asleep and didn’t get up till two o’clock. I had to go sleep at Bridget’s house. Now I’m not allowed to go anywhere. And my mother says you and I can’t be friends anymore.”
Maggie looked over at Mrs. Malone. For a moment Debbie’s mother looked at her, and then she tilted her chin up in a way she had when she was angry, and stared past her. Maggie could not imagine why Mrs. Malone would be angry at her.
“How am I in trouble with your mom for what you did? What did you say?”
“You should have taken me home, Mag.”
“You shouldn’t have had anything to drink. We’re only thirteen. I could see right down the front of your blouse.” Maggie stared at her friend’s neck. There was a very faint purple mark, ineptly concealed with what looked like Max Factor pancake.
“Oh, grow up,” Debbie said. “What are you, my conscience? If you think you can handle everything, then do it. But don’t do it halfway. If you’re going to save somebody’s life, then save it all the way.”
There was a long silence. The two girls looked down at their shoes, hazy with dust.
“My mother said Richard’s father is paying for everything,” said Maggie finally, not looking up.
“He’s okay,” Debbie said. “Bridget says they’re sending him to military school. He’s going to need plastic surgery on his arm, Bridget said, and one of his fingers was burned off. That’s pretty disgusting, but at least it wasn’t his face. God, that would have been bad. It didn’t even touch his face, just his arm. And it was the arm he doesn’t use to write or throw, Bridget said. He’ll write and tell me soon. I don’t know how I’m going to see him at military school.”
Maggie said nothing, only fingered the tissue in her hand. She looked at Debbie, her hair frizzing in the heat, and knew that she would always think of her as her best friend. She looked at Mrs. Malone, who still avoided her eyes, and knew that that was over, too, and she thought that maybe it was Mrs. Malone she would miss most. She would miss having a mother she didn’t have to push away, having a mother nothing like herself, having a family with no complications. Her eyes swam with tears, until the sunlight broke into little pink particles and she saw everything as a blur. She had known her grandfather would die. She had gotten used to the idea, little by little over the summer, that he was not invincible. But she knew that she had still believed that some things lasted forever.
“’Bye Deb,” she said.
“God, you’re always so dramatic,” Debbie said. “That’s what Bridget says.”
Maggie looked away and saw that now her grandmother had the monsignor on one side of her and Mr. O’Neal on the other. Suddenly her grandmother crouched down and lifted one side of the grasscloth. “Oh, God,” Maggie heard Connie say, and the two of them moved away from the Malones and stood behind Mary Frances.
“Could you get your father, sweetheart?” said Mr. O’Neal, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief.
Mary Frances wheeled and brightened. “Maggie, these gentlemen are confused. Go get your uncle James and your father.” And suddenly all the boys were there, in their dark suits, looking so alike, so flushed and full of blood. For the first time Maggie saw the family resemblance, and saw it in herself, too.
“I just wanted to know on which side the baby was buried,” Mary Frances said, her voice loud enough that people began to look over. “He is under the mistaken impression that there is nobody else in the Scanlan plot.” The five men, their hands folded in front of them, turned as one to Mr. O’Neal, who wiped his forehead again.
“Perhaps one of you could show your mother to the car,” he said.
“Is there another casket there or not?” Tommy said.
Mr. O’Neal looked at Mary Frances, and then his narrow nostrils flared. “Absolutely not,” he said. “And I can assure you that I had a number of conversations with your father about these arrangements over the years and it was understood—twelve places. He and your mother. You five and your wives.”
Tommy grimaced. “What about my sister?” he said.
“The sisters make their own arrangements,” said Mr. O’Neal, as though that settled everything.
“My parents had a child who passed away at birth,” Tommy began. “A little girl.”
“My understanding was that at the time she was buried at a cemetery in the