Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine
Page 1
PRAISE FOR
SOME WHERE OFF THE COAST OF MAINE
“Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine deals with the intricacies of infidelity, cancer, insanity, marriage, growing old, accepting death, and just plain accepting yourself.”
—Elizabeth Wurtzel, Seventeen
“We suffer with these women as they plod through the years, wincing at their impulsive behavior wrought by the Vietnam era, an era vividly captured by Ann Hood in this accomplished novel.”
—Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, New York Times Book Review
“Provocative…an intriguing work.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Hood is able to portray characters coming of age…with equally sharp insight and compassion.”
—Alida Becker, San Jose Mercury News
“Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine is not just another 1960’s novel…it is the story of life, of living, and of three unforgettable women as they struggle to find their way from one era to another.”
—Judy Isenhour, Salisbury Post (N.C.)
“A lovely novel…Hood creates characters so arresting one wishes each of them were the principals of longer novels.”
—Peggy Constantine, Chicago Sun-Times
Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine
ANN HOOD
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY
New York • London
Copyright © 1987 by Ann Hood
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Production manager: Devon Zahn
Verses from 1929 On by Ogden Nash. Copyright © 1940 by Ogden Nash.
Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hood, Ann.
Somewhere off the coast of Maine / Ann Hood.—1st Picador USA pbk. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-06874-0
I. Title.
PS3558.0537S6 1998 98-21299
813’.54–dc21 CIP
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.
Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT
For my parents, with love
Acknowledgments
A VERY SPECIAL THANKS to William Decker, Nicholas Delbanco, Maxine Groffsky, Melissa Hood, Carrie Kronish, Glenn Russow, Bob Reiss, Jane Silva, Joshua Ziff, and, especially, Deb Futter.
Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine
Contents
PART ONE Beyond the Pictures
Sparrow, 1984•
Rebekah, 1985•
Howard and Elizabeth, 1985•
Claudia, 1985•
Henry, 1985•
Sparrow, 1985•
PART TWO Back Then
Suzanne, Claudia, and Elizabeth, 1966•
Claudia and Suzanne, 1966•
Suzanne and Elizabeth, 1966•
Claudia and Elizabeth, 1967•
Suzanne, Claudia, and Elizabeth, 1967•
Suzanne, 1970•
Elizabeth, 1972•
Suzanne, 1972•
Suzanne, 1973•
Suzanne, Claudia, and Elizabeth, 1973•
Claudia, 1979•
PART THREE Finding Out
Henry and Rebekah, 1985•
Howard, Elizabeth, and Jesse, 1985•
Claudia, 1985•
Claudia, 1985•
Rebekah, 1985•
Sparrow and Suzanne, 1985•
PART ONE
Beyond the Pictures
Sparrow, 1984•
TO SPARROW, HER FATHER was a man standing in front of a Day-Glo green VW van in a picture dated June 1969. The picture had been taken the year before Sparrow was born. In it, her father’s hair was bushy and blond and he had a big droopy moustache. Sparrow liked the way he was looking up, with his head tilted back and his mouth open in a wide smile.
Sparrow’s mother, Suzanne, never talked about Sparrow’s father. Suzanne was a serious businesswoman. She dressed in pleated skirts and Oxford shirts with little bow ties. She would tell Sparrow to forget about the past and look ahead. “Don’t worry,” she would say, “about things that happened a long time ago.” Sparrow’s obsession with her father began to grow when her mother started to date Ron.
Sparrow found the picture of her father in an old poetry book of her mother’s. She’d been looking for a poem to read aloud in English class. The picture fell out when she opened the book and as soon as Sparrow saw it, she knew it was Him. She studied it for a long time, searching for some resemblance—the nose, maybe, or around the mouth. She said his name out loud. Abel. Finally, she took the picture to her mother.
“This is him, isn’t it?” she demanded as she put the picture down in front of her mother.
Suzanne was getting ready for a dinner-date with Ron. She was wearing a white slip and sitting at her vanity table applying makeup. The table was littered with brushes, creams, and pots of powdery colors. The room smelled like Chanel No. 5.
Her mother looked down at the picture and for a moment Sparrow thought she was going to faint. Her face grew pale under her perfectly blended Gingerberry blush. But, almost immediately, she regained her usual professional demeanor.
“Where did you get that?” She avoided looking at Sparrow or the picture. Instead, she concentrated on lining her eyes in kohl.
“I was looking for a poem to read in English class and I pulled out a copy of Howl and it fell out. It’s him, isn’t it?” she demanded again. “Howl? That’s not a book for a fourteen-year-old. As I recall, there are a lot of homosexual references and…and it’s very…um…drug-oriented.”
“You told me that you didn’t have any pictures of him.”
“I have some lovely poems that you can bring to class. Classic ones. Robert Frost, for instance. I have a beautiful collection of his poetry. He wrote about the woods and nature. Very lovely poems.”
“Mother,” Sparrow said angrily. Below them, boats sailed in Boston Harbor. She could hear the whistle of the ferry returning from Cape Cod.
Suzanne put the eye pencil down, sighed, and picked up the picture.
“I didn’t think I had any pictures of him. He kept all that sort of thing. Honestly, one forgotten picture in some silly book and you act as if I’m withholding state’s evidence.” She turned her gaze toward Sparrow now. One eye was neatly outlined in black, the other was untouched, giving the impression that one eye was either unusually large or unusually small.
“I never knew what he looked like,” Sparrow said.
Suzanne opened her mouth as if to reply. But instead, she looked back down at the photograph and studied it closely, fingering the outline of the van. She shook her head. “It looks so strange,” Suzanne said.
Sparrow waited for her to say something else. Like, “I remember the day that picture was taken” or “I wonder if he still has that moustache.” But she just kept staring at the picture, then put it back down.
“I don’t look very much like him, I guess,” Sparrow said, and picked up the photo. Her hair was a darker blond, more like Suzanne’s. But her eyes, Sparrow thought, had flecks of the same green as his.
“Why won’t you tell me about him?”
Her mother began to outline her other eye.
“Mom?” Sparrow noticed her mother’s hand was shaking slightly.
“It’s not healthy to dwell on things like this. To relive them over and over again.”
>
“Relive them?” Sparrow said. “I don’t even remember living them.”
“You know what?” Suzanne said, her hand steadier now. “Bring in that Robert Frost book and we’ll go through it together. You’re going to be surprised when you see how much I know about poetry. In fact, you’ll be stunned. I’m a real poetry whiz.”
Sparrow didn’t answer. The thing you’re really a whiz at, she thought, is changing the subject. This subject, anyway.
“I just want to know what he’s like,” Sparrow said. “That’s all.”
“No, you don’t,” Sparrow thought her mother mumbled.
“What? What did you say?”
Suzanne looked at her again, both eyes neatly lined now.
“‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’ is a lovely poem. Really lovely. And it’s much more appropriate for class. You’ll see.”
SPARROW HAD THE PICTURE for three months. She studied it often, not really certain what it was she expected to find there. At night, in the dark, she called it to mind in perfect detail—the lime green of the van, the wide smile and tilted head. She could almost hear the laughter.
Her mother and Ron saw each other almost every night. He always brought Sparrow little presents. A small box of Godiva chocolates. An African violet in a tiny green pot. A pin with her initials engraved on it. Sparrow threw them all away.
FOR THE PAST YEAR or so, Sparrow’s mother called her Susan. She said that the name Sparrow was too dated, too silly. For a time, her mother explained, everyone named their children Summer or Sunshine. “If you had been a boy,” her mother said, “I would have named you something like Sage.” Sparrow asked her mother if she were a boy, would she be called Steve all of a sudden? “No one will take you seriously with a name like Sparrow.” Sparrow hated being called Susan. Whenever her mother called her that, she refused to answer. “You didn’t think it was silly when I was born, did you? Why did you name me that if you thought it was so silly?”
Sparrow’s mother shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, sounding almost sad.
SPARROW PLAYED THE PIANO in a trio. They had practice every Thursday after school. The school was in Cambridge, a pair of old brick mansions that sat across from each other. At lunch or study period the girls would walk down to the Charles and watch the Harvard crew team practice. When Ron told Sparrow that he’d been on the Harvard crew team “back in the Stone Age,” she stopped going to watch. Instead, she’d sit alone and read, determined not to waste her time drooling over a dozen potential Rons sculling.
One of the girls in the trio, the flutist, lived around the corner from the school. Sparrow and Blair, the violinist, lived in the city, and had to wait for rides home after practice. Their parents were supposed to take turns picking them up, but Blair’s father ended up doing it more because Suzanne was always getting detained at the office. Once, to Sparrow’s horror, her mother sent Ron to get them. The two girls sat in the backseat. Sparrow stared out the window the whole time and Blair poked her whenever Ron said something. Don’t you ever, Sparrow told Suzanne that night, do that to me again.
“Why don’t you come down to watch crew anymore?” Blair asked Sparrow as they sat on the wall in front of the school watching for Suzanne.
Sparrow shrugged. “Its dumb.”
“We’re locked up all day in a school full of girls and you think it’s dumb to go and gaze at half-naked men? You’re losing it, Sparrow. Really.”
Blair pulled on her hair. She had explained earlier that pulling it made it stick out more. She had shaved half of it off and dyed tendrils on the other half a robin’s-egg blue.
“Where is she anyway?” Blair said.
“Detained,” Sparrow said sarcastically.
“Maybe I should call my father.”
“She’ll be here. Eventually.”
“I can’t wait to get my license. Then I can drive myself down here. I want to go to 33 Dunster Street and use my fake ID to order tequila sunrises.”
“That’s dumb,” Sparrow said.
“Why?”
“It just is.”
“You are so straight. Honestly. You’d probably order pink ladies.”
Why is she always late? Sparrow thought.
“I don’t think it would kill Jessica to have us wait at her house,” Blair said. “It’s right down the street. She’s got the new Dead Kennedys album. We could at least be listening to it while we wait.”
“Here she is,” Sparrow said, relieved.
“Am I late?” Suzanne said as they climbed into the backseat. “I rushed like mad.”
“You’re always late when you pick us up,” Sparrow said. “Blair’s father is punctual one hundred percent of the time.”
“He’s a painter. He works at home. So he has more flexibility,” Suzanne said.
“She’s never late for Ron,” Sparrow said to Blair.
“How was practice?” Suzanne asked.
Sparrow leaned over the front seat. “Can we stop at Brigham’s?”
Her mother looked at her watch. This was an image etched forever in Sparrow’s mind—her mother glancing at her watch and sighing. When Sparrow was younger, she used to feel bad for her mother. She thought she worked too hard. At night sometimes, Sparrow would make the baby-sitter leave food out for her—cookies and milk, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, graham crackers. Lately, though, her mother’s ambition and efficiency disturbed Sparrow. She wanted them to spend more time together. It seemed as if all of Suzanne’s spare time went to Ron. How could her mother have Ron intrude on their life when she’d never even let Sparrow’s real father in?
“I guess we have time for some ice cream,” Suzanne said.
Brigham’s smelled like spilled milk. The bright lights there made everyone look paler, colors faded against the glaring whiteness. They slid into a booth, the red vinyl crackling beneath them.
“I think you have something in your hair,” Suzanne said, reaching across the booth and touching Blair’s head.
“It’s dyed, Mom,” Sparrow said.
“No. There’s something blue. Like paint.”
“It’s a hair coloring,” Blair said. “Like a hair spray.”
Suzanne frowned. “Oh.”
“Her father thinks it looks swell,” Sparrow said.
“He gave me this,” Blair said. She lifted up the silver peace sign that hung on a chain around her neck for Suzanne to see. “You must have one of these somewhere, don’t you? My father’s got so much neat stuff. He’s got a motorcycle jacket with an American flag on the back like the one in Easy Rider and this really neat poster that has a flower drawn on it and underneath it says ‘War is bad for flowers and other living things.’”
“My mother throws everything away,” she said. “She doesn’t think it’s healthy to dwell on the past.”
Suzanne sipped her coffee. Sometimes, like right now, she got a certain pained look on her face that made her look young and vulnerable. It made Sparrow want to go over to her and hug her. Instead, Sparrow pushed at her sundae, mixing the ice cream into the hot fudge.
“My father even got arrested for protesting the war,” Blair said proudly. “Twice.”
“Arrested?” Sparrow said. “He has a criminal record?”
“They used to just put them in jail overnight,” Suzanne said. “It happened to some friends of mine back in college.”
Tell me, Sparrow thought. Please.
Suzanne motioned for the check.
“Look at the time,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve got to meet Ron at the Hampshire House in an hour.”
Sparrow tried to catch her mother’s eye. The softness had left her face again. She looked older, in control. The spell was broken.
SPARROW THOUGHT THAT HER father still lived in Maine. That was where her parents had met in college. She had a vague memory of going there once to see him. She could imagine a huge Christmas tree with tiny white lights. Sparrow’s mother said that yes, they had visited there once and t
hat there may have been such a tree. She really couldn’t recall the details.
Sparrow had lived most of her life with her mother in the same large apartment in Boston overlooking Logan Airport, Boston Harbor, and the south roof of Quincy Market. To Sparrow, the building looked like a hospital. She hated it. Sometimes, she dreamed of living in the woods with her father in Maine.
DECEMBER.
“Susan,” her mother said, “there’s some fruit and Brie in the kitchen if you get hungry.” She was wearing her black silk dress and large square clip-on rhinestone earrings. “We should be in early.”
Sparrow kept reading. Her mother had eaten out with Ron every night that week.
“Susan, did you hear me?”
Sparrow did not look up.
“I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow night I’ll invite Ron to dinner here. We’ll have take-out Chinese. That’s your favorite, right?” Sparrow shrugged.
“He is really very special to me,” her mother said. She sat on the couch beside Sparrow.
Sparrow closed her book and focused on the lights of a plane landing at the airport across the harbor.
“Who knows,” her mother said, “maybe this will turn into something more permanent.”
The plane was circling.
“If I had to make a list of the traits the man of my dreams would have,” Suzanne continued, “Ron would have them all. I used to do things like that when I was your age. Make lists of the perfect men, the perfect wedding.” Suzanne laughed. “He’s smart, thoughtful, ambitious—”
“He sounds like a boy scout,” Sparrow said.