The Way Life Should Be (15 page)

“
Now
it looks like a gay man owns this place!” Lance says approvingly.

CHAPTER 15

I have been on Mount Desert Island for nearly six weeks. I have
a job. I have a place to live, rented by the month. I have an ex-boyfriend, of sorts, and a new friend or two. I know where to buy groceries and lightbulbs and cold medicine. I have found a beautiful hiking trail (although sometimes, hiking alone, I have visions of falling down a ravine and not being discovered until spring, when park rangers stumble on my decomposed, half-eaten body). I have turned a hobby—cooking—into a fledgling business. In short, I am almost as settled here in this brief time as I was after years in New York.

Yet in some ways it’s still hard to believe I live in this place, so different from anything I’ve known. I have room to think, to breathe. I also have time—maybe too much time. Days are short and nights are long. People know I’m here; it’s impossible to be anonymous. I find this both comforting and unsettling.

The Spruce Harbor Library, a snug, shingled building in the middle of town, is open year-round. In midafternoon, when business is slow, I’ve taken to leaving the shop and strolling up Main Street to browse through the periodicals and new arrivals. The library carries the two island weeklies as well as regional newspapers and the
New York Times
and the
Wall Street Journal.
The
Times
is beginning to look distressingly dense to me, a Morse code of
small black type. I read it as if I’m reading a newspaper from a foreign country—the news feels that far away.

One of the librarians, an older woman who wears her hair in a long, gray braid and appears to own a sizable collection of Fair Isle sweaters, introduces herself to me from out of the blue. “I’m Eileen Davis,” she whispers loudly, leaning over my shoulder as I’m perusing the latest
Us
magazine. “You just let me know if you need anything, all right?”

“Uh—sure,” I say, simultaneously swiveling around to see who it is and closing the magazine to hide my shameful scrutiny of “Stars—They’re Just Like US!” “I’m—”

“Angela Russo,” she says. “I already know that. I put your information into the computer when you got a library card. You live in Dory Cove.”

“Wow. Yes, I do,” I say, wondering what else she knows about me.

“And by the way, computer number two is free if you want to go online. That’s the one you prefer, right?”

At night, after work, coming home to an empty cottage, I build a fire in the woodstove—carefully, the way Lance showed me—with a triangle of logs and crumpled newspaper. I still believe it’s a miracle when the logs catch, when the fire I’ve made actually heats the whole place.

When the cottage is warm, I start to cook. I cut an eggplant into inch-square chunks, toss it with sea salt and a drizzle of olive oil, and slow-roast it in the oven for an hour. I make marinara, letting it simmer on the stove until the plum tomatoes fall apart.

One afternoon someone from the local animal shelter posts a sign on the coffee shop bulletin board that tugs at my heartstrings: “Docile Lab mix needs a home. Five years old. Loving and lonely. Answers to Sam.” Sam! When I call the number I ask, “Is that Sam-short-for-Samantha?” Apparently not; this Sam
is a he. I drag Flynn to the shelter with me, and the dog looks up at us through the wire fence with its glistening (rheumy?) eyes. Sam has a dull chocolate coat with tufts of hair missing. He appears to be starving; every rib is visible. I fall in love with him at first sight.

Not that I believe in falling in love at first sight.

Flynn teases me that this is only the beginning. I will start to collect animals; I will be branded the Woman Who Takes in Strays. But when I ask, Flynn agrees (hesitantly, conditionally) that I can bring Sam to work with me. Then he accuses me of manipulating him by bringing him to the shelter, a place where anyone with half a corroded heart is going to give in.

So here I am with a shy, malnourished dog and a house and a job, more settled than I have ever been, and yet not settled at all. The Big Questions hover in my head. But with butternut squash soup simmering on the stove and Sam lying like a sack of flour on the rug, those questions have lost some of their immediacy. Here I am, building a life—not just waiting for my life to happen. I am breathing in and out, living day to day. It requires so little effort I barely have to think about it.

All of a sudden it is freezing cold.
Lying in my bed, early in the morning, I can see my breath. I sit up, exhaling like a smoker. Wind seeps through the cracks between windows and window frames, rattling the panes. I don’t make a fire or take a shower; I throw a sweater on top of a sweater, coax the dog into the car, and head straight for work. “This is insane! It’s only November!” I wail to Flynn when I arrive.

“It’s November. There’s no ‘only’ about it.”

“Is this the way it will be? From now on, until spring?”

“Oh no,” he says. “It gets a lot colder than this, believe me. What’d you expect? You’re on an island in Maine. In the winter.”

“I don’t think I’m up for this.”

“C’mon, it’s not that bad.”

“That’s easy for you to say. You have central heating.”

“Buy yourself some good thermal socks.” He looks over at Sam. “And feed your dog, will ya? He’s going to need some body fat to get through this winter. Here, give him a biscotti. It’s stale anyway.”

“I have this image in my mind
of you at the end of a long pier, yearning for your sailor, like in
The French Lieutenant’s Woman,
” Lindsay says. We’ve started talking on the phone again every few days, having negotiated an unspoken truce: She is fascinated and appalled by the details of my quiet life, and I am likewise fascinated and appalled by her blossoming relationship with Hot4U.

“As far as I’m concerned, my sailor is lost at sea,” I say. “Good riddance.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. Do you ever see him around?”

“Never,” I say, but as it happens, when I report for duty at the Daily Grind the next morning, there he is.

“Oh—hi,” Rich says. He’s standing at the counter, looking up at the menu on the wall. It’s not even seven o’clock; he’s the only customer. “I just came in to grab a coffee.”

“As good a reason as any to go to a coffee shop,” Flynn remarks.

“Hi,” I say. I know that Flynn is mocking Rich for my benefit, and I’m secretly pleased. I hang my orange parka on a peg and go into the back room to get an apron.

Uncomfortable pause. “Sooo—you two know each other?” Flynn asks innocently.

“Yeah, we do,” Rich says. “Pretty well, in fact.”

I come back out to the front, swatting Flynn as he passes me on his way to the supply closet. It’s funny seeing Rich—funny
strange—outside the Petri dish of his apartment, separate from me. On the other side of the counter.

“What can I get you?” I ask, tying my apron in the back.

I’m a little startled by how good looking he is, having chosen to remember him at his worst. He’s wearing a blue-specked fisherman’s sweater that makes his eyes look even bluer, and a red parka that accentuates his broad shoulders. All those things that attracted me in the first place—the sly smile, strong forearms, slightly crooked nose—are fully in evidence.

Despite myself, I feel insidious stirrings.

“Uh, I don’t know. Just a coffee, I guess. I don’t even know what all those things are,” he says, motioning toward the coffee board above my head. “Double chai soy latte? What language is that?”

“It’s pidgin yuppie,” I say. “Why don’t you try a latte—espresso with steamed milk?”

“I’ve had that before,” he says. “Okay, thanks.”

While I’m busy at the espresso machine, Rich looks around and says, “There’s something different about this place. You—painted?”

Flynn pokes his head out of the closet. “Your ex-girlfriend has been fixing up the joint. Good thing you ditched her when you did, or she’d be doing this to your house.”

I cringe at his breezy betrayal of my confidence. “He didn’t ditch me,” I protest, shooting him an evil look.

“I didn’t,” Rich says. “She walked out on me.”

“Yeah, but only because—oh, forget it. Let’s not go there,” I say.

“Yeah, let’s not,” Rich says. He peers through the glass bell over the muffin display. “So what kind of muffins do you have?”

“Blueberry. Maple walnut. And these are cinnamon scones,” I say, pointing at another glass pedestal.

“I’ll take that.”

I wrap a scone in waxy paper and he takes a bite. “Iss guud,” he grunts with his mouth full.

“She would’ve been making these for you, if you’d played your cards right,” Flynn says.

I glower at him again, and he pantomimes surprise: What’d I do?

Rich, watching us, wipes his mouth with the dissolving paper, then wads it up and stuffs it in his pocket. “That’s okay. I guess I deserve it.”

“Well—whatever, Rich,” I say. I hand him the latte.

He takes a sip, and all at once I’m aware that he seems a little nervous. “I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” he says, putting the latte down.

“Not really. Everybody needs coffee, don’t they?”

“Yeah.” He laughs a little. “But you know I drink—what’d you call it?—swill.”

“Never too late to develop a palate,” Flynn says.

Rich gives me a look, like Flynn is driving him crazy. “Could we—could we go somewhere? Somewhere private, to talk?”

I shrug. “I’m working.”

“After work?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t know what we have to talk about.”

Flynn crouches down on the floor behind me, opens a cabinet door, and pulls out all the coffee filters in an ostentatious display of busyness.

“So I guess you’re staying on the island,” Rich says, reverting to small talk.

“Yep. For now, at least.”

“That’s great,” he says. “So you—you have a place?”

“Uh-huh.”

He pauses, waiting to see if I’ll continue. When I don’t, he asks, “Where is it?”

“Dory Cove.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Yep,” I say.

“So…” He laughs a little. “Can I ever see it?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. Stop by. Say hello.”

“You’re saying hello now.”

“I know, but…I thought maybe we could have dinner together. I could make you dinner.”

“Rich—,” I start.

“Look, I came in because I heard you were working here,” he blurts out. “I wanted to see you.”

Flynn, crouching under the counter, pokes my leg, and I kick my foot in his general direction.

“So how is ‘Blondy with a Y’?” I ask Rich. “Or—who’s the one who called? Suzy?”

“Becky, I believe it was,” Flynn says.

Rich shakes his head. “That’s in the past.”

“Oh, really.”

“Yes, really,” he says. “I’m a single guy these days.”

“Aww,” Flynn stage-whispers, and I kick him again.

“This is awkward,” Rich says. “But I guess I’ll just say it. I was hoping maybe we could just—well, try again.”

“What? Are you serious?” I say.

Flynn pokes his head above the counter. “Very bold, mate. I like it. But I don’t really see how she can go out with you again after you treated her like you did.”

“Flynn, I can handle this,” I tell him.

“Are you ruining my good name?” Rich asks me.

“Did you have a good name?” I ask.

“A fair to middling name, I’d say, at least,” Flynn says.

“Thanks, Flynn,” Rich says.

“No problem, Rich,” Flynn says with a smile.

“Okay then,” Rich says to me. “I guess I’ve made a total ass of myself. But I wanted you to know I’ve been thinking about you.”

“You mean, you wanted her to know you’re between girlfriends,” Flynn says.

Rich looks wounded and irritated at the same time, and I almost jump to defend him. But I don’t. I came to this place wanting to believe that I was the heroine in my own personal fairy tale, and that this man with the sun-kissed face and ice-chip eyes was my prince. I thought I was stepping into the picture tacked to my office wall. Part of me still yearns to believe that this particular story can end happily ever after, and for that reason it’s safer for me to keep my distance, on this side of the counter.

On a typical day
I wake up at five forty-five to get to the shop by six thirty. I mix the dry ingredients into the wet for muffins and scones, all apportioned and sifted during slow moments the day before. Flynn bustles around, getting the coffee going. Sam sleeps on a piece of carpet in the back room near the furnace, and then, as customers begin to arrive around seven, comes out to loll by the front door, greeting people with a tentative wag of his tail. As soon as the last batch of muffins is in the oven (and it’s taking longer now, since the baked goods started selling out by nine and I had to double the recipe), I begin working on the soup, using stock I made at home on Sunday for the base.

Then it’s midmorning, and I’m checking the soup and tending the counter for the occasional customer. Like a man whose
wife insists on having a child he says he doesn’t want, Flynn has progressed from exasperation with the whole idea to grudging acceptance to something like pride. Sometime in the third week, he announces that after deducting expenses—the paint and lighting and other improvements, the pots and pans and grocery supplies—he’s about to break even.

By twelve fifteen the line is almost out the door. Customers order soup and linger at the tables, paying bills and filling out college applications, having political arguments and meeting their kids after school. And like characters in a recurring dream, both Rich and Lance start coming in regularly. “You know, when you break up with somebody in New York, at least you’ll probably never see them again,” I complain to Flynn after Rich leaves with his scone one morning.

“Yeah, it’s the opposite here,” he says. “You’re tormented by them for the rest of your life, until one of you dies.”

In the afternoon I go outside to clear my head. I put Sam on a leash and walk up Main Street to the small park with the fountain turned off for winter, the flagless flagpole. After tying Sam to the bench out front for a few minutes, I step into the library.