I put the nightgown to my face and sniffed. It smelled like Sheba’s perfume combination and not like anything I recognized as myself. With the nightgown in my hands, I left the room. The door to the third floor was closed. Dr. and Mrs. Cone’s door was ajar and I could hear ocean-sounding snores coming from it. I went down the stairs slowly, sticking to the wall edge, where there was less creaking.
The living room floor was covered with scattered books. The air still smelled like a rubber eraser. On the coffee table was half of a broken dinner plate, the edges chalky white and craggy. On the plate were three stubbed-out joint ends. Roaches, Jimmy had told me in the car one night before he swallowed a lit one, just to make me and Sheba laugh.
I stood for a minute surveying the damage. I could start shelving the books then, or I could wait until Izzy woke up. We’d been talking about it so much that she might be hurt if I started without her. But I was slightly worried that if I didn’t start systemizing the books soon, someone else would jump in and shelve them willy-nilly. Certainly not Dr. and Mrs. Cone; they were blind to chaos and disorder. Sheba, however, had a neat streak in her as strong as mine. No one did anything in the Cone house before breakfast, however, so I knew I had time. Maybe Izzy and I would start shelving when she woke up.
The dining room looked fine. Even the candlesticks with the white nubs of melted candle in them were exactly where they’d been last night. The record player was on the floor where Izzy and I had set it up. The records were still lined against the wall, now held up by two stone carvings I had found on the washing machine. One was the shape of a woman’s torso and one the shape of a man’s.
I tried to push open the swinging door to the kitchen, but it was stuck. I walked around the back way: dining room, living room, entrance hall, TV room. When I got to the open doorway to the kitchen, I gasped.
The kitchen was like a crime scene. Or like the kitchen on The Poseidon Adventure after the boat sinks. The floor was covered with broken dishes: plates, bowls, glasses, even the serving platter I had used for the chicken. On top of the glassware and crockery was food from the pantry: cereal boxes, graham crackers, Screaming Yellow Zonkers, oatmeal, flour, sugar, raisins. Everything. The cupboard doors were open and the shelves were mostly emptied. In some places the debris was heaped two or three feet high.
I tried to imagine the scene in my head. Sheba had been doing most of the hollering. But would she break all the dishes? And how did Mrs. Cone feel, watching her dishes get destroyed? What was Dr. Cone doing? Was he trying to medicate or calm or stop whoever was doing the breaking?
My mother entered my head. Not in Roland Park, she often said, as if all the ills of the world were contained in a cloud that just refused to hover over this little nook of northern Baltimore. But there I was, in Roland Park, and a big, heavy shattered-glass storm had landed. I imagined my mother’s face, seeing this scene, her head pulled back, eyes widened, the nearly invisible scratches of her eyebrows lifted almost into her hairline. I remembered the single broken plate in my kitchen at the beginning of the summer and how serious that crime had seemed.
I looked at the closed kitchen door and envisioned Izzy forcing it open, just a bit, and then squeezing through and stepping into a pile of broken glass. Very carefully, I high-knee-stepped through the debris. I picked up a cookie sheet from the floor and used it to push aside the crackling heap that was blocking the door. Then I swung the door open, and pushed debris against it so it would be held that way.
I turned and went back to the TV room, and then to the laundry room, where Izzy and I had organized mops and brooms, rain boots, snow boots, raincoats, umbrellas, roller skates, and a bike pump. I pulled on Mrs. Cone’s orange rubber rain boots. They were too big, but I could walk easily enough in them. With a bucket, a mop, a broom, and a dustpan, I returned to the kitchen. Izzy was standing in the doorway on the dining room side, her mouth open in the shape of the letter O.
“Mary Jane! I woke up and you weren’t there!”
“I’m right here.”
“WHAT HAPPENED?!”
“I don’t know. When the grown-ups wake up, they can tell us what happened.”
Izzy lifted her arms. I waded over to her, picked her up, and walked her to the kitchen table. There were a few cracked and broken glasses on the bench seats, so I placed her on top of the table, which was miraculously clear.
“Everything is broken.”
“I know. I’ll clean up.”
“What will we eat?”
“Hmmm.” I went to the refrigerator and checked inside. Untouched. “Milk straight from the carton? And some Laughing Cow cheese. Okay?”