Robert and I expect to return to Washington on Tuesday, as he must be at the office on Wednesday, and we will be pleased to have you to dinner at the new house as soon as possible afterward. It will be such a pleasure having you nearby, and I only regret our many obligations will keep us from seeing each other as often as we might like.
Thank you so much for hosting such a beautiful wedding. I am sure Washington will be talking of it the entire season.
Yours sincerely,
Margaret Pearce Walsh
twenty-nine
MADELEINE
1999
August, and the air lay wet and hot around us as we sat on the back porch of The Kitchen, the occasional quick wind more of an unpleasantly hot exhale than a relief. As was my habit lately, I had thrown my hair up into a messy knot, and the curls that sprang free pressed damply against my bare neck.
“Where are you sitting?” Sharon asked, attempting to insert a cranky toddler into a high chair at the end of the table. I had babysat the twins a few nights so Sharon and Kevin could go out, but I was embarrassed to say I still couldn’t tell the boys apart. They were one gloriously sticky, flailing, kissable, undifferentiated mess. This one kept arching his back every time Sharon tried to slip his legs underneath the tray, so I leaned forward and tickled him, which made him collapse into giggles so she could catch him unawares and get him settled. “Thanks.”
“I’ll sit over here,” I said, moving down to find an empty chair and plopping into it, setting my beer down on a napkin.
“I’ll sit next to you. Kevin! Come feed your children.” Kevin loped over and kissed Sharon’s forehead, taking the other squirming twin and sitting down with him in his lap. Sharon left him cutting avocado and chicken for the boys and collapsed into the chair beside mine. “I am pooped. Vacation cannot come soon enough.”
“When are you leaving?” Kevin’s mother had a beach house on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and they were all going for a week. There was nothing like late summer in Magnolia to make you long for water and an ocean breeze.
“Next week. I am totally planning on leaving all child care to Grandma while I sit on the sand and read a book. And drink,” she said, reaching for my glass, which was sweating the napkin underneath it into wet shreds, and draining half of the beer in one long swallow. “God, this is so good.”
“Henry, can you bring me another beer, please?” I called out across the porch. There were well over a dozen people there—Sharon and Kevin and the boys, Wanee and her family, Cassandra, Pete and Arthur, the owners of Java Good Day, and their daughter, Caitlin, Kira, my boss from the art supply store, and Henry and me. It was Monday night and The Kitchen was closed, the rooms strangely empty and echoing when I walked inside to go to the bathroom.
“You drank the whole thing already? You lush!” he called back, pulling a chilled glass out of the cooler behind the outside bar and slipping it under the tap, letting the caramel liquid pour out, a thin foam settling on the top. I had never liked beer, but Henry made a cream ale that tasted of vanilla and sugar and I couldn’t get enough of it.
“No, Sharon stole mine,” I said, as he handed me the fresh glass, so cold it felt like it would burn my fingers. “Thank you.”
“You can have your own, you know,” he said to Sharon.
“It tastes so much better when it’s stolen.” Sharon drained the rest and held the empty glass out to him. “More, please,” she said, and then let loose a monumental belch.
“Well, when you put it like that.” Henry took the glass and headed back to the bar.
“Charming,” I said. “Really. You do that at the Ladies Association lunches?”
“I save it just for you,” Sharon said sweetly. “Speaking of which, I haven’t seen you there in a while.”
“I’ve been working. My landlord is a total nightmare if I’m late on rent,” I said, and Sharon punched me in the arm. My mother’s house had sold days after it had gone on the market, and when it looked like I would be staying in Magnolia for a while, I had moved into the carriage house on Sharon and Kevin’s property. It was tiny and the bathroom and closet doors banged into each other and the stove was the size of a toddler’s play set and it had a terrible spider problem, and I loved it. There was only one large room, with an antique iron bed against one wall, the kitchen in one corner, and the living area, which I had filled with an easel and canvases and tables covered with brushes and tubes of paint and rags sprayed with color. Every morning when I woke up, the first thing I saw was a spill of sunlight across the painting I was working on, and I could smell the grass and the garden outside and hear the twins laughing, and it always made me smile.
“Well, you’ve been missed. Ellen O’Connor asked about you just the other day.”
“Oh yeah? How’s she doing?”
Sharon shrugged. “I have no idea. I can’t read those people.”
“Yeah, well, they don’t want you to be able to.”
“I told her you were working at the art store and she said she might come by.”