The Paper Palace(88)

“I say so.”

“Well then, we have nothing to worry about. Let’s walk to the beach.” She throws off her bedding, pokes me in the hip. “Move, please, so I can get out.”

“I know you hate physical affection, but I’m going to give you a really big hug, and you’re going to have to deal with it.”

“Fine. Give me a second to prepare myself.”

I put my arms around her and hug her so close. “I love you, Anna. It’s going to be fine. I promise.”

“Love you back,” she says. “I don’t know why I hated you so much when you were little.”

“I was annoying.”

“I was angry.”

“You were terrifying. You still sort of are.” I laugh.

“Do you remember that time Conrad sucker-punched me on the porch?” Anna asks.

“Yeah.”

“Leo grounded him and he fell down and cried. I still feel bad about it.”

“Why? He hit you.”

“Because I goaded him. I wanted to get him in trouble.” She stares out the big plate-glass window at the pond. The sun is hitting the ice at a perfect angle, so that it shimmers like crystal, throwing off sparks. “I was so mean to him,” Anna says.

“You were mean to everyone.”

“After Leo sent him to his cabin, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried. I have no idea why.” She gets up and goes over to the stove, picks up the metal jug, pours water into the kettle. “I saw some mint tea in the pantry,” she says.

“I’ll get it,” I say.

“It’s weird, the things we remember. There were probably a million worse things I did back then, but when the doctor told me about the cancer, that day with Conrad was what came into my mind. How horrible I’d been. And then he died the next summer.”

“It was two summers later,” I say. “You were working at that kibbutz in Santa Cruz.”

“Why was I doing that? A kibbutz? I must have been on acid.” She laughs, and for a moment she’s entirely herself again. “I keep thinking if I’d been a nicer person, this wouldn’t be happening to me. What if that whole karma thing is true? I could come back as a centipede. Or a blood clot.”

“This is not your fault,” I say. “And there’s no such thing as karma.”

“You don’t know that.”

But I do. Because if karma existed, I would be the one with cancer, not Anna. I take a deep breath, knowing what I have to do. All the years, I’ve kept my promise to Jonas. But Anna has to know this isn’t her fault. “Do you remember how Leo kept ranting around the apartment screaming why? Breaking things and yelling at Mum?”

Anna nods.

“He blamed himself for Conrad. But it had nothing to do with him. It was my fault.” I take a deep breath. “That day on the boat, when Conrad died—”

“I don’t want to be dead, Elle,” Anna says, interrupting. “I don’t want to be nothing anymore . . . no more trees, no more you—just a pile of flesh rotting away. Remember Mum? And the worms?” She’s half laughing, half crying.

“You won’t,” I say. “I won’t let you.”

“Poor Conrad,” she says, her voice barely a whisper. “I wasn’t even sad.”





28


   1998. May, New York.


The top of my mother’s kitchen table was once an old barn door, its sharp edges softened by decades of family dinners. There is still a keyhole where a lock once fit, and woodworm boreholes like pinpricks, filled with years of food grime turned the consistency of earwax. When I was little I loved to root around in each hole with a fork, making tiny piles that seeded the tabletop like termite droppings. I sit here now, poking at the table with the tip of a ballpoint pen. Peter should have been here by now. It’s Mum’s birthday and we’re taking her out for dinner. Our reservation is at eight. I pick up the kitchen phone and call the time. “At the tone, the time will be . . . seven . . . twenty-five . . . and fifty seconds. . . . At the tone, the time will be . . . seven . . . twenty-six . . . exactly.” The new kitten walks into the kitchen. Marmalade back, white paws, yellow eyes. He looks up at me, wanting attention. I put him on the table and he starts eating the termite crumbs. Somewhere in the apartment I hear a crash. I push back my chair and go down the hall.

Mum is on a stepladder, alphabetizing the bookshelves.

“Oh good,” she says. “You can help me with the poetry section.” She pulls a stack of books off the shelf and hands them to me.

“Peter’s running late.” I sit down on the floor and start sorting books. “Does Primo Levi go in poetry?”

“I can never decide. Put him in philosophy for now.”

I pick up The Collected Poems of Dwight Burke from the top of a pile and open it. On the front page is a handwritten dedication, scrawled in faded blue fountain pen: For Henry’s girls, who are sweeter than pachysandra, with hope that your lives will be filled with poetry and spice. Love, Dwight.

“This is mine.”

Mum glances down from the ladder. “I believe it’s yours and Anna’s.”

“You’re right. I’ll send it to her.”