“Who cares?” said Elizabeth scathingly, still annoyed with her yet simultaneously displaying something other than mere annoyance, something I did not recognize then—whatever veiled emotions recoil within a teenager whose mother frequently yells admonishments at her over a glass of something opaque.

(I recognized this reaction much later, when this memory returned to wander through the house and I had the opportunity to study it from the outside—to study the childish carelessness and the complex succession of rancor, hurt, and regret that passed fleetingly across my sister’s face with all the whispery impermanence of a hummingbird’s wings—and to understand the truth behind our behavior.)

Eventually we found our mother in Elizabeth’s bedroom. Well, I should say Elizabeth found her; she had run upstairs to her room while I deliberately counted my steps, as I was fixated on counting at the time, and there were certain magical numbers I had to reach in my counting if I wanted good fortune—in particular, seven, eleven, and twenty-one. I had just reached nine, counting my steps on the way up the stairs and having pocketed seven for later magic, when I heard the thump of Elizabeth’s backpack hitting the floor and a wordless shriek that sent me racing up the rest of the way in a flurry of curiosity. I found Mother sitting on Elizabeth’s princess bed, the sorry guitar flat on her lap. Each of the strings had been removed, tied into terrifying metal knots, and cast onto the floor.

As children, we were shocked and appalled at the defacing of the guitar, but really, it wasn’t as though she’d smashed it into pieces or damaged it irrevocably. If only we had known how easy it was to change strings—or known, in fact, that guitarists change their strings all the time. Strings get old, after all. They lose their vibrancy. They fray. Old strings sound like the muted voices of damned souls whose cries you can only hear coming up through the floor vents. And those strings were old—imagine one of them snapping in Elizabeth’s face the next time she put the full force of her teenage fury into her strumming. It might take out an eye.

“How could you?” Elizabeth shouted.

Agnes picked up her drink and smiled. The ice that remained, nearly melted, clinked against the sides of the glass. “So pick a new hobby.”

“Like drinking?” Elizabeth shot back.

(She did pick a new hobby shortly thereafter, in fact, and one that seemed at odds with her brief foray into the rebel-punk life: ballet. A rebellion against her own rebellion. Playing classical music from her stereo, she practiced her graceful movements. Sometimes, though, when Agnes had vanished into the house or into her own head, Elizabeth played her punk CDs and danced a dizzying mélange of ballet and the frenetic energy of crunching guitars—a paradoxical art. It was only much later, when she was older and more sensible, that she realized the very best rebellion against our peculiar family was to become, in fact, a terribly sensible, down-to-earth, and altogether normal human being.)