An Illustrated Death Read Online Free PDF

slacks, a pin-striped cotton blouse, and chunky gold jewelry. Her crinkly red hair had been released from the scarf and was held behind her ears by tortoiseshell combs.
    “I brought you a clean shirt in case you wanted to change.” She held out a white waffle-weave cotton sweater with navy and red stripes highlighting the V-neck. It looked like it had been ordered from a Talbots catalog and I couldn’t imagine myself wearing it. That’s the thing about us non-fashionistas. We look as if we’d wear anything. But we won’t.
    “I can wear something else tomorrow and meet your family then.”
    She took another look at my red sweatshirt with its grinning Cornell bear and shook her head. “No, you’re fine. You’re supposed to be an artist. You should see what some of our other guests used to come to table in.”
    Come to table? Was this a meal or a coronation? “What did Andy Warhol wear?”
    “Oh, he never came here. My father thought he would be a bad influence on us. My father was very careful about who we were exposed to. We didn’t even go to school.” She seemed proud of that.
    “Isn’t that against the law?”
    “Oh, we had tutors. The schools around here were terrible anyway, all Bonacker families.”
    Bonacker was the traditional name for the farmers and baymen who had settled Springs back in the 1600s and 1700s. The fact that names like Miller and King were revered by historical societies, did not seem to impress Bianca. “My father thought school was a waste of time, even college. Vietnam was his art institute.”
    O UTSIDE THE DAY had already started to perk up, a thin gold line outlining the trees and clouds. After a steamy summer, the cooler air felt wonderful. But as soon as I thought that, I started to feel sweaty. What was I doing, invading this family’s world? Less than three months ago they had suffered a terrible double loss. I couldn’t imagine why they would want to entertain a stranger and wondered if the parents of the dead child would be there.
    I followed Bianca up the front stairs into a dark-paneled hall covered with paintings. I recognized Fairfield Porter, Ben Shahn, and other artists and hoped that the family had a good alarm system. Below the artwork were dark brown wicker chairs with flowered cushions and the kind of undistinguished rugs you might see in a hunting lodge. That was what the room reminded me of, I realized, one of those lakeside vacation homes that upstate owners called “camps.”
    The hall turned right and opened into a dining room. With its pale blue woodwork and corner cabinets stuffed with silver, the room seemed to belong to a different house. A portrait of a young, light-haired man in a pale blue painter’s smock hung over an impressive brick fireplace. He was smiling so broadly that he seemed ready to burst out of the frame. I realized it was Nate Erikson and my heart squeezed . I don’t belong here.
    At the head of a long cherry table was a woman with a pretty, finely creased face and white hair clipped back with a barrette. Several strands straggled thinly over her midnight blue turtleneck. Her sharp eyes, also blue, followed me all the way to the Windsor chair that Bianca pulled out for me.
    “You’re late,” the matriarch, Eve Erikson, announced.
    Not exactly the dithering personage Bianca had warned me about, though a dark-skinned woman in a pale green uniform hovered in the shadows behind her. A personal attendant?
    Then Eve was gaping at me as if Bianca had brought in Typhoid Mary. “What are you doing here? Who invited you here?”
    Before I could open my mouth, several people at the table rushed to explain. Bianca prevailed. “Mama, this isn’t— This is my collaborator, Delhi Laine. Remember, she’s here to illustrate my Good Night poems.”
    Eve squinted at me. “You’re an artist? Where did you study?”
    I could sense that everyone at the table was watching, waiting to hear what I would say. But I was my parents’ daughter, unable