The Way Life Should Be (10 page)

“By the way, where’s your dog?”

His face is blank. Then he twitches slightly, as if jolted by memory. “Aah—he, actually, he ran away.”

“‘She,’ you mean.”

“What?”

“‘Sam-short-for-Samantha’?”

“Right,” he says. “She—you know, she acted—like a guy. Roughhousing and all that.” He crouches and moves his hand as if he’s playing with a big rambunctious dog. Then he stands up straight and sighs. “I miss her.”

“Gosh. I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right. Let’s just not talk about her again, okay? It’s kind of a sore subject.”

“I’m sure it is.”

He knows I don’t believe him, and clearly wants to close this topic as soon as possible. “Hey,” he says, clapping his hands together. “How much have you seen of Mount Desert?”

I’m willing to switch gears—for now, at least. What’s my alternative? “Not much. Am I really on an island?”

“A-yuh,” he says in an exaggerated Maine accent. “Come on. Let’s go for a ride. I’ll show you around.”

The road rings the interior
of Mount Desert, dipping in and out of small villages with scenic harbors, glimpses of the sea. I am riding shotgun in Rich’s truck, high above the ground, my finger tracing our route on a free map he picked up for me in the convenience store. On the map, Acadia National Park spreads out from the middle of the island, like an ink stain. Rich tells me about how it was built, how Franklin Roosevelt established a jobs program for World War I veterans and how the vets spent fifteen years cutting and hauling granite and building bridges to carve a park out of these mountains and valleys—carriage roads, bicycle paths, hiking trails. The Rockefellers donated eleven thousand acres, the Vanderbilts gave money, and now this is one of the most scenic national parks in the country. The population of the island swells from fifteen thousand to over a million in the summer. Cadillac Mountain, its heathered purple face visible for miles, is, for many months of the year, the first place in North America to see the sun rise; tourists come up at three thirty or four in the morning, huddled in blankets, to wait it out.

I guess if you live in a place like this you can’t help but turn into a tour guide. Still, Rich’s enthusiasm for the place catches me off guard.

“You love it here, don’t you?” I ask, and he gives me a side-long glance; he thinks I’m making fun of him. But after a pause he says, “I think it’s the most beautiful place on earth.”

“All year round?”

“Winter’s tough,” he says. “But we find things to do.”

“Like what?”

He puts on the blinker and turns left into a park entrance. Traffic was sparse before, on the main road, but this road is deserted. Rich points at the granite blocks lining the asphalt, bumpers to keep cars from pitching off the sides as the road winds up into the hills. Touching the windshield with his finger, he identifies various trails whittled into the hillside: Beehive, Great Head, Otter Cliffs. “Climbing can be addictive,” he says. “All year long, even in the snow, you see people up there. They look like ants.”

We’re quiet for a moment.

“We go to bars and play Scrabble,” he says abruptly. “We have sex. Get high. Go to movies, go to bars. Some people get depressed, some go to Florida.”

“What about you?”

“I work on my boat,” he says. “Hang out with my friends.”

“Go online to meet girls.”

He looks at me out of the corner of his eye, grins, shrugs. “Go online to meet girls,” he says, nodding.

We are winding slowly up the mountain now. I look up at the rock face pocked with trees and the road stretching ahead. As we get higher the trees fall away, every view a postcard.

Rich pulls off the road into a scenic overlook. We sit in silence in the warm, humming truck, gazing out at the black ocean far below, the spiky coastline. Up here on Cadillac the other mountains look like hills. In the distance you can see strings of small islands, white boats like faraway seagulls, a strip of bleached sand. It’s strange that I’m here, so far from what I know. I glance at Rich, as indecipherable to me as everything else. But here he is, on this journey with me, waiting for the moment to unfold.

CHAPTER 10

Any coffee shop that plays “Hey Jude” on a cold, wet Thursday
morning can’t be all bad. It’s my third day on the island, and I have just stumbled on this place. It’s called the Daily Grind, and it’s in Spruce Harbor on Eider Street, between the bank and the market. I’ve driven through this little village several times; with its small shops, brick sidewalks, and one-room cedar-shingled library, it seems to be neither a tourist town nor an enclave of the wealthy, just a place where people live and work.

Driving down Main Street in search of coffee—I can’t take Rich’s watery gas-station blend any longer—I spy the placard out of the corner of my eye, down a side street. Before I park I check to make sure the place is open. I figure there is probably a fifty-fifty chance. Though it is still officially leaf season—that is, not yet November—the fair-weather stores that cater to vacationers have mostly closed up for the year. The promise implicit in its name—the Daily Grind—gives me hope. That means every day, right, not just sunny summer ones? As I get closer I am rewarded: Not only is it open, but a hand-lettered sign in the window promises “All day, every day.”

Rain is coming down as if through a sieve. Water rushes to the gutters; the sidewalks are mined with puddles, awnings pregnant and sagging. Among the many things I didn’t bring, an
umbrella would be nice today. I dash through the front door and stand in the foyer for a moment, stamping the water from my feet. Once inside, the smell of real coffee, brewed from freshly ground beans, makes me swoon. I stagger to the counter—a drowning person toward a life raft, a thirsty person in the desert toward water…a New Yorker in Maine toward Colombian blend.

“Oh my God, can you really make me a latte?” I ask.

The guy behind the counter laughs. “You are officially the last tourist of the season,” he says in an Australian accent.

“I’m amazed you’re open!”

“This island doesn’t melt into the sea when you go home, you know,” he says. “Locals need caffeine as much as you people.”

“‘You people’ are not my people,” I protest.

“That’s what you all say.” He presses down the lever on the espresso machine and a long, slow hiss of steam escapes. After pouring hot milk into a wide white cup and spooning foam on top, he hands the mug to me.

“Thank you.” I breathe, taking a sip. “Umm. Sooo good.”

“Glad you approve.”

“You know, you don’t exactly sound like a local yourself.”

“What on earth do you mean?” he says, ramping up the accent.
Whut on uth d’ye main?

I roll my eyes and take another sip.

“Aren’t we all just travelers in this journey we call life, anyway?” he says.

“That’s philosophical for this hour of the morning.”

He cranes around and looks at the clock over his head: 12:21. “It’s afternoon. You do need that coffee.”

As he talks he wipes down the counter, taps coffee filters into the sink, arranges tea packets in their slots. He’s kind of short—maybe five eight—and ruddy, with reddish brown hair.
He appears to be my age or a little younger. Hard to tell with Australian men. Whatever their age, they’re somehow both slightly leathery and perpetually youthful.

It is warm enough in here, but it isn’t cozy. The walls are an icy yellow and the floor is checkered with black-and-white linoleum tiles. The lighting is purplish, fluorescent. The chairs are lightweight metal, with perforated seats and open wire backs; the Formica countertop is cluttered with tea dispensers and Save the Children boxes. Except for three Sprites on the bottom shelf and some grocery-store bagels puckered with slice marks, the deli case is empty. A seemingly arbitrary collection of travel-agency posters, faded by the sun, covers the walls.

The overall effect is of a waiting room in a mental hospital.

And I was wrong about the music. The Beatles were a chance selection. A radio station from Bangor is broadcasting greatest hits from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and right now Sheena Easton is singing about how her baby takes the morning train, and takes another home again. To find her waiting for him.

I fish sections of newspaper out of a communal basket and assemble a Frankensteinian collection of parts from the
Bangor Daily News
,
Bar Harbor Times,
and the
Islander,
with classifieds from the
Ellsworth American.
Over the next half hour, I learn a lot about two sordid local crimes (unrelated but possibly part of a disturbing trend) and stumble on a recipe for pumpkin muffins involving orange rind. Pumpkin muffins—I sure could use one right about now.

A few people come in and out, announced by cold blasts of air, leaving sodden footprints in their wake. They make small talk with the Australian, whose name, I learn, is Flynn.

“Like Erroll,” he tells me during a lull. “My grandma was a huge fan. He was Australian, you know.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah. It’s quite a popular name over there. Even though the dickhead told people he was Irish. And your name is—?”

“Angela.”

“Nice to meet you, Angie.” He disappears behind a door and comes out with a broom.

“Actually, it’s—” I start to correct him, but he has disappeared behind a door.

A moment later he emerges with a broom. “What?”

“Oh, nothing.” I watch him sweep the floor for a few minutes. “This is quite a popular place.”

“Only place.”

“Really?”

“Almost.” He sweeps a pile of dirt into a dustpan with a long handle, then pours the dirt into a half-full garbage bag. “You want a refill?”

My latte is long gone. “Actually, I’m kind of hungry. Do you have anything to eat?”

“Bagels,” he says, putting away the broom.

“Are they fresh?”

“Depends on what you mean by fresh. I call them Re-Fresh.”

“Re-Fresh. You mean thawed?”

“That’s another way to say it.”

“Oh. No thanks,” I say.

“I can toast one. You won’t know the difference.” He opens the dishwasher.

“I’m from New York. I’ll know the difference.”

“New York, huh,” he says. “Really New York, or New York by way of somewhere else?”

“That’s a funny question.”

He raises his eyebrows and smiles, wiping out a glass. “I don’t think you’re really from New York.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t have the vibe.” He places the glass on a shelf behind him and takes another out of the dishwasher. “Am I right?”

“No.”

“You’re a native New Yorker?”

“Well, I grew up just outside the city.”

“Where? New Jersey?”

“Yeah.”

“Aah. Thought so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I just think it’s funny how people from New Jersey always say they’re from New York.”

“That is not true,” I say indignantly. “I’ve lived in New York for more than ten years. My entire adult life.”

“Hmm,” he says.

“What?”

“I’m just trying to calculate how old you are. Either twenty-eight or thirty-one, I guess, depending on how you define adulthood. Voting age or drinking age?”

“One of those,” I say. “Sort of. So where do you say you’re from?”

“Born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, mate, and proud of it.” He shuts the dishwasher with his foot and straightens the line of spot-free glasses on the shelf above his head.

“Just not quite proud enough to stay there,” I say. I don’t know why I’m scrapping with him like this. Rich has been so weirdly uncommunicative that I’m starved for conversation; I’ll do anything to keep it going.

“Touché. Actually, I…fell in love with someone, if you really want to know. He was a foreign-exchange student at university in Melbourne, and I tended bar at a place he liked to go downtown.”

Ah, he. Good to know. “So how did you end up here?”

Except for us, the place is empty. Flynn throws a dish towel across his shoulder and comes over to my table with a pot of coffee. He pours coffee into my empty cup, then swoops into the chair across from me. “I used to joke that I’d follow him anywhere, and that’s exactly what I did. I ended up here, on an island on the other side of the world.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s here. Teaches high school over in Bar Harbor. We’re just not together anymore.”

“Oh, that’s sad,” I say. “Following someone around the world sounds like true love to me.”

He shrugs. “True love is an elusive beast.”

“That’s poetic.”

“Hard-earned wisdom often is, you know.” He stretches, then pulls away from the chair back and turns around to look at it. “These chairs are rough as hell. Whose idea were they?”

“I don’t know—yours?”

“I got them on the cheap from a dreary French restaurant in Ellsworth that was going out of business,” he says.

“Well, maybe now we know why,” I say.

The door opens with a faint tinkle,
and a woman and young boy come in. The woman is small-boned and attractive; the boy looks just like her. They both have large brown eyes and dark curly hair.

“Afternoon, Flynn,” the woman says.

“Hey, Rebecca. Hey, Josh. What’s shakin’?”

Josh ducks behind the woman’s back, and Flynn leans forward over the counter, pretending to try to get a glimpse. “Darn. Too quick for me,” he says.

Josh giggles, and Rebecca pulls him out from behind her. “Be polite to Flynn,” she says. “He makes Mommy’s coffee.”

“Ah, no, not polite!” Flynn says. “Polite is the last thing we need in this place. I think you should be really rude.” He sticks out his tongue at Josh and bugs his eyes.

Josh titters again, his hand over his mouth, then sticks his tongue out at Flynn and darts behind his mother.

“Great, Flynn. Encourage him.”

“Aw, he’s a good kid,” Flynn says.
Keed.
“So what can I get you today?”

“Um—I’ll have a double tall skim cappuccino with extra foam. Oh, and a shot of vanilla. Thanks.”