Trompe l'Oeil by Nancy Reisman Page A

tainted—permanently? Nothing seemed more permanent than now.
    Afternoons when she did homework, her mother would sometimes sit next to her and smooth her hair and read, as if Katy were a small cat. But when Nora turned her face or crossed the room, Katy could see how brittle she was; and in neighborhood conversations she was strangely cheerful, smilingand chatting with the other women as if she’d parachuted into the world she’d always wanted.
    Outside the house, no one spoke about Molly.

HOUSE II
    From the wraparound deck, you entered through the kitchen: white walls and long side windows, a broad oak kitchen table, the white peninsula of the breakfast counter separating the work space from the table. Painted cabinets lined the far left wall, above old laminate counters. A chunky white electric stove, a decades-old refrigerator, its edges curved, the manufacturer’s name embossed in chrome script. A stainless-steel kitchen sink along the entry-side wall, a window just above—sometimes lined with tomatoes—from which Nora gazed at the house across the narrow road and the brook-fed pond, and later blew smoke from rationed cigarettes. Sand, always, on the kitchen floor (oak planks beneath the table; linoleum near the stove), uncontrollable in summer, a warm soft grit the family swept twice a day. Two parallel doorways led from the kitchen to a broad living room big enough for two sofas and several chairs, windows on three sides facing the bay and the east- and westward stretches of beach—on sunny days swaths of blue. Below and beyond the windows and the back deck, a concrete patio abutted a seawall of concrete and stone. In fair weather, the blue wooden shutters stayed open, held by steel hooks, andin storms they were bolted shut, the light and the views of the sea cut off. Other touches here and there: a small alcove beneath the stairs, for a time a toddler’s playhouse, for a time a one-desk office.
    The clouds of gnats infiltrated the kitchen in May—prompting Nora to hang mosquito netting for a few days before the gnats died and fell into shoes and coffee cups. On the second floor, four bedrooms, modest, the largest at the far end of the hall, with its own tiled bath. What had once been a single large room James and Nora had divided into two, one mid-hallway, one at the near end, beside the bathroom at the top of the stairs. These also faced the bay. For a time, the mid-hallway room was Molly’s and pink; soon after Rome, painted white and emptied. A fourth bedroom—Theo’s favorite—opened at the top of the stairs along the street side facing the pond, a side window catching the eastern shoreline.
    The night view from the deck: a vast sky clotted with stars.

AFTER I
    If it had been her own father, her beloved late father, appearing across the street, Nora too would have run: for her, too, there would have been nothing but his face, his wave. Imagine making the leap toward him, recognizing him but not the objects around him, apprehending the man but not the moving traffic. Only in your mind is there clear space between you and your father; only the mind can make a truck vanish. She did not mention this to James. Yet had she told Lydia this, Lydia would have nodded—yes, love, minds, trucks. Just as, for hazy liminal moments, flying dreams can leave us verging on ascent. But Nora had not called Lydia, or answered Lydia’s phone messages; nor had she sent Lydia the engraved memorial card for Molly (unsent cards waited stacked in a box, death repeated in tasteful script). Even when she’d settled Theo and Katy into school routines, she did not write to Lydia. Because after Rome you do not get other doorways. Because another Nora might exist—this seemed clear now—only if the children were safe; if Molly still existed, if Theo and Katy had lost nothing. It did not surprise her that both Lydia and Molly showed up in dreams, sometimes together, or that