A Piece of the World(33)

I don’t ask to see what he’s doing, but I’m curious.

It’s a warm, sunny day in July when Andy comes downstairs and says he’s tired and distracted and maybe he’ll take the afternoon off and go for a sail. After he leaves, I realize it’s a good time to see what he’s working on up there. No one is around; I can hoist myself up each stair as slowly as I want. Resting every other step.

Even before I open the door to the bedroom on the second floor I smell the eggs. Pushing the door wide, I see broken shells and dirty rags and cups of colored water scattered all over the floor. I haven’t been up here in ages; the wallpaper, I notice, is peeling off the wall in strips. Despite the breeze from an open window, the room is stuffy. I glance quickly at the painting, propped on a flimsy easel in the far corner, and look away.

Pulling myself up onto the single bed—my childhood bed—I lie on my back, staring at the spiderweb fissures in the ceiling. Out of the corner of my eye I can glimpse the rectangle of canvas, but I’m not ready to look at it directly. Andy told me once that hidden in his seemingly realistic paintings are secrets, mysteries, allegories. That he wants to get at the essence of things, no matter how ugly.

I’m afraid to learn what he might see in me.

Finally I can’t put it off any longer. Turning on my side, I look at the painting.

I’m not hideous, exactly. But it’s a shock nevertheless to see myself through his eyes. On the canvas I’m in profile, looking soberly out toward the cove, hands awkward in my lap, nose long and pointy, mouth downturned. My hair is a deep auburn, my frame thin and slightly off kilter. The pantry doorway is rimmed in dark, half in shadow. The door is cracked and weathered, the grasses wild beyond. My dress is black, with a slash, a deep V, below my white neck.

In the black dress—not what I was wearing—I look somber. Severe. And utterly alone. Alone in the doorway facing the sea. My skin ghostly, spectral. Darkness all around.

Bridget Bishop, waiting to be sentenced.

Waiting for death.

I roll onto my back again. Shadows of the lace curtains, moving in and out with the wind, make the ceiling a roiling sea.

When Andy comes in the next morning, I don’t tell him I went upstairs. He says hello, we chat for a few minutes while I stir up drop biscuits, and he walks into the foyer. Stops. Comes back to the kitchen door with his hands on his hips. “You went up.”

I spoon the dough onto a flat metal sheet, dollop after dollop.

“You did,” he insists.

“How’d you know?”

He sweeps his hand up with a flourish. “Path through the dust all the way to the top. Like the trail of a giant snail.”

I laugh drily.

“So what’d you think?”

I shrug. “I don’t know about art.”

“It’s not art. It’s just you.”

“No, it’s not. It’s you,” I say. “Didn’t you tell me that once? That every painting is a self-portrait?”

He whistles. “Ah, you’re too shrewd for me. Come on. I want to know what you think.”

I’m afraid to tell him. Afraid it will sound vain or self-important. “It’s so . . . dark. The shadows. The black dress.”

“I wanted to show the contrast with your skin. To highlight you sitting there.”

Now that we’re having this conversation, I realize that I’m a little angry. “I look like I’m in a coffin with the lid half shut.”

He laughs a little, as if he can’t believe I might be upset.

I stare at him evenly.

Running his hand through his hair, he says, “I was trying to show your . . .” He hesitates. “Dignity. Solemnity.”

“Well, I guess that’s the problem. I don’t think of myself as solemn. I didn’t think you did, either.”

“I don’t. Not really. It’s just a moment. And it’s not really ‘you.’ Or ‘me.’ Despite what you think.” His voice trails off. Seeing me struggle with the heavy oven door, he comes over and opens it for me, then slides the baking tray of biscuits in. “I think it’s about the house. The mood of it.” He shuts the oven door. “Do you know what I mean?”

“You make it seem so . . .” I cast about for the right word. “I don’t know. Lonely.”

He sighs. “Isn’t it, sometimes?”

For a moment there’s silence between us. I reach for a dishrag and wipe my floury hands.

“So how do you think of yourself?” he asks.

“What?”

“You said you don’t think of yourself as solemn. So how do you think of yourself?”

It’s a good question. How do I think of myself?

The answer surprises us both.

“I think of myself as a girl,” I say.





1914–1917


Everybody in town seems to know about the envelopes postmarked Massachusetts. I can tell that Bertha Dorset has been gossiping by the way she smirks and lifts her eyebrows when she hands me the mail. When I mention it in a letter to Walton, he writes, “I’m sorry that anyone should bother you with their curiosity,” and offers to use Ramona as a foil—she can address the envelopes from Boston, he says. “Then they wouldn’t know that I was writing. But I’m afraid they would hear of it some other way.”