An American Tune: A Novel

31 “Get Together”

297 “Get Together” Diane had planned to close the shop while she and Monique were in Florida; business was slow in March, anyway. But she accepted gratefully when Nora offered to keep it open. It would be good for both of them, Nora said. No customers would be turned away, and she’d have something to do to pass the time, waiting and hoping to hear from Claire. She walked the shoreline in the early mornings, going as far as the hollowed-out tree where she had met Tom in January. There, she’d sit awhile in the weak spring sunshine and watch the waves break and recede. Just days ago, driving north with him, it had been winter.Snoweverywhere–deep,sparkling,white.Nowthesnowwas shrinking away from the trees and bushes, leaving circles of brown earth. The dune grasses were beginning to show, some with bits of green in them. The beach parking lot was squishy with mud. Itwasarelieftositinthequietshopallday.Itwasacheerfulplace, full of the work of dozens of artists who lived in the area. Scarves and beautiful woven throws in rainbow colors, whimsical ceramics, jewelry made of feathers and stones, cuddly dolls with embroidered faces. The lake in every season was there in watercolors and photographs . Mobiles turned lazily in the light breath of heat coming from the ceiling registers. Nora brought one of the wicker chairs from the 31 298 An American Tune backroomandsetitnearthefrontwindow,whereshesat–sometimes hours at a time–a book open her lap, gazing out on Main Street, halfhoping ,half-fearingtocatchaglimpseofCharlieorClaire.Itseemed odd to her that their lives could be so calamitously different and the street scene she looked out on so completely unchanged. Macbeth’s Grocery, the post office, the Friendly Tavern, the ice cream store. The cozy little public library that had long ago been the one-room schoolhouse. Nights,aloneinMoandDiane’shouse,shewoke,disoriented,her heart racing. Where, who was she? If she couldn’t go back to sleep, she’d drag herself from bed, pull on the robe Diane had lent her and go into the family room, where she’d touch the space bar of the computer and the screen would blink and glow with light. She did not write to Tom. She did that in the mornings, from the computeratDiane’sshop.Atnightwrotetoherself–everything,anything she could remember. Long, rainy afternoons in the library of herchildhood–lightseepingthroughthehighwindowsintothecozy basement room lined with books and herself at one of the scarred tables, a book open before her. The Moffats, Little House in the Big Woods,TheFiveLittlePeppersandHowTheyGrew.Booksabouthappy families. She had devoured them, carrying them home in the basket of her bicycle, disappearing into them, relegating her real family to the edges of her consciousness. If she wrote long enough, if she wrote without flinching, finally, she began to feel her soul take on weight. She began to believe that, in time, she would be able to explain what had happened to her when she was young–how she had lost her path, her love, her self–and to believe that Claire would listen. Alittleoveraweekintothewar,U.S.troopscrepttowardBaghdad in sandstorms of epic proportion. The news was grim: convoys ambushed , a downed helicopter, terrified soldiers captured and shown on Iraqi television. No grateful Iraqis crowding the side of the roads to greet them as predicted by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, no flowers thrown into their paths. Meanwhile, Baghdad continued to burn, pummeled by U.S. bombers. Nora switched off The Today Show and set out walking 299 “Get Together” earlier than usual to avoid the disturbing images of people’s lives in ruin. She walked quickly, fueled by anger, past the tree trunk where she usually sat, past the stone sculptures, until she calmed down and the world around her became more real and compelling than the world on the screen. Later, she wondered if she had known where she was going all along–though, at the time, she rounded the point and reached what used to be the end point of her morning walks thinking only of how lovely and improbable the dunes were: sand mountains, rising to the sky. Shekeptonuntilshecametothebreakinthetreeshighaboveher, the entrance to the forest path that led home–and, suddenly, there was Astro bounding down the dune. She fell to her knees, opened her arms to him, and he danced around her, whimpering, licking her face. He rolled over, panting, and when Nora scratched his stomach she could have sworn that he was smiling...