sacred objects in her world. It was not a stretch to say that the place, set back against acres of lush dogwood and sumac and uncut switchgrass, was failing. Buyers today wanted something that looked old but felt new. Henrietta’s house looked old and felt older. Her real estate firm tried to find a positive angle for the sale. They cut the price lower than she wanted. They brought in fashion-forward furniture for “staging.” Everything was low-slung. Couches so low you practically needed a crane to lower yourself into place, or else you had to trust-fall into the cushions. Furniture like this reinforced the idea that you, as the human, were powerful and huge and could accomplish anything. Someone had told her this. The tinier the sofas, the bigger the cash. Someone had said this also. Everything would need to be white, because whiteness in the world of buying and selling was synonymous with optimism, and optimism here was necessary, because this place, this big old spooky place, had something about it that reeked of darkness. Someone, incredibly, had said this, too.
They moved into the kitchen, where Henrietta opened random boxes, looking for the weathervane. Juliet took a seat and waited. It was a big and open room, Harold’s favorite, with three windows that looked out to the field and the river. They had eaten Sunday dinners here, every week, right from the very beginning, a secular tradition that went unbroken until his death. It was the one night Harold did not work, but still he would spend most of the day preparing the meal—rolling fresh pasta, or spit-roasting meat, or waiting for dough to rise in the hottest corner, by the sunlit glass. The very first night they were in this house together, they had slept here because their beds had not yet arrived, and she could remember waking that first morning, her husband asleep on the floor, warm light in through the windows, the sky clear, the river fast and dark.
Juliet stood up and began to walk. “When you find it,” she said, “just call me. I’ll come back.”
“But it’s here,” Henrietta said, standing up, the box cutter in her hand. “It’s here somewhere.”
Juliet found Harold’s suitcase. “Maybe you put it in here,” she said, crouching, her hand on the zipper.
Henrietta felt herself lunging before she could open her mouth to speak. “No! Please! Don’t!”
5.
At first Lydia met with an Internet specialist. She did not know such a person existed on campus. He was a young man, maybe twenty-two, with rimless eyeglasses. Did she understand that as she aged her notions of privacy and the privacy of her body would shift? She assured him that she did. He repeated the question, word for word, this time slowly, as if some not-so-subtle condescension might help her understand better. This picture, he told her, would exist on the Internet for all eternity. Did she understand exactly what that meant? Did she realize that the Internet forgot nothing? She had thought the question was open-ended and at first did not say anything. The man opened up the calendar on his desktop and started scrolling through the years: 2017, 2057, 2117. “This is the future going by,” the man explained. Did she understand that this picture would still be floating around in the year 2117?
Next she met with the head of discipline. Evidently Hartwell employed a three-strikes policy when it came to matters like this. This was news to Lydia. Distribution of forbidden imagery, they called it, which was a perfect summation of Hartwell’s approach to difficult problems. Needlessly arcane, bureaucratically heartless, and institutionally reluctant to call it what it was. She could, it turned out, have sex with a classmate if she so chose, but she could not send a picture of herself to that same classmate. A stern woman with a local accent, the head of discipline told Lydia that Charlie was gone for good and that because this was her first infraction she would be suspended for
They moved into the kitchen, where Henrietta opened random boxes, looking for the weathervane. Juliet took a seat and waited. It was a big and open room, Harold’s favorite, with three windows that looked out to the field and the river. They had eaten Sunday dinners here, every week, right from the very beginning, a secular tradition that went unbroken until his death. It was the one night Harold did not work, but still he would spend most of the day preparing the meal—rolling fresh pasta, or spit-roasting meat, or waiting for dough to rise in the hottest corner, by the sunlit glass. The very first night they were in this house together, they had slept here because their beds had not yet arrived, and she could remember waking that first morning, her husband asleep on the floor, warm light in through the windows, the sky clear, the river fast and dark.
Juliet stood up and began to walk. “When you find it,” she said, “just call me. I’ll come back.”
“But it’s here,” Henrietta said, standing up, the box cutter in her hand. “It’s here somewhere.”
Juliet found Harold’s suitcase. “Maybe you put it in here,” she said, crouching, her hand on the zipper.
Henrietta felt herself lunging before she could open her mouth to speak. “No! Please! Don’t!”
5.
At first Lydia met with an Internet specialist. She did not know such a person existed on campus. He was a young man, maybe twenty-two, with rimless eyeglasses. Did she understand that as she aged her notions of privacy and the privacy of her body would shift? She assured him that she did. He repeated the question, word for word, this time slowly, as if some not-so-subtle condescension might help her understand better. This picture, he told her, would exist on the Internet for all eternity. Did she understand exactly what that meant? Did she realize that the Internet forgot nothing? She had thought the question was open-ended and at first did not say anything. The man opened up the calendar on his desktop and started scrolling through the years: 2017, 2057, 2117. “This is the future going by,” the man explained. Did she understand that this picture would still be floating around in the year 2117?
Next she met with the head of discipline. Evidently Hartwell employed a three-strikes policy when it came to matters like this. This was news to Lydia. Distribution of forbidden imagery, they called it, which was a perfect summation of Hartwell’s approach to difficult problems. Needlessly arcane, bureaucratically heartless, and institutionally reluctant to call it what it was. She could, it turned out, have sex with a classmate if she so chose, but she could not send a picture of herself to that same classmate. A stern woman with a local accent, the head of discipline told Lydia that Charlie was gone for good and that because this was her first infraction she would be suspended for
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