A Great and Terrible Beauty

"Well, you implied it," Pippa sniffs.

"Can we just forget this whole silly argument?" I snap.

"Gemma." Pippa sticks her bottom lip out in an exaggerated pout. "Don't be cross."

Felicity adopts the same ridiculous face. "Gemma, please stop. It's very hard to talk with my mouth like this."

Ann is on it now. "I won't smile until Gemma does. You can't make me."

"Yes." Felicity is giggling through her bulldog face. "And everywhere people will say, 'They use to be so attractive. Pity about that lip problem.'"

I can't help it. I start to laugh. They roll on the ground with me then, the four of us screaming and making the most asinine faces imaginable till we're exhausted and it's time to go.

The door appears, and we slip one by one through the portal. I'm the last to go. My skin is beginning to tingle with the door's breath-stopping energy when I catch sight of Mother holding the little girl's hand. Beneath the large white pinafore, the girl's dress is colorful and unusual. Not something one would see at an English girls' school. Interesting that I've never noticed it.

The two of them are looking at me, hopeful and wary. As if I can change things for them. But how can I help them when I don't even know how to help myself?

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Today is Assembly Day. My dictionary has no formal entry for this occasion, but if it did, it might go something like this:

Assembly Day (n.) A boarding school tradition in which the family of the schoolgirl is allowed a visit, resulting in the mortification of all and the enjoyment of none.

I've coiffed my hair, buttoned, laced, and pinned myself into ladylike perfectionor as close as I can get to it. But inside, I'm still reeling from my visit with Mother and our argument. I behaved terribly. Tonight I'll go to her and apologize, feel her warm arms around me again.

Still, I wish I could tell my familyFather especially--that I've seen Mother. That somewhere beyond here in another world, she is alive and loving and beautiful as we all remember her to be. I have no idea what I'll find when I go downstairs, and I'm torn up with hoping and wishing. Father might walk in, looking well fed and well groomed in his fine black suit. He might hold out a gift for me, something wrapped in gold paper. He might call me his jewel, might even get sour-faced Brigid to laugh at his tales, might hold me close. He might. He might. Might. Is there any opiate more powerful than that word ?

"Perhaps I could come along with you," Ann says as I try to tame my hair for the hundredth time. It doesn't want to stay neatly coiled atop my head as a lady's should.

"You'd be dreadfully bored within five minutes," I say, pinching roses into my cheeks that flare and fade straightaway. I don't want Ann along when I'm not sure of what I'll find.

"Will your brother be coming today?" Ann asks.

"Yes, God help us all," I mutter. I don't want to encourage Ann where Tom is concerned. Two springy curls flop down low on my forehead. I've got to do something with this hair.

"At least you have a brother to annoy you."

In the washstand mirror, I catch a glimpse of Ann sitting forlornly on her bed, dressed in her best with nowhere to go, no one to see. I'm going on and on about the trials of seeing my family, while she'll spend the entire day alone. Assembly Day must be excruciating for her.

"All right," I sigh. "If you're up for the torture, you can come along."

She doesn't say thank you. We both know it's a mission of mercy, but for which one of us, I can't say yet. I take in the sight of her. White dress straining at the seams over her chubby body. Wisps of lank hair already escaping from her chignon, hanging in her watery eyes. She's not the beauty I saw last night in the garden. "Let's do something with that hair of yours." She tries to see around me in the mirror. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Nothing a good brushing and several pins can't cure. Hold still."

I take down her hair. The brush yanks through a knotty snarl at the base of her scalp. "Ouch!" "The price of beauty," I say by way of apologizing without really apologizing. After all, she said she wanted to come along.

"The price of baldness, you mean."

"If you'd hold still, this wouldn't be so difficult." She's suddenly so still she could be mistaken for a stone. Pain is underrated as a tool of motivation. I put what seems like a thousand pins in to hold her hair in place. It's not half bad. At least it's an improvement, and I'm feeling a little impressed with myself, actually. Ann positions herself in front of the mirror. "What do you think?" I ask.