A Summer to Die (10 page)

There were the tuxedos, and the tails, and the top hats. There was Maria with her dress pulled up to show a lacy blue garter. There were the huge baskets of flowers beside the altar of the church. "Know what happened to those flowers?" Maria asked. "Two hundred dollars' worth of flowers? They got thrown away as soon as the service was over."

There was the wedding cake, about three feet high, decorated with birds and flowers and frosting ribbons. "Know how much that cake cost?" grinned Ben. "A hundred bucks. Know what it tasted like? Cardboard."

There were hundreds of people drinking champagne. "Know who those people are?" asked Maria. "My parents' friends. Ben's parents' friends. Know what they're doing? Getting drunk, on five hundred dollars' worth of champagne."

And there were Ben and Maria, surrounded by people, flowers, food. They were smiling at the camera, but they both looked as if they didn't mean it much.

"Know who that is?" Ben asked. I nodded. "That's Ben Brady and Maria Abbott, who wanted to get married in a field full of daisies beside a
stream. Who wanted to have guitar music instead of a five-piece band; homemade wine instead of champagne," he said. He slammed the book closed and put it back in the box.

"Why didn't you?" I asked.

They shrugged. "Oh, sometimes it's just easier to please people," Maria said finally. "Ben's parents wanted a big wedding. My parents wanted a big wedding. We did it for them, I guess."

"Can I ask you a funny question?"

"Sure."

"Why don't you both have the same last name?"

It was Maria who answered me. "You know, Meg, I had the name Abbott all my life. Maria Abbott did things that I was proud of. I won a music award in high school, and I was Maria Abbott. I was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in college, something I worked hard for, and I was Maria Abbott. When I realized I wanted to marry Ben, I also realized that I didn't want to stop being Mafia Abbott. Ben could understand that. There's no law that says a wife must take her husband's name. So I didn't. Someday you may feel the same way about Meg Chalmets."

Right now I know there's no one I would rather be than Meg Chalmers. It's a funny thing about names, how they become part of someone. I thought
suddenly of the little boy Will Banks, years ago, who sat in a room angry and sad, and carved WILLIAM on the closet floor.

"Hey," I said. Funny I hadn't thought to ask before. "The baby. What are you going to name him? Her? It?"

Maria groaned. "Ask any other question, Meg.
Don't
ask what we're going to name him her it. We can't decide. We fight about it all the time. We scream at each other. It's
awful.
"

Ben said, "I've quit worrying about it. I figure the baby is going to arrive and before it does anything else, it's going to shake hands all around and say, 'Hi. I'm — — —.' That's the only way we're going to know what its name is."

Then he jumped up, bounded through the living room, and opened a door. "But look! This is where it will be born!" I looked through the living room and saw an empty room beyond, very clean, its walls freshly painted white, with a brass bed alone in the center.

"And this is where it will sleep," said Maria, smiling, touching the cradle with her bare foot, so that it rocked slightly.

"And this is what it'll wear!" said Ben proudly, reaching into the drawer of a partly sanded pine chest, and pulling out a tiny blue nightgown. The drawer was filled with little folded things.

"This is what it'll eat!" grinned Maria, cupping her hands around her breasts.

"And—" Ben stood still suddenly, in the middle of the living room. "Meg, come. I want to show you something." He took my hand, and I followed him out the back door, picking up my photographs on the way. It was almost lunchtime.

Ben took me past the garden where the peas were thriving against the wire trellises, across the newly cleared space where he'd been pulling up alders, past the little wooden bird feeder that Maria filled with seeds each morning. Behind a clump of young pine trees, he had pulled out brush and exposed part of a rock wall that had been there, I knew, for more than a hundred years. The sunlight filtered down through the nearby woods into the little secluded space; he had cut the grass there, and it was very soft, very green, very quiet.

He put his arm over my shoulders and said, "This is where we'll bury the baby, if it doesn't live."

I couldn't believe it. I pushed his arm off me and said, "
What?
"

"You know," he said firmly, "sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to. If the baby dies, Maria and I will bury it here."

"It's not going to die! What a horrible thing to say!"

"Look, Meg," Ben said, "you can
pretend
that bad
things will never happen. But life's a lot easier if you realize and admit that sometimes they do. Of course the baby's probably going to be just fine. But Maria and I talk about the other possibility, too. Just in case; just in case."

I turned away from him and left him standing there. I was so angry I was shaking. I looked back; his hands were in his pockets, and he was watching me.

I said, "Just in case you're interested, Ben Brady, I think you're an absolutely rotten person. That baby doesn't deserve you for a father."

Then I walked home, and on the way home I was sorry I had said it, but it was too late to go back.

Molly is in the hospital again, and it's my fault.

Why can't I learn when to keep my mouth shut? I'd already said something I regretted, to Ben, and hadn't had the nerve to go to him and apologize. It was just a week later that I blew it with Molly.

She was lying on her bed, in her nightgown, even though it was eleven in the morning. She's gotten so darn lazy, and my parents don't even say anything to her about it. That's partly why I was mad at her, to begin with, because she was still in her nightgown at eleven in the morning.

She was grouchy and mad, too. I'm not sure why. I think mostly it was because school had just ended, before she'd even had a chance to go back. Tierney McGoldrick hardly ever calls her anymore. She doesn't know it, but toward the end of school he started dating a red-haired senior girl. At least I was smart enough not to tell Molly
that.

But there she was, lying on her bed, grumbling about how awful she looks. I am so sick of hearing Molly talk about how she looks. Her face is too fat. Her hair is too thin. To hear her talk, you'd think she was really a mess, when the truth is that she's still a billion times prettier than I am, which is why I'm sick of listening to her.

I told her to shut up.

She told me to drop dead, and before I dropped dead, to pick up my sneakers from her side of the room.

I told her to pick them up herself.

She started to get up, I think to pick up my sneakers and throw them at me, and when she swung her legs over the side of the bed, I suddenly saw what they looked like.

"Molly!" I said, forgetting about the sneakers. "What's wrong with your
legs?
"

"What do you
mean,
what's wrong with my legs?" No one had ever criticized Molly's legs before; in
fact, even I have to admit that Molly's got nice legs. She held up her nightgown and looked down.

Both of her legs were covered with dark red spots. It looked like a lot of mosquito bites, except that they weren't swollen.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," she said slowly, looking puzzled. "What could it be? It wasn't there yesterday; I know it wasn't."

"Well, it's there now, and it sure looks weird."

She pulled her nightgown down to cover her legs. Then she got into bed and pulled the covers up around her. "Don't tell anyone," she said.

"I will, too. I'm telling Mom." I started out of the room.

"Don't you
dare,
" Molly ordered.

I'll be darned if I'll take orders from Molly. Anyway, I really thought my parents ought to know. I went downstairs and told Mom that there was something wrong with Molly's legs; she jumped up with a frightened look and went upstairs. I stayed out of it after that, but I listened.

I heard Mom and Molly arguing. I heard my mother get my father from the study. Then more arguing with Molly. I heard my mother go to the upstairs phone, make a call, and go back to Molly.

Then Molly crying. Yelling. I had never in my life heard Molly like that before. She was screaming, "No! I won't! I won't!"

Things quieted after a few minutes, and then my father came down. His face was very drawn, very tired. "We have to take Molly back to the hospital," he told me abruptly, and without waiting for me to answer, he went out to start the car.

Mom came downstairs with Molly. She was in her bathrobe and slippers, and she was sobbing. When they were by the front door, Molly saw me standing all alone in the living room. She turned to me, still crying, and said, "I hate you! I hate you!"

"Molly," I whispered, "please don't."

They were in the car and ready to leave when I heard my mother call to me. I went outside, letting the screen door bang behind me, and walked over to the car. "Molly wants to tell you something," Mom said.

Molly was in the back seat, huddled in the corner, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. "Meg," she said, choking a little because she was trying to stop crying, "tell Ben and Maria not to have the baby until I get home!"

"Okay," I nodded. "I'll tell them." As if they had any control over it! But I would tell them what Molly said, just because Molly asked me to. At that point I would have done anything in the world for Molly.

I went back upstairs, picked up my sneakers and put them in the closet. I made Molly's bed. The pussy willows were still there, in their little vase. The photographs of Will were back on the wall, and the two of Molly and her flowers were with them now. The chalk mark was still there, faded, but there. It was a nice room, except that an hour before, Molly had been in it, and now she wasn't, and it was my fault.

I went down to the darkroom, gathered up the photographs of Maria I'd been working on, and walked across the field to their house.

Will Banks was there, having lunch with Ben and Maria. They were all sitting outside at the picnic table, eating the entire crop of peas. There was a huge bowl of them in the middle of the table, and they were each eating from it with their own spoons, as if it were the most normal sort of lunch in the world.

"Hey, Meg!" Ben greeted me. "How's it going? Have a pea. Have
two
peas!"

He fed me two peas from his spoon; they were the tenderest, sweetest peas I've ever eaten. I sat down on the bench beside Will, and said, "Molly's back in the hospital, and she says please don't have the baby until she comes home. I know that's a dumb thing to say," and then I started to cry.

Will Banks put his arms around me and rocked
me back and forth as if I were a baby. I cried until his shirt collar was wet clear through, saying "It's my fault, it's my fault, it's my fault" over and over again. Will said nothing except "There. There."

Finally I stopped crying, sat up straight, blew my nose on the handkerchief Will gave me, and told them what had happened. No one said very much. They told me, of course, that it wasn't my fault. I knew that already. Ben said, "You know, sometimes it's nice just to have someone to blame, even if it has to be yourself, even if it doesn't make sense."

We sat there quietly for a minute, and then I asked if I could borrow Maria's spoon. She wiped it on her napkin and gave it to me, and I ate all the peas that were left in the big bowl. There were
pounds
of peas, and I ate them all. I have never been so hungry in my life.

The three of them watched in amazement while I ate all those peas. When I was finished, Maria started to giggle. Then we all started to laugh, and laughed until we were exhausted.

It is so good to have friends who understand how there is a time for crying and a time for laughing, and that sometimes the two are very close together.

I took out the photographs of Maria. Will had seen them, of course, because we'd worked on them together. He is as able in the darkroom now as I am, but our interests are different. He is fascinated
by the technical aspects of photography: by the chemicals, and the inner workings of cameras. I don't care so much about those things. I care about the expressions on people's faces, the way the light falls onto them, and the way the shadows are in soft patterns and contrast.

We looked at the pictures together, and talked about them. Ben was much like Will, interested in the problems of exposure and film latitude; Maria was like me: she liked seeing how the shadows curved around the fullness of the baby inside her, how her hands rested on the roundness of her middle, how her eyes were both serene and excited at the same time.

"Meg," she said, "Ben and I were talking about something the other night, and we want you to think it over and talk about it with your parents. If you want to, and if they don't mind, we'd like you to photograph the birth of the baby."

I was floored. "Golly," I said slowly, "I don't know. It never occurred to me. I mean, I don't want to intrude."