“But we haven’t gone in the house yet!” cries Abigail. She means the Farnsworth Homestead, just behind the museum, the former home of the museum’s benefactor, Lucy Farnsworth. For some reason—it’s beyond Louisa, who finds the home on the fusty side—Abigail loves to go into the homestead, insists on it every year, even as her siblings, when they come, race through the museum and ask if they can wait outside in the sunshine, all done with the past. “Please?” begs Abigail. “I’m not even a little bit hungry yet. Can’t we go in?”
“Of course we can,” says Annie, and Louisa sighs and puts a hand on her grumbling stomach. She steps outside to call Barbara, who reports that her father is doing just fine, sitting with his newspaper on the back porch. She texts Matty to ask if everything is going okay, and he replies,Yes.
Is Claire with you, she texts back, and again:Yes.So, with no other excuse at hand, off they go to the homestead.
In the house they are greeted by a female museum employee, tall and stern, with an out-of -season cardigan, a faint mustache, and the kind of short gray hair Louisa hopes never to have but fears sometimes is inevitable. Louisa is familiar with the lore: Lucy Farnsworth, the last owner of the house, lived to the age of ninety-seven, a spinster who wore all black; the neighborhood children thought she was a witch. When she died, her entire estate went to the creation of the art museum.
Abigail takes Annie’s hand and leads her through the first doorway into the sitting room. So many competing prints, the wallpaper, the drapes, the carpet. It makes Louisa dizzy.
Abigail has an endless supply of questions for the museum employee. What used to happen in this room? What about that one? Did children live here? How old were they? Is there any tea in the teapot that sits on the table in the drawing room? No? Why not? And then, one for Louisa: Can they get carpets like this in their house in Brooklyn?
“Definitelynot,” says Louisa. When they renovated their Brooklyn apartment a few years ago they paid through the nose for old carpet to be torn up, revealing parquet that they then replaced with white oak, and somebody will have to carry Louisa out feet first before they do anything else to those floors.
The kitchen is the room on the first floor that holds the most fascination for Abigail—she stands forever in it, staring at the coal stove along one end, the farmhouse sink, the butler’s pantry with the orderly shelves of crockery and glasses. Once finished there, she wants to examine both sets of stairs, one carpeted and one bare. “For the servants,” she says philosophically, studying the back staircase.
They go up the front stairs, treading on the bare carpet where so many others have trod before them. At the top hangs a drawing of horses in a pasture, surrounded by ducks and sheep. Even this Abigail gives her time to, as if she knows the horses personally.
“You know,” says Annie, “once I came up here from Portland at Christmastime, and they held a candlelight tour of this house.”
“Youdid?” Abigail’s eyes are shining. “You really got to do that? By candlelight?”
“I did. They took us through all the rooms, and talked about the family that used to live here. Do you know that of the six children in the family, only three survived to adulthood?”
“Six!” says Louisa. “I’m guessing their mother was not a tenured professor of history.”
“Three died? That’s awful!” says Abigail, but her eyes are still alight and fascinated. “And was it all decorated for Christmas, when you came?”
Annie looks around, lips pursed, trying to remember. “The town was, and the museum was, and they had the lobster trap tree up on Main Street, you know, in the square. But the house looked just like this. Only candlelit. Oh, it was so pretty. At the end we had cocoa over at the museum.”
“Inever knew you did that,” said Louisa, feeling petulant. “You never told me!”
“I guess I don’t tell you everything,” says Annie shrewdly. She winks at Abigail.
“I want to live in a house just like this one day,” Abigail says. “Just exactly like this. Decorated the same way. In fact I think I’d like to live inthishouse.” She is lost in a painting of the Last Supper that hangs in one of the bedrooms, which only makes Louisa think again of the sourdough pullman loaf across the street. If they’ve sold out of it, she’s going to be devastated.
“I need some air,” Louisa tells her mother and her daughter. “I’ll wait for you outside.”
Between the sidewalk and the house stands a white picket fence, outlining the tiniest front yard there ever was. Where on earth did the six children who used to live in this house play? Simpler times, Louisa supposes. They probably played in the street, darting around horse-drawn carriages. Or maybe children didn’t play back then; maybe they were too busy taking care of younger siblings and beating laundry clean against a rock. She doesn’t realize Annie has snuck up beside her until she hears her say, “How much longer are you going to let Steven leave you all alone up here?”
“Let?” says Louisa irritably. “There’s no letting. We have an agreement. I told you. He needs a little more time to get through the work stuff. And I’m not alone.” Louisa’s sunglasses had been perched on the top of her head; she drops them over her eyes, the better to remain inscrutable.
Her mother gives her the look that she used to give her in high school, the look that says I-know-this-bottle-of-vodka-used-to-be-fuller-than-it-is-now. “Well, but. Surely he could make time for a short visit, if he cared to. It’s not like he’s in New York and we’re in Vancouver, or Timbuktu. One can be here in a matter of hours from Brooklyn!”
Louisa is balanced on the knife’s edge between composure andagitation. She can feel herself tipping the wrong way. “It’s not that simple.”
“I don’t see why not. You hop in the car, and you come to see your wife and children.”
“For one thing, Mom, we just have one car. And it’s up here. For another, he’s working day and night. The company needs this other round of funding to keep going forward. They’reso closeto making it, but if they don’t get another round, it could all go pffft.He can’t do it when we’re in his hair. Believe me, I’d rather have him here! But I’m giving him the summer, and when they sort this piece of it out, we’ll go back to sharing the responsibilities the way we used to.” She blinks back unexpected tears, hoping the conversation can end here.
“Well,” says Annie. “That’s not—” She pauses, and Louisa fills in the pause with what she thinks Annie might say.That’s not an agreement your father and I ever would have made.Or,That’s not the way to run a marriage.
But with an unforeseen empathy Annie says, “That’s not an arrangement that’s making things very easy on either of you.” She frowns. “It must be difficult, with both of you working so hard.”
Louisa squints at Annie. Relief floods through her, nearly weakening her. Her mother understands! “Yeah.Yes.It is.” Her beloved Pitcairn, always calling to her, and she not able to answer. Fifty-two days left in Owls Head, which means that she now needs to write five pages per day to stay on track.
The door to the house opens and disgorges two women. Louisa has the sense that she’s falling off the knife’s edge here, and she goes ahead anyway. She wants to honor her mother’s life, her work, yes, but she also wants to question it. “I mean, Mom. Itisdifferent. I agree that it’s different. For you guys, Dad’s career took precedence over everything. You gave and you gave... and, I don’t know.”
“And what?”
