We are running out of space at the Nantucket landfill. I spent the winter driving by dumpsters, unable to stop myself from looking over the edge. There’s so much being thrown away that is worth saving. I want to save it all. I don’t need anything else, but when people call with a chop saw or a truckload of mahogany decking or an ice chest or deep dresser drawers with dovetails chiseled by someone long, long dead, or a flat file waiting to be filled, I can’t say no.
I can’t save it all. I can’t save everyone. I can save this one thing. I can try to save myself.
I need to repair the gunwale of my dinghy. I need to build a deck for my outdoor tub. I need to learn to draw. I need to finish this novel. I will find a use for it all. I will find a use for everything. I will be useful.
It seems like everyone I know is divesting themselves of something. A lot of folks want to leave, to retire, to move to Vermont or New Hampshire or Maine. To live in a place that’s easier. Meanwhile, I’ve accepted that this is where my life is. I intend to die here, just make my way further down South Shore Road to Sherburne Commons until eventually my ashes are scattered on the wind in the low dunes near the sewer beds where my mother’s cousin Danny’s memorial bench is. Maybe I’ll get mixed in with the sludge and trucked out to the dump.
There are people who have said they are leaving Nantucket as long as I’ve lived here. Depending on the day, half the year-round population of the island is claiming they’re going to leave and move someplace else. But where would we go? We can’t all get boat reservations at the same time. We can barely get our cars inspected here.
At our May town meeting, the new nursing home appropriation fails. I wonder if there will be a place to die here when the time comes. Is that why we are all haunting one another while we are still alive?
The other Saturday I was in an old garage that’s getting cleaned out before the house goes on the market. The place smelled like mold and mildew, and the faintest hint of the lilacs that were just starting to bloom along the street. It was twilight, the old garage bathed in blue. I know the family’s better stuff was sold at auction last summer. The auctioneers here sell the same lightship baskets and scrimshaw over and over again.
I opened an old filing cabinet and could smell the family photos before I saw them. Neatly organized file folders, curling at the edges, catalogued a life: CHILDREN, DAD’S WILL, DANCE CLASS, DEEDS, GARDEN, INSURANCE, LETTERS, MANUSCRIPTS, MOTHER, POTTERY, SCHOOL PAPERS, and on and on, each aspect of a existence organized alphabetically. I put some photos in a pile and hoped they will be looked at one last time before the house is sold.
I pulled a hammer out of the dumpster. It fits me better than the one I bought at Frager’s hardware some years ago. I rescued some pottery tools and give them to a ceramicist I know. I wrapped them in twine, a little bouquet. I saved the lilacs for myself. They need to be forced open.
I drove home past the junkyard. The spring peeper frogs are so loud down there. Come September, the fox grapes will choke the old boats that have taken up residence in the bog. We are all so twisted together out here. Entanglements are enough to kill a right whale. It is a wonder the rest of us survive it all.
