and Gina filled with dread too; she had her own awful memory of Sid. She was ten when she last saw him at Fran’s funeral, where he was cloaked in black and Banton enmity. “You must speak to Sid,” her mother had coached her, squeezing her hand. But after everything that had happened, Gina couldn’t bear to even look at him.
“I can’t believe he had the gall to tell Annie and Lester he thinks we have the Washington letters,” Cassie said. “It can’t be a coincidence that he got into the antiques business in New York—he probably funded it by selling family stuff from Lily House.”
The thought that family fighting over things like the Washington letters could go on for another generation made Gina’s stomach hurt. “You never know,” she said. “Maybe Mom’s the one who was lying about who had what.”
“Well we know she wasn’t above lying,” Cassie said.
Gina felt suddenly that her time with Cassie at the house, taxed enough by grim circumstances, was churning into a downward spiral. She resolved not to entertain any more negative commentary about their mother or any other family member.
Reaching into a bag full of Christmas tree ornaments, she pulled out a box containing an angel made of glass with a delicate halo and lacy wire wings. Every year, the girls had taken turns climbing up to place her at the top of the tree. Gina was about to remark on its loveliness when Cassie crowed, “Look! It’s the angel with nine lives! Veteran of Christmas wars! God! Mom found a way to ruin every Christmas! She just had to have a fight with somebody. Fran. Or Dad. Or me. Whoever.” She began to laugh. A soft, gurgling laugh that slowly swelled to a whoop.
Her laughter seemed impetuous and was so forceful, Gina felt an almost physical sensation of being pushed away. “Cassie, you’re drunk!”
Cassie slapped Gina’s knee. “Imagine just canceling Christmas on your kids! It’s so awful it’s hilarious!” She laughed harder, rocking back and forth on the rug, tears streaking her cheeks. “Was that the last time you were at Lily House? The year of the Christmas-that-never-was? Or did you forget—remember your wall-of-forgetting?
Gina felt the strength drain out of her. Cassie was right—that was the last time Gina had been at Lily House. But it was Cassie who seemed to have forgotten—maybe because she’d been away, happily skiing with a friend—that the canceled Christmas had come on the heels of Fran’s suicide.
Cassie was still tittering. “Stop!” Gina yelled. “Please stop!” She flushed with heat as if she were wrapped in plastic. “We need some fresh air in here!” She lurched to the window and flung up the sash. “Shit!”
“The storm windows are still on,” Cassie said. She slumped onto the couch. “I’m sorry. It’s because of all the work fixing the shed roof. I was up here fifteen weekends this year, and we only got the ones upstairs off. I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing!” Gina snapped. “It doesn’t matter—it’s not our house!”
“Oh,” Cassie said, “It’s just that . . . you’re hardly ever here and now there’ll be no reason for you to come east.” To Gina, Cassie looked a lot like their mother right now, her body sunken into the couch cushions, tears that turned her big eyes into glittery martyr jewels.
“Don’t be silly! I’ll come to see you in Providence.”
“It’s just not the same. Here . . . now . . . without the house.”
“Cass, stop! What’re you saying? You’ve always griped about coming to Maine. And anyway, we were miserable here. Admit it. You’re as finished with the house as I am.” Her eyes stung with the uncertainty of this stern pronouncement.
The ship’s clock chimed, followed by the groan of a lighthouse and for the first time, Cassie didn’t announce which one. She stood and slinked into the kitchen.
With a shaking hand, Gina carefully laid the glass angel in its wooden box. When she heard Cassie draining the pasta, she joined her, and they sat down and plowed through their dinner, topping it off with Fig Newtons. After they’d washed the dishes, Cassie fell asleep on the living room couch. At nine thirty, Gina, hardly able to keep her eyes open, dragged herself upstairs to bed.
As on previous nights, she felt utterly alone in her father’s bed. She pictured Esther and Ben, reassuring herself that somewhere, she still belonged to someone, and reached for her phone on the nightstand. She had to tell Esther that she’d never again leave her in her time of need, if she could possibly help it.
“Aw, I forgot she was going to have dinner at Julia’s,” Paul said, when Gina asked to speak to Esther. “How’d the rest of the day go?”
Gina described their visit with Annie and Lester, but her conversations with Cassie felt too convoluted to talk about. “I wanted to prepare Esther for the funeral,” she said. “I’m afraid she’ll feel . . . I just . . . I hate not being there with her now.”
“You can’t be in two places at the same time,” Paul said. “Esther knows that. And I’m here.” He took a breath. “Gina . . .”
In his protracted pause, Gina heard everything he wanted to say: you worry too much . . . you don’t have to be the perfect mom . . . it’s okay for them to grapple. Things he’d told her over and over again, but she didn’t buy.
“You need to worry about yourself,” he said now. “Right? If you’re very anxious, how about taking the Xanax I gave you?”
She was too exhausted to call him on his paternal tone. “No,” she said. “Whatever. Just tell Esther she can get ahold of me anytime if she wants.”
After they’d hung up, Gina thought about how attending to her children always made her feel strong. Now, feeling small and vulnerable in her childhood room, she realized that comforting her children soothed the confused and inconsolable child within herself. Was there something wrong with that? With her? Maybe Paul was right: she needed to find a different way to ease her anxiety
She lay awake for an hour, listening as Cassie locked the front door and thumped upstairs to bed. When the house was silent, she tossed in her father’s exile bed for a few more minutes until she could stand it no more. There was no way self-comforting was going to happen in this bed, in this room, in this house!
She jumped out of bed, shivering with a violence a blanket wouldn’t fix, and crept into Cassie’s room. “Can I sleep with you?” she asked.
Cassie slid over in the double bed, and Gina climbed in beside her as she had so many times before.
“You’re shaking,” Cassie said. “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t want to sleep in there?” She caressed Gina’s shoulder, and they were both quiet for a while. Finally, Cassie said, “I’m sorry about earlier. You know, it’s different for me, being in this house. I couldn’t have spent so much time here if I hadn’t had a couple of blowouts with Mom. It’s why I can laugh about it all and you can’t.”
Gina rolled onto her side, her back to Cassie. Since they were very young, the sisters had bonded over struggles with their mother; now, the distinction Cassie had made caused Gina to feel even more isolated. The defenses she’d been keeping up for days were weakening. But she wouldn’t let them; there was still too much to get through. When Cassie hugged Gina close and cried, her warm, minty breath puffing into Gina’s back, Gina sensed that
