Strange Fits of Passion Read online

  I parked across the street from the store. The sign said Shedd's, over a Pepsi logo. In the window there was another sign, a list: Waders, Blueberry Rakes, Maple Syrup, Magazines, Marine Hardware. And to its right there was a third sign—a faded relic from a local election: Vote for Rowley. A boy in a blue pickup truck, parked by the Mobil pump / out front, brought a paper coffee cup to his lips, blew on it, and looked at me. I turned away and put my hand on the map, folded neatly on the passenger seat. I put my finger on the dot. I thought I was in a town called St. Hilaire.

  The village common to my right was shrouded in snow. The light from a four o'clock December sun turned the white surface to a faint salmon. Behind the steeple of the church at the end of the green, a band of red sliced the sky between the horizon and a thinning blanket of clouds. The crimson light hit the panes of glass in the windows on the east side of the common, giving the houses there a sudden brilliance, a winter radiance. Yet I noticed, above the wooden door of the church, the odd graceless note of an electric cross lit with blue bulbs.

  The storm was over, I thought, and was moving east, out to sea. The street in front of Shedd's had been plowed, but not to the pavement. I imagined I could actually see the cold.

  I shook open the map and laid it over the seat, with Maine crawling up the backrest. With my finger I traced the route I had driven, from my parking place at Eightieth and West End, up the Henry Hudson and out of New York City, onto the parkways that led to the highways, along the highways and across the states and finally north and east to the coast of Maine. In ten hours, I had put nearly five hundred miles between myself and the city. I thought it might be far enough. And then I thought: It will have to be.

  I turned to see my baby. She was sleeping in the baby basket in the back seat. I looked at her face—the pale eyelashes, the reddish wisps of hair curling around the woolen hat, the plump cheeks that even then I could not resist reaching back to stroke, causing Caroline to stir slightly in her dreams.

  The stuffy warmth from the car heater was fading. I felt the cold at my legs and pulled my woolen coat more tightly to my chest. The horizon appeared now to be on fire. Gray swirls of clouds above the sunset mimicked smoke rising from flames. Along the common, the lights in the houses were turned on, one by one, and as if in invitation, someone inside Shedd's snapped on a bulb by the door.

  I leaned against the seat back and looked across at the houses. The windows at the fronts were floor-to-ceiling rectangles with wavy panes of glass. The windows that were lit reminded me of windows I used to look into when I was a girl walking home after dark in my town. The windows of the houses there—warm, yellow frames of light—offered glimpses of family rituals hidden in the daytime. People would be eating or preparing supper, and I would see them gathered round a table, or I would watch a woman, in a kitchen, pass through a frame, and I would stand in the dark on the sidewalk, looking in, savoring those scenes. I would imagine myself to be a part of those tableaux—a child at the dining table, a girl with her father by a fireplace. And even though I knew now that families framed by windows are deceptive, like cropped photographs (for I never saw during those childhood walks a husband berating a wife or hitting a child, or a wife crying in the kitchen), I looked across the common and I thought: If I were in one of those houses now, I'd be sitting in a wooden chair in the kitchen. I'd have a glass of wine beside me, and I'd be half-listening to the evening news Caroline would be in an infant seat on the table. I would hear my husband at the door and watch as he kicked the snow off his boots. He would have walked home from...(Where? I looked down the street. The building on the wharf? The library? The general store?) He would crouch down to pet a honey-colored cat, would bend to nuzzle the baby on the table, would pour himself a glass of wine, and would slide his hand across my shoulders as he took his first sip....

  I stopped. The image, filled as it was with critical falsehoods, was a balloon losing air. I looked at my face in the rearview mirror, quickly turned away. I put on an oversized pair of dark glasses to hide my eyes. I draped my scarf over my hair and wrapped it around the lower part of my face.

  I looked up again at the simple white houses that lined the common. There was snow on the porches. I was thinking: I am a settler in reverse.

  I know you are surprised to hear from me. I think that I was rude to you when you came to visit. Perhaps it was the tape recorder—that intrusive black machine on the table between us. I have never liked a tape recorder. It puts a person off, like a lie detector. When I was working, I used a notebook and a pencil, and sometimes even that would make them nervous. They'd look at what you wrote, not at your face or eyes.

  Or perhaps it was your presence in that sterile and formal visitors' room. There was something that you did that reminded me of Harrold. Sometimes he would sit, as you did yesterday, your legs crossed, your face expressionless, your fingers tapping the pencil lead on the table, quietly, like a brush on a snare drum.

  But you're not like Harrold, are you? You're just a reporter, as I was once—your hair pinned back behind your ears; your summer suit wrinkled across your lap—just trying to do your job.

  Or possibly it was simply the process itself. You'd think that I'd be used to that by now, wouldn't you? But the problem is that I know too much about how it works. I'd be talking to you, and you would seem to be looking at me, but I would know that you were searching for your lede, listening for the quotes. I would see it on your face. You wouldn't be able to relax until you'd got your story, had seen its center. You'd be hoping for a cover, would be thinking of the length. And I'd know that the story you would write would be different from the one I'd tell. Just as the one I am going to tell you now will be different from the one I told my lawyer or the court. Or the one I will one day tell my child.

  My baby, my orphan, my sweet girl...

  I took the name of Mary, like a nun, though without a nun's grace, but you will know that, just as you will know that I am twenty-six now. You'll have seen the clips; you'll have read the files.

  You'll describe me in your piece, and I wish you didn't have to, for I can't help seeing myself as you must have seen me the day you came to visit. You'll say that I look older than my years, that my skin is white, too washed out, like that of someone who hasn't seen the sun in weeks. And then there is my body, shapeless now in this regulation jumpsuit, and only two or three people, reading your article, will ever know how it once was. I don't believe that any man will ever see my body again. But that's hardly important now, is it?

  I know that you're probably wondering why it is that I've decided to write to you, why I've agreed to tell my story. I have asked myself the same question. I could say that I am doing this because I don't want a single other woman to endure what I went through. Or I could tell you that having been a reporter, I suffer from a reporter's craving—to tell my own story. But these explanations would be incorrect, or only partially correct. The true answer is simpler than that, but also more complex.

  I am writing this for myself. That's all.

  When I lived it, I couldn't clearly see my way. I understood it, and yet I didn't. I couldn't tell this story to anyone, just as I couldn't answer your questions when you came to visit. But when you left, I went looking for a piece of paper and a pen. Perhaps you are a good reporter after all.

  If you can find the facts in my memories, in these incoherent ramblings, you are welcome to them. And if I tell this story badly, or get the dialogue wrong, or tell things out of sequence, you will hear the one or two things that are essential, won't you?

  When I opened the door to Shedd's, a bell tinkled. Everyone in the store—a few men, a woman, the grocer behind the counter—looked up at me. I was holding Caroline, but the glare of the fluorescent lights and the sudden heat of the store were confusing to me. The lights began to shimmer, then to spin. The woman standing by the front counter took a step forward, as if she might be going to speak.

  I looked away from her and moved toward the aisles.


  They'd been talking when I walked in, and they started up again. I heard men's voices and the woman's. There was something about a sudden gale and a boat lost, a child sick with the flu and not complaining. For the first time, I heard the cadence of the Maine accent, the vowels broadened, the r's dropped, the making of two syllables out of simple words like there. The words and sentences had a lilt and a rhythm that was appealing. The accent grows on you like an old tune.

  The store was claustrophobic—you must know the kind I mean. Did you see it when you were in St. Hilaire? A rack of potato chips and pretzels had been squeezed next to a cooler of fresh produce. There were two long rows of cereal boxes and canned goods, but at least half the store appeared to be given over to shelves of objects associated with fishing. I moved along to the back wall and picked up a quart of milk. I held the baby and the milk in one arm and slid a packaged coffee cake into my free hand from the bread aisle. Walking to the front of the store, I passed a cooler filled with beer. I quickly snagged a six-pack with my finger.

  When I returned to the front of the store, a man was at the counter, a man about my age and about my height. He had a handlebar mustache and was wearing a denim jacket and a Red Sox baseball cap. The jacket was tight in the shoulders, and I doubted it would button across his waist. It seemed like a jacket he had worn for years—it had a frayed and soft look—but now he had gained a bit of weight across his middle, and the jacket was too small. He wore a navy-blue sweater, and he moved his feet while he stood there. He seemed jazzed up, nervy, in perpetual motion. He tapped a beat on the counter, where he had placed a package of fish cakes, a can of baked beans, a six-pack of beer, and a carton of cigarettes. I thought he must be cold in such a thin jacket.

  Across the counter was the grocer, an older man—in his late fifties? He had discolored teeth, from cigarettes or coffee, and an ocher chamois shirt that had an ink stain, like a Rorschach, on the pocket. He rang up the purchases on the counter with only one eye on the cash register. The other one was glass and seemed to be staring at me. My scarf was slipping from my hair; I had my arms full and couldn't fix it.

  The only woman in the store was standing by the coffeemaker and reading The Boston Globe. She was wearing a green hand-knit sweater and a taupe parka. She was an impressive woman, not fat, but tall and big-boned, and I thought it was possible, though she was well-proportioned, that had she stepped on a scale, she'd have outweighed the grocer. Her eyes were watery in color, bluish, and her eyebrows nearly nonexistent in a roughened face of high color. Her teeth were large and very white, and there was a slight gap between the front two—a trait I would see often in the townspeople. Perhaps you saw it too. Her hair was graying, clipped short, in a style I would describe as sensible. I thought she was probably fifty, but I also thought she was a woman who had early on settled into a look that would last her many years. When she turned the pelves of her newspaper she looked up at me.

  "That's five hundred and eighty-two dollars," said the grocer.

  The man with the handlebar mustache took his wallet out of his back pocket and smiled at the weak joke. He handed the grocer a ten-dollar bill and began to speak to him. I may not have the dialogue quite right, but I remember it like this:

  "Everett Shedd, you're goin' to make me a poor man."

  "Don't be bellyachin' to me, Willis. You're poor all by yourself."

  "That's so. It's a bitch season. Jesus. There in't a man in town makin' a dime this time a year."

  "You pull your boat yet?"

  "No; I'll do it on the fifteenth, like I do every year. Tryin' to eke out a coupla more miserable weeks, though the pickin's is pitiful."

  "Don't get sour on me, Willis. You're too young to get sour."

  "I was born sour."

  The grocer snorted. "That's the truth."

  The man with the handlebar mustache picked his change off the counter and lifted the paper bag of groceries. I moved forward with the milk and coffee cake and beer and set them down. Quickly I tightened the scarf around my head with my free hand. The man with the handlebar mustache hesitated a minute, then said, "How you doin', Red?"

  I nodded. I was used to this.

  "What can I do you for?" asked the grocer. The glass eye was looking at me. It was blue; the other eye was a grayish green.

  "I'll take these," I said, "and I was wondering if you knew of a motel where I could spend the night, with my baby."

  This came out fast, as if rehearsed.

  "Passin through?" the grocer asked.

  I touched the items on the counter, reached in my purse for my wallet. The strap from my shoulder bag lurched down my arm, causing me to have to shift the baby.

  "I don't know. I'm not sure. I might stay," I said. I lowered my eyes to the counter—a scuffed rectangle of gray Formica, bordered on one side by a canister of beef jerky strips, on the other by a display of candy canes. I knew the grocer must be wondering why a woman alone with a baby wanted a motel room on the northern coast of Maine, possibly for more than one night, the first week in December.

  "Well, I'm afraid there's nothing in St. Hilaire," he said, as if genuinely reluctant to disappoint me. "You have to go over to Machias for a motel."

  "There's the Gateway, halfway to Machias," said the man with the handlebar mustache, who was hovering near the magazine rack. I looked at the magazines— Yankee, Rod and Gun, Family Circle, and others. I saw then the familiar title, and my eyes stopped there, as if I'd just caught sight of my own face in a mirror, or the face of someone I didn't want to be reminded of.

  "Muriel has about a dozen rooms. She'd be glad of the business."

  "That's so," said the grocer. "Save you goin' into Machias proper. Motel's not much to look at, but it's clean."

  Caroline began to whimper. I bounced the baby to quiet her.

  "That's three thirteen," said the grocer. He said the number like this: "thuh-teen," and I always think of that pronunciation when I think of the Maine accent.

  I paid the man and opened my coat. I was sweating in the hot store.

  "Where you from?" asked the grocer.

  I may have hesitated a fraction too long. "New York," I said. The two men exchanged glances.

  "How do I get there?" I asked.

  The grocer put the food into a paper bag, counted out my change. "You go north on this coast road here till you hit Route One. Take a right and that'll take you toward Machias. The Gateway is about seven miles up, on the left. You can't miss it—big green sign."

  I gathered the paper bag into my left arm, held the baby in my right. The man with the handlebar mustache moved toward the door and opened it for me. When he did, the bell tinkled again. The sound startled me.

  The horizon had swallowed the sun. The dry, bitter air slapped my face. My boots squeaked in the snow as I hurried to the car. Behind me, from the top of the steps, in the cold silence of the night, I could hear voices, now familiar, casual and well-meaning in their way.

  "She's alone with the baby."

  "Left the father."

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe."

  Everett Shedd

  You could tell she was in trouble the minute she walked in the door there. She had a gray scarf wound all round her face, 'n' those sunglasses, 'n' I know she meant to hide herself, but the fact is, she looked so unusual, don't you know, with those dark glasses when it was already sundown outside, that you had to look at her. You understand what I'm sayin'? It was like she was tryin' to hide but drawin' attention to herself instead, if you follow me. 'Specially when she wouldn't take the glasses off inside; then you knew she had a problem. And the way she held the baby. Real close, like she might lose it, or it might be took away from her. And then later, the scarf fell back down off of her head, 'n' you could see, 'n' I thought right away that she'd been in a car accident. It was slick as spit outside—had been all afternoon. Not all of the roads had been plowed yet, 'specially the coast road, 'n' so I figured she was going to tell us she'd been in an accident,
except that the bruises didn't look exactly fresh, don't you know, I mean to say recently fresh. And then there was the fact that she'd tried to hide them. You don't try to hide bruises from a car accident. At least in my experience you don't. And I've had a little bit of experience. I expect you know that I'm the town's only officer of the law, apart from when I'm authorized to deputize someone else. Me 'n' my wife, we run the store, but when there's trouble, I'm supposed to sort it out. And if I can't sort it out, I call over to Machias, and they send a car. And I'll tell you something: I hardly ever see a face looks that bad. Not to say we don't have our fair share of altercations. We got some fellas here get to drinkin' 'n' go off their heads, 'n' I seen a few black eyes, even a broken arm here and there, but this was different. Her lower lip, on the right side, was swollen 'n' black, 'n' she had a bump, big as a lemon, at the edge of her cheekbone the color of a raspberry, 'n' I suspect if she'd taken off those glasses we'd a seen a coupla humdinger shiners, and Muriel, who saw her in the morning, and Julia, they say it was bad. This was important, don't you know, what we saw that day, we had to say so at the trial. I think Julia might of said, right there when she walked in, was she all right, and she said, fine, but you could see she wasn't. Dizzy, she was. And it seems to me she had a limp. I thought there was something wrong with her right leg. So I was standin' there, puttin' in the groceries, thinkin' to myself. She in't askin' for help. She says she's from New York. We don't get many people from New York 'tall up here.

  So me and Willis and Julia are all three of us lookin' at each other on the sly like, 'n' then she's gone. Just like that.

  I can tell you I've pondered many times if I did the right thing that night. I could of quizzed her, you know. Got her to tell me what was goin' on. But I doubt she'd a told me. Or anyone. She was on the run, if you want to look at it like that. And we knew she was probably goin' to be safe at the Gateway, though I didn't like to send her and the baby out in such cold. It was goin' to be brutal that night, they were sayin' minus sixty with the wind chill, so I called up to Muriel to tell her someone was on their way. And then Muriel put her onto Julia the next day, and I think we all figured Julia, she was keepin' an eye on things, had the situation under control, as if you could control a situation like this. But we talked about it later, after she left. We were interested; I won't say we weren't.