Reunion at Red Paint Bay

The streets of Red Paint feel familiar to him, a pattern indelibly implanted on his brain when it was a younger age. He remembers the shortcut from the inn to the Common, parks on the darker river side, then walks the winding bike path to the bandstand. He goes up the broad steps and stops for a moment, looking out on the green as if there is a crowd come just to hear him. What would he speak of, something topical, like divine intervention in the modern world? Miracles would surely be the talk of the town after the page-one headline in the Register—Virgin Appears in Red Paint Backyard? The question mark was necessary, of course, the proper journalistic skepticism. But if you believe in God, how could you not believe in miracles? An all-powerful God could clearly do what would seem improbable or impossible, the definition of a miracle. He could even defy the logic that He Himself created—go up and down at the same time. Appear and disappear. Kill and let live. Punish and forgive. Be God and not be God. And He could be everywhere at once, no need to send the Virgin or anyone else as an emissary. He might even descend to a bandstand like this, in a small town like this, to deliver His message, perhaps ten new commandments for the new millennium. He would require a proper introduction, of course, and who would get the honor? Ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, put your hands together for the Creator of …

He sees something in the shadows of the bandstand floor, reaches out his foot to turn it over. A small face stares up at him, a brown teddy bear with a red strip sewn on as a smile. He picks up the spindly little stuffed animal, apparently lost or thrown away. Either way, gone from whoever once loved it. He shakes the bear of dirt and its head bounces up and back, an involuntary yes. There’s no one nearby to ask about it, just youngsters kicking a soccer ball under the lamplight in the grass below. How many of these boys secretly clutch a stuffed animal to their chests at night?

He takes the teddy bear with him down the other side of the bandstand, holding the railing as he goes. He used to tear across here and leap the half-dozen steps—the single daring act of his boyhood. He remembers the terror of it, closing his eyes at takeoff, eternity in the air, his arms windmilling to keep himself aloft, then the wonderful solidness landing on earth.

The boys on the Common scramble after the soccer ball, crash into one another, then roll on the ground in exaggerated injury, clutching their calves, little fakers in training. They don’t take any notice of a man strolling along with no apparent purpose. He can’t remember noticing adults passing by either when he sat against the lamppost as a boy, watching the nightly Wiffle ball game his classmates organized. They coaxed him into playing once when they needed an extra kid and let him throw the ball up for himself when he batted, since he couldn’t hit a regular pitch. Still, the best he could hope for was a little dribbler that he could beat out to first base, a pizza box. At least he could run fast.

He walks zigzag now across the worn-down playing field. It was always dusty here in summer, more brown than green, more dirt than grass. It hurt hitting the hard dry ground of summer.

“Hey, mister!” He looks around, sees boys behind him, boys on the side, boys in front of him. “Get out of the way, will ya?”

He waves his apology and hurries through the Common, comes to Mechanic Street and crosses without bothering to check each way. There’s little traffic this time of night in Red Paint, and people would always stop for a man shuffling across the road. The Register Building is lit up on the inside as always. He presses his face to the window and can see the old fireman’s bell hanging from the ceiling, rung when the paper went to press. There’s the typesetter’s table in the corner, full of the cast metal letters used to make up pages by hand. And on the far wall, the old map of the Province of Maine with “Red Paint Territory” marking the land between the ocean and bay. Nothing, it appears, has changed at the Register.

He moves to the front door and reads the staff list posted under glass. At the top, Simon Howe: Editor in Chief. There are a dozen names below him, ending with Pressroom: David Rigero, written in a different typeface, an obvious addition. He looks both ways on the sidewalk, then takes out a Magic Marker from his pocket. He uncaps it and holds it under his nose for a moment, inhaling the pungent scent. He considers how to fit the word on the door. Angled seems best, top left to bottom right, for maximum size and dramatic effect. The marker squeaks across the surface, leaving thick black letters on the light wood color. He can’t decide on the punctuation. An exclamation point? Too frantic. A period? Too formal.

He hears a car coming up the street, and it scares him that he might be seen. He can’t remember ever being caught doing anything wrong, not even being reprimanded at school. He has spent so much of his life avoiding being rebuked, yet here he is defacing a building in the center of his hometown. How would he explain himself? Momentary insanity? Continuous insanity?

He sets the teddy bear against the door and slips sideways a few steps into the alley, leaving the single word to stand by itself, no punctuation needed.





RAPIST

Simon stood outside the front door to the Register staring at the word. Beside him, the paper’s photographer raised his camera to his eye. Simon turned quickly, knocking his arm. “No pictures, Ron.”

The young man regained his balance and readjusted the Nikon dangling from his neck. “Why don’t you want a snap, boss? This would grab the eye on page one.”

“Did anyone else see this?”

Ron turned half around as an old woman shuffled past, her head down. “Sure, I mean, anybody who goes by can see it, if they look over.”

“Any staff?”

“Most of editorial is already here.”

“How about the production people?”

“Nobody except Rigero. I saw his truck parked in the lot.”

Simon ran his index finger over the letters, and a little of the black rubbed off.

Ron held out a battered old teddy bear. “I found this leaning against the door, like a calling card. You know, the Teddy Bear Vandal—good headline, huh?”

Simon took the flimsy stuffed animal. It was pressed in at the face, as if stepped on, and cut open in the belly, a small, ragged slit.

“The police will be over in a few minutes,” Ron said.

Simon whirled on him. “You called the police?”

“Yeah, they always check out vandalism.”

“This is just a little graffiti, probably from some bored kid. Get something abrasive from the janitor’s room and we’ll rub it off.”

“That’s bad business, that’s what it is.” The voice came with a wooden cane shaking between their heads. Simon and Ron leaned out of the way as Erasmus Hall jabbed it toward the door. “It’s a sign,” he said, “repent before it’s too late.” He held out a tract. Simon took one from his tremoring hand and then stood in front of the word until it could be washed away.



“Mr. Howe, can I talk to you a minute?”

Simon looked up from his desk and saw his recently hired pressroom man standing over him. He smelled of after-shave, some strong metallic scent. “Sure.” Simon scanned the newsroom. “We could go in the conference room, that would be private.”

“I don’t need private. This is okay.”

Simon gestured to the seat across his desk, then leaned over it. “The writing on the door—I guess you saw it.”

“Yeah, there was kind of a crowd out there when I pulled in, so I took a look.”

“I’m sorry,” Simon said. “We scrubbed it off as soon as I got in.”

“You’re sorry?”

“That you had to see it.”

Rigero shrugged, his shoulders sticking up longer than usual, like a child who hasn’t quite mastered the gesture. “Doesn’t have anything to do with me. Nobody knows what I was in for except you,” he said, his voice a little lower, “and you didn’t tell anybody, did you, Mr. Howe, because that would be like invading my privacy, wouldn’t it?”

He’d told Amy, but wives didn’t count. Everyone presumed you shared secrets with your spouse. “Of course I didn’t tell anyone.”

“Then nobody else would know.”

Simon nodded. “So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?”

“I was making up the For Sale page and saw your ad for the piano.”

“You play?” The question popped out of Simon with more surprise in his voice than was appropriate. “I mean, you didn’t mention that when we talked about your hobbies at the interview.”

“It’s not for me. I got a sister up in Brunswick has three kids. I thought I’d refinish it for her, like a gift. She used to play when we were growing up. I figure she could teach her kids.”

“That’s a nice idea.”

“She stuck by me when I was in, my sister did. The rest of the family acted like I died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But the piano, it’s been used pretty hard. My son used to play with his feet. And it hasn’t been tuned in years.”

“That’s okay, I’m used to working with wood, and I’ll get it tuned. But I was wondering, the ad said a hundred dollars, would you take seventy-five? That’s all I got.”

Haggling over the price of her piano—Amy wouldn’t like that. He would have to say he got the full amount and chip in the other twenty-five himself. “Sure,” Simon said. How could he ask for more than all a person had?

“I got my truck, I could come around after work and pick it up.”

“It’s pretty heavy.”

Rigero flexed his arms a little. “I used to be a mover, and I have a lift on my truck. I can handle it.” He stood up and put out his hand to seal the deal.

“You know,” Simon said as they shook, “maybe we better go over now before my wife gets home. She isn’t thrilled we’re getting rid of this. She might chase you away,” he said, laughing just a little.

“Okay, I’ll meet you there,” Rigero said and headed for the pressroom.

Simon grabbed his jacket and turned toward the front door. He had never noticed before, the self-segregation of the editorial and press staffs in their entrances and exits. Was it a pattern worth changing? “I’m off for the rest of the day,” he called to Barbara across the room, and she waved at him without lifting her elbow from her desk.

The front door opened in as he reached for the handle, and Holly Green leaned up to press her cheek to his. Of all the girls in his class, Holly wore twenty-five years the best, he thought.

“I’m glad I caught you, Simon,” she said, full of energy as always. “I have some stories for the reporter you assigned to the reunion story.”

“Anything exciting?” he asked as he stepped back to let her in.

“I was going to tell him about our senior weekend in Boston, the last one in the history of Red Paint High.”

Simon remembered the trip well—the cheap hotel on the outskirts of the city, the room hopping after curfew, the tossing of the fake Roman statues into the pool, raiding the minifridges for every available snack. “I have to admit, we did ruin it for every other senior class.”

“You can take kids out of Maine but you can’t take Maine out of the kids—that’s how our beloved vice-principal so condescendingly put it.”

“In retrospect, I see his point,” Simon said. “But go light on the details with Joe. I don’t want to make us look too bad.” He gave Holly a little hug to indicate he had to leave and headed off to move a piano.



“Nice place,” Rigero said as he walked around the sunny family room picking up whatever could be picked up—a ceramic giraffe, a wicker basket full of old political buttons, and a round shell-like object, pocked with holes.

“Brain coral,” Simon said. “Davey found it out in the front yard. This area was probably under water once.”

“Or somebody just tossed it out his car window driving by.”

“That’s possible, too.”

Rigero reached for one of the family photos lined up on the end table, then held it close to his eyes as if trying to discern some small detail.

“It’s Disney World,” Simon said. “We made the obligatory trip last year.”

“Looks like your kid had a great time.”

“Davey was in heaven.”

Rigero shrugged. “Don’t expect I’ll get there myself.”

Simon noted the careful way Rigero set the picture back on the end table at the same angle as before, as if he was familiar with the room, or at least felt at home there. A thought crossed his mind, but how could he put it? “You didn’t happen to stop by here last Thursday night, did you, David?”

Rigero looked up quickly. “Why would I do that?”

“No reason,” Simon said. “Our son just thought he saw someone at the front door who didn’t ring the bell, and we were trying to figure out who it was.”

Rigero laughed a little. “So you’re asking everybody?”

“No, I mean, I just thought, since you knew where I lived maybe you stopped by for something.”

Rigero squatted next to the old Endicott upright, leaned his shoulder into the side, and lifted the piano an inch off the floor. “About 250, I’d say. I’ve moved heavier.” He held up the small throw rug he’d brought with him. “We’ll shove this under it and drag it to the door.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Simon heard the Volvo’s sputtering motor coming up the driveway and looked out of the front window. “Christ,” he said, “my wife.”

“That a problem?”

“Never can tell.” He hurried into the hallway and opened the door as Amy came through, humming. “You’re home early,” he said.

She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Don’t look so thrilled.”

“I’m just surprised.”

“My three o’clock canceled.” She dropped her bag on the hall chair. “Why is a pickup in our driveway?

He gestured toward the family room and the back of the man inspecting the piano. “I found a buyer. We were going to move it before you got home, but we can do it another time.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve made my peace with your getting rid of part of my childhood. Cart it away.” She moved into the room with her arm outstretched. “I’m Amy.”

Rigero turned around and shook her hand quickly, then dropped it. “Nice to meet you, I’m David.”

“David,” she repeated, “that’s our son’s name, but he insists we call him Davey.”

“I’ve always been David.”

“This will only take a few minutes,” Simon said, putting his shoulder to the piano as Rigero had done. “Why don’t you go get changed, Amy, while we move this out of here?”

She leaned against the arm of the sofa, not going anywhere. “How did you find a buyer so fast?”

So the questions began, leading to a predictable conclusion. “I put an ad in the paper,” Simon said, “like we talked about.”

Amy thought for a moment, which was what he was afraid of. “The paper doesn’t come out till tomorrow.”

Rigero smiled mischievously. “I guess I had an unfair advantage—I saw the ad early.”

“All right,” Simon said standing up now, “you do the heavy lifting, David, and I’ll slip the rug under.”

“You saw the ad early,” Amy repeated, circling them. “You work at the Register?”

“Yeah, in the pressroom. Just started a couple of weeks ago.” He ran his fingers smoothly over the top. “This is actually a pretty good piece. The wood’s not warped at all.”

“Have you tried playing it?” Amy asked.

Rigero positioned himself at the side of the piano and found two grips for his hands. “Mr. Howe told me it’s out of tune—that’s why he knocked twenty-five dollars off, right?”

“That I did,” Simon said as he knelt down, the rug in his hand.

“You can always get a piano tuned right, but you can’t fix warped wood.”

“So,” Amy said, her voice hardening now, “you’re an expert on pianos?”

Rigero shook his head. “I just know wood.”

“What else do you know?”

“Ready, lift,” Simon said, and as the piano rose off the floor, he shoved the small rug under the two side legs.

Rigero set the piece gently down, then rubbed his hands together. “I guess I know a thing or two about a thing or two.”

Amy nodded. “Robert De Niro—This Boy’s Life.”

“Yeah, he was great in that, wasn’t he?”

“In a psychotic sort of way, yes.”

Rigero grinned. “Nobody does psychotic better than De Niro.”

Amy ran her hand over the top of the piano, a caress. “Prison,” she said, and both men turned toward her, “is that something you know a little about?”

Rigero glanced at Simon.

“What about—”

“Amy,” Simon cut in but then didn’t know what to say. He had never been able to get her to hold her tongue.

She regarded him a moment, then turned back to Rigero.

“Rape?” he said. “Is that what you want to know about?”

Amy stared at him for a few moments. “Maybe Simon didn’t tell you, but I’m a therapist, and my longest-running patients have been sexually assaulted.”

Rigero rubbed his arm hard across his face, turning it red for a moment. “And like how many rapists do you have as clients?”

“I don’t treat rapists.”

“Then you only know one side of rape.”

She dismissed his point with a flick of her hand. “You think there are two sides to rape?”

Rigero shrugged. “There are two sides to everything, if you want to listen to them.”

“Okay,” Simon said, stepping between them, “let’s move a piano.”



He helped secure the old upright in the truck, positioning and repositioning, tying and retying. It took a half hour.

“That should hold her,” Rigero said as he jumped off the back. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his rear pocket. The box was crushed at the top. He opened it up and tilted it toward Simon. One mangled cigarette remained inside.

A generous offer, Simon thought. “No thanks, I don’t smoke.”

Rigero flipped open a matchbox and pulled out the remaining match. He struck it against the lighting strip, then cupped his hand around the flame and guided it toward the cigarette in his mouth. Such delicate maneuvers, the ritual of smoking. “Your wife,” he said as he expelled the first long puff, “she was getting pretty hot in there.”

Simon wondered at his choice of words. Not angry or upset—hot. “Like she said, she works with a lot of women recovering from, you know, being assaulted, so she’s kind of sensitive on the subject.”

“I just didn’t expect it, her knowing.” He said this in an offhand way, not accusatory at all.

“Sorry about that. Once she knew I hired from the prison she wouldn’t let it go. She actually guessed.”

Rigero dropped his half-cigarette to the street and rubbed it out with his foot. “You can tell her I was in seven to ten for having sex with a woman who passed out on me halfway through. Five minutes’ pleasure, seven years’ pain.”

Simon couldn’t imagine telling Amy this, but he nodded anyway, like one guy to another.



On his way back to the house he pulled out a few weeds growing up around the front walk. At the door he turned toward the sun and let the warm rays soak his face till it began to burn. Then he went inside.

“I can’t believe it,” she said, rushing into the hallway. “You brought that man into our house when I specifically warned you I never wanted to meet him.”

“How could I know you’d be home early?”

“That’s not the point,” she said, her body visibly shaking. “A person like that is toxic, and I didn’t want him anywhere near our lives. Now his disgusting hands will be playing the piano I never wanted to sell in the first place, the one I learned on and Davey learned on.”

“You agreed it was taking up too much space, and it’s not for him anyway. He’s refinishing it for his sister who has three kids so they can have music in their lives.”

“So he’s a music-appreciating rapist with a heart of gold. I’m touched.”

Simon shook his head at her. “Why are you getting so hysterical over this?”

“Don’t use that word on me,” she said. “Every time Freud wrote about an hysterical patient it was a woman.”

“Okay, I take it back, you’re not hysterical. But why are you so upset? He made a mistake and served his sentence.”

“Because women who are raped don’t get a few years’ term they can serve and then they’re free.”

“So David deserves a life sentence? Or is that too good for him? Perhaps he should be strung up on the Common.”

“Don’t be sarcastic.”

“I’m serious. I really want to know—what’s the proper sentence for a rapist?”

Amy thought for only a moment. “Shame, Simon, and that man doesn’t have any.”





He sits on the wide-planked porch of the Bayswater Inn watching rain pelt the water. At times the wind changes direction and blows the thick drops far enough sideways to reach him under the broad roof. He doesn’t stir, even when the inn’s owner, Peter McBride, approaches him with a mug filled with a brown liquid, topped by whipped cream.

“Compliments of the house, Mr. Chambers,” the innkeeper says as he holds out the tall glass. “It’s the specialty of the inn—we call it the Tonic. My grandmother used to say if this doesn’t cure what ails you, nothing ails you.” The man takes the mug and paper napkin. “The secret is using Jameson whiskey and untreated Vermont cream, no chemicals. Don’t stir it in. Drink through it.”

He sips the sweet cream until the coffee pours through with a jolt of whiskey. He wipes his mouth on the napkin, leaving a dark smudge, which he folds out of view. “I’m not a coffee drinker,” he says, “but this is very nice.”

The wind whips the halyard on the flagpole, making them turn toward the curving driveway. “I could listen to that all night,” McBride says. “I’ve always thought the best sounds on earth are a foghorn, a waterfall, and the rattle of the halyard against a flagpole.”

“And the whistle of a train,” the man says, “one going away from you.”

McBride moves behind his guest and takes hold of a large black handle, which he turns with some effort. The blue-striped awning begins rolling up, inch by inch. “Sorry,” he says, “can’t chance a gust ripping through it. You might want to move inside.”

“A little rain never hurt anyone,” he says. But forty days and nights of it, that extinguished virtually every living thing. Six chapters after creation, God washed away humanity, repenting that He had made it. To whom does God confess?

McBride leans against an empty Adirondack chair. “I’d sit out with you if I could, but we’ve got a lot of work to do before the school reunion here next week. Things get pretty chaotic for a few days. I hope you won’t be put out.”

“It won’t bother me at all,” the man says, a most agreeable guest.



He remembers the music most of all—the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth, the strange meditation of violins and harp that always accompanied wakes at the Bays-water Inn. It seemed to him like music that didn’t want to end, as if the notes were bunching up at the edge of a cliff, refusing to be shoved over. He was the body watcher at so many viewings when he was a teenager that it took years to get the haunting melody out of his head. And now it has come back as he crosses the dining room toward the Viewing Room, a small outcropping off the west wing where the bodies of Red Paint’s most prominent citizens are laid out in their ornate coffins. He could have brought Jean here in her sleek bronze casket, surrounding it with large pots of white lilies. But what if no one came to her wake? What if no one remembered her at all?

He pulls open the doors and sees two computers sitting on facing desks. He steps back and looks both ways to make sure he isn’t disoriented. The Viewing Room has apparently become a small media center, and where do people in Red Paint now go to say goodbye to their dead? He takes a seat at one of the monitors. The cursor blinks in the Google box, blinks and blinks, waiting for instructions.



That evening he sits in the library and prints a short message in his clearest hand, all capitals. He walks over to the reception counter where an older woman is making notes in a ledger, her head down. It’s the first time he’s seen her there, and he wonders what position she holds in the McBride clan. Sprawled next to her on the counter is a muscular gray cat with an enormous lionlike head.

“Oh,” she says, looking up after a minute, “I didn’t hear you.”

It’s a familiar comment—I didn’t hear you, or I didn’t see you. Sometimes he feels like he could walk through people and they wouldn’t notice. Maybe just a little shudder and a momentary What was that? “Sorry to bother you,” he says, “but do you have a postcard stamp, by any chance?”

“I can do better than that, I have a meter right here.” She gestures behind her and then extends her hand. He holds the card down along his leg. “Anything wrong, Mr.…”

“Chambers.”

“Of course, the Rachel Carson suite.”

She’s waiting for his answer. Is anything wrong? He hands over the postcard.

“Paul Revere,” she says, noting the picture. “You should get one of our Bayswater Inn cards, show people where you’re staying. Only a dollar each, I have them here.”

“Perhaps next time,” he says.

She slides his postcard through the meter, then tosses it into a tray of outgoing mail, message side up. At this movement the cat raises its head off the counter and considers the human close by. He has never seen a cat like this one, so thick in the neck and face.

“Have you met Terrence?” the woman asks, scratching the animal’s cheek.

“Hello, Terrence.”

“He looks like a bruiser, I know. The males get that way when they aren’t neutered, all bulked up for fighting. But inside he’s just a big sweetie.” Terrence holds his gaze.

“That’s nice to know.” The man reaches out his index finger, and the cat takes a lick.

“If Terrence likes you,” the woman says, “you must be all right.”