GRAFT

A NOVEL

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

ALEXIS VON KONIGSLOW

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

August, 2009

Alexis von Konigslow, 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition

395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada

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1+1 Canada Graft

Prologue: Oserov, Russia, 1928

"I want you to practice spelling," said Aielle.

Blima crawled out from under the dining room table, and sat across from her mother. It had been work, all her behaving. This would be easy.

"I want you to write our family name."

Blima did, and her mother took it and crossed it out. She wrote something new, then slid the paper back

"I want you to write it like this."

"That spells something different."

"Write it like I showed you."

Blima wrote her name again, and Aielle crossed it out. "I want you to write our family name the way I show you."

"I know, I said." Blima slid off the chair. She inched toward the door. "I know how to do it." Then she rushed back to the table, pushed the paper off, and it drifted to the floor.

"Things that are in the world are not immutable."

1 The Day Before the First Day

1.

Emily set an extra wine glass at the table and listened to the low shush of the dishwasher. It was like the waves of Lake Ontario. Maybe the lodgehouse would be carried away. Maybe her grandmother's old boyfriend would never find them.

Aunt Blima shuffled into the dining room, carrying a big, white box. "Blessed are the

Pacific tribes, for they dine with the saints."

"Could you please be less weird?"

"It's a family tradition to use your Great-grandma Aielle's good China for Passover's extra setting."

"I know- "

"It's not every family who serves Elijah. You'll find lots of Jews who only pour him a drink But he needs something to line his stomach. That's what our mother always said."

"I remember great-grandma Aielle."

"These plates were hers," said Aunt Blima. "And they're not for use by just anyone.

Especially not the guests. They have germs and who knows who raised them. You'll see. It's just for prophets, and for anyone who isn't corporeal enough to scratch a good plate. In case

I die, now you know how we do things in this family."

"Who is this guy who's coming tonight?"

"Doran Baruch." Aunt Blima handed Emily the box.

"Is he related?" She might have misread the signs. He might be some long lost relative, although romance and blood-relations might not be mutually exclusive in this place.

"How is your work coming along?" Aunt Blima said abruptly.

2 "Fine."

"It's your thesis, your mother said."

"Just the abstract, introduction and conclusion," said Emily. "The writing parts."

"You must be almost finished. Your mother said you needed the quiet and the lodge is closed for the Seder. There's nothing here but quiet."

Emily set the box on the table and eased open its flaps. She didn't look up. This morning, she'd opened a document on her computer and titled it (Introduction), and other than that title, she hadn't typed a letter.

"Maybe my Eliyahu can help you." Blima shuffled around the table, straightening the napkins one by one. "Except if Elijah's spirit can find his way to our table after all that wine, then it really would be a Passover miracle."

Emily took out a big plate, a little plate, and a delicate little bowl, and arranged them carefully. She probably did need a miracle. She couldn't admit that, however, especially not to family.

"You see lovie, every year, Elijah drinks with the Pacific Ocean Jews, whose geographic location allows them to dine first and be most blessed. But soon after the nightfall of the Tasmanian Jewish populations, he gets lost in the region of the Himalayas.

Every year, the same. He's shikkered, you see, because all of those families and all that wine, and most of it, I hate to tell you, is Manishevits. It reflects badly on our people, but there you have it."

"I like Manishevits."

"Elijah generally wakes up in late April, in either a cave, or in a motel with coin operated beds."

"Can we leave a setting for any ghost?"

3 Blima put a warm hand on Emily's arm. "Doran Baruch should sit at the head of the table, and your Bubie Sonja should sit beside him. I was going to put Elijah in between Sonja and Doran to make them behave. But as we well know, he hardly ever shows up. And who knows. He might even like if they got frisky."

"That's my grandmother," said Emily, "please don't be gross."

"Elijah's ways are not for us to understand." Aunt Blima shuffled back to the cupboard. Gray hair, pink cheeks, perfectly put together in slacks and a sweater, she looked exactly the same as she'd always looked, if slightly more compact. Maybe Emily was taller now.

"Maybe I should sit on Doran's other side," Aunt Blima said after a moment, "but maybe I shouldn't."

"Bubie Sonja and her boyfriend need privacy, you mean."

"Oh no." Blima gathered together the name cards that Emily had printed. "I was just joking that they might hold hands under the table. Although. You never know. Sometimes your uncle Moshe and I still do, but mostly because he forgets which fingers are his after all these years, and he grabs the wrong ones when he wants to wring his hands."

"Who invited Mr. Baruch?"

"Who do you think?"

"My Bubie?"

"God no. He invited himself. He called yesterday in the morning. You can't refuse.

If someone asks you to attend a Seder, you have to say 'of course'. It's called a Mitzvah."

"I know." Emily heard a creak, and she turned to the doorway. Since she got here, she'd often imagined that her cousin was keeping an eye on her.

"A mitzvah is a law of comportment." Blima shuffled back to the kitchen.

4 And Jonah was probably just cooking, or whatever he was paid to do here.

"It's a good deed, but regulated," Aunt Blima veiled through the door. "Now you know."

Emily moved from place setting to place setting, rattling the knives and forks and dropping them on the table, and making cups in the cupboards clatter. Jonah wasn't out there. Otherwise, he would have walked in as soon as Aunt Blima had gone out.

2.

Harpo felt tugged along, like he was attached to a string and someone at the other end was pulling. He was one of those wooden ducks with wheels that poor families bought their kids instead of pets, and, right now, the string was leading him on a tour of the waterfront.

He slowed, to test it out, and there it was again. He hurried along the path, up a gentle incline full of weeds and spots of light like pennies, that were less bright now than when he'd started out.

It must be getting late. He must be getting hungry.

Harpo slowed as he passed the lodge's canoe shed, then tripped over a broken oar, propelled forward again. No water sports. He tried to stop at the equipment shed, but found himself stumbling forward faster instead. No fishing either. That one was okay. He hadn't had the stomach for fishing since that trip to Montauk anyway. On he went again. He could hear the bustling of people who'd been packed like sardines in the lodge last night. He'd bet they were whooping it up on the waterfront now, with their deckchairs and bathing suits and the little martinis with the snaking orange peels too, probably. His brothers were probably there. They might be missing him.

5 Finally, in a clearing, Harpo stopped and felt no desire to move forward. The rope was slack He sat down on a fallen tree and made himself comfortable. He could see the lake a little bit, or was that the river? And there was some sunset too, a streak of wicked orange spread over a purple sky, a layer of marmalade over raspberry jam.

When an old man walked out of the forest, Harpo scooted over on his log to give him room. He was ready for the company.

"How do you feel?" said the old man as he settled himself beside Harpo.

"What?"

His hair was white mostly, with some gray patches and some black, and it looked like birch bark. There was something familiar about him though, about that face like an old pillow.

"Do I know you?"

"That depends." The old man stripped some twigs. "You'll have to tell me who you are and then I can say if I know you. So who are you?"

"Pinky," said Harpo.

"Nope."

He could have been from the tenements in New York, this man. He looked like uncle Harold a bit. He was shorter, and he didn't have that slightly sour smell, but even so.

Harpo loved him immediately.

"What's your name, really?"

"Exapno Mapcase."

The old man looked at him strangely. "No, that's not it." But then he smiled, and

Harpo smiled right along with him. There was something about that face, all those wrinkles around eyes blue and bright like a little kid's. "Try again."

6 "Harpo MacMarx."

"Closer."

"I like you," said Harpo.

"Fine," said the old man, "if that's the best I can get. I see now why you don't talk much."

"Are you staying here?"

"Why would I stay here?" The old man hopped off the log. "I'm going for a walk.

You're coming with me. Neither of us is staying here. Why would we do it?"

Harpo followed into the woods, and then they pushed their way into the dark part, in which direction he couldn't say. He'd guess North, by the way the moss was growing on the trees, or did moss always grow facing South, or was that even moss? He kept walking behind the magnetic old man, although he heard a funny kind of a burbling sound now, and wondered whether they shouldn't both turn back What could make a noise like that?

Harpo stumbled faster. "What is that?"

The old man didn't turn, and he didn't slow, and Harpo wasn't going to lose him, even though the noise was getting louder and louder. He pictured monster-like things, a den of rabid animals, dinosaurs maybe.

Finally, they came to a cascade, and the sound resolved itself into a rush of water.

Harpo crept toward it. It was a tiny little waterfall, but with a roar like Niagara falls. Imagine that. He scrambled up the little incline after the old man, who was standing at the top now, staring down. For a moment, he just stood beside him. Then, slowly, "Can I ask you a question?"

"How well do you know the Kogans?" the old man said quickly.

"Who?"

7 He fixed Harpo to the spot with deep blue eyes. "The people next door."

"The lodge owners."

"The Jewish lodge," said the old man. "That one."

Harpo leaned against a birch tree. "I saw Sam, but only for a minute. I saw a picture

of Aielle on the wall, but I never saw the real thing. She's beautiful, but the rumour is that

she doesn't come down from the attic much. She's been a bit atticky for a while, that's what

I heard."

"They have little girls, too."

"I didn't see them."

The man massaged a bristly white beard with a sound like a table being sanded.

"Aielle comes down in the morning," he said after a moment. "Usually I see her at night,

when all the guests have gone to their rooms."

"You know them then?"

"I like the look of them. I like the way they look, as a family."

"Oh," said Harpo. "I like families. I'm from a big one. Four brothers, two parents,

and enough cousins to fill up New Jersey."

The old man's eyes lit up. "I have three brothers and five sisters. But only one

daughter." Then he patted Harpo on the back. "I like the look of you too. How are you

feeling today? You never said."

"What?"

"I've been thinking about it," said the old man, "and you might as well call me

Jacob."

"Do you know anything about Russia?" said Harpo.

Jacob looked at him with pie-dish eyes.

8 "I'm thinking of going."

But Jacob just stared.

Well, anyone would be surprised. People weren't exactly lining up to get into there just now. It wasn't exactly a vacation destination, like, say, Montauk, Long Island.

"I've been invited to tour there," said Harpo. "My best friend wants me to perform."

And he'd be the first Western performer since communism. And it was a job. And since their last movie hadn't made any money at all, he probably needed one. No one would hire the brothers any more, probably, that's what Groucho said.

Jacob massaged his beard again. "It sounds like kismet, that you've been invited just now."

And since the Crash, he couldn't exactly afford to be unemployed either.

"That sounds just like kismet to me. What's the problem with going?"

"There are communists there. And they don't have toilet paper, if you believe the rumours." He didn't want to do it alone, that was the real problem. And Jacob nodded, as if he'd heard that part too.

"Well, I have to think about this. We'll talk about it later," and he turned and disappeared into the trees, quickly for an old guy.

Harpo watched him go.

On closer consideration, maybe that was the wrong question to have asked. If a strange old man appears out of the forest, maybe the question he should have asked him was how do you get back to the lodge house?

Luckily Harpo felt that pull again. He followed it away from the waterfall and back into the trees, and he was lucky because the feeling was pulling in Jacob's direction.

That man.

9 Jacob.

He really looked like the tenement men from New York.

That's what Harpo loved about Treasure Island and the lodge. It was old home week every day. Except that man wasn't really Harold. His voice was a lot gruffer, and that definitely wasn't a Plattdeutch accent. And since Frenchie was dead and Harold had been older, and oh how it always struck when he remembered that his father was gone. His grief was a filament and it should light him up like a lightbulb, so he was always surprised that everyone couldn't see that he was an orphan. They should be able to see grief like this all the way in New York.

The rope felt taut, so he stumbled forward faster. As he moved, a feeling of love came right through him, singing like a rotten mayonnaise sandwich, sweet and bitter, and it made him screw up his face. That love always came eventually, right along with the feeling of loss, so it wasn't the worst thing, remembering Frenchie. He had to remember that.

Harpo hurried over the tree roots and around the sticky bushes. The fir trees were darker now, the trail disappearing in a smudge of greens and shadows, and they were probably serving dinner in the lodgehouse. So then his brodiers would definitely notice that he was gone.

3.

Emily stood very still in the kitchen. She'd finished the place-cards. She'd set the table. She'd vacuumed last night. And everyone had commented on her helping spirit and dedication to cleanliness, so she couldn't vacuum again.

She could start writing up her thesis notes.

She could mop. But not if Jonah wasn't finished cooking.

10 She could clean out the kitchen. The lodge had two fridges. Emily opened one. Then she opened the other. Then she closed them both. Then she crept from the kitchen door to the Registration desk. The first visit to the lodge that she remembered had been when she was six years old, when she'd visited here with her parents. She remembered dragging a towel down that narrow stairway. Comers had been difficult. But still. The lodge had been fun.

She stopped at the shut office door.

On that same trip, she'd visited her great uncle Moshe in his office. Every time he'd moved toward her, she'd cried. Her father had had to pick her up. All the adults minus

Moshe had laughed. Jonah had been there too, a little boy hovering in the doorway.

Emily crept into the room of doors, and caught Jonah there now, bending over the notebook she'd left open on a table.

"I was just wondering what you do." He stepped back, nearly tripping over a rug.

"Math." Emily hurried to the book If she grabbed it, he'd notice. But she wouldn't have left it open at an inappropriate page. She wouldn't have written his name, say, or a sketch of him or something equally bizarre, and then just walked away. She was more careful than that.

"What kind of Math?"

But she had spent the morning quantifying the impropriety of noticing that a cousin was cute. It had to do with degree of relation, she'd decided, the length of the shortest path that connected them on the family tree. Emily to her mother, to her aunt, to Jonah would be terrible, but she didn't have an aunt, so that was out. The path had to be longer than four, and since paths would have to increase by twos, she probably didn't need immediate therapy.

11 But all that would require some explanation. He couldn't see those diagrams. She seized the book.

"I study connections," she said.

He wasn't her first cousin. At least she'd established that.

"It's not pure Madi though. I'm straddling the Sociology department and the Math department."

And she just liked standing beside him. That was all. He smelled like pine cones and something else, maybe coconuts, and Emily imagined the slight pull of gravity that she must be feeling, because objects in space always attract each other. She found herself inching closer.

"It's called graph theory, the Math part." She could feel the fabric of his shirt against her bare arm.

"Graph theory," said Jonah.

"I'm looking at the connectivity of social groups," she found herself saying. "I'm kind of counting people's friends. I've already done all the research. The work is done, so now I'm just writing it up. I just have the intro, conclusion, abstract, those parts, and they're remarkably difficult to write. I have a deadline. That's why I came."

Jonah pointed to the open page Emily held pressed to her stomach. "This looks like your family."

She looked down. There were some half completed diagrams, a bunch of graphs she didn't remember having drawn. Nothing incriminating though, that she could see.

"It looks like a family tree."

"Yeah." She saw a big Doran Baruch in the middle of the page, and was relieved.

She'd also been piecing together how he might fit in to the family. She flipped the page,

12 though, just in case. "I guess you could represent a family tree like a graph. I was playing around with doing it, I think," and maybe she would. It was a good idea. She could use it somehow, in her introduction, maybe, to give more insight, or a better breadth of knowledge, or an idea of what graphs could do. "The thing is, graphs are just points and lines. So you can draw one vertex to show all of the members of a family. And then draw edges to show how they're related." She drew vertices, and connected them. Then she labeled them, with her name, her mother's, her grandmother's, up until her Papa Jacob, because that was all she knew.

"That's not right though." Jonah touched the page. "That one." He traced his finger along the Aielle to Jacob edge, and touched Emily's hand, briefly. "Jacob. That's not right."

"He was my great-grandma Aielle's father. He's my great-great-grandfather."

Jonah took the pencil and drew his own graph. "I went back to, like, 1888 or something, in some research I did. No, earlier, because Jacob was born in 1860, and I found his parents too." He straightened. "Jacob had one daughter, Maxine. And a son in law.

That's all."

"I don't think that can be right."

"Why are you interested anyway?"

Abruptly, Emily closed her notebook. She found herself walking away from him, drifting back to the dining room.

4.

Harpo tripped and stumbled through the underbrush, and even though he hurried, he couldn't seem to catch up with the old man. He hadn't seen one flash of jacket or white

13 hair. It was like he was a ghost. Maybe he was because this place was full of them. Another reason to love the Treasure Island lodge.

"Harpo?"

Harpo stopped. That was Chico's voice. This always happened. He was always saved, in the most unlikely way, in the most unlikely place.

"Hey, Harpo." A voice first, and then a face, and then a whole figure, emerged from the wood. Chico, but with that look in his eye that meant that Harpo should be careful.

"We're going canoeing," he said. "Do you want to come?"

"Did you see an old man just now?"

"I'm seeing you and that's close enough."

"No," said Harpo. "A really old guy. He had a white beard and he looked like Uncle

Harold, Frenchie's pal."

"Oliv a shulum, Harpo. Uncle Harold must be dead by now, don't you think?"

"He went hopping along real fast just now. In this direction. You didn't see him?"

"No, partner," Chico said in the drawl that Harpo loved so much. "It's just us in the woods so late. Are you coming in the canoe?"

"Are we allowed to canoe when the sun's going down?"

"Probably not." Chico's eyes flashed in the waning light. "Are you interested?"

There was a trick in this, of course. "Okay."

"Good." Chico smiled in the way that meant he knew the whole time that Harpo would come if he asked. Then he turned and hurried into the trees.

Harpo followed. And it was a good thing, it turned out, because that need to move had welled up again. It was a kind of an itchy feeling this time, like the rope had pulled taut

14 when he wasn't paying attention. Just like him to forget about it like that. He looked up and saw some clouds and the sky like a bruised plum.

"Keep up, Harp," and Chico disappeared.

Harpo hurried after. He burst through the foliage and was surprised to see a clearing, and a tiny little broken down dock, and another of his brothers at the end of it.

"Groucho!" The clearing was pockmarked with dips and shadows, and Harpo stumbled over them like he was a drunk. He could hardly see. He could just barely make out the canoe bobbing in the water, and Grouch was just a silhouette, a black on blue cut out of a man whose arm was raised in greeting.

Ghico reappeared beside him. "We're about seven miles from the lodge house," he whispered. Harpo turned, but Chico was forcing him out onto the tumbledown dock.

5.

Emily wandered into the dining room and found Aunt Blima changing the seating again.

"Let me guess. You want to sit next to Elijah."

"Jonah doesn't sit at the table."

"He's family."

"He's help," said Aunt Blima. "Anyhow. He has to serve. And I need you to come upstairs with me. I have to get ready and you can help. It's going to be a major endeavor. It's hard work, all that beauty."

Emily hurried up the stairs after her aunt. She felt the banister. It was smooth and worn from so many hands and so many years.

15 She and Jonah used to swing down it like crazy things. They used to pretend, no, they made believe, because Jonah didn't like to play pretend.

"Let's say I'm from the pen, and you're from the asylum on Johnson, and we're meeting up after we break out." Jonah put on his dad's ski mask and sat up, but motioned for Emily to stay crouched. They were hidden beside the banister on the upper landing. Nobody would find them. It was perfect. "We'll meet in the room of doors and then escape by the river.

We'll make a raft."

"I'll pretend that I'm crazy and I see ghosts."

Jonah took off his mask. "I don't pretend."

"Oh." Emily sat.

"Let's say you're a crazy girl who sees ghosts."

"Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Let's say I can see ghosts."

"We'll meet up at Papa Jacob's dock. There's a secret there."

Emily sat on the overstuffed chair that had always been her favourite. She kicked off her sandals and curled her toes in the soft carpet. She hadn't been inside this room since she'd come back, and she used to love it. She loved it, still. "Was Papa Jacob grandma Aielle's dad?"

"Of course not," Blima called from inside the washroom, and Emily felt something, a surfeit of feeling inside her head and chest. One more degree of removal, at least.

16 "Oh but you used to follow your cousin Jonah everywhere," she was saying. "He's a

very proficient young man now. Not educated, but he'll do okay in his own sort of way. We

just have to remember not to use our standards when we think about him. Not everyone can

aspire to the same things."

"He should be able to take a break, Aunt Blima. He should have a place at the table."

"His brother doesn't come."

"Neither does my mom," said Emily. "She knows she'll just drink too much and

argue with Bubie Sonja."

"It was funny to think," said Aunt Blima, "but Jonah followed you around too. He

used to follow you just everywhere. Do you remember that?"

"No." But there were things she did remember. The feeling of those long summers

they spent together. They had to be quiet, because of her grandfather, who was lying on the

couch. Her grandfather liked to feel his pulse, on his wrist and his neck, and check his

temperature, all at the same time, and he looked tangled up like a big piece of string. She and

Jonah used to hide behind the couch and mimic him. That was her only memory of him.

He'd died when she was seven.

"I mean yes." Sometimes Jonah played the piano. When he did, she hid behind the

tangly potted tree. But he knew she was there. He would peek over his shoulder, and watch

her watching him. Sometimes they played. Sometimes Jonah and his brother devised ways of

making her cry. "I remember a bit."

"Lovie," said Blima, "could you help me in here?"

Emily stood and dragged her feet. She walked close to the wall and touched a framed

etching lightly, feeling over the bumps and hollows of the ornate thing. She used to feel the

textures of this place if she didn't want Jonah and Darryl to think she was lonely. How

17 strange that thinking about sad afternoons long past was comforting now. There was a serenity to them, or maybe a serenity in thinking about them. The remembered ones didn't have that thrill of panic.

"I'm all in a state."

Emily walked into the bright yellow bathroom, and was welcomed by that powdery smell she remembered so well, and the big oval mirror in its blue and gold mosaic frame.

Blima puttered from the sink to the cabinet to the sink again. "Does the place look nice?"

It did. It looked perfect. It was exactly as she remembered it.

"I don't know if I should clean a bit more."

"He's not going to see the inside of your bedroom, Auntie Blima."

"They make room sprays now. One for the bedroom. Another for the bathroom.

All that technology."

"Why would Mr. Baruch come into your bathroom?"

"Maybe I should put some more makeup on my face."

Emily looked at Blima's reflection. She had always loved that mirror, and those pots, and those powders. She'd played here. She'd sat up on the counter. She remembered lifting her arms and Auntie Blima patting her stomach with a powder puff.

"Your Bubie Sonja, her eyes are going, I think. She wears that blue eyeshadow, and I don't think she knows what colour it is. It's blue like bluebells. That is not a colour for a face."

"Blue eyeshadow is in, Auntie Blima."

"Usually, I tell her. But if she wears it tonight, I'm not going to say anything. I'll look better beside her, if she looks like a Picasso portrait. She's always had an unfair advantage

18 anyway, that light hair, those eyes." Blima turned back to her own reflection and clucked at it. "Anyway. I'm older so I need all the help I can get."

Emily's eyes wandered around the room, at the yellow tiles, the sparkling shower, and that bath. It was an old one with clawed feet.

"When you get older, you stop growing hair on your head and you start growing a hair on your chin. Not many of them. Just the one. And it's long like a vine. That's what you have to look forward to when you get old."

"I can't wait."

"I don't want him to think we didn't take care for his visit. I want him to know that

I'm really trying."

"I thought he invited himself."

Blima smiled at Emily's reflection. She cupped her cheek, her hand cool and soft.

"That beautiful face," she said, "and those cheeks. I'd give anything for cheeks as red as those. You wouldn't know it now, but your Bubie and I were lookers too, when we were young. We were the legendary Kogan girls, that's what we were called. And there were songs written about us. But they weren't particularly good ones, so that was that."

"There were songs?"

"Lovie, your Bubie was known for dating every handsome young man who came to the lodge. Did you know that?"

"No," said Emily, clapping her hands together, but of course she remembered. This was a story that she loved.

"Oh yes." Blima turned to face her. "One man would drop her off at the front door.

And Sonja would rush to the back door to meet her next date there. And so it went every night until she met your grandfather."

19 "What about Mr. Baruch?"

"What about him?"

Emily had thought at first that Doran Baruch must have been one of the front-door suitors, a shy young man carrying a single daisy night after night. But he'd invited himself to a Seder, and that was too brazen for a man with a daisy. Maybe he brought a rose. Roses were dangerous flowers. Or maybe he was one of the back-door boyfriends, who dressed in fancy clothes and was exciting, but had no scruples.

"Was Bubie Sonja in love with him?"

"It was hard not to be in love with Doran."

Emily pushed herself off the counter. She'd hoped for a no, for reassurance and a retelling of her grandparents' love story, preferably one that took the fifty-six minutes left until lunch.

"Everyone was a bit in love with him," said Blima, as she pulled a pen of mascara out of its tube and pushed it in again to flatten out the lumps. Emily had taught her to do that just yesterday. Had she asked for this reason? For this Doran Baruch?

"Who is this guy that you put mascara on for him?"

"He's miraculous. Our mother told us he'd been touched by a miracle. He got to the

USA from Russia. Every summer, he took the train here, all by himself. Can you imagine? A boy of nine, when he started, all alone on a train. Our mother said, no matter what else happens in your life, you have to love him."

"That makes no sense."

Aunt Blima pressed her mascara pen to her eyelashes.

"You don't just automatically love someone," said Emily. "Nobody can just tell you to do that."

20 But her Aunt just blinked at the mirror, her eyes flashing wetly.

"Why do you get all like this every time you talk about him?"

"The heart has two ventricles," said Blima, "the left ventricle and the right ventricle.

And each of the ventricles holds an equal amount of love."

"The ventricles hold blood," said Emily. "They're part of a pump system."

"We need two receptacles for love, because everybody has at least two kinds of love in their life."

"That is just not true."

"You have your opinion and I have my opinion. We could argue until the end of the night and who would be right?"

"I studied Human Biology in university." Emily pushed out of the bathroom. "I would be right."

6.

"Are you coming or not?" Chico forced Harpo right to the edge of the dock, where everything was in soft-focus, purple and black, and dangerous.

"Harpo?"

"I'm coming." It was windy. It smelled like seaweed. It was hard to breath. He'd just have to step down, grab the side of the boat, the dock maybe?

"Go on then."

"I'm going." Harpo shuffled closer to the water. He bent at the waist. There was nothing to hold. His brothers probably had no intention of getting in that canoe, anyway.

They were probably just going to shove him in and shove him out.

21 "So get in already, Harpo," said Chico. "Check out is on Tuesday. We only have a week left."

Harpo stepped lightly into the canoe, but his foot bobbed and moved from under him, and suddenly he was falling backward, and just as suddenly he wasn't. Chico had grabbed his shoulder. Then he took Harpo's arm, and stepped on the boat, and then Harpo was somehow folded properly in the canoe, holding that funny piece of wood that smelled more like the lake than the lake did. He couldn't see into the bottom, but there must be water down there, because his knees and shins were suddenly cold. "Is this thing safe?"

"You do know how to swim, don't you?" Groucho put an oar across the top of the canoe, and then Chico did the same, and then they climbed in. They settled into the boat without the whole thing sliding out from under them, and off they went into the dark lake,

Harpo bobbing and rocking with the water, his brothers busy with shushing oars. The whispering sound of the water, the warm air like a hug, made Harpo close his eyes.

"We have to look out for lights," whispered Groucho, and Harpo nodded, but he wasn't really listening.

"We're pretty far away from the lodge now, right in the river. Barges come down here all the time."

"Okay." Harpo could feel a fine mist on his forehead. He closed his eyes and gentle little drops touched his eyelids.

And then there was a silence. And then. "We're here," whispered Groucho.

Harpo looked up. The sun had set entirely now so he couldn't see anything at all.

"Where are we?"

"Coronation Island."

22 Both of his brothers stopped paddling, and for a long moment, they bobbed and rocked in silence. There was an occasional crack as something hit against the boat.

Finally, Chico raised his arm. "See that?"

Harpo saw a line of black on black and his eyes followed it. In the far distance, he saw pinpricks of light.

"That's the Kingston Penitentiary," said Groucho.

"I'll pay you one hundred dollars if you yell 'jail break' right now," said Chico.

"Not in your life."

"Get out," whispered Groucho. "Quick. Climb out. Climb up. We have to show you something."

Harpo could now just barely make out the dock in front of him. He felt it, though.

The canoe was hitting against it at every passing wave. That was the cracking sound, the banging feeling. He felt for the slimy wood with careful fingers, and then hoisted himself up.

"Where are we again?" He reached a hand out to his brothers, but they were already pushing themselves off with their oars.

"Coronation Island," said Groucho. "This is where the real morons are crowned."

Harpo sat back. "Mormons?"

"He's had two hours to think about it," said Chico. "And that's the best he could come up with."

"What?"

"Coronation Island." Chico shook his head.

"It's a slow week," said Groucho. "You'll have to forgive me. I've had a lot on my mind."

23 Harpo lowered his hand. Frenchie's funeral, Groucho meant. And he understood.

That had been a hotbed of jokes, just one after another in a desperate succession, just

Grouch to him to Ghico and back again, and then to Zep and Gummo. Then there had been the other people, and that had been the worst, because nobody should be allowed to make eye contact at a funeral. It should be illegal. Harpo looked up to Groucho's bobbing form, or was that Chico? Because he felt it too. He was wrung out, twisted round, dried up, even here, even though he was in the middle of a lake.

"Well, goodnight Harp," Chico said as the canoe slid away again, fitting perfectly into the darkness.

"Oh." Harpo saw the joke now. "I get it. You're leaving me here."

"We'll pick you up in the morning," Chico called.

Harpo stumbled from one side of the dock to the other, and felt the cold water lapping up from all directions, and the spray of it stung his arms and cheeks. It was a small thing, this dock, the size of two king sized beds pressed together, and there was no island attached to it at all.

"Hey, Chico." They should be turning around now, to pick him up again.

But there was nothing.

Harpo sat. And now the seat of his pants was cold. It would be wet too. There would be a wet spot. He sighed, and the night sighed back, the breeze and the water and the strange animals sounds whistling in answer. He couldn't even hear his brothers' rowing anymore.

24 7.

Emily felt compelled to move, down the stairs, then into the hallway, then into the room of windows. She saw her notebook, and opened it to the Jonah family tree from the morning.

She drifted back into the hallway, fingering the indents, the marks that Jonah's boyish scrawl had made on the page.

Genealogy could be considered research.

In fact, this could be important. She could make the claim that the family tree was the first instance of a social network, graphed. And this as illustration, two family trees, disparate at first, but now connected, that would mean something too. The connection would have to be significant. It could be the moment at which something happened, or an idea was transmitted, or information was passed, and if she followed this, she might find some reason that her work was useful.

She drifted back into the hallway, and heard Blima's familiar march down the stairs, and let herself drift again, to meet her. Aunt Blima stopped on the second to last stair. Emily held up the crinkled paper. "Can we sort out how we're all related?"

"We don't have much time before the sun sets." Blima walked down the final steps.

"Lovie, we start the Seder as soon as it's dark out. It's custom. That's how it's done."

"I know that."

"This is a Jewish lodge. It isn't just anything. You have to know the customs."

"I know." And as Aunt Blima pushed into the dining room, Emily followed - inexplicably, she needed to follow her. "I set another place at the table."

"Not another one of your Bubie's boyfriends. I didn't even hear the phone."

"One is for Elijah," said Emily. "But you said ghosts. So I put another one for

Harpo Marx."

25 Aunt Blima stopped. "Harpo," she said. "Why?"

"I don't know." Emily started watching Harpo's movies when she was really young.

She used to sit in sofa forts with Grandma Aielle and talk about him. He was a good man, that's what Grandma Aielle always said. He was a good father. Emily never knew why she always added that, but it got to be that she said it too, and it was linked to Harpo as a descriptor. "I used to love him. He was a good father, you know."

"That's right." Aunt Blima touched the extra chair, with something like reverence.

"He was a man you could really love." Her eyes were dark and shining, and silence seemed to course toward her somehow, like she was a black hole at the centre of the room.

Suddenly, she looked up. "Harpo came to the lodge, you know."

"He came here?"

"Oh yes." Blima straightened, on the move again, again the normal chattery Auntie

Blima, with a story on hand, Emily was sure. "He nearly drowned once." And there it was.

"He got stuck at the little floating dock and it was dark out. He yelled and yelled. I'd followed him outside, so that's how I knew."

"You actually heard his voice?"

"He wasn't really a mute." Aunt Blima pushed into the kitchen. "He just played one in the movies."

"What did he say?"

"What do you think he said? He said help."

"Does that mean great-grandma Aielle met him too?"

"Sure she knew him."

Knew him.

Aunt Blima looked around the kitchen, then pushed off again, into the dining room.

26 And Emily followed. "That means they might have talked." She was following someone who had followed Harpo Marx. "She used to tell me about him. She told me

Harpo stories all the time. I thought she got them from books." But Emily had really thought she'd made them up, because she couldn't verify any of them, and she'd read everything written on or by a Marx. Grandma Aielle might have been sharing real experiences, her experiences with Harpo. Emily felt like she was glowing. It was like there was more oxygen in the lodge.

"Your grandma Aielle knew everyone, lovie," said Aunt Blima, walking around the table, straightening the cutlery, piece by piece. "That was your great-grandmother. That was her."

"Why was Harpo stuck out on the dock in the first place? The lake one, I assume.

Not the main one or Papa Jacob's dock"

Aunt Blima picked up Elijah's crystal wine glass.

"Did Harpo not know how to swim? I guess his family used to be pretty poor.

Maybe they never got to a swimming pool."

"Not all poor people don't have class," said Aunt Blima. " Harpo's family pulled themselves up, like they had a rope nobody else could see. It's like our family. When we got to this country, we had nothing. We came only with a cart. That was it."

£T know that."

Blima bent to the table, and scrubbed viciously. Then she straightened again, and sighed, and Emily was forced to acknowledge that all this frenetic movement meant that

Aunt Blima didn't want to continue this particular conversation. "I mean, I remember that story," she said. "You came with a cart. You hid all your money and your valuable stuff

27 inside. Papa Sam turned it into a coffee table later, so that way, we could always all remember, every time we drank coffee there."

Blima folded her cloth, then unfolded it again. "Harpo told me he used to swim in the Hudson river. There was a special paddle called the chin-me-up that meant that you didn't get garbage in your face."

Emily picked up the cloth. She wiped at the perfectly clean table. She knew she should stop, give it time, ask again later. They always picked up conversations later, as if days or weeks hadn't passed, Bubie Sonja and Auntie Blima both, all the old folks here. And she could just do it too. "So then why did he have to call for help?" she found herself saying.

"I think it was the same old game that Jonah played with you when you were little."

"Did you save him?"

"Our mother paddled in the lake and got him."

"Maybe that's why she loved him so much." Emily sat. She wanted Aunt Blima to continue, and Aunt Blima always finished stories, even when she didn't actually know how they ended. But she just scrubbed. "Did you and Harpo ever talk just the two of you?"

"Sure." She didn't look up.

"What sorts of things did Harpo say?"

Blima's dark eyebrows had descended like stormclouds.

"I like the stories that you told me too," said Emily, willing her to sit. "I mean the stories about the family. I remember all of them. You were just little when you left Russia.

You ran away in the night. Papa Sam built a vegetable cart, and you walked it right to the ocean. You stole fruit and vegetables from farms and sold them as you went, because you left everything behind you, and you thought you'd need money. Oh yeah, and you needed to

28 pay for the boat. That's what the money was for. You bought passage on a boat that was carrying paint dust."

Blima nodded, her face gentle now, or gentler, anyway. "And we bought food," she said.

"Grandma Aielle said that it was Elijah disguised as a troupe of musicians who gave you guys the wood to make your cart in the first place." Auntie Blima used to tell her these stories, but so had great-grandma Aielle. She'd whispered them to her while they hid in sofa forts, these stories and others too. Emily hadn't thought about that in years. She hadn't remembered. "Then Elijah followed in disguise as good weather, because you managed to make it all the way to the boat without snow. You travelled to Canada. And you met Elijah in the forms of a custom agent, an engineer, and a friendly train passenger who told grandma

Aielle about Treasure Island, and then disappeared ten miles before Belleville, even though the train never stopped."

Blima sat at the head of the table. "We'll talk more about all this another time."

"I thought you wanted me to ask about the family."

"I do." Blima reached into her pocket and pulled out two letters, or a letter and a folded-up piece of paper. "But maybe not right now. When Doran is gone again, then we can talk about it."

8.

Harpo lay down on his back. He stared at the stars, and they seemed to wink out on by one.

Even they were abandoning him. He eased himself backward, slowly, so that his head was partly in the water, and he let the water lap up his hair, over his forehead.

Then he stood up again.

29 Then he walked.

This was why he didn't like to be trapped out in the middle of lakes. It was because he paced and his thoughts did too, and they always ended in those forbidden areas.

Vorbotten!

Harpo sat down again, chuckling a little at the memory of Frenchie's voice, that fake anger, that attempt to say no. It had never worked. Frenchie couldn't yell. Fie couldn't even raise his voice. A few times he'd taken off his belt, pushed Harpo into the hallway, and slammed the door shut on the gaping faces inside their little apartment. But then he'd hit the wall and not Harpo, and it only sounded like discipline. Frenchie loved them too much to really get angry.

Harpo lay back.

9.

Emily leaned forward to see what Aunt Blima held, those papers she caressed so lovingly they might have been living things.

"I do want to talk to you about the family," she said, and for a moment, Emily thought she was speaking to them, to the papers, and she almost expected to see them flutter away by themselves, bang against the glass then fly out to the lake, as uncomfortable as

Emily was. "There are things I think we should sort out."

Aunt Blima looked up. Their eyes met, and Emily had a feeling of space inside her head, and it was dizzying. But only for a second. Then Aunt Blima looked away again, and put the envelope between them.

30 "This letter, I found it when I was cleaning out your grandma Aielle's things, when I cleared her room for you. Grandma Aielle had hundreds of letters, and they were all in

English except for one."

"It's in Russian?" Emily touched it. It was smooth like silk

"Then I cleaned out my things too. I decided, since I'd started... " Aunt Blima held out the other square of paper.

Emily took it uncertainly.

"Harpo wrote it," she said. "I want you to have it. I was going to give it to you tonight. Maybe you're too old for afikomen, but it's always nice, to find a thing."

Emily watched Blima put the Russian envelope on the Seder plate. Then she unfolded her own paper carefully. On it was a giant L. It took up the whole page. "Harpo wrote this?"

"It's a love letter," said Blima, as if that explained everything.

10.

Harpo curled up in a ball, and pain radiated outward in every direction. It always surprised him that it was physical. Missing a person was physical. His chest hurt, but not just that, his head and throat also, they all screamed in bright white agony. Other people should be able to see it. This grief, it should make him bright like a star.

11.

Emily scrunched herself into a tiny ball on the window sill.

What was this thing she held in her hands? Whatever it was, it was momentous. She felt like her whole twenty-three year old life was bigger because of it. She held a relic of

31 Harpo Marx. Forget the monetary value - although it would definitely have one, and it would almost certainly be high - this thing had a sentimental value that would be incalculable.

She traced the L with her fingertips. It was a love letter, somehow. She didn't know how, exactly, but it was. It expressed love, or contained it, or transmitted it. She could feel it.

She used to secretly wish that she was a love letter. Oh, and she wished that that particular memory hadn't come back to her, but here it was, so vivid that she could smell the chalk and sweat of her highschool, and feel the cold sculpted plastic chair, all unlikely angles rigid against her back. She'd sat in class and written confessions, wrapped around her wrist and arm, only to cover the whole thing with long sleeves when the bell rang. It was all because of that old joke, no doubt, "what's black and white and read all over?" that she hadn't understood for ages, that Auntie Blima had had to explain to her. She used to imagine herself read all over, fingers tracing the paths of words, up her arms, then down her torso, up her breasts then down again, tracing her whole topography.

She heard footsteps, and then Jonah glanced into the room, holding a sandwich on a plate the same way Emily was holding Harpo's L. She put the paper carefully in her pocket.

She couldn't tell him about her old love letter thing. That was too embarrassing. It was a long time ago, anyway, and why had she had to remember that just now? "Something just happened," she said quickly.

Jonah put the plate down on a table and sat beside her feet.

"Aunt Blima told me that Harpo Marx came here," she said. "Grandma Aielle knew him."

"You used to love Harpo," said Jonah. "I remember that."

"Blima gave me a love letter from him."

32 Abruptly, Jonah motioned to the table. "I brought you a sandwich."

"There must be a reason grandma Aielle talked about Harpo all the time. He actually influenced her. He influenced her and she influenced me, so indirectly, I've been influenced by Harpo Marx."

"Also, I searched the Mormon website for you. I couldn't find Aielle and Sam

Kogan though. I looked for birth certificates, marriage certificates. I searched Oserov and all the little towns around it. I couldn't find anything."

"Why would the Mormons know about my grandparents?"

"They've done the research." Jonah stood and stretched. "They collect these things.

I'll show you later." And then he was gone.

Emily listened to Jonah's retreating footsteps. Then she retrieved her little letter and held it to the sunlight. There weren't fingerprints, not that she could see. And direct light might damage some necessary component. It was a thing that she didn't understand. It seemed to just emanate love. She tapped its centre and the whole thing folded itself up like some night flower closing. Its metaphysical properties could probably be measured.

12.

Harpo stared at the little lights on that far shore. If he looked at them long enough, they seemed to swim like a family of fireflies. He lay down on his back. The stars were the same size as the prison lights, except there were more of them. Harpo practiced not blinking, and those moved too. They should thank him for getting them unstuck after all those years pinned up there.

Harpo's nose was cold.

And he was hungry.

33 And he was stuck He couldn't get off the dock, or away from the lake, or out of his head even.

He was standing by Frenchie's bed. This was one of the last times he'd ever see his dad. An earthquake rolled the hospital room and suddenly, Harpo was in a corner of the room, trapped by his father's bed. His arm was pinched by the headboard, and he had to look at his dad, really look. Frenchie was gone. He'd already checked out. His cheeks were hollow, his skin yellow, his eyes open and vacant. His mouth made a perfect oh. And oh

God. He loved him. Harpo loved Frenchie so much, and he wasn't coming back again so he couldn't even say it. I love you, Frenchie. The words burned his throat, and he couldn't even get out of the hospital room because he was stuck between the bed and the wall, and he couldn't call for a nurse because his throat was useless. And they were busy, it sounded like.

Something was wrong. He could hear yelling in the hallways. He sort of understood what was happening, but sort of didn't. The earthquake meant nothing to him, even as another aftershock shook the room, and the bed rolled into Harpo's stomach so hard he could hardly breathe, so hard his eyes filled with tears.

And now Harpo was back on the dock, drowning in the dark night, eyes watering. I love you, Frenchie.

Just before he'd left for the lodge, Chico's daughter had asked him about Frenchie's last moments. Harpo remembered putting his hand on her little head, stroking the dark hair, saying nothing. How could he answer? He'd pictured that gaunt face, that oh his mouth had made, and the smell, the smell of antiseptics and something sour and terrible, his father's body, shutting down. He couldn't tell her that. She was just a little kid. And she'd loved him.

Harpo would wire Maxine in the morning. He'd tell her that Frenchie had bilked money out of the nurses. He'd write, "on his last day on Earth, Frenchie taught the nurses

34 Pinochle. He made a four hundred dollar bid and got it." It was time to start taking care of

Frenchie's memory.

He'd be the grownup.

He'd start right now, well, just as soon as he got off the dock.

He thought he saw a movement somewhere, a flash of black on black, and stood,

cold in all the places he'd been folded up.

"Hello?" he veiled. "Is someone out there?"

But there was nothing.

"Help!"

13.

Two intersecting family trees would be a social network, diagrammed over time. And time was not easily captured in graph theory.

Emily minimized her introduction document, still blank save for title, and she

searched for the Mormon website instead. They did indeed collect Historical information.

Crazy. She was glad of it, but couldn't figure out why, why they would have put so much

effort into this, why they would have started it in the first place. Why had she started her project though? And this, at least, provided lasting value, and was interesting to more people than just the information collectors themselves. Anyway. She had two separate family trees, hers and Jonah's, but they were connected somehow. There must have been a moment in which the connection was made. She could search for that, and how perfect would it be in her thesis? A real moment of connection, and a discussion of its consequences, because certainly neither of their families, neither the Kogans nor the Roses, could have functioned independently. Auntie Hannah had to show up at the lodgehouse in the afternoons for

35 cards. Blima, Sonja and Moshe needed a fourth. And Aunt Blima needed someone to tell her stories to. They were like those sharks, and the fish who suctioned onto to their stomachs their whole lives, not parasitic, but the other one, symbiotic.

She dirummed her fingers over her keyboard. Some of the relatives were from

Ireland somehow, she seemed to remember, but this particular branch of the family was from Russia. She should probably start her search in there. She entered Samuel Kogan's name in the search page, but found nothing. But last names changed, especially when translated from Cyrillic. She tried spelling after spelling, and still, nothing. She tried Aielle

Kogan. Nothing. She heard footsteps again, then felt a shadow all around her.

Jonah sat down by her feet.

"I'm looking up genealogy," she said.

"Found anything?"

"It's as if they never existed. It's like they're ghosts."

Jonah squeezed her ankle, then stood up again and disappeared into the kitchen. Just then, Bubie Sonja walked into the room. Jonah had some sort of early warning or avoidance system for sure. It was uncanny how he tracked the older folks here.

Bubie Sonja settled down at a table close to Emily's window. "Who's a ghost, dear?"

"Do you remember those stories you used to tell me? The ones about growing up on

Treasure Island?"

"Of course I remember the stories." Sonja put her newspaper on her lap. "Whatever my sister has been telling you, it's a fabrication. I forget one phone call and now it's 'Sonja has Alzheimer's'. She's the one who's been getting strange. She smells like garlic. Not her breath, her pores. There it is. I didn't want to be the one to say it."

36 "That's not what I meant." Emily looked out the window. The sky was Kingston

grey.

"But you know, maybe I just didn't want to call her back. It can be a hard thing,

talking to my sister. You can't hang up the phone because she won't stop talking. I timed it

last Tuesday. It was one hour and twelve minutes between when I said goodbye and when I

hung up die receiver."

Just then, Jonah appeared again, and he bent and put another plate on the table.

Sonja caught his wrist before he could straighten.

"Oh, look at you." Sonja stroked his cheek with her other hand. "I can barely reach

your face anymore, you're so tall. Such soft skin. Tell me, Jonah, can you bring us some

white wine?"

Jonah winked at Emily and disappeared into die kitchen. Emily felt her stomach

warm.

"It used to be your favourite story when Blima and I went door to door and told

stories for a penny."

Emily had heard this one before. She loved to picture diose two little girls holding

hands and making money, although her favourite wasn't that one, her favourite had to be

her Bubie's love story.

"Every week, we ended on a cliffhanger. When Blima wrote the stories, it was Elijah

the prophet, and exploding cellars and pantries. My stories were more serious. Mine were

about our teacher, and he was in love with a florist who had episodes and he had to run through the streets and rescue her."

"Did Hannah help with the stories too?"

37 "Sure," said Bubie Sonja, as Aunt Blima shuffled into the room. "But it was a limited

participation. We used to pinch Hannah's arm and tell her what to say. Sometimes we sent

her home to practice."

Aunt Blima sat beside Emily. "It might surprise you to hear this, but your Bubie used

to be very bossy."

"It was Blima's idea to run around telling those stories. It was her idea to sell them."

"We made money," said Blima. "Don't forget that."

"Your auntie Blima always had schemes."

"It was a lucrative business. I sold stories before we ever came to Canada, before my

upstart of a sister was even diought of as a possibility. In those days, I recited stories for a

denezhka, or three for a kopeck, it was a bargain. A kopeck was like a penny. A penny was a

lot of money those days."

"Blima's favourite story was about the exploding basement."

"Ionlytolditonce."

"The only trouble with that story was that it was true."

"You shouldn't even remember," said Aunt Blima. "You were little. Little and

annoying. I should tell Emily the story of when I first laid eyes on you, an ugly screaming

thing, red and wrinkled like an old tomato."

"Anyhow," said Bubie Sonja. "Our parents didn't like that she was saying what

happened at the lodge."

"An old hang-up from Russia, that was all."

"When they found out," said Bubie Sonja, "out came the leather strap."

"You didn't tell me that," said Emily. "You used to tell me this story, but you never told me that part."

38 Jonah appeared again with a bottle and three glasses.

"Hannah's father had that strap," said Bubie Sonja. "It wasn't from our family."

Emily looked up. Jonah was standing very straight, the clinking glasses still hooked in his fingers.

"He was a mean one, Hanna's father," said Aunt Blima. "Not like our father. Our father was gentle. Hannah's father was probably the only disciplinarian on the whole Island."

"Auntie Hannah?" Emily met Jonah's eyes and she felt a shiver, like her thoughts were suddenly electric. "You mean Jonah's grandmother Hannah?"

Jonah arranged the glasses and poured.

"It's twice in one week that I talked about the old stories." Aunt Blima stood and handed the glasses around, to Bubie Sonja first, then to Emily. "I was at a bridge game last night and they asked me about them."

Jonah disappeared again, and Emily watched him go. He didn't make eye contact again.

"You said that you would be in last night," said Bubie Sonja.

"Maybe it was the night before that I was at the bridge game."

"You left me a message and you said you'll be home all night."

"Well, I knew where I was."

"I've been thinking about it," said Bubie Sonja. "This is what Passover is really for.

We get shikkered and we clear up all of the things that bother us about each other. Not to let things fester, that's what's important."

"That's not true," said Emily. "That's just not true."

"Why do you think we drink four glasses of wine before we eat?" said Blima.

39 "Why do you think we start even at lunch time in this family?" said Sonja. "The good thing about my mushugunah sister is that she gives me a lot of material. I could start drinking first thing in the morning if I felt like it."

14.

When the old man climbed onto the dock, Harpo shivered all over. Uncle Harold never appeared out of lakes like that. Harpo scrambled over to the far side of the dock, but saw no canoe, only some little ripples in the dark water, and a little piece of the dock jutting out, that he hadn't noticed before. "How did you get here?"

"So how are you doing tonight, my man?"

Harpo sat down heavily. "You didn't swim. You couldn't swim here because you'd have to start at the jail and you don't look like a break out to me."

"You're a bit confused. That can happen. Other than that, how do you feel?"

"My brothers left me. And you're not really here."

"I'm not?"

The breeze ruffled Harpo's hair. Minnie used to do that, and that's how he'd known he'd done something right. And now the Kingston night time was telling him well done. So he'd guessed it. He was sitting with a ghost. Now what?

"Are you far from home?" Harpo whispered.

"Well, it's a bit of row. Or do you mean before this life right here? That was a bit of a row too. I came from Ireland. I followed my family, so it wasn't so bad."

"Oh." The ghost had crossed the ocean with his family. Maybe Frenchie and Minnie would come with Harpo to Russia then. "I followed my family too. That's why I'm stuck out here."

40 Jacob scooted close to the edge of the dock and put his legs in the water. Harpo leaned forward, to see whether there were any ripples, but it was too dark to see. "If you go to Russia, you might meet some friends of that Jewish lodge family, the Kogans."

"That would be quite a coincidence."

"Maybe it wouldn't have to a 'by accident' coincidence. Maybe it could be the kind of coincidence you arrange before you leave." Jacob seemed to hear something, and he turned to the shore.

Harpo turned, to follow his gaze.

"Sometimes when I listen inside the window, they're talking about Mitzvah. That's when you have to do nice things for other people."

"Yeah, I know."

"It's a nice idea. I like that you have to do them. I always liked it. Sometimes, inside the lodge, they're worrying about the people they left behind in Russia."

Harpo gathered together some pebbles, and dropped them in the lake, and they tinkled musically. "Have you ever heard of Minnie Marx? Or Frenchie Marx?"

"Yes," Jacob said softly.

"They were my parents." Harpo felt that same searing hurt, in his forehead, burning all down his chest. It should be visible. But it wasn't. It was still just as dark out, and nobody could see his grief but him. "I love them, you know."

"It was in all the newspapers."

"Is there Pinochle in heaven?"

"How could there not be Pinochle in heaven?"

41 "Then that's okay." Harpo rubbed his eyes. He didn't want the ghost to see him crying. It was vanity, but there it was. "They liked playing cards. So it would be nice if they could play together now."

"You're a nice son," whispered Jacob.

"Minnie was never that good though. She had five boys. So she always waited for an inside straight." Harpo held his breath, and he heard a chorus of buzzing. He hadn't known there were insects out. Usually he was better at listening, but now all he was doing was talking all night.

"The lake feels warm now that the night is cold," Jacob said after a moment.

"Does Frenchie know how much I love him?" Harpo did love him. But he'd never said it, not once. Was it enough to just love him and trust that Frenchie knew he was loved?

Maybe it was just that simple, because that's how radios worked after all. You turn a dial and the sound comes. "We always said we were Minnie's boys, but we were his boys too. He travelled with us, you know. That's when we were touring. He used to sit in the audience every night and start all the laughs. That was his job. People are more likely to laugh if someone else laughs first. That's why. I don't think I mentioned this, but my brothers and I are performers," although he must know that, if he was a ghost.

"You were with him at the end," Jacob said quietly. "That's what I seem to remember from the paper."

"The last day before he died, he taught a couple nurses to play Pinochle. He made a five hundred dollar bid, and he got it."

Jacob pointed across the lake. "You're not so far from home."

42 Harpo thought about the tenements, the long days stalking the city, the hot nights with his brothers and his mother and his father and all his relatives, fighting a lot and being wild and laughing like maniacs. Once, he stabbed Groucho with a fork over a dinner roll.

"My brothers are at the lodge house right now."

Chico and Groucho were probably sitting in the dining room, or that room that had all the windows, probably ensconced in a bottle of whisky and a game of Pinnocle. Those two boys who looked so much like him even his parents were confused sometimes.

He closed his eyes and smelled the soggy air, the cold and the water and all those flowers that didn't open in the daytime. And there were other smells he hadn't even known about before. And then in front of him, Kingston, all lit up like a birthday cake, and beside him, nothing.

Jacob was gone.

Harpo ran to the other side of the dock There were definitely ripples in the lake now.

15.

Emily heard a crunch in the gravel outside. There was something out there. It moved, and the gravel crunched, and gravel presented a number of acoustic uncertainties. And so Emily couldn't even determine the subject's height or weight. She could do it in a house though, if the house had wood floors and a finite number of inhabitants, and if she knew the inhabitants well enough. If there was one thing that Emily understood, it was a house. She always had, footsteps, moods, the house itself of course, the layout, the pitfalls, those floorboards that, when pressed, revealed it all.

43 Then Emily heard a pop, a car door closing. It was a car then. She'd been way off.

Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja stood, smoothing their clothes. They'd heard it too then.

Then the front doorway finally opened with a horror-movie groan, and they hurried out of the room.

Then Moshe settled down exactly where they'd been sitting. It was a procession of old people. It was like they were taking turns.

"It's early in the Marx Brothers' careers." Her great uncle wasn't one for pre-ambles.

"Harpo and his brothers have just been kicked out of what might be their last vaudeville theatre, for some sort of misbehaviour, I don't remember what." Emily tried to look over her uncle's head, but she couldn't see the doorway from where she sat. Anyway, she knew this story. She couldn't remember why they'd been kicked out of vaudeville either.

"They all know that it might be the end of their act." Uncle Moshe caressed a book,

Harpo's autobiography that he'd given her as a graduation present, and it squeaked under his thick thumb. Hers was in her room, she thought vaguely. He must have his own copy then.

"Nobody says it, but as they all squish into their train compartment coming home, they're all thinking it. Ironically, Harpo is the only one to speak. He says, "nuts", and then leaves."

Emily heard a sort of muted talking from the front room, but she couldn't make out individual words.

"Anyway. When the train ride is coming to an end, that's when Harpo joins his brothers. He walks inside and they're all still there. They're all excited and talking. They have ideas about their next act. So Harpo, he sits down, and he makes up ideas too. But before, in that train corridor, that was the only time Harpo ever felt sorry for himself. That's what he said in the book, and I believe it."

44 Emily heard footsteps from Registration, coming nearer. "I'm not feeling sorry for myself, Uncle Moshe."

"Everybody's entitled to do it sometimes."

But Bubie Sonja and guest were walking into the room, so Emily stood.

He looked like a shadow. That was her first impression. He was a light-haired shadow.

"Lovie, I want you to meet Doran Baruch."

He was so tall that he seemed to be folded into the room. She couldn't see his face very well at all because it was darker by the ceiling, but she noticed gaunt cheeks that shadows cut into and light eyes big like loonies.

"He used to come to the lodge every summer, when we were growing up. It was always something we would look forward to."

Doran Baruch bowed low. "Blessed are the Pacific tribes," he said. "Because they dine with the prophets."

This was the man her grandmother had loved. Her great-grandmother too, apparently. He was miraculous, that's what they all said. He straightened and fixed Emily with a look that she couldn't understand. Then he quickly looked away.

"Oi gevalt." Sonja grabbed Doran's elbow and steered him toward the dining room.

"Doran, you sound like Blima."

"What do you mean?"

Bubie Sonja gave Doran's elbow a good shove, and Doran was propelled, twisting backward to talk.

"Did I say something wrong?"

"Blessed are the saints. That's what my sister says when she's being strange."

45 He hesitated. "I've been saying that to Jewish people on Passover for fifty years."

"They probably just think you're married to a Sephardic. They're strange, those ones.

They eat lamb."

Then Bubie Sonja hugged him - his arm, Emily noted without knowing why. Her grandmother hugged his arm specifically, and then she ran her fingers down the crook of his arm, in a gesture that seemed too personal to be witnessed, especially by her grand-daughter, her grand-daughter who'd loved her grandfather. So Emily hid behind the door.

"And it feels nice to stand beside you again," Emily heard her grandmother whisper.

"I've missed you. You wouldn't think it would still hurt, but it does."

"It's physical," whispered Doran. "I was always shocked. Breaking your heart is like stubbing a toe, or breaking a bone. It doesn't seem possible. Since it's only an emotion. A product of the mind."

16.

"Why is this night different from all other nights?" said Emily, and everyone cooed, and just as quickly, the wave of attention ebbed.

They all started talking all at once. The table was full, but Emily was most aware of the empty seat beside her. It felt like an absence. Oh God, she'd had too much to drink already, and the Seder hadn't even started.

Moshe, at the head of the table, stood. "Let's hurry up so we can eat."

"We still have blessings to make," said Auntie Hannah, who must have arrived when

Emily had been meeting Doran, hopefully not before that, hopefully not in time to hear her

Aunt talking about her father's leather strap.

Emily hadn't even seen her at the table.

46 After all that work assigning places, she could hardly see any of the Seder guests.

She didn't think that any of them were sitting at their places, except for Doran. Doran was a black cloud at the other end of the table. Emily found that her eyes were constantly drawn to him, like he was threatening weather she needed to keep an eye on.

"I'll bless the bread and the candles," said Sonja.

"I wanted to bless the candles," said Blima.

"I want to bless the wine," said Hannah. "And then we'll see who remembers the most Hebew. I'm not even Jewish and I can keep up."

Emily imagined sturdy old Aunt Hannah as a little girl, whipped.

Then she felt Jonah's shoulder touching hers, and she started. He was standing behind her, filling her wine glass.

"Have you been to a Seder before, Doran?" said Moshe.

Emily was aware of movement from the far side of the room, Doran shaking his head. "Not like this," he said after a moment. "No. I only came when Aielle was around.

This, I imagine, will be different."

"Well this is an opportunity." Moshe leaned back in his chair. "The idea of the Seder is that the community gets together one time every year, and we tell the story of the Exodus.

So we've all heard the story too many times. It's nice to have someone new to tell it to.

There's a twist in it too, and it's been ruined for everyone else."

Emily felt another movement at the end of the table. "I'm honoured," said Doran.

"To be involved." He cleared his throat thickly. "I like the idea of communal remembering.

That's why I'm here."

"Except maybe history's sometimes best forgotten," said Auntie Blima. "That's the thing I don't know."

47 Doran was silent. The colours around the table danced and Emily poured herself more wine.

"In the Seder we tell the story of when the Jews passed over," said Bubie Sonja.

"You have to say from where to where," said Hannah.

"From Egypt to Isreal," said Bubie Sonja. "Even the goyem know that part."

"And it took eight days," said Hanna. "You have to say that."

"It took forty years."

"Oh that's right."

"And in all that time," said Bubie Sonja, "they still found the only country that had no oil."

"Mr. Baruch." But Jonah, bent low to fill his wine glass, was looking at Emily. His eyes flashed in the candle light. "If you ever attend another Seder, please don't tell them what happened at ours."

There was another creak from the head of the table, and another silence, and eventually a soft, "but all this is just fine." Emily drank more wine.

"Let me set the scene for you," said Moshe. "We start in Egypt. The Jews are making the pyramids. They're slaves, and the Pharaoh is a difficult one. He whips them. Tortures.

One day he goes too far. He declares that all the first born Jewish males will be killed."

Moshe poured himself another glass of wine, and refilled Emily's as well. "Then there's a whole business where a woman has a baby and sends him down the river but we all know that part."

Emily heard a creak from the head of the table, Doran shifting on his seat.

48 "Is he making fun?" said Bubie Sonja. "That's an important part of the story, Moshe.

Maybe that bears talking about in a bit more detail. Especially with Doran with us this year.

Maybe we should tell the story properly this year."

Emily drank more, and the shadow of movement around her made the room sway.

"It's a special year," said Sonja. "Doran is a special man."

"Well," said Moshe, "Okay. A Jew named Moses was born, and he got saved by his

mother, who was a pretty classy lady. She put him on the river. He was found and raised by

the Pharaoh himself, but he knew where he came from, this Moses, and he saved that up."

At this, Doran leaned forward, and Emily wanted to know why. There was no way to

ask All the oxygen in the lodge seemed to have vanished. Maybe it had been taken by the

breeze humming around the lodge, or maybe it was one of those beady little stars that had

taken it. Everyone knew that you need air to burn with. The greedy things did look like they

were burning brighter than usual.

"One day when the Pharaoh got to be too bad, Moses demanded that he let the Jews

go free. The Pharaoh said fine then, leave, see if I care. He said that because God had given

Moses certain miracles to play with and Moses had already called down some plagues."

Jonah leaned close to Doran again. "Uncle Moshe likes to sit at the table and

expound."

"But now the pharaoh was a mercurial man. He chased them. And it wasn't just him.

The Egyptian soldiers got in on the act. They all chased the Jews right to the bank of the

Red Sea, where they were trapped. Instead of going around, or swirnming through, Moses

parted the water. The Jews walked. That's the twist."

A silence settled over the table, and with the dim lights and clinking glasses, Emily was suddenly sure that she was breathing too loud. She put her head in her arms.

49 "Wouldn't it have been nice if Dad could have parted the water when we left

Russia?" said Aunt Blima. "It would have been nicer to walk"

" Our mother certainly expected him to," said Bubie Sonja. " She really had realistic expectations, that one."

"Our mother went through an ordeal," said Aunt Blima.

"She was a misery," said Bubie Sonja. "You always stick up for her. It's time to stick up for us."

"Oliv a shulum," said Aunt Blima, "may she rest."

"I'm the one who remembers what she was like," Bubie Sonja was saying, "since clearly, you refuse to. The episodes. When she went up to live in the attic and Dad had to break into the room with screwdrivers. When she came down in that ratty nightgown that she refused to part with, not made up, hair everywhere, and she yelled at the guests. When I talk to you, it's like it never happened."

Emily looked up.

"Nobody minded," said Aunt Blima.

What had happened? What had she missed? The story had changed drastically, and how had they veered away from die Exodus?

"All those nights that Dad carried her to the old dock, like it was the most normal thing in the world. When he took her out in the canoe. Her see through skin and dripping nose. Everyone could see. They only pretended not to."

"I never saw this," whispered Doran. "This was Aielle?"

"It always happened after you left," said Bubie Sonja. "But clearly my sister doesn't remember."

"You weren't even there," said Aunt Blima. "It's me who remembers."

50 Emily held her breath.

"You weren't even born until the good years. You weren't there for the move. Our father pretended everything was normal, but she was getting weirder and weirder, and I was alone with them then. I was with her on the train, when a man came into our compartment, when she talked to him then said we get off next, because that man is Elijah the prophet.

Our father was asleep and it was just me and our mushuguna mother, and her eyes were shining. I was scared. And that's when she started talking, this whole story about Elijah.

Elijah was with us. He followed the whole way. From Oserov to the boat, in the guise of good weather, and on the boat trip, he was the wind that blew us to Canada. She saw him when she went on deck and he was disguised as a cloud, or one time as a breeze that touched her cheek just so. A man in tight pants. An insect. And I was only little, I couldn't be expected to keep her sane all by myself in that shooshing compartment and the only one awake. And then I was the one who had to take care of you, and our father, and listen for her creaks and footsteps in the lodgehouse. To tell her moods. To make sure she was okay.

If I can forgive her, then you can." And Blima seemed to deflate. She rearranged her cutlery.

"Well," said Sonja, after another silence had descended, after Emily had finished another whole glass of wine. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes," said Blima. "As a matter of fact, I do."

A wave passed through the table, everyone looking to the head. And from the head of the table, there was just silence, just crackling air, Doran more an absence than physical presense in the room. Emily closed her eyes. And after that, all she could remember of the

Seder was the clicking of cutlery against plates.

51 17.

When the canoe appeared, Harpo was lying on his back, singing Sweet Adeline. He sat up,

but not until the little boat actually hit the dock, and he felt the bump, and he knew this one

was real.

And then a woman crawled up next to him. He recognized her from the giant

framed portrait over the Registration desk. The lodge owner's pretty wife. Aielle. She was

wearing a long white nightgown, and it looked soft. He wanted to hug her.

"Good evening," she said, struggling with something in the darkness, a rope maybe,

maybe to secure the canoe.

"How did you know to come?"

"My husband had brothers, once."

"Did you hear me calling?"

"I sent my little girl to listen." Aielle took Harpo by the shoulders and eased him to

the edge of the dock "I saw those boys come in. I saw them pushing each other inside the

doors, and I knew. They did something bad."

Harpo dropped into the canoe, and felt it bob, with him this time, not out from under him. And this time, the water at the bottom felt warm. It was like Jacob said, exactly.

Cold night, warm heart. Or cold water, warm weather. Something like that. The canoe bobbed again, and abruptly Aielle was sitting across from him. She'd looked out for him.

She'd even sent her daughter out to listen. She was even more beautiful now, the wind

messing her unbrushed hair, her dark eyes shining.

"They're probably going to sneak away to rescue you soon."

52 Harpo leaned back. There wasn't another oar, but Aielle seemed to be steering the canoe just fine. "How could your daughter have heard me? The lodge is miles away, on the island."

"You can see the island."

"That's Kingston. That's the jail on the shore."

"Your brothers must have played a trick on you. The lodge is right there. You see those lights?"

There were little pricks of prison light in the darkness.

"That's the lodge. The penitentiaries are all in Kingston, near the lake, not the river.

They paddled you around the island a bit, that's all."

"That sounds like them." The sharp walls of the canoe poked into Harpo's side, but he was remarkably comfortable, listening to the breezes slamming the water, smelling the wood smoke, and anticipating the hot toddy and how it would warm his throat, all the way down to his stomach. And watching this woman take him home. Aielle, who was grunting adorably as she pushed the oars. Boy, she was beautiful. "I think your family is from Russia."

"Yes," she said after a moment.

"I'm going there. I'm going on tour." He was having trouble forming words. "I think

I've decided."

"Could you do something for me while you're there?" said Aielle.

Harpo nodded, blinking to keep his eyes open.

"Could you deliver a letter? And maybe bring a letter back?"

53 18.

Emily tiptoed into the kitchen and found Aunt Blima standing in front of the left fridge, lit by the glow like it was a green-tinged campfire.

"Why are you awake?" Emily whispered. "It's early."

"When you get past seventy-five, you forget how to sleep." Aunt Blima turned, and in the strange light, her face looked old and ghoulish.

"You look great though," Emily mumbled, taken aback and not wanting to divulge the other thing, "for so early in the morning."

Aunt Blima opened the fridge wider and light spilled out everywhere. She stood on her toes. "You have to learn about snacks," she said. "I'll teach you. In case I die, you'll know how we do things in this family."

Emily peeked over Aunt Blima's head. The fridge stuff, cans and jars and condiments, they looked like different kinds of creatures in this light. Her aunt pulled out a whole chicken.

"You're not seriously going to cook that."

Blima trundled to the oven. "When our mother used to bake a chicken, she collected the drippings."

"It's five in the morning."

"She roasted the chicken on a bed of garlic. Just cloves and cloves, twenty at least, and what else. Chives. Onion. We spread this thing on toast. I used to make it too, but not for years and years because of this no fat business. But I'm making it again now. It's time.

Sit."

54 And Emily sat. She pulled the barstool closer to the kitchen island, and it felt like she

was all alone in the lodgehouse and the lodgehouse was all alone in the world. If only Jonah

had woken up too. "Can you please tell me something about Harpo?"

"I'll make coffee. That's also good for mornings. Just the smell is enough."

Emily put her cheek on the cold counter. "I just want to hear something. Just one

thing. Then I'll stop bothering you about him."

"I helped him write letters." Aunt Blima sat down beside her. "I helped him start a

romance. Or maybe I helped him finish it, I can't remember. He was sitting by the waterfall.

No. He was sitting by the dock. It was memorable, because that's the day that he and my dad

blew up the basement. He told me he was practicing his letters, but he wasn't, he already

knew how to write."

"Who was he writing to?"

"Susan Flemming.

Emily sat up. "His wife?"

"Not yet, she wasn't." The kettle whistled. "She was his wife later, and that was

because of me. Everyone was very protective of Harpo. Especially the first time he came to

the lodge. They'd all read that his father had just died. It was in all the newspapers, and

everyone was worried about him. They all thought he was fragile, more so than his brothers,

and it was true, he was a man you just needed to protect. They all said to me, Blima, treat

Harpo like he's good China. He's having a sad time of it right now. But they didn't have to tell me. I knew all that already."

"He came here when his father had just died?"

"Right after the funeral. You know what else I just remembered? His name. In

Cyrillic, Harpo's name looks like Exapno Mapcase. Those might be the only words I still

55 remember. He liked to say that all the time. Exapno Mapcase, secret agent. That was him.

But that was later."

"He wrote that in his autobiography," said Emily. "That was a chapter title even.

Exapno Mapcase, secret agent."

19.

"Are you feeling better?" whispered Aielle. She held a hot tray, and Harpo could only see her in silhouette, because she was standing between him and the window, and the moon was just that bright. "Eat," she said. "You'll waste away."

Harpo stuffed a chocolate rogolah into his mouth, and the warm chocolate burst apart, and the fabric of his life changed.

Aielle tiptoed away, then trundled back with a blanket. And Harpo loved her. It was just that simple. He ate another rogolah. He could love any woman who fed him at the moment. Right now, he felt he could love any one at all.

He heard a pop and a release, a door opening somewhere in the lodgehouse, and when he looked back again, Aielle was gone. He could hear the groan and shift as she made her way up and up and up. She was going to the attic, he figured. It took a hilariously long time.

56 The First Day

1.

The sun was just starting to rise, blazing over the horizon like a blood-shot eye, and Hannah was razing a path. Emily leaned her head against the lodge's front door and watched her pluck things, all the withered plants recently revealed by melted snow. And then she was at the door. Abruptly, Hannah was pushing her way inside, and Emily was stumbling backward.

"I heard that you were thinking about the old times." Hannah thrust out a hand holding letters.

And Bubie Sonja appeared beside Emily, to take them. "Are you?"

"I heard that you're making a family tree," said Hannah. "Anyway. That's what Jonah seems to think So I brought the old correspondence. Emily, those are from your great- grandmother. She wrote to my mother. People sent letters in their day, darling. That's what was done."

Darling. As her Bubie Sonja frowned, Emily tried to determine, from Hannah's expressive face, what else Jonah might have said to her. It was Hannah who, the previous

Channukah, third glass of Manishevitz in hand, had waved Emily over and whispered with sweet breath, "darling, my Jonah loves you." But maybe she'd said it out of pity. Maybe

Jonah didn't like her anymore at all, and she was trying to make her feel better. That tended to happen in this family. People tended to say exactly the opposite of what they were thinking. Anyway, it didn't really matter. Jonah was her cousin.

"Blima was carrying around a Russian letter all day yesterday," Bubie Sonja said, examining an envelope. "It was in our mother's things, the only writing in Russian, the only

57 evidence she'd ever lived there at all. We were thinking we might talk about it at the Seder. I don't know why we didn't."

"Has anyone had it translated?" said Emily.

"Isn't it funny how everything happens all at once?" said Bubie Sonja. "These are never coincidences, I think, these moments of confluence. It means something, if we're all thinking about letters."

"Well ladies." Hannah kissed Emily's cheeks, one and then the other. "I have more things for you, Emily. Trousers. Two blouses and a dress. I'll bring them later. Now, I have to go back next door. I'm making a strudel with Matzoh. We'll see."

And Emily watched her toddle back out.

"Hannah wants to give you trousers," whispered Sonja. "Well. We have a drawer where all her special presents go. I'll show you where that is later. Don't tell your Auntie

Blima about that though. She has a real soft spot for that crazy old thing."

"Do we have anything left from when the family was in Russia?"

"There are boxes in the cellar."

"The basement, you mean?" Sometimes, when Emily was little, as she was tiptoeing down that creaky staircase, Jonah would shut the lights out on her and slam the door.

Sometimes Jonah's brother Darryl held the knob so tight that she couldn't move it at all.

Maybe that's what Hannah had been thinking about when she'd whispered into Emily's ponytail. Maybe she'd been consoling her, or counseling her. Darryl didn't like her. That she knew for sure.

"That's where we used to store things so our mother couldn't just throw them away," said Bubie Sonja. "We hid things down there."

58 Emily ambled toward the kitchen, suddenly wanting coffee, suddenly wanting to move again. She crept around the door frame and smelled the garlic spread from the night before. Abruptly, she pictured grandma Aielle, standing right there, right in the doorway, her hands hidden inside a long black sweater. Emily used to stand on her toes and reach into the pockets. Grandma Aielle's hands were warm, balled up, right at the bottom, and Emily would have to root around in there until she found stuff, a receipt, a piece of plastic, the screw top of some drink. It was her job to throw all that away.

2.

Harpo thrust his legs into the lake. It was frigid. The sun was just starting to rise, and it looked like a bloody eye, and it wasn't doing anything to warm anything. And the whole thing was stupid anyway, because he'd come out to see a ghost, and Jacob wasn't here.

The lapping water wet his bunched up pants at the knees and he was taking a perverse pleasure in letting them get wet higher and higher. He'd catch a chill. He might get pneumonia. People died of that. He might die of it. Then his brothers would be sad. Minnie might say that he was feeling sorry for himself, but Minnie would be wrong. He was feeling sorry for his brothers. They'd have a sorry time without him when he was dead. Who would

Chico play cards with? Who would fling pennies into their cups? Groucho? That was a laugh. He always missed.

Harpo arched his back and felt slimy little rocks.

"Did you forget something out there?" said a familiar female voice.

And Harpo fell right off the dock. He looked down and noticed that he was wet to his thighs, and, unaccountably, his arms were drenched too.

59 "Or are you thinking you want me to rescue you again?" Aielle (the saviour, the bringer of midnight pastries) was pointing toward the dock on which Harpo had been stranded last night. He could just make it out in the blinking water. "If you're just going for a walk in the lake, that's fine. I might not feel like canoeing later, though. So if you could do it soon, that would be best."

Harpo bowed his assent, and Aielle smiled.

Then Harpo danced in a circle, and Aielle laughed outright. It was a pleasant sound, kind of like pennies falling into a glass, so he danced more and more wildly, like those funny

Russian dancers, crossing his arms, kneeling and kicking. She liked that, it seemed. Well, she was Russian, after all. And so Harpo kicked harder and harder, until he was panting.

"Stop." Aielle motioned with her arm, a sweeping gesture that he didn't understand.

"It's enough now. That's too much laughing."

Harpo jumped up beside her. He shook himself off, and she laughed again, a charmingly exhausted sound. "Stop it. I can't laugh anymore."

"That's your quota of laughing for the day?"

"Yes, exactly," and she fixed him with piercingly dark eyes.

Harpo waited, but she didn't say anything more. He was imagining what he wanted her to say, when abruptly he pictured Jacob, red cheeked in the breath-white night, and the force of the thought made him lie back He didn't know why he was reminded now, or why the thought was so vivid. Except that maybe she'd want to know about him. If there was a ghost on the premises, she might want to charge him to stay. "You know what I discovered?"

Aielle sat up. "A letter?"

60 "No." Harpo struggled up as well. "A letter?" He wished he'd found one of those.

He liked letters. He liked ripping them especially. The first time he'd ripped a letter onstage, they'd been in that wonky little theatre in Queens, going wild since curtains up. Professor

Groucho was sorting through letters, and Harpo had taken one, just grabbed it, and ripped, and then a second passed, two, then audience laughter surged like a wave and knocked them over almost. Then Groucho: "he gets angry because he can't read." God, he loved his brothers. He touched Aielle's hand. "Have you met Chico and Groucho yet?"

"You didn't see it?" said Aielle. "My letter? It must have been a dream, then."

"You dreampt about a letter?"

"Did we talk about Russia? Is that true, at least?"

"I told you that I'm going there," said Harpo. The rumours were right, then. She did have a mind like the attic of a house, or a frame of mind like a house frame, all layered ideas.

She was beautiful though, more so even, since he felt a bit protective now. "You asked me to deliver a letter for you."

"I had a dream last night that I wrote a letter. I brought it to the dock, but I couldn't find you. There were just some saplings instead, waving in the wind like skinny ghosts. I remember addressing it and everything. I remember writing Simon's name."

"Simon?"

"I felt better. It's been so long since I wrote his name."

"Who's Simon?"

"Then I put it back on my drafting table. But when I got up this morning, the letter was gone. It's funny because I remember it so distinctly. I remember the feeling of ink on my fingertips. I get it on me. I'm worse than Blima." She held up her wrist and hand, and

61 they glowed, unmarked, a milky white in the pale sunlight. "We talked about my country, you and I, that I know is true."

"Did you check your pockets?" said Harpo. "You were wearing a nightgown. It was white. It was made out of something fluffy."

"It's not the sort of letter that I would misplace," she said, watching him with her strange intensity. "It must have been a dream."

"Do you often write to Simon in your dreams?" But that sounded too incongruous

(incongruous!) Why would she dream about a letter when she could so easily have dreamt about the man himself, instead. "Maybe your husband took the letter. Maybe he wanted to say hello too."

"No." Suddenly, Aielle's cheeks were pink like they were wind burned. And her lips were red too. And Harpo was suddenly aware of his hand, lying close to hers. It tingled.

Aielle had had an affair with this man. Suddenly it was in the realm of things he knew.

3.

Harpo tried not to look beside him. Aielle's dark hair was tickling his face. The wind was whipping it against her shoulders too. Those shoulders looked so smooth. He'd always loved that particular part of the female anatomy, the shoulder that sloped into the neck. It sometimes drove him crazy, that spot. He loved to rest his face in the crook of Susan's neck, and tickle with fluttering eyelashes while his hands moved elsewhere. He crossed his legs at the ankles. He thought about letters.

Aielle said nothing at all.

62 4.

Emily opened her eyes and there was Jonah's head, looming right beside her on the table like he was a plate. His eyes were wide like soup bowls. He slid a mug of coffee in front of her, and it clanked against her other mug, and Emily willed him not to speak, not to move, not to do anything. But not to leave, though.

She held her breath. There was a new smell in the room now, a smell like licorice, maybe. She closed her eyes, and tried to follow from image to image like before. Where had she left off? A big hand that hers fit right into, a fingernail that came off in her palm, that clicked against the kitchen counter, was it plastic?

"Are you okay?" whispered Jonah.

Emily put her head in her arms. She was fine. She was great. She was right on the verge of remembering something, and whatever it was, it would blow the day right open. She could feel it.

"Emily?"

Emily touched the matzo on her plate, and there it was again, the table cloth hanging down at eye level. That seemed important.

"Did you sleep at all?"

Emily shifted to answer him, but she smelled her matzo instead, and it happened again, her head buzzed with images, memories of things, and caffeine. And she actually felt a sensation like a buzz. Jonah would love the connection between food and memory, but how could she explain it?

"I thought I heard you get up last night," he said. "What have you been doing?"

"I'm thinking." But as soon as she said it, it wasn't true anymore. The images were gone. The feelings too. Her mind was filled with white and gray like a Kingston sky.

63 "I was worried," said Jonah. "I tried to check on you."

Emily rounded on him. "You're the one I need to be protected from," and she didn't even know where that had come from, that anger hot like flame in her stomach, already burnt away and gone, even the fumes of anger, gone.

And then Jonah's cheeks and neck coloured, and she felt gutted.

"I have these memories," she said quickly. "I think there's something I'm supposed to remember."

"Did you sleep at all?"

"A bit," said Emily. "Not really. It was worth it for this chicken stuff."

Jonah picked up her matzoh, and sniffed, just like she'd done, and Emily felt herself nodding and nodding as a feeling of warmth blossomed in her stomach. She swayed and the room seemed to sway with her. Jonah must understand. The tangy smell, that's what had done it, that's what had made her remember all those things, the big rump in an orange kitchen, the song, the pockets she jumped to, the bits of paper. And now there was something else too, something on the periphery, her great-grandmother holding long strips of Scotch tape. Suddenly, Emily could feel the tacky things stuck to her fingertips, and the little jolts as they were pulled off again. Something was being taped away. And she was feeling thrillingly complicit. That must have been a long time ago, a decade and a half or longer. She couldn't have been more than six or seven.

"Maybe you should sleep," said Jonah. "You should go back to bed."

"No," said Emily, her head in her arms. "It's because we couldn't find Aielle and

Sam on the Mormon website."

"They might have changed their names."

"I tried every conceivable spelling of Kogan."

64 "I've been thinking about it. We could widen our search. Did your great- grandparents have any other family?"

"I don't want to ask Aunt Blima again. She got a bit annoyed the last time, so maybe

I should give it a few days."

"Sure," said Jonah. "You're here for a while, aren't you?"

"We could probably find out on our own, though. There are old boxes in the basement, and I'm sure we could find names and stuff there."

"That's kind of off-limits for me, though," said Jonah. "I'm just staff here."

"You're family." Emily should go down to the cellar herself, and she knew that, and she would. But she just didn't want to go now. Jonah nudged her arm, and she felt brittle, like she might snap again. "How did you know about the Mormon thing?" she said quickly.

And then there was a silence. And then. "You know Blima's got a registration outside?"

"What?" Emily stood, and the morning changed again. She had to hold the back of the chair to steady herself. "Right now?" She turned to the window. That was sunlight streaming in from outside, like a flood, like a torrent. "I promised I'd help her with those. I forgot." And she'd promised herself she'd have a thesis outline finished by noon. When she'd come here, the light had been going the other way, from inside to out. And the sky had been a dusty purple. What time was it? "She's got a registration now?"

"They're outside."

Emily picked up her cup of coffee, then put it back on the table again. Which would be more serious? Girl with mug, girl with arms crossed, girl with hands on hips. "Blima was supposed to get me. Show me how to do things in the family and all that."

"They get this way. They get into their pranks and they forget."

65 "I should have been listening." Leave the coffee. Take a pen. That would look good.

Don't say good morning in case it was already the afternoon because, oh God, it might be.

Just say hello. Hello was safe. She'd promised herself that she'd start the conclusion by lunch.

"You don't have to help all the time."

Emily cast around for an escape route. She was blocked by the table. She should take her coffee mug out with her for sure. Coffee and where had she put that pen?

"You could just do your own work"

Emily bristled, moved backward, but Jonah touched her hand. "You could just be on vacation." His voice was gentle.

Emily moved her hand and Jonah's fell away, but then he shifted his weight and was standing closer still. And suddenly Emily was seeing his face close up, his cheeks, pink and white and blotchy, stubble sandy orange, the same like his hair. He certainly didn't look like her at all.

She ducked and turned and ran out of the room, banging on the dining room table and the back cabinet on her way. The sound echoed.

As she rounded the corner past the doorway to the kitchen, the smell of the chicken spread caught her again, and she was sitting under the dining room with great-grandma Aielle. Aielle was whispering. All crouched up like that, she looked like a pot cozy. Emily's fingers were curled around waxy crayons, and she was surrounded by colour, and Grandma Aielle was waving fingers covered with curling tape, tickling Emily's face.

66 5.

Aielle looked up, and Harpo did too, and he saw clouds smeared in concentric rings. They looked like the inside of a mouth. They kind of looked like screaming. Then Aielle stood and

Harpo scrambled to his feet. "Your daughter heard me yelling," he said.

"She's my oldest one." She was inching off the dock, like she was being pulled, like that string from yesterday had caught her instead. "Her name is Blima."

"Blima." Harpo liked how that sounded.

"I have another one too. Her name is Sonja. She has curls. Light hair. Pink cheeks.

She could be an angel from a painting." She turned. "I think I saw the mailman leave."

"The mailman?" said Harpo. "I like letters."

"He shakes Sam's hand. They talk about bread. Then they both go on and it's my turn now." She looked at her watch.

Harpo caught Aielle's arm. "Your turn for what?"

"I have to see after the mail," and she walked quickly into the woods.

Harpo stumbled after her.

Maybe it wasn't such a coincidence that both he and Aielle liked the mail. Who didn't like letters? He didn't dream about them though. That was new. But she probably didn't tear them up like he did, so they were even. Harpo imagined a conspiracy in the post office - himself, as a Postie - tearing up all the letters as they came. Harpo the postman.

Wait.

This could be something.

It could be the movie. It could be the movie that saved the Marx Brothers.

Harpo saw that he'd fallen behind, and so he ran. Aielle turned a corner, and he held onto a skinny little tree trunk and rocketed himself around it. Maybe he could tear up only all

67 the letters mailed to one person. Find someone mean, or someone to tease. Good old

Maggie and her broken down smile. Or maybe he could redirect the mail, and help the people who needed help. He'd have to talk to Chico.

As Harpo caught up with Aielle, he leered at her, but his heart wasn't in it. What if girls needed help finding the right man? Harpo the postman could cut up letters, tape together the wrong halves. He could send around patchwork correspondence. Jokes. Pranks.

Sometimes, die letters the writers had meant to send. He could start romances, he'd bet on that. This could be perfect. It could be the movie that redeemed them from Duck Soup.

And it was Aielle who'd given it to him. Like a gift. Like she knew he needed an idea just like this. "I like you, Aielle Kogan."

Aielle stopped walking. "You travel a lot. Don't you?"

"Sure," said Harpo.

In the movie, he'd travel in a big white postal truck, no, he'd walk, postmen walked, didn't they? He pictured himself in a Postie uniform. Then he pictured her in a uniform, running, and laughing her exhausted laugh because that was his favourite of all her laughs so far. And Harpo the postman was giving chase, his brothers close behind.

Harpo took a deep gulping breath. There was more oxygen in the world. It was because of her. Wherever she was.

Harpo stopped. Aielle had disappeared into the trees, and he was alone in the woods again. He turned, to find her, but he found the lodgehouse instead. The newly risen sun was hitting one of its windows and making it shine like a copper penny. Somehow he'd wondered right back home again.

Harpo trudged up the wooden stairs. Something always happened. And people he liked were always ditching him.

68 6.

Emily hurried to the desk where Auntie Blima stood facing a young man and a young woman wearing Queen's jackets. They were wearing them well, in that slightly swaggering way you're supposed to do, their weight on one leg. Emily edged away from the desk and closer to the back cubbies.

"You kept separate last names then?" said Blima.

"We're not married," said the young man.

"Oh," said Aunt Blima. "So dien you want two rooms?"

"Just the one. If that's alright."

Emily grabbed a room key and the registration book When she straightened, Jonah was beside her. His shoulders were shaking. Was he laughing? He was, she saw, as he handed her a felt tipped marker.

Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja had always been too open about sex. They've been around a while, that's what they said. They could answer every kind of question. They certainly didn't have problems with pre-marital relationships. Bubie Sonja, especially, had hinted that she'd been in a bunch of them, and hadn't there been a special one? God, she hoped it wasn't with Doran.

"We're just going to sleep here." The young man handed Emily a Visa, and she was relieved to reach out her hand, and not say, "they've been around a while, you know." She examined the card. The student's name was Ryan.

"I mean we're just going to sleep," said Ryan. "We'll be in the city until pretty late every night. We just graduated."

"We're having a special dinner here tonight," said Blima.

69 And then there was a silence. Emily stared at the registration desk, felt sweat on her forehead that must be visible, that was probably pearling and catching the light like a million little prisms. She tried to imagine these two painfully normal people at the Seder table, where she would be staring at her cousin, and invading his personal space, where Jonah would be smelling like a Barbie doll or a coconut, and the rest of the family would be being their weird selves. These weren't things she could easily explain.

Blima leaned toward Emily, and she started, and she took a boxy machine from her aunt's outstretched hand.

"You swipe the card through the slot," said Aunt Blima. "Then follow the instructions. It tells you what you want to do."

"Thanks for the offer though," said the young man, "but we won't really be able to eat here at all. We've got meal plans in the city."

Emily nodded, and she swiped the Visa, and touched the keypad to enter the amount, head ducked low so that nobody would see her relief.

"You have a nice night," said Blima.

Emily turned to face Jonah's office, then the students. She felt her blush like a fever.

"I'll show you to your room." She could be scalded by shame like that.

7.

Harpo poked his head in the kitchen. He saw three pairs of wide eyes, too little, too pink, too sticky-outy, none the ones he wanted. Then he looked in the dining room, then in the long hallway. No Aielle in sight. Then he ran through the stuffy room with all the doors in it, and, in the room filled with windows, He found Chico at the card table, practicing his shuffle and deal, with Grouch reading across from him.

70 Chico put down his cards. "Where were you last night?"

"Where was I?"

"We went back for you."

"I saved the crossword," said Groucho. He put his hands on the table, then hit his pockets. "It's someplace."

Harpo sat. After a moment, Groucho lifted his book again, and Chico shuffled. Why did he bother practicing? There wasn't another person who could play with such panache.

Chico grinned at him, as if he knew what Harpo was thinking, and he probably did.

"Pinchie Winchie?" said Chico.

"Maybe later."

"I was thinking of finding a fourth. Would you be in?"

"I'm thinking of going to Russia."

"Not tonight, though."

"September."

Chico nodded. "I heard that. Somebody told me. I have a gig too. I'm going to

Vegas."

Harpo looked out the window. It was still bright and beautiful. He wished for rain.

Of course Chico was going to Vegas. "You're going without me?"

"It's a piano tour, partner. You don't play the piano."

"Yes I do."

"'Love Me And The World Is Mine' isn't enough for a whole tour."

"I can play it in four different keys."

"I don't think an audience would like that. Especially the Vegas crowd."

"Yeah." Harpo turned away. "They have discerning tastes there in Vegas."

71 He'd said discerning. Groucho was intent on the book, so he hadn't heard. Harpo would tell him later. No. He wouldn't. He'd never tell him at all. He'd never tell Groucho anything again. Ghico would go and he'd gamble and he wouldn't stop until he'd lost everything he'd earned from the movie. Harpo would write him notes, note the amount of money he was allowed to put down every night, but Ghico would gamble that away too.

He'd sell it as movie memorabilia. And he could just as easily come to Russia.

"I'm taking Maxie with me to Vegas. She'll love it there. It's nice for a kid, lots of colours."

Harpo nodded, even though he was their family too. And he'd been their family first.

Stupid tied down brothers.

"I just thought of a game." Ghico started dealing.

But Harpo pushed away his cards. "I don't want to play."

"I haven't told you the rules yet. You'll want to play when I tell you how it works."

"I don't care." It had been comforting to know that he wasn't all alone. But maybe he was. Maybe his brothers were moving on. They had separate families, and they even had separate jobs now, and it was only Harpo who had nothing without them. Duck Soup had been a great movie. "Why had nobody liked it?

"Okay." Ghico pushed Harpo his cards. "So it's like Pinchie Winchie."

Harpo stood. He'd come here to be with his family, not to realize that he was alone, to be the only one here who was all sad and lonely, all lit up by grief. "What happened to being a string of Christmas lights?"

"We're Jewish, Harp."

Harpo turned to the door. Aielle would know what he meant.

"What did you say about light?" said Groucho.

72 Harpo turned to answer Grouch, but just then he saw Aielle outside. She was standing in a knot of trees, just outside the window. And she saw him too. But she didn't wave, didn't smile, didn't acknowledge him at all. She turned and ran back into the trees. He stalked away too. He didn't care where.

8.

When Emily came to the lodge as a little girl, she and Blima used to swim together, and Aunt

Blima would always carefully wet her armpits first before traipsing into the water. She had a dark green bathing suit with a frilly little skirt. It made her look like an eggplant. That's what

Emily told the students, Ryan and Amy, as she stood in front of their door.

"Seriously," said Ryan. "You don't have to apologize."

"Blima's not actually offended that you're not married."

"You really don't have to worry," said Ryan, lingering after Amy had already disappeared inside. "This is a nice place."

Emily looked down the hallway, at the unevenly faded wallpaper, the worn rugs and carpets, the light that seemed to hover in slanted columns of dust.

"It feels like History here," said Ryan.

"Yeah." Emily put her hands in her pocket and felt the little folded paper, Harpo's letter. "This place does have that."

"And I like the way it looks almost modern too, because there are so many lamps around, with all different shapes and stuff."

Emily nodded. She hardly even noticed those anymore.

"I was in another inn like this, in Pennsylvania," said Ryan. "And it had pictures of the famous people who lived there on all the room doors."

73 "This place had lots of famous people. In the thirties, it was the only resort that Jews were allowed to go to, so they got so many people. Like the Marx brothers."

Ryan nodded slowly. He looked back in the room. "On all the walls, in that other inn, they also had framed family trees."

9.

Emily balanced on the top step so she could see the window, the tops of the trees and the sky. It was like Bubie Sonja said. Things just kept coming up, like letters and family trees.

Aielle would say that the universe was trying to tell her that she should make one. How many people had brought that up in the last two days? Two. No. Three. Jonah, Hannah, and now this Ryan. Even her advisor might say that this was a sign - two vertices a coincidence, three a pattern, of sorts.

Framed family trees.

Graphed family trees. Genealogy as graph theory.

Her introduction was supposed to give background, history, and maybe she could discuss genealogy too. She could show the community of Treasure Island as a social network, a concrete example, a graph whose vertices could be tracked and analyzed. And she could probably use it to map the passage of the oddities here, like Auntie Blima's story about

Elijah in cheap motels, that had moved from Russia to Treasure Island to Boston, or wherever Doran was from.

Emily jumped to the next stair down.

Maybe she could find the root of Blima's obsession with Elijah, or grandma Aielle's fascination with Harpo.

Then she jumped down again.

74 What if she could show how these pathologically strange people had affected each other all these years? Maybe she could even map traits, like biologists did, and determine the origins of quirks, senses of humour, and things. This Island was islolated like the Galapagos.

Emily jumped again. That was big. Potentially, this could be huge.

Milligram had tried to quantify the six degrees of separation thing. What if she could do that for the nurture side of personality development? For storytelling and the passing of information? What if she graphed it, and turned the whole thing into a scientific game of broken telephone?

This wasn't procrastination. This was work. Because what was she missing in her thesis more than that, more than evidence of why it mattered anyway.

She hopped onto the landing.

The only problem was that this was bigger than just introduction material. It would have to be included in the theory section too. She'd just have to add it, and rewrite a bit. She hurried to her room. No. To the cellar. She needed to find information about her family.

10.

Harpo was still a lone wolf. He was alone anyway. He felt like prowling.

He walked laps around his room, and he felt like mauling something, and he could chew the furniture even. Not his, though. Chico's. Groucho's. And wouldn't that make

Chico all superior like he was right, and Harpo still was a little boy. But he was, wasn't he?

Wasn't that the point?

Harpo sat down heavily in front of his suitcase. He hadn't unpacked it yet. So he opened it and threw a shirt at the wall. That felt nice, so he took out another one, and threw that too. Then he threw some socks. Then he threw a pair of pants. The buckle crashed

75 noisily against the wall, and it felt nice when that happened. So Harpo looked through his suitcase for more trousers. He found a pair and threw them. Then he threw pajamas.

So here he was, in a fancy resort, one of the only guests who was allowed to sleep in a room by himself, and only sometimes did he sleep by himself, and still he was alone.

He threw three shirts at once. They didn't hit the wall. One fell in a heap right at his feet.

He was still that scrawny little boy, that drop out, that fall out, that thing that attached himself to people he thought would be his friends for life. None of them ever were.

Still none of them were his friends. Maybe not even his brothers, now that Minnie and

Frenchie weren't around to tell Chico to include him. He missed Minnie and Frenchie. He missed making movies. He didn't want to be alone.

Harpo took a deep breath. He didn't even feel better. And now he was out of clothes to throw. He opened the suitcase wide. Inside it, under a flap of material, there was his sewing kit, and inside that was a pair of scissors. He put on a tie, cut it in two, and loped into the hallway.

11.

Emily tiptoed past registration and Jonah's office, past the guest rooms, and to the door closest to the stairs. She opened the cellar door carefully and raised her hands above her head to find the cord, tickling her palm just like she remembered. Except it tickled her wrist and arm too. She was taller now. She pulled, and a straining light popped into the room, and she walked down the stairs, briskly, before she could lose her nerve.

76 It was about ten degrees cooler down at the bottom, and the air had a moisture in it that was palpable. She quickly found the other two lights, but they made the shadows bigger, the empty space smaller, and she moved further inside before she could analyze more.

She hoped that her eyes would adjust, and indeed now some of the dark by the floor became denser than the rest. She knelt and felt forward and there were the barrels.

Blima and Sonja used to play here. This was their secret hide-out with Hannah, they'd always said. Emily put her hands on the wood cask and felt around it, picturing their clipped bickering down here, in English or Russian or Yiddish, she didn't know. Probably

English. They didn't remember Russian any more, and they only ever used Yiddish to swear or keep secrets.

When she got to the dip in the barrel, she patted it. And she overcompensated and slipped, and abruptly she was on the ground. And she saw a box. She sat up, quickly, and opened its flaps with a whoosh of cold air. Inside was a tangle of things, telephone cords and gadgets, mostly, but with an envelope squeezed in at the very top. She picked it out carefully.

It was labeled 'old'. She slid her fingers under the lip, and it made an eerie crinkly sound that bounced hollowly off the walls. That's when she made the mistake of looking up. She was suddenly confronted with shadows and the stiff bumpy walls that she remembered.

Here it was then, the cellar of her youth.

A chill came on suddenly, and she hugged herself, and the envelope made a noise, so she thrust it in her pocket. The room was endlessly big again, the walls receding to who knows where, the shadows were so dark. This was how she'd pictured jail cells before she ever saw a real one on television. She hadn't remembered that. She used to expect murderers down here, in between and inside the barrels, and dogs with massive teeth too, and every other kind of monstrosity, and every time she'd heard a footstep from upstairs, she'd gone

77 rigid. Once she was standing alone in here, and she heard ragged breathing that wasn't hers, just that, just breaths, and this cold air that seemed to seep up right from the soil— or was that a dream?

Emily jumped up, and clambered up the stairs, and held her breath the whole time.

That's what she used to do. She couldn't remember why.

Up in the lodge house again, with the cellar door safely shut behind her, the air smelled like lilacs. It must be getting late. Or it might be getting stormy. She held the letter lightly in her pocket, and her heart was still beating too fast, so she stepped outside to the deck for the cold air. She walked down the steps and down the waterfront path because she liked the sound the letter made when she moved. It was a satisfying crinkle. Up here, that sound was nice.

12.

Harpo wanted to be found, or caught, or pulled by that string again. He needed help. There was a feeling in his stomach, and that's what it was. The need to be helped.

He stumbled down a hallway, not one he knew, just one he chose at random. He'd just keep walking. He'd walk until he got back to New York He'd give up, and be a tenement man himself, and live the rest of his life on a doorstep. Nobody would be able to find him. Even if they wanted to.

Harpo rounded a corner, and saw the desk at which he'd registered, and a long hallway. And there was Aielle. She was standing at the end of it. He grabbed the wall and stopped abruptly, but his heart kept going, and he pictured it falling wetly at her feet. He held his breath.

This was a moment like a bubble.

78 Harpo crept a bit. Aielle was behind the Registration desk, holding a drawer knob or something, not opening it, just staring. She had a strange energy, and something about her made Harpo picture a bird. She would have to notice him slowly. She'd have to get used to his presence here.

Aielle opened the drawer, then pulled out a pile of envelopes. She looked at each letter slowly, with her fingertips as much as her eyes, and, vaguely, Harpo wished that she'd examine him that way.

He tiptoed closer. And the scene changed. He noticed that her eyes were wet and her cheeks were red. She looked like she was holding back tears. Harpo could cry too, just looking at her.

He took another step. But this time he stepped onto a loose board, and he felt the creak before he heard it, and he wanted to stop the whole next few minutes from happening.

But the floor creaked. Aielle turned. She saw him. Her eyes widened and she fled. She disappeared through one door, and, seconds later, he heard anodier door latch shut.

Harpo sat down against the wall.

Maybe she wasn't avoiding him. Maybe she was sad because of something else, something that had nothing to do with him. Maybe she was still trying to figure out whether she'd written that letter.

Harpo scrambled to his feet. He pushed through the door that Aielle had escaped into.

13.

Harpo ran through the upstairs corridor and rounded a comer. And he nearly walked right over a little girl. He stopped. Their eyes met, and Harpo felt a shock, like his blood was

79 suddenly carbonated like Coca Cola cold in a bottle. Her eyes were like Aielle's, almond

shaped and dark and serious, and this must be Blima, the little girl who'd heard him shouting

from the lake.

She looked right at Harpo's chest, and Harpo remembered the cut up tie. That must

look a little bit shocking in a classy place like this. He waved the tie stump, smiling

sheepishly, and suddenly, the little girl's face brightened.

And then she laughed. The little girl had a laugh like pennies falling into a mug, like when he flung one and it got in. It was the cutest thing he'd ever heard. It was exactly what he needed to hear.

Harpo felt a pull of protective feeling. And it was so visceral that he stepped toward her. Visceral! He'd tell Groucho. Maybe. Maybe he'd tell him about Blima too, because she was a girl he could really love.

She skipped away, round another comer. And her face appeared again, from behind the wall, smiling playfully. But then they both heard her mother calling her name, and her smile disappeared, and, seconds later, so did she.

14.

Harpo walked from hallway to hallway, touching the walls to feel their texture. They were pretty smooth. He looked like he was intent. He looked like he was inspecting. He used to do this in the tenement buildings. He'd thought, then, that nobody would think he was lonely if his hands were busy, so he'd gone up and down the hallways and stairways and stairwells, seeing how they all felt.

He took a break and looked at the window. He didn't see out. He just saw his own reflection. He waited for Aielle's image to appear behind him. She had to come. She had to

80 find him. He needed her. But just his face looked back, pale and soup-bowl eyed.

Boy, he could look stupid.

He made a face, a Gookie, just like Gookie the cigar maker on lower 82nd.

There were moments in his life that had changed everything, not just after, but before too. Like the first time he'd imitated Mr. Gookie, and the kids on the stoops laughed so hard they flopped on their sides, their faces covered with tears and snot, the first time ever they weren't laughing at him. The world changed. Just like that. He ran upstairs, and

Minnie screamed with laughter too, and after that it was like he'd always been funny. Then there was that card game in twenty-two when they got their nicknames. He'd turned into

Harpo before and after. Now, when he talked about the tenements, he talked about little

Harpo who was on his way to Broadway and then the pictures. All those loose moments, running away from gangs, getting into scraps, getting scraped, running through the streets like a marble in a box maze, all those moments were just necessary steps on his way to being

Harpo Marx, the Marx Brother. But that other boy, the scared little kid, he was still there.

And he could see him in the stupid window, little Ahdie, who played by himself and stuck by all the wrong people because he didn't want to end up all alone.

Harpo flopped down on the overstuffed chair that faced the window. Fine particles of dust alighted. They flew up all around him like it was snowing upside down.

15.

The forest floor looked like a carpet. Emily rarely walked this path in the daytime, so she was surprised at the delicacy of it, the little spots of light that looked like candies strewn all over the forest floor, all over the funny little plants that grew in the gloom, all over her fallen tree too.

81 She sat. She'd been down to the cellar. She hadn't bothered Aunt Blima again. She planned to be nicer to Jonah, and that seemed like a sort of victory too, a step in the direction in which she wanted to go. It seemed to Emily that you could be a Harpo, or you could be a Groucho. Those seemed to be two orthogonal ways in which to approach the world, the axes with which you could measure personality.

She took out the envelope and shook it. It was full of pictures, and they spilled onto her lap, and they were old, the label was right. They weren't black and white even, but beige and sepia, and they were cut in all different sizes and shapes. There was Papa Sam, but young. She knew him by the beard, and by the expression that her mom wore sometimes too, that look of irritated concentration. He was standing stiffly beside two other men who looked just like him, and they were holding one hand behind their backs, all three of them.

Emily imitated the gesture. Then she flipped the card. Bobby, Sam and Dima, 1907. Those must be his brothers, more people to search the Mormons for. She flipped through the pictures, through more images of them, in more uncomfortable poses. No new names. But this was something.

Emily heard a noise and quickly put the envelope back into her pocket. She looked up again just as Jonah broke through the trees.

He stopped and watched her. "I'm interrupting," he said.

"You're always interrupting." Emily put a hand on her mouth. "I'm sorry. I mean

I'm not doing anything. So there's nothing to interrupt."

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

"I'm already going for a walk," Emily heard herself say. She rubbed her face. That's not what Harpo would have said. "Do you want to come?"

"Only if you want company."

82 "I do." And Emily was surprised to find that she meant it.

So it could be that simple.

Jonah walked down to the dock, and Emily followed after slowly, one foot touching the other like Harpo sometimes did in the movies. This had worked. She'd been nice. He'd forgiven her. What if personality didn't come from genes? What if it was just a series of decisions? She could be happy. That was the thing. She could be Harpo Marx if she concentrated hard enough. And a resilient attitude could be passed down the generations just as easily as genes could. If her great-grandparents made it here from Russia, then she'd figure out her life too.

Jonah hurried ahead, and Emily scrambled after, onto the loose stones that had been a concrete dock once, but that now spilled onto the lake in juts and avalanches. She caught up, and they stood still, listening to sounds that Emily couldn't place, whistles and splashes with no clear source in the still water. Then Emily pushed some pebbles into the lake with her foot. They tinkled like coins falling into a jar.

"I like that sound," said Jonah.

"I found more names to lookup. My Papa Sam's brothers."

He touched her arm. "Let's go swimming."

"I don't have a bathing suit."

Jonah lifted his shirt over his head. Then he dropped it on the grass and looked at

Emily. He unbuckled his pants and straightened, and Emily was strung along by the movement. She was standing too close to him since he was taking his clothes off, but she didn't move away.

He seemed to hesitate.

83 She heard her breath, and his, and all die chirruping and damp ruckus all around them, and was that look a dare? He knelt and stumbled out of his pants. His boxers were blue with little clouds all over. She would never have pictured that.

He paused again, and seemed to be waiting for an answer. What would Harpo say?

Emily quickly unbuckled her pants and pulled down on her shirt. She held it down.

But he was watching her, so she wriggled down her pants and tried to step out of them.

Then she found herself falling, and grabbing onto Jonah's shoulders. And oh they were hot, his shoulders, and his skin was soft, and her face was touching his chest almost. But now their center of gravity shifted and he was falling too, and they both fell into the grass.

They struggled back up. And then Jonah was running to die end of the dock. Emily's pants were stuck around her shins and ankles somehow, and so she kicked, and kicked off her shoes, then kicked off her pants. She bunched her clothes around the rectangle of envelope, then ran after him, over the rocks and pebbles, and through the sharp little pains in her feet, but she didn't care about that, because there he was, waiting for her. They made eye contact, and she shivered, and abruptly, he turned and splashed into the lake. She jumped in right after. And she felt die freezing water against all of her all at once, and then the sharp stones on her bare feet as she stood to take a gasping breath. She huddled inside the water. "I thought it was deeper here." But Jonah was already gone. He'd swum off without her and was treading water farther off.

"It's cold," said Jonah as she swam out to him, past where she could stand.

"Thanks for warning me."

"I'm sorry."

Emily ducked under the water. She opened her mouth, surfaced, and spurted water up above her like she was a fountain. Jonah laughed. She laughed too, because she was right

84 for once, Harpo would have done just that. As she giggled, she swallowed some of the river water and spluttered. Her throat burned. She couldn't cough with him so near.

"Are you okay?"

Jonah was holding her around the waist now, looking at her. His face was really close. And she could feel the muscles in his arms working.

"Are you alright?" he whispered.

She nodded, and tried to stop herself from coughing, so made a strangling sound instead. She cleared her throat. She could feel the water swirl around her where Jonah was kicking.

"You know," said Emily, her eyes watering, "anything can be represented by a graph." She turned her head and coughed once, hard. "All the little Islands in the lake could be vertices. The canoe trips between them would be the edges. We could figure out optimal paths and stuff."

"Do you want to swim out to the dock?"

"Are you going to leave me out there?"

Jonah turned a bit.

"No, sure, I'd like to. Let's just go there and back though. I should work on my thesis."

Abruptly, Jonah let her go. He raced forward, in a strong front stroke, strikingly fast, and Emily was suddenly very cold in the strip around her waist where his big hands had been.

She wished they could have stayed where they'd been a minute longer. He probably would have stayed with her, like that. She shouldn't have said anything. They'd still be together.

85 16.

Emily used to love sloshing back to the lodgehouse with Jonah, listening to the puddles in their shoes, the hiss and pop as they walked. She still sort of liked it. It was quite cold, though. She hadn't remembered that. And she was worried about the delicate little envelope that she held gingerly pinched between her thumb and forefinger.

"Hey." Jonah turned. "Did you find anything in the cellar?"

"How did you know I was down there?"

"There were lights on. I shut them out for you."

"Oh."

"I know you don't like going down there in the dark"

And Emily knew that this was his job, and she shouldn't take it as evidence that he did lookout for her, but she liked feeling cared for. That was probably the source of this fascination with her cousin, the fact that Jonah had always had at least a bit of a soft spot for her, when his older brother wasn't around.

"Hey," she said. "Why isn't Darryl here? Why doesn't he ever come to the lodge?"

"He said he got his Freedom Papers when he graduated high school." Jonah ducked his head. "He doesn't really like it here."

And Emily felt warm again, all in a rush.

17.

Harpo woke, and he saw the chair, and he remembered where he was. Lodgehouse. Island.

Canada. Then he looked up to the window and saw another face in the reflection so he quietly lifted the blanket over his head and made himself look like a cushion. From now on,

86 he wouldn't be seen or heard and he'd go through life this way, watching it in reflection in dirty windows.

"Blima!"

Harpo looked up. It was Aielle in the entrance of the room, Aielle's pretty reflection in the glass, like he'd hoped for. But the tone in her voice made him shrink deeper into the chair.

"Yes, I said," came the chirpy little reply.

"Blima, you look at me when I'm talking to you."

"Okay." And now he could see Blima's sweet face, those almond eyes. They met his in the window, and Harpo felt cold. But the little girl didn't say anything. She didn't give him away. She just looked back to her mother.

Now Harpo had no choice but to hide. Aielle couldn't know he was here. She'd be furious. She'd think he'd been eavesdropping, and besides, she had the Minnie look.

"You can't talk back to me that way," said Aielle.

"Fine."

""When I say you have to take your sister to talk to the guests, I mean it."

"She was feeling shy, so I did it by myself."

"When I tell you to do something, you do it. Sonja is cuter. Guests like her more.

And a child's duty is to say goodnight to every guest. You have to do it by name. You have to curtsey. Both of you. If you don't say goodnight properly, both of you, that means I have to come downstairs and do it myself, and that's not fair to anyone."

"Fine, I said."

"You make my heart shrink when you misbehave."

There was a silence, and suddenly Harpo worried that his stomach would growl and

87 give him away. It was always his stomach. That was always what did it. If it wasn't his stomach though, it would be his heart. It would break right apart. It would probably sound like a zipper. Harpo peeked at the window. Blima was zipping and unzipping her jacket.

"Do you want me to be able to love anyone at all?"

Blima looked up, not at her mother, but at Harpo. She nodded at him and his heart swelled up. Poor little kid.

"What was that?"

"Yes, I said. I want you to love people."

" Then you can't make my heart shrink and shrink and shrink. If you do, then there won't be room for any love at all. Then I'll stay up in the attic forever. I'll lock the door, and

I won't even come out to visit."

"The guests like you, if you come down, and you're dressed pretty and brush your hair."

"Tell me that you're sorry. Say 'I'm sorry, mom.'"

"I'm sorry, mom."

Harpo's fingers tingled. He thought, he didn't know what to think. He knew he wanted to hug that little girl though. She wasn't a heart shrinker. She was a love conduit.

He'd thought conduit. He'd have to tell Groucho. He would. Harpo shrank deeper into his chair, grimacing at the groan, but the reflected Aielle didn't seem to notice. She turned and left the room, tugging at Blima's arm like she was an old toy she wouldn't be sad if she broke.

88 18.

Emily hovered outside the dining room, just around the door. She could see everyone was inside already, ready to start the Seder. Blima, Moshe, and Auntie Hannah, and Sonja and

Doran were standing side by side, and their hair looked similar, Emily thought vaguely. It must be the candle light.

"I noticed this before," said Sonja. "It's a name at my spot at the table, but it's not my name."

Emily moved to walk around the wall, to correct her bubie, to explain the name cards, but Jonah grabbed her. He tugged her behind the door, and stood beside her, close.

"I think this means that I have to pretend to be my sister," Bubie Sonja was saying.

And Emily felt tugged. But Jonah held her back, his hand in the crook of her arm.

"I'm not ready to go in yet," he whispered. "Stay."

She could feel his breath on her neck It teased all the little hairs into standing, and that felt nice, but she also wanted to make sure there was a place set for him at the table.

There was still time to bring out plates and things, napkins, cutlery, if she was quick and clever about it.

"Just stand with me one more minute."

Emily nodded, and anyway, they were like a tent, both leaning into one point, the point where her forehead met his chest. If one of them moved, they both would fall. She felt his chin on her head. He was breathing deeply. It was fine to be close with your family.

"I sat down where I saw my name," said Doran.

"That means that you play you," said Blima. "That's fine. There's less research involved."

89 "Just let them be weird," whispered Jonah, and Emily felt his hand on the back of her head. He was stroking her hair. She could still smuggled in a plate. She'd just have to be sneaky.

"Now I have to think of what Blima would say," said Sonja. "I think she would say,

'I want to tell a story about the sister of Moses. She was a famous vaudeville star.'"

Jonah shifted, and Emily grabbed onto his waist to keep from falling. "They're just playing," he whispered into her ear. "They know what the name cards mean." He reached his arms around her, and folded her into his chest, and now they were hugging for real. Just hugging. Just standing there. She tightened her arms around his waist and felt an answering pressure. He smelled like dryer sheets, and a little bit like coconuts. "They do this."

"Then I have to think of what Sonja would say," said Blima.

He squeezed tighter.

"No," said Bubie Sonja, "because you have the Moshe ticket."

"Well," said Moshe, "Moshunya would say, 'lets eat.'"

"No, Moshunya would say, let me tell you the story of a cellar," said Bubie Sonja.

"You're every bit as bad as Blima."

Emily felt an itch at the base of her back. She twitched a bit, but carefully, because she was responsible for Jonah's balance too.

"I could tell you the story of a cellar," Moshe said brightly. "It's about my father."

"That's my story," said Aunt Blima, "and it's about my father."

"No, it isn't, I remember distinctly." Someone picked up a drink. Emily could hear the clinking ice cubes. The itch got worse, so she arched her back, and hoped that her sweater might scratch it for her, but it didn't, and she twitched again.

90 "No, you're right. It's Blimushka's story. I know because it happened in Treasure

Island when I was very young, but I grew up in Toronto."

Emily shifted a little, loosened her grip, to scratch her back, and abruptly Jonah let her go, and she was stumbling, watching him disappear into the kitchen. She'd been comfortable suddenly, and just as suddenly, she was shivering a little, walking into the dining room all alone.

And there wasn't a place for Jonah. And there wasn't time to do anything about it. If she made a scene, he'd just feel worse, probably.

19.

"Let me tell the story anyway." Moshe filled Emily's wine glass. "Emily, this isn't my story.

It's your Auntie Blima's story, but I tell it better."

"I tell it better than any of you," said Bubie Sonja.

"I was there," said Aunt Blima. "And I'm the one who was old enough to actually remember. How could I tell it badly?"

"This is the story about the Treasure Island cellar. When your great-grandma Aielle and your Papa Sam moved to Treasure Island, the lodge house wasn't a lodge at all. It was a shack Even after they opened to the public. They had very few rooms. Now, your Papa Sam had already added extensions to the house."

"Wait," said Emily. "Papa Sam did that? I didn't know he could do that."

"He'd never been trained," said Aunt Blima. "He just got up one morning, and decided to teach himself. People did that sort of thing in those days. Dad, especially. Your

Papa Sam was miraculous himself."

"That doesn't make sense," said Emily.

91 "Oh yes," said Blima. "We've had inspectors in. They all say the same thing. The lodge is flawlessly built. Much better than what they put up today."

"So Papa Sam had added extensions so that more guests could stay," said Moshe,

"but what your grandma Aielle really wanted was a cellar. She wanted to store things, and make rootbeer and sauerkraut. So Sam, and Papa Jacob, and Harpo, they all got together, and they bought dynamite."

"Harpo Marx was involved in this?"

"Oh yes," said Bubie Sonja. "Although he was nervous. Do you remember, Blima?

He kept asking whether this was a good idea. This is something I remember. Nobody told me that. He made his brother take me for a walk, I think He wanted the kids nowhere near the lodge when it happened."

"Just the kids?" said Emily.

"We should make sauerkraut again," said Aunt Blima.

"We couldn't do it like our mother," said Bubie Sonja. "Although how she ever did it is still a mystery to me. She refused ever to walk into the cellar, she was so angry."

"She wasn't angry," said Aunt Blima. "She wanted to keep from getting angry. That's all."

"I thought she wanted the cellar?" said Emily.

"She thought your Papa was stupid to dynamite it on his own," said Bubie Sonja.

"She wanted him to bring in a professional."

"He did it himself?"

"With Papa Jacob and Harpo," said Aunt Blima. "At least he asked for their help."

Papa Sam had asked Harpo. Emily knew her great grandfather mostly from pictures.

He had good posture. Also, facial hair that was brown and grey, and maybe she could kind

92 of remember the tickle of it on her cheek, if he was the one who always bent down to talk to her. The mustache moved as he spoke, like bulrushes moving in a breeze. She'd watched it and cried. But she was really little then. And it might not have been him.

"And that's not all he did," said Bubie Sonja. "In the room of doors, you can't see windows, so he cut up the walls to make it a better view."

"He made slats. They open right up so you can see the windows."

"Harpo did that?" It was a cheerful room, Emily thought vaguely. She should visit it more often.

"But the best," said Aunt Blima, "that was the cellar."

"Did he at least empty the house?" said Emily. "Before he blew up the place?"

"God no," said Aunt Blima. "All of the things were still inside. There were probably still guests in there too, I don't remember. But it worked, so that was that."

"Where did they get the dynamite?"

"Dad dug a hole in the ground in the back and filled it with gun powder. Then he and Papa Jacob sat on lawn chairs and watched the whole thing. Harpo didn't sit with them.

He was so scared. He made me promise not to let him tell Dad another single idea."

"Harpo liked to help," said Bubie Sonja.

"I know," said Aunt Blima. "I'm the one who knows. Harpo was my friend, and he was with me when the cellar exploded. And our mother. Our mother was laughing."

"She was seething," said Bubie Sonja.

"No, I remember distinctly. That was one of the moments when I thought, 'this is what I want to be'. I want to be a woman who can laugh as the whole world is being dynamited around me. After, though. I'll admit. Late that night, she got a bit annoyed. I heard it all the way in our room."

93 Emily ducked her head and drank

20.

"Doran," said Bubie Sonja after an eternity of clinking glasses, "do you remember anything from your childhood?"

"Yes." Doran nodded slowly. "I remember everything."

21.

Emily wanted to be with Jonah, back in their corner again. She grabbed his arm, right where it sloped into the elbow, and felt his momentum change. He was matching hers. Maybe he did like her, given that he was following.

But then Sonja sidled up to Emily, and Jonah gently slipped away, and disappeared into the room of doors.

"You know, lovie, when your Great-Aunt Blima and I were young, we thought it was our job to visit every person who came to visit the lodge and ask them if they were having a good time. 'Has your stay been marvelous?', and 'We hope that your stay has been just marvelous'. That's what was done then. We started when I was just three years old."

"That's cute."

"I think it's nice for the people in charge to visit."

"Yeah." Emily folded herself in the little space where the two walls met, exactly where she'd stood with Jonah. Only, it wasn't warm now. It wasn't cozy like it had been, and it didn't smell sweet like coconuts.

"Especially the guest of honour, lovie. I think it's nice if the guest of honour makes sure everyone's having a nice time, especially if she's a beautiful grand-daughter like you."

94 Emily picked herself off the wall with difficulty. "I guess I should mingle a little."

She'd fit so well into that little space.

"That's a good girl. You go check on all those guests."

"You mean Hannah and Mr. Baruch."

"That's a good girl."

22.

Emily found Doran Baruch on the veranda. He fit into the shadows, or the shadows fit him, and he looked like a mishappen leather glove. "Mr. Baruch," she said quickly, before she could talk herself out of it.

"Doran," he said simply, and suddenly, Emily had no idea what to say.

"How has your stay been? I hope it's been just marvelous."

"Of course." And he sat on the steps, as if being disturbed were the most natural thing in the world.

Emily sat beside him, and she felt the wet seeping through her pants, through her underwear, right to her skin. Had it rained? "Do you really remember everything?"

"I used to remember nothing."

"Yeah," said Emily. "That makes sense. My Aunt Blima doesn't really remember anything either. I used to bug her about it. All she could tell me about was a cold, white room, with a cupboard that she crawled into once."

"There was a cupboard?"

"She remembers being yanked away from it," she said, "but she grabbed onto the drawer handle and it opened as she was pulled. Six years in Russia, and that's all she got from it, the feeling of a set of drawers."

95 Doran nodded slowly. "You remember what she told you."

"I was interested for a bit. I don't know why."

Doran lapsed into silence and Emily was intensely aware of the sound of her own breathing. It sounded like panting. It seemed louder than the lake sounds. Then something scooted in the grass and she was relieved.

"The last time I came here, it was in this time of year," Doran said suddenly. "But it was different. There was snow. But that was years ago. Decades." He took a deep breath.

Emily could see the steam as he exhaled slowly, the dim fog of water particles that all caught the moonlight.

"It snowed more then. I thought, if one thing would stay the same, that would be the weather. But things in this world are not immutable."

Then he pointed. Emily saw a bar of darker black and she followed it to the swingset. It was lit by starlight, the bars winking dully.

"Those were there then," said Doran. "There was snow from the ground to the rubber seats. Then on them too. It looked like there were dead bodies slumped on the swings."

Emily put her head on the banister. It was only on this porch that the shadows were caught. She looked up. It was the overhang that did it.

"There weren't bodies. It was just the snow. It wasn't covering anything. I checked, of course. Just swings." He shook his head, a weird, ambulatory shadow. "I don't know why

I said that I remember everything. My first memory used to be at the lodge house. I was lying on the floor, under the dining room table, looking out the window. There were grownups in the room. I could hear them whispering."

96 Emily drew in a breath and let it out slowly, and it lit up all around her. "My first memory," she said, and she thought about a hill, a lamp stand, a bookshelf. She could feel herself hugging a pair of legs and then being lifted. She didn't know which one came first.

"I'm drunk."

"Since I turned seventy, I've been remembering things. Before the lodge house.

Before North America even. I remember my parents. It's all coming back. I don't know what any of it means, but I remember it so vividly. I'm sitting on a very cold bench and I'm shaking. There's a very tall man in front of me. He shows me a tongue depressor and says,

"there are wafers that are body of Christ." I don't know why he's saying this. And I'm terrified that Jesus will come. I got it the wrong way around, you see. I pictured wafers making up a man. And I thought that he would stomp around, pointing out sins and eating people. Crackers get hungry, you see, or so I saw. Years later, I saw a movie, and I saw him, the monstrosity that at first I pictured Jesus to be. I thought of him as a marshmallow man."

"You and Blima would get along," said Emily.

"We do," said Doran. "And you grandmother. I also remember your great grandmother. Aielle."

"From the lodge."

"In Russia. In a Church, I think. Or maybe it was an office or a waiting room. I never remembered that until these memories started seeping. I'd thought. Even when I came here first. I thought I was meeting her for the first time. It wasn't until recently that I remembered her from before."

They'd known each other before the move. Emily had suspected that. Had someone told her?

97 "But Grandma Aielle's Jewish," she said. And Emily wasn't sure she really wanted to understand what this man was piecing together. "I don't think that you could have seen her in a Church."

"Do you think it was a dream?"

"What?" Emily could only see his eyes. They were watery and staring up at the moon. "It could be a dream, I guess."

"She was a beautiful lady, Aielle." And Doran drifted back to silence.

Emily looked at the door. At the bottom, there was a strip of bright orange light, like the one lining the doors when she'd been little, when there'd been grownup parties and she'd been banished, lying just outside, peering in.

She could probably stand up now. She could probably go inside. Bubie Sonja couldn't have meant for her visit to last any longer than this.

"Did you ever meet her?" said Doran.

Emily started, but remembered to nod. This man was nice, but maddening. He always spoke when she least expected. He always stopped when she thought he wouldn't.

"I didn't know if she died before you were born."

"I was twelve."

"There's a memory that I have. I don't know if it's the first time I saw Aielle. I'm on a bench. It smells like chalk. I liked to curl up like a worm or a larva. So I wouldn't be noticed. I saw Aielle come in. And then my father. They whispered together, and I wanted them to stop, so I dropped a book It echoed. They left together soon after. I think they were holding hands."

"Luckily there are no more Seders," said Emily. She didn't want him to finish the story. She didn't want to know how it ended.

98 "These ceremonies only come in twos," said Doran. "It always felt like there were more— "

"Because we celebrate for eight days— "

"—A calendar year maybe. Three hundred and fifty-seven days of remembering, and then you can take eight days off. It always seemed to me that the Jewish culture had the better idea on the subject of how to remember."

23.

"You're Blima." Harpo had found the little girl in the garage, threading binder's twine around a pencil.

"I was waiting for you to find me," she said quietly.

This was a fragile moment too. There'd been so many.

"This is a game?" He hovered in the doorway. He didn't want to move too fast. He could feel his connection to the little girl, and it was tenuous like worn out twine (tenuous!)

"I don't want anybody else to find me," she whispered, "onlyyou."

He tiptoed closer. "Why's that?"

Blima shrugged, then spun the cord around her wrist. "I did something terrible."

"What did you do?" said Harpo, but he knew already. She hadn't asked her sister to greet the guests byname. She'd done it by herself.

Blima didn't lookup. "It was just terrible."

"It's really not that bad." Harpo sat down on a stool. "Compared to what my brothers and I used to do."

"Did you do mischief?"

99 "Your mother just gets into funny moods sometimes. It's not your fault. She loves you, you know. She told me you're very smart."

Blima spun the cord round and around her fingers. "She wouldn't say that." Then she pulled the twine loose.

Harpo pulled his stool forward, to look closer at that cute little face he liked so much. But the base of the stool was caught in the twine, and it toppled a bit. Harpo grabbed it, and walked it backward a little, to where it would stand up again. "She said she trusts you to look after lodge guests when their brothers leave them outside on docks."

"I did that by myself because I wanted to."

"Your mom didn't ask you to go outside and listen?"

"I was checking on you."

Harpo picked up some twine from the floor and wound it around his fingers. He liked when people looked after him. He liked this girl even more than he had, if that was even possible.

"I saw you go outside, and then I saw those other men laughing. My dad told me they're your brothers. I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Harpo tugged on the twine around his fingers and saw that it came from a long length of it. He tugged it higher, and saw that it came right from Blima's spool. He must have the other end of it. He let the twine out, so that he would have a lot of slack. Then he stood slowly, slowly led the twine closer to Blima, winding it around stools and tables as he went. She was fiddling with a hammer, and didn't look up, and so Harpo crept closer still.

"Whatever you did, it probably isn't horrible."

"I hid something. It didn't belong to me."

100 "You hid something?" Abruptly, Harpo remembered the letter. What if it hadn't been a dream after all? What if Aielle really had written something for him to deliver?

Blima hammered her can.

Harpo wound the twine around two more stools. "Did it belong to your mother?

This thing you hid?"

Blima didn't look up. So Harpo crept close and looped the twine in a wide circle that he knew would catch her when he pulled. "I like to hide things from my brothers."

"What do you hide?" she whispered.

"Lots of things." He crept closer still. "Coffee. Crosswords. Books. Once, I hid my brother Chico's pants."

"How did you hide pants?"

"We were sharing a room in a hotel." Harpo pulled tight on the twine, holding his breath. But Blima didn't seem to know that she was stuck now. "We had a play. We were touring from theatre to theatre. One morning, my brother slept too late, so I got up quietly, and I took away all his clothes."

Blima hid her face.

"Then Chico had to come down to the registration desk wearing boxer shorts and nothing else."

Harpo could hear twittering. "So that makes us friends." He crept around and around, so that Blima was caught, around her waist, around her stool. "We both like to hide things." Then he spun around and around so he would be caught too, around the stools, around the workdesk, around Blima.

And she sat up again. "I want to be your friend."

101 Harpo felt that lightbulb feeling again, looking at poor little Blima's stricken brown eyes. So he shrugged, big, raising his rope-caught arms. The twine pulled taut, and the stools lifted right off the ground.

Blima, who'd fallen off the chair as it was rising, moved a little, and discovered that she was stuck too. She screamed with laughter, jumping up and down. Harpo jumped too, and everything in the shed clattered and banged. It took them half an hour to get unstuck again.

24.

Emily didn't want to go inside yet. She didn't want to be seen. And she couldn't be. She couldn't see the stairs beneath her, it was so dark out. She lay down on her back. The moon had been covered up by clouds. That would do it.

The door creaked open. Then Emily heard footsteps, then a thick sort of silence, someone hovering in the doorway. She didn't have to sit up to know that it was Jonah.

"It's nice out," he said after a minute, and Emily felt like the night opened up a crack. Maybe he'd been looking for her. She heard a creak as Jonah lay down, and then a pressure as he touched his socked feet to hers.

"Jonah?"

"Hey."

Emily waited, but Jonah said nothing more. There were things he could say. Why he was outside. Why he worked at the lodge. If he'd missed her. "I've never understood the expression 'companionable silence', Jonah." Emily listened to his slightly arrhytlimic breathing, and the sharp exhalations that might have been a laugh.

102 "Are you holding your breath?" he said after a moment. "I'm the one who used to hold my breath."

Emily curled on her side and felt the cold in her feet and then in the rest of her. She wanted Jonah to feel the loss of her.

"Do you remember?"

She remembered Jonah lying dead in the stairway and all those nights she thought she was a murderer.

"I used to pretend that I was dead. You used to get the mirror and hold it under my nose?"

Emily stood and scrambled around Jonah and to the door. It was then that she realized that if she pressed her head to the doorway, she could hear inside.

"So what did you think of that?" Emily heard Bubie Sonja say.

"I didn't like it," said Aunt Blima. "I hated it. He made me nervous. He made my feet sweat. What does that mean, 'I remember everything'? What is he going to tell?"

"Don't take your shoes off," said Sonja.

And then silence and then. "Oi gevalt, Blima. Animals don't strip off when there's company still in the next room. A dog would keep his socks on."

"I can wring out my stockings and have enough to water the vegetable garden and maybe make a soup."

"Put your socks back on at least."

"What does he remember?"

"Don't roll up your slacks. I don't need to see your ankles. Oh, you give me a nervous breakdown."

103 "You took off your socks."

"I have beautiful ankles. Your toes look like slugs."

Someone leaned back on a chair. Emily could hear it groan.

"He looks different." And Bubie Sonja's voice was soft. "But you can still see the old

Doran. That sweet face. Those eyes. He's different now, but still handsome. You can still see why all the girls were madly in love with him. They're probably still throwing themselves at him. He's a catch. That's the problem. It's competition."

"Does he want to tell us what he remembers?" said Blima.

"Does he still think that I'm beautiful?" said Sonja. "I'm not what I was. When he first saw me, he didn't look shocked, but then, he'd always been kind. He'd always been more generous than people deserved."

"It's worse than asking, this business of silence, because he makes me want to fill it."

"Fill it with what?' said Bubie Sonja. "What do you have to say? You hardly even spent time with him. You were rarely in the same room, when he visited. Besides, you don't have to fill any silence. You have a husband Moshunya who does it for you and you don't even have to ask"

"Drinking makes me feel like I want to talk. Or ask him questions. Oh, he's sleeping upstairs in the lodge tonight."

And Emily remembered Ryan and Amy, living the way twenty-somethings were supposed to. How could anyone live in a lodge, surrounded by so many better examples of how people were, and ever be able to relax at all.

"And tomorrow we have to start again," said Aunt Blima, echoing Emily's own thoughts, "all this mushugas. If I didn't have such aches every day, I'd run fast and make a whirlwind and summon my Eliyahu."

104 "You've never summoned Elijah that way so you might as well stop trying."

"I want to know what he remembers."

"I know what he's thinking about," said Bubie Sonja. "He's thinking of a certain night when he was twenty-one and I was fifteen and a quarter and we paddled to Wolf

Island. There was a lot of moonlight and not a lot of clothes. That's what he remembers.

What I want to know is does he regret it. And why did he never come back. And what does he think now."

And Emily felt cold. But she was trapped. She didn't want to hear any more, but

Bubie Sonja would be furious if she found out her own grand-daughter had been eavesdropping.

"Why would he regret it, Sonja," said Aunt Blima. "Of course he loved you. Of course you're still beautiful. Don't be crazy."

"Then why is he always slipping away? Why is he not sitting with me, like he used to?

I still love him. I didn't think I would, but I do. I love him as much as I did that summer."

At that, Emily slammed inside the lodge, and the door rattled on its hinges.

25.

Harpo tiptoed to Blima's room. She'd kept an eye on him, so he'd keep an eye on her.

She was a sensitive little thing. She needed his help with her mom, and Harpo had a lot of experience with this sort of thing. He knew what Aielle was trying to say. He'd just have to mitigate the rest of it.

Mitigate!

Mitigate, four across from the cross-word with Groucho the day after Frenchie's funeral - it occurred to Harpo, and not for the first time, that it was some higher power that

105 set the crosswords, not some dime a day employee. The words Grouch taught him were always immediately useful. What other words had he learned lately? Incongruous. Tenuous.

Discerning.

He'd fix Blima relationship with her mom. Everyone needed to be loved by their moms. And nobody was more lovable than that little girl.

106 The Second Day

1.

The water was sparkling and pale blue and should have been warm, but wasn't. There were footsteps approaching. So Harpo kicked, and water flew everywhere. She might get wet, but that was a risk he was willing to take.

"That's the splashing of a man who has something on his mind." Aielle sat herself down beside him, and Harpo noticed that she was all made up. She looked completely different from the straggly thing who'd crawled out of the lake the night they met. She could be a different person altogether.

"I recognize the look because I have things on my mind too," she said, smoothing her fancy skirt and starchy blouse. He probably missed the nightgown most. He'd had an atticky feeling for that thing.

These clothes hadn't gotten wet at all.

Harpo kicked again, and this time they definitely did.

"I've been thinking about the letter that I want to send with you," she said without missing a beat.

She hadn't even flinched.

But now she was silent. She was just watching the water. Susan had looked like that once, on their last date, when she'd been curled on his rug in his living room, and Harpo felt the same thing he'd felt then, like a cord of something had been pulled inside him.

"How does love move from person to person anyway?" she said suddenly.

By letters? That didn't make sense.

"Love might be like the smell of baking."

Harpo shifted, moved a rock from under his back. "I like food."

107 "I think love might travel through the air like a gas. I think that might be where it comes from."

Harpo sat up again and looked at the surface of the water. He remembered seeing

Minnie standing under a broken light in an empty dressing room and thinking, 'I can make her happy. He grabbed the dressmaking dummy and waltzed with it, and just as quickly, he was on the ground. She'd lashed out with her measuring stick, he realized, as a strip of pain opened up across his back and legs.

"How does love actually get from one person to another? That's the question."

"That's easy." In Harpo's memory, he was crouched on the dusty floor, picking up the pins she'd knocked down, tipping them up so the pointy ends stuck his fingertips. Love was a desperate feeling inside his stomach, like the need to find a washroom. "It just does. It just goes."

"How? You love and the other person is loved?"

"Yes." Minnie had loved him. She had.

"That seems too simple to me," said Aielle. "There must be more to it. It's a complicated mechanism, I bet."

Harpo nodded, then he realized that Aielle wasn't right, so he stopped. But it was too late. A hole had yawned open inside him. And Aielle was smiling like he was in full agreement. Smart people did this. They made easy things seem so complicated. They lost track of the point.

"Could there be a time difference?" said Aielle.

"What does time have to do with anything?"

"It can't be true that as soon as I love someone, then they know it already— "

"That's your job—"

108 "I've hardly had time to make up my mind at all. That would be presumptuous."

A wave crashed against the little dock They both got wet. So did the dock. Harpo touched a little weed absently, now thinking about loving over time, loving in time. "If I love someone when I'm on a train, does the love move faster?"

"Probably," said Aielle. "Yes, of course it would."

"Good then." That was nice. He'd loved Susan on the way here, as the train had pulled away from the station. He'd thought about her really tenderly, like he'd never really thought about anyone. His Susan. That's what he'd thought. His Susan who wanted to bring her mother on a date. That was funny. "So if I think a nice thought about a girl when I'm on a train, it'll find her and just sock her."

"Unless the train is moving away from her."

Harpo sat up straight.

"If the train is moving in the opposite direction, then she might not even know about it yet, this nice thought of yours. It's going to take a while, to get there."

This was all too much for a boy who'd fallen out of school in grade two.

"Love is not easy to think about," said Aielle, nodding. "It's a complicated thing. It's like with time zones and clocks, that's my newest theory. I'll work at loving now, and hopefully people will find out later."

"Because of time zones?"

"Because otherwise, something about the way I love is broken. I love my girls, and I don't think they're feeling loved by me. It's not a working transaction. That's why I prefer guests pay with cash."

"You're worried about your girls," he muttered. That was nice, at least.

109 "When you write a letter, your words should go, but your love should go with it. But the Canadian Postal Service doesn't charge a tariff, so I'm concerned they don't take it seriously."

"Wait," said Harpo. "You're worried about your letter?" Was this the same letter that

Blima was so sad about? The letter that she'd hidden? " Aielle, was that a dream? Or did you actually write a letter?"

"Maybe it was a long time ago that I wrote it." She looked out at the islands. "It could be that was a memory, and not a dream at all. It could be that that particular letter was sent already, years ago."

Harpo shivered.

Aielle stood. "I have to write a new letter, to give to you. And I'm going to need you to bring me a response. Or maybe you can just bring the response. That's all I really care about."

She picked her way off the dock, and this time, Harpo didn't follow.

2.

Emily stopped at the entrance to the room of windows. Her great aunt was sorting through envelopes, and her grandmother was touching a pencil to her wrinkled forehead, like she was mapping out all the things that hurt.

Bubie Sonja sat up. Emily shrank back.

"What's a nine letter word for lie?"

"Obfuscation."

"To lie, a verb," said Bubie Sonja. "And obfuscation is much longer than nine letters.

It takes a calendar year just to say it."

110 "Disseminate," said Aunt Blima.

"That means something eke."

"Dissemble," said Aunt Blima. "To dissemble."

"We could go on Jeopardy! you know. If they ever allowed two half wits to make up one whole person."

3.

Dissemble. Disassemble. Emily could figure this place out if she went back to first principles, if she looked at each of the component parts. She eased herself into the doorway to Registration, where Jonah was typing at the desk. She tiptoed, one step, then another, and then she stepped down on a loose board. It creaked. He looked up.

"I'm not spying on you."

"I'm still searching the Mormons," he said. "Birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates. So far, nothing."

"I found some new names," Emily walked behind the desk quickly, feeling the texture of the wood. "Bobby and Dima. Robert and Vladimir Kogan. Papa Sam's brothers. I found pictures of them in the cellar."

Jonah leaned closer to the screen. And so Emily sat. And waited.

She'd had dozens, maybe hundreds of imaginary conversations with her cousin before coming here, but now she couldn't think of anything to say. She just needed one pithy kind of observation, or something like that, and talk would just flow. Just a thought.

Like a foothold. But she could think of nothing.

So she set up her own computer. Silence was fine. Silence was helpful. She could work on her thesis. Or if she couldn't do that, then at least she could make a schedule. Point

111 form outline for the written parts to be finished tonight. Abstract and introduction tomorrow written tomorrow. Then she could start the adding on to the theory, and add more every day until Friday, the conclusion. Writing the conclusion would coincide with the end of Passover, in which Jews celebrate coming home.

Emily checked her word count. Even her schedule didn't break a hundred words.

She imagined telling Jonah that.

4.

"Excuse me, ma'am." Ryan was standing at the other side of the registration desk.

Emily stood so quickly that she knocked over her stool. She'd never been called ma'am before, and wasn't sure she liked it.

"I seem to have had an accident." He shifted on his feet. "We did. Amy and me."

"Are you alright?"

"The lamp."

Emily looked down. Indeed, he was holding a lamp, one of the little ones that were mounted on the desks in each of the rooms. Jonah moved toward his office.

"I don't think it's going to work anymore. I'd be happy to pay for a replacement."

Emily looked to Jonah, who shook his head. "That won't be necessary."

"Thank you," said Ryan.

"It was an accident?"

He didn't look hurt. He was sweating though. He thrust the lamp at her and ran back up the stairs, two by two.

"What's wrong with it?"

Jonah took it, knelt and plugged it in. "Flick it on."

112 Emily touched the button, and it shot out one spark, then nothing.

Jonah stood.

"Don't touch it." She still had colours dancing in her peripheral vision, thin little lightning streaks, lights and shadows.

"What did he do to it?"

Emily gingerly touched the bulb's glass cover. It was warm, but not very.

"It smells too," said Jonah. "Can you smell that? It's like flowers. I think we should call it Jasmine."

"The lamp?"

"It could be Jazzy for short."

5.

Harpo stumbled into the woods, thinking in connected rectangles like frames in a movie reel,

Harpo with mailbag, Harpo feeding dog, Harpo kissing a letter and handing it to a pretty girl who is crying. Harpo delivering feelings. Here's how it would go. He would open her mail, hand her the letter part, then use the envelope to wipe her eyes. Except he might give her a paper cut. He wouldn't do that. He'd give other people paper cuts, though. That would be his secret weapon. He'd get in a tousle with a bad guy, then he'd be running away and the enemy would be busy sucking his finger. He'd do it a lot. That would be funny. That would play.

Then Harpo pictured a little kid. She was reading a letter and crying because of what she found inside. Harpo the Postman took the thing and ripped it to pieces. He could be a reverse mailman too. That would work. There was nothing more powerful in the world than comedy that sort of hurt.

113 He should find the letter that Blima had hidden. It would be in the interest of this new movie. It would be research.

6.

Emily felt a hand on her wrist, and she looked up.

"So far nothing," said Jonah. "Nothing for Robert or Vladimir. But I'm looking at alternate spellings now."

"This shouldn't be so hard." Something was wrong with her picture of the family.

She closed her computer because whenever you're stuck, you should always go back to first principles, and what did she really know? She had two graphs, no, three. She had her family, Jonah's and Doran's, and they were all connected somehow, by influence if not all of them by blood.

She was going about this all wrong. She needed to ask the right questions. She needed a search pattern.

What she needed was a methodology.

She pulled out her notebook and made a list of all the names she knew, then organized them by line. On her line she had herself, and she was connected to her parents.

Then her mother was connected to Bubie Sonja. Both Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja were connected to Grandma Aielle and Papa Sam.

Emily propped up the graph. It was remarkable how little information family trees really captured. They didn't tell the reader who was still alive in whose lifetime, for a start, and who'd influenced who. For example, she was connected only to her mother and father on the diagram, but really, she was pairwise connected to her grandmother as well, and that relationship was a significant one. It was Bubie Sonja who'd explained her mother's

114 moodiness, told her about sex and reproduction, and given Emily her first cup of coffee. She was pairwise connected to Grandma Aielle as well. They used to hide in sofa forts together, her grandma's idea, not hers. They'd watched the Marx Brothers movies. So she filled in the graph with dotted lines, from Auntie Blima, grandma Aielle, and Moshe too, all to her. They were edges of influence, though, so they should really be directional. She drew in arrows.

They terminated at her, the one who'd been changed. Then she drew in Jonah's tree. Then she filled in the dotted line connections between the graphs. Then she moved on to Doran's line. She wrote in Doran's name, and that was all. And all she had for him was a couple of dotted lines.

"Where is Doran?" she said. "Has he just been with Bubie Sonja all this time?"

Vaguely, she wondered if she should colour-code these things. If she did, she'd make the

Sonja to Doran edge a bright red.

"Doran's alone," Jonah said after a moment, leaning in close to his computer screen.

"He's been keeping to himself, upstairs, not that your grandmother hasn't been peeking in his keyhole. Hey, if you listen, you can hear him creeping around. He's going up to the attic now, I think Listen."

Emily put her head on the desk, and closed her eyes, and she heard it. A creaking without a source, round and round it sounded like, sometimes cracking dully where Emily could swear there weren't even floors or walls, just sky. She felt the soft little hairs on her arm stand up.

"I've got goosebumps," she said.

And suddenly she felt a hand on her back and neck

"That happens to me sometimes too."

115 Emily could still hear a slow sort of clicking, Jonah's finger on the mouse, like a sprinkle of rain on a window. She tried not to breath too deeply.

"Anytime the old folks walk into a room, he slips out of it. It creeps me out that we have so much in common. Pie's a weird guy."

She could feel Jonah's hand stroking her back slowly now, up and down, from her neck to the middle of her back She didn't know what he might be thinking. He was staring at the computer still, so he probably wasn't thinking about her at all. She didn't even know if he really had been looking out for her all these years, or if she'd been following after him. It could be that she'd just sort of anticipated his trajectory, and put herself in all the places he was going to be.

She heard him breath deeply. He was disappointed by search results, or whatever it was he saw on the screen. He definitely wasn't aware of her, except in terms of reaction, the upward pressure she was exerting on his palm as a result of Newton's third law. She wanted to tell him tilings. She wanted to say that she was scared of how her thesis would be received, and she pictured herself saying it. He'd give her a sympathetic look, the one that made his eyes ovals, not circles, more like serving dishes than saucers, then he'd touch her shoulder. She'd imagined all this, in detail.

Jonah's hand stopped again, right at the base of her neck, so she could feel his skin against hers. He clicked on the mouse. They were definitely thinking about different things.

Maybe she shouldn't have pictured what this week would be like. Maybe in imagining it she'd guaranteed that it wouldn't happen, because when did anything ever turn out exactly how she thought?

Jonah started stroking her again. His hand stayed right where it was, at the base of her neck, but his thumb moved, teasing a shiver up and down her spine.

116 7.

Harpo tiptoed into the room of doors. His brothers were in there, in a big knot of people, laughing and playing cards. They didn't notice him. They didn't even look up. It was their loss then. They didn't even know there was a mystery to be solved.

He tiptoed out again.

Where would a kid hide a letter?

In the hallway, there was a couch, and Harpo sat on it nonchalantly. At least he hoped he was being nonchalant. He picked up a book from the bookshelf beside him, and flipped through it, and when he was sure nobody would walk in on him, he reached under the couch's bottom cushion. Nothing. Wood. He fell on his side and slid his hand further, and still nothing. A penny. That was it. He sat up and saw people outside the window, and they were looking at him. He waved. They turned and walked off again, and Harpo continued feeling up the couch like he was a particularly methodological lover.

Methodological. He'd have to tell Groucho. That had been in a crossword recently too. The gods of the New York Times were showing him the way.

Harpo tiptoed to the next couch. Nothing under the seat. He turned and felt under the topmost cushion, the one against the back. Nothing. He slumped and felt under his own bottom. The letters had to be in a couch. They couldn't be near the floor because that Aielle was a compulsive vacuumer. Harpo knew the type. And Blima was a smart girl.

Then he saw a framed picture, and he felt behind it, along the very edge of the frame, and didn't find anything, but it was probably too high for little Blima to reach anyway.

She was just nine or ten. Eleven tops. Short.

Harpo checked the rest of the frames anyway, just in case, until he reached the end

117 of the row and found himself at the entrance of the room full of windows. He snuck in, and went right to the couch. He was still busy checking under its bottom cushions when people came in, a man and a woman, and they sat on one of the sofas. They looked at him suspiciously, then turned away. The woman shifted and sat on the man's lap.

Harpo considered finding another room to snoop around in. But this room had lots of overstuffed chairs and sofas, and where better to hide a letter? Harpo's instincts had to be right. He was basically a ten year old himself. And he remembered from the tenements.

Chairs and table bottoms were the two things nobody even tried to clean, so any time he found a penny, he taped it under the foot of the dining room table. They might even still be there, his secret stashes. That furniture might be worth twice as much as its new owners thought.

Harpo reached his hand between the chair and the cushion, and those other guests turned to watch him again, so he froze. He closed his eyes. He'd wait them out. He'd pretend to be napping. Then he'd search again as soon as they left. It would be perfect.

Harpo let his thoughts drift away on the churning sounds of muffled giggles.

8.

Suddenly, Emily's back felt cold. She sat up, disoriented, unmoored, somehow. Jonah was typing again.

"I have an idea." He was staring hard at the screen, cheeks pink, eyes bright. "Let's forget the Mormons for a while. Let's try other sites."

She rubbed her eyes.

"And tell me about your thesis," he said. "Maybe you can explain it to me while I'm looking."

118 "Sure." Except when she talked about Math too much, to non-Mathy people, their eyes dimmed like TV sets shut off. "It's about connectivity," she said. And he didn't register any recognition. He just watched his screen. It's so weird, she and her classmates used to whisper to each other during lectures, that the majority of the population doesn't even know what a derivative is, when that's all we work with. She pictured herself talking about derivatives. He would laugh, she bet.

"You have to tell me more than that," said Jonah. "I want to understand what you do."

"My project is based on Milligram's experiment."

Jonah stopped typing.

"Not the prison one," Emily said quickly, "the other one. The one with all the letters, the packages in the mail."

"Go on." Jonah picked up the mouse, then wound the cord, and unwound it again, and Emily couldn't remember whether he'd ever liked Math or whether he'd dropped it at the first opportunity. Why did she think he had?

"Really. I want to understand."

"In 1956, this guy called Milligram started an experiment. He took packages to people in Chicago, and gave each of them the name of a person who lived in New York. He told them, if they didn't know the person or the address, they had to send it to someone who might be more likely to. And then the recipients had to do the same thing. The package came with instructions. And that went on and on until the packages got to New York. So he counted how many people the packages went to before they got to the right address. He was counting the degrees of separation between all the people."

119 "Like six degrees of separation." Jonah, slouched over the computer, still wouldn't look up.

"There are problems inherent with an experiment like that," Emily heard herself say, wound up now, like one of those stupid toy cars. "The biggest was probably that lots of people just didn't want to participate. They never sent the package on. Never mind the fact that you really can't be playful with the mail anymore."

"Packages, especially," said Jonah.

"My research focuses on Facebook. And other social networking sites. I've gone to lots of universities and graphed social networks, and I've found how they intersect. I found the average path length between students (four, not six), and I also looked at connectivity, what happens when one vertex is removed. That's almost more interesting. There are whole networks that fall apart, that all count on this one person to keep them together. You can anticipate it based on the degree of the individual vertices." Emily stopped. And even though she was silent now, her voice rang in her ears. She'd talked for a long time, just then.

"I found some sites," Jonah said finally. "Come look."

Emily pulled her chair closer. She couldn't see the screen because of the glare from the window. And she could still hear the stupid echo of her voice, talking Math.

"They don't look as comprehensive as the Mormons," he was saying. "But some of them look like searcher sites. People exchanging advice. I think we can figure this out." He angled the screen toward her and pointed at things she could just barely see, people etched in opposite colours, a blade of grass, maybe, flowers. "These ones travel extensively and take pictures. They say they'll swap information. It might be worth looking into. I'll look for some others."

120 "Thanks." She touched his arm. She hadn't even decided to. Her arm had just sort of moved itself, and suddenly she remembered sitting out together one night, years earlier, when he'd wordlessly handed her a Math test. It was trig, and the whole thing was covered in a bloodless red. The searchlight moon made the corrections look almost irate. She'd put her hand on the crook of his elbow then too, and they'd sat like that for hours. She could have told him that she wasn't as good at Math as everyone seemed to think, but she hadn't.

9.

When Harpo opened his eyes again, the lodgehouse owner was sitting across from him. Sam.

Harpo remembered him from his first day at the lodge. When he'd checked in, Sam had been behind the desk.

Harpo realized that his arm was under the cushion of the easy chair. He couldn't feel it at all. He yanked it out with his other hand, and it weighed more than a house, and you couldn't get gangrene from this, Minnie had told him once, or else all the restless sleepers in

New York would be walking around limbless. Abruptly, he remembered why his arm had been there in the first place. He'd been searching for a letter. And now those other people were gone, but Sam was here, and that was worse than guests.

Sam looked up.

Harpo stretched his fingers. They only moved a little. He didn't know what to say.

Usually he just said whatever popped into his head, but he couldn't say what he was thinking now. Sam couldn't know about his wife's affair, and the letter was probably addressed to that other man. What had he been called? Simon? Oh and he'd been thinking about Aielle's neck

Not now. But earlier. He certainly couldn't say that. So Harpo raised his tingly arm in greeting, supporting it with the other hand. That seemed like a good compromise.

121 Sam nodded, so Harpo smiled and picked up a magazine. Sam smiled and put down his newspaper. Harpo smiled and Sam smiled and Harpo felt like bounding over to Sam's newspaper and ripping it to shreds. And he might do it too. If they did this smile routine one more time, he would, and then he'd dive behind the sofa and catapult things right into Sam's coffee mug. "I'm going to Russia," he said quickly.

"Are you?"

Harpo nodded gravely.

Sam folded the newspaper neatly and Harpo made himself nod again and think some more normal thoughts. He pictured a ship.

"Well, you'll probably go on a passenger boat," said Sam, and Harpo looked up, his mental picture of a boat rocking.

"Frankly I think that you should. Travel in comfort. You won't regret it."

"You swam?"

"We came over on a boat carrying coal dust. The captain was the cousin of a partner of mine and he got us passage on board without too much fuss about papers. We had some, but they were forgeries, and maybe not particularly good ones. Our passports, also, were not ideal. It was a rough crossing."

"Do you have any advice about visiting Russia?"

Sam scratched his beard. "Eat borsht. It's not the same here. Find someone who bakes. That's my advice. I think you should eat."

Harpo leaned forward. He could get excited about a trip like this, even if he did have to go all by himself.

"You like food?" said Sam.

122 "My father— his name was Frenchie— he cooked. It was great. He was the greatest.

I don't know how he did it. I used to stab my brothers with forks over his dinner rolls. We didn't even have any money then. It was a miracle. I've always thought that. Food is miraculous."

"Just my kind of man," said Sam. "I'd stab for mandelbreut. It's a hard fact to face, but I believe I would. Do you like coffee? Flave some. My Aielle makes it herself. She roasts the chicory roots, or whatever it is she can get her hands on these days. Whatever she finds, she makes it taste good."

"That's like Frenchie," said Harpo, and it felt good to tell someone about him, to say him name out loud again. "Frenchie was a magician."

"I think I read that in the newspaper." Sam leaned forward. His expression wasn't pitying. It was something else. Wistful maybe. "They wrote some wonderful things about him."

"You read about Frenchie?"

"I would have liked to have met him."

Harpo liked this man. He liked Sam tremendously. "Frenchie would have liked meeting you too. He would have loved you."

Then they were both nodding for minutes and minutes, until Harpo's hand tingled violently, like he'd just been stuck by sewing pins, and he jerked. He definitely needed to find that letter. Maybe he could find them and take them away with him. A man who liked food as much as he did should never have his heart broken. This was something he could do. He could fix this.

123 10.

Sam started to say something when there was a noise outside and two little girls scrambled into the room, Blima and another one, a smaller kid, three or four years old at most. That one put her head in Sam's lap, and he hoisted her up by the hips until she was upside down and her legs were dangling behind her.

Sam caught Harpo watching. "These are my girls." The upside down girl wriggled, and her father set her down and patted her backside, and she disappeared behind the chair with Blima. Sam's face was all lit up like a light bulb. Having kids must be nice. They would never paddle you to the middle of the lake and leave you there, not for more than ten, fifteen minutes, tops.

"And what are you two up to?" said Harpo.

Blima climbed onto the back of the easy chair, like a monkey. "We hide our toys. So that way, when we find them, it's like we're getting a present all over again."

"That's clever."

"It's called Second Present."

"And where do you have your treasure hunts? In here?"

Blima brushed her father's hair around her finger and made a ringlet.

"Somewhere else then?" Harpo remembered the cozy little room where they played cards in great blue clouds of cigar smoke. "In the room of doors maybe?"

Blima ducked behind the chair.

That room wasn't used that often during the daytime. She'd have lots of privacy to hide things. And it had lots of sofas too. He'd look there next. "I like that room. It's a great place to hide things in. It's the centre of a maze or something."

124 "That's because Dad built things all around it," came a reply from behind the easy chair. Blima. Blima the monkey.

"It's peaceful in there."

"I hate that room," said Sam.

"Really?" said Harpo, but the girls didn't wait for an answer. They ran out, Blima first, then the smaller kid, tearing after her. They must know this one.

"There are no windows," said Sam. "It's stuffy. You could suffocate."

"Have you considered punching holes in the wall?"

"No. I never did think of that. It's brilliant. Instead of punching, how about we saw.

Girls! Blima? Where did they go? We're going to redecorate."

"Right now?"

Sam stood. "Blima! Blima's my helper. If I can get her to help me hold the wall straight, then why not right now?"

"I'll help."

"You will? Wonderful. This sounds like an afternoon. This is perfect, because I've been looking for something to do with my hands."

11.

"Emily?"

Emily looked around the wall, into the room of windows, and Bubie Sonja and

Auntie Blima were waving her inside. "I have to read something to you."

"I'm just checking something. I'll be right back." Jonah said that Doran hung out in the attic. If there was something in there that had interested Doran, than guaranteed she'd want to know about it too.

125 Emily climbed the stairs one step at a time, analyzing the creaks as she went. They seemed not all to be connected to her. There seemed to be a positive feedback system, and maybe that's exactly what it was, one loose floorboard pushing against another loose floorboard and then another until the entire house was a sort of a one-man band. She stopped on the stair to listen to the whole thing unfold.

And that's when she heard another creak, and it was distinctly a footstep, and it definitely didn't coincide with her movement. It came from upstairs. Another step followed it, then another, and another, and finally, she got a sense of location and trajectory. Doran was up there already. And there didn't seem to be a rhythm to his movements. He seemed just to be staggering from one end to the other.

She walked up one more step and stopped again. Because he'd stopped too. Had he heard her?

She tiptoed down the stairs again. She'd look in that room sometime, but not when he was in it.

"Come in here, dear," Bubie Sonja called. "There are letters that you have to see."

"Did Doran used to stay in the attic?"

"That was where our mother lived when she was having one of her bad days," said

Bubie Sonja, "when she had to retire upstairs."

"Only for the first few years," said Aunt Blima. "You were too young to remember anyway. You're just repeating things you've heard other people say."

"You're the one who parrots what you heard Dad say," said Bubie Sonja. "Not me. I remember when she went back up, because she did it from time to time. She retired. That was the polite thing to say, in front of the guests. We'd say she'd retired for the day, even if it was just after breakfast. She was immensely embarrassing."

126 "She needed to rest."

"Our father used to pry her out of there with screwdrivers and tools, and he took the whole door right off its hinges sometimes."

"He worried," said Aunt Blima, "that's all. He was a worrier."

"Blima says it's nothing, but I used to see her sneaking up there, to make sure the things were undisturbed, to make sure our mother wasn't sneaking up when nobody was watching her." She turned to Emilys aunt. "If you saw one footprint in the dust, you'd be upset and irritable for days. You'd listen for her creeping up the stairs, and I'd listen for you.

It was a follow the leader of worry."

Emily hurried outside, to peek up the stairs again.

12.

"Here's a good one." Bubie Sonja motioned for Emily, as she walked back into the room.

"Our mother wrote to Aunt Mackie that she was proud of the way I threw a temper tantrum."

"Aunt Mackie was Auntie Hannah's mom," Emily opened her notebook to the page with the family graphs.

"Chico once told me that Mackie stood for Mackerel," said Aunt Blima. "It was terrible. I believed it for years. It was at her funeral that I first heard her full name. It was

Maxine, of course, but I never questioned an adult."

"In the letter, our mother wrote that my temper meant that I was strong willed," said

Bubie Sonja. "That's what she said. Direct quote. She wrote that she secretly liked it when I slammed the doors."

"That wasn't so secret," muttered Aunt Blima.

127 "And Mackie's dad was Papa Jacob?" said Emily.

"Oh of course our mother told you," said Blima. "She always liked you better."

"Life was harder for me. You always went right along with everything. I rebelled.

Imagine if I hadn't."

"So she had to love you harder," said Aunt Blima. "It was a smart thing. You got a lot of attention that way."

13.

"This is an important project," said Sam, as he led Harpo and the girls into the garage, no, workshop. "Here's why. The room of doors has one important feature. It looks just like a vegetable cart. In fact it is a vegetable cart. This is the cart that we pushed from Russia to

France and even smuggled on the boat to Canada. I put it in the room of doors. I want it to be important. I've always wanted guests to gather around it, so we can talk about it, and tell them about our journey, but nobody goes in that room except to smoke or suffocate or gamble."

Blima edged out of the room. Harpo willed her to stay.

"Blima," said Sam. "Blima was there. Can you tell Mister Harpo about the cart?"

At that, Blima disappeared completely.

"We were pretending to be vegetable vendors, travelling from farm to farm. A good disguise, right? Gypsies, Jews, we're all the same to them. Really, we were just using the thing to carry our dinners."

At this, Blima crept in again, stealthily. It was like she was an 83rd streeter, casing the joint.

128 "We stole vegetables from the fields while we were walking. Inside it, we'd also

hidden our valuable things."

Harpo sat heavily on the toolbox. Sam had everything. He had a vegetable cart. He

had a tool kit. He had those saws, a work table, work benches. "Did you get much out of

Russia?"

"It should have been difficult. We got lucky. We got all of our jewels. I built a secret

compartment in the cart. I still don't quite know how we got away with it. It seems a bit

miraculous, now."

Blima was hanging on to the doorway now, swinging a bit.

Sam caught Harpo watching her. "Do you think you want a family?"

"I do want my family back I miss the way it used to be, but first Minnie went, and

now Frenchie. And then Duck Soup. My brothers are moving on."

"I mean children," said Sam. "I mean your own family. I suggest you try it. Rent a

wife and some children for a while. See how the whole thing strikes you."

"I certainly like yours," said Harpo. "I'll rent this one."

"I wouldn't part with them." Sam was looking through his tool bag, and Sonja was

helping by sprinkling sand and pebbles on his shoes. She had a very serious expression. In

the doorway, Blima's expression made Harpo pause. It was sad like it had been the night

before in the dirty window, when she'd been all eyes.

"I think maybe I do want some children."

Jacob said he'd wanted lots of kids. And that did seem like a pretty nice thought.

Imagine having a whole house full of them, a smiling little face in every window. Little things

that you could love, waving when you left, waving when you came back, loving you all the time, anytime you needed them.

129 "Do you think I should have kids?" he asked Blima, and that did it, that got her inside.

"Of course you should," she said.

"Okay." Sam flung his toolbag across his shoulder. "We're off to the room of doors.

I need my helpers."

Blima scurried out of the room again.

"You're not helping, Blima?" said Sam.

"I'm very busy today," came the reply from just outside. "I just don't have the time.

If you'd have given me some advance notice, then I might have made arrangements."

"How about my Sonja?"

But Sonja was already running after her sister. "You have to give us notice."

Harpo scrambled to meet Blima in the doorway. He knelt.

"We have a very busy day today, Harpo," she whispered.

"Second Present?"

"Also, Finding Stuff. It's our job to go into the rooms when guests checkout. If there's anything left to collect, we have to show our parents and sometimes we get to keep it.

I have a collection I have to fill up. It's important."

Then Sam trundled out the door with his bags and tools, and Blima vanished, her little sister trailing behind her.

14.

"We found a better one." Sonja pulled a chair to the window and sat, and Emily closed her laptop quickly.

"We also found some wine." Aunt Blima set down a bottle and glasses.

130 "I'll read to you as you work I've arranged them from funniest to least funny."

Bubie Sonja laid the envelopes on the table like they were cards. "Maybe I'll start with the top. No maybe the middle. My favourite one is in the middle, it's from the tenth of

November in 1983." Bubie Sonja pulled crackling paper out of an envelope. "Dear Mackie."

She pulled her chair closer to Emily and read, "I'm just home from visiting Annette." She put down the letter. "Your grandma Aielle used to have a friend named Annette. She used to always say, "well, I'm going out with Annette," and your mushuguna Auntie Blima thought that she was saying a net and that she was catching butterflies."

Aunt Blima poured. "You thought so too."

"Okay." Bubie Sonja adjusted her glasses, and read again, "Dear Mackie. I'm just home from visiting Annette. We watched that show with the lady and all her guests. They have fine sofas on that programme, but I still prefer the newsman who's so handsome. On

Anette's show, they talk about sex all day long, these people. I didn't know you were supposed to enjoy it. Imagine that."

"Oh gross." And Emily remembered that her grandmother peeked into keyholes, to see a man who was weird and smelled like a tin can. And she'd seen her cousin in boxer shorts.

"I forgot that our mother said that," said Aunt Blima. "She always said, "close your eyes and think of Israel'. This was sex-education in our day."

"Luckily your Auntie Blima and I took after our father in that regard," said Bubie

Sonja. "Although I don't know that I believe it, entirely. She went out of her way to say that she hated sex, but she said it too often."

Emily shivered. Grandma Aielle could not have had a secret affair, although it was their family Modus Operandi. When they were uncomfortable, they always said the opposite

131 of what they were thinking.

"And then we were always so scared she was seeing other men. Do you remember,

Blima? Every time she wore the pearls, we'd cling to her. I'd never let go of her leg. Neither of us would leave her alone in a room."

Emily was transported to her secret suspicions from the night previous, and abruptly she realized that Doran was still here, and she'd have to have another weird encounter tonight. She opened her laptop.

"We had other reasons to think she might have been having a romance," said Bubie

Sonja.

"We just loved romance stories," said Aunt Blima. "We invented them for fun."

"She had lingerie. There was that vial that she wouldn't let us look at. There's another letter here, let me find it, she described sex in detail, and she sounded like a professional, she said— "

"Oh my God," said Emily. "I do not want to hear about my great grandmother's sex life."

"Oh." Sonja folded up the letter. "I'd better not read you the rest. I'll go upstairs and find you another one."

And then Emily found the perfect site. The cemetery men. The picture showed old tombstones in an overgrown cemetery. She bent close to read the scrolling text. The cemetery men were a group of History buffs from Seattle. They'd roamed through all the cemeteries in Oserov and surrounding towns and taken pictures. They'd email all of them for free.

132 15.

Harpo held the wall, but it was moving back and forth, almost popping right out when Sam pulled on the saw. Would the whole thing just crumble? It probably would. He shouldn't have suggested this. In his defense, people usually knew better than to listen too much to his ideas.

Sam pulled the saw out of the wall and inspected his work "This was a great idea,

Harpo."

"I was just thinking the opposite."

Sam turned back to the wall, and gave it a punch. The hole cracked inward, jaggedly.

It didn't look like a window at all.

Harpo felt his fingers and toes tingle. "That's not right."

"Well." Sam rubbed his hands on his pants. "We'll fix it later. After lunch maybe.

Let's have another lunch. Suddenly, I feel like a ham sandwich. You look like you need one too." He clapped Harpo around the shoulders. "Come."

17.

"Find anything?" Jonah tiptoed into of the room just as Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja left it.

"There are loads of message boards." Emily clicked on one and read. "This is my favourite so far." She pointed to her screen, and Jonah sat down beside her. "They call themselves the cemetery men, these guys. They've photographed all the graveyards in

Oserov, every tombstone. They're not even from there. Not even their family."

"Are the pictures posted?"

"Just a couple. They say they'll send the rest of them if you ask."

133 "This is fun." Jonah pulled his chair even closer. He smelled like oranges again. "It's like when we were kids."

"I sent them an email," said Emily, as a feeling swelled in her stomach. He remembered being kids together too. She shouldn't be surprised, though. Of course he would. They'd spent whole summers together.

"We'll make a list of all your family," he said. "We should find their graves then."

"It's kind of sad though. To be looking this way."

16.

Harpo found Blima hovering near the room of doors again. She turned, like being spied on was the most natural thing in the world. "I don't think my mother's going to like the window."

"I'm going to fix it."

"Hike it though."

Harpo knelt. "Did you hide a letter two nights ago?" he whispered. "Did you take a letter from your mom's desk?"

Blima's eyes widened. They were big like dish plates. "How did you know that," she whispered. "Except it wasn't two nights ago. It was, maybe, two hundred nights ago."

"Are you sure it wasn't just the other night?"

"I thought I'd just forget about it, but I didn't. I just feel worse. Every single second, it gets worse, and I can never stop thinking about it, even when I'm sleeping."

"Oh." Harpo sat on his heels. Hadn't Aielle mentioned that it might have been a memory? Suddenly, he thought of something else. "Were you born here?"

"I used to live in Russia."

134 "Do you remember things from when you were little?"

"I remember everything."

The affair had started in Russia. Harpo touched her soft little head. "What did she know?

18.

Harpo had been wandering for what felt like hours when he found the pale little oaks that meant the lodgehouse was near. And there it was. Suddenly, he could see everything. The moon was full and bright like stage lights, and it illuminated a man, bent at the waist, peering in a lodge window.

Harpo crept toward him. Then he recognized Jacob. He ran toward him. "I've been looking for you," he whispered.

"I've been looking for you." Jacob clapped Harpo on the back. "How are you feeling?"

"What?"

"Have you been a help to Aielle?"

"I tried to make a passageway in their house, so the room of doors could have windows." Harpo sighed. For a moment they watched his breath light the air between them.

"I think I'm explaining this wrong."

"Did it work? Did you passage window work out?"

"We fell right through. It looks terrible."

"I can help," said Jacob. "I'm an architector."

"Do you think you could fix it? Aielle will be furious. Sam was only trying to help."

135 "Will you open the door for me tomorrow night? Very late?" He scratched his beard.

"I don't think I want to see them. I should come after they're sleeping. I think I'd be shy to say hello."

"A shy ghost," breathed Harpo.

"That's right. That's me. I'm shy like a ghost. Tomorrow night. You open the door and I'll have my tools."

15.

"So how is your stay?" Emily sat awkwardly beside Doran, who was sitting on the verandah stair again, just sort of crouched there. She hugged herself tightly. She was cold, because it was cold at night here, but she could feel a bead of sweat dripping down her back

"My stay continues to be wonderful."

As Emily contemplated the swaying grasses and the sliver of moon, her stomach made a sound like a whale's song. She clutched her hands over her midsection. Maybe it was okay. Maybe Doran hadn't heard it.

But he stood. "I should let you warm up."

Emily stood quickly, and he took her hand. His was warm. He towered over her.

"Have a good night," she said.

"Yes." But Doran didn't let go of her hand. "Thankyou." He seemed to be watching her, but she couldn't see his face. Standing beside him, Emily was very aware of the jut of the overhanging roof, just a smudge of black on black "I have more memories of Aielle," he whispered, tightening his grip. "She visited. I remember a child. It must have been Blima, when she was a girl. So many things are coming back to me. At night. When I'm alone. The memories are coming fast, like a flood, like a torrent."

136 "What brings them back?" said Emily. "What triggers them?"

"I remember they visited. A beautiful lady and a girl who held her hand and wouldn't make eye contact with anyone. It was in the evening. We were eating dinner. Then a knock at the door, and plates were cleared away before I could finish my potato. I always saved them until last. I still do. My mother closed her door and she was crying and crying. I was caught in two gravity wells, taking two steps toward my mother's bedroom, hearing the sounds inside, and then going back to the little girl who was all alone and touching the walls.

She was pretty. The beautiful woman was with my father in his study. The door was closed.

She was different from my mother. She wore dresses and strings of pearls."

Emily shifted and looked at the door.

"I think she's the one who saved me in the end."

"Who?"

" Aielle. Your family. That's what I think must have happened. Because the next thing I remember is being here."

"My family saved you?"

"She hovered around me. She was always around, crouching down, touching my face with the tips of her fingers. Maybe that was why. She wanted to memorize everything about me so that she could find me later. She was planning to save me, in the end."

"That could make sense," said Emily, but it didn't. It didn't make sense at all. How could Blima, who loved telling stories, who loved the mystical journey from Russia to here, have kept something like that to herself? And if Aielle really had escaped first, how could she have gone back to find him?

"Since Blima remembered the room too, I know all this must be true. It happened.

When I remember more, I'll tell you. I'll tell you tomorrow night."

137 "How do you think they did it? How did my family save you?"

Doran let go of Emily, and abruptly her hand was freezing, like it had been submerged in cold water. "Well," he said. "Well. What a night. I think I may go for a walk by the lake."

Emily watched him walk down the stone path toward the dock, a swaying behemoth casting a thick shadow on the moving grass.

138 The Third Day

1.

As Emily walked into the stairway, she heard a sound, an angry kind of humming. It was coming from upstairs, and it sounded imminent somehow, like an equipment malfunction or a fire about to start.

She galloped up the stairs, her heart beating hard to the rhythm of her footsteps, and when she got to the landing, she saw Aunt Blima.

She was standing in the hallway with the vacuum cleaner. The noise was the vacuum.

Emily shrank behind the doorway.

Blima was busy. This was a private moment. She shouldn't intrude. She should ease back down the stairs quietly, so she wouldn't interrupt, but she found herself looking around the wall instead.

Aunt Blima was wearing one of the funny looking dresses like grandma Aielle used to wear, swinging that vacuum cleaner right in front of the students' room, closer and closer to their door each time. When Blima saw Emily, she waved. Her face was open and shining, and she was smiling wider than Emily had ever seen. Her expression was joyous.

Emily ran back down the stairs, where Jonah was fiddling with something behind the desk. "Blima's vacuuming," she said.

"Yeah," said Jonah. "She does that."

"Upstairs."

"She likes to pretend she's saving them from sin."

Emily craned her neck, to see the stairway again. "Because I didn't vacuum well enough?"

"Premarital sex." Jonah held out a lamp. "Do you like it?" He fidgeted it, the same

139 one from the day before, it looked like. "I tied a bow."

"But it isn't working, is it?"

"I have to start cooking." Jonah looked away. "Passover is difficult. There's a lot of work, when you're not allowed to use anydiing."

Emily put the lamp on the desk between them.

"I thought maybe you could watch Jazzy," he said.

"The lamp."

"She's been asking about you. She likes you."

Emily stroked the glass cover. It was a cute little thing, if you forgot its practical uses.

It looked kind of like an alien, like it had a lopsided little eye right in the front of it. "She misses me," she said, "clearly."

"We both agree. We wouldn't trust this place for any other kind of pet."

"Lamps aren't doing so well either."

Jonah stepped close again. Emily could feel him looming over her, but she didn't lookup. "Jazzy's happy the way she is," he said. "She's never been happier."

Emily stepped back to the stairway again, worried, now, that he was making fun of her. "This is not ideal," she said. "The vacuuming, I mean. I have to ask Aunt Blima a question."

"You can ask," said Jonah. "Their pranks never take that long."

2.

Harpo crept from the trees to the shrubs. Aielle was sitting on the dock, kicking like a kid in a bathtub. Her eyes were bright, and her cheeks were red, and she looked softer this

140 morning, more like the pigeon coop of a person he had such a soft spot for. Harpo stepped lightly on the dock

Abruptly, Aielle stopped splashing. She looked around, and Harpo froze. Had she heard him? There was that old fear, the old insecurity, that he'd been thinking too loud.

"I'm sorry I broke your house," he said.

"You played with my Blima."

Since he'd left the lodge house, he'd just been thinking about breakfast. Eggs, rogalah, buns. Coffee. Coffee was safe. He nudged a little stone into the lake. It splashed hollowly. "I'll fix the hole. I've already figured out how I'm going to do it."

"You two get along," Aielle was saying. "I'm glad. I'm happy for it. Have you met my other daughter? My Sonja? She's just like Blima, but prettier."

Harpo sat down heavily. He picked up more little stones, and sprinkled them into the lake.

Aielle watched.

So he picked up a bigger stone, and he stood, dropped it in, and it plopped satisfyingly. Water splashed upward in a straight line. Aielle was smiling too. She handed him another, a monster rock this time, bigger than his hands, and he nearly fell in, throwing it out. But it was worth it. That thing made a splash he could feel in his stomach. "Good one," he said.

"I have another." But then they heard a sound, a crunching in the driveway, and

Aielle held it tightly.

"What did you hear?"

141 But Aielle didn't answer. Harpo uncurled her fingers, and took the stone, and he turned it over in his hand. It was quartz, and had a little ribbon of pink winding through it. It was pretty, so he didn't throw it. He shoved it into his pocket instead.

The crunching sounded again, a person probably, on the gravel driveway.

"Who is that?"

Aielle straightened her blouse, tugged it swiftly, then sat, legs tucked under her skirt.

"I'm waiting for the mail."

"That's right." Harpo sat too. "You're watching for the mailman." She'd love Harpo the Postman, he thought vaguely, wondering how he could find himself a uniform. "That wasn't him? Shouldn't you run to greet him."

"Oh no," she said. "I don't see him. I see the mail. I come here to compose myself."

"Like a letter."

"What?"

"You compose letters. That's what Groucho always says. 'I have to retire to my chamber so that I can compose a letter.' He says that sometimes. I don't know why." And it occurred to Harpo that Aielle had a little ritual. That's why she was out here. Maybe he should have one too. Maybe all the characters in the movie would have one. Harpo could go inside the houses, and see the mail rituals, the incense, the tea, the beautiful girls praying for love letters. That's how he could find the person to save. That's how the movie could begin.

Aielle leaned on his shoulder. "I wait until it's my turn."

In the movie, the girl would open the door. Harpo would crawl through the window.

And then he'd shrug sadly. He had nothing for her. The girl would cry a few prettily placed tears, and then she'd lean her head on his shoulder, while he fiddled with his mailbag. "Does sitting out here help?"

142 "There are ways to charm a day, to wring just a little luck out."

"Yeah."

"The morning you came, for instance, I was sitting out here as the sun came up."

Harpo looked up. She thought of him as a portent of good luck But why? But that didn't make sense. A feeling of something blossomed in his stomach, ballooned out until he felt dizzy. It was like he was watching the pictures, and the pictures were watching him right back. It had been a long time since he'd thought of himself as lucky for anyone.

"I hadn't been outside all winter, or in the fall before, and maybe not in the year before that. So you see what must have happened. After I sat out here in the morning, then I found the courage to come to the lake dock. And then you told me that you were going to my country. It all makes sense."

And there they were, sparkling in Aielle's dark eyes, the prettily placed tears. "This is the Russian man, you're waiting for. Simon."

Harpo put a hand on Aielle's back. How could he help her too? How could he make her feel better without breaking Sam's heart and making Blima cry. "Is it so you know you'll see him again?" he whispered.

"I want to know that he doesn't regret what he did."

"What?" And the morning changed. "What did he do?" The sky was pink, but it wasn't soothing anymore. It threatened. And the clouds loomed. He'd thought she was waiting for a love letter.

"I shouldn't have let him help us," whispered Aielle. "But the truth is I couldn't say no. I was pregnant. I had Blima too."

Their eyes met and they had another of those moments of tacit understanding (tacit!)

But he couldn't tell Groucho that word. What if he pieced it together? The man, the one

143 who'd had an affair with Aielle, he'd helped Aielle's family get out of Russia. He was clever,

Groucho. He'd probably figure it out faster.

"I'm sorry," whispered Harpo. "I'm sorry for your troubles." Because that's what everyone had said to him at the funeral. He ran his fingers through her hair. It had helped her as much as it had helped him. Troubles are troubles precisely because they can't be helped.

After a moment, Aielle stood. "You should be sorry." She smoothed her skirt and wiped her eyes. "You broke a hole in the lodgehouse. Now our room of doors is also the room of holes in the wall."

"I'll fix it."

"I know you will."

And Aielle was off, off the dock and disappearing into the woods. In the movie, the pretty girl's worries would be easy. The whole thing would have to get wrapped up in just over an hour, no, under an hour, if you counted chases and musical numbers.

3.

Emily tiptoed into the room of windows, carrying the lamp, careful not to look like she was cradling it, although she had to, to supporting its wonky little head. Auntie Blima had spread a crossword puzzle over an entire card table, and was staring at it like a general staring at a map.

"Did you know Doran's family in Russia?"

Auntie Blima looked up. "I think that his parents and our parents might have been friends. It was a long time ago, lovie. I don't remember that much."

"You don't remember him from back then?"

144 "I remember a wall hanging."

"That's it for all of Russia?"

"You have to remember that I was just a little girl."

Emily craned her neck Six down. Light is transmitted by wave or by blank Particle.

But she didn't feel like helping. "How do you think he got out?"

"Doran was— "

"I know," said Emily. "He was involved in a miracle."

"And since he was so miraculous," said Auntie Blima, "he was adopted by a family in

New York Had he not been, he might have ended up in Chicago or Detroit. Or maybe even

Baltimore, God forbid."

"What if I want to hear the real story?"

But Aunt Blima grabbed her pencil, and quickly wrote on the crossword. She looked up, triumphant. "Four down," she said. "Tacit."

And then Bubie Sonja shuffled into the room, carrying Auntie Hannah's letters. And

Emily remembered the other one she'd seen, the one Aunt Blima had been stroking. "Have you seen the Russian letter?"

"No, dear," her grandmother and aunt said at once.

And then Emily saw something, a movement, a flash of blue, and she hurried out the door.

4.

In the hallway, Emily and Jonah were standing in a corner, so close they were touching.

Emily bundled Jazzy into his arms. "Can you watch her for a while? I think she's getting fussy."

145 "These are long days."

"I just basically told Aunt Blima that all her stories are made up."

"All her stories are made up," said Jonah. "Don't worry so much. They're always so much happier when you're here. Jazzy can tell you. She has the basis for comparison."

Emily bent and kissed Jazzy's smooth little head, then she slipped away again.

5.

Harpo balanced on the upraised wood that marked the entrance to the registration hallway.

He'd seen Blima playing here. He tiptoed to the little chairs that faced the desk and sat down in one. He reached his hand into the cushions and pulled out a soft grey glove. A treasure. A present, rather. He pressed it against his face, then put it back where he'd found it. He hopped onto the next chair, and there he found a little bear tucked just under the arm. This was definitely Second Present. He must be getting close. He put the bear back and reached into his pocket. All he had was a piece of tie. Oh and the pretty rock He hid them on the other side of the cushion, then sat still and waited for footsteps. Nothing. The mailman must have come and gone by now. Sam would have already looked through the mail. He'd probably sort and run. He must know a little about the ritual too. The Russian man had helped him too after all.

Harpo stood and looked at the walls, then looked at the desk No mail. Just a mug.

He sniffed at it. Coffee and something sweet, rum probably. He'd seen a maid walking around with that earlier, before the sun had even risen, and she'd been weavy a bit, even then. Everyone was playing at something here.

Harpo peeked behind the desk There were loads of drawers back there. And cubby holes against the back wall. Mail must go over there somewhere.

146 He tiptoed to the windowed hallway again, and looked at the photographs framed on the walls. They were of people he didn't know, standing straight-backed and very serious. He tried out the pose. He put one hand behind his back and scowled. He should do that in the pictures. He'd have to find a way. Then he saw a picture of a little boy. He leaned forward and saw that it wasn't a little boy. It was a little girl dressed in a boy's sailor suit. She was all crouched down, smiling slyly, ready to jump at the camera, unmistakably Blima.

He heard footsteps, and so he ran to the doorway behind the registration desk and eased himself inside it, mostly in the dining room, with the door shutting on top of him.

Those were the footsteps of a girl trying not to be heard, Aielle tiptoeing into the room. And there she was, framed in his field of vision, stepping to the desk Harpo held his breath. He shouldn't be here. He was suddenly sure of it. He'd made a mistake. He shouldn't be witnessing this. It was private. He had to see it though, if for no other reason than he couldn't look away.

Aielle eased a drawer open very slowly. She took out a handful of letters, knelt, and held diem on her lap. This must be part of the ritual.

Harpo felt a tickle, so he shifted, just a little, and Aielle froze. This was research for the movie, he could say. It was research. He'd write a scene just like this. He'd write himself in it, though. He'd scoop the poor girl into his arms and kiss all the tears off her cheeks, although that wasn't really his role. That was be the job of the romantic lead. He'd lead the romantic lead right to her. That would be his part in this.

Aielle bent back over her letters again, and Harpo let out a very quiet breath. She sorted with slow fingers. Then she leaned her head against the desk.

Harpo felt tears in his eyes. He would never put a scene like this in a movie. He slipped into the dining room, then out the door at the other end of it.

147 6.

Emily sat down on the overstuffed easy chair, boyed, happy, somehow, ready to try again.

She should ask about the letters, or the crossword. She should be a nice girl, a dutiful niece, someone who scored high up on the Harpo axis. "Were Doran's parents dead?" she found herself asking instead. "Is that why he came alone?" Harpo wouldn't have asked it like that.

Bubie Sonja put down the letter she'd been reading.

"I don't know." Aunt Blima said after a moment.

"I don't think even he knew what happened to his parents," said Bubie Sonja.

"But how did he get from Russia to here anyway?"

"He was brave," said Bubie Sonja.

"Was he adopted?'

"He had a foster family," said Bubie Sonja.

"Did they sponsor him or something? How did he get out?"

"Elijah brought him," said Aunt Blima. "That's all the story our mother ever told us.

That's it."

"And you were okay with that?" Emily tore a small slit in the very edge of the newspaper.

"You have to understand," said Bubie Sonja. "He's a miraculous man. He always has been, you see. Whenever he came to the lodge, he looked out for me. Whenever I was with him, I didn't have to worry about anything. I knew that when he was there, anything was possible."

148 "That doesn't make sense," said Emily. "Anyway, that's not what I was asking. I want to know how he got out of Communist Russia. And how he knew to come to the lodge in the first place."

"It's a Jewish lodge," said Aunt Blima.

"I thought he wasn't Jewish," said Emily. "Were his foster parents Jews?"

"I'm telling you," said Bubie Sonja. "He was touched by a miracle."

"There's no such thing as miracles."

"Darling," said Aunt Blima, eyebrows descending, expression darkening. "Miracles happened back then. I think they're even happening now, but people are too swept up with their explanations to see them."

"Okay." Emily tucked the frayed edge under, so her aunt wouldn't see that she tore the crossword. "What do I do if one of the lamps broke, in one of the rooms?"

"You just take one from somewhere else," said Aunt Blima. "Preferably from one of the common spaces, there are lots, you can just wander around until you find one."

"Okay."

"Although," she yelled as Emily escaped, "that's Jonah's job. Don't let him get away with being lazy. He will, you know. He'll take advantage of you."

7.

You could decide to look for patterns, or you could decide not to. Emily ran her finger along the picture frames in the registration hallway. Once she'd found a pattern, it was hard not to see it anymore. Blima didn't like her asking questions about Doran. She got mad when Emily looked into the family's story, and Emily was too scared to tell her that she was researching genealogy. Those were signs that something was wrong. Something in the family was off.

149 Emily stopped at a picture showing Blima in a boy's sailor suit, coiled and ready to jump. There was a fingerprint right in the middle of it, on top of Blima's head. Emily moved a bit so the fingerprint shone corkscrew silver and pink and gold. She put her own finger right beside it.

Miraculous was just another word for intellectually lazy. It meant that you weren't asking the right questions.

8.

Harpo banged through die crowded hallway, hardly seeing the people in it, hardly noticing the food they were carrying. He hesitated in the doorway of the room of windows. This place was too bright too, and the people in it were too smiley, and it was wrong to be happy on a morning like this one, when there was a woman who was sad. A woman laughed, high and squealing, and Harpo turned away. He stumbled out. Who could laugh when Aielle was crying, hidden behind a desk?

He walked into the room of doors. This room was dark, despite the gaping hole in the wall, and that felt a bit better at least. He touched the funny wooden cart in the middle of the room, and noticed, for die first time, that diere was an upright piano in here too. He sat at it and ran his fingers over the keys. This wasn't die hardest instrument to learn.

Harpo played a middle C. It creaked diroughout the room. The piano was out of tune. And the room was eerie. The hole in the wall made sounds echo funny, and so the C, what should have been a C, seemed to come back at him off every hard surface in the cluttered place. Then he thought of something.

Harpo stood, and checked inside the piano bench. Nothing. He searched through the bookshelves and flipped through some of the books. No presents. Not even a card.

150 Something wasn't right. There were so many hiding places in this room. Why hadn't she hidden anything in here?

Harpo sat down again and just then he saw little Blima in the doorway, balancing on the wood partition.

He turned and played a bass note. It twanged as if from a honky-tonk piano.

"I hope that you're enjoying your stay, Mr. Harpo." She looked away, but didn't move to leave.

Harpo leaned toward her, smiling, "come on over". She stayed where she was, just swayed back and forth on her feet a little. But Harpo didn't give up. Sometimes a smile was more like a magnet than a magnet was. It took work to keep them going, but they drew everyone else near. It sort of worked. Blima swayed closer and closer to him, until she was inside die room, close to the piano bench. So he made a face, his favourite one, the gookie like the crazy cigar man from the tenements, puffed cheeks, crossed eyes, and it worked.

Blima laughed the cutest laugh he'd ever heard, like a little xylophone.

"You know what would make my stay better?' he said. "If you took me on a tour.

Could you please take me on a tour of the lodgehouse?"

"Okay." Blima took Harpo's hand, and tried to tug him up off the bench.

"What about this room? I thought we could start here."

Blima leaned all her weight forward, and tilted over completely, kept standing by

Harpo's hand alone.

" Can't we play Second Present?"

"Not in here," she grunted. "It's off limits in here. Because there's a hole."

151 Harpo stood, and Blima marched forward one laborious step. "Don't worry about the hole," he said. "I've got a plan. I'll fix it tonight. But what if I want to play Second

Present with you here today?"

"We can't play Second Present in this room." Blima let go of Harpo's hand, panting.

She motioned for him to kneel. "There was a ghost here this morning," she whispered.

"Most days, there's a ghost. Because this room is haunted. There's a man whose soul is in here. Sometimes you can even see it. If you see smoke, then that's what it is. It's the soul of a man was mean. He gave people needles. Also, he pinched. When he was alive, he liked to look inside people's ears and mouths, so that's how his soul tries to get in now. If you don't cover you face when you sneeze, you're done for."

Harpo stroked Blima's head.

"This world isn't as safe as we think it is. That's one of the secrets I'm not allowed to tell my sister." She tugged at his hand again and Harpo let her lead him away.

9.

Emily peeked into the room of windows to look for a lamp, and that's when she realized that she was trapped. If she moved now, then Bubie Sonja and Aunt Blima would see her, and they'd know that she'd heard their fight. They might think she'd been eavesdropping. So she hugged the doorway and tucked herself in the little space just outside.

"Our mother was a broken barrel," Bubie Sonja was saying, "she couldn't be filled up. We couldn't love her enough. We couldn't complement her enough. We couldn't do enough for her, and, you know, we couldn't do anything right, either."

There were reading lamps on all the desks. Emily could see their glass covers sparkling in the light from the window, maddeningly close.

152 "If we made the slightest mistake, she'd retreat to the attic. And we did make mistakes, Blima. We were children. We were allowed. Everyone's allowed to make mistakes, and there's no reason that we should be exempt from that."

"I don't like it when you talk that way," said Aunt Blima. "Not when there are guests here. Not in front of Emily."

"I can say what I want because it happened."

"What was so terrible?"

"She ruined my life," Bubie Sonja whispered.

"Every mother makes mistakes."

"Tell me what you remember." Bubie Sonja's voice was hard. "I can't be alone in this."

And Emily shrank farther away, out of sight.

"I loved our mother. I might not have been as pretty as you. I might not have had light hair, but I was still a good daughter."

"I mean it," said Bubie Sonja. "She was hard on you too. You have to have things that you're angry about."

Emily hid farther still inside the alcove.

"Sometimes when I'm with you, I feel like it never happened. When you talk, it could be another woman you describe. And these letters, they're funny and beautiful. But I'm not inventing what she did to me. It happened."

"You were happy too, Sonja," said Aunt Blima. "It wasn't so terrible. And every heart has two ventricles."

"I only had one love."

And Emily flushed cold. This must be Doran they were talking about. But that made

153 no sense. Grandma Aielle said that Doran was miraculous, and everyone had to love him,

Aunt Blima said.

"If I tell you," said Aunt Blima, "will you stop?"

"No," said Bubie Sonja. "Yes. Okay. I don't promise though."

And for some reason, Emily wanted to hear too, even though she loved her grandma

Aielle, even though she thought Aielle was perfect.

"There were things in our childhood that I didn't like," said Aunt Blima.

"Name them. Make a list."

"I used to have to summon Elijah all the time."

"It never worked," said Bubie Sonja. "Tell me something serious."

"I hated when we had to greet the guests and tell them goodnight. I didn't like that we had to eat dinner with them and always know which cutlery was right. Do you remember? You used to hold up a fork and I'd shake my head? I'd point to the right utensil.

Well, I never really knew. I was just pretending so you'd be less terrified."

"That's not enough."

"Being yelled at," said Aunt Blima. "Learning to cry without sound."

Emily leaned her head on the wall. Grandma Aielle's face had been lined and soft and beautiful. She'd never looked angry, not once that Emily had known her. She'd never yelled or raised her voice. She loved her too much to yell.

"Learning to be loved less," said Aunt Blima.

"Be specific," said Bubie Sonja.

Emily squeezed her eyes shut. Sometimes, she had to be careful with Bubie Sonja and Aunt Blima. They were the ones who yelled. They were the ones who got disappointed.

Grandma Aielle just radiated love, like a big old thermonuclear explosion.

154 "I feel angry sometimes because of my pictures," said Aunt Blima. "I used to draw

Elijah the prophet because I thought he would keep her company that way. Then I found those drawing taken down and gone. It hurt my feelings that she threw the pictures away."

"Pictures." Bubie Sonja was holding a drink Emily could hear the ice in the glass tinkling incongruously prettily. "We used to hide in the coat closets. I cried under all the winter coats. I could hear you crying in the next closet over. And you talk about pictures."

"Every mother has bad days."

"Some nights we slept in die bathroom, because that was the only door that locked.

We saw the pin coming in through the door. You had to stay awake and force it out again."

"She had good days too," said Aunt Blima. "Just think about those letters."

"Why couldn't she have been like that when it counted?"

Emily scurried into the room of doors, holding her breath.

10.

There were little lamps on all the card tables. Emily would just have to choose one.

She went right to the wooden table, the one made from the vegetable cart used in their exodus from Russia. She knelt, and felt along its side. It was unfinished wood, and she might get a splinter, but she didn't care. She used to think this room was haunted. She used to be almost as scared of this place as of the cellar. Maybe more. She willed the ghost to show himself now. She dared him.

She heard a creak, and started, and saw Jonah in the doorway. "It's dusty, I know," he said. "We should hire Elijah to clean."

"He never shows."

155 "I always forget about this room too. And Blima never comes in here. I never see it happen."

Emily reached for the lamp on the wooden table. It didn't budge. It was stuck But this was probably the best one to take. Nobody ever turned it on. They were probably all afraid that the table would catch fire, that the untreated wood just combust, just get consumed. Before she came, her mother had pulled her aside, grabbed her roughly by the arm and hissed, "no candles in that place. No incense. No open flame. Especially in the first floor." Although all that was understood. All those books and things. Newspapers, old crosswords, and now Auntie Hannah's letters. What made better kindling than decades old envelopes?

"Do you know the one about Elijah and the old people?" Jonah sat on the arm of an easy chair.

"Don't you have things to do?"

He shifted, looked out the door.

"Elijah on the train?" Emily said quickly. "That story? The man with the tight pants who whispered to Grandma Aielle near Belleville?"

"Elijah liked to go for walks, like you. Once, when he's wandering around, this guy sees him, and they decide to travel together, I don't remember why." Jonah lapsed into silence.

Emily sat back against the table. She'd forgotten that there was a piano in here.

Aielle used to like this room.

Once, when Emily was very little, she brought her toys in here so she could play by herself. She remembered running two of her little people under the table. They were on a journey. She couldn't remember which. And then the piano in the corner had played all by

156 itself. Just one note, and it had echoed emptily. And Emily remembered freezing, too scared to move even her eyes, until the piano played again, a twangy bass note, and she'd scooped up her things and run. Except it might have been a dream.

"Okay, I remember," said Jonah. "So they're going along and they come to an old shack. Inside, there's a really old couple. And I mean gruesome old. I'd be shocked if they had teeth."

"Did Elijah pray for teeth?" She clicked on the lamp. It shone a soft little light. It worked, then, at least.

"Outside, there was an old cow. The old man and woman loved the weird old thing like it was their kid. As Elijah was walking past it, all of a sudden, he dropped to his knees and prayed for the cow to die."

"That's not funny." She sat up on her heels and tugged, and nearly overbalanced as the lamp came away from the wood.

"That's what the friend said. Why would you do that? Because, like, seconds later, the cow falls right over. He just dies. He's just dead. But then much later, Elijah tells him, "I had to do it. The angel of death was coming to take the old woman, and as much as they loved the cow, they loved each other more. So I prayed for the angel of death to take the cow instead."

"I don't like that story."

"It was Aielle's favourite, I think." Jonah sat down heavily on the couch, like a very old man. "Old stories are almost never nice. You notice that? It's like they didn't even invent happiness until the seventies."

157 Emily turned the lamp in her hands. A piece of paper was stuck to its base. "I like it better when they made things nice for kids." She gave a gentle tug, and the letter came away in her hand. It was yellowing, and folded in tight squares, just like the Harpo letter.

"I've always thought it was because they didn't like telling us stories. That's why my grandmother always told the one about the Hobos on the train. She always said, "There are hobos on all the trains through Kingston." They'd kidnap me if I didn't wash my hands properly. They'd think I was one of them. That was the reason. Eventually, I just learned not to ask for stories anymore. It wasn't any better here, in the lodgehouse, I mean."

Emily tucked the little paper into her pocket.

"Do you want to go for a walk?"

She looked up. "You heard them arguing too? Sonja and Blima?"

"Their hearing is going. They don't know how loud they are sometimes."

"You don't have to feel sorry for me."

Jonah stood. "Let's go to Papa Sam's dock I don't think I ever showed you how that thing works."

Emily crept to the doorway. Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja were still guarding the windows. If Jonah went outside, they'd see him. "Let's go later," she said.

11.

Harpo let himself be led back into the registration hallway.

"I hid some things for my sister in here," said Blima.

Harpo touched his forehead, and pretended to think, hard. "Did you hide a glove and a bear?"

"How did you know that?" whispered Blima.

158 "I hid something for you. I hid things in a bunch of rooms."

Blima ran right to the chairs. It was just like he thought. The best place to hide a thing. Blima searched the cushions of one, then the other. Then she moved on to the little card table. She crouched underneath it and looked up. Now that was interesting. He should definitely start hiding things under tabletops. Who ever looked there?

Harpo drifted over to the wall again, to the photographs. He posed like an old

Russian man again, his hand behind his back. Then he noticed the funny picture of Blima again.

"Hey monkey," he said. "Was this picture taken when you were in Russia?"

Blima ran over to Harpo and fit herself perfectly under his arm, like an armrest. He could get used to having a sidekick like this. He could see now why the tramp had wanted one.

"That's when I wasn't allowed to wear any dresses."

"What?" he whispered. "Wait. Why were you not allowed to wear dresses?"

"After we got off the boat. That's when I was allowed to wear a dress again. I can also wear a skirt, if I want one."

She had to look like a boy while in transit. The passport for Blima had been a little boy's.

Blima looked up. "Don't be worried," she said. "My mom says I'm the tailored type anyway."

Harpo stroked Blima's soft hair while the world shifted yet again, all around him.

Why would Simon give them a little boy's passport when he must have known Aielle had a daughter? Maybe you just couldn't be that picky on the black market.

159 12.

Harpo tiptoed through the room of windows, like he was a tough 85th streeter, like he was casing the joint. Really, he was watching Groucho. Groucho could probably figure this out.

There was a missing letter, a little boy's passport, and an atticky girl. Goucho was absorbed in a crossword though. Harpo flicked it.

Groucho looked up. "Tell me all the words you know."

"Is that the crossword you saved for me?"

"I've almost got the bastard," said Groucho. "Seventeen across. Pithy."

"Drunk and lispy."

"Close. I need ten letters."

"Fed up?"

"I'm destroying it. With pen. Good luck to anyone who wants to have a go at the sucker after me. And that's the lesson to be learned. If you can't do it properly, turn it into a big joke. Nobody will know that you didn't mean to do it in the first place."

"Bar-brawled," said Harpo. "Pissed, and pissy, and mouth-punched-in."

Groucho counted on his fingers. He looked up. "Perfect."

And then Harpo skipped to the backdoor, and out. This wasn't the time. He'd ask

Grouch later.

13.

Emily folded herself in the little alcove outside of the room of windows.

"I don't understand this," Bubie Sonja was saying. "I can't imagine why we haven't spent time together at all."

"A lot of years have passed," said Aunt Blima.

160 "He just came to be nostalgic. That's the only reason anyone comes here anymore."

"Am I arguing?"

"That's just what our parents would have wanted for the lodge."

"The lodge was named in seven obituaries this year alone. Remembered with fondness and love, all of them. Maybe he read them. Maybe that's why he came."

"The reason I'm worried," Bubie Sonja said quietly, "isn't so much that we haven't spoken. It's that he hasn't looked me in the eye. I don't think that he's looked any of us in the eye."

"Except for Emily," said Aunt Blima.

"Why did Doran come?"

"Are you only now realizing that it's a problem?"

"I really loved him, you know. Seeing him after all these years, maybe I still do."

"Maybe it's a lot for him to handle too," Aunt Blima said quietly.

14.

Jonah nudged Emily, and she felt herself blushing. "I'm not eavesdropping."

"My grandmother's coming," he whispered. "I had to put Jazzy in a cubbyhole. I feel terrible."

And then Auntie Hannah marched down the hallway, and Jonah pushed past Emily into the room, and rearranged the seats, and set out wine glasses. Emily followed inside. She sat, then Hannah sat next to her, very properly, as Jonah pulled up more chairs.

"We shouldn't just be drinking wine, I think," he said. "Elijah wants a Manhattan. To mix things up a bit."

Blima scooted to the liquor cabinet.

161 "Do you think he came?" said Hannah.

"He's coming," said Aunt Blima. "This time I know."

"Blima pours the best Manhattans," said Bubie Sonja.

"It was Harpo who taught me that." Blima walked back to the table with a tray of bottles and glasses.

"Why did Harpo teach you how to mix drinks?" said Emily.

"It was on his visit in 1933," said Sonja. "We were kids. He was a kid, even though he was old. Oh he was just ancient. He was over thirty. We thought, that was just the end.

Thirty and unmarried."

"You thought that," said Blima. "I knew who he was. He was my friend."

"He was on his way back to New York like a sort of reverse exodus. He already left in the middle of the night to sing with the Nightingales and then be the Marx brothers and tour all the way to dorton and back again. It was a melancholic trip, I think, this stay at the lodge. Do you remember that? His brothers were with him. At least two or three of them that time. And another man who was fat."

"Sonja!" said Hannah.

"He was round like a grape," said Bubie Sonja. "It was a time for us, let me tell you.

Our mother was locked in her bedroom. Dad was trying to get her out. He had his toolbox out, and all his tools arranged on the carpet, but he didn't know what he was doing."

"He knew what he was doing," said Aunt Blima. "He had a workshop."

"We'd been left alone."

"They asked their friends to keep an eye on us. The Levis, I think. It was usually them."

"They did that a lot," said Bubie Sonja. "Our mother thought we should really raise

162 ourselves. The couple next door to us saw our father trying to open the door to the attic again, so they invited us to their room for drinks. And our mother taught us that you must always reciprocate an invitation. So the next evening, we invited them downstairs for cocktails. Our mother was still locked in her room."

"All that time?" said Emily.

"Dad got in one night, and she locked herself in again the next. She was dramatic, our mother."

"And so we enlisted the help of Bessie the maid," said Aunt Blima. "That was fine.

She would pour the drinks for us before she started on dinner. So your Bubie Sonja and I put on all of our best clothes, nice dresses, gloves to our elbows, and we went down and met the Hoffmans down in the room of windows, because that's where we drank cocktails then.

And we talked and we sat and we sat and finally we thought, where is Bessie with the cocktails? We looked around and nobody else was drinking either."

"In those days, everybody drank," said Bubie Sonja. "There was none of this, oh no alcohol for me business."

"So we went into the kitchen and we found Bessie lying on the floor," said Blima.

"She always fainted when she picked up something cold."

"And even though Dad bought her a pair of tongs, she sometimes tried to pick up the ice with her fingers. We saw the ice on the table, and the open bottles, so we knew exactly what had happened."

"So we didn't know what to do," said Bubie Sonja. "Well, Blima didn't know what to do."

'Til tell you what we did," said Blima. "Emily, your Bubie Sonja pinched me and told me that I had to go out to the card tables and ask Mr. and Mrs. Hoffman to help us make

163 the drinks because we didn't know how. So I went out, and walked right to the table, but then I turned right around and walked back to the kitchen again. I was too embarrassed to ask. I tried to close the kitchen door, but there was this man standing behind me."

"Emily, your Harpo was a mensch," said Sonja, "and he was the one who had followed Blima into the kitchen. Not that we recognized him right away. He wasn't wearing his fright wig right then."

"I knew him," said Blima. "I would have known him anywhere. It's just that he was standing behind me."

"He looked like just anybody in the world. Anyhow, he came in the kitchen and asked me if there was something the matter since my sister seemed so upset. And then he mixed the drinks."

"He didn't mix them," said Blima. "He taught us to mix them. That's the point of the story."

"He taught us by mixing," said Sonja. "I think I should know. I was there after all."

Blima turned to Emily. "He taught us to mix a drink," she said, "and not just for us did he teach us. Do we want our friends to get drunk while we get sober? You mix them stiff drinks and pour a thimble of alcohol on top of your own drink Splash the booze right on the top. Nobody will know the difference. They smell just the same. And you make sure they choose the right one by putting a big thumb print on the glass you don't want them to choose. It will glow like a rainbow, he said, and it did."

"So we got the Hoffmans drunk that night," said Sonja. "And the man and woman who were supposed to be keeping an eye on us. Do you remember their names? We got them good and shikkered also."

"So we spent the rest of the night talking to Harpo. He told us things from his

164 childhood in New York"

"What did he tell you?" said Emily.

"We talked to him also." Bubie Sonja's eyes were slivers. "It was difficult, our childhood. Our parents looked different, and they had accents. And how could we invite our friends to our house? It smelled like garlic and kishka. Our mother was crying all the time."

"That wasn't forever," said Blima.

"Those nights. Those were the worst. She sat and she cried and she lit candles, hoping that they would flare. She was hoping that Elijah would come and lead us away from the lodgehouse. So we went in our room and prayed for him to let us stay. We weren't allowed candles. We used reading lamps. Then Dad stopped letting mom use candles."

"At least that got our mother out of the house," Aunt Blima said mildly, "buying all those lamps."

Emily stood, and slipped out of the room.

15.

Emily stumbled up a little muddy hill, and kicked through the little streams of melted snow, and breathed in that smell. She grabbed a branch and pulled at it, and when she let it go, it swung out like a weapon, and hit her in the side. She heard a crinkle, the letter from the lamp.

Emily walked further into the forest, and found Papa Sam's old dock She retrieved the letter, and opened up the squares with careful fingers. The letter was a relic, something that could be in a museum. It was two pages written in a neat hand.

165 "Dear Blima, the picture that you attached to my mirror depicts the most beautiful man I've ever seen. Who is he? He seems familiar. I can't leave it on the mirror to compare to my own pale reflection. Until I'm no longer a misery, it stays in my underwear drawer."

They were tiny little love letters, and they ran into each other, one into the next into the next.

"Dear Sonja, you looked so wonderful when you were dancing for the guests. I'm proud that you remembered the guests' names to wish them good night. It's fine that you hold your sister's hand to do it. You're brave just for trying."

Blima said the L was from a love letter, but this was a kind of love letter too. It was about love. It professed love.

"Dear Blima, I keep an exhibition of your drawings in my underwear drawer so that I can look at them properly every single morning in my period of meditation between toilet and oatmeal. Who is that man? They're with my underwear because it's been a great many years since I've forgotten to put on a pair." And it made Emily feel love too. She missed

Aielle suddenly, and not in a nostalgic way. It was more pressing than that. It hurt, and she wanted to see her, and she wanted her back again. She missed specific things. She missed that soft hand she used to reach for.

Once, she took Aielle's hand and a fingernail came away, right in her palm. The memory was as vivid as the smell of mud and budding things. Grandma Aielle picked her up, and her big smile smoothed away most of her wrinkles. "If you ever think that secrets are too big to handle, I want you to know that they aren't. Love isn't too big to handle eidier. No love is too big to put in a book. What I do. When I want to say 'I love you,' I write it on a scrap of paper or a receipt. Or we can tape it up under a table. I'll show you.

Harpo showed me. He's the one who taught me that."

166 And Emily clutched the tree. The memory changed. She'd always assumed that

Grandma Aielle taught her random things she'd learned from Marx Brothers movies, but she and Harpo had talked. What had they talked about?

"What if somebody reads the book?" she'd asked her grandma Aielle, then.

"Then that means that Elijah has sent them to find it."

And then Emily remembered watching, horrified and interested and appalled, as

Aielle fit the big red nail back onto her finger.

Emily put the letter into her pocket again. Then she jumped onto Papa Sam's dock

It rocked, and she nearly tumbled into the lake, but she caught herself on a big stick That's when she noticed that the stick was attached to the little dock itself. She knelt. The dock was motorized. There really was a secret here.

16.

When Jonah found Emily on the dock, he jumped onto it, and the whole thing bobbed wildly.

Emily grabbed the stick again. "This thing moves?"

"That's what I wanted to show you."

"How far can it go?"

"Anywhere. It's a boat. That's a real boat motor. I don't know why Papa Sam made it, though."

"It's weird," said Emily. "It's not that normal."

"I used to use it all the time," said Jonah. "When we did that stupid dock thing?

When we left you there? I used to check on you."

"WithDarryl?"

167 "No."

Emily thrust Harpo's letter at him. "Aunt Blima gave me this," she said, as he hopped up beside her. "She said it's a love letter. Harpo wrote it."

Jonah turned it over in his hands. "It only says L. There aren't even any words.

There isn't even a name."

"Blima said. She gave it to me. She held it out and said, "it's from your Harpo. It's a love letter." Maybe it's a clue. Maybe there are more of these somewhere."

Jonah handed it back. "I don't believe in stuff like that."

"In love letters?"

"I believe in love letters. But I think that love is simple. You know? It shouldn't be something you don't understand. Nobody should make it needlessly confusing."

Jonah touched Emily's arm. She turned and saw him watching the driveway. She heard it too, a crunching of gravel.

"It's Doran," he whispered.

17.

Harpo always ended up back here. He saw the lights of the lodge, lit up like costume jewelry against the dark forest. All the windows had different colours somehow. They looked warm.

He'd rather be cold.

He turned back toward the trees, but then he heard a sound. Finally, he saw the dark figure peeking in the lodgehouse windows. He tiptoed, but the ground beneath him crunched. The man turned. Jacob. "And how are you, Mr. MacMarx?"

"That's Exapno Mapcase to you."

Jacob clapped. "You're going to Russia."

168 "I was looking for you before. Why do you only come out at night?"

And he dropped his hands. "At night, I can see in, and they can't see out."

"Oh." Harpo took a deep breath of smoke-laden air. He remembered the first time

they'd met, when Jacob was asking how he was, when he tapped him on the back. He'd done

it since too. Ghosts probably couldn't do that. Blima was right. They were more like smoke,

or soap bubbles. Harpo tiptoed closer. There was a fire burning in the fireplace, inside the

great room. He could see the flickers, and even hear the crackles. But the night felt darker. It

felt like there was no air. "Why don't you want them to see you?" he said, even though he

didn't want the truth. He wanted ghosts.

"I'm just a townie," said Jacob. "There's no law saying you need to be friends with

your neighbours. I wish I was their family. Then they would be forced to love me and my

wife. And my daughter, and her husband. They have a daughter the girls' age."

Harpo tiptoed even closer, and then he touched Jacob. He was solid. His coat felt

soft. He wasn't a ghost then. He couldn't be. He was real.

"Well." Jacob turned and clapped him on the back again. "It looks like everyone's

going to bed. I brought my tools."

Harpo made himself laugh. "Your ghostly toolkit. Tools that have died terrible

deaths." It was a little bit funny.

18.

A breeze swept through the grass, and Emily shivered. She settled on the cold stair beside

Doran. It was unfortunate that this nightly weirdness had become their habit. She didn't

even know what to say any more. "Did you remember anything else?"

169 "Images. Sounds. A cupboard I crawl inside, and I'm yanked out, and I see the whole office whirling past me. And then a pain. I've been spanked. Blima saw that cupboard too.

That's the other reason I came. I wanted verification. I wanted to know these weren't dreams."

Doran turned, and a spot of wet white tooth shone in the moonlight. He might have been grinning, or grimacing. Emily tried to picture him as a child, and she saw him as long- limbed and strange like a spider, and freakishly tall, even then. That was probably not accurate though.

"You probably can't imagine me as a child."

"No," said Emily, shaking her head fervently, blushing, hoping he couldn't see it in the dark under the verandah, "of course I can— "

"But I was. I was a child then."

A breeze rifled through the grass.

" Aielle came to our apartment."

Emily shifted in her seat. She was squirming like a baby. And yet. She looked at the doorway, at the light that was warm looking and orange, that shone out of the room of windows. She could hear a tinny sort of music, too.

"So Aielle came inside. She had her daughter. I didn't want them to come. My father asked me to sit at my desk. So I did. I slid off the chair, until my back was on the base, and my legs were touching the ground. I was boneless, you see. I imagined that I'd lost the rigidity in my bones. Then I moved my feet, to maneuver myself around in the chair. I was imaging how a boneless person might live. The adults were speaking in serious voices. Then my father stood, and walked to my closet, and gave her my clothes. A pair of pants that were too short. A shirt that needed to be mended. More shirts. A jacket. I didn't wear them

170 anymore. It didn't matter. I was furious. My fury made me lose the hardness in all my bones.

It was my anger that had done it. My mother was inside her room, having one of her headaches that she said made her see colours."

Emily shivered. This was too much.

"After that. I remember broken glass all over a floor. Not much more."

And Emily stood. Unaccountably, she remembered sitting in school and reading about Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass. But that was in another country. And he wasn't Jewish. That couldn't have happened to him.

19.

"Well this isn't the end of the world." And Jacob emptied his box, piece by piece, and quietly put them on the towel.

Harpo touched each of the tools. They were all hard and cold and very physically present. He arranged them in order of length.

Jacob said that this wasn't the end of the world. He was right. That he wasn't a ghost didn't mean that ghosts didn't exist. It didn't mean that other dead people wouldn't come back

"Sawing didn't work last time," Harpo whispered. "That's how we made the mess."

Jacob clapped his hands quietly. "After we're done, we have to see if there's anything else I can help with. You can tell me if anything else is broken. I've done this an awful lot, you know. "When Sam was building the extensions, I used to check on them, fix things up, come by in the night. I poured a proper foundation. Not proper. Just a bit better than the one he did. I added braces. Straightened a few things. He's a good man, Sam. He loves his family. You can tell."

171 Then Jacob chose a funny flattened out instrument, and waved to Harpo, beckoned for him to follow. Harpo scooted on his bottom, all the way over to where Jacob was sawing at the jagged hole in the wall.

Jacob reached down a hand on Harpo's bowed head. He sanded the hole in the wall with the other. All night, Jacob worked one handed. Minnie might have said that Harpo was feeling sorry for himself again, but Minnie would have been wrong. He was feeling sorry for

Jacob. It must be hard to work with only one hand.

20.

The room of doors was lined in bookshelves, so Emily had trouble deciding where to start.

Her heart pounded, her head fluttered, and she moved and moved, if only to tap her toes.

She moved a chair to the farthest wall, hopped on, and picked a handful of novels out of the shelves. Nothing. She picked out the next handful. Then she heard the floor groan.

"What are you doing?" said Jonah. He was lying under the table.

Emily hopped off the chair, and she felt a thrill, and her blood felt electric. She touched her cheeks. They were hot. She felt like she could see in the dark.

"Why are you up?" he said.

"Why are you under a card table?"

He sighed and rolled out from underneath. "I wanted to say I'm sorry. I wanted to say it when I was a kid, but instead I just kept on teasing you."

"What are you drinking?"

Jonah moved inside the shadows again and a bottle rolled to Emily's feet.

She slid off the couch and picked it up. "Spiced rum?" she whispered. She wanted to be angry, to frown, to turn away, but found instead that she was smiling. It was probably a

172 stupid smile, but she was glad that he was here with her. "I'm drinking coffee. It tastes great.

This tastes better than anything. I forgot how good it feels to drink coffee at three oh eight in the morning.

"You'll never sleep again," said Jonah.

"It feels great. I feel great."

Jonah picked himself up and sat on the chair's other arm. "What are you doing?"

"Snooping."

"What are you looking for?"

"I have no idea," said Emily. "Anything really. They think that I forgot, but I didn't forget, they're the ones who didn't even know her."

"Who?" said Jonah. "Who didn't know who?"

"Grandma Aielle," said Emily. "No. Blima and my Bubie, I mean, they didn't know grandma Aielle. She died when I was twelve years old, but I remember. They're the ones who never listened to her. She kept everything. I'm going to find something to prove she wasn't having an affair."

"What if you find out she was?"

"Did you know she hid things?" said Emily. "I happen to know that she never threw anything out in her life. She used to walk around with bits of paper and plastic in her pockets and I had to empty them out for her at night because she couldn't part with anything, not even garbage."

"Is that normal?"

"She had to leave everything behind in Russia," said Emily. "She used to always say to me. It'll happen again. You enjoy these things as much as you can while it all lasts."

"I guess that's normal."

173 The Fourth Day

1.

"Harpo!"

Harpo heard his name, then stumbled into Sam's embrace, then stumbled out of it again. He held onto the Registration desk Mornings were getting more and more difficult.

He really did love sleeping.

"Thank you, Harpo."

He felt the smooth surface of the counter, and didn't look at Sam. He hadn't found them yet, the letters, and whatever else Simon may have given. He hadn't fixed anything. He would though. He wanted to, so badly.

"The window is a masterpiece."

"Oh." That, he hadn't done either. Last night, Jacob had sanded, and straightened, and pounded, then stained it all, the whole thing, the whole window. And then he and

Harpo had sat in the dark room and breathed in all the fumes. The room looked great, and the window looked dizzyingly good inside it. But it had nothing to do with him.

Sam patted Harpo on the back "Gome tonight. We'll smoke cigars. You're a good man, Harpo, and we'll celebrate that too." And Harpo nodded, then escaped into the morning air.

2.

The patterns of movement in this place didn't make sense. Emily climbed up one stair and thought, not for the first time, about the flights of birds, how they ducked and feinted all at once, that there must be a logic to it, just one that humans couldn't necessarily see. There was Auntie Blima and Bubie Sonja, with their morning ritual of coffee and crosswords, after

174 having mooned after Doran (Bubie Sonja) and tormented the guests (Auntie Blima). And then there were the men upstairs too. She had no idea what they did. She didn't see them when she ate breakfast, that's all she knew. She could probably graph their individual passages through the lodge. That would definitely be procrastination though.

Emily creaked up one more stair, listening to Doran's progress in the floors above. It sounded like he was searching. But how did he know what to look for? He said he didn't remember, not in any real way.

Worries were like ideal gasses. They expanded to fill all possible space.

3.

Harpo eased himself down beside Aielle. The warm air and pink sky reminded him of how much he liked to sleep. He wouldn't even get up early like this for the pictures. But for

Aielle. And for her daughter. That was different.

"You're easy to talk to," Aielle said suddenly. "I talk too much, sometimes. But it's fine if I'm with you. There needs to be a certain amount of talking getting done, and you're certainly not doing it."

Harpo freed his arm so that he could touch her shoulder. She eased into his hand, her back concave. Her soft, white sweater reminded him of the nightgown.

"Silences from you are comfortable," she said. "They're never uneasy. There's never that tension that happens just after I've said the wrong thing."

Harpo ran his hand up and down, and he could feel her spine under the sweater. He could feel a coiled energy too. He drew a smile on Aielle's back with his fingertips.

175 "Those bad kinds follow me after they start," she was saying. "I drag them from room to room. All of this is easier for Sam of course. He just loves people, and that's all there is. It doesn't matter who they are, Sam will love them."

"Was Simon like that too?"

"I can't help what I see. These people, these ones who come to the lodge, they've never had to run from anything, any of them. They have their parents still. I had my mother until I was twenty-six years old. If you're forty and you still have a mother, and you see your mother two times every week, that means that you'll see her an average of three hundred times more than I saw my mother. It's not fair."

Harpo spelled out the word mom.

"I have too many worries."

Harpo shifted so that he was sitting behind her. Now he could trace on her back properly. He needed a long word. Or a funny sounding one maybe. He wrote 'pithy' He'd done this with Minnie once, on a balmy evening. He'd been walking back to the tenements when he saw her sitting out on the sidewalk, looking tired, so he sat beside her, and patted her back. She didn't yell or anything. She didn't even stand up. She just let him.

"I talk about these worries, and that's where the silences come from. Nobody wants to know. They don't want to hear it because I'm right. I'm scared my girls will have to leave this country too. I'm scared the Jews won't be welcome. Wars. Kinim. Dever. Pestilence too, maybe, but that's not a major worry because I've never been squeamish about insects. My

Sam sometimes asks me to kill the spiders. But I'll admit I knew that when I married him."

Harpo wrote spider in a loopy cursive. Aielle didn't say anything. Minnie had. Minnie had guessed: pencil, glass, table, and after each guess, Harpo'd sat up straight and said,

"that's right," even though he'd just been doing scribbles then.

176 "I'm scared the girls will never find husbands. It's not like at home, where we just put the young women on the market and bargain between parents."

Harpo wrote the word love. He wasn't so good a speller, but that was one word he knew.

"Here it's all so loose. What do you know when you're just eighteen? Can you really pick a husband on your own? You're still a child, then. No. I know my children better than they know themselves. I'd do anything for my girls."

Harpo leaned his forehead on her back, breathing in her smell, the powder, the soft vanilla.

"Even if it's something that I shouldn't have done. I won't regret it. What I did, it was for my family."

Harpo spelled out 'the monkey loves you' on her lower back, breathing in her smell, the powder and soft vanilla. Then he wrapped his arms around her waist.

"Things were easier in Russia. There was nothing for me to worry about. Even for the cleaning, I had help. Even when things got difficult, and I couldn't be the spoiled little girl, I had help. I liked being the little girl. I won't apologize for that either. Who would choose the other thing?"

"When did you leave?" Harpo said into the fluffy white sweater.

"Three years ago."

And Harpo let go. He lay down on the dock, suddenly exhausted, too exhausted to stay upright. Aielle's smaller daughter couldn't be much older than three. When Harpo opened his eyes again, Aielle was gone, and he sat up to find little pebbles stuck to the side of his face.

177 4.

Harpo picked his way off the dock. Aielle had had an affair, a kid, an escape from Russia, but not in that order. He knew what Grouch would tell him. If he wanted to be a grownup, this is what it would entail. He would have to do bad things sometimes. Chico too, Chico would say that.

But he knew it already.

Minnie stole food for them. Harpo had seen it. He'd never told anybody.

He'd been skitting down 83rd, past the grocery vendor, when he saw her. He stopped, because it wasn't often that he saw this other Minnie, the one who didn't know that she was being watched by a son. And that's when he saw it. She dropped a tomato into her handbag, then something else had gone in, something kind of yellow-ish, and he'd run. He hid in an alley, and from there, he could see the store keeper. Because that storekeeper had seen the whole thing. Harpo sat down on the concrete, and he was diz:zy, and black spots appeared in his vision, and his mother couldn't go to jail, but then the shopkeeper turned away and

Harpo breathed again.

So here was the deal. If Harpo could save this family, then he'd be responsible enough to have his own one.

5.

Emily put Jazzy in the chair next to her, and turned on her computer, and listened to it power up. She had a new email. It was a name she didn't recognize. Not her thesis advisor.

Not in response to the genealogy query. That might take some mulling over, and it was probably a good sign that he hadn't said no outright.

178 She put her hands on either side of her mug and rested her head on top of them. She breathed in coffee. Her graphs and diagrams formed and disintegrated like images in a kaleidoscope, social networks sticky like spider webs, pinching off, forming new graphs.

Many of the people she'd interviewed didn't know most of the people on their own social networks, not in any real way, not enough, some of them, to remember why or when they'd added them in the first place. So Emily had established that people tended to connect themselves to acquaintances and friends of friends. So what had she really discovered?

She opened her eyes, and the inside of the mug was like a murky pond. Her head was buzzing. She was buzzing. She wasn't allowed a morning off her thesis when she hadn't technically started what she'd come here to do. And yet. She felt like she'd never be able to think again.

She opened the email, and abruptly, she was awake. It was a message from the cemetery men. There were pictures attached. She opened the first one, labeled Oserov cemetery 001, and it showed the graveyard in a dreary bloom, and she was startled. That wasn't how she'd pictured Russia. There were dark things everywhere, mosses and vines and things. The tombstone itself was damp, dry only in patches, like the stone itself was weeping, like how she'd imagined the wailing wall when she was young. The Cyrillic name on the grave wasn't visible, but the cemetery men had photoshopped a text box into the bottom, with the name written in English and Cyrillic. It wasn't a name that Emily recognized.

There were over three hundred pictures to go.

She put her head on the table. The wood was cool, and the cup warmed her forehead, and she felt like a tiny little island in an ocean of coffee. She angled the screen so that she could see it, and clicked on the next image. This one showed the graveyard from another angle, still looking damp and darkly fertile, and it took seconds and seconds for

179 Emily to even find the tombstone. It had been eaten up by creeper vines. It made her feel claustrophobic, this whole exercise, this whole place. Her thesis. These worries. Doran. She wanted out. The beginning of university had been better than this, the end of it. She remembered when she first lived in residence, the shock, the strangeness, the one night, after a class, when she'd walked down to the laundry room, bought a stale sandwich from a vending machine, and sat eating it, watching the drying machines spin. That wasn't like now.

There was a sweetness to that memory. Those were just slack hours before time would pull taught again, and she'd known that, but now she didn't know what would be on the other end of any hour. She might not be able to finish her thesis now that she was adding more stuff. She might finish it, and nobody would care. It might show nothing. Who cared how people were connected anyway?

She slipped her arm under the table and patted Jazzy's smooth little head, then tried again, to focus on pictures.

6.

Harpo took up his post in the dining room doorway, half crushed by the heavy door, when he heard footsteps. Blima was already by his side.

"The worst times are always in the mornings," she whispered.

"You know about the ritual too?" Harpo crouched down next to her. Then he sat.

Then he wedged his knee in the doorway. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. He leaned his head against the shutting door. He was caught in a crossbreeze. That made it even harder to stay awake. "Do you know the name Simon? Is that a name you've heard before?"

Blima put her hands on his knee, and leaned on him, peering into registration.

"You look like you have a secret," he whispered.

180 "We went to this house in Russia," she said suddenly. "They left me in the outside hallway. I lay down on the couch and I watched them. They were holding hands. I saw. I was holding my book So I dropped it. To make them stop. Then the boy did the same thing, with his book."

"The boy?"

"He always copied me. Every single time I did anything."

"Who was he?"

But just as abruptly as she'd started, Blima stopped talking. She slipped away, and

Harpo watched her run. Toward the room of windows, probably. That was probably her favourite room.

Did Simon have a son? Is that where he'd found the passport?

Harpo peeked out the door. He saw Aielle shuffling behind the Registration desk, and their eyes met. Abruptly, he was awake.

7.

Harpo ran into the hallway. His heart was pounding. The whole place was throbbing, the colours too vivid, the sun too bright, and it wasn't what she thought. What must she think?

Maybe he was okay. Maybe she hadn't seen him.

Well, he'd fix this, whatever it was that was wrong, and then she'd know. He'd just have to find those letters. He drifted toward the room of doors. He wanted to help so badly.

He could hear his brothers. Somewhere close. He didn't know where. He drifted toward the sound. Then he tripped on a throw-rug. Rugs. Mats. Nobody bothered to clean under those. So Harpo knelt and rolled up an oriental carpet. He searched under it. Nothing.

He unrolled it again and crawled to the next one. This time, he found a tiny little sock

181 Second Present. It had to be. That's exactly the kind of gift adults thought to give little kids.

He crawled farther, until he came upon a pair of legs. Guest. Guests. Two of them, and the female legs weren't bad. He looked up and saluted, and the people to whom the legs belonged shuffled away, and Harpo sat back down on his heels. He was getting close. He could feel it.

But what would he do when he found the letters?

He heard a whoop of laughter, Chico for sure. He let the search take him in that direction.

If Simon had a son, then it could be that he had a wife too. Probably he did.

Probably he did have a wife. Harpo shivered. It was warm out, but still, he had goosebumps.

Had Simon put his own family in danger when he'd helped Aielle?

Maybe he deserved some love letters. Maybe he should know that she still thought about him.

But then Harpo pictured Sam, and Sam had said he'd have wanted to meet Frenchie, so maybe he would just bum the letters and then nobody would have to worry. Harpo crawled under one of the long couches. He hadn't looked underneath it yet. It smelled like must. It was overpowering. And there was nothing under there but balls of dust and lint. He pictured little Blima lying on the top of one of these couches, in Simon's apartment, dropping heavy books to remind Aielle of her other family back home.

After a moment, Harpo crawled out again. He crawled all the way to the room of windows. He looked up. His brothers were here. Chico was on the sofa, slumped over a pack of cards, blinkingly caught between sleep and wakefulness. Harpo got that wind in the head feeling that sometimes happened when he watched his brothers. They looked so alike he could be watching himself. He and Chico could be twins. Groucho too. Groucho was

182 lounging on an overstuffed chair, reading. Harpo scrambled to his feet and tiptoed inside.

He had to look here. He had no choice. This was Blima's favourite room, so the letters must

be hidden here.

"I'm hot." Groucho had put down his newspaper and was taking off his jacket.

"Did you have treasures when we were growing up?" Harpo crept around the room,

one lap after another, looking for hiding places. He'd checked the sofas and the cushions, the underneaths and the all drawers.

"I had this bun once," said Groucho. "Except my brother stabbed me with a fork, and then he took it."

"Did you have anything that you hid from the family?" Harpo had hidden pets, a cat once, three dogs, all in empty tenement basements. The neighbourhood kids stole them.

He'd hidden money, all the things and buttons he'd found in the alleyways. He'd pulled a doll's head out of the Hudson, and put it in Ghico's pillowcase. "We didn't have secrets, really." He'd hidden lots of things from his brother's wives, Maxine, both of Groucho's kids.

He'd never told Frenchie that Minnie had stolen from a store. That was it. He knelt down again and rolled up the rug. Nothing.

"I had 47 cents I never told anyone about," said Groucho.

"Where did you keep it?"

"The sock drawer."

"I would have found that."

"I know you would have." Groucho fanned himself with his newspaper. "So I taped it to the top."

183 Harpo sat on the couch's arm. "Did that work?" He tried the chest at the corner of the room, opened the top drawer with his toe, then felt along inside with his feet. Nothing.

"Did taping things to drawers work?"

"Chico found it."

Chico opened his eyes. "Hardly worth looking for. Forty-seven cents. The way you snuck in and out of the room in the dark all the time, I was expecting a million dollars."

"So to answer your question," said Groucho, "no. The sock drawer was not a good place to hide things. Tape or no tape."

"Did you have any hiding places that Chico didn't find out about?"

"I don't know." Groucho reached down and struggled, and then his shoes were flying up, then banging, one then the next.

"I hid things in my socks," said Chico. "I didn't take them off. That's how I kept them safe."

'You should take off your socks now," said Groucho. "To make up for it."

"Socks wouldn't work for a letter, though."

Groucho ripped a paper out of a magazine, and carefully folded it into a fan.

"How would you hide a letter?"

"The vent?" said Groucho.

Harpo found a vent mounted in the wall, dragged a chair to it and jumped up. He peaked in, and saw nothing, an empty hole.

"Are you stripping?" Chico pointed to Groucho's rolled up pants and bare ankles.

Groucho eyed Chico first, then Harpo. "I'd feel better if you'd take off your socks too."

"Did we ever hide things from Minnie?"

184 "That's why we had the grouch bag."

"Before that," said Harpo. "In New York Did Minnie ever hide anything from us?"

Groucho sank even lower on the couch. "Are your socks still on?"

"I know I hid things from you two. I can remember taping things to chair legs, tabletops, underneaths, but there must have been better spots than that."

"I really want you to take off your socks," said Groucho. "You're hot. I think it would make you cooler."

"I'm not hot," said Harpo. "I remember taping something to the underside of a kitchen chair once. I don't think that worked. It was an Uncle Al dime, and it was gone the next day. Frenchie was gone at the time, selling door to door, I guess." He remembered because the tiny little apartment had felt empty and cavernous. "I just thought the word cavernous."

"Good for you," said Groucho. "Now spell it."

"Not in your life." The apartment had been empty. No strange men had tiptoed inside, because he would have known. Minnie had been beautiful. But still. Minnie and

Frenchie had loved each other. Harpo flopped on the couch next to Groucho.

"Take off your socks," said Groucho, and Harpo kicked him. It felt good, so he did it again. Then he nudged him with his foot.

"Are you scratching my leg?" said Groucho. "You're probably getting my skin cells all over your shoes and socks. You'd better take them off in that case."

"I remember loose floorboards, but that never worked." None of the floorboards ever actually came up. He'd dropped a penny through a crack once, but he'd never gotten it back. "Pillow cases, mattresses, old shoes," he muttered. He really had searched everywhere.

And he'd never seen a love letter. He was sure of that, at least.

185 "Minnie had a special drawer," said Groucho. "You could take it out. I used that a few times. I slid things in the space between the drawer and the back. I stopped doing it though."

Chico put his cards on the table. "I didn't know that one."

"What did she keep in there?" whispered Harpo.

"Rent money," said Groucho. "Pictures of us."

"Why did you stop using it?" said Harpo.

"I put a chocolate in there once and it melted before I could eat it. It got all over the rent money."

"Why are you looking to hide something?"

Harpo put leaned his head on the arm of the sofa. Now that they'd asked, he had no idea how to answer. Well, he'd just explain the whole thing. In a minute though. First he just had to rest his eyes.

8.

Emily hid behind the door to the kitchen and peeked inside. Jonah was there, alone.

"Jonah," she whispered, hugging the doorway.

He looked up, and his face filled with colour. "Is Jazzy okay?"

"I got an email back from the cemetery men."

"Already?" His eyes were wide. "Did they send pictures?"

"Almost four hundred."

"Have you looked at them?"

"I'm waiting for you."

186 "Okay." Jonah rubbed his hands on his pants and looked at the laden counters.

"Okay. Just give me ten minutes. I'll be right there."

9.

Harpo opened his eyes and straightened quickly, but it wasn't Chico beside him. It was

Groucho. Chico was gone. Harpo turned slightly, and something fell from his head to his chest. He picked it up. It was a piece of paper folded into tight accordion sections and squeezed at the bottom. A fan. As he unfolded it, another landed on his lap.

"I just wanted to tell you," said Groucho, "I'm your biggest fan." And he threw another one.

Harpo caught it and made to throw it back, but noticed that it was smooth and coloured, so he touched it to his lips instead. "Minnie used to call you the whiner."

Groucho threw another fan. "You were no Chico yourself."

"We still did everything she said. What could we have done— "

"There's nothing we could have done."

"Do you forgive her?"

Groucho picked up some more glossy pages from his lap and started folding them.

"Sure."

Harpo's eyes drifted shut, and he pictured Aielle, her eyes wet, her cheeks red.

Another fan hit his nose, and Harpo opened his teary eyes. He grabbed the fan and threw it back, hard.

"You can't just throw those things around. Imagine if everybody did that. It would be fandemonium," and Groucho threw another.

187 The fan landed on top of Harpo's head, and Harpo kept still to balance it. "Are you bored?"

"I'm making art," said Groucho. "I'm not the one who's collapsed over an easy chair. I'm just fine. I'm gainfully employed. I'm doing something with my life. You're the one who looks miserable."

Harpo readjusted himseE "I'm thinking," he said, and it was true. "Do you think it would be hard to get out of Russia?"

"I thought Aleck was getting you a Visa."

"For people who live there, I mean. Some people were living there and had to escape."

"You're referring, I assume, to the beautiful Aielle and her family."

"I'm just talking in general. Hypothetically, how would a family get out of Russia?"

"Are they Jews, these hypothetical people?"

"If they traded passports. What would happen to the people they traded with?"

Groucho threw another fan. "That would be a lunatic thing to do, Harpo. Don't give away your passport when you're there. I don't care why."

"But if someone did."

"You won't."

"If someone already has."

Groucho folded another fan, carefully pressing down the sections. "The only reason

I could think to do it, is if you were a wanted person anyway. Maybe you're a criminal, and you think you're better off as a Jew."

Harpo nodded slowly. You would also do it if you were in love, but maybe he shouldn't tell him that. You might do it to save an unborn child.

188 "It wouldn't end well for the people who gave them up," said Groucho. "That's all I know." And at that, another fan landed on Harpo's arm, and he unfolded this one, pulled it out and smoothed it. It showed a beautiful woman in an evening gown.

"I thought you should wake up to fanfare."

Harpo thought, but he didn't have as many words as his brother. He closed his eyes, and couldn't get them open again, and he knew that when he did, he'd be buried under a mountain of white fans.

10.

Emily scrolled from picture to picture, watching Jonah's reaction more than the pictures themselves, and found herself scrolling back, apologetic. She hadn't been paying attention.

She'd forgotten to read the names.

"Don't worry," said Jonah. "I've been having trouble too. That's a lot of graves."

And then Emily fell on one, a Robert. She looked up, and saw what must be a mirror of her own appalled expression. It said Robert Baruch.

"It's a coincidence," said Jonah, but the next grave said Dimitri Baruch, and they were side by side.

Emily slammed her laptop shut. "I should get back to my thesis," she said after a moment.

"We can look at this later." Jonah stood up, and stretched, and disappeared out the door.

189 11.

Harpo tiptoed to the desk, and Sam was fiddling, crouched behind it, and there was no reason to be shy. He and Sam were friends. They'd talked already, about food and fathers, and what were stronger bonds than those two things?

Sam popped up. "Are you ready for that cigar?"

"Can I please send a wire?"

Sam reached into hidden compartments and came back again with a pen and a paper.

"You tell me what to say and I take it to the post office when I go into the city."

"It should say this. Aleck. I'm in. Get the Visa." Harpo leaned over the counter to grab the pen, more to steady himself than anything else. "I think I'll write in the details."

12.

Emily opened the computer again. She scrolled through cemetery pictures. Then she heard

Aunt Blima and Bubie Sonja arguing in the hallway, so slammed her laptop shut. She edged toward die door. But she didn't want to know what they were talking about. She didn't feel like eavesdropping anymore. She held her breath, then hurried out of the room.

"Darling." Aunt Blima touched Emily's arm, and she was obliged to stop. "We're having an argument."

Emily hugged her laptop. She shrank into the doorway like Jonah did sometimes.

She was maximizing the distance between herself and them, and the shadows might hide her face. Jonah was a strategist. There was method to his ticks.

"Blima was arguing," said Bubie Sonja. "I wasn't, but my sister was. I was just trying to have a civilized conversation."

190 "We were trying to decide about our mother," said Blima. "Was she bad at loving us?

Or is it our fault? Are we just bad at being loved?"

"Maybe you just didn't understand each other," said Emily. "It's hard when there are so many stories about the family, and you don't even know which ones are true."

"Emily," said Sonja. "You studied Science. How does love work? How do people love each other?"

"I have no idea."

"What did you learn about if you didn't learn that?" said Bubie Sonja.

"I took Sciences," said Emily. "We learned Science. I don't know."

"Didn't you learn anything practical?" said Aunt Blima. "People are going to be married most of their lives. Doesn't it make sense that they should learn how to live together? How to sleep with another person, for instance. That doesn't come naturally. It takes practice. How to share the blanket. How to make a schedule. How to keep a house.

How not to flatten pillows. These are the subjects they should teach."

"There would be less therapy in the world," said Bubie Sonja. "If they just taught more about loving."

Emily ducked her head. She was smiling despite herself. She could feel it. What would they call a course like that? Love delivery systems. Or the transmission of love, maybe. Who would teach it? Maybe the magnetics guy in the Physics department because he had a face like a waning moon, and he liked to clutch his heart while he lectured. He seemed like a romantic kind of guy, in a Physics Prof kind of way. But wasn't that a strange thought, that love might be explained by field theory. "This is kind of strange," she said slowly. "I just sort of thought of this right now. But love might work like magnets. Magnets all have two poles, a North pole and a South pole, and opposite poles attract each other. But that ability

191 to attract - the magnetism - that's not in the magnet itself, it's in the air around it. There's a field around any magnetic object, and that's where it is."

Blima clapped her hands together. "Like a soul."

"So how does the soul work?" said Sonja. "How does it go through the air? And how far does it go? It doesn't makes sense that it would go on forever. And why are some some magnets stronger?"

"It depends on a bunch of things," said Emily. "Radius. That's one of the factors.

The field gets weaker the farther away you get."

"You're better at loving close up," said Blima. "But that can't be right. My aunt Olga.

She was Papa Sam's sister. I remember her from Russia. She was a loving woman, but you couldn't get near her because of garlic and halitosis."

"I love by poste sometimes," said Sonja. "That has to be taken into account. But what about the radius of a waist. Bigger magnets work better. So fatter people love better."

"That makes sense," said Bubie Sonja. "Our mother was very thin."

"So was Dad," said Aunt Blima.

"Oh, that's true."

"This isn't what I meant," said Emily.

"We'll figure this out," said Aunt Blima. "Dorothee. Fat and good at loving. I only knew her when I was very small."

"Who was she?" said Emily, hoisting her laptop under her arm, reaching into her pocket for a pen, finding nothing. "Who was Dorothee?"

"That was your Papa Sam's mother," said Blima. "Then there was his father. Isaac.

Thin with a very big head. He looked like a stop sign. Affectionate, but with suction cup

192 kisses, so not effective for a child. Then there was Johannes. I don't know him except for pictures. Fat. Reputation as a loving squeezer."

Bubie Sonja sighed. "It doesn't look like there's a relation between size and love.

We'll keep on looking, though.

"Then, there was Angelica. Chubby. She pinched. To her, that meant love. To me, that meant torture."

"We'll let you know."

13.

Jonah grabbed Emily's wrist. "You were teaching them about magnets."

Today, of all days, she didn't want him to be keeping an eye on her. "I got more names," she said. "I'll tell you about it later."

"Yeah."

"Hey, Jonah. I never put the new lamp inside Ryan and Amy's room."

"I'll do it right now."

14.

Emily crept back into the room of windows, where Blima was leaning over her crossword.

"How is your thesis coming?"

"Can you tell me Bubie Sonja's love story?"

"How she married your grandfather, you mean." Aunt Blima took off her glasses.

Emily sat down beside her. Blima didn't say anything, so she started. "She was beautiful," she said. "She was known for dating every man who came to the lodge. Every

193 night, one man would drop her off at the front door and another would pick her up at the back door."

"Do you want to know the real story?"

Emily stood. "That's not real?"

"I don't know if you really want to know."

16.

Harpo crept through the forest, that was creaky and dripping with a recent rain, that was carpeted with a mist that rose up from the mud. It looked different. It looked like a cold sort of rainforest. It smelled like it too. Everything about the night felt different.

Blima was a dutiful girl, if she'd run out in a dark forest in the night, just to look after him. There were things outside here. There were noises. There were wild animals. There were ghosts, it felt like.

Harpo took a cautious step forward. The sound his foot made seemed muted. The sounds were wrong. It was like he'd been trapped under an overturned waterglass. Maybe he was inside a glass. Maybe some giant thing wanted to watch him the way he and his brothers used to watch the spiders crawling through the apartment.

17.

Emily heard a sound and then another, and that started off a series of creaks and bangs in the walls and the ceiling, an arthritic house settling in for the night. Then Jonah tiptoed into the room. He set two mugs of coffee on the table and sat beside her. "I've been thinking about it. Maybe they were friends because their brothers had the same names."

194 "I don't think Doran's father and Sam were friends."

"Maybe that's how they met."

"That's not the impression I'm getting, in our creepy late night conversations." But she didn't want to tell Jonah what she did think. She powered up her computer. She'd skipped this last conversation with Doran. Inexplicably, she missed it, though.

"How's your thesis going?"

"I'm getting worried."

"You've done the hard part.

"The writing part is the hard part," said Emily, "the introduction and conclusion. But

I've added stuff too. I'm waiting to hear about what my advisor thinks about that."

"Anyway, you've never failed anything."

Emily scrolled through the pictures, to the Robert Baruch one. Then to the next grave, that said Dimitri Baruch, and the next, Dorothee Baruch, then Angelica Baruch and

Isaac Baruch. Dimitri, short and nice, Dorothee, fat and affectionate, Angelica, chubby and weird, and Isaac, who had a body like a spoon. "All the first names match. Two can be a coincidence, but five is a pattern."

"I have no idea what that would even mean."

"We're connected somehow."

"Are you related, do you think?"

"I don't know." Emily sat back and listened to the hiss of rain on the roof and covered balcony and windows. What did she think?

A wind whistled into the window crack, and Emily shivered.

Jonah reached to her and patted her back. She leaned her head on his shoulder. She didn't even notice herself doing it. Just suddenly, she felt the soft material of an overworn

195 shirt, and saw the skin of his neck way too close, and smelled the dryer sheets and the spicy smell of his soft skin. He had a birth mark in the gentle curve between neck and shoulder, and she less kissed it than touched it with her lips, and felt his smooth warm skin.

He folded her into a hug.

If all this was true, then her family wasn't as wonderful as they said. Blima would have to stop bothering her about her friendship with Jonah. Not that they'd ever had any valid reasons to do it anyway.

Emily kissed Jonah softly again just as a breeze blew into the room, and all the soft hairs on his skin were teased into standing. She shivered too. It must be a sympathetic reaction, because she wasn't cold at all.

18.

Harpo crept through the trees, overtop of crunchy things, weeds and underbrush, and underneath gnarled up things, twigs and spiderwebs. A branch like a crooked fingers poked him, and he gasped. A drop of cold water fell on his shoulder, and he jumped. Even his footsteps scared him. He'd better find the lodgehouse soon. If he didn't, his heart would stop. It would just give out. He knew it.

And then he saw it, the lodgehouse lit up like it was made of precious stones. It glowed. And there was a silhouette dark against it.

Again, Jacob was peeking into the window, crouching where greenish blue forest light met the bright orange mist that surrounded all the windows.

"How much do you know about the family?" said Harpo.

Jacob didn't seem surprised to have been interrupted. He looked like a spirit again.

"Nobody knows more than the man who looks in windows."

196 "I need you to help me figure all this out. Why can't you just come inside? They'll like you, I promise. Why don't you just knock on the door?"

"They dress for dinner. Sam wears suits with things in the pockets. And Aielle wears gowns and pearls, even in the attic sometimes. She's told the littlest girl about their family in

Russia. They come from royalty, you know. They never associated with carpenters when they were there."

"Do they ever argue about the littlest girl?"

Jacob's eyes shone a milky white. "They love their girls. Both of them."

Sam was too good a man to wonder about his daughter. He wouldn't care anyway.

"What do they argue about?"

"Russia, I think." Jacob edged closer to the window. "They'll be alone soon. We can see then. Nights like this, it's hard to hear, but usually they say the same things. So I can fill in. I think Aielle usually says she needs to know. I don't know about what though. She never says that. And Sam never says why she should leave well enough alone."

A drip of cold water fell down Harpo's neck, and he shivered.

"They argue about the poste too. Sam says it's useless to send things to Russia. He says the mail is searched."

For a long moment, they watched inside the window together. The nighttime smelled like damp plants and ozone (ozone!) and woodsmoke. Harpo stood on his toes, and saw a fire in the room of windows. That was why. He saw little Blima sitting in front of it.

"The older daughter tends to the fire." Jacob had noticed Harpo's interest. "Isn't she a helper? She's a good girl, that one."

197 Blima was a good girl. And she was practical. And self-sufficient. She probably didn't even ask her parents for kindling. She probably made due with what she had around, like love letters to other families.

18.

Emily stood next to Jonah in the doorway, and she felt a pull of protective feeling that made her stumble closer. He was so good to the family, even though they were mean to him. And he'd sat with her, and he was so nice. She touched his arm. He smelled like a coconut, and he was radiating heat, and she stood closer and closer until they were touching again. She wanted so badly to give him something. "I failed a Math test once," she found herself saying.

"You did not," he said lightly.

She couldn't see his face. It was full of shadow.

"I was so scared. I had to get it signed by my parents, but I knew they'd be so angry."

Jonah moved, so he was facing her in the doorway. Now she couldn't see his face at all. She was cold. There was a distance between them. "I thought, 'that's the end.'" And her voice cracked. But she couldn't help it. She just kept on talking. "All my future plans. I'd never get into university or anything. So I forged the signature. I was so ashamed when I got it back I hid the test in a vase in the study. After that, I could never go in the room again. I still don't. The test is probably still there. Except now I might have to put my thesis with it."

"I'm sure that's not true."

"It might be terrible. I might have to dig a hole in the garden and bury it for seven years. It's not pure Math. Nobody was convinced, when I started. Now, I'm not convinced.

I'd been so sure."

198 "It'll be fine."

This wasn't going how she'd imagined. Probably because she'd imagined it again.

She'd pictured him putting his arm around her, and yet, here he was, standing as far away as he could get. He wasn't moving though. He hadn't left. That was something at least.

And suddenly, it occurred to Emily that in all this research, she hadn't found any reference to Jonah's family, any indication that they were biologically related at all. Had he noticed that? She wanted to ask him, but a breeze blew in through the window and spoiled everything.

She shivered.

Jonah turned away. "I'd better go," he said. "I have to get up early."

"Wait," said Emily. "Where's Jazzy."

He hesitated. "I'd better find her." And then he was gone.

19.

Outside, under drips and surrounded by creaks and forest groans like the trees themselves were shifting, Harpo felt like he'd stumbled out of the word. He could still see in though. It was funny watching the men in their shirtsleeves, and the women fanning themselves, when he was so cold. He was starting to shiver, to move outside the pool of light, when, finally, the guests starting standing one by one. Harpo settled down. The guests filed out.

Blima left last, a stumbling little sleepwalker. He couldn't see whether her eyes were even open. Minutes later, Aelle drifted in. She was wearing the nightgown, the one he loved, that same one he saw that first night. His heart ballooned.

199 "Okay." Jacob took Harpo's arm in his big warm hand, and they shuffled closer to the window, crunching over leaves and twigs. "This is it," he whispered, and they hid between two windows.

Aielle sat folded neatly on the couch, and Sam was standing at the fireplace, at the very same spot that Blima had been in just moments before. Harpo could just barely make out that they were talking. He pressed his head to the wall, and thought that he heard his name, and felt something, a funny warmth in his stomach.

"They're talking about you," Jacob whispered. "Aren't we lucky. English today.

Sometimes Sam doesn't insist on it."

"Can you hear?"

"Aielle, she said that you're going to Russia. She says that you're going to set everything right."

Now Harpo felt really cold, like the temperature of his bones just sharply dropped.

"Now she's talking about prophets. I don't understand. It usually makes more sense than this. Come back tomorrow. I'll show you then."

20.

Harpo wandered from doorway to doorway, but they were all still, and the silence seemed to radiate into all the rooms too. Nobody was awake. Not even his brothers. What kind of lodge was this?

He tiptoed into the room of windows. The standing lamp was still lit, but the room didn't look bright and yellow the way it had when he'd been outside, looking into it. It looked dark orange now, like he was inside a terracotta vase. The quiet made him feel closed in, so he hurried out, right to his room. With nothing else to distract him, Harpo walked

200 inside and closed the door. He kicked through the mess on the floor until he felt something hard, and heard a sound like a shot. He kicked again, and his suitcase nosed up through the shirts and pants like a submarine. He sat down hard, and found himself in a nest of pajamas, remarkably comfortable. He wouldn't even need a bed. He curled and closed his eyes and thought about clothes, the suits his father used to sew, and lappas, all the extra bits of material that were always left over. Harpo had made a nest of those, once. He used to hide in them. Or sometimes, he'd tied them around himself, and jumped out at his brothers as they walked inside the apartment. Frenchie yelled when he did that. He never meant it though.

The problem was his eyes always had the same expression because he was a happy man. It was those eyes, no, maybe the shapes of the wrinkles underneath, that always told Harpo that he was loved. Frenchie knew how to wrinkle himself up all tenderly. He was a man who knew.

Harpo uncurled and lay on back. He stretched his legs, and that felt nice, so he stretched his arms over his head. This was it. This was comfort.

So he was going to Russia.

Aielle was counting on him. He had no choice.

He'd have to tell Susan that he was going. It would be an excuse to call, at least.

What would she say? Hello was a good bet. She'd probably make a joke about Marxism.

He'd find a way to support her, even if the Marx Brothers never made another movie.

Harpo closed his eyes. He'd think about Russia the next day. Susan too. And Aielle, and Blima, and Sam. He could probably forget about the letters though. Those things were probably long gone. There was always a fire burning in the room of window, and Blima had probably just dropped them in it.

201 21.

Emily hesitated outside the room of doors. Blima never went in here. Jonah had even noticed that.

Emily hung on the doorframe, her skin still prickly, still hot, even though she could feel the breeze whistling in from the room of windows, that air that had skimmed all the soft smells from off the lake.

She tiptoed inside the haunted room, just far enough to turn on the lights. She stopped again. Then she edged farther inside. It was like she'd been caught with a lasso, like she had no choice.

She sat beside the centre table, and touched the rough wood. Sometimes she could almost see the vegetable cart this had been. It was like that young beauty, old crone optical illusion that everyone looked at, sometimes a table, sometimes the component parts of something else. Inside this something else was the secret compartment with which her family had smuggled out all their valuables out of Russia, in a journey Emily herself could never have accomplished, not that she could say definitively, whether that story was even true anymore. That compartment might have been dismantled when Sam had turned it into a table. Probably, he'd had no choice. He was certainly no master carpenter. But then Emily ran her hands across the underneath, and she found a hinge. She lay on the floor and slid underneath the table. Her heart was pounding. It was then that she saw the trap door.

Well, she'd verified at lease one part of the story.

She eased open the old door, on its creaky springs, and inside, she found a package, a big off-white enveloped tied up with lengths and lengths of twine.

202 23.

Emily's hand barely fit inside the secret package from the vegetable cart table, so she dumped the contents. A letter and a book. Grimm's fairytales. A funny thing to send all the way to Russia. She'd have thought Aielle would send Anne of Green Gables or Emily of

New Moon or something, something a bit more Canadian.

She slipped them back inside, then slipped the whole thing in her pants. Kind of disgusting, but she didn't want anyone to see before she hid it in her room.

22.

When Emily found Doran, he was sitting under the dripping verandah. The whole night was dripping, and it was so misty, she couldn't see the lake. "You're still awake," she said.

"I like our talks."

Emily sat down beside him. "I'm sorry I didn't come earlier."

"I remembered something else for you. I remember coming on our boat. There was a man with me. For a long time, I wasn't safe, and then, with this man, I felt like I was.

During the morning, the man slept. I stalked the engine room. It was three storeys high with yawns and grunts like an animal. One time, there was a man inside the shadows in the corner of the room. I felt his breath on my shoulder. But that might have been a dream."

"Was he Canadian?" Emily pictured her Papa Sam. "Did he have a white mustache that moved when he spoke?"

"He had short, dark hair. Wispy, a bit."

"We steered the boat together. Until there was a storm. The wind drove the raindrops so hard they stung my face. And I couldn't breathe either. They was coming at me so fast, those raindrops and this wind, there wasn't time to find oxygen. I pressed my face

203 against the man's slicker, and he picked me up and carried me inside. They had to turn the ship so it faced the waves. I wasn't allowed to do it."

"Do you still speak Russian?"

"Russian was always spoken in the house where I grew up, in Manhattan. It was the language of secrets. My parents used it when they didn't want me to understand. Of course I still speak."

"Can I show you something?" Emily handed him a letter. She'd fished out the topmost one from the package. She'd see how this went, and then bring him others if it was okay.

He slid the papers out of the envelope and turned them over, sheet by sheet.

"What does it say?"

"It says, 'I love you, Simon.'"

"What else does it say?" Emily craned her neck to see. It was in Grandma Aielle's writing, covered in her artistic swirls, and Emily wasn't surprised. She could be okay with it.

Maybe Grandma Aielle was a modem woman. And maybe Papa Sam knew. For all Emily knew, he might have been okay with it too.

"I think Simon was my father," said Doran.

She watched Doran out of the comer of her eye. Waiting for him to read was exasperating. He was giving nothing away.

Grandma Aielle loved Simon.

"It says, 'you told me that every heart has two ventricles so that we can all have two different kinds of love.' It says, 'I'm trying to love this country.' Who wrote this? This is

Aielle's writing. I recognize Aielle in this." Doran turned to the last sheet.

Emily took a deep breath. The outside smelled smokey, and like plants, and she

204 could hear just about a billion things buzzing around in the darkness.

"She talks about Sonja. She describes her in great detail."

"Blimatoo?"

Doran turned over the page. "No. I don't see Blima. She professes her love. That's all. Are there any more letters?"

"Auntie Blima's been walking around with one, Emily heard herself say. "If I can find it, I'll bring it tomorrow night."

Doran nodded slowly. "I'll wait for you here. When everyone else is sleeping."

"I'd better go to bed." But Emily didn't move.

And a drip fell onto the letter, with a sound like a footstep in the grass. Emily craned her neck The paper was a translucent silver where the raindrop had touched it, and streaky blue was bleeding radially outward.

23.

The door opened a crack, and Emily sat up on her elbows. A book fell off the bed. She must have been reading. She hadn't meant to fall asleep. She'd wanted to think. About something.

About Doran. Their talk together. 'My grandma Aielle, who I loved, was having an affair.'

She might have loved the other man more than my Papa Sam. My Bubie Sonja might have loved Doran more than my grandfather. She couldn't picture herself saying any of that. For once, she couldn't imagine the conversation at all.

The door creaked open, and three fingers appeared inside, then part of a face. Jonah.

"Come in," she said, half whisper, as she sat up in the bed.

"Jazzy had a bad day," said Jonah, tiptoeing into the room.

"Did she?"

205 He bent to kiss the little lamp he cradled. "Lie down," he whispered, and she did.

"You haven't slept since forever."

Emily arched her back to adjust her pillow. It was true. She hadn't slept. She'd been up looking for things in this lodge house that seemed to grow as you looked through it. It was the same as when she was little. She was just mistaken before, when she thought it looked threadbare and ancient.

Jonah sat on the corner of the bed, and Emily let herself roll into him. "You have a gravity well." She was having trouble keeping her eyes open, keeping track of what she was saying, keeping him straight in her field of vision.

"Close your eyes."

"No." She didn't want to wake up and find him gone. "I'm not tired." She could still feel the shape of his neck and shoulder, and the feeling of his skin against her lips. "How's

Jazzy feeling now?"

"Better." Jonah shifted so he was leaning close to Emily now. "I feel better too. I missed her all day. I always wanted to see her. Just put down what I was doing— "

"I missed her too."

"That's what I kept thinking. I want to see Jazzy."

"She gets lonely," and the words were heavy on Emily's lips, hard to form, hard to say. "We should spend more time with her tomorrow."

"Let's do that." Jonah reached across her and lifted the blanket. Emily liked the feeling of his fingers against her arm, and they lingered there. She thought for a moment that he might crawl into the bed beside her, and she was suddenly alert, well, close to alert. But then Jonah shifted once again and put the lamp beside her on the bed, under the covers, and he tucked them both in together, Emily and Jazzy, and then she remembered nothing.

206 The Fifth Day

1.

Emily stumbled into the dining room to find Jonah flipping through recipes.

"Is Passover really that bad?"

"It is if you're cooking."

Emily put her hand on Jonah's back. He felt so solid. She stroked his soft shirt, and under it, she felt his shoulder bones and muscle, and he smelled like dough and musk, and woodsmoke, somehow. If the Harpo and Groucho axes of personality were north-south, and east-west, respectively, then the Chico axis would be up and down, measuring impulse control.

Although it was all relative. Although how were they related? She'd established that

Papa Sam was related to Jonah and not to her, so he couldn't be their connecting vertex. If not him, then who? "How are we related?"

Jonah turned around in his chair. "Why?"

She sat heavily, in the chair beside his. "I just realized that I don't know."

"I don't think we are. Related. I think our families just pretend."

"That doesn't make sense."

"Families do that sometimes," her said. "Sometimes cousins is just a thing that people say."

Emily stood again. She'd need to think about this, look at her graphs, brush her teeth. Find a mirror at the very least. Her heart was pounding. She stumbled out of the room. If he'd known that, why had he let her believe he was her cousin?

207 2.

Harpo patted Aielle's head hard enough to mess up her hair, to take strand after strand out of that tight elastic. She laughed. So did Harpo, a bit. Because she looked like a scarecrow, and of course, she wouldn't know that until later. Sometimes it was the little things. He could be happy.

"How do you think love works?"

"Oh." Not this again. He rubbed her back. Loving wasn't complicated. It really wasn't. Love was like light. You flicked a switch and the room was lit. You loved someone and they were loved. But that did seem too simple. How did love get sent? How did light get sent, for that matter, now that she'd asked the question, and how come when you flicked a light switch, the whole room lit up all at once? Harpo rubbed his eyes. Frenchie would never worry about things like this. He never felt sorry for himself one minute of his life, and he'd had reason to more than anyone. Harpo would be like that. He'd just figure this thing out and then move on to his own family. "Can you tell me things about Simon?"

"You know," said Aielle, "sometimes I dream that my love is inside a balloon that's attached to me by a chord. And when I complete some task that someone gives me, then I get a pair of scissors and I cut it, and the girls catch it after that. And Sam. Simon too."

"Is Simon tall?" Harpo's voice cracked. He was a lousy detective. "Does he have dark hair?"

"It never works in the end," said Aielle. "No matter how successful I am in the dream, I wake up, and it's all just the same."

"What's Simon's last name?" Harpo whispered.

"I mean to say 'I love you and I say 'do up your shoes, you look like a homeless person'. I want to say, 'you look beautiful,' and instead I hear myself telling Blima that the

208 hobos will see her untied shoes, think she's one of them, and steal her away to live in trains and eat worms. I don't mean it. This isn't what I mean. But I say it all the same."

"So stop."

"I just need to know how to transmit the right message," said Aielle. "That's what the real problem is. Are you really going to Russia?"

"Yes," said Harpo. "I'm going. The plans are underway."

"Your brothers weren't so sure. They didn't think you'd really go."

"I've applied for the Visa." He stroked her back again, and this time he concentrated, hoping to transmit something. No, he hoped she'd feel something. "The process has already started."

3.

Harpo was installing himself in the dining room doorway, sitting against the wall, foot thrust out to hold the door open a crack, when Blima appeared from out of nowhere. She lifted

Harpo's arm, and curled in his lap, hugging his hand around her. They heard footsteps.

Neither peeked. Harpo looked down at Blima, and her eyes were closed, and so Harpo closed his eyes too. He was getting used to this house, it's creaks and messages, and the baby smell that still clung to Blima, powder and warmth. There was a crack and that meant that

Aielle had passed behind the Registration desk There was a soft hush, the drawer opening.

He didn't look He just hugged Blima closer.

But abruptly, she squirmed out of his lap. By the time he looked over, she was already gone, clear out of the room. And then the dining room door opened all the way.

There was a whoosh of cold air, a breeze that lifted Harpo's hair, and Harpo didn't move,

209 not even to take a breath. Aielle was standing in the doorway, towering over him. His head was blank. He saw falling snow. Every time he blinked, he saw mounds and mounds of it.

"Harpo." Aielle's voice was hard. "There's a wire for you." And she handed him a card.

It was an official looking thing, from the government, not the Canadians, the

Americans. They requested his aid in his upcoming tour. They wanted him to be a spy, probably. Aleck had warned him this might happen.

Aielle disappeared again, and the door whooshed shut.

And suddenly, Harpo knew how he'd get Simon's family out. He laboured to his feet, and left the room, bristling at the intensity of Aielle's stare, measuring his steps so he wouldn't show that he was afraid.

4.

Emily sat sideways on the easy chair, so that her head was leaned on one arm, and her feet were balanced over the other. She kicked off her shoes. Then she wriggled her toes and watched them, and enjoyed the look of her moving socks. After minutes of this, Jonah came into the room, and, without acknowledging her, sat in the easy chair beside hers. He lay down the same way. He had Jazzy, Emily saw. He'd propped her up in his lap.

Emily held her breath.

Since the chair was angled slightly, she could watch him without his seeing. He looked very small from the angle, almost scrawny, all curled up like a bug.

"What do you want to do in your life?" she said. "Do you have plans?"

"Pipe dream plans, or real plans?" he said. "I guess it's all the same. I want to open a cafe, a student hangout."

210 "That's great."

"Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck, though. Like my life is blocked like a trapped sink I feel like I need something to happen before I can actually do anything."

Emily was about to tell him that she knew what he meant when Aunt Blima shuffled into the room. Emily could feel Jonah stiffen. He squirmed to get out of the chair, and it took seconds and seconds. He was struggling with Jazzy, and he wasn't used to getting caught, and this was her fault, she'd disrupted his concentration.

"I didn't know all the work was done," said Aunt Blima as he scrambled to his feet, finally upright. "So the help could put his feet up."

But Jonah was already leaving. He hurried out of the room before Emily could figure out what to say. Even when he'd gone, she didn't know.

5.

Harpo found Blima in the room of windows. He stood in the doorway. He caught her eye and cocked his head, and out she came, running. He felt a surge of something, like affection, only more so. He needed a sidekick. Maybe he'd take the tramp's. Maybe Blima would be great in the pictures. He took Blima's hand and led her out the door.

"There's a waterfall I want to show you," he said as they skipped down the stairs. "I have some questions too. I need to know everything you remember from Russia."

"My bed was metal," she said. "We had a maid who snored like a train engine. And I had a toy house that was made of wood and had furniture, but it was too big, so I wasn't allowed to bring it."

"What about leaving Russia?"

211 "I had a brown coat. It smelled like moth balls. That's because the woman who gave it to me wasn't a good housekeeper, that's what my mother said."

Harpo nodded. Brown coat. Bad housekeepers. The agents would probably need something more in the way of coordinates.

"Sometimes the old man with the tooth taught me poems. Then I recited them door to door. It was one poem for a kopeck, or three for a denezka, it was a bargain. There wasn't much money, but neighbours payed me because I was cute. Before Sonja was born, everyone thought I was pretty."

"Do you remember what it looked like? Where you lived?"

"There was my favourite tree."

A place with trees. "Did they look like these ones?"

"Oh no." Blima looked at him soulfully. "They were much higher."

Trees that were high. The path swerved, and took them to the clearing, then out of it again, and he could hear the waterfall. The roar of it was starting to drown out his thoughts, and wasn't that some luck, because he didn't know what to think.

He needed details. Concrete information.

Blima must have been nine minus three, so very young, when she they moved away.

She might not remember anything helpful.

As they got closer to the waterfall, Blima held his hand tighter and tighter. But when they got there, she ran off like she was one of those racecar toys, and Harpo had to run after her.

She climbed up the tiny mountain, then turned to face him. "I also remember a lamp. It was really tall, and I wasn't allowed to walk behind it. And there was an office. It had a drawer with needles inside."

212 Harpo sat down on the rocks. He took his movie notes and Susan letter drafts out of his pocket, and put them on the mossy ground beside him, and found a spot that was blank

He couldn't ask Aielle about Simon. He couldn't get her hopes up.

He took a page and folded it into a boat. Blima knelt and watched him. Then they picked it up, together, each holding a side, and they set it in the water. Blima ran after it as it crashed down the baby falls. Harpo sat down and folded another one as Blima ran back up holding the sopping mess of paper.

It had been hours of repetitive folding and chasing when he finally took Blima's hand to walk home.

But when they got to the lodgehouse's back door, Aielle was waiting.

Her cheeks were red, and she was smiling thinly. The guests on the waterfront path laughed and waved, but they seemed to exist in another world. Harpo and Blima squeezed each other's hands. She was furious. They could tell.

Harpo opened his mouth to say something, but Aielle took Blima's other hand roughly. "It's not your fault, Harpo," she said. "Blima knows better than to go outside without asking for permission."

6.

"I thought about more things about the family." Aunt Blima sat beside Emily, and Emily was still thrumming with all the things she should have said. She should have defended

Jonah. She should have yelled. Aunt Blima shouldn't have said it in the first place. She should have known better.

Abruptly, Emily stood.

"You're going to work on your thesis?"

213 "I'm going to read about Harpo."

"I thought you were behind."

"It's research," Emily mumbled, gathering her things. "Harpo is connected to everyone famous at that age. I'm going to look at timelines. To see if he affected their art or research or something."

"I don't see what that has to do with Math," said Aunt Blima. "You are studying

Math?"

"I'm studying connections, and social interactions, and it makes sense that Harpo would have affected Science too. You don't discover new things by always thinking about the same old stuff. You need new ideas too. You need to put one thought next to a completely different thought, and see if you can connect them somehow. So Harpo would be important. He'd make people think in a whole new way."

"It's not natural."

"Well, it's a new thing that I'm doing in my thesis. The nature part of genealogy."

"What I'm saying, darling," aunt Blima said slowly, "is that it's not natural to love someone who's dead."

"Whatever." Emily turned to leave. Then she turned back. "Jonah isn't the help."

"Sure he is. He's on the payroll, lovie. Don't think that he would pay so much attention to you if we weren't giving him money."

7.

Emily crashed through the hallway, when someone grabbed her arm, and she wheeled around to see Jonah.

214 "Come with me." He pulled her into the kitchen. It smelled like baking, like rising dough and chocolate, and the lights were low, and he beckoned her to the stove. She followed dumbly.

"I know you like rogolah."

Rogalah, little pastries stuffed with chocolate and rolled with cream cheese, and since she was a kid, she'd loved them. They were perfect. Great-grandma Aielle used to make them by the tray-full.

"We can't eat these," said Emily. "It's Passover."

"The secret is that nobody here really pays any attention to that. They all have cookies hidden in their rooms."

"They do not."

"The help always knows."

"I'm sorry." She should have said something right away. He knew that. Of course he knew. She could yell all those other times, but then, when he'd needed her...

"They'll be grateful," said Jonah. "Maybe more should be out in the open here. You know? We should all just stop pretending things."

Emily touched one of the little lumps in the pan. Jonah was probably talking about the stupid pretensions to Russian royalty. He was probably talking about how she kind of listened to all of that even though she pretended not to.

"Do you actually observe?" said Jonah.

Emily bent and looked at her fingerprint on a pastry. Then she marked another one.

"Grandma Aielle and I used to decorate them. The chocolate ones only, because the raisin rogolah looked just the same, but they were poison."

215 "Look at them. They've barely risen at all. They were about this thick when I put them in the oven."

"That's not the point."

Jonah pointed to the fridges. "You know how you're supposed to have two of those, one for meat and one for milk? They just shove everything in both. They won't even let me keep them separate."

"I'd better go. I'm going to finish my thesis."

"Have you written much yet?"

"Today's the day."

8.

The dining room was full and cheerful, but Harpo was stuck to the wall like he was a stupid painting. He was watching Aielle, who had her hands around her daughter's shoulders. She shook her. Then she shook her again. Harpo drew in a breath. People would notice soon.

Why didn't Aielle stop? It was his fault, not Blima's. He was the adult.

"You never made me ask for permission before."

"I looked for you and I couldn't find you."

"You don't care if I take Sonja for walks." Blima's voice was squeaky. "You love her more."

"What choice do I have?" hissed Aielle. "I have to be nice to Sonja or else she'll hate me."

A feeling thrummed through Harpo, like his stomach was a giant guitar string. It was anger, maybe. No, not anger. Desperation.

216 Groucho was beside him, and Chico too, both leaning close to tight dress girls, and

Harpo couldn't get their attention, either one. It was like they were in a different universe.

And Harpo didn't know what to do. Blima would be so embarrassed. They were all dressed for dinner.

"You're a big girl now, Blima, so I'll be honest with you." Aielle was getting loud now. "You're always on my side. You have to be. I sacrificed a lot to get you here."

Blima was shaking.

"Sonja's different. It's her turn now. So you have to stop being selfish."

Harpo looked around the room, full of people, bustling, talking, pretending that they didn't see, but they all did. They were watching his little girl get yelled at. Why didn't any of them say anything? If just one of them looked up, they could stop this.

"I have to work harder for her love. That's just the way it goes."

Across the room, someone sneezed. Harpo heard it, but through a filter, like there was cotton in his ears, like his ears should pop.

"You're a very agreeable person, Blima. That will help you out later in life."

Harpo looked at the floor. Minnie used to say that he was an agreeable person, but he didn't feel like an agreeable person right now. He didn't agree with anybody at all. He felt like he was vibrating at a frequency that should make all of the glass in the place explode. He willed Blima to look at him. After a moment, she did. She fixed him with a hurt expression, and Harpo felt something inside him like his heart were turning into liquid. He sat down, collapsed right into the chair beside him, suddenly without bones or the power to stand up straight. He heard a door slam down the hall. Poor little thing. She felt like she was all alone in the world. He knew because he'd felt it too. He felt it now. His whole body rang with the memory of it, like he was a tuning fork, struck.

217 9.

Emily opened her door to find Uncle Moshe was standing right outside. He looked anxious.

"Can I help you?"

Moshe leaned into the bedroom a little. "It's not a catastrophe," he said quickly. "But

I was wondering if you could give me a hand."

"I've already done most of it," said Uncle Moshe.

As soon as she walked into the room of windows, Emily was met with the smell of coconuts. Then she saw Jonah lying under the table by the window. And she understood. He was drunk. He'd been drinking. Coconut rum. Orange liquor.

"I mean, no, not most of it," said Uncle Moshe. "There's still the stain. Vomit can be difficult. But this place is infused with it, so don't worry too much. People have brought up just about everywhere over the years. This used to be a wild place."

Emily watched Jonah carefully. His chest was rising and falling, so he was alive at least. Although, even if his chest wasn't rising. He was a person who knew how to hold his breath.

"I feel responsible," Uncle Moshe was saying. "We've been drinking together in my office. He's been so celebratory the past few weeks. I don't know. I kept refilling his glass. I shouldn't have, but I did."

Emily knelt beside Jonah. "Are you okay?" she whispered.

He looked at her, eyes like two harvest moons. "I've had better days," he said, and

Emily laughed. When Jonah's brother Darryl wasn't around, they used to play games under the table.

218 "We should get this cleaned up quickly," said Uncle Moshe. "Before your Auntie and your Bubie Sonja see."

"I'll get it right out," said Emily. There was already a cloth on the floor, and bottles and bottles of solvents. She took them and started to clean.

"I'm so sorry," said Jonah.

What would Harpo say in a situation like this? He'd probably find something positive and say that. "It smells really nice in here," she said, and it did.

"Oh God," said Jonah.

"It really does." She'd expected to be disgusted, but she wasn't. It did smell nice. The whole room smelled like a cocktail, or a rum cake.

"You should let me clean up," said Jonah. "Just an hour to sleep and then I could do it."

"I don't mind."

"You don't?" He sat up painfully. "Usually these things make you snap."

"I snap?"

"You don't like these kinds of surprises. Not that anybody does like this. Not that anybody should. Especially from the help."

"I'm not like them," said Emily, but maybe she was.

She listened to all their stories about being Russian royalty.

Given the opportunity to hear a story that was true, she'd turned and run.

She put all her weight on her shoulders and scrubbed as hard as she could. She felt like a cord had caught around her and pulled tight. She was a Groucho. Still.

Jonah reached for her hand, but Emily pulled it away. "The stain will set," she said.

"I have to clean this. It's just luckily you're not dead."

219 "All those times... " But Jonah didn't continue.

All those times. Emily blinked away the memory of dark nights, dark rooms, laughter filtered underneath the dining room door, and so many tears that she felt like she was drowning. "Next time, it might not be a joke," she said.

"What?" said Uncle Moshe. "Alcohol poisoning? I don't understand the two of you.

Emily scrambled to her feet, then reached for the bowl. "I'm going to get more water," she mumbled. And Moshe followed her to the kitchen.

"The first time Jonah died was when he was eleven years old and I was six." The first time might have been a Seder, but it probably wasn't. The adults were all in the dining room, having a fancy dinner. Beneath the door, there was a tiny strip of bright yellow light. Emily remembered lying down and pressing her face to it. She remembered cold air, grownup voices, the tinny sounds of trumpets in a big band orchestra (and how could so much unfurl out of a tiny cassette tape?), and that she was playing by herself because Darryl was over.

"I don't think he really died," said Uncle Moshe.

"I was only six."

"Did he tease you? Is that what happened."

"He used to do it a lot," she said, and her voice was brittle. Even she could hear it crackling.

"It was probably Darryl," he said. "I bet it was because of Darryl."

"Jonah used to pretend that I killed him." Darryl asked Jonah to bother her, and

Emily pretended not to hear, and Jonah did it, exactly what his brother asked. He piled books on her back. Emily shook them off, stood up, turned around and shoved him. He fell down dead.

220 "That's too bad."

Emily didn't respond. After a moment, she heard Uncle Moshe leave the room. She wrung out her cloth.

10.

Harpo sat against Blima's door. He shouldn't have taken her so far. They could have played indoors. Next time, he would. Next time, they'd make a sofa fort, or play under a table or something.

He should have known this would happen.

He'd had a dream last night. It came back in a rush. He was on Broadway, only he forgot what play, what he was doing, and all he knew was he was standing centre stage with a lamp. He called for Minnie. He explained, as she climbed onto the stage, that he didn't know what play he was in, that he didn't know why he was all alone, that he wanted his brothers.

She waited for him to finish. Then she walked to centre stage. Then she yelled, about professionalism, talking onstage, then about Aielle, Simon, Blima, the box office flop and everything. At some point during the tirade, he realized that the audience was watching. He'd forgotten about them. But now he could hear them, shuffling around in the dark. Someone opened a candy, and he could hear crunching.

He rested his ear against the door. He couldn't hear anything, not a step, not a bed- spring, nothing. Maybe Blima wasn't even in here. She might have escaped through the window or something.

So Harpo stood. He needed to walk. He needed to help. He needed to do something.

221 11.

Emily hurried through the dining room to find die scouring pads, and, just her luck, her grandmother and aunt were there, sitting at the dining room table with cards.

"Emily," said Aunt Blima, "come sit down."

"I don't have time. I still have to work for a bit."

"We wanted to tell you die one about the bitter almond. Anyhow. You're always working."

"This is a bit more pressing than it usually is." She didn't want to listen to a story, except maybe to her grandparents' love story. She edged toward the door. If she stood still any longer, she might ask for it, with her Bubie Sonja sitting here and everything. And she'd never been allowed to ask it with her around. It had been an unspoken rule. Maybe not unspoken. She couldn't remember. Abruptly, Emily remembered that it wasn't the real story.

"Why don't you just sit down for a minute," said Aunt Blima. "Your Bubie and I are getting older, you know."

"I know."

"We won't be around forever."

Emily hovered in the doorway, half in, half out. "We were just discussing your

Auntie Hannah. She sucked her diumb until she was nine years old. So did your Bubie.

"I sucked my thumb until I was nine years old, to die day," said Bubie Sonja. "I didn't want to settle for anydiing less than Hannah got."

"Anyhow," said Aunt Blima. "One day, Hannah called us and said diat her mother covered her diumb in bitter almond, would we come over and help her lick it off?"

"That's sick," said Emily.

222 "And then we got involved in the war, because her parents came to the lodge and looked after us for a weekend while our parents were busy."

"We couldn't live at their house," said Bubie Sonja.

"Oh no," said Blima. "We refused. They took care of us, and at night, the Schwartz's took care of us. We couldn't stay at Hannah's house. The toilet paper in their outhouse was pieces of catalogue and newspaper cut up into squares, and her mother gave it out one piece at a time. You had to ask her before you went to the bathroom. That took a lot of planning."

"So how did it end with the thumb sucking thing?"

"Well, we don't suck our thumbs anymore, do we?" said Aunt Blima.

"Of course," said Emily, and she hurried out the door.

"You're not after Harpo again, are you?" Blima called after her.

12.

Emily stomped into the room of windows, but Jonah wasn't on the easy chair. She ran to the table, and looked under it. She remembered seeing him dead on the ground, where she'd shoved him. All those times. She'd picked up his hand. It fell back to the ground. She thought that meant he was dead. Then Darryl rushed over and asked her to get a mirror. He held it under Jonah's nose, and explained that since it wasn't fogging up, he was dead. Her best friend was dead. She'd killed him. Then he'd told her not to bother the adults. They should be allowed one more party without knowing that their son was dead.

"He probably went to sleep it off," said Uncle Moshe, from the opposite doorway.

"It wasn't just that you know. It wasn't just playing dead. Jonah and Darryl used to paddle me to the dock and leave me there."

"That I remember."

223 "I was little." Emily knelt on the carpet and scrubbed vigorously. "They told me that we were all the way in Kingston. And that the lights from the lodge were really prison lights.

I believed them." And then she focused on cleaning. Soon, she heard Moshe leave the room.

She dipped the cloth in the water and swirled it around. It had been so long ago.

Jonah had been nice for decades, and she should just let it go. That's what Uncle Moshe was thinking. He was right too.

When the rug was clean, Emily tiptoed to Jonah's room, then to the kitchen, then to the room of windows again. Finally, she found him in the room of doors, curled like a little bug beside the big wooden table. She found a blanket and covered him.

Here's what she remembered most: She was curled up on a step outside the dining room, crying without sound, when Jonah appeared at the bottom of the stairs. She threw herself into his arms, and he nearly overbalanced, but grabbed onto the railing in time to save them both. Then Darryl arrived behind him. "Next time, it might not be a joke," he whispered.

13.

"Hey, Sam." Harpo walked heel to toe into Sam's office. It was a nice place. He liked it.

"Are you ready for that cigar, Harpo?"

"I had an idea," said Harpo. "What if we turned your vegetable car into a table? That would help people gather there."

14.

"So I hear it's been a long day for you, Emily," said Aunt Blima.

"It's not that bad," said Emily. "Where's Bubie Sonja?"

224 "She's upstairs, looking for Doran. So. Jonah drank too much. That's like our chef who used to drink too much. These men. Your Papa Israel nearly drowned him in the lake, he got so mad."

"I'm not that mad. I'll just watch A Night at the Opera, and then I'll feel better."

"All of this business with Harpo Marx."

"Well, he's somebody I can depend on."

"How can you depend on a man who died in nineteen sixty-three? He's dead, lovie.

It's strange that you're so attached to him."

"I don't think it's strange."

"It's unnatural when there are living men around."

"Oh God." Emily stood. "It's not like that. He's just comforting. He's dependable. I put his DVD on, and I laugh. Every time."

"It's easier for a man who's dead," said Aunt Blima. "He doesn't have to do that much."

"He never makes me sad. He never lets me down."

"What happens if the DVD breaks?"

"That's not his fault."

"Then you don't laugh."

"I buy a new one. And it hasn't happened yet, so whatever."

Blima stood. "Let me tell you about Harpo Marx letting you down. A pretty girl walks by, who's older than you and has long legs, then he's off. It wasn't just the movies.

That's what he was like. That was Harpo."

"He wasn't like that."

"Let me tell you what he was like— "

225 "What about Elijah? He wasn't perfect. He went to those old people who loved that cow like their kid. And what did he do? He prayed for the angel of death to take the it. And it died. And those two old folks were devastated."

"That's an easy one," said Blima. "Everyone knows that one. He did it because he saw the angel of death. He asked the angel to take the cow and to leave the old woman alone."

"And he couldn't have asked the angel of death to leave them all alone? All three of them? He couldn't have asked the angel of death just not to come? He had a pretty direct line to God. That's what everyone says. Those people were old and they were poor and he just made them more miserable."

"Sometimes, that's the way things have to work"

"Sometimes, people just want to look clever."

"You don't know Elijah."

"He had to bring Aielle here? Treasure Island is the middle of nowhere. He expected her to start a farm here?"

"He expected her to start a lodge. Yes, the first few years were tough, but they figured it out. And I'm the one who knew Harpo Marx, and don't you forget it."

"You said he was your special friend."

"I was protecting you."

"You said he was an angel."

"This is who Harpo Marx really was. One day, I had a fight with our mother. She was mad. It didn't have anything to do with me, but she wanted to yell at me anyway, so she did. She pulled me right into the great room in front of everybody. Then she told me I was a miserable daughter. And Harpo didn't defend me. He didn't help me. He didn't do

226 anything at all. He always did before, but not that time, when I needed him. There was a girl there, I guess. That's what must have happened. At first, I thought he just didn't notice. But then he gave me a long look in my eye and I knew that he saw. He just did nothing. He just stood there while I cried in front of all the guests."

"Harpo was a good man."

"He left me alone. That's your hero. A man who will leave a little girl alone."

"Whatever." Emily stalked away. "Everyone else says he was great."

15.

Emily slammed her door. And for minutes after, she could still hear the echo of it, the pop of air, the vibration in all the walls. She could feel it, like a change in pressure, almost. She hadn't slammed a door like that since she was fourteen years old, and why had she ever stopped?

She walked a lap of the room, to the dresser, then past it to the window, then around again. Harpo had been a good man, and a good father. And grandma Aielle would never embarrass anyone in front of guests, especially a kid.

On her third lap, Emily stopped at the dresser. On it, she'd put the framed postcard of the three most famous Marx brothers. They were pressed into the frame, smiling boyishly, clearly caught in the midst of some great movement. And beside them, taped to the glass, was a picture of Harpo Marx without his fright wig and costume. He just looked like a normal guy. She detached the Harpo picture, the au-naturel one, and took it with her on her next lap of the room.

Harpo looked like the kind of person who would never yell at old people. He'd never slam a door. What Blima said just wasn't true. He hadn't been mean. She'd never read that

227 anywhere before, and she'd read everything written by and about them, and someone would have said it. Someone would have mentioned that.

She walked another loop of the room, faster this time. Blima was probably just angry with her. Until this morning, she'd been calling Harpo her special friend.

He was an angel. That's all there was to it. She opened her door, taped die picture to the outside. Then she slammed it again. God, she was fourteen again.

And what would Harpo do now? He always said that if things got to be too much, you had to stand on your head. Emily crouched down in the corner of the room, and put her head on the floor, and then her hands, to make a triangle, and slowly lifted up her bum, then her feet. She came crashing down again. She tried again. Same net result. There was no intermediate step, it seemed. She was upside down, then flat on the floor. She stared at the ceiling. It needed a new coat of paint. She was still fidgety. She felt a breeze from the open window, and suddenly she knew what Harpo would do.

She ran to the window, opened it all die way, then hopped onto the ledge. As she swung herself outside, she hit her leg, and it made a horrible sound, thunderous, and she was sure everyone in the lodge would have heard it. She froze, half inside, half out.

Then Doran's face appeared out of the window of the adjacent room. He leaned out, farther and farther, not saying anything at all, just fixing her with dish plate eyes. Emily's leg started to throb. A bruise was forming for sure. She could feel it. Should she go back in?

What would she say to him if she did? After minutes of stillness and pain, she maneuvered the rest of the way out the window, and let herself drop. She fell to the ground, stunned.

That had hurt. It was farther up than she'd imagined.

She looked up again. She had just jumped out of a window.

She'd been caught at it too.

228 "Hey!"

Emily wheeled around. Ryan was walking toward her. Amy was standing sullenly beneath the oak tree.

"Hey, Emily!"

Emily turned and limped down to the woods as quickly as she could.

She'd just been caught twice. What would they say to her? What would she say to them? Could she just pretend that it hadn't happened?

Harpo used to get tossed out of his school when he was in grade two. His class was on the second floor, and two bullies used to grab him, hoist him up to the window, and let him fall. In his autobiography, he never talked about what that felt like. Emily had always read it as mostly funny, and admired the scrawny little boy who picked himself up and marched himself back to the classroom until the day he just didn't anymore. But now that she knew what it felt like, it wasn't funny.

How could Harpo have forgotten about Blima?

Emily stumbled through the trees.

She had seen the pictures of her great-aunt when she was very young. She was the cutest thing in the world, with those messy curls, that impish little smile. How could Harpo turn his back on her? How could he have walked away and left her crying.

Emily burst through the trees and slowed. She'd somehow expected Jonah to be at the dock, his legs in the water, waiting for her. But he wasn't here. Why would he be? He was still sleeping it off under a table, so Emily stumbled to the water all alone.

She sat down at the dock, and she felt the shape of Jonah beside her, the heat that radiated off him, the way his ribs flared out and then tapered. That's where she would like to put her arm, around him ribs, and then he could pull her close. She remembered her face

229 pressed into the crook of his neck and his shoulder, the sharp smell of his skin. She'd probably never feel that again. He'd find another girlfriend, and clean up and be perfect, and she'd be all alone.

She lay down on her back, and she could see the bright sunlight even through her shut eyes. It looked red. She should view things through blood vessels more often. She turned on her side. She was uncomfortable, but she deserved it. She imagined Harpo in his raincoat. And she saw him, in the room of windows, in that raincoat and wig, and he looked at her, and turned away.

16.

Harpo sat on a toolbox, panting. "I tried to be quiet about dragging the cart out," he said,

'except it didn't really work." He'd banged into three doorways and two guests, and although he'd shushed the lot of them, it hadn't really helped. "I didn't see Aielle though."

Sam turned a bucket upside down and sat. "What's the different between a vegetable cart and a table? Give up? The answer is nothing. They're the same thing, except that a table has legs." He pulled a chair close.

"You're going to take the legs off?"

"Why not? The tree won't mind. It's already dead." He knelt, and turned the chair over.

"Do you like remembering the trip over?"

"The trick is to tell it better than it really happened." Sam grabbed the chair's seat, and sawed. After a moment, the leg came right off.

"The trick is to remember only the good things. Pretend that the bad ones never happened."

230 Sam looked up, and caught Harpo's eye, and Harpo felt like his blood was suddenly electric. He knew. Sam knew everything.

"God gave us a selective memory, and an imagination, and with that comes the ability to remember things any way we want."

Harpo shivered. Is this what having a family would mean?

"And with that comes the capacity for infinite happiness," Sam said sadly. Then he turned the chair over, and sawed.

17.

Emily walked back up to the lodgehouse. She saw Doran and stopped. God, she couldn't deal with him right now. She couldn't have another morse code conversation.

"Emily!" he called, as she walked to the stairs.

And she wanted to walk right past him. She didn't want to look at him. He'd seen, and he'd want an explanation, or a talk, and he went about everything like Michelangelo staring up at the Sistine Chapel, waiting to start to paint.

"You found him,'' he said, and she stopped.

"Who?"

"The man on your door. He's the man who brought me home from Russia."

"That's Harpo Marx."

"Imagine that," said Doran.

Emily escaped into the house. They were all cra2y here. But it was true that Harpo looked like anybody. Without the crazy clothes and fright wig, he could be just any normal person.

231 18.

Emily walked into the dining room, and found her Bubie and Aunt Blima sitting at the table still, with cookbooks filling all the usable space. Of course. Jonah hadn't prepared dinner.

Emily sat heavily.

"Where's Jonah?" said Bubie Sonja. "Jonah's indisposed?"

"That's okay," said Emily. "I can make dinner. It's really not a problem."

Blima carried in the papers and cookbooks, and spread them out on the dining room table, and Emily was scared.

"Jonah seems indisposed a lot," said Sonja.

"He's fine," said Emily. If he was indisposed a lot, it was because of these old ladies who made him feel like less than a person. And they weren't Russian royalty. "Just please be nice to him. Okay?"

Blima opened a big purple cookbook "Feel this," she said, and she thrust it at Emily.

"Your grandma Aielle gave it to us. Some day, we'll give it to you."

"And Jonah. Jonah uses it more."

"Don't you worry," said Bubie Sonja. "Jonah will go to college some day. He'll find lots of recipes of his own."

"He's really smart, you know."

"Smell the cookbook," said Aunt Blima. "It even smells like her. Feel it."

Emily leaned closer. It smelled like cinnamon, and it still felt worn, like her great- grandmother's fingers had just been softening the pages, flipping through, wearing them all out.

Aunt Blima opened it at random. "Kuegle," she read.

"Good choice," said Bubie Sonja, "except it's Passover."

232 "I don't care."

"No, I don't either. Emily?"

She sighed. "Is that what you want me to make?" Jonah wouldn't be able to make dinner. There was no point in hiding it either. Clearly, they knew.

Blima put on her glasses. "Two cups of broad egg noodles. Four tablespoons of melted butter."

"I'd put more," said Bubie Sonja.

"You don't need it. One pound of cottage cheese. Sour cream and white cheese, grated. Four beaten eggs, a half cup of vanilla, one cup of crushed cornflakes, one teaspoon of cinnamon, and sugar."

"The one our mother made was Caramel Jerusalem, oh do you remember the melted sugar that we licked out of the bowl." Sonja clapped her hands together.

Blima flipped again. "Vegetable kugel. Zucchini. Carrots. Onions and a whole clove of garlic, but here our mother says two. Oh, this one I remember. Look at our mother's notation." She stroked the page. "Do you remember she marked everything. With that pencil? And here's die Tsimme Kugel. It's marked. She wrote right on the page. You have to cut the sugar in half or else it's just no good."

"Blima."

Blima turned. So did Emily.

"Blima, we've had our noodle course. Move on."

"Of course." Blima put aside the purple book.

Sonja was flipping through another book, a fat one laden with clippings and bloated pages. "I found Isreali Hummus."

"The secret was you add water," said Aunt Blima. "That makes it tender."

233 "Well, now you've ruined the ending." Sonja picked up another book. "Do you remember the Pita chip crackers? The ones with all the cheese?"

Blima picked up an old green book faded to the colour of a bruise. "Too much effort."

Sonja licked her finger and flipped the page. "Shavuos blintzes. Do you remember."

"Jonah makes blintzes," said Emily. He brought them out on a silver fish platter, warm noodles folded into cylinders as big as her hand, cheese, vanilla, and preserves on top.

"They're divine," said Aunt Blima. "Maybe better than our mother's. But he only makes them when Emily visits. Poor lost soul."

Emily warmed, all over, right to her tingling toes. "I like him too, you know," she muttered.

Sonja put a hand on her arm. It was soft and cool. "Maybe we should move on to entrees."

"I think you're right." Blima handed Emily a blue book, and it was worn, and the side was sticky. "Look for cabbage rolls. No. Short ribs."

"I don't think we really come from royalty." Emily flipped through the book. "I don't think there's anything different between me and Jonah."

"You're right," Aunt Blima said after a moment. "We should read the recipe for hamburgers."

"Of course you're different than Jonah," said Bubie Sonja. "Look at your education.

He's not even a sous-chef."

"He's smart," said Emily, "and that's what matters." And now they weren't cousins.

And now she'd have to stop herself from imagining— her, piling into his cafe with books and papers, and him, popping little pastries into her mouth, a house, a garden, mostly mud,

234 drinks, outside, a kiss in the rain, in a thunderstorm, kissing in the dirt— because nothing she imagined ever happened. Always, it was the opposite that came true.

Aunt Blima gently took the cookbook from Emily. "The secret of our mother's hamburgers is the oatmeal. You kneed the ground beef, and you add oatmeal, and grated cheese. The cheese goes right inside."

"Is that what you want me to make for dinner?"

"We'd prefer this, dear," said Bubie Sonja. "We're just going to read."

"Doren and Uncle Moshe."

"We fed them," said Aunt Blima. "Now. The oatmeal."

"You put in oatmeal," said Emily, "got it."

"Oatmeal is all our mother ate for breakfast," said Sonja, smiling at Blima. "That was her favourite breakfast since we knew her."

"And then," said Blima, "this one morning, when we were on the ship on the way over here, her first morning alive for all I knew, because she'd been locked in the cabin the whole time until then, until she got up, and she sat with us at the table. Everyone was surprised. One of the sailers, he came to the table at looked down at us and said 'comment

5a vas?', and our mother, she took him for a waiter, and she said 'oatmeal'."

"So do you want me to make those for dinner?" said Emily. "You haven't eaten yet.

Should I make hamburgers."

"Oh, I couldn't," said Sonja. "I just couldn't eat a thing. Not another thing. We've been through a brisket and flanken. And that was before you even got here."

Blima picked up the purple book again, and she opened it to the back "Dessert."

"Read this one now," said Sonja.

"Chocolate rogulah," said Emily.

235 "Another thing Jonah makes just for you," said Blima.

Emily stood. "I can scramble some eggs or something. That's kind of light."

"Lovie." Blima hugged Emily tight, then kissed her soft cheek. "We're going to bed.

This was such a wonderful night. We should do it again."

19.

Harpo stumbled out of the workshop, and saw Blima on the gravel. She was playing some game, crouching, hopping, then crouching again. She looked like a little rodent or something. This wasn't complicated. He felt a feeling in his chest like a blossoming of a flower. He loved her. That was it.

"Hey, bunny rabbit."

Blima stood. "I wasn't being a bunny rabbit. I was being a frog." Then she turned and walked away, off the gravel, right to the yellowing grass. "You don't know anything."

"I know that I love you," Harpo said, hurrying after.

Blima stopped. But she didn't turn around. She had a choice. She could turn around and let Harpo hug her, or she could run further in the woods. She could feel like he loved her, or she could pretend he didn't and she was all alone in the world. He'd had that choice before. He'd never wanted Minnie to feel bad.

Blima turned around. Harpo sat down so that they could see eye to eye. But now he was too low, so Blima knelt too. "I love you too, Harpo." What a pair. What a picture this must make. A child comforting a grownup in the woods. God, he wanted kids. He wanted this one, but he knew that Sam would never part with her. Aielle either, no matter what

Blima thought.

236 19.

When Jonah slumped into the dining room, Emily looked around, for a space for him to sit.

She'd covered everydiing in recipes, the tabletop, the chairs, the floor, in sections, her lap.

She'd made a quadrant. To help her put the clippings back in the right books.

Jonah took a pile of recipe cards from a chair and sat. Emily held her breath.

Already, she wasn't sure if she really remembered her system.

But Jonah put the cards back on his lap. "Were they mad? Was Blima mad?"

"They had some sort of thing going on."

"I never made dinner."

"They read recipe after recipe, then they went to bed. They didn't want anything else.

I kept offering."

Jonah picked up a card from the table. "I use these, you know."

"I was going to type them all out. So we can have a backup. It's research anyway. I'm graphing them. Grandma Aielle and all her friends used to circulate their recipes and always sign the changes, so I've been able to quantify how influential they are in each others' lives."

"With recipes."

"For instance, every time Hannah looks at a recipe, she adds more garlic. Everyone else's life has been thirty percent more garlicky."

"If they follow the recipe."

"Grandma Aielle used to always cross out butter and write in lard. I assume that was a joke."

"Maybe." Jonah flipped through more cards. " Aielle's the one who taught me how to cook She was more interested in me than even my parents were. She loved you too. You

237 guys used to make sofa forts. Sometimes you'd sit under the dining room table, and nobody knew where you were. Except me. I always knew."

"How long have you known we're not really cousins?" Emily bent to replace her pile of recipe cards, wondering, as she straightened, whether this could be one of the real stories she didn't really want to know.

"What did you talk about when you were under the table?"

"Nothing." Emily closed the cover of one of the cookbooks with a whoosh. "I don't know." And dozens of recipes were airborn. They looked like flights of birds. "Mostly

Harpo Marx." That's all she really remembered.

20.

Emily slammed another cookbook shut, and a recipe fluttered to the floor. She reached for it, and the gust of wind from her outstretched hand pushed it, and it flew up in the updraft, and arced under the table. It was from the noodle pile too. Those were her favourites.

So she bent to pick it up, and hit her head on the table, and she didn't even see the little recipe cut-out. So she crawled under. She picked up the recipe, and that's when she looked up. There were pictures under there. A million crudely drawn little sketches in hundreds of colours. And curls of peeling yellow tape. Emily reached to stroke them, and she got the strangest feeling she'd ever had, like she was too big for her body, two sizes at once, and it was dizzying, and she remembered things. She remembered putting her head in

Grandma Aielle's leg, and she was hot like a hot water bottle, just giving off heat. Grandma

Aielle said it was because she'd been out in the sun. Then Grandma Aielle leaned back on her special pillow, and read her a story, and the sunlight swung by to hit them right in the eyes, and Grandma Aielle wiped Emily's sweaty face with her skirt. Emily remembered, the

238 feeling of it, the complicity, the collusion— they whispered so that Emilys mom wouldn't yell from the next room. Later, Grandma Aielle would write letters, and Emily would colour.

21.

When Harpo and Blima found their way back to the lodge, they saw Jacob peering into the window. Blima hid behind Harpo. But then he took her hand, and steered all three of them to the steps.

Blima put her little head on his lap. It was easier for him. He'd had aunts and uncles.

They'd always told him what Minnie had been like when she was little. They reminded him that she loved her kids, then made him laugh. He told Blima that.

"But we came all alone," said Blima. "Nobody in this whole country knew us."

"Ah." Jacob patted his knee. "You know what your mother was like when she was just little?"

"You weren't in Russia."

"I know stories," said Jacob. "I'll tell lots of them. You tell me which ones fit. One time, when your mother was just very little, she came with me to work. For a while, I left her outside, so I left her with the carpenters and the apprentice carpenters. Then when she came home, she watched her mother making the dinner. And she said to her, "hurry up you lazy bastard."

"That does sound like her," said Harpo. "Doesn't that sound like her?"

"Let me tell you. She was just the same as she is now. Just as smart. Just as stubborn.

I would take her for walks in the carriage, and she would stand up and show off that she knew how to spell."

239 Harpo sat back, and he watched Blima, and Sam said that with imagination and retelling History comes infinite happiness, but what about the shadow of the truth?

"I used to take your mother out for walks," said Jacob. "Every time we passed someone in the pram, she would say, "hello. P.I.G. Hello. C.A..T."

240 The Sixth Day

1.

The sun was just thinking about rising when Harpo tiptoed into the room of doors and sat at the piano. He settled in. This morning, he'd trick Aielle. She'd walk out to the lake, and get all ready to ditch him, but he'd beat her to it. He'd ditch her first. He just wouldn't come.

He opened the piano's dust cover. There would be no strange and eerie conversations this morning, no feeling guilty because of another family's secrets.

He ran his fingers along the keys. This was how Chico used to start, when Chico was taking lessons, and Harpo tucked himself between the wall and the open kitchen door to watch: Chico played a single chord, and it vibrated exactly where Harpo's heart was. Maybe it was Chico's face when he played it. Even Mr. Levi with the wrist smacking ruler and drooling lisp clutched his heart like the hammiest of romantics when he heard. And Chico didn't even look at the keys, so Harpo didn't either. He looked out the window, at the pastel clouds and lit up water, and pressed down. The piano cried out discordantly. It was a sound felt in the stomach, not the heart.

Then he heard a creak outside, and Aielle tiptoed into the room. She hadn't gone to the lake either. She'd tricked him. And she'd tricked him first.

Harpo played a D minor chord, the sound guaranteed to break any heart, and coincidentally the first chord in the only song Harpo really knew, Love Me And the World Is

Mine, sad version.

"I used to play for the pictures, you know," he whispered.

"I thought your brother played the piano."

"I played this song over and over, in different keys. Different tempos too.

Depending on what was happening on-screen."

241 Aielle sat down beside him. He played the rest of the song. Minor key. The world could have been mine. If you'd just loved me. She sighed. "I'll never love them properly," she said after a minute. "Ever since I came here, I lost that ability. I was only able to love in my country. Love depends on geography, I should have guessed that."

Harpo played the song again. He could even see the scene, a beautiful woman looking out a dirty window, waiting for a letter would never come.

"There's nothing to be done," Aielle whispered. "If I was smart, I'd get the canoe and paddle back to Russia."

Harpo took his foot off the dampening pedal, switched from minor key to major.

Now in the movie, Harpo would be appearing with his mailbag. This scene would be hopeful. He stepped up the rhythm, quick and plucky. Love me and the world is mine.

"Or is a bad mother better than no mother at all?"

He played faster.

This would be where the man knocked at the girl's door. He'd be holding flowers in shaking hands, a happy ending, a high note and a major key.

"How hard can being a better mother really be? I'm willing to work on other things, so why not that? Maybe I can find some courses at the university. They have domestic engineering, there. I checked."

Harpo played the ending of the song with a joyful flourish.

"Maybe I just need help. Maybe all along, that's all I needed."

Harpo moved a wisp of hair out of Aielle's eye. "Maybe you should write a love letter to Blima."

"I can do that." She put her head on Harpo's shoulder. "I do love my daughter, you know."

242 Harpo played again, sprightly. Love Me and the World is Mine. "There's a wailing wall," he said, "but maybe there should be a laughing wall too. And a hugging wall. Maybe you should write down the things you want to say, and find a place to hide it. Blima loves finding things, you know."

"I can make a laughing wall," she whispered. "I can do that. Well, maybe a loving table, just to start."

After a moment, Aielle sat up again, and creaked out of the room. Harpo played again. The major key trick had worked on him too. He was riled up. He was crazy about

Susan. Why not take a chance? Why not tell her? What's the worst that could happen? Chico could get a beautiful new girl to fool around with. But then, at least, he'd be helping out

Chico.

2.

Emily was tiptoeing down hallways, like she was attached to a string and someone at the other end was pulling. She touched the doorknobs as she passed them, and tried to imagine this place when it was popular. Because it had been popular. It used to get stuffed to capacity and beyond that, guests sharing rooms with other guests, ones they didn't even know sometimes, just for the privilege to be here for a day or two. Connections, in that time before Facebook, that meant so much for a weekend, then vanished after that. No grasping on to digital signatures. God, what was she doing with her life?

It was just the morning, she reminded herself. Her research often felt stupid and useless and derivative before noon.

And now she was investigating nurture. And nurture had never been properly quantified or considered.

243 In any case, the lodge, at least, could be important again. She could feel alright about that, at least. Ryan was right. She just had to appeal to History. For her thesis too. And to figure out the family, definitely. It was the same methodology. She just had to follow connections.

She walked up the stairs and down the hall where she used to trail a blanket like a cape. She could figure this out. So far she had two family graphs connected by Harpo, like he was the angel on top of a Christmas tree. And she had a little orphan vertex. Doran

Baruch. He'd known the Kogans in Russia, then gone to the States, then come here, rolled around the world like a marble in a box maze. There had to be a reason for all that movement. People didn't travel around much back then. They didn't even have planes. If he'd made his way here, then Aielle must have sent for him.

Doran was important. He probably had the highest connectivity of everybody. He was connected to Aielle, Blima, Sonja, and what about Papa Jacob, and everyone in the lodge right now? And what about his family? She hadn't really asked herself how Doran's family might fit in to the rest of the graphs, and she wasn't asking herself now, because somehow it was in the realm of things that she knew. His family should be charted right alongside her own. There should be a dotted line connecting Aielle to his father. Aielle had had an affair with Simon. Those letters Emily had found were love letters. Obviously. She'd said, 'I love you,' right out, in the way that she'd never been able to say it to anyone. Maybe Doran was really Aielle's son, but no, that couldn't make sense, the mother was too easily verifiable. It was the father who was forever in question. And the father was still in question. If Aielle had sent for the son, why hadn't she sent for the father?

Emily felt herself steered again, down another empty hallway, she didn't care where.

And for once she really didn't care. She was content to surrender herself to the swirling

244 water feeling, to life banging her around a day, and she didn't time herself before she had to go back to work or do anything. She just rounded the next corner. And as she did, she saw

Aunt Blima shuffling toward her.

"It's fancy meeting you here," said her aunt.

"Why are you awake?"

"I'm on my third lap," she whispered, "a morning constitutional indoors. We sometimes do this. We go for long walks in malls as well, that's another thing old people do.

The logic when you're in your seventies doesn't work the same way as logic in your twenties."

The light in the hallway was a lime colour, and Emily peeked outside, at the empty morning. "Do you remember Doran's family from Russia?"

"I was very young."

"He remembers you." He thought he might. He remembered someone, and it may have been Blima. "And you were the same age as him."

Aunt Blima nodded in silence, then pulled a chain from around her neck, and used the key attached there to open the door outside of which they'd stopped. "This is the room that Harpo stayed in. That's why it's fancy to meet here."

"How did Doran get out of Russia, Auntie Blima?"

Aunt Blima tiptoed inside. "Doran's room is 111. We don't book that room, in case

Doran decides to visit, and we don't clean out his things. That's a tradition started by my mother. In case I die, now you know how we do things in this family."

"He came the first time in 1933?"

245 Blima shuffled to the chest of drawers beside the bed, and opened it, and heavy things shifted around noisily inside. Pungent air came out in a rush. It smelled like a pine wood forest.

"The story is that Doran was touched by a miracle. He should have died. Many times, he should have died, but he found his way to us, where he belonged." Aunt Blima pulled out a wooden duck attached to the string, and handed it to Emily. "Harpo's room was

211. When he went away, he always left me secrets to find."

Blima handed Emily a rattly box and heavy wooden car. She remembered these things. Grandma Aielle used to bring her in here sometimes, let her play with the toys in here, as long as she promised not to take them out of the room. There was also a stuffed toy hidden somewhere. If you held it one way, it was a mouse in a dress. If you flipped the dress over the mouse's head, it turned into a cat, two toys in one, but it had no feet. It used to annoy her that no matter how she played, the toy walked on its whiskers.

"Anytime a guest left, I would always go in with the help," Blima was saying. "They'd change the sheets, and I would look for treasures. And if the guests who left things didn't wire for them back within two weeks, they were mine. Harpo knew the rule. He always left me something. Once, he left me a tie that he'd cut in half. He liked to play with scissors, so he'd cut it in two and worn just the one half of it to dinner. My mother found the halves in my things and sewed them back together for me. I never told her. Your Uncle Moshe wore it when we got married."

Emily hugged the wooden things. She wouldn't be deterred. Anyway, how could she trust that any of this was true, when the other stories were turning out so dark. "How is .

Doran connected to the family? You must have known him in Russia. Otherwise, how did he make his way here?"

246 "Our mother sent for him."

"I figured that out. How did she know who he was though? She must have known him before."

"She took care of him. We all tried to. He stopped coming, and I always thought it was my fault. I still think it might be. I used to worry that I only pretended that I loved him, that I didn't really love him at all. That's why he didn't come back People know these things.

Of course they know. And, of course, I did something terrible."

"To Doran?"

"And your Bubie," she whispered. "I saw them on the dock I was toodling around on the lake in Papa Sam's dock the one with the motor. I told my mother. I've never told anyone."

"But that's fine, right?" said Emily. "Bubie Sonja was just a teenager. She deserved to be busted."

Aunt Blima pushed past Emily. "I'm going to put on some coffee. Please lock up when you're finished exploring."

Emily arranged the toys in the drawer. Aunt Blima hesitated in the doorway. "Those are only to be played with here— "

"I know— " And she didn't play with toys anymore.

"Except this." And she handed Emily a pretty little piece of quartz, with a ribbon of pink winding inside it. "This is for you. It's lucky."

247 3.

Emily creaked into the dining room. She wedged the door open with a salad bowl so that she'd hear the gurgle of the coffee maker and be nearer to the smell. She sat down at the dining room table and dumped out the package.

She'd sort out the family.

She set the letter aside, and picked up the book. She flipped through it, and like most old things, it was weighted funny. And it felt strange in her hand. The front cover tended to fall forward. Emily flipped it open. Tucked inside were three passports. She opened them, and saw three faces she didn't recognize. But then she noticed the names. Doran Kogan. All three of them were Kogans. She felt cold.

She stuffed passports back inside the book's opening pages.

Grimm's fairytales.

Doran's father had given Grandma Aielle his family's passports.

Aielle got Doran out of Russia, but his father had gotten Aielle's family out first.

They'd assumed false identities, not, not false, someone else's, Doran's, and his parents'. Oh

God. That's why Doran had needed rescuing in the first place. And what had happened to his family? What happened to the two other faces from the passports? Why didn't they all come from Russia?

Emily tucked the letters in the book, then the book back inside the package. She didn't want to know what they said anymore. She checked the envelope. There was no postage on it, no stamps, no evidence that it had ever been sent at all, any of it, not even the passports. They'd taken the passports and they hadn't made any attempt to send them back.

Certainly those two other faces would have wanted them back. They would have wanted their names back.

248 She flipped it over.

She couldn't show any of this to Doran.

Doran never even got his name back

4.

Harpo stood in front of the window and stared. He put his weight on one foot. He put his hand on his hip. He didn't look like Chico. He looked like a little kid playing at being tough.

Secret government men wore dark suits, and didn't negotiate with scrawny guys like Harpo

Marx. But the agents wanted him to do something for them. He'd arrange a trade or the deal was off. He relaxed his face and stared dead-eyed into the window. Then he sat down on an easy chair and thought of some tough things he could say, to go with the pose.

5.

When Emily woke up again, the sun was still not up. It was still struggling over the lake, smudging colour all over the shimmering water. In front of her was the Seder plate, and on top of it, an envelope. The Russian letter. She picked it up.

Emily slid the thin sheets of paper out of the envelope. The note wasn't addressed.

There were none of the formal greetings that she'd grown used to in the other old correspondence.

Doran had asked for more letters, and she'd promised that she'd bring them. But she couldn't show him anything now. What would he think? He'd know what all this meant, of course. It meant that grandma Aielle and Papa Sam had taken his name, stranded his family in Russia. And then, for some reason, only Doran had made it out.

249 She smoothed the letter out on the table, and ran her fingertips over the indents. The cursive Cyrillic was tightly controlled and pressed in firmly. It looked official, this writing, like a note from a high school principle.

She flipped to the next page and felt line after line, pretending that she could read it herself, that she didn't even need Doran to unlock it for her. Her fingers stopped in the middle of the page. She'd found probably the only other Cyrillic words she knew. "Exapno

Mapcase." Harpo Marx.

She flipped to the first page. 1933. Oh God. It wasn't addressed, but it was dated.

Harpo went to Russia in that year. He was the first Western artist to perform after the advent of communism in that country, he'd written about it in his autobiography, she'd read it, that he'd gone, that he'd played secret agent while he was there. The American government asked him to smuggle out a letter taped to his shin.

But she shouldn't get her hopes up.

Maybe the writer of the letter had simply seen his performance. Apparently, Harpo had gotten standing ovations every single night he was there. In all the Russian papers, they'd said that his performance was something to write home about.

6.

Harpo opened his eyes, and pushed up from his chair, and saw Chico beside him. He was expecting to see something else, or someone else, or Blima maybe. He must have been dreaming.

"I got you some coffee," said Chico. "To make up for the night on the dock"

250 "Oh." Harpo craned his neck and saw that there were two mugs of coffee on the table in front of him, one brimming, the other mostly empty, both rimmed with a slick of coffee oil. "Thank you." It was good he was here. Harpo could practice his impression.

"We did go back for you, you know." Chico was slouched on the chair like a real tough guy, like an 85th streeter at least. "You were already gone."

Harpo slouched like Chico. It worked. He felt tougher. Then he stood. When he met those agent guys, he'd be standing like this, like Chico, Chico the teenager from the tenements, hustling, playing cards, placing bets, you never knew what he'd just been doing, but you knew that it was dangerous.

"Are you okay?"

The Chico walk started with stance. Harpo adjusted himself. Head out, arms swinging. Then he added movement, steps bouncy but not measured. He loped around the room.

"Did you hurt your leg?"

Harpo stopped, put his hands on his hips, and stared without blinking. His eyes watered a bit. That wasn't good.

"That mug is yours," said Chico, pointing. "I carried both mugs of coffee together. It was harder than I thought. They're hard to carry. I had to put my thumbs in them, because otherwise they would have spilled."

"I have an idea for a movie." He took another step, but it was hesitant, so he stopped and took stock of his limbs. They weren't particularly confident right now. One knee was locked, the other wobbly. That wasn't right. "We take over a post office." He tried again, and got his arms swinging, then knocked over a lamp. He caught it again before it fell,

251 and righted it. He remembered this from when he was a kid. This walk was hard to start again once you'd stopped it.

"Do you think they'll let us make movies anymore?"

"We take over a post office. Groucho's the supervisor. He sorts the mail, and we take it to the houses. At first, I rip up the letters as they come. But then we start to cut them up, and paste them back together. We start romances that way. Take the girls who love the wrong men. We can set them up with the shy guys who love them from a distance."

Chico scratched his face. He yawned. "Wouldn't work," he said finally.

"Why not?"

"Letters wouldn't keep a movie moving," he said. "You don't mind that I put my thumb in your coffee?"

"How about solving mysteries? That could have lots of action."

Chico was staring at his coffee cup. "Do you mind if I put the rest of my fingers in it?"

"The letters would count for something now. I could still have that stupid look on my face as I cut and paste. You and Grouch would be mad at first, but you'd get into it too, as soon as you saw how well it was working. We'd manipulate the whole world. We'd mess with everyone. We'd be able to. We'd have their mail."

"I'd just feel better if they all went in. It would feel more complete. You know? Like scratching only one cheek. You need to scratch the other."

"Of course, I'd be sending for things as well. Pets. A dog. A lizard. A dark suit.

Disguises. They'd all arrive slowly, a running gag. Audiences love running gags. They'd all be used in die climax. It would be chaos."

"Harpo?" Chico leaned forward. "Can I put my fingers in your coffee?"

252 Harpo slumped back onto the plush back of the easy chair. "Of course," he said,

"please do," but when Chico leaned toward the mug, he scrambled forward and blocked him. Then Harpo maneuvered himself back in his seat. Chico tried again, and Harpo shoved him with his shoulder, and they struggled, but neither fell out of their chairs. They sat back, both at once. Harpo shifted so he was lying across his chair again, facing his brother this time, his legs hanging close to Chico's shoulder, just in case. But Chico was still.

"The whole plot would work because of the letters," said Harpo.

"That's too much reading for a movie. The audience would have to read the originals, then the new letters. Wouldn't work. My gut says no."

"Well, my gut says yes."

"Harpo?" Chico moved fast, but Harpo beat him to it, arching his back and knocking him quick, and Chico slid out of his chair. He landed with a bump, but shot up to his knees and dipped his fingers into the coffee mug.

Harpo let himself slide off his chair and onto the floor. He could go to Russia by himself. He could bully government men, even if they had crew cuts and wore dark suits that fit them. He could even rescue a family from Russia. He just needed to know he was coming home to a family. And a job too. A job would be nice.

"You're not really going to Russia?" said Chico. "Are you?"

"I'm going." And Harpo loped off into the hallway.

7.

Harpo heard quick little footsteps down the hall, like rain on a patio, and suddenly the little footsteps turned into little people. They rounded the coiner right into him, Blima with a tumbledown carpet bag and Sonja with a pillowcase. "Where are you two off to?"

253 "I'm running away," said Blima.

Harpo knelt. Sonja held up the case, that, stuffed as it was, took up more space than she did.

"What's in there?" he said.

"My bear called Dodo," said Sonja, "and two books."

"Are you leaving too?"

"I have to be with my sister."

"Do you think I can have a conversation with Blima? Before you go off?"

"I can only spare a few minutes," said Blima. "After that, I'm afraid that I'll be very busy."

Harpo nodded very seriously. "I understand."

8.

As Sonja banged down the stairs with her bag, Harpo sat on the stair beside Blima.

Suddenly, he didn't know what to say. What were the words he'd learned in the crosswords recently? Corporeal, tacit, torrent. Consistent. Topography. None of them helped.

"I have a question for you, monkey."

Blima sighed. "Fine."

But he didn't need to ask what had happened. Aielle had meant to do something nice for her little girl, but it had gone horribly wrong. She'd wanted to say, "I love you," but instead had called her an upstart or a gorilla. He'd never seen anything like it before, except for maybe Minnie, and Grouch sometimes. They made no sense. Loving was so easy.

"Would you watch a movie about a Postman?" said Harpo. "I mean. If the Marx Brothers made a movie about mailmen, would you watch it?"

254 "Yes," whispered Blima. "Can we watch it tonight? Before I run away?"

Harpo smiled. He knew it was a good idea. At least this had been a good idea. "We haven't made the movie yet."

"What happens in it?"

"Chico and I play mailmen. We're partners, and we go door to door together. Chico knocks on the doors, and when the women answer, he goes inside and takes chocolates and flowers out of his mailbag. I sit down outside on the porch steps, and the dogs sit by me, and I pull dog biscuits out of my mailbag. And then one day, I see a woman through a dirty window. She's waiting for the mail and crying."

Blima leaned her head against Harpo's shoulder. "Then what happens?"

"I don't know. Let's see— "

"I think she's sad because she's in love with two men," said Blima. "Only, she can just marry one of them. She's in love with the doctor, but that's only because he was her childhood sweatheart. She's also in love with the other man. She might not know it, but she is."

"Really, the other man is better, though."

"Exactly."

Harpo's fingers were tingling. Simon was a doctor. He'd figured something out.

"Her mother makes her marry the other man," said Blima. "And the doctor marries someone else too. Sometimes the woman pretends she's sick so she can visit the doctor during the day. When they kiss in his office, her daughter hides in the cupboard even though there are boxes of needles in there."

"Were there lots of doctors where the woman lived?" whispered Harpo. "Or was there just one?"

255 "Just one. She doesn't really love him at all, I changed my mind. She just thinks she does. And the doctor doesn't love her at all either. So when he tries to send love letters in the mail, since he doesn't mean them, they don't get there. That's the rule. You have to believe in the letter for the mail to work That's why she doesn't get any mail. That's why she's crying. Except then how would people get the bills that they have to pay. My daddy gets bills and he says he doesn't believe that he should have to pay them."

"How about this," said Harpo. "One day the beautiful woman gets into a fight with her husband. It's nothing serious. It's just silly. She writes a love letter to another man, not a man she loved, just a man she'd liked when she was a kid. But she doesn't mean it, the letter, the fight, anything. And after she sends it, she feels just awful. That's why she's crying. She only wrote it because her feelings were hurt, but now she's scared she's ruined her whole family."

"She never meant any of it," whispered Blima.

"The whole thing was a mistake. So she tells Harpo everything, and Harpo the

Postman finds the letter. He tracks it down, rips it up, and everything is saved.."

"Except can he do that?"

"Harpo the Postman? He can do anything."

9.

Emily lay down under the dining room table, her head on the package so that nobody who stumbled into the room would see it. She turned her head to see a stripe of sunlight beside her, and listened to the life of the lodgehouse unfurl around her, in the upper floors first, with footsteps and creaking floors and closing doors, then in the kitchen, then closer and closer. Auntie Blima banged into the dining room, picked up the salad bowl, like seeing an

256 upturned bowl on the floor was the most normal thing in the world, and she replaced it on top of the cupboard. She didn't see Emily. She just shuffled right back out again. Then

Jonah ran in and left. Then Moshe's legs and loafers shuffled past her.

This place was lonely without Grandma Aielle to hide with. Hiding here, she might even admit to herself, was kind of weird.

It might be funny if she was drunk. She should get a bottle, in fact, and bring it under the table with her, but she couldn't seem to find the energy. Plus she could feel the sunlight on her face now. It was licking a stripe on her forehead. She closed her eyes.

10.

Emily woke to a light show, to sparkling Scotch tape, and dust particles like dazzling flakes of snow. The sunlight was all the way past her now. She must have slept for a while.

The package was uncomfortable. So was the cramped space under the table. When she used to sit here with Grandma Aielle, she'd just sat right up. She must have been so little, but she didn't remember it that way. She remembered filling up the entire world, or all the space under the table anyway. She remembered drawing pictures, colouring them in and then carefully covering them with tape, piece after piece, so that they would be waterproof. She didn't remember why. She remembered Grandma Aielle drawing too, or writing maybe.

Then they'd taped it all up together.

There was a feeling that Emily got, when a long forgotten memory was freed, a feeling of space, like her skull was somehow bigger. She should concentrate on that feeling and just not think about the package under her head. That was hard to do though. Her neck hurt.

257 Emily sat up on her arm. She reached up and let the curling little bits of tape tickle her fingertips.

Some of the colours in some of the drawings had faded more than others. She used to love lying under here and staring up at them, the ship, the train, that crazy thing, with the face of a cat and the body of a person, she definitely remembered that. She had no idea which of these things she'd drawn. Not all of them though. She knew that. She remembered knowing that.

She lay down again. There were people who could go through their whole lives not knowing how things fit together, and how they fit in the world, but she hadn't ever been one of those people. She needed to know. She needed to know what that letter said about Harpo

Marx. She needed to know how he fit into her family.

11.

Emily found Doran on the step. When she sat, water from the steps soaked into her pants.

She didn't move at all, made herself get wetter and wetter, and she deserved to be uncomfortable. What she was doing was wrong. Coming out here was wrong. "I found another letter."

Emily watched the lake, as Doran slowly flipped through the pages.

"What does it say?"

"It's about Simon, Ekaterina and Doran. That must be me. Do you think that's my family?"

"Probably," said Emily. "Maybe. What does it say?"

"It says that my parents are dead."

Emily put her head on the banister.

258 Doran bent to read, "they were sent away with their little boy, all three of them."

Was that because they didn't have passports? Could they have died because that book was never sent back? But Emily couldn't imagine asking anyone those questions, not

Doran, not her family, not anyone from the Russian department. For once, her imagination failed her completely. Her head was blank. Her thoughts, snow.

"They were sent to a farm in Siberia, where nothing would grow. They went with the rest of the Jews, although they weren't Jewish themselves. The authorities were angry because my father had the wrong passports, it says. He was the doctor in the town, and he assumed, therefore, that nobody would pay attention to what he did. He was wrong. He was arrogant. Even in the settlement, he was arrogant."

"Oh God."

"This letter, it looks like it was written by another survivor, someone who had known him in Oserov. Yes. Yes. It says right here. He'd known him in Oserov."

"I'm so sorry."

"He says he's not surprised that the doctor found an American to rescue his child.

He's not surprised that an American sent for the whole family, that the doctor assumed that he and his wife would survive. They didn't. This man writes that Simon and his wife are dead. The child has been cared for by the community." Doran looked at Emily. "I would say that this man didn't like my father."

Emily didn't know what to say.

Auntie Blima would be heartbroken. There was no room in the family mythology for a story like that, and Aunt Blima seemed to believe those stories with a sincerity that was touching, that was heartbreaking, now that she thought about it, now that she saw the thing in context.

259 "I never thought they'd still be alive," said Doran.

Emily shouldn't have brought out the letter. She should never have shown it. All this for the love of Harpo Marx, a ghost, a man she'd never met, to satisfy the most useless of curiosities. Doran was going to tell Auntie Blima everything.

"That can't have been what I was expecting, coming here. That I would find them living."

Emily could have spent this entire week keeping to herself, typing. That's what she'd imagined this trip would be like. She'd pictured herself sequestered in the room of windows, just listening to the clicking of keys. "Do you remember being there?" And still, she couldn't stop. "Do you remember being in Siberia?"

"I remember a ditch," said Doran. "It's less a memory than an image. It looks like the ground has a jagged scar. But it might have been a dream. Who knows. When all this time has passed, it's hard to know. What's real. What I dreamed. What I saw in movies. It all feels the same sometimes. That, also, is why I came. I wanted confirmation. Proof that what

I'm remembering is possible." Doran bent over the letter. He read, "the little boy is being sent to Canada, and then to the United States where a quick adoption has been arranged, he understands. To the celebrity has been pulling strings, it says, we cared for him well, regarless of who his father was." Doran looked up.

"The celebrity," said Emily.

"This is the man that I remember. I remember him. This man, I think, is writing to him. Although too angry to make much sense. To do much, in the way of logic."

"Who was it?" whispered Emily, but she knew. Exapno Mapcase. Harpo Marx. Her fingers tingled.

260 "I remember men. They didn't speak to me, and I didn't speak to them. I pretended

I was mute. I don't know why. They took me in a car, and then I was in a boat and I'd been given to another man. I was prepared to pretend the same with him, and not say a word ever again. But then this man, the man with the with wispy brown hair, he knelt down and looked at me right in the face. He had a smile that was sad. It looked like love. That's what I remember."

"What's his name?"

"He looked like how I felt, I remember thinking that."

"Is it written there?"

"As soon as those men in suits left, I talked to him."

"Harpo."

Doran stopped. Emily shrank away from the sunlight. She wished for rain. The weather shouldn't be this cheerful.

"Imagine. Aielle sent Harpo Marx to rescue me. That makes sense though. Nobody would have thought to do that but her. She was the only one who knew what to do."

"Are you mad?" said Emily. "Because of what must have happened?" His father had given their passports to her family. And because of this, they'd died. She couldn't make herself say it.

Doran touched her shoulder with fluttering fingers. "Until the year she died, your great-grandmother always wrote to me on March 1. That's my birthday. Until the summer when I was eighteen, she always wrote to me with a money order and a train ticket. After that, she sent me a card. Sometimes, she signed it."

"Why didn't you come any more?"

"I'm a SINK."

261 "Like from the kitchen?"

"Single income no kids," said Doran. "So you see the problem."

Emily leaned back. She didn't see the problem. She didn't know how to tell him that.

"You're not angry?"

He breathed, and Emily could see the fine mist of his breath. "My father chose your family to live. That's not Aielle's fault." But he was mad. Emily could feel it. He felt like an empty presence beside her, or maybe that was Emily herself.

"I can't have been expecting that I would find them both alive, after all these years.

They would have to be one hundred years old, at least."

"I'm so sorry."

After a long moment, Doran smiled. "I don't think that I missed having a wife, or having children. But some grandchildren. I think I might have liked that."

"Why didn't you get married?"

"I only loved one woman," he said. "And that was Sonja."

12.

"Doran, our mother called you a miracle," Bubie Sonja said as Emily and Doran walked into the room of windows, a sad procession. "She said that you should have been lost forever in

Russia, but you got out."

"Yes." Doran sat with his back straight and sloped forward, like he might jump up at any second. Emily willed him to sit back, to calm down, to forget everything that had just happened. It didn't take an acute observer to see that he was sad. And how could he not be?

How could she have told him all that?

"She said that Elijah himself came back to rescue you," said Bubie Sonja.

262 "Your father was her special friend, you know," said Aunt Blima.

"I do know that," said Doran. "That's something I remember."

"I think she might have loved him," said Aunt Blima. "I don't know."

Emily held her breath. She'd started this. She was the reason all this was happening, and suddenly, she didn't want anyone to ruin Auntie Blima's ideas about what her mother was like. She was in her eighties. She was just an old lady. What was the point now, even if she was hard on Jonah sometimes, He knew not to pay too much attention.

"This, I didn't know," said Sonja. "Do you think she might have had an affair?"

"She couldn't have," said Aunt Blima.

Emily looked at Doran, and he was already staring at her, those milky eyes unreadable. She felt like she was buzzing again, like she'd downed a quart of coffee. She wanted to stand and run.

"Maybe everything in my father's life happened because of love," said Doran.

"I think our mother did love your father," Aunt Blima said quietly.

"I don't think he cared about me less," he said, "for loving other people more."

"Do you remember him?" said Aunt Blima. "Do you remember your father?"

"In one of my favourite memories, I'm sitting with him on a stair. He was upset, I think. We didn't sit together like that often. He was a busy man. So this was special. I sat very still even though the floor was very cold. He said to me, "the heart was two ventricles."

He was a doctor, you see. He said, "everyone should have two loves in their life, to fill both of them up." And he did. He said he had the love of my mother in the left, and the love of me in the right."

"She did," whispered Aunt Blima. "She did love him. I remember definitely now."

263 "He said that's what ventricles are for, my father. I didn't remember anything until I turned seventy-three, and then it all started coming back to me. Sometimes I think I lose him again every time I remember him. But it's the opposite. I have to keep reminding myself of that. I have more now than I ever had before."

"I remember some things too," whispered Aunt Blima. "I remember sitting in your apartment. They loved each other. When our family left, she loved him still. She wrote him love letters. She didn't like going outside. She never went to town. So she asked me to mail them. Of course I didn't."

Emily looked at the floor. She didn't want to make eye contact with anybody.

Grandma Aielle had tried to mail them back. She hadn't hidden that package. Aunt Blima had. She wouldn't have been older than eight or nine. She wouldn't have known about the passports.

"I loved my father," Aunt Blima was saying. "I knew that she'd leave both of us for your father and my own daddy would be heartbroken. It's silly, isn't it? I was so sure though.

She never knew that the letters hadn't been sent."

"This also," said Bubie Sonja. "I didn't know this either."

"I feel just terrible," said Aunt Blima.

"You shouldn't. He must have died not long after you left." Abruptly, Doran stood.

"I have to go."

Emily watched him walk away.

13.

Harpo held Blima's hand and marched her to the room of windows, and he felt better. He felt okay. He needed kids. This was it. He'd talk to Susan for sure. He wanted a family.

264 Harpo stood and surveyed the room. There were sofas, and quite a few easy chairs, so they could build a proper castle. He set to work disassembling the cushions, and, after a moment, Blima helped.

Then she surveyed the mess with her hands on her hips. "How did the good man get the woman to love him in the first place?"

"That's a good question." That's exactly what had been bothering Harpo. How did he find the man? How would the Marx Brothers bring the lovebirds together?

14.

Harpo set to work piling the cushions into an igloo, round and round a giggling Blima. "Tell me about your sister," he said. "I want to hear about your sister."

"Am I getting another one?"

"Not that I've heard."

"Because they didn't tell me the last time. They didn't tell me anything. My mother was getting fat, but they just told me that she had gas, so for a year, I was afraid to eat beans on toast, because I thought, for sure, that would happen to me. And then, they took me to the hospital. And then, on the way there, I was so scared, because I thought they'd just love her more, and they wouldn't need me anymore. But then they showed her to me. She was in a bassinet, like a plate. A nurse held her up, and she was screaming and red and she looked like a tomato. And I thought, that's okay. She's no threat."

"Because she was so ugly?"

"She was disgusting," said Blima. "Are you going to have kids?"

"Yes," he said, and he meant it. "Definitely. Just as soon as I get back from Russia. I might adopt though. I don't think I can wait nine months."

265 Blima stood, inside quite a mound of pillows now. "Are you going to fit in here too?"

"Of course."

Harpo arranged the pillows. What would he name his kids? Minnie, obviously. He'd need to have a kid named Minnie. Frenchie wasn't really a name, but Alexander, after his best friend, and maybe William. Bill. That sounded good.

15.

"Harpo was our mother's special friend too," said Bubie Sonja.

"Yeah." Emily was hovering in the doorway. "Aunt Blima told me." She hugged the wall, discretely watching for Doran.

"She cried when he died, you know," said Bubie Sonja.

"I didn't know that," said Aunt Blima.

"You were too busy crying to notice. You couldn't see anything through die tears.

Everything was dripping, your eyes, your nose. You looked just terrible. It was terrible to see."

Doran trundled down the stairs. Emily rounded on Blima. "I thought you were mad at Harpo."

"You can get mad at a person and still be his friend after," said Blima. "You can still love him terribly."

Emily heard the front door click shut. She looked at Aunt Blima, who was watching her too, with an expression that Emily couldn't decipher. She looked sad, kind of, and suddenly Emily felt electric, and tingly, and what did Auntie Blima know? Had she looked at

266 the package since she'd hidden it? Did she even remember that it was there? She'd hidden it decades ago, seventy years, at least, maybe more. Maybe she didn't remember doing it at all.

"I'd give anything for a good letter right now," said Aunt Blima. "It's a shame nobody writes them anymore."

"We have email," said Bubie Sonja. "It's faster."

"It's hard to write a really warm email," said Blima. "And have you ever received one? I don't think I have. I don't think I've ever received an email and felt like that fixed anything. I wouldn't have the thing if it weren't for electronic booking. And of course recipes online."

19.

Blima and Harpo both fit into the sofa fort, but it was hot. That was the only problem.

Blima squirmed out from under Harpo's arms. "What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

"I've done loads of bad things."

"Can you tell me more stories about your mischief."

"I went to a black tie dinner, and I wore a black tie, but no pants. I ran out of bushes with no clothes on so my friend would miss his shot in croquet." Blima was staring up at him with adoration, and he liked this, the adoration, sure, but also confessing stuff. "I caused mischief in a hotel, you know. In Montauk, Long Island, not far from here. They didn't like

Jews, at this place, that was why. I wanted to go on a fishing trip with my friends, two friends I didn't know very well, and I got a wire from the hotel the next day. It said "trust you are gentile." So I checked into the hotel as Harpo MacMarx with a walking stick and a tam-o-shanter."

267 "Did you stay there?"

"I stayed for one night. I was afraid my friends wouldn't like me anymore if I caused them trouble. But then that night I told them, and they were angry on my behalf. We left.

And I got the last laugh, anyway, by asking the concierge for directions to the nearest Jewish temple. But that's not really funny mischief. That's more like sad mischief."

Harpo found one of Groucho's fans, that must have been stuck in the sofa, that had migrated into the fort now. He fanned Blima. Then he fanned himself. That night in

Montauk Long Island, that was the most uncomfortable dinner of his life. The dining room had been empty save for them. The cutlery had echoed, and the waiters all stood in a line watching them. Harpo thought they might suspect that he was a Jew. They might be looking for a keepah. That's when he told. He said it like it was some great joke, "look, they're waiting to see if I break out a keepah," but he'd said it collapsed over the table, his soupbowl staring down at him.

"I can be pretty mischievous sometimes," Harpo said. "I have more mischief to tell you about. And we have to finish the Harpo the Postman story. Don't you two run away, at least until then."

But Blima was sitting up straight. She'd heard something, and now Harpo heard it too. There was a crunching in the gravel, just outside, across the wall from where they were sitting.

"Those are my mom's footsteps," she whispered.

16.

Emily heard a crunch in the gravel outside, and drifted toward the window sill. It might be

Doran. Maybe he hadn't really left. Maybe he'd just gone for a walk

268 "I found one." Sonja walked back into the room, waving a letter. "Blima, I found a good one. You said, earlier, you said you were in the mood for a good letter. Well, I found you one. Let me get it out."

"Be careful with that."

The thing outside moved, and the gravel crunched, and gravel presented a number of acoustic uncertainties. And so Emily couldn't even determine the subject's height or weight.

Doran would be a logical guess though. There was no reason to think that he wasn't coming back

"Well, I have just learned that my farts can be heard over the phone," Bubie Sonja read. She was sitting now, the letter spread on the table in front of her. Her eyes were shining. She was happier than Emily had ever seen.

"Grandma Aielle wrote letters about farts?"

"I'm writing to apologize to you," She read, "and I'm not calling you because I'm not sure what else can be heard over phone lines. Technology is a dangerous thing."

"I didn't know she wrote about that," said Aunt Blima. "Let me see."

"And what about thoughts? Did you ever think about that? Do you know when sometimes you pick up the telephone and you hear someone talking? My Blima tells me that it's the wires that are crossing somewhere, but what if it's someone's thinking, the very act?

It could happen that sometimes our thoughts happen at the frequency of a telephone, and get transmitted some place, and we don't even know it."

Blima reached for the letter, and Bubie Sonja was on her feet. "It's intolerable, this hearing our mother's voice from your mouth. It's like she's back. Soon she'll be ordering me to heat the soup, make more coffee, clean the microwave."

269 Sonja walked to the window, but what if Doran was standing outside? What if he heard something, and it brought back bad memories? Emily put herself between her grandmother and the window, and Doran. Doran had been in Siberia. He must have watched his parents die. He might have been there, when his father gave up all hope of survival. He didn't need to be reminded about parents. Not right now.

"What if sometimes our thoughts travel at the same frequency as a microwave?

Would our appliances start to chatter at us as well? I think that the solution might be to stop reading the encyclopedia, but I have been reading it with young Moshe. His particular brand of inquisitiveness is catchy, worse than cooties. But as long as I'm thinking about this particular thing, I'm encouraging Blima to use the kitchen appliances as much as possible.

Make more coffee - in case the coffee machine can talk Roast the beans yourself - in case it's the stove that can hear me. Heat that soup. Run the dishwasher. I imagine that while she's in the kitchen, she's hearing a chorus of "I love you" from all the machines, because

I'm not very good at saying that in a way that she understands. I can't say it. I can't even write it. I've tried. I need help. I used to get help too, but now even that's gone. But of course. You know all about this, since your Hannah is such a trouble."

"I wasn't a trouble," said Blima.

"She didn't say you," said Sonja. "She said Hannah."

"It's implied."

"It's a scream," Sonja was saying. "And it's true. I didn't remember, but all that happened."

"She made Blima use the microwave a lot?"

"The farts," said Sonja. "I'm the one who told her. Emily, sometimes your great- grandmother farted when she was talking on the phone. We'd be talking, and then she'd just

270 let loose a great big one. One day, I told her that. And she said to me, 'I didn't think that anybody could hear it', and we both just laughed and laughed. Nothing fazed our mother."

"Sure she had some tough years," said Sonja. "But after that... "

Blima sat. "She also did it in elevators."

"Our mother was a riot," said Sonja. "She was just naturally funny. It just came as the most natural thing in the world." And then she left again. "I'm looking for more letters."

15.

Emily sat across from Aunt Blima again. "Okay," she whispered. "I do. I want to know the real story."

"Our mother made Sonja marry your grandfather. The marriage was arranged."

"No," said Emily. "That's not what you told me. They fell in love. She started standing up the other boys to see him. Then he stopped showing up. She stopped going out all together, because she was waiting for him. She had red eyes and a runny nose, so she pretended to be sick. Finally, he knocked on the door, except, instead of roses, he brought

Kleenex. Also, a box. He'd only left so that he could buy her a ring."

"Your Bubie Sonja was boy cra2y," Aunt Blima said slowly. "That part was true."

"And she stopped dating because she met my grandfather."

"Our mother gave her the choice. She could get married, or she could go to boarding school then, university abroad."

"Why?"

"Our mother worked in mysterious ways. She was like Elijah. She saw things that nobody else saw. That summer, Sonja was with the boys too often, and she snuck out at

271 night, and they were doing who knows what. And she snuckout with Doran. That's when our mother really got mad. I suspect she didn't want her to make Doran wild too."

"My Bubie loved my grandfather though."

Aunt Blima put a warm hand on Emily's cheek. "Arranged marriage didn't mean that your Bubie didn't get a choice. And our mother, for all her faults, she was good with people.

She knew how to match. She got right with me too."

"Your marriage was arranged too?"

"No. She just introduced me. And she said it once or twice. You should marry that boy. I regret that I never told her that she was right."

"So why was my Bubie's marriage arranged and not yours?"

"That's my fault," said Aunt Blima. "That was because of something that I did.

When I saw them out of the dock. When I told my mother. The next day, Doran was on a train going back to his foster family. Two weeks later, Sonja was married."

"That that makes no sense." And then Emily remembered the other side of the nature versus nurture debate. Doran had light hair like her grandmother. His father gave up his whole family's passports. And Bubie Sonja was born a few months later. Bubie Sonja was

Simon's daughter, Doran's sister.

20.

Harpo and Blima were widening the fort when the topmost cushions moved, and suddenly

Aielle's face appeared inside.

Harpo felt Blima stiffen. He was pretty nervous himself. His heart was beating fast like a net of fireflies. "Oh hi, Aielle," he said lightly. "How are you?"

"I'm just fine. Thank you for asking. But listen. Do you mind if I join you?"

272 "Not at all," said Harpo.

And Aielle's face disappeared, and then her foot appeared, and then the rest of her squirmed her way in, in the most awkward maneuver Harpo had ever seen. He felt Blima's body shaking with laughter, and then Aielle landed on top of them, and the cushions fell apart.

"I'm so sorry." And Aielle looked just stricken.

"It's okay," said Harpo. "I was getting hot in there anyway." He arched his back and pushed himself back up onto the couch. "In fact, I think I'm going to go for a walk by the lake. Why don't the two of you experiment with a better design."

"I feel certain that we can do that," said Aielle.

And Harpo hopped, out the door, and down the steps, and off, into the forest.

17.

There was a new sound outside, and Emily pressed her ear against the drapes and the drapes against the window, and the little silver chain tinkled against the floor. Abruptly, she felt the squeak of a finger on the other side of the glass. It trilled against her face and a long shiver tickled down her spine. She hopped off the sill. That might be Doran. He might not have really left. He might be calling her outside.

"Where are you off to, Emily?"

"I'm going for a walk."

18.

Emily put her socks back on again. The lake water was frigid, and the whole woods were empty, and there hadn't been anyone standing outside the room of windows. Maybe there

273 hadn't been footsteps at all. Maybe she'd been hallucinating, or thinking whistfully, or listening wishfully. She did wish Doran would come back. She wished she could fix this. It was funny that this shame, shame a product of the mind, produced a physical pain that radiated down her chest like a plumb line. It seemed to show her where happiness was, orthogonal to where she was sitting, cross legged on a deck, alone.

There were footsteps now though, crunching through the wood. Jonah. "I've been looking for you," he said.

"I want to listen for Doran." Emily didn't turn. An ember of shame lit again, and she was on fire in the inside, like a lightbulb. It was remarkable that nobody else seemed to see it.

But they didn't. Jonah didn't give any indication that he knew what she'd done.

"I need to listen for tires on the gravel. I'll hear his car when he comes back again."

"You miss your late night talks?"

"I did something horrible." She'd shown him a letter that had upset him. And she'd figured out that the woman he wished he could have married had been his sister, anyway.

And she hadn't told him that. She'd figure it out too late. She'd missed her chance, maybe forever.

"Oh," he said. "What did you do?"

When Emily didn't answer, he sat down beside her. He looked uncomfortable. He looked afraid of her too. And that wasn't fair, she wasn't someone to be afraid of - when she hurt people, she did it by accident.

"I brought out the rogolah," he said at last.

"I'm certainly not going to break Passover now."

"I don't mean to eat." Jonah opened the bag quickly. "I thought we could throw pieces in the water, like on Yom Kippur."

274 "And think about our sins?"

"I forgot that's why we did it."

"No, I mean thank you." Emily reached into the bag. "It's kind of appropriate. And

I think it might help." She ripped a pastry and threw the little pieces into the water. "Did you know that there are different kinds of infinite? One is called countable, and the other is called uncountable. It all has to do with how quickly the numbers increase." And there were some sins that were too big to consign to bread.

"I didn't know that," said Jonah.

21.

When Harpo was finished with the Blima letter, he had no idea where he was. He couldn't see the lake, or the path he'd thought he was following. He couldn't see any path at all. Just trees. Not even familiar ones.

"Hey Harpo." Chico again. His brother was magic. It's like he always said.

"I got lost."

"We're going canoeing."

"Let me guess. You found another island."

"This time, we're all going together. I have cards. It's a nice night, and you're going to Russia soon. It'll be fun."

"It'll be different this time?"

"Of course."

Of course there was a trick in this one too. There always was. "Okay," he said. "I'll come."

275 22.

Emily crept up to the attic, and it was funny, because even though Doran had left, it still sounded like there were footsteps up there. As she wound to the very top of the staircase, she saw that there was. The door was open. Maybe he hadn't left at all.

She crept inside, and saw Auntie Blima sitting on a cot. Other than one sad old lady, and one army issue cot, the place was empty, save for sunlight and dust.

"I think he'll be back," said Aunt Blima, as Emily crept into the room. "Next year.

He'll come for Seder. We'll set a place for him at the table, Doran and Harpo and Elijah."

"There'll be more empty places than filled ones." Emily sat next to her aunt. "You did know Doran in Russia."

"He told you?"

"His dad and Grandma Aielle were having an affair.

Aunt Blima nodded.

"I think that Bubie Sonja was Doran's sister."

She looked up.

"I never told him. I should have."

"Don't," she whispered.

"But wouldn't it help? Bubie Sonja was the love of his life too. At least he'd know that it couldn't have worked anyway."

Aunt Blima put a warm hand on Emily's arm. "When I saw them on the dock that night, they weren't kissing."

"Oh God."

"But I knew my mother did it for a reason. I knew."

"We can't tell my bubie then."

276 "No."

22.

Off they went into the dark lake again, Harpo curled up in the middle of the canoe, his brothers pulling the oars. The dark and the rocking, made Harpo close his eyes. He remembered the nice part of that fishing trip, in that other hotel, when they'd sat up and played Pinochle and then a round of Pinchie Winchie, and they'd laughed until the waiter nodded off in the corner of the room. At the time, he'd thought, who could sleep? Now he understood. He knew how he must have been feeling, that waiter, like he was sitting still and the whole world was floating away from him.

"Harpo," said Chico. "Harp. Get up. We're back at the lodge and I see Sam on the porch."

Harpo opened his eyes, but he couldn't see anything. Sam was waiting? Was something wrong? Was he angry about the canoes?

"Harp," said Groucho. "Sam's mad." Oh God. Maybe he knew what Harpo was planning to do, with Simon, with his family. Maybe Blima had figured it out. Maybe he'd just been thinking too loud.

"We're not supposed to be canoeing after sunset."

"Oh," said Harpo. At least it was only that.

"You get out," said Chico. "We'll put the canoe back in the shed."

Harpo scrambled forward and felt for the dock, and if there was one person he didn't want to be mad at him, that was Sam. He still hadn't figured out how to fix his family.

He pulled himself up onto the dock and looked up, but he couldn't see him. He couldn't see anyone. Not even his brothers' canoe.

277 He sat back on his heels. He was alone on the dock again. But, beside him, a deck of cards. His brothers must have thrown it. So he threw them, card by card, as far into the lake as he could get them, enumerating worries like they'd done with, sins on Passover, growing up. When he was finished with his worries, he started enumerating words, enumerate number one, moving on from there.

23.

It was a bit cold, but it was a nice night anyway. And this was a nice place to think. Really, his brothers had done him a favour. He could sit here and reflect, and plan, and prepare himself mentally for the trip. But all he could think about were his strange still moments.

Reading the wire that said June flew into the mountains, those minutes pinned by Frenchie in a hospital bed. Looking at that wire. Trust you are a gentile. Trust you are a bigot, my friend.

Harpo sat. Suddenly, he could remember exactly what Susan's face had looked like, on that disastrous first date, her serious expression, the cute pinched look, those dimples.

She'd curled up on the rug, and they'd both known that it wasn't going well. He loved her, sure. Why would she ever love him? Especially after she met his brothers?

He stood up again.

There was a hole in his heart, and it was exactly in the shape of a person. He wouldn't have thought that it would fit in such a small place, but it did.

He didn't want to be here anymore. He didn't even like reflection.

He called for Aielle. Then he called for Jacob.

278 24.

Harpo felt a bang, and, unaccountably, he looked up. He saw nothing. Stars. That was all.

When he looked back down again, Jacob was beside him. Seconds later, Aielle appeared with the canoe. She crawled onto the dock. For minute after minute, they sat together. Harpo had a feeling of space in his head, like there was lots of empty air, and wind. He didn't know what to say.

"Harpo," Aielle whispered after a moment. "There is a man standing on the deck."

Jacob edged toward Harpo, hiding behind him now, like he was a little kid.

"Is this man a guest?"

"He's your neighbour."

"I don't know him."

"He knows you," and all Harpo could see was Jacob's watery eyes catching the moonlight. "He probably knows you better than anybody, Sam included. He's like your guardian. He's like your foster dad. He's the one who fixed the window in the room of doors. He does the plumbing when everyone's asleep. When Sam was putting up the extensions, he always used to sneak onto your property and fix the work, so it wouldn't just come crashing down." And still, Jacob said nothing.

And then nobody said anything. They stood in silence for minutes and minutes.

"Oh," said Harpo. "And his name is Jacob."

"I'll call you Papa Jacob, then."

"I'm not Jewish though."

"That's okay."

"And I'm just a carpenter."

279 She touched Jacob's cheek "I'm not exactly royalty. The lodge is for the Jews. That's important. I told my husband, we have to open a lodge for Jews, do something for our people, that's why we were saved. But the lodge is also for the gentiles who help Jews. That's why I needed to make a resort. That's why. That was the thought from the beginning."

And again, nobody said anything.

Until, "I'm in love," Harpo heard himself say. Oh well. At least he broke the silence.

"Tell us about her," Jacob whispered.

"Her name is Susan."

Jacob sat. Aielle sat beside him.

"When I asked her out on a date, she asked whether she could bring her mother.

That's funny." And that mischievous light in her eyes, bright like lightbulbs.

"How did you meet her?" said Aielle.

Harpo sat. "At a friend's dinner party. It was a set up. She was put beside me at the table, but that's not where we met for the first time. The first time we met was at my play.

She was in the audience. I always used to single out the prettiest girl and stare at her, and one night, it was her. She came backstage and shook my hand."

"So what's the problem then?" said Jacob.

He gathered together some pebbles together and sprinkled them into the lake. "Our last date didn't go too well," he said. "Susan was sitting on the rug. She said, "this is a bachelor pad, Harpo," and she asked me if I was planning to always be a bachelor, and all of a sudden, everything got really sad." He hadn't been ready to join a new family. He still loved his old one. But he was ready now.

"Are you planning to always be a bachelor?"

280 "No." He'd had so many family lives in his head. He and June moved back to New

York, went for walks in the tenements. He and June, in a ranch in Southern California, racing in the evenings, two bumpercars running down the coolies. And Susan. Well. He didn't even bother any more. None of it ever came true anyway.

"It's nice, being in a family," said Aielle.

"I can't think of a better thing," said Jacob.

"Listen, Aielle." If Harpo could just fix her problems, then he could have his own family. That had been the deal. "I need to know about the town you used to live in. I need to know what it's called and where it is. I can't tell you why. Is that okay?"

"That, I can do for you," said Aielle. "I can draw you a map, and circle it. I can also bake something. How about we go back to the lodgehouse and warm up, the three of us."

She untied the canoe.

Harpo stood. He tiptoed toward the canoe, then Aielle took his arm and guided him inside it so he didn't fall in the water.

"You know, Harpo? You're very lovable."

25.

Jonah closed his eyes and moved his head toward her, and at first Emily just watched, but then she moved toward him too, and pressed her lips to his, and then everything went very fast. They were kissing, and she felt warm, her lips first, then her head, then her whole body.

She loved Jonah. Maybe it could be that simple.

But she heard a creak and pulled away. But it wasn't Doran. It was just this place.

281 Jonah held her face, then moved close again, and Emily found herself in his embrace again, his arms wrapped around her waist and pulling her close. Then they were falling onto the pillows, and her head hit the headboard. She heard it more than felt it.

"Oh my God." Jonah lay down beside her.

"It's okay." Emily pressed her head to his shoulder, into that soft curve to his neck.

There was that crook, that beautiful smooth place. She kissed it softly. He was caressing the back of her head, and running his fingers down her hair and back, so she kissed him again, breathing in that sharp smell of him, that pine and woodsmoke and sweat, and reached her hands around his waist. She hugged him hard, then reached for his head and felt his hair, sharp strands at her fingers and palms. She pulled away a bit, and looked at him, cheeks pink and lips cherry red, eyes wide open, very wide open.

"Wait." She sat up on her elbow. Jonah watched her. "What about Jazzy?"

"It's okay," he said, reaching up to kiss her again. "She's sleeping."

282 The Seventh Day

1.

Emily knew she was dreaming, but that wasn't important. What was important was that she not wake up.

Harpo was standing in front of her.

He was just standing there. Emily couldn't decide what to do. She knew that she wanted to close the space between them, but how, how could she do it without scaring him away. This was a fragile moment. He couldn't disappear.

Abruptly, Harpo fixed the problem.

All in a rush, he closed the four steps between them. He grabbed Emily under the arms and hugged her tightly, lifting her bodily off the ground. He felt incredibly solid. She could feel his back under his coat, the muscles moving under the material.

He put her back down again, but Emily didn't let go. She put her head on his shoulder and noticed that he smelled like wood smoke, that his coat was softer than it looked like it should be.

"I've been looking for you," she said into his raincoat. She hugged him tighter, and felt an answering pressure, his hands on her lower back.

"Don't go," she said.

But now Emily was awake. And these were the things that she knew. She was alone.

Jonah wasn't here, so he'd left her in the middle of the night. And Doran hadn't come back to the lodge at all.

283 2.

There was Harpo on the dock, sitting still with a letter in his hands, just like the last time

Blima saw him. Except this time, he came to the lodge with a suitcase and a little boy, instead of just a suitcase. Also, he had a pen. Maybe he was writing to a sweetheart. This might be juicy. Sonja would want to know all about it so she could add it to her collection of lodge love stories.

Harpo shifted, and Blima froze, and suddenly they were playing a game of red light green light. When he looked down again, Blima edged forward. She was winning and he didn't even know. When she got right behind him, she knelt. Maybe she'd be able to read the whole letter before he even noticed her. But it was an empty page he was staring at, with a

'Dear Susan' and that was it, so she sighed down the back of his neck, and ended the game.

Harpo wheeled around. "I've been wondering when you would show up," he said.

"I've missed you. I've been looking for you."

"You were looking for my mother," said Blima. "I heard you when you came in."

"I have something for your mother. I have something for you too."

"What do you have for me?"

"A surprise." But Harpo looked sad and not excited. He looked out at the lake. So probably socks.

"Would you just finish your letter so I can read it?"

Harpo picked up the pen again, but then he put it in his mouth. "It's to a girl named

Susan."

"That part, I know."

"I don't know what to write."

284 "I can help. I'm good at that. I read a lot of love letters. I have a collection of them that guests forgot in their rooms, under their pillows, mostly. I'm allowed to keep them if they don't wire for them, and if my parents don't want to take them away." Blima pictured

Moshe's long eyelashes, and she rubbed at her eyes. "Some of them are a bit disgusting though. I'll bring them later. We can write your letter together."

Harpo was silent, so Blima remembered the feeling of Moshe's hand on hers. They were really soft and warm like buns just out of the oven. They kind of smelled like that too.

When he'd tightened his hand around hers, when they were standing in the woods the previous night, she'd been warmer than when she wore mittens. But thinking about that made her stomach flutter, so she stopped.

"I don't want to be Harpo the Postman any more," Harpo said suddenly. "I thought mailmen could maybe only deliver good news. I thought that was a choice they can make. I don't want to tell people things that are sad."

And even though it was a warm day, Blima felt cold.

3.

Blima was tucked in the space between the open dining room door and the wall, and she didn't want to give herself away, or else she'd have just grabbed the letter right out of her mother's hand.

She knew exactly what was going to happen - as soon as she saw Harpo holding a letter, she knew. She willed time to stop. But it didn't. He gave her mother the letter. She read it. Then she turned and walked up to her bedroom. The next few days, she knew, would be punctuated by hammering, her father trying to pry her out of it. She knew how to stuff things in the lock.

285 When the third floor bedroom door closed with a pop, Blima fled to her own bedroom.

4.

Blima sat down on her bed and imagined that the whirlwind of God appeared in her bedroom. She would kiss Elijah right on the mouth if he came, just like she saw Mr. and

Mrs. Schwartz do that one time at the back of the kitchen, behind all the crates. She pictured kissing the little boy named Moshe that her mother said she should hurry up and marry, and she felt that thrill of dizziness she got on Passover sometimes when she drank the wine too fast. She slid her legs off the bed. That wouldn't do. She couldn't be dizzy for the rest of her life. So it was time to solve the problem herself.

Blima hopped off her bed and ran around her room, around and around again to see if she could cause a whirlwind and summon Elijah herself. She hadn't tried it for years.

Maybe this time, it would work. If he came, her mother wouldn't give her away, or take her away, or leave for another family.

She heard a soft little knock on her door, and she froze.

"Blima?" whispered Harpo.

Blima turned away from him. She'd pretend that she hadn't even heard. She climbed up on the window sill and hopped right off outside.

5.

Blima ran from the mud room to the stairway to the dining room so fast that Mr. Echelstone the mailman, who wasn't the normal kind of Christian, shouted that she was probably possessed. She couldn't stop running. Even now that she was so tired she could probably

286 die. She needed to get Elijah to visit. When Harpo visited last, the world had opened up. Her mother had turned into her plain old mother again, weird but okay on the whole, not the pale ghost who had haunted the upstairs, and hidden from people, and said things that were mean. And they'd had friends again, all of a sudden. The people across the street came over every night, Jacob who told her to call him Papa, and two adults. Also, the pretty red-headed girl she used to chase the ice truck with, the one she'd always been too shy to talk to.

Hannah. She even had freckles on the backs of her hands. She was perfect. And she was her best friend now, and it would even count in school, she'd said, in a promise that involved fingers. But now Harpo was back and things were closing up again, just as air tight as they'd been before he ever got there. Blima wouldn't let it. She'd get Elijah, and Elijah would help.

She looked up as she ran, and even though it made her bang into walls and things, it was worth it. He might hear. She prayed hard.

She stumbled from the room of windows, down the hallway, to registration, and she tripped and hit the registration desk so hard she spun into the wall. She didn't even think her feet had been on the ground just then. She picked herself up and ran, well, walked fast. But since it's just the movement that makes eddies, so it counted.

Since Harpo got back, there hadn't been one wind in Kingston, not one stormcloud, not one visitor who talked to their mother and told her vague and mystical things, and she wouldn't get out of bed because of it. It was that and the letter. And now, even all this running didn't work, even though it worked in the bathtub when she twirled her fingers, she saw an eddy, and when she unplugged the stop she saw one over the drain.

"Blima." Sonja appeared in her path.

Blima avoided her sister, and banged right into the wall.

"You should behave like a lady."

287 She rubbed her sore elbow. "You're just saying exactly what you hear other people say.

"You're giving me a nervous breakdown."

Blima shook her sister's hand off her because Sonja was too young to understand anything. She ran from the staircase to the kitchen to the back door and back again. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. They were burning like Christmas lights. It felt like you should be able to see them all the way from Russia, where Harpo had just been. And now he was carrying letters too. Who knew what might be in those. She thought he knew better than to give them, no matter what Harpo the Postman's job is. It should be illegal to write down anything that would make someone sad.

6.

Blima tiptoed into the room of doors, quickly enough to cause a wind behind her, and maybe a whirlwind above her, but not loud enough to bother the guests. She whipped behind one after another, behind all the couches, until she was blocked.

"Hiya monkey," said a man who looked remarkably like Harpo. He was kneeling down, already holding Sonja around the shoulders. "Did you happen to see the paper this morning? Did you happen to see what's on the front page?"

"Tanks," said Blima, because it was against the rules to not speak if you were spoken to. She edged toward the door.

The man wagged his eyebrows. He was Groucho then. He was in disguise as a normal person, but the eyebrows always gave him away. "You're welcome."

Blima giggled nervously, and then Sonja pressed her face to her ear. "That's because tanks sounds like thanks."

288 Blima turned. "I got it," and now she did.

"Harpo was looking for you. If you're looking for Harpo back, he's talking to your father. I think he's pretending to be an architect. It's going to be a disaster. If you go out to see him, make sure to put on a hard hat."

7.

Blima saw Harpo hovering in the doorway, looking around like he wanted to find her. So she hid.

"Is Moshe short for Moses? No, it's Morris. You're Blima's friend?"

Moshe straightened his tie. "I like her."

"I think you should get married."

"Mster Harpo, I'm ten."

"I know, I know." Harpo shuffled. He was sweating. "I'm just telling you. Don't wait too long before you ask You shouldn't let things get complicated."

Blima ran again. Nobody knew how much it hurt when everyone you loved was trying to throw you away.

8.

Blima ran out the door again. She knew that Sonja was running after her, and she didn't like to exclude her sister, but this was an emergency. She had a best friend now. She'd gone to

Kingston. She'd seen ivy. On buildings. The world couldn't go back to what it had been, a space the size of a lodgehouse, with creaks and bangs and ghosts.

She looked up to better project her thoughts to Elijah, and she banged into a shrub.

So she made a compromise. She'd look where she was going, and just think a whole lot

289 harder, and Elijah would understand.

She stumbled faster. Her new life included mystery and intrigue, and not of the letter variety, and in her intrigues with Sonja and Hannah, it was her mother who was the normal one. Hannah sucked her thumb and her mother wanted her to stop, so she covered all her fingers with bitter almond. Hannah came running over and asked them to lick it off. And that was only the second day they knew her. Blima'd even touched the thumb with the tip of her tongue and her whole mouth had buzzed like her spit was suddenly electric. It was disgusting. Even their mother wouldn't do that. Blima had asked Aielle if she'd ever do that to Sonja, and Aielle said that Sonja wouldn't be twenty years old and married and still sucking her thumb - something would happen between now and then and she would stop.

But Sonja really liked sucking that thing, and Blima didn't know what sort of thing might induce her to stop with her thumbs. She thought another finger. Their mother said a husband. Blima said that was stupid. Because if that was true, then Sonja probably just wouldn't get married. And Blima couldn't imagine letting her sister marry a person who didn't let her do it. Maybe that could be her test of character, not just for Sonja, but for her too. If a boy ever asked her to start a romance, that's the first thing she would say. She would hold out her thumb and say, "Do you mind if I suck?" Except a boy had been to the lodge too, Morris, Moshe, the one her mom wanted to give her away to even though she was only nine years old. And even though she'd wanted to hate him, she couldn't, because he'd been a gentleman that night, the second day she'd been Hannah's best friend. They'd been pretending that Hannah's mom wanted to cover all of them with the bitter almond, and

Blima's idea had been to get dressed up and greet all the guests like perfect hosts. Then

Hannah's mom couldn't touch them with the sticky stuff because number one it would ruin their dresses and number two, what would the other guests think? So they'd gone from guest

290 to guest and greeted them all by name and made small talk just like their mother asked them to, and the whole time Hannah's mom and dad were sitting there just imperiously, just as you please, and they were counting on Blima's sense of propriety that she'd greet them to.

Then Hannah's mom would nab them. They were done for. But then Moshe heard the story, and he came with Blima to greet Hannah's mom and dad and he held her thumb the whole time, the whole entire time. The people who held hands didn't understand anything about romance.

Blima was rounding the waterfront path, back to the lodgehouse, when she heard people. So she crouched down in behind shrubs. Just to take a small break Just to catch her breath.

There were Daddy and Jacob, fiddling with boxes. They looked busy. Dad's face was shining. And there was Harpo, standing halfway between Dad and Jacob, shifting on his feet and looking left and right like he wanted to find some other place to be. And there was their mother, in the third floor bedroom window, pale and staring downward. She looked like a ghost. She stood, to wave at her, but she got Harpo's attention instead.

Harpo ran over, and knelt, and hugged her right to him. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

She struggled out of his arms. "You brought my mother a letter."

"Your friend went home, and I sent my brothers on a tour of the waterfront with your little sister. Your dad asked me not to evacuate the rest of the guests. He says he doesn't want to disturb anyone's stay."

Just then, Blima noticed how pale Harpo was, the sheen of sweat that was in his face.

That's how her dad looked you know when, when he was kneeling against the attic door, trying to pry it open. But before she could ask what was wrong, she heard a sound. What

291 was that? It was an explosion. It was muffled, but loud somehow, and the whole island seemed to rock

For some reason, Blima looked up. She saw flights of birds like a blanket over the lodge. They formed a giant umbrella, and they stayed that way for a minute, two, then dispersed, and they were birds again.

Then she looked back out to the lodgehouse, and there was a cloud of dust in the air, and a stream of people crowding onto the porch. Halfway between Blima and the porch,

Dad and Jacob were hugging each other and whooping like they were birds themselves.

And then Blima realized that Harpo was still crouched, hugging her, hiding his face.

"Did the house cave in?" he whispered.

"No."

"Did it fall over?"

"What just happened?" The wall of white dust began to settle. The lodge looked like a ghost. Everything looked ghostly. They were whispering. There were no sounds above a hush, and Blima felt like that was okay because her ears needed to pop anyway. And that's when Blima looked up, at the room that her mom had been haunted, and there was her mom's face. And now it was gone.

"Your dad and Jacob just made you guys a cellar." He peeked. "Monkey, it's your job to make sure that you daddy never listens to anything I say."

But it was sort of a miracle too. That would have to make her mom happy. "We can make rootbeer now." They both watched Dad and Jacob and all the guests inspect the house. Everything seemed to be fine. Dad looked, and found them, and flashed them an ebullient thumbs up.

"I've been thinking about it." Harpo was still shaking. "It's probably safer if you

292 don't let me tell your Daddy any more ideas."

And just then her mom ran out of the back door, holding the hand of the little boy that Blima remembered from before. She picked him and stumbled down the steps, and through the path, and she was covered in white, and Blima didn't know what to think She was outside. She'd be mad. She didn't like being dusty.

Her mom turned back to the house, and her dad caught up to her, and whispered in her ear. And that's when she laughed. It was the only sound on the island.

9.

Emily found Jonah in the laundry room, and she set up her computer on the ironing rack that was beside his, and she pulled a stool up to it. Emily ran her fingers over the keys, just to feel the smooth plastic and hear that sound like soft rain hitting a window. She knew that

Jonah was watching her. She knew he thought she was stupid for coming here, and sitting with him, but she wasn't going to move. She'd shadow him all day just like when she was eight. She wasn't going to look at him though, well, maybe just a little, maybe out of the corner of her eye.

She started the computer as Jonah ran the iron over a sheet or something, something long, and the smell of fabric softener wafted up in a vapour.

"What's wrong with you?" he said.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She didn't lookup. She watched her reflection on the monitor as the computer booted up. She could still feel Harpo's hands pressed against her back. She could also feel the absence. Unlikely as it would have seemed to her before today, absence was a physical sensation too.

"I dreampt about Harpo last night."

293 "Why do you love him so much?"

"He never hurt anybody, for one thing. Even when he was acting mischievous, he was really cute. Who could stay mad at him?"

"I could get that wig. It wasn't his real hair, you know. Also, I saw this rain coat, like the one that he has. I think I might be missing the point, though. That's the thing."

"Some people know exactly what to do. Like Harpo always knew how to be funny, like he was looking right over the heads of the people who didn't know what to do. Did you know he never felt sorry for himself? I love Harpo."

"That's why I bought his coat."

"You bought Harpo's coat?"

Jonah put on a funny old raincoat, that had been on top of the sheets, that Emily hadn't even seen. He raised his hands, and he looked like Jonah in a ruined old coat. Emily started to back away, but he rushed forward and took her in his arms. He spun her wildly, just the way silly Harpo used to do to girls in the movies.

Jonah had Harpo's hair. It was curly and light and why had she never noticed that?

He spun her more and more wildly, and Emily laughed out loud. She tripped over the ironing board, but Jonah just held her more tightly. And he was laughing too. She'd never seen him laugh like this, all lit up and sweaty. She struggled a bit, then got a firmer grasp on his shoulders. She could hardly see the room anymore, it was swirling by so fast.

She felt like they were standing still, and the whole world was spinning around them.

And then they slowed, arid they stopped.

"Hey," said Jonah. "Do you want to go for a walk?"

"A romantic walk by the lake?"

"I could get out the canoe."

294 "Can I invite my grandmother?"

"What?"

"That's what Harpo's wife said on tlieir first date. Never mind."

Emily heard footsteps on the stairs above her head. It was probably Blima, running down to see what the matter was. She squirmed free of Jonah's arms and ran out of the room, onto the deck, and down onto the grass. She turned. Jonah was tearing after her. She led him to the broken dock.

10.

Emily didn't think before she threw herself into the water off the dock. It was just cold, air, cold everything, and then she was swimming. She looked back, and she saw Jonah swimming behind her, his arm movements crisp and fast, arid he was gaining on her. Before she turned back to swim properly, she made herself think. She was happy.

Then she caught up with Jonah, who was waiting. She put her hand on his shoulder, and it was slick, and hard like a house. And then they were treading water together, and just as suddenly, he'd grabbed her, and she was hugging him, and she could feel the muscles pulling, first one then another. There was a rumble of distant thunder and arms circling

Emily and a kiss. She wasn't kicking any more. She wasn't afraid of the thunder. She wasn't even afraid of what the dark clouds might bring, even though they were gathering like a fist.

And then Emily swallowed water again.

Jonah crawled up on the dock, and she crawled up right after, and he helped, hoisting her by the arms and making her overbalance, right on top of him, her body a tent over his bigger one. Then she collapsed and she felt him oof, and then she felt him laugh, and she was shaking up and down, up and down, as his chest rose and fell, and then she was

295 laughing too. She sat up again and pressed her hand on top of his hand, and here was her giant friend again. She could fit two or three of her hands on his bear paw. She touched his arm. It was brown like toast, but all the little hairs on it were bleached white.

She bent toward him, and watched her wet hair fall over his face. He blinked a bit.

She bent farther, and touched her lips to his. He held his breath. Until she kissed him, a very chaste kiss like the kind a child gives, and his lips were soft and tasted like salt. She liked it.

She licked them now, then kissed him again, then pressed herself on top of him. He breathed shallowly and made little moaning sounds. And she giggled. He was so careful.

11.

Blima found Harpo at the lake again. "Is she beautiful, your girl?"

"Like nothing you've ever seen. And sweet. Funny too. We met at a dinner party where my friend was trying to set me up with a girl. And so she was the one who was sitting beside me. And the next day, they wrote about it in the newspaper."

"I didn't know they write about romances in the newspaper."

"It's more like gossip," said Harpo. "For people in movies."

"I have to start reading those. Our father will be so shocked. He'll pretend to fall off his chair, but if there's romances, I'll read them."

"So Susan called me the next day and told me she was going to sue me for using her to get promotion. Have you ever heard anything so funny?"

"That's not romantic. Okay, I'll help you out. You know who's romantic? Elijah the

Prophet. He's the one who saves romances. He saves everything. Our mother said. What did you say in your last letter?"

"Sometimes love letters are like fine wines. Or cheese. It's best to let them age."

296 "I don't think that's true," said Blima. "Okay, so here's one of them. 'Do you remember that night that we went on a walk to the lake and you let me kiss you but only as long as nobody could see us? Do you remember when I said I'd never tell? Do you remember how you said after that if I told anyone you'd call me a liar? Well, now all I want to do it tell everyone."

"Well, I can't use that," said Harpo. "We never went on a walk by a lake."

"I'll find another one."

"Do you believe in bad luck names? There's a girl who's perfect except her last name."

"Does it sound disgusting? There's a guests who are called Mr. and Mrs. Slivovitz and that sounds like one of the slow and quiet ones from my grandma."

"I knew another girl with that last name and she died."

"That's romantic."

"I wonder if I'm bad luck to a girl like that."

"Oh my goodness, you don't understand luck at all." Blima stood, and wiped away all the little pebbles that were pressing little holes in her legs. "That's not how things work.

The name is a bad omen for the girl. Some people are bom with the wrong names. Our mother said. So when you marry her, she's going to change her last name, and then you'll save her from some terrible bad luck The only problem is you didn't get to that other girl in time."

Harpo looked down. After a moment, he quickly reached into his pocket. "I have a letter for you too. It's a love letter."

"Really?" Blima quickly unfolded the paper. In the middle of it, written big, was the letter L. "L for love." She looked back home, and could barely make out the lodgehouse,

297 could just see one window, because the setting sun had hit it just so, and made it shine like a copper penny. "You gave our mother a letter," she whispered.

12.

Emily crept past the room of doors, and she heard a creak, so she looked inside. Blima was kneeling in front of the wooden table. She was feeling around for the trap door, and Emily felt her heart rate increase.

The package was gone. She'd taken it and hidden it in her suitcase.

Did Aunt Blima know what was inside it?

She hovered just outside the doorway. If she put it back now, Aunt Blima would know that she'd seen it. She could tiptoe back at night. She could replace it when everyone else was sleeping. Or she could never put it back at all, and protect Aunt Blima from the knowledge of what she'd hidden. It wasn't her fault. And it was years ago. And there was no reason to believe that sending those passports would have changed anything.

298