With Harry watching, Orville spun the mail car around in the middle of the road. He felt certain there must be a rule against postmen doing police turns, but he didn’t care. Three miles later, he flew across the one-way bridge, which was free of any oncoming vehicle. His and Meg’s house sat not far from the bridge, but Orville didn’t glance in to see if Meg was home yet from grocery shopping. Another five hundred feet past his own mailbox, Orville made a sharp right onto the gravel road that led up to Cell Phone Hill, the only spot in town high enough that cell phones could transmit. He put the car in park and then rummaged in the glove compartment for his cell phone. It was his daughter who had given him that skinny phone for his birthday. All professional postal carriers should have cell phones, Daddy, she had written on his birthday card.
Clicking the phone on, Orville punched the seven numbers he knew would cause a real phone to ring at the post office in neighboring St. Leonard. The office manager, Edwin Beecher, finally answered with his long and annoying “Heeeelllooooo,” as if he were the host of a popular game show. Orville explained what was happening at Harold Plunkett’s mailbox. He listened for a minute as Ed shuffled through the rule book. Finally, Ed told Orville what he didn’t want to hear. Harry’s moose mailbox wasn’t violating any postal codes or restrictions, so as long as it’s sound and acceptable with no lewd words or drawings.
“Blah, blah,” Orville said. Ed’s voice was tiny, as if the post office itself existed down there in the coils and valleys of the cell phone.
“Come on, Orville, don’t be so cantankerous. You only got this week left.” Ed was still talking when Orville clicked the phone off.
The little mail car drove back down the gravel road that led up to Cell Phone Hill, taking its time now. But when Orville arrived back at Harry Plunkett’s mailbox, Harry was still waiting, a few white snowflakes melting on his cap.
“I’ve been thinking while you were gone,” said Harry. “I believe you’re being cantankerous, Orville.”
Without a word, Orville reached out, pulled down the moose’s hindquarters, and stuffed the mail inside. Two bills and a personal letter. He had done it. He had delivered the mail come rain, come snow, come sleet or hail or moose shit. He put the car into drive, grinding the gears generously. His tires spit some gravel back at Harry as he drove away from the box. In his rearview mirror, he saw Harry run a jacket sleeve across the moose’s back, as if petting it for a job well done.
2
MONDAY AFTERNOON
AND EVENING
When Edna Plunkett crawled into her blue Toyota, she could smell snow in the afternoon air. The few flakes that had fallen earlier in the day hadn’t amounted to more than wet spots wherever they hit. Now Edna wondered which morning it would be that the whole town would wake to find itself layered in white. With no other vehicle in sight, she had right-of-way on the bridge and so didn’t bother to brake as she hit the lower end. The car crossed over a river so blue it hurt Edna to glance down at it. But that’s what autumn did to colors in Mattagash. It brightened them, dazzling the onlookers. Mother Nature knew what she was doing all right. She was giving everyone some last splashes of red and orange and golden yellow before she gave them a solid blanket of white for months. Maybe, Edna thought, autumn was nature’s way of apologizing.
She passed her brother Tommy’s house and saw his dog sitting listless in front of its doghouse, the silver chain that held it catching sunlight. Poor dog, Edna thought, as she passed the sandwich board sign that sat on Florence Walker’s front lawn. Edna noticed that the Word for the Week was cantankerous. Florence was an English teacher who had retired two years earlier but couldn’t quit teaching. Below the word, Florence had written in neat letters: stubborn; unwilling to cooperate. Each week the new word began with a new letter of the alphabet. Mattagash had been from A to Z three times in the eighty-one weeks since Florence retired, from anomaly to zinger, from atypical to zealous, from anathema to zenith. Now they were back to C. Edna made a quick mental note of the word and its meaning, but she would have a full week to learn it. Let others in town ridicule the old teacher; Edna Plunkett appreciated the free education. She even wrote each word down in a secret notebook that she kept at the bottom of her sewing basket. Edna had plans for her future, and big words like charismatic, daunting, and enigma would come in handy.
At Mama Sal’s house, Edna saw her mother standing next to the dead hollyhocks near the front porch. She felt her stomach tighten, the way it always did when she was about to discuss something important with her mother. She had hoped to gather some steam on her way to Mama Sal’s front door. But there her mother was, entrenched as a post and wearing her pissed-off face. Edna cut the car’s engine, grabbed her purse from the seat, and got out.
“Good thing Orville’s about to retire,” said Mama Sal. She was wearing the blue birthday sweater Edna’s twins had given her. Her thick hair was pulled back into its usual gray ponytail. In the palm of her hand were a dozen dried hollyhock seeds and under her arm was that day’s mail. “I got a good mind to start throwing pop bottles at the mail car.” She shuffled the black seeds into a sweater pocket.
“Were you trying to flag him down again?” Edna asked. She had been told often that, of the two daughters, she was the one who most resembled Mama Sal. And this had always pleased Edna, even though her mother was tall and big-boned.
“He pretends he doesn’t see me,” Mama Sal said. “And me waving both my arms. All I want to know is why my disability check is late.”
“It’s against the rules to stop on his way back to the post office,” said Edna. “You know how Orville loves his rule book.”
As Mama Sal turned her aluminum walker toward the front door, Edna reached out and put a steadying hand on her mother’s elbow. The walker had been the subject of much whispering in the family. Mama Sal bought it a decade earlier, the same month Edna’s father died unexpectedly of a heart attack. A week after the funeral, Edna had driven Mama Sal to the first of many doctor appointments, followed by visits to a disability lawyer in Watertown. While the subject was taboo in that Mama Sal never brought it up, which meant no one else should either, Edna had seen the occasional document left lying on her mother’s kitchen table. She had read words such as lumbar back pain and inability to ambulate effectively. Mama Sal occasionally referred to her condition more affectionately as “my damn back.” Whatever mishap caused the injury in the first place remained unknown to her children. But the disability checks began arriving nonetheless, slender doves winging up monthly from Augusta. Over the years, Edna would drop by to find the walker having a good rest in the kitchen and Mama Sal upstairs taking a nap, even though they had long since moved her bedroom downstairs. Or the walker would be left at the door going down to the cellar and Mama Sal could be heard humming as she sorted through boxes of junk in the basement.
“Watch that top step now,” Edna said, as Mama Sal maneuvered the walker’s front legs up onto the porch.
Inside, on the kitchen counter, Edna noticed the box of medium-sized pumpkins she had dropped off in Mama Sal’s garage the night before. She had to struggle to carry that box from the car to the garage. Now here it was, sitting in the kitchen, the pumpkins smiling over the rim. Edna looked at Mama Sal, who looked back.
“You had any company today?” Edna asked.
“I’ve known you to be a lot of things, lawyer, doctor, insurance agent, fire inspector, and minister,” said Mama Sal. “So now you’re a cop?”
Edna reached into the cupboard for a cup and poured some of the coffee that had most likely been in the pot since Mama Sal got up that morning. It poured like thin molasses. She watched as Mama Sal situated herself in the recliner by the window, that spot from which she watched the world go by.
“I was just asking,” said Edna.
Mama Sal opened that day’s Bangor Daily News and began reading. Edna pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and over to t
he recliner.
“I got something to tell you,” she said, as Mama Sal flipped over to the obituaries. “Now, I don’t want you to hit the ceiling, but I’m gonna ask Roderick for a divorce. The boys will be in high school soon. I think I might sign up for a class at the college. I’m still only thirty-seven years old.”
Edna took a breath and waited. Mama Sal seemed to be listening well enough, especially since she folded up her Bangor Daily and Edna knew she hadn’t looked at the comics yet, her favorite part. If all Mama Sal had done was hit the ceiling, Edna would have been satisfied. But she had gone further than that. She had hit Edna, a sharp quick scuff across the side of her daughter’s head with the rolled-up newspaper.
“You’re still trying to keep up to your sister’s heels,” said Mama Sal. “If Bertina was to shit blue, you’d be drinking ink all day. And now that she’s back here in Mattagash, expecting handouts for herself and them Spanish-looking grandkids of mine, you been running over there every day like a headless chicken instead of staying home with your husband. Bertina’s already had three divorces and you haven’t had one. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
Edna pushed her chair back and stood. She felt her eyes tearing up. But crying would only weaken her. She reached for her purse. At the kitchen door, she turned and looked back at Mama Sal. She could feel her bottom lip quiver, as it did when she was a child and felt so tiny in her mother’s tall and grown-up presence.
“I guess pumpkins can walk,” Edna said. When she slammed the door behind her, it was hard enough that Mama Sal’s wind chimes chattered on the front porch.
***
When Edna pulled back into her own yard, it was already 2 p.m. and not the best time of day for any sensible Mattagash woman to go shopping. Since there were no department stores unless you headed south to Caribou or Presque Isle, important shopping for anything other than groceries was a three-hour round-trip. It would be evening before she returned, but she didn’t care. Not on this day. That’s when she noticed that Roderick’s pickup truck was pulled in above the house. He must have come home for a cup of tea and something sweet, which he shouldn’t be eating in the first place, not since the doctor had told him to lose fifty pounds.
Roderick was sitting at the kitchen table, half a chocolate cookie on a plate in front of him. When he saw Edna, he stopped chewing. It wasn’t as if he’d starve to death if she were no longer there to cook his meals. He was obviously capable of foraging.
“So much for your diet,” Edna said. Before she could say anything else, let alone “I want a divorce,” her twelve-year-old twins burst into the kitchen in an identical dash to the fridge for sodas.
“Why are you guys not in school?” Edna asked.
“Basketball practice,” one boy answered, as he grabbed the rest of Roderick’s cookie. His brother was already on his way back to the front door.
“I hate to be a tattletale,” Roderick said to Edna, “but Roddy slapped Ricky before you got home. What’s your new rule? A dollar of allowance per slap?” The last twin stopped at the door and looked back at his mother.
“It was Ricky who slapped me,” he said. “Daddy can’t tell us apart.” And then the twins were gone, in an identical burst of energy. Edna heard the front door slam and picture frames rattle on the wall in the living room. Since they had planned to name their first boy after his father, Edna and Roderick were bewildered when male twins came along. Unable to choose one namesake, they had finally named both boys after Roderick, in accordance to their birth order, and had simply divided the name between them: Rod Plunkett Jr. and Rick Plunkett Jr.
Edna watched until the twins had left the yard, identical legs cranking the pedals of their bikes. Then she went to the cupboard, lifted the plate that held up a stack of many plates, and took out a hundred dollar bill. She came back to the table and stood looking down at her husband.
“The boys will be in high school soon. It might not be a bad idea if we were to go our separate ways, at least for a little while.”
Roderick stood up fast and reached an arm out to her. Edna leaned back, afraid to be slapped once more that day for telling the truth. But then Roderick raised his other arm and beckoned for her to step into them, to let him give her a hug. In all their years of marriage, Roderick had never hit her. Sometimes, Edna almost wished he would throw something. Bertina was always bragging about things her ex-husbands and lovers had hurled at her. “Latinos are very hot and passionate,” Bertina said. “So are Italians.” But on this day, Roderick was more scared than passionate.
“I’ll clean up my act,” he said, dropping his arms since Edna refused them. She went to the fridge and got out a can of lemonade. Roderick followed. “I’ll wipe my shoes before I come into the house,” he added, as if that thought had just flown into his mind and not because Edna had been nagging him for years. But it was so much more than muddy shoes on carpet. “And I’ll take you every Sunday to the Chinese buffet in Watertown.”
Edna closed the fridge door.
“I’ll quit smoking this very minute. I know you been on me about that.” He held up his right hand. “Hand to God, no more cigarettes.”
“I took the hundred-dollar bill that we were gonna put into our savings account,” Edna said. “Me and Ben Franklin are going shopping, and we’re gonna spend every penny if it kills us.”
Roderick followed her to the front door.
“Do you think you might be going through the change early?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m going through a change all right,” Edna said.
***
Edna shopped all over the mall for things she didn’t like and didn’t need. A pair of cotton slacks, and winter on its way. A corkscrew with Elvis’s head at the top when she hardly ever drank wine and she wasn’t all that crazy about Elvis. A key chain, when she already had several the kids had given her for Christmases and birthdays. A throw pillow that didn’t match the sofa. Lacy red socks she’d never wear.
But she bought some important stuff too. On her way home, she stopped at the craft shop in Caribou and selected oil paints, some brushes, and a large canvas. In high school, an art teacher told Edna that she had an artistic flair and should maybe even take lessons. But this was around the same time she met Roderick Plunkett, back from the Army, tall and muscular and wearing a starched uniform that had seen little action until he convinced Edna to step into a Watertown motel room he’d rented for the night. That night now seemed a lifetime ago, and in a way, it was. It was Edna’s lifetime that had passed, each year taking away more of the artistic girl who had dropped out her senior year to marry her boyfriend. Now, Edna was going to start a new life. Some people call it being born again. As Edna saw it, since she had been passed at the ripe age of seventeen from Mama Sal to Roderick, it was being born for the first time.
***
It was already evening when Edna saw the Welcome to Mattagash sign, with its big friendly moose. There had been a vote taken the year the sign was painted. The moose had won, with the loon coming in second, followed by the coyote in third place. The lobster, being a Down East notion far from ocean-less Mattagash, didn’t even place. She drove past the sign and into a town that had grown quiet while she was gone. Edna had never before been shopping that late, all alone and that far away. There had been a soft panic mixed in with the good feelings, but she didn’t let it enervate her one little bit. Enervate: to deprive of strength, to weaken. She drove past Amy Joy Lawler’s house, the old McKinnon homestead and one of the first homes after the welcome sign. She drove past her own house, as if she didn’t live there anymore. She could see a flickering light coming from the living room window and assumed Roderick and the twins were fastened to the TV for the night.
Headlights were already coming across the bridge, so Edna waited on her end for the vehicle to pass. It was her brother, Tommy Gifford, in his black pickup truck with those enormous tires. She heard Tommy
toot once, a signal that he recognized her car, and so Edna tooted back. She pulled onto the bridge, glided the length of it, and memorized again the meaning for cantankerous. Only the downstairs light was on at Mama Sal’s, in the room where her bed now was. Edna hoped she was saying her rosary beads and not watching the road like it was a movie. She felt a rush of freedom once she was past the house where she’d been born and raised. Ahead was Blanche’s Café, already closed for the night, the windows dark and curtains drawn. Edna passed the moose that Roderick’s uncle, Harry Plunkett, had installed as his mailbox. And then she passed Blanche Taylor herself, out doing her nightly run.
As Edna drove, wind blew dead leaves across the tarred road ahead of her. It was before the road ended that she saw the sign, Mattagash Trailer Park. There were so many retirees and old-timers living in the trailers there now that the local kids had nicknamed it Jurassic Park. Edna pulled up in front of Bertina’s trailer, the oldest one in the park and the shabbiest too. She turned off the car and sat staring at the last trailer in the upper row of trailers, a one-bedroom that stood next to a clump of pine trees. It was empty now. The man who previously lived in it, a soil inspector from Bangor, had finished his work and disappeared back downstate. Ward Hooper. He had come late in the spring and rented the trailer, a home for the two months he would spend in Mattagash gathering and recording soil samples for the state. Edna first met him at Blanche’s, the two of them sitting on stools and waiting for their lunch to arrive. He owned a white pickup truck, and he had asked Edna questions about herself as if the answers were important. Have you always lived here? What do you think about the war in Iraq? Do you have children? What are the winters like this far north? And even though it was daunting for her, she had answered. She had answered because Ward Hooper was so charismatic. She felt euphoric sitting there on that stool. It was almost as if, now that she had the big words to fit the big feelings, it hurt all the more. Poignant: affecting the mind and emotions.
The One-Way Bridge Page 2
