Edgy Partners

Each bedroom had its own bath. Off to the left of the living room was the dining room jutting out at an angle toward the bay and always sunny and cheery because of the windows on all three sides. On the land side of the dining room were the large kitchen, pantry, and laundry. A staircase in the pantry led up to two small servants rooms above and a shared bath. We had no live-in servants here now. Just Tania, the black cook; her son, Toby, who did the gardening; and a handyman, Seth. Tania and Toby lived inland on the road to Elkton. Seth, who served as handyman and chauffeur, as needed, lived over the detached three-car garage across the parking area from the main entrance.

All smaller, less formal, less staffed than any of our other homes—which was why it was my favorite. It was the only house of ours I wanted to have, not the least because of the long dock below the bluff with the boathouse and the collection of sailboats.

My gaze moved away from Toby, a muscular black beauty some five years older than I am, who, only in shorts, moved with grace and glistening muscles in the flower bed, to the first-floor screened porch. Having seen me shift my eyes to them, my mother and Hal—as she called him—moved farther away from each other on a rattan glider. They were only shadows on the porch to me, though, so the adjustment seemed needless. I heard them in the master bedroom in the night. I knew he was giving her a good fucking. She and her men hadn’t surprised me for some years. She had made little pretense of covering it when my father was away, and the two of them seemed so distant from each other when they were together that I’d given up caring years ago.