Enchanted August (18 page)

How many of those Harvard crimson lads were having fumbling, sweaty encounters with each other in the boathouse on the Charles? Beverly thought. A lot. If I had only known.

“Good morning, Beverly!” chirped Lottie as she came in through the pantry to the kitchen. He still had not got the lay of the land on this floor. Every day seemed to uncover a new room.

If he were not such a slow mover he would have had time to stop Jon and her from pouring coffee into their own mugs as they bounded into the kitchen, clearly delighted with themselves for having had some sort of sexual encounter before breakfast. Their little one must be a sound sleeper. Jon was pouring himself all but the dregs of the pot when he saw Beverly's empty mug.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“There's none left.”

“I'll make you a new pot.” He went over to the tap to rinse out the carafe and started to fill it.

“Not with that water. I'll need springwater for my own coffee. The tap water is barely potable.”

Lottie came over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He only flinched a little bit.

“Isn't it a beautiful day, Beverly?
Potable
's a good word. Where did you come up with that?”

“It's in common usage,” he said. He knew it wasn't these days, but Gorsch and he had had many discussions about potability when Gorsch traveled, especially in Mexico. “I wouldn't touch my lips to that water.”

“Lottie's been getting the water from the spring, haven't you, Lottie?” said Jon with a prideful grin. “Let me get it now, though. It's awfully heavy to carry.”

“Have you been down there yet, Beverly?” asked Lottie. “To the springhouse?”

“No, and I don't intend to go.”

“Why don't you and Jon go together?” she said, as if she did not understand English. “I'll stay here for when Ethan wakes up. He sleeps like a baby here.”

“Better than a baby.” Jon flashed her a lascivious grin. It did not go unnoticed by anyone. “Come on, Beverly. You take my coffee, and I'll have the next pot, but we'll both go down to the spring together. Then I have to go into town again. Even fake pneumonia only lasts so long.”

Jon handed him his own mug,
MBNA AMERICA BANK
, and Beverly took it.

“I hope they believe you,” said Lottie, “about the pneumonia.”

“I made it sound like I was about to croak.” He coughed, for effect. “I'm well enough to get springwater, though. Come give it a try, Beverly.”

There was something rather charming about Jon, and he did have those very tight buttocks, so Beverly found himself saying yes before he could think better of it.

Lottie gave her husband a lot of fairly lengthy instructions about how to pump the water and the least cumbersome way to carry the cooler and not to forget to fill up the primer jug, and Jon took them all with admirable patience. He fetched the cooler that stood in the pantry and motioned for Beverly to follow him out the back door.

“I'm not going in a bathrobe,” said Beverly.

“I'll wait,” said Jon.

Beverly took his time changing, but Jon was true to his word.

Beverly was not so steady on his feet anymore, but the path to the spring was easy, the way well worn. “Tell me about Possum,” said Jon. The walk went quickly after that. Beverly heard himself talking about all the years they had been together. Which led to all the years he and Gorsch had been together. Which led to the suitcase full of letters. Jon was an admirable listener.

The ground near the springhouse was a lot spongier than the rest of the path, and as they approached the low roof that covered the pipes, things got muddy. Beverly was not fond of mud. “I've walked enough,” he said. “You go from here. I'll watch. Mind you, don't soak yourself, or you'll have to strip off again.” He heard Gorsch's snappy voice in his head—“You should be so lucky”—and he smiled.

Jon was manly, but he was clearly confounded by something as old-fashioned as a water pump. Beverly knew just how to work one—there had been such a mechanism on his own grandmother's farm in deepest New Jersey, a place that at the time was as undeveloped as this. Jon had clearly not listened to his wife because he started pumping vigorously and no water was manifest. The hand pump was noisy and clattering, rusted in places, surely built in the gay nineties. It was older, even, than Beverly. And it would function if Jon knew how to do it.

Jon turned to him and smiled warily. “I'll get this going in a second,” he said and redoubled his efforts. Beverly might have reminded him that he needed to prime the pump first, as Lottie had actually told him, but he enjoyed the working of Jon's muscles in his remarkably thin T-shirt, and so withheld comment until Jon stopped again.

“There's got to be something wrong with it,” he said. “I'll find someone to fix it. Robert should be told.” Jon was clearly not used to being unable to achieve what he wanted. Beverly thought again of Lottie and how cheerful she looked this morning.

“Have you heard the expression ‘prime the pump,' Jon?” he said. “It's used crudely in some circles, but it does have a specific meaning.”

Jon looked at him blankly.

“Do as your wife said, man. Pour some water from that jug on the left—”

“The blue one?”

“I wouldn't know, as I'm color-blind,” Beverly said, patiently, he thought. “Either one. I'm sure they're both left there for the same reason.”

Jon inspected two jugs, both of which looked a dull gray to Beverly. “That's right,” he called as Jon gestured to him with a full jug of water. “Then pour water from that jug into the pump”—Jon started pouring—“
while
pumping. I'm sure a strapping man like you can do it.”

And indeed he could. A few more pumps of the handle and the water gurgled loudly, bubbled up from the fecund earth, and splashed with shocking abandon onto Jon, who was standing in the way. He moved out of range quickly.

“No nudity—this is a kids' island, now!” he said to Beverly with a grin.

As the beautifully clear water cascaded into Jon's coolers, Beverly smiled to himself. The water made Jon a little boy. The striving lawyer was washed away, not to put too fine a point on it.

“Could you take a look at the business with the music while we're here?” asked Beverly before he could think better of it. “Gorsch's music?” His voice caught in his throat but Jon could not have been aware.

“Sure. I'd be happy to.” He ran his hand through his hair. He was wavering. What could he be thinking about?

“Oh, money,” said Beverly. “Are you thinking about money?”

Jon grinned. “Not your money. I had been thinking about how to bottle this water and sell it in Brooklyn. But now that doesn't seem like such a cool idea. Want to taste this, Beverly? You won't believe how cold it is.”

He filled one of the gray jugs with fresh water and brought it over to Beverly. “Try it,” he said. “Cup your hands.”

Beverly did as he was told. Jon poured the water into his hands and he recoiled just a bit from the shock of it.

“It's so good,” said Jon.

His wrists were almost numb from the cold as he lifted the water to his mouth. This was water you could taste—tangy, iron water that pierced his right eye with cold.

L
ottie reflected on her August sojourn. This was already their third Saturday at Hopewell. So far it had been shockingly marvelous. In fact, she was afraid that she would tempt the gods if she enumerated all the things that had gone right on Little Lost Island. Jon and she had had a ton of sex, for one; here she was, doing laundry. She actually loved doing laundry on the island. The washer and dryer were not in a dingy basement as they were in her apartment building in Brooklyn. There were no quarters to scrimp together. She didn't have to wait to get into a machine.

No, here the laundry room had a view of the trees and the path down to the springhouse. She could just dump her laundry in a pile near the washer and do it at her leisure. She even picked up Beverly's laundry and did his, as she was quite certain that he was not a laundry doer himself and he would be embarrassed to admit it. I am Dobby the house elf, she thought, but liberated.

The cottage had a long, squeaky clothesline on a pulley that seemed to have been installed before Lottie was born but still worked if you applied a little elbow grease. She pulled the sheets out of the washer and put them in the garish plastic basket so she could hang them on the line.

She knew even as she was romanticizing the hanging out of sheets that she was romanticizing the hanging out of sheets. But it was hard not to. Clothespins were just not a big part of life in Park Slope. And they were such a clever invention. There was a basket of them in the laundry room and then another bag of them out by the line. She debated the merits of the two kinds of clothespins that she encountered: the very old-fashioned kind with the button cap and a split up the middle—no metal, no spring, just wood. She liked them the best. They didn't always hold the clothes so well, though. But they were so smooth and kindly. They were kind clothespins.

The other variety, more modern, vintage rather than antique—those she knew about already. They were good for small things, especially. She liked to hang her bras from the line. Now that she was having sex again she thought they looked saucy instead of forlorn.

The sheets were the best. They were big and clumsy to get situated on the clothesline, but once she had them set up properly, they billowed in the wind and bleached in the sunshine like sails. And when they were dry and back on the bed, they smelled like the outdoors.

Today's was a sheet load. Two and a half weeks here and a lot of the visions she saw when she arrived had already come through. Jon was here, and Ethan, so her most important predictions had come to pass for herself, which was nice for her but not so nice for everyone else. Rose had blossomed like the rose she was, and Lottie was rooting for Fred and was still very sure that Rose would invite him up, maybe even today.

She tugged on the line again. Beverly seemed to have a crush on Jon, or at least he was flirting with him just the tiniest bit. That was good for both of them. There was nothing Jon liked more than attention, and he got it from Beverly and then gave it back in return. The mess of letters and e-mail printouts in the suitcase had been reduced to neat piles, and only two of those piles comprised really tough challenges. Beverly promised to answer one of them a day with Jon's help, and they had made a good start. It gave Beverly an excuse to talk about Gorsch. He really needed to talk about Gorsch, Lottie thought.

She pulled another sheet from the basket and tossed it over the clothesline. She straightened it out and pinned it to the sheet before it, taking care to economize on pins, even though there were hundreds of them.

“I think Jon has actually been fired,” she said aloud. He hadn't been able to get on the firm's network yesterday, either on his phone or at the library terminal. If we were home I would be a wreck, and he would be out of his mind. “I'm glad we're here.”

She gave the line another tug and listened to the impossibly loud chatter of the brown squirrels in the high pine trees—no, spruce (she was learning)—overhead. Squirrels were just not this noisy in Prospect Park. It was like they were a whole different breed here. In fact, they were.

They'd have to leave this place eventually. Real life would rush in. She wondered what they would do to pay the mortgage. And tuition bills. Bartending was good money; a start.

The fitted bottom sheets were a pain to hang up and a worse pain to fold. Lottie usually just rolled them up into a ball and stuffed them in the tiny linen closet at home. She'd had a German boyfriend once who insisted that fitted sheets were an abomination, and would not lie down in a bed that had one on it. He had been sleeping with his former girlfriend the entire time they were together, so she went out and bought herself two deep-pocketed fitted sheets the minute she'd booted him out of her tiny Alphabet City apartment. But he was probably right about fitted sheets.

All these sheets reminded her of ex-boyfriends. Only one of them was good at doing laundry—he had, in fact, taught Lottie how to iron shirts: sleeves first, then collar, and then the reward of the body of the shirt. That was before Jon and his neat white boxes from the dry cleaner. He wouldn't have to wear those shirts if he'd been fired. They could just hole up here and gather mussels and huckleberries (she knew the difference now between them and blueberries) and eat off the land.

Of course, the house wasn't heated. Or insulated. It would be bitter here in the wintertime. Romantic, but bitter. Plus, they didn't own the cottage. A small wrinkle.

Lottie shook out the last sheet from the clothes basket. Rose had seemed romantic yet angry when she got to this place, but now she just seemed romantic. Romantic without an object of her affection. Lottie had no doubt that Robert SanSouci was coming here because he had an interest in Rose. He wanted Rose, married or not. But did he really want Rose, or just someone to take care of? All men want that. All people want that.

I am a philosopher here. Dobby the house-elf philosopher.

 • • • 

Caroline was only too happy that Beverly had by now taken over the kitchen almost entirely. His meals were simple, delicious, and effortlessly prepared. All day yesterday he was simmering lobster shells on the back burner and that night they had a lobster bisque that she would never forget. Beverly in the kitchen was different from Beverly everywhere else in the house. A dictator, yes, but no moping here.

“If you're not going to help at all, and I'd rather you didn't,” Beverly said on Saturday evening, “then you might at least set the table.” Just as Caroline's voice could never be anything but honey, Beverly's manner was never anything but peremptory. It was just the six of them, again. Caroline was still dangling the author on the thread of her texts; she'd found a place, in a corner of her third floor, where she could get a little bit of service. She wondered if she should tell the others she'd be having someone come up. Her own summer visitor.

The sunsets took their time here; even now at seven thirty it felt like daylight would never end. The low, sharply angled sunlight streamed through the western windows into the kitchen.

“Shall we eat in the dining room tonight, Beverly?” asked Caroline. It would make a change from the old spindle-legged table in the kitchen.

“Dinner will be on the table at eight o'clock,” he said, “and I don't care what table as long as everyone is seated and everyone is appreciative.” They'd had a little trouble with getting Lottie seated.

“Then I think we shall migrate to the dining room,” said Caroline. She was already picturing herself there with Mike McGowan. She wanted him to love the cottage as much as she did.

She had been to town twice to text him before she found the hot spot. He was clever and ardent and he said he was writing a part just for her. She liked the idea of a writer. She hadn't had one before.

They had barely been in the dining room at all. It was musty. If this were my place, I'd take down those curtains for a start, Caroline thought. There were two walls of windows, one looking south, the other east. Very wise to have the dining room out of the fierce light of the setting sun. She liked this old architect more and more.

She reached for a chair so she could get the curtains off their rails. They were clearly additions from the sixties—brown and orange wide-weave affairs with overlarge flowers on jungle-like stalks. The chair didn't budge. A further pull determined that it wasn't stuck to the floor—it was just inordinately heavy. There wasn't a stick of furniture here that was flimsy or made to be worn out. They built for generations when they made things back then.

She dragged the chair to the first window and lifted off the curtain rail. Much better. As she stood there looking out from on high she could see the mountains off in the distance. If the trees were not in leaf you could see so much more. “How would it be to be here in the winter?” she called to Beverly.

“Very cold,” he said. “There's not a shred of insulation in this house, if you'll recall.”

Of course that was true. Still, as Caroline dragged the chair from one window to another, she thought of fires in the fireplace and a dusting of snow on the ground. “It would be pretty, though,” she said. “We could have tons of people. They could sleep in that big Hogwarts room and pretend they're kids.”

“If you wanted them to freeze to death,” said Beverly. “Where did Rose put the garlic?”

Caroline didn't answer. Now that the curtains were down and sequestered in the sideboard, the room was much more alive. It needed air, though.

She tried to get the windows open, but only two of them would move at all, and not without a struggle. It took all her strength and a lot of maneuvering. “
Fuck
, this is hard,” she said. “Why doesn't anyone take care of this place?” The window opened with a shriek.

“Caroline, what on earth are you doing?” asked Beverly. He came in from the kitchen with half a peach in his hand. “Isn't that best left to young Max? This is dripping. And peach juice stains.” He disappeared back into the kitchen.

“I'm getting some air in here,” Caroline called. She followed him in. “What are you making tonight, Beverly? You are a talented old fellow.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. He brushed it off. They all liked to give him kisses on the cheek to see if he'd let one stick.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Gorsch was the talented one.”

She pulled up a stool. Also heavy, but mobile. “Tell me about Gorsch,” she said.

“Oh, there's nothing much to tell. We were great friends for many years.”

Is he not out of the closet? Caroline thought. How sweet to think that he's keeping something private. How did anyone keep anything private? “Did you cook for him?”

Beverly measured balsamic vinegar into a cup and poured it into a small saucepan, which he set on the stove. “Yes, I cooked for him. Not this sort of thing. Gorsch liked simple stuff. Overcooked meat and potatoes, mostly. But you don't want to hear about that.”

“I do want to hear. How did you meet?”

“Are you setting the table or interrogating me?”

“Both,” said Caroline. “Are you simmering? Can you come into the dining room with me? I need your opinion.”

“I'm reducing, so I suppose I can come in for a moment.” He adjusted the heat. “How I despise an electric stove.”

They went through to the dining room and Caroline was already cheered by what a difference it made to have the curtains down and the windows open. The room was not dreary at all.

“No plates?” said Beverly.

“They must have better stuff than what's in the kitchen. What's in here, do you think?”

She opened a sticky door to a dark cupboard or closet or pantry. She did not even know the words for these storage places. There were no closets in the bedrooms, but downstairs there were cupboards all over the place. She had learned by now that most of the electricity at Hopewell Cottage was governed irrationally, so she waved a hand in front of her into the dark of the closet and sure enough it hit a string that connected to a lightbulb, which was a nice, regular one, and not a twisted fluorescent. It gave off a dim light.

It wasn't Aladdin's cave, but it was full of treasure. The wooden shelves were filled with crockery. Stacks of dinner plates, luncheon plates, chop plates, bowls. They must have been collected and added to over time, as none of the plates were particularly standard.

“Oh, blue willow pattern,” Beverly said, barely loud enough for her to hear.

“What's blue willow pattern?” said Caroline.

 • • • 

Beverly took the plate out of her hand. He held it for a long time. He was barely aware of Caroline next to him until she asked, “Wasn't that the name of Gorsch's big hit?”

He looked at the blue-patterned china: three figures crossing the bridge, the two birds flying, touching wings. “You know the story?”

Of course this exquisite but callow girl would not know the story.

“I don't,” said Caroline.

“Two lovers adored each other,” Beverly said. “But they were unsuited.”

“Sad.”

He traced his finger over the crackled glaze. “This is an old one,” he said. He flipped the plate over. “You see?”

She looked at the smudged stamp on the back of the plate. “Is that good?”

“England is always good when it comes to china and gardening,” said Beverly. “That much they should have taught you in elementary school.”

“I was on set.”

“No excuse.” He turned the plate over again. “The princess grew up in a palace. See the palace? It's hard for me of course because—”

“—you're color-blind.”

She mocked but he would not rise to her bait. Not this time. “Indeed. The princess's mother adored her, but as I say, the father was a different matter. The father had chosen someone else for the princess to marry.”

“Typical,” said Caroline. Beverly did not smile.