The Remigrants by Joseph E. Wright

Author:Joseph E. Wright [Wright, Joseph E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466085039
Publisher: Joseph E. Wright
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter X

Alice could hear the sound of a radio playing a faint and muffled Mozart Twenty-ninth symphony coming from the top floor. She walked towards the staircase which led to the third floor. Why would Nicholas be up there? she wondered. Slowly, she started up, past the pair of oil paintings of nineteenth-century young ladies which she and Nicholas had purchased at an antiques show in Cape May, to the top of the stairs. She turned to her left and went to the back of the house, to the studio where she spent so many hours painting while Nicholas was busy writing. The room with its low ceiling was enjoying what little late-afternoon sun was still shining, making the room not only ideal for painting, but cozy, inviting, as well.

“We’re a pair,” Nicholas once said, the words suddenly coming back to Alice now, as she looked at the easel in the corner. It was the summer they went to New England, through Vermont and Maine, Nicholas with his portable typewriter and she weighed down with canvas, water colors, easel. They were sitting near the edge of a cliff just outside Ogunquitt in Maine. Below, the foamy surf was beating against the rocks, shooting spray into the air. Alice was sketching the scene before them, the ocean spread out, and off to their left, a lighthouse, a remnant from an earlier century. Nicholas was also sketching, sketching the outline of a new novel which he wanted to set in New England.

“Yes, we’re made for each other,” Nicholas had said that summer afternoon. “The arts farts, you and I. You with your palette, me with my trusty old Olympia typewriter.”

Alice reached down and turned off the radio. If Nicholas was up here, she reasoned, he’d have to be in one of the front rooms, which was unlikely. Nicholas never went up there. Maybe he was outside? That, too, seemed unlikely. She walked towards the front of the house, stopping to look into the smaller bedroom on her left. Dismal, she said to herself. These front rooms were the same as they had found them when they purchased the house. This room still had dark green paint on the walls which were cracked and had chunks of plaster missing. They had never gotten around to finishing these rooms. They kept the heat turned off up here, making the rooms cold and damp, never more so than today. Alice felt the cold going through to her bones. No one was in there. She stepped over to the door which opened onto the large front bedroom, a mate to the one Nicholas and she shared on the floor below. She jumped slightly from shock as she stood in the doorway. Nicholas was there in the room, standing in front of one of the two windows, his back to her.

“So, there you are,” she said and tried very hard to sound casual. “Wondering where you wandered off to.” She walked into the room.

Nicholas turned around. Behind him, the dusk outside came through the window and formed a halo about his head.

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