Duplex (18 page)

A
S FOR JANICE, SHE KEPT TREATING US LIKE GIRLS LONG after we were grown women. One of us went so far as to die—the last time we saw Janice was at the funeral. The service was over and people were milling around outside the chapel, some of them sobbing, some of them swatting at flies. It was a small chapel made of stone, the charming building in which Mary and Walter Woodard had exchanged their marriage vows and not far from the Italianate mansion where his father lived until he died or disappeared—even now there continued to be contention around this subject. On the other hand, everyone agreed Woodard Village had to be the greatest money-laundering venture ever.

What are you waiting for? Janice asked. She had climbed behind the wheel of one of those large beige vans mothers of six tended to drive, though as far as everyone knew Janice had remained childless. If you don’t mind crowding together, she told us, I can fit you all in.

The reception was at the house where the deceased lived until she died; it was attached to the house in which a widower named O’Toole had gradually turned from man to ghost before escaping up the chimney. Most of us had gotten off the street years ago, though you could hardly call that an advantage. After a while the mere fact of being able to move from place to place supplanted the wish to conquer time but it was a poor substitute. Everyone knew the meaning of a thing didn’t emerge until there’d been an ending and you could finally see how all the parts worked together.

I hope you remember what I told you about Pangaea, Janice said. The giant lump of stone, the giant sea? The black locket, the friendship rings, the socks? Because if we hadn’t figured it out by now, it was the dead woman who’d been stealing things from us. Doll dresses, trading cards, you name it.

She always thought she was better than everyone, Janice said. You know that, don’t you?

What we knew by now was that for as long as we’d known her Janice had suffered under the impression that everyone thought they were better than she was. Since the last time we’d been together Henry had gotten a divorce and married a former gymnast, and Janice had remarried twice. Her latest husband had been unable to attend the funeral—he needed to have some part of himself replaced.

Being better doesn’t do you any good, Janice said. I hope you all know that by now.

As the sweet apple reddens on a high branch, high on the highest branch the apple pickers forgot—no, not forgot: were unable to reach. She didn’t say it aloud, the way she would have before; instead the curly-haired girl nodded, even though Janice couldn’t see her from where she sat. Janice was right, the girl thought. She was sitting in the way back, between the girl who had become a chemist and the girl who lived on a farm. The chemist was telling them that some molecules were unusual in that they were able to form bonds that couldn’t be broken and were called exquisite, and that gold had the unusual advantage of being neither left-nor right-handed. Just like my goats! said the other girl. She had turned out prettier than everyone expected but also not so very bright.

Of course none of us were girls anymore. We weren’t
really
old yet, but we were having trouble from time to time remembering things like what we’d had for dinner the night before. Most of us had married, some more than once. Some of us had children, one of us had a grandchild.

It’s not easy to have a good marriage, Janice said—she seemed to be addressing herself. Then she sighed and honked her horn at something no one else could see. Had any of us heard about the worm addicted to grape leaves? she asked, letting up on the accelerator and giving another little honk of the horn. Of course we hadn’t, as Janice well knew—no one had heard of it. There was a worm addicted to grape leaves, she continued, and suddenly it woke up. Call it a miracle, whatever, something woke it up and it wasn’t a worm anymore. It was the whole vineyard, and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, an ever-expanding joy that didn’t need to devour anything.

She sped up, driving the van down the third of the three hills, past the school and the water tower and across the railroad bridge.

I can’t remember the last time I was back here, someone said. She’d married a foreigner and had developed a bit of an accent.

Worms? said someone else. Is she talking about worms now?

I would kill for a drink, said the chemist.

Amazingly, there was one parking spot left at the end of the street up near the Avenue; Janice began the complicated job of maneuvering the van into it.

We used to sit there, the curly-haired girl said, on those very steps. Very eyes, she recalled Janice saying and someone asking, what are very eyes? It might have been the dead woman but she couldn’t be sure. That’s where I traded everything away, the girl thought. Night had been falling. The stars had just been coming out though really they’d been there all along. They were there now behind the bright blue banner that was the sky.

The dead woman’s parents had money, Janice said; I wonder what became of it? They wanted lots of children, more or less in the spirit of plantation owners wanting slaves, but they only got the one. After grade school they sent her off to a boarding school where she wore a blue uniform and everyone studied the classics, the kind of place you’d go if you wanted to learn Greek so you could read things like those poems you were always so keen on. She caught the curly-haired girl’s eye in the rearview mirror. But the poor thing was never much of a student, was she? I heard she played cover point on the JV lacrosse team and she enjoyed history, but only because she had a crush on the teacher.

In grade school she could do the times tables faster than anyone, said the chemist.

That’s just memorizing, said Janice. In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue. No big deal. Anyone can memorize. You, me. Chimps, even. What I’m saying is she didn’t have brains.

She’s dead, said the smallest of the little sisters who’d grown into a large woman with a flourishing business of her own. She was our friend. Why can’t someone say something nice about her?

We’d spent a lot of time together a long time ago but Janice was right. Like Pangaea, when the parts came back together, the coastline of Asia didn’t dovetail with South America, just as you couldn’t make a pair anyone would want to trade for out of Pinkie and a horse. Some continents moved faster and farther than others. The one who’d married a foreigner became a famous opera singer.

After boarding school she went to college, Janice continued. She went to a good school, but that was because her parents had money. The kind of school where they dance around a maypole but also volunteer at soup kitchens. That kind of place. She was still a whiz at memorizing facts; everyone’s always been hot for facts. Dates, names, you know what I mean. She majored in history. She knew loads of things. She knew the War of the Roses didn’t have anything to do with roses. She knew about all the wars. Don’t major in history if you don’t want to hear about wars. She knew about General Wolfe scaling the Heights of Abraham. She knew about the atom bomb. She knew secret restricted data about brown-skinned people being used as guinea pigs after the Castle Bravo accident. She even knew about the Know-Nothings.

I hate this, the opera singer said. This is boring. She was standing toward the back of the group, trying to speak sotto voce, but Janice overheard her.

History
is
boring, Janice concurred, undaunted as usual. It’s not like the Ride of the Valkyries. It’s what comes
before
history that isn’t boring. She hummed a little,
hoyotoho, hoyotoho.
Prophecy, she said. Prophecy isn’t boring.

Getting old had agreed with Janice, bringing her bones closer to the surface. For the funeral she’d donned a plain black dress and was wearing her hair in a twist—she looked a little like a sibyl.

We should go inside, said the chemist. It’ll seem weird if we stay out here any longer.

Everyone began moving up the steps, closer to the front door. Summer was over but the trees had yet to let go of their leaves. The air was still warm but it had a cool blade in it, sharpening the shadows of the sycamores. The women could hear the sound of music coming through the open windows of the deceased’s house—someone was playing the piano. They could also hear the sound of many people speaking all at once but keeping their voices down, in deference to the dead.

She always wanted to be a good girl, Janice reminded us, turning from where she stood at the door, her hand on the knob.

I thought you said she was the one who stole things, someone said.

Sure, Janice said. She did. But nothing really valuable.

That locket was a family heirloom, said someone else.

Be that as it may, Janice replied. She didn’t finish the thought.

What was important was that the deceased was no different from the rest of us. She went to school and she said her prayers and eventually all the bad things she never allowed herself to do blended together inside her into a feeling that wouldn’t come to the surface like the bubble in the carpenter’s level that was still down there in what used to be her father’s cellar workshop.

If you don’t believe me, go look, Janice said. That’s what happens to girls when they have the wish to be good, so good they almost can’t be seen.

I heard she was pretty tall when she died, said the farmer. I heard they had to cut her feet off to fit her in the coffin.

Oh for heaven’s sake, said the chemist.

That’s just a fairy tale, said someone else.

The opera singer began to sing: Light she was and like a fairy and her shoes were number nine. For a moment her voice took us with it as it flew skyward, before dropping us back down to the ground.

Inside the house was extremely hot, even with the changing season and the windows open. Whoever was playing the piano was proficient but musically oblivious, speeding through a series of maudlin tunes as if there were no tomorrow.

That trip to Italy was the high point of her life, a family member was saying, pointing to a large framed print of Michelangelo’s
David
hanging over the piano.

I had no idea, said the opera singer. Like the rest of us, she was visibly brighter now that she had a glass of whiskey in her hand. I thought the only place she went was to the shore, like everyone else around here.

It was a tour, Janice said. Milan to Florence to Venice to Rome. She met a man in Florence and took him back to her hotel room with her. He wasn’t as handsome as David but he was Italian and, more important, he had all the working parts. During the night bats got into the room through the shutters and flew around and around up near the ceiling. The hotel had very high ceilings—at first she and the man tried standing on the bed and using pillowcases to chase the bats out the windows, but after a while they gave up. In the morning the bats had curled themselves into little balls in the agapanthus leaves of the ceiling fixture and the man was gone.

An Italian lover, said the opera singer. Who would have thought it.

That’s why she worked for a travel agent, Janice said. Because of that tour. Every day when she went to work she sat in an office with posters of exotic places hanging on the walls. Not just London and Paris. Nepal. Machu Picchu. You get all kinds of discounts if you work for a travel agent. But she never took advantage of them. She went to her college reunions and she went to the shore and that was about it. Until she came down with lung cancer she was pretty healthy. She didn’t smoke. She did some yoga. I think she was in a book club for a while, but she quit when they stopped talking about the books and started talking about personal things like their feelings.

We never went to the shore, said the farmer. We couldn’t afford to. Every summer I’d watch you all drive away in your station wagons. Then I’d go up to my room and play My Little Pony. I was heartbroken but I never told anyone except the ponies. Of course they couldn’t hear a thing.

Like that poor girl left behind by the Aquanauts, said someone else. That poor girl they left all alone.

Right, said the chemist. What about her?

By this time they had moved through the living room and dining room and kitchen and out the back door into the little yard. In the yard on the other side of the stockade fence someone was burning leaves.

I thought this time the story was going to be about the Great Division, said the opera singer. I have to admit I’m disappointed.

You wouldn’t think there’d be enough leaves yet to make a pile, the farmer said. She rose on her tiptoes to look over the fence.

Janice accepted a scallop wrapped in bacon from a tray offered by a serving person wearing a tight black dress and a small white apron. Disappointed? she said. What do you mean disappointed?

Just that this time nothing’s happening, not like with the Rain of Beads or the Horsewomen or the Aquanauts, the opera singer said.

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Janice had unwrapped the scallop and was looking at it critically. Sometimes they weren’t real scallops but skate cut in the shape of scallops with a cookie cutter. The way you could tell was if there was a hinge.

That was the important thing, Janice explained—the hinge not only being the place where a real scallop attached itself to its shell, but also the place where you could go forward and back with equal ease.

A lot of things happened, Janice said. Weren’t you listening? The way things happen to all of us. At some point the dead woman stopped being a child; she put her foot down. She went to school, she went to Italy, she went to work, she got sick and died. Some people live to be older than she did. Some people get married or have families. You could even be highly thought of by a lot of people before you die. You could be famous.

She means the opera singer, thought the curly-haired woman. Everyone knows who she is even if they hate opera. She’s over the hill and she’s still terrific-looking and she hasn’t had any work done. I
hate
you, thought the curly-haired woman, but she didn’t, not really. Out of all the girls she’d grown up with, the opera singer had always been one of her favorites.