before she left for school, Courtney arranged her seashells in a straight line, one touching the next, on top of her white dresser. Before she went to sleep at night, she shaped them in the circle. Bon matin, Maman. Bonne nuit. Je t’aime.
The first Friday back at school, she came home and the shells were gone and she knew exactly what had happened. Just to make sure, she stood in the archway to the den. Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres on a tray, Ruth in the middle of a story about Mrs. Hoving. Ruth paused and waited.
I’m cleaning my room, Courtney said.
Ruth sputtered a laugh. Oh, right. But one of the others, a more experienced mother, said, How nice!
But I can’t find my seashells. For dusting.
The two women sitting on the tweed sofa smiled. And Ruth caught her cue. Try the bookshelf over your desk? I’ll bet that’s where they are.
Thank you, said Courtney and went out through the garage to find Paige in the orchard. Paige had told Courtney she was strictly forbidden in the orchard, even in the mornings. No one wanted her in the orchard now. But Paige had taken her best things to give away. Just like she’d taken their father’s canon-style cigarette lighter and his English beer.
In the orchard, Paige stood against the outhouse, arms crossed and angry, as Courtney walked toward her along the path. Two boys, Eddie, with the bluish swollen girl’s mouth, and Henry, with the pink cheeks, sat on the ground smoking small black cigars. They looked up at Courtney, frowning. The third boy was Andrew Kennedy, leaning back against his tipped-over bike wheel, legs splayed. He didn’t look at her at all.
Out, said Paige. Now.
We are out, said Courtney jutting her chin. She stared at her sister’s tiny breasts on display, her uniform jumper on the ground. Her Carter’s underpants looked stretched out and baggy as if she’d carried things in them. The lighter, the shells. She still wore her school blouse, opened up, but the collar was smudged as if Henry’s black cigar and Eddie’s blue lips had leaked together there. Her tiny breasts, unlike Courtney’s, poked straight out like thumb tips. And the nipples were light small orangey caps on each. Courtney’s new breasts were rounder. Ruth junior, Paige had said in a fight, and Courtney worried this might be true. Her nipples looked like stupid pink toy pig pennies. Go away, said Paige. Last warning.
Ruth wants you, Courtney said.
What for?
How should I know? She told me to find you. She said even if you had to stay for detention, tell Sister to let you come home.
Henry stubbed out the black cigar. He stood and popped it through the half-moon slit in the door behind Paige’s head. As if she’d disappeared. He didn’t need to acknowledge her anymore. She’d failed at something, Courtney knew, and felt a tickle of panic for her sister. Henry’s pants were unzipped, but now he fastened them, slid his belt through the loops in slow motion. Buckle, jacket pulled on, his clip-on school tie shoved down into a side pocket. Yeah, he said to the boys. Eddie jerked up his book bag. Andrew Kennedy righted his bike. The three of them zigzagged away through the wrecked trees.
Nice work, Courtney. Paige pulled her uniform jumper on over her head.
Zipper, said Courtney.
Paige smoothed her flyaway hair. They’ll tell everyone, you know.
I’ll take my shells back now, said Courtney.
Tough luck, detective, said Paige. Too late.
The next week, the second week of sixth grade, Courtney’s new teacher, Sister Frances, said they were old enough to know the ins and outs of hell. They weren’t babies anymore. They had power. They could pray for those already in hell and for those who were well on the way, stumbling blindly along the dark path.
Paige. Obviously. She’d let boys rummage around in her underpants.
Sister Frances then prompted the prayer for those who had sinned against us. This was the merciful part, the intervention for our enemies. This was all fascinating and not something their mother had agreed with, ever. She had suspended her belief when she was little, she told them, like a balloon. Like a zeppelin! And she seemed to think this was very funny. So Courtney hovered now between whether to try this prayerful intervention for her sister or not. But then she did. She imagined lifting Paige out of her quick certain slide into hell at the last minute, throwing a damp towel over Paige’s scorched wispy leaf-tangled hair. She prayed and nothing changed. So on Thursday afternoon Courtney tried her mother again. She hid her mother’s play earring, a pearly cluster on a rusty clip, under the bed skirt. She had a candle stub from the kitchen drawer. She nestled the stub in the shag carpet and lit it. The instant the bed skirt caught fire Ruth was banging on the door.
Something about the look of Paige, her legs wide, knee socks high, oxfords laced, backbone lined up at the sagging corner of the old outhouse, hair a nest with dead leaves tangled at the top of her head, underpants hanging in heavy folds, her nipples, her nylon school blouse reminded Courtney of a painting her mother had kept hanging on the wall of her dressing room. Nymphs, water nymphs, bored and dozy-eyed like Paige with bodies that looked electric under the winding fabric mostly on their hips. The nymphs dragged toes through shallow ponds. They sat on rocks or propped their bodies against tree trunks like Paige at the outhouse. Courtney could kill Paige. Just kill her. Paige’s underpants all baggy around her legs just like their mother’s bathing suit because their mother had become too thin.
Even though their father had tried to fatten her up with barbecued steaks on the grill, salt in the air, blood rolling on their plates. Their mother would lick and chew. Hurry now, said Mrs. Hoving standing at the back door. Come girls. The light still pink over the ocean, Mrs. Hoving tucked them into bed. Then their parents would come and find the exact place on each forehead to efficiently deliver their love. Their father had forgotten all about that. No one was delivering anything anymore. But Paige in the orchard with her baggy pants was transmitting something to the boys on the ground and they were the ones with precision now. Courtney hated her sister for deserting her this way. She truly hated her. And that made her feel very sick in her stomach.
Downstairs in the kitchen, waiting for her father to come home and adjudicate the bed fire, her mother’s pearly play earring sitting on a dish like poison, Courtney slumped and still—not a word now, hissed Ruth, not a sound—two things occurred to Courtney. The first thing was that Ruth had knocked before charging in, which she seldom did, and the second was that she must have been right outside the door the whole time, waiting for Courtney to do something bad.
Ruth stood now whisking rye bread crumbs into gravy at the stove top. Potatoes roasting in the oven. A soft, soothing pop-pop of gunfire from the den, where Paige, home from school, watched television. When their father came in at dinnertime, Ruth would then wash her hands of Courtney and her obstinate refusal to accept the love and nurturance so abundantly provided. She was finished being treated like the servant, she said, stirring the gravy, rehearsing. This was it.
But their father was in no mood for Courtney. Right away he tried to shoo her into the den with Paige. You stay where you are! said Ruth.
Listen, he needed to talk to Ruth, now, because he wasn’t going to let the bastards win.
Of course he wasn’t, said Ruth, but she squinted when he put his briefcase down on the chair beside Courtney. He might let the bastards win, her look said. He just might.
And it occurred to Courtney that Ruth washing her hands of all of them might be the answer her mother was giving to the prayer. Her mother
