“She’ll be back tomorrow. She told me that you should stay here, just for tonight.” Helen breathes in. “Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of you.”
Helen feels a tingle of pride as she says this, as if she has won some private contest. She thinks of the woman next door, hurriedly dialing the telephone right now, or perhaps sitting quietly by herself. Is there any chance that she is reviewing the course of her actions, narrowing them down, pinpointing the careless decisions that have led here? Most likely not, Helen concludes. She feels that she understands women like this. Avis’s mother will not pause to examine her own role, but hasten to place blame. She will call the mother of the babysitter, Olivia, who’d left her daughter alone. She will blame that girl, that mother. Still, Helen feels a twist of pity. It is a harsh lesson for any parent, no matter how deserving.
When the gravy is done, the pasta cooked, Helen shows Avis where to place the cloth napkins on the table, where to put the forks and water glasses. This may be, as far as Helen knows, her first encounter with a fully set table, a family dinner. She calls Gene, who slouches out of the den and opens a new bottle. There is no booster seat in the house, so Avis sits sunken on a full-sized chair. Gene, at the head of the table, shifts uncomfortably. They eat quietly for a few minutes, the table trembling from some repetitive movement of Avis’s. As Helen watches the girl spear her wagon wheels, one by one, she sways with the sudden premonition of a knock at the door. For a moment she waits—breathing deeply, composing herself—but the knock does not come.
It is good, Helen reminds herself, for the girl to be here, in a house like this. Her home is an extension of her own self as she would present it to the world. The structure, once a single-story ranch, the stylistic peer of its 1950s neighbors, is now indistinguishable from the newly built houses on teardown lots. She has added a second story, adorned it with arched-eyebrow gables. She has overlaid the concrete porch with bluestone, rebuilt the steps with ashlar risers. And, in keeping with the prevailing aesthetic, she has added craftsman-style columns and a vaulted beadboard ceiling.
Unlike Rufus, she has welcomed the changes around her. She appreciates the care that the town’s meticulous new families have exhibited in their renovations and landscaping, bespeaking a larger set of kindred values. Rather than threatened, Helen feels comforted by this influx of discriminating young people, flush with money and beauty, who have chosen to live here. The appreciation is mutual, she imagines. As a longtime resident, she deserves part of the credit for making Old Cranbury so attractive to newcomers, a place with a well-rooted citizenry, upholders of community standards.
The interior of her home is equally reflective of her taste and character, and potentially instructive to a child. The living room is formal in the old style, with a Persian rug, Louis XVI settee, damask curtains edged with tassels. A large, gilt-lined table displays her most prized dollhouse, a three-story Victorian. A satinwood display cabinet showcases her family heirlooms—porcelain bells, plates, beer steins—emblazoned with the coat of arms of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. These are objects with roots in proven, time-tested culture. We are the stewards of our culture, Helen believes, responsible for shepherding it safely into the future. Helen feels pity for children of parents with no understanding of this, who dispose of the past like so much used toilet tissue.
Her own son has disparaged her concern for appearances. As she notes of so many American youths, he has learned to prize individual freedom above all else, even at the expense of civilized manners and common decency. It is, at the core, a sad misunderstanding. He has never been able to hear her, or has willfully blocked her out, when she tries to explain that her attention to dress, to housekeeping, to the front shrubs and flower boxes, is not about impressing others. There is no such servility in it. On the contrary, it is a matter of self-regard, a concerted lifting of the individual in example to the many. This is the way the world works, she has tried to tell him, the way it has always worked since the beginning. Those who miss this truth, or ignore it, will lose—and always have.
She looks at Avis in her gravy-dripped shirt, poking at a wagon wheel with her finger. The exertions of the day descend upon Helen all at once, make her posture begin to hunch. Still, she forces herself to make conversation with Gene, to ask about Cannonfield Road, pretend to listen. When there is a pause, she smiles at Avis and says, “And what did we do today?”
The girl looks down at her plate.
“Did we paint together? Did you help me paint furniture for the dollhouse?”
There is a quiver at the sides of the girl’s lips, but she does not answer. Helen rises to clear the table. She goes into the kitchen with the stack of dishes and runs the water over them.
“Helen,” Gene calls.