1991
In late August, Eve and Jack finally were able to buy their first house, a quaint arts-and-crafts-style bungalow not far from the grounds. Although the house was on a busy street, it sat in a veritable cocoon of greenery and had a small, private backyard. Jack laid a curved line of pavers from the back door to a bench beneath the boughs of a magnolia, and the yard became a little haven from the hubbub of the university.
They walked to work every day, since Eve was now a counselor with the Counseling and Psychological Services on the grounds and Jack continued to teach in the Drama Department. It made Eve nervous, though, not having a car at work in case there was an emergency with one of the girls. Still, it was nice to have that time with Jack and the exercise was good for her, though her feet occasionally protested the walk, much as they did when she got out of bed in the middle of the night.
Their first night in the house brought a terrific thunderstorm that kept Eve awake with its unpredictable thunderclaps and flashes of light illuminating the unfamiliar bedroom. She wasn’t surprised when Dru came into their room at one in the morning.
“Can I sleep with you and Daddy?” she asked.
Dru was six and fearless, but for the first time, she had her own room. That, along with the storm, was too much for her.
“Sure,” Eve said. “Hop in.”
Dru scrambled into the bed and lay down between her and Jack, who had not stirred once since coming to bed. In a few minutes, Dru, too was sound asleep.
At three, Eve got up to use the bathroom. Her feet felt as if she were walking on gravel as she crossed the room. The pain had definitely worsened in the past few months and she knew she’d have to break down soon and see a doctor.
She opened the bedroom door and nearly tripped over Cory, who lay on the hardwood floor, her pillow under her head.
“Cory?” Eve whispered. “What are you doing here?”
Cory jerked to a sitting position as if caught doing something wrong. She looked around the hallway as though trying to place her surroundings. “I don’t know exactly,” she said.
Eve lowered herself to the floor across the hall from her. The hardwood felt cool beneath her aching feet. Summer was coming to an end.
“Some storm,” she said.
Cory nodded. She was wearing underpants and a sleeveless pajama top shaped by small, new breasts. She’d gotten a bra in May and her period in June, but Eve had not yet grown accustomed to the changes in her daughter’s body. Cory was still a little girl in her eyes.
A flash of lightning cut through the bathroom window into the hall, and Cory winced. She hugged her knees. “Mom?” she asked.
“What, honey?”
“I don’t want to go to Darby.”
Darby was the private school Eve and Jack had gotten her into for the fall. They’d used the money in Cory’s secret bank account to pay her tuition.
“Why not, hon?” The move to Darby was a good one, she felt certain. It would get her away from the kids who had known and taunted her for years and it would put her into a more intellectually challenging environment. She was far ahead of her public school classmates academically, but no one wanted her to skip a grade because she lagged so far behind her peers socially.
“I don’t know,” she said again, words Eve was hearing regularly from her lips these days.
“It’s going to be good for you,” Eve said. “You liked it when we visited.”
“Yeah, but now it’s almost time to go and I’m changing my mind.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid,” Cory said. She balked at that question these days, coming up with excuses other than fear when she didn’t want to do things.
“Then why don’t you want to go?”
“I won’t know anyone,” she said.
“Think of that as a good thing,” Eve suggested. “You can be a clean slate there. You can be the person you’ve always wanted to be. It can be fun to reinvent yourself sometimes.”
Cory pondered that. “Maybe,” she said.
“Come on.” Eve winced at the pain in her feet as she stood to open the bedroom door. “Dru’s in the bed, so you’ll have to make yourself comfortable on the rug.”
As it turned out, Cory liked Darby from the first day. The kids were nice and very smart, she reported, and the teachers joked with them instead of being “all serious and everything.” Eve thought the Darby students were actually a bit nerdy, but then, so was Cory. Her beauty was a front for a hungry, scholarly mind. The classes were rigorous, and that was a challenge Cory could rise to.
“I have four hours of homework!” she announced when Eve picked her up that first afternoon. She sounded sincerely thrilled by the prospect. And Eve was equally thrilled that she’d received no calls during the day from a teacher or a school nurse, asking her to pick up her anxious, frightened daughter.