magic,” Tess said, smiling wistfully. “He makes all the bad things go away.”
H ENRY CAN’T BE SURE when Danner first showed up. It’s almost as if she’s been around since Emma was born. Since she learned to talk, at least. In the beginning, the invisible girl wasn’t called anything, then, when she was first learning to read, Emma named her.
Henry had an old pair of hiking boots, something he’d bought just before graduating from college, visions of trekking around the world in his head: Ireland, Wales, Australia, the Alps. They’d all four go—“The Compassionate Dismantlers take on the world!” Suz had shouted, delighted by the idea. But then Suz died and Tess got pregnant, and that put an end not just to the Dismantlers, but to his wanderlust. The boots were relegated to yard work and the occasional hike through the woods behind his house. And these days, the only dismantling he did was taking apart the trap under the bathroom sink to retrieve whatever small artifact Emma dropped down the drain. Earrings. A little Eeyore pin she got when Tess’s parents took her to Disney World.
“Daddy, what do your boots say?” Emma asked one afternoon as she lay on the kitchen floor staring at the boots abandoned by the door. The company name was pressed into the leather across the heel of each boot.
“Danner.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s who makes them.”
“Like the elf?”
“What elf, honey?”
“The elf who makes the shoes.”
“Something like that, I guess.”
Emma gave a nod and went back to staring dreamily at the boots. The next day, the invisible girl had a name. Named for a shoe-making elf, and a pair of heavy boots that spoke to Henry not of regret exactly, but simply of what might have been.
Henry grips the Blazer’s wheel tightly, worrying over the baseball game, the origin of the postcard that drove Spencer to suicide, and now, over whether or not Danner is going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. Emma gets quiet. He glances in the rearview mirror, sees she’s still talking, but in a low, quiet voice. Subdued. He turns down the radio.
“How did you die?” Emma asks. Then, in the mirror, he watches her nod, her face as serious as it gets, all pinched up. I’ve got a splinter kind of serious. I think my hamster’s sick kind of serious.
On the low murmur of the radio, Henry hears the crack of a bat. The announcers go wild. Home run. Bases loaded. The Sox have taken the lead. It’s a new ball game.
Chapter 5
W HAT IS A GHOST ? Danner says it’s not always the way people think. A ghost doesn’t have to be someone dead, rattling chains, stuck between two worlds. A ghost is a spirit and everyone has a spirit, living or dead. Animals, plants, people.
They’re bumping along in Emma’s dad’s Blazer. Her dad is always saying this stretch of road is the worst and wondering where the hell his tax dollars go.
“Potholes the size of Rhode Island,” he says.
He’s watching Emma in the rearview mirror, his eyes all worried and strange, which is the way he looked at her each time she coughed when she had pneumonia last year.
“Imagine,” Danner tells Emma, as she sits beside her on the crumb-covered, juice-stained backseat, “that the world is like those layers of clear pages in encyclopedias and biology books: put them all together, and you get a whole image, like a frog or a person. But making that up is layer after layer: sheets with heart and lungs, the nerves, the muscles, the skeleton, the skin. This is what the world is like. Do you understand?”
“No,” Emma admits. She doesn’t get it at all. If Mel were here, Mel might get it.
Danner looks out the window at the world going by: a barn with a broken back; a woman watering the pansies around her mailbox; the Heigh-Ho Cabins, which promise satellite TV and have a glowing red VACANCY sign. Danner’s wearing an old faded green college sweatshirt of Emma’s dad’s. SEXTON , it says, in big white
H ENRY CAN’T BE SURE when Danner first showed up. It’s almost as if she’s been around since Emma was born. Since she learned to talk, at least. In the beginning, the invisible girl wasn’t called anything, then, when she was first learning to read, Emma named her.
Henry had an old pair of hiking boots, something he’d bought just before graduating from college, visions of trekking around the world in his head: Ireland, Wales, Australia, the Alps. They’d all four go—“The Compassionate Dismantlers take on the world!” Suz had shouted, delighted by the idea. But then Suz died and Tess got pregnant, and that put an end not just to the Dismantlers, but to his wanderlust. The boots were relegated to yard work and the occasional hike through the woods behind his house. And these days, the only dismantling he did was taking apart the trap under the bathroom sink to retrieve whatever small artifact Emma dropped down the drain. Earrings. A little Eeyore pin she got when Tess’s parents took her to Disney World.
“Daddy, what do your boots say?” Emma asked one afternoon as she lay on the kitchen floor staring at the boots abandoned by the door. The company name was pressed into the leather across the heel of each boot.
“Danner.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s who makes them.”
“Like the elf?”
“What elf, honey?”
“The elf who makes the shoes.”
“Something like that, I guess.”
Emma gave a nod and went back to staring dreamily at the boots. The next day, the invisible girl had a name. Named for a shoe-making elf, and a pair of heavy boots that spoke to Henry not of regret exactly, but simply of what might have been.
Henry grips the Blazer’s wheel tightly, worrying over the baseball game, the origin of the postcard that drove Spencer to suicide, and now, over whether or not Danner is going to be a permanent fixture in their lives. Emma gets quiet. He glances in the rearview mirror, sees she’s still talking, but in a low, quiet voice. Subdued. He turns down the radio.
“How did you die?” Emma asks. Then, in the mirror, he watches her nod, her face as serious as it gets, all pinched up. I’ve got a splinter kind of serious. I think my hamster’s sick kind of serious.
On the low murmur of the radio, Henry hears the crack of a bat. The announcers go wild. Home run. Bases loaded. The Sox have taken the lead. It’s a new ball game.
Chapter 5
W HAT IS A GHOST ? Danner says it’s not always the way people think. A ghost doesn’t have to be someone dead, rattling chains, stuck between two worlds. A ghost is a spirit and everyone has a spirit, living or dead. Animals, plants, people.
They’re bumping along in Emma’s dad’s Blazer. Her dad is always saying this stretch of road is the worst and wondering where the hell his tax dollars go.
“Potholes the size of Rhode Island,” he says.
He’s watching Emma in the rearview mirror, his eyes all worried and strange, which is the way he looked at her each time she coughed when she had pneumonia last year.
“Imagine,” Danner tells Emma, as she sits beside her on the crumb-covered, juice-stained backseat, “that the world is like those layers of clear pages in encyclopedias and biology books: put them all together, and you get a whole image, like a frog or a person. But making that up is layer after layer: sheets with heart and lungs, the nerves, the muscles, the skeleton, the skin. This is what the world is like. Do you understand?”
“No,” Emma admits. She doesn’t get it at all. If Mel were here, Mel might get it.
Danner looks out the window at the world going by: a barn with a broken back; a woman watering the pansies around her mailbox; the Heigh-Ho Cabins, which promise satellite TV and have a glowing red VACANCY sign. Danner’s wearing an old faded green college sweatshirt of Emma’s dad’s. SEXTON , it says, in big white
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