Cities I've Never Lived In: Stories Page 5

  Peter stayed in the hospital until he was twenty-one; nobody could find his parents, and the hospital had put him to use in the kitchen. When he left, he couldn’t find the island on any maps. He took a boat out, but in the place where the island should have been was a sprinkle of land, most of it not much more than rocks. The most promising landmass turned out to be nothing but sandy slopes and beach grass. He was told someone had tried to start a leper colony on it years ago, but it had proved inhospitable. He traveled the coast for some time, taking on construction jobs or working the docks, looking for anything familiar.

  He finally took the bus up north and got off in Portland, Maine. He stood there, a medium-sized boy with pale coloring. Across the street he saw an old brick building with “Saint Andrews Hotel” lettered in faded white paint.

  He took a room for a month. When the month was up he paid again. He liked it there; he liked to sit idly with the other residents. In the hospital, they had sat for hours on the long, narrow sunporch, everyone squished in with African violets and end tables, all the old men leaning on canes, their eyes in the light as opaque as glass marbles. No sooner had Peter left the hospital than he found another one. How strange we are. How different we are from how we think we are. We fall out of love only to fall in love with a duplicate of what we’ve left, never understanding that we love what we love and that it doesn’t change.

  He took a job at a fish stall in the Portland Public Market and would come back with his white T-shirt stained watery red and orange where he leaned against the counter. What have you been up to, Petey? Betty would call out. She worked behind the desk, and always had shadows of mascara under her eyes, even during the morning shift.

  He would shower, then return to the lobby, the low tide smell still clinging to him. The residents talked lazily back and forth. A man drinking from a coffee-stained paper cup turned to him and said, I used to have a wife from Chicago. Know what she did?

  No, Peter said.

  Fell in love with the butcher, the man said.

  Another man said, Don’t pay him any mind.

  Things went much as they had in the hospital, until one day a girl came in. She was beautiful—fourteen, fifteen, slender, knock-kneed. She used to live on the island, used to ride up and down the dirt road on her bicycle. She wore a lavender skirt instead of cutoffs and her face had lost some of the boyishness, but otherwise she hadn’t changed.

  No, man, someone said when Peter started to walk over. That one’ll put you in jail.

  No, he said. I know her. He froze before he got to the desk. He realized what was wrong: she should have been nearly thirty.

  In the morning, he followed her from the hotel. She walked to the old port section of town, along cobblestone streets and down to the ferry terminal. She walked through the building and out into the fenced-in area where people waited. She put down her bag and stood there, a cardigan folded over her arm. They must be mistaken, he thought, standing like that in front of a boat that never left the harbor. It must have once been a nice boat, with a cream-colored canopy and dark wood accents, but the hull was leaking rust; a dozen wooden park benches had been dragged under the canopy. He thought there was no sense in it, but then an old, silver-haired man emerged from the cabin and took the girl’s ticket. She boarded.

  When Peter tried to board, the captain shook his head, then tied the rope, pulled in the metal ramp, and disappeared the way he had come.

  The next time someone from the island came, it was a friend of Peter’s father’s, an old fisherman, a drunk with a bulbous nose and gaping pores. Peter had always liked him, found something gentle in him that had been missing in his own father. As with the girl, the man hadn’t changed. Peter followed him down the hall to the bar in the corner of the old ballroom, and sat next to him. The bartender poured Peter the bottoms from old bottles of wine. The man was impressed—Helps to know people, the man said. They talked for a while. The man said he had never lived on an island, that he drove trucks for a shipping company. Always wanted a boat, though, he said. He opened his wallet and showed a slip of paper tucked inside the silky creases. He wasn’t a man for impulses, but he had bought a ticket to look at whales for the next day.

  In the morning, Peter walked with him to the same ship the girl had left on. After the man boarded, Peter extended a wad of bills toward the captain, who looked at it kindly as if he wanted to understand.

  For months no one came, then a small, strong, dark-haired woman appeared. She wore a cheap-looking polyester skirt and a scallop-sleeved peach blouse. It was his mother. Like the others, she hadn’t aged. She edged around the lobby like she used to do when they went shopping on the mainland, dropping her shoulders so her body moved inward. She used to pick through shirts and speak as if annoyed with him, then hold the shirts up to his frame and purse her lips.

  She stopped at the desk, then went down the hallway, following the man who carried her bag.

  He tried to get her name or room number from Betty. She’s too old for you, she said.

  She reminds me of my mom, he said.

  She shook her head. Sorry, she said, it’s regulations. She took a dollar from the drawer so he could buy coffees from across the street.

  In the morning, his mother reappeared in clothes even more drab—a gray skirt and an ill-fitting blouse and sandals so tight that her feet squished out between the straps. She went over to the utility cart to pick out her breakfast. She hovered over the metal tray with pastries piled on doilies—the doilies reused until grease blots seeped through the paper—at last selecting a Danish with a circle of yellowed cream at the center. She ate her breakfast in a high-backed chair along the wall, eating slowly as if she were on a trip away from home for the first time, getting to pick what she wanted, and enjoying the secrecy of her choice.

  Peter handed her a newspaper.

  What’s this? she asked, holding it away from her.

  I thought you’d like it, he said.

  Thank you, but I don’t read the paper.

  After his mother left the lobby, Betty bought the paper from him. She did the crossword puzzle, frowning at the paper as if it had done something to her. Do I remind you of your mom? she asked.

  Not in the least, he said.

  She invited him to her room after her shift for a cocktail. When he arrived, she had showered and washed off her makeup. She had spread nips on the table, and he lifted up the fanciest bottle. Go ahead, put them in your pockets, she said. He picked a Jack Daniel’s and some gin. She motioned for him to take more. She talked to him about something—applying to college, or a trade program. He opened a bottle and drank. She ran a hand over her face as if looking for something. You should listen, she said. You can’t stay here forever. I’d like it if you could, but you can’t.

  He thought of opening another, but instead tapped his pockets, moved to the door, and said, You coming to clams?

  Sure, she said. I’m coming.

  When he walked out to the hall, his mother was walking past. Are you finding everything to your liking? he asked, falling into step with her.

  Everything is fine, she said.

  There are brochures in the lobby with some attractions, he said. If there is anything I can do for you.

  I’m quite all right.

  He said, I was wondering where you’re from. She kept moving; he reached and touched her arm but she shrank from him. You remind me of someone I know is all, he said, someone I once knew. And I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to make sure you were having a nice time.

  She stopped—they were in the lobby—and studied him. I’m from Stamford, Connecticut, she said.

  Do you have a son?

  A daughter.

  Does she look like you?

  A little, she said.

  Do you have a picture?

  That’s enough.

  She meant it to come out more lightly than it did. She asked him to show her the brochures, and she took several, even ones she had no interest in.
He gave her directions to cafés and shops. He invited her to clams.

  The residents of the hotel ate clams at a run-down place by the docks that had five-cent littlenecks on Tuesdays. They sat inside on tables covered with plastic gingham cloths. The back door was open, but the wind didn’t come through. The door looked onto a parking lot filled with lobster traps and rope crusted with dried-out crustaceans. Beyond that lay the harbor. From there, Helen appeared. Peter stood, and the others stopped talking. She looked up, saw the table of scraggly people and the young man, his hair a fine sandy gold and his body shimmering with sweat. She hadn’t noticed before how different he was from the others. It occurred to her that she could take him with her, as if he could fit into her purse. She thought of her house in the development, the driveway with squares of concrete that reflected the moon.

  You came, he said.

  Yes, the directions were good. She sat down, keeping her purse on her lap.

  No one is going to take it, he said.

  She laughed. It’s just habit.

  We ordered already. We would have waited, but we didn’t—

  No, it’s fine—I’m glad you didn’t. Sometimes I can never find the places I need to find. She glanced at the table for a menu, but didn’t see one. She lifted an arm to flag the waitress, but he pulled her arm down. Clams, he said.

  Clams?

  You order clams.

  What else?

  Clams, Portuguese roll, ear of corn, iced tea with sugar. Just say—never mind. He looked up. The waitress had come over. She’ll have the clams, he said, and the waitress nodded and walked away. I’ll have the clams, Helen repeated. Very good choice, someone said.

  When the food came they stopped talking. Chipped stoneware bowls were filled with shells the colors of seagulls, with clams so small they must have been illegal. They picked out the graying bellies with little forks, and dredged them through butter, their lips shining with the oil. The thin, waxy napkins that came in the packs of plastic silverware only blotted the oil. On the walk home—No, not home, Helen caught herself—she said to Peter, I’m glad I came.

  You thought you wouldn’t be? he said, holding his arm out to see the shadow.

  Yes, she said. I thought it might be strange.

  But you’re glad?

  I’m glad.

  At the hotel bar, they had several drinks, things she wanted that he wouldn’t normally have ordered. Things mixed with cranberry juice, grapefruit, grenadine. Oh! she said, aren’t you going to eat your cherry? The cherry was at the bottom, speared to an orange by a pirate’s knife. He had never gotten a pirate’s knife before. Two cherries! she said. She’s happy, he thought. I’m happy was the next thought, followed by the unfamiliar recognition of joy, the discomfort in it, the panic. Will it leave me? How to make it not leave me? Thinking that if he pretended it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t leave.

  At the end of the bar, he saw the captain of the ferry, hunched over, one arm circling a beer. He turned to his mother. She was lining up swords. He asked her how long she was staying at the hotel. She said she wasn’t sure. She was taking a boat the next day to Peaks Island, she said. It was a tourist island close to the mainland. The picture on the brochure had captivated her.

  Can I come with you?

  It might be better if I go alone, she said. I’ve had such little time. It sent pain through him. She saw it. She said, I don’t know you.

  Do you feel like you know me? That you might have known me before?

  I read paperbacks, she said. I go to restaurants and sit by the window and read.

  That’s what I like to do, too.

  In the morning, she stood in the lobby, holding a straw hat. He walked toward her. He could see Betty approaching him, so he walked faster. When Betty realized what he was doing, she stopped in the center of the room, under the place where a chandelier used to hang.

  Outside, he lifted his mother’s bag.

  I hope the person I remind you of was kind, she said.

  She was always kind.

  Well, there’s that at least.

  When they got to the ferry building, the window where she had bought the ticket was boarded up, or she couldn’t remember where it was, or something else happened to confound them. She looked at Peter and said she would stay if he wanted that, but he handed over her bag and said to go on, that he would be there when she got back.

  SETTLERS

  An artist I knew used to tell me stories about his life. We’d sit on the curb and he’d talk in the low, measured voice of his. His wife had left him and his daughter, Leigh, in a fishing village hours north of Portland. They had moved there so he could be a painter and he had a studio that opened to the harbor. Soon as his wife left, though, it didn’t mean anything, the studio, trying to be a painter.

  She had left him in October. Winter was coming. They didn’t have any money.

  His daughter had outgrown her winter clothes, and at the church store, he bought her an oversized jacket with a great fur hood that made them both laugh, but he couldn’t find her any boots. After, they ate at the soup kitchen in the church hall. They ate there often. Almost everyone in town ate there. There wasn’t anything to it. They were all poor, that many hours north, where the sun was so slant and spare that by January you felt it could disappear. No one talked to him about his wife leaving. The men especially acted as if they weren’t there. Paul had to remind himself they thought they were doing him a favor. At last one of the men looked up and said, They were giving out bags of rolls before, but looks like they’re all gone.

  That’s fine, Paul said. We have bread.

  That night, Leigh watched cartoons, a blanket over her. Paul studied the stained glass fruit that hung from the window. He wanted to take them down, but didn’t want her seeing any changes. Outside, the sky seemed to rest on the boats, their masts as bare as the trees. Gradually the sun sunk and the light widened and turned red and orange. It felt impossible then, living this way, but soon there was the coziness of the house at night. He set up TV trays, and she stayed bundled under the blanket, the cartoons flickering over her. She watched the screen even after he turned it off.

  When they finished dinner she rested her face on the blanket and talked to him, nestling into the sofa as if she was an animal. This is kind of nice, don’t you think? he said. I don’t know, she said, though he could tell she was happy; it was only that she begrudged him everything. Her withholding had always been a form of tenderness toward him.

  He said she’d have to go over to someone’s house some days so he could paint, and he asked whose house, naming the two women who did day care, Sheila and Maryanne, and she said Sheila, which he already knew.

  He turned up the heat. When it warmed, he combed her hair and got her in a nightgown. Then they lay on the floor, the two of them around her lamp, and he read from something she’d picked from the bookmobile. He also had a stack of poetry books he’d taken from a free box, the pages blooming with water damage. He read Brodsky poems, then Hayden Carruth, finding a poem about a cow. You’ll like this, he said. The moon was like a full cup tonight. You like Sheila don’t you?

  Yes, she said.

  If you decide you don’t like it we can talk about the options, but let’s try this.

  He woke on the sofa to her rustling in the kitchen. He sat up to see what she was doing, and watched her put a bowl on the floor and pour cereal over it.

  After breakfast they walked the dirt road past the jumble of cottages, trailers, shacks, to Sheila’s sturdy ranch with a front room painted yellow. Sheila let Leigh in, then smoked with him on the steps. He asked her how much she’d charge, and she said an amount that he knew was too low. I’ll cook dinner for you, he said, you can come over and have dinner with us. Leigh cooks.

  I would believe it, too, Sheila said. She asked if his wife was coming back, and he said he didn’t think so. I only ask, she said, because I wanted to know what Leigh thinks, what you told her.

  She hasn’t asked,
he said.

  It might be better if you don’t wait for her to ask, she said.

  He went to see an apartment above a bar—one that was cheaper and better insulated than theirs—but it was dark and filled with trash. He picked up cans, then gave up and headed toward the harbor. Some of the houses had new woodpiles, the wood so fresh the color was iridescent. He walked to the bird sanctuary, then couldn’t think of another place to walk. He got to Sheila’s hours early.

  We were about to have a snack, Leigh said as they walked down the path.

  We can have a snack at the restaurant, he said.

  The sign by the register said to wait, but you only had to look to be sure the waitress saw, then you found a table. They sat in a booth with vinyl so stiff it barely pressed in. Leigh ordered a brownie. Paul drank coffee and watched out the window. You know why we need to move, right? he said. That we could get a warmer place to live? That the winter gets really cold? He wondered if at that age you understood winter, if you could remember it from the year before. She detailed the project she was making, a construction-paper basket for trick-or-treating. What color? he asked. The other kids were using orange but she was using green. Why? he asked. She wanted to.

  That night they had dinner on the sofa again. He couldn’t handle the intimacy of being alone with her, so he let her watch cartoons while they ate. After, she said she wanted to sleep in the living room, and there wasn’t much of a point he could make against it, so they brought in her mattress.

  They got a bag of potatoes from a neighbor’s cousin. They had done this when he was a child, stored a bag in the cellar and eaten them all winter, but the cottage didn’t have a cellar. Shit, he said, then went outside so he wouldn’t swear in front of Leigh.