Off Keck Road by Mona Simpson Page A

Elaine doesn’t do diddly-squat.”
    â€œMy mother blames me for the divorce,” June said, pulling her knees up close to her on the kitchen chair. “I said, ‘Ma, he left me.’ But she thinks I should’ve kept him. If I’d been easier to live with. George told her once that I sleep in an ugly position. She says to me, ‘Look at Nance. If he wants to go up north, they just pick up and go.’ ”
    Bea considered mentioning the odd chase she’d had with her boss at work. But she didn’t. For some reason, she wanted to hoard it, alone.
    Partly, she was ashamed; partly, she was proud.
That old elusive happiness
.
    She believed her refusal was smart, a coin in her hand. She felt better afterward. There was a power in denial. Her mother had taught her that
no
was a magic word, generative: It created more and greater tries.
He’ll ask again,
she thought. They all knew what they were supposed to do. They’d all been taught the same things. But June had fallen off. She may not understand.
    If it had been a weekend, June might have stayed even longer, sleeping in the guest bedroom across the hall from her daughter. But it was a Tuesday. Tomorrow, she had work and Peggy had school.
    Bea didn’t consider until years later why it was that their almost nightly visits took place in her mother’s big house, where she herself stayed over several times a week. She’d always assumed it was because of her mother. But what about Peggy?
    At the end of that night, June carried the long sleeping girl out over the lawn into the backseat of her Volkswagen. Bea ran behind carrying Peggy’s shoes.

VIII
    W hen Bea was named broker of the year, in 1971, everyone gathered in her office at four o’clock to open the champagne and drink it out of Styrofoam cups, and Bill Alberts noticed the old change-of-address card on her bulletin board as the other brokers were leaving. Their efforts at festivity wore out quickly; after birthday celebrations, they were all back at their desks, cake eaten, within twenty minutes.
    He looked up at her oddly. “Should we run away together to New York? We could catch Bill Evans playing the Village Vanguard.”
    He extracted her flexible needles from her hands, crushed her fists into his, and nicked her shoes with his into a fox-trot, singing,“ ‘So let’s keep dancing. Just bring on the news and have a ball. If that’s all. There is.’ ”
    Later on, when she looked back over her life, Bea would see that afternoon as a last chance. True, it was a joke of a question. True, he was still married, but what shimmered for her behind the lightness was something possible, dark and strange. But she hadn’t lifted her head. Her mother was still alive—here in Green Bay—and infirm.
    Besides, by then Bea was used to him. He no longer upset her sense of balance. Her mother, whom she’d finally told about his compliments, suggested that Bill Alberts chose her only because he knew she had too much sense ever to acquiesce. Bea wasn’t sure she agreed. Though she didn’t want to assume otherwise and be the fool. But inwardly, she really did believe it was she herself who excited him.
    And with him, Bea adopted an exaggerated attitude of shock.
    She was half-convinced that if she said, Okay, Bill, take your pants off, let’s go to a hotel, he would faint on the spot.
    But only half-convinced.
    â€œWell, what about bringing culture to Green Bay?” she finally answered him.
    â€œChanged my mind,” he said, walking out shaking his head. “You know Marge and the kids moved to a house in Ashwaubenon.”
    Bea did know that, of course. Everyone did. And what a house! Seven bedrooms. People said there were “built-in” saunas in three of the baths.
    He sighed. “Someday, Bea Maxwell, you’re going to wish you’d taken me seriously.”
    One thing she did think that turned out