“Patty Nicely!”
“No.”
“Yes! Okay, Patty won’t come right out and tell me, but she’s lost weight, did I tell you she’d gained weight and the kids at school call her Fatty Patty? Well, she’s certainly been very nice to Charlie, she looks wonderful, and they were friends anyway, kind of. So there you go.” Angelina gave her mother a meaningful nod. “You never know.”
“My goodness,” Mary said. “Angel, that is wonderful gossip, my word. They call her Fatty Patty, the kids at school? To her face?”
“No. I don’t think she even knows. Just once.” Angelina sighed, pushing her plate back. “She’s awfully nice.”
—
When they finished eating, Mary went and sat on the sofa. She patted the place next to her and Angelina joined her, bringing her wineglass with her. “Listen to me,” Mary said. “Listen to what I have to tell you.”
Angelina sat up straight and looked at her mother’s feet. She felt that only now did she see that her mother’s ankles were no longer tiny, as they had always been.
“You were thirteen. I came to pick you up at the library. And I yelled at you—” Mary’s voice suddenly quavered, and Angelina looked at her, saying, “Mommy—” But her mother shook her head and said, “No, honey, let me go on. I only want to say I yelled at you, I really yelled at you, I have no idea what about, but I yelled and you were frightened, and I was yelling because I had found out about your father and Aileen, but I never told you about that—until, well, you know, a million years later, but the point is, honey, I frightened you, I yelled at you, and you were frightened.” Mary looked past Angelina toward the window, and her face moved. “And I am so, so sorry,” she said.
After a moment, Angelina asked, “Is that it?”
Mary looked at her. “Well, yes, honey. I’ve felt terrible about it for years.”
“I don’t remember it. It doesn’t matter.” But Angelina thought she did remember, and inside her now she cried, Mom, he was a stupid pig, but so what, Mom, please, Mom—Please don’t leave, Mommy! After many moments, Angelina said, “Mom, it was so long ago, that stuff with Aileen. Did you leave Daddy because of that? Because it sure took you long enough.” She could hear the coldness of her tone. It was as if the wine had turned on her; she felt that cold toward her mother, suddenly.
Mary said thoughtfully, “I just don’t know, honey, but I think I would not have left.”
“We’ve never talked about it at all,” Angelina said.
Her mother was silent, and when Angelina looked at her she was stabbed by the look of sadness on her mother’s face. But her mother said, “Well, tell me, honey. Now that you’re finally here. Tell me what it’s like for you. I told you before, I fell in love with Paolo. Your father and I were not compatible in many ways, but, honey—I fell in love. So now you tell me.”
Angelina said, “He’s a bank teller, Mom. And this place is—” She looked around. She wanted to say “squalid” again, but it was not that. It just was not—it was not lovely—and it was a strange place with its high ceilings and chairs that were worn in their upholstery.
Her mother sat up very straight. “This place is beautiful,” she said. “Why, we have the view of the water. We’d never have been able to afford it if Paolo’s wife hadn’t had money.”
“She had money?”
“She has money, some. Yes. And he’s like me, he didn’t come from much.”
Angelina said nothing.
Mary continued, “The point is this. I am comfortable with him. I am in love with him, and I am comfortable with him. Your father’s family, as you very well know, had money, and your father has been very successful. Frankly, Angelina, I don’t give a damn about money. I like not having it, in fact. Except that not having it keeps me from seeing you.”
“You’ve returned to your roots.” Angelina meant this sarcastically, but she thought it sounded silly.
“My father worked at a filling station. We had nothing. You know that. Paolo does not have money and he does not have huge ideas of how to make it. If that’s what you mean by returning to my roots.”
Angelina stared at her own feet stretched out in front of her; her ankles were thin. “Wait.” She looked up at her mother. “So he lived here with his wife?”
“That’s right. She met someone and took off, and she left him this place, and we’re glad to have it.”
“I don’t understand anything,” Angelina said finally.
“No. I don’t either.”
Mary reached for her daughter’s hand. And yet to Mary came the sudden knowledge—how stupid she had been not to see this before—that her daughter would never forgive her for leaving her father. Not in Mary’s lifetime. And Mary’s lifetime was not very long anymore. But the knowledge was terrible—and yet in Mary’s head was that twang again, she was angry—!
Please.
Angelina said, “Mom. I don’t want you to die. That’s the whole thing. You took from me the ability to care for you in your old age, and I wanted to be with you if you died, when you die. Mom. I wanted that.”
Mary looked at her, this woman with the creases by her mouth.
“Mom, I’m trying to tell you—”
“I know what you’re trying to tell me.” And now Mary had to be careful. She had to be careful because this girl-woman was her daughter. She could not tell her—this child she loved as much as she had loved anything—that she did not dread her death, that she was almost ready for it, not really but getting there, and it was horrifying to realize that—that life had worn her out, worn her down, she was almost ready to die, and she would die, probably not too long from now. Always, there was that grasping for a few more years, Mary had seen this with many people, and she did not feel it—or she did, but she did not. No. She felt tired out, she felt almost ready, and she could not tell her child this. And she also felt terror at the thought. She pictured it—lying here in this very room while Paolo rushed about—and she was terrified, because she would not see her girls again, she would not see her husband again, and she meant their father, that husband, she would not see all of them again and it terrified her. And she could not tell her daughter that had she known what she was doing to her, to her dearest little Angel, she might not have done it.
But this was life! And it was messy! Angelina, my child, please—
“You didn’t even take the money Dad owes you from the divorce—in the state of Illinois, you could have had some money.”
Mary said, “But, honey.” She paused, looking for the words. Finally she said, “When you fall in love you get into some”—Mary waved a hand upward—“bubble or something. You don’t think. But why should I have his money? I never earned a penny of it.”
Angelina thought, You’re a dope, Mom.
Mary shook her head slowly and said, “I’m a dope.”
Angelina said, “Well, if you had taken the money, I could visit you, that’s one thing you could have done with it.”
Mary said, “I understand that. Now.”
“And why do you say you didn’t earn it? You raised five girls, Mom.”
Mary nodded. “I always felt that I was at the mercy of your father and his family. Like I was a kept woman. I should have had a job. But why would I have had a job? I don’t know what you and Jack have done about finances, but I’ll tell you, Angelina, it’s a good thing you’ve always worked. It makes things a lot more fair between two people.”
Angelina said, “Jack’s going to come back.”
“Jack left? I didn’t know he’d left.” Mary pulled back to look at her daughter.
Angelina said, “I don’t want to talk about it, but things were my fault too. So he’s coming back. When I get home.”
“He left?”
“Yes. And I don’t want to talk about it.”