Bitter Sweet (11 page)
‘It’s terrible.’
‘Well, honey, you get out of the house. Go to a movie or something. You shouldn’t be there alone on a Saturday night.’
‘I won’t be. I’m going to the club for dinner,’ she lied to ease his worry.
‘Good ... good. That’s what I like to hear. School starting pretty soon, is it?’
‘In less than two weeks.’
‘Here, too. Then the streets will be quiet during the week again. You know how it is. We cuss the tourists when they’re here and miss ‘em when they’re gone.’
She smiled. How many times in her life had she heard the equivalent of his remark? ‘I remember.’
‘Well, listen, honey, your mother’s waiting to talk to you again.’
‘Here’s a kiss, Daddy.’
‘And here’s one for you. Be good now.’
‘Bye, Daddy.’
‘Good-bye
Margaret?’ Vera had taken the receiver before
Roy
had a chance to finish.
‘I’m here, Mother.’
‘Did you get rid of that sailboat yet?’
‘No, but I’ve still got it listed with the agent at the marina. ‘
‘Don’t you go out on it alone!’
‘I won’t. ‘
‘And be careful who you invest that money with.’
‘I will. Mother, I’ve got to go now. I’m going out to the club for dinner and I’m running a little late.’
‘All right, but don’t wait so long to call next time.’
‘I won’t. ‘
‘You know we’d call more often if we could, but these long-distance rates are absolutely ridiculous. You talk to Katy tell her her grandpa and I are anxious for her to come up.’
‘I will.’
‘Well .. good-bye then, dear.’ Vera never failed to include one perfunctory endearment as their conversations ended.
‘Bye, Mother.’
By the time Maggie hung up, she needed a hot drink to soothe her nerves. She made a cup of herb tea and took it into the bathroom while she brushed her hair. Viciously.
Was it too much to expect a mother to inquire about her daughter’s welfare? Her happiness? Her friends? Concerns?
As always, Vera had turned the focus on herself. Vera’s hard work. Vera’s disappointments. Vera’s demands. The entire world should consider Vera’s wishes before it made its next move!
Return to
Maggie was still punishing her scalp when the phone rang again. This time it was Brookie, opening without an introduction.
‘We’ve got it all arranged. Lisa is getting in on Tuesday and she’ll be spending a week or so at her mother’s. Tani’s right in Green Bay, and Fish’s got only a three-hour drive from Brussels, so we’re all getting together out here at my house on Wednesday noon and we plan on you being here, too. What do you say? Can you come?’
‘Not within a hundred miles of my mother! Absolutely not!’
‘Oh-oh. Sounds like I called at a bad time.’
‘I was talking to her. I just hung up.’
In a conversational tone Brookie inquired, ‘How is the old bat?’
A snort of laughter caught Maggie by surprise. ‘Brookie, she’s my mother;.’
“Well, that’s not your fault. And it shouldn’t .keep you from coming home to see your friends. Now what do you say - all five of us, a few bottles of vino, a few laughs and a good long gab session. All it takes is a plane ticket.’
‘Oh, damn, it sounds good.’
‘Then say you’ll come.’
“But I’ve-‘
‘But shit. Just come. Drop everything and jump on a plane.’
‘Damn you, Brookie!’
‘I’m a devil, ain’t I?’
“Yes.’ Maggie thumped a foot on the floor. ‘Oh, I want to come so badly.’
‘Well, what’s holding you back?’
Maggie’s excuses tumbled out, as if she were trying to convince herself. “It’s such short notice, and I’d only have five days, and teachers have to be back in school three days before the students, and I’d have to stay at my mother’s and I can’t even carry on a telephone conversation with her without wanting to put myself up for adoption!’
‘You can stay with me. I can always throw a sleeping bag on the floor and another bone in the soup. Hell, there are so many bodies around this house that one more will hardly be noticed.’
‘I couldn’t do that - come all the way to
‘So stay at your mother’s nights and make sure you’re gone all day. We’ll go swimming and walk across the bar to
‘Oh, Brookie.’ The words conveyed Maggie’s wilting determination.
‘You said that before.’
‘Oh, trooc-x became distorted by frustration arid Iot]ging.
‘I suspect you’ve got plenty of money to buy a ticket,’ Brookie added.
‘So much that you’d gag if I told you.’
‘Good for the woman. So come. Please.’
Maggie lost her struggle with temptation.
“Oh, all right, you pest, I will!’
‘Eee,iiiiiiiyow I’ Brookie broke off the banshee yell to tell someone nearby, ‘Maggie’s coming!’ To Maggie, she said, ‘I’m getting off this phone so you can call the airport. Call me as soon as you get into town, or better yet, stop here first before going to your folks’. See you Tuesday!’
Maggie hung up and said to the wall, I’m going to
The sense of surprise remained, augmented. Maggie accomplished nothing on Sunday. She packed and unpacked five assortments of clothes, finally deciding she needed something new. She styled and restyled her hair deciding, too, on a trip to the beauty shop. She called for plane reservations and booked a seat in first class. She had almost a million and a half dollars in the bank and decided for the first time ever- that it was time she started enjoying it.
At GeneJuarez the following day she told the unfamiliar hair designer, ‘Do something state of the art. I’m going home to get together with my high school girlfriends for the first time in twenty-three years.’ She came out looking like something that had been boiled and hung upside down to dry. The odd thing was, it exhilarated her as nothing had in years.
Next she stopped at Nordstrom’s and asked the clerk,
‘What would my daughter wear if she were going to a Prince concert?’ She came out with three pairs of acid washed blue jeans and a selection of strappy undershirts that looked like something old man Niedzwiecki would wear selling used auto parts in his junk yard.
At Helen’s of course she bought a couple of refined dresses - one for travel, one for any exigencies &at might arise - sniffed the favourite perfumes of everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Lady Bird Johnson, but wound up in Woolworth’s dime store merrily paying $2.95 for a bottle of Emeraude which remained her perennial favourite.
On Tuesday morning she stepped out of a cab at Sea-Tac International Airport into driving rain, deplaned four hours later in Green Bay beneath a blinding sun, and rented a car in a state of disbelief. During all her years of travel with Phillip they had always planned their trips weeks,’ months in advance. Impulsiveness was new to Maggie; she was exhilarating. Why had she never tried it before?
She made the drive north with a renewed sense of emerging and crossed the canal at
Apple and plum orchards hung heavy with fruit which shone like beacons in the August sun. At intervals along the highway open-air markets displayed colourful crates of fruits, berries, vegetables, juices and jams.
And of course there were the barns, telling the nationality of those who’d built them: the Belgian barns made of brick; the English ones of frame construction with gabled roofs and side doors; the Norwegians’ variety of square-cut logs; the German ones of round logs; tall Finnish barns of two storeys; German bank barns built into the earth, others half-timbered with the spaces between the timbers filled with brick or stovewood. And one grand specimen painted with a gay floral design against a red ground.
In
At Egg Harbor Maggie slowed to a crawl, amazed to see how it had grown. Tourists dawdled everywhere, crossing the road licking ice cream cones; on sidewalks before antique displays; in the doorways of craft shops. She passed the
She reached the high bluff above her hometown, a last cherry orchard on the left, then the sharp downswing of the highway around the base of a sheer limestone cliff, into the town itself. Coming upon it was forever a pleasing surprise.
One minute you were in the farmland above with no inkling the town lay below; the next you were sitting at a stop sign looking straight ahead at the sparkling waters of Fish Creek Harbor with Main Street stretching off to your left and right.
It was exactly as she remembered, tourists everywhere, and cars inching along while pedestrians jaywalked wherever they pleased; gaily decorated shops built, in old houses along a shady Main Street whose east and west ends were both visible from where she sat. How long had it been since she’d been in a town without a traffic light or a turn lane? Or one whose
Across
Main
an old false-fronted building drew her attention: the Fish Creek General Store where her father worked. She smiled, imagining him behind the long white butcher case where he’d been cutting meat and making sandwiches for as long as she remembered.
Hi, Daddy, she thought. I’ll be right back.
She turned west and drove at a snail’s pace beneath the boulevard maples, past flowered lawns and gabled houses that had been transformed into gift shops, past the Whistling Swan, an immense white clapboard inn with its great east porch replete with wicker chairs. Past the confectionery and Founders Square, and the cottage of Asa Thorpe, the town’s founder, and the community church where the doves and morning glories on the three stained glass windows were exactly as she remembered. Out past the White Gull Inn to the end of the road where a tall stand of cedars marked the entrance to
Green Bay
, sparkling in the late afternoon sun.
She stopped the car, got out and stood in the lee of the open door, shading her eyes, admiring the sails - dozens of sails - far out on the water.
Home again.
In the car once more, she drove back the way she’d come. The traffic crawled, and parking spots were at a premium, but she snagged one in front of a gift shop called The Dove’s Nest and walked back a block and a half, past the stone retaining walls where tourists sat and sipped cool drinks.
Raising a hand to stop traffic she sneaked between two bumpers to the other side of the street.