The Stories Of Mary Gordon Part 23

But even I could see there was no point trying to get out of Eileen Lynch's party. I didn't say anything as I miserably dressed and miserably walked across the street, my present underneath my arm, a pair of pedal pushers I was sure Eileen wouldn't like.

Superficially, the Lynches' house was cleaner, though the smell was there, the one that always made me suspect there was something rotting, dead, or dying behind the stove or the refrigerator. Eileen's older sisters, whose beauty I then felt was diminished by its clear s.e.xual source, were dressed in starched, high dresses; their shoes shone and the seams in their stockings were perfect. For the first time, I felt I had to admire them, although I'd preferred their habitual mode of treatment- the adolescent's appraisal of young children as deriving from a low and altogether needless caste- to their false condescending warmth as they offered me a party hat and a balloon. Eileen seemed unimpressed by all the trouble that had been gone to for her; her distant walk-through of Blind Man's Bluff and Pin the Tail on the Donkey I recognized as springing from a heart as joyless as my own.

Throughout the party, Mrs. Lynch had stayed in the kitchen. After the presents had been opened, she appeared, wearing her nurse's uniform and her white hose, but not her cap, and said to all of us, "Will ye come in and have some cake, then?"

It was the cake and ice cream I had known from all the other birthday parties and I closed my eyes and tried to think of other things- the ocean, as my mother had suggested, the smell of new-mown gra.s.s. But it was no good. I felt the salty rising behind my throat: I ran for the bathroom. Eileen's guests were not from my cla.s.s, they were a year younger than I, so I was spared the humiliation of knowing they'd seen all this a dozen times before. But I was wretched as I bent above the open toilet, convinced that there was nowhere in the world that I belonged, wishing only that I could be dead like my father in a universe which had, besides much else to recommend it, incorporeality for its nature. There was the expected knock on the door. I hoped it would be Mrs. Lynch instead of one of Eileen's sisters, whose contempt I would have found difficult to bear.

"Come and lay down, ye'll need a rest," she said, turning her back to me the way the other mothers did. I followed, as I always had, into the indicated room, not letting my glance fall toward the eating children, trying not to hear their voices.

I was surprised that Mrs. Lynch had led me, not into the child's room but into the bedroom that she shared with Mr. Lynch. It was a dark room, I don't think it could have had a window. There were two high dressers and the walls were covered with brown, indistinguishable holy images. Mrs. Lynch moved the rose satinish coverlet and indicated I should lie on top of it. The other mothers always turned the bed down for me, and with irritation, smoothed the sheets. Mrs. Lynch went into the closet and took out a rough brown blanket. She covered me with it and it seemed as though she were going to leave the room. She sat down on the bed, though, and put her hand on my forehead, as if she were checking for fever. She turned the light out and sat in the chair across the room in the fashion, I now see, of the paid nurse. Nothing was said between us. But for the first time, I understood what all those adults were trying to do for me. I understood what was meant by comfort. Perhaps I was able to accept it from Mrs. Lynch as I had from no other because there was no self-love in what she did, nothing showed me she had one eye on some mirror checking her posture as the comforter of a grief-stricken child. She was not congratulating herself for her tact, her understanding, her tough-mindedness. And she had no suggestions for me; no sense that things could change if simply I could see things right, could cry, or run around the yard with other children. It was her sense of the inevitability of what had happened, and its permanence, its falling into the category of natural affliction, that I received as such a gift. I slept, not long I know- ten minutes, perhaps, or twenty- but it was one of those afternoon sleeps one awakes from as if one has walked out of the ocean. I heard the record player playing and sat up. It was the time of the party for musical chairs.

"Ye'd like to join the others then?" she asked me, turning on the light.

I realized that I did. I waited till the first round of the game was over, then joined in. It was the first child's game I can remember enjoying.

My mother didn't come for me in the car, of course. I walked across the street so she and Mrs. Lynch never exchanged words about what had happened. "I had a good time," I said to my mother, showing her the ring I'd won.

"The Lynches are good people," my mother said.

I'd like to say that my friendship with Eileen developed or that I acknowledged a strong bond with her mother and allowed her to become my confidante. But it wasn't like that; after that time my contacts with the Lynches dwindled, partly because I was making friends outside the neighborhood and partly because of the older Lynch children and what happened to their lives.

It was the middle fifties and we were, after all, a neighborhood of second-generation Irish. Adolescence was barely recognized as a distinct state; it was impossible to imagine that adolescent rebellion would be seen as anything but the grossest breach of the social contract, an incomprehensible one at that. Rebel Without a Cause was on the Legion of Decency condemned list; even Elvis Presley was preached against on the Sunday mornings before he was to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. So how could my neighborhood absorb the eldest Lynch kids: Charlie, who left school at sixteen and had no job, who spent his afternoons in the driveway, souping up his car. Or Kathy, who'd got in trouble in tenth grade and then married, bringing her baby several times a week, a.s.suming that Eileen, at ten, would be enchanted to take care of it. She wasn't of course, she viewed the child with the resentful gaze she cast on everything in life and refused to change its diapers. Rita, the third daughter, had gone to beautician school and seemed on her way to a good life except that she spent all her evenings parked with different young men in different cars- we all could see that they were different, even in the darkness- in front of the Lynch house.

I was shocked by the way the Lynches talked to their parents. In the summer everyone could hear them: "Ma, you stupid a.s.shole," "Pop, you're completely full of s.h.i.t," "For Christ sake, this is America, not f.u.c.king Ireland." Once in the winter, Charlie and Mrs. Lynch picked Eileen and me up from school when it was raining a gray, dense, lacerating winter rain. In the backseat, I heard Mrs. Lynch and Charlie talking.

"Ye'll drop me at the supermarket, then."

"I said I'd pick these kids up. That was all."

"I just need a few things, Charlie. And I remember asking ye this morning and ye saying yes."

He slammed the brakes on and looked dangerously at his mother. "Cut the c.r.a.p out, Ma. I said I have things to do and I have them. I mean it now."

Mrs. Lynch looked out the window, and Charlie left us off at the Lynch house, then drove away.

People said it was terrible the way the Lynches sat back, staring helplessly at their children like Frankenstein staring at his monster. My mother's interpretation was that the Lynches were so exhausted simply making ends meet that they didn't have the strength left to control their children, and it was a shame that children could take such advantage of their parents' efforts and hard lot. The closest she would come to criticizing them was to say that it might have been easier for them in the city where they didn't have the responsibility of a house and property. And such a long commute. But it was probably the kids they did it for, she said. Knowing how she felt, n.o.body said "shanty Irish" in front of my mother, although I heard it often on the street, each time with a pang of treachery in my heart as I listened in silence and never opened my mouth to defend.

Everyone for so long had predicted disaster for the Lynches that no one was surprised when it happened; their only surprise was that it happened on such a limited scale. It was a summer night; Charlie was drunk. His father had taken the keys to the car and hidden them so Charlie couldn't drive. We could hear him shouting at his father, "Give them to me, you f.u.c.king son of a b.i.t.c.h." We couldn't hear a word from Mr. Lynch. Finally, there was a shot, and then the police siren and the ambulance. Charlie was taken off by the police, and Mr. Lynch wheeled out on a stretcher. We later found out from loe Flynn, a cop who lived down the street, that Mr. Lynch was all right; Charlie'd only shot him in the foot. But Charlie was on his way to jail. His parents had pressed charges.

Then the Lynches were gone; no one knew how they'd sold the house; there was never a sign in front. It was guessed that Mr. Lynch had mentioned wanting to sell to someone in the cab company. Only the U-Haul truck driven by Kathy's husband and the new family, the Sullivans, arriving to work on the house, told us what had happened. lack Sullivan was young and from town and worked for the phone company; he said he didn't mind doing the repairs because he'd got the house for a song. His father helped him on the weekends, and they fixed the house up so it looked like all the others on the street. His wife loudly complained, though, about the filth inside; she'd never seen anything like it; it took her a week to get through the kitchen grease, she said, and they'd had to have the exterminator.

Everyone was awfully glad when they were finally moved in. It was a relief to have your own kind, everybody said. That way you knew what to expect.

Watching the Tango.

One should not watch the tango. Or at least not in a theater like this, one so baroque and so well cared for, so suggesting plutocrats and oil money or money made from furs: Alaska, some cold climate, underpopulation, paying women to come out. They watch the tango, these two lovers, because they have heard from friends that it is good to watch these dancers, and seats were available on quite short notice. And they must do things on short notice, for they are illicit lovers; he is married, and her job has those long hours: it is hard to get away. They are longing for the lights to go out so they can hold hands. Someone they know is in the row behind them; they must wait for darkness.

They do not know what to expect but they have, of course, a.s.sociations with the tango. Underlit and fundamentally quite dirty dance halls in parts of some large city fallen now into decay. The lights go out. They hear the sounds of an accordion, and overrich violins. He takes her hand, plays tunes on the palm of it. Her eyes close out of pleasure and she feels herself sink down and yet be buoyed up. And it encourages her to give herself up to these impossible joke instruments, their tasteless sounds.

The dancers come onto the stage. They are not young. First the men dance with each other. And the women, to the side, each dance alone in circles, as if they didn't notice, didn't care. Then suddenly, like the crack of a whip, the couples come together. Mere formality is seen to be the skeleton it is; limbs intertwine, the man's hand on the woman's back determines everything: the stress is all. The dancers are seductive, angry, playful, but it does not matter. All their gestures are theatrical, impersonal: the steps matter, and the art, which is interpretive. None of the couples is the same.

What are these women doing with their middle age? Theirs is not a body type familiar to us North Americans. Long and yet heavy-limbed, with strong, smooth athletes' backs, the high arched feet of the coquette, these bodies have not kept themselves from the fate of those of the simply indolent. Beneath the skirts, covered with beads and sequins, are soft stomachs, loose behinds. Can it be that when they are not here dancing these women are lounging, reading ill.u.s.trated Spanish romances that look like comic books: heavy-lidded blondes succ.u.mbing, ravished, their words appearing over their heads in balloons like the words of Archie and Veronica? Are they eating chocolates, these women, these dancers? How late do they sleep?

It is impossible to invent for them an ordinary life. Of course they sleep all day. And where? Their bedrooms are quite easy to imagine. Dark and overfull: the hair pomade, the bottles of gardenia, jasmine; the pictures of the dying saints. The dolls stiff on the dresser tops, their skirts lace or crocheted, look out upon the scene like smug and knowing birds. What have they witnessed? Tears and botched abortions, abject and extravagant apologies, the torpid starts of quarrels, joyous reconciliations unconvincing in the light of day. The light of day, in fact, must never enter. The dark shiny curtains stay closed until late afternoon. Outside the closed door the house life goes on like another country. Some old woman- mother, servant, it hardly matters- dusts and polishes the furniture with oil that smells of roasting nuts. She does not knock to say "Still sleeping? Rise and shine!" She does not dare. She is professionally quiet.

The woman who is watching the tango takes her lover's hand and brings it to her lips. He does not know exactly why, but she can see that he has understood the springs of such a gesture. Sorrow. "You all right?" he whispers. "Yes." She is thinking: we will never dance together among friends. It makes her want to cry: she so envies the spectacle of these couples before them, so free of responsibility. They sleep late, they make love, they dance among their friends. But they do not look happy.

Happiness seems as irrelevant to them as sunlight, medicine, or balanced meals. Yet they do not suggest the criminal. They are infinitely, reverently law-abiding. You can see how they would love a dictator. But what is this: a woman dancing amorously with another woman? And a man, seething with anger, dangerously dancing by himself? What now? Here he comes with a knife. Of course he kills her. More in love than ever with her dead, he carries her offstage, kissing her all the while with a real tenderness.

They had talked before at supper, the two lovers, about violence between women and men. The statistics, she said to him, are up: more women now are violent to men. Oh good, he said, like lung cancer. How far we've come. Still, many more men are violent to women than women are to men, she said. And men can kill women with a blow of the fist. Don't forget that, she told him. Thanks, he said. I'll keep it in mind. Once he told her that he had hit a woman. She was completely on his side.

A short, dyed blonde appears onstage holding a microphone. The lovers, listening, do not know Spanish, yet they understand this woman has been betrayed. By whom? She is at least in her mid-fifties. The s.e.x she suggests is quite unsavory. Money may have changed hands. Did a young man in tight black pants grow tired of the way he had to earn his free time? So he could be out gambling with his pals while the singer sang her heart out. Worse, with a young girl who made fun of her. The singer is right; it is terrible. She knows better. But she will make the same mistake again. The woman watching thinks of the singer dyeing her secret hairs, gray now, perhaps with a small brush. The thought of it raises in her a terrible pity. She begins to be afraid of growing old.

Intermission now. In the red lobby with its stone festoons, the lovers must pretend to be talking casually. In fact, every word he says increases her desire, and she doesn't want to go back to the theater, to the dark, where she cannot see his face, so beautiful and so arousing to her. But there is nowhere else to go. Adulterous, they are orphans. They sit in restaurants; they walk around the streets.

His friends come up. Almost never when the lovers are together do they speak to anyone except themselves. It is odd; the woman feels they are speaking in a foreign language. "We have visited Argentina," the man who is her lover's friend says, and it sounds to her like a sentence in a textbook. The four of them hear the bell and walk together down the aisle back to their seats.

A new couple has joined the dancers. Older, heavier, afraid of risks, as if they know there are things not easily recovered from, not ever, they move funereally and with no sense of play. But their somberness has not destroyed the others' spirits. Over in the corner are the madcap couple, jumping, laughing like jitterb.u.g.g.e.rs. He loudly slaps her behind. The male dancer to their left has an expression of balked chast.i.ty. "That one's a spoiled priest," the woman tells her lover. "I've seen that face on thousands of rectory walls." "And the old guy owns the nightclub," says her lover. "He has my marker for seventy-five grand." The dancers are becoming individuals, which makes them to the woman, oddly now, less interesting. She feels that, knowing them, she has to take them seriously. And she doesn't want that. She wants to lose herself in the cheap music and to dream about her lover's body.

The finale brings out all the dancers' pa.s.sion to a.s.sert their differences. The musicians, too, are ardent. The woman watching with her lover thinks: the lights will go on, we will leave each other for the hundredth time. Thousands of times more we will kiss each other blandly at the train station, in case his neighbors are around.

He says, "Their children probably don't dance the tango. Maybe no one will when they are dead."

"We will," she says. "We'll do it for them."

They take hands with the lights on. Suddenly gallant and protective, they see everyone- the dancers, the musicians, the sad singers- all of them valorous, n.o.ble, worthy, and capable of the most selfless love.

"We'll do it one day," she says. "One day we'll dance the tango."

They walk outside the theater holding hands with the rash courage of new converts, soldiers, gamblers, pirates, clairvoyants. The rain keeps them beneath the theater marquee where they kiss as if it didn't matter or as if it were the only thing that did. They see one of the dancers arguing with someone- his real wife?- a sparrow in a kerchief and brown shoes. Impatiently, he opens his umbrella, leaves her there- she has no coat, no pocketbook- and walks away. She stands with the self-conscious stoicism of one who knows she has no choice. A minute later he returns, beckons, and she runs to the umbrella. He is wearing patent leather shoes. His dancing shoes? They will be ruined.

"Let's go now," the watching woman says to her lover. She doesn't want to see the other dancers coming out. She doesn't want to have to worry.

Agnes.

"Well, it's the same old story. It's the woman pays. You see it every time," said Bridget, closing her pocketbook with a click, Nora could see, of dreadful satisfaction.

"Anybody could have seen it coming. But you don't, I guess," said Nettie.

"And whose fault was it but her own?" Bridget asked.

"Poor soul, there was few enough moments of joy she had on earth. And G.o.d have mercy on the dead. There'll be no more talk of it in my kitchen," said Kathleen.

Nora looked up at her mother, thinking her a coward to make the conversation stop. She had contempt for every one of them, her two aunts and her mother. And her father too, pretending he was sorry about Agnes's death. For they had never liked her, any of them, although at least her mother had been kind to her. Nora had not liked Ag herself.

Ag was a disappointment, for she was the only woman any of them knew who lived in sin, and she made such a dowdy appearance. Really, Nora felt, and anyone with sense would have agreed with her, if you were going to be somebody's mistress, you should look- how? You should be overdressed and overly made-up with loud dyed hair that was itself a challenge, a large bosom and a shocking, sticking-out behind, a waist you drew attention to with tight, cinched belts. You should smoke cigarettes and leave them in the ashtray marked with your dark lipstick, piles of them so people would count them when you were gone, and make remarks. But Agnes looked, Nora had always thought, like a wet bird, with her felt navy blue hat in winter, her straw navy-blue hat in summer, with her damp hands that she kept putting to her face as if she were afraid that if she didn't keep checking, she'd find her face had fallen off.

Sometimes, though, the difference between Ag's fate and her appearance raised in Nora a wild hope. Ag looked as damaged as Nora with her one short leg knew herself to be. But Ag provided a suggestion that it could be possible to live a life of pa.s.sion nonetheless. How could this be anything to Nora but a solace? At thirteen, she dreamed identically to her girlfriends. Rudolph Valentino would carry her off somewhere, his eyes gone vague and menacing with love. He would hold her at arm's length, staring at her face, unable to believe in his good fortune. They would lie down together on soft sand. He would not have noticed her leg, and when she tactfully brought it up he would laugh, that laugh that could have been a villain's but was not, and say, "It is as nothing with a love like ours."

Sometimes in the middle of this vision, Nora grew embarra.s.sed at herself and angry, and her anger grew up like a bare spiked tree against an evil sky; it grew and spread until it became the only feature in the landscape. "Fool," she called herself, for everybody knew that no one would forget her leg, it was the first thing anybody saw about her, it was the thing the merciful looked past, remarking on her hair, her eyes; the thing that most people could not get past, so that they did not look at her. She would never be beloved, carried off. She would take a commercial course, forget the academic that the teachers told her she belonged in, forget that stuff, for she would always be alone, and when her parents died she would live in the house alone. She would always support herself so she would never have to rely on her four brothers. At such moments, a last resort but one she dared to trust, Ag's face would swim up among the others in her mind. For Nora knew her uncle Des could have had anybody, but he'd stuck with Ag. Ten years he'd stuck with her, and all that time she'd asked for nothing. Supported him and said okay when he said he would never marry, that he had no patience for the priests and couldn't be tied down. Still he stayed with her, and the example of Ag and her uncle suggested to Nora that if she could bring a man to see that she would ask for nothing, she too could have a pa.s.sionate life.

But in the end, there was no comfort in it, for the life so obviously weakened Ag and made her hungry for respectability. Ag was no help to her, and Nora grew resentful of the cruelly false hint Ag did not know she proffered. She could only just bring herself to be civil to Ag, and she allowed her parents to believe that she judged Ag's morals as harshly as her aunt Bridget did.

Now she felt bad about not having liked Agnes, and it was typical of Agnes, she was great at making everyone feel bad. She came into a room like the end of the party: no one could enjoy themselves with her around; n.o.body could relax. She should have seen it and kept away. But she didn't see it, of course, and kept on coming. You could say, perhaps, that it was Uncle Des's fault: he should never have brought her in the first place, acting as if it was respectable. But she came more than he did: three times to his one, although the sisters always knocked themselves out asking him to come and knocked themselves out when he got there.

Nora knew her uncle Desmond was a bootlegger. She'd heard the word before. It was a queer word, she thought, "bootlegger," it sounded innocent like "shoemaker" or "fireman," far more innocent than names of other jobs: "chauffeur," "handyman," that men in her family without much comment seemed to hold. But because of Des there were odd night stirrings, brisk events involving whispers and rushed trips downstairs to the coal cellar and then up again and downstairs in a greater rush, and Nora being told to keep the children back, but told not one thing else. And then the arguments, the terrible dangerous anger when her father came home and was told: Des had to hide some of his liquor in the cellar, he could be killed or be arrested, there was not another blessed place.

Edmund Derency paced, he literally pulled his hair, he told his wife her brother was a thief, a wastrel, and he didn't give a tinker's d.a.m.n for her or for her family, and they would lose it all, lose everything for him, and because of his d.a.m.n laziness and trickery it all would go for nothing, the trip over and the years of work so they could have what they had now: the house, a girl in high school, jobs in the government you kept forever unless they found out about something like this, and then it was all gone.

Look at the house, Kathleen, he said, take a good look at it, remember it so you can think of it when us and all the kids are living on the street because of your d.a.m.n brother and his d.a.m.n fast tricks.

But then it was over, Des was back with money in his pocket and a gift for everyone, a radio big as a piece of furniture that even her father could not resist. Nor could he keep up his grudge against Des, spectacularly handsome in his shirtsleeves, the sight of him a gift, like a day at the beach for all the children issued fresh, as if it was the thing they all deserved, they knew it now, but had been all along afraid to wish for. When Des put his hands on Ed Derency's shoulders and said, "G.o.d, Edmund, I'd have shot myself in the foot rather than do this to you and Kath. If there had been a G.o.d's blessed way out of it. But they were on my neck, and I don't need to tell you of all people what that could have meant."

"Not another word, Des. What else would family be for? G.o.d knows they're trouble enough at the best of times, if you take my meaning."

There were the two of them, drinking her uncle Desmond's whiskey, the very bottles Nora's father had threatened to smash up with an axe, winking, their arms around each other, men together, as if women and all that had to do with them- the children and the houses and the family meals- were just a bad joke that had been forced upon their kind. Nora hated them for that, she hated what was clearer to her daily: the adult world of false seeming, lies and promises you couldn't trust an inch. There was Des, just having made a joke, or laughed at one, about the weight of women on the world, singing "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" while her mother played the piano for him, tears dropping on her fingers while she played. And the aunts crying in their chairs and Agnes sitting there patting her eyes with a twisted-up handkerchief as if she were afraid that if she made a noise or if her tears fell on the furniture she would be a nuisance. Nora hardened her heart against her uncle, against all of them, and turned away when he sang the song he used to sing to her when she was little: "With someone like you, a pal good and true / I'd like to leave them all behind."

She thought with anger how she once had loved it, what a fool she'd been, a fool he'd made her, and the family'd allowed. He knew that he had lost her, and he made his eyes go sad. "There's no more time for your old uncle now you're a young lady, is there?"

How could anybody look so sad? He needed all her comfort. She was about to say, "Oh, Uncle Des," and put her arms around him, smell the smell of his tobacco and the starched collar he always wore. But something in his look gave him away, some insecurity. He looked around the room, hedging his bets, looking toward the younger children, giving up: they were all boys. But in that moment he had lost her, and she shrugged her shoulders and said, "I have lots to do. With school, you know, and all."

Afterward she was glad she had done it. For that was the last time he had come with Agnes; it all happened not long after that: he must have known. Must have known when they made him sing "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" a second time, and he looked at all of them, especially at Agnes though, and said, bringing his fist down on the radio, "We'll all go back. I swear it to you. It's the one reason I'm in this rotten business. If I make a killing, it's back home in triumph for the lot of us. First cla.s.s. We'll turn them green."

He hadn't meant a word of it. Two weeks later he was on the train to California with his brand-new wife.

"Well, it's ridiculous, he's never even brought the girl around. How could he have just upped and married somebody we've never met? You must have read it wrong, the letter. Let me have a look at it," said Bridget.

She read the piece of paper- hotel stationery- as if she were a starving person looking in a pile of rot for one intact kernel. Then, Nora could see, she hated herself for her fool's work and looked around her for someone to blame.

" 'Twas fast, like, you'd have to say that," Nettie said timidly. "Perhaps they had to."

"I'd say Des would know better than that," said Edmund Derency, "I'd say that for him."

The sisters turned upon him then, their eyes hard with the fury of shared blood.

"You never knew him," Kathleen said with tight lips to her husband. "There's something he's keeping from us. The woman could be sick, dreadfully sick. Or dying, and he wouldn't want the three of us to know."

Ed Derency threw down his newspaper. "She's a rich girl whose family threw her out for marrying a greenhorn. That's as sick as she is."

"And how will he support a wife in California? He'd got nothing put away. Too generous," said Kathleen.

"And Agnes Martin to count on with the money she got wiping the noses of the Yankee brats," said Edmund.

"She worked for the finest families in New York, Ed Derency, don't you forget it," Bridget said.

"Since when are you on Ag's side?" he asked.

"What will happen to Ag now?" said Nettie.

"I hate to think of it," said Edmund.

"No one's asking you to think of it," Bridget said. "It's none of your affair. Someone should phone her."

"I'll telephone her," said Kathleen, rising as if she'd waited to be asked. "I'll invite her for Sunday dinner."

Nora ran upstairs to the bathroom, shut the door behind her, and ran the water in the sink as loudly as she could. She dreaded the thought of Ag and wished her mother had the courage to cut her off. There was nothing they could do for her, nothing that anyone could do. She hoped Ag knew that and would have the sense to stay away. But then she knew Ag wouldn't, and her vision of Ag sitting in the living room and hoping for a sc.r.a.p of news hardened Nora's heart. She'd be d.a.m.ned if she'd be nice to Ag; if Ag had pride, she'd stay away. But if she'd had the pride, she'd never have taken up with Uncle Desmond and embarra.s.sed everyone and put herself in this position so she would be hurt. She'd be better off dead, Nora said to herself, enjoying her cruel face in the mirror.

When Ag arrived, she looked no different; if she'd spent nights weeping, it had left no mark. She talked of Desmond's marriage, his departure, reasonably, as if it were something they had discussed together and agreed to.

"He pointed out to me," Ag said, "that really he had no choice but to marry her. 'She's not like you and me, Ag,' he said. 'She was brought up with the silver spoon. I couldn't do it to her, leave her in the lurch. She stood up to her parents for me. She lost everything. She wasn't like the two of us. She really had something to lose.'"

Ag said this proudly, with a pride Nora had never seen in her when she'd had Desmond actually with her. And Nora hated her because Ag didn't see how she'd been taken in. Desmond had gone off with another woman, had given her everything that Ag had wanted from him, and Ag acted as if he'd given her a gift. Disgust welled up in Nora, and at the same time fear; she wanted Ag to know what had happened to her, but she didn't want anyone to say it. She was petrified every second that Bridget would open up her mouth.

But the visit pa.s.sed with not much more than the usual discomfort; Ag had always been so troublesome a presence that her new estate hardly made a difference.

"Do you think we've seen the back of her at last?" asked Bridget.

"There's no one else for her on holidays and things. In charity, I'd say we'd have to ask her," Kathleen said.

"Charity my foot," said Ed.

"You talk big, Ed Derency, but you'd be the last to turn her out. Or have her sitting by herself on Christmas."

"It's just February, Kath. Let's see what the year brings," said Nora's father, but Nora couldn't tell whether or not he meant it kindly. She could see that they felt relieved that Agnes hadn't come apart over Desmond's leaving; their relief had made them quiet. They discussed Ag's folly, her gullible swallowing of the story Des had fed her, less than they might have, or than they'd discussed anything else she'd ever done. They were quiet because they were cowards, and they couldn't say a word about what had happened without putting Desmond in a light which even their love couldn't render flattering.

Agnes phoned whenever Desmond wrote her.

"Well, at least he keeps in touch with her, that's something," Kathleen said.

It was from Ag and not from Desmond that they learned Desmond's wife had had a baby. Desmond's letters were about weather, about his new job in a haberdasher's, about how a customer who worked in Hollywood had said that Des should have a screen test. Not a word about his wife, as if she were a temporary measure, and the important things in life were weather, scenery, the movie industry, the cut of clothes. It was only from Ag that they learned how he met his wife. Des was her father's bootlegger; her father was a big lawyer in New jersey. Tenafly, Agnes had said. No one could tell Nora how it happened: that he went from chatting the girl up, leaning his foot on the running board of some big car, and then the next thing, they were on the train to California. Was it that it was obvious to everyone but her how it had happened? Or was it that she was the only one who had the sense to know that the time in between was the real clue, the real important time, the time that held what she and Agnes needed to know: what had happened that had made Des give this woman easily the thing Ag wanted and would never get, or ask for, or after a while think of as any possibility at all.

Agnes was cheerful at the news of Desmond's baby's birth. She had become, Nora could see, more family to him than his own family. Her new responsibility gave her a pride of place that she had never had, as if she'd landed a good job at last and reveled in the t.i.tle. Nora saw that all this made the sisters hate her, and she knew that Agnes didn't have the sense to see. Proudly, without apology, she brought them news of him as pretext for a visit. She came often, for Desmond called her often for advice: she was a children's nurse, and Des said, Ag reported proudly, his wife had never been around a baby in her life.

"I even wondered if I should go out there. Lend a hand, you know. Poor thing, she sounds so overwhelmed. You see it all the time. She's very young, you know."

Bridget put her full teacup heavily down in her saucer. They all knew she was about to say something terrible, but for this once no one tried to shift the conversation to distract or stop her. Nora saw that they wanted Bridget to do the dreadful thing, to hurt Ag, that they- her mother and Nettie, with their famous reputations, in her mother's case for being kind, and in her aunt's for being too cheerful to think a bad thing about anyone- wanted now for Agnes to be hurt. Nora saw that only she did not want it, but she was afraid, not strong, a child, and to prevent it you had to be stronger than all that hating of the three of them, than all that wish to hurt. She saw them look at Bridget, and saw her take it as a sign.