ONE
Except for the time I was digging my own grave at gunpoint on the edge of Biscayne National Park, I hadn’t much experience with a shovel. Now, my first winter in Maine was providing a cram course in the form of snow. Back in Miami, a sore back was the least of my concerns. And when I was able to crack the gun-toting drug lord’s head with the back of the shovel and run for the mangroves, the real terror began. That night spent hiding, half submerged, I was unable to decide which was worse: leeches or mosquitoes. Neither of those was a threat here in deep, dark February in sleepy, frozen Green Haven, Maine.
I had been warned, and was fully expecting and prepared for a “wicked” winter, or so I thought. The locals whose holy books are The Farmers’ Almanac and Uncle Henry’s, who had advised me that there would be a record amount of snowfall—as forecast in “FA”—and that I could get whatever I needed to cope with it in “UH,” must now be enjoying the fact that I had been skeptical. Of course it didn’t help that my parking space seemed to be at the vortex of a snow funnel. Every time the wind blew out of the northeast, which accompanied most large storms, my 1987 Plymouth Duster had been buried. To be honest, my car is actually a Plymouth Tourismo. Plymouth did not make a Duster in 1987. I just think a Duster is more my style—less extravagant, more practical. Today, just the tip of the antenna marked the car entombed in flakes so big I could almost see their individual differences. I laughed to myself. My present situation was a far cry from chief detective of Miami-Dade County. If anyone from my past could see me now—Jane Bunker, bundled up like a goddamned Eskimo—living in an apartment over a trinket-selling tourist trap in this remote outpost—making ends meet financially (just barely) with a combination of insurance consulting/investigation and a job as the assistant deputy sheriff of Knox County—shoveling snow!
My landlords, Alice and Henry Vickerson—Mr. and Mrs. V to me—had been gracious in offering me the use of their snow blower. But that offer had come with the stipulation that it not be fired up until eight a.m., the time at which “anyone with an ounce of civility” should wake. I suspected the ounce of civility was in direct correlation to the ounces of Scotch whiskey consumed the night before, but might also have been age related. The eight a.m. mandate, in conjunction with the price of gasoline to power the blower, had me, at six sharp, digging a path with a red plastic shovel from the door of The Lobster Trappe (the V’s gift shop over which I reside) to the antenna under which lived my wheels. Not that I am opposed to Scotch. I have been known to imbibe. But I am frugal; some would say “cheap.”
When a crease of golden light warmed the eastern horizon, I figured I had been shoveling for nearly an hour. Not that I was counting, but I was aware that we were gaining over a full minute of daylight every twenty-four hours. I yearned for the four a.m. sunrise that would come again with the spring solstice. I thrive in daylight. And, I’ve come to find out, I am not crazy about the cold. Mr. V had secured a big red lobster thermometer (“Lobster Thermadore,” as advertised in the shop) on the largest spruce tree on the lot. The black line whose height signified the temperature barely showed on the tail, displaying a frigid eight degrees this morning. Exercise within multiple layers of clothing resulted in full warmth by the time I had exposed the hood of the Duster, allowing me distractive thoughts while I found the car’s doors.
Maine had become home, again, sort of. Although I still struggled when asked about my past, I had at least confided in the Vickersons and my new friends enough to stop their incessant questions that were born out of curiosity and rumor. People make more of what is unsaid than what is said. Not one to wear my heart on my sleeve, I am weirded out by strangers who bear their souls over a cup of coffee in public, or share intimate and minute details of their daily existence over social media. The surge in popularity of reality TV has everyone thinking their lives are ready for prime time. Just eight months ago, I was the new kid in town. What preceded my arrival was the knowledge that I had been born on Acadia Island, was basically kidnapped by my own mother (along with my baby brother, Wally), and was transplanted to Miami, where I grew up in a predominantly Latino section of the city and worked as a police detective until this past June. Rumors of a highly decorated career in drug enforcement cut short by some undefined, yet insurmountable scandal may have been exaggerated. But I have never been one to kiss and tell.
Although I hadn’t yet visited Acadia Island since my move back to Maine, I could see it, as I stood to rest my back in the distance across the bay, looming mysteriously over smaller islands and ledges that dotted the way between it and Green Haven. Someday, I thought, I would initiate a family reunion. Someday, when I could stomach the possibility of having a door slammed in my face. Or worse yet, learning that the Bunkers were not the catalyst that sent my mother sneaking off in the middle of the night, settling at the farthest reach of the Eastern Seaboard, into the looney bin, and finally to suicide. The way my mother told it it qualified her for sainthood. To my five-year-old mind, she had been heroic. At forty-three, I wasn’t as convinced. What I “knew” was this: My mother had disappointed my father’s family when she gave birth to a girl, as boys were needed to perpetuate both the Bunker name and the heritage of lobster fishing. The Bunkers had fought long and hard to acquire and protect their private sliver of the ocean floor that provided their livelihood and identity, and needed to seed the future with young Bunker men willing and able to carry on the territorial war. I always wondered how my life would have been different if the Bunkers had considered women capable of fishing and fighting. No matter, because when dear Wally was born and it was clear that he was a Down syndrome baby, that was the final blow to our “family.” My mother, according to her, was treated like a pariah until she found the courage to escape. Nearly forty years later, here I was, a short boat ride to the truth, but unable to climb aboard; my fear of disillusionment crippling. Or perhaps it was confirmation I feared.
My move to Maine from Florida was indeed a knee-jerk reaction, and one that brought with it an inherent dichotomy that I straddled awkwardly. What remained constant in my life was my affinity for the law. This passion for fighting crime and solving cases ranging from petty theft to first-degree murder was what bolstered me through all lows. In the short time I had been in Maine, I had seen the crime rate change dramatically. Although the downeast coastal villages were quaint, sleepy havens where tourists enjoyed tranquillity and lobster rolls, there had been an explosion of drug use and overdoses among the young population of year-round residents. Meth labs were being discovered weekly, and synthetic opioids had become the new heroin. I had cut my law enforcement teeth in the era of the War on Drugs in Miami, the highest drug trafficking area in the Continental US. The older folks who live here are shocked by the seemingly rabid increase in drug-related topics in their local newscasts and print. But when you see young people harvesting a very abundant and lucrative resource like the Maine lobster, it was just a matter of time before the drug lords would tap into that cache. Timing may indeed be everything. Or is it location, location, location? Time and place. I was in the right place at the right time to make a difference, I thought.
When I was able to pry the driver’s-side door of the Duster open wide enough to squeeze in, I did. Three pumps on the gas pedal with a foot clad in the requisite, insulated L.L.Bean boot, a twist of the key in the ignition, and “Vroom,” off she went—purring contentedly. I hated wasting gas, but thought it might be okay to let the engine idle while I dug out the back tires and dished out a couple of wheel wells behind them and out to the main road. The price of gasoline in Down East Maine was all the motivation I needed to throw snow with a real hustle. Just as I was finishing the job, the phone inside the house rang, piercing the stillness of the icy air. I leaned the shovel against the rear bumper and started toward the house. One ring later, the phone stopped. Two rings and a hang-up was the code I had worked out with my boss at Marine Safety Consultants, Mr. Dubois, and was my signal to call him back pronto.
Cell phones are all but useless in this particular nook of coast, so my personal calls all come through a “party line” that I share with the Vickersons. The code was worked out in an attempt to gain a bit of privacy. At first, Mr. and Mrs. V had been discreet about listening in on my calls. But once the cat was out of the bag, rather than stop doing it, they became more blatantly nosy—even jumping into conversations to offer opinions. Most of my first-time callers end up saying “Who the hell is that?” before the end of the conversation. I then have to be polite and introduce whichever one of my octogenarian landlords happened to be near the phone when it rang. At the start it was disconcerting, then it really began to piss me off. Now, I laugh. And of course outsmart them.
Torn between allowing the Duster to remain running and thus climbing into a toasty warm car and shutting it off to feed my frugality, I opted for frugality. Besides saving gas, I needed to toughen up, I thought as I made my way back to the house. Carefully closing the door behind me so as not to wake my landlords, I brushed snow from the bottom of my pant legs, which were frozen stiff, and pulled my feet from my insulated “Beanies” with the lobster claw boot jack. Yup, The Lobster Trappe sold anything and everything lobster related. There were lobster trap birdhouses, lobster beanbags, lobster coloring books, lobster corkscrews … Well, you get the picture. The shop was now in its off-season, so the Vickersons were busy researching new items to add to their inventory, which led to many interesting conversations at their dinner table, where I had an open invitation to be any night at 7:30—five o’clock if I wanted cocktails. I tiptoed my wool socks across the shop and started up the stairs to my apartment. Halfway up, the door below that connected to the main house opened and I heard a very cheery, “Good morning, Janey!”
“Hi Mrs. V. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No dear, the phone did. Two rings and a hang-up. Must be your boss. Better call him back right away.” Oh no, I thought, they were on to me. I wondered how many conversations they had tapped into since I had schemed the code. The Vickersons were so good to me in every way that I had never been able to bring myself to scold them for eavesdropping. What the heck, I thought, at eighty-two and eighty-six, if they find pleasure injecting themselves into my fairly unexciting life, so be it. It’s not as if the happenings in Down East Maine and outer islands (my territory in both my insurance and deputy gigs) required security clearance. The last two assignments I had been given by Mr. Dubois were surveying minor damage to lobster boats in a late January blizzard. One boat’s mooring parted and it was blown into another boat before landing luckily on the only patch of sand beach in the county. And the only task I had been assigned as deputy sheriff since September was following up on leads that often led to busting meth labs, arresting addicts, and hopefully beginning to snuff out what had reached epidemic proportions. Often, the entire community knows about a case or incident before I do, I realized. The Vickersons just like to be in the loop. I assured Alice that I had come in to call my boss, and hoped I could discreetly give Mr. Dubois a heads-up that they were listening before they jumped in.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mr. Dubois. Jane Bunker here, we are returning your call.”
“Alice?” Mr. Dubois asked.
“Present,” Mrs. V said promptly.
“Henry?”
“Standing by,” answered Mr. V dutifully. Oh God, I thought, now there wasn’t even any pretending. The only thing keeping me from being terminated from either of my jobs was the total lack of anyone else to do them. That, and the fact that I am good at what I do.
“Okay team, here’s the deal,” the boss started. “Jane, I need you to go out to Acadia Island to survey damage suffered in a house fire. It’s a summer home owned by a good customer for whom we insure several properties, three vehicles, a boat, and a business. The fire was just last night, and I want to move quickly to accommodate these people.”
“Since when do we survey house fires? I thought you handled only marine-related insurance?” I asked to stall, and hoped to conceal an oncoming loss of composure about a trip to Acadia.
“It’s called bundling, dear,” interjected Mr. V. “Everyone is having to gain bandwidth in any business to stay afloat. Insurance is very competitive. Alice and I have all of our insurances under one roof as well—it’s the only way we can afford it all.”
“Besides,” Mrs. V weighed in, “you really should go to Acadia and get that demon off your back.”
“I think you mean monkey, dear,” Mr. V corrected. “And maybe Jane needs to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Either way,” Mr. Dubois interrupted what I had come to know as ping-pong proverbs before Alice could send one back over the net, “I assume the place is a total loss. Not much in the way of firefighting on these islands—all volunteer, and no real training or equipment. All I need from you is to go out and take lots of pictures to document what I already know,” said Mr. Dubois.
“Yes sir, I’ll get out there ASAP.” Yet again, I am reduced to a photographer, I thought.
“Great. When you get off at the dock, take a right on the main road, in about half a mile you’ll see a yellow Cape on the right. The Proctors are expecting someone from the Agency. They are caretakers for the Kohls, whose house you’ll be surveying. They will get you where you need to be and back to the dock,” the boss instructed. I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I registered “Proctor”—not any of the family names associated with my kin.
We all said our goodbyes and hung up, leaving me to contemplate the trip “home.” Within seconds the phone rang again. I grabbed it and was not at all surprised to be speaking with the Vickersons. They advised me of the ferry schedule to and from Acadia, adding that I had already missed the first boat out to the island. The winter ferry schedule to Acadia did not give a passenger many options—the “early boat” departed from South Haven (a ten-minute ride from home) at seven a.m., and the “late boat” was a three p.m. departure from South Haven. Following the forty-minute cruise out, the Vickersons informed me, the boat would remain at the dock on Acadia just long enough to unload people and freight, before returning to the mainland. I thanked my landlords for the info, and told them I would find an alternate ride out, snap a load of pictures, and return on the last and only remaining ferry this evening. “Better get a wiggle on,” advised Mrs. V. “Time is of the essence.”
“What’s the rush? Remember, haste makes waste,” instructed Mr. V.
“He who hesitates is lost,” admonished Mrs. V.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread!”
“The early bird gets the worm!”
“Good things come to those who wait.”
“Tide and time wait for no man. And damn few women! There, top that, Henry,” Alice challenged.
“I need to deice the Duster. I’ll let you know my plans, thanks!” I wasn’t quite sure what I was thanking them for, but slammed the phone down, bolted down the stairs, yanked on my boots, and hustled to my chilly and waiting Duster. For all I knew, the old folks were still volleying proverbs. Their game used to irritate me. Now I enjoyed it, I thought as I quietly quipped, “A stitch in time, saves nine.”
My warm gloves melted the thin layer of frost on the car’s steering wheel, leaving distinct handprints at ten and two. Nothing upsets me more than waste, I reminded myself as I waited for the Duster’s defroster to clear a porthole in the windshield. I don’t mean global, all-encompassing misuse and extravagance. That does not concern me. I only pay heed to the wastefulness of which I am responsible—me, myself, and I. Perhaps a gut reaction to my very unusual childhood; my personal frugality is just that—personal. I don’t preach. I don’t boast. I don’t admire extreme economy in others. I find nothing more annoying than conversation regarding the “great deal” someone got on something following a compliment on that something, or the fuel economy of any particular hybrid automobile. Nor do I care about membership on the Fortune 500 list, or who the top-paid athlete is at any given time. My mother’s routine of frittering away the monthly welfare check from the State of Florida in a single day, leaving us to “get creative” for the remaining thirty days to the next installment, left its mark. Not that I didn’t enjoy and look forward to the first of every month and whatever my mother had planned for us, but I knew at a very early age that my mother suffered from chronic immaturity with money. We ate and enjoyed government cheese, and the neighborhood ladies were forever dropping leftovers off for us, which sustained our family of three until I was old enough to work. I heard but didn’t agree with the same ladies’ whispered, negative opinions of how Wally and I were being raised. The ladies whose husbands worked long, hard hours, barely making ends meet, knew the value of a dollar. And I remember the look of envy in their children’s eyes each and every month when we arrived home by taxi—not the bus, a taxi—armed with gifts, souvenirs, and stories of adventure. They said we couldn’t afford such extravagance as a day at the circus. My mother said we couldn’t afford not to. I’ll never know which is true. But this morning, had I left the car running for fifteen minutes while I was on the phone, I would have been sick to my stomach.
Publicly, I am not big on sentimental journeys. My wanderlust is limited to the future. Privately, I spend a lot of time wondering about my roots, especially since moving to Green Haven. The only family I have left is Wally, I thought. Five years my junior, and an adult with Down syndrome, living in an assisted, yet independent situation, my baby brother has always been more well balanced and adjusted than I have been. He makes friends easier than I do. All of the reasons that I had for not uprooting him to come along to Maine when I bailed, were the exact same reasons why I should have done so. He’s happy there, I justified as I backed out of the driveway. But Wally is always happy. The last shrink I saw before the big move north told me that I was overprotective of my brother. Maybe so. I just couldn’t risk dragging him off into the unknown where, if my mother had been truthful, he would be mistreated by mean people blinded by ignorance—and those were blood relatives! Now I faced the probability of actually meeting what remains of the Bunkers, and hoped some of the hatefulness my mother spoke of had withered in the past thirty-eight years. I reminded myself that this trip to Acadia was not a quest for the truth or an opportunity for a family reunion. It was work, period.
Normally I would walk the mile to the Harbor Café, but there had been so much snow lately, it was banked high on either side of the street, leaving a gap so narrow that an oncoming vehicle presented a challenge. No sidewalks and not much time to find my buddy Cal were reasons enough to forgo the exercise today. As I nosed the Duster into a too-small parking space, I hoped this latest snow had not disrupted Cal’s morning ritual of coffee and a newspaper at the café. Cal had quickly become my go-to guy for just about everything, including a boat ride, which was foremost on my request list this morning. Cowbells swinging on the inside of the café’s door announced my entrance along with a good gust of cold, fresh air that formed a wispy vapor where it mixed with air permeated with donut grease. The place was crowded, and I stood in the doorway looking for Cal while I wiped snow from my boots onto a not-so-welcoming doormat that read “Many Have Eaten Here. Few Have Died.”
“Close the door!” Yelled a chorus of apparently chilly breakfast guests. Pushing the door closed behind me, I spied at the counter the back of Cal’s head with its thinning white hair. Luckily, the only empty seat was next to him. Unluckily, the seat was unoccupied because of the presence of Clyde Leeman, the unofficial town crier, on the other side of it. I tried to be discreet about putting my back to Clydie when I took the stool between him and Cal, like the people on the airplane who stick their face in a book to avoid having to speak to their seatmate. I liked Clydie well enough, just wasn’t up to his nonstop complaining and nonsensical jabbering. It was clear to me how and why Clydie had developed a very thick skin. It was virtually impossible to insult the man. And believe me, everyone tried.
“Hi Cal,” I said pleasantly, as he lowered the newspaper onto the counter, exposing his quick smile, and removed his glasses to reveal twinkling blue eyes that defied his age. Cal had a natural ability to make everyone feel as though he were genuinely happy to see them, even when he wasn’t. Before Cal could speak, Clydie broke in with his usual, too loud voice.
“Well, hellooooo, Ms. Bunker! You must be freezing. You ain’t in Kansas anymore, are ya? Hey, I hope you don’t have to pee. The pipes are froze in the bathroom.” With that, the couple seated on the other side of him got up to leave.
“Clyde Leeman!” shouted Audrey, my favorite (and only) waitress in the café. “Will you stop with the announcements? Every time you open your pie hole, a customer leaves.” The sassy, heavily tattooed and pierced Audrey was headed my way with a cup of coffee. Clearing a used paper place mat printed with local advertisements with her right hand, she plunked the full cup onto a clean one with her left, and slid it in front of me.
“Well, I just think it’s good to let people know that your toilets are not working. What if someone has an emergency? This coffee is like mud! If anyone makes the mistake of a second cup, you’re gonna have an awful mess,” Clyde yelled.
“I thought the out-of-order sign on the door was sufficient,” Audrey said. “But I guess that would require the ability to read.” Audrey rolled her eyes, and sighed in exasperation. “Want the usual, Janey?” she asked, seemingly hopeful to exclude Clyde from any more conversation. I hesitated, not knowing what my usual was. I didn’t recall being that predictable.
“I can read!” Clydie defended himself. “And you’d better avoid the prunes this morning, if you know what I mean, Ms. Bunker. Those pipes is froze solid. They won’t get a flush down until April at this rate.”
“Why don’t you take some of that hot air into the bathroom and thaw the pipes?” Audrey asked sarcastically.
All the talk revolving around the status of the toilet was making me nauseous. I quickly agreed that I wanted my usual, whatever that was.
“English or day old?” asked Audrey. When I met this with a puzzled look, she elaborated. “Your usual is the least expensive item on the menu. Today that’s a tie between a toasted English muffin and yesterday’s special muffin.”
“What was yesterday’s special muffin?”
“Raspberry, a buck fifty.”
“What’s today’s special muffin?”
“Apricot bran, two bucks.”
“I’ll have the toasted English, please,” I said.
“Ha!” Clyde chimed in. “Good idea to avoid bran with the nonfunctioning facilities.” Just as I thought Audrey would pour coffee into Clyde’s lap, the cowbells announced another customer, causing Clyde’s head to swivel toward the door. The incoming customer looked around in vain for a place to sit other than next to Clyde, and, shrugging hopelessly, shuffled over and took the least coveted seat in the café. As Clyde began chewing an ear off the guy, I turned my attention to Cal.
“Cal, I need a favor,” I said.
“You name it. I’m your guy,” Cal replied immediately, never breaking eye contact. To my mind, only the best of friends will agree to a favor before knowing what it is. This was testament to the mutual trust we shared; trust that had been won quickly and tested frequently. Not that I had been involved with many investigations since my arrival in Green Haven, but when I had, Cal had been at my service in any way needed.
“It’s an easy one today. I need a ride to Acadia Island this morning. Seems that I missed the boat, so to speak.” I went on to explain my mission to document damage caused by a house fire, and my plan to grab the late ferry back ashore later. Cal confirmed that I was in luck. He was happy to accommodate my request, especially at the expense of the insurance company who would reimburse all expenditures. I had learned that Cal was delighted to collect money from an insurance company with whom the vast majority of cash flow had always gone in the opposite direction. And since his retirement from a number of careers including commercial fishing, Cal had the time and appreciated a little extra money.
“Besides,” Cal added, “the Sea Pigeon needs to stretch her legs a bit. And it’s a great day for a boat ride. I haven’t been to Acadia in years. No reason to go.”
Me either, I thought to myself as Audrey delivered a toasted English muffin.
“Not my business, but…” Audrey started and hesitated long enough to give me an opportunity to cut her off, which I did not. I really liked Audrey. She is young and quirky, but has great insight—well beyond her nearly two decades of life. And I had confided in her to a small extent about my connection to Acadia, so figured that I had made it her business by doing so. “Are you hoping to catch a glimpse of the mysterious Bunker clan?”
“No,” I chuckled. “I wouldn’t know a Bunker if I was sitting next to one.” I extended my arms to both sides, indicating that Cal and Clydie were more family to me than anyone on Acadia.
A long pause accompanied by Audrey shaking her head was finally filled with, “OMG. The only thing keeping me from genealogy research is the slight possibility that I could be related to Clydie.” Cal’s shoulders bounced up and down with a silent laugh. “Well, I want a full report tomorrow, girlfriend,” Audrey said as she smacked the counter with my tab. Cal ordered a couple of muffins to take to his wife before Audrey was out of hearing range, and we laid out a plan.
I was to go home and ask the Vickersons to deliver the Duster to South Haven so that I would have it upon my return to the mainland this evening. Cal would pick me up at the Lobster Trappe and we would ride together to the dock where his boat was secured. He would get me to the island by ten, giving me plenty of time to take pictures and catch the last boat off. I liked simplicity. And I liked the fact that I would be home in time to join Mr. and Mrs. V for drinks and dinner.
Cal and I paid our respective tabs and stood to leave just as the cowbells rang out. Marilyn and Marlena, or “the old maids” as they were affectionately referred to, stepped in single file; Marlena cradling one of the couple’s numerous blue-ribbon Scottish Fold cats. A chorus of “close the door” was met with quick action, and the ladies, whom everyone assumed were gay, came over to take the stools Cal and I had vacated. The sixty-ish gals were regulars at the café, allowing them lenience with pets. Any resident of Green Haven who had engaged in conversation with either of the women knew a lot about Scottish Folds. Even I, in my brief time here, had learned that these cats cried with a silent meow and stood on their hind feet like otters.
Marlena and Marilyn owned Green Haven’s only hardware store and gas pump, and were legendary for gouging the locals who had no other shopping options. (My introduction to them several months ago had left me with a comparison to the Baldwin Sisters from The Waltons, which I had never been able to shake.) Marilyn had a distinct look: gray hair pulled into a neat braid; Marlena looked like a man. Both of the women had a penchant for tweed. And both pulled off an arrogance that privileged education and upbringing afford by being quite philanthropic.
Before we could exchange pleasantries, Clydie took the floor at full volume. “Hey, Aud,” he yelled across the counter to a clearly disgusted Audrey. “That’s it! The solution to the problem is kitty litter. If it’s good enough for the highfalutin Sir Walter Bunny of Wheat Island, it’s plenty good enough for the clientele here.”
I choked back a giggle with the reminder of the name of this particular cat. I thought I recalled being told that the ladies’ numerous Scottish Folds had been trained to use the toilet, too, but may have imagined that part. Audrey looked stunned, and claimed that it was shock at the inclusion of “clientele” in the dimwit’s vocabulary. This was not enough to throw Clyde off his game, though. He added, “Put a litter box back there, and I’ll bring in my clam rake for you to use as a pooper scooper.” Audrey scowled and snapped a pointed index finger at the door while Marlena and Marilyn looked on in confusion. Clydie, who was banished from the café nearly weekly, donned his coat and hat, and wished everyone a nice day. Clydie’s exit scene was complete when he drew Audrey’s attention to two customers who were sitting crossed-legged, suggesting that they might need the restroom.
The door closing behind us clipped fragmented conversations of the village idiot and other daily customers, small talk that I had become accustomed to since my arrival in Green Haven and my frequenting the only breakfast joint in town. Cal was right behind me in his pickup truck as I weaved the way back to my place through high banks of snow made fresh white with this morning’s windfall. Although it had been a full nine months since my move here from Miami, I still marveled at the differences. It wasn’t the obvious, opposite ends of the spectrum differences of the physical surroundings that I found astonishing. It wasn’t subzero temperatures, record inches of snow, or the remoteness of this ultra-rural location that drew the biggest dissimilarities to the life I had left behind in South Florida; it was the subtleties. It was the fact that I had a sense of community here. I had a circle of people with whom I lived that I actually cared about. And they cared about me. In Miami, when a coworker asked how I was doing, they expected nothing more than a cursory “Fine, thanks,” and would be put off by anything more. The best and worst times of my life had been defined publicly as “Fine, thanks.”
Here in Green Haven, when acquaintances asked why I had never married, it was not the accusatory tone that I had become weary of in Miami. It was asked out of real caring and wanting to know my story. As quirky as it was, Green Haven was starting to feel more like home to me than anything I had ever known. Maybe it’s just a good place for misfits, I thought as I pulled myself out of the Duster and signaled to Cal that I would be a minute as I walked toward the Lobster Trappe. The Vickersons’ Cadillac sports a bumper sticker that reads “Some of us are here because we’re not all there,” which sums it up completely. Certainly the regulars at the café were quite a collection of oddballs. And I couldn’t help but wonder if mavericks gravitated here, or if the place had made them that way. Classic chicken or egg, I thought. And something that didn’t need resolving. Either way, I knew that Green Haven was a place that embraced more than tolerated people like me who are less mainstream—whatever the hell that means, I thought as I knocked and let myself into the Vickersons’. It had taken me over forty years, but I was learning that home is a feeling, not a place. And I had actually succeeded in starting life over in spite of the naysayers of my past who warned that I could not do so simply by saying “Goodbye and good riddance.”
Knocking twice on the door with the back of my left hand, I twisted the knob and flung it open with my right, and barged into the landlord’s knickknack-filled home. The place was a virtual menagerie of nautical novelties, souvenirs, and small collections displayed in what Mrs. V liked to call “Salty Chic.” It was immediately clear that I had caught the Vickersons in mid-celebration of something. Mr. V did a fairly dramatic fist pump while his wife danced around gleefully. Their mood was so joyful that I couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh Janey! You just missed the best phone call of our lives!” shouted Mrs. V.
“Publishers’ Clearing House?” I asked playfully.
“No,” Mrs. V said, nearly out of breath. She clasped her hands together and placed them tightly under her chin. “Wally’s coming to live with us!”
“My brother?”
Copyright © 2017 by Linda Greenlaw
