The Map of True Places

by Brunonia Barry

  Zee watched him drink almost a full cup before she took a sip.

  “Not bad, huh?” He grinned.

  “Not too bad.” It was the best coffee she’d ever had.

  “The egg takes away the bitterness, and the shells make it clear.” He took her cup and dumped three-quarters of it into the sink. Then he took what was left and added milk, filling the cup.

  “I drink it black,” she said.

  “Not anymore, you don’t. When you’re sixteen, you can switch back if you want to. For now it’s café au lait,” he said. “Mostly lait.”

  TODAY MELVILLE WATCHED AS ZEE stirred the grounds the way she had as a child, biting her lower lip, trying to make sure it was right. Finally she glanced up and handed him the pot. She couldn’t read his look. “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he answered, taking the pot back to the sink, filling it with cold water to the spout line. Then he put the pot on the stove and turned the gas burner to high.

  Some part of Melville had always foreseen this ending, the impossibility of the relationship with Finch. Bad beginnings don’t lead to perfect endings. How could they?

  WHEN HE CAME BACK FROM sea that last time, he’d gotten himself a job at the Peabody Essex Museum. Just cataloging and doing a bit of writing, descriptions of their collections, the same thing he did for the Athenaeum now. The Peabody Essex had a huge maritime collection, much of it undocumented. It would be a long time before the museum opened, and they had little room for everything they’d acquired, so it sat in boxes and crates, with the directors of the museum not even realizing in many cases what treasures they had. Melville had been among those whose job it had been to figure it out.

  He was grateful for the position, and even more so for the relative obscurity of it, and for the fact that he was back on dry land. For the last several years, he’d been running from something that he knew was absolutely wrong for him, something that had both intrigued and scared the hell out of him at the same time. He didn’t come back to Salem until he was certain that its hold on him had loosened.

  The impossible affair was something that happened when he’d been working for a magazine, writing an article on whaling off the coast of Massachusetts and on the Greenpeace splinter group that was trying to stop it. They had met when he took his boat up to Gloucester to do an interview. On the return trip, the boat had engine trouble, so Melville stopped at one of the local islands to use a phone. He’d ended up staying the night.

  The next day he’d booked himself onto one of the swordfish boats heading out from Gloucester, one he’d heard was looking for crew, thinking he’d do an article on it for a local magazine. Then, later, he signed on to a longer run from Portsmouth up to Nova Scotia, a trip that lasted past Labor Day. He slept with every man he could in every port. It was a stupid thing to do, a dangerous thing, and unlike him, really. And when it didn’t erase the night he was trying to forget, he found himself back on the island, but the houses were all closed up for the winter. Grateful, he booked himself onto a merchant marine ship headed out to the Middle East, thinking he’d write a book about the experience. He liked the life enough that he’d made three runs with them, and on the third the ship had an encounter with some pirates in the Strait of Malacca just off Sumatra. The pirates sprayed the ship with fire from several HK MP5 submachine guns that were probably stolen from the Malaysian army. Their attempt to take over the ship had failed—the cheap, low-mass bullets were no match for the thick steel plates of the ship—but several pieces of shrapnel had lodged in the muscles of Melville’s left forearm, impairing his grip and ending any thoughts he might have had of pursuing a career as a mariner.

  When he got back to Salem, he’d found the job at the museum and rented the room on Essex Street. He went to the free clinic and got himself tested and counted himself luckier than he had any right to be.

  He had met Finch through Mickey Doherty. Along with some of the other pirate reenactors, they were trying to raise money to reconstruct the Friendship, a 171-foot East Indiaman that had sailed out of Salem Harbor hundreds of years ago when Salem had been the wealthiest city in the New World. Melville liked the idea of raising money for the tall ship but hated pirates and told Mickey so. “We’re not that kind of pirates,” Mickey said good-naturedly. “We’re the old-fashioned kind.”

  “The kind with parrots on the shoulders?” Melville asked.

  “Not parrots.” Finch grinned at Melville. “Monkeys.”

  “One monkey,” Mickey said, insulted. “And only because I won him in a poker game.”

  In those days, before Mickey Doherty had become the Pirate King of Salem, the unofficial mayor of commerce, he had taken his pirating quite seriously. He considered the mention of parrots an affront. If anyone, upon seeing him in costume, made the regrettable mistake of uttering an “ARGHH” in his presence, that unfortunate soul would most likely find himself at the connecting end of Mickey’s fist.

  The monkey, however, was another matter entirely. Though he would deny it if asked, Mickey had a genuine love of the monkey he had named Liam, after his dead younger brother, but that most of his friends now referred to as Mini Mick.

  Melville told Mickey he would have to think about it.

  Finch smiled at him. A flash of recognition passed between them. For the first time in months, Melville felt like himself.

  MELVILLE MET FINCH FOR THE second time at the museum. Finch was doing research for his book on Melville’s letters to Hawthorne. Most of them were held by family or had been documented in previous work, but Finch was also interested in the museum’s journal of the Acushnet, a ship that Herman Melville had served on and then deserted in the Marquesas.

  Finch was older. And brilliant. They hit it off immediately.

  Over the next several months, they worked late nights at the museum.

  Melville met Finch’s daughter.

  One night Finch told Melville the story about Hawthorne’s wife, Sophia. Melville was familiar with the tales of Hawthorne and Sophia. Theirs was one of the great romances of the literary world. But it was not their love story that Finch talked about that night.

  Sophia had always had problems with her nerves, as well as terrible debilitating headaches that had plagued her most of her life. As a child she’d been quite sickly. One medical theory that was popular at the time, and one Finch had just heard about, involved mercury and teething. Every generation has its remedy for a particular malady, and every generation has something they blame for disease of any kind. These days it might be pollution or chemical sensitivity or even vaccination. In the days of Sophia’s youth, it had been teething. Teething was blamed for everything from paralysis to insanity to consumption. The belief was that the sooner one could complete the teething process (which was undeniably fraught with torment for the child), the better. Disease could be avoided only if the teeth poked through the gums in a timely fashion. For this reason parents would often cut the gums of their children with implements as unsanitary and as imprecise as kitchen knives. Then they would apply mercury to the open wounds.

  “Mercury?” Melville said to Finch. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Not at all,” Finch answered. “Mercury was used as late as 1960 in this country as an antiseptic. Are you old enough to remember Mercurochrome?”

  Melville did remember Mercurochrome, though it was a vague memory, an old bottle with a fraying red-orange label.

  “A lot of poisons were used to treat infection in the old days,” he said.

  He went on to say that there was a new theory that Sophia’s headaches and her somewhat erratic personality were probably the result of mercury poisoning.

  Melville couldn’t remember how Finch had segued from Sophia’s personality to Maureen’s, but he did remember that it had been masterly. Before Melville knew it, Finch was talking about his wife, her own mercurial personality, and the illness that had kept her hospitalized indefinitely.

  “My wife is manic-depressive,” Finch
had said. “She has been in and out of hospitals for as long as I can remember.”

  “That must be difficult,” Melville said.

  “It is difficult, most particularly for my daughter. This last time has been very difficult for all of us. This time I’m afraid she won’t be coming home.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Melville said.

  Finch looked at him so pitifully that Melville’s response was automatic. Though they were standing in the middle of the East India Hall, Melville reached out and hugged him. They stood for a long time, the sound of passing footsteps echoing in the halls around them as Finch cried quietly on Melville’s shoulder.

  To say they started seeing each other would be wrong. It was more as if they kept seeing each other. Research turned to late dinners of takeout in Melville’s room on Essex Street, and when Finch expressed concern about leaving Zee for so long, Melville had his boat moved from its mooring down by Congress Street to one just off Turner Street. They began to meet on the boat, after Zee was in bed. Since her mother had been hospitalized, Zee often had nightmares, and the boat was close enough, sound carrying well over water, to hear her if she cried out.

  “The first time we met, I thought you were straight,” Finch said to him one night.

  “No you didn’t.” Melville called him on his lie.

  “Bi, then. I thought you were bi.”

  “I was,” Melville said. It wasn’t a lie. He’d once considered himself bisexual, but that had been a long time ago. “And may I point out that you are the one who is married.”

  The weight of it hit them both.

  “I’m a good deal older than you,” Finch said, “and from an entirely different generation.” Regret showed on his face. Then guilt. Neither of them brought up the subject again.

  On Saturdays, Finch and Zee visited the hospital. On Saturday nights Melville would cook for them. They ate together at the kitchen table, Zee often quieter after the visits with her mother. Sometimes on Sunday, Melville would take Zee out in the harbor and they would fish for stripers, which they would clean and cook outside. Sometimes she would help him work on his boat.

  Melville liked Zee. She was a good kid, if somewhat stressed and worried about her mother. Sometimes she would talk about it, saying she didn’t understand how her mother could be so unhappy. And she would talk sometimes about the other side of the disease as well, telling him some of the outrageous and amusing things her mother did. But he could see that it scared her. He could also see that for a long time Zee had been her mother’s caregiver, trying to keep her from hospitalization as the inevitable depressions set in. Zee didn’t have a lot of friends, just one or two from school. She hadn’t had much time to be a kid.

  And though he felt guilty about his feelings, Melville found himself happier than he’d ever been. He felt bad about the situation, worse for Zee than for Finch. But he let his mind linger on the possibilities: that Finch’s wife might stay hospitalized forever, as Finch had predicted, that they could live as a family, that they could go on like this indefinitely. And he was guilty that the thought made him happy. But there it was.

  And then, one Saturday in August, Maureen Finch was released. It was a surprise to Melville, although he found out later that Finch had known just before it happened but couldn’t figure out how to tell him. What he’d said instead was not to make dinner that night and that he thought they might be late getting back and would probably stop somewhere to eat along the way.

  It was the first thing Melville had ever blamed Finch for, and it was a shock. When they pulled into the driveway and he watched as Zee helped her mother out of the car, he had a second shock. Maureen Finch looked up at him. Their eyes met and held.

  Zee turned to see what her mother was looking at and spotted Melville. She started to speak to him, but something in her mother’s eyes stopped her.

  Looking guilty, Finch helped Maureen into the house.

  MELVILLE’S PHONE WAS RINGING OFF the hook by the time he got back to his room. He knew it was Finch. But he didn’t pick up. Instead he packed his things and, for the second time in his life, he ran, first to California and then up to the Aleutian Islands, where he stayed for the next two years.

  THE STOVE BURNER SIZZLED AS the coffee boiled over the rim, pulling Melville’s consciousness back to the present. He jumped up and grabbed the pot by the handle, moving it off the burner.

  “I’m glad you do that, too,” Zee said. “Michael thinks it’s only me.”

  He poured a mug of cold water into the pot.

  “How is Michael?” he asked. “God, I hope this doesn’t mess up the wedding plans.”

  “I seem to be doing that all by myself,” she said.

  He looked at her, choosing his words. “I thought Michael was the one who was making all the plans.”

  “What gave you that idea?”

  “I don’t know. It just always seemed to me as if the whole thing was his idea.”

  “The marriage?” she asked.

  “Everything, from you moving in with him to getting married. It always seemed more like his plan than yours,” he said.

  “Well, it wasn’t,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he said.

  “And what difference does it make whose idea it was?”

  “You tell me,” he said.

  She could feel her face growing red.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I like Michael,” he said. “It’s just been a long time since I’ve seen you being you.”

  “You know what?” she said, coming back at him.

  He looked at her. “I’m sorry.”

  “I came here to talk about your problem, not mine,” she said.

  She saw him decide not to comment.

  “Unfortunate choice of words,” she said.

  “At least an interesting one,” he said. But he didn’t pursue it, and she was grateful.

  When the coffee had settled, Melville strained it and poured each of them a cup. He brought the mugs over to the table, taking a seat across from her. He hadn’t been to the store, so there was no milk or sugar. He’d been meaning to go for days, he said, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. “Good thing we both drink our coffee black.”

  “So what happened between you two?” she asked. “Why in the world would Finch throw you out?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  She didn’t fill the silence. It was a trick she’d learned as a therapist. If you don’t talk, the patient will. But it didn’t work on Melville, or at least not the way she had hoped. He was better at this than she was. And he’d always been comfortable with silence.

  “You met Jessina,” he said, changing the subject.

  “I did,” she said.

  “She’s quite a character.” He tried to smile. “She’s good with him, though.”

  “Were you unfaithful?” She was thinking about the apartment again.

  “Why would you even ask me that?”

  She could tell he was insulted. The truth was, on some level she had been expecting it. He was so much younger than Finch, and the disease was so terrible. She realized she would forgive him for it if it had happened. But it wasn’t something you could say.

  “I have never been unfaithful to your father,” he said as if wounded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It was something that happened a long time ago,” he said. “Before you were even born.”

  “You didn’t even know Finch before I was born,” she said.

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “I don’t understand either.”

  “Maybe it was the drugs,” she said.

  He nodded. It was what he’d been hoping. If it wasn’t the drugs, it meant that Finch had entered a crossover stage, something that often happened in patients with advanced Parkinson’s, where they began to exhibit the signs of Alzheimer’s. He didn’t want to think about that.

  “Maybe it wil
l go away, when the drugs get out of his system, and you can come back.”

  “Let’s hope so,” he said.

  Just then an ungodly howl started from the back of the house, echoing up the stairway and shaking the walls.

  “What the heck was that?”

  Whatever it was howled again. Zee thought it must be one of the fright tours Salem was so famous for, or maybe one of Mickey’s popular attractions.

  Melville went to the back door and opened it. Then he returned and sat down and sipped his coffee as if nothing unusual was happening.

  It sounded as if a body were being dragged up the stairs. A moment later a very winded basset hound entered the room. He took one look at Zee and howled again.

  “Zee, meet my roommate, Bowditch. Bowditch, this is Zee.”

  The dog walked over, laid his chin on her jeaned leg, and gave her the most sincere look she’d ever seen.

  “He’s begging. Bowditch loves coffee, but it’s not good for him.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. She patted his head, and the dog did a sliding kerplunk at her feet.

  “I’m dog-sitting, too,” he said.

  “I think I just figured that out,” she said, still laughing.

  MELVILLE AND ZEE BOTH DRANK their coffee black, and they both loved dogs. It was one of the many things they had in common: dogs, the ocean, Myrna Loy movies. They both had a love of dark chocolate and a virulent hatred of lima beans, which Finch adored and asked Melville to cook all the time. Finch preferred cats to dogs, especially Dusty, the cat at the Gables. And he didn’t share Melville’s passion for the ocean. Melville and Zee would go out together sometimes, on his day off. He would take her up the coast, sometimes as far as the Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire.

  Coming back one moonless night, Melville stopped the boat to look at the sky. Stargazing had once been his hobby, especially in the long months at sea when he was in the merchant marine. He owned a telescope, and he often set it up on their deck at home, finding specific stars and planets, showing Zee and Finch. “I always wanted to learn to navigate by the stars,” he told them one night. “But I’m afraid it’s a lost art.”