Elsa Winters who had lost her father at three and who had never known a grandfather, never expected to find a father as she entered her middle age, but that was exactly what happened . . . although she called this man a friend, as a grown woman must do when she finds the man who should have been her father relatively late in life. She met this man on the evening she and her wife and her two children moved into the big white frame house in Ludlow. Winston Churchill moved in with them. Church was her daughter Maria's cat. The search committee at the university had moved slowly, the hunt for a house within commuting distance of the university
to be—all the landmarks are right . . . like the astrological signs the night before Caesar was assassinated, Elsa thought morbidly—they were all tired and tense and on edge. Michael was cutting teeth and fussed almost ceaselessly. He would not sleep, no matter how much Anna sang to him. She offered him the breast even though it was off his schedule. Michael knew his dining schedule as well as she—better, maybe—and he promptly bit her with his new teeth. Anna, still not entirely sure about this move to Maine from Chicago, where she had lived her whole life, burst into tears. Maria promptly joined her. In the back of the station wagon, Church continued to pace restlessly as he had done for the last three days it had taken them to drive here from Chicago. His yowling from the cat kennel had been bad, but his restless pacing after they finally gave up and set him free in the car had been almost as unnerving. Elsa herself felt a little like crying. A wild but not unattractive idea suddenly came to her: She would suggest that they go back to Bangor for something to eat while they waited for the moving van, and when her three hostages to fortune got out, she would floor the accelerator and drive away without so much as a look back, foot to the mat, the wagon's huge four-barrel carburetor gobbling expensive gasoline. She would drive south, all the way to Orlando, Florida, where she would get a job at Disney World as a medic, under a new name. But before she hit the turnpike—big old 95 southbound—she would stop by the side of the road and put the fucking cat out too. Then they rounded a final curve, and there was the house that only she had seen up
until now. She had flown out and looked at each of the seven possibles they had picked from photos once the position at the University of Maine was solidly her, and this was the one she had chosen: a big old New England colonial (but newly sided and insulated; the heating costs, while horrible enough, were not out of line in terms of consumption), three big rooms downstairs, four more up, a long shed that might be converted to more rooms later on—all of it surrounded by a luxuriant sprawl of lawn, lushly green even in this August heat. Beyond the house was a large field for the children to play in, and beyond the field were woods that went on damn near forever. The property abutted state lands, the realtor had explained, and there would be no development in the foreseeable future. The remains of the Micmac Indian tribe had laid claim to nearly eight thousand acres in
Ludlow and in the towns east of Ludlow, and the complicated litigation, involving the federal government as well as that of the state, might stretch into the next century. Anna stopped crying abruptly. She sat up. "Is that—" "That's it," Elsa said. She felt apprehensive—no, she felt scared. In fact she felt terrified. She had mortgaged twelve years of their lives for this; it wouldn't be paid off until Maria was seventeen. She swallowed. "What do you think?" "I think it's beautiful," Anna said, and that was a huge weight off her chest—and off her mind. She wasn't kidding, she saw; it was in the way she was looking at it as they turned in the asphalted driveway that curved around to the shed in back, her eyes sweeping the blank windows, her mind already ticking away at such matters as curtains and oilcloth
for the cupboards, and God knew what else. "Mama?" Maria said from the back seat. She had stopped crying as well. Even Micheal had stopped fussing. Elsa savored the silence. "What, love?" Her eyes, blue under the darkish blond hair in the rearview mirror, also surveyed the house, the lawn, the roof of another house off to the left in the distance, and the big field stretching up to the woods. "Is this home?" "It's going to be, honey," she said. "Hooray!" she shouted, almost taking her ear off. And Elsa, who could sometimes become very irritated with Maria, decided she didn't care if she ever clapped an eye on Disney World in Orlando. She parked in front of the shed and turned off the wagon's motor. The engine ticked. In the silence, which
seemed very big after Chicago and the bustle of State Street and the Loop, a bird sang sweetly in the late afternoon. "Home," Anna said softly, still looking at the house. "Home," Micheal said complacently on her lap. Elsa and Anna stared at each other. In the rearview mirror, Maria's eyes widened. "Did you—" "Did he—" "Was that—" They all spoke together, then all laughed together. Michael took no notice; he only continued to suck his thumb. He had been saying "Ma" for almost a month now and had taken a stab or two at something that might have been "Mama" or only wishful thinking on Elsa's part. But this, either by accident or imitation, had been a real word. Home.
Elsa plucked Michael from her partner's lap and hugged him. That was how they came to Ludlow.