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  “What did you want to talk to me about?” Chloe asked. Only a flimsy screen door separated Chloe’s mother’s ears from Hannah’s troubles.

  Hannah waved her off. “Just you wait,” she said, all doom and gloom.

  2

  Sweet Potato

  “I’M IN THE KITCHEN,” HER MOTHER CALLED OUT AS SOON as Chloe opened the screen door. A statement of delightful irony since they lived in a winterized cabin that was one room entire, if one didn’t count, which Chloe didn’t, the bathroom, the two small bedrooms and the open attic lost where Chloe slept.

  I’m in the kitchen, Lang said, because this month she was baking. Last winter, her mother was scrapbooking so every day, when Chloe came home, she would hear: I’m in the dining room.

  The previous fall, her mother decided to become a seamstress and told Chloe that from now on she was sewing all of her daughter’s clothes, in the craft room.

  When she was tracing out the family tree on her new Christmas-present software, Lang was in the computer room.

  During the summers, Lang said nothing, because she was outside, fishing and tending her vegetable garden, voluminous enough to supply tomatoes to all eight homes around their part of the lake. Bushels of zucchini and cucumbers went with Chloe’s dad to work.

  Chloe’s mother Lang Devine, née Lang Thia of Chinese descent from Red River, North Dakota, reinvented herself constantly into something new. She had wanted to be a dancer when she was young, but then she met Jimmy and wanted to be a wife. After many years as a wife, she wanted to be a mother. And after many years as a mother of one, she wanted to be a mother of two.

  Jimmy’s favorite, he said, was when Lang took up tap dancing. He built her a wooden platform; she bought herself a pair of black Capezios size 5, some CDs and taught herself how to tap dance. That was noisy.

  And not as delicious as baking, which was the current phase, and Chloe’s favorite after gardening. Jimmy Devine liked it, too, but groused that he was gaining two pounds a week because of Lang’s buttery hobby. Chloe thought her dad might teasingly mention the extra pounds Lang herself had put on around her five-foot frame, now that she wasn’t tap dancing. But no. Just last week, Jimmy said as he dug into Lang’s cream puffs (made with half-and-half, not milk, by the way), “Sweet potato, how do you bake so much and yet stay so thin?”

  And Chloe’s mother had tittered!

  How to explain to both her parents that it was unseemly for a grown woman of advancing years, married for nearly thirty, to titter when her husband paid her a half-hearted compliment by calling her the name of a red starchy root vegetable?

  This afternoon Chloe walked in slowly, set down her school bag, pulled off her boots, and walked down the short corridor, past her parents’ bedroom, past the bedroom that no one ever went into anymore, past the bathroom, into the open area to put her lunchbox on the kitchen counter where it would be cleaned and prepped for tomorrow. Something smelled heavenly. Chloe didn’t want to admit it, because she didn’t want to encourage her mother in any way. What her mother needed was a tamping down of enthusiasm, not a fanning of the fire. Her mother and Blake shared that in common.

  “Doesn’t that smell divine?” Lang giggled, turned around, and with floury hands, patted Chloe on both cheeks. “I only make divine things for my divine girl.” One of the few things Chloe tolerated about her mother was that she was short, making even Chloe seem tall by comparison.

  Chloe brushed the white powder off her face. “Whatchya makin’?”

  “Linzer tarts.”

  “Doesn’t smell like Linzer tarts.” Chloe glanced inside one of the pots on the stove.

  “Raspberry jam. I made it from scratch this afternoon for the tarts. It’s still warm. You want to try?”

  Chloe did want to try, so much. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m full.”

  “Full from lunch four hours ago?”

  Lang got out some orange juice, a yoghurt, unboxed some Wheat Thins, opened some cheddar cheese, washed a bowl of blueberries, and set it all in front of Chloe sitting glumly at the table. She brought the long wooden spoon half-filled with warm jam to Chloe’s face. Chloe tasted it. She had to admit it was so good. But she only admitted it to herself. She wouldn’t admit it to her overeager mother. “What’s for dinner?”

  “I’m thinking ratatouille.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll see. It’s a vegetable stew, I think. But it could be a condiment.” She chuckled. Honestly, why did Chloe have to be the only serious one in her house?

  “Dad needs meat.”

  “Yes, don’t worry, we’ll feed the carnivore some pork chops. I found a spicy new recipe. With cumin. How was school?”

  Chloe desperately needed to talk to her mother. She didn’t know where to start. That she didn’t know how to start was more vital. She tried not to be irritated today by her mother’s earnest round face, unmade-up and open, high cheekbones, red mouth, smiling slanting eyes, affectionate gaze, her short black hair straw straight like Chloe’s. Tell me everything, her mother’s welcome expression said. We will deal with everything together. Chloe tried hard not to sigh, not to look away, not to wish however fleetingly for Hannah’s mother, the thin, pinched, absent-minded and largely absent Terri Gramm. “School’s good,” she said.

  That’s it. School’s good. Nothing else. Open book, look down into food, drink the OJ, don’t look up, don’t speak. Soon enough, the hobby called. Jam would have to be cooled, the Linzer tarted, the ratatouille stewed.

  Trouble was, today Chloe needed to talk to her mother. Or at least begin to try to talk to her. She needed a passport. Otherwise all her little dreams were just vapor. She had kept her dreams deliberately small, thinking they might be easier to realize, but now feared she hadn’t kept them small enough.

  “Are you going to write a story too?” her mother said. “You should. Mrs. Mencken told me about the Acadia prize. Ten thousand dollars is amazing. I bet Hannah is going to write one. She fancies herself to be good at anything. You will too, of course. Right?”

  Now who wouldn’t be exasperated? What kind of a mother knew about things that happened that day in fourth period English, before her child even had a chance to open her mouth? Chloe managed to contain her agitation. After all, her mother had unwittingly offered her the opening she needed.

  “You discussed it with Hannah and your boys?”

  “Not necessarily,” Chloe replied. Disgusted is what she was. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because you took nearly forty-five minutes to walk home from the bus. It usually takes you fifteen. What else are you doing if not discussing the Acadia Award for Short Fiction?”

  Again, easy to suppress a giant sigh? Chloe didn’t think so. She sighed giantly. “I’m not going to do it, Mom. I’ve got nothing to say. What am I going to write about?”

  Lang stared at Chloe calmly. For a moment the mother and daughter didn’t speak, and in the silence the ominous shadows of hollowed-out fangs essential for a story were abundantly obvious.

  “I mean,” Chloe hurriedly continued, “perhaps I could write about Kilkenny. But I can’t, can I? Because I didn’t go. Maybe you can write that story. I don’t think there’s an age limit on entrants.”

  When Chloe was eleven, her parents had gone to Ireland without her. They said it was for a funeral. Pfft. Their trip formed the foundation of much, if not all, of the resentment of Chloe’s teenage years. A blown-up photo in a heavy gold leaf frame of the Castlecomer glens hung prominently in the hallway.

  Lang continued to stare calmly at Chloe.

  “You don’t need Kilkenny to write a story,” Lang said. “There are other things. Or, you make it up. That’s why they call it fiction.”

  “Make it up from what? I’m going to make up a story about something so dramatic that it will win first prize?”

  “Why not? Blake is.”

  How did her mom know this!

  “I’ve seen nothing. But Blake has seen rats and—”
She stopped herself from saying used condoms.

  “You have an imagination, don’t you?”

  “No, none. I need a story, Mom. Not musings about what it’s like to live on a puddle lake in Maine.”

  “Puddle lake? Have you glimpsed the stunning beauty outside your own windows?”

  In the afternoons, the glistening lake, blooming willows and birches trimming the shoreline, the railroad rising on the embankment did occasionally shine with the scarlet colors of life. That wasn’t the point.

  “I can’t write about skiing or bowling, or learning to drive,” Chloe continued. “I need something substantial. And I have nothing.” Why couldn’t she talk about herself without allowing a whiff of self-pity to waft through her smallest words? The one ashen tragedy in their life she could never write about. And Lang knew that. So why push it? Besides, her mother had once informed her that the Devine women were too short to be tragic figures. “We can be stoics, but not tragics,” Lang had said a few years ago, when it seemed to everyone else that the very opposite was the only thing true. “Make it up, darling,” Lang repeated, unperturbed by her daughter’s tone. “You’re a very good writer.”

  “Mom, I don’t want to be a writer.”

  “Neither does Blake. Yet look at him.”

  Chloe watched her mother walk to the printer in the computer room behind the sofa and peel off several sheets of paper. Lang slapped the rules of entry for the Acadia contest on the table.

  “You have five months to come up with a story and write it. It must be original. It must be fiction. And after it wins, it will be published by the University of Maine Press. Properly published! In book form and everything. That’s very exciting, isn’t it?”

  “Did you not hear me?”

  “No. By the way, I got you the pens you wanted.” Lang produced three packages of blue pens, gel, ballpoint, and fountain, and laid them in front of Chloe.

  “I also took the liberty of getting you a notebook. Several different kinds to choose from. I thought you might need one if you’re going to write a story that’s going to win first prize. The Moleskine is very good. Has soft paper. But you try them all.”

  Chloe stared at the pens, at the four notebooks. Had she actually mentioned that she needed a pen? One blue pen!

  “Mom, listen to me.”

  Lang sat down, elbows on the table, staring at Chloe with complete attention. She looked so pleased to be told to do what she had already been doing.

  “I want to write something, I do. I just don’t think I have … look, here’s what we were thinking.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “The four of us.”

  “The four of you were thinking all at once?”

  “Well, discussing.”

  “That’s better. It’s always good to be precise if you’re thinking of becoming a writer.”

  “Which I’m not, so.”

  “What are you four up to now? Let’s hear it.”

  “We’re thinking of going to Europe.”

  Lang stayed neutral. She didn’t blanch, she barely blinked. No, she did blink. Slowly, steadily, as if she was about to say …

  “Are you crazy?”

  There it was. “First listen, then judge. Can you do that?”

  “No.”

  “Mom. You just said you wanted me to write.”

  “You have to go to Europe to write? Did Flannery O’Connor go to Europe? Did Eudora Welty? Did Truman Capote?”

  “Actually, he did, yes.”

  “When he wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms, his first novel, he’d been to Europe?”

  “I don’t know. We’re getting off topic, Mom.”

  “Au contraire. We are very much on topic.”

  “Mason and Blake need to do research.”

  “So they’re going to Europe?”

  Chloe made a real effort not to facepalm, a real, true, Herculean, McDonald’s supersize-sandwich effort not to facepalm, because there were few things her mother hated more than this brazen gesture of exasperation and frustration.

  “Hannah and I have been talking about the trip for a while.”

  “I thought you just said you wanted to go for Blake and Mason? Make up your mind, child. Either you thought of it on the railroad tracks, or you’ve been planning it for years.”

  “How do you know we were on the tracks?”

  “I saw you.” Lang pointed out the window. “Right across the lake.”

  Both things were true. Chloe and Hannah had been dreaming of going for years, but Blake and Mason just thought of it today. Lang sat and watched her daughter like a bird watching the world. One never knew what the Langbird was thinking until she sang.

  “Isn’t going away to college enough for you?” Lang said quietly.

  Chloe clasped her hands. She didn’t want to look into her mother’s face. She knew how hard it must have been for her parents to let her go away to school. “I’ve been dreaming of Europe since I was little,” she said, almost whispered. “Way before college.”

  “Sometimes circumstances change, and we have to dream a different dream,” said Lang. There was only a breath after that, and no change in expression to reflect the colossal wreck from which life had had to be recomposed, rebuilt from the ashes, Capezio shoe by Linzer tart. “College away is a big step, not to mention an enormous expense, even with the scholarship they’re giving you.”

  “I know, Mom. Exactly. And then work and study and more work and study, and when else could I ever do it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, let’s see, how about—four years from now? Or never. Either way is good with me.”

  “That’s what I want for my graduation present,” Chloe declared boldly. “A trip to Europe. You went to Europe.”

  “It was for a funeral!”

  “So what.”

  “Graduation present. Really. I thought you wanted a laptop.”

  “I’ll use our old one. I’ll take the desktop.”

  “You certainly will not. All my family-tree files are on it.”

  “I thought you were baking now? Oh, and yes, the files are permanently embedded in that one desktop computer. You’re right. They can never be moved.”

  “Do you know what happens after you make a choice to be sarcastic to the woman who gave you life?”

  Chloe softened her tone. She knew that talking to her parents about anything was a fifteen-part process that would begin with an idea being promptly rejected and then followed up by a string of days during which her mother enumerated in Tolstoyan prose why whatever it was Chloe wanted was the worst idea. After a War and Peace-length volume on why they couldn’t get a dog, or a tattoo, or a third earring, or go to Europe, the real decision would be handed down. She didn’t get a tattoo. Or a dog. Or a third earring. What was happening here was just preface. The real meat of her mother’s argument was still to come.

  But this time Chloe wanted a different resolution. This time she wanted her way, not Lang’s way. “Mom, what’s the big deal? I’ll be eighteen when we go.” When, not if. What a clever play on words! What a clever girl.

  “Yes, because that solves all the problems. And don’t use the word when with me, young lady.”

  Ahh! “What problems? There are no problems. We want to go to Europe for a few weeks. We’ll walk around, visit beautiful churches, eat delicious food, go to the beach, experience things we’ve never experienced before—”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “And then come home,” Chloe continued, “and Blake will write a beautiful story that will win first prize.”

  “The boy has many skills. Do you think writing is one of them?”

  “He thinks he does and that’s all that matters.” Chloe was defiant, but she didn’t have the answers. To her friends, she was usually the person her mother was being to her right now. The devil’s advocate, the sucker of joy. There were a thousand reasons why everything Blake and Mason wanted to do was a terrible idea. Oh God. Had Chloe already turned in
to her mother at seventeen? Facepalm!

  “And by the way,” Lang said, “Europe is a big place. It’s not Rhode Island. Or Acadia National Park. Where in Europe were you four thinking of visiting? You mentioned church and beach. That could be anywhere.”

  “Barcelona.”

  Her mother groaned. “Barcelona. Really. That’s your idea. Of all the places, that’s where you want to go?”

  “We’ve never been to Spain. And it’s on the water.”

  “So is Maine. And you’ve never been to Belgium either.”

  “Who wants to go to Belgium? What kind of story can one possibly write about Belgium? Or Maine?”

  Lang shook her head. “There is so much you don’t know.”

  “That’s why I want to go to Europe. So I can find out.”

  “You’re going to learn about life lying on a filthy beach? Okay, riddle me this,” Lang said. “Where do you plan to sleep?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Am I not being clear? You’re planning to go with your boyfriend, your best friend and her boyfriend. Where are the four of you going to sleep in this Barcelona?”

  Chloe tried not to stammer. “We haven’t thought about it.”

  “Haven’t you.” It was not a question.

  “Probably a youth hostel or somewhere like that.”

  “So in a dorm with fifty strangers all using the same bathroom facilities, if there are any?”

  “We don’t care about that. We are young, Mom. We’re not like you. We don’t care about creature comforts. Where we sleep. What we eat. What we wear. It’s all fine. So it’s not the Four Seasons. So what? We’ll be in Europe. We’ll buy a student Eurail pass for a few hundred bucks, sleep on trains if we have to, to save money.”

  “Why would you need to do that?” Lang’s already narrow dark eyes narrowed and darkened further. “You just said you were going to Barcelona. Why would you need to sleep on trains?”

  “In case we wanted to see Madrid. Or maybe Paris.” That was Hannah’s idea. Hannah, the Toulouse-Lautrec artiste.

  “Paris.”

  “Yes, Paris. Isn’t France next to Spain?”

  Her mother folded her hands together. “Chloe, I tell you what. Go away and think carefully about all the questions I’m going to ask you next time you sit down and say, Mom, I want to go to Barcelona. Everything I’m going to ask you, ask yourself, find an answer, and come prepared.”