MARY AND O'NEIL (4 page)

But where? Outside, beyond the smoked glass of the library foyer, the sky is so white it seems to tremble, poised on the very edge of snow. Leaves whirl in the parking lot, nearly empty now of cars, a temporary oasis of calm tucked between toddler story-hour and the full-blown hurricane of the after-school rush. Miriam looks at her watch and sees that it is noon, on the button. Where is Arthur? She is already wearing her coat—she had expected to find him, waiting at the curb, twenty minutes ago—and the dry heat of the foyer has begun to close in on her, dampening her frame with perspiration. Should she go back in and call? And if no one answers—if he is neither home nor at the office—what then? For a brief moment she fears that something has happened—Arthur is not the best driver; he has seemed, of late, even more distracted, more airy, than usual—but then she realizes it is herself she is thinking of. Arthur is fine; Arthur is late. Sighing to hear herself sigh, she removes her coat, her hat, her gloves; finding then that her arms are too full, she puts the coat back on, leaving it unbuttoned, and checks her watch again. Beneath her coat and her white turtleneck sweater and her brassiere’s gleaming apparatus of wire and lace, in the folds of skin where her left breast meets her rib cage, a bright point of cancer glows.

She is thinking, then, of her children, Kay and O’Neil, and of her daughter’s wedding, fourteen months ago. A bright day in September: all the trees had just begun to turn, beneath a sky so vastly blue—blue like neon, so blue it seemed to buzz—it was impossible not to remark on it. (
Such perfect weather!
they all said.
And the sky!
) After the ceremony everyone drove back to the house, where a tent had been erected in the yard. The memory visits her in a series of pictures: Kay in her wedding dress, a full gown studded with small white stones; her husband, Jack, whom Miriam wishes to like but can’t, handsomely serious in his gray morning coat; his hard-drinking relatives from St. Louis—nearly all of them were bankers or the wives of bankers, it seemed—smoking cigarettes and talking up a storm as the waiters in their black pants and pressed white shirts passed trays of cheese and crab puffs and tiny things on sticks; Arthur’s mother, just recovered from gall bladder surgery, rising, somehow, against the tidal pull of age, to shuffle through a dance. From the sidelines she watched the tiny floor fill up—Jack and Kay, Arthur and his mother, the bankers and their wives—turned, then, to find O’Neil beside her, smiling, then taking her elbow in his hand. C’mon, he said. The band was playing something, she guessed, you could lindy to. I won’t tell my shrink if you don’t. You do dance, right, Ma?

She looked at him, pleasure filling her like water pouring into a vase: her grown son just back from his first two weeks of college, all smooth white teeth and rangy limbs, his eyes glowing with champagne. How had it happened? Why did she miss him so, when he was standing right there? She hadn’t cried during the wedding but now it seemed she was about to; it was possible she would begin to cry and never stop, so she let him take her to the dance floor, place his hand at the small of her back, and steer her into and through the music—when had he learned to do this?—then spin her out to the ends of his fingers, catching her before she flew away. She saw herself, as if from the corner of her eye: a blur of blue dress, arcing like a comet’s tail away from the sun’s bright heat and light; the boy in his gray suit, taller by far than she, hurling her outward and reeling her in again. As the song’s last bars approached he folded his arms over her somehow, catching her weight as he tipped her back on one foot; her other foot rose, and before she knew what had happened her full weight was in his arms. Her hair skimmed the floor, blood filling her skull in a dizzying rush; O’Neil, her boy, had his mama in a full dip. As he returned her to a standing position she detected, around her, a smattering of jokey applause.

As the next song began he tipped his head across the floor toward his sister and Jack, who was wiping the lenses of his heavy eyeglasses on a handkerchief.

“Aw, he’s not so bad, Ma,” O’Neil said. He handed her a glass of ice water; she hadn’t even seen him get it. “You know? So it’d be okay to lighten up a little. At least for Kay.”

The remark startled her. Had she been so obvious? And it was true, about Jack: he seemed rigid and fusty to her, not at all like the boys Kay had dated in high school and then college—clever, flirtatious, quick with a joke—and not at all like O’Neil or his friends, whom Miriam adored. She drank the water O’Neil had handed her, surprised to find how much she wanted it. No, she couldn’t quite bring herself to like him, much as she’d tried. From the first day Kay had brought him home to visit, she had thought it; his life was a train he expected her to board. She saw it all: the old station wagon strewn with toys and the sacks of groceries in back, the dry dinners with deans and visiting economists, the burrowing claws of life on the margins of some small college town. (And wasn’t it also true that she, Miriam, had never really gotten along with Kay? That love was one thing but getting along was something else, and there had been, well, certain difficulties, certain unnameable tensions, between them? That this gap was the very one Kay had chosen to fill with Jack? Making it, in the end, Miriam’s fault?) So, no. She didn’t like him, not one bit. But more than this, she had forgotten—actually
forgotten,
if for a moment—that the party was her daughter’s, not O’Neil’s. The yellow stripes of the tent, the band’s silly music, the crispness of the autumn air, and the calming presence of the waiters and waitresses gliding through the company with trays in their hands—she had forgotten that all of this has been called into being by her daughter’s decision to marry Jack.

“Mom? Come in, Mom.”

She looked up to find O’Neil, grinning and wagging his eyebrows. A waiter moved past, and she placed the empty water glass on his tray, trading it for a full one of champagne.

“Ammunition,” she said then, and drank; she smiled back at O’Neil, who was drinking too. She thought about telling him to go easy on the champagne, but decided quickly not to. Beyond the walls of the tent it had begun to grow dark, blue afternoon bruising to black. One of the caterers was firing up the propane heaters that hung on poles in each of the tent’s four corners.

“All right, hon.” She put down the empty champagne glass. “The mother of the bride will go ask her son-in-law to dance.”

“Now you’re talking.” He rolled his eyes. “I’m sure that will be, you know, interesting. Jack is an interesting guy.”

“Very,” she agreed, and touched his sleeve. “But I’m not doing it to make you laugh. For Kay, like you said.”

And so she danced with Jack (O’Neil, solving a problem, appeared at that moment to take Kay by the arm and whisk her off across the floor); she danced with him not once but twice, and though he talked her ears off—all nonsense about his dissertation and his theories of wage and price controls, and which uncle was a partner in which St. Louis investment firm, as if she might someday have some serious money to spend in St. Louis—she found herself, for that time, liking him, almost, just as O’Neil had hoped. He was just a nervous boy, not really a man at all, uncertain how to dance with a grown woman or where to place his gaze and what to say to her while he did so (nothing;
Say nothing,
she thought). He was doing his very best, in other words, and what else was there to wish for? When it was over, he made a little bow, awkwardly hugged her; looking over her shoulder, he might have actually called her Mom.

The sound of a car horn: Arthur, idling at the curb, is waving to her from the wheel of the mud-spattered Peugeot. Miriam buttons her coat again and heads outside to meet him. Their suitcases are in the backseat, as promised, and a surprise: beside them she sees their old wicker picnic basket, with a wool blanket folded neatly on top. Greasy diesel fumes huff out the tailpipe and are whisked away into the autumn air.

“Sorry.” He makes a flustered gesture with his hands. “I decided to pack a lunch. And I couldn’t find the goddamn cat again.”

“You and Nestor need to work some things out.” She arranges herself in the front seat. “Anyway. You did find him? And left him some food? We’re not abandoning him to the foxes, in other words?”

“He was under your dresser.”

“Ah.” She nods. “I see.
My
dresser. Sounds like a conspiracy.”

“Mimi, I just got held up.” His voice, though apologetic, is impatient too. He has been late for nearly everything his entire life; his voice says she should be used to it by now. “I said I was sorry. I had some work to do.”

“So you did.” She hears herself sigh; the urge to fight has passed. “Oh, it’s all right, Art. I should be, but I’m not really mad at all.” She leans over the gearbox and—why not?—kisses her husband’s cheek. She knows this will surprise him, and it does; as she pulls away, Arthur reaches with his hand to the place on his face where she has kissed him.

“Now,” she says, slapping her knees to tell him it’s over and to get the car in gear, “let’s go rescue our boy.”

Arthur and Miriam, on the road; an hour of winding country lanes—woods and towns and gas stations floating by, everything denuded and bathed by a thin autumnal light—and then they join the interstate, a pulsing artery of commerce headed east into New England. In Albany they change places in the parking lot of a McDonald’s—it is just after two o’clock—continue into Massachusetts and the Berkshires, and stop at a state park near Great Barrington to eat the sandwiches and drink the soup that Arthur has packed.

They arrive at the college after six, its great buildings ablaze with light. Despite the cold, students are everywhere. Doors and windows are open; music pours forth across the little town. They check into their hotel on the edge of campus and then telephone O’Neil in his dorm room. In the background Arthur can hear something like a party going on—loud voices, doors slamming, a girl laughing over the sound of a horn section and twanging guitars.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, “we got a bit of a late start.”

“What?” O’Neil says. “Will you guys shut the hell up? Hang on, Pop.” There is a muffling silence as his son smothers the receiver to yell something over the music. When his voice comes back on the line, the music is gone. “We’re all just cramming for midterms here. Very intense stuff.”

“I could tell. Sorry we’re late.”

“Sounds like a story.” O’Neil laughs at something Arthur can’t see. “Mom there?”

“In the shower. Have you had your fill of fun already, or do you still want to eat?”

“When didn’t I? The stuff they serve here is like army rations. Want to know what they gave us last night? Salmon loaf and pea-cheese sauce. We thought it was a joke, like Eat this, and that’s what you’ll do: you’ll pee cheese-sauce.”

“Lovely,” Arthur says, laughing. “Bring Sandra, if you want. We’re all pretty excited to meet her.”

“Sandra who?” His son lets the question—a joke, Arthur realizes—hang for a moment. “Kidding. But she’s got a rehearsal. It’ll be just me, I’m afraid.”

Thirty minutes later they go downstairs to find O’Neil in the lobby, sitting on the sofa and reading from a stack of alumni magazines on the coffee table. He has dressed up a little, wearing pressed khakis and a navy wool blazer with a slender black necktie hanging loose around his throat. But what Arthur notices first is the haircut. O’Neil has always worn his hair long, in loose curls that hang over his ears. All of that is gone, replaced by a spiky crewcut. Their boy rises, smiling at the sight of them, and catches them both in a long-armed hug.

“Honey,” Miriam says mournfully. “Oh, God, I know I shouldn’t say anything. Your hair?”

O’Neil grins self-consciously and runs a hand over his scalp. “It was funny, but I just woke up one day and thought: I have to get rid of all this hair. I actually skipped a class just to go to a
barbershop
.”

Miriam reaches out to touch his hair but stops herself, stroking the air just inches from his head. “Well, it can always grow back,” Miriam says.

“All the guys on the team are getting it cut like this now,” O’Neil says. “Some of the girls too.”

“I think it looks great,” Arthur chimes in. “Very 1962. I think I had one just like it.”

O’Neil smiles. “See, Mom? That’s the idea.”

The steakhouse where they usually go will be too packed by now with the parents’ weekend crowd, so they agree to eat at the hotel, taking seats in the bar while they wait for a table. Miriam, pleading exhaustion, orders a club soda, and Arthur his usual Dewars and water; when the waitress asks O’Neil what he wants, he thinks a moment, and then asks for a club soda too.

“You know, the hardest thing for most of the guys on the team is not drinking,” he says, chewing a mouthful of peanuts from a bowl on the bar. “They catch you, you’re off, no question.” He reaches into the inside pocket of his blazer and produces a photograph. “That’s Sandra.”

The girl in the photo is younger looking than Arthur expected, and a good deal prettier. The photo is of the two of them, standing arm-in-arm before a brick building that Arthur recognizes as O’Neil’s dormitory. Her hair isn’t brown, as he imagined, but a bright shade of blond that verges on red, a red that reminds Arthur of certain autumn leaves—though the picture, he realizes, was taken months ago, before the summer had gone. The grass at their feet is lushly green, and they are both dressed for warm weather and sunshine, O’Neil in his nylon running clothes, Sandra in white tennis shorts and a T-shirt. On her head, covering most of her hair and dimming her eyes and brow into shadow, she wears a baseball cap—navy blue, with a red
B
for the Boston Red Sox. The way the shadows fall makes Arthur think that the photograph was taken just before sunset, and the two of them are on their way to dinner, or to change for dinner. Sandra is small, the top of her head rising only to O’Neil’s shoulders, and a bright splash of freckles dresses her cheeks and nose, which is button shaped and turned slightly upward as she looks into the photographer’s lens. Arthur knows he should say something about how pretty she is, and when he does, his son smiles with happy relief.