Very Old Bones (25 page)

But he does.

We all do.

Molly laid her head back on the sofa and closed her eyes to shut out Tommy’s sobbing and Sarah’s screaming. She tried to replace those sounds with the face of Walter as he stood tall
before her, waiting for her kiss, expecting it, inviting it. Walter loves Molly’s kisses. Loved. Don’t pity yourself, Molly Remember poor Julia, dead at twenty-two, Julia who never knew
passion, Julia who was kissed by boys twice in twenty-two years and neither kiss meant any more than a penny’s worth of peppermints. I was truly kissed, Julia. Your sister knew kisses and
love and more. Much more. Never again. Other things. Never again.

Molly plunged into the blackest part of her memory to hide, to shut out the thoughts that were coming back now. So much wrong. So many evil things the result of love. Why should it be that we
are gifted with love and then the consequences are so . . .

Tommy squealed and Molly rose up from her black depths, sat upright on the sofa, heard the squeal a second time, a third, the squeal of an animal in agony, and she was racing up the stairs in
seconds toward the wretched sounds. She saw Tommy face down on his bed, Sarah striking his naked buttocks—she had never hit him naked before, never; nobody was ever hit naked, ever—her
hand coming down again and again with the two-foot rule (and Molly saw that Sarah was hitting him not with the rule’s flatness but with its wide edge and screaming, “filthy boy, brazen
boy, filthy boy, brazen boy”), the Tommy squeals and Sarah screams beyond Molly’s endurance.

But as Molly moved toward Sarah to snatch away the ruler Tommy suddenly rolled onto his back and with both feet kicked Sarah in the stomach as she was raising the ruler yet again, and Sarah flew
backward across the room, her back colliding with Tommy’s three-drawer dresser, knocking his clown lamp to the floor and throwing the room into darkness. And Sarah sat suddenly on the floor,
breathless, her glasses gone, her expression not pained as much as incredulous that such a thing could happen to her.

So began Sarah’s awareness of her mortality. In her rage, Sarah damaged Tommy’s spine so severely that he could not walk, could not stand or lie straight, could not bend over, could
only rest and sleep sitting on cushions. Dr. Lynch, the family physician for thirty years, prescribed pain pills, a wheelchair, and X-rays, and accepted without question the explanation that Tommy
had been attacked on the street by wild kids who hit him with sticks. Tommy would not eat or drink, would accept nothing from Sarah, and so Molly assumed control of his life and convinced him to
take some bread pudding and tea. She put whiskey in the tea to soothe this grown-up child who never drank whiskey, or even beer or wine, in a house where it went without saying that a drop of the
creature improved every living thing, including dogs and fish.

Tommy calmed down and Molly busied herself so totally with him that she could, for hours at a time, forget how dreadfully hostile she was to this house, this family, especially to the absurd and
brutal Sarah, who could not only do such a thing but who could stand for the doing for decades, Sarah who felt no remorse, only mortal pangs of ingratitude that she should be isolated by her family
after giving her life over to its care and feeding, its salvation from damnation.

Chick was the first to isolate her. When he learned what she had done to Tommy he immediately picked up the telephone, called Evelyn, proposed to her and was accepted, told her he would give two
weeks’ notice at the
Times-Union
and take whatever severance pay he had coming, then they would go to Miami as she wanted, she could work at the deli, he’d get a job somewhere,
and they’d start a new life and never look back.

He said all this in earshot of Sarah, who was sitting in front of the television watching “Death Valley Days,” a western series to which she gave loyalty because it advertised 20
Mule Team Borax scouring powder, which Sarah used for cleaning, as had her mother before her. Sarah said nothing to Chick when he hung up, did not acknowledge that he was in the room. He walked in
front of the television and said to her, “Sarah, you and your mad ways are out of my life. And Tommy’s life too.”

The latter threat was not to be carried out. Chick had concocted an instant pipe dream that he would take Tommy to Florida with him, care for him, let him grow old in the sun. But Tommy could
not move, and would not; said he didn’t want to leave Colonie Street in such nice weather. Tommy, in a week, seemed to have forgotten the beating Sarah gave him. He did not really remember
why he couldn’t walk right, yet he shunned Sarah even so, leaving the room when she entered. He did not talk to her about the beating, or about Letitia Buckley, and when Molly tested him and
asked what happened to his back he thought a while and said some bad boys hit him with sticks down on Pearl Street.

After six weeks in the wheelchair and sleeping on the sofa in the back parlor to avoid going up and down stairs, Tommy began to improve. Despite this, Molly felt herself sliding back into the
melancholy mood that had enveloped her after Walter’s death. She barely talked to Sarah, who had withdrawn into her cocoon of injured merit, and nurtured herself with silence and television.
Also, with Chick being gone, probably forever, the house never seemed emptier to Molly.

She took short walks in the neighborhood, visited with neighbors, Martha McCall across the street, who was supervising the movers who would take her and Patsy and their household of forty-four
years out of the neighborhood and up to a new house on Whitehall Road, and Libby Dolan, who said she was selling her house to a Negro woman. Would Molly know anybody on the block in another
year?

Molly also bumped into Letty Buckley, to whom she had apologized coming out of church the first Sunday after Tommy’s cane trick, and found Letty sweet, even forgiving, knowing how simple
Tommy was, a bit abashed it was a simpleton who had done that to her, and even worried for him. Will you have to put him away? No, never, said Molly. And she came home in a fog of emptiness.

Coming into the house made it worse. Talk to Tommy? Talk to Sarah? Talk to the walls? She called her niece, Peg Quinn, just to hear a family voice, and Peg was strong, as always. Molly updated
her, leaving out the cause of Tommy’s injury, and Peg immediately offered to come down and visit, or take Molly to supper Downtown, or a movie maybe? But no, that wouldn’t solve
anything. And then, after a half-hour of speculating on what would become of Chick in Florida, and analyzing Sarah’s sullen isolation, Peg said, “Why don’t you go up to Saratoga
and spend some time at the hotel? The weather’s beautiful, and Orson’s there, isn’t he?”

“He is,” said Molly.

“Then call him and tell him to get a room ready for you, and one for Tommy, and for Sarah if she wants to go. Get a change of scenery. Do it, Molly, do it.”

Do it. Molly understood the advice. Do it, Molly, Walter told her, Chick told her, Peter told her. And did she do it? In her way. But she didn’t weigh much. Ha-ha.

“Maybe I will,” Molly said. The hotel, the lake, Orson. “But Tommy needs his wheelchair. I couldn’t handle it alone.”

“I’ll send Billy down to give you a hand getting him and the chair into the car,” Peg said. “And Orson can help you at the other end.”

Molly called Austin McCarroll at the Texaco station and told him to come and take her car down off blocks and make it drivable. Walter had given her the car, a 1937 Dodge, and taught her to
drive it. In seventeen years Molly had driven less than four thousand miles, drove it back and forth to Saratoga, took Sarah and Tommy for drives in the evening to get ice-cream cones, went riding
Sundays after the war. This year she didn’t even bother to take it off blocks when the good spring weather came. No place to go anymore.

But now Molly could see herself again at the wheel, driving up Route 9; going up the hill into the Grand View driveway, a thrilling prospect, something she hadn’t done as a vacationer in
years. Even though so much time had passed, the Grand View had never been out of her mind for long, and whenever she did find herself turning into its driveway she knew that it would be like going
home again, going home to love.

The Grand View Lake House: An Old Brochure

Situated on the eastern shore of Saratoga Lake, fifteen minute ride from railroad station, our car and porter meet your train; the hotel and cottages offer beautiful vista, eighty rods from and
no feet above lakeshore, avoiding excessive dampness at night, free from miasma and malaria; convalescents accommodated, consumptives not entertained. Rolling lawns, shade trees, canoeing, boating,
fishing, bathing, tennis court, croquet, clock golf, eighteen-hole golf course nearby, bird sanctuary in woods, small game and bird hunting in season, tents available for camping in nearby woods,
thousands of flowers, garage on premises, motor parties welcome. Dining room screened, strictly home cooking, all eggs, milk, cream, poultry, and vegetables from our own farm. Wide, 200-foot long
veranda, two fireplaces, casino for dancing, piano, phonograph, talking pictures every Sunday night, shower baths, inside toilets, long distance telephone connection, cars carry our guests to
nearby Catholic and other churches. Proprietors Patrick and Nora Shugrue, William Shugrue full partner. Hotel open from June 1st to October, 105 rooms, three cottages, special rate by the week,
write for terms.

Molly and Giselle: A Colloquy, September, 1954

“I must tell you about love,” Molly said.

“I must tell you about marriage,” Giselle said.

“You seem to know nothing about love.”

“I know everything.”

“It would not seem so.”

“Peter loves you.”

“And I him. But he loved Julia more. I wonder did he ever love Claire.”

“And Orson loves you.”

“And I him,” said Molly.

“I haven’t loved much in my life, but I know I love Orson with a full heart,” Giselle said.

“It would not seem so.”

“You should know me, should be in my head. Then you would understand.”

“You left him alone last year.”

“We’d been apart for six months, but even so we were always together.”

“It would not seem so.”

“You are old. You don’t understand the young.”

“You must never leave them alone for long if you love them,” Molly said.

“Then you live for them, not yourself.”

“You seem to know nothing about love.”

“You should have seen us together.”

“It looks alike sometimes. It looks alike.”

“You should have seen us together at the Plaza.”

“You were not together then.”

“But we were,” Giselle said. “Even there in The Candy Box with his stripper I felt no jealousy. There was a woman in Germany he went with one night, and he must have had others
in New York, but I was never jealous of any of them. But this night I loved him and yet I was jealous of the vision he had of me, for it wasn’t me. That loving, successful, talented, noble
woman, that was his invention of me. Orson hallucinating again. Orson of the brilliant imagination. Orson the fabulous lover, like none of the others. Orson the marvelous, loyal dog of a
man.”

“And that is what you think love is?” Molly asked.

“I knew he might go away from me, but I also knew it wasn’t me he was leaving but the idea of me. And when I looked at his face I wanted to photograph what I saw. There was an
uncertainty in his eye, a calmness, with that old wildness banished. There was something in him I didn’t understand.”

“As he didn’t understand you.”

“When we left The Candy Box after the shooting we took a cab back to the Plaza. He saw me to the elevator, then went out for a walk, to clear his brain, he said. He didn’t come back,
and after an hour I feared he wouldn’t, so I got dressed again and scoured the lobby and the hotel bars, because I couldn’t believe he’d left me. I preferred the
Life
editor’s apartment, where my things were, if I was going to spend the night alone, but I still thought there was a small chance Orson would return. And I knew he knew I’d wait for him
in the hotel. And so I did. I phoned Peter and found Orson had neither been there nor called. Peter said he knew an all-night bar where Orson sometimes went and offered to go there alone, or with
me if I wanted. He said he’d call Claire, but I knew that would achieve nothing, and it did.”

“We were up at Saratoga Lake for three weeks. Mama was dead six months and it was a suffocating summer. We were sitting on the veranda talking about I don’t know
what, and I saw that a new arrival, a good-looking fellow who had struck up a conversation with Sarah yesterday, was talking with her again. Then I saw a bird fly into a tree on the lawn, and it
must’ve hit something, because it fell to the ground. I ran out to get it and picked it up and started to cry. The newcomer squatted down beside me and said, ‘May I see it?’ And I
showed him this beautiful creature that he said was a cedar waxwing. ‘It seems to have an injured wing,’ he said. ‘We can help him.’ I asked how that was possible and he
said, ‘We’ll keep him alive while he gets well.’ And that’s what we did for the rest of the week. We fed him and made a nest for him in the birdcage the hotel gave us and he
became the pet of the guests. I loved him so, that little creature. Everybody came to my room to see him. We took him out of the cage and he did fly a little inside the room at the end of the week,
but not very well. On the tenth day he seemed ready and, when I carried him to the veranda, a dozen guests and waitresses came out to watch him go. I released him over the porch railing and he flew
so well, right up into the same tree he’d fallen from. We were all so happy. He perched there in the tree for a minute and then he fell again, not injured, but dead.”