The Guest Cottage

by Nancy Thayer

  On the spur of the moment, she phoned Hristo to invite him and Desi. Unfortunately they already had plans, which put a damper on Sophie’s spirits, but only for a moment. She phoned Connor down in the apartment.

  “Please come for a meal with us tonight,” she said. “My two best friends are here, and Jonah’s good friend Cash, and Lacey’s friend Betsy. I’m making a huge lasagna, one of my specialties.”

  After a long moment of silence, Connor replied, “Why, thank you very much. I would enjoy that indeed. With one condition: that you will come here for dessert. I picked two quarts of blueberries from the wild bushes at the back of the property and I’ve been wondering what to do with them all. My wife taught me how to make a blueberry pie before she died because she knows that’s my favorite dessert. If you could bring along some vanilla ice cream, it would go nicely.”

  “It’s a deal,” agreed Sophie, adding ice cream to her list.

  She dropped Angie and Bess at Surfside and drove into town. She went to Moor’s End to buy fresh lettuces, red and yellow tomatoes, basil, zucchini, onions, and spinach. She went to Annye’s Whole Foods to purchase a large selection of olives and cheeses, figs, garlic, prosciutto, cantaloupe, marinated red peppers, artichoke hearts in olive oil, and baguettes shipped over from Pain D’Avignon. At the Stop & Shop, when she finally found a parking place, she bought the rest of the necessities: ground beef, lasagna noodles, lots of different chips and crackers, and of course the vanilla ice cream. One more stop: Hatch’s Package Store, where she loaded up on an assortment of good red wines.

  At home, she put on a CD of Tosca and sang along with it as she prepared the various layers of a large pan of beef lasagna and one of spinach lasagna. She roasted the red peppers and blended them in the food processor with garlic, goat cheese, olive oil, basil, and rosemary to make a dip to serve as an appetizer with the plate of antipasto she would put out. No fish or shellfish in anything; over the past three weeks they had had fish almost every day. When the lasagna was in the oven, she washed the lettuces and tore them into a wooden bowl, ready for dressing at the last moment. She took out the most colorful tablecloths she could find in the cupboards and spread them over the tables outside and in the dining room. At Moor’s End, she’d bought several bundles of fresh summer flowers. She had put these in water when she first got home; now she arranged them in various vases and pitchers and set them around on the tables. Then she hurried to take a shower and dress before everyone arrived home from the beach.

  She chose a cute blue-checked gingham sundress that might have been a bit too low-cut for her to wear except on the beach, but it was a hot night and she looked good in it. She ruffled her increasingly shaggy hair, clicked on hoop earrings, and took special pains with her makeup. She hadn’t really cared what she looked like before except on her dates with Hristo, but tonight she felt playful and even daring. In the back of her mind—oh, what the hell, it was her mind after all—in the front of her mind, she thought: Okay, Angie, you can look sexy; well, guess what? So can I.

  Her friends and the kids had caught a ride home from the beach with Trevor. Around five, everyone spilled into the house at once, hot and sandy, hungry and thirsty. They raced off to shower and came back downstairs.

  “What smells so good?” asked Trevor. He wore board shorts and a clean T-shirt that said, Never trust an atom. They make up everything.

  “I’m in an Italian mood today,” Sophie told him. “I invited Connor to join us. He’ll be up any minute. And we’re going to his place for dessert!”

  Trevor stared at her, squinting his eyes as if she’d become a problem to solve.

  “I’d love it if you’d open some of the wine,” she cooed, sending the subliminal signal: You believe I’m jealous because you slept with Angie? Ha! Look how happy I am.

  “Sure,” Trevor said, going into the kitchen.

  “Mom.” Jonah slumped into the kitchen, his freshly shampooed hair dripping on his shoulders, Cash behind him. “What smells so good?”

  “Lasagna,” she told him. “Go outside—I’ve set chips and a tub of iced drinks out there.”

  “Awesome.” Jonah and Cash bumped into each other getting to the door to the patio.

  Lacey and Betsy were next, shepherding Leo in front of them. “Mom, we’re so tired from being in the sun all day. Could we watch some television?”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea,” said Sophie. “Trevor, what do you think?”

  “Fine with me,” Trevor agreed.

  “Here, take this in with you.” She handed her daughter a plate of sliced carrots, cucumbers, and cheese and handed Leo a basket of chips.

  The kids hurried to the family room, giggling. Bess came into the kitchen with her short hair still damp and her pretty face free of makeup. She wore a loose sundress and no jewelry.

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  “Help yourself to a glass of sangria and relax on the patio,” Sophie told her. “I made lasagna. Connor Swenson, the old gentleman in the apartment, is coming up for dinner and we’re going there for dessert. I’ll be out in a moment.”

  “Fabulous,” said Bess. “This is a perfect day.”

  It wasn’t until Sophie and Trevor had joined Bess and the boys on the patio that Angie made her appearance. She had taken the time to blow-dry her curly black hair, which she wore loose and free. She wore a long, multicolored gypsy skirt with tiny bells on the hem that tinkled seductively when she walked and a skimpy white tank top with no bra so that her dark nipples showed clearly.

  “Wow, Sophie! What a feast! I’m ravenous!” Angie slid a smile at Trevor as she spoke, making it clear exactly what she was hungry for.

  As the group gathered on the patio, sipping drinks, selecting munchies from the table with its bright cloth, flowers, and abundance of food, Connor Swenson came toward them over the lawn, moving slowly, leaning on a cane. Sophie introduced him to her friends, noticing that the side of one of Connor’s deck shoes had been cut open. She didn’t remark on it, but quickly ushered him to a chair. Trevor asked the older gentleman what he’d like to drink and handed him a cold beer.

  And then, as Sophie had thought it would, a perfect summer evening unfurled beneath the cloudless sky. She passed around the platter of antipasto. Trevor kept everyone’s glass filled. Bess clicked photos of everything with her phone before subsiding into her chair. Angie, not to be overlooked, carried the chips and Sophie’s red pepper dip to Connor, kneeling before him to hold the plate as he dipped a chip, her gypsy skirt swirling on the patio tiles.

  After a while, they all went in for dinner. Sophie had put candles on the table, and now she lighted them and turned off most of the lights in the house. She called the kids to come join them, so it was a grand total of ten people of all ages gathered around the table enjoying lasagna, salad, and crusty garlic bread.

  They talked about the island, the seals they’d caught sight of in the water, the great white shark rumored to be hanging out at Great Point, the fabulous variety of birds winging through the air—hawks, cormorants, crows, cardinals, and finches—as well as the snowy swans swimming in local ponds and the mallards who lived in shallow water at the end of the harbor and often stopped traffic on Orange Street as they crossed to visit local lawns.

  Connor mentioned that he was carving a duck decoy and the conversation turned to him. Everyone, especially the children, was fascinated to hear that he’d been a farmer in Iowa.

  “Oh, yes,” Connor told them, “I was a real farmer. I had a herd of polled Herefords. You all probably don’t know what polled means. It means that they’ve been bred to be hornless. Less danger, especially from the bulls.”

  “Did you have a bull?” Leo’s eyes were wide.

  Connor laughed and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, Leo. I had many of them.”

  “Were they scary?”

  “Truthfully, yes, they were. Or could be. Cows—the females—are pretty mild-tempered, but bulls can be unpredictable, especially when the
cows are”—he stopped to think of a euphemism—“ready to mate. And bulls are territorial.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Lacey.

  Connor explained and went on to describe a time when his wife, Audrey, had taken a liking to a newborn bull she named Wooly Bully. He had curly white hair on his forehead and he loved for her to scratch it. Whenever Audrey came out of the house, Wooly Bully would run to the fence and bellow for her. But he grew up and moved to another field, and Audrey didn’t see him as often.

  “One day, after a spring storm had washed out a fence, Wooly Bully wandered over into a neighbor’s field. How to get him home? By then he was three years old, in full possession of his male properties, and he weighed over three thousand pounds. He was not especially mean, but bulls and cows in general tend to butt one another with their heads to communicate. One hard knock with his head could send a human unconscious. Audrey, just a tiny thing weighing scarcely over a hundred pounds, insisted she could bring him home. So she walked right over into that field of fescue, walked right up to that great big animal, cooing his name the whole time. He snorted. He pawed on the ground. It had been quite a while since Audrey had scratched his forehead, and it was possible he had forgotten her and would consider her an invader.” Connor paused to take a drink.

  Sophie looked around the table as Connor spoke. The children were fascinated, even big Jonah and Cash. The adults were calm but engrossed, their lips shining in the candlelight with olive oil and wine. Everyone looked beautiful to Sophie. She thought she would always remember this moment.

  “Hurry up! Tell us what happened!” cried Leo.

  Trevor’s face bloomed with a smile to hear his son interact normally. His eyes flew to Sophie’s and they exchanged a quick nod of triumph.

  “Well,” continued Connor, “Audrey walked right up to that bull and reached up—he was a big one—and scratched his forehead. He blew out his breath, making a noise like this”—Connor created a huffing sound with a low bass rumble—“and snorted, and knocked Audrey for more scratching. But here’s the thing: he didn’t knock her hard. He did it just about as gently as any bull could. And there I was standing on the other side of the fence, my heart in my throat with fear for her, and what does she do? She reaches up and puts her arms around the bull’s neck and hugs him and whispers in his ear.” Connor took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. His eyes were shiny with tears. “That bull hadn’t forgotten her. He was like Audrey’s puppy dog. She fastened the lead rope around him and led him back to our field.” Connor barked a short laugh. “I’d better add that I had to leave the battlefield sharpish. He wasn’t so happy to see me.”

  “Do you miss your farm?” asked Lacey, a distressed expression on her face.

  “Yes, I do, Lacey. But you know, I’m an old man now and I can’t do what I used to do. Plus farms aren’t what they used to be. A corporation bought my property and farms it with machines. They knocked down our hundred-year-old farmhouse and our barns. When we lived there, we had cats, dogs, chickens, a couple of horses, and of course the cows. Now no animals live on that land. Things change. That’s just the way it is.” A shadow passed over Connor’s handsome old face, but then he resolutely brightened. “But change can bring good things, too. You children have seen my carving. I didn’t have time to really enjoy it when I worked the farm. In fact, whenever you’re ready, we can go on over to my house for dessert and I’ll show you around.”

  Sophie was afraid the kids in their excitement would hurry to Connor’s house before he could get there. “Connor, why don’t you go with Bess, Angie, and Trevor, while the children and I wrap up some of this food for tomorrow?”

  “Mom,” objected Jonah.

  “Mommy, that’s not fair,” Lacey whined.

  “It won’t take long,” Sophie said cheerfully with a note of iron in her voice.

  So the adults rose from the table and slowly ambled over to the apartment. Sophie blew out the candles and turned on the lights. She organized the kids to clear the table outside and in the dining room. She put the leftovers in Tupperware containers or wrapped them in foil. She loaded the dishwasher. She rinsed out the empty wine bottles and gave them to Jonah and Cash to put in the recycling bin. She told the kids to use the bathroom and wash their hands, and was pleasantly relieved when Leo obeyed her without question.

  As they walked through the grass, light faded from the sky, and the stars began to flick on, one by one, as if someone were passing through rooms above, turning them on. A hawk—Sophie thought it was a hawk—shrilled in the trees. The night was muggy and still. Lacey’s fairy house and Leo’s Lego fort were black shapes in the fuzzy gray bushes.

  Connor’s apartment was almost too small to hold ten people. Sophie found it oddly thrilling to see the place, at last. It was very simple: one large room with a galley kitchen at one end. A door, always closed these days, connected to the music room. Stairs led to a loft bedroom and a bathroom. A recliner faced a large-screen television. An end table next to the recliner was stacked with books and magazines.

  The surprise was that in place of a dining table, a long worktable stretched against the wall. A vise was attached to the table and on the wall next to it hung knives, chisels, clamps, hammers, pliers, and tools Sophie couldn’t name. Each implement was outlined in white chalk so that the correct tool would always be returned to its proper place. Blocks of wood were stacked at one end of the table. Next to it were several tubes of paint, lacquers, and wood sealers. Jars of turpentine, containers of brushes, a basket of rags, and a dustpan and small brush sat at the other end of the worktable. It was a world unto itself. Sophie could imagine getting lost in the intricate creation of a wooden bird with all the exact markings and feathers of an actual bird.

  “Awesome,” Jonah said as they gathered around the worktable.

  “I can’t see!” cried Leo, and Trevor picked him up.

  “Can I try?” asked Lacey, reaching for a block of wood.

  “Absolutely not,” Sophie quickly told her daughter. “Those knives are sharp.”

  “Perhaps you might help me soften this ice cream by putting it in the microwave,” Connor said to Lacey. “I know how to use it, but I never can judge how long for what food and I don’t want to turn the ice cream into mush.”

  Lacey, complimented by Connor’s assumption that she knew such things, directed her attention away from the carvings to help Connor soften the ice cream and spoon it over the plates of blueberry pie he had already prepared.

  It was too crowded in the apartment, so the group went outside and sat in a circle on the grass to eat their desserts. Light fell from the open door of Connor’s apartment, illuminating their party. Behind them, the Swensons’ house rose like a ship on a black-green sea, the windows glowing rectangles of light gold.

  Trevor sat next to his son, helping him balance his bowl on his legs.

  “This is delicious,” said Sophie.

  “My wife’s recipe,” Connor told her. “We used to pick the berries from wild bushes growing all around the farm.”

  While everyone else talked about recipes and berries, Trevor concentrated on helping his son spoon the food into his mouth without dropping it all over his clothes. He was grateful to have such a task so obviously require his attention. Angie had been shooting him sly complicit looks all evening, as if she wanted to make certain everyone around knew they were a couple.

  They would never be a couple. Angie was fierce and controlling, almost gymnastic in her frenzy. As they made love, she pinched him, slapped him, and growled. On the side of his neck he wore an unattractive love bite she had given him during their session. That had been oddly arousing and repellent at the same time. He couldn’t stop himself from thinking of vampire movies and ritualistic brandings, and no matter how he tried to pry her away from him, Angie was determined. He suspected she was trying to literally leave her mark for her friends to see. She was a beautiful woman but rather frightening. He had a feeling she thought she owned him now
, and that was absolutely not true.

  “Connor,” Bess said, putting her empty bowl on the ground and leaning back on both arms, “thank you. That was scrumptious.”

  “And your carvings are amazing!” Angie added. “Why don’t you try to sell them in town? I’m sure a lot of shops would carry them.”

  Connor chuckled. “I’m no master artist. Besides, trying to sell them would take all the fun out of it. I’d start comparing my carvings with those of other people and then I’d feel that I wasn’t as good. If my carvings didn’t sell, I’d really take a hit to my ego and I’d probably stop carving. My Audrey said to me when I started carving birds, you don’t want to let it get out of hand.” He chuckled again at the pun. “Of course, she was probably referring to the mess of wood shavings that fell off my clothes when I came in from my shed.”

  Angie, appearing slightly miffed at having her brilliant idea rejected, scanned the area around them restlessly. Suddenly, she cried, “Oh, Leo! What is all this under the bushes? Legos?” Talking to herself—“They’re plastic, I guess, so the rain won’t hurt them”—she crawled a few feet to the bushes at the side of the yard. “What is all this? Honey, you have them arranged in lines. Hasn’t anyone shown you what else you can do with Legos?”

  Without waiting for Leo’s response, Angie began to pick out certain Legos and move them around, saying, “You see, if you take a few pieces out here, you have the doorway and you can put the Legos up here so they make turrets. Now, start a wall of Legos here to make a rectangle which will end up being a castle, which is much more fun than just a straight line—”

  “No!” screamed Leo. Jumping up, he ran to his Legos and threw his body down over them. “No, no! You ruined it. Stop it! Stop it! Daddy, help!” He continued shrieking, his small limbs flailing.

  Shocked, Angie moved back immediately, flashing a horrified look at Sophie. “Sorry, Leo. I was only trying to help.”

  Her words were drowned out by Leo’s hysterical cries as he frantically tried to return his Legos to their proper place. Seizing a turret, he knocked over several other Legos and dissolved into sobs.