at least, if consolation was what she wanted, that she looked “much younger” than her age. If one didn’t look too closely, in too unsparing a light.
Long she’d imagined herself as a girl, not quite a woman, with a curse blighting her maturity. Though in fact she wasn’t a virgin, she’d long led a virginal life. She’d become, in Salthill, a “character” in others’ imaginations. Like Adam Berendt, though Marina wasn’t so strong, nor so popular, a “character” as Adam had been. A minor character . An eccentric . All communities are myth-making, and none more so than communities of the privileged and the sequestered, like Salthill. Where some of us have turned to salt, like Lot’s wife?
The Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, population ,, was less than an hour’s drive north of the George Washington Bridge; by train, you arrived at Grand Central Station in twenty-eight minutes, at least ideally. It was both a “historic” region—an old Dutch community founded in 6 on the west bank of the Hudson River, rebuilt and enlarged in 8 by devout members of the utopian Salthill Community under the messianic leader-ship of Captain Moses Salthill, who would in time, overwhelmed by angelic and demonic voices in “fiercesome contention,” take his own life—
and zealously, vibrantly contemporary. Here was community spirit in an almost literal sense. Even Salthill Republicans, it was fondly (if not altogether accurately) claimed, voted liberal. There was a palpable community self, a soul . You couldn’t avoid it. Owner of the landmark Salthill Bookstore on Pedlar’s Lane, in the heart of the “charming” historic district, Marina Troy could not avoid it.
Adam had said, of Salthill, that it was a place that, lacking legends, except for the long-dead early settlers, had to invent its own. And maybe this had become true, since World War II, of America itself. There were no true “heroes”—for there could be no “heroics.” Yet the instinct for
“heroes”—“heroines”—“legends” remained undiminished. At any time, a number of individuals must be designated as “legendary” by the media; a Middle Age: A Romance
number of individuals must be designated as “local characters” in their communities. The wish to believe that Adam Berendt had been a recluse, for instance, a man of mystery, could not be borne out by any actual behavior on Adam’s part over the years; though Marina sensed it would be intensified after his death. And there was Marina Troy, a “character” on a smaller scale.
The unmarried, never-married, virginal-appearing and “fiercely independent” Marina Troy. A figure of romance, to others at least, in this green suburban world in which everyone was married, or had been married. “They speculate about us,” Marina’s friend Abigail Des Pres told her,
“—I’m the lonely, sexually rapacious neurotic divorcée, forever in quest of a man; you’re the mysterious maiden, with the long glamorous hair like what’s-her-name in the fairy tale. Not Rumpelstiltskin—” “Rapunzel?”
“—a sort of unconscious temptress. Men are drawn, intrigued, but frightened away.” “Are they? How?” “The collective sense is there must be some secret in your life, Marina. So they think.” Marina laughed, though this disclosure alarmed and annoyed her. Her true secret, her repudiated hope of being an artist, she intended not to share with anyone (except Adam, who would never betray a secret).
“But, Abigail, who is this ‘they’?”
“ ‘They.’ Who surround us.”
So tales were told of Marina Troy. Those beautiful somber stony-gray eyes! Her face in repose, so melancholy! Marina could be made to laugh, but silently. Though she was the daughter of a high school science teacher in unromantic Pike River, Maine, north of Bangor, and a woman who’d been briefly a registered nurse, yet her Salthill legend was of a “patrician New
Long she’d imagined herself as a girl, not quite a woman, with a curse blighting her maturity. Though in fact she wasn’t a virgin, she’d long led a virginal life. She’d become, in Salthill, a “character” in others’ imaginations. Like Adam Berendt, though Marina wasn’t so strong, nor so popular, a “character” as Adam had been. A minor character . An eccentric . All communities are myth-making, and none more so than communities of the privileged and the sequestered, like Salthill. Where some of us have turned to salt, like Lot’s wife?
The Village of Salthill-on-Hudson, population ,, was less than an hour’s drive north of the George Washington Bridge; by train, you arrived at Grand Central Station in twenty-eight minutes, at least ideally. It was both a “historic” region—an old Dutch community founded in 6 on the west bank of the Hudson River, rebuilt and enlarged in 8 by devout members of the utopian Salthill Community under the messianic leader-ship of Captain Moses Salthill, who would in time, overwhelmed by angelic and demonic voices in “fiercesome contention,” take his own life—
and zealously, vibrantly contemporary. Here was community spirit in an almost literal sense. Even Salthill Republicans, it was fondly (if not altogether accurately) claimed, voted liberal. There was a palpable community self, a soul . You couldn’t avoid it. Owner of the landmark Salthill Bookstore on Pedlar’s Lane, in the heart of the “charming” historic district, Marina Troy could not avoid it.
Adam had said, of Salthill, that it was a place that, lacking legends, except for the long-dead early settlers, had to invent its own. And maybe this had become true, since World War II, of America itself. There were no true “heroes”—for there could be no “heroics.” Yet the instinct for
“heroes”—“heroines”—“legends” remained undiminished. At any time, a number of individuals must be designated as “legendary” by the media; a Middle Age: A Romance
number of individuals must be designated as “local characters” in their communities. The wish to believe that Adam Berendt had been a recluse, for instance, a man of mystery, could not be borne out by any actual behavior on Adam’s part over the years; though Marina sensed it would be intensified after his death. And there was Marina Troy, a “character” on a smaller scale.
The unmarried, never-married, virginal-appearing and “fiercely independent” Marina Troy. A figure of romance, to others at least, in this green suburban world in which everyone was married, or had been married. “They speculate about us,” Marina’s friend Abigail Des Pres told her,
“—I’m the lonely, sexually rapacious neurotic divorcée, forever in quest of a man; you’re the mysterious maiden, with the long glamorous hair like what’s-her-name in the fairy tale. Not Rumpelstiltskin—” “Rapunzel?”
“—a sort of unconscious temptress. Men are drawn, intrigued, but frightened away.” “Are they? How?” “The collective sense is there must be some secret in your life, Marina. So they think.” Marina laughed, though this disclosure alarmed and annoyed her. Her true secret, her repudiated hope of being an artist, she intended not to share with anyone (except Adam, who would never betray a secret).
“But, Abigail, who is this ‘they’?”
“ ‘They.’ Who surround us.”
So tales were told of Marina Troy. Those beautiful somber stony-gray eyes! Her face in repose, so melancholy! Marina could be made to laugh, but silently. Though she was the daughter of a high school science teacher in unromantic Pike River, Maine, north of Bangor, and a woman who’d been briefly a registered nurse, yet her Salthill legend was of a “patrician New
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