When the men came inside again, the children were released back into the yellow-green storm air, to a blanket of velvet grass. Polly had seen yards like this—lacking patches and dog piles—only from a distance. She and Edmund rolled on the lawn but there was nothing else to do, not a tool, toy, shrub, climbable tree. Through the fancy sliding screen doors they could hear an argument begin again—war now, and Tommy leaving for it. When they heard more voices raised, and a car engine, Jane came running toward them and scooped them up—Rita and Tommy had roared off without their child—while Merle stowed their bags and they followed in a fancy car borrowed from the Wards.

They ended up together at a Holiday Inn restaurant with umbrellas in the drinks and Hawaiian music. Later Polly and Edmund were left in a hotel room with peanut butter sandwiches and coins and a Magic Fingers bed, while all four parents drank.

Tommy’s mother and father weren’t dog people, and the Schusters promised to take care of the pointer Lemon when Tommy shipped out in October. Polly and Jane took the train back. The upper bunk, the sink that folded down, the ceremony of the dining car made Polly insanely happy. Merle drove, taking uppers while Lemon was on downers; at about 2 a.m., he said, they were moving at the same speed. Rita and Edmund lasted at the older Wards’ house until Christmas, when she set their garage on fire.

Now, in January of 1968, no one made Edmund go to school immediately. Polly needed to go, of course, and when she came home on the second day, she found him on the couch, surrounded by her books. She guessed that he hadn’t done this on his own, that her mother or Dee or Papa ransacked her room, but she minded, and she walked upstairs and slammed her door. When she couldn’t bear it any longer—she was hungry, for one thing, because everyone was too distracted by Edmund and Rita to pack a lunch, and the cafeteria food revolted her—she nearly fell over the stack left outside of her door.

More stewing, some guilt, though what did you call it at seven or eight? Edmund’s bedroom door was closed, but everyone seemed to be behind a door—Dee napping, Papa on the phone, a low grumble—but Merle and Jane, who were at class. Rita was singing in her room, and her voice was so unnerving that Polly dropped half the books back against Edmund’s door and retreated to her room after grabbing a handful of cookies.