Bittersweet (10 page)

Just one weekend spent amid the Winslow clan and I’d already learned a useful trick—if you didn’t speak, they forgot you were listening. That’s how I gathered that only a handful of Winslows had attended Jackson’s memorial service back in February, where CeCe, Jackson’s mother, had been inconsolable. Over the first lantern-lit dinners of the season, there volleyed a tingling, electric replay of the returning soldier’s every act the previous summer, the last time anyone had noticed him.

He had been too skinny.

Too quiet.

Always buried in a book.

Angry about the Kittering boys borrowing the canoe.

Or no, when Flip was hit by the dock repair truck, he’d been empty of emotion, remember, hadn’t so much as batted an eye, just carried the mangled dog into the grass and laid her down.

Wasn’t there a broken engagement to some girl from Boston?

Hadn’t he once yelled at Gammy Pippa in the Dining Hall?

As all of Winloch replayed the stammering timbre of Jackson’s voice, the slight shake in his hands—which hadn’t been there before Fallujah—our collective chatter crescendoed, filling Winslow Bay with the single, relieving point the Winslows could finally agree upon:

It was because of the war. A relief, someone uttered, to have a reason.

Beyond that, one couldn’t blame anyone in particular, but it didn’t escape me, as I listened invisibly, that those few Winslows who lived in Burlington and had four-wheel drive were doing their best to forget the unhinged pitch of CeCe’s keening, not to mention the attention-sucking way she’d fallen, dramatically, to her knees beside her son’s coffin (her histrionics, frankly, a bit much), as the snow fell outside the funeral home, blanketing the city in fresh, pure white.

It was times like these that one was thankful for tradition. At least that’s how Birch Winslow began his toast that first Monday evening of summer, raising a glass of local ale before the whole of Winloch. It was the twenty-first of June, the Midsummer Night’s Feast, held every year on the solstice upon the Dining Hall lawn, before the tennis courts, such a fundamental Winslow tradition that Ev seemed shocked when I needed it explained. A good hundred of us were spread before Birch on blankets and folding chairs in the soft, falling light, our collective contributions to the groaning board (the elite’s name for a potluck, I’d come to learn) already picked apart on the tables made haphazardly of sawhorses and plywood. Stockard’s russet potato salad, Annie’s fried chicken, and my homemade blueberry pie were all long gone.

“We are missing one of our own,” Birch went on, and a sad hush descended upon us—even wild little Ricky stopped squirming—“and the loss is a great hole in us that will remain unhealed.” Missing was any mention of Jackson’s name; his family was absent as well. Rumor had it that Mr. Booth had left CeCe for good back in April, and that she and her offspring would not be coming back. But Birch did not elaborate. We raised our glasses of artisanal beer as the Winslow coat of arms rippled above us.

Tradition held that the feast was dinner theater; the Rickys and
Maddys of the family, too young to memorize lines, were dressed as sprites and fairies, outfitted in diaphanous wings, wielding Peter Pan swords and Tinker Bell wands, their faces swirled in glittery turquoise. It fell to the older boys (and the men who fancied themselves young) to perform the memorized parts of the rude mechanicals from Shakespeare’s
Midsummer Night’s Dream
. Star-crossed lovers Pyramus and Thisbe had courted each other through the reticent wall for nearly a century, and the Winslows still found it hilarious.

“O Grim-Look’d Night! O night with hue so black! / O night, which ever art when day is not! O night, O night! alack, alack, alack.” Pyramus was played by Banning in a pair of his wife’s culottes. The audience cheered at the sight. His timing was good, actually, as though his premature businessman middle age was just a diversion from his true, thespian calling. He was all bluster and arrogance, a donkey in the clothing of a man.

As the prologue finished introducing our Pyramus, messy Annie accosted me on my blanket, digging her ample hands into my forearm, begging for help in a frantic whisper. Ev glared at us until I snuck off the blanket and followed Annie to Maddy, sitting on the bottom step of the Dining Hall, stuffing her tiny pink mouth with the remnants of a pan of brownies. “She’s swallowed walnuts! Walnuts!” Annie hiccuped like the Little Red Hen, and I spent a good ten minutes with the wiggling, sugar-high girl in the bathroom, helping her mother swab off the chocolate and watching her closely for anaphylaxis.

Crisis averted, I returned to our blanket. I had planned to spend the evening getting sloppy drunk with Ev, but where she’d been sitting, Abby now dozed. The Winslows were absorbed in the play. I put my hand on the dog’s hot head, laughed at Banning Winslow, and couldn’t believe my fortune that these people loved Shakespeare.

Then Thisbe entered.

Yes, it was a challenge to recognize “her”—the red wig, the
vintage dress. But the smattering of freckles over the cheeks, the pink, supple lips—every detail was sharpened by my shame.

His flounces were met with riotous laughter as he delivered his lines in falsetto. He was silly, yes, playing his own brother’s female lover. But he was also electrifying. Not an eye strayed.

To have stood would have been to draw attention. Or so I told myself, rapt at his every move, until he stabbed himself, landing atop his brother’s corpse, causing Banning to cry out, and the audience to give them a standing ovation.

After dinner, I escaped into the bustling herd of fairy children. They were free at last, from school, from the inhibitions necessarily placed upon city kids, finally able to run facefirst into that loose, early summer burst of wind and sun and sweat. It was better with children. They were either loyal or beastly, and it wasn’t hard to tell the difference. We threw sticks for the dogs, and gathered tennis balls from the hedges, as dusk fell and the mosquitoes partook of their own feast, until, one by one, the angels were gathered up and carried home.

The crowd dispersed, it seemed safe to stroll back to the Dining Hall. Abby dreamed loyally on Ev’s blanket, the only one left on the great lawn. I couldn’t bring myself to wake the sleeping creature, even though the sawhorses were gone, the plywood stacked against the hall.

I found myself alone before the barnlike building. The soft sound of guitar filtered out the screened double doors and down the broad steps. I wondered after Ev—should I go back to Bittersweet and check on her? Instead, I climbed the stairs toward the tempting glow and peeked in through the screen, taking in the large space.

Round tables were scattered across a well-polished hardwood floor, with boards so wide they must have been original. Opposite me, another set of double doors led back down to the main Winloch road. To the right lay the industrial kitchen, separated from the main
hall by a cutout wall on which food could be set. To the left, a stairway led up to a second floor, buttressed by a set of long, drab couches on which a small group of people were gathered. I worried I might be interrupting some sacred Winslow tradition, but it was only Indo and a few of the teenagers—Arlo and Jeffrey and Owen, all several years younger than I—who’d spent the better part of the evening on the other side of the tennis courts trying to build a bottle rocket.

Beside the teenage boys, his back to the door, a man played the guitar. The music was exquisite—all trills and fretting, a delicious melody laid forth. It was a song lifted from a warmer place, a place of dancing and the ocean, and I felt pulled toward it, the rhythm settling in my hips and pulsing in my collarbone. I allowed myself to step inside. The screen door yawned open, making a much louder sound than I’d intended.

Indo turned at the whine of the hinges. “Mabel!” she cried.

The teenagers glanced up.

The music ended mid-strum.

Indo strode across the room and enveloped me in her patchouli-scented hug.

The man turned. Over Indo’s shoulder, I recognized those freckles, the dirty blond hair. He was Galway.

“I’m looking for Ev,” I stammered, trying to extract myself. But Indo held me tight, drawing me toward the one man on the Eastern Seaboard I dreaded seeing.

“Have you met my nephew?”

Galway smiled. Stood. His eyes danced over me playfully. “Yes.”

I
turned what I can only imagine was a shade of crimson, feeling the intensity of Galway’s gaze. “I really should go.”

“Nonsense.” Indo gripped my arm. “Now’s a perfect time to show you the archives we talked about. Test your mettle. Oh, don’t look so terrified, I’m kidding. Mostly. But really, can you resist? They’re just up there, waiting for someone to do something with them, to reveal their secrets. Galway helped me box them up a few years ago, and since we are such good friends now, and my poor back won’t allow me regular stairs anymore—don’t grow old, you beautiful creatures …” And on she went, urging me up the rickety steps.

Much to my chagrin, Galway followed.

Indo flipped on the weak overhead lights and excitedly pointed out the mouse-nibbled cardboard boxes piled in the center of the immense, airless attic. “Oh, I’m so pleased,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Galway is such a help in these matters, and I know you two will have good fun tackling this together.”

I could barely think, so embarrassed was I to be near that man. I kept my head down and tried to focus on the sound of Indo’s voice.

There were dozens of boxes, filled with clippings and personal papers and business documents. The immensity of the task I had blithely agreed to that chilly afternoon the week before struck
me—Indo wanted me to find something in this mess for her? And if I found it, she’d, what, give me her house? Fat chance.

“What exactly do you want me to find?” I asked, when I could get a word in.

“First order of business,” she pronounced, “put your hands on that manila folder about my painting. Yes, Galway, I told her your parents took my painting—you know me, I can’t keep my mouth shut. The folder’s nondescript, I’m afraid, so you’ll have to root around a bit, but that’s half the fun now, isn’t it? And keep your eyes peeled for good stories—you never know where you might find some material. She’s a budding writer, did you know that, Galway? The quick mind of a detective. Especially, dear, especially keep your eyes open for anything about … Well, yes, all right, I’ll let you find your own way.”

She then launched into a disquisition on her storied ancestors—“They were visionaries! The leaders of their fields!”—until Galway asked me pointedly, “Weren’t you looking for Ev?” I considered him the enemy but saw the possibility for retreat so agreed apologetically that, yes, he was right, Ev had fallen ill at the picnic and I really should check on her.

“Oh dear,” Indo exclaimed, releasing me. “You should have said something.” I hurried down the attic stairs as she called after me, “If it’s woman’s troubles, tell her to find me; I’ve got fabulous herbs from my guy in Boston.”

I was back out into the moonless night in seconds, cursing myself for ever stepping foot inside that building, cursing Galway for playing that guitar, and it wasn’t until I was far from the Dining Hall that I realized I had no flashlight and only a vague notion of the direction I should be heading. “Abby!” I called, but even the dog had abandoned me. I told myself not to think about vampires. The crunch of my feet on gravel was a good, if small, sign I was going in the right direction.

The Dining Hall was out of sight by the time the light glanced toward me. The beam flashed over me a few times, and I stopped, like a deer in headlights, grateful for the flashlight if wary of whoever might be bearing it. It was just as I feared—Galway, alone. He was winded.

He handed me the flashlight silently, and I was forced to thank him. There were two of us, and only one light. One of us would have to walk the other home. Since we were halfway to Bittersweet, we continued in my direction.

He cleared his throat. I thanked god for the darkness. We walked on together into the night. Finally, he said, “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

I said nothing.

“It’s kind of funny, actually, when you think about it,” he went on. It sounded like he was smiling.

I kept my eyes on the beam and prayed he was done.

“I was looking for Ev that morning,” he said, “and I thought she might be sleeping and—”

“Okay,” I said, wheeling toward him, shining the light at his face, “good.”

He put his hand up to shield his eyes. “I just wanted to say—”

“I get it.” I kept the light pointed directly at his face, unable to restrain my anger at the oblivious, blithe way these people went about their lives. “I get it, it’s hysterical, and now you can hold it over me and humiliate me all you want, you saw me … doing that … but it isn’t lost on me that you were the one spying on people, that you’re”—I searched for the right word—“a Peeping Tom, a pervert”—and with that, I left him. Didn’t care that I had the only flashlight, or that he was the one who’d brought it to me.

Abby met me a few steps from a pitch-black Bittersweet, the night filling with her clacking tags and panting tongue. She licked
my hand faithfully. I went straight for the crawl space below the porch, easily finding the one bag of recyclables I’d set aside, grabbing the three magazines on top. I listened for Galway’s footsteps, but I could hear only the night.

We crept into the sleeping house. The bedroom door was closed, a relief, since Ev, who’d abandoned me for the evening, was the last person I wanted to see. I clicked on the lamp in the living room, pulled the pair of nail scissors from the medicine cabinet, grabbed a notepad and roll of tape from the supply basket, and settled before the cold hearth, letting myself open the September 1, 1961, issue of
Life
, an L.L.Bean catalog from 1987, a
Town and Country
from 1947. I knew exactly what pages I wanted, and ripped them expertly, already feeling calmer, letting my mind wander to the other periodicals waiting below the porch; this was just the beginning. I extracted what I loved: the
Town and Country
cover painting of a woman in a long dress leaning over a balustrade toward a sailboat, a picture of a fresh-faced Jacqueline Kennedy from
Life
, and the laughing blond family from L.L.Bean that I’d been waiting for since I noticed them. I’d use the scissors to do the detail work.