I arrived at my sister Winnie’s on a Saturday morning.
“I’m in here,” Winnie called from the recesses of her family room. “The door’s open.” Winnie’s voice was weak and complaining, but there was nothing unusual in that. She was out of her depth as a wife and mother and she made up a series of ailments to shield herself from both responsibility and criticism. Complaint had become a habit for Winnie and I think she enjoyed it. It’s the prestige of the ill. People can’t very well ignore you when you’re sick, nor can they expect much from you. I had been humoring Winnie since the day she was born. She had been a fussy child: the first to cry on a long car trip, the first to throw a tantrum if she got bored, cold, or hot. She was just never comfortable, our Winnie.
Winnie was at the back of the house in a large window seat. She had an afghan pulled up to her chest. It was one of Priscilla’s signature afghans, made from squares of expensive but leftover yarns. Winnie was staring out toward the enormous field that separated her house from the large farmhouse that belonged to her in-laws.
I went over to her, bent, and kissed her on the cheek. Her cheek was soft and powdery, lacking all resilience, and her smell always reminded me of my mother.
“What took you so long?” Winnie whined. “I thought you’d never come.”
“I told you I’d be here today. And here I am.”
“It’s so dull around here and I’ve been feeling so sick. Charlie took the boys out and I haven’t seen anyone all morning.”
“Well, I’m here now,” I said. “Can I get you some tea or something?”
“Thank you, Jane. You’re a savior. I think if I get up, I’ll just fall over, not that anyone cares about that.”
On my way to the kitchen, I traversed the carpet, which was littered with toy trucks and action figures that had died on the battlefield.
“I know, it’s a mess,” Winnie said. She waved her hand toward the room. “It’s just all so overwhelming and Jorie already left for Thanksgiving.” Jorie was a student from Framingham State College who lived with them and helped out with the boys.
“Charlie’s mother said she’d come over to see me,” Winnie went on, “but she hasn’t come anywhere near me. Typical.” Winnie paused and twitched her nose. “Can you smell that? Can you?” Winnie opened the window and cool air rushed in. “It’s that damned manure. I think they want to drive me crazy. I really do. They built the house here on purpose just so I’d have to deal with the stink of manure day and night.”
Charlie’s parents had subdivided their farm and built a house for Charlie and Winnie. It was a five-bedroom Colonial on a rolling piece of land beside some woods. Everything in the house was new and the best that money could buy.
Winnie’s house was several acres from the main house, and did indeed exist on the border of a farm that accommodated twenty-four horses, some of which were owned by the Maples, while others were boarded by people from nearby towns. Yes, the constant smell of manure wafted from the barn, but that’s how barns smell. I was sure the Maples had not set out to drive my sister crazy.
With horses so easily accessible, I would have thought that Winnie, who had won prizes for dressage when she was young, would take every opportunity to ride, but she never got on a horse anymore.
“I’ll get the tea,” I said from the far side of the room. I went into the kitchen. The breakfast dishes were piled high beside the sink.
I put the kettle on, filled the sink with hot water, and piled the dishes into it. While I waited for the water on the stove to boil, I went into the laundry room, picked up an empty basket, and carried it to the family room and used it to collect the fallen soldiers.
“You don’t have to do that, Jane.”
“I don’t mind,” I said.
“You are so resourceful,” Winnie said. “I don’t think people give you enough credit.”
I wasn’t too flattered by Winnie’s assumption that I was gifted just because I knew how to pick up a few toys. Still, it’s pleasant to receive a compliment no matter how lame or ridiculous.
The teakettle whistled and I went back into the kitchen. Winnie kept a collection of teas in a cabinet over the stove. Black teas—Darjeeling, Earl Grey, English Breakfast—and herb teas—ginseng, Lemon Lift, Passionate Peach. When Winnie put her home together, she relied heavily on Martha Stewart Living. Winnie dotted the house with scented candles and dried flowers. Her theme was French country modern. My sister didn’t have an original bone in her body, but her talent for mimicry was unsurpassed. Winnie was so good that on some days she was just like Martha Stewart—all that was missing was the unbridled ambition, the frenetic energy, and the felony conviction.
I chose Darjeeling, and while the tea steeped, I moved the dishes from the sink to the dishwasher. This small domestic task was both simple and satisfying. It made me feel useful and gave me a glimpse into how I might feel if this were my own kitchen and I were part of a young family. I filled a tray with sugar, milk, two hand-painted mugs, and carried the tray in to Winnie. I knew Winnie had painted the mugs at a store in town called Glaze & Amaze. She often went there. I set the tray down on a small table in the corner of the room. The table was covered with a yellow and blue cloth and the bowl in its center held fresh lavender.
“Come on, old girl. Come and sit down,” I said. I sounded like Priscilla—stodgy. Winnie tossed the afghan onto the floor (Priscilla wouldn’t have liked to see it dropped on the floor like that), came over to the table, and sat in one of the white wicker chairs that flanked it. I poured the tea. Winnie looked up at a wall clock, a wooden reproduction with a yellow face.
Winnie was wearing a velour sweat suit, the type you often see on women as they run around town doing errands in their Suburbans. Winnie’s suit was a pale blue that matched her eyes. Her thin blond hair was cut to just below her ears and framed her face with gentle curls.
“I love the mugs,” I said.
“Do you? Do you really like them?”
“I do,” I said, though the colors were murky.
“I just love doing it. It makes me feel so fulfilled. I asked Charlie to buy me a kiln, but he says my love for ceramics is just a phase and I’ll get over it. I think he’s wrong. I think I’ve found my true calling.”
It would have been nice if she found that her true calling was motherhood. Winnie had suffered from an intermittent postpartum depression since her younger son was born—and he had just turned five.
“A kiln takes up so much room,” I said.
“That’s hardly the point, Jane. My creative impulses should be encouraged. You must be careful or you could just die of boredom out here in the burbs.”
Winnie didn’t exactly live in the suburbs. She lived in a town called Dover—part suburb, part country—and she lived in the more rural section.
“Jane, I feel just awful about the house, don’t you?” Winnie said.
I had been working on getting over my feeling of displacement, but yes, I felt just awful about the house.
“It’s only a house,” I said.
“But it’s our house, the Fortune family house. I hate the idea of strangers living in it.”
“We still own it.”
“For now. If you can trust Dad and Miranda not to drive the family into absolute bankruptcy.”
“I think Littleton has a handle on it.”
“That buffoon. He has never had a handle on anything in his life. The only reason he’s a lawyer is that it runs in his family. He’s an idiot. I don’t know how he made it through law school.”
“Did you ever say anything about this to Dad?”
“Of course not. He thinks I’m thoroughly domestic and lacking all other qualities. He wouldn’t listen to anything I said. And if I didn’t know that before, I certainly do now. He never even included me in the discussion about the house. He acted as if it would make no difference to me at all.”
Winnie was right. We were an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of family. It didn’t occur to anyone to include Winnie in the discussions about the house. She had her own home and, we assumed, her own life.
“He might have listened to you,” I said, but I knew, even as I said it, that this was disingenuous. No one in our family listened to anyone else in our family. I was just trying to make Winnie feel better.
She squinted at me.
“Please, Jane. Sometimes Teddy listens to Priscilla, and that’s only because he knows enough not to always trust himself, thank God. But we have to face facts—Teddy and Miranda are two of the most dismissive people on the planet. Look what they did to you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, but I knew what she meant.
“Who is this Dolores character, anyway?”
“She’s Littleton’s daughter.”
“I know that. But why has she wheedled her way into our family and what does she hope to gain?”
“I think she wants Teddy,” I said. “He’s still a catch, even without as much money. It’s hard for us to see it, because we’re his daughters, but he’s extremely attractive to women.”
Winnie made a gagging sound. “You’re making me sick.”
“It’s true,” I said. I started to laugh, a little too wildly, and wiped the tears from my eyes.
“Miranda is deaf, dumb, and blind if she lets that social climber maneuver her way into our family,” Winnie said.
“You don’t even know her.”
“I’ve heard all about her.”
“From whom?”
“Priscilla called me.”
“Stirring up trouble.”
“Isn’t that what she does best?” Winnie took a sip of tea. She sighed. “The Wheaton girls will be home for Thanksgiving. I wish I were still in school. It’s the only time you get a real vacation.”
The Wheaton girls were Winnie’s sisters-in-law, Lindsay and Heather. Wheaton had been a small prestigious girls’ college until the late eighties, when it had finally gone coed.
When we had almost finished our tea, Winnie’s husband, Charlie, came in with the two boys.
“Finally! I thought you’d never come,” Winnie said. “Did you get the pies?”
“Apple, pumpkin, and mince. Hello, Jane.” I stood up and Charlie scooped me into a hug. His wool sweater was rough against my cheek.
Little Charlie, who was actually Charles Maple III—called Trey—jumped onto my lap.
“Did you bring us a present, Aunt Jane?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said. He kissed me on the cheek and put his chubby arms around my neck. I closed my eyes and took in the little-boy smell of him. He jumped from my lap and Theodore—Theo—named for Teddy, kissed me on the cheek in a formal way. He was already eight and had recently acquired a little man’s dignity.
“You want some tea, Charlie?” I asked.
“Still hot?” Charlie put his palm on the teapot.
“It couldn’t be,” Winnie said.
“I’ll heat up some water,” I said.
“No. I’ll get it,” Charlie said. “Besides, you’re a guest.”
“She’s hardly a guest,” Winnie said.
“That’s right. Jane is family,” Charlie said.
“Boys, I picked up some of your toys and put them in a basket in the laundry room. Please take the basket upstairs and put the toys away,” I said.
Winnie looked at me as if I might have gone insane, but the boys went off to the laundry room immediately. When they came out, each was holding a side of the basket. Together, they dragged it upstairs. Winnie raised her eyebrows.
“They never do that for me,” she said.
“Element of surprise.”
Winnie shrugged and sighed. “I wish they’d do that for me.”
Charlie came back from the kitchen with a short glass containing an amber liquid.
“That’s not tea,” Winnie said.
“It’s Glenlivet.”
“You’d better put the pies in the freezer or they’ll never last until Thursday,” Winnie said.
“Done,” Charlie said. “Can I get you a drink, Jane?”
“It’s only two o’clock, Charlie. I don’t see why you have to start drinking so early,” Winnie said.
Charlie gave me a look that seemed to say that Winnie was the reason, but then he walked over to her and kissed her on the nose. “Thank you for worrying about me, dear. What would I do without you?”
What I didn’t know about married people could fill the Boston Public Library. Maybe if I kept my eyes open, I’d learn something, though what good it would do me at this point was an open question.
“You’ll never guess who we ran into at lunch,” Charlie said to Winnie.
“Who?” she asked, sounding not the slightest bit interested.
“Max Wellman.”
“Who?”
“You know, my friend Max Wellman.”
Winnie may not have known who Max Wellman was, but I was experiencing hot sweats and heart palpitations, all symptoms of panic. I hoped that’s what it was. Weren’t those also symptoms of menopause? I was only thirty-eight. It had to be panic.
For fifteen years I had managed to get only as close to Max as his clippings, but now he lurked around every corner.
Winnie poured herself more tea, though it had to be lukewarm.
“You must have heard of Max Wellman, Jane,” Charlie said. “He’s a famous author.”
“I have, but I didn’t know you knew him, Charlie.” I tried to keep my voice steady.
“From college. Have you read his books?” Charlie asked.
“All except for the last one.” Every time one of Max’s books came out, I’d run to the bookstore. Then I’d take the book home and devour it. I don’t know what I was looking for. Clues about Max? What sort of clues? With this latest book, Post, I had decided to hold back. Why should I still be rushing to read Max’s books? Maybe I wouldn’t even read this one. But, like an addict, I stalked the bookstores and hovered around the shelves. I opened Post, looked at the author photo, checked the acknowledgments page, but I always put it down again.
“Well, if Jane’s read this Max Wellman’s books, why haven’t I? You know how much I like to read, Charlie. Why haven’t you brought these books home?”
“We have every one of them upstairs in the study,” he said.
“The least you could do, then, is point them out if he’s someone you know. How do you expect me to better myself out here in the absolute buttocks when you don’t share anything with me and when you won’t buy me a kiln?”
Charlie slumped. “It’s boondocks, not buttocks.”
“You don’t support me artistically,” Winnie complained.
“I support you in every other way.” He raised his voice and drained his glass.
“No need to be like that, especially in front of my sister.”
“Anyway, Max is here in town. He’s staying with his sister in Boston. She and her husband just rented a fantastic house on Beacon Hill for the winter.”
“That’s our house,” I said in a small voice.
“What?” Charlie asked.
“Brainchild, that’s our house. The Fortune family house,” Winnie said. “You know very well that Father rented it out for the winter.”
“I didn’t make the connection.”
“There’s no reason you should,” I said.
“I feel stupid. I’m so sorry, Jane.”
“What about me?” Winnie asked. “I think I deserve an apology, too. It was my house, too. I have been shamed, by association.”
“There is nothing shameful about renting your house out for the winter,” Charlie said.
“You’d think that, wouldn’t you? It is the way you’d think,” Winnie said.
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I think.”
“You just don’t know anything about the history of families.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m more concerned with my family’s present than its history,” he said.
“That’s because you don’t have a history to speak of. Second-generation English is hardly a history.”
“And you came over on the Mayflower,” Charlie said, his voice infused with sarcasm.
We didn’t, but we had as many generations behind us in America as you could without coming over on that particular boat. Still, what did it matter in the twenty-first century?
“Anyway, I invited him for Thanksgiving,” Charlie said.
“Who?” Winnie asked.
“Max.” Charlie seemed exasperated. “Isn’t that who we were just talking about?”
“Without asking me?” Winnie said.
“My parents are the ones having it,” Charlie said.
“Did you ask them?”
“I don’t have to.”
There was a small bit of skin hanging from my thumb and I began to chew on it.
“Don’t do that, Jane. It will get all bloody,” Winnie said. Charlie looked over. I saw myself as he must see me—dour, dry, somber, bookish, and lacking in style.
“Anyway,” Charlie said, “Max isn’t coming. He’s spending Thanksgiving with his sister.” Thank God, I thought. “But he might come over for dessert.”
Something banged hard on the floor upstairs and one of the boys shouted.
“Oh, Charlie, can you see to that?” Winnie asked. She had that fainting-couch look to her, as if any movement was beyond her strength.
“I will,” I said.
“No, Jane, I’ll go,” Charlie said.
He went upstairs.
“I think my husband is getting bored with me,” Winnie said. “I don’t know why. It’s as if everything I ask him to do is an ordeal. We haven’t had sex in a month.”
I didn’t like this kind of heart-to-heart. I wasn’t crazy about heart-to-hearts in general, but I especially hated them when they included the subject of sex. I wasn’t a prude, exactly, I just had never been one of those girls who discussed breasts, periods, and boys. My mother said that I had never really been young, but I had been young, only in a different way.
“I’m sure he loves you,” I said.
“That’s just the easy thing to say. But you’ve never been in a long relationship, and in a long relationship things fade.” She touched her hair. When she was younger it was a more sunny shade of blond. “You know what we need?” she said.
“What?”
“A girls’ day out.”
I couldn’t remember ever having had a girls’ day out with Winnie. I had gone shopping occasionally with Miranda, and that was more of a torture than a pleasure. Miranda was so meticulous about her choices: everything had to be by Leonardo da Vinci, look like it had been painted on by a master craftsman, and elegant without being showy. I once shopped with her for five hours and all she bought was a pair of silk socks and a face cream guaranteed to remove every worry line she ever had.
“Now, if they could only make a cream to remove the worry itself,” I had said.
Miranda looked at me like I was mentally defective. My family never understood my sense of humor. In fact, if you asked them, they’d say I didn’t have one.
“We’ll go on the Friday after Thanksgiving. I’m sure Charlie’s parents won’t mind taking the boys,” Winnie said.
“That’s the busiest shopping day of the year,” I said.
Winnie was undaunted. “Why should I worry about the busiest shopping day of the year? A master shopper never has to worry about the little people.”
“Why don’t I stay home and take care of the boys,” I suggested.
“That wouldn’t be any fun.”
I was flattered that Winnie thought I might be good company on a shopping trip. I’d never given her any reason to think so.
Charlie came downstairs. “The boys are fine,” he said. “Barely. Theo was close to popping Trey’s eye out with one of those plastic mega-monster things, but he’ll survive. I have to go out to the office for the rest of the afternoon. Max is thinking of moving back to this area and I told him I’d pull some listings. He says he’s ready to settle down in a rambling farmhouse. That’s what he said, ‘a rambling farmhouse with a stone wall and a brook and maybe a swing hanging from a tree.’ He thinks he’s ordering from a catalogue. Who knows? Maybe I can pull it off.”
“What will we do for dinner?” Winnie asked.
Charlie looked at Winnie as if she might manage to get off her ever-increasing behind and arrange dinner, but he said, “We’ll figure it out when I get home.”
Charlie put on his coat, pecked Winnie on the cheek, and went out to the car.
“I noticed some laundry when I was in the laundry room. I think I’ll just throw it in so it can be going while we’re sitting here,” I said.
“Thank you, Jane. You’re an angel. That’s such a good idea.” One she might have had herself. “I wonder why Marion hasn’t come over this morning.” Marion Maple was Winnie’s mother-in-law. “I thought she’d at least invite us over for dinner on Wednesday night when the girls get home.”
“I thought we were going there Thursday for Thanksgiving,” I said.
“We are.”
“That means two big meals in a row.”
“No difference to her. We’re family,” Winnie said. “Besides, she has help.”