Object Lessons Part 18

"Mark can do what he wants," Gail said. "I can do what I want. So can you."

Connie was silent for a minute. She could see John Scanlan's nose, beaklike and fierce, and then two more visitors knelt in front of the casket and blocked her view.

"No one can do what they want," she said, thinking of the look on Joey Martinelli's face when she had given him back the key to the construction trailer.

"I guess I can understand if you're sad," Gail went on as though she hadn't heard. "The way he talked about you-how Tommy was the only one to marry a girl with looks, how the rest of the grandchildren, even Monica, were washed-out from too much Irish inbreeding and your children were the only ones who were halfway decent-looking or had half a brain. If I had had to hear one more word about what great legs you had, I would have screamed."

Connie looked at her sister-in-law for a long time, and suddenly, to her surprise, she felt tears fill her eyes. She felt great pity for John Scanlan, and anger at him, too. "Well, Gail, that's the first I've ever heard of the high regard my father-in-law had for me," she said.

"It would have killed him to say anything nice about anyone to their face. He didn't even kiss me at our wedding. I never heard him say a kind word to Mother. I don't even believe he loved her. I think she was just a baby machine. Excuse me. I didn't mean anything by that."

The man and woman kneeling in front of the body rose, and Connie could see that the woman was crying. She was wiping her face with a tissue, wiping away her rouge so that one cheek was a gray-white, the other a gay pink. It was one of John Scanlan's sisters, the one he always called Fat Marge.

"Who knows how he really felt about anything?" Connie had said, and then she had looked across the room to a corner where Dorothy O'Haire sat lost in the shadows. She was wearing a cheap black suit, clutching a black patent purse. Earlier in the evening, before anyone else had arrived, Connie had come in to make a list of the people who had sent flowers so that Mary Frances could send thank-you notes, and Dorothy had been kneeling at the casket with a little girl at her side. The child wore a beautiful navy blue dress, some gauzy stuff over linen, and a big sailor hat. When she had turned away from the casket, Connie could see that the girl had her mother's dullish yellow hair, but her eyes were of a clear and translucent blue. They were Scanlan eyes.

"Oh, Dorothy," Connie had said.

"Mrs. Scanlan, this is my daughter," Dorothy had said primly. "Her name is Beth." The girl curtsied. "How do you do?" she said, like a little girl in an old movie. On the bosom of her dress her initials were monogrammed in white: EAO. Connie knew that the O stood for O'Haire, and she was just as sure, as sure as if the name had been spoken aloud, that the E and the A stood for Elizabeth Ann. She wondered whether the girl's mother had chosen the name, to stake her claim, or the girl's father, to try to make amends or to live life over. After a few minutes, Dorothy had taken the child outside and put her into a car with someone, Connie could not see who, and then had come back inside alone. "I wanted her to pay her respects," she said to Connie, finding herself that same seat in the corner, and every time during the evening Connie looked over, she had wondered if John had provided enough money for both of them. And she realized she knew another thing she would never tell her husband, and she felt weary with the weight of all the secrets it required to protect those you loved.

Now in the sunlight Connie looked over at her own father and wondered if that's what he had done for her, all these years, if his silence was really protection from a world he found too terrible to live in. He stood silently studying the cemetery, making sure it was perfectly groomed, everything in place. His flawless world, Connie thought, where none of the people are mean or dishonest or careless because none of them are alive. Angelo left her for a moment to say something to Leonard, and then walked back slowly, his shirt glowing in the sun. She was glad she had worn a skirt, even a flimsy cotton wrap one, its ties strained by her thickened waist; her father was offended by women in pants. Her hand went to her hair to smooth it off her forehead.

"Mr. Scanlan is buried," Angelo said.

"Finally," said Connie.

"He was supposed to have the child buried with him?"

Connie nodded. "That's what his wife thought. I don't know whether it was a misunderstanding, or he just ignored her."

"Different things are important to different people," Angelo said. "Most people hate the bugs-your son loves them. Most people talk too much-your daughter listens."

"My daughter is a woman now."

"Of course," said Angelo. "This summer it happened. Anybody could see. When your mother was her age, she was already married. One baby on the way, one baby to come. Children grow fast. Except if they are here." And he looked around him again. Mary Frances joined them, her rosary in her hand, and Angelo escorted her in his courtly fashion back to the car.

Connie was quiet on the drive home, overwhelmed by events. She and Mary Frances fell back on their old ways for much of the drive, the older woman talking in a desultory fashion about Monica's wedding. Connie thought it would be an interesting affair, judging from the fact that the groom's family had wanted his name on the invitations to read Donald "Duck" Syzmanski. As they neared Mary Frances's house there was a long silence, and then the older woman began to speak, almost to herself, so low that Connie had to bend her head to listen.

"No one ever understands what it's like unless they're in it themselves," Mary Frances said. "People look at your children and they see them all in a lump. Even their father, calling them "the brood," herding them into the car for Ma.s.s every Sunday morning, making rules to fit them all, about staying out late, about homework, about spankings if they got into trouble, even for Margaret, with her little f.a.n.n.y in white cotton pants, her skirt pulled up. But their mother never sees them that way. Even now, all standing together, men in their suits, too big to hug, you see them all as themselves, clear-Jimmy with his everlasting questions, following you around the house: Why does this happen, Mama, why does that happen? Why does the sun rise and set? And Mark, walking him around the living room in that little row house we had, walking him every night with the colic while he screamed and screamed, the sky so black outside that it was like the end of the world. And Tommy curling like a little shrimp next to me on the beach, pulling a towel over his little shoulders so he wouldn't burn. "Be a man!" John would yell at him, and he'd try to lie still, so still that no one would notice him."

Mary Frances looked over at her. "Do you understand what I'm saying?" she said. "The baby was stillborn and they came at me with a needle to put me to sleep and I said, d.a.m.n you, give me that child. And I baptized her right there, and she was so pretty, with pink skin like flowers. And I kissed her face and she was real to me, as real as any of the others, even now. More real, maybe. Because you think of what they'll become, and you're always disappointed. Though they're all good boys, all fine, they're never exactly what you dream they're going to be. Only she, only she never disappointed. Even today I dream the same dreams about her as when I kissed her face." She bent her head over her hands, and then lifted it and stared out the windshield. "I kissed her, and then I let them give me the shot."

Connie pulled into the driveway slowly because she found it hard to see through the tears in her eyes, and because she was so overcome to hear Mary Frances put into words Connie's own feelings, the feelings about her children that she had believed were twisted and peculiar and hers alone. She felt the weight of all the wasted years, of the playacting that all of them had done while they lived with that great central figure, that star now dead. Connie supposed that that was the sin for which they would all have to forgive John Scanlan, the sin of forcing them all to play their thankless roles. Her mother-in-law climbed out of the car and then turned back and leaned through the window.

"Tomorrow at the wedding I will tell my son that I want to sell that house his father bought. I will tell him I want the money and he won't be able to argue with me about it. It's not that I mind people trying to arrange other people's lives, but if they do it, they have to do it right." She drew a deep breath and her voice wavered as she added, "The boys say that I can't live here alone, and it could be that they're right. If I had my druthers, I would prefer it be you and Tommy who move in here. Any of the others would drive me crazy. That's not why I'm having him sell the house. I'm not making a deal with you. I just want you to know what I think. I'm tired of keeping my mouth shut. At least you and I wouldn't have to pretend. You could have your ways and I'd have mine." She stopped for a moment. "And I love my son," she added, as though she only had the one.

They looked at each other for a long moment and then Mary Frances began to speak again, and this time her voice was hard and clear. "There are two s.p.a.ces in that plot in your father's cemetery," she said. "I want the other one. I am telling you and I will tell Tommy, because everyone else will think I'm crazy and they will do what they want in any event. But I'm telling you that it will be your responsibility to see that this time I get my way. The rest of them will want to do what is proper, but you will make them do what is right." Connie leaned over toward her. She wanted to call her something but she couldn't think what and so she simply began, "John said to me in the hospital-" But Mary Frances cut her off. "He did the best he could, dear," she said, sounding more like herself. "A man can't be what he isn't. He did the best he could with what he had. That's something for you to remember. Tommy does the best he knows how."

"I know," Connie said, her eyes filling again. Mary Frances turned and walked into the house and Connie wondered if she should try to tell her more, should try to tell her how sorry her husband had been, although whether it was for the death, for failing to move the baby's body, or for something even more unforgivable she was still not sure. She supposed "He did the best he could" was the best benediction anyone could hope for.

23

MAGGIE SAT ON THE BENCH IN FRONT OF her aunt's old dressing table, her long legs hidden beneath the ruffled skirt. Her bridesmaid's dress hung on the back of the closet door. Connie stood behind her brushing Maggie's hair over and over again as though she was painting, coat after coat. Connie was so small that her head just barely topped Maggie's when she stood behind her, so that in the mirror they looked like some strange Indian G.o.ddess, one dark head above the other, one set of arms resting in the lap, another rising and falling, holding a brush. her aunt's old dressing table, her long legs hidden beneath the ruffled skirt. Her bridesmaid's dress hung on the back of the closet door. Connie stood behind her brushing Maggie's hair over and over again as though she was painting, coat after coat. Connie was so small that her head just barely topped Maggie's when she stood behind her, so that in the mirror they looked like some strange Indian G.o.ddess, one dark head above the other, one set of arms resting in the lap, another rising and falling, holding a brush.

"You two look like sisters," Aunt Ca.s.s said.

Monica was in the bathroom putting on her makeup. She looked like the centerfold in one of the Playboy Playboy magazines the boys had hidden beneath the floorboards of the development houses. She was wearing something called a merry widow, a one-piece lace garment like a very fancy swimsuit, which pushed her bust up and whittled her waist to nothing. "Should she be wearing that?" Connie had said with some concern, but Aunt Ca.s.s said that Uncle James said it was fine. Maggie could not imagine Monica modeling such a thing for her father, but she was not inclined to ask questions on this particular day. magazines the boys had hidden beneath the floorboards of the development houses. She was wearing something called a merry widow, a one-piece lace garment like a very fancy swimsuit, which pushed her bust up and whittled her waist to nothing. "Should she be wearing that?" Connie had said with some concern, but Aunt Ca.s.s said that Uncle James said it was fine. Maggie could not imagine Monica modeling such a thing for her father, but she was not inclined to ask questions on this particular day.

Behind her, her mother was humming tunelessly. She was wearing a new dress, a simple red drape in some satiny material. Her lipstick matched. Her hair was in loose, shiny waves over her shoulders. It seemed incredible that she had been so recently to a funeral, but Uncle James and Mary Frances had insisted that the wedding go on as planned, with no sign, even in their clothes, that there had been a death in the family except that the five priests concelebrating the Ma.s.s would make mention of John Scanlan during the prayers for the dead. "My father would have wanted it that way," James told several of the mourners at the funeral, who nodded solemnly.

Maggie knew this was not true. John Scanlan would have wanted them to cancel the whole thing, deposit or no deposit. (Actually, Maggie knew, he would have wanted Uncle James to demand that the deposit be returned and to threaten legal action if it was not.) "Give the devil his due," Maggie thought he would say, but she could not quite conjure him up, with his broad white grin and his glittering blue eyes, saying it. She could barely remember his face; she could only remember his hands, big, the hairs on them like a web.

In the mirror her own eyes seemed dead, too, looking inside, and then they came alive as she looked up at her mother. Connie had drawn Maggie's long tail of hair up onto the back of her head, and she was separating it into sections, smiling to herself, as though she had a secret. She picked a thin piece of pink ribbon off the dressing table and began to braid it through one section, her hands quick and sure. Maggie sat silently until her mother had made six narrow braids and pinned them into long loops, chestnut shot through with pink. When Connie was finished she picked up a silver mirror from the dressing table, glancing first at the engraving on the back. "From your aunt Margaret's hope chest," she said, and handed the mirror to Maggie so she could see how her hair looked from behind.

With her hair pulled back, her forehead and cheeks pink, her eyes bright without their dark frame, Maggie felt suddenly shy. "It feels strange," she said, returning the mirror. But then she thought that sounded ungrateful and she added, "It looks nice."

Monica emerged from the bathroom in her merry widow and white stockings, her hair still in rollers, Mary Frances's good pearls around her neck. She had lent Maggie her add-a-pearl necklace; she had not wanted to, but Aunt Ca.s.s had insisted. "As a peace offering," she had said, and at that moment Maggie had heard her grandfather's voice loud and clear, saying, "Peace offering my a.s.s." Monica was holding a mascara wand. "Well, well," she said, tilting her head. "The ugly duckling turns into a swan."

"You look lovely, Maggie," said Aunt Ca.s.s.

"When you're old enough to wear makeup you just might look like a real girl," Monica said, rearranging her bosom in the boned bodice of white lace.

"She's wearing makeup today," said Connie, "or this pink will wash her right out." Connie opened her purse and began to remove a bottle of foundation, a compact, and a pat of pink rouge. "I'll take that mascara when you're done with it, Monica," she said.

Connie held Maggie's chin in her hand and began to smooth creams onto her face, turning it this way and that and occasionally rubbing something off with a finger she'd touched to her tongue. It seemed to take a long time, with Connie humming and looking at Maggie dispa.s.sionately as though she was a piece of furniture being refinished. Finally she let go of her chin, and kissed the top of her head. Maggie almost jumped out of her skin.

"What are you going to do about these?" said Connie, and with her index finger she flicked the limp circle of dingy thread hanging from one of Maggie's earlobes. Maggie inhaled. She had kept her ears hidden beneath her hair for a week. Connie went into her purse again and removed a square of tissue. Inside were a pair of earrings, teardrop-shaped stones, purple-red, dangling from small curving pieces of gold.

"This is going to hurt," Connie said, snipping the strings with a nail scissors and pulling them out. It took her a minute to get the earrings in, and Maggie kept very still, looking into her own eyes again. Her mother stepped back to look at her.

"Ta da," she said.

"Where did you get those?" Maggie said.

"They were my mother's. I found them after she died. It was so strange to see them, because I don't think she wore a pretty thing her whole life, at least when I knew her. Your grandfather couldn't tell me where they came from either. And I wasn't interested in wearing them. They've been sitting at the back of one of my drawers for years."

"You couldn't have worn them anyway," said Maggie, moving her head from side to side.

"Sure I could have. Aunt Rose pierced my ears when I was a baby. I just stopped wearing earrings when I got married. Now the holes are closed up."

"Why did you stop?"

"It used to be something that only girls right off the boat did. Girls like your aunt Margaret didn't have pierced ears."

"And you were a girl like Aunt Margaret?"

Connie grinned. "I tried to be," she said. "I don't think I was very good at it."

"Oh, Connie, what a beautiful job you've done," Aunt Ca.s.s said. "Will her hat fit over that hairdo?"

"No," Connie said. "I don't think she'll wear the hat. It's not really her, Ca.s.s. And the other girls are wearing hats and dresses that are entirely different."

Aunt Ca.s.s narrowed her lips, but she looked again at Maggie's hair, and then she sighed. "Maybe G.o.d will count the ribbons as a hat," she finally said.

"Go into the bathroom and see if there's any Vaseline," Connie said to Maggie. "Put a little on your lips and blot it off."

Her mother moved aside and Maggie saw herself in the mirror. She could not believe what her mother had done, how she had managed, with her Touch 'n' Glo creamy ivory and her Autumn Roses cake rouge and her eyebrow pencil, to turn Maggie into a shadow of Connie herself, a manufactured double. She leaned forward but try as she might she could not make the resemblance go away, and it suddenly occurred to her that this was the only difference between the two of them-a little color, a little pressed powder, a few years.

"Thank you," she said to Connie's reflection.

"It was my pleasure," Connie replied, as though the two of them were partners in some antiquated dance.

Maggie drew one of Mary Frances's housecoats tight around her lanky body and staggered into the bathroom in her new dyed-to-match damask pumps. Monica was leaning into her own reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. The bathroom was strewn with curlers, bobby pins, pots of cream and foundation, bottles of perfume.

"Excuse me," Maggie said, moving past her cousin to reach for the Vaseline on top of the toilet tank. Monica recoiled, and Maggie thought she was about to get nasty again when suddenly she moved toward the toilet and fell to her knees. The retching was painful to hear, as if Monica had a fishbone in her throat; a roller fell from the front of her hair onto the floor. Maggie leaned forward, picked it up, and held back the long curl so it would not get in Monica's way.

The vomiting seemed to go on and on, and Maggie felt stupid standing there, bent over, holding a piece of hair, afraid to move. She had seen the same thing happen too many times to her mother to misunderstand, and this made her feel stupid, too. She remembered saying to her cousin, "You don't fool me one bit," in the bridal salon, and she knew everyone had thought she meant more than she was saying. Perhaps, she thought, her grandfather would in fact have wanted the wedding to take place today, funeral or no funeral. She could see the red welt on Monica's tanned back where the merry widow had pressed into her flesh, and when her cousin finally rose, using the toilet to hoist herself from her knees like an old woman, Maggie saw that her mascara had run in gray rivulets all over her face, making little rivers in the pink of her makeup. Her eyes were bloodshot, her lips swollen, the veins on the part of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s spilling from the top of her fancy underpinnings blue and swollen too.

Maggie watched Monica in the mirror as she methodically began to apply cold cream to take off her ruined makeup. When Monica's face was bare, she put out her hand peremptorily, her polished nails pearly, and retrieved the roller. She twisted the long lock of hair back up and began to redo her face, first blotting a single tear that ran down the side of her nose.

"Monica," said Maggie, "I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry it turned out like this."

She knew she had said the wrong thing when she saw the usually implacable face contort. Her cousin whirled round to face her, so close that they were almost touching. "You just don't get it, do you, Maria Goretti," Monica said, her eyes wild. "This is the way it is. This is the way everything is. It's one screw job after another, and then you die. You really think it's going to be like some G.o.dd.a.m.n little story, but this is what it's like when you grow up. One bad thing after another, and you just have to say 'To h.e.l.l with it' and go on to something else. But not you. You're going to walk around with that little sad face and those little sad eyes and go, oh, oh, I'm really sorry, you didn't live happily ever after, you-"

"Shut up, Monica," Connie said, standing in the doorway.

"You should be able to fill her in, Aunt Concetta," Monica said after a moment's silence. "I'm going downstairs for my prenuptial crackers, so I don't throw up on Father Hanlon's best vestments."

"You do that," Connie said as Monica put on a robe.

When she was gone Maggie sat back down at the dressing table. "I feel stupid," she said.

"Your cousin is the one who's stupid," Connie said.

"You know what I'm talking about. I didn't even figure out why she was getting married. They probably all thought I was an idiot when we went for our dresses. They were all making little comments about whether Monica's could be let out, and I just sat there listening. You should have told me."

Connie knelt on the floor, lightly, as though there was no belly under the red tent of her dress. She looked up into Maggie's face, her eyes blazing. "Maggie," she said, "there are some things that aren't that important. There are things that seem tremendously important at the time and then years later you look back and think you can't believe you ever worried so much about them."

"You sound like Monica. Everything's silly."

"No," Connie said, smoothing her daughter's hair. "That's not what I mean. It's just that whether you're getting married because you're having a baby isn't as important as getting married and having the baby. Monica's wrong. She's one of those people who sees everything bad. And there are other people who see everything good."

"Like who?"

"I think deep down inside your father is one of them. Your aunt Margaret, too, probably, in a different way."

"What about you?"

"Not good or bad. Things just are."

"And me?"

"I think you'll probably be like me."

The two of them looked at each other for a moment. Finally Maggie said, "Monica said something else to me, too. When we were getting our dresses." She watched her mother's face, but it was very still. "About when you got married. And when I was born."

Connie smiled slowly, but she didn't show her teeth, and her eyes were cold. "She's going to have a hard life, that girl," she finally said, as though she was talking to herself. Then she looked at Maggie and said, "What did I just tell you? There are things that seem important to some people that just aren't important at all."

"You should have told me," Maggie said.

"I wouldn't have known what to say. We got married. We had a baby. I wouldn't change a thing."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes."

"Were you going to have a baby and that's why you got married?"

"That's one way of looking at it."

"That's wrong, isn't it?"

Connie sighed. "What's wrong is if I was angry about it for the rest of my life. Or if you were ashamed." Connie rose and took Maggie's dress down from its hanger. She cradled it in her arms and then she looked Maggie in the eye and said, "It's wrong to light a fire. It's worse to enjoy it."

"I didn't enjoy it."

"I know."

"You don't believe me about not doing it."

Connie was quiet, her face blank.

"It's complicated. I sort of did it, but I sort of didn't. Does that make any sense?"

"Yes," Connie said. "I know exactly what you mean."

"It was hard to think about it while it was happening."

"I know that too."

"Why did you tell the police I wasn't there?" Maggie said.

"Because that seemed closest to the truth."