“Get away from me,” she said.
“No,” he said, and took her arm. “Margaret, this is killing me. You never think about what it’s doing to me. It’s all you, poor Margaret, she’s got to punish herself, but you’re punishing me too, damn it. I’m suffering, Margaret. I don’t need to manufacture any fucking Daily Suffering, I’ve got it all built in. I’m going crazy because of this.”
At the subway stop he let go of her arm. They stood in silence. I will not cry, she thought. He will not make me cry. He’ll get over this. I’ll be gone. It doesn’t matter. She turned her back to him and stared down the tracks, unblinking.
He said, “Margaret?” She didn’t answer. “Margaret?” She could see the T coming, way down the block. She concentrated on trees. There were plenty of them around the museum, most of them bare like those in her mother’s photograph, but not bleak. The sky behind them was a brilliant blue that looked fake—dyed by some sentimental optimist. When the car came, she got on and looked behind her for Roddie, but he was gone.
She did nothing but read. “You could occasionally do something more productive,” her mother said. Her mother had also made several serious speeches about her going back to school. If not Harvard, then how about transferring somewhere else? How about Cornell? Her parents had both gone to Cornell, and had been hurt that Margaret wouldn’t even apply. Or B.U.—nothing wrong with B.U. Maybe Uncle Teddy could get her into Brown for spring term. Or she could take a job for the rest of the year and start school again in September. Or at least do some volunteer work. One of the soup kitchens, a literacy program, tutoring in the schools.
Her mother’s ideas ran down and finally ended with, “If nothing else, you could paint.” Her smile eager, her eyes bright with stubborn hope.
Margaret hated it that they didn’t force her to go out and get a job—though she knew she would hate the job even more. She didn’t even have to do housework. They still considered her to be on the brink of some disaster: unbalanced, dangerous. They pretended she didn’t revolt them, pretended she was their pet. After six months, her mother was still making all her favorite foods and doing her laundry. Her father was still coming up to her room when he got home from work and asking nervously, “So how’s my girl today?”
She always said, “Oh, pretty good, Dad. Hanging in there,” and he would do the fake grin he had perfected over the summer and say something like, “Hey—I see we’re having tortellini for dinner. I’d better get down there and see how things are coming along.”
She wished she had the guts to become anorexic or run away or join the homeless on Cambridge Common or at least go officially crazy. She imagined lunging at her father when he came in, making animal noises, slashing with her fingernails. Or tossing the bowl of tortellini through the dining-room window. She hated herself for wolfing down her mother’s goodies, and for slopping around the house all day in her old sweatpants, reading. She was even beginning to resent the books she read: in them, things happened. Life went on. People went to work, dressed up, took walks, held conversations, got into their cars or their carriages and drove places. No one hung around in sweatpants and read about it.
She considered calling Roddie up and saying, “Okay, lover-boy, let’s get hitched.” She considered showing up at his room with her wrists slashed, bleeding all over him: this is what blood looks like, Roddie, and she would smear it on his shirt, his face, his hairy hands. She considered calling him and saying she was in London, Matthew had sent for her, they were living together, and every night they went to the theater and then to a pub and then home where they screwed gloriously, royally, incessantly, so fuck you, buddy, fuck all of you.
She finished Middlemarch and reread Portrait of a Lady, and she tried and failed for the third time to get past page ten of Less Than Zero, and she reread The Beggar Maid and Mr. Bridge and was halfway through Mrs. Bridge when a package came for her in the mail from her aunt Nell.
It was the size of a paperback book, and it was wrapped in brown and tied daintily with white string. Her heart sank when she saw it. It certainly didn’t look like anything that was going to get her to California. She tried to think what it could be. Aunt Nell had a sarcastic side. A guidebook to San Francisco? A rubber frog? A photo of her favorite auntie? Whatever it was, it looked like Daily Suffering, neatly packaged.
No one was home, thank God, thank God. Margaret took the package to her room and cut the string with nail scissors. Under the wrapping was a box that had once held Christmas cards—gold bottom and stiff plastic top, with tissue paper inside: tissue wrapped around small hard objects.
Margaret began unwrapping them. A ring, a necklace, more tissue, other things—all small pieces of jewelry, like prizes in a kids’ game. She thought at first that she was meant to sell it to finance her trip to California, but the stuff was clearly worthless: a cheap necklace of blue glass beads, another necklace of fake pink pearls, a brass chain with an ebony pendant in the shape of a half-moon, an enamel ring, a cat pin, two thin gold bangles, and a scarab bracelet. Junk.
Then she saw that at the bottom of the box there was an envelope, square and white, with her name on it in Aunt Nell’s handwriting. Aunt Nell wrote in blue ink with a broad-nibbed fountain pen, so that the letters were shaded and the writing looked formal and old-fashioned. The M in Margaret bore a flourish like a flag blowing in the wind, the t was crossed with a plumed streak. Could Aunt Nell write her name with such conviction if there wasn’t a check inside? If there was no check, wouldn’t she write in small, apologetic letters?
She waited. She looked at the jewelry, piece by piece. The ebony pendant was rather nice—and black, so she could wear it with her mourning clothes. The gold bangles were okay, not exciting. She put the ring on her finger—blue enamel with little pink flowers and SOUVENIR OF COLD SPRINGS in yellow. Cute. Kitschy. So what?
The ring seemed familiar, seemed to have a vague unpleasant association, but she couldn’t place it. She sat and stared at the way it looked on her finger, waiting. Then she studied her boldly scrawled name. Margaret. Margaret. Margaret.
The envelope, please.
Q: What’s in it?
A: What you deserve.
She opened it. Inside was a folded piece of notepaper and inside that a folded check. The check fell out, still folded. Her stomach dropped, and she could hear her pulse beat. She read the note.
Dear Margaret, This is some of your great-aunt Peggy’s old jewelry. I’m cleaning out the attic preparing to move, and I thought if anyone should get this, you should, since you’re named after her and you look more like her every year. I don’t think I’ll have the family here at Thanksgiving this year. I’m between houses, and the place is in an uproar. Take care of yourself out in California, let me know how it goes, and don’t let Heather boss you. I hope the enclosed will help. Best wishes to all. Love, Aunt Nell
Margaret twisted the ring on her finger, listening to the sound of her blood beating in her head. She looked at the folded check: a square of beige on her bedspread. If she never unfolded it she would never know. She would never have to do anything, ever. She could sit in her parents’ house with the check unfolded for the rest of her life. The check would yellow and crumble and disintegrate, her sweatpants would fuse to her legs, she would go blind from reading, she would eat tortellini and ice cream until she croaked. They would have to cut Great-Aunt Peggy’s enamel ring off her fat finger.
She touched the check—poked it, hoping it would unfold by itself and reveal its magic. It could be anything—twenty dollars toward her ticket, a hundred. Hope the enclosed will help. Aunt Nell was selling the old house and moving to a condo: did that mean she’d be feeling rich or poor? What did help mean? Margaret in blue ink with a flourish? A cache of worthless jewelry?
She began to think she was incapable of unfolding the check. She would have to take it to someone and get them to do it for her. Mrs. Niedermeier next door. The man at the bank. She twisted the ring around her finger. SOUVENIR OF CO
LD SPRINGS. How strange that the ring fit her so perfectly. Was that a sign? A sign of what?
She picked up the check and held it for a moment without unfolding it, thinking: this is absurd, you are pathetic, if it’s not enough what will you do, what will you do, you’ll call Roddie, you’ll go to Brown, you’ll go back to Harvard and eat dirt, you’ll go mad, you’ll die, you’ll die, you’ll die. Oh you melodramatic jerk. Stop it, stop it. Her stomach churned. She closed her eyes, unfolded the check, opened them.
It was a check for a thousand dollars. She put her head in her hands and cried for the first time since Emerson. She felt her heart begin to unfreeze. The ice melted in her veins. She would live.
HEATHER
1982
Heather had a bad flight from San Francisco—as if the Thanksgiving hordes weren’t bad enough, there had been turbulence all the way, and her connecting flight in Pittsburgh had been delayed for two hours because of a bomb threat. By the time she got to Syracuse it was after ten. She checked into the hotel at the airport and called Aunt Nell’s house from her room, which had a cockroach in the sink and a mural over the bed of Indians creeping through a forest. Her father answered the phone.
“I’m not going to make it tonight,” she said. “I just got in and I’m really tired. I checked into this Airport Inn place.”
“Heather, for Christ’s sake, why are you spending my money on a motel? I’ll come over and get you. It’s twenty minutes. We’re all here waiting for you.”
“Dad, I really feel lousy,” she said. “I’m ready to pass out. Tell Aunt Nell I’m sorry. I’ll be there tomorrow early, I promise.”
“How early?”
“By noon. I promise. And I’ll take a cab.”
“This is completely unreasonable.”
“I’m exhausted, I can’t help it.” She stared at the Indians. They looked like white movie stars in heavy makeup. They wore ponytails and moccasins and loincloths. She heard her father say, “She’s tired out, she’s going to stay at the Airport Inn,” and someone—Aunt Lucy?—said, “Oh Teddy, can’t you put your foot down?”
“Dad?”
He sighed. “Yes, Heather.”
“Has Mom called, by any chance?”
“What? Mom? No. Why? Is she supposed to?”
“Not really. I just thought she might.”
“I very much doubt that your mother would call you at this number, Heather. Frankly.”
“Okay. I just wondered.”
“There’s no way we can persuade you to come over here?”
“I’m half-asleep already, Daddy.”
After they hung up, she picked up the roach with a tissue and flushed it down the toilet. In the mirror she saw that her mascara was smeared; she had black rings beneath her eyes, like a punk rocker. She removed the mascara with baby oil, washed her face, and rubbed in moisturizer. Then she took two Seconals and fell asleep before she could start thinking.
The next day they were all mad at her, of course. She was late because there was a snowstorm and it took the guy at the desk forever to get her a taxi. Then the taxi got stuck at Carrier Circle and they sat for half an hour while the driver told her his idea, which was that drug addicts should be rounded up and sent to reservations like Indians used to be. While they were going through withdrawal, they could be looked after by WACs.
“I figure the government could give the WACs the equivalent of combat pay,” he said. “Assign them to, say, six-month hitches out there.”
Heather sat looking at the snow and sucking on a Lifesaver. “Hmm,” she said. “That’s a good idea. Really creative.”
“That way you not only get these characters off the streets, but you put the broads in the military to good use.”
“Right,” Heather said. “Brilliant.”
“I think about this stuff a lot,” the cabdriver said.
They made slow progress, but she was, to say the least, in no hurry, and the city was clean and almost pretty in the new snow. They turned up Hillside Street, and her aunt’s place looked like something on a Christmas card—the tall white house a bit shabby, maybe, but there were the clean new drifts of snow, the driveway flanked by white-frosted pine trees, a wreath on the front door. She gave the driver a nickel tip, and he stared at it and said, “What kind of shit is this?”
She said, “You should be institutionalized.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and sped away.
Her father answered the door wearing white wool pants, plaid socks, and a black turtleneck sweater with a pendant on a chain around his neck. She clung to him for a moment, then kissed his cheek and said, “Wow, Dad, that’s a weird outfit.”
“Thanks,” he said. “You should talk.” They smiled at each other and linked arms and went into the living room where there was a weak fire burning. Dinah the cat sat washing on the rug. Heather’s father poked the fire, and it flared brightly then subsided to a glow. “I’m so glad to see you, baby,” he said. He sat down in the old easy chair; the cat jumped immediately to his lap and settled herself. “I was worried about you yesterday. I must have called the airport ten times. They finally told me your flight was delayed.”
“There was a terrorist or something. And then just now I had this bizarre cabdriver. A really sick guy. The world is starting to give me the creeps.”
“I got so depressed when you didn’t show up last night.”
“Oh, Daddy. Can’t you wait until I’ve been here a while before you start laying the guilt trip on me?” She sat down in a chair opposite him. “What’s wrong with my outfit?”
“A bit preppy,” he said. “Is this what you kids at Berkeley have come to? Monogrammed shetlands and penny loafers? You look like my girlfriend Patty back in tenth grade. You look like you’re on your way to the hop.”
“Everyone’s wearing them. Back to basics, Daddy.”
“Well, you look nice, anyway. You always look nice. You look like your mother.”
“With you, I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not.”
“Definitely,” he said. “Definitely a compliment. How is the old girl? Where was she supposed to call from?” There was a glass of something colorless on the table beside him. He picked it up and drank. “And what made you think she was going to call, anyway?”
“I don’t know, I just had a feeling.” Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked frantically. “Actually, I’d kind of planned to see her on this trip, but she’s gone to Palm Beach, presumably with one of those playboy types she hangs around with.” She kept the tears back, but the threat of them was ominous: she had sworn she would keep her cool on this trip, in the face of no matter what. She changed the subject. “Peter’s not coming, is he?”
“He’s in Mexico with some friend of his. He’ll probably come north for Christmas to see your mother.”
Peter was a sophomore at a branch of the University of Alabama, where he had acquired a Southern accent and a rifle. He had taken Heather to a rifle range last Christmas. She spent a long, frightening afternoon watching Peter score bull’s-eye after bull’s-eye and talk to the men there about gauges and ammo and telescopic sights. He made her try some shooting, and she had been so scared of the noise and the way the gun kicked when she pulled the trigger that she felt sick and shaky for hours afterward. And Peter—she’d been scared of Peter, too.
She said, “I guess I’m supposed to spend Christmas at Mom’s, but I’ll come up to Providence and see you afterward.”
“For New Year’s?”
“I have to get back to do New Year’s Eve with Timmy.”
“And how’s our boy Tim?” He tossed it off, but she knew he was hoping they’d get married when Heather graduated. He thought of Timmy as a solid, stable type just because he was in law school.
“He’s all right. Same as ever, I guess.”
“Sounds like a wild and torrid romance we’ve got here.”
“He’s all right, Daddy. We’re getting along just fine.”
“One of those towe
ring passions that sweep all before it—a love for the ages.”
“Cut it out,” she said, but she had to laugh. “Where is everybody?”
He ticked them off on his fingers. “Two aunties, one great and one regular, in the kitchen cooking dinner. One deadly uncle down in the cellar attempting to fix the washing machine, which overflowed this morning. One arty great-uncle and his unsuitably young wife out in the studio looking for some precious artifacts he left behind when he scuttled away to England. One teenybopper cousin up in her room listening to the hideous music of her generation.”
Heather listened. Something by the Police floated faintly down from upstairs. “Oh God,” she said.
“Be nice to your cousin. She looks up to you as a role model.”
“Oh definitely.”
“And you should probably go out right now and say hello to Aunt Nell.”
“I should. I will. She’s mad at me—right?”
“Well—” He drained his glass and looked around distracted. “Maybe a little.” He started to get up. The cat raised her head, looking alarmed.
“Let me.” Heather went over to the cupboard by the piano where Aunt Nell kept the booze and returned with a bottle. “This?”
“Your auntie’s blessed Tanqueray.” He stroked the cat, and she curled up again. “Fill it to the brim—with gin.”
She filled it halfway. “I don’t know how you can drink straight gin.”
“Like this.” With jerky robot gestures, he raised the glass to his mouth. “See?” He drank and smacked his lips. “Piece of cake.”
“Yuck.”
“Actually, if you’d bring me a couple of rocks from the kitchen I’d appreciate it.”
Her great-aunt Nell was bent over the turkey, basting, and her aunt Lucy was patting some kind of gray mess into a bread pan. When Heather came in, Lucy was saying, “Her art teacher says she has real talent, if she’d only apply herself.”
Heather said, “Hi, everybody.”
Aunt Nell straightened up, her glasses misted from the oven, and said, “Well. It’s about time.” She closed the oven door and set the timer before she went over to give Heather a hug. “I can’t believe you went to a hotel when we had your bed all ready for you.”
Souvenir of Cold Springs Page 4
