Chapter 8

"There," she said. "Now, Joe. Now. Now. Now." He cried out and spurted over his chest and neck. "Ahhh," she said as he fell back. She took his hand and pushed it over the warm sperm. She lifted her nightgown and pulled his hand to her stomach. "Make me beautiful," she said, writhing and slippery. She pushed his hand to his chest and pulled it back again. "Make me beautiful," she said in a smaller voice, "all over." Joe tried. He passed out.

In the morning, he awoke to the sounds of animated conversation. He lay with his eyes closed waiting for his brain to unscramble. His head was pounding. Gradually, he realized that he was in bed next to Isabelle and that she was watching TV. He was in bad shape physically, but he felt freer than he had in a long time. "Top of the mornin'," he said lifting his head and opening his eyes.

"I was just going to wake you up," Isabelle said. He had to blink and focus. She was pale and looked upset. Her arms were folded in front of her, shielding her breasts. "I've ordered breakfast. Room service will be here soon, so I'm afraid you'll have to go now. I eat breakfast and then I do my work."

"Oh, O.K., throw me out. All I have to do is--find my room. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Joe."

"O.K." He staggered up and figured out how to put on his pants. Socks and shoes took a little doing. "Picking up speed . . . " She kept watching the TV. "Isabelle?" She turned her head and shushed him with one finger to her lips.

"Just go, Joe," she said tightly. She meant it.

"But . . . " he didn't even know her last name. "Isabelle, I'm in the book. Give me a call." She smiled. Joe couldn't tell whether she was glad that he wanted her to call or whether she was forgiving him for things he didn't understand. He wanted to hug her, but he knew that he shouldn't. She changed channels. He blew her a slow kiss and left.

The room waiter pushed a stainless steel cart past him in the hall as he tried to remember his room number. He thought it was 437. He didn't want to go down to the lobby and admit to the desk clerk that he was too messed up to remember his room number. He took the elevator up one floor. Go for it, he told himself, and slid the card into the lock. A green light flashed. Yes! He entered his room and considered the bed, still made. What the hell, might as well keep going, he thought. He showered and lugged the Filson bag down to the restaurant where he ate a waffle with strawberries, drank coffee and two glasses of water. He assessed the situation.

You're in Seattle, Joe.

Airport.

Take bus?

Save money.

It was a smiley morning. The waitress and the desk clerk were in good moods. The trolley driver was singing. The sun was shining; that must have had something to do with it. He got off the trolley at the end of the line and caught a city bus to SeaTac. He was hours early and had saved thirty bucks by not taking a taxi. He snoozed and spaced out all the way to Hawaii and home.

"Hi, Batman. Where's the party?" Batman maintained a tolerant silence. Joe took two aspirin and slept for fourteen hours.

14

Friday morning Joe walked to the farmer's market and bought onions, bok choy, lettuce, and carrots. The prices were good; the locals were cheerful; it was a good deal for everyone. It was late September, and there were fewer tourists around. A lone conga beat tumbled and surged across Kapiolani Park. The smell of grilling teriyaki drifted across the grass. Small cumulus clouds blew out to sea.

Joe sat on the last beach before Diamond Head, a place where he and Sally and Kate had often come on weekends. An older man--the age Joe was now--used to park his car and carry a rubber raft to the water. His dog would jump into the raft, and the man would push it out, swimming slowly, until they were a hundred yards offshore. He would climb into the raft and write in a notebook while his dog rested and kept watch. The deeply tanned man and the black raft floated up and down, a dark silhouette on the glinty ocean. Occasionally the man paddled to keep from drifting too far down the beach. Probably 80 now, if he's still alive, Joe thought.

"Time to get serious." The words appeared like a banner in Joe's mind. To his surprise, he had told the woman at the San Juan Yacht Club that he was a poet. The words were true as he spoke them. He had defined himself, for better or worse. Whether he wrote stories or poems didn't matter--he could do both. What mattered was to get to work.

Isabelle was on to something with the patchwork quilt. The faces and feelings that he described were important, but--as patches. He needed to carry his writing further and work on the quilt. Isabelle? He shook his head feeling a slight flush. She was a sharpie, no doubt about it. She got right to him. But she was well down the alcoholic road. She didn't have to work. She didn't have children. Joe couldn't see what would bring her back. It wasn't the drinking, so much, that put him off. It was the lack of pride or purpose or will power that the drinking implied. Just as well, he thought, that there was an ocean between them.

"You could define adult life as the struggle not to drink too much," he said to Mo at Hee Hing's the following week. He was telling her about Isabelle, leaving out the sex.

"There's too much to do to feel awful all the time," she said.

"Quite right. But some people don't get hangovers; they're just a little fuzzy in the morning. Ingrid was like that. I can't take it. Tea, that's the stuff," he said, drinking from a small round cup. "So, what have you been doing?"

"Oh, the usual," she said. "I've been over to Kauai a few times. I got a decent shot of the cook at Tops."

"Jade Willow Lady," Joe said.

"Yes. I'm framing a large one for my next show--whenever that is."

"I'm anxious to see it. I forgot to tell you: after we talked last, I checked out graduate schools and applied to Montpelier. They accepted me for the semester that starts right after Christmas."

"Congratulations!"

"Yeah, pretty good, huh? Joe Burke, software bum, goes for an MFA. But I'm not sure I should."

"Why not?"

"Pretty expensive," Joe said.

"What would it cost?"

"$3800 a semester, times four." He frowned. "I've got enough to get started, but I'd run out before the second semester."

"There's loan money for graduate school," Mo said.

"I guess. It doesn't make sense from a financial point of view; I'll never get a teaching job. But I think I could learn something."

"You have to make a commitment," Mo said firmly.

"The winter residency is in Florida. For 'housemates preference,' I requested older women of independent means."

"They can be difficult," Mo said. "How come Florida? I thought the school was in Vermont."

"The summer session is in Vermont. I think it was a faculty decision. They leased a hotel in the panhandle." Joe scratched his head. "I don't know. One way of looking at it is that part of the money would pay for a vacation in Florida. It's way over near Alabama. I've never been in that part of the state."

Mo placed her chopsticks neatly across her plate and wiped her mouth with a napkin. She began to fidget.

"Well, onward," Joe said. "You want to go exploring sometime? Look at things?"

"Mmm." She looked out the window. "I'm awfully busy for the next while . . . "

He sighed dramatically. "I'll just have to go myself. Maybe when I get back from Florida?"

"Give me a call," she said. They left, as usual, in opposite directions on Kapahulu Avenue. She was like a figure on a Japanese fan, slowly unfolding, then snapped shut. Let it be, he thought.

He spent the next few days working on a story about the time he and Morgan found a cache of dynamite hidden by the Weathermen, a radical group in the late 60's. He described the lost note that led them to a deserted house at the end of a road, the cold cloudy December afternoon, the shock of discovering a duffel bag in the crawl space under the house, the cardboard tubes of explosive, the tangle of blasting caps, and the ominous silence. But, as he went on to write about the FBI, the local lawyer, and the lawyer's wife, he began to lose focus. One thing led to another. Was he writing a story or a novel? Again he realized that he had a lot to learn.

He was worried about money, but he put off looking for a job. He couldn't decide whether or not to go to Florida? How many hours could he work if he became a full time student? One evening, he swung through his door, stood by the blinking red light on his answering machine, and heard Ann say in a sad voice, "Joe, I'm sorry to have to shock you like this. Your father died--yesterday. Please call me if you get in by eleven or so, our time."

"Damn!" he said. "Damn."

It was seven-thirty--past midnight, Maine time. He got a reduced fare to Boston for the following afternoon on an emergency basis and began putting things into his Filson bag and then taking them out. He couldn't feel anything. He gave up packing, lowered himself to his mattress, and waited a long time for sleep.

In the morning, he called Ann to tell her that he would be there the next day in the afternoon. She said that she'd give him the details when he got there. His father had died of a heart attack. He told her to keep her chin up and said that he'd call Kate.

"Kate?"

"Hi, Dad."

"Honey, I've got bad news. Your grandfather died--the day before yesterday." She let out a small cry and was silent. "I just found out. Ann called. I'm going out there for a couple of days."

"Oh, poor Grandpa. I had a dream about him last week. He was standing by the painting he gave me--the one of the woman in the barn door--and he was smiling at me, very loving and kind. Oh . . . " She sobbed, and her voice got farther away as though she had dropped her arms.

"I'm sorry, Honey. He had a good life," Joe said helplessly.

"He pau hana, now," she said.

"Yeah," Joe said. "I call you when I get back, huh?"

"O.K., Dad."

"O.K. Bye, Honey."

"Bye, Dad."

He packed two changes of clothes, a sweater, and a jacket. It was nearly November, practically winter in Maine. "So long, Batman. Hold the fort." It was a relief to trot down the stairs and get moving.

At midnight, Boston time, he emerged stiffly from the plane and walked into Logan terminal. He rented a small car and stopped for the night at the first motel he came to on Route 1.

15

Joe opened his eyes, blinked, and realized that he was in a motel in Massachusetts. He drove to Portland and stopped at Becky's on the waterfront. Several regulars were in their usual seats. One of the waitresses had gained a few pounds. Joe ate breakfast and sat over a second cup of coffee, enjoying the voices and feeling that he'd changed since he left Maine. He felt better--tougher and more himself. But he was sad for his father, and he had a sense of loss for things left behind, his Maine life, no longer quite remembered.

He left a big tip and hit the road. Deer Isle is out between Penobscot Bay and Jericho Bay. It's a romantic place, softer than the rest of Maine. The light is warmer. Probably that was what attracted his father, Joe thought. He took the fast route through Augusta and Belfast. Three and a half hours later, the Deer Isle Bridge came suddenly into view, high, too thin, an arrow shot gracefully over Eggemoggin Reach. Joe could not drive over it without remembering that its sister bridge in Tacoma shook itself to pieces.

By one-thirty he was bumping down his father's road. The barn seemed empty when he stopped in front. Ann came out of the house to meet him. She was wearing a denim skirt and a black blouse. Her blonde hair was braided and wound behind her head. They had a long wordless hug. Ann had always been nice to him, and he was glad to be there, to be a supportive presence. She sighed and stepped back.

"How nice to see you, Joe. Brendan's here. He flew in yesterday."

"Hi, Joe." Brendan, his half brother, came through the front door. They patted each other on the arms, a compromise between hugging and shaking hands.

"Brendan. A sad day," Joe said.

"Yes." He was eleven years younger than Joe, healthy, blonde like Ann and squarely built like their father. His stylish short haircut, regular features, and white teeth were made for soap opera if his face had been less triangular. His small chin, set in front of a strong neck, gave him a power lifter look. He was wearing chinos and a tight fitting short sleeved shirt with an insignia over one pocket.

Joe stretched. The sky was covered with an even layer of gray cloud. It was unseasonably warm. "Good to get out of the car," he said. "Drove up from Boston."

"I got a flight to Bangor, yesterday," Brendan said. "Mother picked me up." They entered the house and sat in the living room. Something bumped against Joe's ankle.

"Jeremy! Well, well. Jeremy. He looks in good shape, Ann. Thank you for taking care of him." He turned to Brendan. "He abandoned ship on my last visit. I didn't realize it until I was in New Hampshire."

"Oh, he was great friends with your father. And, after a while, he got on nicely with Georgia." Georgia was a fluffy black and white cat.

"Ah, yes, Georgia--a champion mouser." As if to take a bow, Georgia took three steps in from the hall and sat at the edge of the rug.

"Since we're all here," Ann said, "we might as well have a family conference."

"Mother, Joe has been driving all morning. How can he possibly have a conference without coffee or wine?"

"Yes, of course."

"Joe, what can I get you?" he asked.

"Wine."

Brendan brought out a bottle of Pinot Blanc and poured them each a glass. "Dad," he toasted. They raised their glasses, drank, and were silent a moment.

"I have something to tell you--or ask you boys." Ann looked troubled. "I found your father in that small clearing in the woods, on his regular path, the walk he took most days after lunch. When he wasn't back, around four, I went to look for him. Well, you know this already, Brendan, and now you're caught up, Joe--except for one thing that I wanted to tell you both. It was very strange. Your father was lying on that flat piece of ledge. He was stark naked. I knew right away that he was--not alive. I didn't want anyone to see him like that, so I dressed him before I came back." The memory silenced her for a moment. "Why would he be like that? I thought you might have an idea. I don't understand."

Brendan and Joe looked at each other. It surprised Joe to realize that they did understand, that they were, in fact, brothers.

"Mother, you said it was hot."

"Almost like summer, Brendan."

"The sun must have felt good--one last day," Joe said sadly.

"He couldn't have taken his clothes off after the heart attack," Ann said. "Do you think he felt it coming?"

"We'll never know, Mother."

"If he felt it coming, why wouldn't he have come home?"

"I'm sure he would have tried," Joe said. She was struggling with being excluded, or not being included, in a final intimacy. "It's such a beautiful spot," Joe said, "maybe he just wanted to lie there and look at the sky."

"Yes, I suppose," she said. She straightened on the couch and pushed the question to the back of her mind to deal with later.

"He was lucky to have you for so many years," Joe said. This was easier for him to offer than for Brendan who had had every nuance and tension between his parents pressed on him since birth.

"Thank you, Joe. Now--we must talk about the will." She walked to a writing table that stood in a bow window and returned with checks in her hand. "The estate goes to me with the exception of ten thousand dollars to each of you and ten thousand to Kate." She gave Joe two checks and handed the other to Brendan. "This is coming out of the insurance which I'm supposed to get next week, so if you will hold these until the first of the month . . . " She smiled. "There's a stipulation. The money must be spent within one year on something that makes you feel good."

"That shouldn't be hard," Brendan said.

"Thank you," Joe said. "I really wasn't expecting . . . " The money in the family had always been Ann's, although his father's paintings had begun to sell in recent years.

"Additionally, Joe, you are to have this drawing of your mother." She pointed to a framed drawing that was propped up on the writing table. "And first choice of any painting in the barn."

"That's very nice," Joe said.

"Your father always said you should have this drawing. It was one of his favorite pieces from the early years."

"I'll take it with me."

"How long are you going to be staying?" she asked.

"I thought I'd take off the day after tomorrow. I just wanted to see you and Brendan and . . . "

"I'll be here all week," Brendan said, "if anything needs doing."

"We're not going to have a ceremony. He didn't want one," Ann said. She looked down at the floor for a moment and then raised her head. "I'm going to bake something, if you boys will excuse me. Friends are going to start coming by; I want to have something to offer them."

"Chocolate chips?" asked Brendan. She left without answering and they finished their wine in silence.

"Might as well pick a painting," Joe said.

Brendan came with him to the barn. When they were inside, Brendan said, "The old goat!" Joe spotted his father's special stash of Laphroaig and reached for it.

"To the old goat," he said and took a healthy swallow. He passed the bottle to Brendan. "You're all right, Brendan."

Brendan drank and cleared his throat. "Yowsir!"

Joe searched through paintings, mostly oils, and chose a small one, unframed, that had been done earlier that year--a spring scene of the woods at the edge of the field behind the barn. The leaves were just out, and his father had captured the delicate early green, chartreuse, that is gone in a week. The young leaves were modestly and unashamedly tender. There was nice work with interarching birches among the other trees and in the meeting of the woods and the field, but the light on the leaves was the main act.

"A good one," Brendan said.

"Not too big, easy to mail."

"I'll bet you could carry it on the plane, if you packed it," Brendan said. They rummaged around and found a shipping box just large enough for the painting and the drawing.

"Good idea," Joe said. "Now I even have the money to frame it. How are you doing these days, by the way?"

"Not bad. I'm teaching a course at a community college. Of course, the bay area is expensive. Wheeler's making the big bucks. It's a full time job just keeping him out of trouble, making sure he eats right, and so on." Brendan grinned. "I can't imagine what the house is going to be like when I get back. Wheeler hasn't put anything away since he was born. He just picks things up and carries them to different places."

"Creative chaos," Joe said.

"Great, until you need the garlic press."

"I'm with you," Joe said. "I hate looking for things. Wheeler is an excellent fellow, though." He pictured Wheeler, very tall, hawk nosed, wearing glasses, bent over an architectural drawing, the top of his head seeming to glow.

"Oh, I couldn't survive without him," Brendan said, taking another swallow of Laphroaig. "He was a hard man, our father. Maybe you didn't know, not having lived with him and all."

"I suppose so," Joe said. "Did he give you a hard time when you, umm, came out?"

"No," Brendan said, "he was fine about that. 'Whatever works,' he said. It was the art thing--that any other way of life was less worthy. Helping in the community, working with people, he couldn't see that as important. It wouldn't have been, for him, I guess." Brendan shrugged. "I can draw, you know. But I never got off on it." Joe reached out and patted him on the back, not knowing what to say.

They went into the house, and Joe packed the drawing with the oil painting. He put the box on the back seat of the rental car and stopped to pick a few strawberries from the patch of everbearing plants by the end of the barn.

"I love those strawberry plants," he said to Ann in the kitchen. "October and they're still working."

"Your father loved them, too."

Joe prowled around the bookshelves and found an Arthur W. Upfield mystery that he hadn't read. "Great stuff," he said later, as they ate a light dinner of soup and salad. "Off to yet another corner of Australia while Napoleon Bonaparte gets his man."

"The keen senses of the aboriginal combined with the rational faculties of the white man," Brendan said.

_Death of a Lake_ is the one I remember," Ann said. "Year after year, the lake shrinking, the birds, the fish . . . " She shuddered.

"More wine, mother?"

"Yes, a little."

The next day passed quietly. Brendan split and Joe stacked a large pile of firewood. Ann went shopping. They took naps. Brendan and Joe went out for dinner to the "Fisherman's Friend."

"Now that's a haddock plate!" Joe said.

"Finest kind," Brendan agreed. "La Nouvelle Cuisine has not reached Stonington." They had coffee and mammoth pieces of pie.

"Ann seems to be taking it pretty well," Joe said.

"She's a trooper," Brendan said. "What was your mother like? You know, I grew up with that drawing. Whenever I saw you, I always felt the similarity."

Joe leaned back in his chair, surprised. "Well, she wasn't a trooper. She was talented, I guess."

"Do you think of her often?"

"Hardly ever--not very good memories."

"Like?"

Joe sipped coffee. "She was always leaving me places. Once, when I was six, she left me with an old couple in New York. They were very old. They made me stay in a playpen for a week."

"A week?"

"Yeah. It was torture. I was used to having the run of the block. It was summer. The playpen was by a window where I could see the street; that was good, anyway. I remember the dust floating in the room."

"How awful," Brendan said. Memories rushed into Joe's mind as though a lock had been picked.

"I used to listen to radio shows every day at five o'clock. Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and his Great Dog, King. On KING! AroofRoofRoof . . . " Joe looked around the dining room and lowered his voice. "I found a dime on the couch one afternoon and showed it to my mother.

"'Where did you get that?' she wanted to know.

"Found it on the couch.

"'Don't lie to me!' she said. 'You stole it, didn't you? Maggie told me the kids were taking money from little Sean. Tell me the truth.'

"I found it on the couch.

"'You're lying.'

"It's five o'clock--Sergeant Preston . . .

"'You're not listening to the radio until you tell me the truth."'

Joe made a face. "I was so desperate to hear Sergeant Preston that I told her I stole the dime." Brendan was silent. "She wouldn't believe me," Joe said. "That was the worst. She wouldn't believe me." Brendan looked at the napkin Joe had crumpled in one hand, and he shook his head.

"I guess," Joe said, putting the napkin ball on the table, "if I wanted to be adult about it, I'd say she was too high strung--one of these people with major league talent but without the courage to use it."

"Too bad," Brendan said. "We know people like that in San Francisco." He was genuinely sympathetic.

"I'm glad we had a chance to talk," Joe said, on their way out.

"Right on."

Joe made Ann and Brendan promise to visit him in Hawaii. Ann told them that she had decided to stay on in the house, at least for a while; she needed time to adjust. She had friends on the island and money enough to cope with the coming winter. Joe said that he would be leaving first thing in the morning and that they shouldn't bother getting up to say goodbye.

He slept restlessly and dressed at first light. Ann was already up. "You must have coffee, at least," she said.

"It smells great. Thanks." He poured milk from a little pitcher into a mug decorated with a Maine Public Radio logo.

"Just like your father," Ann said, "ready to go in the morning."

"Mmm--delicious. Goodbye, Jeremy," he said to the cat who was rubbing against his ankle, anxious to be let out.