My sisters, my self, Jenny thought. I love you as myself. What could she do to protect them from this unspeakable reality? And herself?
Flora began a chanting poem. “‘My love came up from Barnegat with thunder in his eyes, my love came up from Barnegat telling terrible lies …’”
“No, no,” Eva objected. “No poetry, please.”
“Let’s sing,” Jenny said, “let’s sing,” and in a quavering whisper began, “‘Good night, Irene, good night, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams …’”
“Too tame,” Flora said, interrupting in her strong, true voice. “‘And when the saints go marching in, and when the saints go marching in …’”
“Isn’t it ‘come marching in’?” Naomi corrected, and joined Flora, her voice strengthening with each note.
Eva’s addition was more of a croak, but she clapped her hands and swung her feet as if she were marching. And when Jenny threw her voice into the mix, Flora took off on a harmonizing riff, banging the flat of her hand against the wooden bench, keeping the beat strong for the others.
Still singing, Jenny turned to peer out the front window through a little aperture in the partition. They were approaching the Fontainebleau. Above them the huge trompe l’oeil loomed and beckoned, a Fontainebleau where nothing ever changed, where they would live forever in splendid rooms, elegantly dressed, hair done, nails polished on hands and feet, wrapped in music, surrounded by boutiques, coffee shops, restaurants, bars, in an Eden of benign ocean and wide beach, outdoor pool and indoor gym, of gardens in lush bloom, and overarching all, the unchanging brilliant blue sky. If only the awful vehicle could rise, effortlessly sail upward and deposit them all in the perfection of the painted Fontainebleau: a trick of the eye magically transforming the sisters’ shared, searching, stumbling steps into a triumphant escape from the real horrors to come. But the van, grounded to the pavement, steadily took the curve that would carry them to Eva and Naomi’s final home, and in time, Flora’s, and in one way or another, Jenny’s too.
Acknowledgments
FOR THEIR HELP, I want to thank my friends Doris Grumbach and Vivian Gornick; my agents, Frances Goldin and Sydelle Kramer; my publishers, Cecile Engel and Lori Milken; and my editor, Joy Johannessen, for her meticulous care of the text.