simple, soft shapes in this one,” she said. “Don’t they remind you of your paintings?”
They did, Ginny thought, but only because they seemed inaccurate, like hers.
“Psst!”
Ginny swiveled to see Sid, her mother’s coat hooked on his thumb over his shoulder, peeking at her from around the door frame of an adjacent gallery. Behind him hung an intriguing and enormous black-and-white image. Keeping an eye on her family, she moved toward Sid into the room where a sign announced, “The Pleasure of Ruins.”
Sid poked her in the back. “Hey, don’t look so sad.”
“I’m not sad,” she said.
Sid laughed. “Look over there at your sis.”
Ginny turned; Cassie looked like she always did: pretty, serious.
“She’d rather be anywhere but here. But it’s your mum’s birthday. Your mum and mine, they’re sensitive and get their feelings hurt easily. So we have to try to be extra nice to them.”
Now, Ginny did feel sad. “I know,” she said.
“Cheer up, kid! We’re in the presence of greatness.” Sid gestured to the artwork. “This is the really great stuff,” he said. He was standing so close to her that she could feel his excitement, as if bugs were jumping from him to her. She circled the room, trancelike, astonished by the photographs covering the walls: columns rising from rubble and huge blocks of stone standing upright in a field, heavy crumbling walls and windows with only sky behind. Their 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
