Woman on the Edge of Time

Dolly refused seconds, which Luis seductively tried to press on her, pretending he was only teasing. Mark was still toying with his first serving. The twelve‑year‑old Bob ate dark meat and more dark meat, steadily ignoring everybody. He was chubby and darker than anyone else except her, with small chin and black eyes, the Indian nose. Once when he cast a quick survey down the table, she flashed him a private smile; his eyes widening with surprise, he smiled back. Mainly he seemed to be pretending nothing was real except him and the turkey. He raised a screen of strong protection between his father on his right and himself. You will not hurt me! You won’t get through! the screen said. Indeed, Luis seemed to sense the barrier and he pretty much left Bob alone. He tried once. “That Cesar Chavez guy–I see they got him in jail again. Huh? You still got his picture on your bedroom wall?”

But under repeated prodding, Bob would say only, “I like him. He’s got a nice face.”

Connie smiled again at her tough nephew, who went to an Italian parochial school and had a picture of Chavez on his wall. At the table were those wrestling with Luis and those like Bob, Adele, herself, who were noncombatants. Bob and she rivaled Luis in how much they ate and their pleasure in eating. Adele picked politely. She was patting the baby’s face with a napkin and cooing, while she floated in a sky‑high hammock behind her eyes.

After the pumpkin pie, the maple nut ice cream, and the coffee, Luis herded them into the living room she had decorated under his supervision with pots of pink and yellow chrysanthemums, big spidery blooms as big as baby Susan’s head. Mark, Bob, Celeste, and Mike galloped off to the family room one level down to watch TV, but Luis was serving drinks to the adults in the living room. Connie was excused to begin cleaning up. Dolly offered to help. Connie knew what kind of help she’d be, but looked forward to the company.

“No,” Luis said. “Connie can clean up just fine. You stay with us. I don’t see my big girl that often, do I?”

Dolly glanced at her little jeweled watch, then at the numberless blob of clock on the wall that Connie could never read. Vic was to come and pick Dolly up to take her back to the city, once he got done having Thanksgiving dinner with his mother in a restaurant near Leisure World retirement community.

Connie had run the glasses and dishes through the dishwasher and was just starting on the second sinkload of pots, when Dolly burst into the kitchen, weeping. Luis had been teasing her about how she had been talking about marrying Geraldo and nothing had happened.

After Dolly had wept on Connie’s shoulder as so many, so countless many times before, blown her nose, and put her makeup back on layer by delicate layer in the small bathroom off the kitchen, she settled in a chair. “Why did you want so bad to spend Thanksgiving here?” Dolly asked her. “I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.”

“How come you have to? At least if you go to Carmel she doesn’t make you cry.”

“Yeah, Carmel keeps after me, she just makes me mad.”

“How come you didn’t bring Nita? Is she for real sick?”

“Carmel’s pretending. She doesn’t want to be alone on Thanksgiving. Nita has a little cold, a drippy nose, is all. Carmel says she has her the rest of the time, she gets to keep her holidays. She only did it to spite him. I get caught in the middle. I have to get back to work. He always wants to collect everybody together like some crazy sideshow!” A moment later she was sniveling again. “How can he say I’m fat? How can he? … You know Adele’s only nine years older than me? Just the difference between me and Mark!”

After Adele had put the little ones to bed, she wandered into the kitchen, where Connie and Dolly were putting the dishes away out of the dishwasher here and there, by chance.

“You put the good crystal in the dishwasher!” She was morose now, tense. “You could have broken it all! You don’t do that with crystal. You wash it by hand, of course. Are you so lazy? Or I suppose you’ve never seen a good piece of crystal before.” She was talking to herself. She puttered around the kitchen in low‑pitched sulky anger. Dolly giggled softly; Adele appeared not to hear. We are not three women, Connie thought. We are ups and downs and heavy tranks meeting in the all‑electric kitchen and bouncing off each other’s opaque sides like shiny pills colliding.