“. . . so Polly’s coming over a lot? Her mother lets her?” Dora heard him say one afternoon.
Dora was making baked scrod for dinner, with parsley potatoes. He didn’t like anything she cooked but she continued to make complete meals for the two of them despite that. Over her roast beef and mashed potatoes he’d asked her if there was anyplace around to get a good burrito. The night she’d made leg of lamb he’d requested fish sticks. Last night he’d described something called Hot Pockets, a frozen bread type thing stuffed with meat and vegetables. Dora had nodded and taken another pork chop from the platter.
“I’m surprised her mother lets her. Really surprised. Her mother’s like so uptight. She’s a Republican, you know.”
Dora glanced at him. She was a Republican, after all. But she would have let Tillie visit her pregnant friend. She would have considered it a positive experience for Tillie, to know that there were consequences for actions.
“What?” Peter said, cupping his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.
Dora spread the crumbled Ritz crackers over the scrod and put the pan in the oven. “I think you have foolish ideas, that’s all,” she said, and set the timer.
“Excuse me,” Peter said. “But I wasn’t talking to you.”
Dora shrugged.
“You’re eavesdropping,” he said.
“I’m making dinner,” Dora told him.
“Anyway, I think Polly is probably sick of Jen and Justin and that’s why she’s hanging around so much,” Peter said, presumably not to Dora.
Dora took out two of the blue and white everyday dishes and began to set the table around Peter. She tried to picture the girl on the other end, but could only come up with an image of Melinda at that age, a sullen girl who always looked like she was not to be trusted. She’d slunk into their home during dinner one night, Dan’s arm protectively around her waist, dressed in torn jeans and brown suede Indian moccasins. Those shoes had bothered Dora. Earlier that day she had commented to Madeline Dumfey that it seemed loose girls wore those. Then right in her kitchen, hanging on to her son, Melinda appeared with that very type of shoe. “That girl’s trouble,” Dora had announced as soon as Melinda and Dan had gone. And of course she’d been right. Before Melinda he had never even gotten drunk. After Melinda’s appearance in their kitchen Dan had started with marijuana and who knew what else. The school was calling every other day about his absences. One night the police brought him home, stoned, confused, and with Melinda.
Dora sighed. She was holding two forks, the timer was buzzing, and Peter was staring at her hard.
“Gran?” he said.
She shook her head. “I’m fine.” She went to the oven for the scrod, her heart twisted in grief. In her own lifetime she had taken chances. When she was only twenty she’d fallen foolishly in love with a married man. He had taken her to a lopsided ski cabin he and his wife owned in Maine and Dora lost her virginity on the floor there; he felt too guilty to have sex in his marriage bed. The next morning, feeling reckless, Dora took two runs down the bunny slope, then boarded the chairlift to the top of the mountain where she promptly fell and broke her leg. The man drove her home in a stony silence and never called her again. My how she had carried on! she remembered now, making Madeline drive her past his house, her leg stuck in that awful cast for two entire months, a reminder of her indiscretion.