Too Much Stairs THE VAILLANCOURTS ARE CATLESS but otherwise without flaw: mother, father, three girls, and a boy. Mr. Vaillancourt, a hydraulics man whose job is to prevent disaster, rotates through the mill’s myriad departments on first shift with his tools and hardhat, looking the massive machinery up and down, thinking, I’ll fix you before you can break. Mrs. Vaillancourt is pretty and kind and named Theresa, like our school, like my middle name, which I decide to start spelling with the French h. It hurts her some to see me here, quivering at the top of her stairs, asking Is Denise home?, craning to see into the kitchen. She, too, lost her father young, feels it afresh every time she hears the timorous knock and opens the door and it’s me. “Would you like to call home?” Mrs. Vaillancourt asks when suppertime comes and I make no move to leave. I want to stay so badly. “Please, Mum,” I whisper into the Vaillancourts’ receiver. What I don’t say: I love it here. No cats but so what?
What do You think about When We Were The Kennedys?
