The Way Life Should Be (9 page)

Tim, the state trooper, is all of twenty-three. He has a blond buzz cut and glasses, and it is his second year on the force. As he drives me around, he tells me about the obstacle course police trainees have to maneuver before they get to drive a cruiser. “Even at a hundred miles an hour, I’m probably the safest car on the road,” he says. On his shooting test he got a perfect score from twenty yards, then five and ten and twenty. “What do you aim at?” I ask, and he spreads his freckled young hand over his chest. “Body mass,” he says. “It’s unfortunate, but if you aim for the leg and hit a little kid behind the guy instead, there’s nobody to blame but yourself.”

I can tell he hasn’t been on the job long, or doesn’t run into many people on the road, because he is so eager to talk. He’s the youngest of four kids; he grew up listening to his parents’ music, Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, and that kind of soft rock is still his favorite.

After he drives off, it occurs to me that I now know more about Tim than I do about Richard, the man I am on my way to see. My supposed soul mate.

The highway is long and empty,
narrowing from four lanes to three and then two, and flanked by trees, only trees. Who has ever seen such colors in nature? Vermilion, brilliant gold, hunting jacket orange, olive green—the colors of L.L. Bean turtlenecks. I feel as if I’m passing through a magical forest.

Just before Bangor I veer off I-95 North to 395 East. The trees fall away and soon I am coasting up and down wide, sloping hills. Cottages that look quaint from a peak are revealed, in the valley, to be modest dwellings with cheap siding and dismantled trucks in the side yards. I pass through Ellsworth, or at least its
commercial strip, a gauntlet of strip malls and fast-food restaurants culminating in a Wal-Mart that sits on the edge of town like a fat tick on the back of a dog.

Even without MapQuest I’d know I’m nearing the coast, because after Ellsworth the road is lined with lobster shacks and tourist shops. Garden ornaments, weather vanes, a Cannon towel outlet, boarded-up ice-cream stands. Shabby motels with vacancy signs have “Enjoy leaf season!” spelled out in crazy letters on white rectangular placards facing the road. For a long stretch I’m stuck behind a pickup with a bumper sticker that says, “Hug a logger—you’ll never go back to trees.”

It’s now five o’clock, and the sky is a colorless wash. All at once, I notice a long stretch of mud and seaweed on both sides of the road. Without quite realizing it, I have driven onto the island—a sign on the right confirms it. My heart hops once again. I am here. I am here! Despite my earlier misgivings, I am giddy with excitement. The air is crisp, the water to my right a silky black, the rocks as jaggedly picturesque as the tourist websites promised.

The road forks and I bear right, following Rich’s directions. I’m clutching a printout of his e-mail, holding it up to the fading light. I knew the island wasn’t small—it has numerous harbors and hamlets and coves—but somehow I’d envisioned the place as one charming fishing village. Here I am, still driving. Why am I still driving?

Then I see it, just as promised in the directions, the turnoff for 102. It seems marvelously unlikely that the places noted in the e-mail really exist—like seeing a celebrity in person, a movie star you feel you know. Back at home I looked at a map and saw the names of these roads, and now here they are. A part of me thought this was all make-believe, especially the preposterous name of Rich’s road: Blueberry Cove Lane. It’s like something
out of
Murder, She Wrote.
But no—here’s the street sign, white letters on a green background, illuminated by my headlights in the grainy dusk.

I turn right. The road, crackling under my tires, is evidently unpaved. I look around. If I’m not mistaken, this appears to be a new development of cookie-cutter condos in a rocky lunar landscape. I ponder the directions in my hand as if they might yield fresh insight. This can’t be right. Can it?

Fourteen A. Attached to 14B. Beige vinyl siding, white trim, a forlorn shrub under the front window. Across the road is a vast muddy lot with a yellow backhoe listing to one side on the slant of the hill, trailing deep, puddled ruts.

Rich didn’t tell me he lives in a town house, or that it’s in a brand-new development. But why would he? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I had a picture in my head and…I assumed. Blueberry Cove Lane equals cottage of my dreams. (I should have figured out what is instantly apparent now, that “Blueberry Cove Lane” was the shrewd choice of a calculating developer to evoke precisely the image I had in my head.)

I pull into the driveway behind a shiny maroon truck with custom-appliquéd flames licking the rear. It has to be Rich’s. Are those factory applied, I wonder, or did he select them himself? The house is dark on the first floor except for one room lit by a single naked bulb.

I am monstrously disappointed. It takes all my will not to put my car in reverse and creep back down the driveway.

Taking a deep breath, I try to be open. Flames on a truck are an interesting style choice. This is not a hovel; it’s a nice apartment in what will soon be a lovely subdivision. They’ll plant trees and flowers, pave the street, dig a sidewalk. These new homes have sound heating systems and snug windows—what’s not to like?

I tell myself that I’m being petty. After all, I’m here for Rich; these small things don’t matter. I am sulking like a spoiled child, unhappy with her Christmas present. I hear my father’s voice in my head: “Stop pouting! You’re lucky to get what you got.” Maybe I was—but it didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t what I wanted.

CHAPTER 9

The man of my dreams, my MaineCatch, is visible through the
front window of his town house, talking on a portable phone and drinking a beer. He’s pacing around, looking for something. From this distance, with his coat-hanger shoulders and sun-streaked hair, he looks like a dissolute prep-school kid, one of those dangerous boys who possesses all the charming arrogance of privilege but assumes none of its burdens. I didn’t see him this way before, or not quite this way. In Boston I was drugged with infatuation, and his skin was so smooth. Now, observing him from a distance, I wonder if we would have been attracted to each other in a bar.

As I sit in the car watching him, his most recent haiku comes to mind:

Soon you’ll be coming

We’ll have lots of sex I hope

My bed is king size.

I laughed when I got it, assuming that was his point in sending it. A sex poem to ease the awkwardness. But now I’m not so sure it was supposed to be funny.

I turn off the engine and he looks up, startled, like a farm
animal. He sees the car in his driveway, half hidden behind the truck. I watch him become self-conscious, click off the phone and set it on top of the TV, put down the beer bottle, tuck in his T-shirt. Then he vanishes from the window.

When the front door opens, I run my hands through my limp hair, up from the roots at the nape of my neck, my fingers like a wide-tooth comb. He’s walking toward me with his hands shoved in the pockets of his sweatpants, shoulders hunched forward.

“Hi,” I say, getting out of the car.

“Hey, you made it.” His words are toneless, a little slurry.

“Yeah, finally.” I squint up at him in the gloom.

“Was it gas?”

“What?”

“Your tank was empty?”

“Oh. Yes.”

“Sorry I didn’t—couldn’t—” He shrugs.

“That’s okay. A nice state trooper came by and helped me out.”

“Well, that’s good.” He kicks a rut in the dirt. I notice that he’s wearing his sneakers with the heels folded down, like mules. “So did he ask for your number?”

“What? No.”

He raises his eyebrows suggestively. “I’ll bet he wanted to.”

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Anyway, he was on duty. Isn’t that against the law?”

“Relax, I’m joking,” he says, with a little edge in his voice.

I don’t say anything. In my experience, when somebody says “Relax, I’m joking,” they usually aren’t.

He leans down to kiss me and I feel his rough stubble, smell the sour aftertaste of beer and the mushroomy odor of dried sweat.

“Did you just go running?” I ask.

“Huh? Oh, what, you mean because of my sneakers?”

“You’re—sweating,” I say, attempting to be playful but instead sounding pinched and accusatory.

“Maybe you make me nervous.”

“I’m sure that’s it.”

“Maybe I’m thinking of later,” he says, snaking his fingers through the belt loops of my jeans.

“Oh,” I say. Maybe he is.

Despite everything, I feel myself warming to him—those Siberian husky eyes, the bleached hair on his tanned forearms. He tugs my belt loop on one side, pulling me off center, my left hip bumping into his right. When our bodies touch I feel a shiver. Oh, yes, this—now I remember.

“You want a beer?” he asks. “I could use another.”

“Yeah, all right,” I say. He releases my loops and I follow him into the house.

He turns on the shower
and pulls the T-shirt over his head. His beautiful stomach, almost hairless, skin as thin as a puppy’s. The hollowed-out bone at the top of his rib cage. The sunburned back of his neck.

I tilt my face into the spray and he is behind me, water running over his hands, over my breasts and hips, both of us slick as seals. He rubs a bar of soap down my spine and between my legs and I’m not thinking about anything now except his hands and the soap and his dick pressing hard against me, his lips on my neck, in my seaweed hair.

I close my eyes and see Frank, the fire-eater, blowing flame, like Zeus blew wind. The topiary ignites in a brilliant fireball. Such passion—such uncompromising rage! The fire-eater knew. He knew that letting loose this flame would destroy him, ruin his future, wreck all that he had worked to accomplish. He knew, and he went ahead and did it anyway.

When I wake the next morning
, Rich isn’t there. My bags are still in the car. I am naked under a cotton-poly sheet decorated with sailboats on a mattress on the floor. Striated light filters through a plastic venetian blind on the window.

I get up, find my wadded, damp clothes from yesterday strewn around the bathroom, get dressed, and pad downstairs noiselessly on the wall-to-wall carpeting. The apartment is as featureless as a motel room, with fewer amenities. A black pleather couch, a large-screen TV with gigantic speakers, and some free weights populate an otherwise empty living room. On the kitchen counter are a small microwave, a Mr. Coffee machine, and a take-out pizza menu.

Okay, this isn’t the vision I had in my head. But I have decided to be open-minded. This is a real guy living in a real place, not some New York art director’s idea of what “real simple” is.

I open the front door, and it makes a vacuum-sealed
swock.
Outside is cold and gray, and I stand back with a shiver. Rich’s truck is gone; he must have maneuvered around my car in the driveway. He would have had to drive across the lawn, but there are no tire tracks. The ground is hard-packed. It isn’t giving anything away.

I run out to my car and yank a giant wheeled duffel bag full of clothes out of the backseat. Then I steer the duffel up the driveway to the house, bump it up the three stairs to the front door like I’m trying to dispose of a body, haul it inside, and close the door.

In the kitchen I open the fridge. I find several cans of Red Bull, a six-pack of Bar Harbor ale, a box of Pop-Tarts, a small jar of mayo, and a bottle of ketchup. My stomach is rumbling; now that I think about it, we never had dinner. I take a twin, foil-wrapped pack of Pop-Tarts out of the box.

“You just need to relax,” he said last night,
relax,
for the second time. At that moment it had seemed sweet, given what else he was doing with his mouth, but as I think about it, I’m not so sure. Where is Rich, anyway? He didn’t tell me he was going out; he didn’t leave a note. I wonder now if “relax” means don’t ask questions.

The cold Pop-Tart tastes like piecrust-flavored cardboard with Elmer’s-glue frosting. Mechanically I eat one and then the other, breaking off small pieces and nibbling them like a hamster. I’m not hungry anymore, but it seems somehow impolite to leave one behind.

It occurs to me that Sam, the dog, is nowhere to be seen.

Rich comes home
when I’m in the shower. He calls my name and I freeze, nose twitching like a rabbit. Quickly I rinse the shampoo out of my hair and turn off the water, grabbing a towel and wrapping myself up like a sorority girl on TV.

“Hey,” he says, coming into the bedroom. “I brought you a coffee.”

“Oh. Thanks!”

He sets a paper cup with a white lid on top of his dresser. “Cold out there.”

“I know. I got my bag out of the car.”

“Oh. I guess I should’ve—”

“No! I didn’t mean—” I break off. There’s an awkward pause. “Let me get dressed and I’ll be down in a second.”

He turns away and I let out a breath, drop my towel, scramble for my clothes.

“Thanks for the coffee,”
I say again in the kitchen, taking a sip. It’s weak and lukewarm, but I’m glad to have a prop.

“I had to get gas anyway,” he says.

Flattering. “Right. Well,” I say. “So here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“So…what do you think?”

“What do I think about what?”

“About my being here.”

He nods, a beat longer than necessary. “I think it’s good.”

“Really?”

“You look good. You feel good,” he says, moving closer. “I’m always happy to have a good-looking girl in my house.”

“Gee. That’s lovely,” I say.

“No, I mean it,” he says earnestly, as if to prove that his sentiment is heartfelt.

“‘Always happy’?” I say. “Sounds like you entertain a lot.”

For a moment he doesn’t answer, just looks at me as if he can’t figure out what my problem is.