The quietest Murphy, at least in those years. Like Theo, she preferred the company of books; like Nora, she took up drawing early. Shy, at times skittish. During family arguments she’d hide or daydream. Sweet, people called her. A good girl. She’d make drawings—birds, boats, flying beach umbrellas—she’d give to family members; she’d leave sea glass on the windowsills, pick rosehips and goldenrod and sometimes Queen Anne’s lace.
She frightened easily: anger frightened her, including her own. She did not know how to insist. She did not know how to object. Mistreatment stunned her. In response, she would freeze, or rush away, or, if necessary, appease. Unnerved most often by Katy. A quick learner, an intelligent girl, and yet perennially bewildered. It seemed Theo and Katy and her parents shared a knowledge—or a separate realm?—to which Sara had no access and Delia was oblivious; perhaps there was no more room. Say she lived instead on a tree branch nearby, one that might snap and drop into the sea. Perhaps they would not notice. Her mother could be distractible, forgetful—how easily might she forget Sara? Already, for small moments, it had happened. A discordant silence came and went. Evidence of a deficit somewhere: was it, then, in Sara? So it seemed. Call it an inchoate sense of missing. In dreams her body became a stranger’s, her arms and legs went lifeless. She was still young when her sleep disturbances began; part of most nights she was awake while the others slept. During her grade-school years, she would wander the house—there was pleasure in wandering the house at night—and sometimes she’d doze in the living room or on warm nights watch the sky from the deck. Because of those nights, she glimpsed Katy and Tim half-naked on the deck, pressing against each other rhythmically, and later passed out on the deck chairs.
She studied her parents, her sisters, studied Theo, who seemed to assert himself the way her father sometimes did. Theo could be sweet to her: often Theo would make her laugh. And when he visited from college—and he did sometimes, especially in the summer—in the first days they’d play beach games with Delia, they’d go to movies and make sundaes and together they’d read books. At first, she’d feel bolstered, in some way brave. But after a time he’d become irritable, withdraw into his own books and squint at interruption; he’d squabble with Nora about the car and end up taking his bike—to the harbor, he’d tell them—and return the next afternoon. And in better moods, he would sit on the deck and drink beer—with Tim, when he was there. Then Katy would become snappish. Theo would ignore her, ignore Delia and Sara though Sara herself had not changed. The games and beach walks that had pleased him before had not changed. But maybe it was her lack. Perhaps he’d run short of patience for her; perhaps he had good reason. Toward the ends of his visits, he’d cheer up, but his happiness—like her father’s heartiness—seemed staged and fleeting.
His third year in college, Theo began to bring a girlfriend to visit. Between visits the girlfriends changed. Nora would shrug; Sara would move into Delia’s room, giving her own room to Theo and his friend. In the day, the girlfriend might sleep in the sun on the deck or walk in the tidal shallows, dreamy and remote, like a girl in a painting. At night, Theo and the girl would retreat into Sara’s room. As usual, Sara wandered. From the upstairs hall, she could hear Theo and his girlfriends, her own bed creaking and the women moaning, and her brother moaning. Whispered laughs behind the door. She wanted to hear and then unhear them; later she’d try to remember and unremember.
At some point, Theo’s girlfriends ventured to the bathroom. Sometimes Sara was in the hall with her glass of water, and the girl saw her and waved an embarrassed wave—the girl maybe wearing a T-shirt, her legs slender, her toenails painted. Her bare feet appeared elegant and frank. The girl would duck into the bathroom, and Sara would hear the sound of running water. Sara would return to Delia’s room, where Delia heard nothing; Delia slept through everything. And in the morning, Sara was tired, always tired, but alert, watching Theo in the kitchen, now the more ordinary Theo, and his girlfriend, who was showered and neatly dressed and contentedly sipping coffee. Theo flirted with their mother and with Delia and the girlfriend, he flirted with Sara, and she smiled hesitantly. Lighten up, doll, her mother might say, and Sara would stand close and let Nora pet her head.
Though there was the morning at breakfast when Sara answered the phone and a cheerful voice, a woman, a Shelley, asked for Theo. Sara held out the phone to him, saying, “Shelley?” and their mother glanced up, and the visiting girlfriend whose name was not Shelley paled and swallowed coffee in small rapid sips. Theo took the call on the extension, and Delia inquired with great seriousness about the girlfriend’s ear piercings (sometimes, even then, Delia could step up this way). No one mentioned Shelley again, or the French-braided girlfriend, who never returned.
If Theo was in a hurry to leave—he was often in a hurry—Sara might find the bedroom strangely disordered, her bedside books and her embroidered pillow and stuffed animals lumped in a corner. As if it were still, or again, his room. The sheets were damp in patches or crusted and streaked with white stains, a gamy-salt smell rising, a slight low-tide reek. She’d push open one of the windows, let sea air rush in, pull the sheets from the bed and drag them down to the laundry room and stuff them in the washing machine before Nora got to them. Tucking in the clean sheets was harder, but Katy would help, as if in commiseration or tacit agreement to shield Nora (though from exactly what? Sara could not say). The disorder seemed at times a kind of aggression. She was eight. She felt a queasy buzzing, the heat that could precede tears. If anyone had asked Theo then, he would have answered, surprised, I had to pack, I had to go, certain that was the only truth.
Katy reminded Theo to change the sheets, but he didn’t always, and then the mess seemed all the more deliberate. Sara would strip the bed and a mixed-up kind of shame would resurface. At least Katy would roll her eyes and clown. Let’s clear the air in here, Katy would say, and sometimes, Let’s clean this place up and go for sundaes. Like their mother, Katy could fall into distraction, her gestures slowing while she gazed out a window, her lips pressed together, brow furrowing. It didn’t last long. Sara herself daydreamed; they all watched the sea. In those moments, loneliness would settle into Sara, persisting until she called Katy back, and until Katy shook off distraction and smiled, until Katy told her, Let’s go.