“But they’re wasting themselves over Newark,” she said. “Look at them, shining away for all they’re worth. It’s sad, don’t you think?”
Constantine was in love with Newark. He loved the proud thrust of smokestacks, the simple domestic serenity of square brick houses. Still, he knew Mary needed him to disdain all the ordinary beauties her presence had helped teach him to adore.
“Sad,” he said. “Yes, it’s very sad.”
“Oh, Con, I’m tired of, I don’t know. Everything.”
“You are tired of everything?” he said.
She laughed, and her laughter had a mocking edge. Sometimes he said things that were humorous to her in ways he couldn’t follow. Direct statements or questions of his often seemed to confirm some bitter joke known only to her.
“Well, I’m tired of school. I don’t see the use of all this history and geometry. I want to get a job, like you.”
“You want to work a construction crew?” he said.
“No, silly. I could work in an office, though. Or a dress shop.”
“You should finish school.”
“I can’t think what for. I’m no good at it.”
“You are good,” he said. “You are good at everything you do.”
She wrapped the hair tightly around her finger. She was angry again. How was it possible to know? Sometimes flattery was wanted. Sometimes flattery was hurled back like a handful of gravel.
“I know you think I’m perfect,” she said in a low voice. “Well, I’m not. You and my father both need to realize that.”
“I know you are not perfect,” he said, and his voice sounded wrong. It was hollow and young, with an apologetic squeak. In a deeper voice he added, “You are the girl I love.” Was a statement like that part of the immense, unguessable joke?
She didn’t laugh. “We both say that.” She continued looking deep into the yard. “Love love love. Con, how do you know you love me?”
“I know love,” he said. “I think about you. Everything I do is for you.”
“How would it make you feel if I told you I sometimes forget about you for whole hours?”
He didn’t speak. A small animal, a cat or an opossum, browsed quietly among the garbage cans.
“It’s not that I don’t care about you,” she said. “I do, I care about you awfully. Maybe I’m just shallow. But I keep wondering if love isn’t supposed to change everything. I mean, I’m still myself. I still wake up in the mornings and, well, there I am, about to live another day.”
Constantine’s ears had filled with an echoing, oceanic sound. Was this the moment? Was she going to tell him it would be better if they didn’t see each other for a while? To stop time, to fill the air, he said, “I can take you anyplace. I am assistant foreman, soon I’ll know enough to get other jobs.”
She looked at him. Her face was clear.
“I want to have a better life,” she said. “I’m not so awfully greedy, really I’m not, I just—”
Her attention drifted from his face to the porch on which they stood. Constantine saw the porch through Mary’s eyes. A rusty swing, a carton of milk bottles, a wan geranium growing in a small ceramic pot. He was aware of her parents and her brothers moving around inside the house, each nursing a private bouquet of complaints. Her father was poisoned by factory dust. Her mother lived among the ruins of a beauty she must once have thought would carry her into the next life. Her lazy brother Joey sought the bottom of everything with blind instincts, the way a catfish sought the bottom of a river.
Constantine took Mary’s small hand, squeezed it in his. “You will,” he said. “Yes. Everything you want can happen.”
“Do you honestly think so?”
“Yes. Yes, I know it.”
She closed her eyes. They were safe, at that moment, from the joke, and he knew that it was possible to kiss her.
1958/ Mary was assembling a rabbit-shaped Easter cake according to the instructions in a magazine, cutting ears and a tail from a layer of yellow cake round and placidly innocent as a nursery moon. She worked in a transport of concentration. Her eyes were dark with their focus, and the tip of her tongue protruded from between her lips. She sliced out one perfect ear and was starting on the next when Zoe, her youngest, bumped against her ankle. Mary gasped, and cut a nick big as a man’s thumbnail into the second ear.
“Darn,” she whispered. Before Zoe bumped into her, Mary had been wholly