Brunonia Barry - The Map of True Places

It turned out that Finch had been right. The medicine was working. The flattened midpoint of normalcy the doctor always drew on the wave graph had happened exactly when Finch said it had happened, when they were in the kitchen eating the Oreos. She realized that now. She should never have complained about the milk.

STRANGELY, IT WAS MICHAEL and not her father who finally let her know where Melville was.

“He’s been leaving you messages on the home phone,” Michael said.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You’re in Salem. I figured you knew.”

She could tell that Michael was angry. She’d been feeling guilty about it all week, but now she was angry, too. He’d been traveling again, and he hadn’t called. She’d been leaving messages on the home phone as well as his cell. She’d also been texting.

“So how was the funeral?”

“Okay,” she said.

“Did it turn out as you expected?”

“I don’t know what I expected,” she said. “But no.”

A long pause, then from Zee, “Could we please get back to Melville?”

“I told you all I know.”

“He didn’t say anything else? Just that he had moved out?”

“That and the phone number,” he said.

She wanted to call immediately.

“How’s Finch?” he asked.

“Not good,” she said.

She could hear his tone soften as they talked about her father. The two men had always gotten on well together. In many ways they were a lot alike. “You want me to come out there?”

“Not right now,” she said, a little too quickly.

“Jesus,” he said.

“That didn’t sound the way I meant it.”

“You sure about that?”

“Let me call Melville and see what’s going on. I’ll call you right back,” she said. “Then we can decide whether or not you should come out.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” he said. “I already had plans for the weekend-we had plans, actually.”

More wedding stuff, she thought. “I can’t talk about any of that right now,” she said.

“Nothing to talk about. Just a statement of fact.”

“I’ll call you back,” she said, hanging up.

She dialed the number Melville had left for her.

He picked up on the first ring. “Oh, thank God,” he said. “You’re in Salem.”

“Yeah, I am. Where the hell are you?”

“Finch kicked me out,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“He’s very angry at me.”

“I can see that,” Zee said. “What did you do to him?”

“I don’t know.” He paused for a long moment. “Actually, I do know. But it doesn’t make much sense. It was something that happened a long time ago, something I thought we had worked out.”

“Evidently not,” she said. “He was selling all your things through the window when I got here.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” Zee said. “He has re-created Hepzibah’s Cent-Shop in the front room. He was selling all your belongings.”

Melville couldn’t help but laugh.

“It’s not funny,” she said.

“No, but it’s creative,” he said. “Forgive me, it’s the only time I’ve even smiled all week.”

“I rescued some of your shirts,” she said.

“For that I am eternally grateful.”

“The doctor thinks it’s the new meds,” she offered. “They were causing hallucinations. We took him off them.”

“What’s he doing instead?”

“More Sinemet. One every three hours with two half doses added in twice a day.”

Melville was quiet.

“Are you still there?” Zee asked.

“Yeah.” After another long moment, Melville changed the subject. “I hired a home health aide,” he said. “Her name is Jessina. She doesn’t work on Fridays, but she’ll be in tomorrow.”

“I don’t understand how you’ve been keeping all this from me,” Zee said. “Or why.”

Melville sighed. “Finch didn’t want to worry you.”

She thought back to the effort it must have taken them both to keep things from her. “Any other secrets?”

“You should come over here. We need to figure things out,” he said.

“Where is ‘here’?”

“I’m house-sitting,” he said. “Friend of a friend. Over by the Athenaeum. Come by tomorrow after Jessina gets there.”

She wrote down the address. After she hung up, she went to the bedroom to check on Finch. He was sleeping soundly. She walked back to the kitchen and dialed Michael.

It rang three times before it went to voice mail.

ZEE TOOK OUT HER ANGER on the kitchen. She cleaned. She scrubbed down stove and counters. She polished the toaster until it shined. As she pulled the canisters away from the wall and began to clean behind them, she found several items meant for decorating cakes: red and blue sugar, some bottles of food coloring, and some spices, including an old amber bottle-all stuff obviously left over from some baking project of Melville’s. She opened the amber bottle and looked inside at the tiny silver balls, the kind you might find on a fancy cake or maybe Christmas cookies-dragées, she thought they were called. They were probably too old to keep, but she didn’t want to throw anything out without asking, so she put all the bottles back in the cabinet with the other baking things.

Melville was a great cook, but he had never been great at cleaning or organizing. As she put the cake decorations away, she started reorganizing the cabinets, putting like with like, the canned goods in one cabinet, the spices in another. Her anger was fading, but the energy of adrenaline was not, and so she moved from cabinet to cabinet, wiping down the surfaces as she went, arranging the labels. She became aware that she was being a bit obsessive when she actually considered alphabetizing everything.

When she got to the third cabinet, she was surprised. Hidden behind the boxes of cereal, she found all the wine that Michael had given Finch, every birthday and Christmas for the last four years, all second-growth vintages, really good wines from Michael’s own collection. They weren’t stored on their sides but stood upright, a sure way to ruin the corks. Horrified, she pulled them out and set them on the counter.

Before his diagnosis of Parkinson’s, from his pirate days on, Finch’s alcohol consumption had been increasing steadily. He had developed a real fondness for wine. From a medical standpoint, this now made sense to Zee, though she’d never seen the phenomenon described in any of the medical journals she’d begun to read on a regular basis. Alcohol releases dopamine, the one chemical that Parkinson’s patients need.

Finch hardly drank at all now, not since he was put on dopamine, and Melville didn’t drink much either. She had tried to tell Michael that, but Finch was always so effusive in his thanks that Michael wouldn’t listen to her.

This was such a waste, though. She looked for the wine rack she had given them and found it under the sink. There was space enough for twelve bottles to be stored horizontally, but there were thirteen bottles here. She put the rack on the counter, moving the canisters down to make room. She had to look hard to find the corkscrew, which she finally located in the laundry room. She opened the thirteenth bottle and poured herself a glass. She was still angry with Michael for not answering his phone, but she was grateful, tonight, for his impeccable taste in wine.

SLEEPING IN A NEW place had always given Zee nightmares. Not that her childhood room was a new place. But it was certainly a strange place.

“The Museum of the Perfect Childhood” was how Finch referred to the room that Maureen Finch had created for her daughter.

Zee’s room was reminiscent of the fairy tales Maureen was so fond of writing: white canopy bed with pink roses hand-painted on the head-board, ballerinas in different poses on the wallpaper, a dressing table with mouth-blown perfume atomizer bottles, though Zee, who hated any kind of scent, had never filled them up. The silver brush-and-mirror set placed on the diagonal bore her initials in the classic signet H. F. T.