The Complete Tales of Lucy Gold

Chapter Sixteen

46 chapter sixteen The four Gold children were up in the attic at their grandparents’ house. Covered in dust, the attic was musty and hot. Its pale flowered wallpaper peeled; its floorboards creaked; dead spiders littered the corners. Lucy sat and read in the room with the sloped ceiling, where poor, slow Aunt Gimpel had slept on a cot. The book Lucy was reading featured a resilient heroine . Either her nickname or her father-figure was “Daddy Long Legs”—it was unclear to Lucy which was the case. Perhaps she had long legs, or the father-figure was actually her uncle? Lucy adored the faded blue cover and line drawings inside and had read it many times up in the attic, beneath poor, slow Aunt Gimpel’s bed. What enraptured Lucy about this novel was the fact that the girl was an orphan and was sent off to boarding school.There she had the great fortune to wear a uniform, make friends, and learn how to dance. (The book’s font, Garamond, was also hypnotic for her.) In the other room, with its unfinished walls and one dirty window, Merry, Ketzia, and the brother played 47 dress-up. Lucy gazed through the doorway and watched as Ketzia reluctantly pulled cracked leather boots over bare feet. Merry had her arms crossed and stared at Ketzia with a strange expression set on her face. The brother peacefully sorted through magazines nearby—Merry had told him to look inside them for girls who looked just like her (brown curls, long limbs, hazel eyes). Light from the window was spectacular—so yellow, so soft. Lucy’s brother ran over to her. He whispered,“They’re all naked!” Together they laughed. Oh goodness! Lucy turned back to her book about the girl and the kindly man who paid her way at boarding school.Like the girl in another book, the one who became a ballerina in London, this heroine was deserving. Also like the girl in another book who became a mystery writer, the one who ate apples up in an attic. And the girl who found her father after the war, and once, before she found him, an Indian servant gave her a monkey! And the girl who carried her sisters all in a basket, after a bad man had chopped off various parts—she ended up queen. You were born into goodness, Lucy knew. Goodness was not something you could design or desire; goodness just came with you (or not), though you had to remain calm or it would depart you. Like happiness too. Lucy thought to herself, “Life is magic that way. Wear blouses, oxfords, and skirts.Take ballet . . . have an interest in flowers . . . approach long-legged men . . . ” She ticked off the motifs that frequently accompanied the Deserving in books. 48 Downstairs the Gold children’s parents and grandparents prepared lunch. And just like that girl in the book who read in an attic—Lucy too read in an attic! Life was wonderful already—wasn’t it? Life was a dream. Life was a book! A book skipping along a path strewn with roses and hung with garlands—the volumes all in a neat row. Skipping happily down the worn path, the beautiful path lit with sunlight! In the other room, Ketzia quietly wept as she stood at the window,bathed in pee-yellow light. Undressed except for the boots. Merry,idly twirling her hair,considered the scene. “No,” she said. “That’s not right at all, Ketzia. Stand just on one foot, with the other foot up at your knee, turned to the side. I don’t care if it makes you dizzy—if you fall down, that’s your problem, loser.” From poor Aunt Gimpel’s quarters—pink roses on the walls and on the curtains—Lucy could not hear them. She was too busy imagining herself in a book being written that very moment by a wonderfully kind and intelligent person. ...