Bad Behavior: Stories (25 page)

Other times they’d just sit at the kitchen table and drink tea. Virginia was astonished at the things she told Lily during these afternoons. Lily knew things about Virginia that very few other people knew. Virginia did not know why she confided in her. She had been lonely. The afternoon kitchen was sunny and lulling. Lily listened intently. She asked questions. She asked a lot of questions about Magdalen.

“But don’t you like Magdalen?” she asked once. “Weren’t there good times when she was growing up?”

“Magdalen could be the most lovely, charming child in the world—if she wanted to be. She’d give you the shirt off her back—if she was in the mood.
If
she was in the mood. But to answer your question, no, I don’t like Magdalen. I love her—I love her dearly—because I’m her mother and I can’t help it. But I don’t like her.”

Lily stared at her, pale and troubled.

“Don’t you ever repeat that. It’s very private. If Magdalen ever comes to me and says, ‘Mama, Lily says you don’t like me,’ I’ll say you’re lying.”

As they talked, Lily rested her elbow on a small pile of schoolbooks. She carried these books to and from school every day. One of them had a split green cover that showed its gray cardboard stuffing and a dirty strip of masking tape running up its broken spine. Whenever Lily heard Jarold pull into the driveway, she would grab her books and leave the room. Jarold would come in and see her cup on the table, its faint sugary crust fresh around the bottom. He’d never say anything, but his mouth got sarcastic.

Virginia tried to get Jarold to be nicer to Lily. “She’s got a special kind of charm,” she said. “She’s gentle and low-key. She listens, and she has fresh insights.” Sometimes Jarold looked as though he were listening to this.

But Lily wouldn’t or couldn’t show Jarold her charm. To him, she displayed only her most annoying aspects. And they really were annoying. She almost never said anything at family meals; she either kept her head down and chewed, or stared at people. She ignored Jarold, and sometimes she ignored Virginia too. She was judgmental; she was always talking about what was wrong with the world. She never helped with the dishes or anything else. She was always going into the refrigerator and eating the last piece of pie or cheesecake or whatever dessert was there. She’d say weird things, and when you’d ask her to explain what she meant, she’d say, “Oh, never mind.” She’d sit around looking as if somebody had been beating her with a stick. She’d droop on the wall. She was depressing.

In September, Lily would sit with her books on the floor of the den at night, reading and underlining sentences with fat turquoise lines. Virginia would be on the couch reading the paper, her square brown glasses on the end of her nose. The TV would be on, usually a talk show neither of them wanted to see. On the coffee table there’d be a fat economy-size jar of olives, which they both ate from. They’d talk intermittently, and Virginia liked to think that her silent presence was an encouragement to Lily’s studying.

In September, Lily got good grades on her quizzes. Her art teacher said nice things about her drawings. She got an A-plus on a humanities
paper, and the teacher read it aloud to the class. Virginia called Anne and read it to her.

During October, Lily stopped studying on the floor of the den. She left her broken-backed books on the couch and went upstairs to her room and shut the door. Virginia could hear the radio playing behind the door for hours. She wondered irritably what Lily was doing in there.

On weekends her long-haired friends would come to the door and she’d disappear for the entire day. At night they’d hear the screen door slam, and Lily would pat through the den, her bell-bottoms swishing, her face distantly warm and airy. She’d float down the hall without a word.

The second week in October, Mr. Shin, the school disciplinarian, called Virginia. He told her that Lily was rude in the classroom and that she used obscene language. Two weeks later he called again, this time to say that he thought Lily was taking drugs.

Virginia thought Mr. Shin had a repulsive voice. She thought he was deliberately persecuting Lily for reasons having nothing to do with obscene language or drugs. Lily once said that Mr. Shin told her that her IQ was below normal, that she belonged in a mental hospital, and that he didn’t blame her parents for not wanting her. At first Virginia was angry. She thought of telling Jarold to call Mr. Shin and tell him to leave Lily alone. But then she realized that Jarold was in agreement with him. Then she felt embarrassed. After all, Mr. Shin was right, Lily did use obscene language, casually and often. She did take drugs.

It was Lily’s birthday. Jarold was out of town on business. Daniel and Charles had bought her a deck of tarot cards and a pair of earrings. There was a boxed cake in the refrigerator. Virginia was going to ask Lily what she wanted for dinner, but when Lily came home she was too high to answer the question. She tried to act normal, but she couldn’t She said weird things and giggled. Lily almost never giggled; it was a strangely unpleasant sound.

Virginia sent the boys to visit their friends next door. Then she turned to Lily. “You are a constant irritant,” she said. “I’ll never
forgive Anne for dumping you on me, although the poor woman was probably desperate to get rid of you.” She didn’t remember what she said after that. She was furious, so it probably wasn’t very nice. She recalled that Lily said nothing, that she seemed to shrink and become concave. She kept pulling her hair in front of her mouth and holding it there.

It was very different from the way Magdalen had acted when Virginia would catch her on drugs. Virginia could scream at Magdalen, and call her anything she liked. Magdalen would follow her around, her long legs working in big strides, eyes blazing. she’d yell, “Mom! Mom, you know that’s a bunch of shit. What about the time you …”

But Lily just sat there, becoming more and more expressionless.

Virginia slept with Lily that night. She went into her room, no longer angry but with a sense of duty, concerned that Lily know she was cared for, that she wouldn’t go through the drug experience alone.

She found her lying on the bed with all her clothes on, staring. Virginia made her change into her nightgown and get under the blankets. She turned out the light and got into bed with her. Lily went into a tight curl and turned her face to the wall. Virginia got the impression that she didn’t understand why Virginia was there.

Virginia said, “Well? Don’t you want to talk?”

Lily didn’t answer for a long time. Then she said, “About what?”

“Whatever’s on your mind.”

Another long pause.

“There’s nothing on my mind.”

Her words sounded disconnected, not only from her but from each other. Virginia suddenly wanted her to go home, back to Michigan. It would be easy. All she had to do was tell Jarold that she’d been taking drugs.

“Well, that’s funny. Magdalen was a talker.”

“About what? What did she talk about?” She sounded genuinely interested.

“Oh, about boys. There was one in particular. David. I remember the name because she kept moaning it over and over.” She hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but it was hard not to.

Lily didn’t say anything.

They lay there in silence, not even scratching or shifting. Every time one of them swallowed, it was obvious that she was trying to do it quietly. Virginia’s nightgown was hot and her feet were dry. She felt as if she couldn’t close her eyes. She remembered the afternoon conversations they had shared and their walks in the mountains. They seemed meaningless now—like bits of color glimpsed through a kaleidoscope. She felt an unhappy chill.

Virginia turned, and the blankets rasped in the long silence. In a fiercely sudden move, she put her body against Lily’s, and her arm around her. She waited, almost frightened.

For several seconds there was no reaction. Then Virginia could feel every muscle in Lily’s body slowly tightening. Lily’s body became rigid. Her back began to sweat.

They lay like that, uncomfortably, for a long time. Having moved, it was hard for Virginia to turn away again.

The next day they ate birthday cake from paper plates on their laps as they watched TV. Jarold said, “Well, do you feel fifteen?”

“I don’t know,” said Lily.

It seemed like she really didn’t know. She looked badly shaken. Jarold didn’t say anything else. Charles stopped eating his cake and looked at Lily for a long moment. He looked puzzled and disturbed; for one thing, Lily loved cake and she hadn’t eaten any of the cake in her lap.

Virginia didn’t tell Jarold about the drugs, but he got rid of Lily anyway. She had stayed out with her friends one night, and he had her things packed when she came back the next morning. They drove her to the airport within the hour and left her waiting for a standby flight with her clothes in a big white shopping bag. Virginia kissed her good-bye, but it didn’t feel like anything.

That night Anne called. Lily had not gone home. She had taken
a plane to Canada instead. “I don’t think we’ll send anybody after her this time,” said Anne. “It wouldn’t do any good. Nothing we ever did was any good.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” said Virginia.

For a few days afterward, Jarold talked about how awful it had been to have Lily there. Then he forgot about it. Charles was the last person to mention her. It was shortly after Virginia got a call from Magdalen. He said, “You and Dad were always acting like Lily and Magdalen were alike. But they weren’t anything alike at all.

For a while after that, life was okay. Magdalen was still acting like an idiot, but seemed to have stabilized in a harmless way; she had a steady job as a waitress in a health-food restaurant in South Carolina, and talked about astral travel and crystal healing when they called her. Camille was in law school at Harvard. She was engaged to a handsome, smiling med student. She sent glorious twelve-page letters to her mother on multicolored stationery covered with purple or turquoise ink. She described her teachers and her friends. She wrote about how much she loved Kevin, how much she wanted to have children and a career. She recorded her dreams and the art exhibits she’d seen. Virginia imagined Camille sitting at her desk in class. Her legs were folded restfully before her, her body slouched with arrogant feminine ease, but her neck was erect and her large eyes watchful. She imagined her sitting at an outdoor café, her bony knees childishly tilted together under the table, her long hands draped on top of her warm coffee cup as she leaned forward, laughing with her friends. She saw Camille walking across campus with Kevin. His brown jacket was loose on her shoulders, protecting her.

Daniel and Charles grew up easily. They trooped around the house with noisy bunches of boys who all seemed to have light, swinging arms and stinging, nasty voices. At times their eyes were dull and brutish. They told cruel, violent jokes and killed animals. They were mean to other children. But they harbored a sweetness and vulnerability that became exposed at unexpected moments. And
they were still her little boys. She could hear it in the way Charles called, “Mom?” when he couldn’t sleep at night. She would pass by his room and hear his voice float plaintively from the darkness. She would look in and see him sitting up in his gray-and-white pajamas, slim and spare against the headboard, his blond hair standing up in pretty spikes. She would sit on his bed for at least an hour. Sometimes she would lift up his pajama top and gently scratch his warm back. He loved that.

When Daniel was fifteen, he found a girlfriend. She was fourteen. she was very short and had dark hair and gentle hands. She had a round, sweet face and worried eyes. She worried about things like ecology. She sat in the kitchen with Daniel after school, eating Virginia’s sandwiches and talking about the EPA and whales. Her feet, in striped tennis shoes, barely touched the floor. Daniel admired her as he ate his sandwich. He stopped killing squirrels with BB guns.

When Charles was twelve, he was in a school play. He was one of the Lost Boys in the high school production of
Peter Pan
, a boy named Tootles. It was a small part, and he was nonchalant about it, but he loved to dress in his contrived rags and make his eyes fiendish with black eye paint. He came home from rehearsal that way. Virginia would see a beam of light in the driveway, then hear a car door slam and muffled voices. The door would bang and Charles would appear, nimbly swaggering in his frayed knickers and flapping sleeves. He’d grab something to eat from the kitchen and wheel into the den, yelling his lines in a mocking voice. “You see, sir, I don’t think my mother would like me to be a pirate. Would your mother like you to be a pirate, Slightly?”

She went to the play on opening night and sat in the front row with Jarold and Daniel. Charles was vibrant on stage. His airy movements had more authority than anyone else’s in the cast, except the lead. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. The pale little girl playing Wendy lay fainting before him in her white nightgown, her long brown hair fanned across his feet. He said, “When ladies used
to come to me in dreams I said, ‘Pretty mother, pretty mother.’ But when at last she really came, I shot her.” Tears came to her eyes. She looked at Jarold and saw him smiling and blinking rapidly. Charles said, “I know I am just Tootles and nobody minds me. But the first who does not behave to Wendy like an English gentleman, I will blood him severely.”

When the play ended, Virginia went to the dressing room. It was an old classroom with heavy wooden mirrors propped against the walls and cardboard boxes full of makeup and cold cream on the desks. Children were leaping around the room, chattering and singing songs from the play in sarcastic voices. They were bright-eyed and demonic when seen up close. Virginia saw Charles. She saw him dip his hand into a jar of cold cream, turn and slap it across a timid-looking girl’s face. The girl smiled painfully and tried to laugh. Another girl pointed at her and laughed. Charles turned away.

She dreamed of a conversation with Lily. They were sitting at the kitchen table with cups of tea before them. She said, “After I had Daniel, the doctors told me that I shouldn’t have any more children. They said it would be unsafe. I was lying there in the hospital when they came in and announced, ‘While we’ve got you here, we’re going to tie your tubes.’ And I said, ‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ I wouldn’t let them do it. and the next year I had Charles.” She smiled foolishly at Lily.