Bittersweet (8 page)

“Aren’t you going to offer us a cold beverage?” Tilde demanded when we’d covered every square inch of the house. I retreated into
the kitchen, grateful for a break. That woman made my mother look like a carefree soul.

“Have you been in for a dip yet? Is it cold?” she queried as I brought in a tray of lemonade and Ritz crackers, placing it on the rickety bench we’d pulled from the side of the house. There wasn’t enough seating, and Tilde had taken the armchair for herself, so I sat beside the food. The bench swayed precariously. Birch had been in the bathroom for a while, relieved, I imagined, to get a break from the female politics.

“I have,” Ev responded. “I don’t think Mabel’s much of a swimmer.” I opened my mouth to protest—I had shivered my way through a waist-high wade during one of Ev’s dawn forays—but, before I could say anything, Ev demanded from me, “Have you thought about changing your name? Even just to Maybelle, and then we could call you May for short; it just suits her so much better, don’t you think, Mum?”

Only one person had ever called me Maybelle. Involuntary tears filled my eyes. I crammed a Ritz into my mouth. Salt. Butter.

“It’s Winloch,” I heard Tilde respond. “She can go by anything she wants.”

I told myself to get it together. Chew. Swallow. Sit up straight. Be sweet.

Ev took a sip of coffee. “When’s Lu coming?”

“Our baby girl,” Birch explained, returning from the bathroom.

“You have a baby?” I asked. Ev had mentioned only older brothers.

Tilde’s laugh erupted sharply. “Well, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.”

“Jesus, Mum,” Ev said, “not everything is a comment on how old you look.”

“She’s in Switzerland, dear,” Tilde replied testily. “At tennis camp.”

“The one you sent me to?” Ev asked in an innocent voice. “Where that twenty-five-year-old deflowered me?”

I nearly choked on my coffee. Birch pounded me on the back, and, by the time I’d regained myself, Tilde was already out the screen door and Ev had shut herself in the bedroom.

“You girls coming for dinner tonight?” Birch asked cheerily, popping a Ritz into his mouth. “We’re having a spur-of-the-moment get-together.”

“Did we pass?” I blurted, unable to help myself, sure my rude question was the final nail in the coffin. But he didn’t answer. Just gave my shoulders an affectionate double pat and followed his wife out the door.

Twenty minutes later, Ev emerged from the bedroom, face stained with tears. I watched her pull the bolt closed on the front door. When she shut herself back into the bedroom, I heard the bolt slide closed there too. She didn’t say one word.

“S
ee?” Ev seethed later that afternoon. “See? She’s a psychopath.”

We were strolling down “Boys’ Lane,” a side road that angled off from the main thoroughfare near the Dining Hall and led to a string of three of the ubiquitous Winloch cottages.

“But when will they tell us if we get to keep Bittersweet?” I asked, gagging at the memory of my mother’s chipped beef on toast, the first meal I’d be met with if I had to go home.

“You never get to know anything important, not when my mother’s concerned.” Ev sighed. I bit a nail. She pulled my hand from my mouth. “Don’t worry so much!” she insisted. “She’ll be onto something else by tomorrow and forget we ever existed.” She slung her arm over my shoulder and snuffled my ear until I smiled. I understood the sentiment well: hoping your mother forgot you walked the earth. It was the one thing Ev and I shared in spades.

We came upon the first cottage, smallest and farthest from the water. “This is Queen Anne’s Lace,” Ev said. She made a face. “It’s Galway’s.” My heart started pounding, and I was grateful to confirm the place was devoid of life, for his predicted absence was the only reason I’d dared accompany his sister to this side of camp.

I eyed the house—it was unpainted, the wood gray and weathered. “I thought he came up on weekends.”

Ev rolled her eyes. “Too busy saving the world. Don’t despair, you’ll see him again soon if he doesn’t make it for the Midsummer Night’s Feast,” but before I could ask her what that was, she sniped, “Can you believe he chose this shack? Such a hovel. He could have had Banning’s”—pointing to the cottage sitting ahead at the left end of the road—“I mean, he is the second-born, but he can’t appreciate natural beauty or something. The views are to die for over on this side.”

Soon we were before Goldenrod and Chicory, the house on the right standing at attention in crisp white, the one on the left saggier and tea-colored in a dirty, unintentional way. Beyond the cottages, through carefully thinned woods, lay a wide view of Winslow Bay—not nearly as impressive as Indo’s, but something to admire. Before them, matching SUVs were piled high, hatchbacks open. Two towheads, an older boy and a younger girl, ran in shrieking circles, chased by a pair of game, harmless golden retrievers.

A tall, handsome man emerged from Chicory, his frame nearly filling the doorway. “Hey, Sis.” He strolled over and pecked Ev on the cheek, then introduced himself as Athol.

“This is May,” she blurted. I was tongue-tied; firstborn Athol was better-looking than I’d prepared myself for, perhaps because Ev had described him as all serious business. Samson’s cheekbones, crystal-blue eyes, six-foot frame—out of a propaganda photo for eating organic or running Ironman. As he extended his hand, I realized that he was the spitting image of a young, lean Birch, although he didn’t radiate his father’s charisma.

Athol picked his little boy up and tossed him in the air; the four-year-old shrieked in laughter. To the chubby toddler at his feet, he cajoled, “Do your parents know you’re out here?” and she huffed with resignation toward the other cottage. Soon they had all come out to greet us, Athol’s equally tall and tanned wife, Emily, who explained that the baby was napping; the little boy, Ricky, being gathered by
his auburn-haired, foreign au pair for an afternoon swim, water temperature be damned; Ev’s other brother, Banning, balding, rotund, pulling Ev into a sloppy hug; his wife, Annie, an air of messiness in her curly hair and round face, bearing the chubby little girl, Madison, out on her hip and asking the au pair if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to take Maddy along too. There were dogs too—I had begun to realize there would always be dogs: Banning and Annie’s two simple-looking golden retrievers (named Dum and Dee, although, like their namesakes, they were only ever mentioned in the same breath, giving them a collective identity) and Quicksilver, an old greyhound who stuck close to Emily’s side until he spotted an unfortunate squirrel and took off up the road, toward Galway’s.

“Be careful,” Ev said, watching the dog’s pursuit. “Mum’s on about leashes again.”

“All well and good for her,” Athol snapped. “She doesn’t have a greyhound.”

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” Ev bit back, matching her eldest brother’s tone.

I could already see a few fault lines in their siblinghood, but I couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. It was impossible to imagine being known this way, teased, taken for granted. And Ev would never ask me what it was like with my brother, because, as far as she knew, I was an only child.

Athol and Emily’s summer cottage was far nicer than the year-round home I’d been raised in, and Emily proudly took me on the grand tour, explaining how over the winter the whole foundation had been lifted onto steel beams, and then, naturally, they’d decided to repaint, and redo the kitchen with Sub-Zero and Wolf appliances. The home was modernized, with every possible extravagance, although that was not the word Athol and Emily would have used to describe the chrome garbage can that opened with the wave of a hand, or the
flat-screen television hung on the wall in the “library.” Every surface in that cottage was dust-free, and, when the baby awoke, I noticed that she, too, was a perfect, tidy creature, smiling down from her mother’s arms like a dewy baby bird. I liked Emily in an abstract way, but she was the kind of tall, athletic person who lived in a different stratosphere, hardly looking below her shoulders. I wondered if she’d even recognize me the next time we met.

We stepped onto Chicory’s whitewashed, screened-in back porch for a bottle of Prosecco and a view of the water and the other cottage. Banning lived a jovial, disheveled life in comparison to his toned and crisp older brother, and Goldenrod seemed a messy second to the elder brother’s summer home. The paint on Banning’s house and porch was peeling, the screens sagging, loose with age. Plastic ride-on toys were already scattered over the back lawn, and Annie huffed around them, trying, in vain, to minimize their tacky effect upon the landscape, her hair flying up and out like some kind of alive thing. I imagined Athol and Emily had strong opinions about spending their summer so close to his brother’s life and wife, and I wondered how on earth Banning had passed his mother’s inspection.

Below us, at the water’s edge, the poor au pair tried to keep Ricky’s and Maddy’s little bodies from drowning. Every few moments there was a splash of exuberance or a sharp yelp, but none of the other adults paid the sounds any mind. Nor did they help the girl when, arms laden with wriggling children and sodden towels, she trudged up toward us through the woods. Only when Quicksilver, Abby, and Dum and Dee careened at top speed down the forested embankment toward the overburdened girl did Emily stand and yell, “Stop. Come.” On the other porch, Annie looked up obediently, as though one of the dogs herself. Quicksilver emerged hanging his head, but it fell to Annie, carrying a giant plastic ball under her arm, to rescue the au pair and the children from the rest of the exuberant canines.

Seemingly oblivious to the domestic hubbub, Athol took
Ev and me into the master suite to show us the last bit of renovation. He crossed his arms skeptically and surveyed the neat, tight room. “We wanted to expand,” he said, “but the footprints are protected. Can’t build up or out.”

“Mum doesn’t want anyone’s house to be as big as hers,” Ev said to me.

“Don’t be petty, Genevra, it doesn’t become you,” Athol scolded. He was tilting his head, scrutinizing the floor. “It’s crooked.” He turned to me. “Doesn’t it seem crooked?”

“It looks fine,” Ev said.

Outside, Abby wandered by. Athol’s eyes followed the dog as she passed the window. “I hate having to use John.”

“He works hard,” Ev responded evenly.

“I don’t see why Father doesn’t just send him off. When I’m in charge, I won’t confuse backwards tradition with loyalty,” Athol grumbled, his jaw growing tight.

Out on the road, Ev fumed. “I always think I’m going to love it here, and then I come back and I remember what they are—arrogant and thoughtless and moneygrubbing.” I nodded and agreed, and did not say that the floor had, in fact, looked a little crooked to me.

D
inner that night was held at Trillium, the white, multistoried cottage Samson had built on the spit of Winloch beyond Indo’s, on the peninsula that lay between the outer bay and Winslow Bay, with a 270-degree view of the lake. Standing on the whitewashed porch, one felt as if on a boat, ever on a set course southward. Trillium was grander than the other Winloch homes—along with its three stories and the best view, it boasted a wide, mown lawn. It had passed from man to man, father to firstborn son, through the generations: Samson to Banning the first, to Bard, then Birch. Someday it would be Athol’s, and then little Ricky’s. How disappointed the Winslows would have been if they’d had only daughters.

Tilde stood by the door, the first to greet us. At the sight of her, my mouth went dry—I didn’t know if I could bring myself to ask someone so intimidating to give me my fate. She was dressed impeccably—crisp ivory shirt, pressed raw silk capri pants in a stunning turquoise, luscious pearls around her throat. “Care to put on a sweater, dear?” she asked as she eyed Ev’s décolletage, prominent in her coral sundress.

“Jesus, Mum.” Ev huffed past her mother and into the room within, where a crowd had already gathered. I handed Tilde the corn
muffins I’d baked, each topped with its own plucked daisy. Tilde took the platter from my hands as if it was a foreign object.

“How … thoughtful,” she said, looking down at the muffins.

My tongue stuck against my palate—my mother had taught me one could never go wrong by bringing something to a dinner party, and Birch had used the term
spur-of-the-moment
. Besides, Ev should have said something to save me from committing a faux pas. I almost offered to take the muffins back, but just then Birch emerged from the party and clapped his hands as if in delight at the sight of me.

“Tilde! She brought cupcakes!” he exclaimed, heartily grabbing one and tearing into it with his teeth.

“You aren’t supposed to eat the flower,” I apologized as I watched a petal disappear into his mouth.

He laughed heartily, clapping Tilde on the back, and, as though she were a windup doll on the fritz, her smile returned mechanically. I felt faint—I knew I had to ask them, straight out, whether Bittersweet would be ours for the summer. I didn’t think I could step inside another Winloch cottage until I knew.

I cleared my throat. “Do you mind if I ask—” I began, my voice coming out thin and shaky. “I just mean, if I need to buy a ticket home …”

“You’re not thinking of leaving us?” Birch looked stricken.

“Oh no,” I said, “I wouldn’t want to, just, if I need to.”

“Why would she need to leave?” Tilde asked as though I wasn’t there.

Birch waved his hand dismissively. “Nonsense.”

Tilde handed Birch the platter, then turned to take in the view, lifting a pair of binoculars from a side table that sat beside the door. The porch was scattered with twiggy rattan furniture painted white, in stark contrast to the jewel-toned Adirondack chairs that were sprinkled across the lawn below. At the far end of the porch, I admired a
twin-size cushioned swing upholstered in navy ticking, comfortably appointed with an abundance of peachy pillows. It looked like the perfect place to curl up with a book and drift into a sun-dappled nap. But no, I couldn’t love it until I knew.