The Most Dangerous Thing

Autumn 1980

T ally is surprised how hard the news hits her, although she supposes one is never prepared for this. Her mother, after all, had to cope with the same situation when she was much younger. Implacable time, the one thing that never stops, that’s the real certainty behind death, if not taxes. Time is relentless in its forward drive. She grips the phone, the cherry red wall unit in the kitchen, one of the few notes of color allowed in her all-white oasis, seeing details she stopped noticing long ago-the paper disk in the center of the dial, the tendons in her hand, the large squash blossom ring she wears on her right hand, scuff marks on the wall. Most rings like this are turquoise, but Tally’s stone is coral. It clashes terribly with the red of the phone-

“April,” Miller says. “I hope you don’t mind that we waited.”

“Of course not,” she says. She thinks of an old phrase- butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. To her, it has never connoted anything but coldness, and she has never understood why others think it indicates charm and good manners. But she gets it now. Her mouth is like a covered butter dish, cool and contained and proper, presenting what is expected of her. She calls over her shoulder. “Clem? Clem?” The acoustics in the house are so odd. He could be steps away and oblivious. He could be upstairs and hear every word.

“What?” he calls back. It sounds as if he’s on the second floor.

“Pick up the extension. Miller has news.”

She stays on the line while Miller repeats his big announcement, makes the proper happy noises, then excuses herself, insisting that father and son should have a father-to- father talk. In hanging up the phone, she misses the hook and the receiver clatters to the floor on its long curlicue of a cord. She stoops to pick it up and slides it onto the cherry red base. She’s going to be a grandmother. This is what happens to women who have children at nineteen. They become grandmothers at forty-three.

Nothing has changed. She looks as young as she did two minutes ago, when Miller called, taking advantage of the Sunday rates, as he always does, thrifty boy. It is only 3 P.M. out in Denver. Here, it is the end of a perfect autumn weekend, which Gwen has wasted by spending it indoors at a roller-skating rink. Tally is skeptical of Gwen’s enthusiasm for such a wholesome activity. She worries it might be used as a cover for something else, something done out in the parking lot, assuming they really go to the rink at all. But what’s the worst thing that could happen? Gwen will get pregnant. So what? Tally’s already going to be a grandmother.

She knows her reaction makes no sense. If she had anticipated this development, prepared herself, she would be elated or at least somewhat enthusiastic. But it feels messy, being a grandmother when one child is still in high school. It makes her feel old and young at the same time-a grandmother at forty-three, but still a mother to a high school freshman. Clem, she knows, will have no ambivalence, and she steels herself for his arrival in the kitchen, his eagerness to celebrate.

Sure enough, he comes in and kisses her with an excitement he has not shown in-well, let’s not add up all those weeks, months, she thinks. A year, at least.

“What are you looking for?” she asks, for Clem has released her and is rummaging through the small collection of wine they keep in a stackable Formica holder on the counter.

“Something worthy of the news.”

“What news?” Gwen says, clattering up from the basement. Her cheeks are ruddy, her hair mussed. A completely normal by-product of roller skating, but also of other activities. And why did she enter through the basement?

“Your brother’s going to have a baby.”

“How advanced of him,” Gwen says, going to the refrigerator and staring into it, a habit that makes Tally wild because she never takes anything, only studies the food with an almost voyeuristic delight . “I would have thought that Sylvia would have the baby, but I guess Miller is superevolved. Kramer vs. Kramer must have hit him pretty hard.”

Tally knows that Clem hates this new tone of Gwen’s, a flip sarcasm honed over the summer, but he ignores it today, determined to have his moment of joy. “If you like, you can have a glass with us to celebrate.”

“A glass of what?” She’s interested, Tally can tell. Gwen likes being treated like a grown-up. Tally was the same way at this age. Still, it makes her nervous, the way Gwen brightens at the thought of drinking something with alcohol. Don’t move so fast, she wants to tell her daughter. Or next thing you know, you’ll be on the verge of being a grandmother.

“This white Burgundy, I think. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

“It won’t be cold in time,” Tally says. “Dinner’s at seven.”

“I’ll put it in an ice bucket. That will be good enough. Does it go with what you’re fixing?”

It will, actually. She’s making poached salmon, a light green salad for dinner. A summer dish, but it is technically summer for one more day, although the seasons also seem to be rushing, impatient as Gwen. The light is pulling away. The days are darker at both ends. Tally hates to feel the ebbing of the light, even though she made very little progress over the summer when there were daylight hours galore. The new painting, which began with so much promise, is torturing her, has been torturing her for almost a year. But for once she’s not going to give up.

While Tally wishes she could stop time, she understands Gwen is eager for the calendar to move forward. She is wearing fall colors today-a plaid skirt with burgundy knee socks, a navy sweater. This is Gwen’s “new look,” straight from The Official Preppy Handbook, and Tally objects to it on every front. It is expensive, first and foremost, and materialistic. She hates Gwen’s sudden attachment to labels, the insistence on branding herself with tiny alligators, polo players, a socialite’s signature.

But Tally also finds it confounding that her daughter wants to dress in this conservative, rigid style. If Tally had been a high school girl today, she would be listening to punk bands, embracing the most outrageous clothes possible. Why does Gwen want to look like a Junior Leaguer? Clem loves the new Gwen, but Tally suspects that the clothes are a cover, that the boys in plaid pants and crewnecks are much wilder than the scruffy hippies that Gwen brought home last year. She is dating a Gilman boy now and seems to attach a lot of importance to that. Her goal, Tally understands, is to get a bid to as many private school proms as possible. She has turned into a horrible flirt.

“You are turning into a horrible flirt,” Tally told her just that morning, after listening to Gwen’s end of a phone call. She wasn’t eavesdropping. Tally was in the kitchen, cleaning up from breakfast, and Gwen chose to take the call here rather than run up to her bedroom. She wrapped the extension cord around herself, then uncoiled, all the while talking about her various conquests.

“Like mother, like daughter,” Gwen said.

“I’m not a flirt.”

“You don’t flirt often,” Gwen conceded. “Maybe that’s why you make such an ass out of yourself when you do.”

“Gwendolyn Eleanor Robison.” She is named for the poet Gwendolyn Brooks. And a maiden aunt of Clem’s, but Tally prefers to credit only the poet.

“Remember that time with Mickey’s stepdad?”

She doesn’t. She can’t even remember his name. Then she does.

“I wasn’t flirting with him.”

“That’s not how Mickey’s mother saw it.”

“That’s not what happened-”

“Oh, don’t spazz out about it,” Gwen said with a flippant wave. “It’s not important.”

Then why bring it up? Probably because she knows Tally will brood on it for the rest of the day.

T ally must have seen Rick here or there-at the Exxon, sitting in Rita’s car when they dropped Mickey off- but she first spoke to him at the end of Mickey’s eleventh birthday, a Friday-into-Saturday sleepover. Gwen was not a whiny or demanding child, but she had lobbied relentlessly to attend this party for her new friend. Clem didn’t want her to go. He was dubious about Mickey’s home situation. But Clem didn’t have the heart to tell Gwen his true