Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

by Ann Hood

  HOWARD AND ELIZABETH WERE having a clambake. They invited fifty people. There were kegs of beer and jugs of wine and the air was rich with the salty smell of clams and fish and lobster. Rebekah’s father had strung twinkling Christmas lights in all the trees, and as darkness approached, the yard was illuminated by tiny flashes of pink and green and blue and white. Someone had brought sparklers. Henry handed her a lit one, shooting and hissing. Rebekah accepted it silently.

  “Want to get high?” he asked, settling cross-legged beside her.

  Rebekah shook her head.

  Henry shrugged and watched his sparkler dance about. Rebekah watched hers as well. The day after tomorrow she would have her new nose. She had seen Dr. Warren again, forged the consent form, had two photos taken (profile and full face), given blood and urine specimens. Dr. Warren had assured her the bruises would be gone by the time school started.

  “I’m going away to school,” Henry said. “To Brown.”

  Rebekah nodded.

  “Yeah. I leave in a few weeks.”

  Rebekah’s sparkler died and she dropped it to the ground.

  “I can’t keep those bears, Henry. They’re expensive.”

  “I don’t want them back,” he said. “They’re for you.”

  Rebekah looked at him. He had liked her since they were small children and both of their families lived together on the farm. As far as Rebekah could tell, Henry was the only boy who ever liked her. And Henry’s family was even odder than her own. His mother had stopped sending him to school when he was twelve because she was worried he would be kidnapped or killed. A reporter from the Boston Globe heard the story and did a human interest feature on the family in their Sunday magazine. With the article there had been a slightly out of focus picture of Henry’s entire weird family. His mother, Claudia, who stopped cutting her hair and fingernails “to see how long they’ll grow, like when you die,” kept referring to Henry as Simon, Henry’s dead brother. Rebekah could not have Henry, of all people, like her.

  “Could you get me some wine?” Rebekah asked him.

  She watched him lope away. He was tall, too tall, with extra-long legs and arms. His hair was the palest blond, almost white, and thin on top, which made his forehead too large and prominent. Rebekah decided he looked a little like an ape. He returned with two plastic glasses and a jug full of red wine.

  As he poured them each a glass full, he smiled. There was no denying that despite everything else, Henry had a very nice smile.

  “To us,” he said, and he lifted his glass to hers.

  Rebekah drank the wine quickly and refilled her glass.

  “It tastes good,” she said to Henry. Good-bye old nose, she thought as she drained the second glass.

  A group of people started to dance the twist. Rebekah caught a glimpse of her parents. Elizabeth was wearing a green and blue striped skirt that puffed out slightly as she danced. Howard laughed, mocked embarrassment at the sight of his wife’s knees when her skirt lifted. Rebekah had taken money from these people, her parents. Grand larceny, she thought.

  Henry said something, but “Twist and Shout” was too loud for Rebekah to understand him. She didn’t want to hear him anyway. She watched her parents dance. They twisted down to the ground, then worked their way back up. Rebekah remembered her mother teaching her to twist. She had taken a bath towel and held it behind her. “It’s like drying up after a bath,” Elizabeth had said, and they twisted together in the hallway, their partners fluffy striped towels. Rebekah closed her eyes. She was dizzy from the wine. She was forgetting the importance of her new nose, she reminded herself. And once her life had improved, her parents would see its importance too. Quickly, Rebekah finished her wine and poured some more. She was only two days away from her new life.

  Henry was talking again.

  “What?” Rebekah said.

  He leaned closer to her. “It’s so noisy. Can we go somewhere to talk?”

  Rebekah’s mother waved over at them, smiled.

  “Yes,” Rebekah said, “let’s go somewhere.”

  She took Henry into the pottery workshop. They drank more wine and smoked a joint. Rebekah explained about the kiln and the sake offerings.

  “Neat,” Henry said as he peeked into the kiln.

  Rebekah asked Henry about Brown. As he talked, she remembered that Sally Perkins, Head Cheerleader and Most Popular Girl, used to have a boyfriend at Brown. She had worn his fraternity pin and all the girls had crowded around her to see it. Rebekah studied Henry more closely. She had to narrow her eyes to focus. If she were to arrive at school with a new nose and a boyfriend at Brown, her place in the senior class would be secured. Henry, she decided after careful scrutiny, was not so bad after all. He did not have acne or any bad scars. And, she noted, besides his nice smile, he had a very nice nose.

  Henry stopped talking.

  “Your glass is empty,” Rebekah said, and refilled it for him. She had a rather pleasant feeling, like she was floating. In fact, she felt like she was swooping around like an eagle—she swooped her arms to pick up the wine and then swooped toward her glass. She leaned over and Henry’s face flew by her. Rebekah giggled.

  “You know,” she said, and was surprised at how far away her own voice sounded, “this is a going-away party.”

  “For me?” Henry asked. His voice echoed slightly in her ears.

  “No. Well, yes, that too, I suppose. But for this, I mean.” She pointed to her nose. “Here. Feel.” She took Henry’s hand and ran it slowly over the bump. Henry’s touch felt surprisingly nice. “Oh,” she said.

  Henry’s face appeared suddenly in front of her own. He kissed her, a soft little kiss which felt very good.

  My first kiss, Rebekah thought. She didn’t want him to stop.

  Henry gently kissed her nose.

  “Yes,” she said solemnly, “kiss it good-bye.”

  He pulled away from her. The motion made her dizzy and she had to grab his arm to steady herself.

  “What are you talking about?” he said.

  “I’m getting it fixed.” Then she added sadly, “It’s so ugly.”

  “But you’re so beautiful.”

  “Maybe on the inside. But no one ever looks there.”

  “I do,” he whispered, and kissed her some more.

  They kissed for a very long time, it seemed. Rebekah still heard The Lovin’ Spoonful in the distance. She tried to block out the image of her parents dancing out there and to concentrate instead on Henry. He was breathing heavily, and pressing against her. He thinks I’m beautiful, Rebekah thought. It felt so good, to be kissing him and listening to him breathe this way. But then Rebekah felt the chalky dust fill her nose and throat.

  She rose unsteadily, her stomach rolling unevenly.

  “I think I will keep the bears,” she said.

  Henry pushed her gently down to the dusty floor. Rebekah was amazed at how long kissing could go on. For a minute, she saw the kissing here, in the pottery workshop, as a kind of communion. It was this dust, after all, that was buying her new nose. Maybe, she thought, this is more like a burial. But before she could think about it anymore, she felt as if a magnet pulled at her, pulled her around and around. She tried to get her eyes to focus, but everything was spinning too quickly. Images of Henry and the kiln sped by so fast that before she could register, they were gone, only to return a second later at an even faster speed.

  “Rebekah?” Henry said.

  She gagged, the taste of pottery dust and wine in her throat.

  Henry moved quickly, got her outside, held her head while she was sick.

  “It’s okay,” he said over and over.

  He stroked her hair and then her cheeks and finally, with one thin finger, her nose.

  “It’s okay,” he said again.

  But the smell of the pottery workshop stayed in her and she had to turn her head away, gasping for air.

  REBEKAH LOOKED INTO THE coffee cup in front of her, the mirror image of her mother sitti
ng across from her. Rebekah was sore all over. And her head ached. She could not believe, as she sat here in the bright kitchen with her family, that last night she had kissed Henry. Henry of all people. She would never, she vowed, talk to him again. She would never drink wine again.

  “Rebekah kissed Henry,” Jesse said.

  Rebekah’s head shot up, sending the throbbing pain from her temples throughout her head.

  “I saw you,” he said.

  Elizabeth looked up. “Interesting.”

  “I did not,” Rebekah said. “I saw you.”

  “He has always liked you,” Elizabeth said.

  Rebekah rubbed her aching head.

  “In the pottery workshop,” Jesse added.

  “Is that where you disappeared to?”

  “Please, Mom,” Rebekah said wearily.

  “He’s leaving for college, isn’t he?”

  “Brown.” I wish, she added to herself, he was already gone.

  IT WAS OVER. REBEKAH’S HEAD and face pounded from the pain. She had two black eyes and bandages that extended over her nose and cheeks. She was in her bedroom with an ice pack on her forehead. Her parents and Jesse had gone to Tanglewood to hear a concert. They would come home and find her face a bruised and swollen mess. And they would be furious. The longest she could delay the confrontation was until the next morning. She prayed she would die peacefully during the night.

  A KNOCK ON HER BEDROOM DOOR woke Rebekah with a start.

  “Henry’s on the phone,” her mother said through the door.

  Rebekah realized that she was indeed still alive, her prayers unanswered. The sunlight hurt her eyes. Rebekah groaned. Her face hurt and Henry was on the phone. She forced herself to think of that September day that would make all this worthwhile.

  “I’ll tell him you’re sleeping.”

  Rebekah listened to her mother’s footsteps fade. She could not leave this room. She could not face her mother.

  “Rebekah, he’ll call this afternoon.”

  “Mom, could you—”

  The doorknob began to turn.

  “Don’t come in!” Rebekah shrieked.

  “Why ever not?” The door remained frozen, slightly opened.

  “Please send Dad in.”

  “Rebekah, he’s working. What’s going on?”

  Tears began to fall down Rebekah’s swollen face. The throbbing behind her eyes and cheekbones got worse as she cried.

  “I need to see Daddy.”

  “For goodness’ sake.” Elizabeth closed the door and once again Rebekah listened to her walk away.

  It took a long time for her father to come from the workshop. Rebekah heard her mother call to him. She knew that she had a lot of explaining to do and Rebekah wanted to do it to her father’s kind Santa Claus face. She could picture her mother if she told her. Her lips would tighten, her jaw would twitch.

  Rebekah remembered the time she had bought steak for Jesse and herself. Her parents had gone to Boston for the day and left Rebekah money to buy something for dinner. The steaks had caught her eye, sparkling red in the meat section, an area she was usually rushed through by her mother. “We are not cannibals,” Elizabeth would say. Rebekah had bought the steaks. She and Jesse had stared at the cooked meat on their plates, watching as the blood slowly oozed out of it and formed watery red puddles around the steak. “What’s the matter?” Rebekah had said angrily as Jesse stared, horrified. “Haven’t you ever eaten a steak before?” And she cut into hers and placed a piece into her mouth. She was completely unprepared for the slipperiness of it, or the toughness when she chewed it. But she and Jesse ate every bite. When their parents got home, both children had stomachaches. “Rebekah made me eat cow,” Jesse cried. Elizabeth’s lips tightened and her jaw twitched. “Well,” Howard said, “there’s nothing wrong with trying something different.” And he had given Rebekah a big wink.

  “Can I come in?” her father asked now.

  “Yes. But be prepared.”

  “Your mother thinks you cut your hair while we were out yesterday,” he laughed as he walked in. His smile disappeared when he saw her.

  “Were you attacked, Bekah?” he asked, his eyes so filled with concern that she began to sob again. “No.”

  Howard frowned. “What then?”

  “I had it done.”

  “What?”

  “My nose!”

  Her father took her into his arms.

  “I was ugly. So ugly. No one would even be my friend.” The words escaped in gasps between the sobbing. “I tried to ask you for help. And Mom too. But no one listened. So I just went and did it. Myself.”

  Rebekah buried her pained face in her father’s beard, and burrowed her fingers into it as she cried.

  THE FAMILY SAT AROUND the dining room table, a massive block of oak with six legs. In the center was a vase the color of wet dirt, filled with yellow daisies. The question they were considering was about Rebekah. She had sat in her room for three weeks, coming out only to eat and work in the pottery store, which she did every day from ten to six in order to pay back the fifteen hundred dollars. Her nose was still slightly swollen and the remaining bruises were the color of Dijon mustard. Her mother could not look at her without her jaw twitching. The punishment was indefinite. It stretched before Rebekah like an endless tunnel. In her exile she started and finished The Clan of the Cave Bear. Yesterday she began The Valley of Horses.

  They were here at the table to decide if Rebekah should be allowed to accompany them to the Wickford Art Show. The family went every year, setting up a table along the streets of the small seaside town in Rhode Island. They sold pottery and handed out brochures about the technique Howard used. On the way home after the last night, they always ate Chinese food at a restaurant called Pagoda Inn. It was a family ritual.

  Every time Rebekah looked up, Jesse made his eyes go crossed. Only in this family, Rebekah thought, would a ten-year-old get a say in the decision-making process. He had acquired a silver space suit, someone’s discarded Halloween costume, and wore it constantly.

  “You just don’t seem to appreciate the seriousness of what you did,” Elizabeth said.

  “The prisoner shows no remorse,” Rebekah said.

  Elizabeth’s jaw twitched.

  They glared at each other across the daisies.

  “I would like everyone to go to the art show. I would like us to be there as a family. All of us,” Howard said.

  “Let’s vote, please,” Rebekah pleaded.

  “It’s not only the art show at issue here, Rebekah,” Elizabeth said. “There’s no point in punishment if it’s not making you think about what you did.”

  “I’ve already told you that I thought about it for weeks before I did it. It will all be worth it. You’ll see.”

  Her parents exchanged glances.

  “Look,” Rebekah said, “I don’t want to spoil anything. I’ll do whatever you want so we can all go. One big happy family.”

  “Well,” Howard said, “let’s see what happens in another month of you working in the shop and staying home. Elizabeth?”

  Her mother nodded.

  Rebekah sighed. Freedom was another month away. It looked as if she would finish The Valley of Horses too.

  THE BRUISES, THOUGH NOT completely gone, were easily hidden with an Erase-It stick. She did not look like Brooke Shields, but the bump in Rebekah’s nose had disappeared. She still had a rather large, ordinary nose.

  Rebekah’s plans to buy new clothes and makeup did not work out. Instead, all the money she earned at the pottery shop had to go toward paying back her parents. She had to search drawers, closets, and old trunks to find things to wear for the first day of school. Finally, with Vaseline on her lips, an old pleated skirt from the attic, and a short-sleeved cotton sweater of her mother’s, she was ready. There were no loafers with tassles or Izod shirt, but with her new nose and high spirits, Rebekah thought she looked pretty good.

  Downstairs, in the kitchen, the radio played
jazz. Her mother was drinking coffee and working on a crossword puzzle. She looked pale and thinner than usual. Rebekah felt as if she hadn’t noticed her mother at all these past few weeks. She poured a glass of orange juice and looked out the window. It was a perfect day. She had sacrificed everything for this day, and it was here at last. Tucked into her book bag was a card from Henry, slipped to her during her exile. At lunch today, with Sally Perkins within hearing distance, she would casually pull it out and read it. “My boyfriend at Brown,” she would explain.

  “It’s about that time, isn’t it?” Elizabeth asked. “Daddy filled your tires. They were low.”

  “I’m walking. No one rides bikes.”

  “Then you’d really better get going.”

  Rebekah turned from the window, smiled at her mother. It was too good a day to let their animosity get in the way.

  “What do you have on your lips?”

  “Just Vaseline.”

  “Well, they won’t get chapped anyway.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Bekah?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want you to be disappointed today.”

  “Disappointed?”

  “I don’t know what you’re expecting—”

  “Nothing. I’m not expecting anything. God! You want to ruin everything for me, don’t you?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

  Rebekah gathered her things.

  “Have a good day,” she heard her mother say as she left.

  REBEKAH SAT UNDER A tree in the front yard. The humiliation was so horrible she couldn’t even move. In fact, she was not sure how she made it home. This day, her new start, the beginning of her life filled with parties and dates and giggling girlfriends, had been a failure. She sacrificed everything for this day and it was all for nothing.

  Tears filled her eyes, rolled down her still-tender cheeks and nose. It was over. Tomorrow she would don her patched jeans and bicycle to school like before. It didn’t matter. Her nose was different, but everything else was still the same. She had no car to borrow from her parents so she could drive to McDonald’s and sit on the hood while she sipped Coke and ate a Big Mac. She didn’t even eat hamburgers.