Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking

by Aoibheann Sweeney

  “How long would I have to go for?”

  “Just a few weeks. Or as long as you want. Walter said they have a room you can stay in.”

  I stood up and went to get the pie. “We may need to prepare for a storm,” I said, absently.

  “A storm?” he said, watching me.

  “Mr. Blackwell said there’s something brewing near Florida.” I put the pie down on the table between our plates, unable to look at him, and sat back down.

  He nodded at my plate. “Somebody’s not ready for dessert,” he said gently.

  The fog was thick as I drove across to the boatyard the next morning, steering by my compass the whole way. As I walked across the tarmac where the boats were stored in the winter the sound of someone hammering was ringing hard in the dampness. I went toward it, but it was one of the boys, and when I asked if Mr. Blackwell was there yet he shrugged. I went into the office. From the window I could see Mr. Blackwell talking to someone down at the fuel dock.

  It was all I could do to wait until his eleven-thirty break—one of the boys was always around, hoping to have lunch with him, and I wanted to get him alone. I watched him climb up into Jim Craig’s scallop boat, where he was redoing the floorboards. At eleven-fifteen I made a fresh pot of coffee, poured two cups, and walked down to him.

  He took off his hat, pushing a hand through his sweaty black hair. “You telling me it’s time for a break?” he said, looking down at me over the edge of the boat.

  “My dad found a job for me in New York City,” I said, looking up at him.

  He smiled. “Is that right?” He put his hat back on and I saw him cast a glance over his work before he went over to the ladder to climb down to me.

  I was nearly as tall as he was when he was on level ground. He took the cup of coffee and gestured toward the picnic bench in the weeds by the old loading dock.

  “He says they need my help at the institute he used to work for,” I said, when we’d both had a sip.

  He nodded thoughtfully. “That’ll be nice,” he said.

  “You think so?”

  He shrugged. “How long you going for?”

  “However long I want, I guess,” I said.

  “Might be good for you,” he said. “Seeing things.”

  When I didn’t answer he glanced over at me. “You’re not gonna miss anything around here you know. Your dad’ll just keep writing that book.”

  I nodded, my eyes filling with tears, and we both looked out at the foggy glare. I was glad to be sitting with him. I sniffed but he didn’t look over; he was giving me my privacy, but I knew he was thinking of my father too.

  “You two preparing for the storm?” he said finally, finishing his coffee. “It’s a ways off, but it’s supposed to be a big one. There’s no guarantee that it won’t get up here.”

  On my way back through town after work, indulging my melancholy, I stopped at the hardware store for storm supplies, though I had long since bought enough canned goods and emergency candles to make it through several winters. I liked the smell of Hardwick’s: the burnt tar of the twine, the fresh white of new canvas and spools of untouched line, the bright rubber of the marine supplies. I bought some batteries and a few extra cotter pins for the outboard—it was one of the only repairs my father knew how to handle—and as I was putting them down on the counter it occurred to me that I was getting ready to leave.

  “You see the people in Florida on TV?” Mr. Burns said as he rang them up. No one in Yvesport ever remembered that we didn’t have a television.

  “No,” I said, “but Mr. Blackwell said it was pretty far off.”

  “Those people in Florida don’t know where they are if they’re not sitting in a traffic jam, trying to get somewhere. I suspect they’ll all finish evacuating and come back home just in time for the storm to hit.” He chuckled to himself.

  I carried my bag down to the boat and as I headed over to the island, which was still emerging sleepily from the fog, I found myself wishing that I was already gone—the storm done with, my life changed. My father looked up in surprise as I came through the door and dropped my package on the counter.

  “I guess I’ll leave before the storm,” I said to him as I unpacked the batteries and lined them up in the kitchen drawer. “Mr. Blackwell said it’s a ways off.”

  10

  There was a lot to do in the week before I left, and I was glad for it. Although the rumors of the storm’s force were subsiding, it gave everyone a sense of urgency, and people responded to my various requests with unusual efficiency. Even though it was still August, Sam Ames brought over enough cords of wood to last my father through Christmas and helped me pile it on the hill behind the house, in case the water rose during the storm; Mrs. Malloch said she’d send her grandson over to cut the grass while I was gone. I spent several mornings on my knees preparing the flower beds in front of the porch, though Mr. Blackwell said he’d be over to do some weeding “while my father had his nose in his books.”

  I made lists of instructions for my father to follow for the garden (tomatoes will give when ready) and the house (check generator switch when lights are out), restocked the kerosene and matches, cleaned the lamps, washed the blankets I had stored since spring. I made jam and froze berries, I cooked beans and restocked our store of potatoes and onions. We hardly spoke, but he drank very little and watched my frenzy of activity with a strange kind of contentment. Once I tried on the dresses Julie had given me and asked him to pick which one I should bring.

  “Why can’t you bring them all?” he said uncomfortably when I came downstairs with the first one on.

  “They’re only for formal occasions,” I said, as if I knew better.

  “What else are you bringing?” He looked at me reluctantly.

  “Jeans, I guess. And sweaters.”

  He dropped his eyes. “I’m sure that one’ll be fine,” he said. “The color suits you.”

  “Do you think the shoulders are too tight?” I pushed.

  “I think they’re fine,” he said, looking at me as if it hurt his eyes.

  I went upstairs and took off the dress, embarrassed, not sure what I had wanted. I laid it down beside the others, and then hastily rolled up two of them and stuffed them into the duffel bag. Cool salty air came through the window and I felt tall and female in my bra and underwear. I peered at the picture of my mother on my desk. She always looked the same, smiling in a fixed way, like people do when they have portraits taken, as if they are holding themselves in. No matter what kind of mood I was in I could never make the picture come alive—she seemed to know I was looking at her, and stared back eerily, like one of Julie’s dolls. I put my loose flannel shirt back on and the carpenter pants I’d been wearing in the garden. I hadn’t meant to frighten him.

  The storm finally came the morning I was leaving. Most people had left their boats in—it was only supposed to amount to a small-craft warning. The sky was dark, with a tint of the peculiar yellow that indicates the pressure lifting with the light. The bay was ominously calm. My father’s duffel bag barely tipped the dory. He waited politely for me to put a hand on the dock before he stepped in after me. Mr. Blackwell used to joke that it was his big brain that threw him off balance, and he still couldn’t get into a small boat without pitching it.

  The engine choked and then roared on the high throttle—I brought it down low and sat down behind him. I tried to think of something to say as we headed out of the cove but found myself waiting until we were out of range of the house; shadowy sky flashed in the panes of the living room windows, but the island already looked indifferent and still. I’d forced him to make a list of all the things he needed in town while we were sitting at the breakfast table, but I knew there would be something missing when he came back home without me.

  “You have your list?” I yelled at him as the ocean hardened beneath the boat’s speed. He turned around and gave me a nod, his gray hair blowing up in the wind. The bay lay behind us, some of the dark clouds edged no
w with rain. I thought of the foul-weather gear in my bag, though by the look of it I’d be in the bus by the time the storm started. When I slapped the channel marker for good luck as we passed, he didn’t turn to give me his reproachful look.

  The boats in the harbor jangled and bobbed in our wake. Most of the fishermen who were still working had left hours earlier, but the gulls were still wheeling around, unsettled among the rigs and masts, wary of the strange sky. Mr. Blackwell was waiting on the dock.

  “Big day,” he called out, as if to break the silence with my father before we got to the dock.

  I shut off the motor and he came to help me onto the dock. “You two have time for some coffee?” he asked, nervously including my father.

  “We ought to make sure we get a ticket,” my father said, without meeting his eye. I looked back and forth between them.

  “Won’t keep the big-city girl waiting,” Mr. Blackwell said, giving me a wink.

  Before I could stop him my father shouldered the duffel bag, as if he always carried it, and began to walk up the ramp. I knew it was too heavy for him, and Mr. Blackwell knew it too. When we got to his truck in the breakwater parking lot my father looked away, and suddenly Mr. Blackwell was folding me in a hug. His rag wool sweater smelled of sweat and engine fuel.

  “You take care now,” he whispered in my ear.

  My father glanced at us, and then he began walking down Main Street. Mr. Blackwell got into his truck and gave me a few farewell honks before he headed over to the boatyard.

  They sold the tickets to Bangor at the drugstore. We bought one even though the bus wasn’t coming for another hour, and then my father suggested, unexpectedly, that we go to the diner for some coffee.

  We took two stools at the counter, and the waitress gave us each a mug and filled it with coffee before we asked. My father poured cream into his and then stirred it rapidly, so that the spoon rang against the sides. We could see the grill from our seats, and we watched the hash browns being shoved around. After a few minutes he got out a bank envelope and gave it to me. It was heavy as a chocolate bar, tight with cash. “I’m hoping that’ll keep you,” he said, “however long you’re there.”

  It rained a little outside and I felt how small we were, in our little diner, in our little town. I could hear the wind against the windows, and suddenly everything felt unfamiliar. My father looked stooped beside me. I put my hand over his, noticing the brown spots, the wrinkled skin. His knuckled fingers were cool, and my own hand felt hot and clammy. I studied the napkin dispenser, coming untucked, a torn sugar packet beside it, lying in the dust of its contents. The room seemed queerly still.

  “Maybe we should go,” he said, giving my hand a quick squeeze, and then stood up, as if he had been sitting for hours.

  We walked together to the bus station. He kissed me on the cheek as I got on, but he was gone before I found a seat. I saw him out the window, walking away, though I’d planned on waving to him. As the bus jerked and tilted out of town, past the high school playing field, past the new electrical plant and on toward the interstate, I wished he’d stayed just a moment longer. As if, in our life together, that was all we’d ever gotten wrong.

  the age of bronze

  11

  The rain was pouring down in sheets when we arrived at the Port Authority bus terminal. A line of open umbrellas collected at the taxi stand outside, and people rushed from the brightly lit entrance out into the dark, bent over, holding newspapers above their heads. Gusts of wind fluttered the shop awnings and slowed the river of cars down the glittering avenue.

  I got in line in my old rain jacket, still stiff with salt, my father’s duffel bag on my shoulder. Eventually I was ushered to a taxi. It smelled like cigarettes inside. The driver moved through a confusion of shining bumpers into the traffic, banked on every side by windowed buildings, blinking storefronts. He was listening to another language on the radio. We turned off the avenue and the scale of the buildings shifted; there were trees. We clanked over the lid of a manhole and came to a stop. In the dark behind the sheets of rain I could make out the façade I had long since memorized in the photo of my father with Arthur Mitchell—the arched windows, the stout brownstone steps. I might as well have been stepping back into that same photograph.

  “This it?” said the driver, to remind me he was waiting to be paid.

  After he left I was standing uncertainly at the bottom of the rainy steps when someone opened the front door. A man in a white T-shirt looked up at the rain with an irritated glance, light pouring out of the doorway around him. He called something out to someone inside and began to fumble with his umbrella. It was the automatic kind, with a button on the handle, and something was stuck; I approached the steps, hoping he’d notice me.

  “Fuck,” he said, frowning at the umbrella. He was wearing glasses, and behind them I could see his long, thick lashes.

  “Excuse me,” I said finally. “I’m looking for the Institute for Classical Studies.”

  He glanced at my duffel bag. “Are you looking for someone in particular?”

  “Who are you talking to?” The door opened wider and an older man in a silk robe and slippers came into the vestibule and looked out. Despite his outfit he carried himself with the kind of exaggerated formality that my father did after a few whiskeys, and my first impression was that he might be drunk. “What have we here?”

  “I’m looking for the Institute for Classical Studies,” I repeated, as if it was the only sentence I knew. I moved the duffel bag in closer to me so that it wouldn’t get too soaked.

  “Well, don’t just stand there drowning,” said the older man. “Help her with her bag, Nathaniel.”

  Nathaniel started gingerly down the steps toward me, but I had already swung the bag onto my back and they both stepped aside to let me through. The entryway was dark and warm, and in those first dim moments, as I rested my damp bag on the worn Oriental carpet, I thought it looked very glamorous. An electric chandelier shone on the thick banister leading up the stairway to the second floor, and there was a framed mirror, spotted with age, on the opposite wall in which I could see myself, in my yellow coat, reflected like a flame in the murk.

  “I suppose you’re Peter Donnal’s daughter,” the older man said, studying my face.

  “Yes,” I said. “Are you Walter?”

  “I’m Robert.” He tightened his sash impatiently, and then, keeping his eyes on me, he went over to the stairs. “Miranda Donnal has arrived,” he yelled upward.

  In a minute another man was peering down at me. He looked about my father’s age and was fully dressed, though his hair was tousled, as if he’d just gotten up from a nap. “How amazing,” he said, staring at me quietly.

  “He said he would send her,” Robert said, looking back up at him.

  “Well, I didn’t expect her to look exactly like him,” the other man said as he came down the stairs. He took both my hands in his and smiled at me like a priest. “I’m Walter,” he said, gently, as if I might disappear. “We’re very happy to have you.” My hands were cold and I saw him glance at my dripping jacket. “She’s soaked!” he said to Robert. “How did you get here, by boat?”

  “By bus,” I said, smiling.

  “Goodness. Well, take off your coat and stay awhile.” He dropped my hands and looked at the others. “We should take you to the club or something. Shouldn’t we? Nathaniel can come too.”

  I had to pull my jacket over my head, and for a moment I was in the dark and struggling to get out, and then I surfaced in the cool air, and they were all looking at me. I pulled at the hem of my skirt to unwrinkle it, and tried to hold my wet jacket away from me.

  “Amazing,” said Walter, shaking his head.

  “She’s his daughter, after all,” Robert said.

  Nathaniel was tapping his umbrella against his thigh. “I have to go meet my sister,” he said, apologetically.

  Robert smirked and looked at me. “You wouldn’t want to get in the way of Nathaniel�
��s sister.”

  “I’m sure you two will have plenty of time to meet,” Walter said.

  Nathaniel gave me a little nod, sort of a bow, as Robert showed him out. “See you,” he said, earnest.

  “You must be starving,” said Walter, turning to me with a smile. “Should I get you a drink? Or maybe I should show you your room and then we can all go out.”

  “The club’s a little extravagant for a Sunday night, isn’t it?” Robert commented, wandering over to poke at a pile of mail on the hall table.

  Walter looked at him. “You’re not actually passing up an opportunity to go to the club, are you?”

  Robert kept his back to us. “It’s not like I haven’t got anything else to do.”

  Walter rolled his eyes at me, as if to indicate that he was used to this, and gestured for me to follow him upstairs. The library, classroom, and office was downstairs, he was saying, and the bedrooms were upstairs. My duffel bag kept brushing against the cracked paint on the wall, and each time a few green chips wheeled into the air. Walter was explaining breathlessly that the after-school Latin classes Robert ran during the school year were starting tomorrow, and that Robert had hired Nathaniel to help him out because so many boys had enrolled. Robert also wrote theater reviews, and Walter said the “transition” between the two jobs was often difficult for him, though he would do nothing but go out to shows all year long anyway.

  My room was in the back, down at the end of a short hallway. “We’ve been thinking of renting this room for years,” he said, opening the door for me, “but someone always needs a place to stay, and it’s the perfect guest room.”

  I squeezed past him and sat down involuntarily on the bed. The walls were the same fading green as the rest of the house—though better preserved, as if from being hidden away. The ceiling slanted down toward the garret window at the back and a small desk fit in one corner. It was decorated with a bouquet of flowers, now dead.