The man jumps as if I’ve sprung out from behind a bush wearing a clown mask. I squawk, leaping back, and my elbow collides with the field tomatoes. I lose my grip on the cucumber as the tomatoes fall to the floor.Plop, plop, plop.I kneel, cleaning up my mess, and he crouches beside me to help. I catch a glimpse of big hands and bronzed forearms.
“Thank you,” I say, glancing up to find myself confronted by a pair of pale green eyes and one of the most remarkable faces I’ve ever seen.
And that’s saying something. I come across a lot of exceptional faces in my line of work—so many that I’ve become indifferent. It’s not that I don’t appreciate beauty. I do. But classic good looks don’t excite me. I’m far more interested in the features we don’t typically see on the screen and in advertising campaigns.
Butthisface.
I feel this face in my body. In the twitch of my hands, which desperately want a camera between them. Ineedto capture this face.
There’s the odd color of his eyes. The way his eyebrows are tapered slashes across his forehead, a touch darker than the hair on his head. His lashes are fringes of feathered gold. He has a mouth made for kissing; his lips are full and pink and pouty. His jaw is squared off, befitting someone who headlines a superhero franchise and bench-presses small cars for sport.
It’s not just that he’s handsome—it’s that nothing about him is too perfect. His nose is slightly crooked, as if it’s been broken. Fine lines fan out from the corners of his eyes. He’s sporting a day’s worth of tawny stubble, like maybe he didn’t get enough sleep last night. I think of twined limbs glowing in the moonlight. He looks like sex.
He’s doing a similar inspection of me, a corner of his grin slowly lifting. My mouth has gone dry, my skin stovetop-hot, and I can’t seem to pull my eyes from his. I chew on my lip. Maybe I could ask to photograph him…
But then he smiles, and the gods of summer must be smiling, too, because a matching set of dimples appears in his cheeks, startlingly boyish and sweet.
It slips past my lips before I can stop it: “Whoa.”
His eyebrows lift.
I scurry to my feet, dropping the bruised tomatoes in my cart while more words continue to tumble from my mouth. They might bethank youandtomatoesandbye. Before he can say anything, I steer my cart toward the next aisle with the speed of a NASCAR driver, cucumber abandoned, just as awkward as I was at seventeen.
8
As Nan watches me unbox the sewing machine I bought at the hardware store, I tell her about my horrifying run-in by the cucumbers. The Nan I know would have tears of mirth falling from her eyes. But she only shakes her head, the barest hint of amusement on her lips.
“Should we go into town later and hunt for fabric?” I ask, hoping to perk her up, but she turns me down.
“Tomorrow. I’m still feeling a little slow today. I think I’ll take a nap after lunch.”
“You’re going to have to be a patient teacher. I haven’t sewn since high school.”
I loved using Nan’s Singer. There was one pattern I made over and over, a 1980s Laura Ashley dress I found in Nan’s stockpile, with overall-like straps, roomy square pockets, and very little shape. I wore it with blouses and plaid shirts underneath. I thought it looked romantic. But by the time I entered my senior year of high school, I’d become aware of how the DIY dresses made me stand out. I overheard a classmate calling me a freak and switched to jeans and T-shirts the following day. I still dress to go unnoticed.
“You’ll pick it right back up,” Nan says. “It’s like riding a bicycle.”
I cut her a look, and she wrinkles her nose. I was never any good at riding bicycles.
“Well?” I stand up, evaluating the makeshift workstation I’ve set up on a card table by the windows.
“That’ll do,” Nan says. “You know, Joyce always thought it looked like too much of a hunt camp in here.” She gestures to the paper cutouts of fish that hang over the windows, the year and species of the catch written in lead pencil.Lake trout, ’84. Bass, ’03. Pike, ’91.
“I think they’re kind of cool.” Cottage history, as told by fishing trips.
“I don’t mind them, either.” She points to one. “I caught that pickerel. Joyce wanted to paint the walls white, brighten everything up, but John wouldn’t hear of covering up the wood.”
Andeverythingis wood. Floors, walls, ceilings, kitchen cupboards, furniture. A rainbow of brown. The only touches of femininity are the Harlequins and the floral armchair. Nan sees me eyeing it.
“That was Joyce’s spot.”
“Maybe we do florals,” I say, thinking aloud. “Make it more like Joyce.”
Her eyes flicker. “Sounds like a plan.”
When Nan lies down on the screened porch sofa, I change into my bathing suit and caftan and grab a wide-brimmed straw hat. I burn like birch bark, going from pale and freckled to red and freckled, with no stop at tan in between. I pack a canvas tote with sunscreen, a snack, my notebook, and my old Pentax.
In my final year of university, a group of students organized an exhibition of our work in an empty storefront in the West End. We thought we had talent. Knew it, really. My best friend, Oz, swiped our prof’s overstuffed Rolodex—an antiquated object even then, its position on his desk an obvious brag—andsent an email to every gallerist, buyer, collector, and journalist in the thing. I sold my first piece, a print ofOne Golden Summer, to an art buyer for one of the big banks whose CEO came from generations of cottagers. I spent the hundred dollars on a vintage Pentax K1000 after Oz talked the seller down by twenty-five bucks.
