On Second Thought(82)

I looked to my right, and there was my mother's elderly Subaru turning  onto Main Street. I waved, not that she could miss me; I was the only  one here. She pulled over, turned off the engine and got out, looking  the same as ever, and unexpected tears clogged my throat. "Hi, Mom," I  said, starting to move forward for a hug.

She nodded instead, then hefted my two suitcases into the back of the  car. "I didn't know you were bringing your dog," she said. Boomer wagged  his fluffy tail, oblivious. "He better leave Tweety alone."

Tweety was Mom's parakeet (and favorite creature in the world.) "Tweety's still alive, then?"

"Of course he is. Where's that dog gonna sleep?"

"It's good to see you, too, Mom," I said. "I'm fine, thanks. In a lot of  pain, actually, but doing okay. After being run down in the street. By a  van. Sustaining many injuries, in case you forgot."

"I didn't forget, Nora," she said. "Get in the cah."

Boomer jumped in at the magical words, filling the entire backseat.

A thickly built woman with hard yellow hair approached our car. "Hey,  Sharon. Who you got there?" Who y'gawt they-ah? Good to see the Maine  accent was alive and well. The speaker was Mrs. Hurly, mother of  Carmella Hurly, one of the mean girls from high school. I'd called them  the Cheetos back then (not aloud, of course)-the popular, mean girls  who'd go to Portland to court cancer at tanning salons, resulting in a  skin tone not found in nature.

"It's my daughter," Mom said.

"Lily, you're back, sweethaht?"

"Uh, no. I'm Nora. Hi, Mrs. Hurly. Nice to see you. How's Carmella?"

Her face hardened. Right. I was not an islander who had brought pride to  my hometown. I was the girl who stole the prince's crown. Also, I  looked a lot different from the olden days, when I'd been a fat, lumpy  teenager with bad hair and worse skin.

"Cahmeller's wonderful," Mrs. Hurly bit out. "Well. You have a good day, Sharon. Nora."

It would soon be all over town that I was back.

Mom got into the driver's seat, and I flopped gracelessly in mine, ass first, and bumping myself in the face with the crutch.

"So how is Carmella?" I asked, fastening my seat belt.

"Good. Five kids. Cleans hotel rooms in the summer, bartends at Red's.  Hard worker." Hahd wehrkah. Man, I guessed my accent had faded more than  I realized. That, and I hadn't talked very much to my mom these past  few years. Perfunctory phone calls, her annual twenty-four-hour visit to  Boston.

"You'll be sharin' your room with Poe," she added.

"I will?"

"Well, where do you think she's sleepin'?" Mom pulled away from the curb.
         

     



 
Good point. I suppressed a sigh and looked out the window. Main Street  had gentrified a bit. There was a bookstore I'd never seen, called The  Cracked Spine. Cute name. Lala's Bakery, which would have a line around  the corner every day in the summer, was fairly deserted now. A  kitchen-goods store. Huh.

"How is Poe?" I asked. I hadn't seen my niece for five years.

My mother shrugged.

"Mom, could you actually tell me?" I snapped. Five minutes, and already I was irritated.

"She's grumpy. Hates it here." She turned onto Perez Avenue, renamed for  the man who'd sent a Scupper Island kid to college every year for the  past quarter century...including me. We passed the ubiquitous  made-in-China souvenir shop, unimaginatively called Scupper Island Gift  Shoppe (I always hated the spelling), a restaurant I'd never seen, an  art gallery, another restaurant.

We'd never be Martha's Vineyard-too far, too cold, too small-but it seemed my hometown had blossomed.

"Did things go okay in Seattle?" I asked, referencing my mom's recent visit to fetch Poe.

"Dirty town," Mom said. "Lots of litter. And beggars."

Of course. Look on the dark side, that was my mother's motto. She didn't  approve of panhandling, having grown up poor herself. But her version  of poor was scrappy. It meant hunting and fishing for your food if you  had to, knowing how to put up the vegetables from your garden, dry fish,  smoke meat. If you didn't have something, you made do.

I'd been to Seattle four times to see my sister. I would've gone more,  but Lily was always slippery about letting me come out there to see my  niece. Once, Roseline came with me, which was a good thing, because Lily  became "too busy" to see me, and I only got to see Poe for an hour. I'd  been crushed, having pictured the four of us going out for pastries,  visiting the Public Market on Pike Street, eating at the top of the  Space Needle. Rosie stepped up, and we did have fun-we ate crab and  salmon till we just about turned pink, kayaked in Puget Sound, almost  peeing ourselves when a pod of orca whales came within a hundred yards  of us, giggling hysterically with fear, utterly awestruck.

But in the back of my mind had been the thought, If only Lily was here.  Now this is adventuring! If only it was like old times. The fact was,  those old times had been old for more than a decade at that point.

"And how is Lily?" I asked, when it became apparent my mother wasn't going to mention her.

My mother's gaze didn't stray from straight ahead. "She's in jail, Nora. How do you think?"

"Is she doing okay? Did you see her?"

"Ayuh. She seems fine."

Fine. Really? Was she devastated? Heartbroken? Remorseful? Angry? She  was probably angry. She had been for the past twenty-two years, at least  as far as I could tell. Since the day our father left.

Within three months of landing in Seattle at the age of eighteen, Lily  had gotten tattooed, pierced and pregnant. She had a series of  boyfriends; I had never met Poe's father, and to the best of my  knowledge, neither had Poe. Lily's job history was spotty-barista (of  course, it was Seattle), band manager for a local group, temp, barista  again, tattoo artist.

My sister was also a petty criminal. Identity theft, credit card fraud  and drug dealing, though the legalization of marijuana had put a dent in  her business. I hadn't known about any of that until last month, when  my mother had told me she had to fly out and get Poe, because my sister  had been sentenced to two years, out in August with good behavior.

Beantown Bug Killers had given me a plan. Stay on Scupper until Lily got  out. Then she'd either come East to fetch her daughter, or I'd fly back  with Poe. And I'd...fix things.

How, I wasn't sure.

We turned onto the dirt road that led to our house, and I held my arm  across my chest to minimize the jostling. My collarbone ached. Mom  glanced at me but said nothing. In the backseat, Boomer whined with  excitement, sensing we were close to our destination. The car jolted  over a pothole, and I sucked in a breath, my knee and shoulder flashing  white with pain. My back ached, too, heavy and dull thanks to the  bruised kidneys. Hopefully, I wouldn't be peeing blood later on.

And there it was. Home. A humble gray-shingled Cape with a screened-in  deck on one side, almost exactly as I'd left it, the bushes in front  taller than I remembered.

I'd been away for so long.

My mom pulled into the unpaved driveway-we didn't have a garage-and  threw the car into Park. She got out and opened the back door for  Boomer, who raced off to sniff and mark his territory.         

     



 

Our closest neighbors were a quarter mile away, since our house bordered  a state forest. Lily and I used to think home was the most magical  place on earth-the sound of chickadees and crows, gulls, the frigid  ocean slapping against the rocks a few hundred yards away, the gray  seals that would visit the shores with their pups. The wind would scrape  and roar across the sky almost constantly, howling in the winter. The  yard was just a carpet of pine needles, beyond that, forest and ocean.  The Krazinskis were our next-door neighbors, and they were half a mile  away. Lily and I, and sometimes Dad, used to sit for hours in trees or  makeshift forts and wait to see animals-fox and deer, pheasants and  chipmunks, porcupines and raccoons.

I opened the car door, the smell of pine and wood smoke thick and rich.

Though I wouldn't go so far as saying it was good to be home-not yet-I knew this was where I needed to be.

I tried to get out of the car, but since my knee was in a brace and I  couldn't bend it, I flopped right back onto the seat, jarring my  collarbone, a pain that radiated all the way into my fingertips.

Being helpless sucked.

Also, my mother wasn't the world's most loving caretaker. She was  halfway to the house with my suitcases. "Mom? Can you give me a hand?"

"Poe!" she yelled. "Get out here and help your aunt!" She went inside.

The wind gusted, cutting through my jacket, pressing me back into the  seat as I struggled. The Dog of Dogs came up to check on me, and I  patted his head with my good hand. Dogs beat people every time. "Are you  my pretty boy?" I asked. He wagged in the affirmative, then trotted off  again.

Finally, the door opened, and out came my sister.