thing on this earth she couldn’t fully be in charge of. She was a piece of work, your mother. She was fantastic. I never knew anybody people loved so much, but my God she was a bossy so-and-so.”
I was partly shocked when my father said all this—as much by his vehemence, too, the sight of him in love, his eyes alight in their pouches, a fleck of glistening spittle on his lips—and partly also full of wonder, because I thought for the first time that it was natural, and clear, that each of us would have a different story of who Bella Eldridge was and of how it had been. It stood to reason. Sirena and I, too, would have different accounts of our shared year, and that hers wouldn’t match mine—well, that wouldn’t invalidate mine, just as my father’s picture of my mother didn’t invalidate my picture. Somehow, briefly, on that day after Being Edie, this all seemed just about believable.
I got my dad home in good time and picked him up a six-pack and a jumbo bag of extra-cheese Doritos on the way. My mother would never have allowed him those things, it was true, and my dad in his resumed bachelorhood took freedoms that I could tell excited him, as if he were a small boy getting away with something.
I’d decided not to go to the studio all weekend, which made me realize how much a reflex it had become. After I dropped off my father, I headed home over the BU bridge as if to Somerville, and realized only at Central Square what I’d done. I was almost sure Sirena would be working that afternoon, but I didn’t go to find out. If she wanted my help, she could ask for it. I went home, I went for a run, I had a shower. I’d told myself I’d read a book, but I didn’t feel like it. It seemed depressing to turn on the TV. I e-mailed a few people but tired of that, too. I called Didi but they were out and her cell was off.
Finally, in the early evening, I called Sirena: I left her a message, as professional as I could make it, confirming the date and time for the Appleton third-grade field trip. There were permission slips to get signed, I reminded her. We had to plan ahead. I made scrambled eggs on toast and went to bed at eight thirty, terribly hungry but not for food. So much for my state of repletion.
Sirena didn’t return my call. I didn’t know why, but I wasn’t going to humiliate myself by asking. I held out almost a week, with every kind of crazy story in my head to explain her silence. On Thursday night, I caved. I waited till late, well after nine, before I went over to the studio. I told myself this had nothing to do with her at all, that this was about Edie and Alice and my need to get back to work on them. I’d left the Polaroids on my table, and I’d only really remembered them that day. I knew it was too late—I knew Sirena well enough to know that even if they were facedown, especially if they were facedown, she would have looked at them, scrutinized them, had opinions. I was ashamed to think of it. Maybe her silence was caused by her contempt for the photos—me, blurry in my bra; me, wild-eyed, taking pictures of myself in something like fancy dress; me, preposterous, and preposterously, inappropriately, unhumble …
Fun House Nora, the Woman Upstairs, we like her because she’s so thoughtful of others. Because she isn’t stuck up.
Which one is Nora? I can’t quite picture her …
You know, that nice third-grade teacher—not the one with the cotton-candy hair, the other one.
That’s who I’m supposed to be, the other one: “No, not the really great artist in that studio—the other one.”
“Not the beautiful woman in the knockout dress—the other one.”
“The funny one?”
“Oh yeah, I guess she’s that. The funny one.”
Sirena might think the Edie Polaroids were funny. She might think they were some sort of joke. That would be okay, if they were a joke.
So on Thursday night, I went over to see about my rooms, about my artists, to look over the photographs I’d made. I went to retrieve them, a salvage operation if you will. Unavowedly, I went to see what she’d done during the week, what progress she’d made without me. I went