“But Edgie’s going to recover, I’m sure of it. And mostly because of you, Bea. And once she gets home, she’ll feel a lot better.”
“She’s not coming home.” Bea raised her wet face from the sodden handkerchief; fresh tears trickled down the deep furrows in her cheeks. “She can’t come home, Brenda can’t take her.”
“What? Why?”
“She thinks she is and I can’t tell her otherwise. I’m afraid it’d kill her.”
“Why can’t she come home?”
Bea dug the hard heels of her hands into her eye sockets, as if she could push the tears back in. “She needs special therapy right now or it won’t do any good, speech therapy, physical, occupational…Medicaid won’t pay for home care, and every bit of our savings is already going to Wake House. I’m not even sure the insurance can pay for therapy here, not all of it. Brenda wants to take her back, but there’s some rule against it if she’s bedridden. I don’t know what to do. We’ve never been separated before, and I don’t know what to do. Why couldn’t it have been me? That’s what I keep praying to God to tell me. It was always supposed to be me, not Edgie.”
Caddie put her arms around her. “Well, I don’t agree,” she said in a voice as steady as she could make it. “If it had to be either one of you, it’s better that it’s Edgie.”
“No.”
“I think so. Poor thing, she couldn’t handle this happening to you, Bea. She’d feel overwhelmed, because she’s never been the older one. That’s your job.”
“I can’t do it. Oh, Lordy.”
“You have a lot of friends to help you.”
She inhaled a deep sniff and sat up straight. “That’s the one good thing about being the oldest woman on earth. Everybody else is younger.” After she blew her nose, she mashed it back and forth with her handkerchief. “It’s not true that we’ve never been separated. When Daddy first found out his heart was bad, they sent him for tests over at Johns Hopkins. I drove him, and we stayed two nights in a motel and Edgie stayed home to keep things going. The first night she went wild—had a glass of sherry all by herself in the parlor and turned on a dance program on the radio. Loud—she told me that so proud, Caddie, you’d’ve thought she shot heroin in her arm. She stayed up till eleven-thirty and didn’t even listen to the news. Racy! Next night, all the fun was out of her, though. She called up on the phone and wailed about how lonesome she was, would we please hurry and come home.” She laughed, smearing one last tear out of her eye.
“I don’t know how healthy it’s been, us two being so close. You don’t see it in sisters so much nowadays, everybody’s so independent. Girls with jobs, and keeping their names when they get married. Well, it can’t be helped, we are what we are by now, and if she goes before me, I swear—” She put her head back against the wall and shut her eyes tight. “It’ll be like cutting off my leg. Both legs.”
Caddie didn’t know what to say. Except, “I think she’s going to get better. And Brenda will work something out, I’m positive.”
Bea made a try at a smile. “I hate to say it, but I think sometimes things really are as bad as they seem. Sometimes there’s not going to be a happy ending. And if that’s the kind of wisdom old age gets you, I can do without it.”
Magill found them a few minutes later, leaning against each other, holding hands. “Um,” he said, and they straightened up, sending him shaky, reassuring smiles. “Edgie fell asleep, so I…”
“Well, that’s good,” Bea said in her hearty voice, getting to her feet with a grunt, “now you can go on home with Caddie. You’ve been here since morning, you look terrible.”
“You’ve got that backwards, Miss Bea, except for the looking terrible part, of course.” He had a funny, courtly way of talking to the old ladies at Wake House that they loved. “You go with Caddie now, and I’ll stay just a little longer.”
“Nope. Brenda’s coming over to pick me up, we’ve got it all arranged. Go on, get.” She gave him a push. “Anyway, I’ve got a plan: I’m gonna sit down, put my feet up on Edgie’s bed, and take a snooze.”
Hugging Bea goodbye, Caddie whispered in her ear, “I know everything’s going to be all right.” But she wasn’t sure she believed it.
Out on the pavement, the heavy August heat smacked into them like a wet towel. Caddie took Magill’s arm when he wobbled, and he took hers, she guessed because she was pregnant, and they tacked across the wavy parking lot toward her broiling car.
“Hey, look at you, you’ve bulked up,” she noticed, squeezing his bare biceps under his short-sleeved shirt, and of course then he had to flex the muscle for her and she had to exclaim over it with even more enthusiasm. “Bulked up” was an exaggeration, but he did have a stronger, tougher feel to him. “Yeah, been working out,” he said in a deep-throated, mock-manly voice. She told him she’d been taking long walks in the mornings, for health and to work off some of Finney’s manic energy, but she really ought to do more. Teaching piano and violin all day didn’t exactly keep you in shape. Magill said she looked okay to him.
“Actually, I’m not teaching all day,” she confessed, trying to steer out of the lot without burning her hands on the wheel. She opened all the windows but Magill’s, which was stuck, but the car still felt like a sauna. “This time of year, I lose a lot of students because of vacations and what have you. My schedule’s about half what it should be.”
“No students, no income,” Magill realized. “That must make it rough.”
“Well, you know it’s coming, so you try to plan ahead in the good times.” It seemed worse this summer, though, or else she was just worrying more. Nana’s pension had been enough to get her through the first two months at Wake House, but with the higher rates coming, they were going to have to dip into savings. Nana’s cast was off and she’d graduated from the wheelchair to the walker—she could come home if she wanted to. But she didn’t want to.
“It’s just the nature of my job,” Caddie said, “it’s seasonal. I’d planned to work part-time at the music store, I’ve done that before, but then, I don’t know, I just sort of punked out.” No, what happened was, she’d started going out with Christopher, and that had been so thrilling and unexpected, the idea of working in a store at night when she could be with him had come to seem wasteful and ridiculous. Another wrong choice in a summer of wrong choices.
“Oh, no, what is this? Oh, brother, a traffic jam. On Sunday. It must be an accident. Or else that construction on Lee Street…” Cars were inching along in her lane and not moving at all in the one beside her. “Good thing we’re not in a hurry,” she said, trying to be positive. But if the Pontiac idled too long on a hot day, the radiator boiled over. She looked over at Magill, who didn’t appear to be listening. He was drumming his fingers on the knees of his jeans, frowning at the dashboard. He turned toward her suddenly and cleared his throat. But then he didn’t say anything.
“It’s the traffic light, I think,” she said, squinting into the distance. “I can see a cop. Oh, boy, now we’re in trouble.”
“I, um.” He cleared his throat again. “I was going to wait for a better time, but I don’t know when that would be.”
“What?” She gave him her full attention. He looked as if he had a present for her, something chancy he wasn’t a hundred percent sure she’d like. The sun through the window struck his face on one side, illuminating his beard stubble. Some men only shaved every few days for fashion; Magill did because for him shaving was a dangerous adventure.
“I was thinking about the situation, your situation, and I was thinking…” He grinned without looking at her, gazing past her out at the car stopped next to theirs. “What you said before about the second generation of Winger bastards, and it made me—”
“The what?”
“The second generation of bastard daughters. You said that, remember, or else Frances did, that time we—”
“Oh. Right.”
“Yeah, and so I thought maybe, possibly, I might be able to help you out.
Since you’re sort of a…of a conservative person. Wouldn’t you say?”
She peered at him. The car in front moved a few feet; she put the Pontiac in gear and crept up behind it.
“In a good way, nothing wrong with being conservative, especially for a woman. These days. That’s not the right word, anyway; I mean…cautious, maybe, not…not…well, anyway.” He gave up trying to think of the right word. “I was wondering if it wouldn’t solve everything if you—and I”—he spread his arms in a sort of all-embracing way—“got married.”
She giggled. He was so funny, he—
“I’m serious.” He stopped smiling hopefully; his face went stiff.
Dear God, he was. She burst out laughing.
“Oh. Okay, well.” He folded his arms and slid down in the seat.
“I’m sorry!” Was he offended? But it was so funny. She was amazed and delighted with the sweetness of it. “I’m just surprised—you took me by surprise—”
“Forget it, I know it sounds crazy. I agree. But in a way, it’s a stroke of genius.”
“It is?”
“Yes.” He hauled himself up, rewarming to it. “It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. You’re in kind of a bind—I’m free. I’m no prize, we agree on that, but that’s the beauty of it. Here I am, nothing if not available. Magill. It’s a good, solid name. We came from Cork, I think, I’m not positive, my father used to say that but he wasn’t exactly a genealogist.”
He put his hands together, growing earnest. “I’m not doing this very well. You’ve been worried about the baby, so I just wanted you to know. I could help you solve the problem, that’s all. Think of it as—” His face lit up: an inspiration. “Think of it as elements in an alloy. You’re titanium, you’re strong, but you’re much stronger if we add aluminum.”
“You’re aluminum?”
“Yeah. And niobium, I’m aluminum and niobium, Ti-6Al-7Nb—okay, that’s not the best analogy because it’s three elements, not two, but you get the point.”
“I get the point.” The car behind her blew its horn. It was so hot, she could feel sweat on the backs of her knees. Magill’s face shone with it. And his blue eyes were liquid with sincerity, gazing into hers. “Why,” she said eventually. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I can. Here I am—I’ve got no other plans.” He grinned winsomely. “Use me.”
“Don’t you have a future in mind for yourself?”
“Not that I can see. Not currently.”
“So it doesn’t matter what you want?”
“No.”
“Because you’re finished. You don’t deserve any happiness.”
Awareness dawned in his face, followed by alarm.
“You think your friend is dead because of you. So you’ll keep hurting and punishing yourself forever, by marrying me, for instance, since that’s only what you deserve.”
“Hey, wait. Let’s backtrack.”
“It’s like starving yourself.”
“No.”
“I appreciate the offer—I’m sure you meant it kindly.”
“I did. No, not kindly.”
“I’m no prize either,” she said, laughing. “Obviously.”
“I didn’t say it right.”
“You did, and I understand, truly. I’m not trying to give you a hard time. Thanks. Really. Thanks.”
She kept a frozen smile for as long as she could. She’d been feeling teary and blue off and on all day—hormones. A big, blubbery puddle of emotion was ready to overflow; the only thing keeping her steady was a weak little spark of anger. Umbrage. How pitiful did he think she was? She’d never known anybody as full of self-hate as Magill, and here he was asking her to be part of his penance. A charity case to help him carry on his tradition of suffering. Caddie the hair shirt. She shouldn’t be mad, but she was.
“It’s moving. Thank God.” The hated brake lights of the car in front went off; traffic began to inch forward. She shifted into second, and finally a breeze began to circulate. Good: they needed a change of air in this car.
They drove the rest of the way in pained silence. By the time they got to Wake House, she wasn’t angry anymore, just anxious to get away. She parked in her usual spot but left the motor running. “Well, I guess we’re not getting married, but thanks again for the offer.” She said it in a final way so that he would get out of the car.
He looked miserable, which was a small consolation. “Aren’t you coming in?” he asked. “I thought you wanted to see Frances.”
“I’ll come back later. It’s so hot, I think I’ll go home.” That made no sense, Wake House had air-conditioning and her house didn’t, but Magill didn’t argue. She didn’t even think he heard.
“Okay, you were right. It was a stupid idea. Sorry. I don’t know”—he made a twitchy motion around his head with both hands—“what I was thinking.”
“It’s okay. It’s sort of funny.”
They tried smiling at each other.
“I thought of a better analogy than titanium and aluminum. I guess you don’t want to hear it, though.”
“You know…I really…”
“Never mind.” He leaned over and started picking at the edges of an old peace decal on the dash. “But it’s not like you’re an illegal alien and marrying me would get you a green card. We already know each other. You’ve seen me at my worst, and you, you don’t even have a worst. I’d definitely be getting the sweet end of the deal.”
That made her smile. “Christopher called me,” she said for some reason. “He wanted to give me his address and tell me about his new job. Brag about it, actually.”
Magill mumbled something vulgar.
“I told him the baby wasn’t his.”
He sat up and stared at her.
She hadn’t been going to tell anybody this, not even Thea. “And he believed me—that’s the amazing thing. I told him I got mixed up counting the days. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
“I thought—I thought he didn’t even know.”
“He knew. We just pretended he didn’t.”
Magill frowned, absorbing that. “Why tell him anything, then?”
“Well, in case he ever found out. I wanted to make sure—I just wanted him out of the picture. So all the decisions are mine.” If she could ever make them.
Magill looked at her in a funny, pleased way, as if he knew something she didn’t know.
“Oh, no—no, don’t think it’s because I want the baby for myself. That’s not it.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely. No. I’m giving it up for adoption.”
He recoiled. “You’re not.”
“Why not?” His dismay made her defensive. “I am. I’ve been working with an agency, all I have to do is fill out some more papers. I just have to sign. Well, what did you think? I can’t keep it.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? I’d be an unfit mother! For one thing. I’m poor, single, I don’t want a child—and anyway, Nana’s my child.”
“See, if you married me, you wouldn’t be poor or single, you’d—well, poor, okay, but not forever, not—”
“Magill, could we please drop this? I’m not marrying you,” she said with an angry laugh.
“Right.” He stuck his thumb in a hole in the knee of his jeans and pulled, rip. “Right.”
After a minute she added more gently, “But thanks anyway for, you know. Trying to save me.”
A wasp flew in and began to throw itself against the windshield with furious rasps. Magill froze. Caddie used her cupped palm and calmly guided it out the window.
He kept sitting there, baffled or something. This conversation was awful. She tried to telegraph a message into his left temple: Open the door. The car engine gave a sick, timely wheeze, and finally he reached for the handle.
Outside, he leaned down, storklike, to look at her through the frozen-open window. “Where I went wrong, Caddie, I was thinking of myself the way I used to be. You’d’ve enterta
ined the possibility of me then.”
“What?”
“Yeah, I know, but you’ll have to take my word for it. I used to be the kind of guy you’d’ve considered.”
“Magill, wait.”
He gave her a sheepish salute. “Sorry I screwed up,” he said, and started down the sidewalk, stiff-arming the stone wall beside him to keep in a straight line. She called to him again, but he passed the steps to Wake House and kept going. The farther he went, a narrow blade of a man in flapping clothes, the less sure Caddie felt about which one of them had screwed up.
19
Caddie apologized to her grandmother five times on four different occasions before Nana finally gave in and forgave her for wrecking her lawn sculptures. The last time, Caddie said this was it, she’d run out of ways to say she was sorry, if Nana couldn’t excuse her for what she’d done they’d just have to live estranged for the rest of their lives. Since they weren’t even estranged now, that was a pretty idle threat. It was just that Nana couldn’t bring herself to say “I forgive you” in words.
Caddie’s ultimatum, or more likely her exasperation, finally worked. “Oh, hell. Give it up already,” Nana begrudged one evening after dinner. “You’re forgiven.”
“Well, thank you. About time.”
“But you were wrong, just so we’re clear on that. Terribly wrong.”
“Oh, boy, are we clear on that. But you forgave me, I heard you. No taking it back.”
Nana had already put on her nightgown. She was tucked in bed with her sketchbook on her knees and a handful of pastels, making a chalky mess on the bedspread. “Caddie, what’s the essence of oldness?”
“Pardon?”
“Oh, never mind, how would you know. What’s up with you these days, anyway? You look funny.”
She gave a nervous laugh. “I do?” She wasn’t showing yet, her clothes fit fine, but she was nine weeks pregnant and she still hadn’t told Nana. Here was a perfect opening—she could tell her right now.
“You look wired or something. You getting enough sleep?”
How shrewd. She was wired and tired at the same time, but imagine Nana noticing. Caddie cleared her throat, but the two words that would have explained everything didn’t come out. “I’m fine. What’s that you’re working on, something new?”