The impossible affair was something that happened when he’d been working for a magazine, writing an article on whaling off the coast of Massachusetts and on the Greenpeace splinter group that was trying to stop it. They had met when he took his boat up to Gloucester to do an interview. On the return trip, the boat had engine trouble, so Melville stopped at one of the local islands to use a phone. He’d ended up staying the night.
The next day he’d booked himself onto one of the swordfish boats heading out from Gloucester, one he’d heard was looking for crew, thinking he’d do an article on it for a local magazine. Then, later, he signed on to a longer run from Portsmouth up to Nova Scotia, a trip that lasted past Labor Day. He slept with every man he could in every port. It was a stupid thing to do, a dangerous thing, and unlike him, really. And when it didn’t erase the night he was trying to forget, he found himself back on the island, but the houses were all closed up for the winter. Grateful, he booked himself onto a merchant marine ship headed out to the Middle East, thinking he’d write a book about the experience. He liked the life enough that he’d made three runs with them, and on the third the ship had an encounter with some pirates in the Strait of Malacca just off Sumatra. The pirates sprayed the ship with fire from several HK MP5 submachine guns that were probably stolen from the Malaysian army. Their attempt to take over the ship had failed-the cheap, low-mass bullets were no match for the thick steel plates of the ship-but several pieces of shrapnel had lodged in the muscles of Melville’s left forearm, impairing his grip and ending any thoughts he might have had of pursuing a career as a mariner.
When he got back to Salem, he’d found the job at the museum and rented the room on Essex Street. He went to the free clinic and got himself tested and counted himself luckier than he had any right to be.
He had met Finch through Mickey Doherty. Along with some of the other pirate reenactors, they were trying to raise money to reconstruct the Friendship, a 171-foot East Indiaman that had sailed out of Salem Harbor hundreds of years ago when Salem had been the wealthiest city in the New World. Melville liked the idea of raising money for the tall ship but hated pirates and told Mickey so. “We’re not that kind of pirates,” Mickey said good-naturedly. “We’re the old-fashioned kind.”
“The kind with parrots on the shoulders?” Melville asked.
“Not parrots.” Finch grinned at Melville. “Monkeys.”
“One monkey,” Mickey said, insulted. “And only because I won him in a poker game.”
In those days, before Mickey Doherty had become the Pirate King of Salem, the unofficial mayor of commerce, he had taken his pirating quite seriously. He considered the mention of parrots an affront. If anyone, upon seeing him in costume, made the regrettable mistake of uttering an “ARGHH” in his presence, that unfortunate soul would most likely find himself at the connecting end of Mickey’s fist.
The monkey, however, was another matter entirely. Though he would deny it if asked, Mickey had a genuine love of the monkey he had named Liam, after his dead younger brother, but that most of his friends now referred to as Mini Mick.
Melville told Mickey he would have to think about it.
Finch smiled at him. A flash of recognition passed between them. For the first time in months, Melville felt like himself.
MELVILLE MET FINCH FOR THE second time at the museum. Finch was doing research for his book on Melville’s letters to Hawthorne. Most of them were held by family or had been documented in previous work, but Finch was also interested in the museum’s journal of the Acushnet, a ship that Herman Melville had served on and then deserted in the Marquesas.
Finch was older. And brilliant. They hit it off immediately.
Over the next several months, they worked late nights at the museum.
Melville met Finch’s daughter.
One night Finch told Melville the story about Hawthorne ’s wife, Sophia. Melville was familiar with the tales of Hawthorne and Sophia. Theirs was one of the great romances of the literary world. But it was not their love story that Finch talked about that night.
Sophia had always had problems with her nerves, as well as terrible debilitating headaches that had plagued her most of her life. As a child she’d been quite sickly. One medical theory that was popular at the time, and one Finch had just heard about, involved mercury and teething. Every generation has its remedy for a particular malady, and every generation has something they blame for disease of any kind. These days it might be pollution or chemical sensitivity or even vaccination. In the days of Sophia’s youth, it had been teething. Teething was blamed for everything from paralysis to insanity to consumption. The belief was that the sooner one could complete the teething process (which was undeniably fraught with torment for the child), the better. Disease could be avoided only if the teeth poked through the gums in a timely fashion. For this reason parents would often cut the gums of their children with implements as unsanitary and as imprecise as kitchen knives. Then they would apply mercury to the open wounds.
“Mercury?” Melville said to Finch. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Not at all,” Finch answered. “Mercury was used as late as 1960 in this country as an antiseptic. Are you old enough to remember Mercurochrome?”
Melville did remember Mercurochrome, though it was a vague memory, an old bottle with a fraying red-orange label.
“A lot of poisons were used to treat infection in the old days,” he said.
He went on to say that there was a new theory that Sophia’s headaches and her somewhat erratic personality were probably the result of mercury poisoning.
Melville couldn’t remember how Finch had segued from Sophia’s personality to Maureen’s, but he did remember that it had been masterly. Before Melville knew it, Finch was talking about his wife, her own mercurial personality, and the illness that had kept her hospitalized indefinitely.
“My wife is manic-depressive,” Finch had said. “She has been in and out of hospitals for as long as I can remember.”
“That must be difficult,” Melville said.
“It is difficult, most particularly for my daughter. This last time has been very difficult for all of us. This time I’m afraid she won’t be coming home.”
“I’m so sorry,” Melville said.
Finch looked at him so pitifully that Melville’s response was automatic. Though they were standing in the middle of the East India Hall, Melville reached out and hugged him. They stood for a long time, the sound of passing footsteps echoing in the halls around them as Finch cried quietly on Melville’s shoulder.
To say they started seeing each other would be wrong. It was more as if they kept seeing each other. Research turned to late dinners of takeout in Melville’s room on Essex Street, and when Finch expressed concern about leaving Zee for so long, Melville had his boat moved from its mooring down by Congress Street to one just off Turner Street. They began to meet on the boat, after Zee was in bed. Since her mother had been hospitalized, Zee often had nightmares, and the boat was close enough, sound carrying well over water, to hear her if she cried out.
“The first time we met, I thought you were straight,” Finch said to him one night.
“No you didn’t.” Melville called him on his lie.
“Bi, then. I thought you were bi.”
“I was,” Melville said. It wasn’t a lie. He’d once considered himself bisexual, but that had been a long time ago. “And may I point out that you are the one who is married.”
The weight of it hit them both.
“I’m a good deal older than you,” Finch said, “and from an entirely different generation.” Regret showed on his face. Then guilt. Neither of them brought up the subject again.