The Truth About Lorin Jones

9

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE Thanksgiving, in her stepfather’s house in Rochester, Polly lay in bed in the attic room that had been hers since the age of nine. The steep slope of the ceiling and its freckled, flaking whitewash were as familiar to her as her own skin, now also beginning to freckle and flake. Her childhood books were still on the shelves behind the door, her old posters — Monet and the Beatles — still on the walls. The burnt-sienna homespun curtains that she had hemmed herself were sun-faded, but they caught on the handle of the casement window in the same old way.

Her attic was still, Polly thought, the only really attractive room in the house. The others were comfortable enough, but wholly unaesthetic; there was no vulgarity or pretension in their decoration — only utter lack of taste. In the sitting room forest-green upholstery clashed with olive-green carpeting and sea-green brocade curtains, all of the most durable quality; Early American furniture contended with heirloom Victorian and Danish Modern. The pictures and ornaments had been chosen solely for their symbolic value: family photographs, footstools covered in tapestry roses by Polly’s mother, ashtrays and a magazine rack made by her half brother in school, and an embarrassing sub-Degas pastel of a ballet dancer that had won her a prize in seventh grade. Even worse were the souvenirs of Bea and Bob’s vacations: tourist-shop watercolors of Provincetown and Paris, a gilt papier-mâché tray from Rome, a Royal Wedding plate from London, and a huge hideous prickly-pear cactus from New Mexico. (When she was eleven Polly, having heard that alcohol was a sure if slow poison, had tried to kill this monstrous plant by pouring sherry into its pot, and the following month gin. The cleaning lady had been accused of tippling, but the cactus had thrived, and continued even now to thrive.)

As Polly used to complain rudely and hopelessly when she was a teenager, the house didn’t have to look this way. It was large, well designed in the style of the 1920s, and built to last. An English professor just around the corner on Crossman Terrace whose children Polly had gone to school with had an almost identical house; but it was beautiful inside as well as comfortable, full of elegant furniture and pictures and leafy green plants arranged with thought and care.

But it wasn’t only for aesthetic reasons that Polly always felt uncomfortable in Rochester. The house reminded her, still, of what her life there had been like. Walking into it was like walking into a thin fog, a damp miasma of ancient anger and depression.

The move to Rochester had been great for her mother, she saw that now; it was what Bea had always wanted, a stable marriage to a reliable man who had progressed steadily if not brilliantly from physics graduate student to full professor. After what she’d been through it must have been great to have a big comfortable house near the park and two sons who were born at respectable intervals and had Bob’s placid temperament and his talent for math and science.

But in this happy family Polly was an outsider. She hated math; she had bad moods and screamed and wept and threw things. She was too old for her new family — ten and thirteen years older than her half-brothers. She didn’t match her mother and Bob and the boys, with their straight hair and neutral light-brown coloring. She didn’t even have the same name as they did; a girl in her class once asked if she was adopted. Often people who came to the house for parties didn’t know who she was. “You must be the baby-sitter,” a woman in a shiny red dress with beads on it said to her once in the kitchen.

Her mother did try to get Polly to baby-sit, but usually she wouldn’t, because her little brothers always ganged up on her as soon as their parents were out of the house, and wouldn’t mind what she said. They were stupid, spoiled little kids, she thought then; now they only seemed totally dull and conventional.

Lorin Jones also had a half brother she didn’t particularly get on with as a child, Polly recalled, feeling a faint echo of her old shiver of identification. Only it was worse for me, she thought: I had two of them.

When Polly was fourteen Bob Milner won a prize for a textbook on physics, and a reporter from the Times-Union came to interview him. Polly was at a friend’s house that afternoon, only two blocks away, but nobody called her to come home and be in the photo of Professor Milner and his family, or even mentioned her in the article. Bob said he was sorry about it afterward, when it was too late. “That’s okay,” Polly told him. “I’m not related to you anyhow.”

Her mother was different: Polly felt related to her, though she couldn’t understand why she liked Bob and the boys so much — didn’t she see how boring they all were? Bea at least wasn’t boring; she sometimes made surprisingly shrewd, even witty comments on people and events. But she was hopelessly unliberated and unambitious. She was still grateful to Bob Milner for marrying her and taking her to a dreary city like Rochester; she still couldn’t get over how nice he was compared to most men.

And the infuriating thing was that Bob was nice. He had always tried to do the right thing by Polly, she had to admit that. He paid to send her through college and graduate school; he never favored her half brothers over her when it came to presents or music lessons or trips. Of course, one reason he was so nice was that he’d always had everything his own way at home; Bea saw to that.

For instance, Bob Milner had been allowed to name his sons Albert and Hans after the two physicists he most admired; Bea had no input in the selection, any more than she’d had in the selection of Polly’s name — her father’s grandmother had also been called Paula. Once, when she was in college, Polly had asked her mother if she’d minded having her husbands choose the names of all her children. At first Bea had seemed not to know what Polly was talking about; then she smiled and rested her hands on the old treadle sewing machine at which she was piecing an ill-designed patchwork quilt. “No, it never occurred to me,” she said, shifting the folds of material. “But I don’t think names are all that important, do you?”

“I think they’re very, very important,” Polly had replied; at the time she had been thinking of changing her name to Stephanie, for no good reason that she could remember now.

Except maybe that was why I wanted to call my kid Stephen, she thought. I wanted him to be the kind of person I thought a Stephen or a Stephanie was then, probably because of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: independent and artistic and brave.

And what kind of person was Stevie now? Polly sighed. At the moment, she had no idea.

It had been a real dismal scene, as he would have put it, ever since he got to Rochester. She was stunned when she saw him loping along the airport corridor toward her, looking inches taller in his new cowboy boots, and transformed outwardly into a Western preppie. His unruly brown hair (so like her own, and before always about the same length) had been cropped and tamed, and he wore an unfamiliar red ski parka covered with zippers and flaps and strips of Velcro.

“Oh, Stevie, baby!”

“Hi, Mom.”

Not only was his greeting constrained, for the first time in his life Stevie seemed to suffer rather than return Polly’s hug and kiss. On the way to her mother’s house he suffered rather than answered her questions. He hardly looked at her, but kept staring at the backs of Polly’s half brother Alby and Alby’s new wife, Carolee, in the front seat. Maybe her son was abashed by Carolee’s presence, though strangers had never made him shy before: on the way to La Guardia in August he’d had an animated conversation with the cabbie about tornadoes.

At home it was no better. Polly had been looking forward to this moment for months, but she was unable to break through Stevie’s reserve. At her suggestion he sat in the kitchen while she made the walnut cake he had always liked; he cracked nuts for it and licked the bowl, but his conversation was a series of monosyllables and platitudes. “Yeah ... No ... Sure, I’m all right... Dad’s all right... School’s all right... No problem,” he kept saying. Her beloved child, whose lively volubility had always been her joy, had become a polite, inarticulate stranger.

At dinner, though, he fell into the familiar noisy, banal style of conversation at the Milners’, dominated as usual by the men. He and Bob and Bob’s sons compared computer games and sci-fi films; they traded stories of mountain climbing and white-water canoeing, while Bea and Carolee provided a cheering section. Afterward Stevie helped the men wash up and then followed Alby and Hans into the study to play poker. It was always that way in this house: you practically never had a private conversation. She might as well resign herself to it; after all, tomorrow she and Stevie would be leaving for New York, and she’d have him to herself for two days.

She certainly hadn’t had him to herself yet, Polly thought the following evening, clearing the table while her mother scraped and rinsed the plates, as they had done in this same kitchen every Thanksgiving since Polly was nine. Bea Milner had a new dishwasher now, and leaves had been added to the dining table as the family grew, but otherwise everything was almost eerily the same as it had been thirty years ago. Presumably, some of Bea’s dreary forget-me-not china must have broken and her flowered linen dishtowels worn out from time to time, but they had been replaced with similar china and towels.

Meanwhile, Bob and his sons and Stevie were watching football on TV, just as they did every year, and Polly and her mother were cleaning up, even though they had also cooked dinner. The men usually pitched in after meals, but on Thanksgiving they were always exempt. Polly had resigned herself to this; it was something else that riled her now: the fact that Alby’s wife, Carolee, was in there watching football with the men.

“I don’t see why Carolee doesn’t have to help us,” she complained, covering a Pyrex dish of cranberry sauce with plastic wrap. “After all, she’s not a guest anymore, she’s part of the family now, isn’t she?”

“Mm, yes,” Bea agreed placidly. She was a small, sturdy, rather pretty woman with tinted and waved light-brown hair and a more lined, less defined version of Polly’s features. Her large round eyes were pale rather than dark, and there was something neat and birdlike about her movements. “But you know, dear, she’s a tremendous football fan. I think she gets just as excited by a game as Alby or Hans, don’t you?”

“I guess so,” Polly agreed; she could hardly do otherwise, when her sister-in-law’s cheerleader shouts could be heard all the way to the kitchen. They were even louder in the dining room when she went back for a load of dessert plates. As she stacked them she thought how apt her roles and Bea’s were. She brought her mother complaints and irritations, like soiled dishes, and Bea, with her mild wash of resignation and explanation, patiently sluiced the mess away. Even though she saw through the process, it still made Polly feel calmer.

“I do really feel Carolee is one of the family now, you know,” her mother said as Polly returned.

“Oh, yeah,” Polly replied; in her opinion Carolee, who was a scientist and a jock, was all too much like a Milner.

“I think she’s going to be good for Alby. Of course, she’s not as brilliant as he is; but she’s an awfully nice girl, don’t you think?” Bea helped herself to a couple of grapes from one of the plates Polly had just brought in; her eating habits were also birdlike.

“She’s nice enough,” Polly agreed. “But she’s not very interesting.”

“Well, maybe not.” Bea sighed as she scoured the sticky dish that had held sweet potatoes. “But I don’t think that really matters so much. You know, Polly, when you’re young you always want people to be interesting. Then later on you find out it’s much more important for them to be serious and decent. I’ve noticed that at work.”

“Oh?” For the last eight years, Bea had been an assistant dean — a glorified secretary, really — in the university summer-school program.

“Whenever we get an application that says a student is ‘interesting,’ and not much else, I always put a little W next to his or her name now. For Watch out.” Bea giggled suddenly. Since she usually didn’t drink, the glass or two of sherry she allowed herself on holidays always made her a little blurry.

“How is your job going, by the way?” Polly asked, realizing that in the clamor of family news Bea had volunteered none of her own.

“Oh, very well. Of course, this is our quiet season, we’re only just getting the catalogue together.”

“So things are all right with you,” Polly said; it was hardly a question, for Bea was chronically contented.

“Oh, yes. I have everything I want.” She hesitated, holding an ugly Corning Ware serving dish under the tap; the warm water, splashing on its edge, sent up a kind of transparent fan. “I’d like for you to be happier, that’s all.”

“I’m fine,” Polly said.

“I worry about you sometimes, you know.”

“Oh?” Polly said, surprised; it was unlike her mother to worry about anything.

“Mm. You see, when I married Bob, I thought it would be the best possible thing for you, to grow up in a pleasant place like Rochester. In a normal family. But I wonder sometimes if maybe after we moved here I didn’t pay you enough attention. I was always thinking about the boys: Alby’s asthma, and the trouble Hans used to have with reading. But you were so sensible, so articulate, so talented; I knew you’d always be all right. At least, I thought you’d always be all right.” She wiped back a stray lock of hair with one wet reddened hand.

“I am all right, really,” Polly assured her. For years she had wanted to hear her mother admit that she might have done something wrong. But now that this was happening it made her embarrassed and uncomfortable, as if the kitchen were tilting and sliding into the cellar.

“You weren’t really unhappy, growing up here, were you?” Bea dropped the dishcloth into the sink and turned to look at her daughter.

“It was okay. It was fine,” Polly lied.

“I was so sorry it didn’t work out for you with Jim. But I expect you’ll find another nice man soon.” Bea put a handful of spoons into the dishwasher, giving Polly a quick little smile that was also a question.

“Mh,” Polly said. No, I’m not going to find a nice man soon, she thought, because there aren’t any “nice men” in New York. What I’m looking for now, probably, is a nice woman.

I might as well tell her the truth, she decided, staring past Bea at the new kitchen wallpaper, which had a clumsy pattern of spice tins in avocado, orange, and brown. (Why would any graphic artist have wanted to design such a drearily hideous wallpaper, or any shop have ordered it?) She’ll be upset, Polly thought, but so what? It was always so hard to get a rise out of her mother; why shouldn’t she be upset for once? “I’m not sure I will,” she said. “Uh, you know my friend Jeanne, that you met in New York last year, the one that’s sharing my apartment now.”

“Mm.” Her mother nibbled absently at the end of a leftover breadstick.

“Well, she’s a lesbian. And I think I might be one, too.”

“Oh, Polly.” Bea dropped her breadstick into the dishwater. “Really?”

“I’m not sure. But I might.”

“Well, dear, if that’s what you want,” Polly’s mother said finally. She wrapped some celery in a piece of plastic. “I mean, your friend Jeanne seemed like a very nice girl.”

“Yes, but she’s not, I mean, we’re not —” Polly stuttered.

But Bea wasn’t listening; she was gazing past her daughter with an odd faraway smile. “You know, when I was in high school, I had this tremendous crush on the captain of the girl’s tennis team.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes.” Bea giggled again; she was certainly tipsy. “She was so tall and athletic; she reminded me of your father, in a way. Well, I suppose I should say he reminded me of her when I met him, because of course that was years later.”

“You mean, are you telling me, you and this girl were lovers?” Polly stared at her mother across a counter of marbled avocado vinyl.

“Oh, no. Well, not exactly, anyhow,” Bea said, smiling and fitting a plate into the dishwasher. “I mean, I positively adored her, but we didn’t do anything, of course. Well, not anything serious, you know.” She giggled.

“I thought you’d be shocked,” Polly said, a little shocked herself.

“No, dear. It’s not like men, after all, is it? With those awful bars they go to, and the dreadful diseases they get. If it was Hans, say, of course I’d be very worried for him. But it’s different for us. There’s a woman in my office now, she and her friend have been together for eighteen years, and they’re the nicest quietest people you’d ever want to meet, except they do have rather an awful Abyssinian.”

“An Abyssinian?” Polly, confused by everything her mother had said in the last few minutes, saw a dark-skinned butler — or cook, maybe? — in a turban.

“A cat, you know.” Bea giggled. “But I think really it would be better not to say anything about it to Jim,” she added. “I mean, not until you’re sure. He likes people to be consistent. And if it turns out not to be so after all, he’ll think you don’t know your own mind.”

Polly stared at her mother again; never in her life had she heard her suggest that anything should be kept from Jim. “Okay,” she agreed, wondering if she knew her own mind, or anyone’s.

“And the same for Stevie, don’t you think?” Bea added two cups to the dishwasher.

“I wasn’t planning to say anything to Stevie, not yet,” Polly agreed. “I thought I’d wait until he moves back home.”

“Much better. Well, I think that’s all the plates we can fit in on this load.” Bea poured the detergent dispenser full of grainy pink-and-white powder from a box named Comet, closed the door, and pushed ON.

When Polly, with Stevie behind her, unlocked the door to her apartment on the afternoon of the day after Thanksgiving, she expected to find it as she had left it: empty, cold (she had turned down the thermostat), dark, and untidy. Instead it was full of warmth and light and flowers. An explosion of ice-pink long-stemmed roses crowned the desk; another even larger one of gladioli spread green-and-white moth wings above the coffee table.

She stood dazed; then there were steps in the hall and Jeanne came running in.

“Oh, Polly!” she cried, almost laughing. “The most wonderful thing has happened, Betsy’s left her husband!”

“That’s great,” Polly said, jerking her head to warn Jeanne that her son was there.

“Oh hello, Stevie.” Her friend’s voice dropped an octave and lost volume.

“Hi,” Stevie replied with an equal lack of enthusiasm.

“Well, anyhow.” Jeanne took a breath. “I’ve moved my things into your spare room. I thought I’d stay here tonight and tomorrow, it’s so horribly crowded at Ida’s. People are sleeping all over the floor, and you can simply never get into the bathroom.” She smiled uneasily. “If it’s okay with you, that is.”

“Sure, it’s okay,” Polly repeated; what else could she say?

“What was that all about?” Stevie inquired audibly as he followed his mother down the hall.

“Nothing. Just somebody Jeanne knows, who’s been having trouble with her marriage.” Polly swallowed, distressed to hear herself lying — fudging, at least — to her son.

As soon as Stevie had left to visit a friend she got the details. Jeanne had phoned Betsy the night before Thanksgiving, with dramatic results. “I’m so grateful to you,” she cried, hugging Polly again. “Really, if you hadn’t suggested it, I might never have called her.”

At the other end of the line, Betsy had wept with relief. “I thought it was too late; I thought you never wanted to see me again,” she had sobbed happily. Then she had packed her bags, called a taxi, and come straight to Jeanne. While Polly was in Rochester they had had a joyous reunion in Polly’s bed.

“I knew it would be all right,” Jeanne said, smiling. “I mean, I knew you’d got Stevie’s room all ready for him, and I didn’t want to mess it up. Of course I changed the sheets again for you. Oh Polly, it was so lovely.” Jeanne held out her arms as if to embrace the whole world; her cheeks were flushed pink with retrospective pleasure. “You don’t mind?”

“No.” Polly shook her head, irritated to discover that she did mind. “Of course not. So where’s Betsy now?”

“She’s at her parents’ house up in New Canaan, till Monday. She was supposed to have gone there for Thanksgiving, with the husband, but she called to say she was sick. She’s going to tell them everything now.”

“Uh-huh,” Polly said. “So she’ll be staying there for a while?”

“Oh no; just for this weekend, it’s much too far to commute to the college, and of course we want to be together. We’ll share her place in Brooklyn Heights as soon as that creep leaves.” Jeanne leaned over the gladioli, pinching off a half-dead bloom.

“He’s going to move out, then?”

“Oh yes. He’ll have to, because Betsy owns half the apartment; it was bought partly with her parents’ money. But I thought that until then she could stay here.”

“He-yere?” Polly couldn’t prevent a break of dismay in the middle of the word.

“Just for a little while. After Stevie leaves, of course. I thought what we might do is move the bunk bed into your room, maybe take it apart into twin beds, that’d be more convenient for you. And then move the double into Stevie’s room for us.” She smiled brightly. “That would be so much nicer.”

“Well,” Polly said. “I don’t know.”

“Naturally Betsy would help with the expenses, so we’d all be saving money.”

“Mm,” Polly said, thinking that her friend hadn’t said “share.” But then, why should she? From Jeanne’s point of view, Polly was almost rich. Jeanne was scraping by on a mingy academic salary, and Betsy, who taught freshman composition part-time on a one-year contract, was even harder up.

All the same, Polly felt cross and beleaguered, like a child whose parents were arranging her life behind her back. She didn’t want Betsy in her apartment, and she wanted to sleep in her own bed. But to say so would sound selfish and grudging. And after all, it would only be for a few weeks, probably. It couldn’t be more, because Stevie would be home for good before Christmas. “That’s true,” she admitted.

“Oh, wonderful. Thank you, dear.” Jeanne, who had been shifting uneasily along the sofa, bounced up to give Polly another quick hug. “I want to apologize to you, too,” she added. “I know I’ve been awful to live with ever since I broke up with Betsy.”

“You haven’t, really.”

“Oh, yes, I have, Polly. I’ve been frightfully moody and distracted, and not much help around the house either. And you’ve been an angel to put up with me. But I’ll make it up to you now; we both will. Oh, I’m so happy. I’m going to call Betsy right now.”

“I’d like to ask you something,” Polly said after Jeanne had murmured a final series of childish endearments into the phone. “When Stevie gets home, could you give us some time alone to talk?”

“Oh, sure. Is something the matter?”

“No; I just didn’t get much chance to see him in Rochester. My family was all over the place, you know what they’re like. So if you could stay out of the way for an hour or so —”

“How do you mean, out of the way?” Jeanne said, her voice rising slightly. “Do you want me to go out and walk around the block for an hour? Because I can’t go into the park now, you know; it’s nearly dark out already.”

“No, of course not,” said Polly. “But if you’d just, I don’t know, go and work in my bedroom while I make dinner?”

“All right,” Jeanne agreed. “Just let me know when I can come out, okay?”

But in fact Jeanne didn’t stay in the bedroom. Instead, after Stevie returned, she wandered around the apartment like a cat whose territory had been invaded — though maintaining a considerate silence. Don’t worry, I’m not going to interrupt your conversation, her manner seemed to say. But you can’t fault me for going to the bathroom or looking for the Times.

Whether it was because of Jeanne’s hovering presence or not, Polly was unable to break through Stevie’s reserve, though he’d been fairly voluble on the plane and in the taxi from La Guardia, talking about what he wanted to do in New York and the kids he planned to see. Over supper he was still unnaturally quiet and polite; and whenever something almost like a conversation got going, it soon died away. Maybe because it was clear that though Jeanne was really trying, she found his subjects — skiing in Colorado, Star Trek, Halley’s Comet — deeply uninteresting. If it was going to be like this, Polly thought, she might as well have stayed in Rochester, surrounded by relatives. It might even have been better; if Stevie didn’t talk to her there she wouldn’t have noticed so much.

But was it really Jeanne’s fault, or had her son in fact become an alien? Because after the dishes were done, he spent the rest of the evening on the telephone and in front of the TV. (“Mom, do you mind? I don’t want to miss ‘Miami Vice.’ ”)

“Well, how was it?” Jeanne asked when he was in bed. “Did you have a good talk with Stevie?”

“Not yet, really.” Polly sighed. “We’re still sort of awkward with each other, you know.”

“Yes, I noticed that.”

“He’s not in Colorado now, but he still seems almost that far away. And he’s developed such awfully good manners.”

“He certainly eats much less sloppily,” Jeanne agreed.

“I don’t mean just his table manners. It’s, like, his whole attitude. He’s so cool and polite, it almost scares me. I just don’t know.” She paused, waiting for Jeanne to ask, “Don’t know what?”

“I mean,” she continued, “I guess I should expect it to take a while for him to feel at home again, but hell —” Again Polly waited, and again her friend did not speak. “Of course, at that age three months is a big chunk of your life; it’s like a year or so for you or me.” No comment. “I realize I’ve just got to hang in there, give him time. But right now I hardly recognize him as my own kid.”

“Polly, dear. Stevie’s fourteen now. He’s not your kid anymore. He’s growing up, turning into a man.” Jeanne pronounced the noun with distaste; “Turning into a monkey,” she might as well have said.

“I suppose so.”

“I know it’s hard for you to face facts sometimes.” Her friend’s voice was kinder now, soft and soothing. “But you’ve simply got to reconcile yourself to losing him eventually.”

It was Polly’s turn now not to answer. I don’t reconcile myself, I won’t! she thought. And it isn’t hard for me to face facts, either. She opened her mouth to say this, then shut it, remembering how thin the walls were; if she and Jeanne raised their voices in an argument Stevie might hear it. “Maybe,” she muttered finally. “Well, I’m getting sleepy. Goodnight.”

She stamped crossly down the hall to her room, and then lay awake for a long time, wondering as she thrashed and turned whether Jeanne was right. Was her Stevie, the one she knew and loved, gone for good? Or was he only hidden under a laconic new manner and expensive Western clothes?

Polly had just finished making a late breakfast for her son the next morning and gone into the bathroom when she heard a smash of china and a shout of “Oh, fuck it!” from the kitchen.

She dropped the Times, pulled up her jeans, and hurried down the hall, arriving in time to hear Jeanne wail: “Oh, no! Not Betsy’s darling Japanese teapot!”

“I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to —” Stevie had backed away from Jeanne’s misery and fury into a corner; his mouth was open, his elbows raised defensively.

“Oh, hell. Maybe we can mend —” Polly began.

“Don’t be stupid! Can’t you see it’s hopeless?” Jeanne stooped to the floor, then rose with a bony white fragment of china in each hand and an expression of deep bereavement. “Oh, she’ll be so sad!”

“Hey, I’m sorry. But I didn’t touch the thing, honest,” Stevie protested. “I just opened the cupboard door, and it fell off the counter. Why’d’ja have to leave it like that?”

“I left Betsy’s teapot exactly where I always leave it; where it belongs.” Jeanne was in control again; her tone was cool. “Anyone who had eyes in their head would have seen it —”

Stevie’s look of guilty dismay shifted toward exasperation. “Listen, I said I was sorry already, for shit’s sake.” Jeanne flinched at the obscenity, but made no other reply. “Whadda you want me to do? You want me to buy you a new one? Okay, I will.”

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to do that,” Jeanne said with a tight smile. “It was an antique; it belonged to Betsy’s grandmother.”

Half an hour later Polly squatted on the kitchen floor, wiping the worn marbled vinyl with a wet wadded paper towel. She was mopping up the last of the cinnamon rose tea, and also the last tiny sharp shards of Japanese china. From this position she heard the front door close, signaling that Jeanne had gone out to buy a new teapot. (“No, thanks, I’d rather do it myself. You wouldn’t know what to look for.”)

Now there were steps in the hall; Stevie slumped in the kitchen doorway.

“Aw, Mom,” he said. “You don’t hafta do that. I already cleaned up the mess.”

“I know you did, pal.” Polly sank back onto her haunches and smiled up at him. “I just want to be sure nobody comes in here in the middle of the night and starts screaming around because they’ve cut their foot. This china is really sharp.” She shook her head; she already had a slash on one knee.

“I guess she’d make a hell of a fuss.” He grinned.

Though this wasn’t what Polly had meant, she let it pass. She was so happy to have the real Stevie back, talking to her in his real voice. He had even, she noticed, changed into one of his old shirts, a red checked flannel that they had bought on a trip to Macy’s last winter, now too short in the sleeves.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, opening the refrigerator. “Can I have some of that cake, or were you saving it?”

“Sure you can have it, if you’re hungry.” She got to her feet. “Have anything you want.”

“Great.” He vanished behind the refrigerator door, emerging with the remainder of Jeanne’s apricot torte in one hand and a bottle of tonic in the other. “There’s never much to eat at Dad’s house.”

“That’s too bad.” Polly could not help grinning.

“Yeah, that Debbie, she’s always on a diet.”

“That’s too bad,” she repeated with equal insincerity.

“Hey,” Stevie said, chewing. “You’re not still pissed at me about this morning?”

“I never was pissed at you. It was an accident, that’s all. Only you’ve got to watch your language with Jeanne, okay, pal? Curse words freak her out. You know some people are like that.”

“Yeah. I know. Listen, Mom,” he added, swallowing.

“Mm?”

“How come Jeanne is staying here? Doesn’t she have anyplace else to live?”

“Well, not right now. She’s looking for an apartment.” Polly’s smile faded. “And she couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving, because she doesn’t have any real family.” (Not strictly true; Jeanne had a father and brother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but she despised and feared them.) “Do you really mind it that she’s here?”

“I dunno.” Stevie shrugged. “I guess not. I mean, I know she’s company for you when I’m away. I just don’t see why you like her so much, that’s all.”

“We’re really good friends,” Polly said firmly. “She was awfully kind to me last month when I had the flu. And you’ve got to admit she’s a great cook. Wait till you taste the chocolate mousse she’s making for us tonight — you still like chocolate, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Stevie said, but without eagerness, and in his former constrained manner.

“I know Jeanne’s a little —” Polly’s voice seemed to freeze up. “Anyhow, I’m sure once you get to know her better you’ll like her.”

“I don’t hafta like her, Mom.” Stevie took a swig of tonic directly from the bottle; if Jeanne were to see this, she would be revolted. “You don’t like all my friends.”

“I do too,” Polly protested.

“You don’t like Billy all that much.”

“Well.” Polly grinned. “I guess maybe I don’t. But it’s nothing personal, it’s just that he’s such a computer freak; he never has anything to say to grown-ups.”

“Anyhow, Jeanne doesn’t like me either, so who cares?” Stevie shrugged and opened the refrigerator again.

I care, Polly wanted to say, but the words would not leave her mouth. “What makes you think that?”

“I d’know.” Stevie paused, looking at his mother over the open door of the fridge, his heavy eyebrows drawn into a puzzled frown. “It’s just — The way she keeps watching me. I feel like she’s kind of got it in for me; she wants me to fuck up. Like this morning. I figure she sort of left her dumb old teapot out on purpose, to see if maybe I would break it.”

“Oh, Stevie,” Polly exclaimed. “Jeanne wouldn’t do anything like that.” But her son, who was eating cranberry sauce with his fingers, did not reply.

An hour later, after Stevie had left, Jeanne returned carrying a plastic bag marked Pottery Barn.

“Did you find a teapot?” Polly looked around from her notes.

“Well. I found a kind of teapot.” Jeanne halfheartedly unwrapped a plain white pot. “It’ll have to do for a while.”

“How much was it? I’ll pay you now.”

“No rush, dear. It was nothing, only about twelve dollars.”

“That’s not nothing.” Polly stood up and began to look for her handbag.

“Please, don’t bother. I tell you what. Someday when I have time I’ll go over to Bloomie’s, and if I find a pretty one you can buy me that.” Jeanne’s smile was open and charming, her tone casual, but what Polly thought was that her friend was still furious.

“All right,” she agreed, for after all fair was fair. But what an awful lot of fuss about a “dumb old teapot”!

Not that that was so unusual. Jeanne always overvalued objects; she could go into raptures over some battered mirror frame or motheaten fringed shawl in a shop window on Columbus Avenue. The high point of her trip to England two years ago, to hear her tell it, had been the Victoria and Albert Museum, and during her occupation Stevie’s room had become a gallery of frayed silk and bubbled glass and chipped marquetry.

Jeanne cares for things more than she does for people, Polly thought. But then for most of her life Jeanne hadn’t had anyone of her own to care for. Her mother had died when she was ten, her father and brother were coarse heavy-drinking French-Canadian paternalist types, and she had no children. Polly looked at her friend again, but now with pity.

“Where’s Stevie, is he in my room?” Jeanne asked.

His room, you mean, Polly thought, but forbore to say. “No, he’s gone visiting.”

“Ah.” Jeanne sank onto the sofa with a sigh, lit a cigarette, and picked up Vogue, which she occasionally bought herself as a treat the way she bought bags of chocolate-covered cherries. “You know,” she said casually over the magazine a few moments later, “it’s Stevie who should pay for Betsy’s teapot, not you.”

“And you know Stevie won’t have twelve dollars.” Polly almost laughed; it was characteristic of her son, as of her father — whom, she realized, he was also beginning to resemble physically — that he couldn’t save money. But Jeanne didn’t smile.

“I expect he has twelve dollars somewhere, in a savings account or whatever. Or at least he has an allowance.”

“You really think Stevie should pay you out of his allowance? But he only gets two dollars a week. Even if he gave you half of that, it’d take him a long time.”

“Well, why shouldn’t it?” Jeanne smiled. “He might learn something that way.”

“Learn something?”

“Yes, learn to be a little more careful of other people’s property. If that’s possible.” She laughed lightly.

“Well, maybe he could pay part of it,” Polly said, struggling with her own irritation. “But I don’t really think — It was just an accident, after all.” She looked at her friend for confirmation, but instead there was silence. “I mean, it’s not as if Stevie meant to break the teapot.”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Jeanne turned a page of Vogue with a scissoring sound.

“Oh, of course he didn’t.” Polly shook her head, smiling. “You —” She stopped. You’re both being ridiculously paranoid, she had been about to say, he thinks you left it out deliberately. But that could lead to real trouble.

“I realize Stevie’s your innocent child. Or rather, he was. But he’s growing up now, and you’ve got to grow up a little too.”

“You mean, you really believe —” Her voice rose.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it on purpose.” Jeanne’s manner was affable. “Accidentally-on-purpose, at least. I mean, heavens, it was in plain sight on the counter. Nobody could have missed it, not even a man, unless they’d wanted to.”

“Well, Stevie could. And hell, I know he’s growing up. But that’s why it happened; he’s growing so fast now he’s gotten clumsy. He doesn’t know how large he is, so he bangs into things, knocks things over. Most adolescent boys are that way.”

“Yes, that’s the usual excuse, isn’t it?” Suddenly Jeanne’s tone had become bitter and uneven. “That’s the way it is in this world: men are taught as children that once they start getting larger and stronger they can smash up things and people carelessly. They can go on doing it all their lives, really, and they’ll be excused and forgiven; they won’t have to pay. It’s the women who will always pay, in the end. The way my mother did.”

“I didn’t mean —”

“But you see, you didn’t say, ‘All adolescents smash things up.’ Nobody ever says that. Girls are growing fast too at that age, but nobody makes those excuses for them. If they break something they’re punished. They have to learn to control themselves and respect other people’s property. Isn’t that true, now?” She folded her round, rosy arms against a lavender jacquard sweater.

“Well, yes, I suppose. But I think you’re being unfair to Stevie,” Polly said stubbornly. “And he felt it too. He thinks you don’t like him, you know. And maybe he’s right.”

Jeanne got up and came over to her; she crouched down by the desk until her face was on a level with Polly’s. “Don’t say that,” she said; her voice was soft, trembly. “I love Stevie, because he’s your child. It’s just that I worry about what’s happening to him, what happens to all males in this society. I mean, look at him now. He’s lived with you all his life; then he goes to stay with his father for a couple of months, and he comes back completely changed.”

“I don’t think he’s changed all that much. Underneath —”

“Of course, the process isn’t complete yet. He’s only fourteen. I know it’s hard.” She put one hand on Polly’s arm and gazed at her with round pale eyes in which tears seemed to brim. “I’m very sorry for you — for both of you. But you mustn’t think I dislike him. Please.”

Jeanne’s voice was gentler than ever, her posture suppliant, yet Polly felt as if her friend’s hand were a heavy weight pressing on her. “All right, I don’t,” she finally had to say.