screaming when he did. Only when she heard him snoring in the next room could she sleep. She could still feel his coarse skin on hers. She could still smell his breath coming hard and fast over her face and into her nostrils. She pulled off the state highway and onto the long driveway to the house. Ancient pines rose tall and straight into the night sky, filling her head with their overpowering fragrances and dwarfing her ugly memories. The house lay ahead, silhouetted against the sunless sky. Becky was glad she had brought company. “Wow,” Peggy breathed when Becky opened the front door. “I would die for this!” It impressed, Becky had to admit. The wide pine floor boards were partially covered by hand-loomed rugs from Arizona. The mantel of the huge stone fireplace supported ivory carvings from the Arctic. Hand-crafted copper chandeliers hung from the twelve foot ceilings. The tall windows were framed by hand-loomed three- toned golden drapes as heavy as rugs. The open staircase led to a wooden bridge which spanned the living room, connecting the bedrooms on the second floor to her studio and Joe's. For a moment she saw it all through Peggy's eyes. “Come on,” she yelled and ran into the kitchen. The room, even at dusk, glistened from the white formica countertops and the white appliances. Only a black kerosene stove which provided them with cooking facilities and a modicum of heat during power outages jarred the gleam. Large baskets of overflowing green plants hung from between the twin skylights that allowed views of the blue sky or clouds or wonderful combinations of both during the day and of the stars and moon on cloudless nights. In the living room she retrieved a long plastic box from under the stereo and fished through it for some head-banging music. She inserted Van Halen's OU812 and cranked up the volume so that the music almost shattered her ear drums and stopped her brain from rerunning the old memories that had started on the way home. Tommy returned from the kitchen with cans of beer for all of them, dropped two of them on the coffee table for Peggy and Becky and then sprawled on the white canvas chaise near the front sliders, gulping his beer, and smoking a long cigarette, imagining himself on top of Becky. She could tell exactly what he was thinking from the leer on his face. He watched her move around the room, while he destroyed his cigarette in an already-full ashtray and lit another one, his eyes glued to her body. Peggy didn't wait for an invitation to explore the house. She ran upstairs, flipping on light switches as she careened from one room to the next, shrieking ecstatically as she progressed.