The Point of Vanishing

middle of folding a towel. “Did Daddy say when he’s starting his new job?”
“In a month or two,” said Barbara.
My God, he’d already accepted the position. And he had the nerve to tell her not to get ahead of herself. His promise to discuss any offer with her before taking it was nothing more than a deceitful, argument-ending ploy. Would they need to sell their new house on short notice and find a home in New York? And if he decided to take the train back and forth, he’d be gone most of the day.
She felt like a spinning top knocked off balance—forced to set aside her writing and again burdened with managing another of Wilson’s disruptions. She should have foreseen this cavalier and dismissive side of him. There’d certainly been signs early on. When they first met, he’d spoken about his position at Dartmouth in that haughty manner intended to impress. And, during their first year of marriage, he’d complained endlessly about his department chair ordering him not to smoke in the classroom, an order he refused to follow.
Still, she’d been taken in by his intellect and impressive knowledge of literature and writers. Heaven knows he wasn’t handsome—gangly, of middling height, and slight in the shoulders. But his face had intrigued, even intimidated: the broad, aristocratic forehead, thick arching eyebrows, and brooding lower lip. He’d told her he admired her keen grasp of Jack London and Ford Madox Ford, and she’d been fool enough to swoon when he flattered. So now she could only take his arrogance in stride and comfort herself with the knowledge that he was a good father. Barbara, at least, felt nothing but admiration and adoration for him.

CHAPTER SIX
BARBARA AT TWELVE
New Haven, February–March 1927
When her father stepped through the door, Barbara flew at him, waving sheets of paper. “Look what came in the mail—The Saturday Review write-up.”
“Whoa,” he said, shucking off his overcoat. “Have you read it yet?”
“Just once.”
“Let me get changed. Then we can all look at it together.” Her father removed his hat and hung it on the hook over his coat. He bent over and kissed her forehead. “How are you, sport?”
“I’m good, Daddy. Glad your train was on time.” Her father took the train to New York every day because he held a prestigious editor position with Alfred A. Knopf.
He asked, “Where’s your mother?”
“Upstairs, making the beds.”
He stepped toward the stairs. “I’ll tell your mother to come down. You get your grandma.”
They all gathered around the dining room table, Barbara sitting beside her father and Grandma Ding and her mother across the table, with Sabra nestled on her mother’s lap.
Barbara spread the sheets out in front of her father.
He read the first line. “‘A strange, delightful, and lovely book, indeed.’”
She sat quietly beside her father, studying his expression.
“I love this part about Eepersip,” Barbara said, pointing at the first column and reading. “‘But she was not a child who could be contented easily. She packed a small lunch basket and ran away to an open glade on the upper slopes of Mount Varcrobis, and the first things she saw in the glade were a doe and her daisied fawn. In literature, as distinguished from the mass production of books, it is the happy gift for putting things like that that makes all the difference. Barbara knows this quite well.’”
Her mother grasped Sabra’s hands, and together they clapped. Sabra unleashed an excited “Yeeeee!”
“Daisied fawn,” said her father. “It is one of the loveliest phrases in the book.”
Her father hunched over the lines, and Barbara mimicked his pose.
“And here he tries to sum it all up,” said her father. He recited: “‘It tells of one little girl’s escape from the tiresome world of grown-up mechanisms and compromises. Eepersip went outdoors and stayed there. This, obviously, was her world, and she saw no reason why she should be asked to give it up. To submit to recapture was unthinkable.’”
Grandma Ding knit her hands over her knee and asked her, “Does Eepersip really want to run away, dear?”
Barbara paused a moment. Her grandma always worried about Eepersip being lonely. “Oh, yes, she was happy to escape. She truly loved nature and was happier there than in any other place. Each time she met a new animal or saw a new mountain or meadow, that became her joy, and she never regretted leaving behind the last wonder once she found a new one.”
Barbara took up the next page and nudged it in front of her father.
“It ends quite poignantly,” he said, picking up the page. “May I?”
Smiling impishly, Barbara nodded.
Her father read, “‘There are moments when, for one reader, this book grows almost unbearably beautiful. It becomes an ache in his throat. Weary middle age and the clear delicacy of a dawn-Utopia beckoning: The contrast sharpens to pain.’”
Her father smiled at her. “I’m proud of you, Barbara. Damn proud.”
Barbara reached for another clipping and slid it toward him. “Let’s look at the New York Times review again.”
“All right,” said her father, adopting a lecturer’s tone. “It’s lengthy, so I’ll just read the highlights.”
He cleared his throat. “‘What is most remarkable in the story of nine-year-old Barbara Follett’s heroine is that recourse is never once made to this order of fairy folk. From the moment of her escape on the foothills of Mount Varcrobis to the last line of the book, Eepersip is the protagonist of her own adventure. The feeling of liberation can grow at times to something very like ecstasy.’”
Her father looked up and winked at her mother. “He’s captured the essence of our wild child, hasn’t he?”
Her mother said, “Probably better than he knows.”
Barbara tapped her fingertips together. “Read some more, Daddy.”
Her father scanned the page. “‘Barbara Follett may live and write to 90. But she will never give us the flight of sea birds more truly and vividly than in these dozen and a half words she wrote at the time: “Strong, narrow wings beat down the air as the