had been a death in the family except that the five priests concelebrating the Mass would make mention of John Scanlan during the prayers for the dead. “My father would have wanted it that way,” James told several of the mourners at the funeral, who nodded solemnly.
Maggie knew this was not true. John Scanlan would have wanted them to cancel the whole thing, deposit or no deposit. (Actually, Maggie knew, he would have wanted Uncle James to demand that the deposit be returned and to threaten legal action if it was not.) “Give the devil his due,” Maggie thought he would say, but she could not quite conjure him up, with his broad white grin and his glittering blue eyes, saying it. She could barely remember his face; she could only remember his hands, big, the hairs on them like a web.
In the mirror her own eyes seemed dead, too, looking inside, and then they came alive as she looked up at her mother. Connie had drawn Maggie’s long tail of hair up onto the back of her head, and she was separating it into sections, smiling to herself, as though she had a secret. She picked a thin piece of pink ribbon off the dressing table and began to braid it through one section, her hands quick and sure. Maggie sat silently until her mother had made six narrow braids and pinned them into long loops, chestnut shot through with pink. When Connie was finished she picked up a silver mirror from the dressing table, glancing first at the engraving on the back. “From your aunt Margaret’s hope chest,” she said, and handed the mirror to Maggie so she could see how her hair looked from behind.
With her hair pulled back, her forehead and cheeks pink, her eyes bright without their dark frame, Maggie felt suddenly shy. “It feels strange,” she said, returning the mirror. But then she thought that sounded ungrateful and she added, “It looks nice.”
Monica emerged from the bathroom in her merry widow and white stockings, her hair still in rollers, Mary Frances’s good pearls around her neck. She had lent Maggie her add-a-pearl necklace; she had not wanted to, but Aunt Cass had insisted. “As a peace offering,” she had said, and at that moment Maggie had heard her grandfather’s voice loud and clear, saying, “Peace offering my ass.” Monica was holding a mascara wand. “Well, well,” she said, tilting her head. “The ugly duckling turns into a swan.”
“You look lovely, Maggie,” said Aunt Cass.
“When you’re old enough to wear makeup you just might look like a real girl,” Monica said, rearranging her bosom in the boned bodice of white lace.
“She’s wearing makeup today,” said Connie, “or this pink will wash her right out.” Connie opened her purse and began to remove a bottle of foundation, a compact, and a pat of pink rouge. “I’ll take that mascara when you’re done with it, Monica,” she said.
Connie held Maggie’s chin in her hand and began to smooth creams onto her face, turning it this way and that and occasionally rubbing something off with a finger she’d touched to her tongue. It seemed to take a long time, with Connie humming and looking at Maggie dispassionately as though she was a piece of furniture being refinished. Finally she let go of her chin, and kissed the top of her head. Maggie almost jumped out of her skin.
“What are you going to do about these?” said Connie, and with her index finger she flicked the limp circle of dingy thread hanging from one of Maggie’s earlobes. Maggie inhaled. She had kept her ears hidden beneath her hair for a week. Connie went into her purse again and removed a square of tissue. Inside were a pair of earrings, teardrop-shaped stones, purple-red, dangling from small curving pieces of gold.
“This is going to hurt,” Connie said, snipping the strings with a nail scissors and pulling them out. It took her a minute to get the earrings in, and Maggie kept very still, looking into her own eyes again. Her mother stepped back to look at her.
“Ta da,” she said.
“Where did you get those?” Maggie said.
“They were my mother’s. I found them after she died. It was so strange to see them, because I don’t think she wore a pretty thing her whole life, at least when I knew her. Your grandfather couldn’t tell me where they came from either. And I wasn’t interested in wearing them. They’ve been sitting at