then more boldly.
ZEE COULDN’T FIND A PARKING place on Turner Street. Tour buses lined the lot at the House of the Seven Gables, and the tourists who came in their own cars parked on the sidewalk, ignoring the RESIDENTS ONLY sign in favor of a ten-dollar ticket they would never pay.
She finally parked on the small patch of green where Finch kept his bird feeders. As she got out of the car, she noticed a tourist walking away with an antique ship’s model, which seemed to fly through Finch’s first-floor window and into his hands.
Her first thought was that Finch was being robbed. Then she noticed the tourist’s bags hanging from the guy’s arm, a small child at his side. As she got closer, she spotted the hand-lettered sign in the top of the window: HEPZIBAH’S CENT-SHOP. And underneath it a smaller sign, also hand-lettered: EVERYTHING MUST GO.
Finch’s hair stood up in white tufts. His voice was hoarse. He didn’t recognize her until she stood directly in front of him, and when he did, he immediately started to cry.
The tourists moved back, out of the way.
“Dad,” she said. “What’s going on here?”
“Hepzibah,” he said. “My Zee.” He reached out for her, gripping her hand as hard as he could. “I willed it so,” he said, and then turned to his audience, his faith in life itself renewed. “I willed it so!” he cried.
PART 2: June 2008
The ancient method of Dead Reckoning or deduced reckoning is often unreliable. Winds, tides, and storms can easily push the ship off course. Every mistake is compounded, altering her passage in critical ways, often with tragic results. For this reason, sailors eventually turned to celestial navigation. The stars are a constant. The earth spins, but the stars remain fixed in the heavens. Even the stormiest sky eventually will clear to reveal them.
7
FINCH PRACTICED TOUCHING HIS thumb to his middle finger as rapidly and accurately as he could. He had succeeded fairly well with his right hand but was slower and clumsier with his left.
“There’s usually one side that’s weaker than the other,” the doctor said, taking notes.
“I’m aware of that,” Zee said. They’d been through the routine at least a dozen times. “We’re here about his medication.”
“Unfortunate,” he said. “But we did know that this one might not work. This particular medication came with warnings. It causes hallucinations in some people.”
“And clearly he’s one of those people. He thought he was Nathaniel Hawthorne.”
The doctor’s eyebrows raised. “Creative. Of course, considering his background…”
Zee fired him a look.
“Often men believe they’re working for the CIA, some covert-ops kind of thing. Women’s hallucinations often tend to be more sexual in nature,” he said, grinning at her.
Zee ignored his remark.
Neurologists have a rather warped sense of humor, Mattei had told her more than once.
“We’ll take him off it.”
“I’ve already done that,” she said. When she hadn’t been able to reach the doctor by phone, she had checked the PDR and had called a friend of Michael’s who was also a neurologist. There was no danger from sudden withdrawal, no weaning period.
“Don’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Finch said. His voice, once loud enough to be heard unmiked in lecture halls of a hundred or more students, was now barely audible.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said.
“The hallucinations are not usually unpleasant. They’re generally more alarming for the family than for the patient.”
“Nevertheless,” she said, ending any possibility of continuing the meds. It seemed astounding to Zee when she thought of the side effects some doctors expected their patients to contend with. Any television ad for pharmaceuticals these days came with a list of contraindications so long it sometimes seemed amazing to Zee that people would dare to take so much as an aspirin.
The doctor stood up. “Can you walk for me, Professor Finch?”
Finch stood shakily. Her first impulse was to help him, but she willed her hands to stay at her sides.
With great effort Finch shuffled fifteen feet across the doctor’s office. Zee could tell how difficult his effort was only by his breathing. His face was masked, a classic sign of Parkinson’s.
Once a reserved New England Yankee, Finch had become more emotional with the progression of his disease. But his emotion showed neither on his face nor in any vocal inflection. It was a more subtle energy that told Zee how frustrating and impossible this short walk had become for her father.
She had often wondered at the fact that Finch didn’t have the shaking so common to Parkinson’s. Ten years into the disease, he had only recently developed any kind of resting tremor, and even that was so slight that anyone who was not looking for it would never notice.
Curiously, none of these symptoms had been the first signs of Finch’s illness. The first cause for concern had happened in a restaurant in Boston, the night Finch had taken them all out to dinner to celebrate the release of his new book based on Melville’s letters to Hawthorne. The book was aptly titled: An Intervening Hedge, after a review that Melville once wrote for one of Hawthorne ’s books.
Finch had been working on the book for the better part of ten years. The fact that he had finished it at all was cause enough for celebration; the fact that someone had actually published it represented job security. Finch didn’t need to work. His family had left him money. But teaching was something he loved, and teaching Hawthorne and the American Romantic writers was his greatest joy in life.
Finch presented a copy to both Zee and Melville, the name of the man for whom Finch had left Zee’s mother. That’s what Zee often told people who asked, though neither statement was very accurate. Actually, Finch never left Maureen, though he had met Melville for the first time during one of Maureen’s extended hospitalizations. And Melville’s name was really Charles Thompson. Melville was a nickname Finch had given him, one that stuck.
Zee opened her book to the title page, which he had inscribed to her. To my sweet Hepzibah, he had written in a hand that was much diminished from the one she remembered. A million thank-yous. Zee was contemplating just what those thank-yous might be for when she caught the dedication that was printed on the following page: FROM HAWTHORNE TO MELVILLE WITH UNDYING AFFECTION.
Zee had always had mixed feelings about the book, which hinted at a more intimate relationship between Hawthorne and Melville than had previously been suspected. Though even Finch admitted that the men of the times had been far more accustomed to intimacy than those of today, often writing detailed letters of their affection for each other and even sharing beds, the fact that Finch had tried to prove that there was something deeper there bothered Zee more than she liked to admit. In espousing this theory, it seemed to Zee that Finch was attempting some strange form of justification for his own life choices, justification that was, in Zee’s opinion, both far-fetched and unnecessary.
That Finch and Melville were the real thing, Zee had never doubted. Not only were they clearly in love, but because they were so happy and devoted to each other, they had provided for Zee the kind of stability that Finch and Maureen never could. So despite any damage their love might have caused to the family, Zee would always be
