middle ones,” she said, and Maggie bent over them, scowling.
“You’ve grown,” said Helen. “You’ll be as tall as I am soon.”
“I’m already taller than my mother,” Maggie said.
“But not taller than Richard Joseph. Is he still the idée fixe?”
Maggie felt as if they were back to code again. She shrugged. “He’s not as great as everyone thinks he is,” Maggie said, trying to coax another button through its loop and wondering how Helen would ever get into this dress if no one was around.
“Bravo,” Helen said. “I know that kind of boy. All talk and no substance. He’s cute, but he’s a little too full of himself.”
“Debbie still really likes him.”
“That’s no surprise. You and Debbie are like oil and water.” Maggie frowned. She was finished with the buttons, but she fiddled around with the back of the dress to prolong the conversation. “I can tell you exactly what Debbie’ll be doing in twenty years,” Helen added.
“What?”
“She’ll have three kids. She’ll live in Kenwood or a place just like it. She’ll be married to somebody she met in high school and married halfway through college. She’ll say she’s going to finish college when the kids are in school. If you ask her if she’s happy, she’ll say ‘Of course I’m happy’ and she’ll be telling the truth.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Maggie said.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, if that’s what you want. It’s just that most people don’t decide, it just sort of happens to them. That’s not what my life will be like twenty years from now.”
“Tell me yours,” said Maggie, and she stopped trying to pretend she was still buttoning and sat down on the bed.
“I haven’t the foggiest. Maybe I’ll be an actress. Maybe a dancer. Maybe I won’t be good enough to be either and I’ll wind up with three kids and a house in Kenwood.” She laughed, and Maggie frowned again. “You’re right, Maggie, that’s pushing it a little. The point is, I haven’t done anything yet that will force me in any particular direction. Somebody like my sister, she’s already on her way to a decision. In two or three years she’ll start dating some guy, and she’ll get used to him and he’ll get used to her. They’ll go a little further each time they park, until they don’t have any further to go. And their families will get to know each other and everyone will expect them to get engaged and pretty soon they will. And then they’ll be married and the kids will show up and so on and so forth ’til the end of time. How old are you guys again?”
“Almost thirteen,” said Maggie, liking the sound of it much better than twelve.
“The decisions you make when you’re thirteen can decide who you will be for the rest of your life.”
“But can’t you change?”
“Sometimes. You can break up with the guy. You can marry somebody else. But after a while, you can’t change a thing. Like my parents. Can you imagine one of my parents waking up someday and deciding they wanted to ditch seven kids, or move to a place where they don’t know a soul?”
“That’s what Debbie said.”
“Wait a minute. You’ve lost me. My sister said these same things?”
“She said parents have no future, that their lives are over.”
“Ah. No. That’s not the same thing. Your life is over when you’re dead. But the kind of life you have—that’s settled early, sometimes by accident. Sometimes by character. Like Monica Scanlan. What will she be doing twenty years from now?”
“She’ll be married,” Maggie said.
“Kids?”
“Only two. Enough to make her seem like an all-right person but not enough to be too much trouble or make her get fat.”
Helen grinned. “Kenwood?”
“No,” said Maggie. “Someplace with bigger houses.”
“California!” cried Helen.
“California?” said Maggie.
“And will she live happily ever after?” Helen asked.
Maggie stopped laughing. “No,” she said quietly. “Monica will never be happy, no matter what.”
“You’re good at this,” Helen said. “What will you be doing in twenty years, Maggie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Husband?”
Maggie thought of her parents dancing, and her parents fighting while her grandfather lay half dead, and of John Scanlan telling Mary Frances he was going to marry her whether she liked it or not, and of the nail in her jewelry box, and the mark of Richard’s fingers on her arm. She was wearing a dress with sleeves today so that the bruise marks, a brownish-yellow now, would not show. “I don’t know,” she finally said.