Evenfall

by Liz Michalski

THE tart turns out perfectly. There’s no cinnamon in the house, only nutmeg, so Andie sprinkles a pinch onto the dough. Butter, sugar, flour, and the nutmeg make a shortbread crust, which Andie presses into the pie plate with her fingers. She bakes it for fifteen minutes, then in a flash of inspiration adds a layer of pine nuts, brought back from Italy in her suitcase. She toasts the nuts before sprinkling them over the surface of the still-warm crust. They’ll keep it from getting soggy.

  The peaches need almost no help. Andie slips off the skins, slices them, and tosses the slices with nutmeg, a teaspoon of sugar, a little flour, and a dash of cream. She arranges them on top of the crust, and puts the whole thing back in the oven.

  While it’s baking she boils water for the green beans, trimming the ends and adding salt to the pot. She’ll toss them with balsamic vinegar—another item from her personal survival kit—walnuts, and a little blue cheese, and serve them at room temperature.

  The timer sounds, and she removes the tart from the oven, placing it on the counter to cool. Nina eyes it hungrily, and Andie nudges her away with her knee.

  “Not for you,” she tells the dog. She’ll give the pup a few bites of chicken later.

  But when she opens the refrigerator later that evening, the chicken is gone. Andie’s standing there, staring into the shelves, when the phone rings. She reaches for the receiver, stretching the cord so she can talk while continuing her search.

  “Hey, it’s me,” Cort’s voice says in her ear, and she glances at the clock. It’s 6 p.m.

  “Hey, yourself. What’s up?”

  “Looks like I’m not going to be there for a while. One of the damn goats got out of the crate in the back of the truck, and I had to pull over.”

  His voice is grim and Andie closes her eyes, picturing goat mayhem on a major highway.

  “Where are you?”

  “At a rest stop on the Massachusetts border. It’ll be a couple of hours, anyway, and then I have to unload the damn things.”

  “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “See you later,” she says, and hangs up. The chicken’s still missing, but since her boyfriend is, too, it doesn’t seem to matter as much. She closes the refrigerator door. Nina catches her eye and slinks out of the room. Andie looks after her for a second, then shakes her head. The dog’s smart, but it’s not as if she has thumbs. Maybe Gert stopped by and decided to rummage in the fridge, Andie tells herself, knowing even as she thinks it how unlikely that is.

  The missing chicken doesn’t affect her dinner plans, at least. She fixes herself a plate of green bean salad and good bread spread with tapenade, pours herself a glass of red wine from the bottle she purchased yesterday, and carries her meal out onto the porch.

  It’s odd to be eating dinner with the sun still out. In Italy, she and Neal never dined before eight, and almost never alone. But today she skipped lunch, unless you count the peach, and she can’t wait to eat any longer.

  When she’s finished, she pours herself another glass of wine. She considers having a piece of tart, but it looks so pretty she decides to wait for Cort. If he’s really late, they can always eat it for breakfast. She places it on top of the refrigerator for safekeeping.

  Nina’s stretched under the dining room table and heaves to a stand, brown eyes following Andie.

  “Settle down, girl,” she says, but the dog comes over and butts her head into Andie’s thighs. After scratching behind Nina’s ears for a bit, Andie finally goes to her bedroom, drags out Frederick Hartt’s History of Italian Renaissance Art, and carries it to the porch.

  She’s had the tome since college. It’s battered and worn, the pages curling, with notes written in the margins and occasional stains from coffee, espresso, even butter. In the slowly fading light she leafs through the illustrations, all of which she knows by heart, the way others might say the rosary or play with worry beads. It’s a mindless occupation, a way to calm herself, although why she needs soothing at this moment, she couldn’t say. It could be because her father, in characteristic Richard style, hasn’t bothered to call back with an exact date for his arrival. Andie refuses to call him, and the result is a low-level continual anxiety, which ratchets into stomach-twisting agitation whenever she hears tires crunching up the gravel drive.

  Richard’s unreliability is nothing new. The only schedule he’s ever followed has been those of the ponies, as he calls them, and it’s one that dragged her across the country and back every year, until the aunts finally put their foot down. She’d been in eighth grade when she’d started boarding school, and when Richard had pulled up to the farm to take her away she’d hidden in the safest place she could think of. Nobody ever went up to the attic. She’d lain there, behind an old rolled-up rug that smelled of cedar, and waited for her father to leave. If he left, they’d have to keep her, not just for the summer but for good. She watched the dust motes drift across the air and listened to her father swear outside. She never heard the attic door open. It was Frank, of all people, who found her. She still remembers the sorrow in his blue eyes when she asked him why she couldn’t stay.

  It worked out for the best, anyhow. That’s what she tells herself when she looks back. She can’t picture growing up in Hartman, all family dinners and church on Sundays. By her second year of boarding school, even summers were too much here. She’d spend the first month babysitting for pocket cash, then join her friends with their families at the Cape or on Nantucket. She’d get out of town as fast as she could.

  Still, it annoys her how much Richard can affect her mood. She thought she’d left that behind a long time ago. She takes her wineglass and wanders through the rooms. Outside, the crickets are chirping, and the trees at the edge of the pasture slide into darkness, their leaves whispering secrets in the warm evening wind.

  The house itself unsettles her tonight. It’s so full, stuffed with the accumulations of the people who lived and married and died here. Most of what Andie owns fits in the single suitcase she brought with her when she’d left Italy. She’s grown used to a lifetime of traveling light, of never living long enough in one place to get attached or weighed down. Except in Italy, and even then most of it belonged to Neal.

  She looks out at the blackness and sees instead her old apartment. That first time he’d come for dinner, he’d looked around, at the card table she’d covered with a thrift store cloth, at the mismatched chairs and the wine bottles with candles in them, and his eyes had crinkled in amusement.

  “I’ve never known anyone who actually was a starving artist,” he’d said. She’d been mortified, but when he picked her up and spun her around the room, she’d felt giddy and safe at the same time. It was Neal who introduced her to comfort: to down pillows and high thread count sheets, to heavy silverware and beautifully embroidered tablecloths and a constantly changing selection of artwork, of etchings and sculptures and paintings. She’d learned not to grow too attached to any one object, because when she’d returned home from class, it might be gone, sold to the highest bidder to finance the next beautiful thing.

  When she’d moved in with him, she’d taken almost nothing with her, leaving the bargain furniture and dented pans for the next grad student. She’d known without thinking about it that they had no place in his carefully composed world.

  Now she looks around the house, with its overstuffed chairs, fading carpets, and ancient wallpaper, and wonders idly what he’d think of the mishmash. She’s lost her place here, too, if she ever had one, and the silence that once seemed so welcoming is oppressive. She returns to the porch and picks up the book, straining to see the illustrations in the fading light.

  Whatever the reason for her restlessness, Hartt does his work. One moment she’s gazing at her favorite illustration, the tiny Apollo and Daphne, and the next she’s blinking, bleary-eyed in the dark, up at Cort.

  “Sorry,” he says, brushing the hair off her forehead. “Didn’t mean to wake you up. I was afraid yo
u’d brain me with that thing.” He points to the book, lying next to Andie on the swing.

  “S’okay,” she mumbles. She pulls herself to a sitting position and yawns. “What time is it?”

  “About ten. Unloading the little buggers took longer than I thought,” he says. A sudden breeze blows past them, and upstairs the attic door bangs shut. Nina sits up and cocks her head, whines once, then settles down again.

  “Yeah, well, just so long as they don’t bother Aunt Gert.” Andie yawns again, stretching. “God, it feels like midnight.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re old.”

  She swats him.

  “Ow.”

  “That’s what you get for disrespecting your elders.”

  “Well, Granny, any chance of getting those old bones up? I want to show you something.”

  She lets him tug her off the swing and to the door. Nina tries to come with them, but Cort gently holds her back by the collar and shuts her in.

  “Don’t want her making the goats any more crazy than they are,” he says in response to Andie’s questioning look.

  They hold hands to the truck. The passenger-side door creaks when Cort opens it. Andie’s ready to get in, but he shakes his head and pulls out a large brown paper bag. He tucks the bag under one arm, takes her hand, and leads her toward the meadow.

  In the dark the path is almost invisible. Andie’s eyes take a few moments to adjust, and she stumbles a few times, leaning on Cort for support.

  “I’ve got a flashlight, but I’d rather not use it yet,” he says. “Give it a second and you’ll be able to see just fine.”

  Andie stubs her toe on something and bites back a comment, but already she understands what he means. To the east there’s a faint line of light, diffusing into the black sky like milk into chocolate. The west, over the woods, is dark and the stars above are radiant.

  They walk slowly, bushes and rocks assuming odd shapes until they come close. The family cemetery looms out at them, white stones glinting in the moonlight.

  They’re going downhill now. Over the loud chirps of crickets Andie hears something rustling. She freezes, refusing to move when Cort tugs her on.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She tells him about the snake, and although she can’t see his face, she hears amusement in his voice. “Probably a black rat snake. They’re not poisonous. Most farmers like them because they’re good for keeping pests down. He was probably more scared of you.”

  “I doubt it,” Andie says. She lets Cort lead her on, but she’s careful to step where he does.

  She hears the rustling again, even louder this time, and sees up ahead the shadowy outline of the paddock. Something snorts, and Cort stops and sets the bag down. He pulls out a flashlight and shines it at the paddock, keeping the beam low. Andie catches movement through the wire, and then a head pops into view over the fence.

  “Easy girl,” Cort soothes, moving forward. The goat bleats at him. Its face is small, with large eyes and ears so tiny that at first glance Andie doesn’t see them.

  “It’s a LaMancha,” Cort says. He gives the head an affectionate pat, and the goat butts his hand.

  “A what?”

  “A LaMancha. It’s a kind of dairy goat. This is Clarabelle. The other one is her daughter, Clarissa.”

  Andie peers into the pen and sees a tiny goat curled up quietly on the grass.

  “Is she okay?”

  “I think so—just tired. It’s been an exciting day for them,” he says, giving Clarabelle another scratch. “They probably miss the rest of the herd. I’ll let them settle in for a couple of days before we try milking.”

  The little goat gets up and walks over to Andie, who dangles her hand over the side of the fence. It gives her fingers a friendly sniff and tries to suck them.

  “Hey,” Andie says. “Cut that out. Your mother’s over there.”

  “She’s just a baby—about three months old, the breeder said. And Mama over there is almost two.”

  They stand watching the animals until the doe loses interest and settles down in a far corner of the paddock. The kid curls close, making soft bleating sounds.

  “Let them sleep,” Cort says.

  They walk off a little distance. Cort sits down, patting the grass beside him.

  “I should’ve brought a blanket—sorry,” he says. When Andie hesitates, he reaches up and pulls her into his lap. “C’mere, you. Still worried about a little snake?”

  “It wasn’t all that little,” Andie says, but she leans her head against his shoulder. They sit quietly, looking up at the stars. After a moment, Cort reaches into the bag and takes out a paper carton of lemonade and a couple plastic cups.

  “This should probably be champagne, but the package store was closed by the time I got there.” He pours them both a glass. “Happy anniversary.”

  The words take her by surprise. She’s been letting the days here slide by, like beads through her fingers, and she’d hoped Cort would do the same. Quickly, she counts back to their first date. A month, exactly.

  “To summer,” she hedges, accepting her glass and bumping it against Cort’s. He looks at her, starts to say something, then appears to change his mind.

  “To summer,” he says. He tips the glass back and Andie can see the long, smooth muscles of his throat.

  Around them, crickets start to chirp again, lulled into security by how still Andie and Cort are. A mockingbird starts—it sounds as if it’s singing from a bush to Andie’s right—and in the background there’s the low hum of an airplane. She can hear the goats shifting restlessly in their paddock, and when she lets herself lean back, the slow steady throb of Cort’s heartbeat.

  She’s almost asleep when she feels Cort stir.

  “What?” she asks.

  “It’s getting buggy—we should get back.” She scrambles out of his lap and Cort rises, brushing the seat of his jeans. She expects him to head straight for the path, but instead he opens up the brown bag and pulls out a large glass jar, the kind Clara used for her preserves. He unscrews the lid, and when he passes it to Andie she can feel that holes have been punched in it.

  “What’s this for?”

  “Watch,” he says, and guides her up a little rise. She can smell wild roses, that deep, clove scent. At the top of the hill are the roses themselves, blurry-edged shadows.

  She takes a step toward them, but Cort holds her back.

  “Wait a sec,” he says. She waits, and after a minute she sees a cool flash of light. Then another. And another.

  “Lightning bugs!”

  “I thought we could catch a few,” Cort says. He takes the lid from her and deftly claps it over the most recent flash. Inside, the light from a single beetle twinkles on and off.

  Together they fill the jar, cupping the tiny beetles in their hands and scooping them in. When it’s full, they turn for home, Andie holding the jar and leading the way. She doesn’t stumble once.

  BY early morning the lightning bugs have lost their energy, sparking only intermittently from their place on Andie’s dresser.

  “Worn out,” Andie says. “Like us.”

  Cort lays his leg across hers and nuzzles her ear. “Don’t even think it.” He rubs her neck and she groans in pleasure.

  “Mmm, that feels good.” Maybe it’s because she’s tired, but the next words spill out before she thinks. “God, I wish summer could last forever.”

  He slides his hands to her shoulders, kneading them gently. “Who says it can’t?”

  “My bank account, for one.” The money she’d deposited when she’d arrived in town is almost gone, and she’ll need to find a job soon. The thought of sending out her CV, applying for positions, facing the inevitable rejection, makes her shoulders tense up. She takes a deep breath, flips over on her stomach so that Cort can reach her whole back, and tries to relax.

  “Why not look around here?” he says casually. His hands increase their pressure, their rhythm slow and languid, sliding up and down her s
pine. “There are plenty of museums and schools in the state. You could live at Evenfall, save up some money, and pay off your loans.”

  “Great plan,” she says. “Except for the fact that it’s going up for sale.”

  “Then live with Gert. She could use the company.”

  “Right,” Andie says. “I’ve already proven I couldn’t last a day there.”

  “Then live with me.” His hands stop moving.

  She buries her face in the pillow, takes a deep breath before turning over to face him. She’d had a feeling this was coming ever since the lemonade last night. Still, it would be easier if she weren’t naked.

  “Look, I’m flattered,” she says gently. “Really. I am. But there’s a bunch of reasons why it wouldn’t work.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for starters, you live with your folks,” she says, trying for humor. “Let’s be realistic, okay?”

  “Say yes and I’ll be out of there tomorrow.” Cort’s face has such an eager, hopeful expression that Andie has to look away.

  “Cort, I’m sorry,” she says. Even as she’s saying it, she knows the words don’t help, not even a little bit. “I thought you understood I was only here for the summer.”

  “That was before,” he says. “I figured things had changed. You’re telling me they haven’t?”

  She reaches out to touch his arm, but he brushes her off. “You don’t feel something special here? I know you do.”

  “Look.” She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “I’ve had a lot of fun this summer, with you. But we both know this is just a temporary thing. I need to be in a big city, for my career. And there are too many differences between us for this to work long term.”

  “Name one.”

  She can’t believe he’s making her spell it out.

  “Well, there’s your age, for a start.”

  “That’s it? That’s what’s got you so upset?” He smiles, and it pisses Andie off a little, that he thinks it’s funny. She’s a little less careful when she speaks this time.

  “That and the fact that we have totally different lives. I mean, I don’t see myself living in Hartman for the rest of my life, in the same house I grew up in, but you seem to have no problem with that.”