This isn't going to be hard, after all. Even though he said he felt strongly about not divulging the information, he's a kind man, and I can make him change his mind.
Natalie looked through the bookcase in her room until she found the large United States atlas that, she realized with a smile, Aunt Helen had given her one Christmas when she would much rather have had a new sweater.
The map of Maine was on page 32. She tilted the lampshade so that the full light of the bulb fell on the page, and searched the state for Simmons' Mills. Finally she found it; the name jumped out at her from a space in the north-central mountainous section of the state, and she held her finger there and looked at it for a long time. The small circle with a dot in the center, there on the edge of the Penobscot River, was keyed to indicate that Simmons' Mills had a population between 1000 and 2500.
"Oh, I'm just a small-town girl," she announced aloud, giggling to herself.
She followed with her finger the route she would take from Branford. Main highways as far as Bangor; beyond that, to the north, it would be increasingly smaller, more curving roads, through the mountains, along the river, to the town where she was born. The town where she would find Foster H. Goodwin and, through him, her real parents.
Then her eyes slid to the coast, and she saw Ox Island, a tiny dark blue dot in the lighter blue of Frenchman's Bay.
First, thought Natalie, looking with joy at the sculpture that was now in shadows in the dark corner of the room where her desk was, I will go to see Tallie. Tallie has a way of putting everything in perspective, and before I set off on that long road that curves to a place called Simmons' Mills, I'll let my grandmother smoothe the edges of my questions into manageable shapes.
9
ON THE MAP, coastal Maine had the erratic pattern of cardiograms that Natalie had seen often in her father's office; it looked as if someone had taken a pen and drawn an irregular line, without looking, from New Hampshire to Canada at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The line moved, apparently aimlessly, in and out, forming peninsulas and promontories; it opened into harbors and coves where rivers arrived to empty into the sea.
Driving northeast on Route 1, Natalie was less aware of the random patterns of the coast. But she saw the ocean again and again on her right; she saw it curving around the edges of the small towns, the tide moving restlessly against the pilings that formed part of the docks and the fish-packing plants. It appeared in the desolate places that came now and then suddenly, after a bend in the road, where there were nothing but rocks and wind-sheared trees; and occasionally it was there against a short expanse of sand, where children would be playing with buckets and shovels and touching their toes into the icy water with shrieks of delighted pain.
It took her four hours to reach Northeast Harbor, a pleasant and uneventful drive in the small new car. The brilliant blue of the cove around which the little town clustered in a semicircle was spectacular. Northeast Harbor was a picture-postcard town; she could see the groups of tourists strolling the main street, their cameras dangling, their summer-vacation outfits so new the store creases were still visible. At the boat landing, she could pick out the ferries that took tourists to the bay islands on daily cruises. Natalie glanced down at her own faded jeans as she parked the car at the landing, and was devoutly glad that she was not wearing double-knit slacks, rhinestone-rimmed sunglasses, and driving a car with New York plates.
Snob, she thought, laughing at herself.
She lifted her backpack to her shoulders, pulled her hair loose from its webbed straps, and locked the car. Following the instructions Tallie had provided over the phone, she walked along the docks and looked for a small lobster boat named Egret. It was moored ignominiously behind a larger, more luxurious, cabin cruiser and moved up and down slowly as the water lifted it and let it go again.
Natalie looked down and waved at the man who sat on the boat with his legs up and a pipe in his mouth.
"Sonny?" She felt a little silly, but Tallie had told her someone named Sonny would be on the Egret.
"You the one goin' to Tallie's island?" he asked.
She smiled, nodded, and he reached up to help her aboard.
It wasn't Tallie's island. Natalie didn't know who owned the rest of it, but Tallie owned only four acres of Ox Island, which was two miles long and a half mile wide. It was typical of Tallie, though, thought Natalie, that people thought of it as Tallie's island.
It was typical, too, of a Maine lobsterman that he would have his jacket buttoned up tight against his chin in June, when the tourists were all in shirt-sleeves and alligator-adorned jerseys, and would be freezing and covered with goose bumps on the water. The breeze was very strong even before the Egret was out of the tight harbor, and downright cold as they crossed the open ocean to Ox Island.
"Do you know Tallie?" asked Natalie. "She's my grandmother."
Sonny was at the wheel, steering toward the island, watching the bay, not noticing the cold salt spray that struck his face as the boat moved.
"Yep," he said.
Natalie smiled to herself and didn't attempt any more conversation. If I were Tallie, she realized, I'd have him talking in long paragraphs, and before the fifteen-minute boat ride was over I'd know his life history.
Oh well, I'm not Tallie. No one is.
Sonny eased the boat gently toward the decaying dock at Ox Island. He muttered to himself, something about how they'd better fix that before the ice bust it up next winter, someone going to get hurt out here. When the boat was fast against the dock, he took Natalie's hand firmly and helped her up.
"You be here Sunday at two," he said roughly. "I'll take you back."
"Shall I pay you then?" she asked.
"She took care of it." He turned to his engine, ignoring her thank you.
Tallie wasn't at the dock. Natalie hadn't expected her to be. Tallie had never, according to Natalie's mother, been on time to anything in her life.
But she was at the house. Natalie walked up the dirt road, opened the never-locked door, and found her there, busy in the kitchen, singing "Un bel dì vedremo" from Madama Butterfly, loudly and slightly off-key, as she stirred something on the stove.
She looked up in surprise. "Natalie! Is it four o'clock already? I meant to be at the dock to greet you! But one of the local fishermen stopped by this morning with the most wonderful gift of lobsters and scallops and halibut that I decided to make a paella ... have you ever tasted paella, Natalie? Look, how the saffron changes ordinary rice to such a marvelous shade of gold!...and my goodness, I've lost track of the time. You look absolutely beautiful. I have always thought of you as a Modigliani person, and look ... you've proven me correct by wearing your hair that way, so that it falls into those elongated lines. Are you hungry? Warm enough? In need of music? Let me put on some Bach, so that everything will seem orderly and precise."