But whether Aunt Jeanne had changed or my eye had become considerably more nuanced in the intervening years, what I discovered that first December of college was that I’d rather shoot myself in the head than become her. She lived in a dank, cat-infested condo and seemed puzzled whenever I suggested we go to the Smithsonian. She ate TV dinners and dozed off in front of midnight infomercials. As Tilde turned from us, I remembered, with horror, the promise my aunt had extracted from me at the end of my stay (all she’d had to do was invoke my abandoned mother’s name): two interminable weeks in May before heading back to Oregon. I dared to dream that Ev would come with me. She’d be the key to surviving The Price Is Right and the tickle of cat hair at the back of the throat.
“Mabel’s studying art history.” Ev nudged me toward her father. “She loves the Degas.”
“Do you?” Birch asked. “You can get closer to it, you know. It’s still ours.”
I glanced at the well-lit painting propped upon a simple easel. Only a few feet separated me from it, but it may as well have been a million. “Thank you,” I demurred.
“So you’re majoring in art history?”
“I thought you were majoring in English,” the president interrupted, suddenly at my side.
I grew red-faced in the spotlight, and what felt like being caught in a lie. “Oh,” I stammered, “I like both subjects—I really do—I’m only a first-year, you know, and—”
“Well, you can’t have literature without art, can you?” Birch asked warmly, opening the circle to a few of Ev’s admirers. He squeezed his daughter’s shoulder. “When this one was barely five we took the children to Firenze, and she could not get enough of Medusa’s head at the Uffizi. And Judith and Holofernes! Children love such gruesome tales.” Everyone laughed. I was invisible again. Birch caught my eye for the briefest of seconds and winked. I felt myself flush gratefully.
After the president’s welcome toast, and the passed hors d’oeuvres, and the birthday cupcakes frosted with buttercream that matched my dress, after Ev made a little speech about how the college had made her feel so at home, and that she hoped the Degas would live happily at the museum for many years to come, Birch raised a glass, garnering the room’s attention.
“It has been the Winslow tradition,” he began, as though we were all part of his family, “for each of the children, upon reaching eighteen, to donate a painting to an institution of his or her choice. My sons chose the Metropolitan Museum. My daughter chose a former women’s college.” This was met with boisterous laughter. Birch tipped his glass toward the president in rhetorical apology. He cleared his throat as a wry smile faded from his lips. “Perhaps the tradition sprang from wanting to give each child a healthy deduction on their first tax return”—again, he was met with laughter—“but its true spirit lies in a desire to teach, through practice, that we can never truly own what matters. Land, art, even, heartbreaking as it is to let go, a great work of art. The Winslows embody philanthropy. Phila, love. Anthro, man. Love of man, love of others.” With that, he turned to Ev and raised his champagne. “We love you, Ev. Remember: we give not because we can, but because we must.”
CHAPTER THREE
The Invitation
One too many glasses of champagne, one too few canapés, and an hour later, the overheated room was swimming. I needed air, water, something, or I felt sure that my ankles—bowing under my body’s pressure upon the thin, pointed pair of heels Ev had insisted I borrow—would blow. “I’ll be back,” I whispered as she nodded numbly at a trustee’s story about a failed trip to Cancún. I teetered down the long, glass-covered walkway leading into the gothic wing of the museum. In the bathroom, I splashed tepid water on my face. Only then did I remember I had makeup on. But it was too late; the wetness had already wreaked havoc—smeared lips, raccoon eyes. I pumped down paper towels and scrubbed at my face until I looked like I’d slept on a park bench, but not actively insane. It didn’t matter anyway—we were just going back to the dorm. Perhaps we’d order pizza.
I traipsed back up the hallway, a woman made new with the promise of pajamas and pepperoni. I was surprised to discover the great room already empty—save the violinist packing up her instrument and the waiters breaking down the naked banquet tables. Ev, the president, Birch, Tilde—all of them were gone.
“Excuse me,” I said to one of the waiters, “did you see where they went?”
His eyebrow ring caught in the light as he raised his brows in a “why should I care” I recognized from my own nights working late at the cleaner’s. I went to the ladies’ room and peeked under the bathroom stalls. Tears began to sting my eyes, but I fought against them. Ridiculous. Ev was probably headed home to find me.
“Goodness, dear,” the curator tsked when she caught me in there. “The museum is closed.” Had Ev been by my side, she wouldn’t have said it, and I wouldn’t have quickened my departure. I plucked my lonely coat from the metal rack in the foyer, and plunged out into the cold.
There, in sight of the double doors, were Ev and her mother, their backs to me. “Ev!” I called. She did not turn my way. The wind, surely, had carried off my voice. So I approached, concentrating on my steps so as not to twist an ankle. “Ev,” I said when I was close. “There you are. I was looking for you.”
Tilde snapped her head up at the sound of my voice as though I were a gnat.
“Hey, Ev,” I said gingerly. She did not answer. I reached out to touch her sleeve.
“Not now,” Ev hissed.
“I thought we could—”
“What part of not now don’t you understand?” She turned toward me, rage on her face.
I knew well what it was to be dismissed. And I knew enough about Ev to know that she had spent much of her life dismissing. But it seemed so incongruous after the night we’d had—after I’d lied for her, and she’d finally acted like my friend—and so I remained frozen, watching Tilde steer Ev to the Lexus that Birch brought around.
She didn’t come home that night. Which was fine. Normal, even. I had lived for months with Ev with no expectations of her—not of friendship, or loyalty—but by the next day, her dismissal was gnawing at me, rubbing me raw, like the heels she’d lent me, making blisters I should have anticipated, and tried to prevent.
Despite pulling on her boots and letting them cup my arches; despite allowing myself to wish, with every step I took, that the previous night’s unpleasantness had been an anomaly, the day turned worse. Six classes, five papers, four midterm projects on the horizon, a thirty-pound backpack, the onset of a sore throat, pants sodden with snowmelt, and a hollow, growing loneliness inside. Trudging up our hall as evening fell, I could smell the telltale cigarette smoke whispering from under our door and remembered our RA’s offhand comment about how next time it happened she’d be in her rights to fine us fifty bucks, and I allowed myself to feel angry. Ev had returned, but so what? I had asthma. I couldn’t survive in a room filled with smoke—she was literally trying to suffocate me. My asthma medication’s one benefit—justification for the extra weight I carried—wouldn’t do me any good if I were dead.
I gritted my teeth and told myself to be strong, that I didn’t need the damn boots. I could just write to my father and ask for a pair (why hadn’t I done that already?). I didn’t need a Degas-bestowing supermodel snob lying around my room, reminding me what a nothing I was. I gripped the doorknob and told myself to say it how Ev would say it, formulated “Fuck, Ev, could you smoke somewhere else?” (I would make my voice nonchalant, as though my objection was philosophical and not an expression of poverty), and barged in.
She usually smoked atop her desk beside the window, cigarette perched in the corner of her mouth, or cross-legged on the top bunk, ashing into an empty soda bottle. But this time, she wasn’t there. As I dropped my bag, I imagined with delighted gloom that she’d left a cigarette smoldering on the bedclothes before heading out to some glamorous destination—the Russian Tea Room, a private rooftop in Tribeca. The whole dorm was doome
d to go up in flames, and I would go down with it. She would be forced to remember me forever.
And then I heard it: a sniffle. I squinted at the top bunk. The comforter quivered.
“Ev?”
The sound of soft crying.
I approached. I was still in my drenched jeans, but this was electrifying.
I stood at that awkward angle, neck craned up. She was really under there. I wondered what to do as her voice began to break into a full, throaty sob. “Are you okay?” I asked.
I didn’t expect her to answer. And I certainly didn’t mean to put my hand on her back. Had I been thinking clearly, I never would have dared—my anger was too proud; the gesture, too intimate. But my little touch elicited unexpected results. First, it made her cry harder. Then it made her turn in the bed, so that her face and mine were much closer than they’d ever been and I could see every millimeter of her flooding, Tiffany-blue eyes; her stained, rosy cheeks; her greasy blond hair, limp for the first time since I’d known her. Her mouth faltered, and I couldn’t help but put my hand to her hot temple. She looked so much more human this close up.
“What happened?” I asked, when she’d finally calmed.
For a moment it seemed as if she might start sobbing again. Instead, she fished out another cigarette and lit it. “My cousin,” she said, as if that told the whole thing.
“What’s your cousin’s name?” I didn’t think I could stand not to know what was breaking Ev’s heart.
“Jackson,” she whispered, the corners of her mouth turning down. “He’s a soldier. Was,” she corrected herself, and her tears spilled all over again.
“He was killed?”
She shook her head. “He came back last summer. I mean, he was acting a little strange and everything, but I didn’t think …” And then she cried. She cried so hard that I slipped off my parka and jeans and got in bed beside her and held her quaking body.
“He shot himself. In the mouth. Last week,” she said finally, what seemed like hours later, when we were lying beside each other under her four-ply red cashmere throw, staring up at the cracked ceiling as if this was what we did all the time. It was a relief to finally hear what had happened; I had started to wonder if this cousin hadn’t walked into a post office and shot everyone up.
“Last week?” I asked.
She turned to me, touching our foreheads. “Mum didn’t tell me until last night. After the reception.” Her nose and eyes began to pinken in anticipation of another round of tears. “She didn’t want me to get upset and ‘ruin things.’ ”
“Oh, Ev,” I sympathized, filling with forgiveness. That was why she had snapped at me after the party—she was grief-stricken.
“What was Jackson like?” I pushed, and she began to weep again. It was so strange and lovely to be lying next to her, feeling her flaxen hair against my cheek, watching the great globes of sorrow trail down her smooth face. I didn’t want it to end. I knew that to stop speaking would be to lose her again.
“He was a good guy, you know? Like, last summer? One of his mom’s dogs, Flip, was running on the gravel road and this asshole repair guy came around the curve at, like, fifty miles an hour and hit the dog and it made this awful sound”—she shuddered—“and Jackson just walked right over there and picked Flip up in his arms—I mean, everyone else was screaming and crying, it, like, happened in front of all the little kids—and he carried her over to the grass and rubbed her ears.” She closed her eyes again. “And afterward, he put a blanket over her.”
I looked at the picture of the gathered Winslows above my desk, although it was as silly an enterprise as opening the menu of a diner you’ve been going to your whole life; I knew every blond head, every slim calf, as though her family was my own. “This was at your summer place, right?”
She pronounced the name as if for the first time. “Winloch.”
I could feel her eyes examining the side of my face. What she said next, she said carefully. Even though my heart skipped a beat, I measured my expectations, telling myself that was the last I’d hear of it:
“You should come.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Call
“Do they know we’re coming?” I asked as Ev handed me the rest of the Kit Kat bar I’d bought in the dining car. The train had long since whistled twice and headed farther north, leaving us with empty track and each other.
“Naturally.” Ev sniffed with a trace of doubt as she settled, again, on top of her suitcase under the overhang of the stationmaster’s office. She regarded my orange copy of Paradise Lost disdainfully, then checked her cell phone for the twentieth time, cursing the lack of service. “And now we’ll only have six days before the inspection.”
“Inspection?”
“Of the cottage.”
“Who’s inspecting it?”
I could tell from the way she blinked straight ahead that my questions were an annoyance. “Daddy, of course.”
I tried to make my voice as benign as possible. “You sound concerned.”
“Well of course I’m concerned,” she said with a pout, “because if we don’t get that little hovel shipshape in less than a week, I won’t inherit it. And then you’ll go home and I’ll have to live under the same roof as my mother.”
Her mouth was set to snarl at whatever I said next, so instead of voicing all the questions flooding my mind—“You mean I might still have to go home? You mean you, of all people, have to clean your own house?”—I looked across the tracks to a tangle of chickadees leapfrogging from one branch to the next, and sucked in the fresh northern air.
An invitation marks the beginning of something, but it’s more of a gesture than an actual beginning. It’s as if a door swings open and sits there gaping, right in front of you, but you don’t get to walk through it yet. I know this now, but back then, I thought that everything had begun, and, by everything, I mean the friendship that quickly burned hot between me and Ev, catching fire the night she told me of Jackson’s death and blazing through the spring, as Ev taught me how to dance, who to talk to, and what to wear, while I tutored her in chemistry and convinced her that, if she’d only apply herself, she’d stop getting Ds. “She’s the brainiac,” she’d started to brag warmly, and I liked the statement mostly because it meant she saw us as a pair, strolling across the quad arm in arm, drinking vodka tonics at off-campus parties, blowing off her druggie friends for a Bogart movie marathon. From the vantage point of June, I could see my belonging sprouting from that day in February, when Ev had uttered those three dulcet words: “You should come.”
Over the course of the spring, in each note scribbled on the back of a discarded dry-cleaning receipt, in each secretive call to my dorm room, my mother had intimated I should be wary of life’s newfound generosity. As usual, I’d found her warnings (as I did nearly everything that flowed from her) Depressing, Insulting, and Predictable—in her way, she assumed Ev was just using me (“For what?” I asked her incredulously. “What on earth could someone like Ev possibly use me for?”). But I also assumed, once my father reluctantly agreed to the summer’s arrangement, that she would lay off, if only because, by mid-May, Ev had peeled her Winloch photograph off the wall, I’d put the bulk of my belongings into a wooden crate in the dorm’s fifth-floor attic, and my summer plans—as far as I saw them—were set in stone.
So the particular call that rang through Ev’s Upper East Side apartment, the one that came the June night before Ev and I were to get on that northbound train, was surprising. Ev and I were chop-sticking Thai out of take-out containers, sprawled across the antique four-poster bed in her bedroom, where I’d been sleeping for two blissful weeks, the insulated windowpanes and mauve curtains blocking out any inconvenient sound blasting up from Seventy-Third Street (a blessed contrast to Aunt Jeanne’s wretched spinster cave, where I’d spent the last two weeks of May, counting down the days to Manhattan). My suitcase lay splayed at my feet. The Oriental rug was scattered with sturdy bags: Prada, Burberry, Chanel. We’d alr
eady put in our half-hour jog on side-by-side treadmills in her mother’s suite and were discussing which movie we’d watch in the screening room. Tonight, especially, we were worn out from rushing to the Met before it closed so Ev could show me her family’s donations, as she’d promised her father she would. I’d stood in front of two swarthily paired Gauguins, and all I could think to say was “But I thought you had three brothers.”
Ev had laughed and wagged her finger. “You’re right, but the third’s an asshole who auctioned his off and donated the proceeds to Amnesty International. Mum and Daddy nearly threw him off the roof deck.” Said roof deck lay atop the building’s eighth floor, which was taken up entirely by the Winslows’ four-thousand-square-foot apartment. Even though I was naïve about the Winslows’ money, I already understood that what summed up their status resided not in their mahogany furnishings or priceless art but, rather, in the Central Park vistas offered from nearly every one of the apartment’s windows: a pastoral view in the middle of an overpopulated city, something seemingly impossible and yet effortlessly achieved.
I could only imagine how luxurious their summer estate would be.
At the phone’s second bleating, Ev answered in a voice like polished glass, “Winslow residence,” looked confused for an instant, then regained her composure. “Mrs. Dagmar,” she enthused in her voice reserved for adults. “How wonderful to hear from you.” She held the phone to me, then flopped onto the bed, burying herself in the latest Vanity Fair.
“Mom?” I lifted the receiver to my ear.
“Honey-bell.”
Instantly, I could smell my mother’s pistachio breath, but any longing was pushed down by the memory of how these phone calls usually ended.
Bittersweet Page 2
