Mary and O'Neil Read online

  “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.”

  She nods. She cannot help herself; how marvelous, she thinks, to be called a girl. “The next one.”

  She watches O’Neil head back into the crowd; she realizes that for the first time that evening, she is alone. And yet she does not feel alone. The wonderful music, the spinning lights, all O’Neil’s friends there (for more have arrived; he seems to know everyone); she has the uncanny sense of stepping into his life, and all the promise it contains. With her eyes she searches the open floor again and finds O’Neil dancing with a dark-haired girl she does not recognize; she sees Arthur dancing with Eliza, and Stephen, a solitary figure at the base of the stage, swaying his hips and pumping his fist, a beer in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other; she sees Sandra swinging her trombone back and forth in time to the music’s joyful rhythms. She knows that O’Neil has left her, that his life has begun, but the thought does not grieve her. It is as if time has thrown off its moorings, revealing all—that she, Miriam, has disappeared. She thinks of her father, gone twelve years, and her mother, too, sleeping her way into death not long after, as if it were not possible for her to remain in the world without him. A hole had opened; she had only to step through. After the funeral, the second in a year, Miriam walked alone through the Brooklyn apartment, not so much missing them as marveling at their absence. The places they had been, had sat and stood and walked and slept and eaten: fifty years of life in this place, and now they were gone. And yet their presence was vivid, palpable—a thing not seen but felt, like a parting of air. It was as if she were walking through the rooms of memory. She is remembering this, and watching too; the music stops—not the end of a song, merely a break in the action—the dancers stop in their tracks, and she sees O’Neil, the dark-haired girl swung out to the very tips of his fingers, throw back his head and laugh. The words, half remembered, form in her head. See? It is all so simple. The children are gone; they have flown away from you.

  And this is when she feels it—the first pain. What she has experienced until now has been more of a presence, a sense of something there. It was this awareness that brought her fingers to her breast to find the lump two weeks ago. But now, at this moment watching her son and his friends dancing, her mind adrift in the past, a tiny ball of fire ignites within her. It rockets through her body with a nauseating rush, leaving her hands and feet tingling, her brow glazed, her throat constricted with bile. The room lurches below her; she reaches one hand outward to brace herself, but finds nothing to hold, to stop her fall. The wall, she thinks. The wall will save her. Three more steps and she is there.

  Then someone has taken her by the elbow: it is Sandra, standing beside her. Wasn’t she just onstage?

  “Mrs. Burke?”

  But Miriam cannot speak; she knows if she doesn’t leave the room immediately she will be sick, or faint. The gymnasium seems like an enormous fishbowl, colors and shapes bending in the crooked, swirling light. At some impossible distance she sees Arthur and Eliza dancing, like two figures swimming on the far side of a lake.

  “I’m ill,” she manages.

  “I know. I’ll help you.”

  A pair of metal safety doors, then the sudden white light of the hallway: guiding her by the elbow, Sandra leads her away, though Miriam is barely aware of any of this. All she knows is that the music is gone, sealed away behind her. Another door opens and she finds herself in a small room full of instruments; she is backstage, where the band keeps its supplies. Relief overwhelms her, like oxygen to the lungs. She realizes that she is sitting on a bench of some kind, and that Sandra has gone, but the moment she discovers this she looks up and sees that Sandra has returned, carrying her purse. She holds a paper cup of water before Miriam’s face.

  “Drink this,” she says, and guides her hand around the cup.

  Miriam lifts the water to her lips. It is cool but not cold, and she sips at it, thinking only of the water’s taste, and her own pounding heart. The pain is gone, but in its wake it has deposited a kind of tingling numbness, scattered throughout her body like a luminous dust. So this is what it will be like, she thinks.

  A few moments pass. She finishes the water, and Sandra takes the cup. “Do you need the bathroom?” Sandra has pulled a chair up, and is sitting directly in front of her.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you want me to get Mr. Burke?”

  Miriam shakes her head. “You’ve done more than enough. I just need to rest here a minute.”

  Sandra’s eyes search her face. They are very blue—the blue of sapphires.

  “He doesn’t know,” Sandra says then.

  But before Miriam can say anything, Sandra goes on. “I didn’t mean to surprise you. You haven’t told Arthur, have you? Or O’Neil.”

  Miriam shakes her head. “No.”

  “And it’s cancer? A kind of cancer.”

  Miriam nods, amazed beyond words. “Yes. I think so. I have a tumor in my breast. How did you—”

  “It’s all right.” Sandra takes her hand. “I just do.”

  For a while they just sit there, their hands together. And Miriam is glad she has said it. Finally, she has used the words.

  “I’ll tell you how,” Sandra says gently. “I don’t know if it’s the real reason, but I’ve always thought so. I was six years old, and I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Do you know what that is?”

  “I think so.”

  “Most people don’t. I spent most of two years in the hospital. Little kids who get it nearly always die, but I didn’t know that at the time. My parents sure weren’t going to tell me. But I found it out, later. Chemo, radiation, things they’d never tried on anyone before. I had it all. And when it was over, I could always tell when someone was sick, even if they didn’t know it yet. I guess I’d been around cancer patients so long, I could just read the signs.”

  “When did you know about me?”

  “Well, when we first met, at the race, I thought it.” Sandra tips one shoulder and frowns; Miriam can tell she has returned to the moment, to feel what it was like. “At dinner too. It was just an inkling. You’ll probably laugh. Sometimes it’s lights, or a sort of ringing sound. Sometimes it’s just a feeling, like I’m remembering what it was like to be sick myself. I wasn’t certain until I saw you just now, outside.”

  The understanding hits her all at once. “The hats,” Miriam says.

  “You’ve discovered my secret.” Sandra smiles warmly, shrugging. “I just don’t feel dressed without one.”

  The door opens then, washing the room with music and noise, and a heavyset boy steps inside. Like the other band members he is wearing a navy suit and a gold necktie, and his face is flushed with the exertion of playing. He stops when he sees the two of them.

  “Christ, Sandy. Where have you been? We h
ad to shuffle the playlist twice already. You were supposed to be off break ten minutes ago.”

  Sandra barely takes her eyes off Miriam. “Just a minute in here, all right, Joe? I’ll be done soon. You can get along without me.”

  His face falls. “You don’t have to be such a crank about it. We need charts for the third set, anyway.” He kneels and rustles through a cardboard carton to find it, then leaves the two of them alone.

  “We should probably get back,” Miriam says.

  “When you feel up to it.” Sandra gestures toward the stage door. “They can fake it for a while.”

  A question occurs to her. “Does O’Neil know about you?”

  “About the cancer?” Sandra shakes her head. “I think he knows I was sick, but not the details. I’ll tell him sooner or later. He thinks I’m just some kind of superachiever, and to tell you the truth, I don’t want to spoil the illusion yet.”

  Her purse is at her feet; she remembers Sandra returning to get it. Miriam asks Sandra to bring her some more water, and Sandra leaves with the cup, reappearing almost at once. Miriam drinks it down—she hadn’t realized she was so thirsty—and opens her purse to remove the small package with the glass trombone inside. She places it in Sandra’s hands.

  “It’s just something small. I saw it today, and thought of you. But open it later. I don’t want O’Neil to know just yet.”

  Sandra looks at the package in her palm. It is wrapped in thin white tissue paper, with a crinkly green bow. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, Mrs. Burke.”

  “You’re welcome. And it’s Mimi, okay?”

  Sandra smiles. “Mimi, then.”

  They have risen to go when Miriam stops. “Sandra, this thing you can do.” Miriam pauses, wondering what words to choose. “Can you tell if someone’s going to be all right?”