The Paper Palace(15)

“What’s so funny?” Maddy asks.

“Nothing.” I catch myself. “Nothing’s funny.”

“That’s kind of weird, Mom,” she says, going back to her book. “Laughing for no reason. It’s like a creepy clown.” She scratches a mosquito bite on her ankle.

“The more you scratch, the more it itches.” The kids are still in their pajamas. A drip of candle wax has hardened on Finn’s sleeve, there from last night, when they came in to say good night to the drunken grown-ups.



* * *



—

“We heard you singing before,” Finn had said, coming in through the screen door with a mischievous “I know I’m supposed to be in bed, but here I am” expression.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You were meant to be asleep hours ago,” I said.

“You people are making too much noise,” Maddy said. “Jack’s asleep. He passed out.”

“Climb on,” I said, pulling Finn onto my lap. “But only five minutes.”

He leaned forward to peel a wax stalactite off the side of a candlestick. A few drops of wax dripped onto his sleeve. “Can I blow out the candles?”

“No, you may not.”

“Will you walk us back to bed? I heard something in the bushes. I think it might be a wolf.”

“There’s no wolves here, dummy,” Maddy said. “I’m getting a glass of milk.”

Finn climbed off my lap and went over to curl up on the sofa next to Peter, who carried on talking to Gina, stroking Finn’s back as if he were a cat. Across the table from me, Anna’s godfather John Dixon and my step-grandmother Pamela were arguing with Jonas’s mother about the nesting shorebirds.

“It’s our beach,” Pamela was saying. “What right does the Park Service have to cordon it off?”

“I couldn’t agree more. It’s for the birds,” Dixon said, laughing too loud at his own pun.

“The beach belongs to Mother Nature,” Jonas’s mother said. “Do you honestly care more about where you put your towel down than the possible extinction of a species?”

“Can someone open the screen door for me?” Maddy came out of the pantry, balancing two glasses of milk.

Peter stood up, a bit unsteady on his feet, opened the porch door, mushed the top of her hair.

“Daddy! I’ll spill.” Maddy laughed, spilling a puddle of milk.

Finn got down on all fours and slurped the milk off the floor. “I’m a cat,” he said.

“Gross.” Maddy blew me a kiss. “Night, Mama. I love you. Night, everyone.”

“Night, sugarplums,” Peter said, lying back down on the sofa. “And not another peep.”

I watched Jonas peel wax dripping off a candle as Finn had just done. He molded the wax between his fingers absent-mindedly. First into a ball, then a swan, then a turtle, a cube, a heart—if his fingers were exposing his thoughts in Claymation. And it occurred to me that the first time I met Jonas he was about Finn’s age. A sweet little boy. Impossible to imagine that my small, tufty child could ever become a hurricane in someone’s life. Jonas glanced up, saw me looking at him.

“You spoil those children,” my mother said after they’d disappeared down the path into the darkness. “In my day, children were supposed to be seen and not heard.”

“If only that rule still applied to you, Wallace,” Peter called over.

“Your husband is terrible,” Mum said, pleased. “I don’t know how you’ve put up with him all these years.”

“Love is blind, thank god. Or at least my wife is.” Peter laughed. “That’s the secret to my happiness.”

“In my day, we simply divorced and remarried,” Mum said. “So much simpler. Refreshing, even. Like buying a new suit of clothes.”

“Huh,” I said. “That’s not quite how I remember it. And if Anna were here, I can guarantee she’d agree.”

“Oh, please,” Mum dismissed me. “You turned out just fine. If your father and I had stayed married, who knows what you might have been. You might have become some happy, namby-pamby twit. You might have become a hotel manager. Divorce is good for children.” She stood up and began clearing away a few lingering dinner forks. “Unhappy people are always more interesting.”

I could feel the familiar fight rising inside me, but Jonas leaned over and whispered, “Ignore her. She says things she doesn’t mean when she drinks. You know that.”

I nodded, poured myself a glass of grappa, handed the bottle to him. Our fingers touched as he took it from me and poured one for himself.

“A toast.” He held up his glass.

“What are we toasting?” I asked, clinking glasses.

“Blind love.” His eyes never left mine.

I waited a few minutes before getting up from the table.

Mum was at the sink, her back to me. “I could use some help with these dishes, Eleanor. The hot water’s refusing to get hot again.”

“In a minute. I’m going to the bathroom.”

“Pee in the bushes. That’s what I always do.”

I slipped out the back door, waited in the shadows wondering if I had read him correctly, wondering how I would feel if I was wrong, left standing here like some pathetic sixteen-year-old. The porch door opened and footsteps came down the sandy path. Jonas stopped, looked around into the darkness, found me. We stood there, a rustle of wind off the pond, bullfrogs lowing.