grain pouring from a sack, fast and haphazard, with her heavy bike following her body, pinning her leg.
Shit, she thinks. Iâm going to throw up.
Now she knows the sound of an audienceâs horror, and it is different than rapt joy and amazement. And so sheâs left alone for the moment, watching clouds move beyond the windowpane, and realizes that sheâs afraid. Fear, in the past, has been somethingshe can turn off, but she canât find the energy today to move it aside.
Itâs only when sheâs afraid that she second-guesses her decisions, and itâs only when she second-guesses her decisions that she thinks of her daughter, Beverly, who lives in Vermont with Hazelâs mother.
Am I a terrible person for giving her up?
âIâm cold,â she says, but her face is bandaged and she can only moan. She tries to rub her arms, but maybe one of them is broken, and then sheâs out again, riding a morphine high into nothingness.
Out of that nothingness emerges the candy-striped lighthouse at West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine, where she was born, the easternmost point in the United States, a beautiful, lonely, and snow-drenched place where her father dutifully tended the light to keep schooners from crashing into the jagged rocks, hidden by fog banks and dark nights.
She can still hear the boom of the fog cannon, still smell lard oil and kerosene on her fatherâs hands. Many of their belongingsâmirrors, clocks, the silver tea setâtook on a crusty salinity. She frequently cut her feet on the barnacled rocks, swam out into swirling currents because she was bored.
She had loved her parents but not the long stretches of loneliness; days in the keeperâs cottage were too quiet, too monotonous, and she ran away at fifteen to join the Johnny Jones Exposition.
She thinks of those first weeks, the vigor of the itinerant carnival life, how seductive the sounds and smells were after years of looking out over the Bay of Fundy. There was gregarious music and conversation, the burnt sugar smell of cotton candy, and the savory smell of meat roasting. God, the only live music she heardthe first years of her life was the calls of loons, the tinkling of sailboats, the whinnies of horses, the rhythm of waves. Sheâd craved volume, intensity, action, and Johnny had put her in a high-dive act, which, a few dives in, had also landed her in this very hospital, when she struck her head and split her scalp down to the bone. Thatâs when she took to the motorcycle.
âWho recovers on a motorcycle?â her mother had asked, hysterical.
She never wore a helmet, even when she could feel the wind rushing over the bald spot on her head where the stitches were. You couldnât let fear in, she figured, and a helmet was one way of admitting the anticipation of being hurt, of breaking. A helmet acknowledged your vulnerability.
There is coughing nearby, the sound of another gurneyâs wheels squealing over the waxed wooden floor. Someone down the hall is going on and on about President Hardingâs poker habit.
âStop,â she mumbles, injuries throbbing. âI need quiet.â
She retreats into her memories, and recalls the way a storm looked as it approached the lightkeeperâs house, the way you had to brace yourself for the onslaught of waves and wind because the house was literally on the edge of the island; she could stare down into the opaque sea from her bedroom window, which the wind rattled and flew underneath, chilling her even on summer nights. Her father would tend the light no matter how bad the gales got. Even during hurricanes, he ran up and down the winding wrought-iron stairs. She remembers the sound of his feet, the clunk-clunking, the urgency. Through him she learned what stupid devotion to a task feels like, repetitive motion. She lives it. Around and around the motordrome she lives it, her slender foot on the gas.
A brisk, starched nurse stands
Shit, she thinks. Iâm going to throw up.
Now she knows the sound of an audienceâs horror, and it is different than rapt joy and amazement. And so sheâs left alone for the moment, watching clouds move beyond the windowpane, and realizes that sheâs afraid. Fear, in the past, has been somethingshe can turn off, but she canât find the energy today to move it aside.
Itâs only when sheâs afraid that she second-guesses her decisions, and itâs only when she second-guesses her decisions that she thinks of her daughter, Beverly, who lives in Vermont with Hazelâs mother.
Am I a terrible person for giving her up?
âIâm cold,â she says, but her face is bandaged and she can only moan. She tries to rub her arms, but maybe one of them is broken, and then sheâs out again, riding a morphine high into nothingness.
Out of that nothingness emerges the candy-striped lighthouse at West Quoddy Head in Lubec, Maine, where she was born, the easternmost point in the United States, a beautiful, lonely, and snow-drenched place where her father dutifully tended the light to keep schooners from crashing into the jagged rocks, hidden by fog banks and dark nights.
She can still hear the boom of the fog cannon, still smell lard oil and kerosene on her fatherâs hands. Many of their belongingsâmirrors, clocks, the silver tea setâtook on a crusty salinity. She frequently cut her feet on the barnacled rocks, swam out into swirling currents because she was bored.
She had loved her parents but not the long stretches of loneliness; days in the keeperâs cottage were too quiet, too monotonous, and she ran away at fifteen to join the Johnny Jones Exposition.
She thinks of those first weeks, the vigor of the itinerant carnival life, how seductive the sounds and smells were after years of looking out over the Bay of Fundy. There was gregarious music and conversation, the burnt sugar smell of cotton candy, and the savory smell of meat roasting. God, the only live music she heardthe first years of her life was the calls of loons, the tinkling of sailboats, the whinnies of horses, the rhythm of waves. Sheâd craved volume, intensity, action, and Johnny had put her in a high-dive act, which, a few dives in, had also landed her in this very hospital, when she struck her head and split her scalp down to the bone. Thatâs when she took to the motorcycle.
âWho recovers on a motorcycle?â her mother had asked, hysterical.
She never wore a helmet, even when she could feel the wind rushing over the bald spot on her head where the stitches were. You couldnât let fear in, she figured, and a helmet was one way of admitting the anticipation of being hurt, of breaking. A helmet acknowledged your vulnerability.
There is coughing nearby, the sound of another gurneyâs wheels squealing over the waxed wooden floor. Someone down the hall is going on and on about President Hardingâs poker habit.
âStop,â she mumbles, injuries throbbing. âI need quiet.â
She retreats into her memories, and recalls the way a storm looked as it approached the lightkeeperâs house, the way you had to brace yourself for the onslaught of waves and wind because the house was literally on the edge of the island; she could stare down into the opaque sea from her bedroom window, which the wind rattled and flew underneath, chilling her even on summer nights. Her father would tend the light no matter how bad the gales got. Even during hurricanes, he ran up and down the winding wrought-iron stairs. She remembers the sound of his feet, the clunk-clunking, the urgency. Through him she learned what stupid devotion to a task feels like, repetitive motion. She lives it. Around and around the motordrome she lives it, her slender foot on the gas.
A brisk, starched nurse stands
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