“What?” her father said.
“Everyone is going to die and you know it. Any victims within a five-mile radius from ground zero can expect to die from radiation sickness, cancer, or leukemia within the first six months.”
There was a short silence.
“What are you talking about?” said Cathy.
“Ingrid,” said her father, “there’s not going to be any bombing.”
“A meltdown, then. Same difference.”
“Sweetie, there’s no meltdown. We’re not—”
“Oh my God,” said Cathy, and put her hands over her face.
“Then what?” Ingrid demanded. “What happened? Why are we all sitting here? Why is Cathy crying?”
“Sweetie,” said Ingrid’s father, “we wanted to tell you. What we wanted to tell you is.” He looked at the carpet. “We’re getting divorced.”
She was going to live, she was going to live, and she loved the plaid couch, the orange shag carpet, the dusty eucalyptus-scented air outside, the itch of poison oak on her left forearm, the candy dish on the coffee table beside her stepmother’s knee, her father’s polyester pants scratchy against her thigh. The world was not ending just yet after all, and Ingrid began to cry again, this time with relief.
Then her stepmother screamed. Her legs kicked out in front of her, upsetting the coffee table. The candy dish went flying, scattering miniature Clark bars over the rug.
“Jesus Christ, Cathy,” said Ingrid’s father, “what is it now?”
Ingrid’s stepmother jumped into a crouch on the sofa. “A fucking snake,” she gasped. “A snake just crawled over my foot. There.”
Ingrid and her father looked where Cathy pointed. The three of them watched Ingrid’s garter snake as it moved slithering through the shag carpet as if through dry grass. It paused, disoriented, by the leg of the TV stand, then turned suddenly and vanished behind the drapes.
The empty paper bag lay on its side at Ingrid’s feet. Ingrid picked it up and absently began crumpling it into a ball and then stopped. No one said anything more, and no one moved. The silence settled in around them and thickened, holding the three of them on the couch in a kind of suspended animation, eyes fixed on the spot where the snake had disappeared.
In the ensuing shuffle of the divorce, Ingrid was allowed to leave Melvin High and go to boarding school, which her father referred to as A Good School Back East. She did not exactly fit in, not even with the other mohawked kids, but no one made fun of her, either. She did her schoolwork, had one real friend, and dreaded the holidays that meant a return to Melvin. The thought of spending the whole summer back there, waking up every morning at Linda’s in one of the twin beds in Melanie’s room, with its yellow daisy curtains and matching bedspread, its walls plastered with posters of Scott Baio and Andy Gibb—well, it was enough to make you want to be dead.
Ingrid had been pedaling her bicycle as fast as she could go through Newell and around the reservoir. Now, coming into Randall, she felt winded. At the crest of the hill she stopped and gazed down at Randall Center.
The Town Green looked just like a postcard, the kind that says GREETINGS FROM NEW ENGLAND across the top. All picture-perfect, Mister. Grass so manicured it looked like each blade had been cut with nail scissors, old wrought iron benches that didn’t know the meaning of the word rust. A white clapboard church with a big bell in the steeple, nice maple trees. Whatever problems the people who lived here had, they could probably just sprinkle them with a little money and make them go away again.
At least, that was how it looked from the outside.
As she stood straddling her bike and trying to light a cigarette, the rain began, sudden and intense and very cold. By the time she had pedaled ten yards to take shelter under the nearest maple tree, she was drenched. Too wet to smoke, even. So she got back on her bike and pushed on, around the green and out Old Adams Road.
When she found the Shepards’ house, Ingrid wiped the water from her face and stared. The house was worth staring at. It was different from all the others she’d passed, neither rambling farmhouse nor boring colonial. Her eyes ranged appreciatively over the steep roof of blue-gray slate, the wide porch detailed with gingerbread scrollwork under the eaves. There were arched stained-glass windows flanking the front door, copper downspouts etched with the turquoise patina of age. It looked to Ingrid like a house in an old movie, the kind that hid a lunatic in the attic or a body in the basement. She propped her bike against an oak tree, ran across the lawn and up onto the porch, pushed her sodden hair back from her eyes and rang the bell.
The woman who answered the door did not go with the house at all. She looked like she’d be more at home in Southern California: mail order pastels, big gold earrings. Ingrid felt a lurch of disappointment in her stomach.
“Mrs. Shepard?” Red hair, pancake makeup. After a pause that went on too long, during which Ingrid felt herself being looked over and found wanting, the woman smiled.
“Yes, hi. You must be Ingrid. I was expecting you a bit later.” Mrs. Shepard looked past Ingrid to the driveway. “Where’s Liz Luce?”
Ingrid hooked her thumbs in the back pockets of her jeans. “Mrs. Luce couldn’t come.”
“Oh—well, come in. You’re drenched.”
“Yeah, it’s raining,” Ingrid said, and then wished she hadn’t.
She followed Mrs. Shepard inside and looked around. There was hand-carved scrollwork on the post thing at the bottom of the stairs, a very old mirror built into more carved paneling beside the front door. The antique brass door hinges with an inlaid pattern of fleurs-de-lys. Old things, well made. Whoever had built this house had cared about what they were doing, had intended it to last a long time. Through an archway Ingrid glimpsed a living room filled with books, a fireplace and a worn brown velvet sofa with wooden legs that looked like lion’s paws. She imagined stretching out on the sofa after everyone else was asleep and reading. The image pleased her.
“This is a cool house,” she offered.
“Let me just see where Ray is,” Mrs. Shepard said. “Why don’t you go on in the living room there. Here, take off that sweater, and I’ll get you a towel.”
Ingrid hesitated, then peeled off her sweater. Beneath it she wore a black Minor Threat tee shirt whose collar and sleeves she’d cut away with some very dull scissors. She felt Mrs. Shepard’s eyes on her and wished for a moment that she’d worn more regular-looking clothes. Then she shook away the feeling and wished instead for a cigarette—if the Shepards weren’t going to like her, it was better to find out now.
In the kitchen, Evelyn threw Ingrid’s dripping sweater across the back of a chair and spread a dishtowel beneath it so the floor wouldn’t get wet. This was the girl who was going to save her from doing something even crazier than throwing a rock at her husband’s head? This girl, with hair sticking out from her head every which way, with clothes so ragged even a church poor box wouldn’t want them, this girl with a safety pin in her ear, this girl who showed up wringing wet a whole hour early? This girl was not going to make her life any easier. She hadn’t even had time to vacuum or figure out what to serve, or—shit, she hadn’t even cleaned up the broken glass in the study upstairs. The big jagged pieces of windowpane and the smashed lampshade were still all over the rug and the rain had probably come in and wrecked the rug entirely. She should have dealt with that first thing this morning; what was wrong with her?
Evelyn leaned against the sink and took a deep breath. She could at least bring out some snacks. But what? Her own mother, when she was being fancy, used to set up a card table outside the Winnebago on which she’d serve ladyfingers she had cut in half and filled with Cool Whip, then sprinkled with powdered instant coffee. Right, Evie Lynne, that’ll look real good. She began opening