even more for winter when the wind roared across the bay and you could walk the ocean shore for mile upon mile and the only living things you saw were birds.
The house she had lived in for the last two years was a rental on the bay side, a mile or so south of Wellfleet village. She still thought of it as Joel’s house. To reach it you had to leave the highway and negotiate a labyrinth of narrow, wooded lanes, then a steep dirt trail that led down to the water.
Driving through the woods, away from the traffic at last, Helen turned off the air-conditioning of the ancient Volvo station wagon and wound down the window to get the warm smell of the woods. It was probably no cooler than New York, but the heat here was different, the air clean and there was nearly always a breeze.
The car bumped its way down the trail until she could see the black expanse of water below her through the trees and the three small houses she had to pass before the final descent to her own. She stopped beside her mailbox but there was nothing in it. He hadn’t written for over a month.
There was a light still on at the Turners’ who looked after Buzz when she was away. She could hear him barking a welcome as she pulled up outside. He was inside the screen door of the kitchen, wagging his tail and watching her. Mrs Turner appeared and let him out.
Buzz was a neutered scruff of uncertain parentage that Helen had got from a dog pound in Minneapolis, the Christmas before she met Joel. Which, except for her father and an ill-tempered hamster - one of the menagerie of pets Helen had kept as a child - made it the longest relationship with a male she had ever had. His coat was shaggy now, which made nonsense of his name. When she’d first laid eyes on him, he’d had an all-over crew-cut to rid him of a frightful infestation. Covered in blotches of purple disinfectant, he’d been, without even a close rival, the ugliest dog in the pound. Helen simply had to have him.
‘Hiya Trouble. How’re you doing? Get down now, get down.’
Buzz jumped into the car and waited in the passenger seat while Helen thanked Mrs Turner and chatted for a minute or two about the horrors of summer in the city. Then she and Buzz drove down the last quarter of a mile of bumps and potholes to the house.
It was a big old place, clad in rotting white clapboard that rattled when the wind blew, as it often did, from the west. It stood on its own like a beached liner at the water’s edge, overlooking a marshy inlet of the bay. It seemed yet more like a ship inside, its every wall, floor and ceiling paneled in narrow, darkly varnished tongue and groove. Upstairs, twin gable windows surveyed the bay like portholes. The bridge of the ship was a long bay window in the living room where at high water you could look out and imagine you were at last afloat and setting sail for the Massachusetts mainland.
Helen could happily stand at that window all day, if she let herself, watching the weather rearrange the shapes and colors of the bay like a restless, perfectionist painter. She loved the way the wind and clouds made traveling patterns through the marsh grass and how, when the tide slid out, the air filled with a salty, primordial tang and the mud flats hummed and scuttled with armies of fiddler crabs.
The time-switch light above the back door was on and a welcome-home party of bugs was whirring around it, casting shadows five times their size on the stoop. Helen dumped her bag outside the door She would take a quick walk along the shore to give Buzz a run She was tired, but the kind of tired you get from sitting in a plane and a car too long. It was also an excuse to delay going inside. The house seemed so big and silent now that it was only she and the dog who lived there.
She walked down the curve of broken boardwalk and then down the steps to the strip of sand that ran beside the marsh grass all the way to the end of the inlet.
The breeze felt good on her face and she took the
The house she had lived in for the last two years was a rental on the bay side, a mile or so south of Wellfleet village. She still thought of it as Joel’s house. To reach it you had to leave the highway and negotiate a labyrinth of narrow, wooded lanes, then a steep dirt trail that led down to the water.
Driving through the woods, away from the traffic at last, Helen turned off the air-conditioning of the ancient Volvo station wagon and wound down the window to get the warm smell of the woods. It was probably no cooler than New York, but the heat here was different, the air clean and there was nearly always a breeze.
The car bumped its way down the trail until she could see the black expanse of water below her through the trees and the three small houses she had to pass before the final descent to her own. She stopped beside her mailbox but there was nothing in it. He hadn’t written for over a month.
There was a light still on at the Turners’ who looked after Buzz when she was away. She could hear him barking a welcome as she pulled up outside. He was inside the screen door of the kitchen, wagging his tail and watching her. Mrs Turner appeared and let him out.
Buzz was a neutered scruff of uncertain parentage that Helen had got from a dog pound in Minneapolis, the Christmas before she met Joel. Which, except for her father and an ill-tempered hamster - one of the menagerie of pets Helen had kept as a child - made it the longest relationship with a male she had ever had. His coat was shaggy now, which made nonsense of his name. When she’d first laid eyes on him, he’d had an all-over crew-cut to rid him of a frightful infestation. Covered in blotches of purple disinfectant, he’d been, without even a close rival, the ugliest dog in the pound. Helen simply had to have him.
‘Hiya Trouble. How’re you doing? Get down now, get down.’
Buzz jumped into the car and waited in the passenger seat while Helen thanked Mrs Turner and chatted for a minute or two about the horrors of summer in the city. Then she and Buzz drove down the last quarter of a mile of bumps and potholes to the house.
It was a big old place, clad in rotting white clapboard that rattled when the wind blew, as it often did, from the west. It stood on its own like a beached liner at the water’s edge, overlooking a marshy inlet of the bay. It seemed yet more like a ship inside, its every wall, floor and ceiling paneled in narrow, darkly varnished tongue and groove. Upstairs, twin gable windows surveyed the bay like portholes. The bridge of the ship was a long bay window in the living room where at high water you could look out and imagine you were at last afloat and setting sail for the Massachusetts mainland.
Helen could happily stand at that window all day, if she let herself, watching the weather rearrange the shapes and colors of the bay like a restless, perfectionist painter. She loved the way the wind and clouds made traveling patterns through the marsh grass and how, when the tide slid out, the air filled with a salty, primordial tang and the mud flats hummed and scuttled with armies of fiddler crabs.
The time-switch light above the back door was on and a welcome-home party of bugs was whirring around it, casting shadows five times their size on the stoop. Helen dumped her bag outside the door She would take a quick walk along the shore to give Buzz a run She was tired, but the kind of tired you get from sitting in a plane and a car too long. It was also an excuse to delay going inside. The house seemed so big and silent now that it was only she and the dog who lived there.
She walked down the curve of broken boardwalk and then down the steps to the strip of sand that ran beside the marsh grass all the way to the end of the inlet.
The breeze felt good on her face and she took the
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