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Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
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Reproduction is accom-plished by cell division, like amoebas. You’d be thrown out of the colony if they even suspected you did this.”
He thrust, and thrust again. I felt the heat start up, up.
“Well, you shouldn’t have corrupted me then,” I gasped, arching up to meet him. “I can’t just stop doing this…now…oh!”
“Or this?”
“No….”
“Or this? Oh, God, Maude….”
“Hurry, Peter, hurry….”
“You’ll have to give it up because the houses are so close together that you can hear…oh, Jesus, Maude… everything .”
“Then,” I said fiercely, riding with him up that long red crest, seeing lights explode behind my closed eyelids, “you’ll just have to stuff a pillow in my mouth every time because I’m very surely going to scream—”
And did. And heard his whoop of laughter spill out with his climax.
I never tired of it, that long slide into red darkness, that shuddering up-spiral, that joyous outspilling. I would ride with him into hell on that, I thought. Bed and laughter, those two things, with Peter, would last forever, withstand anything.
And despite what he said, we could do those things anywhere, including Retreat. Who would dare to stop us?
No matter that I came to feel the cold of Hannah Chambliss’s mind reach out for me as the miles between us shortened, we set off for Maine on a blue-edged morning not long after that evening in an envelope of sensuality and laughter.
Retreat lies at the tip of Cape Rosier, a wild green stub of land fingering out into Penobscot Bay farther than any other land mass on that coast. Only the great islands of the bay—Deer Isle, North Haven, Islesboro—are more sea-locked and inaccessible. The seas around the cape, unbroken for many miles in their sweep up the Penobscot, are dark blue and empty for hours and sometimes days at a time of sail traffic, all but the enormous oceangoing sail yachts preferring the island-sheltered harbors around Rosier. There are many, teeming with sails and yacht clubs and summer homes and colonies: Bucks Harbor, at South Brooksville; Orcutt; Center Harbor, at Haven, near Brooklin; and the entire archipelago of small sheltered harbors around the tip of Naskeag Point into Blue Hill Bay and beyond into the great blue of Frenchman’s Bay. Here the truly wealthy have for a hundred summers nestled their enclaves like small succulent piglets nosing at the pure-cream teats of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert.
Over on that side of the long peninsula that juts out from Blue Hill down to Naskeag, the water is acknowledged to be warmer and gentler, the houses far grander and more accessible, the air sweeter and milder, and the blood far bluer. Cape Rosier is a wild place for mavericks, the conventional summer-people wisdom goes, for those who prefer their own society and don’t mind the great seas and booming blue winds and howling storms; who don’t care that the nearest good shopping town is elegant old Castine, some twenty miles away over horrendous roads (though, if you could go by water, it would be nearer five). The very small village of South Brooksville provides a general store and rental library and cemetery and infinitesimal post office; it is typical of Retreaters that they are proud that the post office was, until the early 1960s, the smallest in the United States. Surrounding farms provide produce, eggs, and milk; fishing boats bring in lobsters and haddock; tidal flats yield clams. A trip to Blue Hill or Ellsworth, for serious shopping and culture, is a half-day prospect, and a sojourn to Bar Harbor can still take the whole of a day, well into darkness. I once offered the suggestion to Mother Hannah that one saw the same faces year after year in Retreat because nobody else wanted to bother with it.
“I know we’re supposed to be very careful who we let into Retreat,” I said, “and I’ve heard for years how hard it is for outsiders to be accepted here. But for my money, it’s because nobody but us
He thrust, and thrust again. I felt the heat start up, up.
“Well, you shouldn’t have corrupted me then,” I gasped, arching up to meet him. “I can’t just stop doing this…now…oh!”
“Or this?”
“No….”
“Or this? Oh, God, Maude….”
“Hurry, Peter, hurry….”
“You’ll have to give it up because the houses are so close together that you can hear…oh, Jesus, Maude… everything .”
“Then,” I said fiercely, riding with him up that long red crest, seeing lights explode behind my closed eyelids, “you’ll just have to stuff a pillow in my mouth every time because I’m very surely going to scream—”
And did. And heard his whoop of laughter spill out with his climax.
I never tired of it, that long slide into red darkness, that shuddering up-spiral, that joyous outspilling. I would ride with him into hell on that, I thought. Bed and laughter, those two things, with Peter, would last forever, withstand anything.
And despite what he said, we could do those things anywhere, including Retreat. Who would dare to stop us?
No matter that I came to feel the cold of Hannah Chambliss’s mind reach out for me as the miles between us shortened, we set off for Maine on a blue-edged morning not long after that evening in an envelope of sensuality and laughter.
Retreat lies at the tip of Cape Rosier, a wild green stub of land fingering out into Penobscot Bay farther than any other land mass on that coast. Only the great islands of the bay—Deer Isle, North Haven, Islesboro—are more sea-locked and inaccessible. The seas around the cape, unbroken for many miles in their sweep up the Penobscot, are dark blue and empty for hours and sometimes days at a time of sail traffic, all but the enormous oceangoing sail yachts preferring the island-sheltered harbors around Rosier. There are many, teeming with sails and yacht clubs and summer homes and colonies: Bucks Harbor, at South Brooksville; Orcutt; Center Harbor, at Haven, near Brooklin; and the entire archipelago of small sheltered harbors around the tip of Naskeag Point into Blue Hill Bay and beyond into the great blue of Frenchman’s Bay. Here the truly wealthy have for a hundred summers nestled their enclaves like small succulent piglets nosing at the pure-cream teats of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert.
Over on that side of the long peninsula that juts out from Blue Hill down to Naskeag, the water is acknowledged to be warmer and gentler, the houses far grander and more accessible, the air sweeter and milder, and the blood far bluer. Cape Rosier is a wild place for mavericks, the conventional summer-people wisdom goes, for those who prefer their own society and don’t mind the great seas and booming blue winds and howling storms; who don’t care that the nearest good shopping town is elegant old Castine, some twenty miles away over horrendous roads (though, if you could go by water, it would be nearer five). The very small village of South Brooksville provides a general store and rental library and cemetery and infinitesimal post office; it is typical of Retreaters that they are proud that the post office was, until the early 1960s, the smallest in the United States. Surrounding farms provide produce, eggs, and milk; fishing boats bring in lobsters and haddock; tidal flats yield clams. A trip to Blue Hill or Ellsworth, for serious shopping and culture, is a half-day prospect, and a sojourn to Bar Harbor can still take the whole of a day, well into darkness. I once offered the suggestion to Mother Hannah that one saw the same faces year after year in Retreat because nobody else wanted to bother with it.
“I know we’re supposed to be very careful who we let into Retreat,” I said, “and I’ve heard for years how hard it is for outsiders to be accepted here. But for my money, it’s because nobody but us
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