A Piece of the World

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Copyright © Christina Baker Kline 2017

Christina Baker Kline asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover illustration © Alan Dingman

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008220099

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008220082

Version: 2018-02-19

Praise for A Piece of the World

‘A moving portrait of a woman in search of autonomy and purpose in her life’

Sunday Times Culture

‘A graceful, moving and powerful demonstration of what can happen when a fearless literary imagination combines with an inexhaustible curiosity about the past and the human heart: a feat of time travel, a bravura improvisation on the theme of art history, a wonderful story that seems to have been waiting, all this time, for Christina Baker Kline to come along and tell it’

MICHAEL CHABON, author of Moonglow

‘With remarkable precision and compassion, A Piece of the World transports us to a mid-century farmhouse on the coast of Maine. But just like the painting that inspired it, this novel is about so much more. It’s about the terrors and injustices of childhood, the aches of adulthood, the regrets of middle age. It’s a story about a woman trapped by family and duty and her own ailing body ... Christina Baker Kline has accomplished something grand’

NATHAN HILL, author of The Nix

‘Christina Baker Kline writes about home an dplace with wisdom and tenderness, but most of all she writes about Christina Olson with compassion, empathy and resounding admiration. This is an inspiring, haunting, powerful novel’

HELEN SEDGWICK, author of The Comet Seekers

‘An affecting and memorable novel... unexpected and bleakly beautiful world. I thought it explored the nature of art and inspiration in a fascinating way, whilst also posing profound questions about what endures and what proves transitory; about the roles we choose and those which are forced upon us’

MATTHEW PLAMPIN, author of Will & Tom

‘The novel evokes the sombre grace of those paintings in language as earnest and straightforward as Wyeth’s brush strokes’

New York Times Book Review

‘With delicate palette, stark images, subtle tones, nuances brushstrokes, and consummate craftsmanship, Christina Baker Kline has written this novel the way Andrew Wyeth painted the canvas. It is a masterpiece’

Historical Novel Society

‘Tender, tragic, A Piece of the World is a fascinating exploration of the life lived inside that house at the top of the hill’

LILY KING, author of Euphoria

‘A brilliantly imagined fictional memoir of the woman in the famed Wyeth painting ‘Christina’s World,’ so detailed, moving, and utterly transportive that I’ll never be able to look at the paining again without thinking of this book’

ERIK LARSON, author of Dead Wake

‘Painterly, sensuous, and sympathetic’

Kirkus Review

‘A pure, powerful story of suffering met with a fight. In fiction, in her quiet way, Christina triumphs – and so does this novel’

O Magazine

‘Insightful, evocative prose brings Christina’s singular perspective and indomitable spirit to life’

Publishers Weekly

‘With beautiful and stunning prose, the novel explores the sensitive and complex bond between artist and muse against the beauty of the rural American lanscape’

Daily Beast

‘Epic’

Cosmopolitan

‘In this beautifully observed fictional memoir, Kline uses Andrew Wyeth’s iconic paining Christina’s World as the taking-off point for a moving portrait of the artist’s real-life muse’

People

‘Brings to vivid life a little-known corner of history... Avoiding sentimental uplift, A Piece of the World offers unsparing insight into the real woman behind the painting’

USA Today

‘A gorgeous read’

Real Simple

Dedication

For my father,

who showed me the world

Epigraph

‘There was a very strange connection. One of those odd collisions that happen. We were a little alike; I was an unhealthy child that was kept at home. So there was an unsaid feeling between us that was wonderful, an utter naturalness. We’d sit for hours and not say a word, and then she’d say something, and I’d answer her. A reporter once asked her what we talked about. She said, ‘Nothing foolish.”’

—Andrew Wyeth

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

The Stranger at the Door

1939

1896–1900

My Letter to the World

1940

1900–1912

Waiting to Be Found

1942–1943

1913–1914

The Cameo Shell

1944–1946

1914–1917

What Promises I Make

1946

1917–1922

Thornback

1946–1947

1922–1938

Christina’s World

1948

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Artwork

Credits

About the Author

Also by Christina Baker Kline

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

LATER HE TOLD ME HE’D BEEN AFRAID TO SHOW ME THE PAINTING. He thought I wouldn’t like the way he portrayed me: dragging myself across the field, fingers clutching dirt, my legs twisted behind. The arid moonscape of wheatgrass and timothy. That dilapidated house in the distance, looming up like a secret that won’t stay hidden. Faraway windows, opaque and unreadable. Ruts in the spiky grass made by an invisible vehicle, leading nowhere. Dishwater sky.

People think the painting is a portrait, but it isn’t. Not really. He wasn’t even in the field; he conjured it from a room in the house, an entirely different angle. He removed rocks and trees and outbuildings. The scale of the barn is wrong. And I am not that frail young thing, but a middle-aged spinster. It’s not my body, really, and maybe not even my head.

He did get one thing right: Sometimes a sanctuary, sometimes a prison, that house on the hill has always been my home. I’ve spent my life yearning toward it, wanting to escape it, paralyzed by its hold on me. (There are many ways to be crippled, I’ve learned over the years, many forms of paralysis.) My ancestors fled to Maine from Salem, but like anyone who tries to run away from the past, they brought it with them. Something inexorable seeds itself in the place of your origin. You can never escape the bonds of family history, no matter how far you travel. And the skeleton of a house can carry in its bones the marrow of all that came before.

Who are you, Christina Olson? he asked me once.

Nobody had ever asked me that. I had to think about it for a while.

If you really want to know me, I said, we’ll have to start with the witches. And then the drowned boys. The shells from distant lands, a whole room full of them. The Swedish sailor marooned in ice. I’ll need to tell you about the false smiles of the Harvard man and the hand-wringing of those brilliant Boston doctors, the dory in the haymow and the wheelchair in the sea.

And eventually—though neither of us knew it yet—we’d end up here, in this place, within and without the world of the painting.

1939

I’m working on a quilt patch in the kitchen on a brilliant July afternoon, small squares of fabric and a pincushion and scissors on the table beside me, when I hear the hum of a car engine. Looking out the window toward the cove, I see a station wagon turn into the field about a hundred yards away. The engine cuts off and the passenger door swings open and Betsy James gets out, laughing and exclaiming. I haven’t seen her since last summer. She’s wearing a white halter top and denim shorts, a red bandanna tied around her neck. As I watch her coming toward the house, I am struck by how different she looks. Her sweet round face has thinned and lengthened; her chestnut hair is long and thick around her shoulders, her eyes dark and shining. A red slash of lipstick. I think of her at nine years old, when she first came to visit, her small, nimble fingers braiding my hair as she sat behind me on the stoop. And here she is, seventeen and suddenly a woman.

“Hey there, Christina,” she says at the screen door, out of breath. “It’s been such a long time!”

“Come in,” I say from my chair. “You won’t mind if I don’t get up?”

“Of course not.” When she steps inside, the room smells of roses. (When did Betsy start wearing perfume?) She sweeps over to my chair and hugs my shoulders. “We arrived a few days ago. I surely am happy to be back.”

“You surely look it.”

She smiles, spots of color on her cheeks. “How are you and Al?”

“Oh, you know. Fine. The same.”

“The same is good, yes?”

I smile. Sure. The same is good.

“What are you making here?”

“Just a little thing. A baby quilt. Lora’s pregnant again.”

“Such a generous auntie.” She reaches down and picks up a quilt square, a piece of calico, pink flowers with green leaves on a brown background. “I recognize this fabric.”

“I tore up an old dress.”

“I remember it. Small white buttons and a full skirt, right?”

I think of my mother bringing home the Butterick pattern and the iridescent buttons and the calico. I think of Walton seeing me in the dress for the first time. I am awed by you. “That was a long time ago.”

“Well, it’s nice that old dress is getting a new life.” Gently she places the square back on the table and sifts through the others: white muslin, navy cotton, chambray faintly marked with ink. “All these bits and pieces. You’re making a family heirloom.”

“I don’t know about that,” I say. “It’s just a pile of scraps.”

“One man’s trash …” She laughs and glances out the window. “I completely forgot! I came up here for a cup of water, if you don’t mind.”

“Sit down, I’ll get you a glass.”

“Oh, it’s not for me.” She points at the station wagon in the field. “My friend wants to paint a picture of your house, but he needs water to do it.”

I squint at the car. A boy is sitting on the roof, looking at the sky. He’s got a large white pad of paper in one hand and what looks like a pencil in the other.

“He’s N. C. Wyeth’s son,” Betsy says in a stage whisper, as if someone might hear.

“Who?”

“You know N. C. Wyeth. The famous illustrator? Treasure Island?”

Ah, Treasure Island. “Al loved that book. I think we still have it somewhere.”

“I think every boy in America has it somewhere. Well, his son’s an artist too. I just met him today.”

“You met him today, and you’re riding around in a car with him?”

“Yes, he’s—I don’t know. He seems trustworthy.”

“Your parents don’t mind?”

“They don’t know.” She smiles sheepishly. “He showed up at the house this morning looking for my father, but my parents had gone off for a sail. I answered the door. And here we are.”

“That happens sometimes,” I say. “Where’s he from?”

“Pennsylvania. His family has a summer place up here, in Port Clyde.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about him,” I say, arching an eyebrow.

She arches an eyebrow back. “I plan to learn more.”

Betsy leaves with her cup of water and makes her way back to the station wagon. By the way she’s walking, shoulders back and chin forward, I can tell she knows he’s watching her. And she likes it. She hands the boy the cup and climbs onto the roof next to him.

“Who was that?” My brother Al is at the back door, wiping his hands on a rag. I can never tell when he’s coming; he’s as quiet as a fox.

“Betsy. And a boy. He’s painting a picture of the house, she said.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

I shrug. “People are funny.”

“Sure are.” Al settles into his rocker, pulling out his pipe and tobacco. He starts tamping and lighting, both of us spying on Betsy and the boy out the window and trying to act like we aren’t.

After a while the boy climbs down and sets his pad of paper on the hood of the car. He offers his hand to Betsy, who slides down into his embrace. Even from this distance I can feel the heat between them. They stand there talking for a minute, and then Betsy tugs on his hand, pulling him toward—oh Lord, she’s bringing him up to the house. I feel a momentary panic: the floor is dusty, my dress soiled, my hair unkempt. Al’s overalls are splashed with mud. It’s been a long time since I’ve worried about being seen through the eyes of a stranger. As they walk toward the house, though, I see the boy gazing at Betsy and realize I don’t need to worry. She is all he sees.

He’s at the screen, now, on the threshold. Lanky, smiling, quivering with energy, he fills the entire doorway. “What a marvelous house,” he murmurs as he opens the screen, craning his neck to look up and around the room. “The light in here is extraordinary.”

“Christina, Alvaro, this is Andrew,” Betsy says, coming in behind him.

He inclines his head. “Hope you don’t mind my crashing in uninvited. Betsy swore it was okay.”

“We don’t stand on ceremony,” my brother says. “I’m Al.”

“People after my own heart. And call me Andy, please.”

“Well, I’m Christina,” I say.

“I call her Christie, but no one else does,” Al adds.

“Christina, then,” Andy says, settling his gaze on me. I detect no judgment in it, only a kind of anthropological curiosity. Still, his keen attention makes me blush.

Turning to Al, I say quickly, “Remember that book Treasure Island? His father did the paintings for it, Betsy said.”

“Did he now?” Al’s face lights up. “You can’t forget those pictures. I probably read that book a dozen times. Might be the only book I ever actually finished, now that I think about it. I wanted to be a pirate.”

Andy breaks into a grin. His teeth are large and white, like a movie star’s. “So did I. Still do, in fact.”

Betsy’s holding the oversized drawing pad. As proud as a new mother, she brings it over to show me. “Look what Andy did, Christina, in that short amount of time.”

The paper is still damp. In bold strokes Andy reduced the house to a white box with two gables facing the sea. The fields are green and yellow, with bristly blades of grass poking up here and there. Near-black firs, a purple swipe of mountains, watery clouds. Though the watercolor has been done quickly—there’s movement in the brushstrokes, as if the wind is blowing through—it’s clear this boy knows what he’s doing. The windows are mere suggestions, but you have the peculiar sense that you can see inside. The house seems rooted in the earth.

“It’s just a sketch,” Andy says, coming up beside me. “I’ll keep working at it.”

“Looks like a nice place to live,” I say. The house is snug and cozy, a fairy-tale version of the one Al and I actually live in, the only hint of its decay in smudges of blue and brown.

Andy laughs. “You tell me.” Running two fingers over the paper, he says, “Such stark lines. There’s something about this place … You’ve lived here a long time?”

I nod.

“I sense that. That it’s a place filled with stories. I’ll bet I could paint it for a hundred years and never get tired of it.”

“Oh, you’d get tired of it,” Al says.

We all laugh.

Andy claps his hands together. “Hey, guess what? Today is my birthday.”

“Is it really?” Betsy asks. “You didn’t tell me.”

He puts his arm around her and tugs her toward him. “Didn’t I? I feel like you know everything about me already.”

“Not yet,” she says.

“What’s your age?” I ask him.

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two! Betsy’s only seventeen.”

“A mature seventeen,” Betsy blurts, color rising to her cheeks.

Andy seems amused. “Well, I’ve never cared much about age. Or maturity.”

“How are you going to celebrate?” I ask.

He raises an eyebrow at Betsy. “I’d say I’m celebrating right now.”

BETSY DOESN’T SHOW up again until several weeks later, when she bursts into the kitchen and practically dances across the floor. “Christina, we are engaged,” she says breathlessly, clasping my hand.

“Engaged?!”

She nods. “Can you believe it?”

You’re so young, I start to say; it’s too quick, you hardly know each other …

Then I think of my own life. All the years, all the waiting that led to nothing. I saw how the two of them were together. The spark between them. I feel like you know everything about me already. “Of course I can,” I say.

Ten months later, a postcard arrives. Betsy and Andy are married. When they return to Maine for the summer, I hand Betsy a wedding gift: two pillowcases I made and embroidered with flowers. It took me four days to make the French knots for the daisies and the tiny buttonhole-stitch leaves; my hands, stiff and gnarled, don’t work the way they used to.

Betsy looks closely at the embroidery and holds the pillowcases to her chest. “I will treasure these. They’re perfect.”

I give her a smile. They’re not perfect. The lines are uneven, the flower petals spiky and overlarge; the cotton is marked faintly with the residue of ripped stitches.

Betsy has always been kind.

She shows me photographs from their upstate New York wedding ceremony: Andy in a tuxedo, Betsy in white with gardenias in her hair, both beaming with joy. After their five-day honeymoon, she tells me, she’d assumed they would drive to Canada for the wedding of a close friend, but Andy said he had to get back to work. “He’d told me before we were married that was how it would be,” she says. “But I didn’t quite believe it until that moment.”

“So did you go by yourself?”

She shakes her head. “I stayed with him. This is what I signed up for. The work is everything.”

OUT THE KITCHEN window I see Andy trudging up the field toward the house, hitching one leg forward, dragging the other, his gait uneven. Strange that I didn’t notice that before. Here he is at the door in paint-flecked boots, a white cotton shirt rolled to the elbow, a sketch pad under his arm. He knocks, two firm raps, and pulls open the screen. “Betsy has some errands to do. Is it okay if I hang around?”

I try to act nonchalant, but my heart is racing. I can’t remember the last time I was alone with a man other than Al. “Suit yourself.”

He steps inside.

He’s taller and handsomer than I remember, with sandy brown hair and piercing blue eyes. There’s something equine about the way he tosses his head and shifts his feet. A pulsating thrum.

In the Shell Room he runs his hand along the mantelpiece, brushing off the dust. Picks up Mother’s cracked white teapot and turns it around. Cups my grandmother’s chambered nautilus in his hand and leafs through the filmy pages of her old black bible. No one has opened my poor drowned uncle Alvaro’s sea chest in decades; it screeches when he lifts the lid. Andy picks up a shell-framed portrait of Abraham Lincoln, looks at it closely, sets it down. “You can feel the past in this house,” he says. “The layers of generations. It reminds me of The House of the Seven Gables. ‘So much of mankind’s varied experience had passed there that the very timbers were oozy, as with the moisture of a heart.’”

The lines are familiar. I remember reading that novel in school, a long time ago. “We’re actually related to Nathaniel Hawthorne,” I tell him.

“Interesting. Ah yes—Hathorn.” Going to the window, he gestures toward the field. “I saw the tombstones in the graveyard down there. Hawthorne lived in Maine for a while, I believe?”

“I don’t know about that,” I admit. “Our ancestors came from Massachusetts. Nearly two hundred years ago. Three men, in the middle of winter.”

“Where in Massachusetts?”

“Salem.”

“Why’d they come up?”

“My grandmother said they were trying to escape the taint of association with their relative John Hathorne. He was chief justice of the witch trials. When they got to Maine they dropped the ‘e’ at the end of the name.”

“To obscure the connection?”

I shrug. “Presumably.”

“I’m remembering this now,” he says. “Nathaniel Hawthorne left Salem too, and also changed the spelling of the name. But a lot of his stories are reworkings of his own family history. Your family history, I suppose. Moral allegories about people determined to root out wickedness in others while denying it in themselves.”

“Actually,” I tell him, “there’s a legend that as one of the condemned witches stood at the scaffold, waiting for the noose, she uttered a curse: ‘May God take revenge on the family of John Hathorne.’”

“So your family is cursed!” he says with delight.

“Maybe. Who knows? My grandmother used to say that those Hathorn men brought the witches with them from Salem. She kept the door open between the kitchen and the shed for the witches to come and go.”

Looking around the Shell Room, he says, “What do you think? Is it true?”

“I’ve never seen any,” I tell him. “But I keep the door open too.”

OVER THE YEARS, certain stories in the history of a family take hold. They’re passed from generation to generation, gaining substance and meaning along the way. You have to learn to sift through them, separating fact from conjecture, the likely from the implausible.

Here is what I know: Sometimes the least believable stories are the true ones.

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