Masters of Illusions (15 page)

“Because of my brothers, Denny never hit the kids, but he was very cruel to them.” Then she played with her fork, which was
still clean. She’d shoveled the cannoli down her throat with her fingers. Her eyes were wet, though Palma, like Margie, wasn’t
a weeper.

Margie never wanted to hear about cruelty, but now she had no choice. Not if she really loved Charlie. She said, “What is
it, Palma?”

Palma said, “People used to say he was mean because he was a drunk, but that wasn’t so. His drinking gave him the excuse he
needed to be mean. A built-in excuse: I had too much to drink so I can’t help it if I’m mean. But, Margie, he
liked
being mean. The meaner he was, the more he enjoyed himself.”

Margie could only think to say, “I’m so sorry, Palma.”

Margie had once asked her, a long time ago, how she could have stayed married to such a horrible man. That was before she
found out about the tyranny of domestic economics from Martha. Palma had said that she stayed because the priests told women
that men became mean when their wives riled them. How could you leave a man for being angry with you when you were the one
who had brought on the anger? Treat your husband with kindness, they’d said, and he will, in turn, love and protect you. So
she had maintained such a preposterous bargain only to realize that kindness is seen as stupidity by mean people and makes
them even meaner.

The priests didn’t know that when you’re kind to a bully, the bully figures you’re weak and worthless. That was because priests
entered seminaries when they were fourteen years old. Once Margie said to Charlie that she hoped someday an archaeologist
would find another 2,000-year-old scroll that said that Joseph beat the shit out of Mary when she told him she was pregnant.
You want to get your boyfriend angry, tell him you’re knocked up and that he’s not the father. And at the time, Charlie got
this look of wonder on his face, a look that didn’t reflect Margie’s, for a change. He said, “You know, it’s true. People
make believe you’ve gotten them angry so that they can get angry at you.” Margie didn’t know what he was talking about. She
told Martha what he’d said. They had discussed the possible meanings. Then Martha had said, “Daddy really would like to open
his mind. He would. But he can’t because his
disk space
is full. Full of that circus shit. He’s obviously capable of thinking provocatively. Something has actually managed to sneak
into his brain that didn’t have anything to do with that damn fire.” But Margie could see that it would be hard for anything
else to enter his mind, seeing as how he was married to a woman whose back was covered with the damn fire’s scars. She didn’t
know about disk space.

The other reason Palma stayed with her husband was to avoid dishonor, the Italian code word.

“Margie?”

“Yes, Palma?”

“You’ve got that look.”

“I know.”

Palma meant that Margie looked bitter. No one else noticed, just Palma. Maybe Martha, too. Palma’s generation got so much
practice in reading other people’s minds. The Palma generation figured that you were lazy and indifferent if you didn’t make
the time and effort to figure out what was bothering someone else. And then when you figured it out, you didn’t bring up the
topic; you just offered the person a cannoli.

Palma said to Margie, “All my children had to learn to tiptoe around their father. That will make a child serious.”

“Palma, why did you marry your husband?”

Palma looked down into her cup. “Because he had a trade. He was a painter. He got steady work.”

“But…”

“It was the Depression, Margie.” Now she looked back up. “Have you come to tell me you’re divorcing Charlie?”

“Palma!” Margie couldn’t believe she’d said that. “Of course not. Charlie and I love each other.”

“Then what is wrong, Margie?”

Margie started to say nothing, but that wouldn’t have been fair. Palma had answered her; she should answer Palma. Margie refused
to make Palma try to read her mind. Palma was a tired woman. She deserved peace. Margie said, “To tell the truth, Palma, I
am really beginning to get damn sick and tired of this circus shit.” Next, Margie was about to ask Palma her advice, but Palma
suddenly reached across the table and gripped Margie’s wrist. She said, “Get him to stop.”

Get him to stop. To stop? Finding the pyromaniac was what Charlie was. Get him to stop, was sort of like, “Get him to shed
his skin.” Get the Statue of Liberty to put down the torch and give her arm a rest. And what about this divorce business?
Had Palma read that from her vantage point across the table? Did Margie not know what was in her own mind? She was exasperated.
So she called Martha at school. Charlie and Margie and their families referred to Yale as “school” so that they’d stop being
awestruck. Martha was the one who had made the suggestion when she got tired of everyone being tongue-tied whenever they tried
to get out the word
Yale.

Martha happened to be in her room. “Are you in the mood to be my shrink for a few minutes, honey?”

Margie knew Martha had smiled. Martha said, “You’re beginning to like searching your soul, right?”

“No.”

“Oh, Mommy. I’m sorry. What’s the matter?”

“I need to search my soul.”

“You’re a brave lady, Mom.”

“I wish.”

Margie told her about coffee with her grandmother.

“You want me to analyze Grandma’s behavior?”

“Whatever.”

“Well, hell. I don’t know why she would say that. Nobody’s going to get Daddy to stop, that’s for sure. She must feel she
knows something about you that isn’t really there, or else something is there but you’re not aware of it.”

“But what should I do?”

“About what?”

“About figuring out what she was really saying.”

“Mom. First of all, are you really sure she was trying to say something other than what she was saying?”

“Yes.”

“You’re getting good.”

“Thanks.”

“You could ask her, obviously.”

“You know I can’t.”

“Yeah, right. Listen, Mom, you were a child when you met Grandma. Seventeen. That was me a year ago, right?”

“Yes.” Incredible.

“So there’s a good chance she knows things about you that you don’t. Good chance.”

“Martha?”

“What?”

“How’s school?”

Long pause. “Great. I wish I didn’t love calculus so much.” “So maybe you’re not meant to be a lawyer.”

“I’m meant.”

“Is this calculus teacher a handsome man?”

Silence.

“Sorry, Martha. Didn’t mean to read your mind.”

Silence.

“I said I was sorry. But crushes are normal. And besides, when you develop a crush, you don’t think: Gee, I guess I’ll marry
this guy and live happily ever after. Instead you think: He sure is cute. Period. Women of my generation envy that. We always
thought in terms of, Is this the one? Really, Martha. No offense.”

Martha laughed. “No offense taken. We’re through with that other part of the conversation though, right? The part you called
me about?”

“For now.”

“Just think things through. Control those impulses.”

“I will, baby.”

Martha said, “Mom?”

“What, honey?”

“God! He is
so frigging cute!
”

Martha always knew when to let her mother off the hook, even though she did remind Margie on occasion that she had taken up
with a man who was engaged to another woman. To everyone else in Margie’s life, breaking another womatis engagement by stealing
her man was shocking. No one ever brought it up. Not even while it was happening. Martha, however, found it very curious.
Margie felt badly that Martha didn’t see anything else about her that was intriguing, but that one bit of personal history
did keep Martha from taking her for granted.

Margie took Martha’s advice. She thought things through. She analyzed her relationship with her mother-in-law She went back
to the beginning. Those Sunday dinners were the beginning.

Margie had come to enjoy her new big family except for Charlie’s father, whom she treated like a piece of furniture. She walked
around him in her own brand of deference. He would look at Margie and she would look into the two holes that were his eyes.
Every Sunday, he’d lurk, but then one Sunday he wasn’t there. He’d never come home the night before. That had happened before,
Margie was told, but by morning one or another of his buddies would arrive at the doorstep holding him up, and Palma and her
sons would get him to the bathroom, where his wife would clean him. Charlie said to Margie that those times weren’t so bad;
it was when he’d come home still roaring drunk, stand in the living room, unzip his fly, and pee on the carpet. Now that was
tough to take. Margie asked Charlie to please not tell her things like that, she couldn’t stand it.

On this one Sunday everyone was getting ready for dinner and debating whether somebody should go look for him when the doorbell
rang. Chick opened the door. Two of his friends, two cops, stood in the doorway. The crowd of people in the house flowed to
the front door. Chick was whispering to the cops, and then he waved them off and turned.

“Denny’s at the hospital.”

Palma said, “Sweet mother of God.”

Chick said, “He’s dead.”

Denny O’Neill had had a fight with his buddies and insisted on walking home from the bar just over the line in West Hartford.
The dividing line between the two cities was the railroad tracks. He’d been hit by a freight train.

Margie watched the commotion that went on for days, and through all the telegrams and arrangements and visits from the priest,
Margie especially watched Charlie. She couldn’t take her eyes from his face, the face of a victor. The face of the warrior
who’s seen the enemy slain.

The final arrangements included the plan that Denny’s sons should carry his coffin. Charlie said, “Not me.”

The family enveloped Charlie. His mother begged him not to be bitter. His uncles spoke of scandal. His brothers told him to
grow up. After all, this man was his father. Margie said to him, “I think you should do it for Palma.”

So when Charlie said no to Margie, they all knew he meant it. There would be other pallbearers. The family was disgusted with
Charlie, though. Margie said to him, “I respect you, Charlie, I do. If you can’t do it, I know your reasons are right.”

Charlie’s eyes were clear. He said, “The filthy son of a bitch.”

As it turned out, Charlie didn’t even go to the funeral.

Now in thinking all that through, it wasn’t Charlie’s father whom Margie was imagining. The burned out holes instead of eyes
had become her own father’s. There was nothing there in Jack Potter’s eyes anymore. Not when Margie stood watching him from
the door of his room. But when he spotted her, they would fill with duty, and with affection, if not love. Love had been taken
from him by the war, though Jack Potter blamed something else. The psychiatrist said to Margie, “If a prisoner of war is liberated,
he leaves his prison with nothing. In a way, putting it simply, he’s almost like a baby being born. He has to find out who
he is. Most are able to do it, though it is a great burden to them since it forces them to relive what they wish they could
forget. But, of course, they can’t forget even if they want to. Your mother was an excuse for your father not to have to relive
what he’d been through.”

Margie said, “I think it’s too late to do anything about that.”

The doctor said, “I’m afraid that’s true. I wish it wasn’t so.”

“Me too.”

Margie wondered at what point it had been too late for her father-in-law to get out of the hellhole he was in. Margie had
never had a single conversation with Denny O’Neill; she’d just said that one word to him. Lush. Her own father didn’t initiate
conversations with his daughter, but he answered everything she asked, and paid attention, in a hazy way, to things she told
him. When Margie was twelve, she read
The Diary of a Young Girl.
Margie didn’t know how it would end. As she read it, she couldn’t wait to get to that final scene when the Americans would
invade Europe and save the day: She could just see the GIs crashing into the Annex to rescue the Franks, the van Damms, and
Mr. Dussel; then Anne and Peter going out on a real date; Anne’s sister, Margot, finding a boyfriend of her own. But when
Margie finished the book, she couldn’t believe the ending that she’d found there—no ending—and was horrified as she read the
afterword. She ran downstairs and said to her father, “Did you know that Hitler tried to kill every Jew in the world, even
the kids?” She waved the book at him. “Even Anne Frank?”

He said yes, of all things, and that was more of a shock than the horrendous secret Margie had come upon. Her father was in
on it.

“You knew about it?”

“Yes.”

“How come you didn’t tell me?”

He said, “Same reason your schoolbooks won’t tell you. People think it’s best to isolate children from the truth. That’s why
teenagers go wild. They find out the truth and are rightfully angry that it was kept from them. People are very stupid, Margie.
Especially the smart ones.”

She’d gone back to her room to think. Twelve-year-olds do a lot of thinking because no one ever tells them anything, as her
father had just pointed out. She began to see that this Jew-killing was kept from kids for the same reason sex was hidden.
People didn’t tell their children about the Nazis killing the Jews because maybe kids would think that if adults did things
as bad as that, why wouldn’t they?

Margie had learned about sex two years before. Her father had given her a book on menstruation. Margie tended to skim-read
when she was reading something exciting. She could read an Agatha Christie in forty-five minutes. Her brain automatically
condensed books the way Reader’s Digest does for people who don’t have the natural ability. So she skimmed the menstruation
book, learning first of all that Modess rhymed with,
Oh yes,
no exclamation point. When she finished it, she held the mind-boggling notion that girls bled from all their pores once a
month and wrapped these bandages that rhymed with
Oh yes
around their arms and legs and bodies, and presumably, during that time of the month, went around in long-sleeved shirts
and dungarees. (Not only did Margie skim, she filled in pertinent information that she inevitably missed) But what about your
face and hands? she wondered. She wondered about logistics rather than the female body’s need to rid itself of a gallon of
blood every twenty-eight days. (The book had said
pint,
but she’d skimmed by that.)