The Paper Palace(21)

“Plié encore! Graceful arms, please!”

I watch the girl in front of me and try to copy her.

“à la seconde,” Madame calls out.

I place my feet wider apart and bend my knees. And then it happens. A large puddle forms on the glossy wooden floor beneath me, spreads out quickly, soaking the edges of my pink ballet slippers. Behind me, I hear a shriek. The music stops. I run from the room in tears, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the pristine floor, and lock myself in the bathroom.

“Miss Josephine!” I hear Madame call out to her assistant, “A mop, s’il vous pla?t. Vite, vite!”

The next weekend, my mother makes me go back. “Eleanor,” she says sternly, “we are not a family of cowards. You have to face your fears head on. Otherwise you’ve lost the battle before it’s begun.”

I plead with her to let me stay home with Anna, but she waves me off.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You think those little girls have never peed before?”

“Not on the floor,” Anna says, laughing so hard that she has to hold her stomach.

12:30 P.M.

The beach parking lot is broiling. I climb out of the car onto the sandy blacktop and let out a yelp.

“Jesus fuckery.” I leap back into the Saab. “I think I scalded the skin off the bottom of my feet.” I feel around the floorboards in front of me for my flip-flops, find them wedged under the passenger seat.

“Both of you should put on socks. The sand will be scorching.” I hand Finn a pair of white sweat socks from my bag. “Maddy?”

“I’m fine. I’m wearing sandals,” she says.

“The sides of your feet will get burned.”

“Mom.” Maddy gives me a pained look. “I’m not going to wear socks and sandals. Gross.”

“What’s wrong with socks and sandals?” Peter gets out and starts unloading gear from the trunk. “It’s the Englishman’s uniform abroad.”

I wait until everyone is out of the car before pulling down the visor to check my face in the mirror. I run my fingers through my hair, pinch my cheeks, re-tie my sarong lower around my hips. I can see Jonas’s beat-up truck parked farther up ahead.

Peter opens my car door. “Here.” He takes my hand and pulls me up and out.

I grab a pile of towels and the thermos of ice water from the backseat.

“And be nice to Gina when she points out that we’re an hour late. No bitchy Eleanor. Just nice Eleanor.”

“I’m always nice.” I give him a kick in the butt as he walks past me, but he manages to dodge it.

As we crest the dune, a hundred umbrellas come into sight. Solids. Stripes. Red, white, and blue. The water is clear turquoise, an even break. No red tide, no mung. A perfect beach day. A Jaws day. Kids playing Frisbee, making castles and digging deep moats around them that fill with water from a wellspring underneath the sand. Gorgeous young things strut self-consciously in bikinis, pretending not to know they’re being watched. I scan for Jonas. He always walks to the left.

Peter sees them first. They’ve set up a yellow-and-white-striped beach tent. It looks like a circus pavilion, enclosed on three sides but open to the sea. Gina stands next to it waving a fuchsia towel, signaling us. Maddy and Finn race down the dune toward her, Peter following behind. I hang back, girding myself for whatever happens. What if Peter senses something different between me and Jonas? What if Gina noticed we were both gone? I try to visualize the room just before I went out the back door. Jonas at the table, leaning back in his chair, outside the fall of the candlelight. Peter lying on the sofa, Gina laughing at some comment Dixon had made, my mother pouring grappa into espresso cups, clearing plates, washing glasses in the sink. I’m pretty sure Gina’s back was to me. Jonas is sitting on the sand, staring out to sea. I take a deep breath. We are not a family of cowards.





1976. July, the Back Woods.


I am floating on a blue rubber raft. My eyes are closed, face to the sun. Black motes dance around under my eyelids in the opaque red. I drift, listen to the sound of my breath going in and out, let the salt wind carry me to the middle of the pond. There is nothing but me. No one here but me. A perfect moment. I dangle my arm over the edge of the raft, open my fingers, feel the resistance of the water as it passes through them. I imagine I’m a duck. Any moment now a snapping turtle will swim up from the cold bottom and grab my sharp yellow feet, drag me to the deep. In the distance, I hear the clatter of wooden paddles being dumped in the bottom of a canoe. Anna and her friend Peggy have paddled over to the far side of the pond. It’s only a short walk to the beach from there. When I open my eyes, I can just make out the tiny flames of their bright orange life vests as they pull the boat up onto shore and disappear into the tree line.

Mum and her boyfriend Leo have gone into town to collect his kids from the Greyhound bus stop. They are coming to stay with us for ten days. Leo is a jazz musician from Louisiana. Saxophone. He has a thick black beard and laughs a lot. He believes exercise is for the weak. His favorite food is shrimp. Anna isn’t sure about him, but I think he’s nice.

Leo’s kids, Rosemary and Conrad, live with their mother in Memphis. They have heavy southern accents and say y’all. Rosemary is seven. Mousy. “Irrelevant,” Anna says. “And she smells weird.” Conrad is eleven, one year older than me. He is short and squat, with Coke-bottle glasses and bulging eyes. He stands too close. We’ve only met them once before, at a luncheonette, when they came to New York to visit their father. Rosemary ordered a rare steak and talked about original sin.