After six wonderful weeks, they packed their clothes, cabin gear, and kitchen supplies into every nook of her father’s Pierce-Arrow and drove back to their Orange Street apartment. Mother fixed melted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for dinner and, afterward, Barbara unpacked her clothes and books. She put her typewriter back on her desk, with her old Eepersip story pages stacked on the left and newly typed pages on the right. She’d spent nearly every morning at Sunapee revising her novel. Twenty-two more pages, and then Daddy said it could be submitted to a publisher.
Gosh, she was tired, the kind of tired she felt after splashing and swimming in the lake all afternoon. Brittle leaves rustling outside her window put her in the mood for hot chocolate, but she didn’t even have the punch to ask her mother to fix her one. She threw her clothes on the dresser, slipped into her nightgown, and collapsed into bed.
✭
“Barbara, wake up.” Her father’s voice sounded far off like it was coming through a wall. She felt her covers whooshing off. Arms pushed under her shoulders and thighs.
Through the haze of sleep, a question welled up. “What’s wrong?”
Her father scooped her up. “Fire, the place is on fire.”
His feet thumped against the wood floor and, as he ran, he jostled her in his arms.
She asked, “Where? Where’s the fire?”
“In the kitchen.” He dashed through the sitting room, out the front door.
“Ouch.” Barbara’s elbow banged against the door jamb. Fire, the apartment was burning. Oh, no. “Daddy, I have to get my story.”
Her father yelled to her mother, “Get away from the building.”
Barbara twisted her head around. Her mother bounded up to them on the front edge of the lawn, clasping a bundled-up Sabra.
“Put me down.” Barbara struggled against her father’s grip.
He loosened his hold.
Barbara sprang out of his arms and headed for the house. Her father grabbed her arm and yanked, jolting her shoulder. Pain shot down her arm.
“Let me go,” she said.
He sunk his fingers into her arm. “Stay with your mother.”
Barbara thrashed her arms. “But Eepersip’s in there.”
“You’ll do as I say.” Her father shook her. “Is that understood?”
She didn’t want to say yes. She scowled at him.
Her father reeled around. “I’ll get the Baxters.”
He raced past the burning side of the building to the stairs leading to the upstairs apartment.
The wood slats on the kitchen end of the house glowed orange. Flames from the kitchen window cast a fiery glare on the hedge and grass.
Barbara looked at her mother. “Can we get my story?”
“Let your father help the Baxters first.”
Sabra whimpered in her mother’s arms, and her tiny hands and feet punched at her blanket.
Barbara heard her father banging on the door and hollering, “Jack, Harriet, get out. The place is on fire.”
Pop. The kitchen window exploded, shooting a spray of glass.
“Oh, Lord.” Her mother pulled Barbara close to her.
The acrid scents of burning wood and rubber filled her nostrils. “I can’t stand it, Mother. My novel could burn up.”
Her father appeared from around the house's unburned side, leading the stout Mrs. Baxter, who held old Mr. Baxter’s hand. Her father tugged them along as they tottered over the bumpy lawn.
Her mother said, “Thank goodness you got out.”
Mrs. Baxter patted Sabra’s head. “And you and your darlings, too.”
“I’ll ask Howard to call the fire department,” said Mr. Baxter, shuffling off toward the neighbor’s house.
“Oh, God,” her mother said. “All our clothes. Everything’s in there.”
Barbara tugged her father’s arm. “Please, can we get my manuscript?”
Fire flared through the kitchen wall and lapped at the side of the building. The undersides of the tree limbs and leaves flickered with orange. Barbara could see ripples of heat wafting from the wall.
“You stay here,” her father said. “I’ll see if I can get in through a window.”
Barbara called, “It’s on my desk.”
Her father dashed to the side of the building untouched by flames and disappeared around the back.
“Oh, Goodness,” said Mrs. Baxter. “All our family keepsakes are in there.”
“It started in our kitchen,” her mother said. “Maybe your apartment can be spared.”
“We’re all safe,” said Mrs. Baxter. “That’s what matters most.”
Barbara heard a slam, like a window thrown open. She closed her eyes. “Please, Daddy,” she said, “please save Eepersip.”
Her father rounded the side of the building carrying a cardboard box.
He plunked it down, and Barbara looked inside. “Did you get it?”
“I had to get the manuscripts I’m working on. I’ll try now.” He tore off around the side of the house.
From the back of the building, another glass explosion sounded.
“Oh, no,” her mother said, handing Sabra to Mrs. Baxter. “Hold her and keep Barbara here.”
Her mother darted to the side of the building, her dress fluttering wildly.
Barbara couldn’t stand it. She broke into a run, following her mother.
“Barbara, no,” Mrs. Baxter yelled.
Barbara didn’t stop. She raced past her parent’s bedroom to the window beneath her father’s study. She peeked around the corner. Her father stood under her bedroom window, brushing his head and shoulders.
Her mother ran to him. “What happened?”
“Glass. All over me,” he said. “Her bedroom’s on fire.”
Her father grabbed her mother’s hand, and they headed toward the house corner. Before her parents caught sight of her, she rushed back to the front of the house and crossed the front lawn.
Mrs. Baxter hollered, “Barbara, come here.”
Barbara ignored her and ran to the other side of the house, past the flaming kitchen wall, all the way to her bedroom window. She jumped up, trying to see. It was too high. She couldn’t reach it. The front door: That was the only way in. She sprinted back around the other side.
She collided with her father and lost her balance.
“What in God’s name are you doing?”
“I have to get Eepersip.” Righting herself, she tried to dodge him.
He grabbed her by the waist, lifted her off the ground, and clutched her to his side.
Suspended, she flailed her arms, struggling to find the ground with her feet.
“Stop it.” He wrapped his other arm around her waist and gripped her tightly against himself, trudging to the front lawn, to where her mother stood waiting.
Barbara tried to twist out of his grip. “I have to get Eepersip.”
His wiry arms dug into her stomach. With a forceful thrust, he lifted her and flung her to the ground, hard, on her back.
Dazed with pain, she struggled to rise.
He dropped down astride her. “It’s gone, Barbara. It’s too late.”
“No, Daddy, it’s Eepersip. I have to publish it.”
Her father’s weight trapped her, squeezing her ribs.
“I’m losing my books, too,” he said. “And everything else in my study.”
Barbara thumped her forearms against her father’s chest. “But you said I’d be famous.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER—BARBARA TURNING NINE
New Haven, March 1923
With Barbara’s ninth birthday mere days away, she couldn’t keep herself from dropping hints to her mother.
“Remember my birthday last year, Mother, when I gave you drawings of all those different wildflowers? Well, this year I have a very special present for you.” Barbara had turned the idea of birthday gift giving upside down. It seemed so ordinary to let others give her presents. So she’d made a tradition
of giving Mother a gift on her own birthday, which sweetened the anticipation ever so much.
Finally, when Sunday, March 4, rolled around, Barbara gathered her mother, father, and grandmother in the sitting room and ordered them to close their eyes. She trotted down the narrow hall to her bedroom.
The family had moved into this cramped apartment on Orange Street last fall. Barbara hated it and had named her bedroom “the dungeon.” After squeezing her bed, dresser, and desk into the small room and standing her violin case in the corner, there was no space for her bookshelf. It had to be kept in the room Grandma Ding stayed in, which greatly displeased her.
Barbara reached under her bed, pulled out her manuscript, and padded into the sitting room. “Keep your eyes closed.”
She sat on the other end of the sofa from her mother, who leaned into its corner and stretched her legs out. Her mother was going to give her a baby brother or sister in the summer. Her belly looked like a perfectly round hill, and it grew a little steeper every week.
“Hold out your hands, Mother.” Barbara handed the two-inch-thick manuscript to her. “Open your eyes.”
Her mother balanced the papers on her tummy and read the cover page, “The House Without Windows and Eepersip’s Life There.”
Barbara beamed. “It’s a story I wrote for you.”
“What a darling you are,” said her mother. “A story for me. And, I’m sure, an impressive story at that.”
Grandma Ding scooted forward in her wingback chair. She was even shorter than Barbara’s mother, and her eyes crinkled when she talked. Her grandma said to her mother, “I want to read it after you, Helen.”
Barbara asked her mother, “When will you start reading it?”
“Today. I can hardly wait. I’m so touched.”
“Daddy was my editor.”
Her father leaned back in his wrinkly leather chair and crossed one leg over the other. “She’s as much the perfectionist as I am.”
“Daddy said it’s an excellent story. And awfully well written.”
Her mother smiled at her. “So that’s why you had that ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign up all winter.”
Grandma said, “You composed and typed that whole thing? Heavens, it’s book-sized.”
“Daddy taught me how to estimate the word count. It’s about 35,000.”
“Goodness gracious,” Mother said. “You must have kept Eepersip quite busy.”
“Daddy thinks we should try to publish it.” Barbara twisted around toward her father. “Don’t you, Daddy?”
He smashed his cigarette out in the smoking stand. “I do. It’s damn good.”
Barbara looked at her mother. “Once you and Grandma finish it, Daddy’s going to reread it and make suggestions. Then I’ll retype it and send it to a publisher.”
“I’m sure it’s quite wonderful,” said her mother. “But I can give suggestions, too, you know.”
“I want to be a writer, Mother, just like Daddy. Except I want to write fiction.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes at her father, like she was annoyed with him. It made Barbara feel squirmy.
“I learned about metaphors and similes from you, Mother,” Barbara said.
Her mother wiped off her frown and smiled at Barbara. “Bar, you can do whatever you set your mind to. I see your talent and brilliance every day, in all the wonderful work you do in your lessons.”
Her grandma said, “The House Without Windows? That’s an unusual title.”
“The world is without windows, unlike houses. Don’t you see, Grandma?”
“How clever. So Eepersip is an explorer of the world?”
“Even more than that,” said Barbara, crossing her arms and nodding deeply.
Her father looked at Grandma, then Mother. “In many ways, Barbara is leagues ahead of the college students I tried to teach so many years.”
Barbara felt all shimmery, like buttercups in the sun.
“I know she is,” Mother said. “And she has plenty of time to master her writing.”
Grandma Ding said, “Why don’t you go lie down and read, Helen. I’ll finish the sweeping and start dinner.”
Mother pivoted around, sat up, and hugged Barbara. “You’re the best daughter a mother could have. Thank you for the present.”
“You’re welcome, Mother. I hope you like it,” Barbara said.
“I’m sure I will.” Her mother glanced at Daddy. “And I’ll speak to your father about how I can help you make it even more perfect.”
Her father said, “Multiple editors can confuse an author.”
Her mother scowled at her father. Barbara hated it when her mother and father were grumpy with each other. But she knew how to make them be nice again. She said to her mother, “Why don’t you read the first page? Then Daddy can hear how it sounds out loud.”
Mother peeled off the title page and read, “In a brown shingled cottage on the foothills of Mount Varcrobis, there lived with her father and mother, a little girl named Eepersip. She was rather lonely . . .”
Barbara liked how the beginning sounded. It’d been a long time since she’d written that. But she remembered the ending word for word because she’d carefully revised it just that morning. Silently, she recited: “She was a fairy—a wood nymph. She would be invisible forever to all mortals, save those few who have minds to believe, eyes to see. To these, she is ever-present, the spirit of nature—a sprite of the meadow, a naiad of lakes, a nymph of the woods.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HELEN
New Haven, August 1926
Helen paused at the bottom of the stairs, clutching a basket of line-dried laundry against her hip. Upstairs, in Sabra’s bedroom, the girls chattered away. “Barbara,” she called, “bring Sabra down here where it’s not so hot.”
Late July and early August had been scorching, with record-breaking temperatures spanning the Northeast. Each day she tracked the sun’s progress from their home’s east-facing kitchen to the westside living room, closing the curtains against its fierce rays, but never staying entirely ahead of its steamy torment.
The heat had probably contributed to the raging row she and Wilson had before he’d left town for his job interview. Yes, she’d let the argument get out of control. But he’d set the whole thing off with his out-of-the-blue announcement. Honestly, after they built a charming and comfortable home and furnished it from top to bottom, he had the gall to propose taking a post in New York City.
All they did lately was bicker. She’d had such hopes for them in the beginning, once he’d put his first marriage behind him. They were so happy on their Maine honeymoon, quizzing each other about their secrets and dreams. And she loved their first home, a small cottage in Hanover with a river-stone fireplace and bay windows she decorated with pots of African violets. He was content there with his position at Dartmouth College, and she liked teaching high school English. Then he clashed with the English department chair and uprooted the family—leaving Dartmouth for a professorship at Brown and, shortly afterward, accepting his post at Yale University Press. With each move, she’d swallowed her displeasure, rededicated herself to home educating Barbara, and tried to please Wilson and help with his writing.
She’d hoped planning and building this new house would offer a fresh start. But before long, they’d settled back into the same tired grievances: arguing whether a new car would be a splurge or investment; squabbling over who had time for this chore or that and blaming and defending—about how she should stretch the household budget and he should curb his expenses.
Barbara, holding three-year-old Sabra by the hand, walked her down the stairs one step at a time, clutching four of Sabra’s stuffed animals. “We’re playing jungle.”
“Please don’t haul all the animals down here.” Helen sat down on the sofa and plunked the laundry basket on the occasional table. “Why don’t you read to Sabra?”
Barbara walked Sabra to her father’s leather chair and lifted her onto it. “You wait here.” She trotted
upstairs with the stuffed animals and returned with her manuscript.
“Those pages are curling from being hauled around so much,” Helen said, reaching into the basket and pulling out a pair of Sabra’s pajamas. Yes, she was impressed at how Barbara had rewritten her Eepersip story from memory after the house fire, but it seemed that was all Barbara cared about these days.
“I’m going to tell Sabra a secret,” said Barbara.
“What secret is that?” Helen asked, though overheated as she was, she hardly cared.
Sabra clapped her hands together. “Tell me, Barba.”
Barbara shifted Sabra to the corner of the chair and nuzzled in beside her. “I’m dedicating my Eepersip book to two people—my secret pirate friend and you.”
Sabra bounced her arms in the air. “Book? Read me a book.”
“You’re going to have your initials in my book. For everyone to see forever and ever.”
“Read me a forever story, Barba.”
“You silly girl. When you’re older, you’ll appreciate having a book dedicated to you.”
Sabra leaned over the chair arm toward her stack of books. “Read, Barba.”
“All right, I’ll read from the last chapter of Eepersip.”
Sabra tried to crawl over the edge of the chair arm to get at her stack of books.
Barbara tugged her back. “Listen now.”
“If Sabra can’t sit still,” Helen said, flapping the front of her dress to air herself, “maybe you two should put your swimsuits on and go play with the hose.”
Barbara ignored her. Ah, Helen thought, it’s just as well they’re in their own world. She had quite enough to manage, with Wilson gone until Thursday and her mother visiting friends in Hanover. She’d begged Wilson to decline the interview. No sooner had they paid off the furniture than he surprised her with “the most extraordinary news”: Alfred Knopf had invited him to New York for an interview. Why, she demanded, hadn’t he told her about applying for a position there? How was he to know, he replied, that Knopf would follow up on what seemed an off-hand request for his résumé?
The Point of Vanishing Page 2
