The Mistake by Douglas Kennedy

Author:Douglas Kennedy [Kennedy, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781448184323
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

Two

PEMAQUID POINT. A short stretch of sand – no more than a quarter-mile long – facing the open waters of the Atlantic. The ‘point’ is more of a cove: rocky, rugged, fringed on either side by vacation homes that are simple, but clearly upscale. Ostentation is never liked in this corner of Maine – so even those ‘from away’ (as anyone not born in the state is called) know better than to throw up the sort of garish shows of money that seem to be accepted elsewhere.

In Maine so much is kept out of sight.

I had the beach to myself. It was three-eighteen in the afternoon. A perfect October day. A hard blue sky. A hint of impending chill in the air. The light – already beginning to decrease wattage at this hour – still luminous. Maine. I’ve lived here all my life. Born here. Raised here. Educated here. Married here. All forty-two years I’ve had to date rooted in this one spot. How did that happen? How did I allow myself to stand so still? And why have so many people I know also talked themselves into limited horizons?

Maine. I come down to this point all the time. It’s a refuge for me. Especially as it reminds me of the fact that I am surrounded by a natural beauty that never ceases to humble me. Then there is the sea. When I was in a book group we worked our way through Moby-Dick two years ago. A retired navy woman named Krystal Orr wondered out loud why so many writers seemed to be drawn to the sea as a metaphor for so much to do with life. I heard myself saying: ‘Maybe it’s because, when you’re by the sea, life doesn’t seem so limited. You’re looking out at infinite possibilities.’ To which Krystal added: ‘And the biggest possibility of them all is the possibility of escape.’

Was that woman reading my mind? Isn’t that what I was always thinking as I came out here and faced the Atlantic – the fact that there is a world beyond the one behind me now? When I looked out at the water my back was turned to all that was my life. I could dwell in the illusion of elsewhere.

But then there was the distinct bing of my cellphone, bringing me back to the here-and-now, telling me that someone had just sent me a text.

Immediately I was scrambling in my bag for my phone, as I was certain that the text was from my son Ben.

Ben is nineteen; a sophomore at the University of Maine in Farmington. He’s majoring in visual art there – a fact that drives my husband Dan just a little crazy. They’ve never been able to share much. We’re all products of the forces that shaped us, aren’t we? Dan was raised poor in Aroostook County; the son of a part-time lumberman who drank too much and never really knew how to spell the word r-e-s-p-o-n-s-i-b-i-l-i-t-y. But he also loved his son, even if he often thought nothing of lashing out at him while tanked.

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