The Golden Hour Read online

  “Have you gone over there yet?” she asked.

  “You mean and knocked or something?”

  “Yeah.”

  She had a red bandana on her hair. We must look like Lucy and Ethel, I thought. Wasn’t there an episode like this?

  “Have you seen that place?” I asked, pulling the hot sweet potatoes from the oven, where they had been roasting for over an hour. The room smelled sweet. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were armed guards.”

  “Maybe it’s a celebrity,” she said, her eyes wide. “Or like a famous author or something. We should go. We should totally go.”

  Pilar has always been the brave one, the one with the balls. In college she was the one who initiated the more daring adventures. And Gus and I had always gone happily along for the ride. When she was experimenting with performance art, I was there for her when she needed a body. Someone to sit still as a stone in the middle of a quiet gallery, the one she could dress up or splatter with paint. An empty canvas. But she was the color, the vibrancy. Not much had changed over the years.

  “Here,” she said, pulling the apple pie that had been cooling on the counter into her flour-dusted arms. “We’ll just bring this over. Introduce ourselves.”

  I rolled my eyes even as I knew I had no choice in the matter.

  “What if it’s some sort of recluse, somebody who just wants to be left alone?”

  “Then he shouldn’t come to the door.”

  “What if it’s some crazy lunatic with a shotgun?” I said.

  She shrugged again. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

  And she was right. Anything was possible. I was the kind of person who stood looking at closed doors. Pilar was the one who would pick the lock, or just simply knock it down.

  * * *

  We hoped the sight of Avery, this doe-eyed child, might be enough to make us seem harmless. (As if two women in aprons and kerchiefs might somehow be threatening.)

  “Is that a path?” she asked, motioning to the dark entrance to the woods separating the two properties.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head.

  Pilar didn’t know the details of what happened to me, but she knew enough. She nodded at the realization and gestured to the rocky cliff. “Let’s go this way instead?”

  “Yeah,” I said, grateful. “There’s sea glass on the beach.”

  Avery led the way down the rocky cliff, more sure-footed now, knowing the best places to jump and climb and land. At the bottom, as if the sea had delivered them especially for us, were literally hundreds of bits of sea glass. We set the pie down and filled our pockets.

  When we’d raked the enormous swath of sand for cobalt and emerald bits, Pilar grabbed the pie and made for the stairs that led up to the house.

  The front yard was clearly taken care of, though I hadn’t yet heard any evidence of this, no lawnmowers or leaf blowers. This was the kind of front yard upon which you’d expect handsome prep school boys to play football, little blond girls in white dresses to run barefoot. We slowly walked up the pathway. I looked at Pilar to see if she was nervous, but she was smiling like some sort of 1950s housewife with flour in her hair and a steaming pie in her arms. Avery skipped behind, and I wondered if I should have changed her into something less crazy. Since we’d gotten here, since she wasn’t in school, I’d been letting her dress herself. Today she had on red, white, and blue striped tights and a tattered nightgown. White cowboy boots and a purple pair of mittens.

  There were two giant pots of orange and yellow mums on either side of the door and a harvesty-looking wreath made of silk leaves hanging on the enormous front door.

  I didn’t see any cars, but I also didn’t see any sort of driveway. I suppose it was around the back. Or, perhaps, underground. I’d read when Bill Gates designed his mansion in Washington, he’d planned an underground parking garage for ten cars.

  Pilar took the broad porch steps a couple at a time and without hesitation rang the doorbell. When no one answered, she moved toward the closest window and pressed her face against the glass, trying to peer in. Avery followed, mimicking her, and my heart started to race.

  “Guys,” I reprimanded, just as the door swung open.

  The man at the door looked to be about sixty. Tall and fit, wearing soft khaki pants and a crisp white button-down shirt rolled up at the sleeves. I noted his expensive leather boat shoes, worn without socks despite the chill. He had a full head of silver hair, which was long enough to touch that starched collar. Dark-rimmed glasses.

  Distinguished is the word most people would use. Monied would be my word of choice. As if money were something that could happen to you.

  “Hi!” Pilar said, as effervescent as a shaken soda.

  “Hi!” Avery echoed.

  The man smiled dimly.

  “We’re your new neighbors,” Pilar said. “I bought the house next door. My name is Pilar. This is Wyn. And this,” she said, as if she were presenting a gift, “is Avery.”

  “Oh,” the man said. “Next door?”

  “Yes,” Pilar said. “The one on the other side of those trees.”

  The man nodded. What an odd man, I thought.

  “We brought you a pie,” I said dumbly. Silences like this always made me uncomfortable.

  Pilar thrust the pie toward him, and he took it awkwardly.

  “Who’s there?” a voice said behind him, and he grimaced a little.

  A woman came to his side. She too smelled of money. Of private school and legacies. Blond hair perfectly coiffed. A long, elegant neck that held the head upon it with confidence, arrogance. She wore an outfit not so different from the man’s, a silky white button-down blouse and a knee-length khaki skirt. They looked like they belonged in a catalog.

  “Who is it?” she said, but she wasn’t asking him, rather us. Demanding for us to make ourselves known.

  “They bought the house next door,” he said, his voice all grit and grumble.

  The woman’s eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly, perhaps a Botox-induced restraint.

  “Whatever for?” she asked.

  “I’m an artist,” Pilar said, her smile wide. “I plan to come here to work. Wyn is a painter too.”

  “We brought pie,” I said dumbly. “For Thanksgiving tomorrow.” I didn’t know what was so disconcerting to me about this couple. I might have fared better facing a loaded shotgun.

  “That place has been vacant for thirty years,” the woman said, almost defensively.

  “Thirty-five,” Pilar corrected. “Do you happen to know who lived there? Have you been here that long?”

  “Thank you for the pie,” the man said then. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “It looks delicious.”

  The woman uncrossed her thin arms, and her diamond tennis bracelet slipped down her arm to her bony wrist. “There are rats over there. I hope you plan to have an exterminator come in,” the woman said, and, with that, shut the door in our faces.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” Pilar said to the closed door. And as we walked back down the steps, she muttered, “Assholes.”

  “Assholes, assholes, assholes,” Avery said, skipping down the stairs, and I didn’t bother to correct her.

  * * *

  On Thanksgiving morning, I woke up in a cold sweat, trembling. Breathless. Every bone in my body felt rattled, but I couldn’t hold onto the dream long enough to understand why. I disentangled myself from the twisted sheets and took several deep breaths, trying to regain my footing in this world, having been shaken to the core in my dream one.

  But just as my nerves started to settle, Pilar’s phone rang, the old-fashioned ringtone jangling me loose again.

  Pilar’s voice murmured softly downstairs.

  I pulled on my robe and shoved my feet in my favorite, ratty pair of slippers and, after peering into Avery’s room and seeing her curled up like a bug in her bed, headed down the stairs.

  Pilar was in the kitchen, and the turkey sat naked and goose pimply in a roast
ing pan on the counter. She had the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder as she opened one drawer after the next.

  “Baster?” she mouthed.

  I shook my head.

  “Yes,” she said. “But I need at least a few months. When would all of this happen?”

  I made myself a cup of coffee, noting it was not the generic coffee I had bought in a giant tub at Walmart, but rather something in a tiny brown bag with a handmade label. Something Pilar must have brought with her.

  “Okay. No, no. I am so excited. I just don’t want to overcommit.”

  She hung up the phone and she stood, stunned, at the counter.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  “My manager. The National Gallery wants a piece.”

  “What?” I asked.

  I remembered going to DC on a high school field trip, standing at the National Gallery looking at Van Gogh’s sunflowers, at Botticelli’s Venus and Mars, and feeling like I might burst into tears. The idea that Pilar’s work would hang on these same walls, in this virtual cathedral of great works, seemed almost incomprehensible.

  “It would be part of a traveling show, starting at the National Gallery. With three other contemporary portrait artists.”

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  Pilar’s eyes were filled with tears. I went to her and grabbed her hands.

  “Breathe,” I said.

  Pilar was prone to anxiety attacks. Even when news was good, especially when news was good, she sometimes got overwhelmed. It was as if a surge of any sort of energy would short-circuit her. I understood this feeling, although I never shared that with her. Instead, I just helped to talk her through it.

  “Sit,” I said, and put her in a chair.

  I poured a glass of water from the filtered pitcher in the fridge. “Drink this. All of it.”

  My mind spun. The National Gallery.

  I had watched Pilar grow as an artist like a mother watches her child develop from a fumbling toddler into a graceful dancer. When we met at art school, she was obsessed with watercolor pencils. It was the only medium she wanted anything to do with. She begrudgingly learned how to use oils and acrylics, how to manage the impulses she had. How to redirect them depending on the media. I, on the other hand, hungrily wanted to try everything. My high school had been ill-equipped to handle the handful of aspiring artists who walked the halls. My mother’s art room was a makeshift classroom with poor light. There was no room in the budget for supplies, and so the supply closet was filled with donated items: half-used Cray-Pas, crusty jars of tempera, brushes that had seen better days. It’s a wonder any of us persisted. Thankfully, my mother was an enthusiastic teacher who taught us how to make art out of nothing. We recycled magazines and turned trash into sculptures. My mom and dad supplemented my own personal stash as best they could, though I went through the boxes of pastels and sticks of charcoal and tubes of paint faster than they could afford to replenish them. When I got to art school it was as if I hadn’t eaten, and somebody had brought me to an all you can eat buffet. I was gluttonous. My early paintings were almost three-dimensional with the gobs and gobs of paint I piled on. After school, I had gone back to leaner paintings. One could track my entire life in those paintings, not by the subject matter but by the materials used to create them, my poverty revealed in the thin colored pencil drawings, the years with Gus defined by the acrylics that could be purchased with a coupon at Michaels, the rare oil paintings usually following holidays (birthdays and Christmases) when those who loved me spoiled me with tubes of paint.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  Pilar nodded. “I’m pathetic.”

  I shook my head. I knew all too well how much a body could defy you.

  “I think you’re going to need to get used to this,” I said. “Seriously.”

  She smiled at me and grabbed my hand.

  “So listen,” she said, her mouth twitching, “here’s the crappy thing. I’m actually going to have to fly down to DC to meet with the people at the National Gallery.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” I said, disappointment like a lead sinker in my belly.

  “I have a feeling I’m going to be down there for a while. I’m sorry,” she said, sighing, squeezing my hand. “I know you really need a friend right now, and I feel like I am doing a really shitty job.”

  I shook my head even as tears stung my eyes. “No,” I said, forcing myself to laugh, to brush her words away with the dismissive flick of my wrist. “This is amazing news. You have to go.”

  “I promise I’ll make it as quick as I can.”

  * * *

  We spent the next several hours in the kitchen quietly preparing a feast fit for a dozen people instead of just the three of us. I was grateful for the distraction, and by the time the turkey was in the oven, the disappointment of Pilar’s impending departure had lost its sharp edges.

  We drank the very good wine Pilar had been keeping in her trunk. Avery made us paper place mats with turkey drawings of her tiny hands, and we held hands at the dining room table as we did every year, reciting the list of things we were grateful for.

  “I am grateful for my best friend, Wynnie,” Pilar said, squeezing my hand. “Who loves me warts and all.”

  I smiled.

  “And,” she added, “I am grateful I get to spend Thanksgiving with my other best friend, Avery, who is the smartest, sweetest, and sassiest girl I know.”

  Avery giggled. Pilar looked at me to go next.

  “I am grateful to this turkey for giving up his life so we can eat him for dinner,” I said, nudging Avery, and she giggled some more. I took a deep breath. I needed Pilar to know it was okay, that I understood what an opportunity this was for her. “And I am grateful I have a best friend who is always there for me, even when she’s far away.”

  “Thick or thin, baby,” Pilar said, raising her glass and clinking it against mine.

  “Your turn,” I whispered to Avery.

  Avery put her hands up in prayer. I have no idea where she learned this. She took on a somber tone. “I am grateful for this stupid turkey who got himself killed for our dinner. I am thankful for my best friend Pilar, who brings me lobsters and my fuzzy slippers. And I am thankful for Mommy for painting my room and for taking care of me.”

  I felt my chest swell.

  “And I am thankful for my daddy, who carries me when my legs get tired walking home from school. The end.”

  “The end,” Pilar and I said in unison.

  * * *

  We ate too much, drank too much, and left the dishes in the sink. After Avery went to bed, Pilar pulled out a joint and we smoked it quietly in the kitchen with the back door open to the cold November air.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said, stretching, vertebrae cracking like a handful of Pop Pop Snappers. “I can’t believe I have to leave again tomorrow already.”

  “When do you think you’ll be back?” I asked, feeling a bit panicky at the prospect of another week out here alone.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I have this DC trip, but my manager also wants me to meet a collector in the Netherlands. It could mean a really big sale. Realistically, I’m thinking New Year’s? I can try to be back by New Year’s Eve?”

  The New Year was over a month away. By then we might already have heard from the court about a retrial. My stomach knotted.

  “Have you heard anything from your lawyer?” Pilar asked again as if she were reading my mind.

  “I’ve been trying not to think about it, Pill.”

  What happened with Robby Rousseau wasn’t something I talked about with her, with anyone, ever. After the initial explanation for the scars I’d given her fifteen years ago, Robby Rousseau had not really come up as a topic of conversation again.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about this,” Pilar started. “But if he goes back to trial, I can be there. I want to be
there for you.”

  Really? She couldn’t even be here now, when my world was starting to fall down all around me. I shook my head. “Don’t be stupid. I don’t even think I’d go.”

  Her eyes widened, and she smiled sadly. “Well, could you at least write a letter or something? There’s got to be something you can do without actually being in the same room with that asshole.”

  I winced.

  And I recalled those weeks sitting in the courtroom as the lawyers sparred and parried while I sat, silently staring out the window at the snow falling. I hadn’t spoken then except when I was forced to. Not a word. I was a keeper of promises. A curator of secrets.

  Larry had already told my parents that in the unlikely event a retrial was granted I would have to testify. I was thirteen years old then, traumatized. But now I was a grown woman. There were twenty years between that day and me. This is what the jury would see.

  But Larry and my parents didn’t know the truth. And they would never, ever understand if I tried to explain.

  “You’re right. I really don’t want to talk about it,” I said, going to close the back door, shivering in the cold. “Let’s talk about the National Gallery instead. Let’s talk about how you are going to be an internationally famous painter.” Please, let’s talk about anything but this.

  When my phone rang, I startled. Trembling, I glanced at the screen. Ginger Hardy. My client in Aspen, the one waiting on the commission.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” her familiar, nasally voice chirped. “I am so sorry to bother you on a holiday. But listen, Bob Chatham, my husband’s friend, the art publisher? We’ve actually invited him and his wife out to the chalet for a ski weekend in January. And I was thinking, if you were able to get the painting to me by then, if they saw your work in person, there’s no way they wouldn’t go for it. We’re talking Ikea.”

  I was kind of stoned. I wasn’t sure I was hearing her right.

  “Ikea?”

  “Ikea,” she said. “I told him all about you, and he’s excited to see the painting. I have a good feeling about this, Wyn.”