A Peculiar Grace (39 page)

They were sitting in the garden. The slab of granite bench had been covered with a cloth and held what remained of a salad, the gnawed cobs of new corn, a platter with the carcasses of a pair of roasted chickens, plates stacked with dirty silverware and the remains of a roll of paper towels, pressed into service as napkins. Beth and Mary Margaret were drinking gin and tonics whose consumption they seemed to coordinate so both repaired together to the house to freshen their drinks. Hewitt strongly suspected this was for Beth’s sake, a chance to regain her balance. He was touched by what he’d never seen before, this fragility in his sister. Meredith and he were drinking red wine, she only seventeen but not only handling it well but aware of what
she was drinking, prewar St. Julian. Selected intentionally when she asked for wine earlier.

“Red or white?” he’d asked, as if it didn’t matter to him.

“Oh, red. Thanks.”

Off he’d gone to the cellar.

Now out in the warm evening all of them together, Jessica quiet but not separate, sitting at one end of the slab in one of the chairs they’d gathered—Meredith at the other end with her mother and grandmother along one side, leaving Hewitt a side all to himself, which he liked because he could move his chair back and look easily from one to another. Although he was mostly engaged with Meredith and this not unseemly, since she was, at least ostensibly, the purpose of this trip.

Jessica was drinking a slow single gin and tonic. She had a jar of spring water on the table also. Her feet tucked up in her chair so she was sitting cross-legged.

And Meredith, in white shorts and a lemon T-shirt, was stretched, almost slouched in her chair, her long legs and arms draped, swept down, spread along the ground. Her feet also bare. She had thick auburn hair, parted on one side but high over her face and heavy on to her shoulders. She was almost six feet tall, not heavy but strongly muscled, the sort of girl who ran track or swam or played soccer. Another girl of that age and size might’ve been self-conscious but Meredith struck Hewitt as someone who never once had looked in a mirror and wished herself other than what she was. Her face was strong and keen, eyes large and bright.

She was radiant and Hewitt listened to her and watched his sister and understood Beth no longer quite comprehended her daughter, as if a stranger had grown out of the winsome but anxious little girl he remembered.

Meredith was a rising high school senior and she and her mother and grandmother were on a whirlwind driving tour of half a dozen colleges in the Northeast.

Meredith explained, holding her wineglass by the stem and resting the base on her thigh where a red semicircle formed on her brown skin. “Daddy says it’s crazy of me when I can go to Chapel Hill or any of the UNC schools for in-state tuition and get as fine an education as anywhere at an nth of the cost but I’ve spent my entire life in North Carolina. I want to live somewhere else for a while. To see another part of the country.”

Beth said, “Merry, honey, now that’s not true. You went to Grand Cayman last spring with your girlfriends and we all traveled through France and Italy and spent that month in Ireland.”

“I had fun in the Caribbean but Mother I was not exactly immersed in the local culture. And France and Italy were great but Daddy went after it like it was a job and to this day I can’t tell you where we went in what order. At least until I dropped his video camera on the Spanish Steps which you two never did believe was an accident but at least he slowed down a little bit. Except then all he could see were those cute boys everywhere and he glued himself on to me like I was about to be abducted.” She turned to Hewitt and said, “At that point I believe I would have enjoyed an abduction, you know, a short one. What this is all about is I grew up in the South, around my daddy’s family—did you ever meet him?”

“Why, of course he did,” Beth said.

“It’s true.” Hewitt nodded. “I danced at your parents’ wedding.”

“Don’t start,” said Beth.

Mary Margaret said, “Wasn’t that girl a cousin of Evan’s?”

Hewitt said, “What girl?”

Beth said, “See? Let’s not start.”

Hewitt said, “Yes, Meredith, of course I’ve met your father.”

“That’s a story I’d like to hear sometime.” She glanced at her mother and grandmother and back to Hewitt. “Mom never pretended to miss Vermont but there’s a big part of my history here. This place right here.” She waved one long arm in a languorous motion over her head. “Right?” she said to Hewitt.

He said, “It’s a fact. I can’t say if it’s cause for excitement or not but there’s been Pearces on this big chunk of mountain for a couple hundred years. And before that I guess near another hundred and fifty years down there in Massachusetts or Rhode Island or both. Before it got too crowded.”

When she just looked at him, he said, “That’s kind of a joke. But I guess you’d have to live here to get it.”

She nodded, as if she understood that. Leaned to the table and took up the bottle of wine and portioned it out to empty it. Hewitt saw she poured herself a bit more than himself and he liked her even more.

She said, “It’s a lot of things, making me want to come to school up here.” She leaned forward in her chair toward Hewitt, her wineglass held out between them. She said, “I’d like to ski. I’d like to learn what winter’s like. Not a few inches of slushy snow but real winter. I’d like to see that, live in it.”

He wanted to ask what she planned for her life, what her dreams were. Because he knew the hard strong way, at her age nothing would ever be as true again in her life. But this was the sort of question idiot adults asked. So he kept quiet. Which was not a problem. She was happy to talk to him. He was thrilled, vibrant with her presence, attentive and feeling suddenly very adult as he knew his job was to let her roll and keep his own senses a step ahead of her as best he could. At the same time he was registering the three other women all watching this take place. Fuck them, he thought. I’m her uncle. If she did end up in New England for a few years it would be a grand thing and they would get to know each other.

“And I want to know about my grandfather.” She came without effort upright in her chair and was leaning forward close to Hewitt. She said, “Did you know there’s a painting of his in the North Carolina Museum of Art?”

“I think I knew that,” Hewitt lied. He’d let that sort of information come and go—it had nothing to do with the man. It wasn’t
like he was going to drive around the country stalking his father’s paintings.

“But you have the book?”

And he knew she was not talking about old exhibition catalogues. Something twinged, a memory of a letter requesting his recollections or any relevant papers. But it had been years ago, not the best of times for such a thing. He remembered getting a bound manuscript in the mail but had read only the title, something professorial and mildly ridiculous.
Thomas Pearce, the Folk Figure: Emotion and Abstraction in Midcentury Art
.

“You know, I don’t,” he said. “I sort of retreated from all that. I mean, I’m glad it’s out there. And you should be proud, very proud of your grandfather,” and did not allow his eyes to slip toward his sister but kept them focused on her daughter. Which was not that hard because she was so close he could smell the sour food and wine breath of her. He said, “Because he was an artist. A very good one. With the soul and spirit of greatness. He was a fine man and had terrible things happen in his life but he continued to open himself over and over. Which is one hell of a thing for a human being to do.”

Beth said, “Hewitt, what’re you talking about?”

Hewitt stood. He said, “Nothing. Nothing, Beth. It’s heading toward dusk and dry’s it’s been the mosquitoes are finally out. So I say we pick up and move inside.”

Mary Margaret and Jessica were quickly up. Jessica, rising, slapped the back of her neck. Hewitt loved her for that. Beth hesitated, her eyes hard on him and her lower lip clamped over her upper lip. Then she slowly came up. Standing she looked at her brother and then her daughter. Finally she said, “It’s been a long day. Let’s get cleaned up and start thinking about bed. We have a ten a.m. meeting at Middlebury tomorrow. It would be a very bad idea for you to be hung over for that.” And took the stack of bowls and platters and stalked off
through the dusk toward the house, her footing a little unsure, her gait rocking and each step forward gained as if to test the ground before she moved ahead. Then Mary Margaret caught up with her and passed her and so led the way, Jessica trailing with most of the rest of the supper debris.

Meredith stood. She was close to Hewitt. They were alone but knew they had to go on to the house. She said, “It freaks my mother out when I ask about Grandfather Pearce.”

Hewitt raised his wineglass and drained it. He said, “He was always kind to her. In his way. I think she just wanted something else, some idea she had about normal life. Which did not include a father locked up most of the day and night making paintings that not many folks around here understood. She never got past that, I think. He was a good man but she’s six years older than me—in ways she knew a man different than the one I did.”

“Gram’s told me some about him.”

“It’s tricky. She doesn’t want to come between you and your mom.”

“Gram’s complicated.”

“That’s the truth.”

There was a pause. The house was lighting up. Window by window. Then Meredith said, “Uncle Hewitt?”

“Please,” he said. “No uncle. Hewitt’s enough. The rest makes me feel like an old man.”

“Okay.” She cleared her throat. “Hewitt. That girl. Who is she really?”

“I told you. The daughter of an old friend—”

She cut him off. “Now you’re lying to me.”

He looked at her in the gathering dusk. Seventeen years old. He said, “You’re right and I apologize but there’s good reason for it. I’ll tell you all about her when the time’s right.”

“She your girlfriend?”

“Hell, yes,” Hewitt said. “She’s my friend. And I’m hers. And I would say it’s fair to pronounce we love one another. But that’s it.”

She touched his arm and said, “Do you think I’m stupid? I saw how she watched you.”

He was quiet. Then he said, “Meredith. It’s been a long day. And I’m glad you’re here.”

They were halfway through the dark windowlight-splotched gardens when she pulled up short and said, “I guess we’ll see. Won’t we?”

I
N THE KITCHEN
his mother was at the sink, washing dishes. She turned and hugged her granddaughter and told her good night. The small old woman like an alert chipmunk tugging hard once at the looming back of the younger woman. Tender words and cheek kisses and Meredith went down the hall and upstairs.

Hewitt watched his mother working in the house that had been hers for not only a long time but undoubtedly the peak of life. Where every day brought uncertainty nagging like a hen pecking at the snow on your boots—if a painting might sell, if the children were healthy, if she could keep them that way, all of them. Where—despite her protestations in favor of the retired golfing life and the friends like herself who had survived that storm of middle life—she had lived her life.

The Irish girl.

She turned from the sink, well aware he was there. Without hesitation she took her old seat at the table and Hewitt sat across from her.

“Hewitt, you look good.”

“I’m all right. You seem well.”

She waved her hand. “I’m getting to be an old woman. No, I don’t complain but there it is.”

“Still playing golf?”

“Of course. I still won’t use those damn carts though. When that day comes I’ll quit the game. I’ve had to give up the tennis.”

“That’s too bad.”

She shrugged. “And just when I was getting good at it.” She paused. “But Hewitt, I’m relieved. When I was up two years ago you seemed yourself again but there was still something lonesome about you. Although I’ll tell you now—after that trip was the first time since you were a teenager that I started sleeping through the night without worrying about you.”

“Oh Mother, I was fine.”

“So you say. I don’t believe it and neither do you but what’s past is past. You seem better now. And that’s what counts, isn’t it?”

“You know,” he said. “You do seem tired.”

“Well, I’d hope. After more than a week in the car with those two.”

He studied her. She had a faint smile but was serious in her own way, love without regret and honest assessment. The same woman as always. He said, “So why’d you come? The peacemaker?”

“I suppose. I wanted to see you. And I wanted to make this trip with Meredith, see it fresh again if you’ll allow me a fancy.”

“She’s a humdinger. Reminds me of Dad.”

“Yes. She does me too. I’m doing my best to keep my nose out of it but my heart hopes she comes to school up here.”

“To learn the place, as she said?”

Mary Margaret Pearce sighed. Then she said, “Well, yes. And she’s too young to understand but she’s the only Pearce blood a generation down. And you know how your father felt about this place.”

“Well. I plan to stay right here until I die. But if she did come north and fell in love with it here there’s always room to build another house. Like you say, she’s young. It could be ten or fifteen years before she sorts all that out. But, if it’s assurance you want, even if the unlikely miracle strikes and there’s a wife and half a dozen screaming monkeys running around here, a piece of this would always be hers.”

They were quiet a bit. Enough just being across the table from one another. Then, in a quiet voice Hewitt said, “You never told Beth about Dad, have you? I mean the history—”

“I know well enough what you mean.”

He tipped his head. “Why not?”

Mary Margaret was gravely direct. “It’s complicated, Hewitt. I know how such things are viewed today and certainly don’t agree with all of it. But the history—the history of those two was always difficult—the hardest parts before she’d even recall. When I realized I was pregnant I was terrified. I’d no doubt of his love for me. But we’d been together three years and the man couldn’t even bear to be in a room with babies.