"In the Family," says Gwen, "we aren't allowed to have full-time jobs."
"That figures."
"If you got more schooling," says Kathleen, "they give you a better jawb. Whether your typing's good or not. My cousin, she went to Boston State two years, she walked into a haws- pital looking for a receptionist jawb and they made her head clerk in accounting. She gets holidays, paid vacation, health insurance — "
"I went to Nawtheastern one semester," says Barbara. "But I quit. I couldn't see it, out on the fuckin Green Line every day to sit in a classroom. My girlfriend dropped out and then I quit."
"Where'd you go to college?" Chickie is looking at Nina. Nina hadn't said anything about going to school. "BU?"
"No."
"Where then?"
"Bard."
"Sod, what's Bod? I never heard of it."
"It's in New York."
"You from there?"
"Connecticut."
"From Connecticut and went to school in New York. What, you moved? What'd you take there, what'd you major in?"
"English."
"You should be a teacher."
"I tried it. Substituting. I didn't like it."
Chickie snorts. "Substituting isn't the same thing. Substitutes, it was tawture what we used to put them through. They know about that at Career Girls? The English?"
"I suppose."
"Prawbly doesn't cut a whole lot in office work, does it? Well, you got nice handwriting, anyway."
Nina eats and watches the kids. They are crowded around the tables, arms brushing, spearing forkfuls of cake from each other's trays, jostling, teasing. She spots a couple she'd like to take home with her, little curlyheads with bright eyes. The counselors talk among themselves over the children's heads.
"I think it's a bad jawb," says Chickie da Costa. "The minute I heard it on the radio I smelled a rat. Somebody bought em that podden."
The big item in the morning news is Governor Dukakis officially pardoning Sacco and Vanzetti, clearing their names in the record books.
"How do you know?"
"Hey, those Mafia, they get in trouble, the big cheeses down in Prawvidence bail em out."
"They aren't Mafias," says Barbara. "It said they're political."
"Mafia, politicians, it's the same bunch. Dukawkis is in the bag."
"They're dead," says Nina. "They were anarchists who were accused of a robbery. The evidence wasn't any good but they were electrocuted anyway."
"They're dead already?"
"They died in nineteen twenty. But they weren't cleared officially till today."
"Huh." Chickie shakes her head. "Lotta good it does em now."
"What's that?" Kathleen is looking at Gwen's lunch.
"Pork."
"Oh."
"You ought to try some of this," says Chickie. "It's real good. And they don't chodge us for seconds."
"No thank you."
"They packed that for you, the Family?"
"Food isn't important."
"Right." Chickie nudges Nina under the table, rolls her eyes. "Food's not impawtant. I hope my stomach's listening. And you, you're not eatin Bobra?"
"I don't have much of an appetite today."
Barbara excuses herself to go to the bathroom.
"She doesn't look good," says Mary.
"She suppawts her boyfriend," says Chickie. "A real loser. I seen them together she comes to Career Girls for her check."
"She looks tired."
"She's wrecked so much of the time, she can't hold a jawb. That's why she does this stuff. Idiot work."
"And he doesn't have a jawb?"
"Not that you'd notice. I asked her. I was thinkin of moving in with my boyfriend. But both of us would be bringin it home, we'd split the rent. We want to go to the Bahamas."
"What's there, the Bahamas?"
"Real nice beaches, hotels, trawpical forests. He's been once before."
"With somebody else?"
"Won't tell me." Chickie makes a face. "That's one of the reasons I'm not movin in, there's too much stuff he doesn't tell me."
"You think she's smoking a joint in there?"
"I wouldn't be surprised, Mary. Personally, I can't see it. Makes the time drag, makes the day go longer."
"Speaking of which, here comes Lover-Boy."
"Spare me. Are you guys done?"
Deke walks toward them with his lunch, flashing his smile, singing. He sings along with his radio all day. As he sits the Career Girls all stand and take their trays to the waste barrel.
The houses were set hundreds of feet back from the meandering road, some of them completely out of sight behind stone walls and giant elms. The lawns were left shaggy but not overgrown. The stone walls were carved into flat planes, into long rectangles and rounded pillars, as if the Yankee masons wanted to do in stone what Europeans did in shrubbery.
Two granite statues had once flanked the entrance to the driveway, a lion and a lioness looking haughtily across the gravel to each other. The lion's paw had rested on a small globe which disappeared one night, neatly separated as if it had spun away under its own power. The lion disappeared soon after, leaving only the marble base. Mother supposed it was fraternity boys back from Easter vacation, that it had turned up in some New Haven dormitory, painted and scrawled with graffiti. When Nina was little she imagined that it had risen of its own and run off to search for the missing ball. That it had made itself mortal by sheer willpower, every day growing warmer to the touch, thawing from the inside out, till it had walked away one night, stiffly, proudly, leaving little piles of rock dust for tracks.
The lioness stayed, but didn't look as sure of itself.
Redboy was sleeping on the empty pedestal when Nina drove in, the big Irish setter Mr. Worth had brought when he moved in with Mother. Redboy had an enormous head and snored when he slept.
It was a large colonial house, white with black shutters and shingles. Only the name on the box had changed since Nina lived there.
Nina ate shrimp salad with her mother in the sun-room.
"You're moving out?"
"We decided it was best. There isn't room enough for three."
"Do you like him?"
"Hummer? No, not much."
"Robin's parents won't be happy."
"They're never happy."
"And how is your friend Meredith?"
Nina hadn't heard from Meredith for over a year.
"Okay, I guess. Still in med school."
"And little Sara?"
"She went back to California."
"And the one I thought was so lovely, the Jewish girl — "
"She got married."
"Oh."
Mr. Worth wasn't there. Nina usually managed to time it so he'd be off on business.
"They were such nice girls. Do you see any of your other friends in Boston?"
"Most of them are down in the City. Boston is a two-year town, three at most. They do their time and then move to New York."
"Oh."
Her mother nodded for a long moment.
"Gloria Fortner died."
Nina tried to remember which one she was.
"The second this year. One of our most faithful classmates."
Mother devoted herself to reunions. Smith, class of '43. It was an obsession, getting the girls together. Mother bombarded them with newsletters, with old pictures, with birth and death announcements, with arrangements for the next get-together. She made tours of the East, New York to Philadelphia to Boston, catching old classmates at home and staying on for a few days.
"I'm trying to get a contingent together for the service. It's in Branford."
"People are busy, Mother — "
"It seems they have less and less time as they get older. With me it's the opposite."
"Maybe if you left a little more time between reunions, Mother, people would have a chance to recover, to get nostalgic again."
"It isn't nostalgia," said Mother. "It's friendship."