On Little Wings (11 page)

Hardly.

“Yep,” Darcy said in a sing song voice.

“That’s good, and I would love to play, but Jennifer and I are going out now. You can visit until I’m dressed, but that’s all today.”

Sarah gave me a sympathetic look and hurried back to her room. Darcy turned her pout on me and I muddled through the next ten minutes asking her age, (five), her favorite game, (red rover), her favorite animal, (hedgehog), and her favorite color, (pink … or heliotrope). Just as I was about to ask what color heliotrope is, Sarah’s door swung open and she saw my puzzled expression. With a slight groan she put her hands on Darcy’s shoulders and steered her forward. “We are going now, dear. I’ll see you later.”

“Where are you going?” she demanded, her strange eyes pulled together with worry.

“Lots of places. Town. The ferry. The island. Maybe the lighthouse. Lunch, dinner. Who knows,” Sarah said as she swept through the room, retrieving her keys from the coffee table and her purse from the floor. She stopped, looked me over to confirm I was ready to go and said to Darcy, “So you need to run home. We’ll be back tonight.”

Darcy protested energetically, but Sarah scooted her out the door and jumped into the car. “So sorry,” Sarah said as we rounded the corner. “She should come with a bell so you know when she’s about to sneak up on you.”

“No, she didn’t sneak. She stomped. That girl doesn’t need a bell!” Sarah laughed and I assured her that Darcy didn’t bother me. As tactfully as possible I asked about her odd eyes.

“Her dad is half Japanese. He worked one of the boats for a year.”

“I knew it!” I said. “I thought she looked Asian. But that hair!”

“Strangest mix I ever saw,” Sarah agreed. “But beautiful. She is very striking.”

“Very,” I affirmed. I let the car grow silent before I gently asked, “So she and Nathan have different fathers?”

Sarah sighed and her jawline tightened. “Yes.” She said simply.

I tried to show her that didn’t mean anything to me with a shrug. I wasn’t judging anyone. The silence returned. I rubbed my hands on my legs and said “She told me that Nathan said I’m not pretty and I’m scared of crabs.”

“What!” Sarah cried in horror. “Oh, Jasper.”

“Who’s Jasper?”

“No. Not who. It’s just my expression. My word to use in utmost exasperation. My mother didn’t believe in girls cursing. It stuck”

“Jasper?”

“I can’t even remember how I came up with it. But back to Darcy - don’t believe her. Of course you’re beautiful and I don’t know about the crab thing. She’s five and … she’s Darcy.” Her words were not convincing, but still comforting. “Nathan is really botching this, isn’t he?” she said in frustration. “Just promise not to dislike him yet. Let me at least make a formal introduction.”

A little late for dislike
, but I silently vowed not to despise him. Yet. After that the hours of the day flew by at a crazy pace. Sarah took me to the docks to catch the ferry, which sounded very old fashioned and romantic, but in reality felt a bit like an old city bus on water. Still, even a city bus seems exciting when it is chugging through the waves. The island, complete with storybook village and lighthouse, took me hours to explore. No trail along the high sea cliffs could go untred, no quaint shop along main street could be passed without my happy exclamation of “Look!” While Smithport felt like the dress rehearsal of New England with the dirty, hurried dock work and faces full of concern and distraction, Monteg Island felt like the performance. Even the fish in the windows of the seafood café sparkled silver in the sunlight. Here Maine put on her best show, the toil of the fishermen’s lives and the battle with the elements hidden behind the exaggerated beauty of nature and the charming touch of man.

The conversation never meandered back to my mother except for the unscarred tales of childhood that Sarah shared enthusiastically. She spoke of my mother without a trace of resentment, and I stilled my questions, waiting through the sunlit hours, the buzzing restaurants, the rolling ferry rides and finally the peaceful, tired drive back to Shelter Cove. After night pulled her veil over the world, I would ask, and this time, wait for the answer. Tonight Sarah would share the story I came two thousand miles to hear - the lost chapters of my mother’s life.

We returned to home in the evening, slightly ill from eating so much good food all day, and thoroughly, deliciously, exhausted. The large cushions of the sofa caught me as I fell into them with a relieved sigh. I needed to call my Dad and Cleo, but I couldn’t convince myself to move. Instead, I scratched Charlie’s jaunty, black ear and he stretched his head backwards to give me a wet lick. Sarah yawned, patted my leg and said, “I guess we should pick our lines. Nathan usually comes over around 8:30, after he puts the girls to bed.”

“He puts his sisters to bed? What about his mother?”

Sarah’s shoulders rose once and fell heavily. “She could do it. Sometimes she does, but Nathan’s … more reliable. She’s not bad – just too young to have four children.”

I asked how old Mrs. Cass was and Sarah corrected me again. “
Miss
Becker. She’s mid-thirties. It’s not her physical age I’m talking about,” she hinted with raised eyes.

“I thought you were her friend,” I said in confusion as I registered a slightly bitter edge to Sarah’s voice.

“Oh, I am. Loosely. I love her children. I care about what she does, but she’s not my favorite role model.” She modulated her message to sound more courteous. “Judith has her good points, though. I don’t mean to disparage her. She does her best.” Sarah looked around the room, twisting her torso to see the bookshelves behind her. She changed the subject by asking me, “Do you want to search poems, essays or novels for your line?”

She suggested I start with poems for our first reading because stumbling across something poignant in an entire novel can be difficult. “It’s usually easier to find something in a book that you are already reading. That way you have the context,” she explained. “Poetry is supposed to be on the top two shelves of that bookcase,” she said pointing. “But I get careless and they get scattered. But you can start there.”

I took down an antique Tennyson with a damaged spine and perused the pages. The time passed steadily as we browsed for lines, piling discarded books in precarious stacks, loading our laps with potential favorites, and occasionally sharing some of our finds. Sarah chose one first but refused to let me see it. My father called halfway through my search to ask about the day and I had to cut him short to take a call from Cleo. I tried to skim the literature while talking to her but I just ended up failing at both. I either lost my place in the poems or took too long to answer her simple questions. “Cleo,” I finally told her, “let me call you back in the morning when I have time to tell you everything.” I tried to stress the word
everything
to suggest her waiting would pay off. That finally appeased her and I hung up the phone while Sarah smiled and shook her head.

“Oh, to be young,” she murmured without further comment. When a light tap sounded on the front door, I quickly decided between two books and grabbed the Tennyson, my ferry ticket stuck between two pages to mark the poem I picked.

“We’ll be right out,” Sarah said, not rushing as she set a few more books on the crowded coffee table. Charlie raced to the door, scratching it until Sarah yelled his name sharply. Sarah grabbed a bookmark, left the book behind and led the way outside. I didn’t ask questions, just followed, throat tight, stomach trembling like I was stepping onto a stage instead of a small porch.

Nathan sat on the porch rail, his back against the slender post, with a battered paperback in his hand. He nodded at me with a clenched jaw. His face looked too young for the grim, thoughtful line of his mouth. Since he didn’t say hello, neither did I. I seated myself on one of the two wooden chairs, leaving the other one for Sarah. She looked at both of us and said, “Nathan, my niece, Jennifer Newsom. Jennifer, my friend and student, Nathan Moore.”

“Hi,” I murmured. He only nodded again. The silence was not uncomfortable: It was agonizing. I broke it with a halting apology. “I’m sorry … about yesterday. I didn’t know you lived here.”

His eyes scrunched in thought and a muscle in his cheek flexed. “No problem. Sorry I scared you,” he offered me a quick glance before returning his eyes to the ground.

“Okay, good.” Sarah said matter-of-factly. Then she turned just to Nathan and asked him about his day, and gave a quick sketch of our day’s activities.

At last he addressed me again, “Did you like the island?” There existed in his voice an intangible challenge.

“Of course,” I answered, my own tone just as defensive and clipped as his. The scene of the island’s tiny white village rose in my mind, the flowers laid in straight, blooming lines. “Not quite as much as Smithport, but all the same, it was beautiful.”

His head jerked, “Why not as much?” This time he allowed his wide, narrow eyes to meet mine and I stared a moment before answering. His face was a study in contradictions: The vulnerable, intelligent eyes, the slightly flaring nose, the ruddy cheeks, his firm jaw, the feathery, long eyelashes and the crooked scar. He seemed pieced together by an indecisive creator who didn’t know exactly what he was making. But for all that being said, the result was not unpleasant to look at.

“I don’t know. It’s a little pretty-picture for me. If it were real it would be like a Utopia, but it feels a bit contrived…” Then, knowing it would tickle their fierce Maine pride I added casually, “too many tourists.”

Nathan’s lips pulled up at one corner, stretching his scar.

“I told you she’d be a Smither,” Sarah said almost smugly. Nathan lifted one shoulder and smirked, but didn’t argue. “So I’ll go first tonight,” Sarah said, and then turned and spoke only to me, “We tend to trade, but there’s no real rule or schedule.” She raised the laminated bookmark, its yarn tassel hanging limply against her fingers, “It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story. A Native American saying,” she finished.

I waited a moment before asking, “Is that all?”

“Yep,” Sarah said with a smile.

It seemed too easy.

“Why did you pick that one tonight?” Nathan asked, rubbing one eyebrow.

“Because this bookmark was stuck in one of the books I picked up and it seemed right for tonight. I think it fits. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stories. My own, Claire’s, and now Jennifer’s.” She gave me a meaningful look and I knew she hadn’t forgotten her promise. “So, do you two think it’s true?”

“I can’t find an argument,” Nathan said. “Not without getting metaphysical.”

“Makes sense to me,” I agreed.

“A rare consensus,” Sarah teased. “I guess we’ll enjoy it while we can. Okay, then. Nathan, you’re up. And thanks for sparing us the metaphysics.”

He gave her a fleeting, reluctant look. “I have to read the entire poem tonight or the last stanza won’t make sense.” I heard Nathan’s words, but I didn’t notice what he said. My attention focused on something I hadn’t noticed before in his short answers.

“Is that your accent?” I asked in astonishment.

His eyes widened in annoyance as he waited for me to answer my own question.

Sarah laughed and pointed to Nathan. “She’s not used to it. She doesn’t know it but she’s made me feel very normal for the last two days.”

I asked her what she meant and she told me that it had been nice to have someone around who sounded like her for a change. “But you grew up here,” I protested. “Why don’t you sound the same?”

“I grew up here with my mother from New York. Private schools in New York. She always said that we could eat like Smithers, live like Smithers, fish like Smithers, even smell like Smithers, but no daughters of hers would talk like Smithers.” Sarah grinned brilliantly. “She taught us to speak. And she untaught what we learned from the locals.”

“Smell like Smithers?” Nathan scoffed.

“My father had the most incredible Maine accent, rich and musical and a symphony for the ears. I could listen to him forever,” her wistful words faded as she spoke.

“So your mother let him talk like a Smither?” I asked.

Sarah huffed, “She loved his voice like I did. Men can get away with it. But she’s right, it’s not very elegant on a woman. It is a voice that belongs to the watermen.”

Nathan asked if he could continue, his eyes sparking with amusement at our conversation. Sarah quieted and instead of giving him her attention she closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair, lifting the front two legs off the floorboards.

“You’ll crack your head open,” Nathan intoned dully.

Instead of cracking her head, she just cracked one eye. “You’re off duty,” she said. “Save it for the little girls.”

Nathan sighed and opened his book. I looked between the two, feeling momentarily invisible. Their half sentences, cryptic references, meant nothing to me, but the relationship fascinated me. Not quite mother and son, but close. She seemed almost like an
aunt
. I stared at Nathan, resenting the decades he had her all to himself. I put aside my indignation when he began reading Ozymandias by Percy Shelly, his voice sounding normal until his accent snuck out, peeking unexpectedly behind syllables, surprising me, pleasing me. I understood how Sarah listened to her father for hours. Something about a rugged voice reciting an old British poem made a thrilling mix. Like his face. He came to the last stanza and paused, interrupting his lines. “So this stanza is the one I like best.”

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair?’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

“He wrote it about a monument built for a Pharaoh. A millennia later, there is nothing left of the man but a broken statue half buried in the sand. I liked the image.”

I imagined the sands blowing against the bleak scene of the lost Egyptian empire before my mind traveled to the vast, unfathomable waters of the ocean behind us. Both seemed wildly desolate to me.