Bittersweet (14 page)

She lurched past me, managing, somehow, to get to her feet, stumbling toward Eric. Like a true Disney hero, he rushed to her aid, and she clung hard this time, wrapping herself around his barrel chest and smiling up at him. He pushed the hair from her face, then took her by the wrist and tugged her toward the cabin door. I headed that direction, to block their way, but Eric pushed right by.

“We were there to make John jealous,” I said.

Ev’s eyes flashed, as though, for a moment, she had come back into herself. But her words lumbered out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ev.” I tried to grab her arm.

“What are you, some kind of lesbian?” she spat, before disappearing down into the cabin.

Bitten and stunned, I watched her go, and in an instant I felt a hand clamp down on my shoulder, and another slide around my waist from behind. “Hey hey hey,” Murray whispered into my ear, “let’s enjoy the quiet.” I tried to struggle against him, but I was going nowhere; he had pinned me from behind.

“Ev,” I called, but Murray’s spidery hand moved from my shoulder to clamp over my mouth, taking my air. I tried to kick, to move away, any which way, but I was pressed between him and the closed cabin door. His breath smelled horribly of licorice and marijuana, and I could feel his erection boring through his clothes into my leg like some horrible rodent, and he was humming, growling into my ear as he writhed against me.

“Murray.” The voice was familiar and came from behind us.

Murray dropped his hands at once and stepped away, laughing, like a kid with his hand caught in the cookie jar. I turned and gasped, coughing for air, for freedom, and met Galway’s eyes. He was walking carefully toward us along the boat’s deck. I wondered if he’d been a stowaway this whole time. “Heard you were having a little party,” he said grimly.

“We’re having fun, right?” Murray really thought I might corroborate.

Galway held out his hand to me. I took it and realized I was shaking. “Okay,” he said to Murray, “you’re going to go down and get Ev.”

Murray thrust his hands into his pockets and looked at the deck. I actually felt bad for him for a split second. Then I remembered the feeling of him behind me.

“Go down and get her,” Galway said, his smile gone, “or I tell your mother who really embezzled the family trust.”

Murray wheezed. Disappeared into the cabin. As soon as he was gone, Galway turned to me. “Did he hurt you? Did he do anything to you?”

I couldn’t speak. Galway pointed to stern. “My rowboat’s tied up right there. Do you think you can climb down by yourself while I wait for Ev?”

I nodded a feeble yes. Clambered over the back of the yacht, lowered myself down the ladder and into the dinghy.

“Murray?” I heard him ask with authority. And then there was a sudden burst of sound, as Ev came tearing out of the cabin, cursing Murray and Galway, calling them assholes and worse, and the next thing I knew, Galway was forcing her down into the rowboat until we were untied and blessedly free, and, behind us, there was the scraping metal sound of the anchor chain lifting, and the yacht’s motor coughed to life, and then we were rowing back toward shore—Ev seething, me shaking, and Galway silent and strong.

I
emerged from the hushed bedroom just after dawn, clear-minded and angry. Ev was passed out in the same sprawled position she’d collapsed into in a fit a few hours before, but I’d awoken early from familiar nightmares—the horrible, driving sound of the frigid river; the hand grasping out into the open air. Fighting to forget, I banged the kettle onto the stove and cursed the pilot light until it took. Kicked the cabinet when it failed to yield any cereal.

I heard footsteps and gathered my strength for all the things I’d say to her, about how selfish she was, and stupid. I might even use the word
slut
.

“You okay?”

I turned to find a half-asleep Galway, tousled hair and bleary eyes, wrapped in the couch throw. “You slept here?” I asked incredulously. The words came out mean.

He rubbed his eyes. Nodded. I tried to imagine anyone heavier than sylphlike Lu sleeping on the busted, ancient wicker porch couch—my back ached just imagining it. I returned to the cabinets. We had to have bread, Cream of Wheat, something.

“Don’t you have work?” I asked in a clipped voice, slamming the metal doors as they revealed their uselessness.

I could feel him watching me. “It’s Saturday.”

There was nothing in the house. Finally, I turned to meet his eye.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked in a low voice. I was surprised at his anger. No one had been angry on my behalf in a very long time. I shook my head, even as I rubbed one wrist and felt tears well up inside me. I told myself I would not cry.

“Are you sure?” he asked, taking one step toward me.

I took an honest accounting of myself, every muscle, every inch of skin, and really felt. I was lucky, I thought, with a burst of recognition, and, like it or not, Galway had been my luck. “It was terrifying,” I admitted. “But I’m fine.”

“Murray used to come over to Winloch when we were kids. He was always trying to get me to murder frogs with him. One time, a rabbit.”

“Boy stuff,” I offered.

Galway shook his head. “Those guys are sickos.”

The kettle shrieked. I moved it off the burner and opened its mouth, silencing it. I had wanted to wake Ev, but now I wanted her to sleep all day. I dreaded facing her hangover, her love triangle, and, even more, the helpless rage that had coursed through me all night and was stalling into defeat.

There came, at just that moment, a sweet and perfect birdsong from the woods. Galway and I each froze and listened as the notes cycled through four more times. The haunting melody brought back Lu’s promises of what Winloch would offer. It was dawn. The wood thrush.

Galway’s smile was kind and careful. “You hungry?”

Masha made us omelets and home fries and thick-cut bacon. The salty aroma filling the empty Dining Hall sent me into paroxysms of joy. Apparently Masha had been cooking Galway hearty meals since he was a boy. They had an easy rapport, that of an aunt doting upon her favorite nephew, but it did not escape me that she was a servant
and he a Winslow. Still, when the meal was cooked, Galway urged her to put up her feet. She showed us pictures of her apple-cheeked grandchildren in New Jersey and told a few embarrassing tales on Galway the boy. I found myself laughing, eating seconds, pushing aside the feeling of Murray behind me.

But after I’d cleaned my plate, when Masha was back in the kitchen making lunchtime chili and silence had fallen upon us, I found myself saying, “I should get back.” Despair descended as I looked out the opened double doors at the gray day and anticipated a morning alone on the cold Bittersweet porch, trying to read
Paradise Lost
, avoiding writing another letter to my mother, while both waiting for and dreading Ev’s awakening. Now that my stomach was full, I couldn’t stand what Galway must think of me, between what he had seen in the Bittersweet window and what he had saved me from on the yacht. He was kind, I could see that now, which made me hate the idea of his pity even more.

“Indo said you’ve been making progress on the papers,” Galway said enthusiastically. He was immune to my mood, apparently, or willing to be its salve.

“What defines progress?”

“I spent some time with those papers a few years back,” he said. “I’m embarrassed to admit I found it kind of interesting.”

“I haven’t found Indo’s folder,” I said miserably, remembering that she’d told me to search for even more than that, cursing myself for obediently looking. It stung to think of anyone in Ev’s family considering me to be in the same class as Masha, but wasn’t that exactly the roles we’d fallen into? Indo had told me to jump, and I’d asked how high.

Still, there was Indo’s suggestion that she would share the wealth, that the papers might offer me the chance to earn the right to come back next summer. And Galway was trying to distract me, and it meant not having to face Ev, and maybe he’d have some idea of what
would satisfy Indo’s thirst for knowledge. We climbed the attic stairs. It was already stuffy up there, the timbers retaining a month’s worth of heat, and Galway cracked the windows on either end of the great space to establish a cross-draft. I hung back as he set to work. His eager hands riffled through my piles as concentration settled on his brow. I was not used to being around people as in love with research as I was, and I felt suspicion rise through me. The way he tilted his head and displayed absorption was so like myself that I wondered, for a paranoid moment, if he was mocking me.

“Esther,” he said with admiration, shuffling a piece of paper up from the table on which I’d stacked what I could find from his great-grandfather’s generation. “She was a battle-ax.” He grinned, reading aloud from the brittle, yellowed newspaper clipping in his hand: “ ‘Dr. Esther Winslow spoke before the Smith College Society for Science and Medicine this Thursday past on the subject of Hysteria and the Female Temperament: “I advise you ladies to put little stock in the misperception that our brains are any less formidable than those of the opposite sex. Experience has shown females much less likely to be swayed by the organs below their waists than our counterparts would have you believe, and certainly much less than our counterparts are.” ’ ”

I chuckled. Galway nodded. “She was the rebel. Classic second child.”

“But not your direct ancestor?”

Galway rummaged out a hand-drawn family tree, made, I guessed, almost thirty years before, since it listed only Athol in our generation. Galway stepped up beside me and pointed to Esther’s name, his arm so close to mine that I could feel the warmth from his skin. “She was Samson and Bryndis’s second daughter, of five. Banning was the only boy, born after her. Sometime around eighteen eighty.”

“And Banning was your great-grandfather.”

Galway nodded.

“So why aren’t Banning’s sisters’ descendants here at Winloch?” I asked, casting my finger over the names of Great-grandfather Banning’s sisters: Abigail, Esther, Katherine, Margaret, and Victoria. “Didn’t Samson build it for all of you?”

“Well, Esther didn’t have any kids, or rather didn’t let her female ‘organs’ sway her, and I think her career was so intense that she hardly took a vacation. Abigail married and moved somewhere else—Maine, I think—where she had her share of summer residences. Katherine summered here, but she was a spinster.” I grimaced. “I know,” he said. “Awful word. Margaret”—he grinned—“Indo once told me that Margaret was a lesbian who moved to San Francisco.”

“Shocking!” I gasped in mock horror.

“But that might just be wishful thinking on Indo’s part. And Victoria?” He looked up to the rafters as if they offered some kind of answer. “Boston maybe?”

“You know a lot about your great-grandfather’s family,” I said, wondering if there was an untold reason all those women, Banning’s sisters, had left Winloch, or if their departures could be chalked up to a different era, in which men inherited and women became part of the families they married into.

I followed Galway back to the table, still musing on secrets. “How did you know that about Murray?” I asked hesitantly. “About the embezzling thing?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Thing about this family is, you stick around long enough and remember what you hear, you can piece together the truth about just about anyone. It’s all said in other ways, usually about a boat or a dog or taxes. So you consider the source, and the information, why the information was leaked, and then you decode what it really means.”

He pulled a couple of dusty chairs from the eaves of the great
room and settled in again at the papers. I started in at the table beside him, where I’d arranged the papers for Galway’s grandfather Bard, head of the generation below Banning Winslow and his sisters.

“Did you know your granddad?” I asked, after consulting the family tree again.

“Bard? He wasn’t much on kids. More concerned with money. The family trust. That kind of thing. He died when I was ten. But his sister, Gammy Pippa, she’s still around.”

“Here?” I asked.

“She usually comes for a couple weeks. She’s ninety-five. Feisty. Used to let me and Jackson drink beer on her back porch, where no one could see us. I think she liked the company.”

The specter of his cousin loomed over us. “Were you close with Jackson?” I asked.

Galway put down the papers in his hand. “He was intense. Even when we were little, he took everything personally. And then, you know, signing up for the Marines. I think he had a lot to prove.”

“About what?”

“He had Winslow blood flowing through his veins.” I thought of asking if that meant Galway felt he had a lot to prove too, but he continued. “You know, I bet she’ll be here for the wedding. Gammy Pippa.”

“Wedding?”

“The wedding. Tomorrow.”

I laughed. “There’s a wedding here tomorrow?”

“In the meadow beside Trillium. My cousin Philip is marrying his college sweetheart. I give it two years.”

“Is that a cynical view of them, or just your general take on marriage?”

He cleared his throat. I could feel his eyes on my face. “I feel like I haven’t made it up to you for spying.”

“Please—let’s not.”

“I feel awful about it. And I’ve learned my lesson—I won’t go peeking into other people’s windows ever again.”

I smiled in spite of myself as I felt my entire body growing red with embarrassment.

“And then, the whole Murray thing. I’m not like him, okay? I just want you to know it’s not my habit to … to … to prey on innocent women.”

I nodded. My heart was pounding hard.

He was anxious, one hand rubbing the other. “But I also want you to know—I hope this won’t seem forward—I want you to know I didn’t mind what I saw.” He held my gaze, then, hardly blinking, and I saw something glaze over him that I’d seen in the window, something warm and dreamy, his mouth opening, his eyes softening, and I felt my breath catch in my chest. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t unpleasant, all right?”