The Most Dangerous Thing

objections, and she easily batted down the straw men he tried to put up- you won’t get enough sleep, you’ll eat junk, what about homework? All Tally could think was that Rita was a stronger woman than she was, having a sleepover for eleven-year-old girls.

Tally wanted to think she was better than her neighbors-and Clem-when it came to such snobbery. Mickey’s house called her bluff. From the moment she crossed the threshold that Saturday afternoon, she was in distress. The smells-onion, bacon, a never-quite-clean diaper pail somewhere. The noise-there was clearly no quiet corner in the house. And the house, although newish, was showing its seams. Then again, so was Clement’s dream house. Whatever the modern world had wrought, it did not include better-built structures. Old houses got scuffed and dirtied, true, but new houses gapped and sagged and peeled. Gwen seemed oblivious to it all. But Tally noticed, and Mickey’s mother, Rita, noticed her noticing.

“We were living up in Wakefield, but there were only two bedrooms,” she said. “After I got pregnant with Joey, we needed three bedrooms, but I didn’t want Mickey to leave the school district. We didn’t have a lot of options.”

“Oh, that’s good. That you were able to maintain that stability for Mickey. She’s a very special little girl.”

Rita squinted at Tally, as if suspecting she was being ridiculed. “We like her. Although I wish she would help more with the baby.”

“I just turned eleven,” Mickey said. “And he weighs, like, ninety pounds.”

“Try twenty,” put in Rick, the baby’s father, although this dark, good-looking man didn’t resemble his son, a white, doughy blob. Most babies were white doughy blobs, in Tally’s opinion. Why did people pretend to find them fascinating? Tally hadn’t even found her own children mesmerizing. She loved them, of course. But it had been hard, being a twenty-one-year-old girl with two children under the age of three. Hard and, well, boring.

“He’s adorable,” she said, flicking a finger under his chin. Chins. His mother shifted him on her hip. Rita was a pretty woman, despite being a little hard and faded. If Rick left her, she could still find another man. But after that? She wasn’t going to have much of a shelf life.

Tally automatically made this calculation upon meeting another attractive woman: How many more men were in her future? It was like assessing another person’s bank account. What are you worth? Do you have more than me or less than me? Most women had decidedly less. Rita was harder to judge. She was earthy, practically reeking of sex. Clem was a bigger prize than Rick, but Rick was a catch . He can probably fix things, Tally thought. He didn’t bother with this place because it was a rental. But if he owned his own home, everything would work, always. His dream house would function, no corners would be cut, no mistakes would be made.

“Would you like a beer?” Rick asked. She said she would. Gwen shot her a look. The look said many things. Such as: You never drink beer! If there’s no rush to get home, why are you here already? What are you doing? But Tally was just being polite.

Later, on the short trip home, Gwen said: “You acted sappy.”

“Sappy? What do you mean?”

“Weird. Drinking beer. Staying late, when you always say that good manners mean not hanging on and on.”

“I thought you wanted to spend more time with Mickey. She is your best friend.”

“Mickey said-” Gwen paused. “Mickey said you were flirting with her dad. She said women do that all the time, right in front of her mother.”

“I thought he was her stepdad and not even that, not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“They’re not married, right?”

Gwen’s face clouded with hard thought. Oh dear, what was so obvious to an adult could fly over a child’s head. Gwen honestly didn’t know that people could live together and have babies without being married. Tally remembered her playing Barbies with a friend back in the old neighborhood, Gwen informing the friend solemnly: “They can’t have babies if they’re not married. It’s a law.” Her daughter was naive in a way Tally had never been.

“I didn’t mean they’re not married, darling. Just that they didn’t have a big wedding. But that’s typical of second marriages. Forget I said anything.”

Talk about naive: children never forget what they are asked to forget. Within a week, Gwen had hurled this accusation at Mickey, after some silly argument, and Mickey reported the insult to her mother, who had, lord help them, driven to the Robisons’ house to confront Tally. Tally claimed a migraine and asked Clem to take charge of the mess, but he insisted that she at least be present while he defended her.

Rita was headed to work, her hair in a messy upsweep, sort of a deflated beehive. Her fury was so palpable that one could almost imagine real bees buzzing furiously around her head.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Clem said. “Tally never meant to say anything to Gwen.”

“Misunderstanding? More like wishful thinking, if you ask me. I’m used to women throwing themselves at Rick. I’m not used to them using little girls to carry their ugly gossip. Maybe Mickey shouldn’t be coming over here, if you have problems with my lifestyle.”

“Mickey and Gwen love each other,” Clem said. “They shouldn’t be punished because an adult made a mistake.”

“What do you mean, love ? My girl’s not queer.”

“Not that kind of love.” Tally could tell that Clem was working hard to keep his emotions in check, that he was repulsed by Rita’s quickness in projecting romantic love on the friendship of two innocent little girls, and her knee- jerk disgust at homosexuality. Perhaps Clem suspected, even then, that Fee was gay. At any rate, he talked Rita down, apologizing for Tally’s misstatement. (Which it really was; she had done everything to mitigate her slip.) He charmed her. Clem could charm. He had charmed Tally into giving her life away.

Now, almost four years later, watching her slim-hipped daughter switch about the kitchen in a way that seems designed to make the pleats on her skirt swing just so, Tally wonders if Mickey had loved Gwen in that way, if Rita’s instincts had been better than theirs. It would explain so much- Mickey’s abrupt disappearance from Gwen’s life as she plunged into the world of boys, boys, boys, Gwen’s fierce determination never to speak of her. What had they done, up in those hills, all those afternoons? A few Sapphic kisses, perhaps some show-and-tell? Then the Halloran boys had become part of their dyad, and Gwen had switched her affections to Sean. That ended, too. Everything ends.

“How do you feel about being an aunt?” she asks Gwen, hopeful that she will turn the question back to Tally, show a smidgen of empathy for her mother, or at least acknowledge that Tally is human, that she did not come into existence solely to produce Gwen, feed her, and clothe her.

“We never see them,” Gwen says. “So it’s hard to see how it will change much of anything around here. Why is that? Why don’t they visit? Even when they were dating, he never came home.”

“Well, he lives so far away-”

Her daughter can call bullshit with a glance.

“It’s how things are, Gwen. Sons tend to be absorbed by their wives’ families.”

“They only got married three months ago.” Tally remembers it well. Outdoors, in the Boulder backyard of the in-laws, Miller’s studious little wife wearing a wreath of flowers in her hair, Gwen staring raptly at the young couple exchanging their vows. Too raptly, for Tally’s taste. Gwen was seeing only the dress, the crown of flowers, the attention riveted on the bride.

“You’ll see. Miller’s just doing what most boys do, disappearing into his wife’s family. But daughters are for life.”

“What about Fee?”

“She’s still in college. I don’t expect Fee to partner off for a long time. Miller’s the odd duck, marrying young, having a baby right away.” But Tally wonders if Gwen is challenging her to gossip about Fee, to include her in the confidential discussions she and Clem have had about their oldest daughter.

“Huh.”