The Paper Palace(28)

“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 listenin, 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.