“Ridiculous,” he said as Mary Ellen made her way briskly toward the sidewalk.
She stopped just after passing Nate, pressed her painted pink lips together, and turned back. “You ought to know by now that repairing anything in these old homes is expensive.”
Nate leaned down to pick up his newspaper, and as she turned to leave, Luther snarled and lunged at her bag once more.
Just as she was about to drop it, Nate called harshly, “Halt!” And the beast stopped just inches away from Mary Ellen, who took the opportunity to race down the sidewalk toward Broad Street.
She got to the studio in the back of the Berkowitz Antique Shop before Jeanne and Gene Berkowitz shuffled down the back fire escape of their above-store condo and opened the showroom.
Their location on King Street was a prime one, right between Fulton and Clifford Street, in the three-block heart of the antiques district. The store specialized in the conservation and restoration of seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and early nineteenth- century European furniture and art. It had a 2,500-square-foot showroom divided into categories: case pieces, tables, seating, decorative objects, silver, and artwork. Their period lighting pieces were scattered all around the showroom, some chandeliers hanging so low in certain sections that one needed to duck to get around them.
Mary Ellen’s specialty was recasting the molds of damaged frames and regilding them. She was the best in town, and occasionally other dealers would visit her home in secret and ask if she would restore a particular damaged gem they had acquired.
She was loyal to the Berkowitzes and always asked their permission before she took on outside work. They were usually amenable, though they had a few enemies in town, and every now and then Gene would look over his bifocals, clear his groggy throat, and say, “I’d rather you not, Mary Ellen. But of course, it’s up to you.”
The Berkowitzes hired Mary Ellen a year after her divorce, and in many ways she experienced the restoration of her heart in that back studio, working with her hands, taking something old and broken and making it beautiful again. She loved history and the smell of antiques, she enjoyed the colorful customers who made their way in and out of the store from around the world, and she liked bringing home a steady paycheck each month. And even though Gene and Jeanne were demanding in many ways (they only gave her five vacation days a year, the same amount they took themselves), they seemed to appreciate her work and her loyalty, and they often invited her upstairs or out for dinner after a long day.
By midmorning, she was well into her project for the week: the restoration of the body of an old seventeenth-century harp Jeanne had found at an estate sale in New Orleans. She hardly noticed when Gene knocked gently on the studio door, a client holding two small paintings right on his heels.
“Here she is,” Gene said as he directed the woman toward Mary Ellen, who was on a stepladder, scraping off the mold on the top side of the harp.
She rubbed her hands on her work apron and walked over to meet the customer.
The woman put the paintings on the counter and extended her hand. “I’m Winifred Kitteridge. It’s so nice to meet you, Mrs. Bennett.”
Winifred Kitteridge. The name didn’t ring a bell. And yet the woman seemed as if she knew Mary Ellen. She took the two small paintings and turned them around, and Mary Ellen instinctively put her hand over her mouth.
“Father/Daughter Dialogue #9,” she said.
“Yes,” Winifred eagerly agreed. “They belonged to my great-aunt, and she left them to me in her will. I’m going to hang them in some special nook in my new home at Kiawah, and I was hoping you could tell me the story behind them.”
Mary Ellen blinked several times before walking over to study the paintings. They were of the little island that formed on Store Creek at low tide. And there were figures on the island, she and Meg, crabbing.
Charles used to set up Julia’s miniature easel, the one she got for her seventh Christmas, right beside his. Together they would watch and watch and watch some more before dipping their long, narrow brushes in the clumps of acrylic paint on their palettes. Often, Mary Ellen and Meg were featured in the work.
Eventually a local gallery that showed Charles’s work offered to display Julia’s as well. They usually painted the same vista and the gallery would set their paintings side by side on the walls. They titled them “Father/Daughter Dialogues.” Julia sold her first painting at age twelve—it was a painting of two sunflowers in the field—and by fifteen she had her first commission, the angel oak tree on John’s Island, which a man wanted for his son who loved to climb it. Charles had been mighty proud of her. He would work with her on the weekends and all summer long, and she was teachable. She listened. She understood and she tried her best and she had the gift. She applied what he had to say and made something of her own that was both original and pleasing to the eye.
“My ex-husband. Well, he’s dead now anyway, but we divorced before he died. He was an artist—”
“Yes, Charles Bennett,” the woman said. “I’ve researched him on the Internet, and I read the little biography the Joggling Board Press published about him.”
The vista was like a dream to Mary Ellen. How she had loved that spot on Edisto Island. How she had enjoyed swimming out there with her daughters and her husband, catching enough crabs for the evening meal, sunbathing, or watching the porpoises feed along the mud banks. It had been her solace for decades.
She pointed to the other painting. “And this one is by my daughter.”
“Julia?”
“Yes. She painted alongside her father from age seven on. I think she painted this one around age ten or eleven.”
“Amazing,” Winifred said. “I researched her too. But her art is so different than this.”
“Yes, it is,” Mary Ellen said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even think her father understood her art over the last few decades.”
The woman lifted both the paintings up. “I heard that you build custom gilded frames.”
Mary Ellen nodded, and Gene patted her back in a brotherly way as he answered the call of a handful of cackling tourists who had just entered the showroom. “I do from time to time.”
The woman smiled and leaned in. “Do you think you could build some for me? For these? I’ll pay you whatever you ask.”
Mary Ellen looked at the two gems. She thought they had all been bought by a collector in Florida, and she didn’t think she’d ever see one again. She could take them home to her little upstairs studio by the laundry room and build something over the weekend.
“I’d be happy to,” she said.
Winifred clapped her hands and then promptly sat down on a stool, took out her checkbook, and asked Mary Ellen to name her price.
AROUND FIVE THIRTY IN THE EVENING, MARY ELLEN walked home with the small paintings in her bag. Possessing them for these few days somehow unlocked a fresh container of memories of a season of life she had yet to stop longing for, a season about which she had yet to stop wondering how it had all fallen apart.
She thought of how Julia’s high school art teacher encouraged her to apply to Interlochen, a fine arts boarding school in Michigan, when she was fifteen, but Mary Ellen and Charles said no to that. The eighteen years of childhood went fast, and they weren’t going to give a one of them up. They loved being parents to both Julia and their younger daughter, Meg. Maybe something in both of them sensed that it would all come crashing down soon.
“Plus, Julia needs something to fall back on,” she remembered Charles telling her as Mary Ellen nestled in his thick arms on the old porch swing after supper. Charles made his living as an attorney. The art was his love, his hobby, and occasionally it brought in a little side income that went into the college or the Edisto house renovation fund. When Julia got a full scholarship to the University of Georgia’s studio art program, she studied English literature as well. Then she went to the Rhode Island School of Art and Design for an MFA and then on to study with that wicked Peter Tule before landing a tenured tr
ack position at Hunter College.
“She’s actually making a living as an artist,” Mary Ellen had said to Charles. It was one of the last times she saw him before his sudden passing a few years ago. She had taken the train up to New York for one of Julia’s exhibits and she was surprised to see him there as well. They were standing in front of an eight-foot painting of a hexagon in neon-yellow set against a neon-orange background. It was titled Unbearable Lightness. Though Mary Ellen and Charles lived less than fifty miles from one another, she hadn’t seen him in years.
He had looked over and his barrel chest filled with air. He narrowed his brown eyes and met hers with what she sensed was a thick mix of sorrow and guilt, though she could never know for sure. Had she ever really known him? He reached out to touch her forearm, but she flinched and took a step away. He exhaled and turned back to Julia’s painting. “Yes, she is,” he said. “And I’m not surprised.”
NOW AS MARY ELLEN ROUNDED THE CORNER FROM BROAD onto Savage Street, she spotted her porch and Jane Anne sitting there the way she always did when she had something really juicy to share. She smiled at the sight of her neighbor, who lifted a bottle of wine and something wrapped in tinfoil. Jane Anne was a widow and they enjoyed many impromptu meals together. Cooking for one was ridiculous.
Mary Ellen picked up her pace. She couldn’t wait to show Jane Anne the paintings. It was as if a precious relic of her old life had been excavated, and if she could stare at the images long enough, maybe she could make more sense of the turn she never saw coming. Jane Anne would help her with this.
As she crossed Nate Gallagher’s drive, she held up her bag to indicate the treasure within, and as she did the English mastiff leapt out of nowhere, his paws reaching for the bag, toppling Mary Ellen over as the paintings slid out and onto the sidewalk.
“Get off of her!” Jane Anne raced off of Mary Ellen’s piazza, her own little poodle barking behind her as Mary Ellen opened her eyes only to have Luther lick her face with his giant, wet tongue before pawing her chest.
Nate was on the sidewalk by this point. He pulled Luther away as Jane Anne helped her friend up. Mary Ellen searched for the paintings. They were facedown. She broke away from her friend and picked them up, paying no attention to her skinned knees and her torn linen skirt.
An edge was slightly frayed on one and a little paint along the side had been scraped off the other, but other than that, the paintings were fine. She clutched them to her chest as Jane Anne gathered up the rest of her belongings and Nate muffled an excuse about Luther’s enthusiasm. He ordered Luther into the house and then extended his arm.
“No, thank you,” Jane Anne said, then she pointed right to his chest. “The next time that dog gets out of line, Nate Gallagher, I’m calling the pound. Do you hear me?”
Nate nodded as Jane Anne’s poodle left her own little surprise beneath his tea olive bush, then she offered her little arm to Mary Ellen, who took it without so much as looking Nate in the eye as she hobbled to her front piazza, the paintings carefully tucked beneath her arms.
ONCE THEY WERE INSIDE, JANE ANNE HELPED MARY Ellen wash off her knees and bandage them.
“I’m fine.” Mary Ellen shooed her away. Then she brought out the little bamboo trays and warmed up some okra soup she’d left thawing in the sink as Jane Anne sliced the Vidalia onion pie she had brought over.
Once they were settled with their trays on the back screened porch overlooking the garden, Mary Ellen turned and said, “Now, what’s the scoop? I know you’ve got something good to share.”
Jane Anne sipped her soup from the silver spoon. “You’re the best cook in town,” she said to Mary Ellen. “I do believe this okra soup is better than the one at Alice’s Kitchen.”
“Spit it out, Jane Anne,” Mary Ellen said.
Jane Anne took a sip of her white wine and looked at Mary Ellen head-on. “Marney Bennett has lung cancer.” She sucked her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “It’s bad, I hear.”
Mary Ellen exhaled slowly. She pictured the two daughters she had seen at Charles’s funeral and then the photograph of the little boy on Dot’s refrigerator when she stopped by to check in on her old sister-in-law as she did from time to time.
The irony was not lost on her. Here she was—healthy as a horse—and Charles’s young wife, as young as Julia, had cancer. How many more twists to this story were there going to be?
The thick scent of roses from Nate’s garden sifted through the screened porch. Some days were heavier than others, and this one was starting to feel like a ton of bricks. She felt a little dizzy. Or maybe that was just from her sidewalk fall. Either way, sometimes life was so unpredictable it took her breath away.
“That’s awful,” she said. “That’s awful news.”
Jane Anne raised her eyebrows, indicating there was more.
“Go on,” Mary Ellen said. “Spit it all out, gal.”
“Well, guess who—according to Dot—she asked to help take care of the children while she undergoes surgery?”
Mary Ellen knew exactly who Marney would have asked. She knew it instinctively. She became aware of her heart pounding. It resounded in her ears.
“And what did Julia say?”
“She said no, of course.” Jane Anne took a hearty bite of her onion pie and shrugged her bony little shoulders. She was petite, but she could clean a big plate fast, and she was almost always a second-helping girl.
Mary Ellen looked out over her blooming garden. From the trickle of her fountain she could almost hear the voices of Julia and Marney, home from college on the occasional long weekend. She had loved cooking for Marney, who was always so appreciative of a warm meal at the dining room table. She was a second-helping girl too, and Mary Ellen made sure to bake Marney’s favorite, coconut cake, every time she knew Julia was bringing her home.
Jane Anne put down her empty plate and picked up the last crumbs of the pie with her index finger. “Well, that’s the scoop.”
“I’ll say that was a doozy.” Mary Ellen suppressed the immediate urge to call Julia and ask her all the details of Marney’s astounding request.
Jane Anne reached down to pat the top of her poodle’s head. “Now what were you clutching so carefully?”
Mary Ellen inhaled slowly and put down her tray. “Some paintings I thought I’d never see again.”
“Well, show me. I need a little breather before my next helping.”
Mary Ellen stood and nodded. “Come on into the dining room and see.”
JANE ANNE OOHED AND AAHED OVER THE PAINTINGS and then, overcome with sleepiness, took her second helping home in a little plastic container. Just as Mary Ellen was watching her friend cross the street, Nate Gallagher popped his head around her privacy door and she jumped back.
“What now?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve crossed paths with you this many times since you moved in.”
He rolled his eyes and held up a check. “Well, since you’ll probably be slapping me with a doctor’s bill after your scuffle with Luther, I thought I better go ahead and pay for the window.”
She smirked and held out her hand, but he didn’t give it over. He cleared his throat. “I was hoping I could take a look at the job that was done. I’ve got a crack in my living room window, and I might have no other choice than to call these thieves.”
“All right,” she said as she led him into her home, through the dining room, and to the kitchen.
He stopped in the dining room to admire the paintings.
She looked back and waited until he glanced up at her. “These are both signed Bennett. Do you have some artists in the family?”
She nodded. “I did. My ex-husband painted one and my daughter painted the other.”
“They are beautiful,” he said.
She watched him gazing at them and she puffed up her chest. “Well, come on in the kitchen.”
He looked up and followed her. He studied the job and nodded approvingly. Then he glanced her way. “It sure smells good in here.
” He nodded at the pot on the stove. “What is that?”
“Okra soup.”
He made a face. “Too slimy.”
“You’re missing out,” she said. “Okra is a low-country delicacy.”
Nate grumbled, handed her the check, and then turned around. “See you around the neighborhood.” He flapped his hand and closed the door behind him.
“Hopefully not,” she mumbled to herself. And she did not watch him make his way home.
CHAPTER 8
Julia
The weeks went by quickly as Julia secured the venue for the wedding and reception, strategized her department chair bid, organized her fall classes, and packed for her Budapest summer. Her passport was renewed. She ordered the supplies she’d need to paint and had them shipped ahead of her to the apartment she rented from a professor there. She bought a new Nikon camera that cost her nearly half of her monthly paycheck.
Bess and the kids had packed up and headed for the Hamptons for the summer and Graham joined them on the weekends. Bess was going to handle any of the other imminent wedding arrangements that came up during the summer. And she was going to track down the perfect little flower girl dress for Chloe, the only other member of the wedding party beyond the matron of honor (Bess) and the best men (Simon’s two sons, Philip and Colin). Simon was off to England for Philip’s graduation from Eton. He’d meet Julia in Budapest in two weeks for their romantic getaway to Istanbul.
Every now and then the idea of Marney and the cancer growing in her lungs surfaced in Julia’s mind, but the fact that no one else had called her about it made her sure someone had stepped up to the plate.
She prayed as she still did from time to time when the world around her stopped and she felt alone and yet not alone. Her prayers were quick and one-sided, not like the ones she used to have in her mother’s sunflower garden after Aunt Dot told her that God sometimes talked back if you were willing to hear beyond audible words. She prayed Marney would fully recover—it was a selfish prayer, of course. She prayed it because she didn’t want anything to tie her to the woman and her family. She wanted to go her whole life without having to face Marney or her half siblings.
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