Object Lessons Part 5

"Grandpop bought us a bigger house. He gave you keys and everything. He says it has a basketball hoop and a little room over the garage I can have for myself."

Connie dried her hands on a dishtowel. "Whose side are you on?"

Maggie felt she was going to be sick, too, and wondered if it was just the sharp vinegar smell lingering in the kitchen. "I didn't know there were sides," she said.

"Never mind," Connie said. "I shouldn't have said that. We're not moving."

"Are you sure?" Maggie said.

"We are not moving," said Connie in a trembling voice, and Maggie had taken Joseph out of his chair and back to the patio.

Out on the patio now, Celeste stepped into the sun, a Pall Mall glowing white against the blood red of her lacquered nails. She followed Connie onto the lawn, off balance because the heels of her shoes had sunk into the dirt. They had their backs to her, but Maggie could hear s.n.a.t.c.hes of what they were saying. Celeste threw back her head and, her mouth working like a fish out of water, blew a chain of smoke rings into the still air. Suddenly she turned to Connie and said loudly, "We've all gotta grow up sometime, Con."

"So when is it your turn?"

"I'm as grown as I'm gonna get. Here's the G.o.d's truth-you're more of a kid than I am, never mind the husband and the four kids and the house. You need to start acting like the mother of a growing girl, not just living in a dream world."

"I was never a kid, Cece. How come I was never a kid? It's not fair."

"You're right," Celeste said. "But you got no choice now, sweetheart. You gotta hold this family together."

"I thought the man held the family together."

Celeste blew more smoke rings. "There's only one thing men hold, and that's when they got to go to the bathroom. All right, sorry," Celeste added, seeing her cousin's face. "But sometimes I think you watch too many movies. Your daughter needs you now."

"She doesn't like me, Ce."

"Get out," Celeste said, dropping her cigarette into the gra.s.s and rubbing it out with the pointed toe of her shoe. "What's to like? You're her mother. Did you like your mother? Do I like my mother? You need to show her things. Remember how old Rose slapped me when I first got the curse? Boom! 'It's an old Italian custom,' she says. I should have thanked her for preparing me for Charlie."

Connie did not answer. She had her arms wrapped around herself as though she was holding her body together. Maggie could see the construction crew on their lunch break; the two women gave them a little wave, and the men waved back. Maggie moved away from the screen, afraid someone would see her. Celeste put her arm around Connie's shoulder, and they stood that way for what seemed like a long time: Celeste holding Connie, Connie's head of black curls on her shoulder, Maggie holding back the sheer white curtains beneath the pink gingham ones. Then one of the men yelled "Back to the grind!" and the women turned and went indoors. Maggie saw that her mother's face was wet and her long nose a little s.h.i.+ny, and she heard her say softly, her voice breaking, "They're gonna win, Cece. I can feel it. Ten years from now I'll be living in one of their houses, sitting on their furniture, wearing their clothes, and my kids will be their kids. She's already one of them."

"Don't overreact, sweetheart," Celeste said. "You got the ace in the hole. If your husband has to chose between you and them, he'd choose you every time. He already did it when it mattered."

"And what if my daughter has to choose between me and them, Cece? It's not as simple as Cinderella anymore."

"Hey, honey," Celeste said. "This isn't like you. You having your friend, or what? The curse upon you? You and me, we always were on the same schedule."

Maggie heard her mother laugh, high and a little shaky, and saw Celeste smooth her hair.

"I wish," Connie said, with an odd shrillness in her voice.

"Oh, s.h.i.+t," Celeste said, stopping and looking down at her cousin. "Not again. Can't you count?" Maggie wondered what they were talking about, and as she looked down at her mother her eyes began to brim with tears, for no reason she could figure out except that her mother was crying, too.

8

ON THE FOURTH DAY OF THEIR ANNUAL trip to the beach, the Scanlan women had their photograph taken at Cap'n Jim's restaurant. Maggie knew that as surely as her grandmother would disapprove of her bathing suit, and her cousin Teresa would get sunburned so badly she would smell like Noxzema for a month, on the fourth day they would have their picture taken to testify that they were having a wonderful time and were part of a supremely happy family. trip to the beach, the Scanlan women had their photograph taken at Cap'n Jim's restaurant. Maggie knew that as surely as her grandmother would disapprove of her bathing suit, and her cousin Teresa would get sunburned so badly she would smell like Noxzema for a month, on the fourth day they would have their picture taken to testify that they were having a wonderful time and were part of a supremely happy family.

While the photographer set up his tripod, Maggie looked around to see what he would see: Monica laughing, her hair s.h.i.+ning in the lights; Teresa, who was the same age as Maggie, her eyes pale blue as eucalyptus mints, her face a little vacant; and the twins, a matching patina of pale pink over their faces and arms, staring down self-consciously at their shrimp c.o.c.ktails. Mary Frances had gone to the ladies' room to freshen her lipstick, which had come off on the rim of her whiskey-sour gla.s.s. The picture would cost five dollars, and when it was sent to her at home, Mary Frances would put it in the silver frame that held last year's picture. Maggie had taken the velvet back off that frame one day, and had found seven photographs of the group, starting back when she was six years old, her lips drawn down in an awkward smile to hide the fact that her two front teeth were missing. Monica was eleven in that first picture, and looked, Maggie had been sad to see, much as she looked today, except that there had been the glint of her braces. On Monica, even braces looked good, as if she had jewelry on her teeth.

"Congratulations, Maggie," Monica said now, readjusting the bow holding back her hair. "My father says that your mother is going to have another baby." Monica made the word "another" last a long, long time.

"So what?" Maggie said.

"Really? When? Ooooh," said Teresa, picking up the last shrimp with her stubby freckled fingers. "I hope it's a girl this time."

They were eating by a plate-gla.s.s window in the restaurant. It was actually a refurbished tugboat, big and square, with graceless utilitarian lines, which picked diners up at 6:00 and 8:30 from a pier on the bay side of the town of South Beach and sailed along the sh.o.r.e while they ate. Mary Frances took the girls to dinner at Cap'n Jim's each year because she a.s.sumed they liked the novelty of it, and each year they mimed excitement and delight, convinced that it was Mary Frances's favorite restaurant. In fact after years of Friday night meatless suppers, Mary Frances hated fish, and she had no stomach for the sea; she usually ate little and drank a good deal. Maggie was like her in this; she usually drank so much soda during these meals that she had to go to the bathroom at least twice, each time thinking of what happened after she flushed the toilet this far from land.

"What are you girls giggling about?" Mary Frances said pleasantly as she came back to the table, although the only one giggling was Teresa. Mary Frances sat down in the middle, between Monica and Maggie, and the photographer fiddled with some dials on his camera. "What a handsome group," he said, and Mary Frances smiled, and the shutter clicked. "All sisters, I presume," he said, and Mary Frances laughed, and the shutter clicked again. It was the same photographer as always, wearing a captain's hat and smoking a cigar. He said the same things every year.

They had spent the day on the beach, where the sound of the sea and the strength of the sun had lulled them all into afternoon naps, even Mary Frances in her rented beach chair. Her magazine would fall open on her lap, her mouth would goggle a bit, and she would doze, waking suddenly, embarra.s.sed, to say, "My, but it's warm." Mary Frances was not entirely comfortable with her granddaughters-she had been the youngest of nine children, and was accustomed to being the baby herself-and she did her best to hide it by playing the role of grandmother the way she expected Billie Burke or Spring Byington would. She affected a sort of breezy elegance, which usually consisted of wide eyes, a half-smile, and the phrase "Well, girls?" all accompanied with a slight sideways tilt of the head. Maggie had once seen a movie starring Greer Garson and had become indignant at the way Greer Garson had imitated her grandmother. It was only in the last year or so that she had realized that Mary Frances herself was doing the imitating.

On the beach, Maggie had listened to the radio and lain on her back on a towel. The air was white with unalloyed sunlight, and her lips tasted like salt from the sea, and from her own sweat. Around her were girls sparkling with baby oil, their hands always busy with their hair, their eyes moving back and forth along the horizon for some boy or another, their nipped-in waists the perfect counterpoint to their bosoms and their hips.

And then there were the littler girls, the ones Maggie had been like the summer before, shrill and jumpy, smelling of Coppertone, wet white T-s.h.i.+rts over their cotton suits to keep them from burning, their plastic buckets beside them on their blankets. And the middle-sized ones, like her cousin Teresa, still digging for sand crabs at the water's edge, still wearing her shapeless nylon tank suit, although she had to slump to keep her nipples from poking its navy-blue surface. Maggie felt as if she belonged nowhere, and to none of them. "Roll over, roll over," the deejay sang every hour, parroting the children's song to warn his listeners to tan evenly, but Maggie stayed on her back, afraid that if she lay on her stomach she would dent the top part of her bathing suit.

Monica was sitting under an umbrella; she tanned only an hour a day because she had read in Seventeen Seventeen that too much sun gave you wrinkles. Occasionally she got up to stroll down the beach, her pink eyelet suit hugging her body, and Maggie would watch her stop at the lifeguard stand and talk to the two young men who sat there, their zinc-oxided noses two white flags on the horizon. Other boys would stop by, and Monica would swivel from one to another. Finally she came back to lie under the umbrella. that too much sun gave you wrinkles. Occasionally she got up to stroll down the beach, her pink eyelet suit hugging her body, and Maggie would watch her stop at the lifeguard stand and talk to the two young men who sat there, their zinc-oxided noses two white flags on the horizon. Other boys would stop by, and Monica would swivel from one to another. Finally she came back to lie under the umbrella.

In midafternoon, when Maggie was falling asleep, the voice on the radio said, "I've got a special request here from the guys in the soph.o.m.ore sports club at Fordham. This one goes out to the beautiful, the untouchable, the incredible Helen. No last names, please." Then he played a song Maggie had never heard before, by Johnny Mathis, whose voice kept breaking on the high notes. When Maggie looked up at her cousin, Monica was staring out to sea, her eyes narrowed. "Untouchable my a.s.s," she muttered.

"What, dear?" Mary Frances said pleasantly.

"Nothing, Grandmom," said Monica, and she got slowly to her feet and walked back to the lifeguard stand.

When Monica was gone, Maggie gingerly turned over onto her stomach. She lay flat for a minute, the sand s.h.i.+fting slightly beneath her cheek, and then she propped herself up on her elbows and looked down. Sure enough, her convex top was now concave.

"Oooh," she moaned.

"What, dear?"

"Nothing, Grandmom," Maggie said, pus.h.i.+ng out the cups with her finger.

"I love your bathing suit, Maggie," Teresa said with a giggle. "You look like a cancan dancer."

"Watch your mouth, dear," said Mary Frances.

When they were not at the beach, they strolled along the boardwalk, played miniature golf while Mary Frances watched, ate surf and turf at restaurants with imitation fishnets on the walls. Mary Frances told the same stories every year, and over the years Maggie had begun to think there was something sad about them, as though what Mary Frances didn't discuss was somehow different and darker than these pat anecdotes.

Maggie knew very little about her grandmother's past life, except that Mary Frances still mourned Elizabeth Ann, the baby who had died, and Maggie sometimes wondered whether being surrounded by her granddaughters reminded her of her loss. Her aunt Margaret had told Maggie that Mary Frances herself had been born two months after her father had died of tuberculosis and that when she was little she had thought her name was "posthumous child" because so many people called her that. Inevitably the children Mary Frances felt most drawn to were the vulnerable ones. Maggie knew that her grandmother was fondest of Tommy, and she tried not to think about what that meant, for her father and for her. Maggie knew that her grandmother loved her, too, although the rest of the family thought of Maggie as John Scanlan's pet.

After they had had their picture taken, a full moon rose outside the window of Cap'n Jim's, and they looked at the man in the moon as they had cheesecake for dessert. The boat was approaching the pier, and the girls gathered up their white patent handbags and began to follow their grandmother to the door. The guesthouse where they always stayed-"patronized," Mary Frances said, as though she was somehow condescending to the place-was right across the street from the pier. It was a squat, rather pretty white building with white pebbles instead of a lawn, big pots of geraniums flanking the path to the front door, and a porch that ran around three sides where they spent the evening looking over the sea and rocking in their rocking chairs.

"Grandmom, I have cramps," Monica said, as they crossed the road in single file, looking, Maggie thought, like a row of ducks in their yellow and white summer dresses and their s.h.i.+ny white summer dress shoes. "Can I go in and lie down?"

"There's no need to be so explicit," said Mary Frances. "Just go ahead. The rest of us will be out here."

They sat down, facing the ocean, the sounds dying down as the diners moved away from the boat, the sounds dying down to the slow, rhythmical boom-boom boom-boom of the surf, occasionally shot through with a trill of high laughter from the beach. of the surf, occasionally shot through with a trill of high laughter from the beach.

Maggie mulled over the news about a new baby, which was not really news after the day she had seen her mother being sick in the sink. One of her most enduring images of her mother was of a headless person, a small torso bent double, making strangled heaving sounds over the sink. For a long time it was the only way she thought of her mother, on those rare occasions when she did think of her when they were apart, although now sometimes there would appear unwanted in her mind the picture of her mother looking like that high school photograph, her face alight, not like a mother at all.

Maggie knew that soon it would be time for Mary Frances to tell stories. Usually when they were at the beach Mary Frances told the story about how she had met John Scanlan. She had been small and pretty, with soft brown hair and hazel eyes, and John Scanlan had looked down at her and said, "You're going to marry me whether you like it or not." It was a great family story, the epitome of what they all liked to think of as the Scanlan directness and determination, character traits that in fact only John and Maggie's aunt Margaret, Sister John of the Cross, happened to possess. But Maggie realized now that the fact that her grandfather had gotten his way said as much about Mary Frances as it did about John Scanlan. For that was how it had happened, really, and even now Maggie could hear it in her grandmother's voice: Mary Frances had not known whether she liked it or not, whether she liked him him or not; she only knew that John had taken charge of the situation, and that had been that. or not; she only knew that John had taken charge of the situation, and that had been that.

And that had been that ever since. In the first ten years she had had seven children, while her husband had become grand, feared and fawned upon by nearly everyone he met. And somehow, over those years, she had come to love him. Maggie could see that it pained her that John let the world know he thought she was silly and childish, although Connie had once said that that was part of the reason John had married Mary Frances, so that he could think she was silly and childish and manage her. Somehow the "whether you like it or not" story always made Maggie feel sad.

"Tell about the lifeguard," Maggie said, looking sideways at her grandmother, who was staring fixedly toward the black void of the horizon.

"Oh, that old story," her grandmother said.

"I love that story," said Teresa.

"Well, as you all know I'm not much of a swimmer," said Mary Frances, whose grandchildren had never seen her do anything in a bathing suit except sit on the beach. "I was with my friend Ruthie Corrigan and we were at the Alden, a guest house down the street here, I think it's called the Grande now. We had a room on the top floor with those dormer windows and just barely room enough for two. Seven dollars a week it was, which may seem cheap to you, but was dear then, I can tell you, especially for me. Not that we were poor. But there wasn't money to burn."

"And you went swimming," said Maggie.

"And we went swimming," Mary Frances continued. "There was a dreadful undertow, one of those where you can just barely stand up. It was dragging us around, but Ruthie was a bigger girl than me, a very big girl, with great big bones and feet, I think they were tens, if you can imagine, and she was staying put and I was all over the place out there. And I was trying to be calm, but finally I said 'Ruthie, I'm drowning, say your prayers and I'll say mine.' And she hollered, oh, did she holler. And before I knew what had happened there was this young man pulling me out by the hair."

Mary Frances stopped to catch her breath, her face as pink as the embroidery on her pocket handkerchief.

"He was as handsome as Francis X. Bushman-"

"Who's Francis X. Bushmer?" said Teresa, who had a mind, John Scanlan always said, "like a sieve."

"Shut up," said Maggie. "An actor. Pay attention."

"He was as handsome as Francis X. Bushman," Mary Frances said, "with beautiful wavy hair and the prettiest teeth. I was all right when he got me up on the beach, only out of breath and a little scared, but Ruthie was screaming like a banshee and finally I had to tell her to be quiet so he could tell me his name. Roderick. Can you beat that? Roderick. Like a duke, I said to Ruthie. And right there on the beach he said, 'May I take you to dinner tonight?' And me still trying to catch my breath, so I just nodded. 'May I take you?' Like a duke, I said to Ruthie."

"But you didn't go," said Maggie.

"I didn't go, no," said Mary Frances with a slight clicking noise, her mouth dry from the whiskey sours. "That afternoon I met your grandfather. And that was that."

Maggie waited.

"He swept me off my feet," Mary Frances said with a sigh.

It suddenly seemed very quiet and the noise of the ocean seemed loud. "I have to go to the bathroom," said one of the twins softly, as though she was a toddler who needed to be taken and helped. "Well, go then, dear, don't discuss it," Mary Frances said impatiently.

"Grandmom, can I go for a walk on the beach?" Maggie asked, as her cousin slipped away.

"In your stockings?"

"I didn't wear them tonight."

"I wish I'd known that. I would have sent you back upstairs. Well, go ahead then."

Maggie handed Teresa her white patent pumps and ran down the stairs. The road that separated the guesthouse from the beach was empty and the sand felt surprisingly cold. The night was so black that Maggie knew she had reached the water's edge only when she felt the sea run over her feet. When she looked for the moon she realized that it must be hidden behind the clouds, and she wondered if it would rain, and what they would all do if it did, stuck together at the beach on a rainy day. To one side she could hear an odd whirring sound, and dimly in the dark she made out the silhouette of someone surf-casting. She began to walk in the opposite direction.

She felt at home walking on the beach. The lonely, empty feeling in her stomach, which seemed out of place in everyday life-at the pool, playing softball, at school, with her brothers-felt suitable at the beach. She walked for what seemed like a long time, and then turned at one of the stone jetties and walked back again, looking for the lights of the guesthouse beyond the dunes. She saw them from some distance away and began to climb to the middle of the beach.

She was perhaps a block away from the house when she almost stepped on a half-naked couple sprawled on a blanket. She drew back and then squinted in the darkness, able to make out the curve of the boy's bare b.u.t.tocks and the ridiculous welter of clothes gathered around his ankles. "Oh my G.o.d," he kept repeating, moving up and down. "Oh my G.o.d." Beneath him a girl seemed to be staring blankly at the sky overhead, the whites of her eyes visible even in the darkness. Maggie realized that the girl was staring at her, and that it was her cousin Monica, looking expressionless, grim, her fingernails sparkling on the boy's shoulder as the moon momentarily emerged from the clouds. "Oh my G.o.d," he said again, and Maggie drew back and ran across the sand to the break in the dunes.

She kept on running across the street, up onto the porch of the guesthouse; then she sat there hugging her knees for a few minutes before she went upstairs to the room she and Monica shared. One of the twin beds was lumpy with what Maggie knew would be an artful arrangement of pillows. She pulled out her own pillow and turned on her side, feigning sleep when she heard footfalls an hour later. She spent all night wondering what to do, but the matter was settled for her the next morning, as she and Monica walked to the beach together several steps behind their grandmother. Monica gave her a level look, not unlike the one she had given her the night before on the beach, and said quietly, "Who'd believe you? Grandpop says you have an overactive imagination." Then she walked ahead, her carefully oiled calves s.h.i.+ning in the sun, talking to Mary Frances.

Maggie lagged behind, and so it was she that Mrs. Polisky, the owner of the guesthouse, reached first as she came trotting up behind them, her fat face red. "Tell your grandmother you've got to come into the house," she gasped. "You've got to go home. Your grandfather's had an accident."

9

JOHN SCANLAN LAY IN THE HOSPITAL bed, the left side of his face looking as though it was melting into his shoulder, a thick line of saliva edging his jawline. "Wipe his mouth," Mark said to one of the nurses, but as soon as she had done so the spittle crept down again. bed, the left side of his face looking as though it was melting into his shoulder, a thick line of saliva edging his jawline. "Wipe his mouth," Mark said to one of the nurses, but as soon as she had done so the spittle crept down again.

Except for the fact that his family stood behind a sheet of gla.s.s, kept out of the intensive care unit by regulations that even now her uncle James was appealing, Maggie thought that it looked like one of the deathbed scenes of the British royal family in her book about Queen Victoria. Her grandfather did not look dead; he looked ruined, as though he would have to be renovated from top to bottom to regain any semblance of his former self. Mary Frances was sitting beside his bed, stroking his hand and clutching the cord to the intravenous feed.

"Will he die?" Maggie asked, the only one of the grandchildren left there, the twins having been sent home by cab, Teresa sent to the cafeteria in hysterics, and Monica left in the waiting room with some of the aunts, reading an old copy of Vogue Vogue.

"What kind of question is that?" Mark asked. "Jesus. Of course not." Maggie noticed that a tube running from underneath the covers down the side of the bed was bright yellow, and she began to feel sick. She had been in a hospital only twice before, once for st.i.tches in her knee, once to visit her mother when Joseph was born, her father sneaking her in past the nurses' stations, but it had not been like this. Even the smell was different; there was still the odor of disinfectant, but it was overlaid with that of rubber and dirty clothes. She went outside into the waiting area, where her father was talking on the pay phone.

"Did you find her?" Monica was asking him.

"Mind your own business," Tommy Scanlan said, dropping in another coin.

"Maggie, honey, do you have any idea where your mother could be?" Aunt Ca.s.s asked.

"At home."

"No, she's not."

"At Celeste's?"

"Your brothers are there, thank G.o.d. But Celeste doesn't know where your mother went."

Tommy slammed down the pay phone and said, "She can't even drive, for Christ's sake. She hates the train. Where is she?"

"Did you call Grandpop?" asked Maggie, who thought it was probably a bad time to mention that her mother might be able to drive after all.

"He said he'd find her. How's he going to find her? The closest Angelo Mazza's ever come to driving is riding shotgun in the flower car at a funeral."

"Perhaps she's visiting a friend in the neighborhood," Aunt Ca.s.s said.

"She doesn't have any friends," Tommy said, and Maggie flinched. "She has Celeste," she said quietly.