Bittersweet

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  It had stopped raining, but I slipped on Ev’s muddy rubber boots at the back door and made my way down the narrow path that led to Bittersweet Cove, our private bit of lake. It was a small cove, hugged on three sides by wooded, rocky land. A stairway cut down to the small beach directly below the kitchen, or one could take a more precarious route—continuing along the left arm of the hug on slippery pine needles (and, after a rainstorm, diminutive mudslides) and, finally, out onto a low, flat rock just above the waterline that offered one a magnificent view of the outer bay. That was my intended destination, but, as I slid and cursed, the rubber boots offering no traction, I was startled at the sight of a slender, magnificent creature skimming along the surface of the larger lake, then alighting, soundlessly, upon the very spot I’d been aiming for.

  The bird stood perfectly still. A great blue heron. We’d had them at the river back in Oregon, but they’d always looked so scrappy. This one belonged here. Long lines, calm face, elegant—a Winslow. The heron regarded me coldly, reminding me of how Ev had merely tolerated my presence in the early months we’d shared a room, before Jackson’s death had brought us close. I watched until the bird’s long wingspan silently lifted it away. I dug my muddy toes in and climbed back up the embankment, backsliding with nearly every step.

  I resolved to climb down again when the land was dry. As soon as the wind was warmer, and didn’t send me goose bumps off the surface of the water, I would swim off the heron’s rock. Even though it seemed hard to imagine it would ever be hot enough to want to swim—the summer was still newly born—I’d liked the running Ev and I had done in New York, and the new strength in my legs. I needed a bathing suit, and the confidence to pull it over flesh that had never known the sun, because this was the kind of place where one swam boldly, daily, and made a body one had never had.

  I set out back up the dirt road John had driven us down that first night. It curved more sharply than I remembered, so that soon Bittersweet was out of sight, and all I could see were maples, pine, and sky. The fresh leaves shook down drops of water in little bursts, and crows cawed at each other somewhere atop the trees—a jarring, comical sound, too common for this beautiful place. I had worn the cashmere, but soon it was tied around my waist. The rain had washed the world clean. Rafts of freshly cut grass began to filter down the road, followed by the sound of a lawn mower.

  As I caught sight of the Dining Hall—which I now knew was the great white structure looming at the intersection of the Bittersweet driveway and the main Winloch road—I saw a phalanx of workingmen sweeping the tennis courts, cinching the nets, mowing the lawn, and hammering at loose nails on the wide wooden steps leading up to the building. Two compact white pickups were parked along the side of the road, their flatbeds filled with tools and gathered branches, matching insignias painted on their doors: a yellow dragon, with the talons of an eagle, grasping a set of arrows. The coat of arms matched the flag that one of the men was now hoisting up the Dining Hall pole. I stood in the middle of the road and watched him pull it into place.

  I was just deciding whether I wanted to cut back into the woods beyond the Dining Hall when three dachshunds, yapping sharply, appeared from the undergrowth on the other side of the road. They surrounded me, their assault ridiculous. At first. But every time I tried to step away, they growled and shifted to form a new circle of containment. They were small, and I wasn’t afraid, but there was nowhere to go.

  “Come back, assholes!” Soon, from out of the forest, burst a tall, sharp woman, Ev in another life. A good fifty years older, the woman was not as striking as Ev, and she wore a god-awful hand-crocheted poncho that Ev wouldn’t have been caught dead in, but they were unmistakably related.

  “Oh dear god,” she barked, marching toward me full steam, bending down and yanking the ringleader by the collar. “Fritz, leave the goddamn girl alone,” she commanded, and Fritz ceased yapping at once, which quieted the other two dogs. Soon they were snuffling through the newly mown grass as though I didn’t exist at all.

  She started laughing, big and raucous. “That must’ve scared the shit out of you.”

  “I didn’t think anyone else was here.”

  “Drove up last night,” she confided, taking my arm in hers. “Come to tea.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Aunt

  Ev’s aunt Linden—who introduced herself as Indo—lived to the right and over a hill, in a part of Winloch I didn’t know existed, a long, well-trimmed meadow where the oldest cottages sat, four in a row. At the farthest end of the meadow was the largest house I’d seen at Winloch; white, with multiple stories and a porch that stretched around its four ample sides. I recognized it from the picture that had hung in our dorm room. The other three cottages were siblings of Bittersweet, each small and block-like, one story high. Transplanted white pines tastefully disguised the poles carrying electricity to each home.

  It wasn’t hard to guess which house was Indo’s. Cherry red, with a moss-covered roof, the first little cottage leaned to the left upon its foundation. A bathtub planted with impatiens occupied its small front lawn, mowed from the meadow. According to the faded, hand-painted sign pasted in the window of the door, it was called Clover.

  “Leave your shoes,” Indo indicated as she let me into a kitchen smelling of sandalwood and cayenne. Fritz and his compatriots trotted right past me, faithful in their owner’s assessment of my trustworthiness. I pulled Ev’s boots off, balancing them upon a tangle of clogs in the corner.

  From the peaked roof above me hung a dozen baskets covered in thick dust. A glass-fronted cabinet, propped up on one side with a stack of shims, overflowed with china. Clipped atop it was the room’s sole light, a bulb set inside an aluminum funnel, with which a construction crew might have illumined a work site. The kitchen itself seemed haphazardly collected, as though Indo had gone into a handful of homes with a hacksaw and helped herself to an Edwardian porcelain sink here, a particleboard shelving unit there. And where the impulse, under someone else’s directive, would have been to use the cutout above the sink to pass food between the kitchen and living room, in Clover, it served as a repository for more stuff—two dozen wooden spoons, a precariously stacked collection of teal earthenware, and a great green tin of Bag Balm.

  I followed the older woman into the living room, watching her long gray braid snake across her back. “It’s not much,” she prattled, “but it’s all I have. Must sound melodramatic to a pretty young thing like you. But I’m afraid it’s true, this eyesore is everything to me. And who knows how long it’ll be before it’s taken from me too. What’s that saying? ‘It’s not whether you get screwed but if you have fun while it’s happening.’ Something like that, but pithier.”

  She spoke as though we had known each other forever, and I hid my discomfort with such unearned intimacies by taking in the rest of her home. Clover’s walls, like Bittersweet’s, were made of bead board, but whereas Ev’s cottage was painted a silty white, Indo had embraced color: scarlet paint on the walls; an indigo, batiked cloth tossed over a sofa whose fourth leg was a stack of water-rippled paperbacks; a chair upholstered in seventies tangerine floral. Through two sets of French doors along the second and third of the living room’s adjoining walls, the screen porch looked out over the lake.

  “But listen to me, going on about myself. It’s you I want to hear about. You look sparky. I like that about you. Do you need to pee? No, that’s fine. Right through that door on the left.”

  I followed her directions into a short hallway that led to two small bedrooms. I peeked into both of them in search of the toilet, and was surprised to discover that whereas the rest of Indo’s home seemed funky and youthful, her pastel bedroom looked like it had been decorated by the old woman she seemed to have avoided becoming. Mosquito netting modestly shielded the bed, which was draped with a chenille spread. Framed lithographs of local flowers hung on the pink walls.

  I found the cottage’s only bathroom, painted a glossy magenta, and learned quickl
y it was a primitive affair, with a cracked, too-high mirror and two sinks—the working one of which was turned on by a permanently affixed set of pliers—and a decoupaged toilet that swayed dismayingly whenever weight was set upon it.

  Throughout Clover, the wooden walls—no matter their color—were decorated with black-and-white pictures, either framed and askew or curled up toward the tacks that pinned them. A few of the photographs depicted landscapes (some of which I could recognize right out the window), but, for the most part, the subjects were children: blond, sinewy, strong. I scrutinized the faces, recognizing Indo herself as a young girl, and a tall, proud boy who had Birch’s eyes.

  “You like my pictures?” Indo chuckled through the kitchen cutout as she busied herself over the stove.

  “You took these?” My eyes ran over the taut bodies sunning themselves in old-fashioned bathing suits.

  “My mother bought me a camera for my tenth birthday. I was a hobbyist.”

  “And now?” I asked, discovering a newer photograph, of a beaming toddler who might have been Ev.

  “Art is for the young,” Indo declared, and a long silence fell upon us for the first time.

  Every nook and cranny of Indo’s living room was filled: books, masks, and little carved boxes from all over the world. A collection of birds’ nests was displayed on what she called a whatnot shelf of driftwood and wind-felled pine. The sheer quantity of accumulated goods was no far cry from my mother’s Hummel figurines and salt and pepper shaker collection. Whereas breezy Bittersweet felt like a foreign country, Clover, with its alarmingly creaky floors, damp smell, and myriad collections, made me feel homesick for the first time.

  Indo emerged from the kitchen with a clinking tea tray. She ordered the dogs down to their ancient pillow on the living room floor, in front of the cold woodstove, then led me onto the side porch, where a long table and moldy wicker chairs awaited us. It was brighter out there, and I squinted as my eyes adjusted to the glare of the sun upon the lake. She served a strong pot of smoky Lapsang souchong beside rye toast dripping margarine; if I’d known her well, I would have teased her that it had taken her so long to make such a simple snack.

  She seemed to read my mind. “I’ll be pleased as punch when they open the goddamn Dining Hall—I am not a cook. And the Dining Hall’s free. Only good part about the Winloch Constitution—all you can eat. Oh, but look at you, poor thing, I’ve made you glum. Well, I won’t be the one to tell you Winloch is anything but heaven on earth.”

  “You should eat with us,” I proposed.

  “Might want to ask Ev first,” she warned, but when I blushed as I remembered my place, she was tongue-tied for the first time. “I meant— Oh dear.” She placed her hand over mine as if we’d known each other for years. “I meant to say that Ev doesn’t like me much.”

  But I found that hard to believe. Indo was a character, sure, her mismatched socks and moth-nibbled man’s sweater told you that right off the bat, but she was irreverent and honest, traits which I had seen Ev love in others. As soon as she found out I was a reader, she wanted to talk books, and, seeing my goose bumps rise in the broad southerly wind coming off the bay, she brought me an afghan off the back of the couch. We passed the afternoon on Wuthering Heights and To the Lighthouse, my limbs wrapped in the scratchy wool. I told her about my mother’s love of line dancing—it wasn’t much, but it was more than I’d ever told Ev—and, in turn, she described her junior year abroad in Paris and the love affair that had ended with a kiss beside the Seine. I gathered she was lonely and, in the way of those the world has left behind, fiercely attached to her solitude while quick to blame the world—and her family—for her isolation. But I didn’t mind being in her company. My week as Ev’s scullery maid had made it lovely to simply enjoy someone without the threat of impending expulsion. We drank many pots of tea, and I made many trips to Indo’s jury-rigged toilet in the exuberant bathroom, and it wasn’t until I noticed the long shadows moving across the lawn that I realized the day was almost gone.

  “I think we’ve become friends,” Indo said when I told her I should be going. “Do you feel that?”

  “Of course,” I replied.

  “It may be ‘of course’ to you, but I don’t have many friends. Don’t get me wrong, that’s my own goddamn fault, but it means I’m afraid I don’t often get the chance to connect with people like you. People who are trustworthy, and kind and—”

  “Thank you.” I felt myself grow hot under her compliments.

  But she went on. “You see, when you find you don’t have anyone to trust, it makes you greedy. Here I am, in this little rat’s nest of mine, gathering my things around me, sure at any minute it’ll all be taken from me—”

  “I can’t imagine anyone taking this from you. It’s your home.”

  “Who’d want it, right?” She laughed, gesturing to the chaos around her. “Who indeed. Perhaps you’re right. Or perhaps a friend will climb out of the woodwork and present herself to me, help me in my time of need, just when fate comes to screw me after all. A friend like you: brave and bold.”

  I squirmed in my seat as her eyes bored into me. “I’m neither of those things. Really.”

  But Indo wasn’t deterred. “I guarantee that if your mettle was tested you’d be surprised. Indubitably surprised at how resourceful you are.” She sat back. The wicker creaked underneath her. “And you know, you might be surprised what you’d gain by even trying to help someone like little old me.”

  I knew I was being manipulated into asking, but I couldn’t help myself. “Like what?”

  She smiled. Spread her arms wide, indicating all her possessions, and the house around her. “Like this.”

  “Like your house?” I asked incredulously.

  She nodded.

  “But it’s your house. The one you’re afraid someone is going to take from you. And anyway, you don’t know me. And what do you need help with?” I sounded irritated, I knew, but I was beginning to feel trapped by her rhetoric.

  “After this afternoon spent together, I know you infinitely better than any of my nieces. I can see that your mind moves like quicksilver, and I admire that. And you know when to bite your tongue.”

  “You’re being very kind,” I said, scooting my chair out so I could stand. I felt dizzy, as though a spell had been put on me.

  “It’s not kindness. It’s fact.”

  “Really,” I protested, my voice rising without my permission, “I’m not the kind of person you think I am. I’m not. I’m not brave at all. I’ve been tested, I promise you I have.” I stopped myself from going on.

  But I’d said enough for Indo. She leaned back in her chair and narrowed her eyes at me. “I see.”

  “This was such a nice afternoon.” I gathered up the dishes. “Let’s do it again soon.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t peg you as a girl plagued by self-doubt.” She rose from the table, muttering. “Well then, perhaps it’s better—yes, it’s better to let you find your own way.”

  “Thank you so much for your hospitality,” I said primly, striding back inside.

  She caught up with me in the kitchen as I stepped into Ev’s boots. “Mother always told me I shouldn’t force what takes its own time.” She caught my arm. Her fingers gripped me with a strength I couldn’t have guessed at. It was then that I noticed six locks lining the inside of the back door, chains dangling, bolts pushed back, padlocks undone. I would have chalked them up to Indo’s eccentricities if I hadn’t seen John install the bolts in Bittersweet.

  Indo followed my gaze and took in the locks as though she, too, was seeing them for the first time. Quickly, she pushed the door open, hustling me outside.

  “I’ve been looking for a friend like you for a while,” she persisted. “Someone interested in stories. You’re interested in stories, aren’t you? You see, I’ve been trying to locate a manila folder … I’m sure you’re aware we have a family collection of artwork …”

  “Yes,” I answered, glad to
be outside again. She was still talking, but I was distracted by the softness of the late afternoon. The drone of the mower continued from over the hill—the landscapers were still at it.

  “The Winslows have pretty incredible tales,” she pressed on. “They’re just sitting up there, in the attic of the Dining Hall, waiting in boxes. Samson’s papers, his son’s, it’s really worth looking at. You could keep an eye out for that folder I need, and find an interesting tale or two to make your own.”

  “Sure,” I said, “okay,” eager to placate her as I waved good-bye, even if I had no idea what she’d meant by “that folder,” wondering if Ev was worried about me. We had so much to do before the next day’s inspection.

  A damp and droopy Abby, tongue lolling from a day in the water, met me on the Bittersweet road. She gamely licked my hand, but it wasn’t until I got to Bittersweet that I noticed John’s truck, parked behind the cottage, out of sight.

  “Hello?” I called.

  The screen door swung open, and John strode down from the porch, brushing past me. “You guys had a leak,” he said, not looking me in the eye, calling Abby to him, hopping into the truck and gunning the engine. He was off in a matter of seconds.

  “What was that about?” I asked when I found Ev on her hands and knees scouring the porch, her hair tied back in her bandanna.

  “Huh?” she asked dreamily.

  I pointed in John’s direction, noticing, with disappointment, that the porch was in the exact state I’d left it that morning.