"Lock your own mother up? You did that! You and Gifford, you lying little witch, you 
did that to me, your own mother! You think I would have done such a thing to my mother? 
You are a witch, Ancient Evelyn's right, you're a witch, take that bow out of your hair." 
And then they'd fought, Mona holding Alicia's wrists, forcing her back.
  
  "Come on, Mom! Stop it!"
  
  And then Alicia went limp as she always did, just a sack of potatoes on the floor, 
sobbing and pounding her fist. And the shock of seeing Ancient Evelyn in the doorway, 
which meant that she had made the long trek up the stairs by herself, not very good, and 
her dour words.
  
  "Do not hurt that child! Alicia, you are a common drunkard. Your husband is a common 
drunkard."
  
  "That child hurts me!" Alicia had wailed.
  
  No, Mona would never put her in a hospital again. But the others might. You never knew. 
Best not to drag Michael into it, even if he wanted to help her fix up the place. Scrap 
that plan. Go on to the next one.
  
  By the time she'd peeled off her clothes, the room was filled with delicious warm 
steam. She turned off the lights, so the only illumination came from the orange flames of 
the gas heater, and then she sank down into the tub of hot water, letting her hair stream 
out as if she were Ophelia again, or so she always imagined, floating to her death in the 
famous stream.
  
  She turned her head this way and that to stir her long hair in the water, seeing the 
swirl of red around her, to get it really clean. She pulled at the bits and pieces of 
dead leaf. God! One of these could have been a roach! How ghastly. It was this swirling 
back and forth that made her hair so thick and shining after, the long soak and the 
turning.  A shower would just beat it flat. She loved her hair to be as big and thick as 
possible.
  
  Perfumed soap. Wouldn't you know it? And a bottle of pearly thick shampoo. These people 
knew how to live. This was like a fine hotel.
  
  She washed her hair and body slowly, enjoying every minute of it, lathering gently all 
over and then sinking down to rinse the soap and shampoo away. Maybe she could somehow 
restore Amelia Street without inviting in all the new brooms of the family. Maybe she 
could explain to Uncle Michael that things had to be done cautiously and quietly, that he 
mustn't talk about Patrick and Alicia, that everybody knew anyway. But then what would 
they do when Ancient Evelyn started to tell the workmen to go home, or that they could 
not use noisy equipment?
  
  It was comforting to be clean. She thought again of Michael, the sleeping giant, in 
there in the witch's bed.
  
  She stood up and reached for the towel. She dried her hair roughly, tossing it forward 
and then backward, loving the freedom of being naked, and then she stepped out of the 
tub. The soft clean flannel gown felt snug and safe to her, though it was too long of 
course. So she'd pick it up like a little girl in an old-fashioned picture. That's how it 
made her feel. That's how her bow made her feel. Little old-fashioned girl was her 
favorite disguise, to the point where it wasn't a disguise at all.
  
  She rubbed her hair fiercely one more time, and then picked up the brush off the 
dressing table, stared at herself for a moment in the mirror, and then began brushing her 
hair firmly back away from her forehead and behind her shoulders, so that it would dry 
neatly as it should.
  
  The gas heat seemed to curl and breathe around her, to tap on her forehead with 
fingers. She picked up her bow of ribbon, and pinned it in place on the back of her head. 
She could just see two little bits of it sticking up. Like devil's horns.
  
  "Oncle Julien, the hour has come," she whispered, shutting her eyes tight. "Give me a 
clue. Where do I look for the Victrola?" She rocked from side to side, Ray Charles style, 
trying to recapture one vivid moment from all those ever fading dreams.
  
  A thin distant sound came to her, under the gentle roar of the gas heater, a song she 
could barely hear. Violins? Too thin a sound to tell what the instruments were, except 
there were many, and it was ... it was... She opened the bathroom door. Far far away, but 
it was the waltz from La Traviata playing. It was... the soprano singing. She started to 
hum it, irresistibly, but then she couldn't hear it! My God, what if the Victrola was 
down there in the living room!
  
  She padded barefoot, towel over her shoulders like a shawl, into the hallway and peered 
down over the balusters. Very distinctly came the song of the waltz, louder than it had 
ever been in her dreams. The woman sang gaily in Italian, and now came the chorus behind 
her, sounding on the whole scratchy record like so many birds.
  
  Her heart was pounding suddenly. She reached up and touched her bow to make sure it was 
securely clipped to her hair. Then she dropped the towel in a little careless heap and 
went to the head of the stairs. At that very instant, light softly leapt out of the 
doorways of the double parlor, and grew soundlessly brighter as she went down the steps. 
The wool carpet felt slightly rough to her bare feet, and when she incidentally saw her 
toes they looked very babyfied beneath the flannel, which she had to lift now, just like 
a picturebook kid.
  
  She stopped. As she looked down, she saw that the carpet was no longer the red wool 
carpet. It was an oriental runner, very worn, very thin. She felt the change of texture. 
Or rather she became aware of standing on something more threadbare, and she followed the 
cascade of Persian blue and pink roses down the stairs. The walls had changed around her. 
The wallpaper was a deep dusty gold, and far below an unfamiliar chandelier hung from the 
oval cluster of plaster leaves on the hallway ceiling - something frothy and Venetian 
that she could never recall having seen before. And it had real lighted candles in it, 
this little chandelier.
  
  She could smell the wax. The song of the soprano went on with its reliable and swinging 
rhythm, making her want to sing with it again.  Her heart was brimming.