Object lessons (16 page)

Next to it was a professional black-and-white photograph of Helen. She was wearing a lot of obvious eyeliner and looked older and very beautiful. Her shoulders were bare. Maggie stood up to look at the picture closely as Helen’s roommate exhaled and said, “Her Theda Bara look. Wonderful, isn’t it?” Maggie nodded. She had no idea what the girl meant.

When Helen came in she was wearing the same kind of kimono as the other girl’s, but in a bright salmon color, and her part was lost in the thicket of her unbrushed hair. Maggie thought she looked more beautiful than in the picture, the pale skin of her heart-shaped face pink at the cheeks and chin, her legs jutting out from her robe. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to call first?” she said.

“You don’t have a phone,” Debbie said, her eyes down, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Sure we do,” said the roommate. “We got it last week.”

“Don’t you tell Mom,” Helen said sharply, looking suddenly like her old self as she swept into the kitchen. “Do you want coffee?” she called over her shoulder, but neither of the girls answered.

When she came back into the room, a cup cradled in her hands, Maggie felt as though Helen had been gone a long time. She realized it was only a month since Helen had moved out, and she thought perhaps the other feeling was only because she had never belonged at home, had always seemed about to leave. She did not look at home in this apartment either, although her roommate did, yawning and stretching like a toddler just up from an afternoon nap.

“Mom won’t let anybody move into your room,” Debbie said, uncrossing her arms. “Aggie begged and begged. She sent in the money to hold your place at Marymount.”

Helen laughed, not sarcastically, but with real happiness, her blue eyes alight. “That’s all right,” she said. “I knew she would. I’ll come some day next week for dinner and talk to her after. How’s Charles?”

“Okay. He sleeps all the time. Not like Jennifer was.”

“Did you tell them about the part?” the roommate said, putting her cigarette out in the milky dregs of her coffee.

Helen smiled.

“Your sister got a part in a revue at a club downtown. It’s called
A New World
. Sort of a folk-music thing. I swear she’s going to be famous.”

“Really?” Maggie said.

Helen shrugged again. “Don’t tell Mom,” she said.

“You’re going to sing in a show?” Debbie asked.

“Don’t look so shocked,” Helen said. “I have a good voice.”

“The face didn’t hurt, either,” her roommate said.

From the hallway came the explosive sound of someone laboring to clear his throat. Then there was the sound of spitting, and of the toilet flushing. Maggie and Debbie stared, transfixed, as a tall man with awry red hair walked into the living room, his chest and his feet bare, his blue jeans hanging so low on his hips that a small cloud of pubic hair stood out above the waistband. He was scratching his stomach and still clearing his throat. When he saw the girls he looked at them sleepily. “Sorry, wrong number,” he said, and walked back down the hall. They heard a door close.

“Ooops,” the roommate said.

“I’ve got to go to work,” Helen said.

“The play is during the day?” Debbie asked.

“I’m still waiting tables. The play pays three dollars a performance. I can’t buy shampoo with what the play pays.”

Maggie was afraid to use the bathroom, but she had to go so badly she was afraid she wouldn’t make it home if she didn’t do it then. She looked quickly around the corner of the door, but the man with the red hair was not there. The seat on the toilet was up, and the inside of the shower curtain was wet, Maggie wanted to look in the medicine cabinet, but she was afraid someone would see or hear her. She ran the water, and pinched her cheeks to try to make them pink.

“Could you give me a hand with this?” she heard Helen call from a room down the hall, and she waited for a minute to see if the man would respond and then went into the bedroom herself.

It was an odd mixture of things, with Helen’s old powder-blue spread on the bed and a silky New York City souvenir scarf thrown over the bedside lamp. There was a poster on the wall of a painting that looked like a pocket watch melting into the sidewalk, and a photograph of a young man who reminded Maggie a little of Richard. “Dali,” said Helen. “James Dean.” Maggie could think of no possible reply; it was as though everyone in the apartment spoke in code. Helen pointed down her back to a row of little buttons. “I can’t reach the middle ones,” she said, and Maggie bent over them, scowling.

“You’ve grown,” said Helen. “You’ll be as tall as I am soon.”

“I’m already taller than my mother,” Maggie said.

“But not taller than Richard Joseph. Is he still the
idée fixe?”

Maggie felt as if they were back to code again. She shrugged. “He’s not as great as everyone thinks he is,” Maggie said, trying to coax another button through its loop and wondering how Helen would ever get into this dress if no one was around.

“Bravo,” Helen said. “I know that kind of boy. All talk and no substance. He’s cute, but he’s a little too full of himself.”

“Debbie still really likes him.”

“That’s no surprise. You and Debbie are like oil and water.” Maggie frowned. She was finished with the buttons, but she fiddled around with the back of the dress to prolong the conversation. “I can tell you exactly what Debbie’ll be doing in twenty years,” Helen added.

“What?”

“She’ll have three kids. She’ll live in Kenwood or a place just like it. She’ll be married to somebody she met in high school and married halfway through college. She’ll say she’s going to finish college when the kids are in school. If you ask her if she’s happy, she’ll say ‘Of course I’m happy’ and she’ll be telling the truth.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Maggie said.

“There’s nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you want. It’s just that most people don’t decide, it just sort of happens to them. That’s not what my life will be like twenty years from now.”

“Tell me yours,” said Maggie, and she stopped trying to pretend she was still buttoning and sat down on the bed.

“I haven’t the foggiest. Maybe I’ll be an actress. Maybe a dancer. Maybe I won’t be good enough to be either and I’ll wind up with three kids and a house in Kenwood.” She laughed, and Maggie frowned again. “You’re right, Maggie, that’s pushing it a little. The point is, I haven’t done anything yet that will force me in any particular direction. Somebody like my sister, she’s already on her way to a decision. In two or three years she’ll start dating some guy, and she’ll get used to him and he’ll get used to her. They’ll go a little further each time they park, until they don’t have any further to go. And their families will get to know each other and everyone will expect them to get engaged and pretty soon they will. And then they’ll be married and the kids will show up and so on and so forth ’til the end of time. How old are you guys again?”

“Almost thirteen,” said Maggie, liking the sound of it much better than twelve.

“The decisions you make when you’re thirteen can decide who you will be for the rest of your life.”

“But can’t you change?”

“Sometimes. You can break up with the guy. You can marry somebody else. But after a while, you can’t change a thing. Like my parents. Can you imagine one of my parents waking up someday and deciding they wanted to ditch seven kids, or move to a place where they don’t know a soul?”

“That’s what Debbie said.”

“Wait a minute. You’ve lost me. My sister said these same things?”

“She said parents have no future, that their lives are over.”

“Ah. No. That’s not the same thing. Your life is over when you’re dead. But the
kind
of life you have—that’s settled early, sometimes by accident. Sometimes by character. Like Monica Scanlan. What will she be doing twenty years from now?”

“She’ll be married,” Maggie said.

“Kids?”

“Only two. Enough to make her seem like an all-right person but not enough to be too much trouble or make her get fat.”

Helen grinned. “Kenwood?”

“No,” said Maggie. “Someplace with bigger houses.”

“California!” cried Helen.

“California?” said Maggie.

“And will she live happily ever after?” Helen asked.

Maggie stopped laughing. “No,” she said quietly. “Monica will never be happy, no matter what.”

“You’re good at this,” Helen said. “What will you be doing in twenty years, Maggie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Husband?”

Maggie thought of her parents dancing, and her parents fighting while her grandfather lay half dead, and of John Scanlan telling Mary Frances he was going to marry her whether she liked it or not, and of the nail in her jewelry box, and the mark of Richard’s fingers on her arm. She was wearing a dress with sleeves today so that the bruise marks, a brownish-yellow now, would not show. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

“Kids?”

“I don’t know.”

“Kenwood?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think that’s a good sign,” Helen said. “Most of the people you know would answer yes to every one of those questions. Just remember that sometimes you drift into things, and then you can’t get out of them. Not to decide is to decide.”

“Not to decide is to decide?”

“Exactly.” Then, in an uncanny imitation of the voice of Mother Ann Bernadette, the Mother Superior of Sacred Heart, Helen added, “I’m so glad we had this little talk, Miss Scanlan.” She picked up her purse. “I’m going to be late for work.”

“Thanks, Helen,” Maggie said.

Helen smiled, her face as clear as though it had just been carved from some pale stone. “Thanks for buttoning me up. Be good. Have you been wearing my bathing suit?”

“It doesn’t fit,” Maggie said.

“Soon, Maggie. Soon it will.”

Out in the living room, Debbie was sitting talking to Helen’s roommate. “We have to go,” Debbie said. “We have stuff to do.” Maggie looked down at her dress. The hem was still a darker color than the rest, and occasionally it clung to her legs. The man had come into the living room again. “Anybody remember where I put my shoes?” he said.

“’Bye,” said Debbie.

“’Bye,” Helen replied.

“Arrivederci,”
said the man with the red hair, from the floor. He was peering under the couch. Maggie was surprised to see him do this; that was where her saddle shoes always turned up when she couldn’t find them in the mornings, but she had never known a grownup to lose shoes.

The two girls had ridden down in the elevator in silence. Their train was already on the platform, and they rushed down the subway steps, their damp shoes making slapping noises on the concrete. For a moment as they sat on the plastic seats they were out of breath. Maggie held her umbrella between her knees.

“What were you and Helen talking about?” Debbie finally asked.

“The future.”

“Did you tell her what the Ouija said?”

“No,” said Maggie, pulling at a cuticle. She did not want to tell Debbie about what would happen to her in twenty years, just as she had not wanted to tell her about the bathing suit. They were silent again as the train rocked back and forth, lulling them into sluggishness.

“Do you think he slept there?” Maggie finally asked, looking up at the advertisements for wrinkle cream and continuing education just above the dirty subway windows.

“That’s a stupid question,” Debbie had answered, but Maggie didn’t know if she meant stupid yes or stupid no. They sped through the tunnel, the air warm and smelling of grease. In the Bronx the train came suddenly aboveground, into the kind of clear white sunlight that Maggie felt she had not seen for weeks. She turned in her seat to watch the tops of tenement buildings go by, squinting into apartment windows, faintly seeing women in light clothing moving around behind the curtains. On a fire escape just opposite one of the stations two boys sat in shorts, chewing gum, and as they saw Maggie watching them they both gave her the finger. She turned around. The two girls were alone in the car.

“Do you really think Helen will be famous?” Debbie said.

“I do,” said Maggie.

“I don’t think that guy was sleeping there,” Debbie said.

“Neither do I.”

“Don’t tell my mom.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t tell your mom either.”

“Don’t worry.”

They had not spoken again until they reached Maggie’s house. It seemed deserted, as it did so often these days. Maggie came back from the bathroom to find Debbie holding the California bathing suit, turning it in her hands as though wondering what it was.

“You stole my sister’s bathing suit,” she said.

“You went in my drawers,” Maggie replied. And suddenly she sucked in her breath, because she realized that Debbie had gone in her drawers a hundred times before, and she had never minded until then.

As though she had read her mind, Debbie said, “I always go in your drawers. But I never stole.”

“I didn’t steal it. She gave it to me. The day she moved out.”

“Liar.”

“It’s true,” Maggie said. “You can ask her.”

Debbie looked at her and then threw the suit onto the bed. Maggie wondered whether it would have been better to pretend that she had taken it. She had never really understood, until that moment, how hard it must be to be Helen Malone’s sister.

“I’m going over to Bridget’s,” Debbie said, shoving past Maggie. In the doorway she turned. “I’m getting to be somebody, too,” she said, and then she added, “I hope you
do
move.”

Maggie had known she would pay—for the time with Helen, for the bathing suit, for Debbie’s feeling that Maggie had taken something that should belong to her. Every time she thought about that moment in her bedroom she felt sick, but not as sick as she felt when she found Debbie out in the development that night, daring her to strike a match, her eyes mean, with no vestige of friendship in them. Behind Debbie she could see Bruce, his face pink, and she knew that if he could speak he would say “Don’t do it. You don’t have to.” She wondered why he was there. He didn’t seem to shadow Richard so much anymore.

“Do it,” Richard said, and the silence was so overpowering that the scrape of the match along the side of the box sounded like an alarm in the room. A tiny flame leapt up in the darkness.