ajo e ojo sauce for it, salad, dressing, grated fresh Parmesan into a dish, sliced bread, got out the butter, put some cookies and grapes on a plate, set the dinner table. “Ready to eat?” he yelled upstairs, where she went after her shower. “Starving,” she said. “Be right down.” She put two candles in silver candlesticks on the table and lit them. “I know you don’t like them—‘dangerous’ and ‘mawkishly romantic’ and they smell and eat up the oxygen and give off heat you don’t want — but just for tonight and when we have guests?” They sat next to each other, ate and drank. “Oh, I forgot to toast to a great summer,” he said, and she said “It goes without saying. Though tomorrow night we should make more room for us at this table. Too cozy, and my elbow keeps bumping yours. I love you but I like to eat apart.” Vivaldi’s Winter was on the Bangor public radio station. “This’d be more appropriate music for the morning,” she said. “You’ll see. You’ll have to wear your flannel shirt and, if you’re the first one downstairs, light the kindling in the cold stove to warm up the kitchen.” “Is that what that big old cast-iron thing is called?” and she said “I think so. Remember, I’m from the Bronx. Maybe I heard it wrong and it’s ‘coal.’ No, couldn’t be. Only takes wood. Probably ‘cold.’ It can get hot enough to bake bread.” They washed the dishes and put them away. She showed him how to get a fire started in the cold stove and made sure the cats were in their sleeping basket. “You going to shower?” and he said “If you want me to,” and she said “Not if you think you’re okay. The shower — well, you’ve been to the toilet, unless you just peed in the grass, so you know they’re both in the cabinet off the porch. That can be a problem when it’s raining. And never shower during an electric storm. The floor’s metal and it’s not grounded well,” and he said “Then I’ll call in an electrician to fix it and pay for it myself if the landladies don’t cough up,” and she said “They won’t, so we’ll share.” They went to bed. “Good, no mosquitoes yet,” she said. “The one drawback of a cottage by the water. In a week they’ll be keeping us awake unless we plug up the window screen holes that have materialized since last year, though they also come down the fireplace.” “There are kits to stitch up those holes or I’ll just staple new screens on, but leave it to me. As for the fireplace, let’s get a glass shield or screen that completely seals the opening. It’d be worth it, not to lose even one night’s sleep, and again, I’ll pay for it out of my own pocket. After all, we’ve got more than two months here.” “You’re full of good ideas tonight and so generous,” and he said “Are you being sarcastic? That’d be so unlike you,” and she said “Not at all. Fact is, I feel remiss I didn’t think of taking care of the fireplace that way before.” “Nah, come on. You think of things that I don’t and I think of things that you don’t and we also both add to the other’s ideas. We’re what’s called a couple.” Stan came around six in the morning with the crabmeat. “Find everything in order? I left a lawnmower and can with enough gas in it in the woodshed, in case one of you feels inclined to cut the grass. I wanted to, but got busy opening a half-dozen houses.” They went back to bed and stayed in it till seven. “Gets light here so early,” he said. “What was it, five?” This is the routine they fell into. They each made their own breakfast, read a little — he, the Times from the previous day — and worked at their desks till around one, when they stopped for lunch. She: a soup and bread and dessert or a sandwich and salad; he: a few carrots and celery stalks and a piece of cheese and more coffee. They’d eat lunch at the small wood table in the kitchen or sitting on the porch and talk about the work they’d done that day. That’s how it went for a week. Nobody she knew was up yet, so they were just by themselves and he loved it. After lunch: walks on the road, or along the shore with three of the cats. Kitya, the mother, liked to stay home. Or a drive to Naskeag Point to look for sea-polished or unusually shaped stones and to watch the lobster and other boats come in or leave. Or a drive to the library in town or the general store there for essentials they were out of. Their big shop they’d do in Ellsworth next week, and have lunch there, and one of these days, she said, they should go to Acadia National Park and have popovers and tea at the Jordan Pond House. She didn’t know it had burned down the previous winter. Before or after dinner, they drove several times to an ice-cream stand about ten miles away on Deer Isle. After they finished their cones, he hugged her from behind — it was already getting chilly — as they watched the sunset. “This is already my favorite thing to do up here,” he said. “The sky, delicious ice cream, cone’s good too, holding you, and of course gushing about it.” “I knew you’d like this particular spot. Ice cream’s local, I want you to know. Made in Ellsworth, where we’ll be going to,” and he said “I’m looking forward to it.” “A friend here calls it Asphalt Acres,” and he said “Then maybe it isn’t too great.” Then something happened to spoil the good mood for a while. It was a couple of weeks before he got into an argument with her mother, when she was visiting, so maybe this also contributed to her breaking up with him the day they got back to New York. Just thought of that but now doesn’t see how it couldn’t have. He wanted to mow the grass around the cottage before the caretaker took the lawnmower back. “He said we could have it for a few days and it’s been way more than a week.” “He might leave it in our woodshed all summer. That’d be just like Stan,” and he said “Still, I’d like to get it done at least once. It really needs it, and it’ll give the mosquitoes less place to hide.” She said “Before you do, let me point out the places I don’t want mowed because of the flowers.” She had driven somewhere for something. He thought he’d surprise her by mowing the grass before she got home. He was finished, putting away the lawnmower, when she drove down the driveway and got out of the car. “I could smell you mowed, all the way from the road. Looks nice, but I asked you to wait till I showed you what I didn’t want mowed,” and he said “I was very careful to stay at least a few inches away from all the flowers.” She looked around. “Well, you didn’t get the peonies, thank goodness.” Walked around the woodshed; he followed. “Oh, no,” she said. “You destroyed every one of them.” “Where? What?” and she said “My foxgloves.” She pointed to an area about ten by fifteen feet, and he said “There were foxgloves there? I don’t know what they look like, but I saw no flowers. Just weeds.” “They were just coming up, were going to flower in a few weeks. Damn, that was so willful of you. You don’t listen. You do what you want. Not just willful. Pigheaded. Stupid. Stupid.” “I’m stupid?” he said. “I’m not saying you are, but I’m not. That’s what my father used to call me when he got mad at me, and I hated it,” and she said “Maybe he was right. For look what you’ve done. You cut them clear to the ground. They’ll never come up again. They took so much doing to get them started two summers ago, and when a few appeared last summer, I knew they’d taken. I planted them from seeds, did all sorts of things to make them work.” “So we’ll do it again this summer so they come up next. Or you’ll tell me how and I’ll do it alone,” and she said “I don’t want to wait two more summers to see a big patch of them. If you knew what they looked like and how hard they are to grow and to keep coming back, you’d understand.” “What I don’t understand is why you’re going so crazy hell over it. In the end, beautiful as they might be, they’re just flowers; flowers.” “I can’t believe you sometimes,” and she went to the car, got a big paper bag of something off the front seat, started crying and headed toward the house. “Are you crying over the flowers?” and she said “Shut up.” “Listen, Gwen, I’m sorry, truly sorry, which I forgot to tell you, but I truly am.” She went inside without looking back at him. So maybe this was the first time he saw her cry, or over something he said or did. She was cool to him for a few days. They ate dinner together and slept in the same bed, but she kept as far away from him on it as she could, and when he touched her shoulder once from behind, she flinched. “Don’t worry; I’m not in the mood either. It was just my way of saying goodnight.” Her mother called every night — her father would get on when her mother was through — and probably asked how things were, because he overheard Gwen say “Not that great,” and another time: “Same as before. No, it isn’t my health or work. I’ll explain when you get here.” “Funny,” he said, when she seemed to be feeling better to him, “how fast things change.” “The foxgloves?” and he said “Yes, and I’m not saying it was because of nothing,” and she said “Please don’t remind me of them or I’ll get angry and sad all over again. It won’t be easy to forget what you did.” “It’d be best for both of us if you did, but okay. And they might come up again next year without our replanting them. But we got pretty close to ending things, didn’t we?” and she said “Martin; I asked you; please.”