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long, blond, slightly stringy hair tucked behind her ears, and giant hoop earrings—and just by the look of her scowling blue eyes and the lift of her chin and her folded arms, you can see that she’s furious. It must have been Soapie holding the camera—Soapie, who has never once told a story about Serena that didn’t involve some kind of fuss between them. There’s no glorifying the dead with Soapie, or overlooking their teenage mistakes.
    Oh, Mama. Why in the world aren’t you here helping me out with her now, where you should be?

[four]
    Serena didn’t go in any of the ordinary ways young people usually pick to die: some rare, exotic cancer, or drug overdose, or car accident. Instead, she was walking down the street in New York City, going to meet a friend for a Coke, and a piece of a building broke off from twelve stories above and smashed into her head, killing her instantly.
    Death by building. Seriously. What were the chances?
    Rosie was three, so all she has is a shadowy memory of her mother’s blond hair and flowery perfume, the feel of a lingering touch on her forehead once when she had a fever, and a couple of lullabies weaving in and out of her sleepiness, songs she’s pretty sure Soapie never sang to her. Had there also been a plastic kiddie pool they splashed in, and a time her mother had read her a story about ducklings? Did these things really happen, or are they simply snippets from old TV shows?
    As for her father, she never had the pleasure. According to Soapie, he married Serena and got her pregnant on purpose, thinking it would improve his chances of avoiding the draft. But then he headed for Canada anyway, leaving Serena waiting for him. Soapie’s lips always clamped shut when she told this part; her whole face changed, and a person could see how the photo-destroying rampage might have sprung from a mood this deep and dark.
    But then her grandmother would get that grim look on her face and switch the story back. Nope. No blamingother people. Serena had been a capable, educated adult, and no one
forced
her to be with David. It had been her stupid-headed belief in romance and melodrama, her sheer foolish girlishness. And that, young lady, comes with consequences: unintended babies, early marriage, and motherhood.
    And maybe even early death if you happen to be walking next to an unstable building.
    For Soapie, her daughter’s death meant she was plunged into another round of child rearing. Instead of the art-filled, easier middle-age years that Rosie knew she had planned for herself, Soapie left New York City and bought a four-bedroom colonial in North Haven, Connecticut, a place where no one knew them or the tragedy that trailed behind them like a bad smell. And why not start over in a whole new place? She’d tried her best with Serena, but there was no use in pretending that things had gone well. There had been lies and fights and rebellions and mistakes, drugs, bad boyfriends, the occasional arrest—everything the sixties had to offer. And then Serena was dead, and there was a child to raise.
    Luckily for Soapie, Rosie thinks, she was a well-behaved, nervous child, aware at some deep level that she’d been entrusted to someone who might not be totally able to withstand the full force of a normal American childhood. For the first years, she sat cuddled close to her grandmother on the brown couch in the den, quiet and watchful, as the cigarettes burned down in the ashtray, and the ice cubes melted in the vodka glass. Even then, she remembers knowing that this New England family dream house Soapie had bought was the wrong house for them. It was as though the house itself—with its black shutters and flagstone front walk, six-foot windows, a rose garden, a terrace, and hundred-year-old maples that arched over the lawn—expected to turn the two of them into a family, and held it against them when it didn’t work out.
    But life has a way of moving forward, and Rosie learned how to heat up