Sara Majka - Cities I've Never Lived In - Stories

He thought of opening another, but instead tapped his pockets, moved to the door, and said, You coming to clams?

Sure, she said. I’m coming.

When he walked out to the hall, his mother was walking past. Are you finding everything to your liking? he asked, falling into step with her.

Everything is fine, she said.

There are brochures in the lobby with some attractions, he said. If there is anything I can do for you.

I’m quite all right.

He said, I was wondering where you’re from. She kept moving; he reached and touched her arm but she shrank from him. You remind me of someone I know is all, he said, someone I once knew. And I don’t mean to bother you. I just wanted to make sure you were having a nice time.

She stopped — they were in the lobby — and studied him. I’m from Stamford, Connecticut, she said.

Do you have a son?

A daughter.

Does she look like you?

A little, she said.

Do you have a picture?

That’s enough.

She meant it to come out more lightly than it did. She asked him to show her the brochures, and she took several, even ones she had no interest in. He gave her directions to cafés and shops. He invited her to clams.

The residents of the hotel ate clams at a run-down place by the docks that had five-cent littlenecks on Tuesdays. They sat inside on tables covered with plastic gingham cloths. The back door was open, but the wind didn’t come through. The door looked onto a parking lot filled with lobster traps and rope crusted with dried-out crustaceans. Beyond that lay the harbor. From there, Helen appeared. Peter stood, and the others stopped talking. She looked up, saw the table of scraggly people and the young man, his hair a fine sandy gold and his body shimmering with sweat. She hadn’t noticed before how different he was from the others. It occurred to her that she could take him with her, as if he could fit into her purse. She thought of her house in the development, the driveway with squares of concrete that reflected the moon.

You came, he said.

Yes, the directions were good. She sat down, keeping her purse on her lap.

No one is going to take it, he said.

She laughed. It’s just habit.

We ordered already. We would have waited, but we didn’t—

No, it’s fine — I’m glad you didn’t. Sometimes I can never find the places I need to find. She glanced at the table for a menu, but didn’t see one. She lifted an arm to flag the waitress, but he pulled her arm down. Clams, he said.

Clams?

You order clams.

What else?

Clams, Portuguese roll, ear of corn, iced tea with sugar. Just say — never mind. He looked up. The waitress had come over. She’ll have the clams, he said, and the waitress nodded and walked away. I’ll have the clams, Helen repeated. Very good choice, someone said.

When the food came they stopped talking. Chipped stoneware bowls were filled with shells the colors of seagulls, with clams so small they must have been illegal. They picked out the graying bellies with little forks, and dredged them through butter, their lips shining with the oil. The thin, waxy napkins that came in the packs of plastic silverware only blotted the oil. On the walk home — No, not home, Helen caught herself — she said to Peter, I’m glad I came.

You thought you wouldn’t be? he said, holding his arm out to see the shadow.

Yes, she said. I thought it might be strange.

But you’re glad?

I’m glad.

At the hotel bar, they had several drinks, things she wanted that he wouldn’t normally have ordered. Things mixed with cranberry juice, grapefruit, grenadine. Oh! she said, aren’t you going to eat your cherry? The cherry was at the bottom, speared to an orange by a pirate’s knife. He had never gotten a pirate’s knife before. Two cherries! she said. She’s happy, he thought. I’m happy was the next thought, followed by the unfamiliar recognition of joy, the discomfort in it, the panic. Will it leave me? How to make it not leave me? Thinking that if he pretended it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t leave.

At the end of the bar, he saw the captain of the ferry, hunched over, one arm circling a beer. He turned to his mother. She was lining up swords. He asked her how long she was staying at the hotel. She said she wasn’t sure. She was taking a boat the next day to Peaks Island, she said. It was a tourist island close to the mainland. The picture on the brochure had captivated her.

Can I come with you?

It might be better if I go alone, she said. I’ve had such little time. It sent pain through him. She saw it. She said, I don’t know you.

Do you feel like you know me? That you might have known me before?

I read paperbacks, she said. I go to restaurants and sit by the window and read.

That’s what I like to do, too.

In the morning, she stood in the lobby, holding a straw hat. He walked toward her. He could see Betty approaching him, so he walked faster. When Betty realized what he was doing, she stopped in the center of the room, under the place where a chandelier used to hang.

Outside, he lifted his mother’s bag.

I hope the person I remind you of was kind, she said.

She was always kind.

Well, there’s that at least.

When they got to the ferry building, the window where she had bought the ticket was boarded up, or she couldn’t remember where it was, or something else happened to confound them. She looked at Peter and said she would stay if he wanted that, but he handed over her bag and said to go on, that he would be there when she got back.

An artist I knew used to tell me stories about his life. We’d sit on the curb and he’d talk in the low, measured voice of his. His wife had left him and his daughter, Leigh, in a fishing village hours north of Portland. They had moved there so he could be a painter and he had a studio that opened to the harbor. Soon as his wife left, though, it didn’t mean anything, the studio, trying to be a painter.

She had left him in October. Winter was coming. They didn’t have any money.

His daughter had outgrown her winter clothes, and at the church store, he bought her an oversized jacket with a great fur hood that made them both laugh, but he couldn’t find her any boots. After, they ate at the soup kitchen in the church hall. They ate there often. Almost everyone in town ate there. There wasn’t anything to it. They were all poor, that many hours north, where the sun was so slant and spare that by January you felt it could disappear. No one talked to him about his wife leaving. The men especially acted as if they weren’t there. Paul had to remind himself they thought they were doing him a favor. At last one of the men looked up and said, They were giving out bags of rolls before, but looks like they’re all gone.

That’s fine, Paul said. We have bread.

That night, Leigh watched cartoons, a blanket over her. Paul studied the stained glass fruit that hung from the window. He wanted to take them down, but didn’t want her seeing any changes. Outside, the sky seemed to rest on the boats, their masts as bare as the trees. Gradually the sun sunk and the light widened and turned red and orange. It felt impossible then, living this way, but soon there was the coziness of the house at night. He set up TV trays, and she stayed bundled under the blanket, the cartoons flickering over her. She watched the screen even after he turned it off.

When they finished dinner she rested her face on the blanket and talked to him, nestling into the sofa as if she was an animal. This is kind of nice, don’t you think? he said. I don’t know, she said, though he could tell she was happy; it was only that she begrudged him everything. Her withholding had always been a form of tenderness toward him.