Tales of a Seaside Inn continues below from Part 3 in May.
... The original Saltmarsh Inn, circa 1650.
Patience picked up on our meandering course of thought, which did sort of seem at sea, although enjoyable all the same and interesting in its drift.
"If I understand my family, the Puritans saw the sea's storms and their own sufferings as punishments sent from a god angered at their personal sins and mankind's inherently sinful nature. Those sins, inherited from The Fall, no more separable from humans than slime from fishes."
As we've seen, Patience has no special fondness for fishes or any other denizens of the deep.
"God I don't know. I'm agnostic about many things, god among them. Although I guess she's on my bucket list. Or maybe post-bucket list."
"My daughter says, 'Mom you're good at lots of stuff, but God's just not one of them.' Polly's probably right. I'm no good at god."
Polly was born as Karen graduated divinity school and Patience, really on a whim, asked her to play godmother. Karen, for her part however, took the role seriously, in the sense of introducing the child to God, not just doting on and heaping her with gifts. Although there was that too.
She and Lily, her girlfriend from BU, married after graduation as soon as common sense finally prevailed to legalize gay marriage in the cradle of liberty. As for cradles, however, they would never rock their own because, as Karen put it, "We'll probably always be just poor church mice."
But in a very real sense Karen had been adopted by the Morris family early on. And that bond only grew after she summoned up the courage to come out as gay, much to the disgust of her very conservative Mayflower family and later announced her vocation to the ministry, Unitarian no less, much to their additional horror. She felt like family and in turn adopted Polly without a second thought.
But moreover Karen was lavish with her love, time and attention. Not unexpectedly she'd acquired her first congregation. She never catechized. I mean, being Unitarian, how much dogma is there anyway? But God was always a presence between them which they naturally shared and spoke of as if he/she were a close friend and confidant, always at hand, an obvious and comforting fact of living.
Patience was, well, patient with this as in most things. She overheard it all as harmless and never objected. It made Polly happy and that was enough. In fact it sounded preferable to the tedious chatter of most children. It did give her pause, however, when Polly began seeing God everywhere at around age seven.
Walking home together from the inn to the farm, say, under a starry canopy streaked with occasional meteors, Polly might say, "Look, there's God!"
Patience's gaze would follow the tip of Polly's finger to a point in the heavens, a dark lost coordinate. "I don't see anything, sweetie."
"He just moved. God smiled on us. Now he's smiling at someone else. He's busy. He's got lots of people to see. The whole world tonight. He has to move fast. Oh, mom, you're just no good at God."
Patience quietly concluded, perhaps cynically, "Evidently one has to enjoy the split-second reflexes of a child to catch a glimpse of god. And perhaps, not to put too fine a point on it, a certain amount of coaching, if not quite catechizing, at a credulous early age."
None of which Hector and Justine had apparently considered necessary to launch their children out on the stormy and uncharted seas of life.
Now if Polly had begun seeing Jesus that would have been another matter altogether, suggesting, if not immediate psychiatric intervention, at the least a serious talking to with Karen. But god, the lower case G, seemed no more harmful than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Sponge Bob or all the other crap grownups force-feed kids to keep them controlled and not totally wig them out with their, albeit perhaps, innocent weirdness.
The non-existence of the first two suspects Polly accepted unphased and without demur upon discovering the truth. "Santa's not real Mom. Everyone knows that except little kids," she volunteered one Thanksgiving, aspiring to be her sophisticated self and little no more.
The third in the trinity turned out to be more problematic. The cover of her devoted idol, blown by accident during an in-store appearance, caused the child a slow sad march through all the stations of grief when she was disabused of his existence. Sad yes, but much to the salvation of Patience's sanity, who seriously suspected he might be a source of mental illness, at least to adults.
Patience continued, "Now if what people mean by god is the universe, everything that exists - stars to starfish, atoms to asterisms, super novae to vibrating strings, cosmic laws to moral ones - I'm OK with that. As a place holder. We're roughly on the same page. Just not the one found in any bible or professed to the pews."
"But look," Chief Farnham stepped in with restrained irritation, "who's behind all of it? Who created that? Who made the laws?"
Fred, our police chief, who's also the harbor master and a deacon of our town's Congregational church, is a man of few words. His questions are usually related to practical points of law and order rather than impossible existential issues.
"OK kids, where're your clothes? What's that smell? And you're how old Missy?"
"I see it's only two horses. But where's the permit?"
"Lady, three times this week. Where's the fire now?"
"You want trouble or simply have a death wish?"
"Didn't leave a quarter for that zucchini in the cigar box? Well you're lucky. It's August, you can't pay people to steal them."
He prides himself on having the courage of his convictions, simple though they may seem, against a rising tide of pagans who pride themselves on having the courage of their doubts, all way too complex to guide a soul through the depths and shoals of life. Which is why they so often lose their way and eventually end up as subjects of his questioning.
When Fred has something to say, however, it's often well worth hearing him out. Either that or it's a case, as noted above, of, "Look, you'd better listen up." Wise words those in any case.
The alternative? Maybe a short ride downtown, the two blocks of Main Street by the police station.
Adjacent to the Chief's office in the basement of the town hall is one small windowless, airless cell. Yours, perhaps. Cot, can and catering, if required, provided by the Saltmarsh Inn. All yours alone.
To sober up another sailor wrecked on the shores of morning or maybe to consider one's more serious sins in the deeply silent depths of this grimly Gothic building.
One door down is the equally claustrophobic Rowley museum, carefully curated by Miss Loving, our town librarian. And one among the fire circle tonight, as noted.
Shirley knows where all the bodies are buried and just how they came to be through numerous generations. Here the past is firmly convicted and confined with no chance of reprieve or escape. Your odds may be better. Or not.
Patience paused for a moment, as if considering skating out on what looked like thin ice. Which is what she considers faith to be - nowhere near deep enough and very easily broken, but enticing in its smoothness, in what it hides and elides.
Patience sides with science, in which faith apparently has no proper place. Scepticism, which I guess is an endless questioning and restless curiosity - or the courage of one's doubts, if you will, as mentioned above - is probably the scientist's natural attitude. Plus the use of the word 'probably' it seems. Not to say that society could function on these alone. There are just too many unknowns. Probably.
"No one. There's no one behind the curtains. There is no behind. And the only curtains are the mysteries in men's minds, waiting to be pulled back to reveal - nothing. It is what it is."
"So you believe in nothing? Religion has taught us nothing after all this time?" Fred said.
"No, not nothing," Patience replied, "although it, and man even, is a mere blip on the radar of cosmic time."
"What then?"
"Well sin, surely. Like the sturdy Puritan stock who were still frail in the flesh. There's almost nothing provable in religion, but sin certainly is."
There was a fog moving in now, a sharp sea smell creeping over the door sill, seeping under window sashes - for any house of this age will always befriend the elements, having lived with them so long - carrying with it the scents of ebb tide, a heady mixture of mud, hay, salt - and clams. The mixture of sin and sea fog, with its tang of shellfish, seemed to react to make us all hungry, late as the hour was. Soon, however, there was a hopeful scrunch of gravel on the driveway and bang of the kitchen door at the back of the inn. Herb was home. And wherever Herb was, food soon followed.
Herb worked beside our mother, Justine, in the inn's kitchen from an age when he couldn't quite see over the countertops and had to stand on milk crates to stir a bechamel.
She was the Saltmarsh's chef for years, a solid country cook who, although from the prairies of Nebraska and untrained except by her Pawnee Indian mother, over time perfected a unique, sophisticated take on classic Yankee cuisine. Especially seafood, which she'd never had growing up. She'd never even seen the ocean until she married Hector, in fact she'd never seen him until their wedding day.
Hector served on several ships in the South Pacific during the war and the crews, as most sailors at sea from time beyond memory, were always starved for news from home. Letters were precious commodities, and as a result, to be swapped and shared with one's buddies, even those with the most intimate and personal details. Especially those, actually, ones worth working over for days.
One day his oppo, Tommy, in the rack above him handed him down a letter postmarked Broken Bow, Nebraska. "My sister," was all he said.
As he opened the envelope a photograph fluttered out like a moth from between the pages and landed roughly over his heart. He picked it up and couldn't believe what he saw by the lingering half light below decks - a beautiful woman in a long wind-blown white dress standing on top of the waves in a vast ocean.
He did the all-time definitive double-take, shook his head and held the snapshot out in the aisle where the light was a bit better. He saw that the ocean was actually a sea of grass and that the wave was a slight rise above a rolling prairie that stretched unbroken to the horizon.
She was ... he didn't know what to think ... almost unearthly in her beauty. Which he couldn't even begin to place. A mixture of American Indian, New Orleans Creole and Santorini will tend to do that. With the next breath that he finally managed to take he knew with absolute certainty, without a single doubt, that he would marry her. He read the letter.
Dear Tom,
We miss you so much and worry all the time. We follow the war news every night now on a wireless that papa bought (can you imagine?) to do so. Sometimes he even lets us all listen to Perry Mason during Saturday dinner if we've been especially good that week with the chores.
Electricity has now reached a far as the Chase's farm but they say it will be another year before it gets way out here. Papa (he's so clever) has rigged the set up to the battery in the pickup which he parks under the kitchen window. We listen hard for news from the Pacific.
I do envy you seeing the world, however, and the strange stories you have to tell. No doubt, between fighting the Japs, you have the maids of distant lands cast under spells. Would that I might fight, whatever the danger, and have distant men under spells of my own.
For there are no men left here in Broken Bow, besides the old or broken. All are overseas, several sadly dead on one of the fronts. Am I to die an old maid? You left when I was a girl, but I've since turned into a woman and still never been out on a date - or even had the satisfaction of turning down an indecent proposition. What's to become of me?
Do you have any friends aboard ship who might consider courtship? Anyway, enclosed is a snap mamma took of me in the new dress I made. Would that I might ever have an occasion to wear it.
And would that this war would end! Stay safe and come home soon.
Love, Justine.
Hector noted her address in the day's entry of the logbook he kept throughout the war, next to details of the ship's daily run, enemy engagements and ports of call. When he returned the letter Tom took one look at his shell-shocked visage and said, "Yeah, write her buddy."
Obviously a photograph was also required in return with any reply. Hector had his Brownie with him, but it might be months before he could get any prints made. Tom said, "I'll take care of it."
He took a few photos of Hector standing in full dress at the bow of the USS Cassin Young in the slanting sun of a tropical evening. Then he talked with his other oppo. Mike, the ship's photographer, somehow managed to shoot all the Young's battles from every insane point of hazard armed with nothing but Leica, a captured German war weapon.
Tales of a Seaside Inn continues with Part Five in August.
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