The Way Life Should Be (13 page)

I wash the living room floor with a rag and the orange cleaner, scrub the crusty, charred interior of the oven with Comet. I scour the stained, dirty tub. Lance brings over some storm windows, the few he could find, and tacks them up around the house. Washing the grimy windows is a revelation: light! I find a gluey pile of feathers and bone, a dead bird, apparently, in a corner of the dark bedroom, and for a moment it gives me pause. I imagine the bird flying around like crazy, looking in vain for an exit, flying into the window and knocking itself out. Was it injured to begin with? I’m tempted to interpret this as a metaphor for my situation—confusion, loneliness, despair—but decide instead to view it as a kind of ritual sacrifice, a purification of the space.

I want to rip out the dank bedroom rug but fear that it will turn into a bigger project than I can handle, so I rent a shampoo machine from the hardware store and a lot of the stains actually disappear. I consider this a small victory.

When the house is clean—as clean as I can get it—it looks pitiful, as barren as a jail cell. I head back into Ellsworth to Marden’s, a close-out store Lance told me about, and pick up some throw pillows and a floor lamp that might even pass for stylish (so hard to tell when you’re standing between the overstocked Rubbermaid hampers and the fake diamonds). At the L.L. Bean outlet I find flannel sheets and an area rug, and at Wal-Mart, sheer curtains, a sofa slipcover, and a plastic shower curtain stamped with a map of the world. I am playing house.

“First you place
three medium-size logs like this,” Lance says. The two of us are kneeling in front of the woodstove like supplicants before a statue of the Buddha. The door in its belly is wide open; Lance places the logs inside, carefully balancing each on the other in a triangle. “Then you add these thin sticks. You can
use twigs from outside, or you can buy kindling at the log store, if you want.”

“They sell kindling, too?”

“Of course.” He places the sticks around the logs, then tears off strips from a pile of newspapers he’s brought in for the lesson. Scrunches the paper into balls, wedges the balls around and under the sticks. “That’s pretty much it. You light a match to the newspaper, and in about ten minutes you should be nice and warm.” He hands me the pack of matches. “Start from the back. Obviously.”

“Nothing is obvious to me.”

“This stove is idiotproof. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“You really shouldn’t underestimate my level of idiocy.” I strike a match and put it in the stove, and it goes out.

I try another.

Another.

“I need to get one of those ignition wands. This is tricky,” Lance says kindly.

A little pile of blackened matches grows on the floor.

“I just thought of something,” he says. “If you twist a sheet of newspaper into a baton, you can light that and use it to ignite the rest.”

Following his instructions, I twist and light the baton, then maneuver it toward a ball of newspaper at the back of the stove. Astoundingly, the paper catches fire.

When the sticks begin to burn, he pushes the stove door until it’s open only a crack. “It’ll be toasty in here in a moment.” We crouch in front of the stove, huddled in our coats, waiting. After a few minutes I shrug off my coat. A miracle. I feel like the Cro-Magnon whose sharp-witted cave mate first thought to rub sticks together and create a spark. Fire!

The next day,
and the day after that, I wake up, in my soft flannel sheets on the double bed with the terrible mattress (add to list: new mattress) in the tiny bedroom, with a peculiar sense of peace. I hop out of bed and light a fire, hop back into bed. Skim-milky late-fall light, softened by the sheer curtain, suffuses the room. Read for a while, drift back to sleep. Take a shower in the tin stall.

Hours pass and dissipate. I have no habits in my new life; I create routines out of air. I go to the coffee shop, my one touchstone in this alien world. Get in my car and drive—along Sargent Drive, high on a ridge limning the coast, overlooking a glassy expanse of water studded with boats, into Northeast Harbor, where most of the enormous old houses I pass are boarded up. On a foggy day I make my way up Cadillac Mountain to the bleak flattop, an expanse of parking lots and deserted tourist trails, and stand in the cold mist gazing out at an Impressionist view of land and sea. In Bar Harbor, where every other shop is closed for the season, I stroll down Main Street. People on the street hustle along in their warm parkas, squinting as they come toward me—either at the dazzling midday light or the glare of my orange jacket, I’m not sure which. I meander down the aisles of the year-round grocery store, stocking up on staples. No take-out here—if I want to feed myself, I’m on my own.

The kitchen in the shack isn’t much bigger than mine was in New York, but now I have time to use it. I unpack the boxes of pots and pans, knives and bowls. My old blue Le Creuset pot with a broken handle, as heavy as an infant. Three whisks, in different sizes, from the housewares section at Zabar’s. An absurdly large white food processor. A bright yellow space-age silicone spatula, tinny old-fashioned metal measuring spoons. These pieces have a friendly, talismanic power, a comforting fa
miliarity. I find my cookbooks in a box and pore over them, then gather the ingredients to make banana-nut muffins in the oversize tins I bought on Canal Street. (The oven is so small I can fit only one muffin tin on each shelf.) I cook turkey sausage in the blue Dutch oven on the electric burner with minced white onion and shreds of carrot and parsley, the juices mingling into the base of a thick soup.

I call home to let my dad know that I haven’t been dragged into the woods by wild bears or, more to the point, by the sailor I met on the Internet. I’m not prepared to relate the details, so I tell him the bare minimum, keeping the conversation vague and upbeat. It didn’t work out with that guy, but it’s “beautiful” and “quiet” up here; the people are “really nice,” I’ve found a place to stay for the time being, and I’m going to “see how it goes.” I can tell my dad is looking for an opening, any sign of ambivalence, to push his agenda of getting me to come home, and I’m determined not to give him one.

“Sharon and I keep wondering when you’re going to come to your senses, but I guess you think you know what you’re doing,” he says.

“Thanks, Dad,” I say.

After I hang up, I call Lindsay. “I’m trying not to say I told you so. I’m biting my tongue,” she says when I relate the whole wretched MaineCatch story.

“Thanks, Linz.”

“Okay, so that’s over.
Why
are you still there?”

I try to explain that I am taking it day by day; I want to see how things unfold; I am enjoying the solitude and the quiet, the seagulls and the evergreens.

Lindsay is unconvinced. She laughs when I tell her that the woodstove, which I have only just learned to light, is the main source of heat in my house. She tells me she’s figured it out: This
whole back-to-nature thing is a way for me to bond with my dead mother. I’m trying to get in touch with my inner hippie child, the way my mother did. I tell Lindsay that running off to Portland, Oregon, and living with a doctor in a cedar-shingled solar house designed by a well-known architect wasn’t exactly “back to nature”—but she says I’m missing the point.

“The point is, your mother left because she said she needed to ‘simplify,’ right?” Lindsay says. “And that’s basically what you’re doing. We can never escape our mothers, Ange, even when they’re dead. Maybe
especially
when they’re dead.”

“Where’d you get all this insight into mother-daughter relationships?”

“I’m taking a psych class at the New School,” she says. “Can you tell?”

The only person I’m eager to speak with right now is Nonna, and she doesn’t like to talk on the phone. I call her midmorning on a weekday, when I know my dad and Sharon are at work and Nonna is probably in the kitchen preparing dinner, cutting vegetables for
minestra
or cooking beans for pasta
fagioli,
the kitchen warming with the simmering pot.

“
Ciao?
Hello?” she says warily when she picks up the phone after many rings.

“Hi, Nonna, it’s me. Angela.”

“Angela! Oh!”

“Yeah, hi!” I say. “It’s so nice to hear your voice.”

“Oh, Angela—
mi dispiace,
” I’m sorry, she says; “your father is not here right now.”

“I know, Nonna. I know. I called to speak to you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I—I miss you.”

“Ach.” She laughs uncomfortably. “You call me long distance?”

“Yeah, Nonna, of course.”

“So expensive,” she says. “You should save your money.”

“No, no—it’s my cell phone. It’s a calling plan—with minutes—oh, whatever. It’s free. I just wanted to see how you’re doing.”

“Free? How can it be free? Nothing is free in life.”

“It’s already paid for, Nonna. Like TV. You don’t have to pay to watch TV every time, right? It’s like that.”

“Ohh,” she says, as if she still doesn’t quite believe me. As many times as I’ve tried to explain how telephone service has changed, she still thinks long distance is a luxury.

“So how are you feeling? Are you well these days?”

“Cosi cosi,”
pretty much, she says, clearing her throat.

“Do you still have that cold?”

“No, no,” she says.

“Have you been to the doctor?” I ask.

“Pah,” she says with disgust. “No doctor ever told me anything I didn’t know already.”

Nonna’s distrust of doctors, a vestige of her self-reliant peasant past, is legendary in our family. In labor with my father, she refused to go to the hospital and insisted on giving birth in her own bedroom at home, assisted by an Italian neighbor woman. The fact that my mother ran off with a doctor only confirmed and justified her worst suspicions.

“Nonna, you’ve been sick for a while. Promise me you’ll get checked out,” I say.

“Ack,” she says.

“Promise.”

“All right, all right,” she says. “Enough. Tell me how is Maine.”

“Maine is…” How
is
Maine? “I like it here, Nonna. It’s been a challenge. But I’ve rented a little house, and I think I’m going to stay for a few months.”

“
Buono.
And the sailor?”

“Ehh,” I say.

“Not so good,” she says.

“Not so good.”

“Are you getting enough to eat?”

“Yes. I’m surviving.”

“You have to make stone soup.” She laughs, a sharp wheeze. “That will keep you warm.”

“What are you making today?” I ask.

“Non molto,”
not much, she says. “I think chicken marsala for tonight. I have lemons, so maybe a
torta al limone
for your father.”

“That sounds so good. I wish I could be there.”

“I do, too,” she says. “But you can make it yourself, you know.”

Craving the smells and warmth of Nonna’s kitchen, I go back to the grocery store in Bar Harbor and roam the aisles for potatoes, ziti, plum tomatoes, carrots—cheap and hearty ingredients. Driving home I think about what I will make for dinner, anticipating the slow simmer of an evening with a good book, a nice lamp, a warm stew. Light, flaky haddock, perhaps, caught in the harbor this morning, cooked in wine with sage and shallots. Oven-roasted chicken, the cavity filled with lemons and rosemary. Or maybe just stone soup.

In my best moments, I think:
This is exactly where I want to be.

In my worst moments, I think: What am I doing in this isolated place on the chilly edge of winter, with no friends and no takeout, my last hopes for romance dashed against the craggy rocks?

CHAPTER 14

Flynn is busy, busy, busy, and I am not. “You’re awfully busy for a
man who’s not busy,” I remark as he scurries around the empty shop.

“I’m good at being busy. It’s what I do,” he says. “Besides, part of what I’m doing is getting ready for times when I will be busy.”

“You mean like next July?”

“That’s funny,” he says. “Actually, a bit of a lunch rush is coming up.”

“You don’t serve lunch.”

“People come in for a caffeine jolt,” he says. “Gotta get through that long afternoon.”

Every morning, like a homing pigeon, I make my way to the Daily Grind. Customers holding hot cups to cold noses stand around chatting in groups of two or three. Flynn points out the different demographics as people come and go: lobstermen and boatbuilders, innkeepers and architects, wealthy people with winterized summer homes, up for a weekend; writers and painters, teachers and high school kids, retirees, the occasional stray tourist. If the flow of incoming customers has ebbed and Flynn has done enough wiping, cleaning, fussing for the moment, he pulls up a chair and plays backgammon or checkers with me.

Flynn’s fingernails are bitten to the quick. Often when we’re playing a board game he chews his cuticles. Between the Aussie accent and the finger wedged in his mouth, I can barely understand him.

“All artists bite their fingernails,” he says when I get up the nerve to tell him to stop.

“That’s baloney.”

“It’s well documented. Look it up.”

“Anyway, you’re not an artist,” I say.

“I have an artist’s temperament. Haven’t you noticed my obsessive-compulsive behaviors—the way I wipe the counters over and over, my mercurial moods?”

“Yes, but, Flynn, you’re not an artist.”

“I would be if I had artistic talent,” he says.

Several days later, as I’m sipping a latte and playing solitaire, he leans across the counter and says, “So, Angie, I’m guessing you’re a trust-fund baby.”

“What?”

“You know. Silver spoon and all that.”

“That’s a little rude, isn’t it?” I say.

He shrugs. “Sorry.”

“You’re not sorry.”

“Well, you’ll find that people are pretty straightforward around here.”

“You’re not from around here,” I remind him.

“I’m from around here like you’re a New Yorker,” he says. “So are you? A trust-fund baby, I mean.”