Extra Innings by Doris Grumbach Page B

a lovely pond at the right side of her property, where herons and egrets come regularly, and the wild ocean at the foot of her meadow. Her place is endowed both with the pleasure of the closed circle and with the infinite immensity of the sea.
    I have always loved Moody and, as well, its name. There is a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, ‘The Minister’s Black Veil,’ about Parson Hooper, whose sad history, Hawthorne tells us in a note to the story, is based on ‘another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody of York, Maine.’ Without too much substantiating evidence, I like to think that Moody Beach is named for the clergyman who wore a black veil over his face to cover his guilt ever since his early life when, by accident, he was responsible for the death of a beloved woman. Or so the story suggests.
    Outside of Wells, we go to a yard sale, one of hundreds held all over Maine on weekends. We stop at every one we pass, looking for books and, at the same time, inspecting all the artifacts of Mainers’ lives spread out on rickety card tables and boards and trestles: odd pieces of chipped porcelain, old burned pots and pans, plastic wall decorations and knickknacks of every description, as well as rusty, interesting old tools, kerosene lamps, ships’ parts, and always, used clothes of every size, clean but very worn.
    I find a small, battered Peter Pauper ‘gift’ book copy of La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims . I buy it for fifty cents to read during the four hours we have yet to drive, ignoring Sybil’s reminder that I already own two copies, one in Maine, the other in the apartment in Washington.
    Sybil is driving (as she usually does, because of her profound, but justifiable, distrust of my poor reflexes and absentmindedness), so I read aloud to her from the book:
    â€˜Youth changes its tastes by force of passion; age retains its tastes by force of habit.’
    We debate the truth of this aphorism. I am of the opinion that it is certainly clever but, to my mind, like much else that is clever, in error. I have retained my passionate, youthful tastes throughout my life, regrettably . But my physical capacity to enjoy them diminishes and then leaves me, with age. Rich food and hard drink are no longer easily digestible, music and theater are less available because of the failure of my ears, of becoming ‘hard of hearing,’ as we used to say. Reading is more difficult as my eyesight weakens. My old love of swimming is not enough to overcome my body’s debility. And the joys of sex? They are gone when opportunities and hormones diminish; they join the dubious pleasures of nostalgia and memory that we all must settle for.
    I read the rest of the book to myself while Sybil listens to a country-music station, and I try my best not to hear it. La Rochefoucauld’s maxims are like acupuncture, small stings on the skin, producing a modicum of pain and some subcutaneous pleasure.
    We are home. A light, powdery snow has fallen during our two-day absence, turning the roughness of the meadow into a smooth expanse. We watch the evening news, listening to reports of Anita Hill’s testimony before a Senate committee. We want to find out if her accusation of sexual harassment against a Supreme Court nominee, Clarence Thomas, will stand in the way of his appointment. Who has lied? Why? There are no answers, only a growing sense, for both of us, that Thomas is not a suitable or credible candidate for so high, so important, a position.
    The news moves on to other Senate business. I grow bored and find myself meditating on a frivolous observation: Senator Paul Simon’s earlobes. They seem uncommonly large buttons of flesh that descend from his ears, almost organs in themselves.
    This trivial matter sends me into the bathroom to inspect my own ears, something I cannot remember having done since my girlhood. Ah, there I see: mine too are now changed. Instead of the small, smooth globes