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.
‘So you were pleased, then,’ I pressed. ‘We passed the inspection.’
Birch’s eyes lingered over me for a long, odd moment. He frowned, dismissing my words, before turning back to the water. ‘How many do we have?’ he asked. I followed his gaze out to Winslow Bay as Tilde counted aloud, noticing, for the first time, a tangle of masts, bobbing like a floating forest.
‘Do you know much about yachts?’ he asked.
I shook my head, thoughts racing. They hadn’t told me I had to leave. Which meant they were going to let me stay. I almost laughed aloud with relief but for the serious tone Birch used as he pointed out toward a moored boat with two masts. ‘That’s a yawl – the mizzenmast, which is the second mast, is behind the rudderpost. And that’ – he moved his hand to the right – ‘is a ketch – the rudderpost is behind the mizzenmast. The rest are sloops – single masts.’
‘Twenty-six,’ Tilde said crisply.
‘Give her a chance to look,’ he said, and she handed me the heavy binoculars. I wasn’t even sure what I was supposed to be looking for, but I held the glasses to my eyes. The magnification moved so quickly across the suddenly close landscape that I felt dizzy. Finally I found the fleet of moored boats in the water right before us. In the golden light I could make out a family swimming beside one of the yachts. On the deck of another, a couple sipped martinis.
‘Canadians,’ Birch said in a mocking tone.
‘They sail down just for the weekend?’ I asked, impressed that so many people were living such luxurious lives.
‘Twenty-six is far too many,’ Tilde said. ‘They’ll keep us up half the night.’ Then a look of delight flitted across her face. ‘Perhaps one will get stuck on the reef.’
‘We don’t want that – then we’d have to help them.’ Birch laughed, and, much to my surprise, Tilde joined him. I’d never seen her amused, and the sound was much lighter and looser than I would have imagined. Birch turned to me again, and Tilde’s laugh cut itself off, midair. He hardly seemed to notice, but I could feel her disdain.
‘I curse the crows when they wake me up,’ he declared, ‘but I praise them when they wake the damn Canadians.’ He held up the platter of muffins. ‘Shall we find a place to put these?’ I was grateful for his graciousness, and to leave Tilde behind.
Birch led me into the room just inside the screen porch, the finest I’d seen at Winloch; if this was the summer room, I wanted to know what the rest of the house looked like. Upon the honey-colored floor stood antique wooden sideboards and a large mahogany table. An exquisite burgundy Oriental rug tied the furniture together, ending before a large fireplace sporting a brass fender and matching andirons. Canapés were arranged in colorful formations upon hand-painted porcelain platters: crab cakes and mini-lobster rolls and demitasses of chilled pea soup. Never before had I been at a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ family dinner of this caliber – now I understood why my corn muffins had been in error. Birch found a spot for them, a spot I kept my eye on as the night progressed, praying someone would finish the stupid things so I might be absolved of my blunder.
As more Winslows arrived, I filled a china plate and nibbled at the far wall, watching them pass before me – an older woman, a little boy, the well-dressed mothers, the chiseled men – all with their alabaster skin, scrubbed clean of dirt and imperfections. They were a perfect, particular breed of animal, like racehorses or hounds, thin-ankled and groomed. It was easy to tell those of us not related by blood – we were almost all shorter and darker, but there was something else: we hung back.
Elegant Ev checked in on me more than once; apprehensive Annie sought me out for company; blundering Banning spilled his daughter’s apple juice all over my sandal, making my left foot moist and sticky for the rest of the evening. But otherwise I was left alone. As the soiree progressed, a herd of blond children thundered in and out of the room, raiding the crackers and cheese. They were shooed out onto the porch intermittently by a clucking mother, and, more than once, I thought to follow them, longing for their honesty. As the summer room grew too small to contain the sheer number of Winslows inhabiting it, the party spilled out onto the porch, and I made my way to the other side of the room, thinking I’d go in search of the toilet, when my gaze settled on an alcove built into the wall, out of sight of my previous post. Inside the alcove hung the most beautiful painting I’d ever seen.
True, I hadn’t seen many paintings in my life; the reproductions in the art books at the library had, at best, been murky sketches of the real things. In person, Ev’s Degas had impressed me; I’d known, just by looking at it, that it was Important. Still, that small, predictable work of art called forth a far less rousing sensation than the gasping good fortune I felt as I took in the great painting hanging before me.
It was a Van Gogh.
I couldn’t call up the painting in my memory, so perhaps I’d never seen it reproduced. It was unmistakably one of his, if bigger than I’d ever guessed a Van Gogh to be.
A landscape – his telltale cypress trees in rich greens and blues, reaching up toward a night sky. Above, stars. Below, yellow and green grasses, purpling in the distance. If there was a distance; it was hard to hold on to the perspective in any of it, for just as the eye would settle on a horizon line, a glance to either side would reapportion the whole thing, casting one’s first impression into doubt. But far from causing frustration, as such an effect would have elicited from a lesser artist, the result was exhilarating, pulse-quickening. The painting heightened emotion as only great art can.
For the first time that evening, I forgot about the Winslows.