The Road Taken (22 page)

“Ginger sends love,” Rose said. They sat in the living room, waiting for Ed to come home from work, for Mrs. McCoo to fetch Peter from school, for the shapes of all these people to push away the spectral shape of Marianne. “She’s really enjoying college. She’s made friends. I was so worried about her, but I think it’s going to be all right.”

“Who wouldn’t like Ginger?” Peggy said. She was drinking vodka. They always had vodka in the house now because Ed had recently replaced the gin in his famous martinis with vodka and she liked it better. But before he came home to fix them Peggy started on the vodka by herself, over ice. Nothing to make her drunk or mix badly with the Miltowns, but just a little to keep her heart from hurting.

“Peggy dear,” Rose said, “we need to talk about Joan.”

“No!”

“Joan loves you, Peggy. She’s devastated. I think if she could give her own life to bring Marianne back, she would.”

“Why doesn’t she?” Peggy murmured. Her mother pretended not to hear her.

“You can’t hate her forever. She’s your sister.”

“What has that to do with it?”

“When you were little girls, Joan worshipped you,” Rose said.

Peggy didn’t answer.

“She still does, Peggy. She thinks you have the answer to life. Joan doesn’t. She’s just a lost soul. More lost now that you won’t find it in your heart to let her try to be friends again.”

“My heart is busy,” Peggy said.

“It was an accident, darling. It could have happened to anyone.”

“I know,” Peggy said.

“Then why won’t you forgive her?”

Peggy thought or a moment, and took a sip of her vodka. “I can’t,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“You need someone to be angry at.”

“That’s normal, isn’t it?”

“You could be angry at God.”

“God?” Peggy said ironically. “Do you think God cares?”

Rose’s look was faraway. “I thought that way when I was a little girl and lost my mother,” she said.

Deaths remind people of other deaths, Peggy thought. She sighed. Don’t tell me about your mother, she silently warned Rose. Don’t tell me about your grief and loss. I want mine. You keep yours. I don’t want to share. Rose looked down at her hands, knotted together in her lap, and subsided. Good, Peggy thought. At least Rose was soft; she was not like Grandma. For an instant Peggy wondered if Rose had loved or resented Celia when she was a motherless little girl learning to live with the replacement, and then she stopped thinking about it because thinking was still too much trouble.

Who would come to visit next? she asked herself, as if it were a game. Aunt Maude from Bristol? Uncle Hugh? Ginger in her wheelchair? Joan herself, evil incarnate? When Joan broke Marianne she broke a lot of other people too, Peggy thought.

I wish I didn’t hate her, but I don’t know how to stop.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Hugh sometimes thought his life experience was very limited, although from the outside it might have seemed bizarre. But it was only the ball gowns that were bizarre, the wigs and boa and size-twelve evening slippers, the makeup. He was in other ways a simple man; he looked at his family and saw the messages of the world. Ginger being paralyzed had made him want to stay home where he felt needed; Peggy losing Marianne made him want to spread his wings. How ephemeral our existence was, he realized. One moment a person was here, warm and breathing, and the next moment vanished. You are not getting any younger, dearie, he told himself, and he knew he was right.

And Teddy was not getting any younger either.

Ginger had accompanied Hugh and Teddy to lunch in a Village café, and she had been so accepting and curious that Teddy had loved her immediately, as Hugh had known he would. She was the daughter Teddy had never had. After that the three of them went to lunch nearly every week, if Ginger had time between her classes. They were an odd-looking trio: the vivid girl in her wheelchair, the beautifully groomed and effeminate middle-aged man in his elegant suit, with just a touch of powder on his face, and the burly, reddish-haired teddy bear with a lusty laugh like a hug. But the places they frequented had plenty of unusual-looking people, and no one ever stared. In fact, they were so jolly together that they became a kind of welcome fixture.

The death of little Marianne and Peggy’s lasting grief could not entirely freeze their joy in the moments they spent together. If anything, Ginger and Teddy joined Hugh in his realization that happiness should not be deferred. Ginger invited Teddy to come to the family for dinner, Hugh seconded the motion, and Teddy, shyly and nervously, agreed.

“Who will you say I am?” he asked.

“My life’s companion,” Hugh said.

Ginger applauded and Teddy blushed.

So Hugh slipped Teddy into the life of his family like a letter under the door. At dinner Ben and Teddy talked about the construction and repair of buildings, something Teddy knew about well and Ben was interested in, having been in charge of the problems with his town house for many years, and Hugh thought with pride how masculine this discussion was. Rose was sweet, as was her nature. Ginger, of course, was Ginger. And poor Joan, so tightly held together she seemed pathetic and about to fly apart, let it all flow by her, the drama of someone else’s life that could never touch or compete with her own.

Hugh and Ginger were the only ones who hadn’t yet been to Larchmont to visit Peggy. Now that Teddy had been accepted into the family with no hysteria or repugnance, Hugh decided to take him with them. On a crisp fall Saturday, when most people were either at football games or watching them on television, the three of them borrowed Ben’s car and went to pay a condolence call that was also an introduction. We’ll shock her out of her stupor, Hugh thought, but he didn’t really mean it.

Ed opened the door. Hugh was stunned at how much older he looked. His blond hair was streaked with gray, and even his face was gray, and seemed elongated somehow, pulled down by the weight of his sorrow. So it was possible to turn gray overnight; Hugh had wondered about that. He’d heard of the phenomenon, but never seen it. And Ed was so young!

Behind Ed was little Peter, a stalwart boy turned clingy. Peter had seen Ginger only once since she had come home confined to her wheelchair, and although what had happened to her had been explained to him, he peered at her as if trying to decide if her condition was really permanent. The two of them were at eye level. She knew, of course, what he was thinking. Ginger knew what everyone thought about her; her radar was much too strong.

“Hey, big Petey-boy,” Ginger said. “Remember your Aunt Ginger?”

He nodded.

“I’ve got a great machine here. Want a ride? I can do wheelies.”

Peter ran behind Ed and hid.

“I lied, anyway,” Ginger said to the rest of them, feigning cheer. She headed into the living room at full speed.

“This is my friend Teddy Benedict,” Hugh said.

“Ed Glover. How do you do?” The two men shook hands. “I’ll see if Peggy is up,” Ed said. “She’s taking a nap. Please come in, make yourselves comfortable. There’s beer in the refrigerator and I have the game on if anyone is interested.”

“Yes, I would take a look,” Teddy said. He went into the family room, where the TV was, as Ed, followed by Peter, disappeared up the stairs.

“My man,” Hugh said to Teddy, and flounced. “I love that he likes football.”

“You love everything about me,” Teddy said sweetly. He had changed a lot, Hugh thought, since he had been accepted into the family.

“Isn’t this a beautiful neighborhood?” Hugh said. “Teddy, what you and I should do is buy a little house in the suburbs and live the natural life. We could both commute with the husbands.”

“Well, that’s butch,” Teddy said.

“But it’s not so crazy,” Hugh said. “I know two gay couples who have bought houses outside the city, in a quiet place, not a family suburb but something really isolated and lovely. They go up on weekends, and during the week they live in their separate apartments like we do.”

“No, I’m a city person,” Teddy said. “And so are you.”

“Well, then,” Hugh said tentatively, bringing up the subject again, not that it ever did any good, but he had been thinking about it a lot lately. “Maybe finally after all this time we should look for an apartment.”

“You should,” Ginger said.

“Ginger dear, you have no idea what the world is like,” Teddy said.

“Oh, yes, I do. Who would know that you lived together? The people you care about know already, and it would be easy to keep the people at your office in the dark. People don’t know what they don’t want to know.”

“She’s right,” Hugh said. “We could live in the Village. In an apartment house with all different kinds of people in it.Families, gay people, straight people, old people, young people. We’d just be part of the microcosm.”

“And if you have an elevator I’ll visit you,” Ginger said.

“Of course we’ll have an elevator,” Hugh said. “I can’t go up stairs in heels.”

Teddy chuckled. We are making progress, Hugh thought. Some months ago Teddy would have responded that was exactly why he couldn’t live with me. Now at least he knows when it’s a joke.

They all looked up to see Peggy coming into the room. Hugh was startled at how drawn she looked. Peggy had always been so voluptuous and creamy, and now she looked ill. Her eyes had a foggy look, as if clouds were blowing across them, or something the rest of them could not see. “Hi,” she said. “Hi, Ginger.”

“Hi,” Ginger said. She wheeled over and put her arm around Peggy’s waist for a moment and rested her head on her sister’s hip.

“This is my friend Teddy Benedict,” Hugh said.

“Hello.”

“I was so sorry to hear about your daughter,” Teddy said. “Hugh told me.”

“Thank you.”

Hugh waited for her to suggest they move into the living room so they could talk, but she didn’t. Peggy was so obviously damaged that he, who was never at a loss for words, didn’t know what to say. They all sat there in the family room pretending to be interested in the game, except for Teddy, who really was, and then Ed came in with a pitcher of martinis. He handed a martini to Peggy, and her eyes when she looked up at him were clear for the first time.

“Where’s Peter?” she asked.

“Up in his room.”

“How are Mom and Dad?” she asked, turning to Hugh.

“Fine.”

“Mom came by recently,” she said.

“I know.”

Peggy sipped her drink. “Doesn’t anyone want anything?”

“I’ll have a beer,” Teddy said. “I’ll get it.”

“I’ll have a lovely martini then,” Hugh said. “I’m not driving.”

They sat there playing cocktail hour in the suburbs, drinking and smoking, but intimidated into muteness by Peggy’s powerful and awkward grief. Hugh told himself that they were family and therefore Peggy didn’t have to try. The game went on in the background; Ed and Teddy were too polite to watch but unable to offer a different diversion. Hugh had always found the sounds of football reassuring because it was something Teddy liked, and boring because he didn’t, but now he found it all bizarre. Rose and Celia had reported to him how badly Peggy was still doing, but he had not been prepared for her silence. They had said they’d had talks. He wondered if he should not have brought Teddy, since Teddy was a stranger to her, but then he realized it didn’t matter; she hardly realized Teddy was there.

In his fantasies before this visit Hugh had planned to redo Peggy’s wardrobe, perk her up, tell her about the new makeup. But you couldn’t do a beauty makeover on a zombie. He was reminded of his poor old friend Zazu, who owned the antique shop, who had sold it to the current owners and then gone into a decline and eventually died some years ago; and what he remembered was that Zazu had become so forgetful and then finally so silent that most of his friends, those who hadn’t already died, had drifted away. Poor Zazu, paint collecting in his wrinkles, food stains on his dressing gown, sat there like Miss Havisham, stroking his motheaten little Yorkshire terrier, who was ancient too.

Peggy was clean enough, and she didn’t have a senile lap dog, but she might have been a hundred and ten years old. Hugh had the strong feeling that she never went anywhere, did nothing, and that her mind was stilled by the cacophony of her disjointed and shrieking memories.

“Peggy!” Hugh said. “What are you thinking? Right now?”

“Not much.”

“That’s not true.”

“Maybe not,” she said, and gave him the saddest smile imaginable.

“What can we do to help?” he asked, and waited for her to tell him something, anything, so he could feel of use.

“But it’s very simple,” she said, finally.

“Then I’ll do it. What?”

“Make it all not have happened,” Peggy said. “That’s the only thing I want. Can you do that, Uncle Hugh?”

Hugh sighed and shook his head.

They didn’t stay for dinner, and Peggy and Ed seemed relieved. Teddy said he didn’t want to drive back to the city in the dark because he didn’t know the way—a pathetic lie that they accepted with grace.

“I don’t know the way into my next day,” Peggy said. “Thank you for coming. And you too, Teddy.” Peter had come down from his room, finally, at the prospect of food, and she was encircling him with her arms.

In the car they were quiet for a while, somber and remembering the visit, hurting for the miserable family they had left behind. “God!” Ginger said finally. “She kept looking at me in such a weird way.”

“That’s your imagination,” Hugh said. “She was looking at everyone like that.”

“No.”

“Hugh,” Teddy said, “not to change the subject, but I have an idea.”

“About dinner?”

“No, I thought we’d eat in the city, but this is about next week.”

“And what is it, my life’s companion?” Hugh said.

“Why don’t you call your realtor and you and I can look for an apartment.”

Hugh’s heart leaped. “For us? For you and me?”

Teddy nodded. “I don’t want to waste my life anymore.”

Hugh beamed and kissed him on the cheek. Ginger didn’t mind the display of affection. She was beaming too.

“Oh, I am so excited,” Hugh said. “The man has a way with words, does he not, Ginger? I never want to waste another moment either.” The bridge approached them, the strings of glittering lights like a necklace, the city skyline like a glorious toy.

***

Although the three happy people in the car did not know it, Peggy had indeed been looking at Ginger in a peculiar way. What Peggy had been thinking was how all those years she had been afraid her two children would get polio, and how horrible it would be if one of them were to be paralyzed and had to spend life in a wheelchair. She had thought Ginger was the sacrifice, to keep Marianne safe. And now Peggy realized how glad and grateful she would have been to have Marianne alive and in that wheelchair; crippled, struggling, making do, but
alive.
Just alive . . .

Ginger was so strong, and so cheerful, and so full of life. To have Marianne back, Peggy would have had her change places with Ginger in an instant.