Annie DeWitt - White Nights in Split Town City

In the center of the town was a green with a gazebo where people were married. Around it, pillars of New England gathered in silent communion. The library with its green clock face. The Inn that housed the old tavern. Steeples and bell towers of every denomination. Next to the Congregational church sat a legal office, a tearoom, and a country store. Occasionally, Birdie and I rode our bikes to the store and bought Pop Rocks and Candy Cigarettes with change we collected from the tin under the kitchen phone. Margaret was sitting house for the young, recently widowed lawyer whose office was in the center of town. Margaret said our lawyer was suffering what every man faces after the death of his wife: the prospect of many sleepless nights bookended by two days of solitude. Weekends, for him, were marked by the occasional meal at the pub and the sound of the dog’s footsteps crossing the wooden floor of the kitchen in the morning before begging at the door to be taken out. The lawyer still kept up with his parents whom he often visited. Margaret, his neighbor and sister in solitude, watched his house. Despite the depth of its character, her own studio lacked the yawn and stretch of a true home in which the soul could forget itself between doorways.

As Ray pulled into the drive, Margaret was outside watering the begonias. She’d tied a white scarf around her straw hat to keep it steady as she worked. The brim shielded her face. When she moved her head the shadow muted the sharp cleft of her nose and the harshness of her cheekbones. In one hand she was slung an old watering can. In the other, a metal trowel, which she waved at me as I walked up the drive.

“Have her home by six, Margie,” Ray yelled out the window as he backed into the road.

“Always a doll, Ray,” Margaret boomed back at him. “Save me that bass this time, if you catch one.”

As Ray’s truck disappeared down the road, Margaret turned and started up the walk.

“Let’s put lunch in the fridge and have a swim,” she said. “I like to get all my work out of the way in the mornings when I’m still good for it.”

The kitchen was open and light. The sun streamed in over the large cast iron sink illuminating an island of wood over which hung a collection of cookware.

“I’ll chop,” she said. “You give these a wash.”

The salad was a cobbled together affair. Lettuce chopped into thick wedges, strips of bacon left from breakfast, and a handful of strong smelling cheese. Margaret smoked as she worked, resting her cleaver on the edge of the cutting board every now and again for a drag on her cigarette.

There was a distance to her silence that I appreciated. After the vegetables were chopped, we went for a swim.

The pool was long and in-ground. Strings of buoys were set up in lanes. Margaret removed her hat and her sarong, draping them over the fence post before heading to the deep end where she dipped her toes and then dove. I watched her swim several lengths. The oval of her back moved down the pool at a steady clip. When she reached the end, she curled into a ball and flipped under water. The backs of her heels were the only parts of her which displayed any evidence of exertion. They blushed a slight red as she pushed off the wall.

I put my arms over my head and dove in to the lane next to her. I paddled in a rough breast stroke, an awkward choppy necking which involved a few strong pulls punctuated by the occasional scissor of the legs. I could never stave off the feeling of drowning.

Afterward, we sat in the lawn chairs and dried off. There was a slight breeze. It dried the hairs around my temples. When I ran my fingers through them, I felt a tug where the roots pulled on the skin. Margaret tied her hair back with one of the thick rubber bands from the post office. She kept a stack of these around her wrist.

“Well then,” she said. “Let’s have a nap to revive ourselves before lunch.”

She put her hat over her face as she slept. Every now and again when she let out a low breath, I glimpsed at the chair where she was reclined. Margaret’s body was a solid raft which didn’t slumber out around her. Her breasts were modest. Small canonical hills that rode close to her body. Nothing about her outsized humble geometry.

I grew tired and lay back in my chaise. When the sun hit, my body warmed at even integers. After a while the insides of my lids were lit a bright yellow, which burned when I stared up into them.

I woke to Margaret tapping me on the shoulder.

“I must’ve drifted off,” I said.

“Are you getting enough sleep nights?” she said.

“I’ve never been good at it,” I said.

We lunched on the veranda next to the pool. The meal was punctuated by the occasional passing of the water or the chirp of a chickadee in the distance. Margaret kept a small white mug in her hand on which from time to time she tapped her ring. It was filled with a dark liquid I figured for coffee. She sipped it as we ate.

Afterward we retired to the darkroom, a makeshift studio in the bathroom of the hallway off the mudroom. For Margaret there was nothing secretive in the way images revealed themselves. The beauty of developing lay in the science of the chemicals and the way a body moved in a dark space. I sat on the back of the toilet and manned the wash. “Not such a bad day for an old lady,” Margaret said, holding up a large black and white image of the young lawyer diving into the pool. “What do you think of this one?”

In that moment, I realized Mother had passed countless hours in this space. Here her presence was felt even in absence. It surprised me that Margaret had not mentioned her. A painful awareness was let back into the room. Mother would’ve known just what to say about anything. Here I was holding my tongue.

“I’ve never been much good at diving,” I eventually said.

That night Margaret drove me to the Starlings’. She took the back roads. Her old white Volvo, with its wooden stripe and bullish head, flew down the hill out of town. She drove in the center of the road with no regard for sides or lanes. With the wheel she took a light touch, switching hands often to tap her cigarette. I put my arm out the window when we took the curves.

Ray’s pickup was parked in the drive when we arrived.

The two men were on the back porch.

“You’re forgetting something,” Margaret said as I opened the door of the car. She reached into the backseat and handed me the dusty black body of the old point and shoot we’d practiced with that afternoon.

“Here,” she said. “Next time, we’ll develop some of yours.”

There was something definite about the weight of the machine in my hands. I slipped the camera strap over my head, righting its body on my chest.

“Sure,” I said.

Father and Ray were on the deck as I came up the stairs. Their backs to me, the two men stood side by side looking out over the yard. Ray was teaching Father how to shoot. “Loosen your grip and let your wrist do the work,” Ray said.

I paused as Father released a round over the pool and into the clearing. A metallic smell hung in the air. Ruth emerged from the kitchen with a tray of rock glasses and a bottle of Scotch. Father and Ray startled at the sound of the screen behind her.

“Where’s all your fish?” I said.

Father turned to look at me. I glimpsed a light in his eyes, a reflection perhaps from Ruth’s lampshade in the window. As he bent down, it flickered and went out. I reached up to him. He picked me up in his arms and pulled me to his chest.

“Let’s get you home,” he said. “I bet that sister of yours is knee-deep in trouble.”

My legs knocked against the Starlings’ railing as Father carried me down the stairs to the truck. I was too big already for carrying.