A Watch of Nightingales

A WATCH OF NIGHTINGALES

other books by Liza Wieland Near Alcatraz Bombshell You Can Sleep While I Drive Discovering America The Names of the Lost

A WATCH OF NIGHTINGALES

Liza Wieland

The University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2009 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2012 2011 2010 2009

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wieland, Liza. A watch of nightingales / Liza Wieland. p. cm. — (Michigan literary fiction awards) ISBN-13: 978-0-472-11672-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-472-11672-X (cloth : alk. paper) I. Title. PS3573.I344W38 2009 813'.54—dc22 2008022947 Parts of the novel appeared previously in Indiana Review 30.1. Summer 2008. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to the following for permission to reprint song lyrics: ON THE STEPS OF THE PALACE (from “Into the Woods”) Words and Music by STEPHEN SONDHEIM © 1988 RILTING MUSIC, INC. All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved Used by permission from ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC. THE MILLER’S SON (from “A Little Night Music”) Words and Music by STEPHEN SONDHEIM © 1973 (Renewed) RILTING MUSIC, INC. All Rights Administered by WB MUSIC CORP. All Rights Reserved Used by permission from ALFRED PUBLISHING CO., INC. LOSING MY MIND Written by Stephen Sondheim Used by Permission of Range Road Music, Inc., Jerry Leiber Music, Mike Stoller Music, Rilting Music, Inc. and Burthen Music Company, Inc. ISBN13 978-0-472-02525-1 (electronic)

this book is for Monica, Cassie & Georgia

Acknowledgments

I’m indebted to the following people for their kindness, guidance and inspiration: Faye Bender, Katharine Cluverius, Sam Douglas, Connie Hales, John Hales, Liddy Hubbell, Alexis Khoury, Kathie Lang, Pria Mangtani, Carolyn McCormick, Tanya Nichols, Jane Saunders, Helene Joseph-Weil, Linda Wilson, my colleagues and students in the English Department at California State University, Fresno, and my colleagues at the Epiphany School. It has been my tremendous good fortune to know Hank Moses and Vance Wilson, two exemplary educators. Many thanks also to Chris Hebert, Christy Byks-Jazayeri, Marcia LaBrenz, and Carol Sickman-Garner for their work on the manuscript. I’m very grateful for encouragement and support from my parents, my brothers, my sisters, and their families. And to Dan, deepest gratitude for love, wisdom and patience.

÷ ONE

Mara heard the voice from a long way off, a girl calling the doves. She stood alone in the stone courtyard, listening. She knew without seeing that the girl’s hands were cupped close to her face, as if she were whispering a secret into another girl’s ear. Mara waited, but no bird answered, and so she pulled the heavy door closed, scattering the cote of doves roosting above her. The rush of their wings was like ›uttering pages, a sound Mara believed she had heard all her life: not so much books, but scores, hymnals, librettos, singers ‹nding their places, waiting for the music to begin again. She let her key rest in the lock, and wondered whether she had been the last to leave, if any of the students were still inside. She listened again, this time for the voices of boys, but all she heard was the tick, tick of wet snow. She turned the key and dropped the ring into her bag. Walking in this snow was treacherous, but exhilarating too. The stone and the ice glistened, indistinguishable, in the half-light of early evening. She told herself it was like learning to walk—though no one remembered that feeling, not really—or maybe like having one’s feet bound, and here she slipped and slid downhill, but managed to regain her balance. She was glad the weather had driven everyone indoors, that no boys loitered outside the refectory and the library, beneath the chapel portico. She could see them now, as she passed by, seated at the long tables or wandering between, in search of more milk or dessert or conversation. They looked warm and content. They suspected classes would be cancelled tomorrow, and Mara observed both ease and excitement in their bodies, in the way they lounged over their half-empty plates. She thought they would not notice her, but then one of them, a tenth grader standing beside the window, smiled and waved. The boys near him turned, and one pressed his palms together, furrowed his brow

in mock supplication, mouthed the words, snow day, Mrs. Raynor. Mara slowed further and raised one ungloved hand. She felt their eyes on her as she continued past the refectory and came into the shadow of the cathedral, and she was grateful both for the darkness and for the shoveled, salted steps down to the street. Her bag seemed heavier suddenly, and she wondered why she’d brought home all these ‹les. She knew she wouldn’t read them tonight. She’d bake the defrosted chicken, and then maybe they’d watch a movie if Rachel had ‹nished her schoolwork. A car passed slowly, slid toward her, halted with a shimmy, then continued its descent. Mara couldn’t imagine trying to drive tonight—she tried to remember if she had ever navigated snow in Washington. She heard the squeal of brakes further up the hill, on Wisconsin Avenue, and waited for the muf›ed crunch, the chime of breaking glass. Never. Not once. John always drove because he knew this kind of weather made her nervous. She crossed the street and stopped at the bottom of the driveway, letting her bag fall onto the wet cement. She’d left the light on in the front room, over the piano. She could see the illuminated keys, and a disc of light on the bench below, as if someone were about to enter the room, sit down and begin to play. Another softer glow came from the back of the house, from the kitchen. Mara lifted her bag and started up the driveway, past the snowbound car, around the side of the house and through the back gate. A white slash of snow hung precariously along the arm of the sundial, and it stopped her for a moment, like a hand held up in warning. She heard the telephone ring and then the machine, its brief greeting, followed by a click and the single bleat of the line going dead. In the mudroom, Mara dropped her bag onto the low seat and shrugged off her coat. She reached for a hanger and wondered again how anyone could prefer hangers to hooks, and which one of the previous occupants had decided this question, and why. She sat to unlace her boots, pulled them off, then settled back against the wall, looked down at her watch. A quarter to six. The house was silent, except for a faint creak as the snow on the roof bore down. Rachel was probably on the train from Baltimore, though she might decide to stay another night if the snow kept up like this. Mara leaned toward the stairs and called Rachel’s name. No answer. She felt a little ping of relief, like a splinter eased out. She looked down at her hands, spread her ‹ngers over the 2

black wool of her trousers. The nails were looking less ravaged; soon she’d start painting them again. Her ‹ngers were still white from the cold, the index ‹nger on her left hand an odd, creamy color, the right thumb too, like wax. She knew now the only way to bring the ‹ngers back was to run hot water over her hands. It was fascinating to see, really, the blood blooming into the tips of her deadened ‹ngers, turning them the color of plums, of eggplant. Mara stood then and passed through into the kitchen, glanced at the chicken in the sink, the small glass beside it, a ‹lm of cranberry juice at the bottom. She turned on the hot water and passed her hands under the stream, watching their transformation, the purplish stain seeping downward. There was a name for this condition, something much more glamorous-sounding than poor circulation, but Mara couldn’t remember what it was. John would know, of course. He was so good at that sort of thing, arcana, word-play, crossword puzzles. He could recite the names of all his predecessors, and their wives, in order, back to the school’s ‹rst headmaster, 1876. When her ‹ngers were mottled and tingling, Mara turned off the water, crossed to the high cabinet and took down a china teacup and a bottle of Irish whiskey. She stood at the counter and surveyed the empty order of her kitchen. She thought about music: they always had music in the evenings, but she couldn’t decide what she wanted to hear. There were four or ‹ve CDs in her bag: the new Renée Fleming, A Little Night Music, Into the Woods, a couple of other possibilities for the spring performance. She considered each disc, but as the whiskey did its work, her bag seemed farther and farther away, and ‹nally lost in another country. Music always saves you. It always has. She heard the words in her brother’s voice. How right he was about her. Phil was always right. At least he had been right in December, about Christmas carols. All month, Mara sang them or played them, very low in John’s of‹ce, from morning until night, rehearsed Christmas carols with her choirs at Georgetown. The melodies, as familiar as her own voice, gave her something to concentrate on—a line she knew or suddenly remembered, another verse, all the verses of “Once in Royal David’s City,” the carol that was best for processionals. She liked to begin it in the north porch of the cathedral, with one boy soprano, but after his solo, there 3

was plenty of music left. Hundreds of singers could march through into the nave and arrange themselves on the altar before the ‹nal lines. Christmas modulated into the new year, through the Feast of the Epiphany, and now, somehow, it was the end of January. Mara put down her empty teacup and considered the chicken, wondered whether Rachel would be home in time for dinner. If not, she’d cook something else, open a can of soup. She could see, across the kitchen, that the answering machine light held steady: no messages. She could try calling Rachel, and as if she’d conjured the sound, the telephone rang. “Mrs. Raynor?” Mara heard Arthur Overby’s voice, familiar, but always a little off, as if disguised, as if he were trying to sound like anyone but himself. “Yes?” “How did it go? How is Bandasari?” “He’s ‹ne, Arthur. He’s going to be all right.” “No, I don’t think so.” “What?” “Think about the knife. Bandasari’s knife.” “It’s not a knife—” “It’s a weapon, Mara. On school grounds.” She listened to his accent then, the echoes of Chicago and Boston, the r at the end of her name, the vowels as ›at as Midwestern ‹elds. “Arthur, please. It’s resolved.” “You can’t do that. The board should meet—” “I’ve taken care of it.” “You can’t just take care of it. That’s not how things are done. We’ve let you have certain responsibilities, in light of your relationship with the boys. . . .” “And I’m very grateful for that, Arthur.” “But you’re a music teacher. You’re not an administrator.” “This came up. It had to be dealt with.” “A student has a knife, Mara. You have a child in a school. Would you want her to be in danger?” “She’s not in danger. No one was in danger.” “What if she was?”

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“Arthur, please. I need you to . . .” Mara stopped. What did she need from Arthur Overby? “We’ve both been through the mill.” “You’re too lenient with that boy. I’ve seen you. You’re too interested. You have no idea what will happen if you set this precedent. No idea. It will be terrible for you, I can promise you that.” “Good night, Arthur,” Mara said. She hung up, and the sound of the phone crashing against its cradle echoed through the house. She was shaking. She picked up the handset again and called Rachel’s cell phone. Not turned on, as usual. Then she tried John’s mother in Baltimore. After ‹ve rings, the message began, Fern Raynor’s chirping voice, so cheerful, a voice that has no idea what’s happened to it, Rachel said a few weeks ago. She left a message, two questions: Is Rachel still there? What train did she take? And then slowly, slowly, like light through fog, it came to her that maybe Arthur Overby had been watching. How else could he know where she had been, with whom, and that she was now at home? He must have seen her and Gurtej Bandasari at the school. She was standing next to the light switch in the kitchen, and she reached up to turn off the overhead lamps. There was a small work light still illuminated on the stove, but she knew no one could see her in the room, while she could see clearly out into the back garden. She looked carefully and saw there were no footprints across the back lawn, a swath of grass twelve feet wide running between the gate and a six-foot-high stone wall. Through the window beside her, she could see that the snow in the side yard was also undisturbed. The white of the snow re›ected up into the night sky and came back as a kind of weak glow—like the milky light of early morning, just before objects return to being themselves.

Two hours earlier, she had come to the of‹ce to ‹nd Gurtej Bandasari, gorgeous, dark, framed in the perfect light of the rose window. He was waiting for her, waiting with his hand clutched hard against the outline of the kirpan. The winter light spilled through the stained glass and around him in weak reds and blues and violets—such an illusion of color was one of the saddest jokes played by late January in this city, at this latitude—and still kept him in

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shadow. It looked as if he were being held out of the light somehow, by some force, some terri‹c absence. “Mrs. Raynor,” the boy said, and his voice sounded both broken and astonished. “Here I am.” “Gurtej,” she said. “What are we going to do?” “I can’t give it up. I have to wear it.” “I know.” “It’s not even sharp,” he said. “Look.” He opened a fold in his shirt, reached inside and drew out a roll of cloth, and from it, a steel blade, a hand’s length. He held the knife in his open palm, point outward, and it gleamed dully, as if lit from inside. Mara had been walking as she spoke, and as the boy replied and spoke in turn. Now the kirpan lay between them, aimed just below her chest. “The other parents . . .” No, she thought, be truthful. “Some of the parents have complained.” “Who?” “Well, Alex’s parents, obviously.” “The State Department.” Mara smiled. “Not the whole State Department, I’m sure.” She took the kirpan and closed her ‹ngers around it. It felt light and cool. She clutched the knife more tightly, to warm it up, to transfer its meaning through her skin. Gurtej put his hand over his chest, the empty space where the kirpan should have been. “Dr. Raynor wouldn’t have let this happen,” he said. Mara pressed the knife to her heart, and for an instant, the two, the boy and the woman, stood in exactly the same pose. She watched the red and purple and blue beams from the stained glass fall like liquid around them. In a few minutes it would be dark enough that the automatic lights would ›ash on in the hallway, and they would be stunned at ‹rst and then even more alone with each other. “Here,” she said, and offered the kirpan back. “What do the parents say?” “We should go to the of‹ce,” she said. “Can you come now?” Gurtej nodded and took the kirpan, rolled it into the cotton cloth and slid it back inside his shirt. He waited politely, at attention, his arms

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hung stif›y at his sides. Only his ‹ngers moved, ›ickering in and out of the light, as if he were warming up to play piano. Mara held out her hand. And then she did not know what she expected the boy to do with such a gesture. He was too old to walk handin-hand with the head of school, but too polite to refuse. So he took her hand and shook it. “There,” he said. “We’re making a deal.” “I hope so,” Mara said. “When Rachel was a little girl, four, I think, she used to say, ‘OK that’s the deal, but what’s the compromise?’” “That sounds like Rachel,” Gurtej said. “You know her pretty well, then?” “We’ve been studying together lately.” “Really?” Mara said. “She’s doing better.” “I’m glad.” The headmaster’s study was in the very heart of the school, facing into an open courtyard, a ‹shbowl of a room at the end of a long hall of administrative of‹ces. Now it was Sunday, and the hallway was dark and silent. Mara moved around her assistant’s desk, then paused at the study door to let Gurtej pass through ‹rst. The space was so close she believed she could smell him, the mix of him, a soft scent like lavender, a hint of sweat, another heavier perfume, a woman’s. His backpack brushed her arm, and he apologized. She invited him to sit down. There were two armchairs set to form a right angle, and Gurtej took the chair closest to the door. Mara eased herself into the other. For a moment they looked out the windows, into the courtyard. The other side of the building— classrooms—was dark. Snow fell, as it had all day. Flakes whirled into view and then disappeared, and Mara had the odd sense of being underwater. When she glanced back at Gurtej, she saw he was looking around the of‹ce, at the books, mostly John’s. After half a minute or so, he met her gaze and smiled. “I haven’t been in here since Mother brought me,” he said. Then the smile faded. “I’ve been that good.” “I know you have,” Mara said. “Dr. Raynor spoke highly of you. And you’re not in trouble now, Gurtej. But we have to work this out somehow.”

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“My mother knows you from school in England.” Mara considered. “Yes. She does. We haven’t had an occasion to meet yet though. Not since then.” She let out a sigh. “But I suppose we will now, yes?” “Tell me what happened,” Gurtej said suddenly, and Mara had no idea what he meant. She stared at him. “Tell me what they said about the kirpan.” “He wrote it out,” Mara said, crossing the room to the desk. “We asked him to. He wrote it all down.” She glanced over her shoulder at Gurtej, and saw that his face was drawn into a frown. “No, don’t be angry. I was the one. I asked him to.” “Alex.” “Yes.” She found the other boy’s statement and returned to her chair. She began to read, silently. “It’s very even.” “Even?” “I mean he doesn’t sound upset. More surprised. It sounds like everyone was surprised.” “Can I see it?” “Of course.” Gurtej read the page, or began to, then dropped the paper in his lap and rubbed his eyes. He reached down, into the front pocket of his backpack, and took out a maroon-colored glasses case. “I have old man’s eyes,” he said. “It runs in the family.” Mara remembered his mother’s glasses, how they made her look, at eighteen, like an ancient librarian, like a Cambridge scholar, which, in fact, Kokila Bandasari had wanted to be. Gurtej read, shook his head. “He’s really a good writer, isn’t he?” “He is a good writer. But is it true? Is that what happened? Read the rest.” “Yes,” Gurtej said. “I’m sure he’ll tell the truth.” It was a basketball game, friendly, or so Alex Ingersoll had written. The boys were playing during a study hall. They had permission, or most of them did. It wasn’t even a game, actually, nothing so formal. Alex was trying hard, Mara thought, to be fair, too hard, so that she wondered if there was some other trouble, the obvious in Washington. These were the sons of politicians and diplomats, as Gurtej was, and as Mara had learned over the years, many of them had minds for, disposi8

tions toward, intrigue. They listened to their fathers. And mothers, too, Mara corrected herself. So, in the basketball play—Alex had not written game a second time—Gurtej Bandasari had gone up for a rebound, raised his arms to reach for the ball, and his shirt was lifted up, and there was the knife. Alex didn’t know the name for it. “He asked me,” Gurtej said, “and I told him, but he must have forgotten.” Gurtej had explained to them why he wore the knife, Alex’s story continued, but he had seemed nervous. The group broke up soon afterwards. Some of the boys had to go back to class. Alex Ingersoll was a good writer, Mara thought, his tone so measured, so innocent that the whole piece was damning. She could almost smell the fear rising off the typed page. “What do you think of it?” Mara asked Gurtej when she could tell he had ‹nished reading. “It’s all true,” he said. “They asked, and I answered, and we all went out of the gym.” “Did you have the sense that anybody was worried about it?” “I knew they would be. I thought we’d just talk it out. But what do the parents say?” “They’re concerned. Not even so much about you as—” “They don’t understand.” “It’s true. Some of them don’t. But most of them do, actually. They’re smart people.” “Yes, of course.” Gurtej’s voice changed pitch, climbed a half-tone. “Very smart. For example, a certain distinguished member of Congress, on your Board of Trustees. He calls himself a seeker of justice. But he calls Muslims and Arabs ‘the heathen.’ And he once said there are only two concepts Arabs understand: power and death.” Mara shook her head. “Last week, he dropped off some papers at the house. Rachel left and wouldn’t come back until he was gone.” “That was my idea.” “Really? I didn’t know you had such in›uence,” Mara said. Then she held up her hands. “But back to our discussion. What happens if you don’t wear the kirpan?” “What happens?” Gurtej’s voice rose on the second word, mocking. 9

“Well, I know you won’t melt or disappear. But explain why you wear it, so I can tell the parents.” “You already know this. It’s what I told Alex and the others.” Gurtej closed his eyes, as if to recite. “The kirpan is a symbol of my baptism. My whole name, which you also know—” Here he opened his eyes, and dropped his gaze away from Mara’s face. “There’s a lot I don’t know yet,” she said. “I was thinking that.” He swept one hand around the headmaster’s study. “I was thinking you might not have had time to learn everything.”

M

ara wanted to tell someone about Arthur Overby’s call, the vague threat of it, but she didn’t know whom. Maybe she should have said more in her message to Fern. She thought of her own mother, also a widow, but easily alarmed. She would ask Mara again to come back to Pittsburgh, the suburb called Upper St. Claire, a place, she said, where nothing could happen to her. Sometimes that nothing was profoundly attractive, the near-Midwesternness of that part of Pennsylvania. There was a town to the south, called Scenery Hill, where her father grew up. It was on top of a great rise in the Allegheny Mountains. You could look out in every direction and see what was coming. There was no one she wanted to call. Not so soon. She’d talked to all of them, friends, acquaintances, every single one, three months ago, seen them at John’s funeral Mass, the other memorials she’d attended. So many times in those ‹rst few weeks, Mara would watch with a sort of detachment as a well-wisher said something like “Be glad for what you had with John,” and then this person’s face would twitch as he or she thought, “I can’t believe I just said that.” And though she never did it, Mara wanted to shout, “I can’t believe it either! What a crock! You idiot!” She often wanted to laugh, and once she did, after the third ceremony, which called itself “an appreciation.” Most of the guests had gone, and Phil had hustled her out of the reception hall. Phil was the only one now of course. Maybe she should go to the restaurant—she could call a taxi and just show up. In this weather, the place was probably all but empty. Even if it was busy, she could sit at the bar, have a

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drink. There would be conversation around her, and a bartender who wouldn’t say anything if she didn’t speak ‹rst. Taped next to the telephone was a card for the limousine service John sometimes used. The fare would be charged to the school, but Mara could tell her assistant to keep an eye out for the bill. She called the number, and the dispatcher addressed her by name. “The snow’s slacking off, Mrs. Raynor. We can get a car to you,” the dispatcher said, which lifted her spirits in a way she hadn’t expected. “Your driver will be there in ‹fteen minutes.” Without turning on any other lights in the house, Mara made her way upstairs. She washed her face and brushed her teeth, changed her shirt. It seemed almost easier to see in the snow-lit darkness. And easier, too, not to see the bedroom, the books still on John’s bedside table, the stacks of quarters, pairs of socks, nasal spray, all the rest of it, still on his dresser. Instead, these were shapes, objects, outlines, the idea of John, rather than proof of his absence. When she was ready, she lay down on the bed, on her side, her arm extended as if he might be there to touch. For a few minutes, there was nothing between them. With her eyes closed, Mara felt under, and above too, somewhere under the heavens where John must be. If she spoke, he would hear her. This was a thing she could do, like holding her breath, and he was the breath. The world stopped and went backwards. He was still there.

D

“ o you believe in heaven?” Mara’s own voice had shocked her. She wasn’t sure where the question had come from. Its brute force seemed to surprise Gurtej as well. “I am supposed to believe I will be united with God,” he said slowly. “But do you believe it?” “It’s bliss. That’s the word. Not to be born and reborn again and again. But it does seem attractive sometimes.” “What does?” “To come back,” Gurtej said. “To get another go at it.” “To come back,” Mara repeated. “Without pure devotion to God, I die without merit, and I transmigrate.”

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“Do you think everyone does?” “That’s the Sikh belief.” “It’s very interesting,” Mara said slowly. “The idea of coming back. Do you think the living ever wish for their dead to die without merit?” Gurtej looked at Mara, and she saw a sort of peace come into his face. She knew he understood what she was asking. “Never,” he said. “They always wish them bliss.” “Of course,” Mara said after a pause. “Of course they do.” Gurtej held her gaze. “They must.” “How will you get home, Gurtej?” she asked then. “Or do you board weekdays now?” “I don’t board,” he said. “But I can walk. Unless you’re going that way. It’s not far. Edgevale, near the Parkway.” “I don’t drive. I mean I can, but I don’t like to. Dr. Raynor was the driver.” “That’s all right, then.” “Do you mind if I walk with you?” “I’m meeting someone.” “I can walk pretty fast. I’ll come back for my bag.” They stood together in the hallway as Mara locked the of‹ce door. “I’m going to make a decision,” she said. “You may wear the kirpan, in a sheath. But no basketball. You’re not on the team, are you?” “Me? Are you kidding? Have you seen the guys on the team?” “All right, all right. Just remember this isn’t the end of it.” Mara stared up into the boy’s face. He was breathtaking, his skin so smooth, his hair and eyes nearly the same shade, blue black like a clear sky at midnight. He would grow a beard later, and this would only make him more handsome, more appealing, the intensity and mystery of his young face behind a beard and mustaches. He did not look like his mother.

Mara heard the squeal of brakes in the snow, a car door open and close, a quick step on the front porch stairs, the doorbell. She made her way downstairs slowly, reluctantly, in the dark. But then there was a knock and a voice calling, “Mrs. Raynor, Mrs. Raynor,” in another kind of accent, European, but fallen away. 12

She could see through the window glass a young man in a black wool coat. No hat. He looked familiar, dark curly hair and dark eyes, and there was a strange moment in which she believed Gurtej had come back for her. “I’m here,” she called. “Car service. Are you all right?” “Yes. I’m ‹ne. Thank you.” She still did not open the door. “Maybe this is silly, but could I see some identi‹cation?” “No problem,” the driver said. He unbuttoned his coat, reached into his back pocket, and brought out a wallet and a card case. He held up a business card and then his driver’s license. She unbolted the door and stepped out onto the porch. “Kantsakis,” she read, “Constantine.” She held onto the card. “May I keep this? You never know.” “Of course,” the driver said and offered Mara his arm. “It’s true. You never know.” In the car, she told him the name of the restaurant, Echo, and he did not smile or say it back to her as almost everyone else did. They swept down from Georgetown, but slowly, drifting by the badly parked cars—it was the same scene as an hour before when Mara had walked Gurtej home and walked back—passing parts of the familiar view, ‹rst the Lincoln Memorial, then the Korean War Memorial, John’s favorite, those stainless steel soldiers that look you right in the eye. “It’s as if they’re consoling you,” he had said once. The Washington Monument next, then up to the Smithsonian castle, and ‹nally the grand pale spread of the Capitol ahead, like a low cloud. The restaurant sat tucked behind the farthest Senate of‹ce building, just off Independence Avenue. “Should I wait, Mrs. Raynor?” “I don’t think so. But can I call if I need to?” “You have the card, I think?” Mara said she did. She leaned forward and extended her hand over the back of the seat. Kantsakis took it in both of his gloved hands. They thanked each other, though Mara wasn’t sure what she’d done to make him grateful. As Mara had suspected, the restaurant was mostly deserted, except for the bar, where her brother stood, still dressed in his chef’s whites 13

and toque, leaning against the wall by the kitchen door. He was in the middle of telling a joke; Mara could see how everyone looked in his direction, and his voice came to her across the room, low and warm. She wished she’d been there ten minutes before, an hour before, three hours before. This was how she always felt as soon as she caught sight of Phil, and why it was so often dif‹cult to leave him and go back to her real life. He turned his head when Mara came in the door, but did not recognize her under her scarf and so turned back to ‹nish the joke. But then Mara heard the crack in his voice and knew he’d realized who she was and that it ‹lled him with fear. Even before the people at the bar had understood the punch line and started to laugh, Phil was walking toward her, his eyes opened wide, his lips forming the question. “Mara?” he said. “What’s wrong?” “Phil, Phil.” She always said his name more times than was necessary, something their mother also did. “How did you get here?” “Car service. Can you sit with me for a minute?” “Sure.” He led her to a table. “Here. I’ll take your coat. What’s wrong?” Mara nodded her head toward the others at the bar. “OK. Let me get you something.” She watched her brother hang up the coat and then call out, “Anybody mind if we close up?” Everybody minded, and Mara thought he must have been kidding. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a white porcelain bowl. He carried it close to his face and steam fogged his glasses. “If I told you it was ox-tail, you wouldn’t eat it,” he said as he set it down in front of her, “so I’m not going to tell you.” “It’s not ox-tail. Look. It’s yellow.” “OK. So talk to me.” She told him about Gurtej Bandasari and the kirpan, the walk to his house, and then the conversation with Arthur Overby. It took eight slow sentences, about a minute, during which a waiter brought two glasses of wine. “That’s all. You remember Arthur. We’ve had a long history. Fifteen years.” Mara shook her head. “He was next in line for the head job when John was chosen.” “I remember. And now he sees his chance?”

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“Maybe. I’m not sure what he sees. There’s some rage, though . . . I don’t know if you remember. His wife and child were killed three years ago.” Phil nodded. “You’re a kind of reminder. An echo.” He smiled sadly. “As it were.” “I am. I know that. Arthur’s a sad case, really. And then Rachel hasn’t come home from Fern’s, and she hasn’t called.” “It’s not really that late, “ Phil said. He did not look alarmed. He looked, Mara thought, the way he did at eighteen, when he ‹rst started cooking for their parents, as if something on the stove had burned, and he had to decide whether burned could be salvaged by spice and then served. “Bandasari? He’s the one whose mother . . .” “He’s the one. And they know each other, pretty well, it seems. Gurtej and Rachel. It sounds, well, like a romance.” “Seems like you might be talking to her pretty soon.” Mara nodded. “I don’t know how it’s taken this long, except I think she’s been—what has she been? Respectful.” “Maybe she’s nervous too.” “Maybe.” “When you do meet with her, you should do it here.” With his index ‹nger, Phil made a wide circle. “I promise not to hover. But I’d be close by, just in case.” “What do you think might happen?” “I don’t know. What do you think?” Mara let go of the spoon and watched it sink into the soup bowl, completely out of sight. She picked up the wine goblet and looked at it, trying to resist the urge to gulp down the half-glass that was left. “Phil—” the tears were coming. There was no holding them back. “It’s OK, Mar.” “If I start this, I feel like I’ll never be able to stop.” She glanced over at the bar, saw the heads turning away, thought brie›y that people were nice, even if they were clueless. It was Rachel’s word, clueless. Mara wondered if she had any of her own words left. She tried not to sob, which brought on a ‹t of coughing instead, and she put her hands over her face. “I’m tired, Phil. Of school. And Rachel. Not tired of her, but I guess I’m waiting to lose her too, to college. And—the rest of my life. I

15

keep thinking, I’ll get through this, I’ll get through this. People keep saying I will. But then I realize that the this is the whole deal. It’s day after day.” She raised her head and looked at her brother. “You can’t get through it. Can you?” “You can, Mara. You will. But it’s all right to think you can’t, as long as you keep asking me.” “What do I do now?” “At the school? You’ve done it, I’d say.” Mara nodded. “The parents might not be happy.” “Same as it ever was. As for Rachel, she has a phone, yes?” “We gave her one last summer, but now she won’t turn it on. She says, ‘I don’t want you to know where I am.’ We had something of a scene about it, the same scene we always have, where she storms out of the room, yelling that I’m sel‹sh.” She paused and looked at her brother. She wondered suddenly if he shared Rachel’s opinion. “‘He was my loss too,’ is what she always says.” She heard the skreek of Phil’s chair as he pulled it closer, and then she felt the warm weight of his body next to hers, his heavy arm across her shoulders. They sat like that for a minute, and every so often he squeezed her shoulder. She could tell he was thinking, deciding something, by the way his arm felt lighter and lighter. “OK,” he said. “First, let’s do this. Let’s hire the car service full-time. You hate to drive and you don’t need to be driving around by yourself, especially not in bad weather.” “Oh, Phil,” Mara said, “I can walk to school. It’s just across the street.” “OK, that’s ‹ne. But anywhere else, you ride. Rachel too. Will she hate it or love it?” “Hard to say. Both probably. But I can’t really afford a car service.” “So it will be my birthday present to you. I don’t think I’ve given you a birthday present for years.” “You always gave me dinner.” “Then this is for all the years I should have sent a car to bring you to dinner.” Mara smiled and reached into her pants pocket for Kleenex. She held it up. “I always have shreds of this somewhere. Thank you, Phil. It’s a good idea.” 16

“And Rachel will probably be home when you get there.” “But still. It’s so empty in that house.” “Sshhhh.” Phil smoothed Mara’s hair. “Oh God, Phil. Sometimes I still think he’s going to walk in the front door, look around to make sure Rachel’s not in the room, and say, ‘You’re really not going to believe this one.’ It was so nice to be in his shadow. I guess I thought if I took on part of his job, I’d still have some of that . . . cover.” “So will you be glad when you give it all up—when this search is over and there’s a new head of school?” “I honestly don’t know. I guess it will be good to get back to the choirs.” “What are you rehearsing these days?” “You’re asking all these questions to distract me.” “Is it working?” “It always works.” Mara smiled. “I have this kind of crazy idea. I found an adaptation of Little Women for my female singers.” “Aren’t there men in Little Women?” “Three. But I’ve wondered if these parts could be sung by a chorus of voices, off-stage, from the wings. The effect might be strange but also—I don’t know. Elemental.” “Absent but everywhere.” Mara nodded. “We watched it Thursday night. At the end we were in tears, but Rachel looked at me and said, ‘It feels good to be crying about something else besides Dad, don’t you think?’ I wasn’t sure it felt good. All I could say was ‘It had a happy ending.’ Rachel stared at me, then she said good night and stood up, with those wide swimmer’s shoulders, wide like a wall. I said, ‘I’m failing you in all the regular ways, aren’t I?’ She said, ‘And then some.’” Mara suddenly knew that if she said another word, she would fall into a black hole of despair and never come out. She imagined it, the darkness, the loneliness, an empty house, the telephone ringing and ringing. She looked at her brother and shook her head. He sat still, trying to get her meaning, until she put her ‹nger to her lips. “OK,” he said. “Dessert?” “No thank you.” “I’ll just bring it anyway. For you to admire.” 17

A few minutes before eight-thirty, Mara called the car service, and asked the dispatcher to send the driver she’d had earlier in the evening. Then she gave the card to Phil. “See if you can get him. He’s nice.” “Kantsakis,” Phil read. “You like him?” “He drove John. I remember that he drove all of us to London.” “Wow. What a guy. He must have a fabulous car.” “You know what I mean. To the airport when we went to London.” “Is he my type?” “De‹nitely not.” Almost everyone else had left the restaurant. There were low voices and the occasional clank of a pan from the kitchen, but the main dining room and the bar of Echo were empty. Mara and her brother stood inside the front door, waiting for her car, gazing out at the tableau of Capitol Hill. The sky shone with re›ected light from the snow, light that was its own absence. She had a particular piercing memory of the way a ›ashlight looked, shining from under a blanket. She didn’t know where the image came from, what blanket, which of the innumerable bedrooms of her life, but she felt opened up violently, torn from neck to belly. She shut her eyes and saw the negative image of the snow falling, the dark confetti of it, the humped shapes of cars in the street. It was lovely, that reversal. It was a wonder people opened their eyes at all, ever. “The snow’s never really stopped,” Phil said. “All day.” “I wish I was someplace where I could see a whole ‹eld of it,” Mara said. “The Mall is like a ‹eld. The river too. Actually, the way you’ll go back will be a pretty good vista.” “How are you getting home, Phil? Do you want a ride?” “No, it’s all right. Robert’s coming to get me.” “How’s Robert? I didn’t know he was still around.” “He’s back. Came crawling on his hands and knees.” “There’s a picture.” Phil laughed. “It was. Believe me.” “You two can’t seem to get loose from each other, can you?” “That’s sort of what we decided. Stuck with each other. Though I’m not sure I like you using the word ‘loose.’” “Sorry, sorry.” Mara paused. “Well. I always thought he was just a 18

. . . a prince, so I’m glad. You should bring him over sometime. I’ve missed him. He always laughed at my jokes.” “He laughs at everyone’s jokes.” “Now, now.” “He made partner. He’s much happier. We both are.” “I’m glad. Really. Somebody should be much happier. You should.” Phil turned back to look out the window. He stood a foot away from Mara, but when he spoke, it seemed like miles. “Do you feel,” he said, “like we’re all in a dream? Like we somehow dreamed ourselves to the place we are? And now we’re caught in it.” Mara made a sound like hmmmm, considering. “I’ve felt this way ever since John . . . that for a little while everybody woke up, we were all awake, and we thought about how suddenly a life gets lost, but now we’ve all gone back to our little dreams again.” Mara nodded. The snow was coming more heavily, closing them in. They stepped farther apart, on either side of the restaurant’s front door. “I’m in this dream with Robert, and the restaurant is a dream, and everything sort of piles on everything else during any given day, and you think it makes sense, that one thing leads to another. But it’s really all like a dream, where nothing is connected. Things just keep happening, and you can’t stop it or see where it’s going.” The light of the bar behind them seemed very far away, in another city, another time. Mara turned to look at the large shape of her brother. They were born less than a year apart, but she caught up to him in school early on, so it was as if he’d really been with her all along, from the moment of her own birth, and she with him. The shadow of the door in between them now was an embodiment, dark tissue joining them, or an electromagnetic ‹eld, a passageway. Farther down the street, they heard the slow crunch of the wheels of a car in snow and saw the ‹rst pale gleam of headlights. “Shall I walk you out?” Phil said. “Don’t you have any gloves?” “Can’t ‹nd them. No, don’t walk me out. Just watch me.” “I’m all eyes.” Mara could hear the music playing as she approached the car. The driver’s side window was lowered slightly; still, Kantsakis must have had the volume turned up very high. She got in, and there was the sudden silence, a deep peace. She closed her eyes: the white ‹eld, the Mall, 19

would have to pass unseen, and so it did. The wheels slid over the snowy streets, and Kantsakis turned the radio on low: Mahler, she thought. Then they were stopped below her house. “My brother will call you,” Mara said. “He wants to hire you fulltime.” “Very good.” Mara knew what Kantsakis believed, that Phil wanted a driver for himself, but she could not bear to explain. “If you’ll just wait until I get inside?” As she unlocked the front door, she was still hearing the music in Kantsakis’s car. She called upstairs to Rachel, but again there was no answer. The message light ›ashed, and Mara felt a surge of relief. “Mara,” Overby began. His recorded voice seemed to come from underwater. “I’m struck by something. I wanted to tell you this. I’m struck . . . I’m struck by how easily swayed you are. It’s not like you. You’ve become, well, fearful. It’s as if you’re afraid of the boy with the knife. That’s all.” The machine signed off with a wavery blast, like a foghorn. Mara dropped her keys and pocketbook onto the counter. She switched on the small television in the kitchen, the local news channels. Winter storm warnings. Nothing else. She put the water on to boil and made herself a cup of tea, but forgot to drink it. Upstairs, in John’s study where the second phone line ran, she called Amtrak information, a number she’d had in her head for more than thirty years, 1–800-USARAIL, and waited through the menus and recordings for a human operator, who assured her that there were no delays or other problems between Baltimore and Washington. She sat down at John’s desk and closed her eyes. Too dark. She opened them and ran though the possibilities. Shopping, a walk, a visit to any of a dozen friends in the District, time alone, more time away from Mara, after the words they’d had Thursday night. Rachel was eighteen, as she reminded Mara. In my nineteenth year, she liked to say. It wasn’t so late. Nine o’clock. She should have called. Mara had done this to her own mother once or twice, out with friends, with boys. She shook her head at the memory of it, turned her gaze to the photographs at the back of John’s desk. Rachel and Mara, John and Mara, John and Rachel, Rachel and Phil, seven pictures. Rachel as a baby, maybe four months old, in Phil’s arms, wearing a pink sleeper, with a bemused, wise expres20

sion on her face, a little world-weary even, already. The wedding picture. Mara lifted it and turned it face down. Rachel and John, sunset with a water tower in the distance, the clouds like a painting by Titian or a Raphael, Rachel with that same expression, staring off at something else. What was she looking at? She took the other two photos in her hands. One frame was heavy, ceramic with ›at stone inlays, painted pink and brown, blue and white. The other was smaller, made of wood, with a design like plantation shutters above and below the picture. Two Rachels, thirteen years apart. Back and forth, she studied them, this Rachel, that Rachel, the same expression, the gaze elsewhere, the half-smile, a ›icker of concern in the eyes. Then it came to her, like running up against something hard, but welcoming, like a man’s chest. It’s me, Mara thought, Rachel is looking at me. The telephone was ringing again, but no, too soft, Mara knew. That’s the phone next door. Still holding the two pictures, she stood and made her way back to Rachel’s bedroom, picked her way across the ›oor, through a pile of clothes, over something that felt ›at and large—a yearbook—to the lamp by the bed. Rachel hated overhead lighting, too garish, she said, no way to read by it. She found the switch on the cord and rolled it forward with her thumb. The bedclothes were neat and tight, untouched since Friday. There might be a note on the bedside table. No. On the desk. A note would be hard to ‹nd, in all the papers, notebooks, magazines. Otherwise the room was tidy enough, only the two piles, jeans and a shirt, a stack of school yearbooks, set exactly halfway between the door and the lamp, like a trap. It would be hard to tell what was missing. In the closet were empty hangers, but not an alarming number of them. Shoes? Not many, but Rachel didn’t particularly care for shoes. Or clothes, for that matter. Mara realized she had no idea what should or shouldn’t be in Rachel’s closet. She remembered the days of little dresses when she could look at what was on the hangers and know exactly what was missing and how many days could pass before she had to do laundry again. The vision of little Rachel with her strong legs and— even at age three—wide shoulders made Mara feel suddenly very tired. She lay down on Rachel’s bed and immediately she was inside of it, the old dream of high wind, a ship about to set sail, leaving her on shore. John’s face appeared, wide-eyed, but then drifted out of focus. Rachel swam beside them, just under the surface of the water. Mara was pres21

ent too, as the dreamer, trying to keep John’s face before her, but this was impossible, and so in the dream she was frantic. When she woke and tried to get out of bed, the noise of the impatient sail was still loud in her ears, ringing, ringing. She put her hand out and found the telephone by the bed. “Mara?” It was Fern. “I put Rachel on the train yesterday afternoon, about four. She said she had a lot of studying to do.” “Yesterday?” Mara sat up. “She hasn’t been here.” “She hasn’t?” Fern sounded as if she were about to cry. “I’m really sorry.” “Oh Fern,” Mara said, “it’s not your fault. But what did she say? Was she going somewhere else? Did she seem OK?” “She was the same as she’s been, kind of quiet. I assumed she was coming home. We didn’t talk about much.” Mara felt a chill creeping up her arms and into her shoulders. The heel of her left hand was pressed hard against the bedside table. The hand shook, and Mara watched it, horri‹ed. Surely the wrist would break. Seconds passed. “Mara?” Fern said. “Are you still there?” “I’m here. I think—I’m just thinking. I’d better hang up. Try not to worry, Fern.” “What can I do?” “Just let me know if you hear from her.” “I will. I will.” Downstairs, there was still no Rachel, nothing disturbed, only the tea she’d made, gone cold in the mug, untouched, the tea bag still submerged. Mara stared at the mahogany-colored liquid, a slice of her face re›ected there, like looking out a window at night from inside a lit room. She wondered if this image was what everyone saw of her, this insanely lit edge, a cubist fragment without ears. She went again to the living room window and peered out, up the street. She had the sense suddenly of being completely missing, all of her gone, absent, invisible. No one could see her like this, standing behind the shutters, and she couldn’t at the moment see anyone else. Like the tree falling in the woods: if your husband and daughter are gone, what are you? Not wife, not mother. Shadow. Less than shadow.

22

I

“ like to walk in the snow,” she had said to Gurtej. “Especially at night. It’s so quiet.” They passed slowly down the driveway, by the chapel. Several cars were parked at the curb, and the lights inside were blazing. She could hear the organ, faintly, and a speaking voice, a man’s, then a single peal of laughter. Though it was a Sunday, and late afternoon, this was a wedding rehearsal. Tomorrow there would be a marriage here, an alumnus and his bride. Mara thought she remembered the invitation, the odd timing of the ceremony, and asking someone to send her regrets and a gift from the school. “I hope you don’t mind that Rachel and I are friends, Mrs. Raynor,” Gurtej said. The words stung somehow. There was no sense to it, this feeling that she was losing Rachel too. “I think she needs friends now.” “So you’re not upset?” “Should I be?” Mara turned to look at Gurtej and slipped a little in the snow. He took her arm, then released it. “She’ll tell you if you ask her. She just wants you to listen to her.” “Tell me? Tell me what?” Gurtej stopped walking and clapped his arms against his sides in a gesture of impatience. “I think she wants you to pay more attention. She wants so much. She wants to know how to make sense of . . . everything. From you, but also from me. Or about me, I guess. She wants to understand my beliefs. She asks the same questions you just did. Like I’m a resource or something. I want her to stop it. I want her to talk to me, the person. But I’m afraid if I say that—” “She won’t talk to you at all.” “Yes.” Mara patted him on the back, and they began to walk again. “Be gentle with her, Gurtej. Please.” “Or you’ll take away the kirpan.” “Oh Gurtej—” “I’m joking, Mrs. Raynor. I’m joking.” They walked another block in silence, the lit windows in the

23

row houses above them casting long rectangles of light on the snowy sidewalks. The light looked warm, as if it should melt the snow. Instead, drifts formed at the edges of the gleam, inclined toward the buildings. The numbered streets off Wisconsin were unmarked by tires, though there were several cars pulled in at odd angles to the curb, doubleparked with a kind of hysterical glee. The streets had an air of peaceful carnage, a bloodless coup. There was hardly anyone about. A few years ago, in one of the worst storms of the century, people had been outside, in darkness like this, almost giddy with loss of power and light. Now it seemed entirely possible that only Mara and Gurtej were left in the world. “You’re not going to walk the whole way to my house, are you?” Gurtej said. “I think I might. See how quiet and lovely it is? And perfectly safe. What do you think could possibly happen in weather like this?” “I wouldn’t want to guess.” “It seems like bad luck, doesn’t it? Tempting fate. To name the worst thing you think can happen.” Gurtej was silent for almost a minute. “Rachel is a lot like you,” he said ‹nally. “That makes sense, I suppose.” “No. I mean—well, yes, it does make sense. She’s your daughter. But what I meant actually was that you talk the same way. The same as she does. You talk around things. You say everything except what you honestly want to say.” Mara thought she would slap Gurtej, or cry. She stopped walking, but he took her arm and led her forward. “Don’t you think, Gurtej,” Mara said after a long silence, “don’t you think this is the way most people talk? Do you think there’s anyone who’s speaking his mind or her mind every second? Especially people who are nearly strangers. You and I are nearly strangers, I think.” Mara could feel the momentary falter in the boy’s footsteps, as if he were caught by surprise. “Nearly strangers,” he said. “It’s an oxymoron. But you know who always spoke his mind? Spoke plainly. You’d know who if you thought about it for a minute.” He paused only slightly. “Dr. Raynor.” “It’s true,” Mara said. “You’re right. He had that—simplicity. About 24

you and Rachel, he would point out that you’re both on your way to college. He would say if you were older it might make him nervous to know how you feel about his daughter. He might be worried about the ethnic and religious differences between you. Just a little worried, not much. He would tell you the truth in that way.” “That’s the sense we got.” “Yes,” Mara said. “But I can’t pretend to be him.” “No. But we’re not strangers.” There seemed to be the smallest threat in the way he said the words. Mara believed from his tone of voice that Gurtej must know something about what had happened between his mother and herself. “What do you mean?” “Your life is so public. Dr. Raynor’s death. And Rachel tells me certain things.” “I won’t ask what.” “She told me you lost a child. When she was four.” They turned the corner down Edgevale Terrace, and Mara felt frozen, as if the enormity of Gurtej’s knowledge had penetrated her coat, dropped down into her boots, like a hard blast of wind, the weight of an avalanche. She knew Gurtej, whose arm was still linked with hers, could feel her trembling. He moved closer, a fraction of an inch. He was exactly John’s height, Mara realized, his elbow pressed against her ribs just where John’s had. Gurtej pointed out his house at the end of the block. The snow swirled around them, obscuring her vision, until they were standing below the front steps. She heard music from inside. “I know that singing,” Mara said. “It’s a raga. For evening.” “Yes, that’s right,” Gurtej said slowly. “How did you know?” “I’ve heard it before. I can’t really . . . Ashoka Dhar is the name of the singer.” Gurtej was staring at her. “I’ll call you a taxi,” he said ‹nally. There was a cell phone in his hand. “No thank you, Gurtej. I’ll be ‹ne. I need to walk.” “Mrs. Raynor,” Gurtej said, and then he embraced her, quickly, “that’s for Rachel.” He hugged her more tightly, and Mara felt his chin rise, as if he were looking up at a window over his head. “All right,” Mara said, stepping back out of the circle of his arms. “I’ll see you during the week.” 25

She was only half aware, when she thought of it later, of a shadow passing through the light from the front window above them. Something trembled into and out of the bright square on the snow beside her. She turned and had moved halfway up the street before Gurtej climbed the front steps and kicked the snow off his boots. She heard his heels on the bricks, the sound of it ringing violently into the silence. “Good night, Mrs. Raynor,” he called then, “and thanks for everything.”

Gurtej would know where Rachel was. Mara wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before. His ‹le was still in her bag. She’d asked for it as soon as she heard about the trouble with the kirpan, and the director of admissions had at ‹rst been unwilling to send it. That’s not necessary, he had said, followed by the kind of sentence she was hearing more and more: Dr. Raynor never asked for student ‹les. Mara had laughed and tried to stay calm. John had a photographic memory, she’d said. He recalled everything about the students. She was glad the exchange was taking place over the phone. The admissions director had said, as you wish, like some obsequious butler, and Mara had wanted to reply, no, it’s not as I wish. Not much of this is as I wish. She sat down at the kitchen table and opened the ‹le. Grade reports, all of them good, As and Bs, a letter of congratulations from Habitat for Humanity, thanking Gurtej for organizing a bene‹t last year, teachers’ reports, letters of recommendation from his English school, a copy of his birth certi‹cate. As she turned the pages, Gurtej grew younger and younger. Then the application to this school, ‹nally, and the personal statement required for admission. The only trace of Kokila in the application was her name: Nabiha Kokila Iqbal Bandasari, and her occupation, which was stated simply as “business.” Her education was listed on the form: Vernal Hall, Leeds University. That was all. Not a word about what “business” might be. The personal essay ran three pages, closely spaced. From the beginning, it sounded just like Gurtej, the Gurtej Mara had seen tonight: wise, funny, polite. The fourth sentence caught Mara’s attention: “My mother is standing over me as I write this.” The rest of the paragraph de26

scribed Gurtej’s relationship with his parents. There was a discussion of arranged marriages and the foreign service. He described travel to Kenya, and there was another glimpse of Kokila: “. . . when my mother worked for an international development agency.” At the end, Mara found what she was looking for. In the ‹nal section of the essay, Gurtej wrote that the person who had the greatest in›uence on his life so far was his mother. “She has had incredible highs and lows in her life,” he wrote. “She lived through the violence and uncertainty of the Ayub Khan regime, and after martial law was imposed in Karachi, her family ›ed to England. She fell in love with my father, a Sikh, and married him, an unusual and dif‹cult choice for a Muslim woman. She had promise which others kept her from ful‹lling, and she suffered.” There. It was as if Mara had read her own name. She saw, as clearly as if she were there in the of‹ce, Kokila’s face, her eyes, the dark circles under them like bruises. Kokila was the moon-faced woman in her husband’s shadow, graceful and silent at State Department parties. Mara had seen her once, less than a year ago, across a large room, a banquet hall, for a second or two, then Kokila had turned away, and it was how Mara ‹nally recognized her, by that glimpse of the braid—still dark, so kinked and wiry, it looked soft—that hung to her waist. That same night, in bed, she had told John the entire story of that year, 1977, a story only Phil knew the whole of. John had held her and said nothing until long after she’d ‹nished talking. She’d thought he wasn’t going to make any comment, and she’d almost fallen asleep, when he’d said, simply, “I wish you’d told me before.” It changed something between them. Eight months later he was dead, and it had become permanent, that silence between the end of her story and his wish. She found the telephone number and closed the ‹le. Her heart raced as she pressed the numbers. “Yes! Hello!” a woman cried. Kokila. The voice was unmistakable, a smooth, clear alto, the accent no less pronounced than a quarter century before. “Kokila,” Mara said. “This is Mara Raynor.” “Mara. It’s very late.” Kokila’s voice deepened, but spun faster. “We have much to talk about, but perhaps at another time?” “Yes, I’m sorry. But my daughter, Rachel . . . I wonder if she’s there by any chance? She is . . . she has not . . .” 27

“Gurtej has not come home yet tonight.” Kokila said, and stopped, as if she’d wound down. “But I walked him home!” “He’s gone out again. He does this, you see.” “Are you worried?” “He is a young man. He is hard to hold.” Kokila put her hand over the receiver and spoke to someone else in the room. “I know he met with you today. And so I should ask you what has been decided about the kirpan.” “He can wear it for now,” Mara said. “Beyond that, I am still deciding.” She listened closely to the silence between herself and Kokila. “They’re good friends,” she said ‹nally. “Gurtej and my daughter. He told me so.” “What do you think?” “They may be together.” “Is that good?” Kokila sounded as if she might be trying to sti›e laughter. “I think it’s better than if they were alone.” Mara listened again to Kokila’s breathing, saw them years younger, sitting side by side, each waiting for the other to speak, to confess. “If they are together, what do you think they will do?” “I don’t know. What do you think?” “Make us suffer,” Kokila said. There was deep sadness in her voice, and rage. She took a breath. “Maybe not Rachel. Gurtej has been so angry. Even before the kirpan. He is disappointed in us, in me, in his father. We’re not sure why. It’s partly what eighteen-year-old Sikh boys do in America. They want to be like everyone else, but at the same time, they don’t. They aren’t. You must understand this. You spend your whole days with them. The boys.” “It’s not really my profession, though. It was my husband’s. He had a magic touch with them. They all tell me that.” “Ah,” Kokila said. “My real work is young women singing. Day after day, it’s girls in their happiest moments.” “That must be something. I can hardly imagine it.” Mara thought again of Kokila and herself in school. The uniforms, the sad refectory, the cold dark mornings, hoping for the wafting scent 28

of chocolate from the Cadbury’s factory ‹ve miles to the west. “I’m lucky,” she said. “In some ways.” “Yes,” Mara replied. She heard it approaching, the condolence. “Thank you,” she said. Kokila paused, took a breath, which shook, almost imperceptibly. “What will you do?” “I’m going to cancel school for tomorrow. Because of the snow.” “Because you could not work. What mother could when her child is in trouble?” Mara heard the weight of years. She imagined Kokila’s face drawn into a frown, a grimace, some gesture of puzzlement or impatience. She wished she could see this expression, whatever it was. She regretted, regretted deeply, not having gone inside the house with Gurtej. Kokila promised she would have Gurtej call if he had seen Rachel. Then she said goodbye. Mara clicked the off button on the telephone, and tried to picture them, Rachel and Gurtej. She stood in front of the sink, looking down at the thawed chicken, like a baby, she thought, its limbs drawn up under the belly, the head perhaps just tucked out of sight. Like Rachel’s little back. So cold and small. Enough for three, and no more. She felt the little swell of breast meat, and chided herself for the false analogy, the sentimentality of it. This was the belly of the chicken, not its back, nothing like the baby Rachel had been, curled in sleep. What do you want, Mara? the silence seemed to ask. I want his voice in my ear. She thought of Gurtej Bandasari’s arm, taking hers. His warm arm over her cold one. Arthur Overby had been right about her, about what she was becoming: a woman easily frightened, a woman who had not been touched for a long time. She sat down on the steps between the breakfast table and the sink, directly under the telephone, and put her hand on her own chest, in that space where the breastbone rises. Touched with intent, that was the difference. All that embracing at memorial services, at school, in the grocery store for Christ’s sake, the quick body press beside the vegetables. It was all as amorphous as death itself, beyond words. She pressed her own hand harder against her heart. Was it still beating in there, or had it frozen solid? At any moment, Rachel would call, or burst through 29

the door, breathless, after her walk from the Metro station, and Mara would stop thinking and start asking questions, probably all the wrong ones, but she would try harder to be careful, to listen to Rachel instead of to the noise in her own head, that familiar screaming wind, the deafening commotion of the sails. Almost midnight. She walked out to the living room and stood looking up the street. No Rachel. Back to the kitchen: the chicken in the sink. Dinner tomorrow. It is tomorrow. But maybe they would linger over it, just the two of them, as Mara and John had many nights, as many as they could. They would sit in front of their empty plates and tell each other’s fortunes, read from the con‹guration of chicken bones, the splay of rice grains. Let’s have last rice, John said once, and they’d laughed at the pun. Oh God. Maybe Rachel would want to talk about college. Maybe she didn’t want to go. The idea hit Mara like a gigantic wave. That was it. She didn’t want to go, and she didn’t know how to say so. No, no, Rachel, Mara imagined herself saying, it’s ‹ne, it’s all right. Go to Europe, bum around for a year, take your time, see the world. Maybe I could meet you in Paris. We could take that apartment in the 15th, near L’Ecole Militaire. The one your father and I always talk about, the spring before you were born. And barged into your little love nest, Rachel might say, only half joking. But it was true. The best thing about that apartment was the bed, like sleeping in a cloud. Her side closest to the window, the view of trees just coming into leaf. John’s side always on the left. When would it not be his side? More and more she slept with Rachel, or downstairs on the couch, lived her life on the ground ›oor of the house. No one but Mara and Rachel had been upstairs since John died—it seemed impossible, but it was true. The upstairs was the sanctuary, like a girls’ dormitory, but not even most girls were allowed in. She wondered if Gurtej had ever been up here. It could have happened, when Mara was at a meeting, a rehearsal, looking for Rachel’s Christmas present, though she had not lasted very long out in the world of happy holiday shoppers. She had come home empty-handed. Rachel was sitting alone at the kitchen table, and she had noted the absence of shopping bags, remarked on it with her eyes. Mara had not had the energy to lie about a surprise, the locked trunk of the car, the package hidden in her of‹ce. Rachel knew she had nothing for her. “Mom,” she had said, “where have you been?” 30

The light in the room seemed to glitter ecstatically, then shatter into a thousand pieces. Her vision was broken by lines of darkness and then lines of gold, crossing at odd angles. Will this never end? she thought, and then said out loud, to the empty kitchen, “Where is my child?” At twelve-thirty, Mara called Phil, and told him what Fern had said. “And I called Kokila.” “Ah.” “They may be together.” Phil said he would send Robert over and go himself immediately to Union Station to see what he could ‹nd out. Mara imagined the sound of it, in Washington and in Baltimore. Rachel Raynor, Rachel Raynor. Please, please. There would be people in the station who would smile and go on with their lives. But some would recognize Raynor. Maybe someone had seen her and would call. But no, Mara thought, being paged doesn’t mean anything. Most likely anyone who heard the name and recognized it would think it was Mara who was lost, that she had lost track of Rachel, that one of them had wandered away, they’d become separated in the crush of people rushing here and there, saying hello and goodbye. Well, it was true, wasn’t it? She went to the piano and sat down on the edge of the little bench, then bent nearly double, her face pressed to her knees, weeping. Why would they have done this, and where would they have gone? To make us suffer, was that really it? To be alone together? She wondered what Rachel and Gurtej might want from each other. She knew what Gurtej thought—that Rachel was after some kind of understanding of death, some odd hope in the logic of reincarnation. But what did he want, except to be loved by Rachel? She thought of Romeo and Juliet, but it wasn’t really like that. No one was trying to keep them apart. Except maybe the whole world. Isn’t that always how it goes? Mara heard the words in Gurtej’s voice and she felt another kind of fear, a bone-splintering ache. What did you call this: fear of darkness, fear of youth, fear of the past. The phrases rang sharp and hard, like an incantation, then peeled themselves away to nothing, to the truth. Fear of Kokila Bandasari. Twenty minutes later, Robert stood in the front hallway. “Mr. Weiss31

man at your service.” He embraced her and she held on for a long time. “Mara, I’ve missed you. You’re the only one who told jokes worth laughing at. And never a single lawyer joke. Hey, hey, don’t cry. It’ll be OK.” “Phil is a blabbermouth,” she said through her tears. “Thanks for coming over. I just—I’m losing my mind.” “I can imagine,” Robert said. “Though I know I can’t really. Phil said he’d call as soon as he talks to somebody—on my phone. In case Rachel tries.” Mara led him into the kitchen. “Do you want anything? Tea? A drink? I have this chicken. I should cook it.” “No, thanks. Well, coffee maybe. I’ll make it.” “Let me,” Mara said, but she sat down at the table. She didn’t speak, felt as if she couldn’t remember the words, the sounds that made the words. “Do you want to tell me what happened? With Rachel?” “We had a ‹ght.” “The goin’ to college blues. On top of everything else.” “I don’t think she’s very blue about it.” “Is she still swimming?” Mara nodded. “She practices like crazy. Since last year, she’s broken three school records and two district records. She could get a scholarship, I’m sure.” “That’s great.” “It is. I think she’d stay in the pool all day long every day if she could. Underwater, if that was possible. She has the longest turns you’ve ever seen. I think sometimes she’s not going to come up.” Mara lay her head on the table. Robert sat down across from her and took her hand. “It feels,” she began, “it feels like every bone in my body is splintering, from end to end.” She looked up at Robert. “I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what’s real. Do you think I’d know if something awful happened to her? Do you think I’d feel it somehow?” “Do you feel it now?” “When Rachel was a baby, even as old as three, we would wake up at the same time during the night. Even when she was in her own room. Four or ‹ve times a week, every week. It was like all the visceral stuff between us was still there, and she knew or I knew. I couldn’t hear her be32

cause I usually slept wearing earplugs then. So it was something else, some other sensation.” “What did John think about that?” “He thought it was weird. But he got used to it. You remember how John was about that kind of thing, coincidence, spooky exotic stuff. He’d raise his eyebrows once, and then go on with whatever he was doing.” “I think that’s what he did when he ‹rst met me. Twice with the eyebrows maybe.” “He liked you. He always referred to you as my brother-in-law.” “He was a prince. I remember he hated the word partner.” “He did. He said it reminded him of square dancing.” “I was there,” Robert said. “And you said, ‘Swing and partner should never appear in the same sentence.’” “And only you laughed.” “Does Rachel still look like him? I don’t think I’ve seen her in months.” Mara squeezed his hand. “I know you were at the Mass. I saw you.” “I wasn’t exactly invited. I hope you didn’t mind.” “I was touched.” “So I haven’t seen her close up.” “She does look like John. She’s like him in most ways. She’s focused and ef‹cient. She’s built like him. Lean. Those broad shoulders. There’s hardly any me in her.” “No big voice?” “Not that I’ve heard. Let me get a picture.” She walked back into the darkened living room, peered again through the shutters. The empty street. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was. The lines from the song sliced into her head. This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. The street light illuminated the road, making it appear hot and false, a soundstage before the props have been brought in, Mara thought, before the actors have arrived. Cue Rachel, she thought, enter Rachel. How much more language was there for what she wanted? Not much. Mara knew she’d already used up all the words for please come back, said them so often there was only sound left, just noise. So what else is there? My eyes. That’s it. If I stand here and stare long enough at this scene, Rachel will 33

come striding into it, head up, no hat, arms swinging the way they do, as if she’s pushing water away, behind her, pushing everything behind her. She has to. To go forward. She has to put it all behind her. She’s at that age. Mara remembered how she and Kokila had been at eighteen, those months at school together, and now the astonishing facts of an unsharpened knife and their children’s affection. She has waited so patiently to ruin me, Mara thought. She has waited so long for her revenge, and now she will have it all.

34

÷ TWO

Her

name was Mara Robinson then, and she was eighteen and standing on the platform at Gobowen Station, in the freezing January rain. She had not gone into the waiting room because her bags, seven months’ worth of clothes and books, were too heavy to budge. She had been moving most of them, two steps at a time it seemed, for the past thirty-six hours, from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., where the plane was delayed for ten hours because of snow, to Heathrow Airport, to Euston Station in London, to Wolverhampton, to this outpost, near Oswestry, Shropshire, on the border of Wales. It was ‹ve o’clock in the afternoon, but almost full dark this far north in the dead of winter. Another man had got off the train at Gobowen, but he was long gone. There was no porter or stationmaster. This is a dream I’m having, Mara thought, and when I wake up I’ll be in Pittsburgh and in my bed and I won’t have gone anywhere. She closed her eyes and opened them again. There was a certain pleasure in this, the surprise of it, in the emptiness and expanse of the railway platform and the view Mara had of the train tracks glistening away into the falling dark. It was the stillness she loved, being still, being here, ‹nally. The last few months had been like one long earthquake. The ground rattled continuously under her feet, starting early in October, when she decided she couldn’t stand another minute of high school. She wasn’t quite sure what happened, but she woke up one morning feeling suddenly older, dangerously bored. She talked back in class and wept in the principal’s of‹ce, and sneered at everyone who told her she was ruining her chances of getting into a good college. She asked her voice teacher for harder pieces. No more silly lieder. A bluebell from the earth . . . in a green summer meadow. Ridiculous, nothing to do with real life. So this teacher, who she knew was a little afraid of her, obliged and found pieces that were new or hardly ever performed. Beginner’s opera, 35

choral symphonies, the tortures of Holst and Berlioz, Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music. She applied early to the Berklee School of Music, then skipped classes and spent her days at Jimmy Carter’s campaign headquarters in Pittsburgh with a few younger teachers from school, drinking champagne, a lot of champagne, for the ‹rst time, when he was elected president. In mid-November, a particularly discerning counselor found out that the English Speaking Union offered half-year scholarships to attend boarding school in the UK. The selection process, he heard, was much less rigorous, and it was quick. Mara read that Stephen Sondheim had gone to live in London, and took it as a sign. Then two weeks before Christmas, the acceptance from Berklee arrived, and an hour later, the telephone rang, and Mara found herself listening to the head of the ESU scholarship committee in New York, who spoke as if he was doing the last of his shopping in the middle of Bloomingdale’s. She was in, accepted at a girls’ school in Salop, he said, the modern name for Shropshire, a ‹ne school, very international ›avor, an excellent arts and music program. Congratulations, Miss Robinson, the term begins in three weeks. They’ll be expecting you. Well, apparently not. Mara swallowed again, carefully, hoping that her throat wouldn’t hurt so much, that the cold she’d felt coming on since the night before would have become something else, something less. She coughed until her eyes watered, the smooth but sinister cough her mother called the croup, like the barking of a dog. At the sound, a man she had not seen before turned from the shadows, toward her, so that the light caught his face, illuminating it like the moon. He moved closer. Mara could see a kind of confusion in his eyes, as if he were looking for her, but looking past her at the same time. “Can I help you?” he said. “Are you from Vernal Hall? I’m Mara Robinson.” Mara extended her hand, but the man did not take it, or even look down. Instead he laughed, throwing back his head. His throat, Mara saw, was nicked and cut in several places, from shaving badly, or with a razor that was dull. “They don’t want the likes of me there, now do they? With all those girls?” Mara understood suddenly that the man was blind, and the knowl-

36

edge ‹lled her with horror and elation. Here was someone more lost than she. “They’re supposed to meet me,” she said. Immediately the man began to shout the word taxi, over and over. The sound of his voice, quavering and hysterical, ›ew around the station platform, back down the tracks toward London. Behind them, she heard the door to the waiting room open. “Singleton!” a man’s voice called. “Stop that! Leave the young lady alone.” “I’m calling a taxi for her,” Singleton said. “We can hear that all right.” The man stood beside Singleton, put his hand on the blind man’s shoulder. The two might have been brothers, Mara thought. Such smooth, pale faces. “Where are you wanting to go to, Miss?” “The school,” Mara said. “The girls’ school named Vernal Hall. I thought someone would be here to meet me.” “Well,” the gentleman said, “let’s go round to the other side where they might have a chance of ‹nding you.” He had a kind voice, fatherly. He picked up two of Mara’s suitcases and then put them down again. “Planning to stay a while, are you?” He took a pair of gloves out of his coat pocket, drew them on, hefted the bags again and nodded toward the door. “Right through there.” They passed through the waiting room, which was two benches, a ticket booth and a train schedule tacked to the wall. At the front of the station was an empty car park, piles of snow pushed against the curbs and out into the road on the far side. Beyond that, nothing, ‹elds maybe, a faint glow where a mantle of snow lay on them. “I should call the school, I guess,” Mara said. The man pointed to the phone box and asked if she needed coins. She reached into her coat pocket and showed him what she had. He moved them around in her palm and pulled out the largest one: twenty‹ve pence. In the phone box, with her back to the station, the man and her luggage, Mara began to cry. She knew there was some trick to making a telephone call in England, but she couldn’t remember what it was. She lifted the receiver and deposited the coin, acted as if she were speaking. She waited until her breathing evened out, then hung up. In

37

that time, the rain had turned to hail, and she heard the clatter of it on the roof of the station. “Nobody there,” she said. “Did they know you were coming today?” “I thought so, but my ›ights were all delayed.” “In America?” “Yes. There was a snowstorm in Washington.” She tried to laugh. “Maybe I’m a day late. Or a day early.” “Poor girl,” the man said. “Let’s get you a taxi, then. The right way.” It seemed to Mara that a taxi appeared out of nowhere, turning into the drive of the station. It was the dream again, the dream-taxi. She wondered who would be driving such a vehicle, and was relieved to see it wasn’t anyone she knew. She thanked the man from the station, opened the door and got in. She watched the driver load her bags into the trunk, the boot, she reminded herself. The car was warm. Mara wanted to let herself drift off to sleep, let the dream-taxi take her where it would. “This gentleman says to take you to Vernal Hall,” the driver said when he settled in behind the wheel. “Is that right?” “Yes, please. Is it far?” “Not too far. Twenty minutes. You’re feeling a bit knackered, I’d guess.” “Yes,” Mara said, though she wasn’t sure what he meant. She rested her head against the back of the seat. The taxi driver began to sing quietly to himself, and Mara closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the driver was still looking at her, but the light was different. He was saying, “We’re here, Miss,” quietly, gently. She looked out the window at what appeared to be a stone castle, glazed by the rain, illuminated by a single low ›oodlight. The windows were dark, except for one, upstairs, but the glow was dimmed by something red, a curtain, a shade. Mara glanced back at the driver, began to search in her handbag for her wallet. “No charge, love,” he said, then turned back to face the school. He rubbed his hand over his face, and said, without looking at her, “I’ll go in with you. Make sure somebody’s about. I’ll get the luggage.” The hail was turning back into rain, and Mara felt the slice of it along her cheek. She shivered furiously, and the driver took her arm, 38

saying easy now, easy, as if he were quieting an animal. They walked to a stone porch and the large wooden door at the front of the building, and then as Mara raised her ‹st to knock, the driver stepped in front and pushed it open. The door gave a loud, solemn creak, and Mara started to laugh. This can’t be real, she thought, this is a joke, a bad movie. Soon the ancient ghost will appear and tell my future. They stepped inside, into a darkened vestibule. Through a door to the left, Mara could see a desk, two chairs facing it. A staircase rose in front of them, then turned out of sight over their heads. “Hello,” the driver called. “Anybody here?” Far away, upstairs, there was the sound of a door opening, silence, and then the held breath of someone listening. “Anybody here?” echoed Mara. “It’s Mara Robinson. The new girl.” A door closed, and there was the sense that preceded sound, the idea of someone approaching from a great distance, above them, a kind of change in the atmosphere, a tingling on the top of Mara’s scalp. She glanced at the taxi driver, who still held onto her bags, and saw that his eyes were on the ceiling, his face, in this light, completely drained of color. She wondered if there were stories about this school, some haunting, and that was why no one had wanted to bring her out here, why Singleton the blind man had behaved so oddly, why no one came for her. Maybe, she thought wildly and with a strange pleasure, the place did not really exist, and she had stepped outside time, alongside it somehow. A light appeared at the top of the staircase then, and the sound of a careful step in some kind of half-plastic squeaking shoe. The light itself moved raucously, a light carried but not carefully. Mara saw the hems of a pair of dark trousers as a yellow glow ‹lled the stairway. Then suddenly all the electric lights in the hall ›ashed on. The taxi driver was startled and set down the suitcases heavily. He moved closer to Mara, for whose protection she wasn’t sure. She saw that the vestibule was dingy, much older than it had seemed, and she felt ›ooded by great sadness. She wished she were back in Pittsburgh, and a sentence began to form in her head, in reverse: the next train south to London, back to the train station, please take me. “The switch is halfway down the bloody stairs,” a voice said, English but accented in some other, more exotic way. “It’s really bloody stupid.” 39

A girl appeared then, about Mara’s age, wearing navy blue corduroy jeans and a white turtleneck sweater. Pakistani, Indian, Egyptian— Mara couldn’t be sure—with dark hair pulled back from her face. She gazed at Mara, noted carefully her cloth coat, stockings, her wet shoes, and Mara felt it, absolutely taken in by those eyes, soft and brown, and so tired, the blue circles beneath them a sign of great intelligence and power. Or maybe its opposite: a girl who stayed up late studying because she couldn’t quite understand all that was being asked of her, because she knew she could make terrible mistakes. Mara was horri‹ed and attracted. She wanted to be like this girl, or at least be as warm as she looked in those sensible clothes. “I’m Kokila Iqbal,” she said, offering her hand, which Mara took. “I’m the head girl.” “I’m Mara Robinson.” “We didn’t know when you would arrive. Girls don’t really come back until tomorrow afternoon.” “Sorry.” “No, it’s all right. You must have terrible jet lag. I’ll call Miss Franklin to take you to your room.” Kokila walked into the study, to the desk, and picked up the telephone, dialed and waited, said something Mara couldn’t understand, except for the word “American.” Her tone seemed oddly sharp. She replaced the receiver and stood with her back to Mara and the taxi driver, looking around the study. She picked up an object on the desk, held it close to her face, then put it back down. A photograph. Then she brushed her hands down the sides of her jeans and stepped around to the front of the desk. She opened a side drawer and reached to the back, removed her hand, and closed the drawer, all very quickly. When she came back into the vestibule, she was holding a twenty-pound note. She stared at Mara again, that same gaze of appraisal, Mara knew it, deciding in or out, yea or nay. The taxi driver cleared his throat, asked if they needed something more from him. Kokila answered that they were ‹ne, then handed him the twenty pounds. The driver reached into his pocket, but Kokila told him to keep it all. “Thank you,” the driver said, then turned to shake hands with Mara.

40

“Watch yourself here, Miss,” he said. He glanced at Kokila. “They work hard, these girls do. They’re famous for it.” “I’m sure we do,” Kokila called after him. She scowled at the driver’s back going out the door, waited until she heard him get into his taxi. “It’s a school, you know,” she said, more quietly, to Mara. “Come on. We’ll take your bags to your room, and then go in to supper. There’s no heat over there yet, so you’ll have to sleep in Lower Four.” She lifted one of Mara’s suitcases. “Rotten cough you have, isn’t it? Frankie’ll give you something for it.” Kokila led Mara through a long passage under the stairway and out the back of the building. The rain misted down on them, and it was very dark. “Don’t you want a coat?” Mara asked. “I’m used to this,” Kokila said. “Bloody English weather. I don’t even feel it anymore. At least it’s only rain now.” In the distance, Mara heard the lowing of a cow. She would have to ask about that later. All her energy now had to be put toward getting through the next hour or so and then into bed. Maybe she would not have to eat dinner. She wasn’t sure she could swallow anything with her throat on ‹re like this, and she felt the nausea, stronger than ever. The gravel crunched under her feet and Mara began to count her steps and Kokila’s. She wanted to ask how much farther they had to go, but she was too tired to form the words. She saw they were passing by one-story buildings, classrooms maybe, low and dark, ominous even. There seemed to be nothing ahead of them but freezing rain and night. “There she is,” Kokila said, and Mara saw, thirty yards ahead, the beam of a ›ashlight. “We’re nearly there now.” Below the light was a pair of boots, with wool trousers tucked into their tops. “Hello,” a voice said, very pleasant and low-pitched. “Not very welcoming weather, I’m afraid. Give me your bag.” She took the suitcase from Mara and strode ahead. Everyone here is very strong, Mara thought, I’ll have to toughen up. She saw then the dormitory building, new, with a glass entryway, like a doctor’s of‹ce or an elementary school, a place of endless trials and bad news. “Here we are,” Miss Franklin said, opening the door. She turned to hold it for Kokila and Mara, smiling and nodding. She was a small

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woman with silver hair pulled into a braid and twisted up at the back of her head. She had a kindly, weathered face, ageless. She might be ‹fty or seventy. “This dormitory is called Lloyd-Williams. It’s lovely and new. Built two years ago for the sixth-form girls.” They turned down a hallway on the ‹rst ›oor. “Your room will be the second one down, just here, on the right.” Mara saw, to her great relief, a single bed. No roommate. There was a closet, the narrow bed and a desk. A large window looked out into the darkness. With the light off, Mara thought she could see a rail fence a few yards away. Then the light snapped on, and the window became a mirror. “We’ll leave your bags, but there’s nobody else here, so you’ll want to sleep in another dormitory tonight.” “It’s all right really,” Mara said. She wanted to start making this room her own. “I don’t mind. If the door locks . . .” “Or . . .” Miss Franklin began, sounding as if she would give in. “There’s no heat,” Kokila said suddenly, from behind them. Miss Franklin seemed to consider. “No heat. Quite right, Kokila.” “She should sleep in Lower Four.” “Right.” Miss Franklin put her hand on Mara’s shoulder and Mara felt as though she’d like to fall backwards into the older woman’s arms. “Lower Four is above the kitchen, so it’s always warm.” “I really could stay,” Mara said. “You’re ill,” Kokila said. “We can’t have an American freezing to death her ‹rst night here.” She stared at Kokila, wondering if all the girls would be like this, and how she would ever make friends with any of them. She missed Phil already, achingly. She had been telling him everything, or almost, for the last few weeks. They could not stop talking. “It’s like you’re going to die,” Phil had said. “Or like you are,” Mara replied. Their parents had come to exist on the edges of their vision, as voices. Phil, wise beyond his years, said their parents were like a blown-down fence. The idea made them both sad. Then Mara was back in the English dark, walking between Kokila and Miss Franklin. They were talking about classes, about the headmaster, who had been in New Zealand for the holidays. Mara tried to listen, but she expected that someone would tell her all this again any42

way. Then they turned up a walk that ran beside a building with high arched windows. The refectory, Miss Franklin said. They would have a light supper, and then Mara could go to bed. The refectory was straight out of Dickens—and why should it be otherwise? Mara thought. It was thrilling in a way. She had wanted to come to school in England to see something different, something English, and here it was, the silent, echoing place where Oliver Twist might ask for more. They entered the hall between the ‹rst row of tables and a long raised platform, “high table,” Miss Franklin called it, where the oldest girls and the staff ate. A woman sat alone there, with her back to them, a very tall woman with red hair. She turned when she heard them come in, looked directly at Miss Franklin and smiled. As Mara came up the steps and toward the table, she stood. “This is Miss Ellis,” Miss Franklin said. “She teaches music and drama.” “When Mr. Mellors lets me,” she said, and the others laughed. “Mr. Mellors is a lover of Shakespeare,” Miss Franklin explained. Kokila introduced Mara, and she shook Miss Ellis’s hand, which was warm and very soft. There was an order and hierarchy to these proceedings, Mara believed, a secret to be learned and kept. Another girl from Pittsburgh who had come back from her year in an English boarding school had told Mara this—that she should pay close attention to the “relations.” The girl had used that word, used it mysteriously, with a ring of awe in her voice. Nobody knows relations, she’d said, like English girls and women. They sat down at the table, and with no plates before them, Miss Franklin offered grace. Then she looked up and laughed. “Well, this is funny, isn’t it, Kokila? We can’t ask Mara to serve yet. She won’t know how. So you must do it.” Kokila looked at the two of them for a long moment. Something twitched and darkened in her eyes. Mara thought, astonished, that the whites of Kokila’s eyes shaded into gray for a second or two. And then in a perfectly ›at American accent she said, “It’s like riding a bicycle.” Mara laughed, which, she saw, was not what the other three expected. Kokila pushed her chair back, stood quickly and walked down the steps at the other end of the platform. She disappeared into the kitchen. She returned with two plates and set them down in front of 43

Miss Franklin and Miss Ellis. Mara could see some kind of stew—meat, potatoes, carrots, peas—and the smell of it made her stomach rise into her throat. Then there were bowls of fruit salad and a plate of sliced bread. When Kokila left and returned a third time, Mara asked if she could help serve, and Kokila shook her head. “No thank you,” she said. “It’s your last chance to be a guest.” The two teachers said nothing, but watched Kokila’s movements intently. When she was away from the table, they looked at each other. After Kokila ‹nally sat down in front of her own plate, they said “thank you,” and “very well done.” Kokila did not answer. They ate mostly in silence, and Mara was glad. She forced herself to take small, slow bites. Once Miss Ellis asked about her airplane ›ight, and Mara told them about the delays in Pittsburgh and Washington. Her throat burned, and as she talked, her cough grew more insistent. “We’ll take you to the dispensary ‹rst, I think,” Miss Franklin said, and that was the end of conversation for a while. The stew was warm and salty. The fruit tasted like water, like textured nothing. When they were ‹nished eating, Kokila cleared the plates and brought out a pot of tea. She stood looking at Mara for a long time, in that same way, sizing her up. Mara wanted to ask what she was staring at, but before she could, Kokila turned, ‹nally, and walked back into the kitchen. It seemed she was gone for ages. Miss Franklin and Miss Ellis said nothing, poured tea for themselves and Mara, and sat sipping it, eyeing each other over the rims of their teacups. Kokila returned with a dish of lemon wedges and a small ceramic pot full of honey. “This is what my mother gives me to drink for that kind of cough,” she said to Mara. “Tea with honey and lemon.” “Kokila has been accepted to Cambridge,” Miss Franklin said suddenly. “My mother is a lecturer there,” Kokila said. “One of the ‹rst women.” “That will be nice,” Mara said. “You and your mother together.” “Yes,” Kokila said. “One more term.” There was something about those words and the way Kokila said them, a meaning that seemed to ‹ll the whole refectory. The syllables ›ew down into the darkness at the bottom of the room, where the littlest girls sat, wanting their mothers, eating for comfort or not eating at all. 44

The whole room shook with the force of those three words and the relief of being able to say them at last. Mara felt she understood it, the great ache of children wrenched from their mothers, the emptiness afterwards, days and months and years ‹lled with other women who would never do. Her eyes stung and the room blurred and swam. Miss Ellis seemed to notice. She ‹nished her tea and placed her left hand over Mara’s. “You’re exhausted,” she said. “Enough of dinner. Miss Franklin, I’ll take her from here.” “Thank you very much,” Mara said, then turned to Miss Franklin and Kokila. “I expect I’ll see you tomorrow.” They all four stood, but after Miss Ellis and Mara moved away from the table, Miss Franklin and Kokila sat back down. Mara saw them lean closer together across the table. She could see no pleasure in Kokila’s face. Her expression was stern, reproving, as if she were the teacher. “We’ll just go up this way,” Miss Ellis said, leading her out a side door. “It’s the same building, but I wouldn’t want to take you through the kitchen. You should keep your illusions for a day or two at least.” She laughed then, a silvery sound in the night air. “Tomorrow, you’ll see Mr. Sutcliffe, the headmaster, and he’ll tell you about your classes, and all that sort of thing. What are you interested in?” “History,” Mara said. “Social studies.” “Ah, very good. Do you study a language?” “French.” “Good, good. Mr. Dalglish is teaching a French literature course that sounds very promising. Malraux to begin with. La condition humaine.” “This year we read La symphonie pastorale.” “Upper Five is doing that one. How about music? Or acting?” “I’m in choir at home, and voice lessons. I play guitar.” “Really? Private lessons? You must be quite good. Did you bring the guitar with you?” Mara felt something happening in her face that she could not control. Her eyes stung. “What’s the matter, Mara? Did you forget your guitar?” “No,” Mara whispered. “My throat . . . I feel a bit sick to my stomach.” “It’s all right, dear. We’ll get you up to bed in two shakes.” 45

“No,” Mara said, and leaned away, her head over a patch of grass. It all came up, the stew, the fruit, the tea. Miss Ellis placed her hand in the middle of Mara’s back. “Oh my,” she said and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, and Mara took it, wiped her mouth. “I’ll wash this,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” “Don’t worry,” Miss Ellis said. “You’re just exhausted. Still spinning, I’ll bet.” They waited, and then Miss Ellis draped her arm around Mara’s shoulders. “In the summer term,” she went on, deftly changing the subject, “we’re going to do a play for Parents’ Weekend. Some of the girls are brilliant actresses and dancers. Your countrywoman, for instance, Teresa. She comes back tomorrow.” “I didn’t know there was another American.” “Yes. Just the two of you this year.” They began to walk again, until they reached another door in the refectory building. They climbed a ›ight of stairs, and Mara found the second-›oor hallway pleasantly warm. Miss Ellis opened the door to one of the rooms and said the names of two girls who would be returning the next afternoon. She pointed down the hall to the bathroom and asked if Mara would be all right. “My rooms are right at the end there,” she said, “if you need anything. Please don’t be afraid to knock. If you wake up and feel sick again, or even just lonely. Or if your cough gets worse. I sleep badly anyway. I’d be happy to talk, make you a hot drink.” Mara thought to remind Miss Ellis about going to the dispensary, but all she wanted to do was get into this bed and sleep. Not even sleep, really—just stop moving and talking and listening to talk. She lay awake for a long time that night wondering what she had done in coming to this school, and what she would do. She missed Phil. She thought of the letter he had given her at the airport. She had it memorized now. He was jealous of her, she had already known that, for getting away, and angry, too, hurt that she would leave him alone in godforsaken Pittsburgh with their silent parents. He alluded to something else he wanted to tell her, about my life, he’d written, about what will happen to my life. And she thought, too, ‹nally, about what had happened over a month ago, two months. After the Carter victory party, her guitar teacher had asked her to go home with him. Mara had said 46

yes, thinking and not thinking about what would happen between them, how much she wanted to be changed, how she felt an ache for him, or maybe just someone like him, from her knees up. And in his apartment, after more to drink, he led her into his bedroom. She saw him nearly every afternoon for weeks, after school. They drove to his apartment, spent an hour in bed, and then he brought her back, as if the lesson was over. By the Friday before Christmas, Mara had changed back or changed again, and told him, no more, enough, and that was the last of it. But now she knew, as surely as she knew her own name and the name of the school she was in, the county, the country, that she was pregnant. The strange way she’d felt for the last two weeks, this sickness—she knew it was more than anticipation or sleeplessness or jet lag. There was also a sensation of ›uttering, of effervescence, under her arms, a feeling that was like a voice, a tiny sprite calling, the baby announcing itself. Mara listened closely from a place that was outside her body, outside her green and blue bedroom, outside the house in Pittsburgh, on the wing of the airplane crossing the Atlantic, looking in at herself, curious, utterly detached. Here, though, in a narrow dormitory bed in northwest England, she was coming back to herself, and that observing being rushed back into her own skin like a blast of cold air. She looked around this girl’s room, two girls, Georgina, Miss Ellis had said, and someone, Fiona, maybe. The re›ection from the snow illuminated what was there—a poster on the wall, dark shapes and letters, more words, the Desiderata. Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. No, that was something else. Stuffed animals and a gleaming doll’s face resting against the pillow on the other bed. A bear and a rabbit. The doll sat a little apart, her head turned toward the window as if she were listening, or waiting for a face to appear. Mara thought of Georgina’s home, her bedroom. Did she have other dolls there? Didn’t she miss these? There were two desks with chairs, back to back, their surfaces cleared, twin dictionaries upright as sentries guarding the Queen’s precious English, other books leaning against them. That was all. Serious work must be done at these desks, done and redone and then forgotten. Mara wondered if she would remember anything she learned in this school, or if would it always be to her the place where the baby began 47

and ended. Because the baby would have to end. She had never talked to the guitar teacher after Christmas, never seen him, didn’t want to. He had become a ghost to her even before the last night when he stopped his car in front of her house and leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. I’ll miss you, he had said then. Mara had felt a shiver of power, enough to get her out of the car, past her mother at the front door, and into her room. And then to this room, thousands of miles between that closed door and this one. There were stars glittering at the window now, the sky must be clearing, the storm moving east, and Mara thought she should ask the stars what to do, a question instead of a wish. Miss Ellis seemed nice, trustworthy, Miss Franklin too. Kokila, though, there was something about her, a scent of danger or fear. Mara coughed again, imagined she heard the echo of it down the long hallway. The stars seemed to shake with her coughing, their sharp edges harsh against the velvet dark. The dippers would wheel by and Orion look in on her, at the toys on the bed, the books on the desk, the writing on the wall. The room spun once and stood still, and it seemed that someone hovered by the bed. “Mother,” Mara said, and before the word stopped resounding in the air, she was asleep. She woke once to see the moon, crooked and sideways, re›ected in the long rectangle of the Desiderata, as if there were a mirror on that wall instead of glossy paper. The words came back to her easily: “Go placidly amid the noise and haste . . .” She tried to open her mouth to speak these words out into the English darkness, but no sound would come forth. Go placidly, go placidly, the idea was stuck just on the other side of sound, the opposite of echo. What was that, Mara wondered, silence upon silence, the voice of what would never come into the world.

In the morning, there was Miss Ellis with breakfast on a tray, still as a statue, looking not down at Mara but turned half away and gazing out the window, with a strange expression on her face, unsettled yet resigned. “Hello,” Mara said. “Oh, there you are,” Miss Ellis said as if Mara had been lost. Her 48

face brightened and she lowered the tray so that Mara could see toast, tea, marmalade, something that looked like bacon, a bowl of oatmeal. She tried to think how she could refuse it. “Can you sit up a little bit? How’s your tummy today? Settled much better, I should think, after such a good night’s rest. Do you know it’s nearly eleven o’clock?” “Oh no,” Mara said, throwing off the blanket. “I should get up then. The girls will be here soon, won’t they?” “No hurry. Not until afternoon. I expect most of them are just now having their breakfast at home.” “All right. I slept well, I think.” “You were sleeping very soundly. I must have been standing here for quite a while.” “You were just standing?” “You’ll ‹nd that just standing is the preferred method of observation at this school.” “What do you mean?” Miss Ellis laughed. She looked and sounded, Mara thought, like a teenager. “I don’t know what I mean exactly.” She lowered her voice. “I suppose I mean it as a sort of warning. You’ll be watched here. I don’t think Americans are used to that, not the way the English do it. It’s quite strange to them.” She looked into Mara’s eyes then, directly, and her expression changed. “Your posture. Grooming habits. The way you eat an apple.” Her gaze softened. “Do you like milk in your tea?” “Yes. Milk, please.” Miss Ellis set the tray across Mara’s lap and poured out a cup of tea, then turned to place the teapot on Georgina’s desk. “I’d like to go to America someday,” she said. Her back was still turned, and Mara thought she could hear a kind of desperation in Miss Ellis’s voice. The expression accompanying the words must have been alarming. “There’s a lot of America to come to,” Mara said. “I know,” Miss Ellis said. “I believe I should like California.” She turned, poured milk from a pitcher into the teacup, which made a beautiful bloom of white in the amber tea, like a white rose or a cloud of dust. “I’ve never been there,” Mara said. She spread marmalade on a piece of toast, and took a bite, then another. “I think I would love to pick fruit off the trees. Lemon trees, orange, 49

tangerine. I would eat a tangerine every morning, straight from the tree.” “That sounds wonderful.” “Yes.” Miss Ellis straightened up and crossed over to the window. She pressed her hands hard on the sill, as if she were trying to keep it from drifting upwards. She slowly made the ‹ngers of her left hand into a ‹st, raised it, waited a second or two. She whispered something that sounded to Mara like “oh hell,” then knocked twice on the glass. When whoever was below looked up, Miss Ellis shook her head violently. “No, no,” she said, but not loud enough for anyone outside to hear. Then she sighed and turned back to the bed. Her face was blotched and pink. “What is it?” Mara said. “Oh dear,” Miss Ellis answered. “I shouldn’t tell you this.” She crossed back to the door and closed it, then came to sit at the foot of the bed. “You’ll hear it anyway. How’s your tea?’ “Good, thanks.” “There’s a child here called Olwen Barnes. She’s eight. She’s had a terrible time–mother died. Father’s new wife . . . her daughter is here as well. Gina Whistler. But she’s no help.” Miss Ellis moved her hands in the air as if to fritter something away. “She wanders outside without a coat.” “Olwen does?” “Yes.” Miss Ellis smiled. “The new wife would never lack for coats. Nor Gina. Half-Italian, and when she goes home, it’s to Florence.” Here Miss Ellis rolled her eyes. “She—Olwen—misbehaves. Last term she ate a packet of pins.” “Ouch,” Mara said. “But she has a lovely voice. She can sing like an angel. She makes the others jealous. So I take care of her.” Miss Ellis rose from the bed and stepped back to the window, but it seemed Olwen had gone. “The older girls—Gina’s group—‹nd her quite trying.” “Why?” Miss Ellis looked at her for a moment. Finally she said, “Because they miss their mothers.” Before Mara had time to puzzle this out, there was a knock on the door, a sharp, energetic rat-tat-tat.

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“Miss Franklin,” Miss Ellis called as the door opened, “I think our patient is improving.” “Very good,” Miss Franklin said. “Did you sleep this long?” “I did,” Mara said. “But I think I could sleep longer.” “Nonsense. The girls are starting to arrive.” “Oh,” Mara said. “All right. Let me just . . .” She swung her legs over the side of the bed. The bottoms of her light blue pajamas seemed to her very American and threadbare. The color reminded her of home, in Pittsburgh, and her mother in the kitchen on winter mornings, stirring absently at a cup of instant coffee. Mara could see the jar on the table, her mother’s face and the face of the woman on the jar, Taster’s Choice, enjoying her ‹rst cup of the day. That face and her mother’s face, so different, the one sleepy and disgruntled, the other in raptures. Mara suddenly missed her mother desperately, that cold, bright kitchen. She stared at her legs inside the blue pajamas, trying to stop the tears, the heat of them gathering behind her eyes. “What is it?” Miss Ellis said. “Are you dizzy? Just sit for a minute. Nobody’s in a rush to get in.” “I feel sick,” Mara said, and reached past the two women for the trash can beside Georgina’s desk. All her little bit of breakfast came back up, tea, toast, marmalade like rotten oranges. “Oh dear,” Miss Ellis said. “Not again.” She reached to hold back Mara’s hair. “Here,” Miss Franklin said to Miss Ellis. “Give me that rubbish can. You have one just like it. Georgina will never know the difference.” She knelt down to look in Mara’s face. “Are you done? Shall we get you to the dispensary? I’m afraid we forgot all about it last night.” She pulled a packet of tissues out of her pocket. “Take these.” “Thank you, Miss Franklin,” Mara said, wiping her mouth. She closed her eyes. “I think . . .” She couldn’t tell them, not now, not yet. “My stomach is upset.” Miss Franklin looked at her for a few seconds, and Mara held her gaze. “You should call me Frankie,” she said. “All the girls do anyhow. I prefer the ones who say it to my face.” “Frankie,” Mara said. “I’m all right now. I think I got up too fast.” Miss Franklin stood up and left the room with the trash can. In a

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minute, she was back with its exact twin, white plastic, no liner. “Thank goodness for the abundance of poor taste in these things,” she said, and Miss Ellis frowned, then laughed. Mara did too. It sounded exactly like something Phil would say. Immediately, the panic set in again. Phil was so far away. He would have been the one to help her now, get her to a doctor, a clinic, stay with her through it all. “Do you feel well enough to get dressed?” Miss Franklin asked, and Mara said she did. “Good. We’ll get you back to Lloyd-Williams then, and you can shower there. What I actually came to say is that Mr. Sutcliffe would like to see you in his study, after supper. He thought you might like to watch the inauguration of your new president.” “Is that today?” Mara said. “I’ve lost track of time, I guess. I’d like to see it. It’s silly, but . . .” She paused. “I think I’m a little homesick.” “Be sure you feel up to it,” Miss Ellis said “Yes indeed,” Miss Franklin said. “Mr. Sutcliffe’s rubbish bin is rather nicer than this one.” She reached behind Mara to draw up the sheet and smooth the blanket on the bed. “Georgina will never notice.” “A good thing,” Miss Ellis said. “She’s a piece of work, that one. Face that would stop a coal lorry. Must be what makes her so disagreeable.” “Miss Franklin!” “Oh, she’s heard talk like this before. She’s American, isn’t she?” Frankie squeezed Mara’s shoulder, gently. “I like this girl, I must say. Could use a bit of tidying up, but I do like her.”

In

her dorm room in LloydWilliams, Mara unpacked and arranged her clothes and books, pinned her photos to the wall. She wrote letters to her mother and to Phil, but tore them up. She felt sick again and sat down to rest and slept through dinner. When she woke, no one else seemed to be in the building, and she wondered about the time, and about ‹nding her way to Mr. Sutcliffe’s study. Inaugurations took place in the morning: the presidentelect went to church, was sworn in, and then lunched as the president and danced all night at inaugural balls. It was hard to imagine Jimmy Carter dancing all night, but then it was hard to imagine him as president of the United States. Three years ago, it was hard to imagine 52

Richard Nixon ›ying away in a helicopter. Imagination and politics seemed to repel each other like the wrong sides of magnets. As she began to lace up her boots, there was a knock on the door, and before Mara could get up, Kokila let herself into the room. “Hello,” she said. “Frankie says you’re ill. She told me to get to the bottom of it. Girls losing their breakfast is a bad sign.” “I don’t know what it is,” Mara said. “I just got here. Maybe I’m tired.” “Maybe,” Kokila said. “You have a boyfriend?” “Had.” “Called Had?” “Used to have a boyfriend.” “Well, I hope you didn’t give him up because you thought you might want an English bloke. Worst bloody lot you can imagine. Pale as paste, spotty faces, rotten teeth. There are two boys’ schools down the way. Shrewsbury and Ellesmere. You’ll meet them at dances, study halls. You’ll see.” Mara locked her door and they began the walk back to the main building. “How about you? You have somebody stashed away in London or someplace?” Kokila stopped walking and glared. She reached out her hand and Mara thought Kokila was going to pinch her. She almost laughed. Then Kokila turned her head the other way and gazed out over the Welsh hills. “My marriage is arranged,” she said. “Arranged? Does that still happen?” “Americans are such fools. Of course it still happens. It will always happen. It’s the one way to insure happiness in marriage. You know everything about each other. Your families know everything. The family is always there. You never have to be alone.” “Who is he?” “Fazal Bhutto. Fourth cousin to the prime minister of Pakistan.” “So what will that make you?” “A girl cousin.” “But what about being in love?” “Love? What do you know about it?” Mara thought about the guitar teacher, marveled that she did not 53

remember a single thing he’d told her about himself, about anything. All she recalled was a body, pale in the light coming through his bedroom window. His body over hers, moving closer. “I don’t know a thing about it,” Mara said. Her eyes ‹lled with tears. She knew Kokila would see, but there was nothing she could do. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?” Kokila said. “I might be. Yes. Probably. I don’t know.” Kokila leaned hard on the heavy wooden door of the main building, but it did not move. “Nobody much uses this one,” she said. “It sticks.” The two girls stood side by side and pushed so that the door moved slowly inward, scraping along the stone ›oor. It was a hideous sound, Mara thought, straight out of Edgar Allan Poe. Like the sound of the front door last night, only not comical. Inside, the hallway was lit only by a window at the far end. Overhead, Mara and Kokila could hear the sounds of girls’ voices and feet hurrying back and forth, doors opening and closing. “The hordes return,” Kokila said. “It was so peaceful there for a while. Only six months and I’m done. Can’t believe I’ve lasted this bloody long.” “How long have you been here?” “Four years.” “Why did you stay?” “It’s like university. It looks bad if you leave in the middle. But all these rich girls with their rich parents. They’ve hated me ever since I got here.” “Why?” “The English hate us the way you Americans hate your Blacks. That’s what they call us here.” “We don’t hate our Blacks. We . . .” “Don’t be an idiot.” Kokila took Mara by the hand, set her in front of the closed door to Mr. Sutcliffe’s study and knocked. “If you’re in trouble,” she whispered, backing away, “my mother will help you.” “Help me?” “Get rid of it.” Before the sound of Kokila’s voice had died away, the study door opened, and a short stocky man stood staring at Mara. “Yes,” he said, then looked ›ustered. Mara supposed he wasn’t used to new faces. 54

“I’m Mara Robinson. The American.” “Oh! Mara! Miss Robinson then,” Mr. Sutcliffe said. “Come in, come in.” He reached out to shake Mara’s hand, then drew her into the room, which was brightly lit by, it seemed, a great many lamps. There was a ‹re going in the ‹replace. The television sat on a small table, the sound very low, a British voice describing Washington, the placement of various dignitaries for the swearing-in ceremony. “Sit down, please,” he continued. “They’re just about to begin. I thought you should see this—your country and all. All the girls should see it really, but they’re busy, you know, moving in. Would you like some tea?” Mara did not want any more tea, but she thought she ought to have it, hold the cup at least, for the sake of—what would this be called? Etiquette. Security. She wanted to do something with her hands to keep them from trembling. “Yes, please.” “Had a long day yesterday, I heard,” Mr. Sutcliffe said. He fussed with a teapot on his desk and brought Mara a mugful. “Milk? Sugar?” “No, thank you.” Mara held the mug close to her face as Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, Gerald and Betty Ford, Walter and Joan Mondale all shifted nervously, waiting for the chief justice to bring forth the Bible and hand it to Mrs. Carter. She noticed that something dripped from Ford’s face. A runny nose? It looked cold there, still freezing. Two days ago, Washington was iced in. Was that two days ago, only two? Jimmy Carter raised his left hand, placed his right hand on the Bible. Rosalynn Carter smiled and then some deeper expression took hold, as if the business of smiling was over for now, for a long, long time. Then Jimmy Carter made his promises, and he was the president, as if by magic. Walter Mondale took his turn with the Bible. It was done. President Carter spoke then, though not for very long. Mara heard some of it, she thought, through a veil of sleep. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles. “Nothing for the history books,” Mr. Sutcliffe said and clapped his hands. “There. Lovely. You have a new president. Remarkable. The free world is safe once more.” “Do you really think so?” she said. “Think what?” 55

“That there’s a second between presidents, when nobody’s really in charge, and the free world isn’t safe?” “I do believe in things like that, in moments when everything can change, all at once. Do you?” “I do.” And she could not stop the words that came next. “With all my heart.” Mr. Sutcliffe put down his teacup on the low table, beside, not in, its saucer. He looked at Mara as if she were something unexpected and perfectly outlandish: a small dog, a record player, a boy. Then he smiled kindly, and so she felt not the least embarrassed by his staring and silence. She sipped at her tea and looked back to the television. Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, hand in hand, waving to the crowd. Mrs. Carter was wearing a teal blue coat and dark boots. Everyone had on gloves. It was amazing how small the Carters looked, like two happy children, ›anked by six or seven enormous Secret Service agents. These men lumbered in and out of the camera’s range, some in sunglasses, some with their coats ›own open in the wind. Two happy kids, Mara thought, off to their ‹rst day at school. “You are the ‹rst American we’ve had here in eight years,” Mr. Sutcliffe was saying. “You and Teresa, the girl from New York.” When he said girl, he pronounced it “gull.” “Is she back yet?” “The last American we had went home after three weeks. She wanted fresh orange juice.” He glanced at the television, dipped his head toward the Carters. “She was from Georgia. Not a place known for oranges.” “Peaches,” Mara said, and then she too nodded at the strolling president. “Peanuts.” “It was mysterious to us all, what a girl coming to the north of England might imagine.” “I think some people don’t have very good imaginations.” “Quite. But you do, I hope, and Teresa does, it seems. She’s been a ‹ne student. Very good at maths, very popular with the little ones.” “I’m looking forward to meeting her.” “She’ll be back shortly, I expect. Your classes will start next week.” He stood up from the couch and crossed behind the television set to the desk. “I have your schedule of courses right here. Chemistry, Calculus, 56

French Literature, Political Studies, Use of English, and French Grammar. Music. I understand you sing. Does that sound like enough to keep you out of trouble?” He was smiling again. Mara laughed out loud. “On Thursday evenings, the sixth-form girls will come here for World Citizenship, which is what you in America call current events. You’ll ‹nd it very lively. The foreign girls often talk about their countries. And we just saw the ‹rst of your presidents to walk home from his inauguration. You and Teresa will have to explain that one, I should think.” “He’s one of the common people,” Mara said. “Common?” Mr. Sutcliffe chuckled and then looked concerned. “A piece of advice, Miss Robinson. Mind how you use common in Britain. Teresa will tell you what happened when she ‹rst arrived and said it seemed Fiona was a common name.” “The Fionas didn’t like it.” “They most certainly did not.” Mr. Sutcliffe smiled and rolled his eyes in a decidedly conspiratorial manner. “I’ll remember that,” Mara said. She was beginning to like him, but felt impatient now, eager to be out of Mr. Sutcliffe’s ecstatically lit study, talking to someone, Kokila maybe, writing a letter to Phil, receiving a letter from him, from anybody. Her mother would be the ‹rst to write, she knew, two pages on white stationery, back and front, ‹lled with questions Mara did not yet know the answers to. “I expect,” Mr. Sutcliffe said, “you’ll feel somewhat lost for a few more days, but then we’ll put you to work. The girls all have a job, and they rotate. Serving at meals, cleanup, mail call, tuck shop, supervising games. By then you’ll have made friends and all that.” “I can start right away,” Mara said, thinking, and all that? Is it good or bad that the headmaster calls the business of living here all that? “I should be getting back now. Thank you for inviting me.” Outside, she pulled the study door shut. The hallway was dark, but Mara could feel the heat from another body. She stood very still. She had expected to be alone, wished for it, and now she wasn’t. “Who’s there?” she said, and her voice broke open, a creak and a sigh. “It’s me. Kokila. Was it that bad? You were in there a long time.” 57

“No, it was ‹ne.” “Come on, then. I’ve got somebody for you to meet.” Mara turned toward Kokila’s voice. She saw a dim white shape, like a cloud, but nothing else. The voice itself seemed brittle, changed somehow from the one she remembered. “I can’t see you.” “That’s all right. Go back into the hall and up the steps. To my room.” Mara did as she was told, back into the entrance hall where she’d been left the night before. She stopped at the foot of the stairs. “You go ‹rst,” she said. “Do you have a ›ashlight or something? I don’t know which one your room is.” “A torch. It’s called a torch in England, not a ›ashlight. Doesn’t that sound romantic and medieval and dangerous? A torch. Go on. Last door on the left.” The stairway was steep and narrow, winding in a half-circle as it went up. At the middle point, it was completely dark and con‹ning, like a capsule. Mara heard Kokila’s breathing behind her, but she did not make any noise on the steps. She wondered what kind of shoes could be so silent. In the upstairs hallway, there were only two doors, both lit by moonlight streaming in a window at the end of the hall. The nearly full moon was at the edge of the windowpane, and the sight of it, sailing away, made Mara feel sad and strange, as if she were in a place much farther away and more foreign than England. The door to Kokila’s bedroom was slightly ajar, and a long triangle of ›ickering light spilled out of it. Mara pushed and the door swung inward. She was astonished to see the room lit by what appeared to be hundreds of candles. Eastern music played from a tape, a sitar, a lone, mournful voice, ascending and descending scales. Across the room, a blond girl sat cross-legged on the bed, holding a teacup. She smiled at Mara, took a sip from the cup and placed it on the ›oor next to a tall brown bottle. “Hello,” she said and pushed herself off the bed with surprising force. Her back arched, and her feet landed together on the ›oor next to the bottle, as if she were a gymnast dismounting from the balance beam. “I’m Teresa Gwynne. Greetings, countryman. Countrywoman. My fellow American, as our last president used to say.” 58

“They all say it,” Kokila snorted. She closed the door. “Bloody tiresome.” “Mr. Sutcliffe told me you weren’t back yet,” Mara said, shaking Teresa’s outstretched hand. “I didn’t want to watch the inauguration,” Teresa said. “How was it? Want some cider?” “It was interesting,” Mara said. “Apple cider?” “The hard stuff,” Teresa said, and Mara nodded. Teresa looked at Kokila. “So have you pinched three cups from the dining room?” Kokila moved to a low table and reached under the cloth that covered it. “I think I have ‹ve, actually,” she said. “So. The new president. Did he speak?” She handed the teacup to Mara. “He did. The BBC said it wasn’t very impressive.” “What did Sutcliffe say?” Teresa asked. “‘Nothing for the history books.’” Teresa and Kokila burst out laughing. “He always says that, doesn’t he, Reese?” Kokila said. “He invites us to watch some current events on his telly, and that’s his judgment.” Teresa poured cider into the cup. Mara held it carefully for a moment before she drank, and Kokila and Teresa watched her, amused. It was a gorgeous cup, Mara thought, cream-colored porcelain, with a sky blue band at the lip, and below it the school insignia, a shield with three wheels inside bound together by a cord. She took a sip of the cider, which was cold and sweet, a little ‹zzy, like apple beer, if there were such a thing. “Will this make me drunk?” she asked. “Let’s hope so,” Teresa said. Kokila lit a stick of incense and placed it on her desk. Teresa sat back down on the bed and opened a package of cookies. “These are Eccles cakes,” she told Mara. “Have a seat, by the way. Eccles cakes look like they have a lot of dead ›ies in them, but it’s really raisins.” She and Kokila laughed again, uproariously but not loud. Mara thought she would have to drink fast to catch up with them. She sat down beside Kokila, on a patterned rug with a red border. As she drank, the room became an exotic lair, and she saw that behind the candles, three of the walls were hung with Indian cotton, shades of red and pink and purple. 59

All three patterns were different, but related, shapes like people and animals, but not clearly so. Mara had seen this fabric at the import shop in Upper St. Claire, and she planned to buy one or two pieces to take to college next year. This was, in fact, exactly the room she’d dreamed of making for herself, like a sultan’s tent, where there would be no traces of Pittsburgh. “Kokila says you’re in trouble,” Teresa said suddenly. “I don’t know. I think I am. I don’t even know how to ‹nd out for sure.” “Blood test,” Kokila said. “Was it the boyfriend Had?” “No, no boyfriend,” Mara said. Kokila was puzzled. “Who then?” “I can’t even think about him,” Mara said. “I can’t think about any of it for more than ‹ve minutes.” “You have to,” Kokila said. “Frankie will take you for the blood test.” “If you tell her to,” Teresa said to Kokila, “she will.” “All right,” Kokila said. “We can’t have the new American girl sent home right away in disgrace.” “Why can’t you?” Mara said. “You don’t even know me. Why all this . . . ?” She waved her hand in the air and smiled. The candlelight moved with her, and she stared at it. This room, these girls, the cider, all so lovely and unexpected. “The English girls would like it too much,” Teresa said. “They would all go cluck, cluck, cluck, just like an American to get knocked up. They would all say, you Americans can’t keep your knickers on.” “The English girls are all little fools,” Kokila said. “And hypocrites. At least at this school.” She poured more cider into Mara’s teacup. “Not a single one of them has ever had an idea of her own.” “That is bleak,” Mara said. “Kokila, your room is beautiful. And frightening too.” “Is it frightening, really?” Kokila said. “Or are you frightened in it?” “I don’t know,” Mara said, “but I feel like I never want to leave, so I couldn’t be frightened, could I?” “Some people crave fright, don’t they, Kokila?” Teresa said. “It makes them do stupid things.” Teresa and Kokila exchanged a long look. 60

“Enough about that, all right?” Kokila said. “What I crave is getting the bloody hell out of this school.” Mara closed her eyes. The cider made her feel weightless. Her breasts tingled, and she thought about a baby and those few days in December. She hated the guitar teacher, but he seemed far away, not a danger to her anymore, not even really worth hating. She pictured him very small, at the end of a long string, while she ›oated tethered, miles above. Kokila offered her an Eccles cake, but Mara kept her eyes closed, saying she did not want to look at all those ›ies. She heard Kokila and Teresa laugh, then she felt a sensation of spinning and tipping, and her face was on the soft rug, the top of her head resting against Kokila’s thigh. She felt Kokila’s hand, brushing her hair back, curling it behind her ear. The rug had a sharp, smoky scent to it, a kind of perfume. Kokila’s hand felt large, not like a girl’s, but her touch was light, a mother’s touch. The music seemed to be splintering, the voice moving in and out of cracks between the notes. There’s no absolute pitch, Kokila was saying, twenty-two notes in an octave. Mara began to drift off into sleep, thinking they would take care of her, Kokila and Teresa and Frankie. It was midnight when Kokila shook Mara awake. “Come on,” she said. “Back to your room. I told Frankie you’re still jet-lagged, but now it’s time to go.” Mara sat up. She saw that the candles had been put out and the room was dark except for a pool of light made by the small desk lamp. Teresa had gone back to Lloyd-Williams without her, the cider bottles and teacups were gone too. Mara felt heavy, waterlogged, as if she were listening to Kokila from the bottom of a pool. She rose unsteadily to her feet and struggled into her coat. “Did you talk to Frankie?” “Never mind, never mind,” Kokila said, and she put her ‹nger to her lips. “Can you ‹nd your way back?” “I think so.” “Down the hall, down the stairs, out the back door. It’s a straight line.” She opened the door to her room and took Mara’s arm, gently, led her into the hall. She pointed toward the window, where the moon now peered in from the other side of the pane. “Follow the moon,” she said. “Just walk as if you’re going into it.” 61

Which is what Mara began to do, after feeling her way down the hall and into the back staircase, a sensation like drowning, she thought, the way drowning would look if you could watch yourself do it. She was descending three ›oors down on this side of the building because the land sloped away from the front of the school, to the north, and ran downhill a mile farther to the border of Wales. But the extra ›oor was surprising, and made her wonder if she’d been somewhere else, if she’d been taken away in her sleep by Kokila and Teresa, or Frankie. A home for girls in her condition—her mind felt disordered from the cider, the candles, the incense, the evening watching an American ritual on British television. Then there were no more stairs, and almost utter darkness at the bottom. She knew there should be a door, but she couldn’t see one. “Where am I?” she asked herself quietly. The words sounded as if they had come from outside her body. “You’re here,” a small voice said. “I can see your face. Put your hand out in front of you.” Mara held both arms straight out, and in three steps, her ‹ngers touched the top of a child’s head. “Right. Here I am.” The voice was light and brittle, as if the child weren’t used to talking. “The door is right behind me.” Slowly, slowly, a violet column appeared a foot away from Mara, then grew wider, a rectangle which ‹lled up suddenly with stars, and then the gaping moon, and ‹nally the shapes of school buildings and the rail fences of the neighboring farm. The child was caught for a moment against the dark door, then she stepped into the path beside Mara. A little girl, seven or eight years old. She took hold of Mara’s hand. “I’ll walk with you,” she said. “Who are you?” Mara said. “I mean, thanks for your help, but what’s your name?” “Olwen,” the child said. Her teeth chattered, then stopped. “Olwen,” Mara repeated, remembering Miss Ellis had spoken of this girl. “Hello, Olwen. I’m Mara.” “I know. You’re the American. The new one. You came in the night so nobody would see. That’s what always happens here.” Mara laughed. That voice—there was something about its small, fragile pattering. “Not the middle of the night. But I did come in after dark. It gets dark early here.” 62

“Yes,” Olwen said. “Do you know there are cows right beside us now? Right over there. If you stand very still, you can hear them chewing and snoring.” Olwen pulled a little on Mara’s hand, toward the fence to their right. The moon was so bright, it was possible to see the barn, and beyond it, the path to the farmer’s house. “Isn’t it too cold for the cows to be out?” Mara said. “I don’t know. But don’t look for them. Close your eyes and listen. That’s the only way to hear them.” Mara closed her eyes. How quiet it was! In the middle of the night in Upper St. Claire, there was always the hum of Pittsburgh. Even if the individual sounds—cars, voices, music—weren’t distinct, you could hear that pitch, whine or rumble. She heard Olwen next to her, shifting or shivering. She took hold of the child’s hand more tightly, and realized that neither of them was wearing gloves. The ‹ngers she held were small and cold, and Mara imagined them turning blue and then white. She slipped Olwen’s hand into her coat pocket. And then Mara heard the soft lowing of a cow, a gentle chuff, like human murmuring in a dream. She opened her eyes and gazed up at the English stars—should they look different? The moonlight fell hard on her and on Olwen, and made shadows behind them and a little to the left. She could see Olwen’s eyes were squeezed shut. It was an interesting little face, not beautiful or charming, but intent, with thick dark brows, a perfectly triangular nose, and thin lips. Her dark hair grew in wisps around her face, probably unruly, Mara thought, like everything else about her. She freed her hand from Olwen’s, put her arm around the little girl’s shoulders, and drew her close. “Olwen,” she said. “You’re right. I hear them. But what are you doing up this late and . . .” Mara looked down under the girl’s coat: shoes, stockings, the bottom of a uniform skirt hanging below the hem of the coat. “Still dressed?” “I was waiting for you. I didn’t want you to get lost. You don’t know the grounds yet, and scary things happen.” “What things?” “Girls do things to other girls.” “Tell me what?” “I don’t know.” “Do you walk around at night a lot?” 63

“I do.” “Why?” “We’re fourteen in my dormitory. The others make too much noise at night with all their breathing. It keeps me awake. And I check on things. The cows, the greenhouse, tuck shop. People act badly, and I catch them.” “Really?” Mara said. “All right, well, maybe someday you’ll tell me about it. But right now, let’s do this. We’ll walk to my room. I have a ›ashlight there. What do you call it? A torch. Then I’ll walk you back, and I’ll be learning the way.” Olwen agreed, or seemed to. Mara realized she had stopped feeling the cold—it seemed miraculous, like a change in body chemistry, or some kind of gift from Olwen, passed through her hand. She thought brie›y that she might never want to let this child go, and the idea, those words, brought tears to her eyes. They were now about a hundred yards from Lloyd-Williams. The air was sharp and clear and seemed to open, to melt, as they moved through it. Their feet whispered along the gravel path. They passed the science building, where Mara would have her chemistry class, where all the windows shone with moonlight. She saw her re›ection in the science lab windows, the picture of herself holding a child by the hand, the child a step ahead, leading her, eager. It was a vision, really, of the future, and of the future that would never be, not after the blood test and whatever came next, whatever Frankie or Kokila or Kokila’s mother arranged. Mara and her child, true and not true, possible and not possible. “Here you are,” Olwen said, and then she was gone. Mara heard shoes pattering on gravel, and then the sound was lost. Lloyd-Williams stood hulking and quiet, and so new that the hinges on both sets of doors worked without a sound. The common room was dark, though it gave off the faint scent of something sweet and spicy. Teresa said the Egyptian and Persian girls often stayed up late cooking and talking in their rollicking languages, all hooting and clucking. She’d imitated them, and Kokila had laughed, saying her language sounded like that too, and she spoke quickly: tu bewakoof hain. You have a dull palate for languages, you Westerners, she’d said, for spices and languages. You have two left tongues. Then they’d laughed and toasted with more cider. 64

Mara’s room on the ‹rst ›oor was across the hall and two doors down from Frankie’s. She saw a strand of light glowing at the bottom of Frankie’s door, which then widened and grew large. “Mara.” Miss Franklin stood just inside the door, in a bathrobe. Her voice echoed at a pitch oddly high and formal. “Not so late again, please. Oh—and you and I will have an appointment later this week. I’ll let you know when.” The ‹rst week progressed oddly, haltingly, crippled. Some blocks of time would move quickly, in a heartbeat, breakfast, for instance, over before Mara could ‹nish her single piece of dry toast. Prayers the same, as if she’d slept through it. Olwen left her seat with the younger girls and came to sit beside Mara, then somehow disappeared during the singing of the school song. Her Political Studies class seemed to drag on and on, the word ombudsman intoned over and over by Mrs. Roe. Civil servant. What an odd government the English had. Chemistry after, then morning tea in the common room at Lloyd-Williams. Girls watching the early news on the telly, seven or eight different languages being spoken as girls vied for space in the tiny kitchen. Afterwards, off to read French literature with John Dalglish, who was young and handsome. With a kind of recognition that was electric and painful, Mara noticed the way some of the girls watched him. Then the clatter of lunch, surveyed from the high table, where Mara sat and Teresa served, slipping her extra fruit and some surprisingly good cheese, pale and yellow as butter. “Wait and I’ll walk you to Mellors,” Teresa said, and then led her to the class. Mr. Mellors was beginning Othello with a read-through of the entire play, and the sound of English girls’ voices rendering Shakespeare brought Mara to tears. Finally, at the end of the day, there was choir, where Mara was introduced and asked to sing scales. The room grew quiet as she moved through the warm-up exercises by herself. “That’s lovely, Mara,” Miss Ellis said gently. “What else?” “We use Dvorak for descending scales. ‘Songs My Mother Taught Me.’ Do you know it?” Miss Ellis played and Mara sang. Songs my mother taught me in the days long vanish’d. Seldom from her eyelids were the teardrops banish’d. 65

Now I teach my children each melodious measure. Oft the tears are ›owing, oft they ›ow from my mem’ry treasure. By the end of the song, the room had darkened and stilled. Little breaths escaped as if they had been held for a long time.

On Friday morning, Miss Franklin stopped in the open doorway of Mara’s room. Mara had her back to the door, gathering her notebook for chemistry class. “Miss Robinson,” she said, not loudly but so that anyone walking by might hear, “I’ll take you this afternoon to sort out your traveler’s cheques. We’ll go into Chirk. Four o’clock, in front of the school. You’ll be back in time for the dance at Ellesmere.” “Thank you,” Mara said without turning around. And when she did look, Frankie was gone. Teresa stood in her place, peeling an orange in one long strip. The bright fall of skin seemed garish against her blue uniform. She offered Mara half. “Vitamin C,” Teresa said. “You need it. I heard Frankie. Four o’clock.” “Where’s Chirk?” Mara said. “Next town over. It’s a pretty drive. You pass the Cadbury factory on the way. The smell will probably make you gag.” “Why?” Teresa dropped her eyes quickly to Mara’s belly. “The smell of chocolate in the air like that. It’s—I don’t know—it’s alarming. It’s what Kokila says. We’re not ready for something so rich. Sometimes it drifts this way. You’ll see. On those days, everybody wants to cut class.” She looked at her watch. “Come on. Chemistry. Let’s go blow something up.” Instead, they drew pictures of chemical reactions: lithium aluminum hydride, liberated by water. Mara drew carefully: LiAH(subscript)4, a hexagon, six sides with a tail. “Hexagon,” Teresa said. “Do you see what it looks like?” Sperm, Mara thought, and put down her pencil. Finally, ‹nally, the afternoon waned. At ten minutes before four o’clock, she walked through the games pitch and around to the main 66

school building, which she had learned was called Nye. Kokila sat on the steps of the front portico. She was wearing glasses, which she took off quickly and folded away into a pocket when Mara sat down beside her. “The truth is,” Kokila said, as if they were in the middle of a long conversation, “this happened to me. Last year. Frankie and Ells, they helped. They were bloody brilliant. You’ve ‹gured out about them, haven’t you? That they’re lesbian.” “I didn’t really think about it,” Mara said. “Teresa got it right away, but she’s from New York. All those English cows, they haven’t a clue. And Sutcliffe. ‘Nothing for the history books.’” “Would they be ‹red?” Kokila snapped her ‹ngers. “Sacked. Like that.” Mara stared out across the front lawn, a ›at, brown expanse that ran for a hundred yards or so, up to a high hedge. Beyond the hedge, she knew, there was a road, but they could see no sign of it. There might have been an ocean beyond, or nothing. “It’s actually pretty here in the spring,” Kokila said. “Really. You have to wait and wait, but then one morning, it’s already happened.” “How did you feel?” Mara said. “I mean, well, after.” “Shitty.” “In what way?” “In every way.” Mara did not look at Kokila. She could tell she shouldn’t. The winter afternoon slid into evening. The moment was palpable, like an exhalation of breath. A car’s tires crunched along the gravel, and Frankie pulled up in front of them. Her car was dark blue, a “mini.” Mara knew the name, somehow, for this vehicle, which was smaller than a Volkswagen, comically small. But behind the wheel, Frankie looked grim. She rolled down her window and asked if Kokila were coming as well. “No,” Kokila said quietly. “Once was enough.” Mara walked around behind the car and got in on the other side. Frankie rolled up her window and they started down the long driveway. In the small car, Frankie was extraordinarily close. She wore driving gloves, black leather, which snapped across the backs of her hands. Her hair was a yellowy gray, somewhat less striking up this close, but her 67

skin seemed young and elastic. There was a high color in her cheeks, almost as if she were embarrassed. She did not so much as glance at Mara or speak to her until they were beyond the school drive and a good halfmile down the road. Then she pointed out the window and spoke in a vague way about Roman forti‹cations, which looked like craggy stone teeth set in the hills. The town in the opposite direction, she said, Oswestry, was named for a Lord Oswest, who was beheaded there. She said it was sometimes too rural for the girls, but occasionally not rural enough. Mara nodded but kept quiet. Several yards ahead, a pair of chickens stepped out into the road. Cows grazed behind stone fences, sometimes turning their sweet, absent faces toward the sound of the car. “I think I’d like to be one of those cows,” Mara said after a while. Frankie laughed, tossing her head back a little. “The girls call each other that. So you’ll probably get your wish, at least in name.” “I’ve heard it all week. ‘You bloody cow,’ ‘You stupid cow.’” “What do Americans say?” “You know, I honestly can’t remember.” “Do you want me to come in with you, Mara? I can do that. Or I can take a walk in town.” “I think I’ll go by myself.” “All right. Just tell the assistant your name. You’re to see Dr. Martin.” “Will I need to pay?” “It’s arranged. There’s a tea shop just up the street. The Black Gate. I’ll meet you there.” At Dr. Martin’s of‹ce, there was a urine test and a blood test. Afterwards, while she waited, Mara did not look at the other women in the of‹ce. There were three of them, then four, then two, in their thirties and forties, sitting like statues. She knew they were staring at her, a young girl they did not know, on a Friday. She could only have come from the school, even though she was not wearing the uniform. Why, Mara wondered, did Frankie bring her here, where there would be talk, gossip? She would ask Kokila, who had probably sat in this same place. When? It must have been year before. That must mean something for her arranged marriage in Pakistan. Surely her husband-to-be would have to know.

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The doctor’s assistant called her name and pointed to “Mara Robinson” on a list, then to a plus mark beside it. Mara saw the column full of plusses and minuses, maybe a week’s worth of women’s names, surely not just a day. Blue ink. One minus sign crossed out and a plus next to it. Was that woman happy or sad when she found the news had changed? “Thank you,” the assistant said and lowered her eyes to the appointment book. “Nothing else?” Mara said. “Perhaps,” the woman answered. “You will let us know.” She smiled and inclined her head toward the door. “Goodbye now,” she said. The two tests and the waiting had taken just under an hour. Long shadows stretched up Church Street when Mara let herself out of the doctor’s of‹ce. Not far up the hill, she saw a sign drifting back and forth. The Black Gate. Frankie would be waiting for her there, knowing already, sure of everything. Mara turned and walked in the opposite direction, until she came to a smaller street, an alley really, leading away toward some dark shops and the church. No one saw her, and Mara felt both the hurt and the victory of not being missed. She had, too, a distinct sense of the universe spinning up and away from her body, in this empty street in Chirk, spiraling like a tornado, but transparent as water, a whirlpool in reverse. She believed that nearly everything else in her life would be ‹gured from this date. January 28, 1977. But she knew, too, without having the words for it, that this trouble would end, but it would not be the last or even the greatest. She stepped away from the wall and walked farther up the street, toward the church. The last shop before the churchyard was a rundown-looking place, an antiques shop. “Bygones,” the sign read. Mara stood in front of the window, forcing herself to take big gulps of air. Slowly the items in the window display came into focus: Queen Elizabeth, mugs, plates, picture frames, books of photographs. Red white and blue bunting hung over it all, a string of tiny union jacks. “Silver Jubilee,” the signs read. 1952–1977. The twenty-‹fth anniversary of the queen’s accession to the throne. Mara remembered suddenly a circuitous statement Queen Elizabeth had made about the American colonies: she said the colonies had been lost because the British lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what was

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impossible to keep. She went the long way round saying it, Mara’s history teacher had told the class, but what she means is something about knowing what to give up and how and when. She thought of the last night. The guitar teacher had been that same evening to a bon voyage party, for Mr. Woods, a history teacher, the one, in fact, who had puzzled over Queen Elizabeth’s words about losing the colonies. He was leaving the school, moving to Washington to serve as President Carter’s deputy assistant chief of protocol. He had told her class this with a kind of wild happiness and confusion. She remembered they had all laughed, and Mr. Woods had held out his hands, raised his palms to heaven in a gesture of je ne sais quoi. He was Belgian, by way of Tennessee, and spoke with the slight, strange wisp of two accents. “Does anybody know what it is, chief of protocol?” he asked the class. “You’re the Welcome Wagon,” a girl had said. “The what?” Mr. Woods said. “My mother does it,” the girl replied. “You bring the little soaps, the maps of the city. You tell them how to connect the telephone, set up newspaper delivery, where to buy the best steak.” “I do,” Mr. Woods said. “That’s exactly right. But these people don’t stay, they don’t move in. They’re just visiting. Protocol—it means basically etiquette. For visiting heads of state. Then they go home.” “Nobody really stays,” Mara said suddenly. Mr. Woods went on. “What foods should be served or not served. Hands shaken or not shaken, interpreters, customs, that sort of thing.” “You’ll have to learn to be polite,” Mara said, and instantly regretted it. She had always felt a kind of bond with Mr. Woods. He was different. He was probably like her when he was eighteen. “I will,” Mr. Woods said. He actually smiled at Mara. “It’s true. You understand.” “And have an open mind,” Mara said, unable to stop herself. “Yes,” Mr. Woods said, slowly, thoughtfully, looking at Mara. He spoke from a great distance, as if he were already in Washington. “But also have a mind of my own,” he said gently, “like you do.” The class went quiet. Everyone knew something was happening, but no one could have said what it was. 70

“What about Mrs. Woods?” Mara asked. His wife was a French teacher at the school. “She’s a natural. She will ‹nd the best little soaps.” The class laughed again. Mara felt that an immense change had come over her, that she had grown up all at once. She was happy for Mr. Woods and his wife, sad to lose them, amazed at the way the world could open up in the space of a few minutes, the length of a phone call or an exchange in a classroom. The next day, she put in her application, long after the deadline, for the English exchange program. If the rest of the class was content to be left behind in Pittsburgh, ‹ne for them. Later, the guitar teacher described the Woods’ bon voyage party, the table of exotic foods, the wine. He was happy and surprised to have been invited. “It’s because I’m a classical guitarist,” he told Mara. “Everybody gets to go away,” he’d said sadly, “even little you.” She’d felt sorry for him then, and ›attered, and the rest was, she said to herself now, with a choked laugh, nothing for the history books. Miss Franklin was waiting outside the Black Gate. Mara stopped directly in front of her and looked up at the darkening sky. She nodded her head and watched as Miss Franklin closed her eyes for a moment, then led Mara to her car. “We’ll arrange for you to go to Cambridge, to Kokila’s mother, Mrs. Iqbal,” she said. “Then you can move on, and your life will ‹ll up and ‹ll in this place.” “Will it? I don’t know. I feel like a part of me is going to be walking here in Chirk forever.” She heard Frankie sigh. “You’re so young, Mara. You’re lucky. I think that what you’re saying is quite right. But that’s what happens to people, isn’t it? You leave a little of yourself behind. A part of you will stay at the school, too. You lose little bits and pieces of yourself wherever you go.” “So what’s a person left with?” “If I were an old woman in a book, I would say ‘memories.’ But I’m not. I think what a certain kind of person is left with is a teaching certi‹cate.”

When Miss Franklin turned the car into the school driveway, they saw every light in the main building blazing. Two police wagons were parked by the front steps. 71

“What on earth?” she said. She stopped the car abruptly and pointed out the driver’s side window. The beams of ‹fteen or twenty ›ashlights moved crazily about the games pitch, the southeast end, where a little creek ran on the other side of the wire fence. Three of the ›ashlights broke free and approached the car. As the lights came closer, Mara saw that one of them was held by Miss Ellis, the others by a nurse from the in‹rmary and Mr. Mellors, the English teacher. Miss Franklin rolled down her window, then opened the car door, so that the dome light would ›ash on. Miss Ellis bent and peered into the car. Mara saw her face and knew she would never forget it, that distress, the twist of the features into a kind of pain that was far beyond tears. “Olwen Barnes,” Miss Ellis said. “Have you seen her? She’s run away. I think—I—it’s so dark and cold. I don’t think she has a coat.” Miss Franklin stared straight ahead, then she seemed to come back to herself, turned to Miss Ellis and took her hand. “Louisa,” she said gently, “we’ll ‹nd her.” The pack of wavering ›ashlights had moved farther up the creek, away toward the other end of the school grounds. Mara knew there was a car park there, but what else she wasn’t sure. High hedges and a path between them. The beams of light bobbed out of sight. “Don’t go get mixed up in that.” Miss Ellis nodded toward the police cars. “Leave the car here for me in case I need to go . . . somewhere.” Mara and Miss Franklin got out and walked the rest of the way up the drive. The police cars were empty, but a radio clicked and scratched, like a rodent, like a little animal had got in and was looking for crumbs and crusts. They let themselves in the front door of Nye and hurried past Mr. Sutcliffe’s study. Mara glanced in and saw a police captain at the desk, talking into the telephone, holding the receiver in one hand and shielding his eyes with the other. He was speaking quickly, and his voice was very low, dangerous, the hum of an electric razor, a carving knife. They passed down the hall, through the back foyer where Olwen had met Mara a few days ago, and out the door. They hiked back up the gravel road, past the classroom buildings, the refectory, the barn. Inside, there was a stillness like sleeping. Most of the sixth form would have gone on the bus, to the Ellesmere dance. “Maybe Olwen was a stowaway,” Mara said. 72

“We thought of that,” Teresa called from her room. “We’ve called Ellesmere and asked them to search the bus.” Miss Franklin unlocked the door to her rooms, then stood still with the key in her hand. It was hard to tell if she was on her way in or out. She didn’t seem intent upon going anywhere. “Miss Franklin?” Mara said. Teresa came out of her room. “Little Olwen,” Miss Franklin said, and her voice cracked and her arms dropped to her sides. “Teresa? What do you know about this?” “Nothing,” Teresa said. “We don’t really know how long she’s been gone.” “Miss Ellis adores her. She’s like a daughter—but such sadness. A child so young. How can such a little girl have such large unhappiness?” She swayed a little on her feet. “Do you want to sit down?” Teresa said. “Or were you going out to help?” Miss Franklin remained standing. “I’m no help.” She said it almost briskly, as if changing the subject, but she did not move. Mara had a sudden, overwhelming notion that the door to Miss Franklin’s rooms ought to be closed, that something terrible was about to happen, or to be said. She turned toward the hallway. “Don’t go just yet, girls. Please.” Mara looked at Teresa, who opened her eyes very wide and nodded her head. “Can we make you some tea?” Mara said. “No thank you,” Miss Franklin said. “I’ll just wait to hear from Miss Ellis.” “You know what?” Teresa snapped her ‹ngers. “I have some brandy in my room. I know I’m not supposed to, but I’m eighteen, and . . .” Miss Franklin laughed and dropped into the armchair. Her face seemed to brighten. “Oh Teresa! What do you think I would say about a girl with brandy in her room? Go get it. That’s what I would say. Mara, come sit with me and let’s talk for a moment. Let’s talk about a problem solved for once, shall we?” Teresa opened the door and disappeared down the hall. They heard her key in the lock and the squeal of the hinges, the opening and closing of her closet door. Then she knocked twice and let herself into Miss Franklin’s room. She held the bottle of brandy under her coat. 73

“There are glasses above the sink,” Miss Franklin said. Teresa passed into the kitchen and came back into the sitting room with three glasses that had once been jelly jars. The sight of them caused Mara’s heart to pull tight inside her chest, a sadness, an inkling about Miss Franklin’s life in a place where the things she had either belonged to the school or were cannibalized this way, reinvented as less, as empty. She wondered if Miss Franklin had anything of her own besides the clothes she wore, the sturdy woolen trousers and thick sweaters, the dark green anorak she still had on. They sipped their brandy and listened. The few sixth-form girls who had not gone to the dance now clattered downstairs and turned on the television. Something American, Mara could tell from the theme music, then the accents. Familiar. Starsky and Hutch, she thought. The Persians, Kokila had said, hate dances and love Starsky and Hutch. Mara already liked the Persians, who seemed shy and sweet. Azi, Shantih, and Afsaneh. Afsaneh had a fear of the dark so deep and passionate that it was enviable. Shantih was an artist, thin and somewhat strangelooking, with a square nose, like a cartoon dog’s snout. Her name means “peace,” Kokila had said, and there was a note in her voice, jealousy, as if she wanted the name, the quality of it. Mara wished she were sitting in the common room with them, in the easy dark, gazing at those two American heroes and their rough world where trouble came and stayed for only a half-hour at a time. Frankie, Mara noticed, held her jelly glass but did not ever bring it to her lips. She seemed to be hearing sounds other than the television, outside, far away. Her listening began to seem more and more enraged. There was a whirling force in the room, a kind of frenzy. No one moved except Teresa, who was staring at the carpet, tracing the pattern with her index ‹nger. There was gun‹re from the television and Teresa looked up. “Does this have something to do with Kokila?” she said. “You should ask her when she comes back from Ellesmere,” Miss Franklin said. There was no curiosity in her voice, just pure weariness. It was not exactly an answer to Teresa’s question, more like some kind of code. They two knew what had been asked and what the reply had meant. There was no mystery, not really. Mara knew that she was being powerfully excluded. 74

“She wanders off a lot,” Mara said. “Who does?” Miss Franklin asked. “Olwen. Miss Ellis told me about her the ‹rst morning I was here.” “But now it’s night,” Miss Franklin said. “Do the others know?” Mara pointed toward the common room. “It’s best not to alarm everyone,” Miss Franklin said. “And think about it,” Teresa added. “If a lot of the parents heard that girls got lost at night . . .” “Some parents would hardly mind,” Miss Franklin was saying. Teresa gazed absently at Mara and then went back to her contemplation of the carpet. Mara saw her lips move, as if she were counting or praying. From the common room, there was music, rolling on, a guarded song, perfect for the closing credits, an air of jubilation with just enough half-steps up the scale to give the impression that there was more trouble just around the corner, always more trouble. She heard the Persians talking farther away, in the kitchen, and then a rattle of pots and lids. More girls trooped downstairs, and the room ‹lled up again with twittering and laughter, the warm tongue-clacking of their language. Someone turned on music, a tape sent from home, sitars playing, a reed instrument, mournful singing. “They’re having their own party,” Mara said. “Those girls.” Miss Franklin sighed. “I don’t worry about them. They seem to know how to make themselves happy.” “Why do you think that is?” “They’re not so Western,” Teresa said. “They’re closer to the center of things, but they know it’s not them. They’re not the center.” Miss Franklin looked into her glass of brandy and smiled wanly but still did not drink. Mara leaned back against the bookcase. “Shouldn’t we just ask them if they’ve seen Olwen?” she said. “I’m getting an idea,” Teresa whispered. “She told me something the other day. About candy bars. Eating candy bars in secret, with— some others. I think I know where she might be.” Miss Franklin stood up and handed her glass to Mara. “Where? The tuck shop?” Teresa nodded, and they hurried out of Miss Franklin’s rooms into the hallway. The sounds from the kitchen, music and talking, were almost riotous, and the smell of food cooking was pungent and full, food 75

that was sweet and sour, salty and thick with spice, the woven spell of curry and cardamom and hot pepper. The tuck shop stood by itself on the west side of the school, straight across the games pitch from the search. It looked like an old shed, a garage or gardener’s storage. There was a door on the north end and low windows along the front. Mara saw right away that it would be easy, even for a little girl, to climb in one of the windows if she could pry it open. But there was nobody in sight, and Miss Franklin’s disappointment was palpable. She tried the door handle. Locked. Teresa walked along the windows, shining her ›ashlight inside and calling Olwen’s name. Mara could see nothing but a high counter which seemed to divide the room in half, lengthwise. Behind the counter were shelves of sweets, the “tuck” that girls could buy three days a week, chocolate bars and potato crisps, chewing gum, sacks of hard candies and jellies. It looked to Mara so orderly and closed up as to be infuriating, a tease. “Olwen?” Miss Franklin called. “Are you there? Please come out, dear. You’re not in any trouble. We won’t call your—anybody. Miss Ellis is so worried.” “Olwen,” Teresa called. “I’m here and Mara is here.” Silence. “Olwen,” Mara called. “Do you have a coat?” “No,” a little voice came back. Then sobbing. “Is Gina with you?” “Open the door for us, Olwen,” Teresa said. There was a slight shuf›ing, the sound of boxes, but not heavy ones, being pushed aside. Frankie, Teresa and Mara moved around to the door. “You can unlock it from the inside,” Frankie said, “if you just pull the handle down.” There was more shuf›ing and a long, loud click as Olwen pulled the door in toward herself. Teresa was being careful, Mara noticed, not to shine the light directly into Olwen’s face, so the ‹rst thing they saw were two bare feet, and naked legs above them. The tops of the feet were very white, bloodless. Olwen sobbed, and they saw then that she was stark naked. Frankie seemed to be ‹ghting to speak, but she could not. She unbuttoned her anorak, shrugged it off and put Olwen into it. “What happened to you? Olwen! God!” Teresa cried. She knelt 76

down beside Frankie and aimed the ›ashlight at Olwen’s throat and face, stained and dirty from crying. Five red welts bloomed above and below her chin. “Let’s get you inside and warmed up,” Miss Franklin said. “Mara, will you go to Miss Ellis and the others, and tell them she’s been found? Just that much. Tell them she’s in my rooms.” “You want me to go?” Mara said. “But . . . I don’t really—” “You go. Please.” “All right,” Mara said. “Where do you think they are by now?” “Cross the games pitch and go through the hedges toward the amphitheatre. Follow the dry creek. You’ll see their lights. Here. Take my torch.” “All right,” Mara said again. She turned and immediately the darkness outside the ›ashlight grew monstrous and impenetrable. Frankie called after her to walk straight along the gravel. After she’d taken just a few steps along the path, the voices were suddenly muf›ed, swallowed up by the darkness and their coats and the maze of hedges that bordered the games pitch. She walked until she came up against the façade of the school’s chapel, then moved closer to the building, leaned her whole weight against the stone statue of St. Mary beside the door. Held back for more than four weeks, the tears came in a rush, and she knocked her ‹st hard against the stone as if she were asking to be let inside. “I think I’ll never ‹nd Stephen Sondheim,” Mara whispered. She thought she ought to go into the chapel and explain her situation, to the air, to whatever spirits resided there. But really, what was there to explain? St. Mary had been hearing it forever, endless, dull as the wind. Did the voices all sound the same after a while, so that she ho-hummed through the petitions? This, though, was the Anglican Mary, so it might be that she perceived things differently. Did this Mary ever come to know a certain pitch or range and think to herself, oh no, it’s you again, as her saintly heart ‹lled with apprehension? Or delight. Maybe some petitions brought forth a wave of happiness and relief, almost enough to make Mary lift her stone arms as she recognized the voice of her dearest child.

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÷ THREE

Mara thought she must have slept. She was lying on the couch, her shoes were off, the room was dark, though there was some uneasiness about the light at the edges of the window that suggested dawn, or the idea of it anyway. Phil had come back from Union Station a few hours before. Nothing, he said. Nobody saw her or talked to her or remembered selling her a ticket, but it would be hard, really, to know for sure. Mara sent him into the guest room to sleep, and he went willingly, exhausted. She made more coffee and stood drinking it, then walked from window to window, through the dining room, the downstairs study, past the front windows, the tall casement between the bathroom and the foot of the stairs. She circled twice through these rooms, watching and listening. The world seemed profoundly still and empty—blank, as if nothing, nothing, had ever happened. She felt a spike of fear rise along her breastbone, and recalled Overby’s voice on the telephone, a voice in a dream. She crossed quickly then, through the kitchen to the living room window, and opened the blinds. She stared across the street at the school, watched until she saw one of the custodians, Clive Fessenden, shoveling the snow. Old as he was, Mara was relieved to have him nearby. His heart, though. She would go over and tell him to stop, call for someone younger. The driveway needed a plow, not a shovel. She packed up a sandwich and the rest of the coffee, then put on her boots and coat and walked back through the living room to let herself out the front door. It wasn’t far from the front steps to where Clive stood. If need be, she could call out to him, run down into the street. Outside the air was clean and cold, kni‹ng down into her lungs. Clive was gone, but she could hear the scrape of a shovel from behind the chapel. Sounds seemed both muf›ed and magni‹ed: the turn of the key and the sliding of the bolt rang all the way down the street. A car ap78

proached and slowed. Mara could see a ‹gure at the wheel, hunched inside a dark coat. A man. He turned in his seat to look at her coming down the front walk, slowed almost to a stop, raised his right hand to wave. Then he gunned the engine, and the car ‹shtailed a little on the icy road. Mara could not tell who it was. She crossed the street and trudged her way through the snow on the driveway. Four inches, maybe six. She couldn’t remember the last time there was so much snow in Washington. She looked down at her boots, sinking and rising, and she thought she could be in any one of the snowy cities she knew: Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Salt Lake City, Oswestry. She had trudged through weather like this in Boston, with baby Rachel, moving slowly toward a different stone building, to visit John in his of‹ce. Time seemed to collapse and Mara felt dizzy. She looked up. Clive had ‹nished the pathway between the administration building and the chapel. She heard a motor behind her and turned to see a white truck struggling up the driveway. She walked back a ways and saw the name on the side panel: Capitol Florist. The wedding. Imagine being married today, in this weather. A white wedding, she thought, the joke John would have made. She waved to the driver of the truck and unlocked the glass doors to the main school building. The warm air from inside felt tropical. Six potted palms bore out the illusion. As she turned the key in the of‹ce door, she heard the telephone ringing, then the school’s message. There was a pause, followed by little gasping breaths. “Mom,” the voice said, tiny, far away. “It’s me, Mom. I’m OK. I’m sorry.” Mara grabbed at the receiver, fumbled, brought it to her ear. “Rachel! I’m here. I’m here. Don’t hang up. Where are you?” “With friends. I’m ‹ne.” “Where? In D.C.? I’ll come get you.” “No. It’s OK.” “Please, Rachel. I’ll come right now.” “I’m not ready. I just need to be . . . I just want to rest. Out of the house.” Rachel started to cry then. “I didn’t even want to call you there. Dad’s voice on the machine . . . the house is too sad.” “Then we’ll move. We have to anyway. Just let me come get you.” “I will. Not today. But I’ll call you.” “Where are you?” 79

“I’m ‹ne.” “Is Gurtej with you?” “I’m ‹ne, Mom. I’ll call you later.” “Tell him he should be in assembly this week.” “He knows, Mom. He’ll be there. He’s a good person.” “Rachel—” Mara’s voice broke. “Mom. Please don’t. We just can’t cry anymore, OK?” “I was so worried. Fern is worried.” “I talked to her, just now.” “You did?” “I saved you from that.” Mara laughed a little. “Yes, you did. Thank you. But please, please don’t ever do this again.” “Mom, it’ll be just like that when I go to college.” “But then I’ll know where you are!” “You really think so?” Mara knew she was right. Every moment of every day, Rachel would be missing. “Please let me come get you.” “Not yet.” “Well.” Mara took a breath. “Then just talk to me. Just for a little while.” There was a long pause. “Mom,” Rachel ‹nally said, her voice ragged, “I feel scared. I feel panicked all the time.” “About what?” “Everything. I feel like I have to rush through everything just to get to the end of it. So I can stop. But then there’s always something else.” “It’s a good thing in a swimmer.” “But not anywhere else. Not out of the water. Not even in the water all the time. Do you know how many false starts I have this season?” “How many?” “It averages out at two per meet. I swim three events. And that’s not even counting practices.” What should I say? Mara wondered. What does she really mean? What does she want me to say? “But it’s bigger than swimming. Is that what you mean?”

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“I just . . . when I’m not scared, I’m just numb. Numb and scared, back and forth.” “I think it will be good for us to move. Out of the house, out of Washington. You need to get started on something new.” “But it’s still six months! Maybe longer. I don’t think I can stand it.” “I know, I know. Let’s . . . let’s do this. When the rest of the college letters come—” “Why do you say letters and not acceptances?” “OK. When the acceptances come, and you start to make decisions, we’ll go visit. Wherever you want. We’ll take a trip. Abby’s in Boston, and the Imberts are in Palo Alto. We’ll go and we’ll case the joint, as my mother says, buy the sweatshirts, all that. I never visited college before I went, and when I got there, I felt like an idiot.” “Mom—can I ask you something?” “Of course.” Mara felt a cold blade in her heart. “What happened to your life?” “What do you mean?” “Your singing.” “I just stopped. I had you.” “You mean you had to stop because of me?” Mara heard the shade of accusation, the rising sadness in Rachel’s voice. “No,” she said, “no—but my voice changed. It fell apart. I pushed it too hard. So many things, all together, from the beginning—” “When you were my age?” “Even then. Yes.” Mara thought, just keep her on the phone, talk her down, talk her home. “At your age. For one thing, I never really found the right teacher. You need a teacher—you and the teacher have to ‹nd a way to talk you can both understand. Sometimes it’s not even the words you say, sometimes it’s a tone of voice or a gesture. But I never quite found that person.” “Or you didn’t look hard enough.” “Maybe. Or maybe I didn’t have a distinctive enough sound. That was said once, in a review. And my voice did change, in my thirties—” “After you had babies.” She wants me to say all this, Mara thought. I don’t know why, but she does. “I sang more and harder after. I thought I could hear some-

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thing happening to my singing—changing ranges, dropping, clouding over, or under. Not a bell, but a whistle, was what your dad said. I’d had this ice-cold soprano, or been a soprano . . .” “Do you have it, or are you it?” “That’s a good question, Rache. An amazing question. I think if I knew the answer to that, I’d still be singing.” Rachel was quiet for what seemed like a long time. “Rachel?” Mara said gently. “Are you still there? Is that what you want to know? Does that answer your question?” “Sort of.” “Can I come get you?” “Not yet, Mom. But I’ll call you.” “Please, Rachel.” “Mom. Let go a little.” “All right.” Mara closed her eyes, pressed the ‹rst ‹ngers of her left hand hard against her forehead. “OK. I’ll be here for a while. I’m working on a talk. Then I’m supposed to have a rehearsal at Georgetown. Should I go? Should I stay at the house? Tell me what I should do.” “I’m OK. Go to rehearsal. They need you.” “You’re more important.” “No, I know that. You go. You need them.” “Oh honey.” Mara stopped, steadied her breath. “All right. That’s good. I’ll talk to you after. Call me. I love you, Rachel.” “I love you too, Mom.” Mara drew a breath, and held it. She wanted Rachel to hear the absolute silence of her not-breathing and then the letting go. “Are you with Gurtej?” “Yes.” “And his mother?” “Yes.” After Rachel said goodbye, Mara sat at the desk for some minutes without moving. Finally, she drew a pad of paper from the drawer and printed carefully at the top of the ‹rst page: Stop crying! What happened to your life? She wrote for an hour and a half, until the chapel bells began to ring, and then she sat back in John’s chair, astonished by how utterly she had been out of her body. She was amazed to have hands, even 82

though one of them, the hand holding the pen, felt cold at the ‹ngertips. The sensation of her legs crossed under the desk came to her fully, and then the persistent ache behind her right eye. She unwrapped the sandwich she had brought and ate it, drank coffee from the thermos. The bells tolled, full and sweet, like girls singing. Another headmaster had remarked upon this some years before, saying how ‹tting it was to be in the presence of girls’ voices, calling them, insistent, that it was good preparation for the rest of the boys’ lives. Some of the female teachers had taken him to task for that, but Mara thought he was right. She pushed the chair back from the desk and turned to look out the window. A black limousine was parked close to the chapel door, and a white one, like a queen in an ermine cape, was just gliding in behind it. The wedding party. Mara watched as a young woman was helped out of the back seat. The girl was talking to a man who was obviously her father, and neither one of them was smiling. She wore a huge dark coat over her white dress—it must have been the father’s coat—and a tiara. There was a silence and solemnity about it all, or maybe the snow muf›ed the sounds of their voices. Mara turned over the pages of the yellow legal pad she’d been writing on. Nine, single-spaced. Unbelievable. She didn’t want to read it, not now. Maybe at home tonight, with Rachel. Maybe. She sat for a moment, her hands folded as if in prayer, then dropped her forehead onto the ridges her bent ‹ngers made. She wanted to say something to John, wherever he was, ask him to bring Rachel home, to give assurances. She would wait to hear his answer. But it seemed that every word she possessed was in those nine pages. Faintly at ‹rst, organ music rose up from the chapel. Mara looked at the clock on the desk. Ten minutes past eleven. She thought she must be hearing the processional. They were just beginning. Wait! she wanted to call down to them. You don’t have any idea what you’re doing. It took ten minutes to pack up her bag, straighten the desk, put on her coat and boots. In the hallway, four boys sat at a table studying, quizzing each other. Latin. They stopped when they saw Mara, said hello, Mrs. Raynor. Mara waved and smiled, embarrassed that she did not know them all by name. They looked heartbreakingly young, and the picture they made—four skinny boys inside on a snowy day, declining, declining—saddened her deeply. 83

“You’re working hard,” she said as she passed by the table. “Not too hard,” one of the boys said. “That was a pretty good snow we got last night, wasn’t it?” The boys nodded, and one of them asked if she needed help shoveling her driveway. “No, thank you. But you boys make sure you get out to play in it before it all melts.” “We will,” two of the boys said in unison, and then said “jinx!” Mara shuddered, then wished them good luck with their Latin. She let herself out of the administration building and crossed the courtyard, knowing where she had meant to go all along, even before she had left her own house. Snow had begun falling again, and the wind had risen, so that it seemed the ›akes came from above and below. The brass handle of the chapel door was icy cold, and Mara realized she’d forgotten her gloves. As soon as she pulled on the handle, she felt the heavy door being opened from inside, and she stepped back. Silently, the door swung inward, and there stood Alex Ingersoll. Mara understood at once that he was acting as a school usher for the wedding—the older boys had duties like this. He smiled and motioned her inside. There was something else in his face that Mara did not quite comprehend, some worry, some sadness. The chapel was small and dark but very beautiful. It had about it a subterranean gothic feel, the dark ages gone underground and made darker. One noticed a certain disorganization, too, about the space, a lack of architectural order, too many pillars and beams, and none of them evenly spaced. With the pews ‹lled, there was a slight sense of chaos, of a meeting hastily called, of fear. Mara wondered why any woman would want to be married in a place like this. Alex directed her to a seat, but she shook her head no and went to stand in the center of the back wall, where she could have a view of the altar. The bride and groom were kneeling before the minister, who wore a simple white robe, making him appear somehow deeply connected to the bride, almost a part of her body. The groom, in a black tuxedo, seemed the stranger, the odd man out. Almost as soon as Mara had settled herself against the wall, the couple stood and turned to face each other, and Mara saw that the bride was very young, and pregnant. The groom was young too, but not disarmingly so. He looked familiar, and 84

Mara thought he might have been a senior a year or two before. Maybe that was why Alex was an usher, maybe they had been friends, were friends. Mara felt cold suddenly, and tired. She remembered something then about the wedding invitation: “The Honorable and Mrs.” This was a judge’s daughter, a congressman’s daughter. That was why everyone looked so distinguished, so stiff, so utterly horri‹ed. The bride, too, appeared to want to run, to bolt. Every minute or so, or less, she turned away from the groom and the minister, turned fully toward the congregation and the aisle, and seemed to be contemplating the back door, calculating the distance. Once, her eyes locked with Mara’s, and when it happened again, a strange expression ›ew across her face: recognition, hope, pleading. Mara wondered at this vision of herself as she never was, and how much it all seemed like a dream, the jumble of hilarious details: the groom’s earring, the one unlit candle among the six on the altar, wet footprints on the red carpet leading down the aisle, the bride’s tiara. When the minister asked for the rings, to bless them, he dropped one, and it rolled away toward the front pew. A tall man stepped into the aisle, picked up the ring and returned it to the bride. This caused some mirthless laughter. The back door opened then, and Gurtej Bandasari stepped into the chapel. He extended his hand to Alex, and after the briefest pause, Alex clasped it, then shook, once, hard. Alex then dipped his head in Mara’s direction, and Gurtej looked over at her. He did not appear surprised. He smiled and made a little bow, then moved quietly across the back of the chapel to stand beside her. “Where is Rachel?” Mara whispered, and Gurtej shook his head. She asked again, and again he shook his head, and she could not get his meaning. A woman began to sing. Mara knew the song, “Evergreen.” The voice belonged to her ‹rst soprano, and it was, as ever, lovely, perfect, less brassy than Streisand’s—the version Mara knew—on the high notes. It ‹lled the chapel, exactly, got into every corner, inside every glove. It is a glove, Mara heard the words in John’s voice, that’s what this song is. Gurtej touched her arm lightly, then took her hand and pressed it against his chest. She could feel the outline of the kirpan, and she drew her hand back quickly. She didn’t understand what he meant, what he was trying to tell her. She looked at him, and Gurtej looked 85

back at her, and smiled. There is nothing in that smile, she thought, alarmed, but she did not know really what she meant by the word nothing. It seemed far beyond her ability to understand. And in the next moment, Mara saw it, the thick dark braid, the frizzed hairs escaping from it, and as she was making her way from seeing to knowing, the woman—Kokila—turned, as if she had heard a noise, something louder than the bright voice singing. As the shoulders moved, the crimson silk of her sari, the scarf-like dupatta ›uid, seemed to run like blood. There was gold stitching along the collar, Mara could see it now, the pro‹le, and then Kokila’s face, the same café au lait of her skin, the dark circles under her eyes. And as Mara watched Kokila’s gaze move across the back of the chapel, she felt, again, Gurtej’s hand on hers, drawing it to his body, holding her hand there, hard against the knife, until his mother found them, saw them. Kokila’s expression did not change, not really, though a set of parallel lines appeared and disappeared in her forehead, between her eyebrows, the ghost of worry, of surprise. Mara moved her hand from underneath Gurtej’s and stepped away from him. She knew how it must look to Kokila, but she could not help herself. The song was over, and the wedding guests applauded. There was the ‹nal blessing of the bride and groom, and then the minister turned the couple toward the congregation and introduced them into their new life as husband and wife. Mara did not know the name, only that it sounded familiar, American, three given names followed by the single syllable and then a number. The bride’s name was gone, vanished into the thin air of an abbreviation. Everyone stood, applauding again, a little wildly, Mara thought, the sound of it strange in her ears, bursts like gun‹re, or like the gesture of releasing something—dust, a spell. The organ began the recessional, a piece the school used for graduations, called “Crown Imperial,” and Mara wondered if the boy, the groom, the husband, the father, thought about that, the way this music had moved him on in life. It had a kind of pulse to it, and also the sensation of running, of ›ight. It was music meant for large halls, cathedrals, open spaces where the eye had room to move. In the tiny chapel, it was monstrous, taunting. Go ahead, it sang; you’re just running in place. The bride and groom moved off the altar, down the muddy red carpet. The bride had been crying, Mara saw 86

as they came closer, and as they passed the last full pew of guests, her face rumpled up like a blanket, blushed hard red, and she began to weep again. The groom gazed around, frantically searching for someone, Alex maybe, to open the chapel doors and let them out. But where would they go? The courtyard was piled with snow, the driveway icy, the whole world closed down. They would get into a long dark car and wait for someone to take them away. The wedding guests began to spill out of the pews into the middle aisle and greet each other, embrace and kiss and talk about the weather. Mara saw the the soft fawn color of Kokila’s cheek, then the ›ash of crimson and gold. Their eyes met, and Kokila smiled. For an instant, the years melted away, and Kokila was head girl again, a gleaming vessel of knowledge and power. Then time rushed back toward her. She felt Gurtej move from her side and toward his mother. She caught his sleeve and whispered, “Just tell me she’s all right?” Gurtej smiled and nodded his head. The minister, coming down the side aisle, saw her standing alone. He guided her toward the chapel’s east door and held it open. “Mrs. Raynor,” he said. “How are you?” Mara realized she was supposed to know this man, but she didn’t have any idea what his name might be. She wondered if she should answer his question truthfully. “A bit distracted,” she said, raising her hand toward her house across the street. “Yes,” he said. “Good thinking to cancel school after that storm. Sun’s coming out now, though.” The minister stepped closer to the building, pulled a pack of cigarettes from the folds of his robe. He shook one loose, put it between his lips, found a packet of matches. Mara waited. It seemed there was more to be said. He drew in heavily, coughed and laughed. Smoke poured crazily from his nose and mouth. “Those poor kids.” “She looked young.” “Eighteen.” He shook his head. “I guess it’s the right thing to do.” “You have a daughter,” the minister said. “I can’t even think about it,” Mara said. “Please.” 87

“No. Don’t. Don’t think about it.” “It’s too cold to think.” “It is.” The minister took one last desperate drag on the cigarette, dropped it, pushed the remains into the snow. “They’ll be wanting me for pictures now.” He took Mara’s right hand in both of his. “You need gloves. Take care, Mrs. Raynor.” “Yes,” Mara said. “Thank you.” When the minister had disappeared around the side of the chapel, Mara started out across the parking lot toward home. It was slow going, exhausting, slightly uphill, a kind of high stepping to move through snow this deep. She fought the sensation of falling sideways and backwards, and ‹nally, she stopped and looked east toward Normanstone Park. It would be so easy to wander away down there. She could be lost in a matter of minutes, the roads obscured by snow, the creek itself the only clear path through the trees, frozen in some places but not in others, impossible to be sure what was safe and solid. The walking would keep her warm for a while, and she would either come out of the park in a place she recognized, or she never would. She remembered Pittsburgh, and wandering with Phil along the creek behind their house. It was summer, and there was the sense they’d fallen into a groove or fold in the earth, a place where walking was more like ›oating. Mara tried to use that same gliding step now, but in the ‹rst block she slipped twice, and then fell hard, sideways, landing with her face in the snow. “This is why I need a driver,” she said out loud. “What?” a voice called. Her ‹rst soprano, Sharon Greene. “Mrs. Raynor?” Sharon appeared then, from the other side of the chapel, walking quickly toward her. There was a man a pace or two behind, and Mara tried to push herself up, to get away. “Are you OK?” Sharon said, and the man caught up to them, put his hand on Sharon’s back. “We weren’t exactly following you.” She turned her head half away to indicate the man, who, Mara saw, was older, maybe close to Mara’s own age. He reached out his hand, Mara took it, and he pulled her to her feet. “This is Jeffrey,” Sharon said. “We can walk you home.” “Thank you,” Mara said. “That would be nice. It’s pretty slippery.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jeffrey take Sharon’s hand.

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“So,” Mara said ‹nally, “you sang very well just now.” “You were there?” Mara nodded, and Sharon spoke in a rush. “I hardly had time to rehearse it. The wedding was, well, you saw. Sudden.” “Do you know them?” “She’s a friend.” Sharon stopped talking and looked up at Jeffrey. “She’ll be OK, I think. They live in New York, and he’s with a Dutch bank.” “They look so young,” Mara said. “They are so young. But I guess New York is a good place to be young in.” “You’re headed there,” Jeffrey said, an odd tone to his voice, mournful and bright at the same time. “I hope so,” Sharon said. “You’re good enough,” Jeffrey said quietly. “I think so too,” Mara said. “That’s what people keep saying, but I don’t know if I want to go. I’m pretty comfortable here. I could be happy enough, I think. Doing what you’re doing, you know, the directing thing, the teaching. But you don’t want to hear about my problems.” “I do, actually.” Mara turned toward Sharon. The girl’s face was so sweet and round, the kind of face that would stay childlike for years and then age suddenly, overnight. She wore a string of pearls, always, even to rehearsals, with blue jeans and a sweatshirt. Mara felt suddenly the urge to ask about the pearls, what they meant to her, where they had come from. From Jeffrey? Her father? She was someone’s daughter. Like Rachel. “I’ve got to get going,” Jeffrey said, and Mara suddenly understood that he was a secret. She turned away to search for her keys, found them and lost them in her bag on purpose, again, and then a third time. When she turned back, he was already walking away, head bent, hands jammed into his coat pockets. Sharon was gazing after him. Mara linked her arm through Sharon’s. “Hmm,” she said. “Hmm is right,” Sharon answered. “Jeffrey is . . .” Mara waved her hand in the air. “You don’t have to tell me.”

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“Married.” “You should de‹nitely go to New York.” “I know.” “I won’t tell,” Mara said. “Thanks,” Sharon said. She turned then and gazed up the street. Away from her singing voice, she seemed younger, the high school girl she’d been not long ago, shy even. “So where does Rachel want to go to college?” “She’s not sure. She’s still thinking about it. I’m waiting for her to tell me, I guess.” Mara thought she knew what Sharon wanted to say next, and she tried to ease away from it, by easing toward. “She was talking about it, or just starting to, with her father. And then, you know, the conversation stopped.” “Mrs. Raynor,” Sharon said after a pause. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m so afraid of saying the wrong thing to you.” Mara moved to embrace Sharon. The girl sobbed in her arms. This should be Rachel, Mara thought. Why isn’t this Rachel? “It’s all right,” she said. Her own eyes were dry. “Everybody says the wrong thing. There’s no way not to. There’s no right thing. It hasn’t been invented. It never will be.” “I’m so sorry,” Sharon said. “That’s pretty close to the right thing, I think,” Mara said. “Now, blow your nose. Everyone will think I’ve been mean to you.” She laughed. “I’m only mean to the boys. I’ll see you later at rehearsal, OK?” She stood in the drive and watched Sharon walk away—to what place? To whom? No one really knows, she thought. Why should I expect to know? Above her, the house seemed to lean under the weight of the snow, to hang in cold balance, but she went in. Phil stood in the middle of the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee, as if he’d been frozen that way, as some sort of still point in the turning world. He looked up at Mara from worlds away but read her expression immediately. His shoulders dropped a little, and the cup wobbled in his hands. “You heard from her,” he said. “She’s OK.” “She’s OK. She called the of‹ce. She’s with Kokila. At Kokila’s

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house, I should say.” She told Phil about the wedding and Gurtej’s wordless reassurance. “You had a call here too.” “Arthur?” Phil nodded. “Did you talk to him or just listen?” “I talked.” “Oh dear.” “He sounds . . . I don’t know. On the edge of something. His wits, maybe.” “He’s had his share of trouble.” “I know. I don’t think that’s a good enough excuse. But I assume that’s why you’re not telling anybody about these calls.” Mara didn’t answer. She closed her eyes and saw Arthur Overby as she always did when he wasn’t standing right in front of her. She remembered him presiding desperately over the funerals of his wife and son three years ago in the small east-facing chapel, how he ran the two ceremonies as if they were board meetings or focus groups or fact-‹nding missions, how unequal to these occasions he was, how everyone present saw this. How little she had understood it then, that inability to make the proper gesture, to acknowledge the reality of death. Then it came over her, last October, the memory she tried to close her mind against, but never could: the kiss Arthur had pressed upon her and that she had not rejected forcefully enough, two days after John died. “I feel . . .” she began. “I think I know how he felt.” Phil moved closer and placed his hands gently on Mara’s shoulders. “All that feeling just drags you under.” “I’m already under. Anyway, he’ll settle down. Arthur will. This will all blow over with the new head search going on.” Mara stepped back into a patch of sunlight. Weak as it was, she could still feel the warmth spread across her back. “And you need to get to work.” A minute later, she was watching her brother cross the backyard, let himself out the gate and get into his car. She followed the car’s progress as long as she could, moving from one window to the next, through the dining room, the study, the reception room, the front door. “Let’s get a dog,” she said out loud, as if Rachel, or anybody, was in the house with her. Suddenly, she felt exhausted, a deep emptiness in

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her bones like the ‹rst days after John’s death, when she had put on all his shirts, one by one, to ‹nd those that still held his scent. Upstairs she lay down on the bed and closed her eyes.

Two hours later, Kantsakis unfolded himself from his seat to open the passenger door for her. She did not speak, and so he didn’t. When he was back in the car, he turned to look at her, and she pointed to the radio tuner and put her ‹nger to her lips. Kantsakis turned back, slipped the car into gear and drove, Wisconsin to 35th to P Street below the Observatory and its snowy expanse. Darkling, I listen, Felicity Palmer sang, unmistakable, the recording Mara knew, the only one in existence, and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme. Kantsakis drove the car but did not seem to move. There was a certain knowledge in the way he held his shoulders, a profound understanding of how long he might have to be in this car with Mara, attention and—what else was it?—need? Pleasure? Mara noticed this but could not think about him for long because the words were coming into her head so fast. You could always recognize the music of Gustav Holst, she knew, his master work The Planets, great orbs of sound moving in the universe, utterly unexplained, nearly uncharted. So Keats had seemed the perfect choice for Holst, a way to get negative capability into music: two irreconcilable ideas, yoked together. Mara had read this poem, “Ode to a Nightingale,” in her eleventh-grade English class, and then learned to sing it in the same month, when she was seventeen. It was the ‹rst serious test her voice had ever been put to, all those years ago. Now she spoke the words in a whisper, remembering what her teacher had said—young girls don’t know how to use their lips—and how that had seemed like both vocal instruction and the most important emotional truth. Forlorn! The very word is like a bell, the major lift on “bell” coming out of nowhere, the summons to come awake, bid adieu to fancy, to dreaming. But still that last nagging, unanswerable question: Was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music: —Do I wake or sleep? The last crashing chord, the small pocket of silence, and then the an92

nouncer’s sleepy prattle, good for a snowy afternoon, he said, Holst First Choral Symphony Opus 41, the poems of John Keats. “The Nightingale,” he called it. Wrong, wrong! Mara wanted to say. Kantsakis shifted in his seat, and Mara wondered if she had actually spoken. “Incredible,” he said. “Your taste in music,” Mara said. “It’s unusual.” “You know that piece, Mrs. Raynor?” “I sang it a long time ago.” “It’s full of meaning.” Kantsakis was not asking a question. “It is.” “You know that I sing a little?” Kantsakis said. “No,” Mara said. “How would I know that?” “Intuition. Listen.” He adjusted the radio volume. “You’ll know this, I’m sure.” The outrageous Berlioz, Mara thought, Benvenuto Cellini. Madness, something about opium dreams. That crazy plot with all those monks in disguise and the forbidden lover named Teresa. Where was Teresa? “Since high school,” Kantsakis continued. “In college, I did Gilbert and Sullivan, one production every year for four years. And Kiss Me Kate, and Camelot. My Fair Lady. The men’s a cappella group. I have perfect pitch.” “Really? How do you know?” Mara raised her voice slightly. She was conscious of the melodramatic tone, and she wondered if they were making fun of each other, just a bit. She liked him, really quite a lot. It was nice to talk to a young man, this young man. He was different somehow, sweet—his dignity was slightly undigni‹ed. He could not carry it off completely, the formality, the absent presence of driver. “It’s interesting—I mean—to me. Partly, it’s inherited. My mother is Vietnamese, and her language depends on pitch. You probably already know that. If you say ‘I like your boat,’ and change your pitch slightly, it would sound like ‘I like your bite’ or ‘I like your beat.’ And then, years of piano lessons.” “Why are you telling me this?” “So you won’t worry that I’ll be bored at the rehearsal. I was also the lead singer in a garage band in Alexandria. We called ourselves ‘Magpiety.’ Hard to imagine. In Alexandria, I mean.” 93

“Well,” Mara leaned forward. “I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think you should come in to the rehearsal. Not because of Magpiety. It’s a women’s group. I think you might make them nervous. Not you personally. It’s just . . .” “I hadn’t thought of that,” Kantsakis said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. Your brother said to stay with you.” “There’s no need for that.” “All right.” They drove in silence, and Mara felt miserable, the old misery and a new one. She had wanted Kantsakis to be somehow outside her life, but now he was admitted, whisked inside, just like everyone else. “What did my brother tell you?” “There have been telephone calls.” “That’s all?” “Yes.” He didn’t look at her in the mirror. “I don’t think there’s any danger.” “Your brother doesn’t either.” Mara sat back. She wondered why, then, Phil had told him anything. She pressed her ‹ngertips to her eyes, hard, until she saw white stars, roiling together, psychedelic. “You could listen outside the door,” she said. “How would that look?” Kantsakis asked. “Like Gilbert and Sullivan. The practice room entrance is just at the back of the building, the blue door. I’ll leave it up to you. If you’re not here when we’re done, I’ll call.” They shook hands. He was like one of the boys from school, grown up, one of her boys, with a job of sorts, a life. Her heart opened toward him—it felt like that, a ‹ssure, a wound—for who he had been at seventeen or eighteen, the troubles he had had, large and small. Inside, Mara was happy and a little amazed to see her girls, her women, all twelve of them, and it seemed to her they’d changed, grown up suddenly, since late December. They appeared content, relieved to have come out on the other side of Christmas and the new year, and to resume their normal lives at college, lives mostly kept away from their families. Their chatter, a sentence here and there, an exclamation, all had to do with themselves, with each other, with boyfriends, professors, the start of the semester. The accompanist, a Polish graduate student 94

named Lena Kusnierz, was seated at the piano, talking on a cell phone. She folded it closed as soon as she saw Mara, and sat patiently with her ‹ngers resting lightly on the keys, then began to move them without playing the notes. The women quieted gradually as she moved from the back of the room to the front, then, with a look from Sharon Green, began the stretches Mara had taught them, a sort of mechanical grand tai chi, the moves with the best names: White Crane Spreads Wings, Carry Tiger to the Mountain, Step Back to Repulse Monkey. With great concentration and gathering of breath, they found C without a pitch pipe or the piano. Then after Lena played the chord around their voices, they began the arpeggios and descending octaves, changes in pitch and dynamics, the vowel sounds and nonsense syllables. As soon as they ‹nished these exercises, Mara usually had them sing alone, randomly, though everyone knew that after a month’s break, she would start with Sharon. So she would surprise them. “Ramona,” Mara said. “Long phrases. The Purcell. And then Lucy, descending scales. Try to sound like Paul Robeson.” The women sang, their voices ›uttering out at ‹rst, but gaining strength, ‹lling the room. Mara closed her eyes. She could see the notes propelled forward, motes of crystal, slightly too sharp at the edges. “All right,” she said when they’d ‹nished. “Not too creaky. I heard ‘Evergreen’ this afternoon. Quite well done. Sharon? An encore?” Lena played the prelude, and Sharon began. Love like a chair, strong back and arms. A song for a much older couple, really, Mara thought. Two people sitting in an of‹ce. Or maybe not: what does it mean to make each night a ‹rst? Who would want that, really? And unrehearsed? She told herself to stop thinking about the words and just listen. It was glorious singing, better than in the chapel. The notes spun out like taffy. Mara knew Sharon was thinking that: spin the note, imagine it alive, refreshed with every beat. The last seemed to hang visible in the air as a cry, while the accompaniment modulated higher. Then it vanished. “When she sang at the wedding,” Mara said, “there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. No, excuse me, I’m wrong. There was one. Sharon’s. She was all technique and discipline, and that made for greater art. She moved the audience, but she herself did no . . .” 95

The women said it in unison, the phrase she’d taught them: “No spur of the moment emotional bathing!” They smiled brightly, expectantly, but carefully, Mara thought. They’re waiting to see how I do. “It’s good to see you all,” she continued. “You’ve been on my mind, you the group, and what we would work on next. So. I had a kind of wild idea for a spring performance.” She paused, and a strange silence descended over the room. It’s as if I’m about to fall, Mara thought, as if they’re going to have to catch me. She sat down beside Lena. “There’s an opera, about three years old. Little Women. As in Louisa May Alcott.” “But we’re not professional opera singers,” Sharon said. “We don’t really know what we are, do we?” Mara said. “That’s the point of us. We can do choral, we can do musicals.” “But opera?” “Let’s listen to it,” Mara said. “Just hear it ‹rst, and then we can decide.” “Aren’t there men?” “I had an idea about that, too. I know you’ll think I’m crazy.” That silence again. She thought, they’ve been ready for this for three months, to see me go over the edge. Maybe I have. They’ll tell me, and I’ll believe it, and we’ll go from there. “The men’s parts could be sung as a chorus. Offstage. As if they’re only half there.” “Spooky,” Sharon said, but there was a certain relish in her tone, appreciation. She gets the picture already, Mara thought. She’s living it right now. “Let’s listen.” The opening notes sounded—strings, easy, water shimmering, and then the odd single ›ute. They listened through to the end of the prologue, the music building its way, strangely, noisily, into the opera’s main themes. What to do about time? What to do about death? “It’s twelve-tone, but lyrical too,” Mara said. “Almost sentimental, but not quite. Not as bad as the novel anyway. And it’s for younger voices. You can hear that. It’s for you. I think we also need to watch the PBS production. We can do that sometime next week.” “What are the parts?” Sharon said. “Though I guess we know.” “There are ‹ve women and three men, and then a few other, minor 96

characters. I don’t know if we’ll do the whole opera, but we can do a selection.” “That one, the one that went ‘Things Change,’ that one for sure.” “Remember there are off-stage voices, too, like the wind. I counted, and there would be parts for everyone,” Mara said. There was a wakefulness and excitement in the air that she had not felt—anywhere—for some time. She stood and turned the CD player on again, and the March girls’ voices soared inside the practice room. “Where are you going to get an orchestra?” whispered Lena. She held up the CD case. “Sixteen-piece?” “Can you learn it?” Mara said. “Just piano? Won’t it sound thin? That might be a little too much of an adaptation.” “Maybe I can call in some favors.” “You’re excited about this,” Lena said. “Yes,” Mara said, “I really am.” “It’s good to see.” They listened for an hour while Mara skipped among the scenes she thought likely for the group. They narrowed it to four, maybe ‹ve. “So is it a go?” The girls looked at each other and nodded their heads. “Great,” Mara said. “Then I’ll order scores. The parts are written for three sopranos and three mezzos. One of the sopranos can actually go either way. The men’s parts are for a tenor, two basses and a baritone, so we’ll have to think about those songs. But six main parts. How do we call it?” Mara stood back while the girls settled the question. “Age,” Sharon said. The group spoke in a rush, all at once. “You mean experience, right?” “Rank? What’s that called? Seniority?” “We don’t have to have the same voice for every part.” “Is everybody happy with that?” “I’d like to play Beth. How soon does she die?” “Is it as sad as in the book? I’ve never read about anybody dying that’s so . . .” There was an awkward silence then, the girls staring at their hands or out the window. Mara leaned against the piano. “We can say those 97

words,” she sighed. “We have to if we’re going to sing this music or any music. We have to say—it. I appreciate what you’re doing. I really do. I know you’re thinking about me.” She stopped. “I appreciate it.” Tears ‹lled her eyes. “Sometimes, though . . .” She fought to steady her voice. “This is going to happen, and I’m sorry. I know it’s awkward, and certainly I wish I had more control . . .” She sat down beside Lena. “You will,” Lena said. “I know.” Mara smiled at her. “And on that note, I’ll get the scores. Go do what you usually do and buy the CD. We’ll meet next week for a read-through. I’ll ‹nd some musicians.” The girls began to gather their bags and coats, but no one seemed to want to leave the room. “What made you think of this?” Sharon said. Her voice was very still and soft, not the way Mara usually heard it. She looked more closely at Sharon’s face, and what she saw made her look away, at her own hands folded in her lap. There was more in it than just the question asked. There was seeking, beseeching. Though some of these women hoped to be professional musicians, most of them knew in their most private hearts that they weren’t quite good enough, and that what they would end up as was Mara. This was the knowledge in Sharon’s eyes, the quest for it, a test of her own imagination, or her power to imagine, against Mara’s. It was a speci‹c moment of understanding: she wanted, someday, to be better than her teacher. “I felt like doing something unusual,” Mara said. “Something that would be dif‹cult.” She heard girls’ sighs, but did not look up. “But not impossible. I love this story, even if it is ‘moral pap for children.’” “Who said that?” “Alcott herself. But I didn’t have sisters and Rachel doesn’t have sisters, but I have a daughter . . .” She wanted to say, who’s run away from home. Did any of you ever run away? “Well, I think it’s brilliant.” This was from the senior named Ramona, who had seen the PBS production. “I mean the male voices as a chorus. On some songs. It won’t work on all of them. But I can see it in the last two scenes. It’s brilliant,” she said again, and laughed, though there was a kind of catch in her voice. “But kind of crazy. Can we look at the libretto?” It was true: they did not want to leave. Outside was cold and fallen 98

dark and the walk back to the dorms or apartments for most of them, to dining hall food and roommates and studying economics, psychology, preparing for a test, living the life that they’d started this group to escape, or at least keep at bay. “I only have this one copy,” Mara said, “but I’ll play the tarantella again, and we can pass it around.” They listened. The music races, gallops is what the libretto instructs. It’s a game like truth or dare, played by the four March sisters and Laurie, that has to do with folding laundry. So it’s called, cleverly, Truth or Fabrication. Mara wondered for a moment about props. They would need just a few, to convey the sense of what’s going on, like a line drawing, a sketch. A sock, towels, work clothes, that would be enough. The other scenes wouldn’t require much. A letter, a Bible, a wedding ring. Anyway, Mara thought her way through the piece, the whole story is about empty hands and full hearts. There was a line she both loved and hated, when Jo is asked during Truth or Fabrication, “What do you value most in a husband?” and she answers “Nonexistence.” The two girls sharing the libretto winced slightly when the music moved through those lines. “The ‹nal duet between Jo and Beth,” Mara said, cuing the CD. “Can we bear to listen?” She pressed the play button. The scene they heard was astonishingly simple, the frantic Jo, the composed but still forceful Beth, the lullaby sung and not ‹nished at the end. Jo wants to take Beth away, to the sea. She says it won’t take them long to pack. Mara stopped the machine and there was snif›ing all over the small practice room, blowing of noses. Rachel was right. It did feel good to cry about something else. But then you had to stop crying. “My father had a name for this sort of thing,” she said. “He would have called it a thirteen-handkerchief opera.” The women laughed. Maybe, she thought, that’s exactly why I want us to perform this. To cry about something else, and then to stop. “What about props?” “I was just thinking about that. I was just thinking we’d hardly need any. Music stands, a little laundry, and—this will sound odd, I know— proximity. You’ll just stand close to one another and let the music do the work.” 99

“Oratorio.” “Something like that.” “Music stands and holding hands,” Sharon said. “You’re getting too clever for us,” Mara said. “Soon, only New York will be able to tolerate you.” “I’m going to go to New York,” Sharon said, “and ‹nd this composer and confess what we did to his opera.” “Maybe he’ll come to us. He’ll be either interested or horri‹ed.” She paused. “The other thing I was thinking about was my school’s graduation. There are always performances for the parents. Maybe I can use part of the boys’ orchestra.” “Maybe?” Lena said. “Aren’t you sort of in charge?” “Sort of is exactly right,” Mara said. “And I couldn’t just commandeer them anyway. But the music director likes a challenge, so I’ll talk to him.” “I want to go get this music!” Sharon said. She looked up at the clock in the practice room. “We’ve been here almost an extra hour.” “All right,” Mara said. “Think about parts. I’ll see you next week.” Mara stayed until all her women had left the room, and then she sat at the piano. Her mind seemed to ‹ll with a kind of substantial whiteness, like cotton, until she thought she would suffocate. She closed the piano lid, shut out the lights and left through the side door. Kantsakis was waiting. He seemed to understand her mood and drove without speaking. Mara wished she had never left the house. It would be impossible now to go back in alone, stay alone tonight. Even when Rachel came back—two women alone in that large place. How had they lived there for the last three months? Mara could not remember. She thought she might get in her own car and drive to a hotel. But then that would be the end. If she gave in, she might as well start looking for an apartment tomorrow. And how would an apartment be any better? Fewer rooms, maybe, but she’d be alone just as often, and then when Rachel went to college, always alone. Kantsakis stopped at the bottom of her driveway, got out and opened the passenger door. Mara paused to listen. She thought she could hear the telephone ringing. Inside it would be too dark to see into the spare room, corners, closets. The thought chilled her. 100

“Can you see me in?” she asked Kantsakis. “Just until I get the lights on.” “Of course. Actually, your brother suggested I do that.” Mara unlocked the front door and they stepped into the front hallway. “Rachel!” she called, then turned to Kantsakis. “And my daughter . . .” “Your brother told me.” “Privacy seems to disappear all at once, doesn’t it?” “I think every dictionary inside the Beltway has had the word privacy crossed out. But a thing isn’t really public here until some pundit’s made a joke.” “That’s very astute.” “How was your rehearsal?” “Good, I think. We’re just starting—would you like a cup of tea or something?” “I shouldn’t. I mean, it’s not professional.” Mara moved through the front room and into the kitchen. As she reached to turn on the light, she saw the ‹gure standing in the backyard and knew at once who it was. “Oh,” she breathed and glanced at Kantsakis. She put her ‹nger to her lips, then crossed the room and unlocked the back door. She opened it, but stood inside. Arthur Overby made his way through the snow and stood below her. “Mrs. Raynor,” he said. “What, Arthur? What?” “This knife issue. The Sikh boy. Bandasari.” “It’s not a knife.” “Bandasari, Mrs. Raynor. The weather bought you a day, you know. But this is not your decision.” He paused for a long time between each sentence. Mara could hear a trembling in his voice, and she wondered how long he had been waiting for her in the cold. “You are not the school. We’ve let you have your way, but now it’s not good for the school. Think about your daughter.” Here, there was a longer pause. “You need to give up and move on. We’ll be in to see you tomorrow morning.” Overby turned then and disappeared around the east side of the house. Mara heard the back gate creak open. “And by the way,” Overby called out, “technically, it is a knife.” 101

Kantsakis came to stand beside Mara at the door. “That didn’t sound good,” he said. They listened to the crunch, crunch of Overby’s footsteps as he made his way down the drive. “At least now you know I’m not crazy.” “I never thought you were crazy,” Kantsakis said. “I can stay for a while if you want to call your brother.” “It’s all right,” Mara said. “He won’t be back. I’m not really afraid of him. I’m just tired.” They were still standing in the dark. “I should make you some tea,” Kantsakis said. Mara smiled. “Surely that would not be professional.” “No,” Kantsakis agreed. He didn’t move, though, and Mara realized she didn’t want him to go. “After my father died,” Kantsakis began and then stopped. He cleared his throat. “After my father died, I would make tea for my mother. Because he used to do that for her. She would close her eyes and listen to the sound, and pretend it was him making the tea. And then she would ask me to say certain things. Because my father and I had the same voice. He always said, ‘The Greeks make terrible tea,’ and so I would say that.” Kantsakis laughed. “It’s true, too. The Greeks do make terrible tea.” “You must be a good son,” Mara says. “She says that I am,” Kantsakis replied. “Now.” “Magpiety,” Mara said. “That’s right.” He reached above her head to turn on the kitchen lights. “I should go.” “All right,” she said. “See you tomorrow.” After he had gone, Mara poured herself a glass of whiskey, and then another. She stood staring into the back garden, wondering who Kantsakis was, what he was, and then she thought she knew. He’s a raft, she told herself. He’s a lifeboat. He’s a ferry to the other side. I have to be careful. She lay awake that night, waiting for another phone call from Overby, Rachel’s key in the door, her step on the stairs. She thought of Rachel at age three, how she was a little companion, the perfect student. Rachel learned everything, remembered everything, understood 102

adult notions, like how it was possible to be moved by music, how people could retell stories to make them better, to improve history. Somewhere in the house, Mara thought she heard Rachel’s adult voice, calling up from the bottom of the stairs. But it modulated into something else, mechanized, the answering machine maybe. There was an insistence in the voice that caused Mara to keep still, a pitch that demanded absolute attention. “Mom,” Rachel seemed to say, but the voice was Kokila’s, “did you miss me? Did you wonder if I was ever coming back?” The voice broke, then gasped, half-drowning. “You’re the one who’s missing. You’re the one. I want you back. This instant. That’s how you would say it. I want you back this instant.” There was silence then, and Mara sat up, swinging her feet off the bed and onto the ›oor. “Who’s there?” she called. “Kokila?” No answer. She stood and went to the top of the stairs. The house was quiet, still. She could tell there was no one else.

The ‹rst candidate for the headmaster’s position had arrived the day before. He would spend the morning with his old chum, a trustee he had known ‹rst at Cornell and later at Wharton, then come to school. Mara had not liked him on paper, and she found him nearly unbearable in person, in brief conversation at a Christmas party. He was the assistant head at a small school in Lexington, Kentucky. His name was Richards, and he went by the initials E.J., which heightened Mara’s sense of him as a cipher. Many of the trustees and members of the search committee were taken in, Mara knew, by his money talk, his ‹scal sense, as he called it, his talents as a raiser of funds. Mara thought he had no soul. His wife and children would come for the weekend, and maybe that would improve him, maybe he would look better in the light of his attachments. He had an accent, something Midwestern, he was a bore, he wore Old Spice, the fog of it rising off his clothes. The boys would wither under such a person, they would turn into MBA clones. She was surprised by her own feelings, how when she ‹rst saw him, she’d wanted to slap E. J. Richards until his big jowls shook. Five of the trustees were waiting outside the of‹ce, as Mara knew 103

they would be. Mr. Richards—Ed, they were calling him now, and Mara wondered at the name change—had gone to visit an economics class, and then would have lunch with some of the boys, tenth and eleventh graders, who had some stake in the choice of new headmaster. Arthur Overby spoke ‹rst, and then invited her into her own of‹ce. The other four, Loridans, McClanahan, Duffy and Ramsay, followed. She felt strangely giddy, as if some ballast or gravitational force had fallen away, and something else, which she realized as she watched two days ago, as Gurtej ascended the steps to his house. Having made a decision about the school, about its day-to-day business, the place hurt her less, grieved her less. It put her deeper inside John’s skin, at least the layer of it he’d worn to work. It was the ‹rst time she knew she had been right to ask for the job of acting head, because she loved the school, the boys really, how earnest they were, how serious. She loved their sweet faces, that look in the eyes of the youngest ones, the wild and only half-conscious searching for their mothers in any room they entered. The trustees ›attened their bodies against the wall so Mara could pass into the of‹ce ‹rst. Once inside, they stood in an awkward knot until she asked them to sit down. She offered coffee, but there was a chorus of refusal. “Well then,” she said, “how’s it going with Richards?” “Fine,” Overby said. “Breakfast with the Mothers’ and Fathers’ Clubs representatives. Very cordial. Then classes, lunch. There’s a dinner tonight, at Jim’s house.” He gestured toward Jim Duffy, an alum, a lawyer with Baker and McKenzie. John had liked him as a student, invited him to the house for dinner. Mara smiled and started to nod her head. But Rachel. She looked directly at Duffy. “I’m sorry. I can’t. There’s a family situation.” “Actually, we’ve heard,” Overby said. “It’s a private matter,” Mara said. Why were all these men in her of‹ce, she thought suddenly, without a—what?—witness? “I need to be at home tonight.” Overby cleared his throat. “There’s something else. Did you not consult with anyone about the knife?” “It’s not a knife,” Mara said. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a twitch move across Jim Duffy’s mouth. “It’s called a kirpan. It isn’t sharpened.” 104

“Right,” Overby said. “But the issue is the decision. It’s not how we do things. We’ll have to meet with the parents and look into the language about weapons on campus. Probably there’s a loophole in the language, but you can’t just decide on your own what to do. Especially not in your position.” Mara stared at him. “I did, though. So now what do you propose?” She looked at the other four. “What do you all propose? Surely Mr. Overby can’t make the decision by himself.” “We’ll call a meeting,” Overby said. Mara opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand. “Mrs. Raynor, on a different subject. You know you have a vote in the selection process. It’s in the charter, that the headmaster or acting headmaster shall have a right to vote on all hiring matters including his replacement.” “Yes,” Mara said, “I know. Unless he’s in disgrace. The pronoun is problematic here, isn’t it?” “We’re asking you to give up your vote,” Overby said. “On what grounds?” “Bias.” “Is anyone keeping a record of this conversation?” Mara said. “This should be on the record.” “It’s a private discussion,” Overby said. “It’s dif‹cult for us to understand how you can vote if you refuse to meet the candidate.” “I haven’t refused!” Mara said. “This is his ‹rst day on campus. I had no advance notice of this dinner. And I did meet him, at your Christmas party.” She looked at Jim Duffy. “Do you think I should give up my vote? It’s off the record, Jim.” “I think you don’t need the stress.” “I do, though,” Mara said. “Believe me, I do. Is there not some published itinerary for Richards? Why don’t I have a copy? What’s he doing after lunch?” “So you won’t give up your vote,” Overby said. “I won’t give up my vote.” “We don’t want this search scuttled. It’s high-pro‹le.” “Oh come on, Arthur,” Mara said. “Don’t talk to me like I’m some . . . girl. I know all this. I’ve known it for ‹fteen years. I know what the endowment is, right down to the last penny. I know the ‹rst, last and middle names of half the alumni, and most of the parents. I know some 105

of their telephone numbers by heart. I know who shovels the snow in the driveway, I know who has the food service contract. I know which junior—and it’s not a senior—has the best voice in the choir.” “Good for you,” Overby said. “And I know Richards will kill this place.” “He’s an experienced administrator.” Mara went to John’s desk and opened one of the small side drawers. “I don’t know what I’ve been keeping this for,” she said. “I guess I was saving it for John. It’s the kind of thing he used to save for me. It’s the hiring criteria for Richards’s old job.” She sifted through the scraps of paper. “I just want—I’m sure none of you have seen it. It’s just so—ah, here it is. Listen to this. This is under ‘essential duties and responsibilities’: ‘The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by the Assistant Headmaster to perform the essential functions of this position. While performing the duties of this position, the Assistant Headmaster is regularly required to stand, walk, sit, talk and hear. The Assistant Headmaster is occasionally required to reach with hands and arms, and stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. The Assistant Headmaster must occasionally lift and/or move up to ten pounds. Speci‹c vision abilities required by this position include close vision and distance vision.’ That isn’t a metaphor, that last part, about vision.” Mara began to laugh. Again, she had the sense that she might ›oat. “It’s a legal statement,” Overby said. “It’s the Americans with Disabilities Act statement.” “I know,” Mara said. “I know, I know.” She heard herself laughing, as if from a far corner of the room. Hooting, she thought, I’m hooting like an owl. She sat down and tried to compose herself. She gazed for a moment at the ‹ve men in front of her. She wondered about their wives, how they stood it, their lives with these clowns, so formal, so properly costumed, but their ridiculousness leaking out like sawdust through the seams. Except Arthur. She closed her eyes. And Duffy. Maybe he wasn’t married. Mara couldn’t remember. He sat still now, staring down at his hands, his face red. He blushed easily, Mara did recall that much, had done so all through the ‹rst dinner he’d had with them, thirteen or fourteen years ago. He was president of the senior class; that’s why he’d been invited. And it was one awkward moment after another, a spilled glass of water, questions asked while he was chew106

ing. Rachel, though, loved him the moment he walked through the front door. Rachel was four and sometimes went googly-eyed over the boys, especially if they paid her any attention at all. Jim Duffy was sweet with her, pretending to be interested in her dolls and her artwork. At the end of the meal, there was a pile of toys and paper beside his chair, and Rachel had crawled into his lap. Mara wished she had taken a picture of it, the boy that he was, holding little-girl Rachel. She wished she’d taken it and could show it to him now. “But,” she said, “isn’t it an exact description? Of what you want a headmaster for. And why you want Richards.” No one spoke. “I’m worried, actually, that this isn’t a search at all, but more like a referendum in Havana or someplace.” “I think that’s enough, Mrs. Raynor,” Overby said. “We’ll see that you get a copy of Mr. Richards’s itinerary. Perhaps he has time this afternoon or tomorrow. Surely your own schedule is tight.” “I’ll make time,” Mara said. She stood then, and extended her hand toward Overby, who took it. She shook hands with the others, and then with Jim Duffy. She squeezed his ‹ngers. “I’m sure Rachel’s all right,” he said. “You were her ‹rst love,” Mara said. “I remember. She was hard to say no to.” Mara rolled her eyes. She tried to speak, but no words would come, only a rattling “ahhhh.” Then they were gone. She stood in the doorway and smiled down at her assistant, Betty, who asked if she wanted a sandwich. “I’ll go get one,” Mara said. “See what’s for lunch. Can I bring you anything?” Betty shook her head, pointed to the bottled water on her desk. “Liquid diet,” she said. “Got to ‹t in closer to this desk if you’re going to have ‹ve of them in there at once.” “I hope that doesn’t ever happen again.” Betty shook her head and sighed. “I’m going to miss you.” “Maybe I’ll need a handler.” Betty turned back to her computer screen. “Let me know,” she said. In the refectory, the boys were as much themselves, Mara thought, as they ever were. The din they made was surprising at ‹rst, and then pleasant, clatter of trays, chatter of voices, varying pitches of laughter, 107

the occasional raised voice of a teacher or head of table. As she stood in the doorway and surveyed the room, Mara observed that no one looked unhappy, though she was sure there was the usual worry about tests and sports matches, families and friendships swirling through the noise. She moved through the rows of tables instead of walking around them, saying hello to the boys and enjoying their looks, surreptitious, they believed, curious, the hush that moved like a wave as she walked. She stopped here and there when she knew a boy’s name, and asked what he was having for lunch or how a sport was going, an injury healing, small talk. She lingered with the younger boys—it was second-shift lunch for the middle school. Seventh graders. What a time. She remembered it vividly, her own year and Rachel’s, the Byzantine making and unmaking of alliances. She saw Richards at a corner table with four juniors. He was talking. It was impossible to read the boys’ faces, their body language, and Mara was glad, proud of them. They would be fair. They took this whole enterprise seriously. She crossed to the cold food table, put together a ham and cheese sandwich, and went back to sit with one of the two boys she had seen studying Latin the day before. It seemed ages ago—she thought this boy should be old and gray now, a Rip Van Winklish beard curling down from his chin and around his feet. “May I join you?” she said. “Oh, Mrs. Raynor! Sure. I’m almost ‹nished, though.” “That’s OK, Matthew. How did the Latin test go?” For a second, Matthew Tobin looked very surprised—and scared, Mara thought, and she knew what his answer would be even before he took a breath. He looked down at his tray, into what appeared to be the remains of a taco. “I bombed,” he said. “It won’t stay in my brain. I know it right before the test, and then, poof.” He snapped his ‹ngers. “It’s all gone.” The boys beside him and Mara shook their heads in sympathy. “I took French in school,” Mara said, “and it was just like that for me, too. The only thing that seemed to help was making up little rhymes, especially for the vocabulary. It worked for conjugating verbs too, now that I think about it. And then ‹nally, one day, I got an A on a test, an A-plus. The French teacher told me to go out in the hall and shout, “J’ai fait un A-plus! Finalement!’” 108

The boys laughed. They would talk about this later, Mara knew. But fondly. Silly Mrs. Raynor. She’s sweet, but . . . And then they would shrug their shoulders, thinking, maybe, of their own mothers. “And all the other teachers stuck their heads out of their classrooms and told me to be quiet, but I was so proud of myself, I didn’t care.” She looked around the table. “Shall I ask Mrs. Warren to let you yell in the halls?” “Yeah! Yeah!” the boys said. “Done,” Mara told them, and took a bite of her sandwich.

I

t was so easy to say yes, to permit outbursts of joy in school hallways. That was the kind of place John had envisioned. All she had to do was say yes, stand back and let it happen. School should be joyous, she’d once said aloud. She remembered John was quiet for a few minutes. Then he turned to her and said, “Or real,” and he reminded her of a class she’d taught at American University years before, four days after a freshman had fallen, drunk, from a third-›oor window, and died. There were boys from his fraternity taking her course, and non-Greeks, and women, and for the ‹rst hour of class, the room rang with accusations and excuses and disclaimers. Mara let the talk go, even when it turned to shouting, and she didn’t speak at all herself. Then the room fell into a deep, unbroken silence. A couple of the students wept, but no one left. It was astounding. They sat. The sun began to go down, the room grew chilly, and shadows seemed to rise in the corners because no one turned on the lights. Still the students stayed and waited, eyes closed, eyes open, heads bowed, faces hidden in arms crossed on the table, some of them. At six o’clock, when the class was supposed to end, Mara thought she ought to say something, but she couldn’t imagine what, so she pushed her chair back, stood and left the room. The students followed—she saw out of the open door of her of‹ce—drifted away toward dinner, dorms, the evening. They were mourning, she decided later, and despite all their differences, they wanted to mourn together. Even the loners wanted to ‹nd friends, even the saddest ones. And so Mara said a particular thing to Rachel when she called the of‹ce later that afternoon. She said, I’m glad you and Gurtej Bandasari have found each other. 109

“You are?” Rachel said. “He’s been a good friend.” “I hate the thought of him going away next year.” “You’re going away too, you know.” Mara took a deep breath. Can I really say these words, she wondered, and mean them. “It will be wonderful. Your big adventure.” “What will you do?” “Here’s what I’d like to do,” Mara said. “I’d like to move to the place where you go to college. Is that too weird? Would I drive you crazy?” “No,” Rachel said. “I don’t know. What would you do?” “Look for a job. Music directing or teaching. Administration. If I worked at the school, it might be good ‹nancially. Tuition reduction maybe.” “Kind of backwards though. Usually the parent already works there.” “I guess so. Sometimes backwards is OK. But what do you think?” “Would I have to live with you?” “No. I think it might be best if you didn’t live with me actually. But of course if you wanted to . . .” “Remember how Dad had that plan to live on a sailboat in Boston Harbor?” “I remember.” “It would be freezing in the winter.” “There’s electricity. I’d get a heater. Maybe I’d move on land in the winter.” “Would you mind living alone?” Mara considered, then tried to ‹nd her voice but couldn’t. “I’d mind,” she whispered. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?” “Oh, honey. What a question!” Mara imagined Rachel, imagined she could feel her stiffen through the telephone line and pull away. She held on tightly to the handset, as if that would bring her daughter closer. “Never mind then, Mom.” “No, it’s all right. You just surprised me. It’s not a bad question. I hope the answer is what you want.”

110

“I don’t want a particular answer. I want you to tell me what you think.” “All right. Fair enough. I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’m really pretty sure about that.” Rachel exhaled. “Your dad and I—well, you know this. We’ve said this. I’ve said it, I guess. We were really lucky to ‹nd each other. We had a lot in common. We understood things about each other from the very beginning. I never knew anybody else, another man, I mean, that I thought I could stand living with, the way I liked to live, which was in the nearly constant company of this one person.” “Not everybody can stand that. Gurtej says his parents get along better because his father travels so much.” “Gurtej comes from an unusual family, I think.” As she spoke these words, Mara recalled Gurtej’s touch, at the back of the chapel during the wedding, his smile, and how she’d thought there was nothing in it. What she realized now, listening to Rachel’s small, hesitant voice, was that his smile wasn’t empty, it just wasn’t speci‹c. It wasn’t meant only for her. She thought Kokila had said it at Vernal Hall: Americans want everything to be so personal, so direct, uni‹ed, all of a piece. What if we all agreed that human personality was really fragmented, made up of a million pieces? Isn’t that the way people describe intense experience? Isn’t that the way I’ve felt these last few months? Mara thought. Like the music Kokila listened to at school, the ragas, the notes splintered, improvised. There was no absolute pitch. “You know a lot about that family, don’t you?” Rachel said. “I do,” Mara replied. “I do indeed.”

Kantsakis stopped the car at the bottom of the driveway, and turned to look at Mara, then turned back, following her gaze across the street and up to the cathedral. “Did you like school?” she asked him. “I survived it,” Kantsakis said. “It’s funny you should ask. The one thing I got out of it is that I learned to cook. Actually, my mother taught me, so it wasn’t school in that sense.” “Like my brother. Only he taught himself.”

111

“That’s amazing. I can’t imagine.” Here Kantsakis paused, cleared his throat. “It’s also funny you should ask because I brought you a little something. Let me get it.” He pressed the trunk release and got out of the car, then returned with a canvas bag, from which he drew a covered pot. “It smells wonderful,” Mara said. “It’s chicken and ginger. A dish called kho.” “Kaw,” Mara repeated. “Spelled k-h-o. You should hear my mother say it. You have to sound like an angry bird to get it right.” Kantsakis turned suddenly and stared out the front windshield. He seemed embarrassed, almost sullen, Mara thought, and younger, as if this food had transported him back to a troubling time. “What is it?” Mara said, but Kantsakis misunderstood. “A stew. A caramelized sweet base, cut with ‹sh sauce. You should eat it with rice.” “What else? I mean what is it with you.” Kantsakis turned again to look at her. “It’s just—it’s nice to be around a musician. A singer.” “I’m not really—” “You are, though. Even if you don’t sing much anymore. You still pay attention to voices. You still know what it takes, how much work it is.” “How old are you?” “Twenty-‹ve.” “Have you ever had voice lessons?” “Not private lessons. I could never afford that.” “You need some kind of teacher, though. Just to see what you have, what kind of talent. I don’t teach privately, but I can recommend a couple of people. Let me make some calls.” Kantsakis’s smile was electrifying. Mara thought she might have to shield her eyes against the brightness of it. She wanted to tell him that no one had smiled like that, smiled at her that way, in years, possibly not ever. Maybe Rachel had, when she was ‹ve or six. “Do you want me to see you inside?” Kantsakis asked. “No, thank you,” Mara said. “It’s all right. He won’t be waiting out back. He’s bothered me earlier today.” 112

Kantsakis helped Mara out of the car and handed her the pot, which was ceramic, she saw, sky blue. She wondered if his mother had made this, too. “Remember,” he said, “with rice.” “Kaw,” Mara answered. “That’s not harsh enough.” So Mara tried again. “Good,” he said. “Perfect.”

113

÷ FOUR

Kokila

Iqbal’s mother’s name was Sahila, but everyone she knew in Cambridge called her Sallie. When she met Mara at Euston Station in London, she bent and kissed her forehead. “Ah, you girls in dif‹culties,” she said, the pitch of her voice both sad and forgiving. She picked up Mara’s suitcase and led her away from the platform, through the crowded station and out onto the street. It was a Thursday evening, rush hour, and Mara thought the American phrase in her head, and somehow the repetition of those two syllables, rush hour, rush hour, kept her a›oat. They stood in a line for taxis, and then when Mara was bundled into one of those big black cars, with Sallie beside her, the noise of travel and city life was abruptly silenced. She listened for a moment to Sallie’s voice, directing the driver to King’s Cross Station, the sound of it like silk or a rich liquid poured from a dark bottle. Sallie settled back in her seat next to Mara. She was extraordinarily tall—her knees were bent and there was still no more room to push her feet forward. She seemed almost to ›oat above Mara’s head in the dizzy warmth of the taxi. Her perfume was strong, a shrill ›oral and so unlike the incense, cinnamon and sweat Kokila carried on her skin. Mara thought the word embalmed. “We’ll take the six o’clock train to Cambridge and then have something to eat at my house. The procedure is tomorrow morning. Very quick.” She snapped her ‹ngers. “Like that.” “All right,” Mara said. “Thank you, Mrs. Iqbal.” “You must call me Sallie. Not Mrs. Anything.” “Yes,” Mara said in a whisper so low she wasn’t sure she’d spoken at all. “I know you’re terribly frightened. That’s only one thing, though, isn’t it? The rest of it is all a tangle, a jumble. You can talk to me about it if you like. I hope you will.” 114

Mara nodded and stared out into the gray London evening. It looked like all the books, Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, and all the movies, billows of fog and gloom. Only the clothes were wrong, the wrong century, though she saw the occasional man or woman wearing a long coat, a duster, a ›ying scarf. No bonnets, though. If only she could see a bonnet, with ribbons, a bow tied under the chin. It was a strange thing to wish for, and yet not—to be out of her own time, far from her own circumstance. She closed her eyes and shook her head. She could not help herself, even though she knew she was being watched. “How’s school going, then?” Sallie said. “The ‹rst weeks of the term?” Mara heard the words from a long ways off. She opened her eyes and turned to look into Sallie’s face, lit by the glow from a small map light attached to the seat. Her skin was the same lovely color as Kokila’s, café au lait, but her eyes were bigger and not so tired-seeming. They were like eyes in a painting, in certain paintings, huge, dark, glossy, and they followed Mara’s eyes, while seeming not to move at all. Yet there was something ›at, impenetrable about her entire face, a two-dimensional quality. “It’s been interesting,” Mara said. “I haven’t been able to concentrate all that well. But . . .” She paused. “To live with all those girls. It’s strange. I have one brother at home and no sisters, and I go to a coed day school. I think I’m the experiment for them, not the other way around.” Sallie smiled. “It’s so normal for the English,” she said. Mara wasn’t sure what she meant. “The classes are good. There’s a lot of note-taking. But it seems the opposite of normal. There’s always a crisis, or a girl crying, or a girl angry at another girl.” “Wasn’t that true at your school in America?” “I guess so.” Mara thought for a minute. “But the boys sort of turn down the volume on it. Or blur the edges. Everything doesn’t seem to happen in capital letters.” “Dramatic?” “Yes.” “But there’s a certain freedom without the boys, yes? Power?” “It’s as if we’re always waiting for them to arrive.” 115

“Ah. True. Kokila says you’re a singer. She tells me you have a beautiful voice.” “Thank you.” “Don’t thank me. I didn’t pay you the compliment. I’d like to hear you sing, though. Perhaps over the weekend if you feel up to it. Or next week. I’ll keep you here until Friday.” “Friday?” “Just to make sure everything’s all right.” In King’s Cross Station, there was the same crush and chill, a shock after the cab ride. Sallie frowned and buttoned her coat, then led Mara into the bar. They sat at a small table with Mara’s suitcase pushed between them. Sallie ordered a brandy, saying it was what she loved most about the French, and she ordered one for Mara too, saying, “You don’t have to drink all of it. Just enough to warm you up.” Mara knew how the brandy would feel and taste, the burn of it in her lungs and throat and belly, the blast of its perfume into her sinuses. What she felt though, as she sipped from the glass and waited to board the train, was a kind of chemical reaction, as if her nerves, nerve-endings, were rising away from her bones to sit at the very top of her skin, just under the ‹rst layer. She was sure she could feel the baby too, although she knew it wasn’t possible, not yet. Still there was this rumbling, the blunt mechanical repetition of all those cells, dividing, redividing, forming themselves from blood and from each other. She smiled across the table at Kokila’s mother. “How many?” she asked. “How many girls?” “You’re the fourth,” Sallie said. “Kokila was the second.” “How did you . . . ?” “Come to be so useful?” When Mara nodded, she continued. “I’m interested in girls your age. I have a daughter. I come from a different culture. All these are answers and not answers. You do something once and then it becomes what you do always. You come to have a reputation, so to speak. It’s my research, too, how girls see themselves, come to invent their personalities. Out of sticks and stones and broken bones. Is that how the rhyme goes?” “That’s boys, I think.” “Ahh. Pfft. Boys.” She glanced at the large clock just outside the bar. “Let’s go get our train.” 116

Once she was settled in a seat beside the window, Mara closed her eyes and fell asleep, though not deeply. She was aware of Sallie’s presence next to her, her scent, the way her body seemed to relax as soon as the train began to move. Sallie took a book from her bag, opened it and began to read. Mara watched the ›ashing of Sallie’s rings, rubies, garnets, sapphires, one on every ‹nger. She heard the pages turn and then a hum of understanding or appreciation. There were moments, though Mara did not know how long they lasted, when Sallie became her own mother, at home in Pittsburgh, waiting, a book open on her lap, a circle of lamplight beside her, waiting for Mara’s next letter, for Phil to come home, for Mara’s father to ‹nish the dishes and drift upstairs to bed. Her mother was whispering something to her, Mara could just barely hear it, not the words themselves, but the sharp consonants and the beginnings and ends of the words. Out of what her mother was saying came the sudden knowledge, the certainty that that tiny bundle of cells jostling inside her would order themselves into a girl. And then she saw this child, the small face with huge dark eyes sitting alone on the front steps of Nye, at Vernal Hall, waiting for Mara. There was an electricity in her little girl’s body: the certainty that her mother must come for her crackling against the evidence of no car coming up the drive, the sun setting before her, the dinner bell ringing, voices calling her to come back inside. The voice calling was Sallie’s. “Mara,” she said, stroking her shoulder, “we’re here. I think you’ve slept the whole way.” Before Mara was fully awake, she was sitting in the front seat of Sallie’s car, then driving past what must be university buildings, then parked in front of Sallie’s house. It was a lovely place, even in the dark, a cottage set back from the street and surrounded by trees and hedges. “Here we are,” Sallie said. “Let me get your bag.” There was a light on over the front porch, and a strong spicy smell drifted toward them even before the door was opened. “Mmmmm.” Sallie led Mara inside. “Priya, my Indian cook, has conjured something wonderful for us. Are you hungry?” “I don’t know,” Mara said. “I’ll try.” They stood in the foyer, very close together. Sallie seemed struck by a sound Mara couldn’t hear, unwilling to move, listening. She dropped the suitcase and put her arms around Mara. “Kokila never lets me do this anymore,” she said. “Do you like Indian food?” 117

“I’ve only had curry,” Mara said. She pressed her cheek to the soft sleeve of Sallie’s coat. “Made with yellow powder from the grocery store. That probably doesn’t count.” “This will be different then.” The house was small, two bedrooms only, but laid out in a way that made it feel quite large. The bedrooms were set like bookends, and in between, the living areas, kitchen, dining room and large study all ›owed into one another. Mara was reminded of Kokila’s rooms at school, and this was especially so once Sallie had turned on all the lamps. On nearly every wall were shelves ‹lled with books, the titles in English and in what Mara came to know was Urdu, some German and French. In the corner of the study was a baby grand piano draped with red and gold cloth, on top of which stood an arrangement of framed photographs. Mara went to look at them while Sallie moved about the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, cabinets, the oven. The pictures were mostly of Kokila, as Mara had suspected they would be, and Kokila’s father, a tall, slim man who wore black-rimmed glasses, and was handsome in the manner of Omar Sharif, despite his balding head. Other, older women in saris, a mother perhaps, sisters, serious expressions on their faces, a wedding photograph of Sallie and—Mara realized she did not know Kokila’s father’s name. “Let’s have a bite to eat,” Sallie called from the doorway. “Then I’ll show you thousands of photographs if you’d like.” They sat at the small kitchen table, and Sallie passed Mara dishes of chicken curry and lentils and peas and potatoes, soft warm rounds of bread. “Priya is an excellent cook,” she said. “But she is a mystery. I hardly ever see her. She comes and goes while I am teaching or in London. She prefers it that way. But you will meet her tomorrow. So we will see what she looks like these days, if she’s old and gray now.” Sallie laughed merrily and poured water from a blue pitcher, and handed a glass to Mara. “Try to eat,” she said. Mara took a few bites, but she found she could hardly swallow the food. “It’s not how it tastes,” she said. “I just . . . I just wish this were tomorrow night, and it was all over.” “Do you know how you will feel tomorrow night?” “I guess I don’t really know. Relieved. Sad.” “Would you like to call anyone tonight? Anyone at home?” 118

Mara did a quick calculation. Seven-thirty now, here, so two-thirty in Pittsburgh. Thursday afternoon. No one would be home anyway. “No thank you,” she said. “Would you like to talk?” “I think I’d like you to talk.” Sallie stopped eating and looked at Mara. “About what?” “About anything. Whatever you feel like talking about. Your voice has a nice sound.” “You want me to give a lecture?” “Don’t call it that, though. I hear the word lecture, and my eyes start to close.” Sallie laughed. “Start with a question, then,” she said. “Where’s Kokila’s father?” Sallie sighed and looked at her watch. “He is in Rome. He is having a late Roman supper with some solicitors from his of‹ce. They are drinking too much wine.” She stopped talking and waited, then ›uttered her hand in front of her face. “Oh, yes, yes. I am supposed to continue. He has a ›at in London where he stays most of the time. We are both glad for the privacy and the time to get our work done.” “My parents are like that, except they live in the same house.” “It’s odd, isn’t it?” “It’s very quiet.” “Will it be too quiet for you here?” “I don’t think it will matter. Actually, I’m afraid I won’t want to go back to school next week.” “You will. You’ll be starved for company by then.” “I like your daughter,” Mara said. “Do you know how hard she works?” “I do know. And I’m sure I’m to blame. She has a great many aspirations, and she seems to be interested in the same subjects as I am. That makes it harder for us. I wish she’d gone in the direction of art or music or science. And now she will be here, at King’s College, in the autumn term. She’s not very rebellious, I’m afraid. Her one single act of rebellion—well, it ended up badly, as you know.” Sallie touched the corners of her mouth with a napkin. “You seem to like the chapatis.” Mara looked down at the round, puffed bread in her hands, the third she’d had. “I do.” 119

“Lecture gives you an appetite.” “They’re delicious. Like eating a cloud.” “Clouds are made of ice crystals,” Sallie said. “It’s like eating the idea of a cloud.” “Next week, Priya will make you what she calls ‘Well-Behaved Bread.’ I like to eat it when I’m sad.” “Why are you sad?” “Sometimes it’s hard to know why. But the taste of the bread ‹lls up your nose and forces sadness out through the top of your head.” “I might need several loaves.” “She’ll bake as much as you can eat.” Mara went to bed that night in the room that was Kokila’s, although there was nothing of her in it. Maybe the poster on the wall, she thought, from a Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Tempest, a twisted but strangely beautiful Caliban, a muted watercolor, the picture surrounded by Caliban’s lines in scenes with Prospero and Ariel. Mara stood reading it before she turned out the light. She lay in the absolute darkness of the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust, but it would not happen. A voice in her head murmured endlessly that there was still another way, still time to change her mind, still a plan that would take shape out of the jumble of her thoughts and make perfect sense. She would have to go home, to Pittsburgh, endure the rage of her mother and the disappointment of her father. Everyone would know. She wouldn’t graduate from high school. And then, and then. That wasn’t the end, not even close. She’d have a baby, or else some nice rich couple would come and she would put the baby into the rich woman’s arms and never see her again. And didn’t that amount to the same thing as this, as tomorrow? The baby would be gone, sooner or later. She turned on her side and hugged her belly and whispered sorry, sorry, sorry. She thought she might go crazy and cry out, but then Sallie would come and talk, and Mara knew that saying all this, any of this out loud would only make it less clear. “There must be some deal we can make.” She whispered the words into the pillow. She wondered: if I do this, then what? If I do this, I will ‹nd a way to bring you back. It was impossible. But somehow the notion gave her a small bit of comfort, a chink of light opened somewhere in her head. There are things you can do in order not to lose the dead. Memorials. Photographs. I’ll 120

‹nd a way to keep you near. People do it every day, all over the world. “I promise,” Mara whispered. “I swear it on my life. Even if it takes a long time to ‹gure out how. I’ll never stop thinking about you. Your name will be Rachel.”

I

n the morning, Mara was awakened by a knock on the door and Sallie’s voice calling her name. Mara got out of bed and showered, dressed and went in to sit at the kitchen table. “I’m supposed to ask how you slept,” Sallie said. “It’s the polite thing, but you needn’t answer.” “I’m all right,” Mara said. “You should eat just a little something. I made oatmeal.” “That’s ‹ne.” “Just a few spoonfuls.” Sallie put the steaming bowl on the table, along with a jar of sugar, a pitcher of milk and a small bottle of ground cinnamon. “Then you can take this. It’s Demerol. It will make you feel relaxed. But you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to.” Mara said she thought it might be a good idea. She forced herself to take ‹ve bites. She counted them slowly, making sure there was the same-sized mound of oatmeal on the spoon each time she brought it to her lips. Then she put the pill on her tongue and swallowed it. “Brush your teeth,” Sallie said. “And then we’ll be off.” In the car, Mara began to feel the effects of the drug. Her eyelids grew heavy, and there seemed to be in her head a kind of solid iron ›oor below which her thoughts could not go. She wondered if she were smiling and touched her ‹ngers quickly to her mouth. “I guess I should ask where you’re taking me.” “The doctor is a friend of mine,” Sallie said. “It’s better if you don’t know her name. Then you never need to think about it.” “OK.” “Shall I tell you what will happen?” Mara felt drunk and nauseous. She stared out the car window. “Tell me,” she said ‹nally. “She’ll take a picture, ‹rst, to see the fetus, to make sure there is one—” 121

“There might not be?” “Anything is possible. Then she’ll use a suction tube like a straw to extract the contents of the uterus, the tissue of the fetus and the placenta. It goes into a receptacle. That’s it. You’ll likely feel a bit of cramping, more or less. Everyone is different.” “Everyone is different,” Mara repeated. “Every. One. Is. Different.” She turned and saw that Sallie wore a grim smile. She supposed their expressions must be identical. Sallie turned the car into a driveway and pulled up close to a house that looked to Mara very like the cottage they had just left. She had a dreamy notion that they had only driven around the block and come back to Sallie’s house, and it was Sallie who would perform the procedure. She’d been given the Demerol so she wouldn’t notice. Sallie set the brake, got out and walked around to the passenger door. Mara felt grateful and embarrassed and amused, and when she stood up, she circled her arms around Sallie’s waist. She thought she should say, Kokila really does love you. They walked around a hedge of evergreen and Sallie opened the back door without knocking. A young woman was waiting for them, wearing a white apron and looking barely older than Mara. She bowed slightly when Sallie introduced her as Priya. Then she turned and led them out of the kitchen, down a short hallway and into an examination room. It had once been a bedroom, Mara guessed. There was still a painted border of roses and lilies around the top of the walls, like the lid slightly off a box. Another woman came into the room, English, or so she sounded, and asked Mara to remove her jeans and underpants. Priya helped her up onto the examination table, and Mara closed her eyes, thinking Priya, this small strong woman, the baker of well-behaved bread, Priya, with her tiny, sweet face like a child’s, Priya could make this turn out all right. “Mara,” the English voice said. “I’m going to perform an ultrasound. On the screen we’ll get a picture. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to.” “I want to see it,” Mara whispered. “You’ll feel some pressure. Now. Let’s see, yes. There.” She turned

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the monitor screen, and Mara saw it, the milky shadow, the agitation of its heartbeat. “Hi there, little one,” Mara said and closed her eyes again. The procedure took ten minutes, more or less. There was no clock in the room. Mara felt a kind of tug, nothing more. “Can I see it?” she said. There was a silence in which Mara knew Sallie and the doctor were looking at each other. “There’s nothing to see really.” “I need to see it.” Sallie held up a shallow bucket, like a large dish, and Mara saw blood, bright red, a small humped mass. She reached out her hand. “No, no,” Sallie said. “I want to touch it.” “You can’t.” “Why not? It’s mine. I want to hold it.” “She can’t do that,” the doctor said. Mara held on tightly. She could feel the pull from Sallie’s hand, feel it gradually relax as Priya whispered, “Let me,” and took hold of the dish. “I’ll do it,” Priya said. “She can’t,” the doctor said again. “I think it might be all right,” Priya said. Mara heard the doctor leave the room, close the door. She thought maybe Sallie had gone too. Priya still held the dish but did not speak. Mara reached her hand inside, then turned to hold the fetus in both hands. She looked at it carefully, trying to ‹nd a human shape, eyes, the rounded package of the body. She thought she could just barely make out the curve of skull. “Goodbye,” she said. She pictured a tiny hand, waving, waving. Afterwards there was a rhythmic ache, but not like menstrual cramps. More like something groping in the dark, a visceral stumbling in an empty room, the pain not from bumping into tables and chairs, but from the action of grasping over and over, reaching and not ‹nding. An hour later, they were back inside Sallie’s house, Mara lying on the couch, drifting in and out of sleep, Sallie reading in an armchair. Later Sallie built a ‹re. Sometime in the early evening, Mara sat up and

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tried to eat soup. They did not speak except when Sallie asked Mara how she felt and Mara said ‹ne, OK, all right. She didn’t read. At eight o’clock she went to bed. She noticed there was a line of dried blood under the nail of her right index ‹nger, and so she didn’t wash. She pulled out of the pocket of her jeans the tissue she’d used to wipe her hands, the rust-colored smears on it already turning to powder. She put the tissue on the night table and then reached to turn out the lamp. The room was as dark as it had been the night before. No more, no less. She put out her hand and felt for the tissue, took it under the covers and slept with it held tight to her chest.

What

happened in the next few days, Mara found, was that she lost her voice. She knew, thought quite rationally, she could speak if she wanted to, but the truth was, she didn’t want to. She would answer Sallie’s questions with a nod or a gesture, but that was all. She thought about talking. I could tell her this, I could ask her that, I could recite the Declaration of Independence, or talk about Jimmy Carter or the guitar teacher. But then it would all seem to her like too much trouble, or unimportant, or just plain stupid. By Thursday morning, she wondered if she could still sing. She waited for Sallie to ask her to. They had fallen into a kind of routine, eating meals and reading. Mara had a week’s worth of schoolwork from her teachers at Vernal Hall, to whom Frankie had explained Mara’s long absence as a “cultural opportunity.” Mara hardly knew what to make of this, and so she tried not to think about it. Sallie taught in the mornings. In the afternoons she took Mara to someplace quiet, St. Paul’s Cathedral, where Mara looked for the bird woman from Mary Poppins, though she did not tell Sallie, the Tate Gallery, the King’s College Library, a concert—Brahms—at the Royal Academy of Music. Sallie seemed almost giddy, she laughed and chattered, and hugged Mara often, and did not press her to speak. She made up a pet name, Marakesh, and used it when they were at home together. “It’s all right here,” Sallie said Wednesday afternoon, “but when you get back, they’re going to expect you to talk. If not then, on Monday, in your classes. Although you could probably just take notes for a week 124

and no one would notice. After that, though, I think they might decide to send you home.” “I know,” Mara whispered. “Would you like to sing? We haven’t tried that yet.” “There’s a song I’ve had in my head.” Mara heard her own voice crackle and waver, as if she were listening to it over the telephone, across the Atlantic Ocean. She crossed the room and sat down at the piano, began to pick out chords. She sang:

[To view these song lyrics, refer to the print version of this title.]

“That’s quite a little song,” Sallie said. “How did you happen to learn that one?” “It’s not even over yet,” Mara said, laughing. “The other two verses are more . . . more. I don’t know why I should laugh. My voice teacher at home gave it to me. Sondheim. Stephen Sondheim. A Little Night Music. She thought it suited my range.” “Your vocal range?” Sallie said. 125

“That’s what she meant.” “Do you miss home?” “I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t know what’s going on there.” “What do you think is going on?” “The usual. My brother Phil writes me faithfully, every week. Actually it sounds like my school is in some sort of crisis. The boy who had this scholarship last year came back to be editor of the school paper, and I guess he’s become quite radical. The headmaster made him resign. They say he’s having ‘re-entry problems.’” “Tell me about your brother.” “He’s a year older, but we ended up in the same grade. He’s going off to college next year too. To New York.” “Does he know what’s happened to you?” “No. I think he can tell there’s something, but I haven’t explained.” “Will you?” Mara didn’t know. She felt it again, the loss of language, the great distance between her thoughts and her voice. Singing had brought it back, nearer, but then these questions, these ideas about explaining— “I never . . .” she said. “You never what?” Sallie’s voice was oddly intent. “I never had to explain anything to him before. He just knew.” “How likely is that? How is it possible? What does it mean?” Mara stared at Sallie, who looked angry suddenly, and distracted, as if she weren’t thinking about Mara, but rather of something distant. Or someone. “That’s Kokila’s attitude,” Sallie said ‹nally. “That’s her way in the world. She understands learning, being in school, but she believes the most important things a person just knows.” “Well. She did just know I was pregnant.” “Really?” Sallie’s eyebrows rose, and all the anger seemed to sputter out of her. “She’s an odd child. Her name means ‘nightingale’ and I think it’s cursed her. That she’s always crying out against some darkness. She’s dif‹cult. She asks a great deal of the people who love her. She believes the world owes her a lot.” “Owes her for what?” “Owes her because she’s smart. Because she hates mediocrity.”

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“She says that. She’s famous for it: ‘We will not tolerate mediocrity.’” “And I’m a very mediocre mother.” Mara wondered what she was supposed to say in reply. It seemed impossible that this woman who had stayed by her side for the last six days would be a disappointment to her own daughter. She thought of her own mother, alone in the living room, reading under the light of a single lamp, so completely unknown to her. She wouldn’t have used the word mediocre about her own mother. She wouldn’t know what word to use. “You don’t seem mediocre to me,” she said. “You seem, the two of you, the same in a way. Or maybe it’s that I want to ask you both the same question. I did ask Kokila, actually. Why are you doing all this for me?” “What did Kokila say?” “She said it was because she hates the English girls. Not in so many words. She said the English girls would think I was a typical American who couldn’t keep her knickers on.” “Are you?” “I don’t know. But why are you doing it?” Sallie closed her eyes. “Can you stand a bit more lecture?” “I think so.” “All right, then. The Iqbals in this century are poets and philosophers, descended from Allama Iqbal, who in 1930 visualized an independent state for Muslims. He invented Pakistan, you might say. So I, too, can get into the visionary spirit, not about Islam, but about the modern world, motherhood in particular. It seems to me that when motherhood comes from desire, deep desire, and not from a mistake or lack of education, then children will be the start of a new race of people. I believe that. I believe that many children who come into the world by accident have a disadvantage. I believe that young women have a hard enough time in the world, even now, even if they’re not in some kind of trouble. Older women must help them make their way.” “I’ll never forget you,” Mara said. “The thought of that gives me great pleasure. I’ll admit that to you. But the truth is that you never forget anything. Do you? You won’t ever forget anything. I can tell that about you.”

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“How?” “What you asked for in the procedure. To hold it. That’s never happened before. Not anybody in your situation. Not that I ever heard of.” Mara was still sitting at the piano. With one ‹nger, she began to pick out the notes to “My Funny Valentine.” When she looked up, she saw Sallie was amused, but puzzled. “Frank Sinatra,” she said, and Sallie nodded. Played this way, the song was haunting and disjointed. The tune had always seemed to Mara too sad for the lyrics, but maybe that was why everyone loved it so. And it was short. You couldn’t mess up, at least not for long. “Sing it for me,” Sallie said. “Not this one.” She played it again, and then a third time. Sallie listened and watched patiently. Mara observed her own hands ›attened out over the piano keys, and the ‹ngernails, bitten to the quick, the ‹ngers themselves pale and long as the keys. She thought of the hands of her political studies teacher, Mrs. Roe, curled in on themselves as if she had arthritis, and always purple from the cold. She recalled a piece of a poem Phil had written, lines that described a drowned woman’s hands “curled like fetuses.” It was a terrible poem, his English teacher had said. Mara pretended to be indignant for Phil’s sake, but she saw that the teacher was right, every line was truly, as he’d told Phil, “strained.” She knew this pained Phil deeply, but she also knew he would write more and better poems, or do something else important. She wondered what Phil could see of her and her life. She realized they almost never spoke of the future beyond college, as if it were impossible to imagine. Though it wasn’t. Maybe they were afraid that nothing would happen to them, that they would end up hopelessly normal, staid, stuck. In her room that night, Kokila’s room, Mara stared at the smears of dried blood on the tissue. She thought of it as a kind of Rorschach test: if she stared at it hard enough and long enough, an image would appear, a blossoming forth of this child. Then she reminded herself that this child would never be a child, did not exist. She was ›ooded with sadness then, but also with great relief, the combination only a little less than heart-stopping. A great weight dropped onto her chest, she could scarcely breathe, and then it lifted, fell and lifted, again and again. 128

In three days, Sallie would put her on the train in London, and Mara would make that journey again, the same change at Wolverhampton, evening arrival at Gobowen Station, though this time Frankie would be there to meet her. Or Miss Ellis, or both of them. Mara longed for the feel of Miss Ellis’s arms around her. She half-envied Frankie, who had that pleasure all the time. She wondered vaguely if she would ever come to love women more than men, and supposed it was possible that she would want women more for comfort. She thought of Phil, who did not seem to want women at all. She thought of her own mother at home, the circle of lamplight, the dead, silent house, and she vowed to be a better daughter, to ask questions, to listen. She had been a mother herself, if only for two months, and surely that would help her along somehow.

These are the names, Priya said, the soul of cooking, as your own name is what your soul is called by: tel, pyaz, lasun, adrak, garam masala, lal mirch. Then there is coriander and yogurt, cloves, darchini, bari ilaichi, tejpat, Kofta biryani. And then the ideas: freshly grated coconut in the raita will increase the curd. Add a few drops of lemon juice to rice while it is cooking, and the grains will remain separate. Soak halved onions in water for ‹ve minutes, and you will not cry when you cut them. Sometimes though, she said, crying while you slice an onion will make you feel better. Mara stood beside Priya in the kitchen, then took up the knife herself. There was no end to the chopping, but it was good, mindless work that produced results. The garlic and ginger hummed in her nose, smells like sound. And that was the beauty of it, the way this food collapsed the senses into each other, into one single astonished sense. They cooked for Sallie, Priya seemingly as grateful as Mara was, though she did not say why, never told the story of her speci‹c gratitude. They listened to Indian music from the radio, Ashoka Dhar, Priya’s favorite singer. “Let me do your kundli,” Priya said on Tuesday afternoon, and then she laughed. “I know you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s a little bit like your Western horoscope, the Western way of thinking. You tell me your birthdate and time, where you were born, and then I can tell 129

you some things. My father was a great pundit, very respected, and I learned from him.” On Thursday, she had done it, and Mara was amused and charmed by much of what Priya told her: You are a born leader but too shy to parade this quality. Very shy. You have great dif‹culty in communicating feelings and emotions. Love comes early in your life, and when it comes, it strikes a very ardent note, but big ›ames die out quickly. Probably your wedding will not be an early one, but it will be a happy one. You are likely at times to strike some odd inventions that will be lucky for you, and you will be liable to make money in a peculiar way, off the beaten track. “Peculiar,” Mara said. “That’s a strange word.” “Yes,” Priya said, but she was distracted, Mara could tell, as if she had not completely returned from the punditry. “What is it, Priya?” “I would like to do another one,” she said. “All right. But why?” “This is odd, but I would like to do your child’s. You held that child, so in a way, it was born.” “I don’t know,” Mara began. She looked at Priya, who held her gaze. “It was hard to let go of that child, Mara.” “It was.” “This is a way to keep it. Very irregular, but sometimes the crooked path is good.” So they imagined, their wits clouded, Mara thought later, by spice: a girl, Rachel, born January 1977, in Cambridge, England. Sensitive and generous, Priya told her later, on Saturday. If she were to hear of a case of want or somebody in dire distress, it is unthinkable that she would pass by and not hold out a helping hand. She has an aptitude for the highest professions, medicine for example, though it must be admitted that some of what a doctor sees might shake her ‹nely balanced temperament. Adventure would tempt her, and she should be warned against secret schemes with unfamiliar persons. There are many branches in the world of music where she would ‹nd congenial work. “That’s all,” Priya said. “That’s very nice.” 130

“So what do I have?” Mara asked. “An outline? A ghost?” “A shade,” Priya said. “That is a good word for it. Something and nothing. Both worlds, with music in them.”

On

their last afternoon together, Mara went with Sallie into London to the Pompeii exhibit at the Royal Academy. For the ‹rst time in weeks, Mara believed she was actually in the world, seeing the world, the advertisements in the Tube, the dizzying escalators that seemed to move straight up at ninety degrees. They rode to Green Park Station, and on the very top step, just before emerging into the daylight of the park, she felt awash in hope and expectation. They walked toward Piccadilly Circus, past the Ritz Hotel, the Burlington Arcade, almost to the top of Savile Row, until they saw the queue at the Royal Academy stretched around three sides of the building. They looked at each other, and Sallie shrugged, and so they joined the line, which moved quickly for a while, past buskers and panhandlers. Just inside the courtyard, they saw that the line wound itself around ‹ve times. At their feet, a man sat playing classical guitar while a woman passed a sock for donations. Mara stopped, frozen, horri‹ed, then turned her back on them. “Too many people, Mara?” Sallie said. “What shall we do?” “I’d like to see it.” “I would too.” “I’ll go ask how long the wait is,” Mara said, “then we can take turns standing in line.” “Good idea.” Mara went then, to the doorway of Burlington House, where a woman smiled at her questions, and said she’d been waiting about an hour and a half. “It’s worth it, though,” the woman said. “My daughter told me I’d never forget it.” She repeated this to Sallie, who sent her off, saying she should try warming up in Fortnum & Mason, that the smells of coffee and tea were heavenly. Mara thought she ought to get some sort of gift for Sallie, something that would remind her of Mara and Mara’s gratitude. She stopped in the Ritz, just to get a look at it, the bustle of sophisticated travelers coming and going. She felt a little feverish too, and knew 131

there would be armchairs or sofas in a hotel lobby. She would have to be careful not to fall asleep. On her way in, she glanced at the windows of the hotel’s gift shop, and saw a collection of snow globes, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle and St. Paul’s Cathedral, the exact twin of the one Mary Poppins shows to Jane and Michael Banks. Mara chose this one, paid for it and had it wrapped in a box with a gold ribbon. “A lovely idea,” the shopkeeper said, “for someone at home.” Mara nodded and thought about all the ways in which that might be true, and that she should come back in the summer and buy one of these for her own mother, who must have sung the song to her at night, in the dark, years ago. She walked back again to the Royal Academy, crossed Piccadilly to Fortnum & Mason, stood just inside the door and breathed in the scents of coffee and tea, sugar and vanilla, grateful that none of it made her feel sick. She wondered if that was why Sallie suggested she come here, to show Mara how her body had already changed, changed back. There was so much Silver Jubilee in the windows, on the shelves, for the tourists, more mugs and tins of tea and coffee. She bought a tea strainer that looked oddly like a monocle, with the image of Elizabeth II on the handle. She might go back to school, wear it on a red cord around her neck, see if anybody noticed. She remembered her mother’s old-fashioned word for such an ornament: lavalier. Back in the courtyard of the Royal Academy, the classical guitarist was gone, and the line had moved much faster than expected. Sallie was almost inside the door, looking nervously back toward the gate. She smiled and waved, the delight and relief on her face larger than the occasion, Mara thought. As soon as they were inside the museum, she gave Sallie the snow globe. “How lovely,” she said, kissing Mara on both cheeks. “How perfect. I take care of you, and then I ›y away. You must come back though. Come for the Easter holiday, with Kokila. It would be good to have you both.” “I’d love to,” Mara said. Inside the exhibit, Mara knew at once that the woman she’d spoken to earlier—the woman’s daughter, really—had been right. On a sunny morning, in 79 A.D., without much warning, Mount Vesuvius roared up and spilled over, raining destruction all along the Bay of Naples. A 132

baker had just put eighty loaves of bread into his oven, a child sat in a corner, a woman walked to the market. But the child covered his face, the woman attempted to crawl away, a dog left tied by his master twisted in the most horrible contortions. Mara could not tear her eyes away from these casts, made by pouring plaster into the spaces left by decomposed bodies: a monument made from its own absence. Adults and children huddled together, trying to shield themselves from dust, pumice, stones and burning ash. “This is so . . .” she said to Sallie but she could not ‹nish, could not move. “You never get to see this,” Sallie said. “No one gets to see it, the way people are at the very end. We all wonder what we would do. And here’s the answer.” “What’s the answer?” “We would try not to let it happen. We would not go gently.” Mara felt for the tissue in her pocket. The scene before her was the same: if she looked hard enough, long enough, some truth would come to her, clarify itself. Like looking at a car wreck, she thought, but this was artifact, not fact. A car wreck was the real thing, and this was a picture. How could it be that a picture was more riveting than the real thing? “Let’s go on to something else,” Sallie said, and guided Mara to the next rooms, the dish of walnuts still whole after nineteen hundred years, the lantern with its graceful lotus leaf design, solid gold, still in one piece. Why had the eruption not melted the temples of Apollo, Jupiter, Isis, the theater, the preserved atrium, the House of the Faun, the elaborate villa, the fast-food places called the thermopoli, the Villa of Mysteries, where frescoes depicted a young girl being initiated into the sacred rites of Dionysus? But when Sallie left to ‹nd the ladies’ lavatory, Mara went back to the body casts. Such inconceivable suffering. The woman, her legs turned sideways, her back on the ground, neck arched, mouth open, as if she were still crying out, calling. Mara wondered what the words could be, if the words might still be hanging in the air, somehow, above the woman’s face, if the plaster could catch that too. Maybe she was singing, Mara thought wildly, maybe her last sounds were not a scream but a song. Almost but not quite without thinking, she stepped over the 133

velvet cord that separated the crowd from the exhibit. There were a few gasps and a low murmuring. A guard called to her, “Miss!” Mara knelt down beside the woman’s head, and the world behind her seemed to go silent. She put her ear close to the woman’s face and listened. What she heard was like a rush of air, a high wind, a long emptiness. She put her own mouth close to the woman’s, as if she might be able to breathe air into the scorched lungs, bring back the nineteen hundred years dead. She saw that one of the woman’s eyes was open and the other was closed. In the open eye, there was a small white dot, a slight gleam. Mara stared into it, waiting for a sound, until she heard her name and Sallie grasped her hand. The voice seemed to come from the contorted plaster form, and it was a question, not a command, an inquiry full of fear and compassion. It was not Sallie’s voice, Mara was quite sure of that, or else it was Sallie’s voice from the beyond, from some future they could not yet see into.

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eresa was waiting in Mara’s room, sitting cross-legged on the bed, eating a chocolate biscuit. “Frankie unlocked it,” she said, nodding her head toward a small vase of ›owers. “She brought those. You might not want to be alone now, so I . . .” She let her voice trail off and seemed to read Mara’s expression. “Or you might want to. Just tell me and I’ll go. She got up and moved to the desk chair, gesturing expansively toward Mara’s bed. “No,” Mara said. “You can stay. I’m ‹ne.” “Was it . . . ? I don’t know the right questions, I guess.” “It was pretty easy. Kokila probably told you.” “She never said much.” “Where is she, anyway?” “Went down to see Mum for the weekend. Your trains probably passed each other. You could have waved across the platform at Wolverhampton.” “Oh.” Mara was surprised. “I would have stayed if I’d known. We could have come back together.” “Well, don’t worry about it. I think she decided at the last minute. Feel up to a little walk? Frankie thinks the ‹rst thing you need is fresh air.” 134

“It’ll be dark soon.” “I got permission. Just a short constitutional. Get your sea legs back.” Mara opened her closet. “I missed my cape,” she said and drew it off the hanger. It was heavier than she remembered. She locked the door to her room, and they went out past Frankie’s room, where the door stood open. “Ah, Mara,” she called. “Miss Ellis told me you took an earlier train. Everything all right?” “Yes,” Mara called. “Just ‹ne.” “We’ll have a cup of tea later, yes?” “All right.” “Just a short walk, is it, Teresa?” Teresa answered Miss Franklin that it would be short, and the two let themselves out the front door of Lloyd-Williams. There were voices in the common room, the laugh-track from a television program. Mara did not even glance in to see who was there. Outside, Teresa pointed left, toward the back of school property. Mara had never walked this direction because there was no reason to. The gravel path gave way to dirt and then scrubby grass and ‹nally the rail fence that ran all the way around school grounds. Teresa vaulted over the fence and then turned to help Mara climb it. They were in a wide pasture, unmarked except for a faint trail that disappeared over a hill. “I told them I’d take you to Weston Rhyn in case you needed supplies. But we don’t have to do that. There’s also a dance there tonight, but I don’t imagine you want to go.” “I’d rather not.” “Then we’ll just walk.” Teresa led the way uphill and across to leap over another, lower fence, which landed them on a narrow, paved road between two pastures. Mara knew it would get dark before they returned and she hoped Teresa could ‹nd their way back. They walked in silence, Teresa waiting, Mara guessed, to see if she would talk or cry or throw herself under the wheels of a passing car, though it didn’t seem there would be many chances for that. She didn’t know whether Teresa was curious or appalled or even interested. She was an extension of Kokila, though now that they were alone, she seemed different. Teresa had spoken to Frankie almost tenderly, without a trace of the dismissive tone Kokila 135

used. Mara began to relax, to remember that Teresa was an American, a New Yorker, and that would give them something to say to each other. They passed a church, surrounded by a wrought iron fence, an old ruin really, all the windows broken, brambles growing in the front yard, up to the doorstep. “I love this place,” Teresa said. “It doesn’t know what it is.” “Or was,” Mara said, and Teresa turned to her and smiled. The building looked Victorian, and addled, as if it were a woman who wore her petticoats on the outside. At the far end, though, where the altar must have been, there was a plain round tower with a pointed roof. “Watch,” Teresa said. She stepped close to the gate and held her hands together over her mouth, a strange expression, surprise and terror. Then she began to call, who, who, who, and the position of her ‹ngers over her lips caused an odd, mournful echo, like a dove. And from inside the church, the sound came back, a choir of mourning doves, or pigeons, crying and echoing. It was as if the church were ‹lled with inconsolable children. Teresa dragged the metal gate aside, as wide as it would go, but when Mara started to walk through, Teresa stopped and whispered shhhh. When the birds had stopped crying, Teresa let the gate go. It worked by way of a spring, and made a hideous screech and clang as it shut. There was a great twittering and ›uttering, and hundreds of birds poured out through the broken windows. The sight of them was alarming, apocalyptic, but also heartbreakingly beautiful, the combination Mara always heard in certain minor chords and triads. “I don’t do it to be cruel,” Teresa said. “I love the spectacle.” “I didn’t think it was cruel,” Mara said, though she did. “I’m trying to love spectacle less though.” Mara thought of her own hands, last week, full of blood. “What do you mean?” “I’m trying to learn to be calm. And not so homesick. My sister sent me a book of Chinese philosophy. ‘Know the sons but stay in touch with the mother.’” “Is it helping?” “I don’t know. I’ll show it to you when we get back.” They continued down the road toward Weston Rhyn. The air was 136

full of moisture, but it was not raining. Teresa said the rain had stopped as soon as Mara’s train pulled in, and Mara recalled that this was true. She asked how Teresa knew about her train, and Teresa shrugged. They came to the edge of Weston Rhyn, and Mara saw that it was really only three shops, a grocer’s, a ‹sh and chips shop, and a post of‹ce, which was closed. They stood for a moment in the doorway of the grocer. “Kokila never wants to go in here,” Teresa said. “She says they look at her like she’s going to steal something.” “Is she?” Mara asked. “She does steal,” Teresa said. “She’s going to get caught someday.” “Why does she do it?” Teresa didn’t answer. She led Mara across the street, and asked for two orders of ‹sh and chips. “It’s good to taste something every so often,” Teresa said. “You probably got good grub in Cambridge though.” “I wasn’t very hungry there,” Mara said. She thought of Priya’s cooking, the kundlis. They were in her coat pocket, left behind in the dark of the dorm room closet. “It seems in a way like I wasn’t even there. I didn’t come back with anything to show for it.” “‘Shape clay into a vessel,’” Teresa said. “‘It is the space within that makes it useful. Therefore pro‹t comes from what is there, usefulness from what is not there.’ That’s from the book my sister sent, the Tao te Ching.” “So now I’m useful? How?” “You just have to wait and see. But doesn’t it make you feel calm, just hearing those words? “ “It does.” “I don’t know anything about what happened to you and Kokila. I hope I never have to know. And this is going to sound strange, but I think it makes me more useful that I don’t know, that I’m empty like that.” “Is that why you and Kokila are such good friends?” Teresa didn’t answer right away, and Mara felt a shiver of worry, unease. Finally, Teresa said, “Something’s happening with us.” “Do you know what it is?” Teresa looked up suddenly. “Do you?” “No. I mean, I hardly know her. I think after last week, I know her mother better.” 137

“And she doesn’t like that one bit.” “Oh,” Mara said. “But it’s something else too. Her life, her future. Her parents. Frankie understands it all, but Kokila hates being understood. She wants to be a mystery.” “What about her parents?” “Well, you know her mother. Her father is the prime minister’s lawyer. Solicitor. In Pakistan. Though he never seems to be in Pakistan. But there are elections next month, and he’s on the wrong side. Kokila says his fall will be huge, dramatic. She’s going to Cambridge to study law. We’re all a little ridiculous in her eyes.” “I think her mother just wants her to be a regular daughter.” “Which is about the last thing Kokila wants. One more thing, and then we’ll head back,” Teresa said. The grocery was still open, and Teresa wanted sweets to send back to her sisters in New York. They wandered the aisles, and the names of the biscuits began to sound like a nonsense song for children, for Olwen, Mara thought: Hobnobs, Duchy Biscuits, Abbey Crunch, Penguins, Petticoat Tails, High Baked Water, Bath Oliver, Twiglets. When they brought their Jaffa Cakes and Digestives to the counter, the shop keeper pointed out to the road, and said, “Your headmaster’s just leaving.” There was Mr. Sutcliffe and a woman Mara presumed was his wife getting into a small green car. Teresa walked out to speak to them. “We’re going to walk back, but it’s getting pretty dark, isn’t it?” Mara said. The shopkeeper seemed to be both listening and not. “Where do you come from?” she said. “The U.S. Pennsylvania. The town’s called Pittsburgh.” “Ah, but that’s a city, not a town. Come back here a moment.” She opened the half-door between the counter and the back room. “My husband was in Philadelphia during the war. In the air force. Colin!” she called. Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe had just come back into the shop. Mrs. Sutcliffe was a round, red-cheeked, red-haired woman, in her middle ‹fties. Mara was amused to learn her name was Fiona. A gray-haired, strikingly handsome man emerged from behind the tall shelves. When he saw Teresa, he smiled and held out his hand, then

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seemed to think better of it. He put both hands behind his back, glanced over at the Sutcliffes and nodded once. “This one’s from Pittsburgh!” Colin’s wife said, placing her hands gently on Mara’s shoulders. “Isn’t that something?” “It’s a long time ago I was there.” Colin said. “Before she was born.” “Tell them where else,” his wife said. “Americus, Georgia. Meridian, Mississippi. Looks like a Welsh word, that one. He seemed to drift off a little. Mara wondered how old he was. He looked more like the woman’s father than her husband. “I was in awe of the Blacks. Never seen so many, but what friendly people they were to us. Hard to imagine the trouble you had with them. Couldn’t understand it at all. Such peaceful people. Not like the colored here. You can hardly go anywhere—” Colin’s wife blushed bright red. “You’re the one from New York,” she said to Teresa, drawing her behind the counter. “You were there too, Colin.” “I was as well,” Mr. Sutcliffe said. “Chestnuts sold on the street corners,” Colin said to Mr. Sutcliffe, without looking at him. “Remember that, James?” “Aye,” Sutcliffe said. “And roasting corn.” “We traveled everywhere, when we could,” Colin said. “In any broken-down car we could ‹nd. I tried to see the whole country.” Colin’s wife had disappeared, but then she was back, a black box clutched in each hand. “These are his RAF badges.” She opened the ‹rst box. “Go on. You can touch them.” Mara did, and then Teresa. As strange as Pompeii, Mara thought, relics back from ‹re and death, but these were the things themselves, an of‹cer’s beret badge with a ruby red enamel crown above the eagle, and a lapel badge that read “Queen’s Colour Squadron Royal Air Force” and then the word “Escort.” The design in the middle was a sword piercing a coronet. That must signify protection, even though it seemed vaguely threatening. “They’re beautiful,” Teresa said. “Were you an escort?” “I was, at the Queen’s coronation.” “I didn’t know that, Colin,” Mr. Sutcliffe said. “Quite an honor, I’d say.” The two men gazed at each other, and their wives looked on.

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There was a kind of trembling in the room, a stirring, the hum of a broken machine coming back to life. “And these are his wings,” his wife said suddenly, opening the second box. “No crown on these, you see. Before Her Majesty, of course. He won’t wear them anymore.” “No reason to, Kathy,” Colin said, ›ushed and smiling. He opened his mouth to say something else, but laughed instead. “I’m proud of him, I guess,” his wife said. She squeezed his hand and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Mrs. Sutcliffe shook her head a little, and moved around the counter to embrace her. The men still seemed to be lost somewhere else. “It’s all right, now, isn’t it?” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. “Janet’s all right?” “She’s ‹ne,” Kathy said. “She’s doing brilliantly now, she is. Like her old self.” “I’m so glad,” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. Colin called to his wife and told her to put the things away. Mara wondered at this odd little performance between the adults. “Girls!” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. “It’s too dark to walk. Let us drive you back. We can’t have you wandering off into the night.” “Our Janet is at university,” Kathy said suddenly, to Mara and Teresa. “Leeds. She was a Vernal day girl. Years and years ago. For one term. Then she went to Weston Rhyn. She liked to come home for lunch.” “And now look at her,” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. “So far away.” There was an acute silence in the shop, all six of them, Mara knew, thinking about great distances, but each listening for something different, a car, an airplane, a voice. “All right,” Kathy said. “Now off with the lot of you before you miss your suppers.” “Good night, girls,” Colin said, grasping their hands. He smiled sadly, shook his head. “Go back to your school and write long letters to your parents saying how much you miss them. And that you’re sorry.” “For what?” Teresa said. “For everything,” Mrs. Sutcliffe said, and then neither she nor her husband spoke another word on the drive back to school. They held hands, though, across the front seat of the car, and glanced at each other once or twice, and smiled gently. 140

They

came into Nye, Teresa and Mara, past Sutcliffe’s of‹ce, down the hall, through the back foyer, and out the door. They hiked back up the gravel road, past the classroom buildings, the refectory, the barn. Halfway to Lloyd-Williams, they came upon Olwen, standing as if frozen. Teresa said hello and stopped with a sigh, but Mara saw the gleam of tears on Olwen’s face. “What is it?” she said. “I thought I could make it,” Olwen wept, “but I can’t go any farther. They took my shoes, and it’s too dark.” “Who took your shoes?” Mara said. Olwen put her hands to her face in a gesture that seemed to Mara both melodramatic and completely honest. “I can’t tell you,” she whispered. “The older girls?” Teresa said. “Gina,” Olwen whispered. “Why do they do it?” Mara asked. “She follows them,” Teresa said. “Don’t you?” Olwen nodded, and Teresa knelt beside her and took her hand. “You have to stop that. They don’t want to be followed.” “But she’s my only sister.” “Gina Whistler,” Teresa said to Mara. “Stepsister, really. Like in the fairy tale.” “I don’t have a sister,” Mara said to Olwen. “I always wanted one too.” “Olwen,” Teresa said. “You’re going to be in trouble again. You need to get back to your dormitory.” I’m afraid of the dark,” Olwen cried. “Here,” Mara said. “Let me hold you. I’ll carry you back. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” “I’ll go tell Ells she’s OK,” Teresa said. “I’m sure there’s a search party out again.” She ducked her head, dropped her shoulder and sped off. Olwen climbed into Mara’s arms and held on. “Do you want to tell me about it?” Mara whispered into her hair. “No,” Olwen said. “Just hold me.” She thought of the plaster cast at the Pompeii exhibit, the woman on the ground twisted in pain. There was something about how the two 141

bodies looked, the Pompeiian woman not even a body but the space a body left, the white glow of plaster, and the pale translucence of Olwen’s naked legs and feet. She had wanted something from that ‹gure, an explanation, a story, a history lesson. She had not been able to control her longing for that woman’s voice, and so she had heard it, the smoky wheeze, invented it in her head. She recalled the absence of humiliation, that she felt no shame when the museum guard spoke sharply to her, when Sallie led her away, out of the gallery, out of the museum, into the courtyard of the Royal Academy where the rain on her face had ‹nally broken the spell she was under. And she thought it was odd now, Mara did, that she had no desire to hear what Olwen would tell her about Gina and the others, none in the least. At Lower Three dormitory, she gave Mara a kiss on each cheek and ran upstairs. Mara began to make her way back to Lloyd-Williams, but was lost almost instantly. She’d expected the hedges to open up onto the school driveway, where she would cut straight across the lawn and pass through to the west side of the school property. But now it was hard to know which direction she was walking. The place seemed to be made for getting oneself lost. She looked up at the stars, found a dipper, big or little, she wasn’t sure, couldn’t be until she saw the other one. But she hadn’t noticed the position of the stars back at the tuck shop. There was a slice of moon in the sky, but that didn’t help either, though she was determined to keep the moon on her left, and at least try to walk in the same direction. Ten more steps brought her to a high brick wall with no outlet left or right. She turned around. “It’s not that big a place,” she said out loud, and waited to see whether anyone might answer. She laughed a little at herself. “And just who do you think you’re speaking to?” Mara asked, and the answer came rushing into her head. She stopped walking and looked up at the trail of sky she could see between the hedges. “It’s you,” she said. “So where are you now?” There was a gentle rustling somewhere in the mulberry, a stray breath of wind, a small animal. “Over there, eh?” The stars swam a little, and Mara closed her eyes. “I miss you. I have to say. Wherever you are. You’re all I thought about for weeks, and I don’t know how to stop doing that.” She started walking again, and turned right, down another leafy corridor. Almost twenty yards off, there was a sense of coming into light, a glow, the stars not so sharp. 142

The music room was probably unlocked—some of the sixth form practiced at night—and Mara thought she might go in and sit at the piano and play as much Sondheim as she could, to summon him, draw him he knew not whither or wherefore, or who he was there for. She could sound like him sometimes, when she wanted to, and he would hear that and take her back to London. But then she would become another missing girl, a lost girl. She thought, this is the strangest time of my life. The side door to the piano practice room stood slightly ajar, and Mara let herself in and turned on the light. Just a little practice, she thought, just a little night music. Miss Ellis should talk to Olwen ‹rst, hear the story. There were great secrets, probably deep as oceans and just as likely to drown you. It was none of her business, Mara Robinson, the American who’d stumbled into this school just a few weeks before, into the middle of their lives. Sit tight, she told herself, play scales for a little while. You’ve missed a week of lessons. In her head, she was beginning a letter to Phil, telling him the truth about what had happened to her, begging him to burn the letter after reading it. She would ask him to come visit her at the end of summer term, for Parents’ Weekend. There was a desk in the practice room, and she went to it, and opened the center drawer, found a tablet lined for musical notation, and a pen. She knew Phil would like it if she wrote him on this paper instead of regular stationery. It would give him a laugh. Dear Phil, she wrote standing up in front of the desk. She crossed it out, tore another sheet from the notebook and began again. Dearest Phil, Here’s the thing. I think you might be gay. She had no idea where the words came from. Did that ever cross your mind? If so, and you are, it’s ‹ne with me. I’m not even sure why I’m writing this, except what happened to me last week makes me want to say what I really think. And never lose you. Will you come visit me in July? Mara stopped writing, folded up the paper and slipped it into her coat pocket. She sat down at the piano again, picked out notes. The sun comes up, I think about you. The coffee cup, I think about you. 143

I want you so, It’s like I’m losing my mind. Behind her, the practice room door creaked open. She did not turn, but thought of the people, the three or four, who might be standing there. She kept singing. The morning ends, I think about you. I talk to friends, I think about you. And do they know? It’s like I’m losing my mind. The door opened again, and this time Mara turned around, but there was no one there. Maybe the hem of a dark coat, disappearing. “Hey!” she called. “Come back!” And then she whispered, “Mr. Sondheim, was that you? Mr. Sondheim, I’m ready for my close-up.” She laughed a little, and took the paper out of her coat pocket, unfolded it, reached for the pen. Phil, she wrote, it’s a strange place, but you’ll love it. I think there are ghosts here. And one of them is me.

I

“ asked Gina why she would do a thing like that,” Kokila said. “Take a little girl’s shoes. Nobody else would ask her, but I did.” “And so what did she say?” Teresa wanted to know. “She said Cambridge was going to my head.” “Then what happened?” “Then we just stared at one another.” “Sort of like we’re doing now,” Mara said. Kokila moved her eyes slowly from Teresa’s face to Mara’s, a lioness surveying her prey. There was a kind of blank disinterest in her look that prickled the top of Mara’s head, as if the top of her skull had been sheared off, and cold air was rushing in, ›ooding in behind her face, down her throat to surround her heart. “What’s been going on around here?” Kokila said. 144

“You’ve only been gone two days,” Teresa said. “What do you think could have happened?” “I don’t know,” Kokila said. “Practically anything.” “How’s your mother?” Mara said, returning Kokila’s stare. “She’s ‹ne. You certainly made quite an impression.” Her tone of voice was even, as if she were talking about the weather. She looked out the window of Teresa’s room, but Mara thought there was probably nothing to see. The window gave back the room like an old mirror, and there was a kind of mist around their faces, as if the window had steamed up, but only slightly. Mara turned to see what Kokila might be staring at, and she saw Kokila’s face, a wave of pain washing over it, pain or incomprehension. She’s staring at a problem on a test, Mara thought, though she did not know where the image or the idea had come from. She had never seen Kokila take a test, never observed her to be tested by anything. “She was very nice to me,” Mara said. “She made it all bearable.” “She’s pretty good at that,” Kokila said. “When she wants to be. She doesn’t always want to be.” Kokila took a sip of brandy from the teacup she was holding. Then her body went completely still, as if she had left it, or the brandy was a paralysis-inducing potion. It’s like she’s been here for a thousand years—Mara was amazed at the realization, and wondered if Teresa could see it too. It’s like she’s centuries older than we are, and she’ll outlast us. Mara glanced at Teresa, who was hunched over her own brandy, peering into it. She’s ageless somehow. It’s alpha and omega. When we’re gone, she’ll still be sitting here with her strange knowledge and hurt feelings. She wants things that we have, but she doesn’t know what they are. “I don’t think you two will ever understand,” Kokila said. “Understand what?” They said it together, exactly in unison, and Mara heard the way the two ›at American accents fell as one, Mara’s own the higher pitch, a series of grace notes. “Anything,” Kokila said. “I met with my future husband, for dinner last night. Priya . . .” Here she looked at Mara. “You know Priya. She liked you, too. Anyway, she did my kundli, and Fazal’s, and we’re perfectly compatible. We’re to have four children, and two of their names are to begin with P and M.” 145

“Is he nice?” Mara said. “He is,” Kokila answered. “And his mother has no daughters, so she’s very—I don’t know what the word would be.” “Attentive?” Teresa said. “Devoted?” “Something like devoted,” Kokila said. “She’s going to come with us to Cambridge from London.” “So you’ll have two mothers,” Mara said. “I only have one mother,” Kokila told her. “We all only have one mother, Mara. Unless we steal another one.” “Why do you think I stole your mother?” “Did I say that? Reese, did you hear me accuse Mara of stealing my mother?” “I wasn’t listening,” Teresa said. “I’m trying to ‹gure out something else. We went to the grocer’s in Weston Rhyn, the one you won’t ever set foot in.” “I’ll set foot in it. It’s just I don’t like to.” “And the woman, the wife, Kathy, seemed to be—what would you call it, Mara?—having some kind of moment with Mrs. Sutcliffe. Did you know she had a daughter who went to school here?” “I may have heard something about it,” Kokila said. “They were very sentimental,” Mara said. “The men too.” “I remember that girl,” Kokila said. “Her name was Jane or Jenna or something like that.” “Janet,” Teresa said. “You remember her name, Kokila.” “I go away for forty-eight hours, and come back a criminal. How does that happen, Reese?” Kokila stood, gathered up her coat. “Mara? How does it happen?” “I don’t know,” Mara said. “I was gone all week.” “Janet Cunningham was a rotter,” Kokila said. “She got herself into trouble. She was disgusting, the way she trotted after Ells like a dog. I told Sutcliffe about them.” “Was it true?” Mara said. “I don’t know, but she got what she deserved.” “What did she deserve?” Teresa said. Her face seemed to Mara absolutely simmering with knowledge and fury. “Who are you to say what people deserve?” “Americans.” Kokila spat the word. “Innocent until proven guilty. 146

Always trying to be fair. Always making allowances for everybody’s poor, sad story. You’re all such children. Nobody gets what they deserve. The world is much too complicated. And too simple. You get what you get. Get. As in this.” She made a grasping motion with both hands, circling them into ‹sts and pulling the ‹sts in close to her chest. “Sit down, Kokila,” Teresa said. “Don’t go. Don’t be mad at me. Finish your brandy and you’ll feel better.” “I’m the head girl,” Kokila said. “And I want to be treated like the head girl. I’m going to Cambridge. No one else here is going to Cambridge. That disgusting Janet Cunningham only went to Leeds.” The pitch of her voice changed then, a kind of ascension. “But I’m not modern. I’m not going to throw away all the tradition, like my mother did. I’m going to be everything. Daughter, wife, mother, lawyer. With a husband and beyond a husband. It can work. I know it can.” This is how a nervous breakdown starts, Mara thought. Kokila turned to look at the photographs stuck on Teresa’s wall. Without her glasses, which she never seemed to wear or carry with her, she had to press in very close to them. Mara and Teresa waited quietly, as if for a pronouncement, a judgment: Teresa’s three sisters, Megan, Jane and Emily, at the beach, with their parents, holding up a sign that read “bon voyage.” “These are new,” Kokila said. “They all look so happy.” “They are happy,” Teresa said. “I’m always the gloomy one in the pictures. You should see them. Every holiday, every birthday. I’m the one who’s got a red face or red eyes or looks like she’s been crying.” “Why?” Mara said. “I usually had been crying. It happened so often that my father started to wonder if there was something about anticipating a family picture that set me off. They thought maybe it was about my soul, that I was worried it would be stolen. So they started not telling me when a picture was going to be taken. And thus began the years of the closed-eye photos.” Kokila smiled. “Why are they so happy when you’re not in the pictures with them?” “Because I’m taking the picture, Koke. I’m making them laugh. Some children are better heard and not seen.” “Some adults, too,” Kokila said “You’re lucky to have sisters, Teresa,” Mara said. “I know.” 147

“Where’s this one taken?” Kokila asked. She tapped her ‹nger on the photograph that seemed to be in the middle of the arrangement. “It looks so cold.” “That’s Cape Cod. Truro. Megan’s boyfriend’s family had a place there, and they let us use it for a weekend, just the four of us, no parents or boyfriends. It was great. Emily built all the ‹res and did all the cooking, and the rest of us ordered her around. Which she loves because she’s basically a masochist. Actually, she’s named after Emily Dickinson, and she feels she has to live up to it.” “Who are you named after?” Kokila said. “St. Teresa. The French one and the Spanish one.” “Martyred?” “Nope. Tuberculosis and old age, respectively. Patron saints of aviators, ›orists and headache sufferers. No eyes in a dish or anything like that. No miracles.” “Mara?” Kokila said, with her back to them, still gazing at the photos. She is commanding me to speak, Mara thought, and quickly glanced at Teresa, who nodded her head slightly: Go ahead, play along. Let’s make her head girl again. “It’s just a name my mother liked. There’s no St. Mara. Not that I know of.” “Kokila means—” “Nightingale,” Mara said. “Your mother told me.” Kokila glared. “Did she tell you not as in Florence, the nurse with the lamp? Did she tell you, as in song unlike any other? Phrases and repetitions. Deep, low, sustained notes. Did she tell you the nightingale has only one eye, and she steals another from a serpent, who is angry and vengeful? Did she tell you the nightingale must be vigilant, and so she sings all night with her breast pressed against a sharp thorn in a white rosebush? Her blood turns the roses red. Did she tell you a ›ock of nightingales is called ‘a watch’?” “No,” Mara said. “She didn’t tell me that.” “Have you ever heard one?” Teresa said. Mara began to sing. Thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! 148

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. Thou wast not born for death immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth when sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn . . . “Nice,” Kokila said. “No wonder my mother loves you. Did you sing for her?” “Once. Not too much.” “Why did you want to come here?” Kokila said. “Both of you. It seems like a game, a holiday or something. We’re here to work, to sit for our A levels and go to university. And you’re here for—what? The experience? It’s strange. How do you explain it to yourselves?” “I was bored at home,” Teresa said quickly, and Mara was glad. She wanted the silence after Kokila’s question to be ‹lled in. “I was sick of my school. Jane went off to college, only half-wanting to. She would have liked to stay home with her friends and have high school go on forever. I thought it should have been me, getting away. This was the next best thing.” “Me too,” Mara said. So now she was an echo, the mirror of a voice. “I want to learn from you,” Kokila said. “Both of you. I want to learn to be more American. I’m getting too English. It seems like the right antidote, and so I’ll land somewhere in the middle.” “What about being Pakistani?” Mara said. “I already know that. And if I forget, my mother-in-law will remind me.” She rolled her eyes. “That’s already American,” Teresa said. “The mother-in-law as force to be reckoned with.” “The English are so secretive,” Kokila said. She looked at Mara steadily, then at Teresa. It was a kind of a challenge. “So don’t be like them,” Teresa said. 149

“I could get Frankie and Ells chucked out of here,” Kokila said. “But why would you want to do a thing like that?” Mara asked. “What do you think happened to Janet Cunningham?” Kokila said. “Why do you think she left?” Mara and Teresa were silent, and Kokila seemed content to let the question hang in the air. She turned and walked two paces back to the door, bent to peer at the photographs of Teresa’s sisters. She asked which was the one in college, and Teresa told her, two of them actually, Jane and Megan. She asked the name of Mara’s brother and Mara said Philip. “What would be American,” Teresa said, “I mean, if you really want to be more American, is to forget about it. Turn a blind eye. Look the other way. Live and let live.” “Americans don’t do that!” Kokila was furious. “Americans are constantly meddling in everyone else’s business. All over the world.” “Freedom . . .” Mara began. “Freedom?” Kokila said. “Let me tell you about that myth. In Pakistan, there is freedom, there is democracy, but only Ali Bhutto and his friends are allowed to drink or gamble or go to nightclubs. He is very charismatic, but charisma is not freedom. He kills separatists. He is in bed with the fundamentalists and the judiciary. His nationalization is a sham. Banks. Rice and ›our mills. Thousands of small businesses ruined. He has corrupted his party.” “Your father is one of his lawyers,” Mara said. “You’re going to marry one of his nephews.” “I hate my father.” “What does this have to do with Frankie and Ells?” “Hypocrisy! I hate it!” “You’re not making much sense, Koke,” Teresa said quietly. “I know.” Kokila dropped to the ›oor and sat with her back against the wall, her knees pulled up to her chest. Mara and Teresa went to sit on either side of her. The ›oor was cold and there was dust along the baseboard. Teresa’s closet was partway open, and Mara could see shoes, Nikes and Converse tennis shoes, oxblood-colored ›ats like ballet shoes, and black high heels. Shoes, she thought, that’s American. We could teach her about kinds of shoes, and how many a woman needs and why. 150

She touched Kokila’s arm. “What do you want us to teach you?” “To be happy,” Kokila whispered. “Just that.” There was a brisk knock on the door and Miss Franklin’s voice called, “Meeting. Sunday-night meeting, girls.” They could hear the tromp of feet from upstairs, a general grumble from Vicki Marsh, three doors down. “You’re supposed to call the meeting,” Teresa said to Kokila. “I know.” “I’ll say you’re sick. Second head runs it sometimes.” “No,” Kokila said, raising her head. “Have you ever seen Mary Fairchild run anything? She’s hopeless. She stammers and stutters her way through.” Kokila pushed herself up from the ›oor, and opened Teresa’s closet to look in the mirror. She licked the tips of her ‹ngers and smoothed her hair into place. She shook her head and smiled in mock dismay, pulled the long thick braid over her shoulder to examine the end. Mara wanted to touch Kokila’s hair, see if it would feel sharp and wiry, like frayed rope. Kokila said, “Let’s go,” and Teresa opened the door. In the common room, the sixth-form girls milled between the kitchen and the television. There were twenty-two of them, a small United Nations: girls from Greece, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, England of course, and America, Ireland, Iran, Polynesia, China, Pakistan and India. Miss Franklin sat at the very back of the room, her body very straight, taut, attentive, and Gina Whistler sat beside her, fairly quaking with rage. Kokila stood for a moment in front of the television, and everyone went quiet and still, taking their places in chairs and on couches. She motioned for Mary Fairchild to join her, and then the two of them perched side by side on a table just to the left of the television. Kokila smiled, and Mara thought the room took on a strange numbness. They’d heard it all for weeks, years, since each form had its own meeting. They were not seeing Kokila, not seeing anything. No wonder girls in England called each other cows. Kokila cleared her throat and read a list of the week’s events, house netball, careers lecture, philosophy discussion, music examination, house outing, world cookery, choral society, ‹rst hockey trials. The list was published and handed around, so Mara wasn’t sure why it had to be read, except maybe for the sake of tradition. Then the girls were free to speak. Saba, the Egyptian, had lost her watch and wondered if anyone had seen it. Mary Fairchild was trying to 151

organize a skating party. Iyabo, the beautiful six-foot Nigerian artist, needed tutoring in French. She would give anyone who helped her some of the ishiewu her mother sent from Lagos. Everyone laughed, and Teresa said she’d provide tutoring but only if Iyabo would keep all the ishiewu for herself. “It’s goat head, brains and eyeballs and all,” she whispered to Mara. Kokila waited until all the girls had made their announcements or requests, then she asked how the Weston Rhyn dance had been. Several girls giggled and whispered, but no one spoke up. “Well?” Kokila said. “I’ll tell you about it,” an English voice boomed from the kitchen, Vicki Marsh. “There wasn’t enough bloody booze! Sorry, Miss Franklin.” “In fact, there was probably nothing to drink,” Miss Franklin said evenly. “And the blokes!” Vicki went on. “But it was Weston Rhyn, wasn’t it?” “That’s why I wouldn’t go,” Gina said. “Mediocre,” Kokila said, her gaze locking with Gina’s. “That’s what they are there. We will not tolerate mediocrity.” She raised her ‹st in the air and shook it. The girls nodded, laughing. “On a serious note,” Kokila said. “A little girl, a third-form girl, was found wandering in the dark without her shoes. She was all right, but we have to watch out for the little ones. Even if they drive us bonkers. Right?” “Right!” the chorus of girls called back. Gina said nothing. Mara marveled at her expression, both closed and watchful. The meeting ended. Mary Fairchild slid off the table as quickly as she could, but Kokila stayed where she was, her back straight, hands clasped in her lap, surveying the room, staring Gina Whistler into the ground. Mara watched her, attracted and mysti‹ed. Kokila could certainly rally her troops, and that was how she appeared to regard them, with a mixture of pride and severity. It was a gift, Mara knew, that charisma Kokila raged against in Zul‹kar Ali Bhutto, Kokila had it too. She would be a great stateswoman some day. She would make others forget her sins, forgive them. Even now, Mara could hardly remember what had been said in Teresa’s room. Kokila was like a drug. Or something else: she could erase herself at will, and then sketch herself back 152

in to existence, new, a few quick strokes. Like her mother, Kokila would be impossible to forget.

Sallie held the white dress, and Kokila held a red sari, the color of cherries. As they argued, they began to raise the dresses higher and higher over their heads, and then swing them back and forth in a slow, sweeping motion, languorous and utterly at odds with the fury of their disagreement. Mara watched, horri‹ed and fascinated. She thought anyone walking outside must wonder what strange pageant was going on, what re-enactment of Lancaster and York, or Lewis Carroll’s white knight and red queen. Fazal Bhutto sat on the other end of the couch, four feet from Mara. He appeared to be in a sort of waking sleep—he was holding his head up, and Mara could see that through the slits of his eyes, he was paying close attention to the scene, the struggle between his wife-to-be and her mother. Suddenly Kokila turned to him, and asked what he would wear to their wedding. “I will wear a suit,” he said, opening his eyes only a little wider. “See?” Kokila cried. “See what?” Sallie said, laughing. “A suit! A suit is modern.” “Don’t you care about this?” Mara whispered, and Fazal Bhutto shrugged his shoulders. But even with this news from the groom, Sallie seemed to be running out of ammunition, pleading over and over, It’s my dress and I’ve saved it for you, and slipping into Urdu more quickly than Kokila did. At these moments, Fazal seemed to perk up. Mara heard his name and his family’s name repeated often enough to understand how the argument was changing, that it was about the Iqbals and the Bhuttos, and what it meant to have invented Pakistan or to have transformed it. Still they waved the garments back and forth, as if each was trying to distract the other with the beauty of the material, the way it would glide around the body of the bride and make her worthy. The question is, Mara thought, worthy of whom. Or what. Finally, Sallie stopped talking, crossed the room, and dropped the white dress in Mara’s lap, and all the muslin, silk, the hundreds of pearl buttons fell around her like cloud and mist. The dress looked as if it had 153

never been worn. Without thinking, Mara gathered some of the bodice into her hands, brought it up to her face and held it there. She heard Sallie leave the room, go into her bedroom and close the door. “You take it, then,” Kokila said to Mara. “That’s what she means.” “Everyone is upset about the elections,” Fazal said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’ll go now. There may be news.” He rose from the couch and looked meaningfully at Kokila. Mara wondered if they had ever had a moment like this before, without chaperones, and she realized suddenly that it had fallen to her to be Kokila’s guardian. She thought maybe she ought to step between them. “Fazal,” she said. “Why is everyone upset?” Fazal did not look away from Kokila as he spoke. “Pakistan is so young in many ways, and the People’s Party, my uncle’s party, is doing so much good, but their method is not understood. Many Pakistanis cannot see the future as clearly as my uncle does.” He reached for Kokila’s hand. “I will come back when your mother is feeling better,” he said. He made a little bow to Mara and was gone. “What he means,” Kokila said, “is that Bhutto’s been accused of rigging the election.” “Do you think he did?” “Not by himself.” “Is that why your father’s not here?” “Yes.” “Kokila, why did you want me to come with you for this holiday? You must have known there would be all this . . .” Mara waved her hand in the direction of Sallie’s closed bedroom door. Kokila smiled only slightly. “Witnesses,” she said. “Witnesses are the center of a Muslim wedding. Every agreement, every promise must be made in the presence of witnesses.” “Every battle?” “Those are the most important.” Kokila turned from Mara toward the closed door. “Amma!” she called. “We’ll go now. We’ll just go back to school.” The door opened and Sallie stood before them, glaring. “You go, Kokila,” she said. “Mara should stay. She would like a vacation. To relax. But you go back to your school where you are so happy. So important.” They stood frozen. Mara thought, here we all are, ancient, mod154

ern, American, outside of time. Then Kokila bent slowly, regally toward her backpack and jacket, as if they were bouquets tossed at her feet by an admirer. “As you wish, Amma,” she said. She turned her back, positioning herself between Mara and her mother. “Mara? Are you staying or coming?” Sallie moved past her daughter. “Mara is staying. She came for the holiday, and I won’t have her disappointed.” Mara felt relieved. She did indeed want a vacation, a week away from the school, the orderly day, the other girls. “Of course,” Kokila said. She looked at her mother. “Amma, are we nothing but an endless experiment for you? Am I nothing but that? When will you stop putting me in situations in order to see how I will turn out?” And then she was gone. “Mara,” Sallie began. “I’m sorry—” “I don’t want to make trouble between you,” Mara said. “I’m so grateful to you for all your help, but I just—Kokila is so angry.” “That’s true. But she will get over it.” “She’s at a strange place in her life.” “No more so than you are.” They went that night to see a play, Shakespeare, Richard II. Mara was content to be in the shadow of Sallie, her certainty, her intelligence. And the idea of sitting in the dark while language roiled over her—it seemed delicious. She felt even more strongly than she had during her ‹rst trip to Cambridge that she had come to some place from which she would proceed as a wholly new being, the bend in the river where the bridge was washed out, no way to cross without rocketing violently forward through high water. Afterwards, Sallie told Mara this story about Kokila: “In 1974, when she was fourteen, she began to pay very close attention to politics, especially American politics, particularly the fall and subsequent resignation of President Richard Nixon. For her ‹rst essay that year in political studies, she wrote a comparison of Nixon’s resignation speech and the abdication speech in Richard II. She invented the assignment herself, and it was a logical comparison since both men blamed their troubles on the actions of other people. The teachers were astounded, and she received perfect marks. The play reminds me of that paper. Kokila was happy with the high marks, of course, but what I’ll never forget is how 155

afraid the essay made her. She said she knew she was way ahead of the other girls, that she thought like an adult and read like an adult and acted like an adult. But she wondered, what would happen when they all became adults too? Then where would she be? I didn’t have much of an answer for her. I didn’t have any answer. What I think is true, though, is that she’ll ‹nd people like you to become close to, people who are like her, as I believe you are. And some of the others will never catch up. They’ll have all the rights and responsibilities of adulthood, but they’ll be just large children. And I have to think that you and Kokila will be calmer at age forty because you will have been forty for all those years and will have got used to it. “I have a little gift for you,” Sallie continued. She rose from the sofa, went to her desk and returned with a box covered in black velvet. Inside, Mara found a golden bird as big as her ‹st, the black lacquer crusted all over with shards of mother-of-pearl and shiny gems. “It’s a nightingale,” Sallie said. “To remind you. Of both of us.” “It’s beautiful,” Mara said. “Thank you. But really, shouldn’t Kokila have it?” “It’s mine to give. And anyway, Kokila is a nightingale. She has herself. At the moment, that’s all she wants.” Sallie sat down next to Mara. “Here. Look. You wind it up, and inside you can see the gears go. You can see how the music is made.” Mara wound the pin and they listened to the bird’s song, piercing, clear as glass bells, the tune intricate, a riddle of modulation, asked again, and then again, differently. “They come in the summer to West Raynham,” Sallie said, “in East Anglia. The nightingale cannot be confused with any other songbird.” “And the Keats poem,” Mara said. “You know it, of course,” Sallie said. “I think every schoolgirl knows it.” “I learned it as a song, actually.” Sallie nodded. “It’s about music, that poem, how music helps us in our struggle between opposites. Between memory and loss. The nightingale is a kind of middle ground of imagination. Keats doesn’t have a vision, but he doesn’t fall into despair either. It’s a very strange poem, though. Rather than arriving at a conclusion about his experience, Keats is not sure if he’s had an experience. He wonders if he dreamed it all.” 156

Mara held the nightingale under the lamp and marveled at its different glitterings, another kind of modulation, in light rather than sound. Sallie smiled and drew her index ‹nger softly along Mara’s cheek. Then she got up, went to the front window and stood staring out into the darkness. “But Keats leaves something out of the poem,” she said. “The nightingale’s song is exquisite, true. But the real bird, the female—as soon as her eggs are hatched out, she loses her beautiful voice and schools her young with a harsh call. It’s raucous and angry.” Here Sallie paused and sighed heavily. “I am interested in that change in the female’s voice, what motherhood does to her. Why should it make her so cruel, so severe?” She turned to face Mara. “Why should it? That is the hardest part of the story.”

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÷ FIVE

T

he boys gathered for assembly It was chapel, really, a hymn, a scripture every Wednesday at ten reading, a sermon or talk, sometimes a choral selection, prayers, another hymn, boys in robes serving as acolytes, candles lit at the beginning and extinguished at the end. John would give the sermon about once a month. Since his death, other faculty had stepped in, but Mara had never spoken at an assembly. For a while, some of the boys believed she’d lost her voice—she’d heard the rumors, dark fairy tales about the Widow Raynor and her mysterious silence. This Wednesday morning, Mara knew everyone—even Richards and the trustees—would be waiting for something like the breaking of a spell. She would give them that, and more, when she talked about Gurtej Bandasari and the kirpan, and less, in a way: she had realized in the rewriting that her talk was really about loss. It was also a letter of resignation, a farewell, and it should be given in January when the boys could really hear it, rather than in June when they couldn’t. By graduation, they would have become deaf—actually their hearing would start to go in April when the blare of college acceptances began. If she wanted to be remembered in any way, the time was now. If she wanted John to be remembered, was what she really meant. So this talk was a kind of love letter too, about love. The boys were old enough to hear it, even the sixth graders. Someday they would all be in love, every last one of them. Many were already. Gurtej, for instance. Or if he wasn’t in love with Rachel, it amounted to the same thing: a bond that drew them away from the rest of the world. Mara wondered again how much Gurtej knew about his mother’s school days, what exactly Kokila had told him about Mara’s part in her life at this same moment, the end of school, and what he had told Rachel. She could almost hear Gurtej’s voice: Do A .M .

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you know what your mother did to my mother when they were eighteen? At three minutes before ten, she was sitting on the stage with the choir, but mostly juniors and seniors, she noticed, and recalled that group was referred to as Chorale. So they must have prepared something. A boy stood and brought her a program. “Little Lamb,” the musical selection was named. She waited, stood for the hymn, “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small.” Her talk wasn’t going to have anything to do with the music, this theme of animals. Maybe she ought to admit that right away, so no one would think she was out of her mind. Especially Richards, right there in the front row, next to Arthur Overby. The prayer began, “Lord make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.” St. Francis of Assisi. “Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console.” Especially grant that, yes. Please. Mara rose and walked to the lectern. She stood up on the step someone had kindly provided for her and adjusted the microphone. “Gentlemen,” she began, “and ladies.” She smiled and nodded toward two of the women faculty, seated in the second row. “And distinguished guest, Mr. Richards. This is the ‹rst opportunity I have had to address you since I took on the job of interim head, and I would like, at the outset, to thank you all for your good wishes and compassion.” She paused. Those faces, all of them upturned. It was the purest moment of sympathy she had experienced in the last three months. “An issue has arisen in the school, an ideological problem that de‹nes our entire existence. Yours, and in a different way, almost inexplicable, mine.” At the back of the chapel, a door moved, soundlessly. Someone ‹nally oiled those hinges, Mara thought, even as she spoke. She had already looked back down at her speech when a ›ash of color caused her to glance back at the open door. Kokila, in a green and gold sari, and behind her, Gurtej. A sob rose into her throat, ampli‹ed itself as a deep, ragged breath. She watched them until they were seated. One or two boys turned in their seats to see what she was looking at, but most were spellbound by her presence at the lectern, her ‹rst words, and then the odd sound she’d made after. There was a stirring of whispers from behind her, in the choir stalls, a ‹rm ssshhhh from the director. Mara wanted to say Kokila’s name, or maybe call out to the boys in the back 159

row to lock the chapel doors, so Gurtej and his mother could not escape. “The issue is religious tolerance,” she continued. “It’s also fear. As many of you know, we have a student at the school, Gurtej Bandasari, who practices Sikhism. As a part of his faith, he wears a kirpan, which resembles a short-bladed knife, but is not sharpened.” She looked for Alex Ingersoll in the audience, but could not ‹nd him. “Some of you were surprised recently to see it on his person, or hear about it. It worried you. It worried you for a number of reasons, all of which are valid. I’m here to reassure you that Mr. Bandasari’s kirpan is not a cause for concern. This is the way I have come to understand it.” Mara paused and took a long breath to ‹x the image in her own mind. “Think of a cross for Christians. Is it worn to symbolize an instrument of torture? No. It’s a sign of the spiritual life and of struggle between good and evil. And a symbol of history and tradition. The kirpan is the same. A Sikh is expected to be a saint and a soldier and follow a path of law, order and morality. The symbolic content is in a way the opposite of the thing, and also the fullness of it. In poetry, this is called metonymy. In life, it is called mystery.” The boys sighed, just a little. Mystery was still one of their favorite subjects. “It seems to me we believe or we act as if there are two types of mystery; those that would seem to be knowable, and those that we accept as forever veiled away from us. The distinction is moot really, because by de‹nition, a mystery is unknowable. Love is, I think, a mystery, the kind we try to make believe we can know the essence of. Death and the afterlife are mysteries we’re mostly content to let alone. “But back to Mr. Bandasari and the question at hand. As I thought about the situation over the weekend, it became clearer and clearer to me—that is, less of a mystery—that he should be allowed to wear the kirpan.” There was a general rustling from the audience, whispering from the front row, between Arthur Overby and Ramsay, Richards and the principal of the Upper School. “I did not consult with anyone, as perhaps I should have. I should say I did not consult with anyone alive.” The chapel was completely still, and Mara wished the suspended disbelief would last forever. “I did seek counsel from the memory of my husband. Not in the manner of the séance or the crystal ball or the 160

palm reader, but through my understanding of his past acts. The question what did John Raynor do, led me to what would John Raynor do?” Mara felt she had her audience right with her, and John too, there beside her as she said his name. “This is the knowable mystery of love. Call it memory, if you like. The French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said that love is not two people gazing at one another, but two people gazing in the same direction. So I looked and found the angle and direction of the gaze I shared with my husband.” In the back of the chapel, Gurtej stood up. “Thank you, Mrs. Raynor,” he said simply, but did not sit back down. Mara knew what he would say next, but not how he would say it. He pressed his palms together and raised them just above the level of his eyes. “And thank you, Dr. Raynor, up in heaven.” Then he sat down next to Kokila. Mara saw him lean toward her and whisper in her ear. The sound that followed his words was extraordinary and strange, like the swell of laughter and choking, and the sound a body makes when the breath is driven out of it by a kick or a fall. There was a sort of disembodiment about it, too, as if the boys in the audience were not responsible. Mara glanced down at the trustees, whose faces were blank as air. They seemed to be looking off to the side of her head, at the candles burning on the altar, the little ›ames. “You’re welcome, Gurtej. I only ask that you keep the kirpan covered.” She saw Gurtej nodding his head hard, agreeing enthusiastically. “I’m making this deal with you publicly because I think it illustrates something about intolerance, which is really fear. We all know now that Gurtej Bandasari will be wearing the kirpan and we know why. This knowledge should erase our fear. There can be no element of surprise or uncertainty, which are the basis of fear. We might have been afraid of Mr. Bandasari’s kirpan because we misunderstood it as a knife, a thing capable of in›icting pain and death, a calling card of evil. And evil, gentlemen, is perhaps the most unknowable of mysteries.” Here Mara tried not to look at Kokila. “It is a force that often refuses to speak its speci‹c name or be brought into the light. But Mr. Bandasari’s kirpan has been named; it has been shown, so there can be nothing evil about it. It is his right as a Sikh to carry it, and we must let him.” “Look!” Gurtej called from the back row, and standing again, he lifted his coat and shirt and brought out the kirpan, held it high in the 161

air. “Here it is. You’re seeing it.” And what Mara felt then she supposed everyone—the boys, the faculty, the trustees—felt, despite all her talk: a knife in the air. And more than that: Kokila sitting calmly, smiling slightly, next to a boy holding a knife in the air. It was frightening, horrible, perfect. Mara ›inched, and the step she stood on wobbled beneath her. She grabbed the sides of the lectern, and she knew how it would appear to the assembly. Just get to the end, she told herself. “Eleanor Roosevelt asked this question: ‘Where do human rights begin?’ and then she answered it. ‘In small places, close to home, so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of individual persons: the neighborhood he lives in, the factory, the farm, the of‹ce where she works. Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.’ “This school is one of those small places, and it is indeed close to home. For me, for my daughter Rachel, and until very recently for my husband, it has been home for nearly ‹fteen years. What we do here radiates outward, Mrs. Roosevelt said, and will in›uence the course of world events. That’s an awesome thought, isn’t it—and I mean awe in every sense of the word, to think that the way you treat this issue of the kirpan has echoes in the wider world, that it can travel down the street to Congress, up to New York to the United Nations, to India and Pakistan and beyond. It’s power. Who’d have thought at ages ‹fteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, you could have power like this?” And here Mara did look at Kokila, and Kokila held her gaze. “Most of you,” she continued, “can’t even vote yet. But you can be the quiet beginning of something, right here, right now. “I can’t say how or why I know this—it’s mystery of the highest order—but Dr. Raynor would be proud of you. He is proud of you, right this minute. And I trust, as Mr. Bandasari said, that Dr. Raynor is with God in heaven, and he is putting in a good word for all of us.” Mara stepped back from the lectern, and sat down next to the chaplain, who took her hand and held it for a moment. She heard a shuf›ing and looked up and out at the boys. One by one, and then in groups of three and four, they stood up, the teachers too, and the trustees in the front row. This is what they had been taught to do in chapel, when the 162

candles were lit, in lieu of applause. Mara smiled, gave an awkward kind of bow from the waist, then stood and blew them a kiss. And then it began, in the back of the chapel, Mara thought Gurtej must have been the one to start, one pair of hands clapping, then more and more, until the small space thundered with applause. Mara knew it was not all for her, maybe none of it was. These boys had never had a chance like this to show their appreciation for John. She turned to face the altar, the six lit candles, and joined in. They would all understand what she meant by it. When the sound died away and the boys sat down, the Chorale remained standing and performed their piece. Little Lamb who made thee, Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o’er the mead. Little lamb I’ll tell thee . . . That’s all Mara heard. Because she saw a ›ash of light from the back of the chapel, the door pushed open, Gurtej and Kokila exiting quietly, unhurried. Mara hesitated, knowing that if she left the stage now, no one would understand, the choir director might be insulted, the trustees would roll their eyes—and the spirit of the boys—how could she leave after that ovation? She imagined then, just a ›ash, how uncomfortable everyone might feel after the service was over, that the condolences might start again, from Richards too. She could not bear it, and whispered to the chaplain, “I have to go.” There was a door in the wings, stage left, which opened into the art gallery, the stairs to the library. She would meet Kokila and Gurtej coming around the corner. Five steps, off the stage, through the exit, its glowing sign, into the gallery. Empty. The boys’ voices and the piano sounded far away, muf›ed. Mara walked quickly, half-ran, past the alumni watercolors, past the headmaster’s of‹ce, and still there was no sign of them. She wanted to call out Kokila’s name, but she knew she would be heard inside the chapel. Then there was the sound of a car’s engine starting, and she rushed toward it, past the potted palms, out the door of the administration building, into the driveway. Kokila was just climbing into the 163

front passenger door of a black car, small, hunched like a bug, she thought. “Kokila,” she called, “wait!” Kokila turned and smiled, raised her arm and waved, then ducked into the car and closed the door. Mara watched them, hugging herself in the cold, until the car was out of sight.

For the rest of the day, Mara listened from inside the headmaster’s of‹ce as the calls came in, and Betty answered them. After the ‹rst forty minutes, she realized Betty, whose words she could not quite catch, was doing a certain amount of screening. She smiled to herself and watched the boys come and go below the window. This was like the old days. If she closed her eyes, she could conjure almost every detail: the sticky scent of the hazelnut coffee John liked, his voice across the room or outside the of‹ce door, murmurous, placid, explaining, endlessly making sense of something for somebody. Mara would be making a list for him, looking into a boy’s ‹le, drafting a letter of recommendation. His desk was between the door and the chair she always sat in. So she was safe. The two most important calls came in back-to-back, about two o’clock. First, there was Rachel, who had heard about Mara’s talk, presumably from Gurtej. Mara understood, ‹nally, that Rachel was living there, with the Bandasaris, and felt shocked and comforted in the same instant. She had a brief but very clear memory of Sallie’s house in Cambridge, the silence in those days after the abortion, when Sallie was gone, and before Priya arrived to do the baking and cleaning. A minute later, Mara heard Betty try to discourage the next caller, and knew immediately who it must be. She went to the door and signaled to Betty to put him through. “Hello, Arthur,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to hear from you.” She listened then as Overby detailed the means by which she could be bodily removed from the headmaster’s of‹ce. As he spoke, Mara stared out the window until the sun burst from behind a cloud and blinded her. The view of boys passing below her, the entire school grounds, disappeared, lost in light. “You wouldn’t dare touch me,” Mara said. “Not now.” Overby assured her that he would if he had to. 164

The search for a new headmaster was scuttled by the students, though Mara did nothing to stop their protests, other than make sure that meetings were orderly and their complaints put in writing. The boys seemed to understand quickly that Richards was the favored candidate, and they found him odious, a bore, a windbag, anti-intellectual. A lot of words with hyphens, one of them said, as if that were one of the strongest arguments against the man, that only made-up, cobbled-together words would describe him. He had, the boys said in their letters, nothing in common with them. He had attended public school and seemed a little too proud of it. Mara winced when she heard that one, then laughed a little in the privacy of John’s study, and prayed that kind of talk didn’t make its way into the newspapers. But some of it did, and miraculously, the D.C. papers and the New York Times saw the boys as heroes, taking their education into their own hands. They were almost a populist movement, one columnist wrote. Another, who had been at Harvard with John, called their campaign the perfect merging of public and private education, a reinvention of the preparatory school. It was good press, all of it. The endowment grew. A number of alumni donated money for the ‹rst time. The teachers were praised for having taught the boys how to use their collective voice, and Mara was hailed for listening to it. Maybe, someone suggested, Mara ought to stay on as head of the school. Or maybe the search should include women candidates. And here the bubble burst, the parents raged, and Mara felt as if she were losing her mind. The phone calls from Arthur Overby, which had stopped for a time, began again, his strange, sad, androgynous voice calling aggressively. “You need to disappear,” he said. Later she saw him standing across the street, staring up at the house. For an hour, he moved slowly along the sidewalk, head down as if he were searching for something he’d lost. She ‹red the independent consulting ‹rm, but the Board of Trustees rehired them the following Monday, saying she had no authority. On Tuesday, she found the lock on her of‹ce door had been changed. On Wednesday, Betty gave her the new key. On Thursday, the trustees sent a registered letter asking her to resign as interim head, and she refused, writing back that it would be a terrible example to set for the students. 165

Then Mara called Kokila. She counted ten rings, hung up, then called again. On the third try, an older woman answered and began to explain that Mrs. Bandasari was out. She stopped abruptly, and there was the sound of the telephone being passed to someone else. “Hello Mara,” Kokila said. “Is she all right?” “Is who all right?” Rage welled inside Mara’s chest like sickness, like a kind of poison. The headmaster’s study grew dim before her eyes. “I’ll come to your house, Kokila.” “Please don’t do that,” Kokila replied, her voice taking on a softer tone. “She’s ‹ne. Rachel’s ‹ne. She’s resting. I’ve told her she must return home this weekend. I’ll think she’ll be ready.” “You think?” “She will come home by Sunday.” “Can you tell me why you’ve done this?” There was a pause, a breath exhaled slowly, a decision made to say certain words or not to. “You would do it for my child, Mara. I know you would.” Two days, Mara thought as she listened to the silence inside the receiver. I have two days to become someone else, a different kind of mother.

On Friday morning, the boys went on strike. It was beautiful and terrifying, nearly one hundred boys sitting at the door of the headmaster’s of‹ce, spilling into the hallway, lounging against the walls. Most read or worked quietly, a few played cards. No one was allowed to sleep. When anyone approached Mara’s of‹ce, Adam Russell, the senior class president, rose from his place and asked what the business was. If the individual refused to explain or tried to brush him aside—which happened exactly twice—Adam signaled to ‹ve other seniors, football and basketball players, and all six stood in front of the doorway. Adam knew no trustee or parent would touch them or push them, and the other boys knew how to push back. About half of them slept in the hallway Friday night, joined by some of the resident faculty. On Saturday morning, another twenty 166

boys returned. A few fathers came to collect their sons, or try to. One boy went home because his mother was ill, but he was back by dinnertime. The boys ate in shifts of thirty; Adam and his pack never left, and food was brought to them. An astonishing number of girlfriends appeared bearing gifts of cookies and sandwiches, but were not allowed to stay for long. “It’s not a love-in,” Adam said. “It’s real.” He was eighteen and very serious. When the reporters and television cameras showed up on Sunday afternoon, he was eloquent, perfectly charming. “This place,” he said, swooping his arm in a wide circle, “has had everything to do with who I am. I’ve been here since second grade. Nowhere I’ll go, not even college, will have the same in›uence, or as much. I’m not the only one who feels this way. We’re not letting this school go to the corporate dogs.” There was a deafening cheer from behind the camera, and the man interviewing Adam was visibly alarmed. “When will you go back to your classes?” he asked, and Adam answered, “When we feel sure the business of the school will be conducted openly, fairly, and with the school’s best interest in mind.” When Mara asked him how he learned to talk like that, he said it was from the movies, and they both smiled and shook their heads in sad wonder. On Sunday night, the students asked Mara to meet with them. No trustees, they said, no parents. When Mara protested she was like a parent, was a parent in fact, the three boys who had come to the house to see her looked mysti‹ed. She wondered then if they even thought of her as a woman. When they’d gone, she voiced this thought to Phil and Robert, who had come to parse the evening news. “We should go with you,” Phil said. “You shouldn’t go walking anywhere by yourself.” “Right,” Robert said. “The gay brother. That should calm everybody down.” “I’m serious,” Phil said. “We won’t come in. We’ll wait in the chapel, or come back here. You can call us when you’re done.” For a moment, Mara stood apart from herself and wondered if she’d ever seen either of these people before. There was a strange calm in the moment, as if a raging wind had suddenly stilled. “What if Rachel comes home?” Mara said. “You have a driver on call,” Robert said. “Remember?” 167

“Kantsakis,” Phil said. “That’s true, but nobody’s paying him to be a bodyguard.” “He’s very sweet. Maybe too sweet. But really, don’t be silly. I don’t need a bodyguard. I need advice. I don’t know what I’m going to tell them. I think I’m going to ask rather than tell. I think that’s what they want.” She closed her eyes. “I still can’t believe any of this is happening. I guess I’ve been saying that for months now. It just gets stranger and stranger, doesn’t it?” When no one answered, she opened her eyes. “What’s that line—I don’t know which of them says it—Alice or one of the others—curiouser and curiouser. Like I’ve gone inside a mirror or fallen down a rabbit hole.” The way they look at me, Mara thought. Maybe I have gone mad and they’re being so polite about it. Kantsakis will come and take me away but not to school, not to meet with the boys, but to a hospital. He’d bring food for the trip, though. I could convince him to take me somewhere else. London, Paris. She found herself smiling a little at the idea. “Mara,” Phil said, shaking his head, “you look—I don’t know. I’ll go call.” He stood and reached for the television remote. “Are we all done here? I think the only thing on is Sixty Minutes and you didn’t make that yet.” “I’ll call,” Mara said. “I hired him,” Phil said. “I’ll explain.” “Explain what?” Mara heard her own voice, louder than necessary, a note of hysteria. “Don’t worry about it,” Phil said. “It’s only across the street.” He disappeared into the kitchen, and Mara heard him pick up the telephone and walk to the mudroom by the back door. “So,” she said to Robert, “what does he think he needs to explain that I can’t hear?” “I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think he’ll say anything you don’t already know. But sometimes it’s alarming to hear what you already know coming out of someone else’s mouth.” Kantsakis arrived so quickly Mara wondered if he’d been waiting up the street. After that, it was three minutes across the street, up the school driveway, barely time for pleasantries. “We’re still having interesting times here,” was all Mara said, and Kantsakis’s answer was, “I know.” 168

“I was wondering,” he continued, “about Little Women. About the casting. I mean, do you need male singers?” He spoke quickly. “I know you haven’t asked, but if you do—and you haven’t heard me sing, but I would love to have the chance. I’ve learned a little of it, Frederick Bhaer’s lines . . . he’s got some good ones.” Kantsakis cleared his throat and sang the lines about Italians making opera but not art. His voice, Mara thought, was more Broadway than the baritone the part called for, more volume than texture. “You know,” she said, laughing, “you sound like the lead singer in a garage band called Magpiety. But you should come to a rehearsal. My little women are ready now. You should come and see if you think it works. What we’re doing is sort of, well, unorthodox. We can talk about it on the way home. Oh—and I have the names of some teachers for you.” Then she thanked him and got out of the car. Two of Adam Russell’s football player friends were on guard at the entrance of the building. Gurtej stood with them. All three looked surprised as they held the door open for her. “You’re by yourself?” Gurtej said. “I’m glad to see you back,” Mara said to him. “I had instructions. No trustees, no parents.” “But nobody—?” One of the boys, Frank Presario, didn’t seem to be able to make sense of it. She wondered if he was getting enough sleep. “Who does that leave?” Mara asked. “No lawyer?” Frank said. Mara laughed. “I have a driver.” She pointed back to the car and Kantsakis behind the wheel. “Is that close enough?” Gurtej looked then as if he were more scared than puzzled and motioned her toward the common area outside headmaster’s of‹ce, where the boys had moved all the available sofas and chairs into a kind of a grotto, in which they had been camped for three days. The furniture was occupied by seniors, while underclassmen stood or sat on the ›oor. She saw there was one armchair left vacant, for herself, she imagined, then wondered suddenly if it were a symbolic emptiness, for John. The boys themselves grew silent, as one by one they saw her approach, nudged each other into quiet. She stood at the outer fringe of the boys’ circle, close enough to touch some of them, and waited to be invited, instructed. There was a profound stillness, respectful but full, immi169

nent, and she felt she might sustain it for a long time, like a note held, the vibrato, a most human note. She thought it was respectful of her, for her, to wait, to see what would happen, not to assume she should be the ‹rst to speak. There was something else here too, a kind of continuum: the simultaneous presence of John in the empty chair, these boys and her own schooling, Kokila and suddenly Teresa, her Taoism, the ten thousand things, and Teresa’s ability to wait, her gift for it. Teresa might have a child now too, a boy, the age of Gurtej, or a girl, like Rachel. Where was she? In Maine, Mara thought she remembered hearing that, knowing that. She heard singing then, a voice that sounded both familiar and strange, the accent a ludicrous but beguiling soup of Italian, Greek, German, all of them at once. Kantsakis had gotten out of the car and was walking away toward the chapel, but the words and the tune drifted in to Mara and the boys. Many of them blinked and raised their heads, as if brought back into the world. “Please sit here, Mrs. Raynor,” Gurtej said, and pointed to the empty armchair. The boys opened a path for her, shifting their long legs. They seemed so like children assembled there on the ›oor, for story hour. Mara moved through them and sat down. “It’s nice and warm in here,” she said, and many of the younger boys nodded. “That’s good. Did you get your dinner yet?” “We did,” Adam said. “Thank you.” “So?” she said. “What shall we do?” “We want a new search.” Gurtej sat down as he spoke. “But,” Adam said, “we don’t really know how a search gets done. Aside from hiring a consulting ‹rm. How else could it work?” “It’s very complicated,” Mara said. “As you all know by now. The consulting ‹rm screens the candidates, and then the School Search Committee takes over. What’s dif‹cult to know is what names the consulting ‹rm has not passed along to us. And in our case, the consulting ‹rm employs one of our trustees as its chief ‹nancial of‹cer. So you can see the problem. It’s also a ‹rm that specializes in business executives.” Outside, Kantsakis continued with Bhaer’s part. He seemed to be walking a circle outside the building, like a sentry, or a postulant, Mara thought. “Headhunters,” Gurtej said. 170

“An interesting term, isn’t it?” Mara said. “And you want to hire a different consulting ‹rm?” Adam said. “I’d like to,” Mara said. “One that specializes in school searches. I’d like to do it the old-fashioned way.” “And why can’t you?” a boy called from the sofa to her left. Ingersoll. “Well, ‹rst of all, Alex, because I’m not the headmaster, or a member of the Board of Trustees. I’m the headmaster’s widow.” The boys looked pained. Many of those who had been watching Mara’s face glanced away or down at their hands, their shoes. “And second,” she continued, “because the idea of a headmaster is changing. It’s becoming more and more about fundraising, and less and less about being the headmaster, or lead teacher.” “It’s about pleasing our parents.” “It’s about putting up with our parents.” “It’s about trying not to put our parents in jail.” “Or be put in jail by them.” Mara laughed. “No comment.” “But the main thing is,” Adam said, “you won’t stay.” “I’m not sure how you mean that,” Mara said. “The main thing. But no, I won’t stay. I can’t. For a number of reasons, not the least of which is also old-fashioned. I’m not sure a woman should run a boys’ school.” Kantsakis’s voice soared, the word nonsense, a glittering note. The boys drew a collective breath, and then they laughed. Again, there was a ›utter of hands in the air and voices. One boy spoke above the rest. “But we need our mothers as much as we need our fathers.” “It’s true, I think,” Mara said. “In some ways it’s a very good point, the idea being that a woman’s in›uence might—what? What do you think?” “Soften things,” Adam said. Some of the younger boys laughed but were quickly shushed by the older ones. “Make us less competitive with each other,” Frank Presario said, his voice booming from his post at the door. “Make us more interested in art and music and less in sports,” a younger boy said. “Make us more respectful of women.” “I think you all act quite respectfully toward women,” Mara said. 171

“But a man was the headmaster at my mother’s school in England,” Gurtej said. Mara felt frozen. She had been listening to a boy sitting on her right, and Gurtej’s voice came from the left side of the room. He had not been standing there before. He had moved and she had not noticed. It took her whole attention, not so much what he had just said, but that he had been able to change his position so quickly and quietly. Kantzakis had come to the Bhaer’s lines about marriage, the comparison to a horse and its harness. Kantsakis had walked around to the far side of the building, but Mara believed he could hear what they were saying. He was singing for her, singing to her, to protect her. He was an interruption of her business with these boys, but also a vision of that business, a ful‹llment of it. He’s binding us all together, she thought, a ribbon of sound around the school. “That’s true,” she said, wondering whether she was responding to Gurtej or to Kantsakis’s singing. “It’s strange, isn’t it? And the head of that school is still a man, even now. So it must be a tradition there. And I don’t know that it’s good for the girls. I don’t know if it was then.” Some of them must be ‹guring it out, Mara thought as she was saying the words. And what would it mean to them, that Mara had once gone to school with Gurtej Bandasari’s mother? “But,” she continued, other lines from Little Women, the book, coming to her, “what’s interesting in all your ideas about a female head is that you seem to think a woman should be head of a boys’ school because she is good, a kind of an angel. Shouldn’t women have the same opportunities as men because they are human beings and granted equal rights? Isn’t it interesting that sometimes equal rights might not apply?” “I don’t know about that,” another boy said. “What I know is we don’t want you to go. I came through this school with Raynor on the door of the headmaster’s of‹ce, and I don’t think I can make the adjustment.” “Thank you,” Mara said. “I guess I could tell you something about a name being just a name, a bunch of letters run together.” She smiled and shook her head. “But I wouldn’t mean it.” “Can’t you stay one more year?” Comfort, Kantsakis sang gently, closer, a kind of stage whisper. “I would have to ask Rachel.” She glanced over at Gurtej and raised 172

her eyebrows to ask the unspoken question, where is she? “I promised to go away to school with her. And it’s really too late to begin another search this year. But someone else could step in. There are other possibilities.” “If we ask the trustees to keep you on, “Adam said, “we have to know that you’ll do it.” “I understand. I’ll go home and talk about it, think it over. Your part of the bargain is to go back to class on Monday. Tomorrow. Is that agreed?” “We’d planned to,” Gurtej said. “Are you all going home tonight?” Mara asked. “Not yet. We’ll talk to the trustees tomorrow morning at seven. Classes start at eight thirty-‹ve.” “You’ve got this timed to the second, don’t you?” “I learned it from the movies,” Adam reminded her. He grinned again, but not for long. He was exhausted, Mara saw, and like Frank Presario, he was afraid of his own power, the sheer weight of it in his hands. He knew he might lose everything he’d worked for, his college admission, his good name. In that instant, Mara wanted to comfort him, hold him close, tell him he didn’t have to be so grown up so soon. And Gurtej. He had moved again, to the middle of a pack of younger boys, directly in front of her, but about four rows back. She felt again their quick hug on the sidewalk, the fearless compassion of it, the strength of his hand on hers in the back of the chapel. Adam’s mother was a diplomat, a negotiator. She’d been with Richard Holbrooke in Dayton, in Bosnia. And Kokila. These women should be proud of their sons. These women could certainly run a boys’ school. It was interesting, the idea of another year—and horrifying. She was swayed somehow by the eleventh grader’s plea. Twelve years of Raynor on the door. But where would it end? The sophomores could say the same thing next spring, then the freshmen. The seniors had had him for all twelve years, some of them. Ingersoll was one, and Adam Russell. Probably twenty others. Tears glazed Mara’s vision, and she stood, began to make her way toward the front hallway. The boys thanked her and she wished them a good night. Frank Presario was moving toward the door, about to open it for her. The ›oodlight there shone toward the driveway and the street, but she could see Kantsakis’s shadow approaching from the dark side of the building, and 173

she could hear him trying to ‹nd the notes of Bhaer’s last lines. Then a voice called out, sharply, words Mara could not understand. She thought the word, enunciate. She heard Kantzakis say, “Can I help you?” They pushed past Frank, knocking him backwards against the door, the four men, Loridans, Ramsay and McClanahan, and Arthur Overby. “Mara,” Hugh Loridans said. “You have to go home. You boys need to clear this building.” “We’re settling things, Hugh,” Mara said. “No, Mrs. Raynor,” Overby said. “You need to go.” “Arthur,” Mara lowered her voice, softened her tone. “Please wait a minute. The boys have agreed to go back to class.” “I don’t care what they’ve agreed to do. We’ve let you have your way, but now that’s over. It’s not good for the school.” As he spoke, Mara looked at Kantsakis. He seemed to get her meaning at once. “That’s the man who was in your yard,” Kantsakis said suddenly, loudly, pointing. “Him.” “What’s he talking about?” Loridans said. Kantsakis walked closer to Overby. “Say ‘Raynor.’” “This is ridiculous,” Loridans said. “Who is this person?” “I heard you,” Kantsakis said. “I was there, in the kitchen. You threatened her.” Adam stood up. “That’s illegal.” His voice cracked. “That’s harassment.” Overby turned away and walked toward the door. Kantsakis followed him. “Would you deny it, in front of all these children?” he said. “I would,” Overby said. “I do deny it.” Kantsakis moved closer. “Say the boy’s name. What was it?” “Bandasari,” Mara said. “Say ‘Bandasari.’” “You’re out of your mind,” Overby whispered. “Mara,” Loridans said, “are you going to let this go on?” “I don’t seem to be in charge,” Mara said. “Say it. Or ‘school.’ Say ‘school.’” Kantsakis moved closer. He looked, for an instant, as if he might kiss Overby. “Say ‘Bandasari.’ Say ‘knife.’” 174

Overby’s face reddened and he brought his palm into Kantsakis’s chest and gave him a mighty shove.

Later, much later, Mara would say she did not hear the noise Kantsakis made as he pitched backwards through the glass door. She would say instead that she felt it, as if her heart had leapt forward toward him, a kind of equal and opposite reaction. She would say, too, that she saw the glass explode into a thousand pieces, like glittering stars, caught in the light that illuminated the driveway between the school buildings and the chapel. She would remember how these innumerable stars seemed to take ‹re and then go out, and she would recall the feeling of her own hand on her throat, and choking, and how for a second she believed it was Frank Presario’s hand, which was actually on her upper arm, dragging her away from the shattered door. But she pulled free and ran straight into the welter of shards, knowing that she was foolish, that she might be hurt too, but she did not care. Kantsakis was lying inside the vestibule, on his back, gazing up at her, steadily, as if he had been waiting for her face to appear above him, waiting to tell her something important. When he saw her, his expression changed, ›ickering between relief and exasperation, as if he would say, now look what you’ve done. He tried to raise his head, and Mara saw blood below his jaw, blooming across the collar of his shirt. She knelt and touched his neck. He was trying to tell her something—she could see his lips move, his face working to get the words out. There was a terrible urgency in his eyes, his forehead creased in surprise and concentration. Finally, she understood, and looked down at his legs, which were caught on the jagged ridges of the shattered door. And into this moment walked Kokila Bandasari. Mara knew the shadow as it passed the knot of conferring trustees and came into the light. Then she saw that Kokila was holding Rachel’s hand, dragging her forward toward Mara. “Rachel,” Mara said, but she could not move, could not step beyond Kantsakis, though his eyes had closed and he had turned his head away. “You will need plywood,” Kokila was saying quietly, slowly, as if she 175

were giving directions to a child. “And you must have some of those boys sweep up the glass.” Mara nodded, but she did not want to go back inside, away from Rachel. It occurred to her suddenly that she had caused all this, and that the boys would know. What could she possibly say to them now? She looked back at Kantsakis, and tried to make time telescope back into itself, back to the beginning of the day, Sunday, then the previous week, the month, before that, when Rachel was home, when John was still alive. If only she could see back to the start, not to change anything, but to make for herself a clear picture of events, a stillness, then she would know what to tell them. “Mara,” Kokila stood beside her, pressing two ‹ngers on the inside of Mara’s elbow, as if she were taking a pulse. “Do you know what’s happened here?” “I do,” Mara whispered. “He . . .” But then she found she could not continue. She knelt and touched Kantsakis’s outstretched arm. She saw his blood on her shoes and on the hem of her coat. “Send them home.” Kokila continued speaking in a musical, murmurous voice Mara had not heard for twenty-‹ve years. “Stand up. Send the boys home. They have driven, some of them. They can give rides to the others. The rest can go to their dormitories.” “But I don’t know—” Mara began. “Yes, you do. You do know. You have always known. Go on. Stand up.” Kokila paused, closed her eyes, then opened them again. “I have your child,” she said, as if she were telling Mara something else, a profound secret. Her expression was impossible to read. “And you have mine.” Mara stood. “Gentlemen,” she said. The boys turned toward her, almost as one body, raising their heads away from cell phones, from tight knots of conversation with each other. Their faces were blank—playing dead, John had sometimes called it when they’d been summoned to him, when they were guilty or nervous. A hundred boys not wanting to be noticed, and it was amazing how well it worked. They were a sea, a fresco, a mural, blending into each other, into the furniture, the carpet, the ›esh-colored walls. Only Adam moved. “I’ve called 9-1-1,” he said, holding up his cell phone. Then he crossed in front of Mara, crouched beside Kantsakis 176

and felt for a pulse. Mara instructed the boys to call their families and tell them they were safe inside the school. She asked pairs of seniors to be responsible for a group of eight underclassmen and walk these groups back to the dorms. The senior boys nodded and began to move about, herding and organizing. The phone rang in the headmaster’s of‹ce, then stopped. Adam exhaled and said quietly, as if to himself, “He’s still with us.” Some minutes passed before the quiet shuf›e of boys was broken by a pair of sirens, a paramedics’ van followed by a police car. Loridans and Ramsay met them in the driveway. Mara began to move away from Kantsakis and toward the tight circle of men and medics, but Kokila held her back. “Let them,” she said. Mara noticed then that Arthur Overby was gone. “I’m not sure what they’ll say,” she told Kokila. “What does it matter?” Kokila dropped her gaze to Kantsakis, then to Mara’s bloodied hand. “The medical people will see what’s happened. That’s all you need right now.” As she spoke, the paramedics broke away from the others and hurried toward the building. The younger of the two, a woman, gently moved Mara out of the way, then went back to her vehicle for a stretcher. Mara knelt and held Kantsakis’s hand. “Are you taking him to Georgetown?” Kokila asked. “Right,” the paramedic said. “Let us through please.” The paramedics counted to three, then lifted Kantsakis onto the rolling stretcher. The woman who held his legs whispered “Jesus.” Mara saw that he was unconscious. “You can call later,” Kokila said to Mara. “When you’re ‹nished here.” Mara peered into the building and saw about ten boys were still there, two with brooms, the others simply waiting for someone to come for them. They said almost nothing to each other, seeming to listen to the tinkling of glass going into the garbage bags, a delicate sound in all that silence and held breath, like a woman’s bracelets. “Did I start this?” The voice behind her belonged to Gurtej. Mara thought for a time. She was sure some of the boys could hear him, and would hear her reply. 177

“No,” she said. “These things start so far back, it’s impossible to know where the beginning is.” When the sweeping was ‹nished, they all stood together, ›ecks of glass glittering at their feet. She saw that the men had gone—Loridans, Ramsay, Overby, all of them now ›ed. She shook her head at the wonder of it, at the ten boys left, two women, ten boys and Rachel. What did it mean, this arrangement of children and adults? Mara looked at Kokila. “This is like that night—” and then she cast her eyes around the circle they made. “That night,” Kokila repeated the words slowly. “Only there were many girls and one boy.” “My brother,” Mara said. “Can you tell me what happened here, Mara?” “That was my driver. He was pushed. By Arthur Overby. Do you know him? The trustee? He lost his wife and child. The school—” “Has replaced them,” Kokila said. “Yes. I think he feels that way.” “It is not sensible.” “No.” Across the street, she saw the front door of her house open, and a man emerge. John, she thought, then it’s not him. She waited for Phil to cross the street and come up the school driveway, but he stood still on the front steps. “This is my fault,” she said. “No, Mara . . .” Kokila began. “Yes. Since the kirpan . . . there have been threats. I was afraid, nervous. So my brother hired him, and then . . . this. I’ve been thinking . . . I would have given anything . . .” The next words pounded in Mara’s head. Kokila stopped her, holding her by the elbows. “What are you saying?” She looked over at Rachel, who had not yet uttered a word. That face, waiting for her, still there. That face like a beacon, as if it re›ected light or was ‹lled with light, or had invented light. How could she explain? She had to explain: a voice in her head had driven Rachel away, John’s voice, louder than anything else on earth. The living want the dead to return, but it’s possible to want this too much, want this only. “I 178

would have given anything,” she said again. “It’s like I was stuck. But I think . . . now I’m not. I’m not stuck, but I haven’t gone anywhere either. I feel like I’ve been empty for a long time.” She thought of Vernal Hall, Chirk, the doctor’s of‹ce there, Kokila’s mother, the clinic in Cambridge. “All these voices.” “It’s all right to be stuck,” Kokila said. “Here is your daughter.” All this time, Gurtej had been moving closer to Mara, so that now his left arm was pressed against her right. She reached behind him and placed her ‹st up high on his back between his shoulder blades. “It’s a trade then,” she said. Kokila took her son’s arm. She led him down the driveway and helped him into the car, tenderly, carefully, as if he were injured too. Mara took hold of Rachel’s hand and did not let go until they were inside the house, until the door had closed securely behind them. She knew Rachel was thinking about it too, the night, the darkness, a telephone call, a police car, paramedics, the strange lights all around their house. She wondered where she was, who she was, marveled that life repeats, rolls and falls in on itself so it’s possible to have many selves and then forget which one is present. Mara shook her head, as if to clear it and start over. Rachel had come back, and they would go away together, soon. Mara made that promise as she walked down the school drive, not quickly, not slowly, across the street, and up to her own front door, a promise like a mantra, like a heartbeat. She did not know what would happen to the headmaster search after tonight, only that she would not stay on another year. The juniors would have to live without Raynor on the door. They would get over it. She’d left them with a story to invent, the story of a night, a nightmare. All those boys. They would grow up to be men, and one day they would try to tell somebody about this night, the story of what had just happened. She longed to know what they would say, just exactly how each one, every one would put it into language. It was the only way—all versions should be heard in order to arrive at the truth. This story would be told more than a hundred different ways. It seemed incomprehensible. At reunions, the boys would argue about it. That was a small, pleasant thought: to imagine them grown, in suits and ties, holding a cocktail, a wife’s hand, reinventing this night. 179

G

“ urtej’s mother said to ask you about the baby.” Mara started violently, and she knew Rachel had felt it. They were seated side by side on the sofa, and Mara’s arms were still around Rachel, even though she’d been home for more than an hour. “Sorry, Mom. I told Gurtej, and he must have told her. Maybe there’s not much I don’t know. I remember some things, and then there are pictures of you . . .” “When did she say this?” Rachel looked de‹ant for a moment, but then the expression melted into something else, closed and secretive. “At her house.” Mara felt tears prickle behind her eyes, so she closed them and shook her head. “Tell me again. What did she say?” “She said I should ask you about the baby.” “Why did she say that?” “Because she thinks people need to talk about what’s happened to them.” Mara felt cold and sick, and then she realized Rachel meant the baby that died, not the other one, the baby she’d been pregnant with in England. That baby had been living in her thoughts since her meeting with Gurtej, the two babies that never got to grow up. It’s not time to tell that story out loud, she had been thinking, not yet, maybe not ever. And now Kokila was in the air, a presence in the room, reviving those other, older stories. She told herself to keep calm, keep Rachel calm, answer the question, stop crying. “The good thing was that we already had you,” Mara began, “and I’m sorry sometimes that you never saw her. She was so perfect, that little sleeping face, like she would have been a terri‹c sleeper. She was so serious about sleeping.” She stopped then, abruptly. “I was four,” Rachel said, as if to start the story again, wind up its mechanism. “You were four,” Mara repeated, mesmerized by the occasion of this telling. “We thought the sight of her might scare you, or else you’d never be able to forget it. But she was perfect and tiny. She looked like you a little, but more like your Uncle Phil.” “What was wrong with her?” “It’s hard to say. Nobody could really tell us without an autopsy, and in a way it didn’t matter. Some connection between us wasn’t working. 180

You had come early, but not that early, and you made it. When I ‹rst held her, her eyes were open, and I think there was some little part of her still alive. There wasn’t a heartbeat, but something, some little breath. And she was looking over my shoulder, and I wanted like mad to know what was so interesting. So interesting that she had to get to it. Like it was calling her. And then we closed her eyes and let her go.” “She’s in my dreams sometimes, Mom. I don’t think I ever told you that. Maybe I didn’t even know it was her most of the time. And I have this sense that she’s gone on ahead and she’s checking things out for me. She knows where I’m going to college. She’s probably already wearing the sweatshirt.” “Yes.” Mara laughed and hugged Rachel closer. She felt her shoulders, broad but thin. There was a delicate but constant twitch of muscles and tendons under the skin, the sense of imminent ›ight. “She’s got it on right now. She never takes it off.” “Who was she named for?” Mara thought, this is going to be the longest part of the explanation, the story, whatever this is. It’s not an explanation because Rachel already knows most of it. And it’s not a story because it has no plot. Plots are for dead people, some funny writer joked. Not my dead people, Mara thought. “Sallie. Someone I knew a long time ago,” she said. “Is she buried?” “She’s scattered, with Daddy, in the same place. I thought you knew that.” “I’ve been thinking I wanted to go pay him a visit.” “Me, too. We can rent a little boat, or get a charter to take us.” Mara petted Rachel’s hair, lifted sections of it to feel the weight. “Gurtej can sail Dad’s boat.” “He can? Well. I guess I’m really not surprised. I’d like to go now, actually.” “We can’t go now, Mom.” “Why not?” “It’s nighttime.” The little girl’s word. Mara loved hearing it. “We couldn’t see anything. It’s too dark.” But we could hear them, Mara thought. Their beautiful voices echoing over the water, like the sirens calling us, like birds singing at night. She heard their music, pictured crowds of women real and in181

vented, Rachel, Sharon Greene, Jo, Beth, Meg, Amy. They were singing, Know’st thou the land where the lemon trees bloom? The Goethe poem from Little Women. Their voices rose and fell, and there was a reedy quality to them, untrained. Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket’s gloom? Where a wind ever so soft from the blue heaven blows? And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose? Only Kokila was missing, and Mara could hear a silence like rushing wind where Kokila’s voice ought to be. The notes sounded all wrong, the questions asked by the song pitying, pitiful, desperate. There was no answer, the voice seemed to say. There was no such place. “Why did you want to run away?” Mara asked. Rachel tucked her head under Mara’s chin, and her smooth cheek lay hard on Mara’s collarbone. She spoke slowly, explaining, her voice running down at the end of each phrase. She had to get out of the house, she said, away from the place that only reminded her of how gone her father really was. And away from Mara, away from the sickness of her mother’s grief, the nearness of it, the contagion. That was the word Gurtej’s mother had used. Gurtej’s mother had said that Mara would only get well when she was left alone. She will only start to see you, Rachel, Kokila had said, if you aren’t there. She will only hear the music of your voice if she misses it.

In

the days after Kantsakis’s fall, Mara walked from school to rehearsal along the Potomac, miles longer than driving, but more populated. It took an hour and a half. She thought about water in cities, what it was doing there, what on earth, and how only once in her life had she lived in a place with no river. Washington had this one. Boston had the Charles, New York had two, Pittsburgh had three. But Vernal Hall. The Severn was somewhere, not too far, but she’d never seen it. Teresa had taken her walking once over an old aqueduct, but there was a dry ‹eld below it, soft-looking, as though it wouldn’t hurt to fall ‹fty feet. She gazed into the Potomac and tried to imagine John swimming like a ‹sh beside her, baby Sallie in his arms. In all the years since Sallie’s birth and death, Mara had not missed her as much as she did now. “It’s like we got separated,” she whispered to the river, to John and the baby. “At a football game or 182

something. In a department store. You were with Sallie, and I was with Rachel, and then there was panic, there were injured people, and we lost sight of each other.” A man passed her on the sidewalk, going the other way. He took note, Mara thought, of her murmurings, looked as though he would stop and ask her what the matter was. She turned her head away, gazed up over the water, instead of into it, at the Georgetown University buildings, the law school, like a castle, like Westminster Abbey. That’s London, another town with a river. The man changed his mind and passed by without speaking. “I need the lost and found,” Mara whispered. “Maybe you’re there.” A woman passed, dressed completely in black, carrying nothing but a black notebook clutched under her arm, no purse, no backpack. She looked strangely familiar. Last year, Mara and John had driven to New York to see a production of Salomé, in which the actors wore dark clothing and read the Oscar Wilde play from notebooks like that one, while the music from the Strauss opera soared around them. It was very odd, two halves of two performances, drama without sets and costumes and blocking, opera without voices singing. Mara was transported in a way she found hard to explain to John. It reminded her of being a child, and then an adolescent, in the fervor of her early singing years, wandering through the house, or in her bed dreaming of songs and roles to ‹ght off the dreariness of daily life. She knew her voice was small and untrained, but in a way that wasn’t the point. This instrument, as she was beginning to think of it, might someday deliver her and Phil and her parents from lives that were the same, day in, day out. More than that, she realized, there was something physical, erotic about what she did—she remembered this watching Salomé’s dance of the seven veils—how she imagined her vocal cords, a tangle of wires and surprises, secret openings and closings, her body in a way, to be explored and improved, studied from the inside to discover its range, then coaxed more, larger, up, up, up, to that place where you just open your mouth and the notes fall out. And then the ending of the performance seemed familiar, too, the bloody necrophilia, the erotic abandon with a severed head. The clinic in Cambridge with Sallie Iqbal, the scene she had made there. That night she told John about the abortion, let it out into the open, and lost some part of him before she lost him entirely. But that feeling of transport, of being carried away by the performance she was watching, and 183

yet existing utterly inside it, that was what she wanted for her Little Women. It made her laugh out loud, right there, walking beside the Potomac, the notion that the spirit of Salomé could go rushing into the souls of the March sisters. “One hardly speaks of such things,” Mara said, Meg’s words when Jo asks why she hasn’t mentioned her pregnancy in her letters to New York. One hardly speaks of such things. The men are missing, she thought as she crossed the bridge, the men are not here. Salomé’s ‹nal dance, aria, explosion. That was the soul of the story, that John the Baptist was gone for good, dead, and she was bereft. The men are not here yet? That was the meaning of school, too, all those boys not quite men, not quite grown. The men are not here yet. That was the moment Jo March wanted to live in forever: the men are not here, not even her father, away in the war, thinking his deep and obscure thoughts. It was Vernal Hall. The men are not here yet. She was late, and the rehearsal had started without her, the women, girls, something in between really, warming up, eager to get to the music. They looked at her impatiently, hesitated in the middle of their octaves, then resumed. Mara had the sense suddenly that they were afraid of her, of her constant proximity to injury and death. Sharon Greene seemed the most fearful, maybe because she had actually been close to the place where Kantsakis fell, close to Mara’s house, had told her things in con‹dence. Mara hardly knew what to do about it except to praise Sharon and keep working. “The men are missing,” she said when the warm-ups were over. “That’s how to sing it. Even the chorus parts.” “Which are supposed to be men’s voices,” Sharon said. “I know. So how do you ‹gure that out? That’s what Jo wants, right? For the men never to show up.” “But Laurie’s there.” “He is,” Mara said. “But Jo makes him one of the girls. Even his name. Laurie. It’s a girl’s name.” “What do you want?” Sharon said. “I mean, what do you want from us? I just don’t get it sometimes. How you can make a statement, then turn it into a question, and that’s supposed to tell us how to sing.” The others looked at her. It was how they all felt, Mara knew, mysti‹ed. “I just want you to think about it, that’s all.” 184

“What happened to your driver?” Sharon said suddenly. “We heard the story. It was in the paper.” Mara understood that the real question was, should we all be here with you? “Mara didn’t do it, Sharon,” Lena said. “It was an accident.” “That’s not what I meant,” Sharon said. “You’re blaming the victim,” Lena answered, and Mara almost smiled, thinking Lena might be watching too much American television. “Sometimes the victim needs to be blamed,” Mara said. “It’s true. Sometimes the victim brings it on herself. Sometimes. But it wasn’t an accident. He was pushed. By a man acting like a child, worse than a child. It was terrible, but he’ll be all right. His legs were cut badly. The man who pushed him left the scene, but I saw it. Nearly a hundred boys saw it.” She was afraid she would cry and so she pressed the ‹ngers of her left hand hard against her lips to stop their trembling. “I think we should get to work. We want this to be perfect. We want to astonish our audiences.” “We will,” Lena said, looking at Mara. Her eyes glistened. “If the men aren’t here,” Ramona said, “what about Meg? She wants to marry John Brooke.” “The men are not here yet,” Mara said. And so Ramona sang her Meg, explaining what’s happened to her, how the girl she used to be had broken open and then disappeared, from bud to blossom. She’s got it, Mara thought. She’s got the hope and the fear and the looking forward and backward at the same time. The room felt as though it were trembling, and Mara wondered if she would faint, whether she was dizzy or if the sound of Ramona’s voice had altered the chemistry of the air. I won’t listen. Sharon sang. Her retort was a wail, a shout, a death rattle, all at once. It’s deafening. I won’t forgive you. Just go then. “The men are never going to get in the door,” Mara said, “if that voice has anything to say about it.” They worked away at the libretto, keeping to the story line, the chorus, standing apart, singing the men’s lines from the far corners of the practice room. It was very strange. Mara could tell they all thought so, and yet there was a kind of truth, an understanding, the feeling of two 185

people thinking the same thing at the same time, and sure of it. That gesture between teacher and student. The way eyes lock between lovers. In the libretto, Meg and Mr. Brooke want to use her parents’ wedding vows, so Meg and Marmee sing the part with Brooke and Gideon March off-stage. And what it sounds like, Mara realized, is a mother and daughter pledging their own kind of love. She didn’t know how she would explain this to anyone, what she was doing with this opera. “We could have men if we wanted them,” she said, and her young women laughed. None of us is married, Mara thought suddenly, not one of us in this room. Maybe there were some boyfriends kicking around, waiting in the wings. Kantsakis, she thought, and winced. He was waiting to get in, to be let in. She sang the last line of the aria again, We’re bound in gold, as life goes ’round, and held up her left hand, where her wedding band still gleamed. She held her hand so the ring caught the light from the overhead ›uorescents and became an orb, a tiny, blinding planet. The girls stared. Mara was not sure what it looked like from the other side. She turned and cued Lena to go on. In the next scene, Jo refuses Laurie’s proposal of marriage. Mara had imagined it strangely in her head, a kind of battle. Sharon’s single voice pitted against four voices singing Laurie’s part, two in each wing, was astonishing, the way it proved Jo’s point. She sang, and there was that dizziness again, Mara could see it in the girls’ faces now, too. How they were singing a scene they recognized, the lone female voice, small, panicked, then angry. The male voice, distant, multitudinous, everywhere at once. It came out as exactly what Mara wanted to hear, but she wasn’t sure that it was right. “We could have the men,” she said again. “But the point of forming this group was not to have them,” Sharon said. She turned to the others. “Isn’t that right? So why did we do it?” Mara thought again of Salomé, the production she’d seen, and the story itself, Salome the girl. “We did it, I think—you did it, really—because,” she spoke slowly, listening clearly to each word as it entered the air, “you understand something about growing up. You’re grown up, I know, but there’s that business of changing from girls into women. It’s what Jo understands too. That as you get older, something inside you gets smaller and smaller.” 186

“Nobody ever puts it like that,” Sharon said. There was a note of awe in her voice, as if she were witnessing a miracle. “I know,” Mara said. “Usually the talk is all about opening up and blossoming, the big wide world, the horizon, expanse. But the thing that’s fading away, the part of you that’s going to be lost forever—that’s why you wanted this group.” The image of Salomé, her bloody ecstasy, twitched at the corner of her vision. That’s the last moment of girlhood, when what’s revolting and what’s attractive are indistinguishable. Jo’s rejection of Laurie and Salomé’s wish to have John the Baptist dead, they’re not so different. One is more polite than the other. “Safety in numbers?” Ramona said. “Or just more,” Sharon said. “That part getting smaller, whatever it is. We all share it. So the more of us there are in any given place, the bigger it still is.” There was a breathlessness in the rehearsal room, as if this talk had been physical work, heavy lifting, sprinting, bending over backwards, Mara thought the phrase that way, though she wasn’t sure why. “So do we want the men?” she said. “Not yet,” three or four voices answered. “Let’s sing something else to close,” Mara suggested. “Then let’s go home. We’re ahead of schedule. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a long week.” “Mrs. Raynor,” Sharon said. “When you felt this way—when you were where we are, and you knew you wanted to be a singer? What happened? I mean, what did it feel like?” Mara wondered what she could say. Something about her time in England, about Jimmy Carter and her history teacher going to join the new administration. She had already told them the part about wanting to meet Stephen Sondheim in London, and become attached to him in some way. She tried to remember back, before the guitar teacher, before the election, before all of that became the reason she had gone away, before it was so simple. “It had to do with my eyes in a way,” she began. “This will sound strange, I know, but at your age, I felt like I couldn’t quite see the world in an orderly fashion, or see things for what they were. Leaves on the ground looked like boats, buildings like empty stone shells, cars like 187

large bugs scuttling down the street. Things went out of focus, or went way off to the side of my vision.” And partly it was being seen, Mara thought, believing that she wasn’t seen, couldn’t be seen, had become a kind of a ghost. That might be too frightening to hear. That year, Kokila’s mother had made her feel less invisible, but not less like a ghost. A ghost was different—it had once occupied a body, lived in the world, taken up space. The popular wisdom was that a body became a ghost because it was unsettled. Sometimes all a ghost had left was a voice, a thin whistle through the trees at night, a call in open spaces, brittle, mechanical, a sound that couldn’t really be there, a call. A calling. She could explain it that way. “I started to understand that becoming a singer, giving myself over to it, to the demands of training and performing, all of this would make me ghostly, had already started to. Where once I had a body, there was now only a voice. I knew what I had to give up: cars, boys, boys in cars, Saturday nights spent wandering in gangs through shopping centers. And then what would happen when I got to the place where all that had already disappeared? What would I become then? When I met my calling full force? What would I be? More of a ghost, or less? More of a voice, or none?” The women sat quietly, unafraid. “What happened between then and now?” Sharon asked. Mara realized she’d been holding her breath. She exhaled and the sound came out as laughter. “My life happened,” she said. “But what you mean is why am I here, and not in New York, at the Metropolitan Opera, in London, in Paris?” Sharon nodded, very slowly. “I tried too hard to feel every note,” Mara said. “I was too much the embodiment of emotion, rather than the vessel for it. I could not keep myself from experiencing the role. I could not sing the end of La Bohème without crying. I was too raw. Probably the best performance I ever gave was as a mechanical bird. Art is not reality, all my teachers said. But it was. It is. For me art is real. It’s as real as you are, sitting right in front of me. As real as my husband was. As my daughter is.” She thought the women looked puzzled, closed up. She thought she should stop talking, but she couldn’t help herself. “Compare it to the way some people feel about the past. Some people forget the past. 188

It’s over, it’s done. But to me, the past is no less present than this moment we’re standing in.” Mara circled her arms in front of her body, her ‹ngertips barely touching. “Art and reality. The past and the present. Here they are. All together, a big bouquet.” She ›ung her arms wide and held them open, waiting. “Just for you.”

At

Georgetown Medical Center, Mara waited in line for a visitor’s pass, then rode the elevator to the fourth ›oor. She felt sure that today she would meet Kantsakis’s mother, but nowhere in the hospital did she see any Asian woman who might be the right age. She thought she might recognize the scent of the kho or the congee that Mrs. Kantsakis would most certainly bring for her son, but all she smelled was the empty clean of the trauma unit. Kantsakis was alone in his room. He lay in bed with the sheets tented over his legs. Mara stared, as she had done the ‹rst time she visited, at the stark white of the bandage at his throat below the deep blueblack of his hair. His head appeared to ›oat above his body. She said nothing because she still didn’t know what to say. She took his hand and held it. “Much better today,” he whispered. “I can probably go home next week.” “That’s good news,” Mara said. “Have you had any visitors?” “A few. My mother hasn’t been able to come yet. My father used to do all the driving, so she never learned. I always went up to see her. I’m hoping a neighbor will bring her down today.” Kantsakis shifted under the sheet and blanket. “How are you?” His voice was straining, and Mara winced at the sound of it. “Who’s replaced me?” “No one. You’re irreplaceable. I’m walking everywhere, which is a good thing.” “But is that safe?” “Perfectly safe.” “He was here yesterday,” Kantsakis said. His dark eyes seemed to open wider and to soften. “Really? Arthur was here?” “He came to apologize. We talked a little. He asked me about growing up and about college. About singing. He seemed very interested.” 189

“He was always a wonderful teacher that way.” “I could tell. But it’s too bad . . .” Kantsakis paused. “I was just about to say, his life is ruined. But then I remembered. His family. I think his life was already ruined.” “I don’t think any life is ruined,” Mara said. “I don’t believe it goes that way. Things happen to you. And they keep happening until . . . there’s no more you. Until then, you have a million chances to undo any ruin.” She smiled. “And then, as a certain Sikh student of mine would say, you transmigrate.” Kantsakis looked at her. There was a sudden cloud of pain in his eyes, and Mara took his hand, pressed it between both of hers. She wondered if he was thinking about his father. “Once, a long time ago, I learned a little about Indian music, particularly the ragas. How different the tones are from Western pitches, that there can be something like twenty-two microtones within an octave. I’ve been thinking the music is like transmigration of souls—where the original being is dispersed into the air. I’ve been thinking that at the end of a person’s life you can watch it happen. And I keep trying to make a metaphor: it’s like the splintering notes of certain birds, or it’s like the way birds leave a tree when a loud sound frightens them, or it’s like ‹reworks. But it’s not like anything else.” Mara laughed and shook her head slowly. “My mind has been turned inside out these last few months. It’s good in a way.” “You seem happier.” “So do you. And now you can work on your singing. You can cook, and you can sing. You have perfect pitch, you said. That goes a long way.” “I don’t know. Sometimes it seems like just a really cool parlor trick. A friend of mine used to say perfect pitch was throwing a banjo in a Dumpster without hitting the sides.” Mara laughed. “It’s a funny thing. At the beginning of my career, pitch was black and white, like the colors of the piano keys. But as I began to work with singers, my sense of it changed. Now it’s about the shade of the sound, and the vibrations and harmonies. There’s a whole range of perfection.” As she was speaking, Mara saw Kantsakis turn his head, very slowly, toward the door. His eyes opened wider and ‹lled with tears. His mouth

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trembled and then spread into that incandescent smile Mara loved. “Listen,” he said. Mara listened but she couldn’t hear anything for a moment. Then there was the distant ping of the elevator bell, footsteps receding, voices hushed in an adjacent corridor, the wheels of a gurney or a cart. Kantsakis continued to smile at the open doorway, without speaking, until Mara wondered if she should call for a nurse. She placed her hand gently on his forehead and watched as a tear glittered, then rolled across his cheek and into his ear. When she turned again toward the door, a small Asian woman was standing, framed as if in a picture. “Mama,” Kantsakis said. “You’re here.”

Gurtej met Mara at the bottom of her driveway. He pointed to Rachel, who stood on the porch above, watching. “I’m walking her to practice,” Gurtej said. He waved to Rachel, then called out to her. “Ready?” This one question seemed to Mara to have been addressed to both of them. Rachel started to loop her gym bag over her shoulder, but Gurtej walked up the driveway and took it from her. “I think she’ll break a record today,” he said. “She’s amazing. It’s beyond me, how she does it.” “Gurtej is one of those people who doesn’t displace water,” Rachel explained. “He just sinks.” “I think it’s cultural, too,” Gurtej said. “Swimming just isn’t something Sikhs do. But you—it’s one of the ‹rst things—for safety. Before you fall into a pool or something.” He turned to Rachel. “When did you learn?” “When she was three,” Mara said. “By falling in a pool.” “Mom,” Rachel said. “Please don’t tell that story.” “It’s one of my favorites, though,” Mara said. “It’s so . . . it’s so you.” “It’s so all of us,” Rachel said. “Labor Day weekend that year, we borrowed the house of a friend in Longmeadow, in south central Massachusetts. It was a wonderful place, huge, open, modern, half-hidden in the woods.”

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There were six bedrooms, a cavernous dining room no one ever ate in, and a swimming pool. In the mornings, John and Mara sat outside with their coffee, reading the Globe, while Rachel played with her dolls or picked too many of the ›owers or drove her Big Wheel at top speed around the cement deck of the pool. Mara watched nervously for two days, and on Sunday morning, it ‹nally happened: Rachel took a curve too fast, and the Big Wheel tipped over into the water. There was an eerie silence as the plastic wheels caught and stopped, and then the splash. John and Mara were out of their chairs before the sound of the splash had died away, and what Mara saw ‹rst was Rachel’s blond head, under the water. John jumped in, and she raced to the other side of the pool. By then Rachel’s face was out of the water, and she was reaching for the Big Wheel, which was still a›oat. John lifted Rachel and handed her out to Mara. Rachel coughed and cried a little, but she hadn’t swallowed much water. Everyone dried off and John changed clothes, and Rachel was back on the Big Wheel, ‹fteen minutes later, making wider, slower circles. “She pedaled over to our chairs and said, Mom, Dad, I can swim now. I saved myself because I can swim. John and I just looked at each other. Rachel told the story, endlessly, for a month. She had saved herself, every time. That beautiful face rose out of the water, the legs kicked, the arms reached, her heroic little body worked without a hitch.” “But when you and Dad told the story,” Rachel said, “it was about the shoes.” She turned to Gurtej. “After they got me out and calmed down, they noticed they’d kicked off their shoes at exactly the same time. Their shoes were between their chairs and the side of the pool, lined up perfectly, the pairs right next to each other.” “It’s a metaphor,” Gurtej said. “It is,” Mara replied. “It’s a mystery,” Rachel said. “All right,” Mara said, kissing Rachel. “You two. Come straight home. I mean it.” “My mother will see to that,” Gurtej said. Mara smiled at him. This boy could still read her thoughts, like the ‹rst time she’d met him in the headmaster’s of‹ce. “How is your mother?” she said. 192

“Traveling,” Gurtej replied. “She had to go to London. She’s trying to decide what to do with her Amma. She’s too old and sick now to live on her own.” “Her mother?” “Yes.” Mara prayed he wouldn’t say the name. “Will she come here?” “She wants to.” “That would be nice for you.” “I guess so. I haven’t seen her in about ‹ve years. I don’t think she likes boys.” “But she’d like you!” Rachel said. That tone, and the look that went with it, mocking, loving, extraordinary. The tone of voice that has kept young girls alive for centuries, Mara thought suddenly, power and mystery and submission, all rolled into one. Scheherazade. Let me tell you one more story about yourself. This is the best one yet. “Actually, you’re the one she’d like,” Gurtej said to Rachel. Mara tried to imagine Sallie Iqbal grown old and frail, in Cambridge, sitting on the sofa in her bright little cottage, as Mara had, listening for music. When was the last time they had seen each other? In London during Easter vacation. She was lying to herself. It was Parents’ Weekend, at the end of the school year, in July. She couldn’t bear to think of it. She looked up at the children, and there it was, the past: the three of them inside a house, a different three, but still a mother and two children. “When I was at school in England,” Mara said, “I met your grandmother. Your mother probably told you.” Gurtej shook his head. “She doesn’t mention it,” he said. “She never talks about school. It’s like she didn’t exist before she was about twenty-‹ve.” “It was a strange place,” Mara said, “and we were strange in it. I was a stranger.” “What do you mean?” Rachel said. Mara felt her nearby, Kokila, breath of incense, scent of smoke. She could hear Kokila’s voice roll and burble under her own. She would go to see her, she knew, though she did not have any idea how it would be arranged, who would make the next telephone call, only that it would happen, and very soon. She heard the ringing of the telephone, inside 193

her head, too, as she’d been hearing it for weeks. That was, she realized, where the breathlessness in the room came from, from her, her lungs, her memory, the heavy lifting of it off her heart. “I think,” Mara began, “that I didn’t really get used to it until I’d been there for some months—the end of April. Every few weeks, I spent a day or two in Cambridge with your grandmother. Your mother joined us once or twice, but she was . . .” Mara saw that Gurtej was listening raptly, hungrily. “What was she?” he said. “In her mind, she was already in college—like you two are, in a way. She’d left that old life behind, that life with her mother and father.” “Was she happy?” Gurtej asked. This is the moment, Mara thought. I can’t undo anything. The truth won’t undo anything. “She was, in her own way. She worked very hard.” The air around them seemed to lighten, to shimmer. “Were you happy, Mrs. Raynor?” Gurtej asked. Mara nodded. “In my own way. I wanted to travel. I was eighteen. I was ready to see the world. But the English girls didn’t know what to make of us—there was another American there too. ‘Aren’t you here to study?’ they said, but before we could answer they would put on their worst American accents and say, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. You’re here to have an experience.’” “No wonder, really,” Gurtej said. “Foreign exchange is a funny thing if you think about it. You go to look at them, as if they were animals in the zoo. So you have a year of wandering around, looking into cages, offering your little handful of peanuts.” “Yes,” Mara said. “The English girls didn’t get to put it on their resumes: ‘I spent time with Americans.’ They had to put up with us, and be—I don’t know what they had to be.” “Grateful,” Gurtej said. His eyes ›ashed with rage, then he glanced over at Rachel and smiled. “What missionaries and certain senators expect from the heathen. That they be grateful.”

T

hrough the glazed lights beside the front door Mara could see the shadow of a man. He was dressed in a 194

dark suit or jacket, she thought, and tall. She stood still for a moment, waiting for the bell to sound. She knew he could see her—whoever he was—as she saw him, a body, and yet insubstantial. She thought he might go away, but he didn’t, and they faced each other in this peculiar way for nearly a minute. Full knowledge came to her then, and she unlocked the door, pulled it toward her. “Hello, Arthur,” she said. “Hello, Mara.” “Please come in.” “No, thank you. I won’t put you to any trouble. I just wanted to—” “It’s no trouble. Please.” Arthur Overby stepped across the threshold of the house and moved through the room like a sleepwalker, like the being he was, a man whose whole world had suddenly disappeared and then done so again. Mara offered him coffee, which he refused. She wondered brie›y, oddly, if he still had the ability to eat or drink. He stood beside the piano, then abruptly sat down on the bench. “I’m going to Michigan,” he said. “I have a sister there. She’s asked me to come.” “That seems like a good thing, Arthur. Is it a good thing?” “You have a brother here.” “I do.” There was silence between them for what seemed to Mara like a long time, until she realized Arthur’s statement about Phil was meant as a kind of question. “He’s been a good source of support,” she said. “I think he was ready to leave D.C. when John died, but he stayed.” She thought she should keep talking. “It’s good that he’s a chef. The one thing I haven’t wanted to do is cook. Or eat, really. It just seems—” “Pointless,” Arthur said ›atly, and Mara nodded. After that, he seemed unable to speak. Mara stood above him, looking down into the thinning nest of his hair. He’d be bald in a few more years. She had to resist the urge to touch him, pat him on the shoulder. But why? She thought suddenly. Why resist? She crossed behind Overby and sat down on the other end of the piano bench. From there, she could feel his stillness, the way the stillness of a trapped animal can be visceral and present. She placed her left hand on the keyboard and played six notes. 195

“‘My Funny Valentine,’” Arthur said. “Yes. This one is worse.” She rearranged her hand over the keys. The notes seemed to come out of the ends of her ‹ngers with a jolt, an electric pang. The sun comes up, I think about you. The coffee cup, I think about you. ... It’s like I’m losing my mind. “I spent a lot of my life wanting to meet Stephen Sondheim, but I never did.” “I’m sorry, Mara. That’s what I came here to say. I’m sorry.” “Costi Kantsakis said you went to see him.” “He’s an extraordinary person.” “He is. Gentle. And curious. It’s a wonderful combination.” “I was thinking . . .” Arthur dropped his head to his chest, and his breathing went ragged. “I was imagining—him—my son in twenty years.” “Arthur.” Mara reached over to put her hand on his arm. “Don’t.” “It’s all right,” he said. “Really. It helps. I don’t know why, but it does.” “That’s good.” “Mara. I think what I wanted was—” “Arthur, it doesn’t matter.” She slid closer on the bench and embraced Overby. His shoulders shook and she felt his tears on her neck. He tightened his own grip around her and then let go, stood and walked slowly to the front door. “It was good of you to step in this year, Mara,” he said. “Thank you, Arthur. Send me your address in Michigan, OK?” Overby smiled and dipped his head. “Be well, Mara,” he said. After the door closed, Overby’s shadow lingered outside, as if he wanted to say more. Mara stayed where she was, her ‹ngers resting on the piano. The sun comes up, she played, long pauses between the notes. When she raised her head again to look, the shadow of Overby was gone. 196

÷ SIX

But they were not grateful, the English girls, not at all, and in the Vernal Hall hothouse of ›amboyant anger and forgiveness, a strange alliance was developing, Mara noticed. Kokila, who had reviled the English girls, suddenly entered into complicity with them, a few of them, Gina Whistler in particular, who kept about her a tight circle, an entourage. One day, it opened just enough to admit Kokila, and then shut itself up again with a dramatic sigh and an exhalation of Dunhill smoke. “I told her not to be surprised when they spit her back out,” Teresa said to Mara. “They did the same thing to me in the fall, before you got here.” “Did you like it?” Mara asked. “I mean the being let in.” “I did. Who wouldn’t?” “So what happened?” “They got bored, I guess. I’m not wild enough for them.” Teresa lowered her voice. “You know how Gina is to Olwen. But also—they steal. They like to shoplift in Oswestry. I didn’t go for that.” “Aren’t they worried you’ll tell?” “They made it pretty clear they’d tear me limb from limb.” “You can run faster than any of them.” “Maybe, but to where?” They both laughed, but Mara felt something dark at the edge of her consciousness, the click of a lock, the resounding clang of a cage door slammed shut. “Anyway,” Teresa continued, “things are in a balance now. They’re nervous about me, and I’m nervous about them. It holds steady.” “You like being nervous?” “I don’t know about like. But it works. It’ll work until the end of term, and then I’ll never see them again.”

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“True. But I think I’d just be so hungry for revenge. Do you think they’ll drop Kokila that fast?” “Maybe not. It’s close enough to the end, and she’s a pretty good prize. And it’s different for her. She’s staying here, in England, remember?” They walked a little farther around the games pitch. “All right,” Teresa said. “I’m gone. See you at lunch.” She lowered her head, dipped her shoulders and took off in her miraculous coltish sprint. Mara watched until Teresa was out of sight, down the drive, through the gate, left turn onto the road. This had become a mid-morning ritual, to avoid the crowd and heat of the ten o’clock break in the Lloyd-Williams common room. Mara and Teresa would put on running tights, djibbahs and what the English called plimsolls, and walk twice around the games pitch, and then Teresa would run for half an hour more. Teresa said it was American of them, to ramble out of doors, and that they should always move east to west, which is why she turned left at the gate. Mara agreed, but the truth was, as soon as Teresa was out of sight, she lost her bearings, she wandered in the wilderness, but she told herself this was American too. The weather began to grow warmer at the end of April, and Mara walked farther and farther from Vernal Hall, so far that one day she found herself completely out of sight of school buildings, all of them, even Nye, with its turrets and wind vane. She made her way through grassland along a thin arm of the Severn, narrow and deep, but dry, plunging along until she was sure she’d lost her way. Her wristwatch read eleven ‹fteen, and she supposed she ought to start back, retracing her path through the beaten-down grass. But maybe, she reasoned, if she kept going, would she just make a great circle? It seemed possible, judging by the arc she’d already made. She stood still and turned to look at the trail behind her, a dark ‹ssure. Her breathing softened, and without the crash and whoosh of her own steps, she could hear the breeze move the sycamore leaves, a bird or two, the scratch, scratch of an animal, a squirrel or a mouse, in the undergrowth. It was so peaceful, blissful, solitary, warm. She did not want to move, not ever. The wind seemed to change a little then, take on a sound that was more like crying. And Mara realized suddenly that what she heard was the sobbing of a child who could not catch her breath. Voices too, low198

ered almost to a whisper, but not quite. To her right, there was a low hedge of woodrose and sweetbriar, about three feet tall, thick and sharp, running up against the tree she stood under. She moved around behind and knelt down. The crying got closer but not much louder, the voices as well. Mara could see ›ashes of blue and black, the silver-blue of Vernal Hall uniforms, blond hair, a patch of dark sweater. A moment later, the group of them was close enough to see: Gina Whistler and another sixth-form girl named Penny Ryder, and Olwen, the two English girls dragging Olwen by her arms, and Kokila pushing her along from behind. Mara started to straighten up and call out to them, but then she saw Penny let go of Olwen’s arm, reel back and give her a vicious smack in the chest. The physics of it was hard to unravel for a moment: Penny’s hand stayed in the air, but Mara heard the thwack and saw Olwen’s head shake. She covered her face but did not cry out, and Penny swung again. The third time Mara saw it—a sock, in the bottom of which was something round and hard, an orange, a cake of soap. Mara closed her eyes and lost count of how many times Olwen was hit. “Here’s the river,” Gina said, the words spoken slowly through clenched teeth. “This is where we throw you in and end your miserable life.” “Please don’t,” Olwen sobbed quietly. Kokila gave her a shove from behind. “We’ll hold your head under,” Gina said, and Penny gave Olwen another blow, which Mara heard but did not see. “Promise not to tell,” Penny said. “Swear on your dead mum.” “I promise,” Olwen breathed. “I swear.” “Lock her in the tuck shop,” Kokila said, “and take her shoes. Like the last time. That will teach her to go spying around.” “I won’t,” Olwen said. “Shut up,” Kokila said. “May you never speak again. Little angel voice.” This last was said in perfect imitation of Miss Ellis, and for an instant Mara wondered if she were there too. She looked up and saw Penny deliver three more blows to Olwen’s back. Olwen fell down into the grasses, but Gina and Kokila pulled her up. “All right,” Gina said. “Don’t kill her. Not yet. We’d better get back 199

before lunch bell. I think she understands now, don’t you, you little cow?” “Yes,” Olwen said, her voice a whisper, but steady. Mara thought Olwen must be in shock to be able to say anything at all. She saw the four of them turn and walk back the way they had come, pulling Olwen along with them, and she wondered that none of the older girls had noticed Mara’s path and that it led straight to the tree and the sweetbriar. Just then, Kokila looked back, and their eyes seemed to meet through the undergrowth. Kokila smiled and pulled at the collar of her shirt, twice, three times. Mara looked down and saw that her cloak was splayed open, the red lining in two bars running from her neck to her waist. It was a wonder the others hadn’t seen it, the color as loud as a voice. Mara knew she would have to tell someone. Teresa ‹rst, and then they would both go to Frankie. She heard it over and over, the sock hitting Olwen, and thought she might never stop the sound of it. Tears ‹lled her eyes, and she wondered how the day could still be so beautiful, how the sky could be so blue in the face of what she’d just witnessed. How could anybody injure a child that way? Those girls could kill Olwen. They might still do it. She waited for the sound of their steps to die away into silence, and then she lay down full length under the sycamore and sobbed. She reached her arm inside the briars, wrapped her hand around a stem and squeezed. The pain of it seemed like nothing. She pulled her arm back and stared at the blood on her palm and thought of Cambridge, January, the clinic, her outlandish request and the granting of it. She realized Sallie was the person she wanted to tell what she’d just witnessed. But she couldn’t, she wouldn’t, not ever.

I

“ saw something,” Mara began. “Olwen and some older girls.” She was standing, with Teresa, in Frankie’s rooms, in front of Frankie and Miss Ellis. They had been asked to sit but had declined. Mara thought if she sat down, if she gave herself a moment’s comfort, she would lose her nerve. Frankie’s face closed like a door, even her gaze, Mara saw, her eyes actually pulled out of focus, shimmied in their sockets. It was extraordinary, like special effects in a horror movie. “Lots to see around here,” Miss Ellis said. She was holding a mug, 200

of coffee, and something in it. An exotic scent, cinnamon and chocolate, hung in the air. “Lots and lots.” Her voice was suddenly mechanical and shrill, wound up too tight. “I was out for a walk,” Mara said. “Don’t,” Frankie said. “Don’t say another word.” “But it was awful. She might have been killed.” “Quiet!” Frankie’s voice hummed and rang in the room, a growl with a knife in it. Miss Ellis sloshed coffee out of the mug, then placed the dripping mug on the ›oor next to her feet and covered her face with her hands. “I know.” “You two are very bright, very American, American girls,” Frankie said slowly. “You have listened at doors. You have been privy to information.” “We trusted you,” Miss Ellis said from behind her hands. Then she looked up. “We trust you.” Her voice was commanding, musical with feeling and instruction. “Let me explain something. Why they do it. She’s the teacher’s pet. My pet. But more than that. It’s deep, primitive. It’s because all the mothers are gone. There are no mothers here. No men and no mothers. It’s a frightening combination. And Olwen— whose mother really is dead—Olwen is a vision of it all. She’s a cup of sadness. She’s a mirror. They want to smash the mirror. They can’t stand to look at themselves so helpless, so—what?—abandoned.” “But shouldn’t somebody do something?” Teresa said. “You will know what to do,” Frankie said. “Now it’s time you were in your rooms. Good night.” She did not take her eyes off Mara’s face or rise from her chair. “Not another word.” In the hallway, Teresa put her ‹nger to her lips then pointed toward the door. They walked out into the night. “She won’t come to check,” Teresa whispered. “She knows we’re going to talk about it. She wants us to. They can’t do anything about it, Frankie and Ells can’t. Kokila knows all about them, and they know about her, and it all piles up on top of itself that way.” “You didn’t see it,” Mara said. “You didn’t see what they did to her. It was evil.” Teresa was silent, watching her. Mara knew what she was thinking: why didn’t you do anything then? “Because she was spying on them?” Teresa said ‹nally. 201

“There’s something about her voice too. Her voice drives them crazy. It’s too beautiful.” Mara and Teresa let themselves into the music building. “We just have to watch out for her as best we can,” Teresa said. “We can keep her with us,” Mara added. “What Ells said about the mothers . . . it’s strange.” “But true,” Teresa said. She turned toward the mirror and the barre and began to work through some ballet steps. “So much hurt going around.” Mara sat down at the piano. Sondheim, West Side Story, the little of it she knew. She looked down at the keys and saw the red cuts between the thumb and ‹rst ‹nger on her right hand, where she’d taken hold of the briars. The cuts followed, it seemed, the lines on her palm, a kind of emphatic fortune-telling, lines for the future, for children, for happiness and disappointment. If only she could read them. She played with more bluster and crash, stretching her ‹ngers to make an octave, over and over, until the cuts opened again, and bled. She wiped her palms on her jeans, dragging the ›ayed skin hard along the fabric.

The drama production for Parents’ Weekend was going to be Under Milkwood. That had been the rumor for some weeks, and then, in mid-May, Miss Ellis made the formal announcement. There were to be no tryouts, she said, because the play was complicated, more about voices than action, subtitled in fact “a play for voices,” and ‹rst performed on the radio. “In 1954,” she said, smiling, “before any of you were born. Dylan Thomas had barely ‹nished writing it when he died. So we might not have ever had it at all.” “He drank himself to death,” Teresa whispered to Mara, “at the White Horse Tavern, in New York. I’ve been there. Megan took me. You can get a pretty good hamburger.” Miss Ellis was still talking, though she glanced over at them and furrowed her brow. She was saying that she had the parts assigned in her head, though two or three she would offer to any girl who wanted them. “For instance,” she said, “there’s a character named Bessie Bighead.” She opened her copy of the play and began to read. “‘Bessie Bighead, 202

born in a barn, wrapped in paper, left on a doorstep, big-headed and bass-voiced, she grew in the dark until long-dead Gomer Owen kissed her when she wasn’t looking because he was dared.’ Now the girl I give that part to would be rather unhappy, don’t you think? So Bessie Bighead is for the taking.” “So to speak,” Kokila said. “Give it to an American.” Miss Ellis froze and then recovered. But the others, she went on, are plums. In a trial performance, six months before he died, Dylan Thomas directed and read four of the parts, First Voice, Second Drowned, Fifth Drowned, and the Reverend Eli Jenkins. So those parts went to the most local girl, the most Welsh, a ‹fth-form girl from Chirk, whom Mara didn’t really know. She stopped listening after a while, sure Miss Ellis would not have assigned any part to a girl with an American accent. She watched Kokila and Gina, on the other side of the music room, writing notes back and forth. She’d made it as clear as she could that she knew they were terrorizing Olwen, she’d done it without words, by sitting next to Olwen, or drawing her close and staring hard at Kokila and Gina if they were nearby. Then one day, Gina said, “Didn’t your mother teach you about staring?” and Mara answered, “Didn’t your mother teach you to be kind to little children who can’t defend themselves?” So the war was on. Mara told Teresa she’d washed her hands of them, but she missed Kokila in an odd way. They had their strange bond, their tangle of small bonds, really, wrapped up in the con‹nes of Vernal Hall, like wires bound inside a plastic sheath. Like a circuit. She was terribly curious about Kokila’s marriage, now that she knew where it would happen, and who would be invited. Kokila never brought it up anymore, never seemed to be preparing for such a momentous event. She began to wonder if it was all a myth, mythic, a story Kokila and Sallie used to explain their lives, without men, to console themselves. Mara wanted to ask, wanted to be invited back to Cambridge, or back into the upstairs rooms where there were candles and incense and cider, and good talk, clever talk, conversation about how people felt, about their futures, talk that seemed to put them back inside the world. She played the mechanical nightingale less and less, then put it away for good, in the back of her closet. Suddenly Miss Ellis’s voice slipped into Mara’s thoughts, a shiny 203

blade, and she realized what she’d heard was her own name: “. . . two or three parts for a singer. Polly Garter, Mr. Waldo, and children’s voices for you and Olwen to sing together.” Mara glanced across the room toward Gina and Kokila, who were looking at her. Actually, everyone in the room had their eyes trained on her, and Mara felt again the sudden hiss of foreign exchange, of what Teresa called Yank-hate. Now the American girl has gone and got the best part, the star part. The girl who used to get the choir solos, Celia Parkes, rolled her eyes heavenward and kept them there. Her friends, seated on either side of her and behind, patted her arms, her back. “This is part of it, Polly Garter,” Miss Ellis said, moving to the piano. She sat down, played a chord and sang, “I loved a man whose name was Tom. He was strong as a bear and two yards long.” There was a loud intake of girls’ breath. She stopped and smiled. “It gets a bit worse, Mara, but not much.” Celia Parkes, Mara saw, dropped her eyes and smiled. “My mother won’t be coming to Parents’ Weekend,” Mara said. “Or my father. So it’s all right.” “You must all go read the play,” Miss Ellis said. “So you’ll be prepared.” In the end, Mara had four parts, and Teresa had two, because she was also in the ballet performance, the Voice of Guidebook and the one she had asked for, Bessie Bighead. She promised not to harm Miss Ellis, and all the girls in the room laughed at the good joke, turned back against the Florentine and the Pakistani. As she listened to Teresa, Mara believed she was observing something lovely and mysterious, that Teresa was undergoing a transformation right before her eyes. She could not explain it completely, but there was something like the sense that Teresa suddenly slept better at night. She seemed rested, calm, during the day. She spoke less. Maybe it was all the dancing, the hours of running paring her down to an essential self. Or maybe it was just the end of term approaching. Teresa made no secret of the fact that she wanted to go home, that she missed her sisters and her parents. But she did not long for them; she was not unhappy. She seemed perfected, from her study of the Tao. She had become like the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver’s Travels, which they were both reading. She and Mr. Dale, the ballet master, had choreographed a dance to 204

Beethoven’s “Symphonie Pastorale,” as he kept calling it, confusing everyone, including himself. The advanced French students were reading the Gide novel of the same name, and a few of them were dancers, and Teresa said it was like understanding a joke but not getting it, the way the music and the novel did and didn’t intersect. Mara watched them rehearse and wondered at how strangely unself-conscious the dancers were, not at all how these girls acted in the hallways or the bathrooms, robes knotted tightly, nightgowns buttoned up to their chins, faces averted, ›ushing quickly when they heard somebody else come into the lavatory. No, she corrected herself, that was about nakedness and bodily functions, and this—seventeen girls in loose pants or tights and sweatshirts—this was about competence. About half of the seventeen had none, Mara thought, no grace, no musicality, no lift. But they liked it, being part of a performance, learning the steps, even if some of them had to stop and shake their heads and stand still for a moment while the others continued to twirl and leap around them. They counted out the measures, these lost girls, their heads bobbing in time, and waited for a slower, earthbound step to ease themselves back in. And it was the most beautiful thing in the world, when once or twice in an afternoon’s rehearsal, they all moved together. It was, Mara thought, like all those small perfections: a voice like a bell, a bird on the wing, a rainbow. She felt it low in her gut, and the day, what was left of it, took on a kind of steadiness and peace. She didn’t know the dancers very well; most of them were ‹fth-form girls who lived scattered throughout the younger ones’ dormitories. It was an odd coincidence, and the girls wondered about it themselves, that the staff consistently picked dancers to supervise the little ones at night. Only Afsaneh and Teresa lived in Lloyd-Williams, and Mara was glad, even so near the end of the term, to meet a whole new group of students. Most of them were English, except for Teresa and two of the Persians, Afsaneh and Azi, and a Malaysian girl named Ying Lee. Ying Lee had a nearly uncontrollable and celebrated craving for sausage rolls and ketchup, for which she would trade Malaysian postage stamps, mostly to the littlest girls. Mara could see why this currency worked: the stamps were unbelievably gorgeous, miniature paintings of ›owers, animals, beach scenes, native women and men. Among the third-form girls, there was a cult of Ying Lee, sausage rolls and the Malaysian post. 205

Ying Lee, for her part, seemed astonished by the marketplace she’d created and refused to talk about it. She was an athletic dancer, a kind of dervish, everywhere at once. Teresa told her Americans would call her “scrappy,” and Ying Lee laughed until tears squeezed out of the corners of her eyes. “It sounds like what you’d call someone you didn’t have the faintest idea how to handle,” the ballet master said. “Yes!” Ying Lee shouted. “I like that!” Her clothes smelled of ketchup and she danced low to the ground, seeming to hover just off the ›oor. As Parents’ Weekend drew near, the ballet rehearsals were moved to the amphitheater, where the actual performance would take place, secluded behind a copse of cedars on the western edge of the school grounds. The stage surface was poured concrete and somewhat uneven, but Mr. Dale felt the girls must get used to it. For a while, there were horrible falls and scrapes and bashings of bodies, but no one broke any bones, and Teresa said the dancing had improved considerably after a few days in the open air. The amphitheater had a cultivated ruined look, as if it would be a haunt for centaurs and playful cupids. It had emerged after a few weeks of rehearsals that Mr. Dale’s model for the choreography was the pastoral symphony cartoon from the movie Fantasia. Someone remembered there was a part for Bacchus, and right away, Ying Lee constructed the role for herself, a reeling piece of mayhem that even the buttoned-up Mr. Dale could not resist. How, he asked her, do you know to do that, go all rubbery that way? She didn’t answer, but Frankie said later that teenaged girls don’t know how they know half of what they don’t know they know. Miss Ellis stared at Frankie as if she’d never seen her before, but Mara could tell it wasn’t that she’d said something incomprehensible, but that she’d said too much. Ying Lee spent hours a day practicing drunkenness. Even Mr. Sutcliffe told her to get a hold of herself, but it was as if she were helpless to stop. Mara ‹nally read through all of Under Milkwood one afternoon, stretched out in the highest row of the amphitheater while the dancers rehearsed. She had glanced at her lines and at the music for her parts, but not paid much attention to what others of the voices said about her. When she’d got to the last line, she closed the slim little playbook and 206

hurried to the music room to ‹nd Miss Ellis. She and Frankie were eating sandwiches, seated side by side at the worktable, each reading something. They shared a bag of crisps between them—that was how Mara noted it, the English word. She liked it that the language was coming to her this way, though it made her vaguely nervous too, about going home with all these wrong words in her head. Chips and crisps and loo and torch, and the voices she heard around the words, which one of them would come out of her throat when she opened her mouth to speak? The two women looked up. Their faces, Mara saw, were completely blank. She supposed they’d perfected that look over the years, and the thought made her sad, canceling out any little victories. She held up her copy of the play as if it were a stained handkerchief, evidence. “How many children do I have?” she asked, the last word nearly a cry. “What?” Frankie said, her voice rising to a screech. Miss Ellis was quiet, staring, then she smiled. She looks guilty, Mara thought. “She means the play, dear,” she said, patting Frankie’s knee under the table. “It’s not speci‹c. The play isn’t. At least I don’t think it is. Several. Three or four, I’d say.” “Is that why you gave me the part?” “Is what why?” Mara knew she would be forced to say it, to put into words the thing that had happened to her, the thing she had chosen to do, which neither of these women had spoken of or acknowledged since January. “Is it because that’s what you think of me?” “What’s what I think of you?” “That I’m . . . loose. Because I’m not. It was one time.” She held up her index ‹nger, as if for someone who doesn’t speak the language. She shook her head. “Not one time. One man.” She began to cry. “Mara.” Miss Ellis pushed her chair back but did not stand. “No one says that about Polly Garter.” “But she has all those babies and no husband. She just gets them mysteriously?” “Not mysteriously.” “Other women’s husbands, then.” “It’s just talk,” Miss Ellis said. “Read it again: ‘Polly, you’re no better than you should be.’” 207

Mara sat down on the piano bench. It was just too much—how you could go from the con‹dence of crisps to the horror of harlotry, abjection of adultery. The joke came straight from Phil, by way of Stephen Sondheim: the whorer, the whorer. She smiled a little. “I gave you the part because you have the voice for it. You have the best voice in this school, apart from Olwen, and she’s so young we don’t know if it will last.” She paused. “I wanted to do the play anyway, without music, but it’s jolly nice that there’s someone able to sing it well. And the other . . .” “And the other?” Mara said. “Well, it just happened. It just turned out that way. And maybe you can give a better performance than anyone else could. Maybe you can bring more to it. Maybe it’s lucky.” “It’s not lucky,” Mara said. “Maybe it’s the silver lining,” Frankie said. “We’ll just have to wait and see, now won’t we?”

Mara

and Olwen sang together every day. Their shared songs in Under Milkwood lasted about two minutes, but they drew their rehearsal time out to an hour and a half before supper, sometimes two hours. Mara helped Olwen with her lessons, or taught her new music. Twice they worked on letters to Olwen’s father, which, she assured Mara, he would never receive because her stepmother, Gina’s mother, would hide them, read all the private bits and then burn them after her father had gone to his of‹ce. “She can’t be that bad,” Mara said. “She is! Just wait. You’ll meet her at Parents’ Weekend, and you’ll see how horrible she is.” They got into the habit of reading together, Olwen in Mara’s lap in one of the soft armchairs just outside the library. They couldn’t read inside the library because one wasn’t supposed to talk, and Olwen wanted the novelty of being read to. It was astonishing that a child could have missed this in her young life, but it seemed Olwen had. And Mara was happy for the feel of Olwen’s hard little body resting against her chest, often growing heavier as Olwen dropped off to sleep. It made them late for supper, but girls passing by on their way to the refectory would tell 208

Frankie that Mara was stuck with the sleeping Olwen, and after a few days of this, no one bothered them. An hour would pass, a silent, still hour when everyone else was in another building, and Olwen was safe from Gina and Kokila, and Mara was holding a child. Everyone seemed to agree that Olwen needed holding, almost as much as she needed sleep. “The Midnight Rambler,” Frankie called her, when they went to be ‹tted for their parts. Olwen smiled then, a private little twitching of her mouth, and obediently got herself into the costume Frankie handed her, a girl’s jumper, blouse and ankle socks, and a pair of low boots, which looked as though they had crossed many a cow pasture in the Welsh countryside. Olwen went to the mirror and stood for a minute or so, while Frankie and Mara looked through the racks for Polly Garter and Mr. Waldo. They heard her whisper something to her re›ection, then she turned and walked back to stand beside Mara. “I look like myself,” Olwen said, and it was just so. Nothing would ever change Olwen. Mara wondered at the clarity of it, the truth. It frightened her somehow that Olwen could not be disguised, transformed by details. At ‹fteen, she would be exactly the same, at thirty, into middle age, not her looks, but her ways, her carriage, a girl unloved and beaten. It had gone on so long. Mara felt a streak of something behind her eyes, like sharp pain, but not, not physical that way. Foreboding. She put her arm around Olwen’s shoulders and turned back to the costumes. Mr. Waldo was easy, just a ‹fty-year-old man with fat pink hands, his costume a shirt and workpants. He was under a quilt in his ‹rst scene, then on a stool at the bar in the Sailors’ Arms. “What is he, love?” Frankie asked. “Kind of a doctor, a veterinarian, maybe. He dreams about soft women. He says ‘in my bread pudding bed.’” “The play’s a bit of a scandal, isn’t it?” Mara looked at Frankie to see if she meant anything by it, if she knew anything. But there was nothing besides delight in her face. “I grew up thereabouts, you know,” she said. “But I’ve conquered the accent. Most of us did. We’re all around and you hardly know it. Like Scots.” “Why?” Mara said. 209

“It’s a bit of an oddity, being a Welshman.” “Or woman?” “Or woman. Like being a cripple or a half-wit. Or being eighteen forever.” She laughed at the face Mara made. “No, maybe not quite as bad as that.” “That would be bad.” “It’s on account of this play, some of it. Bloody eccentrics, all the Welsh. I shouldn’t curse. But that’s everybody, dearie. All over the world.” “You do know this play, then?” Frankie smiled and waved her hand around the costume shop. “It’s my job. Same as it will be yours one day to know all the operas in the world. That’s where you’re headed, isn’t it? That’s what Louisa says. And I’ve heard you myself. It’s a gorgeous instrument you have in that voice. A terri‹c set of pipes, my father called it. Louisa has been waiting to do this play, waiting to ‹nd somebody who could really sing. This one”—she patted Olwen’s head–”was going to be a long time showing herself.” Mara turned back to the rack of costumes, waiting for Frankie to continue, moving the hangers slowly from right to left. Period costumes, for Shakespeare, for Molière. Tartuffe, she thought the soft French name, all of them so well cared for, even the ones that were supposed to look like rags. She ran her hand down the sleeves, the bodices, moved on. Sequins, suddenly, like scales. Mara’s gaze drifted down the front of the dress: a tail! A mermaid. She pulled it forward, out of the crush of other, lesser pieces. “Olwen,” she whispered, “look at this one!” Olwen said nothing, but moved her body in closer to Mara’s, slid her arm around Mara’s waist. “She’s never used that one,” Frankie said. “We found it in Brighton, of all places. A costumer selling off his shop. That dress was for parties, but how could you get around in it? Louisa loved it, though, thought it might come in just right if she ever did the Hans Christian Andersen.” Kimonos next, three of them, blue and green and pink, looking alive, already animated by voices. “Do you come in here sometimes,” Mara asked, “and just look? Just to sort of let your mind wander? They’re just so—I guess I’ve never seen so many all together.” 210

“Well, you can look all you like, Mara, after I get you a dress for Polly Garter. Let’s get that taken care of ‹rst.” Frankie walked around to the second rack and came back with something lavender, maybe just below knee length. On the hanger, it was a disappointment, Mara felt, but she could not quite imagine what Polly Garter would have worn. Certainly not a kimono. Not a hoopskirt. From the neck down the character was a blank, felt like a blank. Mara realized this feeling had something to do with her own body, the way the guitar teacher had touched her body, and how completely she wanted to forget him. And there was this too: the way the baby, that tiny child’s body, had come out of hers and become nothing, a void. Flesh of my ›esh, she thought, lack of my lack, loss of my loss. She slipped the dress over her head. It had no buttons, no zippers. It just went over and down. Or up and over. Mara knew this fabric, like silk, but synthetic, rayon, but something else too. The slightest itch, as if it might be easy to take off, a pleasure. The material would remind its wearer always of the opportunity, the possibility of removing it, of the naked skin underneath. That was Polly Garter. “Look at yourself,” Frankie said quietly, and Mara turned to Olwen, standing a few feet away, her eyes huge, her mouth open. “What is it?” Mara said, and then she found the mirror. The shade of the dress, lilac really, brought out some color in her skin, a kind of blush that was close to her summer suntan. Gypsy, she thought, that’s part of it, that foreign attraction and threat. The material clung to her breasts, and then dropped away, slid down over her hips, suggesting the shape without giving it away. It was as if there was nothing on her skin but early evening, which would ‹nally give way to night and all its mysteries. “No shoes,” Mara said in a low voice she hardly recognized. “Never,” Frankie whispered back.

It had all been settled months ago. Phil would arrive the Friday of Parents’ Weekend with Sallie. She and Mara had arranged it by telephone, that Sallie would meet Phil’s plane at Heathrow, he would spend the night in Cambridge, and then they would drive up to Vernal Hall together. Phil would stay with Mr. Sut211

cliffe and his wife, since there was not much in the way of accommodation for boys at the school. Mothers and sisters posed no problem, but boys and fathers were a riddle. Those were Sutcliffe’s exact words. Mara suspected what he really meant was a puzzle, the distinction being language rather than shape or ‹t. She spent more time that was truly necessary thinking about this, as she did all questions that seemed to take hours to consider and answer. She looked up the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, the two-volume set, using the magnifying glass. A puzzle was any contrivance designed to amuse by presenting dif‹culties to be solved by ingenuity or patient effort. A riddle was a question or statement so framed as to exercise one’s ingenuity in answering it or discovering its meaning. Like the nightingale. Conundrum. Phil was a conundrum. Their mother had once said so. Mara lay on her bed in Lloyd-Williams and thought of this, not to pass the time but to stop it. The plain fact was, she did not want the term at Vernal Hall to end. She did not want to go back to Pittsburgh and then on to Berklee. She wanted to skip over all the beginning, and land in the middle of college, pass right by all the getting-to-know-you-getting-to-know-all-about-you of freshman year. It seemed possible that deep consideration of language problems might make this happen, drive her into some tunnel of consciousness, and she’d emerge on the other side, a voice major, with a graduate fellowship, a repertoire, maybe a job. And then ‹nally, he was there: Phil, easing himself out of Sallie’s car in the bright afternoon sun, spilling almost onto the gravel drive in front of Vernal Hall. Mara was waiting for them just inside the entry, her face pressed close to one of the side windows. She was glad she was alone—Teresa would have suggested they stand outside in the sun, and Mara wouldn’t have wanted to explain. She wanted to see Phil before he saw her, or more exactly, she wanted to have a still moment in which to see him, to get used to the sight of him, before she had to speak or act. She was afraid of what she might do. In the past few days, the idea of him, or of his arrival, had caused her eyes to ‹ll with tears. She thought if she started to cry in front of Phil and Sallie, the two of them together, she might never stop. But now it was all right. It was Phil, gangly and lovely, and taller by at least a head. He carried a red sports duffel bag, the person and the 212

luggage together so preposterous that Mara rushed away from the window laughing, ›ying out the front door and down the steps and into his arms. With her face pressed to his chest, Mara heard Phil say her name over and over. He hugged her tightly and didn’t let go. It was true, she thought, what he’d said at the airport in Pittsburgh last January. He’d missed her more. “You’re a giant!” she said. “Jeez! In six months. Look at you!” “You sound like all the other relatives,” he said. “Except for that accent. You look great, Mara.” He stepped back. “You look so English!” From the other side of the car came Sallie’s laughter. “Wait until you see a real English girl,” she said. Phil made a face, eyes crossed, tongue lolling. “I’m ready.” He kept his back to Sallie, and his expression suddenly turned serious, imploring. Mara wondered what had happened in the car, or before that. “Did you have a good ›ight?” she asked. “Did you have any trouble at the airport?” “I carried a sign,” Sallie said. “Like he was . . . what do you say in America? The big cheese?” “It was weird,” Phil said, turning to face Sallie, then Mara. “Seeing my name like that.” Sallie nodded. They had talked about this in the car, Mara could tell. “It’s like joining back up to yourself, without knowing you’d been separated. Kind of cool.” Sallie walked around the car and gave Mara a quick hug. “I would have known him anywhere though,” she said. “The resemblance is quite vivid.” “More than it used to be,” Mara said. “Poor Phil.” She bent to pick up his duffel bag, but he took it from her. “You’re still a girl,” he said. “Let’s go ‹nd Sutcliffe. He said to come for tea when you get in.” She turned to Sallie. “I think Kokila has the third-form study hour now.” “Or she’d come out to meet me, I feel sure,” Sallie said dryly. She gave a little laugh. “Ah well. I suppose the head girl’s mum ought to call on the headmaster now and then.” Mara felt dizzy with happiness, drunk almost. Phil was really there, the lifeline, the ally. Maybe going back wouldn’t be so bad. No, it 213

would be. It would be terrible. But for now, the next few days, she had the best thing there was. She had a boy. Even if he was her own brother, he would be a kind of magic. She had not thought of this as a possibility, she had not thought of it at all in fact, but here it was: Phil as a force between herself and the others, against all the relentless Englishness. She would show him everything, tell him everything, Kokila, Olwen, Teresa. He would love Teresa. It felt like she’d been undressed for months and now had clothes on again. That notion about seeing your own name at the airport, it was a version of that, the way she and Phil were versions of each other. He took up the duffel bag in his left hand, and Mara ran her left arm around his waist. He patted her on the back and let his hand rest there, higher up, draped over her right shoulder. They had never done this before, held on quite this way. Sutcliffe was waiting in his study, the tea brewing in the pot on the low table, the cups and saucers arranged before him. He sat with one gray trousered leg crossed over the other, in a light blue shirt and a blue blazer, too warm for July, Mara thought, but then she had never seen him without a jacket or a sweater. He seemed to be in a trance, with the study door open. Mara knocked and smiled, and started to enter the room before he took full notice of them. He stood then, shook Phil’s hand, and Sallie’s, and looked curiously from one to the other, as if expecting to ‹nd a resemblance there. He gestured that they should sit, and then he poured the tea, while asking the usual questions about the ›ight, the drive north, how things were in Cambridge. He seemed to drift off for a moment, staring into the blank television set. “Your sister,” he said to Phil, “has a very beautiful voice. It has been lovely to have two nightingales here.” He looked at Sallie and smiled, then took a breath. “I’m thinking of retirement.” “No!” Sallie said. “What a surprise! But you’re so young.” “Yes. Still.” Sutcliffe closed his eyes. “My wife and I have been talking about it.” Here he paused and turned to Phil. “I say this because you’ll be staying with us, and no doubt you’ll hear about it, and I wouldn’t want—well, you know, secrets and gossip, and all that sort of thing.” “Of course,” Phil said. “You can count on me.” Mara tried not to stare at her brother. He’d got it so fast, the place-

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keeper in conversation, the saying something that says nothing but sounds deeply reassuring. “The year of the two nightingales would be a ‹tting last year, I believe. Don’t you think so?” Mara smiled, wondering how to answer such a question. “They sing at night,” Phil said. “After sunset. At the end of the day.” “Exactly,” Sutcliffe said. “Precisely right.”

H

“ ow did you do that?” Mara said when they were alone. Sallie had gone back to park the car and then ‹nd Kokila. Mr. Sutcliffe had sent them to have supper in the refectory. He would leave his kitchen door unlocked so Phil could come and go as he liked. “Do what?” “Hypnotize Sutcliffe. He was putty in your hands. You could have gotten him to give you . . .” She couldn’t think of a single thing the headmaster had that her brother might want. “Spending money!” “There’s something about him,” Phil said. “He seems sort of sad. Do they have kids?” “I don’t think so. If they do, he never talks about them.” “I guess I’ll ‹nd out. So where are we going now?” “Refectory. Dining hall. Right up there—the one with all the windows. With all the girls pressed up against the windows staring at you.” “Great.” Phil slowed his pace, so that Mara had to turn and walk back to him. “So how are you really?” he said. “Tell me quick. You look OK—a little thin, maybe.” “I am OK. Really. Going back will be strange, though, I can tell already. How’s the home front?” “The same. Quiet. I can’t imagine what they’re doing right now with neither one of us there.” “Don’t think about it.” “I’m trying not to.” “Did you tell them yet?” Mara said. “Tell them what?” “You know.”

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The doors to the refectory building ›ew open then, and Olwen rushed out, hurling herself into Mara’s arms. Teresa followed, more slowly, but just as eager, Mara saw. A sibling is a sibling to Teresa, she thought, no matter whose it is. “Phil, this is—” But before she could say anything else, Olwen let loose a torrent of chatter—her name, her age, the length of time they’d been standing at the window watching for Phil and Mara, all of it ending with the breathless observation that Phil was a real boy. “Like Pinocchio,” he said. “Sort of.” “And I’m Teresa. Could you just say something with an American accent?” “What’s for supper?” Phil enunciated grandly. “Wow,” Teresa said, “that was great. Believe it or not, supper is something called bangers and mash. They’re getting rid of the horrible stuff before most of the parents get here.” Inside, the girls stood at their tables in utter silence. It made Mara want to laugh, and so to keep herself in check, she bent down and whispered to Olwen that she must go to her table, down at the very end of the room. Olwen nodded solemnly and began the long walk past the elder girls, head up, a terri‹c smile on her little face. They had seen it, all of them, every one: the American boy had held her hand. Teresa started up the steps to the high table, where she had kept seats for Mara and Phil. Just as they reached their places, a slow clapping from a single pair of hands resounded from the end of the table nearest them. Mara looked up. Kokila. Kokila had begun it. She stood next to her mother, who had joined in the applause, and at ‹rst, Mara did not know what she was looking at. But her eyes adjusted, as if to darkness, and she saw Kokila, beautiful, mysterious, dressed in a sari colored copper and pink, the dupatta draped over her head, the bangles on her wrists jingling as she brought her hands together. She’d lined her eyes with something dark and applied lipstick, just a touch of crimson, as if she’d been eating raspberries. The applause grew louder as the students followed the lead of their head girl, in one of her last of‹cial acts of welcome. She would do this again, over the weekend, for all the parents, but Mara had not expected it for her brother. Kokila lifted her right hand, toward Phil, then turned and made a small bow before her mother, who was hidden between Kokila and the 216

rest of the girls at the table. Kokila took her mother’s arm and drew her into the space beside the high table, so all the girls below could see her. It was a gesture ‹lled with intention, Mara thought: Kokila in the native costume, and her mother in an English afternoon dress, sprigged all over with small blue ›owers, her feet in white espadrilles, no stockings, no jewelry but her wedding ring, no makeup, her thick black hair cut short, shaved over and behind her ears like a man’s. The applause began to fade, and Kokila and her mother moved back to their places. The dining room ‹lled slowly with the clatter of plates and cutlery, the relief of girls’ voices at the end of term. Vicki Marsh served their table, and when she brought Phil’s plate, she leaned down and whispered to Mara, “Come round for a drink after and bring the charming bloke with you.” “A quick one,” Mara said. “He’s staying with Sutcliffe.” “He’ll need it, then,” Vicky said and moved off to ‹nish the serving. Mara raised her eyes from her plate to see Kokila smiling at her, at Phil, nodding her head toward Vicki. Mara smiled back. This was a different Kokila, all right. Maybe she wanted a truce, at the end, now that her mother was here. Or maybe it was all an act, like her display a moment before. Mara didn’t care. “Is that the Kokila?” Phil asked. “The one and only.” “What a showgirl!” “She’d hate you saying that.” “Can I meet her?” “I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it.” “You know,” Phil said, a little louder, to include the whole table, “this grub isn’t as bad as you’d think from the name. Why do they call it that anyway? I get it about the mash. But bangers?” “It’s just the English,” Teresa said. “There’s one with a worse name, a cabbage dish called bubble and squeak. The squeak is the cabbage, and the bubble is . . . well, I don’t know what the bubble is.” “No, no,” Afsaneh called from across the table. “I know what it is. I know I don’t seem very English,” she said to Phil, “but my guardian in London makes bubble and squeak. It’s all the odds and ends left after a holiday, made into a round disk.” “Like a hamburger?” Phil said. 217

“Wow.” Teresa nudged Phil with her elbow. “Say hamburger again.” “Like that,” Afsaneh continued. “My guardian uses brussels sprouts. She ›attens them ‹rst with a mallet. It’s terrible.” “What’s your name?” Phil asked, and Afsaneh told him. “Your sister,” she said, “is a very nice person. She has made me not so afraid of the dark.” “Good job, Mar,” Phil said. “And,” Afsaneh continued, “she has a beautiful voice.” “I keep hearing about this voice. In all the years I’ve been her brother, I’ve never heard so much about it.” “You’ll really get to hear it tomorrow night,” Mara said. “The part’s a little racy. Good thing you’re here and not Mom.” “That’s for sure.” Mara ‹nished eating and sat back in her chair. Vicki Marsh was right: Phil was a charming bloke. She watched him as he listened carefully to the girls’ questions, Afsaneh and Teresa, Azi and Shantih, Mary Pease-Watkin and Louisa Swithinbank, Georgina Farrell, the three who had talked so endlessly about Ile Nastase’s bad behavior during Wimbledon. They weren’t so bad, not really. She would miss them, miss seeing how they grew up, who—they would correct her, of course, saying it’s whom—they married, what they made of their lives. They had more questions about America for Phil than they’d ever had for her, but she didn’t mind. They were being sweet to Phil, and he was charming them right back. This was good for international relations. This was what the English girls would remember about the half-year exchange student from America: her brother, and how he seemed to give each of them his undivided attention. They would talk about it for the rest of their lives. For a weekend, when I was eighteen, an American boy fell in love with me.

M

ara had never been all the way inside Vicki Marsh’s room, and so she was surprised to discover a small refrigerator wedged behind the door, between the clothes cupboard and the wall. Vicki opened it, and handed cans of cider to Phil and Teresa. She poured tumblers of gin for herself and Mara. “Doesn’t anybody know?” Mara said. “Have you had this all year long?”

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“It’s for my insulin,” Vicki said, pulling her round face into seriousness. “I’m a bloody diabetic.” “So to speak,” Phil said. “A clever one, he is,” Vicki said. “Frankie knows all about it. But Frankie’s a good old girl. Live and let live, that’s Frankie. I don’t get into any trouble. I don’t bother anybody. Some girls like chocolate, and that’s their vice, if you know what I mean.” “Cheers to that,” Phil said. “Tell me about New York,” Vicki said. “That’s really what I want to hear about. Your sister doesn’t know anything about New York, but she says you’re going to college there.” “Not for another month.” “Oh, well, make it up then. I hear it’s ripping. I hear you can get a bloody avocado at two o’clock in the morning.” Phil laughed, and Teresa said, “I told her that.” “But she—” Vicki pointed at Teresa. “She lives on Lon Guy Land. So she doesn’t know bloody anything.” There was a sharp two-beat knock, and then Kokila stood framed in the doorway. There was a glittering rage in her eyes, and she turned to the rest of the room. “Do you know what’s happened? The talks have failed. Zia has imposed martial law. Bhutto is out. He’ll be executed. Not right away. But just wait.” “Is your father all right?” Mara said. “He’s in London. He’ll be here the day after tomorrow and you can ask him yourself.” “What about Fazal?” Kokila stared out the window across the room, in which, as darkness fell, her re›ection was just beginning to appear. “I’m sure he’s in prison too,” she said. A little smile played about her lips. She was speaking to herself, Mara thought, but there was no sorrow in her voice when she said, “There won’t be any marriage now. Not for me. Finally, I’ve ditched me mum.” She laughed wryly. “In every possible way.” “On-tray,” Vicki called, and Kokila ›oated into the room, still dressed as she had been at supper, but without the dupatta. Her braid hung over her shoulder, and against the muted, delicate colors of the sari, it looked dangerous, darkly alive. She smiled at Phil and sat down

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next to him on Vicki’s bed. “Thanks for driving up with her,” she said and patted his hand. “She’s nervous on the road alone.” “No problem,” Phil said. “She seemed ‹ne.” “What to drink, Koke?” Vicki asked, then laughed at herself and changed the intonation and accent, so it became a question about the American cola drink. “Actually, nothing, thanks. I just wanted to meet the famous Philip.” “I’ve heard a lot about you, too,” Phil said. “I’m absolutely sure of it,” Kokila replied.

Gin was not the best choice. Mara had this thought some hours later. Still, everyone seemed to be having such a good time. Louisa Swithinbank turned up, then Iyabo, the statuesque Nigerian, folded herself into the room as well. The place was a swirl of talk and laughter, cigarette fumes, the sweet pinch of cider and the clean scent of limes somebody brought for the gin and tonics. Phil was smiling so much, Mara wondered if his face would hurt the next day, and she realized she had never seen him so happy, so completely at ease. A roomful of women, ‹ve different nationalities. He was talking to them about food, their native dishes, and she heard him say to Iyabo, “A goat’s what?” Iyabo patted him on the shoulder, and said she was afraid it was true. Then she turned to Mara. “He is so innocent, this brother of yours,” she said. “How can that be if he has lived all these years with you?” Almost without thinking, Mara looked at Kokila. She knew Iyabo was only making a joke, or maybe a good-natured reference to Under Milkwood and Polly Garter. But Kokila was staring at Mara, her eyes ‹xed as if from a very great distance, the space of years or galaxies. Mara had to close her own eyes, both from the vision of that stare and the gin. The voices in the room became a kind of undulation, rising and falling like a road, changing and modulating like sound underwater. Phil was shaking her shoulder. “Mara,” he said. “Wake up. I should get back to Sutcliffe’s. It’s late.” “It’s only half-ten.” Vicki’s voice.

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“Don’t let her drink any more,” Phil said, not to Mara, but to the room. “She’s got to sing tomorrow.” “I haven’t had that much, really,” Mara said. “I’m just not used to it.” She sat up. “Wait, Phil. Let me walk you back. Just give me a minute.” She tried to stand, but the room went spinning away from her, and she sat back down. “I’ll take him,” Teresa said. “I’m going that direction anyway,” Kokila said. “You all take care of Mara. I should go too. Mum’ll be wanting a whiff of me breath.” She laughed. “Come on, Prince Philip.” Phil bent down and kissed the top of Mara’s head. “I’ll be OK. Come and get me for breakfast.” “I will. I just need some sleep.” She watched the door close. Teresa sat down on the ›oor next to her. “Just relax a minute,” she said, “and tell me when you feel like moving.” “Do you think he’ll be all right with her?” “I think so. It’s not very far.” “She seems so . . . transformed. In that sari. It’s amazing.” “Maybe her mother’s a good in›uence.” Mara knew that much was true. “But the politics too. Did you see her? It was like she was lit from the inside. She hated Bhutto. She never wanted to marry that nephew. You know, I’ve missed her.” “Missed who?” “Kokila. Haven’t you?” “I don’t know if I have,” Teresa said heavily. “But your brother’s great.” “He’s an angel,” Mara said. “I think I can stand up now.” “What’s that called, do you think?” Teresa said. She reached her arms around Mara’s waist. “Sister-of-angel?” “Mother-of-pearl,” Mara said. “Son of a gun. Child of God.” “Well, you’re still drunk, I guess,” Teresa said. “It’s called lucky.” In the morning, Mara woke late with a splitting headache, but she dressed quickly and ran as fast as she could to the Sutcliffes’ residence. She stopped short when she saw Mrs. Sutcliffe standing at the stove, the creased v-neck of a chenille robe visible at the bottom of the window glass. Steam from a pot rose up around her face, and her hair was

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pinned to the sides of her head in a way that seemed private. Her own mother, Mara knew, would look this way on Saturday mornings, up early frying bacon for her family, the same wrap of bathrobe, the same vacant look, as if standing completely and quietly amid the details and duties of her own life had pushed her out of it, and she was trying to dream herself back in. Into this scene walked Phil, and Mara watched as Mrs. Sutcliffe turned and held out her hand to him. Phil took it, or so Mara believed—she could not really see below his elbow. And then Mr. Sutcliffe entered the room, and the three of them sat down to breakfast as happily and naturally as if they’d been doing so, at this very table, all of their lives. This picture, Mara felt, it was a kind of vision, and even if she stared at it for a hundred years, she could never get to the bottom of it, or understand why it moved her so. They passed the bacon, back and forth among the three of them. Phil took the cover off a small dish that appeared to contain an egg. There was a moment of stillness, as if a ‹lm had stopped moving, when Sutcliffe asked the blessing, Mara knew it by heart—this food to our use and us to thy service—and then the action clicked forward again. Phil said something amusing, and the Sutcliffes laughed. They drank their orange juice. Mrs. Sutcliffe poured more coffee for her husband, and Mara knew, in that moment, it was not that this picture looked so familiar, but that she had never seen it before, a family eating a meal together, never from the outside looking in. And she knew, too, somehow, irrevocably, that this was her future, but also that she would never be able to see it just this way because she would be far inside it—the hair in pins, the bacon, the coffee, serving the child who is always like an honored guest, just as he should be. Then she was in it too: she had knocked, Mrs. Sutcliffe had risen to open the door, Phil had turned and smiled at her. She sat down at the table and Mrs. Sutcliffe boiled an egg for her. Sutcliffe and Phil were talking about New York, where, as she knew, Sutcliffe had been for a week, many years ago. Mara ate her egg from a blue and white cup, with a small spoon, and the ooze of it seemed to go straight to her head and settle softly in between the parts of her skull that had been grinding against each other. Something about the conversation was hilarious, and all four of them seemed to know and enjoy it. The man who could not remember much of New York City and the boy who had not really 222

lived there yet, making up the place, inventing it around shards of memory and guidebooks and Columbia College’s promotional literature. What they could conjure between them was the great expanse of Central Park, which both had seen from very high up, from Sutcliffe’s hotel, and for Phil, from a Columbia alumnus’s apartment, and the peculiar experience of walking back and forth between two rivers in the space of an afternoon. “I don’t know what it was,” Sutcliffe said. “Maybe because it felt familiar, an island, you know, like England.” He stopped talking, and his gaze drifted away, and Mara could tell there was something else. They all waited. Then he blinked rapidly and looked at his wristwatch. “The parents will start arriving around eleven. We have a luncheon. You know this, of course, Mara. The afternoon exhibits and dance program, reception, dinner. And then your play.” “A long day,” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. “What will you do, Philip?” “Whatever Mara wants, I guess. Stagehand, maybe?” “We’ll take a walk,” Mara said. “I want to show him Weston Rhyn. He’s never had real ‹sh and chips.” “Very good,” Sutcliffe said. “The house is open,” Mrs. Sutcliffe said. “Come and go as you like. Rest. Make yourself at home.” They all four pushed back their chairs at once and winced at the din. Mrs. Sutcliffe laughed and said she loved a loud house. She and her husband exchanged a look that Mara thought bore the weight of ages. She wondered if it was preface to the retirement discussion. “I just wanted to tell you,” she began, and turned to Sutcliffe, “that this has been a wonderful experience for me.” She laughed. “Kokila makes fun of that word, experience, especially coming from Americans, so I better pick another one.” She glanced at Phil. He was frozen, seemed oddly uncomfortable. “I’ll never forget it,” she went on. “I think I probably won’t know how important it is for a long time. In some ways.” Mara’s hands rose in front of her then, as if of their own accord, and came together to form a kind of vessel, just the way they had when Priya put the tiny fetus into them. She wondered if the Sutcliffes knew anything about why she had gone to Cambridge so soon after her arrival. She had always assumed not. She looked up at Mrs. Sutcliffe and saw 223

tears trembling in her eyes, not even tears, not enough to fall, but a kind of mist, the way her father’s eyes looked a certain moments, during the national anthem, saying goodbye to her at the airport in January. She wondered if she’d been wrong about her parents all these years. “But it’s a huge part of me now,” she said simply, folding up her hands. “So, thank you.” The Sutcliffes smiled but did not say anything. Mara understood later it was because they could not.

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“ re you nervous?” Phil said, as they walked back toward the dormitories. “I guess so. A little. I feel far away.” “Getting into character.” Mara was stunned. “That must be it. How did you know that?” “I did it every day last year.” “It feels different from nerves, doesn’t it?” “Before taking your driver’s test was nerves.” “Right. But this is—I don’t know. Like I look at you and can’t ‹gure out who you are.” Phil laughed. “Me neither. I can’t ‹gure out who I am.” “So did you tell them?” “I told Mom.” “What did she say?” “She looked at me for a long time. Then she cried. Then she hugged me. Then she said the most unbelievable thing. For her. She said, ‘It’s called being gay.’” “Wow. But then that was it?” Phil nodded. “I don’t think she has words for it. It bugged me for a while, and then I was glad. It was honest. But it’s made her quieter than ever, and Dad knows something’s up. So it’s pretty weird there.” Mara made a sound like strangling, like a sigh. She’d never heard such a noise before come out of a human. “I know,” Phil said. “You can come visit me in New York anytime. Really, Mar, whenever you want. And I’ll come up to Boston.” “Thanks,” Mara said. She patted his back. “You’re going to have a great time. You’re going to get so smart. And then cooking school.” 224

“We’ll see.” “Let’s just take a walk, OK?” “Do you need to rest?” “After lunch. Teresa will take care of you. You can just say hamburger over and over.” They turned west and walked across the games pitch toward the amphitheater. If they kept walking, they would come to the narrow stream, the sycamore tree, the brambles where Mara had hidden herself. She wanted to tell Phil what she had seen there, what she knew, but maybe he was better off not knowing while they were all here together. Maybe she would tell him on the ›ight home, the whole story, all the stories. “Everybody here seems great,” Phil said. “I’m sure it’ll be hard to leave. That was nice, by the way, what you said to the Sutcliffes.” “What about Kokila? Did you talk much last night?” “Not really. It was a quick walk. Kokila said something about her marriage. I asked her if women from her culture ever wished they were men, and that seemed like a faux pas.” “She wanted an arranged marriage. She said she did. But now everything’s changed. Still, she wants to be the opposite of her mother.” “Doesn’t everybody?” “Maybe. But it’s strange when it makes you old-fashioned. And her mother’s so nice.” “She seems to like you a lot.” “And that’s been a problem too.” “I’ll bet.” Mara led her brother back toward the school buildings, then turned north, following the path she and Teresa had ‹rst taken to Weston Rhyn, past the church and the aqueduct, through the summer pastures, which were abundantly green. They talked a little, about Phil’s future roommate, from southern California, whose letters sounded as if he would arrive with eighteen years’ worth of suntan and a surfboard. They planned their three days in London, visits to Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral, one expensive dinner at the Ritz Hotel, which had a restaurant Phil had heard about. A thorough search for Stephen Sondheim. But this is the other England, Mara thought, gazing around them, maybe the real England. She knew if she was ever going to talk about what England was, it was this place she’d draw upon, 225

not London, not Cambridge, not what happened to her there. But she would never get it right—it would always be the place through her, never the place itself. That was the part of the experience Kokila despised, that the place and the culture became a backdrop, a collection of props, lying mute behind the droning American voice. So she started to sing, rehearsing ‹rst Polly Garter and Mr. Waldo, then “I Shall Marry the Miller’s Son.” “If I Were a Bell,” the sweet little drunk song from Guys and Dolls. But that was wrong. The houses are blind as moles, the voice of Milkwood croons, and the windy hill is a town of windows. Something about those words stuck in Mara’s head, those two lines, one from the beginning and one from the end of the play. She began again. I loved a man whose name was Tom. “Me, too,” said Phil. “Sing the rest.” Mara’s voice rang out over the pasture grasses, and then fell away under them, under the green earth, as a voice should, she thought, as a human voice always will.

The Vernal Hall production of Under Milkwood, the sixtieth play to be performed at the school, began promptly at seven-thirty that evening, after a short speech by Miss Ellis, about those sixty years of drama and tradition, and a statement about the play’s content. “This play is about language,” she said, “and poetry, and what that has to do with life.” Then the stage darkened and Julia Pilkington moved to the lectern and spoke the play’s ‹rst lines. To begin at the beginning: It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched courters-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, crowblack ‹shingboat bobbing sea. Mara, standing in the wings, could see Phil sitting in the second row, next to Sallie, and to an empty seat, for Kokila, who was late. She was working on the speech she would give at the farewell ceremony the next day, her valedictory. It seemed to be part of the school tradition that the head girl go into a kind of seclusion the night before she was to pass out of the arms of the school. Mara thought it seemed weirdly bridal,

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and she asked Frankie where the idea came from, but Frankie didn’t know. The play went tremendously well. The parents’ laughter was loud, and—the only word Mara could think of for it—honest. It had the quality, again and again, of surprise, of helplessness. No one was appalled, even though it seemed that many in the audience had never seen such a performance. They’d been to cinema, they’d all suffered through some Shakespeare as part of their schooling, but this was different. Teresa had described it perfectly the week before, watching a rehearsal with some of her ballet mates. “They know it,” she’d said. “They know it in their bones, the names, the life of this town, but they’ve never seen it from the outside.” It was just like Mara’s view into the Sutcliffes’ kitchen. When Mara sang her songs, Polly Garter, and near the play’s end, Mr. Waldo, she was aware of some fumbling with the programs, some whispering as, she thought, the parents tried to identify her. She heard a louder whisper, “the American,” and then a shushing. She wondered if she could somehow work it into Polly Garter’s song: And I loved a man whose name was Harry. American-born and sweet as a cherry. Then the moment passed. The silence into which she sang was nearly daunting, all those faces raised toward her, not one of them that she could see dropped down in embarrassment over the words: Now men from every parish round run after me and roll me on the ground. There was that exaggeration about silence—one of her mother’s pet phrases, but Mara loved it, and it was true: you could have heard a pin drop. Or—she thought, as she ‹nished Mr. Waldo’s song, Come and sweep my chimbley, bring along your chimbly brush—a glass breaking. She heard it, unmistakably, the shattering of glass and a shrill scream. She saw Mr. Sutcliffe leave his seat on the aisle and walk out of the auditorium. Unsteadily, Julia Pilkington began her next line, glancing at Miss Ellis, who nodded and mouthed the words, go on. So they got through it, through ›ashlights raging past the auditorium windows, the voices calling, the crying of a child who Mara knew was Olwen, to the last of Julia’s speech, The suddenly wind-shaken wood springs awake for the second time this one Spring day. At the dying away of the parents’ confused applause, the lights and shrill keen of an ambulance raced

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past. Mara was already out the stage door, back in Polly Garter’s lavender dress for the curtain call, running down the gravel drive and through the hedge to the tuck shop. There was blood everywhere, around and below a hole in the window glass, roughly the size of a small body. Olwen lay on the ground, her head nearly touching the building, her face streaming with blood, her shirt soaked with it. She was very still and her eyes were closed and bloodied. Fifteen feet away, Kokila and Gina sat together, as if they were keeping watch, their knees pulled up to their chest. Beside them lay the money box from the tuck shop, fallen open, glittering full of silver coins. Sutcliffe stood to one side, Frankie on the other, looking as though she might like to deliver a strong kick. Mara moved closer to Olwen, slowly, until one of the medical attendants turned to look at her and told her to stay back. A moment later, he turned again, as if he could not believe what he had seen, this vision of a girl appearing out of nowhere, her dress nearly the same color as the midsummer night sky, the sky as it had been half an hour before, before he arrived at this scene, this horror of girls. Olwen opened her eyes then and stared at Mara and blinked. Blood seemed to be pooling up and oozing out of the two depressions where her eyes ought to be. It’s not real, Mara thought. It can’t be real. Olwen lifted her left arm toward Mara, and the attendant asked if she were Olwen’s sister. Before Mara could answer, Miss Ellis appeared beside her and professed to be next of kin. “All right then,” the attendant replied, his voice a growl, but an assent. Miss Ellis knelt down beside him. “It looks like somebody tried to stuff her through the broken window,” he said. “More than once. Don’t touch her.” What he was doing, Mara ‹nally understood, was cutting away Olwen’s dress, her schoolgirl costume from the play. Another ambulance worker was cleaning her head and neck, examining the wounds, the deepest cuts. He took her blood pressure. It seemed to Mara a terrible thing to let Olwen continue to lie on the ground—she worried that the earth right there might act as a sponge and soak her blood downward, that the force of gravity would be less if she were somewhere else, lying on a bed, or in someone’s arms.

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“She’s going,” the attendant said. Mara heard the urgency in his voice but she did not quite understand it, not immediately. “Going where?” she asked, but no one answered her. The two attendants loaded Olwen quickly and carefully onto a stretcher. One of them asked Sutcliffe what she thought was an odd question: “Someone from the school?” “I will,” Miss Ellis said. She looked at Frankie and then they both climbed in the back beside the stretcher. The ambulance pulled away. Parents and students still drifted out of the auditorium. Mara could hear their voices, asking what had happened, quieting as the ambulance sped by, then rising again. Sutcliffe looked lost, but only momentarily, then he told Kokila and Gina to get up and come with him to his of‹ce. There was nothing in his voice, no tone at all, as if his voice had been turned inside out. “I heard you,” Mara said. All three of the others stopped in their tracks and turned to look at her. “Bitch,” Gina said. The word, the spit of it was just barely audible, a secret shared among the four of them. “I saw you,” Mara said. “I saw you by the river, hitting Olwen.” “What?” Gina said. “You’re mad. Olwen Barnes was trying to break into the tuck shop, and we caught her.” “And threw her back in?” Mara said, recalling what the attendant had told her. “She got hurt,” Kokila said. “It was her own fault.” “Girls,” Sutcliffe said. “Silence. Mara, you get out of your costume and come to my study as well. See if you can ‹nd Kokila’s mother and bring her with you. Gina? Are your parents here?” “My mother’s here. My stepfather comes tomorrow,” Gina said, her voice full of bitterness and disgust. “I’ll ring him now,” Sutcliffe said. “He’ll want to see to his daughter.” He turned toward the academic building and Gina did too. Kokila hesitated a second or two, glaring at Mara. “Don’t lie to my mother,” she said, and then followed Gina. Mara stood still for a moment and stared at the spot where Olwen had lain. The ground seemed darker there, and Mara bent to look more closely. Then she took three steps and was standing on it. Blood rose up

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between her bare toes, and she could feel it, marshy, smell the iron scent of it. “Olwen,” she said out loud and began to weep. Frankie would come back tonight with some kind of news, and Miss Ellis would stay with Olwen. Ells, Ells, whose play had been a triumph, superb, sensational, to the very end, even interrupted. Everyone in the audience knew it, that Miss Ellis had done something extraordinary. And now it would be ruined. She took the long way around to the stage door, walking quickly behind the auditorium instead of alongside it. She thought that Sutcliffe and Kokila and Gina had probably met Sallie on the way, that she would not have to deliver any message, tell any lie or truth. It was odd how Kokila had put it, frightening actually, eerie. She sat down on the step behind the stage door. Phil and Teresa would ‹nd her. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there waiting. The light didn’t change, though it seemed the stars moved, raced. She said Olwen’s name, whispered it in prayers, believed she would feel it if Olwen died. She might go blind, Mara thought, there was so much blood in her eyes, everywhere. But she could still sing, Mara was crying again, she still would have her voice. She ran her hands down both legs to her ankles, trying to feel Olwen’s blood, get it off her skin. She heard her own name, Phil’s voice and Teresa’s, but could not answer. She saw the beams from their ›ashlights, torches. They would ‹nd her, even though she didn’t want to be found, not yet, not ever. The light swerved around the corner, fell on her legs and stayed there. Teresa’s voice asked her name as a question, and Mara looked down and saw the blood caked on her feet, splotches of it halfway up her legs. “It looks like they tried to send Olwen through the window. Head‹rst, like a battering ram.” “Who?” Teresa said, but she knew. “Kokila and Gina.” “Olwen,” Teresa said. “Is she . . .” “They took her in the ambulance. I don’t know.” Mara looked down at her feet. “There was so much blood.” “Kokila,” Phil said. The name in his voice was strange, almost holy, mystical. Mara did not know what he meant by it, but it made her afraid, as if he were casting some spell, over himself, over all of them, some curse. 230

By the time Mara got to Sutcliffe’s study, almost an hour had passed. Gina and her mother sat on the couch next to Kokila and Sallie. Sutcliffe motioned Mara to an armchair across the room and told her to bring it closer. He did not offer to help. Everyone stared at her, and Mara believed, suddenly, she was the one on trial. She wished she had brought Phil with her. “Tell us what you know, Mara,” Sutcliffe began. “Maybe you did it,” Gina said, and her mother nodded vigorously. “I was in the play,” Mara said. “Mr. Sutcliffe was there. I was on stage, singing. Sallie—Mrs. Iqbal was there.” She looked at Sallie, whose face gave everything away in the lamplit study. She seemed to be counting the ›owers on her dress, her brow furrowed in a kind of hopeless concentration, as if there were too many ›owers, as if it was all beyond her. It was a different dress from the one she’d been wearing the day before, green instead of blue, but the cut of it was the same, the idea of it, the message of it the same. Sallie seemed more English than Gina’s mother, the way an imitation can transcend the original. “It’s quite clear,” Sutcliffe said, “that Mara was not involved tonight. I think one of you had better tell us exactly what happened, and what happened to Olwen Barnes.” “They threw her,” Mara said. “That’s what the medical attendant told me. They sent her head‹rst.” “She did it to herself,” Kokila said. Beside her, Sallie seemed to have trouble catching her breath. “I don’t think she could have dived through that window,” Mr. Sutcliffe said. “She swallowed pins, didn’t she?” Kokila said. “She’s always hurting herself,” Gina said, “even at home. She wants the attention.” “You beat her,” Mara shouted, but then her voice escaped, fell away to a whisper. “Over by the river. You were there, but Penny was the one who hit her. With something hard in a sock. You were afraid she was going to rat on you.” She turned to Sutcliffe. “It was horrible.” “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” Mr. Sutcliffe. Mara saw the immensity of the truth yawning before her. Frankie, Kokila, all of it ought to come down now, the whole architecture of their secrecy. 231

“I did. I told Miss Franklin and Miss Ellis.” “They can’t be trusted,” Kokila said. “They have it in for me. You know about them, don’t you, Mr. Sutcliffe?” “Know what?” Mr. Sutcliffe said, and Mara closed her eyes, wondering how she could stop what would come next. “That they love each other? Is that it, Kokila?” Mara jumped in her seat. There was a long pause as something settled in the room. Or rose, she thought. It took a great effort to keep still. Kokila said nothing. “We have a great many accusations here,” Mr. Sutcliffe continued. “I would like to be told the true story.” “If I may speak.” Sallie did not raise her eyes. “It appears that a child was hurt somehow, involving window glass. I think that’s all we know.” The room was silent for some time. There was the feeling of held breath. “Quite true, Mrs. Iqbal.” Sutcliffe shook his head and stood up. “I would like to hear about the rest of it from one or all of you. This may be too—what?—public, right here with all these parents. I should like to hear something tomorrow.” He seemed beyond anger, beyond exhaustion. Away, Mara thought, as if he were listening to another voice, outside this room, or pitched so that the rest of them could not hear it.

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“ e knew all about Frankie and Ells,” Mara told Phil and Teresa the next morning after breakfast. “It was amazing. But then . . . just sad. He was reviewing his life. You could see him thinking, twenty years, and it’s all come to this, a little girl bleeding nearly to death.” “Is she all right?” Phil asked. “Olwen? Have you heard anything?” “I think if it was really bad, we would have heard,” Teresa said. “But Frankie and Ells weren’t back all night.” “You didn’t see Sutcliffe this morning, I guess,” Mara said to Phil. “I didn’t see either one of them. I got out of there about six-thirty. Left them a note. I thought they’d be pretty busy.” “So where have you been for three hours?” “I went to Weston Rhyn. I wanted to take that walk again. The guy who runs the little shop was in America after the war.” 232

“We know him,” Teresa said. “I think all I said was thank you, and he went nuts. He’s crazy to hear the accent again.” He looked at Teresa. “Kind of like you.” They were walking slowly toward the amphitheater, where in twenty minutes, the valedictory ceremony would begin. The sixth-form girls were gathering on the front steps of the academic hall, all in white, with crowns of daisies in their hair. They looked excited and wistful and very bridal—maybe this was where it came from, the tradition of secluding the head girl. She was the head bride. She was supposed to lead them all into marriage, into adulthood, the world, the business of getting and spending, something like that. The parents had mostly already claimed their seats in the second and third rows, quietly, subdued, none of them speaking much to the others. There was a kind of fury in the air, either the knowledge of what had happened last night, or else some imperfect truth, some piece of gossip involving the head girl, a half-Italian girl and an American. Mara saw that Sallie was sitting separated by three sets of parents and assorted siblings, away from Gina’s mother. They did not even seem to be in the same universe. Afsaneh’s guardian, a small nervous woman, was speaking to Sallie, but did not seem to be getting much in the way of reply. While Mara took all this in and wondered where she should sit, a tall dark-haired man in a beautiful blue silk suit strode past them. He stopped brie›y at the entrance of the amphitheater, then moved toward Sallie. She stood, embraced him, and they sat down side by side. “Look,” Mara grasped Teresa’s elbow. “There he is.” “I don’t believe it,” Teresa said. “He actually showed up.” “What a suit,” Phil said. From where they stood, Kokila’s father glittered like a jewel set in an expanse of sand. The other parents craned their necks and then thrust their whole bodies forward to get a look at him or catch his eye. He nodded brie›y to some of them, then settled into conversation with Sallie. After a minute or two, Sallie crossed her arms over her chest, closed her eyes and shook her head no. After that, they did not speak to each other. “This makes me think,” Teresa began slowly, nodding in the direction of Mr. Iqbal, “that Kokila’s going to give her speech. I don’t think 233

he’d show up if she wasn’t. If she was going to be shamed. He’s been shamed enough.” “Well,” Mara said. “I never thought of it that way.” “I think something must have happened to clear it all up,” Teresa said. “At least Olwen must be OK.” As she spoke, music blared from the loudspeakers on each side of the amphitheater, a trumpet voluntary. The ‹fth-form string quartet took their places on the stage, smiled at the parents and waited for their cue. Mara, Phil and Teresa hurried in, and Teresa tried to lead them to the left, but Mara shook her head, and they took seats almost directly behind Kokila’s parents. Mara wondered what she ought to do: say hello to Sallie and introduce herself to Kokila’s father, or just say nothing. She wondered that her head did not ›y apart, and in the end, she reached down and touched Sallie’s shoulder, gently, so that it would be possible to pretend not to notice, not to feel. The shoulder moved, almost imperceptibly, from under Mara’s ‹ngertips, a strange, slow collapse, like a gesture in modern dance, the invention of the concave. Mara’s eyes ‹lled with tears. What else did you expect? A voice echoed in her head, a horribly human familiar rasp, the voice of her guitar teacher. Little fool. Kokila was the daughter, after all, and the daughter was in trouble. It was the occasion Sallie could always rise to, would rise to: a girl in dif‹culties, the word she had used. Now Mara was not that girl. She was the girl with the beautiful voice, who had sung last night to a packed auditorium, a spellbound crowd. Mara had told the story that implicated Kokila. Mara was going home to America, to college, freedom, a life of pleasure and hope. Mara had had her experience and come out of it brilliantly. The faculty entered the amphitheater in single ‹le, from the left, while the sixth-form girls entered from the right. The two lines met in the middle of the stage, and passed each other slowly, each girl greeting each faculty member. From the seats, it was a breathtaking spectacle: the dark academic robes of the faculty, shot with the colored hoods or epaulets or headwear that signi‹ed their degrees, mingling with the white, the daisy crowns. There was a touch of something sinister about it, too, Mara thought, the darkness of sleeves like huge wings enveloping the white as the faculty embraced the girls they knew well or espe-

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cially liked. It seemed the truest benediction, innocence meeting danger, how frightening beauty might be. Gina, for instance. Mara saw her enter, radiant, as striking among her classmates as Kokila’s father was among the parents. And Mara felt it again, how much she missed Kokila, and she ran her eyes along the ‹le of white and yellow crowns, to the middle of the line. There she was, not in a sari, but dressed exactly like the others. Mara was astonished to discover that she had never seen Kokila’s bare legs—she always wore trousers—but now they paraded past, made shapely by the high heels she wore, the café au lait color of them darker against the white of her dress. Kokila was shaking hands with Mrs. Roe, then Mr. Dalglish, Mr. Mellors. Mara scanned farther down the line of faculty and found Frankie and Ells, next to last, adjusting their gowns, as if they’d just that moment arrived. “From the hospital,” Teresa whispered, ‹nishing her thought, pointing. Sallie turned then, put her ‹nger to her lips. Her face was stern but utterly empty. It was as if they had never met. The two lines moved slowly, left to right, right to left, as the string quartet played. The audience shuf›ed, shifted, impatient for the awards and speeches to begin. Mara kept her eyes on Kokila, the dark braid, the lovely legs, as she approached the last of the faculty. Three more, an embrace from Mr. Stott, the Latin teacher. Two more. Miss Rees, mathematics, a lingering handshake. Then they came face to face, Kokila and Frankie, and the whole procession seemed to halt. They stood with their arms at their sides, and for a long, horrible moment, it appeared as if one would strike the other. Then it was over. Frankie stepped forward and took Kokila in her arms. Miss Ellis gently patted her back. Kokila appeared to sway—as if they were dancing, as if the music had moved them to dance, and this embrace lasted so long that the lines really did stop. It was perfectly choreographed, the way the girls’ heads turned, and the heads of the faculty too, one by one, one after the other, to look at Frankie and Miss Ellis, at Kokila, to witness this moment between a girl and the women who, for a time, had stood in the place of her mother.

They talked it over incessantly, Kokila’s speech. Mara and Phil talked about it for the next few days, the

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drama of it, the horror, too, made even more unbearable because they were sitting behind Kokila’s parents, who clearly had no idea what she had planned to say. The way it began, with the single word, mediocrity, had made Teresa and Mara glance at one another and roll their eyes. “It will not be tolerated,” Kokila had said, her voice as commanding as it had ever been. It seemed to Mara that the birds stopped twittering, the wind stilled itself to nothing. Then came the rest: “I am mediocre. I have been discovered to be so by an American who used those qualities of American honesty and patience to reveal my true nature.” The full confession followed: that Kokila had planned the theft from the tuck shop while everyone was at the play, had allowed a little girl to be hurt. In front of them, Sallie covered her face with her hands. Mr. Iqbal sat up so straight and still that Mara wanted to touch him too, to see if he had been turned to stone. “It is as if I am my country,” Kokila had said. “It is as if I am Pakistan, attracted by the riches of the West, the friendship of the English. Or rather, it is as if I am Zul‹kar Ali Bhutto, guilty as charged. You are Muhammed Zia, and you have imposed martial law.” They talked about it after they saw Teresa off at Gobowen Station, amid a rush of tears and promises to meet in New York. They talked up and down the corridors of Chirk Hospital, when they went to see Olwen, who had lost 75 percent of the blood in her body, but would live, though she would never again have full use of her eyes. She did not remember a single moment of that evening after she’d sung her parts in Under Milkwood and wandered outside because she was bored. She climbed out of the high white bed and Mara held her, and Olwen begged her not to go back to America. Her upper body was striated with cuts, and as she burrowed into Mara’s lap and sobbed, then sang her little song from the play, and said her heart would break, she began to bleed through the bandages. Mara put Olwen back in the bed and waited while a nurse administered a sedative. Mara’s blouse was streaked with blood. Her hands too, where she had lifted Olwen and hugged her one last time, there was blood along her ‹ngers and across her palm, tracing the lines of her bones. On the train down to London, through Euston Station, up the stairs to their hotel room, Phil and Mara talked about what would happen to Kokila. It was discovered, she’d confessed in her speech, that she had al236

ready stolen money from the school. She had spent it but she would pay it back. She would have to be punished, she’d said in the end, and she believed God would take care of that. At St. Paul’s Cathedral, they stopped talking about it. They took the tour and then decided to climb to the top, all the way, up to the highest part of the dome, to the outside stone gallery with its 360-degree view of London. The climb took them up 259 steps to the Whispering Gallery, where hushed voices supposedly echoed from one side of the dome to the other. Phil wanted to try it, and so he hurried to a spot in the gallery directly across from where Mara stood, and she heard it, his voice saying her name. But when he returned he told her he hadn’t said anything; he couldn’t think of anything to say that he’d want overheard. “So what did I hear then?” she asked him, and he looked at her and did not answer. They moved on, through two small doorways and narrow passages, which made Mara brie›y uncomfortable, but she imagined that most of the climb would be like going up inside the Washington Monument, an enclosed spiral of stairs, seemingly endless, a continuous bustle of tourists up and down, the chatter of their many languages. For a while this was so. They climbed a hundred stone steps, worn smooth and shiny by walking shoes, so much older than anything in Washington, any view, any attraction. But then, quite unexpectedly, the stairway opened up inside the dome of the cathedral and became two stairways, one going up and one going down. There were no walls or handrails, just the enormity of Christopher Wren’s imagination and ›imsy metals stairs, like catwalks, set at such an angle that Mara felt she was inching up on her belly. She wanted to stop and go back down, but there were signs everywhere telling her that to go back was forbidden, that this stairway went up and up only. And she knew, anyway, that it would be even more terrifying to look down, to see where and how she might land if she fell. Phil was not afraid, and he encouraged her quietly, from a little ways above, stopping when she did, when she said she needed to. And somehow, somehow, she made it to the top, and out onto the stone gallery, and there was London, just as, so an American mother was telling her child, the chimney sweeps see it. Mara tried to look. She saw the Thames, and Big Ben, and the Tower of London, ticking them off in her head. But then, after a minute or two, she had to stand back, away 237

from the railing, press her body against the cold stone and glass of the dome. Her chest ached, and she heard again Sallie’s last words to her, spoken after Kokila was in the car. This is a like a dull knife in my heart, Mara. One day, you will feel it too. She had the peculiar sensation that she might jump, that she might throw herself down from the top of St. Paul’s—not out of any despair or fear or regret, but because it was going to happen anyway. She tried to explain this to herself for days afterwards, and on and off for years, even now, how it had seemed inevitable that she would plunge to the earth. And she wanted it not to be something that had happened to her. No. She wanted to be the architect of her fall. She could almost hear it, the sound she would make as she ›ew earthward, the raucous song, the lonely nightingale, after all the other birds have left her.

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÷ SEVEN

There was another nightingale story, Mara knew. She had read it to Rachel fourteen years ago, and then sung it in three versions of the opera, the Stravinsky called Le rossignol, the Charles Strouse and the Susan Bingham versions called by the English name, The Nightingale, from Hans Christian Andersen. Now, Mara couldn’t get it out of her head, as if a part of the story she’d been missing all these years was about to come into focus, make itself understood, the lonely Emperor, the exquisite singing bird, the mechanical imitation, how all these ‹t together, especially the most incongruous part, the kitchen maid, the little girl who drifted out of the story somewhere in the middle. For a long time after she came back home, Rachel slept with Mara, on John’s side of the bed, and Mara held her until she drifted off to sleep, until one of them did, her little girl grown to these monstrous proportions, but in her mother’s arms again, in spite of it. I’m seeing you, Mara whispered to her sleeping child, I promise I am, even in the dark. The nightingale’s singing was so lovely that travelers from other countries had written about it, but even so, the Emperor had never heard the song. He was reading a travelogue from Japan and came across the reference. He was appalled to have been found ignorant of one of his own country’s assets—its greatest charm, the travelogue proclaimed. What’s this? he demanded, and the bird was brought to him by the clever kitchen maid. And then the mechanical bird appeared. Who had made it, and then sent it? The Japanese, again, maybe. It seemed like the kind of gift that could only be a trick, an animal full of the unexpected, unleashed when the time was right, like the Trojan horse. How did they work on the inside, all those gears and levers? A music box, a wheel turning, agitating another wheel into sound. 239

Soon enough, the imitation bird wore out. The Emperor’s court played it a hundred times a day to learn its song, which was complicated and strange, not easily understood or reproduced. In Le rossignol, the Stravinsky version of 1908, the bird’s song is harsh, the notes clipped off at the top. To perform it, the soprano or mezzo soprano had to sing—it is almost too simple to say it this way—badly, but it was the part that required the most talent and imagination, to sing against everything the voice had been taught. No vibrato, no connecting between tones, no dynamics, none of the standard devices used to express emotion, nothing beyond the pitches. One’s breathing had to seem wrong, shallow, only from the chest, one’s phrasing slightly awkward, as if lost in a language not known or understood, as if there was only sound, no reason behind the notes, no art. Not too much of the mask, the vocal director had said. Mara ‹nally resolved the part in her head by thinking about it as an absence of mystery, a throwing off of the veil. It was arti‹ce, this bird, so all of its seams would show, all of the tricks Mara had learned for steadying her voice, elongating it, extending the breath, opening tones and closing them, vibrato, phrasing, all of it had to be on display and yet also work ›awlessly. Her director said, the magician turns his back for a moment and the audience can peer into his bag of tricks. And so we come away from his show preferring miracles. In that production, Rachel had been an extra playing several small parts, a silent piece of scenery, a mushroom in the forest, a little girl at the Emperor’s court, a playmate of the kitchen maid who leads the Emperor’s Chief Imperial Chamberlain to the nightingale. It had been wonderful and strange to be on stage with Rachel—it was the only time, ever—and a wish evolved in Mara’s heart that she could have sung the part of the real nightingale instead of the mechanical bird, and so be more heroic in front of her daughter. It was silly, she knew it. But still. Rachel was ‹ve, and she later claimed Le rossignol as one of her earliest memories: she described it as coming awake for the ‹rst time in her life, on that stage, facing the darkened, packed auditorium and listening to her mother sing a duet. With a live bird, was how she put it. “Mom,” she said now, as she always did when this memory was invoked, “I was convinced you weren’t real.” It was now mid-April, the ‹rst thoroughly warm day of the year, the sun overhead bright and strange, the air surprising and yet weightless on 240

their skin, like new summer clothes. They were motoring away from the dock in John’s sailboat. Shiloh, it was called, a twenty-‹ve-foot Catalina. Gurtej manned the tiller, adjusting direction constantly, so that the craft moved with a kind of shimmy. He had told them he knew everything about sailing a boat, but now Mara wasn’t sure. “You were a mushroom?” he said to Rachel. “A fungus?” Rachel smiled at him, Mara saw, in a way that was both dismissive and inviting. It made her feel oddly drunk, punchy, as the boys at school said, out of control of Rachel’s life. But she marveled too, wondering how Rachel knew to get her face to look exactly that way. She guessed most eighteen-year-old girls knew how to do it. Gurtej glanced past her, toward the bow and beyond, checking for other boats in his path, but then his eyes drifted back to Rachel, clouded over, with worry perhaps. Two lines appeared between his eyebrows, then his face smoothed itself out again, became impenetrable. He was afraid of something, losing Rachel or knowing too much about her, because that would reveal the truth of her feelings for him. He was in love with Rachel. His heart was great with tenderness, Mara had seen this in the last two months, and he had impeccable manners, endless patience. Kokila, or someone, had done a ‹ne job with him. “Mrs. Raynor,” he said. “Can you tell me when we’re getting close to the spot?” “It’s about ‹fteen minutes out, I think,” Mara said. “Maybe twenty. I can tell by the trees.” “If you can, give me ‹ve minutes’ notice,” Gurtej said, “so I can ‹gure out what to do. I’ve never idled before. I’m curious about how the current will move us.” “You don’t idle when you put up the sails,” Rachel said. “No,” Mara added, more gently. “You just keep motoring, but very slowly, into the wind.” “Can we sail back, Mom?” “If Gurtej thinks he can manage,” Mara said. “Among the three of us we should be able to handle it. There were usually only three of us. Remember?” A kind of reverie seemed to settle upon them then, and Mara saw Gurtej reach over and take Rachel’s hand. She looked away from them, toward the two lines of trees converging on either side. This was the 241

oddest vista in the Chesapeake Bay, one she and John had discovered years before, fourteen years almost to the day, when they had come looking for a place to scatter baby Sallie’s ashes. Rachel was with them, four years old, but fast asleep, wedged all the way forward in the Vberth. John stood, holding the tiller, and Mara stood next to him, hugging the box of ashes. They had had a long, exhausted argument about Sallie’s tiny body, what to do with it, how to let it rest. There was no alternative Mara could stand. Cremation and burial seemed equally horri‹c, ‹re or the cold earth. And after that, what to do with the ashes? John said he couldn’t bear the sight of an urn, but ‹nally they came to a compromise, that Mara would keep some ashes for herself, hidden, and she would never tell him where they were. She saw the place now, and gave Gurtej his warning, saw the way the trees on either shore met in the distance, or seemed to, to form a narrow corner, more like the top of an isosceles triangle. It was just a trick of horizon and perspective, but it didn’t matter. “Where coasts come together,” John had said as a kind of blessing, “the one Sallie’s on and the one we’re on.” And Mara knew the fact of the illusion was part of being precisely there: these coasts could never meet, not in this world. She stood, raised her arm and pointed, explained to Gurtej what he should be looking for, and he stood too. Rachel moved in beside him and nodded, remembering, Mara believed, their trip out here last November, how cold it was, a second numbness, how the man who piloted the motorboat knew his place in the scheme of things and never said a single word. “Dad!” Rachel yelled, her voice echoing across the water, breaking into a million pieces, over and over. “Sallie!” Tears ran down Gurtej’s cheeks, and he wiped them away with his free hand. Mara glanced at him through her own tears and smiled. Now that they were here, on the very spot, she closed her eyes and coaxed the image up through her feet, from under the water, through the hull of the boat, through the bottoms of her shoes, her socks, running like blood up through her body to her brain. John holding Sallie, both of them asleep, as they had looked in the hospital, as they had never been because Sallie was already past sleep and on her journey back to wherever it was she’d come from. She was in his arms though, in Mara’s vision, held tightly, wrapped in a thick, pink blanket, which undulated at 242

the edges, its movement like a lullaby. Their hair drifted around their faces, ›oating this way and that. There was an ease in their two bodies, in the small face and the larger one, but John’s arms never relaxed and drifted open. Sallie never tried to squirm or ›oat out of his embrace. Mara kept this picture ‹xed in her mind until she knew it was true, until she felt it like a force inside her own body, growing to displace sadness. It was so good that they were together, that neither one of them was alone in the dark. She opened her eyes, stepped across the companionway and took Rachel in her arms. Rachel let go of Gurtej’s hand and curved her body around her mother’s, pressing her cheek against Mara’s forehead. The wind tousled their hair, Rachel’s into Mara’s, and Mara’s into Rachel’s. There was hair blowing into Mara’s mouth, but she wasn’t sure whose it was. Sometimes I envy them down there, she thought. Up here, we’re battered and buffeted. Up here, we have to step away from each other and go on. But Rachel did not seem to want to let go. “Mom,” she whispered. “Sometimes I’m so afraid.” “I know,” Mara said. She thought of Rachel as a small child waking up from a nightmare. You were never supposed to say “afraid of what?” or “tell me about it.” Then the child would forget and the monsters would fade away, back into the curtains, the toy chest, the shadows, as all dreams do. But another mother once told her a new trick: say to the child, “If you tell me about it, you’ll never have that dream again.” “I wanted to come here,” Rachel said. “I know it was my idea. But I didn’t think it would make me so sad.” She sobbed and her whole body shook. Mara held her more tightly. “Sometimes that’s just the way it has to go,” she whispered into Rachel’s skin. “Not sometimes. I think all the time. You have to get down to the very bottom of being sad, down to where you feel hopeless.” She thought for a moment. “And even crazy. And then you can start to come up again.” She could feel Rachel nodding, like a tremor moving from head to toe, as if her whole body wanted to believe what Mara said was true. “It’s like we’re all together now,” Rachel said. “It is. And we can come back any time you want.” Mara expected that Gurtej would say something then, but he was 243

silent and still. There was no sense that he was even in the boat with them. It had been the same with John sometimes, and also the opposite. Maybe that was part of what Rachel saw in Gurtej. Mara’s father, too, was a subtle force, a kind of ghost even when he was alive, like the wind. Still Rachel held tight to her, and Mara concentrated on a kind of telepathy. She pressed the side of her head against Rachel’s, so that maybe Rachel could see them too, John and Sallie in their deep embrace. Mara stared over Rachel’s shoulder into the dark cleft of trees. The boat was turning slightly, moving west and then south, so that in a few minutes, it would drift completely around and aim itself back toward shore, and the marina they’d set out from. When this happened, it would be time to go. Rachel would be ready. She imagined the current was John and Sallie, somewhere underneath them, the ripple of their two souls. Slowly, the shore moved, the trees fell back, the narrow corner opened up. As if she had given him an instruction, Gurtej cut the engine back. “We’re facing into the wind now,” he said. “So if one of you can take the tiller, I’ll hoist the sails.” Rachel gave Mara one last hug and stepped away. “I’ll do it,” she said, and placed her hand over Gurtej’s. He kissed her on the cheek, then scrambled forward, uncleated the starboard lines and began to raise the mainsail. Mara sat down, listening to the sail luff in the wind. On really breezy days, like this one, the sound of it was deafening, bone-shaking, the crying wind of her old dream. “All right,” Gurtej said. “We’ll have to tack in a few minutes, but right now, let’s ‹nd our course.” He took the tiller from Rachel and turned off the motor. The quiet was astonishing and complete. Every time, in all of her twenty years of sailing with John, Mara thought this and commented on it. John always agreed, as if he too were struck by it for the ‹rst time. There was something extraordinary, she thought, in that moment of agreement, the way they looked at each other, as if their understanding of peace and silence was exactly the same, as if it made them, more than their history or their children or anything else they shared, profoundly married. 244

The boat dashed off then, away from shore, toward the middle of the bay, heeling about thirty degrees. Gurtej had a steady hand, and Mara saw the concentration on his face, but no worry or uncertainty, even as they approached other boats. He stood up now and then to peer over the companionway and adjust his course. She thought suddenly how much John would have enjoyed sailing with him. “My, she was yar,” Guretej said, and Rachel stared at him, then laughed. They both looked expectantly at Mara. “Yar?” she said. “Mrs. Raynor,” Gurtej said. “I’m embarrassed that I know this. That’s what Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn say to each other in The Philadelphia Story. About a sailboat they had when they were married.” “It’s how you know they’ll get back together,” Rachel said. “Yar?” Mara repeated. “I never heard Dad say that.” “It means quick to the helm,” Gurtej said. “Easily maneuvered. This boat is yar.” He glanced at Rachel. “I love this boat.” “So should I just give you the keys,” Mara said to Gurtej and Rachel, “and let you sail off without me?” “That would be really generous,” Gurtej said. “And Dad would rather have it used than not,” Rachel added. “He always said sailing is the perfect discipline.” She turned to Gurtej. “Shiloh means place of peace. Isn’t that great for a sailboat?” “I thought it was a battle‹eld,” Gurtej said. “It is,” Rachel told him. “It was. Which is it for a battle‹eld? Is or was?” “Both,” Gurtej said. “What’s that called? Like cleave and cleave?” Gurtej began to unwind the line behind him. He pulled the tiller slowly to port and the boat turned, the sail shifted and ‹lled. He let out the line he was holding, cleated the other. Mara and Rachel moved across the deck to sit on the higher side. Is or was? Mara thought. That’s why we want to come back to the place where the ashes went into the water. The exact spot is the conjunction of is and was, the place of peace. Somebody should sing something, a hymn, or “May the Circle Be Unbroken.” Aretha Franklin’s rendition of “Respect” came into Mara’s head and she laughed, a little puff of breath through her nose. Rachel turned to look at her. Is or was? The real bird or the invented 245

one? The director had said to the male lead, a tenor, remember that the Emperor is alone. That’s the most important thing about this opera. But he was wrong. It was that the little kitchen girl, when she heard the real nightingale sing, said it made her feel as if her mother were well again and held her in her arms.

What Mara saw in the ‹rst ›oor rooms was not at all what she had expected. No candles, no lamps draped with muslin, no scent of spice, no hint, even, of the color red. The downstairs rooms had a faded, aristocratic look to them, vaguely southern, she thought, the lost hope of gentility. There was a dark green velvet sofa—really the illusion of dark green, now muted to sage, as if by exposure to the sun. A baby grand piano, a striped love seat, a pair of upholstered wing-back chairs, coffee tables and side tables, lamps with necks like roman columns and slightly yellowed shades. The front window curtains were opened, but the light came in from the northwest— it was four-thirty in the afternoon—weak and uncertain. It was hard to see how the couch could have faded from exposure. But maybe the furniture had been rearranged. A woman, a maid or a cook, had answered the door and let Mara in, smiling enigmatically at the sound of her name. She had said, Please, you stay, with an accent that was Russian or German, it was hard to tell from just the three syllables, and gestured toward this room. Then she had disappeared, to the back of the house, the kitchen. There were little mirrors on the back of her shoes, and as she walked down the short hallway, these caught the light, and so it appeared that her feet gave off sparks as she moved, that in fact her going away was electric, volatile. Mara waited, listened. There were footsteps above her, and soft voices from somewhere above that, and music, the plaintive voice, the splintered pitch. After a moment’s wait, she stepped into the room, toward the piano and the photographs arranged on the closed lid. It would be impossible to get a look at them without edging around behind the love seat and standing with her back to the window, in the curve of the piano’s body. The photographs faced almost completely toward the window, as if the people in them were all looking out, craning their stilled necks toward the slice of sky that hung over Edgevale Terrace. Mara 246

could see that the cloth they rested on had faded accordingly: rectangles of darker green stretched behind each picture, like shadows cast. There was no trace of dust on the frames or the glass, but it appeared they had not been moved for a long time. Mara could not help herself. She stepped carefully around the furniture and maneuvered between the window and the piano. She thought it would lessen the awkwardness somehow if she could see Kokila ‹rst, this way, with her husband, maybe, with Gurtej. It would make the years collapse a little. But it had not occurred to her that she might recognize some of the pictures, that she might have seen them more than twenty-‹ve years before, arranged on another—or was it the same?—piano. And so she gave a little cry, a gasp, when she bent to look and saw the young Kokila, and Sallie as a bride, and Kokila’s father, there among the photographs she had expected. Her head went suddenly cold at the top as she wondered why she had come, and— strange idea—if she would live through it. She felt, too, that she could look at these same pictures forever, and so it was an effort to look past them, that gory hyperbole: she had to tear her eyes away. But all of the pictures had that same effect, even the one she had never seen: Kokila and her husband, in what must be a wedding photograph, formal and—the word Mara thought was stoic. The husband, Kameer Bandasari, stood like a cardboard cutout, gazing off somewhere over the photographer’s head. At his future, Mara thought, at the place where he is exactly, precisely this minute, a diplomat, a man of great authority. But Kokila was looking hard into the camera, directly at the photographer, it seemed, through the eye of the camera into that man’s—Mara was sure a man took this picture—one open eye, into his brain, into his heart. She was not much older than when Mara had last seen her, bending into her mother’s car in the driveway at Vernal Hall. She wore the same look, full of anguish and anger and relief, the same eyes, dark-shadowed underneath, as if there was always another exam to be studied for, another watch to be kept, or vigil by candlelight. What was strange, Mara realized ‹nally, was Kokila wearing the wedding garment, the costume of it, as if they’d dressed up for the camera, had a laugh about it, and then put their real clothes back on. She herself had done that once, in Denver, with a boy named Jim Ryan, a friend from college. He had put on the costume of a nineteenth-century Western 247

gentleman, hat and coat and string tie, and she a dance hall girl, more Toulouse-Lautrec than Gunsmoke. It was a fantastic picture, in every sense, the sepia tone, the looks on their faces, serious and uncomfortable, and in awe of the new science of photography. Jim Ryan had said that couples like to take those sorts of pictures when they are trying to ‹gure out what they mean to each other, and so they think maybe a different context will be illuminating. He had dated one of Mara’s roommates, and Mara was in love with someone else. That night, his car broke down, and they had to be rescued by his father. Back at school, they lost touch. He had been right about the picture though, about wedding pictures too. Those two people standing there, doing absolutely nothing. She had one the same, of herself and John. There was no other kind of picture like that in the world, nothing quite so consciously posed. For a moment, the photographer became a marriage counselor. See, he was saying. Here, he told them as he arranged the gown, the ›owers, the man’s hands. This is how it goes, this is what you do. Good. Right. Now just hold still. There was the noise of footsteps on the stairs, and Mara glanced up. Flat, black slippers, a glimpse of dark tights, a black skirt, cream-colored sweater, Kokila from the bottom up, looking straight ahead toward the front door, as if she had no expectation of meeting anybody in her front hallway. The black braid, now shot with gray, hanging over her shoulder, the hand on the banister perfectly manicured, as it had never been in school. Mara thought she ought to move from the piano, or call out, but she was too fascinated by this view, too aware of her advantage in this moment. On the bottom step, Kokila paused and peered into the room, but she did not see Mara, did not imagine she’d be hidden away, half out of sight. Her brow wrinkled, and she huffed out a breath, exasperated but half relieved, it seemed, glad for a reprieve. “Kokila,” Mara called, easing her way back, “I was admiring your family.” “Oh Mara,” Kokila said. “Waiting for me in the shadows.” There was a beat then, a pause, a stopping of clocks. They advanced toward each other and met just beside the sofa. Mara held out her hand and Kokila took it, then drew her into an embrace and kissed her, the European way, three times, left cheek, then right, then 248

left again. Mara felt for a moment she might cry or keep Kokila in the tighter, longer American embrace, but Kokila stepped away. “Would you like tea?” she said. “Or coffee? Come upstairs. It’s so drafty down here in this room, even in the spring. I only use it for spying out of the window. Now and then I see a senator or two. The Democratic senator from New York is just nearby. Usually only the wives and their dogs. But that’s what I am, after all. Or would you like sherry?” Kokila led Mara back upstairs and into a sitting room directly over the one Mara had been standing in. “Gurtej calls this the ice room,” she explained. And so it was, Mara saw, done in blue and silver and crystal. A ‹re blazed in the ‹replace, but the effect was odd, not warming. The only other color was a yellow cushion on the window seat. “That looks better for spying,” Mara said. “Too high, actually,” Kokila told her. “All you see is who needs to color her hair again and who’s going bald.” She guided Mara to the couch. “Please sit. What would you like?” “Tea would be lovely.” The woman who had answered the door appeared at the top of the stairs. “Bela,” Kokila said. “Tea, please. Bring the box, yes?” Bela nodded and made a little bow, then retreated down and out of sight. She made no noise, despite the ›ash of her shoes. Kokila dropped into an armchair opposite the sofa. She looked at Mara, her head tilted a little to one side. It was a look of tenderness, Mara thought, and concern. And reticence too. “We are more evenly matched now,” she said, and Mara nodded, without knowing exactly what Kokila meant. “You have heard this a thousand times, but I must say it too. I am so sorry about your husband. He was a great leader for the school.” “Thank you,” Mara said. “He was. I, on the other hand . . .” She let her voice trail off. There was no sense in completing the thought. Certainly, Kokila had already formed an opinion, and she would express it. “No. You’ve done the right thing. It was an experiment, and you’ve handled it all beautifully, from the beginning. The kirpan, the strike, everything. Very well done.” She wanted to change the subject. “Gurtej is a pleasure.” “Mostly,” Kokila said. “It’s extraordinary that they became so close. Our children.” 249

“Do you think so? Why?” “The coincidence of it,” Mara said. She forced herself to hold Kokila’s gaze. “Don’t you think?” “I suppose. If you look at it a certain way. But if you see it with different eyes, it is all very logical, sensible. Do you know what I mean?” Kokila was looking at her, a smile playing on her lips, a challenge. For a fraction of a second, Mara felt she did not know where she was. And then she came back to herself and thought she understood. She believed Kokila must mean reincarnation, a version of it, rather premature in their case. They had come back as their children without having to die ‹rst. She wanted to ask Kokila to explain it to her, but she did not want to talk about the past, not yet. “They have a great deal in common,” Mara said. For the ‹rst time, Kokila seemed irritated. “They have nothing in common. That is such an American notion. Why do you think two people must have something in common in order to get along? It’s very lazy thinking. People work to get along. You cannot fall back on an idea so—“ “Mediocre.” Kokila smiled. “Exactly.” “We should talk about our children, I suppose.” “Should we? I don’t think they are in any great danger. They are very fond of each other, but I’m not sure what that means.” “Gurtej is a responsible boy. Of course the responsibility is not entirely his.” “He says Rachel is always underwater.” “He’s right. It’s a family joke about her, but it’s also true. That’s been her way—since her father died.” Mara laughed, heard it as an odd bleat. “Sometimes I’d like to join her, actually.” “It would be very quiet, I should think. Very peaceful.” “Yes,” Mara said. “Thank you for taking her in.” A silence fell between them then, and it stretched on until Bela brought the tea, a huge tray holding two teapots, two cups, two saucers, a plate of cookies, and beside that, a large wooden box. There were also two silver tea strainers, two spoons, pots of honey and sugar, and a small pitcher of milk.

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Kokila leaned forward in her chair. “I’m sorry to say I don’t remember what tea you liked or how you took it.” “I don’t remember either,” Mara said. “Open the box, then. Perhaps it will come back to you.” Mara lifted the lid of the box, which opened like a child’s school desk. Inside were twenty jars of loose tea, labeled on the top with colored tags, in Kokila’s neat hand, Mara still recognized it: Earl Grey, Irish breakfast, lapsang souchong, oolong, English breakfast, sencha, gyokura, jasmine, pouching, orange pekoe, gunpowder, hyson, imperial, Darjeeling, assam, a few more. The jars themselves were made of tinted glass, and lifting them, Mara saw the colors she’d expected, remembered from Kokila’s rooms at Vernal Hall, rose and violet, bluegreen, amber, garnet. “These are beautiful, Kokila.” “I have them made—blown, actually—by a craftsman in Williamsburg. It’s my passion, I’m afraid. A silly affectation, but, oh well.” “What if I had asked for coffee or sherry?” “One pot, one bottle.” “I would have missed this experience.” Kokila glanced up. “You would have missed it. Choose now, and then I’ll prepare it for you.” Mara ran her index ‹nger along the tops of the jars. She lifted out the oolong and handed it across the low table. “I remember this one is sort of smoky-tasting.” Kokila nodded. She opened the jar and spooned some of the tea into a strainer and balanced it over the mouth of a teacup. She lifted the blue pot and poured hot water over the tea, very slowly, so that the strainer, which was rather small, would not over›ow. The service took concentration, two or three minutes, and Mara watched Kokila’s hands as they moved through the work gracefully, the long ‹ngers, the nails polished a translucent mother-of-pearl. They were not the hands she remembered, not at all. At school, Kokila kept her nails short, bitten that way usually, and her hands had seemed square, masculine. How she kept her ‹ngernails was one of the earliest decisions a girl made about beauty and the cultivation of it, and no one Mara had ever known had gone against her initial determination. Except Teresa. In March of that

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year, she had stopped polishing her nails, forever, she said, what a waste of time. Mara and Kokila had agreed. “Do you ever hear from Teresa?” Mara asked now. Kokila looked up, startled. The tea strainer on her cup over›owed. Filaments of tea pooled on the table. “Teresa and I—” she began. “We met by accident in New York. It was very nice. But now . . .” Kokila sighed heavily. “I suppose I’ve lost track of her again. She gave me those slippers, with the mirrors. I saw that you noticed them. Bela loved them too, and I like to see them. If you wear them, you can’t see them.” “I’ve been thinking about her lately,” Mara said. “Wondering if she had children.” “She doesn’t have children. No husband, no anyone, except her sisters. Lots of nieces and nephews, she said. She is an executive assistant at a law ‹rm. She has a very quiet, peaceful life. But this was ten years ago.” They drank their tea. So the past had been opened up, through the mention of Teresa, and it yawned before them, Mara felt, dangerous, a body waiting in the shadows, as Kokila had accused Mara of waiting. Kokila offered the cookies, but Mara felt she did not want any sweetness, only the harsh, strong tea on her tongue, in her throat. The house was silent, except for footsteps above them, and then, a moment later, the sound of something dropped to the ›oor, a shoe, a book. Kokila glanced up at the ceiling, then locked eyes with Mara. “The reason I invited you,” she began, then stopped, took in a deep breath. “It wasn’t exactly what I said, to talk about our children. It was because of my mother.” Here she looked up and pointed with her ‹nger. “My mother wanted to see you. She wanted to talk to you. When I told her about our—coincidence. She was insistent.” Kokila stopped talking. Mara had put her hand to her heart. “You look . . . are you surprised? She is here, you know. Gurtej said he told you.” “He said you had gone to London, and that she was ill. But no, not that she was here. Is she very sick?” “She’s had a turn for the better. The last week or so. But you can see for yourself. She knows you’ve come today.” “I wish I had known,” Mara said, opening her hands wide. “I wish I’d brought her something. Flowers. Something.”

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“Nonsense.” Kokila stood abruptly. “An old woman doesn’t want anything except her memory.” “Is she . . . ?” Mara pressed her index ‹nger against the side of her head. She did not like making the gesture—it felt crude. But she would have liked less to ask the question it stood for. “She’s smarter than she’s ever been. More aware. She doesn’t have much use for her physical body, so she’s become all consciousness, all intelligence. It’s a bit daunting, actually.” Mara had stayed where she was, seated, and she picked up her teacup, held it against her chest. She looked up at Kokila but did not see her. She saw herself in Cambridge, in Sallie’s house, alone in Kokila’s childhood bedroom, just this time of year, in the held breath between winter and spring. “Shall we go up?” Kokila asked. “Is there something wrong?” “No. There’s nothing wrong. There’s just so much.” “It seems that way. But the truth is there’s really not all that much. Just one or two things. All the rest of it disappeared along the way. Burned off. What is it that happens to iron? Tempered?” Tempered, Mara thought, puri‹ed by ‹re, modulated. She set her teacup on the tray and smoothed her skirt. “How do I look?” Kokila laughed. “Older. Lovely. But she won’t be paying attention to your clothes. I told her about your husband, so that’s what she’ll see.” As Kokila led the way out of the sitting room, Mara wondered what it looked like, her widowhood, how it would appear in Sallie’s eyes. They passed the second-›oor bedrooms and started up a narrow staircase that soon twisted in on itself, as if the whole townhouse were shaped like a triangle, a pyramid, and so grew narrow at the top. “We carried her up here,” Kokila said. “I don’t know how we’ll ever get her down.” “Don’t think about it,” Mara whispered. At the top of the stairs there was a tiny landing, not large enough for two people to stand next to each other, and a closed door. Kokila knocked twice. “Amma,” she called, “I’ve brought Mara.” Kokila pushed the door open, and Mara saw her at once, Sallie, in pro‹le, hunched and wizened, seated in an armchair in front of the window, a north-facing view, and so the light poured in beside her, behind her. Her gray hair was drawn back into a coiled braid, and she

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wore silver earrings with hanging orbs and crystals, like tiny chandeliers. Her hands lay knotted in her lap, on top of a crimson chenille blanket, and that was where all the light from the window went, to her rings, which ›ashed like the back of Bela’s shoes. She turned her head slowly, then smiled and held out her right hand. Mara crossed the room and knelt beside the chair. She put her lips to the ‹ngers, the rings, cold, knobby and indistinguishable, and kissed them. “Am I the pope?” Sallie said. Her voice was clear and strong, almost as it had been years before, her laughter like notes from a ›ute. “Let me look at you.” Mara raised her head and met Sallie’e eyes. They seemed milky, fractured by cataracts maybe—it was hard to tell in this light. Someone came into the sitting room just behind her, from the bedroom. “See who else is here?” Sallie said. Mara let go of Sallie’s hand and turned to see a woman about her age standing with her hands folded, smiling. The recognition seemed slowed in time, a camera lens turning, focusing, then suddenly she knew. “Priya,” she said. She rose and then was unsure of what to do, but Priya rushed into her arms. “We must all sit,” Kokila said crisply. “Enough of this emotional bustle. More tea, Mara? Amma, Priya, have you had your tea?” “We’ve had ours,” Sallie said. “I want to talk. Tea will only get in the way.” It was a small room, this turret, containing only a couch and two chairs, a table by the window, so that when all four women sat down, their knees nearly touched. “I want to know everything,” Sallie said. “Some of it I know already.” She laid her hand on Mara’s knee and tapped one ‹nger. “I’m sorry, little one.” “Thank you,” Mara said. “And I know that Gurtej and your daughter ran away together. I think that’s exquisite.” “It wasn’t at the time,” Mara said. “But tell me about this girl. I know Gurtej is a rascal.” She paused and glanced meaningfully at Kokila, then turned back to Mara. “Is she like her mother?”

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“In some ways,” Mara said. “She’s impulsive. She’s—a swimmer. Very fast. She’s a wise person. I don’t know if that’s like me.” “Do you have a photograph?” “I do,” Mara said. “Downstairs, in my bag.” “I’ll get it,” Kokila said. When Kokila had left the room, Sallie took Mara’s hand again, and squeezed it, harder than it seemed she could. Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “All those years ago. I called you Marakesh. I still have that.” She pointed to the small globe on the table near the window. St. Paul’s, birds like snow fallen down around its steps, waiting for morning, for crumbs from strangers. The young ones are hungry, their nests are so bare. Mara nodded. The stairs creaked, and Sallie let go, turned her face toward the window. “Here you are,” Kokila said, glancing at her mother. “How do you manage with so small a pocketbook?” Mara shrugged, laughed. “I’m never far from home nowadays, I guess.” The sentence hung in the air, a reference, somehow, to their ‹rst meeting at Vernal Hall. “I learned my lesson,” she said, but she wasn’t sure what the words meant, not really. She pulled her wallet out of the purse, and opened it, extracted the sleeve of photographs. Rachel at three, at seven, at ten. Mara knew the ages by the dresses Rachel wore. Rachel at fourteen, impossibly tall and lean in a racing swimsuit. Her graduation picture should be here, Mara thought, but the package was supposed to have been picked up the week John died. She had no idea where the pictures were. She wanted to explain that to Sallie and Kokila, Priya too. It seemed to reveal some fundamental truth about the way that time had been, what it had felt like. We couldn’t see ourselves, we forgot where we were, something like that. “She’s very tall,” Sallie said. “She seems tall.” “Her father,” Mara said. She reached into another compartment of the wallet, behind her driver’s license. “This is John. This was taken ‹ve or six years ago. The of‹cial school portrait.” Sallie took the picture out of Mara’s hand. “Very wise eyes,” she said. “Yes,” Mara answered. “That’s where Rachel gets it from. Wisdom. He was a very calm, reasonable person.”

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“Infuriating?” Sallie said. “Mother!” Kokila shook her head. “It’s all right. Sometimes he was.” Mara laughed, and Priya did too. Mara turned toward her. Maybe Priya had stories to tell about her own marriage. “And now you’re running his school?” Sallie said. “How has that been?” “An experiment.” Mara glanced at Kokila. “Your grandson helped organize a strike.” “I have heard,” Sallie said. “And it achieved its purpose.” “It did.” “But there was some violence,” Sallie said quietly, forcefully. “At the end. A man was pushed through a window.” Mara saw Kokila draw a sharp breath, only slightly quieter than a gasp. “A door,” Mara said. “A glass door.” “How did it happen?” “One of the trustees had been discovered in a deception, and he was angry.” “It must have seemed very familiar to you.” “Mother,” Kokila said. “This is behind us. Mara, how much longer will you serve?” “For another few weeks.” “And then?” “And then we’ll see,” Mara said, meeting Kokila’s gaze. “It depends on where Rachel decides to go to college.” “You’ll go too?” Sallie asked. “If she wants me to.” “If she doesn’t?” “I don’t know. I haven’t the foggiest idea.” Mara’s voice trembled, and at precisely that moment the light in the room seemed to change, not darken, but glow pearly, like Kokila’s ‹ngernails. Sallie glanced at the door that led out to the landing, which stood half-open, just wide enough to admit a body. Mara wondered if Sallie felt it too, the sensation, the change in atmospheric pressure, as if someone else had come into the room. “If you need a cook . . .” Priya said.

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Mara turned to her. “I have never eaten food like that since,” she said. “It was like I dreamed it.” She thought of Phil. She did not know if Sallie or Kokila would ask about him. Maybe Kokila already knew, from Gurtej, from Rachel. “Actually, my brother is a chef. Here in Washington. He has a restaurant near Capitol Hill.” “I met your brother!” Sallie said. “Yes! Parents’ Weekend. He was very nice.” She paused, pressed her ‹ngers to her temples. “It’s tremendous sometimes, this feeling of a memory shooting to the surface. Visceral. Like an explosion inside my head.” “Yes,” Mara said. “It must be good to have him nearby,” Kokila said. “What sort of restaurant?” Priya said. Her voice was high and full of laughter, exactly the same. “American. But he experiments, makes up dishes, changes their names, adds spices, takes them out. He’s a genius, sort of, a mad scientist.” “Would you move away from him?” Sallie asked. There was a note in her voice, a hint of accusation. “I’d try to convince him to come along,” Mara said. The conversation seemed to grow strange, veering away toward something ominous but invisible, unpredictable. She wondered if she should ‹nd an excuse to go: they ought not to tire Sallie; she had to be home for Rachel. “Do you still sing?” Sallie asked. “I remember you had a lovely voice.” “I direct choirs and a women’s choral group at Georgetown. We’re rehearsing right now, music from the opera production of Little Women.” “But no more singing for you?” “Not for me.” “What happened to your life?” Sallie said. “I have been asked that question a great many times lately,” Mara said. “So I suppose I haven’t answered it well enough yet.” She closed her eyes. “Let’s see. What’s the true story? I had a child. I wanted more children. Lots of them. Remember the part I sang in Under Milkwood? Polly Garter and her many children. She was so real to me. I could understand the charm of a child to hold always, and then another when

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the ‹rst one got too big to hold. And then another. I loved singing while I was pregnant, it was so easy with the baby like a pillow for my diaphragm to press against.” “But then why did you stop?” “Having babies or singing?” Mara laughed. “Something happened to my breathing after Rachel. A director ‹nally told me I had the wrong technique for Western sounds, where the larynx is low and the soft palate is high and the tongue is forward. I couldn’t get it back.” “This is hard for a non-singer to understand,” Sallie said. “I know,” Mara replied. “Talking about the voice is like talking about love or death. You have to talk around it because there is no language for the thing itself.” “Did you ever think it was the other way around?” Sallie said. “That you wanted children because you knew the limits of your talent? That you brought about your own failure?” She looked directly at her own daughter. “The oddest things are being made into opera,” Kokila said briskly. “I forget what it was I saw the other day. Crime and Punishment or something. Why do you think that is?” “To give good work another life, I think,” Mara said, willing to have the subject changed. “So it’s not forgotten. Composers often see movie versions of a work, then read the book, so a story is already staged for them, in their heads, before they even see the language. Then the libretti write themselves.” “It’s a strange notion, don’t you think?” Kokila said. “That people would sing to each other rather than speak.” “I don’t know,” Mara said. “Maybe it’s a little like the idea that it’s more natural to walk than to run. Why should that be so? There’s this tradition of mothers singing to their babies, but then after a while it goes away. Maybe opera is a return to something original and elemental?” “You’ve clearly thought about this,” Kokila said. “It’s my work.” “How wonderful to have a life’s work,” Kokila said. “And really it has been, all your life, one way or another.” “That’s true,” Mara said. “I’ve worked for my husband’s agency,” Kokila said, “but it wasn’t the same.” 258

“Gurtej’s ‹le says ‘international development.’” Mara had the sense, then, of this talk as dramatic, dramatized, as if Sallie and Priya had turned into props or extras, and there was a single spotlight turned harshly on herself and Kokila. She knew suddenly what would be said, what she would say. She was conscious of thinking somewhere beyond the conversation, of recalling stage directions, blocking, lines. “Yes,” Kokila said. “You remember that I’d hoped to read law at Cambridge, but that became an impossibility.” “Why?” Mara asked. “You know why,” Kokila answered, but without bitterness, Mara thought. But Kokila’s voice was strange, mechanical. “But all that is nothing now,” Sallie said. “Nothing. The smallest speck of dust.” “The smallest speck of dust is still something,” Kokila said. “It can still get in your eye. Cloud your vision. It can still hurt.” “I’m . . .” Mara was about to say sorry, but Sallie interrupted her, with more force than seemed possible. “Stop!” she said. Her body shook, as if the word had cost her a great deal. “What you did for Gurtej, the kirpan. That is more than enough. It is settled between you.” She stared at Kokila. “You’ve told me so yourself.” “I know I did,” Kokila said. Mara thought she was near tears. “But I want to have something back. I want to hold something in my hands.” “What do you mean, child?” Sallie asked. “I know what she means,” Mara said. “I know what she means.” Priya intoned the words, an echo, a stone speaking out of a thousand years’ silence. “This is the only way to make a thing real.” Mara looked at her. The evening had fallen imperceptibly, so that all she could see were outlines, the rises and declivities of a face, a curve of cheek, gleam of eye. She wondered again what Priya’s life had been, the intervening twenty-‹ve years. Did she have a lover, a husband, children? Where were they? Teresa. Teresa ought to be here with them, right now. Teresa was a missing piece of this puzzle, if it was a puzzle. It seemed to Mara that the puzzle was not so much what had happened between them at Vernal Hall in 1977. The puzzle was how they had all found themselves back here, together. But no. It was a riddle, which is 259

about language, a statement, and then a question. The riddle was, We’re here now, so how do we make Teresa appear? “I had another child,” Mara said. “Another daughter who died as she was born. I named her Sallie.” There was a piercing silence, so sharp it hurt her ears, but she did not know what to say next. She waited. “I know in some cultures it’s bad luck to name a child after someone living, but not in mine. I meant it as a tribute.” “So what is it you are trying to tell me?” Kokila said. There was the faintest note of ridicule in her voice, and she coughed, as if to get rid of it, then apologized. “If you mean,” her voice went on, gentler now, a whisper to a frightened child, “that you have suffered too . . .” She paused again. “We have lost lives, both of us. But if you mean to claim my mother again—” “Kokila,” Sallie said. “She never claimed me.” “Yes, she did. You loved her more. That year. The wedding dress! You wanted her more than you wanted me.” “She was easier to love that year. But it’s not right to say ‘more.’ I didn’t love her more.” “It seemed that you did,” Kokila said. “And I wanted you two to solve your problems.” “And now they have,” Priya said. “And just why did you want that so badly?” Kokila asked. There was silence, and in it, Mara heard the faintest creak on the stairs. No one else seemed to notice, though in the near dark, it was dif‹cult to tell. Gurtej, she thought. There was some presence, some warmth she could feel. Gurtej is listening to this. He’s hearing it all. “It seemed fundamental,” Sallie said. “It seems fundamental.” She stopped. There was the great weight of thought in the room. “Political. Nations involved in a dispute. One of them has acted badly, it seems, but really the problem is that they do not understand each other. And they should. They could, if only they would speak to one another and be patient.” “And now they have,” Priya said again. Mara felt as if they might never move from this room, this hour. There was more. She had not said exactly what Kokila wanted to hear, the magic words to break the spell, to cast off the bonds of enchantment. “I know why you put Olwen Barnes through that window.” 260

“It was so long ago,” Sallie said. But her voice rose at the last word, an ellipsis, an invitation to continue. “You did it because Olwen was a mirror.” Mara remembered Miss Ellis’s exact words. “You felt your own mother was lost to you, and the sight of it was more than you could stand. And then all these years later, you took my daughter. You knew where she was when I didn’t know.” “She needed me,” Kokila said. “I know,” Mara whispered. “We are speaking out of the dark,” Sallie said, sounding amazed. “Olwen Barnes is a music teacher. At Vernal Hall. She forgave you long ago, Kokila.” The silence after lasted a full minute. Mara imagined the notation of it, like rests in a musical score, that lovely arabesque, that ›ourish, such a strange symbol for drawn breath. She imagined Olwen, counting rests, ‹nally happy at school. She’d lost Olwen, Mara had, as Kokila had lost track of Teresa. But now they could be found again. “Are you happy in your life now, Kokila?” she asked ‹nally. Kokila sighed, a slight rattle in her throat. “Yes,” she said ‹nally. “I made a good marriage.” She paused to look at her mother. “I ‹nally rebelled. My rebellion was to fall in love. With a Sikh. It made everyone terribly, deliriously happy. Including myself. And so here I am. There is still Gurtej to be reckoned with, but he’ll turn out ‹ne. There is the small matter of my mother.” She smiled quickly as she said this. Mara could see the gleam of her teeth. “I am glad to be here,” Sallie said to Kokila. “You are my only child. I need taking care of.” “The loneliness is terrible,” Mara said. She thought she could not go on, but she did. “It’s a kind of madness.” “It is,” Sallie said. “I would sit at my desk last winter, in the morning, and watch the mist rise off the roofs of the neighbors’ houses. It looked like ghostly people and animals walking away, at a determined, ceremonial pace. I felt left behind, the last corporeal thing on earth. Only Priya saved me. And Kokila’s visits. They were my angels.” “And now you will never get rid of me,” Priya said. “And you will never get rid of me.” Now Kokila had become the echo. They sat in silence a few minutes longer. Mara knew Rachel would be waiting for her at home, but she could not trust her voice to speak, 261

her heart not to burst. She did not want to cry here, now. A little light had been turned on, a small door opened. Not ›oodgates. She took deep breaths quietly, imagined Rachel walking from school. Tomorrow was Saturday. They would go somewhere, a ‹eld trip, just the two of them, away from battle‹elds and memorials. Mara would say, Rachel, there’s a story I want to tell you, and then she would have to decide which part of the story. Mara and Kokila. Teresa and Olwen. Parents’ Weekend at Vernal Hall. The ‹rst Rachel. “I should be getting home,” she said. “Rachel’s expecting me.” A lamp ›ashed on then, near the window, beside Kokila. She could have turned on the light at any moment, but she hadn’t. Mara wondered at this, Kokila keeping them all in the dark. They were all looking at each other now, blinking and smiling. “We will see more of you, Mara,” Sallie said. Mara offered her hand, then glanced at Kokila. “I hope so,” she said. “Our children will see to that.” Kokila stood and crossed the tiny room, then led the way downstairs. On the second ›oor, a door opened, and Gurtej stood framed in the light from his bedroom. “Mom?” he began, and then saw Mara. “Oh! Hello, Mrs. Raynor. I hope you’re not here to talk about me.” Mara wondered that Kokila did not see through her son’s ridiculous performance. She looked at Kokila, who seemed to regard Gurtej with frank amusement. Maybe she, too, had heard him on the stairs. Maybe she wanted him to know the story. “We’re tired of discussing you,” Kokila said, then reached over and ruf›ed Gurtej’s hair. “We’ve decided there’s no hope.” “Will I still be fed?” “Tonight at least. After I see Mrs. Raynor out.” Mara moved to the doorway, close enough to Gurtej that their arms touched slightly. She took his left hand and pressed it to her breastbone. “That’s where you keep Rachel,” he said. “Right,” Mara replied. “That’s where mothers keep everything.” She looked up. “Isn’t that true, Kokila?” Kokila pressed her index ‹nger to the middle of her forehead. “In here too,” she said. “For the sake of balance.” Mara nodded and released Gurtej’s hand. “See you next week,” she 262

said. “Kokila.” She held our her hand, but Kokila drew her into an embrace. “Khuda ha‹z. Salaam. Shoukriah.” “Thank you,” Mara said “Shoukirah. Breathe for Eastern sounds. Shook—re ah.” “Shoukriah.” “Very good.” “I’ll let myself out.” “All right.” Mara was at the bottom of the stairs when she heard Kokila’s voice. “My mother will want to meet Rachel.” “I’ll bring her,” Gurtej said. “And she’ll want you to visit again.” “I will,” Mara said, and then she was outside, down the front steps. She paused for a moment in the square of light cast out of the downstairs front window. She did not know whether she was being seen. She looked up at the second- and third-›oor windows, and raised her hand. It seemed likely, despite the invitations, that she might never come here again. Two ‹ngers, the peace sign. Then she walked up the street to look for a taxi.

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t the end, voices, song, voices out of the dark: Sharon Greene, as Jo March singing to her sisters. Mara heard the lines, saw the performance, watching from the wings of the Leavy Center auditorium, the notes making themselves almost perfect, but then she forgot all that, the words, the music, and what remained in her memory was Sharon’s face, the expression that was revelation and disillusionment both at once. She was singing more exquisitely than she ever had. Something had happened to her voice in the weeks just before the concert, and now it opened into its full loveliness, effortlessly, so that a single note sung seemed to vibrate with all the others that had proceeded it—Mara could hardly make sense of this herself, though it had happened to her once, many years ago. There was a kind of eternal present in this singing, the way the color white contains all colors, and yet still is something else. The notes were big, not loud, but wide, deep, unfathomable. But the face. Mara saw the enormity of what 263

Sharon knew, that this was the best she had ever sung or might ever sing. This was what all the work had been for, this pleasure, this rapture, but as the notes surged up from her lungs through her throat, into the air, they were gone. At the end of the performance, they would all be gone. There was no way to stop their disappearing. But at the end of the performance, the men had arrived: the composer of Little Women, Mark Adamo. And his guest, Stephen Sondheim. He took Mara’s hand, Sondheim did, then seemed to think better of it, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Brilliant,” he said. “The men were missing. As so often happens.” Another song: Rachel’s graduation, Rachel and her class gathered on the stage, dressed in bridal white, daisies in their hair. Mara sat in the third pew, between two mothers, her own and John’s, holding each one by the hand. One of Rachel’s classmates sang a Goethe poem, “The Convert,” the most glorious, haunting melody Mara had ever heard, by Hugo Wolf, who died a madman. She had supposed she would not have any tears left for this ceremony, but she was wrong. And the next day, Gurtej’s graduation, the school song, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” with lyrics composed by an elderly English teacher. In the gleam of sunset, Rachel’s classmate had sung. By the ancient rivers gleaming, down the pleasant shores of home, sang Gurtej and his class. So two songs, really, though Mara came to hold them in her head simultaneously. She handed the diplomas to each member of the graduating class, and so she could see them in the third row: Kokila and Kameer Bandasari, and Sallie and Priya. Sharon Greene was there too, beside Kantsakis, in his wheelchair, perfectly parked, moving his lips, forming words which did not match the tune. He would sing now, now that he could not drive. Work on his voice. Vocal technique is Greek in origin, he told her, based on beauty, strength and health. He only wanted to be of use, his hands poised over the wheels of his chair, ready to go. The injured party, graceful like Teresa, still singing, even wounded, like Olwen. Next, Mara singing, her lone voice, a keyboard, an oboe and a ›ute, unseen in the dark loft of Echo, at the small ceremony in which Phil and Robert pledged themselves to each other, and exchanged rings. Sondheim’s “On the Steps of the Palace”: 264

He’s a very smart Prince. He’s a Prince who prepares. Knowing this time I’d run from him, He spread pitch on the stairs. I was caught unawares. And I thought, Well, he cares. This is more than just malice. Better stop and take stock While you’re standing here stuck On the steps of the palace. And a fourth song, a medley of songs, the last memorial to John, which had been kept a secret for months. A tape played, or a CD someone had put together, John’s favorite songs. There was a competition among the students and alumni to design a triptych of panes for the central stained-glass window in the administration building. Once the winning design was chosen, the work was done secretly, though really right under Mara’s nose. She was told some of the old panes had been shaken loose by Kantsakis’s fall, and so the work order was signed and the installation begun, behind a small screen, because, so she was told, of the torch and the dust and the noise. Good, she said at the time, I won’t worry about it then. But later she thought: how completely I am known, how utterly my interests and disinterests, my attentions have been plumbed. For the unveiling, she was summoned from her of‹ce, a week before graduation. She and Betty and Evans, the assistant principal, had been in her of‹ce, John’s of‹ce, talking about the graduation ceremony, and what Evans, whose father was in the coast guard, called the change of command. He was brusque and sweet. “You give a speech,” he said to Mara, “and you cry. Everybody cries. Then I give a speech and everybody looks at their watches and thinks about what there will be to eat at the reception.” In the mid dle of their planning, Adam Russell knocked on the door and leaned halfway into the of‹ce. “Mrs. Raynor,” he said. There was something behind his voice, a sob. Mara thought, God, Rachel. “Someone wants to see you.” 265

Someone was the whole school, silently assembled, then bursting into applause when they saw her come into the hallway. The music she heard was Stephen Stills, modulating into Lyle Lovett, a tape she made for John years ago, songs about boats. John loves this, she thought, and began to look for him, but then Adam led her forward to the window. Rachel was there, and Phil and Robert. Mara understood before she really saw it, all of it, the wash of color, the sailboat, the images of the man and boys. It was like music, no narrative, only feeling, only intuition and the senses. But there was language, too, etched along the bottom. Mara remembered sitting with John in the of‹ce, many years before, as he read the words to her, before using them to end one of his ‹rst talks to the boys. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the attribution read. She had forgotten that, but not the sound of John’s voice reading to her. “I ‹nd the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving. To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it. But we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.” It was clear right away that she was not expected to speak. Adam began to explain that there had been a competition, which had been judged by Rachel and by members of the art department. The winner was an alumnus named Paul Dusey, who stepped forward out of the sea of boys, faculty and staff, and shook Mara’s hand. He was an architect, Adam read. He’d studied classics and math. “I’ll keep this short,” Adam said. “We loved Dr. Raynor. We put this together.” Here he handed Mara a fat looseleaf binder. “It’s what we remember. What he said, what he did. He taught by silence, by example, with other people’s words. He was not impressed by his own words. But we were. We miss him.” Mara smiled and clasped her hands together and made a bow. Then she linked her arm through Rachel’s, and they turned to look at the window. The hall, though ‹lled with boys, was utterly silent, except for the music. “Please,” she said, turning. “If you would let me, I’d like to shake all your hands.” It took some time, but she did it, listening along the way to the stories, the little moments. “He taught me how to tie my shoes,” one boy said. “The right way.” 266

“He stood outside to greet us.” “Almost every day.” “Even in the snow.” “He told me math was 10 percent skill and 90 percent con‹dence.” “He said wherever I went, take a book just in case.” “He said it was OK for boys to cry.” Most said nothing. A few blinked away tears, but just a few.

M

ara knew she’d kept it, somewhere. She stood in the middle of the bedroom, as if lost, pretending to be lost. The top drawer of the bureau, it was in there, behind the slips and scarves and nightgowns she would never wear again, the small mechanical nightingale. She held it in her hands, then tipped it so that the back slipped off, and the tiny bag of ashes fell into her palm. Without letting go of the bird, she dipped her index ‹nger into the ashes, the dust, the small bone fragments the size of peas, all that was left of little Sallie Raynor, and brushed her lips, then reached down inside her shirt and touched the ashes to the skin over her heart. Mara set the little bird on the bed, went into John’s study to ‹nd a screwdriver, the smallest one from his set, then came back and sat down. She unscrewed the back of the mechanism, and took the pin from between the gears, where for twenty-nine years it had kept them from turning. Then she replaced the outside of the metal housing, the bag of ashes and the plastic back. She wound up the music, taking care to disengage the stop lever. She shook the little bird once, and it began to sing. The mechanical bird stays perfectly in tune, the Emperor realizes, but she has no art. We can explain her completely, open her up and see how she works. When she sings, we always know what notes we will hear, and in what order. With the real nightingale, you never know what will happen, what can be built out of music and moonlight, stained with heart’s blood. I was unaware of my greatest treasure, the Emperor says. It is a lesson for mothers. The telephone rang, and Mara did not get up. Then there was silence, except for the trilling of the mechanical bird. She waited, and as 267

she knew it would, the telephone kept ringing. Still she sat on the bed, the bird in her hands. The phone rang, twice more, and each time it sounded farther and farther away, next door, down the street, under the ocean, across the next continent. Mara did not move. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Nobody there. The singing bird made a small regular hum below the notes, like waves on the side of a boat at rest, the sound of it very nearly continuous, but not quite, the way a group of singers learns to breathe. One voice drops out for a moment, but almost no one listening can tell. A soloist, though, must get her breath by taking time away from the note that was. A funny way to put it, as if the past and the present and the future were simultaneous. Mara closed her eyes and listened. In what city was this song, what country, what year? Rachel would be home soon. It was time to pack.

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