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.