backyard maple her father had split and stacked in the early ’80s on the assumption that their defunct fireplace chimney would soon be restored to working order.
Detangling the bikes from one another was like freeing a single coat hanger from a pile of coat hangers; the curled, raggedy-taped handlebars caught on the brake cables, the toothed pedals caught in the spokes. The first bike she freed was Regina’s; were Regina home to witness Mary commandeering her bike (unridden for more than a decade), Mary would never have done so, since Regina remained viciously possessive over long-neglected objects well into her so-called adulthood. The color-coded belongings of childhood (bikes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, mugs) were clung to like hard-won plastic checker pieces, forever reminding Mary that there was still a score being kept.
Mary found a bike pump and inflated the warped front wheel; she tested the arthritic brakes on the wet street, much to the evident irritation of Ye Olde Bastard, wearing a tam-o’-shanter and walking his miniature schnauzer back and forth across his lawn. She felt a momentary flush of affection for the man, his disgruntlement was so sincere and unconditional that he couldn’t even quell it for politeness’ sake, dead mother be damned. She far preferred it to the glassy courtesy of Mum’s friends and the sundry neighbors who, in the days before the funeral, had stopped by with casseroles in foil pans or tin containers of cookies. They peered into the kitchen as though she weren’t even there, perhaps hoping that her father or her sisters were nearby and might be recruited to dilute the encounter with the pretend invisible person at the door.
Mary biked past the Smiths’ house, the Harringtons’, the Ewings’, the Pooles’, dodging the icy snow remnants still condensed near the curbs and over the storm drains. She made a left on Neale Street and narrowly missed the pothole she’d hit at the age of twelve trying to turn the corner while standing on the bike pedals, arms outstretched and jerkily feathering the air. The barrette she’d been wearing at the time dug into her scalp and she’d suffered temporary amnesia, wandering the streets until a neighbor found her and drove her to the hospital. For three hours she didn’t know who she was or why she was upset, but she knew definitively that something was wrong. It was a terrible sensation, and ironically, she could remember quite viscerally this experience of non-remembering, the sensation of knowing something while not knowing it at the same time.
She passed the West Salem Cemetery, its wrought-iron gate painted a wet seal black and glinting beneath the overcast sky. Three blocks later Mary passed through the Semmering Academy brick gates, past the marble plaque with the school’s motto VOX IN DESERTO , “A Voice in the Wilderness,” the “wilderness” part always a bit of a misnomer. Yes, there used to be farmland surrounding the Gothic Revival brick structure built in 1891 by the philanthropic Semmerings, but by the time Mary attended the motto had been colloquially rephrased as VOX IN SUBURBO , the farms having been sold off by impoverished heirs to subdividers, the fields replaced by cul-de-sacs that looked from the catwalk on the academy roof like a series of asphalt crop circles. Semmering Academy had been famously endowed by the Semmerings for the purpose of “educating the savages,” of whom very few remained and those who did expressed little interest in learning French and geography; ten years later, the enrollment at three, the academy’s mission shifted slightly from educating savages to educating girls.
Mary stashed her bike by the back Dumpster. She stood in the shadow of Semmering and reflected how much it resembled a sanitarium from this vantage point, with its barred rear windows and its ominous smokestack and its sinister industrial hum. The back door opened to expel a trio of girls, their skirts longer than in
Detangling the bikes from one another was like freeing a single coat hanger from a pile of coat hangers; the curled, raggedy-taped handlebars caught on the brake cables, the toothed pedals caught in the spokes. The first bike she freed was Regina’s; were Regina home to witness Mary commandeering her bike (unridden for more than a decade), Mary would never have done so, since Regina remained viciously possessive over long-neglected objects well into her so-called adulthood. The color-coded belongings of childhood (bikes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, mugs) were clung to like hard-won plastic checker pieces, forever reminding Mary that there was still a score being kept.
Mary found a bike pump and inflated the warped front wheel; she tested the arthritic brakes on the wet street, much to the evident irritation of Ye Olde Bastard, wearing a tam-o’-shanter and walking his miniature schnauzer back and forth across his lawn. She felt a momentary flush of affection for the man, his disgruntlement was so sincere and unconditional that he couldn’t even quell it for politeness’ sake, dead mother be damned. She far preferred it to the glassy courtesy of Mum’s friends and the sundry neighbors who, in the days before the funeral, had stopped by with casseroles in foil pans or tin containers of cookies. They peered into the kitchen as though she weren’t even there, perhaps hoping that her father or her sisters were nearby and might be recruited to dilute the encounter with the pretend invisible person at the door.
Mary biked past the Smiths’ house, the Harringtons’, the Ewings’, the Pooles’, dodging the icy snow remnants still condensed near the curbs and over the storm drains. She made a left on Neale Street and narrowly missed the pothole she’d hit at the age of twelve trying to turn the corner while standing on the bike pedals, arms outstretched and jerkily feathering the air. The barrette she’d been wearing at the time dug into her scalp and she’d suffered temporary amnesia, wandering the streets until a neighbor found her and drove her to the hospital. For three hours she didn’t know who she was or why she was upset, but she knew definitively that something was wrong. It was a terrible sensation, and ironically, she could remember quite viscerally this experience of non-remembering, the sensation of knowing something while not knowing it at the same time.
She passed the West Salem Cemetery, its wrought-iron gate painted a wet seal black and glinting beneath the overcast sky. Three blocks later Mary passed through the Semmering Academy brick gates, past the marble plaque with the school’s motto VOX IN DESERTO , “A Voice in the Wilderness,” the “wilderness” part always a bit of a misnomer. Yes, there used to be farmland surrounding the Gothic Revival brick structure built in 1891 by the philanthropic Semmerings, but by the time Mary attended the motto had been colloquially rephrased as VOX IN SUBURBO , the farms having been sold off by impoverished heirs to subdividers, the fields replaced by cul-de-sacs that looked from the catwalk on the academy roof like a series of asphalt crop circles. Semmering Academy had been famously endowed by the Semmerings for the purpose of “educating the savages,” of whom very few remained and those who did expressed little interest in learning French and geography; ten years later, the enrollment at three, the academy’s mission shifted slightly from educating savages to educating girls.
Mary stashed her bike by the back Dumpster. She stood in the shadow of Semmering and reflected how much it resembled a sanitarium from this vantage point, with its barred rear windows and its ominous smokestack and its sinister industrial hum. The back door opened to expel a trio of girls, their skirts longer than in
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