Enchanted August (19 page)

“But the princess knew she was not cut out for a life with a suitor of her father's choosing. She loved another, but he was not welcome. Not welcome at all.” He concentrated on not allowing his hand to shake.

“Who did the princess love?” Caroline's low voice.

“She loved a boy.”

“The wrong boy?”

“Very much the wrong boy.”

“Where are they on this plate?” Beverly watched her scan the willow-pattern plate for the two lovers.

“You won't find them there,” he said. “They tried to escape the father's wrath by sailing away in that boat. But the father and his two younger,
loyal
sons were ever in pursuit.”

“Not a very nice family,” Caroline said.

“The gods showed them mercy, and turned them into birds,” Beverly finished. “They mated for life.”

“What a beautiful story,” she said, her eyes tracing the image on the plate. “It must be quite ancient.”

“It was made up,” said Beverly, “by the china maker. To sell plates.”

“No!”

“It was. A beautiful ruse. But it bore some similarity to . . .”

“Someone close to you?”

“A little, yes.” He touched the bridge of his nose.

“You mated for life?” asked Caroline.

“Gorsch made a song of it. The story's in the verse, not the chorus, so not everyone knows it. ‘Blue Willow.'”

“I know that song,” she said. She sang in a quiet voice:

Two lovers,

Their flight of innocent grace.

One palace,

A vast impregnable place.

Gorsch would have written songs for this voice, Beverly thought. He closed his eyes and listened to her sing. She had pitched it just right.

Father, brothers

All intent on breaking the pair.

Willow tree blows skyward

As the birds float on air

Blue willow . . .

She didn't sing the chorus. Beverly let her last note fade to silence.

“My sauce will be reduced to nothing if I don't get in the kitchen. You might do better to lay those plates out than to stare at them.”

Caroline leaned close. “Before you go.”

This time, when she kissed his cheek, he didn't brush her away.

 • • • 

“I don't know if I told everyone,” Rose said that night when they sat down to Beverly's superb chicken with balsamic peaches, “but our cottage owner, Robert SanSouci, is coming up for a day or so on Monday. I hope it's okay.”

Rose had gotten into the habit of being the salad maker, and tonight she'd used soft Boston lettuce from the farmers market and basil from the window boxes on the dock. Instead of corn they had blueberry scones—frozen from the specialty store they'd discovered in Dorset Harbor—slathered with butter. Caroline got Max to lay in the wine (no more chardonnay, foreign or domestic), so they were drinking something brilliant that Rose didn't recognize. Jon was taking Ethan for a sunset cruise on the Whaler, so it was just the four of them.

“Robert SanSouci is coming?” said Caroline. “Is there room for him?”

“There's tons of room,” said Lottie. “No one's even in the boys' dorm. That has to have six beds at least.”

“He can have Kenneth Lumley's room,” said Beverly. None of them actually believed in Kenneth Lumley by this point, but it was said in all seriousness.

“That's very generous of you, Beverly,” said Lottie. “I think it would be nice for Rose to have someone up here. You don't mind, do you, Caroline?”

“He's not really coming up here for me,” Rose said. “He was passing by.”

“Nobody passes by Little Lost Island,” said Caroline. “Also, I might have a friend come up next week.”

This was news. They were going to have a full cottage.

“Great,” said Rose. Everyone will be here but Fred, she thought.

“I'm not cooking for massed thousands,” said Beverly.

“We could order in,” said Caroline.

“We already order in,” said Lottie.

“You actually can get people over to the island to do a lobster bake,” said Rose. “There are all kinds of signs in the Harbor.”

“I know. Jon took their number. It will be nice to have Robert here. I think he has a little crush on Rose, even though she is a married lady,” said Lottie.

“He could add frisson,” said Beverly.

“Just as long as he doesn't make himself too much at home,” said Caroline.

T
hat night, after dinner had been eaten and Jon had done the dishes—very helpfully, he thought—Rose told them the story of Max in the library.

It was cold enough to make a fire that night and Jon was the designated fire expert. Except that he wasn't actually that great at it. “Is this the flue? Is it open or shut?”

“It should be open,” Lottie said. They were both looking up the chimney. “What did he say exactly?”

“He said, ‘In case Meredith was talking, Kitty dumped me.' And then he left.”

Jon wasn't really following the conversation. Something about librarians and the handyman. “Is there any kindling?”

“Caroline brought in a bunch of sticks before it started raining,” Rose said.

“Very prescient of her,” said Jon.

“Or just very smart,” said Lottie. “Caroline is the smart one—isn't that funny? You don't think of movie stars as smart.”

“Lottie, you must learn not to say everything that comes into your head,” said Beverly, but not unkindly. “It will be the undoing of you.”

“She's come undone,” said Lottie. “I know that from somewhere. So what do you think was the reason, Rose? What's Kitty like?”

“I don't know. I don't even know who she is. Her friend seemed nice enough.”

“We have kindling, but what about wood?” asked Jon. “Is this fire really worth it?”

“A fire is always worth it,” said Lottie. “You'll make a gorgeous one, Jon, I know.” She was so nice to him up here. Was she always this nice, and he just didn't notice?

“The firewood is in a pile under the back stairs outside,” said Beverly. “You must have seen it.”

Jon had not noticed. He wound his way through the narrow hallway into the kitchen and out the door to the back side of the cottage. The air was wet and cold and the night was black. The clouds that had brought the afternoon rain must have been still overhead because Jon could not see the moon or the stars. He took a deep breath. The lights from the house threw some light his way, but not much. No wonder everyone carries flashlights in their pockets around this island. He needed a flashlight. Maybe I can get one of those headlights that people wear camping, he thought. They're so cool but I'd feel like an idiot in one back home. Here all that gear actually made sense. He and Ethan could have matching headlamps. Dad and lad.

Jon felt tears prick his eyes. Seriously? I'm crying about Ethan wearing a headlamp? This place is going to wreck me.

There was a wood carrier right next to the pile and Jon stacked it full. He'd take in a huge pile and then they wouldn't need to get any more for a few days. He'd be a hero.

The wood was heavy and awkward and it took him a while to get it back to the living room—or the east sitting room, as Caroline had started to call it. She had disappeared from their little cluster again that night. She fixed up the house during the day and holed up in her room at night. She wasn't a joiner.

Jon hoped that they would have stopped talking about that poor guy Max by the time he got back. Relationships are tough, for sure. But not as tough for him up here, where it wasn't real life.

“Oh, Jon, do you need help?” said Rose.

“Primitive. Man. Make. Fire,” said Jon. He dropped the firewood with a huge clatter.

“Down, boy,” said Beverly.

 • • • 

Caroline was not about to let on about the third-floor hot spot, where she got to carry on with Mike McGowan. It was such a relief to be online again—albeit very slowly and crankily. She must have been picking up a neighbor's wireless, or some faint signal from the mainland. Whatever it was, she was happy for it. Although it made her a little sick at the same time.

He was a gawper. He would stare and he would grab—oh, not literally, of course. He'd be much too refined for that. But she would be a conquest for him. She'd give him boasting rights. That's what they all wanted with her. And with it, of course, came her own sense of power.

tell me why you want to see me so badly

you are exquisite.

you are sublime

Guide par ton odeur vers de charmants climats

He was laying it on with a trowel.
Not one I know.

Baudelaire

Keep going

Je vois un port rempli de voiles et de mâts

Okay, that's good.

It's the one about fragrance and charming climates and ports with sails.

Thanks, I got it.
Maybe that was a little too barbed. She toned it down.
do you like lobster?

lobster is mother's milk to me

That was lame for a genius.

Sorry that was lame. I like lobster a lot.

Should she ask him?

you could come up for the lobster bake next Wednesday night

No immediate swoosh. I bet he's all bluster.

I'll be there.

and then if I don't like you you have to go

She didn't even know what he looked like.

Send me a picture.

A pause, then a photo. Black-and-white. Brooding. From the nineteen . . . twenties?

Isn't that Buster Keaton?

She knew it was not.

Maybe.

Bring your boater hat. But if I say you can't stay here . . .

. . . then I'll drive 500 miles, have a single claw, and drive back.

Wednesday at 6ish on the west shore. Ask anyone

just in time for the mosquitoes

I'll be bitten to shreds

She knew he'd want to write, “Before or after I'm with you?” and if he did she might rescind the invitation.

I'll cover you with calamine.

nite

nite

She moved away from the wireless space. It was like an electric fence—get too close and you'll burn. She was burned.

But why on earth have someone up here? He'll tell the papers; it will be fodder for the bloggers; the publicists will make it into a story for
next
year's Oscar race, except that she wouldn't be in next year's Oscar race. He probably had a wife and three kids—she'd be cast as the home wrecker even if nothing got wrecked but her own damaged heart. The only thing he had going in his favor was that he didn't want to be discovered either. She wondered again who he was. People said Michael Chabon for sure. Neil Gaiman had come up. Didn't those guys have wives who were both super hotties, though?

Oh well, everyone likes to cheat.

Isadora Osgood Saunderson wouldn't have cheated on her earnest, ardent, bearded young scholar, would she? Caroline went back to the picture album that she'd looked at so many times up on that attic floor. There must be other pictures of her when she's older, Caroline thought. Did she marry him? Were they in love their whole lives?

Too bad she hadn't kept a diary. But most of those diaries back then were pretty restrained—chronicles of daily tasks and accomplishments, not of feelings.

She held up Isadora's dress in front of the mirror for the umpteenth time. It made her feel bad this time, like she was cheating on Isadora herself.

One thing was for sure: she was not going to let Mike McGowan up here in the attic. This was her place. No one could come here unless they were worthy. And Mike was already not worthy. She heard an explosion of laughter from downstairs in the east sitting room. The cottage smelled like firewood. It would have been nice to join them tonight, Caroline thought. Instead of texting.

She looked down at her phone. There was one last message.

it'll be a blue moon.

B
right and early Monday morning, Robert arrived on the island on the eleven a.m. ferry.

As he wound his way up the hill toward Hopewell, he reminded himself that, other than the cottage—which was, admittedly, staggering good fortune—he was not much of a prize. Too thin, too nerdy, too much a product of the seventeenth century, even though he was only thirty-three. But with his two older parents having been so distant, as a boy he'd filled himself with stories.
Tarzan
was a favorite, then science fiction, and then somewhere in the spring of his junior year in high school his elderly parents took him to an all-Bach harpsichord and lute recital at Chapel Hill and he was smitten. He taught himself guitar when all the other kids were playing soccer, and then it was a short hop from there to the much coveted lute. Actually not such a short hop—lutes were not much in supply in North Carolina, but a very kind music teacher, who may or may not have had designs on Robert, put the antique instrument into his hands and he was transported. The ravishing sound of the strings, the resonance of the large body, the sheer woodenness of it—not to mention its antiquity and the vast diversity of the repertoire. Guitars were his friends but the lute was his love.

What would Rose think about falling in love with a lutenist? It could happen, couldn't it? Someone who looked like Helga could love him. Lots of people could have loved him if he weren't such an oddball.

And he
was
an oddball. Several girlfriends had told him as much. His great love in college, Maeve, was the first to say so. Maeve, second youngest of a large brood of Catholics, may never have encountered anyone who could be called poorly socialized, but that's what he'd be labeled if he took one of those personality quizzes. But he was also all the good things that came with that: fiercely loyal, intensely devoted, and, because he thought so little of himself, dedicated to making his lovers have a superb time in bed.

Robert had the geek's capacity for the study of detail, and he applied an almost academic rigor to the female body. He liked women of all stripes and, for an unassuming fellow, had rabid fantasies about what he might do with just about anyone in bed.

All that said, he was loath to make the first move. Loath to speak up on his own behalf. Unwilling to sell himself. That's why he let the cottage do it for him.

Oh, it was a cheap ploy, he knew. There was barely a soul alive who could go to Hopewell Cottage and not fall in love with it. He'd tried this before, God knows, and a couple of summers ago it almost worked. But that woman—Arlene, bad name—turned out to be in love only with the cottage and not with him at all. And in fact, she wasn't really in love with the cottage as it was. She wanted to add a satellite dish and rip up the kitchen. That was it for her.

Robert hadn't taken any of them up to the third floor. He told them all it was just filled with mildewed crap that he needed to get rid of eventually. Not even Arlene had been up there, and he had spent half of June and all of July with her there. (She was a teacher—long summers.) She loved the turret room on the south side of the cottage, the one with the rose prints, although she didn't like the prints and brought books of wallpaper samples from as far away as Camden, along with other ideas. They could have been good ideas if she had been the right person. He just wished she had liked him as much as she did the house. Or the idea of the house.

But she hadn't, and eventually he had ended it, awkwardly of course. Now he was foolishly doing the same thing again this year. Life presents us with the same lesson over and over again until we learn it, one of Robert's wiser friends always said. Here we go with the same old lesson.

And then there she was.

Robert was startled by how much more striking Rose was here on Little Lost than she was even when he'd first seen her. She belonged in this landscape.

“Robert? Is that you? I didn't think we were expecting you till later.”

“No, I'm here.” Stupid thing to say. Obviously he was here.

“Nice to see you again. I was just on my way to town but I think I may have gotten the ferry times wrong.”

“The ten thirty has pulled out,” said Robert. At least he could be helpful about island things. Rose's stoic Wyeth face got more stoic. “But let me take you over in the Whaler. Is it tied up on this side?” He hadn't noticed it when the ferry tied up at the wharf, such was his determination to see the woman who was now next to him. Lovely though she was in this warm August light, she was less happy to see him than he'd fantasized she would be. Of course what he fantasized was not likely to happen in the middle of the path to the ferry at ten forty in the morning. Worse luck.

“Forgive me, I'm so distracted,” said Rose. “I have a Skype date with my kids and I'm getting a little frantic. My sister set it up—she's with them for the month. Or they're with her for a month. I have to get to the library. I can't have missed the ferry, can I? Lottie blew a fuse last night and all the clocks went out.”

Robert would have spoken sooner but he was far too distressed at hearing that she had children to respond. If she had children, did it mean she had a husband? And if she had a husband, where was he? Here?

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“That I had a Skype date?”

He composed himself. “Oh, no, sorry. No, why didn't you tell me you needed a lift across to the mainland? I'll take you. Unless you want to run up to the cottage and get your husband? There's room in the Whaler for all of us.”

“Oh, thank you so much. Can we go down to the dock right now? I don't want to miss them. I miss them so much already.”

“Yes, yes, of course. I can take you right into town by boat. We'll get there quicker than by car. I'll make sure you talk to your kids.”

“Oh, thank you, Robert!” Her face lit up. I'm her hero. He pressed his suit as they walked fast down to the dock. “How nice for you and your husband to have this holiday away from the children.” Rose did not reply. Was he here or not?

“This boat! I was so scared of it the first day we got here, and then I jumped out of it to rescue a hat!”

“That sounds dramatic,” said Robert.

“It was!” Rose smiled. What a terrific smile. “It's a lot less threatening now.”

“It's a good old tub,” he said. “Not much for the open seas but it will get you to Dorset Harbor in no time. Craft fair at the Dorset Green on Mondays, which means traffic. Could you untie?”

“I think so.”

It wasn't completely fair of him to ask her to untie when he could as easily have done it himself, but this way he got that satisfying rear view of her as she undid the bow knot without much difficulty. “You're getting to be a sailor yourself,” he said.

“My husband always says the elegance of a knot is in the untying, not in the tying,” she said. “This must have been an elegantly tied knot if it was easy for
me
to undo. We'll get there by eleven thirty, won't we?”

Robert pulled the cord twice and the engine caught. “We'll be there in half an hour,” he said. “Less.” He maneuvered the boat around the lobster pots and gave it plenty of gas once they were out of the no-wake zone. It wasn't easy to talk over the drone of the motor, so he didn't try. Rose was looking out over the bow as if she were a figurehead. She called back to him, “I reserved the computer terminal at the library from eleven thirty to twelve. They're usually good about it, aren't they? They seem nice there. I don't want to miss the kids.” There was a catch in her voice. All at once, Robert pictured himself with an instant family: two children (what kind? how old?) and perhaps another one or two to round out their happy home. They could populate the dormitory room with loads of kids and their friends. They could field a baseball team, if only he knew how many people were on a baseball team.

Was the husband here?

“I think they're doing well at my sister's. And they should be—all that space! But I haven't heard anything for the past four days and it's kind of killing me. When I see them I want to go back to them. But when I'm here I'm here.”

They skirted around the channel marker that would lead them into Dorset Harbor. He wanted her to keep talking, even though he could hear only about one word out of three over the sound of the outboard. He was piecing it together. Kids with sister. Husband possibly not here, so Robert was in with a chance.

“We'll tie up at the public dock. There's usually a space there.” He slowed the engine. “See if you can spot an empty cleat and then just loop the rope around it.”

“Don't go in too fast!” said Rose. “I'm not good at this.”

“Any slower and we will be in neutral. In fact”—he put the engine in neutral—“now we are in neutral. You hop off and I'll tie up. See?” He looked at the clock tower in the white clapboard Congregationalist church that was Dorset Harbor's architectural prize. “It's not even eleven now. You have tons of time.”

“Will you come with me?” Rose smiled at him. “I'm not sure how to get to the library from down here.”

“I'll show you.” He took another chance. “How nice for you to see your husband and kids, even by Skype.”

“My kids, yes, not my husband,” said Rose. “I mean, he won't be there.”

“He's not at his sister's?”

“My sister's. No, he's at home. At home in Brooklyn.”

That was all it took for him to be back in bed with her, in the turret room with the roses that conjured her name. “Here's the library,” said Robert. “I'll wait.”

 • • • 

The twins were having a blast.

“
Mommy!
I can see you!” Ben shoved Bea out of the frame but Bea fought back. She was learning. Maybe it helped not to have Mommy intervene. Something to think about, Rose. “
Mommy!
You're in the computer!”

Rose was crying with relief and love and missing them. “I'm here, you guys! Oh, you look so good. You have
blue lips
. What have you been eating?”

Here proceeded a long conversation, if you could call it that, about the many different FrozFruits Aunt Isobel had offered them while they were staying with her. They were mostly making faces at themselves in the Skype frame, but that was fine. It was all fine. “Are you having fun? A lot of fun?”

Isobel had gone all out, of course, and there was a bouncy castle in her backyard for the weekend, and all the kids from the neighborhood were coming over to play. “Don't worry! I'm having it catered!” she said as she squeezed in the frame. “This is great for them. They're living on FrozFruits. It's brutal here. How's Maine?”

“Maine's great. Are they okay? Are they sleeping? Is Ben hitting?” Or biting, she didn't add.

“He's hitting enough to be noticed. But there are big kids here, don't forget. They outweigh him!”

“I could come back if it gets to be too much.”

“HIIIIIII MOMMMMMMMMMY!”

“Hi my sweet pea sweet Bea!”

“I made Ben cry!”

She couldn't say, “That's good,” but she applauded Bea's gumption. “Well, try not to make him cry, but I'm glad you two are playing together.”

Ben began doing something that was making screeching noises in the background. “I'm moving the chair!” She loved the way he said it:
chay-o.
“Watch me moving the chair!”

They were having a ball and Fred and Isobel had arranged it all. She had an urge to talk to him, to see him in front of her. To have him next to her in bed at night and wake up with him there.

“I'm really fine with them here, Rose. Fred could go up and see you. What's it like up there? Where are you, anyway?”

“We're Down East!” It was such a funny expression for being so far north they could practically swim to Nova Scotia. “On an island off the coast. In a cottage. Maybe the kids will come here someday.” She was feeling expansive. “Maybe you'll all come here someday.”

“Rose, they need me out in the yard to break up a fight. Talk to you in a couple of days?”

“Okay—same time Wednesday. No, Thursday. Wednesday's the lobster bake.”

“It's just a parade of clichés up there. Are you catching your own lobsters?”

“Not yet! Tell them I send my love.”

Isobel waved and the picture froze. Rose closed her eyes, took a breath, and let her shoulders fall.

“Are you over and out?” Robert's voice behind her startled her. “Were they wonderful?”

She smiled broadly. “They were! They're great. They're actually doing okay without me.”

“And you are thriving?” he said. He hoped he made the question sound funny.

She grinned. “You sound like a doctor.”

“I give you not only a clean bill of health, but an excellent prognosis.”

“Oh, and what is that?” she asked. It was fun to flirt.

“My prognosis is that you will enjoy a rich and healthy life if you and your darling children come up to Maine once a year from now till death—”

She cut him off. “Now till death? Yikes.” Had he been going to say, “Now till death do us part?” She barely knew him. A little crush was okay but she wasn't ready for a proposal.

He was making an effort to gather his wits back together. “Well, let's just say I hope you come up here for many years.”

He was amusing, if a little professorial and Ichabod Craney for her taste. “I don't think we've even found every room in the place yet. We keep discovering new ones. I told the others you were coming and they said you can have Kenneth Lumley's room.” She smiled again. They already had Hopewell Cottage in-jokes. “If you stay till Wednesday you can join us for the lobster bake. Lottie's husband, Jon, thinks he has someone lined up to come over and make it all happen.”