Object lessons (27 page)

“His name is Bruce,” Maggie said.

“Can he really play decent ball?” said Tommy. Then he remembered why he had gone to her and he held out his arms. Monica and her father were already dancing, the bride’s train thrown over her arm, a little soiled where it had dragged on the ground on her way into church. Monica looked over her father’s shoulder, and he looked over hers. They looked like an illustration in a woman’s magazine: That Special Day.

Tommy turned to Maggie and gathered her up, gliding around the floor, circling the other couple with long, graceful steps. Every fourth step he would spin, holding Maggie’s fingers in his lightly. He felt good, covering the polished parquet, his shoulders squared. He looked down at Maggie, whose pink dress belled out behind her slightly, but she was looking down at her feet.

“Don’t look at your feet,” he said.

“I can’t follow if I don’t,” she said.

“Stand on mine,” Tommy said. “I can take it.”

“Daddy, I’m wearing high heels. I’m too big to stand on your feet.”

“Then close your eyes,” he said. “Close your eyes and don’t think about it.”

Maggie tilted her head back and shut her eyes; the lights made copper spots on her hair, and little sparks shone from the amethysts dangling from her earlobes. Tommy kept his arm tight around her waist and turned again, and now she was finally following him. She could not dance like her mother, but she was making a creditable show. As his eyes passed, only half-seeing, over the tables ringing the dance floor, he could tell that people were watching them. He dipped her once, spun, dipped her again, and still she kept her eyes tightly closed and her torso limp and pliable. Tommy began to sing along with the band:

You’re the spirit of Christmas,
My star on the tree,
You’re the Easter Bunny to mommy and me,
You’re sugar,
You’re spice,
You’re everything nice,
And you’re Daddy’s little girl.

He sang all the way through to the end of the song, and when it was over James and Monica walked away from each other and Maggie and Tommy just stood there for a moment. Even after the music ended, she waited a full minute before she opened her eyes.

“You did good,” Tommy said.

“I liked it,” said Maggie. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that before, just to close my eyes and not try so hard?”

“I never thought of it before,” Tommy said. Suddenly there was a loud crash, the drummer giving his cymbals a good whack. “It’s hokey-pokey time,” the lead singer called. “Go dance,” said Tommy, and when he got back to his table he saw that the boy had claimed her again, standing opposite her in the hokey-pokey line. He tried to figure out who the boy looked like, but he could not. Tommy turned to look at his wife, who was watching the dancers with a small smile on her face, and then he glanced over at Maggie, who had the fixed and exhausted smile of someone who has been having a wonderful time for hours. “I’m a lucky man,” he said out loud, and he finished his brandy, took Connie’s hand and led her onto the floor.

25

W
HEN
M
AGGIE WOKE UP THE DAY AFTER
the wedding, she could hear voices coming faintly from the back patio. From her bedroom window she could see her aunt Celeste and her mother outside, sitting in lawn chairs, coffee cups on the cement at their feet. The clock said noon. Maggie had missed Mass for the first time since she had had the mumps three years ago. She noticed that the earrings, which she’d taken off and put on her bureau, were gone. She put on a pair of old pink shorts to match the ribbons in her hair and went downstairs.

“Hi,” she said softly, stepping out into the backyard.

Celeste grinned. “Boy, were you right,” she said to Connie, and then to Maggie, “Honey, you look like a million bucks with your hair like that. I can’t wait to see the pictures of you yesterday.”

Maggie went out the sliding door and sat crosslegged at Cece’s feet, her head down. Her aunt was wearing a hot-pink dress that consisted of one tier of ruffles atop another. She had on hot pink plastic earrings and her engagement ring winked at Maggie. “Happy birthday,” she said to Maggie. “Your present’s inside. It’s a diary.”

“Celeste!” Connie said. “You couldn’t wait and let her open it?”

“What the hell.”

Connie went into the kitchen and returned with a small box in her hand, wrapped in silver paper with a pink bow. “Happy birthday,” she said, handing it to Maggie.

“God, I remember it like it was yesterday,” Celeste said with a grin. “Remember the size of you, Con? I mean, people died when they saw you coming down the street. And then Tommy calling us from the hospital and telling me, ‘Celeste, she’s the biggest goddamn baby in the hospital.’ He said that to everyone. ‘Bigger than any of the boys, too.’ God he was excited. I just kept trying to imagine ten pounds of baby getting out of your body. Maybe that’s what put me off having kids. I remember when you brought her home. I’ve never seen two human beings look so goddamn happy. You had such a smile on your face, I’ll never forget.”

Connie looked down at Maggie and smiled. Maggie had finished unwrapping her gift. It was a heartshaped locket with her initials engraved on its face in curly script. “Your first real piece of jewelry,” Connie said, taking it from her and leaning over to put it around her neck.”

“It’s really, really nice,” Maggie said quietly, and she didn’t say any more. But she fingered the locket as she sat on the ground and each time she felt the little grooves of the engraving beneath her fingertips she smiled.

“Monica just called you,” Connie said.

“How? She left for Bermuda this morning.”

“She called from the airport,” Connie said. “She wants to make sure that you don’t throw her bouquet away. She gave me instructions about how to preserve it until she gets back.”

“That little witch,” said Celeste. “You keep that bouquet longer than two weeks, it’ll outlast the marriage.”

“I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” said Connie with a small smile.

“Not because she’s expecting,” said Celeste. “God, if every marriage that started that way broke up, nobody would be married.” Maggie raised her head and listened carefully. “But a man can only take so much and so much of Monica is about two weeks’ worth.”

“Maybe marriage will change her.”

“Ha,” said Celeste, and Maggie laughed. “So,” her aunt added, “you caught the bouquet. You know what that means.”

“She didn’t mean me to catch it,” Maggie said. “She threw it right at one of her friends but it bounced off somebody’s elbow and just landed in my hands. I wasn’t even trying.”

“It’s okay,” Celeste said. “I caught the bouquet at your mom’s wedding and I was already married. Maybe if you’re married and catch it it means you’re next to be divorced.”

The three of them sat looking over the fields behind them. There were twenty-four houses now: four complete, the rest in various stages of framing and finishing. The remains of the charred house had been razed, and another had already been framed in. For a moment Maggie remembered what the fields had once looked like, and then the memory was gone, and she thought that in a few months she would not even be able to remember what Kenwood had been like before the development started.

“It really looks different back here,” said Celeste, who had always been able to read Maggie’s mind.

“It’s going to change the whole place,” said Connie. “They’re going to build twenty-four more after these. Some builder has plans for a shopping center just down the road. We’ll be surrounded.”

“I saw your friend Joe on the avenue yesterday when I was picking up groceries for my mother,” said Celeste. “I told him he missed his chance with me. I haven’t seen him around here too much lately.” Celeste squinted at her cousin in the bright sunlight. She’d always been able to read Connie’s mind, too.

“He’s busier now.”

“Have you finished your driving lessons?” Celeste asked.

“I have my temporary license. My permanent one comes any day now. I drove my mother-in-law over to Calvary Cemetery the other day all by myself. And now at least I have ID if someone in a bar doesn’t think I’m twenty-one.”

“No small accomplishment,” said Celeste, and she arched one penciled eyebrow.

“Give it a break, Ce,” Connie said.

“Are you moving?” Celeste asked.

“I think so. It’s funny how I just lost all my upset about it. My mother-in-law needs us over there. The question is whether to move into her house or the one down the street. Tommy says they may need to sell the other one to pay some of the bills from the business.”

“We really might move?” Maggie said.

“I don’t know,” Connie replied. “Let’s wait and see how your grandmother does.”

“Grandmother, Schmandmother,” said Celeste. “You’ll have five kids soon, and you’ve got four bedrooms. You’ll have to start hanging them from the chandeliers. That’s a nice big house the old lady’s got.”

“Give it a break,” Connie repeated.

“How’s being married, Aunt Celeste?” Maggie asked.

“It’s better this time,” Celeste said thoughtfully. “But still it’s the same. It’s not natural, having someone else telling you what to do all the time. But at least we’re not arguing about how much I spend on my clothes. When I was married to your Uncle Charlie, one little blouse and—pow! He broke my nose once over a winter coat.”

“Don’t tell her things like that, Cece,” Connie said. “It’ll make her think all marriages are like that.”

Celeste lifted her eyebrow again.

“They’re not. Look at my mother-in-law. She’s a changed person since her husband got sick.”

“Probably dancing in the aisles,” said Celeste, lighting a cigarette.

“You know that’s not true. That man was her whole life. That’s the thing the kids don’t understand. I was looking at Monica yesterday and thinking,
she has no idea
. It’s not just a man. It’s your house, your kids, your family, your time, everything. Everything in your life is who you marry.”

“That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard you make, Con,” said Celeste somberly.

Connie stared across the fields, her lips still red with a trace of lipstick from the day before. “Somebody moved into one of those houses yesterday,” she finally said. “I saw the truck from the upstairs window when I was getting ready to go out.”

Celeste shrugged. “Big deal. You know what Sol always says. The more things are different, the more they’re the same.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Maggie said.

“Yeah it does,” said her aunt. “Think about it.”

Upstairs a screen was lifted with a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. “Connie,” came Tommy’s tortured voice. “I need tomato juice.”

Celeste laughed. “I’ll come in with you,” she said as Connie rose. “Put some vodka in it. That’ll make him feel better.”

Maggie stayed out on the patio and thought about what her aunt had said. The more she thought aboutit, the more she thought it was ridiculous. She thought about life with her grandfather gone, her grandmother alone, perhaps her entire family living in the big stone house and hanging out in the gazebo. She thought of Monica with a baby and a husband, never again to go to a dance with one boy and dump him halfway through the evening for someone better looking, and of Helen perhaps getting a part on Broadway and having strange men spend the night at her apartment. She thought of Debbie being Bridget Hearn’s best friend, or maybe thinking she was until Bridget dumped her, and she tried to think they deserved each other, but instead she got a feeling in her chest as though a rib was broken.

She thought of her mother driving her around during the winter months, while the dark outside and the dashboard lights within made a little oasis of the front seat of the car. She knew that even a week from now things would be different. School would start, and she would spend her days in her green uniform blazer and her plaid skirt, her saddle shoes raising blisters on the joints of her toes and the back of her heels after three months in sneakers and flip-flops. On Tuesday they would shop for school supplies, copy books with their spines still closed tight and pencil boxes that smelled as freshly plastic as Christmas morning. There would be no more nights in the development because she wasn’t allowed out on school nights. Soon all the windows of the new houses would be filled with yellow light and the spindly saplings they were planting along Shelley Lane and Dickens Street would grow up to be trees. And soon it would seem as if Tennyson Acres had always been there, and only the older kids would say “Do you remember before they built the development?” and would know what was inside each of those walls. Maggie wondered if someday the people in the last house by the woods would rip up their wall-to-wall carpeting and find the old
Playboys
beneath the floor.

The gold of her locket was warm beneath her fingers. She took a letter from the pocket of her shorts. “Dear Maggie,” she read, “I am really glad you are willing to write to me even though we are in the same place and school is starting. I have a lot of things to ask you which are easier to write in a letter than to say to your face. Your face is great but my conversation is not. (HA HA!)” Even now, after reading the letter at least six times, Maggie’s breathing felt funny when she got to that part: your face is great. She wondered if Bruce could dance. He had never asked her for anything but the silly line dances at the wedding, perhaps because his father was there. Each time she had looked at him he had looked away and cracked his knuckles. When his father told him it was time to go, he had pressed the letter into her hand, but before he moved away, he had squeezed it hard.

Inside the house she could hear her aunt and her mother laughing. She wasn’t sure whether her aunt Celeste was wrong about things changing and staying the same, or whether it was one of those differences between children and adults, like the way they were always saying that time went by so quickly when just to get from June to September seemed to take a lifetime.

Maggie walked through her own backyard to the beginning of the development. The soft ground sagged beneath her feet, and she could see in the cement of the curbs that Terence and his friends had been there, putting in hand and footprints, and leaving their initials: TSS, KAK, RVQ. The asphalt for the roads had not been laid yet, and she could feel the pebbles through the soft thin soles of her sneakers. Up ahead of her was the first house to be finished, a ranch house with sliding picture windows in almost every room. Maggie remembered that Richard and Bruce had written their names inside the doors of the kitchen cabinets the day they’d been installed.

Maggie approached soundlessly, close enough to see into the living-room window. A man and a woman sat on a couch against one wall. He was bald, with his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, and she had a short cap of black hair, like a bathing cap, and tiny black eyes. They held round glasses, almost like bowls, filled with dark amber liqueur, and they sipped at it as they looked around them. Their furniture looked as if it had elbows, it was so angular, and on the wall above the couch was what Maggie was sure must be modern art, a soaring splash of fuschia dotted with black and gray. It was pretty, really, and the gray matched the couch. The man rose and Maggie leapt back, her heart pounding, but when she looked in again she could see that he was only adjusting the picture, and she imagined they had just hung it, hung it before they unpacked any of the cardboard boxes stacked at the far end of the room, before they began putting away their dishes and discovering names written in pencil inside their brand-new cabinet doors.

The woman rose and stared at the picture, a hand on her hip, and then she said something to the man and stood tapping her foot while he made the smallest adjustment. A voice in Maggie’s head said stridently, “I’d bet my bottom dollar they’re Jews,” even though Maggie herself was thinking that they looked mostly Italian, and Maggie recognized it as her grandfather’s voice. And she knew that for the rest of her life, from time to time she would hear that voice within her head.

She wondered if this was what it was like to be haunted. Or perhaps that was what heaven was, the eternal life of your own point of view fired off, every now and then, inside the skulls of unsuspecting friends and relatives. Maggie thought that her grandfather would live that way in her mind, until the day when she died herself, when there would be other people around to remember her. She looked back at the houses of Kenwood, old and familiar, and she looked around her at Tennyson Acres, and the two seemed to her to be the past and the future. She heard her grandfather’s voice again, saying, “There’s the here, and then there’s the hereafter.” That was how it looked to her, the two parts of the neighborhood, like here and hereafter, like what had been and what was to come. Her grandfather was finally having his hereafter, but he was here, too, inside her head, and she was glad of that.