Alvah, passionate for sailing in the way that boys who grew up on boats with their fathers and grandfathers can be, is happy to do the brunt of the work, and once we’re out on the ocean we fall into an easy rhythm. Ramona opens a basket and cuts chunks of bread, slices of cheese, passes around hard-boiled eggs and salt and a tin canteen of water.
In the course of conversation, I learn bits and pieces about Walton’s upbringing. His mother is obsessed with social decorum, his father a banker who stays in Boston in a small apartment several nights a week—“when he has to work late. Or at least that’s what he tells us,” Walton says. I’m not sure what he’s implying and fear it’s rude to ask; I don’t want to look ignorant but also don’t want to pry. It’s as hard to picture where Walton grew up as it is to imagine life on the moon. I conjure parlor rooms out of Jane Austen, a redbrick mansion, the walls of the dining room adorned with gilt-framed paintings of Harvard-educated ancestors.
He tells me that he had a curved spine, scoliosis, as a child, and had to wear a plaster body cast for a long, hot summer after an operation when he was twelve. While other boys were climbing trees and kicking balls around, he lay in bed reading adventure stories like Swiss Family Robinson and Captains Courageous. He doesn’t say so, but I know he’s trying to explain that he understands what it’s like to be me.
As the hours pass, the sky drains of warmth. It’s not until I notice goose bumps on my arms that I realize I’ve forgotten a sweater. Without a word, Walton peels off his jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. “Oh,” I say with surprise.
“I hope that wasn’t too forward of me. You seemed chilly.”
“Yes. Thank you. I just—I didn’t expect it.” In truth, I can’t remember the last time anyone noticed my physical discomfort and did something about it. When you live on a farm, everyone is uncomfortable much of the time. Too cold, too warm, dirty, bone tired, banged up, injured by a tool or hot grate—too preoccupied to worry much about each other.
“You’re quite an independent girl, aren’t you?”
“I suppose I am.”
“You’ve never met anyone like Christina, Walton,” Ramona says. “She’s not like those silly girls in Malden who don’t know how to light a fire or clean a fish.”
“Is she a suffragette, like Miss Pankhurst?” he asks in a teasing voice.
I feel woefully ignorant; I don’t know what a suffragette is and I’ve never heard of Miss Pankhurst. I think of all the years Walton spent in school while I was washing and cooking and cleaning. “A suffragette?”
“You know, those ladies starving themselves for the vote,” Ramona says. “The ones who think, God forbid, they can do anything a man can do.”
“Is that what you think?” Walton asks me.
“Well, I don’t know,” I say. “Shall we have a competition and find out? We could split logs for firewood, or fix a drainpipe. Or maybe slaughter a chicken?”
“Careful,” he says, laughing. “Miss Pankhurst was just sentenced to three years in jail for her treasonous words.”
There is, I am almost certain, a spark between us. A flickering. I glance at Ramona. She raises her eyebrows at me and smiles, and I know she senses it too.
ONE DAY WALTON shows up alone on a bicycle. He’s wearing a pin-striped sack coat and a straw boater, not the kind of hat any man around here would wear. (For that matter, they don’t wear pin-striped sack coats either.) Around my brothers he looks slightly preposterous, like a peacock in a cluster of turkeys.
Holding his hat between his hands, he kneads the brim with his long fingers. “I’m here to do you the favor of relieving you of some eggs. Can you believe they’ve entrusted me with this important task?” And then, conspiratorially, “Actually, they have no idea I’m here.”
“I’ll get my coat,” I say.
“Don’t think you need one,” he says. “It’s not actually—”
But I’ve already shut the door.
I stand in the dark hall, my heart thudding in my ears. I don’t know how to act. Maybe I should tell him that I’m needed in the— A rap on the door. “Are you there? All right if I come inside?”
I reach up to the coat pegs and pull down the first thing I find, Sam’s heavy wool jacket.
“Christina?” Mother’s voice filters down the stairs.
“Getting eggs at the henhouse, Mother.” Opening the door, I smile at Walton. He smiles back. I step onto the stoop, putting on the jacket. “Two dozen, yes? You can come with me if you want.”
“Butterscotch?” He holds out a piece of amber candy.
“Uh . . . sure.”
He unwraps it before handing it to me. “Sweets to the sweet.”
“Thanks,” I say, blushing.
He gestures for me to lead the way. “Lovely property,” he says as we stroll toward the henhouse. “Used to be a lodging house, Ramona said?”
The butterscotch is melting in my mouth. I turn it over with my tongue. “My grandparents took in summer guests. They called it Umbrella Roof Inn.”
He squints at the roof. “Umbrella?”
“You’re right,” I say, laughing a little. “It looks nothing like an umbrella.”
“I suppose it keeps the rain out.”
“Aren’t all roofs supposed to do that?”
Now he’s laughing too. “Well, you find out the answer and let me know.”
Walton is right; my brother’s scratchy jacket is too hot. After I’ve gathered the eggs, I peel off the jacket and Walton suggests we sit in the grass.
“So what’s your favorite color?” he asks.
“Really?”
“Why not?” The butterscotch clicks between his teeth.
“Okay.” I’ve never been asked this question. I have to think about it. The color of a piglet’s ear, a summer sky at dusk, Al’s beloved roses . . . “Um. Pink.”
“Favorite animal.”
“My spaniel, Topsy.”
“Favorite food.”
“I’m famous for my fried apple cake.”
“Will you make it for me?”
I nod.
“I’m going to hold you to that. Favorite poet.”
This is an easy one. “Emily Dickinson.”
“Ah,” he says. “‘Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.’”
“‘Or has it feathers like a bird—’”
“Very good!” he says, clearly surprised that I know it. “‘Or billows like a shore.’”
“My teacher gave me a collection of her poems when I left school. That’s one of my favorites.”
He shakes his head. “I never understood that last part.”
“Well . . .” I’m a little hesitant to offer an interpretation. What if he disagrees? “I think . . . I think it means that you should stay open to possibility. However it comes your way.”
He nods. “Ah. That makes sense. So are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Open to possibility?”
“I don’t know. I hope so. What about you?”
“Trying. It’s a struggle.”
He tells me that he is going to Harvard to please his father, though he might’ve preferred the smaller campus of Bowdoin. “But you don’t turn down Harvard, do you?”
“Why not?”
“Why not, indeed,” he says.
“HE LIKES YOU,” Ramona says, eyes sparkling. “He asks me all these questions: how long I’ve known you, if you have a boyfriend, if your father is very strict. He wants to know what you think.”