Luster

Once back inside the house, Rebecca excuses Edie upstairs. Edie overhears Rebecca and Eric’s conversation and begins to pack her things and contemplate spending the night in her storage container. Akila opens her door and motions for Edie to join her in her room. Akila warns Edie, “It’s going to be all night” (142). She also unveils that the family has been in intensive therapy. She asks Edie: “Please don’t mess this up” (142).

The next morning, Edie wakes up after falling asleep in Akila’s room. She wanders downstairs quietly and stumbles on Eric in the downstairs bathroom. Eric and Edie stare at each other in the mirror before he ignores her. She moves on with the day and attempts to ignore what has happened. She packs a few sandwiches and takes a train to Manhattan, where she arrives at a library. After passing through an exhibit called “Wartime Cognitive Dissonance and the Physiology of Dissent” (146), Edie reflects on her father’s struggles after serving in the navy and her “struggle to understand the blind anger and periods of profound withdrawal” (147). Edie also reveals that her mother was her father’s third wife.

Edie recalls her father’s stories of his mentally ill mother of whom he was afraid. Like her father feared his mother, she feared her father. Edie details how “he had […] found it fetid and strange, killing for his country—a country that, once he was back home, reminded him that patriots could be shell-shocked, could be spangled in Arlington grass, but absolutely could not be black” (148).

Edie visits the special collections in the basement of the library. She watches the female archivists work before spotting Eric, who “opens a book underneath a mounted light” (149). She watches him work with a female archivist who is next to him and takes in how “he is warm and involved, apparently the kind of boss who is also your friend” (149). Edie returns to the house and spends the day taking photos of items around the house.

Recounting her time as a religious teenager, Edie remembers how she kept the Sabbath and struggled to fit in with her peers. Edie recalls her mother’s catatonic episodes, during which she would proclaim “that God was dead” (153). In the present, Edie maintains a low profile around the house. She continues to make still lifes of objects around the house and play video games with Akila, who shares how “her mother was swept away in a flood” (154). Edie purchases additional art supplies and continues to paint while struggling to paint a self-portrait.

Rebecca asks Edie to help her plan a birthday party for Akila, who does not want a party. On a Sunday, they drive to a local skating rink and set up for Akila’s party. Only two kids show up. Everything goes wrong, from Akila being unable to break the piñata to the cake having the wrong number of candles. The stress of this moment is broken when first Eric, then Akila, and then the rest of them begin to laugh. They all head out to the skating rink and attempt to have fun until the rink’s disco ball falls from the ceiling and into Akila’s arms.

Back at the house, they “disperse into our separate rooms” (160). Later that evening, Akila knocks on Edie’s door, and they play the video game they have been attempting to beat. After finishing a round, Edie begins to leave when Akila calls her back, “considers me and then removes her wig” (161). Her head is covered in scars from leaving in a relaxer for too long. Edie retrieves some supplies from her room and begins to work on Akila’s hair.

Edie continues her work of cleaning around the house and painting. She soon discovers money on a dresser and uses it to buy art supplies. Over the next few weeks, Edie continues to find more money left for her on her dresser. She takes Akila to get her hair braided. She wanders around the house at night and listens to Eric and Rebecca have sex.

Edie buys a blue dress and, one day when Rebecca is out, puts on the dress and makeup before heading to the basement to see Eric. After listening to vinyl records and having some gin, Eric “rolls up his sleeve and wraps his hand around my throat, a thoughtful, preliminary squeeze, as if the hand is not his own” (167). Edie struggles to breathe, Eric loosens his grip, and she leaves the basement.