and acquired wisdom and that wasn’t guaranteed. Mine was inherited. There was no ordinary human being I couldn’t handle, master, and defeat if I had to. Look at what I had just been through with that fiend who had pretended to be an attorney. I smiled to myself, imagining how Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder would have reacted at lunch if I had described those events in any detail.
How silly and insignificant their concerns for me were. My biggest problem should be sharing a bathroom with a divorcée who was full of herself.
All of this filled me with optimism, but when I gazed out of my bedroom windows and looked down at the bright, Norman Rockwell streets reeking of peace and contentment, imagining the happy families that occupied the other houses, with their manicured front lawns, their sparkling driveways and walks, their potted flowers and sprawling old trees that had quietly witnessed the birth of a nation, I could imagine the creeping, crawling, dark shadows seeping in and over it all,finding the cracks in the perfection, slipping through any tiny opening, oozing over the immaculate streets and sidewalks, embracing the houses and darkening the hearts of parents who would suddenly fear for their teenagers as much as for themselves.
Was Daddy ever far away? Had I been deluding myself?
I opened the window and listened to the breeze tiptoeing over the tops of houses and trees until it circled the house to dance a ballet in the sunlight. On the right side of a house across the street, a tree of metal butterflies jingled. Down toward the west end of the street, a car door slammed. Someone called out to someone. There was a trickle of laughter. High in the sky above, a twinkling star metamorphosed into a commercial jet. I suddenly could hear Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder below discussing the dinner menu and then dropping their voices into whispers, surely to talk about me. How quickly they had begun to care and worry about me.
What a wonderful choice I had made. Life here was surely a breath of fresh air. I told myself that Ava, Daddy, and the others most likely expected that I would flee to some darker sanctuary, a place where my inherent nature would feel more at home. They’d search for me in urban alleyways, large, busy cities where someone like me, and like them, would have an easier time disappearing. For a frightening moment, I wondered if they weren’t right to assume that and if I wasn’t wrong to ignore it. Would my true nature be too obvious in a place like this? Would these people take second looks at me, see the veil of darkness that was always besideme, step away, and then choose to avoid and ignore me? Would they, in short, become afraid of me?
It didn’t matter that they could not identify what it was exactly that turned them off to me. Whatever it was, they would instinctively feel that it was something born out of a netherworld, some grotesque swamp crawling with repulsive creatures, some so loathsome that they weren’t even imagined in nightmares. My terrible fear was that they would sense all of this, and I would soon be on my way again, fleeing, searching for that impossible place that would enable me to deny my second self and let me become ordinary.
I couldn’t help wondering, maybe wishing it, if such a hopeful dream existed for my sisters, too, if during some free moment when they were alone, they permitted themselves to admit to the same longing. For them, however, the moment they opened that door, the terror and guilt came rushing in behind their fantasy, ripping and tearing it apart, growling and roaring until they cowered and chastised themselves for having even a moment like mine. It occurred to me that they might be pursuing me not out of anger but out of jealousy. I had gone farther away than any of them had. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that there was one of us who could escape, because that reinforced and drove home their own failure. And for me, at least right now, their
How silly and insignificant their concerns for me were. My biggest problem should be sharing a bathroom with a divorcée who was full of herself.
All of this filled me with optimism, but when I gazed out of my bedroom windows and looked down at the bright, Norman Rockwell streets reeking of peace and contentment, imagining the happy families that occupied the other houses, with their manicured front lawns, their sparkling driveways and walks, their potted flowers and sprawling old trees that had quietly witnessed the birth of a nation, I could imagine the creeping, crawling, dark shadows seeping in and over it all,finding the cracks in the perfection, slipping through any tiny opening, oozing over the immaculate streets and sidewalks, embracing the houses and darkening the hearts of parents who would suddenly fear for their teenagers as much as for themselves.
Was Daddy ever far away? Had I been deluding myself?
I opened the window and listened to the breeze tiptoeing over the tops of houses and trees until it circled the house to dance a ballet in the sunlight. On the right side of a house across the street, a tree of metal butterflies jingled. Down toward the west end of the street, a car door slammed. Someone called out to someone. There was a trickle of laughter. High in the sky above, a twinkling star metamorphosed into a commercial jet. I suddenly could hear Mrs. Winston and Mrs. McGruder below discussing the dinner menu and then dropping their voices into whispers, surely to talk about me. How quickly they had begun to care and worry about me.
What a wonderful choice I had made. Life here was surely a breath of fresh air. I told myself that Ava, Daddy, and the others most likely expected that I would flee to some darker sanctuary, a place where my inherent nature would feel more at home. They’d search for me in urban alleyways, large, busy cities where someone like me, and like them, would have an easier time disappearing. For a frightening moment, I wondered if they weren’t right to assume that and if I wasn’t wrong to ignore it. Would my true nature be too obvious in a place like this? Would these people take second looks at me, see the veil of darkness that was always besideme, step away, and then choose to avoid and ignore me? Would they, in short, become afraid of me?
It didn’t matter that they could not identify what it was exactly that turned them off to me. Whatever it was, they would instinctively feel that it was something born out of a netherworld, some grotesque swamp crawling with repulsive creatures, some so loathsome that they weren’t even imagined in nightmares. My terrible fear was that they would sense all of this, and I would soon be on my way again, fleeing, searching for that impossible place that would enable me to deny my second self and let me become ordinary.
I couldn’t help wondering, maybe wishing it, if such a hopeful dream existed for my sisters, too, if during some free moment when they were alone, they permitted themselves to admit to the same longing. For them, however, the moment they opened that door, the terror and guilt came rushing in behind their fantasy, ripping and tearing it apart, growling and roaring until they cowered and chastised themselves for having even a moment like mine. It occurred to me that they might be pursuing me not out of anger but out of jealousy. I had gone farther away than any of them had. They couldn’t tolerate the fact that there was one of us who could escape, because that reinforced and drove home their own failure. And for me, at least right now, their
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