Object Lessons Part 14

"Liar, liar, your pants are on fire," said Monica in an even voice. "Just a warning, Maria Goretti. Anything you can do I can do better. You may think it's Monica, zero, Maggie, one. But you're wrong. We're even now."

"That's not how I am," Maggie said.

"Oh," Monica said in a squeaky little voice. "That's not how I am. I'm a good girl."

"You are a witch, Monica," Maggie said.

"Now, Maggie," said Aunt Ca.s.s.

"My, my, my," Monica repeated, her smile tight.

"And you don't fool me one bit," Maggie added.

"I don't fool you," said Monica, and though her voice was low it somehow felt as if she was screaming. "I don't fool you. G.o.d! With your family? With your birthday six months after your parents' anniversary? Don't talk to me about fooling. Don't talk to me, Maria Goretti. All I have to do is open my mouth and you'll be in so much trouble you'll never know what happened. Good little Maggie Scanlan. G.o.d, if they only knew. You're worse than everyone else because you pretend to be so good."

"Monica, this will stop," Aunt Ca.s.s said.

"Can I believe my ears?" said Monica shrilly. "We're defending Maggie? How many times have I heard you talk about how her mother is not our sort, dear? How many times have I heard my father complain that she sucks up to Grandpop so she'll get more of the money? G.o.d, Mother, one night when you were drunk you even called her a wop. Why are we standing up for her now?"

"Monica, you are not yourself," said Aunt Ca.s.s, her face crimson, her voice shaking.

"Oh, cut the Mary Frances routine," Monica said, falling back into the chair. "This is myself. This is it. This is me, the real me." She pointed a narrow foot at Maggie. "Who knows who she really is." Maggie looked down at her fingers holding the charred piece of cardboard as though they were strange to her. She threw the match on the floor. "You'd better learn the facts of life before it's too late, Maria Goretti," said Monica. "Or you'll wind up like your mother."

"I'd rather wind up like my mother than wind up like you," Maggie said.

"Same difference," said Monica.

"No," said Maggie.

"May we finish fitting the dress now, ladies?" the saleswoman said.

"I don't think I'm going to need the dress," Maggie said.

"You'll probably be in jail," said Monica.

"No, no, absolutely not, I will not allow this," said Aunt Ca.s.s, who seemed close to tears. "You must be in the wedding. It will seem strange to everyone if you're not."

"It will seem strange to me if I am," Maggie said.

"Maggie, please. I cannot cope if you make trouble."

Maggie turned back to the mirror. Her face was white and her eyes were glowing. The salon was completely silent, and in the silence she could hear herself breathing;. "What do you think you'll be doing in twenty years, Monica?" Maggie said in a low voice, and she could tell by the look on her cousin's face that the question was first unexpected, then unpleasant.

"I haven't the faintest idea," Monica said.

"I do," said Maggie.

"You can tell the future now, Maria Goretti?"

"I can tell yours."

"Now let us take the dress off," said the saleswoman, and she drew the curtains and left Maggie alone again.

18

IT WAS BECAUSE OF THE PARKING LOT that Connie almost turned back, not because of the hospital. She still found parallel parking a problem. She had driven right past her aunt Rose's house one afternoon because her uncle Frank's car was in the pitched driveway and she would have had to parallel park at the curb. The hospital lot had head-in s.p.a.ces: she had tried them at shopping centers twice and found that if she cleared the car on the right, she wound up with her front b.u.mper heading straight at the side of the car on the left, and if she started successfully toward the back of the s.p.a.ce, she was sure to see that one side of the car was in danger of being pleated by the back b.u.mper of another. Before Connie had known how to drive she had thought it was a silly adolescent thing, much overrated. She realized now that she had made herself think that about all the things she could not do, like swimming and riding a bicycle, and that there were difficult and elaborate skills the rest of the world had that she lacked. In a way the knowledge had been soothing; the thought of some essential inferiority made her feel more at home with others than her belief in her superiority had. that Connie almost turned back, not because of the hospital. She still found parallel parking a problem. She had driven right past her aunt Rose's house one afternoon because her uncle Frank's car was in the pitched driveway and she would have had to parallel park at the curb. The hospital lot had head-in s.p.a.ces: she had tried them at shopping centers twice and found that if she cleared the car on the right, she wound up with her front b.u.mper heading straight at the side of the car on the left, and if she started successfully toward the back of the s.p.a.ce, she was sure to see that one side of the car was in danger of being pleated by the back b.u.mper of another. Before Connie had known how to drive she had thought it was a silly adolescent thing, much overrated. She realized now that she had made herself think that about all the things she could not do, like swimming and riding a bicycle, and that there were difficult and elaborate skills the rest of the world had that she lacked. In a way the knowledge had been soothing; the thought of some essential inferiority made her feel more at home with others than her belief in her superiority had.

She had found herself frantic as she drove to the hospital, and she had thought at first that it was because this was only her second time out alone. But then she realized it was about Joey, about what had happened in the parking lot. Staring at her bedroom ceiling the night before, she had replayed it all in her head and felt herself flush all over again, flush and burn. And for the first time she had admitted to herself that the baby within her had saved her from committing adultery. She would have done it, in daylight, with Joseph in the back seat, if some combination of hormones and nerves had not forced nausea to triumph over l.u.s.t.

She had hung around the kitchen all morning, finding odd jobs for herself, and it was not until she jumped at the sound of a truck door slamming that she realized she had been waiting for a visitor, waiting for the visit that would ruin her life.

She had gotten into Tommy's car, then; he had left it in the driveway while he went off with one of the cement-truck drivers, but somehow she saw the fact that it was there as an omen, a sign, and an opportunity to save herself. She did not know why she was here, at the hospital, except that in some odd way she equated her fall from grace with John Scanlan. Just for a moment, on the way there, she had wondered if her father-in-law had planned this, had somehow arranged for Joey Martinelli to be the foreman at the project for this very reason. "I'm off my trolley," she muttered to herself in the quiet of the car.

She found a s.p.a.ce all the way at the back of the lot, where there were no other cars, and pulled in, straddling one of the painted white dividing lines. She walked toward the building, its big brick smokestack sending a plume of gray-black up toward the sky. In her straw bag was the Daily News Daily News, and an airline bottle of Four Roses she had found in the back of the liquor cabinet.

Her heart was throbbing so violently as she crossed the parking lot that she wondered if, beneath her blouse, it looked like a painting of the Sacred Heart, a red oval, fiery like a bull's-eye on her body. All night she had rehea.r.s.ed what she would say, how she would try to persuade John Scanlan to give up the idea of moving them into that new house, how she would try to talk him out of forcing Tommy into Scanlan & Co. Tommy hadn't told her a thing, but she had known what was happening when she saw the new key on his key ring, and heard from Joey that the word was out that the old man was selling First Concrete. She had thought at first that she would try to talk to Tommy, but then she had realized that it was useless to discuss the matter with anyone but John Scanlan himself. When she recognized this, she knew some part of her life was over, that she had grown up, and that it was not the liberation she had always thought it would be, but an acceptance of her own powerlessness.

She was relieved, at the visitor's desk, to find that no one else had a pa.s.s to be in John Scanlan's room. No one would demand an explanation of why she was stopping by for the first time in her father-in-law's month-long illness, and how she had arrived at the hospital. Standing in the doorway of the room, listening to John Scanlan snore hoa.r.s.ely, she knew that her carefully rehea.r.s.ed speech had been a waste of time. Looking across at his beaky profile, the hair slipping over his high forehead, she felt a frisson of fear and dislike, but she knew that he would never again be the power that ruled all their lives. His chest was too sunken, his breathing too tenuous. With a kind of sympathy she looked at the tubes running to and from the bed and realized that he was catheterized, and thought what a humiliating thing that was for a man.

When she stepped to the side of the bed she saw that someone else was there, too, asleep in a chair. It was John's secretary, Dorothy. Connie had only met her once, at a horrid party for John's sixtieth birthday, but she recognized her because something about her stolid face and figure had reminded Connie of her aunt Rose. Tommy had told her that Dorothy was helping out, although the table her father-in-law had been using as a desk was empty now except for a stack of blank Scanlan & Co. stationery.

"Dorothy," Connie whispered, touching her arm lightly.

The other woman slowly raised her head and looked at the bed, then up at Connie. Half asleep, she stared, and then her eyes widened with panic.

"It's okay," Connie said. "You must have fallen asleep. It's kind of stuffy in here."

"We were working," said Dorothy, her fingers, with their big knuckles, twisting round one another like a tangled ball of yarn.

Connie looked down at John Scanlan. It was clear that he was barely capable of consciousness, much less work. She tried to search Dorothy's face for some sign of guilt or fear, but the woman was staring at her hands in her lap. All Connie could see were the big tortoisesh.e.l.l pins that held Dorothy's hair in an old-fas.h.i.+oned roll at the base of her neck.

"That was nice of you," Connie said.

"I have to go," Dorothy said. "I have to pick up my daughter." Her hands twisted again. "You have a daughter, too," she added.

"Yes."

"Mr. Scanlan likes her. Your daughter, I mean."

"I know."

Dorothy rose heavily. She wore a cameo at the throat of her white cotton blouse. Connie thought she looked out of time, like a visitor from the last century. Her eyes were red. She picked up her purse from the floor, and a paperback book. At the door she turned and looked at John Scanlan.

"He's dying," she said.

"Yes," said Connie.

"I'm glad," said Dorothy, and for just a moment there was a blaze of savagery in her eyes and an acrimony in her voice that made her seem half mad. Then she turned and left.

"Jesus Christ," whispered Connie, sitting down, repelled by the warmth still lingering from Dorothy's body. "What did he do to her? her? How many others are there? Jesus Christ, what a life this man has led." For a long time she sat there and watched him sleep. Twice a nurse came in, glanced briefly at the blue cardboard visitor's pa.s.s and at the patient, then left again. The level in the IV ebbed slowly. Connie read the How many others are there? Jesus Christ, what a life this man has led." For a long time she sat there and watched him sleep. Twice a nurse came in, glanced briefly at the blue cardboard visitor's pa.s.s and at the patient, then left again. The level in the IV ebbed slowly. Connie read the Daily News Daily News. She left the little bottle of Four Roses in the top drawer of the bedside table. The light outside deepened slightly, from a white to a pale, pale yellow. Finally Connie came to accept that if the key to a prison were on her husband's key ring, he had put it there himself.

She had nearly made up her mind to leave when John Scanlan turned his head on the pillow and opened his eyes. The deep blue was masked by a rheumy film, like the shadow a dog's eyes develop when old age has set in. For the first time that she could remember Connie looked him in the face, eye to eye, and did not flinch, did not look away.

He stretched out his big hand, soft and dry as a snake's skin. The veins on the back were enormous, and by some trick of the light or because of his illness, they seemed to be throbbing.

"Franny," he said hoa.r.s.ely, reaching for her.

Connie drew back, but he pulled her arm closer and threaded his fingers through hers, engulfing her palm in his own. "Don't be angry, sweetheart," he said, almost as though he was talking to himself. "You're prettier when you smile." And he grinned, a kind of rictus now that his face had been pared down to bone and sinew. Connie thought she had never heard his brogue so thick, even when he was telling stories at parties and had had too much to drink. His grip made the stone on her engagement ring cut into her finger.

For a long time he said nothing, just stared and breathed heavily, as though he had been running. "The children are in bed," he said once. "Good riddance." A few minutes later he winked at her, and said "You're my girl." Connie was pink with embarra.s.sment, although she knew that it was not her he was seeing; she was afraid, too, afraid that he would somehow suddenly snap out of it and be enraged at so revealing himself, be enraged at being duped, even if he had done the duping himself. His lids drooped and he began to breathe more evenly; then they snapped up, like shades that had been pulled at the bottom, and he began to talk as though there was not enough time to get out all the words.

"I'm sorry you lost the baby, Franny," he said groggily, his voice catching on every consonant. "It was the blood that did it. The doctor said it happens sometimes, but there was no blood with the boys. She was a beautiful little thing, but the doctor said 'She won't live, Mr. Scanlan,' and you wanting a daughter so bad, after the three sons, wanting someone you could put in little dresses with the ribbons and things." He fell silent but his breathing was loud. "I remember when you said 'I'm not having any more to break my heart. You have all your boys.' And you didn't want to let me come near, but that kind of thing can't be allowed to last." Connie could hear the sounds of the hospital out in the corridor, the rattling of the gurneys, the footsteps of the nurses. Finally he added, "You can't deny your husband, Franny. That's G.o.d's law."

He turned his head away from her and breathed so heavily that Connie was terrified and thought for a moment she should call the nurse. It was a horrible noise, and she wanted it to stop, but she was afraid that if it did he would begin to speak again. She did not want to hear any more.

Finally he turned his head back to her, and Connie saw that the tears were running down his face. He looked at their two hands, linked at the edge of the mattress, and then he looked up, and his face was contorted with grief, his lower lip shaking as though he had palsy, the tears dripping off his chin onto his pajamas, darkening the thin cotton. He pressed the back of her hand to his lips, and Connie recoiled, but he pulled her toward him again, with all the strength of a young man. Connie thought his tears must clear away his blindness and he would see her for who she was, but when he looked up again he only whispered "Please," and she felt the kind of sympathy for him that she always felt for her husband, the sort you feel for a small child, although she never felt it for her own children.

"It's all right, John," she said softly, pressing his fingers. "Everything is all right."

"Say you forgive me," he said.

"I forgive you."

He turned his head away and looked at the ceiling. Then his eyes closed. He dropped her hand, and the snoring began again.

She sat there for a while, and then picked up her purse and left. It was cooler out in the parking lot, and the sky seemed a deeper blue. She knew it must be past dinnertime. She wished she had taken the bottle of whiskey with her; she thought she could use a drink. Driving home, hunched slightly over the wheel, she knew she had learned one thing that afternoon: she would never be alone with Joey Martinelli again. She thought of the old man lying in the bed, of all the business deals and the machinations, and of him saying, last of all, "Say you forgive me." She didn't want to need forgiveness at the end.

That night when her husband came home from the hospital he told her that his father had fallen into a coma and that the doctors did not expect him to come out of it again. "My mother's all upset," said Tommy, sitting at the red Formica table in the kitchen, sipping his beer and staring into s.p.a.ce, "because she says the last words he ever said to her were 'This is the toughest G.o.dd.a.m.n roast beef I've ever tasted in my life' when she brought him a sandwich for lunch yesterday."

"It would be in character," Connie said, knowing that if she did not tell him now she could never tell him, yet knowing that for some reason she could not tell him now. She looked into his face, trying to find the man she thought, so many years ago, would save her. And she realized, without regret, that it had been the other way around, and that she would have to live with that responsibility, even embrace it, for the rest of her life. She realized that for years she had wanted to sit by John Scanlan's side and say "To h.e.l.l with you." But she had moved beyond the desires of that woman now. She had become a person who could sit there, hand in hand with that awful man, and forgive him his trespa.s.ses, whatever they might be. And if her husband knew that, he would know something that would ruin his life even more decisively than his father had tried to do. He would know that his wife was stronger than he was.

"She thought he was going to get better," Tommy said sadly. "She thought he would be all right."

19

IN ONE CORNER OF THE BLACK, A TINY zigzag of lightning leapt like a tic in the eye of the sky. Maggie could see it from her bedroom window, just beyond the sweep of gingham below the curtain rod. She was alone in the house. The lights were out. A thunderstorm was coming. Maggie's mouth was dry and full of an awful taste. zigzag of lightning leapt like a tic in the eye of the sky. Maggie could see it from her bedroom window, just beyond the sweep of gingham below the curtain rod. She was alone in the house. The lights were out. A thunderstorm was coming. Maggie's mouth was dry and full of an awful taste.

The adults were gone again. Maggie often came home in the late afternoons from riding her bicycle aimlessly on the back roads and found the house empty and airless, like a house in a horror movie after The Thing has pa.s.sed through town and gone. She would go up to her room and soon would hear the idling of a car in the driveway, like dogs growling, and then the heavy sound of the car door and the lighter one of the storm door downstairs. Then the sounds of pots and pans from below, the preparation of dinner.

It seemed to her that all the adults were acting more like children than they had before. The bickering on Sundays, usually the purview of Maggie and Monica and a handful of the younger cousins, was now between Tommy and James, or Margaret and Mark. Mary Frances wept. Old patterns and alliances had surfaced and rea.s.serted themselves, so that her grandmother was dependent upon Margaret, meek with James, and clinging and loving with Tommy. For some reason Mary Frances had decided to reupholster her entire living room in blue damask, and half the furniture was missing. The grandchildren sat on the floor, their patent-leather pumps and saddle shoes making spots of light on the carpet. The atmosphere made them silent and watchful. Monica especially was quiet. She sat at the mahogany dining-room table and read Life Life magazine, her face as white and s.h.i.+ny as the surface of the pages. "G.o.d, I wish he'd die and get it over with," she had said last Sunday, fanning herself with a magazine, her honey-colored hair waving wet on her temples. Then she had disappeared into the bathroom, the water running from behind the closed door. Maggie suspected that Monica was crying in there, and this, more than anything else, made her feel everything was off-center. The two of them had not spoken since their encounter at the bridal salon. Maggie was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for the bride, so drawn, so hard-eyed, so brittle in her descriptions of tea sets and china patterns, so joyless two weeks before what Maggie had always thought was supposed to be the happiest day of your life. magazine, her face as white and s.h.i.+ny as the surface of the pages. "G.o.d, I wish he'd die and get it over with," she had said last Sunday, fanning herself with a magazine, her honey-colored hair waving wet on her temples. Then she had disappeared into the bathroom, the water running from behind the closed door. Maggie suspected that Monica was crying in there, and this, more than anything else, made her feel everything was off-center. The two of them had not spoken since their encounter at the bridal salon. Maggie was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for the bride, so drawn, so hard-eyed, so brittle in her descriptions of tea sets and china patterns, so joyless two weeks before what Maggie had always thought was supposed to be the happiest day of your life.

The development was quiet. Some of the kids had given up on it, bored and put off by the finished quality of the model houses. Others were worried about trouble. The fires had been in the local newspaper, and the mothers had started to sniff their children's s.h.i.+rts for the scent of smoke. The construction company had hired guards to patrol three times a night; on their first trip out they had picked up some ninth graders in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a split-level house and brought them home while the neighbors watched from beneath their hall lights. A coffee-colored mongrel that had wandered into one of the model homes and become stuck in a crawl s.p.a.ce, howling like a mourner at an Irish wake, had been taken to the pound by one of the guards and put to sleep before his owners had figured out where he was. The younger kids swore that his s.h.a.ggy ghost haunted the house in the middle of the night, howling from below the kitchen linoleum. From Maggie's bedroom window she could see the guards in their tan uniforms, pale shadows with flashlight beams moving at an angle ahead of them. They pa.s.sed through at nine and again at eleven and, she supposed, at some later time, too, when she was already asleep. In between they checked the doors and windows of the A & P in the next town, the two churches in Kenwood, and the Kenwoodie Club to make sure that no one had scaled the fence to go skinny dipping.

She had spent the day at her grandfather's cemetery, but she and Angelo hardly spoke now. More and more, Damien helped him out with his gardening, and Maggie had lost the knack for being happy there. Until this horrible sweaty season, lines had been drawn, in her house, her neighborhood, her relations.h.i.+ps. Some of them were boundaries-good and bad, us and them-and some of them were lines that connected people-mother and father, friend to friend. They had all been rubbed out as surely as if they had been written in chalk, not stone, and Maggie knew she could not live without them. Sometimes she sat for hours with her back against the rough bark of a tree, blowing on a blade of gra.s.s between her fingers, wondering what would happen next. Often she cried.

When she got home, she had walked out to the development. She knew Debbie would be there. She had gone to the Malone house the day before because Mrs. Malone had invited her. Charles Malone had been in a ba.s.sinet in the kitchen, sucking loudly on the neckband of his T-s.h.i.+rt, little beads of p.r.i.c.kly-heat ranged like a necklace around the crease in his fat neck. "That baby is more like a potato than a human being," Mrs. Malone had said, not at all regretfully, as she chopped onions at the kitchen counter. "He just lies there all day sucking on whatever he can get into his mouth. He'll want a beer by the time he's three."

"Aren't most babies like that?" said Maggie, who was sitting at the table while Debbie was upstairs getting dressed. Her long wet hair was dripping onto the seat of her shorts, and even though Mrs. Malone was all the way across the room, Maggie's eyes were tearing from the onions.

"Lord, no," Mrs. Malone said, dabbing at her face with a paper towel. "That Aggie didn't settle down until she was two. Crying all the time unless you carried her around the room on your shoulder. Lifting those little legs and pa.s.sing gas so loud you could hear her all through the house. It was all I could do not to pitch her out the window." She lifted a corner of her ap.r.o.n and wiped her eyes. "d.a.m.n," she said. The baby lost his piece of T-s.h.i.+rt, let out a momentary yell, and had found his middle fingers by the time Maggie got to the ba.s.sinet. He had a funny egg-shaped head, like a cartoon character.

The entire house was in a tizzy because Helen was coming home for dinner. It was difficult to imagine what a difference six weeks could make. Helen had become a visiting dignitary from another world, Monica had become engaged and Maggie's mother had become a wraith who evaporated and reappeared without warning in her own home. Mrs. Malone, whose idea of a balanced meal was tuna on toast with a slice of tomato, had planned scalloped potatoes and Salisbury steak for the occasion, bending over cookbooks that had been shower gifts many years ago, their bindings still cracking when they were opened because they had so rarely been used.

Debbie found it all incredibly annoying: her mother dressed in fresh Bermudas and a pressed s.h.i.+rt, her father home early, a cloth on the dining-room table, which was usually reserved for family holidays, and Maggie invited without her permission and against her will. She had wanted to have Bridget Hearn there, too, but Mrs. Malone had said no. "She's not family," she had said in front of Maggie, who had flushed when Debbie said, with an abrupt gesture, "Neither is she." Debbie had gone upstairs to change without asking Maggie to go along, but Maggie had followed anyhow, listening as Debbie railed to herself as she dressed. "Does she think my sister is going to think she turned into a good cook in one month? Does she think my sister will all of a sudden think we eat in the dining room every night?" Maggie suspected that Debbie kept referring to Helen as her sister in an attempt to cut her down to size, but it was all in vain.

Aggie and Debbie had gone downtown with a friend of Helen's from Sacred Heart to see Helen in the revue. While Debbie had said it was "okay," Aggie had been more specific. "She had on this thing like a leotard, you know?" she said, leaning forward, her eyes bright in the beam of a flashlight they had turned on on the floor of the development house. "It was white and it had her heart painted on it like it was bleeding, with drops running down her stomach. And she sang this great song called 'Loving One Another.' And this guy behind us with a beard? He said to this other guy who was with him, 'That's the one I told you about.' And the other guy said, 'You weren't kidding.'" She looked really beautiful. It was really quiet when she sang."

"You could see through her costume," Debbie said.

"You could, a little bit," Aggie said. "Like you can see through my white suit right after I go in the pool? But I think people thought it was just shadows."

"Sure," said Debbie, snorting.

Debbie snorted now as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. "An ap.r.o.n?" she said. "Oh, hush," Mrs. Malone said, trying to get the smell of onions off her hands.

"You use a lemon," Maggie said. "You rub it on your hands and then rinse them off with cold water."

Mrs. Malone looked over her shoulder in surprise. "Forty years old last month and I've never heard that," she said. "Does it work?"

"My mom does it."

Mrs. Malone opened the refrigerator. "I'll try it next time," she said. "I'll buy a lemon."

Debbie snorted. "Listen to Maggie," she said. "She knows everything." Mrs. Malone had looked from one girl to another and then turned back to the sink when there was a noise behind them. It was Helen, dropping some shopping bags and a big purse shaped like a shopping bag into a chair. She smiled at Maggie, put her finger to her lips and glided across the kitchen. She was wearing pink ballet slippers and a white dress that looked like a slip with pink flowers embroidered on it. Maggie could see that beneath the dress she wore no underwear except for tiny underpants. She had never seen such tiny underpants before.

"Guess who?" Helen said, putting her hands over her mother's eyes.

Mrs. Malone jumped and whirled around. She looked as wiry as an old man next to her soft, slightly rounded daughter. But a resemblance was there, in the clean planes of their faces, in the delighted, dazzled look they both wore.

"You're early!" Mrs. Malone said.

"Early?" Helen said, falling back a bit. "I live here!"

"Not anymore," said Debbie.

Helen whirled around and studied Debbie narrowly. Then she grinned. "You're right, Deb," she said lightly. Her hair was growing longer, and a heavy line of blue beneath her lower lashes made her eyes look even bluer. She stooped over the ba.s.sinet and ran one finger along the side of the baby's face. "He looks like a water balloon," she said.