Cities I've Never Lived In: Stories Read online

  WHITE HEART BAR

  Years ago, I came across an article with the headline “Local History Professor Caught Stealing Maps.” Under the headline, I was surprised to find the name of a man who had once been a friend of mine. Years ago, not long after the girl had gone missing, I had watched him leave the library. I was under the shade of a tree, and he didn’t see me. There was an intensity about him—as if everything was wrapped into one emotion, not sadness, or despair; the closest I could come was confusion, but it wasn’t really that.

  After a time his face relaxed, and he continued down the stairs. I felt sympathy for him and thought I understood that moment on the stairs, what it was for him, but I’d been wrong.

  In those days, during the time of the lost girl, I was living with my husband in a grand but decrepit loft apartment in an area of Portland that was known as resurgent, a description that carried more than a little wistfulness. Near us, an upscale restaurant was tucked into an old brick warehouse. We would sometimes sit at the bar, eating complimentary cheese straws and ordering the cheapest bottles of wine before sweeping back up the street in our mismatched secondhand clothes, my crimson coat and rubber boots, Richard’s gray cashmere coat that must have once belonged to a wealthy man but now very much belonged to him—the military lapels, the satin lining, the soft matted pills under the arms.

  We lived on the third floor of a building that looked vacant from the street. Even when climbing the central stairs—a rattling, metal affair that echoed with every step—we felt an air of abandonment. Our apartment, too, was cavernous. In the middle of the space, we had created a sitting area out of Chinese screens. It was silly, really, looking like something the Red Cross might have set up as a triage area if Chinese screens had been considered appropriate. Inside sat two chairs, a newspaper rack, and a coffee table piled with books and newspapers.

  It was here that I first read about a twenty-four-year-old girl who had gone missing near the harbor. With the newspaper on my lap, I told Richard. He asked what day she had gone missing. When I told him, he said that she was a student of his at the night class he taught at the arts school. He had driven her that night after class, to a bar by the waterfront; he’d seen her walking along the road and offered her a ride. The police had been there after class on Thursday. What could I tell them? he asked me. What do I know about this girl?

  Over the following weeks, he told me the story several times. He also told me that on two occasions they had gone to a bar together, and she had told him stories about her life. He told me a little about it. I also read newspaper articles, a blog that her friends started, the police transcript. I talked to people at the local paper where I worked—enough so that I began to piece together what had happened.

  The night she disappeared had been warm for February, and the warmth had brought the fog in. It would have been hard to see her at the side of the road on the outskirts of the city, where there were a few boarded-up buildings, some empty warehouses. She would have been walking along a strip of sidewalk, the streetlights illuminating the fog.

  There would have been a darting quality to her, with her high shoulders and lanky arms. She walked without gloves, without a hat, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets, her breath a cloud in front of her. The fog, the buildings, the streetlights. Her fragility and toughness, the physicality of her walk. I could get that far. And to my husband backing out of the parking space, leaning forward to clear the windshield, arranging the books and papers at his side, fiddling with the radio. He saw a movement in and out of the streetlight. He almost didn’t see her. He cleared more of the window, craned his neck, then eased the car out of the lot. He pulled to the side of the road just ahead of her and leaned across to open the door.

  He said, Louise, Louise, and she grabbed the door and put her head in. Her hair fell across her face. Her face, even when she held her hair aside, would have been in shadow, the overhead light having broken months ago.

  Do you want a ride? he said.

  She lingered with one hand on the door. Okay, yes, she said, thank you. She lowered herself, a puff of air coming up through the cracks of seat leather. She settled her purse on her lap, didn’t buckle her seat belt. She was close enough so he could see her then. Her curls escaping from a loose bun. Her eyes with shadows underneath.

  I had imagined at first that he was a sudden flurry of activity, leaning over to swipe at the empty coffee cups as she sat down, but as he told the story, I understood this wasn’t the case. He was comfortable with her, he knew how to talk to her. He said simply, continuing a conversation they’d had at the bar weeks earlier, Why New Mexico?

  It was seven years ago, she said. She had left home. Her roommate worked at a snack bar in a bowling alley, and they shared a room in a ranch house with windows only in back; there weren’t any windows in front. The room contained boxes that didn’t belong to them. Someone had tacked sheets over the walls.

  She slouched in the seat while talking to him, as if the ride was going to take hours rather than minutes. She laughed quietly, looked over at my husband, thought of the bowling alley, the nacho chips with cheese from a pump, the orange T-shirts the counter help wore. Anyway, she said, I was seventeen and I liked to bowl.

  Are you any good? my husband asked, but it wasn’t a real question; he was busy looking for the White Heart, a bar by the waterfront. He slowed the car. The bar was down a cobblestone alley blocked off to traffic. He pulled over next to the barrier and looked at her. He had parked in an interval between streetlights and she opened the door to turn on the overhead light. It’s broken, he told her. You could put in a new bulb, she said. I could, he said.

  She slipped out, pulling her purse after her. She said, Thanks, see you next week, and bounded toward the side of the bar. He watched her silhouette, her hand reaching up, feeling the lump of her hair as if tucking it in then swinging open the door—a clumsily balletic move, the dropping of the hand and swinging it out again. Then the door settled closed. He sat there for some time. He told me this offhandedly, had said, There’s something else. Maybe ten minutes after the girl had gone in, I—

  Ten minutes, I said.

  Yes, he said, I stayed for a while in the car.

  What did you do?

  I don’t know, he said.

  We were silent, then he said, While I was there, a man walked past.

  The man walked down the alley and entered the bar the same way as the girl. My husband thought it was Alec. But there had been the fog, the darkness, he couldn’t be sure.

  It didn’t seem like his sort of place, my husband said. But it looked just like him.

  You didn’t see his face? I asked.

  No, but I’m nearly certain it was him.

  I realized that I had seen the girl before. She had been at a party at Alec’s house. He lived across the harbor, in a half-weatherproofed cottage. The porch was covered in vines that gave it an enclosed, hidden feel. Alec and the girl had sat together on a wicker sofa. She had her legs pulled close to her. Her shirt was baggy, too big for her, and the hem of her skirt was unraveling.

  Alec rarely looked at people when he talked, and his body was turned away from her, his face down. From where I sat, I couldn’t see his eyes, though I knew they were hazel—in certain lights they were specked with yellow and usually rimmed in red; he rarely slept well.

  I glanced at them a few times from the kitchen window, but I paid more attention when the girl left—a funny girl with sandals in one hand, shells around her ankle, walking down the dirt road. When he came in, we stood in the kitchen, which was very white, and leaned against the cabinets, finishing gin and tonics. I waited for him to say something, and he didn’t. He finished his drink, and I took his glass and poured him another. He sat on the counter, his feet against the faucet.

  I had met him shortly after his wife left him, though I didn’t know that at the time. I never found out if she left for another man or in response to his remoteness. Perhaps she thought she would be ab
le to live with it because she loved him, but after several years realized that she couldn’t. I had seen a picture of her. She had large eyes, a warm smile, and warm brown hair around her face. I imagined, based on the picture, the kindness in her and the sadness she would have felt in leaving him.

  His office was at the end of a corridor. Sometimes I brought lunch, and we would sit there with only his desk between us. In this way I learned bits of his life, that he had spent his childhood in Maine but his family had moved to Chicago when he was a teenager, that he had moved early in his career from job to job, that there was some sort of dissatisfaction there, a sense that despite his love of history, the profession itself suited him as little as anything else.

  Do you know what my mother once said? he said. Don’t talk too much. If you stay quiet, people will assume complexity. She also said I was a cold fish.

  He looked up, surprised and unsure about what he had just said. I kept my gaze even and mouthed the words cold fish. What are people thinking sometimes? I said. I felt compassion for this man who never thought he would speak those words out loud. Life can be so unkind, I said to him. And he nodded, though who knew with Alec whether it was in agreement or simply a reflex.

  I called Alec after my husband told me he might have seen him that night. We agreed to meet at a café. Alec sat with his chair pulled out and his body turned as if toward a third person.

  She was at the bar, he said. She had told me she might be going out. I hadn’t seen her for a while so I went.

  There was a band at the bar and he didn’t like the noise. He wanted to leave, but she was with friends. He could smell her shampoo, that was how close they stood, but when bar seats freed up he found himself next to a woman he didn’t know. Louise sat turned away from him. He had thought to go to the bathroom just to get away, but walked out the back door to the harbor. Then the group gathered around him on the pier as if it had been planned, some of them smoking. She was drunker than before and stood apart, looking at the ocean.

  He approached her. When he had walked into the bar, she looked up and smiled. Now she turned toward the wind, took an elastic from her wrist, tried to pull her hair up, and then let it fall. He lifted a hand as if to smooth her hair, but pulled his hand back.

  I’m going, if you want a ride home, he said.

  She mentioned another bar they were going to; he hadn’t paid attention and told her to take a taxi home. Probably she didn’t hear. The group had splintered. She started to stumble. Maybe the shots had taken a while to hit, or maybe how subdued she was had hidden how drunk, or maybe his presence had organized her. Her arm floated up to point at the moon. The moon, she said, there is the moon. Then she felt like sitting. She climbed a ladder down to the sand, took off her shoes, and balled the socks into the shoes. She sat on a rock with her purse in her lap.

  She remembered living on an island years ago and lying on the dock, the stars overhead and jellyfish in the water, the rowboats tied with rope that dragged with seaweed. She had lain down with some of the other people from the farm, and thought, The world opens immeasurably. She would have felt it like something opening inside of her. Then she had slipped into the water while the other people from the farm talked on the dock. The little dipper, someone said, count the stars. The water was so cold that she gasped. Louise? someone had said. She was in between the rowboats, in the space where one was missing and the others swayed to meet but didn’t. She kicked out. Cold? someone asked. So cold, she said, kicking away. She hadn’t even been wrong that the world opens immeasurably—it does—but it also does something to you, all those jolts and shocks.

  She kept a flask in her purse and decided to drink, but then her friends from the bar called from above, so she put down the flask and put her shoes on. Later she would remember the flask, climb back down to look for it. Somehow her shoes would end up there. My sense of it starts to break down here. She was feeling chaotic, things were happening too quickly, in the bar then not in the bar, climbing down the ladder, taking off her shoes, drinking the rum. Then she was up again, on the pier. Where are your shoes? someone asked. She didn’t know anyone, but she stood in the crowd as if she did. People asked about her shoes. The last person who’d asked was the one they interviewed. He was with a group of college guys; they were young and intensely interested in her shoes, they kept asking her, but then the interest dissolved, something else, as if they were goldfish turning in a pool, attracted their interest.

  And you were lovers, I said to Alec.

  It was over, really, at that point.

  Have you been to see the police?

  Yes, he said. Right away, the next day.

  They showed him security footage from the pier. The police had charted each person who went down, when each passed, and when each came back. They had pointed him out. He looked upset, they told him. Angry, like something was going on, they said, pointing their fingers at the screen. He told them that he loved her. He knew he’d made a mistake, so he quickly tried to fill the hole. He told them that she was troubled. I wanted to help, he said, but there was nothing I could do. He talked too fast, keeping his eyes on his hands. At first they found him guilty, strange, but at some point the tension in the room eased. They stopped paying attention, thought about dinner, home. No one thought, Poor guy. No one thought much of anything. Mostly they didn’t like him, though they would never have been able to say precisely why.

  I said, You know there was nothing that you could have done, but he didn’t say anything. A few weeks later he cut his first map. He slid it in his bag, walked out of the library, and stopped on the steps. The pain on his face would be clear. He wouldn’t notice a woman standing under a tree, watching him, trying to understand.

  At home we listened to the radio. They had found the body. My husband called from inside the screens: Anne, he said, Anne, come here. I sat with him; he relaxed and lifted one of the newspapers from the floor. Gases bring the body up, he said, gases and temperature. I don’t really understand. Tides play a part. They’re saying it was an accident.

  The lamp lit the orange of the screens and illuminated the space.

  Later, I found him sitting on the bed with his head bowed. He was crying. I’m very sorry, he said. There was a tattered cover on the bed with dull squares of burgundy, rust, and light blue. He put one hand over his eyes and I sat behind him and placed a hand flat on his back and stayed like that for some time, while rice cooked in our alcove kitchen. I felt a sudden enlarging of space, with sacks of half-put-away groceries on the counter, the sagging bag of rice scattering kernels everywhere, everything acquiring significance, more beautiful than the many beautiful things I had seen, more beautiful even than the harbor had ever seemed to me. One hand shaking as I scooped rice into an open palm, husband still sitting on the bed, the apartment darkened and the lamp still on inside the screens, now glowing as if there was a heart inside. Husband in near dark, sitting on a faded quilt. His coat still on, as if he had known, in preparation for a shock, that he might need it.

  SAINT ANDREWS HOTEL

  In 1963, an eleven-year-old boy named Peter Harville was committed to a state mental hospital in the western part of Maine, far from the island where he grew up. He had cut his wrists with his father’s coping saw, and lay on the ground watching the sawdust turn red until someone opened the door. Peter? his father asked, not moving or coming in. Peter? Are you all right? Peter noticed that his father spoke more gently than usual, and the shed felt warm and calm; for the moment he was happy.

  The next week his mother packed a bag for him and his father took him on the ferry, then into the Cutlass sedan that was kept in the lot on the mainland with a key under the seat for anyone on the island who had an errand to run. They were at the hospital by three. Afterward, the father checked into a hotel. He went to the bar across the street and had several pints of beer. It had been ten years since he’d spent a night off island and he studied the line of coasters taped to the wall behind the bar. His hands twitched
on the counter. They were small-boned and fine, adept at gutting fish and killing the lambs during the summer slaughter, thinking of their bodies dangling in the walk-in no more than he thought of anything else.

  In the hotel room, he took off all his clothes and folded back the sheets, then slid inside and tried to sleep. When he got home, his wife listed object after object, asking if they’d let Peter keep it.

  Sometimes I dream about him, she said to her friend Eleanor. They were hanging laundry; the wind came up the grassy slope and blew all the soft clothes on the line, the chambray shirts and white cotton sheets, her blue nightgown with lace along the neckline.

  While her friend clipped, Helen stared across the sea. She felt as though she had lost something but she kept forgetting what it was, and when she remembered she couldn’t understand it. Do you suppose it’s a long trip? Helen asked, her voice sounding like it arose from a daydream. The idea had come to her over days, like a bubble expanding in the back of her mind, that it had been a mistake, that she would take the ferry, find the car, drive to the hospital, tell the doctors it had been an accident with the saw, that it wasn’t true what her husband said about Peter.

  Her hand slipped, and a gust of wind took the sheet and blew it down the hill. Both women laughed and chased after it, barefoot in cotton skirts, two thirty-year-old women chasing after a sheet, then drinking instant coffee in the kitchen with a plate of crackers between them. They gossiped about the hotel where Eleanor worked as a housekeeper. She was seeing one of the men there, someone’s cousin who was going back to Boston soon. Helen watched her, watched the liquidness of new love—the way her talk spilled, her eyes shone, how her hands slid through the air—and thought, He’s going to leave and she’ll still be here.

  One day the ferry went out to sea but the mainland never came. The captain turned back fearing he would run out of gas. He tried again the next day, but still couldn’t find the shore. In time, he took it as a matter of course, as they all did, as they forgot their desires with some relief, as the desires when they arose had been impractical, painful. One man who painted in the loft of an old barn began to paint canvases of blue trees. The islanders hung them in their living rooms, and there was something hopeful in it, as if they had kept a belief in the symbolic power of beauty.