Bittersweet (21 page)

“Locals. Their fathers and grandfathers worked for the Winslows.” He was quiet then. We listened to the water streaming from behind the bathroom door. “There’s a lot to be done down there. You put in the docks, and the swim floats, repair the roofs, you know? Do all the mowing, all the planting. Then you’ve got to shore up the banks below the cottages to stop the erosion, so you haul rocks, bring in the backhoe, that kind of thing. Weed whacking. Tending to the leech fields, making sure they’re clear of saplings and the sewage is evaporating. You replace sump pumps in the basements, and the wood beams of the foundations with steel ones. When the decks rot, replace them. And in the winter, you’ve got to close up the cottages, so that’s shutting off the water, draining the pipes, sweeping off roofs, taking off the gutters, moving the furniture, repainting.”

I had never heard him say so much. “Do you work on the woods?” I asked, wanting more of his voice washing over me like water.

“Oh sure. You thin out the softwood saplings—white pines, red pines—you want the hardwoods to grow. See, in my grandfather’s day, it was all farmland down here, and what comes after farmland is the softwoods. But hardwoods are what give you good heat for stoves in fall and spring, so you thin out the pine so the maple and oak can get enough light to—”

“Hey!” Ev’s chipper voice cut through his. She was standing in the living room, one towel wrapped around her lithe frame, the
other like a turban on her head. “Are you going to help me pick my outfit or what?” She walked suggestively into the bedroom.

John practically panted as he stood to follow her. “Excuse me.”

I washed the dishes a few times until they were done.

That afternoon, dressed in our alabaster frocks, Lu and Ev and I stuck flags embossed with the Winslow crest at three-foot intervals along the border of the Trillium lawn as per Tilde’s instructions. John backed in his full pickup. I watched Ev observe his interaction with her mother—John’s cap in his hand, Tilde’s words of instruction—and wondered how Ev felt. But as he hauled the bags of ice onto his shoulder and followed Tilde to the porch, neither he nor Ev acknowledged each other, so I kept my head down and pushed the next dowel into the soft earth.

“Do you think Galway’s coming?” I asked as casually as I could muster, when we had finished up our task.

“He’s probably with his girlfriend,” Lu said, flopping to the ground.

“He has a girlfriend?” I tried to sound calm.

Lu caught sight of Owen mounting the stairs up from Flat Rocks. She checked to make sure her mother was out of sight, then rushed to his side. Ev lay beside me, squinting at the teenagers as they embraced furtively.

“Have you ever kissed John like that?” I asked.

“In front of my mother’s house?” Ev shook her head emphatically. The day had grown warm, but not unpleasantly. Bumblebees darted in and out of the tiger lilies that edged the grass. “Why the sudden interest in Galway?” she asked.

The lie came easily. “Oh, he knows I’m interested in the Winslow genealogy and—”

“Oh my god, you’re such a nerd!” She slapped at me, and I scowled. She rolled onto her back. Her fair hair splayed across the
close-cut grass and her eyes dreamily opened and closed as one hand lay open upon her stomach. “I have some news—”

“Genevra?” Tilde’s voice snapped Ev out of whatever she was about to say.

“Yes, Mum?”

“Have you gotten out the tablecloths? Look at you girls. Grass stains everywhere.”

Ev darted to her mother like a little girl.

The men lit the barbecue. The women set out the potato salad and lemonade and ketchup. The white-clad guests arrived and relished the juicy jalapeño burgers topped with Cabot cheddar as a pack of dogs drooled below the children’s table, hoping for a dropped morsel. The Winslows wore their summer’s best white clothing—collared polo shirts, cotton sundresses—and I realized I had finally stepped into the picture that had hung in our dorm room. I closed my eyes and uttered up a prayer of thanks to Jackson Booth, my patron saint, the reason I was there.

I was standing on the porch beside Ev, deciding whether I could allow myself a second corncob rolled in butter, when she gasped and grabbed my arm. I followed her gaze out the screen. “It’s Aunt CeCe,” she said, abandoning her plate on the table and rushing into the house.

All I knew of CeCe Booth was that her only son had committed suicide, and that she had been devastated—embarrassingly so (at least according to the Winslows)—at his funeral. I had heard snippets of gossip—that her overprotectiveness was the reason Jackson had enlisted, that she had driven her husband away with unparalleled neediness—but I had taken the unkind assessments as idle chatter, the inevitable fallout of tragedy. I knew all too well how quickly the wolves gathered.

Standing outside Trillium, the woman looked undone by grief, as if all it would take was one touch and she’d disintegrate. Her brown hair was pinned back messily, her too-warm gray wool sweater too big, her hands wrapped around herself as if she might crack apart. I watched her approach her older brother’s house. I expected to see her embraced. And she was—by her sisters Stockard and Mhairie, by her nieces, Lu and Antonia and Katie, and by the local family friends who had heard of her tragedy and now gathered around her, cooing in sympathetic tones. Far more instructive was to notice who did not open their arms. From my vantage point on the porch, the division was glaring, if the reason for the rift invisible. Birch didn’t look her way, and her elder sisters, Greta and Indo, pointedly remained in their Adirondack chairs on the Trillium lawn. I was shocked by Indo’s snub. She was eccentric, yes, but usually welcoming in her oddness, and I’d assumed she’d embrace the one person who seemed even more out of place at Winloch than she. But then, perhaps that was precisely it; perhaps Indo didn’t want to be associated with someone perceived as weak.

Tilde swept across the Trillium lawn like an arrow, reminding the guests gathered around the grieving woman that there was cold beer on the porch and waiting until, one by one, they had moved away from CeCe to lean in close and whisper into her sister-in-law’s ear.

CeCe’s body tensed. In a desperate tone, she replied, “I just want to join in the fun, Tilde. I’m not going to ruin anything.”

Tilde leaned in for another exchange, at which CeCe exclaimed, “Well of course I’m emotional,” her voice getting louder as she said that word. Tears began to leak from her eyes.

Ev appeared beside me again, lifting her plate in a satisfied gesture.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

Ev followed my gaze to her mother and aunt’s conversation.
Tilde’s hand was now on CeCe’s arm, and CeCe was trying to remove it. “She promised not to come,” Ev replied tersely.

“Why?”

“She’d just upset everyone. Which is exactly what she’s doing.”

“Her son just killed himself!” I balked.

“For god’s sake, Mabel, butt out,” Ev snapped. Then she disappeared into the crowd.

C
hastened, I ate and drank alone, observing CeCe’s gradual admittance into the festivities, although she hardly looked festive. Without a second glance in my direction, Ev slipped off as the football game began. Athol and his wife, Emily, argued about who had forgotten the baby carrier, and, some moments later, Lu and Owen retreated down to Flat Rocks for a make-out session. Indo’s Fritz and Tilde’s Harvey got into a growling match over a squeaky toy, which ended in Indo barking at Fritz and leading him back to her house.

I uncapped my sixth beer—had I really had that much?—and decided to strike out on my own. I made my way through the summer room, drifting before the Van Gogh until I thought I heard footsteps and, remembering my interaction with Athol, darted out Trillium’s front door. I wandered up the road that led through the meadow, past the two other cottages and Clover. Fritz appeared at my heels, yapping grumpily, as though I’d been the one to banish him from the party. Once I’d begun to crest the hill, he stopped short and woofed a couple of satisfied barks, as though to say, “Take that!” before turning back toward Indo’s.

It was dark in the woods, and I stumbled as I climbed but acknowledged, as I swigged the beer and began to hiccup, that that might have more to do with my drunkenness than with the coming
night. I could have turned onto the lane leading down to Bittersweet, but, instead, I found my feet leading me past the Dining Hall on the main road and toward Galway’s. I succumbed, quickening my pace until his cottage was in sight.

The little house was unlit and the driveway empty, but I still peeked in every window, taking the only parts of him I could get—a mug waiting on the kitchen counter, the bed made neatly in the sparse, small bedroom. I ran my fingers over the cottage’s name, carved into a piece of wood hung up beside the door: Queen Anne’s Lace. Galway was about the least lacy person I had ever met. That would be funny except it seemed as though he was never coming back.

I leaned my head morosely against the doorframe, then jerked it back up again as soon as I heard a shriek: high, intense, short. I froze. The sound had come from the direction of the other brothers’ cottages. I thought of Ev and John. I didn’t much care to see them at it again—more for my sense of self-preservation than anything else—so I told myself the sound was nothing and lay my forehead upon the doorframe once again. But then, I heard it: more of a scream this time. A woman’s scream.

I thought of Murray—what he had tried to do to me. If someone was hurting another woman that way, I had to stop it. I lumbered off Galway’s porch, then stopped for a moment to collect myself, slapping my cheek to regain relative sobriety. The point of impact stung, but the world still swam. I lurched up Boys’ Lane toward the two cottages.

In the time it took to walk from Queen Anne’s Lace to Banning’s and Athol’s cottages, I didn’t hear a thing. I began to doubt myself. The night was now almost upon me, and I considered just going back to the fireworks, expecting to hear the bursting above me at any moment. But there it was again—that sharp cry, and so I pushed on, moving off the gravel road onto the grass so that my steps
were silent. As I approached, there were no clues to which house the sound had come from. So I chose Banning’s, on the left, crouching down as I ran around its side, grateful for the cover of night. I stood on my tiptoes and peeked into the first window, sure I was about to see something horrifying, but the unoccupied living room was only messy. I crouched down, replaying the same scenario with the master bedroom.

It was then that I heard the scream again, quickly, and intentionally, muffled. It had come from Athol’s. I surged with adrenaline, picking up a large stick from the lawn and creeping toward the back of the house, where I knew I’d be able to peek around to Athol’s back porch. I could hardly breathe as I crept, wincing at every sound my body made, sure I’d accidentally tumble over one of Maddy’s noisy toys and give myself away.

At the edge of the house, I got as far down to the ground as I could, and looked.

A single kerosene lamp flickered on Athol’s back porch, but to my dark-accustomed eyes it might as well have been a hundred. There, upon the table, Athol lay on top of a woman, his hand on her mouth as he thrust inside of her. He was entering her over and over, ramming her head against the screen. Quicksilver lay to the side of them, sleeping, as though this were an everyday occurrence. I began to cry. It looked like he was hurting her. I had to do something.

And then I heard her laugh. “I said ‘harder,’ ” she commanded, “hold me down and do it harder.”

I saw her face. The au pair. Realized: she was choosing this. He wasn’t hurting her—it was part of some game they were playing.

He returned her kiss with a probing tongue. My stomach turned. This was nothing like John and Ev. Nothing like love. This was just two sad people rutting in the woods. Quicksilver lifted his head as though he smelled me. I ran, sure at any moment I’d find that dog tearing at my heels.

I got back to Flat Rocks just as the fireworks started. I noticed Emily sitting on a folding chair, draped with her slumbering children, and wondered if she knew where her husband was. Just then, Ev slung her arm through mine.

“Sorry about before,” she whispered. The sky burst red above us. She pulled me over to a towel some way from the rest of the family, now oohing and aahing at the dazzling gold glitters falling above us. Emily’s baby roused at the booms, her squalls carrying over the water.

“I have something to tell you,” Ev said quietly.

I was hungry for the fireworks, eager to feel them rumble through me, explode what I had just seen, destroy the knowledge I now had, about Athol, about the au pair. I wanted Ev to be quiet.

But instead, she whispered, “I’m pregnant.”

I
did the math: ten weeks along by early July, Ev had conceived before we came north. That night, in our room, as she fantasized aloud about sewing a baby quilt and buying a safe car, I wondered whether John was the father. Unless he’d come to New York in early May, she was carrying someone else’s baby.

I couldn’t bring myself to ask her. “Does John know?” was the closest I could get.

“Why do you think he wants me to kiss up to his mother?” I was glad the room was dark, so she wouldn’t see me wince at the flippancy of her tone. “I’m so glad I finally told you,” she gushed. “I’ve been bursting, but he wanted to keep it just for us.”

“You’ll start showing soon,” I replied neutrally. “What will your mother say?”

“I’m not going to have to worry about her.”

I paused. “You’re not keeping it?”

“Of course I’m keeping it,” she said. But she didn’t explain what she meant.

I wanted to scream: What about me? What about college? What about us old ladies sitting on the Bittersweet porch together? Did she know what childbirth consisted of? Was she taking vitamins? I
slipped into a restless slumber, for once welcoming the suffocating distraction of my nightmares.