The Paper Palace(8)

“We couldn’t keep it,” he says. “It would have grown into a monster.”

“Carl,” my mother calls from somewhere in the apartment, “do you want a drink? Supper is almost ready.”





1971. June, New York.


Anna’s and my first week in our father’s new apartment. It is a grubby walk-up on Astor Place, but he makes it seem exotic and adventurous. The air is heavy, hot, no air conditioning—the wiring is too old for that—but he has gotten us our own rotating fan. And he promises, as soon as he gets his next paycheck, he will buy us each an International Doll. I want Holland. He promises us many wonderful things that we will eventually learn not to expect. “From here on out, it’s just me and my girls.” We jump up and down on our new trundle bed, dance to the Monkees, and eat Dannon blueberry yogurts. If you keep stirring the fruit up from the bottom the yogurt becomes darker and darker, he tells us when he turns on the evening news.

On Monday morning, our father dresses himself with precision in a blue pinstripe Brooks Brothers suit and brown wing tips that he shines to a high gloss with a chamois. He smells of Old Spice and shaving foam. He looks at himself in the hall mirror, parts his hair with a small tortoiseshell comb, adjusts his tie so it sits exactly right between his starched collars, pulls his cuffs, centers his gold cuff links. “Your father was famously handsome when he was young,” our mother tells us. “They called him the Belle of the Ball when he played football at Yale. That silly game ruined his knees.”

I hold on to the edge of his suit jacket as we go down the dark creaking staircase. My hair is a tangled mess. No one has reminded me to brush it. I have a nervous feeling in my stomach. Today is our first day at Triumph Day Camp. Anna and I are taking the bus alone. We are both wearing our camp uniforms: navy blue shorts and white T-shirts that say TRIUMPH on the front. On the back, they say All Girls Are Champions.

“There are very few girls in the world who are lucky enough to wear a shirt like that,” our father tells us. On the way to the bus, he stops at Chock full o’Nuts and buys us cream cheese and date-nut bread sandwiches for our lunch. I don’t want him to be mad at me, but the tears come on their own, betraying me. I hate cream cheese, I say, when he asks me what’s wrong. He tells me he’s sure I will like it, and hands me the paper bag. I can see he’s annoyed and it worries me. When he loads us onto the camp bus, I beg him not to make me go. He can’t be in two places at once, he says. He has to earn a living. Book reviews to write. Time-Life is waiting. But he’ll be right here waiting for us when the bus comes back. And I will love camp, he promises.

As the bus pulls into Sixth Avenue traffic, I watch him getting smaller and smaller. I tear a piece of paper off the edge of my lunch bag and chew it into a ball. What will I do if I need to pee? How will I know where to go? I want a swim badge, but I’m not allowed in over my head. Anna chats to the little girl next to her, ignoring me, and eats half her sandwich before the bus reaches Westchester.

Triumph Day Camp is on a lake. We drive in past baseball diamonds, a field covered in big dart boards, a giant teepee. The driver pulls in behind a long line of yellow buses. The parking lot is a sea of girls. All of them wearing the same Triumph T-shirts.

My counselors introduce themselves as June and Pia. They both wear Triumph shirts, but theirs are bright red.

“Welcome, five-to-sevens! For those of you who are new: if you need to find us, look for our red shirts,” June says. “Raise your hand if you were at Triumph last year.”

Most of the girls in my group raise their hands.

“Then you are already champions!! First things first. Let’s head over to your cubbies to put away our lunches. We’re in Little Arrow.” She lines us up behind her, leads us to a big brown building. Pia walks at the back of the line. “To make sure there are no stragglers. Rule number one: Never, ever leave your group. But if you ever do get separated, don’t move. Sit down right where you are and wait. One of us will come back for you,” Pia tells us.

On the edge of each cubby is a piece of masking tape with our names and birthday written in marker. Eleanor Bishop, September 17, 1966. I bite my finger. Now they will all know I haven’t even turned five yet and they won’t want to play with me. Barbara Duffy has the cubby next to mine. She is seven and has a Beatles lunch box.

“Grab your knapsacks!” June calls out. We’ll have a potty break and then change into our bathing suits. Who here knows how to tread water? That’s the art studio.” She points as we pass a room that smells of construction paper and paste.

The changing room is lined with little curtained stalls. I go into a stall and pull the curtain shut. I’m in my underpants before I realize my father has forgotten to pack me a bathing suit. By the time I get dressed again, everyone has already gone to the lake. I sit down on a wooden bench.

June and Pia don’t notice I’m missing until snack time, when they do the after-swim head count. From the changing room, I hear them calling my name again and again. A whistle blows, shrill and panicky. “Everyone out of the water,” I hear a lifeguard scream. “Now!”

I sit quietly, waiting for someone to come back for me.

9:22 A.M.

The cabin steps—three old pine planks attached by struts that have been on the verge of rusting-through since before I was born—bow under my weight. I bang on the kids’ door. It is one of those metal-framed doors with screens and glass windows that can be raised or lowered and, with a satisfying click, slot into place. My three children are tucked safely into their beds, the brightly painted yellow floor covered in wet towels and bathing suits. My mother is right. They really are pigs.