Love in Maine (24 page)

William Post took the coin from his daughter and held it in the palm of his hand for
a few seconds. “May I?” He held it up to indicate that he wanted a closer look.

“Yes. Let’s.” Maddie stood up too, and she followed her father out across the front
hall and back toward his office, which overlooked the snowy expanse of the backyard
and the adjacent conservation land. It was a glorious winter scene, all crackling
black branches against virgin snow.

“Have a seat, sweet pea, and let’s see what we’ve got.”

This was always the way. Objects bound Maddie to her father. She would find something
in the woods or down near the stream that ran between their property and the Wallaces’
next door, and she would run home and wait until her father got back, and then she
would present it to him for inspection. He always encouraged her and brought her into
his mysterious and secret world. His study.

At the moment, he was looking through a large, handheld magnifying glass. He had set
the coin—about the size of a quarter—onto the green, papery felt of his desk blotter
and had turned on a desk lamp that shone down upon it. “It’s quite something, isn’t
it? Look at the detail on Athena’s helmet.
Mmm-hmmm
.”

Maddie sat in the chair next to his desk, her hands held palms together between her
thighs, in her old pajamas and her flannel bathrobe and ragg wool socks. She was waiting
for her turn.

“Come see,” her father finally said.

She jumped up and took the hand lens that he held out for her. He had a metal pointer,
like a surgical instrument in the shape of half a tweezer and twice as long. “See
here,” he began. “Do you notice the Scylla here?” He was pointing at the figure atop
Athena’s helmet.

“Yes. She’s beautiful.”

“She looks terrifying, if you ask me!” Her father laughed. He loved to make these
long-dead characters come to life. “But I suspect Herakles,” William paused to turn
over the coin to show the over side where the hero stood, “thinks she’s worth fighting
for, don’t you?”

Maddie stared at the small piece of history, thousands of years old. Thousands! She
sighed. “It’s a spectacular gift. I don’t really know how to . . . think of it.”

Her father sat back in his old, creaking leather chair on the casters. “I think the
person who gave it to you is very clever . . . and knows you very well.”

She could tell that her dad was skimming around the pronoun. “He. It’s a he. He knows
me very well.” She smiled up at her father, then continued speaking while her attention
returned to the coin. “I think you’d like him . . .”

“I
would
like him hypothetically? Or I
will
like him when I meet him?”

Maddie smiled but didn’t look up. “I hope the latter.”

“So do I! So do I!” William Post pushed away from the desk on the wheels of his chair
and stood up. He clapped his hands together, then opened his arms wide. “Merry Christmas,
Madison!” She hugged him back. He patted her twice quickly, and then it was over.
She set the magnifying glass back onto his desk, picked up the coin, and turned off
the table lamp.

As they walked back toward the living room, her father said, “I’m afraid the sweater
your mother and I got you is going to be rather anticlimactic.”

She smiled up at her father and held the coin in the palm of her hand for the rest
of the day.

That night, Maddie re-read Hank’s letter over and over. If anything ever happened
to it, she had it committed to memory for all of eternity. He had been in Greece.
Obviously. But other than that, he said he wasn’t able to tell her details. He didn’t
use the word deployed, but it sounded like that was the case. He said it was going
to be better for both of them if they met up again in August when he got back. And
then his tender request that he wanted her to wait for him. It was so glorious. Maddie’s
face hurt from smiling when she read the words, and said them over and over in her
mind.
Two sides of the same coin
.

Everything made sense again. Maddie spent the rest of her Christmas vacation baking
with her mother and babysitting for her nieces and nephews and working on her senior
thesis and generally being in a stellar mood. She got back to school in January and
felt like she was in the final segment of the longest race she’d ever rowed. The combination
of the ramped-up academics to finish her senior year, waiting to see if she got the
grant, counting down the months and weeks until Hank resurfaced from wherever he was—it
all began to wear on her.

She watched the news with an intensity that set her roommates on edge.

“What is your problem, Post?”

Maddie was sitting in front of the banged-up television in the living room that she
shared with three of her friends in the off-campus house they rented together. She
was biting her nails. The habit had started sometime after the Head of the Charles.
It helped, somehow.

“No problem,” she mumbled. “Just watching the news.”

“You are not a poli-sci major. Since when did you get so interested in the Gulf War?”
Her roommate Deeanna was a bit of a pain lately.

“It’s not the Gulf War, you idiot.”

Deeanna stared at her. “What did you just call me?”

Maddie looked up from the television. “I called you an idiot. The Gulf War ended before
we were born. The only active combat zone right now is Afghanistan. I am watching
the news about Afghanistan.” Maddie rolled her eyes and went back to nibbling her
fingernails and trying to see what she could see when the news camera swept over the
landscape between Kandahar and Kabul.

The news clip finished, and Maddie turned off the television.

Deeanna was still standing there with her hands on her hips. “What the hell has gotten
into you?”

Maddie stood up and raked her hair back into a ponytail, pulling a rubber band from
her wrist, where she always had an extra. “I’m sorry. You’re not a total idiot.” Deeanna
was one of the top premed students at Brown. It wasn’t a lie. “But you seriously know
so little about American history that I sometimes worry for you.”

Deeanna smiled. “Isn’t that what Wikipedia is for . . . all those silly dates?”

Maddie shook her head. “Let’s agree to disagree. I think all those silly dates pretty
much define our humanity. You go cure cancer. Together, maybe we’ll make the world
a better place.”

They walked into the kitchen and had a couple of glasses of wine that Maddie poured
from the box of cheap dreck they kept in the fridge.

Deeanna stared at Maddie’s pale, exhausted features. “Are you ever going to tell any
of us what this is all about?”

Maddie stared into her wineglass. “Probably not. It’s bad enough thinking about him
all the time, I don’t think I could bear—”

Her roommate made a fist pump. “I knew it! I told Leah that you met someone and you
were heartbroken—”

Opening her mouth to defend herself, Maddie was immediately cut off.

“—or temporarily heartbroken or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Maddie said. “That’s about right. Temporarily heartbroken. But I think I’m
on the mend.”

Sort of.

After Maddie had begun to do a little research on the role of military divers and
the jobs they tended to have after they retired from the military, Maddie became mildly
obsessed with where Hank actually was. If he thought it was safer not to be in contact,
it had to be pretty hairy. By the beginning of April, Maddie was reaching the point
of desperation from not having had any word from Hank. And then Janet’s wedding invitation
arrived.

Maddie tore it open, then picked up the phone.

“Hello?” Janet answered on the third ring.

“Hi, Janet. It’s Madison Post. How are you?”

“Maddie! What a treat to hear your voice, you sweet thing! Did you get the invitation
already? I hope you can come. It’s probably right around your graduation and impossible
and—”

“No. It’s perfect. I get out of school the week before, so we will all have something
to celebrate.”

“Well, I’m sure Hank has told you, but it’s such a shame he won’t be back in time.”

Sure Hank has told me?
Madison began to get a creeping feeling that she was going to regret the next few
minutes for the rest of her life.

“Oh. Have you heard from Hank?” Maddie asked.

Janet obviously heard the hint of false disinterest in Maddie’s voice.

“Well, of course. I mean, yes. He’s been very good about staying in touch. But he
said he’s too far away to come back in June. His assignment finishes in August, and
I just didn’t want to wait that long to get married. You understand! Phil and I are
so ready to tie the knot.”

Maddie felt like she was suffering repeated punches to the gut.
Very good about staying in touch
? What the hell?

“Maddie?”

She must have stayed silent for too long. She tried to recover her equanimity. “I’m
here. I’m so sorry, I was distracted for a few seconds. I’m so happy for you.” But
her tone was empty, and she figured Janet could probably hear that too. They talked
about Phil and what a brutal winter they were having in Blake, and then Maddie asked
about Sharon and the girls, and then finally if there was anything special Janet wanted
as a wedding present.

“Oh, nothing special, sweetie. We have everything we need. It would just be wonderful
to have you here if you can make it.”

“I’ll definitely try,” Maddie said. Somewhere in the course of the conversation, she’d
gone from definitely going to definitely trying. They made a bit more small talk,
then one of Maddie’s roommates, Leah, came into the living room of their apartment
and Maddie begged off the call and said good-bye.

She stared at the phone and tried to process that Dumpster full of information that
she’d just gotten. Hank was able to write letters to his mother and not to her? His
goddess
? She felt like a stupid, stupid girl. Why did every other Army wife have Skype and
e-mail and you-name-it to stay in touch with their loved ones? Was she even a
loved one
? Had Hank once said he
loved
her? Or did it just make him feel good to send her precious ancient coins and tell
her how great he thought she was? And to wait. That must be so much easier than actually
showing up and being in someone’s life like a
normal
person.

She almost pawned Athena and Herakles, with a mind to giving the money to Janet and
Phil. And what was up with not even going to your own mother’s wedding? Who
did
that? Except the most heartless, disconnected beasts? And Hank Gilbertson.

He’d set this whole stupid situation up this way. Sure, he probably thought it was
best to keep Maddie focused on her final year of school and her studies and her athletics
and every other damn thing, but that should have been her decision, not his. Who was
he to make all of these unilateral wait-for-me-to-complete-my-labors type of statements?

Maddie was still storming around the living room when Deeanna came back from her chemistry
lab. “Another bad day in Candy-harr?”

Looking to the ceiling to keep the rage from flying in her roommate’s face, Maddie
counted to three and said, “Kan. Duh. Har. It’s pronounced Kandahar. And yes, as a
matter of fact, I am having a particularly shitty day. Anything else?”

Deeanna smiled and walked into her room. “Nope. That about does it.” She shut the
door quietly, and Maddie realized that all three of her roommates were closed up in
their respective rooms and she was standing alone in the middle of her living room.
In the middle of what was supposed to be the best year of her life at one of the best
schools. In her prime.

Here she was, pining away for the ghost of a guy who had nothing better to do than
string her along while he wrote regular letters to his mother while she, Maddie!,
sat home and bit her fingernails and watched YouTube videos about the construction
of the bridge across the Panj River into Tajikstan.

The resentment boiled up inside, fierce and fast. She yelled so her voice would penetrate
all three closed doors. “I need to go out!!!”

Within seconds, all three of her friends poked their faces out of their rooms. With
an eyebrow raised in sarcasm, Emily said, “Oh, has Madison Post decided to come back
to earth?” She looked from Maddie to Deeanna to Leah and back again.

“Yes!” Maddie tried to corral her enthusiasm. “I am back and I want to get bombed
and pick up the first hot guy who hits on me. Give me twenty minutes to get tarted
up, and we are out of here.”

The other three turned back into their rooms until the sounds of closet doors opening
and closing and makeup caps popping on and off were drowned out by the stereo being
cranked up to full volume with a rapper pounding out a steady thrum of lust-inspiring
aggression.

Maddie got her wish.

She got completely drunk and picked up the first guy who hit on her. Unfortunately,
or rather, fortunately, the guy was a friend of Deeanna’s, and there was no way he
was going to take advantage of a completely unconscious Madison Post. He helped her
stumble home and got her into bed fully clothed. He felt like he had achieved new
levels of chivalry when he tossed a blanket over her passed-out body.

When Madison woke up the next morning and realized she was alone and fully clothed,
she was mildly disappointed. She almost wished she had gone through with her first
drunken one-night-stand. At least then the pain of Hank’s strange silence would have
been overshadowed by the requisite regret and shame she would have felt if she had
actually slept with the guy who was just then passed out on the floor next to her
bed.

He was kind of cute, actually. His name was Sam and he sat in the back in one of Maddie’s
Latin classes. He wasn’t stupid. And he wasn’t a pig. He was just sort of there. When
he began to wake up, Maddie was still staring at him, and his glazed expression didn’t
really register where he was or who she was.