Road Through the Mountains

One Most of the houses at Ogunquit were shuttered against the blinding day, silent in their gardens above the beach. They stood back from the road, pale blue clapboard battalions on their green lawns. By the Bay Cove Hotel on the corner, a smoke tree hung over the gate to the pool, its spring bronze leaves now green, the threadlike stalks of the flowers fluttering faintly in the July heat. Anna came up the hill, looking back over her shoulder. Her ten-year-old daughter was trailing her wet towel on the path, and her feet were bare against the grass and stone. "Honey, put on your shoes," Anna said. She walked back to her, but in a second, Rachel was running past her, uphill, and into Grace's yard, where she flung herself down in the shade. Anna paused, then picked up the dropped towel, and followed. As she turned in the gate, the suddenness of a memory sur- prised her. Rachel, perhaps only two or three years old, in that same deep shade, in this same garden, chasing Grace's cat, and wrapping it in her arms. The cat, resigned to the show of ardor, submit- ting grudgingly, with a single twitch of its tail. The shade of the tree was dappled, the light a changing kaleidoscope on Rachel's arms, on the fur of the cat, on the sparse grass. In spring, the sweet chestnut shed its pollen in this same place of racing shadows and light. And here was another summer. Another memory flooding in upon the first. Rachel was eight; they were on the road to Provincetown in the early morning; sand was blowing across the end of the highway. Anna's broken-down old Chrysler was hiked on the verge, with the hood raised. As if they were there again in this moment, Anna clearly saw the repairman cocking his head toward her child, grinning; and Rachel, staring, rapt, into the smudged gray distance. Seven a.m., sand underfoot, sea grass, the sound of Provincetown boats setting out for the whales on Stellwagen Bank. Anna had a sudden strange feeling, a sense of disorientation. It was as if she had stepped out of the day, and, for the few short seconds that she had been gone, time had folded in upon itself, stretched like soft candy. She heard the opening of the screen door, saw her mother emerge onto the porch. Anna walked down the path. Grace was even taller than her daughter, and her hair that even up to last year had been a great iron gray color, was now almost white. She was sixty, but looked more. They regarded each other solemnly for a moment. Then Anna opened the door to the house. The rooms inside were blissfully cool, blinds pulled down on the side of the sun, and windows open on the shade. Sea air was blowing through the house, caught from the edge of the bluff above the stony shoreline. From the back, they could see Perkins Cove, the arc of houses facing the Atlantic; beyond that, Grace's view, in winter, when the trees had shed their leaves, was almost completely ocean. Anna walked over to the lawn side, to the shade, to the ripple of air. She looked out the window at Rachel, who was still lying on her back spread-eagled, eyes closed. "Did she say anything about going back?" Grace asked, as soon as the door closed. "No," Anna replied softly. Grace put an arm around her shoulder. Briefly, Anna rested her head against her mother's, before they both turned back toward the room. It bore all the hallmarks of Grace's life. Anna couldn't recall a day when Grace's house had not looked like this: a deep couch with hand-sewn cushions, newspapers on the table, empty coffee cup. A pack of cigarettes. A big box of household matches balancing on the ashtray. The English Roberts radio on the fireplace, the old Norman Rockwell print, the basket of cones and wood. Anna's own paintings, and herMcGregor, Elizabeth is the author of 'Road Through the Mountains' with ISBN 9780553803587 and ISBN 0553803581.