Anything Is Possible(9)
“Are these your kids?” The girl was squinting, and she pointed laconically at the photos.
“Those are my nieces and nephews,” Patty said.
“I know you don’t have kids,” the girl said with a smirk. “How come you don’t have kids?”
Patty felt the faintest blush come to her face. “It just never happened. Now let’s talk about your future.”
“?’Cause you never did it with your husband?” The girl laughed; her teeth were bad. “That’s what people say, you know. Fatty Patty never did it with her husband, Igor, never did it with anyone. People say you’re a virgin.”
Patty put the papers flat down on the desk. She could feel her face become flaming hot. For a moment her vision blurred; she heard the ticking of the clock on the wall. In her wildest dreams she could not have anticipated what was going to come out of her mouth. She looked hard at the girl and heard herself say the words “Get out of here right now, you piece of filth.”
The girl seemed stunned for just a moment, but then she said, “Hey, wow. They’re right. Oh my God!” And covering her mouth she made a sound of laughter that grew in length and depth so that Patty had a sense of it spilling from her mouth like bile from some creature in a horror film. “Sorry,” the girl said in a moment. “Sorry.”
From nowhere Patty suddenly knew who the girl was. “Your aunt is Lucy Barton,” Patty said. She added, “You look like her.”
The girl stood up and left the room.
—
Patty closed the door to her office and telephoned her sister Linda, who lived outside of Chicago. Perspiration made Patty’s face moist, and she felt her underarms sticky with it.
Her sister answered, saying, “Linda Peterson-Cornell.”
“It’s me,” Patty said.
“I figured. The phone said your school’s name.”
“Well, then how come— Listen, Linda.” And she told her sister what had just happened. Patty spoke in a rush, leaving out what she had said to the girl. “Can you believe it?” she finished. She heard her sister sigh. After a moment, Linda said she never understood how Patty could work with adolescents anyway. Patty told her she was missing the point.
Linda said, “No, I’m not missing the point. The point is Lila Lane, Lucy Barton, Lila this, Lucy that. But who cares about them?” When there was a pause, Linda continued, “Seriously, Patty. The fact that Lucy Barton’s niece is such trash should come as no surprise, I mean really.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because. Don’t you remember them? They were just trash, Patty. Oh my God, I just remembered they had those—what? Cousins, I think? The boy’s name was Abel. Oh my God, he was something. He’d stand in the dumpster behind Chatwin’s Cake Shoppe and go through the garbage, looking for stuff to eat. Was he that hungry? Why would he do that? But I remember he’d do it with no embarrassment at all. I remember Lucy being with him. It made me shudder. It still does, honestly. His sister’s name was Dottie. A scrawny girl. Dottie and Abel Blaine. It’s kind of amazing I remember them. But how could I forget? I’d never before seen anyone going through garbage looking for something to eat. He was a handsome kid too.”
“Gosh,” Patty said. The heat from her face had started to go away. She asked, “Didn’t Lucy’s parents come to your wedding? Your first one.”
“I don’t remember,” Linda said.
“You do so remember. How come they came to your wedding?”
“Because she invited them, to have people there who would speak to her. For God’s sake, Patty. Just forget that. I have.”
Patty said, “Well, maybe you’ve forgotten, but you still have his name. Peterson. After only a year of being married to him.”
Linda said, “And why in the world would I want the name Nicely back? I never understood why you kept it yourself. The Pretty Nicely Girls. How horrible that we were known as the Pretty Nicely Girls.”
Patty thought: It wasn’t horrible.
Linda added, “Have you seen Our Mother who is not yet in Heaven recently? How’s her dippiness factor these days?”
Patty said, “I thought I’d go out there this afternoon. It’s been a few days. I need to make sure she’s taking her medicine.”
“I don’t care if she takes it,” Linda said, and Patty said she knew that.
Then Patty said, “Are you in a bad mood or anything?”
“No, I’m not,” Linda said.
It was a Friday, and in town that afternoon, Patty went to the bank with her paycheck, and then walking down the sidewalk she looked into the bookstore and saw—placed right in the front of the display—a new book by Lucy Barton. “My gosh,” Patty said. Inside the bookstore was Charlie Macauley, and Patty almost walked out when she saw him because he was the only man, other than Sebastian, that she loved. She really loved him. She had liked him for years without knowing him too well, the way people in small towns know one another but don’t know one another too. At Sibby’s funeral, when she turned and saw him alone in the back row, she fell—fell—head over heels in love with him, and she had been in love with him since. He was with his grandson, a boy in elementary school, and when Charlie looked up and saw Patty, his face opened, and he nodded. “Hi, Charlie,” she said, and then she asked the bookstore owner about the book by Lucy Barton.