The younger workers seemed to know about the rumor, they looked at us. The older workers seemed not to know.

The birds were near, and when the name chain was broken it was because Glory had been chasing them off. Seagulls. While we sat, Glory ran around, she didn’t care what anyone thought of her—not the young workers or the old workers, not anyone. The double-plated name chain was lost in this terrible sand. Imported sand. We used our feet as brooms. We dug with our nails. We dusted with our palms, but the name chain seemed to be buried and unreachable: Glory, 14-karat gold double-plated chain with the diamond-cut letters, the namesake letters and a heart design, lost.

We left Glory to search on her own. We left because we could not bear to see Glory in a state of despair; it wasn’t the way we hoped to remember her. And anyway the workers were moving closer and closer, so we couldn’t stay. We put on our shorts. We left her. We got in the car and we drove away.

The windows were open and as we drove off we could see Glory in the distance—with the yellow halo of mine trucks around her magnificent head, and the workers small as mice—before they were all out of sight.

When we came close to our neighborhood we heard someone yell the rumor. We didn’t get a good look at them, but they sounded as if they might be young. Someone laughed and the young person laughed and the rumor was repeated, with less force, quieter, as the car was moving away from them; we were going home. And despite the heat we rolled the windows all the way up.

When we arrived and opened the car door the grass moved, and when we slammed the car door the grass moved, so even the grass seemed to know the rumor. The front door creaked; the steps creaked. We ran a bath. The water was loud as it rushed out; it knew. The artificial sand was everywhere, under our toenails and on the wooden steps, inside the mahogany china cabinet, in our eyebrows, on the purple painting, and on the banister, on the knowing banister.

We brushed the metal with a white electric toothbrush. Beneath the braces our teeth were stained. We flossed. In the bedroom we dressed, we turned on the lamp, we covered the lamp with a scarf and the white wall moved to lilac. Our hands washed in a lilac light; the lamp knew.

And the rumor grew. It became a myth, legend. Later, when the braces were removed, the teeth bleached and made straight, the rumor remained.

Then Glory left town. The orthodontist left town and the receptionist left.

The children wouldn’t learn the rumor from us. They learned the rumor from their classmates.