by Katie Curtis
Amid their grief, they barely finished cleaning out the perishable items at his house and hadn’t made it to the items in the will, or the paintings. Marie and Anna had discussed coming back here in the evenings to itemize their mother’s work, take pictures, and email with Stephen to decide what they each wanted. They went back to Marie’s to eat, and while she put Henry down, Anna sat out on the deck and dialed Raphael’s number.
“Hey Raph,” Anna said when he picked up.
“Hey, sweetie, how are you? I’m just headed out to lunch now. How’s it going? I miss you,”
“Thanks, I miss you too. It’s going ok, I am just figuring out some things with my family. Think they might take a little while. Maybe a few weeks. Maybe a month,” Anna said.
“Wow, I didn’t realize you’d be gone that long,” Raphael said, sounding surprised. Anna could hear the honk of cars and the squeak of buses breaking through the phone.
“I know,” she said, heading out to her sister’s back deck. The ocean chill wrestled with the spring sun, and it wasn’t clear who was winning yet. “But there is a lot to do here. There are a lot of pieces to pick up from Uncle Charlie’s will. Raphael, he left me his house.”
“His house?” he asked. “The one on the harbor? Do you want to keep it?”
“I’m not really sure; it’s happened so fast. I sort of want to give it some time before I decide. But the taxes are paid for five years so it won’t hurt to wait. You should come up, stay there with me for a weekend or something,” she said.
“That sounds really fun. It’s so tough to leave work right now, but let me get through this week and see what I can do. How’s Genevieve taking it?”
“She is fine with it . . . we sort of have an arrangement. She wants me to check out the local galleries, see if there is anything worth bringing back. I guess I want to make sure I have enough time to get everything with the house done so I don’t have to worry about it down the road. I want to spruce it up, I guess. Get the gardens going. Uncle Charlie prided himself on his gardening, so just spring cleanup and getting rid of some stuff.” Anna watched as a starling of birds flew over the pine trees in Marie’s back yard. She remembered her mom used to call it a school of birds, since they moved like fish. “I think I want to see how it feels, too, staying in it. The house, I mean.”
“Love, I just need to check - are you getting any ideas about moving back?”
“No, of course not. I just want to get an idea of what the house needs. I am just getting used to it all,” she said. Marie called to her from the garage where she was waiting for Anna to leave for Uncle Charlie’s. They were heading to the house to go over the paintings. “Look, I’ll call you later. Marie is waiting for me, but I’ll be back before you know it. You’ll get a chance to focus on work. I’ll set up our vacation spot before the summer.” Anna tried to sound cheerful.
“Ok, sweetie. I’ll talk to you soon. Love you,” Raphael said.
“ Love you too,” she said.
“How’s Raphael?” Marie asked as they drove over to the house. Mike was home with Henry again, and it was nice to have a moment alone with her sister. The spring evening was darkening quickly, and dusk settled in around them as they pulled up the road to the harbor.
“He’s good. The house was just a surprise. I asked him to come up here soon and stay there with me,” Anna said. She noticed the gallery her father had mentioned as they turned at Riley’s market. It read Perinault Gallery, and there was a black sign with an oil painting of the rocky Maine coast under the name. The red barn had a sign that said Open. Anna promised herself she would stop by soon.
“I can’t believe he left you his house,” Marie said. “Think it was his way of trying to get you and Dad to make up? You know, make you come up here more?”
“I’m not sure,” Anna said. She looked out the window at the neat New England homes, their flower beds tidy and their lanterns glowing. “How has it been for you to move back, to live near Dad? I mean, doesn’t he give you grief for staying home with Henry instead of practicing medicine? We both know how our conversations would go if I lived nearby.”
“Well, no, he doesn’t ride me for giving up practicing medicine,” Marie said. “I think he views what I am doing as valuable. And he views me as settled; stable. But we’re totally different. You guys have years of hurt between you.”
Years of hurt between you. Anna wondered silently if that hurt would be enough to keep her from returning home to Maine, to Uncle Charlie’s house. It was enough to make her leave in the first place. It was just so exhausting. Even though a part of her felt very much at home here, felt as if it belonged in Maine, she was worried that having to face her father so often would be too hard. Her life in New York was easy. Safe. But being here was opening up her eyes to what a slower life looked like. The speed of life there was, deep down, not her speed. It was entertaining and glamorous, fast and sophisticated, but lately Anna had felt that something very essential about herself was shut off. At times she would try to listen for it, and other times – when she was busy, when she was distracted – she ignored it. But that part of her was alive here. She had to admit at least that much.
“Do you think you could be happy living in Uncle Charlie’s house?” Marie asked.
“No, I couldn’t imagine leaving my life in the city, leaving Genevieve and the gallery,” she said as they pulled into the driveway. “I just like that I have this time right now. Like a sabbatical.” She felt a wave of gratitude for the gift her uncle had given her. She wanted to stay in this moment, and because of the house, she could. She silently thanked him as they headed up his drive.
When they got inside, her sister started a fire in huge stone fireplace. As the warmth started to creep across the living room, they each turned to different rooms to take down the pictures. They designated the landing at the top of the stairs as a central place to pile them up. Anna’s breath caught when she walked into her uncle’s bedroom. There was a painting of white birches that her mother had done. It had exaggerated brushstrokes, so the whiteness and the dark lines popped, contrasting each other, and the background was a spring green color. It was beautiful, and Anna remembered her mother giving her a lesson in brushstrokes as she had painted that one. Then she had given it to Uncle Charlie for his birthday. Just as she was about to call Marie in to see it, she heard Marie shout.
“Anna, come here!” She walked across the hall into one of the other spare bedrooms and again caught her breath. It was a painting of the three of them when they were all in grade school. It was a masterpiece. The expression on their faces, the protective way Stephen’s arm was around them, the serenity in the scene. Anna felt tears spring to her eyes as she took it in. The beauty of the painting was clearly the love their mother had for them. The lens you saw the figures through was pure maternal love.
“It feels like a piece of Mom, doesn’t it?” Marie said quietly, looking at the painting.
“It does,” Anna said, her voice heavy with sadness.
They looked through more of the canvases, and Anna could remember some of them hanging in the gallery in Damariscotta. Her mother’s work sold sporadically when she had the gallery. In the years that had passed since her death, a secondary market had sprung up, and Anna knew collectors had inquired about the inventory on the market. They would be very happy to see these new pieces. She had never tried to look for them before, out of respect for her father and her uncle. Somehow they felt laid to rest with her mother. But here they were, staring at her. And they were beautiful. She looked at her mother’s work with newly educated eyes. They were very good. Genevieve would love them. But Anna wasn’t sure if she wanted to part with them. She would wait and work through with her siblings how to handle all these pieces.
She and Marie took a photo of each one, and they emailed them to Stephen to see what his top choices were.
As they searched through Uncle Charlie’s bedroom for any other paintings he had lying around, Anna noticed a picture o
n his nightstand she had never seen before. It was her father, Uncle Charlie, and Aunt Catherine as young children. But there was a fourth child, a girl, who was clearly the youngest. “Hey, Marie, did you ever hear Dad or Uncle Charlie talk about a little sister, one younger than Aunt Catherine?” Anna asked.
Marie looked up quizzically. “No, why?”
“Because in this picture, it looks like they’re with another child who looks an awful lot like Catherine but . . . younger.”
Marie came over to glance at the photo. “Huh. That’s weird.” She stared at the picture. “I have no idea who that is. Probably another relative. We’ll have to ask Dad.” Her sister stood up straight and started rubbing her eyes. “Hey, I have to be up early with Henry. Do you mind if we leave in a few minutes?”
“Sure,” Anna said as she put the picture back down. She took in the rooms upstairs and thought about Charlie living here a week ago. It was hard to believe. His shadow cast over everything.
As they drove home, Anna couldn’t forget about the picture.
“Think we should ask Dad about the picture? With the young girl? Or maybe we should ask Aunt Catherine instead.”
“Aunt Catherine might tell us more than Dad,” Marie said. “Let’s ask her when she is over for dinner.”
Yes, Anna thought in her sleepy head, it was much easier to ask Aunt Catherine.
That night as she slept at her sister’s house, Anna had a dream. Her mother was painting in the boathouse at Uncle Charlie’s, down by the water, where she usually went when she was doing an ocean picture. She was sitting at the canvas, her brush busy working, when she turned around and beamed at Anna, her lips wide as she laughed. Her dark hair was piled up on her head, she wore a chambray oxford smeared with paint everywhere, and her blue eyes were laughing. Sunlight streamed into the boathouse. The canvas she was painting had the picture of the three of them that she had seen that day. But there was a little girl sitting in the corner, her mother’s model, and Anna saw that her mother was painting her face in the spot where Anna had been. It was the little girl from the photo on Uncle Charlie’s dresser.
Suddenly Andrew was there, urging them to get away from the boathouse, that the water was rising. Anna looked out the windows and the gray choppy water was covering three quarters of the window. Just as she was struggling to run away, she heard the water crash against the windows of the boathouse, and she woke up suddenly, the morning light streaming through the window.
Chapter 7
The next day, Anna went over to the house early. Marie had let her borrow the pickup truck that Mike used for dump runs, and she was grateful to have it.
“Just, um, make sure you drive carefully,” Marie had said as she handed her the keys. Anna knew this reminder was because her brother and sister had always teased her about being a bad driver. Which was unfair. She just didn’t have a lot of practice; living with them as the youngest and now in the city, she didn’t have a ton of opportunity. And she had a few accidents when she first started driving. They were just mean older siblings, Anna thought defensively as she grabbed the keys from Marie and slide into the truck, glaring at her like the slighted little sister she was. But by the time she pulled out of Marie’s driveway, she sat back, relaxed. Her body felt amazingly rested as she sipped coffee driving to the house. It was the fresh Maine air, she thought.
She went down to Riley’s market to grab a few things to bring over to the house. The store’s wide pine boards stained almost black brought back memories of being a kid and picking out candy here. Mr. Riley’s son had taken over and very little had changed. If anything he just polished the store up.
There were men in the shop with bright orange fishing overalls on. Her thoughts instantly went to Andrew. Everything near the harbor would remind her of him if she let it. As she stood in front of the produce, her mind went back to taking Andrew’s skiff around to Back Harbor, hanging out under the old bridge that was completely covered by water when the tide came in, lying in the sun and laughing. It seemed to Anna whenever she replayed a memory with Andrew that she was laughing. And in every memory, they were always surrounded by beauty. She could only appreciate that now, having been in the city for so long. But there was no denying how beautiful mid-coast Maine was, especially Pemaquid. No wonder the artists and tourists flocked here.
Pemaquid was actually a peninsula that stuck out into the Atlantic Ocean. New Harbor lay to the south and Round Pond to the north. They were all technically villages of Bristol, though most people from out of town referred to the area as Pemaquid. The name was given to it by the Indians, and it meant “a point of land running into the sea.” The Indians were there long before the settlers were, though both were drawn to it for its abundant fishing and hunting. The road leading all around the rocky coast was lined with bed-and-breakfasts, giant boulders, white picket fences, and sea roses. Everywhere your eye fell, there was beauty. Maybe that’s what drew her mother here. Maybe that’s why Andrew wouldn’t leave. She thought briefly of her strange dream with both of them. It had been so long since either of them had visited her dreams.
She put her bags on the seat next to her—more ground coffee, clementines, and their famous cheese bread, which she remembered well—and started up the noisy pickup truck. The town was quiet this early on the way to her uncle’s house. She was glad. She needed to spend some time alone out here, in the quiet, and let the reality of his death sink in. She also tried to ignore that she made a six-point turn to get out of the parking lot. She was a fine driver. Just out of practice.
Once she was on the road, her thoughts were buoyant. Grief had purified her heart somehow. Everything that had been bothering her in New York—Raphael’s workaholic tendencies, Genevieve’s constant competition with other galleries, the frequent ache of wishing she could call her mom—were quiet now. In their place was a kind of emotional spring, and it felt real and honest, unlike the persona everyone, including Anna, wore in the city. She felt light as air.
The sunlight nearly blinded her as it bounced off the water. She dug her Ray-Bans out of her purse and put them on as she drove carefully along the curvy rocky shore road. Finally she pulled up to her uncle’s house, a few hundred feet after Shaw’s Wharf. She had been out here with the other family members, but this was her first trip alone.
Though it was bright out, the morning air was crisp. Anna was glad she brought her winter jacket, the ocean breeze making it even cooler. She got out of the truck and looked up at the white colonial with the purple lilacs just starting to blossom on both sides of the yard. Anna walked up the brick path to the front door, and noticed that her uncle had planted bulbs—tulips and daffodils. They were popping up now, and he wasn’t here to see them. I wonder if he knew his time was running out, she thought.
She was eager to get inside and start working. As she walked up the path, she saw sunlight bounce off the upstairs window. She realized that the window was in her uncle’s bedroom. He would’ve looked out of it every day for most of his life.
Inside, the house was musty and smelled of a mix of the cigars her uncle smoked and the fire her sister lit last night. Though it was tidy—her uncle was a New Englander, after all—there was a thin film of dust covering most of the tables and bookshelves. Anna stepped from the front hall into a cozy living room and rolled up the sleeves of her plaid flannel oxford. The large picture windows faced the water, and the sunlight warmed the room. Putting down her art supplies next to a knotty wool sofa the color of strained peas, she walked straight toward the kitchen to set down her groceries from Riley’s.
Anna stood there staring at the outdated cabinets and walls, the rug underneath the sink that was a faded map of Maine, imagining her aunt and mom bustling around, getting a meal ready for a holiday. She walked into the back pantry, which was down the hall from the kitchen, the linoleum floor uniting it with the kitchen as well as a bathroom off to the other side. She hated the linoleum. She put her snacks in the fridge, she set up the coffeemaker and brew
ed half a pot, the aroma filling the air. This was a perfect morning for lots of coffee.
She grabbed a notepad from her bags in the living room and stood up, taking in the view. The ocean waves were crashing into the rocks, and the sky was so huge, she was sure the clouds she was looking at must be hanging over London. Seagulls sailed effortlessly before they dove down to skim the water. Buoys were scattered throughout the waves like toy tops left behind by children. To think that this view was now hers was hard to process. She stared at the boathouse at the end of the long wooden pier. Grabbing her art supplies and a cup of coffee, she went down the steps and walked inside the boathouse, the old wood creaking underneath her feet, and the swell of the water making splashing noises against the dock. She opened a travel easel, laid out some pastels, and started to draw the rocky shore in front of her.
What she had kept from Raphael, and from her family was that she wanted to stay to paint. Something had jolted her system since she had returned home, and everywhere she turned she wanted to capture the image. Maine had breathed into her nostrils, her lungs, awakening something in her so that she saw with fresh eyes, and what she saw was beauty everywhere.
As she looked out on the ocean, she remembered lines from a Keats poem Andrew used to quote sometimes when he was driving his boat out on a particularly beautiful day.
“O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea…”
Those words echoed how she felt – like her eyes were vexed and tired by the city, by becoming distant from nature. She thought back to when she first arrived in the city. Genevieve had been college roommates with one of Anna’s favorite art teachers, who told Anna her friend in New York City needed a new person to help run the gallery. She was exhausted with the girls she kept interviewing for the position who asked about being invited to parties in the Hamptons and if they could have Fridays off in the summer, all with lackluster experience about art. She asked her friend to send down her brightest, hardest working student, in the hopes that they would know something about art and help her build her gallery.