Bad Behavior: Stories (26 page)

The dream-Lily smiled back. “Charles is a beautiful boy,” she said. “I think he may be a genius in a way people don’t yet understand.

“Don’t ever tell Daniel or Jarold I said this, but Charles is my favorite child. He’s precious and special. Whenever I think of someone trying to harm him—any of my children really, but especially him—I picture myself turning into a mother tiger and lashing out. I would do anything to protect him.”

“Why would you think of anyone trying to harm him?” asked Lily. “Just out of the blue?”

She woke up feeling guilty and frightened and angry at Lily.
She dimly tried to sort it out. Whey should she feel any of these things? The doctors hadn’t tried to tie her tubes. There had been no conversation with Lily. She went back to sleep.

When Daniel was sixteen, he had another girlfriend. She was another small girl, with dark hair and light-brown glasses. She wrote poetry and talked a lot about feminism. Virginia still had a snapshot of them on their way to the junior prom. The girl looked embarrassed and distressed in her gown and corsage. Daniel was indifferently handsome.

Charles became a delicate, pretty adolescent. His eyes were large and green and long-lashed, his neck slender. He slouched like an arrogant little cat. Girls got crushes on him, they called and asked to speak to him in scared, high-pitched voices. He was rude to them and hung up. The only girl he liked was a homely, jittery kid who wore a leather jacket and bleached her hair. But that ended when the girl was sent to some kind of institution.

Camille got married a month after she graduated. She and Kevin flew to New Jersey for the wedding. They posed for snapshots in the den. They were radiant against the jumbled background of random shoes and scattered newspapers.

Everybody walked around the house talking and laughing and eating hunks of white cake. Kevin’s father shook hands with Jarold. Kevin’s mother helped in the kitchen.

Camille and Kevin went to Spain for their honeymoon. Then they moved to New York and got jobs. Camille wrote letters on heavy gray stationery with “Dr. and Mrs. Kevin Spaulding” printed across the top.

Magdalen was married the following spring. She married a Southern lawyer whom she had waited on in the health-food restaurant.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” said Anne. “She probably did it to shock you. She couldn’t have Camille getting all the attention.”

“It’s what she wanted all along,” said Betty. “A daddy.”

John was ten years older than Magdalen. He was broad-shouldered
and slow-moving, with lazy gray eyes. Magdalen cuddled against him, her hand quiet on his lapel.

Jarold watched them with deep approval. It relaxed him to talk about them or look at them.

Virginia was happy that Magdalen had found someone normal to take care of her. She was proud of her daughter’s wedding beauty and of her successful husband. She enjoyed a smug feeling of vindication now that Magdalen had come to such a conventional end.

The couple moved to John’s farm in North Carolina. Magdalen baked bread and kept house. She had a baby, a fat boy named Griffin. Virginia took snapshots of Magdalen holding Griffin in a ball of blankets, her eyes startled and glistening wildly above her grin. John stood over her, his chin held high, smiling his slow-eyed smile. Magdalen asked her for advice in a meek, thrilled voice.

Virginia called Anne. “I love it,” she said. “He doesn’t let her get away with anything. If she gets high-toned, he puts her right in her place. And she
loves
it.”

Daniel graduated from high school and then went to college to study engineering. He went with heavy sweaters, socks and boxes of records. Virginia took a picture of him standing at the train station in a huge cream-colored sweater. His tennis-shoed feet were tight together, his shoulders were hunched. He smiled tolerantly into space as a long strand of blond hair blew across his forehead and licked the lashes of one eye.

Virginia stood in the kitchen and did the dishes in the afternoon. She wore a sweatshirt and loose slacks and fat gray socks. Her hair was in a high, wispy ponytail. The sun was warm and her hands were warm in the lightly food-flecked water. The radio was on, playing love songs, songs about babies and homes. Virginia sang as she washed, about roses and bluebirds and tears of joy. She knew they were stupid songs, but they made her feel exalted. They were notations for things too important and mysterious to describe accurately in radio songs.

They had barbecues in the evenings. They ate steak and potatoes and oily salad with flowery leaves. They ate regally in their lawn chairs, looking out into their big back yard and all the trees. Charles and Jarold argued about what Charles should do after high school, or whether New York was ugly or not. Charles usually said, “Oh, never mind,” and kept eating. When he was finished, he got up to walk to the stream that ran in the wooded area behind their house. Virginia and Jarold sat alone, full and splendid, their jackets around their shoulders.

Virginia loaded the dishwasher in the dimly lit kitchen, scraping the bones and greasy napkins into big black garbage bags. There was TV noise from the den, and the low rasping sound that Jarold made when he moved the newspaper. Charles came in, his face distant, his light jacket flapping. She circled his head with her arm, brought it to her shoulder and held it there to kiss before he broke from her and went away down the hall.

She sometimes sat on the couch with a pile of vinyl photo albums. One album opened on her lap to show a glanceful of red snowsuits, Christmas trees, armloads of grinning dolls, and beautiful tall children who smiled, drew pictures and were happy. Holding Easter baskets full of grass and chocolate. Raking the leaves. Winning trophies. The weddings and the graduations. The long-ribboned corsages.

She had to remind herself that Anne and Betty had families that were nice in other ways, that one of Betty’s daughters was a certified genius and went to a school for advanced children.

She wrote to Anne and told her, “We’re getting fat and sassy.”

It was winter when Camille called. She asked how Virginia was doing and waited while Virginia told her. She asked about Magdalen and the boys. Then she said, “Mother, I’m having an abortion.”

Virginia stifled a choking noise. “Were you raped?” she managed to ask.

Camille began to cry. “No,” she said.

Virginia waited as Camille controlled her voice.

“No,” said Camille. “Kevin doesn’t want to have children. I let myself get pregnant without telling him. I thought he would change his mind, but he didn’t. He’s really mad. He says if I don’t have an abortion, he’ll divorce me.”

Virginia left the phone feeling very unlike herself. She made a cup of tea and went into the den with it. She sat on the couch with one gray-socked foot propped up on the coffee table. She wondered why Kevin didn’t want to have children.

She did not tell Jarold about the abortion.

Camille came home to visit. She walked around the house in her old snakeskin jumpsuit, her little hips twitching briskly. She told stories about being a corporate lawyer and teased “Daddy.” Virginia admired her. But she noticed the stiff grinning lines around her mouth.

Camille visited Magdalen too. She stayed with her for two days before flying back to New York. She wrote Virginia a letter shortly afterward and told her that she felt something strange was happening between John and Magdalen. Magdalen was brittle, she said. John ordered her around a lot, in a very nasty way. She said that late one night she woke up and heard the sound of someone being rhythmically and repeatedly slapped. It went on for about five minutes. Magdalen looked fine the next day, and Camille had been too embarrassed to say anything.

Virginia called Magdalen late that night, when Jarold was in bed. She didn’t hear anything strange in her voice. When Virginia got off the phone, she put on an old gray sweater and walked from room to room. The rooms were dark and hollow. They seemed unfamiliar and eerie, but that didn’t make her go upstairs or turn on the light. She stood in the middle of the dark living room with her feet together, wrapping the sweater around her. She stood there not thinking about anything, just hearing the wind and the faint hum of the house.

Charles and Jarold had a fight. Charles was graduating from high school and he didn’t want to go to college. He just wanted to move
out of the house. Jarold told him his attitude was stupid and weak. “Magdalen thought she’d go the unconventional, freaky route,” said Jarold at breakfast, “and look where it got her. Married, a mother. And happy for the first time in her mixed-up life.”

“I still think Magdalen’s freaky,” said Charles.

It went on for about a week. Then Charles lost his temper. He said, “I’d rather be on my face in the Bowery than be a horse’s ass like you.”

“Charles,” said Virginia.

Jarold crossed the room and belted Charles across the face, knocking him out of his chair. Virginia dropped her glass in the sink and ran to Charles. “Don’t you dare hit my son!” she screamed.

“Oh, get out of here, you idiot,” said Charles. He wiped the blood from his mouth in a bored way.

Virginia began sitting up late at night in the den, drinking and staring at her gray feet. She made sarcastic comments that nobody paid any attention to. Jarold called her “Mother.” “Now, Mother,” he’d say.

Charles moved to New York. He got a job in a record store and an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Other than that, it was hard to tell what he was doing.

Virginia called Camille. Camille was meeting wonderful new people and being successful. She told lots of funny stories. But then she said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’m having a hard time keeping it to myself. Last month Magdalen told me that John slapped her. Not hard or anything. But still.”

She paused so Virginia could say something. Virginia sat quietly and stared at the kitchen.

“Of course, we both know how annoying Magdalen can be,” continued Camille. “But that doesn’t give him the right to strike her.”

Virginia left the conversation feeling cheated. Camille had told her about Magdalen at the end of the conversation, after all the good things. That seemed strange to Virginia. She sat for a long time on the stool under the phone with her legs tightly crossed and
her elbows on the knee of one leg. She thought about how awful the kitchen was. There were balls of dust and tiny crumbs around the edges of the floor. Pans full of greasy water ranged across the counter. The top of the refrigerator was black. Everything in the room seemed disconnected from its purpose.

In the fall, Daniel decided that he didn’t like engineering school and dropped out. Jarold argued with him over the phone for a long time. When he hung up, Jarold went out into the garage and sat in the car with a scarf around his neck. He sat there for over an hour. Virginia could hear the car’s engine start, chug awkwardly, and then shut off. This happened several times. She couldn’t tell whether Jarold was repeatedly deciding to drive somewhere and then changing his mind, or if he was just keeping warm.

Camille divorced Kevin two months later. She put her things in bags and boxes and moved into a girlfriend’s apartment. She tried to make it sound like fun. Virginia pictured her sitting on the couch with her friend, both of them bundled in blankets, drinking mugs of tea, being supportive. It was a nice picture, but it seemed adolescent.

Everybody came home for the holidays. Magdalen and Camille hugged each other constantly during the visit. On Christmas they wore their pajamas and slippers all day. They sat close together and squeezed each other’s hands. They had confidential conversations, which Virginia only half heard. When the talked to anyone else, their faces stiffened slightly. Magdalen had a hard time finishing a sentence.

No one else seemed to notice. “Magdalen’s always been flighty,” said Jarold.

Charles was very pale. He picked at the Christmas meal, eating very little. His dinner plate was a mass of picked-apart food. Daniel ate a lot. He ate while he talked or walked through the room. There were often light brown crumbs on his plaid shirt.

Virginia took only one group picture. It came out ugly. Magdalen’s eyes were a dazed green slur. Camille’s neck was rigid
and stretched, her eyes bulged. Daniel’s eyes were rolled up and his nostrils were flared. Charles hung back on the couch, his hand covering the face of a malignant elf. Jarold, half in the picture and seen from the side, was frozen in the middle of a senseless gesture.

Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching the late movie when Magdalen called. Virginia tried to ignore the phone. It rang eight times. “Are you going to get that, honey?” said Jarold.

Magdalen’s voice was calm. “Mama, I’m calling from the bus station in Charleston. John and I had a fight. He broke my nose. Griffin and I are coming home.”

She arrived at 4:30 in the morning. Virginia stood at the door in a flannel nightgown watching the taxi pull into the driveway. Magdalen emerged in the open-car-door light, a thin girl in a bulky army coat. The door shut and she became a slow, bundled figure kicking the driveway gravel with her shuffling steps. “Mom?” Her voice was sheepish and sweet.

She carried one suitcase and a big shopping bag. Griffin had just started walking. He looked tired and wistful. His blond hair was much too long.

John called the house, but they hung up on him. He threatened to come and get Magdalen, but Jarold said he’d kill him if he did.

Magdalen found a small apartment in town. She got a job at a flower shop. Virginia took care of Griffin during the day while Magdalen was at work. Griffin was a shy, pensive child who talked in bursts. He was precise, analytical and watchful. He made Virginia feel protective and sad. She tried hard to keep her sadness from showing.

After a few months the florist let Magdalen take the flowers home so she could be with Griffin.

On weekends Magdalen and Virginia went shopping for clothes or groceries. They were quiet and easy with each other. Magdalen lent Virginia books to read, and they talked about them.

Virginia was surprised at how nice it was to be in Magdalen’s apartment. She liked to go there in the mornings with cherry-cheese
pastry or fruit. Magdalen would be in the large, bare main room, sitting in her cotton robe on a floor pillow. The sun would come in through a big, curtainless window. There were white plastic buckets of roses, tulips, irises, freesia, dyed carnations, birds of paradise and wild magenta daisies. There were bunches of flowers on the floor on wet, unrolled newspaper. Stripped rose thorns lay on the paper like lost baby teeth.