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Authors: Emily M. Danforth
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like she was maybe going to take my hand, or just touch it, but I moved it fast to my lap.
She smiled a tight smile at me and said, “I’m going to level with you here, Cameron, because you seem adult enough to handle it. Grief is not my strong suit, but I did want to see you and tell you that if you need anything from me, you can always ask and I’ll do my best.” She seemed like she was done, but then she added, “I loved your mom since I met her.”
Margot wasn’t crying and I couldn’t read on her face the potential for it, but I knew that if I looked at her long enough, I could definitely get all weepy, and maybe even eventually tell her about me and Irene and what we had done, what I had wanted to do and still did want to do. And I knew, somehow, that she would make me feel better about it. I could just tell that Margot would assure me that what I had done hadn’t caused the accident, and that while I wouldn’t believe anybody else telling me that exact same thing, I might actually believe her. But I didn’t want to believe her right then, so I didn’t keep looking at her face but instead drained the rest of my Shirley Temple, which took several swallows; but I finished every last sweet pink-red carbonated drop until the ice clacked against my teeth.
Then I said, “Thanks, Margot. I’m really glad you came.”
“Me too,” she said, and then she put her napkin back on the table and said, “I’m ready for that salad bar. How about you?”
I nodded, and then she asked me if I knew the German word for bathroom and I said no and she said das Bad , and it seemed funny so we both smiled, and then she stood and told me that she was just going to pop into das Bad for a minute before we ate. And while she did that, I took her photos back out of the envelope and found that wedding shot of her drinking straight from the champagne bottle and I slipped it up under my shirt and just inside the waistband of my pants, its surface cool and tacky against my stomach.
After Ruth came back, a moving van followed close behind; we had to make room for some of her stuff. This meant tackling the garage, closets, the storage shed in the backyard. During one of these clearing sessions we unearthed a dollhouse my father had made for my fifth birthday. As dollhouses go, it was amazing. It was a built-to-scale reproduction of some big old Victorian in San Francisco—according to my dad, it was a famous one on a famous street.
The version he built for me was three feet high and a couple of feet wide. It took both Ruth and me, working together, to get it out of the narrow opening of the cluttered storage shed.
“Should we put this in the car, take it to St. Vincent’s?” Ruth asked after we’d made it through the cobwebbed doorway and were standing together on the lawn, both of us sweating. “It would make some little girl awfully happy.”
We’d taken carload after carload to that thrift store. “It’s mine,” I told her, though I wasn’t planning on keeping it until right that minute. “My dad made it for me, and I’m not giving it to some stranger.” I hoisted it up by its peaked roof and took it into the house, up the stairs to my room, and shut the door.
Dad had painted it a blue he called cerulean, and I thought that name was so pretty that I named the first doll to live in the house Sarah Cerulean. The windows had white trim, and real glass panes, and flower boxes with tiny fake flowers in them. There was a fence made to look like ornate wrought iron around the little platform yard, which was done up with synthetic turf scraps left over from the indoor soccer field in Billings. I don’t know how Dad even wound up with those. He’d cut up scraps from real shingles to do the roof. The outside was entirely finished, every detail, but the inside was another story.
The whole dollhouse was hinged, so you could close it and see it from all four sides, or open it and have access to each of the individual rooms,
She smiled a tight smile at me and said, “I’m going to level with you here, Cameron, because you seem adult enough to handle it. Grief is not my strong suit, but I did want to see you and tell you that if you need anything from me, you can always ask and I’ll do my best.” She seemed like she was done, but then she added, “I loved your mom since I met her.”
Margot wasn’t crying and I couldn’t read on her face the potential for it, but I knew that if I looked at her long enough, I could definitely get all weepy, and maybe even eventually tell her about me and Irene and what we had done, what I had wanted to do and still did want to do. And I knew, somehow, that she would make me feel better about it. I could just tell that Margot would assure me that what I had done hadn’t caused the accident, and that while I wouldn’t believe anybody else telling me that exact same thing, I might actually believe her. But I didn’t want to believe her right then, so I didn’t keep looking at her face but instead drained the rest of my Shirley Temple, which took several swallows; but I finished every last sweet pink-red carbonated drop until the ice clacked against my teeth.
Then I said, “Thanks, Margot. I’m really glad you came.”
“Me too,” she said, and then she put her napkin back on the table and said, “I’m ready for that salad bar. How about you?”
I nodded, and then she asked me if I knew the German word for bathroom and I said no and she said das Bad , and it seemed funny so we both smiled, and then she stood and told me that she was just going to pop into das Bad for a minute before we ate. And while she did that, I took her photos back out of the envelope and found that wedding shot of her drinking straight from the champagne bottle and I slipped it up under my shirt and just inside the waistband of my pants, its surface cool and tacky against my stomach.
After Ruth came back, a moving van followed close behind; we had to make room for some of her stuff. This meant tackling the garage, closets, the storage shed in the backyard. During one of these clearing sessions we unearthed a dollhouse my father had made for my fifth birthday. As dollhouses go, it was amazing. It was a built-to-scale reproduction of some big old Victorian in San Francisco—according to my dad, it was a famous one on a famous street.
The version he built for me was three feet high and a couple of feet wide. It took both Ruth and me, working together, to get it out of the narrow opening of the cluttered storage shed.
“Should we put this in the car, take it to St. Vincent’s?” Ruth asked after we’d made it through the cobwebbed doorway and were standing together on the lawn, both of us sweating. “It would make some little girl awfully happy.”
We’d taken carload after carload to that thrift store. “It’s mine,” I told her, though I wasn’t planning on keeping it until right that minute. “My dad made it for me, and I’m not giving it to some stranger.” I hoisted it up by its peaked roof and took it into the house, up the stairs to my room, and shut the door.
Dad had painted it a blue he called cerulean, and I thought that name was so pretty that I named the first doll to live in the house Sarah Cerulean. The windows had white trim, and real glass panes, and flower boxes with tiny fake flowers in them. There was a fence made to look like ornate wrought iron around the little platform yard, which was done up with synthetic turf scraps left over from the indoor soccer field in Billings. I don’t know how Dad even wound up with those. He’d cut up scraps from real shingles to do the roof. The outside was entirely finished, every detail, but the inside was another story.
The whole dollhouse was hinged, so you could close it and see it from all four sides, or open it and have access to each of the individual rooms,
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