The Children(37)

After paying Hank threw his napkin on his plate, obscuring his partially uneaten—uneaten!—trout in cilantro foam. He said, “Hey I know let’s walk to the water.”

It was delivered in a rush, morosely, as rehearsed a line as she’d ever heard.

Execution time. Guin swallowed the last of her wine.

The evening smelled of brine and ice-cream cones, and everyone in it was young. This was new to her: not the feeling of being the oldest person in a place, the confirmation. They walked without speaking to the water. There Guin leaned back, fingers wound into the railing, neck turned easy toward the axe. She liked Hank too much to make it difficult for him. But when he looked at her, his face a picture of misery, she had to press her lips together to keep herself from gripping his shoulders, saying, Not yet.

He dropped to his knees. Fumbled a small something from his pocket and held it up.

She stared. The lights of a party boat slid by, making a panic-colored streak in her peripheral vision. Passersby slowed to watch them. Guin could hear their soft exhalations, strangers catching on to what was happening an instant before she did.

Not yet, she thought again. The sentiment had changed.

Hank looked up at her, dip-dyed in twilight. In his eyes, love and terror. In his hands, a little box, ring nestled starlike inside it.

Deep inside of her, a curtain pulled back. She saw it with cinematic clarity, moving toward her in a brilliant wave, unstoppable: her future. So clean and sharp it was rendered in uppercase. Marriage. She could have a Husband. She could be a Wife.

It was the dyad toward which adulthood bent, dropping ripely into her lap. She’d literally never thought of it. It was so loud a notion, so utterly new, it drowned out everything. All the clamoring questions inside of her, and the great blank space in which they moved: silenced, filled. Could it really be this easy? What was her face doing? It felt masklike, unknowable.

Guin reached into open air. Like Macbeth, reaching for a phantom knife: sharp and elusive and right there, real adult life offered to her in a box lined in velvet. Also, she loved him.

She gave him her hand.





Twenty-One

2000




Guinevere slammed into the house all sun-dazed and sour, teeth grimed with unripe mulberries. A woman was sitting at the kitchen table.

She laughed at Guinevere’s expression. “Hi, cutie. Did I scare you?”

The woman wore Doc Martens with yellow laces, faded jail-stripe overalls, and a T-shirt that said big star. She had an accent, but an American one. Boston, Guinevere found out later. Did I sceh you?

Guinevere’s stomach was churning. Ennis told her the berries weren’t ready, and she ate them anyway. Green fruit tasted like lightning and made her feel like a witch. She lifted her chin, summoning her witch self. “Who are you?”

The woman stuck a hand out. “I’m Anne. I’m a painter. If you walk into the woods right there,” she indicated over Guinevere’s right shoulder, “and go straight for about two miles, you’ll run into my studio. I usually drive, though.”

Guinevere shook the woman’s hand—callused, blunt—and studied her face. Older than Edith, younger than Llewellyn. Her hair was in a platinum topknot and all her exposed skin was freckly, even her lips. She made Guinevere wish for freckles, and hair long enough to tie in a knot.

Still, she didn’t like the way Anne sat in their kitchen, the entitlement with which she drank coffee from the stained Zabar’s mug. If Edith were here, she wouldn’t dare sit so boldly. But Edith was in New York, because her book had been published. It was everywhere, in bookstores and people’s houses and even—she told them—in the pages of the New York Times.

She promised Guinevere could read it. That promise had legs and it kept on running. A few months ago, in a burst of uncharacteristic good cheer, she offered to bring all three of them to the release party in the city. Then Llewellyn said, There’s a conversation that needs to happen first, don’t you think?, and she’d looked thoughtful and not mentioned it again.

Ennis said probably the book sucked and she was embarrassed. Guinevere didn’t think that was it.

Anyway, Edith was far away. Anne was right here. And Guinevere didn’t see new people often enough to waste the opportunity. “What kind of stuff do you paint?” she said.

Anne leaned in, conspiratorial. “Want to see?”

Llewellyn walked in. Hair wet, trailing a sharp musky scent. He put a hand on Guinevere’s head and smooshed her hair around. The touch was gone before she could lean into it.

“I thought you were out with your brother, playing wild things.”

He sounded jovial, almost. She blinked at him, trying to locate the other change: he’d trimmed his wild-man beard. The jersey he’d been slouching around in for days was gone, the sleeves of a black T-shirt cut against the softening muscles of his arms.

Anne held out her mug. “I was asking your daughter if she’d like to see my studio.”

“What a thought,” he said, taking the empty mug. He laid his other hand on Anne’s freckled skin, right where her shoulder became her neck. It rested there brief as a butterfly before he moved to the sink. It was long enough to fill Guinevere with a dizzy loathing.

“I don’t care about your stupid studio,” she said, and slammed back out into the icy spring light.