Protecting Marie: Chapters 1–5

“You look gorgeous,” Fanny had said somewhat wistfully, as though she knew her mother’s beauty could rub off on her daughter only by magic.

She did not belong to the popular clique.

“It’s your young, garbled vision clouding things. Hopefully, you’ll outgrow it—your garbled vision. Then you’ll see how beautiful you really are.”

Fanny dawdled, watching snow land on her mittens and melt.

She decided to keep her coat on. It was saffron yellow with a large tawny stain across the back and a fake leopard-skin collar.

She decided to keep her coat on. It was saffron yellow with a large tawny stain across the back and a fake leopard-skin collar.

“Say it. It’s...got...nothing...” Ellen prompted.

Some of the houses were decorated on the outside with hundreds of small white lights strewn across shrubs and circling porch railings like stars.

They drove by a sprawling brown Pontiac Catalina that was parked at a cockeyed angle and already collecting snow.

Embossed in red on its license plate were the letters and numbers: KB 8207.

Traipsing through the woods by myself will do me good.

Ellen held out a handsome brooch for Fanny to see.

But she had forgotten to bring her fan downstairs, and so she tumbled off the futon at about one A.M., nudged awake by the incessant sounds of the night.

She heard the wind whooshing through the flue.

Only when she felt her mother beside her and made out the frame of the mantel in the bleary light, did she realize where she was and that Nellie was long gone.

Henry’s resistance to owning a dog was just as strong as Fanny’s desire. The more she pleaded for one, the more emphatic Henry’s refusals became.

He lectured her on the troublesome aspects of training a puppy, emphasizing how time-consuming and filthy the whole undertaking was.

A smooth, creamy dog was lying in pure snow, its eye closed lazily, its paw slipped under its muzzle.

She would remember how her hands encompassed its round, pink belly.

And how it was like the world. She would remember its smell—hot and loamy and sweet-stinky and comfortable.

“And so, when the gallery called the art office to say that they wanted to represent me, I was, well, elated. Understandably so.”

The petals were so dark they looked black at the innermost whorl.

“They’re extravagant,” Ellen said as she separated a few stems that were entwined and worked them into the vase.

Fanny watched the balloon without blinking. First it looked like a kite. Then it looked like two birds—one big, one small—far, far away. And then it looked like nothing at all but part of the mottled sky.

They folded the sheets and blankets they had used last night and piled them neatly with the pillows from their bedrooms on the stodgy corduroy chair.

She started up the steps, then reached back and grabbed the newel post, facing Ellen.

She tried to muster up all the courage she had to shape this Christmas into a good one.

The Christmas Fanny was five, the weather had been balmy—sunny and in the sixties—unusual for winter in Wisconsin.

Henry stifled a laugh and covered Fanny’s small hands with his big ones.

When Fanny came back downstairs, she was flushed from her shower.

Fanny became acutely aware of how the shirt felt between her fingers. If she rubbed too hard, she thought it might disintegrate.

“Want some breakfast?” Ellen asked. “Before this becomes a full-fledged bakery?”

She ate it slowly, relishing every crumb.

She had not inherited Henry’s penchant for neatness, as a quick look around her room would clearly indicate.

Instantly aware that Henry’s game did not involve searching for pretend, dim-witted monsters or inept fairies, but rather real things—her things—things she wanted to keep.

Marie’s torso and head had been cut from a Lucky Charms box. Her spindly arms and legs were thin strips of typing paper glued to the torso.

Fanny had used everything from wrapping paper to gum wrappers to newspaper. Of course, there were snippets to represent all of the paper families.

Fanny had nothing to file, per se, so she used the file cabinet as a secure home for her most prized possessions.

Before closing and locking the drawers, Fanny gingerly removed Marie.

She would leave her dresser drawers open. She would leave her dirty socks on the throw rug. She plunked herself down on her unmade bed defiantly and rested her eyes.