Laurel, Summer 2004
Harborview House was well named. Standing on the widow's walk, Laurel looked to her left and could see the Oyster River wind between a tumble of pine covered hills on its way to the ocean. Closer by, the town of Port Harmony itself was clearly visible from her lofty perch.
She had to shake off a hint of vertigo looking down at it. She could see church steeples poking up from the tree tops and the cleared spaces of the town common and the elementary school playfields. Directly before her were the forty or so brick and clapboard buildings that comprised the quaint downtown.
She leaned on the railing and peered intently at the visible storefronts. One looked to be a coffeehouse, another was clearly a bookstore. She made a mental note to check them out when she went into town.
To the right of downtown, she looked out at the harbor, and beyond it, to the open sea. A small boat was heading toward the town landing. She could faintly hear its puttering engine as she watched it deftly pull alongside the dock. When it stopped, she gazed around the harbor area. It seemed to be a chaotic jumble of ramshackle wooden buildings, dumpsters, and boats propped up on tall jacks.
She tilted her head back and felt the sun warm her face. A cool breeze swept across the widow's walk, rustling the hem of her yellow sundress. Inhaling, she could smell the salt in the air.
She heard a sound from below her, and looked over the rail. Her mother had come out to the deck. She set a tray on the round wicker table and pulled out a chair.
"Is that ice tea?" Laurel called down.
Her mother looked up, shading her eyes from the sun. "Yes," she said, "Why don't you come down and have some? I don't like you being up there in the first place. I don't think it's safe."
Laurel rolled her eyes, but smiled and said, "I'll be right down."
She took the stairs two at a time, crossed through the dining room and emerged on to the deck. Her mother had already poured her a tall glass of tea and was dropping a lemon wedge in it when she sat down.
"I don't know why it wouldn't be safe," Laurel said, "It's been there for a couple hundred years."
"That's exactly why it isn't safe."
"The view is worth a little risk."
Her mother slowly shook her head. Then, craning her neck, she said, "Here comes your father."
The main entrance to Harborview House was on the inland side, off of Bluff Road, but on the seaward side, a steep set of stairs led from the deck to a gently sloping path down the hillside to Kittredge Street. Laurel looked over her shoulder and saw her father emerge from the top of the stairway.
"Where'd you go, Daddy?" she asked.
He held up a folded newspaper. "Down to that little store to get the Herald," he said. He sat down, opened the paper and began to peruse the front page.
"Andrew," her mother said, as she poured him a glass of tea, "Would you please tell your daughter to stay off of that balcony? I don't think it's safe."
"It's not a balcony," he replied without looking up from his paper, "It's a widow's walk."
"Why do they call it that?" Laurel asked.
He put down the newspaper, took a sip of tea, and said, "These big houses all belonged to prosperous captains in the old days, when ships from this port, and others like it, traded all over the world. Many of them had these walkways at the top of the house, where their wives could watch for the returning ships."
"But why are they called widow walks?"
"Because sometimes, the husbands, and their ships, would never return. Sometimes the wives would stand up there every day for many years, waiting in vain."
"That's really sad."
"So, what are your plans for today?" her mother asked.
"I thought I'd walk down into town take a look around."
Her mother frowned. "Honey, I really appreciate you spending your summer with us," she said, "I spent the summer after my junior year at Bryn Mawr in Italy. So I know that it's a bit of a sacrifice for you to spend yours here with us in Maine. But you know, you're our only baby and we've missed you so much while you've been away at college."
Laurel smiled, despite her resentment that her mother had brought up her summer in Italy. "That's all right, Mom," she said, "I'm not looking for excitement, I'm happy just to spend the summer relaxing."
"Good place for it," her father said, without looking up from his paper.
Laurel finished her ice tea, fetched her purse from the hall closet, gave them each a kiss and headed down the stairs.
As much as she wished she were elsewhere, Laurel had to admire the beauty of her surroundings as she walked down the gentle slope of Kittredge Street. The houses, large and rambling, all appeared to have been built in the early nineteenth century. Many had plaques beside their front doors; Collins House 1817, Morgan House 1834, Lovejoy House 1825. Each yard seemed to contain either a massive lilac bush or rhododendrons in full bloom. In every open space along the street, pink and purple lupines reached towards the clear blue sky.
Near the bottom of the slope the street curved to the right. She passed between two large brick buildings and stepped on to High Street, turning left. The building on the corner was the Town Hall. In front of it, the bronze figure of a union soldier stood, holding his rifle at parade rest.
Next to the Town Hall, a small variety store was set back from the street. Its windows were plastered with broadsheets advertising Moxie and Shipyard Ale and the Maine state lottery. She assumed this was where her father had bought his newspaper.
The other side of the street was lined with brick store fronts. She crossed over to take a closer look. There was a barber shop, a hardware store and a real estate agency. Past a narrow alleyway, she walked by a jewelry store, a lawyer's office and an empty storefront. A sign in the window read "Coming Soon," but did not say what was coming.
High and Main Street met at an angle. The Port Harmony Congregational Church imposingly faced the intersection. She cut across the shady church yard to Main Street. First Methodist Church was directly in front of her. Looking up the street towards the edge of town, she saw another steeple. That must be the Baptists, she thought.
Main Street was more tightly clustered with businesses than High, and was much livelier. There was a bakery and a little diner and to Laurel's surprise, a Thai restaurant. There were several gift shops, most, naturally, specializing in nautical themed items. To her delight, she found the little book store she had spied from the widow's walk, tucked between Walgreens and Reny's department store.
The day was growing warmer, so when she saw Lovejoy's Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlor, she went in and bought a cone of mint chocolate chip.
The town common was just up at the next corner, so she crossed and walked there. It wasn't a large park but it was shady and cool and filled with lovely beds of lilies and columbine. At the far end, there was a gazebo. She imagined there would be some old timey kind of band playing there on the Fourth of July, perhaps accompanying a barber shop quartet.
There was another monument in the center of the the park. She walked toward it, wondering which war this one was commemorating. But when she came around to the front of it, she saw that the figure was not a soldier, it was a bearded man in what look like a raincoat and hat, hunched over an old fashioned ship's wheel.
"To The Men Of Port Harmony Who Were Taken By The Sea," the inscription read.
Laurel sat down on a bench across from the statue, suddenly overcome with an uneasy feeling. She looked down at her ice cream cone, and no longer wanted it. She remembered her father's explanation of the widow's walks. Now, this monument, this grave marker for men with no grave, was a second piece of evidence that beneath the town's bright and sunny facade was a legacy of...what? Sadness? No, she thought, loneliness.
She heard children's laughter and looked up to see a boy and a girl running across the lawn, a beagle puppy scampering at their feet. A young woman, presumably their mother, followed behind, smiling at them.
Laurel gazed around the park. A young couple was strolling together, hand in hand. A middle aged man sat on the steps of the gazebo, eating his lunch. An elderly woman on a motorized scooter was tossing peanuts to a small flock of crows.
She finished her ice cream, without really tasting it. You are being ridiculous, she thought, this is Maine, but it's not a Stephen King novel. There is no great darkness lurking beneath the town's surface. People were born here, they lived their lives, they died. It wasn't likely that the people in the park knew anyone who had been lost at sea. That scarcely ever happened anymore, did it?
No, she realized, there isn't any special aura of melancholy in Port Harmony. That feeling was coming from within her.
She had wondered, on occasion, if she suffered from depression. She didn't think so, at least as she understood it. What she felt so often was not depression, but might more accurately be called dissatisfaction.
Recently, she had felt disgruntled about spending the summer with her parents. A group of her friends from U-Mass had rented a house in Amherst. She could have stayed with them and taken a seasonal job, waiting tables or working the register in a local store. But she chose not to disappoint her parents, even if it meant disappointing herself.
She rose from the bench and continued her walk along Main Street, but she was lost in her thoughts and paid little attention to the people and businesses she passed by.
How long have I felt this way, she thought. It certainly hadn't started when her mother brought up the idea of summering in Maine.
