Bittersweet. Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
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make an exception for Abby,’ Ev offered as John pulled up in front of the cottage.
‘Don’t do her any favors.’
‘It’s not a favor,’ she replied, eyes skimming John.
He took Abby toward the woods to piddle. The night came rushing in: the rhythmic cricket clamor, the lapping of water I couldn’t see. The moon was behind a cloud. Beyond us, I could sense an expanse which I took to be the lake.
‘What do we have to do before the inspection?’ I asked Ev quietly.
‘Make it livable. Now we only have six days until my parents arrive, and I don’t even know what state it’s in.’
‘What if we can’t do it that fast?’ I asked.
Ev cocked her head to the side. ‘Are you worrying again, Miss Mabel?’ She looked back at me. ‘All we have to do is clean it up. Make it good as new.’
The moon reemerged. I examined the old house before us – an indecipherable sign nailed to it began with the letter B. The building looked rickety and weatherworn in the moonlight. I had a feeling six days wasn’t going to cut it. ‘What happens if we can’t?’
‘Then I move in with my witch of a mother and you spend the summer in Oregon.’
My lungs filled with the chemical memory of perc. My feet began to ache from a phantom day of standing behind the counter. I couldn’t go home – I couldn’t. How could I explain my desperation to her? But then I stepped into the night, and there Ev was, in the flesh, smelling of tea roses. She threw her arms wide to envelop me.
‘Welcome home,’ she murmured. ‘Welcome to Bittersweet.’
WHEN MY EYES OPENED that first morning in the cottage they called Bittersweet, shadows of tree branches danced across the bead board ceiling in time with the glug of water in the cove below. Out the window, I could see a nuthatch hopping up and down the trunk of a red pine, chirping in celebration of his grubby breakfast. The Vermont air was cool and I was alone.
Arriving under cover of darkness had given a disappointing first impression, made worse by the threat of Birch’s inspection and my fate in the face of our failure. The house had seemed all dingy fixtures and shabby, unmatched furniture, touched everywhere with the scent of mildew; all I saw was work.
But I understood now, as I took in the shining brass beds in the morning, the crisp cotton duvet covers, and the faint scent of coffee wafting in from the kitchen, that this was a quiet place, a country place, a place of baguettes and pink grapefruit and spreadable honeycomb, idyllic and sun-drenched in a way I had never known, but of which I had long been dreaming.
Ev’s bed, the twin of my own, lay empty under the opposite window, rumpled sheets cast aside. From the light and birdsong, I could guess it was no later than eight. In the nine months I had lived with Ev, I had never once seen her up before ten. I called her name twice, but there was no reply. I puzzled for a few moments over her whereabouts, before lying back and closing my eyes, willing more delicious sleep. It refused me.
I felt a hint of desire. I listened long and hard. I was truly alone. And so I (shyly, bravely) put my hand down between my legs and felt myself grow wet. I knew there was a risk Ev might barge through the door any second, so I told myself to hold still, to move only one finger, to feign sleep. It is strange how such restrictions heighten one’s desire, but there it is. Soon my fingers were buried deep and I was in another world.
I tried to remember to listen. But there were always a few moments in which even I could not be cautious enough to subdivide my mind. I threw off the covers and felt that private wildness inside me rise up and carry me over a great, shivering chasm of joy, the only unbridled pleasure I knew.
It took time to recover myself. Afterward, I lay there, legs splayed, eyes closed, grateful for the warmth inside of me, until I felt the particular sensation of being watched. I lifted my eyes to the window just above Ev’s bed.
There, framed by wood and glass, was the face of a man.
His eyes were glazed over.
His mouth was agape.
I screamed. He ducked. I covered my whole self with the quilt. I laughed, horrified, nearly suffocating under the duvet. Almost burst into tears. Peeked out from beneath the quilt again. The window was empty. Had there really been someone there? Oh god. A new level of humiliation. I would never forget the look on his face – a mix of lust (I hoped) and horror (more likely). He’d been freckled. Dirty blond hair. I could feel myself blushing from head to toe. When I got up the nerve, I strode to the window, wrapped in the comforter, and wrestled the resistant, dusty blind down into submission before dressing myself with nunlike modesty. Maybe they’d kick me out of Winloch before we even got to the inspection.
Ev returned an hour later, moss tangling her locks. She smelled like a child who’d been playing in the forest, and her face bloomed with a smile she was doing her best to hide. Eager for distraction, I offered to cook, but she insisted I sit at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table and let her do the work for once, a dubious allowance, since I knew that she could hardly boil water without setting the kettle on fire. As she bustled about the white metal cabinets, art deco refrigerator with a heavy, ka-thunking door pull, and dirty seafoam-green linoleum curling up at the edges, my fingers traced the repeating, once-vibrant pattern of blackberries and gingham that had protected the table during someone else’s breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
The kitchen had once been the short part of the L that made up the porch, and it retained the casement windows from its earlier life as a sunroom. Because the waist-to-ceiling panes overlooked the Bittersweet cove, what might have been a gloomy room glittered, making it the most beautiful spot in the cottage. But I resisted the view, keeping my back to the woods and water, remembering, with fresh embarrassment, the feeling of that man’s eyes upon me. He was out there, somewhere. What was to keep him from telling? The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.
‘Galway said he met you this morning,’ Ev mentioned, casually clicking on the stove’s pilot light to heat the green enamel percolator set on the back burner. My pulse began to race. That man in the window was the only person I’d seen all day. Did she know? Had he told her? Had she read my mind?
‘He’s pretty awkward,’ she said apologetically. She glanced at me for a moment, catching the expression on my face. ‘Was he awful to you?’
‘What’d he say?’ I managed to squeak.
Ev rolled her eyes. ‘Galway doesn’t say anything unless it serves his own political gains.’ I breathed a sigh of relief as she babbled on. ‘Don’t worry, he’s only coming up weekends.’ She rolled her eyes conspiratorially, as if I had any idea what she was talking about. ‘Now you know firsthand why he’s terrible with women,’ she chirped, as I resolved simply never to see Galway again, whoever he was, while Ev went on to tell me how ill-equipped her brothers were for any kind of love, even though two of the three of them had managed to find wives. But Galway would be a bachelor forever, although she was almost positive he wasn’t gay, he seemed extremely hetero to her, mostly because he was an asshole, and if she was going to pick one of them to be gay she would have picked fussy Athol, although Banning was such a pleasure seeker (this is how I gathered, with horror, that Galway was her brother) – and then she served me a burned scrambled egg and lukewarm, bitter coffee, rendered drinkable only after I added a healthy slug from a dented can of condensed milk found on the shelf above the sink, and gave dictation on the provisions and products we would need John to pick up in town for the coming days of cleaning.
Even then, I was glad I’d come.