Object Lessons

  “She thought he was going to get better,” Tommy said sadly. “She thought he would be all right.”

  19

  IN ONE CORNER OF THE BLACK, A TINY zigzag of lightning leapt like a tic in the eye of the sky. Maggie could see it from her bedroom window, just beyond the sweep of gingham below the curtain rod. She was alone in the house. The lights were out. A thunderstorm was coming. Maggie’s mouth was dry and full of an awful taste.

  The adults were gone again. Maggie often came home in the late afternoons from riding her bicycle aimlessly on the back roads and found the house empty and airless, like a house in a horror movie after The Thing has passed through town and gone. She would go up to her room and soon would hear the idling of a car in the driveway, like dogs growling, and then the heavy sound of the car door and the lighter one of the storm door downstairs. Then the sounds of pots and pans from below, the preparation of dinner.

  It seemed to her that all the adults were acting more like children than they had before. The bickering on Sundays, usually the purview of Maggie and Monica and a handful of the younger cousins, was now between Tommy and James, or Margaret and Mark. Mary Frances wept. Old patterns and alliances had surfaced and reasserted themselves, so that her grandmother was dependent upon Margaret, meek with James, and clinging and loving with Tommy. For some reason Mary Frances had decided to reupholster her entire living room in blue damask, and half the furniture was missing. The grandchildren sat on the floor, their patent-leather pumps and saddle shoes making spots of light on the carpet. The atmosphere made them silent and watchful. Monica especially was quiet. She sat at the mahogany dining-room table and read Life magazine, her face as white and shiny as the surface of the pages. “God, I wish he’d die and get it over with,” she had said last Sunday, fanning herself with a magazine, her honey-colored hair waving wet on her temples. Then she had disappeared into the bathroom, the water running from behind the closed door. Maggie suspected that Monica was crying in there, and this, more than anything else, made her feel everything was off-center. The two of them had not spoken since their encounter at the bridal salon. Maggie was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for the bride, so drawn, so hard-eyed, so brittle in her descriptions of tea sets and china patterns, so joyless two weeks before what Maggie had always thought was supposed to be the happiest day of your life.

  The development was quiet. Some of the kids had given up on it, bored and put off by the finished quality of the model houses. Others were worried about trouble. The fires had been in the local newspaper, and the mothers had started to sniff their children’s shirts for the scent of smoke. The construction company had hired guards to patrol three times a night; on their first trip out they had picked up some ninth graders in the basement of a split-level house and brought them home while the neighbors watched from beneath their hall lights. A coffee-colored mongrel that had wandered into one of the model homes and become stuck in a crawl space, howling like a mourner at an Irish wake, had been taken to the pound by one of the guards and put to sleep before his owners had figured out where he was. The younger kids swore that his shaggy ghost haunted the house in the middle of the night, howling from below the kitchen linoleum. From Maggie’s bedroom window she could see the guards in their tan uniforms, pale shadows with flashlight beams moving at an angle ahead of them. They passed through at nine and again at eleven and, she supposed, at some later time, too, when she was already asleep. In between they checked the doors and windows of the A & P in the next town, the two churches in Kenwood, and the Kenwoodie Club to make sure that no one had scaled the fence to go skinny dipping.

  She had spent the day at her grandfather’s cemetery, but she and Angelo hardly spoke now. More and more, Damien helped him out with his gardening, and Maggie had lost the knack for being happy there. Until this horrible sweaty season, lines had been drawn, in her house, her neighborhood, her relationships. Some of them were boundaries—good and bad, us and them—and some of them were lines that connected people—mother and father, friend to friend. They had all been rubbed out as surely as if they had been written in chalk, not stone, and Maggie knew she could not live without them. Sometimes she sat for hours with her back against the rough bark of a tree, blowing on a blade of grass between her fingers, wondering what would happen next. Often she cried.

  When she got home, she had walked out to the development. She knew Debbie would be there. She had gone to the Malone house the day before because Mrs. Malone had invited her. Charles Malone had been in a bassinet in the kitchen, sucking loudly on the neckband of his T-shirt, little beads of prickly-heat ranged like a necklace around the crease in his fat neck. “That baby is more like a potato than a human being,” Mrs. Malone had said, not at all regretfully, as she chopped onions at the kitchen counter. “He just lies there all day sucking on whatever he can get into his mouth. He’ll want a beer by the time he’s three.”

  “Aren’t most babies like that?” said Maggie, who was sitting at the table while Debbie was upstairs getting dressed. Her long wet hair was dripping onto the seat of her shorts, and even though Mrs. Malone was all the way across the room, Maggie’s eyes were tearing from the onions.

  “Lord, no,” Mrs. Malone said, dabbing at her face with a paper towel. “That Aggie didn’t settle down until she was two. Crying all the time unless you carried her around the room on your shoulder. Lifting those little legs and passing gas so loud you could hear her all through the house. It was all I could do not to pitch her out the window.” She lifted a corner of her apron and wiped her eyes. “Damn,” she said. The baby lost his piece of T-shirt, let out a momentary yell, and had found his middle fingers by the time Maggie got to the bassinet. He had a funny egg-shaped head, like a cartoon character.

  The entire house was in a tizzy because Helen was coming home for dinner. It was difficult to imagine what a difference six weeks could make. Helen had become a visiting dignitary from another world, Monica had become engaged and Maggie’s mother had become a wraith who evaporated and reappeared without warning in her own home. Mrs. Malone, whose idea of a balanced meal was tuna on toast with a slice of tomato, had planned scalloped potatoes and Salisbury steak for the occasion, bending over cookbooks that had been shower gifts many years ago, their bindings still cracking when they were opened because they had so rarely been used.

  Debbie found it all incredibly annoying: her mother dressed in fresh Bermudas and a pressed shirt, her father home early, a cloth on the dining-room table, which was usually reserved for family holidays, and Maggie invited without her permission and against her will. She had wanted to have Bridget Hearn there, too, but Mrs. Malone had said no. “She’s not family,” she had said in front of Maggie, who had flushed when Debbie said, with an abrupt gesture, “Neither is she.” Debbie had gone upstairs to change without asking Maggie to go along, but Maggie had followed anyhow, listening as Debbie railed to herself as she dressed. “Does she think my sister is going to think she turned into a good cook in one month? Does she think my sister will all of a sudden think we eat in the dining room every night?” Maggie suspected that Debbie kept referring to Helen as her sister in an attempt to cut her down to size, but it was all in vain.

  Aggie and Debbie had gone downtown with a friend of Helen’s from Sacred Heart to see Helen in the revue. While Debbie had said it was “okay,” Aggie had been more specific. “She had on this thing like a leotard, you know?” she said, leaning forward, her eyes bright in the beam of a flashlight they had turned on on the floor of the development house. “It was white and it had her heart painted on it like it was bleeding, with drops running down her stomach. And she sang this great song called ‘Loving One Another.’ And this guy behind us with a beard? He said to this other guy who was with him, ‘That’s the one I told you about.’ And the other guy said, ‘You weren’t kidding.’” She looked really beautiful. It was really quiet when she sang.”

  “You could see through her costume,” Debbie said.

  “You cou
ld, a little bit,” Aggie said. “Like you can see through my white suit right after I go in the pool? But I think people thought it was just shadows.”

  “Sure,” said Debbie, snorting.

  Debbie snorted now as she stood in the doorway of the kitchen. “An apron?” she said. “Oh, hush,” Mrs. Malone said, trying to get the smell of onions off her hands.

  “You use a lemon,” Maggie said. “You rub it on your hands and then rinse them off with cold water.”

  Mrs. Malone looked over her shoulder in surprise. “Forty years old last month and I’ve never heard that,” she said. “Does it work?”

  “My mom does it.”

  Mrs. Malone opened the refrigerator. “I’ll try it next time,” she said. “I’ll buy a lemon.”

  Debbie snorted. “Listen to Maggie,” she said. “She knows everything.” Mrs. Malone had looked from one girl to another and then turned back to the sink when there was a noise behind them. It was Helen, dropping some shopping bags and a big purse shaped like a shopping bag into a chair. She smiled at Maggie, put her finger to her lips and glided across the kitchen. She was wearing pink ballet slippers and a white dress that looked like a slip with pink flowers embroidered on it. Maggie could see that beneath the dress she wore no underwear except for tiny underpants. She had never seen such tiny underpants before.

  “Guess who?” Helen said, putting her hands over her mother’s eyes.

  Mrs. Malone jumped and whirled around. She looked as wiry as an old man next to her soft, slightly rounded daughter. But a resemblance was there, in the clean planes of their faces, in the delighted, dazzled look they both wore.

  “You’re early!” Mrs. Malone said.

  “Early?” Helen said, falling back a bit. “I live here!”

  “Not anymore,” said Debbie.

  Helen whirled around and studied Debbie narrowly. Then she grinned. “You’re right, Deb,” she said lightly. Her hair was growing longer, and a heavy line of blue beneath her lower lashes made her eyes look even bluer. She stooped over the bassinet and ran one finger along the side of the baby’s face. “He looks like a water balloon,” she said.

  The kitchen had begun to be crowded with Malones. Aggie was asking Helen about her show, and trying not to look down the front of her sister’s dress. Some of the younger children were begging to open the shopping bags. Mrs. Malone leaned back against the sink, her arms folded, and stared at Helen. From behind Maggie, Debbie snorted. She went out of the house onto the front steps and Maggie followed her, although she wanted to stay with everyone else.

  “You’re going to get the back of your dress really dirty,” Maggie said, as Debbie sank down on the dusty concrete stoop.

  “Who cares?”

  “Why are you so mad at me?”

  “Don’t flatter yourself.”

  “I’m going to leave,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry your mother invited me if it makes you so mad.”

  Debbie acted as if she had not heard. “She’s just like your cousin,” she said. “She gets away with stuff because she’s pretty. I don’t even think she’s that pretty. Her nose is really pointy. She used to try to squish it up with her fingers, but it still points.”

  Maggie sat down, too.

  “I hate it when I go to school and somebody goes, ‘Are you Helen Malone’s sister?’”

  “People always ask me if I’m John Scanlan’s granddaughter,” Maggie said.

  “That’s completely different.”

  From where they sat they could hear voices in the living room. The street was very quiet except for the sound of a truck on the next block spraying what was left of the vacant lot for mosquitoes. Small clouds of insecticide rose above the roofs across the street, and a sweet smell drifted toward them. “Certainly not,” they heard Mrs. Malone say, and then Helen said with a laugh, “All right, then Coke. I thought you really meant ‘Would you like anything to drink?’” Then there was a murmur from Mr. Malone.

  “I got my dress for the wedding,” Maggie said. “It’s really nice. I have to get a garter belt to wear under it.”

  “Bridget says that I’m better-looking than Helen. She says that Helen’s eyes are too close together.”

  “Bridget’s a moron.”

  “Oh, I forgot,” said Debbie. “You’re Helen’s best friend. Who would have figured that out?”

  “I used to be your best friend.”

  “Things used to be different.”

  Maggie felt her eyes water and hoped it was only the insecticide. She thought she could hear hammering, very faintly.

  Behind them the door opened and Helen stepped out onto the steps. “You’re going to get your dress dirty,” she said to Debbie.

  “Who cares?” Debbie said.

  Helen looked at Maggie and shrugged. “So do you guys want your presents or not?” Debbie could not help herself; she turned and looked up. From behind her back Helen produced two small boxes. Inside were silver hoop earrings, like little rings.

  Maggie held hers in the palm of her hand and touched them with her index finger. “Thank you,” she said.

  “We don’t have pierced ears,” Debbie said sullenly.

  “Not yet you don’t.”

  The two girls were very still. Finally Debbie said, “They’ll kill us.”

  Helen smiled. “Maggie, if I pierce your ears, what will happen?” she said, in exactly the tone of voice she had used to ask Maggie what she would be doing twenty years from now.

  “My mother will yell at me.”

  “And then?”

  “I’ll probably get punished. Maybe I won’t be able to go to the club for a week.”

  “It’s almost September. The club will close on Labor Day. So what else can happen?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “So you’ll get yelled at, maybe punished. But then you’ll have pierced ears and new earrings.”

  Maggie smiled and looked down at the hoops. “Does it hurt?” she asked.

  “Only for a minute,” said Helen.

  “I’ll do it,” said Maggie, and Debbie looked at her, her eyes wide. “Oh, this is unbelievable,” she said harshly. “Maggie Scanlan, who’s afraid to do anything wrong?”

  “What’s with you?” Helen said.

  “Forget it,” said Debbie. “I know you think she’s great, but she’s a big chicken. She won’t do anything that will get her in trouble. Bridget says she’s nun material.”

  Helen looked thoughtful. “There’s trouble, and then there’s trouble,” she said. She turned and started upstairs, and Maggie and then Debbie followed her. Helen pulled them into the bathroom. There was a needle threaded with white cotton and a bottle of alcohol on the edge of the sink. “Stay away from Bridget Hearn,” Helen said as she rubbed Maggie’s lobes with alcohol. “She’s a jerk.” Maggie had smiled, and as the needle went in she did not make a sound. But as they went downstairs, their earlobes tingling, their hair carefully combed forward, Debbie had turned to her and said, “I dare you to come out tonight.”

  Now, from her window, Maggie watched the guard’s car pull away, the pale beige glowing in the half light from the houses. The lightning leapt again, brighter this time, and there was the dim timpani of thunder far away. The lightning flashed and then remained, and as she narrowed her eyes she could see fire pluming from the roof of the house where she and Debbie had once taken up residence. Even at that distance she could see that this one, the eighth one, would be the one that would count, and she understood Debbie’s valedictory remark. I won’t go, she told herself. I won’t go. Afterward, she wondered whether she had gone because of Debbie’s dare, because she was worried about her friend, or because she was just as hypnotized by trouble as the rest of them.

  She could smell the blaze as soon as she left the house, sharp and bitter, a chemical edge to the natural musk of smoke, a perversion of the autumn smell she’d loved all her life and would never be able to bear again. Trotting among the houses, she began to glimpse the fire, throwing the edges
of the building into sharp relief. The house looked much as usual, except that in each of its windows there was a glimpse of waving, gaudy orange, like tattered curtains blowing. The lightning throbbed again, and after the thunder she heard a scream. She went in the front door and saw flames filling the back of the house, turning the walls to nothing, and she saw Richard and Debbie leaping about, laughing. Then Debbie gave a little scream again as the fire moved forward with a roar. “We did it,” she cried, her voice shrill. “We finally did it!”

  Maggie could see that in minutes the entire building would be alight, and perhaps the ones next to it, too. On the floor there was an empty bottle of Four Roses, its cap filled with cigarette butts, and Maggie wondered for a moment why they’d chosen that to feed the flames. Then she looked at Debbie, who was leaping up and down as though she was on a pogo stick, her hair corkscrewing into little curls in the heat, and realized she was drunk. Her blouse was unbuttoned almost to the waist, and a big bruise purpled her neck just where it met her collarbone. Maggie felt herself flush. She looked over at Richard, and he gave her a slow, sleepy smile and ran his tongue along his lips. He stumbled over and put his mouth against her earlobe, touching his lips to the string Helen had put there until Maggie was ready to wear earrings. Maggie smelled the liquor, a hospital kind of smell, and tried to pull away, but he kept his hand on her shoulder hard, like a vise.

  “Hi, sexy,” he said. And he looked over at Debbie and then laughed and turned back to Maggie. He was leaning on her, and Maggie suspected that if she stepped aside he would fall over. “You’re the coolest-looking girl I know. I love your eyes. Your eyes are so cool.”

  Maggie shivered. The flames suddenly blazed toward them, leaping toward the ceiling, turning the fresh paint to a pale curdled mess. Debbie yelped and then looked over and said to Richard, “I wouldn’t waste my time.”

  “This is bad,” Maggie said. “You guys better get out of here. This is going to burn down the whole house.”

  “Good thinking,” said Richard, who did not move. “Watch it burn with me. You’ll like it. Relax. Just for once. You’d be so cool if you’d relax.”