MARY AND O'NEIL (7 page)

She steps inside and finds herself in a large room with tables and chairs scattered about, and a counter for coffee and sweets. On the far side she sees a wall of windows, looking out over the millpond, and beyond it a patio, with tables and chairs covered for the season. The room is empty except for a lone woman standing at the pastry counter, reading in the heat. Her eyes rise as Miriam enters; she nods, smiling emptily, and then returns to her magazine.

Stairs lead down to the basement. Miriam finds herself once again in a large room, though the space has been divided in half: a gift shop on one side, and on the other, behind a wall of thick Plexiglas, a demonstration area, where a man and a woman are working. Miriam sheds her coat and joins the small group of people who have gathered to watch. At either end of the space are two stone kilns, like bank safes, their interiors glowing with a churning heat; between, laid across long work tables, rest half-a-dozen long metal tubes. The process is a blur of detail. In the tiny work area the man and the woman move with a graceful and liquid surety, like a couple dancing, though they are dressed cumbersomely, for hard labor: heavy aprons and thick safety glasses, rubber gloves that reach to their elbows, denim jeans and shirts despite the heat that Miriam knows must be searing. Somehow they manage to maneuver their long poles in and out of the heat, from table to kiln and back again, never colliding with anything or with each other, but never speaking either. They are young, in their thirties; Miriam imagines—then is certain—that they are married. (No, she decides, not dancing;
cooking
. It is as if she is watching a couple cooking in a kitchen.) The woman wears her dark hair in a long, swinging braid, wonderfully thick, and has a strong, narrow face. Behind her goggles her eyes are calm, and shine with the reflected light of the kilns. In and out of the fire she guides her rods, a half dozen at her command, spinning them with quick intensity as they cool. As Miriam studies her, she holds one to her lips, puffs out her cheeks, and expels a steady exhalation of breath. At the other end of the tube a bubble appears; Miriam finds herself exhaling, too, a breath that she realizes she has been holding in anticipation. The bubble expands to the size of a Ping-Pong ball, then a tennis ball; its surface gleams with the wet translucence of a baby’s fingernails. It seems perfect to Miriam, and yet the woman is not satisfied. Examining it, she frowns, then worries it quickly with a knife before reinserting it into the fire.

It is then that Miriam notices the small display table in front of the Plexiglas wall, and on it a solitary glass pitcher, no more than four inches tall, with a wide curling lip. The walls of the pitcher are voluptuously thick, like the cream that the pitcher itself is intended to hold. A tented slip of paper beside it bears the price:
$50.00.
Fifty dollars for a cream pitcher. She knows why she has come; she will buy the pitcher, as a present for Kay.

But in the gift shop the saleswoman tells her that they’re sold out; the last cream pitcher is the one on the table, and not for sale. She offers to take an order for her—she can have the pitcher in just a week or two, the woman explains, certainly in time for the holidays—but Miriam shakes her head, no. The point is to have it now, to feel the pure pleasure of coveting something and receiving it immediately, in one smooth transaction of discovery; waiting even a week or two, she knows, would break the chain. She has resigned herself to leaving the shop empty handed—she has put on her coat and scarf—when something else catches her eye. On a shelf above the sales counter she sees a display of glass musical instruments, the size of Christmas ornaments. A guitar, a saxophone, a tiny, jeweled flute: each is miraculously detailed, made of a brittle, paper-thin glass like the skin of ice on a puddle just frozen. In all her life Miriam has never seen anything like them. She dares herself to peek at one of the dangling tags:
$140.00.
Astounding, she thinks. But it could be a thousand. In her heart she has already bought one. Who is it for? For O’Neil? For Kay? For herself? Miriam finds the one she wants and lifts it gingerly from the shelf. She is surprised, and not surprised, to find that it weighs nearly nothing. The saleswoman stands silently beside her, wearing an expression of pleasurable expectancy that Miriam knows must be a mirror of her own. In her open palm she holds out the glass trombone for the woman to see.

“A gift,” she says.

The evening’s guest list expands: A phone call to O’Neil’s room to tell them they’re on their way, and now his roommate, Stephen, will be joining them, and his new girlfriend, Eliza—the girl from across the hall, with the black hair and silk robe and morning cigarette.

“None of their folks came up for the weekend,” he explains to Miriam. “They’re like little orphans.”

In the background Miriam can hear laughter, and then Stephen’s clear voice, reciting a line from
Oliver Twist:
“Please, sir, I want some more.” In his hammy cockney accent the words come out as “Ple-
suh,
I want sum-
moa
.”

“They’re a sad sight,” O’Neil says. “Besides,” he whispers, “I sort of already made the offer.”

“Did Sandra win her game?”

“That’s the spirit, Mom. Yeah, a real blowout. She scored twice, and took a good one in the shins. I’ll let her tell you all about it.”

At O’Neil’s dormitory everybody piles into the big Peugeot, the girls in the back seat, O’Neil and Stephen stretched out like oversized children in the wagon’s cargo compartment with the jumper cables and bags of sand. The mood of the group is exuberant; Miriam wonders if the four of them have been drinking, and then wonders why she is wondering; it’s a party, it’s fine if they have. Turned in her seat, she chats with the girls about the hockey game—Eliza is on the team too—and listens to their gossip about other people she doesn’t know, their coaches and teachers and classmates. Eliza, it turns out, is also from Boston; in the dark car her teeth shine very white—the white of china—and she laughs easily, more easily than Sandra, who seems, beside her, a figure of almost mysterious calm.

“I always knew O’Neil would have cool parents,” Eliza says.

“You hear that, folks?” O’Neil calls from the back. “You passed.”

Eliza lights a cigarette she has taken from her purse and opens her window to exhale a trail of smoke.

“Hey, you’re freezing us back here!” O’Neil says. “Pee-ew!”

Eliza turns to Sandra. “Did you hear something?” She passes the cigarette back to Stephen, who takes a drag and hands it back, over his shoulder.

“What part of Boston are you from?” Miriam asks Eliza. Then, to Sandra, “Did you know each other before?”

The two women look at each other, and then, puzzlingly, burst into laughter.

“We’re cousins,” Sandra explains.

At the restaurant Miriam waits with O’Neil and his friends in the bar, while Arthur goes to find out about their table. When the two girls leave for a minute to go to the ladies’ room, and Stephen is ordering drinks for everyone at the bar, she takes O’Neil’s elbow.

“I wanted you to know,” she says, “I think Sandra is just great.”

“Well, she likes you too.” He smiles and rocks back on his heels. “It’s no big deal, Ma.”

She wants to tell him about Sandra’s present, stashed in her purse, but decides to let it be a surprise. She hasn’t even told Arthur about it. With his friends along it will probably have to wait, anyway.

“Of course it’s a big deal. If she’s the one you like.”

O’Neil shrugs, embarrassed. Stephen returns from the bar and hands each of them a drink: club soda for Miriam, a beer for O’Neil. The season is over.

“I know you don’t like the haircut,” O’Neil says. “I didn’t tell you, but it was Sandra’s idea. She’s kind of nuts about short hair.”

“And hats,” Miriam says. For the evening Sandra has traded in her wool beret for a flapper’s doeskin cap, pea-green, the front brim folded up and away from her forehead.

O’Neil laughs and holds up a finger. “Right. Don’t forget hats.”

By the time they get to the table, it is after eight. Sandra is due back at the college at nine-thirty, to help the other band members set up for the dance in the ballroom, so they all order their steaks and eat quickly, everyone talking and drinking and eating at once in the crowded restaurant. Miriam was disappointed, at first, when she learned that Eliza and Stephen would come along—that her time with O’Neil would be diluted in this way—but now she thinks better of this; it is good to see him with his friends, a part of something entirely his own. The four talk easily, finishing one another’s sentences and laughing at jokes before they’ve ended, and though Sandra is the quietest one, Miriam can tell that she is, in some ways, the center, the planet around which they turn. When the conversation drifts too far into their college lives, it is always Sandra who leads it back to Arthur and Miriam, asking them questions about O’Neil or their stay in town, and always at a moment when this will seem natural. Stephen is the comedian, O’Neil the straight man who lets him shine; Eliza is the gay one, in love with her own beauty and the power it possesses. She flirts openly with O’Neil and even Arthur, but always offers something small—a sparkling glance, a touch of the hand—to Stephen, to remind him she’s with him. Miriam knows that this is what her son has wished for: to show her and Arthur the new family he has made.

The last of the wine is being served when Miriam looks up to find Sandra’s gaze upon her. A slightly too-long moment passes; then Sandra smiles.

“Let’s thank our hosts,” she says to everyone. Expressions of gratitude float over the table as goblets are raised. Miriam feels her face grow warm: how lovely to be thanked. But her pleasure goes deeper than this. These aren’t children talking, but grown-ups. Their thanks are genuine, something they’ve chosen to offer.

“Let’s not forget about your race,” Arthur adds.

O’Neil laughs and lifts his glass. “Fourth place. The highlight of my career.”

When they’re done, Miriam whispers to Arthur to flag down their waitress so they can pay the bill, but it turns out he’s already done this. Somehow he has slipped his credit card to the waitress and signed the bill without Miriam—or anyone—even noticing. As they’re getting ready to leave, Miriam pulls Arthur aside in the vestibule. “Eliza was right about you,” she says.

Arthur looks at her. “How’s that?”

She takes his arm and winks. “
Very
cool.”

Back at the college Sandra excuses herself to run ahead to the ballroom, and by the time the group arrives, they see her up on the stage with the other members of the jazz band, getting ready to play. Tables are spread out across the room where students and their parents are gathered; already a line has formed by the beer keg. The room is decorated with crepe paper and streamers and, over the stage, a large blue-and-gold banner, identical to the one at the college’s front entrance, that reads, Welcome Parents. A mirrored ball hangs from the center of the ceiling, spangling the floor and walls with a confetti of colored light.

“You’ll see, Mom,” O’Neil says happily. He loosens his tie and nods at the stage, where Sandra is talking to other members of the brass section. She is easy to pick out, even in the darkened room, because of her hat. As Miriam is watching her, she brings her trombone to her lips, pumps the slide three or four times, and releases a single, crisp note. “They’re really very good.”

The room fills up with parents and students. Onstage the band readies itself to play, testing their instruments with random notes that tense the crowd with anticipation. Then there is a pause, the bandleader raises his arms, and the music begins. After just a few phrases Miriam knows what she’s hearing: “In the Mood.”

She pulls Arthur close to speak over the music. “My God.” She laughs. “Just how old do they think we are?” But the band, as O’Neil predicted, is very good; already she can feel their precise rhythms moving through her. Why did she not think of this? A night of music: it’s what she needs.

“Come on.” Arthur steers her with a hand at her spine. “Let’s dance.”

She dances with Arthur, then O’Neil, then Stephen. A wonderful energy fills her. Song after song—“Satin Doll,” “Sentimental Journey,” “Something’s Gotta Give,” “Chain of Fools”—the dancing continues without rest. When the band finally breaks at ten-thirty, Sandra appears to drink a soda and dance with O’Neil—a DJ spins records to keep the party going—and then the band takes the stage again, kicking off their second set with a tart blast from the horn section and the theme from
Hawaii Five-0
. A wonderful, surprising, joke; whole tables rise to their feet and take the floor again.

The evening roars onward, a party so unexpectedly marvelous it cannot be refused. All through the second set Miriam dances; she cannot recall an evening when she danced so much, not for years and years. Arthur to O’Neil to Stephen and back again; when the band pauses between songs, she gets herself a cup of beer—just awful, thin and warm as dishwater, but somehow perfect—and stands off to one side to catch her breath and watch.

Then O’Neil is at her side. His face is flushed with pleasure, his brow glazed with sweat. He takes her by the hand. “Ready?”

“No, really. I’m exhausted.”

He laughs incredulously, and gives a little pull. “I won’t take no for an answer.”

“I just need a little breather, sweetie.”

“I don’t believe it.” He frowns, though not seriously. “Well. The next one, okay? With Sandra up onstage we’re one girl short.”