from laughing. It was after midnight when Thalia sat up straight and said, “Do you remember the Resurrection Snail?”
“I don’t think so,” Laurel said.
“He’s a Gray family legend. You were little, though, maybe five or six. We were playing hospital, and I was going to do surgery on that doll you loved, Pink Baby. We went out to the garage to get something out of Daddy’s toolbox. Maybe a screwdriver?”
“No,” Laurel said. It was coming back. She pointed an accusing finger at Thalia. “You wanted the drill!”
“Lucky for Pink Baby, that big-ass snail was by the workbench to distract me. I almost stepped on him.”
He’d been a huge fellow, larger than a silver dollar, making his slow way toward the door that led to their backyard. Thalia had pressed her cheek to the sealed concrete, her butt poking up, her arms draped flat at her sides, trying to mimic the way he moved forward, the upside of him sailing smoothly while his belly undulated.
Daddy had left a hammer sitting out by his workbench, and Laurel had picked it up.
“You held it over him,” Thalia said, her fingers curling around an invisible handle as she made an instant shift. She was five-year-old Laurel, her head tilted, innocent of bad intentions, running a curious finger over a shell that felt invincible. Then she was Thalia again, intoning, “The tool of Damacles,” with such high drama that Laurel burst out laughing again.
“The poor snail,” Laurel said, wiping at her eyes.
Laurel had let the hammer tip and fall forward, no force behind it except its own weight. It seemed unlikely she would do more than shiver his fine edifice, but there was a crunching sound when the hammer landed like a foot on the gravel driveway. When Laurel had lifted it, the snail’s cream and brown swirled house had mashed into a flat sliced pie. His middle had become a jelly filling, oozing up between the slivers, though his head had still been plump and his ball-tipped feelers had waved and quested, suddenly frantic.
“Holy crap, the weeping,” said Thalia, unfolding from her mashed-snail pose. “‘Unbreak it, unbreak it,’ you said. You ran to our room and flung yourself onto your bed. Mother came down on me like the very wrath of God, sure I’d done him in myself to make you sorrowful.”
“Poor Thalia,” Laurel managed to sputter out. “Although I’m sure you’d done something that day to earn a little wrath of God.” Mother had appeared by Laurel’s bed to pet her sweat-damp hair and tell her to stop crying. “Mother said that you had put that snail right back together again.”
“With Super Glue. That was my idea,” Thalia said, inclining her head graciously to an imaginary audience.
“That’s right! She read the package to me, about how it could fix anything. She made it sound magic,” Laurel said. “So I went to look, and it was like magic. He was gone, and there was a trail, like a greasy slug trail, all the way from the workbench to the door.”
“Vaseline. Mother gave me two bucks to design the set and sell the story. Lazarus, take up thy shell!” Thalia reached for the cabernet.
Laurel covered the mouth of her glass with one hand and then stood up, unsteady. They were halfway through the second bottle, and her eyes felt grainy, as if they’d been salted. Outside the glass doors, lightning split the humid air, but the storm was still too far off for them to hear thunder.
“None for me. That was perfect, but I’m done, done, baked through.”
Thalia stood and bowed extravagantly, flourishing her arm, putting one leg behind her and then bending deep at the knee. At the bottom of the bow, she nearly lost her balance, which sent Laurel into a fit of fresh giggles. She trailed up the stairs to her room. In her mild wine glaze, she tumbled into bed without putting the chain on the bedroom door, and her dreams came bright and fast. She heard calliope music and saw a boy with hair like wheat running with her childhood dog, Miss Sugar.
The storm drew closer, and by three A.M., Laurel was up again, barefoot, naked under her sheer blue nightie. She came down the stairs with David’s Swiss army knife in one hand, the screwdriver attachment extended.
Thalia was reading on the sofa. She took less sleep than a cat and had trouble getting settled to do what little she liked, especially away from Gary.
“Tigers in the deer garden. We