The State We're In: Maine Stories (17 page)

My GPS should get me there. Until then, T. Anticipating with great pleasure.

Terry—I won’t send this letter, though sometimes it’s good to write something and tear it up, since the simplest things one wants to write just dissipate into words that sound good and have a logical configuration on the page, yet don’t really communicate what I want to say. Do you already know that Capote visited us, and are you expecting his essence might be indelible, even if—assuming you’re like other writers and photographers I know—you have no mystical beliefs? He peed in the toilet upstairs across from what will be the new pedestal sink. He may have done more than pee—that might be why he went upstairs, rather than using the downstairs half bath. Would it be amusing if I dithered aloud about this to you, a bit nervously, wanting to ingratiate myself, as the old do with the young? Or should I make an attempt to take your subject seriously and not conduct myself for my amusement? We must not talk of toilets at all, but of how good the fish chowder is, or how lovely the lobster salad (which I’ll probably not order, since the days of lavish expense accounts are over). Chances are we’ll never meet again but instead have some little flutter of follow-up on some minor point, and at Christmas I suppose you could astonish me by sending an unintentionally bizarre floral display with glittery pinecones protruding like enormous hatpins. My resentment of the young drips into everything I say, I fear—I, too, am a leaking sink. What it costs to install a sink nowadays! But I’ll save that for hectoring the repairman. No one thinks Capote was a major talent any longer. Now everyone is a prodigy. No one even knows the names of the most serious contemporary writers unless they’re local “celebs” who come out to eat organic cheese on hand-hewn toothpicks to benefit some do-good organization. I was once in a car when the GPS registered “CR” as CRESCENT, rather than CIRCLE. It turned out there was a CRESCENT (in New York State!) in some built-yesterday housing development, and there we were, the driver and me, at the wrong address for the B and B at nearly midnight. It’s good you’re Anticipating with great pleasure, because like all old people I fear the future (An’ forward, tho’ I canna see, I guess an’ fear). The sound you hear is paper ripping, Terry of the genteel manners.

Adver had not come to install the new sink, just as she’d suspected he wouldn’t. He had no phone. He was probably hungover. He often had the “flu.” He would show up eventually, and she’d begun to enjoy brushing her teeth in the shower, so what did it matter? Better that the house be quiet for their conversation.

Across the street she saw the bushes, slightly greener than the day before. This intermediate stage was not her favorite. In certain light, she liked to photograph the tangled branches with the iPad, whose camera was the only one she had anymore. All of Demeter’s things had been donated to the Maine College of Art, where he’d guest-lectured the last few years of his life. Eight days from diagnosis to death. No memorial service, as he’d requested. Instead, she’d bought half a dozen kites and given them to the front desk clerk, who handed them out to children staying at the Stage Neck Inn—the hotel right above the beach. She’d sat in the bar having a glass of wine with her friend Barb Gillicut, still in shock the weekend after Dem’s death, watching the surprised children lean like cats stretching their paws on the thighs of their fathers, who prepared the kites to be sailed. Eventually a sumo wrestler flapped by with
Silence of the Lambs
teeth and contorted mightily in the wind before crashing to the sand. Unlike balloons, no kites simply drifted away as she watched, sharing a second glass of wine with Barb, aware that the bartender had her eye on them and was drying glasses like a Gypsy having a manic fit over a crystal ball, simultaneously polishing and trying to appear disinterested.

Dem was long dead. Dead for years and years. She herself was seventy-four. If he’d lived, he would have been eighty-eight. The Stage Neck now employed a female bartender, who therefore undoubtedly worried less about the mental state of other women. She picked up a crumpled bag in the road. Any car turning onto the street might be Terry in his rental car, which might be either white or red, as rental cars tended to be. All other cars were silver.

How had she ended up here? She was a Virginia girl. Virginia, where spring came a month and a half earlier than it did in southern Maine. In Virginia the problem was bees. In Maine, blackflies and mosquitoes. Well—the problem with bees now was that they were dying. It was a very bad situation. One Dem would have worried about incessantly, pointing out every terrible thing that would arise due to the death of the bees. He would have made photographs of dead bees, and eventually—when the moon no longer appeared at night, or something equally dire—his photographs would be shown at MoMA. Eventually one would be sold at auction in New York City and a framed print of a dead bee would be hung above the marble-topped table of a discerning, socially correct, environmentally anxious couple in Park Slope, so they’d have an expensive little altar of sadness, the photograph taking the place of Christ on the cross, the table an old-fashioned, humble altar that sometimes might feature the perfect still life of our times (of course minus flowers or fruit): a key ring and a Binky and a bottle of Klonopin and an unopened Dasani water.

Red. An unpleasant maroon shade, like menstrual blood. Better, though, than a screaming fire-engine red. So many things going on in the car: a wave; a hand flipping the sun visor back into place; the side window rolling down, then rising again, finally all the way down to allow for an awkward first handshake. Terry wore rectangular glasses with heavy black frames that magnified his eyes and called attention to his facial asymmetry, one eye larger than the other. Brown eyes. Slightly thinning brown hair. Nervous hands: smoothing his hair, dropping the keys, snatching them up again, a sort of stammering dance in the driveway as he wondered aloud about locking the car. He reached back in for his notebook and cell phone, which he slid into the pocket of his sports coat.

She preceded him up the walkway, not wide enough for two at a time (one of Dem’s complaints). She imagined that Terry, behind her, was sneaking a last, quick look at the phone. A robin hopped across the lawn. There was a nest in the climbing rose.

“I confess, I’ve already been to Dockside,” he said. “This is no way for us to begin, but I’ve just been through the most awful couple of days, and to be honest, my goddaughter’s with me. At Dockside. I found out when I called for a lunch reservation that they rent rooms. She won’t join us for lunch, of course, but she’s there because . . . well, because her mother is acting far worse than Hannah, she has a frightful temper when things don’t go her way. I do apologize for bursting out with what’s troubling me, but it’s left me quite disoriented, really.”

She poured him a glass of Perrier. She poured one for herself. He didn’t seem in any shape to question about ice or no ice, so she held out the glass. “What’s happened?” she said. She’d feared he’d be some somber academician, but she suddenly realized that there was no reason to assume he taught. He was certainly voluble. Nothing to worry about there. A man Dem would have taken to instantly. When he was alive, she resisted his spontaneously formed likes and dislikes. Now that he was dead, she channeled his opinions.

“Leigh’s inability to have any empathy whatsoever is hardly helpful in a bad situation. I’m so sorry. Of course you don’t even know these people . . .”

Water wet his chin, he’d taken such a big gulp. He sat at the kitchen table without asking if he might. Which was fine. It was a little chilly on the back porch. There was a space heater, but she suddenly felt embarrassed that he might know she sat on the porch with a heater aimed at her. She pulled out a chair and sat across from him. She said, “I must admit, you’ve got me very interested.”

“She hasn’t graduated, is the thing. What I don’t understand is that this failure to graduate came as no surprise to her, but why she let her mother and father arrange a celebration and book two rooms—Rand came from San Francisco with his girlfriend. Why Hannah didn’t say something beforehand, I don’t understand, though now she tells me they’re intimidating. That her father roars at her. That was her exact word. Not the stereotype of someone who lives in San Francisco, is it? I understand that Leigh can be quite bullish. It’s a crisis of some sort, that’s obvious, and at the college there was absolutely no one to see about it. The dean couldn’t meet with them at all yesterday because of her responsibilities at graduation. What we were all expected to do, other than sitting around the motel, I can’t imagine. There was only one blessed time-out when everyone agreed not to discuss it and we had gelato. It was over in twenty minutes, then the accusations started again and the tears. Hannah seemed to have calmed down by the time she and I left. There’s a boyfriend who’s coming for her tonight, on the bus from Boston. He’s premed. I’m awfully sorry to be dumping all this in your lap. I really must shut up.”

“Not on my account. I don’t get many visitors, let alone people who are caught up in a great drama. All I understand so far, though, is that for some reason this young woman didn’t graduate.”

“She didn’t take any of her final exams! You’d think they’d get in touch with her, see if there was some reason for it. Maybe they did try to contact her. I don’t know. She called this Boston fellow her fiancé and Leigh acted like she’d said ‘my shaman’ or something. What if he is? Her fiancé, I mean. Not that I have the slightest idea what that would have to do with her not finishing her work.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“I don’t know his name. I’ve never met anyone she’s dated. She keeps that information top secret. You try to listen, to let them talk about what they’re inclined to talk about, isn’t that right? What do I know? I’m not a father.”

“I’m not a mother, so I’m not the best person to give advice.”

“I don’t quite know how to handle it. Not that I know what ‘it’ is, if you’ll excuse me for sounding like Bill Clinton. Leigh went absolutely berserk, pointing her finger at me, saying, ‘You’re so sympathetic, you figure this out, you support her so I’m not working two jobs.’ She was exaggerating there. She has one part-time job, and I know for a fact that Rand gave her a very nice financial settlement. If she thinks of her volunteer work as a job, I suppose that’s fair enough, but money’s not a problem. Actually, she may have been a bit unnerved from the moment she met Rand’s girlfriend, who plays with the San Francisco symphony. These aren’t inherently strange people, a musician and a medical student. I do agree with Hannah that in this circumstance, Leigh’s temper was quite terrible.”

“The girlfriend’s young?”

“She’s thirtysomething. Leigh and I are both forty-eight. We met when I had my first job. We were guides in Colonial Williamsburg.”

“Really? I grew up in Charlottesville.”

“Ah, that’s also a beautiful place. We drove there a few times for Leigh to see a shrink. She got pregnant by the candlemaker, during the time she was in love with the blacksmith. She couldn’t decide what to do. I must say, back then when she leaned on me it was much easier to take than her finger pointed in my face like a witch, as though I shared any responsibility for this.”

“So Hannah is the child of Leigh and a candlemaker?”

“No, that happened five years before she had Hannah. She had an abortion.”

“I see. But her relationship with her daughter was good, you thought? Why do you think Hannah did what she did?”

“I’m not saying this to dodge the question, but I think I just don’t understand women. I don’t mean to disparage women. There’s something I don’t get. Me. That I, personally, don’t get.”

“But how can you understand them if they won’t discuss the situation? The Perrier’s on the top shelf, if you’d like more.”

“Let’s go to Dockside! I’m terribly sorry to have brought my problems to you. I’m entirely sure she’s in her room, trying to figure things out, for all I know she’s called her mother and apologized and everything’s fine. I felt like Humbert Humbert checking in with her. The woman at the desk gave us such a skeptical look, even though I said two bedrooms and explained that she was my goddaughter. Hannah’s eyes were red and almost swollen shut at that point, which the woman no doubt noticed. We both had to show our driver’s licenses. I guess that’s become routine. When you check in anywhere.”

“I’ve heard that.”

“Rand flew back home from Bangor. He’s a surgeon. There was no way to stay. And the girlfriend couldn’t miss another rehearsal. It was the first time she’d met Hannah, so what use could she be?”

“Are you using vacation time from your own job to make this trip, Terry? Which is a not very subtle way of asking what you do, I guess.”

“What I do? I’m a writer, like you. I published a book in England about Emily Dickinson’s neighbors. An expansion of my thesis. I majored in psychology at Brown, with a minor in American studies.”

“Ah. Understanding psychology would be a prerequisite for writing about Mr. Capote, I should think.”

“I’m not so much writing about him as about people who have negative effects on other people’s lives. People are always writing about their mentors and thanking everyone they’ve ever met on the acknowledgments page. Everybody has wonderful, supportive, devoted people in their lives. All their pets are perfect. I think there needs to be another kind of book, a more realistic book, out there.”

“I see. So how does Truman Capote fit into this?”

“Being responsible for Ann Woodward’s suicide, for example. The woman who pretended she thought her husband was a burglar and shot him?”

“And now Pistorius.
Plus ça change
. But let me understand: you’re writing a book about people who have adversely affected other people.”

“I suppose that’s it, in a nutshell. Other famous people, of course. America loves celebrity.”

“Any small anecdote I might have about Capote isn’t likely to justify your investment of time.”