hand.
âThanks for everything,â she says.
âYou too.â
âThe room. Good talks. Whatever.â
âWhatever,â he says, smiling. Then he kisses her lips and is gone.
In early afternoon she phones the Harbor Schooner and tells Charlie, the manager, that she is still sick and canât make it that night but will try tomorrow. She eats a sandwich of ham and cheese, makes a pitcher of orange juice, and brings it upstairs. She reaches the bed weak and short of breath. Through the long hot afternoon she lies uncovered on the bed, asleep, awake, asleep, waking always to the sound of motorboats, the voices of many children, and talk and shouts and laughter of men and women. When the sun has moved to the foot of the bed and the room is darkening, she smells charcoal smoke. She turns on the lamp and lies awake listening to the beginning of silence: the boats are out of the water, most of them on trailers by now; she hears cars leaving, and on the stretch of beach below her windows, families gather, their voices rising with the smells of burning charcoal and cooking meat. Tomorrow she will wake to quiet that will last until May.
She closes her eyes and imagines the frozen lake, evergreens, the silent snow. After school and on weekends boys will clean the ice with snow shovels and play hockey; she will hear only burning logs in the fireplace, will watch them from the living room, darting without sound into and around one another. She will have a Christmas tree, will eat dinner at her parentsâ, but on Christmas Eve she could have them and Margaret here for dinner before midnight Mass. She will live hereâshe counts by raising thumb and fingers from a closed fistâeight months. Or seven, so she can be out before Steve comes back. Out where? She shuts her eyes tighter, frowning, but no street, no town appears. In the Merrimack Valley she likes Newburyport but not as much since she started working there, and less since Ray moved there. Amesbury and Merrimac are too small, Lawrence is mills and factories, and too many grocery stores and restaurants with Spanish names, and Haverhill: Jesus, Haverhill: some people knew how to live there, her parents did, Haverhill for her father was the police department and their house in the city limits but in the country as well, with the garden her mother and father planted each spring: tomatoes, beans, squash, radishes, beets; and woods beyond the garden, not forest or anything, but enough to walk in for a while before you came to farmland; and her father ice-fished, and fished streams and lakes in spring, the ocean in summer. Everyone joked about living in Haverhill, or almost everyone: the skyline of McDonaldâs arch and old factories and the one new building on the corner of Main Street and the river, an old folksâ home and office building that looked like a gigantic cinder block. But it wasnât that. The Back Bay of Boston was pretty, and the North End was interesting with all those narrow streets and cluttered apartments of Italians, but Jesus, Boston was dirtier than Haverhill and on a grey winter day no city looked good. It was that nothing happened in Haverhill, and she had never lived outside its limits till now, and to go back in spring was going downhill backward. A place would come. She would spend the fall and winter here, and by then she would know where to go.
She looks at the walls, the chest with her purse and cassette player on its top, the closed door of the closet; she will keep this room so sheâll have the lake (and it occurs to her that this must have been Steveâs, and he gave it up), and sheâll hang curtains. She will leave his room, or the back room, alone; will store in it whatever she doesnât want downstairs, that chair with the flowered cover he always sat in, and its hassock, the coffee table with cigarette burns like Timmyâs bar; she will paint the peeling cream walls in the kitchen. For the
âThanks for everything,â she says.
âYou too.â
âThe room. Good talks. Whatever.â
âWhatever,â he says, smiling. Then he kisses her lips and is gone.
In early afternoon she phones the Harbor Schooner and tells Charlie, the manager, that she is still sick and canât make it that night but will try tomorrow. She eats a sandwich of ham and cheese, makes a pitcher of orange juice, and brings it upstairs. She reaches the bed weak and short of breath. Through the long hot afternoon she lies uncovered on the bed, asleep, awake, asleep, waking always to the sound of motorboats, the voices of many children, and talk and shouts and laughter of men and women. When the sun has moved to the foot of the bed and the room is darkening, she smells charcoal smoke. She turns on the lamp and lies awake listening to the beginning of silence: the boats are out of the water, most of them on trailers by now; she hears cars leaving, and on the stretch of beach below her windows, families gather, their voices rising with the smells of burning charcoal and cooking meat. Tomorrow she will wake to quiet that will last until May.
She closes her eyes and imagines the frozen lake, evergreens, the silent snow. After school and on weekends boys will clean the ice with snow shovels and play hockey; she will hear only burning logs in the fireplace, will watch them from the living room, darting without sound into and around one another. She will have a Christmas tree, will eat dinner at her parentsâ, but on Christmas Eve she could have them and Margaret here for dinner before midnight Mass. She will live hereâshe counts by raising thumb and fingers from a closed fistâeight months. Or seven, so she can be out before Steve comes back. Out where? She shuts her eyes tighter, frowning, but no street, no town appears. In the Merrimack Valley she likes Newburyport but not as much since she started working there, and less since Ray moved there. Amesbury and Merrimac are too small, Lawrence is mills and factories, and too many grocery stores and restaurants with Spanish names, and Haverhill: Jesus, Haverhill: some people knew how to live there, her parents did, Haverhill for her father was the police department and their house in the city limits but in the country as well, with the garden her mother and father planted each spring: tomatoes, beans, squash, radishes, beets; and woods beyond the garden, not forest or anything, but enough to walk in for a while before you came to farmland; and her father ice-fished, and fished streams and lakes in spring, the ocean in summer. Everyone joked about living in Haverhill, or almost everyone: the skyline of McDonaldâs arch and old factories and the one new building on the corner of Main Street and the river, an old folksâ home and office building that looked like a gigantic cinder block. But it wasnât that. The Back Bay of Boston was pretty, and the North End was interesting with all those narrow streets and cluttered apartments of Italians, but Jesus, Boston was dirtier than Haverhill and on a grey winter day no city looked good. It was that nothing happened in Haverhill, and she had never lived outside its limits till now, and to go back in spring was going downhill backward. A place would come. She would spend the fall and winter here, and by then she would know where to go.
She looks at the walls, the chest with her purse and cassette player on its top, the closed door of the closet; she will keep this room so sheâll have the lake (and it occurs to her that this must have been Steveâs, and he gave it up), and sheâll hang curtains. She will leave his room, or the back room, alone; will store in it whatever she doesnât want downstairs, that chair with the flowered cover he always sat in, and its hassock, the coffee table with cigarette burns like Timmyâs bar; she will paint the peeling cream walls in the kitchen. For the
Similar Books
