A Piece of the World(66)

Over time, Al and I settle back into our old ways. But he is changed. A bird flies into a windowpane on the second floor, breaking the glass, and instead of fixing it he stuffs a rag in the hole. He leaves the old Model T to rot behind the shed. He rarely cleans out the woodstoves anymore, just shoves the ashes back to make room for new logs. Long winters strip the white from the house, exposing gray boards underneath, and he doesn’t bother to paint. One after another the fields go fallow, farm equipment abandoned to rust. Within a couple of years, Al is farming only one small patch.

It’s as if he has chosen to punish the house and land for needing him. Or maybe he’s punishing me.





CHRISTINA’S WORLD





1948


In the middle of the field the earth smells like sourdough. Each sharp blade of grass is separate and distinct. Dainty yellow cowslips hang on their stems like tiny wilting bouquets; a yellow-and-black tiger swallowtail butterfly hovers overhead. It’s a mild May afternoon, and I’m on my way to visit Sadie in her cottage around the bend. She offered to come and get me in her car, but I prefer to make my own way. It takes about an hour to get there, pulling myself along on my elbows, hitching my body forward. My cotton knee pads are frayed and grass stained. This close to the ground, the only sound is my own rough panting and the chirp of crickets. Blackflies circle, nipping my ears. The air tastes of salt and lavender and dirt.

I can’t walk at all anymore. My chair has worn a deep groove into the kitchen floor between the table and the Glenwood range. I will not use a wheelchair. So I have a choice: I can stay inside, in the security of the kitchen and my pallet on the dining room floor, or I can get where I need to go as best I can. That’s what I do. Once a week or so I visit Mother and Papa, crawling through the yellow expanse of grass to the family graveyard where they are buried, overlooking the sound and the sea. On mild afternoons I take a small pail with me and pick blueberries. I like to rest in the grass and watch the fishing vessels as they pull away from Port Clyde, out past Monhegan Island and into the open ocean.

When I arrive at Sadie’s, she’s on the front porch waiting for me. “Mercy,” she says with a wide smile. “Look at you. I’ll bet you could use a glass of iced tea.”

“That’d be nice.”

Sadie disappears inside the cottage while I drag myself up the steps and lean against the wooden railing, breathless from the effort. She comes back out with a bowl of berries, a pitcher of iced tea with mint, two glasses, and a wet washcloth on a large tray.

“Here you go, my dear.” She hands me the cool cloth. “So glad you came for a visit, Christina.”

“It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?” I say, wiping my face and neck.

“It surely is. I hope we have a temperate summer like last year, not like the one two years ago. Remember that? Even nighttime was miserable.”

“It was,” I agree.

Sadie and I don’t talk about much. A lot of our time is spent in companionable silence. Today the water in the cove shimmers like broken glass in the late-afternoon sun. The lilacs beside the porch smell like vanilla. We eat the raspberries and blackberries that she plucked earlier in the day, and drink the iced tea, the cool tingle of mint leaves slipping into our mouths like wafers.

The older I get, the more I believe that the greatest kindness is acceptance.



ANDY HASN’T ASKED me to pose since I complained about the portrait in the doorway. But one mild afternoon in early July, out of nowhere, he comes into the kitchen and says, “Will you sit for me in the grass? Just for twenty minutes. Half an hour at most.”

“What for?”

“I have an idea in my head, but I can’t envision it.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t get the damned angle right.”

He knows I don’t want to. I feel shy, self-conscious. “Ask Al.”

He shakes his head. “Al’s done posing, you know that.”

“Maybe I am too.”

“You’re always posing, Christina. It’s not as hard for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Al is restless. You know how to be still.”

Patting the arms of my chair, I say, “Let’s face it, Andy, I don’t have much choice.”

“That’s true, I suppose. But it’s more than that.” He strokes his chin, thinking. “You know how to be . . . looked at.”

I laugh a little. “What an odd thing to say.”

“Sorry, that does sound odd. What I mean is I think you’re used to being observed but not really . . . seen. People are always concerned about you, worried about you, watching to see how you’re getting on. Well-meaning, of course, but—intrusive. And I think you’ve figured out how to deflect their concern, or pity, or whatever it is, by carrying yourself in this”—he raises his arm as if holding an orb—“dignified, aloof way.”

I don’t know how to respond. No one has ever spoken to me like this, telling me something about myself that I didn’t know but understand instantly to be true.

“Right?” he says.

I don’t want to give in too soon. “Maybe.”

“Like the queen of Sweden,” he says.

“Come on.”