Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty

Начало книги

SUMMER FATTENED EVERYBODY UP. The family buttered without reserve; pie seemed to be everywhere. They awoke and slept and awoke in the summerhouse on the island, ate all their meals on the porch while the sun moved across their sky. They looked out at the saltwater cove and watched the sailboats skim and tack across the blue towards the windward beach, littered with the outgrown shells of horseshoe crabs.

Picture the five of them, looking like a family. Fern was happy because they were together all the time. She baked. Not well, but muffins were muffins and they never went uneaten. Edgar wore the clothes he kept at the Vineyard house, which were stiff with salt and faded from sun. At dawn and dusk and six times between he rolled his pants up and stood at the surfline, his feet sinking a little deeper with each wave. Fern wore a kerchief and dug in the garden, trying to make the cucumbers come up. Cricket was always in a sundress with a rainbow on it, the twins in shorts and sailor shirts embroidered with the name of their grandparents’ boat. Fern was a mother and a wife and herself all at once. Edgar rumpled his children’s hair, kissed his wife on the temple, mended the sails and painted the hulls, sailed out in the Sound and bobbed there, pretending the shoreline away.

Читать дальше →