as you act reasonably mature,” Annie says. “And you both look too old to do the really idiotic kid stuff, like drink bleach or hide granola in the VCR. I baby-sat a girl once who did that. It was trouble, because her big brother, Marty, was a karate video addict. After she messed up the video machine with granola, there was nothing for Marty to watch.
“He was eight years old, and I had to get him addicted to the soap operas, which took a pretty good trick. You know how you instantly get an eight-year-old boy addicted to soap operas?” Annie looks at us, savoring the moment. “Tell him that it’s all really happening, all real life, in the apartment upstairs!” Annie laughs her hiccuping laugh, and I exhale a sigh of appreciation. You don’t hear a good baby-sitting trick every day.
Under the table, Geneva gives my shoe a gentle kick. I look over at her and nod, and she grins. She knows how much I want to hand Annie the controls of the day. Why wouldn’t I? It’d be more fun than other versions of this morning, trying to memorize irregular French verbs or holding Geneva’s hand in the nurse’s station.
We finish breakfast and then go up to our rooms to change into jeans and sweatshirts, “slop-around clothes,” as Annie instructs. After changing, Geneva dashes back to the kitchen, but I detour through the second floor, drifting into rooms. The grandfather clock in the den chimes ten elegant, muted strokes, but time feels enchanted, as if this particular morning has been scooped up from the precise march of minutes and hours of a normal school day.
I follow the carpet runner, betting myself. If you can walk on the balls of your feet into every room on the second floor without losing balance, then Mom will let you and Geneva stay home from school with Annie the whole day.
Our townhouse is tall and narrow, a three-story stack of dark rooms, some of which have no real function and are referred to with vague names such as “the sitting room,” “the yellow room,” or “the Korean chest room.” This last room, at the far end of the second-floor stairs, was where Elizabeth slept. At the other end of the hall stand Kevin and John’s old bedrooms, facing each other across the landing, the bathroom and linen closet between them.
I bounce through John’s room, then Kevin’s, my toes spread and crooked like a bird’s for balance. Both rooms are arranged into informal studies, with bookshelves and armchairs, but since all of us prefer using the downstairs den, which has the computer and television, the rooms are dusty with disuse. When I sneeze, my heels almost drop to the floor; I recover just in time. I look at the ceiling, to the triangle of Kevin’s Greek alphabet Delta he painted up there when he got into his top choice fraternity. “A guy’s guy” is how Brett always describes Kevin. An athlete, a daredevil, a leader. “Not much of a student but a lot of fun.” John was quieter, but Brett said he could imitate sounds: bird calls, the crash of thunder, anything. It helped him out for practical jokes. “They loved a good joke, those two,” Brett told me. “John was brainy and Kevin was bold. And Elizabeth knew how to laugh off both of ’em.”
It is nearly impossible to imagine those types of people living in this silent house.
I glide on the balls of my feet, ankles cracking with my unaccustomed shift of weight, into the Korean chest room, where there is no Korean chest because five or six years ago Mom gave it away to my Uncle Nelson as a Christmas present, “so that he’d stop embarrassing both of us with all that obscene hinting.”
Elizabeth’s desk is the only piece of the room that has remained the same from the time she lived here. I tiptoe toward it. More than any photo or anecdote, this desk, with its surface of baby blue painted wood, imprinted with a Led Zeppelin sticker and scratchwork heart bearing the initials E. S. + W. J. , makes me feel close to the sister I never
“He was eight years old, and I had to get him addicted to the soap operas, which took a pretty good trick. You know how you instantly get an eight-year-old boy addicted to soap operas?” Annie looks at us, savoring the moment. “Tell him that it’s all really happening, all real life, in the apartment upstairs!” Annie laughs her hiccuping laugh, and I exhale a sigh of appreciation. You don’t hear a good baby-sitting trick every day.
Under the table, Geneva gives my shoe a gentle kick. I look over at her and nod, and she grins. She knows how much I want to hand Annie the controls of the day. Why wouldn’t I? It’d be more fun than other versions of this morning, trying to memorize irregular French verbs or holding Geneva’s hand in the nurse’s station.
We finish breakfast and then go up to our rooms to change into jeans and sweatshirts, “slop-around clothes,” as Annie instructs. After changing, Geneva dashes back to the kitchen, but I detour through the second floor, drifting into rooms. The grandfather clock in the den chimes ten elegant, muted strokes, but time feels enchanted, as if this particular morning has been scooped up from the precise march of minutes and hours of a normal school day.
I follow the carpet runner, betting myself. If you can walk on the balls of your feet into every room on the second floor without losing balance, then Mom will let you and Geneva stay home from school with Annie the whole day.
Our townhouse is tall and narrow, a three-story stack of dark rooms, some of which have no real function and are referred to with vague names such as “the sitting room,” “the yellow room,” or “the Korean chest room.” This last room, at the far end of the second-floor stairs, was where Elizabeth slept. At the other end of the hall stand Kevin and John’s old bedrooms, facing each other across the landing, the bathroom and linen closet between them.
I bounce through John’s room, then Kevin’s, my toes spread and crooked like a bird’s for balance. Both rooms are arranged into informal studies, with bookshelves and armchairs, but since all of us prefer using the downstairs den, which has the computer and television, the rooms are dusty with disuse. When I sneeze, my heels almost drop to the floor; I recover just in time. I look at the ceiling, to the triangle of Kevin’s Greek alphabet Delta he painted up there when he got into his top choice fraternity. “A guy’s guy” is how Brett always describes Kevin. An athlete, a daredevil, a leader. “Not much of a student but a lot of fun.” John was quieter, but Brett said he could imitate sounds: bird calls, the crash of thunder, anything. It helped him out for practical jokes. “They loved a good joke, those two,” Brett told me. “John was brainy and Kevin was bold. And Elizabeth knew how to laugh off both of ’em.”
It is nearly impossible to imagine those types of people living in this silent house.
I glide on the balls of my feet, ankles cracking with my unaccustomed shift of weight, into the Korean chest room, where there is no Korean chest because five or six years ago Mom gave it away to my Uncle Nelson as a Christmas present, “so that he’d stop embarrassing both of us with all that obscene hinting.”
Elizabeth’s desk is the only piece of the room that has remained the same from the time she lived here. I tiptoe toward it. More than any photo or anecdote, this desk, with its surface of baby blue painted wood, imprinted with a Led Zeppelin sticker and scratchwork heart bearing the initials E. S. + W. J. , makes me feel close to the sister I never
Similar Books
