Still Life

All the juices at the bodega around the corner from my apartment have a number and a name, like “immunity” and “power.” The menu mounted on the wall looks like a blackboard scrawled with daily specials, but the handwriting is a font and the specials never change. I scan it for something with beets and lemon. The only option with both is number ten—depression. 

“I’ll have a number ten, large,” I say. 

The woman behind the juice counter is packing slices of fruits and vegetables into plastic containers. “A what?” she says. She looks over her shoulder at the menu.

“A depression,” I say, moving closer to the counter. “A large depression.”

She nods and takes a lemon from the pyramid of citrus stacked against the plate glass window of the bodega. It’s already dark outside. Snowflakes fall in airy clusters, turning red and blue as they pass neon signs in the window for hot coffee and lottery tickets. 

I walk to the coolers in the back while the juicer whirs. Behind a wall of glass doors are the familiar rows of six-packs—Mexican lagers, corporate light beers, a few locally brewed IPAs with punny names and matte labels. Nothing has a price. The guy at the register decides how much things cost based on his mood and what you look like you have to spend. I’ve been charged as much as seventeen dollars for six beers, which I try to think of as a compliment. 

While I’m deciding what I want, I think of the reality show paused on my laptop at home. It’s part of a series hosted by a cheerful Japanese woman who explains to American families that most of their possessions are actually useless garbage, and then guides them through getting rid of almost everything they own. The show has a spiritual aspect to it—the host prays on her knees in front of a shrine at the beginning of each episode. She says that objects have their own energy, and if they don’t “spark joy” when they are picked up, they should be thrown away.

I hold a door open with my shoulder and pick up a few different six-packs. They all feel about the same. I choose one I haven’t had in a while, pay twenty-four dollars for that and the juice, and walk out into the snow.

When I get home, my roommate’s lying on the loveseat with his legs dangling over one arm.

“I thought you were working tonight,” I say as I turn the locks on the doorknob and the deadbolt. It’s tropically humid inside. Steam hisses from the valve of a cast iron radiator in the corner, and the walls are slick with condensation. 

“They cut me because of the snow,” he says. An old issue of Harper’s is splayed open on his chest. He doesn’t look at screens after dark.

“Yeah, wild that it’s still snowing like this in March,” I say. “I worked from home today.”

“I see that.” He nods toward the open door of my bedroom, where a frame from the show is frozen on the screen of my laptop. The host is holding open an enormous black trash bag while a woman looks remorsefully at a cabinet of mismatched Tupperware. I snap a beer off from the six-pack and put the rest in the empty crisper of the fridge.

“Dinner?” he says as I walk past him toward my room, the beer in one hand and the plastic cup of juice in the other.

“Something like that,” I say. “You can have one if you want.”

“I’m good,” he says. He picks up his magazine and folds the cover back.

It’s even hotter in my room. Paint has started to peel off the wall near the radiator in wet, curling strips. I push the door closed with my foot, put the drinks on the floor, and open the window. Cool air and cigarette smoke rush in from the air shaft. I can hear the pigeons who live at the bottom cooing and shuffling their wings, and my upstairs neighbor talking about something “totally unbelievable” on the phone. Her window slams shut as a lit cigarette tumbles down through the snow. 

My phone chimes with a text and I swipe it open. My boss is asking if I got the email she just sent. Getting on a train now, running late! Will check after drinks, I write back. I switch the ringer off and put the phone facedown on the floor. 

I had been watching the show lying down, but for a little change of pace I pile my pillows and blankets against the wall so I can sit up against them. I hit the space bar to restart the stream. I feel so embarrassed for some reason! the woman with the Tupperware says, covering her face with her hands. The host smiles encouragingly. Only when you’re confronted with what you have, do you realize how much you have to do, she says. I press the space bar again and escape out of fullscreen. 

I click on the other open tab in my browser, which is a blog that I found while looking for pictures of baby goats wearing sweaters. It chronicles nearly fifteen years of a woman building her dream life, from her experiments with goat milk recipes in her early twenties to developing a line of lotions and creams embraced by fashion influencers and arthouse-cinema starlets to buying her own goat farm on an island in a New England bay. The photo that led me to her blog had not one baby goat but three, pouncing and play-bowing in a field of lavender. The caption read Some kids have all the luck!

The blog is hosted on a platform that I didn’t know still existed, with a layout that’s both sparse and difficult to navigate. Even the idea of a personal blog feels antiquated—describing your world to the void, without views or friends or favorites. I think about the enthusiasm you would have to feel about your life to want to write about it in full paragraphs and my eyes start to sting. I pick up the juice and take a hard pull from the straw, and then I finish the rest of my beer in one swallow.

I decide to go back to the beginning of the blog and read every entry in order. By the time I reach year five I’m down to one beer in the fridge and the words on the screen are swaying. I take an Ambien and switch back to the reality show.

Halfway through the episode, the host starts making strange noises to illustrate her points. When you touch the item that sparks joy for you, it feels like…ZING! she says. The other people in the room start imitating her—ZING! ZING! I can’t tell if my eyes are open or shut. Her voice is sparkling and peach-colored. She turns to face me. When you feel joy, you will feel your whole self rising.

The bedside light is still on when I wake up the next morning. My laptop is open facedown in a pile of clothes on the floor, and my roommate is knocking on the door.

“Hey Chloe? Your alarm has been going off for like half an hour,” he says from the hallway.

“Thanks, I got it!” I say. I feel around for my phone, which is blaring a sound file of Tibetan singing bowls. When I pick it up, I see two texts from my boss on the lock screen.

“Ok, but this has been happening a lot lately. I just wanted to communicate that to you.”

“Totally. I’m so sorry. I’m going to be better about that.”

“Thanks,” he says. He walks to his bedroom and shuts the door with a force just shy of slamming.

The texts my boss sent are long enough to take up the entire screen. I reply without reading them. So sorry!!! Drinks turned into a little more…will update soon! 

I get out of bed and search the pile of clothes for something I haven’t worn to work recently. My office doesn’t have a dress code, but it didn’t take long to notice that everyone wore variations of the same outfit formulated each season from cool-girl-chic Instagram accounts and “must-have” listicles on corporate feminist blogs. The jeans I find are stretched and baggy from too many wears without washing, but still unstained. I put on a slouchy sweater and tuck it in. The outfit is uncomfortable and unflattering, but an improvement over the crotch-pinching jumpsuits we wore in the fall. I spray perfume on my hair and clothing and avoid looking in the mirror on my way out.

When I get to work, there’s a film crew blocking the entrance to the building. Bright lights in silver-lined umbrellas are pointed at the door, and a man on the sidewalk is holding a pole over his head with a fuzzy microphone dangling from one end. A folding table under a tent is set with platters of pastries, bagels, fruit, and boxes of coffee. I try to remember the last thing I ate.

“Excuse me—” I say to a woman holding a clipboard, but she shushes me before I can explain that I’m running late. The crew is looking expectantly at the door. I put a muffin in my purse and take out my phone. 

Someone yells Cut! and the crew scatters. I go inside and take the elevator to the twentieth floor. On the ride I eat the top half of the muffin and put the rest back in my bag. When the number nineteen lights up, I practice smiling with my teeth. 

“Sorry I’m late!” I say as the doors slide open. The executive assistant is sitting at her desk in a glass-walled vestibule, under a sign that says Charmd in pink cursive neon.

“Everyone was late. A guy jumped in front of the L,” she says. 

I roll my eyes. “Always at rush hour!”

“I know! So inconsiderate,” she says, and we laugh.

Behind her I can see my boss leaning against my desk, talking to another member of our team. She checks her watch. I smile wider, until I feel my eyes crease, and push through the glass door to the office.

Charmd doesn’t believe in walls. We sit at the kind of long tables found in high school cafeterias, with desk-areas delineated by aggressive displays of framed photographs, gemstone collections, carved figurines, pink Himalayan salt lamps, vacation souvenirs from deserts and mountains, and electric scent diffusers in soothing orb shapes that have been the subject of multiple email chains about establishing olfactory boundaries. Everyone wears noise-cancelling headphones, even at the snack fridge and kombucha taps.

My boss stops talking as I get close. I greet her to fill the silence.

“Have fun last night?” she asks. She’s wearing a cashmere cardigan tucked into high-waisted jeans and a few silver bangles on one thin wrist. Her name is Klara with a K, and I suspect she’s younger than me.

“Well, you know what they say about Tinder—it’s either a good date or a good story,” I say. I suddenly feel hot and unzip my parka. 

“Which was it?” says the woman on my team. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and the sleeves of her thin V-neck sweater are pushed up to her elbows. A nameplate necklace that says AUDREY in wispy gold script hangs just below her throat. 

“Both, I guess,” I say. I laugh.

They don’t say anything, so I keep going. “I barely had time to run back to my apartment and get changed this morning. I probably look like a mess.”

“No, you look great,” Audrey says. Klara is scrolling through her phone. 

“It turns out that the guy I met up with was my brother’s roommate in college,” I say.

“Wow, weird,” Audrey says. I agree with her that it’s weird.

“I didn’t even know you had a brother. Does he live in New York?” she says.

“No. He’s getting his MBA at Wharton,” I say.

Klara looks up from her phone. “Shut. The fuck. Up,” she says. “What year is he?”

“He just started,” I say. I take my water bottle out of my purse and unscrew it.

“My husband’s at Wharton!” she says. “What’s his major?”

“World…economics,” I say.

Her brows furrow. “The multinational management major? Or business economics and public policy?”

“Multinational management,” I say. I take a sip of water.  

“That’s Todd’s major! He just started this year, too. He must know your brother. What’s his name?”

“Josh,” I say, trying to guess the most common name in an MBA program. I forget that Klara knows my last name, too. 

“Cool, Josh Fitzkey. I’ll tell Todd. He won’t believe it.”

I realize with a twinge of nausea that I won’t be seeing anyone in the office again after today. “We should all hang out the next time Josh is in New York,” I say.

“Definitely,” Audrey says. She winks at us and walks back to her desk. 

Klara puts her phone in her back pocket and turns to me. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you,” she says. “Did you see my texts?”

“Mmhmm,” I say. I wish we could be doing this behind closed doors, but there are no doors. My next-closest-deskmate, who is the only person in the company below me, lowers the volume on her headphones. 

“If you don’t start hitting your targets, it really puts the whole team in jeopardy,” Klara says. My deskmate scowls at me over the screen of her laptop. I feel close to vomiting. 

When I don’t respond, Klara’s eyes begin to wander, as if searching the room for the correct managerial script. “Do you want to get together over lunch and brainstorm solutions?” she says.

“Sure. Sweetgreen at one?” I say.

“Perfect,” she says.

After Klara goes back to her desk I walk carefully to the single-occupancy handicapped bathroom, lock myself inside, and throw up for a long time. When I’m done I feel much better. For the rest of the morning I drift around the office, buoyant and untouchable, like a ghost. 

At 12:45 I think about what from my desk will fit in my purse. I’ve never used the blocks of sticky notes or multi-colored paperclips. I don’t know what I would write at home on the mini legal pads. I pick up a photo my ex-husband took of me while we were hiking in the Redwoods, and then I put it back down.

Instead of riding the C back to Brooklyn, I take it uptown to 86th St. and walk across Central Park. The snow is still pristine in places, blank from footsteps. I climb the long flight of stairs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the first time and go inside. My ticket comes with a glossy brochure of current exhibitions and a color-coded map. I work my way from the vast, indistinct roar of the marble entry hall to a quiet gallery in the back, where there’s a show of Dutch Masters paintings.  

I stop at a moodily-lit still life that looks like the aftermath of a good time—an overturned candlestick, a shattered wine glass, a few shucked oysters on a silver platter, a half-peeled lemon next to something that resembles a loosely rolled joint. I read the informational placard next to the painting to see if it is indeed a joint, but the description says it’s a “cone of paper intended to hold spices.” The paper has been torn from an almanac, which, along with the broken glass, is supposed to remind viewers of the inexorable passage of time leading to our own deaths. 

On the way home I pick up a bottle from a small wine shop in my neighborhood. They specialize in “natural” wines, which come in shades of orange and pink and have a layer of silty yeast settled at the bottom. I read a few labels and choose a yellowish dry farm wine that has been aged in concrete. 

“Great choice,” says the man who rings me up. “This vineyard is really at the forefront of biodynamic winemaking in Patagonia.”

“Is that different from organic?” I say. 

He winces slightly, as if I had just farted. “It’s a method of farming that brings out the cosmic forces in the soil. These guys only plant grapes under a new moon, and bury sheep’s hearts stuffed with quartz in the roots.”

“Oh. Cool,” I say. 

“That’ll be thirty-four,” he says. 

I open my wallet and slip out my debit card, and then put it back and hand him my credit card instead. As he runs it I notice he’s kind of cute—scruffy in a way that could be described as “rugged,” with a few days’ stubble and rough hands. 

I thank him as he hands the bag over the counter. “Do you own this place?” I ask.

He snorts. “No,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say with a little laugh. “Well, maybe I’ll see you around here anyway.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he says. There’s a pile of frequent-shopper reward cards on the counter next to the credit card machine, but he doesn’t offer me one.  

As I walk back to my apartment I try to imagine his life. Maybe he only lives in the city in the winter and spends the growing season on a farm—upstate, or in Vermont. Maybe even Maine. He drives an old pickup truck and reads books by a wood stove at night. He has a girlfriend who he refers to as his “partner.” They have a few dogs, and…a horse? Two horses? But what do they do with their horses when they’re in the city? 

I look at my phone and see that Klara’s texted three times. I delete her texts and select “block this caller” on her entry in my contacts. I open my Gmail app and delete my work account. I feel around the gum wrappers and receipts in my coat pockets for my earbuds, but I can only find one of them. I wish I had taken my noise-cancelling headphones with me when I left. 

The apartment is empty when I get back. I pour a glass of wine, drink half of it standing in the kitchen, and then refill it to the top and take it to my room. I consider looking through job postings, but I don’t want a job. 

I get into bed with my laptop and find where I left off on the goat farm blog. It’s 2012, and the owner, Maggie, is wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She’s standing behind a table at a farmers’ market, holding an insulated travel mug in both hands and smiling. Little hexagonal jars of the goat’s milk lotion that will soon go viral in the artisanal wellness world are arranged on a linen tablecloth between sprigs of fresh lavender and bowls of lilacs. 

In the text of the post she cracks bad jokes and gives effusive shout-outs to several local farms and craftspeople. Her writing sounds like the early-morning hours of a middle school sleepover, when the last girls awake are delirious with laughter and affection and make pacts to be best friends forever. It’s so intimate that I feel like I could close my laptop and call her on the phone, and that she would pick up. 

The next year someone named Adam starts showing up in her posts. He has shaggy blond hair and dark, arched eyebrows that make him seem perpetually amused, or like he’s about to get into the kind of trouble that could be described as “mischief.” They move in together, renting a renovated carriage house and ivy-covered barn on a friend’s farm. They turn the barn into the production headquarters of Götja; they forage for rosehips by the ocean and rishi mushrooms in the forest; they make a website. Götja’s eye cream is included in Vogue’s holiday gift guide, and Maggie is featured in a New York Times article about small businesses owned by millennials. I take a sip from my wine glass and realize it’s empty. 

I get up and go to the kitchen to look for some kind of dinner. In the freezer I find a shrink-wrapped chicken pot pie that I think I bought a few months ago, now furred over in a layer of frost. I cut the plastic off and put it in the oven. 

The wine bottle is sweating on the counter where I left it when I got home. I pour a glass and lift it to my nose, trying to detect notes of quartz and sheep’s heart now that it’s opening up. It smells like grapes spoiling on concrete. I cork the bottle and put it in the fridge on the way back to my room. 

The entries in Maggie’s blog are becoming less about her life and more about milestones in building the Götja brand, but I keep reading. She posts links to interviews she’s done, podcasts she’s been on, new items available in her webstore. There are months with only one or two brief entries, mostly about how busy she is, and months with none at all. I feel like I’m losing touch with an old friend—trading voicemails that become fewer and farther between, until we’re down to the occasional miss you! text. She says she has some big news to announce when I start to smell smoke.  

I get out of bed and run to the kitchen, where a dark cloud is seeping out of the oven. I swear and yank open the door. Smoke pours into the room as the alarms in the apartment begin to shriek. I can see through the haze that the chicken pot pie is charred black and slightly on fire. 

For a brief moment I consider leaving the apartment and letting my life burn down. The entire sequence of events comes to me in a time-lapsed montage: I grab my wallet and coat and ride the subway to Grand Central, where I get on a train going somewhere else. My laptop and phone melt into unrecognizable hunks of plastic. My bed disintegrates. I don’t need my keys anymore, because they open doors I’ll never have to go through again. 

Almost unconsciously I get the fire extinguisher from under the sink and pull out the safety ring. I aim and squeeze the trigger, and the oven fills with something white. I can’t see if the fire’s out or not, so I keep spraying until most of the kitchen is covered in a powdery film. 

I’m still holding the extinguisher when I hear the front door locks click open. The shrill chirps of smoke alarms in the stairwell and neighboring apartments sound like a flock of birds warning each other of impending disaster. Before my roommate even gets to the kitchen I can hear him saying things like oh my god and what the fuck.

“What are you doing?” he says from the doorway behind me. 

I put down the empty extinguisher. “I’m moving out,” I say.

The next day I wake up to an email from Maggie, replying to one I had sent her at 1:43 in the morning. I try to remember why this might be happening. I know that I finished the bottle of wine while I was cleaning the kitchen, and there’s a jam jar next to my bed with an inch of yellowish water that smells like it had once been scotch on the rocks. I swallow it and open the email.

Apparently I had found an application to intern for Götja on the company’s website and filled it out—an odd choice given that I’m thirty years old, have about $500 in my checking account, and $30,000 in student loans and credit card debt. The internship is described as an opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to “disrupt the wellness space” and milk goats for six months, which I guess had sounded like a good career move after a day of burning personal and professional bridges. 

I scroll down the email and read the application I sent in. It’s mercifully short and lacking in typos, if somewhat vague about how I plan to revolutionize the industry. In her response Maggie asks if I can meet over Skype next week. I hit reply and tell her I’m free.

During the interview I try to come off as enthusiastic and agreeable—the kind of person you could imagine being grateful for room and board in exchange for a sixty-hour work week. I use phrases like “invaluable experience” and “apprenticeship model.” I ask a lot of questions about Götja that I already know the answers to from reading Maggie’s blog. I haven’t had a drink in five days, and I feel focused and light. She calls me that night to ask if I can start on April 1st.

It’s surprisingly easy to leave New York, as if the city is relieved to show me out after an awkward year-long visit. The only furniture I own is a particleboard platform for my mattress and a dresser from Ikea. I drag them outside and tape on a sign that says FREE—NO BUGS. I pack almost everything I moved with from California into clear trash bags and put them on the sidewalk next to the dresser. I don’t know anyone well enough to say goodbye to, so on my last night in the city I charge a $350 ticket to Parsifal on my credit card and watch it alone from the third-tier balcony. The next morning I drive away.

The bridge to the island is a mile long, rising so high in the middle that the boats in the bay below me look flat and still. A seagull glides parallel to my car for the descent to the coast, close enough that someone riding shotgun could have touched its wing. It dips out of sight as I pass under a sign welcoming me to Nanepaushat. 

The address Maggie gave me is a few miles inland, where the houses clustered around the shore give way to fields and jagged stone walls. Some of the driveways have hand-painted signs for farms, but the only evidence of agricultural commerce I see are a few empty roadside stands with locked honor boxes and a dozen sheep guarded by a vigilant llama whose ears turn to follow my car as I drive by. 

I slow down the car when I see a sign with the Götja logo hanging above a split-rail fence. The gravity of what I’m doing begins to sink painfully into my stomach. I realize that I want to turn back, and then that there is no back to turn to. 

Chickens wander haphazardly out of the driveway as I navigate an obstacle course of ruts and potholes that ends at a white farmhouse half covered in scaffolding. I recognize it all from Maggie’s blog—the towering barn, the tire swing in the front yard, the ribbed greenhouse stretched over with plastic. I park next to a pristine John Deere tractor barely bigger than a riding mower and unbuckle my seatbelt. 

A dog starts barking in the house. The front door swings open and a shepherd runs outside, bounding over to my car and jumping up on the driver’s side window. It’s followed by Maggie, who laughs apologetically as she hooks her fingers in the dog’s collar and pulls it down. 

“Sit! Harley, sit!” she says as the dog takes off after a hen. I open my door and get out. 

“Sorry about that. The welcome party got ahead of me.”

“No problem. I love dogs,” I say, examining the muddy paw prints covering my window.

“Great! I forgot to ask.” She glances into my car, which contains the last of everything I own, including two standing lamps and a box labeled childhood books/photos. “Need help carrying anything in?”

“Oh, no—maybe later?” I say. 

“Sure. I should give you the tour first anyway.”  

I follow Maggie to a field behind the barn while she tells me about preparing the spring crop of herbs and flowers used in Götja recipes. I’m half listening and half regretting the clothing I brought with me, all of it leftover from working in the Charmd office—flared jeans, chunky-heeled boots, unwashable sweaters with impractical necklines and sleeve lengths. Maggie’s wearing dirty white painter’s pants tucked into hiking socks, calf-high L.L.Bean boots, and a striped wool sweater that looks like it belonged to a twelve-year-old boy in 1972. Her sleek brown hair is pulled back in a ponytail that skims her shoulder as she turns to me.

“We’re putting in lilac bushes along the tree line here. Aren’t lilacs sublime? Daffodils are charming in their own way, but I thank god when the lilacs bloom. That’s when you know winter has truly passed,” she says. 

Something strange has happened to Maggie’s voice since the tour started. She sounds like she’s reciting a monologue, complete with pauses for audience response. I also think I hear an accent that I can’t quite place—like she grew up speaking several languages at a Swiss boarding school instead of in the working-class Boston suburb she talks about in her blog. She points out where the chamomile and calendula will be planted as we walk along the rows, which all together are about the size of an ambitious backyard garden.

“Where do you grow the rest of it?” I ask.

“The rest of what?” she says.

“I guess I’m not sure?” I say. “I listened to a podcast where you talked about your life as a farmer, so I thought there was…more of a farm.”

Her eyes narrow a little, but she smiles. “There’s the greenhouse, too, and the goats of course,” she says. “Would you like to see the bees? They’re just waking up for the season.”

Maggie leads me to a stack of wooden filing boxes painted in shades of pastel. She bends down to open a toolbox on the ground and stands with a pair of tweezers in one hand. I back up as she lifts the lid off of the top box.

“We’re experimenting with propolis in Swan Song, the new neck cream. Bees produce so many therapeutic substances—even in their venom.” She uses the tweezers to select a bee from the row of vertical screens in the box. “Simultaneously inflammatory and anti-inflammatory. Want to try?” 

Her bright, smooth skin and wide blue eyes make her look as guileless as a child. But her tone is conspiratorial, like a dare. The bee she holds out to me is writhing in the tip of the tweezers.

“I’ve actually never been stung by a bee before,” I say. “My mother was really allergic, and I think it can be hereditary.”

“We have an EpiPen in the barn,” she says.

I’m not sure how to respond. “I just don’t think it would be a good idea,” I say.

“Of course. Whatever you’re comfortable with,” she says. She holds the bee to her wrist and sighs as her eyes close. “I never get sick. This is my little secret.” 

When her eyes open she’s looking directly into mine. She drops the dead bee into the grass and puts the tweezers back in the toolbox.

The next stop on the tour is the barn. Maggie slides open an enormous door, and we step into a workshop that’s equal parts assembly line and alchemist’s lair. Bunches of herbs hang upside down from the rafters, grazing the tops of cardboard boxes and plastic five gallon buckets that are stacked high against every wall. Sliced mushrooms and frilled ribbons of seaweed are dehydrating on mesh racks in one corner, and in another a copper still, a microscope, a coffee grinder, and a digital scale sit on a long stainless steel table crowded with lab equipment.

“This is where the magic happens,” Maggie says. “And this is Adam.”

The guy from Maggie’s blog is sitting at a table behind rows of empty glass product jars and spools of Götja labels. He smiles at me as he smooths down the corner of a label with his thumb.

“Thanks for coming to help out,” he says.

“You’ll be working in here mostly,” Maggie says before I can respond. “There are morning chores with the animals, mucking and milking and whatnot, but the majority of the work is in production.” She turns to Adam. “Where’s Vinca?”

“She’s out collecting moss,” he says. 

“How much do we have now?” she asks, inspecting a woven basket filled with velvety green chunks. 

“About twenty pounds. I put a batch in the still this morning,” he says. 

“Excellent. Chloe, come,” she says. I follow her to the lab table, where she picks up a jar half-filled with clear liquid. 

“We’re developing a mist,” she says. “I want to capture the essence of Nanepaushat. The sea, the land, the terroir.” She unscrews the cap and holds it up to my nose. I’ve never smelled anything like it—feral and delicate at the same time, like the impossibility of being beautiful and not knowing it.

“It will be very limited. Annual vintages, hand numbered, that sort of thing,” she says as she screws the jar shut and puts it back on the table. “And now on to the goats.”

Maggie unlatches a door leading to the other half of the barn. We walk across a floor softened by hay and then outside again into an elaborate goat playground ringed by an electric fence.

“These are our darlings,” she says. “That’s Bonnie on the platform, Tallulah and Persimmon are eating, and Winona is chewing on the ramp. Winona, hey!” 

The goats look up in unison. They each have a leather collar with a bell that clinks dully as they raise their heads. “They’re all pregnant—it freshens their milk. Tallulah’s due any day now,” Maggie says as she points at a spotted goat with a black patch over one eye. Her sides are so swollen that it looks like she’s carrying saddle bags under her skin. “Twins,” she adds.

There are two more goats in a separate pen at the far side of the yard. They both have foam pool noodles covering their horns, and one of them is head butting a tree. “Who are they?” I ask.

“The bastard is Larry, and that’s his friend Buddy. We have to keep Larry around for breeding. Buddy is castrated though, thankfully,” she says.

I know better than to ask where the other goats are. I’m remembering now that most of the photos of the farm on Maggie’s blog are artful close-ups that blur towards the edges, creating the illusion that a row of plants goes on infinitely, even if there are only a few in the frame. 

She pushes up one sleeve and squints at her watch. “Well, time does fly!” she says. “Let’s get you settled in.” 

Before Maggie left me to unpack she said that dinner would be served at seven. I arrive in the dining room of the farmhouse a few minutes early, but no one else is there. I hear voices in the adjoining kitchen and the pop of a wine cork. 

I sit down at the round wooden table, which is set for four with stoneware plates, Ball jars for water, beeswax tapers in heavy pewter candlesticks, and a few branches of blooming forsythia artfully arranged in a chipped ceramic pitcher. The plaster walls of the dining room have crumbled in a few places, exposing the slats of lath beneath, but even the patina of mold stains where the old wallpaper has been torn away looks more chic than shabby. 

“There you are,” Maggie says as she comes in from the kitchen. She’s carrying a serving platter with a dozen shucked oysters nestled in a bed of crushed ice. “Will you be a dear and grab the lemons?”

I get up and follow the scent of garlic and seared flesh into the kitchen. Adam is standing in front of the stove stirring something in an enameled cast iron pot. 

“Smells amazing in here,” I say.

“Thanks. Kid stew,” he says. 

“I was definitely not this sophisticated as a kid. Is that sherry?” I say, picking up a bottle on the butcher block counter next to the stove.

He laughs—a startling, explosive sound that makes me flinch. “Not kid like a child. The meat in the stew is from the last round of culls.” 

I’m trying to think of what to say when I hear a woman’s voice behind us. “Let’s be real. The goats are just for the blog,” she says. 

“And, on special occasions, dinner.” Adam says. “Have you met Vinca?”

The woman leaning against the doorway is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in real life. She’s wearing Birkenstocks and what looks like a burlap sack with holes cut out for her arms and neck, as if anything more flattering would be too much for mere mortals to handle.

“Not yet. I’m Chloe,” I say, holding out my hand. She shakes it lightly. Her fingers feel cool and delicate, even though her limbs have the defined musculature of a dancer or a distance runner. I realize that I haven’t been touched for months, with the exception of the bodega guy’s fingers brushing my palm as he gives me change. “Are you interning too?” I ask.

“I was, a few years ago. Now I’m on staff. Or I’m the staff, with Adam.”

Maggie appears in the doorway holding a small bell with a wooden handle between her pointer and thumb. “Dinner is served,” she says, tinkling the bell like a butler. Adam and Vinca walk silently into the dining room. “Like herding cats,” she says to me, rolling her eyes. “Don’t forget the lemons.”

I look around the kitchen and see a few lemons in a tiered wire basket hanging from the ceiling. I take them all into the dining room and put them on the table.

“We’re going to need these sliced. For the oysters,” Maggie says. 

Adam gets up and goes into the kitchen, returning with a knife and cutting board.

“Thank you, darling,” Maggie says. She’s smiling at him from across the table, but he doesn’t look up from the wedges he’s cutting.  

“Wine?” Maggie says, turning to me.

“No, thanks. I’m taking a break,” I say.

“Good for you,” she says, pouring generous glasses for herself, Adam, and Vinca.

When we’re all seated, Maggie says she would like to propose a toast. She takes an oyster from the platter and lifts it in the air. “To Chloe, for joining us on this journey. May we rise ever higher—together.”

We each take an oyster and carefully tap the edges of their shells against one another, murmuring cheers, cheers, cheers before tipping them into our mouths. The liquid tastes brackish and vegetal, like the smell of a saltwater marsh on a hot day. 

“Where are these from?” I ask.

“Here,” Maggie says. “Oysters are one of my inspirations for the mist. They simply are their milieu.” She pauses mid-thought to sip her wine. “Have you ever had a really brisk, briny oyster and felt positively transported to the sea? Tasting it on your lips, your skin. You can feel your shoulders burning in the sun.”

I nod and smile, like I’m imagining being at the beach. We all sit quietly for a few seconds. I squeeze a slice of lemon over an oyster.

“Have you thought about pricing the mist?” Vinca asks.

“I don’t think we could reasonably go higher than two-fifty,” Maggie says. She tops off her wine and offers the bottle to Vinca and Adam, but their glasses are still mostly full. “What number feels right to you, Chloe?"

“Well,” I say. I can’t think of a number that feels “right,” exactly. “Who’s your target demographic?”

“Excellent question. How would you describe them, Vinca?” 

Vinca leans back in her chair. She lifts her hands and clasps them on top of her head, where her hair has been twisted up and secured so tenuously that half of it has fallen against the sides of her face and the back of her neck.

“Lovers caught in a downpour,” she says.

“Precisely,” Maggie says. 

Adam finishes the last oyster and puts the shell upside down in the ice. “A man with a study.”

“Brilliant.”

There’s a pause in the banter and I realize with a small amount of terror that it might be my turn. “What about two thirty-five?” I say.

“That sounds perfect. I’m so glad you’re with us,” Maggie says as she reaches over the table to squeeze my shoulder. 

Adam starts to clear the oysters. “Wait!” Maggie says. He puts the platter back on the table and sits down. She gets up, turns off the overhead light, and studies the table briefly before leaving the room.  

“So…what’s happening?” I ask with an ironic half-smile, like I’m willing to play whatever game we’re playing, I just need to know the rules.

“The blog,” Vinca says. “You can take a photo too, if you want. Just don’t geotag the farm without showing Maggie first.”

“Ah yes, the rare Götja geotag—one of the perks of the job,” Adam says, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. 

While we’re waiting for Maggie, I consider the tableau of rustic elegance that is our dinner table. I can see that she was right not to photograph it before the meal started, when it would have looked like a generic spread in Town & Country. Now that the sun has set and the light is off, the candles cast quivering shadows of our bodies and the branches of forsythia on the walls and ceiling. The napkins are askew, the oyster shells are overturned on melting ice, the bottle of wine is nearly finished. Even if there wasn’t a single person in the frame you would feel that a dinner party was taking place—it might in fact be better if the picture were a little empty and vague, so as to more easily imagine yourself in a seat at the table.

Maggie returns with a camera, light meter, and several lenses. She instructs us to look natural while she moves around the table, shooting the scene from different angles.  

“So what’s on the schedule for tomorrow?” I say to no one in particular.

“You’ll have to ask the boss,” Adam says. “I’m in and out of the barn a lot during kidding season, checking on the goats.” 

“He even checks on them overnight,” Maggie says from behind her camera. 

Adam looks like he’s going to respond to Maggie and then decides against it. “You’ll probably be doing a lot of what I would normally do—labeling, shipping, invoicing. I’ll do the goat chores for now.”

“I’m really looking forward to the goat part,” I say. “I’ve never milked anything before.”

“Most of the milk we use is sourced from other farms,” Vinca says. 

“That’s how it’s been since the beginning,” Maggie says. She puts her camera down and turns to me. “I started Götja with milk from trusted local farmers, which we now blend with what we get from our own goats. Every Götja product is made, at least partially,” she says as she looks at Vinca, “with herbs, flowers, and milk cultivated by our own hands on our own land.” 

I recognize some of Maggie’s explanation from the ad copy on the Götja website, which is accompanied by pictures of her weeding flower beds and bottle-feeding baby goats. 

“I’m overseeing the website and PR, so you might not see me much during the day,” Maggie says as she resumes taking photos. “Will someone get the stew? I just want a few of Adam ladling it out.”

After we’ve been served Maggie puts her camera away and opens a second bottle of wine. She tries to pour me some and then remembers why I don’t have a glass. 

“So sorry—I’ve forgotten already!” she says. She fills her glass and puts the bottle between Adam and Vinca. “Don’t make me drink all this myself,” she tells them.

Vinca adds a perfunctory splash to her wine and hands the bottle to Adam. “How’s the room working out?” she asks me. “That’s where I used to live when I first came to the farm.”

“We built a tiny cabin for Vinca last summer. In the woods behind the field,” Maggie says, waving toward one of the walls of the dining room. 

“Wow, cool,” I say. “The room is—”

“Sometimes you just need a little space. Living and working together. You know what I mean,” Maggie says. She seems to have abandoned her accent, and the edge of her lips are stained with wine.   

Vinca sighs and looks at Adam, but his smile is unchanged, as if Maggie hadn’t spoken. “So, Chloe. Tell us about you. How did you wind up here?”

I wake up the next morning to the sound of frantic tapping on glass. In the grayish pre-dawn light I see the shapes of unfamiliar furniture, and at first I’m not sure where I am. I begin to gather clues about my surroundings—the air is cold, the bed I’m in is narrow and firm, I’m alone. I remember that I’m at the Götja farm, where I now live. I’m in my room.

I look around for the source of the tapping and see a small sparrow fluttering against a windowpane. At first I think she’s outside, but she’s actually inside, trying to escape. 

I get out of bed and walk across the cool floorboards to the window. She’s beating her wings against the glass and striking at the pane with her beak. I try to open the window, but it’s old and jammed in the frame. 

As I’m pushing against the sash I see some movement through the gently rippled glass. It’s Adam, coming out of the woods. His head is down and his hands are in his pockets. He strides over the raised rows of dirt in the field, peeks into the goat barn, and continues on toward the back door of the house. 

The sparrow is still knocking against the window. I reach out and close my hand over her wings, folding them against her weightless body. She doesn’t struggle once she understands that she is caught. The down of her breast is so soft that it feels like nothing, like air. I bring her close to my face and look into her blank black eyes. I feel the vibration of her tiny heart under my thumb.