Margaret lay petting her, listening for noises from the attic. She had slept in this bed on Thanksgiving for as long as she could remember. The bedspread was pale blue chenille striped with fluffy ridges, with a flower design in the middle. Her great-grandpa Kerwin had slept in the room across the hall until he got so small he died. Then Grandma Caroline had lived in it, and now her parents slept there when they visited. But this room had never belonged to anyone but Aunt Peggy, as far as Margaret knew. She imagined living in this house herself, when she was old, old as Aunt Nell. This was where old people lived, a house that was full of old people’s things, dead people’s things. She sniffed in the smell of the bedspread: a good smell of cat and clean cotton. This would be her room, this bed, this bedspread, the blue blankets and cold white sheets, the blue flowers on the wallpaper, the dressing table with the ivory mirror that was always facedown.
She wondered how long until dinner. She hoped her mother wouldn’t come looking for her; there was a key stuck in the lock of the bedroom door, but she was forbidden to turn it. She hadn’t run right to her mother from the attic: that proved she wasn’t a baby. A picture of Peter, his big white teeth laughing, hovered just outside her mind; she wouldn’t let it in, but she knew it was there, waiting. Sometime it would come to her. The window shade was pulled up. Outside it wasn’t quite dark, and everything was cold and black and gray, the treetops crisscrossed lines. She saw a bird fly past, then another, then one stopped in a tree and was lost in the branches. A tear slipped down her cheek, and she wiped it on her sleeve.
She picked up the cat and held her in her arms, and Dinah settled against her, her paws kneading Margaret’s shoulder. “You’re my Dinah, my baby Dinah,” Margaret crooned. Dinah sighed, stopped purring, and went to sleep again, curled against Margaret’s stomach. The room grew darker. Margaret dozed, safe, the cat warm against her, until she was awakened by someone screaming.
“Well, she lost another one,” her father said after dinner when he got back. His face was red and frowning, as if he were mad at everyone. He had gone in the ambulance with her mother. Her mother’s skirt had been all covered with blood. There was blood on the hall carpet. Thea and Aunt Nell scrubbed it hard with a brush, but it wouldn’t come out. They put a yellow bath mat over it.
The rest of them had sat down to dinner. Aunt Nell took Margaret out of the dining room and talked to her in the kitchen because she couldn’t stop crying. “The blood wasn’t because she was hurt,” Aunt Nell said. She knelt down and wrapped her two hands around Margaret’s. “There might be a problem with the baby, but your mother will be all right. Don’t be scared, Margaret. Come and eat your dinner. That’s what Mommy would want you to do. Just calm down and eat some turkey.”
Margaret calmed down. She tried to eat some turkey, though she didn’t like it, and she drank a big glass of Mr. Fahey’s Pepsi when Uncle Teddy brought it for her. She couldn’t stop thinking of the blood. In the back of her mind was still the bedroom, Peter’s laugh. Across the table Peter looked as subdued as everyone else. He didn’t look like Peter anymore—the cousin she hated. She still hated him, but he looked different. The grownups talked about the new president, and then about the old one who resigned. Aunt Nell called Nixon Tricky Dick, and Thea said, “That man makes me ashamed to be an American.” Uncle Jamie said he didn’t like that kind of talk, and Mr. Fahey snickered uneasily, showing his snaggly old yellow teeth. Uncle Jamie said there was such a thing as loyalty. When Margaret looked at him, she thought of his old eraser in the attic.
Margaret’s father didn’t return until after the dishes were done. Aunt Nell made him a turkey sandwich, and he let Uncle Teddy give him a drink, for once. The grown-ups talked for a while in the kitchen. Margaret went to look at the blood spot in the hall—still there, under the bath mat—and then lay on the floor in the living room, looking at the coals glowing in the fireplace. She could hear Peter and Heather fighting upstairs. Aunt Kay came in and sat at the piano smoking and drinking brandy and picking out tunes. Margaret wished Aunt Nell would come in and talk to her again, or let her sit on her lap. Aunt Nell, who looked so tall and sharp, was the softest and nicest one of all when you sat on her lap. But Ann came in and plopped down on the rug next to Margaret.
“We could look in the attic,” she said.
“No,” Margaret said. “I’m sick of the attic.”
“But we could look. Somebody might have hid it there.”
Margaret stared at her. What did she know about the attic? She remembered the blue ring with the yellow letters. “Hid what?”
Ann leaned close and whispered in her ear. “The baby. Maybe we should look in the attic.”
Margaret pushed her away. “That’s not what it means when you lose a baby, you dummy,” she said. Ann began to cry. Aunt Kay’s piano playing got louder—big, harsh chords, then “Happy Birthday to You,” then “Frère Jacques.” Margaret rolled over on her stomach and put her hands over her ears.
Uncle Teddy came in and said, “What’s this? What’s this? We’re going in a few minutes, Annie, so stop crying and go find your jacket. Kay? You about ready?”
Aunt Kay crashed her hands down on the keys with an ugly sound. “I suppose so,” she said. “Why not? Assuming you’re in a condition to drive.”
“Don’t give me a hard time, Kay,” Uncle Teddy said. “Just this once.”
Margaret stayed facedown on the rug. She heard Ann and Uncle Teddy leave the room, and then someone knelt beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. She tensed, but it was Aunt Kay. She patted Margaret’s back and said, “Don’t feel too bad, honey. It’s more fun to be an only child.”
Margaret’s mother stayed at the hospital that night. After the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving Special on TV, Aunt Nell tucked Margaret into bed; her father had gone to bed early. Aunt Nell talked to Margaret about the baby, kept saying she was sorry, and her Mommy and her Daddy were sorry, everyone was sorry—as if the baby was Margaret’s treat, a toy for her that the store was sold out of.
Aunt Nell helped her take off her sweater and tights, and shook her nightgown out like a flag before she hung it over the radiator to warm. Then she said, “Would you like a massage, little one?”
It sounded like something to eat: something sweet and wobbly, she imagined, like Jell-O. She hated Jell-O. She stood shivering in her underpants, looking dubiously at her aunt. “I don’t know.”
Aunt Nell laughed and said, “Here—I’ll show you. Hop up on the bed.”
She lay down and her aunt began to rub her back. Aunt Nell’s hands were warm and soft, and they pressed hard but not too hard, cupping around her shoulders and then moving down to the sides where it almost tickled and then down to where her underpants began.
“Feel good?”
“Mmm.”
Aunt Nell rubbed the tops of her legs and the backs of her arms and then her back and shoulders again, kneading like a cat. She leaned over close, humming slightly, and when she stopped humming Margaret could feel her breath on her skin. The house was completely quiet. Thea had gone home, and Mr. Fahey. Uncle Jamie was out in his studio over the garage. Her father was asleep. Margaret began to feel drowsy. The massage felt good, but she wished Aunt Nell would stop. She moved restlessly, and Aunt Nell stilled her hands.
“Enough, little bunny?”
“Mmm.”
“You’re half-asleep.” She turned Margaret over as if she were a doll, and put the nightgown over her head, then hugged her close for a minute. “You’re a dear girl,” she said. “You’re my favorite little bunny, do you know that?”
She tucked Margaret’s old, flattened-out teddy bear in bed with her; after she left Margaret would set the bear gently on the floor by the bed because she was too old to sleep with a stuffed animal. Aunt Nell smoothed back her hair and kissed her square in the middle of her forehead. With a flash of pain, Margaret missed her mother. Aunt Nell stood up and she clung to her. “What’s a souvenir?” she asked, to keep her there.
; She pronounced it soo-venner, and it took her aunt a while to catch on. “Souvenir,” she said. “Oh—it’s a French word. It means something to remind you of something else—a sort of memento.”
Of course: a memento. Aunt Nell kissed her forehead again and went out, closing the door softly as if Margaret were already asleep. But she wasn’t asleep, not quite. She thought about the ring, but she was afraid to go up to the attic alone. She thought about the baby. What Ann said was stupid. Of course, the baby wasn’t lost. But she wondered where it was. It had been in her mother’s stomach, and now it wasn’t. She wondered how it got out and where it had gone. She wondered why there was blood.
She didn’t put the bear on the floor. She hugged it tight. When she closed her eyes, she imagined something coming to the door, opening it, crawling up to the bed: something crying and covered with blood. It was then that Peter’s face came back to her, his big teeth, and his mocking laugh that followed her down the stairs and wouldn’t let her go.
CAROLINE
1973
“I wish I’d known you when you were a nun,” Mort said. “I was never a nun, Morty.”
It was nearly noon. Caroline and Mort were having breakfast alone. Nell’s summer vacation had just started, and she had gone over to the high school to drop off final grades. Jamie, of course, was out in his loft over the garage—presumably transferring endless tubes of paint to endless yards of canvas.
“Half a nun, then,” he said. “Which half, I wonder?”
He reached under the table and put his hand on her thigh, squeezing it through the silk nightgown. She slapped his hand, not hard. “None of that,” she said. “You’ve had more than you deserve.”
She poured him more coffee and he dropped in a saccharine tablet. “Damn it, Caroline, I wish you weren’t so set on going. I don’t see the point.”
“I’m homesick,” she said. “I really miss the desert, the mountains. And I have friends there.”
“You have friends here.”
She smiled at him. “I know. And don’t think I won’t miss you. It’s just—” She shrugged. “I can’t explain.”
She had told him the night before that she was thinking of moving back to New Mexico in the fall. She was negotiating for a little house there, she said, a hacienda overlooking the river, with a view of the blood-red mountains, and she’d be flying out in a couple of weeks to look at it. None of this was true. She wanted to plant in his brain the idea of losing her. She wanted to make it easier.
“You must know what I mean,” she said. “How you can feel you belong to a place.”
He looked at her—studying her, she felt, as if she were a patient with an elusive symptom. She didn’t turn away. “I’ll come out and see you at Christmas,” he said. “If you’re really going.”
“I’m going, all right.” She let her smile intensify. “You’ll love it at Christmas,” she said. “Santa Fe is beautiful, so cold and clear, and all the lights.”
“You can teach me to ski.”
“I never did any skiing.”
It was in Santa Fe that she had been half a nun. She had spent years there, listening to God talk to her, trying to find a purpose for her life. Then the purpose had been revealed to her, and she had come home.
“That’s right,” he said. “Nuns don’t ski. Well, you can teach me to pray.”
“I’ve forgotten how, I’m afraid.” She smiled at him. “That was in another life, Morty. I do other things now.”
They had leisurely third cups of coffee, and then she kissed him good-bye at the front door. He didn’t keep office hours on Mondays, but he was due at the hospital. “I’ll call you tonight,” he said, keeping his arms around her.
“Make it tomorrow, sweetie. I’m really pooped. I think I’ll go to bed early.” He rubbed his cheek against hers; he was freshly shaved and smelled of Brut. What a nice man he was—still sexy, barely gray, not even a potbelly, just that sweet softness around the middle. And a heart of gold. “I’m awfully fond of you, Morty,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”
When he was gone she rinsed their dishes and loaded the dishwasher for Nell. She considered another cup of coffee and decided against it. She went into the living room where Nell kept the liquor, screwed the top off a bottle of Chivas Regal, thought for a minute, and put it back. Then she went slowly upstairs.
She took a shower, being careful to keep her hair dry. She squirted her underarms with Arrid and puffed on the White Shoulders Dusting Powder Mort had given her for her birthday. How could Mort call her beautiful? Her face in the mirror looked ancient, full of strange hollows and creases, her eyes sunk in their sockets. But she looked at it with satisfaction: it was fine, it was the face she wanted.
She went back to her room and put on clean underwear and stockings and finally the bathrobe that had been Stewart’s last gift to her. He had made Nell take him downtown to the Addis Company, where he had picked it out himself: red silk lined in hot pink, with kimono sleeves.
“I saw it, and I said to myself this is what Caro means to me,” he told her. “This is what you’ve done for my life. This is the way I feel about you.” She had lain beside him wearing the robe, and he had pulled back the brilliant red and pressed his face between her breasts. He didn’t have the strength to do anything else. A week later he was dead.
She had never worn the robe with any other man. With Mort and the rest of them, she wore frilly nylon things, pastels. From Paris, when he was at a medical conference there, Mort had brought her silk stockings and a black garter belt with pink rosettes, and a man named Forrest gave her a quilted calico housecoat that she had passed on to Nell when she and Forrest split up. She saved the red silk for the evenings when she was alone in her room with Stewart’s photograph—when, sitting absolutely still in the old leather reclining chair she’d brought with her to Nell’s, she pulled the robe tightly around her and looked into his eyes and felt his presence: really felt it, as a living entity, the way she used to be conscious of the presence of God. Sometimes she could hear his voice, as once she used to hear God’s voice. I don’t deserve you, Stewart had said. God never said that. I don’t deserve you, clutching at her hand. His coughing, the oxygen, the wild flailing of his hands, the look in his eyes. And then nothing but the smell of his fear lingering in the room. No God at all.
When she heard Nell come back, Caroline called downstairs. “Nellie? Come up here for a minute?”
When Nell appeared in the doorway, Caroline was back in bed, propped on pillows with an old Time magazine. Nell asked, “Are you sick?”
“Not really. I think Mort and I had too much breakfast. One fried egg too many. A touch of indigestion.” She laid her hand over her heart. “Here.”
Nell had put on her gardening apron and sneakers and pinned up her hair. She came over to the bed and laid the back of one hand against Caroline’s forehead. “Not feverish.”
“Of course, I’m not feverish,” Caroline said. “High cholesterol doesn’t make you feverish, it just clogs up your arteries or some damn thing.”
“Oh come on,” Nell said. “Don’t tell me we’ve got to start worrying about that stuff already.”
“Not you, child. You’re a spring chicken. Mort told me I should go easy.”
Nell smiled. “I like old Mort.”
“He’s not that old. He’s sixty-two.”
“He seems younger than that.”
“Don’t I know it,” Caroline said. “I’m glad I didn’t know him when he was fifty.” She laid her hand on her chest again and groaned. “I’ll tell you, Nell, I don’t know if it was breakfast or what, but I’ve definitely overdone something. I think I’ll just sack out here all day. This hard living is getting to me.”
Nell shook her head and pretended to look shocked. “You’re certainly a terrible example to your baby sister.”
“I try to be.”
Nell brought her some more magazines from downstairs and said she was going outside to weed the rose bed,
and then to Thea’s to cook Chinese and drink champagne and celebrate the school year being over. The mail was here, the usual junk. Dinah had plenty of food and was asleep outside in the sun. And Jamie could eat the leftover stew in the fridge for supper.
Jamie. “Would you tell him not to bother me, Nell?” she asked. “Not that the charming boy is speaking to me, anyway.”
Nell laughed. “Did you hear him last night? When Mort was downstairs in the kitchen with me? Jamie came in, saw Mort, got that look on his face and said, Oh—good evening. No Hi, Mort, no Hey, Mort, how are you, or anything, God forbid, just this very pompous little nod and—Good evening.”
Caroline said, “One of these day’s somebody’s going to mistake him for the butler.”
Jamie: the hell with Jamie. He would be out there painting until the light failed, unless he had a student to worship at the shrine. She couldn’t keep track of his students—mostly earnest, dowdy young women who thought Jamie was interesting. God: if there was one thing her brother wasn’t, it was interesting. He had begun sleeping out in the loft. Every morning he came in for breakfast, then he packed his lunch and carried it back out in an absurd tin lunch box, with a thermos of coffee, as if he were a laborer going off to a hard day’s work. The chances of his coming in to eat Nell’s stew were very small. He hardly ever came in at all. Nell told her she’d caught him peeing out the garage window.
“Why doesn’t he just move?” Caroline asked Nell. “Get himself an apartment somewhere away from his degenerate sister.”
“Too tight with the buck,” Nell said. Also, Caroline knew perfectly well that Jamie thought it was she who should move. He had told her to her face that he wouldn’t have agreed to her moving in with them if he’d known she was going to spend her widowhood behaving like a slut. Jamie: what would he say when she was gone? She hoped he would feel so guilty and remorseful he wouldn’t be able to paint again. She hated his paintings, which seemed to her drab, formless blobs or—his new thing—soulless and conventional portraits of people she was glad she didn’t know. When she looked at Jamie’s work, she really did get homesick for New Mexico: the pottery, the vibrant santos paintings in the chapel, the woven Rio Grande tapestries in her office at the convent.
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