The Most Dangerous Thing (18 page)

Now, almost four years later, watching her slim-hipped daughter switch about the kitchen in a way that seems designed to make the pleats on her skirt swing just so, Tally wonders if Mickey
had
loved Gwen in that way, if Rita’s instincts had been better than theirs. It would explain so much—Mickey’s abrupt disappearance from Gwen’s life as she plunged into the world of boys, boys, boys, Gwen’s fierce determination never to speak of her. What had they done, up in those hills, all those afternoons? A few Sapphic kisses, perhaps some show-and-tell? Then the Halloran boys had become part of their dyad, and Gwen had switched her affections to Sean. That ended, too. Everything ends.

“How do you feel about being an aunt?” she asks Gwen, hopeful that she will turn the question back to Tally, show a smidgen of empathy for her mother, or at least acknowledge that Tally is human, that she did not come into existence solely to produce Gwen, feed her, and clothe her.

“We never see them,” Gwen says. “So it’s hard to see how it will change much of anything around here. Why is that? Why don’t they visit? Even when they were dating, he never came home.”

“Well, he lives so far away—”

Her daughter can call bullshit with a glance.

“It’s how things are, Gwen. Sons tend to be absorbed by their wives’ families.”

“They only got married three months ago.” Tally remembers it well. Outdoors, in the Boulder backyard of the in-laws, Miller’s studious little wife wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair, Gwen staring raptly at the young couple exchanging their vows. Too raptly, for Tally’s taste. Gwen was seeing only the dress, the crown of flowers, the attention riveted on the bride.

“You’ll see. Miller’s just doing what most boys do, disappearing into his wife’s family. But daughters are for life.”

“What about Fee?”

“She’s still in college. I don’t expect Fee to partner off for a long time. Miller’s the odd duck, marrying young, having a baby right away.” But Tally wonders if Gwen is challenging her to gossip about Fee, to include her in the confidential discussions she and Clem have had about their oldest daughter.

“Huh.”

“But when you marry—”

“I’m
never
going to marry.” The viciousness of Gwen’s tone almost literally knocks Tally off balance. This is sincere revulsion, not the cool mockery she has been practicing. Tally finds herself placing her right palm on the edge of the stainless steel sink, steadying herself. She hates this sink, cold and industrial. Sinks should be porcelain, like the one in her parents’ home. Her parents’ home, with its pantry and maid’s room off the kitchen, a life she wanted no part of. Why? Why had she traded it for something even lesser? What was she thinking?

Perhaps Gwen realizes she has crossed a line because she softens her tone slightly. “I mean, I’m not going to marry young, or at least not have children young, not until I’m at least thirty. I want to have a career first.”

Her attempt at tact is only more hurtful. Gwen’s words hang in the kitchen, an utterly polite fuck-you to her mother. Why not just say:
Upon pain of death
,
I am not going to be you.
Tally wouldn’t mind. Tally doesn’t want to be Tally most days.

But if Tally hadn’t been Tally, then there would be no Miller, no Fee, no Gwen, no in utero grandchild.
You can’t hate me for the crime of having you,
Tally yearns to tell her daughter. Only it’s not hate, it’s disdain and pity, so much harder to stomach. Gwen, her plaid skirt twitching on her hips, is like some beautiful alien in a science fiction film, briefly looking back in disgust at the primordial ooze from which she has emerged. She wants to believe that she is the author of her own life, that she can take whatever form she chooses and it will have nothing to do with Tally. She needs to believe this, at least for a while. Tally understands, absolutely. She felt exactly the same way at Gwen’s age.
I’ll be anyone but you
.

Why does understanding only make it feel worse? Forgetting Clem’s plans, she takes the Burgundy from the ice bucket, opens it, and pours herself a healthy slug of wine. Let the celebration begin.

Chapter Twenty-three

F
ather Andrew is coming to tea. The invitation occurs to Doris just like that, when she stops by his office after altar guild to ask how Go-Go—Gordon, Father Andrew does not approve of nicknames—has been doing since school started.

“We should talk,” he says. “Not now I’m afraid—I’m due at a meeting—but we should make time to speak privately.”

She knows her heart should sink at those words. No mother—no good mother—wants to hear those words:
We should talk
. And, somewhere inside her, there is a horrible, pricking worry, something plummeting with the sound of a long, sad cartoon slide whistle.
I knew it. Things aren’t getting better.
But that pathetic naysayer can barely be heard over the
Love, American Style
fireworks shooting into the air. They have to talk! Privately!

“The thing is, you are so in demand when you’re here,” she says. “People always seem to be tugging at you. And my husband and I still have only the one car, and he uses it most days. Perhaps you could come to the house. For tea?” Yes, for tea, on an afternoon when Sean has band practice and Tim Junior. is at the library and Go-Go is outside, doing whatever Go-Go does. Doris has never served an actual tea, but how hard can it be? That is, she has drunk tea, but never set the table for tea. She has a proper teapot somewhere and a cozy and a trivet. She can bake cookies if she puts her mind to it, or at least buy fancier ones, Pepperidge Farm, although she bets Father Andrew likes something with more heft—banana nut bread, pound cake?

Father Andrew considers her proposal, probably sifting through his schedule in his head, nothing more, yet Doris can’t help wishing more complicated calculations are going through his head. “That would be nice,” he says at last. “Today?”

“Tomorrow,” she parries, nervous that she will be punished for not accepting immediately what he offered, that it’s wrong to ask Father Andrew to work around her schedule. But she can’t ready the house by this afternoon.

“Tomorrow,” he agrees.

The next morning, she can’t wait for Tim Senior to leave for work. But once the house is empty, she is overwhelmed by the enormity of the task. When did the house get this dirty? How? Why can’t Tim Senior ever put his own coffee cup in the dishwasher?

She decides to start on the first floor and work up, as if it were a mountain to climb, pushing the mess in front of her, like a child rolling the base of a snowman. If she doesn’t finish the second floor, it’s not dire. She scrubs out pots that have been soaking for days, separates the boys’ laundry and folds it, putting it on their respective bureaus instead of leaving it in a heap on the hallway bench. She vacuums, she mops, she cleans the venetian blinds, wondering as she does so why they are called
venetian
. That could be a nice conversational gambit with Father Andrew. He seems to know such things.

She gets out a cookbook and realizes she has the ingredients to make a pound cake, although it will wipe out the butter and there will be hell to pay when Tim Senior has breakfast tomorrow. She can run up to the corner grocery later. Oh, she should have read ahead: the eggs have to be separated and beaten with a hand mixer. Where is her hand mixer? She finds it in Go-Go’s room, under his bed. She is forever finding things under Go-Go’s bed. She has to wash it, of course, grimed with dust as it is, and she screws up separating the first egg, which means she has none to spare, but she is perfect on the others. The house, neat for the first time in months, soon fills with the smells of vanilla and butter and sugar.

Can Doris work the same transformative magic on Doris? She goes into the master bathroom. Fluorescent light is unkind to everyone, but this is downright cruel. When did her face become gray and sunken, her hair thin and pink? She was one of the prettiest girls in her parish, second only to Sally McCafferty. Doris was like a rose, everybody said so, although her Aunt Ginny always added: “A plucked rose fades fast.” People laughed when Aunt Ginny said that, and Doris, innocent as she was, assumed it had something to do with virginity. Or perhaps it was pregnancy? Or merely marriage? At any rate, she is good and truly plucked, but there must be something she can do. She gives her face a once-over with cold cream, then applies a thin coat to wear the rest of the afternoon. She takes her curlers out and runs a wet comb through her hair. Tally Robison wears her hair loose and smooth. Why shouldn’t Doris? Hmmm, it doesn’t look quite right. Maybe she can tweak the ends into a pageboy. Her nails are a mess, especially after today’s work, but she cleans them, then files and buffs until they are presentable if not notable.

She goes to her closet. What to wear? Father Andrew has seen her mainly in skirts and blouses. Wouldn’t it seem odd if she dresses up for his visit? But there is a wraparound skirt, green with white piping, which pairs nicely with a green-and-white-checked shirt. That works, although it’s a little summery for November.

The timer pings. She brings the loaves out to cool, making a mental note to hide them later. Tim and the boys would go through these like locusts. She feels a twinge of guilt: What kind of woman bakes a delicious dessert and then hides it from her loved ones? But in her mind’s eye, there must be two perfect, uncut loaves on the serving plate. She wants her table to look like a picture out of
Better Homes and Gardens
. She needs a tablecloth and fresh napkins. She rummages through the dining room’s built-in breakfront and finds a white tablecloth. Stained, of course. She tosses it into the wash with some bleach, hoping for the best.

When she was a newlywed, she didn’t even have a washer-dryer. Also no dishwasher, no venetian blinds, only hand-me-down lace curtains at the windows. All their things were hand-me-downs, with the exception of their bedroom suite, which was a wedding gift from her father. They lived in a simple brick rowhouse off Ingleside, and she kept it spotless. Tim returned from work to home-cooked meals. She washed the dishes by hand while he sat on the back steps, listening to the Orioles game. She was happy. The women’s libbers said she shouldn’t have been, but she was. What happened?

Children
. No one wants to say that out loud, but between the children she gave birth to and the ones she didn’t, Doris was done in. They moved up to a bigger house, not that this place was that big, but it’s that much more to clean. If she had to wash her dishes by hand now, it would take all nine innings to get through them, and that’s despite trying to simplify meals, serving things like Hamburger Helper and Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, which the boys prefer to homemade anyway. Look at how many bowls and utensils went into creating a pound cake. Come to think of it, she better wash and dry those now, hide the evidence. She laughs at herself, thinking of a pound cake as a crime. But she is contemplating a crime, isn’t she? Well, not a crime, but a sin, one of the biggest. To be sure, she’s only thinking about it, but even the fantasy is wrong.

Four years ago, everyone laughed when the current president confessed to committing adultery in his heart. Tim Senior certainly had. For some reason, people thought that the president’s admission made him even more of a—what did the boys call it—a
wimp
. But Doris dug out Tim Senior’s
Playboy—
she had known the location of his secret cache for years—determined to read the article for herself. She flipped to the interview, trying not to see the naked women along the way—not because she was a prude, but because they made her feel so
bumpy
. It was natural for them to be young, with big bosoms and tiny waists, but the honeyed, creamy look of their skin taunted Doris. She never looked like that, even when she was the second prettiest girl in the parish. She found her way to the interview, and as she had suspected, there was more to it than people were saying. The president not only said that God forgave his lust, but he said that he, the president, also could not judge men who gave in to it, that he should not think he was better than a man who left his wife.

Well, Protestants,
Doris had thought at the time. What do you expect? Yet those words lodged into her, granting her permission to have her own fantasies. She would never do anything, of course. But if she does—she might be forgiven. Only how would God feel about her taking a priest with her? Doesn’t that make it a much, much bigger sin? Also, she knows she will be disappointed in Father Andrew if he proves capable of being seduced.
Not that she’s going to seduce him
. She wonders how good the sex could even be if he has never had it before. All she has is her experience with Tim. Still, that pent-up energy should count for something, although it hadn’t worked that way for her and Tim in the early years. Yes, she sometimes felt things. Okay, orgasms. She had them, thank you very much. Eventually. But they fell short of what the world had led her to expect. Not
Love
,
American Style
fireworks, obviously, she’s not that silly, but something—transforming. Something worth all the fuss, not to mention the pregnancies, full-term and lost, those mounds of underwear on the hallway bench, the kitchen that’s never clean. Her husband’s anger, although she supposes that isn’t a direct consequence of sex, or even the lack of sex. She wonders if Tim has ever cheated on her. She wonders if she cares. Caring requires a lot of energy, and she’s pretty tired. Caring takes so much—she takes a breath and allows herself the curse word, if only in her head—so much
goddamn
effort.

By 5
P.M.
, the house looks almost as she had imagined it, although she doesn’t dare set the dining room table. That would provoke curiosity. They eat dinner in the kitchen, and Tim doesn’t even ask why. Tim never asks her anything. It is six-thirty by the time he stomps through the front door, knowing full well that they eat at six, but he says it’s important for him to go out for drinks with his coworkers. He doesn’t like the job at Tuerkes as much as he did at first, and Doris worries he won’t last long there. He trudges through the clean house, noticing nothing, although he had no problem seeing the mess when it was there and criticizing it for advantage. Tim sees only what is wrong and blames her for everything, even the things that are clearly his fault, like his dinner being cold tonight. Some things just don’t reheat well.

“Some things just don’t reheat well,” she tells him.

“I’m the head of this household,” he says. “Dinner should be ready when I’m ready.”

“The Pollacks have a microwave,” Sean says.

“They give you radiation poisoning,” Doris says, although she yearns for one. But it’s better to have a reason for not wanting the thing you want than to admit to yourself that you want something you can never have.

Over the next two hours, Tim and the boys undo much of what she has accomplished today, and Doris is reminded why she stopped trying to stay on top of the housework. Quietly, trying not to draw too much attention to her actions, she goes behind them and puts the house back to rights. She is dying to set the dining room table, to see if it will measure up to the picture in her mind. Her anticipation over the scene is almost as great as the event. Should she find flowers? It’s late in the season, there are only mums and asters, and they have never been to her liking.

“Do you smell that?” Tim asks, coming into the kitchen from the living room, where he has been watching
Quincy, M.E
. For a moment, she worries he has picked up the scent of vanilla and butter. She blushes like a thief, trying not to let her eyes drift to the cabinet where the wrapped pound cakes are hidden.

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something bad.”

She is almost startled into saying,
My pound cakes do not smell bad
, but then she notices what has caught Tim’s attention. She has been too wreathed in Comet and Pine-Sol to pick up the scent, but there is a bad smell like—

“I swear, if that pipe has backed up again, I will”—Tim throws open the door to the basement and clatters down the stairs. “What the fuck are you doing?”

The next thing Doris hears is Go-Go crying—horrible, unnatural cries—as his father yells and, judging from the scuffling sounds, tries to land blows on him.

“Tim!”

He has Go-Go by the wrist, his belt half out of the loops.

“The little shit has shit himself. He was down here trying to rinse his underwear out in the laundry sink, but he left all his turds behind.” He grabs Go-Go by the shoulders, shaking him. “What’s wrong with you? What kind of ten-year-old boy craps himself? How were you going to get all that shit out of the sink?”

“I let him have a hamburger at the drugstore today,” Doris lies, pushing between them, letting Go-Go grab her hips, even though his hands have traces of his own feces. “That probably gave him diarrhea. And he was trying to do the right thing by cleaning up after himself. He just didn’t think about where . . . things would go if he used the laundry tub. It’s not like he ever rinsed out a diaper, or saw someone do it.”

“He’s stupid,” Tim rails. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“No, he’s not. Stop saying that.”

Another mess to clean up, then herself to clean up. It is late when she finishes, but she stops by Go-Go’s room. He is lying in the dark, staring at the ceiling. He doesn’t sleep well, her baby boy. He never has, though.

“I did have diarrhea,” he says, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. “I mean, I didn’t have a drugstore hamburger, but I did have diarrhea.”

“Oh, Go-Go. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I thought it was going to be a fart. I didn’t know.”

“Has it happened before?”

His silence tells her everything.

“At school, Go-Go? Has it happened at school?”

He turns toward the wall.

Doris knows now why Father Andrew is coming to tea. Her son has crapped himself at school. And now at home, within feet of a toilet. She isn’t sure why this is so much more shameful than wetting the bed, yet it is. Something is terribly wrong with Go-Go. Is he crazy? Are all the little things that once made them laugh—the energy, the dancing—were those things they should have been worried about?