eyes wild. “This is the way it is. This is the way everything is. It’s one screw job after another, and then you die. You really think it’s going to be like some goddamn little story, but this is what it’s like when you grow up. One bad thing after another, and you just have to say ‘To hell with it’ and go on to something else. But not you. You’re going to walk around with that little sad face and those little sad eyes and go, oh, oh, I’m really sorry, you didn’t live happily ever after, you—”
“Shut up, Monica,” Connie said, standing in the doorway.
“You should be able to fill her in, Aunt Concetta,” Monica said after a moment’s silence. “I’m going downstairs for my prenuptial crackers, so I don’t throw up on Father Hanlon’s best vestments.”
“You do that,” Connie said as Monica put on a robe.
When she was gone Maggie sat back down at the dressing table. “I feel stupid,” she said.
“Your cousin is the one who’s stupid,” Connie said.
“You know what I’m talking about. I didn’t even figure out why she was getting married. They probably all thought I was an idiot when we went for our dresses. They were all making little comments about whether Monica’s could be let out, and I just sat there listening. You should have told me.”
Connie knelt on the floor, lightly, as though there was no belly under the red tent of her dress. She looked up into Maggie’s face, her eyes blazing. “Maggie,” she said, “there are some things that aren’t that important. There are things that seem tremendously important at the time and then years later you look back and think you can’t believe you ever worried so much about them.”
“You sound like Monica. Everything’s silly.”
“No,” Connie said, smoothing her daughter’s hair. “That’s not what I mean. It’s just that whether you’re getting married because you’re having a baby isn’t as important as getting married and having the baby. Monica’s wrong. She’s one of those people who sees everything bad. And there are other people who see everything good.”
“Like who?”
“I think deep down inside your father is one of them. Your aunt Margaret, too, probably, in a different way.”
“What about you?”
“Not good or bad. Things just are.”
“And me?”
“I think you’ll probably be like me.”
The two of them looked at each other for a moment. Finally Maggie said, “Monica said something else to me, too. When we were getting our dresses.” She watched her mother’s face, but it was very still. “About when you got married. And when I was born.”
Connie smiled slowly, but she didn’t show her teeth, and her eyes were cold. “She’s going to have a hard life, that girl,” she finally said, as though she was talking to herself. Then she looked at Maggie and said, “What did I just tell you? There are things that seem important to some people that just aren’t important at all.”
“You should have told me,” Maggie said.
“I wouldn’t have known what to say. We got married. We had a baby. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes.”
“Were you going to have a baby and that’s why you got married?”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“That’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Connie sighed. “What’s wrong is if I was angry about it for the rest of my life. Or if you were ashamed.” Connie rose and took Maggie’s dress down from its hanger. She cradled it in her arms and then she looked Maggie in the eye and said, “It’s wrong to light a fire. It’s worse to enjoy it.”
“I didn’t enjoy it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t believe me about not doing it.”
Connie was quiet, her face blank.
“It’s complicated. I sort of did it, but I sort of didn’t. Does that make any sense?”
“Yes,” Connie said. “I know exactly what you mean.”
“It was hard to think about it while it was happening.”
“I know that too.”
“Why did you tell the police I wasn’t there?” Maggie said.
“Because that seemed closest to the truth.”
“Did they believe you?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Probably not. Raise your arms.” Connie slipped the dress over Maggie’s head. She zipped it, and stepped back. “You look beautiful, Maggie,” Connie said, and then she corrected herself. “You are beautiful. That’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
Maggie looked at herself in the mirror. She stood up and her mother’s head behind her disappeared, so that now she only saw herself, and she knew that