Vermont

Four AM. The smell of evergreens. Dew on the grass. The sky gets lighter.

Miriam

Miriam is not a very interesting person. She is not pretty, or particularly smart, or particularly kind. She has never won anything, except a consolation ribbon at the town's sesquicentennial when she was nine. They gave ribbons to all the kids, but they made up reasons that the other kids had earned them. Not Miriam. Not a real reason. When it was Miriam's turn to get her ribbon, the principal said, "and this is for Miriam Jameson, who always shows up. A big part of life is showing up." Miriam did show up for everything. She was in band and glee club and soccer and softball and cheerleading. She was there, but also not. She sat on the bench through interminable games. Every single time a sports or music program was printed, Miriam's name was somehow spelled wrong or left off. Her family members thought this was funny.

When Miriam was little, she wanted to be an explorer. Or maybe not. Maybe she wanted to be an acrobat. She went to the circus when she was four and saw the acrobats, and that's what she wanted to be. Actually, she doesn't remember wanting to be much of anything, except a mother like her mother was. But not a mother like her mother. Her mother was not a particularly good mother. Once Miriam saw Susie Colson's mother touch Susie's face, a soft pat on the cheek while they smiled at each other. It was so open, so affectionate, and it almost made Miriam cry, or throw up, and did make her rush to the bathroom to sit in a stall with her arms wrapped around herself, rocking back and forth. No it didn't. It made her want to do that, but she didn't do it. She stood there next to Susie, in the line of cheerleaders ready to go out and root root root for the home team. She didn't do anything but stand there.

The moment ended. Susie's mother went to take her regular place on the glossy wood bleachers. Miriam's mother was not there. In fact, Miriam's mother would not be there at any point during the game or at the end of the game, when Miriam would have to find her own ride home, as usual. She hated begging for rides. She wasn't close enough to any of the other girls or any of the other girls' moms to merit an automatic ride home.

She hated cheerleading, too. That year she got hit in the face by the ball twice and once a ref stepped on her foot and made a black mark on her bright white sneaker that she never even wore outside for fear of getting it dirty. The other girls would notice if she got it dirty. She wanted nothing more than to blend in.

Now she did nothing more than blend in. She wiped the counter that had been wiped so many times it wasn't shiny any more, and she couldn't see even a shadowy reflection of herself.

But once she did stand out, just for a little while. When she first started waitressing, when she was in high school. She was the first one in her class to have a job during the school year, and that gave her a strange sort of status. Boys talked to her at the restaurant, and she figured out how to talk back without looking at the floor or the wall or the table. She wasn't popular, but she was known. It felt good to be known.

And one night she met Eddie when his boat was in port for a storm and that was the beginning and the end.

Then she was first at more things. First to get pregnant and get married and lose a baby. And another. And a third.

Bonnaroo #3

The bus passes brown cows wading into a puddle. Green fields, green leaves, ivy climbing tree trunks.

The Mexican restaurant next to the hotel serves sweet tea in to-go cups.

Bonnaroo #2

DJ heats the crowd to eruption. Glowsticks and hands in the air.

Bonnaroo #1

Tattoo: three stars above a string-bikinied hipbone.

blue ice

It's too beautiful not to stop, so you park on the empty pier. The wharfs are stacked in the center, barnacle-studded. When you get out of the car, the wind blows your hood back hard. You should stop to find your mittens, but you don't. You are pulled to the edge, as close as you can get to the water, made darker blue by the white ice around the edge. A flag snaps steadily. Gulls barely make headway against the clear blue sky. The water moves slow, thick with cold. You take out your camera and turn the dial to video. You hold it steady as the wind assaults your bare hands. Slowly, you turn, trying to catch it all. Your eyes tear. The strings of your hood slap your cheek. Your hands harden into claws, but you hold on as long as you can, snaring something wild, something you can drag into the room full of fluorescent lights and gray cubicles, proof of life beyond work.

Lydia's Island #7

March 1993

Miriam lay on the couch, wrapped in an afghan knit by her grandmother. She had a sharp pain above her right eye. She had woken up with the headache, and the pain had increased all day, in spite of multiple Tylenols. The living room was mostly dark, except for the TV. Outside, ice pinged against the windows and she could hear trees creaking with the weight.

Her son sat on the other end of the couch, his bare feet curled under him. They were watching a show about the Titanic, the camera passing over railings thick with white buildup.
"What is that stuff?" asked Taylor.
"I don't know."
"It looks like ice."
"It's not ice."
"I know."

The camera zoomed into the huge ballroom. A fish swam by, ghostly white, startling Taylor. Miriam wondered if the sunken ship bothered her son as much as it did her. She would have changed the channel, but didn't want to draw attention to her discomfort. Eddie had been out longer than usual. He had gone on two trips in a row this time. He always called her as soon as he got in, but she couldn't help hoping that he'd just show up tonight and surprise her. It wasn't so much that she was excited to see him, but that she wanted him to take care of the kids. Eddie was good with them, cooking pancakes early in the morning before Taylor went to school, running around the house with Hazel. The kids got used to having him around, and it made it harder when he had to leave again.

Hazel came in and stood in front of the TV. Her fine hair glowed in the light of the TV. One pajama leg was twisted.

"You make a better door than a window," Taylor said. Hazel didn't move.
"Come over here, baby," said Miriam. Hazel shuffled over, rubbing her ear. Taylor squeezed tighter into the corner of the couch, making room.
"You couldn't sleep?" Miriam said. Hazel shook her head and settled in next to Taylor. Miriam moved her feet up. She reached down to fix Hazel's pajama leg.
"Your ears hurt?"
Hazel nodded. Miriam could see tears forming in her daughter's eyes. She looked over Hazel's head to Taylor, who put his arm around his sister. Hazel leaned into his side, static making her hair stick to his sweatshirt.

On TV, the camera moved up close to one of the smokestacks, showing its stripe of white paint.
"What's that?" Hazel asked.
"A boat," said Taylor.
"Like Daddy's?"
"Sort of. Dad's is smaller."
"Why's there water in it?"
"It's on the bottom of the ocean."
Miriam shook her head at Taylor. She did not need to get into this tonight. She could feel the warmth of her daughter's leg against her feet.
"Why?"
Miriam could see Taylor trying to make something up.
"Because it had an accident," Miriam finally said.

The show focused on black and white pictures, starting close-up and moving out. Broken dishes. A life ring. A picture of the captain.
"Did Daddy's boat have an accident?"
"Of course not," Miriam said. "Why do you say that?"

"He's been gone too long. When's he coming home?"
"Soon. Remember, he had to go on two trips this time?"
Hazel reached an arm around her brother's stomach. As bad as Miriam felt, she was glad to see the kids getting along. These were her favorite moments, the three of them together, sharing each other's warmth.

When the TV show went to commercials the bright flashing light hurt her eyes. The phone rang. Miriam jumped. It was ten o'clock. Who would be calling this late?
"Want me to get it?" Taylor asked.
"No, it's okay." Miriam was already untangling the blanket from around her legs. When she stood up, her head throbbed harder.

Lydia's Island #6

Teddy's Last Day Part 3

Teddy could hear the whalewatch boat's loudspeaker, Dicky talking about Tamarack and Arrowhead, the islands beyond Lydia's. Those two were strange mixes of enormous summer houses and beat-up shacks. Most of the people who lived out there had boats of their own to get back and forth to the mainland, but Teddy had heard that they were trying to get a regular tourist ferry to make the crossing a couple of times a day. He didn't have much of an opinion about that, as it didn't affect him much, but he knew Lydia wouldn't be happy. She wasn't very tolerant of tourists. He smiled as he motored around his wife's island.

Lydia certainly wasn't the friendliest person he knew, but he understood that she was really just shy. That first night, he had stood beside her, and he could feel her nervousness, how she couldn't quite figure out how to hold her arms. "Want to go outside?" he had said. She nodded, just barely, and they walked out together. The town hall had a false front and a wide porch, like a Wild West saloon. They walked to one side of the porch, and as she walked ahead of him he felt an overwhelming sense that he knew her already. He told her so, and she didn't say anything, just gave that little nod again. She had black hair, and those light blue eyes, and that red dress. It was 1952, and he should have asked her politely if she wanted to go out sometime, maybe get a Coke. He should have asked about her family, gotten a sense of how strict her father was, found out if she was seeing anyone. Instead, he followed her into the dark corner of the porch and when she turned around he kissed her full-on, pressing her against the wall, and she kissed him back.

Teddy went past the island into the open water beyond. He planned to set a couple more experimental traps out here, just to see what he got. The other guys would say that there was no point, that the current was wrong, that it was too deep and nobody ever caught anything out here. If they saw him, they'd laugh at the long lines he'd tied together, but he didn't care. It was good to try new things. When Teddy was a kid he was forever building rockets or paper airplanes or mixing things together to see what blew up. Nobody ever got anywhere by doing what everyone else did.

He cut the motor again, and looked at the island from the back side. He was a couple of hundred feet away from it. The dark rock rose straight up to a cliff covered in trees. It was a beautiful rock, shades of dark and lighter gray with swipes of white lines as if a huge tanker had passed too close to it. Teddy guessed they were left over from the glaciers, but he didn't know much about geology. The rock had a brown stripe at the bottom, outlined in black. The tide line. He knew that much.

He poured himself another cap of coffee and set it on the gunwale. He got his notebook and made a note about where he would throw the trap, then set the notebook by the steering wheel. The island was on his right, and he would toss the trap out to the left. He picked it up, the wire mesh in his work-gloved hand. The sun glinted on the water. The top few inches of water were clear, sunlit green. He rested the trap on the gunwale, then threw it, and as the line unfurled behind it, he realized that the knot wasn't tight enough. He grabbed for it, an awkward movement, and then the shock of cold water made him gasp. His hand was caught in the line, he couldn't make it let go. He saw, as if he were still in the boat looking up, Lydia standing on the top of the rock, as she looked that first night. Then nothing but water.

Lydia's Island #5

Teddy's Last Day Part 2

Teddy hooked the next buoy and pulled it in. His colors were light purple with navy blue crosses, a source of amusement for the other guys. Teddy didn’t mind. His buoys were easy to see, and that was what mattered. It had taken a long time to feel like one of the guys. For a long time he hadn’t felt qualified. They had spent their whole lives in this bay, and so had their fathers and grandfathers. Not only did Teddy not have much experience on the water, but he was also from away. He would never have made it out here if not for Ben.

He hooked the line to the winch and hauled in the next set of traps. A few lobsters in here, but they looked small. He got out the gauge and checked. A couple of keepers, just barely. He threw the other one back and put the keepers in the cooler.

After meeting Lydia, Teddy wanted to spend as much time here as possible. His cousin was pretty serious about his own Philhardt’s Landing girl, so the two of them rented a couple of rooms and worked at the lobster pound outside Charlie’s. Teddy had always been good at teaching himself, and that summer he studied the lobstermen from afar. He wanted to figure out everything about them, how they talked, how they moved, what they knew.

By the next summer, Ben got him a job as a stern man on Ronnie Comcheck’s boat, the Dora Eliza. Ronnie hadn’t been too friendly at first, but Teddy worked hard and kept quiet, and eventually Ronnie started telling him stories.

Teddy stopped for a minute to pour a capful of coffee from his thermos and look at the house on the island. The storm shutters were on over the front windows. The Adirondack chairs were under the deck and the picnic table was at the side of the house. The beach had a little debris on it, but nothing major. Pieces of a busted buoy, a length of frayed clothesline, some foam from under a wharf.

Teddy thought again about living there. He’d miss seeing the kids, that was one thing. It might be good for Coley if they sold the mainland house and pushed him out of the nest, but what about Miriam? She’d had a rough year, too, and he knew she couldn’t afford to pay anyone to take care of Hazel. Hazel would be in school next fall, though, and Taylor would be nine, maybe old enough to keep an eye on her after school.

The whalewatch boat left the pier. Teddy could hear it start up, and then the Lydia Lee rocked in its waves. Teddy automatically bent and straightened his knees to stay upright. Not many tourists going out today. Dicky Comcheck had told him they didn't see much of anything the day before, just a bunch of puffins and some seals. Dicky offered a money-back guarantee that his passengers would see whales, and he hated like hell to lose money. This weekend he'd probably make his last trips of the season. Dicky honked his horn and Teddy lifted an arm in greeting.

Lydia's Island #4

The bay was flat calm and orange with sunrise. Teddy Jameson parked his truck at the pier in a row of other trucks like it. All the trucks were in some state of disrepair, rust holes patched with two by fours, wires hanging out of taillight sockets. They resembled their owners, Teddy thought. Sitting on the same stools at Charlie's every day, practically touching but not facing each other.

Looked like most of the boats were out already. Teddy didn't live close enough to the pier to be the first to go out, so he preferred to be last. He bought some pickled herring and bait bags from Jim Graff, next to the harbormaster's office, and then stuck his wallet in the truck's glove box. No sense in taking it out on the water with him. He didn't need money out there.

He took his red plastic cooler and thermos down the walkway to the dock, where his skiff was tied. It had rained the night before, so some dirty water sloshed around in the bottom of the boat. He didn't bother to bail it. A little water never hurt anybody. He got out his oars and rowed to the Lydia Lee, which glowed bright red in the early-morning light. He had painted it red because of the dress his wife wore when they first met. Course, he never told anyone that. Sounded too hokey. He met Lydia at a town hall dance when they were sixteen, in 1952. Teddy lived about an hour away, a new transplant from Massachusetts. Mass-hole, the other kids at his school called him. His cousin knew a girl in Philhardt's Landing, and Teddy had come down to the dance with him. Lydia had on a red gingham dress, and she stood against the wall, frowning. Her frown made him want to laugh. It was always clear what Lydia was thinking, even then, and he liked that about her.

He was careful not to bump the skiff against the Lydia Lee. He'd repainted her last winter, and the paint job was holding up pretty well so far. He pulled around to the back and transferred his lunch, bait box and thermos from one boat to the other, then got in. He led the skiff around the big boat to the mooring buoy and tied up. This part was harder without a second pair of hands, but he managed. Teddy knew his wife was right, that he was too soft when it came to his son. But he didn't mind being by himself. Besides stupid little things, it wasn't much harder.

He planned to check his farthest traps today. Teddy was a little more experimental than the other fishermen in the harbor. He kept detailed notes about what worked and what didn't, depending on the time of year. So far, the traps on the outer edge of the bay weren't yielding much, but he hoped they would soon. He and Lydia and their grandchildren had spent a lot of time out on the island this summer, and Teddy knew his wife would like to move out there year-round. That was okay with him, if it made her happy. If he could find some good fishing right around the island, he could fish from the skiff and save some money on gas for the big boat.

A red metal bell buoy rocked and clanged in the Lydia Lee's wake. As he motored out to the edge of the bay, towards the twin islands, he thought, as he often did, of Lydia's brother Ben. Ben had died last April. Heart attack. One minute he was at the supper table, talking to his son, Harrison, and the next he was on the floor, gasping for breath. They couldn't get him to the mainland in time to save his life. Teddy hadn't been there, but he was still haunted by the image of Harrison gunning the motor of his father's fishing boat while his father, maybe dying, maybe dead, leaned against his mother in the back.

Teddy got out to the farthest traps, about a hundred feet from Lydia's Island, and cut the motor. Gulls caught up to him and screeched as he pulled the first trap, which was empty. He checked the bait, decided it was okay, and dropped the trap again. He motored slowly to the next one, his wake rising white behind him.

The trees on the island were mostly evergreens, but there were a few fall colors mixed in. The sun was up now and the water was a pale, reflective blue. It was going to be hot for November, one of those last Indian summer days before the world started shutting down for winter. Teddy guessed he'd better get on Cole about finding a job for the winter. They couldn't let him stay on at the house forever without bringing in any money. He thought of his son's eyes, light blue like Lydia's. Some would say they were cold eyes, but Teddy knew better. His son was a good man. He just hadn't found his place in the world.

Work #2

I worked in a jewelry booth for a couple of years, first one day a week, and then full-time. This booth was across the walkway from the bookstore, and paid about twice as much per hour.

The booth was twenty feet long and five feet wide. Along the front and one side were glass cases lit with hot lights that burned our arms when we had the misfortune to brush against them. The booth had wooden boards, six feet by two feet and heavy, that slid along a groove in front of the cases. We filled the grooves with boards, then locked with a padlock for the night. In the morning we reversed the procedure, stacking the boards in cupboards under the cases. The owners never trusted me with a key.

When we weren't helping customers, my friend and I sat at a small wooden table with white plastic chairs and ate too much and talked about mostly nothing and cut wrapping paper into squares that fit around the jewelry boxes. Sometimes we rearranged the cases of jewelry or dribbled the gold chains of necklaces into little piles behind the gems. The prices were not to face up. The customers were supposed to ask us what the prices were, and then we could try to sell them something.

Tourmaline is generally found in granite, in the top third of mountains. They have to blast to get to it. Probably the mountains in Acadia National Park are full of tourmaline, but the park service doesn't allow blasting (this was often met with genuine regret from customers). Tourmaline comes in more colors than any other gemstone. Sometimes it's heat-treated to bring out the deep colors (not something to tell the customers). Pink tourmaline is a secondary birthstone for October, because opals are soft and breakable. Tourmaline is a hard stone, a 6 and a half on the scale. (Or maybe not, maybe I'm finally forgetting.) Tourmaline is Maine's State Stone, but tourmaline comes from all over the world. Therefore, our tourmaline was not guaranteed to come from Maine. We could never have such a selection of fabulous color and clarity if we limited ourselves to one geographic area. This does not, however, change the fact that it is Maine's State Stone. If a chickadee flies into New Hampshire, is it not still Maine's State Bird?

Jewelry customers are often needy, trying things on over and over, asking your opinion and then not liking it, finally choosing the first thing they try on. They look at the color of the gemstone against their skin. They take the jewelry out into the more natural light of the mall. They look at pendants on long and short chains. They hold earrings against their ears. Maine State Law prohibits trying on earrings. They go away to think about it.

We sized their fingers with a group of metal rings in different sizes. Sometimes the sizing rings got stuck on customers' fingers, and then, having no water, we sprayed them with Windex.

The owners called us "the help." They would not accept returns more than two days after Christmas, even in the case of a woman who died before her grandchildren could give her the pendant they spent so long picking out.

I was in the jewelry booth on September 11 when the second plane hit the second tower. My friend and I listened to the news all day on the little boom box radio on the table. A few days later a woman came in and cried while looking in one of the cases. "I knew someone in the second tower," she said. "She was young," she said, "just like you." She could barely get the last words out. I thought about how awful it would be to die at work.

Still, it would be another year before I left.

Overcast

Black ribcage of a new building against the brightest part of today's sky.

Five floors below me, a wide and shallow puddle on a metal duct. Air currents ripple its surface, one way and then another.

Lunch Truck

The lunch truck is silver, with bags of chips hanging on the outside. The man inside is mostly bald and very tan, with short white hair on the sides of his head. He smiles at me. "grilled cheese, please" I say. He knows what I always order, but never assumes anything. "White or wheat?" he says. His words are clipped, precise. I can't place his accent. He throws two pieces of white bread on the hot metal, and moves on to the next customer. I watch him put ketchup and mustard on hot sausages, fill sub rolls with tuna or chicken salad, chop frozen blocks of steak with the side of his metal spatula, which clangs against the grill. He adds two slices of white cheese to my bread, closes the sandwich and puts a metal press on it.

Just before the sandwich is done, he lays out a square of tinfoil with a smaller square of unwaxed paper on top. He anchors the paper with a clean knife. He checks my sandwich, then takes it off the grill and puts it on the paper. He cuts it diagonally with the big knife, and folds the paper around it.

I can tell that he doesn't like it when I change the routine by not needing a bag. So I don't say anything. I hand him a bottled water from the ice bin. He wipes it off on his apron and puts it in the bag with the sandwich, then stuffs a pile of napkins on top. "Three dollars," he says. I pay him, smile, say thank you. He smiles and moves on to the next customer.

Work

For years, I worked at a bookstore in the Maine Coast Mall. The mall had stores on one side and windows on the other, with a walkway about twenty feet wide in between. Although I was not a morning person, I liked opening the store. I had my own key, which I used to unlock the big glass doors of first the mall and then our store. I let myself in and closed the door behind me.

I liked being in the bookstore while the doors were closed and nobody else was there, walking between the shelves of books to the break room. I put my lunch in the refrigerator, punched my time card and put on my name tag. I didn't mind wearing a name tag, except when customers read it and called me by my name as if they knew me.

Later in the morning, I went out into the mall to check in newspapers. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Herald and Globe, and the Portland Press Herald. People reserved these papers. I cut off the plastic bands and counted them. Then I counted the reserved ones out, checked them off in the book, and wrote names at the top in pencil. Some of the reservers got mad if we wrote their names in ink.

I remember the light on the brown-tiled floor of the sloping mall, everything in order, all the stores opening for business. I gathered my scissors, papers and reserve book and went back in.