Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders Read Online Free Page A

my experience that those who’ve been involved, well, they want to help.”
    Involved? It made it seem like this was my fault somehow. I wanted to clarify. “We were driving home from a potluck.”
    The Red Cross woman looked at me, momentarily confused, and then she glanced at the children as if noticing them for the first time. “What I’m saying,” she went on, “is that sometimes it’s part of your healing process too—being of use.”
    I wanted to explain that the image of the woman’s foot inside the jewel-buckled high heel reared up in my mind every few moments and my goal was to erase it as soon as possible with the familiar—my toaster’s yellow quilted cover, the salty belches of Tilton’s humidifier, the nylon of my favorite nightgown. George and the kids and I, we were involved only in the sense that we hadn’t been crushed to death by a plane engine. I was feeling an intense desire to insulate everyone.
    “I’d be happy to do what I can to help,” I told the woman. “But we don’t have a big house, and we do have a growing family, so…”
    The Red Cross woman nodded but still took down my name and address. I assumed this was for some kind of follow-up—maybe counseling for victims of a disaster. The Tarkingtons were victims too, I thought to myself. Let’s not forget that.
    But then the woman seemed to betray me. “Thank you,” she said. “I think you’ll see that this kind of generosity pays you back, threefold.” She put her hand on her heart, a sweet gesture that didn’t belong to her at all. I was sure she’d been taught to do it and had practiced it, but still didn’t have it right.
    I suddenly wanted to stand up and slap her. In fact, in my mind’s eye, I did just that, so quickly and sharply that the woman spat blood. I have imagined the slap so clearly over the years that sometimes I can feel the rubbery contact of my hand with her flesh. But in reality I didn’t move an inch—afraid of stirring the children. I only smiled tightly, thinking, Stupid woman! I said no! No, no, no!
    My daughters grew up with this story. Was that wise, especially in Tilton’s case? She’d interrupt the story only to clarify that she’d been the baby in the blanket.
    “Yes,” I’d say. “Yes, you were.”
    Ruthie, on the other hand, openly hated the story. She said she could still remember the stink of the helmet. By fifteen, she referred to it as “that shitty helmet,” and I would suspend the story to correct her language. “Language, please!” I’d say, and Ruthie would snap back, “Oh, you want more of it? Hell, damn, cocksucker. Or would you like it in French or Spanish? Merde! Is that better?”
    In the months before Ruthie left home, when she was sixteen, it became impossible to tell the story with her in the room. When I tried to press on through with something simple, like “They came with torches to search for bodies,” Ruthie would interrupt. “Why didn’t they come with flashlights? Flashlights were invented back then, right?”
    “I don’t know why. Was I in the Red Cross? Was I a soldier?”
    It was around this time that I realized I might lose both of my daughters, that they would slip off into the wide world just as their father had. I explained that they were shaped by this tragedy and that they were fated to become poets to express this tragedy. Although I had no deep appreciation for literature, I knew well enough that poets, with so few options, often remain at home. “The world doesn’t necessarily love poets,” I said, “but mothers do.”
    Ruthie refused to write poems, on principle. “You can force someone to be an accountant,” she said, “but not a poet.”
    After Ruthie left, Tilton longed for her sister and this was when her sensitivities bloomed into allergies, and then became chronic, ongoing conditions. It grew dangerous for her to be outside for long—she could go nowhere beyond the gate. Although I had always made sure that Tilton