Oslo, Maine

by Marcia Butler

  “This okay?” he asked.

  “It’ll do.”

  A long hallway connected the kitchen to the rest of the house. The scuffed walls were bare save for two photographs hanging exactly opposite each other. One was a wedding shot of Celine and Claude cutting the cake. They appeared no older than teenagers, with flushed cheeks and uncertain smiles, testing the waters of an adult world. The other was a baby picture of Pierre, perched on the seat of an adult bicycle. Celine and Claude stood on either side, propping him up with protective hands. Pierre looked to be about a year old, wearing an adult-sized blue cap stamped with the March logo, his bright-red hair sprouting from beneath. He was bare chested, and his thin legs dangled out of a diaper. Sandra wondered momentarily why they’d stopped with these two photos; the hallway could have displayed many dozens. Well, she didn’t believe in that type of sentimental documentation, either. The shine of life’s various milestones tended to dull through the years. At least that’s what Sandra’s experience had been, and perhaps this was so for Celine and Claude as well.

  She nudged Pierre forward. “C’mon, pick up the pace. Jim and I have rehearsal this afternoon.”

  “You’re the one who stopped to look,” Pierre pointed out.

  “True enough,” Sandra agreed, laughing.

  They proceeded toward a room containing only a few folding chairs placed at random. A single bulb hung from a jerry-rigged wire snaking down about a foot from a jagged hole in the ceiling. At one time this had been the Roy living room. Now it served only as a pass-through space, with five doors leading to other sections of the house.

  Over the years and from the distance of their kitchen window, Sandra and Jim had watched with a mixture of fascination and bewilderment as Claude increased the footprint of his house. But she’d only recently gleaned how truly odd the expansion was: impulsive, crude, certainly accidental. Claude had created openings through the living-room walls where it made no sense at all, then slapped together new rooms or even an entire wing. The house had a spooky feel—like a Grimm maze—allowing for no natural intuition as to one’s location. As she and Pierre walked toward one of the doors, he playfully tapped the hanging bulb with the back of his violin. It swung in a circle, brushing the garish orange walls with its dim wattage.

  When they arrived at Pierre’s bedroom, Sandra took out her violin, placing the case at the foot of a utilitarian bunk bed that hugged a long wall. She assumed that at one time the bunks had been intended for sleepovers, though Sandra knew Pierre had a tough time making friends and was especially lonely since his accident. Now the top bed was loaded with books piled flush to the ceiling, and the weight had caused the mattress to sag precariously below. At their first lesson she’d expressed concern that the whole thing might collapse from being top-heavy, or at least, tip over. But Pierre pointed out that he’d wired the bedposts to bolts attached to the structural wall. Claude had been threatening to toss the books out altogether, so Pierre had come up with this solution. His idea actually appealed to Claude, who then helped with the process, and Pierre’s precious books were saved from the town dump.

  She sat on the bed and plucked her violin strings, which had remained in tune from the previous lessons she’d taught that morning. Pierre stood in the middle of the room, planted his feet apart, and tucked the three-quarter-size violin under his chin. He was small for his age and wouldn’t be ready for a full-size instrument for another year at the earliest. But his fingers had a good amount of meat at the tips, and Sandra had high hopes for the tone Pierre might eventually produce.

  “Want to test me?” he asked.

  She grabbed a sheet of paper off his night table and a rock the size of a tennis ball they’d selected from the driveway. Pierre extended his right arm and then bent it to a little less than forty-five degrees. She then placed the paper on the crook of his elbow with the rock on top, heavy enough to keep the paper in place. Pierre bowed very slowly on the D-string, back and forth, to demonstrate how facile he’d become at maintaining a steady bow stroke while also producing a healthy tone. All the while the paper edges fluttered, but the rock never dislodged from his elbow.

  “Am I okay?” he asked as he played.

  “Looking good. Sounding good,” she murmured with approval.

  Now he drew the bow across the other three strings, which caused the rock and paper to tumble to the floor. He broke into a simple melody she’d assigned as part of his lesson. Sandra joined him, providing harmony. Pierre’s intonation proved to be almost flawless. If the pitch did veer, it was only because as a beginner he’d not yet mastered any technique to speak of. Still, Pierre heard the problem and adjusted immediately, his intuition uncanny.

  In this spartan room, as she corrected his mistakes and reinforced his improvements, Sandra thought about the one thing she meant to incubate in Pierre. Potential. The idea that what was dreamed of in one moment could become a future the next. And it felt almost sacred. If not sacred, then pure. Because she didn’t really care if Pierre became a professional violinist. What mattered was that through learning the violin he’d understand that music itself, in whatever form and for the rest of his life, would never fail him. Sandra had not entertained this notion, which she knew to be true for herself as well, for quite some time. When teaching the violin, Sandra had discovered she felt more herself than in all her years as a performer.

  At the end of the lesson they packed up their instruments in tandem, like comrades. Pierre opened the double doors to his closet and stowed his instrument on a top shelf. That’s when Sandra saw the most astonishing thing. The inside surfaces of both doors were covered, top to bottom, with small pieces of paper a few square inches in size, stapled directly into the wood. The bottom edges had curled up, giving the impression of feathers. Pierre turned and stood between the open doors, watching her reaction.

  “What on earth?” Sandra declared, looking at him with wonder.

  “What do you mean?” Pierre asked, much too innocently.

  “All these little papers. What’s this about, Pierre?”

  “Oh. Just my life,” he said nonchalantly while examining his fingernails. The kid was quite the actor when he wanted to misdirect.

  “Can I look?” she asked.

  “If you want. But they won’t mean anything to you.”

  Sandra gently fingered the papers, noticing some were layered three-deep. The display had been precisely organized with the staples exactly parallel to the top of the paper, and every square was positioned with a one-inch margin on all sides. Great care had gone into this cataloguing, or whatever it was. And Pierre was right—none of it made sense. A few words, a series of numbers, maybe a date. All a kind of coding and penned with perfect lettering:

  Rain and thunder

  44.05 – 70.71

  5-12-19

  Mom cried

  44.08 – 70.84

  5-20-19

  Boys laughed

  44.01 – 70.23

  5-22-19

  As she spent a minute scanning the perplexing papers, Sandra wondered if this had something to do with his memory loss. Suddenly, she knew it was true, like an empirical fact of nature, such as birds fly and dogs don’t. And now Sandra understood that Pierre wanted her to see this, because thinking back over their lessons, she realized he had never opened the closet doors before. But this time he had done so with intention, almost ceremonially. He wasn’t testing her, not exactly. More like he wanted to trust her. She felt Pierre watching her as she continued to flip through the papers. He tracked her movements, leaning closer at times to see which paper she’d chosen to read. Every now and again, he’d nod with approval at her choice, though she still couldn’t decipher what it all meant.

  Then, a loud thump just outside the bedroom, like a piece of furniture tipping over, startled them both. Afraid of what she might find, Sandra grabbed the scruff of Pierre’s shirt to hold him back from racing to the door. She opened it a crack and peered out. Celine sat slumped on the floor with
her back pressing against the other side of the door. Sandra had no choice but to let it swing open, and Celine collapsed into the room. She lay on her back, still in her nightgown. Sandra was embarrassed that the garment had ridden up almost to Celine’s crotch, exposing faint bruises dotting her thighs as if she’d repeatedly stumbled against the same table edge. Then she saw that Celine wore no underwear, and Sandra quickly knelt and tugged the nightgown down. Meanwhile, Pierre had jumped to his mother’s head and begun to whisper in her ear. Celine croaked a few words.

  “She wants to go to her bedroom,” he whispered.

  “Can she even walk? How’re we supposed to lift her?”

  Pierre ignored her questions, and without explanation took over with an expertise that broke Sandra’s heart. He crouched over on his hands and knees. Celine used his back as a brace, gathered herself up, and staggered to her feet. Once standing, she leaned against the wall as Pierre positioned himself into her armpit. They clamped their arms around each other’s shoulders and waists and began down the hall. Sandra walked alongside, spotting as they hesitated or when Celine teetered toward the wall. Pierre directed them toward a new wing of the house Sandra had not been into.

  “This way?” Sandra asked, confused, because she knew the master bedroom was in the other direction.

  “Mom’s got her own bedroom now. And it’d help if you walked behind us, Mrs. Kimbrough. Sorry, but it’ll go faster that way.”

  Of course. He’d obviously done this for his mother numerous times and suddenly Sandra felt foolish, because what did she really understand about this family?

  When they reached the new bedroom, Sandra stood back as Celine accepted the single bed with an odd laugh and curled herself into a ball. Pierre gathered up the bedclothes and swaddled his mother tightly, tucking the sheets under the mattress on one side and placing pillows as a baffle on the opposite. Sandra assumed this was meant to prevent her from falling out of bed. That Celine was now immobilized came as a relief and Sandra released her fists, realizing she’d been clenching them the whole time.

  She now looked around what appeared to be the largest room in the house, certainly enormous for a bedroom by typical Maine standards. The walls had been primed, and a few different samples of pink/peach color had been patched here and there for selection. A single chest of drawers was clearly inadequate to accommodate the multiple piles of clothing lying on much of the floor. Then, Sandra turned around to discover what could only be described as a circus spectacular. A couple dozen pairs of high-end shoes were displayed on a shelf spanning the wall width. Curious, she walked over and examined the labels: Louboutin, Blahnik, Choo, Kors, to name a few that Sandra recognized. All with four-inch heels, minimum. Each posed in proud profile, almost brazen. Treasured objects, to be sure. And very expensive.

  Sandra glanced at her watch and felt a small panic. “Lord. I’ve got to run, Pierre. You know what to practice for next week?”

  “D major and minor scales. The next two pages of the melody book?”

  “Right.”

  “Can I do another scale? Maybe A.”

  “I’ll leave that for you to decide.”

  He nodded yet looked uncertain about her meaning.

  “Don’t move forward with A until the D scales are correct,” she explained.

  Sandra left the Roy house fascinated by Pierre’s secret papers, baffled by Celine’s impressive footwear, but also disturbed by her friend’s apparent use of pills. Witnessing the complex layers of the Roy family revealed not clarity, but rather a thick confusion. But that was Maine. Certainly Oslo. And as she drove the short distance up the hill to her house, another thought came to mind. The Roys’ sex life was at a standstill, probably had been for some time. Sandra wondered why this was even interesting. But it was.

  She crested the hill and when her house came into view, she spied Jim spread-eagled across the solar panels that blanketed their roof. The electric bill had come in a good bit higher over the last months, and they suspected that one or more of the connections had been damaged during the unusually inclement winter they’d recently endured. Jim insisted they avoid a costly service call on the system, which had outlived its warranty by more than ten years. So Sandra was now relieved to see Jim pinwheeled for a look-see.

  Although she’d married a guy who could coax almost anything back to life, she squeezed the steering wheel with apprehension. The plans they’d put in place to live partially off the grid had not proved anywhere near successful, mostly because neither of them had a disciplined head for finance. As a result, Sandra had learned to tolerate debt like it was a familiar reaper making monthly appearances; their incomes rarely squared with the bills. Jim must have heard her tires crunch over the rough gravel, because he lifted his head and grinned in her general direction. Sandra nodded to herself—perhaps some good news. And she gave in to a smile as well, because oh boy, did she have some great gossip.

  Sandra parked her car between Jim’s pickup truck and her motorbike at the back of their house. She swung the door open and almost stepped into a six-foot-square puddle of slush. Just when those in Oslo thought it was safe to change out seasonal wardrobes, Maine would famously claw back the winter with a surprise snowfall, which still covered the surrounding dense woods. Now, the late-spring melt had created a steady stream of water feeding directly into their parking area. Sandra dragged rubber boots from the back of the car, tossed her flats onto the passenger seat, and jammed her feet into the clodhoppers. When she stepped out, she sank a few inches into half-frozen water. Undeterred, Sandra jumped over several miniature lakes and reached the house in time to steady the bottom rungs as Jim descended the shuddering ladder.

  “You’ll never guess what,” she baited him.

  Jim leapt down from three steps up and pivoted. He grabbed her ponytail at the rubber band, slid his hand down her almost-waist-length rope of silver hair, and then wound it back up to her neck as if it were a skein of yarn. Searching her hazel eyes for a few seconds, Jim shook his head and planted a dry kiss on the tip of her nose. Which meant he couldn’t fix the panels. Which meant paying for the solar company to come out, and they’d surely advise replacing the whole shebang. Which meant they were, yet again, financially gutted. Dread swarmed much too fast. She bit her lower lip to hold back any show of emotion—anger or tears. Gossip about the Roys’ lackluster sex life now seemed trivial.

  Sandra pushed Jim’s arms away and he let her hair swing free from his fist. She looked him up and down with impatience, an emotion that had quickly supplanted her fear of certain financial ruin because Jim was still in his pajamas. They’d need to leave within the hour if they were to arrive in Portland on time for orchestra rehearsal. She pointed to his plaid flannels with derision and simultaneously began a mental inventory of monies they currently owed. Her gynecologist and his cardiologist. Perimenopause was making her certifiable, and bad tickers were rampant on his side. And their deductibles for both were so high they’d be satisfied only if one of them stroked out and then survived in a lifelong coma. The dentist. Two crowns for him, a root canal for her. Regular cleanings had become a quaint memory. The Oslo grocery store—an awkward situation. The manager, who’d propositioned Sandra when they first moved to Oslo about twenty years earlier, had agreed to hold over a tally that had grown to an embarrassing sum. She recently began shopping two towns over to avoid his expectant gaze. Sandra wasn’t sure which he hoped for most, the money or sex. She almost regretted not giving the guy a mercy fuck way back when, before he’d ballooned to three hundred pounds; maybe he’d forgive their current bills. Now the list would include Maine Solar Solutions, whose tagline was “A lifetime of worry-free energy!”

  The past year had been even more challenging due to both Jim’s cello and her violin needing major overhauls. Their luthier in Boston wouldn’t offer them credit, and actually refused to return the repaired instruments until Jim first handed over not a check, but a wad of cash. Jim was insulted by what he saw as a cluttering of
his “high art” with the luthier’s “low commerce.” But with past transactions the man had waited months and months to be paid, so Sandra couldn’t exactly blame him for holding their instruments hostage. They’d performed on their much inferior B instruments until the debt was satisfied. Sandra threw these thoughts aside because, really, what was the point? Lack of money had been their ménage-a-trois partner for years.

  “Seriously. Guess,” Sandra prodded again.

  “Can’t wait,” Jim deadpanned, and leaned back against the ladder with arms crossed.

  “It’s really good.”

  “Where’s my cello?”

  “Already in the truck. Come on, guess!”

  “We have to go. And I’m starving,” he whined.

  “Claude and Celine aren’t sleeping together.”

  “Oof.” Jim winced.

  “Right?”

  “Celine tell you?”

  “Not exactly …”

  “Well, this should be interesting. That man is a fuse aching to be lit.”

  “I know. But let’s get some soup. Anyway, it’ll take the entire drive to explain.”

  “Can’t wait,” Jim repeated, rolling his eyes.

  They walked around to the front of their 1840 home. The restored farmhouse was on the Maine historic register but hadn’t looked as if it qualified since forever. Jim cared little for any pretense of aesthetic maintenance (not to mention system repairs), and only when there was a dire need at that. Instead, he applied all his elbow grease to working a year-round greenhouse, which they relied on for the greater percentage of their food. All part of that grid business.

  As they walked around to the front of the property, Sandra dragged her hand along the dark-grey paint, peeling off like shredded paper, and rubbed the color between her fingers. The flecks disintegrated to dust. She gazed up at the gutters under the roofline. A few drops promptly hit her forehead. They hadn’t been cleared of dead leaves from last fall and were now a repository for stagnant water. She wiped the moisture from her brow and took a whiff. Mold, mixed with sour milk from Celine’s dirty kitchen table.