Dream House by Catherine Armsden Page A

to get up and get ready.”
    Ben wrestled himself out of bed, waking Paul, and went to his room.
    â€œHow’d you sleep?” Paul asked, as he did every morning; it had become rhetorical.
    He stood, yawned, and put up the window shades. From the bed, Gina saw blue sky out one window, and out another, fog cascading over the white Victorian cornice of the neighbors’ house. They were several miles from the Bay, but she could hear the moan of a ship’s horn, confirming that the fog hovered at the Golden Gate.
    Paul looked at her, his face full of concern. “I can get them breakfast if you want to try to go back to sleep.”
    â€œNo, no,” Gina said. “I’m okay.” Her morning ritual with the kids, their steady expectations of her, were what lately had given her the will to get out of bed each morning.
    She stood and went to find Ben, who was squatting over his Illustrated Encyclopedia of Machines dressed only in his underwear. “Look,” he said. “Elevators are just like big pulleys.”
    Gina knelt next to him and said, “Cool,” more about his boundless curiosity than the impressive diagram of the elevator. She put some clothes out for him. “Here you go. Get dressed now, okay?”
    â€œCan we work on the rocket when you get home tonight?” he asked. A quarter of his floor was covered with plastic K’NEX piecesand the beginnings of a complicated rocket model they’d been building together. It was apparent to Gina that he had better innate spatial skills than she and probably could have constructed the rocket alone. But he liked having her help.
    â€œSure,” she said. “We could finish the fins.”
    Ben turned his big eyes up at her and studied her face. “Your voice sounds different,” he said.
    Gina cleared her throat. “Really? How is it different?”
    â€œOlder.”
    Wilted inside, she smiled and hugged him. “Hmm. Well, I am older than I was yesterday, right? And so are you.”
    She surveyed his floor—origami paper and Legos, an open package of flower seeds and a small dirty sock—and even surrounded by the kid mess and primary-colored plastic, she felt the inevitability of his growing up, looming like a kidnapper in the shadows.
    And Esther! In her stuffy, quiet room, filled with the nature she was deprived of growing up in the city: shells and rocks and bird nests, bits of obsidian, sea glass, cow bones and feathers, several cacti and a Venus Flytrap, Gina could almost hear her daughter growing, exhaling her innocence into the room. Everywhere, there were clues that she was ready to be older. Last week, Gina had been rummaging to find an overdue library book and came across a stash of tampons behind Esther’s cherished collection of Redwall rat adventures. Esther hadn’t started her period yet, but the fourth grade curriculum included a detailed unit on puberty, and it was so like Esther to be thoroughly prepared—even, possibly, years in advance. Later, she’d come home from school with the news that she’d decided she wanted to go to sleep-away camp this summer. She’d never wanted to before, and that night, in private, Gina and Paul had differed about whether she was ready to be away for two weeks. “She’s been so ambivalent,”Gina had reasoned. But Paul didn’t worry about the kids when they were out of his sight; he imagined only the best: their pleasure at being with other children and under the enlightening influence of other adults. “Maybe it’s Esther’s mom who’s the most ambivalent?” he’d said to Gina.
    He was right, and it wasn’t just about camp—she was relieved when the next day, Esther reversed her decision; she was already dreading the days when Esther and Ben would leave for college. Surely this was not normal!
    Esther was still asleep, curled facing the doorway. Every day she looked more like