Bittersweet

by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

  There was something else—something I shouldn’t have dared to dream about but did all the same—Indo’s offhand suggestion that her house was up for grabs. Still, now, mentioning that remembered hope brings a blush to my skin, because, really, who would be foolish enough to believe an eccentric old woman’s ramblings? And I didn’t even know what she was looking for, not really. Anyway, hadn’t Ev already offered up the vision of us as old biddies sitting on the porch together? She had, certainly. But perhaps I had already started to doubt her constancy, to try to map out other ways I could keep Winloch mine. In any case, I know myself well enough to admit that once someone has introduced a suggestion to an imagination like mine … well, let’s just say by the first day I sat down with the family archive, I had already pondered how much it would cost to have Clover’s toilet replaced.

  The moth-nibbled, mouse-nested Winslow papers made me sneeze. Their crumpled, knife-thin edges flaked off like autumnal leaves in late fall. They had acquired an ancient, musty smell from the many seasons they’d been waiting in the attic. Some of the papers were thick and heavy and marked with fading fountain-pen ink. Those old documents held crossed, European sevens and bore the imprint of typewriters, so that, as I ran my fingers over the backs of the pages, I could feel the ripple of backwards words set down a hundred years before. The newer pages were thin as onionskin and already yellowing. Some bore sickly sweet–smelling purple mimeograph ink; others were scrawled with handwriting that pointed to more recent failings in the teaching and execution of proper penmanship.

  But regardless of whether the Winslow papers were young or old, the collection, as a whole, was in ruins. Coherent order was nowhere to be found. It took me a few half days to simply put the piles of paper in some kind of chronology. I roped Arlo, Jeffrey, and Owen, eager for action, into dragging a few unused dining tables up the creaky attic stairs, and we stacked the papers onto each one, decade by decade, before the boys scrambled off in search of greater adventure.

  There were very few documents from Samson’s day—a copy of the original Winloch deed, a half dozen sheaves from one or another of his companies—and then, from the era after Samson died, when Banning the first was coming of age, there was a slim pile of papers regarding war bonds, succession, a box of personal letters, and a few newspaper clippings that mentioned his sister Esther, who had become a physician. Someone had taken care to save those articles, and I read with great admiration about her bravery and determination.

  There were some papers in there regarding a bankruptcy from sometime in the thirties—I couldn’t tell if the smudge at the end of the year read “2” or “9,” but it seemed unlikely the Winslows would have gone bankrupt and held on to this paradise, so I set it back down on the pile, even as it burned a question mark into my memory.

  It wasn’t until Bard—Birch’s father, Ev’s grandfather—came to power, in the midthirties, that the papers grew voluminous. There were work orders, deeds, clippings, many more pounds of paper creating many more pounds of dust. On more than one of those June afternoons, I picked up the trail of a bought tract of land—apparently Bard was something of a land baron—followed it for a few years, and then, when the scent ran cold, shook my head at the sheer vagueness of my task, and at how well Indo, of all people, seemed to know me. I was just supposed to be looking for a manila folder. But she had been right—I couldn’t resist a juicy tale.

  I pulled myself away and wandered downstairs, bidding good-bye to Masha, Winloch’s ample, white-haired, Russian cook. She took a moment from stirring her minestrone to answer with a gruff nod.

  My favorite spot in all of Winloch lay at the lip of our cove, on the flat, smooth rock on which the great blue heron had perched the first day I ventured beyond Bittersweet. The rock was big enough to hold only one body, easily reached by swimming, or, if one didn’t mind a bit of a scramble, by climbing down the ledged incline through scratchy undergrowth. I liked that the spot lay between private land and public. Basking on the warm swath, I could turn my head out, to the push and pull of the outer bay only inches away, where motorboats sped in toward Winslow Bay, and, in the distance, a marina flashed silver and white when the sunlight hit it; or I could turn my eyes in, toward Bittersweet, making out our small, sandy beach, even as the stairs, cottage, and the rest of Winloch was hidden from view. It was here that I felt the most in my element—hidden, but watching.

  I believed I was the only one who knew about the spot, which was sheer folly, since I’d stayed at Winloch for all of three weeks and the Winslows had been there for more than a century. But one morning I clambered down through the forest, backpack full of snacks and reading, a morning of solitude ahead of me, only to discover someone already lying in my place. She was on her stomach, her long blond hair spilling down over her bare lower back, just brushing her apricot bikini bottom. I imagined her a selkie, that mythological creature of the Celtic lands, a girl who’d shed her sealskin to become human. But at the sound of me, she lifted her head, and I saw she was only a girl. A girl who looked as much like Ev as Indo did, but still a child—gawky, insecure, on the brink of beautiful.

  She held up her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. “Are you Ev’s friend?”

  I squatted down as she sat up. “May.”

  “Lu.” She stuck her hand in her bag and pulled out two cigarettes. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen.

  “No!” I must have looked horrified. She returned them to their original spot and pulled out two lollipops instead.

  “You’re Ev’s sister?” I asked. It was hard not to scrutinize her face—it moved in and out of exquisiteness. She had one little mole on her right cheek—the only imperfection I noticed, if it could even be called that. “I thought you were at tennis camp.” I sat beside her.

  She snorted. “Yeah, ’cause I’m so athletic.”

  “There was a sit-ups requirement at my high school, and you can imagine how well I did.”

  She looked me up and down—the full thighs, the soft belly—and genuinely giggled, but before her pleasure could grow into a full laugh, she caught it abruptly, her shoulders shrinking impishly by her ears. A look of delight flitted across her face as she pointed over my shoulder into the cove and, with the other hand, put a finger to her lips. “We’re not alone,” she whispered.

  I turned, expecting a large creature—another human, a dog, perhaps—but, as far as I could see, there was nothing to note. Lu’s finger pointed a path to what looked to be a dead head, a decaying stick making its slow way down to the lake bed.

  “It’s a turtle,” she whispered, and as I leaned forward in disbelief, the stick popped underwater. Lu let out a gleeful gasp. We scanned the cove for the surfacing head. It finally appeared, far to the left of where I was looking. Lu spotted it first. “They swim faster than they walk,” she explained.

  “What kind is it?”

  “Probably a painted turtle. Could be a snapping turtle, but I’d have to see its shell to know for sure. Don’t worry,” she said, noting the alarm on my face, “they’re much more afraid of us than we are of them.”

  “What other animals live here?” I asked.

  Her face lit up. “We used to have otters—you could tell because, in the early spring, there’d be cracked-open mussels on the shore. And muskrats too—they made their nest in that little spot over there between the rocks. There are beavers inland—everyone’s always in a fight over them damming the streams because it raises the water table. And let’s see … ospreys. They don’t live in the cove, but they fish here, and near the ledges, in the morning and the night. You see them soaring way up, and then they swoop down, making their bodies like arrows, and they’ll catch small bass or minnows. Oh, and the wood thrush!” She closed her eyes then, dipping her foot into the water. “She sings at dawn and dusk. The most beautiful melody.”

  Catching herself, Lu looked up at me sharply, worry furrowing her brow. I recognized in that look a child in possession of an inconveniently attuned mind, o
ne she had learned to camouflage. I nodded once, and then she truly smiled, before going on, her knowledge of the natural world spilling forth as though, with that one nod, I’d given her a gift.

  “Let’s see … white-tailed deer? Sometimes you’ll see a red-tailed fox for, like, a second, running across the meadow. And there are black bears—well, supposedly. I’ve never seen one. Quail families. Pheasant families in the forest. Quail are much more skittish, but if you can catch a glimpse of them, their babies are these tiny, adorable puffballs with little racing feet. And keep your eyes out for the pileated woodpecker.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “A dinosaur.”

  I laughed. “No, really.”

  She nodded knowingly. “You’ll know it when you see it.” We both checked in on the turtle head, bobbing in the water. “Daddy says there are catamounts—you can tell because you’ll find a deer kill sometimes off the Winloch road.”

  “What’s a catamount?”

  “An eastern cougar.” She shook her head to reassure me. “But I’ve never seen one of those either.” We sat in silence, looking out at the small tufts the breeze was making on the quiet lake. “You really love it here,” she observed, unwrapping her lollipop and sticking it in her cheek.

  My eyes skimmed the dazzling water as I thought of all the vibrant life above and below. I wanted to tell her how lucky she was to call this hers. Instead I said, “It’s heaven.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Rocks

  Luvinia Winslow was the first person I met at Winloch who I would have easily befriended elsewhere. She wasn’t as cool as Ev, but whether that was character or lingering childhood was hard to tell. She was smart, and not afraid to boast about it—top of her class in math (“that’s both boys and girls” she was quick to point out)—but also innocent in a manner not shared by any boarding school girl I’d ever met. And she was innately generous; in the first twenty-four hours I knew her, Lu picked wildflowers from the meadow for Bittersweet’s kitchen table, mixed me a batch of sourdough starter, and taught me how to do the Australian crawl. From the few interactions I witnessed between them, I caught on that Ev treated Lu much the way she treated me—adoring one minute, blind the next—but instead of feeling jealousy, I found myself glad to live in the category of little sisters.

  “Have you been swimming off Flat Rocks yet?” Lu asked as we sat together below Bittersweet, where we’d met each morning for the three days I’d known her. It felt like we’d been friends much longer than that.

  “No.” Flat Rocks was the prized swimming area below the Trillium meadow, where the Winslows frolicked and splashed together—it was centrally located, a flat, smooth expanse of sandstone big enough for two dozen people, which allowed a sweeping view of Mt. Mansfield, the Adirondacks, and Winslow Bay. Although the spot had been mentioned to me by nearly every Winslow I encountered—from the teenage boys headed there to practice diving off the swimming dock to Emily and Annie and other young mothers herding their small children, water wings, sunhats, and many bottles of sunscreen up and over the hill—I had never been invited. It would have been easy to grab my towel and descend the Trillium steps to the broad plateau myself, but I had a clear sense that each Winslow would have stared up at me just a little too long, and even the thought of their collective watchfulness made me blush.

  Lu insisted we go that instant. We found Ev still in bed. She scowled at my waking her, at my invitation, at the obvious closeness that had already grown between Lu and me. “I’ve never been to Flat Rocks,” I said, tickling at her toes, “and you’ve been god knows where all week. You owe me an afternoon.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” Ev sniped.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. I had resolved to ask nothing specific about her love triangle, and I knew she wouldn’t volunteer anything in front of Lu.

  She only sighed.

  “Come on then,” I insisted as I gathered up Paradise Lost from our bedside table, brushing aside the irritation at her recent lack of interest in me. She should have been the one inviting me to Flat Rocks. Eventually she followed us out of the house, slumping in self-pity until Lu and I threatened to throw her in the lake, which brought an ever-so-slight smile to her face, turning her, briefly, back into her best self.

  We descended the wooden stairs below the Trillium lawn just as the sun passed its midway point. We were laden with goods, including turkey sandwiches Masha the cook had slapped together on a moment’s notice. One way in which Lu and I were not alike: while it never would have occurred to me to ask someone else to make my lunch, Lu had assumed it was our only option.

  A few folks had scattered themselves across the rocks, but we were early enough that the teenagers and childless had yet to arrive, and late enough that those with small children had already come and gone, for noon lunches and nap time. We had ample room to spread our towels. I applied my sunblock in globs, then watched Lu skillfully rub a thin layer of the lotion into her golden skin. At the sight of my blotchy face she giggled, and her slender fingers evened me out. Ev rolled her eyes at us and settled into another nap on the warm rocks.

  I donned my sunglasses and flipped open Paradise Lost, retucking the letters I’d penned to my mother, but hadn’t sent, into the back of the book. Lu frowned at my reading choice as she flipped open her People. “You’re going to fall asleep,” she singsonged.

  My official story—as if anyone was asking—was that I was on Book Three. But Lu knew me better than I imagined, because the truth was, I hadn’t been able to read more than a page at a time before dozing off. Consequently, even though I’d devoted many cumulative hours to the cause, I didn’t have any idea what was happening in the damn book (1) because it was smarter than I was, and (2) because I had no memory of what I’d read the day before.

  I flipped, with dread, to the page I’d earmarked and began:

  Thus with the Year

  Seasons return, but not to me returns

  Day, or the sweet approach of Ev’n or Morn,

  Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summer’s Rose,

  Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine;

  But cloud instead, and ever-during dark.

  An Us Weekly tumbled over the top of the book, landing on my face. “Thank me later,” Lu deadpanned.

  I’d never been much of a beachgoer, and it took me a couple hours to understand that our business for the day would cover—and not exceed—swimming, reading, gossiping, and lolling in the sun. I kept wanting to stand up and do something, kept thinking of the Winslow papers waiting for me in the Dining Hall attic, but every time I stirred, Lu placed her hand upon my arm and insisted I enjoy myself. “If you want, we can take a dinghy out,” she said, disdainfully adding, “but that’s mostly for the boys.”

  After we ate our sandwiches, Ev declared herself parched, gathered up her things, and headed back up to Bittersweet. I guessed I was supposed to follow her—it was certainly what I would have done only a week before—but Lu shot me a look that told me to grow a backbone. So I stayed.

  The boys arrived. Arlo and Jeffrey and a few of the younger teens made a beeline for the water, splashing as they submerged themselves, butterflying to the swimming dock twenty yards out. I watched Owen set his things down carefully where the other boys had tossed their towels, then glance over his shoulder at us. It was a surreptitious look, meant to appear nonchalant, as though he were scanning the whole rocks, but I saw he was searching out an oblivious Lu, absorbed in her magazine.

  “How’s he related?” I asked as I watch him wade into the water.

  “Who?”

  “Owen.”

  “He’s not,” Lu said without lifting her eyes from the page. “He’s Arlo’s best friend from school.”

  So he was fair game. “He seems nice.”

  “Sure.”

  “Have you talked to him?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “Lu,” I said sharply, “I think he likes you.”

 
That got her attention. She drew herself into a sitting position. Watched him swim carefully to the dock, where Arlo and Jeffrey jumped and called his name. “He’s seventeen,” she whispered, awestruck.

  “And cute.” He was the kind of boy I would have loved in high school—well-mannered, tawny, and lean. The kind of boy who wouldn’t have given me the time of day. He was good-looking in counterpoint to the purebred Winslows; his ancestors, like mine, had probably been workingmen.

  Lu lifted her magazine again. But I could tell, from the glow in her cheeks, that she didn’t mind the thought of Owen liking her.

  My memory of the many afternoons I spent at Flat Rocks that summer is long and lingering, bound up with the reassuring sense of things always having been the way they were, and the belief that they would always be that way. As the afternoon wore on, more Winslows descended the steps, calling happily to one another, and I began to see the nonfamilial, simply familiar, connections between them, and understand that to sit upon the rocks and watch the world go by was essential to the definition of being a Winslow.

  They liked to ride in boats: wooden canoes, rowboats, skiffs, dinghies, kayaks. Once the children were awake again, someone—an uncle, a cousin—would take a few little ones out on the Sunfish to teach them to sail. Birch owned a Chris-Craft, a wooden motorboat from the thirties, with teak decks. Every winter, the whole boat had to be stripped and revarnished, the chrome polished so that it gleamed anew. Come midafternoon, he’d take the teenagers out with a pair of water skis, and they’d zoom by us in great circles, taking turns whizzing atop the water.

  The Winslows liked to discuss boats almost as much as they liked to ride in them: how loud the Boston Whalers were, how terribly accosting the buzz of the Jet Skis, the awful sound of new-moneyed Canadian French coming off the too-close yachts. To a person, the clan admired the beautiful line of a Friendship sloop, and the primary colors of the spinnakers as they came off the marina, speeding past Flat Rocks for the Thursday night races.