"There's not enough real life on television," Louisa said.
"That's the whole point," Brindle told her.
"I'd like to see him try scraping the tomato paste out of that little tiny Hunt's can, too."
"Mother, you — went through all this last week," Brindle said. "That's a re-run you were watching, and you made all the same objections too."
"I did not! I knew nothing about such programs last week."
"You told us every bit of it: the lemon zest, the celery…"
"Are you accusing me of a faulty memory?" Louisa asked.
"Ladies. Please," said Morgan. It was, true there seemed to be some problem lately with his mother's memory. She had spells when she was doggedly repetitive; her mind, like — an old record, appeared to stick in certain grooves. But it only made her nervous to have it brought to her attention. He scowled at Brindle, who shrugged and buttered another slice of bread.
Meanwhile his daughters ate in a separate flurry of gossip and quarrels and giggles-seven slim, blue-jeaned girls and then someone else, a little white-haired waif with rhinestone ear studs, some friend of Kate's. She sat between Kate and Amy and stared at Morgan narrowly, as if she disapproved of him. It made him nervous. He was never truly happy if he felt that even the most random passing stranger found him unlikable. He'd begun the meal in a fine mood, twirling his spaghetti theatrically on his fork and speaking in a broad Italian accent, but gradually he lost his enthusiasm. "What do you keep looking at?" he asked now. "Have we met before?"
"Sir?"
"This is Coquette," Kate told him.
"Ah. Coquette."
"Me and her are in the same class at school. We like the same boy." Morgan frowned. "Same what?" he said.
"This boy named Jackson Eps."
"But you're, only in fifth grade!"
"We liked him in fourth grade too."
"This is ridiculous," Morgan told Bonny. Bonny smiled at him; she never knew when to start worrying. "What are things coming to?" he asked his sister.
"Where are we headed, here? It's all these Barbie dolls, Ken dolls, Tinkerbell make-up sets."
"I liked a boy in fifth grade," Brindle said.
"You did?"
"Robert Roberts."
"Oh, Lord, Brindle, not Robert Roberts again."
"Robert Roberts was in fifth grade?" Kate asked. She nudged Coquette. "Robert Roberts was Brindle's childhood sweetheart," she said.
"He was not only in fifth grade," said Brindle, "he was also' in fourth, third, second… We used to have to share our reading-skills workbook; he was always losing' his. In kindergarten we went shopping once at Bargain Billy's and be stuck a label on my cheek reading SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT. He also took me to my first school dance and my first car-date and my senior class, picnic." Morgan sighed and tipped his chair back. Bonny helped herself to more salad.
"Then in college I broke it off, " Brindle told Coquette. "I gave him back his high-school ring with the candle wax still in it to make it fit my finger-half a candle's worth, it looked like. I'd probably have drowned if I ever wore it swimming."
"Why'd you break it off?" Coquette asked her. "I got married to someone else."
"But why'd you break it off? I mean, why marry someone else?" Brindle pushed her plate away and set her elbows on the table. She said, "Well, I don't know if… When I talk about him, it sounds so simple, doesn't it? But see, even back in kindergarten he would sometimes act silly and sometimes bore me, and yet other times I was crazy about him, and when we grew up it got worse. Sometimes I liked him and sometimes I didn't like him, and sometimes I didn't even think of him. And sometimes he didn't like me, I knew it; we knew each other so well. It never occurred to me it would be that way with anyone. I mean, he was my only' experience. You understand what I'm trying to say?" Plainly, Coquette didn't — Understand a word. She was growing restless, glancing toward the plate of Oreos on the sideboard. But Brindle didn't see that. "What I did, " she said, "was marry an older man. Man who lived next door to Mother's old house, downtown. It was a terrible mistake. 'He was the jealous type, possessive, always fearing I would leave him. He never gave me any money, only charge accounts and then this teeny bit of cash for the groceries every week. For seven years I charged our food at the gourmet sections of department stores-tiny cans of ham and pure-white asparagus spears and artichoke bottoms and hearts of palm, all so I could save back some of the grocery money. I would charge a dozen skeins of yarn and then return them one by one to the Knitter's Refund counter for cash. I subscribed, to every cents-off, money-back offer that came along. At the end of seven years I said, 'All right, Horace, I've saved up five thousand dollars of my own. I'm leaving.' And I left."
"She bad to save five thousand dollars," Morgan told the ceiling, "to catch a city bus from her house to my house. Three and a half miles-four at the most."
"I felt I'd been challenged," Brindlesaid.
"And it's not as if I hadn't offered to help her out, all along."
"I felt I wanted to show him, 'See there? You can't overcome me, so easily; I've got more spirit than you think,'" Brindle said.
Morgan wondered if supplies of spirit were rationed. Did each person only get so' much, which couldn't be replenished once it was used up? For in the four years since leaving her husband she'd stayed plopped on Morgan's third floor, seldom dressing in anything but her faded lavender bathrobe. To this day, she'd never mentioned finding a job or an apartment of her own.
And when her husband died of a stroke, not six months after she'd left; she hardly seemed to care one way or the other. "Oh, well," was all she'd said, "I suppose this saves me a trip to Nero."
"Don't you mean Reno?" Morgan had asked.
"Whatever," she said.
The only time she showed any spirit, in fact, was when she was telling this story. Her eyes grew triangular; her skin had a stretched look. "I haven't had an easy time of it, you see," she said. "It all worked out so badly. And Robert Roberts, well, I hear he went and married a Gaithersburg girl. I just turn my back on him for a second and off he goes and gets married. Isn't that something? Not that I hold him to blame. I know I did-it to myself. I've ruined my life, all on my own, and it's far too late to change it. I just set all the switches and did all the steering and headed straight toward ruin." Ruin echoed off the high, sculptured ceiling. Bonny brought the cookies from the sideboard; the girls took two and three apiece as the plate went past. Morgan let his chair tip suddenly forward. He studied 'Brindle with a curious, alert expression on his face, but she didn't seem to notice.
Now he and Bonny were returning from a movie. They slogged down the glassy black pavement toward the bus stop. It was a misty, damp night, warmer than it had been all day. Neon signs blurred into rainbows, and the taillights of cars, sliding off into — the fog, seemed to contract and then vanish. Bonny had her arm linked through Morgan's. She wore a wrinkled raincoat she had owned since he first met her, and crepe-soled shoes that made a luff-luffing sound. "Maybe tomorrow," she said, "you could get the car put back together."
"Yes, maybe," said Morgan absently. "We've been riding buses all week." Morgan was thinking about the movie. It hadn't seemed very believable to him. Everyone bad been so sure of what everyone else was going to do. The hero, who was some kind of double agent, had laid all these elaborate plans that depended on some other, unknowing person appearing in a certain place or making a certain decision, and the other person always obliged. Sentries looked away at crucial moments. High officials — went to dinner just when they usually went to dinner. Didn't B ever happen instead of A, in these people's lives? Morgan plodded steadily, frowning at his feet. From out of nowhere the memory came to him of the hero's manicured, well-tended hands expertly assembling a rifle from random parts smuggled through in a leather briefcase.