numerous times, but clearly the conversation had nothing to do with her except to act as a bit of brain washing. It was more designed as one of those things to remind her dad how lucky he was to meet her when he did. She claimed to have saved him from being a street person, that she was amazed when she discovered he was prelaw. He once confessed in a fight that he was never prelaw and only said that because one of the “dirty girls” had told him that’s all it would take for him to get a date with one of the uppity girls. The promise of a career and good money was all you needed.
Then when they started dating, he did a trick a day for her. Flowers appearing out of his sleeve; Hawk materializing from his empty hat. Abby once heard her dad tell Sadie that he had a marriage founded on tricks and it changed the way she looked at everything. It is one of those things she plans to ask him about some night soon when he is near dozing at the foot of her bed. She will also ask him about a friend of his from childhood, Joanna, who owns the Dog House and sometimes works at Pine Haven. “Joanna and I were a lot like you and Richie,” he had said. “Best friends all through elementary school.” He said that she had always been a good loyal friend. True blue, he said. “And she could do everything I could do except pee standing up. A real tomboy.”
“Some would say butch.” Abby’s mother didn’t know she heard her say that, but she did. “Though she’s been married how many times? Four? Five. Clearly there’s something wrong with her. ”
When Abby outgrew regular bedtime stories, her dad started telling her about what the town used to be like. How once upon a time she might have looked out her bedroom window and seen into the cemetery because the hedge of myrtle wasn’t there and the tall pine trees were just saplings. This was before the retirement home was built on the other side of the cemetery and before the row of modest split-levels across the street from them were plowed down and replaced with gigantic brick homes with cathedral windows, enormous garages, and no yards. A mathematician had once lived in their house and her dad had found all kinds of numbers and scribbles on the wall in what had been his study but now is their guest room. Abby had the girl’s room, roses on the old wallpaper her mother fussed about for weeks, steaming and peeling every little scrap. The girl drove an old Checker cab painted dark green and last he heard was living and teaching somewhere in the Northeast.
He told how once in the cemetery there was a grave with a playhouse over it, how in 1940—almost twenty years before he was even born—the grief-stricken parents had the ten-year-old’s playhouse moved there, the grave within looking like a little bed, the grave of the baby they had lost in the early 1930s there beside her. And he promised to take her there and show it to her, which he did. The playhouse rotted and fell down years ago, but he could find the grave, and he also showed her the statue of Lydia, a beautiful young woman who was rumored to try to hold on to you if you sat on her stone rose-petal-covered lap. And now Abby goes there every day and speaks to them all by name. When her dad was a child there was a grown-up-sized rocking chair inside the playhouse and he and Joanna had thought that maybe the chair was for the father to come and sit at night so he could cry there by the graves of his children without anyone seeing him. They always hoped they might see him there or hear the rocker. It chills Abby to think about that, especially as she is passing down the path where the playhouse used to be.
She isn’t supposed to play in the cemetery. Her mother freaks out and says that’s where people go to do drugs and homeless people sleep. One woman’s purse got stolen out of her car while she was putting flowers on her husband’s grave. Those things may be true, but Abby hasn’t seen anything scary. She had been
Then when they started dating, he did a trick a day for her. Flowers appearing out of his sleeve; Hawk materializing from his empty hat. Abby once heard her dad tell Sadie that he had a marriage founded on tricks and it changed the way she looked at everything. It is one of those things she plans to ask him about some night soon when he is near dozing at the foot of her bed. She will also ask him about a friend of his from childhood, Joanna, who owns the Dog House and sometimes works at Pine Haven. “Joanna and I were a lot like you and Richie,” he had said. “Best friends all through elementary school.” He said that she had always been a good loyal friend. True blue, he said. “And she could do everything I could do except pee standing up. A real tomboy.”
“Some would say butch.” Abby’s mother didn’t know she heard her say that, but she did. “Though she’s been married how many times? Four? Five. Clearly there’s something wrong with her. ”
When Abby outgrew regular bedtime stories, her dad started telling her about what the town used to be like. How once upon a time she might have looked out her bedroom window and seen into the cemetery because the hedge of myrtle wasn’t there and the tall pine trees were just saplings. This was before the retirement home was built on the other side of the cemetery and before the row of modest split-levels across the street from them were plowed down and replaced with gigantic brick homes with cathedral windows, enormous garages, and no yards. A mathematician had once lived in their house and her dad had found all kinds of numbers and scribbles on the wall in what had been his study but now is their guest room. Abby had the girl’s room, roses on the old wallpaper her mother fussed about for weeks, steaming and peeling every little scrap. The girl drove an old Checker cab painted dark green and last he heard was living and teaching somewhere in the Northeast.
He told how once in the cemetery there was a grave with a playhouse over it, how in 1940—almost twenty years before he was even born—the grief-stricken parents had the ten-year-old’s playhouse moved there, the grave within looking like a little bed, the grave of the baby they had lost in the early 1930s there beside her. And he promised to take her there and show it to her, which he did. The playhouse rotted and fell down years ago, but he could find the grave, and he also showed her the statue of Lydia, a beautiful young woman who was rumored to try to hold on to you if you sat on her stone rose-petal-covered lap. And now Abby goes there every day and speaks to them all by name. When her dad was a child there was a grown-up-sized rocking chair inside the playhouse and he and Joanna had thought that maybe the chair was for the father to come and sit at night so he could cry there by the graves of his children without anyone seeing him. They always hoped they might see him there or hear the rocker. It chills Abby to think about that, especially as she is passing down the path where the playhouse used to be.
She isn’t supposed to play in the cemetery. Her mother freaks out and says that’s where people go to do drugs and homeless people sleep. One woman’s purse got stolen out of her car while she was putting flowers on her husband’s grave. Those things may be true, but Abby hasn’t seen anything scary. She had been
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