Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine

by Ann Hood

  “I’m sorry I came,” Sparrow said.

  “Oh, no,” Melanie said in her singsong voice. “I’m sorry you can’t understand your father. Abel.”

  Sparrow turned back toward the window. Why is it, she thought, that no one tries to understand me?

  A while later her father came to the parlor and stood in the doorway too.

  “Franklin,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My middle name is Franklin. And I’ve lived in Maine my whole life. I was born up north. Near Presque Isle.”

  Sparrow didn’t respond.

  From down the road she watched as Ron’s gray BMW approached. When it stopped in front of the house, Sparrow said, “She’s here. And he’s with her.”

  Ron’s car looked like a space vehicle against the backdrop of snow and old houses. Sparrow watched Ron and her mother. They sat, motionless, for a very long time. Her mother was holding a cigarette without puffing on it at all.

  “Maybe you should go out there,” Abel said.

  “She came to get me, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “So let her get me.”

  Sparrow still didn’t turn around to look at her father, who had changed into his good blue shirt and put on a wide tie with a bright psychedelic pattern, a Christmas present from Suzanne in 1968. Sparrow lifted the drapes and looked out again. They both were still sitting there, looking straight ahead. The smoke from her mother’s cigarette twirled like a tiny gray tornado.

  THE RIDE UP 95 NORTH from Boston to Maine was quiet. Suzanne felt there was nothing else to be said. She woke up and decided she would go up there and get her daughter. She had to claim what was hers. Abel had never wanted Sparrow and he wasn’t going to get her this easily. Not now. Not after sixteen years.

  Suzanne imagined the two of them together, father and daughter. She hadn’t told Sparrow a few months earlier, when the girl had thrust that old picture of Abel at her, that she did indeed have her father’s wide smile. Or that sometimes, when she cocked her head a certain way, Sparrow looked exactly like Abel. And now the two of them were probably giggling together, becoming fast friends. She remembered a couch she and Abel had in their little beach house. It was an old thing with an Indian print blanket draped over it, one of the kind of blankets sold at college fairs back then. Above the couch they had hung a matted Picasso print of a hand extending flowers. It was on this couch under this picture that Suzanne imagined Sparrow and Abel.

  In New Hampshire she said to Ron: “Could you please stop? I want some cigarettes.”

  He frowned but didn’t say anything about how the upholstery absorbed smoke.

  They didn’t speak again until they reached the house. When they parked in front of the old house with the chipped paint, Suzanne said, “Oh, dear.” And then they sat in the car for quite some time.

  Fear raced through Suzanne’s mind. What if Sparrow didn’t want to come back? What if Abel had read her poetry and baked her Hello Dollys and drawn her into his strong arms in a big hug? What if she lost Sparrow after all?

  The cigarette she was holding turned into ash and fell on her lap and the seat of the car. She gasped, brushed at the ash, which disappeared into her gray wool trousers and the deep gray upholstery.

  “Should I come in with you?” Ron asked her.

  Earlier that morning, when she told him she was going to Maine, he had said, “Should I drive you?” This time, she shook her head and got out of the car.

  The air here was as she remembered it, sharp and cold, almost painful. She slipped a few times on her way to the house, her black Bally shoes not able to grip in the snow. Off balance, she teetered up the stairs and onto the porch. There was a couch there, with an old green blanket over it. She fought back an impulse to pull off the covering and see if it was their couch.

  The door opened then and Abel stood in the doorway, fatter and bearded, but definitely Abel. Suzanne inhaled slowly, struggled for composure. Sparrow was behind him, peeking over his bulk. She shifted her gaze from her daughter back to Abel. Her eyes scanned his face, saw a younger man there, a younger man standing in front of a freshman composition class and reading an essay about her to everyone. And Suzanne felt her heart race wildly like it did that day.

  But all she said, sternly, was, “Hello, Abel.”

  Her eyes settled on the tie, an outdated, too wide, brightly colored tie. And she remembered buying it and wrapping it in Christmas paper with tiny Santas or snowmen on it. Suzanne had thought back then that the tie symbolized both their worlds—his unconventional one and her traditional one. It had meant they could have both of those worlds. She remembered sitting at his feet, wrapped in an old flannel shirt of his, telling him all these things as he opened the present. Now it stood as proof of the silliness of that time and those ideas.

  As if he knew what she was thinking, Abel tugged at the tie.

  “May I come in?” Suzanne asked. “May I come in and get my daughter?”

  He stepped aside and Suzanne brushed past him, bringing the smell of Chanel No. 5 and the cold winter air in with her.

  “Is your friend going to stay in the car?” Abel asked.

  “He’s not my friend,” Suzanne said. “I’m going to marry him.”

  Abel raised his eyebrows. “Yes. Well, you wouldn’t want to marry a friend, would you?”

  “Susan, are you ready to come home?” Please, Suzanne thought, say yes. Say you want to come home with me.

  “I have to get my purse and things.”

  “Yes. Well then, get them.” Relief filled her. She was getting her daughter back.

  SPARROW SAT ON THE STAIRS and listened to her parents.

  “You are as beautiful as ever,” her father said.

  “You look well also.”

  “No. I said you are beautiful. As always.”

  They were in the parlor. Sparrow couldn’t see them but she pictured them sitting side by side on the pale green couch facing the Christmas tree.

  “I did it all wrong, Suzie. The girl came here in the middle of the night—”

  “The girl?”

  “Sparrow. Sparrow showed up here full of some crazy ideas.”

  “She’s like that, you know. So full of dreams. How could you know?”

  “She wants us to fall back in love, I think. This guy you’re marrying—”

  “I hope,” her mother said, her voice icy, “you told her that was completely impossible. I hope you explained to her that was impossible.”

  “Suzie—”

  “Where is she?” Her mother’s voice was shaking now. “What is taking her so long?”

  “Suzie,” her father said softly.

  “Don’t touch me. Get away from me.”

  This was not her mother’s voice. There was no control at all. It was fragile and trembling, like a little girl’s. Sparrow ran down the stairs, but her father was alone in the parlor.

  “Where did she go? She didn’t leave, did she?” Sparrow asked him.

  He pointed to the bathroom. She went to the door, knocked, then went in. Her mother was sitting at the edge of the tub, clutching the sink. She didn’t look up when Sparrow came in.

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

  “Please, Susan. I’ll be right out. It was a long ride, that’s all.”

  Sparrow hesitated. “Mom, are you crying?”

  “I’ll be right out. Please,” Suzanne said. She didn’t raise her head.

  THE THREE OF THEM STOOD awkwardly on the porch. Suzanne was cool and composed as they said good-bye. Abel bent down to kiss her cheek, but she turned her head sharply and her neatly blunt cut hair whipped across his face.

  “Are you ready, Susan?”

  “Sparrow,” Abel said softly.

  Sparrow looked at her father. He handed her a white plastic bag.

  “I think you’ll like these,” he said. “A few pictures.”

  She thought briefly of reaching out and hugging him but didn’t. Instead, she thanked him
and walked away with her mother. Suzanne gripped Sparrow’s arm tightly for balance as they walked down the icy path toward Ron’s car.