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20 For Alex’s last night at Pinestead, Sean built a camp‹re on the level tongue of shore to the north of the main house and stuck foilwrapped potatoes and ears of corn into the coals. He invited the last renters, a family of four, to share the picnic of potatoes, corn, kielbasa, and marshmallows. After they ate Sean built up the ‹re again, almost into a bon‹re, and they watched the sparks ›y up from it to disappear into the darkness. Melina hammered out her repertoire of Stephen Foster at a gentler-than-usual speed. “You’re awful quiet,” Mary murmured to Alex. “Is everything all right?” Alex was still in shock at those pictures. Someone else’s troubling reality, on top of Sean dropping out of college, hit her deep inside. She was sobered up inside, not that she’d been the least bit intoxicated at any point. She couldn’t have said anything about them, to her mother or to Melina. “I’m sorry to be leaving,” she said softly. Mary squeezed her hand. Melina set down her banjo against the arm of the lawn chair in which she slouched. One arm propped on the chair, bent, so that she could rest her head in her hand, she stared into the ‹re. She did pose, Alex realized. She posed all the time, without even knowing it. She draped her long body around things. Hiding her height, or was it an interior fatigue? Lassitude. There’s a word for you. Melina suffered from lassitude. But what’s with taking off her clothes for some artist? And who could it be? They were amateurish, for sure, though the artist was talented. A friend or young person, not a teacher. Was that more acceptable? Alex wanted to weep for her little sister’s loss of innocence. Melina’s bare knees glowed in the ‹relight. She began chatting with the daughters of the renters. Drawing them out, getting them to tell her about their ballet classes in Detroit. She could do that, she had some skills. All was not lost. Sean stayed on his feet, tracking down embers that escaped the ‹re. Occasionally a knot full of pitch exploded, and a spray of sparks ›ew above their heads and disappeared in the blackness. Alex tried to withdraw her hand from her mother’s, but Mary wouldn’t have it. She squeezed until Alex’s ‹ngers hurt and held on. 191 “Melina.” Alex knocked and then poked her head into the bow room. “Hnnh?” She was lying on her bed scribbling. She rolled over and gracefully ›ipped the book or papers she was working on down behind the bed, against the wall. But she still held the pen in her ‹ngers and said, “I love this pen. It’s unbelievable. It’s so cool. Thank you.” “You’re welcome.” Alex walked over to the bookcase and pretended to study the books. Jesus, there was a coverless paperback copy of Fanny Hill that had made the rounds at Interlochen, ages ago. Good Lord, she’d forgotten all about that. How did it end up here? Did I bring it home? She let her eyes wander to the sheaf of drawings that she had crammed back onto the lower shelf of the bookcase, between Paddle to the Sea and Treasures of the Art Institute. She looked up at Melina, who gazed at her steadily with those unnerving, sea-green eyes, one multicolored . With her pale eyes in a sunburned face, she looked like a photo negative. “Are you going to have a good year, sweetie?” Alex said abruptly. “I hope.” “This thing about lighthouses.” “Oh, don’t laugh at me. Don’t say it’s a fantasy. I just like them.” “Thing is, they’re all automated now. Almost all. Remember when we went to the UP when we were kids and saw the light at White‹sh Point? There was a family that lived there then. But they were the last ones to operate that light.” “I loved it.” “It’s like the Swiss Family Robinson, except for that other thing you said.” “What other thing?” “Well, that lighthouses were really needed. It was a needful thing.” “Yeah. I like that, and also I like things that are possible,” Melina said, surprising Alex. She sat up and crossed her legs in the lotus position . “I like to imagine things that could really happen.” “I know you do. You used to get...
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