I don’t see why I should care about charming Miss Ogden.
Mrs., Roland corrected her. There used to be a Mr. Ogden.
He died? Lilia asked.
He did, unfortunately.
You must be happy.
Happy? No. I appreciated Mr. Ogden as much as Sidelle. I would even say we both have to bear the unbearable loss. But of course you’re too young to understand that.
You didn’t think of me as too young to be a lover.
You don’t think of yourself as too young to take a lover, Roland said. Look, I don’t mean it lightly when I say someone can charm Sidelle. Or that someone would be disapproved of by my future wife.
Have you said these things to other girls? Lilia asked.
As a matter of fact, I have not.
What do you say to them, then?
Oh, different things.
Lilia thought for a moment, and asked again, Why would I want to charm Mrs. Ogden? She’s probably old enough to be my mother. I didn’t even care to charm my mother when she was alive.
Lilia’s mother had died the month before. A more dutiful daughter would not have allowed a dead mother to enter this conversation, but what other woman did Lilia have in her life to call on to battle Sidelle Ogden?
You don’t charm Sidelle as you would charm your mother or your aunt, Roland said.
But as your mother or your aunt?
Don’t be clever. All I’m saying is, I could see her being tickled by you.
Would that make you want to marry me? Lilia said.
You, Lilia, or you, a little girl from California?
What’s the difference?
I can’t possibly marry a little girl from California.
But if I’m only me, if I’m only Lilia, you would marry me then?
You’re too young to think about marriage.
In the old days girls my age would’ve had children by now.
In the old days I’d have long abandoned you, Roland said. Don’t come here again. I know where to find you. Let me be the one to make decisions, will you?
So there were, Lilia calculated, future possibilities. Is that how it works with Mrs. Ogden, too? she asked. That you’re the one to make the decisions?
Listen, Lilia, Roland said. Between you and me, let me always be the selfish one. There’s nothing else I would ask of you, I promise.
POSTED IN THE ELEVATORS AND on the bulletin boards of each floor were flyers announcing an upcoming memoir-writing class. “Wisdom to share, memories to preserve, discover the inner writer” and so on and so forth. It was the talk of the day. Lilia could already guess who had signed up, who would be coerced to attend, and who would refuse only to regret it later. The class would run for eight weeks, and the announcement called it “perfect timing,” ending just before the holiday season, as everyone would produce “a precious record,” “a priceless jewel,” “a special gift for the special ones.”
Eight weeks! Long enough for any one of them to drop dead from an accident. Or for one person to fall in love with another person, though love was a trickier business than death. The week before, Calvin’s children had terminated his contract abruptly and whisked him to Portland, Oregon. Bewitched, they had said of him. At least that was the word reaching Lilia’s ears, as though she had gone out of her way to cast a spell on Calvin so that he would strike them all out of his will and put Lilia’s name in instead. Foolish children, foolishly vigilant. At that reunion in the next world, she would be busy enough without Calvin tugging at her elbow. He might insist on introducing Lilia to his wife. Would she be glad to see him again, or would she scurry away, hiding her face in her shawl and upsetting a drink in someone’s hand while fleeing? You never know who a person really is when she is alive. Dead people will have more surprises for us.
Lilia imagined her parents, her three husbands, some of her siblings. Lucy? Oh, Lilia, let’s not go there.
It must be a chaotic puppet show up there, every figure pulled by too many strings. If she went, Lilia thought, she would have to bring a pair of sharp scissors. Snip snip snip. What she wanted was to sit under a tree, on a bench, with a sign that said, DO NOT DISTURB. If only god had been considerate enough to install such a bench for Eve at the beginning. You know god is a man because he thinks a woman is always waiting to be approached.
No, at that party Lilia would make her stance known. Nobody would disturb her, except Roland. If a man approached a woman sitting next to a sign saying DO NOT DISTURB, it would have to be Roland.
“What do you think?” Dolores asked. She had taken the seat next to Lilia before some man could.
“About what?” Lilia said.
“The memoir-writing class. Won’t it be fun?” Dolores said.
Isn’t it enough, Lilia thought, that already most of them sit around doing nothing but reminisce about the good old days? To spend extra time spelling them out—what lengths do people go to to make themselves believe that they have lived a memorable life?
“There’s so much we can talk about. I for one already have several ideas brewing,” Dolores said.
“And we can all look like mutton dressed as lamb?” Lilia asked.
Dolores did not look as though she had comprehended Lilia. Was it the wrong idiom?
No need to cry over cracked eggs, Lilia’s mother had said shortly before she died. Her hip bone had fractured, but no one expected her to die that night—not from the broken bone but from an injury to her head. Earlier that day she had gone up to the attic. Looking for a pair of overalls, she said when Lilia’s father called from below, demanding to know what she was after. Make a list of what you need, he said. Hayes or Jack can get them for you.
He had not understood that her journeys to the attic, increasingly frequent in that last year of her life, had been a protest. There were other places on the ranch if she had wanted simply to escape her husband. Instead, she insisted on climbing up to the attic, but only when he was around. When she slipped and tumbled down the ladder, he said that a lesson must be learned.
No need to cry over cracked eggs, but who was crying then? The jumbled idiom had baffled Lilia. She was the only one to stay at the hospital. Her father, having predicted little emergency, had forbidden her younger siblings to accompany them, and he himself had left for home just in time for supper. He was a man of strict routine.
Perhaps her mother had been consoling herself. All women must have spoken to themselves words unheard by their husbands.
“So you will say yes?” Dolores said.
“To what?” Lilia asked.