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.
It was a memoir.
A memoir? Patty picked it up and glanced through it, though the words bounced around because of Charlie being so close by. Patty took the book to the register and bought it. She glanced at Charlie on her way out, and he gave her a wave. Charlie Macauley was old enough to be her father, though he was younger than her father would have been if he had still been alive. But Charlie was at least twenty years older than Patty; he had been in the Vietnam war when he was young. How Patty knew this, she could not have said. His wife was notably plain, and thin as a stick.
—
Patty’s house was a few streets away from the center of town. It was not a big house, but it was not a small house either. She and Sibby had bought it together and it had a front porch and a small side porch too. Her peonies were heavy-headed by the side porch and there were irises now in bloom as well. Through her kitchen window she could see the irises as she took a box of cookies from the cupboard—they were Nilla Wafers and the box was half full—and then she went into her living room and sat down and ate every one. Then she went back to the kitchen and had a glass of milk. She telephoned her mother to say she would be over in an hour or so, and her mother said, “Oh, goodie.”
Upstairs, sunlight came through the windows and spilled into the hallway. Little dust bunnies were gathered up and down the floor. “Oh dear,” Patty said. She said that a few times, sitting on her bed. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she said.