Anxious Hearts (17 page)

I am wicked late to Penobscot Pines this morning. I’m supposed to get there at eight o’clock and make sure that the files are ready for Dr. Wadsworth. She reads them over a cup of coffee every day at 8:15.

Dr. Wadsworth is very organized. She is also very skinny.

But I don’t make it by eight. There are two reasons. The first reason is because I oversleep. The second reason is because on the way to Penobscot Pines, I get stuck at a railroad crossing while some endless freight train goes by, carrying massive stacks of Maine lumber to God knows where.

I sit there, listening to the too-peppy DJs on the morning radio talk show about the Boston Red Sox’s winning streak,
or losing streak, or something like that, and I zone out, watching the train flash by, car by car,
click-clack, click-clack
.

I stop watching the train and focus on the space between the cars, which flashes in and out of view in millisecond blasts as the train speeds by. I see, in those flashes, a beat-up pickup truck waiting on the other side of the train tracks, its half-rusted grill illuminated in quick pulses of light.

And I see him behind the wheel.

Gabe.

He’s in the pickup truck, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap. It is Gabe.
Clack. Clack.
He is unmistakable.
Clack.
With every flash, a scene emerges from between the cars. Gabe and I by the dock.
Clack.
Gabe and I at Quoddy.
Clack.
Gabe and I kissing in his headlights.
Clack.
Gabe in my sleeping bag.
Clack.
Gabe disappearing over the cliff.

I stare, motionless, through the racing rain.

But when the train ends and fades into silence, there is no truck on the other side of the tracks. There is no Gabe. He is gone.

I sit for a moment, not moving, until the car behind me honks. I look into the rearview mirror and wave. “Sorry,” I say, knowing the woman in the car behind me can’t hear.

When I arrive at 8:25, Dr. Wadsworth calls me into her office. I sit on one of the folding chairs in front of her
desk. She gets up from her chair, walks around the desk, and perches on its edge, standing before me, stern and serious. I know I’m in trouble.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Wadsworth,” I say, looking at my knees. “I’m late.” I close my eyes and wish this moment were over. “There was a train.”

“Eva,” she says. “Eva, listen to me. Ada died last night.”

“What?” I look up, almost to her face but not quite, stopping at her pendant, a sterling globe on a chain that lies across her rippled sternum. “She was fine yesterday,” I say matter-of-factly, like I know something.

Dr. Wadsworth doesn’t repeat it, because she knows she doesn’t need to. I heard her.
Ada died last night
. That’s it. No embellishment, no
I have bad news
, no
I know how you must feel
. No candy or sugar at all.

Ada died last night
.

Just like that.

“Ada died last night,” I say.

Dr. Wadsworth just nods.

I shouldn’t be surprised. Ada was old. She wasn’t well. She’d been preparing to die for months. Ever since she got to Penobscot Pines.

But I didn’t think it would happen last night. She seemed so lucid yesterday, so energetic. Most people around here die
after coughing for two weeks, or after breathing through a machine for a month while their families haggle over what to do with them, or something.

Not Ada. Ada just died.

I’m sad. I think. And scared. I have to tell Da’, and he’ll get all weepy, and we’ll have to figure out what to do, a funeral and whatnot, and then I’ll have to do it. Now I’m mad. Once again, I’m going to have to do everything. Is it my fault my father’s so feeble? No. Not my fault.

Then again, maybe it is. Maybe I made him feeble. Maybe I just wore him out. But I’m the one who has to suck it up and do everything.

I wish I could ask Ada what to do. But Ada died last night.

“I think you should go home,” says Dr. Wadsworth. She picks up her clipboard and pen. “Go home this afternoon. Spend a few days with your father. I’ll see you back here on Monday.”

“What about my shift?” I say hopefully. “I’m on the schedule, see?” I point to the dry-erase board on the wall. I’m clearly down for work today and tomorrow.

“Go home, Eva,” she says. And then she gets up and leaves the office to make her morning rounds, which will be one stop shorter than yesterday. I wonder if Dr. Wadsworth still gets sad when a resident dies, or if it even affects her anymore. She’s worked here over ten years.

I wonder how long it will take them to fill Ada’s bed.

The ride home is a slow procession of station wagons from Massachusetts and Quebec, filled with Maine-gawkers covered in mosquito bites and sunburns, screeching to a halt at every ice-cream stand and any sign that says
CLAMS
, and asking questions like, “Is this lobster salad authentic?” The drive should take two and a half hours; today it takes five.

Normally, this would be misery. But I’m in no rush today. I don’t mind. It’s not like I’m all that eager to get home.

I spend the time rehearsing what I’m going to say to Da’.

“Da’,” I’ll say. “Ada died last night.”

A few miles after Machias, the traffic dissipates. Before long, I’m pretty much the only one on the road. I roll down the windows and cruise under the brilliant-blue summer sky. The pines overhead whiz by, dropping splotches of sunshine onto the road as I take the small rises and curves one after the other, slow here, then fast, then slow again. I take out my tired ponytail and let my hair whip across my face and eyes, and wonder if I’ll stop when I get to Franktown or if I’ll just keep driving forever.

When I get home and yell hello and walk in the door and see Da’ sitting in his upholstered armchair by the window
overlooking the street, smiling at me with serene, bloodshot eyes, I realize he already knows.

“Come here, Eva, my girl,” he says.

“Da’,” I say. I stand beside his chair and put my hand on the armrest. He has one of Ada’s old quilts wrapped around his legs.

“Eva,” he says. He reaches up and pulls me down onto his lap and pulls my head onto his shoulder. “You were her angel.” He reaches up and strokes my hair with his fatherly fingers, brushing it off my cheek softly. “And now, she will be yours.”

I don’t cry. Instead, I fall asleep. Right there on Da’s shoulder.

Gabriel

A
T THE BASE OF THE THICKET WAS A SMALL
, stony river-beach. Four birch canoes lay in a jagged row on the rocks. Gabriel quickly tied Basil’s horse to a tree, dragged the sturdiest-looking canoe into the shallow water, and without pausing or looking back for his father, paddled, swiftly and powerfully, into the depths of the slow-moving Lesser River, trusting the current, slow and languorous here, rapid and swirling there, to guide him downstream to the seaport of Vieux Manan, to Evangeline.

He wove handily through the drooping boughs of the ancient willows and the tangles of incessant river weeds, steering around the shifting sandbanks and rocky islets, paddling with newfound strength and energy, beyond the
edge of the vast western grasslands and into the teeming forests beyond, where the river’s shadowy aisles grew darker and closer, and the moist, thick air flowed like syrup into his lungs.

Gabriel’s rhythms as he rowed coaxed his thoughts toward Evangeline. He imagined them together in the one-room log-and-earth cabin he’d built on the pastured hillside above Pré-du-sel, framed with chestnut and stone, and roofed with thatch from the marshes. The wood of his oar recalled the oak he’d hewn into her cider press. He pictured the long bench, the ladder-back chairs, even Evangeline’s footstool, all carved by Gabriel’s own hand. Gabriel had honored his wife’s wishes and built a kitchen window over the low sink basin, overlooking a sloping field of wildflowers, oxeyes and hawkweed and white clover. There was a sturdy shed with room for four goats and a dozen hens. Farther on, an orchard of saplings, and the living waters of Glosekap Bay.

The house was his greatest expression of love for her. But it was now just a pile of ashes and cinders. Evangeline had never seen it.

Softly the evening came. Gabriel drifted and wept alone in the twilight. His shoulders collapsed and sobs of exhaustion and desperation skimmed across the river. “Are you so near to me?” he cried to the riverbanks. “Have you dreamed of
me?” His voice carried through the fireflies gleaming on the riverbank, and into the dark caverns of the night forest.

“I will build another house for you, my beloved. I will build another life for you. This is my vow.” As he swore, he felt the first raindrop on his forearm.

The storm came in slowly, with the markings of a shower, not a torrent. The heavy drops fell into the dark river around him, and Gabriel, though he knew he should find cover, swelled with determination, not prudence. He paddled more deeply in the rushing water, keeping a steady rhythm as he rowed: “Evangeline, Evangeline.”

The storm grew only stronger, drenching the oarsman and conjuring up a formidable, swirling headwind, but Gabriel didn’t stop. His goal was forward, and though already drenched, he rowed on.

Each stroke of the oar now brought him nearer, ever nearer, to her.

eva

It’s too late. It’s done.”

Da’ is still stirring the coffee that I set down in front of him at least ten minutes ago, as if the half-and-half isn’t yet mixed in. I managed to convince him to get out of that easy chair and sit at the kitchen table while I fix us a couple of sardine sandwiches, open-faced with cheddar cheese melted over the top. I find some coleslaw in the refrigerator, too, which I sniff and set out. The pale green cabbage and faded orange carrots match the cracked floral vinyl tabletop. “I’ve already sold it,” he says.

“But Da’,” I say.

“Half of it is yours,” he says, still stirring his coffee.

“Half of what?”

“The house. The land. The money.”

“Da’,” I say. “If you’ve sold the house, where are you going to go? Where are you going to live?”

“That’s not all,” he says. “Ada’s property is ours now, too.”

“What?”

“Yes.”

Ada has maybe a couple dozen acres. I never really thought about what would happen to her property if she died. I guess I figured she had some nephew or cousin somewhere who would show up, probably bummed out that they had to deal with trying to sell it off.

“What do you mean, her property is ours?”

“Ada’s lawyer called me after we took Ada to Penobscot Pines. He said she would be leaving pretty much everything to me, and you. He says that if we found the right buyer, the land could be worth a decent price.”

“No kidding,” I say.

“It will help pay for school,” he says. “You won’t have to borrow as much.”

“But Da’. Where are you going to go?”

“I can’t stay out here, Eva.” He sounds so old when he says it. “Come here. Look.” He points out the kitchen window to the lawn. The grass outside hasn’t been cut since I left a month ago. The rosebushes are disheveled and brown. The
fields beyond are choked with weeds. Only two chickens are left after a fox attack last week.

“It is too much,” he says. “Even the barn is falling apart. The roof needs replacing. The loft is full of mice.”

I know that he is right. He can’t stay here. But I can’t imagine him living anywhere else. And I can’t imagine anyone else living here.

“Are you sure, Da’?”

He is silent for a minute or two, letting his watery eyes dart left and right before closing them behind heavy lids. “Our story here is nearly finished,” he says. “And you are grown. It is time.”

He stops stirring his coffee.

Later I call Louise and ask her if I can come to Bar Harbor for a couple of days before I go back to Penobscot Pines. She says yes, of course, and I drive down to meet her after her shift at Blueberry Fields Cantina. She steals a bottle of champagne from behind the bar and we drink it on the beach, where the midsummer moon is full and the sand glistens. Louise tells me about her latest beau, Gaston from Montreal. “He wears the tiniest bathing suit!” she says.
“C’est tragique.”
We laugh, and then I tell Louise about Ada dying, and how the last thing she told me to do was find Gabe.