by Katie Curtis
The blond woman came up to Andrew, and Anna’s face suddenly felt warm, and her head became so light, she was afraid she was going to pass out. Memories from her train ride home after seeing him with the blonde from the boat flooded her. Rational thought seemed to recede, like a wave, and the pure pain of rejection wrapped around her heart, like barbed wire. She needed to leave. “Excuse me, I’m going to go see what Dad and Aunt Catherine are up to,” she said quickly. As she pulled away, she caught Andrew’s gaze. The look he gave her hit her hard. It was that same gaze that seemed to jump right inside her lungs, making her breath sharp. She stepped away, unsteady, and went out to the hall. Breathe, she told herself. Breathe.
She stood there in the empty school hallway, in front of a glass case filled with trophies. She could see her reflection in the glass, her black hair contrasting with her pale face and red lips. She stared at the gold figures of girls swinging a bat, the names on the rectangular plates under the title “MVP”. Angela Hopkins. Jennifer Walters. Is this what having a breakdown looks like? Reading the names of girls who were good softball players while you quietly lost your mind? Molly Malone. Ashley Reichl.
The door from the gym opened, spilling light into the dark hall. Andrew stepped out, and slowly walked towards her.
“Anna, can we please talk.”
“I – I don’t think that’s a great idea,” she said. “Raphael’s going to look for me, and your, well, your gorgeous lady friend will probably look for you.”
“Look, I asked her to come when I heard, when I heard you were coming with your boyfriend. I had already agreed to come and it was going to be too hard for me to watch you – to see you together if I came alone. She’s just – she’s a colleague.”
“Well she looks an awful lot like your type. Like the blond you were with in your boat after we broke up.”
“What?” Andrew looked confused.
Anna turned around to face him. She crossed her arms, holding on to them as if they would give her some kind of support right now. “We had only been broken up for a year. I came up to Maine to tell you I had made a mistake. I took the bus to surprise you. And when I got to the harbor, you were out on your boat with some blonde girl. You guys were kissing.” Anna realized she was crying now. “I got back on the bus and went back to New York. I couldn’t believe you had moved on so fast, and it really hurt. So, I think it’s better if we just leave it alone, Andrew. Just leave it in the past,” she said. She was suddenly shivering.
Andrew looked confused, and stared at the wall. Then his eyes opened wide. “You’re talking about Sam. Samantha. She’s Chris’s little sister. He couldn’t help me one day, so she came out to help. She kept flirting with me, told me what a huge crush she had on me,” he stopped, remembering, his hand cupping his chin as if it would help him remember. “We kissed for like a second, but I pushed her away and told her I didn’t feel that way about her. She kept trying. It was a nightmare. You – you were there that day?” he asked, bewildered.
“Yea. I was there. I came back.” She wiped her tears, positive her eyes were probably resembling a raccoon at this point. “But none of it matters now.” She took a step towards Andrew. “You should’ve come to New York if you weren’t over me. You should’ve come to New York period.” She walked passed him, and headed back towards the bathroom. She didn’t think she could find her good vibes this time.
After she put cold toilet paper wads on her eyes, to bring down the swelling from crying, and wiped as much mascara away as she could before touching up her make up, she started to worry Raphael would wonder where she was. She came back into the gym, and breathed a sigh of relief to see him standing with Marie and Mike, her dad and a few other people she didn’t recognize, along with Aunt Catherine and Uncle Joe, and Sarah and Phillip. Her family had taken him under their wing. She headed in their direction, and overheard their conversation as she reached for Raphael’s arm.
“Interest rates aren’t going anywhere. You’re going to want to look at High Yield at the moment,” she heard Raphael say.
“That’s a great opportunity if you can buy in at a low,” said a gentlemen who Anna guessed was a colleague of Mike’s. They all seemed to nod their heads.
“I see you’ve met Aunt Catherine,” she said to Raphael, feigning a bright spirit. He nodded and put his arm around her.
“Yes, your aunt is a lovely lady,” he said, winking at her.
Aunt Catherine smiled at them, and leaned over to Anna. “You didn’t tell me your boyfriend was so handsome and so smart,” she said.
These words made Anna feel better suddenly. “I didn’t? Well, he’s very modest. I didn’t want to embarrass him too much.” She fought every thought of Andrew as she joined in on the conversation about investing the Foundations assets and the hospital’s 401(k) plan. She was so grateful Raphael’s attention was on something other than her.
Later, as they headed home, Anna driving the truck down the winding road back to Pemaquid, they sat in silence for a few minutes. The headlights lit up a long rock walls as they drove. “Aren’t the stone walls charming around here?” she asked, trying to make conversation.
“They are,” he said half-heartedly, nodding. “So was that the Andrew you were with when you lived here?”
“What?” asked Anna.
“Liz said she made Andrew come. Then she said, ‘I hope you don’t mind’. To you. Then Marie acted all weird. Why would she think you would care?”
Anna stared at the road. “Yes, that’s him, but it was a long time ago. I told you all about him. He doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
“Are you sure? Because that would be something I should know about.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I told him about you right away.”
“So you guys hang out and talk?” Raphael asked, his voice revealing a tinge of sarcastic anger.
Anna thought about their conversation, about the way Andrew had looked at her tonight. About their lunch date at his school. It weighed guiltily on her conscience for a moment, but there was no point in telling Raphael about that. It would make things worse. Besides, it was in the past, she told herself. And after he just stood there while she walked away tonight, she knew there was nothing more to say. “He was at Shaw’s Wharf the day of my Uncle’s funeral. We talked briefly. It’s a really small town, Raphael.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He turned on the radio, and found a recap of the baseball game. The Yankees had easily won against the Cardinals. Raphael sat quietly, chewing his fingernails down to stubs.
“Hon, you have nothing to worry about. He was there with his girlfriend. He’s very old history. Let’s forget it,” she tried to backpedal and change the subject. “Listen, what do you think about buying some tickets to a Yankee game soon? Have something fun to look forward to when I get back?”
His hand relaxed, and in his fatigue, he nodded. “I would love that,” he said, squeezing her hand. “If you’re ever coming back.” Something had drained out of him. She could feel it. She looked at him and squeezed his hand tighter.
“I’m coming back,” she said softly.
The next morning, they both slept in. They woke up and showered, hurrying to catch Raphael’s flight out of Portland at one p.m. They drank their coffee with eggs and bacon, then hurried to get dressed and leave by ten.
As the airport grew closer, they were at first polite. Then Raphael broke the ice. “Look, Anna, you know I love you. I am sorry that I talked to your father about your art. I am sorry for not being more sensitive. I – I trust you about Andrew. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned. But take the time you need here to figure out what you want. I think it is important for us – for our future – if you know what that is. So I want you to figure that out while you are here. Then come home to me. Please.” His brown eyes seemed to plead with her of their own accord. He took her hand with one of his and stroked the back of her hair with the other.
I know,” she said quietly
. “You’re right, and I think that’s what I am trying to say to you; that is what I need to do here. I have to take this moment and breathe. It’s what my heart is telling me to do. So I’m gonna listen. And I will let you know what it says as soon as I know.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for being big enough to let me do this. And thank you for coming up here, it means a lot. I love you and I’ll be home soon,” she said, holding his hand in hers. They kissed, and held each other for a moment, and said goodbye.
“Vaya con Dios,” he said, touching her cheek. “Go with God.”
As she watched the planes taking off at the airport, she thought of birds migrating. She wondered if that was all she was doing, just going away from New York City for a season, then coming back. She longed to be guided by instincts like they were. To be relieved from all doubt and confusion. Then she realized that birds always migrated home, and knew that of course her instincts would take her back to Maine, and to the sea.
Chapter 17
After Raphael’s visit, Anna threw herself into the work she was in Maine to do. Fixing up her uncle’s house, finishing a few paintings, cataloging her mom’s art. The only way she could know for sure what she wanted was to see how she felt after she saw these things through.
She scraped and painted the back screen door on a sunny morning. She cleaned up the yard, raking all the dead leaves and trimming back the dead heads. She edged the grass along the beds and laid down mulch. Putting Charlie’s house in order started to put something inside her in order too.
One afternoon while she was edging the beds in the yard, she looked up at the clouds gathered over the ocean, making the view a study on shades of gray. She washed the dirt and mud and leaves off her hands and went down to the boathouse. She got out a new canvas and painted the background a milky gray. A wave of desire rose up in her, and she noticed it, but of what? Of painting? Of the ocean? She tried to work it out on the canvas. The haunting sky was translated into a bulbous and threatening white, black, and gray scene. As she worked, she noticed she was crying, and she wiped her nose and eyes on her sleeve. Then she started to laugh at herself for crying so hard. A great weight was lifting off her chest, her shoulders. All of her decisions, her pressures, were somewhere dissipating on the water. Inside her was fresh emotion, stripped of being charged, like she had issued her own lightning bolt while she painted, and now all the particles in her were balanced again.
She sat back and looked at the painting and realized the image was one of grief. All at once, she understood what she was trying to do here in Maine. She had to finally dive into the pool of grief that she had just locked behind a door since she had moved to New York. Losing her mother, and Andrew, and in a way her father all at once. She just moved on from it all without dealing with it. When she returned to grieve for Uncle Charlie, the door was budged open. That was what was calling her here. Her heart and her mind were trying to work it out now, after her years of strength, drawn from Raphael and her work and Genevieve. She had strength now. She needed to use it to face all she had lost.
Her first step was to pack her painting bag and travel easel. She hopped in her sister’s truck and drove across town, through downtown Damariscotta, before ending up on a familiar winding dirt road. She went past a thick stone wall that led to a wrought-iron gate. Finally, she turned into the parking lot of St. Patrick’s.
Instead of parking next to the church, she drove to the far corner of the lot. She stared into the cemetery. She thought of Uncle Charlie at a nearby cemetery. She wished that he was here, so she could visit both of them together. She got out and heard the echo of the heavy truck door close behind her. In her hand she carried a pot of tulips she had dug up from his garden. She figured he wouldn’t mind.
She knew the spot like the back of her hand even though she had only been here four or five times. She went to the edge of the gravel parking lot and down a muddy path to a field outlined by a stone wall. To the northwest corner and up to a large slab of concrete, fifth from the right, that read:
Therese McAllister Goodrich, 1949–2004
Underneath her name it read:
There is a time for everything under the heavens.
A time to be born and a time to die.
She remembered when her father told them that her mother had asked for her headstone to say that. Before she went home and the hospice care started coming, before she was unable to think or speak. They had discussed many details, and that was one she had handed him on a little piece of paper. Anna thought of her mother thinking so finally about her own death. She must have gotten close to accepting it. It seemed that way to Anna. Still, her mother had been truly grieved to be leaving her children motherless. She had written them all letters—Anna had hers in her apartment safe, but she made a copy that she carried in her journal. She brought it with her and unfolded the creased, wrinkled pages.
My dearest Anna,
This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but the only thing worse than saying goodbye to your youngest daughter would be to not say goodbye. I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want you to ever have a single day where you feel the pain of needing your mother and not having her there, to comfort you, counsel you, love you, cherish you, tell you all the wonderful things inside you. But you will; I can’t stop that. Instead I can ask you to remember every day that I love you so much and I wish I could be there.
I don’t think dying means I am not there. I think it means I am there in a different way. Of course, we don’t want it to be this way. We want it to be so that I can help you get dressed on your wedding day. That I can hold your children just like I held you.
But I believe that love is more powerful than death. It has to be. I hope you can picture, like I do, that way down deep inside your heart, in the very fabric of your soul, there is a connection to another world. Love is a thread. A river. It connects those two worlds between your heart and Heaven. Even though I am going to be somewhere else, our love will still bind us together.
After her mother died, Anna read the letter over and over again, and every night while she fell asleep she imagined a new way that their bond could look. One night, it was a piece of twine; the next night it was an electric cord; the next, a river with estuaries that looked like arteries, the earth’s topography mirroring the heart’s anatomy. She took great comfort from this, and always felt like somehow her mother could hear her, know what she was going through. She could always conjure up her mother’s voice in her head trying to talk through any problem she was having.
Except when her father put enormous, unrealistic pressure on her. Then she couldn’t hear her mother at all. She knew that no one loved her mother more than he did. Their pure devotion to each other made her feel even more confused and guilty when she was so angry at her father’s behavior. The only thing she could figure out was that her grief made her so raw, and his made him so blind, and it was a combustible combination. It blew up one day, and that was the day she decided to leave. The day she asked Andrew to come with her to New York.
Anna looked out over the grave at the tops of the trees, the spring green leaves a vibrant color against a sky that was overcast and ominous.
Coming back and seeing Andrew had cast so much doubt over her. She felt both her hurt from all those years ago, and a new growing sense that she had hurt others, too. That she had been too angry. She had run from a lot of things she loved in her anger and hurt. Did I make the right decision to leave here? If he loved me, he would have come with me, right?
Suddenly a new thought washed over her.
If I’d loved him, I wouldn’t have left.
She could see this easily now, how much hurt she must have caused him. In her grief, in her pain, she hadn’t seen this clearly before. That explained the look on his face each time she had seen him here. He looked like he was in pain. She felt a sudden urge to comfort him, to say she was sorry. She had made so many mistakes, and she didn’t know where to step next to avoid making more.
&
nbsp; What should I do, Mom?
She heard herself ask with a small voice in her head. She looked over and could see the cross at the top of the church’s steeple, the stained-glass windows of St. Patrick, another of Christ holding a sheep. She couldn’t remember the last time she had prayed. She couldn’t even remember the last time she didn’t feel mad at God since her mom had died. But suddenly the depth of her heart unfolded a question, a prayer, without her even thinking it.
What do you want me to do, God?
A bird suddenly flew to the branches just over Anna’s head. Its shrill cry pierced her heart, and she wept again. This time it was like a cleansing purge. She let every hurt, every painful thought flow through her head, ran over them like pearls, caressing them, feeling them fully. Her emotions swelled and burst, like the white caps of the ocean crashing on the rocks of the shore. She let the storm in her heart rage. It was so much easier to set it free than hold it in anymore. When she was done, she stood up, wiped her eyes and nose, and took a deep breath. A warmth on her face made her look up, and she saw a small stream of sunlight break through the clouds.
She knew what she needed to do. She needed to talk to her father. She set down the pot of tulips she had been gripping fiercely, walked back to the truck, and headed home.
Chapter 18
It was only a few minutes south of Uncle Charlie’s house. Her childhood home sat on a large acre of green grass, with woods behind it. The brown barn stood out next to the white colonial, and a creek ran behind it that fed into a small pond. The hours her friends and siblings had spent in those woods, in that creek, were part of the canvas of her childhood.
When she pulled in, she noticed her dad had raked and mulched the beds since she had been there last, when she had stopped on the way to Marie’s house to visit the barn. The yard was tidy and neatly edged, and the paint looked fresh. She saw her father’s car and was glad he was home. She didn’t know if she would have the guts to come here again to talk to him.