For the next two weeks, I’m holing up on a writing fellowship in a summer house on a hefty tract of private land located on Shin Pond up north. It’s Patten Pioneer Days this week, and the festivities are in full swing. The big event is the fireman’s barbecue on Friday, followed by fireworks, and a spaghetti supper at the Methodist church. There will be traffic this weekend because of it. The town only has a few hundred residents, but this weekend, everyone comes back, including me and my dad, who is bringing his new girlfriend, and they are both staying with me (“in separate bedrooms,” he repeats a hundred times, just to make sure I’ve understood.) He and Barbara met at the Senior Center over slabs of meatloaf, and they’ve been happily doddering away ever since. Strip away the externals, and the two of them are weirdly alike. On spindly legs they potter along, peeling oranges and marveling at the fresh air. They count their pills, worry about finding the bathroom at night, and they’re starting Spanish language classes together.
“Why Spanish?” I ask them.
“Why not?” they reply, smiling.
As they sit outside on the porch, watching the golden eagle soar overhead and listening to the loons on the pond, I roast a chicken and set the table, then call them inside for supper. With happy smiles of anticipation, they wait for me to serve them, as my dad reads aloud the daily meditation from the Upper Room and says grace as we hold hands around the table. For dessert, they eat ice cream and play Scrabble together on the card table. Barbara wins every time. My dad doesn’t mind.
The next day, we drive to Houlton so Dad can show Barbara where we used to live. The Town and Country shop is still there, and so is Cole’s shoes. Ricker College is gone. The Elm Street Diner burned down and got rebuilt at a different spot in town, but it still sells whoopie pies the size of your head. The Christian Missionary Alliance Church is now the Church of Latter Day Saints. The old Congregational Church is in the same place, and so is the Methodist Church on the corner of School Street. The church and the library are still facing each other across a small park, a large statue of a civil war soldier marking the halfway point between them.
The old parsonage is a different color. I recognize it immediately, but it’s the maple tree out front and the Jarvis’s house next door that I really remember. Roy and Mary were skinny old folks who didn’t have kids because they didn’t like them. They retired in Houlton to get away from people, and Roy re-upholstered boats as a hobby that grew into a booming business. This was not the plan. So he sold it, and resumed his cantankerous routine, sitting on the front porch muttering about young whippersnappers and feeding us gingersnap cookies.
“They were Greek,” my dad says randomly. “Jarvis is a Greek name.”
My best friend from middle school still lives in Houlton, so Nancy and I hang out for a while and she updates me on all the gossip before we drive back to Patton and park near the Methodist church to attend the church supper. On the street, cars are lined up on both sides. The church supper is in full swing. As soon as we go through the door and enter the vestibule, the elderly woman taking tickets recognizes my dad immediately.
“Reverend Lee!” Sally exclaims in pleased surprise, moving her oxygen tank out of the way so she can hug him properly. “How nice to see you!” After they chit-chat for a while and he introduces Barbara, Sally turns to me with an expectant look on her face. “And which one are you?” she asks with characteristic Yankee bluntness.
“I’m the middle one,” I say cheerfully.
She looks at me more closely, and her confused expression clears. “Oh yes!” she exclaims in recognition. “Why, you’ve hardly changed at all! Your sister was the pretty one.” And her face lights up in pleasure because she actually remembers the three of us kids running around the church and going Christmas caroling in subzero temperatures.
I smile back, because she’s correct: I’m just as short and stubborn as I was when I was ten. However, the next time one of the old parishioners asks me which one I am, I’m going to grin widely and say, “I’m the Ho!”
Thanks to my korma, it’s finally true.