Al and I have never hugged, that I can remember. I don’t know the last time we’ve touched, except when he is helping me get around. But here in the murky darkness I put my hand over his, and he lays his other hand over mine. I feel the way I do when I lose something—a spool of thread, say—and search for it everywhere, only to discover it in an obvious place, like on the sideboard under the cloth.
I think of what Mamey told me long ago: there are many ways to love and be loved. Too bad it’s taken most of a lifetime for me to understand what that means.
A FEW DAYS after Andy started sketching me in the pink dress in the grass, he takes his drawings upstairs. I work in the kitchen all morning, scraping my chair around the floor. I leave biscuits cooling on the counter, a pot of chicken soup on the range. At noontime he comes downstairs and helps himself, scooping a biscuit through his bowl of soup, gulping water from the pump in the pantry, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Heads back upstairs. In the afternoon I bake a blueberry pie, cut a warm slice, push it ahead of me on a plate to the stairs, and call for him to come and get it. It’s worth the effort for the grin on his face.
He rows home at dusk. Comes back the next day and troops upstairs, his heavy thudding footsteps the only sound in the quiet house. I hear him pacing around up there, opening doors, shutting doors, walking into different rooms.
This goes on for weeks.
One month, then two.
There are traces of Andy everywhere, even when he’s gone. The smell of eggs, splatters of tempera. A dry, splayed paintbrush. A wooden board pocked with color.
The weather cools. He’s still working. He doesn’t leave for Pennsylvania as usual at the end of August. I don’t ask why, half afraid that if I speak the words aloud, they’ll remind him that it is past time for him to return home.
While he’s upstairs I go through the motions of my routine. Heat water for tea. Knead the bread. Stroke the cat on my lap. Watch the grasses sway out the window. Chat with Al about the weather. Settle in to enjoy the sunset, as vivid as a Technicolor movie. But all the time I’m thinking of Andy, tucked away in a distant room like a character in a fairy tale, spinning straw into gold.
One October morning Andy doesn’t show up. I haven’t seen Betsy in weeks, but the next day, when I’m darning socks, she pops her head in the kitchen door. “Christina! Will you and Al come to dinner?”
“To your house?” I ask with surprise. They’ve never invited us before.
She nods. “Andy talked to Al, and they agreed Al can bring you in the car. Please tell me you’ll come! Just a simple meal, nothing fancy. We’d adore it. A nice send-off before we head back to Chadds Ford.”
“Andy’s finished for the season, then?”
“Finally,” she says. “It’ll be nice to have some peace and quiet, I’ll bet.”
“We don’t mind. We have a lot of peace and quiet.”
IT’S LATE IN the afternoon a few days later when Al—wearing a light-blue collared shirt I made for him years ago that I rarely see him in—lifts me out of my chair in the kitchen and carries me down the steps and into the back of the old Ford Runabout. It’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere in a car—since I’ve been anywhere except Sadie’s, in fact. I’m dressed in a long navy cotton skirt with forgiving panels and a white blouse—an old uniform, but at least it isn’t torn or stained. Hair smoothed back and tied with a ribbon.
The backseat of the car is dark and cool. As we bump down the drive I lean back and close my eyes, feeling the vibrating thrum of the motor against my legs and a flutter of nervousness in my stomach. I’ve never seen Andy anywhere except in our house, with his paint-spattered boots and pockets bulging with eggs. Will he be a different person in his own home?
Al turns right at a stop sign, then drives mile after mile on a smooth road. I hear the loud blinker; we make a slow right turn. Then the crackle of gravel. “We’re here, Christie,” he says.
I open my eyes. White clapboard cottage, trellis of white clematis, dark windows, neat green arborvitae. I knew they’d moved out of the horse stalls, but seeing the cottage reminds me anew: Betsy got her house after all.
And here she is, standing on the porch in slim black pants, a mint-green blouse, a red-lipped smile, waving. “Welcome!” Behind her, Andy waves too. It is strange seeing him here, out of context, wearing a crisp white shirt and clean, unsullied trousers and shoes, his hair neatly combed. He looks like a nice, ordinary man in a nice, ordinary house. The only hint of the Andy I know is his hands stained with paint.
Al gets out and opens my door. He and Andy cradle me up the steps and into the house. Betsy holds the door open; two young boys dart back and forth like minnows.
“Nicholas! Jamie!” Betsy scolds. “You two go play upstairs. I’ll bring you some cake if you’re good.”
Al and Andy carry me into a sparsely furnished room with a long red couch, a low oblong wooden table in front of it, and two striped wingback chairs. They settle me onto the couch while Betsy disappears through a swinging door and emerges with a tray of radishes in a small bowl, a platter of deviled eggs, and a little jar of green olives with red tongues. (I’ve seen olives like this before, but never tried one.) She sits beside me and directs Andy and Al to sit across from us in the wingbacks.
Andy seems a little jittery. He shifts in his chair and gives me a funny smile. Al glances above my head and then looks at Andy. He seems jittery too.
“Toothpick?” Betsy offers.
I take one and spear an olive into my mouth. Briny. Texture like flesh. Where to put the toothpick? I see a small woodpile on Andy’s plate and balance the toothpick on my own. Looking around the room, I see Andy’s familiar pictures in frames all over the walls: a watercolor of Al raking blueberries, his pipe and cap in profile. A charcoal sketch of Al sitting on the front doorstep. The large egg tempera of Mamey’s lace curtains in a third-floor room billowing in the wind.
“They look nice in frames,” I tell Andy.
“That’s Betsy’s domain,” he says. “She names them and frames them.”
“We divide and conquer,” Betsy says. “A glass of sherry, Christina?”
“No, thank you. I only drink at the holidays.” I don’t want to say it, but I’m afraid I might spill on my blouse.
“All right. Al?” Betsy asks.
“A drink would be nice,” he says.
Al and I, not used to being served, are stiff and formal. Betsy’s doing her best to put us at ease. “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, I hear,” she says as she hands Al a tiny glass of sherry.
“Good thing, we can use it,” Al says and takes a sip. He winces. I don’t think he’s ever tasted sherry before. He sets the glass on the table.
I glance at Betsy, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Laughing lightly, she says, “I know rain is good for the farm, but it’s no fun to be stuck inside with the children on a rainy day, let me tell you.”
Al gives Andy a droll look. “You should get them painting,” he says.