“Whereabouts?”
“Back there. It’s the gray shingle house with the dark blue trim. It was just a shack when she bought it, but she added on. She’s a painter.”
“A house painter or the artist kind?”
“Artist. She’s pretty well known. She does paintings of the beach and of people’s houses. All the local galleries show them. She has a website, too. There’s this one painting people keep asking for. She must have painted it fifty times. You know that old cottage at the north end of the island? That zombie house they call Grief Cottage?”
“ ‘Zombie House’ is the perfect name for it! That place is waiting for a major accident. Why they haven’t torn it down beats me.”
“It’s pretty bad. I ate my lunch on its porch. But I didn’t go inside.”
“Don’t even go on that porch again. The whole structure is rotten through and through.”
“A boy and his family disappeared from that cottage. They were staying there after the season was over, and they didn’t know about hurricanes, and Hazel came and washed them all away. But their bodies were never found.”
“That was a long time ago,” says the sunburnt man. “Long before my time and even longer before yours. Look, dude, it’s one thing to be interested in history, but you want to stay away from that house. Because people who go in don’t always come out.”
IX.
I had never met people like the Steckworths. They were half an hour late, which got Aunt Charlotte’s bristles up.
“Now we’ll wait to hear what their excuse is,” she said, pacing up and down the scrubbed and gleaming kitchen floor. “You can tell a lot about people from their excuses.”
“How?”
“Nice people simply apologize. Others, the sort who want to impress you, give you a story about how something really important came up. To put you in your place.”
“What would something ‘really important’ be?”
“Oh, our good friend the governor dropped by—or my uncle the senator. Or, the plumbers who are installing our ninety-foot hot tub showed up unexpectedly. That sort of thing.”
It was hard for Aunt Charlotte and me to keep a straight face when the Steckworths had hardly stepped through the door before announcing that they were late because the tree company putting in the thirty-foot mature palmetto trees around their Olympic swimming pool had dropped by unexpectedly to check measurements.
The Steckworths—Ron and Rita—were suntanned the color of mahogany and both wore heavy gold chains around their necks. They lingered just inside the front door, which opened into the kitchen, and treated us to a blow-by-blow chronicle of the building of their McMansion—though naturally they didn’t call it that. The two of them made it into a kind of duet, Ron vocalizing the measurements of rooms and staircases and trees, and Rita chiming in with the frustrations of having to deal with architects and contractors and landscapers. “Not to mention the decorators,” wailed Rita.
This was my aunt’s cue to say, “Well, let’s go into my studio and have a look at your forty-two by fifty-six painting.”
I watched from the doorway, nervous. What if they took one look and said in chorus, “Oh, this is not what we wanted at all!” Aunt Charlotte would be stuck with only the non-refundable down payment. Or what if one of them asked a stupid question and earned a caustic retort from my aunt which would humiliate them, make them feel obliged to retaliate in some way—perhaps to quibble over the agreed-on price, or ask for changes in the painting?
“Oh, look, Ronnie!” was Rita Steckworth’s first reaction. “All our palmettos are already in!”
“If only life was that simple,” said Ron Steckworth, winking at my aunt. “Have you ever painted one this large before, Mrs. Lee?”
“No,” said Aunt Charlotte. “Ordinarily I prefer to work on a smaller scale.”
“How small?” asked Ron.
“Oh, sixteen by eighteen, twelve by sixteen. I have a particular fondness for four by sixes, about the size of my palm.” She held up a palm.
“A sixteen by eighteen would be completely swallowed by our mantelpiece,” said Ron.
“That’s why we agreed on a forty-two by fifty-six,” my aunt replied.
“Wait, is that yellow paint I’m seeing up there in the sky?” Rita asked, standing so close to the painting that her nose almost touched it.
“Very observant,” said my aunt. “It’s cadmium yellow. If you’ll step back a bit, you’ll see it disappearing into the blueness. Someone standing at the proper distance when it’s hung in your house will see a richer blue sky than if I had used blue pigments alone.”
“Oh, richer,” Rita Steckworth echoed, obediently stepping back. “Yes, you’re right.”
“Turner used yellow in his skies a lot,” Aunt Charlotte said. “And Sisley. I learned the trick from Sisley.”
“Sisley? Now where does he—?”
“We’ll Google him when we get home,” Ron cut her off. Sauntering around to the rear of the big studio easel mounted on wheels, he examined the reverse side of the canvas. “What will you do back here?” he asked.
“Do back here?” inquired Aunt Charlotte.
“I mean, you gonna put something back here? Or do you leave it open like that?”
“Most professionals leave it open. An oil painting never completely dries. If you were to cover the back, it couldn’t breathe and condensation would set in … followed by mold.”
“Euw, mold!” cried Rita.
“Your framer may want to finish off the back with a sheet of porous brown paper so the air can circulate,” Aunt Charlotte said. “But the paper is mostly for looks.”
“We were thinking gold for the frame,” said Rita, “but what would you suggest?”
“If it were me, I’d keep it simple. You don’t want the frame to distract from the painting. I’d suggest a simple molding. No more than an inch. And I would go for chrome or silver rather than gold.”
“Maybe just a thin gold molding?” Rita Steckworth entreated.
“Well, if you keep it very thin,” said Aunt Charlotte.
X.