A crackle. A voice. “Welcome to Ocean Explorations, an Introduction to Oceanography, produced by National Geographic.” Suddenly, I was no longer alone. As the narrator spoke of ocean currents and plate tectonics, I began to find order. Baskets and boxes once haphazardly filled were now empty, so I sorted and gathered and filled them again, lining them up neatly on the closet shelves. The record spun and taught me a new vocabulary—upwelling, limnology, abyssal plains—while I collected dozens of once-stray colored pencils, sharpened them, and tied them up in twine: a complete set now. The costumes I smoothed and hung from hangers on a rolling rack that had been impossible to access before. Sorting them gave me a glimpse into the past. They had performed The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland—those were the easiest to identify. Some of the costumes were meant to look medieval, while others had bell bottoms and fringe or African motifs. They had been forgotten for so long. They could have become mildewed and moth-eaten, but they had not.

I thought of the children who had worn them. I wondered if they’d really joined the family, as the article had said. If they had happy memories of this schoolhouse, if they returned for holidays and made themselves at home here. I was so lost in thought—my palms smoothing a furry little lion costume with a giant mane of brown yarn—when the record stopped. The needle lifted and moved to the side and the quiet that followed startled me.

The room felt suddenly chilly, as though the cold and silence had been there all along, lurking under the lecture and my busy movements, briefly obscured by my sense of purpose.

A shadow streaked across a wall. I held perfectly still, bracing for a memory to take me over. Wondering what would happen this time, after it was finished.

But no memory came.

I thought of Lee’s face and his fear, that first day of lessons. And then I thought of his careful penmanship and the equations that finally made sense. Of how we moved on from it, safe in the schoolhouse.

Maybe the shadow was only my imagination.

I told myself that it was so.

I turned the record over and continued with my work until the room was neat again, with rows of clear tables and a closet that invited learning and play. I did it all without looking at the window. I did it with the record player’s volume cranked as high as it would go.

___

By the time the third album had ended, I had finished labeling the shelves. I sat in the clean room, reading an old hardcover collection of Grimm’s fairy tales, listening for the vans approaching from the road. Finally, I heard wheels on gravel, the groan of the gate.