The story of the unfinished painting of the Sailing Ship Columbia winning the America's Cup in 1958, inside the house beside Spring Creek, at the edge of the county line

Mr. Sunday asks the others to keep their business to a dull roar, as it disturbs both his painting and his paints. He carries his tea up on a saucer and it clatters and rattles with every step. It is not his fault he lives with so many. It is not his fault his paints are so shy.

Mr. Sunday's pursuits are well-known by the others, who appreciate the finished products of pines at dusk and sunflowers illumined in a beam of afternoon sun, but do not always enjoy their creation. Friday in particular goes dancing through all the lower rooms in protest, clicking her heels and waving her crimson shawl about her like a flag-dancer or a tailor-queen. Mr. Sunday grunts and grumbles, but all he can do is wave his hands when Tuesday joins the fun.

It is Monday and Wednesday's turn to care for the animals, and so they proceed out-of-doors all in flannel and canvas. Monday has a great deal to say to Wednesday, but Wednesday's stalwart and peaceable quiet is difficult to break. From behind their sizable beard, Wednesday gives the impression of deep thought and wisdom as they haul hay for the cattle and horses. A bead of sweat forms on Monday's forehead as he struggles with his bale, until he finally breaks with effort of saying nothing and erupts with, “Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?”

Wednesday considers the statement, and holds up a hand to the first drops of rain. “I hadn't noticed,” they say with sylvan calm. “I was thinking about how good you look in red.” Monday's face summarily becomes as bright as his two-pocketed and black-checked shirt.

Back up at the house, Tuesday has caused a small commotion by feeding the dog a single tube of liniment and Friday's lucky silver dollar, and the resulting hollering has caused Mr. Sunday to mistakenly paint the forsythia a deep and exhaustive chartreuse. Saturday observes the hubbub over the brim of their gothic tales of woe and horror, and smiles deep within their head but not without.

Ultimately, the only solution is that Tuesday will bestow upon Friday her good dancing slippers, but only if Thursday assents to escorting Tuesday with the dog to the doctor's down the road, posthaste. Unwitting to their involvement in this scheme, Thursday rolls up the sleeves of their green housecoat to reach into the drain, where a clog has caused considerable water to accumulate in the dip in the tile where they often stand before the kitchen basin. While the pot bubbles plaintively atop the wrought iron, Thursday's fingers contact a thing both hairy and cold as metal, and quite severely stuck in the rivets of the pipe. They mutter an expletive, and then are struck with guilt, and check surreptitiously that the children are not within earshot.

Meanwhile, while Wednesday carries hatchet and wedge and Monday ports a rusted red wheelbarrow, Monday expresses his botanical knowledge with great fervor and excitement. Indeed, there is an abundance of botany about them, including Quercus alba, Hamamelis virginiana, and Ilex aquifolium, but it appears that Monday understands little of the foliage he describes, or perhaps his words are jumbled by the sudden and most inexplicable quickening of his heart.

When the pair returns to the place where they had previously abandoned a day's labor, Monday finally ceases his rambling. He and Wednesday fall back into a familiar and practiced rhythm of splitting and stacking, and a long sigh departs him. He contemplates how it would not be terrible if he and Wednesday were to remain friends, and act as they always had, and that’s all that were to come of it. Wednesday appears to take quiet joy in the sudden whoosh and crack beneath the warm gray sky.

With much waving of hands and declaration of vengeance, Friday and Tuesday both take within their arms half of the beleaguered and nauseated dog, and summarily squabble over who will be blamed before the good doctor. Mr. Sunday breaks for an afternoon snack, and stares out of the attic window at the snow-spotted woods. His eyes and his art are not what they used to be, and he often wishes he had the fire and inspiration of his youth. But then, he thinks, picking chips of lemon yellow from his smock, he would scarcely know what to do with fire these days. He is dry old wood.

In the foyer, Friday and Tuesday cajole the dog though the door and down the walk. Saturday turns a page, and sighs at depictions of beastly men and darkened castles with cracks shuddering in their foundations. They think they would like a castle someday, if they get the chance. Thursday's clamoring is just far enough away to go unnoticed.

While the pot has now been prevented from boiling over, Thursday is well behind on preparing the roast. Indeed, they are short on garlic and parsnips and peppercorns. While smacking themself for forgetting such a kitchen staple as peppercorns at the marketplace this week, they forget the puddle still some half-inch deep on the tile, and fall with the twenty-pound roast into the dishwater. Meanwhile, the drain gurgles around its clog like an old man sucking his teeth.

Thursday releases many explicit pronouncements, including a curse on the mother of the roast and all its unborn children, and then rests their head against the door of the scullery. They worry that when one thing goes wrong, everything else will go wrong after it. Why shouldn’t the world be connected on a perilous string, the fatal tug of which was the loss of the band in the drain, and now like a paper chain the rest of their life should all come tearing down? They were foolish, and now the dinner is lost and so is the esteem of all those they love! – or so goes their thoughts, spiraling around in increasing pitch and amplitude like a zoetrope with a broken motor.

Mr. Sunday, noticing that the house has now grown quiet, finds it rather melancholy, and stands before his easel with cadmium yellow drying on his palette knife, wishing he had not been so quick to tell the others to quiet down. The forsythia appears wilted and nearing the end of its bloom, and he again looks out the window at the woods and thinks about how sometimes things go on without you, and what is the point of a painting, anyway? What is the point of pretending that anything lasts?

The wood is split and stacked, and Monday's wheelbarrow is loaded high. Wednesday covers their axe as Monday sulks like a wet dishrag. He thinks that no jester has ever been as big a clown as he.

“A good haul,” says Wednesday, and Monday finds that a smile is wrung out of him, despite his self-pity.

“Just like every day!” Monday replies, and laughs with false cheer, staring at the stupid leaves on the stupid dirt, half buried under the stupid snow. “Just the same as every damn day.”

“Isn't it wonderful?” says Wednesday, and Monday cannot help but raise his head. Wednesday's eyes twinkle. “I love the time we spend out here.”

Monday is dumbstruck, barrow still raised above the ground. “Me too,” he stammers. “I love the woods. And splitting wood. And stacking wood. And you.” He shuts his mouth in mortification, but before he can worry too much, Wednesday kisses him very gently on the lips. Rain falls like small parasol dancers, embarking on the descent from some grand tightrope in the sky.

When Wednesday pulls away, Monday stares with panicked disbelief.

“I love you, too,” says Wednesday, their voice as earnest as unspun wool and unsanded oak. “I just didn't know when to say it. You always start talking before I do.”

Monday turns entirely scarlet and begins to melt like snow under a light rain. A Quercus alba observes these two amours, and spreads her brown leaves a little wider to shield them from the rain.

Saturday finishes the story and checks the time. With some disappointment at the tale’s denoument, they rise and wonder to where the others have gone off. They find Thursday wide-eyed in the kitchen, the sink overflowing, the parsnips half cut and mangled, and the roast being frantically blotted dry with cheesecloth. Saturday takes pity and plucks the clog from the drain with some effort but little ceremony.

They clean the bits of hair and carrot peelings and thread from the silver wedding band, and fit the ring back onto Thursday's finger. When Thursday notices the ring's receipt, they burst into tears on Saturday's bosom, and Saturday spends an equivalent time blotting Thursday as Thursday spent blotting the roast. With time, it becomes apparent that Saturday does not mind.

When they are in calmer mind, Saturday bestows them with a kiss, and departs the house with their sable coat and the keys.

Mr. Sunday sits in his chair when Thursday visits. His hands are wiped clean of most acrylic, but there are impressions of less toxic colors around the grooves of his nails.

“It's beautiful,” says Thursday, but Mr. Sunday waves a hand.

“It's hogwash,” he declares. “It'll never be anything, just like I was never anything, anyway.”

“Oh, come now,” says Thursday, not unkindly, switching on the bedside lamp and beholding the scene which the painter has lovingly inscribed. “You are loved and your paintings are, too, and Saturday's gone to get the dinner. What more do you want?”

Mr. Sunday snuffs and snorts, and says, “Hmmph.” Thursday kisses him on his stubbled gray cheek.

“May I hang this over the kitchen sink, once it is dry?” inquires Thursday.

Mr. Sunday believes that he has no objection.

Monday hopes no one will notice the rosy hue of his face, or the woodchips in his shirt, or the hand belonging to Wednesday that he is clasping tightly at his side. He has a low opinion of how observant other people are. Wednesday seems to have no such concerns, smiling through their auburn-brown beard. They bring in the wood and stoke the fire, all the while Monday extols to all in earshot the intricacies of ballast and the perils of seafaring, which Thursday supposes he knows nothing much about.

The dog is alive, and returns to happily nuzzle Wednesday and lick up and down their beard. Tuesday agrees that Friday saved the day by remembering the word liniment for the doctor, if not its spelling, and Friday admits that it was likely her fault for the row to begin with. Monday makes a crown from last week's newspaper, and Tuesday wears it as Saturday lays out the grocery store fare. Monday inquires on the roast, and is summarily silenced by Saturday's severe glance.

Mr. Sunday sits at the head of the table, wishing he could hear a little better what Wednesday whispers into Monday's ear. Jokes, probably. That kid always had an ear for them. The dinner tastes of a warm summer in Newport where boats had sailed across the bay like great swans, and there had been embers in the air and he had been all gold ochre and flammable oils and grandiose plans. He had still had difficulty laying brush to canvas, but it hadn’t mattered that the painting of the sailboat went unfinished when he embraced him at the docks, hat askew as he stepped from the boat. Things had been different then, and Sunday had never wished to be a maudlin old man, but he cannot help but long for the first few chapters now that the book is drawing to a close.     

Saturday, who understands the nature of books and of many other things, lays their hand on his. They say nothing, but their smile is warm.

“It is decided,” proclaims Monday, who appears as surprised to be giving his pronouncement as a man struck by an automotive is surprised to be walking. Wednesday leans slyly away from his ear. “We are going to be wedded, I suppose, in the summer.” There is great clamor and hubbub, and cheering from Friday and fretting from Thursday, and Mr. Sunday barks at them all to keep it down.

But he doesn't mean it, and they know it, and they don't.