Brunonia Barry - The Map of True Places

“Where?” he asked.

“Someplace dark enough to see the stars.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

HE LET HER PILOT THE boat. She checked the fuel level automatically, then laughed at herself. She hadn’t been at the wheel of one of these boats since she had stolen them when she was a kid. There was something freeing about it.

She maneuvered slowly through the crowded moorings of Marblehead Harbor, and when they passed the red nun and the end of the 5 mph limit, she opened up the engine and headed for Baker’s Island.

JESSINA DECIDED TO BAKE cookies for Finch. It was hot, and she had the kitchen windows open to the offshore breeze. She rifled though the baking cabinet, pulling down red and green sugar, more Christmas than July colors. Though it was past July Fourth, she’d been hoping for red, white, and blue. Still, she made stars with the colors she had, shaking powdered sugar over the red and green.

Finch loved her cookies, which she made soft enough for him to eat. Each afternoon he ate two with a large glass of milk, not the 2 percent kind Zee ordered from Peapod but the full old-fashioned stuff Jessina bought at one of the colmados on Lafayette Street. Finch needed to put some weight on-he was wasting away.

WHEN THE PIRATE FIRST APPEARED at the window in his tricorn hat and eye patch, Jessina thought she was seeing things. Then, when he spoke, she recognized Mickey’s voice. She’d heard him do local radio spots, seen him marketing his tourist traps on Salem Access TV. A lot of the kids who lived in the Point worked summer jobs for Mickey, which made him a good guy at least in that respect. He did use mostly college kids from Salem State, but he also gave the Dominican high-school kids a chance. She was hoping that next year, when he was too old for day camp, Danny might get a job working for Mickey.

Mickey asked for Zee first, and then, when Jessina informed him that Zee wasn’t there, he reluctantly asked for Finch.

Jessina walked him down the hall to where Finch sat in his new recliner watching a soap opera. Finch looked up in surprise when he saw the pirate, huge in this small space, his hat just inches away from the ceiling beam.

“Hello, Finch,” Mickey said to him.

Finch looked at Mickey and then at Jessina. It was clear that he had no idea who Mickey was. He kept looking as if he were waiting for either an explanation or a punch line.

“How are you?” Mickey asked.

Finch seemed surprised by the question. “Fine, thank you,” he said. “And you?”

“Pretty good for an old man,” Mickey said.

“An old pirate, you mean,” Finch said.

“That, too,” Mickey said.

Picking up on Finch’s obvious confusion and wanting to defuse the tension Mickey must be feeling, Jessina turned to Finch. “Perhaps we should offer Mr. Doherty one of our cookies.”

Finch looked baffled by the thought.

“Would you like a cookie, Mr. Doherty?” Jessina said.

“No thank you, no,” Mickey said.

“I’m tired,” Finch said to Jessina.

“Yes, Papi, I know you’re tired, but Mr. Doherty has come to visit you.”

“It’s okay,” Mickey said. “I was just stopping by for a minute.” He had come in the kitchen door, but now he walked toward the front door, which was closer to the den. He couldn’t get away fast enough. “Just tell Zee I stopped by,” he said.

He could hear Finch chuckling softly to himself as he walked out. “We just had a pirate in our den, didn’t we?” He looked at Jessina for confirmation.

“We certainly did,” she said.

ZEE POINTED THE FLASHLIGHT along the path leading to the cottage.

She reached into the window box, fishing for the key. Skeletons of old plants and flowers, annuals planted when Maureen was still alive, crumbled under her fingers, but the key was still there. The screen was ripped and its frame twisted out of alignment. The last time she was here, she obviously hadn’t bothered to pull the door shut, and the winter damp had warped the wood. But the inside wooden door, though swollen, was still intact. She had to push hard to open it.

“Whose place is this?” Hawk asked.

“It’s mine,” she said. “But I haven’t been here for a long time.”

The kerosene lamp sat on the table in the middle of the room. Zee walked to the kitchen drawer and pulled out an old box of safety matches. They were damp and a bit moldy, but on the fifth try she managed to get one lit.

A circle of warm light radiated outward, illuminating the couch and the tiny kitchen with its soapstone sink and hand pump, the oak icebox. Zee walked to the sink and opened the interior shutters and the French windows beyond. The stars and moon reflected off black water. She walked window to window, opening them and letting the salt air erase the musty smell.

“This place is amazing,” Hawk said.

“You think?”

It occurred to her that Michael had never seen the place, had never seemed interested. Like Finch, Michael wasn’t a water person. Still, she wondered why she hadn’t insisted on showing it to him.

Hawk looked at the pump. “Is that salt or fresh water?”

“Salt,” she said. “There’s a well down that way for fresh.” She saw him pick up the bucket. “I don’t think the pump works,” she said.

“Let’s give it a try,” he said. He carried the bucket down to the tiny beach in front of the cottage and filled it.

It took many tries, but he got the pump going. Then he laughed at himself. “I’m not sure why I did that,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said.

She smiled. She pumped some water just to see it. When she was little, she had done their dishes in salt water, she’d had to stand on a stepstool to reach. It was a good memory of Zee and her mother, one of the only good ones, and she was grateful to Hawk for giving it back to her. Any good memories she had of her mother were from this place: Maureen reading her stories aloud while Zee sat on the braided rug sketching dragonflies and gulls, the summer they picked beach plums and made jam, hauling both the sugar and water from the mainland. There were a lot of scraps and flashes of memory that came to her now, and she was grateful for each of them.

They sat at the table and played gin rummy with an old deck of cards Zee found in the drawer with the matches. He won all but one hand. “So what do you want to do now?” he asked.

“How about an overnight?” she asked.

“Like at camp?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Just like that.”

“You got any marshmallows?”

“If I do, they’ve got to be twenty years old.”

“What about scary stories. Do you know any?”

“I know some,” she said, thinking suddenly of Lilly Braedon. We both know one, she thought. Then she thought about the other story she knew, the one her mother had written. She wasn’t about to tell him either story. Not tonight. She’d have to think of something else.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m game.”

Hawk blew up the old canvas air mattress while she rolled out the rug and got the blankets down from a shelf.

The cottage was situated in such a way that the views were almost 360 degrees. They lay down together, looking up through the huge doors that lined the west-facing wall. With the doors open, they had a clear view of the stars. They could hear the waves crashing on the rocks below.

First he pointed out the constellations, the easy ones she already knew, and the signs of the zodiac: Aries and Libra. Then he tried to point out some of the fifty-seven stars used in celestial navigation.

“I had an easier time with the zodiac,” she said.

“No, look, there’s the Big Dipper. Polaris is there.”