by Nora Carroll
As her eyes skimmed the room, she was surprised that after all this time everything looked exactly the same. A balcony with a Craftsman-style geometric railing encircled the living room like a wide catwalk. The second floor had no ceilings; you could look all the way up into the exposed pine rafters in the house’s vaulted gables. All across the front of the cottage were windows looking out on the lake. The rooms were furnished with Navajo rugs and Indian baskets, wicker furniture and hand-bent hickory rockers. There was a stillness common to rooms that have stood empty, the old house silent but for the creaking of the worn floorboards under their feet.
Russ broke the silence with a loud, appreciative groan.
“This is unbelievable!” Russ exclaimed. “American cottage style, eclectic Arts and Crafts, and look at this Indian stuff. This house could be a cover story.”
“Journey’s End.” Jess whispered the cottage’s name so softly she wasn’t sure if she had spoken aloud.
“I’ve got to get on the phone,” Russ said.
Jess looked at the view through the warped glass, out toward Hemingway Point. With the lights on in the living room, she could see her own reflection faintly in the windows, her same narrow face, with fair hair in a ponytail. She was wearing button-fly Levi’s and a white cotton T-shirt. Exactly what she might have worn the last time she was here, when she was seventeen.
Russ started fingering the Navajo rugs and inspecting the Ojibwa sweetgrass baskets. Jess stood there with their suitcases—there were so many rooms here, most of which had always stood empty. At first, she wasn’t sure which room they should use.
“Come on, Jess. Let’s put our bags in here.” Russ pointed to one of the ground-floor bedrooms with wide windows looking out on the lake.
Mamie’s room. Jess hesitated, then decided her hesitation was silly. She grabbed the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it into the room.
“I can’t find an outlet, Jess!” Russ hollered from his position under Mamie’s Victorian writing table. Jess was standing upstairs on the balcony. From where she stood, she could see into the room that used to be Mamie’s. It was a feminine room with frilly white curtains and pictures of Gibson girls hanging framed on the walls. Jess’s grandfather had run off when her mother was a baby. Her grandmother’s room bore no trace of him. All she could see of Russ was his jeans-clad legs and the pointy toes of his expensive leather cowboy boots. His computer paraphernalia crowded the top of Mamie’s writing desk; his bomber jacket and camera case were strewn across the bed, lenses, camera paper, and other junk littering the spotless pink-and-white chenille spread. “We’re going to need to get set up for Internet access.”
Russ had already been on and off the phone with the magazine half a dozen times.
“Classic Gaines,” she kept hearing him say. “His signature work.”
When Russ wasn’t on the phone, he walked around with Jess like a tour guide, showing her things about the cottage that she had never consciously noted.
“See the foundation.” Russ pointed to the uneven heaping of gray stones that ran along the base of the shingled structure. “That’s local flint. Arts and Crafts style. Characteristic.” Inside, he pointed at the walls and ceilings. “Look at the pine board—unvarnished, so Gaines—that golden-honey color.” Jess had never really noticed the walls, had taken for granted their warm amber hue.
But she knew that they were pine boards—number one white pine planks. Jess almost felt like she could hear a voice, long forgotten, whispering in her ear. She shook her head. No, she was not going to think about him. All that was so long ago. Jess ran her hand along the smooth, knotty surface of the wall, feeling the carefully grooved edges, the slightly shirred ends.
“The amazing thing about this place,” Russ said, “is that it hasn’t had a thing done to it. You just don’t find cottages like that. They’ve all been screwed around with, mucked up.”
In the bedroom, Russ was drawn to a collection of small Indian artifacts on the shelf in the corner. They were little tourist trinkets, painstakingly made by hand: a miniature birch-bark canoe, a finely beaded sandal, and two small woven baskets, one with a tiny doll in deerskin cradled inside. Russ handed one of the baskets to her. “Do you see how fine the weaving is?”
She examined the intricate beadwork, the careful stitches. Each basket had a name stenciled on it: Mamie, written on the basket that still held the doll; Lila, on the basket that was empty, the doll no doubt lost long ago during play.
“How am I ever going to figure out what to do with this stuff?” Jess said.
“Are you kidding? These old handmade tourist trinkets from the twenties are worth a small fortune.” Russ picked up a hand-painted toy tomahawk and brandished it toward his reflection in the mirror.
Russ didn’t understand, but maybe that was just as well. These were just things to him—to catalog, describe, photograph, and eventually sell. For herself, they were dusty relics of a past that seemed frozen in time—it was hard to know what value to assign to things like that.
Russ lost no time getting acquainted with the layout of the rambling cottage. He was upstairs in the alcove now, muttering into his voice recorder. Behind him, the high alcove windows were thrown open, and a fresh breeze from the lake was making the faded curtains flutter.
“Wow, Jess, this picture of your grandmother,” Russ called over the balcony. “I never knew you looked so much like her. It’s the spitting image of you.”
“Is that the picture that was up there in the alcove?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not Miss Mamie. That’s my great-aunt Lila—Mamie’s sister.”
“What was she like?”
“I don’t know. I never knew her. She drowned in the lake years ago. Before I was born.”
“That’s sad.”
“Actually, it was kind of creepy. Miss Mamie almost never talked about her. Just left her picture there, staring out over the lake. Kids used to say that late at night you could hear footsteps on the balcony and the sound of water dripping—the ghost of old Aunt Lila.”
Russ came down the stairs holding the picture.
“It is an amazing likeness though, isn’t it?”
Jess looked at the faded image, the face of a pretty young girl, in the old sepia-toned photograph. She looked to be about seventeen, with fair hair and wide-set eyes in a narrow face. There was a faint likeness, she supposed.
Jess had never liked the way she looked that much, blond and ordinary, not at all like her mother, Margaret, who was a black-eyed beauty, with dark hair, prominent cheekbones, and almond-shaped eyes. Margaret used to stand in front of the mirror, combing her thick, dark hair, making Jess feel like a pale wraith beside her. Jess imagined that she looked more like her father—even though she had no idea what her father actually looked like. She didn’t even know his name. All her mother had told her was that she was the result of a one-night stand with an Irishman when Margaret was in Belfast reporting on the Troubles. At cocktail parties, Margaret loved to retell the story of Jess’s conception, always with the utmost hilarity, including lines about seeing bombs exploding in the sky. Try as she might, Jess could learn nothing about him. Margaret steadfastly stuck to the story that she never even knew his name. Jess’s own name, Carpenter, was Margaret’s invention—she had picked it, she said, because it was easy to pronounce.
For the rest of the afternoon, Russ was on and off the phone. Jess went out onto the wide front porch. She tested each of the porch swings and finally came to rest in the hammock. From there, she could see through the birches and out over the lake toward the beach and sailboat moorings.
The Wequetona Club was set on a sheltered cove where for thousands of years the Woodland Indians had made their summer camps, fashioning arrowheads from the tough, flinty stone and fishing for trout in the clear water surrounded by an unbroken expanse of dense woods. In those woods, the
re was a grove of the giant white pine that had surrounded the lake. These trees once drove the economy of the region, drawing first lumbermen, then white settlers, and, eventually, summer people to the shores of Pine Lake.
By now, all the giant trees were gone—shipped out to build the great cities of the Midwest. Only one small stand remained, on the plot of land adjoining Journey’s End. From the cottage, there was nothing distinctive about them; it was from across the cove, at Hemingway Point, that their majesty could be seen: dark-green towering spires pointing sharply up into the sky.
Lying in the hammock, staring out at the sun-dappled expanse of lake, Jess felt as if she had momentarily stopped time. The hammock was rocking slightly in the gentle breeze. Then, she heard a frail voice calling her name.
“Why, Jess Carpenter, welcome to Wequetona.” Jess looked out and saw May Lewis, tiny and hunched over, dwarfed by a woolen suit in a bright shade of robin’s-egg blue, coming along the walk.
Jess was startled to see Mamie’s friend. It made her grandmother seem closer, the fact of her passing more real.
Jess climbed out of the hammock and walked out to say hello. “Mrs. Lewis. How nice to see you. I’m surprised you recognized me after all this time.”
“Why, you look exactly the same, Jess. I’m so sorry about your grandmother. Miss Mamie is missed.” Her face was wrinkled, but she had a sharp look in her eye. Jess squirmed under her gaze, wondering if Mrs. Lewis knew that Jess hadn’t seen her grandmother for many years before she died.
But Mrs. Lewis was poised, and her friendly smile gave no hints.
“You must stop by The Rafters sometime. You can tell me all about your medical practice.”
Jess flushed in spite of herself.
“Oh, I . . . I never did go to medical school . . . ” It was half a lie and she stammered through it.
“Well, I’d love to hear what you are doing now,” Mrs. Lewis said, smiling. “You were always such a bright girl—you must have accomplished great things.”
“Oh, nothing special,” Jess said. Nothing that really helped people, as she had once dreamed of doing.
“Well, you be sure to stop by. I’d love to hear all about it.”
Mrs. Lewis continued along the walkway until she reached the woods, and then she circled back.
Back up on the porch, Jess turned her face away from the lake and tried not to think about her grandmother.
The sun began to set over Pine Lake, turning the water to a silvery sheen. Russ and Jess sat on the front porch drinking white wine.
“They want it to be a kitchen and solarium focus.” Russ’s sharp voice intruded upon the silence.
“What?” Jess said absently.
“For the magazine.”
“That ratty old kitchen?” Jess was surprised. “Why would they want to do a story on that?”
“Well, of course, it’s a makeover story, and those usually have the kitchen as an important focus.”
“A makeover story?”
“You know, beautiful old cottage brought up to date, with Sub-Zero appliances and stuff.”
“I thought you said the best thing about this place is that it’s never been tinkered with.”
“That’s right,” said Russ. “It’s a designer’s dream. You can leave the authentic look and just improve upon it. That gives it a kind of ‘old money’ look that’s hard to fake.”
“Russ, this place is going to be sold this week. How on earth are you talking about remodeling?”
“I’ve got some of the best people in New York who’ll work on it. I think I have a real shot at getting it on the cover of the magazine.”
“On the cover?” Jess said, honestly surprised.
“An original Gaines? Jess, this will be a real coup. Couldn’t we just sit tight while I try to pull this together? The place will be twice as valuable when we’re done.”
Jess looked at Russ’s boyish, eager face. He was a bit thinner than the average guy, wore little intellectual glasses, and had a nervous way of leaning forward and barely resting in his seat. His jeans were jet black—she had seen him turn them inside out before he washed them so they wouldn’t fade. And those fancy leather cowboy boots, hand tooled, were clearly designed for walking on cement. Everything about him said city boy. Not the kind of guy who had spent time poking sticks in the mud as a kid. Not the kind of kid who knew the names of birds and trees. Unbidden, the names of birds that someone had once taught her came back: kingfisher, pileated woodpecker, pine warbler, golden loon. Stop, Jess thought. Just stop.
She looked out at the lake again—there was something about being here that was bringing the past into sharp and uncomfortable focus. As though her life was a continuum of connected parts—not a past life and a present that had been sharply divided in two.
“Please,” Russ said. “It would really be a good thing for my career . . . ”
“Oh, all right,” Jess said as much to herself as to Russ. “You can do whatever you want.”
Russ leaned over and gave her a kiss, but she turned her head so that his lips just grazed her cheek.
He looked at her, puzzled. He didn’t read her well, didn’t often know what she was thinking. Then, he grinned a happy grin and picked up his cell phone, punching a number on his speed dial.
“Milo,” Russ crowed into the cell phone, “start booking blocks of flights up to Traverse City. It’s all systems go.” He gave her a thumbs-up sign, then stood up and walked out toward the porch, the phone pressed hard to his ear.
Russ was talking and examining one of the Indian blankets. He looked so out of place here—but that was good, wasn’t it? For years, she had kept looking for the same kind of man that she had once lost—now, finally, maybe she’d given up on old dreams, and changed for good.
Jess carried her empty wineglass into the kitchen and set it down next to the sink, and then she ducked into the pantry off the kitchen, a short, narrow hallway that had always been used as a storage space.
She pulled the string hanging from the single bulb, and a thin light lit up the room. She looked around but soon spotted what she had been looking for, leaning up against the wall in a dusty corner. It was a long switch of pine, carefully stripped of its bark, then whittled smooth. She picked it up slowly and examined it, running her fingers along the sides to feel the knife marks ticked vertically along it like measurements.
Then, she ran her fingertips over the two initials carved into it: J and D.
Up until that moment, she had been able to keep her emotions at bay—but now, they flooded over her and she felt startled awake, like being splashed by cold, clear water from the lake.
CHAPTER FOUR
JESS, AGE SEVENTEEN
That year, the water level in the lake was unusually low. Most years, the water lapped up against the wooded shoreline, except right at the swimming beach. Along the rest of the shoreline, you could only get to the lakefront by cutting through the sedge marsh, thick brambles and saplings, and sharp razor grass.
But that year, you could walk all the way out to Loeb Point along the beach. Flocks of birds congregated in the sand, and minnows swam in the shallow, stagnant pools near shore.
Jess liked to walk down the solitary beach alone. As she rounded the bend of the cove, she slipped out of sight of the beach where the sunbathers congregated, and she could not be seen from the cottages up on the bluff. None of the other summer people ever seemed to walk that way, as though there were nothing in the empty beach or woods that could interest them. But Jess loved the quiet along the beach; she watched as the seagulls that had flocked there took flight in white swirls, rising above the mallard ducks that swam along placidly at the water’s edge.
Down at the far end of the beach, Jess had found a fresh cold spring bubbling up out of the sand. In years past, the spring must have fed directly into the lake, but this year, it
was visible, just a bubbling in the sand. When she stuck her foot into it, she felt icy-cold water, and her leg slipped down as far as her knee. Jess took to sitting there by the little spring. In the afternoon, she could slip away from the bathing beach with a book and stay there by the spring, reading and watching the birdlife on the water. Not once had any of the other bathers ventured in her direction.
On one of those days, Jess was seated on a flat rock next to the bubbling spring, reading a book. There were clouds in the sky and the weather was changeable. When the sun was out, the water was calm and blue, but then a dark cloud would pass with a gust of wind, and the water would turn slate colored, with tiny whitecaps. Because of the threat of storm, few boats were out, and so Jess was surprised when she saw a canoe slip around the corner of the cove. A young man with his shirt off was paddling, his clean strokes slicing through the water.
The canoer seemed to take no notice of her. Perhaps he couldn’t see her because of the sun that had just flashed out from behind a cloud, and which must have been shining in his eyes. Jess, on the other hand, had the sun behind her, and she immediately noticed his stillness and unusual ease in the canoe. His fluid motions as he paddled made him appear to scarcely move, but she could see the muscles in his deeply tanned bare torso, slipping across his ribs as his oar plunged into the water.
To her surprise, as he drew nearer to shore, with one graceful motion he jumped out of the canoe, pulling it up on the sand not fifteen feet from where she sat, although he still didn’t appear to have noticed her. Closer, she could see that he was a boy of about her age, wearing faded red swim trunks, with an unruly tangle of brown wavy hair streaked through with gold.
His motions were slow and deliberate. He pulled the canoe out of the water and then laid his wooden oar across the seats. The canoe was also a faded red, like his swim trunks. Jess sat perfectly still, perched on the rock, almost directly in front of him.
Finally, he put his hand up to shade his eyes from the sun and looked straight at her.