here in the house.
In the sagging bed, Gina was alone on an island in the dark, dreary night with the one person who understood.
Cassie stopped crying and rolled over. Soon, her icy cold feet found their way to Gina’s calves, as they always had when they slept together as girls.
Gina folded the pillow over her head. When Cassie said something, she peeled it away. “What?”
“You haven’t cried the whole time we’ve been here.”
Gina had felt the tears, swelling inside her. What Cassie didn’t know—because Gina hadn’t yet found the words for it—was that even before their abrupt and monumental loss, something else had been stealing from her, something more insidious and stealthy. “I can’t,” she said. “Not yet.”
“You still always sleep with a pillow wrapped around your head?”
“Yup.”
“I’m sorry you ended up with the bedroom next to Mom’s.”
“It’s not your fault.”
A house: a shelter against heat, cold, rain, thieves and the inquisitive. A receptacle for light and sun. A certain number of cells appropriated to cooking, work, and personal life.
A room: a surface over which one can walk at ease, a bed on which to stretch yourself, a chair in which to rest or work, a work-table, receptacles in which each thing can be put at once in its right place.
The number of rooms: one for cooking and one for eating. One for work, one to wash yourself in and one for sleep. Such are the standards of the dwelling. Then why do we have the enormous and useless roofs on pretty suburban villas? Why the scanty windows with their little panes; why large houses with so many rooms locked up? Why the mirrored wardrobes . . . the elaborate bookcases . . . the consoles, the china cabinets . . . ?
Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture
The morning after the funeral, Paul, Esther, and Ben piled into Cassie’s car so that she could drop them at the airport on her way back to Providence, where she had an evening event to cater. Watching her family drive out the driveway, Gina felt a frantic urge to run after them and jump in the car. But there was still much to do, and she owed it to Cassie to stay a couple more days.
The auction man arrived at ten-thirty to pick up the house’s more valuable furnishings. “There’re some real treasures here,” he said. “You might be surprised by what they fetch.” Sliding open the drawer of a Banton family desk, he asked, “Have you gotten everything out of these drawers? Oh, wow! Look at these!” He plucked out several small, worn frames. “Sixth plate daguerreotypes. Signed ‘New York, 1841.’ Wonderful!”
Yesterday, Gina had seen the daguerreotypes but hadn’t even taken them out to look at them. They’d been tucked in that drawer for as long as she could remember and had become fixtures over time, like faucets and hairbrushes. What excited her were the piece of George Washington’s cloak and the lock of Martha’s hair, now tucked in her carry-on bag. She and Cassie had decided not to even mention this fresh discovery to the auctioneer until they’d researched the best thing to do with them. Since Cassie’s house had been broken into recently, she insisted that Gina take them with her to San Francisco.
Neighbors and friends had picked up most of the rest of the furniture and now that the auction items were cleared out, the house was nearly empty. Even the ship’s and lighthouse clocks had been packed away, their voices silenced. Without Cassie’s big personality to fill up the rooms, Gina experienced the echo of death even more acutely.
She went upstairs and sat on the toilet lid, looking for solace in her email. She opened the last of five from her clients, Mitzi and Jeff Stone, whose two voicemails she’d neglected to answer. She’d brought their drawings with her, expecting they’d want to talk and finally made a date with them for a Skype conference the next morning. She spent most of the afternoon answering the string of emails from clients and contractors that felt like a lifeline.
At five o’clock, she loaded up her parents’ car with more boxes and bags and headed out Halsey Road to Goodwill. She made her drop, trying not to think about her mother’s tiny cardigans and tiny shoes and the hardly-worn wool trousers of her father’s that were stuffed beneath the knot of the black plastic bags. It seemed indecorous that owing to size and convenience, trash bags had become the default carry-all—for life, for death, and everything in between, like garbage.
When the car was empty, Gina turned around and drove back into the center of Whit’s Point to pick up some groceries at Tobey’s Market, the only commercial establishment in town and whose sign boasted “The Oldest Family-Owned Store in America.” She pulled into the parking lot, filling with apprehension. She could run into anyone!
She dashed into the store, wishing she had her sunglasses to hide behind. It was dinnertime, and the place was nearly empty. In summer, tanned yachters from boats moored in the harbor perused the sparsely stocked shelves, sporting Patagonia miracle fabrics, traditional red shorts and Topsiders. But April was slow for Maine merchants. A couple of older local men in khakis and wool L.L. Bean jackets lingered at the register, complaining about the shrinking of Wheat Thins over the years and the “useless and ugly” crosswalk that had just been painted between Tobey’s and the post office. “If you can’t cross the street in Whit’s Point without a bunch of damn lines to tell you how to do it, you should stay at home,” one of them said, and the other said, “Ayuh.” Gina was relieved that she recognized only the cashier in the store, who was one Tobey or another.
Everything inside the store had changed except the most complete inventory of Campbell’s soups in America, the anemic iceberg lettuce that dominated a paltry selection of California produce, and the creaky wood floor. Rubbery-looking croissants and a self-service coffee bar—complete with soymilk—had replaced the display of Devil Dogs, Yodels, and Ring Dings; there were handmade wreaths, straw baskets, and homemade preserves for sale. What was once the quintessential country mom-and-pop grocery had become a caricature of a quintessential country mom-and-pop grocery.
She carried her omelet ingredients to the register and handed her money to . . . Robbie Tobey, she remembered now, who had been a year ahead of her in school and had smashed up his father’s truck out on Halsey Road when he was sixteen. “Thanks,” he said, without looking at her.
Walking back to the car, a man approaching her stopped abruptly. “Gina?”
“Kit!” She leaned forward with the impulse to hug her childhood friend but caught herself and drew back, offering him her hand. Kit shook his head with a smile.
“Grease,” he laughed, holding up his hands. “I’ve been workin’.”
Kit’s aged face and baldness were a surprise, but it was his familiar, piercing gaze that put Gina momentarily at a loss, taking her back twenty-eight years, when she had last seen him.
Kit’s brow creased. “Well, wow. I was really shocked about the accident. I didn’t even know. I was out of town for two weeks and just got back yesterday.”
“Yeah,” Gina said. Emotion welled up in her, and she looked at her feet. Kit lifted his hand as if he might reach out to comfort her, a possibility that only flustered her more.
“Well,
