Bad Behavior: Stories (24 page)

Virginia imagined the brat confronting her gentle sister. Another spoiled, pretty daughter who fancied herself a gypsy princess, barefooted, spangled with bright beads, breasts arrogantly unbound, cavalier in love. Like Magdalen.

“I want to marry Brian in a gypsy wedding,” said Magdalen. “I want to have it on the ridge behind the house. Our friends will make a circle around us and chant. I’ll be wearing a gown of raw silk with a light veil. And we’ll have a feast.”

“Does Brian want to marry you?” asked Virginia dryly.

Magdalen was seventeen. She had just returned home after a year’s absence. She carried a fat green knapsack on her back. Her feet were filthy. “I’m coming home to clear my head out,” she said.

She ate huge breakfasts with eggs and bacon, baked a lot of banana bread and lay around the den playing with tarot cards. Family life went on around her brooding, cross-legged frame. Her long blond hair hung in her face. She flitted around with annoying grace, her jeans swishing the floor, humming songs about ladies on islands.

After six months she “decided” to marry Brian, and went to Vancouver to tell him about it.

Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an overlong cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken.

For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay
attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts.

Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching
Cool Hand Luke
on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely.

Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?”

Lily had just been released from a mental hospital. “All she does is lie around like a lump, eating butter sandwiches and drinking tea like a fiend. I don’t think she can go back to school here, now that she’s been expelled. We’ve already tried sending her away to school and that didn’t work either. I don’t know what to do.”

Magdalen was somewhere in Canada. Camille was away at college. Charles and Daniel were always outside playing. “Why doesn’t Lily come and go to school here?” she said. “I’m fresh out of girls, you know. Send her on out.”

She went back into the den forty minutes later. Jarold was hunched forward on the couch with the exasperated expression that he always had when he was watching liberals on TV. He was so intent on
Cool Hand Luke
that he didn’t ask about the telephone call. She cuddled against him silently.

She meant to tell him about Lily after the movie was over, but she didn’t. She planned to tell him for several days. Then she realized she was putting it off because she knew he would say no.
So she decided not to tell him anything. All week, she fantasized about Lily, and what it would be like to have her there.

A week later, she picked Lily up at the airport. As she stood shielding her eyes to scan the passengers climbing from the plane, she realized that she had been vaguely expecting Lily to look like Magdalen. She felt a slight shock when she noticed the small, pale, brown-haired girl. Even as Virginia adjusted her expectation, she was surprised by Lily’s appearance. She had not imagined such a serious face. As Lily came toward her among the passengers, Virginia felt an odd sense of aloneness about the girl. Her gray eyes were wide and penetrating, but seemed veiled, as if she wanted to look out without you looking in. Her mouth and jaw were stiff and rather pained. Virginia was curious and taken aback.

She bought Lily a can of grape pop and took her to the car. It was a humid day; the seats were sticky and hot. They rolled down all the windows, and Virginia turned on the radio to a rock station. Lily didn’t say much until they got out on the turnpike. Then she said the thing about Florida. Virginia was surprised and pleased. She laughed and said, “Well, we did chase a few lobsters around the house, but it would take more than that to make us exotic. We just couldn’t manage to keep the doors and windows shut at the same time.”

“Maybe exotic isn’t the right word,” said Lily. “You were just so obviously different from us. Mother showed us pictures of you and you always seemed so self-assured. I remember a picture of Magdalen and Camille. They were both standing with their hips out and one of them—Magdalen, I guess—had her foot perched up on something. They looked so blond and confident.”

Virginia thought of the pictures she had seen of Anne’s family. In a group, they looked huddled together and meek, even when they were all smiling brightly. They looked as though they were strangers to the world outside their family, as if they had come out blinking, wanting to show their love and happiness, holding it out like a shy present. Anne’s daughters were pretty in a different way from Magdalen or Camille. She remembered a picture of Lily and her sister Dawn crouching in a sandbox in frilly red sunsuits. Their brown
hair just reaching their shoulders, and the bashful smiles on their bright, thin lips seemed heartbreakingly, dangerously fragile to her.

“Well, you all looked darling to us,” she said. “We could tell you were sweet as pie.”

Virginia left the highway and took Lily for a drive through the mountains. She drove to the top of a hill that looked down on a lake and some old dull-colored green pines. They were near a convent, and the woods were planted with white daisies and small purple flowers. They got out and walked until Virginia felt a light sweat on her skin. Then they sat on a stone bench near the convent and told each other family stories. Virginia liked Lily. She was intrigued by her. She wondered why such an intelligent child could not do well in school.

They went home and Virginia made them cups of tea.

Charles and Daniel came home from school. They were surprised to see Lily, and to hear that she was coming to live with them. They sat at the table and Virginia served them pieces of coconut cream pie. The three children had a short, polite conversation. Charles said, “That’s a cool knapsack. My sister Magdalen has one like that.”

When the boys went upstairs, Virginia began to worry. Jarold was coming home, and she still hadn’t thought of what to say to him.

She decided to take a shower and put on a pretty blouse. She told Lily to make herself at home, and went upstairs. When she came down again, she found Jarold in the kitchen; he had left work early. He was standing at the table, his face red and bitterly drawn about the eyes. He looked at Virginia like she was his enemy. Lily looked at her too, her face stiff and puzzled. Jarold walked out of the room.

She and Jarold talked about it that night. Apart from the intrusion, Jarold did not like Lily. “She’s weird,” he said. “She has no social graces. She just stares at you.” They were lying in bed on their backs in their summer pajamas, their arms lying away from their bodies in the heat. The electric fan was loud.

“Jarold, she’s shy,” said Virginia. “And she’s upset. She’s had a hard time these last few months.”

“Whose fault is that? Why do we have to get stuck with her hard time, Virginia? Answer me that.”

Virginia lay still and looked at her long naked feet standing at the end of the bed. She couldn’t think of an answer.

“And she’s got such a pasty little face,” continued Jarold. “She looks like something that crawled out from under a rock.”

“Jerry.” Her voice was soft and blurry in the fan.

“I don’t think Jarold likes me,” said Lily the next day.

Virginia was doing the dishes. Lily stood beside her, leaning against the wall, standing on one leg.

“He just needs time to get used to you.” Virginia dug around in the water for the silverware and tried to think of something to say. “He told me last night that you remind him of Magdalen. And he loved Magdalen.”

Virginia could feel Lily brightening.

“But you see, Magdalen hurt him more than anyone else in the world. It’s a painful memory for him.”

“I guess so,” said Lily. “He told me I look like something that crawled out from under a rock.”

Jarold was a big, handsome man who sold insurance to companies. His handsomeness was masculine and severe. His bright blue eyes were harsh and direct, and his thin, arched eyebrows gave him an airy demon look that was out of character with his blunt, heavy voice. He rarely made excessive or clumsy movements, although his walk was a little plodding. He had become successful very quickly. They had never been forced to live in small apartments with peeling wallpaper. For years Virginia believed that Jarold could surmount anything. He could, too, until Magdalen.

Jarold had been in love with Magdalen. At breakfast, he would look at her as she sullenly pushed her egg around her plate while the other children chattered, as if her bored, pale face gave him the energy to go to work. He read all of her papers from school; he always
wanted to take her picture. She could make him do anything for her. He’d let her stay out all night; he let her spend the weekend in New York when she was fifteen. Wherever she was, even when she was traveling around Canada with a busload of hippies and a black person, if she cabled home for money, Jarold sent it immediately. If he tried to be strict, she would tease and flatter him. The few times he lost his temper and punished her, she punished him with silence. When he dragged her up the stairs and spanked her, she ran away from home. She called a week later and spoke to Virginia, but she hung up when Jarold got on the phone. It was the first time that Virginia had seen Jarold cry.

“Magdalen has real charm,” said Jarold to Lily. “She can charm the birds off the trees. You don’t have any of that. You don’t have any personality at all.”

Virginia was surprised at the intensity of Jarold’s dislike for Lily. And, although Lily never expressed it openly, Virginia felt that Lily hated him too. Lily never argued with him; she barely acknowledged his presence. When she had to speak to him, her voice was clipped and subtly condescending, as though he were beneath defiance.

One evening, Lily and Virginia were sitting together in lawn chairs in the back yard when Charles and Daniel approached them with a big piece of wood. The boys had shot four squirrels, skinned them and nailed the skins to it. They displayed the skins proudly, and Virginia praised them. Lily said nothing until they left. Then she said that she thought it was sick.

“I know, it seems awful,” said Virginia. “But they’re little boys and it means something to them. They do it to impress their father.” Virginia was unnerved by the sudden look of contempt on Lily’s face.

“I know,” she said.

Lily’s stay gradually became more and more unpleasant and eventually became a discomfiting memory that hung over the house for quite a while. But there were bright spots that stood out of the unpleasantness so vividly that they seemed to come from somewhere else altogether.

Virginia would spend afternoons with Lily after school. They’d change into jeans and T-shirts and drive into the mountains where they’d gone the first day. Sometimes they’d stop at a Dairy Queen and buy pink-spotted cups of ice cream in melting puddles of syrup. They’d sit on the car hood, slowly swinging their legs and eating the ice cream with pink plastic spoons, talking about the bossy girl in Lily’s home ec class, or the boy she thought was “different.” Virginia spoke about her high school days, when she was beautiful and popular and all the girls tried to be friends with her. She’d give Lily social advice about how to choose her friends.

When they’d get to the mountains, they’d leave the car and walk. They’d become quiet and concentrate on the walk. They’d find paths, then break branches from trees and use them to clear their way. Lily would stop to examine plants or insects, her brow taut and puzzled. She’d pick up a lot of things to hold in her pockets, especially chestnuts. She would pick up a chestnut and hold it in her hand for the whole walk, stroking it with her fingers, or meditatively rubbing it across her lower lip.