The Scanlan grandchildren did not get away with calling their aunts and uncles by their first names. Connie did not know exactly what to say. Finally she said, “No.”
“No, no, NO,” said Joseph loudly, talking to the bear.
“I beg your pardon?” said Monica.
“I said no,” Connie repeated.
Joseph was still babbling, making it hard for Connie to hear. “Would you tell her I called to ask her to be a junior bridesmaid at my wedding?” Monica said.
“I beg your pardon?”
Monica repeated herself, as though she had been practicing the sentence for some time.
“You’ll get the invitation this week. The wedding is at the end of the month.”
“The end of the month? Who’s the guy?”
“You don’t know him. He goes to Fordham. His name is Donald Syzmanski. His father is a police officer.” There was a silence. “A sergeant,” Monica added coldly, as though the silence had implied criticism.
Connie did not know what to say. This was the longest conversation she had ever had with her niece. Monica had always reminded her of Gigi Romano, a beautiful girl she had known in high school, who had had an impossibly tiny nose and numerous matching cashmere sweater sets, and whose father was said to be a member of organized crime. She had married an older Italian man and moved to Las Vegas the summer after graduation. There had been 700 people at Gigi Romano’s wedding, and her gown had been hand-beaded at a convent in Italy. In high school Gigi Romano had always referred to Connie as “deadbeat” because of the cemetery, and she had always gotten a good laugh out of it. Connie couldn’t imagine why she was thinking of that now.
“Have you gotten a dress yet?” Connie finally asked, groping for something to say, and as soon as she said it she realized it was such a non sequitur that she laughed.
“Yesterday,” Monica answered coolly.
Connie still did not know what to say. Finally, in the silence, Monica said, her voice cracking, “I assumed that you of all people would understand this. Please just give Maggie my message.”
“I think you should call back and ask her yourself.”
“No thank you,” Monica said.
Connie paused. “I’m sorry, Monica,” she finally said.
“Everything is fine,” Monica said. “Thank you very much.” And she hung up.
“Bear,” Joseph said.
Connie lay down on the bed beside him, her hands cradling her lower abdomen. It was only slightly rounded, but it no longer flattened out when she lay prone. Three months pregnant and she had lost three pounds from the nausea, so that her ribs made her naked torso looked like a striped shirt. She knew that it would not make any difference. The baby would be large and healthy. They always were. She had worn a size-four dress the day of her wedding, and yet Maggie had weighed ten pounds. Who could tell what was inside you until it came out?
She felt tiny fingers on her arm. Joseph was patting her softly with one hand while he held his bear in the other. He put his thumb in his mouth and she buried her face in the nape of his neck. He was the only one she could love like this now. The two oldest children always pulled away from her, although it had been years since she had tried to kiss Maggie, both of them squeamish in the face of their shared femininity. And she was wary of Damien, who would climb all over her like an overanxious boy in the back seat after a high school dance. But Joseph was passive and pleased with the attention, and she lay there for a long time.
She felt sorry for Monica, not because she obviously was getting married because she had to, but because she knew the girl would let that fact simmer below the surface of her life, a boil of discontent forever. She would always feel as if she had been trapped, even though she would likely wind up with the same life she would have had whether she had gotten pregnant or not. Connie tried to remember when she herself had realized that, but she did not think she had ever needed to realize it. She had been happy on her wedding day; as she watched the little Tudor cottage surrounded by flowers and tombstones recede through the window of the limousine, she had thought to herself, “Now my real life can begin.” She suspected that Monica’s real