Stiltsville: A Novel - By Susanna Daniel Page 0,72

an empty bed, but I was wrong: Margo was sleeping heavily with an arm across her forehead. She’d done more packing after getting home: there was a row of three suitcases just inside the room, facing the door like eager dogs waiting for it to open.

Dennis woke Margo early the next morning, and after an hour they departed with only a large tote of food and a change of clothes each. I went through the house straightening up, and in Margo’s room I made the bed—she would not sleep there again before we left—and cleaned her little bathroom. I took her suitcases to the car, then returned for two boxes of books she’d packed up that morning. I stood a long time in her closet, then spotted four shoeboxes on the highest shelf: all were filled with paper confetti, which Dennis and Margo and I had made when Margo was fourteen. Dennis had come home with half a dozen reams of multicolored office paper his firm was going to throw out—I have no idea why; perhaps it had been ordered mistakenly—and Margo had decided that instead of wasting it we should make confetti, which one day we would use to celebrate something. The next day, Dennis had brought home three-hole-punch gizmos, and after dinner every night that week we’d sat at the breakfast table and made confetti. One shoebox was filled with pastel pink and green confetti, another with yellow and orange, another with baby blue and red, and another with all the colors, which Margo had called tutti-frutti. When I removed the lids from the boxes, several pieces floated up and onto Margo’s bedspread. I got a large freezer bag and filled it with the tutti-frutti, then returned the boxes to their shelf and swept up the leftover confetti with my hand.

Later I drove to the department store and bought Margo a red bathrobe and matching slippers. I was struck with a momentary sense of regret that I had not thought of this earlier, so I might have had the bathrobe monogrammed. I added matching towels and left, having spent more than I should have. On the way home, I stopped at a sporting goods store in South Miami and looked at tennis rackets. I didn’t care about the aluminum or the lighter weight, but it seemed to me that an oversize head was a wonderful idea. A salesman told me it improved play by enlarging the so-called sweet spot. I left with only a can of tennis balls and that evening, after leaving the new bathrobe and slippers on Margo’s bed, I popped open the can, letting loose a cloud of thick canned air that smelled of spray paint and rubber, and I took my old wooden racket outside to hit against the garage door. It was a clear, quiet evening. Fireflies darted around the gardenias in the side yard, and the air smelled of key limes and barbecue. The next-door neighbors waved as they went out, and then the street was empty. I aimed for the flat parts of the garage door and tried to avoid the beveled paneling, which skewed the ball in the wrong direction and sent me running after it. After a while I managed to hit many more than I missed. I was sweating and felt a blister starting to form on my palm. I kept it up until the ball was difficult to discern in the blue evening, and when I stepped up onto the porch I was surprised to find myself winded and my legs aching a little, as they did after Dennis and I swam laps around the stilt house.

I was early for the first practice. I asked in the pro shop and was directed to a court on the far end of the property. Jack stood at the baseline, serving one ball after another over the net. Each hit the opposite fence with a heavy thud. I stood watching his form—the light toss, the full range of his swing, the powerful follow-through. His legs were long and thick. If I’d been trying to receive those serves, I thought, they would have knocked the racket right out of my hand.

I stood on the sideline, under a gazebo between the courts, until he noticed me. “Frances, right?” he said. He motioned to my racket in my hand. “That’s a relic.”

I smiled and nodded, a little flattered that he had remembered my name. A man and two women—twins—came through the gate onto