The old lobster boat was wrapped in white plastic that had begun, over the years, to flake and tear. A screen door that was cut into the wrapping over the stern showed through to the boat’s interior ribs, revealing the vital internal organs: the galley, the bunk beds, the head. A yellow slicker she recognized as Melville’s was still slung over the brass cleat near the captain’s chair. The old boat gave the impression of a sugared Easter egg, the old-fashioned kind that contained a whole world inside.
Seeing the boat, Zee was prompted to ask one more time after Melville.
“What do you mean, gone?” she asked when Finch repeated the word for probably the fourteenth time.
“Gone, disappeared, poof!” he said, making an upward sweep with his hand.
In a way she wished, hoped, he had not altogether given up speaking as Hawthorne. At least Hawthorne would have answered her question with a recitation that might have yielded more meaning.
This time she changed her question. Instead of asking where Melville had gone, she asked, “Well, when do you think he will be back?”
“Never,” Finch said.
SHE SHOULD HAVE LET HIM off at the kitchen door, she thought. It would have been a much easier walk. Because they used the front door, there was a long and cluttered hall that Finch had to negotiate. She grasped his arm to guide him down the hall to the kitchen, but he shook her off. He could do it himself, he told her.
It took several minutes for Finch to travel the long hall from the front door to the kitchen of the old house. She followed his stiff-legged shuffle the length of the hall. The ceilings were low in this house. The wide pine floors sloped on the diagonal. A child’s marble dropped in the living room would end up in the kitchen, which made walking difficult enough. But the piles of newspapers Finch had collected over the years seemed to grow precariously out of the floor every few feet. They were waist-high in some places, and they seemed to sway when she walked by them like Disney rocks that were about to tumble. And then there were Finch’s books, piled on every surface: the mantels, the desk, the raffia awning-striped wing chair in his den. She was reminded of a pinball machine as she watched Finch navigate unsteadily through the room. His walker stood in the kitchen fireplace. Still wrapped in plastic, it was the same yellowing white as Melville’s boat.
After she helped Finch inside, Zee went around the side of the house and began to collect the assorted things that he had placed outside the window of the cent shop he’d created: two pairs of shoes, fishing gear, several lightbulbs of varying wattage, and a set of binoculars. Slowly she began to realize that most of the items Finch had been selling actually belonged to Melville. The hand-lettered sign he’d hung on the window, the one saying that EVERYTHING MUST GO, began to take on a new meaning.
Some people throw people’s belongings to the curb. Finch, ever the practical Yankee, had opened Hepzibah’s Cent-Shop and tried to make a profit.
“Don’t bring that stuff back in here,” Finch said when he saw her coming through the door with a pile of Melville’s shirts.
“What the hell happened between you two?” Zee asked.
“None of your business,” he answered.
She put the shirts and the rest of what she could gather on Melville’s boat, forgetting Dusty was there and almost tripping herself in a last-minute effort not to step on his tail. “You’d better be getting on home,” she said when the old cat looked up at her. “It’s going to rain.”
By dinnertime Finch seemed almost his normal self again. She wondered how much of this was the meds. Though he was considerably better than he had been, she knew that the drugs were still in his system. The doctor had told her they wouldn’t totally clear out of his bloodstream for another forty-eight hours.
“Let me make you something for dinner,” she offered.
“No, look, I’ve got it right here,” he said.
He opened the fridge to reveal a row of labeled sandwiches. She noticed the script on the labels, cursive and feminine, decidedly not Melville’s. Peanut Butter, Tuna, Deviled Ham-dates scribbled under the titles. Finch took out the deviled ham, pointing to the others and telling her to help herself.
He couldn’t swallow very well anymore. She remembered Melville’s telling her that. Melville had also told her that bowel movements were becoming increasingly difficult for Finch, peristalsis slowing with the disease. She remembered he was supposed to eat prunes. She looked around for some, searched in cabinets and in the fridge. Then she wondered if they had settled on some medication instead.
She needed to ask Melville these questions. Even if he was gone, as Finch insisted, she still needed to talk to him.
“What do you want to drink?” she asked.
“Milk,” he said.
He wasn’t supposed to drink milk with his pills. He knew that. She poured him a glass of ginger ale instead. She chose a tuna sandwich for herself.
They ate in silence. She could see the difficulty he was having swallowing his food. It made her sad. But at least he was eating. Melville had long ago replaced Finch’s favorite Wonder bread with whole wheat. Two Oreo cookies had been placed on the side of each plate, Saran Wrap tight over the top. Finch had always loved Oreos.
She slid the two cookies on her plate across the table to him. He smiled at her. Standing up slowly, he shuffled toward the fridge.
“What do you want?” Zee asked. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I told you,” he said. “Milk.”
“You can’t have milk with your pills,” she said. “Milk interferes with dopamine absorption.” She was there when the doctor had told him that.
Finch acted as if he had no such recollection. But Zee could tell by his smirk that he was lying. This was his form of cheating. Oreos with milk.
“I took my pills half an hour ago,” he said.
“Twenty minutes,” Zee corrected.
He rolled his head back and forth to demonstrate the ease of movement. He was acting, exaggerating the range, imitating the looping head of the dopamine at its peak. “See, it’s working already,” he said. He was right, of course. If it weren’t working at least a little bit, he would be too stiff to fake any movement. As if to punctuate, he touched his thumb to his middle finger over and over, the way they made him do in the doctor’s office.
“Suit yourself,” Zee said. But he knew she didn’t mean it.
He ate the cookies and sipped at the milk. The fun had gone out of it for him, though. He left half a glass on the table when he got up and made his way into the den.
By 7:00 P.M. he was asleep in his chair, heavily dosed with Sinemet, his head flopping forward. A long string of saliva dripped out of his open mouth and onto his pressed shirt. He wouldn’t wake up again until it was almost time for the next pill. Then he would be agitated, looking for something, anything, to take away the tension his brain was creating. He might open his cent shop again for the tourists, though they had cleared out by now. Most likely he would try to walk, the worst thing he could do.
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.
9
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.