Later, the man goes out to the pool. Jenny hates the baths, but they come here several times a week on the man’s insistence. She dresses and goes out to the side of the pool and watches the man swim back and forth. There are many people here, naked or nearly so, tossing miniature footballs back and forth. She sees the man grasp the ankles of a woman and begin to tow her playfully through the water. The woman wears silver earrings. Her hair is silver, her pubic hair is silver. Her mouth is a thickly frosted white. The water foams on her skin in tiny translucent bubbles. The woman laughs and moves her legs up in a scissors grip around the man’s waist. Jenny sees him kiss her.
Another man, a Mexican, comes up to Jenny. He is bare-chested and wears white trousers and tall, yellow boots. He absently plucks at his left nipple while he looks at her.
“Ford Galaxie,” he says at last. He takes a ring of car keys from his pocket and jerks his head toward the mountains.
“No,” Jenny says.
“Galaxie,” the Mexican says. “Galaxie. Rojo.”
Jenny sees the car, its red shell cold in the black mountains, drawn through the landscape of rock and mutilated maguey. Drawn through, with her inside, quietly transported.
“No,” she says. She hates the baths. The tile in the bottom of the pool is arranged in the shape of a bird, a heron with thin legs and a huge, flat head. Her lover stands still in the water now, looking at her, amused.
“Jenny,” her mother laughs. “You’re such a dreamer. Would you like to go out for supper? You and Daddy and I can go to the restaurant that you like.”
For it is just the summer. That is all it is, and Jenny is only five. In the house they are renting on Martha’s Vineyard, there is a dinghy stored in the rafters of the living room. The landlord is supposed to come for it and take it down, but he does not. Jenny positions herself beneath the dinghy and scatters her shell collection over her legs and chest. She pretends that she has been cast out of it and floated to the bottom of the sea.
“Jenny-cake, get up now,” her mother says. The child rises heavily from the floor. The same sorrow undergone for nothing is concluded. Again and again, nothing.
“Oh, Jenny-cake,” her mother says sadly, for Jenny is so quiet, so pale. They have come to the island for the sunshine, for play, to offer Jenny her childhood. Her childhood eludes them all. What guide does Jenny follow?
“Let’s play hairdresser,” her mother says. “I’ll be the hairdresser and you be the little girl.”
Jenny lets her comb and arrange her hair.
“You’re so pretty,” her mother says.
But she is so melancholy, so careless with herself. She is bruised everywhere. Her mother parts her hair carefully. She brings out a dish of soapy water and brushes and trims Jenny’s nails. She is put in order. She is a tidy little girl in a clean dress going out to supper on a summer night.
“Come on, Jenny,” her mother urges her. “We want to be back home while it’s still light.” Jenny moves slowly to the door that her father is holding open for them.
“I have an idea,” her mother says. “I’ll be a parade and you be the little girl following the parade.”
Jenny is so far away. She smiles to keep her mother from prattling on. She is what she will be. She has no energy, no talent, not even for love. She lies facedown, her face buried in a filthy sheet. The man lies beside her. She can feel his heart beating on her arm. Pounding like something left out of life. A great machine, a desolate engine, taking over for her, moving her. The machine moves her out the door, into the streets of the town.
There is a dance floor in the restaurant. Sometimes Jenny dances with her father. She dances by standing on top of his shoes while he moves around the floor. The restaurant is quite expensive. The menu is written in chalk on a blackboard that is then rolled from table to table. They go to this restaurant mostly because Jenny likes the blackboard. She can pretend that this is school.
There is a candle on each table, and Jenny blows it out at the beginning of each meal. This plunges their table into deep twilight. Sometimes the waitress relights the candle, and Jenny blows it out again. She can pretend that this is her birthday over and over again. Her parents allow her to do this. They allow her to do anything that does not bring distress to others. This usually works out well.
Halfway through their dinner, they become aware of a quarrel at the next table. A man is shouting at the woman who sits beside him. He does not appear angry, but he is saying outrageous things. The woman puts her hand gently on the side of his head. He does not shrug it off nor does it appear that he allows the caress. The woman’s hand falls back in her lap.
“We’re spoiling the others’ dinner,” the woman says.
“I don’t care about the others,” the man says. “I care about you.”
The woman’s laugh is high and uneasy. Her face is serene, but her hands tremble. The bones glow beneath her taut skin. There is a sense of blood, decay, the smell of love.
“Nothing matters except you,” the man says again. He reaches across the table toward her and knocks over the flowers, the wine. “What do you care what others think?” he says.
“I don’t know why people go out if they’re not intending to have a nice time,” Jenny’s mother whispers. Jenny doesn’t speak. The man’s curses tease her ears. The reality of the couple, now gone, cheats her eyes. She gazes fixedly at the abandoned table, at the wreckage there. Everywhere there is disorder. Even in her parents’ eyes.
“Tomorrow we’re going sailing,” her father says. “It’s going to be a beautiful day.”
“I would say that woman had a problem there,” Jenny’s mother says.
Outside, the sunset has dispersed the afternoon’s fog. The sun makes long paddle strokes through the clouds. At day’s end, the day creaks back to brightness like a swinging boom. Jenny walks down the street between her parents. At the curb, as children do, she takes a little leap into space, supported, for the moment, by their hands.
And now gone for good, this moment. It is night again.
“It’s been night for a long time,” the man says. He is shaving at the basin. His face, to about an inch below his eyes, is a white mask of lather. His mouth is a dark hole in the mask.
Jenny’s dizzy from drinking. The sheets are white, the walls are white. One section of the room has a raised ceiling. It rises handsomely to nothing but a single lightbulb, shaded by strips of wood. The frame around the light is very substantial. It is as though the light were caged. The light is like a wild thing up there, pressed against the ceiling, a furious bright creature with slanty wings.