She said, “Is that so? How funny this is,” lay back and didn’t say another word and by the next afternoon she was dead.
It was a Saturday when Nicholas Laramie came to offer his respects for the death of my brother, which turned into him and my father dipping into the good scotch before lunchtime and by three they’d played through all of Ben’s favorite songs on the piano, red faced, swaying on the bench, refusing lunch and my mother’s entreaties that they not make so much noise, pounding their fists on the piano if I didn’t clap from where I sat reading in the corner. At four my father excused himself to go upstairs and nap, but when I went upstairs after him I heard the sound of his retching behind the bathroom door.
I snuck back down the stairs and it was just Nicholas alone in the parlor, his head resting on the piano keys. He staggered from the bench and plopped beside me on the love seat where I’d returned to read my book. “Mary,” he said. “Please. I’d like to take you to the dance.”
“You’re not well,” I said. “I’m not going. Not so soon after Ben.” He reached over and snapped my book closed.
“Why do you have to break my heart,” he said, wiping his leaky eyes on the back of his wrist.
From far away Nicholas gave the illusion of being handsome, with his blond hair greased back and a straight-toothed smile. My mother had always said he was the handsomest of Ben’s friends, that were she my age she’d be smitten with him, but up close I saw what she didn’t — how pomade glistened at his temples, the strange patches of dry skin at the corners of his mouth.
“Oh come on,” I said, “you’re like a brother to me.” My throat hurt from the effort of not crying. Ben hadn’t even known Nicholas all that well. I thought of my sick father, a man who never drank, not even on communion.
“I want to go with you because you’re the only girl I know who’ll let me talk close to her,” he said, slipping his hand onto my knee and letting it warm there. We both watched it.
“What do you say, sweet Mary May?” And then you walked in with the tea and didn’t look at me and started setting the table. He kept his hand on my leg.
I said, “Why don’t you ask Eva, if you want to go to the dance so badly.”
The teacups rattled on your serving tray. “I don’t know how to dance,” you said.
“Look at those lovely arms. You were born for dancing.” He took the tea tray from your hands.
“I’ll play,” he said to me, “and we’ll teach her a thing or two.”
“Please, let’s not,” you said under your breath. He started in on the piano, the notes galumphing along in unrelenting cheer.
I didn’t notice Mother, in her bathrobe at the top of the stairs, until she shouted down, “For the love of God quit that racket.” She braced herself on the railing as though she might fall.
“Deepest apologies, ma’am,” said Nicholas, “just trying to make Eva dance. I’ve got it in my mind to take her, if you can spare a night.”
The bathroom door opened and my father lurched out, ashen as I’d ever seen him. He slumped down on the step beside my mother and said, “You keep on playing, son.”
“Jim,” said Mother, “can’t you grant me one moment of peace?”
He flicked his hand at her. “Keep on, I said.”
“Sir?” said Nicholas. My father hung his head in his hands and bellowed, “This is my house, and I’m asking you to play.” Nicholas started in on “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” and halfway through my father looked up, searched the room for me, and said, “You sing, Mary. You used to be a canary. Why don’t you sing anymore?” and so I forced my mouth to sing the last verse and you and everyone watched me, because it was better than watching my father, who had begun to cry.
When you came to my room that night I was angry as I kissed you. Our teeth kept clicking together.
Still, on the day of the dance I insisted you wear my silk underthings, my finest necklace, my tortoiseshell comb in your hair, and I draped my velvet jacket over your shoulders.
“I don’t want to go,” you said.
I said, “Don’t worry. Nicholas picked you. You’re one of us now.”
I didn’t tell you that you looked beautiful. Instead I made a catalog of all the ways in which you weren’t — how on most days your hair hung in two braids and at night you worked the tangles out from behind your ears, or the subtle lisp you had when you spoke, too much spit in your mouth. How your eyelids grew shiny with oil by the end of the day. The fine, dark hair that trailed in a line from your belly button. The dimples on the backs of your thighs.
When Nicholas arrived he leaned into me and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll have her back early.” He used breath spray, and I could smell what the mint masked, a warm, milky, babyish smell. The two of you walked away arm in arm, leaving me on the porch peeling potatoes. It was cold and gray outside, and my hands were freezing, but I couldn’t stay in the house another minute. I could hear when the band started up and behind the dance hall, in the far field, the cows lowing. I thought of you, spinning and spinning, the heat of dancing stirring up the smell of your skin and Nicholas’s hands on your back. And I hated it, I hated you, and I looked down at the knife I was using to peel the potatoes and cut a deep line across my palm, surprised at the initial lack of blood.
I walked toward the dance hall, my hand wrapped up in my skirts. It started to sleet. Wetness climbed up my hem, my soaked skirt lashing my ankles. There was a big circle of light surrounding the dance hall where kids were chatting and laughing, but I stood far enough away in the darkness of the street that I couldn’t see who they were or their outfits. From inside the hall the music picked up, and with it hooting and laughter. I listened for you. My cut throbbed.
After the dance, you came to my room to return my things. Normally you were so carefully quiet when you came to me, but this time you were louder than you should have been. You unclasped your shoes in the doorway and kicked them off. Your frizzy hair was haloed, backlit by the hallway light. You crawled into my bed, in your wet coat, in your party dress, and unpinned your hair. Loosed and dark, it snaked over my pillow, smelling of cigarette smoke. Your breath was sour and close.
I noted a small cut, like a beauty mark on your upper lip.
When I woke up again you were gone and my jade necklace was on the pillow beside me. I lay in bed fingering its beads, still warm from your body, and in my head started to pray the rosary, though I didn’t want to. A habit of the hands.
On the nights that followed I said nothing about the bruises on your arms and legs, one in your armpit, one in the curve of your neck that you hid with a high collar.
You returned my silk underthings clean and faintly stained. I didn’t think about it. I told myself it was your time of the month to bleed, though I knew when you bled. We bled at the same time.
You would be ashamed to see what I’ve let this house turn into. The house that you so carefully cleaned. You wouldn’t recognize the place. I lie in my bedroom and feel the terrible weight of all the dank, untended rooms piled high with junk. My world is dark and heavy, the air thick with something, not just inside my home but in the street, the whole town, and farther and farther out so that even looking at the sky I never felt right, not even at the beach. Not when I said my marriage vows or when they put my first baby in my arms, or my second, or when my son said, “Ma, why don’t you smoke a little grass to calm down”—this was thirty years ago — and I got high and felt the darkness and heaviness and disarray closing in on me, closer every minute, and I pictured the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse coming for me, mainly just their horses, the relentless rush of hooves.