“I hope not, too,” Nancy said. She didn’t want to think about ruining her life, which seemed ridiculous. She wanted to concentrate on what an honest, decent man he was. Not a death’s head. “You probably haven’t,” she said.
“Then let’s go home now,” he said, folding his napkin after dabbing his mouth. “I’m ready.”
Home meant he would fuck her, and no doubt do it with ardor and tenderness and take it all the way. He was very good at that. Crystal hadn’t been crazy to want to fuck Tom instead of her nasal, crybaby boyfriend. Nancy wondered, though, why she herself expected that now; why fuck me? Probably it was fuck me instead of fuck you. Since she didn’t much want that now, though it would surely happen. It made her regretful; because she was, she realized, the very sort of person she’d determined Tom was not, even though she was not an adulterer and he was: she was a person who said things, then looked around and wondered why she’d said them and what their consequences could be, and (often) how she could get out of doing the very things she said she desired. She’d never exactly recognized this about herself, and now considered the possibility that it had just become true, or been made true by Tom’s betrayal. But what was it, she wondered, as they left the restaurant headed for home and bed? What was that thing she was? Surely it was a thing anyone should be able to say. There would be a word for it. She simply couldn’t bring that word to mind.
The next morning, Friday — after the night in Freeport — they ate breakfast in Wiscasset, in a shiny little diner that sat beside a large greenish river, over which a low concrete bridge moved traffic briskly north and south. The gilt-edged sign outside Wiscasset said it was THE PRETTIEST VILLAGE IN MAINE, which seemed to mean there were few houses, and those few were big and white and expensive-looking, with manicured yards and plaques by the front doors telling everyone when the house was built. Across the river, which was called the Sheepscot, white summer cottages speckled out through forested riverbank. This was Maine — small in scale, profusely scenic, annoyingly remote, exclusive and crowded. She knew they were close to the ocean, but she hadn’t seen it yet, even from the plane last night. The Sheepscot was clearly an estuary; gulls were flying up-river in the clear morning air, crisp little lobster craft, a few sailboats sat at anchor.
When they’d parked and hiked down toward the diner, Tom had stopped to bend over, peering into several windows full of house-for-sale pictures, all in color, all small white structures with crisp green roofs situated “minutes” from some body of water imprecisely seen in the background. All the locales had Maine-ish names. Pemaquid Point. Passamaquoddy something. Stickney Corner. The houses looked like the renter cabins across the river — places you’d get sick of after one season and then have to put back on the market. She couldn’t gauge if prices were high or low, though Tom thought they were too high. It didn’t matter. She didn’t live here.
When he’d looked in at two or three realty windows, Tom stood up and stared down at the river beyond the diner. Water glistened in the light September air. He seemed wistful, but he also seemed to be contemplating. The salt-smelling breeze blew his hair against the part, revealing where it was thinning.
“Are you considering something ‘only steps from the ocean’?” she said, to be congenial. She put her arm in under his. Tom was an enthusiast, and when a subject he wanted to be enthusiastic about proved beyond him, it often turned him gloomy, as though the world were a hopeless place.
“I was just thinking that everything’s been discovered in this town,” he said. “You needed to be here twenty years ago.”
“Would you like to live in Wiscasset, or Pissamaquoddy or whatever?” She looked down the sloping main street — a block of glass-fronted antique shops, a chic deli, a fancy furniture store above which were lawyers’ and CPA offices. These buildings, too, had plaques telling their construction dates. 1880s. Not really so old. Harlingen had plenty of buildings that were older.
“I wish I’d considered it that long ago,” Tom said. He was wearing tan shorts, wool socks, a red Bean’s canvas shirt and running shoes. They were dressed almost alike, though she had a blue anorak and khaki trousers. Tom looked like a tourist, not an ex-cop, which, she guessed, was the idea. Tom liked the idea of transforming yourself.
“A vacation is not to regret things, or even to think about things permanently.” She tugged his arm. She felt herself being herself on his behalf. The street through town— Route 1—was already getting crowded, the bridge traffic slowing to a creep. “The idea of a vacation is to let your spirits rise on the breeze and feel unmoored and free.”
Tom looked at her as though she’d become the object of his longing. “Right,” he said. “You’d make somebody a great wife.” He looked startled for saying that and began walking away as if embarrassed.
“I am somebody’s wife,” she said, coming along, trying to make it a joke, since he’d meant something sweet, and nothing was harmed. It was just that whatever was wrong between them caused unexpected events to point it out but not identify it. They loved each other. They knew each other very well. They were married people of good will. Everything was finally forgivable — a slip of the tongue, a botched attempt at lovemaking, a conversation that led nowhere or to the wrong place. The question was: what did all these reserves of tender feeling and kind regard actually come to? And not come to? Walking down the hill behind her husband, she felt the peculiar force of having been through life only once. These three days were to determine, she understood, if anything more than just this minimum made sense. It was an important mystery.
Inside the Miss Wiscasset Diner, Nancy perused The Down-East Pennysaver, which had a dating exchange on the back page. Men seeking women. Women seeking men. Nothing else was apparently permissible. No Men seeking men. Tom studied the map they’d picked up in the B&B, and which contained a listing of useful “Maine Facts” in which everything occasioned an unfunny variation on the state name: Maine Events. Mainely Antiques. Mainiac Markdowns. Maine-line Drugs. Roof Maine-tenance. No one seemed able to get over what a neat name the place had.
Out on the river, a black metal barge was shoving a floating dredger straight up the current. The dredger carried an immense bucket suspended on a cable at the end of an articulated boom. The whole enterprise was so large as to seem ridiculous.
“What do you suppose that’s for?” Nancy said. The diner was noisy with morning customers and contained a teeming greasy-bacon and buttery-toast smell.
Tom looked up from his map out at the dredger. It would not get past the bridge where Route 1 crossed the river. It was too tall. He looked at her and smiled as though she hadn’t said anything, then went back to his “Maine Facts.”
“If you’re interested, all the women seeking men are either ‘full-figure gals over fifty,’” she said, forgetting her question, “or else they’re sixteen-year-olds seeking mature ‘father figures.’ The same men get all the women in Maine.”
Tom took a sip of his coffee and knitted his brows. They had until Sunday, when they were flying out of Bangor. They knew nothing about Maine, but had discussed a drive to Bar Harbor and Mount Katahdin, which they’d heard were pretty. Nancy had proposed to visit the national park, a bracing hike, then maybe a swim in the late-lasting-summer ocean if it wasn’t too frigid. They’d imagined leaves would be turning, but they weren’t yet because of all the summer rain.