buns, those long black cotton dresses, Rory could easily picture them in Rome, Madrid, Istanbul, gossips meeting in a Mediterranean village market square, or sitting together on a back stoop, heads leaning together. He couldn’t tell them apart, but he didn’t think they were twins. For all he knew, they might not even be sisters. No one had ever told him their surnames.
They had two passions: gardening and watercolors. They began their gardening before the last frost had left the ground, filling their windowsills with trays of small sprouting plants. Whenever Rory tried to help out, they would let him turn the soil with a spade, weed, trim, and the like, then they’d do it all over again to their own satisfaction. Finally he took the hint and left them to their devices. After the first snowfall, they were still harvesting kale and a few herbs.
The rest of the time they would paint and they could keep to it all day, in wicker chairs under the elm in summer, by the worktable in their apartment in the winter, the cast-iron stove behind them casting off a cozy heat. Sometimes they worked on the same piece, other times each chose her own subject.
Their work was highly detailed, with the same technical proficiency of a botany textbook. Rory had no idea what became of the paintings when they were done. He’d been inside their apartment dozens of times, to fix a faucet, clean the stovepipe, gout the bathroom walls, but had never seen anything of the stacks of watercolor paper with the completed paintings on them—they were not on the walls, certainly—and no one ever seemed to come to take them away. Where could they all go? Sometimes, he wondered if he only imagined them painting, the long hours filled with the quiet murmur of their voices, heads bent over the easels—the way he was sure he only imagined he could hear Brandon’s sax when there was no instrument at hand.
The house lent itself to flights of the imagination. “There’s no such thing as fiction,” Annie told him once. “If you can imagine something, then it’s happened.” So he wondered, but he didn’t worry. They were characters, all of them. Peculiar, certainly, more so than most one would meet in the routine of day-to-day living, but there was nothing truly inexplicable about any of them.
He couldn’t say the same thing about Maida and Zia, the neighborhood tomboys who claimed to live in the branches of the old elm tree behind the house.
2.
Kerry Madan tramped down Stanton Street, the leather soles of her boots scuffling on the pavement, her knapsack heavy on her back, the valise in her hand heavier still. It was quieter here, away from the traffic on Lee Street, but the quiet made her uneasy. There was something claustrophobic about walking under this long row of enormous oaks. The trees were too big, their dense canopy almost completely blocking the sky. They cast deep shadows against the tall houses and the shrubbery collected against their porches and brick walls, throwing off her sense of time. It no longer felt like the tail end of the day. It was too much like late evening now, a time when anyone could be out and about, watching her, waiting in the shadows for her to step too close. Anyone, or anything.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been outside like this—at night, by herself. Her anxiety took her past the usual dangers of a big city until her imagination went into high gear and she was inventing other threats, nameless things, creatures with hungry eyes and too many teeth. It didn’t feel safe here, not even close. In the few moments she’d been walking under the oaks she’d gone from feeling brave and free to wondering if it hadn’t been a huge mistake to so completely cut her ties with the past.
Her pace faltered. She’d given up checking the numbers of the houses, more concerned now with what might be hiding in the bunched lilacs and cedars that crowded against the porches than finding number
They had two passions: gardening and watercolors. They began their gardening before the last frost had left the ground, filling their windowsills with trays of small sprouting plants. Whenever Rory tried to help out, they would let him turn the soil with a spade, weed, trim, and the like, then they’d do it all over again to their own satisfaction. Finally he took the hint and left them to their devices. After the first snowfall, they were still harvesting kale and a few herbs.
The rest of the time they would paint and they could keep to it all day, in wicker chairs under the elm in summer, by the worktable in their apartment in the winter, the cast-iron stove behind them casting off a cozy heat. Sometimes they worked on the same piece, other times each chose her own subject.
Their work was highly detailed, with the same technical proficiency of a botany textbook. Rory had no idea what became of the paintings when they were done. He’d been inside their apartment dozens of times, to fix a faucet, clean the stovepipe, gout the bathroom walls, but had never seen anything of the stacks of watercolor paper with the completed paintings on them—they were not on the walls, certainly—and no one ever seemed to come to take them away. Where could they all go? Sometimes, he wondered if he only imagined them painting, the long hours filled with the quiet murmur of their voices, heads bent over the easels—the way he was sure he only imagined he could hear Brandon’s sax when there was no instrument at hand.
The house lent itself to flights of the imagination. “There’s no such thing as fiction,” Annie told him once. “If you can imagine something, then it’s happened.” So he wondered, but he didn’t worry. They were characters, all of them. Peculiar, certainly, more so than most one would meet in the routine of day-to-day living, but there was nothing truly inexplicable about any of them.
He couldn’t say the same thing about Maida and Zia, the neighborhood tomboys who claimed to live in the branches of the old elm tree behind the house.
2.
Kerry Madan tramped down Stanton Street, the leather soles of her boots scuffling on the pavement, her knapsack heavy on her back, the valise in her hand heavier still. It was quieter here, away from the traffic on Lee Street, but the quiet made her uneasy. There was something claustrophobic about walking under this long row of enormous oaks. The trees were too big, their dense canopy almost completely blocking the sky. They cast deep shadows against the tall houses and the shrubbery collected against their porches and brick walls, throwing off her sense of time. It no longer felt like the tail end of the day. It was too much like late evening now, a time when anyone could be out and about, watching her, waiting in the shadows for her to step too close. Anyone, or anything.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been outside like this—at night, by herself. Her anxiety took her past the usual dangers of a big city until her imagination went into high gear and she was inventing other threats, nameless things, creatures with hungry eyes and too many teeth. It didn’t feel safe here, not even close. In the few moments she’d been walking under the oaks she’d gone from feeling brave and free to wondering if it hadn’t been a huge mistake to so completely cut her ties with the past.
Her pace faltered. She’d given up checking the numbers of the houses, more concerned now with what might be hiding in the bunched lilacs and cedars that crowded against the porches than finding number
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