flies forward.
It’s one o’clock, Mom says. She lifts her phone and calls Dad. Jack announces that mint is a cure for the common cold, mint is a cure for bad breath, mint is a cure for almost anything. Glares at me briefly.
Perdita watches him talk, watches me. She lifts one eyebrow and that’s when I see the tiny little loop at the end of one brow, like a period at the end of a sentence, and now when she leans toward the pan again, to stir the mint, to watch the garlic glow and the saffron stir in, her chain clinks against the edge of the pot. She quickly shucks it off. Strings it across the back of a chair like a purse. Stands beside my brother. Gives his cheek a kiss.
Itookawalk, I say.
Don’t do this, Mom says.
I’ll go—find Dad.
Not a chance. You’ll stay right here. Your father’s coming home.
Pesce spada come la fa la rita
, Jack says. Mom stands and walks across the room. Says something to Perdita, something to Jack, and now the door opens, and Dad’s here, and Jack announces the spice of the day, which is really an herb, and I can’t help it: Perdita’s chain makes its way into my fist. A perfect fit. The hall at theVitales’ is hurried with ivy. The closets are full of forgotten things. The twins’ door unlocks and then it locks again. I pull the chain from the sleeve of my sweater.
What the hell, I think. What the friggin’ hell?
If you cared about me, you would stop me.
29
The upstairs piano plays, but I don’t know the song. The smell of lit cigarettes floats. Invisible fog. The song stops, and there is a parade of sharp-heeled shoes, and I wait, certain now that they are coming for me, but there is only silence up above, and Mom and Dad in the room next door, talking.
We can’t wait
.
We have to go
.
Katherine’s ready for us
.
In the back the bookbinder works behind a wall of taped-up glass. Here, I work too, faster and faster—the freckled flower, the stolen chain, the tips of feathers, scissors and glue. The stalk bends and the bloom glows and everything is complicated, and I need the light of the moon.
Hey, someone says.
Is it you?
30
I wake to the sound of bricks being dropped to the ground, to glass things crashing. I wake in the bottom bunk, beneath the ship of steals. I listen for the sound of rain. No weather. I listen for the shoes above me, or a song. Nothing.
I lift the skirt of the twins’ bunk bed and the nests are there—the old ones, the new one—tucked into the museum of my obsession, the beautiful and strange. I stand at the window and see the empty patio, the string of Christmas lights, and two men, like policemen, dusting the edge of broken things, and now I see the bookbinder himself, his bald head bright in the morning light, his glasses hanging from a chain around his neck. The police take notes on thin pads. They slip dust and shards into a plastic bag. They talk—a grumble of Italian—and I step back, very slow. I hear the sound of something coming. I open the door, lock it behind me, and the front room of the flat is like a storm blew through. A couch pillow hatting the head of the TV. The TV yanked awayfrom the wall. The tubs and the buckets of ivy in the wrong places, pots and pans in a crooked stack near the sink.
Jack?
Can’t find it, my brother says. Can’t find it and told her I would.
A cord trails from the headphones at his neck. His hair is a mad porcupine. The dot on his chin is more like a beard. He shoves everything he touches—throws couch pillows onto the chair, chair pillows onto the floor, pots and pans into the sink. He’s as close to tears as I have seen him since last year, when Dad came home and announced his sabbatical and Jack started listing everything he loved about Philadelphia, everything he would miss—Restaurant School’s two-day-old muffins, that cat that came around, Wawa frozen cappuccinos, bluegrass at Fiume, the lights at Boat House Row, the chimney tower on Walnut Street, the man on Forty-Second who
It’s one o’clock, Mom says. She lifts her phone and calls Dad. Jack announces that mint is a cure for the common cold, mint is a cure for bad breath, mint is a cure for almost anything. Glares at me briefly.
Perdita watches him talk, watches me. She lifts one eyebrow and that’s when I see the tiny little loop at the end of one brow, like a period at the end of a sentence, and now when she leans toward the pan again, to stir the mint, to watch the garlic glow and the saffron stir in, her chain clinks against the edge of the pot. She quickly shucks it off. Strings it across the back of a chair like a purse. Stands beside my brother. Gives his cheek a kiss.
Itookawalk, I say.
Don’t do this, Mom says.
I’ll go—find Dad.
Not a chance. You’ll stay right here. Your father’s coming home.
Pesce spada come la fa la rita
, Jack says. Mom stands and walks across the room. Says something to Perdita, something to Jack, and now the door opens, and Dad’s here, and Jack announces the spice of the day, which is really an herb, and I can’t help it: Perdita’s chain makes its way into my fist. A perfect fit. The hall at theVitales’ is hurried with ivy. The closets are full of forgotten things. The twins’ door unlocks and then it locks again. I pull the chain from the sleeve of my sweater.
What the hell, I think. What the friggin’ hell?
If you cared about me, you would stop me.
29
The upstairs piano plays, but I don’t know the song. The smell of lit cigarettes floats. Invisible fog. The song stops, and there is a parade of sharp-heeled shoes, and I wait, certain now that they are coming for me, but there is only silence up above, and Mom and Dad in the room next door, talking.
We can’t wait
.
We have to go
.
Katherine’s ready for us
.
In the back the bookbinder works behind a wall of taped-up glass. Here, I work too, faster and faster—the freckled flower, the stolen chain, the tips of feathers, scissors and glue. The stalk bends and the bloom glows and everything is complicated, and I need the light of the moon.
Hey, someone says.
Is it you?
30
I wake to the sound of bricks being dropped to the ground, to glass things crashing. I wake in the bottom bunk, beneath the ship of steals. I listen for the sound of rain. No weather. I listen for the shoes above me, or a song. Nothing.
I lift the skirt of the twins’ bunk bed and the nests are there—the old ones, the new one—tucked into the museum of my obsession, the beautiful and strange. I stand at the window and see the empty patio, the string of Christmas lights, and two men, like policemen, dusting the edge of broken things, and now I see the bookbinder himself, his bald head bright in the morning light, his glasses hanging from a chain around his neck. The police take notes on thin pads. They slip dust and shards into a plastic bag. They talk—a grumble of Italian—and I step back, very slow. I hear the sound of something coming. I open the door, lock it behind me, and the front room of the flat is like a storm blew through. A couch pillow hatting the head of the TV. The TV yanked awayfrom the wall. The tubs and the buckets of ivy in the wrong places, pots and pans in a crooked stack near the sink.
Jack?
Can’t find it, my brother says. Can’t find it and told her I would.
A cord trails from the headphones at his neck. His hair is a mad porcupine. The dot on his chin is more like a beard. He shoves everything he touches—throws couch pillows onto the chair, chair pillows onto the floor, pots and pans into the sink. He’s as close to tears as I have seen him since last year, when Dad came home and announced his sabbatical and Jack started listing everything he loved about Philadelphia, everything he would miss—Restaurant School’s two-day-old muffins, that cat that came around, Wawa frozen cappuccinos, bluegrass at Fiume, the lights at Boat House Row, the chimney tower on Walnut Street, the man on Forty-Second who
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