by Beth Harden
“What’s for supper?” I announce, having slipped successfully through the shed into the kitchen without disturbing her.
“Lissa! My grown-up baby,” she says. ‘What a nice surprise!” She turns, pats her hands on her pastry apron and comes to greet me. She is pleased but not overly demonstrative. Some part of her is always half-expecting one of us to wander in with a change of heart and move our cartons of crap back into the upstairs. The only time she is truly content is when the house is crowded with bodies and loud with the incessant banging of piano keys. She thrives on shrieks from the grandkids that have pulled their Huffy bikes up to the window ledge at the pretend drive-thru and ordered crab sandwiches and lemonade, which she hands out to them free of charge.
“Is it a good time for me to come?” I ask tentatively. Stupid question. To her, any time is never good enough.
“Of course! I’m sorry I didn’t have time to clean up the guest room or change the sheets. If I had known you were coming, I would have prepared,” my mother says apologetically. We both know the ropes. The dust is thick in the rooms she no longer wants to tend to. The memories in there are even thicker.
“It’s fine, Mom. I can take care of that. I brought some groceries along,” I reply.
“I have plenty here,” she says. Plenty of the same, she means. A quart bottle of goat’s milk, a container of large curd cottage cheese, last year’s bread and butter pickles, pre-sliced sourdough loaf from Larry’s Pastry, peanut butter swimming in its own oil and soupy strawberry/ rhubarb compote with a rim of mold on the Mason jar. I come with fresh supplies and will discreetly replace items that have outlived their shelf life by a long shot.
“Would you like to take a walk down at the point?” I ask. The afternoon sun is topping over the trees and is still thinly warm. Mom is not good once it gets on toward evening and the dampness rolls off the water and crimps her arthritic joints. She is pleased with the idea and within minutes, we are both in her Ford Escort with a metal bucket and old beach shoes. Dimming eyes or not, she still navigates the four miles that slope past long meadows to the smooth broth of the Bay without ever really looking at the road. After so many repetitions, she can do it with one palm on the wheel and one good eye on the horizon. When she cruises around the first bend in the dirt road leading away from her property line and spots the sporty car tucked into the trees, she clucks her tongue disapprovingly.
“That must be expensive to maintain,” she says. Progress and convenience offend her. I make no response and choose instead to glory in the waning sun. We both know the rules. Small talk welcome; meaningful conversation unnecessary. The town road winds along the eastern side of the peninsula where at its highest crest, the sun burns through the low mist and stuns the viewer. A pair of goats cavorts on top of a rusted El Camino that serves as a feeder. Mr. Thorsen’s trailer has sunflowers knocking heavy heads on his roof. The windows are still stapled over with thick plastic from the winter before.
“He’s been at Ledgebrook Nursing Center now for a couple years,” says Mom. Her truck smells like wet dog and fermented corn. She drives slowly and cautiously scans the sides of the road for a sudden ball or bike to come flying out; but the kids who live here are tucked back in the woods on old logging roads and rarely make it out into the direct sunshine. We pass the old Chapel, the stuffy library and miniscule post office that belongs to the private community that has claimed the Point as their boat launch and cocktail party patio. The signs went up when we were still kids, orders from the Village Improvement Society to keep off, stay back, don’t touch, though we ignored them by climbing up on the railing of the wharf to jump and drop thirty feet, splitting the water like sharp knives. The summer people were aghast and a bit irritated, but could hardly stop us from scampering back up the ropes like water spiders.
Mom parks near the boathouse. Here the stones give way gently under the wheels of the boat trailers as they back in to dump their crafts.
“Wanna head to the left, down to the inlet?” I ask. It’s our favorite walk to where the coastline is broken by a deep covethat dries into beds of salt and clam shells. Once we are out on the rocky beach, Mom and I hunt and peck for the perfect find. Although she is nearing seventy, my mother shows no defining age. Her long, thinning hair is still mostly dark and pinned up with bobby pins. Her body is still strong though osteoporosis has been her companion every since menopause. She is still handsome, no beautiful with her classic cheekbones and smoldering eyes though her vision on one side is dull from increased optical pressure. Glaucoma is causing a thick film to steal over her vision like the sea fog that hangs above the shallow water closest to the beach. Mom creeps along comfortably in her ratty shoes, boys’ jeans and terry cloth beach jacket. One lobsterman is bending over his traps and half straightens up to stare when he spies her, probably mistaking her for a teenager.
There is a new line of flotsam, tangled fishing nets, dry sponges and sea urchins left in the wake of last night’s tide. It looks to be a great picking ground today. The two of us seek out our own spots and kneel down to rummage through the pebbles and debris. We are quiet in our search. The minute focus on color, texture and reflection is a religious ritual that requires complete concentration. Long minutes pass in separate solitude.
“I found it!” I shout enthusiastically. I hold up an arc of porcelain with a ruby cottage and a garden painted on it, a shard from an antique serving platter perhaps. I run with my prize and carefully lay it into the plastic bucket. She approves and then grins widely. Out of her side pocket, she produces a porous, round object with a fluted rim in various shades of bleached gray.
“What is it?” I ask, puzzled.
“A whale vertebrae,” she replies proudly.
“Crap! You win,” I say and embrace her shoulders. It’s not a hug per se, not like other people know one to be. That would mean two bodies that lean in and apply a measure of pressure to connect them, even briefly. In our case, it is my arm wrapped around her back and her willingness to stand still for that moment. She winces when I squeeze.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were pain.”
“Just in that right shoulder,” she answers.
“Is that something new?”
“You know how my arthritis gets in this dampness. I can tell there’s a storm coming in,” she responds.
“You still going to see the same doctor?” I ask.
“Yes, I go the end of this week. I’ll probably need a cortisone shot and that’ll do it.”
We wander the length of the shoreline until we reach the dead end of soppy muck and stagnant tidal pools. The black flies are as big as moths down here and mosquitoes pester every visible patch of skin. We turn back and walk at a faster pace trying to outdistance them. By the time we reach the car, it’s almost obscured by the dusky mist that has wrapped up around the boathouse.
Back at home, we sit with bowls of fresh chowder and homemade popovers as the thick cover of night comes on. Mom lights the Aladdin lamp and the mantle flares to a dim yellow orb though the overhead light switch beckons only a few feet away. I don’t question her choices; it is her house. We talk in fragments. In between is thick silence while we ladle soup and squeeze honey on our biscuits. After we have covered the cursory checklist of siblings and their spouses, she turns to me with the secret she’s been saving up.
“Aaron has moved back to Maine. He came to see us two weeks ago,” she announces matter-of-factly. I had heard through my brothers that my former boyfriend had come East in a U-Haul with a load of furniture and had driven straight to our farmhouse, his first stop since Columbus Ohio; and had lifted each of them off their feet even though not one brother weighed less than one- hundred-seventy-five pounds.
“Yes, I know that,” I reply. “I heard he’s moving his family back into his parents’ property down on Dory Road.”
“What an excellent young man he is! So supportive, thoughtful. All the qualities of a good husband.”
“Right. That�
�s why he’s married, I’m sure,” I respond flatly, careful to not commit any emotion to this topic.
“I believe he has a couple kids. Teenagers now, I think,” she muses.
“Two. Both boys.”
“Yes, you’re right. He and his wife relocated to the Midwest right after they were married to be near her family. But he was stifling out there. Land-locked in a flat stretch of dust. Poor woman probably didn’t know that once a Maine-iac, always a Maine-iac. He was bound to come home.” When I keep quiet, she continues. “You should get together. He hasn’t changed a bit. When’s the last time you saw each other?”
“I can tell you exactly. April of ’96. The day of my graduation from the Academy, remember?”
My mother retracts her smile and her mind wanders back, skipping to the pinning ceremony when I stood on the stage with the Commissioner while my comrades saluted me and my father pinned the Class 479 badge on my blouse. She doesn’t stop there but continues in reverse, going farther back, skating by the day my college diploma was finally handed out in a drenching Boston rain; still reeling in reverse, she skimsaround the hearty applause at Gaylord Hospital when I matriculated from the physical therapy madness. The memories spin under her watchful eye until at last, like a roulette wheel, the ball drops into the very slot she picked.
“You two looked like a royal couple that day. The king and queen of Gust Harbor High. And what a glorious party afterwards. Remember your brothers all tailing you two like royal coachmen? You couldn’t have asked for a better day. You recall that?”
“Yes, Mom,” I say quietly. She stirs her soup in wide arcing circles, banging the stainless steel spoon against the rim on each lap.
“They’re hiring caseworkers at Acadia Hospital,” she muses. After she throws out the suggestion, she reconsiders her approach. “Do you still like your job?” she asks.
“It’s really my passion. So, yes,” I answer.
“I worry about you in there with all those criminals.”
“Actually, it’s probably safer than being out on the street with random people. Inside the prison, we know who the bad guys are. And as we know all too well, worrying about something in advance never prevents it, right?” My mother stands to her feet and pushes in her chair, a signal that she’s had her fill of both flounder and fishing for past wishes.
Later in bed, I allow myself to think back. How after returning home as a partial invalid, they all thought they could wish me back together. Aaron in his gentle persistence chose to overlook all the evidence of damage and try to press his love into me over and over. Reassurance that despite the neurological plateau of flattened effect, the tics, lack of coordinated strength, the droop to one lip and a hazy eyeball, I was still his one and only. Inside where no man could go, my mind raged and cooled, flared and flagged with uncontrolled regularity and inside is where my beloved boy Aaron traveled far to reach me and leave a permanent mark of his potent devotion.
My mother is in her room with the light still on. She often lies awake with a book in hand, lights on, one big reel of anxiety all spliced and revolving until the tail end of her thoughts flaps around and around into a frenzied dream. Her slippery King James Bible is still clutched in her hand when I finally get up to shut out the light. As quiet as I try to be switching off the sixty-watt bulb, the tiny noise brings her upright. Like animals of awkward size, she is most comfortable on her feet.
“Go back to sleep, Mom,” I say.
“I was just resting,” she replies. My mother slips on her reading glasses, picks up the darning needle and the patch of embroidery on the floor and goes to sit in the black rocking chair. On the way back to bed, I gaze over at the closed door at the end of the hallway, the room where I spent months weeping over the boy that we all loved then and love still, wrestling to make the ultimate decision that Aaron deserved to be set free to find a girl like me; like the one I once was when we used to make love in that narrow twin bed while my Mom and Dad were out scratching in the dirt planting potato sets. That room is shuttered now. I have not stepped foot across the threshold since the night I single-handedly packed up my belongings, literally scooping the bras, blouses and jeans with a shaky stone-fisted hand, and hurled them out the busted half-screen into the tiger lilies where my rescuer who was huddled just out of view rushed to press them into his backpack.
#
“Lemme guess. You’re white, right?”
My exposed forearm speaks for itself. Pale as a surrender flag in the eyes of the hostile host who watch my every move. The flecks of sun spots are telltale traces of Anglo vulnerability and the bulging pipeline of blue blood swells in knobby veins from wrist to knuckles.
“Uh, yeah,” I say with playful sarcasm, pulling my sleeve up higher to give everyone a better view of the obvious. Young Mr. Ortega likes the smirks he gleans from the small huddle of onlookers and knows he is well on his way to making a point. He places both hands down the back of his one-color-fits-all pants and shimmies the elastic waistband lower on his hips.
“And I’ll bet you’re from the suburbs too, huh?” he says slyly.
“I won’t deny that,” I say. His movements are fluid, slippery even, as he slides his wiry arms across his state-issued, once-white cotton tee. His overshirt is hanging from his waistband like a flag. The rule states that all inmates must wear their full tans when outside the cell and he knows it full well.
“Tuck in, Mr. Ortega,” I state generically. I block the defensiveness that begins to swell in my chest and thicken my vocal cords. Ortega grins and straightens his shoulders. He makes no move to retrieve the missing uniform.
“You see it too, Miss Abrams. It’s obvious. You were destined to do what you’re doing. Those were your connects and those connections decided how you would turn out. Like go to college, have a nice house. Get a good-paying job like this one you got now. But me, I grew up in the streets of Santiago de Cuba. Then we moved to Miami. Ever hear of the North River projects? Well, it’s the worse piece of shit neighborhood filled with drug addicts and gang-bangers. It’s all I knew. Those were my connects. It was decided for me. I had no choice but to end up here.”
His eyes fixate on my mine. There is not a single spark of contrast in those ominous orbs, not a pin-prick of light or a shimmer of a conscience. They are as opaque and oily as squid ink that repels and confounds those who wade too close. He shakes back a dark halo of hair netted by a rubber band confiscated from the officer’s station. The young ones like him, they wear their disobedience proudly. He has a beautiful face with angular bones, a Romanesque nose and a lift to his lips that invite sport. Despite the bold demeanor and dance, I can imagine the little boy he once was, the youngster who knelt in the Our Lady of Fatima grotto to light a candle of good intent. There in his navy trousers and pressed white dress shirt, his hair creamed into submission, he pledged to take his spot in catechism and his rightful role in the family. Any mother could spot the future in that precious little son especially his own had she not been dope-sick in her own vomit.
Mr. Ortega has a crease of flesh near his temple that puckers and bubbles like a zipper. It is the precise trajectory of a bullet that was meant to inflict deadly silence, but has instead given voice to a fresh brand of brashness. There are things I could tell this young man. Crimes and casualties are not the sole claim of curb communities. Weapons are wielded behind six panel doors and security systems too. Danger dwells in cul-de-sacs where words wound more innocents than those remembered by makeshift shrines erected near the play-yard fences of our cities’ streets. I don’t say anything. What he doesn’t understand is people like me, whites from the suburbs; we wear our scars on the inside.
“There may be some truth in that, but the fact is I don’t have to come from the same background as you to care about your success as a fellow human being. And you do have a choice. You don’t have to cling to what you’ve been handed. This white, uptight, middle-aged lady from the suburbs can be your new connect. And I can hand you off to other
resources, people you don’t even know who are out there advocating in your community. You can start to build a new support system from there if you make the decision to leave that life.”
Though he waffles for a moment as if he might just sign on to this new religion of rehabilitation, Ortega and I both know that he has no intention of converting. The adrenaline of the streets is thick in his blood. He will go back.
I keep a careful eye trained on the movements of my runner, Mr. Vines. These peer mentors are typically old-time convicts whose good behavior has earned them the coveted job of the counselor’s overseer running messages and paperwork up to the lieutenant’s office or Control. It is a position of privilege that often graduates to a tendency to become unduly familiar in habits and too comfortable in conversation. It happens gradually over a course of months and week. The client chair is dragged up a little closer and pushed round to the side of the desk, elbows resting on top of the caseload folders. The trusted worker eventually leans into the measured space of safety between until it disappears into thin inches. And then it’s the reaching into the drawer to get the stapler and ‘I bet your husband and children don’t like you working here.’ The pause that hopes for a confirmation that yes indeed, she is single. I don’t need to tell Vines what to do. He has a sixth sense that tells him when he needs to run interference for his beleaguered boss.
“We’re closing up shop,” says Vines. “Count time!” He is trim and stately in stance. His complexion is the color of caramel. He has a broad bridge and open nostrils, full lips that are chalky with chapped skin and a gentle, rhythmic voice that works like a lullaby to soothe hostile nerves. He uses his superior vocabulary to coax and herd the ones who linger behind to promote their own agenda and pester the counselor with the same question they’ve asked for the past three days running,
