“This place made Mom nervous,” Sam said.
“She brought you here?”
“Yeah, sometimes, but she was always afraid of deer ticks and Lyme disease. The grass would tickle her legs, and she’d jump.”
“What would she and you do?”
Sam shrugged. “Sketch, mainly. Or she’d tell me stories about how the Black Hall artists would come here over a hundred years ago, set up their easels, and paint the view. You know, there weren’t enough women.”
“Really?” Kate asked.
“Yep. Matilda Browne and Mary Cassatt were the only women who really made it as American Impressionists. I mean, Miss Florence ran the boarding house for artists, but she wasn’t one herself. Willard Metcalf was my favorite, but he looked down on girls who came for art lessons, so now I’m not sure how I feel about him. Did you know he called girlsblots, as in blots on the landscape?”
“I’ve heard that,” Kate said, picturing the panel at the museum,Poor Little Bloticelli—a fifteen-year-old girl in her straw hat and white dress, painting at her easel. Kate had gone through the same thing at Sam’s age, being disillusioned by the artists’ lives and wondering if it was okay to still love their art.
They walked toward a stand of weeping willow trees, and Kate set down the canvas bag. She shook out a plaid picnic blanket, handed Sam her sandwich, and opened her own. They sat by the river, eating lunch, watching kayakers paddle along the Essex side. A fifty-five-foot boat with a catamaran hull headed slowly south, carrying tourists on a nature cruise. She glanced at Sam. If Sam had spent lots of time here with her mother, how big of a letdown must it be to come here now with her aunt?
“See that island?” Sam asked, pointing.
“Yes,” Kate said. She knew it well. Growing up at her grandmother’s, she’d heard all about the granite quarries worked in the early twentieth century for stone to pave New York City. Rare indigo hummingbirds were known to nest there every ten years. Most magical were the giant lotus lilies, completely unknown to the United States, that had bloomed on the island.
Mathilda had a botanist friend who had determined they had sprouted from seeds stored in the pyramids of Egypt, a thousand years BC. In the early 1800s, traders had looted the pyramids and stolen ancient racks of linen, to which the seeds had stuck. They had used the fabric to wrap ivory tusks to keep them from breaking on the voyage across the Atlantic. The ivory had been headed to a piano key manufacturer in Deep River, Connecticut. The seeds had blown off the linen, drifted downriver, and taken root on the island’s shore.
“Sometimes Mom and I would paddle out to it.”
“You’d bring kayaks?”
“Nope,” Sam said, giving her a sly smile. “Come on.”
They headed down to the water’s edge, and Sam parted rushes and invasive phragmites to reveal a ten-foot wooden dinghy covered by a tattered canvas. Oars were stored beneath the peeling varnished seats. Tarnished brass oarlocks were already in their holders.
“Whose boat is this?” Kate asked.
“A friend of Mom’s. We’d head out to the island to look for the flowers. Do you know about them?”
“The giant lilies?”Flowers, a friend.The back of Kate’s neck tingled.
“Yep. Everyone said they lived here until a raging storm washed them away in 1927—but Mom thought that was wrong. She was sure a few were left, hidden under other plants or in a secret part of the quarries. We always searched. This was our island of flowers ...”
“Flowers,” Kate said. “You and your mother searched for them?”
“With her friend,” Sam said.
“What friend?”
“An artist. I don’t think you know him,” Sam said. “He goes to the soup kitchen.”
“That’s where you met him?” Kate asked, trying to sound casual.
“He’s poor, but he’s really nice. I helped him with a couple of art workshops at the shelter. He’s great with pen-and-ink and charcoal. Mom always said I could learn from him, that he kept it simple, like so many great artists.”
“He’d help you search for the lilies?”
“Yeah. Apparently, he somehow met your father, who told him he should draw flowers. And as horrible as your dad was in one way, Mom said no one knew more about art than he did.”
“Where is your mom’s friend now?” Kate asked.
“Jed? He sometimes camps on the island, but he’s obviously not there now, or the dinghy would be on the other side. Come on; let’s row out. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if we used it.”
