A Piece of the World(30)

There’s thin satisfaction in their wounded surprise.

And then one day, long after I’ve stopped believing there will be a letter, Bertha slides a pile of mail onto the counter, and here it is: a thick white envelope with a red two-cent George Washington stamp, addressed to me. Christina Olson.

“Well, look at that. Hope it’s good news,” she says.

I can barely wait until I’m out of the post office to open the envelope. I settle on a fallen tree just off the road and unfold the thick paper.

“Dearest Christina . . .”

I read hungrily, skipping forward, shuffling pages (two, three, four) to the end—“Yours”—mine!—“Walton.” My gaze catches on phrases: “summer I will never forget,” “the way you shield your eyes from the sun with your hand, the flat collar of your sailor blouse, the blue-black ribbon in your hair,” and finally: “All roads lead back to Cushing for me.”

I skip forward and back like a bee trying to escape from a hole in a screen. He can’t stop thinking about the summer in Maine. The week he was in Malden was tedious and hot; Harvard is lonely after the sailing and picnics and endless adventures. He misses it all: the sloop moored in Kissing Cove, egg sandwiches on just-baked bread, Ramona’s silly jokes, clambakes down by Little Island, pink-orange sunsets. But mostly, he writes, he misses me.

The light is different on the walk home, softer, warm on my face. I tilt my chin up and close my eyes, putting one foot after the other in the left-hand rut of the road. I can only walk like this, with my eyes closed, because I know the way by heart.

EVERY WEEK OR ten days a thick letter in a white envelope with a two-cent stamp arrives in the mail. He writes from the library, from the dining hall, from the narrow wooden desk in his dormitory room, by the light of a gas lamp after his rugby-playing, gin-guzzling roommate has gone to sleep. Each envelope, a package of words to feed my word-hungry soul, provides a portal into a world where students linger in wood-paneled classrooms to talk to professors, where entire days can be spent in a library, where what you write and how you write it are all you need to worry about. I imagine myself in his place: strolling across campus, peering up at thick-paned, glowing windows at dusk, going to expensive dinners with friends in Harvard Square, where the waiters wear tuxedos and look down their noses at the unkempt students, and the students don’t care.

As the letters pile up I save them under my bed, tied with a pale pink ribbon. In one he writes: “Every night I look up at the great square in the southeast, nearly overhead, and name the stars in it: Broad Cove, Four Corners, East Friendship, and the Ulmer Church, and wish that I were driving around it with you.” After supper I open the shed door and step outside, looking up at the vast expanse of stars, and imagine Walton doing the same in Cambridge. Here I am, there he is, connected by sky.





THE CAMEO SHELL





1944–1946


For years, nobody has seemed particularly interested in the young artist who set up a studio in our house. But this summer is different. In town with my sister-in-law, Mary, doing errands, I’m approached by a woman I don’t recognize in the canned-goods section of Fales.

“Excuse me. Are you . . . Christina Olson?”

I nod, puzzled. Why would a stranger know who I am?

“I thought so!” she beams. “I’m renting a cottage near here with my family for the week. I’ve read about you and your brother. Al, is it?”

Mary, who’d wandered over to the next aisle, comes around the corner. “Hello, I’m with Miss Olson. Can I help you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry! I should’ve cut to the chase. A famous painter is working at your home, I believe? Andrew Wyeth?”

“How do you—” Mary starts.

“I wonder if I might presume on you to get his autograph for me?” the woman wheedles.

“Oh. Well?” Mary asks, looking at me.

I give the woman a tight smile. “No, that’s impossible.”

Later, when I mention this to Betsy, she wags her head as if she’s not surprised. “Sorry about that, Christina. Andy was on the cover of American Artist a while back, and we worried it might change things. Evidently it has.”

“Did he say anything about Al and me?”

“A little. Not much. He may have mentioned your names. Of course the article reveals that he summers in Cushing, so it probably isn’t hard to figure out. I know he regrets saying anything. He really doesn’t like being bothered. I’m sure you don’t either.”

I shrug. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Several weeks later, sitting in my chair beside the open kitchen window, I watch a baby blue convertible pull up in front of the house. The driver is wearing a cream fedora, the woman beside him a filmy polka-dotted head scarf.

“Toodle-oo!” she calls, waving pink-tipped fingers. “Hello! We’re looking for . . .” She bats the man on the arm. “What’s his name, honey?”

“Wyeth.”

“That’s right. Andrew Wyeth.” She gives me a pink-lipped smile through the window.

Andy isn’t here yet, but I know I’ll see him sauntering up the field from Kissing Cove any minute. “Never heard of him,” I tell her.

“He’s not painting inside this house?”