Lone Star
Lone Star
Paullina Simons
Lone Star is another unforgettable love story from the best-selling author of Tully and The Bronze Horseman.Life isn’t about the destination, but the journey…Chloe is eager to drink in the sights and sounds of the Old World as she embarks on a European adventure with her closest friends. Buried in the treasures of the fledgling post-Communist world, Chloe finds a charming American vagabond named Johnny, who carries a guitar, an easy smile – and a lifetime of secrets.As she and her unlikely travelling companions traverse the continent, a train trip becomes a treacherous journey into Europe's and Johnny's darkest past – a journey that shatters Chloe's future plans and puts in jeopardy everything she thought she wanted.From Treblinka to Trieste, from Carnikava to Krakow, the lovers and friends crack the facade that sustains their lifelong bonds to expose their truest, deepest desires and discover only one thing that's certain: whether or not they reach their destination, their lives will never be the same.
Copyright (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Patryce Bak/Cultura/Corbis (girl); Gary Cook/Robert Harding/Corbis (background).
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007441631
Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007441648
Version: 2015-05-06
Praise for Paullina Simons (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Tully
“You’ll never look at life in the same way again. Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you’ll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next. Read it and weep—literally.” Company
Red Leaves
“Simons handles her characters and setting with skill, slowly peeling away deceptions to reveal denial, cowardice and chilling indifference … an engrossing story.” Publishers Weekly
Eleven Hours
“Eleven Hours is a harrowing, hair-raising story that will keep you turning the pages late into the night.” Janet Evanovich
The Bronze Horseman
“A love story both tender and fierce.” Publishers Weekly
Tatiana and Alexander
“This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero [and] a heart-stopping love affair that nourishes its two protagonists even when they are separated and lost.” Daily Mail
The Girl in Times Square
“Part mystery, part romance, part family drama … in other words, the perfect book.” Daily Mail
The Summer Garden
“If you’re looking for a historical epic to immerse yourself in, then this is the book for you.” Closer
Road to Paradise
“One of our most exciting writers … Paullina Simons presents the perfect mix of page-turning plot and characters.” Woman and Home
A Song in the Daylight
“Simons shows the frailties of families and of human nature, and demonstrates that there’s so much more to life, such as honesty and loyalty.” Good Reading
Bellagrand
“Another epic saga from Simons, full of the emotion and heartache of the original trilogy. Summer reading at its finest.” Canberra Times
Dedication (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
To Natasha, my first resplendent light
Epigraph (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions.
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Contents
Cover (#uf9603d3f-ea58-59d4-84e7-a1b00f55cab3)
Title Page (#ufc9ecf7f-6f6e-5340-aeeb-f90d0d9f87c7)
Copyright
Praise for Paullina Simons
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One: Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake
Chapter 1: Insanity’s Horse
Chapter 2: Sweet Potato
Chapter 3: The Perils of College Interviews
Chapter 4: Paleo Flood at Red River
Chapter 5: The Irish Inquisition
Chapter 6: Mottos
Chapter 7: Olivia the Dancing Pig
Chapter 8: Empty Wells and Vernal Pools
Chapter 9: Red Vineyard
Chapter 10: Lupe
Chapter 11: Moody
Chapter 12: Peacocks
Chapter 13: Uncle Kenny from Kilkenny
Chapter 14: The Meaning of Typos
Chapter 15: She Will Be Loved
Part Two: Johnny Rainbow
Chapter 16: Modern Travel
Chapter 17: Carmen in Carnikava
Chapter 18: Cherry Strudel
Chapter 19: Zhenya
Chapter 20: Thorn Forests
Chapter 21: The Guider of Guiri, the Singer of Songs
Chapter 22: All Things Are Numbers
Chapter 23: Lost Children
Chapter 24: Missing Time
Chapter 25: Roses for a Farm
Chapter 26: Dread
Chapter 27: Emil
Chapter 28: Warsaw
Chapter 29: The Dragon and the Honey
Chapter 30: Instead of Auschwitz
Chapter 31: The Clock in Trieste
Chapter 32: A Town Called Heartbreak
Chapter 33: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Chapter 34: My Rags of Heart
Chapter 35: Jimmy Eat World Pain
Part Three: The Blue Suitcase
Chapter 36: Freshman Summer
Chapter 37: Sophomore Summer
Chapter 38: Junior Summer
Chapter 39: Senior Summer
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
Part One (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
We’re not serious when we are seventeen.
One fine evening, full of pints and lemonade,
In rowdy cafes with their dazzling chandeliers,
We stroll under the linden trees in the park.
Now you’re in love, till August anyway.
You’ll make her laugh, you’ll write her poetry
At night you wander back to the cafes
For more pints and lemonade …
We are not serious when we are seventeen,
And when we have green linden trees in the park.
Arthur Rimbaud, “Romance”
1 (#ulink_c3b0f5dc-741c-5c2c-b922-74a24ee2eb6d)
Insanity’s Horse (#ulink_c3b0f5dc-741c-5c2c-b922-74a24ee2eb6d)
CHLOE SAT ALONE ON THE BUS RIDE HOME ACROSS THE TRAIN tracks, dreaming of the beaches of Barcelona and perhaps of being ogled by a lusting stranger. She was trying to drown out Blake, Mason and Hannah verbally tripping over one another as if in a game of drunken Twister as they loudly argued the pros and cons of writing a story for money. Threads of songs played their crowded lyric notes in the static inside her head. Under the boardwalk like no other lover he took my hand and said I love you forever—all suddenly overpowered by Queen’s matchless yawp Barcelonaaaaaaaaa …!
She placed her palm against the glass. The bus was almost at their road. Maybe then this psychodrama would end. Outside the dusty windows, made muddy by the flood of recent rain, past the railroad, near a clearing of poplars, Chloe spied a fading billboard of a giant rainbow, which two white-suited workmen on ladders were papering over with an ad for the renovated Mount Washington Resort in the White Mountains.
She had just enough time to glimpse the phrase on the soon to be obscured poster before the bus lunged past it. “Johnny Get Your Gun.” This left her to contemplate, alas not in perfect silence, the philosophical meaning behind a rainbow being papered over.
Just before the bus stopped, she remembered where the sign was from. It was an ad for the Lone Star Pawn and Gun Shop in Fryeburg. Remembering it didn’t answer Chloe’s larger question, but it answered the immediate one.
“What idiot thought a rainbow was a good symbol for a gun store?” Hannah’s mother had said. Soured on men and life, she had pawned her engagement ring there. Got seventy bucks for it. Took Chloe and Hannah for lobster in North Conway with the money.
They all got food poisoning afterward. So much for rainbows.
Is that what they called karma?
Or was it simply what happened next?
On the dot of 3:40 in the afternoon, the small blue bus pulled up—extra carefully and slowly—to the pine trees at the beginning of Wake Drive, a dirt road past another dirt road marked with a rock painted with a black whale. Four kids jumped off into the dust.
Because it was the merry month of May, and almost warm, they wore the clothes of the young out in the boonies—denim and plaid. Though to be fair, that’s all they ever wore, blizzard or heatwave.
In what universe could a five-minute speech by Mrs. Mencken about the annual Acadia Award for Short Fiction at the end of English period right before lunch—when there wasn’t a soul in class who was paying attention to anything but the rumble in their empty stomachs—result in Blake and Mason deciding they were suddenly writers and not trash collectors?
“Character is everything,” Chloe said doggedly into the dirt. “Character is story.”
The mile of unpaved road at the end of which they lived was all downhill between dense pines. It meandered through the thick forest, getting narrower, crossing the train tracks, hugging the small lake, ending in pine needles and disarray, not a road anymore, just dust, and that’s where they lived. Where the road ended.
Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake. Two couples, two brothers, two best friends. A short girl, a tall girl, and two brawny dudes. Well, Blake was brawny. The scrappy Mason was all about sports the last few years, ever since their dad had his back broken. Mason was a soccer midfielder and a varsity shortstop. Blake got the lumbering body of a man who lived in a rural town and could do anything: lift anything, build anything, drive anything. Blake’s wavy, bushy hair hadn’t been cut in months, his beard was weeks overgrown. The brown Timberlands were grimy. The belt was six years old. The extra large plaid shirt was his dad’s. The Levi’s were hand-me-downs. His light brown eyes darted around, dancing, laughing, full of good humor.
Next to him, his smaller brother looked like a child of prissy aristocracy. Mason’s hair was shaggy straight, but it was meant to be shaggy. It was designer shag. Unlike Blake, who rolled out of bed, hair slept on, and ran to school, Mason woke early and worked hard to make his hair just so. The girls loved his hair, and tortured Chloe about it. Oh Chloe, they chirped, you’re so lucky, you can run your hands through it any time you want. Mason shaved every day, and did not wear plaid. He wore black and gray T-shirts. He was monochrome and his jeans were washed yesterday. On his feet were sneakers. He didn’t cut wood, he played ball. He didn’t look like Blake’s brother, with his compact lean build, intense blue eyes, and his serious, gentle face. Plus, unlike Blake, he was a boy of few words. When he quietly held Chloe’s hand, it was always with kindness. He didn’t pull on her, yank her, demand action from her. He was a gentleman. Not that Blake didn’t try to be a gentleman with Hannah. Just that he was a lot like the German Shepherd he once owned. Panting, unapologetically getting mud on everyone’s floors, dripping ice cream and tomato sauce all over, loping wild through the day. You couldn’t help but feel exasperated affection at his constant antics.
And next to Blake walked Hannah.
Though Chloe herself found Hannah to be slightly androgynous with her tall, boyish body—straight hips, straight waist, small high breasts, short hair always slicked back away from her face—other people, boys especially, did not agree. Her face was opalescent and scrubbed clean, with symmetrical, correct, in-balance features and a gaze as straight as her narrow hips. Her eyes, brown and unblinking, were serious and appraising, making Hannah look as though she were engaged—as though she were listening. Chloe knew it was a ruse: the steady stare allowed Hannah to be lost inside her head. She wore makeup she could ill afford, but strived to look as though she just splashed water on her face and, voila, perfection. With fluid grace Hannah strolled like a ballerina.
At the long mirror in her room she had practiced her arabesques and soubresauts, hoping one day she would stop growing and her parents could afford ballet classes. She finally got her lessons in the divorce settlement, but by then she was five-ten and too tall to be lifted into the air by anyone but Blake, who was definitely not a ballet dancer.
With a detached elegance, Hannah walked and talked as if she didn’t belong in tiny Fryeburg, Maine. She fancied herself barely even belonging in this country. She wore ballet flats, for God’s sake! Even when she schlepped a mile through the mud and pine needles. No butch Timberlands for her. Hannah walked with her shoulder blades flung back, as though wearing heels and a Chanel blazer. She carried herself as if she was too good for the place that by an unlucky accident of birth she had found herself living in, and couldn’t wait until the moment she was sipping wine on the Left Bank and painting the Seine with other artistic, beautiful people. Her big round eyes were permanently moist. She evaluated you before she cried, and then you loved her. That was Hannah. Always crying to be loved.
Chloe in stark contrast was not moist of eye or long of limb. She didn’t care much about not being tall when she wasn’t with Hannah. But next to her reed-like friend, she felt like an armadillo.
One of Chloe’s best physical features was her brown hair, straw-straight, shining, streaked with sunlight. There was nothing she did to make it great. It just was. Every day washed, brushed, clean, unfussy, thin-spun silk falling from her head. She wore no makeup, to differentiate herself from the senior girls who were all about the heavy eyeliner, the flimsy tanks, the one size too small jeans and three-inch (or higher!) mules in which they clodded through the Fryeburg Academy halls, always in danger of falling over or tripping, and perhaps that was the point. Sexy but helpless. Both things were anathema to Chloe, so she kept her body to herself and walked in sensible shoes. Where was she going that required getting dressed up? Bowling? Italian ices? Swimming in the lake? Gardening? Exactly. And she heard the way the boys talked about the girls who dressed the way, say, that hateful Mackenzie O’Shea dressed. A lifetime of meds wouldn’t be able to erase the trauma for Chloe if she thought boys talked about her that way.
Her face, unblemished and fair, suffered slightly from this pretend plainness, but there was no hiding the upper curve of her cheekbones or her wide-set eyes that tilted slightly upward, always in a smile. She had inherited the Irish lips from her father, but the eyes and cheeks from her mother, and because of that, her face, just like her body, wasn’t quite in proportion. The ratio of eyes to lips was not in balance, just as the ratio of body to breasts was not in balance. There was not enough body for the milk-fed breasts she had been cursed with. There may have been a genetic component to the comical chaos inside her—to her math abilities colliding with her existential confusion—but there was simply no cosmic excuse for her palmfuls of breasts.
Chloe blamed her mother.
It was only right.
She blamed her mother for everything.
Look at Hannah. Everything on that girl was assembled as if hand-picked. Tall, lithe, lean, eyes mouth hair nose all the right size, not too big, not too small, while Chloe spent her life hiding under minimizer bras and one-size-too-big shirts. She was afraid no one would take her seriously if they thought of her as a body instead of a person. Who’d ever listen to her explanations about the movements of the stars or migrations of mitochondria or beheadings in a revolution if they thought she was just a pair of boobs with legs. Too heavy-breasted to be a ballerina and too short to be a bombshell.
That Mason didn’t agree—or said he didn’t—only spoke to his poor judgment.
The bus had been dropping them off on the same rural road for thirteen years. Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, fancy high school.
Soon there would be no more blue buses, no more lurching afternoon rides. In a month they would all be graduating.
And then?
Well, and then, there was this:
“Don’t be hating on my story already, Chloe,” said Blake. “It just began. Give it a chance. It’s a good story. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, Chloe,” echoed Mason. Being ten months younger than Blake, he looked up to his older brother, though he did not necessarily disagree with Chloe, as evidenced by his cheerful wink. She took his welcome hand as they strolled past old Mr. Leary out on the lawn, surrounded by every bit of garbage scrap he owned, trying to make it look less garbagey so he could sell it.
“Blake, dear boy,” Mr. Leary called out, “you said you’d come by after school and help me with my block saw. I still can’t get the dang thing to turn on.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Leary.”
“Block saw?” muttered Mason. “What does that codger need with a block saw? It’s soft dirt all around him.”
“He wants to build a bomb shelter,” Blake said out of the corner of his mouth, smiling at the old man as they ambled by. “That’s why he’s collecting the cinder blocks.”
“What’s a block saw?” asked Chloe.
“Who cares,” said Hannah. “A bomb shelter? Guy’s a freak.”
“Blake, not now?” The craggy man persisted. “I have some snacks for you and your friends. Donuts.”
“Thank you, sir, but not now.”
Because now Blake was busy. He had to clear the brush from the dusty path of his own winding life.
All the trouble began when Blake turned eighteen last July and was allowed to enter the Woodsmen Day competition at the Fryeburg Fair. He entered five contests. Tree felling, crosscut sawing, axe throwing, log rolling, and block chop. He lost the crosscut and the log roll and the block chop, and you’d think he’d remember that and be humbled—that he lost three out of five—but no. He beat the best time that year on tree felling by six seconds, coming in at twenty-three seconds flat, and he set a Fair record on the axe throw with six bullseyes in a row.
You’d think his head was the bullseye: it swelled to four feet in diameter. He strutted down the dirt roads and through Academy halls like an Olympic gold medalist. Chloe would remind him that the Fryeburg Academy—which all the local kids attended for “free” through a tax deal between the school and the state of Maine—was one of the most prestigious preparatory high schools in the United States. “No one here gives a toss about your axe toss, I promise you,” Chloe would say to him, but you’d think he were deaf.
It was right after that Blake and Mason entered the business competition for Mr. Smith’s tech class—and they won! Mason was used to winning, with his dozen sports trophies lining the dresser, but Blake became impossible. He acted as if he could do anything. Like, for example, write.
It wasn’t that they didn’t deserve to win. The project was: “Create a successful business.” Who knew that Blake and Mason would take the thing they had been doing part-time and turn it into a winner. With their dad’s ancient truck, they had been going to houses around the lakes in Brownfield and Fryeburg and asking if, for a small fee, the residents would let them cart their trash away. Now, most people in this part of Maine aimed their shotguns to point the brothers in the direction of the exit to their property, but there were some—widows, the feeble-minded—who agreed to pay them a few nickels to cart away their old refrigerators, non-working snow blowers, rusty rakes, newspapers, chainsaws. The boys were strong and worked hard, and after school and on Saturdays, they would drive around and try not to get killed while they made a few dollars. After placing an ad in the Penny Saver, they discovered there was already a national junk company called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. This only fired up their cutthroat spirit. They flattered Hannah into designing their logo: THE HAUL BROTHERS HAULING SERVICES. “WE HAUL SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.”
It looked pretty good. They got a decal made, slapped it on their father’s truck, painted the truck a hideous lime green—Blake said because it was the color farthest removed from the color of the crap they were hauling—used their rudimentary buttering-up skills to get Chloe to create a profit and loss statement, and figured out that if they worked full-time, hired two more guys, and bought another truck with a lift, they would make six figures at the end of three years. Six figures! They had an advertising plan: Yellow Pages, the North Conway Observer, local ads on TV, three radio spots—and then their dad’s Chevy died.
It was over twenty years old. Burt Haul had bought the V8 diesel powerhouse in 1982, before he knew he’d be having sons who a generation later would need it to start a fake business. Burt loved that truck so much that even after the accident that nearly ended his life, he refused to let it go and spent his own scarce money rebuilding it. “I drove your mother home from our wedding in that truck,” Burt told his sons. “The only reason I’m alive today is because of that truck. I ain’t parting with that thing.”
But now the truck engine was like Mr. Leary’s gas-powered block saw. Defunct.
No one had money for a new truck, even a used one. Burt and his boys were being shamefully carted around in Janice Haul’s Subaru. Were they even men?
Hannah and Chloe tried to console their disappointed boyfriends by reminding them that their business wasn’t really a business, it was just a business on paper, which is no kind of business at all. But Blake and Mason had fallen too far into the trap of a dream. Chloe knew something about that. The Haul boys had been so sold on their own pseudo-company that they decided to drop out of school in the middle of senior year and work until they got the money together to buy a truck, figuring that in their line of work a high school diploma was about as useful as watering grass during a downpour.
It was a challenge for the girls to keep their boyfriends in school. It was Chloe who had finally hit on the winning combination of words: “Do you think my mother and father would ever allow me to hang out with high school dropouts?”
That worked, though not as instantly as Chloe had hoped, alas.
So … the senior year passed, truck still broke, and Janice not only had to drive to work and shop for the family, but share her inadequate station wagon with two restless boys with divergent friends, interests and schedules. To make money, the boys shoveled snow, cut grass, did shopping for the infirm, Blake mostly, because Mason was at varsity. Fast forward to today when they were hopping off buses and yammering on about dreams. You had to hand it to them. Those two were single-minded in their pursuits. All their pursuits.
“Chloe, speak up. Listen to what I’m saying. Why isn’t it a good story?” Blake always got irked by her tight-lipped approach to his shenanigans.
“Because so far you haven’t told me anything I’d want to read,” she said.
“I haven’t stopped speaking!”
Chloe opened her hands in a my-point-precisely. “Who are the main characters?”
“It doesn’t matter who they are. Can I finish before you judge?”
“You mean you haven’t finished? And I’m not judging.”
“You so judge. That’s your biggest problem.”
“I’m not—”
Blake put his finger out, nearly to her mouth. “The premise of my story is—are you listening? Two dudes run a junkyard.”
“That part I got.”
“They do say write about what you know.”
“I. Got. That. Part.”
“Two dudes run a junkyard and one day they find something awful.”
“Like what? All you cart away is Wise potato chips and Oreo wrappers.”
“And condom wrappers.” Blake grinned, slowed down, and threw his big arm around Chloe’s shoulder.
“Hannah, control your boyfriend.” Chloe pushed him away. “But okay, even still. Where is the story?”
“Can there be anything more full of story possibilities than a ninety-year-old woman throwing out a Hefty bag full of used condoms?” Blake laughed.
“Not used condoms,” Mason corrected him. “Condom wrappers.”
Chloe glanced at the silent Hannah for support. “Can we move on? What else have you got?”
“We don’t know yet,” Mason said. “Hannah, you think it’s good so far, don’t you?”
“So far there’s nothing!” That was Chloe.
“He wasn’t asking you!” said Blake.
They had ten minutes before they reached home to hammer it out. It wasn’t enough time. Blake pulled them off road, away from home and onto the train tracks that ran through the woods and divided their small part of the lake from the better, larger part. Arms out, backpacks on, they balanced on the rusty tracks and skipped on the ties.
Writing a story for money! What a thing. Acadia’s first prize was ten thousand dollars. Chloe knew the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction had been around longer and was certainly more prestigious, but it paid only a thousand dollars, and you had to write at least forty thousand words for it. No matter how bad one was at math, dividing forty thousand words into a thousand bucks was an awful return. “All work and no pay,” said Mason, and laughed for five minutes at his own joke.
But here—ten thousand dollars for a novella. Blake didn’t even know what a novella was until Chloe told him. To the brothers, a sum that large was the lottery. It was a new truck and the start of their own business. It was the rest of their lives. They acted as if they found it lying under a tree in a suitcase. All that was left to do was count the money.
And little naysay-y Chloe was not allowed to even mention that:
1 They had no story.
2 They were not writers.
3 There would be at least five hundred other applicants, who a. might have a story and b. were writers.
4 One of those applicants might be Hannah who most certainly had stories, a number of them.
5 A new truck was more than ten thousand dollars.
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She had to say something. If only she could learn to keep quiet, like Hannah, or Mason, things would be so much better in her life.
“Who are the junkyard boys?” she asked.
“We are. Blake. Mason. We’re ambling along, asking for no trouble, and suddenly—wham! Trouble comes.”
“Wham,” said Chloe.
“Blake’s right,” Mason said. “We’ve found some awful things.”
“Like what?”
“Dead rats.”
“Rats are good,” she said. “But then what? Someone not wanting dead rats in their house is hardly a story. It’s more like a truism.”
“We found some jewelry too once.”
“Jewelry is good. Then what?”
“Okay, maybe not jewelry, then. Something else.”
Chloe glanced at Hannah, walking on the side of the tracks, away from the three of them, barely listening. Blake jackhammered away at Chloe’s concrete skepticism. “They discover something awful. Something that changes everything. Mason, what can they find that is so monumental and terrible that it changes everything?”
“True love?” Chloe smiled.
“It’s not that kind of story, my dear Haiku,” Blake said with twinkling amusement. “This is a man’s story. No room in it for lurv, no matter how terrible and true. Right, cupcake?” Jumping off the rail, he jostled Hannah along the pebbles.
“Right,” she said.
Mason had new suggestions. “We found an old suitcase once. It was full of snakes. And once we found a live rabbit.”
“Yes,” Blake said. “He was delicious. But Chloe is right. We need a story, bro.” He smacked his forehead. “Got it. How about a human head in the trash?”
Chloe didn’t even blink this time. Almost as if she’d seen a human head in the trash before. “Nice,” she said. “And then?”
Blake shrugged. “Why do you care so much what happens next?” he asked.
She could tell he wasn’t taking it seriously. What the boys did for a living—that was work. Here, all they had to do was come up with a few words and place them in the sweet order that assured victory. Blake was convinced it was child’s play.
“You’re right, we’re all Philistines with our slavish devotion to plot,” Chloe said. “Be that as it may.”
“Yes. The writer drones on about what happens next and as soon as you the reader guess what’s coming, you either fall asleep or want to kill him.”
“So the trick is what? Never give the reader what she wants?”
Blake shook his head. “No. Give her what she didn’t even know she wanted.” He acted as if he knew what that was.
They turned for home. “They find a human head,” he went on, as he and Chloe ambled down the narrowing pine path leading home, Hannah and Mason behind them. A few hundred yards downhill, the dirt road tapered to one lane on which a truck or a car or people could pass—one at a time. “But not a skull.” Blake glanced back and widened his eyes at Hannah. “A head. That’s been recently separated from the body. It still has flesh on it. And they don’t know what to do. Do they investigate? Do they call the cops?”
“I think they should investigate,” Mason said, running up. “Investigations are fun.”
“There’s danger in it.”
“Danger is good,” Hannah said from behind. “Danger is story.”
No, Chloe wanted to correct her uncorrectable friend. Danger is danger. It’s not story.
Blake went on ruminating. “What if asking too many questions of the wrong people puts them in mortal danger?”
Chloe wondered if there was any other kind.
“Someone needs to shut them up. But who?”
“Obviously those who separated the head from the body.”
“But why would someone separate the head from the body?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know yet. But I really think we got us something here. Haiku, what do you think?”
“I say keep working on it.” Chloe used her most discouraging tone.
“Wait! I got it!” Blake exclaimed. “What if they find a suitcase? Yes, a mysterious suitcase! It’s blue. Oh my God, I got it. That’s my story.” Blake stopped and turned to the girls, beaming, his whole face flushed and thrilled. “The Blue Suitcase. What do you think?” He clapped. “It’s flipping awesome!”
Hannah smiled approvingly.
Chloe caught herself shrugging. “It’s a good title for a mystery,” she said. “But a title is not a story. What’s in the suitcase? Once you figure out that part, Blake, then you’ll have yourself a story.”
Blake laughed with characteristic lack of concern for details. He was a big picture guy. “James Bond always goes to a foreign country to solve mysteries and catch the bad guys,” he said. “Some fantastic exotic locale full of drink and women and danger.”
Chloe made a real effort not to rub her forehead. She had a lot of practice hiding exasperation from her mother, but this was on a different scale altogether. “James Bond is a government spy. He kills for money. He doesn’t rummage through the trash for severed heads.”
“Foreign country!” Mason exclaimed. “Blake, you’re a genius.”
Blake’s entire peacock tail opened up in kaleidoscope green.
“But wait,” Mason said. “You and I have never been to a foreign country.”
Blake blocked the girls’ way, smiling meaningfully at them. “Not yet,” he said.
The girls remained impassive. Only Chloe twitched slightly. Oh no! she thought. He doesn’t mean …
“We’ll go to Europe with you,” Blake said. “Mason’s right, I am a genius. The answer to our mysterious suitcase is in Europe. Oh man, this is going to be fantastic. And we’ve only been at it for five minutes. Imagine how good it’ll be when we spend a few days on it.” Blake thumped his flannel plaid chest. “We could win the book prize.”
“What book prize would that be, Blake?” Chloe said.
“I don’t know, Chloe. The prize they give the best book of the year. The Oscar for books. The Grammy, the Emmy.”
“The Pulitzer?”
“Whatever. That’s not the important part. To write something people will love, that’s the important part.”
Chloe leaned in to Hannah. “Did your crazy boyfriend just say he wants to go to Europe with us?”
“I’m sure that can’t be right,” Hannah, her expression frazzled, whispered back. “I’ll talk to him—”
Blake pulled Hannah away from Chloe. “Hannah, when are you two flying to Barcelona?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah replied. “Chloe, when are we flying?”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Chloe.
“Mason, that’s where we go, bro. Barcelona! Our story will climax there.” Blake laughed. The brothers high-fived and bumped shoulders.
“I thought you said it wasn’t that kind of story,” Chloe cut in.
“If it ends in Barcelona, Haiku, it’ll have to be a story for all seasons. Isn’t that where they have the running of the bulls?”
“Oh dear God. No. That’s Pamplona.”
“Wait,” Hannah said. “Blake, you’re not seriously thinking of coming with us?”
“We’re done thinking. We’re coming, baby!”
Mason looked shocked. “We’re going to Europe? You’re bullshitting me.”
“Mason, do I come up with the best ideas or what?”
Mason was at a loss for words.
“Blake …” Finally Hannah became actively engaged in the conversation. “Think about it for a minute. You’re not serious about writing a story, are you? The contest is open to all Maine residents. That’s a lot of competition. Just from our school, there’ll probably be at least a hundred entries. Everyone on our literary magazine is submitting a story.”
“Hannah, have you read the literary magazine?” said Blake, swinging his arms around, bouncing down the road. “It’s called Insanity’s Horse, for heaven’s sake.” He laughed. “Just for that title alone, those fools should be disqualified from participating. Do you remember the magazine’s April thought of the month? The pastiche of the pyramids implementing primal passion is a prolix representation of all phallic prose. I got your phallic prose right here. Yeah,” he said, merry and intense. “I’m not worried.”
How did this happen? One minute ticked by, and before it was up, Blake and Mason had climbed aboard the girls’ slow-chugging teenage dream.
Hannah stopped listening. She pulled on Chloe to slow down. “Now I really have to talk to you,” she said. “Come by before dinner?”
“Is it about Barcelona?” Chloe looked up into Hannah’s flat expression.
Hannah blinked. “No and yes. Do you have your passport yet?”
Chloe didn’t reply.
“Chloe! I told you—it takes two months to get a passport. Come on. Do you want to blow it?”
“Of course not. But that’s easy for you to say—you’re eighteen. I have to ask my parents to sign for my passport.”
“So?”
“Well, I’ll have to tell them I’m going first, won’t I?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t told them!”
“Yeah, well.” Chloe couldn’t believe a whole bunch of things.
Blake was in front of them, panting, eyes blazing, his body heaving. “So what do we have to do to get a passport?”
“Go to the post office,” Hannah said. “But take Chloe with you, because she doesn’t know how to get one either.”
“I know how. I just …”
Hannah batted her lashes. “Are you guys really going to come with us? Because don’t get our hopes up and then not come. That’d be mean.”
“I never disappoint you, pumpkin, do I?” Grabbing the slender Hannah, Blake pretended to dance with her and stepped on her feet. She yelped.
“Blake, you do know where Barcelona is, right?” Hannah said, her arms around his neck. “In Spain. And you know where Spain is, right? In Europe. As in—on another continent. As in, you need not just a passport, which costs upward of a hundred bucks, but also a plane ticket, and train tickets, and maybe, oh, I don’t know—some lodging and food money.”
Mason began to look doubtful, but Blake shrugged with gleeful indifference. “You know what they say, babycakes.” He squeezed her. “You gotta spend money to make money. It’s like the ten grand I’m getting for my story. We can’t start our own business till we win this thing. And we can’t win this thing till we do this other thing.”
“This other thing,” said Chloe, “meaning horn in on my lifelong dream?”
“Exactly. Mase, let’s jet. We gotta go get ourselves some passports. We have no time to lose.” As they sped up, their boots kicked up dust in a bee cloud. “Where’s this post office, anyway?” Blake called back.
“Are you joking? You’ve never been to the Fryeburg post office?”
Hannah poked Chloe. “You’ve never been there either, missy.”
Chloe poked Hannah back. “Yes, I have, stop it.”
Blake pulled on his brother. “Let’s hoof, bro. Should we pick you up, Chloe?” The Hauls lived three houses up from Chloe, around the pond through the scraggly pines and birches.
“Yeah, Chloe,” Hannah said, sticking a finger into Chloe’s back. “Should they pick you up to go get your passport?”
“It’s okay,” said Chloe, swatting Hannah’s fingers away. “I’ll have my mom take me.”
The girls gazed after their young men, and then resumed walking. Hannah shook her head—in distress? In wonderment? Chloe couldn’t tell. “I guess I’ll be going to Spain with my boyfriend and your boyfriend, but not with you.”
“Har-de-har-har.”
“You think I’m being funny? You can’t start your adult life being such a chicken, Chloe. What are you afraid of? Be more like me. I’m not afraid of anything.” She said it as if she didn’t mean it.
But all Chloe heard was be more like me. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth, she thought, stiffening. They were almost at the clearing in front of Chloe’s green bungalow. Hannah slowed down, as if she wanted to linger, but Chloe sped up as if that was the last thing she wanted. “I have to be diplomatic,” she said. “I need their permission to go. I can’t just present them with an I’m-going-to-Europe vaudeville routine.”
“If you don’t start acting like an adult, why should they treat you like one?”
How much did Chloe not want to talk about it. It wasn’t that Hannah was wrong. It was that Hannah always said obvious things in such a way that made Chloe not only think her friend was wrong, but that she wanted her friend to be wrong.
“I’ll talk to them tonight,” she said, hurrying across her pine needle clearing.
“I wouldn’t tell them about Mason and Blake just yet.”
“Ya think?”
Since Mrs. Haul and Lang went shopping on Fridays, Chloe had a feeling that her silence on the subject might be short-lived.
“Okay,” Hannah said, “but start slow. Don’t make your mother go all Chinese on you. You always make her nuts. First dangle our trip, then wait. The boys might be pie in the sky anyway. Where are they going to get the money from? It’ll pass, you’ll see.”
Chloe said nothing. Clearly Hannah had no idea who her boyfriend was. There was no talking Blake out of anything. Short fiction indeed! And as if to prove Chloe’s point, Janice Haul’s Subaru came charging toward them from around the trees, Blake rolling down his window, slowing down, honking.
“We’re off to get our passports!” he yelled. “See ya!”
Chloe turned to Hannah. “You were saying?”
“All right, fine. But don’t tell your mom about them yet.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Chloe asked. Only a flimsy screen door separated Chloe’s mother’s ears from Hannah’s troubles.
Hannah waved her off. “Just you wait,” she said, all doom and gloom.
2 (#ulink_3597d7e7-5e2a-533d-9071-b6413b4bff81)
Sweet Potato (#ulink_3597d7e7-5e2a-533d-9071-b6413b4bff81)
“I’M IN THE KITCHEN,” HER MOTHER CALLED OUT AS SOON as Chloe opened the screen door. A statement of delightful irony since they lived in a winterized cabin that was one room entire, if one didn’t count, which Chloe didn’t, the bathroom, the two small bedrooms and the open attic lost where Chloe slept.
I’m in the kitchen, Lang said, because this month she was baking. Last winter, her mother was scrapbooking so every day, when Chloe came home, she would hear: I’m in the dining room.
The previous fall, her mother decided to become a seamstress and told Chloe that from now on she was sewing all of her daughter’s clothes, in the craft room.
When she was tracing out the family tree on her new Christmas-present software, Lang was in the computer room.
During the summers, Lang said nothing, because she was outside, fishing and tending her vegetable garden, voluminous enough to supply tomatoes to all eight homes around their part of the lake. Bushels of zucchini and cucumbers went with Chloe’s dad to work.
Chloe’s mother Lang Devine, née Lang Thia of Chinese descent from Red River, North Dakota, reinvented herself constantly into something new. She had wanted to be a dancer when she was young, but then she met Jimmy and wanted to be a wife. After many years as a wife, she wanted to be a mother. And after many years as a mother of one, she wanted to be a mother of two.
Jimmy’s favorite, he said, was when Lang took up tap dancing. He built her a wooden platform; she bought herself a pair of black Capezios size 5, some CDs and taught herself how to tap dance. That was noisy.
And not as delicious as baking, which was the current phase, and Chloe’s favorite after gardening. Jimmy Devine liked it, too, but groused that he was gaining two pounds a week because of Lang’s buttery hobby. Chloe thought her dad might teasingly mention the extra pounds Lang herself had put on around her five-foot frame, now that she wasn’t tap dancing. But no. Just last week, Jimmy said as he dug into Lang’s cream puffs (made with half-and-half, not milk, by the way), “Sweet potato, how do you bake so much and yet stay so thin?”
And Chloe’s mother had tittered!
How to explain to both her parents that it was unseemly for a grown woman of advancing years, married for nearly thirty, to titter when her husband paid her a half-hearted compliment by calling her the name of a red starchy root vegetable?
This afternoon Chloe walked in slowly, set down her school bag, pulled off her boots, and walked down the short corridor, past her parents’ bedroom, past the bedroom that no one ever went into anymore, past the bathroom, into the open area to put her lunchbox on the kitchen counter where it would be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Something smelled heavenly. Chloe didn’t want to admit it, because she didn’t want to encourage her mother in any way. What her mother needed was a tamping down of enthusiasm, not a fanning of the fire. Her mother and Blake shared that in common.
“Doesn’t that smell divine?” Lang giggled, turned around, and with floury hands, patted Chloe on both cheeks. “I only make divine things for my divine girl.” One of the few things Chloe tolerated about her mother was that she was short, making even Chloe seem tall by comparison.
Chloe brushed the white powder off her face. “Whatchya makin’?”
“Linzer tarts.”
“Doesn’t smell like Linzer tarts.” Chloe glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.
“Raspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”
Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”
“Full from lunch four hours ago?”
Lang got out some orange juice, a yoghurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warm jam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. She had to admit it was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”
“I’m thinking ratatouille.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. It’s a vegetable stew, I think. But it could be a condiment.” She chuckled. Honestly, why did Chloe have to be the only serious one in her house?
“Dad needs meat.”
“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll feed the carnivore some pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”
Chloe desperately needed to talk to her mother. She didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair straw straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absent-minded and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good,” she said.
That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, the hobby called. Jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.
Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.
“Are you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Mrs. Mencken told me about the Acadia prize. Ten thousand dollars is amazing. I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at anything. You will too, of course. Right?”
Now who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe managed to contain her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.
“You discussed it with Hannah and your boys?”
“Not necessarily,” Chloe replied. Disgusted is what she was. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”
Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not going to do it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”
Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the silence the ominous shadows of hollowed-out fangs essential for a story were abundantly obvious.
“I mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I? Because I didn’t go. Maybe you can write that story. I don’t think there’s an age limit on entrants.”
When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft. Their trip formed the foundation of much, if not all, of the resentment of Chloe’s teenage years. A blown-up photo in a heavy gold leaf frame of the Castlecomer glens hung prominently in the hallway.
Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe.
“You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” Lang said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”
“Make it up from what? I’m going to make up a story about something so dramatic that it will win first prize?”
“Why not? Blake is.”
How did her mom know this!
“I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—” She stopped herself from saying used condoms.
“You have an imagination, don’t you?”
“No, none. I need a story, Mom. Not musings about what it’s like to live on a puddle lake in Maine.”
“Puddle lake? Have you glimpsed the stunning beauty outside your own windows?”
In the afternoons, the glistening lake, blooming willows and birches trimming the shoreline, the railroad rising on the embankment did occasionally shine with the scarlet colors of life. That wasn’t the point.
“I can’t write about skiing or bowling, or learning to drive,” Chloe continued. “I need something substantial. And I have nothing.” Why couldn’t she talk about herself without allowing a whiff of self-pity to waft through her smallest words? The one ashen tragedy in their life she could never write about. And Lang knew that. So why push it? Besides, her mother had once informed her that the Devine women were too short to be tragic figures. “We can be stoics, but not tragics,” Lang had said a few years ago, when it seemed to everyone else that the very opposite was the only thing true. “Make it up, darling,” Lang repeated, unperturbed by her daughter’s tone. “You’re a very good writer.”
“Mom, I don’t want to be a writer.”
“Neither does Blake. Yet look at him.”
Chloe watched her mother walk to the printer in the computer room behind the sofa and peel off several sheets of paper. Lang slapped the rules of entry for the Acadia contest on the table.
“You have five months to come up with a story and write it. It must be original. It must be fiction. And after it wins, it will be published by the University of Maine Press. Properly published! In book form and everything. That’s very exciting, isn’t it?”
“Did you not hear me?”
“No. By the way, I got you the pens you wanted.” Lang produced three packages of blue pens, gel, ballpoint, and fountain, and laid them in front of Chloe.
“I also took the liberty of getting you a notebook. Several different kinds to choose from. I thought you might need one if you’re going to write a story that’s going to win first prize. The Moleskine is very good. Has soft paper. But you try them all.”
Chloe stared at the pens, at the four notebooks. Had she actually mentioned that she needed a pen? One blue pen!
“Mom, listen to me.”
Lang sat down, elbows on the table, staring at Chloe with complete attention. She looked so pleased to be told to do what she had already been doing.
“I want to write something, I do. I just don’t think I have … look, here’s what we were thinking.”
“Who’s we?”
“The four of us.”
“The four of you were thinking all at once?”
“Well, discussing.”
“That’s better. It’s always good to be precise if you’re thinking of becoming a writer.”
“Which I’m not, so.”
“What are you four up to now? Let’s hear it.”
“We’re thinking of going to Europe.”
Lang stayed neutral. She didn’t blanch, she barely blinked. No, she did blink. Slowly, steadily, as if she was about to say …
“Are you crazy?”
There it was. “First listen, then judge. Can you do that?”
“No.”
“Mom. You just said you wanted me to write.”
“You have to go to Europe to write? Did Flannery O’Connor go to Europe? Did Eudora Welty? Did Truman Capote?”
“Actually, he did, yes.”
“When he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms, his first novel, he’d been to Europe?”
“I don’t know. We’re getting off topic, Mom.”
“Au contraire. We are very much on topic.”
“Mason and Blake need to do research.”
“So they’re going to Europe?”
Chloe made a real effort not to facepalm, a real, true, Herculean, McDonald’s supersize-sandwich effort not to facepalm, because there were few things her mother hated more than this brazen gesture of exasperation and frustration.
“Hannah and I have been talking about the trip for a while.”
“I thought you just said you wanted to go for Blake and Mason? Make up your mind, child. Either you thought of it on the railroad tracks, or you’ve been planning it for years.”
“How do you know we were on the tracks?”
“I saw you.” Lang pointed out the window. “Right across the lake.”
Both things were true. Chloe and Hannah had been dreaming of going for years, but Blake and Mason just thought of it today. Lang sat and watched her daughter like a bird watching the world. One never knew what the Langbird was thinking until she sang.
“Isn’t going away to college enough for you?” Lang said quietly.
Chloe clasped her hands. She didn’t want to look into her mother’s face. She knew how hard it must have been for her parents to let her go away to school. “I’ve been dreaming of Europe since I was little,” she said, almost whispered. “Way before college.”
“Sometimes circumstances change, and we have to dream a different dream,” said Lang. There was only a breath after that, and no change in expression to reflect the colossal wreck from which life had had to be recomposed, rebuilt from the ashes, Capezio shoe by Linzer tart. “College away is a big step, not to mention an enormous expense, even with the scholarship they’re giving you.”
“I know, Mom. Exactly. And then work and study and more work and study, and when else could I ever do it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, let’s see, how about—four years from now? Or never. Either way is good with me.”
“That’s what I want for my graduation present,” Chloe declared boldly. “A trip to Europe. You went to Europe.”
“It was for a funeral!”
“So what.”
“Graduation present. Really. I thought you wanted a laptop.”
“I’ll use our old one. I’ll take the desktop.”
“You certainly will not. All my family-tree files are on it.”
“I thought you were baking now? Oh, and yes, the files are permanently embedded in that one desktop computer. You’re right. They can never be moved.”
“Do you know what happens after you make a choice to be sarcastic to the woman who gave you life?”
Chloe softened her tone. She knew that talking to her parents about anything was a fifteen-part process that would begin with an idea being promptly rejected and then followed up by a string of days during which her mother enumerated in Tolstoyan prose why whatever it was Chloe wanted was the worst idea. After a War and Peace-length volume on why they couldn’t get a dog, or a tattoo, or a third earring, or go to Europe, the real decision would be handed down. She didn’t get a tattoo. Or a dog. Or a third earring. What was happening here was just preface. The real meat of her mother’s argument was still to come.
But this time Chloe wanted a different resolution. This time she wanted her way, not Lang’s way. “Mom, what’s the big deal? I’ll be eighteen when we go.” When, not if. What a clever play on words! What a clever girl.
“Yes, because that solves all the problems. And don’t use the word when with me, young lady.”
Ahh! “What problems? There are no problems. We want to go to Europe for a few weeks. We’ll walk around, visit beautiful churches, eat delicious food, go to the beach, experience things we’ve never experienced before—”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“And then come home,” Chloe continued, “and Blake will write a beautiful story that will win first prize.”
“The boy has many skills. Do you think writing is one of them?”
“He thinks he does and that’s all that matters.” Chloe was defiant, but she didn’t have the answers. To her friends, she was usually the person her mother was being to her right now. The devil’s advocate, the sucker of joy. There were a thousand reasons why everything Blake and Mason wanted to do was a terrible idea. Oh God. Had Chloe already turned into her mother at seventeen? Facepalm!
“And by the way,” Lang said, “Europe is a big place. It’s not Rhode Island. Or Acadia National Park. Where in Europe were you four thinking of visiting? You mentioned church and beach. That could be anywhere.”
“Barcelona.”
Her mother groaned. “Barcelona. Really. That’s your idea. Of all the places, that’s where you want to go?”
“We’ve never been to Spain. And it’s on the water.”
“So is Maine. And you’ve never been to Belgium either.”
“Who wants to go to Belgium? What kind of story can one possibly write about Belgium? Or Maine?”
Lang shook her head. “There is so much you don’t know.”
“That’s why I want to go to Europe. So I can find out.”
“You’re going to learn about life lying on a filthy beach? Okay, riddle me this,” Lang said. “Where do you plan to sleep?”
“What do you mean?”
“Am I not being clear? You’re planning to go with your boyfriend, your best friend and her boyfriend. Where are the four of you going to sleep in this Barcelona?”
Chloe tried not to stammer. “We haven’t thought about it.”
“Haven’t you.” It was not a question.
“Probably a youth hostel or somewhere like that.”
“So in a dorm with fifty strangers all using the same bathroom facilities, if there are any?”
“We don’t care about that. We are young, Mom. We’re not like you. We don’t care about creature comforts. Where we sleep. What we eat. What we wear. It’s all fine. So it’s not the Four Seasons. So what? We’ll be in Europe. We’ll buy a student Eurail pass for a few hundred bucks, sleep on trains if we have to, to save money.”
“Why would you need to do that?” Lang’s already narrow dark eyes narrowed and darkened further. “You just said you were going to Barcelona. Why would you need to sleep on trains?”
“In case we wanted to see Madrid. Or maybe Paris.” That was Hannah’s idea. Hannah, the Toulouse-Lautrec artiste.
“Paris.”
“Yes, Paris. Isn’t France next to Spain?”
Her mother folded her hands together. “Chloe, I tell you what. Go away and think carefully about all the questions I’m going to ask you next time you sit down and say, Mom, I want to go to Barcelona. Everything I’m going to ask you, ask yourself, find an answer, and come prepared.”
“Like what?”
“Nope. That’s not how it works. You figure out the solutions to the problems. Oh, and by the way, one of those problems is telling your father. Let’s see how you surmount that.”
Chloe became deflated. “I thought maybe you could tell him.”
“That’s likely.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Mom.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being snide. You know I’m actually going to tell him as soon as he walks in the door.”
“Perhaps he’ll be more reasonable than you,” Chloe said. “Maybe Dad remembers what it’s like to be young. Oh, wait, I forgot, you can’t remember, because you were born old. Born knowing you’d have a kid someday whose dreams you’d spend your entire life harpooning.”
“I’m harpooning your dream of going to Barcelona?” said Lang. “The dream I didn’t know you had until five minutes ago?” She raised her hand before Chloe could protest, defend, explain, justify. “Where are you going to sleep, Chloe? Why don’t you first work on giving your father the answer to that pesky question. Because it’ll be the first thing he’ll ask. Then worry about everything else.”
Her parents didn’t yell, they didn’t punish. They were simply hyperaware of every single thing Chloe said and did. She got a new ribbon at the high school book fair? They knew. She once almost failed a biology test? They knew. She wore black eyeliner? Oh, they knew. She and Mason danced too close at one Friday night canteen? How they knew. They had no life except to live vicariously through hers. And the only thing that was expected of her, aside from not flunking out of school, was not to let down half a billion Chinese mothers by going to a Barcelona beach to have unfettered sex with her boyfriend.
“Going to Barcelona is also an education, Mom,” Chloe muttered. She really didn’t want to face her dad’s questions. What was she supposed to say? We’re going to get two rooms, and the girls will stay in one room, and the boys in the other? What kind of naïve fool for a parent would believe that?
“Yes, an education in boys,” said Lang. “What are you going to tell us, that you’ll get two rooms and you and Hannah will stay in one and the boys in the other?”
There you go. Didn’t even have to say a word.
“Your plan,” Lang continued, “is to rove around Europe for a month with your boyfriend on your hard-earned college savings. This is something you’re seriously proposing to your father and me?”
Dad is not here, Chloe wanted to say. She didn’t know of whom she was more afraid. Dad never really liked Mason, that gentle kid. She didn’t know why. Everyone loved him. “We could go to Belgium, too, if you want.”
“Are you weak in the head? Why would I want this?”
“You mentioned Belgium. I could bring you back some chocolates.”
“Your father gets me a Whitman’s Sampler every Valentine’s Day. That’s enough for me.”
“Belgium is safe.”
“Is Mason safe?”
“Hannah will be with me. She’s nearly a year older. She’ll protect me.”
“Chloe,” said her mother, “sometimes you say the funniest things. That girl couldn’t protect a squirrel. She can’t protect herself. I trust Mason more than I trust Hannah.”
“See?”
“More, which is to say nothing. How much is two times zero? Still zero, child.” She raised her hand before Chloe could come back with a wisecrack. “Enough. I have to slap these Linzers together and then get dinner on. Your father will be home soon. Go to the music room and practice.”
“I’m going to be eighteen, Mom,” Chloe repeated lamely.
“Yes, and I’m going to be forty-seven. And your father forty-nine. I’m glad we established how old we are. Now what?”
“I’m old enough to make my own choices,” said Chloe, hoping her mother wouldn’t laugh at her.
To Lang’s credit, she didn’t. “Can you choose right now to go play a musical instrument,” she said. “Piano or violin. Pick one. Practice thirty minutes.”
“Hannah wants to talk to me before dinner.”
“Well, then, you’d better jump to it,” said Lang, her back turned, an icing sugar shaker in her hands. “What Hannah wants, Hannah gets.”
3 (#ulink_96c6fd5a-f573-582a-8bf0-ad2082614165)
The Perils of College Interviews (#ulink_96c6fd5a-f573-582a-8bf0-ad2082614165)
CHLOE SPRINTED FROM HER HOUSE ACROSS THE FLOWERBEDS and brush to Hannah’s next door.
Since the divorce five years ago, Hannah’s mother had been involved with revolving boyfriends, and consequently their yard never got cleaned up. “Why can’t she do it herself?” Lang would demand. Blake and Mason offered every month to help, but Terri didn’t want to pay them to do it. And she didn’t want them to do it for free because that was asking men for a favor. So she lived surrounded by unkempt backwoods, in wild contrast to Chloe’s parents’ approach to their house and their rural life. Lang allocated part of every day to weeding, mowing, cleaning, planting, raking, leafing, clearing, maintaining. The birches and pines were trimmed as if giraffes had gotten to them, and all the pine cones were swept up and placed in tall ornamental wicker baskets, and even the loose pebbles were picked up and arranged around the flowerbeds and bird houses and vegetable gardens. It was quite telling that Terri and Lang lived next door to each other for almost twenty years and yet didn’t know each other’s birthdays. Lang never said a thing, and kept Jimmy from saying anything, but Chloe could tell by her father’s critical expression when he spoke of “that family” that he looked forward to the day Hannah might become a friend of the past. There are two kinds of people in the world, Jimmy Devine said. Those who try to make everything they come in contact with more beautiful—and then there is Terri Gramm.
Before Chloe knocked, she stopped by the dock and stared out onto the lake, the railroad across it, the bands of violet mackerel sky. She imagined a lover’s kiss in the Mediterranean breeze, the mosaics of streets, parades down the boulevards, music, ancient stones, and evening meals. Beaches, heat, flamenco, bagpipes. Passion, life, noise. Everything that here was not. She imagined herself, fire, flowing dresses, abundant cleavage, no fear. Everything that here she was not. Her heart aching, she knocked on Hannah’s porch door.
Hannah’s mother was on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune.
“Hello, Mrs. Gramm.”
“Hi, honey.” Terri didn’t turn her head to Chloe. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“No, my mom—”
“I’m joking. We got nothing anyway.”
Hannah pulled Chloe into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Did she say no?”
“Of course she said no.”
“But was it no, we’ll see, or was it no like never?”
“It was no like never.”
“But then she started asking you all kinds of questions?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s yes. They never ask anything unless it’ll be yes eventually. Give her a week to think about it. She has to talk to your dad.”
“You think I’ll have a better chance with him?”
“No. But he might give you money.”
“For Barcelona?”
“We’ll figure it out. We have bigger problems right now.”
“Bigger than my mom saying no?”
“Yes.” Hannah was biting her nails. Perfect Hannah with her perfect teeth was biting to the nubs her ugly nails at the end of her perfect long fingers. “How likely is it, do you think, that Blake and Mason are actually going to go?”
“A hundred percent.” Chloe pulled her friend’s twitchy hand out of her mouth. “Stop doing that. Don’t you know what Blake is like?”
Hannah didn’t reply. She was too busy bloodying the tips of her fingers.
Chloe plopped down on Hannah’s lavender bed. The girl turned up her music which was already plenty loud. She did it so her mother couldn’t hear her, but the result was that Chloe couldn’t hear her either. Hannah had a barely audible soprano, like a low hum, and over the high treble strands of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” she was nearly impossible to make out.
She lay on her bed next to Chloe. “Chloe-bear, I’m in trouble.”
“What?”
“I have to break up with him and I don’t know how to do it.”
“With Blake?” Chloe sat up. She was horrified.
“No, with Martyn.”
“Who?”
“Stop it. Be serious.”
Chloe stopped it. How to tell Hannah that she was serious? Who the heck was Martyn? She hoped her pitiable ignorance didn’t show on her face. She scrunched it up knowingly, trussed her eyebrows, nodded. “Why, um, do you have to break up with him?”
“He was going to give me money to go to Barcelona, because he knows I don’t have enough, but if Blake is going, he won’t give me any money.”
Chloe blindly navigated the maze before her, hands out in front. “So don’t tell him Blake is going.” Who the hell was Martyn?!
“Except … he was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days.”
Chloe weighed her words. “Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days?” As if repetition would make Hannah’s words make sense.
“I didn’t want him to, Chloe, believe me, but I don’t have enough money to go, and I thought, what’s a couple of days, when we’re going to be there two weeks, right?”
“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.”
“Don’t be mad. I was going to tell you he was coming. I was just waiting for the right time. Please don’t be mad.” Hannah briefly leaned her head into Chloe’s head, and then clapped her hands business-like. “No, that’s it. I’m going to end it. It’s for the best,” she said. “He is getting too serious, anyway. We need to break up, not go on vacation.”
“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.” Chloe couldn’t get past this one point.
“He doesn’t want me to go without him. He’s afraid I’m going to meet someone, have a fling. He is intensely jealous.”
“Martyn is jealous.”
“Yes, so jealous.”
“Um, does Martyn know you have a boyfriend? Maybe he can be jealous of him.” Poor Blake.
“He’s not worried about him.”
“Well, you’re not, why should he be? So this Martyn is afraid you’ll have a fling in Europe with someone other than your boyfriend?” Chloe opened her hands. “What kind of girl does he think you are?”
“Can you please, please be serious? I know I need to break up with him. But then where do I get the money to go?” She wrung her hands, twisted her sore and bitten fingers. The usually unruffled Hannah looked ruffled.
Chloe was afraid to ask the follow-up question. There were so many questions, she couldn’t sort out their order of priority. She was thinking of Barcelona. But she was also thinking about Blake. “Hannah, if you have someone else, why do you string Blake along? Why don’t you break it off with him, and do what you want?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Chloe,” Hannah said. “Did you not hear me just now when I said I was going to end it with Martyn?”
Chloe heard all right. “Do you even still want to go to Barcelona?”
“More than anything.”
“With Blake?”
“I’d prefer to go with just you.” Hannah pulled Chloe in for a hug. “Like we planned. Do you think we can talk Blake out of going?”
Chloe shrugged. “Perhaps you can dissuade him by telling him if he goes, then your secret lover won’t give you any money for Europe.”
In a humph Hannah turned her back to Chloe.
“I thought you had money,” Chloe said quietly. “I thought we were both saving.”
“We were. We are. But Chloe, I’m not you. I can’t walk around in the same extra-large T-shirt. I need spring clothes, I need summer clothes.”
“What do you want, a new skirt or Barcelona?”
“Both.”
“You don’t have money for both. Pick.”
“Both!”
Hannah’s back curved into a ball.
Chloe sighed, kneading her comforting palm between Hannah’s shoulder blades. “Who’s this Martyn anyway?”
“Don’t joke.”
“I mean”—Chloe cleared her throat—“how come he has money to burn?”
“He’s a professor. He’s got plenty of money.”
Martyn, Martyn, Martyn. Chloe tried to remember the first names of their teachers at the Academy. In any case, Hannah said professor, not teacher. Jumping up, Hannah started to pace and talk, began to tell Chloe things she couldn’t hear. It occurred to her that perhaps this was the reason she didn’t know about Martyn. Hannah told her, but Metallica was playing and through the strands of living life their way, Chloe had missed it.
Hannah grabbed Chloe’s hands. “What am I going to do? It’ll crush him.”
“Do you want to break up with him?”
“I have to. He’s become way too emotionally involved with me.”
“What about Blake?”
“Will you forget Blake! I have a real problem and you bringing him up every five seconds is not helping me.”
Chloe tried to regroup, find something else to say that sounded less hectory. “Um, how long has the Martyn thing been going on?”
“October.”
“Last October?”
“Yes, since my college interview. Chloe, why are you being so obtuse? Is this deliberate? Is this your way of judging me? You’re making it hard to talk to you.”
Now Chloe remembered. She had driven Hannah to Bangor for her University of Maine admission interview. Chloe had been accepted without an interview so she waited outside while Hannah went in. Hannah walked out with a man, who shook her hand or, rather, took her hand and held it. Hannah introduced Chloe to a very tall, grandfatherly gentleman, soft spoken and modest in manner. Surely that wasn’t Martyn?
Chloe thought no more about it, except in January when Hannah asked to be driven to Bangor again because the admissions office needed to go over a couple of things.
That couldn’t be the man Hannah needed to break up with. Chloe had it wrong. It couldn’t be him because he was …
“Hannah, I’m sorry, but how old is Martyn?”
Hannah studied the lilac bedspread as if the answer was written on her sheets like a cheat sheet. “Sixty-two,” she said.
Chloe jumped off the bed.
“Sit down. What are you getting all riled up about?”
“Hannah!” Chloe couldn’t sit. She could barely focus on Hannah’s aggrieved face. “Please tell me you’re not involved with a man forty years older than you. Please.” Was Chloe the only one who thought this was gross?
“Okay,” Hannah said. Metallica segued into Nirvana. Come as you are. As a friend. “Forty-four years,” she corrected Chloe.
Come as you are.
Chloe didn’t know why she should feel so affected by this. Hannah on the other hand was flushed, blinking rapidly, breathing through her mouth, as if she was catching the strands of the plot on her tongue and was about to jump on her computer and write a story for the ages. “He’s very much in love with me,” she said musically. “I didn’t realize he would fall so deep. He’s a widower and has been very lonely. At first he told me it was just for company. He knew we couldn’t last. He’s the one who told me it wouldn’t last!”
“But you’ve only seen him the few times I’ve driven you to Bangor,” Chloe said dumbly. “Right? I mean …”
“Don’t be naïve. We’ve been meeting every Tuesday at the Silver Pines Motor Court. And some Saturdays. He finishes teaching early on Tuesdays.”
Chloe’s expression must have been a sight.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Hannah said. “I didn’t want to be judged, and I was afraid you’d spill the beans to Mason, and then Blake would find out.”
Where had Chloe been that she hadn’t noticed Hannah’s twice-weekly disappearance? What did Hannah tell Blake about her regularly scheduled absence from their already convoluted life? How could he not know? Chloe had been busy squirreling away her own secrets from Hannah, and perhaps was grateful for a few days a week when she didn’t have to look away every time Hannah waxed about the University of Maine they would both be attending in the fall. But what was Blake’s excuse?
Tonight Chloe had nothing to say about Hannah’s dilemma. She remained stuck on the geezer’s age. He was thirteen years older than her father! Yet Hannah seemed unconcerned with this most startling detail: that she was sleeping with Cain and Abel’s uncle. Hannah sighed as if in a romance novel. “It’s extremely flattering to be loved like that,” she said. “So intensely. Oh Chloe! Do you know what it’s like to be loved so intensely?”
“Oh, sure.” Chloe stared into her hands as if they loved her intensely. “Quite a situation you’ve gotten yourself into, girlfriend,” she said.
“Don’t you think I know that?” For a moment, Hannah looked ready to cry. Yet Chloe knew that to be false, for Hannah didn’t cry. She only appeared to look to be ready to cry.
“I gotta go,” Chloe said, rising. “Hey, look on the bright side. My parents probably won’t let me go anyway.”
“How is that the bright side?” said Hannah. “We’ve been dreaming of Barcelona since we were eleven.”
4 (#ulink_2bc00385-1cdd-5668-b573-4e843332e76a)
Paleo Flood at Red River (#ulink_2bc00385-1cdd-5668-b573-4e843332e76a)
IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE AND HER FATHER’S BLACK DODGE Durango was parked in the open clearing by the time Chloe left Hannah’s and made her way through the brambles between the two properties.
It was a warm evening. Through the open window she could hear her mother’s soft voice and her father’s booming one. Chloe slowed down. Treading quietly over the pine needles that crunched under her feet, she inched up to the screened-in window in the living room.
“It’s out of the question.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why would she want to go there?”
“She says because she hasn’t been.”
“What kind of a reason is that?”
“She says because we went to Ireland without her.”
“If I hear one more word about Ireland!”
“Shh. I know.”
“I hope you were forceful, Mother. I hope you said no.”
“I was forceful. I said no.”
“But what?”
“But nothing.”
“No, I can see by your face it’s something. What?”
“She’s insisting.”
“So? We’re going to allow the child to make the decisions?”
“She said something about turning eighteen.”
“Oh, so she’s going to play that card!”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why does she really want to go?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy.”
“What’s in Barcelona?”
“Nothing. It’s not Fryeburg, not Brownfield, not Maine.”
“So why doesn’t she go to Canada? We’ll drive her to Montreal. It’s only a few hours away. In another country. We’ll leave her and Hannah there, then pick them up a few days later.”
“Yeah. Well. I haven’t told you the half of it.”
There was rustling, cooing, small giggles. “You haven’t heard my half of it, sweet potato. It’ll give you and me a chance to stay in a hotel. Like newlyweds.”
“Jimmy, don’t be bad.”
More rustling. Even some grunting.
“Jimmy, come on …”
Sweet God. Chloe couldn’t even eavesdrop on her parents’ conversation about her without it becoming a study in her own mortification.
“But seriously,” her father said. The cooing had stopped, thank God. “We can’t let her go.”
“I agree. How do we stop her?”
“We’ll just tell her she can’t go.”
“I look forward to our spicy pork chops tonight over which you tell her.”
“I’ve never liked that Hannah. Why couldn’t that no-good father of hers have gotten custody instead?”
“I think the answer is built into your very question.”
“That Terri is a piece of work. Doesn’t she know what’s going on with her own kids? I hear Jason is always in trouble up in Portland. By the way, the raccoons got to her garbage again.”
“I saw. I smelled.”
“Did you talk to her about cleaning it up? Or am I going to have to?”
“She told me this morning the animals have to eat, too.”
“I’m going to shoot them next time I hear them near her cans. They’re a rabid nuisance.”
“Jimmy, carry the potatoes. She better come home soon. Dinner is ready.”
“Should I go get her? Did you drive her?”
“No, I didn’t drive her to Hannah’s house. It’s forty yards away.”
There was silence. “I didn’t drive her, Jimmy. She’s fine. She’s next door.” Chloe heard the pot being placed on the table.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Talk some sense into her. She listens to you. You’re her father.”
“If she listened to me, she’d never ask for something so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid, Jimmy, it’s just kids being kids.”
“I never did nothing like that.”
“Okay. We did some stuff too.”
“Not like that.”
“Worse. We were young, too.”
“Hmm.”
“You remember Pembina? The paleo flood in the Red River in ’77? All right, Mr. Comedian. I know you remember. We were so bad. We didn’t need to go to Barcelona.”
“We never needed to go anywhere, sweet potato.”
“Get the drinks. I’ll go get her.”
Pembina was where Lang was from. Pembina, North Dakota, less than two miles south of the Canadian border. The Red River is slow and small. It doesn’t have the energy to cut a gorge. It meanders through the silty bottomlands. Yet every few years it floods catastrophically through the marsh at its delta. It causes immense destruction. In 1977, the river flooded, and the National Guard was called in to help the locals cope. Jimmy Devine, National Guard, met Lang Thia, whose father was a prominent local businessman who made hearing aids.
Her mother didn’t need a hearing aid. She came to the window near which Chloe was hiding and said into the screen, “Chloe, come to the table. Dinner is served.”
With a great sigh, Chloe peeled away from the wood shingles and walked, head hung, to the door.
5 (#ulink_a34f762d-ce1b-590c-becb-d5955198033d)
The Irish Inquisition (#ulink_a34f762d-ce1b-590c-becb-d5955198033d)
LANG TURNED ON THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SMALL RECTANGULAR table. They sat silently, their hands folded. They blessed their food. Jimmy said amen. Chloe asked him to pass the potatoes. Jimmy poured Lang a jasmine ice tea. Lang poured Jimmy a beer. They cut into their pork chops. The silence lasted two or three minutes. Jimmy had to get some strength before he began, though he looked pretty strong already. He was a big Irish guy, blond-haired once, now gray, blue-eyed, direct, no nonsense. He was funny, he was easy, but he also had a temper, and he never forgot anything, neither a favor nor a slight. It was almost his undoing, the merciless blade of his memory. Sometimes he had to dull it with whiskey. Sometimes he had to dull many things with whiskey. Tonight Lang eased him into Chloe’s summer plans by letting him eat for a few minutes in peace while she grilled Chloe on irrelevant matters.
“Did you do your homework?”
“I didn’t have any. It’s senior year, Mom. No one gives homework anymore.”
“Then what do they give you a fourth quarter grade for?”
“Showing up mostly.”
“So no tests, no quizzes, no overdue projects, no missing labs, no oral presentations, no incomplete class assignments?”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Enough nonsense,” said Jimmy, having fortified himself on meat. “What’s this your mother tells me about Barcelona?”
Her father looked straight at her, and Chloe had no choice but to stare back. “Did my mother tell you that she wants me to enter into a story contest? Ten thousand dollar prize.”
“She mentioned something about that, yes. I don’t see how the two are related.”
“I have nothing to write about.”
“Come to work with me for a day or two. You’ll get three books out of it.” Jimmy Devine was the Fryeburg chief of police, like his father and grandfather before him. Fryeburg, Maine. Pop. 3500. Settled in 1763 by General Joseph Frye and incorporated in 1777, exactly two hundred years before the bad luck of the paleo floods two thousand miles away, and now Chloe sat impaled on the stake of parental disapproval.
“Really,” she said, irritated. “Books on what, breaking up domestic arguments and littering?”
“Nice. So now even my work, not just your mother’s, is denigrated?”
Chloe regrouped. “I’m not denigrating, Dad. But our hearts are set on Spain. Hannah and I have been talking about it for years.”
“You told your mother you thought of going just today. So which is it? An impulse or a lifelong dream?”
Chloe didn’t reply. They were denigrating her!
“How in the world can Hannah afford Barcelona?” Jimmy asked. “Her mother is at the bank every other day asking for an overdraft increase. And your friend, who abandoned you to do Meals on Wheels by yourself on Saturdays because she claims she has a job, often skips out on the one lousy four-hour shift she has at China Chef. So where’s her half of the money going to come from?”
Chloe hated that her dad knew everything about everybody’s business. It was terrifying. She stopped eating and stared at her father, the last bite of pork chop lodged in her dry throat. Did he know why Hannah was skipping out on China Chef? Oh God, please, no. A demoralized Chloe couldn’t withstand even two minutes of modest interrogation.
“Why do you want to go so much? Tell your mother and me.”
Chloe said nothing. Her entrails in knots, she felt like a scoundrel.
“Is it because we went without you that time to Kilkenny?” Jimmy said. “You’re lucky you didn’t go. Funerals are not for kids.”
And just like that the three of them were swallowed up by silent oceans. Jimmy awkwardly picked up his fork only to drop it. Lang nursed her jasmine tea. Sickened by the ghastly turn of the already difficult conversation, Chloe tried to right the course.
“It’s not about that. It’s not about funerals,” Chloe said. “It’s not about anything. It’s just awesome Spain. Why do you think I’ve been taking Spanish these last six years? I’m the only senior still taking a language. That’s why. Dad, I’m not a child anymore.”
“If you’re such an adult,” said Jimmy, “then what are you talking to us for?”
“I need your help with the passport.”
“Oh, now she needs us,” Jimmy said. “Just a signature. No help, no advice. No money. You have everything now, big girl. You’ve got it all figured out.”
“I don’t, but … it’s just a few weeks in Europe, Dad. Lots of kids do it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe stumbled. “Lots of kids.” No one from her school.
“It’s the worst place, by the way, to have a vacation,” Lang cut in.
“Why is it the worst place? It’s the best place! Have you been there, Mom?”
“I don’t need to go to Calcutta to know I don’t want to go to Calcutta.”
“Calcutta? Can we calm down? It’s Barcelona! It’s on the sea. It’s nice. It’s fun. It’s full of young people.”
“Did I hear your mother correctly?” Jimmy asked. “The two junkyard wildings down the road want to go with you?”
Well, at least it was out there. The pit in her stomach couldn’t get any bigger. “Why wildings? It’s Blake and Mason. You like them.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth or feelings into my heart.”
“You do like them. Mr. Haul is still your friend. Despite everything.” Chloe took a breath. “You help him out with money, you lend him your truck, you barbecue with him. You exchange Christmas presents. Mom gives them tomatoes.”
“What does that prove? Your mother gives tomatoes to everyone, even the Harrisons who tried to kill Blake’s dog. And in my line of work, I’m forced to talk to a lot of unsavory characters.”
“Mr. Haul is not one of them. And Mom and Mrs. Haul are friends.”
“Don’t get carried away,” said Lang. “I drive to ShopRite with her. She is not the executor of my will. So don’t hyperbolize.”
After a pause, Chloe said, “Now who’s hyperbolizing?”
“I don’t know why anyone, especially my daughter, would want to go to Spain of all places,” Jimmy said, getting up from the table, as if done with the conversation he was himself continuing. “Do you think there’s any place more beautiful than coastal Maine? Than the White Mountains of New Hampshire?” He snorted as he scraped the remains of his dinner into the trash. “You have staggering beauty outside your own door.”
“That’s what I told her, Jimmy.”
“Would that I had a chance to compare,” said Chloe.
“I’m telling you how it is.”
“So I have to take your word for it? I want to see for myself, Dad!”
“Where did this crazy idea even come from? Lang, did you know about this?”
“Jimmy,” said Lang, “she doesn’t know anything about Barcelona. If she did, she wouldn’t want to go. Believe me.”
How did one not raise one’s voice when confronted by a mother such as Chloe’s mother? “Mom,” Chloe said slowly, which was her equivalent of a raised voice. The slower the speech, the more she wanted to shout. At the moment, she was positively hollering. “I know you think I might not know anything about Barcelona. But what in the world do you possibly know about Barcelona?”
“Chloe! Be respectful to your mother.”
“That wasn’t respectful?” If only her parents could hear how Hannah talked to her mother.
Lang raised her hand. She was still at the table, across from Chloe. “No, no. Chloe makes a valid point. Clearly she thinks Barcelona has virtues Maine doesn’t.”
“I think it because it’s true,” Chloe said. “It has stunning architecture. Art. History. Culture.”
“You think we don’t have architecture?” Jimmy bellowed.
“Houses are not the same as architecture, Dad!”
“Don’t shout! Since when do you care about architecture? It’s the first time in my life I’ve heard you use that word. Now you want to go halfway around the globe to learn more about house design?”
Chloe found it difficult to speak through a clenched mouth. “Art. Culture. History.”
“So go visit Boston,” Lang said, pushing away from the table. “There’s a big city for you. It has Art. Culture. History. It has architecture.”
“Maine has history too.” Jimmy tried not to sound defensive about his home state. “What about the Red Paint People?”
“Dad, okay, history is not why I want to go to Spain.”
“Why then?”
“I bet it’s to lie on the beach all day,” said Lang.
“And what’s wrong with the beach?”
“You can lie on a beach in Maine!” Jimmy yelled.
“Chloe! Look what you did. You’ve upset your father. Jimmy, shh.” Walking over, Lang put a quieting hand on her husband.
Taking hold of Lang’s hand, Jimmy continued. They both stood a few feet away from Chloe, near the sink, united in their flummoxed anxiety. Chloe continued to sit and stare into her cold, half-eaten chop. “What about York Beach?” he said. “We’ve got five hundred miles of spectacular sandy coastline. How many miles does Barcelona have?”
“Is it warm?” said Chloe. “Is it beachy? Is it Mediterranean?”
“Do you see?” Lang said. “She doesn’t even know where Barcelona is. It’s on the Balearic Sea, for your information.”
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She groaned. Clearly, in between grilling swine and sugar-dusting Linzer tarts, her mother had opened an encyclopedia and was now using some arcane knowledge to … Chloe didn’t know what.
“Mom,” Chloe said, so slowly it came out as mommmmmmmmm. A raw grunt left her throat. “The Balearic Sea is part of the Mediterranean. Look at the map. Don’t do this.”
Undeterred, her mother continued. “They didn’t even have any beaches fifteen years ago. They built them for the Olympic Games. That’s your history right there. Don’t pretend you’re all about the Barcelona sand. Maine has had beaches for five hundred years.”
Chloe blinked at her mother. Lang blinked back defiantly. “Mom, so what? What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with me going or not going?”
“Don’t raise your voice to us,” Jimmy said. “So if it’s not for the beach, why do you want to go? Do you want to prove something?”
“I don’t want to prove anything. To anybody,” Chloe said through closed teeth. “I. Just. Want. To. Go. That’s it. You want to know why Barcelona and not Rome or Athens or some other place? Okay, I’ll tell you. Because while you were gallivanting through the glens of Kilkenny and I stayed with Hannah and her mom, Blake bought me a magazine.”
“Oh, well, if Blake bought you a magazine …”
“A National Geographic,” Chloe continued through the sarcasm. “There was an article on Barcelona in it. It sounded nice. So Hannah and I said to each other we’d go when we graduated.”
“So you want to go to Barcelona to punish us, is that it?”
Chloe wanted to scream. “Why would I want to punish you?” she said. “Do you want to punish me? Is that why you’re doing this? It’s not about you. It’s not about anything. Hannah and I fell in love with it when we were kids. We thought it would be fun to go when we grew up. And here we are. All grown up. Her mother is letting her go. Her mother is treating her like an adult. And yet my mother and father are still treating me like I’m eleven years old!”
“Can you act like an adult,” Lang said, “and stop being so melodramatic?”
No one spoke for a moment. Then her father did.
“All I know about Barcelona,” he said, turning toward the sink, “is that in Spain, the drivers are considered the worst in the world.” His back was to his wife and daughter. He didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t face them as he spoke. “It’s a well-known, established fact. The worst drivers in the world.”
Putting her soothing hand on Jimmy, Lang glared at Chloe, as if to say, do you see what you’ve done?
Chloe opened her hands. “I won’t be driving, Daddy. I promise.” Her feeble voice oozed with pity and penitence. The fight had gone out of her.
“You’ll be walking, though, won’t you,” Jimmy said, “while others are driving, poorly.” He lowered his head.
“Not even, Jimmy,” said Lang, caressing her husband’s squared back. “Didn’t you hear her? She’ll be lying on a brand-new beach. Admiring the architecture.”
6 (#ulink_76d6e35c-a63f-5567-bdb8-09e8c0a9cb80)
Mottos (#ulink_76d6e35c-a63f-5567-bdb8-09e8c0a9cb80)
EVERYONE HAD A MOTTO. CHLOE’S MOTHER’S WAS: “CAST your bread upon the water.”
Her grandmother’s was, “How I envy the handicapped in their wheelchairs who can push themselves around. They don’t know how lucky they are.”
And Chloe’s? Once, to go miniature golfing, Courtney and Crystal arrived at Chloe’s green cabin wearing slinky hot pink dresses and clangy bangles. Lang took one squinted glimpse at the two and stage-whispered to Chloe, “Where are they going to, a parade at a bordello?”
That became Chloe’s motto: To avoid at all costs such an assessment by anyone’s mother, including her own, or by, God forbid, a boy.
Okay, no, that wasn’t Chloe’s motto. That was her wish. You know what Chloe’s motto was?
On the blank canvas of your life with bold colors paint.
Maybe not so much a motto as an unattainable goal.
Chloe just wanted to know who she was. Not who she wanted to be. But who she actually was.
Up in the loft attic open to the living room, she lay on her bed with the ballerina-pink fluffy down quilt and soft pillows, clutching a tattered 1998 National Geographic to her chest, the one with the precious Barcelona article in it. When Polly, the old wizened woman who owned the Shell gas station in Fryeburg, decided to go into the used book selling business, running it out of her garage, Blake, out with his dad one afternoon, picked up a worn copy of the magazine. He paid two dollars of his allowance to buy it for Chloe when she was eleven and he was twelve. Reading about Barcelona burst her heart into a flame.
She’d read the article so many times since then, she had it practically committed to memory. Redeeming touch of madness. Millionaires on motorbikes, witches caked in charcoal dust, pimps and uncrowned kings. Miro, Picasso, Dali, firebombed girls in whorehouses. Just think about that! Firebombed girls in whorehouses. Barcelona has been inventing herself for a thousand years. With her parents talking below her in their tiny bedroom next to the front door, a nearly defeated Chloe caressed the cover of the magazine, pressed to her breasts, kneaded it like a rosary, prayed to God, please, please, please, and strained to hear the snippets of their parenting. From up here, it was just rising and falling pitch, up down, questions, quiet replies, voices, tempers, tides. For some reason her father’s voice was muffled, unclear. Her mother’s alto rose through the rafters.
Jimmy yelling suddenly and Lang yelling back. The walk down that long dirt road from the school bus is responsible for Barcelona, she says, and Jimmy yells, are you crazy, Mother?
“Better she go with the boys, Jimmy. Blake keeps everybody safe. He’ll keep her safe.”
She can’t hear her father’s response. Only Lang’s voice is clearly heard.
“I don’t want her to go, either, husband.”
“You know she’s leaving, Jimmy. You know that, right? She’s leaving home in three months. For good.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her she can’t go.”
“Don’t be sick with worry, Jimmy. She’ll be fine. Disaster won’t fall on us twice.”
Now Chloe hears her father’s voice. “Not on us,” he says. “On her.”
Chloe crept on her hands and knees to the railing, as if crawling on all fours would make the attic floor less creaky. Her Barcelona magazine on the planks in front of her, she pressed her face between the slats. They didn’t want her to go. She expected nothing less. Her parents weren’t Terri Gramm. They were never going to say, oh, sure, honey, Barcelona with the Spanish boys and your two horny boyfriends and topless beaches and incorrigible Hannah. And you, our only child, who’s never been anywhere without us, not a problem, you go, girl.
Chloe wanted so desperately to graduate, to be self-reliant, to sign her own applications, to take herself out of state, to travel on her own, to be grown up, that it was a physical ache throughout her whole body. A throbbing. What do I have to do, her body cried, to be taken seriously, to be thought of as a fledged human being, not just a fledgling? What do I have to do? It is so painful to live like this, thwarted, dependent.
Her ear was wedged between the slats, listening for a possible seachange.
What else could Chloe say to persuade them? Mom! she wanted to cry. I want to be the girl who later in life when she was old could say, yes, when I was young I traveled by myself on a train through Spain. I don’t want to be the girl who will tell her kid, no, I’ve never been anywhere, except North Dakota where I was born, and Maine where I married your father, and Kilkenny one time when somebody died, somebody who with his wanton recklessness ended up wrecking my careful life.
But Chloe couldn’t say that, just as she couldn’t say that maybe in Barcelona she would have sex with her boyfriend. Or that she might sunbathe topless on the man-made beach, built just in time for her Olympian topless body.
As she sat with her ear to the empty air below, she cupped her hands under her breasts and bounced them up and down. She wanted to sunbathe topless in front of Hannah, so that in this one way, she could come out slightly ahead, because Hannah bested her in everything else. Hannah was always playing a game of one-upmanship. Why couldn’t Chloe play just this once? Hannah was passive-aggressive, a constant downer, not a smiler, an inveterate shopper who made Chloe spend more of her allowance than she ever wanted to, to try to keep up with blouses, skirts, dresses, the latest boots and gloves. The size 2 girl who was always dieting, who told everyone she was fat, the long-limbed girl, aristocratically mouthed, and small-pointy-breasted. What other city could offer Chloe this particular intangible? Bathing topless on the beach in front of their two boyfriends and a city full of strangers, so she could win. How small. How stupid. And yet how completely essential. Could she do that in York, Maine? How could Chloe’s noblest desires fly side by side with her soaring pettiness?
Hannah, who was loved through and through by Blake, and still, it wasn’t enough.
Chloe fell asleep on the floor, her head pressed into the railing. She was woken up at one in the morning by her mother, who helped her into bed.
Please, Mom, she whispered half-asleep, reaching out to touch her mother’s face, or maybe she only thought she whispered. You wanted to be a dancer once. Let me do this one thing for me, but also for you. Let me live what you never lived, far away in whirling dancing noise and nights of magic flowers until the world blows up.
7 (#ulink_625bc2c8-6c4d-5f29-a388-0d56a54bea64)
Olivia the Dancing Pig (#ulink_625bc2c8-6c4d-5f29-a388-0d56a54bea64)
CHLOE DIDN’T KNOW HOW BLAKE HAD MANAGED IT, BUT BY the time her mother dropped her off in front of the Academy bus circle the next morning, every single person she met on the way to homeroom knew about their impending Catalonian Bacchanalian sexcapade. That must have been how Blake painted it, judging from the arched eyebrows and the innuendo smiles.
“Who do you think you are, Isabel Archer?” was what her mother had asked her as she pulled into the parking lot.
Chloe looked at her blankly. Lang stared back. She folded her plump arms. “You have no idea who Isabel Archer is, do you? What do they even teach you? Finest prep school in the United States indeed. Go learn something before you graduate.”
Her friends Taylor, Courtney, Regan, Matthew, his sister Miranda, and four girls on the cheer squad—who for some reason were hypnotized into believing Chloe did not despise them—all cornered her between her locker and the door of the physics lab.
“When are you going?”
“Did you already buy your plane tickets?”
“Can I see your passport?”
“Can you bring it to school tomorrow?”
“What’s the weather like in Barcelona?”
“Do you think your Spanish is good enough?”
“Does anyone speak English over there? Because frankly, Chloe, your Spanish isn’t that good.”
“And Mason doesn’t speak Spanish at all,” bubbled up Mackenzie O’Shea. There wasn’t a girl in six counties Chloe hated more than Mackenzie with her twisty body and twisty pigtails and mouth full of Bubblicious gum. One time in Science she popped the huge bubble wad in her mouth, and the gum burst from her cheeks to her chin and she got gum in her hair. In front of everyone. That was an excellent day.
“Where are you going to stay?”
“I can’t believe your dad is letting you go. My dad would never, and he’s not even the chief of police.” That was Mackenzie.
“Are you allowed to drink over there?”
“Really, you shouldn’t drink. You’re not used to it. You’ll vomit. Like that other time.” Still Mackenzie.
“Don’t they drive on the wrong side of the road?”
“I thought the capital of Spain was Madrid. Are you sure it’s not Madrid you’re going to? Because I don’t think Madrid is on the beach. Blake tells us you’re going to an Olympic beach. He’s wrong, isn’t he?”
“My aunt’s second cousin went to Madrid. She said it was dusty.”
“It wasn’t Madrid, genius. It was Mexico City.”
“Same difference. Very dusty. And crowded.”
“Is there skiing there?”
“Do they take American dollars?”
“How would you even change dollars into pesos? Or are they on the euro now?”
“What’s a euro?”
“Blake and Mason are not going to like it. They get very sunburned. Mason especially.” Still fucking Mackenzie.
Not a word was required of Chloe, or even desired.
“You must be thrilled,” Taylor said as they took their seats in Physics. “To travel through Europe with Mason. It’s a dream.”
Chloe heard Mackenzie’s high-strung voice from behind her. “Mason is not a city guy. He’s a ballplayer. A skier. He’s not gonna like it.”
“Don’t be a fool, Mackenzie,” said Taylor, sparing Chloe a crackling response. “You think varsity players don’t like traveling?”
“Not Mason. He doesn’t like empanadas or that weird Spanish food they have over there. Tapas or some shit. He likes burgers. Steak.”
“I swear, I’m going to deck her,” Taylor whispered.
“Get in line,” Chloe whispered back, and after class implored Mason to control his brother who couldn’t keep his big mouth shut about anything.
“Like I can control him,” Mason said, kissing her and running off.
“Are you so psyched?” was the first thing Blake said to her as they took their seats in Health.
“About what?”
“Barcelona, dumblehead.”
“Do I seem excited to you? Did you tell your parents?”
“Of course. They couldn’t be happier. They can’t believe you girls were thinking of going on your own. Dad said Chief Devine would never allow it.”
Chloe mumbled unintelligibly.
“Mom said she wants us to protect you from the big bad Europeans.” Blake laughed.
“Why’d you have to go tell everybody?” Chloe was churlish. “You and your big mouth. What if my parents say no?”
“Haiku, you funny.” Blake patted her arm as he flipped open his spiral notebook. “You didn’t think your mother would just buy you a plane ticket to Spain, did you? The woman didn’t let you take the school bus until your senior year and even now still drives you in the morning. She was hardly going to run to Liberty Travel in North Conway. They need to think it over.”
“Yes. And then say no.”
“They loves you. Why would they say no to the one they loves?”
Blake knew nothing. Lang was gearing up to say no. She was making heavenly lemon pound cake when Chloe got home from school, a consolation dessert if ever there was one.
“For your information, Mom,” Chloe said, having fortified herself with a shallow knowledge of Henry James’s monumental novel and worked on her riposte all day, “Isabel Archer came into a fortune. That will hardly be me. Are you afraid some broke European is going to sweep me off my feet because he is angling for my five hundred bucks?”
“Is that your fantasy?” Lang asked. “To be desired by dangerous men for your meager dollars?”
“Of course not!” She was with Mason, the cutest boy in the Academy halls.
“Then why did you say it so wistfully?”
“I’m not Isabel Archer, Mom. You know who I am? Olivia, the dancing pig. She has a painting of Degas’s ballerinas on her wall, but she’s never going to be either Degas or a ballerina, is she?”
“So now you’re a pig dreaming of being a ballerina?” Lang slid a plate of pound cake in front of her daughter. “What are you doing, Chloe? Are you placing all your hopes on what may lie just around the next bend in the river? You think you can drift on the train from Spain to France not knowing where your next stop will be in the fervent hope that you’ll come closer to an answer to that most profound of human questions?”
“And what question is that, Mom.”
“Who you are, of course.”
Was there ever a mother more infuriatingly on point than her mother!
Hannah was out. Mason was at varsity. Blake was helping Mr. Leary with his concrete-buster block saw. So Chloe scribbled down some notes for a Social Studies oral essay on women’s rights as interpreted by Pearl Buck and watered the garden.
To her surprise, her father came home early.
“Chloe-bear,” Jimmy said. “Your mother and I are not going to talk to you about Barcelona anymore. You know how we feel. We know how you feel. Until we have something to speak to you about, we are going to call truce and talk about other things. Deal?”
“You should’ve told that to Mom,” Chloe said. “Because she’s been going on about Henry James and Huck Finn all afternoon.”
“She told me. That’s why I’m saying this now. Excuse me.” Jimmy moved Chloe out of the way. “Your mother and I are going for a walk.”
“You’re what? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” her father said. “Because we need privacy to talk about you, and at home you’re always eavesdropping.”
No words more frightening could have been spoken mildly by a gruffly amiable man, who placed his badge and his service weapon on the hall table and donned his spring parka. Lang put on her suede shoes and a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap she had bought at a garage sale even though she’d never heard of the Pirates and thought they were a football team. Off they went, arm in arm, her mother stout, her father expansive, into the hills around the lake.
They were gone an hour.
At dinner they talked of television shows, movies, her graduation party, college. Should she ship her heavier items like a television ahead of time, or should they buy a TV on the other side? And what about a car. She’d definitely need one. How did she feel about a used VW Beetle? Perhaps red? Not a word about Spain was spoken.
The next afternoon, the pattern was the same. Lang made oatmeal raisin cookies, Jimmy came home early, and they vanished through the birches. The third day Chloe began to doubt everything. How important was Barcelona anyway? Why did she have to be so obstinate?
Where could she go that might be more acceptable to her parents? She had read about Innsbruck, the heart of the Alps, white with fresh snow. Picturesque gardens, musical chambers, Roman marvels, Bavarian creams. Her clothes, down coat and all, always on, even in bed.
Ugh.
She spent her entire life living in snowed-in valleys surrounded by mountains. She skied, snowboarded, sledded. She skated right on her lake. She played wild, nearly violent games of ice hockey with her friends. Every four years she and Mason pretended they were Olympic skaters, spinning and salchowing over the thick ice. But Chloe and Blake were actually speed skaters and every winter when they weren’t ice fishing, they spent from sunup to sundown in racing abandon. Chloe owned more parkas than jean jackets. She knew what to do for frostbite. She had read Jack London’s terrifying “To Build a Fire.” More than once.
Why would she go anywhere else but Barcelona? Why would she ever want to?
8 (#ulink_7144b674-52f0-5bf4-9ae3-1b4d4e4cb6d9)
Empty Wells and Vernal Pools (#ulink_7144b674-52f0-5bf4-9ae3-1b4d4e4cb6d9)
CHLOE ASKED TO BORROW HER MOTHER’S CAR TO DRIVE Hannah to Bangor. She made up some story about dorms and housing applications.
Lang only half-listened. “Are you ever going to tell her?” she asked.
Hannah was headed to Bangor to break up with the grandpa who loved her. He might not make it out of the afternoon alive. Did she really need Chloe adding to her woes? “Of course. But not right now.”
“You’ve been saying that since April. Tell her on the way.”
“I will. Soon.”
“Now’s the perfect time. Um, Hannah, guess what? Our trip to Bangor reminds me of something. That sort of thing. You know she’ll find out eventually.”
“Of course she’ll find out eventually, Mom.” Duh.
“Perhaps when she moves into a UMaine dorm and instead of you her roommate is a tall black chick?”
“Yes, like then. And don’t say chick, Mom. Ew.” If Chloe ground her teeth any more, she’d have no teeth left. Why couldn’t her mother be like Hannah’s mother? Terri never asked questions, never hounded, never scolded. Chloe wasn’t one hundred percent sure Terri knew where her daughter was accepted to college. She was just so chill and lax about things.
“Why won’t you tell her, child? What are you afraid of?”
Why did everybody keep asking her this! What wasn’t she afraid of. That Hannah would not forgive her. That she couldn’t explain it. When she tried to explain it to herself, she could not, so how was she going to explain it to her best friend, and to Mason?
“Have you told Mason at least?”
Chloe didn’t reply.
“Oh dear Lord. Chloe!”
“Mom! Can you please not stress me out? Am I not wound up enough? I tell you what, sign my passport application, and I’ll tell everybody everything in Barcelona.”
“Chloe, you haven’t told your boyfriend you’re leaving for San Diego?”
“Mom, he’ll find out soon enough! He’s got his last varsity game coming up. He’s been in training for three weeks. I didn’t want to bother him. And I only just decided.”
“A month ago.”
“A few weeks ago.” She stuck out her hand, trying not to shake from exasperation. “Please can I have the keys?”
“I’m telling you right now, I’m not doing it,” Lang said, opening her purse. “You’re not hopping on a plane to California and leaving me to mop up your mess.”
“Let me go to Barcelona and I’ll tell them myself.”
“Don’t threaten me, young lady, I won’t stand for it.”
“The keys. Mom. Please.”
In the car, while Hannah was angsting away about Martyn, Chloe wasn’t listening, her focus elsewhere. Had there been silence in the car, she might have attempted a confession. A pretend casual tone. No big deal, Hannah. I know you’re thinking we’re going to UMaine, but did I mention this other place I applied to, three thousand miles away from Bangor, our whole wide country away? A Spanish city with beaches, warmth, no mountains, no snow. Like Barcelona, but in the States.
“Have you applied for your passport yet?”
Chloe snapped out of it. “How can I apply? They haven’t said I can go.”
“Tell them in a firm and convincing manner that you’re going and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, right, okay. Do you know what my mother has been doing?” Chloe said. “Buying me books. Frommer’s Guide to Spain’s Coastal Cities. Fun Facts about Barcelona. To Barcelona with Love. DK Guide to Spain’s Most Beautiful Churches.’”
“That’s nice. She’s being helpful.”
“You mean impossible. She says to me, see, honey, you don’t have to go anywhere, you can just read books about it.”
“True, your mother is always advising me to read more,” Hannah said. “She says you can live other lives through books, experience travel, love, sorrow.”
“She’s buying me books so I can see Barcelona from the comfort of my recliner while she makes me éclairs and rum babas.”
“Yeah,” said Hannah. “You have it so tough.”
Chloe drove. She didn’t want to say how much she envied Hannah her parents’ spectacular non-participation. Divorce did that—shifted priorities.
“They make unreasonable demands on me,” Chloe said.
Hannah turned down Nirvana. “I wish somebody would make a demand on me.”
Grandpa is making demands on you, Chloe wanted to say. How’s that going? “I thought you liked that they never asked you for things,” she said instead.
“Turns out, I want to be asked for something.”
“Like what?”
“Anything,” Hannah said. “Just to be asked.” She turned to Chloe. “Why are you so tense? Look at the way your hands are clutching the wheel.”
Chloe tried to relax, really she did.
“I’m the one who should be tense,” said Hannah. “You have no idea how upset he’s going to get.”
Chloe thought long and hard about her next question. “He’s generally in good health, right?” she asked. Like his heart?
“Oh, yes,” Hannah said. “Believe me, there’s nothing wrong with him.”
“Ew, gross. Not what I meant. But okay.”
“What’d you mean?”
“Nothing.”
Hannah was looking too pretty for someone who was about to break up with a nonagenarian. Almost seemed mean. The poor fellow was going to be feeling like shit anyway, why rub it in his face, the youth, the slim feminine attractiveness, the long legs? Hannah even wore a skirt, as if headed to church. Linen skirt as short as the month of February. Navy blue sparkly ballet flats. A cream top. Face deceptively “unmade-up,” yet fully made-up. Eyes moist.
Chloe couldn’t pay too much attention to Hannah’s appealing exterior while driving down a zigzaggy two lane country road, but from a surreptitious corner of her eye, Hannah was looking delectable, not forlorn.
“Hannah, why are you looking so pretty if you’re ending it with him?”
She beamed. “He likes to look at me, that’s all.”
“But you want him to like to look at you less, don’t you?”
Hannah didn’t reply, busy eating her fingers, twisting her knuckles.
To everything there is a season. That was another one of her mother’s mottos. This was emphatically not the season for college confessions. This was a time for lovers. Chloe cleared her throat.
“Can I ask you about Blake?”
“What about him?”
“Don’t you like him?”
“I love him, what are you talking about?”
“Well, then, why …”
Hannah waved at her. “You won’t understand, Chloe. You and Mason are so perfectly aligned.”
“You think so?” Chloe wouldn’t have minded talking about it.
“But it’s different with me and Blake. He’s so sweet, but …” Hannah paused, chewed her nails, stared out at the pines passing by. “Besides the physical, we have little in common. Don’t get me wrong. The physical gets you pretty far. With Blake, believe me, almost the whole way. If it was the only important thing, we’d be in great shape. But aside from that, what do we have? All the things I like, he couldn’t care less about, and all the things he likes I don’t get at all.”
“Blake’s so into you. He likes everything you’re into.”
“What do I care about junk hauling, or building things, or helping old people, or fixing band saws? Or fishing? And what does he care about Paris and museums, and classic literature, and pretty clothes?”
“There are other things …”
“Yes, we’ve done them.” Hannah sighed dramatically. “Do you think that boy will ever live away from his dad? He still helps him into the boat, for God’s sake. He wants to start a junk business. I mean, what am I going to do with someone like that?”
“He also wants to write a book,” said Chloe.
Hannah waved in dismissal. “He and a million others. Me, I want to travel the world. I want to learn three languages. I want to live in a big city. You and I both do. It can’t end with Blake any other way but this way.”
“But that’s the thing,” Chloe said, her gaze on the road. “It’s not ending. If you ended it with him, that’d be one thing. But you’re not.”
Hannah turned to Chloe, frowning disdain on her displeased face. “How do I do that? And then what? What do I do with us?” She made a large air circle, embodying by the broad sweep not just herself and Blake, but Chloe and Mason too. “We are all four of us together every day. We have one life. If I break up with him, what happens to the four of us? Do you even think before you speak? I mean, could you break up with Mason?”
“I don’t want to.”
“But if you did?”
They didn’t talk for a while. The road was narrow, the pines tall, the ride long, what was there to say? Except what a hypocrite Chloe was, what a deceiver. She decided she would tell Hannah about San Diego on the way home, her heart falling through her abdomen at the thought of it.
Chloe underestimated the open and public heartbreak a man near retirement age could display on the walkways of Orono, near the river on the University of Maine campus, when his eighteen-year-old lover told him it had to end.
Chloe stayed as far back as possible. She couldn’t believe Hannah would do this on the avenue where students and faculty strolled on a warm May evening. But his reaction was so extreme that perhaps this was why Hannah had chosen the public square for his flogging; she had hoped he would keep it together. At first they walked arm in arm, overlooking the flowing waters, the mountains beyond. He smiled at her, squeezed her arm. They made quite a picturesque couple against the backdrop of the snow-capped Appalachians.
Hannah spoke. He stopped walking. He took his arm away. She gestured, in her small elegant way, and he stood, a pillar of incomprehension. Then he started to weep. Hannah stroked him, embraced him, talked and talked, a filibuster of consolation. Nothing helped the gray man become less stooped.
Chloe had to stop peeking at his despair. It was as if she had caught him in the shower, or them in a different sort of clinch. She became embarrassed, for herself, for him, for the passersby who slowed down, concerned at his distraught exhortations. He grabbed his chest, as if in the middle of heart failure.
After an hour he was still crying! And Hannah was still rubbing him, talking to him, gesturing far and wide.
Chloe understood nothing of this kind of emotion. Nothing. It seemed to her that logic must prevail in a grown man’s head when he spied himself standing in the middle of the college where he had tenure, bawling because his teenage lover had decided to move on. Not even move on, for Blake was the here and now, just … move sideways. Move back. Move away. How could the enormous common sense of that decision finally—finally!—not triumph over him?
Chloe had been keeping an eye on the time—the thing she usually had least of, next to money—but after ninety minutes her eyes left the watch permanently to pitch silent poison darts in Hannah’s direction, hoping her friend would sense Chloe’s own despair at the tedium of spying on a stranger’s excessive distress. Come on, wrap the whole thing up, put it in a doggy bag, take it home. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Chloe kept silently shouting. LET’S GO!
There was pacing, but there was no departing.
A hundred and ten minutes. A movie now. First a tragedy, then a comedy, then a farce, now Shoah.
Wait. Something new was happening. The stooped old man nodded. He let Hannah hug him, pat him.
Unfounded optimism. There he was, crying again. He could barely stand on his grieving geriatric legs. Carefully Hannah helped him over to a bench, and sat down next to her soon-to-be-erstwhile lover, continuing to cajole and comfort him.
The girls had a three-hour ride back home.
“Did you see him?” Hannah asked.
Oh, I saw him all right. Saw him, heard him, memorized him. I could play him by heart on the piano, that’s how well I’ve studied him.
“Yes,” said Chloe.
How could she tell Hannah about college?
She couldn’t. And didn’t.
She wanted to ask if Hannah loved Blake half as much. Would she shed a quarter of Martyn’s tears when it came time to say goodbye to Blake? Would she miss him an eighth as deeply? What was it called when it wasn’t pain, but a fraction of pain? Grimly Chloe closed her hands on the wheel.
“What happens next, Chloe?”
“I don’t know, Hannah. What happens next?”
It was going to get dark soon. Her mother would be worried. Nothing to do but drive on. “Remember Darlene Duranceau?”
“Who could ever forget her? Why would you bring her up, of all people?”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m trying to make a point about what happens next.”
Blake and Mason had dismantled the woman’s overflowing garbage heap of house in Denmark, Maine, after she died. She had been a hoarder, hoarding even herself in the end. She kept eating and sitting, eating and sitting, and soon she got so big that she couldn’t move off her couch, and she just kept eating and eating and eating, using the couch not just as a bed and a dining table, but also as a toilet, and, eventually, as a grave.
It was winter when she died, and everyone had been snowed in for days. The local market couldn’t deliver Darlene’s groceries. When the roads were finally plowed, Barry the delivery boy brought Darlene her customary two boxes of Pringles and pretzels. Barry found her. Barry did not recover from this. He had been a shy clumsy kid in Chloe’s homeroom, but now he was on major meds, in therapy six days a week and home-schooled by Social Services.
The townies talked about nothing else. What was Darlene’s life like before she and the couch became one? What drama in her life had led her to the upholstered end? Was the end a consequence, an answer to a why? Or was it a catalyst? If everything you did led to everything else that would eventually happen, the question was: was Darlene Duranceau the beginning or the end?
After the coroner pronounced her dead, and it was time to remove her from the premises, the EMT workers discovered that she was stuck. From lack of movement, she had developed sores that festered, causing open wounds that oozed into the sofa, which then closed up around Darlene’s flesh like lichen to a rock. She had liquefied and then mummified into her furniture. The town cremated her with the couch. No one but the boys out in the schoolyard ever discussed how the funeral home fit Darlene and her Davenport into the relatively narrow opening of the cremation pyre.
How could Chloe add to Hannah’s chaos by confessing about California?
She wants to tell her, but she can’t.
She can’t.
And she doesn’t want to.
Hannah will feel betrayed.
What kind of a terrible friend would Chloe be to betray her friend and then tell her about it?
So she doesn’t tell her.
She thinks she justifies it beautifully.
Only a guilty mouthful of what feels like open safety pins alerts Chloe to the falseness of her excuses.
“I know the answer,” Hannah said. “You know what happened next for Darlene? Nothing.”
“Yes. That was the end of Darlene’s story. But yours is just beginning, Hannah. That’s what I’m trying to say. Take heart.”
“Did you see how upset Martyn was?”
“I saw.”
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“It’ll be something. Martyn is not Darlene.”
“But what if what happens next is you and your sacred striped sofa become one?” said Hannah. “What if when God said flesh of my flesh, he meant flesh of my sofa? The Chesterfield of my flesh? What if Martyn is a Darlene?”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
There was silence for a while. It was black out. There were no lights on the road except for the car’s headlights.
“Blake is the sweetest lover,” Hannah said in a small sad voice. “You don’t expect that from someone like him, because he’s so rough and tumble, but he is super gentle and super considerate. He’s always caressing me, kissing my back. He’s always trying to make me happy.”
“You’re lucky,” Chloe said, settling into the wheel, stepping on the gas pedal. She didn’t think Blake was so rough. For months, when his dad couldn’t walk, on account of nearly dying, oh and having a back broken in three places, Blake carried his father to the reclining chair by the sandy shore and set him down into it so Burt could watch the lake and the sky and Blake and Chloe fishing in the boat and skating on the ice. His dad liked to watch the kids having fun, Blake said.
9 (#ulink_67934995-a551-57f0-af46-ee45be3d6297)
Red Vineyard (#ulink_67934995-a551-57f0-af46-ee45be3d6297)
“TEACH ME, HAIKU. TELL ME HOW TO BEGIN. TUTOR ME IN beginnings.”
Blake plopped down across from her in the nearly empty learning center, scruffy, smiling, slapping his notebooks onto the heavy wooden table between them. His pens rolled toward the window. Chloe watched them, and he watched her watching them. Without breaking eye contact with her, he stopped them from falling to the floor and then he spoke. “What’s been the matter with you today?” When she didn’t reply, he went on. “Is it because of Barcelona? Don’t worry. They’ll say yes. They’ve been talking to my mom. Asking her if she thinks we’re trustworthy.” Blake laughed. “I told her, lie, Ma, say yes!”
She smiled half-heartedly but couldn’t look at him. She pretended she was super distracted by Very Important Thoughts. About pi and Ovid and Pearl Buck. The tutoring center at the Academy was a large first-floor classroom with twenty-foot windows and long wooden tables behind which girls like herself sat and waited for students who needed help in math, hard sciences, English, you name it.
Although final exams were getting close, the place was nearly empty. She’d had just one student all afternoon, an apathetic freshman from Delaware named Kerwin, whom she schooled in irrational numbers like pi. “You can’t have an infinite string of zeroes in a pi exponent,” Chloe told Kerwin, “because then the fraction would end. And what do we know about pi? It’s transcendental. It cannot end.” Her mother had once taught her about pi. Something about divinity and infinity. The soul is divine, her mother had told an anguished Chloe. Don’t worry. The soul has no end. Like pi. An infinite thing cannot end.
Kerwin wasn’t getting it. And Chloe wasn’t at her best. Her mind kept wandering. To distant beaches, imposing cathedrals, white stucco resorts in the hills, Hannah walking arm in arm with Blake through the halls, cozy as all that, as if Martyn had not happened, as if the last eight months of tawdry Tuesdays and Saturdays at the Silver Pines had not happened, Hannah making out with Blake between Health and Gym, discussing the prom with him between English and Science, fretting about her mango dress matching his peach cummerbund at the prom, and all the while Blake going on and on about Barcelona, and all the while sadness seeping on and on into Chloe’s heart. How could Hannah pull off such nonchalance? Chloe couldn’t tell why this bothered her as it did. Usually she tried not to ask herself too many why questions.
Now, pretending she hadn’t heard Blake ask about beginnings, Chloe turned to the window, to continue to daydream about Iberian dragons rampaging through the streets. Across the field she could almost make out Mason’s breathless shape on the baseball diamond. He was just a panting dot in golden dirt. It was the only time she saw him panting, perspiring, on fire. When he was out in the field.
“Yoo-hoo, Haiku …”
She blinked and dragging herself back to reality turned to a quizzical, smiling Blake. He was clad as usual in plaid and flannel and cotton and denim, his stubble four days old, his wild hair three days unbrushed and two months streaked by the spring sun. “I just need to know what’s in my suitcase,” he said.
“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are,” Chloe told Blake, quoting Ovid. “So first figure that part out.”
He looked wholly unimpressed. “You’re putting the cart before the horse.”
“No …”
“You are. Believe me. First I write. Then I figure out what it all means. Which, by the way, is the opposite of the insane horse crowd. They put portents on paper first and then use a mallet to beat it into a story.”
“You have it all figured out, don’t you? What do you need me for?” She sounded just like her father.
He leaned forward as if confiding. “I don’t have anything figured out. What would you put inside it? How would you start it? Look what I have.” He pulled out a three-subject spiral notebook to show her. He had divided his notes into sections: story, characters and the last one for thoughts, notes, lists, tidbits.
“I write and write,” he said, “but I still don’t know the most important thing.”
Ain’t that the truth, thought Chloe. She studied the grain in the table. He was too carefree and earnest to be saddled with her pity. “You do kinda have to know what’s in the suitcase if you’re writing a mystery.”
“Who said it’s a mystery?” He shook his head. “No. See, it’s the best thing of all. It’s an unexpected thing. You think you’re reading one kind of story, and then—POP, it’s another.”
“Like not a mystery?”
“You think it’s a mystery, but it’s really a Western.” He laughed. “Or you’re ready for a mother–daughter drama, but it’s really a two-man play about the meaning of trees. A thriller becomes a musical, a coming of age story is now the return of the native, science fiction turns out to be a war story.”
“Wait,” Chloe said, “a musical? How can a story on paper have music in it?”
He grinned as if he were about to doff his black hat. “That’s the trick, isn’t it?”
They were leaning forward over the table. The only other people in the room were three other tutors and a proctor. Outside it was deep spring, warm colors, tulips and grass, outdoor sports and new running shoes, the courtyard full of girls in light summer frocks, the kind she never wore, blowing up in the wind. She could see the three cream-brick dormitories, Payson-Mulford, Webster, and Hastings, arranged in a semi-circle of unchaperoned fun. Every Friday night before curfew, drunken madness. Next to Hastings a fence, a back gate, and a cemetery. Before the fence a tent. And under the tent, a barbecue grill and three picnic tables.
There once was a story with music in it at one of those tables.
Blushing at a hot lick of a nearly forgotten memory, Chloe quickly cantered away from the aching nostalgia of the picnic bench near Hastings, thinking we’ll never be that drunk again, her tongue-tied gaze colliding with Blake’s amused and amiable stare.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She stared at his large, scuffed hands, folded together in calm Zen across the table.
“Tell me why we must go to Europe,” he said.
“To find the blue suitcase, I suppose.”
“Why Barcelona?”
“The question is not why Barcelona,” she replied, gazing out the window. A thousand open questions, invisible to the naked eye, apparent to every living soul. “The question is why anywhere else?”
“Exactly. Who else would know this but you?”
She was trying to answer her own riddles in the unfinished English essay, a treatise on feminism and freedom in Pearl Buck. “You would write about Pearl Buck,” said her English teacher, whose insinuations Chloe didn’t appreciate, but it was too late to change her topic. You would get all As, Chloe. You would have an extra eraser, your neat notes from last year, the report handed in three weeks before deadline, and a yes from all the schools you applied to. Universities of Pennsylvania and Maine. John Kennedy Jr.’s alma mater, and Einstein’s. Every Boston school worth going to, Duke too, and San Diego, that misty Spanish renaissance on Mission Bay. You would. Chloe hated those two words.
It fed too cleanly into the digested and mealy narrative about her, the stereotype she despised and had tried all her life to change. She didn’t want to not do well. She just didn’t want to be known as the girl with the Chinese mother who did well.
You would.
My mother is fifth-generation American, Chloe would answer to every suggestion of the supposed intellectual blessings of her ethnicity. She is more American than I am, since my father’s father was born in Ireland and his mother somewhere in the Baltics. My mother, on the other hand, makes peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. She frequently forgets to buy soy sauce. Does that sound Chinese to you? And yet how else to explain her own relentless quest for excellence? Every revolutionary date, every candidate for president, every battle in the Civil War, every Law and Act, every polynomial and integral domain, every tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow all the way to dusty death had to be not just memorized but internalized?
Pearl Buck wrote about the Chinese woman from a hundred years ago, but she could’ve been writing about Chloe’s mother and father. Jimmy Devine wanted a docile lamb who would be happy to contain herself within his four walls. Pearl Buck said that a woman full of energy and intelligence could not be contained within any man’s walls, but then Pearl Buck, the obedient daughter of a Christian missionary in China, had never met Lang Devine. She can’t be held there, Pearl Buck wrote, even if the walls were lined with satin and studded with diamonds. Chloe disagreed. Her mother’s wood cabin walls weren’t lined or studded with anything but photos of Chloe.
Pearl Buck seemed to think that Lang would soon discover she was living within prison walls. Chloe begged to differ.
Even children were not enough for some women. She may want them, Pearl Buck wrote, need them, and even have them, and love them, and enjoy them. But they wouldn’t be enough for her. “Nobody likes children, Chloe,” her mother would often say. “But we have them anyway.” Chloe was almost sure Lang was joking. Because for some women, children were everything.
Some women didn’t know anything about politics. It took all their effort to be wives and mothers. Well, Ms. Buck opined, that may be sufficient for some women, but their husbands certainly found the time to occupy themselves, not only in their chosen fields and with being husbands and fathers, but also apparently, with other women as well. Just ask Terri Gramm next door who worked sixty hours at L.L.Bean to pay the mortgage while her husband honeymooned in Maui with the assistant baker from Dunkin’ Donuts.
Chloe swore she would grow up to be a different kind of woman, not Terri, not Lang, not the donut-maker-helper.
But what kind of woman?
She had no idea. Chloe had the answer to everything, except the important things.
“Don’t worry about what’s in the suitcase for a moment,” she said to Blake in a voice thick with longing. “And the answer to the why will come. Just start at the beginning. Start with something true and real. Begin with your two main characters, the junk dealers.”
“If you’re going to make fun,” Blake said, “I’m going to give them another livelihood.”
“I’m not making fun. Tell me about them.”
Eagerly Blake opened the notebook to the second section. Character. Pages were filled in pencil in a slow and careful hand, too slow, too careful for Blake. Her delighted skepticism must have been apparent on her face. Without affront, he said, “Did you know, Miss Smartass, that Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime?”
She marveled into his grinning face, tedium forgotten, even Barcelona and parents and Hannah’s other lover forgotten for a moment. “The surprise here,” she said, “is that you would know anything about Van Gogh.”
“Come on, Haiku, you know I’m a font of useless information.”
She broke a pencil. “Are you implying that you will also sell only one thing in your lifetime, say your purported story? Or could you possibly be equating yourself with Van Gogh’s talent?”
“Neither.” Blake was unperturbed by her teasing. “Red Vineyard was not even his best painting.”
“It was pretty good, let’s say that, but again, how is that relevant”—she wagged her finger in a small pi-circle at him and his notebook— “to what’s going on here?”
“All I’m saying,” Blake said, “is that if Gerald Ford can be a male model, then yours truly can be a writer.”
“Another metaphor entirely, but at least more apropos.”
“And did you know that Einstein did not or could not speak until he was nine years old?”
“How in the flipping world is that relevant?”
“Maybe I’m a late bloomer like him.”
Chloe smiled. He was being so cute. “Maybe. But the thing that’s actually relevant about Van Gogh is that he painted the Red Vineyard not while standing at the window looking out at it, but solely from his memory and imagination. Take that away and mull it, Einstein.”
Blake took it. He mulled it. “Maybe The Blue Suitcase will be my Red Vineyard,” he said, his own voice deep with longing.
“Or you could try writing something like Breath by Samuel Beckett,” Chloe said, straight-faced. “It’s one of his lesser known plays. It lasts thirty seconds and has no actors and no dialogue.” Her eyes twinkled.
And Blake, bless him, laughed, as Chloe had hoped he might. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “It’s called an intermission.”
And Chloe laughed.
The proctor shushed them. “Mr. Haul, I’ll thank you to keep your voice down.”
“What if I’m a writer?” Blake said to her, lower and leaning in. “I could be a writer, no?”
It must have grated on him that Chloe didn’t think he could do it. And she didn’t even think that. Well, all right, she did. She did think that. But so what? What did it matter what she thought? God.
“Figure out what’s in your suitcase,” she said, “and you will be a writer.”
Blake sat contemplating her. His face was inscrutable.
“What?” She became discomfited. She hated not knowing what people wanted from her. She didn’t like to disappoint.
“What do you think should be in it?”
“It’s your story.”
“But if it was your story.”
Chloe shrugged. “This one lady I deliver Meals on Wheels to, all the way in Jackson, lives in a yellow shed. I’m not kidding, it’s a shed off the main property, which is huge, but the shed is tiny, and it’s painted yellow, and she sits in a chair outside this canary box all day and watches the road, the cars, the walkers. She’s right past the covered bridge to Jackson. She’s ninety-two. She tells me that she prays to Jesus every day that today will not be the day she dies because she wants to be buried with all the jewelry her husband had given her, but she’s afraid her kids will never go for it once she’s dead. She tells me she’s trying to figure out how to get buried alive so she can decide what goes with her. She’d probably put her jewelry into this vanished case.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lupe.”
“I need to meet her ASAP,” Blake said. “Are you and Hannah doing Wheels tomorrow? Mason and I will go with you.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say.
He was so excited, he skipped right over her lying silence. Then it was time to go.
They ran for the late bus, heaved on, said hi to Freddy the thoroughly vetted and tested union driver. Chloe sat next to the window, Blake next to her, their backpacks squeezed between their legs. Freddy waited another minute for stragglers. Chloe spotted Mason still in his baseball uniform, walking down the path from the fields, with a team of catchers and cheer girls flanking him with their pom poms and their camaraderie. He saw the bus, waved to Freddy, yelled something facing the girls while running backward, then turned and sprinted with his gear and school books to the blue bus. In the twenty seconds it took Mason to jump on, Blake had gotten up and moved over one seat. Mason took the vacant spot next to Chloe. Blake sat with his back to the windows, his feet stretched out. He nearly tripped Mason with his sticking-out black Converse hi-tops.
A panting, sweating Mason kissed Chloe. “Sorry I’m all gross,” he said, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jersey.
“No, I like it.” It was nice to feel an exerting Mason wet on her skin. It was only after sports that she felt it.
“Mase, we’re going with the girls tomorrow,” Blake announced. “Meals on Wheels. To get awesome deets for our story.”
Holding Chloe’s hand, Mason shook his head. “No can do, bro. End-of-year varsity barbecue tomorrow. Sorry. But the three of you go. Have a blast.”
Twisting her mouth this way and that, Chloe looked out the window. How does she tell Blake that Hannah hasn’t gone to Meals on Wheels with her in months?
10 (#ulink_ecc6ea0e-35c1-58fa-ae17-068e65c3c8e0)
Lupe (#ulink_ecc6ea0e-35c1-58fa-ae17-068e65c3c8e0)
HANNAH’S WHEREABOUTS ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS WAS explained by none other than Hannah herself who, as soon as they came pounding on her door to tell her about tomorrow, said, Chloe, what are you talking about, I haven’t been doing Wheels with you in months. You know I’ve been working the lunch shift at China Chef, trying to save up for our trip.
Blake’s kinetic gaze slowed down to take in Hannah, and then Chloe for a puzzled moment longer. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?” he asked.
“I haven’t done it for a while myself, I forgot,” stammered Chloe, throwing Hannah a rebuke dagger with her eyes.
“What’s the matter with you?” Hannah whispered, dragging her inside the house. “You know I’ve been working most Saturdays.”
“Do I?” Chloe said, pulling her arm away from Hannah and walking back outside. “I thought you were working on Tuesdays too. Shows you what I know.”
At nine the next morning, Blake knocked on her door.
“Good morning, Mrs. Devine. Good morning, Chief.”
“Good morning, Blake,” Jimmy said from the breakfast table, hands around a coffee cup. “How have you been? Looking forward to graduation?”
“Oh, absolutely, sir. Thank you. Very exciting. Yes.” Blake always talked to her father as if about to be arrested.
“Listen, I have a tree by the water that’s rotting, a willow.”
“Say no more. I’ll take it down for you. Do you have power out there?”
“By the lake? No.”
“I’ll bring my axe and my gas-powered chainsaw. Today after I bring Chloe home?”
“Anytime you can, Blake. It’s a big tree, though. If you help me knock it down, you can keep half the wood.”
“Thank you very much. My dad would like that. He gets cold cramps at night.”
“How’s he been?”
“Not too bad. Back keeps bothering him, you know.”
“I know,” Jimmy said, staring into his coffee cup.
“Yeah, well, um. Is Chloe ready?”
Chloe was ready.
Lang pulled her into the vestibule, that is, the very same short hall Blake had taken over with his broad flannel-clad frame. “You two have fun,” Lang said, “but come back before six.”
“Okay,” Chloe drew out. “Wheels is from eleven to one, and you know that, so.” She broke off. “That’s well before six. What’s up?”
“Moody is coming tonight for dinner,” Lang said reverentially, as if announcing the arrival of Queen Victoria. Moody was Chloe’s terrifying grandmother. “I hope you don’t have any prior engagements.”
Why would she? It was only Memorial Day weekend, when the kids from six towns would be gathering for the fireworks in North Conway, staying out, hanging around by the outlet shops, miniature golfing, eating ices, listening to the free bands in the old town square, making out, maybe other things. “Prior engagements? Who talks like that, Mom?” was all Chloe said. Moody was coming to dinner! Blake pretended to study the picture of Castlecomer on the wall.
“I just want to make sure you’ll be home.”
“So you talk like Edith Wharton? Why do I need to be home? Why is she coming?”
“She wants you to drive her to the cemetery to visit Uncle Kenny.”
“Ugh, no!”
“Yes. Plus she wants to talk to you.”
There it was. Chloe’s teeth set against each other as if in battle. Her antennae shot up, spring-loaded. “About what?”
“Am I Moody? How do I know?”
“I can tell you know.”
“Go. Just be back.”
“Mom! Is it about Barcelona?”
“Go!”
This was a futile conversation, and the fact that Lang allowed it as long as she did only spoke to Lang’s own anxiety about her mother-in-law’s upcoming visit. It was the first time in three years Chloe’s grandmother would be coming to their house. Chloe glanced over at her dad, to gauge his reaction to his mother’s arrival, but he was head down, buried in the newspaper.
“Blake, ready?” Chloe wanted to storm out of the house.
“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Devine. Have a great day. Chief, I’ll be by later to help you with that tree. I’ll bring some rope too.”
“Wait,” Jimmy said and got up. He handed Blake the keys to the Durango. “Take my truck. It’s easier to get in and out of than the Subaru.”
“Yes, it is, thank you very much, sir.”
“Dad, you’re giving Blake your truck?”
“Hardly giving.”
“You don’t lend it to Mason!”
“When Mason takes you to deliver food to the infirm instead of parking with you behind Subway, he can have my truck.”
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down in that regard, or any other.”
“I know, son.”
“One quick thing—where do you keep the siren lights? Somewhere in the truck?”
“Get out of here, Blake, before I change my mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
Six cold meals and six hot meals were delivered to St. Elizabeth’s on Main Street, the Devines’ parish church, by Petey, the Meals on Wheels delivery boy, who did not like to be kept waiting. Wheels didn’t usually deliver on Saturdays, but a dozen homes depended on Chloe, and that was the only day she could work.
“I’m surprised you still want to go,” Chloe said to Blake as he opened the Durango door for her. She was in a dismal mood. Moody was coming!
“I told you I would. I must meet this Lupe.”
“I don’t even know if she’s on the schedule today. Petey gives me a list. We should hurry. Sometimes she cancels. She doesn’t want me to go all the way out there just for her. Blake, what are you doing, what are you looking for?”
Blake was searching through Jimmy’s truck. “Looking for those damn siren lights. I want to slap them on top of the truck when we get on the highway. You said we should hurry. Turn the suckers on. Scare the shit out of the cars in front of us.”
“No! You can’t use them, Dad will throw you in jail for sure.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
On the way to the church, Chloe wanted to tell Blake she was happy for his company but didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot, so she didn’t. She liked it when Hannah used to come with her. Chloe drove, Hannah navigated, though she was awful with directions, but they had some laughs getting lost. And the old people enjoyed seeing the girls. Chloe got dressed up a little, wore jeans without holes.
But today Blake was driving her. It was better. Until he said, “So why didn’t you tell me Hannah doesn’t come with you anymore?”
Chloe fake-studied the map. “You know, you should teach Hannah how to drive.”
“You should teach Hannah how to drive. I tried.”
“So did I.”
The two of them chuckled. “Let’s just agree she’s a reluctant learner,” Blake said. “But it’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“It’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“What are you, four? Stop mimicking me. Do you want to be driving her around Bangor when you two start college, the way I drive her around here?”
Chloe was very, very busy with the map. “Maybe she’ll get a car and I won’t have to.”
“Where’s she going to get a car from?” Blake said. “If she has any money saved up, it’ll be spent on empanadas in the Ramblas.”
So he was reading up on Barcelona too. That made Chloe smile, until she recalled Moody. Thinking of her grandmother coming for dinner and, oh God, going to the cemetery made Chloe tighten her spine, squeeze shut her lips and reveal to Blake nothing about her other anxieties: the lack of their funds, the lack of permission, the lack of passport, the lack, the lack, the lack.
She said, turn here, but Blake was already turning. He could find the dirt roads around Fryeburg and Brownfield blindfolded. He seemed to have an innate ability not to get lost even when the rural roads were unmarked. His navigation skills were pretty impressive. When she praised him, he replied by asking why she was dressed so nicely. She pretended she wasn’t dressed especially nicely; how to explain that the old people enjoyed looking at her? But the thing that was great about Blake was that no question lingered in his hyperactive brain for long, and often, when the answer was a few seconds in coming, he would make up his own reply, which was what he did now.
“The young girl,” he said in a dramatic voice, “who got all dolled up to feed the elderly vanished one Saturday afternoon. Where did she go? Perhaps her ironed jeans were found in the pond nearby?”
“Why would I lose my jeans in the pond?”
“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of, Haiku,” he said, and guffawed.
He was so silly.
“What does my denim have to do with your story?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “I’m merely collecting information.”
“So I’m not even the end of your story, just a random detail?”
“Nicely punned. I said I don’t know. Look in my notebook—no, not that section, the one in the back that says descriptions. See if there’s anything you like.”
He had written out fifty pages of notes on lakes, junk he had found, birds building nests during spring—and the garden by her house! He was incredibly prolific. Every minute observation was in his spiral.
“Why is my garden here?” In his random musings, he had written about her wine-red tulips, the coral knockabout roses, the orange nasturtium and the hot pink azaleas blooming outside her windows.
“Never know what I might need.”
“Before I vanish,” Chloe said, closing his notebook, “you might want to have me do something amazing or idiotic.”
“Losing your pants is both, don’t you think?” He poked her in the arm as he drove. “Why are you all freaked out about Moody? She’s your grandmother, not Freddy Krueger.”
“That’s what you think.” Chloe sighed. Everyone in the large Devine family lived in fear of Moody. She could not be argued with, or negotiated with. She could not be reasoned with. She believed what she believed, said what she said, commanded what she commanded. I’ve seen too much to bother arguing with the likes of you, was Moody’s standard reply to anyone in her family who dared raise a squawk in opposition. Only Chloe’s father had spoken out against her, and the result of that was that mother and son had been on the outs for the last seven years, since Uncle Kenny died.
The old people became notably enthusiastic when they saw that a tidied-up Chloe did not come alone. “Who is the young man?” Mrs. Van Mirren said with a meaningful smile.
This is Blake, Hannah’s boyfriend, Chloe would say to Mrs. Van Mirren, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Mann and Mr. Warner. They asked where Hannah was. They asked about Mason. They asked when the prom was, and when Europe was. They gave her money. Five dollars, two dollars, seventy-five cents. They would not take no for an answer. This is for your trip, they said. Take pictures. Write things down. Don’t forget. Life is long. You won’t remember if you don’t write things down or take pictures. Are you excited about college? We’ll miss you when you go. We love you. Blake, we love this girl. Take another dollar.
Lupe was last, because she lived the farthest, in New Hampshire, in a tiny hamlet called Jackson, ten miles from North Conway.
Just as Chloe had told Blake, outside a yellow painted storage shed sat Lupe, in a wooden chair planted outside her front door. In the window box under her one white window bloomed purple nasturtiums. “I planted those for her,” Chloe said. Lupe, shriveled like a bald bird in water, gummed a smile and waved. She was white from top to bottom, white hair, white shirt, white bracelets, white pants, white socks, white shoes. As usual, she wore most of her jewelry. If not all her jewelry. Three necklaces, a cross, a dozen jangling bracelets on each wrist, and rings on every finger. When she waved to Chloe and Blake, she trilled like a wind chime.
“Izh thish Mashon?” she said, as if she didn’t have her dentures in.
“No, Lupe, it’s his brother. Blake.”
While Lupe was vigorously shaking Blake’s hand and appraising him, Chloe pulled out Lupe’s lunch, the last one in the hot box, and stepped inside the woman’s one-room house to get a tray and some silverware. Though who was Chloe to tease Lupe about the size of her habitat?
“Lupe, Blake came with me because he’s entering a story contest.” She set the food on a tray in the old woman’s lap. “Did you read about it in the paper? The Acadia Award for Short Fiction. I told him about your box of jewelry.” Chloe poured Lupe some ice tea, put a napkin near her elbow.
“And what, he got interested? He wants it?”
“No, no.” Blake looked mortified. How amusing!
“Young man, I’m joking. Instead of looking for my jewelry, you should find yourself a sense of humor. It would come in more handy.”
“Um, yes, ma’am.”
“Where’s your brother today?”
“At practice.”
“Blake is Hannah’s boyfriend,” Chloe said.
“Who? Oh, Hannah.” The old woman studied Blake intently as she ate. The fork trembled in her shaking hands.
Blake smiled. “I know. She’s too good for me, Lupe.”
“That’s not quite what I was thinking.”
Chloe pulled on Blake’s denim sleeve, and the two of them perched on a nearby bench and kept the woman company while she finished her lunch.
“Has your mother agreed yet to let you go?” Lupe asked.
Chloe shook her head, keeping mum on Moody’s imminent visit.
“She will, though, don’t you think?” Blake said. “I keep telling her.”
Lupe shrugged. “The odds are about even. Don’t count on it, but don’t discount it. I’ve met mothers before. I was one myself until my sons got too wise for my help. Mothers can be an unpredictable bunch.” She took a swig of her ice tea, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Let me ask you something,” she said to Blake after he had scintillated her with stories of his story, even offering her a peek at his journal. “You say you want to go to Barcelona for research.”
“That’s right, ma’am.” And to Chloe, out of the corner of his mouth, added, “And for other things.”
“Call me Lupe. But can’t the answer you’re looking for be found right here in New Hampshire and Maine?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sure it can. Answers are found everywhere. And in anything. You just have to know where to look.”
“Barcelona will make for a far more interesting story, don’t you agree? Rather than writing about boring old North Conway.” North Conway, the biggest town in two counties was a two-mile stretch of a straight rural highway. Fifteen traffic lights and Applebee’s dueling it out with Burger King. Pizza Hut against KFC, Baskin-Robbins against Carvel. There were one or two antique shops, an outlet mall, an L.L.Bean, and gas stations. That was the town. And China Chef, of course, purveyor of hot and sour soup that Hannah supposedly placed on people’s tables. How do you find the answer in a town like that?
Lupe insisted. “You can. You can find answers anywhere.”
“I’d like to find them in Barcelona,” Blake said, and Chloe was proud of him for not being too intimidated by a ninety-something woman. Forgetting herself for a second, Chloe almost made a joke. Leaning to Blake, opening her mouth, she almost, almost said—we should introduce Lupe to Martyn, don’t you think? They’re about the same age—before slamming her hand against her mouth. What was wrong with her!
Blake must have liked Lupe because he talked to her for longer than any of the others. And she must have liked him because she kept asking him to do small chores for her. She pointed out that her chopped wood was too far from the fire pit. It was all the way in the back, near the river. Chloe and Blake carried the chopped wood and the iron rack to the front of her yellow house. They set it up near the fire pit, stacked the wood on the rack, covered it with a blue tarp. Lupe looked pleased by their efforts, especially Blake’s. She asked him to build her a fire. She’s my last one, Chloe told Blake, as they collected some branches for kindling. She always keeps me here. She’s lonely, he said, and she likes the company. I don’t mind. “Lupe,” he called to her, “do you know that your fire pit is eroding on one side? The stones have broken off.”
“I know,” she said. “Who’s going to fix it, me? Or my children in California?”
Blake motioned toward the mansion-like house. “Who lives there?”
Lupe shrugged. “A family. They don’t help me. They got their own problems. The husband is sick. He just don’t know it yet. Or don’t want to admit it.”
“How do you know?”
“Can you tell the difference between a healthy man and a sick one? They’re like two different species.”
To this, Blake bowed his head without reply. He knew the difference well. His own father had been a Hercules before the disaster that almost claimed him, and now was a husk.
“Maybe I can help you fix it,” Blake said to Lupe. “I’ll go to the quarry, pick up some stones.”
The woman shook her head. “Why don’t you come by after school next Thursday? I have a doctor’s appointment and no way to get to it. Usually I call for a taxi. Maybe you can drive me. I’ll pay you for your time, and then we can go to the quarry together. Pick out the stones. I’ll pay for them too.”
“You’re going to go to the quarry?”
“I’m ninety-two,” she said. “I’m not dead.”
On the way home Blake rained on Chloe with questions that at first sounded like research but perhaps weren’t. How long had she been visiting Lupe? When did the husband die? Why did she go to these twelve homes and not others? Why did she stay for five minutes in one home, but forty minutes with Lupe? What happened if she saw something suspicious? What if the people behaved erratically? What if they hurt her?
He had been slightly concerned about Mr. Gibson, a blind man with long scraggly gray hair who had grabbed Chloe’s hand and wouldn’t let go, not letting her leave or feed him. Blake gently, but not too gently, pried Mr. Gibson’s dinosaur fingers off Chloe’s white wrist.
“He’s fine,” Chloe said. “He’s just lonely. Like Lupe.”
Blake was off again about Chloe and her pants vanishing.
“Give it a rest, Blake. I’m not your project, I’m not your story.”
“But if you disappeared,” he went on, speeding invincible in her father’s siren-less off-duty truck, “that would be quite a story, wouldn’t it?”
“No! It’s only a story if there’s a reason why I disappeared.” She paused. “Also what does my disappearance have to do with your blue suitcase?”
“Maybe everything,” he said.
“You leave me out of your lunacy, Blake Haul.”
“It’s fiction,” Blake said. “In fiction, you can have everything to do with my lunacy. Isn’t that what you told me? I can use my imagination and have it all turn out exactly how I need, how I want.” Fiendishly he rubbed his hands together while driving with his knees. His expression was for once both serious and remote, as if he was thinking about something else entirely.
Covering her face, Chloe groaned.
It was a good afternoon.
11 (#ulink_44fec7e7-0e56-5d6c-a720-40cae5e35385)
Moody (#ulink_44fec7e7-0e56-5d6c-a720-40cae5e35385)
SHE RAISED HER GAZE FROM THE TRASHY GOSSIP MAGAZINE, from sordid uncouplings and inappropriate attire of beautiful strangers, and focused the red dot of her anxious brain on her mother. Rather, focused on her mother’s back, while her mother’s studious front was forming tiny spicy Mediterranean meatballs with feta and fennel.
“So why’s she coming?”
“You shall see.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
The eminently sensible Lang pointed out that if she told Chloe, then Moody wouldn’t need to come over.
The eminently sensible Chloe opened her hands to say, exactly! But it was done to her mother’s oblivious back. “I’m making meatballs,” Lang said. “Do you want to help me?”
“If I help you, will you tell me?”
“You will help me,” said Lang, “and I won’t tell you a thing.”
“It’s about Barcelona, right? She’s got some plan?”
“It’s about a man with a horse. Come here and help your mother.”
Their house had once been Moody’s summer retreat. Lochlan Devine built it with his own hands for his young bride back in the fifties so she could have a home by the lake as she had dreamed. Twenty years later Moody gave it to Jimmy and Lang as a wedding present.
“Why would she suddenly be visiting us again?”
“She says it’s been too long.”
“Tell me why so I can prepare myself.”
“Prepare yourself for what?”
Chloe wanted to provoke her mother. “She told me last Thanksgiving that she doesn’t come to us anymore because she’s mad we still blame Uncle Kenny for everything.”
“Well, that’s just silly,” said Lang, looking at no one.
Her father spoke his first sentence of the afternoon. “We do blame my brother for everything,” Jimmy said.
“Jimmy, shh.” Lang turned to Chloe. “Stop stirring the pot, young lady. Your grandmother wants to help, that’s all.”
“Help who?”
“Did we ask for her help?” Jimmy said.
“Yes, Jimmy, we did,” Lang said, one hand on her husband’s shoulder, one hand straightening out the errant lamp shade behind him. She had been feverishly cleaning as if preparing for an open house viewing.
“You did,” Jimmy said. “Not me. Chloe is right. My mother shouldn’t come if she’s still angry.”
Lang leaned her tranquil solemn face into a sitting and grim Jimmy. “She is putting away the bygones and coming for your daughter.”
Jimmy sat coldly. “They’re not bygones,” he said.
“Come on. We agreed.”
“You agreed. I’m resigned to it. Big difference.”
She kissed his forehead. “You promised you would be civil, kind, polite.”
“No. I promised only that I’d be silent,” Jimmy said, standing up. “And you’re not letting me keep my promise, woman.” He went outside to do some yard work.
The next three hours crawled by in epic time, in Thackeray time, every day lasting a thousand tragic pages. Blake stopped by to cut down the rotting willow. Mason stopped by. Hannah stopped by. Then her friends left to go have fun in North Conway with other young people who didn’t have horror-movie grandmothers. Jimmy left to go pick up his mother and bring her back to their house.
Finally six o’clock arrived like the executioner’s hour.
Sometimes Chloe thought of her grandmother as Zeus in his Athenian Temple, gargantuan and fierce. Sometimes Moody was like Tamerlane of Mongolia, murderous and crippled. Sometimes Chloe saw Moody as Siddhartha, half the size of China, wise but terrifying in his omnipotent silence.
On Memorial Saturday, Moody was just a kettle-sized white-haired woman. She had been married to Lochlan Devine since just after the war until his death, fifty years, four of them pretty good. She had given him six children, five surviving, all boys, though what she wanted was two measly daughters. Everybody knew it because she never missed an opportunity to say it.
She was nearly deaf in both ears, but denied she was hard of hearing in even one. She grew odd white fuzz on her face. She liked to drink whiskey and eat caramels and strange spicy sausages she said were from the old country. She smoked unapologetically. She spoke fluent English in a loud, heavy and indeterminate accent. She had occluded sight, which prevented her from driving, though didn’t prevent her from complaining about not driving. Hence her life’s motto about envying the good fortune of people who could push around their own wheelchairs, which she repeated again tonight as she walked through the front door. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” Moody said.
Behind his mother, Jimmy walked in without a word, dropped his keys on the side table and went to sit down. Lang, dressed in church clothes, fussed like a tumbleweed. After Moody hugged Chloe, she blurted without so much as a half-blind appraisal, “Why do you always look so dour, child? What is this awful thing you’re wearing? You’re a beautiful girl. Why are you hiding yourself from boys? Or is it one boy in particular you’re hiding yourself from? It won’t work. They all know what’s inside the hefty bags you wear for clothes. Come, let’s go. I’m not even taking my coat off despite your mother’s efforts. Take me to the cemetery. Don’t protest, better go quick before it gets dark. You don’t want to go to the graveyard at night, do you? I jest. Of course you don’t. Believe me. So let’s go pick some flowers from this famous garden of yours, and get to it. Jimmy, give your daughter the truck keys. You haven’t suspended her license for speeding—or other violations—have you?”
“You mean like Dad didn’t suspend Kenny’s?” Jimmy said, gesturing at the keys to Chloe. “Yeah, Chloe’s still driving. She’s also not speeding, or otherwise violating the good laws of all sane people.”
Moody stared coolly at Lang.
Lang glared at Jimmy.
Chloe rolled her eyes and quickly took her grandmother out of the house.
Chloe never saw her mother as respectful to anyone as she was to Moody, and her father as silent. Lang didn’t sit until Moody sat. There was no eating, drinking, or speaking, until Moody ate, drank, and spoke. Every other question out of Lang’s mouth was, do you have enough salt? More ice? Enough cream on the mashed potatoes? I made chocolate profiteroles for dessert, and fresh coffee, but I also have decaf, or some brandy, if you like. Of course I have whiskey. Would you like some now? Are you cold? Would you like a shawl? You’re too hot? Chloe, open all the windows. And bring in the floor fan from the shed.
Her mother sat in adoration. As if Moody had waltzed in, in light cloth, sans sandals, and beyond her stooped shoulders trembled two wings. That’s how Lang behaved around her husband’s mother. Not so much the husband.
“I fixed the screens,” Jimmy said in a stiff tone meant to convey he had built the Maginot Line—between himself and his mother.
Moody shrugged, as if his fixing the screens was an achievement on par with brushing his teeth. “Good,” she said. “Because I don’t enjoy mosquitoes.”
When Lang would pass Moody’s chair, she’d place her hand gently on the white-haired woman’s shoulder, patting her. It would be amusing if it weren’t so exasperating. All the while Jimmy gazed upon his wife with a pungent mixture of compassion and hostility.
A stressed and anxious Chloe was sullen and silent, like her father, though, she guessed, for different reasons. She and Jimmy sat gray like the unfallen Berlin Wall and stared at their food, at the darkening lake, warily at Lang and Moody across from them making small talk. Chewing her lip, counting to 741 by unlucky thirteens, Chloe tried to be still, to not think. The evening blossomed with the smell of mint and quivering fresh water.
“Moody, how are your flowers doing?” Chloe went over to her grandmother’s every spring and planted beautiful things in the raised black soil.
Moody made a face. “The flowers bring bees,” she said. “Which I also don’t enjoy, having grown up in a bee farmer’s house. Especially the blood orange tulips that came up a few weeks back. Pretty, but the bees! Never seen anything like it. Don’t plant those again.”
“Tulips are perennial, Moody. They come up on their own.”
“Well, plant something else. Something that doesn’t attract bees.”
“You want me,” Chloe asked slowly, letting it sink in, “to find flowers that don’t attract bees?”
Nothing sunk in. “No bees is what I want,” Moody said. “How you get there is your problem.”
Chloe’s scalp tingling, her skin shivering, she clawed at an old bite on her forearm. Was the grand diminutive woman ever going to get to the point of her visit?
There was much food and meaningless conversation before there was finally no food and a meaningful one. After coffee with Baileys, and a second helping of profiteroles (or was it a second helping of Baileys?) Mudita Devine, née Klavin, mother of six sons, oldest one deceased, Lochlan’s widow, fluttering Clarence Odbody clockmaker, opened her mouth.
“So your mother tells me you’re wanting to go to some damn fool city in Europe.”
It wasn’t a question. It was just a beginning. And what a beginning! Chloe nodded.
“Why?”
Before Chloe could reply, Moody cut her off. “I don’t care why. Neither do your parents.” Her mother across from her and her father next to her didn’t have time to nod. “The question is, is this a good idea?”
Chloe knew better than to even pretend to answer.
“Your mother and father don’t think so. You plan to go with your friends? That boy you’ve been hanging around with?”
“Mason. Yes. I’ve grown up with them, Moody.”
“Did I ask how long you’ve known them? Did I ask their names? What does any of that matter to me? You could know them five minutes or fifteen years. None of it matters. What matters is they’re boys, and you want them to join you girls in some tomfoolery.”
“Not …”
“Chloe.” Moody raised her hand. “You’ll have plenty of time to speak briefly. Your time has not come yet. Let me ask you this. In broader terms, beyond the few weeks you’re hoping to grab on a beach, have you given any thought to what you want to do with your life?”
Now could she speak? Chloe glanced from her mother to her father. She answered. Yes, she said. She has thought about it. She was thinking of going into law. She was thinking of majoring in history.
“So what I’m hearing is you want to major in history, yet your first inclination is to head to a Barcelona night club?”
Chloe must have looked flummoxed. “It makes me wonder,” her grandmother said in explanation, “how serious you are about your life.”
“Moody, I’m not even eighteen …”
“Do I not know how old you are?” Moody exchanged a glance with Lang. “So to your parents, you declare that you’re almost eighteen, as if you’re so grown up that you can make your own decisions. Yet now you remind us of your insignificant age to excuse why you can’t be serious about the road before you.”
A squirming Chloe kept quiet.
“So which is it? Are you eighteen or are you eighteen?”
Chloe had no answer, except yes. She couldn’t look up.
“I thought so. Look at me, child. That’s better. Your mother tells me you’ve had your heart set on Europe.”
Not Europe, Chloe wanted to bleat. Barcelona. She wasn’t even brave enough to defend her one small dream to her grandmother.
“You can decide to visit any European country,” Moody continued. “There are nearly two dozen to choose from. You have a few precious weeks before college. An opportunity of a lifetime. And you choose—Barcelona?”
Why was this so frightening? Her heart drummed in her chest.
“Yes.”
Moody raised her strong, wrinkled hand. “Still not your turn, child.” Her gaze was unwavering, which was more than Chloe could say for her own. She’d rather look at her mother! What torture this was.
“Your parents tell me that Hannah talks a good game, but has not yet produced enough cash for your Iberian adventure. And the young men, having come into your dream belatedly, are even more broke. Is this true?” Moody stopped Chloe from replying. “I have a proposal for you,” she said. “A proposal I’ve talked over with your parents, and they agree. A way for you to get what you want. That’s why I came. Do you want to hear about it?”
Chloe couldn’t hear anything above the thumping in her chest. A way for her to get what she wanted! was all she heard. What could Moody possibly have in mind? That Lang and Jimmy go with them to Europe to chaperone? That they go to Canada instead, as her dad had suggested? Moody was speaking, but Chloe—bouncing up and down on the trampoline beat of her excited heart—missed the important part, and she knew she had missed it because the three adults around her had fallen silent.
Chloe blinked. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I don’t think I heard right.”
Moody sighed. “Riga,” she said impatiently. “Riga.”
“I don’t know what Riga is.”
“The capital of Latvia. Also, where I was born.”
“Ah.” Chloe nodded, as if acknowledging that she vaguely already knew that.
The three adults waited for Chloe’s reply. Chloe waited for an explanation.
“Honey, so what do you think?” asked Jimmy.
“Of what?”
“Of your grandmother’s plan.”
“I don’t understand. You want us to go”—Chloe struggled—“to Riga?”
“Yes.”
“No! Why?”
“I have family near Riga,” Moody said. “I want you to visit them. I told them a lot about you. You can bring them a letter from me, and a package.”
“You know, Moody, there’s something we have in this country called the United States Postal Service—”
“Not interested. And don’t be fresh. Also, there is an orphanage in a Latvian town called Liepaja. The town has had a painful history with the Communists, and since the fall of the Soviet Union, the young people there have not been doing so well. Many American families sponsor children from Eastern Europe to come live, study, and eventually work in the United States. Your parents have been thinking of sponsoring such a child.”
“Don’t look so shocked, honey,” Jimmy said. “We meant to talk to you about it. We just didn’t get a chance to.” He glared at his mother who ignored him.
“Your parents would like you to visit this orphanage in Liepaja. Maybe you can find them a suitable boy. Age doesn’t matter, but it must be a boy. Older is better. Not too old. Six or seven. The four of you kids can stay with my relatives. It will make them happy and stretch your lodging budget. Riga is a wonderful historic city. You’ll love it. A win-win, if you ask me.”
Chloe shook her head. Lose-lose is what it sounded like. Worse, Moody wasn’t finished. There didn’t seem to be a finality to her words.
“And,” Moody continued, “after you finish helping your parents, I’d like you to do something for me.”
“Other than visit with your family?”
“You have it wrong. They’re doing you a favor, not the other way around. You won’t be forced to stay in places unsuitable for a young lady.” The old woman kneaded her creased and square hands. “A long time ago, before the war, I had a best friend like you and a sweetheart like you. When war broke out in Poland, we knew we were going to get squeezed by the Russians on one side and the Germans on the other. We ran from Riga and hid out in the countryside. Our plan was to get to the Baltic Sea, make our way to one of the Scandinavian countries and board a ship bound for the west. But we didn’t realize how much of the continent Hitler and Stalin already had in their grip. We were in Kaunas, northwest of Vilnius, when we got caught by the Soviets and taken to the Jewish ghetto. We were there two years, until 1941 when the Germans came. We all thought we were lucky we weren’t in Vilnius because there was a massacre there, near Ponary. Everyone died. They put us on a train bound for the Bialystok ghetto. A year later there was an uprising, crushed of course. But by that time, most of the Jews had been taken to a transit camp nearby. Do you know the name of that transit camp, Chloe?”
“Of course not.”
“Treblinka.”
No one spoke for a moment.
“What about you?” the girl asked her grandmother.
“I’m not Jewish,” Moody said. “Though I reckon that meant little to the Germans. What might have meant more is that I made boots for them. Footwear for the German soldier. I was quite good. Perhaps that helped me.” She spoke matter-of-factly, looking only at her gnarled hands that once had made boots for the Wehrmacht. “How little I understood life. I really believed after the war I would find my friends, see them again. I didn’t know then that Treblinka was like pancreatic cancer. No one survives.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say. Questioningly she opened her hands.
“After Latvia, I’d like the four of you to travel by train and visit Treblinka. Bring my love some red roses. There must be a mass grave around there. After that, you can do what you like. You might want to visit Warsaw, or Auschwitz in southern Poland, but that’s your business. You have three items on the to-do list. Liepaja for your mother and father, Riga for my family, and flowers in Treblinka for me. You do those things, and I will help pay for your trip.”
“I have my own money, Moody,” Chloe mumbled in response, as if that was the only thing she’d heard.
“Oh, sure you do,” Moody said. “But you know who doesn’t have their own money? Hannah. You know who else? Blake and Mason. I hear their mother plans to tap into her life savings to buy them the plane tickets. You can’t travel through Europe on the kindness of strangers, Chloe.”
“You’re going to pay for all of us to go?”
“Well, let’s just say you’re not going to be staying at the Ritz-Carlton. You’ll bring your own money for food, for incidentals. But your travel expenses and your lodging expenses, yes, I will take care of.”
Chloe shook her head. “Moody, I don’t want to go to Riga.” Or to an orphanage! She scowled at her stoic mother, at her father sitting like a sad sack next to her. “My friends will never go for it.” Chloe was thinking of Blake especially. “They’d rather not go at all than go to Poland.”
“Child, I think you’re mistaking what this is,” Moody said. “Is this how your mother allows you to speak to her? This isn’t a negotiation. It’s a proposal. Take it. Or leave it. You want Barcelona? Fine. You’ll have to get to it through my home country. And through Poland. Barcelona through Treblinka.”
“But …”
“Or you don’t go.”
Chloe frowned, perplexed, maddened, upset. “Why would you pay for my friends to go with me?”
“It’s my graduation present to you,” Moody said. “You’ve been largely absent from my life these last few years”—she glared at Jimmy who glared right back—“and I would like to fix that. I’m not as young as I used to be. I don’t want your father’s irrational anger at me to stop you from taking this historic trip. And without your friends you can’t go.”
“Not irrational, Mom,” said Jimmy.
“Oh, yes,” Moody said. “Chloe is your daughter, like Kenny was my son, like you’re my son. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Chloe is a very good daughter,” said Jimmy.
“You’re not such a good son,” Moody said. “What son can stay angry at his mother? Kenny wasn’t a good man, but he was a good son. Better than you. He didn’t stay angry for seven years. That’s a sin, you know. It’s bad luck.”
“We’ve had about all we can handle of that, thanks to him,” Jimmy said as if spitting. “Us, Burt, Janice, their boys. Bad luck well and truly covered, Mom.”
“Listen, if I spoiled him, all right, but I spoiled all you kids. He wasn’t special. You wanted me to love him less than you? He was still my son! I had it rough growing up. I wanted it to be easier for my own children. Why is that so hard to understand?” She raised her hand. “Stop arguing with me, Jimmy. I’m done with it. We’ve yelled all we can yell. Help your child, spoil your child, or take me home. That’s your choice.”
Chloe could see her mother making intense beseeching eyes at her father from across the table. Head bent, Jimmy wasn’t looking at anybody.
Moody turned her attention back to Chloe. “I advised your parents not to keep you from going. Even though you are only eighteen or already eighteen or whatever it is you say, I told them that you should at least try to look for the answer to the fundamental question before you.”
Chloe hated questions before her. “What question is that?” she asked in an exhausted voice.
“What meaning does your finite existence have in this infinite world?”
Chloe didn’t think her Uncle Kenny asked himself this question once, and he probably was never harangued like this. Maybe he should’ve been. Maybe that had always been her dad’s point when he railed at his mother.
“You keep telling your mother and father you want to see things with your own eyes,” the old woman said. “So go see them. Do you only want to see the water and the waves?”
Yes?
“Do you only want to hear the cathedral bells?”
Um, yes?
“What about examining for five minutes your place in the world, what it means to be alive? What it means to be dead?”
“Enough, Mom,” Jimmy said in a voice more exasperated and tired than Chloe’s. “Unlike some others we won’t mention, Chloe gets it.” Jimmy turned to his daughter. “It’s not ideal, Chloe-bear,” he said, putting his arm around her. “It’s called life. You endure a lot of stuff you don’t care about, but then, if you’re lucky, you get what you want.” Jimmy’s eyes caught Lang’s for a glimpse.
Chloe took a few minutes to compose herself before she spoke. “Moody, Mom, Dad, do you guys have any idea how far Riga is from Barcelona?”
Moody smiled with a full set of dentures. “Yes,” she said. “A train ride away across Europe, just like they did it in the war days.”
12 (#ulink_c35cbb52-4cf2-5e00-96ca-77a9e5757c18)
Peacocks (#ulink_c35cbb52-4cf2-5e00-96ca-77a9e5757c18)
THAT NIGHT UP IN THE ATTIC LANG SAT ON CHLOE’S BED. “Your father doesn’t want you to be upset. He thinks we were too hard on you. Some police chief! He’s gone soft in the head, I tell you. The fight has gone out of him.”
“I wonder why,” Chloe muttered. Lang said nothing.
“We don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said when she spoke again. “Dad and I don’t fully understand why you want to go, but then we’re not meant to, are we? I almost wonder if you yourself know. And that’s all right too. If you think you need to go to Barcelona to discover what you want and who you are, then who are your father and I to stand in your way? Your acceptance of Moody’s generous terms is wise. I know you’re worried about your friends not wanting to go to Latvia, but I think they’re going to surprise you. Besides, what choice do you have, really?”
“Not go?”
Lang nodded. “That will make your father happy,” she said. “In any case, everyone agrees the boys should go with you. Burt, Janice, Moody. They’ll keep you safe. Your father and I won’t argue this anymore. If you must go, then better with them. Soon you’ll be far away, and they’ll still be here saving up for that junk-hauling truck they won’t be able to afford because they’ve spent the summer frittering away their money in Barcelona with you.”
“You mean in Poland with me. In Latvia with me. Trudging through graveyards and death museums. And orphanages. What fun.”
Lang remained unfazed. “Europe is your parting gift to your friends. Now you can say goodbye to them the way you’re meant to. Abroad. And I hope when you come back, you’ll see one or two obvious things in a different way. Though I told Moody and your father, I wouldn’t count on self-discovery. I barely count on you coming back in one piece.”
“Nice, Mom.”
Lang patted the pink quilt above Chloe’s leg. “This is our gift to you, letting you go. Your dad and I are proud of you. You’ve been a good girl. We wanted to reward you for not disappointing us the way other parents have been disappointed.”
“Like Terri?”
“Not Terri. I think she’s rather fond of her daughter. And Terri works the hardest in that family. That’s why she doesn’t give a damn about the raccoons and dinner and Hannah’s homework. When you have to care desperately about bringing home the bacon, you’re hardly going to be bothered about who cooks it or what species eat it.”
“Who do you mean, then? Mason and Blake? But you love Janice.”
“There you go again, putting words in our mouths and feelings into our hearts. I didn’t say Janice. I don’t mean anybody in particular. I’m just saying. We thank you for not letting us down.”
“Not letting you down how? By not dying?” Chloe was disappointed in herself. With her mother, and only with her mother (and maybe a little bit with Blake), she sometimes had trouble hiding her tortured heart.
A composed Lang said nothing.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
“Just stay safe, all right?” Lang said quietly. “As safe as you can.”
“Mom, why do you want me to find you a strange boy?” Chloe whispered.
“Not strange,” Lang said. “Just someone who might need a little help. Someone you think your father and I might like. We’re not adopting him, Chloe. We’re sponsoring him. What are you worried about?”
“I’m not worried.”
Lang got up. “In this one way I echo Flannery O’Connor,” she said. “For the last eighteen years, my avocation has been raising peacocks. This requires everything of the peacocks and very little of me. Time is always at hand. Especially now that the last surviving peacock is leaving.”
The conversation was over. Lang smoothed out Chloe’s blanket and bent down to kiss her head. “How was the cemetery?”
“Fine. Moody insisted on putting my flowers on Uncle Kenny’s grave.”
Lang sighed as she took the railing to descend the steep attic stairs. “Why not? I do.”
13 (#ulink_3913f778-fcc4-5c6f-a55c-897d0a94ac50)
Uncle Kenny from Kilkenny (#ulink_3913f778-fcc4-5c6f-a55c-897d0a94ac50)
WHEN CHLOE WAS ELEVEN HER UNCLE KENNY DIED. He was a wild one, lived small, died small. He was cremated and a portion of his ashes were interred in Fryeburg’s rural cemetery, while the rest was flown to Kilkenny to be buried in the family plot next to Lochlan. Chloe’s parents flew to Ireland for his burial. Chloe got excited. Then she found out she wasn’t going.
They were gone a month.
“Must have been some funeral,” she said when her parents returned, all flushed and refreshed, as if they’d been on a honeymoon. They showed her photos of Dublin and Limerick, of glens and castle ruins, of moors and churches and pubs with names like the Hazy Peacock and the Rusty Swan. They began inexplicably to refer to the time away as a “trip of a lifetime.”
Chloe didn’t know what that meant, but she did internalize it.
Seven years later no one spoke of that trip of a lifetime, or of Kenny, or Kilkenny, or glens, or moors. Most of the pictures of Ireland had been taken off the walls of their wood cabin and stored in a box in the shed her father had built for the specific purpose of storing boxes with photos of Ireland in it, and of other mementos. One black and white Castlecomer dell remained in a frame in the hall.
A colossal vat of frightful things was stirred up by Kenny Devine’s vagrant life and subsequent (or consequent?) demise.
The Chevy truck he crashed his speeding swerving rattletrap into belonged to Burt Haul.
On the way home from work, Burt had stopped at Brucie’s Diner to pick up some meatloaf on Monday special. It was eight in the evening in July, not yet dark. It was warm, glorious, chirping.
Burt survived because his truck, built like a Humvee, had been in second gear. The same could not be said of Kenny or his Dodge Charger. Eyewitnesses, unreliable but myriad, clocked his miles per hour at somewhere between seventy and a hundred and twenty. He had no chance.
Burt lived, but barely. He suffered three broken vertebrae, a punctured lung, and five broken ribs. His kneecap, hip and femur were crushed almost beyond repair. It was upon visiting Burt in the convalescent facility that Moody first noted how blessed were those who could push around their own wheelchairs. Burt couldn’t.
His livelihood depended on his truck and his able body. When he wasn’t driving the school bus, he was a handyman. After four months in recovery, he found himself on a disability pension, still unable to walk. Janice Haul got a job at the attendance office at Brownfield Elementary School, but it barely paid half the bills. Little by little Burt improved, but was never the same. He couldn’t sit behind the wheel of a bus anymore, his fused and compressed vertebrae barking so loud they required handfuls of Oxycontin to quieten, and how well could anyone drive a school bus numbed up on Oxy?
Until Burt got well enough to return to work, he was replaced by a Brian Hansen, a recent Vermont transplant, and apparently an excellent driver.
Jimmy Devine’s animosity toward his brother, whose reckless existence had set into motion the spinning wheels of fate, was so violent that it ate apart the bond with his own family. He blamed Moody for never reining Kenny in, for indulging him, spoiling him, coddling him, paying his tickets, his suspended license fees, his legal bills, bailing him out of jail, buying him new wheels, allowing him to live in her basement and to drink her liquor. “Not just a good man’s back, but a whole family has been shattered, all because you could never say no to your firstborn son,” was one of the accusations Jimmy hurled at his mother, way back when. Burt and Jimmy and their families had been close before the accident, then less so, and then hardly at all. Burt blamed Jimmy for his ruined life, for knowing that Kenny should’ve never been allowed behind the wheel and yet doing nothing. “How much more could I do?” Jimmy argued in his defense. “Kenny’s license had been permanently suspended!”
And then, three years later, after another tragedy, Jimmy blamed not only Kenny for all the misfortune, but also Burt for not being man enough to get up every morning and drive the bus. It didn’t matter to Jimmy the pain Burt was in. Living three houses apart, the Hauls and the Devines stayed barely civil, even though Lang kept pointing out in feeble attempts to effect a truce between the men that Burt had done nothing wrong. “It’s not his fault he has a weak back, Jimmy.”
“Nothing wrong,” Jimmy said, “except stroll out of Brucie’s Diner with his arms full of meatloaf at precisely and absolutely the worst moment. Nothing wrong except not go to work, and ruin everybody’s fucking life.”
“He’s suffering too, Jimmy.”
“That’s why I said everybody’s fucking life, Mother.”
Chloe and Moody stood shoulder to shoulder near two graves in the small rural cemetery under the pines as tall and gray as emerald redwoods. Chloe placed all the flowers they had brought in front of a black granite tombstone that read “JAMES PATRICK DEVINE, JR. 1998-2001.”
Moody made her put half of them on Kenny’s stupid grave.
They stood with their heads bent. Moody held on to Chloe’s arm.
“Do you come here with your mother?”
“Sometimes.”
“How often does she come?”
“I don’t know.” The gravesite was beautifully tended, weeded, neatened, full of flowering azaleas, faded lilacs, knockabout roses. “Often, from the looks of it.”
“Your dad?”
“When Mom forces him.”
Moody nodded. “You have to forgive Uncle Kenny,” she said. “It’s not his fault he was born with bad genes and couldn’t walk straight. Not everybody can make a life like your mom and dad, child. Not everybody can push his own wheelchair. Some aren’t so lucky.”
“Yes. Like my brother.”
“Yes. Like him. But he was lucky to be loved. That love is better than hate for my Kenny. No question he did wrong. But it wasn’t all his fault. Sometimes catastrophic things just happen. And your father doesn’t understand that.”
Moody bent her head deeper. Chloe too.
“He understands,” Chloe said. “But that’s not what happened here. A catastrophic thing didn’t just happen.”
They stood.
“What was the poem you used to recite to Jimmy? He knew it by heart. You and he were so cute with it. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Something about Santa, and vampires. Come on. You do remember. Tell your grandmother. It’s a sin to lie to old people.”
“I don’t remember, Moody.” Chloe ground her teeth. She didn’t tell, though she well remembered.
I wonder if Santa Claus is real
The Easter Bunny
The Tooth Fairy too
I wonder if ghosts really say boo
I wonder if leprechauns collect pots of gold
I wonder if vampires ever grow old.
Little Jimmy, who used to yell YES for the first five and an emphatic NO to the last, had been conceived around the time of Uncle Kenny’s death. Her parents had been trying for little Jimmy all of Chloe’s life. For all she knew, she was supposed to be little Jimmy and they had been trying for nine years before she was born and for eleven after. In some ways her mother was very much a Chinese mother. Two decades of trying for that one highly valued masculine child. Jimmy lived for three very good years. Their little cabin in the woods was full of noise and tricycles and paint on the walls and mess everywhere, and Lang didn’t care, and Jimmy didn’t care. Jimmy came home at six o’clock sharp every night, punctual as Big Ben. Lang called the Fryeburg police station a dozen times a day. Jimmy, you won’t believe what your son just said, Jimmy, you’ll never guess what your son just did.
When it was time for little Jimmy to go to nursery school, he was so excited to be taking the big boy school bus. He would jump with joy off the curb when he would see the blue bus pulling up to take him home. One early afternoon Brian Hansen’s wallet had fallen into the footwell. He noticed it when he was in the parking lot, about to pull up to the waiting kids. He bent down to retrieve it. He was driving so slowly. He thought he could take his eyes off the road for just a second. But Jimmy was little and his bones were greensticks. They were no match for a school bus, even a small one, even a slow one.
Lang was at ShopRite buying fruit snacks and juice boxes. Big Jimmy was in a meeting about police logistics for the upcoming summer festival. Chloe was in ninth grade math, dreaming of a tuna sandwich she was about to eat for lunch.
Had Uncle Kenny not broken Burt’s back, Burt would have been driving the blue bus as he had been driving it for thirteen years. Burt would have never taken his eyes off the road. But Kenny did break Burt’s back. And with Burt out of action, the town had hired an out-of-towner with “very good credentials” to drive over the little ones to and fro.
Afterward, Burt didn’t care how bad his back was. Though big Jimmy said it was one fucking day too late, Burt stuck a syringe of cortisone into his thigh three times a week and got behind the wheel of the bus until the town gently retired him, because every time he went over a pothole, he cried out in such anguish that the little kids shrieked in terror. Fryeburg had to either repair the town’s potholes or golden-shake Burt’s hand. The second option was cheaper.
On Jimmy’s tombstone: “THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY.”
Other repercussions: three years ago, Mason comforted Chloe by taking her hand one summer night and becoming her boyfriend.
Still other repercussions: instead of Barcelona, Chloe was headed to an orphanage in Latvia. Damn Uncle Kenny to all hell.
After it happened, Lang did not come out of her house for five months. Then she bought a sewing machine, learned how to stitch herself bright new clothes and staggered on. She bought a heat-gun and heat-cured paints and took up painting lifesize dolls, the height of a small girl, or perhaps a boy. She made fifty of them, and then sold them on consignment, immersing herself instead in gardening with Chloe. The money from the fifty dolls was still dribbling in. And now Lang was giving some of it to Chloe to go to Latvia to search for another lifesize boy.
14 (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)
The Meaning of Typos (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)
YOU HAD TO GIVE IT TO HER. LANG TRIED. BY HERSELF SHE took Chloe to apply for a passport. Turned out both parents had to be physically present to sign the application. Chloe, of course, knew why her mother would prefer her father not come, but said nothing.
With Jimmy in tow, Lang quickly filled out the application form while Chloe, bored and hungry and anxious because her mother was anxious, tried to distract her father. The scene would’ve been funny if her mother wasn’t so stressed out. Her dad, bless him, was barely paying attention to the words Lang was writing down, but when it came time to sign, he moved Lang’s hand away from the paper so he could sign his name by the X at the bottom, and casually glanced over the document.
“Mother,” he said, “why are you so careless? You’re as bad as the incompetents in the school records department. Look, you’ve misspelled her name.” He turned to the postal clerk. “Dave, get us another application. My wife here doesn’t know her own daughter’s name.”
“Sure thing, chief.”
“Thanks, buddy. Careful this time,” Jimmy told Lang. “Want me to do it?”
“No, your handwriting is terrible. I’ll do it.”
“At least I know how to spell.”
“Who can tell? No one can read it.”
He watched her.
Lang gestured to Chloe, who once again tried to distract her father with idle chatter about the upcoming prom, graduation, her dress, a limo, a chaperone. Lang said her pen was running out of ink; could Jimmy go get her another?
He went, but as soon as he returned, he peered over the top of her rounded shoulder.
“Lang! You did it again. What’s the matter with you? I don’t know what’s wrong with your mother today, Chloe. Dave, sorry, I need one more application.”
Lang sighed and straightened up from the counter. Chloe stepped away. She made eye contact with Dave and shook her head, as if to signal him to wait, but also to scram because all kinds of crap was about to go down inside the peaceful Fryeburg post office on a weekday afternoon.
Lang placed her hand on her husband’s chest, on Chloe’s father, Jimmy Devine. “Jimmy,” she said mildly. “Wait.”
He waited.
“I didn’t misspell it, Jimmy,” Lang said. “Look.”
She thrust Chloe’s birth certificate into his face. Jimmy stared, perplexed. Plain as noon, printed in black, with a raised seal from the state of Maine confirming the official nature of the words was “Divine.” Preceded by “Chloe Lin.”
Jimmy understood nothing. “For eighteen years you knew the registrar’s office misspelled our kid’s name and you never told me?”
“Oh well.” Lang patted him. “Nothing we can do about it now. Let’s sign and go.”
“Nothing we can do about it?” he bellowed. “Of course there’s something we can do about it.”
“Not in time for her to get her passport for Europe.”
“She can’t have a passport with her name misspelled in it, Mother,” Jimmy said in his best no-arguments-will-be-entertained chief-of-police voice. “A passport is good for ten years. But a mistake like this is forever. No.”
“Jimmy.”
“No! I said we will fix it and we will fix it.”
Lang did not raise her voice. “It’s not misspelled, Jimmy,” she said. “That’s what I told the lady to write.”
“What lady?” He was dumbfounded.
“The lady at the hospital who came to take the baby’s name for the birth certificate. I told her to write Divine.”
“Well, the idiot clearly didn’t hear you correctly. She needs to be fired. Chloe is not going to have the wrong name on her passport because of a typo.”
“It’s not a typo, Jimmy. I spelled it out for her. I told her to write D-I-V-I-N-E.”
There was commotion at the post office. A man was taping a box shut, the plastic ripping off loudly. The metal door to the postmaster’s quarters slammed, a phone trilled, somebody laughed.
Jimmy was mute.
“It’s not a typo,” Lang repeated. “I wanted her to be Chloe Divine.”
“You made a mistake.”
“I wrote Divine on purpose.”
“But our name is Devine! With an E!”
“I know that. But not her name.”
Jimmy stammered. “What are you saying, woman? That you deliberately gave my daughter a different last name from her father?”
“Same name. One letter different.”
“That’s a different name!”
“No. Just one different letter.”
“A different name!”
“Jimmy.”
Jimmy was hyperventilating.
Chloe hid her amusement. She knew her mother was being disingenuous, for no one knew the power of a letter or two better than Lang, who could have been Lin, which meant beautiful, or Liang, which meant good and excellent, or Lan, which meant orchid, but instead she was Lang, which meant sweet potato. Lang knew the difference between Devine and Divine very well, which is why she changed it in the first place, why she wrote it with an I, why she kept it from her husband for nearly eighteen years. She knew. Divine: altogether marvelous and lovely, celestial and glorious, of the gods, with the gods, exquisite, heavenly, limitless and great. Divine.
15 (#ulink_c315cb6d-4c16-5fbb-be55-e87b89d678f8)
She Will Be Loved (#ulink_c315cb6d-4c16-5fbb-be55-e87b89d678f8)
AT THE END OF JUNE, CHLOE WENT TO HER PROM. IT WAS held in the glass ballroom at the Grand Summit Hotel in Attitash, at the foot of the White Mountains. All the boys dashing, all the girls beautiful. Chloe tried not to judge through her mother’s eyes: who was on parade at a bordello? A few would’ve fit that description. Mackenzie O’Shea in particular. The trouble with Mackenzie was that she thought herself to be quite a tasty morsel. Chloe couldn’t figure out why Mackenzie annoyed her so much. Plenty of girls at the prom were dressed much sluttier.
Mason did his best to match his cummerbund to Chloe’s funky pewter jewelry and silk silver dress, but he was more granite than metal. Hannah, of course, was a tall glass of water in a clingy mango dress, almost like a slip, with shoulder straps and a bare back, but Hannah had nothing to reveal under her dress except skin, no folds, no fat, no breasts, no sags, nothing unseemly, nothing out of proportion, nothing to make her self-conscious. Her dress was low-cut, but because she was so slim, she didn’t look slutty, she looked royal. Chloe, on the other hand, couldn’t wear anything low-cut for obvious reasons, and she couldn’t wear anything too high-necked because then she looked like a retiring female politician. She couldn’t wear an open-back dress because she required a full-back bra to contain what she normally contained under three or four layers of clothing. Summer was always a challenge. She opted for lifeguard bathing suits—red and two sizes too tight—that slammed anything that might bounce against her sternum. Unfortunately, bathing suits were not a dress option for the prom.
After searching for most of her senior year, Chloe finally found something she could wear—a flapper dress, vintage and hand-beaded in glass. It had a cascading fringe, a straight fall and an almost modest V-neck. She wriggled into a square-necked black Spanx slip to cover up her cleavage, and after putting on black eyeliner and black satin sandals, was generally pleased with her almost Audrey Hepburn–like appearance. She left her hair mirror-shiny and down, and wore a red lipstick and a red rose corsage to contrast with the silver beads. She also contrasted well, she thought, against Mackenzie’s pink tutu of a dress, against the girl’s infuriatingly long legs and cheap stilettos. Mackenzie’s straps looked ready to snap at any moment—on her shoes and her shoulders. What a mess that girl was. Why didn’t the boys think so?
While Hannah and Taylor and Courtney spent the day fussing with their hair and makeup, Chloe was done by one. She then sat on her manicured hands and waited, dreaming about Europe and fretting about traveling from Riga to Barcelona.
“It’s two thousand miles by train, Chloe,” Blake had said to her. “What’s the big deal? In July a band of men travel two thousand miles up the French Alps on their bikes. It takes them three weeks. You’re telling me we can’t do the same sitting on a train?”
Chloe had been wrong about Blake. As soon as he heard of the new plan for Europe, he produced maps and atlases, guides on the Baltics, a Latvian–English dictionary, several National Geographics about flying around the Baltic Sea, the 1915 partition of Poland, and a story on the last of the Polish Jews. Absurdly, he acted more excited about going to Riga than to Barcelona. He told her he had always wanted to visit Vilnius. Chloe corrected his geography, told him Vilnius was in Lithuania, not Latvia, and he corrected her right back, telling her that you couldn’t get to Poland from Latvia without first going through Lithuania and the Gates of Dawn. Jostling Hannah, shaking her like a bear shakes a rabbit in his mouth, play punching Mason, filling his notebook with pages and pages of notes and facts and stories and asides about Riga and Vilnius and Warsaw, a thrilled Blake acted as if it was paradise already.
For the prom Jimmy lent the four of them his Durango, and Blake drove them to Grand Summit. Initially they had planned to rent a white limo and go in style, like some of the other kids. But now that they had the expanded trip to the post-Communist world and three weeks of travel to budget for, no one wanted to plonk down eight hundred bucks on a limo. To save money, Blake and Mason even said they would forego tuxes, until Janice put her foot down, thank God, and paid for their tux rental herself.
The girls had seen their boys in suits once before, at a funeral, before Chloe and Mason started dating, but tonight was different. Mason, of course, was groomed like a country-club lawn, but even Blake made an effort to comb his hair and trim his stubble. It was funny how he tried to fit his all-over-the-place self into a black tux and patent leather shoes. Though he looked handsome, he didn’t look as if he were born to it. After the first fifteen attempts to fix his crooked bow tie, Hannah gave up.
Chloe and Mason had been nominated for prom queen and king. The king and queen were voted on as a pair, and Chloe knew she was holding Mason back from winning. Without her he would have been prom king for sure, but she was never going to be prom queen, not even in a dress with beads shimmering and clinking like champagne glasses. It’s an honor just to be nominated, cooed Taylor, trying to stay positive.
The week the nominations had come out, Chloe had found an anonymous note stuffed into her locker. How does it feel to know you are keeping that boy from winning what is rightfully his? Chloe threw the note in the trash, but she thought about it now, on the dance floor with Mason. She couldn’t ignore the sense that other girls were appraising them, and concluding that she wasn’t good enough for that boy.
Fed up with their imaginary glances, Chloe excused herself. In the bathroom, she took off her dress and squirmed out of the suffocating Spanx. Her liberated breasts rose up in rebellion out of their gunmetal V. With cleavage on display, she looked much less like Audrey Hepburn and more like a squat Sophia Loren. Perhaps this was a more fitting look for an almost prom queen.
She strode out into the ballroom where Mason was waiting. The way he smiled at her, it was worth it to overlook for tonight one of her mother’s more critical mottos against revealing clothing.
Mason was a great and special boy. Although he wasn’t much of a dancer, tonight he kept up with Chloe song after song, dancing alongside Blake and Hannah, doing the Macarena, seeing how low he could go under the limbo stick. Pretty low, it turned out. Lower than Blake, even. She touched his face as they danced. She kissed him. On the dance floor she was almost allowed to do this. The Academy’s six vile lunch ladies had transformed themselves into equally vile prom chaperones. They waddled between the tables like malevolent mallards, quacking. What are you doing? You’re sitting too close. No public displays of affection, go dance, but respectably. Are you finished with your dinner? You haven’t touched your steak, your mother and father will be pleased to see their hard-earned money going into the garbage. Fix the straps on your dress, young lady, Miss Divine, your dress is riding inappropriately low. Miss Divine, I’ll thank you to keep your hands on the table, not on your boyfriend’s lap. Mr. Haul, please remove your paws from your date’s bare back. Miss Gramm, do you have a shawl you can throw on? You look cold. Miss Divine, do you have a shawl you can throw on? Mason, honey, you look wonderful tonight. As you were, dear boy. As you were.
Although the occasion was jolly, Hannah seemed less jolly than usual. When they had a minute to themselves on the dance floor, Chloe pulled Hannah close. Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me” was playing.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said to her friend.
“Nothing. Why? Do I seem off?”
“Little bit.”
“No, I’m fine.” She patted Chloe. “It’s all good.”
“You look beautiful.”
“You too. Very va-va-voom.” Hannah sighed. “He’s threatened suicide, you know.”
“Who?”
“Martyn, of course. Says he can’t handle it. What am I going to do? How am I going to go to UMaine, knowing I’ll run into him?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe replied, a little too loudly and brightly, as if delighted by the possibility that Hannah might consider not going to UMaine.
“Maybe I should just join the Peace Corps.”
“What?”
“Why not? I’m an idealistic young person. I’d like to visit Ecuador. They travel all the time. I’d meet new people. Experience different cultures.”
“Um, are you selfless and unobtrusive?”
“Yes.”
“You know they don’t get paid, right? They’re volunteers. It’s not like joining the army.”
“I won’t need any money. I’ll be in Ecuador.” Hannah’s long arms draped over Chloe’s neck. She smelled of Dior Poison. It drowned out Chloe’s gentle musky scent. Chloe patted Hannah’s bare back. She could feel the blades of her shoulders, like wooden fence boards.
“The Peace Corps has been in the news lately,” Chloe said. “And not in a positive light. They may have forgotten their initial objectives.”
Hannah chuckled, pulled Chloe closer, ran her hand over Chloe’s hair. “Silly girl,” she said. “I love how you’re always trying to talk me out of bad choices. Don’t worry, cutie. I’m not serious about the Peace Corps. Besides, I can’t not go to UMaine. I’d never leave you there by your lonesome. So don’t worry. You want to go find our boys?”
A pasted-on smile greeted Hannah when the girls disengaged. “Cheer up,” Hannah said as the girls made their way through the taffeta and satin jungle, searching for their dates. “Like you said, we’re not Darlene Duranceau. Everything’s still ahead of us.”
They got separated. Chloe remained at the edge of the pulsing, strobe-lighting floor. Somewhere on the other side of the ballroom, near white walls and glass doors, reflected in black windows and royal mirrors, Chloe glimpsed Mason, his spiky hair, smiling mouth, delight, bow tie, surrounded by a flurry of shiny silk snowflakes, a lake of reflected satin and soft flesh. In other words, encircled by the cheer squad, blonde hair and soprano giggles all. They were trying to ensnare him in their ribald karaoke routine. In the strobes Mason was being girl-handled, teased, laughed at, pawed. It all throbbed across in fractions of real time, two seconds of black followed by a neon explosion. Chloe couldn’t even be sure it was him. It could have been nothing more than a flash of athletic-field memory. After school, she sits in the bleachers and does her homework, while on the field Mason pitches and flirts with the flirty girls. But mostly he pitches, and mostly Chloe reads, and it’s only for a fraction of an image between blinks and pages that Chloe thinks, is there something there or is it just adolescent fun? She barely even thinks it. She feels it, and in only two or three beats out of a whole minute of her heart.
“Chloe,” a voice says. She blinks and comes to.
Blake was in front of her, smiling, appraising her with his familiar eyes, soaking up her shiny baubles, glittering beads, perhaps other luscious things.
“Have you seen Hannah?”
“She’s looking for you. Seen Mason?”
“He was over there.” Blake waved to the glassy parquet. David Bowie started up. Almost involuntarily their bodies moved up and down and sideways to the pulsing one-TWO, one-TWO of “Let’s Dance.”
As they were already gyrating, they gyrated toward each other, looking around for Hannah, for Mason, Chloe trying to make her breasts bob less (not easy) and make her tacked-on smile less uncomfortable. Her ears ringing like the bells of Notre Dame, Chloe wished she could check her watch. David Bowie was so loud. Oh my God, she thought, am I really that old? Is David Bowie too loud for me at seventeen? Let’s dance.
Maroon 5 came on, kinder, softer, better, lights flashing, bodies inching closer, and she and Blake inched reluctantly closer with apologetic smiles. Sorry there’s no one else to dance with to Adam Levine, their awkward expressions read. Then he opened his arms. She raised hers and stepped up to the Blakeplate. Placing one hand into his, she rested the other on his large tuxy shoulder. She felt the pressure of his palm low around her waist, felt his open fingers not just resting against the back of her flapper dress, but holding her.
“Look, I shaved,” he said into her ear. “Do you see?”
She saw.
“Do you like it better like this, or normal?”
What was the thing to say here? “Either way’s fine.”
“Do you know this song?”
“What?”
He leaned down, toward her, close. “This song, Chloe,” he screamed into her perforated eardrum. “‘She Will Be Loved.’ Do you remember it?”
She knew it well. Everybody knew it. The boys and girls sang it as they played volleyball in gym, as they ran up and down the stairs, as they spring-cleaned the front lawn for field day, as they devoured their sandwiches at lunch. They sang it, they knew it. “She Will Be Loved.” She pretended she didn’t hear him or that it was too loud to reply that of course she remembered it. She nodded in the general direction of his shaggy curly head.
“Are you excited!?”
“About what?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as psyched about anything in my whole life. Riga! Vilnius! Warsaw!”
And Barcelona, she wanted to add to his litany of paradise, but there was no point—he wouldn’t hear her. She tried to catch the floating threads of his voice. He was repeating his avid approval of her idea last week that they should each keep a journal in Europe and at the end of the trip share them with one another. At least, that’s what she thought he was saying. The music was so relentless. Where was the prom queen who didn’t belong to him? He searched for the eighteen-year-old every day for miles. Your dress is pretty, Blake might have said. Very sparkly. You and Mason light up the floor.
“What did you say?” she yelled. Her heart was full.
“You smell so good,” he said, his head near her perfumed earlobes. “What is that?”
“Jovan Musk,” she yelled back. “And Love’s Baby Soft!”
Where was Mason? She flew across the bodies, searching for this mysterious Mason, and found him entombed in a bevy of loathsome beauties dazzling him with their best cheer moves. Come hither, said the spiders to the fly.
“He’s not happy,” Blake yelled, warm breath in her face, his eyes merry. “No boy likes that kind of attention. Makes him feel like a hog at a fair.”
In a moment of swoony weakness, Chloe leaned her cheek against Blake’s black lapel. His big hand tightened around hers. His palm opened wider against her back.
She caught herself, and blessedly “She Will Be Loved” ended.
In silence the four of them chased dreams with time to lose in the empty ballroom. They were the last to leave. The overhead lights had been switched on. “A Hundred Years to Live” turned off in sync with the honk of Mackenzie’s dad’s rickety Buick. The waitresses were clearing the last of the teacups and the janitors were dragging black trash cans around. Most of the white balloons had run out of helium and floated down to the floor in tired gasps.
Chloe watched a red balloon twitching under a table. She and Mason didn’t win. Was he disappointed? He didn’t say. But he also didn’t say something corny like, don’t worry, you’re still my queen. He wasn’t a corny guy. Chloe appreciated that. Mackenzie had invited them all to her house for an after-prom sleepover. They didn’t go. Chloe wasn’t allowed, and Hannah didn’t want to. Go if you want, Chloe had said to Mason. I won’t mind. Are you sure? he asked. The briefest of glares from Blake interrupted him. Mason’s just kidding, Blake said. Yes, I am, said Mason. And now here they all were.
“They’re going to throw us out.”
Hannah, wrapped around Blake, her head thrown back, looked up at the lights. “Let them try.”
Mason was next to Chloe. He was perspiring, and his bow tie had come undone. His tux jacket off, his hair wet from dancing, still slightly out of breath, he sat glazed, staring across the deserted dance floor, squeezing and unsqueezing Chloe’s hand. He was staring into the space by the wall where a short while ago he had been flanked and fondled by smiling shining soon-to-be-extinct nimble-bodied cheer queens.
Only Blake remained fully animated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sang, yeah, yeah, yeah.
“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Mason said to him. “Once high school’s over, our life as we know it is over. Everything familiar slides across the floor, out those double doors, and vanishes.”
Blake cheerfully thumped his brother on the shirt sleeve. “Duuude, no. Wrong attitude. The magic is just around the corner.”
Chloe pulled on Mason’s hand to redirect his attention from the spectral past to the material her. Obligingly he leaned over and she kissed him to make him forget whatever it was he couldn’t.
“I hope we find some good souvenirs,” Mason said. “Everyone is dying of jealousy that we’re going. I want to bring something back for them.”
“Like the clap?” Blake asked.
“That’s what you hope to get out of our adventure?” said Hannah. “Cheesy trinkets for your dumb friends? Perhaps a fridge magnet from Auschwitz?”
“Let’s see if his friends can spell Auschwitz,” muttered Chloe.
“I’m afraid,” Mason said, “that the best part of my childhood is done. That when we come back, we won’t be kids anymore. Won’t see each other anymore.” Slowly he turned his head to stare at Chloe.
In shame she looked away.
“You and I will be kids forever, bro,” said Blake.
“And we’ll be only two hours from here, Mase,” said Hannah. “It’s not like we’re going cross-country. You’ll drive up one weekend, we’ll come down the next. You’ll see. It’ll be awesome.”
Now it was Mason who looked away. “Will it?” His dull voice faded into the white tablecloths.
Blake nudged Chloe, his black patent foot pushing the satin heel of her sandal. Nudged her, eyeing his brother, as if to say, don’t give up. Do something. Say something.
Not knowing what to say, Chloe stared up at a lonely blue balloon clinging to life. It had drifted off and hid around a glittering chandelier. Soon Spain. What would it be like? Noises of cities, flickering lights, midnight music, endless dancing, now and forever. A raucous man to swoon and sing the words, I want you to be queen. I want to tremble and laugh, Chloe thought, I want to cascade down the waterfall like a goddess, to see the substance of my fortune, to find the answer to my prayers. I want to see things I’ve never seen. Holy nights, intoxicating nights. I want to feel things I’ve never felt.
“I just figured out what’s in my blue suitcase,” said Blake. “Oh God. Of course. How could I have not seen? It’s fantastic. But don’t even ask. I won’t tell you. You’ll have to read to the end to find out what happens next.”
Part Two (#ulink_8763aa1e-ce22-592c-8213-073676602244)
Johnny Rainbow (#ulink_8763aa1e-ce22-592c-8213-073676602244)
One half of me is yours, the other half yours Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice,3.2
16 (#ulink_1d76ae96-c8dd-5011-85f5-71be31f3f683)
Modern Travel (#ulink_1d76ae96-c8dd-5011-85f5-71be31f3f683)
Chloe
Chloe truly hoped, really and truly, that the bulk of the twenty-one precious days in life-changing lands would be better than the travel to said lands because the travel sucked. If Dante lived now, what a book he’d write about the road to hell. Long, full of delays, unforeseen and expected trouble, stultifying waiting, wrong seats, terrible food, numb swollen legs, aching back head knees neck throat and throbbing glands—and not any glands that would be fun, at least theoretically, to have throbbing.
She had never traveled before, except in a car with her parents, and this wasn’t at all as she imagined, or as the movies made it out to be. It wasn’t in the least romantic. This was more like being stuck for nineteen hours in motionless traffic on the highway, except less comfortable, because instead of being inside a car, it felt as if the car were on top of Chloe. The carry-on backpack that weighed ten pounds when they left the house now felt like a hundred and ten. One of the wheels on the old suitcase was busted, so Chloe had to half-drag, half-carry it. Then it ended up being over the luggage limit by six pounds. It was either pay a hundred more dollars or lighten the load by one umbrella (she hoped it wouldn’t rain), two bottles of shampoo (how important was clean hair, anyway?), and two books (who had time to read?).
Before Chloe could lighten the load she was asked a ton of questions of punishing stupidity. Did you pack this yourself? She didn’t know what to say. Yes? But also—no. Her mother helped her. Was she allowed to mention she had a mother?
Did anyone else help you with your bags?
“Do you mean pack them? Or carry them?”
The lady pinpointed her contemptuous gaze on Chloe. “Just answer the question, young lady.”
“I want to. I just don’t know how to.”
“What don’t you get? Did anyone help you with your bags?”
“Pack them or carry them?” Mason helped her to carry them. Hannah helped her pack. Not just Hannah, but her mother and father, and Blake threw in a notebook, damn it. If it weren’t for his notebook, she could’ve kept her umbrella.
“Oh my God, I can’t do this today,” the lady said. “Either. Or.”
“No,” said Chloe, sweat running down her aching back.
The woman looked ready to punch Chloe in the head.
They had left home at nine in the morning for a 6 p.m. flight out of Logan. They had a four-hour drive to Boston, a burger lunch, and a wait in line. It was scary saying goodbye to her mother. Chloe acted like she was cool with it, but inside she was all stuttering ambivalence. What if something went wrong? Who would fix it? What if she lost her suitcase? What if she was robbed? What if all her money was gone? What if she couldn’t find Varda’s house? What if no one spoke English?
What Chloe dreaded most was the worst of all possible scenarios: a desperate need for a mother and no mother.
They had been right, her parents. Damn. She was too young to go anywhere. She could make it to the water slide in North Conway, twenty-eight miles away, but that was about it. She could deliver hot meals to old people. In the airport when Lang asked if she would be okay, Chloe said, of course, barely looking in her mother’s direction. Do you want me to stay? Lang asked. No, we’ll be fine, Blake piped up in his booming voice. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of her. Where was Chloe’s dad? He wanted to come, but couldn’t fit in the truck. Where was Terri Gramm? At L.L.Bean, unpacking the fall windbreakers. That’s why Hannah was real-calm, not fake-calm. She was already adult and on her own.
Hannah had bleached her hair before they left. It was Marilyn Monroe blonde now, squeaky straight, very short, and brushed back severely off her face. The electrified blonde bob made her look even more exotic. Hot damn.
They were late taxiing off, and Chloe imagined all horrors, and she meant all horrors, lurking under the belly of the plane while she bit her nails on the runway. How does a plane fly at night? How can the pilot see? Does the plane have headlights, like Mom’s car? But there are no roads. She kept her terrified musings to herself, gnawing on her nails to stop herself from running screaming from her seat. Hannah sat across the aisle with Blake. Mason was one seat in front of Chloe. They couldn’t even sit together. Mason kept writing notes to Chloe on tiny plane napkins and passing them back, as if in Science class. Whatcha doin? You excited? You hungry? You love me? I can’t wait. Look up, I’m smiling at you. Look between the seats, I’m blowing you a kiss. You think we can get postcards when we get to Riga? I want to send one home.
To that last one, she wrote back on her own tiny napkin. Who do you want to send postcards to?
Dunno, came his answer. Kids at school.
What kids?
Dunno. All of them. With a heart at the end.
In the car on the way to Logan, Chloe and Hannah had talked about two butch-looking girls they’d seen holding hands at L.L.Bean, and Chloe said out of nowhere, I bet Mackenzie is a lesbian, and Mason said, why would you say that, and Hannah said, Mason, what do you care if Chloe thinks Mackenzie is a lesbian. And even Blake said, yeah, bro. And Mason said nothing. Why did she remember this? Now he was sleeping. Chloe knew this because he stopped writing her love napkins.
Across the aisle Hannah kept her eyes closed while Blake chatted away, leaning his head against the middle seat, whispering, stage-whispering, joking, laughing, poking her, expounding, trying to get her to open her eyes and look into his notebook. Hannah wouldn’t play. Blake, she kept repeating. I want to sleep. But how can you sleep? This is so exciting.
Blake.
Wake up.
Blake.
Wake up.
“Blake!” That was Chloe, hissing. “Shut up.”
Chewing the cap off his pen, Blake feverishly wrote in his journal, occasionally glancing over at Chloe. You okay? he kept mouthing.
What are you writing? she whispered. He held it up, as if by its cover she’d know. It’s my “back” journal, he said. That’s what the Russians call it. For everything else but the main story.
How would he even know that? What Russians?
Chloe didn’t want to tell him she wasn’t okay, because there was no way to explain why she wasn’t, since she didn’t herself know, and so she nodded and closed her eyes, and then quickly opened them again because she didn’t want to miss the food trolley. Chloe loved to eat. Hannah missed it. She didn’t care about food at all. She once said to Chloe, maybe if you stopped with all that cereal and milk, your boobs wouldn’t have grown so big.
The lights were turned off, the movies came on, the headphones came out. Most people slept, or played computer games, or leafed through magazines. Chloe tried to read a book, AConnecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but couldn’t concentrate. She left to go to the bathroom, and Blake somehow hurled himself over a fake-sleeping Hannah and followed Chloe down the aisle.
“You can’t sleep either, right? It’s too exciting.”
“It’s many things,” she said.
“Exciting is definitely one of them, right?”
“Many things.”
“But exciting is one of them?”
It was pretty far down the list. Chloe didn’t say it. They waited for the bathroom.
“I think I packed too much stuff,” he said. He sounded so chipper. “Too many T-shirts and jeans. Where are we going to do laundry? I didn’t bring twenty-one pairs of jeans. Mase and I brought five hundred dollars spending money. You think that’ll be enough?”
“If you don’t eat, yes.”
He laughed. Sleeping people opened their eyes and glared.
“I’m glad we’re staying with your grandmother,” Blake said, only a notch quieter. “She’ll feed us.”
“She’s not my grandmother,” said Chloe. “My grandmother is in Fryeburg. Moody. You know her.”
“What about the other one—in Peking?” He tilted his teasing head.
Why? Why?
“It hasn’t been called Peking in over twenty years, one,” Chloe said, swatting him like a harassing fly, “and two, my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother never set foot in China. How many times do I have to say it?”
“What? No. I’ve never heard this story. Do tell.”
They didn’t want to go back to their seats so they loitered near the food cart and verbally abused the awful cookies to pass the time.
The flight dragged on. When Chloe thought they must be halfway around the world, in Singapore or someplace, they finally landed—but not in Riga. In Paris. Hannah was excited, but did they see Paris? No. They saw a Parisian airport. Four-hour layover. They wandered around, washed their faces, split two breakfast buns and two coffees, perused the duty free, put on some makeup (girls) and examined the liquor bottles (boys), then checked how much time they had left: three more hours. Having slept on the plane, Mason was refreshed, having fake-slept, Hannah sore and silent. Blake was exactly the same as he had been seven hours earlier, fourteen hours earlier, nineteen years earlier.
They bought a newspaper and Hannah pretended she could read French. Five minutes of mocking her passed the time. It would have been longer if she’d had a sense of humor. They checked out the naughty magazines, not even decorously covered up by brown paper. They were so progressive in Europe, Blake said, so advanced. Bless them, said Mason.
The girls were getting more and more impatient. “You’re looking at it all wrong,” Blake said. “It has to take a long time to get where we’re going, because we are leaving our old life behind. By the time we arrive in the new world, we are reborn. It’s supposed to take a long time, don’t you get it?”
“This is torture,” Hannah said. “What’s wrong with you that you don’t see it?”
“This is fantastic,” Blake said. “I’ve never been on a plane before. Or in an airport terminal. Never met a French person. Or seen a French blue magazine.” He winked with delight. “I’m writing down my impressions in the back journal. Who has time to be ornery?”
Hannah asked if Blake could write down his impressions silently, mutely, off.
Blake didn’t think he could. On the flight from Paris to Riga, the brothers sat together and the girls sat in front of them. The guys kept throwing paper over the seats, pulling the girls’ hair, whispering, laughing.
Questions of Punishing Stupidity Part II: Customs control.
Are you bringing anything into Latvia? Are you carrying contraband? She didn’t even know what contraband was. How could she know if she was carrying it? Are you carrying drugs?
What is your business in Latvia?
What is your destination?
The Latvian customs control were philosophers! Did they mean today? Where was she headed after she left the airport? Or did they mean the destination from which she would fly home? Or the destination to which she was headed in five short weeks, not in Riga, not in Maine, not in Spain, but far far away, in a distant land of saints, palms and stucco. What was her destination indeed, damn them.
Mason
Last month when Blake and I went to fix Lupe’s rotted-out pantry shelves, she said to us that we all float on a boat down a river of Truth that keeps dividing and dividing into tributaries that reunite, and once we reach the sea, we die. We spend our whole existence arguing with each other about which tributary leads to the main stream. “But they all lead to the same place,” she said.
I saved it for later to understand. The later is now. Because I’m trying to look out the window, and all the others are doing is arguing.
Lupe also told Blake that a wise man does three things. First, he does himself that which he advises others to do. (I don’t know if I do that.) Second, he doesn’t do anything that contravenes the Truth. (What is this river of Truth?) And third, he is patient with the weaknesses of those who surround him. (I am definitely not that.) She said Blake was all three.
Blake says he loves that woman. But I don’t know if I agree with her. He keeps borrowing Mom’s car to drive over there and take her to the doctor. There’s always yelling at home now because the four of us are trying to make do with one car and a loaner, a beaten-up jalopy with pistons that misfire in two of its four lousy cylinders. Blake causes strife in our house. I ask you, how wise is that? And how tolerant of it am I? He says Lupe needs a new fire pit. I tell him Mom needs her car, Dad needs a new back, and I need to get to a varsity reunion. Everybody needs something.
I thought that in Europe there’d be no yelling. Silly me. Here I am, in the cab from the airport, my face to the window. Please tell me I will find something here other than strife.
Hannah doesn’t like to travel. Oh, she talks a good game about how she’s going to travel all over the world for some job, translating or something, but I truly believe it’s a fantasy. She hates to go anywhere. I don’t know why she wanted to go to Europe with Chloe. When Chloe told me she and Hannah were heading to Barcelona, I wanted to remind my girlfriend of the few days the previous winter when the four of us went to Franconia to ski. The lift had broken after our first run. There was a blizzard, followed by an avalanche. We were snowed in for four days, with no power, no TV, no radio. Hannah nearly went mad, and we were an hour away from home.
No one lost a limb. No one starved. No one froze. We were just stuck. It hadn’t gone as we planned. But we had a fire, we shoveled snow, we went sledding and snowboarding until they came and cleared the road. We sang songs, and ate cans of Campbell’s soup from the cupboard, stale cereal, almonds, pretzels, pork rind, and talked about life. We played Scrabble and charades and cards, and Risk. It wasn’t glorious skiing, but three of us thought it was fun. Not Hannah. She said it was the worst four days of her life.
Blake laughed it off. He thinks she’s a sugar plum and a candy cane and doesn’t take anything she says or does seriously. I tried to counsel him. She wasn’t joking, I said. She was utterly unmoved by my beautiful Franconia.
Getting from Boston to Riga is another good example of what I mean. We did have to wait a long time. So what? The seats weren’t the most comfortable. So what? The food wasn’t as good as Burger King. But so what, and what is? We are on a three-week joyride together. To Europe! That’s amazing. During the Franconia snow-in, we were with our mom and Chloe’s mom. You know, to keep an eye on things. Make sure we didn’t get out of hand, and um, out of some things, and into other things. This time we’re motherless, and the girls still aren’t happy. Chloe keeps calling Riga her penance. I hope she is joking. And Hannah doesn’t care about anything but Barcelona. She also thinks we’re going to swing over to Paris for a few days. If I didn’t know that Hannah doesn’t have a humorous bone in her body, I’d swear she was joking. To explain why we couldn’t “swing over to Paris,” Blake tried to show her the map, to talk through the twenty-one days of our trip with her, every one accounted for, but she ignored him. To pay her back, Blake and I now ignore every mention of Paris. It’s like we can’t hear her. Every time she says Paris, we say, what? She says PARIS, and we say, what? She says Paris!!! We say, what?
I can’t tell you how much that annoys her and amuses us.
It’s warm in Riga, and the fields are pretty. Maine has more pine. Here, everywhere I look, the grass is uncut. The roads have no shoulders and no sidewalks. I’m sure when we get closer to the city, there will be sidewalks. Right? There have to be some sidewalks somewhere, no?
Hannah is an ice queen. I’d never say anything to my smitten brother. I know she’s beautiful and all. But my God. She’s sitting in a Latvian taxi, looking at her feet. She’s not even looking out the window. I say, Hannah, look, Riga.
And she says, so? It’s a city. I’ve seen cities before.
But you’ve never seen Riga, right?
The worst part is, she got Blake to sit in the middle because she said she wanted to sit next to a window, and now she’s not even looking out of it! If I was Blake, I’d be pissed. Heck, I’m pissed already, and I’m not even Blake.
At least Chloe loves stuff. Once she stops being anxious and, granted that’s easier for me to write than for her to do, but once she stops, she loves stuff. She loves going to the movies and to water parks, loves talking and fishing, and though I don’t like fishing, I like that she likes it. She loves skating and plays a mean four-player hockey game. And she’s a fast skater, too. Not as fast as Blake, but fast for a girl. I can buy her an ice cream or a burger, and she eats it with gusto. She likes driving, and she sings when she drives. She sings when she gardens, too. She never yells at other drivers. And she is so pretty. She doesn’t like people to think that, sometimes not even me. Says she doesn’t want me to objectify her, or some shit like that. I still like looking at her, and when she lets me, I like touching her. She’s got the silkiest hair of anybody I’ve ever met. And other soft nice things too. I wish she’d let me touch her more often. Sometimes it’s hard to get her alone. Ever since Dad’s truck broke, it’s been a bitch to get together just the two of us. Blake and Hannah somehow manage, because on top of everything else, I’m always at varsity. Poor Blake. He’s the most in-deep-trouble dude in Maine, because not only does he not know how unlucky he is, but he thinks he’s lucky.
Things I’m most stoked about: 1. Seeing the Alps on the way to Spain. 2. Barcelona. 3. Being alone with Chloe. Miles of beaches, cheap hotels, food, drink, night. Maybe a room to ourselves. I can’t wait. A last hurrah.
Hannah
I miss him. I’m a million miles away and yet all I can think about is him. Last time we saw each other he kept begging me to let him come visit me for a few days in Spain. I said, how could you possibly, I’m going with Blake. He didn’t care. He said maybe I could get away for a few hours. Where would I tell Blake I’m going, I asked him. To a Barcelona bed with me, he said.
I want to be a good girlfriend for Blake here in Europe, give him these few weeks as happy memories. He’s been good to me. And I’ve been good to him, of course.
Mason has never seen anything or been anywhere, so he’s acting like Riga is da bomb. It’s annoying. I didn’t even know Riga was a capital city until Moody told me. I had barely heard of Latvia. This isn’t where my future lies. I’m going to study to be a trilingual interpreter. I will wear beautiful clothes and go to state dinners in the capitals of the world. Not Riga. Other capitals. I will meet important diplomats, shake their hands and flirt with them. I will get fluent in Spanish and French. Where is my French book? I want to study my subjunctive conjugations while we pass Riga by.
Tomorrow Chloe is going to the orphanage and the boys to the Old City. I’m tempted to send them all off without me, so that I can get over the jetlag, write, practice my Spanish and French, and my English elocution. I’ll say I’m not feeling well. I’ll allude to some womanly problems. That always works. I’ve actually been feeling off lately, that’s not a lie.
Blake
Everything is amazing. Traveling was great. I want to travel all the time. I love planes, I’d never been on one, but how amazing! Packing was fun, carrying stuff, helping the girls, the ride to Boston; I wish we had time to spend a few days in Boston, looking around, walking around. When I grow up and have my own business and can take off work whenever I want, I’ll go to Boston once a month for a long weekend, just to walk around and see the sights. Maybe Chloe can go to Harvard Law School and Mason and I can go visit her. The airport was awesome. I had four burgers because I knew I might not eat for a few hours. The check-in lady weighed my bags to see if they were over, but she should’ve weighed me, because I was over. Ha! Four burgers, two large fries, a large shake, and a Hershey chocolate pie. And a Coke. I was full up, man. She forgot to weigh me. Poor Chloe hardly ate at all, on account of being such a nervous flyer. Her bag was too heavy. She said it was because of my journal, but I told her it was because of her three pairs of shoes.
Hannah is the most seasoned traveler out of all of us, which isn’t saying much, because we’ve never been anywhere, but she’s been to Quebec once, and to Niagara Falls. Before her ’rents imploded, they took her and Jason to Chicago, and once to see Elvis’s house in Memphis, because her crazy cheating dad is an Elvis freak. She took five years of Spanish and three years of French, as she keeps reminding us. So she’s an expert, she says, and doesn’t need to be awake. I love how calm she is.
Poor Chloe! Mason wasn’t sitting next to her and he was snoring to boot, and Hannah was meditating or whatever, but Chloe really needed to talk to somebody to calm down, and she had no one. She would’ve been less steamed if she’d talked to somebody. She just needed a few jokes and some banter about bullshit.
I’m so psyched about Riga. Who else but me is going to write about Riga in the competition? I’m going to season my story with the spice of Europe, baby, and I’m going to choose my words extra carefully, and they’ll be dazzled. I’ll have Chloe read it before I send it, so she’ll be dazzled too, and she’ll say, I didn’t know you could write, Blake, and be all impressed. Look at how awesome your story is, she’ll say.
17 (#ulink_d7e2c89d-7bab-5a54-bad3-90430f166714)
Carmen in Carnikava (#ulink_d7e2c89d-7bab-5a54-bad3-90430f166714)
Chloe
She loved the city in the distance. She loved the traffic on the roads (though she loved it less on the bridge they were failing to cross), and the vivid colors of the buildings. She even liked the unfamiliar sounds of Latvian: half-Slavic, half-guttural.
She was ashamed she was such a bad and unprepared traveler. Having no one to turn to, since neither Hannah nor Mason knew anything about Riga, Chloe turned to Blake, who walked arm in arm with his back journal, and it so happened that his journal on this particular Saturday was filled with tidbits about Latvia! He was infuriating. Why was he always the one looking things up, knowing things? What did Riga have to do with his story? “Everything,” he said. “The story keeps morphing, my dear Haiku. The chrysalis is becoming a butterfly. Did you know for example that Riga is a hotbed of spy activity? I’ll use that detail in my book.”
“What do Latvian double agents have to do with the suitcase found in a dead woman’s yard?”
“We don’t know where the suitcase was found,” he declared. “Don’t assume anything.”
“Your hero goes to Riga to find his answers?”
“Also, don’t assume he’s the hero. He may be the anti-hero. But yes, he goes to Riga. Just look at this place!”
She did. She was startled by the black church spires rising up outside the taxi windows, and she was startled by Blake. His cheerful immersion in the details of their travel and his commitment to his unformed opus were completely at odds with the Blake Chloe had grown up with. He was confounding. Hannah was no help. She accepted the new Blake the way she had accepted the old Blake, with neutral amusement.
Now, stuck in traffic on the bridge over the Daugava River, Chloe was forced to listen to Mr. Eager plan their itinerary like he was some kind of expert on all things Latvian.
“We’ll go to the Central Market. We can’t leave Riga without seeing it. And the Riga Museum. Also the Opera House. And, Chloe, I can’t wait to try the Black Balsam—how about you? No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll find out soon enough.” Leaning forward between the seats, he poked her in the arm. “There’s also a bakery that’s to die for, you know how much you like pastries, wait, I’m looking for the name of it …”
Hannah, of course, in her dry way, rained on all things, especially the bakery. “Well, it can’t be any better than the bakery in Bangor, near UMaine,” she said. “They have the most divine cream puffs. I drool when I think about them, and I don’t usually like sweets. And can the Riga Museum really compare to the Field Museum in Chicago? Same with the Opera House. It might be okay by Latvian standards, but compared to Carnegie Hall? And you know what I think? Beer is beer. Heineken, Bud, Black Balsam. It’s just beer, Blake. Plus Chloe doesn’t even like beer. Let’s not talk about it like it’s Dom Pérignon.”
Mason, looking and sounding annoyed, asked Hannah if she’d ever actually had Dom Pérignon.
“I’m just saying,” said Hannah.
“Didn’t think so,” said Mason.
Blake didn’t care. Sitting between Hannah and Mason in the back, he leafed through his notebook, his bedhead banging the roof of the cab. “Chloe,” he asked absent-mindedly, “when did you take Hannah to a Bangor bakery? You had cream puffs and didn’t tell me? Were they really that good?”
Chloe was at a loss. On the radio, the Latvian music, full of balalaikas and cymbals, syncopated through the cab.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember.” She stared at the outlines of the city through the window. “Moody’s aunt lives so far outside Riga. When would we even get to a bakery?”
“Don’t worry,” Blake said. “We’ll find a way. This bakery is a must-see.”
Chloe was hungry, sleepy, slightly irritated by the long ride, the slow-moving traffic. “Well, it definitely can’t be tomorrow,” she said. “We have to go to Liepaja.” The air whistled out of her balloon. Across the wide river, the Old City tempted her, its blue and pink walls, its green and yellow roofs, the colored stone, the purple domes, the pale light of the late afternoon northern sun. Riga seemed to be holding its breath before the raucous Saturday night ahead. Like Chloe was holding her breath before the next twenty days, before the rest of her life.
“We don’t all have to go to Liepaja,” said Blake.
Hannah heartily agreed.
“Chloe, I’ll go with you if you want,” Mason said from the back seat.
“I thought we would all go,” said Chloe. “Wasn’t that the plan? To live through everything together, like always?”
“We don’t have enough time.” That was Blake. “Hannah will go with you, Haiku. Mase has to come with me. We’re going to the war museum, bro, the Powder Tower. Manly things that dainty girls aren’t interested in. We’re writing a story. This is the work part of our trip. While Chloe is in Liepaja looking for a boy, you and I have to find nefarious goings-on in Riga.”
“No!” said Hannah. “Why do I have to go to Liepaja? I’d rather go to Riga with you. But not to a bakery. What’s the point of going to a bakery if Chloe’s not coming with us? I’m not going to eat any of that cream-filled starch. I’ll be five hundred pounds before the trip is over.” Spoken like a true size 2.
Chloe couldn’t help herself. “If you don’t like the pastries, Hannah,” she said, “then why were you wolfing down so many of them at the Bangor bakery?”
“She makes a good point, turtle, why?” said Blake.
“I was much thinner then.”
As if that answered anything.
“And what do you mean you’re not coming with me?” Chloe knew she sounded petulant. “Somebody has to come with me.”
“Yeah, Hannah,” Blake said. “Chloe can’t find a boy on her own.” He pulled Chloe’s hair. “She needs help.”
“Leave me alone,” Chloe said.
“I’ll come with you, Chloe,” said Mason.
“You can’t, bro. What did I just say?”
They were finally out of the city, over the bright, freshly minted bridge. The countryside went from urban to rural in the space of two city blocks and a farm. Inside the cramped cab, their tired chatter faded.
“What’s the name of the town we’re going to again?”
“Carnikava,” Blake said. “Chloe, why do I have to tell you where you’re going?”
“Not Carnikava,” the cabbie said. “Tsarnikava.”
Blake studied the map. “Says here Carnikava.”
“Tsarnikava!” the cabbie yelled.
After five tense minutes, Chloe spoke again. “How far is … Tsarnikava from here?”
“Twenty kilometers!” the cabbie said. “Maybe … twenty … FIVE!”
“Thank you!” she shouted back. She glanced back at Mason. His eyes were closed. He hated stridency, yelling. How did one yell thank you in Latvian? You’d think Chloe would’ve thought to pack a Latvian–English dictionary. Just to learn how to say thank you, or where is …? or how much?
“Paldies,” said Blake.
Oh, great. So he knew how to say thank you. She retreated into herself, her gaze on the fields. How could her grandmother have an aunt still living? It made no sense. “Chloe, did you say your family were bee farmers?” Blake asked.
“I never said that.” Did she say that? She couldn’t remember.
“You did say that. I bet they have awesome honey. I can’t wait.”
“Did you say beer farmer?” Mason deadpanned.
“Yes, that’s right, bro. Beer farmer. You got it.” They started roughhousing over Hannah. Chloe felt better. Maybe they could leave the aunt’s house after one night, stay in a Riga hostel? She thought this, but then she checked the meter. The price was ratcheting up like a champion swine for sale at the Fryeburg Fair.
47.
She swivelled her head to stare meaningfully at her three companions but none of them could convert the number into dollars, not even the brilliant Blake. Chloe had thought about nothing but the trip for months, but now she felt unprepared. The numbers on the wretched meter kept clicking upward. 51. Her anxiety level rose with each digit.
“What’s the currency here?” she bleated.
“Latu,” the cabbie said. “One latu, almost two dollar. One, two. Easy.” He laughed, opening a big-lipped, inadequately dentured mouth.
Chloe spun around, eyes big. Blake, sitting in the middle, stared at the meter—55 now—and laughed.
“Next time, take train,” the cabbie said. “Without bags, easy. One latu to Riga. One latu.”
59. 60. 61. Yeah. Maybe next time they would take the train.
The trees got taller, pinier, the countryside flatter, the yards more florid. There were farms and peat bog, and swamps. There was a dusky mauve color to the long-limbed conifers. The rural roads were poorly marked. It took the cabbie a while to find the address. For a few miles he drove down a long potholed avenue lined with birches. The small houses, mostly made of stone, were set deep inside the verdant foliage. They were neatly kept, had flowers and greenhouses. The landscape was nearly indistinguishable from Maine. Except for the shadow of the rangy White Mountains and the abundance of lakes, Carnikava and Fryeburg seemed more closely related than Moody and Varda. Chloe hoped no one else would realize that. That they traveled five thousand miles only to see their own backyards.
Chloe made some ironic remark about the beaten down nature of the landscape, and Blake said, “Beaten down?” He sounded prickled for some reason, as if she’d offended his very own Latvia. “May I point out that the road here, while narrow, is paved? Can you say the same for the dirt path you live on?”
Did he say this to be funny or to make her ashamed?
“Why choose?” said Blake. “And please note the trash cans put out onto the road. Are you familiar with this custom? A garbage truck comes to your house and picks up your trash, so you don’t have to haul your week-old garbage in your mother’s Subaru to the landfill fifteen miles away.”
“All right, all right,” Chloe said.
She wasn’t sure they were at the right house because there wasn’t a number on the small stucco cottage painted in sky blue. But out on the road there was an onyx-haired woman, her arm around a skinny adolescent girl, both standing at attention near a peach tree and a wooden gate. The girl waved madly before the cab stopped. They climbed out of the narrow car onto the narrow road, grateful to stretch out and careful not to disturb the droopy branches of an apple tree draping over the hedge and fence. Mason and Blake retrieved their suitcases from the trunk and Chloe paid the fare (77 latu! Nearly $140. She tried not to think about it).
Cautiously they approached the old woman and her young charge, who were still waving but also eyeing the Americans’ abundant luggage with skeptical wonder. Chloe thought that it couldn’t be the right house. The strong, serious woman couldn’t be Moody’s aunt, couldn’t be twenty years older than Moody, who was in her mid-eighties. This woman didn’t look seventy.
“Es esmu Varda,” the woman said. “Es esmu Varda.” She hugged Chloe, muttering incomprehensible things. She banged Chloe’s chest and said “Jūsu vārds ir Chloya.” The young girl next to Varda, demure rather than desperate, despite her name—Carmen—didn’t stop hugging either, except she was hugging Blake and Mason, two young men not remotely related to her. Perhaps she was more like a Carmen than Chloya had first allowed.
“I speak English,” the girl said with an accent. “I learn in school. I translate. Grandmother says she very happy you come. She waited for you long time. She want to know your friend names. And why you bring so much suitcase?”
“It’s not so much,” said Chloe. “One suitcase each. We are traveling for three weeks.”
“Grandmother says too much suitcase,” the girl repeated.
Varda had hair blacker than any hair Chloe had ever seen. It was without a strand of gray. She had black eyes, a weathered, saddle-colored face. Her hands were gnarled claws, tanned, strong, veined, scarred with old injuries. Some of the fingers were crooked, as if they had been broken and then healed poorly. She wore a plain gray dress and old brown suede shoes that she obviously had just scrubbed, for they looked damp. She had dressed up to meet the Americans. The tween by her side, too. Carmen had put on a peasant dress, scraped half the mud off her moccasins, and braided back her long sandy hair. She stood enveloped in a sickly cloud of cheap cologne.
Varda said something to the girl, emphatic and loud.
“She says to tell you she not Mudita’s aunt,” the young Carmen said. “She says you confused.”
The old woman pounded herself in the chest, and said what sounded like “Septic dank.”
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Paullina Simons
Lone Star is another unforgettable love story from the best-selling author of Tully and The Bronze Horseman.Life isn’t about the destination, but the journey…Chloe is eager to drink in the sights and sounds of the Old World as she embarks on a European adventure with her closest friends. Buried in the treasures of the fledgling post-Communist world, Chloe finds a charming American vagabond named Johnny, who carries a guitar, an easy smile – and a lifetime of secrets.As she and her unlikely travelling companions traverse the continent, a train trip becomes a treacherous journey into Europe's and Johnny's darkest past – a journey that shatters Chloe's future plans and puts in jeopardy everything she thought she wanted.From Treblinka to Trieste, from Carnikava to Krakow, the lovers and friends crack the facade that sustains their lifelong bonds to expose their truest, deepest desires and discover only one thing that's certain: whether or not they reach their destination, their lives will never be the same.
Copyright (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
The News Building
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2015
Copyright © Paullina Simons 2015
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover photographs © Patryce Bak/Cultura/Corbis (girl); Gary Cook/Robert Harding/Corbis (background).
Paullina Simons asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007441631
Ebook Edition © March 2015 ISBN: 9780007441648
Version: 2015-05-06
Praise for Paullina Simons (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Tully
“You’ll never look at life in the same way again. Pick up this book and prepare to have your emotions wrung so completely you’ll be sobbing your heart out one minute and laughing through your tears the next. Read it and weep—literally.” Company
Red Leaves
“Simons handles her characters and setting with skill, slowly peeling away deceptions to reveal denial, cowardice and chilling indifference … an engrossing story.” Publishers Weekly
Eleven Hours
“Eleven Hours is a harrowing, hair-raising story that will keep you turning the pages late into the night.” Janet Evanovich
The Bronze Horseman
“A love story both tender and fierce.” Publishers Weekly
Tatiana and Alexander
“This has everything a romance glutton could wish for: a bold, talented and dashing hero [and] a heart-stopping love affair that nourishes its two protagonists even when they are separated and lost.” Daily Mail
The Girl in Times Square
“Part mystery, part romance, part family drama … in other words, the perfect book.” Daily Mail
The Summer Garden
“If you’re looking for a historical epic to immerse yourself in, then this is the book for you.” Closer
Road to Paradise
“One of our most exciting writers … Paullina Simons presents the perfect mix of page-turning plot and characters.” Woman and Home
A Song in the Daylight
“Simons shows the frailties of families and of human nature, and demonstrates that there’s so much more to life, such as honesty and loyalty.” Good Reading
Bellagrand
“Another epic saga from Simons, full of the emotion and heartache of the original trilogy. Summer reading at its finest.” Canberra Times
Dedication (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
To Natasha, my first resplendent light
Epigraph (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions.
T.S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Contents
Cover (#uf9603d3f-ea58-59d4-84e7-a1b00f55cab3)
Title Page (#ufc9ecf7f-6f6e-5340-aeeb-f90d0d9f87c7)
Copyright
Praise for Paullina Simons
Dedication
Epigraph
Part One: Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake
Chapter 1: Insanity’s Horse
Chapter 2: Sweet Potato
Chapter 3: The Perils of College Interviews
Chapter 4: Paleo Flood at Red River
Chapter 5: The Irish Inquisition
Chapter 6: Mottos
Chapter 7: Olivia the Dancing Pig
Chapter 8: Empty Wells and Vernal Pools
Chapter 9: Red Vineyard
Chapter 10: Lupe
Chapter 11: Moody
Chapter 12: Peacocks
Chapter 13: Uncle Kenny from Kilkenny
Chapter 14: The Meaning of Typos
Chapter 15: She Will Be Loved
Part Two: Johnny Rainbow
Chapter 16: Modern Travel
Chapter 17: Carmen in Carnikava
Chapter 18: Cherry Strudel
Chapter 19: Zhenya
Chapter 20: Thorn Forests
Chapter 21: The Guider of Guiri, the Singer of Songs
Chapter 22: All Things Are Numbers
Chapter 23: Lost Children
Chapter 24: Missing Time
Chapter 25: Roses for a Farm
Chapter 26: Dread
Chapter 27: Emil
Chapter 28: Warsaw
Chapter 29: The Dragon and the Honey
Chapter 30: Instead of Auschwitz
Chapter 31: The Clock in Trieste
Chapter 32: A Town Called Heartbreak
Chapter 33: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Chapter 34: My Rags of Heart
Chapter 35: Jimmy Eat World Pain
Part Three: The Blue Suitcase
Chapter 36: Freshman Summer
Chapter 37: Sophomore Summer
Chapter 38: Junior Summer
Chapter 39: Senior Summer
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the Same Author
About the Publisher
Part One (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake (#uceeae01c-a77b-570f-862c-15cba051a8dd)
We’re not serious when we are seventeen.
One fine evening, full of pints and lemonade,
In rowdy cafes with their dazzling chandeliers,
We stroll under the linden trees in the park.
Now you’re in love, till August anyway.
You’ll make her laugh, you’ll write her poetry
At night you wander back to the cafes
For more pints and lemonade …
We are not serious when we are seventeen,
And when we have green linden trees in the park.
Arthur Rimbaud, “Romance”
1 (#ulink_c3b0f5dc-741c-5c2c-b922-74a24ee2eb6d)
Insanity’s Horse (#ulink_c3b0f5dc-741c-5c2c-b922-74a24ee2eb6d)
CHLOE SAT ALONE ON THE BUS RIDE HOME ACROSS THE TRAIN tracks, dreaming of the beaches of Barcelona and perhaps of being ogled by a lusting stranger. She was trying to drown out Blake, Mason and Hannah verbally tripping over one another as if in a game of drunken Twister as they loudly argued the pros and cons of writing a story for money. Threads of songs played their crowded lyric notes in the static inside her head. Under the boardwalk like no other lover he took my hand and said I love you forever—all suddenly overpowered by Queen’s matchless yawp Barcelonaaaaaaaaa …!
She placed her palm against the glass. The bus was almost at their road. Maybe then this psychodrama would end. Outside the dusty windows, made muddy by the flood of recent rain, past the railroad, near a clearing of poplars, Chloe spied a fading billboard of a giant rainbow, which two white-suited workmen on ladders were papering over with an ad for the renovated Mount Washington Resort in the White Mountains.
She had just enough time to glimpse the phrase on the soon to be obscured poster before the bus lunged past it. “Johnny Get Your Gun.” This left her to contemplate, alas not in perfect silence, the philosophical meaning behind a rainbow being papered over.
Just before the bus stopped, she remembered where the sign was from. It was an ad for the Lone Star Pawn and Gun Shop in Fryeburg. Remembering it didn’t answer Chloe’s larger question, but it answered the immediate one.
“What idiot thought a rainbow was a good symbol for a gun store?” Hannah’s mother had said. Soured on men and life, she had pawned her engagement ring there. Got seventy bucks for it. Took Chloe and Hannah for lobster in North Conway with the money.
They all got food poisoning afterward. So much for rainbows.
Is that what they called karma?
Or was it simply what happened next?
On the dot of 3:40 in the afternoon, the small blue bus pulled up—extra carefully and slowly—to the pine trees at the beginning of Wake Drive, a dirt road past another dirt road marked with a rock painted with a black whale. Four kids jumped off into the dust.
Because it was the merry month of May, and almost warm, they wore the clothes of the young out in the boonies—denim and plaid. Though to be fair, that’s all they ever wore, blizzard or heatwave.
In what universe could a five-minute speech by Mrs. Mencken about the annual Acadia Award for Short Fiction at the end of English period right before lunch—when there wasn’t a soul in class who was paying attention to anything but the rumble in their empty stomachs—result in Blake and Mason deciding they were suddenly writers and not trash collectors?
“Character is everything,” Chloe said doggedly into the dirt. “Character is story.”
The mile of unpaved road at the end of which they lived was all downhill between dense pines. It meandered through the thick forest, getting narrower, crossing the train tracks, hugging the small lake, ending in pine needles and disarray, not a road anymore, just dust, and that’s where they lived. Where the road ended.
Chloe and Mason and Hannah and Blake. Two couples, two brothers, two best friends. A short girl, a tall girl, and two brawny dudes. Well, Blake was brawny. The scrappy Mason was all about sports the last few years, ever since their dad had his back broken. Mason was a soccer midfielder and a varsity shortstop. Blake got the lumbering body of a man who lived in a rural town and could do anything: lift anything, build anything, drive anything. Blake’s wavy, bushy hair hadn’t been cut in months, his beard was weeks overgrown. The brown Timberlands were grimy. The belt was six years old. The extra large plaid shirt was his dad’s. The Levi’s were hand-me-downs. His light brown eyes darted around, dancing, laughing, full of good humor.
Next to him, his smaller brother looked like a child of prissy aristocracy. Mason’s hair was shaggy straight, but it was meant to be shaggy. It was designer shag. Unlike Blake, who rolled out of bed, hair slept on, and ran to school, Mason woke early and worked hard to make his hair just so. The girls loved his hair, and tortured Chloe about it. Oh Chloe, they chirped, you’re so lucky, you can run your hands through it any time you want. Mason shaved every day, and did not wear plaid. He wore black and gray T-shirts. He was monochrome and his jeans were washed yesterday. On his feet were sneakers. He didn’t cut wood, he played ball. He didn’t look like Blake’s brother, with his compact lean build, intense blue eyes, and his serious, gentle face. Plus, unlike Blake, he was a boy of few words. When he quietly held Chloe’s hand, it was always with kindness. He didn’t pull on her, yank her, demand action from her. He was a gentleman. Not that Blake didn’t try to be a gentleman with Hannah. Just that he was a lot like the German Shepherd he once owned. Panting, unapologetically getting mud on everyone’s floors, dripping ice cream and tomato sauce all over, loping wild through the day. You couldn’t help but feel exasperated affection at his constant antics.
And next to Blake walked Hannah.
Though Chloe herself found Hannah to be slightly androgynous with her tall, boyish body—straight hips, straight waist, small high breasts, short hair always slicked back away from her face—other people, boys especially, did not agree. Her face was opalescent and scrubbed clean, with symmetrical, correct, in-balance features and a gaze as straight as her narrow hips. Her eyes, brown and unblinking, were serious and appraising, making Hannah look as though she were engaged—as though she were listening. Chloe knew it was a ruse: the steady stare allowed Hannah to be lost inside her head. She wore makeup she could ill afford, but strived to look as though she just splashed water on her face and, voila, perfection. With fluid grace Hannah strolled like a ballerina.
At the long mirror in her room she had practiced her arabesques and soubresauts, hoping one day she would stop growing and her parents could afford ballet classes. She finally got her lessons in the divorce settlement, but by then she was five-ten and too tall to be lifted into the air by anyone but Blake, who was definitely not a ballet dancer.
With a detached elegance, Hannah walked and talked as if she didn’t belong in tiny Fryeburg, Maine. She fancied herself barely even belonging in this country. She wore ballet flats, for God’s sake! Even when she schlepped a mile through the mud and pine needles. No butch Timberlands for her. Hannah walked with her shoulder blades flung back, as though wearing heels and a Chanel blazer. She carried herself as if she was too good for the place that by an unlucky accident of birth she had found herself living in, and couldn’t wait until the moment she was sipping wine on the Left Bank and painting the Seine with other artistic, beautiful people. Her big round eyes were permanently moist. She evaluated you before she cried, and then you loved her. That was Hannah. Always crying to be loved.
Chloe in stark contrast was not moist of eye or long of limb. She didn’t care much about not being tall when she wasn’t with Hannah. But next to her reed-like friend, she felt like an armadillo.
One of Chloe’s best physical features was her brown hair, straw-straight, shining, streaked with sunlight. There was nothing she did to make it great. It just was. Every day washed, brushed, clean, unfussy, thin-spun silk falling from her head. She wore no makeup, to differentiate herself from the senior girls who were all about the heavy eyeliner, the flimsy tanks, the one size too small jeans and three-inch (or higher!) mules in which they clodded through the Fryeburg Academy halls, always in danger of falling over or tripping, and perhaps that was the point. Sexy but helpless. Both things were anathema to Chloe, so she kept her body to herself and walked in sensible shoes. Where was she going that required getting dressed up? Bowling? Italian ices? Swimming in the lake? Gardening? Exactly. And she heard the way the boys talked about the girls who dressed the way, say, that hateful Mackenzie O’Shea dressed. A lifetime of meds wouldn’t be able to erase the trauma for Chloe if she thought boys talked about her that way.
Her face, unblemished and fair, suffered slightly from this pretend plainness, but there was no hiding the upper curve of her cheekbones or her wide-set eyes that tilted slightly upward, always in a smile. She had inherited the Irish lips from her father, but the eyes and cheeks from her mother, and because of that, her face, just like her body, wasn’t quite in proportion. The ratio of eyes to lips was not in balance, just as the ratio of body to breasts was not in balance. There was not enough body for the milk-fed breasts she had been cursed with. There may have been a genetic component to the comical chaos inside her—to her math abilities colliding with her existential confusion—but there was simply no cosmic excuse for her palmfuls of breasts.
Chloe blamed her mother.
It was only right.
She blamed her mother for everything.
Look at Hannah. Everything on that girl was assembled as if hand-picked. Tall, lithe, lean, eyes mouth hair nose all the right size, not too big, not too small, while Chloe spent her life hiding under minimizer bras and one-size-too-big shirts. She was afraid no one would take her seriously if they thought of her as a body instead of a person. Who’d ever listen to her explanations about the movements of the stars or migrations of mitochondria or beheadings in a revolution if they thought she was just a pair of boobs with legs. Too heavy-breasted to be a ballerina and too short to be a bombshell.
That Mason didn’t agree—or said he didn’t—only spoke to his poor judgment.
The bus had been dropping them off on the same rural road for thirteen years. Kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, fancy high school.
Soon there would be no more blue buses, no more lurching afternoon rides. In a month they would all be graduating.
And then?
Well, and then, there was this:
“Don’t be hating on my story already, Chloe,” said Blake. “It just began. Give it a chance. It’s a good story. You’ll see.”
“Yeah, Chloe,” echoed Mason. Being ten months younger than Blake, he looked up to his older brother, though he did not necessarily disagree with Chloe, as evidenced by his cheerful wink. She took his welcome hand as they strolled past old Mr. Leary out on the lawn, surrounded by every bit of garbage scrap he owned, trying to make it look less garbagey so he could sell it.
“Blake, dear boy,” Mr. Leary called out, “you said you’d come by after school and help me with my block saw. I still can’t get the dang thing to turn on.”
“Sure thing, Mr. Leary.”
“Block saw?” muttered Mason. “What does that codger need with a block saw? It’s soft dirt all around him.”
“He wants to build a bomb shelter,” Blake said out of the corner of his mouth, smiling at the old man as they ambled by. “That’s why he’s collecting the cinder blocks.”
“What’s a block saw?” asked Chloe.
“Who cares,” said Hannah. “A bomb shelter? Guy’s a freak.”
“Blake, not now?” The craggy man persisted. “I have some snacks for you and your friends. Donuts.”
“Thank you, sir, but not now.”
Because now Blake was busy. He had to clear the brush from the dusty path of his own winding life.
All the trouble began when Blake turned eighteen last July and was allowed to enter the Woodsmen Day competition at the Fryeburg Fair. He entered five contests. Tree felling, crosscut sawing, axe throwing, log rolling, and block chop. He lost the crosscut and the log roll and the block chop, and you’d think he’d remember that and be humbled—that he lost three out of five—but no. He beat the best time that year on tree felling by six seconds, coming in at twenty-three seconds flat, and he set a Fair record on the axe throw with six bullseyes in a row.
You’d think his head was the bullseye: it swelled to four feet in diameter. He strutted down the dirt roads and through Academy halls like an Olympic gold medalist. Chloe would remind him that the Fryeburg Academy—which all the local kids attended for “free” through a tax deal between the school and the state of Maine—was one of the most prestigious preparatory high schools in the United States. “No one here gives a toss about your axe toss, I promise you,” Chloe would say to him, but you’d think he were deaf.
It was right after that Blake and Mason entered the business competition for Mr. Smith’s tech class—and they won! Mason was used to winning, with his dozen sports trophies lining the dresser, but Blake became impossible. He acted as if he could do anything. Like, for example, write.
It wasn’t that they didn’t deserve to win. The project was: “Create a successful business.” Who knew that Blake and Mason would take the thing they had been doing part-time and turn it into a winner. With their dad’s ancient truck, they had been going to houses around the lakes in Brownfield and Fryeburg and asking if, for a small fee, the residents would let them cart their trash away. Now, most people in this part of Maine aimed their shotguns to point the brothers in the direction of the exit to their property, but there were some—widows, the feeble-minded—who agreed to pay them a few nickels to cart away their old refrigerators, non-working snow blowers, rusty rakes, newspapers, chainsaws. The boys were strong and worked hard, and after school and on Saturdays, they would drive around and try not to get killed while they made a few dollars. After placing an ad in the Penny Saver, they discovered there was already a national junk company called 1-800-GOT-JUNK. This only fired up their cutthroat spirit. They flattered Hannah into designing their logo: THE HAUL BROTHERS HAULING SERVICES. “WE HAUL SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO.”
It looked pretty good. They got a decal made, slapped it on their father’s truck, painted the truck a hideous lime green—Blake said because it was the color farthest removed from the color of the crap they were hauling—used their rudimentary buttering-up skills to get Chloe to create a profit and loss statement, and figured out that if they worked full-time, hired two more guys, and bought another truck with a lift, they would make six figures at the end of three years. Six figures! They had an advertising plan: Yellow Pages, the North Conway Observer, local ads on TV, three radio spots—and then their dad’s Chevy died.
It was over twenty years old. Burt Haul had bought the V8 diesel powerhouse in 1982, before he knew he’d be having sons who a generation later would need it to start a fake business. Burt loved that truck so much that even after the accident that nearly ended his life, he refused to let it go and spent his own scarce money rebuilding it. “I drove your mother home from our wedding in that truck,” Burt told his sons. “The only reason I’m alive today is because of that truck. I ain’t parting with that thing.”
But now the truck engine was like Mr. Leary’s gas-powered block saw. Defunct.
No one had money for a new truck, even a used one. Burt and his boys were being shamefully carted around in Janice Haul’s Subaru. Were they even men?
Hannah and Chloe tried to console their disappointed boyfriends by reminding them that their business wasn’t really a business, it was just a business on paper, which is no kind of business at all. But Blake and Mason had fallen too far into the trap of a dream. Chloe knew something about that. The Haul boys had been so sold on their own pseudo-company that they decided to drop out of school in the middle of senior year and work until they got the money together to buy a truck, figuring that in their line of work a high school diploma was about as useful as watering grass during a downpour.
It was a challenge for the girls to keep their boyfriends in school. It was Chloe who had finally hit on the winning combination of words: “Do you think my mother and father would ever allow me to hang out with high school dropouts?”
That worked, though not as instantly as Chloe had hoped, alas.
So … the senior year passed, truck still broke, and Janice not only had to drive to work and shop for the family, but share her inadequate station wagon with two restless boys with divergent friends, interests and schedules. To make money, the boys shoveled snow, cut grass, did shopping for the infirm, Blake mostly, because Mason was at varsity. Fast forward to today when they were hopping off buses and yammering on about dreams. You had to hand it to them. Those two were single-minded in their pursuits. All their pursuits.
“Chloe, speak up. Listen to what I’m saying. Why isn’t it a good story?” Blake always got irked by her tight-lipped approach to his shenanigans.
“Because so far you haven’t told me anything I’d want to read,” she said.
“I haven’t stopped speaking!”
Chloe opened her hands in a my-point-precisely. “Who are the main characters?”
“It doesn’t matter who they are. Can I finish before you judge?”
“You mean you haven’t finished? And I’m not judging.”
“You so judge. That’s your biggest problem.”
“I’m not—”
Blake put his finger out, nearly to her mouth. “The premise of my story is—are you listening? Two dudes run a junkyard.”
“That part I got.”
“They do say write about what you know.”
“I. Got. That. Part.”
“Two dudes run a junkyard and one day they find something awful.”
“Like what? All you cart away is Wise potato chips and Oreo wrappers.”
“And condom wrappers.” Blake grinned, slowed down, and threw his big arm around Chloe’s shoulder.
“Hannah, control your boyfriend.” Chloe pushed him away. “But okay, even still. Where is the story?”
“Can there be anything more full of story possibilities than a ninety-year-old woman throwing out a Hefty bag full of used condoms?” Blake laughed.
“Not used condoms,” Mason corrected him. “Condom wrappers.”
Chloe glanced at the silent Hannah for support. “Can we move on? What else have you got?”
“We don’t know yet,” Mason said. “Hannah, you think it’s good so far, don’t you?”
“So far there’s nothing!” That was Chloe.
“He wasn’t asking you!” said Blake.
They had ten minutes before they reached home to hammer it out. It wasn’t enough time. Blake pulled them off road, away from home and onto the train tracks that ran through the woods and divided their small part of the lake from the better, larger part. Arms out, backpacks on, they balanced on the rusty tracks and skipped on the ties.
Writing a story for money! What a thing. Acadia’s first prize was ten thousand dollars. Chloe knew the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction had been around longer and was certainly more prestigious, but it paid only a thousand dollars, and you had to write at least forty thousand words for it. No matter how bad one was at math, dividing forty thousand words into a thousand bucks was an awful return. “All work and no pay,” said Mason, and laughed for five minutes at his own joke.
But here—ten thousand dollars for a novella. Blake didn’t even know what a novella was until Chloe told him. To the brothers, a sum that large was the lottery. It was a new truck and the start of their own business. It was the rest of their lives. They acted as if they found it lying under a tree in a suitcase. All that was left to do was count the money.
And little naysay-y Chloe was not allowed to even mention that:
1 They had no story.
2 They were not writers.
3 There would be at least five hundred other applicants, who a. might have a story and b. were writers.
4 One of those applicants might be Hannah who most certainly had stories, a number of them.
5 A new truck was more than ten thousand dollars.
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She had to say something. If only she could learn to keep quiet, like Hannah, or Mason, things would be so much better in her life.
“Who are the junkyard boys?” she asked.
“We are. Blake. Mason. We’re ambling along, asking for no trouble, and suddenly—wham! Trouble comes.”
“Wham,” said Chloe.
“Blake’s right,” Mason said. “We’ve found some awful things.”
“Like what?”
“Dead rats.”
“Rats are good,” she said. “But then what? Someone not wanting dead rats in their house is hardly a story. It’s more like a truism.”
“We found some jewelry too once.”
“Jewelry is good. Then what?”
“Okay, maybe not jewelry, then. Something else.”
Chloe glanced at Hannah, walking on the side of the tracks, away from the three of them, barely listening. Blake jackhammered away at Chloe’s concrete skepticism. “They discover something awful. Something that changes everything. Mason, what can they find that is so monumental and terrible that it changes everything?”
“True love?” Chloe smiled.
“It’s not that kind of story, my dear Haiku,” Blake said with twinkling amusement. “This is a man’s story. No room in it for lurv, no matter how terrible and true. Right, cupcake?” Jumping off the rail, he jostled Hannah along the pebbles.
“Right,” she said.
Mason had new suggestions. “We found an old suitcase once. It was full of snakes. And once we found a live rabbit.”
“Yes,” Blake said. “He was delicious. But Chloe is right. We need a story, bro.” He smacked his forehead. “Got it. How about a human head in the trash?”
Chloe didn’t even blink this time. Almost as if she’d seen a human head in the trash before. “Nice,” she said. “And then?”
Blake shrugged. “Why do you care so much what happens next?” he asked.
She could tell he wasn’t taking it seriously. What the boys did for a living—that was work. Here, all they had to do was come up with a few words and place them in the sweet order that assured victory. Blake was convinced it was child’s play.
“You’re right, we’re all Philistines with our slavish devotion to plot,” Chloe said. “Be that as it may.”
“Yes. The writer drones on about what happens next and as soon as you the reader guess what’s coming, you either fall asleep or want to kill him.”
“So the trick is what? Never give the reader what she wants?”
Blake shook his head. “No. Give her what she didn’t even know she wanted.” He acted as if he knew what that was.
They turned for home. “They find a human head,” he went on, as he and Chloe ambled down the narrowing pine path leading home, Hannah and Mason behind them. A few hundred yards downhill, the dirt road tapered to one lane on which a truck or a car or people could pass—one at a time. “But not a skull.” Blake glanced back and widened his eyes at Hannah. “A head. That’s been recently separated from the body. It still has flesh on it. And they don’t know what to do. Do they investigate? Do they call the cops?”
“I think they should investigate,” Mason said, running up. “Investigations are fun.”
“There’s danger in it.”
“Danger is good,” Hannah said from behind. “Danger is story.”
No, Chloe wanted to correct her uncorrectable friend. Danger is danger. It’s not story.
Blake went on ruminating. “What if asking too many questions of the wrong people puts them in mortal danger?”
Chloe wondered if there was any other kind.
“Someone needs to shut them up. But who?”
“Obviously those who separated the head from the body.”
“But why would someone separate the head from the body?” Mason asked.
“I don’t know yet. But I really think we got us something here. Haiku, what do you think?”
“I say keep working on it.” Chloe used her most discouraging tone.
“Wait! I got it!” Blake exclaimed. “What if they find a suitcase? Yes, a mysterious suitcase! It’s blue. Oh my God, I got it. That’s my story.” Blake stopped and turned to the girls, beaming, his whole face flushed and thrilled. “The Blue Suitcase. What do you think?” He clapped. “It’s flipping awesome!”
Hannah smiled approvingly.
Chloe caught herself shrugging. “It’s a good title for a mystery,” she said. “But a title is not a story. What’s in the suitcase? Once you figure out that part, Blake, then you’ll have yourself a story.”
Blake laughed with characteristic lack of concern for details. He was a big picture guy. “James Bond always goes to a foreign country to solve mysteries and catch the bad guys,” he said. “Some fantastic exotic locale full of drink and women and danger.”
Chloe made a real effort not to rub her forehead. She had a lot of practice hiding exasperation from her mother, but this was on a different scale altogether. “James Bond is a government spy. He kills for money. He doesn’t rummage through the trash for severed heads.”
“Foreign country!” Mason exclaimed. “Blake, you’re a genius.”
Blake’s entire peacock tail opened up in kaleidoscope green.
“But wait,” Mason said. “You and I have never been to a foreign country.”
Blake blocked the girls’ way, smiling meaningfully at them. “Not yet,” he said.
The girls remained impassive. Only Chloe twitched slightly. Oh no! she thought. He doesn’t mean …
“We’ll go to Europe with you,” Blake said. “Mason’s right, I am a genius. The answer to our mysterious suitcase is in Europe. Oh man, this is going to be fantastic. And we’ve only been at it for five minutes. Imagine how good it’ll be when we spend a few days on it.” Blake thumped his flannel plaid chest. “We could win the book prize.”
“What book prize would that be, Blake?” Chloe said.
“I don’t know, Chloe. The prize they give the best book of the year. The Oscar for books. The Grammy, the Emmy.”
“The Pulitzer?”
“Whatever. That’s not the important part. To write something people will love, that’s the important part.”
Chloe leaned in to Hannah. “Did your crazy boyfriend just say he wants to go to Europe with us?”
“I’m sure that can’t be right,” Hannah, her expression frazzled, whispered back. “I’ll talk to him—”
Blake pulled Hannah away from Chloe. “Hannah, when are you two flying to Barcelona?”
“I don’t know,” Hannah replied. “Chloe, when are we flying?”
“I don’t know,” mumbled Chloe.
“Mason, that’s where we go, bro. Barcelona! Our story will climax there.” Blake laughed. The brothers high-fived and bumped shoulders.
“I thought you said it wasn’t that kind of story,” Chloe cut in.
“If it ends in Barcelona, Haiku, it’ll have to be a story for all seasons. Isn’t that where they have the running of the bulls?”
“Oh dear God. No. That’s Pamplona.”
“Wait,” Hannah said. “Blake, you’re not seriously thinking of coming with us?”
“We’re done thinking. We’re coming, baby!”
Mason looked shocked. “We’re going to Europe? You’re bullshitting me.”
“Mason, do I come up with the best ideas or what?”
Mason was at a loss for words.
“Blake …” Finally Hannah became actively engaged in the conversation. “Think about it for a minute. You’re not serious about writing a story, are you? The contest is open to all Maine residents. That’s a lot of competition. Just from our school, there’ll probably be at least a hundred entries. Everyone on our literary magazine is submitting a story.”
“Hannah, have you read the literary magazine?” said Blake, swinging his arms around, bouncing down the road. “It’s called Insanity’s Horse, for heaven’s sake.” He laughed. “Just for that title alone, those fools should be disqualified from participating. Do you remember the magazine’s April thought of the month? The pastiche of the pyramids implementing primal passion is a prolix representation of all phallic prose. I got your phallic prose right here. Yeah,” he said, merry and intense. “I’m not worried.”
How did this happen? One minute ticked by, and before it was up, Blake and Mason had climbed aboard the girls’ slow-chugging teenage dream.
Hannah stopped listening. She pulled on Chloe to slow down. “Now I really have to talk to you,” she said. “Come by before dinner?”
“Is it about Barcelona?” Chloe looked up into Hannah’s flat expression.
Hannah blinked. “No and yes. Do you have your passport yet?”
Chloe didn’t reply.
“Chloe! I told you—it takes two months to get a passport. Come on. Do you want to blow it?”
“Of course not. But that’s easy for you to say—you’re eighteen. I have to ask my parents to sign for my passport.”
“So?”
“Well, I’ll have to tell them I’m going first, won’t I?”
“I can’t believe you haven’t told them!”
“Yeah, well.” Chloe couldn’t believe a whole bunch of things.
Blake was in front of them, panting, eyes blazing, his body heaving. “So what do we have to do to get a passport?”
“Go to the post office,” Hannah said. “But take Chloe with you, because she doesn’t know how to get one either.”
“I know how. I just …”
Hannah batted her lashes. “Are you guys really going to come with us? Because don’t get our hopes up and then not come. That’d be mean.”
“I never disappoint you, pumpkin, do I?” Grabbing the slender Hannah, Blake pretended to dance with her and stepped on her feet. She yelped.
“Blake, you do know where Barcelona is, right?” Hannah said, her arms around his neck. “In Spain. And you know where Spain is, right? In Europe. As in—on another continent. As in, you need not just a passport, which costs upward of a hundred bucks, but also a plane ticket, and train tickets, and maybe, oh, I don’t know—some lodging and food money.”
Mason began to look doubtful, but Blake shrugged with gleeful indifference. “You know what they say, babycakes.” He squeezed her. “You gotta spend money to make money. It’s like the ten grand I’m getting for my story. We can’t start our own business till we win this thing. And we can’t win this thing till we do this other thing.”
“This other thing,” said Chloe, “meaning horn in on my lifelong dream?”
“Exactly. Mase, let’s jet. We gotta go get ourselves some passports. We have no time to lose.” As they sped up, their boots kicked up dust in a bee cloud. “Where’s this post office, anyway?” Blake called back.
“Are you joking? You’ve never been to the Fryeburg post office?”
Hannah poked Chloe. “You’ve never been there either, missy.”
Chloe poked Hannah back. “Yes, I have, stop it.”
Blake pulled on his brother. “Let’s hoof, bro. Should we pick you up, Chloe?” The Hauls lived three houses up from Chloe, around the pond through the scraggly pines and birches.
“Yeah, Chloe,” Hannah said, sticking a finger into Chloe’s back. “Should they pick you up to go get your passport?”
“It’s okay,” said Chloe, swatting Hannah’s fingers away. “I’ll have my mom take me.”
The girls gazed after their young men, and then resumed walking. Hannah shook her head—in distress? In wonderment? Chloe couldn’t tell. “I guess I’ll be going to Spain with my boyfriend and your boyfriend, but not with you.”
“Har-de-har-har.”
“You think I’m being funny? You can’t start your adult life being such a chicken, Chloe. What are you afraid of? Be more like me. I’m not afraid of anything.” She said it as if she didn’t mean it.
But all Chloe heard was be more like me. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth, she thought, stiffening. They were almost at the clearing in front of Chloe’s green bungalow. Hannah slowed down, as if she wanted to linger, but Chloe sped up as if that was the last thing she wanted. “I have to be diplomatic,” she said. “I need their permission to go. I can’t just present them with an I’m-going-to-Europe vaudeville routine.”
“If you don’t start acting like an adult, why should they treat you like one?”
How much did Chloe not want to talk about it. It wasn’t that Hannah was wrong. It was that Hannah always said obvious things in such a way that made Chloe not only think her friend was wrong, but that she wanted her friend to be wrong.
“I’ll talk to them tonight,” she said, hurrying across her pine needle clearing.
“I wouldn’t tell them about Mason and Blake just yet.”
“Ya think?”
Since Mrs. Haul and Lang went shopping on Fridays, Chloe had a feeling that her silence on the subject might be short-lived.
“Okay,” Hannah said, “but start slow. Don’t make your mother go all Chinese on you. You always make her nuts. First dangle our trip, then wait. The boys might be pie in the sky anyway. Where are they going to get the money from? It’ll pass, you’ll see.”
Chloe said nothing. Clearly Hannah had no idea who her boyfriend was. There was no talking Blake out of anything. Short fiction indeed! And as if to prove Chloe’s point, Janice Haul’s Subaru came charging toward them from around the trees, Blake rolling down his window, slowing down, honking.
“We’re off to get our passports!” he yelled. “See ya!”
Chloe turned to Hannah. “You were saying?”
“All right, fine. But don’t tell your mom about them yet.”
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Chloe asked. Only a flimsy screen door separated Chloe’s mother’s ears from Hannah’s troubles.
Hannah waved her off. “Just you wait,” she said, all doom and gloom.
2 (#ulink_3597d7e7-5e2a-533d-9071-b6413b4bff81)
Sweet Potato (#ulink_3597d7e7-5e2a-533d-9071-b6413b4bff81)
“I’M IN THE KITCHEN,” HER MOTHER CALLED OUT AS SOON as Chloe opened the screen door. A statement of delightful irony since they lived in a winterized cabin that was one room entire, if one didn’t count, which Chloe didn’t, the bathroom, the two small bedrooms and the open attic lost where Chloe slept.
I’m in the kitchen, Lang said, because this month she was baking. Last winter, her mother was scrapbooking so every day, when Chloe came home, she would hear: I’m in the dining room.
The previous fall, her mother decided to become a seamstress and told Chloe that from now on she was sewing all of her daughter’s clothes, in the craft room.
When she was tracing out the family tree on her new Christmas-present software, Lang was in the computer room.
During the summers, Lang said nothing, because she was outside, fishing and tending her vegetable garden, voluminous enough to supply tomatoes to all eight homes around their part of the lake. Bushels of zucchini and cucumbers went with Chloe’s dad to work.
Chloe’s mother Lang Devine, née Lang Thia of Chinese descent from Red River, North Dakota, reinvented herself constantly into something new. She had wanted to be a dancer when she was young, but then she met Jimmy and wanted to be a wife. After many years as a wife, she wanted to be a mother. And after many years as a mother of one, she wanted to be a mother of two.
Jimmy’s favorite, he said, was when Lang took up tap dancing. He built her a wooden platform; she bought herself a pair of black Capezios size 5, some CDs and taught herself how to tap dance. That was noisy.
And not as delicious as baking, which was the current phase, and Chloe’s favorite after gardening. Jimmy Devine liked it, too, but groused that he was gaining two pounds a week because of Lang’s buttery hobby. Chloe thought her dad might teasingly mention the extra pounds Lang herself had put on around her five-foot frame, now that she wasn’t tap dancing. But no. Just last week, Jimmy said as he dug into Lang’s cream puffs (made with half-and-half, not milk, by the way), “Sweet potato, how do you bake so much and yet stay so thin?”
And Chloe’s mother had tittered!
How to explain to both her parents that it was unseemly for a grown woman of advancing years, married for nearly thirty, to titter when her husband paid her a half-hearted compliment by calling her the name of a red starchy root vegetable?
This afternoon Chloe walked in slowly, set down her school bag, pulled off her boots, and walked down the short corridor, past her parents’ bedroom, past the bedroom that no one ever went into anymore, past the bathroom, into the open area to put her lunchbox on the kitchen counter where it would be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Something smelled heavenly. Chloe didn’t want to admit it, because she didn’t want to encourage her mother in any way. What her mother needed was a tamping down of enthusiasm, not a fanning of the fire. Her mother and Blake shared that in common.
“Doesn’t that smell divine?” Lang giggled, turned around, and with floury hands, patted Chloe on both cheeks. “I only make divine things for my divine girl.” One of the few things Chloe tolerated about her mother was that she was short, making even Chloe seem tall by comparison.
Chloe brushed the white powder off her face. “Whatchya makin’?”
“Linzer tarts.”
“Doesn’t smell like Linzer tarts.” Chloe glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.
“Raspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”
Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”
“Full from lunch four hours ago?”
Lang got out some orange juice, a yoghurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warm jam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. She had to admit it was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”
“I’m thinking ratatouille.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. It’s a vegetable stew, I think. But it could be a condiment.” She chuckled. Honestly, why did Chloe have to be the only serious one in her house?
“Dad needs meat.”
“Yes, don’t worry, we’ll feed the carnivore some pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”
Chloe desperately needed to talk to her mother. She didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair straw straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absent-minded and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good,” she said.
That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, the hobby called. Jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.
Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.
“Are you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Mrs. Mencken told me about the Acadia prize. Ten thousand dollars is amazing. I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at anything. You will too, of course. Right?”
Now who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe managed to contain her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.
“You discussed it with Hannah and your boys?”
“Not necessarily,” Chloe replied. Disgusted is what she was. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”
Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not going to do it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”
Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the silence the ominous shadows of hollowed-out fangs essential for a story were abundantly obvious.
“I mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I? Because I didn’t go. Maybe you can write that story. I don’t think there’s an age limit on entrants.”
When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft. Their trip formed the foundation of much, if not all, of the resentment of Chloe’s teenage years. A blown-up photo in a heavy gold leaf frame of the Castlecomer glens hung prominently in the hallway.
Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe.
“You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” Lang said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”
“Make it up from what? I’m going to make up a story about something so dramatic that it will win first prize?”
“Why not? Blake is.”
How did her mom know this!
“I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—” She stopped herself from saying used condoms.
“You have an imagination, don’t you?”
“No, none. I need a story, Mom. Not musings about what it’s like to live on a puddle lake in Maine.”
“Puddle lake? Have you glimpsed the stunning beauty outside your own windows?”
In the afternoons, the glistening lake, blooming willows and birches trimming the shoreline, the railroad rising on the embankment did occasionally shine with the scarlet colors of life. That wasn’t the point.
“I can’t write about skiing or bowling, or learning to drive,” Chloe continued. “I need something substantial. And I have nothing.” Why couldn’t she talk about herself without allowing a whiff of self-pity to waft through her smallest words? The one ashen tragedy in their life she could never write about. And Lang knew that. So why push it? Besides, her mother had once informed her that the Devine women were too short to be tragic figures. “We can be stoics, but not tragics,” Lang had said a few years ago, when it seemed to everyone else that the very opposite was the only thing true. “Make it up, darling,” Lang repeated, unperturbed by her daughter’s tone. “You’re a very good writer.”
“Mom, I don’t want to be a writer.”
“Neither does Blake. Yet look at him.”
Chloe watched her mother walk to the printer in the computer room behind the sofa and peel off several sheets of paper. Lang slapped the rules of entry for the Acadia contest on the table.
“You have five months to come up with a story and write it. It must be original. It must be fiction. And after it wins, it will be published by the University of Maine Press. Properly published! In book form and everything. That’s very exciting, isn’t it?”
“Did you not hear me?”
“No. By the way, I got you the pens you wanted.” Lang produced three packages of blue pens, gel, ballpoint, and fountain, and laid them in front of Chloe.
“I also took the liberty of getting you a notebook. Several different kinds to choose from. I thought you might need one if you’re going to write a story that’s going to win first prize. The Moleskine is very good. Has soft paper. But you try them all.”
Chloe stared at the pens, at the four notebooks. Had she actually mentioned that she needed a pen? One blue pen!
“Mom, listen to me.”
Lang sat down, elbows on the table, staring at Chloe with complete attention. She looked so pleased to be told to do what she had already been doing.
“I want to write something, I do. I just don’t think I have … look, here’s what we were thinking.”
“Who’s we?”
“The four of us.”
“The four of you were thinking all at once?”
“Well, discussing.”
“That’s better. It’s always good to be precise if you’re thinking of becoming a writer.”
“Which I’m not, so.”
“What are you four up to now? Let’s hear it.”
“We’re thinking of going to Europe.”
Lang stayed neutral. She didn’t blanch, she barely blinked. No, she did blink. Slowly, steadily, as if she was about to say …
“Are you crazy?”
There it was. “First listen, then judge. Can you do that?”
“No.”
“Mom. You just said you wanted me to write.”
“You have to go to Europe to write? Did Flannery O’Connor go to Europe? Did Eudora Welty? Did Truman Capote?”
“Actually, he did, yes.”
“When he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms, his first novel, he’d been to Europe?”
“I don’t know. We’re getting off topic, Mom.”
“Au contraire. We are very much on topic.”
“Mason and Blake need to do research.”
“So they’re going to Europe?”
Chloe made a real effort not to facepalm, a real, true, Herculean, McDonald’s supersize-sandwich effort not to facepalm, because there were few things her mother hated more than this brazen gesture of exasperation and frustration.
“Hannah and I have been talking about the trip for a while.”
“I thought you just said you wanted to go for Blake and Mason? Make up your mind, child. Either you thought of it on the railroad tracks, or you’ve been planning it for years.”
“How do you know we were on the tracks?”
“I saw you.” Lang pointed out the window. “Right across the lake.”
Both things were true. Chloe and Hannah had been dreaming of going for years, but Blake and Mason just thought of it today. Lang sat and watched her daughter like a bird watching the world. One never knew what the Langbird was thinking until she sang.
“Isn’t going away to college enough for you?” Lang said quietly.
Chloe clasped her hands. She didn’t want to look into her mother’s face. She knew how hard it must have been for her parents to let her go away to school. “I’ve been dreaming of Europe since I was little,” she said, almost whispered. “Way before college.”
“Sometimes circumstances change, and we have to dream a different dream,” said Lang. There was only a breath after that, and no change in expression to reflect the colossal wreck from which life had had to be recomposed, rebuilt from the ashes, Capezio shoe by Linzer tart. “College away is a big step, not to mention an enormous expense, even with the scholarship they’re giving you.”
“I know, Mom. Exactly. And then work and study and more work and study, and when else could I ever do it?”
“Oh, I don’t know, let’s see, how about—four years from now? Or never. Either way is good with me.”
“That’s what I want for my graduation present,” Chloe declared boldly. “A trip to Europe. You went to Europe.”
“It was for a funeral!”
“So what.”
“Graduation present. Really. I thought you wanted a laptop.”
“I’ll use our old one. I’ll take the desktop.”
“You certainly will not. All my family-tree files are on it.”
“I thought you were baking now? Oh, and yes, the files are permanently embedded in that one desktop computer. You’re right. They can never be moved.”
“Do you know what happens after you make a choice to be sarcastic to the woman who gave you life?”
Chloe softened her tone. She knew that talking to her parents about anything was a fifteen-part process that would begin with an idea being promptly rejected and then followed up by a string of days during which her mother enumerated in Tolstoyan prose why whatever it was Chloe wanted was the worst idea. After a War and Peace-length volume on why they couldn’t get a dog, or a tattoo, or a third earring, or go to Europe, the real decision would be handed down. She didn’t get a tattoo. Or a dog. Or a third earring. What was happening here was just preface. The real meat of her mother’s argument was still to come.
But this time Chloe wanted a different resolution. This time she wanted her way, not Lang’s way. “Mom, what’s the big deal? I’ll be eighteen when we go.” When, not if. What a clever play on words! What a clever girl.
“Yes, because that solves all the problems. And don’t use the word when with me, young lady.”
Ahh! “What problems? There are no problems. We want to go to Europe for a few weeks. We’ll walk around, visit beautiful churches, eat delicious food, go to the beach, experience things we’ve never experienced before—”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“And then come home,” Chloe continued, “and Blake will write a beautiful story that will win first prize.”
“The boy has many skills. Do you think writing is one of them?”
“He thinks he does and that’s all that matters.” Chloe was defiant, but she didn’t have the answers. To her friends, she was usually the person her mother was being to her right now. The devil’s advocate, the sucker of joy. There were a thousand reasons why everything Blake and Mason wanted to do was a terrible idea. Oh God. Had Chloe already turned into her mother at seventeen? Facepalm!
“And by the way,” Lang said, “Europe is a big place. It’s not Rhode Island. Or Acadia National Park. Where in Europe were you four thinking of visiting? You mentioned church and beach. That could be anywhere.”
“Barcelona.”
Her mother groaned. “Barcelona. Really. That’s your idea. Of all the places, that’s where you want to go?”
“We’ve never been to Spain. And it’s on the water.”
“So is Maine. And you’ve never been to Belgium either.”
“Who wants to go to Belgium? What kind of story can one possibly write about Belgium? Or Maine?”
Lang shook her head. “There is so much you don’t know.”
“That’s why I want to go to Europe. So I can find out.”
“You’re going to learn about life lying on a filthy beach? Okay, riddle me this,” Lang said. “Where do you plan to sleep?”
“What do you mean?”
“Am I not being clear? You’re planning to go with your boyfriend, your best friend and her boyfriend. Where are the four of you going to sleep in this Barcelona?”
Chloe tried not to stammer. “We haven’t thought about it.”
“Haven’t you.” It was not a question.
“Probably a youth hostel or somewhere like that.”
“So in a dorm with fifty strangers all using the same bathroom facilities, if there are any?”
“We don’t care about that. We are young, Mom. We’re not like you. We don’t care about creature comforts. Where we sleep. What we eat. What we wear. It’s all fine. So it’s not the Four Seasons. So what? We’ll be in Europe. We’ll buy a student Eurail pass for a few hundred bucks, sleep on trains if we have to, to save money.”
“Why would you need to do that?” Lang’s already narrow dark eyes narrowed and darkened further. “You just said you were going to Barcelona. Why would you need to sleep on trains?”
“In case we wanted to see Madrid. Or maybe Paris.” That was Hannah’s idea. Hannah, the Toulouse-Lautrec artiste.
“Paris.”
“Yes, Paris. Isn’t France next to Spain?”
Her mother folded her hands together. “Chloe, I tell you what. Go away and think carefully about all the questions I’m going to ask you next time you sit down and say, Mom, I want to go to Barcelona. Everything I’m going to ask you, ask yourself, find an answer, and come prepared.”
“Like what?”
“Nope. That’s not how it works. You figure out the solutions to the problems. Oh, and by the way, one of those problems is telling your father. Let’s see how you surmount that.”
Chloe became deflated. “I thought maybe you could tell him.”
“That’s likely.”
“Don’t be sarcastic, Mom.”
“I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being snide. You know I’m actually going to tell him as soon as he walks in the door.”
“Perhaps he’ll be more reasonable than you,” Chloe said. “Maybe Dad remembers what it’s like to be young. Oh, wait, I forgot, you can’t remember, because you were born old. Born knowing you’d have a kid someday whose dreams you’d spend your entire life harpooning.”
“I’m harpooning your dream of going to Barcelona?” said Lang. “The dream I didn’t know you had until five minutes ago?” She raised her hand before Chloe could protest, defend, explain, justify. “Where are you going to sleep, Chloe? Why don’t you first work on giving your father the answer to that pesky question. Because it’ll be the first thing he’ll ask. Then worry about everything else.”
Her parents didn’t yell, they didn’t punish. They were simply hyperaware of every single thing Chloe said and did. She got a new ribbon at the high school book fair? They knew. She once almost failed a biology test? They knew. She wore black eyeliner? Oh, they knew. She and Mason danced too close at one Friday night canteen? How they knew. They had no life except to live vicariously through hers. And the only thing that was expected of her, aside from not flunking out of school, was not to let down half a billion Chinese mothers by going to a Barcelona beach to have unfettered sex with her boyfriend.
“Going to Barcelona is also an education, Mom,” Chloe muttered. She really didn’t want to face her dad’s questions. What was she supposed to say? We’re going to get two rooms, and the girls will stay in one room, and the boys in the other? What kind of naïve fool for a parent would believe that?
“Yes, an education in boys,” said Lang. “What are you going to tell us, that you’ll get two rooms and you and Hannah will stay in one and the boys in the other?”
There you go. Didn’t even have to say a word.
“Your plan,” Lang continued, “is to rove around Europe for a month with your boyfriend on your hard-earned college savings. This is something you’re seriously proposing to your father and me?”
Dad is not here, Chloe wanted to say. She didn’t know of whom she was more afraid. Dad never really liked Mason, that gentle kid. She didn’t know why. Everyone loved him. “We could go to Belgium, too, if you want.”
“Are you weak in the head? Why would I want this?”
“You mentioned Belgium. I could bring you back some chocolates.”
“Your father gets me a Whitman’s Sampler every Valentine’s Day. That’s enough for me.”
“Belgium is safe.”
“Is Mason safe?”
“Hannah will be with me. She’s nearly a year older. She’ll protect me.”
“Chloe,” said her mother, “sometimes you say the funniest things. That girl couldn’t protect a squirrel. She can’t protect herself. I trust Mason more than I trust Hannah.”
“See?”
“More, which is to say nothing. How much is two times zero? Still zero, child.” She raised her hand before Chloe could come back with a wisecrack. “Enough. I have to slap these Linzers together and then get dinner on. Your father will be home soon. Go to the music room and practice.”
“I’m going to be eighteen, Mom,” Chloe repeated lamely.
“Yes, and I’m going to be forty-seven. And your father forty-nine. I’m glad we established how old we are. Now what?”
“I’m old enough to make my own choices,” said Chloe, hoping her mother wouldn’t laugh at her.
To Lang’s credit, she didn’t. “Can you choose right now to go play a musical instrument,” she said. “Piano or violin. Pick one. Practice thirty minutes.”
“Hannah wants to talk to me before dinner.”
“Well, then, you’d better jump to it,” said Lang, her back turned, an icing sugar shaker in her hands. “What Hannah wants, Hannah gets.”
3 (#ulink_96c6fd5a-f573-582a-8bf0-ad2082614165)
The Perils of College Interviews (#ulink_96c6fd5a-f573-582a-8bf0-ad2082614165)
CHLOE SPRINTED FROM HER HOUSE ACROSS THE FLOWERBEDS and brush to Hannah’s next door.
Since the divorce five years ago, Hannah’s mother had been involved with revolving boyfriends, and consequently their yard never got cleaned up. “Why can’t she do it herself?” Lang would demand. Blake and Mason offered every month to help, but Terri didn’t want to pay them to do it. And she didn’t want them to do it for free because that was asking men for a favor. So she lived surrounded by unkempt backwoods, in wild contrast to Chloe’s parents’ approach to their house and their rural life. Lang allocated part of every day to weeding, mowing, cleaning, planting, raking, leafing, clearing, maintaining. The birches and pines were trimmed as if giraffes had gotten to them, and all the pine cones were swept up and placed in tall ornamental wicker baskets, and even the loose pebbles were picked up and arranged around the flowerbeds and bird houses and vegetable gardens. It was quite telling that Terri and Lang lived next door to each other for almost twenty years and yet didn’t know each other’s birthdays. Lang never said a thing, and kept Jimmy from saying anything, but Chloe could tell by her father’s critical expression when he spoke of “that family” that he looked forward to the day Hannah might become a friend of the past. There are two kinds of people in the world, Jimmy Devine said. Those who try to make everything they come in contact with more beautiful—and then there is Terri Gramm.
Before Chloe knocked, she stopped by the dock and stared out onto the lake, the railroad across it, the bands of violet mackerel sky. She imagined a lover’s kiss in the Mediterranean breeze, the mosaics of streets, parades down the boulevards, music, ancient stones, and evening meals. Beaches, heat, flamenco, bagpipes. Passion, life, noise. Everything that here was not. She imagined herself, fire, flowing dresses, abundant cleavage, no fear. Everything that here she was not. Her heart aching, she knocked on Hannah’s porch door.
Hannah’s mother was on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune.
“Hello, Mrs. Gramm.”
“Hi, honey.” Terri didn’t turn her head to Chloe. “Are you staying for dinner?”
“No, my mom—”
“I’m joking. We got nothing anyway.”
Hannah pulled Chloe into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“Did she say no?”
“Of course she said no.”
“But was it no, we’ll see, or was it no like never?”
“It was no like never.”
“But then she started asking you all kinds of questions?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s yes. They never ask anything unless it’ll be yes eventually. Give her a week to think about it. She has to talk to your dad.”
“You think I’ll have a better chance with him?”
“No. But he might give you money.”
“For Barcelona?”
“We’ll figure it out. We have bigger problems right now.”
“Bigger than my mom saying no?”
“Yes.” Hannah was biting her nails. Perfect Hannah with her perfect teeth was biting to the nubs her ugly nails at the end of her perfect long fingers. “How likely is it, do you think, that Blake and Mason are actually going to go?”
“A hundred percent.” Chloe pulled her friend’s twitchy hand out of her mouth. “Stop doing that. Don’t you know what Blake is like?”
Hannah didn’t reply. She was too busy bloodying the tips of her fingers.
Chloe plopped down on Hannah’s lavender bed. The girl turned up her music which was already plenty loud. She did it so her mother couldn’t hear her, but the result was that Chloe couldn’t hear her either. Hannah had a barely audible soprano, like a low hum, and over the high treble strands of Metallica’s “Nothing Else Matters” she was nearly impossible to make out.
She lay on her bed next to Chloe. “Chloe-bear, I’m in trouble.”
“What?”
“I have to break up with him and I don’t know how to do it.”
“With Blake?” Chloe sat up. She was horrified.
“No, with Martyn.”
“Who?”
“Stop it. Be serious.”
Chloe stopped it. How to tell Hannah that she was serious? Who the heck was Martyn? She hoped her pitiable ignorance didn’t show on her face. She scrunched it up knowingly, trussed her eyebrows, nodded. “Why, um, do you have to break up with him?”
“He was going to give me money to go to Barcelona, because he knows I don’t have enough, but if Blake is going, he won’t give me any money.”
Chloe blindly navigated the maze before her, hands out in front. “So don’t tell him Blake is going.” Who the hell was Martyn?!
“Except … he was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days.”
Chloe weighed her words. “Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona for a few days?” As if repetition would make Hannah’s words make sense.
“I didn’t want him to, Chloe, believe me, but I don’t have enough money to go, and I thought, what’s a couple of days, when we’re going to be there two weeks, right?”
“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.”
“Don’t be mad. I was going to tell you he was coming. I was just waiting for the right time. Please don’t be mad.” Hannah briefly leaned her head into Chloe’s head, and then clapped her hands business-like. “No, that’s it. I’m going to end it. It’s for the best,” she said. “He is getting too serious, anyway. We need to break up, not go on vacation.”
“Martyn was going to meet us in Barcelona.” Chloe couldn’t get past this one point.
“He doesn’t want me to go without him. He’s afraid I’m going to meet someone, have a fling. He is intensely jealous.”
“Martyn is jealous.”
“Yes, so jealous.”
“Um, does Martyn know you have a boyfriend? Maybe he can be jealous of him.” Poor Blake.
“He’s not worried about him.”
“Well, you’re not, why should he be? So this Martyn is afraid you’ll have a fling in Europe with someone other than your boyfriend?” Chloe opened her hands. “What kind of girl does he think you are?”
“Can you please, please be serious? I know I need to break up with him. But then where do I get the money to go?” She wrung her hands, twisted her sore and bitten fingers. The usually unruffled Hannah looked ruffled.
Chloe was afraid to ask the follow-up question. There were so many questions, she couldn’t sort out their order of priority. She was thinking of Barcelona. But she was also thinking about Blake. “Hannah, if you have someone else, why do you string Blake along? Why don’t you break it off with him, and do what you want?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Chloe,” Hannah said. “Did you not hear me just now when I said I was going to end it with Martyn?”
Chloe heard all right. “Do you even still want to go to Barcelona?”
“More than anything.”
“With Blake?”
“I’d prefer to go with just you.” Hannah pulled Chloe in for a hug. “Like we planned. Do you think we can talk Blake out of going?”
Chloe shrugged. “Perhaps you can dissuade him by telling him if he goes, then your secret lover won’t give you any money for Europe.”
In a humph Hannah turned her back to Chloe.
“I thought you had money,” Chloe said quietly. “I thought we were both saving.”
“We were. We are. But Chloe, I’m not you. I can’t walk around in the same extra-large T-shirt. I need spring clothes, I need summer clothes.”
“What do you want, a new skirt or Barcelona?”
“Both.”
“You don’t have money for both. Pick.”
“Both!”
Hannah’s back curved into a ball.
Chloe sighed, kneading her comforting palm between Hannah’s shoulder blades. “Who’s this Martyn anyway?”
“Don’t joke.”
“I mean”—Chloe cleared her throat—“how come he has money to burn?”
“He’s a professor. He’s got plenty of money.”
Martyn, Martyn, Martyn. Chloe tried to remember the first names of their teachers at the Academy. In any case, Hannah said professor, not teacher. Jumping up, Hannah started to pace and talk, began to tell Chloe things she couldn’t hear. It occurred to her that perhaps this was the reason she didn’t know about Martyn. Hannah told her, but Metallica was playing and through the strands of living life their way, Chloe had missed it.
Hannah grabbed Chloe’s hands. “What am I going to do? It’ll crush him.”
“Do you want to break up with him?”
“I have to. He’s become way too emotionally involved with me.”
“What about Blake?”
“Will you forget Blake! I have a real problem and you bringing him up every five seconds is not helping me.”
Chloe tried to regroup, find something else to say that sounded less hectory. “Um, how long has the Martyn thing been going on?”
“October.”
“Last October?”
“Yes, since my college interview. Chloe, why are you being so obtuse? Is this deliberate? Is this your way of judging me? You’re making it hard to talk to you.”
Now Chloe remembered. She had driven Hannah to Bangor for her University of Maine admission interview. Chloe had been accepted without an interview so she waited outside while Hannah went in. Hannah walked out with a man, who shook her hand or, rather, took her hand and held it. Hannah introduced Chloe to a very tall, grandfatherly gentleman, soft spoken and modest in manner. Surely that wasn’t Martyn?
Chloe thought no more about it, except in January when Hannah asked to be driven to Bangor again because the admissions office needed to go over a couple of things.
That couldn’t be the man Hannah needed to break up with. Chloe had it wrong. It couldn’t be him because he was …
“Hannah, I’m sorry, but how old is Martyn?”
Hannah studied the lilac bedspread as if the answer was written on her sheets like a cheat sheet. “Sixty-two,” she said.
Chloe jumped off the bed.
“Sit down. What are you getting all riled up about?”
“Hannah!” Chloe couldn’t sit. She could barely focus on Hannah’s aggrieved face. “Please tell me you’re not involved with a man forty years older than you. Please.” Was Chloe the only one who thought this was gross?
“Okay,” Hannah said. Metallica segued into Nirvana. Come as you are. As a friend. “Forty-four years,” she corrected Chloe.
Come as you are.
Chloe didn’t know why she should feel so affected by this. Hannah on the other hand was flushed, blinking rapidly, breathing through her mouth, as if she was catching the strands of the plot on her tongue and was about to jump on her computer and write a story for the ages. “He’s very much in love with me,” she said musically. “I didn’t realize he would fall so deep. He’s a widower and has been very lonely. At first he told me it was just for company. He knew we couldn’t last. He’s the one who told me it wouldn’t last!”
“But you’ve only seen him the few times I’ve driven you to Bangor,” Chloe said dumbly. “Right? I mean …”
“Don’t be naïve. We’ve been meeting every Tuesday at the Silver Pines Motor Court. And some Saturdays. He finishes teaching early on Tuesdays.”
Chloe’s expression must have been a sight.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Hannah said. “I didn’t want to be judged, and I was afraid you’d spill the beans to Mason, and then Blake would find out.”
Where had Chloe been that she hadn’t noticed Hannah’s twice-weekly disappearance? What did Hannah tell Blake about her regularly scheduled absence from their already convoluted life? How could he not know? Chloe had been busy squirreling away her own secrets from Hannah, and perhaps was grateful for a few days a week when she didn’t have to look away every time Hannah waxed about the University of Maine they would both be attending in the fall. But what was Blake’s excuse?
Tonight Chloe had nothing to say about Hannah’s dilemma. She remained stuck on the geezer’s age. He was thirteen years older than her father! Yet Hannah seemed unconcerned with this most startling detail: that she was sleeping with Cain and Abel’s uncle. Hannah sighed as if in a romance novel. “It’s extremely flattering to be loved like that,” she said. “So intensely. Oh Chloe! Do you know what it’s like to be loved so intensely?”
“Oh, sure.” Chloe stared into her hands as if they loved her intensely. “Quite a situation you’ve gotten yourself into, girlfriend,” she said.
“Don’t you think I know that?” For a moment, Hannah looked ready to cry. Yet Chloe knew that to be false, for Hannah didn’t cry. She only appeared to look to be ready to cry.
“I gotta go,” Chloe said, rising. “Hey, look on the bright side. My parents probably won’t let me go anyway.”
“How is that the bright side?” said Hannah. “We’ve been dreaming of Barcelona since we were eleven.”
4 (#ulink_2bc00385-1cdd-5668-b573-4e843332e76a)
Paleo Flood at Red River (#ulink_2bc00385-1cdd-5668-b573-4e843332e76a)
IT WAS DARK OUTSIDE AND HER FATHER’S BLACK DODGE Durango was parked in the open clearing by the time Chloe left Hannah’s and made her way through the brambles between the two properties.
It was a warm evening. Through the open window she could hear her mother’s soft voice and her father’s booming one. Chloe slowed down. Treading quietly over the pine needles that crunched under her feet, she inched up to the screened-in window in the living room.
“It’s out of the question.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why would she want to go there?”
“She says because she hasn’t been.”
“What kind of a reason is that?”
“She says because we went to Ireland without her.”
“If I hear one more word about Ireland!”
“Shh. I know.”
“I hope you were forceful, Mother. I hope you said no.”
“I was forceful. I said no.”
“But what?”
“But nothing.”
“No, I can see by your face it’s something. What?”
“She’s insisting.”
“So? We’re going to allow the child to make the decisions?”
“She said something about turning eighteen.”
“Oh, so she’s going to play that card!”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why does she really want to go?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy.”
“What’s in Barcelona?”
“Nothing. It’s not Fryeburg, not Brownfield, not Maine.”
“So why doesn’t she go to Canada? We’ll drive her to Montreal. It’s only a few hours away. In another country. We’ll leave her and Hannah there, then pick them up a few days later.”
“Yeah. Well. I haven’t told you the half of it.”
There was rustling, cooing, small giggles. “You haven’t heard my half of it, sweet potato. It’ll give you and me a chance to stay in a hotel. Like newlyweds.”
“Jimmy, don’t be bad.”
More rustling. Even some grunting.
“Jimmy, come on …”
Sweet God. Chloe couldn’t even eavesdrop on her parents’ conversation about her without it becoming a study in her own mortification.
“But seriously,” her father said. The cooing had stopped, thank God. “We can’t let her go.”
“I agree. How do we stop her?”
“We’ll just tell her she can’t go.”
“I look forward to our spicy pork chops tonight over which you tell her.”
“I’ve never liked that Hannah. Why couldn’t that no-good father of hers have gotten custody instead?”
“I think the answer is built into your very question.”
“That Terri is a piece of work. Doesn’t she know what’s going on with her own kids? I hear Jason is always in trouble up in Portland. By the way, the raccoons got to her garbage again.”
“I saw. I smelled.”
“Did you talk to her about cleaning it up? Or am I going to have to?”
“She told me this morning the animals have to eat, too.”
“I’m going to shoot them next time I hear them near her cans. They’re a rabid nuisance.”
“Jimmy, carry the potatoes. She better come home soon. Dinner is ready.”
“Should I go get her? Did you drive her?”
“No, I didn’t drive her to Hannah’s house. It’s forty yards away.”
There was silence. “I didn’t drive her, Jimmy. She’s fine. She’s next door.” Chloe heard the pot being placed on the table.
“So what are we going to do?”
“Talk some sense into her. She listens to you. You’re her father.”
“If she listened to me, she’d never ask for something so stupid.”
“It’s not stupid, Jimmy, it’s just kids being kids.”
“I never did nothing like that.”
“Okay. We did some stuff too.”
“Not like that.”
“Worse. We were young, too.”
“Hmm.”
“You remember Pembina? The paleo flood in the Red River in ’77? All right, Mr. Comedian. I know you remember. We were so bad. We didn’t need to go to Barcelona.”
“We never needed to go anywhere, sweet potato.”
“Get the drinks. I’ll go get her.”
Pembina was where Lang was from. Pembina, North Dakota, less than two miles south of the Canadian border. The Red River is slow and small. It doesn’t have the energy to cut a gorge. It meanders through the silty bottomlands. Yet every few years it floods catastrophically through the marsh at its delta. It causes immense destruction. In 1977, the river flooded, and the National Guard was called in to help the locals cope. Jimmy Devine, National Guard, met Lang Thia, whose father was a prominent local businessman who made hearing aids.
Her mother didn’t need a hearing aid. She came to the window near which Chloe was hiding and said into the screen, “Chloe, come to the table. Dinner is served.”
With a great sigh, Chloe peeled away from the wood shingles and walked, head hung, to the door.
5 (#ulink_a34f762d-ce1b-590c-becb-d5955198033d)
The Irish Inquisition (#ulink_a34f762d-ce1b-590c-becb-d5955198033d)
LANG TURNED ON THE LIGHT ABOVE THE SMALL RECTANGULAR table. They sat silently, their hands folded. They blessed their food. Jimmy said amen. Chloe asked him to pass the potatoes. Jimmy poured Lang a jasmine ice tea. Lang poured Jimmy a beer. They cut into their pork chops. The silence lasted two or three minutes. Jimmy had to get some strength before he began, though he looked pretty strong already. He was a big Irish guy, blond-haired once, now gray, blue-eyed, direct, no nonsense. He was funny, he was easy, but he also had a temper, and he never forgot anything, neither a favor nor a slight. It was almost his undoing, the merciless blade of his memory. Sometimes he had to dull it with whiskey. Sometimes he had to dull many things with whiskey. Tonight Lang eased him into Chloe’s summer plans by letting him eat for a few minutes in peace while she grilled Chloe on irrelevant matters.
“Did you do your homework?”
“I didn’t have any. It’s senior year, Mom. No one gives homework anymore.”
“Then what do they give you a fourth quarter grade for?”
“Showing up mostly.”
“So no tests, no quizzes, no overdue projects, no missing labs, no oral presentations, no incomplete class assignments?”
“Not to my knowledge, no.”
“Enough nonsense,” said Jimmy, having fortified himself on meat. “What’s this your mother tells me about Barcelona?”
Her father looked straight at her, and Chloe had no choice but to stare back. “Did my mother tell you that she wants me to enter into a story contest? Ten thousand dollar prize.”
“She mentioned something about that, yes. I don’t see how the two are related.”
“I have nothing to write about.”
“Come to work with me for a day or two. You’ll get three books out of it.” Jimmy Devine was the Fryeburg chief of police, like his father and grandfather before him. Fryeburg, Maine. Pop. 3500. Settled in 1763 by General Joseph Frye and incorporated in 1777, exactly two hundred years before the bad luck of the paleo floods two thousand miles away, and now Chloe sat impaled on the stake of parental disapproval.
“Really,” she said, irritated. “Books on what, breaking up domestic arguments and littering?”
“Nice. So now even my work, not just your mother’s, is denigrated?”
Chloe regrouped. “I’m not denigrating, Dad. But our hearts are set on Spain. Hannah and I have been talking about it for years.”
“You told your mother you thought of going just today. So which is it? An impulse or a lifelong dream?”
Chloe didn’t reply. They were denigrating her!
“How in the world can Hannah afford Barcelona?” Jimmy asked. “Her mother is at the bank every other day asking for an overdraft increase. And your friend, who abandoned you to do Meals on Wheels by yourself on Saturdays because she claims she has a job, often skips out on the one lousy four-hour shift she has at China Chef. So where’s her half of the money going to come from?”
Chloe hated that her dad knew everything about everybody’s business. It was terrifying. She stopped eating and stared at her father, the last bite of pork chop lodged in her dry throat. Did he know why Hannah was skipping out on China Chef? Oh God, please, no. A demoralized Chloe couldn’t withstand even two minutes of modest interrogation.
“Why do you want to go so much? Tell your mother and me.”
Chloe said nothing. Her entrails in knots, she felt like a scoundrel.
“Is it because we went without you that time to Kilkenny?” Jimmy said. “You’re lucky you didn’t go. Funerals are not for kids.”
And just like that the three of them were swallowed up by silent oceans. Jimmy awkwardly picked up his fork only to drop it. Lang nursed her jasmine tea. Sickened by the ghastly turn of the already difficult conversation, Chloe tried to right the course.
“It’s not about that. It’s not about funerals,” Chloe said. “It’s not about anything. It’s just awesome Spain. Why do you think I’ve been taking Spanish these last six years? I’m the only senior still taking a language. That’s why. Dad, I’m not a child anymore.”
“If you’re such an adult,” said Jimmy, “then what are you talking to us for?”
“I need your help with the passport.”
“Oh, now she needs us,” Jimmy said. “Just a signature. No help, no advice. No money. You have everything now, big girl. You’ve got it all figured out.”
“I don’t, but … it’s just a few weeks in Europe, Dad. Lots of kids do it.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Chloe stumbled. “Lots of kids.” No one from her school.
“It’s the worst place, by the way, to have a vacation,” Lang cut in.
“Why is it the worst place? It’s the best place! Have you been there, Mom?”
“I don’t need to go to Calcutta to know I don’t want to go to Calcutta.”
“Calcutta? Can we calm down? It’s Barcelona! It’s on the sea. It’s nice. It’s fun. It’s full of young people.”
“Did I hear your mother correctly?” Jimmy asked. “The two junkyard wildings down the road want to go with you?”
Well, at least it was out there. The pit in her stomach couldn’t get any bigger. “Why wildings? It’s Blake and Mason. You like them.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth or feelings into my heart.”
“You do like them. Mr. Haul is still your friend. Despite everything.” Chloe took a breath. “You help him out with money, you lend him your truck, you barbecue with him. You exchange Christmas presents. Mom gives them tomatoes.”
“What does that prove? Your mother gives tomatoes to everyone, even the Harrisons who tried to kill Blake’s dog. And in my line of work, I’m forced to talk to a lot of unsavory characters.”
“Mr. Haul is not one of them. And Mom and Mrs. Haul are friends.”
“Don’t get carried away,” said Lang. “I drive to ShopRite with her. She is not the executor of my will. So don’t hyperbolize.”
After a pause, Chloe said, “Now who’s hyperbolizing?”
“I don’t know why anyone, especially my daughter, would want to go to Spain of all places,” Jimmy said, getting up from the table, as if done with the conversation he was himself continuing. “Do you think there’s any place more beautiful than coastal Maine? Than the White Mountains of New Hampshire?” He snorted as he scraped the remains of his dinner into the trash. “You have staggering beauty outside your own door.”
“That’s what I told her, Jimmy.”
“Would that I had a chance to compare,” said Chloe.
“I’m telling you how it is.”
“So I have to take your word for it? I want to see for myself, Dad!”
“Where did this crazy idea even come from? Lang, did you know about this?”
“Jimmy,” said Lang, “she doesn’t know anything about Barcelona. If she did, she wouldn’t want to go. Believe me.”
How did one not raise one’s voice when confronted by a mother such as Chloe’s mother? “Mom,” Chloe said slowly, which was her equivalent of a raised voice. The slower the speech, the more she wanted to shout. At the moment, she was positively hollering. “I know you think I might not know anything about Barcelona. But what in the world do you possibly know about Barcelona?”
“Chloe! Be respectful to your mother.”
“That wasn’t respectful?” If only her parents could hear how Hannah talked to her mother.
Lang raised her hand. She was still at the table, across from Chloe. “No, no. Chloe makes a valid point. Clearly she thinks Barcelona has virtues Maine doesn’t.”
“I think it because it’s true,” Chloe said. “It has stunning architecture. Art. History. Culture.”
“You think we don’t have architecture?” Jimmy bellowed.
“Houses are not the same as architecture, Dad!”
“Don’t shout! Since when do you care about architecture? It’s the first time in my life I’ve heard you use that word. Now you want to go halfway around the globe to learn more about house design?”
Chloe found it difficult to speak through a clenched mouth. “Art. Culture. History.”
“So go visit Boston,” Lang said, pushing away from the table. “There’s a big city for you. It has Art. Culture. History. It has architecture.”
“Maine has history too.” Jimmy tried not to sound defensive about his home state. “What about the Red Paint People?”
“Dad, okay, history is not why I want to go to Spain.”
“Why then?”
“I bet it’s to lie on the beach all day,” said Lang.
“And what’s wrong with the beach?”
“You can lie on a beach in Maine!” Jimmy yelled.
“Chloe! Look what you did. You’ve upset your father. Jimmy, shh.” Walking over, Lang put a quieting hand on her husband.
Taking hold of Lang’s hand, Jimmy continued. They both stood a few feet away from Chloe, near the sink, united in their flummoxed anxiety. Chloe continued to sit and stare into her cold, half-eaten chop. “What about York Beach?” he said. “We’ve got five hundred miles of spectacular sandy coastline. How many miles does Barcelona have?”
“Is it warm?” said Chloe. “Is it beachy? Is it Mediterranean?”
“Do you see?” Lang said. “She doesn’t even know where Barcelona is. It’s on the Balearic Sea, for your information.”
Chloe couldn’t help herself. She groaned. Clearly, in between grilling swine and sugar-dusting Linzer tarts, her mother had opened an encyclopedia and was now using some arcane knowledge to … Chloe didn’t know what.
“Mom,” Chloe said, so slowly it came out as mommmmmmmmm. A raw grunt left her throat. “The Balearic Sea is part of the Mediterranean. Look at the map. Don’t do this.”
Undeterred, her mother continued. “They didn’t even have any beaches fifteen years ago. They built them for the Olympic Games. That’s your history right there. Don’t pretend you’re all about the Barcelona sand. Maine has had beaches for five hundred years.”
Chloe blinked at her mother. Lang blinked back defiantly. “Mom, so what? What does that have to do with anything? What does that have to do with me going or not going?”
“Don’t raise your voice to us,” Jimmy said. “So if it’s not for the beach, why do you want to go? Do you want to prove something?”
“I don’t want to prove anything. To anybody,” Chloe said through closed teeth. “I. Just. Want. To. Go. That’s it. You want to know why Barcelona and not Rome or Athens or some other place? Okay, I’ll tell you. Because while you were gallivanting through the glens of Kilkenny and I stayed with Hannah and her mom, Blake bought me a magazine.”
“Oh, well, if Blake bought you a magazine …”
“A National Geographic,” Chloe continued through the sarcasm. “There was an article on Barcelona in it. It sounded nice. So Hannah and I said to each other we’d go when we graduated.”
“So you want to go to Barcelona to punish us, is that it?”
Chloe wanted to scream. “Why would I want to punish you?” she said. “Do you want to punish me? Is that why you’re doing this? It’s not about you. It’s not about anything. Hannah and I fell in love with it when we were kids. We thought it would be fun to go when we grew up. And here we are. All grown up. Her mother is letting her go. Her mother is treating her like an adult. And yet my mother and father are still treating me like I’m eleven years old!”
“Can you act like an adult,” Lang said, “and stop being so melodramatic?”
No one spoke for a moment. Then her father did.
“All I know about Barcelona,” he said, turning toward the sink, “is that in Spain, the drivers are considered the worst in the world.” His back was to his wife and daughter. He didn’t, wouldn’t, couldn’t face them as he spoke. “It’s a well-known, established fact. The worst drivers in the world.”
Putting her soothing hand on Jimmy, Lang glared at Chloe, as if to say, do you see what you’ve done?
Chloe opened her hands. “I won’t be driving, Daddy. I promise.” Her feeble voice oozed with pity and penitence. The fight had gone out of her.
“You’ll be walking, though, won’t you,” Jimmy said, “while others are driving, poorly.” He lowered his head.
“Not even, Jimmy,” said Lang, caressing her husband’s squared back. “Didn’t you hear her? She’ll be lying on a brand-new beach. Admiring the architecture.”
6 (#ulink_76d6e35c-a63f-5567-bdb8-09e8c0a9cb80)
Mottos (#ulink_76d6e35c-a63f-5567-bdb8-09e8c0a9cb80)
EVERYONE HAD A MOTTO. CHLOE’S MOTHER’S WAS: “CAST your bread upon the water.”
Her grandmother’s was, “How I envy the handicapped in their wheelchairs who can push themselves around. They don’t know how lucky they are.”
And Chloe’s? Once, to go miniature golfing, Courtney and Crystal arrived at Chloe’s green cabin wearing slinky hot pink dresses and clangy bangles. Lang took one squinted glimpse at the two and stage-whispered to Chloe, “Where are they going to, a parade at a bordello?”
That became Chloe’s motto: To avoid at all costs such an assessment by anyone’s mother, including her own, or by, God forbid, a boy.
Okay, no, that wasn’t Chloe’s motto. That was her wish. You know what Chloe’s motto was?
On the blank canvas of your life with bold colors paint.
Maybe not so much a motto as an unattainable goal.
Chloe just wanted to know who she was. Not who she wanted to be. But who she actually was.
Up in the loft attic open to the living room, she lay on her bed with the ballerina-pink fluffy down quilt and soft pillows, clutching a tattered 1998 National Geographic to her chest, the one with the precious Barcelona article in it. When Polly, the old wizened woman who owned the Shell gas station in Fryeburg, decided to go into the used book selling business, running it out of her garage, Blake, out with his dad one afternoon, picked up a worn copy of the magazine. He paid two dollars of his allowance to buy it for Chloe when she was eleven and he was twelve. Reading about Barcelona burst her heart into a flame.
She’d read the article so many times since then, she had it practically committed to memory. Redeeming touch of madness. Millionaires on motorbikes, witches caked in charcoal dust, pimps and uncrowned kings. Miro, Picasso, Dali, firebombed girls in whorehouses. Just think about that! Firebombed girls in whorehouses. Barcelona has been inventing herself for a thousand years. With her parents talking below her in their tiny bedroom next to the front door, a nearly defeated Chloe caressed the cover of the magazine, pressed to her breasts, kneaded it like a rosary, prayed to God, please, please, please, and strained to hear the snippets of their parenting. From up here, it was just rising and falling pitch, up down, questions, quiet replies, voices, tempers, tides. For some reason her father’s voice was muffled, unclear. Her mother’s alto rose through the rafters.
Jimmy yelling suddenly and Lang yelling back. The walk down that long dirt road from the school bus is responsible for Barcelona, she says, and Jimmy yells, are you crazy, Mother?
“Better she go with the boys, Jimmy. Blake keeps everybody safe. He’ll keep her safe.”
She can’t hear her father’s response. Only Lang’s voice is clearly heard.
“I don’t want her to go, either, husband.”
“You know she’s leaving, Jimmy. You know that, right? She’s leaving home in three months. For good.”
“Okay, I’ll tell her she can’t go.”
“Don’t be sick with worry, Jimmy. She’ll be fine. Disaster won’t fall on us twice.”
Now Chloe hears her father’s voice. “Not on us,” he says. “On her.”
Chloe crept on her hands and knees to the railing, as if crawling on all fours would make the attic floor less creaky. Her Barcelona magazine on the planks in front of her, she pressed her face between the slats. They didn’t want her to go. She expected nothing less. Her parents weren’t Terri Gramm. They were never going to say, oh, sure, honey, Barcelona with the Spanish boys and your two horny boyfriends and topless beaches and incorrigible Hannah. And you, our only child, who’s never been anywhere without us, not a problem, you go, girl.
Chloe wanted so desperately to graduate, to be self-reliant, to sign her own applications, to take herself out of state, to travel on her own, to be grown up, that it was a physical ache throughout her whole body. A throbbing. What do I have to do, her body cried, to be taken seriously, to be thought of as a fledged human being, not just a fledgling? What do I have to do? It is so painful to live like this, thwarted, dependent.
Her ear was wedged between the slats, listening for a possible seachange.
What else could Chloe say to persuade them? Mom! she wanted to cry. I want to be the girl who later in life when she was old could say, yes, when I was young I traveled by myself on a train through Spain. I don’t want to be the girl who will tell her kid, no, I’ve never been anywhere, except North Dakota where I was born, and Maine where I married your father, and Kilkenny one time when somebody died, somebody who with his wanton recklessness ended up wrecking my careful life.
But Chloe couldn’t say that, just as she couldn’t say that maybe in Barcelona she would have sex with her boyfriend. Or that she might sunbathe topless on the man-made beach, built just in time for her Olympian topless body.
As she sat with her ear to the empty air below, she cupped her hands under her breasts and bounced them up and down. She wanted to sunbathe topless in front of Hannah, so that in this one way, she could come out slightly ahead, because Hannah bested her in everything else. Hannah was always playing a game of one-upmanship. Why couldn’t Chloe play just this once? Hannah was passive-aggressive, a constant downer, not a smiler, an inveterate shopper who made Chloe spend more of her allowance than she ever wanted to, to try to keep up with blouses, skirts, dresses, the latest boots and gloves. The size 2 girl who was always dieting, who told everyone she was fat, the long-limbed girl, aristocratically mouthed, and small-pointy-breasted. What other city could offer Chloe this particular intangible? Bathing topless on the beach in front of their two boyfriends and a city full of strangers, so she could win. How small. How stupid. And yet how completely essential. Could she do that in York, Maine? How could Chloe’s noblest desires fly side by side with her soaring pettiness?
Hannah, who was loved through and through by Blake, and still, it wasn’t enough.
Chloe fell asleep on the floor, her head pressed into the railing. She was woken up at one in the morning by her mother, who helped her into bed.
Please, Mom, she whispered half-asleep, reaching out to touch her mother’s face, or maybe she only thought she whispered. You wanted to be a dancer once. Let me do this one thing for me, but also for you. Let me live what you never lived, far away in whirling dancing noise and nights of magic flowers until the world blows up.
7 (#ulink_625bc2c8-6c4d-5f29-a388-0d56a54bea64)
Olivia the Dancing Pig (#ulink_625bc2c8-6c4d-5f29-a388-0d56a54bea64)
CHLOE DIDN’T KNOW HOW BLAKE HAD MANAGED IT, BUT BY the time her mother dropped her off in front of the Academy bus circle the next morning, every single person she met on the way to homeroom knew about their impending Catalonian Bacchanalian sexcapade. That must have been how Blake painted it, judging from the arched eyebrows and the innuendo smiles.
“Who do you think you are, Isabel Archer?” was what her mother had asked her as she pulled into the parking lot.
Chloe looked at her blankly. Lang stared back. She folded her plump arms. “You have no idea who Isabel Archer is, do you? What do they even teach you? Finest prep school in the United States indeed. Go learn something before you graduate.”
Her friends Taylor, Courtney, Regan, Matthew, his sister Miranda, and four girls on the cheer squad—who for some reason were hypnotized into believing Chloe did not despise them—all cornered her between her locker and the door of the physics lab.
“When are you going?”
“Did you already buy your plane tickets?”
“Can I see your passport?”
“Can you bring it to school tomorrow?”
“What’s the weather like in Barcelona?”
“Do you think your Spanish is good enough?”
“Does anyone speak English over there? Because frankly, Chloe, your Spanish isn’t that good.”
“And Mason doesn’t speak Spanish at all,” bubbled up Mackenzie O’Shea. There wasn’t a girl in six counties Chloe hated more than Mackenzie with her twisty body and twisty pigtails and mouth full of Bubblicious gum. One time in Science she popped the huge bubble wad in her mouth, and the gum burst from her cheeks to her chin and she got gum in her hair. In front of everyone. That was an excellent day.
“Where are you going to stay?”
“I can’t believe your dad is letting you go. My dad would never, and he’s not even the chief of police.” That was Mackenzie.
“Are you allowed to drink over there?”
“Really, you shouldn’t drink. You’re not used to it. You’ll vomit. Like that other time.” Still Mackenzie.
“Don’t they drive on the wrong side of the road?”
“I thought the capital of Spain was Madrid. Are you sure it’s not Madrid you’re going to? Because I don’t think Madrid is on the beach. Blake tells us you’re going to an Olympic beach. He’s wrong, isn’t he?”
“My aunt’s second cousin went to Madrid. She said it was dusty.”
“It wasn’t Madrid, genius. It was Mexico City.”
“Same difference. Very dusty. And crowded.”
“Is there skiing there?”
“Do they take American dollars?”
“How would you even change dollars into pesos? Or are they on the euro now?”
“What’s a euro?”
“Blake and Mason are not going to like it. They get very sunburned. Mason especially.” Still fucking Mackenzie.
Not a word was required of Chloe, or even desired.
“You must be thrilled,” Taylor said as they took their seats in Physics. “To travel through Europe with Mason. It’s a dream.”
Chloe heard Mackenzie’s high-strung voice from behind her. “Mason is not a city guy. He’s a ballplayer. A skier. He’s not gonna like it.”
“Don’t be a fool, Mackenzie,” said Taylor, sparing Chloe a crackling response. “You think varsity players don’t like traveling?”
“Not Mason. He doesn’t like empanadas or that weird Spanish food they have over there. Tapas or some shit. He likes burgers. Steak.”
“I swear, I’m going to deck her,” Taylor whispered.
“Get in line,” Chloe whispered back, and after class implored Mason to control his brother who couldn’t keep his big mouth shut about anything.
“Like I can control him,” Mason said, kissing her and running off.
“Are you so psyched?” was the first thing Blake said to her as they took their seats in Health.
“About what?”
“Barcelona, dumblehead.”
“Do I seem excited to you? Did you tell your parents?”
“Of course. They couldn’t be happier. They can’t believe you girls were thinking of going on your own. Dad said Chief Devine would never allow it.”
Chloe mumbled unintelligibly.
“Mom said she wants us to protect you from the big bad Europeans.” Blake laughed.
“Why’d you have to go tell everybody?” Chloe was churlish. “You and your big mouth. What if my parents say no?”
“Haiku, you funny.” Blake patted her arm as he flipped open his spiral notebook. “You didn’t think your mother would just buy you a plane ticket to Spain, did you? The woman didn’t let you take the school bus until your senior year and even now still drives you in the morning. She was hardly going to run to Liberty Travel in North Conway. They need to think it over.”
“Yes. And then say no.”
“They loves you. Why would they say no to the one they loves?”
Blake knew nothing. Lang was gearing up to say no. She was making heavenly lemon pound cake when Chloe got home from school, a consolation dessert if ever there was one.
“For your information, Mom,” Chloe said, having fortified herself with a shallow knowledge of Henry James’s monumental novel and worked on her riposte all day, “Isabel Archer came into a fortune. That will hardly be me. Are you afraid some broke European is going to sweep me off my feet because he is angling for my five hundred bucks?”
“Is that your fantasy?” Lang asked. “To be desired by dangerous men for your meager dollars?”
“Of course not!” She was with Mason, the cutest boy in the Academy halls.
“Then why did you say it so wistfully?”
“I’m not Isabel Archer, Mom. You know who I am? Olivia, the dancing pig. She has a painting of Degas’s ballerinas on her wall, but she’s never going to be either Degas or a ballerina, is she?”
“So now you’re a pig dreaming of being a ballerina?” Lang slid a plate of pound cake in front of her daughter. “What are you doing, Chloe? Are you placing all your hopes on what may lie just around the next bend in the river? You think you can drift on the train from Spain to France not knowing where your next stop will be in the fervent hope that you’ll come closer to an answer to that most profound of human questions?”
“And what question is that, Mom.”
“Who you are, of course.”
Was there ever a mother more infuriatingly on point than her mother!
Hannah was out. Mason was at varsity. Blake was helping Mr. Leary with his concrete-buster block saw. So Chloe scribbled down some notes for a Social Studies oral essay on women’s rights as interpreted by Pearl Buck and watered the garden.
To her surprise, her father came home early.
“Chloe-bear,” Jimmy said. “Your mother and I are not going to talk to you about Barcelona anymore. You know how we feel. We know how you feel. Until we have something to speak to you about, we are going to call truce and talk about other things. Deal?”
“You should’ve told that to Mom,” Chloe said. “Because she’s been going on about Henry James and Huck Finn all afternoon.”
“She told me. That’s why I’m saying this now. Excuse me.” Jimmy moved Chloe out of the way. “Your mother and I are going for a walk.”
“You’re what? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” her father said. “Because we need privacy to talk about you, and at home you’re always eavesdropping.”
No words more frightening could have been spoken mildly by a gruffly amiable man, who placed his badge and his service weapon on the hall table and donned his spring parka. Lang put on her suede shoes and a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap she had bought at a garage sale even though she’d never heard of the Pirates and thought they were a football team. Off they went, arm in arm, her mother stout, her father expansive, into the hills around the lake.
They were gone an hour.
At dinner they talked of television shows, movies, her graduation party, college. Should she ship her heavier items like a television ahead of time, or should they buy a TV on the other side? And what about a car. She’d definitely need one. How did she feel about a used VW Beetle? Perhaps red? Not a word about Spain was spoken.
The next afternoon, the pattern was the same. Lang made oatmeal raisin cookies, Jimmy came home early, and they vanished through the birches. The third day Chloe began to doubt everything. How important was Barcelona anyway? Why did she have to be so obstinate?
Where could she go that might be more acceptable to her parents? She had read about Innsbruck, the heart of the Alps, white with fresh snow. Picturesque gardens, musical chambers, Roman marvels, Bavarian creams. Her clothes, down coat and all, always on, even in bed.
Ugh.
She spent her entire life living in snowed-in valleys surrounded by mountains. She skied, snowboarded, sledded. She skated right on her lake. She played wild, nearly violent games of ice hockey with her friends. Every four years she and Mason pretended they were Olympic skaters, spinning and salchowing over the thick ice. But Chloe and Blake were actually speed skaters and every winter when they weren’t ice fishing, they spent from sunup to sundown in racing abandon. Chloe owned more parkas than jean jackets. She knew what to do for frostbite. She had read Jack London’s terrifying “To Build a Fire.” More than once.
Why would she go anywhere else but Barcelona? Why would she ever want to?
8 (#ulink_7144b674-52f0-5bf4-9ae3-1b4d4e4cb6d9)
Empty Wells and Vernal Pools (#ulink_7144b674-52f0-5bf4-9ae3-1b4d4e4cb6d9)
CHLOE ASKED TO BORROW HER MOTHER’S CAR TO DRIVE Hannah to Bangor. She made up some story about dorms and housing applications.
Lang only half-listened. “Are you ever going to tell her?” she asked.
Hannah was headed to Bangor to break up with the grandpa who loved her. He might not make it out of the afternoon alive. Did she really need Chloe adding to her woes? “Of course. But not right now.”
“You’ve been saying that since April. Tell her on the way.”
“I will. Soon.”
“Now’s the perfect time. Um, Hannah, guess what? Our trip to Bangor reminds me of something. That sort of thing. You know she’ll find out eventually.”
“Of course she’ll find out eventually, Mom.” Duh.
“Perhaps when she moves into a UMaine dorm and instead of you her roommate is a tall black chick?”
“Yes, like then. And don’t say chick, Mom. Ew.” If Chloe ground her teeth any more, she’d have no teeth left. Why couldn’t her mother be like Hannah’s mother? Terri never asked questions, never hounded, never scolded. Chloe wasn’t one hundred percent sure Terri knew where her daughter was accepted to college. She was just so chill and lax about things.
“Why won’t you tell her, child? What are you afraid of?”
Why did everybody keep asking her this! What wasn’t she afraid of. That Hannah would not forgive her. That she couldn’t explain it. When she tried to explain it to herself, she could not, so how was she going to explain it to her best friend, and to Mason?
“Have you told Mason at least?”
Chloe didn’t reply.
“Oh dear Lord. Chloe!”
“Mom! Can you please not stress me out? Am I not wound up enough? I tell you what, sign my passport application, and I’ll tell everybody everything in Barcelona.”
“Chloe, you haven’t told your boyfriend you’re leaving for San Diego?”
“Mom, he’ll find out soon enough! He’s got his last varsity game coming up. He’s been in training for three weeks. I didn’t want to bother him. And I only just decided.”
“A month ago.”
“A few weeks ago.” She stuck out her hand, trying not to shake from exasperation. “Please can I have the keys?”
“I’m telling you right now, I’m not doing it,” Lang said, opening her purse. “You’re not hopping on a plane to California and leaving me to mop up your mess.”
“Let me go to Barcelona and I’ll tell them myself.”
“Don’t threaten me, young lady, I won’t stand for it.”
“The keys. Mom. Please.”
In the car, while Hannah was angsting away about Martyn, Chloe wasn’t listening, her focus elsewhere. Had there been silence in the car, she might have attempted a confession. A pretend casual tone. No big deal, Hannah. I know you’re thinking we’re going to UMaine, but did I mention this other place I applied to, three thousand miles away from Bangor, our whole wide country away? A Spanish city with beaches, warmth, no mountains, no snow. Like Barcelona, but in the States.
“Have you applied for your passport yet?”
Chloe snapped out of it. “How can I apply? They haven’t said I can go.”
“Tell them in a firm and convincing manner that you’re going and that’s all there is to it.”
“Yes, right, okay. Do you know what my mother has been doing?” Chloe said. “Buying me books. Frommer’s Guide to Spain’s Coastal Cities. Fun Facts about Barcelona. To Barcelona with Love. DK Guide to Spain’s Most Beautiful Churches.’”
“That’s nice. She’s being helpful.”
“You mean impossible. She says to me, see, honey, you don’t have to go anywhere, you can just read books about it.”
“True, your mother is always advising me to read more,” Hannah said. “She says you can live other lives through books, experience travel, love, sorrow.”
“She’s buying me books so I can see Barcelona from the comfort of my recliner while she makes me éclairs and rum babas.”
“Yeah,” said Hannah. “You have it so tough.”
Chloe drove. She didn’t want to say how much she envied Hannah her parents’ spectacular non-participation. Divorce did that—shifted priorities.
“They make unreasonable demands on me,” Chloe said.
Hannah turned down Nirvana. “I wish somebody would make a demand on me.”
Grandpa is making demands on you, Chloe wanted to say. How’s that going? “I thought you liked that they never asked you for things,” she said instead.
“Turns out, I want to be asked for something.”
“Like what?”
“Anything,” Hannah said. “Just to be asked.” She turned to Chloe. “Why are you so tense? Look at the way your hands are clutching the wheel.”
Chloe tried to relax, really she did.
“I’m the one who should be tense,” said Hannah. “You have no idea how upset he’s going to get.”
Chloe thought long and hard about her next question. “He’s generally in good health, right?” she asked. Like his heart?
“Oh, yes,” Hannah said. “Believe me, there’s nothing wrong with him.”
“Ew, gross. Not what I meant. But okay.”
“What’d you mean?”
“Nothing.”
Hannah was looking too pretty for someone who was about to break up with a nonagenarian. Almost seemed mean. The poor fellow was going to be feeling like shit anyway, why rub it in his face, the youth, the slim feminine attractiveness, the long legs? Hannah even wore a skirt, as if headed to church. Linen skirt as short as the month of February. Navy blue sparkly ballet flats. A cream top. Face deceptively “unmade-up,” yet fully made-up. Eyes moist.
Chloe couldn’t pay too much attention to Hannah’s appealing exterior while driving down a zigzaggy two lane country road, but from a surreptitious corner of her eye, Hannah was looking delectable, not forlorn.
“Hannah, why are you looking so pretty if you’re ending it with him?”
She beamed. “He likes to look at me, that’s all.”
“But you want him to like to look at you less, don’t you?”
Hannah didn’t reply, busy eating her fingers, twisting her knuckles.
To everything there is a season. That was another one of her mother’s mottos. This was emphatically not the season for college confessions. This was a time for lovers. Chloe cleared her throat.
“Can I ask you about Blake?”
“What about him?”
“Don’t you like him?”
“I love him, what are you talking about?”
“Well, then, why …”
Hannah waved at her. “You won’t understand, Chloe. You and Mason are so perfectly aligned.”
“You think so?” Chloe wouldn’t have minded talking about it.
“But it’s different with me and Blake. He’s so sweet, but …” Hannah paused, chewed her nails, stared out at the pines passing by. “Besides the physical, we have little in common. Don’t get me wrong. The physical gets you pretty far. With Blake, believe me, almost the whole way. If it was the only important thing, we’d be in great shape. But aside from that, what do we have? All the things I like, he couldn’t care less about, and all the things he likes I don’t get at all.”
“Blake’s so into you. He likes everything you’re into.”
“What do I care about junk hauling, or building things, or helping old people, or fixing band saws? Or fishing? And what does he care about Paris and museums, and classic literature, and pretty clothes?”
“There are other things …”
“Yes, we’ve done them.” Hannah sighed dramatically. “Do you think that boy will ever live away from his dad? He still helps him into the boat, for God’s sake. He wants to start a junk business. I mean, what am I going to do with someone like that?”
“He also wants to write a book,” said Chloe.
Hannah waved in dismissal. “He and a million others. Me, I want to travel the world. I want to learn three languages. I want to live in a big city. You and I both do. It can’t end with Blake any other way but this way.”
“But that’s the thing,” Chloe said, her gaze on the road. “It’s not ending. If you ended it with him, that’d be one thing. But you’re not.”
Hannah turned to Chloe, frowning disdain on her displeased face. “How do I do that? And then what? What do I do with us?” She made a large air circle, embodying by the broad sweep not just herself and Blake, but Chloe and Mason too. “We are all four of us together every day. We have one life. If I break up with him, what happens to the four of us? Do you even think before you speak? I mean, could you break up with Mason?”
“I don’t want to.”
“But if you did?”
They didn’t talk for a while. The road was narrow, the pines tall, the ride long, what was there to say? Except what a hypocrite Chloe was, what a deceiver. She decided she would tell Hannah about San Diego on the way home, her heart falling through her abdomen at the thought of it.
Chloe underestimated the open and public heartbreak a man near retirement age could display on the walkways of Orono, near the river on the University of Maine campus, when his eighteen-year-old lover told him it had to end.
Chloe stayed as far back as possible. She couldn’t believe Hannah would do this on the avenue where students and faculty strolled on a warm May evening. But his reaction was so extreme that perhaps this was why Hannah had chosen the public square for his flogging; she had hoped he would keep it together. At first they walked arm in arm, overlooking the flowing waters, the mountains beyond. He smiled at her, squeezed her arm. They made quite a picturesque couple against the backdrop of the snow-capped Appalachians.
Hannah spoke. He stopped walking. He took his arm away. She gestured, in her small elegant way, and he stood, a pillar of incomprehension. Then he started to weep. Hannah stroked him, embraced him, talked and talked, a filibuster of consolation. Nothing helped the gray man become less stooped.
Chloe had to stop peeking at his despair. It was as if she had caught him in the shower, or them in a different sort of clinch. She became embarrassed, for herself, for him, for the passersby who slowed down, concerned at his distraught exhortations. He grabbed his chest, as if in the middle of heart failure.
After an hour he was still crying! And Hannah was still rubbing him, talking to him, gesturing far and wide.
Chloe understood nothing of this kind of emotion. Nothing. It seemed to her that logic must prevail in a grown man’s head when he spied himself standing in the middle of the college where he had tenure, bawling because his teenage lover had decided to move on. Not even move on, for Blake was the here and now, just … move sideways. Move back. Move away. How could the enormous common sense of that decision finally—finally!—not triumph over him?
Chloe had been keeping an eye on the time—the thing she usually had least of, next to money—but after ninety minutes her eyes left the watch permanently to pitch silent poison darts in Hannah’s direction, hoping her friend would sense Chloe’s own despair at the tedium of spying on a stranger’s excessive distress. Come on, wrap the whole thing up, put it in a doggy bag, take it home. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go! Chloe kept silently shouting. LET’S GO!
There was pacing, but there was no departing.
A hundred and ten minutes. A movie now. First a tragedy, then a comedy, then a farce, now Shoah.
Wait. Something new was happening. The stooped old man nodded. He let Hannah hug him, pat him.
Unfounded optimism. There he was, crying again. He could barely stand on his grieving geriatric legs. Carefully Hannah helped him over to a bench, and sat down next to her soon-to-be-erstwhile lover, continuing to cajole and comfort him.
The girls had a three-hour ride back home.
“Did you see him?” Hannah asked.
Oh, I saw him all right. Saw him, heard him, memorized him. I could play him by heart on the piano, that’s how well I’ve studied him.
“Yes,” said Chloe.
How could she tell Hannah about college?
She couldn’t. And didn’t.
She wanted to ask if Hannah loved Blake half as much. Would she shed a quarter of Martyn’s tears when it came time to say goodbye to Blake? Would she miss him an eighth as deeply? What was it called when it wasn’t pain, but a fraction of pain? Grimly Chloe closed her hands on the wheel.
“What happens next, Chloe?”
“I don’t know, Hannah. What happens next?”
It was going to get dark soon. Her mother would be worried. Nothing to do but drive on. “Remember Darlene Duranceau?”
“Who could ever forget her? Why would you bring her up, of all people?”
Chloe shrugged. “I’m trying to make a point about what happens next.”
Blake and Mason had dismantled the woman’s overflowing garbage heap of house in Denmark, Maine, after she died. She had been a hoarder, hoarding even herself in the end. She kept eating and sitting, eating and sitting, and soon she got so big that she couldn’t move off her couch, and she just kept eating and eating and eating, using the couch not just as a bed and a dining table, but also as a toilet, and, eventually, as a grave.
It was winter when she died, and everyone had been snowed in for days. The local market couldn’t deliver Darlene’s groceries. When the roads were finally plowed, Barry the delivery boy brought Darlene her customary two boxes of Pringles and pretzels. Barry found her. Barry did not recover from this. He had been a shy clumsy kid in Chloe’s homeroom, but now he was on major meds, in therapy six days a week and home-schooled by Social Services.
The townies talked about nothing else. What was Darlene’s life like before she and the couch became one? What drama in her life had led her to the upholstered end? Was the end a consequence, an answer to a why? Or was it a catalyst? If everything you did led to everything else that would eventually happen, the question was: was Darlene Duranceau the beginning or the end?
After the coroner pronounced her dead, and it was time to remove her from the premises, the EMT workers discovered that she was stuck. From lack of movement, she had developed sores that festered, causing open wounds that oozed into the sofa, which then closed up around Darlene’s flesh like lichen to a rock. She had liquefied and then mummified into her furniture. The town cremated her with the couch. No one but the boys out in the schoolyard ever discussed how the funeral home fit Darlene and her Davenport into the relatively narrow opening of the cremation pyre.
How could Chloe add to Hannah’s chaos by confessing about California?
She wants to tell her, but she can’t.
She can’t.
And she doesn’t want to.
Hannah will feel betrayed.
What kind of a terrible friend would Chloe be to betray her friend and then tell her about it?
So she doesn’t tell her.
She thinks she justifies it beautifully.
Only a guilty mouthful of what feels like open safety pins alerts Chloe to the falseness of her excuses.
“I know the answer,” Hannah said. “You know what happened next for Darlene? Nothing.”
“Yes. That was the end of Darlene’s story. But yours is just beginning, Hannah. That’s what I’m trying to say. Take heart.”
“Did you see how upset Martyn was?”
“I saw.”
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you think is going to happen?”
“It’ll be something. Martyn is not Darlene.”
“But what if what happens next is you and your sacred striped sofa become one?” said Hannah. “What if when God said flesh of my flesh, he meant flesh of my sofa? The Chesterfield of my flesh? What if Martyn is a Darlene?”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
There was silence for a while. It was black out. There were no lights on the road except for the car’s headlights.
“Blake is the sweetest lover,” Hannah said in a small sad voice. “You don’t expect that from someone like him, because he’s so rough and tumble, but he is super gentle and super considerate. He’s always caressing me, kissing my back. He’s always trying to make me happy.”
“You’re lucky,” Chloe said, settling into the wheel, stepping on the gas pedal. She didn’t think Blake was so rough. For months, when his dad couldn’t walk, on account of nearly dying, oh and having a back broken in three places, Blake carried his father to the reclining chair by the sandy shore and set him down into it so Burt could watch the lake and the sky and Blake and Chloe fishing in the boat and skating on the ice. His dad liked to watch the kids having fun, Blake said.
9 (#ulink_67934995-a551-57f0-af46-ee45be3d6297)
Red Vineyard (#ulink_67934995-a551-57f0-af46-ee45be3d6297)
“TEACH ME, HAIKU. TELL ME HOW TO BEGIN. TUTOR ME IN beginnings.”
Blake plopped down across from her in the nearly empty learning center, scruffy, smiling, slapping his notebooks onto the heavy wooden table between them. His pens rolled toward the window. Chloe watched them, and he watched her watching them. Without breaking eye contact with her, he stopped them from falling to the floor and then he spoke. “What’s been the matter with you today?” When she didn’t reply, he went on. “Is it because of Barcelona? Don’t worry. They’ll say yes. They’ve been talking to my mom. Asking her if she thinks we’re trustworthy.” Blake laughed. “I told her, lie, Ma, say yes!”
She smiled half-heartedly but couldn’t look at him. She pretended she was super distracted by Very Important Thoughts. About pi and Ovid and Pearl Buck. The tutoring center at the Academy was a large first-floor classroom with twenty-foot windows and long wooden tables behind which girls like herself sat and waited for students who needed help in math, hard sciences, English, you name it.
Although final exams were getting close, the place was nearly empty. She’d had just one student all afternoon, an apathetic freshman from Delaware named Kerwin, whom she schooled in irrational numbers like pi. “You can’t have an infinite string of zeroes in a pi exponent,” Chloe told Kerwin, “because then the fraction would end. And what do we know about pi? It’s transcendental. It cannot end.” Her mother had once taught her about pi. Something about divinity and infinity. The soul is divine, her mother had told an anguished Chloe. Don’t worry. The soul has no end. Like pi. An infinite thing cannot end.
Kerwin wasn’t getting it. And Chloe wasn’t at her best. Her mind kept wandering. To distant beaches, imposing cathedrals, white stucco resorts in the hills, Hannah walking arm in arm with Blake through the halls, cozy as all that, as if Martyn had not happened, as if the last eight months of tawdry Tuesdays and Saturdays at the Silver Pines had not happened, Hannah making out with Blake between Health and Gym, discussing the prom with him between English and Science, fretting about her mango dress matching his peach cummerbund at the prom, and all the while Blake going on and on about Barcelona, and all the while sadness seeping on and on into Chloe’s heart. How could Hannah pull off such nonchalance? Chloe couldn’t tell why this bothered her as it did. Usually she tried not to ask herself too many why questions.
Now, pretending she hadn’t heard Blake ask about beginnings, Chloe turned to the window, to continue to daydream about Iberian dragons rampaging through the streets. Across the field she could almost make out Mason’s breathless shape on the baseball diamond. He was just a panting dot in golden dirt. It was the only time she saw him panting, perspiring, on fire. When he was out in the field.
“Yoo-hoo, Haiku …”
She blinked and dragging herself back to reality turned to a quizzical, smiling Blake. He was clad as usual in plaid and flannel and cotton and denim, his stubble four days old, his wild hair three days unbrushed and two months streaked by the spring sun. “I just need to know what’s in my suitcase,” he said.
“In our play we reveal what kind of people we are,” Chloe told Blake, quoting Ovid. “So first figure that part out.”
He looked wholly unimpressed. “You’re putting the cart before the horse.”
“No …”
“You are. Believe me. First I write. Then I figure out what it all means. Which, by the way, is the opposite of the insane horse crowd. They put portents on paper first and then use a mallet to beat it into a story.”
“You have it all figured out, don’t you? What do you need me for?” She sounded just like her father.
He leaned forward as if confiding. “I don’t have anything figured out. What would you put inside it? How would you start it? Look what I have.” He pulled out a three-subject spiral notebook to show her. He had divided his notes into sections: story, characters and the last one for thoughts, notes, lists, tidbits.
“I write and write,” he said, “but I still don’t know the most important thing.”
Ain’t that the truth, thought Chloe. She studied the grain in the table. He was too carefree and earnest to be saddled with her pity. “You do kinda have to know what’s in the suitcase if you’re writing a mystery.”
“Who said it’s a mystery?” He shook his head. “No. See, it’s the best thing of all. It’s an unexpected thing. You think you’re reading one kind of story, and then—POP, it’s another.”
“Like not a mystery?”
“You think it’s a mystery, but it’s really a Western.” He laughed. “Or you’re ready for a mother–daughter drama, but it’s really a two-man play about the meaning of trees. A thriller becomes a musical, a coming of age story is now the return of the native, science fiction turns out to be a war story.”
“Wait,” Chloe said, “a musical? How can a story on paper have music in it?”
He grinned as if he were about to doff his black hat. “That’s the trick, isn’t it?”
They were leaning forward over the table. The only other people in the room were three other tutors and a proctor. Outside it was deep spring, warm colors, tulips and grass, outdoor sports and new running shoes, the courtyard full of girls in light summer frocks, the kind she never wore, blowing up in the wind. She could see the three cream-brick dormitories, Payson-Mulford, Webster, and Hastings, arranged in a semi-circle of unchaperoned fun. Every Friday night before curfew, drunken madness. Next to Hastings a fence, a back gate, and a cemetery. Before the fence a tent. And under the tent, a barbecue grill and three picnic tables.
There once was a story with music in it at one of those tables.
Blushing at a hot lick of a nearly forgotten memory, Chloe quickly cantered away from the aching nostalgia of the picnic bench near Hastings, thinking we’ll never be that drunk again, her tongue-tied gaze colliding with Blake’s amused and amiable stare.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She stared at his large, scuffed hands, folded together in calm Zen across the table.
“Tell me why we must go to Europe,” he said.
“To find the blue suitcase, I suppose.”
“Why Barcelona?”
“The question is not why Barcelona,” she replied, gazing out the window. A thousand open questions, invisible to the naked eye, apparent to every living soul. “The question is why anywhere else?”
“Exactly. Who else would know this but you?”
She was trying to answer her own riddles in the unfinished English essay, a treatise on feminism and freedom in Pearl Buck. “You would write about Pearl Buck,” said her English teacher, whose insinuations Chloe didn’t appreciate, but it was too late to change her topic. You would get all As, Chloe. You would have an extra eraser, your neat notes from last year, the report handed in three weeks before deadline, and a yes from all the schools you applied to. Universities of Pennsylvania and Maine. John Kennedy Jr.’s alma mater, and Einstein’s. Every Boston school worth going to, Duke too, and San Diego, that misty Spanish renaissance on Mission Bay. You would. Chloe hated those two words.
It fed too cleanly into the digested and mealy narrative about her, the stereotype she despised and had tried all her life to change. She didn’t want to not do well. She just didn’t want to be known as the girl with the Chinese mother who did well.
You would.
My mother is fifth-generation American, Chloe would answer to every suggestion of the supposed intellectual blessings of her ethnicity. She is more American than I am, since my father’s father was born in Ireland and his mother somewhere in the Baltics. My mother, on the other hand, makes peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches. She frequently forgets to buy soy sauce. Does that sound Chinese to you? And yet how else to explain her own relentless quest for excellence? Every revolutionary date, every candidate for president, every battle in the Civil War, every Law and Act, every polynomial and integral domain, every tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow all the way to dusty death had to be not just memorized but internalized?
Pearl Buck wrote about the Chinese woman from a hundred years ago, but she could’ve been writing about Chloe’s mother and father. Jimmy Devine wanted a docile lamb who would be happy to contain herself within his four walls. Pearl Buck said that a woman full of energy and intelligence could not be contained within any man’s walls, but then Pearl Buck, the obedient daughter of a Christian missionary in China, had never met Lang Devine. She can’t be held there, Pearl Buck wrote, even if the walls were lined with satin and studded with diamonds. Chloe disagreed. Her mother’s wood cabin walls weren’t lined or studded with anything but photos of Chloe.
Pearl Buck seemed to think that Lang would soon discover she was living within prison walls. Chloe begged to differ.
Even children were not enough for some women. She may want them, Pearl Buck wrote, need them, and even have them, and love them, and enjoy them. But they wouldn’t be enough for her. “Nobody likes children, Chloe,” her mother would often say. “But we have them anyway.” Chloe was almost sure Lang was joking. Because for some women, children were everything.
Some women didn’t know anything about politics. It took all their effort to be wives and mothers. Well, Ms. Buck opined, that may be sufficient for some women, but their husbands certainly found the time to occupy themselves, not only in their chosen fields and with being husbands and fathers, but also apparently, with other women as well. Just ask Terri Gramm next door who worked sixty hours at L.L.Bean to pay the mortgage while her husband honeymooned in Maui with the assistant baker from Dunkin’ Donuts.
Chloe swore she would grow up to be a different kind of woman, not Terri, not Lang, not the donut-maker-helper.
But what kind of woman?
She had no idea. Chloe had the answer to everything, except the important things.
“Don’t worry about what’s in the suitcase for a moment,” she said to Blake in a voice thick with longing. “And the answer to the why will come. Just start at the beginning. Start with something true and real. Begin with your two main characters, the junk dealers.”
“If you’re going to make fun,” Blake said, “I’m going to give them another livelihood.”
“I’m not making fun. Tell me about them.”
Eagerly Blake opened the notebook to the second section. Character. Pages were filled in pencil in a slow and careful hand, too slow, too careful for Blake. Her delighted skepticism must have been apparent on her face. Without affront, he said, “Did you know, Miss Smartass, that Van Gogh sold only one painting in his entire lifetime?”
She marveled into his grinning face, tedium forgotten, even Barcelona and parents and Hannah’s other lover forgotten for a moment. “The surprise here,” she said, “is that you would know anything about Van Gogh.”
“Come on, Haiku, you know I’m a font of useless information.”
She broke a pencil. “Are you implying that you will also sell only one thing in your lifetime, say your purported story? Or could you possibly be equating yourself with Van Gogh’s talent?”
“Neither.” Blake was unperturbed by her teasing. “Red Vineyard was not even his best painting.”
“It was pretty good, let’s say that, but again, how is that relevant”—she wagged her finger in a small pi-circle at him and his notebook— “to what’s going on here?”
“All I’m saying,” Blake said, “is that if Gerald Ford can be a male model, then yours truly can be a writer.”
“Another metaphor entirely, but at least more apropos.”
“And did you know that Einstein did not or could not speak until he was nine years old?”
“How in the flipping world is that relevant?”
“Maybe I’m a late bloomer like him.”
Chloe smiled. He was being so cute. “Maybe. But the thing that’s actually relevant about Van Gogh is that he painted the Red Vineyard not while standing at the window looking out at it, but solely from his memory and imagination. Take that away and mull it, Einstein.”
Blake took it. He mulled it. “Maybe The Blue Suitcase will be my Red Vineyard,” he said, his own voice deep with longing.
“Or you could try writing something like Breath by Samuel Beckett,” Chloe said, straight-faced. “It’s one of his lesser known plays. It lasts thirty seconds and has no actors and no dialogue.” Her eyes twinkled.
And Blake, bless him, laughed, as Chloe had hoped he might. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “It’s called an intermission.”
And Chloe laughed.
The proctor shushed them. “Mr. Haul, I’ll thank you to keep your voice down.”
“What if I’m a writer?” Blake said to her, lower and leaning in. “I could be a writer, no?”
It must have grated on him that Chloe didn’t think he could do it. And she didn’t even think that. Well, all right, she did. She did think that. But so what? What did it matter what she thought? God.
“Figure out what’s in your suitcase,” she said, “and you will be a writer.”
Blake sat contemplating her. His face was inscrutable.
“What?” She became discomfited. She hated not knowing what people wanted from her. She didn’t like to disappoint.
“What do you think should be in it?”
“It’s your story.”
“But if it was your story.”
Chloe shrugged. “This one lady I deliver Meals on Wheels to, all the way in Jackson, lives in a yellow shed. I’m not kidding, it’s a shed off the main property, which is huge, but the shed is tiny, and it’s painted yellow, and she sits in a chair outside this canary box all day and watches the road, the cars, the walkers. She’s right past the covered bridge to Jackson. She’s ninety-two. She tells me that she prays to Jesus every day that today will not be the day she dies because she wants to be buried with all the jewelry her husband had given her, but she’s afraid her kids will never go for it once she’s dead. She tells me she’s trying to figure out how to get buried alive so she can decide what goes with her. She’d probably put her jewelry into this vanished case.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lupe.”
“I need to meet her ASAP,” Blake said. “Are you and Hannah doing Wheels tomorrow? Mason and I will go with you.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say.
He was so excited, he skipped right over her lying silence. Then it was time to go.
They ran for the late bus, heaved on, said hi to Freddy the thoroughly vetted and tested union driver. Chloe sat next to the window, Blake next to her, their backpacks squeezed between their legs. Freddy waited another minute for stragglers. Chloe spotted Mason still in his baseball uniform, walking down the path from the fields, with a team of catchers and cheer girls flanking him with their pom poms and their camaraderie. He saw the bus, waved to Freddy, yelled something facing the girls while running backward, then turned and sprinted with his gear and school books to the blue bus. In the twenty seconds it took Mason to jump on, Blake had gotten up and moved over one seat. Mason took the vacant spot next to Chloe. Blake sat with his back to the windows, his feet stretched out. He nearly tripped Mason with his sticking-out black Converse hi-tops.
A panting, sweating Mason kissed Chloe. “Sorry I’m all gross,” he said, wiping his face with the sleeve of his jersey.
“No, I like it.” It was nice to feel an exerting Mason wet on her skin. It was only after sports that she felt it.
“Mase, we’re going with the girls tomorrow,” Blake announced. “Meals on Wheels. To get awesome deets for our story.”
Holding Chloe’s hand, Mason shook his head. “No can do, bro. End-of-year varsity barbecue tomorrow. Sorry. But the three of you go. Have a blast.”
Twisting her mouth this way and that, Chloe looked out the window. How does she tell Blake that Hannah hasn’t gone to Meals on Wheels with her in months?
10 (#ulink_ecc6ea0e-35c1-58fa-ae17-068e65c3c8e0)
Lupe (#ulink_ecc6ea0e-35c1-58fa-ae17-068e65c3c8e0)
HANNAH’S WHEREABOUTS ON SATURDAY AFTERNOONS WAS explained by none other than Hannah herself who, as soon as they came pounding on her door to tell her about tomorrow, said, Chloe, what are you talking about, I haven’t been doing Wheels with you in months. You know I’ve been working the lunch shift at China Chef, trying to save up for our trip.
Blake’s kinetic gaze slowed down to take in Hannah, and then Chloe for a puzzled moment longer. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me that?” he asked.
“I haven’t done it for a while myself, I forgot,” stammered Chloe, throwing Hannah a rebuke dagger with her eyes.
“What’s the matter with you?” Hannah whispered, dragging her inside the house. “You know I’ve been working most Saturdays.”
“Do I?” Chloe said, pulling her arm away from Hannah and walking back outside. “I thought you were working on Tuesdays too. Shows you what I know.”
At nine the next morning, Blake knocked on her door.
“Good morning, Mrs. Devine. Good morning, Chief.”
“Good morning, Blake,” Jimmy said from the breakfast table, hands around a coffee cup. “How have you been? Looking forward to graduation?”
“Oh, absolutely, sir. Thank you. Very exciting. Yes.” Blake always talked to her father as if about to be arrested.
“Listen, I have a tree by the water that’s rotting, a willow.”
“Say no more. I’ll take it down for you. Do you have power out there?”
“By the lake? No.”
“I’ll bring my axe and my gas-powered chainsaw. Today after I bring Chloe home?”
“Anytime you can, Blake. It’s a big tree, though. If you help me knock it down, you can keep half the wood.”
“Thank you very much. My dad would like that. He gets cold cramps at night.”
“How’s he been?”
“Not too bad. Back keeps bothering him, you know.”
“I know,” Jimmy said, staring into his coffee cup.
“Yeah, well, um. Is Chloe ready?”
Chloe was ready.
Lang pulled her into the vestibule, that is, the very same short hall Blake had taken over with his broad flannel-clad frame. “You two have fun,” Lang said, “but come back before six.”
“Okay,” Chloe drew out. “Wheels is from eleven to one, and you know that, so.” She broke off. “That’s well before six. What’s up?”
“Moody is coming tonight for dinner,” Lang said reverentially, as if announcing the arrival of Queen Victoria. Moody was Chloe’s terrifying grandmother. “I hope you don’t have any prior engagements.”
Why would she? It was only Memorial Day weekend, when the kids from six towns would be gathering for the fireworks in North Conway, staying out, hanging around by the outlet shops, miniature golfing, eating ices, listening to the free bands in the old town square, making out, maybe other things. “Prior engagements? Who talks like that, Mom?” was all Chloe said. Moody was coming to dinner! Blake pretended to study the picture of Castlecomer on the wall.
“I just want to make sure you’ll be home.”
“So you talk like Edith Wharton? Why do I need to be home? Why is she coming?”
“She wants you to drive her to the cemetery to visit Uncle Kenny.”
“Ugh, no!”
“Yes. Plus she wants to talk to you.”
There it was. Chloe’s teeth set against each other as if in battle. Her antennae shot up, spring-loaded. “About what?”
“Am I Moody? How do I know?”
“I can tell you know.”
“Go. Just be back.”
“Mom! Is it about Barcelona?”
“Go!”
This was a futile conversation, and the fact that Lang allowed it as long as she did only spoke to Lang’s own anxiety about her mother-in-law’s upcoming visit. It was the first time in three years Chloe’s grandmother would be coming to their house. Chloe glanced over at her dad, to gauge his reaction to his mother’s arrival, but he was head down, buried in the newspaper.
“Blake, ready?” Chloe wanted to storm out of the house.
“It was nice to see you, Mrs. Devine. Have a great day. Chief, I’ll be by later to help you with that tree. I’ll bring some rope too.”
“Wait,” Jimmy said and got up. He handed Blake the keys to the Durango. “Take my truck. It’s easier to get in and out of than the Subaru.”
“Yes, it is, thank you very much, sir.”
“Dad, you’re giving Blake your truck?”
“Hardly giving.”
“You don’t lend it to Mason!”
“When Mason takes you to deliver food to the infirm instead of parking with you behind Subway, he can have my truck.”
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down in that regard, or any other.”
“I know, son.”
“One quick thing—where do you keep the siren lights? Somewhere in the truck?”
“Get out of here, Blake, before I change my mind.”
“Yes, sir.”
Six cold meals and six hot meals were delivered to St. Elizabeth’s on Main Street, the Devines’ parish church, by Petey, the Meals on Wheels delivery boy, who did not like to be kept waiting. Wheels didn’t usually deliver on Saturdays, but a dozen homes depended on Chloe, and that was the only day she could work.
“I’m surprised you still want to go,” Chloe said to Blake as he opened the Durango door for her. She was in a dismal mood. Moody was coming!
“I told you I would. I must meet this Lupe.”
“I don’t even know if she’s on the schedule today. Petey gives me a list. We should hurry. Sometimes she cancels. She doesn’t want me to go all the way out there just for her. Blake, what are you doing, what are you looking for?”
Blake was searching through Jimmy’s truck. “Looking for those damn siren lights. I want to slap them on top of the truck when we get on the highway. You said we should hurry. Turn the suckers on. Scare the shit out of the cars in front of us.”
“No! You can’t use them, Dad will throw you in jail for sure.”
“It’ll be worth it.”
On the way to the church, Chloe wanted to tell Blake she was happy for his company but didn’t know how to phrase it without sounding like an idiot, so she didn’t. She liked it when Hannah used to come with her. Chloe drove, Hannah navigated, though she was awful with directions, but they had some laughs getting lost. And the old people enjoyed seeing the girls. Chloe got dressed up a little, wore jeans without holes.
But today Blake was driving her. It was better. Until he said, “So why didn’t you tell me Hannah doesn’t come with you anymore?”
Chloe fake-studied the map. “You know, you should teach Hannah how to drive.”
“You should teach Hannah how to drive. I tried.”
“So did I.”
The two of them chuckled. “Let’s just agree she’s a reluctant learner,” Blake said. “But it’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“It’s in your best interest to teach her, not mine.”
“What are you, four? Stop mimicking me. Do you want to be driving her around Bangor when you two start college, the way I drive her around here?”
Chloe was very, very busy with the map. “Maybe she’ll get a car and I won’t have to.”
“Where’s she going to get a car from?” Blake said. “If she has any money saved up, it’ll be spent on empanadas in the Ramblas.”
So he was reading up on Barcelona too. That made Chloe smile, until she recalled Moody. Thinking of her grandmother coming for dinner and, oh God, going to the cemetery made Chloe tighten her spine, squeeze shut her lips and reveal to Blake nothing about her other anxieties: the lack of their funds, the lack of permission, the lack of passport, the lack, the lack, the lack.
She said, turn here, but Blake was already turning. He could find the dirt roads around Fryeburg and Brownfield blindfolded. He seemed to have an innate ability not to get lost even when the rural roads were unmarked. His navigation skills were pretty impressive. When she praised him, he replied by asking why she was dressed so nicely. She pretended she wasn’t dressed especially nicely; how to explain that the old people enjoyed looking at her? But the thing that was great about Blake was that no question lingered in his hyperactive brain for long, and often, when the answer was a few seconds in coming, he would make up his own reply, which was what he did now.
“The young girl,” he said in a dramatic voice, “who got all dolled up to feed the elderly vanished one Saturday afternoon. Where did she go? Perhaps her ironed jeans were found in the pond nearby?”
“Why would I lose my jeans in the pond?”
“That’s what I’m trying to get to the bottom of, Haiku,” he said, and guffawed.
He was so silly.
“What does my denim have to do with your story?”
“I don’t know yet,” he replied. “I’m merely collecting information.”
“So I’m not even the end of your story, just a random detail?”
“Nicely punned. I said I don’t know. Look in my notebook—no, not that section, the one in the back that says descriptions. See if there’s anything you like.”
He had written out fifty pages of notes on lakes, junk he had found, birds building nests during spring—and the garden by her house! He was incredibly prolific. Every minute observation was in his spiral.
“Why is my garden here?” In his random musings, he had written about her wine-red tulips, the coral knockabout roses, the orange nasturtium and the hot pink azaleas blooming outside her windows.
“Never know what I might need.”
“Before I vanish,” Chloe said, closing his notebook, “you might want to have me do something amazing or idiotic.”
“Losing your pants is both, don’t you think?” He poked her in the arm as he drove. “Why are you all freaked out about Moody? She’s your grandmother, not Freddy Krueger.”
“That’s what you think.” Chloe sighed. Everyone in the large Devine family lived in fear of Moody. She could not be argued with, or negotiated with. She could not be reasoned with. She believed what she believed, said what she said, commanded what she commanded. I’ve seen too much to bother arguing with the likes of you, was Moody’s standard reply to anyone in her family who dared raise a squawk in opposition. Only Chloe’s father had spoken out against her, and the result of that was that mother and son had been on the outs for the last seven years, since Uncle Kenny died.
The old people became notably enthusiastic when they saw that a tidied-up Chloe did not come alone. “Who is the young man?” Mrs. Van Mirren said with a meaningful smile.
This is Blake, Hannah’s boyfriend, Chloe would say to Mrs. Van Mirren, Ms. Rivers, Mr. Mann and Mr. Warner. They asked where Hannah was. They asked about Mason. They asked when the prom was, and when Europe was. They gave her money. Five dollars, two dollars, seventy-five cents. They would not take no for an answer. This is for your trip, they said. Take pictures. Write things down. Don’t forget. Life is long. You won’t remember if you don’t write things down or take pictures. Are you excited about college? We’ll miss you when you go. We love you. Blake, we love this girl. Take another dollar.
Lupe was last, because she lived the farthest, in New Hampshire, in a tiny hamlet called Jackson, ten miles from North Conway.
Just as Chloe had told Blake, outside a yellow painted storage shed sat Lupe, in a wooden chair planted outside her front door. In the window box under her one white window bloomed purple nasturtiums. “I planted those for her,” Chloe said. Lupe, shriveled like a bald bird in water, gummed a smile and waved. She was white from top to bottom, white hair, white shirt, white bracelets, white pants, white socks, white shoes. As usual, she wore most of her jewelry. If not all her jewelry. Three necklaces, a cross, a dozen jangling bracelets on each wrist, and rings on every finger. When she waved to Chloe and Blake, she trilled like a wind chime.
“Izh thish Mashon?” she said, as if she didn’t have her dentures in.
“No, Lupe, it’s his brother. Blake.”
While Lupe was vigorously shaking Blake’s hand and appraising him, Chloe pulled out Lupe’s lunch, the last one in the hot box, and stepped inside the woman’s one-room house to get a tray and some silverware. Though who was Chloe to tease Lupe about the size of her habitat?
“Lupe, Blake came with me because he’s entering a story contest.” She set the food on a tray in the old woman’s lap. “Did you read about it in the paper? The Acadia Award for Short Fiction. I told him about your box of jewelry.” Chloe poured Lupe some ice tea, put a napkin near her elbow.
“And what, he got interested? He wants it?”
“No, no.” Blake looked mortified. How amusing!
“Young man, I’m joking. Instead of looking for my jewelry, you should find yourself a sense of humor. It would come in more handy.”
“Um, yes, ma’am.”
“Where’s your brother today?”
“At practice.”
“Blake is Hannah’s boyfriend,” Chloe said.
“Who? Oh, Hannah.” The old woman studied Blake intently as she ate. The fork trembled in her shaking hands.
Blake smiled. “I know. She’s too good for me, Lupe.”
“That’s not quite what I was thinking.”
Chloe pulled on Blake’s denim sleeve, and the two of them perched on a nearby bench and kept the woman company while she finished her lunch.
“Has your mother agreed yet to let you go?” Lupe asked.
Chloe shook her head, keeping mum on Moody’s imminent visit.
“She will, though, don’t you think?” Blake said. “I keep telling her.”
Lupe shrugged. “The odds are about even. Don’t count on it, but don’t discount it. I’ve met mothers before. I was one myself until my sons got too wise for my help. Mothers can be an unpredictable bunch.” She took a swig of her ice tea, shielding her eyes from the sun.
“Let me ask you something,” she said to Blake after he had scintillated her with stories of his story, even offering her a peek at his journal. “You say you want to go to Barcelona for research.”
“That’s right, ma’am.” And to Chloe, out of the corner of his mouth, added, “And for other things.”
“Call me Lupe. But can’t the answer you’re looking for be found right here in New Hampshire and Maine?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Sure it can. Answers are found everywhere. And in anything. You just have to know where to look.”
“Barcelona will make for a far more interesting story, don’t you agree? Rather than writing about boring old North Conway.” North Conway, the biggest town in two counties was a two-mile stretch of a straight rural highway. Fifteen traffic lights and Applebee’s dueling it out with Burger King. Pizza Hut against KFC, Baskin-Robbins against Carvel. There were one or two antique shops, an outlet mall, an L.L.Bean, and gas stations. That was the town. And China Chef, of course, purveyor of hot and sour soup that Hannah supposedly placed on people’s tables. How do you find the answer in a town like that?
Lupe insisted. “You can. You can find answers anywhere.”
“I’d like to find them in Barcelona,” Blake said, and Chloe was proud of him for not being too intimidated by a ninety-something woman. Forgetting herself for a second, Chloe almost made a joke. Leaning to Blake, opening her mouth, she almost, almost said—we should introduce Lupe to Martyn, don’t you think? They’re about the same age—before slamming her hand against her mouth. What was wrong with her!
Blake must have liked Lupe because he talked to her for longer than any of the others. And she must have liked him because she kept asking him to do small chores for her. She pointed out that her chopped wood was too far from the fire pit. It was all the way in the back, near the river. Chloe and Blake carried the chopped wood and the iron rack to the front of her yellow house. They set it up near the fire pit, stacked the wood on the rack, covered it with a blue tarp. Lupe looked pleased by their efforts, especially Blake’s. She asked him to build her a fire. She’s my last one, Chloe told Blake, as they collected some branches for kindling. She always keeps me here. She’s lonely, he said, and she likes the company. I don’t mind. “Lupe,” he called to her, “do you know that your fire pit is eroding on one side? The stones have broken off.”
“I know,” she said. “Who’s going to fix it, me? Or my children in California?”
Blake motioned toward the mansion-like house. “Who lives there?”
Lupe shrugged. “A family. They don’t help me. They got their own problems. The husband is sick. He just don’t know it yet. Or don’t want to admit it.”
“How do you know?”
“Can you tell the difference between a healthy man and a sick one? They’re like two different species.”
To this, Blake bowed his head without reply. He knew the difference well. His own father had been a Hercules before the disaster that almost claimed him, and now was a husk.
“Maybe I can help you fix it,” Blake said to Lupe. “I’ll go to the quarry, pick up some stones.”
The woman shook her head. “Why don’t you come by after school next Thursday? I have a doctor’s appointment and no way to get to it. Usually I call for a taxi. Maybe you can drive me. I’ll pay you for your time, and then we can go to the quarry together. Pick out the stones. I’ll pay for them too.”
“You’re going to go to the quarry?”
“I’m ninety-two,” she said. “I’m not dead.”
On the way home Blake rained on Chloe with questions that at first sounded like research but perhaps weren’t. How long had she been visiting Lupe? When did the husband die? Why did she go to these twelve homes and not others? Why did she stay for five minutes in one home, but forty minutes with Lupe? What happened if she saw something suspicious? What if the people behaved erratically? What if they hurt her?
He had been slightly concerned about Mr. Gibson, a blind man with long scraggly gray hair who had grabbed Chloe’s hand and wouldn’t let go, not letting her leave or feed him. Blake gently, but not too gently, pried Mr. Gibson’s dinosaur fingers off Chloe’s white wrist.
“He’s fine,” Chloe said. “He’s just lonely. Like Lupe.”
Blake was off again about Chloe and her pants vanishing.
“Give it a rest, Blake. I’m not your project, I’m not your story.”
“But if you disappeared,” he went on, speeding invincible in her father’s siren-less off-duty truck, “that would be quite a story, wouldn’t it?”
“No! It’s only a story if there’s a reason why I disappeared.” She paused. “Also what does my disappearance have to do with your blue suitcase?”
“Maybe everything,” he said.
“You leave me out of your lunacy, Blake Haul.”
“It’s fiction,” Blake said. “In fiction, you can have everything to do with my lunacy. Isn’t that what you told me? I can use my imagination and have it all turn out exactly how I need, how I want.” Fiendishly he rubbed his hands together while driving with his knees. His expression was for once both serious and remote, as if he was thinking about something else entirely.
Covering her face, Chloe groaned.
It was a good afternoon.
11 (#ulink_44fec7e7-0e56-5d6c-a720-40cae5e35385)
Moody (#ulink_44fec7e7-0e56-5d6c-a720-40cae5e35385)
SHE RAISED HER GAZE FROM THE TRASHY GOSSIP MAGAZINE, from sordid uncouplings and inappropriate attire of beautiful strangers, and focused the red dot of her anxious brain on her mother. Rather, focused on her mother’s back, while her mother’s studious front was forming tiny spicy Mediterranean meatballs with feta and fennel.
“So why’s she coming?”
“You shall see.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
The eminently sensible Lang pointed out that if she told Chloe, then Moody wouldn’t need to come over.
The eminently sensible Chloe opened her hands to say, exactly! But it was done to her mother’s oblivious back. “I’m making meatballs,” Lang said. “Do you want to help me?”
“If I help you, will you tell me?”
“You will help me,” said Lang, “and I won’t tell you a thing.”
“It’s about Barcelona, right? She’s got some plan?”
“It’s about a man with a horse. Come here and help your mother.”
Their house had once been Moody’s summer retreat. Lochlan Devine built it with his own hands for his young bride back in the fifties so she could have a home by the lake as she had dreamed. Twenty years later Moody gave it to Jimmy and Lang as a wedding present.
“Why would she suddenly be visiting us again?”
“She says it’s been too long.”
“Tell me why so I can prepare myself.”
“Prepare yourself for what?”
Chloe wanted to provoke her mother. “She told me last Thanksgiving that she doesn’t come to us anymore because she’s mad we still blame Uncle Kenny for everything.”
“Well, that’s just silly,” said Lang, looking at no one.
Her father spoke his first sentence of the afternoon. “We do blame my brother for everything,” Jimmy said.
“Jimmy, shh.” Lang turned to Chloe. “Stop stirring the pot, young lady. Your grandmother wants to help, that’s all.”
“Help who?”
“Did we ask for her help?” Jimmy said.
“Yes, Jimmy, we did,” Lang said, one hand on her husband’s shoulder, one hand straightening out the errant lamp shade behind him. She had been feverishly cleaning as if preparing for an open house viewing.
“You did,” Jimmy said. “Not me. Chloe is right. My mother shouldn’t come if she’s still angry.”
Lang leaned her tranquil solemn face into a sitting and grim Jimmy. “She is putting away the bygones and coming for your daughter.”
Jimmy sat coldly. “They’re not bygones,” he said.
“Come on. We agreed.”
“You agreed. I’m resigned to it. Big difference.”
She kissed his forehead. “You promised you would be civil, kind, polite.”
“No. I promised only that I’d be silent,” Jimmy said, standing up. “And you’re not letting me keep my promise, woman.” He went outside to do some yard work.
The next three hours crawled by in epic time, in Thackeray time, every day lasting a thousand tragic pages. Blake stopped by to cut down the rotting willow. Mason stopped by. Hannah stopped by. Then her friends left to go have fun in North Conway with other young people who didn’t have horror-movie grandmothers. Jimmy left to go pick up his mother and bring her back to their house.
Finally six o’clock arrived like the executioner’s hour.
Sometimes Chloe thought of her grandmother as Zeus in his Athenian Temple, gargantuan and fierce. Sometimes Moody was like Tamerlane of Mongolia, murderous and crippled. Sometimes Chloe saw Moody as Siddhartha, half the size of China, wise but terrifying in his omnipotent silence.
On Memorial Saturday, Moody was just a kettle-sized white-haired woman. She had been married to Lochlan Devine since just after the war until his death, fifty years, four of them pretty good. She had given him six children, five surviving, all boys, though what she wanted was two measly daughters. Everybody knew it because she never missed an opportunity to say it.
She was nearly deaf in both ears, but denied she was hard of hearing in even one. She grew odd white fuzz on her face. She liked to drink whiskey and eat caramels and strange spicy sausages she said were from the old country. She smoked unapologetically. She spoke fluent English in a loud, heavy and indeterminate accent. She had occluded sight, which prevented her from driving, though didn’t prevent her from complaining about not driving. Hence her life’s motto about envying the good fortune of people who could push around their own wheelchairs, which she repeated again tonight as she walked through the front door. “They don’t know how lucky they are,” Moody said.
Behind his mother, Jimmy walked in without a word, dropped his keys on the side table and went to sit down. Lang, dressed in church clothes, fussed like a tumbleweed. After Moody hugged Chloe, she blurted without so much as a half-blind appraisal, “Why do you always look so dour, child? What is this awful thing you’re wearing? You’re a beautiful girl. Why are you hiding yourself from boys? Or is it one boy in particular you’re hiding yourself from? It won’t work. They all know what’s inside the hefty bags you wear for clothes. Come, let’s go. I’m not even taking my coat off despite your mother’s efforts. Take me to the cemetery. Don’t protest, better go quick before it gets dark. You don’t want to go to the graveyard at night, do you? I jest. Of course you don’t. Believe me. So let’s go pick some flowers from this famous garden of yours, and get to it. Jimmy, give your daughter the truck keys. You haven’t suspended her license for speeding—or other violations—have you?”
“You mean like Dad didn’t suspend Kenny’s?” Jimmy said, gesturing at the keys to Chloe. “Yeah, Chloe’s still driving. She’s also not speeding, or otherwise violating the good laws of all sane people.”
Moody stared coolly at Lang.
Lang glared at Jimmy.
Chloe rolled her eyes and quickly took her grandmother out of the house.
Chloe never saw her mother as respectful to anyone as she was to Moody, and her father as silent. Lang didn’t sit until Moody sat. There was no eating, drinking, or speaking, until Moody ate, drank, and spoke. Every other question out of Lang’s mouth was, do you have enough salt? More ice? Enough cream on the mashed potatoes? I made chocolate profiteroles for dessert, and fresh coffee, but I also have decaf, or some brandy, if you like. Of course I have whiskey. Would you like some now? Are you cold? Would you like a shawl? You’re too hot? Chloe, open all the windows. And bring in the floor fan from the shed.
Her mother sat in adoration. As if Moody had waltzed in, in light cloth, sans sandals, and beyond her stooped shoulders trembled two wings. That’s how Lang behaved around her husband’s mother. Not so much the husband.
“I fixed the screens,” Jimmy said in a stiff tone meant to convey he had built the Maginot Line—between himself and his mother.
Moody shrugged, as if his fixing the screens was an achievement on par with brushing his teeth. “Good,” she said. “Because I don’t enjoy mosquitoes.”
When Lang would pass Moody’s chair, she’d place her hand gently on the white-haired woman’s shoulder, patting her. It would be amusing if it weren’t so exasperating. All the while Jimmy gazed upon his wife with a pungent mixture of compassion and hostility.
A stressed and anxious Chloe was sullen and silent, like her father, though, she guessed, for different reasons. She and Jimmy sat gray like the unfallen Berlin Wall and stared at their food, at the darkening lake, warily at Lang and Moody across from them making small talk. Chewing her lip, counting to 741 by unlucky thirteens, Chloe tried to be still, to not think. The evening blossomed with the smell of mint and quivering fresh water.
“Moody, how are your flowers doing?” Chloe went over to her grandmother’s every spring and planted beautiful things in the raised black soil.
Moody made a face. “The flowers bring bees,” she said. “Which I also don’t enjoy, having grown up in a bee farmer’s house. Especially the blood orange tulips that came up a few weeks back. Pretty, but the bees! Never seen anything like it. Don’t plant those again.”
“Tulips are perennial, Moody. They come up on their own.”
“Well, plant something else. Something that doesn’t attract bees.”
“You want me,” Chloe asked slowly, letting it sink in, “to find flowers that don’t attract bees?”
Nothing sunk in. “No bees is what I want,” Moody said. “How you get there is your problem.”
Chloe’s scalp tingling, her skin shivering, she clawed at an old bite on her forearm. Was the grand diminutive woman ever going to get to the point of her visit?
There was much food and meaningless conversation before there was finally no food and a meaningful one. After coffee with Baileys, and a second helping of profiteroles (or was it a second helping of Baileys?) Mudita Devine, née Klavin, mother of six sons, oldest one deceased, Lochlan’s widow, fluttering Clarence Odbody clockmaker, opened her mouth.
“So your mother tells me you’re wanting to go to some damn fool city in Europe.”
It wasn’t a question. It was just a beginning. And what a beginning! Chloe nodded.
“Why?”
Before Chloe could reply, Moody cut her off. “I don’t care why. Neither do your parents.” Her mother across from her and her father next to her didn’t have time to nod. “The question is, is this a good idea?”
Chloe knew better than to even pretend to answer.
“Your mother and father don’t think so. You plan to go with your friends? That boy you’ve been hanging around with?”
“Mason. Yes. I’ve grown up with them, Moody.”
“Did I ask how long you’ve known them? Did I ask their names? What does any of that matter to me? You could know them five minutes or fifteen years. None of it matters. What matters is they’re boys, and you want them to join you girls in some tomfoolery.”
“Not …”
“Chloe.” Moody raised her hand. “You’ll have plenty of time to speak briefly. Your time has not come yet. Let me ask you this. In broader terms, beyond the few weeks you’re hoping to grab on a beach, have you given any thought to what you want to do with your life?”
Now could she speak? Chloe glanced from her mother to her father. She answered. Yes, she said. She has thought about it. She was thinking of going into law. She was thinking of majoring in history.
“So what I’m hearing is you want to major in history, yet your first inclination is to head to a Barcelona night club?”
Chloe must have looked flummoxed. “It makes me wonder,” her grandmother said in explanation, “how serious you are about your life.”
“Moody, I’m not even eighteen …”
“Do I not know how old you are?” Moody exchanged a glance with Lang. “So to your parents, you declare that you’re almost eighteen, as if you’re so grown up that you can make your own decisions. Yet now you remind us of your insignificant age to excuse why you can’t be serious about the road before you.”
A squirming Chloe kept quiet.
“So which is it? Are you eighteen or are you eighteen?”
Chloe had no answer, except yes. She couldn’t look up.
“I thought so. Look at me, child. That’s better. Your mother tells me you’ve had your heart set on Europe.”
Not Europe, Chloe wanted to bleat. Barcelona. She wasn’t even brave enough to defend her one small dream to her grandmother.
“You can decide to visit any European country,” Moody continued. “There are nearly two dozen to choose from. You have a few precious weeks before college. An opportunity of a lifetime. And you choose—Barcelona?”
Why was this so frightening? Her heart drummed in her chest.
“Yes.”
Moody raised her strong, wrinkled hand. “Still not your turn, child.” Her gaze was unwavering, which was more than Chloe could say for her own. She’d rather look at her mother! What torture this was.
“Your parents tell me that Hannah talks a good game, but has not yet produced enough cash for your Iberian adventure. And the young men, having come into your dream belatedly, are even more broke. Is this true?” Moody stopped Chloe from replying. “I have a proposal for you,” she said. “A proposal I’ve talked over with your parents, and they agree. A way for you to get what you want. That’s why I came. Do you want to hear about it?”
Chloe couldn’t hear anything above the thumping in her chest. A way for her to get what she wanted! was all she heard. What could Moody possibly have in mind? That Lang and Jimmy go with them to Europe to chaperone? That they go to Canada instead, as her dad had suggested? Moody was speaking, but Chloe—bouncing up and down on the trampoline beat of her excited heart—missed the important part, and she knew she had missed it because the three adults around her had fallen silent.
Chloe blinked. “I’m sorry, can you repeat that? I don’t think I heard right.”
Moody sighed. “Riga,” she said impatiently. “Riga.”
“I don’t know what Riga is.”
“The capital of Latvia. Also, where I was born.”
“Ah.” Chloe nodded, as if acknowledging that she vaguely already knew that.
The three adults waited for Chloe’s reply. Chloe waited for an explanation.
“Honey, so what do you think?” asked Jimmy.
“Of what?”
“Of your grandmother’s plan.”
“I don’t understand. You want us to go”—Chloe struggled—“to Riga?”
“Yes.”
“No! Why?”
“I have family near Riga,” Moody said. “I want you to visit them. I told them a lot about you. You can bring them a letter from me, and a package.”
“You know, Moody, there’s something we have in this country called the United States Postal Service—”
“Not interested. And don’t be fresh. Also, there is an orphanage in a Latvian town called Liepaja. The town has had a painful history with the Communists, and since the fall of the Soviet Union, the young people there have not been doing so well. Many American families sponsor children from Eastern Europe to come live, study, and eventually work in the United States. Your parents have been thinking of sponsoring such a child.”
“Don’t look so shocked, honey,” Jimmy said. “We meant to talk to you about it. We just didn’t get a chance to.” He glared at his mother who ignored him.
“Your parents would like you to visit this orphanage in Liepaja. Maybe you can find them a suitable boy. Age doesn’t matter, but it must be a boy. Older is better. Not too old. Six or seven. The four of you kids can stay with my relatives. It will make them happy and stretch your lodging budget. Riga is a wonderful historic city. You’ll love it. A win-win, if you ask me.”
Chloe shook her head. Lose-lose is what it sounded like. Worse, Moody wasn’t finished. There didn’t seem to be a finality to her words.
“And,” Moody continued, “after you finish helping your parents, I’d like you to do something for me.”
“Other than visit with your family?”
“You have it wrong. They’re doing you a favor, not the other way around. You won’t be forced to stay in places unsuitable for a young lady.” The old woman kneaded her creased and square hands. “A long time ago, before the war, I had a best friend like you and a sweetheart like you. When war broke out in Poland, we knew we were going to get squeezed by the Russians on one side and the Germans on the other. We ran from Riga and hid out in the countryside. Our plan was to get to the Baltic Sea, make our way to one of the Scandinavian countries and board a ship bound for the west. But we didn’t realize how much of the continent Hitler and Stalin already had in their grip. We were in Kaunas, northwest of Vilnius, when we got caught by the Soviets and taken to the Jewish ghetto. We were there two years, until 1941 when the Germans came. We all thought we were lucky we weren’t in Vilnius because there was a massacre there, near Ponary. Everyone died. They put us on a train bound for the Bialystok ghetto. A year later there was an uprising, crushed of course. But by that time, most of the Jews had been taken to a transit camp nearby. Do you know the name of that transit camp, Chloe?”
“Of course not.”
“Treblinka.”
No one spoke for a moment.
“What about you?” the girl asked her grandmother.
“I’m not Jewish,” Moody said. “Though I reckon that meant little to the Germans. What might have meant more is that I made boots for them. Footwear for the German soldier. I was quite good. Perhaps that helped me.” She spoke matter-of-factly, looking only at her gnarled hands that once had made boots for the Wehrmacht. “How little I understood life. I really believed after the war I would find my friends, see them again. I didn’t know then that Treblinka was like pancreatic cancer. No one survives.”
Chloe didn’t know what to say. Questioningly she opened her hands.
“After Latvia, I’d like the four of you to travel by train and visit Treblinka. Bring my love some red roses. There must be a mass grave around there. After that, you can do what you like. You might want to visit Warsaw, or Auschwitz in southern Poland, but that’s your business. You have three items on the to-do list. Liepaja for your mother and father, Riga for my family, and flowers in Treblinka for me. You do those things, and I will help pay for your trip.”
“I have my own money, Moody,” Chloe mumbled in response, as if that was the only thing she’d heard.
“Oh, sure you do,” Moody said. “But you know who doesn’t have their own money? Hannah. You know who else? Blake and Mason. I hear their mother plans to tap into her life savings to buy them the plane tickets. You can’t travel through Europe on the kindness of strangers, Chloe.”
“You’re going to pay for all of us to go?”
“Well, let’s just say you’re not going to be staying at the Ritz-Carlton. You’ll bring your own money for food, for incidentals. But your travel expenses and your lodging expenses, yes, I will take care of.”
Chloe shook her head. “Moody, I don’t want to go to Riga.” Or to an orphanage! She scowled at her stoic mother, at her father sitting like a sad sack next to her. “My friends will never go for it.” Chloe was thinking of Blake especially. “They’d rather not go at all than go to Poland.”
“Child, I think you’re mistaking what this is,” Moody said. “Is this how your mother allows you to speak to her? This isn’t a negotiation. It’s a proposal. Take it. Or leave it. You want Barcelona? Fine. You’ll have to get to it through my home country. And through Poland. Barcelona through Treblinka.”
“But …”
“Or you don’t go.”
Chloe frowned, perplexed, maddened, upset. “Why would you pay for my friends to go with me?”
“It’s my graduation present to you,” Moody said. “You’ve been largely absent from my life these last few years”—she glared at Jimmy who glared right back—“and I would like to fix that. I’m not as young as I used to be. I don’t want your father’s irrational anger at me to stop you from taking this historic trip. And without your friends you can’t go.”
“Not irrational, Mom,” said Jimmy.
“Oh, yes,” Moody said. “Chloe is your daughter, like Kenny was my son, like you’re my son. Why can’t you understand that?”
“Chloe is a very good daughter,” said Jimmy.
“You’re not such a good son,” Moody said. “What son can stay angry at his mother? Kenny wasn’t a good man, but he was a good son. Better than you. He didn’t stay angry for seven years. That’s a sin, you know. It’s bad luck.”
“We’ve had about all we can handle of that, thanks to him,” Jimmy said as if spitting. “Us, Burt, Janice, their boys. Bad luck well and truly covered, Mom.”
“Listen, if I spoiled him, all right, but I spoiled all you kids. He wasn’t special. You wanted me to love him less than you? He was still my son! I had it rough growing up. I wanted it to be easier for my own children. Why is that so hard to understand?” She raised her hand. “Stop arguing with me, Jimmy. I’m done with it. We’ve yelled all we can yell. Help your child, spoil your child, or take me home. That’s your choice.”
Chloe could see her mother making intense beseeching eyes at her father from across the table. Head bent, Jimmy wasn’t looking at anybody.
Moody turned her attention back to Chloe. “I advised your parents not to keep you from going. Even though you are only eighteen or already eighteen or whatever it is you say, I told them that you should at least try to look for the answer to the fundamental question before you.”
Chloe hated questions before her. “What question is that?” she asked in an exhausted voice.
“What meaning does your finite existence have in this infinite world?”
Chloe didn’t think her Uncle Kenny asked himself this question once, and he probably was never harangued like this. Maybe he should’ve been. Maybe that had always been her dad’s point when he railed at his mother.
“You keep telling your mother and father you want to see things with your own eyes,” the old woman said. “So go see them. Do you only want to see the water and the waves?”
Yes?
“Do you only want to hear the cathedral bells?”
Um, yes?
“What about examining for five minutes your place in the world, what it means to be alive? What it means to be dead?”
“Enough, Mom,” Jimmy said in a voice more exasperated and tired than Chloe’s. “Unlike some others we won’t mention, Chloe gets it.” Jimmy turned to his daughter. “It’s not ideal, Chloe-bear,” he said, putting his arm around her. “It’s called life. You endure a lot of stuff you don’t care about, but then, if you’re lucky, you get what you want.” Jimmy’s eyes caught Lang’s for a glimpse.
Chloe took a few minutes to compose herself before she spoke. “Moody, Mom, Dad, do you guys have any idea how far Riga is from Barcelona?”
Moody smiled with a full set of dentures. “Yes,” she said. “A train ride away across Europe, just like they did it in the war days.”
12 (#ulink_c35cbb52-4cf2-5e00-96ca-77a9e5757c18)
Peacocks (#ulink_c35cbb52-4cf2-5e00-96ca-77a9e5757c18)
THAT NIGHT UP IN THE ATTIC LANG SAT ON CHLOE’S BED. “Your father doesn’t want you to be upset. He thinks we were too hard on you. Some police chief! He’s gone soft in the head, I tell you. The fight has gone out of him.”
“I wonder why,” Chloe muttered. Lang said nothing.
“We don’t want you to be disappointed,” she said when she spoke again. “Dad and I don’t fully understand why you want to go, but then we’re not meant to, are we? I almost wonder if you yourself know. And that’s all right too. If you think you need to go to Barcelona to discover what you want and who you are, then who are your father and I to stand in your way? Your acceptance of Moody’s generous terms is wise. I know you’re worried about your friends not wanting to go to Latvia, but I think they’re going to surprise you. Besides, what choice do you have, really?”
“Not go?”
Lang nodded. “That will make your father happy,” she said. “In any case, everyone agrees the boys should go with you. Burt, Janice, Moody. They’ll keep you safe. Your father and I won’t argue this anymore. If you must go, then better with them. Soon you’ll be far away, and they’ll still be here saving up for that junk-hauling truck they won’t be able to afford because they’ve spent the summer frittering away their money in Barcelona with you.”
“You mean in Poland with me. In Latvia with me. Trudging through graveyards and death museums. And orphanages. What fun.”
Lang remained unfazed. “Europe is your parting gift to your friends. Now you can say goodbye to them the way you’re meant to. Abroad. And I hope when you come back, you’ll see one or two obvious things in a different way. Though I told Moody and your father, I wouldn’t count on self-discovery. I barely count on you coming back in one piece.”
“Nice, Mom.”
Lang patted the pink quilt above Chloe’s leg. “This is our gift to you, letting you go. Your dad and I are proud of you. You’ve been a good girl. We wanted to reward you for not disappointing us the way other parents have been disappointed.”
“Like Terri?”
“Not Terri. I think she’s rather fond of her daughter. And Terri works the hardest in that family. That’s why she doesn’t give a damn about the raccoons and dinner and Hannah’s homework. When you have to care desperately about bringing home the bacon, you’re hardly going to be bothered about who cooks it or what species eat it.”
“Who do you mean, then? Mason and Blake? But you love Janice.”
“There you go again, putting words in our mouths and feelings into our hearts. I didn’t say Janice. I don’t mean anybody in particular. I’m just saying. We thank you for not letting us down.”
“Not letting you down how? By not dying?” Chloe was disappointed in herself. With her mother, and only with her mother (and maybe a little bit with Blake), she sometimes had trouble hiding her tortured heart.
A composed Lang said nothing.
For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.
“Just stay safe, all right?” Lang said quietly. “As safe as you can.”
“Mom, why do you want me to find you a strange boy?” Chloe whispered.
“Not strange,” Lang said. “Just someone who might need a little help. Someone you think your father and I might like. We’re not adopting him, Chloe. We’re sponsoring him. What are you worried about?”
“I’m not worried.”
Lang got up. “In this one way I echo Flannery O’Connor,” she said. “For the last eighteen years, my avocation has been raising peacocks. This requires everything of the peacocks and very little of me. Time is always at hand. Especially now that the last surviving peacock is leaving.”
The conversation was over. Lang smoothed out Chloe’s blanket and bent down to kiss her head. “How was the cemetery?”
“Fine. Moody insisted on putting my flowers on Uncle Kenny’s grave.”
Lang sighed as she took the railing to descend the steep attic stairs. “Why not? I do.”
13 (#ulink_3913f778-fcc4-5c6f-a55c-897d0a94ac50)
Uncle Kenny from Kilkenny (#ulink_3913f778-fcc4-5c6f-a55c-897d0a94ac50)
WHEN CHLOE WAS ELEVEN HER UNCLE KENNY DIED. He was a wild one, lived small, died small. He was cremated and a portion of his ashes were interred in Fryeburg’s rural cemetery, while the rest was flown to Kilkenny to be buried in the family plot next to Lochlan. Chloe’s parents flew to Ireland for his burial. Chloe got excited. Then she found out she wasn’t going.
They were gone a month.
“Must have been some funeral,” she said when her parents returned, all flushed and refreshed, as if they’d been on a honeymoon. They showed her photos of Dublin and Limerick, of glens and castle ruins, of moors and churches and pubs with names like the Hazy Peacock and the Rusty Swan. They began inexplicably to refer to the time away as a “trip of a lifetime.”
Chloe didn’t know what that meant, but she did internalize it.
Seven years later no one spoke of that trip of a lifetime, or of Kenny, or Kilkenny, or glens, or moors. Most of the pictures of Ireland had been taken off the walls of their wood cabin and stored in a box in the shed her father had built for the specific purpose of storing boxes with photos of Ireland in it, and of other mementos. One black and white Castlecomer dell remained in a frame in the hall.
A colossal vat of frightful things was stirred up by Kenny Devine’s vagrant life and subsequent (or consequent?) demise.
The Chevy truck he crashed his speeding swerving rattletrap into belonged to Burt Haul.
On the way home from work, Burt had stopped at Brucie’s Diner to pick up some meatloaf on Monday special. It was eight in the evening in July, not yet dark. It was warm, glorious, chirping.
Burt survived because his truck, built like a Humvee, had been in second gear. The same could not be said of Kenny or his Dodge Charger. Eyewitnesses, unreliable but myriad, clocked his miles per hour at somewhere between seventy and a hundred and twenty. He had no chance.
Burt lived, but barely. He suffered three broken vertebrae, a punctured lung, and five broken ribs. His kneecap, hip and femur were crushed almost beyond repair. It was upon visiting Burt in the convalescent facility that Moody first noted how blessed were those who could push around their own wheelchairs. Burt couldn’t.
His livelihood depended on his truck and his able body. When he wasn’t driving the school bus, he was a handyman. After four months in recovery, he found himself on a disability pension, still unable to walk. Janice Haul got a job at the attendance office at Brownfield Elementary School, but it barely paid half the bills. Little by little Burt improved, but was never the same. He couldn’t sit behind the wheel of a bus anymore, his fused and compressed vertebrae barking so loud they required handfuls of Oxycontin to quieten, and how well could anyone drive a school bus numbed up on Oxy?
Until Burt got well enough to return to work, he was replaced by a Brian Hansen, a recent Vermont transplant, and apparently an excellent driver.
Jimmy Devine’s animosity toward his brother, whose reckless existence had set into motion the spinning wheels of fate, was so violent that it ate apart the bond with his own family. He blamed Moody for never reining Kenny in, for indulging him, spoiling him, coddling him, paying his tickets, his suspended license fees, his legal bills, bailing him out of jail, buying him new wheels, allowing him to live in her basement and to drink her liquor. “Not just a good man’s back, but a whole family has been shattered, all because you could never say no to your firstborn son,” was one of the accusations Jimmy hurled at his mother, way back when. Burt and Jimmy and their families had been close before the accident, then less so, and then hardly at all. Burt blamed Jimmy for his ruined life, for knowing that Kenny should’ve never been allowed behind the wheel and yet doing nothing. “How much more could I do?” Jimmy argued in his defense. “Kenny’s license had been permanently suspended!”
And then, three years later, after another tragedy, Jimmy blamed not only Kenny for all the misfortune, but also Burt for not being man enough to get up every morning and drive the bus. It didn’t matter to Jimmy the pain Burt was in. Living three houses apart, the Hauls and the Devines stayed barely civil, even though Lang kept pointing out in feeble attempts to effect a truce between the men that Burt had done nothing wrong. “It’s not his fault he has a weak back, Jimmy.”
“Nothing wrong,” Jimmy said, “except stroll out of Brucie’s Diner with his arms full of meatloaf at precisely and absolutely the worst moment. Nothing wrong except not go to work, and ruin everybody’s fucking life.”
“He’s suffering too, Jimmy.”
“That’s why I said everybody’s fucking life, Mother.”
Chloe and Moody stood shoulder to shoulder near two graves in the small rural cemetery under the pines as tall and gray as emerald redwoods. Chloe placed all the flowers they had brought in front of a black granite tombstone that read “JAMES PATRICK DEVINE, JR. 1998-2001.”
Moody made her put half of them on Kenny’s stupid grave.
They stood with their heads bent. Moody held on to Chloe’s arm.
“Do you come here with your mother?”
“Sometimes.”
“How often does she come?”
“I don’t know.” The gravesite was beautifully tended, weeded, neatened, full of flowering azaleas, faded lilacs, knockabout roses. “Often, from the looks of it.”
“Your dad?”
“When Mom forces him.”
Moody nodded. “You have to forgive Uncle Kenny,” she said. “It’s not his fault he was born with bad genes and couldn’t walk straight. Not everybody can make a life like your mom and dad, child. Not everybody can push his own wheelchair. Some aren’t so lucky.”
“Yes. Like my brother.”
“Yes. Like him. But he was lucky to be loved. That love is better than hate for my Kenny. No question he did wrong. But it wasn’t all his fault. Sometimes catastrophic things just happen. And your father doesn’t understand that.”
Moody bent her head deeper. Chloe too.
“He understands,” Chloe said. “But that’s not what happened here. A catastrophic thing didn’t just happen.”
They stood.
“What was the poem you used to recite to Jimmy? He knew it by heart. You and he were so cute with it. Do you remember?”
“No.”
“Something about Santa, and vampires. Come on. You do remember. Tell your grandmother. It’s a sin to lie to old people.”
“I don’t remember, Moody.” Chloe ground her teeth. She didn’t tell, though she well remembered.
I wonder if Santa Claus is real
The Easter Bunny
The Tooth Fairy too
I wonder if ghosts really say boo
I wonder if leprechauns collect pots of gold
I wonder if vampires ever grow old.
Little Jimmy, who used to yell YES for the first five and an emphatic NO to the last, had been conceived around the time of Uncle Kenny’s death. Her parents had been trying for little Jimmy all of Chloe’s life. For all she knew, she was supposed to be little Jimmy and they had been trying for nine years before she was born and for eleven after. In some ways her mother was very much a Chinese mother. Two decades of trying for that one highly valued masculine child. Jimmy lived for three very good years. Their little cabin in the woods was full of noise and tricycles and paint on the walls and mess everywhere, and Lang didn’t care, and Jimmy didn’t care. Jimmy came home at six o’clock sharp every night, punctual as Big Ben. Lang called the Fryeburg police station a dozen times a day. Jimmy, you won’t believe what your son just said, Jimmy, you’ll never guess what your son just did.
When it was time for little Jimmy to go to nursery school, he was so excited to be taking the big boy school bus. He would jump with joy off the curb when he would see the blue bus pulling up to take him home. One early afternoon Brian Hansen’s wallet had fallen into the footwell. He noticed it when he was in the parking lot, about to pull up to the waiting kids. He bent down to retrieve it. He was driving so slowly. He thought he could take his eyes off the road for just a second. But Jimmy was little and his bones were greensticks. They were no match for a school bus, even a small one, even a slow one.
Lang was at ShopRite buying fruit snacks and juice boxes. Big Jimmy was in a meeting about police logistics for the upcoming summer festival. Chloe was in ninth grade math, dreaming of a tuna sandwich she was about to eat for lunch.
Had Uncle Kenny not broken Burt’s back, Burt would have been driving the blue bus as he had been driving it for thirteen years. Burt would have never taken his eyes off the road. But Kenny did break Burt’s back. And with Burt out of action, the town had hired an out-of-towner with “very good credentials” to drive over the little ones to and fro.
Afterward, Burt didn’t care how bad his back was. Though big Jimmy said it was one fucking day too late, Burt stuck a syringe of cortisone into his thigh three times a week and got behind the wheel of the bus until the town gently retired him, because every time he went over a pothole, he cried out in such anguish that the little kids shrieked in terror. Fryeburg had to either repair the town’s potholes or golden-shake Burt’s hand. The second option was cheaper.
On Jimmy’s tombstone: “THE LORD GIVETH AND THE LORD TAKETH AWAY.”
Other repercussions: three years ago, Mason comforted Chloe by taking her hand one summer night and becoming her boyfriend.
Still other repercussions: instead of Barcelona, Chloe was headed to an orphanage in Latvia. Damn Uncle Kenny to all hell.
After it happened, Lang did not come out of her house for five months. Then she bought a sewing machine, learned how to stitch herself bright new clothes and staggered on. She bought a heat-gun and heat-cured paints and took up painting lifesize dolls, the height of a small girl, or perhaps a boy. She made fifty of them, and then sold them on consignment, immersing herself instead in gardening with Chloe. The money from the fifty dolls was still dribbling in. And now Lang was giving some of it to Chloe to go to Latvia to search for another lifesize boy.
14 (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)
The Meaning of Typos (#ulink_4a9d5357-8015-5c97-b311-202527775445)
YOU HAD TO GIVE IT TO HER. LANG TRIED. BY HERSELF SHE took Chloe to apply for a passport. Turned out both parents had to be physically present to sign the application. Chloe, of course, knew why her mother would prefer her father not come, but said nothing.
With Jimmy in tow, Lang quickly filled out the application form while Chloe, bored and hungry and anxious because her mother was anxious, tried to distract her father. The scene would’ve been funny if her mother wasn’t so stressed out. Her dad, bless him, was barely paying attention to the words Lang was writing down, but when it came time to sign, he moved Lang’s hand away from the paper so he could sign his name by the X at the bottom, and casually glanced over the document.
“Mother,” he said, “why are you so careless? You’re as bad as the incompetents in the school records department. Look, you’ve misspelled her name.” He turned to the postal clerk. “Dave, get us another application. My wife here doesn’t know her own daughter’s name.”
“Sure thing, chief.”
“Thanks, buddy. Careful this time,” Jimmy told Lang. “Want me to do it?”
“No, your handwriting is terrible. I’ll do it.”
“At least I know how to spell.”
“Who can tell? No one can read it.”
He watched her.
Lang gestured to Chloe, who once again tried to distract her father with idle chatter about the upcoming prom, graduation, her dress, a limo, a chaperone. Lang said her pen was running out of ink; could Jimmy go get her another?
He went, but as soon as he returned, he peered over the top of her rounded shoulder.
“Lang! You did it again. What’s the matter with you? I don’t know what’s wrong with your mother today, Chloe. Dave, sorry, I need one more application.”
Lang sighed and straightened up from the counter. Chloe stepped away. She made eye contact with Dave and shook her head, as if to signal him to wait, but also to scram because all kinds of crap was about to go down inside the peaceful Fryeburg post office on a weekday afternoon.
Lang placed her hand on her husband’s chest, on Chloe’s father, Jimmy Devine. “Jimmy,” she said mildly. “Wait.”
He waited.
“I didn’t misspell it, Jimmy,” Lang said. “Look.”
She thrust Chloe’s birth certificate into his face. Jimmy stared, perplexed. Plain as noon, printed in black, with a raised seal from the state of Maine confirming the official nature of the words was “Divine.” Preceded by “Chloe Lin.”
Jimmy understood nothing. “For eighteen years you knew the registrar’s office misspelled our kid’s name and you never told me?”
“Oh well.” Lang patted him. “Nothing we can do about it now. Let’s sign and go.”
“Nothing we can do about it?” he bellowed. “Of course there’s something we can do about it.”
“Not in time for her to get her passport for Europe.”
“She can’t have a passport with her name misspelled in it, Mother,” Jimmy said in his best no-arguments-will-be-entertained chief-of-police voice. “A passport is good for ten years. But a mistake like this is forever. No.”
“Jimmy.”
“No! I said we will fix it and we will fix it.”
Lang did not raise her voice. “It’s not misspelled, Jimmy,” she said. “That’s what I told the lady to write.”
“What lady?” He was dumbfounded.
“The lady at the hospital who came to take the baby’s name for the birth certificate. I told her to write Divine.”
“Well, the idiot clearly didn’t hear you correctly. She needs to be fired. Chloe is not going to have the wrong name on her passport because of a typo.”
“It’s not a typo, Jimmy. I spelled it out for her. I told her to write D-I-V-I-N-E.”
There was commotion at the post office. A man was taping a box shut, the plastic ripping off loudly. The metal door to the postmaster’s quarters slammed, a phone trilled, somebody laughed.
Jimmy was mute.
“It’s not a typo,” Lang repeated. “I wanted her to be Chloe Divine.”
“You made a mistake.”
“I wrote Divine on purpose.”
“But our name is Devine! With an E!”
“I know that. But not her name.”
Jimmy stammered. “What are you saying, woman? That you deliberately gave my daughter a different last name from her father?”
“Same name. One letter different.”
“That’s a different name!”
“No. Just one different letter.”
“A different name!”
“Jimmy.”
Jimmy was hyperventilating.
Chloe hid her amusement. She knew her mother was being disingenuous, for no one knew the power of a letter or two better than Lang, who could have been Lin, which meant beautiful, or Liang, which meant good and excellent, or Lan, which meant orchid, but instead she was Lang, which meant sweet potato. Lang knew the difference between Devine and Divine very well, which is why she changed it in the first place, why she wrote it with an I, why she kept it from her husband for nearly eighteen years. She knew. Divine: altogether marvelous and lovely, celestial and glorious, of the gods, with the gods, exquisite, heavenly, limitless and great. Divine.
15 (#ulink_c315cb6d-4c16-5fbb-be55-e87b89d678f8)
She Will Be Loved (#ulink_c315cb6d-4c16-5fbb-be55-e87b89d678f8)
AT THE END OF JUNE, CHLOE WENT TO HER PROM. IT WAS held in the glass ballroom at the Grand Summit Hotel in Attitash, at the foot of the White Mountains. All the boys dashing, all the girls beautiful. Chloe tried not to judge through her mother’s eyes: who was on parade at a bordello? A few would’ve fit that description. Mackenzie O’Shea in particular. The trouble with Mackenzie was that she thought herself to be quite a tasty morsel. Chloe couldn’t figure out why Mackenzie annoyed her so much. Plenty of girls at the prom were dressed much sluttier.
Mason did his best to match his cummerbund to Chloe’s funky pewter jewelry and silk silver dress, but he was more granite than metal. Hannah, of course, was a tall glass of water in a clingy mango dress, almost like a slip, with shoulder straps and a bare back, but Hannah had nothing to reveal under her dress except skin, no folds, no fat, no breasts, no sags, nothing unseemly, nothing out of proportion, nothing to make her self-conscious. Her dress was low-cut, but because she was so slim, she didn’t look slutty, she looked royal. Chloe, on the other hand, couldn’t wear anything low-cut for obvious reasons, and she couldn’t wear anything too high-necked because then she looked like a retiring female politician. She couldn’t wear an open-back dress because she required a full-back bra to contain what she normally contained under three or four layers of clothing. Summer was always a challenge. She opted for lifeguard bathing suits—red and two sizes too tight—that slammed anything that might bounce against her sternum. Unfortunately, bathing suits were not a dress option for the prom.
After searching for most of her senior year, Chloe finally found something she could wear—a flapper dress, vintage and hand-beaded in glass. It had a cascading fringe, a straight fall and an almost modest V-neck. She wriggled into a square-necked black Spanx slip to cover up her cleavage, and after putting on black eyeliner and black satin sandals, was generally pleased with her almost Audrey Hepburn–like appearance. She left her hair mirror-shiny and down, and wore a red lipstick and a red rose corsage to contrast with the silver beads. She also contrasted well, she thought, against Mackenzie’s pink tutu of a dress, against the girl’s infuriatingly long legs and cheap stilettos. Mackenzie’s straps looked ready to snap at any moment—on her shoes and her shoulders. What a mess that girl was. Why didn’t the boys think so?
While Hannah and Taylor and Courtney spent the day fussing with their hair and makeup, Chloe was done by one. She then sat on her manicured hands and waited, dreaming about Europe and fretting about traveling from Riga to Barcelona.
“It’s two thousand miles by train, Chloe,” Blake had said to her. “What’s the big deal? In July a band of men travel two thousand miles up the French Alps on their bikes. It takes them three weeks. You’re telling me we can’t do the same sitting on a train?”
Chloe had been wrong about Blake. As soon as he heard of the new plan for Europe, he produced maps and atlases, guides on the Baltics, a Latvian–English dictionary, several National Geographics about flying around the Baltic Sea, the 1915 partition of Poland, and a story on the last of the Polish Jews. Absurdly, he acted more excited about going to Riga than to Barcelona. He told her he had always wanted to visit Vilnius. Chloe corrected his geography, told him Vilnius was in Lithuania, not Latvia, and he corrected her right back, telling her that you couldn’t get to Poland from Latvia without first going through Lithuania and the Gates of Dawn. Jostling Hannah, shaking her like a bear shakes a rabbit in his mouth, play punching Mason, filling his notebook with pages and pages of notes and facts and stories and asides about Riga and Vilnius and Warsaw, a thrilled Blake acted as if it was paradise already.
For the prom Jimmy lent the four of them his Durango, and Blake drove them to Grand Summit. Initially they had planned to rent a white limo and go in style, like some of the other kids. But now that they had the expanded trip to the post-Communist world and three weeks of travel to budget for, no one wanted to plonk down eight hundred bucks on a limo. To save money, Blake and Mason even said they would forego tuxes, until Janice put her foot down, thank God, and paid for their tux rental herself.
The girls had seen their boys in suits once before, at a funeral, before Chloe and Mason started dating, but tonight was different. Mason, of course, was groomed like a country-club lawn, but even Blake made an effort to comb his hair and trim his stubble. It was funny how he tried to fit his all-over-the-place self into a black tux and patent leather shoes. Though he looked handsome, he didn’t look as if he were born to it. After the first fifteen attempts to fix his crooked bow tie, Hannah gave up.
Chloe and Mason had been nominated for prom queen and king. The king and queen were voted on as a pair, and Chloe knew she was holding Mason back from winning. Without her he would have been prom king for sure, but she was never going to be prom queen, not even in a dress with beads shimmering and clinking like champagne glasses. It’s an honor just to be nominated, cooed Taylor, trying to stay positive.
The week the nominations had come out, Chloe had found an anonymous note stuffed into her locker. How does it feel to know you are keeping that boy from winning what is rightfully his? Chloe threw the note in the trash, but she thought about it now, on the dance floor with Mason. She couldn’t ignore the sense that other girls were appraising them, and concluding that she wasn’t good enough for that boy.
Fed up with their imaginary glances, Chloe excused herself. In the bathroom, she took off her dress and squirmed out of the suffocating Spanx. Her liberated breasts rose up in rebellion out of their gunmetal V. With cleavage on display, she looked much less like Audrey Hepburn and more like a squat Sophia Loren. Perhaps this was a more fitting look for an almost prom queen.
She strode out into the ballroom where Mason was waiting. The way he smiled at her, it was worth it to overlook for tonight one of her mother’s more critical mottos against revealing clothing.
Mason was a great and special boy. Although he wasn’t much of a dancer, tonight he kept up with Chloe song after song, dancing alongside Blake and Hannah, doing the Macarena, seeing how low he could go under the limbo stick. Pretty low, it turned out. Lower than Blake, even. She touched his face as they danced. She kissed him. On the dance floor she was almost allowed to do this. The Academy’s six vile lunch ladies had transformed themselves into equally vile prom chaperones. They waddled between the tables like malevolent mallards, quacking. What are you doing? You’re sitting too close. No public displays of affection, go dance, but respectably. Are you finished with your dinner? You haven’t touched your steak, your mother and father will be pleased to see their hard-earned money going into the garbage. Fix the straps on your dress, young lady, Miss Divine, your dress is riding inappropriately low. Miss Divine, I’ll thank you to keep your hands on the table, not on your boyfriend’s lap. Mr. Haul, please remove your paws from your date’s bare back. Miss Gramm, do you have a shawl you can throw on? You look cold. Miss Divine, do you have a shawl you can throw on? Mason, honey, you look wonderful tonight. As you were, dear boy. As you were.
Although the occasion was jolly, Hannah seemed less jolly than usual. When they had a minute to themselves on the dance floor, Chloe pulled Hannah close. Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me” was playing.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said to her friend.
“Nothing. Why? Do I seem off?”
“Little bit.”
“No, I’m fine.” She patted Chloe. “It’s all good.”
“You look beautiful.”
“You too. Very va-va-voom.” Hannah sighed. “He’s threatened suicide, you know.”
“Who?”
“Martyn, of course. Says he can’t handle it. What am I going to do? How am I going to go to UMaine, knowing I’ll run into him?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe replied, a little too loudly and brightly, as if delighted by the possibility that Hannah might consider not going to UMaine.
“Maybe I should just join the Peace Corps.”
“What?”
“Why not? I’m an idealistic young person. I’d like to visit Ecuador. They travel all the time. I’d meet new people. Experience different cultures.”
“Um, are you selfless and unobtrusive?”
“Yes.”
“You know they don’t get paid, right? They’re volunteers. It’s not like joining the army.”
“I won’t need any money. I’ll be in Ecuador.” Hannah’s long arms draped over Chloe’s neck. She smelled of Dior Poison. It drowned out Chloe’s gentle musky scent. Chloe patted Hannah’s bare back. She could feel the blades of her shoulders, like wooden fence boards.
“The Peace Corps has been in the news lately,” Chloe said. “And not in a positive light. They may have forgotten their initial objectives.”
Hannah chuckled, pulled Chloe closer, ran her hand over Chloe’s hair. “Silly girl,” she said. “I love how you’re always trying to talk me out of bad choices. Don’t worry, cutie. I’m not serious about the Peace Corps. Besides, I can’t not go to UMaine. I’d never leave you there by your lonesome. So don’t worry. You want to go find our boys?”
A pasted-on smile greeted Hannah when the girls disengaged. “Cheer up,” Hannah said as the girls made their way through the taffeta and satin jungle, searching for their dates. “Like you said, we’re not Darlene Duranceau. Everything’s still ahead of us.”
They got separated. Chloe remained at the edge of the pulsing, strobe-lighting floor. Somewhere on the other side of the ballroom, near white walls and glass doors, reflected in black windows and royal mirrors, Chloe glimpsed Mason, his spiky hair, smiling mouth, delight, bow tie, surrounded by a flurry of shiny silk snowflakes, a lake of reflected satin and soft flesh. In other words, encircled by the cheer squad, blonde hair and soprano giggles all. They were trying to ensnare him in their ribald karaoke routine. In the strobes Mason was being girl-handled, teased, laughed at, pawed. It all throbbed across in fractions of real time, two seconds of black followed by a neon explosion. Chloe couldn’t even be sure it was him. It could have been nothing more than a flash of athletic-field memory. After school, she sits in the bleachers and does her homework, while on the field Mason pitches and flirts with the flirty girls. But mostly he pitches, and mostly Chloe reads, and it’s only for a fraction of an image between blinks and pages that Chloe thinks, is there something there or is it just adolescent fun? She barely even thinks it. She feels it, and in only two or three beats out of a whole minute of her heart.
“Chloe,” a voice says. She blinks and comes to.
Blake was in front of her, smiling, appraising her with his familiar eyes, soaking up her shiny baubles, glittering beads, perhaps other luscious things.
“Have you seen Hannah?”
“She’s looking for you. Seen Mason?”
“He was over there.” Blake waved to the glassy parquet. David Bowie started up. Almost involuntarily their bodies moved up and down and sideways to the pulsing one-TWO, one-TWO of “Let’s Dance.”
As they were already gyrating, they gyrated toward each other, looking around for Hannah, for Mason, Chloe trying to make her breasts bob less (not easy) and make her tacked-on smile less uncomfortable. Her ears ringing like the bells of Notre Dame, Chloe wished she could check her watch. David Bowie was so loud. Oh my God, she thought, am I really that old? Is David Bowie too loud for me at seventeen? Let’s dance.
Maroon 5 came on, kinder, softer, better, lights flashing, bodies inching closer, and she and Blake inched reluctantly closer with apologetic smiles. Sorry there’s no one else to dance with to Adam Levine, their awkward expressions read. Then he opened his arms. She raised hers and stepped up to the Blakeplate. Placing one hand into his, she rested the other on his large tuxy shoulder. She felt the pressure of his palm low around her waist, felt his open fingers not just resting against the back of her flapper dress, but holding her.
“Look, I shaved,” he said into her ear. “Do you see?”
She saw.
“Do you like it better like this, or normal?”
What was the thing to say here? “Either way’s fine.”
“Do you know this song?”
“What?”
He leaned down, toward her, close. “This song, Chloe,” he screamed into her perforated eardrum. “‘She Will Be Loved.’ Do you remember it?”
She knew it well. Everybody knew it. The boys and girls sang it as they played volleyball in gym, as they ran up and down the stairs, as they spring-cleaned the front lawn for field day, as they devoured their sandwiches at lunch. They sang it, they knew it. “She Will Be Loved.” She pretended she didn’t hear him or that it was too loud to reply that of course she remembered it. She nodded in the general direction of his shaggy curly head.
“Are you excited!?”
“About what?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as psyched about anything in my whole life. Riga! Vilnius! Warsaw!”
And Barcelona, she wanted to add to his litany of paradise, but there was no point—he wouldn’t hear her. She tried to catch the floating threads of his voice. He was repeating his avid approval of her idea last week that they should each keep a journal in Europe and at the end of the trip share them with one another. At least, that’s what she thought he was saying. The music was so relentless. Where was the prom queen who didn’t belong to him? He searched for the eighteen-year-old every day for miles. Your dress is pretty, Blake might have said. Very sparkly. You and Mason light up the floor.
“What did you say?” she yelled. Her heart was full.
“You smell so good,” he said, his head near her perfumed earlobes. “What is that?”
“Jovan Musk,” she yelled back. “And Love’s Baby Soft!”
Where was Mason? She flew across the bodies, searching for this mysterious Mason, and found him entombed in a bevy of loathsome beauties dazzling him with their best cheer moves. Come hither, said the spiders to the fly.
“He’s not happy,” Blake yelled, warm breath in her face, his eyes merry. “No boy likes that kind of attention. Makes him feel like a hog at a fair.”
In a moment of swoony weakness, Chloe leaned her cheek against Blake’s black lapel. His big hand tightened around hers. His palm opened wider against her back.
She caught herself, and blessedly “She Will Be Loved” ended.
In silence the four of them chased dreams with time to lose in the empty ballroom. They were the last to leave. The overhead lights had been switched on. “A Hundred Years to Live” turned off in sync with the honk of Mackenzie’s dad’s rickety Buick. The waitresses were clearing the last of the teacups and the janitors were dragging black trash cans around. Most of the white balloons had run out of helium and floated down to the floor in tired gasps.
Chloe watched a red balloon twitching under a table. She and Mason didn’t win. Was he disappointed? He didn’t say. But he also didn’t say something corny like, don’t worry, you’re still my queen. He wasn’t a corny guy. Chloe appreciated that. Mackenzie had invited them all to her house for an after-prom sleepover. They didn’t go. Chloe wasn’t allowed, and Hannah didn’t want to. Go if you want, Chloe had said to Mason. I won’t mind. Are you sure? he asked. The briefest of glares from Blake interrupted him. Mason’s just kidding, Blake said. Yes, I am, said Mason. And now here they all were.
“They’re going to throw us out.”
Hannah, wrapped around Blake, her head thrown back, looked up at the lights. “Let them try.”
Mason was next to Chloe. He was perspiring, and his bow tie had come undone. His tux jacket off, his hair wet from dancing, still slightly out of breath, he sat glazed, staring across the deserted dance floor, squeezing and unsqueezing Chloe’s hand. He was staring into the space by the wall where a short while ago he had been flanked and fondled by smiling shining soon-to-be-extinct nimble-bodied cheer queens.
Only Blake remained fully animated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sang, yeah, yeah, yeah.
“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Mason said to him. “Once high school’s over, our life as we know it is over. Everything familiar slides across the floor, out those double doors, and vanishes.”
Blake cheerfully thumped his brother on the shirt sleeve. “Duuude, no. Wrong attitude. The magic is just around the corner.”
Chloe pulled on Mason’s hand to redirect his attention from the spectral past to the material her. Obligingly he leaned over and she kissed him to make him forget whatever it was he couldn’t.
“I hope we find some good souvenirs,” Mason said. “Everyone is dying of jealousy that we’re going. I want to bring something back for them.”
“Like the clap?” Blake asked.
“That’s what you hope to get out of our adventure?” said Hannah. “Cheesy trinkets for your dumb friends? Perhaps a fridge magnet from Auschwitz?”
“Let’s see if his friends can spell Auschwitz,” muttered Chloe.
“I’m afraid,” Mason said, “that the best part of my childhood is done. That when we come back, we won’t be kids anymore. Won’t see each other anymore.” Slowly he turned his head to stare at Chloe.
In shame she looked away.
“You and I will be kids forever, bro,” said Blake.
“And we’ll be only two hours from here, Mase,” said Hannah. “It’s not like we’re going cross-country. You’ll drive up one weekend, we’ll come down the next. You’ll see. It’ll be awesome.”
Now it was Mason who looked away. “Will it?” His dull voice faded into the white tablecloths.
Blake nudged Chloe, his black patent foot pushing the satin heel of her sandal. Nudged her, eyeing his brother, as if to say, don’t give up. Do something. Say something.
Not knowing what to say, Chloe stared up at a lonely blue balloon clinging to life. It had drifted off and hid around a glittering chandelier. Soon Spain. What would it be like? Noises of cities, flickering lights, midnight music, endless dancing, now and forever. A raucous man to swoon and sing the words, I want you to be queen. I want to tremble and laugh, Chloe thought, I want to cascade down the waterfall like a goddess, to see the substance of my fortune, to find the answer to my prayers. I want to see things I’ve never seen. Holy nights, intoxicating nights. I want to feel things I’ve never felt.
“I just figured out what’s in my blue suitcase,” said Blake. “Oh God. Of course. How could I have not seen? It’s fantastic. But don’t even ask. I won’t tell you. You’ll have to read to the end to find out what happens next.”
Part Two (#ulink_8763aa1e-ce22-592c-8213-073676602244)
Johnny Rainbow (#ulink_8763aa1e-ce22-592c-8213-073676602244)
One half of me is yours, the other half yours Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice,3.2
16 (#ulink_1d76ae96-c8dd-5011-85f5-71be31f3f683)
Modern Travel (#ulink_1d76ae96-c8dd-5011-85f5-71be31f3f683)
Chloe
Chloe truly hoped, really and truly, that the bulk of the twenty-one precious days in life-changing lands would be better than the travel to said lands because the travel sucked. If Dante lived now, what a book he’d write about the road to hell. Long, full of delays, unforeseen and expected trouble, stultifying waiting, wrong seats, terrible food, numb swollen legs, aching back head knees neck throat and throbbing glands—and not any glands that would be fun, at least theoretically, to have throbbing.
She had never traveled before, except in a car with her parents, and this wasn’t at all as she imagined, or as the movies made it out to be. It wasn’t in the least romantic. This was more like being stuck for nineteen hours in motionless traffic on the highway, except less comfortable, because instead of being inside a car, it felt as if the car were on top of Chloe. The carry-on backpack that weighed ten pounds when they left the house now felt like a hundred and ten. One of the wheels on the old suitcase was busted, so Chloe had to half-drag, half-carry it. Then it ended up being over the luggage limit by six pounds. It was either pay a hundred more dollars or lighten the load by one umbrella (she hoped it wouldn’t rain), two bottles of shampoo (how important was clean hair, anyway?), and two books (who had time to read?).
Before Chloe could lighten the load she was asked a ton of questions of punishing stupidity. Did you pack this yourself? She didn’t know what to say. Yes? But also—no. Her mother helped her. Was she allowed to mention she had a mother?
Did anyone else help you with your bags?
“Do you mean pack them? Or carry them?”
The lady pinpointed her contemptuous gaze on Chloe. “Just answer the question, young lady.”
“I want to. I just don’t know how to.”
“What don’t you get? Did anyone help you with your bags?”
“Pack them or carry them?” Mason helped her to carry them. Hannah helped her pack. Not just Hannah, but her mother and father, and Blake threw in a notebook, damn it. If it weren’t for his notebook, she could’ve kept her umbrella.
“Oh my God, I can’t do this today,” the lady said. “Either. Or.”
“No,” said Chloe, sweat running down her aching back.
The woman looked ready to punch Chloe in the head.
They had left home at nine in the morning for a 6 p.m. flight out of Logan. They had a four-hour drive to Boston, a burger lunch, and a wait in line. It was scary saying goodbye to her mother. Chloe acted like she was cool with it, but inside she was all stuttering ambivalence. What if something went wrong? Who would fix it? What if she lost her suitcase? What if she was robbed? What if all her money was gone? What if she couldn’t find Varda’s house? What if no one spoke English?
What Chloe dreaded most was the worst of all possible scenarios: a desperate need for a mother and no mother.
They had been right, her parents. Damn. She was too young to go anywhere. She could make it to the water slide in North Conway, twenty-eight miles away, but that was about it. She could deliver hot meals to old people. In the airport when Lang asked if she would be okay, Chloe said, of course, barely looking in her mother’s direction. Do you want me to stay? Lang asked. No, we’ll be fine, Blake piped up in his booming voice. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of her. Where was Chloe’s dad? He wanted to come, but couldn’t fit in the truck. Where was Terri Gramm? At L.L.Bean, unpacking the fall windbreakers. That’s why Hannah was real-calm, not fake-calm. She was already adult and on her own.
Hannah had bleached her hair before they left. It was Marilyn Monroe blonde now, squeaky straight, very short, and brushed back severely off her face. The electrified blonde bob made her look even more exotic. Hot damn.
They were late taxiing off, and Chloe imagined all horrors, and she meant all horrors, lurking under the belly of the plane while she bit her nails on the runway. How does a plane fly at night? How can the pilot see? Does the plane have headlights, like Mom’s car? But there are no roads. She kept her terrified musings to herself, gnawing on her nails to stop herself from running screaming from her seat. Hannah sat across the aisle with Blake. Mason was one seat in front of Chloe. They couldn’t even sit together. Mason kept writing notes to Chloe on tiny plane napkins and passing them back, as if in Science class. Whatcha doin? You excited? You hungry? You love me? I can’t wait. Look up, I’m smiling at you. Look between the seats, I’m blowing you a kiss. You think we can get postcards when we get to Riga? I want to send one home.
To that last one, she wrote back on her own tiny napkin. Who do you want to send postcards to?
Dunno, came his answer. Kids at school.
What kids?
Dunno. All of them. With a heart at the end.
In the car on the way to Logan, Chloe and Hannah had talked about two butch-looking girls they’d seen holding hands at L.L.Bean, and Chloe said out of nowhere, I bet Mackenzie is a lesbian, and Mason said, why would you say that, and Hannah said, Mason, what do you care if Chloe thinks Mackenzie is a lesbian. And even Blake said, yeah, bro. And Mason said nothing. Why did she remember this? Now he was sleeping. Chloe knew this because he stopped writing her love napkins.
Across the aisle Hannah kept her eyes closed while Blake chatted away, leaning his head against the middle seat, whispering, stage-whispering, joking, laughing, poking her, expounding, trying to get her to open her eyes and look into his notebook. Hannah wouldn’t play. Blake, she kept repeating. I want to sleep. But how can you sleep? This is so exciting.
Blake.
Wake up.
Blake.
Wake up.
“Blake!” That was Chloe, hissing. “Shut up.”
Chewing the cap off his pen, Blake feverishly wrote in his journal, occasionally glancing over at Chloe. You okay? he kept mouthing.
What are you writing? she whispered. He held it up, as if by its cover she’d know. It’s my “back” journal, he said. That’s what the Russians call it. For everything else but the main story.
How would he even know that? What Russians?
Chloe didn’t want to tell him she wasn’t okay, because there was no way to explain why she wasn’t, since she didn’t herself know, and so she nodded and closed her eyes, and then quickly opened them again because she didn’t want to miss the food trolley. Chloe loved to eat. Hannah missed it. She didn’t care about food at all. She once said to Chloe, maybe if you stopped with all that cereal and milk, your boobs wouldn’t have grown so big.
The lights were turned off, the movies came on, the headphones came out. Most people slept, or played computer games, or leafed through magazines. Chloe tried to read a book, AConnecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but couldn’t concentrate. She left to go to the bathroom, and Blake somehow hurled himself over a fake-sleeping Hannah and followed Chloe down the aisle.
“You can’t sleep either, right? It’s too exciting.”
“It’s many things,” she said.
“Exciting is definitely one of them, right?”
“Many things.”
“But exciting is one of them?”
It was pretty far down the list. Chloe didn’t say it. They waited for the bathroom.
“I think I packed too much stuff,” he said. He sounded so chipper. “Too many T-shirts and jeans. Where are we going to do laundry? I didn’t bring twenty-one pairs of jeans. Mase and I brought five hundred dollars spending money. You think that’ll be enough?”
“If you don’t eat, yes.”
He laughed. Sleeping people opened their eyes and glared.
“I’m glad we’re staying with your grandmother,” Blake said, only a notch quieter. “She’ll feed us.”
“She’s not my grandmother,” said Chloe. “My grandmother is in Fryeburg. Moody. You know her.”
“What about the other one—in Peking?” He tilted his teasing head.
Why? Why?
“It hasn’t been called Peking in over twenty years, one,” Chloe said, swatting him like a harassing fly, “and two, my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother never set foot in China. How many times do I have to say it?”
“What? No. I’ve never heard this story. Do tell.”
They didn’t want to go back to their seats so they loitered near the food cart and verbally abused the awful cookies to pass the time.
The flight dragged on. When Chloe thought they must be halfway around the world, in Singapore or someplace, they finally landed—but not in Riga. In Paris. Hannah was excited, but did they see Paris? No. They saw a Parisian airport. Four-hour layover. They wandered around, washed their faces, split two breakfast buns and two coffees, perused the duty free, put on some makeup (girls) and examined the liquor bottles (boys), then checked how much time they had left: three more hours. Having slept on the plane, Mason was refreshed, having fake-slept, Hannah sore and silent. Blake was exactly the same as he had been seven hours earlier, fourteen hours earlier, nineteen years earlier.
They bought a newspaper and Hannah pretended she could read French. Five minutes of mocking her passed the time. It would have been longer if she’d had a sense of humor. They checked out the naughty magazines, not even decorously covered up by brown paper. They were so progressive in Europe, Blake said, so advanced. Bless them, said Mason.
The girls were getting more and more impatient. “You’re looking at it all wrong,” Blake said. “It has to take a long time to get where we’re going, because we are leaving our old life behind. By the time we arrive in the new world, we are reborn. It’s supposed to take a long time, don’t you get it?”
“This is torture,” Hannah said. “What’s wrong with you that you don’t see it?”
“This is fantastic,” Blake said. “I’ve never been on a plane before. Or in an airport terminal. Never met a French person. Or seen a French blue magazine.” He winked with delight. “I’m writing down my impressions in the back journal. Who has time to be ornery?”
Hannah asked if Blake could write down his impressions silently, mutely, off.
Blake didn’t think he could. On the flight from Paris to Riga, the brothers sat together and the girls sat in front of them. The guys kept throwing paper over the seats, pulling the girls’ hair, whispering, laughing.
Questions of Punishing Stupidity Part II: Customs control.
Are you bringing anything into Latvia? Are you carrying contraband? She didn’t even know what contraband was. How could she know if she was carrying it? Are you carrying drugs?
What is your business in Latvia?
What is your destination?
The Latvian customs control were philosophers! Did they mean today? Where was she headed after she left the airport? Or did they mean the destination from which she would fly home? Or the destination to which she was headed in five short weeks, not in Riga, not in Maine, not in Spain, but far far away, in a distant land of saints, palms and stucco. What was her destination indeed, damn them.
Mason
Last month when Blake and I went to fix Lupe’s rotted-out pantry shelves, she said to us that we all float on a boat down a river of Truth that keeps dividing and dividing into tributaries that reunite, and once we reach the sea, we die. We spend our whole existence arguing with each other about which tributary leads to the main stream. “But they all lead to the same place,” she said.
I saved it for later to understand. The later is now. Because I’m trying to look out the window, and all the others are doing is arguing.
Lupe also told Blake that a wise man does three things. First, he does himself that which he advises others to do. (I don’t know if I do that.) Second, he doesn’t do anything that contravenes the Truth. (What is this river of Truth?) And third, he is patient with the weaknesses of those who surround him. (I am definitely not that.) She said Blake was all three.
Blake says he loves that woman. But I don’t know if I agree with her. He keeps borrowing Mom’s car to drive over there and take her to the doctor. There’s always yelling at home now because the four of us are trying to make do with one car and a loaner, a beaten-up jalopy with pistons that misfire in two of its four lousy cylinders. Blake causes strife in our house. I ask you, how wise is that? And how tolerant of it am I? He says Lupe needs a new fire pit. I tell him Mom needs her car, Dad needs a new back, and I need to get to a varsity reunion. Everybody needs something.
I thought that in Europe there’d be no yelling. Silly me. Here I am, in the cab from the airport, my face to the window. Please tell me I will find something here other than strife.
Hannah doesn’t like to travel. Oh, she talks a good game about how she’s going to travel all over the world for some job, translating or something, but I truly believe it’s a fantasy. She hates to go anywhere. I don’t know why she wanted to go to Europe with Chloe. When Chloe told me she and Hannah were heading to Barcelona, I wanted to remind my girlfriend of the few days the previous winter when the four of us went to Franconia to ski. The lift had broken after our first run. There was a blizzard, followed by an avalanche. We were snowed in for four days, with no power, no TV, no radio. Hannah nearly went mad, and we were an hour away from home.
No one lost a limb. No one starved. No one froze. We were just stuck. It hadn’t gone as we planned. But we had a fire, we shoveled snow, we went sledding and snowboarding until they came and cleared the road. We sang songs, and ate cans of Campbell’s soup from the cupboard, stale cereal, almonds, pretzels, pork rind, and talked about life. We played Scrabble and charades and cards, and Risk. It wasn’t glorious skiing, but three of us thought it was fun. Not Hannah. She said it was the worst four days of her life.
Blake laughed it off. He thinks she’s a sugar plum and a candy cane and doesn’t take anything she says or does seriously. I tried to counsel him. She wasn’t joking, I said. She was utterly unmoved by my beautiful Franconia.
Getting from Boston to Riga is another good example of what I mean. We did have to wait a long time. So what? The seats weren’t the most comfortable. So what? The food wasn’t as good as Burger King. But so what, and what is? We are on a three-week joyride together. To Europe! That’s amazing. During the Franconia snow-in, we were with our mom and Chloe’s mom. You know, to keep an eye on things. Make sure we didn’t get out of hand, and um, out of some things, and into other things. This time we’re motherless, and the girls still aren’t happy. Chloe keeps calling Riga her penance. I hope she is joking. And Hannah doesn’t care about anything but Barcelona. She also thinks we’re going to swing over to Paris for a few days. If I didn’t know that Hannah doesn’t have a humorous bone in her body, I’d swear she was joking. To explain why we couldn’t “swing over to Paris,” Blake tried to show her the map, to talk through the twenty-one days of our trip with her, every one accounted for, but she ignored him. To pay her back, Blake and I now ignore every mention of Paris. It’s like we can’t hear her. Every time she says Paris, we say, what? She says PARIS, and we say, what? She says Paris!!! We say, what?
I can’t tell you how much that annoys her and amuses us.
It’s warm in Riga, and the fields are pretty. Maine has more pine. Here, everywhere I look, the grass is uncut. The roads have no shoulders and no sidewalks. I’m sure when we get closer to the city, there will be sidewalks. Right? There have to be some sidewalks somewhere, no?
Hannah is an ice queen. I’d never say anything to my smitten brother. I know she’s beautiful and all. But my God. She’s sitting in a Latvian taxi, looking at her feet. She’s not even looking out the window. I say, Hannah, look, Riga.
And she says, so? It’s a city. I’ve seen cities before.
But you’ve never seen Riga, right?
The worst part is, she got Blake to sit in the middle because she said she wanted to sit next to a window, and now she’s not even looking out of it! If I was Blake, I’d be pissed. Heck, I’m pissed already, and I’m not even Blake.
At least Chloe loves stuff. Once she stops being anxious and, granted that’s easier for me to write than for her to do, but once she stops, she loves stuff. She loves going to the movies and to water parks, loves talking and fishing, and though I don’t like fishing, I like that she likes it. She loves skating and plays a mean four-player hockey game. And she’s a fast skater, too. Not as fast as Blake, but fast for a girl. I can buy her an ice cream or a burger, and she eats it with gusto. She likes driving, and she sings when she drives. She sings when she gardens, too. She never yells at other drivers. And she is so pretty. She doesn’t like people to think that, sometimes not even me. Says she doesn’t want me to objectify her, or some shit like that. I still like looking at her, and when she lets me, I like touching her. She’s got the silkiest hair of anybody I’ve ever met. And other soft nice things too. I wish she’d let me touch her more often. Sometimes it’s hard to get her alone. Ever since Dad’s truck broke, it’s been a bitch to get together just the two of us. Blake and Hannah somehow manage, because on top of everything else, I’m always at varsity. Poor Blake. He’s the most in-deep-trouble dude in Maine, because not only does he not know how unlucky he is, but he thinks he’s lucky.
Things I’m most stoked about: 1. Seeing the Alps on the way to Spain. 2. Barcelona. 3. Being alone with Chloe. Miles of beaches, cheap hotels, food, drink, night. Maybe a room to ourselves. I can’t wait. A last hurrah.
Hannah
I miss him. I’m a million miles away and yet all I can think about is him. Last time we saw each other he kept begging me to let him come visit me for a few days in Spain. I said, how could you possibly, I’m going with Blake. He didn’t care. He said maybe I could get away for a few hours. Where would I tell Blake I’m going, I asked him. To a Barcelona bed with me, he said.
I want to be a good girlfriend for Blake here in Europe, give him these few weeks as happy memories. He’s been good to me. And I’ve been good to him, of course.
Mason has never seen anything or been anywhere, so he’s acting like Riga is da bomb. It’s annoying. I didn’t even know Riga was a capital city until Moody told me. I had barely heard of Latvia. This isn’t where my future lies. I’m going to study to be a trilingual interpreter. I will wear beautiful clothes and go to state dinners in the capitals of the world. Not Riga. Other capitals. I will meet important diplomats, shake their hands and flirt with them. I will get fluent in Spanish and French. Where is my French book? I want to study my subjunctive conjugations while we pass Riga by.
Tomorrow Chloe is going to the orphanage and the boys to the Old City. I’m tempted to send them all off without me, so that I can get over the jetlag, write, practice my Spanish and French, and my English elocution. I’ll say I’m not feeling well. I’ll allude to some womanly problems. That always works. I’ve actually been feeling off lately, that’s not a lie.
Blake
Everything is amazing. Traveling was great. I want to travel all the time. I love planes, I’d never been on one, but how amazing! Packing was fun, carrying stuff, helping the girls, the ride to Boston; I wish we had time to spend a few days in Boston, looking around, walking around. When I grow up and have my own business and can take off work whenever I want, I’ll go to Boston once a month for a long weekend, just to walk around and see the sights. Maybe Chloe can go to Harvard Law School and Mason and I can go visit her. The airport was awesome. I had four burgers because I knew I might not eat for a few hours. The check-in lady weighed my bags to see if they were over, but she should’ve weighed me, because I was over. Ha! Four burgers, two large fries, a large shake, and a Hershey chocolate pie. And a Coke. I was full up, man. She forgot to weigh me. Poor Chloe hardly ate at all, on account of being such a nervous flyer. Her bag was too heavy. She said it was because of my journal, but I told her it was because of her three pairs of shoes.
Hannah is the most seasoned traveler out of all of us, which isn’t saying much, because we’ve never been anywhere, but she’s been to Quebec once, and to Niagara Falls. Before her ’rents imploded, they took her and Jason to Chicago, and once to see Elvis’s house in Memphis, because her crazy cheating dad is an Elvis freak. She took five years of Spanish and three years of French, as she keeps reminding us. So she’s an expert, she says, and doesn’t need to be awake. I love how calm she is.
Poor Chloe! Mason wasn’t sitting next to her and he was snoring to boot, and Hannah was meditating or whatever, but Chloe really needed to talk to somebody to calm down, and she had no one. She would’ve been less steamed if she’d talked to somebody. She just needed a few jokes and some banter about bullshit.
I’m so psyched about Riga. Who else but me is going to write about Riga in the competition? I’m going to season my story with the spice of Europe, baby, and I’m going to choose my words extra carefully, and they’ll be dazzled. I’ll have Chloe read it before I send it, so she’ll be dazzled too, and she’ll say, I didn’t know you could write, Blake, and be all impressed. Look at how awesome your story is, she’ll say.
17 (#ulink_d7e2c89d-7bab-5a54-bad3-90430f166714)
Carmen in Carnikava (#ulink_d7e2c89d-7bab-5a54-bad3-90430f166714)
Chloe
She loved the city in the distance. She loved the traffic on the roads (though she loved it less on the bridge they were failing to cross), and the vivid colors of the buildings. She even liked the unfamiliar sounds of Latvian: half-Slavic, half-guttural.
She was ashamed she was such a bad and unprepared traveler. Having no one to turn to, since neither Hannah nor Mason knew anything about Riga, Chloe turned to Blake, who walked arm in arm with his back journal, and it so happened that his journal on this particular Saturday was filled with tidbits about Latvia! He was infuriating. Why was he always the one looking things up, knowing things? What did Riga have to do with his story? “Everything,” he said. “The story keeps morphing, my dear Haiku. The chrysalis is becoming a butterfly. Did you know for example that Riga is a hotbed of spy activity? I’ll use that detail in my book.”
“What do Latvian double agents have to do with the suitcase found in a dead woman’s yard?”
“We don’t know where the suitcase was found,” he declared. “Don’t assume anything.”
“Your hero goes to Riga to find his answers?”
“Also, don’t assume he’s the hero. He may be the anti-hero. But yes, he goes to Riga. Just look at this place!”
She did. She was startled by the black church spires rising up outside the taxi windows, and she was startled by Blake. His cheerful immersion in the details of their travel and his commitment to his unformed opus were completely at odds with the Blake Chloe had grown up with. He was confounding. Hannah was no help. She accepted the new Blake the way she had accepted the old Blake, with neutral amusement.
Now, stuck in traffic on the bridge over the Daugava River, Chloe was forced to listen to Mr. Eager plan their itinerary like he was some kind of expert on all things Latvian.
“We’ll go to the Central Market. We can’t leave Riga without seeing it. And the Riga Museum. Also the Opera House. And, Chloe, I can’t wait to try the Black Balsam—how about you? No, I’m not going to tell you what it is. You’ll find out soon enough.” Leaning forward between the seats, he poked her in the arm. “There’s also a bakery that’s to die for, you know how much you like pastries, wait, I’m looking for the name of it …”
Hannah, of course, in her dry way, rained on all things, especially the bakery. “Well, it can’t be any better than the bakery in Bangor, near UMaine,” she said. “They have the most divine cream puffs. I drool when I think about them, and I don’t usually like sweets. And can the Riga Museum really compare to the Field Museum in Chicago? Same with the Opera House. It might be okay by Latvian standards, but compared to Carnegie Hall? And you know what I think? Beer is beer. Heineken, Bud, Black Balsam. It’s just beer, Blake. Plus Chloe doesn’t even like beer. Let’s not talk about it like it’s Dom Pérignon.”
Mason, looking and sounding annoyed, asked Hannah if she’d ever actually had Dom Pérignon.
“I’m just saying,” said Hannah.
“Didn’t think so,” said Mason.
Blake didn’t care. Sitting between Hannah and Mason in the back, he leafed through his notebook, his bedhead banging the roof of the cab. “Chloe,” he asked absent-mindedly, “when did you take Hannah to a Bangor bakery? You had cream puffs and didn’t tell me? Were they really that good?”
Chloe was at a loss. On the radio, the Latvian music, full of balalaikas and cymbals, syncopated through the cab.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember.” She stared at the outlines of the city through the window. “Moody’s aunt lives so far outside Riga. When would we even get to a bakery?”
“Don’t worry,” Blake said. “We’ll find a way. This bakery is a must-see.”
Chloe was hungry, sleepy, slightly irritated by the long ride, the slow-moving traffic. “Well, it definitely can’t be tomorrow,” she said. “We have to go to Liepaja.” The air whistled out of her balloon. Across the wide river, the Old City tempted her, its blue and pink walls, its green and yellow roofs, the colored stone, the purple domes, the pale light of the late afternoon northern sun. Riga seemed to be holding its breath before the raucous Saturday night ahead. Like Chloe was holding her breath before the next twenty days, before the rest of her life.
“We don’t all have to go to Liepaja,” said Blake.
Hannah heartily agreed.
“Chloe, I’ll go with you if you want,” Mason said from the back seat.
“I thought we would all go,” said Chloe. “Wasn’t that the plan? To live through everything together, like always?”
“We don’t have enough time.” That was Blake. “Hannah will go with you, Haiku. Mase has to come with me. We’re going to the war museum, bro, the Powder Tower. Manly things that dainty girls aren’t interested in. We’re writing a story. This is the work part of our trip. While Chloe is in Liepaja looking for a boy, you and I have to find nefarious goings-on in Riga.”
“No!” said Hannah. “Why do I have to go to Liepaja? I’d rather go to Riga with you. But not to a bakery. What’s the point of going to a bakery if Chloe’s not coming with us? I’m not going to eat any of that cream-filled starch. I’ll be five hundred pounds before the trip is over.” Spoken like a true size 2.
Chloe couldn’t help herself. “If you don’t like the pastries, Hannah,” she said, “then why were you wolfing down so many of them at the Bangor bakery?”
“She makes a good point, turtle, why?” said Blake.
“I was much thinner then.”
As if that answered anything.
“And what do you mean you’re not coming with me?” Chloe knew she sounded petulant. “Somebody has to come with me.”
“Yeah, Hannah,” Blake said. “Chloe can’t find a boy on her own.” He pulled Chloe’s hair. “She needs help.”
“Leave me alone,” Chloe said.
“I’ll come with you, Chloe,” said Mason.
“You can’t, bro. What did I just say?”
They were finally out of the city, over the bright, freshly minted bridge. The countryside went from urban to rural in the space of two city blocks and a farm. Inside the cramped cab, their tired chatter faded.
“What’s the name of the town we’re going to again?”
“Carnikava,” Blake said. “Chloe, why do I have to tell you where you’re going?”
“Not Carnikava,” the cabbie said. “Tsarnikava.”
Blake studied the map. “Says here Carnikava.”
“Tsarnikava!” the cabbie yelled.
After five tense minutes, Chloe spoke again. “How far is … Tsarnikava from here?”
“Twenty kilometers!” the cabbie said. “Maybe … twenty … FIVE!”
“Thank you!” she shouted back. She glanced back at Mason. His eyes were closed. He hated stridency, yelling. How did one yell thank you in Latvian? You’d think Chloe would’ve thought to pack a Latvian–English dictionary. Just to learn how to say thank you, or where is …? or how much?
“Paldies,” said Blake.
Oh, great. So he knew how to say thank you. She retreated into herself, her gaze on the fields. How could her grandmother have an aunt still living? It made no sense. “Chloe, did you say your family were bee farmers?” Blake asked.
“I never said that.” Did she say that? She couldn’t remember.
“You did say that. I bet they have awesome honey. I can’t wait.”
“Did you say beer farmer?” Mason deadpanned.
“Yes, that’s right, bro. Beer farmer. You got it.” They started roughhousing over Hannah. Chloe felt better. Maybe they could leave the aunt’s house after one night, stay in a Riga hostel? She thought this, but then she checked the meter. The price was ratcheting up like a champion swine for sale at the Fryeburg Fair.
47.
She swivelled her head to stare meaningfully at her three companions but none of them could convert the number into dollars, not even the brilliant Blake. Chloe had thought about nothing but the trip for months, but now she felt unprepared. The numbers on the wretched meter kept clicking upward. 51. Her anxiety level rose with each digit.
“What’s the currency here?” she bleated.
“Latu,” the cabbie said. “One latu, almost two dollar. One, two. Easy.” He laughed, opening a big-lipped, inadequately dentured mouth.
Chloe spun around, eyes big. Blake, sitting in the middle, stared at the meter—55 now—and laughed.
“Next time, take train,” the cabbie said. “Without bags, easy. One latu to Riga. One latu.”
59. 60. 61. Yeah. Maybe next time they would take the train.
The trees got taller, pinier, the countryside flatter, the yards more florid. There were farms and peat bog, and swamps. There was a dusky mauve color to the long-limbed conifers. The rural roads were poorly marked. It took the cabbie a while to find the address. For a few miles he drove down a long potholed avenue lined with birches. The small houses, mostly made of stone, were set deep inside the verdant foliage. They were neatly kept, had flowers and greenhouses. The landscape was nearly indistinguishable from Maine. Except for the shadow of the rangy White Mountains and the abundance of lakes, Carnikava and Fryeburg seemed more closely related than Moody and Varda. Chloe hoped no one else would realize that. That they traveled five thousand miles only to see their own backyards.
Chloe made some ironic remark about the beaten down nature of the landscape, and Blake said, “Beaten down?” He sounded prickled for some reason, as if she’d offended his very own Latvia. “May I point out that the road here, while narrow, is paved? Can you say the same for the dirt path you live on?”
Did he say this to be funny or to make her ashamed?
“Why choose?” said Blake. “And please note the trash cans put out onto the road. Are you familiar with this custom? A garbage truck comes to your house and picks up your trash, so you don’t have to haul your week-old garbage in your mother’s Subaru to the landfill fifteen miles away.”
“All right, all right,” Chloe said.
She wasn’t sure they were at the right house because there wasn’t a number on the small stucco cottage painted in sky blue. But out on the road there was an onyx-haired woman, her arm around a skinny adolescent girl, both standing at attention near a peach tree and a wooden gate. The girl waved madly before the cab stopped. They climbed out of the narrow car onto the narrow road, grateful to stretch out and careful not to disturb the droopy branches of an apple tree draping over the hedge and fence. Mason and Blake retrieved their suitcases from the trunk and Chloe paid the fare (77 latu! Nearly $140. She tried not to think about it).
Cautiously they approached the old woman and her young charge, who were still waving but also eyeing the Americans’ abundant luggage with skeptical wonder. Chloe thought that it couldn’t be the right house. The strong, serious woman couldn’t be Moody’s aunt, couldn’t be twenty years older than Moody, who was in her mid-eighties. This woman didn’t look seventy.
“Es esmu Varda,” the woman said. “Es esmu Varda.” She hugged Chloe, muttering incomprehensible things. She banged Chloe’s chest and said “Jūsu vārds ir Chloya.” The young girl next to Varda, demure rather than desperate, despite her name—Carmen—didn’t stop hugging either, except she was hugging Blake and Mason, two young men not remotely related to her. Perhaps she was more like a Carmen than Chloya had first allowed.
“I speak English,” the girl said with an accent. “I learn in school. I translate. Grandmother says she very happy you come. She waited for you long time. She want to know your friend names. And why you bring so much suitcase?”
“It’s not so much,” said Chloe. “One suitcase each. We are traveling for three weeks.”
“Grandmother says too much suitcase,” the girl repeated.
Varda had hair blacker than any hair Chloe had ever seen. It was without a strand of gray. She had black eyes, a weathered, saddle-colored face. Her hands were gnarled claws, tanned, strong, veined, scarred with old injuries. Some of the fingers were crooked, as if they had been broken and then healed poorly. She wore a plain gray dress and old brown suede shoes that she obviously had just scrubbed, for they looked damp. She had dressed up to meet the Americans. The tween by her side, too. Carmen had put on a peasant dress, scraped half the mud off her moccasins, and braided back her long sandy hair. She stood enveloped in a sickly cloud of cheap cologne.
Varda said something to the girl, emphatic and loud.
“She says to tell you she not Mudita’s aunt,” the young Carmen said. “She says you confused.”
The old woman pounded herself in the chest, and said what sounded like “Septic dank.”
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Полина Саймонс
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Lone Star is another unforgettable love story from the best-selling author of Tully and The Bronze Horseman.Life isn’t about the destination, but the journey…Chloe is eager to drink in the sights and sounds of the Old World as she embarks on a European adventure with her closest friends. Buried in the treasures of the fledgling post-Communist world, Chloe finds a charming American vagabond named Johnny, who carries a guitar, an easy smile – and a lifetime of secrets.As she and her unlikely travelling companions traverse the continent, a train trip becomes a treacherous journey into Europe′s and Johnny′s darkest past – a journey that shatters Chloe′s future plans and puts in jeopardy everything she thought she wanted.From Treblinka to Trieste, from Carnikava to Krakow, the lovers and friends crack the facade that sustains their lifelong bonds to expose their truest, deepest desires and discover only one thing that′s certain: whether or not they reach their destination, their lives will never be the same.