There was a photograph album out on the tables. Laura did not want to look at it, but at one point Ellen passed it to her, and she saw herself standing next to Father on the front steps in a forgotten green dress. Before Grandfather’s legacy had transformed her life, it had been her only party dress, and even that had been passed down from Ellen. ‘Look at you, so young,’ Mother said. She said it in a longing voice, as if they were looking at a picture of happiness. But the picture … the picture. Laura put it down.
She had forgotten that evening – no, you never forget, but you bury it deep – the night of her high school dance, how she had longed not to be the symbol of social failure. At least a boy was taking her to it, even if it was only Walt Eaves. She could not stand his flat-footed walk and the way he talked down to Cristel, their coloured maid, but at least he had asked her, it was a chance. The evening had been horrible enough – when he kissed her it was like being choked, and she had pushed him away and said, let’s go in, Father will be waiting. And he was, but as soon as they came in she saw it, she smelt it, the drink, the stumbling, and Father came too close to her, and asked what she had been up to – it was as if she had to be shamed. She would not follow the memory, down the path where Walt had looked at her with pity in his stupid eyes. Her shame – she would not allow it. How could they grieve, she thought, looking at Ellen and Mother mouthing their platitudes? The perfect fa?ade of drinking their tea and telling half-hearted stories about Father’s favourite books would keep all the memories hidden in the dark. But the stain was spreading now in Laura’s mind, and she felt her hand shake as she picked up her cup of tea: she could not swallow it and had to put it down.
After the guests had left, they sat in the living room facing one another on the new long sofas. ‘You must come to us in Boston,’ Ellen was saying to Mother, returning to a theme that she had already opened up the previous day. ‘There’s lots of room for you. Janet will love to have you with us.’
‘It seems an awful lot for you – and for Tom.’ With Mother’s words, a gap opened in the conversation for Laura to make some offer. But she said nothing.
‘You should come back with us tomorrow,’ Ellen said again, pressing.
‘But there’s so much to do here …’ Mother gestured to the rooms around her.
‘You can come back and sort out Father’s things when you’ve had a break. You can’t do it all when you’re still in such shock. Laura or I will come back with you next month.’
Laura was still sitting in her puddle of silence. She saw a glance pass between Ellen and Mother. She got up and picked up the teacups and took them into the kitchen. She stood at the window, looking down the street where the trees seemed dusty now at the end of summer. How often had she looked down at that view! Yet she remembered it being larger than this, the houses more looming. She realised she had dreamt about this street since she had left, and in her dreams it had had such an aura of menace that now the reality seemed oddly quotidian. She would not stay, now that her path away was clear. She went back to the living room. ‘Is there any brandy?’ she said. ‘Couldn’t we all do with some?’
On her way back to Washington, the inertia she had felt throughout the funeral stayed with her. Perhaps over the last six years she had become too used to the small scale of the English countryside, its low skies and patterned fields, because as she looked out of the train window on the way back to the city, she felt she could hardly comprehend the scale: everything looked too big and the train seemed to be tiny, scuttling through the hills and forests. And the entry into Washington itself overwhelmed her – the humid, dirty air as she left the station, the pulse and roar of the traffic. She had hardly taken in the city in their first weeks there; just the wholeness of the streets and all the brash colour in the store windows had been strange enough without noticing any details. But in the taxi back to their apartment in Connecticut Avenue she felt she was passing through streets built on too massive a scale, oppressive in their inhuman size. Except for the apartment itself, which was miniature, a little box with a clattering tiled floor. They were lucky to have it, she knew. The city was crowded. Everyone was flocking here, to the heart of the new empire.