The Road Taken (21 page)

“How would it be if I go pick up some at the store?” Joan said pleasantly, good Aunt Joan. “We can have it later. Ed won’t have to bother.” She stood. “Can I take the car?”

“Sure. The keys are on my dresser. You really don’t mind?”

“Least I can do,” she said, and smiled.

Joan went upstairs in the cool house and slipped on a pair of shoes, and put her wallet into the pocket of her shorts. I have very little tolerance for brats, she thought. I probably shouldn’t be a mother. She went into Peggy’s bedroom to get the keys to the station wagon. There was the king-size bed where her sister spent every night with the attractive and sexy man she loved, who comforted her, who probably held her in his sleep. Maybe the best reason to get married, Joan thought, was to have someone to hold you. She tossed the car keys up and down in her hand, thinking how many evenings Peggy had gone to get Ed at the station, confident he would be there, happy to see him, bearing him home. Maybe I could just get married and not have kids. . . .

Was she jealous of Peggy having Ed? No, not Ed himself, but only what he represented. He was everything you could want in a man. All those good qualities were there clear as life, and there had to be more than one of him in the world, but she had never even looked for it. Why not? Did she think she didn’t deserve it?

She went out into the warm sun. The station wagon was in the driveway. Joan got in, started the motor, slipped it into gear, released the brake, and backed up—fast, efficiently, as she did everything these days, the new Joan, normal like everyone else, for one moment the pretend housewife, the gatherer, with perfect children at home. As the car moved backward she felt and heard the softest thump on her rear bumper, as if she had hit something, and a tiny squeal, like an animal.

What was that? She stopped the car and got out.

Then she heard Peggy screaming, and saw her running up the driveway. In back of the station wagon, lying on the gravel where it had been hurled, was the little body of Marianne, her soft blond pigtails covered with the blood that was running out of her mouth. She had obviously run in back of the car, and because she was so small Joan could not possibly have seen her.

Joan felt as if someone had poured a bucket of ice water on her shocked skin. Every nerve ending leaped to attention. Her heart was pounding, into her mouth. And out of her heart came her own scream, as loud as Peggy’s: terrified, grief-stricken, desperate.

The only one who was absolutely silent and still was Marianne.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Marianne Glover, age three, of Larchmont, New York, died in the ambulance on the way to the local hospital, of internal injuries suffered when she had been struck by a station wagon that belonged to her mother, which was being driven by her Aunt Joan. That was not what the obituary said; it simply said auto accident. It also did not say that this was the incident that was going to threaten to tear an entire family apart.

The doctor gave Peggy a sedative, and she spent the days between the death and the funeral in such a haze of grief and medication that Ed had to help her dress and undress, put her into the shower, and comb her hair. Ed was accustomed to being a stoic; he was a World War II veteran, he had his ideas of what a man should be and he followed them. But although he was in deep mourning too, Peggy was oblivious to it. She only came alive when she was with her son, holding and stroking him in a hypnotized way that seemed to calm her. She even smiled at him. But her remaining child was the only person she smiled at.

Peter didn’t want to go back to day camp after Marianne was killed, and Peggy and Ed didn’t force him. He had gone off happily for a day of fun and swimming, and returned to find his little sister had vanished. When he asked to sleep in his parents’ bed they let him. He wanted to be able to watch over them, so they could watch over him. As for Peggy, she welcomed his strong little body next to hers; it helped her sleep.

She also liked that he slept between her and Ed. She didn’t want her husband to touch her, this man she loved so much and was so attracted to, because she didn’t want to remember that she was a woman. She was anguish, sorrow, pain, a knotted clump of woe, but not a body. The body was irrelevant. She could not bear to remember what Marianne had looked like after the accident, but her mind wouldn’t leave it. She tried to tuck Marianne’s soul into her own but it fled, like a ray of light. Somewhere outside her view it was laughing at her.

How could she ever have been angry at her child, how could she ever have thought her child was less than perfect? Peggy was being punished, she knew. She should never have let Marianne out of her sight. A child that age was too fast, and too determined, and had no idea that things were dangerous, even when you had told her a hundred times.

And what of Joan, who deserved the real blame? Before Peggy got into the ambulance to be with Marianne she had asked Joan the murderess to stay behind so she would be there to greet Peter when he came home from day camp. After the initial screaming neither of the two sisters was really hysterical. They were partly in shock and partly trying to do normal things to survive. Before the ambulance came Peggy had called Ed at the golf club and told him to meet her at the hospital. By the time he arrived, Marianne, of course, was already dead. It was only later that Peggy realized she herself was dead too. And yes, what of Joan?

At the funeral Joan hung back, trying to become invisible. She wore a black veil so no one could see her face. It was only at Rose’s insistence that Joan was willing to sit with the family at all. She wanted to sit far back, alone, the penitent, but her mother wouldn’t let her. Not that she had been forgiven, or even understood, but making herself into a pariah in front of everyone would only have made things worse, the family felt. They had discussed it at great length, with and without her. At the graveside Joan stood with Rose and Ben, Hugh and Ginger, but not of them. She was so alone she might have been a stranger who had wandered into the cemetery by accident. Peggy couldn’t even look at her.

“I’m so sorry,” Joan kept saying, “I’m so sorry.” She had tried to hug Peggy, but Peggy had recoiled, and after that Joan hadn’t tried to touch her again. “I would do anything to make it not have happened,” Joan said. What could Peggy reply? Not have been born?

“Joan was always the bad one,” Peggy had told Ed after the funeral. “She pretended she’d changed, but she hadn’t changed. She was always trouble.”

Ed gave her an odd look, and then Peggy realized that Joan was near enough to have heard. If Peggy hadn’t been filled with sedatives she would have been embarrassed. You didn’t want people to hear you say terrible things about them, even when the things were true. She hoped Joan wouldn’t come closer and start saying again how sorry she was, and Joan didn’t. She quietly left the room. Afterward Peggy avoided her.

On one level, where sanity dwelt, Peggy knew that it had been an accident. Joan could not have seen someone as small as Marianne behind the long car. But logic didn’t matter. Whatever resentment Peggy had felt all these years with her awkward and unpleasant sister, whatever rifts they’d had, came back full blown. The undeniable fact that she missed their period of friendship, which had been recent and short but had made her feel happy, now made her feel worse. Their good relationship was something else Joan had taken away.

Peggy was perceptive enough to know that Ed was the only person she could trust with her true feelings about her sister Joan. Their mother would make excuses. The others would try to defend her, to make peace. They couldn’t understand what it had been like to live your entire life with a person who had rubbed you the wrong way.

Peggy had stopped going to New York to visit because she didn’t want to go anywhere, and more than anything she didn’t want to set her eyes on Joan. So on a brisk fall afternoon when the leaves were turning, Celia arrived in Larchmont, chirpy, with too much luggage, and put herself into the guest room where the last person whose head had been on the pillow had been Joan. Grandma had taken a taxi from the station because Ed was at work in the city, and Peggy didn’t drive anymore. She couldn’t bear to look at the murder car. Even after Ed replaced it with a zippy Thunderbird convertible, because he couldn’t bear to look at the station wagon either, Peggy wouldn’t drive. She was afraid to. Mrs. McCoo did all the driving now, for the grocery shopping, and Peter’s social life, and Ed carpooled from the railroad station with some men he knew. Everyone of their friends knew that Peggy was depressed, and they were willing to help as long as they had to.

“You’ve gotten very thin,” Grandma said.

Peggy shrugged. Thinness was a reward that meant nothing to her now.

Celia pulled an afghan out of a large duffel bag. “Look what I’ve taken up now,” she said. “I’m an old lady tending to my knitting.”

“Hardly,” Peggy said.

“Well, you’re speaking. I was told you refused to speak.”

“Who told you?”

“Never mind.”

“I suppose they think I’m crazy,” Peggy said.

“Nobody does.”

Celia put down her knitting, went briskly into the kitchen, and found the bar. Peggy trailed after her because being with someone was less painful than being alone. The part of the day she hated most was when she was all alone in the house. That was when she took Miltown, and cried anyway. She watched Celia mixing drinks.

“What’s that?”

“A delicious whiskey sour. I’ve switched from Manhattans. And one for you.”

Peggy took it gratefully. It always amused her to see Grandma having her evening cocktail; she sometimes had two, and she always got a little tipsy. Now, though, Peggy thought about death; about how old Grandma was, although not so much older than her mother, and how some day, without any warning, Grandma would be gone. Like Marianne.Like everyone.

“Ed makes martinis,” Peggy murmured. She didn’t know what she was saying; she had no conversation anymore.

“A man’s drink, in my opinion,” Celia said. “A whiskey sour is a woman’s drink. Of course, many people would disagree with me.”

The nice thing about Grandma, Peggy realized, was that whatever you said, no matter how trivial or what a non sequitur, she would pick it up and go with it. That was probably the secret of her success with strangers, and of her vast social life. Or perhaps she was just stupid. Lately a part of Peggy’s mind, the section that wasn’t completely fogged, had opened in a new way, sharp and raw, so that she saw the worst in everybody. Sometimes she thought it was perception, sometimes just misery.

She sipped her whiskey sour. It was quite sweet.

“Very few people understand what it’s like to lose a child,” Grandma said. Peggy’s eyes immediately filled with tears and she felt a lump in her throat. “You can cry,” Grandma said. “Let me tell you a story.”

I don’t want to hear a story, Peggy thought, but she said nothing.

“I was your grandfather’s second wife, and he was my second husband,” Celia said. “But you knew that.”

“Yes.” Years ago, who cared anymore? She had known Grandma all her life, and her mother had known her almost all her life. Celia had brought the children up, all of them.

“I came into the marriage with a little boy of my own,” Celia said. Had Peggy known that? She couldn’t remember. Surely someone would have mentioned it, but she couldn’t recall. Maybe it had been a secret. Suddenly, to her surprise, her grandmother’s eyes were full of tears, too.

“His name was Alfred,” Grandma said. “He would be the same age as your Uncle Hugh. He died many, many years ago, of blood poisoning, after being scratched by a thorn in the garden. They didn’t have antibiotics in those days. You were cut, you might die. An accident. Like being hit by a car. When I was growing up there were no cars. So then you could be killed by a runaway horse and carriage, or a bolt of lightning. You could die of a disease. A lot of people died, a lot of children. It didn’t make it any easier.”

“I lost so many babies,” Peggy murmured. “But Marianne was the one I
knew.
”

“As I knew Alfred,” Celia said.

The two women sat there looking at each other. “I grieved like an animal,” Celia went on. “I made his room a shrine. Oh yes, I know what grief is. I understand what you’re going through.”

“But what will I do?” Peggy cried. “I can’t stand it, it’s too much.”

“You must have another baby,” Celia said.

Peggy turned her face away. “No,” she said. “No more. I can’t go through that again.”

“And what if something happens to Peter?”

“Grandma! How can you say that?” Peggy looked back at her, appalled. She wanted to run out of the room, but lately she was so tired she could hardly move.

“I say things as they are,” Celia said. “Sometimes people don’t like it, but too bad. My other children were a comfort to me, and so will yours be.”

Peggy shook her head. “My little girl just died and you’re telling me to replace her.”

“No. Nothing will ever replace the one you’ve lost.”

“I can’t. It’s too soon.”

“As soon as possible is my advice.”

I don’t even make love with my husband anymore, Peggy thought, so where is this baby going to come from? That woman is heartless.

Go home, Peggy thought. Leave us alone. But of course she couldn’t say it, so instead she said, “I’m really tired, I’m going to take a nap now,” and went upstairs to her room and locked the door behind her.

Celia stayed for a week. She had brought a huge jigsaw puzzle of Davy Crockett, which she persuaded Peter to put together with her; she chattered when Ed was silent; and of course, being Celia, who always tried to have her way, she mentioned having another baby to Peggy again several times, and whenever she did Peggy always felt such a pain in her heart it was as if hands were wringing it out like a plump sponge. She could picture the drops of blood leaving her heart, see it empty and pale, and wondered how she was still alive.

She supposed she was making Marianne’s room into a shrine the way Grandma had said she’d done with her own dead little boy, Alfred. Marianne’s crib had been replaced by her first grownup bed only a month before she died, and all her stuffed animals were on it, neatly piled up on the pillow, just as they had been that last day. Her dresses were hanging in the closet. Her tiny toothbrush was still in the bathroom, in the cup shaped like an elephant’s head. The sight of it made everyone miserable, but they were afraid to touch it, for Peggy’s sake, and for their own. The brightly painted step stool was there too, which Marianne had used to reach the sink.

If she tried, Peggy could pretend that Marianne was just out playing, that soon she would be back, accompanied by the vigilant Mrs. McCoo, or perhaps Ed, that it was time to bake her daughter’s favorite Toll House cookies. No one ever mentioned getting rid of Marianne’s things because it was much too early, and as for Peggy, she supposed they could stay there forever. She had no idea of the proper protocol; how could she?

She realized that except for Celia, none of them had mentioned Marianne’s name for a long time. It was too distressing. But that only made them all more conscious of her loss, so her loss itself became a presence. When Celia finally left to go back to the city Peggy and Ed were glad. She had brought too much energy with her, and it was the wrong kind. What the right kind would be they had no idea.

Although she still couldn’t bear to let him touch her, Peggy had no idea how she could have survived all this without Ed. Since she was a woman without a body, he had become her soul mate. When she told him secrets, he understood. The one secret he could not understand was why she refused to let him come within her circle of grief, to heal her and himself. But he only questioned her with his eyes. He knew her well enough not to ask for anything yet, only to give her what she asked for.

A few days after Grandma left, Rose arrived. It was as if they were a group of diplomats, taking turns. Rose went right into Marianne’s room and burst into tears. “Oh, sweet baby,” she murmured in a choking voice. Then she came out and embraced her daughter. “And you sweet baby, too,” Rose said. Her mother had not been so physically affectionate since Peggy was a little girl. Peggy hadn’t let her.

She remembered when she had thought her mother was a pest, a nag. Would Marianne have thought the same way about
her
when she became an adolescent? It would have been worth it, Peggy thought, even if she had hated me. She let Rose hug her and felt vaguely embarrassed, and hoped her mother didn’t sense her stiffen. The only person Peggy didn’t mind putting his arms around her was Peter.