by Mary Simses
The boy gave me a suit yourself shrug.
The store was cool and dark, and its four small aisles were crammed with boxes and cans, juices and cereals, vegetables and breads, milk, eggs, magazines. The floorboards creaked as I walked toward the refrigerators in the back. I didn’t find any Perrier, but something else caught my eye: Higgins Root Beer. The label said BOTTLED IN MAINE FOR THAT DISTINCTLY MAINE FLAVOR, whatever that meant. I picked up two bottles, walked to the cash register, and put the bottles on the oaken counter. The wood was yellowed and scarred with pen engravings. CHARLIE AND JUNE. FITZ WAS HERE. LISA T. PETE RONIN IS A CREEP.
The girl behind the counter looked at me with a round moon face and sleepy eyes. “Is that it?”
“That’s it.” I took out my wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. At the bottom of the pile I found my folded hundred-dollar bill wrapped around five twenties—my winnings from Roy. I put it all back and pulled out a twenty from the top of the pile instead.
The cashier was placing the sodas in a paper bag. I was thinking of the drive home, hoping I wouldn’t get stuck in any traffic jams, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Excuse me.”
I turned to see a woman in red pants and a blue blouse standing behind me, holding a box of frozen broccoli. It was Arlen Fletch, from the town clerk’s office.
She leaned over. “I was hoping I’d run into you,” she whispered, as though we were sharing a confidence. “Remember me? From the town hall?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, smiling, as I reached for my bag. “We discussed the IRS.”
Arlen cringed like a vampire facing a silver cross. Then her face softened. “You left this in our office.”
She handed me a little scrap of paper on which I had written FRANK AND DOROTHY GODDARD, the names of my grandmother’s parents—the names I had been searching for in the land records. It was something I’d meant to throw out. How odd that this woman would not only keep it but walk around with it. And people thought New Yorkers were weird.
“Thanks for…keeping it for me,” I said, forcing a smile as I took the paper from her. “And for your help the other day.” I began walking toward the door.
But Arlen followed me, past the bushels of fresh corn and tomatoes. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said, dodging the stacks of canned peas piled at the end of an aisle. “I thought I might see you again. Sometimes things just work out that way.”
“Yes, well, thanks again,” I said, pushing open the door and walking outside.
I paid the boy with the freckles for my gas and was heading toward my car when I realized Arlen was still following me, the box of broccoli in her hand. I stopped at my car and pulled the keys from my purse. “Is there something I can do for you?”
A smile sprouted on Arlen’s little pug face. “I found it.”
“Yes, I know.” I lifted the scrap of paper so she could see I still had it. Was she expecting a reward?
She cocked her head and squinted. “No, you’re looking at the wrong side.” She waved her hand. “I found the house. I found your grandmother’s house. See? It says BRADLEY G. PORTER AND SUSAN H. PORTER. They’re the current owners.”
I looked at the paper and saw the names she’d written on the back. I saw the address. 14 COMSTOCK DRIVE. “You found my grandmother’s house?”
Arlen gave a little shrug. “Yes-sir-ee.”
“But I looked through all the indexes from nineteen hundred and—oh, I don’t know, but I looked through everything and I didn’t find them.”
Arlen leaned in closer again. “Well, you must have missed something, because I found it.” She winked at me.
I wanted to hug her. I wanted to pick her up and twirl her around. I wanted to kiss her little pug face. This would really make the trip worthwhile. I settled for just thanking her again.
“I’ll put the address in my GPS and head right over there,” I told her.
“Your GPS?” She shrank back. “You don’t need one of those to find it. It’s practically around the corner.” She proceeded to recite a lengthy set of directions that included four turns, a fork, and a stream. Maybe she saw me go pale.
“You look a little confused,” she said. “Hold on.”
Arlen went to her car and came back with a street map, folded in thirds. Oh, God, I thought, just let me use my GPS.
The map was yellowed and smelled like a damp basement. Arlen blew off a little film of dust. Then she opened the map and laid it on the hood of someone’s Toyota.
“It’s right there. That’s Comstock Drive.” She took a pink pen and circled something.
“You go on Route Fifty-five and along here, go left there, right on Algonquin, and you turn here, on Verrick, then go across the stream here and left at the fork.” She traced the route for me with her pen. “Then you’ll come to Kenlyn Farm. Big stone wall. Can’t miss it. You pass the farm and it’s just a few streets down on the right.”
My head was beginning to buzz. I picked up the map, ignoring everything except the spelling of the name Comstock so I could program the GPS.
“Kenlyn Farm?” I asked.
Arlen gave me a dismissive wave. “It’s an old blueberry farm. They don’t grow anything on it anymore, though. It’s just a big piece of land, but you can’t miss it. Stone wall on all sides.”
I was pretty sure she was talking about the place I’d just driven by.
“Here, you take this,” Arlen said, nudging me with the map.
I thanked her again, got into the car, and collapsed against the seat. She found the house. She found it. I wanted to see it and touch it and smell it. I wanted to stand at the front door, where my grandmother had stood. I wanted to trace the steps she had taken and steep myself in the wood and the nails and the plaster.
I opened one of the bottles of root beer and let the icy liquid run down my throat, and I thought again about the house and what it might look like. But this time I felt only good things. It would be small and cozy, with slanted floors and steep stairs and little rooms with ceilings that pitched downward. There would be narrow hallways and old glass doorknobs and mahogany trim stained and polished to a rich glow. And I would feel my grandmother in the rafters and in the plaster and in the layers of paint.
I threw the map on the passenger seat and programmed 14 Comstock Drive into the GPS. It showed a list of roads in the area with the name Comstock in them. There was Comstock Lane in Louderville and Comstock Circle in Tolland, but there was no Comstock Drive anywhere, including Beacon. With a sigh, I reached over for Arlen’s map and tried to make sense of the route she had traced.
Then I pulled out of the parking lot and soon I was driving by the stone wall again. Kenlyn Farm, I thought. At the third street past the farm, I turned onto Comstock.
Number 14 was a New England–style home on a street of similar houses—a white clapboard two-story structure with a wraparound porch bounded by a white wooden railing. Dormers peeked out of the upper floor. A maple tree stood in the front yard, a wooden swing hanging from one of its branches. A woman in her early thirties, dressed in denim shorts and a green Dartmouth sweatshirt, pushed a little girl, who looked about seven, on the swing.
I parked and walked toward them. “Hi,” I said, waving. “I’m Ellen Branford.” I extended my hand to the woman. “I’m from New York, but I’m visiting Beacon. My grandmother grew up here.”
“Oh, really?” The woman shook my hand. “Susan Porter. That’s my daughter, Katy.”
“Sorry to bother you,” I said, “but the reason why I stopped here is because…well, my grandmother didn’t just grow up in Beacon, she grew up right here.” I nodded toward the house.
“In our house?” Susan’s eyes sparkled. “You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “No. I got the address from the town clerk. Here’s the thing…I was wondering…”
“Would you like to see it?” she asked as she took Katy’s hand.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Yes, please.” I followed them
across the lawn toward the house, the sun warming the back of my neck as I thought about Gran taking that same walk. Long ago, memories of my grandmother had settled within the walls of this house. I hoped the house would share some of them with me.
We walked up the front porch steps, and Susan led me to a sunlit living room, where a breeze floated through open windows. I admired a fieldstone fireplace, and she told me it was original to the house. I tried to imagine my grandmother in that room as a young girl, but I couldn’t make the connection.
She showed me the family room, where toys and stuffed animals lay scattered on the floor like land mines. I followed her into the kitchen and into the dining room, which had built-in cabinets with glass doors.
“I think those are also original,” Susan said, pointing to the cabinets. Touching the mahogany wood, I tried to feel Gran’s presence, but couldn’t do it.
A narrow flight of stairs led to the second floor. I thought I caught a faint scent of lavender when we reached the landing. Susan led the way through a pale green master bedroom, a nursery trimmed in pink gingham, and a guest room of sorts with a futon in the corner.
It was an old house and a pretty house. But that was all. Whatever I had expected to see or feel wasn’t there. Whatever glimpse of my grandmother’s life I thought I would divine had not materialized.
We stood in the upstairs hallway. “Thank you,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed. “You have a beautiful home and I appreciate your giving me the tour.” I looked down the hall. “I’m trying to imagine my grandmother here.”
“How long ago was that?” Susan asked.
“Over sixty years,” I said. “The Goddards lived here back when—”
Susan’s eyes went wide. She put her hand on my arm. “The Goddards?”
I nodded. “Yes, my grandmother’s maiden name was Ruth Goddard.”
“Ruth Goddard?” she asked. “She was your grandmother?”
I took a step back, a little surprised by her exuberance. “Yes,” I said tentatively. “Why? Have you heard of her?”
“Come with me,” she said. “You have to see this.”
Susan opened a doorway in the hall, and she and Katy led me up a set of steep, narrow steps. I could feel the trapped summer heat as we reached the attic.
“We’re doing some work in here,” she said, “so don’t mind the mess. Brad’s turning it into a home office.”
I looked around at a huge square room with dormers on two sides. The windows were covered with old vertical blinds with thin metal slats. The slats were halfway open and sunlight poured in, leaving geometric patterns on the dark floor. Dust motes floated around us. A circular saw and a pile of other hand tools rested near stacks of drywall.
In one area of the room the old drywall had been stripped off the walls and the studs were visible. In an adjacent section I could see what appeared to be two layers—drywall and plaster underneath.
“Somebody put the drywall right over the plaster?” I asked. “Why would they do that?”
Susan shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the plaster was in bad shape and they wanted to do a quick fix.”
She stepped to one corner of the room, where the light was dim. “What I want you to see is this.” She pointed to something on the wall.
It looked like a painting. It was about three feet high and four feet wide. I took a step closer. A young man and a young woman stood facing one another, holding hands. In the background, carefully composed, stood a lone oak tree in front of a small grove of oaks, and a weathered red barn.
The young woman wore a long green gown, the color of moss. The young man wore trousers and a shirt of earthen brown. They were surrounded by wild plants and flowers and an azure sky. There was something almost mystical about the scene, as if the man and woman had both sprung from nature themselves.
I reached out to touch the veins of a large green leaf. The paint was warm and cool at the same time, rough and smooth. The leaf seemed to come alive under my touch. I could almost feel its energy.
“What is this?” I asked.
“We found it when we ripped off the old drywall. It was painted on the plaster,” Susan said.
“It’s unusual,” I said. “Unusual and beautiful.”
She nodded. “Can you read the writing? You need to look up there.” She pointed. “There are names above the people, and the artist signed the bottom right corner.”
I gazed upward and saw that there were indeed names just over the heads of the two people. Above the young man, the name Chet had been printed in tiny, exacting letters, and above the young woman, the name Ruth appeared. And in the bottom right corner of the painting there was, as Susan said, a signature. I read the name, written in the up-and-down, peak-and-valley strokes that had become so familiar to me: Ruth Goddard.
Chapter 8
A Trip North
I drove away, barely conscious of anything except the pavement in front of me. If there were pine trees and yellow daisies and blue heather on the side of the road, if a spotted deer jumped into the woods and a red squirrel scrambled up an oak tree, I didn’t notice. I was back in Susan Porter’s attic, and because of that I missed my turn and ended up in downtown Beacon.
Feeling a little dazed, I pulled into a parking space in front of the Community Bank. Across the street, a handful of beach chairs and towels lay on the sand, and a few people were standing by the water’s edge. I walked to the seawall, sat down, and took a long, slow breath as I thought about my grandmother and Chet Cummings and the painting.
The sky was full of fat white clouds, and the late June sun darted across the water. I turned my head and gazed at the row of shops—the Three Penny Diner; the Antler; Harborside Real Estate; Tindall & Griffin, Counselors at Law. Something looked different. Maybe Harborside’s red brick had been touched up. Or someone had power-washed the white clapboard on Tindall & Griffin’s offices. Maybe there were new geraniums in the window boxes of the Three Penny Diner. Their red blooms looked just a little brighter. I sat there inhaling the salt air, imagining Gran sitting in the same place, a paintbrush in her hand, Chet Cummings by her side. I had discovered something—a window into my grandmother’s life. A life we didn’t know anything about. This was a gift, unexpected and wonderful. How much more there was to learn about her I didn’t know. But one thing I did know: I wasn’t leaving Beacon. At least not yet.
When I pulled into the parking lot at the Victory Inn, I was surprised to see that half the spaces were already taken. Good for Paula, I thought, but then I worried that maybe she’d given away my room.
“Forget something?” she asked when I walked into the lobby. She looked me up and down. “Leave your darts behind?”
My darts? How did she know about that? I was beginning to understand what people meant when they talked about small-town life.
“No, I—”
“Oh, you really are back,” she said, pointing to my overnight bag.
“Yes,” I said, taking out my wallet. “Something’s come up and I need to stay a couple of extra days—probably until Sunday.” I placed my credit card on the counter with a little snap. “You do still have a room, I hope.”
She opened the leather-bound book, turned a few pages, rubbed her chin, and said, “I can put you back in the Ocean View Suite.”
“Perfect,” I said, writing my name and address in the column marked ARRIVING GUESTS. I knew the drill.
Paula handed me the key with the braided ribbon and I marched up the two flights of stairs. The room looked warm and cozy when I walked in—the nautical prints, the earthenware bowl and pitcher, the bed with the white coverlet. I placed my overnight bag on the luggage rack and put away my clothes. I put my toiletries in the bathroom, on the wicker hamper.
From my briefcase I took a yellow legal pad and set it on top of the toilet tank, along with a memo pad that had a pen-and-ink drawing of the Victory Inn on it. I gathered up a bunch of pens and pencils from the bottom of my briefcase and put them in a dri
nking glass. I placed the glass on top of the toilet tank with the pads and nodded in satisfaction. My new office.
Then I closed the lid on the toilet seat, sat down, took a deep breath, and dialed Hayden’s cell phone. He answered after two rings.
“Hayden, it’s me.”
“Hey, where are you?” He sounded cheerful, happy to hear my voice. “Did you pass Portland yet?”
I clenched my teeth and held the cell phone a little tighter. “Actually, I’m still in Beacon. At the Victory Inn.”
“You’re still in Beacon? Is everything all right? I thought you’d be on the road by now.”
I could hear the concern in his voice. “Yeah, I thought so, too,” I said. “But something odd happened. I was on my way to the highway and I ran into the lady from the land records office—”
“The lady from where?”
“The land records office…at the town hall.” I glanced at the compass rug, with its curlicued N, S, E, and W letters.
“What did she want?”
“She found the address of the house where my grandmother grew up. So I went to the house and the owner—this woman named Susan Porter—she let me in. And guess what’s in the attic?”
“The what?”
“The attic,” I said. “You won’t believe this. There’s a painting my grandmother did…on the wall, in the attic. It’s incredible, Hayden. The owners were doing some renovations and they found it…a painting of my grandmother and Chet Cummings. The two of them. She wrote their names on it and she signed it. And it’s really good. I mean, really, really good.”
I thought about the painting of the young girl and boy, holding hands, and I wished Hayden could be there to see it.
“I didn’t know your grandmother painted.”
“No, that’s the amazing thing,” I said, recalling the detail in the flowers and foliage, the lifelike expressions on the faces of my grandmother and Chet Cummings, the textures she used in the barn and the trees. “We didn’t know, either.”
“Did you take any pictures of it? Did you have your camera with you?”
