Bittersweet

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  We spent the afternoon side by side, sharing a bag of chips, teasing his sisters about their fashion magazines, swimming out to the float and back. There was an elastic tether between us; no matter which cousin’s towel he wandered to, or how far I swam out beyond the swimming dock, we each felt the tug of the other.

  Flat Rocks buzzed that day—everyone seemed to be moving in concert with the summer afternoon. When Owen and the cousins backflipped off the swimming dock, we all cheered, as did the passengers on the twenty-two yachts bobbing in the bay. When Mhairie brought down a cooler filled with ice cream bars, she was celebrated.

  We came to three o’clock. Tilde descended the steps, and a quiet cautiousness overtook us all. The boy cousins swam out to the dock. “Well well well,” Tilde said, bringing a folding chair over to our little encampment, where Ev was feigning sleep. “Looks like everyone’s here.”

  Galway stood, leaving the towel he’d been basking on most of the afternoon, and turning to Lu instead of me. “I’m going in for a dip,” he announced.

  “Mm-hm,” Lu answered absentmindedly, absorbed in her magazine.

  “Stop mumbling,” Tilde scolded Lu as Galway made his way down to the water. I couldn’t help watching him go. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tilde’s hand swat the back of Lu’s head.

  “Ow.” Lu scowled, rubbing her skull.

  “How many times do I have to tell you not to chew your hair, darling?”

  Lu looked down at the soggy end of her braid. She’d been unconsciously sucking it for the better part of the day. “Sorry.” She sulked, but Tilde was already standing.

  “Put your suits on!” Tilde commanded in the direction of the throng of children gathered at the water’s edge. They were oblivious to her instruction, darting back and forth with buckets of water. I sat up, shielding my eyes with my hand, following Tilde’s hawk-like gaze as she called to them again, muttering to herself.

  The children had been in various states of undress all day. Little bottoms had darted past our spot since we’d staked our claim, and Lu and I had remarked how adorable those twin pillows of the newly walking were. Perfect pudenda, quivering penises, the innocence and openness of children playing by water in the sun. Now, as I looked to the water’s edge, I noticed one girl cousin around eight years old, who bore a strong resemblance to both Ev and Lu. She was a distant relative, visiting for a couple weeks. She was a head taller than the next oldest child, but still a little girl at heart, and, like many of the other children had been at one time or another that day, she was nude. Her back was turned to Tilde as she prattled excitedly about building a fairy swimming pool, her buttocks lit up by the light reflected off the water, when a hush descended over the crowd. Tilde was coming right for her.

  “Hannah!” Tilde barked. Frozen shock descended over the little girl as she recognized the sound of an angry adult. Most of the other children had already run off to their parents, who were murmuring about the whereabouts of Hannah’s mother. Soon, Tilde was towering over the girl. “Put your clothes on, Hannah, you can’t run around like that anymore. It’s fine for the babies, but you’re a big girl now!” Exasperated at the girl’s helplessness, Tilde turned to the gaping adults, demanding, “Doesn’t anyone have a towel?” When no one answered, she marched to the nearest vacant chair, where a worn piece of terry cloth lay, and wrapped it aggressively around the girl. Hannah began to wail.

  “What happened?” came a worried voice. Everyone turned to see Hannah’s mother running down the steps. She cascaded toward her inconsolable daughter. Most of us turned awkwardly away. Ev stuffed her bag and stormed up the steps. Tilde tried to explain herself. I spotted Galway out on the floating dock and grabbed Lu by the wrist. We picked our way to the boat dock, away from the drama. As the women bickered, I squeezed Lu’s hand tight and we ran down the long, wooden walkway, gaining speed, until we jumped together into the loud gasp of water, in pursuit of our boys.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  The Swim

  Galway, Lu, Owen, and I stayed with the cousins out on the floating dock long after Tilde, Hannah and her mother, and the rest of them had turned toward home. We spoke little of what had occurred, but I guessed that was less because they were all surprised by Tilde’s attack and more because they weren’t. Mostly, Owen and the cousins discussed a moneymaking scheme they’d been dreaming up: “So right after dark, we load the dinghy with cookies, coffee, beer, wine, that kind of thing, we row out, we knock on a few hulls—”

  “We should have a menu, that way we can do a once-around and then come back.”

  “Can we take Canadian money?”

  “Where the fuck are we going to get wine?”

  I lay in Galway’s lap. He stroked my hair. I smiled, numb to potential criticism. I didn’t much care who could see me out of Trillium’s windows, or if they liked what they saw.

  We all ate dinner together in the Dining Hall—Masha’s brisket and mashed potatoes, along with a couple filched beers. The boys debated the fairness of inflating prices and whether or not they should sell batteries, and Galway found my hand below the table. By the time we made our way back to Bittersweet—we could cheer Ev, I was sure of it—I was happy and sated.

  I noticed John’s truck pulled up behind the cottage before anyone else did, and realized that I wouldn’t have time to warn them we had visitors. Luckily, Abby caught wind of our gang. Whatever John and Ev had been doing when we were in the Dining Hall, they were perfectly platonic as the six of us climbed the porch steps—Ev reading quietly on the porch couch, John fiddling with the loose board he’d been promising to fix since June.

  I had expected to find Ev upset, given how she’d left Flat Rocks. But she seemed as buoyant as I felt, and I was grateful our good moods were aligned.

  “We’ve come to kidnap you,” I said. “We’re going skinny-dipping.”

  Ev shook her head. “Mum will kill you.”

  “Precisely,” Galway said. “What did she say after Jackson died? ‘The Booths skinny-dipped and look what happened to them.’ ”

  Even Arlo and Jeffrey chuckled, so giddy and enthralled were they with the idea of swimming naked with girls—even if two of the girls were their cousins and the third was me. Owen took Lu’s hand. John wiped the sweat from his brow and rose from the floor. “Well, I’m game,” he said.

  We tiptoed down to the Bittersweet cove. The moon had risen, casting a silver dreaminess over the world. The crickets droned, and a few flashes, low over the water, promised fireflies. “Oh, it’s perfect,” Lu cooed to Owen, and I watched him lift her fingers to his lips. I found Galway’s hand in the dark.

  “I’ll stay with the clothes,” Ev declared as we began to undress at the water’s edge.

  “Like hell.” John kept his distance. If they’d been alone, or with just me, he would have swept her into his arms.

  “I’m cold,” she squeaked.

  I guessed she was afraid they’d see her pregnant belly, but it was truly night, and I nudged her with my elbow. She reluctantly began to undo the buttons of her shirt.

  We were a tangle of stripping limbs. The boy cousins were the first to jump in. Ev shushed them. They swam gamely for the flat rock at the lip of the Bittersweet cove, climbing atop it in the moonlight, and slipping into the outer bay on the other side. I tried to avert my eyes from their nakedness, but it was hard not to be curious about what their pink bodies revealed.

  I faced Galway as I undressed, feeling his roaming eyes. I peeled my swimsuit off my top half, surprised at how easy it was to be shirtless. I kicked my shorts onto the ground. He was eager but polite, deftly pulling off his shirt as he watched me undress. The night wind was cool on my skin, and I raced to remove the rest of my swimsuit, ready to jump into the water. His eyes met mine as he stepped out of his swimming trunks. He was naked before me. His sex dangled a few inches from mine, a question and an invitation. I kept my eyes on his, but knew we were both pushing the breadth of our peripheral vision. He grinned widely,
grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the water.

  We waded in, flopping forward as the rocky, clayed lake bottom squished under our steps, and swam, together, to the lip of the cove. Lu and Owen splashed in behind us, whispering happily, and soon John joined. Only Ev was on shore, still half dressed, reluctant.

  Out from under the cove’s tree cover, we could finally see the Milky Way, a startle of stars peppering the firmament. Galway pulled himself up onto the rock, then turned to offer me a hand. I pulled myself up beside him, and we stood, alone, together, at the edge of that great water, where sky met lake, like Adam and Eve. Then he dove in and I followed.

  In the bay, the insistent chirrup of the crickets was quieter. The lilt of nighttime conversation filtered to us from shore. I floated on my back and took in the dazzling sky. Sky seemed an insufficient word—what I saw wasn’t above us but all around, as though the water and air were one whole thing. Fireflies flickered like living stars.

  Galway swam to me. His body was warm, his lips soft, wetter, lapping, and he treaded water for both of us as I wrapped my legs dangerously around his waist, feeling his hardening desire. I wouldn’t make love to him, not here, not the first time. But it was thrilling to feel his longing, to know I could fulfill it. The younger cousins swam close. Galway kissed me one more time and let me go.

  I swam back to the Bittersweet rock to rest and pulled myself up into the cooling breeze. I could make out the boys swimming as far as they could and realized, with pleasure, that Ev and Lu were floating on their backs, side by side.

  I looked down to find John treading water below me. He pulled himself up onto the rock beside me. I tried to look away, but I had a flash of memory of the night I’d seen him and Ev together, and, matched with the hunger I’d felt in Galway, I found myself open, as though I were Ev herself—the Ev I’d met at school—desired and desirous of any attractive member of the opposite sex.

  So I looked. And it was pleasing, to see how that man was put together. More muscular than Galway. Tanner. A fresh, ample cock, lolling in a nest of dark hair. I averted my eyes as he made his place beside me.

  “Thanks,” he said, gesturing toward Ev. “For telling me to fight for her.”

  The breeze blew across my nipples, hardening them. “She deserves to be happy.”

  “Got that right.”

  Galway and I cut across the Dining Hall lawn as the moon was setting. We hardly spoke; an inevitability had fallen over the evening that words would not change. I was not melancholy, but that was the closest emotion I had ever known to what I was feeling. This was it: tomorrow I would look back, and what was coming would be done.

  Queen Anne’s Lace was smaller than Bittersweet and cut, as though with a knife, into four equal pieces: bedroom, living room, bathroom, kitchen. When I had peeked in its windows on previous occasions, I had always taken it to be run-down, badly cared for, but now that I was inside, I realized it was probably the most historically accurate building at Winloch.

  In the simple living room, the walls were rough-cut, the ceiling held aloft with beams made of tree trunks. Galway’s guitar hung over a small woodstove that held up an old cast-iron pot with three legs, and around that central hearth sat handmade furniture, turned and cut from the living world around us—a rocking chair made of tree limbs, a simple table planed from felled wood. A linen-covered love seat held cross-stitched pillows. On the walls hung pewter plates; I leaned in toward one and noticed it bore the Winloch crest. Books were everywhere, and they were old; as Galway slipped into the kitchen, I examined one to find a bookplate bearing Samson Winslow’s name.

  I could hear already how Ev would snipe about the decoration, but, now that I knew Galway, I knew why the place felt so safe, and lovely, in spite of its aged quality. He had saved, and collected, all the things his relatives had discarded. Whereas they had revamped, he had preserved.

  I took in the small bouquet of buttercups in a child’s pitcher on the coffee table, and realized that he might have placed them there that afternoon in anticipation of my arrival. I felt a wave of desire at his confidence. “Whiskey?” he asked, returning from the kitchen with a bottle and two glasses. I took a careful sip, and he sat beside me on the couch.

  Silence burned over us like the alcohol in my chest.

  “What’s your place like in Boston?” I asked nervously, at the same moment he asked, “What classes are you taking in the fall?” Our questions came out like swords against each other, creating a distance to mask the strangeness of what we were doing, here, alone, together, and we sparred back and forth, each insisting the other continue, neither of us with anything important to say, but feeling we must fill the silence, the knowledge of what we were about to do, with words, to delay it, to appreciate it, to acknowledge what was to come. It felt like this: a dance. Him, then me, him, then me, back and forth, until we were both laughing, and then we were looking at each other, and then he reached across the space between us and put his hand on the back of my neck, and then we were pulling toward each other, magnetically, kissing with a fury I didn’t know I possessed, as though he was everything I had ever wanted in the world. Every touch between us, every space that disappeared, was filled with warmth. All I knew was the softness of his tongue against mine, and his hands running over my back, the strength of the muscles in his legs underneath my fingertips, and our chests pressing hard together.

  My brain, the part of me that never turned off, just seemed to sail away. Instead I was all body. Hungry. On fire. Before I lost myself completely, I pulled back. “You’re not with her anymore,” I led. His last out.

  “No,” he gasped, “no,” as if he couldn’t breathe without me, and he kissed me again, and lifted me, carrying me into his bedroom, where we stayed all night, wound around each other, meeting each other in a place I had never known. We made love again and again, until the planet tilted toward morning. The night was ours.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The Morning

  Ping. Ping. Ping ping. Ping.

  A distant sound. Watery.

  My unwilling eyes fluttered open. The world was still blue. Galway’s body slept behind mine; we were two spoons nestled together. I took stock of all of him—hot belly, rhythmic exhalations against the back of my neck, hand slung over my hip possessively.

  Sensing my wakefulness, he shifted onto his back. Yawned.

  Ping. Ping ping. Ping.

  “What’s that sound?” I whispered.

  He yawned again loudly, in complaint, his muscles tightening, like a bear awakening from a winter’s slumber.

  I scooted my body back against him, waiting for him to settle, noticing, with satisfaction, a few drops of blood on the bedsheets. I hadn’t told him it was my first time (or second, or third), but I wasn’t embarrassed at the evidence as I had imagined I would be. I was sore but satisfied.

  He settled back down, but the strange sound continued. I was absurdly awake. “Is it a bird?”

  “It’s the halyards,” he mumbled. It was a metal pinging he was, apparently, accustomed to. The yachts moored only on this side of camp. “Used to be all the masts were wooden.”

  “So they didn’t used to do that?”

  He groaned. “It’s not even light out.”

  We couldn’t have slept for more than two hours. My eyes ached. But giddiness, and nervousness, and a creeping sense of distrust—not of Galway, exactly, but of what would happen next—were making it impossible to relax. I didn’t know how to be this woman. If he fell asleep again, I was afraid that I’d lie here for hours or, worse, that I’d find myself slipping out of bed and tiptoeing away. I had no idea how I’d come back from that. I was pretty sure it wasn’t possible.

  Ev. How would Ev act on a morning like this? Would she talk to her lover? Would she hold on to the night’s promise and insist the seduction carry over into day?

  I turned and put my forehead against Galway’s. The ancient box springs squeaked underneath us, and I realized, with a mixture of embar
rassment and pride, how much sound we must have been making all night. The dawn filtering in through the rustling curtains brought with it the melody of the wood thrush. “I’m starving,” I whispered, feeling my nipples harden against his smooth chest. I kissed him—his sleepy lips responding a split second behind mine. “Let me make you breakfast.”

  “No food in the house,” he grunted. I kissed him again with my mossy mouth. He tasted of me. He opened one eye and peered. “You’re peppy.”

  I pulled myself onto one elbow. My hair was spilling down to my shoulders, loose and mussed. He reached one hand up and played with it, pushing it off my face, and I watched a fresh wave of lust wash over him. “You’re so beautiful.”

  I found myself once again insatiable, joining my lips to his.

  His body went slack. “You made me want waffles.”

  “You really don’t have anything in the house?”

  He whimpered.

  I glanced out at the new day. “We have only one choice.”

  “Cannibalism?”

  “We shall have to raid the Dining Hall,” I declared.

  “There is absolutely no way I’ll survive the journey.”

  I put my head against his chest. Now that we were leaving, I regretted my earlier self. Had I been able to sleep longer, we could have stayed in bed, dopey and hungry for days.

  “Suit yourself,” I whispered, placing one hand over his heart. I closed my eyes.

  He stirred. “I bet there’s bacon.”

  It was ending too soon.

  Anyone who happened to peek out their window as dawn gave way to morning would have seen us streaming across the broad meadow and guessed what we’d been up to all night, but if they did, whoever they were kept the knowledge private, saving it in case it was worth something.