“All right. You will begin tomorrow at nine. I will give you a ride. I have supplies for you. You will be compensated.”
Why does Marion want to clean an apartment? Why has she said yes to this menial labor? She will now despise Sveyta because Sveyta has offered her this pitiful opportunity. Why must she always say yes? And yes, she knows she’ll go, she’ll spend hours scrubbing floors and toilets and the apartment will be spotless, and Sveyta will be pleased. Marion will fume with both satisfaction and malice, thankfulness and resentment, hope and despair. And this will all be absurd because the pay will be—maybe—$100.
“I’ll be ready,” Marion says.
The knapsack is under the bed. The knapsack is under the bed.
How will she be smart this time? How will Marion be good?
Ginny’s Detentions
Ginny and her Bible-sock-wearing homeroom teacher are in a standoff. Since Marion left, Ginny has been accumulating detentions. Each afternoon she chooses not to go to her mandated detention. The following morning the homeroom teacher asks if Ginny went to detention. Ginny says she did. The homeroom teacher smiles and corrects: Ginny, you did not. Ginny’s number of required detentions is rising exponentially, but the school hasn’t figured out a way to make her go to them. Eventually the homeroom teacher meets Ginny after her last class of the day and personally escorts her to detention. She watches Ginny settle in for her hour of forced repentance and leaves. When the detention proctor goes to the window to investigate the sound of a possible car collision (squealing brakes, multiple car alarms, low-toned swearing), Ginny walks out again. She’s getting pretty good at this.
When she ignores her detentions, she doesn’t go home. Sometimes she goes to the Greek diner to see her friend, who gives her Cokes. Sometimes she hangs out with the smokers of the middle school on the steps of the courthouse. The smokers are a strange clique. They are welcoming but hard to read. For a reason unknown to Ginny, they’ve begun to invite her to join them. So far, she’s declined the cigarette but sometimes follows them to the courthouse. Other times, when she doesn’t feel like company, she walks to the promenade. She doesn’t look at the skyline but at the highway below. The cars look like they are traveling faster than they are. She convinces herself to be back home by dinner, knowing that her father will worry. She’s having a hard time looking at him, but she doesn’t want him to worry more. Her father’s worry is visible and upsetting.
There comes a morning when the teachers of the school will not stand. They’ve connected Ginny’s disobedience to her mother’s. A theory develops that the Palms, as a family, are willful. While the teachers don’t know what Marion did, they feel that she has broken some rule. They are used to minding children and scanning for misbehavior; the Palm family glows under this gaze. This must be corrected, and they will start with Ginny. It’s unfortunate timing, but she must learn that rules are meant to be followed. If she does not learn this now, when will she? Is this not a watershed moment for Ginny Palm?
Ginny’s homeroom teacher is triumphant when the middle-school dean schedules a meeting to discuss the seventh grader’s multiple infractions. Ginny sits next to her father, and the dean sits behind his desk. He wears a brightly patterned shirt with a textured tie and jeans and insists that Nathan call him George. No need for formalities here, he says. The homeroom teacher stands in the corner, smiling.
“We understand there have been some issues at home,” the dean begins politely.
“No,” Ginny says.
“Your sister has been pretty vocal about the issues.”
“Jane exaggerates sometimes,” Nathan says.
“No,” Ginny says again.
“Settle down,” Nathan says.
“No, everything’s fine. May I go?”
“You may not, young lady.” This is the homeroom teacher.
“Hey, watch it,” Nathan says. “What did she do again?”
“She has missed all nine of her assigned detentions.”
“But the detentions were for missing detentions. What was her original, I don’t know, crime?”
Nathan meant to be sarcastic but thinks of his wife and reddens at his word choice.
George kindly interrupts the silence to explain. “Ginny has been consistently tardy for homeroom.”
“Can someone explain to me the point of homeroom? Because it doesn’t seem like it has a point,” Ginny says.
“Quiet. How tardy?”
“She was three to seven minutes late.”
“Three minutes? And now she is being suspended?”
“We did not want to escalate, but Ginny has forced our hand.”
“When? Ginny has been taking her sister to school.”
“We should have been informed.”
“Listen, George, my wife is, my wife is…”
“Outta town.”
“Quiet, Ginny. She is out of town, and Ginny has been helping.”
“Again, this would not be an issue a) if we had known about the excused tardies or b) if she had attended a single detention. We really have no choice in the matter but to suspend Ginny for three days.”
“Well, you do have a choice. Everyone has a choice.”
“If we make this exception—”
“Riots in the hallways? Anarchy and mayhem?”
“Quiet, Ginny. Just wait outside.”
“Fine.”
Ginny leaves the office and stands in the center of the small waiting room. There are doors to other offices, an empty desk, and four chairs with upholstered seats. The walls are the pale pink of her mother’s office. That color of paint must be cheap.
Inside, Nathan tries to negotiate the terms of Ginny’s punishment. He does not want his daughter to be punished, and also does not want her around the house during the day. He needs Denise and the hours without children. The dean is unmoved by Nathan’s pleas for leniency. Nathan thinks of Anna Fisher’s accusation in her foyer and concedes.
The suspension begins today, and he’s to take Ginny home. The dean ends the meeting, and Nathan leaves without shaking hands. Unfortunately, Ginny has disappeared. Nathan rushes out of the waiting room and into the hallway to find his daughter. It’s a sea of short people fighting to get to their lockers, and he cannot find his own short person. Realizing that he has lost another member of his family, Nathan places his hand over his heart and tells himself to steady.
Missing Persons