Part 4 (1/2)
I gave her what I hoped was my e camp on Great Pond for this suirls immediately claimed its loft for their own They could listen tothe adults, and with the lake only a few feet from the back deck, they could shenever they wanted, which was always Late afternoons Kate and I fished, though we never caught anything, and weather perhts were so perfectly black and quiet we could hear the water lapping gently against the dock, and we fell asleepof loons
Barbara and I divided our twowith a local realtor, she scoured the market Most of the nicer houses, at least the ones we could afford, were in developments outside tohereas anted to be in town, near the college if possible, in the Waterville school district, but the few decent neighborhoods sees about ht, was that we'd be able to afford a nice house Apparently we'd thought wrong Every time Barbara returned from one of these expeditions she see a place for otten off the road but was still a bundle of nerves, and I knew she wasn't going to cals were, as she put it, ”settled” That is, until she had an apartet back into her routines A nice, cozy little one bedrooant It was fine if this was in an apartment complex, but it had to be for elderly residents only (no fa to do with ”assisted living” Because she refused to takeStreet-we quickly determined that she couldn't affordsubsidized, where her rent would be keyed to her monthly Social Security stipend Unfortunately, these federal and state subsidies were tied to onerous regulations, the most objectionable of which was that Section 8 ”crazies” could not be turned away, and she refused to live with people like that In theory she didn't object to renting a flat in a private ho, so the kitchen and bathroom would have to be modern Unable to climb steep stairs anymore, she would need to be on the first floor, a preference shared by those ned uarantee, because she hated to hear people walking overhead, so the upstairs floors had to be carpeted After a week of poring over the ads in the local paper, of pulling up in front of apartments only to drive away immediately if a car was up on blocks at the curb (a Maine specialty) or the yard was infested eeds or the house itself looked ramshackle, we quickly discovered that the placefor simply didn't exist, at least not in Waterville Once we knehere the clean neighborhoods were, we drove theically appeared in asince yesterday, but none ever did, and with each passing day my mother became more and e, ostensibly to introduceto tap soreed that we'd have to expand our search The few good aparte faculty and staff The time to look was late May, at the end of the school year, not mid-July Under the circumstances our best bet would be to consider nearby Winslow or Oakland Several people recodale, however, was a good half hour away, and given ile condition, that would be stretching it The apartht and clean and airy and carpeted and on the first floor, with updated pluht around the corner from our house, the one we hadn't found yet and probably couldn't afford e did Even if we could find the perfect house, it wouldn't be perfect if it was so distant That evening one of ues called to say that she redale on a hill overlooking the Kennebec River, so over dinner, I suggested we drive out there the next day, when it was supposed to be warm and sunny We could have lunch on the river, then take a peek at the complex What harm could it do? I didn't expect this weak pitch to succeed, but it did
The apart the river They were tidy and clean, the grounds well kept Better yet, to judge by the sign, an apart way froood distance froreed ”The proble to end up” Which was true Just as she and I were expanding our apart hers One of the nicer houses we'd seen was in Winthrop, a suburb of Augusta, about ten minutes from wheresat
In fact the vacancy, a one bedrooht or airy as one ht have hoped But the co was modern, and I pointed out the cable TV hookup It was by far the best apart this with the fact that it wasn't exactly what she'd pictured She wasn't asking for a lot Couldn't she, just this once, have what she wanted? In the kitchen, with the aparter along the surface of the stove
Outside, noticing another complex farther up the hill, my mother asked about it, because it looked nice
”That's for faht?”
”It's awfully close,” my mother said ”Do the children come down here?”
”Never,” the woman assured her ”The two complexes are co,”atto be in Waterville, and he wouldn't want me to be that far away”
Back in the car, she took a tissue out of her purse and wiped her index finger over and over ”Did you notice how filthy it was?” she said ”And don't tell me the children don't coht”
”That's a federal law,” I reminded her ”If it's subsidized, they can't turn away people who are eligible It was the same back in Illinois, if you recall”
Of course she did ”Re woman who lived across the hall refused to take her”settled,” or even close to it, earing on her, I could tell, and e pulled in back at the ca like that in Waterville?”
”I don't know, Mom,” I said, ”but you have to order frohtened at this I'd been saying it a lot lately
THEN WE CAUGHT a break Two of the, Barbara had seen a house she loved, though it was too expensive It was still available, and the price had co was so we hadn't considered: taxes We'd been warned byrealtors, that real-estate taxes here were brutally high It hadn't occurred to us that people almost everywhere believe they're overtaxed-a belief particularly virulent in Maine One afternoon, as an exercise, Barbara sat doith our realtor for the first time and actually ran the numbers on that house, only to discover that it wasn't coe and that, coain True, you got less house for your dollar, but a se of that dollar went to the state The result was a push Better still, now that the house had been on the ht to be motivated What could it hurt to look? Given that love invariably enters through the eye, that was a dumb question We looked, and of course it was the ideal house Back at the realtor's we ran the nuain with the same result It would be a stretch, but not ient to ask what kind ofyear, then told the realtor we'd sleep on it and decide in the ot back to the lake, we'd changed our minds and called our realtor and instructed her to make an offer that would reveal ifto these sellers that it did to us a few months earlier in southern Illinois, when it had been synonymous with desperate, or about to pray for the first tiuessed what effect our finally finding the house would have on my mother, but we didn't Myto have to order off the menu-was an idea she'd always resisted Usually she stood her ground, , that there had to be so we simply hadn't found yet And of course by we she meant me But the journey from Illinois had taken more out of her than we knew, as had the repeated rental disappointments Maine itself-the deep stillness of the woods, the piney dampness of the camp, the lonely sound of the loons out on the pond in the ht-seemed to unmoor her; these rustic routines were ours, not hers, and she was increasingly desperate for control over so Barbara and I rade Lakes, leaving her and the girls alone at the camp for a couple hours Emily and Kate were up in their beloved loft, headphones on as usual, listening toTheir youthful exuberance must've been too much for my mother Eventually, even with their headphones on, they heard her calling up to the the, she explained, to count her change
The next day things caotiation all ith suddenly uns as if they had the stronger hand, which meant they did They'd apparently heard that the bidder was a Colby College professor, and in a mill town like Waterville that was their dreaust, and classes would start in a feeeks The sellers had no doubt also heard that ere out on Great Pond in an unheated camp that would be impossible to stay war, ere like Napoleon On i
On the night in question, all five of us gathered around the camp's television with the sound doe could hear the phone if it rang The patio door was open just a crack, because the nights were already chilly Through the opening ca wadded into balls-but loud, as if played through a bullhorn Orange light, for so on the smooth surface of the lake The cae colu into the sky All around the cove people had come out onto their decks to watch When the fire leaped from the camp itself to the two nearest pine trees, I said, ”Uh, I don't et in the car and drive up to thethe dirt road, and ht There wasn't much of a breeze, but if it shi+fted in our direction, I'd have to carry her, leaving Barbara to attend to the girls We'd all just piled into our cars when the fire trucks careened down the road, effectively trapping us in our drive Along with the neighbors, atched the building burn down to its foundation, the firefighters see from tree to tree and camp to camp As often was the case with my mother, when faced with a real worry, soer, she was re would be fine, that the fire
The episode did, however, provide her with a valuable new context ”I've changed dale apart over breakfast ”Let's take it”
I nodded, not wanting to queer the deal with excess enthusiasain?”