The Paper Palace Read online

  But Mexico hasn’t happened yet. For now my father is falsely jolly and still in love with my mother.

  “Eleanor!” He sweeps me up in his arms. “How’s my rabbit?”

  I laugh and cling to him with something approaching desperation, my loose blond curls blinding him as I press my face to his.

  “Daddy!” Anna comes running now like a bull, angry that I got there first, shoves me out of his arms. She is two years older than me and has more right. He doesn’t seem to notice. All he cares about is his own need to be loved. I nudge my way back in.

  My mother calls out from somewhere in our sallow prewar apartment, “Henry? Do you want a drink? I’m making pork chops.”

  “Love one,” he booms back, as if nothing between them has changed. But his eyes are sad.

  8:15 A.M.

  “So, I thought that was a success last night,” my mother says from behind a battered novel by Dumas.

  “Definitely.”

  “Jonas was looking well.”

  My hands tense around the pile of plates I’m holding.

  “Jonas is always looking well, Mum.” Thick black hair you can grasp in your fists, pale green eyes, skin burnished by sap and pine, a wild creature, the most beautiful man on earth.

  My mother yawns. It’s her “tell”—she always does this before she says something unpleasant. “He’s fine, I just can’t stand his mother. So self-righteous.”

  “She is.”

  “As if she’s the only woman on earth who has ever recycled. And Gina. Even after all these years, I still can’t imagine what he was thinking when he married her.”

  “She’s young, she’s gorgeous? They’re both artists?”

  “She was young,” my mother says. “And the way she flaunts her cleavage. Always prancing around as if she thinks she’s the cat’s pajamas. Clearly no one ever told her to hide her light under a bushel.”

  “It’s bizarre,” I say, going into the kitchen to dump the plates. “Self-esteem. She must have had supportive parents.”

  “Well, I find it very unattractive,” Mum says. “Is there orange juice?”

  I take a clean glass from the dish drain, go to the fridge. “As a matter of fact,” I call out, “that’s probably the reason Jonas fell in love with her. She must have seemed so exotic to him after the neurotic women he grew up with. Like a peacock in the woods.”

  “She’s from Delaware,” my mother says, as if this closes the subject. “No one is from Delaware.”

  “Exactly,” I say, handing her a glass of juice. “She’s exotic.” But the truth is, I’ve never been able to look at Gina without thinking: That’s who he chose? That’s what he wanted? I picture Gina: her petite, perfect little bee-sting of a body; curated dark roots growing into peroxide blond. Evidently, stonewashed is back.

  My mother yawns again. “Well, you have to admit she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

  “Was there anyone at dinner you did like?”

  “I’m just being honest.”

  “Well, don’t be. Gina is family.”

  “Only because you have no choice. She’s married to your best friend. You’ve been oil and water from the day you met.”

  “That’s completely untrue. I’ve always liked Gina. We might not have a ton in common, but I respect her. And Jonas loves her.”

  “Have it your way,” my mother says with a smug little smile.

  “Oh my god.” I may have to kill her.

  “Didn’t you once throw a glass of red wine in her face?”

  “No, Mum. I did not throw a glass of wine in her face. I tripped at a party and spilled my wine on her.”

  “You and Jonas were talking the whole night. What were you talking about?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff.”

  “He had such a crush on you when you were growing up. I think you broke his heart when you married Peter.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He was practically a kid.”

  “Oh, I think it was more than that. Poor creature.” She says this idly as she returns to her book. It’s good she isn’t looking at me because, in this moment, I know my face is transparent.

  Out on the pond the water is absolutely still. A fish jumps and, in its wake, leaves a trail of concentric circles. I watch them bleed out around the edges until they are reabsorbed, as if nothing ever happened.

  2

  8:45 A.M.

  When the table is empty, dishes piled by the sink, I wait for my mother to take her cue to get up and go for her morning swim—leave me alone for ten minutes. I need to sort things out. I need clarity. Peter will be awake soon. The kids will be awake. I am greedy for time. But she holds out her coffee cup.

  “Be a saint, will you? Just half a cup.”

  Her nightgown has ridden up, and from here, I can see everything. My mother believes that wearing underpants to bed is bad for your health. “You need to let yourself air out at night,” she told us when we were little. Anna and I, of course, ignored her. The whole idea seemed embarrassing, dirty. The very thought that she had a vagina repulsed us, and, even worse, that it was out there in the open at night.

  “He should leave her,” my mother says.

  “Who?”

  “Gina. She’s a bore. I almost fell asleep at the table listening to her blather on. She ‘makes’ art. Really? Why would we care?” She yawns before saying, “They don’t have any kids yet—it’s not like it’s even a real marriage. He might as well get out when he can.”

  “That’s ridiculous. They’re completely married,” I snap. But even as I’m speaking, I’m thinking: Is she reading my mind?

  “I don’t know why you’re getting so defensive, Elle. He’s not your husband.”

  “It’s just an idiotic thing to say.” I open the icebox door and slam it, slosh milk into my coffee. ‘No kids make it not a marriage?’ Who are you?”

  “I’m entitled to my opinion,” she says in a calm voice designed to wind me up.

  “Lots of married couples never have children.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “Jesus. Your sister-in-law had a radical mastectomy. Does that make her not a woman?”

  My mother gives me a blank stare. “Have you gone mad?” She heaves herself off the sofa. “I’m going to take my swim. You should go back to bed and start your day over.”

  I feel like smacking her, but instead I say, “They wanted kids.”

  “God knows why.” She lets the screen door slam behind her.

  1970. October, New York.

  My mother has sent us next door to her lover’s apartment to play with his children while his wife babysits us. They are trying to decide whether or not he should leave his wife. I am older now—not old enough to understand any of this, but old enough to think it odd when I look across the interior courtyard from his apartment into ours and see Mr. Dancy holding my mother in his arms.

  In the railroad kitchen, the Dancys’ two-year-old son is in his high chair, playing with Tupperware. Mrs. Dancy stares at a pregnant water bug that has rolled onto its back on the doorjamb between the galley kitchen and the dining room. Tiny little roaches are pouring out of it, quickly disappearing into the cracks of the parquet floor. Anna emerges from a back bedroom with Blythe, the Dancys’ daughter. Anna is crying. Blythe has cut off all of her bangs with a pair of craft scissors. The top of Anna’s forehead is now fringed by a high, uneven crescent of dark brown hair. Blythe’s smug, triumphant smile makes me think of mayonnaise sandwiches. Her mother doesn’t seem to notice anything. She stares at the exploding bug, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  8:50 A.M.

  I sit down on the sofa, settle into the warm spot my mother has left in her wake. Already I can see a few figures gathering on the little beach at the far side of the pond. Usually they are renters—tourists who have somehow found their w
ay deep into the woods, and love that they have discovered a secret idyll. Trespassers, I think, annoyed.

  When we were young, everyone in the Back Woods knew each other. The cocktail party moved from house to house: barefoot women in muumuus, handsome men in white duck trousers rolled up at the ankle, gin and tonics, cheap crackers, Kraft cheddar, mosquitoes swarming, and Cutter—finally, a bug spray that worked. The sandy dirt roads that ran through the woods were stippled with sun filtered through scrub pine and hemlock. As we walked to the beach, fine red-clay dust kicked up, filled with the smell of summer: dry, baked, everlasting, sweet. In the middle of the road, tall beach grasses and poison ivy grew. But we knew what to avoid. When cars passed, they slowed, offered us a ride on the running board or the front hood. It never occurred to anyone that we might fall off, fall under the car. No one worried their children might be sucked into the ocean’s rough undertow. We ran around unleashed, swimming in the freshwater kettle ponds that dotted the Back Woods. We called them ponds, but they were actually lakes—some deep and wide, others shallow and clear-bottomed—ancient relics formed at the end of the Ice Age when the glaciers retreated, leaving behind them massive blocks of melting ice heavy enough to dent the earth’s crust—hollow deep bowls into the landscape, kettles filled with the purest water. There were nine ponds in our woods. We swam in all of them, crossing other people’s property lines to reach small sandy coves, clamber out over the water on the trunks of fallen trees. Cannonball in. No one minded us. Everyone believed in the ancient rights of way: small shaded paths that led to the back doors of old Cape houses, built when the first dirt roads were carved, still standing in sober clearings preserved by snow and sea air and hot summers. And watercress pulled from a stream—someone else’s stream, someone else’s watercress.

  On the bay side, the Cape was pastoral, more civilized. Cranberry bushes, beach plums, and laurels rolled out on the low-lying hills. But here, on the ocean side, it was wild. Violent with crashing surf, and dunes so tall you could run down from a great height, see the ground racing to meet you before you threw yourself into the warm sand. Back then, none of my mother’s friends carped, as they do now, accusing children of eroding the dunes just by playing on them—as if their small footprints could possibly compete with the rough winter storms that eat away the land in greedy bites.

  Sitting around a beach bonfire at night, grown-ups and children ate sand-crunchy hamburgers covered in ketchup and relish, set up on driftwood tables. Our parents drank gin from jelly jars and disappeared into the darkness beyond the fire’s glow to kiss their lovers in the tall beach grass.

  Over time, doors began to close. private property signs came out. The children of the original settlers—the artists and architects and intellectuals who had colonized this place—began to fight each other for time on the Cape. Feuds began over noise on the ponds, over who had more right than whom to love this place. Dogs awoke in the manger. These days even the beaches have been taken over with keep out signs: huge areas cordoned off to protect nesting shorebirds. Piping plovers are the only creatures left with a right of way. But it is still my woods, my pond. The place I have come to for fifty years—every summer of my life. The place where Jonas and I first met.

  From the porch sofa, I watch my mother swimming the mile-long stretch across the pond. Her even strokes, arms slicing the water, an almost mechanical perfection. My mother never looks up when she swims. It’s as if she has a sixth sense for where she is going, a migrating whale following an ancient tread. I wonder now, as I often have, whether her sonar picks up more than whale songs. He should leave her. Is that what I want? Gina and Jonas are our oldest friends. We have spent almost every summer of our adult lives together: shucked oysters and drank them live from their shells; watched the full moon rising over the sea, while listening to Gina complain that the moon was making her period cramps worse; prayed the local fishermen would start culling the harbor seals; overcooked Thanksgiving turkeys; argued about Woody Allen. Gina is my daughter Maddy’s godmother, for fuck’s sake. What if Jonas did leave Gina? Could I betray her that way? And yet I already have. I fucked her husband last night. And the thought makes me want to do it again. The mercury-shimmer of it shudders through me.

  “Hey, wife.” Peter kisses the back of my neck.

  “Hey, yourself.” I start, struggle for normal.

  “You looked deep in thought,” he says.

  “There’s coffee.”

  “Excellent.” He roots around in his shirt pocket and pulls out his cigarettes. Lights one. Sits down on the sofa beside me. I love the way his long legs look poking out from his faded surf shorts. Boyish. “I can’t believe you let me fall asleep on the sofa last night.”

  “You were exhausted.”

  “It must have been the jet lag.”

  “I totally get it,” I say, rolling my eyes at him. That one-hour time difference between here and Memphis nearly killed me.”

  “It’s true. I could barely wake up this morning. The clock said nine a.m., but I swear it felt like eight.”

  “Funny.”

  “I drank too much.”

  “Understatement.”

  “Did I do anything stupid?”

  “Other than refuse to read the Shelley poem for Anna and pick a fight about Quakers?”

  “Well, everyone agrees they’re basically fascists,” he says. “Such a violent people.”

  “You’re an ass.” I kiss him on his lovely scruffy cheek. “You need to shave.”

  He shoves his glasses up his nose, runs his hand through his curly dark blond hair, now graying at the temples, trying to make some order out of it. My husband is a handsome man. Not beautiful, but handsome in an old-fashioned movie star way. Tall. Elegant. British. A respected journalist. The kind of man who looks sexy in a suit. An Atticus. Patient, but formidable when angered. He can keep a secret. He rarely misses a beat. He’s looking at me now as if he can smell the sex on me.

  “Where are the kids?” Peter grabs one of the large white sea-clam shells that line the screen-window ledge, turns it bowl side up, crushes out his cigarette.

  “I let them sleep in. My mother hates it when you do that.” I take the shell from him, carry it into the kitchen, dump the butt into the trash, rinse it. My mother has almost reached the far shore.

  “Jesus, that woman can swim,” Peter says.

  The only person I’ve ever known who could beat my mother in a race was Anna. Anna didn’t swim across the pond—she flew. Left everyone behind her. I follow an osprey as it wings its way through the sky, chased by a small black bird. Wind ruffles the lily pads on the pond’s surface. They sigh, exhale.

  9:15 A.M.

  Peter is in the kitchen scrambling eggs. From the porch, I smell onions frying. A pile of thick applewood-smoked bacon drains its grease into a fold of paper towels on the counter. There’s nothing better than bacon and eggs for a hangover. Actually, there’s nothing better than bacon. Food of the gods. Like arugula and unfiltered olive oil and Patak’s Brinjal pickle. My desert-island-disc foods. That, and pasta. I’ve often fantasized about surviving alone on a desert island. How I would live on fish; build a tree house high off the ground, so that no wild animals could get to me; become really fit. In my fantasy, there’s always a Complete Works of Shakespeare that has somehow washed up on the beach, and with nothing else to do to pass the days, I read (and care about) every single line. I am forced by circumstance to at last become my best self—that supposed potential self. My other fantasies were prison or the army: someplace where I had no choice, where every second of my day was proscribed, where I was too afraid to fail. Self-education and a hundred push-ups and nibbled portions of dry biscuits with fresh water—these were my childhood dreams. Jonas didn’t come into the picture until later.

  I wander into the kitchen and reach for a piece of bacon. Peter slaps my hand away.

  “No picking.” He stirs s
hredded cheese into the eggs, grinds fresh pepper.

  “Why are you using the deep saucepan?” I hate the way British people cook eggs. It’s obvious: a nonstick frying pan and lots of butter. This stupid, soupy, slow-cooking method leaves me a pan that is completely impossible to wash. I’ll have to soak it for two days. “Grr.” I poke him with a spatula.

  Peter’s shirt is covered in splatters of grease. “Fuck off, gorgeous. I’m making the eggs.” He walks over to the breadbox, grabs a loaf of sliced bread. “Toast this, please.”

  I feel my face redden, the sudden flush of heat as I picture my underpants crumpled behind the breadbox, a heap of black lace, the nakedness under my skirt, the way his finger traced a line up my thigh.

  “Hello? Earth to Elle.”

  My mother’s toaster holds two slices at a time. It burns the bread on one side, leaves it raw on the other. I turn the oven on to Broil and start lining up bread on a cookie sheet. I pick up a stick of butter, not quite sure whether to butter first or later.

  “What’s our timing?”

  “Eight minutes,” Peter says. “Twelve most. Go get the kids up.”

  “We should wait for Mum.”

  “The eggs will get tough.”

  I look out at the pond. “She’s halfway back.”

  “You swim, you lose.”

  “K. You deal with the fallout.” When my mother feels slighted, she makes very sure everyone else in the vicinity feels equally afflicted. But Peter doesn’t give a shit about her shit. He just laughs at her, tells her to stop being such a loon, and for whatever reason, she takes it.