Object Lessons

by Anna Quindlen

  “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 tur
ned. “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.

  “I saw your mom with that guy today at the high school, Maggie,” Debbie said, and there was an edge to her voice. “They were parked in the parking lot. Bridget says—” Before Maggie could hear what Bridget Hearn had said about her mother and Joey Martinelli, she had tossed the match away from her like an unwelcome thought. The corner of the garage burst like fireworks, and a roar swallowed up the echo of the scratch of the match. And they all turned and ran into the darkness.

  Maggie came around the corner of one of the raw new roads and thought she heard sneakers behind her, but after a minute the sound faded and was gone. There was gravel on the ground, waiting for asphalt to be poured, and her shoes suddenly skidded sideways, and she fell onto the road; she felt a sharp sting in the side of her calf and on one of her palms. She heard another sound behind her, and then headlights swept the gravel, a car traveling slowly by. She felt caught in the lights, and closed her eyes, afraid the headlights would pick up the pale green of her eyes in the darkness. But the car crept past. In the light from the dashboard, she could see Joey Martinelli behind the wheel. He looked strange, and it was not until he was gone and she had gotten to her feet, blood running down one leg and onto her white sneakers, that she finally figured out that it had looked as if he was wearing a clover chain on his head.

  When she got inside her own kitchen she washed her leg and wrapped it with gauze. “Mom?” she called softly, and then a little louder, “Mom?” Finally she heard her father’s voice in the darkened living room. When she went in, the ball game was on the television, and the only light in the room was the white light from the screen. “She’s not here, Maggie,” he said. “She’s at Celeste’s. Or someplace.” There was such an air of quiet acceptance in his voice, and his eyes were fixed on the screen so completely, that Maggie asked no more questions. She went upstairs and cried, using Helen’s old bathing suit, limp on her pillow, to wipe her swollen face.

  15

  WHEN THE TELEPHONE RANG, CONNIE gathered Joseph up off the floor, holding him close as she walked across the hall to the bedroom. She distrusted the telephone, had never been able to see it as anything other than the bearer of bad news. Her parents had agreed to have one installed only after her mother had had a fainting spell one day, but even when it was put in, it sat there silently, like a big black toad, gathering dust on an occasional table, an outsider amid the cheap china figures. When the phone did ring, all three of them had stared at it with amazement, and it was always left to Connie to answer. Tommy had never understood why she liked to make dates with him at the end of the evening, instead of talking later in the week, and she did not know how to explain. What could she tell him: that she lived in a house where they preferred to keep communication at a minimum?

  She put Joseph down on her bed and picked up the receiver. The baby stared at the ceiling, fingering the bridge of his nose and rubbing the ear of his old brown bear across his cheek and chin. “Bear,” he said.

  “Hello,” Connie said, rubbing his warm stomach and smiling at him.

  “Hello, Connie. It’s Monica. Is Maggie there?”

  The Scanlan grandchildren did not get away with calling their aunts and uncles by their first names. Connie did not know exactly what to say. Finally she said, “No.”

  “No, no, NO,” said Joseph loudly, talking to the bear.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Monica.

  “I said no,” Connie repeated.

  Joseph was still babbling, making it hard for Connie to hear. “Would you tell her I called to ask her to be a junior bridesmaid at my wedding?” Monica said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Monica repeated herself, as though she had been practicing the sentence for some time.

  “I’m confused,” Connie said. “You’re getting married?”

  “You’ll get the invitation this week. The wedding is at the end of the month.”

  “The end of the month? Who’s the guy?”

  “You don’t know him. He goes to Fordham. His name is Donald Syzmanski. His father is a police officer.” There was a silence. “A sergeant,” Monica added coldly, as though the silence had implied criticism.

  Connie did not know what to say. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with her niece. Monica had always reminded her of Gigi Romano, a beautiful girl she had known in high school, who had had an impossibly tiny nose and numerous matching cashmere sweater sets, and whose father was said to be a member of organized crime. She had married an older Italian man and moved to Las Vegas the summer after graduation. There had been 700 people at Gigi Romano’s wedding, and her gown had been hand-beaded at a convent in Italy. In high school Gigi Romano had always referred to Connie as “deadbeat” because of the cemetery, and she had always gotten a good laugh out of it. Connie couldn’t imagine why she was thinking of that now.

  “Have you gotten a dress yet?” Connie finally asked, groping for something to say, and as soon as she said it she realized it was such a non sequitur that she laughed.

  “Yesterday,” Monica answered coolly.

  Connie still did not know what to say. Finally, in the silence, Monica said, her voice cracking, “I assumed that you of all people would understand this. Please just give Maggie my message.”

  “I think you should call back and ask her yourself.”

  “No thank you,” Monica said.

  Connie paused. “I’m sorry, Monica,” she finally said.

  “Everything is fine,” Monica said. “Thank you very much.” And she hung up.

  “Bear,” Joseph said.

  Connie lay down on the bed beside him, her hands cradling her lower abdomen. It was only slightly rounded, but it no longer flattened out when she lay prone. Three months pregnant and she had lost three pounds from the nausea, so that her ribs made her naked torso looked like a striped shirt. She knew that it would not make any difference. The baby would be large and healthy. They always were. She had worn a size-four dress the day of her wedding, and yet Maggie had weighed ten pounds. Who could tell what was inside you until it came out?

  She felt tiny fingers on her arm. Joseph was patting her softly with one hand while he held his bear in the other. He put his thumb in his mouth and she buried her face in the nape of his neck. He was the only one she could love like this now. The two oldest children always pulled away from her, although it had been years since she had tried to kiss Maggie, both of them squeamish in the face of their shared femininity. And she was wary of Damien, who would climb all over her like an overanxious boy in the back seat after a high school dance. But Joseph was passive and pleased with the attention, and she lay there for a long time.

  She felt sorry for Monica, not because she obviously was getting married because she had to, but because she knew the girl would let that fact simmer below the surface of her life, a boil of discontent forever. She would always feel as if she had been trapped, even though she would likely wind up with the same life she would have had whether she had gotten pregnant or not. Connie tried to remember when she herself had realized that, but she did not think she had ever needed to realize it. She had been happy on her wedding day; as she w
atched the little Tudor cottage surrounded by flowers and tombstones recede through the window of the limousine, she had thought to herself, “Now my real life can begin.” She suspected that Monica’s real life had been the one she had led up to now, and Connie supposed it would be hard to give that up.

  She thought of Gigi Romano again: Celeste had once told Connie that Gigi had no children, only poodles and a midget chauffeur who took her everywhere, moving through the dry warm Las Vegas air in an air-conditioned car. Connie did not think it was going to be easy being Monica Scanlan’s child. No, she thought, from now on it will be Monica Syzmanski. She knew it was unkind, that it was true that she of all people should understand, but she couldn’t help herself: she began to giggle. Joseph giggled too.

  She ran one of her hands up and down the bedspread, a quilted flowered spread made out of some sort of synthetic that was supposed to look like silk. Even in the heat it was slightly cool. She knew it was not a Scanlan spread, that she was supposed to have plain chenille, but she hated chenille, felt whenever she saw the spreads in the Scanlan house that she was looking at spare rooms in a convent or a hotel.

  She caressed the spread, up and down, up and down. She loved to run her hands over things, to let sand filter through her fingers or to stroke the tiny fur collar of her winter coat. She supposed that that was what she liked about the babies, too, that for a year or so she could run her hands over their bodies, pale pink as the inside of a conch shell, and feel the thrill of their real silk skins. At a certain point she began to feel bad about it, and she stopped. Perhaps it was the memory of that moment in the cemetery years ago with Celeste and her own father, when she had seen into the sexual chasm that opened up, almost overnight, between parent and child. Or perhaps, Connie thought, it was that for a time touching your babies was like touching the best part of yourself. Connie, raised in isolation amid the dead, had never learned to touch others easily, except for her husband, who wanted to feel her just the way she felt her small children, proprietary and sure in the knowledge that he was stroking an extension of himself. She liked the feel of Tommy, too, but not casually, not out of the blue, only when they were actually determined to touch, in bed at night, which happened rarely when she was pregnant and not at all now. He was sleeping on one side of the bed, and muttering when he did sleep. Feeling her belly, she sighed. The phone rang again. When she answered there was a long silence, and the sound of breathing. “Hello,” Connie repeated irritably.