A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [24]
Emma looked like a different child in sleep, with her mouth shut and her folded hands at her chin. Although she had unnerved me from the start, at birth, because she was so clearly her own person, I felt as time went on that I knew her, that I would always know her better than she could ever know herself. I understood her before she had a concept of herself, and that knowledge, of her habits and proclivities, I would keep like a secret cache. I had washed her day after day, moving my hands over her smooth skin dotted with little golden hairs, skin that for years hadn’t had a single mole on it. I wanted to think, despite my better judgment, that whatever befell her—marriage, divorce, childbirth, disappointment, and triumph—I would know her. She sniffled and screwed up her eyes as she slept. I touched her hair and I was so glad, so glad that it wasn’t she who had drowned. It struck me that my girls would be safe because they had statistics on their side: No more than one child per neighborhood died in a given length of time. We had sacrificed Lizzy for the safety of all the others. Emma was free of danger for now, free to go to kindergarten where she would learn to sit in a circle and cut and paste and make rude noises on her forearm. She would have the chance to go through the long, dark tunnel of public education, and graduate in a long, white gown, and go on to the college we could afford. I wondered what she’d been told about Lizzy. I tried to be quiet, but I couldn’t keep from wailing into the extra pillow on the bed.
“Grammie gave me a new bracelet.” She had half risen up, was resting her head on her fists, elbows bent, staring at me.
“That’s nice,” I whispered.
“It’s rhinestones,” she said, “what princesses wear.”
I had never cried so hard in my life, and Emma didn’t want to notice. It was as if that was how I greeted her every morning, crying. Crying because I didn’t feel I had a right to be in her room anymore, crying because I had inadvertently fouled our own nest.
The visitation and funeral took place two days after Lizzy’s death, in the evening, at the Presbyterian Church in Prairie Center. Dan loved the small town church where every Sunday he put on his black robe, came through the minister’s door to the pulpit, and took his place at the organ. He only knew how to use eight pedals but he got by. He had donated a life-size cow from the Dairy Shrine for the crèche that went on the lawn at Christmastime, which he kindly stored in his garage during the off-season.
We were eating at 4:45 when Nellie asked Howard what he was going to wear to the funeral.
He had just taken a bite of muffin, and when he said, “My navy blue sport coat,” crumbs went flying in all directions.
“Look at Daddy!” Claire squealed.
It took a full minute for Nellie to mentally roam through Howard’s wardrobe and come to the worn corduroy sport coat she had purchased for him when he was sixteen.
“You don’t mean the one you had in high school,” she said, tittering at the absurdity of the suggestion.
“Yep,” Howard said.
When she managed to close her mouth, she cleared her throat, braced both hands on the table, threw her head back, stuck her pointed chin out, and from that great height looked down upon him. “Honey,” she declared, “you cannot wear corduroy when it is one hundred degrees.” She straightened up, and with all the vigor of a sergeant strode to her room. She was back again before we could guess her order. “Go buy yourself a suit,” she said, slapping a blank check down on the table. “You ought to own one—and then you’ll have it for occasions like this.”
Were there going to be more occasions just like this? And could an exceptionally tall and slim person purchase a suit on short