Bad Behavior

Heaven

WHEN VIRGINIA THOUGHT of their life in Florida, it was veiled by a blue-and-green tropical haze. Ocean water lapped a white sand beach. Starfish lay on the shore and lobsters awkwardly strolled it. There was a white house with a blue roof. On the front porch were tin cans housing smelly clams and crayfish that walked in circles, brushing the sides of the cans with their antennae; they had been brought by her son Charles, and left for him and his brother, Daniel, to squat over and watch from time to time.

She imagined her young daughters in matching red shorts, their blond hair pulled back by rubber bands. The muscles of their long legs throbbed as they jumped rope or chased each other, rubber thongs patting their small, dirty heels with every step. A family picnic was being held in the front yard on an old patchwork quilt. Watermelon juice ran down their sleeves.

Jarold was holding Magdalen in the ocean so she could kick and splash without fear. He was laughing, he was pink; his hair lay in wet ridges against his large, handsome head.

Twenty years later, Virginia thought of Florida with pained and superstitious but reverent wonder, as though it was a paradise she had forfeited without knowing it. She thought of it almost every night as she lay on the couch before the humming, fuzzing TV set in the den of their New Jersey home. She lay with her head on a hard little throw pillow, staring out of the picture window into the darkened back yard at the faint glimmer of the rusting barbecue tray. She thought that if they had stayed in Florida, her son would still be alive. She knew it didn’t make any sense, but that’s what she thought.

When Virginia met Lily, her fifteen-year-old niece, Lily had said to her, “Grandmother used to tell us about you all the time. She said you could pick oranges in your back yard. She said you once found a lobster walking in your living room. She said there’d be tornadoes and your house would flood, and horrible snakes would come in. You sounded so exotic. It didn’t seem like you could be related to us.”

They were riding in the warm car with their seat belts on. Virginia had just picked Lily up at the Newark airport because Lily was coming to live with them.

Virginia had been charmed by her remark.

Lily’s mother was visiting Jarold and Virginia. It had been almost eight years since Virginia had spent so much time with her sister.

Anne was the short, brown-haired sister to two tall blondes, a nervous, pitifully conscientious child who always seemed to be ironing or washing or going off somewhere with an armload of books. Her small mouth was a serious line. Her large gray eyes were blank and dewy. She often looked as though she was about to walk into a wall.

Since Anne was the oldest by five years, their mother made her responsible for the care of Virginia and Betty on weekends, when she went into Lexington to clean houses for rich people. Anne accepted the responsibility with zeal. She rose early to get them eggs and milk for breakfast, she laid the table with exquisite care, wreathing the plates with chains of clover. Virginia and Betty complained when she dragged them out of bed to eat; they made fun of her neat breakfast rituals. They refused to help her with the dishes.

Anne dated only scholarly boys. She spent earnest, desperate hours on the porch with them, talking about life and holding hands. She’d bound up the stairs afterward, her eyes hotly intent, her face soft and blushing with pleasure. Her sisters would tease her, sometimes until she cried.

At forty-eight, Anne had become plump, homely and assured. Her eyes had become shrouded with loose skin and she wore large beige glasses. Her eyebrows had gotten thick, but her pale skin was fine and youthful.

During the visit it was Anne who made charming, animated conversation with Jarold and Magdalen. It was she who laughed and made them laugh on the canoe trips and barbecues. Virginia sat darkly silent and meek, watching Anne with interest and some love. She knew Anne was being supportive. Anne had been told that Virginia had not recovered well from Charles’s death, and had come to bring lightness to the darkened house. She was determined to cheer Virginia, just as she’d been determined to mop the floor or make them eat their breakfast.

She had approached Lily with the same unshakable desire to rectify.

Lily’s presence in Virginia’s life began as a series of late-night phone calls and wild letters from Anne. The letters were full of triple exclamation points, crazy dashes or dots instead of periods, violently underlined words and huge swirling capital letters with tails fanning across several lines. “Lily is so withdrawn and depressed.” “Lily is making some very strange friends.” “Lily is hostile.” “I think she may be taking drugs …” “Think she needs help — George is resisting — may need recommendation of a counselor.”

Virginia imagined the brat confronting her gentle sister. Another spoiled, pretty daughter who fancied herself a gypsy princess, barefooted, spangled with bright beads, breasts arrogantly unbound, cavalier in love. Like Magdalen.

“I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding,” said Magdalen. “I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I’ll be wearing a gown of raw silk with a light veil. And we’ll have a feast.”

“Does Brian want to marry you?” asked Virginia dryly.

Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year’s absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. “I’m coming home to clear my head out,” she said.

She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands.

After six months she “decided” to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it.

Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an overlong cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken.

For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts.

Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely.

Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?”

Lily had just been released from a mental hospital. “All she does is lie around like a lump, eating butter sandwiches and drinking tea like a fiend. I don’t think she can go back to school here, now that she’s been expelled. We’ve already tried sending her away to school and that didn’t work either. I don’t know what to do.”

Magdalen was somewhere in Canada. Camille was away at college. Charles and Daniel were always outside playing. “Why doesn’t Lily come and go to school here?” she said. “I’m fresh out of girls, you know. Send her on out.”

She went back into the den forty minutes later. Jarold was hunched forward on the couch with the exasperated expression that he always had when he was watching liberals on TV. He was so intent on Cool Hand Luke that he didn’t ask about the telephone call. She cuddled against him silently.

She meant to tell him about Lily after the movie was over, but she didn’t. She planned to tell him for several days. Then she realized she was putting it off because she knew he would say no. So she decided not to tell him anything. All week, she fantasized about Lily, and what it would be like to have her there.

A week later, she picked Lily up at the airport. As she stood shielding her eyes to scan the passengers climbing from the plane, she realized that she had been vaguely expecting Lily to look like Magdalen. She felt a slight shock when she noticed the small, pale, brown-haired girl. Even as Virginia adjusted her expectation, she was surprised by Lily’s appearance. She had not imagined such a serious face. As Lily came toward her among the passengers, Virginia felt an odd sense of aloneness about the girl. Her gray eyes were wide and penetrating, but seemed veiled, as if she wanted to look out without you looking in. Her mouth and jaw were stiff and rather pained. Virginia was curious and taken aback.

She bought Lily a can of grape pop and took her to the car. It was a humid day; the seats were sticky and hot. They rolled down all the windows, and Virginia turned on the radio to a rock station. Lily didn’t say much until they got out on the turnpike. Then she said the thing about Florida. Virginia was surprised and pleased. She laughed and said, “Well, we did chase a few lobsters around the house, but it would take more than that to make us exotic. We just couldn’t manage to keep the doors and windows shut at the same time.”

“Maybe exotic isn’t the right word,” said Lily. “You were just so obviously different from us. Mother showed us pictures of you and you always seemed so self-assured. I remember a picture of Magdalen and Camille. They were both standing with their hips out and one of them — Magdalen, I guess — had her foot perched up on something. They looked so blond and confident.”

Virginia thought of the pictures she had seen of Anne’s family. In a group, they looked huddled together and meek, even when they were all smiling brightly. They looked as though they were strangers to the world outside their family, as if they had come out blinking, wanting to show their love and happiness, holding it out like a shy present. Anne’s daughters were pretty in a different way from Magdalen or Camille. She remembered a picture of Lily and her sister Dawn crouching in a sandbox in frilly red sunsuits. Their brown hair just reaching their shoulders, and the bashful smiles on their bright, thin lips seemed heartbreakingly, dangerously fragile to her.

“Well, you all looked darling to us,” she said. “We could tell you were sweet as pie.”

Virginia left the highway and took Lily for a drive through the mountains. She drove to the top of a hill that looked down on a lake and some old dull-colored green pines. They were near a convent, and the woods were planted with white daisies and small purple flowers. They got out and walked until Virginia felt a light sweat on her skin. Then they sat on a stone bench near the convent and told each other family stories. Virginia liked Lily. She was intrigued by her. She wondered why such an intelligent child could not do well in school.

They went home and Virginia made them cups of tea.

Charles and Daniel came home from school. They were surprised to see Lily, and to hear that she was coming to live with them. They sat at the table and Virginia served them pieces of coconut cream pie. The three children had a short, polite conversation. Charles said, “That’s a cool knapsack. My sister Magdalen has one like that.”

When the boys went upstairs, Virginia began to worry. Jarold was coming home, and she still hadn’t thought of what to say to him.

She decided to take a shower and put on a pretty blouse. She told Lily to make herself at home, and went upstairs. When she came down again, she found Jarold in the kitchen; he had left work early. He was standing at the table, his face red and bitterly drawn about the eyes. He looked at Virginia like she was his enemy. Lily looked at her too, her face stiff and puzzled. Jarold walked out of the room.

She and Jarold talked about it that night. Apart from the intrusion, Jarold did not like Lily. “She’s weird,” he said. “She has no social graces. She just stares at you.” They were lying in bed on their backs in their summer pajamas, their arms lying away from their bodies in the heat. The electric fan was loud.

“Jarold, she’s shy,” said Virginia. “And she’s upset. She’s had a hard time these last few months.”

“Whose fault is that? Why do we have to get stuck with her hard time, Virginia? Answer me that.”

Virginia lay still and looked at her long naked feet standing at the end of the bed. She couldn’t think of an answer.

“And she’s got such a pasty little face,” continued Jarold. “She looks like something that crawled out from under a rock.”

“Jerry.” Her voice was soft and blurry in the fan.

“I don’t think Jarold likes me,” said Lily the next day.

Virginia was doing the dishes. Lily stood beside her, leaning against the wall, standing on one leg.

“He just needs time to get used to you.” Virginia dug around in the water for the silverware and tried to think of something to say. “He told me last night that you remind him of Magdalen. And he loved Magdalen.”

Virginia could feel Lily brightening.

“But you see, Magdalen hurt him more than anyone else in the world. It’s a painful memory for him.”

“I guess so,” said Lily. “He told me I look like something that crawled out from under a rock.”

Jarold was a big, handsome man who sold insurance to companies. His handsomeness was masculine and severe. His bright blue eyes were harsh and direct, and his thin, arched eyebrows gave him an airy demon look that was out of character with his blunt, heavy voice. He rarely made excessive or clumsy movements, although his walk was a little plodding. He had become successful very quickly. They had never been forced to live in small apartments with peeling wallpaper. For years Virginia believed that Jarold could surmount anything. He could, too, until Magdalen.

Jarold had been in love with Magdalen. At breakfast, he would look at her as she sullenly pushed her egg around her plate while the other children chattered, as if her bored, pale face gave him the energy to go to work. He read all of her papers from school; he always wanted to take her picture. She could make him do anything for her. He’d let her stay out all night; he let her spend the weekend in New York when she was fifteen. Wherever she was, even when she was traveling around Canada with a busload of hippies and a black person, if she cabled home for money, Jarold sent it immediately. If he tried to be strict, she would tease and flatter him. The few times he lost his temper and punished her, she punished him with silence. When he dragged her up the stairs and spanked her, she ran away from home. She called a week later and spoke to Virginia, but she hung up when Jarold got on the phone. It was the first time that Virginia had seen Jarold cry.

“Magdalen has real charm,” said Jarold to Lily. “She can charm the birds off the trees. You don’t have any of that. You don’t have any personality at all.”

Virginia was surprised at the intensity of Jarold’s dislike for Lily. And, although Lily never expressed it openly, Virginia felt that Lily hated him too. Lily never argued with him; she barely acknowledged his presence. When she had to speak to him, her voice was clipped and subtly condescending, as though he were beneath defiance.

One evening, Lily and Virginia were sitting together in lawn chairs in the back yard when Charles and Daniel approached them with a big piece of wood. The boys had shot four squirrels, skinned them and nailed the skins to it. They displayed the skins proudly, and Virginia praised them. Lily said nothing until they left. Then she said that she thought it was sick.

“I know, it seems awful,” said Virginia. “But they’re little boys and it means something to them. They do it to impress their father.” Virginia was unnerved by the sudden look of contempt on Lily’s face.

“I know,” she said.

Lily’s stay gradually became more and more unpleasant and eventually became a discomfiting memory that hung over the house for quite a while. But there were bright spots that stood out of the unpleasantness so vividly that they seemed to come from somewhere else altogether.

Virginia would spend afternoons with Lily after school. They’d change into jeans and T-shirts and drive into the mountains where they’d gone the first day. Sometimes they’d stop at a Dairy Queen and buy pink-spotted cups of ice cream in melting puddles of syrup. They’d sit on the car hood, slowly swinging their legs and eating the ice cream with pink plastic spoons, talking about the bossy girl in Lily’s home ec class, or the boy she thought was “different.” Virginia spoke about her high school days, when she was beautiful and popular and all the girls tried to be friends with her. She’d give Lily social advice about how to choose her friends.

When they’d get to the mountains, they’d leave the car and walk. They’d become quiet and concentrate on the walk. They’d find paths, then break branches from trees and use them to clear their way. Lily would stop to examine plants or insects, her brow taut and puzzled. She’d pick up a lot of things to hold in her pockets, especially chestnuts. She would pick up a chestnut and hold it in her hand for the whole walk, stroking it with her fingers, or meditatively rubbing it across her lower lip.

Other times they’d just sit at the kitchen table and drink tea. Virginia was astonished at the things she told Lily during these afternoons. Lily knew things about Virginia that very few other people knew. Virginia did not know why she confided in her. She had been lonely. The afternoon kitchen was sunny and lulling. Lily listened intently. She asked questions. She asked a lot of questions about Magdalen.

“But don’t you like Magdalen?” she asked once. “Weren’t there good times when she was growing up?”

“Magdalen could be the most lovely, charming child in the world — if she wanted to be. She’d give you the shirt off her back — if she was in the mood. If she was in the mood. But to answer your question, no, I don’t like Magdalen. I love her — I love her dearly — because I’m her mother and I can’t help it. But I don’t like her.”

Lily stared at her, pale and troubled.

“Don’t you ever repeat that. It’s very private. If Magdalen ever comes to me and says, ‘Mama, Lily says you don’t like me,’ I’ll say you’re lying.”

As they talked, Lily rested her elbow on a small pile of schoolbooks. She carried these books to and from school every day. One of them had a split green cover that showed its gray cardboard stuffing and a dirty strip of masking tape running up its broken spine. Whenever Lily heard Jarold pull into the driveway, she would grab her books and leave the room. Jarold would come in and see her cup on the table, its faint sugary crust fresh around the bottom. He’d never say anything, but his mouth got sarcastic.

Virginia tried to get Jarold to be nicer to Lily. “She’s got a special kind of charm,” she said. “She’s gentle and low-key. She listens, and she has fresh insights.” Sometimes Jarold looked as though he were listening to this.

But Lily wouldn’t or couldn’t show Jarold her charm. To him, she displayed only her most annoying aspects. And they really were annoying. She almost never said anything at family meals; she either kept her head down and chewed, or stared at people. She ignored Jarold, and sometimes she ignored Virginia too. She was judgmental; she was always talking about what was wrong with the world. She never helped with the dishes or anything else. She was always going into the refrigerator and eating the last piece of pie or cheesecake or whatever dessert was there. She’d say weird things, and when you’d ask her to explain what she meant, she’d say, “Oh, never mind.” She’d sit around looking as if somebody had been beating her with a stick. She’d droop on the wall. She was depressing.

In September, Lily would sit with her books on the floor of the den at night, reading and underlining sentences with fat turquoise lines. Virginia would be on the couch reading the paper, her square brown glasses on the end of her nose. The TV would be on, usually a talk show neither of them wanted to see. On the coffee table there’d be a fat economy-size jar of olives, which they both ate from. They’d talk intermittently, and Virginia liked to think that her silent presence was an encouragement to Lily’s studying.

In September, Lily got good grades on her quizzes. Her art teacher said nice things about her drawings. She got an A-plus on a humanities paper, and the teacher read it aloud to the class. Virginia called Anne and read it to her.

During October, Lily stopped studying on the floor of the den. She left her broken-backed books on the couch and went upstairs to her room and shut the door. Virginia could hear the radio playing behind the door for hours. She wondered irritably what Lily was doing in there.

On weekends her long-haired friends would come to the door and she’d disappear for the entire day. At night they’d hear the screen door slam, and Lily would pat through the den, her bell-bottoms swishing, her face distantly warm and airy. She’d float down the hall without a word.

The second week in October, Mr. Shin, the school disciplinarian, called Virginia. He told her that Lily was rude in the classroom and that she used obscene language. Two weeks later he called again, this time to say that he thought Lily was taking drugs.

Virginia thought Mr. Shin had a repulsive voice. She thought he was deliberately persecuting Lily for reasons having nothing to do with obscene language or drugs. Lily once said that Mr. Shin told her that her IQ was below normal, that she belonged in a mental hospital, and that he didn’t blame her parents for not wanting her. At first Virginia was angry. She thought of telling Jarold to call Mr. Shin and tell him to leave Lily alone. But then she realized that Jarold was in agreement with him. Then she felt embarrassed. After all, Mr. Shin was right, Lily did use obscene language, casually and often. She did take drugs.

It was Lily’s birthday. Jarold was out of town on business. Daniel and Charles had bought her a deck of tarot cards and a pair of earrings. There was a boxed cake in the refrigerator. Virginia was going to ask Lily what she wanted for dinner, but when Lily came home she was too high to answer the question. She tried to act normal, but she couldn’t She said weird things and giggled. Lily almost never giggled; it was a strangely unpleasant sound.

Virginia sent the boys to visit their friends next door. Then she turned to Lily. “You are a constant irritant,” she said. “I’ll never forgive Anne for dumping you on me, although the poor woman was probably desperate to get rid of you.” She didn’t remember what she said after that. She was furious, so it probably wasn’t very nice. She recalled that Lily said nothing, that she seemed to shrink and become concave. She kept pulling her hair in front of her mouth and holding it there.

It was very different from the way Magdalen had acted when Virginia would catch her on drugs. Virginia could scream at Magdalen, and call her anything she liked. Magdalen would follow her around, her long legs working in big strides, eyes blazing. she’d yell, “Mom! Mom, you know that’s a bunch of shit. What about the time you …”

But Lily just sat there, becoming more and more expressionless.

Virginia slept with Lily that night. She went into her room, no longer angry but with a sense of duty, concerned that Lily know she was cared for, that she wouldn’t go through the drug experience alone.

She found her lying on the bed with all her clothes on, staring. Virginia made her change into her nightgown and get under the blankets. She turned out the light and got into bed with her. Lily went into a tight curl and turned her face to the wall. Virginia got the impression that she didn’t understand why Virginia was there.

Virginia said, “Well? Don’t you want to talk?”

Lily didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “About what?”

“Whatever’s on your mind.”

Another long pause.

“There’s nothing on my mind.”

Her words sounded disconnected, not only from her but from each other. Virginia suddenly wanted her to go home, back to Michigan. It would be easy. All she had to do was tell Jarold that she’d been taking drugs.

“Well, that’s funny. Magdalen was a talker.”

“About what? What did she talk about?” She sounded genuinely interested.

“Oh, about boys. There was one in particular. David. I remember the name because she kept moaning it over and over.” She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but it was hard not to.

Lily didn’t say anything.

They lay there in silence, not even scratching or shifting. Every time one of them swallowed, it was obvious that she was trying to do it quietly. Virginia’s nightgown was hot and her feet were dry. She felt as if she couldn’t close her eyes. She remembered the afternoon conversations they had shared and their walks in the mountains. They seemed meaningless now — like bits of color glimpsed through a kaleidoscope. She felt an unhappy chill.

Virginia turned, and the blankets rasped in the long silence. In a fiercely sudden move, she put her body against Lily’s, and her arm around her. She waited, almost frightened.

For several seconds there was no reaction. Then Virginia could feel every muscle in Lily’s body slowly tightening. Lily’s body became rigid. Her back began to sweat.

They lay like that, uncomfortably, for a long time. Having moved, it was hard for Virginia to turn away again.

The next day they ate birthday cake from paper plates on their laps as they watched TV. Jarold said, “Well, do you feel fifteen?”

“I don’t know,” said Lily.

It seemed like she really didn’t know. She looked badly shaken. Jarold didn’t say anything else. Charles stopped eating his cake and looked at Lily for a long moment. He looked puzzled and disturbed; for one thing, Lily loved cake and she hadn’t eaten any of the cake in her lap.

Virginia didn’t tell Jarold about the drugs, but he got rid of Lily anyway. She had stayed out with her friends one night, and he had her things packed when she came back the next morning. They drove her to the airport within the hour and left her waiting for a standby flight with her clothes in a big white shopping bag. Virginia kissed her good-bye, but it didn’t feel like anything.

That night Anne called. Lily had not gone home. She had taken a plane to Canada instead. “I don’t think we’ll send anybody after her this time,” said Anne. “It wouldn’t do any good. Nothing we ever did was any good.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Virginia.

For a few days afterward, Jarold talked about how awful it had been to have Lily there. Then he forgot about it. Charles was the last person to mention her. It was shortly after Virginia got a call from Magdalen. He said, “You and Dad were always acting like Lily and Magdalen were alike. But they weren’t anything alike at all.

For a while after that, life was okay. Magdalen was still acting like an idiot, but seemed to have stabilized in a harmless way; she had a steady job as a waitress in a health-food restaurant in South Carolina, and talked about astral travel and crystal healing when they called her. Camille was in law school at Harvard. She was engaged to a handsome, smiling med student. She sent glorious twelve-page letters to her mother on multicolored stationery covered with purple or turquoise ink. She described her teachers and her friends. She wrote about how much she loved Kevin, how much she wanted to have children and a career. She recorded her dreams and the art exhibits she’d seen. Virginia imagined Camille sitting at her desk in class. Her legs were folded restfully before her, her body slouched with arrogant feminine ease, but her neck was erect and her large eyes watchful. She imagined her sitting at an outdoor café, her bony knees childishly tilted together under the table, her long hands draped on top of her warm coffee cup as she leaned forward, laughing with her friends. She saw Camille walking across campus with Kevin. His brown jacket was loose on her shoulders, protecting her.

Daniel and Charles grew up easily. They trooped around the house with noisy bunches of boys who all seemed to have light, swinging arms and stinging, nasty voices. At times their eyes were dull and brutish. They told cruel, violent jokes and killed animals. They were mean to other children. But they harbored a sweetness and vulnerability that became exposed at unexpected moments. And they were still her little boys. She could hear it in the way Charles called, “Mom?” when he couldn’t sleep at night. She would pass by his room and hear his voice float plaintively from the darkness. She would look in and see him sitting up in his gray-and-white pajamas, slim and spare against the headboard, his blond hair standing up in pretty spikes. She would sit on his bed for at least an hour. Sometimes she would lift up his pajama top and gently scratch his warm back. He loved that.

When Daniel was fifteen, he found a girlfriend. She was fourteen. she was very short and had dark hair and gentle hands. She had a round, sweet face and worried eyes. She worried about things like ecology. She sat in the kitchen with Daniel after school, eating Virginia’s sandwiches and talking about the EPA and whales. Her feet, in striped tennis shoes, barely touched the floor. Daniel admired her as he ate his sandwich. He stopped killing squirrels with BB guns.

When Charles was twelve, he was in a school play. He was one of the Lost Boys in the high school production of Peter Pan, a boy named Tootles. It was a small part, and he was nonchalant about it, but he loved to dress in his contrived rags and make his eyes fiendish with black eye paint. He came home from rehearsal that way. Virginia would see a beam of light in the driveway, then hear a car door slam and muffled voices. The door would bang and Charles would appear, nimbly swaggering in his frayed knickers and flapping sleeves. He’d grab something to eat from the kitchen and wheel into the den, yelling his lines in a mocking voice. “You see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?”

She went to the play on opening night and sat in the front row with Jarold and Daniel. Charles was vibrant on stage. His airy movements had more authority than anyone else’s in the cast, except the lead. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The pale little girl playing Wendy lay fainting before him in her white nightgown, her long brown hair fanned across his feet. He said, “When ladies used to come to me in dreams I said, ‘Pretty mother, pretty mother.’ But when at last she really came, I shot her.” Tears came to her eyes. She looked at Jarold and saw him smiling and blinking rapidly. Charles said, “I know I am just Tootles and nobody minds me. But the first who does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman, I will blood him severely.”

When the play ended, Virginia went to the dressing room. It was an old classroom with heavy wooden mirrors propped against the walls and cardboard boxes full of makeup and cold cream on the desks. Children were leaping around the room, chattering and singing songs from the play in sarcastic voices. They were bright-eyed and demonic when seen up close. Virginia saw Charles. She saw him dip his hand into a jar of cold cream, turn and slap it across a timid-looking girl’s face. The girl smiled painfully and tried to laugh. Another girl pointed at her and laughed. Charles turned away.

She dreamed of a conversation with Lily. They were sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea before them. She said, “After I had Daniel, the doctors told me that I shouldn’t have any more children. They said it would be unsafe. I was lying there in the hospital when they came in and announced, ‘While we’ve got you here, we’re going to tie your tubes.’ And I said, ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ I wouldn’t let them do it. and the next year I had Charles.” She smiled foolishly at Lily.

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.

Magdalen’s movements were nimble and quick. Her face was serene and beautiful. She seemed completely content.

Virginia felt as though she were a total stranger.

Virginia and Jarold became very quiet together. They still watched late-night movies, but they rarely sat cuddled together. Jarold got tired early and went upstairs to bed. He was always asleep when Virginia came up.

Sometimes she thought Jarold looked obtuse and stupid. At breakfast, when he bent over the paper, he frowned so hard that his mouth pulled his entire face downward and he looked like a shark. His eyes were disapproving. His nose became blunt as a snout.

She knew that he thought his children were failures.

Camille found a wonderful apartment. She began dating a man whom she liked a lot. She came to New Jersey often. She usually stayed with Magdalen. Virginia would take them all for a drive in the mountains. They ate ice cream and made family jokes. The girls would lie all over the back seat and giggle, Camille’s hand on Magdalen’s thigh, one tilting her head against the other’s shoulder.

It was early morning when they found out about Charles. Jarold had just gotten into the shower. The clock radio, wavering between two stations, interlaced the weather report with a song about dumping your girlfriend. Virginia felt her forehead wrinkling as she tried to ignore the noise. She burrowed her head into the pillow and listened to the warm, dull whish of the shower. The phone rang. She opened her eyes; the red digits said 6:15. She wouldn’t have answered if it hadn’t kept ringing so long.

He had been driving from upstate New York in a friend’s car. He had been drinking. He’d passed a truck coming around a turn, collided with another car and gone off the road. His car flipped over and caught fire. His car was badly burned. The other driver survived.

Virginia’s life became a set of events with no meaning or relationship to one another. She was a cold planet orbiting for no reason in a galaxy of remote, silent movement. The house was a series of objects that she had to avoid bumping into. Food would not go down her throat. The faces of her husband and children were abstract patterns taking on various shapes to symbolize various messages. It was exhausting to keep track of them.

She slept on the couch in the den every night. At first it just happened that way. She’d be sitting before the TV with her glass of Scotch when Jarold would kiss the top of her head and go upstairs. She’d go into the kitchen and get a bottle and drink from it. She’d watch the chartreuse-and-violet people walk around the screen. It was sometimes a comfort.

She fell asleep on the hard little throw pillow. She always woke up with sweat around her collar and a stiff neck.

One night Jarold took her hand and said, “Come on, honey. Come to bed. You’ll fall asleep on the couch if you don’t.”

“I want to fall asleep on the couch,” said Virginia.

“No, you don’t,” said Jarold. He tugged her arm. “It’s unhealthy. Come into your nice warm bed.”

She yanked her hand out of his. “I don’t want to sleep in the bed.”

It was true. She couldn’t bear the thought of lying next to him. He could see it in her eyes and it wounded him. He walked away. He said nothing about it again.

Magdalen came to see her almost every day. She walked around the kitchen cleaning things while Virginia sat at the table. Virginia watched her long, calm hands closing cabinets, sorting silverware, rubbing surfaces with wet, stained old cloths. She remembered how Magdalen used to run around and make so much noise. It was a clear memory, but it didn’t seem as though it was hers.

Virginia began getting up to cook Jarold’s breakfast again. She put an extra alarm clock beside the couch. She put on a robe over her rumpled clothes and moved around the kitchen. She put her plate of eggs opposite Jarold’s and ate them. Jarold’s jaws chewed stiffly; his throat was like wood. But they talked, and she found it comforting.

Before he left he would hold her hand and kiss her. She’d wait until he was gone, then sit back down again and cry.

Charles had been dead eight months when Anne came.

Virginia drove to the airport to pick her up. It was strange to be at the wheel of a car again, driving with a lot of other cars around her. It was very sunny, and the primary-colored metal of the cars was festive in the brightness. She turned the radio on and rolled down the window.

Anne was waiting at the terminal in a gray suit. When she saw Virginia she tipped her head to the side and grinned; she raised her hand and waved it in stiff, frantic waves.

They hugged. Anne only came up to Virginia’s chest. Still hugging, they leaned back to look at each other and laughed. Anne’s glasses were cockeyed. “Goodness, you’ve gotten thin,” she said. “Let’s take you home and feed you. I’m starved.”

They rode through traffic, chattering. Virginia didn’t go straight home. She left the highway and drove up into the mountains. Anne rolled down her window and put her gray elbow on the ledge. She said, “It’s simply glorious up here.”

They had egg sandwiches and fruit for lunch. Virginia had cleaned the kitchen and put a vase of pink and white carnations on the table. The fruit was cut up in a large cream-colored bowl. They helped themselves at a leisurely pace, sometimes eating the wet, lightly bruised fruit straight from the bowl with their fingers. The afternoon sun came in, lighting up a sparkling flurry of dust flecks.

Virginia talked about Camille, Daniel and Magdalen. She told Anne about Camille’s career success and about how helpful Magdalen was. “She still lives like a hippie, though. I don’t think she misses the big ranch they had at all. She certainly doesn’t miss John. The only time she’s ever mentioned him was to say that she was always surprised at how stupid he turned out to be. It’s weird. It’s like it never happened.”

“Well, you know some people work best in that kind of footloose life-style,” said Anne. “It’s called being a bohemian. Lily’s still that way.”

“Is she doing well?”

“Oh, yes. You know, I don’t ever worry about her anymore. Ever since she’s gotten serious about photography, her whole life’s pulled together. She really works hard. She works for all the papers and magazines in Detroit.”

Virginia looked at the pieces of fruit on her plate. “I always thought that Lily could do well if she wanted to,” she said. “She was such a sensitive child. I was sorry I couldn’t do anything to help her.”

“Don’t feel that way. You couldn’t have done anything. She was too difficult.”

“Yes,” said Virginia. “She was.”

“But she has good memories of you,” said Anne. “She used to tell me about going up into the mountains with you. She said that the two of you ate so many olives in the living room together that for years the color of olives made her think of you.” Anne grinned in a hideously open way.

Virginia looked at the fruit.

“And then do you know what she said? She said, ‘But that’s not right because Virginia’s not like an olive color at all. She’s more golden.’”

“Oh, stop it,” said Virginia.

“But that’s how I always thought of you too, even when you were awful. You were always golden.”

Anne was smiling again, her eyes in sad half-moons. She saw that Virginia was embarrassed, so she looked down and picked up a wet piece of melon. She ate it, smiling dimly. The movements of her jaw were neat and careful.

Virginia was afraid for a moment that she was going to say something nasty to Anne, though she wasn’t sure why. She had a drink of coffee instead. It was getting cold and oily.

“What’s wrong?” Anne was watching her with a dark, naked look.

Virginia glanced away. “Nothing.”

They had an old-fashioned family barbecue for Anne’s visit. It was the first one they’d had in a year, and Jarold was excited about it. He was ceremonious and manly beside the smoking barbecue, pronged fork in hand. Anne nervously mixed the salad and talked to Jarold about her job counseling old people in Detroit. Magdalen came out of the house, bringing a flat dish of cold pasta. She put the dish on the card table and her hand on Virginia’s shoulder. “How are you doing, Mama? Did you and Anne have a good time?”

“We had a lovely time. We went for a long drive in the mountains.”

“Oh, yes,” said Anne. “We actually got out of the car and walked for a long time. I was enthralled. It was just gorgeous.”

“Anne must’ve put a pound of rocks in her pockets,” said Virginia. “Every time I turned around, she was picking up something else.”

“I love it up there,” said Magdalen. “It’s my salvation.” She moved lightly around the card table, folding napkins.

“You know, something I’ve noticed since I’ve gotten older is my sensitivity to nature,” said Anne. “When I was very young — a teenager — the sight of a sunset or a mountain scene was so deeply moving to me, I would get the chills.” She looked at Magdalen and shivered her shoulders. “And then, as I entered my twenties, I lost that sensitivity.”

“Well, I’m sure it wasn’t lost. You just had to concentrate on other things,” said Virginia.

“I suppose,” said Anne. “But there came a point when I hardly responded to nature at all. I still liked it, but it didn’t move me. Now that I’m on the verge of becoming an old lady, I’m starting to respond to nature again, to be stirred by the great outdoors.” She looked at Jarold with vulnerable eyes, her glasses down on her nose.

“That’s wonderful,” he said. “It shows you’re still excited by life. And that’s the most important thing to keep through the years, more important than money or success. A lot of us lose it.”

“I believe that,” said Anne. “That’s why I enjoy working with old folks. It’s marvelous to watch some of them blossom again, especially the ones who’ve been in those horrible nursing homes. They can be like kids with the openness — it’s exciting to give them another chance to experience it.”

“You’re a very giving person,” said Jarold. He looked at Anne with tender, protective awe, a little shamed, as if he knew that giving was beyond his ability but he was glad that somebody was there to do it.

It was strange to Virginia. When they were young, Jarold thought Anne was silly and too serious and a frump besides. Now here he was, thirty years later, looking at her like that.

“The steaks are ready,” said Jarold.

Magdalen put the steaks on the plates. Anne and Virginia arranged servings of salad and pasta. They all sat in lawn chairs and ate from the warm plates in their laps. The steak was good and rare; its juices ran into the salad and pasta when Virginia moved her knees. A light wind blew loose hairs around their faces and tickled them. The trees rustled dimly. There were nice insect noises.

Jarold paused, a forkful of steak rising across his chest. “Like heaven,” he said. “It’s like heaven.”

They were quiet for several minutes.