He wasn’t sure yet. Not waking up?

Polly poured one last glass of wine and looked harder at a box of snapshots Jane had put aside, mostly color from the fifties and sixties, going into the picture one more time to look at the grubby carpets and pretty furniture, the air filled with dust motes and smoke and the smell of long-lost dogs and people who took baths, not showers. Looking at the photos, Polly smelled bleach and vinegar, Ivory soap. Dee had used Murphy Oil Soap, which smelled like waxflower, and Polly did, too. Rita and Jane hugging—Polly had no memory of such a thing happening, but there they were, and it was later in the summer of 1968, because Rita’s arm was bandaged. Lemon and Merle posed by the new fence, Dee at her potting wheel, Jane at her desk. And photos—blurred and tipsy—from a party Jane and Merle had given that summer while Papa and Dee were in the city. Polly studied the profile of a man standing near Rita, who seemed so familiar. He troubled her.

14. Summer 19682

14

Summer 1968

Dee and Papa hoped to go to Europe that spring but canceled because of the student riots. Now they simply planned two nights in the city—the usual trip to the doctor and dinner with friends from London—and Jane and Merle secretly, giddily, decided to have a party. She’d finished her thesis; he’d been offered a good research position at NYU.

They hid fragile things, bought cheese and salami and gallons of wine, and dragged chairs out of the basement and into the yard. People Polly had never met arrived. Rita showed up after a weeklong disappearance, but she was calm, and her agent brought along a Parisian gallery owner, a stocky American man with a booming voice and light-blue eyes, who reminded Polly of her school’s bust of Beethoven. When people came inside, Polly and Edmund skittered to the banister; when people needed to use the upstairs bathroom, or came up to see the map painting, they hid in their rooms. From their windows, they watched groups walk to the greenhouse to see the other canvases, and through their floor grates they watched the gallery owner talk about Rita’s art and put his arm around her. He looked up as if he knew they were there, and they recoiled.

Eventually, they climbed onto the grape arbor, something that made them feel as if they’d walked into a spy movie. They stayed there, shaded by the vines, spitting grape skins and seeds at the oblivious drunks, taking in details with Merle’s binoculars. No one noticed them; no one ever looked at the edge of anything.