studying the floorboards and Stephen the ceiling, he said, “I would take you myself, but it wouldn’t look good. Teddy’s my friend. I’m the one who called him. He came here to get you.”
All the way home, through the falling snow and the purple-orange glow of the streetlights, while the world rattled around her, jarred by each clumsy step she took in her too-big borrowed boots, Livia convinced herself that Stephen would e-mail the next day to check on her, and something would begin, growing out of the snow like a crocus.
There were e-mails the next day, but none from him.
LIVIA LEFT HER BASKET of washed lettuce on the deck and went into the kitchen. “Dad?” she called. “What do you want me to do with the lettuce?”
Her father approached from his study carrying a thick book bound in blue canvas. “ BIRDS ” was stamped in silver on the spine. “I’ve solved our little mystery,” he said. “Listen.” He flipped to a page he had been marking with his finger and read, “Herons are a large family of wading birds including egrets and bitterns. Egrets are any of several herons, tending to have white or buff plumage.” He closed the book. “That settles it. We were both right.”
“That book’s out of date, and that definition is vague, anyway,” she said.
“But egrets are always herons, and white herons are egrets.”
“But there are white herons that aren’t egrets, too. I don’t know—I don’t remember exactly. I’d have to look it up.”
“I already looked it up.”
“That book is old, Dad.”
“Don’t get upset.”
“I’m not upset! I just want to be accurate.”
He looked at her steadily over his glasses as though trying to determine whether she were a heron or an egret. “Me, too,” he said.
Five · The White Stone House
D ominique found she was suffering from the classic dual anxieties of the well-meaning guest: she wished to avoid being asked to help with the cooking (Winn by himself was already too many cooks in the kitchen), but she did not want to appear lazy or parasitical. Escape was the only solution, and so she took a bike and struck off. She rode quickly, standing on the pedals, overtaking some local kids in basketball jerseys on low-riding BMXs who hooted at her as she passed, then a solitary guy in paint-spattered pants, riding slowly and slugging from a brown paper bag, and then a large family of day-trippers in a single-file line of descending size, Papa Bear to Baby Bear on basketed rental Schwinns. Ahead, she glimpsed a cyclist with churning, spiderlike legs in black spandex. His torso was a blaze of yellow. “ Ah, oui ?” Dominique said. “Le maillot jaune?” She lowered her head and bore down, imagining spectators lining the bike path, snowcapped Alps above, a peloton of BMX kids behind her riding serpentines and pushing one another. The rickety ten-speed she had chosen from the Van Meter bicycle jumble jerked side to side as she pumped. She caught him more easily than she had expected, the silver teardrop of his helmet growing rapidly larger until she drew alongside, disappointed. She dallied a little before passing, hoping he would turn to look at her, but he kept his sunglasses fixed on the path’s vanishing point.
The lighthouse appeared atop a distant bluff, poking up like a solitary birthday candle. In the day, its light seemed feeble and superfluous,a recurring white spark dwarfed and muted by the sun, but Dominique liked the tower’s stalwart shape and jaunty striped paint job. She would ride to it, she decided. She rode a bicycle almost every day at home in Brussels, to and from the restaurant, but she was always having to dodge and dart through fierce swarms of tiny European cars, racing for survival and not pleasure. But this—the air full of salt and bayberry, the sky as iridescent and capacious as the inner membrane of an infinite airship, the slow loosening of her muscles—this was something gorgeous. She needed speed, space, the
All the way home, through the falling snow and the purple-orange glow of the streetlights, while the world rattled around her, jarred by each clumsy step she took in her too-big borrowed boots, Livia convinced herself that Stephen would e-mail the next day to check on her, and something would begin, growing out of the snow like a crocus.
There were e-mails the next day, but none from him.
LIVIA LEFT HER BASKET of washed lettuce on the deck and went into the kitchen. “Dad?” she called. “What do you want me to do with the lettuce?”
Her father approached from his study carrying a thick book bound in blue canvas. “ BIRDS ” was stamped in silver on the spine. “I’ve solved our little mystery,” he said. “Listen.” He flipped to a page he had been marking with his finger and read, “Herons are a large family of wading birds including egrets and bitterns. Egrets are any of several herons, tending to have white or buff plumage.” He closed the book. “That settles it. We were both right.”
“That book’s out of date, and that definition is vague, anyway,” she said.
“But egrets are always herons, and white herons are egrets.”
“But there are white herons that aren’t egrets, too. I don’t know—I don’t remember exactly. I’d have to look it up.”
“I already looked it up.”
“That book is old, Dad.”
“Don’t get upset.”
“I’m not upset! I just want to be accurate.”
He looked at her steadily over his glasses as though trying to determine whether she were a heron or an egret. “Me, too,” he said.
Five · The White Stone House
D ominique found she was suffering from the classic dual anxieties of the well-meaning guest: she wished to avoid being asked to help with the cooking (Winn by himself was already too many cooks in the kitchen), but she did not want to appear lazy or parasitical. Escape was the only solution, and so she took a bike and struck off. She rode quickly, standing on the pedals, overtaking some local kids in basketball jerseys on low-riding BMXs who hooted at her as she passed, then a solitary guy in paint-spattered pants, riding slowly and slugging from a brown paper bag, and then a large family of day-trippers in a single-file line of descending size, Papa Bear to Baby Bear on basketed rental Schwinns. Ahead, she glimpsed a cyclist with churning, spiderlike legs in black spandex. His torso was a blaze of yellow. “ Ah, oui ?” Dominique said. “Le maillot jaune?” She lowered her head and bore down, imagining spectators lining the bike path, snowcapped Alps above, a peloton of BMX kids behind her riding serpentines and pushing one another. The rickety ten-speed she had chosen from the Van Meter bicycle jumble jerked side to side as she pumped. She caught him more easily than she had expected, the silver teardrop of his helmet growing rapidly larger until she drew alongside, disappointed. She dallied a little before passing, hoping he would turn to look at her, but he kept his sunglasses fixed on the path’s vanishing point.
The lighthouse appeared atop a distant bluff, poking up like a solitary birthday candle. In the day, its light seemed feeble and superfluous,a recurring white spark dwarfed and muted by the sun, but Dominique liked the tower’s stalwart shape and jaunty striped paint job. She would ride to it, she decided. She rode a bicycle almost every day at home in Brussels, to and from the restaurant, but she was always having to dodge and dart through fierce swarms of tiny European cars, racing for survival and not pleasure. But this—the air full of salt and bayberry, the sky as iridescent and capacious as the inner membrane of an infinite airship, the slow loosening of her muscles—this was something gorgeous. She needed speed, space, the
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