Even with her eyes closed for the benediction, Hildy can still see Jenny Rose. Jenny Rose's eyes remain open, her hands are cupped and expectant: her leg trembles against Hildy's leg. Or maybe it is Hildy's leg that trembles, beneath the weight of her mother's voice, her father's terrible, pleading smile. For a moment she longs to be as invisible as Jenny Rose, to be such a traveler.
When the mail comes on Monday, there is a letter from Jenny Rose's parents. Hildy extracts the letter from the pile. Myron watches, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He is not happy about being in the same house as Jenny Rose.
All weekend Myron has been practicing two short phrases, with the aid of one of the original letters. Hildy steams open the letter over the teakettle, while Myron watches. The light in Hildy's bedroom flicks on, flicks off, flicks on again. Hildy can feel it pulling at her: for a moment, she feels as if she were tumbling down the spout, falling into the kettle. She might drown in the kettle water. It's that deep. She's gotten too small. She shakes her head, takes a breath.
They take the letter down to the basement, and sit under the Ping-Pong table while Hildy quickly scans it. Myron, who has gone to the trouble of collecting an assortment of pens, adds a postscript in black ballpoint. We miss you so much, darling Jenny. Please, please come home.
"It doesn't match," Myron says, handing the letter to Hildy. She folds it back into the envelope and glues the envelope shut again. It really doesn't matter: Jenny Rose is ready to go. Hildy realizes that she wasn't worried Jenny Rose would recognize her handwriting, it wasn't because of that – Hildy just wants a witness, someone who will see what she has done, what Jenny Rose will do.
"I saw your father," Myron says. "He was at my house last night."
"He's out of town," Hildy says. "He went to a conference."
"He stayed all night long," Myron says. "I know because when I went to school this morning, he was hiding. In my mother's bedroom."
"You're such a liar," Hildy says. "My father is in Wisconsin. He called us from the hotel. How do you think he got from Wisconsin to your house? Do you think he flew?"
"You think Jenny Rose can fly," Myron says. His face is very red.
"Get out of my house," Hildy says. Her hand floats at her side, longing to slap him.
"I think you're nuts," Myron says. "Just like her." And he leaves. His back is stiff with outrage.
Hildy rocks back and forth, sitting under the Ping-Pong table. She holds the letter in her hand as if it were a knife. She thinks about Jenny Rose, and what is going to happen.
Hildy is theatrical enough to want a bang at the end of all her labors. She wants to see Jenny Rose restored to herself. Hildy wants to see the mythical being that she is sure her cousin contains, like a water glass holding a whole ocean. She wants to see Jenny Rose's eyes flash, hear her voice boom, see her fly up the chimney and disappear like smoke. After all, she owes Hildy something, Hildy who generously divided her room in half, Hildy who has arranged for Jenny Rose to go home.
No one is in the house now. James, two months away from his birthday, has gone to register for the draft. Her father is still in Wisconsin (Myron is such a liar!), and her mother is at the church. So after a while, Hildy brings the letter to Jenny Rose, gives it to her cousin, who is lying on her bed.
Hildy sits on her own bed and waits while Jenny Rose opens the letter. At first it seems that Hildy has miscalculated, that the post-script is not enough. Jenny Rose sits, her head bent over the letter. She doesn't move or exclaim or do anything. Jenny Rose just sits and looks down at the letter in her lap.
Then Hildy sees how tightly Jenny Rose holds the letter. Jenny Rose looks up, and her face is beautiful with joy. Her eyes are green and hot. All around Jenny Rose the air is hot and bright. Hildy inhales the air, the buzzing rain and rusted metal smell of her cousin.
Jenny Rose stands up. The air seems to wrap around her like a garment. It sounds like swarms and swarms of invisible bees. Hildy's hair raises on her scalp. All around them, drawers and cabinets dump their contents on the floor, while T-shirts whoosh up, slapping sleeves against the ceiling. Schoolbooks open and flap around the room like bats, and one by one the three oranges lift out of the blue bowl on the bedside table. They roll through the air, faster and faster, circling around Jenny Rose on her bed. Hildy ducks as tubes of lipstick knock open the bureau drawer, and dart towards her like little chrome-and-tangerine-, flamingo-and-ebony-colored bees. Everything is buzzing, humming, the room is full of bees.
And then -
"I'm making a mess," Jenny Rose says. She tears the stamp from the envelope, gives it to Hildy. Only their two hands touch, but Hildy falls back on the bed – as if she has stuck her fingers into an electrical outlet – she flies backwards onto her bed.
Jenny Rose walks into the bathroom, and Hildy can see the bathtub full of water, the silly little boat (is that what she wanted?), the green water spilling over the lip of the tub and rushing over Jenny Rose's feet. Be careful! Hildy thinks. The door slams shut. As Hildy catches her breath, the air in the room becomes thin, and her ears pop. The magic trick is over, the bathroom is empty: Jenny Rose has gone home. Hildy bursts into tears, sits on her bed and waits for her mother to come home. After a while, she begins to pick up her room.
This is the first and most mysterious of three vanishings. No one but Hildy seems to notice that Jenny Rose is gone. A few months later, James goes to Canada. He is dodging the draft. He tells no one he is going, and Hildy finds the brief, impersonal note. He is failing his senior classes, he is afraid, he loves them but they can't help him. Please take care of his fish.
When Mr. Harmon moves out of the house, Hildy has resigned herself to this, that life is a series of sudden disappearances, leavetakings without the proper good-byes. Someday she too might vanish. Some days she looks forward to learning this trick.
What sustains her is the thought of the better place in which one arrives. This is the R.M.'s heaven; the Canada that James has escaped to; it is in the arms of Mercy Orzibal with her bright, glossy mouth, who tells Mr. Harmon how witty, how charming, how handsome he is. It is the green lake in the photograph Jenny Rose has sent Hildy from the island of Flores.
In the photograph Jenny Rose sits between her mother and father, in a funny little white boat with a painted red eye. On the back of the photograph is an enigmatic sentence. There is a smudge that could be a question mark; the punctuation is uncertain. Wish you were here.
Wish you were here?
SURVIVOR'S BALL, OR, THE DONNER PARTY
1. Travel.
They had been traveling together for three days in Jasper's rented car when they came to the dark mouth of the tunnel into Milford Sound. Serena was telling Jasper something very important. What did Jasper know about Serena after three days? That she didn't wear underwear. That she was allergic to bees. That she liked to talk. (She said the strangest things.) That she was from Pittsburgh. Listening to her voice made him feel less homesick.
Jasper was driving on the wrong side of the road, in a place where water spun down the wrong way in the drain, on a continent that was on what he thought of as the upside-down part of the globe, where they celebrated Christmas on the beach and it snowed in the summer, which was the winter. A girl from Pittsburgh was a good thing, like an anchor. Every homesick traveler should have one.