Kay Armstrong, Natalie's mother, was the volatile one in the family. The daughter of gypsylike, artistic parents, Kay had traveled as a child in Europe and Mexico; had absorbed her parents' passion for color, light, and change; and had inherited their exuberant emotions. She had settled as a young woman for the quiet, uncomplicated life of a small-town doctor's wife because she loved Alden Armstrong; but she brought to the family spontaneity and vibrancy that startled them all, at times. The Armstrong household was not like any other, and it was because of Kay.
It was the only house in Branford, Maine, for example, that had, in the modern, copiously tiled upstairs bathroom, an immense old-fashioned bathtub, with feet, in the center of the room. And the feet had Crimson Passion polish on each toe. Kay Armstrong had painted it there, meticulously, herself one October afternoon when all the other doctors' wives in Branford were listening to a speaker discuss The Art of Flower Arranging after their monthly luncheon, to which she had forgotten to go.
She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist.
"I bet that's the sexiest thing that's ever happened in this back yard," she had exclaimed, watching in glee from the kitchen window.
"Mother!" groaned Nancy. "Don't be gross!"
"Well." Her mother grinned. "If you know of anything more than that that's been going on back there, I hope you've consulted your father about birth control."
"Mother!" groaned Nancy again. Kay Armstrong had grinned and shrugged, still watching the striped sleeve making sporadic breeze-guided passes at the pink nightgown.
She was not your run-of-the-mill mother. Natalie adored her.
Natalie called downstairs from the door of her bedroom. "Mom! I'll be down in a few minutes to set the table, okay?"
"Yo," called her mother affably.
Yo. Natalie smiled. That's Marine talk, she thought. Who else ... who else in the world has a mother who talks like a boot camp Marine?
She went to the desk, opened the top drawer, took out the paper that was there, looked at it briefly, and sighed.
Yo. Her mother had not said "Yo" when she read that paper. Her mother's face had crumpled like an old Kleenex, and her mother had cried.
And her father had turned away, his face set in the stiff and puzzled lines that formed there when he had a patient he could not help. "Natalie," he had said, and the word, her name, was almost a question. It was filled with pain.
They had not spoken of it again. Natalie had always felt that there was nothing she could not discuss with her parents. They had talked, often, over the years, about feelings: about anger, about grief, about love. But they had read the paper, when she gave it to them, and she had seen all those same feelings in their faces; she had seen their anguish, as well. And it was something they had not been able to talk about.
It had been two months. They had not mentioned it. Life went on in the Armstrong home, in combinations made up of Nancy's boisterous cheer, Natalie's more introspective calm, Kay Armstrong's splashes of color and craziness, and the doctor's dignity that kept them all moving in smooth and well-directed currents. But there was an undercurrent to the life, now. The murky hurt she had inflicted hung like a translucent curtain; they all looked through it, around it, over and under it, and pretended that it had never been hung there at all.
Once her father's sister, Horrible Aunt Helen, had sent them a hideous ceramic lamp for Christmas. It was a pale green panther with a dim bulb suspended from his underside. If they placed it on top of the television, Horrible Aunt Helen had explained in her enclosed note, their eyes would be protected from damage that was likely to ensue from the flickering light of the screen.
"This guy is going to have terrible sexual problems," Natalie's mother had said, holding the panther upside down to examine the bulb and its dangling electric cord. "Why don't we just pack him up again and send him to Masters and Johnson in St. Louis?"
"Kay," her husband had said, "Helen stops here unannounced all the time. We have to put it on the TV, at least for a while, so we don't hurt her feelings."
"All right," said Mrs. Armstrong. She moved the small piece of Peruvian sculpture that had always stood on top of the television, and put the panther in its place. "But we shall consider it invisible."
They all looked at the panther. It was posed in a sinuous lunge, its fangs exposed. It was very large. Very, very green.
"Do you see a panther on top of the television?" asked Kay Armstrong.
"Nope." Nancy, who always caught the tail of her mother's fancies as they flew past, giggled. "Can't see a thing."
"A panther?" asked Natalie solemnly. "On the TV? Who in their right mind would have a panther on their TV?"
"Not the Armstrongs," said their father resolutely. "The Armstrongs are very tasteful people. I see nothing on the television at all."
The green panther had stayed there for a month. One afternoon Natalie, in her room, had heard a crash. When she went downstairs, her mother was picking up green ceramic pieces and dropping them into a wastebasket.
"Isn't it amazing," Kay Armstrong had said calmly, "how when something is invisible you are very apt to bump into it very hard with your elbow?"
"Amazing." Natalie grinned, helping her with the last green bits.
Now they were all playing the game again. If they pretended the paper didn't exist, it wouldn't exist.
But it does, Natalie thought. I had to write it. I had to ask them to read it.
And they will have to talk to me about it. Even if it hurts.
2
MACKENZIE COLLEGE'S APPLICATION blank had not been very different from any of the others. After the routine questions about Natalie's high school grades and activities, and after all the information about SATs, CEEBS, BOGs, and PCSs that sometimes made the whole college application procedure seem like something left glued to the bottom of the bowl when the alphabet soup was all gone, they had the question for which they had left an entire page of blank space.