“Fine.” Anna sits down on top of her suitcase and tugs the zipper closed, then looks around the room, concerned, like she’s forgotten something. There’s a small bottle of Love’s Fresh Lemon on her bureau. She walks over to it. “Here,” she hands it to me. “Since I won’t be around for your birthday.”
She has taken her posters down, but there are still thumbtacks everywhere and dark smudgy rectangles that look like shadow frames. A small ripped corner of glossy paper is trapped behind a tack. It’s all that is left of Anna’s stuff: a puzzle piece of Sweet Baby James, the rest of him crumpled in the trash.
“Why can’t I have your room?” I ask. “Why does he get it?”
Anna bursts into tears. “I hate you,” she says.
The worst thing of all is that Anna is being replaced. Conrad’s mother has decided she can’t handle a thirteen-year-old boy. She will keep weird Rosemary and her creepy obsession with Gregorian chants and original sin, and we will get Conrad. Horrible, staring Conrad with his short, thick wrestler’s body. Anna says it’s because his mother caught him jerking off into the toilet. We are picking him up at the airport after we put Anna on the boarding school bus. Anna is scared of traveling alone, and Mum knows it, but Leo insisted Mum be there to welcome his son into the family, so she can’t drive Anna to New Hampshire. “I can’t be two places at once,” she told Anna.
“You should go live with Dad,” I say now.
Anna goes to her desk, opens the bottom drawer and pulls out a blue airmail envelope. “I wrote to him this summer. I told him about how bad everything was with me and Leo. I asked if I could come live with him in London.” She hands me the envelope.
Dad’s letter is short. He says he wishes Anna could come live with him but they can’t afford a larger apartment right now. Things are tight and Joanne needs privacy to write. If it were up to me, he says, of course you could live with us. He’s sure things will get better. Leo is a good man. It is signed: Love, Dad.
“He didn’t want me,” Anna says.
“He says if it was up to him,” I say.
“It is up to him, moron,” Anna says.
When it’s time to go, Anna locks herself in the bathroom. She turns the faucet on full blast, but I can hear her crying. Leo is out running last-minute errands, so there are no angry goodbyes. The ride downstairs in the elevator is silent. We watch the landing of each floor slip upward until the elevator man stops the brass handle with a lurch and pulls open the cage door.
“Bon voyage,” our wiry doorman Gio says as we file through the lobby, keeping our eyes on the black-and-white marble floor. “Come home soon, Anna. We’ll miss you.”
Anna manages a smile. “Apparently you’re the only one.” She gives my mother an icy glare.
“You girls need a taxi?”
“No, thank you, Gio,” my mother says. “We’ll manage. If my husband comes home, please tell him we’ve taken Anna to the bus. Eleanor, help your sister with that suitcase.”
We trudge down Lexington Avenue, past Lamston’s, past the drugstore, past the coffee shop that makes root beer floats, down the hill to the corner, where the boarding school bus is waiting.
“Maybe it’ll be like camp,” I say to Anna. “You always wanted to go to sleepaway camp.”
“Maybe,” Anna says. She grabs my arm and puts it through hers. “I wish you were coming with me,” she says. It is the nicest thing she has ever said to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
We shove her suitcase under the bus and stand there together. “Don’t let him win,” she says. And without a single word to our mother, she gets on the bus and doesn’t look back.
1:15 P.M.
I stand knee-high in the sea. Each time a wave crashes on me I steady my leg muscles, turn my body to the side, grip the sand beneath my toes. I don’t want to get pulled under.
Peter and the kids are still far out, floating on their boogie boards. I scan the water around them, looking for fins. Looking for shadows. It’s been a long time since I swam here innocently. Every time we come to the beach, I imagine a shark approaching. I’m the first one to see it. I imagine my cries of warning, the frantic splashing as they half run, half swim toward me, toward safety, toward shore. I imagine screaming for help, and then, with no one else in sight, my own frenzied plunge toward danger. Pulling them from the shark’s grip, risking my own life to save my children. And every time, the other thought comes: If it was just Peter in the water, would I swim out to save him?
Peter waves to me now.
“Lunchtime!” I yell, gesturing for him to bring the kids in.
He looks over his shoulder at a big wave approaching and starts paddling with all his might. He catches the wave at its crest and rides it past me. His face is pure joy.
Gina has set up the picnic in the shade of the tent. I can see the indentation of my body in the sand, next to a pile of tuna sandwiches on a paper plate.
“Jonas went to find a bathroom.” Gina passes out cups of lemonade. “Look,” she says. “He’s so sweet.” She points to Jonas’s drawing in the sand. The one I couldn’t see from the tent. It’s a heart. In it he has written: I love only you.
Gina hands the kids a bag of mini carrots. “Can you imagine having such a romantic husband?” she asks Maddy.
“You’re so lucky, Gina” Maddy says.
“She is,” I say.
“What am I, chopped liver?” Peter says.
“Kind of,” Maddy says. “But nice chopped liver.”
“I hate liver,” Finn says. “Never make me eat liver. Because I hate it.”
I watch Jonas coming back over the dune from the bathrooms.
“Hey, man,” Peter calls to him. “You missed some excellent surf out there. It was a perfect break.”
“I was too busy flirting with your wife.” Jonas lies down beside me on the sand, hands crossed behind his head. I can feel the warmth of his skin next to mine. The small space between us is dense. Not air, but water. Our illicit proximity thrills through me.
“She’s yours for a price.” Peter laughs. “I’ve been waiting for the right buyer.” He stuffs the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth.
“I’ll have my people talk to your people,” Jonas says to Peter, letting his arm brush mine. I allow myself to breathe him in for a second, before sitting up and shifting away.
“Ha-ha,” I say.
There’s a smudge of mayo on Peter’s cheek. “You have a thing there.” I wet the corner of my towel with a bit of saliva and wipe it off.
“Eww,” Finn says.
“It’s just spit, goose. And, Peter? Don’t ever say, ‘Hey, man,’ again. Ever.”
Gina is busy putting rocks and bits of brittle black seaweed around the outline of the heart Jonas drew for me in the sand. Maddy is helping collect pebbles and shells for her. She runs up with a sand dollar in her hand.
“Look!” She sounds as if she has found the treasure of the Sierra Madre.
“It’s perfect,” Gina says, and puts it in the middle of the word love.
I can’t look at Jonas.
“We should go soon,” I say to Peter.
“I want to stay longer,” Finn whines.
“No whining,” I say.
“Me too,” Maddy says.
“I’m getting burnt to a crisp.”
Peter looks at his watch. “The kids are having a good time. We can stay another half an hour.”
He’s right. The kids are happy. It’s not their fault I fucked Jonas.
“Leave them with us,” Gina says. “We can drop them off later.”
“That works,” Peter says before I have a chance to say no. “You can have a swim in the pond. Rinse the salt off.”
“Perfect,” Gina says.
I look at Jonas, willing him to come up with an excuse. He smiles, amused
.
Peter starts collecting our stuff. “Three-ish?”
“Sounds good,” Jonas says to everyone, but he’s looking at me. “If you wait for me to take your afternoon swim, I’ll swim across the pond with you, Elle.”
“I’ll be making margaritas,” Peter says.
“Salt me a glass,” Gina says.
In the car, Peter puts his hand on my thigh. “Alone at last, gorgeous.”
“No thanks to you. I was trying to get rid of them. They’ll come back to the camp and hang around ’til dinnertime.”
“But now we have a few free hours. I thought we could have a swim at Black Pond.”
He leans over, nuzzles my neck. “A naked swim,” he says in his “suggestive” voice. “That bathing suit makes me horny.”
“My ratty old black bathing suit makes you horny?”
“My ratty old white wife does, actually.”
I laugh. This is the thing about Peter.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun.” He reaches between my legs, strokes my thigh where my sarong has fallen open. “When was the last time you had sex in a public place?”
My leg flinches. The memory of Jonas’s hand. “You know what? That’s a great idea,” I say, trying to cover it. “We haven’t been down there in ages.”
“Excellent,” he says, but he takes his hand away.
10
1979. June, Connecticut.
Through the large plate-glass window in my grandparents’ dining room, where I’m setting the table for dinner, I can see all the way across the low hills to the neighboring farm. Up against a barbed-wire fence, their cows chew the cud. The last bronzing light of the summer day flashes the tops of the trees beyond. My father and Joanne are getting divorced. He tells us it’s because he missed his girls too much and Joanne refused to move back to the States. He chose us. We are spending June together.
In the living room, where they are watching the six o’clock evening news, my father and Granny Myrtle are arguing in low voices. I tiptoe around the dining table, placing a silver fork on each napkin, silver knife to the right, trying to listen-in, careful not to make a sound.
“What hogwash,” I hear Granny Myrtle saying to him. “That insufferable woman cuckolded you. And I’d call it a blessing in disguise.” She turns the volume on the television up a notch. “I must be going deaf in my old age.”
“You’re wrong, Mother,” my father says. “I missed the girls.” But there’s a limpness in his voice that makes me think of empty rooms.
“Those two girls are the only good thing you’ve managed to accomplish,” she says.
I hear my father get up and go to the bar, hear the sound of ice cubes landing in his bourbon glass.
* * *
—
Anna lies on her twin bed in our room off the kitchen, staring at the ceiling. “I have to get out of here,” she says when I come in.
We’ve only been here two days, but already she wants to leave. Her boarding school roommate Lily has invited Anna to spend three weeks at the family’s summer “cottage” in Newport. “They belong to the country club. Her brother Leander is a pro in the tennis shop.”
“You don’t even know how to play tennis,” I say.
“God, you’re annoying.”
“If you leave, I’ll have nothing to do.”
“I have no interest in being stuck here for a month, just because Dad decided to come home.” She stands up and fishes a magazine out of her bag, flops back down.
I watch her read.
“Stop looking at me,” she says.
“Do you want to go swimming tomorrow?”
“No.”
“Do you want to go for a bike ride?”
She ignores me.
I sit on the edge of my bed, looking around the room. “If you had to choose between Tab and Fresca for the rest of your life—if you could only have one—which would you choose?”
“I don’t have to choose.”
“I know, but hypothetically.”
“Hypothetically, I may hit you if you don’t shut up.”
“Dad will be sad if you leave.”
“Please,” she says. “He has zero right to put us on some big guilt trip. He deserted us. And now that he’s back, we’re supposed to be grateful?”
There’s a soft knock on the door. Dad pokes his head in. “There’re my girls,” he says brightly. “Dinner’s almost ready. Mother made a pot roast.”
“I’m not hungry,” Anna says.
He sits down on the bed next to her. “What are you reading, kiddo?”
“A magazine.” She doesn’t bother to look up.
“You girls must have grown a head taller since I saw you at Easter. How was spring term?” he asks Anna. “Your mother tells me you got an A in French. Mademoiselle, tu es vraiment magnifique!”
His terrible accent hangs in the air.
Anna looks at him with contempt.
“Well,” he says. “Both of you wash your hands and come help Mother set the table.”
“Shut the door behind you,” Anna says.
* * *
—
It must be early. Thin rulers of gray light stripe my bedspread through the slats of the Venetian blinds. A mourning dove is calling for its mate. I lie in bed listening to its sad, hollow song. Anna is asleep. Low voices are coming from the kitchen. I climb out of bed and walk quietly across the linoleum floor. Our door is ajar. My father is at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Granny Myrtle stands at the kitchen counter making a piecrust, her back to him. I watch her cutting butter into flour, trickling ice water in.
“There’s an eleven twenty bus on Friday morning. I looked up the schedule. It connects in New Haven.” She opens a cupboard and takes out a bag of sugar.
“Anna’s so angry with me.”
“Well, what on earth do you expect, Henry? She’s a fifteen-year-old girl who barely knows her own father. She’ll need a tennis skirt. We can drive into Danbury tomorrow.”
“Mother, tell me how to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to tell. You made your bed. Now you’ll just have to figure out how to un-make it.”
Through my bedroom window I watch my grandfather, already down the hill in the vegetable patch, kneeling in the moist earth. He is weeding the rhubarb, a full basket of sugar peas next to him. A screen door slams shut. My father walks across the lawn toward him. Granny Myrtle pulls a wooden rolling pin out of a lower drawer.
I pull on my jean shorts and a T-shirt and go in to breakfast. There’s half a grapefruit laid out for me on the table, its pink triangles carefully cut away from the skin, a sprinkling of brown sugar forming a sweet crust. Next to it is a silver spoon on a linen napkin. I kiss my grandmother on her soft duck-fuzz cheek, sit down at the table.
“I thought I would take you and Anna for a swim in the Wesselmans’ pool later.” She kisses the top of my head. “You need to wear a hat, Eleanor. Your hair is so bleached by the sun, it’s almost as white as mine.”
“Hats make my forehead itch.”
“Afterward we can take out some new books at the library. I’m making lamb chops for dinner. And you can help me pick asparagus from the patch.”
“I don’t want Anna to leave,” I say.
“Asparagus isn’t easy to grow, you know. Your grandfather was worried the deer and the rabbits would eat all the shoots this spring.”
“I won’t have anyone to be with.”
“There’s no reason your sister should have her summer ruined simply because your father chose to marry that god-awful woman.” My grandmother hands me a pile of buttered white toast and a mason jar of homemade crabapple jam. “Your father is a good man, but he lacks backbone.” She sits down beside me. “Now you, Eleanor, you have backbone. Anna is tough as a bull’s hide, heaven knows
, but you are a stoic.” She pours herself a glass of buttermilk. “I blame myself for your father’s weakness. I pampered him.”
Behind us a floorboard creaks. My father stands there. Above the stove, a wall clock ticks the seconds. I stare down at my toast, mortified for him, wishing I could disappear, save him from his embarrassment.
“Elle and I were just talking about a swim,” my grandmother says to him, as if nothing has happened. “I’ve put in a call to the Wesselmans. Joy tells me their blueberry bushes are positively groaning.”
“I’d like to take the girls for a swim at the quarry today,” my father says.
“I’ve already made a pie crust.” She gets up, opens and closes a few cupboard doors. “I know I put those plastic berry buckets in here somewhere.”
I wait for my father to push back, but he stares out the kitchen window, hands in his pockets. “The black walnut Father and I planted last year has really taken off,” he says.
“Actually, Gran, I’d rather go to the quarry with Dad. We can pick blueberries for you after.”
My father stands up straighter, turns to me, his face smiling so broadly I feel stricken.
“Well, of course, dear,” my grandmother says to me. “If that’s what you would like, then I think it’s a perfect plan.”
* * *
—
The quarry is hidden in the fold of two hills that rise up behind the Straights’ farm. I’ve convinced Anna to come with us. Now that she knows she’s leaving on Friday, her mood has lifted. The three of us climb the slope, towels in hand, following a cow path toward a wide swath of pasture. At the flat top of the hill, black-and-white cows graze, tails flicking flies from their hinds, udders drooping with grassy milk. Everywhere the field is dotted with cow pies—some dry enough to burn, others steaming wet. Across the field, shaded in a copse of trees, is the quarry: a deep, clear watering hole, its granite sides slippery with moss and drip, its roughhewn ledges perfect for leaps into the bracing cold. But first we have to make it past the cow-pies.
My father takes off his loafers and lines them up side by side in military formation. “Race you across,” he says, grinning at us, and starts hopscotching his way expertly across the field. He’s been coming here since he was a kid. “Last one in is a rotten egg,” he shouts over his shoulder. He looks so happy, carefree, and it makes me happy. Anna kicks off her sneakers and races out into the field behind him, competing for the far side. I follow behind her, laughing, wind in my face, towel streaming out behind me like a banner. The cows move and munch around us, their swayed backs gently rocking, oblivious to the young girls rocketing past.
The Paper Palace Page 9
