labels read: “Stonehenge,” “The Parthenon,” “The Forum,” “The Baths of Caracalla.” The images filled her with a wonder she felt in her bones.
She’d nearly forgotten Sid was there until he said, “These places are more alive in death than most places are at birth. They’re cool, huh?” Ginny almost understood what he meant; mostly, she jittered with the idea that he’d speak to her in this grown-up way. “What do you think?” he asked.
Ginny looked at him, wondering what in the world he expected her, his nine-year-old cousin, to say. His dark eyes danced. “I like that they’re mysterious,” she said.
“Ginny?” She almost didn’t hear her father, who’d come up behind them. “Great shots, aren’t they?” he said. But it wasn’t the ruins that captivated her now. Still under Sid’s spell, she slid her hand inside her father’s, and they left the gallery to once more traipse through the halls of Degas and Van Gogh and Bonnard and the three M’s: Monet, Matisse, and Morandi.
At dinnertime, the Vietnam War silently flickered on the TV as it did every night.
The kitchen was cramped and brightly lit, with uncurtained black windows that steamed up from a single boiling pot. A birdcage hung in one corner, but their liberally supervised finch, Pepe, was not inside, having found a warmer place to perch somewhere in the house. While her father peeled potatoes and opened cans of corned beef hash—a favorite quick dinner of their mother’s—Ginny put candles on a small cake in her father’s darkroom. The birthday had gone smoothly enough; all the way to the bus station to drop off Sid, Eleanor had plied him with questions about which colleges he was interested in (“No idea”), whether he had a girlfriend (he didn’t), and if he’d be in Whit’s Point for the summer (“I hope not.”). When he got out of the car, Eleanor said, “He’s so handsome. I can’t believe he doesn’t have a girlfriend.” Cassie had said, “Maybe because he smokes pot. Or, maybe he likes boys.” Ginny had braced for her mother’s reaction, but all she’d said was, “Poor thing. He’s awfully good to his mother.” Then she’d said to Cassie, “Too bad school’s so important you couldn’t come home for my birthday weekend.” Gina had squirmed while Cassie explained in a tight voice that she’d had a long play rehearsal on Saturday.
Now, Ginny was already missing Cassie, but she excitedly eyed the wrapped presents on the worktable. The biggest one, she knew, was a white Singer sewing machine that would replace her mother’s ancient black one.
After dinner, her father lit the candles on the cake, and Ginny carried it into the kitchen singing “Happy Birthday.” Her father set the presents on the floor next to her mother’s chair.
“Well,” Eleanor said, looking down at the sewing machine box, wrapped in Christmas paper. “What a surprise—poinsettias in October!”
“Oops,” Ron said, shifting his weight awkwardly. “Guess I was just reaching for the biggest piece in the box.”
Ron helped Eleanor pull the paper off the sewing machine and stepped back, as if it might explode.
“Wowie!” she exclaimed. “A sewing machine! Now let’s see . . . are you going to learn how to sew, Ron?”
Her father’s nervous laugh. “Oh . . . well, sure, why not?” They’d been warming the kitchen with the open oven, and it had grown too hot; perspiration beaded on his forehead.
Eleanor unwrapped Cassie’s present—a knit hat—and said, “Ooooh.”
Ginny waited, excited about her present—a pair of pajamas. They were her idea, even though she knew her parents usually slept without anything on, which she surmised was because pajamas were a luxury. Her father had taken her to Riversport to buy them. She picked out a cotton pair with green and white stripes; her mother was practical and wouldn’t like frilly, silky ones.
As Eleanor unwrapped the pajamas, Ginny stood at her elbow and held her breath. Her mother picked up the starched, long-sleeved shirt-style top, inspected it, then looked up at Ron. She carefully laid it back in the box.
“Why, Ginny!” she exclaimed, pulling Ginny toward her. “Thank you, sweetie.” Ginny looked into her mother’s face. Her lips were smiling, but her eyes were not.
Late at night Ginny was awakened by her mother’s shout, “This goddamn pigsty!” Silence. Her father, mumbling. She looked at the door that connected her room to her parents’. In the past few years, it had become dangerous, like the door she’d been told never to open if she smelled smoke and the wood felt hot to the touch.
“You don’t know anything! She’ll turn that boy against me . . . Oh, how I loved him. He could have been mine . . .” Her mother wept, steadily and quietly enough that it nearly lulled Ginny back to sleep. But then a mournful tune filled the darkness: “Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me . . .” Her mother’s singing was so creepy Ginny wished she’d go back to crying. Her father mumbled. Her mother: “You really have no idea; do you!” Then, a tearing sound: zripp—zripp—zripp!
“Oh, honey, don’t . . .” Her father’s plaintive voice.
“Don’t touch me! You think I’m just going to be the servant in this pigsty for the rest of my life? Well, don’t count on it! This isn’t life...this is some kind of death! Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . . I wish I could just die.”
The door was burning; her mother’s cries leapt through its old wood like flames. Ginny wrapped the pillow around her head and scratched it with her fingernails, scratch-scratch-scratching away the world. Tonight, she would begin to practice forgetting; she would build a wall-of-forgetting. The less you heard, the less there was to be forgotten.
She must have dozed off. She awoke to the squeal of her parents’ window sash going up and slamming down.
It seemed like hours before she could fall back to sleep.
In the morning, she raised her shade slowly, so the noise wouldn’t wake her parents. It was so early that it was still dark, and across the cove the silhouette of pine trees was just barely distinguishable against the sky.
After switching on the light, she stretched up her arms and looked around her room. Was it a “pigsty”? It was messy but in a good way, in her opinion, because the mess was what she herself had created. Everything else in the room—desk and bookshelves, bed and bureau, pale pink walls and most of her clothing—had been passed down to her. She’d divided the room into zones: one for sleeping, one for homework, one near the window for thinking and reading, one for dressing, one for art making. She’d nearly covered the pink walls with her artwork; everywhere, there were so many animals and books and knick-knacks to look at, that the looking nearly silenced the world outside the room. Perhaps, she thought for the first time, she should sleep with her light on.
She began picking up the clothing layered on her desk chair, separating dirty from clean. The dirty things went into a pile near the door; the clean things she hung up in her closet or folded neatly in drawers.
She went to her easel and flipped through sheets of newsprint. None of the paintings she’d made of flowers and bowls of fruit looked real. When she took her sketchpad outside, on the boat or in the yard, lines and brushstrokes seemed to have wings. But here in her room, she couldn’t get the shapes right. She thought of the ruins at the museum that seemed more like creations of nature than of human hands. She thought of the mysterious Sid and wondered when they’d meet again.
After sorting through every one of her drawings, she selected a few to clip back onto the easel. The rest she stacked on the floor next to her dirty clothes.
Now, she carefully placed the tubes of paint in their box in order by color. Pinched the dry, hard spots off her modeling clay, then rewrapped each color. Switched her Cray-pas around in their box, matching each one with its named slot. She eyed her art supplies; organized in little rainbows, they were as tantalizing as the cookies in a bakery case. She liked arranging and deranging them almost more than drawing with them.
Through the door, she heard her father snore, like a