The Souvenir Museum by Elizabeth McCracken (acx book reading txt) 📕

open. By we, Eloise had meant herself and a small, wild-eyed, disheveled terrier who looked like the dog in the Arnolfini portrait and whose name was, apparently, Shithead. Sadie followed the two of them out the door, across a field, and then, dismayingly, up a hill.

“It’s an amazing house,” said Sadie, to prove to Eloise that she wasn’t too out of breath to talk. “Why Ireland?”

“Why indeed. Apparently they like the Irish. I think they’re mad to have bought it.”

“Why?”

“It’ll take them donkey’s years to fix it up. Not to mention the cost. They’re not very practical. Here, let’s go this way.” Eloise opened a gate that said BEWARE OF BULL. “Come on.”

Sadie pointed at the sign and said, “Bull?”

Eloise’s hat was large and tweed. It had fallen over her eyes; she knocked the brim up with her fist and scanned the field. “Look,” she said. “He’s over there. Come on! Don’t be wet.”

“I’m—they move fast, don’t they?”

“He won’t bother us. Come on, Shithead,” she called in a sweet, threatening voice. “Shitty! Shitty.”

The dog crossed first and they followed, and then climbed through some barbed wire, which caught in Sadie’s hair. She could feel the wet shoes tugging at her tights, the waistband of which had fallen below the equator of her bottom. She slid in the mud. At the moment she thought Eloise was purposefully testing or torturing her, but eventually she would learn that this was simply every walk in the country with every English person she ever met: mud and injury and a disregard for safety or private property.

“What do you do?” she asked Eloise.

The hat was down again; she punched it up again. “Really? I’m a doctor. Len didn’t tell you.”

“Of course!” she said, though he hadn’t. “I meant what kind of doctor.”

“Nephrologist.”

Sadie looked at her watch. “What time is the wedding?”

“Five.”

“It’s one.”

“’Tis,” said Eloise.

“Does Fiona need help? Getting ready? If your mother’s not here.”

“The Dutch will do that. They’re very good, the Dutch. Why, are you tired? We can go back. Lenny’s told me all about you.”

“Oh,” said Sadie. “Sorry your mother’s not here.”

“She’s got gout.”

“Really?”

“You think she’d lie?”

“No. I just—I guess I didn’t realize women get gout.”

“Runs in families,” said Eloise, and Sadie realized there was nearly nothing Eloise did not deliver as a threat. “This way.”

They seemed to be angling back down the hill. She thought it was a hill; it might have been a mountain. “Lucky it stopped raining.”

“Ground’ll be wet for the wedding.”

“Are there roofs over the stables?”

“Yes,” Eloise said. “But for the dancing there’s not.”

“There’s dancing?”

“The Dutch will want to dance, surely,” said Eloise. “And you. Americans are always dancing, aren’t they? Shitty!” called Eloise, in a headmistress voice. “Shithead! Get over here.” Then, carelessly, “I hope you weren’t bothered.”

“Oh, gosh, no,” said Sadie. “By what?”

“My father. He has a childish sense of humor.”

At the house they went in a door at the back, yet another one. Eloise bundled the dog in a dirty pink towel the color of a tongue, then tucked him under her arm. “Do you want a tour?”

“Sure.”

“We’ll take the back stairs.”

Like servants do, thought Sadie, who’d read enough books about English girls in peril to wonder whether she was about to be shut in an attic.

Until recently the house had been owned and occupied by a single old man, who had died alone in one of the bedrooms. Somebody, perhaps the old man when he was a young man, had painted the walls with vivid tempera, which gave the rooms the intense look of Renaissance frescoes, brand-new, ancient, like marriage itself. The old man’s bedroom was blue. Lapis lazuli, thought Sadie. Had his family died? His wife, his children? But the old man had never married: it had been his parents and brother and sisters who had died or disappeared, one at a time. That was family, too. No man who’d ever been married could have died thus: alone but perfectly happy in his bed, a portrait of the Virgin Mary hung at a tilt over his head so he didn’t have to hurt his neck to look at her.

“Sad to die alone,” said Sadie.

“How do you know?” asked Eloise. She set the dog on the ground. He sniffed at the threshold of the room but didn’t go in. “I’m longing for it. But instead I will be surrounded by my children and grandchildren.”

“Oh!” said Sadie. “You have children.”

“Grown,” said Eloise. “Elsewhere.” Then, in an exaggerated English accent, though her own accent was already extremely English, “Gawn.”

Sadie noticed her suitcase in the corner of the room, Jack’s duffel next to it. The bags had been repacked, zipped up. She hoped it had been Jack who’d done it. She suspected it wasn’t.

Half the rooms were derelict and half under construction and absolutely nothing was finished. There were sinks in odd places, unhinged doors leaning on walls. The floors were wood, dusty, any varnish worn away. Everything felt precarious but also beautiful, an excellent place, thought Sadie, for starting a life together.

“What did you get as a present?” Eloise asked.

Sadie was happy to say. It had been her idea. “A guest book,” she said. They had ordered it from Smythson’s. It was leather-bound with the name of the house—Currock House—stamped in gold on the cover.

“What?” said Eloise.

Sadie didn’t know what misstep she’d made. Were you not supposed to say wedding presents before the wedding? But Eloise had asked!

“That’s what I got,” said Eloise. “You’ll have to get something else.”

“Well,” said Sadie.

“Lottie’s invited,” said Eloise suddenly, as though the matter had been settled. “I’m sure Lenny said.”

“The clown?”

At that Eloise laughed. It was a disconcerting laugh: you could see her tongue move with every peal, a rapid clapper in a bell. “Not a clown, no.”

“Oh, that’s right. Puppets. Right?”

“You don’t know about Lottie! He worshipped her. But I’m sure he’s told you.”

He had mentioned Lottie—that she was older than he was, that they’d busked together on the streets of London. Not a girlfriend: just a woman. He’d been