The next day, I’m the only one awake in the whole house, even though it’s past nine. Plus, I’m starving for pancakes. It’s not Sunday, though, so there won’t be any pancakes from Dad, and I don’t know how to make them myself. Or bacon. I guess I don’t know how to do much of anything. For instance, I’m freaked out by the iron, and no one taught me about doing laundry or fixing holes in my pants or talking to my mother. I can’t do the useful things Eleanor is able to do or the sort of weird things Marla knows about—like folding hospital corners when she makes the beds or showing off her expertise with Mom’s fancy label maker or deciding which attachment to use on the vacuum cleaner, based on what kind of surface you are vacuuming.
Dad comes down at ten. It’s weird, since he’s usually hard at work by now, either at the university preparing for classes, or working on one of his fairy-tale research projects. He made us sandwiches and brought them to our rooms last night for dinner, but he didn’t let us come downstairs or see Mom when they got back from the hospital.
There are a lot of weird things about Dad, but one of them is that he doesn’t really sleep. He doesn’t seem to need it.
“Try not to worry,” he says, instead of explaining anything that’s happening.
Marla comes downstairs next. She’s still pajamaed and slippered and shuffling her feet instead of picking them up to walk. Her too-long brown hair is in a not-quite-as-long brown ponytail, and her cheeks are blotchy. She picks up a cereal box to read the back of but doesn’t start yelling at me for finishing off the Apple Cinnamon Cheerios.
She is different. Not a little. A lot.
“Where have you been?” I say. “What’d you guys do last night? And this morning?” After Mom’s fall I sat in my room and read books and wrote LilyLee angry emails about how mean my sisters were being. I strategized ways to look and act older so they’ll start treating me like I’m one of them.
Marla shrugs and smiles. She’s beyond pleased that she’s one of them now.
Eleanor comes downstairs next. She yawns the whole way down the stairs—from the top step to the sloping, broken one at the bottom. Her hair is a nest. It’s hard to even recognize Eleanor when her hair isn’t shiny and her clothes aren’t pressed.
Then Astrid emerges. She is transformed too. Her blond hair is twisted and twirled on top of her head. She kisses my cheek and hugs Dad.
“Morning, family,” she says, and just like that, because she’s decreed it, we are a normal family for a delicate instant.
“It’s late,” I say. “We’ve been waiting for you.” I nod toward Dad. He’s wrapped up in a book with an old green cover and a bunch of Post-it notes.
“Silly. Let’s be glass-half-full girls today. It’s late morning, but it’s not afternoon yet!” Astrid smiles, and I swear I haven’t seen her smiling with actual teeth in months and months. It’s not her style.
“That’s nice,” Dad says. He’s smiling too, a real smile that goes to his eyes and even wrinkles his forehead a little. He heads to his favorite armchair on the porch, which is right off the kitchen, but if we are quiet enough, he won’t hear us. I get a look at the spine of his book. Sleeping Beauty.
“Where were you yesterday? Did you go somewhere? Were you hiding? Marla and I went to your room and you weren’t there and Mom fell and—” I don’t leave space in between my questions for answers, but Eleanor doesn’t seem concerned about that anyway. She shakes her head. That’s when I notice gold in her hair. At first I think it’s summery blond streaks that we all get from the sun, but when I look more closely, it looks more like tinsel.
“Your hair . . .”
Eleanor tries to run her hand through it, but this morning her hair is knotted and half wet, and I know from the dampness of it and the way it glimmers that she has been somewhere. Again. She looks rained on, by both water and strands of gold, and she smells like pine trees and clouds, if clouds have a smell.
All my sisters giggle and I want to laugh with them, but it’s too close to crying, and I think if I let anything out, it will all come out.
“We should make a perfect kitchen,” Marla says. “Dollhouse stove. Apple pie. Red checkered curtains.” She’s looking at Astrid, who nods like she knows what Marla’s talking about, even though Marla is making no sense at all.
“This is a kitchen,” I say. It is the world’s lamest sentence.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marla says. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“But I am worried about it,” I say in such a small voice I think it is even less hearable than a whisper.
Mom hobbles into the kitchen. Her ankle’s all wrapped, and she’s in Dad’s old robe. It doesn’t fit her at all.