Petersfield
As Avery blinked awake in the passenger seat, she could tell by just the road signs they were in New Hampshire. She could already see the bridge in the distance.
She swallowed.
“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” Finley said, tossing her a quick glance and a smile. “Bout an hour left.” Avery nodded, wiping sleep from her eyes, still fixed on the bridge. Her fingers itched to move to the window button.
“We have to roll down the windows as we cross the state line,” she said, turning in her seat so she, at least, could look at Finley. She looked good for going on twelve hours in a car: hair piled up in a bun on her head, sweatshirt discarded at some point after their gas stop in Connecticut, fingers tapping the steering wheel to the beat of the music.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. We have to roll down the windows and smell the Maine air.”
It was one of The Rituals. Baltimore, the Harbor Tunnel: Aves, how do we get out? Follow the lights, Mommy! Connecticut, the Merritt Parkway: When I was little, I called this shitty little thing the “big tunnel.” Seems ridiculous now, doesn’t it? Massachusetts, the first exit on the Mass Turnpike: Should we stop at the train playground? Maine, the state line: Roll down your windows, girls! Smell that Maine air!
“Does it smell any different than New Hampshire air?” Finley asked, eyebrow perfectly arched in question. Avery shrugged.
“Sometimes, when the wind’s just right. Granny always thought it smelled like the ocean,” she replied. Finley glanced at her quickly out of the corner of her eye.
“We don’t have to do this, you know. We can just head up to school.”
“I want to go. I can do it,” Avery said, proud her voice didn’t waver.
“If you’re sure…”
She nodded decisively. “I’m sure.”
They drove up and onto the bridge. She finally moved her hand to the window button, rolling it down. The sign was just ahead. She waited until they were under it to stick her head out the window and shout out, “Smell that Maine air!”
Finley echoed her, a beat behind. Avery kept her head out the window a little longer than usual, breathing deep. If she tried really hard, it did sort of smell like the ocean. But mostly it just smelled like car exhaust.
“Did we do it right?” Finley asked over the wind. Avery nodded as she reached out and briefly touched her hand on Finley’s shoulder.
“Thank you. For coming with me.” Finley nodded, shrugging it off like it was no big deal. But it was.
The sky had started to glow pink and orange by the time they finally broke through the trees and took in Cammock Point in all its glory. The Prouts Hotel kept its stately watch over the back bay. All the boats were moored. The tide was so far out you could practically walk across the sandbars all the way to Old Orchard. Diners sipped cocktails on the hotel’s big Adirondacks and pointed cell phones at the sky.
Finley whistled. “Damn.”
“Turn here. It’s the first driveway on the left.”
She almost wanted to vibrate at just the sight of Petersfield, her family home, in front of her. This fading yellow paint was hers, through and through. Not one thing in that house had changed in at least the last five years. She knew every creak in every floorboard, every book on every shelf, every painting on every wall. She’d picked a college just forty-five minutes away so that she could come here whenever she wanted.
“Here we are!” She didn’t even wait for Finley to turn the car off before she climbed out and stretched. Now it truly smelled like the ocean.
Finley grabbed their overnight bags while Avery spent nearly a full minute fighting with the key. But then they were over the threshold. It felt like coming home. In a way, it was. It had been over a year since she’d been here. Granny had been too sick for her mom or Uncle Luke to feel comfortable coming up here at all, much less without her, over the summer. It had turned out to be for the best, since she’d passed at the beginning of July.
Avery got the first phone call last October. Her mom acted weird when Avery told her she couldn’t talk right now. She asked Avery to call her back as soon as she could. Avery’s stomach immediately began to tie itself into knots. She and Finley left the dining hall right away. Her best friend did an admirable job of trying to keep her distracted until they walked through the door of their dorm, but it didn’t work.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease. That thing the ice bucket challenge was about, that abstract thing that existed out there that none of them had ever had to worry about before. Sporadic, not genetic, so they wouldn’t have to worry about it for much longer, either. Already experiencing difficulty talking. Moving out of New Jersey soon.
Nothing to be done. Prognosis: two to four years. Date of death: nine months later. They’d gotten some time back, sort of. Uncle Luke decided not to put her in a home, but rather do around-the-clock home care at his place. Two years ago, Avery had seen her uncle maybe twice despite him living three hours away; this past year, her mom and sister had gone up five or six times between April and July alone.
Avery had not gone up multiple times. She blamed school, and it was certainly a factor, but the truth was, she couldn’t bring herself to. Not to visit, not to call, none of it. She’d managed one visit, for her mom’s birthday back in May, her first weekend home. By that point, Granny was in a chair, on a feeding tube, and unintelligible. Avery sat across from her on the patio and wished she could be literally anywhere else. It wasn’t the memory she wanted to have. She wanted to close her eyes and see Granny biking down Cammock Point Road, wind in her hair, eighty years old but not feeling or acting a day over fifty. Not this woman in front of her she barely recognized.
She led Finley through the main floor before taking her upstairs. While Avery knew exactly where everything was, she’d never realized before that she didn’t actually know the woman in the two near-identical portraits on either side of the living room, or what those dumb buckets hanging from the ceiling with her great-grandfather’s name on them were even supposed to be, until Finley started asking her about it. How could she have spent all this time here and never asked?
Finley ducked into one of the upstairs bathrooms. Avery stopped in the upstairs hallway, staring at all of the photos adorning the wall. Dozens of faces that she knew from her memories of the house, but couldn’t name. But there she was, age two, building a sandcastle with Uncle Luke. There she was, age ten, practically slurping a lollipop as her sister and her cousins sat around her on the rocks. There she was, age nineteen, in the middle of the cousins’ photo, Granny’s arm around her. The last photo she had with her.
Avery closed her eyes, trying to remember her that summer. Had Granny been clumsier than usual? Had she had trouble talking? Had they missed something? She couldn’t remember anymore. Even as she stared at Granny exactly how she’d looked forever, all she could see was the hunched over woman in the wheelchair slurring out unintelligible syllables.
“Hey,” Finley whispered, her breath tickling the back of Avery’s neck. When did Finley join her? Finley’s thumb wiped away something on her cheek. A tear.
“I’ve never been here without her,” she sniffled. “I don’t—”
Finley wrapped her arms around her. Avery dripped snot all over Finley’s shirt. She didn’t need to look to know Finley was certainly wincing at the feel of it. But she simply held Avery tighter, murmuring, “You’re gonna be okay.”
Avery hadn’t cried over it yet. Almost two months on, and nothing. It was only fitting that she finally did it here, staring at photos from a long full life. A lineage. A life she’d never felt the need to ask about because of course it wasn’t going to end, not the life of Pamela Amelia Peters (née Avery). And yet it came for her, like it would one day come for Avery, Finley, and everyone else. Until she, too, was reduced to photos on this wall, and handwritten notes in the kitchen, and traditions on a thirteen hour drive. ★
Olivia Dimond (she/her) loves finding ways to reinvent the stories we think we know. Her creative and journalistic work has appeared in miniskirt magazine, Study Breaks, and The Bates Student, as well as received honors from the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. You can find her on Twitter @livdimond or at oliviadimond.com.