Her own garden is simple and halfhearted, which is just the way she likes it. There is a hedge of listless lilacs, some dog-woods, and a small vegetable patch where only yellow tomatoes and a few spindly cucumbers ever grow. The cucumber seedlings seem dusty from the heat on this last afternoon in June. It is so great to have the summers off. It’s worth everything she has to put up with over at the high school, where you have to always keep a smile on your face. Ed Borelli, the vice principal and Sally’s immediate superior, has suggested that everyone who works in the office have a grin surgically applied in order to be ready when parents come in and complain. Niceness counts, Ed Borelli reminds the secretaries on awful days, when unruly students are being suspended and meetings overlap and the school board threatens to extend the school year due to snow days. But false cheer is draining, and if you pretend long enough there’s always the possibility that you’ll become an automaton. By the end of the school term, Sally usually finds herself saying “Mr. Borelli will be right with you” in her sleep. That’s when she starts to count the days until summer; that’s when she just can’t wait for the last bell to ring.
Since the semester ended twenty-four hours earlier, Sally should be feeling great, but she’s not. All she can make out is the throbbing of her own pulse and the beat of the radio blaring in Antonia’s bedroom upstairs. Something is not right. It’s nothing apparent, nothing that will come up and smack you in the face; it’s less like a hole in a sweater than a frayed hem that has unraveled into a puddle of thread. The air in the house feels charged, so that the hair on the back of Sally’s neck stands up, and her white shirt gives off little sparks.
All afternoon, Sally finds she’s waiting for disaster. She tells herself to snap out of it; she doesn’t even believe it’s possible to foretell future misfortune, since there has never been any scientific documentation that such visionary phenomena exist. But when she does the marketing, she grabs a dozen lemons and before she can stop herself she begins to cry, there in the produce department, as though she were suddenly homesick for that old house on Magnolia Street, after all these years. When she leaves the grocery store, Sally drives by the YMCA field, where Kylie and her friend Gideon are playing soccer. Gideon is the vice president of the chess club, and Kylie suspects he may have thrown the deciding match in her favor so she could be president. Kylie is the only person on earth who seems able to tolerate Gideon. His mother, Jeannie Barnes, went into therapy two weeks after he was born; that’s how difficult he was and continues to be. He simply refuses to be like anyone else. He just won’t allow it. Now, for instance, he’s shaved off all his hair and is wearing combat boots and a black leather jacket, though it must be ninety in the shade.
Sally is never comfortable around Gideon; she finds him rude and obnoxious and has always considered him a bad influence. But seeing him and Kylie playing soccer, she feels a wave of relief. Kylie is laughing as Gideon stumbles over his own boots as he chases after the ball. She’s not hurt or kidnapped, she’s here on this field of grass, running as fast as she can. It’s a hot, lazy afternoon, a day like any other, and Sally would do well to relax. She’s silly to have been so certain that something was about to go wrong. That’s what she tells herself, but it’s not what she believes. When Antonia comes home, thrilled to have gotten a summer job at the ice cream parlor up on the Turnpike, Sally is so suspicious she insists on calling the owner and finding out what Antonia’s hours and responsibilities will be. She asks for the owner’s personal history as well, including address, marital status, and number of dependents.
“Thanks for embarrassing me,” Antonia says coolly when Sally hangs up the phone. “My boss will think I’m real mature, having my mother check on me.”
These days Antonia wears only black, which makes her red hair seem even more brilliant. Last week, to test out her allegiance to black clothes, Sally bought her a white cotton sweater trimmed with lace, which she knew any number of Antonia’s girlfriends would have died for. Antonia tossed the sweater into the washer with a package of Rit dye, then threw the coal-colored thing into the dryer. The result was an article of clothing so small that whenever she wears it Sally frets that Antonia will wind up running off with someone, just the way Gillian did. It worries Sally to think that one of her girls might follow in her sister’s footsteps, a trail that has led to only self-destruction and wasted time, including three brief marriages, not one of which yielded a cent of alimony.
Certainly, Antonia is greedy the way beautiful girls sometimes are, and she thinks quite well of herself. But now, on this hot June day, she is suddenly filled with doubt. What if she isn’t as special as she thinks she is? What if her beauty fades as soon as she passes eighteen, the way it does with some girls, who have no idea that they’ve peaked until it’s all over and they glance in the mirror to discover they no longer recognize themselves. She’s always assumed she’ll be an actress someday; she’ll go to Manhattan or Los Angeles the day after graduation and be given a leading role, just as she has been all the way through high school. Now she’s not so sure. She doesn’t know if she has any talent, or if she even cares. Frankly, she never liked acting much; it was having everyone stare at her that was so appealing. It was knowing they couldn’t take their eyes off her.
When Kylie comes home, all sweaty and grass-stained and gawky, Antonia doesn’t even bother to insult her.
“Didn’t you want to say something to me?” Kylie asks tentatively when they meet in the hallway. Her brown hair is sticking straight up and her cheeks are flushed and blotchy with heat. She’s a perfect target and she knows it.
“You can use the shower first,” Antonia says in a voice so sad and dreamy it doesn’t even sound like her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kylie says, but Antonia has already drifted down the hall, to paint her nails red and consider her future, something she has never once done before.
By dinnertime Sally has nearly forgotten the sense of dread she carried around earlier in the day. Never believe what you can’t see, that’s always been Sally’s motto. You have nothing to fear but fear itself, she quoted again and again when her girls were little and convinced monsters resided on the second shelf of the laundry closet in the hall. But just when she’s relaxed enough to consider having a beer, the shades in the kitchen snap shut all at once, as if there is a buildup of energy in the walls. Sally has made a bean and tofu salad, carrot sticks, and cold marinated broccoli, with angel food cake for dessert. The cake, however, is now doubtful; when the shades snap closed the cake begins to sink, first on one side, then on the other, until it is as flat as a serving plate.
“It’s nothing,” Sally says to her daughters about the way the shades seem to have been activated by a strange force, but her voice sounds unsteady, even to herself.
The evening is so humid and dense that laundry left on the line will only get wetter if left out overnight. The sky is deep blue, a curtain of heat.
“It’s something, all right,” Antonia says, because an odd sort of wind has just started up. It comes in through the screen door and the open windows, rattling the silverware and the dinner plates. Kylie has to run and get herself a sweater. Even though the temperature is still climbing, the wind is giving her the shivers; it’s making goose bumps rise along her skin.
Outside, in the neighbors’ backyards, swing sets are uprooted and cats claw at back doors, desperate to be let in. Halfway down the block, a poplar tree cracks in two and plummets to the ground, hitting a fire hydrant and crashing through the window of a parked Honda Civic. That’s when Sally and her daughters hear the knocking. The girls look up at the ceiling, then turn to their mother.
“Squirrels,” Sally assures them. “Nesting in the attic.”