Home, Again
Home, Again
E d’s parents aren’t wild about seeing Henry Pepper on their property, though they are mollified somewhat by the sight of the jar, which is back in their home for the first time in thirty-five years. When Ed first removed Old Mo from the wrapping, his mom and dad said, “ Ohhh! ” then fell silent, running their hands along the seams where the jar had been repaired. Ed knew they were thinking of Baz. They all were thinking of Baz. But they were grateful, too, for this one thing that had been reclaimed from what they had lost.
After that, his folks began to move about the house with half smiles on their faces, though Ed has seen his mother throw cutting glances in Henry’s direction. The last time Ed’s folks saw Henry, he was getting ready to marry Ebby. Days before he disappeared from her life. Ed doesn’t like having Henry here, either, but this is what Ebby wants. Ebby says she and Henry have had a long talk about things. Henry himself told Ed he feels like a shit for what he did to Ebby and wants to help the Freemans with their project.
Ebby says Henry has the skills they need at this point, and she knows she can trust him to keep quiet about their family’s plans for the jar until they’re ready to make the announcement. Henry is good at not saying anything, she says. And, no, the irony of that isn’t lost on her.
“See?” Ebby says, pointing at Henry. Henry has his camera anchored to a tripod and is asking Ed’s father to shift the position of the old jar. Its surface seems to glow, now, except where delicate shadows of oak leaves quiver against the stoneware. “Henry has this way of capturing light,” Ebby says.
Ed nods and tries to smile, but he feels his brows pull together as Ebby walks up to Henry. She looks so pleased with him. Not a good thing, Ed thinks, though he notices that Ebby never touches Henry, never quite looks him in the eye. Not like last year. Not like before. It’s as if there is some kind of shield separating their former lives from their current ones. Yet there they are now, standing side by side, facing the jar, their heads tipped in the same direction. This breakup is too damned civil for Ed’s taste.
Ed’s back feels damp under his sweater. The seasons are not what they used to be. His cousin’s son, the one in climate research, says the temperatures in New England are rising faster than the global rate. Before long, he says, the timing of rainfall and cooler temperatures might not be right for the autumn colors this area’s trees are famous for. Not that you need a mathematical model to figure that out. Anyone over forty can see it. Hotter summers. More chaotic storms. More bugs. At least the hummingbirds are coming north earlier. Still, some things about autumn in this backyard haven’t changed. The feel of dried leaves underfoot. The fat glow of squash reaching its prime. The scent of the season’s first logs chopped and stacked.
Massachusetts in autumn will always feel like home, even if Ed still doesn’t want to come back to stay. The feeling of home isn’t tied to one place only.
Ed watches as Henry moves around Gramps Freeman, now, clicking the shutter. By lunchtime, everyone here will have had their turn before the lens. Ed isn’t accustomed to seeing a man of Henry’s generation with an actual Leica, with the bulk of it in his hands, as opposed to a smartphone. Ebby is the one who is using a cellphone camera. She shadows Henry, taking photos of him as he aims the camera. Ebby moves behind Henry, in step with him, bending her own legs as he crouches down.
“Excellent,” Henry says. The shutter sounds repeatedly, though faintly. Ed finds the mechanical sound soothing as he imagines the blades inside the device clapping open to take in the light, then slipping back into their original position. He likes the tangibility of it. But Henry says it’s a digital camera. The shutter sound can be turned off. Though Henry, too, likes to hear it. Ed watches Henry, trying not to look too impressed, and hoping to God that boy does not convince his daughter to get back together with him. Soh follows Ed’s gaze, and as if she can read his mind, she leans in and whispers.
“She met someone, you know,” Soh says.
“Oh, yes?”
“Someone in France.”
Ed rolls his eyes. In France ? A lot of good that’s going to do Ebby here.
“Lord help us,” Ed whispers. Soh gives him a friendly slap on his arm. It feels good, the return of a certain jocular ease between the two of them.
“Shhh,” Soh says, taking his hand and turning to walk farther into the garden. “As for him,” she says, jutting her chin toward Henry. “With any luck, he’ll do some growing up. Find his stride.”
“I really don’t care,” Ed says. “As long as his stride doesn’t take him back into our daughter’s arms.” When Soh laughs, Ed kisses her. He thinks back to late summer, when Soh surprised him by slapping Henry. Until then, he would have been willing to bet the cost of his Rover against seeing that happen. This much Ed will say about Henry: That boy did muster enough nerve to drive all the way up to the Freeman place and look Ed’s mother in the eye. That took guts. Or stupidity. He’s not sure which.
They are all sitting on the screened-in porch, now, sipping on drinks and riffling through the contents of his mother’s ubiquitous canisters of salted mixed nuts. Ed’s dad is talking about Willis, the first Edward Freeman. How he had a way with sketching and painting.
“He told my grandfather,” Gramps Freeman says, “that when he was still a boy, he met a man on the road back from Charleston who inspired him to draw more things from nature. He swore it was the same fellow who did that famous bird book.”
“Who?” says Henry. “You don’t mean Audubon?”
“That’s the one. Well, he didn’t know the name of the man at the time, but that’s who he later claimed it was, and it’s been documented that Audubon was working on illustrations in the area at that time.”
“Seems a little far-fetched to me,” Ed’s mother says, “but this is the story that’s been handed down through the years.”
Ed’s father nods and stands up. “As you know, Willis used to decorate pottery. He put that trail of leaves on Old Mo, and once he got settled in Massachusetts, he painted animals and flowers on wagons and buildings and furniture. But he also drew things he’d seen at sea.” He leaves the room and comes back with the large, flat wooden box that Ed knows well. It holds some of the drawings his ancestor Willis left with his grandchildren, including Ed’s grandfather.
Opening the box releases the scent of years gone by. Years when his grandfather’s grandmother, Aquinnah, a farmer and sailmaker, met Edward “Willis” Freeman at a workstation near the docks. The Freemans have all heard the stories of how one day, after returning from another sea voyage, Willis rode a wagon inland to see Aquinnah’s parents, removed his hat, offered them a sketch of a seascape, and bowed his head before them. A plea for their daughter’s hand. When Willis first saw Aquinnah, he had little more in his possession than the jar, a few sketches, and a new name.
Gramps Freeman removes the sketches carefully and lays them side by side on a coffee table. They all lean forward to peer at the pencil drawing on the first sheet of yellowed rag paper in front of them. It shows a square-rigger, sails raised, pitched at an angle in stormy seas. The next image is a detail of a ship’s rigging, sails neatly folded against the crosstrees. Its intricate system of ropes, cables, and chains rendered in such detail. The sight of those sketches sets up a thrumming under Ed’s rib cage.
There are people, nowadays, who still take voyages on tall sailing ships to learn their workings. When the kids were little, Ed used to say that one day he would take them on just such a trip, and Baz and Ebby would raise their arms in the air and yell, Yaaay!
“When you two are bigger,” Soh would say. She didn’t want them taking risks. Then Baz died, and Ed’s view of the world shifted so radically that he no longer recognized himself. One day he looked at his image in the mirror, at his neatly trimmed, graying temples, at his long, manicured fingers, at the powdery-blue collar of his oxford shirt, at the muted, mustardy tone of his cable sweater, and saw right past it all. He saw through his skin, through the jumble of sinews and arteries and bones beneath, to the only thing he knew to be true. To the wounded heart at his center.
“Why don’t you go?” Soh had said to him more recently, after Ebby left for France. “You’ve always wanted to do that ship thing.” Ed knew Soh wasn’t interested. Wouldn’t even humor him by saying she would consider going. Still, she kept telling him to sign up. He just didn’t see the point anymore. He had meant to do that with the kids. Now, looking at these old sketches, Ed is thinking about it again. He swears he can smell the sea from here, though he knows it’s more than seventy miles away. Maybe he’ll go after all. Or maybe it’ll be enough for him to simply drive back down to their petroleum-blue clapboard house on the Sound and walk down to the beach. Who is he kidding anyway? He never was a sailor, he just loves being by the water.
“Wow, look at that,” says Henry, his voice cutting through Ed’s thoughts. Ed’s father has placed a sketch of a whale, blurred in some spots, on the table in front of them. The bulk of the whale’s body towers over the surface of the water at an almost ninety-degree angle, waves frothing around it.
“Wait, should we be taking photographs of these, too?” Henry asks. “And what about the tintype?” he says, waving a hand toward the living room, where a nineteenth-century painted tintype of Willis, Aquinnah, and their grown sons hangs from one of the walls.
Henry’s enthusiasm seems genuine. Which makes his presence here all the more irritating.