“I guess it’s no wonder Finn’s always in such a miserable mood. I feel so bad for you both. Although, I think you’re a more resilient person than he is. Finn’s stuck in a very dark place.”
I wasn’t sure how to take that. Did Cooper think I wasn’t as affected by Lorna’s death as Finn was? Did everybody think that? That I was a second-string mourner? It seemed very drama-queeny to insist I was just as miserable as Finn, and maybe that wasn’t even what Cooper meant. He acted as if he were complimenting me.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he said, removing his warm hand, which I instantly missed. “I know you’re upset about what happened too, but I think it’s admirable that you’re getting on with it. Life sucks sometimes, but if you let yourself sink down into the misery, sometimes you can’t find your way out of it. Nothing ever seems good again. But I don’t think you’re like that. I think you’re a positive, optimistic person, and eventually you’ll be fine.”
“You think so?” I hated the whine in my voice, like a five-year-old begging for a pat on the head.
“I do.”
“I hope you’re right. I want to be happy again,” I said. And then the most appalling thing happened. Just as Cooper was praising my ability to bounce back, tears started beating down my cheeks.
“Oh, my God, I made you cry,” he said, taking his feet off the table and leaning forward. “Now I feel terrible.”
I tried to soak up the moisture with my hands, but I would have needed a sponge to staunch the flow.
I could see that Cooper was looking around for something to give me to wipe myself up with, but there was nothing obvious in the room. And then, suddenly, he whipped off his T-shirt, wadded it up, and held it to my face, dabbing at my tears.
“You’ll be happy again, Jackie,” he said. “I know you will. I’ll help you.”
I was so surprised by both offers, his clothing and his help, that I stopped crying immediately, but I kept the T-shirt up to my face anyway so he couldn’t see my shock. What did he mean he’d help me? Just that he was willing to absorb a few tears, or more than that?
I was embarrassed that he was sitting next to me without a shirt on, and I was excited that he was sitting next to me without a shirt on. I kept my face hidden in his T-shirt for the longest time. It smelled of lilac, as if it had gone through the wash with Elsie’s clothes.
7.
On my days off I got up early, loaded my camera, drawing pad, and pencils into my backpack, and headed away from town, sometimes to the marshes near the breakwater, sometimes to the beach at Herring Cove, but most often, like today, I headed to the dunes across Route 6. I liked the dunes best because the people I was likely to come across out there weren’t tourists, but artists, writers, and other old hippie types spending their summer living off the grid in one of the weathered, mouse-infested dune shacks that dotted the National Seashore land.
I went to the dunes to see what I’d seen so many times before—sand, beach grass, cloud formations—but to see them differently every time, to watch them change. I loved spending long hours lying on my back in the dunes, watching the clouds mass and pull apart, first hiding the sun, then lifting the curtain on a high-noon performance, casting shadows that changed the landscape minute to minute.
Being out here always made me think of Lorna, partly because everything made me think of Lorna, but mostly (and oddly) the dunes reminded me of her because they were the one place I often came without her. I loved drawing and taking pictures out here, but Lorna didn’t enjoy watching me do it. She didn’t really like watching anything. Lorna liked being out front—she wanted to be watched.
In truth I didn’t really want her around anyway when I was working on art projects. Lorna thought being an artist was a pretty useless goal. When I daydreamed out loud about becoming a famous painter someday, Lorna scoffed. “Famous? The only people who’ll know who you are are people who go into art galleries. My life is going to be art,” she said. “Me, not something I draw or take a picture of.” That seemed perfectly possible to me.
Lorna knew I liked being alone sometimes, but she couldn’t understand it. She hated being alone. More than once she’d made a joke about what a loner I was, and I could tell she was a little angry about it.
Once when we were little kids, the boys and I hid from her. We’d been running around in a wooded field off Harry Kemp Way and somehow she got separated from us and we hid. Maybe we knew it would freak her out—I can’t remember. We could see her from where we were hiding though, and at first it seemed funny that she was so distraught.
“Where are you?” she yelled, turning in wild circles. “I hate you for doing this to me!”
We snickered under our breaths.
But then she fell to her knees and cried as if her heart was broken. “Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me alone,” she wailed, and suddenly the game wasn’t so hilarious anymore.
When we came out of hiding, she wouldn’t speak to us. Her tears had dried in dirty streaks down her face. She stomped off, furious, and we followed her home, begging her to forgive us, to speak to us again. But she didn’t, not for the rest of that day. And though we often teased each other, we never tried to trick Lorna again.
Maybe that was what Charlotte meant when she said Lorna was “needy.” She depended on us because, well, we didn’t let her down the way her parents did. Char’s idea of Lorna as someone to be pitied as much as admired had lodged in my head and I couldn’t get it out. Obviously, the three of us had needed Lorna at least as much as she’d needed us—no doubt about it. But I could see that our need for her and hers for us was not as out of balance as it might have seemed.
As I hiked through the dunes I thought of Lorna asking, “Why do you take the same picture over and over?” I’d tried to explain, but she was an impatient listener. The thing was, every time I clicked the shutter I became more aware of the subtle variations in my surroundings, the small secrets that rose to the surface and were sucked back under. I loved the way a photograph could stop time, put a frame around it. It captured a moment and held it forever, even if the world kept changing. Lorna was like that now, too, mounted, matted, framed, alive only in photographs.
The last time I’d been on the dunes, it was so hot I emptied my water bottle before noon and had to hike to the ocean to cool off. But today it was overcast and rainy, the clouds so dramatic I couldn’t make myself leave until I was so wet my shoes belched water every step of the walk home.
“For God’s sake, you’re dripping wet!” Mom greeted me the minute I came through the door.
I don’t think I’ve ever come into this kitchen without seeing my mother at work, chopping up vegetables or cleaning fish. This afternoon she was tossing handfuls of potatoes into a big black pot that sat on top of our ancient stove. She waved me back into the doorway.
“Take those shoes off before you come in here. Don’t you have enough sense to get in out of the rain?”
“I’m in, aren’t I?” I toed off my soaked sneakers.
“Go upstairs and change clothes, and then come back down here. I want to talk to you.”
Damn. As the youngest of four, I was used to flying under my parents’ radar, but since my older brothers had all (finally) moved out of the house last year, Mom had begun paying more attention to me, which drove me slightly crazy. I slipped into dry clothes, toweled off my hair, and padded back downstairs barefoot.
“You hungry?” Mom asked. Which must be the most-often asked question in this house. When my brothers were around, the answer was always yes.
“Not really. I took an apple with me.”
“An apple’s not a meal. Make a sandwich,” she ordered. She opened the refrigerator door and got out two packages wrapped in white butcher paper, enough salami and American cheese to feed all three of my relocated brothers.
“I’m not hungry, Mom. I had an—”
“I don’t want to hear about your apple. There are fresh rolls in the breadbox. No daughter of mine is goin
g to starve herself.”
There was no use arguing about it. I got out the bag of rolls. For years Mom had been getting up before dawn six mornings a week to knead dough into round loaves for the Portuguese Bakery. Our breadbox was always stuffed with baked goods. I cut a roll in half and topped it with a thin slice of cheese.
Teresa handed me a plate. “Where were you this morning? Dunes again?”
I nibbled at my sandwich and nodded.
“I don’t know what’s so great about sitting out there in the middle of that big sandbox hour after hour.”
“God, Mom, people come from all over the world to see the place we live—it’s beautiful! Have you even been to the beach in the last decade?”
“I’ve got too much to do to sit around on my butt and get skin cancer.” She took a bag of carrots from the fridge. They looked a little dried up to me, but I didn’t say anything.
“Do you even own a swimsuit?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Why would I need a swimsuit? I can’t swim.”
“Really?” How had I not known this? “You grew up in Provincetown and you never learned to swim?”
“We’re surrounded by a dangerous ocean, Jackie, not some fancy swimming pool. There’s nothing beautiful about that ocean to me.”
This was a conversation I’d spent my life trying to avoid—the lethal effects of the killer ocean. I perched on the lip of the chair and scarfed down my roll, which was, in fact, delicious.
Mom frowned. “I guess you were taking pictures out there again. Doesn’t that get boring?”
“No.”
“It’s the same everywhere you look.”
“No, it’s not, Mom.”
“Pictures,” she said scornfully as she whacked up the large, knotty carrots. “That’s all you ever think about.”
It was an old argument and I didn’t take the bait. “Why did you want to talk to me?” I asked. Might as well get it over with.
Mom pointed her knife at me. “This college idea of yours. Your father and I have been talking. You have to start being more realistic about your future.”
Oh damn, it was that talk. I clenched my jaw.
“College is one thing,” she continued. “If you wanted to go to Cape Cod Community like Michael, get an apartment in Hyannis with some other girls for a few years, that would be okay. You’re smart—you could get a business degree or a teaching certificate. You could get a loan—we’d figure it out. But art school? It’s a silly idea for people like us, Jackie.”
Us? I wanted to scream. “And what kind of people are we, Mom?”
“Simple people,” she said immediately. “We don’t have grand ideas like the kind Elsie McGavrock puts into your head. Going off to Boston or New York or someplace like that. Do you know how much it costs to go to a fancy art school, Jackie? To live in a city? A lot more than you can make working at the Blue Moon in the summer, I’ll tell you that. And we don’t have the money to help you pay for it.”
I stared at the tabletop, rolling stray breadcrumbs together into a pasty ball. “I know. There are scholarships,” I said, but so quietly I could hardly hear myself. The whole question of college was so big it overwhelmed me. Getting into the school. Getting the money to go. And then actually packing up and moving there. I hated to admit it, but that was what scared me most: leaving Provincetown, the place I knew so well the streets and alleys were practically extensions of my own body. I didn’t just live in this town—it lived in me.
“Even if we did have the money,” Mom said, “it’s like throwing it away! Art school? What good is being an artist? Who makes a living at that?”
“Some people do.” But I knew I didn’t have a solid argument against her worries. I debated the issue with myself all the time. Even if I worked while I was in college, I’d be lucky to cover the cost of housing and food. I couldn’t possibly earn enough to pay tuition. And even if I got a scholarship, what would happen afterward? How would I make a living? I knew being an artist wasn’t a practical decision, but if everyone was practical there wouldn’t be any artists. Maybe if I’d never seen those books of Picasso and Matisse, never held a charcoal pencil, never looked through a camera lens, I could be happy working in a real-estate office or teaching elementary school. But now I knew what I’d be missing. Without the chance to make art, to learn and get better at it, my life would feel so small.
“Who makes a living at it?” Mom wanted to know. “Finn’s parents? Sure, they’ve got money, but it’s just because his father won that big prize. Most people who write books or paint pictures don’t live in a big house like they do. Most of them are lucky to have some little room over a garage. They wait tables until they’re too old to stand up straight. Is that the life you want? I hope not.”
She took a package of thawed codfish chunks from the refrigerator and located her fish knife. “It’s like you’ve been bewitched by that Rosenberg family,” she said. “Those people think they’re Provincetown royalty or something.”
“No, they don’t. Elsie’s invited you over lots of times, and you always come up with some excuse not to go. You’re the snob.”
But she wasn’t listening to me. She was whacking up the fish with such force I was a little afraid she was going to slice off a finger and throw it in the pot with the seafood. “They’re not even from here!” she continued. “What right do they have to give you advice? Just because they’ve got money doesn’t mean they can run everybody’s life!”
“Mom, Elsie isn’t running my life. She got me interested in art, is all. She knows I love it and she wants to help me figure out how to keep doing it.”
“Well, she needs to mind her own business. She’s not doing you a favor making you want things you can’t have. We’re not rich people, Jackie. We have to make the best of the life we were given.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do! Elsie’s helping me apply for grants and scholarships. There are ways to—”
“She’s giving you false hopes! And then what? When all your big dreams fall apart, you’ll be back here, crying on my shoulder. And I’ve got enough problems as it is.”
I liked to think I was anesthetized to my mother’s bitterness after years of listening to her complain. Still, it stung to be characterized as just another one of her many problems. But it also made me more determined. If I didn’t get into art school, or if I couldn’t come up with the money, I’d figure out the next step then. But I didn’t intend to spend the rest of my life sitting around this fish-stinking kitchen listening to Teresa Silva repeat her list of resentments.
“I know you think I’m hard on you, but I’m just trying to protect you from disappointment,” she said, sounding the tiniest bit apologetic. “I’m not saying you can’t apply to that Tiz-Dee or whatever it is, if you’ve got your heart set on it.”
“Riz-Dee. Rhode Island School of Design.”
“Whatever. You’ll see it’s way too expensive. You should apply to some regular places too. Cape Cod Community, or, if you’re determined to go off-Cape for some reason, UMass Boston or one of the state schools. That’s the kind of place people like us go.”
People like us. What did that even mean? That you were born a certain way and could never escape it? That if your parents scraped by all their lives, you were never going to have an extra shoelace either? That you shouldn’t even try to make your life better?
My mother’s default emotion was hopelessness, but it hadn’t always been that way. When my older brothers were kids, Marco and Teresa actually laughed once in a while. The boys would roughhouse with each other until something got broken. “You drive me nuts!” Mom would yell at them, but there was pride in her voice as well as irritation. Dad would laugh off their bad behavior, saying, “I was a wild animal too at their ages.”
And then, just as I got old enough to join in the romping, everything changed. Uncle Peter’s fishing boat sank one miserably hot July day in a sudden squall, all hands lost at sea. For the next year Mom begged Dad to quit fis
hing.
“I can’t do nothin’ else, Teresa,” he’d say, sorrowfully. “What should I do in this town? Open a hot dog stand? Sell jewelry to the tourists? Fishing is all I know how to do.”
Finally she gave up trying to convince him and resigned herself to being mad at the world. My brothers graduated high school and two out of three joined Dad on his boat, the Sally Marie, named after my grandmother. Mom was worried sick every minute they were gone, and Dad, who was more susceptible to guilt than his children, took to stopping at the Old Colony Tap to knock back a cheap whiskey or two before coming home for dinner.
I was the good kid, the one who didn’t worry my mother, who did what she was supposed to. But I was tired of being quiet and invisible. I couldn’t spend the rest of my life standing in front of a kitchen stove just so my mother knew where I was every minute.
Mom had her back to me, stirring the simmering brew.
“How come Michael didn’t want to work on the Sally Marie too?” I asked, steering the conversation away from my own future. “Did he always want to go to college?”
Mom gave a brief, triumphant smile. “I talked him into it. I couldn’t stand having all my men out on the water.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what Marky and Bobby are gonna do, though. They got girlfriends—pretty soon they’ll get married, have a few kids. The Sally Marie can’t support another generation. I can’t see the future for them.”
She looked so forlorn, I leaned my head against her shoulder. “Mom,” I said, “you can’t see the future for any of us. Nobody can.”
8.
The summer months passed quickly, long days of work, darkened by grief, but also sweetened by budding friendships with Charlotte and Cooper. The last week of August the Jasper Street studios had to be cleaned out for the new fellowship recipients who’d take up residence soon. From the office window I saw Finn and Tess, armed with mop, broom, bucket, and garbage bags, head into Studio 9. Over the summer other artists rented the spaces, and I knew from years past that the mess they left behind infuriated Finn.