“Mary. Come with me now and stop sittin here thinking. The next’ll be the memories of snow and your mother and when she died and before you can say Jack Robinson you’ll be wanting me to take you over to the cemetery and on the way stop off at the florist.”
“It’s Claire I’ve been thinking about, really. When she was small there wasn’t any of this soul-searching stuff. She was a normal, happy little girl, wasn’t she? A real Ann of Green Gables. She wasn’t the one you would think would get mixed up in all this mumbo jumbo. And it wasn’t Michael’s death that got her started, either. No, it was something else. Like when she started hanging around down in Greenwich Village after school. Rolling up her uniform above her knees and hitching to the city to go listen to drop-out musicians. That was when she started with all this metaphysical bunk. Remember the palmistry? All those books out of the library! The Manhattan library, too. And now them coming looking for her pictures in the cellar. I knew that darkroom was a bad idea.”
“Now what’s one thing got to do with the other?”
“Maybe I should have been more stern. I shouldn’t have been so trusting.”
“You wanted me to remind you about the meat.”
“Oh, yikes, that’s right! I’ve got that top round I have to get out of the freezer. You do that for me, will you, dear? And I’ll put some lipstick on. The garage freezer.”
“Mary?”
“What?”
“What’s Claire going to do about that camera Johnny Benedetto gave her?”
“Stanley Breslinsky. That’s her own decision now, isn’t it? And I won’t have you influencing her, one way or the other.” Mary rubbed the corners of her mouth with a Kleenex and grinned into her grubby compact.
Stan shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He could just make out the tops of her garters under her skirt. It was the big soft cotton skirt with the pineapples on it.
“And,” she dotted each cheek with a smudge from her lipstick and savagely patted, “you’d better start thinkin’ about what you’re going to do about the old camera … whether you’ll be givin’ it to Claire or not.”
“That again.”
“Yes, that again. What’re you savin’ it for? To leave her after you’re dead and gone?”
“To be sure. She won’t be getting much else.”
“Stop jokin’ around, Stan. Now, I mean it.” There was a quarter of a cup left of her coffee and she finished it off with a healthy last draft. “She could use it now. She couldn’t be in more of a crisis. She’ll wind up takin’ this fellow’s camera just to get back in the race.”
“He’s the best man any of them’s brought home yet.”
“I know. But you don’t know, really. You never can tell. Wasn’t it you urging Zinnie to marry Fred? It was. I know Claire has ethics. Too many, maybe. But if life forces her hand, there’s no tellin’ what could happen. She might go with him just to justify accepting the gift, like.”
“She’d be right to do it.”
“That’s just the point, Stan. It’s not to be your decision. It’s hers. And if she has her own camera she won’t need anything from him. She’ll be free to judge him for love’s sake.”
Stan looked at his nails stubbornly. “If I pushed Zinnie at all, it didn’t turn out so badly. You got Michaelaen didn’t you?”
“Got Michaelaen! Like he was some raffle prize and me with the right ticket! Sure I’d give him up in a flash if he could have a normal life with a mom and a dad just like every other child, I would! You’re hot stuff, you are. Well, maybe not. Not in a flash. Oh, will you give the dog some of your bread and butter?”
“I’m not eating any.”
“Well, you’re standing right alongside of it! Just give it to him, will you? He’s driving me crazy.”
“He shouldn’t have butter.”
“Neither should you.”
“Especially not in this heat. I ought to bring him along to the vet’s one of these days. He’s long due. You like that, wouldn’t you, boy? A nice trip to the fine doctor?”
Like fish, thought the Mayor.
Mary stood up decisively and smoothed her skirt. “So when are you going to give Claire that old camera of yours? I mean, if you want to.”
Stan was spreading butter back and forth, back and forth. It couldn’t get any softer. The Mayor sat patiently down on the cool linoleum.
“Michaelaen still upstairs?” Mary, her germ planted, changed the subject.
“He’s shaving. I gave him a shaver with no razor and he’s up there scraping shaving foam off his face.”
They both were quiet then. They could hear the rabbits outside shuffling in their cages. Stan lit up his pipe.