FICTION
Barbara Probst Solomon
AMERICA YOU HAVE GONE AND LEFT ME
Daniel, Christopher, and I (his crew) fly up to Maine.
Daniel wants to beat the hurricane and cross over to the Bay of Fundy
as soon as we get to Northeast Harbor. It's his style to be in a hurry.
I corne midpoint in age between Christopher and Daniel. A lover of
hard rock, Chris drinks
Swiss Miss
hot chocolate, and is sweet and
dense. Daniel goes for beer and Manhattans. With me it's seltzer
laced with lemon. Chris could be my son, Daniel my father.
I am not a nautical woman. I have a fear of the sea and don't like
living in cramped spaces. I don't like the look of most of the women
I've seen when we've been docked at boatyards. Their faces are glazed
with a false heartiness. They walk the ramps with the aimlessness of
casual dumb money. But Daniel is profoundly involved with the sea,
and his succession of wives and sometime girlfriends have always
sailed with him. In order to avoid sea-panic, I have brought with me
a canvas needlepoint, the size of a chair seat, which needs ruling in.
Reads: ROOSEVELT VICTORIOUS . I found it in a general
store, and it caught my eye.
"Okay, you children of nature . Here are the lists, provision
up," snaps Daniel. Tall, and heavy-shouldered, his head seems un–
duly massive, and his neck too short. The thickness of his gray hair
gives him a bellicosely healthy look younger than his years. But as
Daniel measures his age by his ability to handle his yawl, he has
started to brood about his loss of physical strength - which is why he
is mad at Chris, who has been earning money running boats down
to Bermuda and the Keys. Daniel knows he will need his help for
anchor-lifting.
"Our refugee from prep school thinks he's a sailor. Well, he
ain't." Daniel affects an old-fashioned Harvard version of Tracy–
Cagney street talk. Makes him sound 1950s Boston snobbish. He is
a shy man, and I half listen to his out-of-date invective, the same
way I half listen to Chris's Heavy Metal.
"Your hair is getting in your way," he says, looking at me.
"After Adelina cut off her mop she looked like a boy with her crew
