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I tug at the crisp white sheet clinging to the corner of my vanity mirror. Yanking at it, I center the fabric. The sheet disturbs dust, which threatens to settle on every surface of my bedroom.
“I don't understand what this is all about,” Marleen reprimands me as if I'm an unruly child. Her eyes pan back and forth between me and the mirror.
“This isn't nearly as dramatic as it looks,” I say and reassure her I'm in great spirits. Just in case she thinks otherwise.
I've explained the entire mourning affair to Marleen but it must have gone over her head. My friend and neighbor, Vera Olmsted, told me about holding shiva for seven days, during which one shrouds all mirrors, but I'm Methodist and there's no need to follow the rules exactly. Loss comes in many forms and my state of mourning has to do with my marriage. For the longest time I counted on a reconciliation but months have passed and not a single phone call from Edward. Not one visit. And my daughter, Penelope, I haven't spoken to her either.
Voices drift toward me through the open window—a child, giggling, high-pitched, pit-a-patting, racing down the walkway with a joy that only children possess. A mother's voice responds gently, wait, slow down, hold my hand. I crane my neck to get a good look at them—the girl is about five or so—and seeing her is comforting at first but then reality sinks in.
• • •
When Penelope was five, we lived in Florida at the end of a cul-de-sac. I search my mind for fond memories of the bungalow but all I know is I wouldn't set foot in it today. A crooked fire hydrant in the front yard and a small square patch of grass. Every time the air conditioner kicked in, the lights flickered on trembling currents due to faulty wiring. We were able to afford the house because the interior was dated and overhead power lines cut through the backyard, mere feet away from the porch. Metal towers loomed above us and I often wondered if it was safe to live there.
For hours on end, Penelope played with her dollhouses, scooting across the cheap carpet until her knees turned pinkish red from the friction. She'd sit with what I interpreted as sharp concentration but as time passed I saw it for what it was: an obsession, a way of soothing herself. She rearranged plastic dolls and dainty accessories and when I interrupted her, she'd snap her head back and flip her ponytail by weaving her fingers through her hair, whipping it around.
Penelope—we called her Pea as a baby and toddler, Penny as a child, Penelope starting as a teenager—never made friends easily. She didn't care for other children. It sounds callous, but it wasn't so much her not liking others as her enjoying her own company. I found what I thought was the solution to her isolation and bought her an outdoor playhouse, hoping it would attract children from the neighborhood. I had an image of Pea and her friends having tea parties and tucking their doll babies in strollers, playing dress-up and wearing princess dresses.
I didn't read the description and the playhouse arrived in hundreds of pieces of wooden shapes with numbered and lettered plastic stickers and a bag of screws, nails, and hex keys. That Edward was going to put the playhouse together was wishful thinking on my part; he has not so much as hammered a nail in the wall.
I found a handyman in the Yellow Pages who put it together the very next day. After he left, Penelope stared at the house for a long time, then circled it as if she was pondering its intended use. “Go on,” I said and watched her step inside as I stood on the back porch and beheld the structure: the scalloped cedar shingles, the cast-iron bell, the stained-glass window in the door which allowed plenty of sunlight to sneak inside, where a delicate heart-and-swag stencil pattern adorned the walls.
Penelope disappeared within the structure and a sudden gust of wind slammed the playhouse door shut and the stained-glass pane shattered though it took me some time to connect cause and effect. Penelope screamed and I ran to find her with a gaping cut from the tip of her index finger down the palm of her hand to her wrist. The cut bled so profusely, I was unable to staunch the bleeding. I rushed her to the ER and Edward did the sutures himself and eventually all that was left of that day was a faint white line in my daughter's palm. It seemed to float, to sit above her skin. Penelope didn't so much as shed a tear. She knew no pain. I say that without judgment, that was just the body she lived in.
There was something about Penelope, something that made me—
Outside my window heavy footsteps sound. More laughter. I got you. Stop being silly. The voices grow weak, then fade, swallowed by the lush landscaping until there's nothing but silence spilling into my room. There one moment, gone the next.
In the blink of an eye. That's my go-to comment when I encounter families in the park outside my window. “Children grow up so quickly,” I say and smile though I shudder when small sticky hands reach for me. I bury my hands in my pockets and add, “Before you know it, they are grown. In the blink of an eye. Gone.”
Like my daughter, Penelope. My husband, my entire life. Gone.
My mind bends in on itself, pondering my role in it all. There's a lesson in here somewhere, but what the lesson is I don't know.