The Map of True Places (19 page)

Z
EE TOOK THE PHONE
into the den. She'd been talking to Melville for the last half hour, trying her best to calm him down. By the time she hung up, Jessina had put Finch to bed and had left Zee a note.

“Get some sleep,” she said to Melville after they'd talked in circles for the third time. “We'll figure things out tomorrow.”

The television was still on, but muted. Zee sat on the couch, flipped the remote, finding Turner Classics:
Jane Eyre
with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles. She didn't turn up the sound but just sat staring at the screen. “Who is Grace Poole?” she said to the television set. It was a game they had invented, she and Melville and Finch, a kind of
Jeopardy!
for the literary set. Something Finch had tried on his lit classes.
Who is Grace Poole?
was the answer. The question was one she had written herself:
She takes care of Rochester's crazy wife in the attic.
No one had talked about the parallel to her mother when the question was asked. She thought now about the way her question should have been worded:
She takes care of Rochester's crazy wife.
There was never any mention of an attic in Brontë's book, and, in the film, it was more like a tower room than an attic. She had always gotten it wrong. It was Maureen and not Mr. Rochester's crazy wife who lived in the attic. And though
both Finch and Melville had challenged wrong answers all the time and must certainly have noticed the error of her question, they had never challenged Zee on this one.

Zee fell asleep to the sound of foghorns. She dreamed of the stars and of the
Friendship,
not the reproduction that was at the wharves today but the old one that Maureen had tried to write about. Then she dreamed about Bernini's sculpture of Neptune and Triton as it had once been described to her by Maureen. Or maybe it was Lilly…. No, it was Maureen.

T
HE DAY
M
AUREEN KILLED
herself, Zee had borrowed Mickey's dory and gone to Baker's Island to get the Yeats book in an effort to cheer her mother.

Maureen's mood seemed better that day. Certainly she was kinder to Zee, whom she had been ignoring ever since the visit to Arcana's psychic studio. The last few months had reminded Zee of the Snow White fairy tale, not just because of Arcana and an image she kept having of her holding out a poisoned apple, but because her mother, who had once loved Zee so much, had grown cold ever since the pronouncement of the psychic, as if the very existence of Zee were keeping her from her fairy-tale ending.

That was the way it was between them for the rest of the summer. Maureen stopped writing “The Once”—in fact, she stopped writing altogether. Mostly she just stared out at the water or sat upstairs in her room. She hardly ate and rarely if ever slept.

So on her way to the island to get the book, Zee was encouraged. Her mother's mood seemed lighter, and though Zee hadn't been able to talk her into coming along, Maureen had sounded almost interested when Zee told her what she was planning to do.

“You've always loved that book,” Zee said hopefully.

“Thank you for doing this,” Maureen said, and actually got out of bed and came down to the kitchen to see Zee off.

“I love you,” Maureen said to her.

It seemed an odd thing to say, because of how bad things had been between them since the episode with the psychic. But Maureen was smiling when she said it, another encouraging sign, or so Zee thought at the time.

In retrospect, Zee knew that such behavior was a common occurrence in suicide cases. The victim would often feel much better once the decision to end things had finally been made. The uplift in spirits often left family members that much more shocked when the suicide happened. “She seemed so much better,” they would declare.

Though Lilly had been Zee's first suicide since she'd become a psychologist, she had heard stories from other therapists, including Mattei. A vast and rapid improvement in a depressed mood can be cause for alarm. In bipolar patients it is often the signal of impending mania. In suicidal patients it often means that they've made that final decision and, upon making it, feel an almost exhilarating sense of relief. But Zee had no such knowledge when Maureen died. Though to most people who met her, she seemed older, Zee had only recently turned thirteen.

Baker's Island wasn't as close by as some of the other Salem islands were; it was actually closer to Manchester than to Salem. When Zee finally got there, it was after three. She tied up the dory and hurried up the ramp.

Zee walked past the spot where the residents parked their wheel-barrows, the only vehicles used to carry things to and from the old cottages, and then she headed toward the cottage, greeting people as she passed, grown-ups and children she'd known since she was little, whose families had summered here for generations. She wanted to stop and chat with them, but she couldn't. Not today.

She let herself into the cottage with the key that Maureen always
left in the window box. The front room was dark and shuttered. Maureen hadn't been here once all summer, a clue that only in hindsight Zee realized should have been cause for alarm. Every summer since Zee was a baby, Maureen had used the cottage as her writing space.

This year the house had not been opened. As Zee entered the doorway, she watched a mouse dart and hide; she couldn't see where it went. The cottage was tiny, only two rooms, the large front room with a small soapstone sink and hand pump and an old-fashioned icebox. A round table sat in the middle of the floor. If the house had been on the mainland, its decoration might have been right out of the Shabby Chic or Maine Cottage catalogs, but here one recognized it as the accumulation of hand-me-downs or discarded items from other places that had been collected over a number of summers: an old rubber bathing cap hanging on a hook, its chin piece cracked and splintered, a straw sun hat from the 1920s that had once had a silk flower on top but that now had only a small hole where that flower had once been attached.

Zee pulled open the four French windows over the sink, then pushed out the shutters beyond. Bright light flooded the room. A nursery web spider took shelter in a crack between the rafters.

Zee had always loved this place. When Maureen planned to stay overnight, she usually brought Zee along, her only requirement being that Zee learn to amuse herself, so that Maureen could write undisturbed. That was fine by Zee, who spent as much time outside as she could. On rainy days she would sit on the rug and draw pictures or play solitaire while her mother worked on her stories. Sometimes Zee read the old Nancy Drew mysteries that had been left there by her step-grandfather's first wife when she was a child.

The rug was rolled up in a corner. It bulged slightly in the center, something she hadn't noticed before. Either it had been improperly stored or something had been rolled up with it. Her cards, maybe? A box of crayons?

The door to the bedroom was closed. Zee hesitated before it. For as long as she could remember, she'd been forbidden to enter what had once been the bedroom. Though there was a double brass bed in the corner, they did not sleep in the room when they stayed here. Maureen slept instead on the couch and Zee in a sleeping bag on a huge canvas air mattress on the floor next to her mother.

Zee opened the door and stood looking at what had once been her parents' marriage bed. The brass was greening where a leak in the roof had caused a slow drip. She could see the sheets on the bed, never changed, and she could make out the faded green chenille bedspread, which smelled musty from the leak.

On that last day of Maureen's life, Zee stood again in the bedroom on Baker's Island. But something was wrong with the picture. It wasn't just that the roof was leaking or that the green chenille bedspread was mildewed from the moisture. It was something else. As she looked at the pillow, she realized that the Yeats book was not there. The one thing her mother wanted, the one thing she had come here to get, was missing.

Zee tore the house apart looking for the book. She looked behind and under the bed. She looked in the icebox and in all the drawers. She even looked outside, around the whole perimeter of the house. Finally she spotted the rug and again noted the bulge in the center of it.

She rolled out the rug, and with it something went tumbling. The force of the rolling threw whatever it was across the room. Hopeful, she took a step to retrieve it, and she saw the mouse. It was the same mouse that had scurried across the floor earlier, and with it was a tiny mouse, presumably its baby. Their eyes were wild. The mice were frozen in place. Zee realized that in rolling out the rug she had destroyed their home. Beside the baby mouse, as if in haute décor, was the silk flower the mice had gnawed from the old straw hat and the ball from her game of jacks that had rolled under the bed so long ago. Next to it was the book.

 

S
TRYCHNINE WAS THE POISON
M
AUREEN
had researched for her story, the one she'd had the housekeeper use on the captain. It was also the poison Maureen ended up using on herself.

There were many easier poisons available, a few she had learned about from Ann and others as nearby as her garden. Maureen had considered and rejected them all. Strychnine is a poison that travels up the spinal cord and heightens the intensity of the convulsions it causes. It is a terrible way to die. Any emergency worker who has ever seen strychnine poisoning would be unlikely to forget it. The seizures are often brought on within ten minutes of ingestion and are triggered by stimulation of any kind—from fear of death to bright light to the sound of a distant car passing on the road. Theoretically, it is possible to survive strychnine poisoning, if one could keep the poisoning victim absolutely calm and quiet for twenty-four hours or so, until the poison clears out the system. But it almost never happens. A noise, or even the softest touch, will set off seizures that flex the back until the head and feet touch the floor, the body creating an almost perfect arch. After each seizure the victim will collapse in a heap, gathering the energy to seize again. After five or six seizures, the body's energy is drained, and the victim dies of respiratory failure or exhaustion.

 

M
AUREEN PLANNED HER DEATH CAREFULLY,
if not well. Finch was on summer vacation from teaching and was carousing with his pirate friends, who were participating in a two-day encampment at Winter Island. And with Zee gone for several hours, Maureen had taken advantage of the opportunity.

The note she left behind was hidden in a place where only Finch would find it. At the bottom of the note, she finished with the verses
that matched the book her daughter was just that moment bringing back to her.

Less than fifteen minutes after Maureen took the poison, Zee came home with the book. She slammed the screen door in the kitchen before she bounded up the stairs. It was the sound of the slamming door that sent Maureen into her first seizure.

W
HEN
Z
EE WOKE UP,
she was still on the couch. The sky had cleared, and the moon was rising over the harbor. It was huge and yellow, and she hadn't seen one like it for a long time. As she sat up and got her bearings, she realized that it wasn't the moonlight that had woken her but the sound of someone pounding on the door.

Finch was already in bed, and Jessina was gone for the night.

At first she thought it might be Hawk. He'd said he might come by tonight to do the railings. But when she looked at the clock, she saw that it was after eleven. Confused and still sleepy, she made her way to the door.

It was Michael.

“I got your message,” he said. “I'm sorry, too.”

 

T
HOUGH THEY WERE BOTH EXHAUSTED,
neither Michael nor Zee slept much that night. Zee's childhood bed was an old-fashioned double, and it dipped in the middle like a hammock, which was fine for Zee alone but not great for two people. And Finch was sundowning again.

In the short time she'd been here, Zee had noticed that Finch
seemed to become disoriented as the day slipped into evening, often leading him to get very agitated by normal activities like washing or dressing for bed. A normal occurrence in some patients with dementia, it was called “sundowning.” He often seemed fearful at such times, and he often wandered, which is what he'd been doing that first night he stood at Zee's bed before the freezing episode began. Sundowning was something Zee knew about, but it was more common to Alzheimer's patients than those with Parkinson's.

When he was sundowning, Finch often didn't want to take medication. It took her until 4:00
A.M.
to convince him to take some trazodone, and by 7:00, when he was due to have his first dose of Sinemet, Finch was fast asleep.

“I'm sorry,” Michael said to her again after witnessing Finch's deteriorating condition. “I thought you were just being dramatic.”

It was the same phrase that William had used to describe Lilly when he'd first brought her to see Mattei. It was an interesting choice of words, and one that Zee might have called Michael on if they both hadn't been so tired. She bristled but decided it wasn't worth an argument.

“I hate to say it, but I agree with the occupational therapist,” he said. “Finch definitely needs to be in a nursing home.”

“He would rather die than be in a nursing home.”

 

L
ATER THAT MORNING, CLEARLY FEELING
guilty, Michael helped Zee clean out more papers. She was making a pile of Melville's belongings, things she would get to him or things he could come sort through one day when Finch was out of the house.

They talked little as they worked.

At six o'clock they sent out for Chinese, and they ate it in the kitchen with Finch and Jessina, who was making jokes about the chopsticks, threatening to feed Finch with them instead of the fork she was using.

“Let him feed himself,” Zee reminded her. Everyone was quiet as they watched Finch try to manipulate the fork.

After dinner she opened a bottle of twenty-year-old port that Michael had given Finch for his sixty-fifth birthday.

“He still has this?” Michael was amazed.

“He still has most of them,” she said, showing him. “Melville opens one every so often, but Finch doesn't drink anymore.”

“Man,” Michael said.

“I told you that a long time ago,” she said.

He looked at her as if her last statement couldn't possibly be true. Then, trying to cover, he searched the cabinets until he found a proper glass for the port.

 

Z
EE HAD TOLD
M
ICHAEL MORE
than once that Finch had stopped drinking, but Michael could never seem to remember it and continued giving him expensive bottles of alcohol on birthdays and holidays. There were other things he'd forgotten as well, things she was pretty sure she'd told him that he didn't remember. She told herself his job was stressful. And the added stress of the wedding plans she hadn't been making only made things worse.

It hadn't always been like this. At least she didn't think it had. In the beginning of their relationship, they'd talked about things. Or maybe it had been Michael who did most of the talking. He'd always been so clear about what he wanted. And the fact that he'd wanted her was flattering. Michael could have anyone. And though it angered her lately, Zee had originally liked his certainty. There was something attractive and almost seductive about knowing where your life was going. It was new for Zee.

But somewhere along the line, she had stopped talking to Michael. Maybe it was because he was no longer listening, or maybe she'd never really talked to him that much. She had certainly never told him
her
dreams. But that was largely because she didn't know what they were. Beyond completing grad school and getting her license to practice, she hadn't really allowed herself to dream much at all. She knew that this was a product of childhood, of living with Maureen's illness and not ever being able to make plans. But the fact was, from the moment they met, Michael had always just assumed that he knew Zee. He had never asked her what she wanted out of life. Which was probably a good thing. Though she might have known when she was twelve, these days she had to admit that she had no idea.

 

T
ONIGHT
M
ICHAEL WAS DRINKING TOO
much. He had finished the bottle of port and had found and opened a Côtes du Rhône. As he drank, his face reddened, and she could feel the tension building.

He reached to pour another glass and caught the lazy Susan with his sleeve, setting it spinning, sending the salt and pepper shakers and Finch's prescriptions flying.

She started to reach for them.

“I'll get them,” he said angrily.

She waited while he retrieved the bottle of Sinemet and the salt shaker.

“This is a dangerous drug,” he said. “I don't understand how anyone could be stupid enough to leave it on the table.”

Zee said nothing. She knew he was trying to start a fight.

“Stupid,” he said again. He got up and walked to the bathroom and put it in the medicine cabinet. “Someone should have done that a long time ago,” he said as he sat back down at the table.

Zee said nothing for a moment. Then, instead of engaging him, she asked a direct question. “When did we get so angry with each other?”

“You may be angry. I'm not,” he said.

“Please,” she said. “I've never seen you so angry.”

“I was angry this weekend,” he admitted. “But you explained and apologized, and I totally understand what happened.”

“You were angry the night Lilly jumped off the bridge.”

“That wasn't anger, that was frustration.”

“Semantics,” she said.

“I had to pay the wedding planner six thousand dollars.”

“I'll pay the wedding planner,” she said. “I told you that.”

“That's not the point.”

“I hated the wedding planner. She was bossy and intimidating, and I didn't like her taste.”

“You liked the sushi.”

“Of course I liked the sushi. Everyone in Boston likes O Ya sushi. I didn't need a six-thousand-dollar wedding planner to tell me I liked O Ya's sushi. Which, by the way, we never would have served to over a hundred people. I don't even think O Ya caters.”

“So we've established that you didn't like the wedding planner.”

“Did you?”

“Not really,” he admitted. Then he thought about it. “Actually, I couldn't stand her.” As soon as he said it, he started to laugh.

“Then why the hell did you hire her?” Zee smiled back at him.

“It's what you do. You fall in love, you propose, you hire a wedding planner.”

“Simple, simple, case closed,” she said, quoting Mattei.

“For most people,” he said.

“Evidently not for my people,” she said.

“True enough,” he said.

His glass was empty, and he filled it again. He started to fill hers, but she put her hand over the top. “I've had enough,” she said.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

“I don't have any idea,” she said.

“Do you want to postpone the wedding?” he asked. “I mean, in light of what's going on with your father.”

“We probably should,” she said.

“But you still want to get married,” he said.

“I never said I didn't,” she said. “You were the one who said that.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay what?”

“Okay, we can postpone,” he said.

She wanted to say something else, something definitive. She knew she should, that he was waiting for something more from her, but nothing came. She was exhausted. “I'm going to bed,” she said. “Are you coming?”

“No,” he said. “I think I'll stay up for a while.”

She could hear him pouring himself another glass as she walked down the long hall to the bedroom.

 

L
ATE THAT NIGHT
M
ICHAEL FINALLY
crawled into bed next to her, rolling them both into the sagging center of the old mattress. Zee awakened to the smell of good wine turned sour on breath. Michael was kissing her.

Instinctively, before she was awake enough to catch herself, she turned her head away.

“I'm sorry,” she said when she saw the hurt look on his face and realized what she had done.

She knew he was angry, but he was also very drunk. And she was too exhausted to talk about it now.

She picked up her pillow and went to the den to sleep, leaving him the bed.

By the time she woke up the next morning, Michael was gone. The note on the table was short but clear.