Love in Maine

by Connie Falconeri

  Maddie tore it open, then picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” Janet answered on the third ring.

  “Hi, Janet. It’s Madison Post. How are you?”

  “Maddie! What a treat to hear your voice, you sweet thing! Did you get the invitation already? I hope you can come. It’s probably right around your graduation and impossible and—”

  “No. It’s perfect. I get out of school the week before, so we will all have something to celebrate.”

  “Well, I’m sure Hank has told you, but it’s such a shame he won’t be back in time.”

  Sure Hank has told me? Madison began to get a creeping feeling that she was going to regret the next few minutes for the rest of her life.

  “Oh. Have you heard from Hank?” Maddie asked.

  Janet obviously heard the hint of false disinterest in Maddie’s voice.

  “Well, of course. I mean, yes. He’s been very good about staying in touch. But he said he’s too far away to come back in June. His assignment finishes in August, and I just didn’t want to wait that long to get married. You understand! Phil and I are so ready to tie the knot.”

  Maddie felt like she was suffering repeated punches to the gut. Very good about staying in touch? What the hell?

  “Maddie?”

  She must have stayed silent for too long. She tried to recover her equanimity. “I’m here. I’m so sorry, I was distracted for a few seconds. I’m so happy for you.” But her tone was empty, and she figured Janet could probably hear that too. They talked about Phil and what a brutal winter they were having in Blake, and then Maddie asked about Sharon and the girls, and then finally if there was anything special Janet wanted as a wedding present.

  “Oh, nothing special, sweetie. We have everything we need. It would just be wonderful to have you here if you can make it.”

  “I’ll definitely try,” Maddie said. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, she’d gone from definitely going to definitely trying. They made a bit more small talk, then one of Maddie’s roommates, Leah, came into the living room of their apartment and Maddie begged off the call and said good-bye.

  She stared at the phone and tried to process that Dumpster full of information that she’d just gotten. Hank was able to write letters to his mother and not to her? His goddess? She felt like a stupid, stupid girl. Why did every other Army wife have Skype and e-mail and you-name-it to stay in touch with their loved ones? Was she even a loved one? Had Hank once said he loved her? Or did it just make him feel good to send her precious ancient coins and tell her how great he thought she was? And to wait. That must be so much easier than actually showing up and being in someone’s life like a normal person.

  She almost pawned Athena and Herakles, with a mind to giving the money to Janet and Phil. And what was up with not even going to your own mother’s wedding? Who did that? Except the most heartless, disconnected beasts? And Hank Gilbertson.

  He’d set this whole stupid situation up this way. Sure, he probably thought it was best to keep Maddie focused on her final year of school and her studies and her athletics and every other damn thing, but that should have been her decision, not his. Who was he to make all of these unilateral wait-for-me-to-complete-my-labors type of statements?

  Maddie was still storming around the living room when Deeanna came back from her chemistry lab. “Another bad day in Candy-harr?”

  Looking to the ceiling to keep the rage from flying in her roommate’s face, Maddie counted to three and said, “Kan. Duh. Har. It’s pronounced Kandahar. And yes, as a matter of fact, I am having a particularly shitty day. Anything else?”

  Deeanna smiled and walked into her room. “Nope. That about does it.” She shut the door quietly, and Maddie realized that all three of her roommates were closed up in their respective rooms and she was standing alone in the middle of her living room. In the middle of what was supposed to be the best year of her life at one of the best schools. In her prime.

  Here she was, pining away for the ghost of a guy who had nothing better to do than string her along while he wrote regular letters to his mother while she, Maddie!, sat home and bit her fingernails and watched YouTube videos about the construction of the bridge across the Panj River into Tajikstan.

  The resentment boiled up inside, fierce and fast. She yelled so her voice would penetrate all three closed doors. “I need to go out!!!”

  Within seconds, all three of her friends poked their faces out of their rooms. With an eyebrow raised in sarcasm, Emily said, “Oh, has Madison Post decided to come back to earth?” She looked from Maddie to Deeanna to Leah and back again.

  “Yes!” Maddie tried to corral her enthusiasm. “I am back and I want to get bombed and pick up the first hot guy who hits on me. Give me twenty minutes to get tarted up, and we are out of here.”

  The other three turned back into their rooms until the sounds of closet doors opening and closing and makeup caps popping on and off were drowned out by the stereo being cranked up to full volume with a rapper pounding out a steady thrum of lust-inspiring aggression.

  Maddie got her wish.

  She got completely drunk and picked up the first guy who hit on her. Unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, the guy was a friend of Deeanna’s, and there was no way he was going to take advantage of a completely unconscious Madison Post. He helped her stumble home and got her into bed fully clothed. He felt like he had achieved new levels of chivalry when he tossed a blanket over her passed-out body.

  When Madison woke up the next morning and realized she was alone and fully clothed, she was mildly disappointed. She almost wished she had gone through with her first drunken one-night-stand. At least then the pain of Hank’s strange silence would have been overshadowed by the requisite regret and shame she would have felt if she had actually slept with the guy who was just then passed out on the floor next to her bed.

  He was kind of cute, actually. His name was Sam and he sat in the back in one of Maddie’s Latin classes. He wasn’t stupid. And he wasn’t a pig. He was just sort of there. When he began to wake up, Maddie was still staring at him, and his glazed expression didn’t really register where he was or who she was.

  “Hi,” Maddie said. “I’m Madison Post. We’re in Latin class together. I think I threw myself at you last night.”

  He had light reddish hair and it was all flattened out on one side. He looked like a stray.

  “Hi. I’m Samuel Pruitt. Nice to meet you, Madison.”

  She reached her hand out from under the too-thin blanket in order to shake his hand. “Nice to meet you, Samuel.”

  They talked a little bit more, and Maddie felt like the least she could do was offer the guy some breakfast in thanks for not sleeping with her despite her—ahem—gracious offer to do whatever he wanted to his body or hers. He was just reminding her of all of her generous propositions.

  “How charming.” Maddie cringed, but they both laughed and through the odd set of circumstances, Maddie had made a new friend.

  After she’d made him an omelet, there was a quick double-tap at Maddie’s front door. It was only about nine thirty on Saturday morning and all of her roommates would be asleep for hours. The only reason she was awake was that she was used to getting up in the dark every morning for crew . . . and there had been a guy snoring on the carpet next to her bed. She rubbed her achy forehead and pulled the front door open. Sam was coming up behind her, his sneakers in one hand, his winter coat in the other.

  “I should probably go. It was great to meet you—” He leaned in to kiss her cheek as Maddie pulled the door open, figuring she could show Sam out and sign for the UPS package or whatever else it would be at that unusual hour.

  Sam froze.

  Maddie froze.

  Hank was, as always, frozen in place. Unmoving.

  “Hank?”

  “Wow,” he said with a slow glance at Sam and then back into Maddie’s eyes. “You remember my name.”

  Sam looked from Hank to Maddie, then slipped past H
ank. Sam’s floppy red hair bounced around as the poor guy hopped onto the cold front porch and pulled on one sneaker and then the other to get out of that loony bin as quickly as his legs could carry him.

  “Do you want to come inside?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Hank stared at Maddie and wanted to rip his own heart out. She looked ragged. Her hair was lank, she was too thin. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and her lips looked chapped and drawn. “I don’t know . . . maybe this isn’t a good time . . .” He stood where he was and let her take the responsibility of telling him what the hell had just happened.

  “Up to you,” Maddie said with a dismissive wave of her hand. She left the front door open and started to walk back toward the kitchen. “Either come in or don’t, but shut the door to keep out the draft, please.”

  What had happened to her? He walked in slowly, pulling the front door quietly behind him. He knew she had three roommates who were probably asleep behind the closed doors that led off the living room. He followed Maddie back toward what must be the kitchen. She was pouring a cup of coffee, and he could see her hand was shaking as she tried to hold the carafe steady over her mug.

  “Here, let me do that,” Hank offered.

  Maddie slammed the carafe back into place on the heating unit of the coffeemaker and swung around to face him. “I can make my own cup of coffee, Hank.”

  “Maddie. It’s me. What the hell is going on?”

  “What’s going on?” Her voice was shrill. Deeanna had woken up and wandered into the kitchen in a too-short nightie and nothing else. She walked over to the coffeepot, reached up for a mug, started to pour, then turned to Hank and said, “You the one she picked up last night?”

  Maddie growled. “Deeanna. Shut. Up. Get out of the kitchen and leave us alone.”

  “Touchy. Touchy. I need milk in my coffee.” She shuffled over to the refrigerator and topped off her coffee with a splash of milk, then shuffled back toward her bedroom.

  “And put on a bathrobe!” Maddie cried after her.

  “Whatever, Maddie.”

  Hank stared at her.

  Maddie stared at him. “What? I’m a college senior. You send me one stupid letter and I’m supposed to wait around like an idiot? Haven’t you ever heard of the Internet? Or the telephone? Or the US Mail?!”

  At least she was getting worked up, he thought. When Hank set aside the boiling rage that accompanied the thought of her picking someone up at a bar the night before, he was relieved to see her get that fire back in her cheeks.

  “I couldn’t. I was on totally high security—” he said in a defensive tone.

  Maddie slammed the flat of her hand on the cheap kitchen counter with a loud thwack! “That is such a lie!” Her voice was rippling with anger. “You are such a screwed-up liar! You just say shit, and I am such an idiot that I actually believe you—”

  He reached out to touch her, anything, her hand, her cheek, to hold on to her upper arm.

  “Don’t! Don’t touch me!” She pulled away from him. “I talked to your mother yesterday.”

  He let his hand drop away from trying to touch her.

  “Yeah. Remember her? Your mother?”

  Hank’s face fell. He felt so guilty that he had taken the few precious days he had to come to Providence instead of going to see his mother who had dedicated her entire life to repairing the damage she thought she had done.

  “I thought—” He was going to say he had thought Madison was more important, but he stumbled when he saw the rage in her eyes. It was so unfamiliar. Especially directed at him.

  “You thought what? You thought it wouldn’t strike me as odd that you send me one letter,” she held her index finger up and put it close to her face, “one stinking letter, and then your mother just blithely tells me that of-course-she-hears-from-you-all-the-time-and-didn’t-I-hear-from-you-all-the-time-too?!”

  Hank stared at Maddie, his face impassive. “Is that what this is about? You’re jealous of my mother?”

  Maddie stomped her right foot on the ground. “How dare you try to twist this around?!” Another roommate could be heard plodding down the hallway to the kitchen. “Ugh! Just come into my room so we can talk without half the neighborhood coming and interrupting us.” Maddie sort of shoved Hank into her bedroom and pulled the door shut just as Emily was turning into the kitchen.

  Hank saw the pillow and the pallet of blankets that was on the floor next to the bed and he reminded himself that Ms. I-have-condoms-falling-out-of-my-bag had also happened to be a virgin. “You have a dog?”

  Maddie looked where Hank was looking, then rolled her eyes in disgust. “No! I don’t have a dog! Well, not counting you, I don’t. That’s where Sam the Latin nerd slept last night.”

  Hank took off his black windbreaker and set it on the back of her desk chair.

  “Why are you taking your jacket off and making yourself comfortable? You are not staying here.”

  “Because I only have forty-eight hours, and I don’t want to waste it bickering.” He stood with his hands on his waist. He was wearing a black woolen sweater with canvas patches at the shoulder. He supposed he looked military and foreign all at the same time. “Come here, Maddie.”

  He saw the flash of longing in her eyes, then her immediate attempt to squash it. “No.” She folded her arms to cover her breasts. He could tell her body was already betraying her. He pulled her desk chair around so he could sit in it, then bent over to untie his laced-up combat boots. They were polished and immaculate. He had wanted to look sharp for the NATO officials on the flight they’d been kind enough to offer him a seat on. But mostly he wanted to look good for Madison when he imagined her opening her front door.

  Part one of that vision had turned out great: the NATO officials had congratulated him on a job well done. Part two of that scenario hadn’t turned out at all the way he’d planned. But if anyone knew how to move forward after unexpected circumstances, it was Hank.

  “Why are you taking off your shoes?! Seriously, Hank, you can’t just walk in here after—what, six months—”

  He stood up, and Maddie gasped. He pulled the dark sweater over his head and began unbuttoning the cuffs of the gray button-down shirt. He towered over her. “Seven months.” Maddie looked down at the floor. He touched her cheek. “Three days.” She whimpered a lame protest. “Twenty-two hours.” He traced the contours of her lips with his finger. “Seventeen minutes,” he whispered finally.

  Maddie looked up at him, still clinging to her defiance. “But why not a single call? Why did you have time for other people and not for me?”

  He wanted to kiss her so desperately. He leaned in—

  “Hank! Tell me!” Her voice was cracking.

  He kept his fingers at the back of her neck, in that warm place beneath the fall of her beautiful hair. “I wrote to my mother in advance . . .”

  “You what?” She wasn’t able to follow his words when he touched her like that. Her eyes were already beginning to cloud with lust.

  “I wrote fifty-two letters in advance,” he repeated.

  “So . . . why didn’t you . . .” She moaned when he reached his hand under her long-sleeved T-shirt.

  “I couldn’t write to you in advance . . . it felt like a fraud. My mother just wants to know I’m alive. You? I couldn’t . . . I just wasn’t able to bring myself to do that.”

  He leaned in and kissed her neck, and someplace in the back of her mind she thought she should be fighting harder to tell him something or demand something. Her head was still fogged from drinking too much the night before, after being so torn up about him just the day before. Wrecked. It was too much.

  “Hank. Please stop.” She said it so softly, but he felt it more powerfully than if she’d clocked him.

  “What is it?”

  “I just need to look at you and touch you and know you’re real. It’s been so long, Hank. Really, really long.”

  His brow pulled tight. “I’ve thought of you every minute,
Maddie. I’ve been working on a project, so completely immersed, and you are always with me. I think of things that I’m going to tell you, and stories about the stuff I’m doing, and what I’m going to do to your body . . .”

  She swayed into him, her lips barely an inch from his. “I don’t trust you, Hank.”

  Maybe it would have been better if she had clocked him. He felt the wind get knocked out of him after he heard those words. He set her a little bit farther away from him. “You don’t trust me?! I just knocked on your front door and some good-time-Charlie kisses you good-bye, and you don’t trust me? This is unbelievable!”

  Maddie moved away from him and sat at the foot of her bed. She looked around her bedroom and tried to see it through Hank’s eyes. There was evidence of her infatuation with him everywhere. The jewelry box with the coin in it was sitting on her bedside table. A picture of the two of them that Janet had taken over the summer was framed and sitting atop her dresser. A movie stub. A fortune from one of the Chinese fortune cookies from Ming’s. Small scraps were tucked into the edge of the frame of her mirror. The brown wrapping paper with the Greek stamps and her address in Hank’s handwriting was in a shadow-box frame over her bed.

  He looked at all the evidence and then smiled down at her. “Really? I think you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed you. And you’re too stubborn to admit it.”

  He kneeled at the end of the bed, pushing her legs apart so he could see her eye-to-eye and lean into her. Whatever had happened on the phone with his mother, Maddie had been devastated. Hank took a deep breath.

  “I’m so sorry, Maddie. I . . . I don’t have any idea how to do this right. I took the assignment because the pay is amazing and it ends in August and I thought, maybe, if you still cared about me, we could be together then. I’ll have enough saved to go . . . wherever you’re going. To Cyprus for the fellowship, or to California to train for the Olympics. Because you’re going places and you’re not going to be easy to keep up with, you know?”