The Paper Palace(3)

“Perfect. Cold.”

The best lesson my mother ever taught me: there are two things in life you never regret—a baby and a swim. Even on the coldest days of early June, as I stand looking out at the brackish Atlantic, resenting the seals that now rear their hideous misshapen heads and draw great whites into these waters, I hear her voice in my head, urging me to plunge in.

“I hope you hung your towel on the line. I don’t want to see another pile of wet towels today. Tell the kids.”

“It’s on the line.”

“Because if you don’t yell at them, I will.”

“I got it.”

“And they need to sweep out their cabin. It’s a disaster. And don’t you do it, Elle. Those children are completely spoilt. They are old enough to . . .”

A bag of garbage in one hand, my coffee cup in the other, I walk out the back door, letting her litany drift off into the wind.

Her worst advice: Think Botticelli. Be like Venus rising on a half shell, lips demurely closed, even her nakedness modest. My mother’s words of advice when I moved in with Peter. The message arrived on a faded postcard she’d picked up years before in the Uffizi gift shop: Dear Eleanor, I like your Peter very much. Please make an effort not to be so difficult all the time. Keep your mouth closed and look mysterious. Think Botticelli. Love, Mummy.

I dump the garbage in the can, slam the lid shut, and stretch the bungee cord tight across it to keep out the raccoons. They are clever creatures with their long dexterous fingers. Little humanoid bears, smarter and nastier than they look. We’ve been waging war against each other for years.

“Did you remember to put the bungee cord back on, Elle?” My mother says.

“Of course.” I smile demurely and start clearing plates.





1969. New York City.


Soon my father will appear. I’m hiding—crouched behind the built-in modular bar that separates our living room from the front hall foyer. The bar is divided into squares. One houses liquor, another the phonograph, another my father’s record collection, a few oversize art books, martini glasses, a silver shaker. The section that holds the liquor bottles is open through to both sides like a window. I peer through the bottles, mesmerized by the blur of topaz—the scotch, the bourbon, the rum. I am three years old. Next to me are my father’s precious LPs and 78s. I run my finger along their spines, liking the sound I make, breathe in their worn cardboard smell, wait for the doorbell to ring. Finally my father arrives and I don’t have the patience to stay hidden. It has been weeks. I hurtle down the hallway, throw myself into his bear-like embrace.

The divorce is not final, but almost. They will have to cross the border into Juárez to do that. The end will come as my older sister Anna and I sit patiently on the edge of an octagonal Mexican-tiled fountain in a hotel lobby, transfixed by the goldfish swimming around an island of dark-leaved tropical plants in its center. Many years later, my mother tells me she called my father that morning, divorce papers in hand, and said, “I’ve changed my mind. Let’s not do this.” And though the divorce had been entirely her choice, and though his heart was broken, he said, “No. We’ve come this far—we might as well finish it, Wallace.” Might as well: three syllables that changed the course of everything. But in that moment, as I sat feeding the goldfish crumbs from my English muffin, kicking my heels against the Mexican tile, I had no idea a sword hung over my head by a hair. That it could have gone a different way.

But Mexico hasn’t happened yet. For now my father is falsely jolly and still in love with my mother.

“Eleanor!” He sweeps me up in his arms. “How’s my rabbit?”

I laugh and cling to him with something approaching desperation, my loose blond curls blinding him as I press my face to his.

“Daddy!” Anna comes running now like a bull, angry that I got there first, shoves me out of his arms. She is two years older than me and has more right. He doesn’t seem to notice. All he cares about is his own need to be loved. I nudge my way back in.

My mother calls out from somewhere in our sallow prewar apartment, “Henry? Do you want a drink? I’m making pork chops.”

“Love one,” he booms back, as if nothing between them has changed. But his eyes are sad.

8:15 A.M.

“So, I thought that was a success last night,” my mother says from behind a battered novel by Dumas.

“Definitely.”

“Jonas was looking well.”

My hands tense around the pile of plates I’m holding.

“Jonas is always looking well, Mum.” Thick black hair you can grasp in your fists, pale green eyes, skin burnished by sap and pine, a wild creature, the most beautiful man on earth.

My mother yawns. It’s her “tell”—she always does this before she says something unpleasant. “He’s fine, I just can’t stand his mother. So self-righteous.”

“She is.”

“As if she’s the only woman on earth who has ever recycled. And Gina. Even after all these years, I still can’t imagine what he was thinking when he married her.”

“She’s young, she’s gorgeous? They’re both artists?”

“She was young,” my mother says. “And the way she flaunts her cleavage. Always prancing around as if she thinks she’s the cat’s pajamas. Clearly no one ever told her to hide her light under a bushel.”