ceiling.
I called to her, but very softly. “Laura?”
She looked at me directly, her body still motionless, except for the way her fingers slowly curled around the blue paper, as if to conceal it.
“What do you want, Stevie?” she asked stiffly.
“Dad wants you,” I told her.
She drew her hands behind her, the blue note disappearing behind her back. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute,” she said. “I have to clean up this mess.”
I did as she told me, and for a while my father seemed satisfied that Laura was on her way. But later, with his typical impatience, he finally headed up the stairs and out to the garage. I followed behind him, a dog at his heels.
Laura was still in the same corner as we entered the garage, the same blue paper in her hand. She tried to hide it again, which surprised me, since I’d never before seen her try to conceal anything from my father.
His eyes fixed on the paper. “What is that?” he asked.
Laura didn’t answer.
My father walked through the dusky light and drew the paper from Laura’s fingers.
From my place at the front of the garage, I watched as he read it. When he’d finished, he turned to me.
“Go play, Stevie,” he said.
I was in the backyard a few minutes later when the two of them came out of the garage. Laura was nestled beneath my father’s arm, and they were walking slowly toward the house.
My mother came home a short time later. She’d been grocery shopping, I remember, and as she headed up the stairs, her arms around an enormous brown bag, my father stepped out of the house, took the bag from her, and returned it to the car. Then he motioned for her to follow him and the two of them walked past me and over to the very edge of the yard. I was too far away from them to make out any of what they said, but I remember having the distinct feeling that they were talking about the blue papers Laura had found in the garage.
After a while they walked back toward the house. They were still talking, and as they passed, I heard my mother say, “You told her not to …” She didn’t finish, because Jamie suddenly came rushing around the corner of the house. At the sight of him, both my father and my mother froze, each of them staring at him with such frightened, startled looks that I had sensed even then that the blue papers, and everything that had happened since I’d seen Laura reading them, had had something to do with Jamie.
During the next few days, however, the entire incident slipped from my mind. Everything returned to its normal pattern, except that my mother seemed even more subdued. There were times, forever after that, when she seemed to flee from any notion of command. Steadily over the next few years, she became more vaporous, slowly giving up the prerogatives of wife and mother so that in the end she seemed more like some distant relative we’d saved from poverty or shame, one who lived with us but had no standing among us, no office or authority, incontestably by then the “poor Dottie” of my aunt’s unforgiving judgment.
But for the rest of us, nothing seemed to change, and as I sat at my desk that morning, remembering the blue papers, it struck me that I wouldn’t have remembered it at all if something else hadn’t happened, something which I always believed was connected in some way to what had been written in them.
It was about three months later. My father had recently put a redwood picnic table under the large maple tree that stood beside the rear fence, and Laura and I had begun meeting there to play Monopoly or checkers or some other game. That particular day, Laura had begun to teach me chess. Slowly, with infinite patience, she introduced me to each piece. I had only played checkers before, and it was not easy for me to get a grip on this much more complicated game.
We’d been at it for nearly an hour before Jamie strode across the backyard and sat himself down on the bench beside me.
Laura hardly registered his presence. Instead, she continued to concentrate on teaching me the game. Jamie watched sullenly while she did it, as if evaluating each word my sister spoke, each gesture she made, second- guessing and inwardly ridiculing her, at times even smiling snidely when she got something slightly wrong or out of order and had to correct herself.
As the minutes passed, I could feel the air heating up and turning sour around us. It was as if the peaceful little island that Laura and I created when we were together had been invaded by a poisonous wind.
Finally, the storm broke.
“You’re doing it all wrong, Laura,” Jamie snapped. “It’s stupid the way you’re teaching him.”
Laura didn’t so much as look at him. She picked up the knight, and began to explain its move.
“You’re going to screw it up, as usual,” Jamie barked.
Laura’s eyes shot over to him. “You’re not supposed to talk like that in front of Stevie.”
“I’m trying to keep him from being a loser, Laura,” Jamie fired back. “The way you’re teaching him this game, he’ll play it like a sissy.”
Laura’s eyes narrowed lethally. “Nobody asked you, anyway, Jamie,” she hissed angrily. “Nobody asked you to come over here and bother us.”
Jamie leaned toward her threateningly. “I don’t have to be asked,” he said. “It’s my yard, too, you know.”
For a flaming instant, Laura glared at him with a terrible ferocity. Then she turned her attention back to the game, but not before muttering a single, indecipherable phrase. “Sort of,” she said.
It had been said under her breath, but loud enough for us to hear it.
“What did you say?” Jamie demanded.
