suppose that was bad of me, and proved I was stuck on myself or something, but I couldn’t help it, the pictures with me in them were just more interesting. Every stage of my life was there, snapped by the camera and stamped on a glossy piece of paper, and it made me feel safe to see myself at three, standing with Donald in front of the house in our matching cowboy and cowgirl outfits, or standing on a chair in front of the kitchen counter, mixing a birthday cake for Mother. The pictures reminded me that I was real; that I always had been real and always would be real, and that I wasn’t just some girl someone had made up.
Whenever I started feeling crazy, I’d crawl under the eaves and take out the pictures and look at myself, sitting on the couch holding Ruthie in my arms as if she were a new toy. I looked so pleased and happy and proud of my baby sister, how could it be that I was evil and made her so crazy she thought she was a bird? There was nothing evil in any of the photographs, not one of them, and I thought that if I were truly a demon it would certainly show; in at least one photo there would be a hint of horns sprouting from my head or a black X outlined on my forehead or something. But instead of looking evil, I looked kind of sweet, and that was comforting, if surprising.
The only pictures I wouldn’t look at were my baby pictures. Once I found one that had “Peggy, 15 months” written on the back and it upset me so much I tore it in a zillion pieces and flushed it down the toilet. They used to try to call me Peggy, but I wouldn’t let them. “My name is Maggie,” I told them and I had a fit if anyone called me anything else. I didn’t even like it that Daddy called me Boo and I was completely insulted when he came up with the candy bars for us and he named Donald’s Donniebar and Ruthie’s Ruthette and mine he called Boobar. “Boobar the elephant,” the kids at school teased, but luckily I wasn’t fat, so I didn’t take it to heart.
Mother’s scrapbook was in the box with the photos, with all the clippings from when she was a singer. She could have been a star. She’d sung with a big band in Detroit, Jimmy B and his Trumpets Three, and there was even a poster with a drawing of Mother looking young and sultry. She looked like me, only pretty. She was good: “Jimmy B’s new songbird, Marion MacPherson, is the sweetest-sounding lark to fly into the Motor City,” one of the clips said, but she gave it all up when Grandmother got sick and Mother had to come back to North Bay to take care of her.
Sick, my foot. Grandmother was only sick when it suited her and I think she just faked it, just to make sure Mother didn’t get a life of her own. I think Grandmother was jealous; she couldn’t bear the idea of anyone being better than her and she wanted to make sure Mother didn’t fly too high.
And it wasn’t just Mother. Grandmother couldn’t stand it if anyone escaped from North Bay and went on to something in the Big World. I think she was even secretly glad when Miss Nolan came back, with that white blob of rubber sitting in the middle of her face, as if somebody had hit her with half a deviled egg. Grandmother blamed Miss Nolan’s nose on her dreams—she’d wanted to be a professional golfer and had spent every day, summer in North Bay and winter in Florida, playing golf. “Getting her nose fried instead of doing something useful,” Grandmother said. “She wanted to be Somebody and look what happened to her.”
Mother thought Miss Nolan could have made it if it hadn’t been for the cancer that ate up her nose. She’d got as far as the LPGA tournament in 1952 and came in eleventh, shooting 318 for 72 holes. “I can do that,” Daddy teased her, “in only nine holes.”
She had given up her life to golf, single-mindedly pursuing her dream, turning down the suitors who chased after her and the chances to be, as Grandmother said, what she was supposed to be, not what she wanted to
Whenever I started feeling crazy, I’d crawl under the eaves and take out the pictures and look at myself, sitting on the couch holding Ruthie in my arms as if she were a new toy. I looked so pleased and happy and proud of my baby sister, how could it be that I was evil and made her so crazy she thought she was a bird? There was nothing evil in any of the photographs, not one of them, and I thought that if I were truly a demon it would certainly show; in at least one photo there would be a hint of horns sprouting from my head or a black X outlined on my forehead or something. But instead of looking evil, I looked kind of sweet, and that was comforting, if surprising.
The only pictures I wouldn’t look at were my baby pictures. Once I found one that had “Peggy, 15 months” written on the back and it upset me so much I tore it in a zillion pieces and flushed it down the toilet. They used to try to call me Peggy, but I wouldn’t let them. “My name is Maggie,” I told them and I had a fit if anyone called me anything else. I didn’t even like it that Daddy called me Boo and I was completely insulted when he came up with the candy bars for us and he named Donald’s Donniebar and Ruthie’s Ruthette and mine he called Boobar. “Boobar the elephant,” the kids at school teased, but luckily I wasn’t fat, so I didn’t take it to heart.
Mother’s scrapbook was in the box with the photos, with all the clippings from when she was a singer. She could have been a star. She’d sung with a big band in Detroit, Jimmy B and his Trumpets Three, and there was even a poster with a drawing of Mother looking young and sultry. She looked like me, only pretty. She was good: “Jimmy B’s new songbird, Marion MacPherson, is the sweetest-sounding lark to fly into the Motor City,” one of the clips said, but she gave it all up when Grandmother got sick and Mother had to come back to North Bay to take care of her.
Sick, my foot. Grandmother was only sick when it suited her and I think she just faked it, just to make sure Mother didn’t get a life of her own. I think Grandmother was jealous; she couldn’t bear the idea of anyone being better than her and she wanted to make sure Mother didn’t fly too high.
And it wasn’t just Mother. Grandmother couldn’t stand it if anyone escaped from North Bay and went on to something in the Big World. I think she was even secretly glad when Miss Nolan came back, with that white blob of rubber sitting in the middle of her face, as if somebody had hit her with half a deviled egg. Grandmother blamed Miss Nolan’s nose on her dreams—she’d wanted to be a professional golfer and had spent every day, summer in North Bay and winter in Florida, playing golf. “Getting her nose fried instead of doing something useful,” Grandmother said. “She wanted to be Somebody and look what happened to her.”
Mother thought Miss Nolan could have made it if it hadn’t been for the cancer that ate up her nose. She’d got as far as the LPGA tournament in 1952 and came in eleventh, shooting 318 for 72 holes. “I can do that,” Daddy teased her, “in only nine holes.”
She had given up her life to golf, single-mindedly pursuing her dream, turning down the suitors who chased after her and the chances to be, as Grandmother said, what she was supposed to be, not what she wanted to
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