The Map of True Places (28 page)

J
ESSINA DECIDED TO BAKE
cookies for Finch. It was hot, and she had the kitchen windows open to the offshore breeze. She rifled though the baking cabinet, pulling down red and green sugar, more Christmas than July colors. Though it was past July Fourth, she'd been hoping for red, white, and blue. Still, she made stars with the colors she had, shaking powdered sugar over the red and green.

Finch loved her cookies, which she made soft enough for him to eat. Each afternoon he ate two with a large glass of milk, not the 2 percent kind Zee ordered from Peapod but the full old-fashioned stuff Jessina bought at one of the
colmados
on Lafayette Street. Finch needed to put some weight on—he was wasting away.

 

W
HEN THE PIRATE FIRST APPEARED
at the window in his tricorn hat and eye patch, Jessina thought she was seeing things. Then, when he spoke, she recognized Mickey's voice. She'd heard him do local radio spots, seen him marketing his tourist traps on Salem Access TV. A lot of the kids who lived in the Point worked summer jobs for Mickey, which made him a good guy at least in that respect. He did use mostly college kids from Salem State, but he also gave the Dominican high-school kids a chance. She was hoping that next year, when he
was too old for day camp, Danny might get a job working for Mickey.

Mickey asked for Zee first, and then, when Jessina informed him that Zee wasn't there, he reluctantly asked for Finch.

Jessina walked him down the hall to where Finch sat in his new recliner watching a soap opera. Finch looked up in surprise when he saw the pirate, huge in this small space, his hat just inches away from the ceiling beam.

“Hello, Finch,” Mickey said to him.

Finch looked at Mickey and then at Jessina. It was clear that he had no idea who Mickey was. He kept looking as if he were waiting for either an explanation or a punch line.

“How are you?” Mickey asked.

Finch seemed surprised by the question. “Fine, thank you,” he said. “And you?”

“Pretty good for an old man,” Mickey said.

“An old pirate, you mean,” Finch said.

“That, too,” Mickey said.

Picking up on Finch's obvious confusion and wanting to defuse the tension Mickey must be feeling, Jessina turned to Finch. “Perhaps we should offer Mr. Doherty one of our cookies.”

Finch looked baffled by the thought.

“Would you like a cookie, Mr. Doherty?” Jessina said.

“No thank you, no,” Mickey said.

“I'm tired,” Finch said to Jessina.

“Yes, Papi, I know you're tired, but Mr. Doherty has come to visit you.”

“It's okay,” Mickey said. “I was just stopping by for a minute.” He had come in the kitchen door, but now he walked toward the front door, which was closer to the den. He couldn't get away fast enough. “Just tell Zee I stopped by,” he said.

He could hear Finch chuckling softly to himself as he walked out. “We just had a pirate in our den, didn't we?” He looked at Jessina for confirmation.

“We certainly did,” she said.

Z
EE POINTED THE FLASHLIGHT
along the path leading to the cottage.

She reached into the window box, fishing for the key. Skeletons of old plants and flowers, annuals planted when Maureen was still alive, crumbled under her fingers, but the key was still there. The screen was ripped and its frame twisted out of alignment. The last time she was here, she obviously hadn't bothered to pull the door shut, and the winter damp had warped the wood. But the inside wooden door, though swollen, was still intact. She had to push hard to open it.

“Whose place is this?” Hawk asked.

“It's mine,” she said. “But I haven't been here for a long time.”

The kerosene lamp sat on the table in the middle of the room. Zee walked to the kitchen drawer and pulled out an old box of safety matches. They were damp and a bit moldy, but on the fifth try she managed to get one lit.

A circle of warm light radiated outward, illuminating the couch and the tiny kitchen with its soapstone sink and hand pump, the oak icebox. Zee walked to the sink and opened the interior shutters and the French windows beyond. The stars and moon reflected off black water. She walked window to window, opening them and letting the salt air erase the musty smell.

“This place is amazing,” Hawk said.

“You think?”

It occurred to her that Michael had never seen the place, had never seemed interested. Like Finch, Michael wasn't a water person. Still, she wondered why she hadn't insisted on showing it to him.

Hawk looked at the pump. “Is that salt or fresh water?”

“Salt,” she said. “There's a well down that way for fresh.” She saw him pick up the bucket. “I don't think the pump works,” she said.

“Let's give it a try,” he said. He carried the bucket down to the tiny beach in front of the cottage and filled it.

It took many tries, but he got the pump going. Then he laughed at himself. “I'm not sure why I did that,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

She smiled. She pumped some water just to see it. When she was little, she had done their dishes in salt water, she'd had to stand on a stepstool to reach. It was a good memory of Zee and her mother, one of the only good ones, and she was grateful to Hawk for giving it back to her. Any good memories she had of her mother were from this place: Maureen reading her stories aloud while Zee sat on the braided rug sketching dragonflies and gulls, the summer they picked beach plums and made jam, hauling both the sugar and water from the mainland. There were a lot of scraps and flashes of memory that came to her now, and she was grateful for each of them.

They sat at the table and played gin rummy with an old deck of cards Zee found in the drawer with the matches. He won all but one hand. “So what do you want to do now?” he asked.

“How about an overnight?” she asked.

“Like at camp?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that.”

“You got any marshmallows?”

“If I do, they've got to be twenty years old.”

“What about scary stories. Do you know any?”

“I know some,” she said, thinking suddenly of Lilly Braedon.
We both know one,
she thought. Then she thought about the other story she knew, the one her mother had written. She wasn't about to tell him either story. Not tonight. She'd have to think of something else.

“Okay,” he said. “I'm game.”

Hawk blew up the old canvas air mattress while she rolled out the rug and got the blankets down from a shelf.

The cottage was situated in such a way that the views were almost 360 degrees. They lay down together, looking up through the huge doors that lined the west-facing wall. With the doors open, they had a clear view of the stars. They could hear the waves crashing on the rocks below.

First he pointed out the constellations, the easy ones she already knew, and the signs of the zodiac: Aries and Libra. Then he tried to point out some of the fifty-seven stars used in celestial navigation.

“I had an easier time with the zodiac,” she said.

“No, look, there's the Big Dipper. Polaris is there.”

“The North Star.”

“Yes. Polaris is always within one degree of the North Pole. You can pick up your latitude by looking at Polaris.”

“I see the North Star, but I don't see the other one you were pointing at,” she said. He moved her head into position and extended his pointing arm from over her shoulder, adjusting for her sight line. “Still don't see it,” she said.

He laughed.

“Well, you see the moon. We use the moon a lot, and the horizon,” he said. “So you have three points of reference. You can only take readings at dawn and dusk, because when it gets this dark, the horizon disappears. But at twilight, for just a little while, the stars are still visible.” He pointed again, this time to a spot low on the western horizon.
“Look, there's Spica, in Virgo, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Spica is a blue giant, and it's not really one star but two stars that revolve around each other so closely that they appear as one.”

“That's either very romantic or hopelessly codependent,” Zee said, looking where he was pointing.

He laughed. “See it?”

She shook her head. He pointed again. “Do you see the Big Dipper?”

“Yes,” she said. “That I can find.”

“Okay, follow the handle of the Big Dipper.” He lay behind her, placing himself at her eye level and raising her arm with his until it traced the handle. “That bright star there is Arcturus. Now, if you keep tracing the straight line about the same distance, you'll find Spica. Right there. See?”

She squinted her eye.

“Spica is key if you're ever navigating at the equator.”

“Good to know,” she said.

“In another month you'll hardly be able to see her in the night sky at all,” he said. “She won't be back until next summer.”

“She?”

“Spica is definitely female. See her?”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Right there,” he said, tracing the line again.

“It's sad when Spica disappears below the horizon,” he said. “But she has her heliacal rising right around Halloween.”

“Her what?”

“At morning twilight in the middle of October, Spica will be visible again on the horizon for just a few days. It's like a tiny sunrise. It's always good to see her again when she shows up.”

“I think you have a thing for this star.”

He laughed. “I just love bright, beautiful Virgos, what can I say?”

She laughed.

He traced the line one more time, pulling her closer to him, lifting her arm with his. “Right there. See? She's the brightest star in Virgo.”

“I've never seen Virgo, and I don't see her now.”

“I think that's sad. You
are
a Virgo,” he said, laughing again. “Actually, you can only see part of Virgo right now. She's mostly below the horizon this time of night.”

“Spica. Virgo. This is how you navigate across the ocean?”

“Yes.”

“Don't you believe in maps?” she asked.

“No way. Ocean maps are incredibly inaccurate.”

“What about GPS?”

“I do believe in GPS,” he laughed. “I just believe in the stars more.”

“More than GPS?”

“GPS is electronic. It can malfunction. If you put your faith in the stars, you can always find your way home.”

“Unless it's a cloudy night,” she said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “On a cloudy night, I believe very strongly in GPS.” He stopped talking then. “Listen,” he said.

“To the stars?”

“No.” A soft hissing sound was barely audible. “I think this air mattress has a leak,” he said.

She laughed. “I wouldn't be at all surprised.”

 

T
HE AIR COOLED DOWN QUICKLY.
Zee got some more blankets from the drawer. “We really need a campfire,” she said.

He wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. “You promised me a scary story,” he said.

“I have a better idea,” she said, kissing his neck.

“I thought we were supposed to be at camp,” he said.

“We are.”

She pulled off his T-shirt and ran her hands over his chest.

“Obviously, my mother sent me to the wrong camp,” he said.

 

Z
EE ROLLED OVER, TRYING TO
get comfortable. The air mattress had completely deflated during the night, and she woke to find herself sleeping on the cold floor. The sky was beginning to lighten. Hawk was across the room by the open window, setting up the brass sextant.

“What's that?” she asked.

“Come here and I'll show you,” he said. “If I were taking sights today, this would be the time. In fifteen minutes, when the horizon line is more clearly defined, you'll no longer be able to see those stars.”

He showed her the star he was plotting. “That's Procyon,” he said.

She leaned over and looked through the sextant.

“It's there, just above the horizon,” he said.

“I see it.” She smiled. “It's beautiful.” She looked at the star for a long time. “You take sights at both dawn and dusk?”

“Morning and evening twilight,” he said.

“And from this you can find your way home from anywhere in the world?”

“Pretty much,” he said. “As long as I have a good quartz watch and an almanac.”

“Amazing,” she said.

“Not really,” he said. “You could learn to do it, if you wanted.”

“I can't even find Spica,” she said.

Hawk laughed. “True enough.” He kissed her good morning. “I need coffee.”

She pulled the blanket tighter around her. “God, it's cold,” she said.

He pulled her to him and hugged her. Looking over her shoulder, he spotted the closed door. “Is that another room?”

“It's the bedroom,” she said.

“We slept on a cold, hard floor when we had a bedroom?” He was across the room and had the door open before she had a chance to stop him.

She followed him inside, watched as he discovered the bed with its fading green chenille.

“I don't get it,” he said.

“It was my parents' marriage bed,” she said.

“And?”

“And, as a result, we always just sleep in the living room.”

“I still don't get it, but I get the idea that I'm supposed to drop the subject,” he said.

“You do get it,” she said with a laugh.

W
HEN
Z
EE GOT BACK
to the house, Jessina was whipping egg whites into a white mountain of frosting for the chocolate cake she was making. Worried, she related to Zee the story of Mickey's visit.

“Finch didn't recognize Mr. Doherty,” Jessina said.

Zee was surprised, though she tried to rationalize it away, telling herself that the two men hadn't seen each other for a long time. Still, it was difficult not to recognize Mickey Doherty. It could have been something with Finch's medication. Lately he had started to spit out his pills. She checked in between his chair cushions and on the surrounding floor. He seemed all right today, if somewhat drowsy.

At dinner Finch mistook her for Maureen again.

Zee called the doctor and left a message.

She called again in the morning and asked that the doctor fit them in.

 

I
T WAS CLEAR FROM THE
office visit that things were deteriorating fast. The last time they'd been there, Finch had been able to walk the straight line, albeit shakily, that the doctor had taped to the floor.
This time he couldn't do it without his walker, and even then he was so tired he could only make it a few feet before he reached out for Zee's arm, and she rushed to help him.

The doctor suggested some physical therapy. He offered to set it up so that they could come to the house two times a week to walk with Finch.

“I walk with him,” she said, somewhat defensively.

“You have enough to do,” he said, and had his nurse make the call.

Finch's speech seemed somewhat garbled, his voice shaky and very hoarse.

“Is there any chance that he's just sick?” Zee asked hopefully. She hadn't thought of it until this very minute.

The doctor took his temperature. “He doesn't have a fever,” he said. “What time did he take his last pill?”

“He's almost due,” Zee said.

The doctor asked him basic questions from the AMTS.
What is your age? What is the year? Who is president?
Finch answered the third question correctly but hesitated on the first and second. When he was asked what year World War II began, he answered without hesitation. He also scored well on the facial-recognition tests, knowing the doctor and others who worked in the office, though he was unable to say what their positions were. When asked to count backward from twenty, Finch looked at her helplessly. And when asked to remember an address he was given at the beginning of the questioning, he didn't even remember hearing it.

There was a second test, this one meant for Zee to answer, which measured the rate and changes in Finch's mental decline. They were all questions about memory, and Zee was asked to comment on each, stating whether things had stayed the same or changed. She found she could answer very few of them, having been there for only a short time and having come to realize just how much Melville and Finch had
been hiding from her. “I'll have to fax this back to you,” Zee said to the doctor. She had to talk to Melville.

The doctor spoke with Finch for a while, a very conversational chatter that didn't fool Finch for a minute. He might not know the answers to some of the questions, but Zee could tell from Finch's eyes that he knew very well what they were here to determine. He looked both frightened and angry.

When the doctor was finished with his final line of questioning, he spoke to both of them.

“I'd say we're pretty deep into the Alzheimer's crossover,” he said. “It's almost inevitable in Parkinson's patients. At some point in the progression of this disease, it begins to act more like Alzheimer's. The same is true for advanced Alzheimer's—those patients begin to develop the movements common to Parkinson's.”

She'd heard it before, but it had always seemed to be some vague possibility that might occur a long time from now. She took Finch's hand. She had wanted to talk with the doctor privately about this. She understood the ethics involved. The patient had a right to know. But she could see from the look on Finch's face that he understood too well, and it scared him.

“How long has it been since he was diagnosed?”

She was appalled that the doctor didn't know. “About ten years,” she said.

The doctor was quiet for a moment and then said in a serious but far too casual tone. “Ten years is a good long run for Parkinson's.”

She looked at Finch to see if he had understood the doctor's meaning. His masked face was difficult to read. Zee could feel the anger rising up in her. She wanted to tell the doctor what she thought of him. She wanted to call him a son of a bitch. How dare he talk to a patient like this? Disclosure was one thing. Zee believed in the right to know. But to dismiss a life so casually was beyond cruel.

However, anything she could have said on the spot would only make things worse. She hoped that Finch had missed the doctor's meaning. She remembered the words Mattei often used to describe neurologists:
The geeks of the doctor world. No bedside manner. Little princes.
She wanted to kill him. To literally rip his smug face off.

Instead she helped Finch from the office, his steps agonizingly slow as he tried to maneuver the walker out of the office and down the hall.

The warm air in the parking lot calmed her slightly. Maybe Finch hadn't heard what the doctor said, or hadn't caught his meaning.

She unlocked the car door and helped Finch in. He was stiff, the pill overdue. She put the walker in the trunk. Then she got into the driver's side of the car, reaching into her purse for the water and the box of pills labeled with the times of day. She pulled out his three-o'clock dose, undid the water bottle, and passed it to him. He swallowed the pill dutifully. Then she reached across and buckled his seat belt, which she had forgotten to do. As she pulled her hand back, she lingered on Finch's arm. “I love you,” she said. He smiled weakly.

As she pulled the Volvo out of the parking lot, Finch finally spoke, his voice so weak from needing the meds that it was barely audible. “So what he was saying is that I'm going to die soon.”

She pulled the car over on Mass Avenue.

“That doctor is a son of a bitch,” she said. She was about to tell him they would never go back, that neurologists were a dime a dozen in Boston, and that she'd have a new one for him by morning. But Finch spoke before she could form the words.

“It's all right,” he said. “I want to die.”