Wild Swans

by Jessica Spotswood

  Maybe she took them with her.

  Or maybe she threw them away. Maybe she didn’t want the memories any more than she wanted us.

  When I was little, I prayed for her to come home.

  But I’m seventeen now, and this is way too little, way too late.

  “I know,” Granddad says. He’s the one who raised me to believe that family is everything: duty and love and legacy. “But we have to think about your sisters.”

  “Sisters?” I clutch the flashlight, knuckles white. “More than one?”

  “Came as a surprise to me too. Isobel is fifteen. Grace”—his voice wobbles. That was Grandmother’s name—“is six.”

  I’ve got sisters. Two of them. I wonder if they are perfect little Milbourn girls with marvelous talents. I wonder if they know that I exist.

  “I know this won’t be easy for you, Ivy. It won’t be easy for me either. But Erica and her husband are getting divorced, and she lost her job, and she needs a place to stay. It took a lot for her to ask. I couldn’t turn her away.” He avoids my eyes and fiddles with his big, silver watch.

  Those are his tells. Granddad is a terrible poker player.

  “You already said yes,” I realize. “When are they coming?”

  “Saturday.”

  That’s four days from now. I run my fingers through my long hair, catching at the tangles. “I see.” My voice is frosty.

  “It’s only temporary. Just till she can earn some money and get back on her feet. I’m sure she’ll want to get the girls back to their schools in September.”

  “September? But that’s the whole summer!”

  And this summer was supposed to be perfect.

  Every summer, Granddad signs me up for activities: writing camp up at the college or watercolors at the Arts League or a production of Oklahoma at the Sutton Theater. This year I put my foot down: no classes. I’m volunteering at the library and I’ll be swimming every day. I need this, I told Granddad—a real summer. A break before senior year and all its pressures: captaining the swim team, copyediting the yearbook, taking three AP classes, and applying for college. And most of all (though I didn’t say this part) I am desperate for a break from the restless, relentless search for my talent.

  Granddad agreed, as long as I promised to submit some of my poems for publication.

  How am I supposed to relax with my mother and newfound sisters living here all summer long.

  “Can she do that?” I ask. “Take them out of New York? Their dad won’t mind?”

  “I don’t get the sense that Isobel has a relationship with her father, and Grace’s dad—” Granddad clears his throat, avoiding my gaze again. “They don’t live in New York. Haven’t for a while. They’re over in DC now.”

  “Oh. I see,” I say again.

  And I do. Clear as day. My mother’s been living two hours away, and she still couldn’t be bothered to come visit. To join us for Thanksgiving dinner. To cheer me on at one of my swim meets.

  I’m not even worth a tank of gas.

  Chapter

  Two

  Bong. Bong. Bong.

  The doorbell gives another stately chime, and I give the table one last glance. I’ve set it with our blue-flowered china and plunked a vase of daisies in the middle. With rain pattering on the windows and a loaf of French bread baking in the oven, the kitchen is downright homey.

  I might be a mess, but there’s no reason perfect Connor Clarke needs to know that.

  Bong. Bong. Bong.

  “Ivy, can you get that?” Granddad hollers from his office.

  He’s on the phone with Erica. They’ve been talking for a while now, his voice rising and falling like choppy waves against the dock. They’re already fighting.

  Maybe he’ll tell her she can’t come.

  “Got it!” I hurry down the hall, past the living room we hardly ever use, pausing to tighten the knot on my halter dress. I put it on this morning because the cherry print is cute and I thought it might cheer me up some, but it’s a little lower cut than I remembered. Last thing I need to do is go flashing Granddad’s pet student.

  I hardly slept last night. My mother is going to be here in three days—my mother and the sisters I’ve never met. I’ve been texting Abby and Claire all morning, but I still can’t wrap my mind around it.

  I take a deep breath, plaster on a smile, and throw open the front door. A guy is standing on our porch, staring out at the rain. Beyond him, the sky is gray and gloomy. This weather feels portentous—a day for omens, for strange birds and black dogs and bells tolling thirteen times.

  Abby would tell me I sound like Catherine Morland, the silly, gothic novel–obsessed heroine of Northanger Abbey. Claire would tell me to stop being so dramatic and check out the guy in front of me, and Claire would be right, because wow.

  I was expecting Connor Clarke to be tall and lanky as a green bean, with hipster glasses and floppy hair. He’d wear skinny jeans and Chucks and a Doctor Who T-shirt. That’s the type of boy who usually takes Granddad’s poetry classes.

  The boy on the porch is tall—he looms over me—but that’s about all I got right.

  I notice his ink first. Tattoos creep like morning glory vines over his arms, then disappear beneath the sleeves of his black T-shirt. He’s not white; that was a stupid assumption. He’s biracial, maybe, or Mexican American like Alex, with smooth, light-brown skin and black hair cropped close to his head.

  I catch myself staring. “Um, hey. You must be Connor.”

  He turns. “You must be Ivy. Nice to meet you.” He sticks out a hand for me to shake. His fingers are splattered with ink. Not the permanent kind, but as though he’s been writing with a fountain pen. His eyes are a rich golden brown, and they skewer me like a worm on a hook. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “You too.” I duck my chin, suddenly shy. Granddad’s had me shaking hands since I was a toddler, but it’s different when the guy is cute, and Connor Clarke is beyond cute. He isn’t classically handsome; his jaw is too square, his nose broad but crooked, like it was broken once, and his ears stick out a little. But he’s interesting looking, and the tattoos… I never thought I found tattoos hot, but apparently I do. On him I do.

  I clear my throat. “Come on in. Granddad’ll be down in a second.”

  “Thanks.” He steps inside and lets out a low whistle. “Professor said this place has been in the Milbourn family for generations. All the way back to Dorothea’s mother.”

  “Yep.” I watch as Connor examines the framed photos of Dorothea. There she is on her wedding day; there she is accepting her Pulitzer; there she is getting an honorary doctorate from the college. I complained to Granddad once that there aren’t more pictures of him and me around the house, and he said just as soon as I get my PhD or my Pulitzer, he’ll put my photo up right next to hers.

  Thanks for setting the bar so low, Dorothea.

  “I’m a huge fan of her work. This is so cool,” Connor says, a reverent note in his voice, and this big, dorky grin spreads over his face.

  I nod, because what am I supposed to say? That sometimes I feel like I’m growing up in a museum, a shrine to our family’s history of mental illness? That Dorothea’s poetry was beautiful, but she destroyed two families because she flaunted her affair all over town? She was shot and killed, her lover was paralyzed from the waist down, and his wife was sent to prison. Four children—Grandmother and the three Moudowney kids—grew up without mothers. I find it hard to feel reverent about someone responsible for that.

  Obviously Connor feels differently. So does Granddad.

  “Did you grow up here?” Connor asks.

  “Yep.” I hope he won’t ask about my parents.

  Or maybe he already knows about my mother. Erica called Granddad at the office; maybe Connor’s the one who answered the phone. It’s strange to think he might have talked to her. I wonder if she sounds like I remember, if my memory of swaying around in her arms is real or just a story someone told me once.
r />   Has she ever looked me up online? I searched for her last night. Couldn’t find much. No Facebook profile.

  It would help if I knew her last name.

  I wonder if my sisters are Milbourn girls. Grandmother kept the Milbourn name when she and Granddad got married, then passed it on to my mother, who—maybe on account of not knowing who my father was—gave it to me.

  I glance up, realizing I’ve been quiet too long and Connor’s waiting for me to say something. Jesus, Ivy, get it together. “What about you? Where are you from?”

  “DC.” He smells like coffee. I wonder if he was scribbling poems with his fountain pen in a coffee shop. “Near H Street,” he adds.

  I shrug an apology. “I’m not real familiar with DC.”

  But Erica and my sisters live there. For all I know, they could be Connor’s neighbors.

  “It’s a cool neighborhood. Lot of gentrification over the last couple years though. Folks like my gram get pushed out to make way for hipsters.” He shakes his head. “Don’t get me started.”

  I smile and smooth the red hem of my skirt. “Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea?”

  His eyes land on my legs and I catch him looking. “Uh, no. No thanks.”

  I can’t believe this guy is Granddad’s suck-up student. He’s six feet three at least, with ripped arms and broad shoulders that taper to a narrow waist. He looks like a goddamn quarterback. As he scrubs a hand over his head, the words tattooed on his right bicep snag my attention; they’re as familiar as breathing. “Is that from Dorothea’s ‘Second Kiss’?”

  He grins, pushing up his sleeve so I can get a better glimpse of the poem that curves over his skin. “Yeah. It’s one of my favorites.” He flips his arm over, revealing lines from another poem spiraling like a snail across his forearm. “I’ve got Langston Hughes here. And Edna St. Vincent Millay here.” He taps his chest.

  “I love Millay.” I wonder which poem it is, what it means to him. Why he chose to have it inscribed right over his heart.

  Hell, now I’m picturing him without his shirt on, all muscles and poetry and—

  I stare down at my bare feet, flushing.

  “The Professor said you’re a poet too.” Connor shares it casually, but my head snaps up, my body tensing like a bowstring.

  “What? No.” I bite my lip. “That’s not true.”

  “Oh.” Connor squints at me. “Sorry, I must have misunderstood.”

  But he didn’t. I know he didn’t, and I hate it when Granddad goes around talking me up, making it sound like I’m special when I’m not. “No. He probably did say that. He exaggerates. I write a little. Sometimes. It’s not really my thing.”

  “Right.” Connor’s lips twitch. “So what is your thing?”

  My shoulders hunch. “I don’t have one. Not everybody has a thing.”

  Connor does though. It’s tattooed all over him.

  I’m being kind of weird and prickly, but he plows ahead, unheeding. “Your family’s full of such incredible artists I guess I just assumed that—”

  “You know what they say about assuming.” I’m trying to tease, but it comes out more of a rebuke. I shrug. “I’m not like the rest of my family. I’m ordinary.”

  And now I sound pathetic. I fold my arms over my chest. Connor’s gaze dips down to my cleavage, and I fight against a blush when, a second later, his eyes meet mine.

  “Nope,” he says. “I don’t believe that.”

  Hold up. Is he flirting with me?

  Jesus, his eyes are pretty. They’ve got little gold flecks near the center.

  I glance down to collect my composure, and when I look up, he’s examining Dorothea’s pictures again.

  I’m so stupid. Connor isn’t interested in me; he’s interested in the Milbourn legacy. He wrote a whole paper on my great-grandmother.

  It stings more than it should.

  “You don’t know anything about me. You have no idea what it means to be a Milbourn,” I say.

  “So tell me,” Connor says, and for a minute I am tempted to do just that. Spill all my messy secrets.

  “Ivy? Connor?” Granddad’s loafers squeak against the floor outside his office, and then his footsteps pad down the stairs. “There you are. Good to see you, Connor.”

  “Hey, Professor. You’ve got a beautiful house.”

  “Thank you.” Granddad’s voice sounds like a thread about to snap. I want to ask him how the phone call went, what Erica said—but not in front of Connor. “Ivy, the timer’s going off in the kitchen. I could hear it through the vent. Is that lunch?”

  “Oh shit. The bread!” I can’t even make lunch right.

  “Language, Ivy,” Granddad chides.

  “Sorry.” I run for the kitchen.

  They follow me. “It’s our housekeeper’s day off, so Ivy made us lunch,” Granddad says.

  “Thanks, Ivy,” Connor says, but I wince. Here I am whining about my family history, and he probably sees a privileged white girl who doesn’t realize how lucky she has it. He wouldn’t be wrong. I’ve grown up with every advantage. My college applications are going to be amazing.

  But I’d trade every one of those private lessons for a normal family.

  “You should come over for supper sometime when Luisa’s here. Her spaghetti and meatballs are not to be missed,” Granddad brags.

  Connor smiles. “That sounds amazing. I miss my mother’s cooking.”

  “Luisa’s like a mother to me,” I say, and immediately wish I could shove those defensive words back down my throat. It’s true, but I don’t owe Connor any explanations. Why am I letting him get me all rattled?

  Connor nods politely, his face inscrutable.

  Great. Now he must think I’m crazy. Or awful enough that I have to pay someone to act like my mother.

  • • •

  Lunch is awkward. Granddad and Connor talk about poetry while I stare out the window at the choppy, gray waves beating against the shore. I think about my mother. Wonder what she’s really like. I’ve heard stories—not from Granddad, who seldom speaks of her, but from Amelia when she comes over for faculty parties and has a second glass of pinot grigio.

  People in Cecil love to gossip about my family. I’ve grown up with old ladies calling me a poor dear and then whispering behind my back. They talk about how troubled my mother was, or they say she was a real handful, that she drank too much and slept around and put the poor Professor through the wringer.

  Then there’s my grandmother. Some people say it was a real shame what happened to Grace. Some say she was selfish to leave her daughter and husband. Others say it was fate—that the Milbourn women are all reckless and bound for bad ends. Dorothea went and had that affair and got herself murdered, didn’t she? And her mother… Well, Charlotte Milbourn didn’t intend for any of her children to escape that train. Dorothea started keeping a journal soon afterward, a practice she kept till the day she died. She wrote plainly about everything else—plainly enough to make me blush sometimes—but not about the collision that took her mother and sisters’ lives. That, she referred to just once. As “the accident.” They never proved it was purposeful.

  Cursed. Doomed. Crazy. The words are a drumbeat in the back of my mind. Once I found an old videotape of my mother singing in her middle school chorus. She was tall and blond and coltish, not grown into her arms and legs yet, gawky as hell. Amelia told me Erica was in a band later. Does she still sing, or did she run away from that too?

  “Ivy?” Judging from the way he and Connor are staring at me, expectant, it’s not the first time Granddad has called my name. I drag my attention back to their conversation. “I was saying that you should show Connor your work sometime.”

  “My work?” I choke.

  “Your poems. The ones you’re planning to submit,” he clarifies. Thank God he doesn’t ask me to go get them. This brings back mortifying memories of command flute performances of “Silent Night” at the English department Christmas parties. “Connor’s a talented p
oet.”

  “Of course he is.” I stab at a piece of avocado. Why doesn’t Granddad adopt Connor then?

  Connor looks back and forth between Granddad, who’s pageant-momming all over the place, and me, slumping sullenly in my chair. He stands. “I’ve got to get back to work. I’m doing a double at Java Jim’s. But thanks for having me over, Professor. This was great. Thanks for making lunch, Ivy.”

  “You’re welcome. It was nice to meet you,” I mumble.

  While Granddad walks him out, I clear the table. Without being asked. Like a good granddaughter. But I bang the plates a little. I would rather die than share my scribblings with Connor. Poetry is obviously his thing, and there’s no doubt in my mind he’s really good at it. I mean, he loves it enough to work in Granddad’s office this summer. Enough to come over and have lunch with his professor and the professor’s grumpy granddaughter. The way Connor talked about poetry—leaning forward in his chair, his ink-stained hands waving to illustrate his point, that big, goofy grin on his face—was dorky as hell but also kind of hot.

  I wish I felt that way about something. Consumed by it.

  My eyes fall on one of Grandmother’s paintings. In it, the black sky twists and the waves rage.

  I shiver. Maybe it’s easier being ordinary.

  Granddad pokes his head back into the kitchen. “You all right, Ivy Bear? You were awfully quiet at lunch.”

  “Fine,” I mutter, sliding the clean cutting board onto the drying rack.

  “You sure?” he presses. “I thought Connor made some good points about Emily Dickinson, but I can’t imagine you agreed.”

  I dry my hands on the green dish towel. “Didn’t think there was any point in arguing. He thinks awfully well of himself, doesn’t he?”

  As soon as I say it, I want to reel the bratty words back in.

  Granddad braces his hands, ropy and twisted from arthritis, against one of the wooden chairs. “He’s one of the brightest young men I’ve taught. I don’t find him arrogant.”