The Map of True Places (35 page)

I
T HAD HAPPENED BEFORE
he met Finch, back when Melville was writing the article on the Greenpeace splinter group. He was coming back from Gloucester on his boat when his engine died. He knew what was wrong immediately and cursed himself for not having gotten around to fixing it. He also knew he'd never make it all the way back to Salem, so he put in at Baker's Island, hoping to use a phone or, barring that, to borrow a skiff and go to Manchester Harbor to pick up the part he needed at the marine supply.

It was June. Few of the summer people had yet arrived. The little store was closed, and Melville had to walk to the far end of the island before he found an unshuttered cottage.

He stopped at the door to ask if he could use the phone.

She'd been hesitant to open the door. In retrospect he wasn't certain why she had.

She stood in the doorway looking at him. Her red hair was tied back, and she had a pencil stuck through it, holding it in place. Her eyes were piercing blue. He stood outside the door just looking at her. It was a long moment before he remembered to ask about the phone.

She told him she didn't have a phone. When she heard his story, she offered to lend him her boat. He took it into Manchester Harbor and picked up the part he needed at the marine shop.

By the time he got back with the part, it was early evening. It wasn't a hard fix, but it was in a bad place, and he had to pull up the deck and several of the floorboards to get at it. He'd shorted out his running lights in the process. When he finished the job, it was after dark. He figured he'd sleep on the boat and head out again at first light.

That she appeared on the wharf surprised him. It was chilly, and her house was all the way at the far end of the island.

“I've made dinner,” she said. “If you're hungry.”

His inclination was to say no. He had some food on board, nothing any good, but enough to get him through until morning. However, when he turned to answer, she was already back at the top of the dock, motioning for him to follow. He called after her, but the wind was against him, and she couldn't hear. He watched her disappear onto the blackening path.

Melville took his flashlight along with him to her house. He could see her lone light ahead, but the path was narrow and hadn't yet been mowed for the summer. A false step in any direction could sprain an ankle, especially in this darkness.

She was waiting there for him, framed by the doorway. He'd meant to tell her no, that he was fine on the boat, but then he saw the table set for two. The oil lanterns that lit the room cast him back to another place and time, and he suddenly noticed her lace dress. She was beautiful. Her red hair hung wild and curling halfway down her back. Without saying anything he had planned to say, he found himself walking through the doorway to the table. She poured the wine.

Later he would remember thinking it had been as if he were awakening to something possible, something he'd never before considered. He noticed the ring on her finger; she didn't hide it. Something about his senses heightened, and every movement of her hands seemed like flight. Her neck was pale and long, a swan's neck, he thought. His thoughts ran to poetry and art, imagery of Leda and the swan,
Leonardo's sensual sketch and the lost Michelangelo. She was beauty of form and movement. The feminine ideal. And he found himself speaking aloud the poetry that came to him:

She came to him. He lifted her hair away from her neck and kissed her. And more poetry came to his lips, all the Yeats he'd learned and forgotten came back to him, and he spoke the words in chant as they made love. And when the verses he hadn't known he remembered ended, all the magical words of “The Harp of Aengus,” they slept soundly in each other's arms with the innocence of children.

 

H
E LEFT THE NEXT MORNING,
not entirely certain what had happened. It wasn't that he didn't like women. At one time he'd considered himself not gay but bisexual, but that had been so long ago he'd almost forgotten that early period of his life. He laughed to himself now, thinking he had been seduced by a siren. It was all so strange and dreamlike that he wasn't truly certain it had ever happened.

For the next several weeks, he wanted to go back to the island. Instead he went to Gloucester and booked on one of the sword boats, then a bigger boat that was going out for several months. He slept with every man he could, in every port, dangerous and nameless sex meant to remind him of who he really was.

But he couldn't get her out of him. He heard her poetry on the sound of the wind and the tides. He left the ship in Newburyport and hitched back to Manchester. He stopped in the bookstore and bought
the white volume of William Butler Yeats. And he inscribed the book to her and scrawled a quote meant for her across the title page:
Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild….

He took his boat to Baker's Island and walked to the cottage. But he found it boarded up for the season.

Feeling both disappointment and relief, he placed the book between the two doors, hoping it would last through the winter, through the rains and snows that were to come, and that one day, if she existed at all, she would find it.

 

M
ELVILLE LEFT
S
ALEM FOR THE
second time the night Finch and Zee brought Maureen home from the hospital. As they helped her into the house, Maureen stopped and slowly turned around to see Melville standing across the road looking at the house. She saw his face just for an instant before he recognized her, and in that moment she understood. Their eyes met, and held. They stood in the moment frozen like statues until Zee and Finch turned to see what Maureen was looking at. Guiltily, Finch hurried Maureen into the house.

Melville had left that same night, this time for California and later north to the Aleutians. He hadn't come back home to Salem until almost a year after Maureen died.

When he eventually returned, he took the job at the Athenaeum and settled into a quiet life, keeping to his side of town.

When Finch finally found him, he brought the suicide note. “Come back to me,” he demanded.

“I can't,” Melville said. “It could never work. Not after what happened with Maureen.”

“Don't you see?” Finch said. “This relationship has to succeed, not in spite of what happened with Maureen but because of it.”

 

M
ELVILLE MOVED INTO THE OLD
house on Turner Street with Finch and Zee.

Though they were never able to forgive themselves for Maureen's death, they found it in their hearts to forgive each other.

They loved their daughter, delighted in her in a way that surprised them both. Finch had always wanted to be a father, but Melville had never considered the possibility. Still, he embraced it and was fulfilled by it.

Together they took the book and the note that Maureen had left and placed them where Zee would never find them.

The years had not been easy, but real love rarely is. They learned to put the past behind them. At least it seemed so until the progression of Finch's disease and his crossover into dementia brought the past back to them as if it had happened not years ago but only yesterday. And the betrayal, once experienced anew, had become real enough for Finch to feel its sting in such a strong way that his anger was able to unravel all the years they had woven together as family.

M
ELVILLE WAS UNAWARE THAT
he'd been crying until he saw the teenagers staring at him as they walked across the ferry parking lot. He recognized one of them from Mickey's store. Melville looked away.

 

T
ONIGHT
M
ELVILLE HAD ALMOST MADE
a huge mistake. He had almost told Zee that she was really his daughter. Though he would never have given her the suicide note, he had almost given her the book. He had even gone so far as to label the birthday card he'd intended to give her with her full name, Hepzibah Thompson Finch.

He knew he had to talk to Finch, and that it had to be tonight.

 

M
ELVILLE CARRIED THE BOOK AND
Maureen's letter into the nursing home. He signed the visitors' log at seven forty-five.

“Charles Thompson?” the receptionist asked.

He nodded.

“Are you family?”

“Yes,” Melville lied.

“Visiting hours are over at eight,” the receptionist told him.

“I'll be just a few minutes.”

Melville walked down the long hallway toward Finch's room. When he got to the door, he paused. If Finch was asleep, Melville would have to wake him.

Feeling himself being watched, Finch opened his eyes.

“Who's there?” he asked.

“It's Melville,” he said. “I came to talk to you.”

Finch didn't move. Then, finally, when his eyes focused, he looked at Melville.

“Could you please put my bed up first?” Finch asked. “I can't breathe with it so low.”

Heart pounding, Melville walked over to the bed. His fingers found the control buttons, he pushed the “up” arrow, and the head of the bed began to slowly rise, bringing Finch to a sitting position and the two men eye to eye.

“Is that good?” Melville asked.

“Wonderful,” Finch said, and sighed. He looked at Melville for a long time. “This is the weekend, right?” he said, trying to remember.

“It's Labor Day weekend,” Melville said. “It's early this year. This is Sunday night, Zee's birthday. Tomorrow is the first day of September.”

They had done this before. It had become a ritual in the last few years they'd spent together.

“Yes,” Finch said. “September.”

Melville braced himself, waiting for Finch's rage to surface. When it did, Melville would explain in a way that would make him understand everything that had happened. He'd explain well enough, and he'd ask for forgiveness. Finch would forgive him again, just as he had so many years ago. And if Finch's rage came back tomorrow, he would explain again. And then, maybe one day, Melville would be able to convince Finch that they should explain the whole thing to Zee.

Finch returned his stare. But the anger wasn't there.

It's over,
Melville thought, thanking God. This must be the next stage the doctor talked about, when they become less angry and for a while things seem almost normal again. Melville's neurologist friend had told him about this. The honeymoon period, he had called it. The period before late-stage Alzheimer's crossover.

“Are you comfortable now?” Melville asked, reaching over to fluff Finch's pillows.

Finch nodded. Still looking at Melville as if he was trying to figure something out, he finally smiled. “I haven't seen you working here before,” he said. “You must be new.”

T
HE
F
RIENDSHIP STOPPED IN
Newburyport on its way south. The battery on Hawk's cell phone was dead, and for some reason he couldn't get reception using anyone else's. When they got to town, he walked up to State Street looking for a pay phone.

He hadn't called Zee the first week after their talk about Lilly. The second week he'd driven over to the house on Turner Street on two different occasions, finding the courage to ring the bell, then losing it just as quickly, as he sat in front of the house. She didn't want to see him. The connection with Lilly made it too much for her. He could understand that. But at the same time, there were things he needed to say to her and questions he needed to ask. He knew he wasn't going to let her go without those things being said.

Tonight Hawk wasn't going to say any of those things. He just wanted to make sure she was all right. The story of Zylphia had done something to him, worried him in a way he couldn't explain. True, the similarities were strange. But Hawk wasn't someone who believed in ghost stories or even sea lore. No, this was different. He was worried about her in some exceedingly practical way, yet there was nothing practical he could put his finger on.

There's a disturbance in the Force,
he thought as he dialed.

It was Jessina who answered. She was cautious at first, not wanting to reveal too much.

“Is she there?” Hawk asked.

“Not at the moment,” Jessina said.

“Can you just tell me if she's all right?” Hawk asked.

Jessina thought about it before answering. She liked Hawk a lot; she hadn't really understood what had gone wrong between them.

“She's fine,” Jessina said. “She's at a wedding in Boston.”

“Right,” he said, remembering the invitation on the lazy Susan in the kitchen. Then he remembered that Zee had told him that the wedding was on her birthday.

Maybe the reason for his agitation was as simple as that. She would be seeing her ex-fiancé at the wedding. Hawk felt jealous just thinking about it, though he knew he had no right to feel that way. Maybe it was the wedding that was making him feel so tense.

Not knowing what else to do, he decided to leave a message. “Just tell her happy birthday.”

 

T
HE CREW HAD GONE TO
dinner at the Black Cow and sat outside on the deck. The sailors were rowdier tonight than usual—he could hear them from around the corner as he approached. They were all good guys. He was going to miss working with them.

When Hawk sat down, they were talking about the application that the
Friendship
had recently filed to officially commission the ship. It was a great idea. If the ship was to be officially commissioned, they could take groups out sailing. And classes full of kids.

Too bad he wouldn't be around for it, Hawk thought. He would have loved to be part of that.