The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [12]
Her mother’s boss dropped her off at seven o’clock. She was cheerful, sunburned. “God, I’ve been freezing to death in just that damn sweater,” she said, tossing her clothes on the bed and heading for the bathroom.
Phoebe perched on the toilet seat, yelling back and forth to her mother while she showered. The delicate scent of her soap rose with the steam, and Phoebe was so relieved she was back. Fog had surrounded their house, browsing coldly at the windows. She lowered the shades.
Her mother pulled on a sweatsuit and they went downstairs to make a cheese soufflé. Phoebe tore the lettuce leaves. She’d never really learned to cook, but was a good assistant.
Taking turns, they beat the egg whites in a hammered copper bowl while a Brahms piano concerto roiled through the house. Phoebe noticed a gold serpentine chain on her mother’s wrist. “Were you wearing that before?” she asked.
Her mother paused, holding the whisk. “Isn’t this something?” she said. “It was sitting on my desk, all wrapped.”
“Jack?” Phoebe said, incredulous. The only birthdays her mother’s boss remembered were the ones she reminded him of.
“I know. I almost fell over.”
“Did he—I mean, did he watch you open it?”
“No, he disappeared. I think he was embarrassed.”
“Maybe it wasn’t from him.”
“No, it was. I mean, I thanked him. It’s nice, don’t you think?”
After dinner they carried bowls of Häagen-Dazs upstairs to her mother’s giant bed. A rerun of The Rockford Files was on. True to form, Jim Rockford fell in love with the woman he was trying to protect and his old dad was threatened by thugs outside the silver trailer. Phoebe fought sleep but finally gave in.
Her mother woke her. “You’re pooped,” she said. “Go to bed.”
“Wait, I want to see the end,” Phoebe muttered, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. She searched the screen for Rockford.
“The show’s all over, sweetheart,” her mother said. “This is just news. It ended while you were sleeping.”
three
While Phoebe’s father was painting her sister, Faith, Phoebe would bang objects sometimes to try to catch his attention, or rustle leaves if they were outside. Her father looked, but only for a second.
She tried disappearing, wobbling into the bushes in her bare feet or hiding up in her room, waiting for someone to call, but no one did.
Finally, in frustration, she went back to them. Faith reached for Phoebe without even moving her head—she was good at sitting for paintings. Phoebe slumped against her sister and, out of nowhere, she was happy. Their father grinned. “You’ve been ignoring us, squirrel,” he said.
Afterward Phoebe would run to look at the canvas, thinking she might be in the picture, too, but there was only Faith. And sometimes not even Faith was fully visible, just a hint of her face, a shadow or else nothing at all. But even then Phoebe saw her sister hidden among the trees or windows or abstract designs, like a secret. She was always there.
“It’s a gesture,” their father said, “an expression you make with your body.”
Diving lessons. A gigantic turquoise swimming pool, water syrupy-looking in the thick summer light. Three boards, the highest a virtual skyscraper attempted only by the seasoned teenaged divers, doglike boys with short legs and long tapered torsos, girls whose slender bodies curved toward the water like birds diving for fish, entering it with so tiny a splash that they left an impression not so much of having dived as of having ascended.
“Sure you’re scared,” their father said. “Don’t fight it, that’s the trick. Walk into your fear. Let everything go and you’ll get it all