“Don’t make this about you, Pete.”
“About me? Are you sure you want to go there, Eleanor?”
Breakfast rises in my throat. A sudden panic. I glance over at Maddy and Finn on the sofa, their small nervous expressions. Their sweetness. Their worry. What I did last night. A terrible mistake I can never take back.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Then I hold my breath and wait for whatever happens next.
5
1972. August, Connecticut.
Rural Connecticut is an oppressive place in late summer. By eight in the morning the air is already thick with landlocked humidity and the suffocating greenness of everything. After lunch, I like to hide in the shade of my grandfather’s cornfield, run from one end to the other, the lazy husks pattering against me; lie on a dark stripe of plowed earth between the rows, secret and safe, listen to the quiet rustle; watch soldier ants carrying their heavy loads across the ruts and furrows. In the late afternoon, clouds of gnats appear from nowhere and swarm us, forcing us to run inside for cover until they disappear back into the shadows of the sour plum tree.
Every evening at our grandparents’ farm, we wait for the air to cool before taking our after-dinner walk. In the heat of the day, the road’s blacktop oozes and blisters. But later, it is lovely to walk on, the tar still soft but not sticky, like walking on marshmallows, the sweet smell of lava rising. Granddaddy William, my father’s father, carries his hickory walking stick, pipe and packet of tobacco shoved in his trouser pocket. We walk together past the cornfield, past the old cemetery across the street from their farmhouse, past the little white church with its darkened windows, the minister’s small clapboard house, reading lights on, his lace curtains drawn. We walk up the hill, where sheep bells tinkle in the dusky hollows of the neighbor’s farm.
Anna and I carry sugar cubes in our pockets and run ahead to feed the Straights’ piebald horse from the palms of our hands. He waits for us at the edge of the field, waist-high in stinging nettles, his warm, snuffling nostrils picking up our scent. Anna scratches him between the eyes and he harrumphs and stomps his foot. When we get home, Granny Myrtle always has cider and homemade sugar cookies waiting. She says she wishes we could stay here with her all the time—divorce is never good for the children. “I’ve always admired your mother,” she says. “Wallace is a very handsome woman.”
The church has a small playground for Sunday school—swings and a jungle gym—but Anna and I prefer to play in the cemetery, with its big shade trees and clipped green lawns. The rows and rows of gravestones are perfect for hide-and-seek. Our favorite place is the suicide grave. It is all by itself, halfway up the hill. People who kill themselves aren’t allowed near the other graves because they have sinned, Granny Myrtle tells us. The suicide grave has a tall stone marker, much taller than me, with a cyprus tree on either side. His widow planted them, Granny says. “At first they were only shrubs. But that was long ago now. Your grandfather helped her dig the holes. She moved to New Haven after that.” When Anna asks her how the man died, Granny Myrtle replies, “Your grandfather cut him down.”
On the back side of the grave is a wide marble step. It’s meant to be for flowers, Granny tells us, but as far as she knows, no one has ever visited. On very hot days, Anna and I like to sit there, hidden from the road, in the cool shade of the tombstone. We’ve started making paper dolls. We draw them on paper and cut them out. Anna always does the faces and hairstyles: ponytails, Afros, Pippi Longstocking braids, pageboys. We make teensy clothes with square tabs that fold around the dolls—striped purple bell-bottoms and hip-huggers, kitchen aprons, leather jackets, crayon-white go-go boots, maxiskirts, neckties. Bikinis. “Every doll has to have its own wardrobe,” Anna says, carefully cutting out a microscopic handbag.
We are sitting on the grave step when we hear a car turn into our gravel drive across the road.
“He’s here!” Anna says.
Our father is coming for a whole week. We haven’t seen him in ages—he’s been traveling for work. He misses his bunny girls he tells us when Granny lets us speak to him on the phone. He cannot wait to see us. He’s taking us to the Danbury Fair and swimming at Candlewood Lake. He is bringing a surprise. We may not recognize him, he says. He has grown a moustache.
We pack up our paper dolls and race down the hill, calling his name, excited for our surprise. He gets out of his car at the top of the driveway. Then the passenger door opens.
11:00 A.M.