoe that we parted the way we did.”

  That’s as close to an apology as she’s going to get, but she’ll take it. “Never mind, Cal. We were too young, too clumsy to know any better.” Buttoning her jacket, she says, “I gather I’m on my own in this situation.”

  He shrugs.

  “So be it.”

  “I have a request. If you do establish contact with him, I’d rather you didn’t mention me. At this point I can’t afford . . . ” He stops himself there, but she’s pretty sure he isn’t referring to money.

  She lays her hand on his, just for a second. “Don’t worry. I won’t betray you. Our son will never know who you are.”

  Briefly she wonders if she should suggest tea in the museum café, now that they have achieved détente. Instead, though, she makes a show of consulting her watch and tells him that she’s meeting a friend at five and must be on her way. She leaves him meandering among the Copleys and Peales, a tall balding man, rather oddly shaped, somewhat stooped, a big black umbrella hooked over his arm.

  FROM AWAY

  Stan’s truck, pulling into Clara’s drive, scatters the mourning doves that are pecking for seeds in the gravel. They flutter onto the lawn or up into the maple tree, from which dangle clusters of pale green polynoses. Stan takes the cooler from her and sets it in the back of the pickup, taking care to tuck it under a tarp. Beneath his suspenders he wears a shirt that’s faded and soft with many washings, frayed at the collar.

  “Something different about you,” he says, opening the passenger door for her.

  “I got my hair cut.”

  “Looks good.”

  He helps Clara into the cab and goes around to climb in on the other side. His legs are so long he has the seat pushed way back. Clara feels somewhat insecure, so far from the dashboard, and would buckle the seat belt if there was one. However, this pickup predates the advent of seat belts. She settles her sunhat on her lap and tries to compose herself, though she feels self-conscious about the h
aircut. To have her shoulder-length gray hair cut boyishly short was a decision made on impulse. Three days ago, on Thursday, she was walking past the Clip ’n’ Curl on Main Street and thought, what the heck. She’s still not used to it. Her head feels so light, as if it might spin off her neck if she moves suddenly. The haircut has given her a sense of quivering on the brink of some sort of transformation, a moth breaking out of its brittle old wrapping. Or it could be the season. May is a flighty month.

  Stan starts the truck and backs expertly down the drive, then takes a left onto Bridge Street in the direction of town.

  “Can’t you tell me where we’re going?” Clara asks.

  “Not yet. Like I said, this is a mystery tour.”

  She didn’t know how to dress. Stan told her only that they’d be having a picnic outside somewhere. But there are picnics and picnics. She surveyed her limited wardrobe and settled on a pair of hopsack trousers and a blue linen blouse her daughter Janet gave her for a birthday present. That was in September, a few months after Henry died. Clara hasn’t worn it before today, hasn’t found just the right occasion.

  After crossing the bridge and passing the Congregational Church on the right, Stan makes another left onto Route 1, which is also Main Street. Downtown consists of a motel and restaurant next door, a gas station, some shops, and about a dozen houses, mostly of nineteenth-century vintage. At the bottle redemption place Stan leaves Main Street and veers left, taking the road that skirts the bay. They pass a cannery, the town dock, and several small weathered buildings with metal roofs. Lobstermen stow their gear in those shacks, he tells her. Beyond them are a boarded-up store and a Wesleyan chapel, which has fallen into considerable disrepair. The paving worsens, and Clara is bounced around quite a bit. Clinging to the door handle, she hopes the door won’t suddenly open and pitch her onto the road. Also she hopes the cooler and its contents are secure under the tarp.

  She bought the cooler at the general store in town because her wicker hamper, the one her family took on many a picnic when the girls were young, is still in her house in Massachusetts. This bright red plastic one is fine—better, even. Easier to clean and has some kind of insulating quality. Bigger than she needed, but the only size the store carried. When, a week ago, Stan knocked on her door and invited her on this expedition, he said he’d furnish the lunch. Don’t bother, she told him, it would be no trouble at all for her to throw a few sandwiches together. Since he’d charged her only five dollars for the work he did, she felt she owed him something. Besides, she rather feared what Stan might come up with in the way of food. What do men know about picnics? Henry never concocted a picnic in his life, would have been flummoxed at the very notion of doing so. After pondering the menu for some days, Clara made a number of neat little sandwiches with a variety of fillings. Even if Stan has some health problem that restricts his diet, he’ll surely find one or two he can eat.

  As he drives, Stan talks about the old days in town. At first he went to school in a one-room schoolhouse, which has since been moved from its original location and is now part of a summer person’s house. He graduated from the brick school building that the town built after the war, on filled-in marsh. It’s been derelict for years, most of its windows broken. Periodically there’s talk of making it over into apartments, low-income housing, but nothing ever comes of that. Now the kids attend an ugly cinderblock district school two towns away, transported there in yellow buses.

  “That’s why you see so many overweight youngsters,” Clara remarks. “They never have to use the good legs God gave them.”

  “That and the dad-blamed TV.”

  Smiling, she says, “We sound like a pair of old fogies.”

  The road narrows, turns to dirt, and begins to climb above sea level, the truck’s engine mildly protesting the ascent. At the top of the rise Stan reveals their destination, the town park. “Haven’t been here before, have you?”

  “I didn’t even know it existed.”

  “They hide it well.” He grins. “From the tourists.”

  He turns off the road and the truck jounces between two fieldstone pillars.

  “Property was deeded to the town in the thirties,” he tells her. “Owner went bankrupt, couldn’t pay his back taxes. He was from away and didn’t come to town much, anyhow. It’s a nice spot. You’ll see.”

  The access road, though, is in wretched condition. So big and deep are the potholes, Stan can go no more than four or five miles an hour. The drive meanders through scrubby woods and granite ledge, stands of jack pine, some wild azalea just coming into bloom. Clara holds onto the door handle for dear life, expecting momentarily to be knocked senseless by striking her head on the roof of the cab or to crash headlong through the windshield. At last Stan brings the truck to a halt in a small parking area and turns off the engine. He leaves the key in the ignition. And why not? Who’d want to steal this old rattletrap? How far would the thief be likely to get when everybody for miles around knows this truck? Stan the Fix-it Man it says right there on the driver’s door.

  He carries the cooler as they weave their way between shallow boulders and low scrub: lambkill and creeping juniper, mountain cranberry and sweetfern. Other plants Clara doesn’t recognize—they must be native only to Maine. Blackflies zoom around them. Though she can’t perceive it with her eyes, the strain in her calves hints that the terrain is gradually sloping upward. Then Clara and Stan come to a place on flat ledge where the landscape opens. Like a fantastic vision, the bay, the wooded offshore islands, and a wide expanse of open ocean appear before them.

  “My goodness,” she exclaims. “If it weren’t for the mist on the horizon, we’d be able to see all the way to Portugal!”

  Her late husband, God bless him, would have pointed out that because of the curvature of the earth, you wouldn’t see Portugal, mist or no mist. Stan says simply, “From time to time cork bark washes up on the beach.”

  All the way from Portugal. Think of that.

  For a moment they admire the panorama. Then Stan starts down the treacherous pink granite cliff, Clara gingerly following behind in the trail he picks out between patches of ledge and the bushes in the cracks between them. She feels a breeze off the water. Her cotton sunhat flaps in her hand, threatening to take off for distant shores, but she hangs on tight.

  Before long they reach a nearly level spot, sheltered on three sides by rock formations, where they have a fine view of the sea. Stan sets down the cooler. Clara dons her sunhat and seats herself on the granite. So what if her hopsack trousers get a little dirty? She removes the cooler’s cover and unpacks little crustless sandwiches, each cling-wrapped, with a stick-on label. “Egg salad?” she asks. “Tuna fish? Deviled ham? Chicken salad? What suits you?”

  Above them, herring gulls swoop and cry out to one another. The outgoing tide crashes against the granite, sometimes spraying them with droplets of water. Lobster boats out on the bay chug from buoy to buoy, the fishermen hauling their traps. Stan samples all four of her sandwich fillings, polishing off each one in two or three bites. “A feast,” he says. “I thank you kindly.”

  “Thank you, for rescuing me the way you did.”

  He unscrews the cap on a water bottle and swallows a mouthful. “You know, Clara, most folks who come to town are just passing through.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” she replies, passing him a baggie of carrot sticks.

  Stan takes a few and hands the baggie back to her. “On their way to someplace else. They stop for gas. They might wander into the gift shop across the street.” He eats a carrot stick, then another. “They think about buying an old wood lobster trap tricked out as a coffee table. Could be they eat lunch in the Brass Lantern. Once in a while they stay in the motel overnight. Then they move on.”

  Clara nods.

  “But you,” he says, “didn’t move on.”

  “No, I didn’t. I suppose you’re wondering wh
at in heaven’s name I’m doing here. A woman of my age all on her own, with no known ties to this place.”

  “I’m curious, I’m bound to admit.”

  Does she really want to talk to this man—or anyone—about it? Would he honestly care? They look at each other. Stan’s face is weather-beaten, like those fishing gear shacks. But such lovely hazel eyes on the man. Sober. Respectful.

  “I’m a widow,” she begins. “Henry died almost a year ago. He had tumors in his kidney and liver, and then in his brain, not the way anyone would choose to go. Much better if he’d had a fatal heart attack on the golf course, because for sixteen months he . . . Well, no point in dragging you through all that. Henry was hardly in his grave before my daughters started nagging me about selling my big old house in Concord and moving into a retirement community near one of them. Bloomington, Indiana, or Evanston, Illinois, were my choices.”

  Stan takes another drink from the water bottle and waits for her to continue.

  “The truth is, although I love my girls, I didn’t want to go to either place. The very thought of a retirement community gave me the heebie-jeebies. I’ve always lived on the East Coast, always wanted the sea nearby. But Lynn and Janet kept phoning me up and saying: What if you fall and break your leg and nobody finds you for days? What if you cut yourself and get an infection and die of blood poisoning? What if the house burns down with you in it? Yammer, yammer, yammer. They meant well, but I couldn’t stand it. So one morning, a month ago, I just hung up on Lynn in mid-sentence and put some clothes in a suitcase. Two suitcases. I asked the post office to hold my mail, canceled the newspaper delivery. I didn’t have to worry about the dog, because he died last summer, a few weeks after Henry went. I locked up the house and got in the car and began to drive north, up Route 1.”