The Shining Girls

Rachel ^{13 JUNE 1993}

Shards of glass from the smashed window pane lie dull on the woven carpet just inside the front door. The canvases, mounted, not framed, along one side of the hallway have been slashed with casual hostility; someone dragging a knife along the wall as he walked.

In the kitchen, the replica Degas ballerinas and Gauguin island girls painted in strange juxtaposition on the cupboard doors look down with dainty indifference at the boxes that have been knocked over, their contents spilled across the floor.

The splayed open photo album is on the counter. Pictures have been removed, torn up and discarded on the tiles; so much confetti. A woman in a white bathing suit squinting into the sun, her face sheared through.

In the living room, the sleek round ’70s table lies on its back with its legs in the air like an overturned turtle. The tchotchkes and art books and magazines that were on it are tumbled across the floor. A bronze lady with a bell hidden under her skirt lies on her side beside a china bird with its head snapped off, leaving a jagged wound of white ceramic. The bird’s head stares blankly at a fashion editorial of angular young women in ugly clothes.

The couch has been cut up, long violent slashes that expose the soft synthetic innards and the bone of the frame.

Upstairs, the door to the bedroom is ajar. On the drawing table, spilled black ink is soaking into the paper, obliterating the illustration of a grimly curious duckling interrogating the skeleton of a dead raccoon in a bear’s tummy. Some of the hand-lettered words are still visible.

‘It’s too bad. I’m so sad.

But I’m glad for what I had.’

A colored glass ornament sways slowly in the sun dappling through the window, casting crazy circles of light across the devastated room.

The neighbors did not come to investigate the noise.