It was close to 2:00 A.M. when he started to hang the final picture: a candid shot of Lissie in a murderous blue funk at the age of eleven. Straining up over his head to hammer the pushpin into one of the ceiling beams, he heard footsteps on the stairs leading down to the entrance hall, and turned, his arms still stretched up over his head, and saw her standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking tentatively into the living room. He thought at first it was Connie — the same long blond hair, the same light eyes, the same lithe slender look. When he realized it was his daughter, he was at first surprised and then annoyed. She knew what he was doing down here, she should have realized—
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said.
“Honey, what...?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I’m sorry,” she said again, and burst into tears.
He came down off the ladder and went to her at once, still foolishly holding the hammer in his right hand. She stood in the center of the hallway, her long white flannel nightgown rumpled, her bare feet planted slightly apart on the riotous blues and reds of the Bokhara rug, her arms dangling forlornly at her side, the tears streaming down her face. Still holding the hammer, he took her in his arms, and held her close, stroking her hair with his free hand.
“What is it, Lissie?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, sobbing.
“Well, it must be some—”
“I’m so happy to be home,” she said, sobbing.
“Well, that’s nothing to cry—”
“I miss being home so much. I hate that school,” she said.
“Darling girl...”
“I hate it, Dad,” she said, and suddenly it all came out in a rush, breathlessly mingled with the tears. “They work us too hard, all the kids say so, we never get time to do anything we want to do, I’m up till midnight, sometimes one o’clock, doing homework, two o’clock sometimes, and my first class is at eight, and I had kitchen last week, I fell asleep in biology, scraping off all the trays, I know I failed my math test, I just know it, and Jenny’s always playing her damn radio when I’m trying to study, and none of the boys like me ’cause I’m too tall, five nine is too tall, it’s supposed to be study time after ten o’clock, and Miss Fitch in English says I’m not concentrating when I’m concentrating all the time, I didn’t even make the soccer team, I hate it, Daddy, I hate it!”
“Wow,” he said.
“Yeah, wow,” she said, and a smile tried hopelessly to break through the tears.
“Come on, let’s sit down,” he said. “Stop crying, you’ll wake Mom. Here,” he said, and handed her his handkerchief.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Come on, no more crying.”
“All right,” she said, sniffling, and looked at the handkerchief, and then blew her nose, and belatedly asked, “Is it all right to use this?” and laughed at her own absurdity, and began crying again.
“Darling, please...”
“Okay,” she said, “I’m sorry, Dad, forgive me,” and blew her nose again. Drying her eyes, she looked into the living room, and saw the photographs for the first time. “Aw shit,” she said, “I blew it.”
“Your nose, do you mean?”
“Yeah, sure, my nose. Aw shit, look at all this! Dad, you’ve... oh, gee, Dad. And I blew it.”
“No, you didn’t,” he said, and spread his arms wide, like a gallery owner welcoming his patrons to an opening. “But try to ignore the ladder.”
“Spoils the effect, yeah,” she said, and grinned. “Look at all this, willya? Dad, you’re only supposed to do the ones from... this is all of them. God, I think I’m going to cry again.”
“You’d better not, I’ll take them all down.”
“Oh, my God, there’s the one of me hating the whole world! Dad, how could you? And, oh... oh, Jesus, look at this one in the snowsuit! And this, oh, I love this one in the rowboat. What was I? Thirteen?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“Great big bazooms even then,” she said. “Oh, wow, look at this one! All tangled up in my skis. Is this Bromley? How old was I?”
“Stratton. You were twelve.”
“I love it! And this one! Dad, this is terrific! I don’t remember you taking this. When was it?”
“In July. At the Jacobsons’ Fourth...”
“Right, right. Oh, look, isn’t this sweet? Oh, look at this little cutie-pie. What was I? Three?”
“Three.”
“Yeah, wow. Oh, my God!” she said, and burst out laughing. “Here’s the one with the lollipop! I must’ve been some dumb kid, all right. What’d I think was on that lollipop?”
“You weren’t even two yet, honey, you were still learning.”
“Oh, Dad,” she said, her voice suddenly lowering. “Oh, God, look at... Dad, this is gorgeous. Where’d you...?”
“Down by the river, in August.”
“Where were you shooting from?”
“The deck.”
“You make me look...” She hesitated, and then said, almost in a whisper, shyly, “You make me look beautiful.”
“You are beautiful,” he said.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Do you like them, Liss? Are you pleased?”
“I love them, Dad,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“Happy birthday, darling,” he said, and took her in his arms and kissed her on the cheek.
“Seventeen,” she said.
“Seventeen,” he said.
There were supposed to be twenty-eight kids at Lissie’s party that Saturday night — two days after her actual birthday — but Scarlett Kreuger got grounded for breaking curfew the night before, and Kimmie Randolph had to go down to North Carolina with her parents for Christmas, so that made it only twenty-six. Jamie told his daughter he would miss Scarlett; each and every time she came to the house, he would greet her at the door with, “Oh, lookee heah, it’s Missy Scah-lutt, home fum Atlanta!” to which Scarlett only blinked in response, but then again nobody ever claimed Scarlett Kreuger had an ounce of brain tissue in her skull. Lissie had invited her, in fact, only because she was a very close friend of Linda Moore’s; everybody in town was saying Linda had gone down to Puerto Rico for an abortion just before Thanksgiving, and Lissie was eager to pump Scarlett about the details.
Without Scarlett and Kimmie, the party divided itself more evenly into fourteen girls and twelve boys, still a bit lopsided, but Lissie didn’t know too many boys in Rutledge. It was Rusty Klein, Lissie’s closest friend in the whole world, who’d helped her compile the “boy” side of the party list, which included only two jocks — the McGruder twins — but only because they were excellent students as well. When Lissie suggested inviting a boy named Owen Clarke, whom she’d met at the Jacobsons’ Fourth of July picnic this past summer, and who she’d thought was kind of cute, Rusty told her that Owen was smoking pot these days, and a party with him around always turned into a sleep-in, with half the boys drifting outside to light up, and then coming back in to sit around grinning like dopes.