But they knew she would. They knew endings and other old truths Jane and Merle wouldn’t speak about but Dee and Papa could: that the world needed monsters, even if it made it hard to walk through the dark; that the oldest horror story was the beast in the back of the cave, and that babies giggled when someone pretended to eat them because being eaten was the oldest fear. That vines could see nearby trees, that people had always drunk too much, and you couldn’t blame yourself if they did; that people had always gone mad, and sometimes it wasn’t malevolent. That you couldn’t fault anyone for pretending there might be good news. That people sometimes died without pain. That you had to treat your memory like a violin and play the bits you liked so that you wouldn’t forget. That your lizard brain made you jump at a snake or a spider, and that people inherited this fear and the special landscapes of their own dreams, some aching for forests, some loving hills or deserts, snow or rivers. That Polly and Edmund would always know the right thing, and they would always at least try to do it. That they weren’t fools: They knew that people had to die, make room, and that when you died, you disappeared. The world didn’t hurt anymore, and you didn’t worry anymore.

It was dark when they heard someone move the dresser. Downstairs, Merle left out glasses of milk and grilled cheese sandwiches. They could hear him talking in Rita’s room, but they didn’t see him until the next morning, when Dee and Papa and Jane returned, and Rita moved on to another continent, singing as she drew long hills, seas of trees. She was so good when she was painting, so sane. She let them powder Dee’s broken pieces of stained glass and add it to the paint for the ocean, so that the water glittered as if it were full of krill and silver fish. Sometimes she tucked Edmund in even when Jane returned, even on nights when Dee wasn’t in the hospital.

13. Friday, July 5, 2002

13

Friday, July 5, 2002

At 4:00 in the morning before Maude’s party, Polly found herself young again, standing in the hallway at Stony Brook in front of a section of Rita’s map. Polly was worried that if she looked too hard at the wet paint, she’d find dead faces. Instead she saw a beautiful beach, a shack and scrub trees, a woman and a man coming out of the water and lying down together on the warm sand. In the dream, Polly was surprised: She couldn’t remember Rita painting these figures. They were so unlike her.