“You busy later?” Alice asked me.
“Why?”
“Like to talk to you,” she said.
“Did you get that, miss?”
“I got it,” Alice said. “Okay?” she said to me.
“Fine,” I said.
“Anybody else?” Alice asked.
“Beer for me,” Sandy said.
“Beer all around,” David said.
“Shall I bring a pitcher?”
“Great.”
“I’m off at midnight,” Alice said, and moved swiftly away from the table.
“She’s awfully cute,” Tish said.
“Mmm,” I said.
“How’d your friend happen to hurt himself?” Trate asked.
“Please, Johnny,” Tish said.
“I’m just curious, honey.”
“Well, they can tell you about it later. Honestly, I’ve never met anyone so morbidly interested in ski accidents.”
“Builds my confidence, honey,” he said, and grinned.
“Now,” Bittner said at the microphone, “to present the awards for the classes 5A and 5B, we have someone you probably know best as the star violinist in our trio here at the Lodge, but who also instructs on the slopes in his spare time, Mr. Max Brandstaetter.”
Max took the microphone with professional aplomb and read off the names of the bronze and silver pin winners. Alice came back with the drinks. Leaning over me as she put them down on the table, she whispered, “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” I said, and watched her swiveling off in dirndl and peasant blouse.
“She’s awfully cute,” Tish said.
The awards went on interminably. Max, finished with his presentation stint, wandered over to our table, and took a chair alongside David. At Trate’s insistence, I told him about Foderman’s accident Max asked David if he would care to play with the band again tonight. Sandy stared off into space as the pins were awarded to 3A and 3B. It was precisely at this point that Mary Margaret arrived.
It must have taken considerable courage for her to cross that room and join us at the table as though nothing had happened to our social contract. We had condemned her bitterly on the walk from the hospital, had bluntly told her she’d be lucky if we didn’t inform the local constabulary that she had flagrantly committed armed assault on a helpless victim, to which she had tearfully countered, “And suppose I tell about the parka?” to which Sandy had replied, “Shoplifting ain’t mugging in the park,” and Mary Margaret had blown her nose and said, “I keep telling you it was an accident!” and Sandy said, “You broke his goddamn leg!” and Mary Margaret said, “I couldn’t help it.”
So here she was.
“Hey, hi,” she said, pulling up a chair alongside Tish. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Mary Margaret Buono.”
“Means ‘good’ in Italian,” David said drily.
“I’m John Hennings,” Trate said, “and this is my wife Matilda.”
“Tish.”
“Her nickname,” Trate said, and smiled.
“I have a cousin named Matilda,” Mary Margaret said. “What’s everybody drinking?”
I noticed at once that she was flaunting her hands. She had put on a black, long-sleeved dress that served as a perfect backdrop for those exquisite white hands, and she used them now with supreme confidence that they were stars in a command performance — single hot spotlight, black curtain, introductory drum roll, and “Heeeeeerrrre they are, folks!” She had dressed deliberately for the occasion, I was sure, hoping we would be so entranced by the beauty of her hands that we would forget the ugliness of her spirit. Trate was captivated at once. Her hands came out of their basket like twin white cobras, and Trate watched hypnotically. Tish, secure in the allure of her own twin assets (ripely and bra-lessly contained in a scoop-necked halter top that looked like the undershirt Sonny Corleone wore in The Godfather), hardly considered a pair of hands competition, and went babbling on to David and Max about how nice it was to be spending the Christmas holidays far from the commercial hustle and bustle of a big town like Portland, Oregon. David made no comment Max did not know Portland, Oregon from Portsmouth, Virginia.
Sandy totally ignored Mary Margaret; as far as she was concerned, Mary Margaret was already dead. Blue eyes vacant, full mouth drawn tight, blond head erect, she disdainfully consigned Mary Margaret to that great big cemetery in the sky without so much as shedding an obligatory tear over her untimely demise. It was perhaps Sandy’s deliberate and premature burial that provoked the next attack from Mary Margaret. I am sometimes quite stupid when it comes to understanding attacks. I seem always to be guarding my front while a pincers assault is being mounted on both flanks. I thought at first that Mary Margaret’s attempt to control the conversational flow merely supported my earlier theory — she was somehow trying to impress us by exposing the least desirable aspects of her personality. I realized only later that I was deluding myself. However flattering and appealing the idea initially seemed, I became more and more convinced that Mary Margaret was motivated not by admiration but by envy. Which is why I’d been afraid of her from the very beginning. Mary Margaret was out to destroy us.
I do not mean that literally. I do not mean that she entertained actual thoughts of poisoning our drinks or slitting our throats while we slept. She wanted only to destroy our triple identity. (It occurred to me that in many respects she was quite similar to Dr. Krakauer, who in our last session had seemed hell-bent on forcing me into a denial of Sandy and David. I honestly don’t know why people are so envious of our unity.) Listening to Mary Margaret as first she flailed out at Max, and then took on the Trates, and then closed the pincers to reveal her true target, I became certain that she was, jealous of what we shared, furious that we would not allow her to join us or to separate us, and determined to get inside our phony little club and bust all the mirrors.
She started by drawing out Trate, who, as it developed, was not a corporation executive but a teacher in a small private school on the outskirts of Portland. Trate, flattered to think that anyone could be even slightly interested in the care and feeding of pubescent boys, launched into a learned (and boring) treatise comparing private-school to public-school education, reaching the conclusion (surprise!) that private schools were in every way superior to public schools, which was why he had devoted his life to teaching fine young boys in a healthy, challenging environment, God bless America, pass the apple pie, and for God’s sake don’t mention, busing.
“Yes, but what about homosexuality?” Mary Margaret asked.
“What about it?” Trate said.
“Isn’t it rampant?” Mary Margaret asked.
“Where? Do you mean in America?”
“No, I mean in private schools.”
“Oh, really,” Tish said.
“That’s a common misconception,” Trate said.
“That little boys are constantly being buggered in private schools?” Mary Margaret said.
“Now, really,” Tish said.
“We don’t have that problem in my school,” Trate said.
“Is it a sleep-away school?”
“It’s a boarding school, yes.”
“Then, how do you avoid the problem?”
“It simply doesn’t exist.”
“Do you believe that, Max?” Mary Margaret asked.
Max, turning away from his conversation with David, smiled and said, “I beg your pardon, I wasn’t listening.”
“We were discussing homosexuality,” Mary Margaret said.
“Ah, yes? What about it?” Max said.
“Do you have private schools in Europe?”
“Yes?” Max said, puzzled.
“Did you go to a private school when you were a boy?”