them

  Off to themselves, safe and lively, women always talked about men: their voices seized hungrily upon men.

  After about an hour and a half of this, either Loretta or Connie would get to her feet and clap her hands lightly together in a confused gesture of satisfaction at having seen Grandma Wendall and having found her “better.” But it was time to go! Time to go, sorry. They had jobs the next day…

  “I woke up and my whole right side was paralyzed. Like stone,” Grandma Wendall said bitterly. “How would you like that for yourself, you two? Always strutting around!”

  “Ma, what do you mean by that?” Loretta cried, hurt.

  “You say hello to Jules for me. Don’t forget. Jules is my only favorite.”

  “Jules says he’ll be over to see you real soon, maybe next Sunday.”

  “Doesn’t matter if he comes or not. I know him. He’s my only favorite.”

  Though they were anxious now to leave they always hung back, Loretta might think of something more to say. Connie might think of something. Only Maureen, carefully marking her place in her book, would be ready to go, frightened and bitter at the old woman’s power even now. Some people, even in their dying, had power; others never had power.

  “You say hello to Jules and to Betty and to what’s-his-name—”

  “Ma, you know his name is Pat! Patrick Furlong!”

  “And to him too, what’s-his-name…”

  They found Furlong down the street in a bar. He had gotten to know the bartender there. The three of them sat with him in a booth. After a few minutes Loretta and Connie would be weeping lightly, and Maureen would sit in idle misery, wishing it was light enough for her to read. Loretta would say, drowsily affectionate, her hand on Furlong’s arm, “Boy, she used to be something, that old gal! Wasn’t she? A real tough old gal! Wasn’t she something, Connie?”

  “Yeah, she was pretty tough.”

  “It’s hell to get old…”

  After they dropped Connie off at her place Loretta would always say, shaking her head, “That poor dope! It’d make me sick, washing the crap out of other people’s clothes. She can have it.”

  “Wasn’t she ever married?” Furlong asked.

  “Yeah, but he run off. Left her.”

  “Why’d he leave her?” Maureen asked.

  Loretta said nothing for a while. Then she said, her face pinched, “What do you care? It’s none of your business, you’re too young!”

  “I feel sorry for Aunt Connie.”

  “Oh, hell, you don’t feel sorry for anybody!”

  Maureen stared at her, hurt. She could not understand. She wondered if maybe her mother was talking to the real Maureen, a girl who was hypocritical and selfish and sly. Was that the real Maureen? Sometimes when she was alone, walking along the street, she was taken by surprise seeing her reflection in a store window, a remote, ghostly reflection she never quite expected or recognized; it did not really seem herself.

  Later on Loretta teased her about cutting school, and Maureen said with a tired laugh, “Go ask the nuns, then, if you’re so sure!” And Loretta teased her about using some of her new lipstick, and Maureen said vehemently, “Ma, I assure you I did not! I’d never touch that stupid grape lipstick of yours!” She felt set upon by her mother and unable to locate any center to her mother’s assaults, any reference point. Furlong often looked on with a faint smile, making no sense of it either—not knowing that Loretta was wrong or knowing it and taking no part?

  But one day Loretta tossed a small gold tube onto Maureen’s bed. She said, “Here. Here’s your own, no need to sneak mine.”

  It was a tube of lipstick.

  “Oh, Ma!” Maureen said. She picked it up cautiously. She opened it: pink.

  “Go take it, try it on,” Loretta said. Puffed and slowed down, wearing a maternity blouse, she stood in the doorway with her arms crossed, tapping her fingers impatiently on one arm.

  Maureen went to the mirror. She dabbed on some lipstick, still cautious, and in the mirror she caught sight of her mother watching her. Her mother’s face was thoughtful behind the usual razzing smile, a kind of good-natured, lopsided smile she had picked up while being a waitress.

  “Okay. That looks nice,” Loretta said.

  “I look funny,” Maureen said.

  “No. You look nice.”

  “But I can’t wear it to school. They don’t allow—”

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Now you can leave my stuff alone, eh?”

  “Oh, Ma!”

  She turned to catch her mother’s eye. Her mother was staring toward her, not exactly at her; the thoughtful, unsmiling look on her face seemed not like her and alarmed Maureen.

  Maybe it was because Furlong had begun to stay at the garage later, sometimes missing supper. Loretta no longer worked and she hadn’t much to do except sit around. It was winter now. She would sit silently at the table, staring at the oilcloth covering. Maureen would come home from school and find her there. The television set would not be on. Maureen would turn it on for her mother. Then she would begin to make supper, fooling around in the kitchen, taking her time. She liked to make supper. It was easy to please people, to please men, just by giving them food. In the old days she had made her father’s supper too. It was the same supper. The same food. She would chat with her mother, opening and closing cupboard doors, looking in the refrigerator. She would always ask her mother how she felt. Loretta would always say, “I’m all right.” Then, sourly, she might add, “I’m too old to go through this again.” But Maureen pretended not to understand. There were secrets of female life open to her, ready for her to learn, but she rejected them. She did not even look at her mother’s stomach if she could help it; magically, her eyes glanced away.

  After supper she cleared the kitchen and did the dishes by herself, since Betty was never around to help and wouldn’t help if she were around. Then she worked on her homework until Furlong came home. He came home later and later as the winter went on. No one said anything. From the kitchen Maureen could see her mother padding around the other room going to change the television channel, or going into the bedroom, opening a drawer, closing a drawer, making at times a sound that could have been sobbing. The two of them, alone so much, drifted to opposite ends of the little apartment. Maureen thought of them as two women with nothing to say. She herself was a woman, but in disguise as a child; if they saw that she had grown up, they might want to talk to her. Maureen pretended to hear nothing, not even her mother’s sobbing. Was that sobbing? Loretta was too strong to cry, no man could make her cry. It was unthinkable. But still Maureen pretended to hear nothing, pressing her hands over her ears, trying to make sense of her schoolwork. Why should her mother cry? Did the baby hurt inside of her? What would it feel like to have a baby? Maureen daydreamed about being pregnant herself. She would have a baby someday. She would get married and have a baby, dress herself in the puffy big blouses her mother wore, the same kind, a woman like her mother; she could not escape. She did not want to get married but there was no other way. She did not want to live with a man, sleep with a man. It made her angry to think of a future in which she waited in an apartment for a man to come back from whatever it was men did, all those hours spent with other men somewhere, talking about something, swearing and laughing angrily, letting their half-closed fists fall onto table tops, peeling the labels off bottles of beer, looking at clocks, shifting their shoulders restlessly inside their clothes. When they were together, men talked of things that could not be told to women.

  One night Furlong didn’t come home until late, Maureen waited around—it was eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock. She had to sit up and wait for him, to get him supper. Her head ached. She sat in the kitchen with a book in front of her, waiting. Loretta and Betty had both gone to bed. Maureen made marks on the oilcloth with her fingernail, writing out her name and
trying to erase it. She thought of Loretta lying in bed, waiting. The clock said twelve-thirty, then one o’clock, and still he wasn’t home and still she waited. She had to get up for school the next day. “That dirty bastard,” she said to herself, writing “Furlong” in the oilcloth cover.

  One night Furlong didn’t come home until after two. He was drunk. He stumbled against a chair, sending it clattering, waking Maureen from her fitful sleep. She could hear him in the kitchen—he was moving something around. She called Loretta and woke her. “He’s home,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”

  “What time is it?” Loretta called.

  “I’m going to bed.”

  She went into her room in a hurry. She lay down on her bed, wanting to sleep at once, feeling how urgent it was that she sleep. She had to wake up the next day at seven-thirty…but her mind was racing in a panic.

  She thought of Furlong hitting her mother: she thought of that startled furious cry, her mother’s cry.

  She thought of Jules in jail again. What if he got arrested again?

  She thought of her father. He was mixed up with her father, the two of them mixed together, stumbling home late at night. It was no surprise. Two tons of steel had fallen down on him, her father. And if Furlong died? Any money? What about the baby Loretta was going to have? Aid to Dependent Children? A check a month? Welfare? What then? Jules had quit school and worked. He brought Loretta twenty dollars a week, a secret from Furlong. Twenty dollars! Maureen should work and then she could make money; she needed to get out.

  In the other room they were arguing.

  She needed to get out, the way Jules had…she needed money…she had to get out…She was mopping the kitchen floor. She had to make sure she didn’t step in the wet, because that made the linoleum dirty again. Black and white squares. The mop splashed soap onto the floor. She had to move the table and chairs out of the way, then mop the floor…

  “Maureen! Maureen!”

  It was confused with mopping the floor: she felt the handle of the mop strong in her hands. She ached to clean the floor. She liked the smell of soap, she liked cleanliness that was harsh and bright…

  “Maureen,” Loretta said angrily, “come out here! You’re only pretending to be asleep!”

  She rolled over. In the other bed, about a foot from her own, Betty lay asleep. She heard nothing. Maureen heard everything and had to get up. She saw that her mother was very angry, very upset.

  “I know you’re pretending, you’re fooling around!” Loretta said. She was about to cry. “Come out here! He’s in the kitchen sink and I’m not doing one more thing for him, the hell with him! I’m fed up!”

  Maureen stumbled into the living-room. She rubbed her eyes. She must have fallen back to sleep. “What do you want? You want to sleep in my bed?”

  “Sleep out here on the couch. Come on.”

  “What?”

  “Stop pretending or I’ll slap your mouth!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s out there puking and the hell with him. I’ve had enough,” Loretta said. Her eyes were streaked with tiny red veins. “I’m going to sleep. I’m sick.”

  “What’s going on? You been crying?”

  “Shut up.”

  “I got school tomorrow—”

  “Oh, you and your school, you and your library! Go tell him your troubles, you and him have all the troubles in the house, to hear you talk! Go make him some coffee.”

  “What?”

  “Make him some coffee.”

  “You woke me up to make coffee?”

  “I said make the bastard coffee.”

  She slammed the door behind her. Maureen looked through to the kitchen. The clock said two-thirty. She could see Furlong’s legs. He must have been sitting at the table, listening.

  In the dim light the room looked clean and unfamiliar, like the surface of another planet, or the cold, smooth surface of the moon. The soiled walls did not look soiled. The oilcloth gleamed white. On the stove the coffee pot looked as if it might be made of silver.

  She went to the stove.

  Furlong said, “What happened to your mother? What was all that?”

  “She went to bed.”

  “Where?”

  “In my bed.”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  Maureen did not look at him. She got a jar of coffee down off a shelf.

  “She says you’re sick.”

  “Why’d she wake you up? Are you making coffee?”

  “She told me to make it.”

  “Is that why she woke you up?”

  “She wanted to sleep in my bed.”

  She saw him out of the corner of her eye, sitting heavily, too tired to move. Like a dog, he shook himself unconsciously and without meaning. He said, “You mean she kicked you out of your room? Good Christ!” But he remained sitting at the table, waiting for his coffee like a man sitting at a diner counter. Maureen got a cup for him. It was easy to please men, to stay out of their way. He was a little drunk, but there was always a slightly drunken, clumsy, agreeable quality about him. It was hard to understand that he was dangerous: he could knock things around, break things.

  Maureen served him coffee.

  After a while he said, “Your mother says you been running with some bad kids. That true?”

  “You mean Betty.”

  “No. You.”

  “Not me.”

  “Some store manager caught you shoplifting?”

  “No.” She turned to look at him, fully. He had fine lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes from laughing too much. There was silence in him, but it was not like the silence her father had had; it came in chunks, thoughtfully.

  “Your ma didn’t make all that up,” he said coaxingly.

  “I don’t know what she did.”

  “I just want to know if it’s true or not.”

  “I told you it wasn’t!”

  “Look, I’m your stepfather now—”

  “You are not.”

  “What?”

  Maureen stared at the floor.

  “You calling your own mother a liar?”

  “I’m not calling anybody anything.”

  “What about me, you calling me a liar?”

  Maureen poured the rest of the coffee into the sink.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning up.”

  “I wasn’t finished with that.”

  “You didn’t want any more.”

  “Yes, I did. I did want more. You did that on purpose.”

  “I did not.”

  “You did too.”

  They were silent. Maureen stood with her back to him, at the sink. She waited. Her face was very hot. Then, abruptly, he leaned forward and knocked the coffee pot out of her hand. It clattered on the floor. Maureen shrieked.

  “You poured that out on purpose!” Furlong said.

  She picked up the coffee pot, not looking at him.

  He said, “She told me she’d make some coffee and there better be some or I’ll smash the place up—you won’t recognize this dump when I’m through! Put that back on the stove!”

  Maureen put it back on the stove.

  “Put some water in it!”

  Maureen was afraid of him, but she was more afraid of her mother: her mother’s silence. Loretta was listening to all this, listening in silence, and would not get up to help her.

  “I said put some water in it. What are you standing there like that for—are you crazy?”

  “You’re the one,” Maureen muttered.

  “What? What did you say?”

  Maureen did not answer.

  “Do you want your teeth knocked out?” Furlong said.

  “Nobody’s going to knock my teeth out.”

  “Just now your mother said, five minutes ago she said I’d better t
each you something before it’s too late—I don’t want the police sticking their noses in around here.”

  “What about the police?”

  “Don’t play dumb!”

  “I’m not in any trouble.”

  “Look—”

  “I’m not! I’m not in any trouble!”

  “Well, you better not,” Furlong said. He was breathing hard. “Like that goddam smart-aleck brother of yours, you can get out and on the street. I won’t stand for it. I don’t want my name smeared up in anything. I’m not getting mixed up or taken down to no police station, believe me.”

  “I’m not in any trouble,” Maureen said feverishly.

  “Stealing lipstick from a five-and-ten?”

  “I didn’t steal any lipstick!”

  “You calling your mother a liar?”

  “Ma is maybe sick…” She was silent. She could hear Loretta listening to them. She could picture her mother’s face there in the darkness, in Maureen’s own bed, listening to all this.

  “Did Ma really tell you that—you should teach me a lesson? Before the police come around?”

  “Yes.”

  He was drinking his coffee. He was still a little drunk and his shoulders were hunched toward the table. “Your mother tells me lots of things about you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “But why does she hate me? I don’t hate her—why does she hate me? I can’t stand it! I don’t know what to do. She always liked Jules better than me. It didn’t matter how good I was. Then Jules left and she still likes him better, everybody does. Now she acts so strange but I didn’t do anything, it’s Betty who hangs around places and steals things. Ask Betty yourself. Look in her side of the room, look under her bed! She takes all kinds of junk—she steals stuff she doesn’t even want; she says it sticks to her fingers—just for fun. I don’t hate Ma—why does she hate me? Why does she say things about me, make up things?”

  “Go to bed. Forget about it.”

  He pushed his chair away from the table, but not to face her. He was facing the wall instead, looking at the wall, his neck and shoulders tense.