Chapter One: August 2023
Bobby Davis’s final Facebook post was “It’s a great day to be alive,” his words accompanied by a photograph taken from the granite shelf high above Swan’s Cove, the sunrise lighting the fishing fleet below. It was a beautiful photo taken on a crisp late-August morning, the feel of autumn in the air. Jonny Morton could make out his lobster boat Cheryl Anne in the photo as he powered out to sea for the day, happy the fog had lifted that morning following a week of damp weather. Yes, indeed, it was a beautiful day to be alive, Jonny smiled at his teenage daughter who was guiding a string of lobster traps off the stern. Little did he know Bobby’s body would be found the next morning in the brush below that same ledge by neighborhood children searching for a baseball. When Jonny heard the news at the bar, all he could do was shake his head and feel sympathy for me. When Ingrid’s son Kevin heard the news, he muttered under his breath “Good riddance.”
Bobby was my father, and Ingrid had been his last girlfriend—the love of his life, or so he told me the week before he died. At the time of this revelation, I was incapable of responding as I now wish I had, due to the fact we had not been emotionally open with each other since my childhood. I wish I could have said how happy I was for him. Instead, as I sat in stunned silence thinking about all the women he had loved, including two wives and several affairs, I was like a computer with a full hard drive, incapable of taking in any additional data involving my old man. Afterall, he had only known Ingrid for nine months.
They met at the market shortly after I moved my father from an assisted living facility in Florida to Archer Island off the coast of Maine. Bobby had been kicked out of Woodridge Homes for unacceptable behaviors, rumors circulating he had upset a lady of some means with his unwelcome advances. When it came to my father and women, there was no good way to separate fact from fiction, so who knew for certain what had happened. I had my suspicions. At age eighty-five, he had outlived his savings and was broke. He was ineligible for Medicaid because he was functioning at a higher level than state-funded residential living facilities required. His mind was still sharp and he was able to pass the activities of daily living test; he could bathe himself, get dressed, walk without falling. As his only surviving child, I had little choice but to move him in with me on this remote island, ten miles out to sea and only reachable by ferry. The ferries didn’t run past 3:15 in the winter, which meant coming and going was difficult, especially on stormy days when some or all boats were cancelled. Not the best arrangement for an elderly person, given the limited medical services on the island, but it was the only remaining option. My sister Edith had died fifteen years ago in a car accident, and my brother Jonas had committed suicide. So, Bobby was all mine.
Ingrid Backlund was her name, and although reclusive, she could be found on occasion at the town library reading a new poetry collection, or at the Saturday morning flea market buying dahlias and daisies. Years ago, she had hired me to build a shed at her grand John Calvin Stevens home overlooking Hopkins Cove. One sees almost everyone on an island of 1,200 inhabitants, and Ingrid was difficult to miss, her eyes an unusual greenish-gray color like the quarried granite of the island. When a gust of wind would send strands of silver hair across her face, my father would remark that she looked like an Icelandic knit sweater. Her freckles had melded into age spots, adding a weathered gravitas to her Nordic beauty, a beauty that had broken the hearts of two previous husbands, or so my father told me. He liked to joke that she was descended from Viking warrior queens, and she would usually laugh at this.
The old man had taken the ferry out to live with me eight years after the death of his second wife, who was not my mother. He was happier to see me than I had anticipated, following his assisted living captivity, for which he blamed me. I was the responsible adult who had to enforce the tough love required to keep him there against his will. It seems none of us is good at objectively evaluating our situation in life, and my father was no exception. Following a fall in the shower and an extended stay in rehab, he no longer could live alone in his condo in Sarasota, so I had to find him a suitable place. He hated Woodridge Homes from the start, missed his freedom and privacy, and tried to escape more than once. He was what they call an elopement risk, and it was a huge relief when he begrudgingly settled in after six months. But when his money ran out, he had to leave. Money. Bad behavior. Probably a bit of both.
My island home is perched high above a former quarry, facing southeast and looking out over the main harbor with panoramic vistas best viewed from my wrap-around porch. I bought the home thirty years ago from a summer family that no longer could make the long trip from North Carolina to ten miles off the coast of Maine. For several years their house sat vacant, the roof leaking and shingle siding facing the ocean mostly turned to dust. Many of the windows were broken and covered with blue tarps that the locals put up to keep their children from getting hurt playing inside. There are many neglected old homes out here, mostly summer homes that pass down through generations until they arrive at a young generation not interested or able to tackle the expenses of maintaining an island home. I went to the Town Hall one snowy January morning and found the property owner’s name and phone number. No taxes had been paid in five years so the town was eager to settle this matter with the heirs. That afternoon, I called the owners who were happy to unload the place at what I felt was a fair price, and now decades later, with the many updates I’ve made, the house is worth a lot of money given its prime location.
Most mornings, weather permitting, I would sit on the wrap-around porch overlooking the harbor and sip my hot coffee, enjoying the sounds of lobster boats humming out to sea. On mornings “thickafog,” (a favorite expression of the locals), the blast of the ferry’s horn in the harbor would send seagulls scattering. It was exactly the life I wanted. Quiet. Removed from mainland stresses. Not at all like life now.
With five bedrooms and me living alone, I had plenty of space for my father. But let’s not pretend I was eager to have him living with me. Bobby had been a shitty father and not a good husband to my mother or stepmother, nor to the other lovers who found him devilishly handsome, but almost always unable to commit. I had modelled much of my adulthood on not being like him, his usefulness as a negative role model only carrying me so far as I made mistakes similar to his, especially my battles with drinking, with all the starting and stopping, which I now think was my unfortunate inheritance, but as I’ve learned lately, apparently from my mother’s side and not his.
But, in fairness, his brief time with Ingrid was different from previous relationships, particularly in the way he cared for her as her memory faded. Either he changed on his own or more likely she changed him through the power of their love. What I believe now that Bobby is dead, is that his last girlfriend was indeed the love of his life. I find it sad that neither my mother nor stepmother were true loves, apparently just “suitable matches,” as my sister used to say. But not suitable enough to last long. How might my life have turned out otherwise had Ingrid been my mother? Would I have grown up in a loving home with two parents there for me, unlike what happened? But I have no reason to complain. Life is hard on everyone.
As I think back across this year of upheaval and tragic events, I find myself stuck on an endless carousel of belief and disbelief. Is there some divine force guiding our lives and the circumstances that shape us? Some genius writer and orchestrator constantly testing and challenging us to realize that bad fortune will eventually shape us in positive ways? Understanding only attainable in our final scenes? Here on earth as in heaven? Or is everything just a series of random events strung haphazardly together?
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