{"id":16577,"date":"2019-08-09T13:28:38","date_gmt":"2019-08-09T17:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=16577"},"modified":"2019-08-09T13:35:06","modified_gmt":"2019-08-09T17:35:06","slug":"how-the-sea-smells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/how-the-sea-smells\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Sea Smells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: none; width: 100%; height: 326px;\" src=\"\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?d=sg19_flipbook&amp;pageNumber=242&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>By Ann Hood<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-13764\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/flatbread-257x300.jpg\" alt=\"flatbread\" width=\"257\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/flatbread-257x300.jpg 257w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/flatbread-200x233.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/flatbread-300x350.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/flatbread.jpg 750w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 257px) 100vw, 257px\" \/>Meg didn\u2019t know what had compelled her to take Exit 28 toward Portland instead of driving straight home to Providence. On the once-familiar streets she became so overwhelmed by nostalgia and bittersweet memories that she had to pull over and stare at the ocean to calm herself. While she was up in Brunswick for the library conference, all of these feelings had stayed tucked away, along with all of the losses of the past few years: first her mother dying, then Jeff leaving their marriage to \u201cfind himself,\u201d and just last year Becca off to college five hundred miles away.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But here all of it washed over her with the salty air and silvery summer light so like that long-ago summer when she\u2019d come to Portland to see Ben, her first love. The one who got away. He\u2019d grown up here, and she had eaten her first-ever oyster with him at J\u2019s Oyster Bar on the wharf. She hadn\u2019t expected to love it as much as she did. But the sharp brininess and seaweedy taste had surprised her. \u201cI think I\u2019m in love,\u201d she\u2019d said, reaching for another, this time forgoing the cocktail sauce. She <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">was<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in love. With Ben. And she\u2019d wondered, hoped, that Ben knew that was what she\u2019d really meant. But the subject of love didn\u2019t come up again, that night or\u00a0 the rest of the week.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meg made her way slowly up hills and down, peering at storefronts and shop signs. What she wanted was a sandwich from the place where she and Ben had gone several times that long-ago week. She\u2019d had the vegetarian sandwich, The Hearst Burger.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Open the bun and the patty is gone! <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ben had ordered the Downeast Feast just so the kitchen crew would come out banging pots and pans.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Unable to find the place, Meg wandered into a bakery instead. Immediately she was struck by how much the young woman behind the counter reminded her of her own twenty-year-old self: the same blond braids, the same round, wire-rimmed glasses, the same air of hopefulness, as if there was something good just around the corner.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meg ordered a brioche and then said, \u201cI was looking for a sandwich shop. It gave its sandwiches funny names?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The girl scrunched up her face, thinking. \u201cCarbur\u2019s?\u201d she offered, and Meg could hear the Maine in her voice. Like Ben\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYes!\u201d Meg said. Then: \u201cThat\u2019s my name too.\u201d She pointed to the girl\u2019s name tag. \u201cMeg,\u201d she added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The girl smiled, unimpressed but polite, and a shiver went up Meg\u2019s neck, like she\u2019d seen a ghost. A ghost of her long-ago self, the one who laughed so joyfully. Who delighted in her first oyster. Who didn\u2019t have so many sad things to tuck away.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Back outside, clutching the bag with the brioche in it, Meg closed her eyes and breathed in deep, the air rich with salt and seaweed and oysters and young love. When she opened them again, the light had shifted slightly, less silvery now, almost lavender. The air, she thought, smelled different too. It smelled, she decided as she bit into the still-warm brioche, a little like hope.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New summer fiction by Ann Hood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[112],"tags":[379,23,127,160,129],"class_list":["post-16577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-authors","tag-fiction","tag-maine","tag-portland-maine","tag-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16579,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16577\/revisions\/16579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}