by Mary Gordon
Throughout the party, Mrs. Lynch had stayed in the kitchen. After the presents had been opened, she appeared, wearing her nurse's uniform and her white hose, but not her cap, and said to all of us, “Will ye come in and have some cake, then?”
It was the cake and ice cream I had known from all the other birthday parties and I closed my eyes and tried to think of other things— the ocean, as my mother had suggested, the smell of new-mown grass. But it was no good. I felt the salty rising behind my throat: I ran for the bathroom. Eileen's guests were not from my class, they were a year younger than I, so I was spared the humiliation of knowing they'd seen all this a dozen times before. But I was wretched as I bent above the open toilet, convinced that there was nowhere in the world that I belonged, wishing only that I could be dead like my father in a universe which had, besides much else to recommend it, incorporeality for its nature. There was the expected knock on the door. I hoped it would be Mrs. Lynch instead of one of Eileen's sisters, whose contempt I would have found difficult to bear.
“Come and lay down, ye'll need a rest,” she said, turning her back to me the way the other mothers did. I followed, as I always had, into the indicated room, not letting my glance fall toward the eating children, trying not to hear their voices.
I was surprised that Mrs. Lynch had led me, not into the child's room but into the bedroom that she shared with Mr. Lynch. It was a dark room, I don't think it could have had a window. There were two high dressers and the walls were covered with brown, indistinguishable holy images. Mrs. Lynch moved the rose satinish coverlet and indicated I should lie on top of it. The other mothers always turned the bed down for me, and with irritation, smoothed the sheets. Mrs. Lynch went into the closet and took out a rough brown blanket. She covered me with it and it seemed as though she were going to leave the room. She sat down on the bed, though, and put her hand on my forehead, as if she were checking for fever. She turned the light out and sat in the chair across the room in the fashion, I now see, of the paid nurse. Nothing was said between us. But for the first time, I understood what all those adults were trying to do for me. I understood what was meant by comfort. Perhaps I was able to accept it from Mrs. Lynch as I had from no other because there was no self-love in what she did, nothing showed me she had one eye on some mirror checking her posture as the comforter of a grief-stricken child. She was not congratulating herself for her tact, her understanding, her tough-mindedness. And she had no suggestions for me; no sense that things could change if simply I could see things right, could cry, or run around the yard with other children. It was her sense of the inevitability of what had happened, and its permanence, its falling into the category of natural affliction, that I received as such a gift. I slept, not long I know— ten minutes, perhaps, or twenty— but it was one of those afternoon sleeps one awakes from as if one has walked out of the ocean. I heard the record player playing and sat up. It was the time of the party for musical chairs.
“Ye'd like to join the others then?” she asked me, turning on the light.
I realized that I did. I waited till the first round of the game was over, then joined in. It was the first child's game I can remember enjoying.
My mother didn't come for me in the car, of course. I walked across the street so she and Mrs. Lynch never exchanged words about what had happened. “I had a good time,” I said to my mother, showing her the ring I'd won.
“The Lynches are good people,” my mother said.
I'd like to say that my friendship with Eileen developed or that I acknowledged a strong bond with her mother and allowed her to become my confidante. But it wasn't like that; after that time my contacts with the Lynches dwindled, partly because I was making friends outside the neighborhood and partly because of the older Lynch children and what happened to their lives.
It was the middle fifties and we were, after all, a neighborhood of second-generation Irish. Adolescence was barely recognized as a distinct state; it was impossible to imagine that adolescent rebellion would be seen as anything but the grossest breach of the social contract, an incomprehensible one at that. Rebel Without a Cause was on the Legion of Decency condemned list; even Elvis Presley was preached against on the Sunday mornings before he was to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show. So how could my neighborhood absorb the eldest Lynch kids: Charlie, who left school at sixteen and had no job, who spent his afternoons in the driveway, souping up his car. Or Kathy, who'd got in trouble in tenth grade and then married, bringing her baby several times a week, assuming that Eileen, at ten, would be enchanted to take care of it. She wasn't of course, she viewed the child with the resentful gaze she cast on everything in life and refused to change its diapers. Rita, the third daughter, had gone to beautician school and seemed on her way to a good life except that she spent all her evenings parked with different young men in different cars— we all could see that they were different, even in the darkness— in front of the Lynch house.
I was shocked by the way the Lynches talked to their parents. In the summer everyone could hear them: “Ma, you stupid asshole,” “Pop, you're completely full of shit,” “For Christ sake, this is America, not fucking Ireland.” Once in the winter, Charlie and Mrs. Lynch picked Eileen and me up from school when it was raining a gray, dense, lacerating winter rain. In the backseat, I heard Mrs. Lynch and Charlie talking.
“Ye'll drop me at the supermarket, then.”
“I said I'd pick these kids up. That was all.”
“I just need a few things, Charlie. And I remember asking ye this morning and ye saying yes.”
He slammed the brakes on and looked dangerously at his mother. “Cut the crap out, Ma. I said I have things to do and I have them. I mean it now.”
Mrs. Lynch looked out the window, and Charlie left us off at the Lynch house, then drove away.
People said it was terrible the way the Lynches sat back, staring helplessly at their children like Frankenstein staring at his monster. My mother's interpretation was that the Lynches were so exhausted simply making ends meet that they didn't have the strength left to control their children, and it was a shame that children could take such advantage of their parents’ efforts and hard lot. The closest she would come to criticizing them was to say that it might have been easier for them in the city where they didn't have the responsibility of a house and property. And such a long commute. But it was probably the kids they did it for, she said. Knowing how she felt, nobody said “shanty Irish” in front of my mother, although I heard it often on the street, each time with a pang of treachery in my heart as I listened in silence and never opened my mouth to defend.
Everyone for so long had predicted disaster for the Lynches that no one was surprised when it happened; their only surprise was that it happened on such a limited scale. It was a summer night; Charlie was drunk. His father had taken the keys to the car and hidden them so Charlie couldn't drive. We could hear him shouting at his father, “Give them to me, you fucking son of a bitch.” We couldn't hear a word from Mr. Lynch. Finally, there was a shot, and then the police siren and the ambulance. Charlie was taken off by the police, and Mr. Lynch wheeled out on a stretcher. We later found out from loe Flynn, a cop who lived down the street, that Mr. Lynch was all right; Charlie'd only shot him in the foot. But Charlie was on his way to jail. His parents had pressed charges.
Then the Lynches were gone; no one knew how they'd sold the house; there was never a sign in front. It was guessed that Mr. Lynch had mentioned wanting to sell to someone in the cab company. Only the U-Haul truck driven by Kathy's husband and the new family, the Sullivans, arriving to work on the house, told us what had happened. lack Sullivan was young and from town and worked for the phone company; he said he didn't mind doing the repairs because he'd got the house for a song. His father helped him on the weekends, and they fixed the house up so it looked like all the others on the street. His wife loudly complained, though, about the filth inside; she'd never seen anything like it; it took her a week to get through the kitchen gre
ase, she said, and they'd had to have the exterminator.
Everyone was awfully glad when they were finally moved in. It was a relief to have your own kind, everybody said. That way you knew what to expect.
Watching the Tango
One should not watch the tango. Or at least not in a theater like this, one so baroque and so well cared for, so suggesting plutocrats and oil money or money made from furs: Alaska, some cold climate, underpopulation, paying women to come out. They watch the tango, these two lovers, because they have heard from friends that it is good to watch these dancers, and seats were available on quite short notice. And they must do things on short notice, for they are illicit lovers; he is married, and her job has those long hours: it is hard to get away. They are longing for the lights to go out so they can hold hands. Someone they know is in the row behind them; they must wait for darkness.
They do not know what to expect but they have, of course, associations with the tango. Underlit and fundamentally quite dirty dance halls in parts of some large city fallen now into decay. The lights go out. They hear the sounds of an accordion, and overrich violins. He takes her hand, plays tunes on the palm of it. Her eyes close out of pleasure and she feels herself sink down and yet be buoyed up. And it encourages her to give herself up to these impossible joke instruments, their tasteless sounds.
The dancers come onto the stage. They are not young. First the men dance with each other. And the women, to the side, each dance alone in circles, as if they didn't notice, didn't care. Then suddenly, like the crack of a whip, the couples come together. Mere formality is seen to be the skeleton it is; limbs intertwine, the man's hand on the woman's back determines everything: the stress is all. The dancers are seductive, angry, playful, but it does not matter. All their gestures are theatrical, impersonal: the steps matter, and the art, which is interpretive. None of the couples is the same.
What are these women doing with their middle age? Theirs is not a body type familiar to us North Americans. Long and yet heavy-limbed, with strong, smooth athletes’ backs, the high arched feet of the coquette, these bodies have not kept themselves from the fate of those of the simply indolent. Beneath the skirts, covered with beads and sequins, are soft stomachs, loose behinds. Can it be that when they are not here dancing these women are lounging, reading illustrated Spanish romances that look like comic books: heavy-lidded blondes succumbing, ravished, their words appearing over their heads in balloons like the words of Archie and Veronica? Are they eating chocolates, these women, these dancers? How late do they sleep?
It is impossible to invent for them an ordinary life. Of course they sleep all day. And where? Their bedrooms are quite easy to imagine. Dark and overfull: the hair pomade, the bottles of gardenia, jasmine; the pictures of the dying saints. The dolls stiff on the dresser tops, their skirts lace or crocheted, look out upon the scene like smug and knowing birds. What have they witnessed? Tears and botched abortions, abject and extravagant apologies, the torpid starts of quarrels, joyous reconciliations unconvincing in the light of day. The light of day, in fact, must never enter. The dark shiny curtains stay closed until late afternoon. Outside the closed door the house life goes on like another country. Some old woman— mother, servant, it hardly matters— dusts and polishes the furniture with oil that smells of roasting nuts. She does not knock to say “Still sleeping? Rise and shine!” She does not dare. She is professionally quiet.
The woman who is watching the tango takes her lover's hand and brings it to her lips. He does not know exactly why, but she can see that he has understood the springs of such a gesture. Sorrow. “You all right?” he whispers. “Yes.” She is thinking: we will never dance together among friends. It makes her want to cry: she so envies the spectacle of these couples before them, so free of responsibility. They sleep late, they make love, they dance among their friends. But they do not look happy.
Happiness seems as irrelevant to them as sunlight, medicine, or balanced meals. Yet they do not suggest the criminal. They are infinitely, reverently law-abiding. You can see how they would love a dictator. But what is this: a woman dancing amorously with another woman? And a man, seething with anger, dangerously dancing by himself? What now? Here he comes with a knife. Of course he kills her. More in love than ever with her dead, he carries her offstage, kissing her all the while with a real tenderness.
They had talked before at supper, the two lovers, about violence between women and men. The statistics, she said to him, are up: more women now are violent to men. Oh good, he said, like lung cancer. How far we've come. Still, many more men are violent to women than women are to men, she said. And men can kill women with a blow of the fist. Don't forget that, she told him. Thanks, he said. I'll keep it in mind. Once he told her that he had hit a woman. She was completely on his side.
A short, dyed blonde appears onstage holding a microphone. The lovers, listening, do not know Spanish, yet they understand this woman has been betrayed. By whom? She is at least in her mid-fifties. The sex she suggests is quite unsavory. Money may have changed hands. Did a young man in tight black pants grow tired of the way he had to earn his free time? So he could be out gambling with his pals while the singer sang her heart out. Worse, with a young girl who made fun of her. The singer is right; it is terrible. She knows better. But she will make the same mistake again. The woman watching thinks of the singer dyeing her secret hairs, gray now, perhaps with a small brush. The thought of it raises in her a terrible pity. She begins to be afraid of growing old.
Intermission now. In the red lobby with its stone festoons, the lovers must pretend to be talking casually. In fact, every word he says increases her desire, and she doesn't want to go back to the theater, to the dark, where she cannot see his face, so beautiful and so arousing to her. But there is nowhere else to go. Adulterous, they are orphans. They sit in restaurants; they walk around the streets.
His friends come up. Almost never when the lovers are together do they speak to anyone except themselves. It is odd; the woman feels they are speaking in a foreign language. “We have visited Argentina,” the man who is her lover's friend says, and it sounds to her like a sentence in a textbook. The four of them hear the bell and walk together down the aisle back to their seats.
A new couple has joined the dancers. Older, heavier, afraid of risks, as if they know there are things not easily recovered from, not ever, they move funereally and with no sense of play. But their somberness has not destroyed the others’ spirits. Over in the corner are the madcap couple, jumping, laughing like jitterbuggers. He loudly slaps her behind. The male dancer to their left has an expression of balked chastity. “That one's a spoiled priest,” the woman tells her lover. “I've seen that face on thousands of rectory walls.” “And the old guy owns the nightclub,” says her lover. “He has my marker for seventy-five grand.” The dancers are becoming individuals, which makes them to the woman, oddly now, less interesting. She feels that, knowing them, she has to take them seriously. And she doesn't want that. She wants to lose herself in the cheap music and to dream about her lover's body.
The finale brings out all the dancers’ passion to assert their differences. The musicians, too, are ardent. The woman watching with her lover thinks: the lights will go on, we will leave each other for the hundredth time. Thousands of times more we will kiss each other blandly at the train station, in case his neighbors are around.
He says, “Their children probably don't dance the tango. Maybe no one will when they are dead.”
“We will,” she says. “We'll do it for them.”
They take hands with the lights on. Suddenly gallant and protective, they see everyone— the dancers, the musicians, the sad singers— all of them valorous, noble, worthy, and capable of the most selfless love.
“We'll do it one day,” she says. “One day we'll dance the tango.”
They walk outside the theater holding hands with the rash courage of new converts, soldiers, gamblers, pirates, clairvoyants. The rain keeps them beneath the
theater marquee where they kiss as if it didn't matter or as if it were the only thing that did. They see one of the dancers arguing with someone— his real wife?— a sparrow in a kerchief and brown shoes. Impatiently, he opens his umbrella, leaves her there— she has no coat, no pocketbook— and walks away. She stands with the self-conscious stoicism of one who knows she has no choice. A minute later he returns, beckons, and she runs to the umbrella. He is wearing patent leather shoes. His dancing shoes? They will be ruined.
“Let's go now,” the watching woman says to her lover. She doesn't want to see the other dancers coming out. She doesn't want to have to worry.
Agnes
“Well, it's the same old story. It's the woman pays. You see it every time,” said Bridget, closing her pocketbook with a click, Nora could see, of dreadful satisfaction.
“Anybody could have seen it coming. But you don't, I guess,” said Nettie.
“And whose fault was it but her own?” Bridget asked.
“Poor soul, there was few enough moments of joy she had on earth. And God have mercy on the dead. There'll be no more talk of it in my kitchen,” said Kathleen.
Nora looked up at her mother, thinking her a coward to make the conversation stop. She had contempt for every one of them, her two aunts and her mother. And her father too, pretending he was sorry about Agnes's death. For they had never liked her, any of them, although at least her mother had been kind to her. Nora had not liked Ag herself.