Becoming Nicole: The Transformation of an American Family by Amy Ellis Nutt Read Free Book Online Page A

state, no matter how long they’ve lived here, is referred to as being “from away.”
    With 95 percent of Mainers identifying as Caucasian, only Vermont is whiter, and even though Orono is a college town, it is still 93 percent Caucasian. In other ways, though, Orono is a peculiar hybrid. Straddling both land and water, it lies at the mouth of the Stillwater, a tributary of the Penobscot River. The Stillwater breaks away from the larger river twelve miles to the north and drains back into the Penobscot downstream. Marsh Island was created when it was encircled by the two rivers. Orono occupies part of the island and part of the mainland—the University of Maine is one of the only colleges in the country located entirely on an island that is not also a state or a city—and its founding predates the American Revolution. Orono was named for the chief of the Penobscot Indians, the same Indians the Europeans eventually pushed out of Orono’s rich fishing and hunting grounds. After the Revolution, lumber mills dominated the town, and while they no longer do, Orono is very much a product of pragmatism and reinvention, a place where very little is ever thrown out and everything is capable of being repurposed, including its stores. A sign for the Orono Pharmacy & Ice Cream Parlor hangs from a rusty pole out front, even though the Ice Cream Parlor is long gone. So is the video store that replaced it, as well as the walk-in medical clinic that replaced the video store. Now the front of the pharmacy is inhabited by Layla’s Bazaar, an international grocery store.
    Despite a few urban highlights, including the Sunkissed Tanning Salon, the town has retained a rural character. When the farmers market opens in the warm weather, many customers arrive by canoe or kayak. Part of Marsh Island, where the university sits, is open every year to bow hunters in search of white-tailed deer, and along Orono’s thirty-nine miles of roadway grow a hundred varieties of shade trees, Norway maple, eastern white pine, red oak, green ash, and black locust. American elm trees still line the byways of Orono, as well as serviceberry trees, so named by New England’s first settlers, who planned their funeral services around the timing of the tree’s bloom, because it signaled the ground had thawed enough for graves to be dug.
    The Maineses’ new house in Orono was a four-bedroom with cedar sides, a three-hundred-foot-long driveway, and a one-stall barn. The front yard was heavily wooded with oak, spruce, and hemlock that were so close to the house, Kelly said, she felt she was suffocating. Eventually, Wayne cut a few down, not because of Kelly’s complaints, but because
he
suddenly decided they were crowding the house.
    With six acres of mostly woodland, there was a lot for the twins to explore. Wayne cut down forty trees to build a one-room log cabin for the kids. Kelly bought a zip line for the backyard and in the winter fashioned a bobsled run that stretched from the back deck down the stairs and across the yard to the edge of the woods. The kids seemed to adjust well, but Kelly wasn’t happy. The house was too boxy. It was too dark inside from all the shade trees; it was overrun by ants, and the water pipe to the well was cracked. But the home wasn’t too far from town or school or Wayne’s new job as safety director at the university, so even though Kelly complained she knew they weren’t going anywhere else anytime soon.
    With the boys about to begin the first grade, the family decided to hold a “Get to Know the Maineses” party for the neighborhood. It was a cool, cloudy autumn day as guests streamed into the house. Kelly was still in the kitchen fixing platters of food, but with the party starting Wayne went looking for the two boys. He found Jonas in the den, then Wyatt appeared at the top of the stairs, smiling down excitedly at his father. There he was, his parents’ sweet, irrepressible, chestnut-haired boy—wearing his favorite