Read Online Object lessons by Anna Quindlen - Free Book Online Page A

thought, to seat herself carelessly on that bed now, pulling the carefully arranged spread a little awry. On those few nights when Maggie had slept in this room, she had always been careful not to sleep in, even to sit on, Elizabeth Ann’s bed.
    “So you’re moving,” Monica said.
    “You heard my mother,” Maggie said.
    “I heard your mother, and I heard our grandfather. ‘Oil and water,’ my mother once called them. The oil part was absolutely right for your mother, but I’m not sure about water for Grandpop. I guess your parents are oil and water, too. I guess that’s what happens when you meet, get engaged, and get married all in a couple of weeks. Oil and water.”
    “Shut up, Monica,” Maggie said.
    Monica turned back to the mirror. “Just think,” she said, studying her face. “We’ll have a whole week to catch up on things when we go to the beach with Grandmom. My last year going, too, now that I’m out of school.” She locked eyes with Maggie in the mirror. “I have so much to tell you. Just the other day, Richard Joseph’s older sister was telling me how her brother and all his friends call you a carpenter’s dream—flat as a board. I didn’t know he was your boyfriend.”
    Maggie looked down at her skirt. On one side was an olive juice stain, on the other a wet mark made by gin. She sniffed and realized that she smelled strange. Then her head snapped back. She did not want Monica to think she was crying. She started downstairs.
    “I can’t wait to see your new bathing suit,” Monica called after her in her pleasantest voice. “Or your new house.”
    When Maggie got to the bottom of the stairs, her grandfather was standing in the doorway, looking out upon the great sweep of his lawn, and at the station wagon in the driveway. Maggie stood next to him for a moment, trying to see it as he did. She hoped her mother couldn’t see her.
    “Your grandmother’s right, for once,” John Scanlan said, putting his big hand atop her head. “You and I can have lunch together. You’ve got a lot to learn, little girl. This whole kit and caboodle is going to be what they call an object lesson for you. For some other people, too.”
    “I don’t really want to move, Grandpop,” Maggie said.
    “Not a question of want, miss. We’re talking about a question of need.” He put his hand into his pants pocket and took out the keys he had thrown into Connie’s lap “Your mother left these on the couch,” he said with a grin. “Give ’em to her.”
    “I’ll give them to my dad.”
    “Your mother,” John Scanlan said. “You heard me. Go on.”

5
    T HE NEXT MORNING MAGGIE WENT TO the Bronx to see her grandfather—her grandfather Mazza, not her grandfather Scanlan. Her grandfather Scanlan tried to stay as far away as possible from New York City, although he had grown up there; he had moved his business to White Plains when he bought the big house in Westchester County, and he always referred to the Bronx as “the godforsaken Bronx.” (Brooklyn was “the slum,” and Manhattan “that hellhole.” Queens, for some odd reason, was “the home of mental midgets.” John Scanlan never spoke of Staten Island.) Maggie’s grandfather Mazza, on the other hand, had not been out of the Bronx for almost ten years.
    Maggie was supposed to take the train to his house, but she usually rode her bicycle, getting off to run beside it as she sprinted across the highways that took people from New York City to New England. She brought her grandfather groceries, and put the brown paper bag, still warm from the sun and the metal mesh of her bicycle basket, on the red table in the middle of the kitchen. Then she put all the groceries away, except for the tomatoes, which she left on the kitchen counter. Once she had forgotten to put the groceries away, and when she came back a week later they were still there, the meat and vegetables giving off a sweet dead smell, the milk and butter high as Gorgonzola cheese. It