defined themselves as proof of his adulthood, and he wore his LIFEGUARD T-shirt with thinly concealed vanity. Just when she had almost reckoned with his absences while away at college, he was home for the summer. All the same, Sophie felt he had only partly returned. More and more he maintained a separate life that kept him out of the house until night; he didn’t even have meals with them anymore.
When Miriam announced that she would be attending night school to finish her long-delayed bachelor’s degree, Sophie began to wonder if everyone, even her mother, felt like a different person inside versus outside their family. Paperbacks with philosophical titles began piling onto the dining room table, and she realized maybe for the first time that her mother had a mind that carried its own images and information. Both of her parents had grown up speaking another language, and yet now they were living inside their new American skins as if most of that past wasn’t quite relevant anymore.
She thought of the woman her parents knew from the same ship that had brought them to America. In the story Sophie vaguely recalled, the refugee suffered such homesickness for friends and family in Europethat she booked passage on a return voyage almost immediately, and then didn’t survive the war. Sophie felt haunted by the idea that you could make the wrong choice, that there was no way to be sure which instinct would save you: the one that led you forward or the one urging you to turn back. She understood almost nothing about the woman except her name, Masha Bernstein, and the barest facts of what had occurred. Beyond that, her parents simply said, “Nobody knew. And then, suddenly, it was too late.”
With a part-time summer job at the library, Sophie stamped the books departing and shelved the ones returning, occasionally repairing their protective plastic wrapping or erasing pencil marks someone had left on a book’s pages. She tallied the dates as they turned in their slow, inky blur; she tracked her hours by lining up the spines with their Dewey decimals.
Watching the bored faces of strangers day after day, she sensed an unbridgeable distance from everyone she saw. She imagined Simon feeling it too, squinting behind his sunglasses at the swimmers and the splashers, inhaling the weird aromatic mix of grilled hot dogs and cotton candy and Coppertone. Maybe even her mother was feeling it, preparing her own homework, trying to complete something for herself.
We’re all waiting for something to happen, Sophie thought. She wrote the sentence on an index card, using first her right hand and then her left. Later, she crossed it out.
The day after meeting Henry at the post office, the second day after the Company picnic, the rain was so relentless Sophie had to ask her mother for a ride downtown.
“I just realized I forgot to make you lunch,” Miriam said, as Sophie climbed out of the car.
“It’s okay. I have some stuff I brought with me.”
“Smart girl,” her mother said and waved as she pulled away.
Something about the greenish tint of the clouds made Sophie think about the secret time she had looked directly at the solar eclipse, the way she knew you weren’t supposed to, testing it out for herself and not going blind. For weeks afterward she wondered if she would wake up blind one morning anyway, as if the slow burning of her retina would catch up with her. She had stood on the street in front of her house, cupped her hands as a small shield against her forehead and looked up. She saw the black curve eating the edge of the sun. She felt the day change color all around her, felt afraid and brave all at once.
Now, the usual stack of returned books waited at the counter, the ones that had piled up in the drop-off box overnight. Sophie could still remember when she and Simon used to take turns shoving their books through the return slot, counting out loud.
Mrs. Richardson, the reference librarian, blinked her usual
When Miriam announced that she would be attending night school to finish her long-delayed bachelor’s degree, Sophie began to wonder if everyone, even her mother, felt like a different person inside versus outside their family. Paperbacks with philosophical titles began piling onto the dining room table, and she realized maybe for the first time that her mother had a mind that carried its own images and information. Both of her parents had grown up speaking another language, and yet now they were living inside their new American skins as if most of that past wasn’t quite relevant anymore.
She thought of the woman her parents knew from the same ship that had brought them to America. In the story Sophie vaguely recalled, the refugee suffered such homesickness for friends and family in Europethat she booked passage on a return voyage almost immediately, and then didn’t survive the war. Sophie felt haunted by the idea that you could make the wrong choice, that there was no way to be sure which instinct would save you: the one that led you forward or the one urging you to turn back. She understood almost nothing about the woman except her name, Masha Bernstein, and the barest facts of what had occurred. Beyond that, her parents simply said, “Nobody knew. And then, suddenly, it was too late.”
With a part-time summer job at the library, Sophie stamped the books departing and shelved the ones returning, occasionally repairing their protective plastic wrapping or erasing pencil marks someone had left on a book’s pages. She tallied the dates as they turned in their slow, inky blur; she tracked her hours by lining up the spines with their Dewey decimals.
Watching the bored faces of strangers day after day, she sensed an unbridgeable distance from everyone she saw. She imagined Simon feeling it too, squinting behind his sunglasses at the swimmers and the splashers, inhaling the weird aromatic mix of grilled hot dogs and cotton candy and Coppertone. Maybe even her mother was feeling it, preparing her own homework, trying to complete something for herself.
We’re all waiting for something to happen, Sophie thought. She wrote the sentence on an index card, using first her right hand and then her left. Later, she crossed it out.
The day after meeting Henry at the post office, the second day after the Company picnic, the rain was so relentless Sophie had to ask her mother for a ride downtown.
“I just realized I forgot to make you lunch,” Miriam said, as Sophie climbed out of the car.
“It’s okay. I have some stuff I brought with me.”
“Smart girl,” her mother said and waved as she pulled away.
Something about the greenish tint of the clouds made Sophie think about the secret time she had looked directly at the solar eclipse, the way she knew you weren’t supposed to, testing it out for herself and not going blind. For weeks afterward she wondered if she would wake up blind one morning anyway, as if the slow burning of her retina would catch up with her. She had stood on the street in front of her house, cupped her hands as a small shield against her forehead and looked up. She saw the black curve eating the edge of the sun. She felt the day change color all around her, felt afraid and brave all at once.
Now, the usual stack of returned books waited at the counter, the ones that had piled up in the drop-off box overnight. Sophie could still remember when she and Simon used to take turns shoving their books through the return slot, counting out loud.
Mrs. Richardson, the reference librarian, blinked her usual
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