The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [50]
Tally wants to say thank you, except she doesn’t feel as if her daughter has been complimented. Doris’s tone is almost accusing, as if Gwen has achieved her prettiness by guile. Custom dictates that Tally should respond with a kind comment about Doris’s children, but she is stumped. She never sees the boys anymore, come to think of it. When did they stop coming around? Mickey, too, no longer visits. The candy drawer hasn’t needed to be replenished in some time. Let’s see—Tim, the lummox as Clem calls him, is probably the same stupid frat-boy-in-training he always was. Go-Go can’t be any worse than he’s been, although there are rumors linking him to the cats that have been found suffocated in the neighborhood’s old insulated milk boxes. Sean, the best of the lot, is a natural-born politician. Tally doesn’t consider that a compliment, but Doris might.
“That Sean,” she says. “He’s a charmer. All your boys have”—grasp, grasp, grasp—“such distinctive personalities.”
Tally wonders if Doris is as curious as Tally is about who broke up with whom, if Doris doubts Sean’s version of events the way Tally doubts Gwen’s. Something happened. Her hunch is that Gwen traded up, realized there was greater cachet in a Gilman boy or a football hero.
Tally wonders if she doubts her daughter because she is aware of her own proclivity for lying. Fudging, as she prefers to think of it. Or maybe nudging—easing a complicated truth toward something simpler, more comprehensible. Tally never lies for advantage or gain. Her lies are no different from, say, a fresh coat of paint or wallpaper in an old house. Something pretty over something unsightly. There’s never been a home that didn’t eventually require updating or renovation. A life is the same way. You live inside it for a long, long time if you’re lucky. Things fray, break, go out of fashion. There’s no shame in bringing a life up-to-date.
She buys her eggs, wishing the store stocked fresh herbs, but one would be hard-pressed to find so much as a jar of dried oregano here. She should have her own herb garden, but the property is too shady to grow anything but ferns and a few complacent flowers. Why hadn’t Clem seen that flaw in his dream lot? It’s formidably dark, with trees to the east, west, and south. The northern light is good for a painter—or would have been, if Clem had been thoughtful enough to include a studio for Tally. She paints in a prefab toolshed bought at Sears, which means choosing between freezing or running a space heater in the winter, a dangerous option around her oil paints and turpentine. I didn’t think you were that serious about painting, Clem said when she asked for her little cabin last year. He was sad; Clem hates to disappoint Tally. Clem, to his credit, did not bring up all the other things tried and abandoned. Throwing her own pots. The novel, which never got far enough along to have a title, other than The Novel. Macramé. Candle making. Jewelry making. Okay, so he was entitled to be dubious, especially given her decision to keep her latest project under wraps, refusing to let anyone see it until she’s finished. But she is finding—what does a painter find? Writers discover their voices. Tally guesses she’s on the verge of achieving her vision of things.
In the parking lot, she notices that Doris Halloran is still sitting in her car, hands gripping the wheel, yet she hasn’t turned on the engine. Poor thing. Although she looks at least ten years older than Tally, she is actually younger, younger even than Tally’s real age, about which she is always a little vague.
“So you started your family young, too,” Doris Halloran said to Tally in this very market, when the Robisons were finally settled in Dickeyville. Settled, but not exactly accepted. Hard feelings lingered about Clement Robison’s dream house, the way he got around the village’s strict rules on historic preservation. He argued that his house, the farthest house down Wetheredsville Road, lying beyond the mill, technically wasn’t part of Dickeyville after all.
“Too?”
“I was married at