Free Death of an Artist by Kate Wilhelm Page B

arrived, he brought a book as well as a bottle of nicely chilled pinot grigio.
    â€œIt’s a history of maps,” he said. “I’ve had it a long time and thought you might like it. I noticed the maps on the wall the last time I was here.”
    â€œThey were Ed’s maps. My husband was in the navy for years, and at ports he prowled in book stalls and began collecting maps he came across. He didn’t keep most of the books, not enough storage room, but he kept the maps.”
    They went to look at them and she said, “I tried comparing one of them to other maps and got hopelessly confused. Some of them are so wrong. Ed said they were egocentric. I liked that, egocentric, geocentric. You put the important thing in the center and never apologize.” She pointed to a map of Japan after drawing it down. “See? The emperor’s palace, dead center, instead of off in the province where it actually was.”
    â€œDid he paint the navy ships?” Tony asked when they moved away from the maps. He indicated the two naval ships hanging near the maps.
    â€œYes. Stef said they were baroque, done in that style, before they got the hang of perspective.” Marnie had a flash of memory of the night Ed had come home to find them hanging. She’d had them framed for a surprise. How husky his voice had become, how his eyes had softened …
    Briskly she turned away and said, “Come keep me company while I toss the salad. I didn’t want to broil that nice fish until we were ready to eat. It won’t take more than ten minutes, and you can have a glass of wine. Are you finding it hard to get service in restaurants yet? Our little town is starting to fill up again.”
    â€œDo the locals hate the summer people?” he asked, sitting at the dining table while she finished cooking.
    â€œCan’t live with them, can’t survive without them. Isn’t that the way with most tourist towns? The traffic on 101 gets impossible, and speeders don’t see the stop signs. The usual complaints, I guess.”
    How easy it was to talk to him, she thought later that night. He asked few questions, but somehow she had kept finding herself telling him things that surprised her. Such as her early life with Ed, how it worried her if he was out on one of the boats and a storm was coming in, how colicky Stef had been.
    At least, she thought then, she had not mentioned that her mother had come to meet her new granddaughter when Stef was two months old. She had said Stef’s constant crying was just punishment, that babies conceived in sin were never happy. She had not liked the coast. The mountain roads were dangerous, the mountains might erupt or something, and all those dark trees had been forbidding. Also, she had felt threatened by the ocean. It was too rough, too violent. She had never come back, and Marnie had never taken Stef to Indiana. Marnie had not been willing to expose her to the kind of criticism she knew her mother would heap on Stef for not doing as ordered, things she was incapable of doing. Sit still. Stop racing around. Go to bed and stay there. Keep out of those cabinets. Clean your plate. A visit to her old home, her mother’s house, would have been a nightmare, and she had never gone to the Indiana farm again.
    Also, she thought, reflecting on what she had not talked about to Tony, she had not said why she and Ed had bought a house obviously too big for them. Stef was three, and Marnie had been pregnant again, with twins. They would need a big house, Ed had said. The twins came prematurely and one died two days later, the other one a week after that. There was never another pregnancy, and the big upper room had remained empty until Stef claimed it as her studio when she was thirteen. When Stef married the first time, Marnie and Ed had moved into the front house, leaving the rear house to the new family. That family history remained locked within her.
    Having