“You shouldn’t have! Maury, come look. From Dempsey. You really shouldn’t have. But, oh Patricia, come look. It’s the most gorgeous ever. A treasure. An absolute treasure. Theresa, don’t you want to see?”
Johnny’s mother was holding against her wrist the antique bracelet Dempsey had brought her, a silver rose intricately woven into a braid of stems and leaves. (No thorns.) Dempsey wasn’t sure about the “gorgeous” but she did know that it was a treasure—and had the receipt to prove it. She’d found it—after a lengthy search—in a shop on Canal Street where the owner, one remove from a pawnbroker, claimed to be a dealer in “antique jewelry.” Johnny’s mother was named Rose, and Dempsey had been unable to avoid the obvious.
And now the bracelet was doing its job in exactly the way Dempsey had hoped it would. Not for nothing had the tradition of gift-giving been instituted. Johnny’s sisters—Maureen, Patricia, Theresa—were all crowded around their mother, with Johnny beaming over Maureen’s shoulder. They, along with Johnny’s mother, were oohing and aahing over the bracelet, passing it from hand to hand, turning it over, holding it up to the light, draping it over a wrist, balancing it on the tip of a finger. Dempsey had, with this simple generosity, deflected everyone’s attention at the crucial moment of their meeting. No one was paying the least mind to her, only to the gift. She was not being subjected to the terrible scrutiny that would have been inflicted on her had she not given the bracelet—at least not inflicted yet. She would have time to make adjustments; she would be allowed to study the sisters, the mother, and Johnny himself, a switch in ritual that only gift-giving could achieve.
Quickly—because there was only so much time—Dempsey noted that the sisters were pretty but not beautiful. Maureen, the oldest, had auburn hair, but the nose was too regal for a face without more prominent cheekbones. Theresa was the one with the big brown eyes, but her face was triangular, diminishing to a tiny pointed chin. And she had too much hair, a profusion of light brown. To Dempsey she looked like a fox trying to be a lion. Patricia, the middle sister, came closest to being a beauty. For her the regal nose had been fitted between two fine cheekbones; for her the mouth had been lengthened and plumped up a bit. Like Johnny, she had deep blue eyes and, for her as for Johnny, the determined chin that was not allowed to stick out too far. But, also like Johnny, she had sand-colored hair. On him, it seemed pleasingly coarse—a sexy indifference to gloss and to shine. But for Patricia, it seemed a deprivation. Should she ever be tempted to consider herself beautiful or perfect, she had only to take note of her coarse hair and the temptation would be beaten back for good. In this way, Patricia’s sandy hair was a form of grace, as were Maureen’s too regal nose and Theresa’s pointy chin. Each had been given a protection against vanity, a weapon against pride. Among them all, only Johnny had been denied some saving flaw. To Dempsey, all the genetic experiments practiced upon the sisters finally found their proper combination in him. Previous errors were corrected; failed trials were rectified. Faults and flaws in his sisters had rearranged themselves in Johnny. Johnny had been given the final reshaping, previous imbalances had been brought in line, new symmetries devised. He defined perfection. And this, Dempsey acknowledged, was what it meant to be in love.
By now the bracelet had exhausted the attention it deserved and, led by Maureen, the sisters descended on Dempsey. Now there were more protracted introductions, handshakes from Patricia and Maureen, a quick kiss from Theresa. It occurred to Dempsey—fleetingly—that her view of the sisters had been distorted. They were, each in her own way, rather beautiful. It was her own standards that may have been awry.
Now Johnny’s arm was around her waist, his nose in her ear, a coupling permissible under the circumstances. The sisters, with their earlier advance upon Dempsey, had merely prepared the way for Johnny’s mother, who had been the last to greet her. She was a fair-sized woman about five and a half feet tall. She had a long narrow face and a long narrow nose. Her eyes were blue and bright and her chin slightly recessive. (Apparently she’d saved her chin allotment for Johnny and for Patricia, cutting Theresa out of the deal completely.) But her hair she’d obviously decided to keep for herself. It was black and shiny. All of her children had been denied even a hint of such sleek fine hair, and Dempsey thought she saw, in the woman’s smile, a secret pleasure, a sly satisfaction, that she’d managed to keep this one splendor for herself.
“I wanted to come down to the ferry,” the woman had said, “but Patricia didn’t make the salad she promised and—well—you understand.” She now took Dempsey by the arm and was leading her away from her children, toward some chairs grouped toward the back of the yard. “And the bracelet’s a honey. A real honey. It’ll fit right in with my collection.”
Dempsey wanted to stop in her tracks, but the pull of the woman’s arm kept her on course toward the chairs. What had made her think that she was being original in giving a woman named Rose a bracelet with a rose on it? In a near whisper, as if this were a confidence, Mrs. Donegan continued: “I have the most extraordinary—extra ordinary—collection of jewelry with roses—earrings, bracelets, rings, brooches, pins, necklaces—you name it. Hat pins you put in your hair even if you don’t wear a hat. I’ve got ’em all. I’ll show it to you some time, the collection. Not today. It’d take the whole afternoon.” Mrs. Donegan held up her arm and wriggled the new bracelet, rattling it against another not completely unlike it.
They had reached the chairs, but just when Dempsey was half-lowered onto a seat, Mrs. Donegan said, “Oh! Wait!” Mrs. Donegan had decided Dempsey must first have a tour of the yard. Dempsey got up. There was a side yard and a backyard. The side yard was for grass bordered by flowers, hyacinths and tulips now gone, but irises and tiger lilies and sweet william in full bloom. (Dempsey knew the names from her still-life classes.) The backyard was for vegetables and it had a toolshed. Between them was a grape arbor, which could also be used as a shaded patio if the sun was too hot. Dempsey, without asking, ate one of the grapes. It was bitter, like a currant. “Jack, my husband,” Mrs. Donegan told her, “made wine as if he were Italian. Every year. The press is in the toolshed if you want to see it. No one drank the wine except Jack. Killed him, I’m convinced of it.”
Dempsey noticed a wobble in the woman’s walk. Mrs. Donegan was wearing pumps with spiked heels. The heels would catch in some of the softer ground and puncture some of the soil as they went.
Next, Dempsey was shown the tomatoes, the beets, the onions and radishes, the lettuce and kale, the poked holes from the high heels pocking the ground wherever they went. When they’d finished, at the six stalks of corn along the back fence, the garden looked as if it had been visited by a pestilence of burrowing rodents that could even now be feasting on beets and onions, on carrots and all the roots that lay beneath the punctured ground.
They returned to the lawn chairs but, again, before Dempsey could settle herself down into her seat, Mrs. Donegan detained her. “No! Wait! Here’s Andrew with the baby.” Once more Dempsey pulled herself upright. There at the side door of the house was a large man and a child. Johnny hadn’t told her anything about the boy who was holding a toy, a plastic bubble the size of a melon, at the end of a stick. There were wheels alongside the bubble and Dempsey could see what looked like colored Ping-Pong balls inside. The hand not holding the toy was covering the child’s eyes.