Myra looked terrible. Her eyes were mostly closed, there was a bad bruise on her left cheekbone, and her mouth hung open as if her jaw had been broken, too. The cast looked twice as big as her arm. Looking like this, a way I had never seen her, she seemed much older to me and quite small. I wondered if she knew about Willie. As the attendant wheeled her out with the nurse accompanying them, I tugged on my grandfather’s hand.
“Does she know about Willie?” I asked.
“Not yet. Wait,” he said. He rushed forward to help get her into the backseat.
The nurse gave my grandfather a prescription for Myra’s pain medication. He took it and then nodded for me to get into the backseat with her.
“Don’t let her fall over or anything, Clara Sue,” he said. “She’s very unsteady.”
Myra groaned and opened her eyes more. “Where’s Willie?” she asked me.
I didn’t have to say anything. My tears did all the talking.
She uttered a horrible moan, and I put my arm around her and buried my forehead against her shoulder. Grandpa drove off silently. I lifted my head quickly and looked back at the hospital.
We’re leaving Willie, I thought. We’re leaving Willie.
Myra cried softly in my arms as we rode back to Grandpa’s estate. Everyone came out when we drove through the opened gate. Jimmy Wilson practically lunged at the car, and when Myra was helped out, he lifted her in his arms like a baby to carry her into the house. I could see that everyone had heard the news and had been crying. The person who would take it almost worse than me was our cook, Faith Richards. No one spoiled or loved Willie more than she did.
Myra was becoming more alert. “Put me down. I can walk!” she cried. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Jimmy paused in the doorway and let her down gently. She glared at him, trying to be angry about it, but anyone could see she was putting it on.
“Got your bed all ready, Myra,” My Faith said. My grandmother used to refer to her as “My Faith,” and Willie and I did, too.
“I don’t need to go to bed.”
“You need to go to bed and rest,” Grandpa said sternly. “No back talk,” he added.
It was the first thing he had said since we left the hospital. Myra took one look at him and started to head to her room, which was next to My Faith’s at the rear of the estate. Then she paused and looked at me. I knew she didn’t want to be alone, and neither did I. I hurried to her side, and we walked through the wide hallway, past the kitchen and into the corridor that led to her and My Faith’s rooms, all the while not looking at anyone. I was afraid that if I looked at any of them, I would burst into hysterical sobs.
I was in that place between a nightmare and just waking up, this time fighting against waking up but also pushing away the nightmare. How could all of this be happening to us? How could any of it be?
We lived in Prescott, Virginia, a community thirty-five miles northeast of Charlottesville that seemed to have been created for millionaires. If you were a resident, it was easy to believe you lived in a protective bubble, which made any misfortune happening to you or your neighbors seem impossible to imagine and even more impossible to accept.
“Fires don’t kill rich people, you know, love,” I heard Myra tell My Faith one day. “Rich people don’t go to jail. Rich people always get saved in the best hospitals by the most expensive and brilliant doctors. Maybe rich people go to a higher class of heaven when they die, and they’re always supposed to die in their sleep without pain, don’t you know. That’s how Lady Willowsby died. She closed h
er eyes, began dreaming of biscuits and tea, and never woke up.”
Myra concluded, “That’s in the English Constitution, passed in the House of Lords.”
“Ain’t that the truth, I bet,” My Faith said. They both laughed about it. I was always intrigued by how easily My Faith could get Myra to laugh. Except for Grandma Arnold and Willie, she was the only one who could.
It didn’t surprise me that I recalled that conversation so vividly at this moment. I had heard this before my parents died, and I believed we were all so special that nothing bad would ever happen to us. Everything seemed to tell us so.
Before our parents’ fatal boat accident, whenever Willie and I visited our grandparents, we went to bed soaking in security and comfort. New toys and bedding with images of our favorite cartoon characters were always in the immaculately kept rooms reserved for us. There were children’s movie characters on the wallpaper. There were dressers and mirrors so shiny and clean that they looked just bought, carpets as soft as marshmallow, and curtains on the windows that looked like the curtains that opened and closed on theater stages. When Myra opened our curtains in the morning, we half-expected to hear music and see a puppet show.
Willie and I imagined we were sleeping in a castle surrounded by high walls and moats, a place that evil creatures and nightmares could only glance at from the outside and then move on from, never daring to enter and certainly never daring to touch us while we were here. Maybe it was all my doing. I wove stories of knights and dragons, always ending with us being protected. It was important to me to be sure my little brother was safe and unafraid, especially after our parents died.
But it was easy to create such a fairy-tale view of the world when you lived in Prescott. Almost every house was a custom-built estate with a minimum of five acres, walled in with elaborate stonework, tall hedges, or high scrolled gates. When we drove by one, I would tell Willie it belonged to this prince or that princess. Some estates had small ponds on the property, and all had foliage and fountains, flowers and bushes designed by well-known landscape artists.
In late spring, there was a competition to determine who had the most beautiful grounds, and the prize was awarded at the public park. People dressed up as if they were going to the Kentucky Derby, and there were musicians and singers, and a few dignitaries made speeches that Myra said were so full of soap that if we looked closely, we’d see bubbles coming out of their mouths. It helped keep us interested.
Willie loved attending, even when he was barely three. There were balloons and ice cream, and circulating among the attendees were magicians, jugglers, and clowns. Myra said it was Prescott’s version of Covent Garden in London. People came from everywhere, even those who lived outside of Prescott. There was always an impressive trophy for the winner. Grandpa had won twice in the last seven years. We did have the most impressive estate.
Because of the restrictive zoning, there were no apartment buildings in Prescott, no middle-class people, and especially no low-income people sleeping here unless they were in-house employees. All the residents were influential business and political people who had, through those zoning ordinances, made it almost impossible for anyone of more moderate means to build a home and settle in this small community. They were also able to keep all fast-food restaurants out. The only businesses approved within Prescott’s borders were convenience stores attached to gas stations. The restaurants in Prescott that “didn’t raise the king’s eyebrows,” as Myra put it—and there were only six—were all gourmet places with chefs who graduated from prestigious culinary institutes. Some Prescott residents were investors in these restaurants.
Rich people and people splurging on dinners for special occasions came from miles away to the restaurants in Prescott. All of them were in beautiful buildings. The moment you walked into one, you knew you were going to spend a lot of money. They all had immaculately dressed waiters, waitresses, and busboys and maître d’s who knew most of the customers by name.