Shining Sea
Page 25
“Yeah,” he says. “There’s a guitar inside.”
She pulls a corner of the plastic open and wrinkles her nose. “It stinks.”
The smell of the brine returns to him; it swells in his heart as the waves once did around him. He’s an old man now. Such a different man. And still that scent drags him back.
“So what is it?” Mia says.
“Like you said. An old guitar.”
“Broken?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So why don’t you use it?”
“Just don’t.”
“But you’ve kept it.”
People lead these lives and then pray their kids don’t end up living anything like them. So they pretend their lives have been clean until either the lies catch up with them or the kids see through the lies. He doesn’t hide his past from Mia; he’s told her what seemed right for her to know. In a way, his past is her past, too, or at least her heritage. His father was a World War II prisoner of war who managed to survive hell in the Pacific, then died anyway when he was a boy, and his mother remarried and moved to Arizona. She is still going strong, but her second husband died from AIDS years ago. That’s why Mia’s much older cousin went into AIDS research and why her grandmother became such an important fund-raiser for AIDS research in her state when not overseeing the volunteer programs at her local library. His older sister stayed behind in Los Angeles and is still there running a renowned—and expensive—artist’s retreat on Venice Beach with her third husband. His younger sister works and mostly lives in Africa, but he’s not sure exactly where—he left, and when he got back, she was gone. He never really got to know her as an adult. He had two brothers who went to Vietnam. One came back and worked as an army doctor until retiring a couple of years ago in Texas. The other didn’t.
After college, he split for Europe and spent some time bumming around, which is when he met her mother. And he met a man there with whom he rowed from Scotland to Ireland. They encountered a terrible storm, and the man died, and he wrote an album about it, with a song that became very successful.
That has always seemed like enough for Mia to know. Because, on the other hand, his life is his and no one else’s. There was no reason to tell her what he was doing when he met her mother on a dance floor on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Or about why he left for Europe—about how he had a friend growing up he spent all his time with who also went to Vietnam and came back alive but still didn’t survive. All these years later, it’s still hard to think about.
“Can I look inside?” she says.
“If you want.”
She hunts around for a pair of gardening shears and slits through the bundle. His old guitar case, faded but still pristine, emerges from the multiple folds of stiffened, yellowed plastic. She lays it on its back and opens the clasps.
The warm rosewood glow has dimmed, and there’s a hint of rot around the sound hole. Diminished and, yet, still beautiful. The hours he spent crouched over this guitar, so many years ago. In their house in California and then in the one Ronnie bought in Arizona. On countless squares and train platforms all over Europe, busking. On the beach in Scotland where he met Rufus.
Mia looks at him, waiting. He picks it up and plucks a string. The sound is awful. He plucks again. The brittle string snaps.
“Is this the guitar you wrote the song on?” Mia says.
He shakes his head. “This is the guitar I wrote the song about.”
“You’ll have to change the strings. Maybe there’s one…” She turns back to the case, flipping open the pick box. “Hey, what’s this?”
She pries with her finger and slowly pulls out a small faded photo.
With the door shut, the air in the barn is still, timeless. He could be anywhere, anytime, back fifty years ago jumping off a pier in Santa Monica alongside his best friend. Or flipping burgers, grease spattering onto their arms. Or swimming in a muddy lake while Joan Baez sings in the distance.
“That’s you! Carrying the palm leaf. Look, you are all there.”
He takes the photo into his calloused hands. So many years lie between the Palm Sunday when Eugene snapped it and this day, here. His father was still alive. But then some were lost. And some more were born.
“Not all. Your aunt Sissy wasn’t even born yet.”
“Oh, yes, she is there, too. Look at Grandma.”
There’s his mother, so young, her lips painted red, her hair prettily curled, her stomach round and hard in the last weeks of pregnancy. Sissy was born barely more than a week after this.
He touches the photo with a blistered finger. “You’re right. We’re all here.” They had just gotten home from Palm Sunday mass. Eugene was waiting on the doorstep. “Even my best friend. He was the one who took the picture.”
“Your best friend? You mean as a kid? What was his name? Where’s he now?”
He hasn’t done everything right in his life. He’s done a lot that was wrong. The first half of his life, he felt like a marionette with strings pulling him in every direction. He wanted to be a hero, like his dad, then failed every test he was given. But he’s a husband and a father, and he has just put up almost 6,500 gallons of syrup. In the end, he’s done at least that.
“His name was Eugene. He died during the Vietnam War. He killed himself.”
Mia puts her hand in front of her mouth. “Oh, Daddy.”
“I forgot it was in there,” he says. “All those years I was carrying this guitar around, I never noticed it. Here: do you want it?”
Mia accepts the yellowed photo delicately, as though it’s more than mere paper, a piece of history she is taking into her fingers, as though it is a butterfly that might either fall to dust or suddenly fly away. She looks up at him. He nods. She slides it carefully into his grandfather’s medical diary.
“You can keep the diary, too,” he says.
She holds it close to her chest. “Are you going to get this guitar fixed?”
He shakes his head.
“The past is the past. There are no resolutions,” he says. “There are just stories.”
Mia doesn’t ask him to explain. Instead, she leans her head against his shoulder.
He puts an arm around her. Her body becomes weightier, and soon her breathing is rhythmic with sleep. He leans back against the hay, cradling her.
“We were an American family,” he says softly.
His eyes grow heavy, and he closes them.
Pressure from Georgina’s hand on his shoulder awakens him, the light of the sun slanting in through the open barn door behind her.
“Darlings,” she says, her still-blond hair feathery around her face, a tall pair of boots on under her nightie. “It’s time to come in.”
Acknowledgments
A sea of thanks
to Judy Clain and Gail Hochman,
to Reagan Arthur and all the smart, hardworking people at Brandt & Hochman and Little, Brown & Co., starting but not ending with Amanda Brower, Liz Garriga, Julianna Lee—who designed this book’s beautiful cover—and Betsy Uhrig,
to Anita Chaudhuri, Susan Jane Gilman, Eva Mekler, and Mina Samuels,
to James Laurence Farmer, David Foster, Dorian Frankel, Beth Phelps of Sweetbrook Farm, the Phoenix Public Library, Ed Roston, Richard Roston, Laurel Zuckerman, and, of course, my mother, MaryAnn Roston, in/of the United States,
to Sheila Friel of Imagine Media Productions, Anne and Norman Rowe, Janet Ruddock, Robin Ruddock for sharing boatloads of goodwill, time, and his seemingly limitless maritime knowledge, and Anne Wilson for sharing the story of her own currach voyage, in/of Northern Ireland,
to Ash and sleepy Quinn, on the Isle of Mull,
to David of the Heritage Garden Café, Sarah of the Heritage Center, the watercolorist, the minister and the minister’s wife, Wendy and Rob MacManaway of the Argyll Hotel, and the crofter who showed me the way—literally, on the Isle of Iona,
to Kevin Byrne, Rodger Meiklejohn and Kathryn Edds, Dell for the chat, Sarah for the cake, and Lucy
Hamilton and Bee Leask for the craic, on the Isle of Colonsay,
to Gillian Rodger and Grant Thompson of Historic Scotland, Katrina of the National Trust for Scotland, and Dru Heinz and the International Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle, through whose fellowship I first encountered Scotland,
to Jim Gallie, Erin Coughlin Hollowell, and Country Joe MacDonald,
to Elizabeth Coleman, Jenny Colman and her lovely family, Carolina Garcia, Susan Malus, Pam Moore and Charlie Rose, Stephen Morallee, Chris Reardon, Louise Farmer Smith, and Ronna Wineberg,
to whoever that guy was who carved up a full smoked salmon on the train to Oban, Scotland, and shared it out amongst all of us fellow passengers,
to Susanna and Laura for all,
to Antti for everything.
About the Author
Anne Korkeakivi is the author of the novel An Unexpected Guest. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications in the United States and Britain, and she is a Hawthornden Fellow. Born and raised in New York City, she has lived in France and Finland, and currently resides in Geneva, Switzerland, where her husband is a human-rights lawyer with the United Nations. They have two daughters. Please visit her at annekorkeakivi.com.
Also by Anne Korkeakivi
An Unexpected Guest
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Book One: 1962 Good Friday / April 20, 1962: Michael
Book Two: 1962–1973 Easter Sunday / April 22, 1962: Barbara
A Marriage / August 26, 1965: Francis
Memorial Day / May 29, 1967: Barbara
Independence Day / July 4, 1968: Barbara
Woodstock / August 16, 1969: Francis
Flu Season / February 9–11, 1972: Barbara
Separation / September 11–12, 1974: Barbara
Book Three: 1984 The Inner Hebrides / June 2–8, 1984: Francis
Book Four: 1987–1996 Los Angeles / September 30–October 1, 1987: Barbara
Graduation Day / May 15, 1996: Barbara
Book Five: 2015 Sugaring / April 9, 2015: Francis
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Anne Korkeakivi
Newsletter
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by Anne Korkeakivi
Cover design by Julianna Lee
Cover art by Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First Edition: August 2016
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Excerpt from “Rocca San Giovanni” by George Fraser Gallie. Used with permission.
Excerpt from “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag.” Words and Music by Joe McDonald. Copyright © 1965, renewed 1993 by Alkatraz Corner Music. Used by permission.
Scripture from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Haiku by Erin Coughlin Hollowell. Used with permission.
ISBN 978-0-316-30785-7
LCCN 2015958604
E3-20160711-DA-PC