Bitter Sweet (23 page)
‘Yes.’
‘Was he addicted to it?’
‘No, which left a lot of grey area between the two of us. It was simply a getaway for him, something he enjoyed that I didn’t. He was always quick to point out that the money he gambled with was his own. Money he’d saved for that purpose. And he’d say, is there anything you want that you don’t have? There wasn’t, of course, so what could I say?
But I always felt it was money we could have used together - to travel more, or... or...’
Silence fell around them. Seconds passed while they stood close enough to touch, but didn’t. At last Maggie drew a shaky breath. ‘God, I loved him,’ she whispered.
‘And we did have everything. We did travel, and we did have luxuries - a sailboat, membership in an exclusive country club. And we’d still have all that - together - if he only hadn’t gone on that last trip. You can’t imagine the guilt I carry for still being angry with him when he’s the one who’s dead.’
Eric reached out and squeezed her arm. I’m sorry, Maggie. I didn’t mean to dredge up unwanted memories.’
She moved and he knew she’d wiped her eyes in the dark.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I learned in my grief group that it’s perfectly normal for me to feel angry with Phillip. Just as it’s probably perfectly normal for you to feel angry with
Nancy
.’
‘I do feel angry with her, but guilty, too, because I know she loves bet job, and she’s so damned good at it. And she works so hard. When she’s flying all over the country she sometimes doesn’t get into her hotel before nine or ten at night, and when she’s home on weekends there’s a horrendous amount of paperwork for her to do. But I find myself resenting that, too. Especially in the winter when we could be together on Saturdays. Instead, she’s doing sales reports.’ He sighed and added despondently, ‘Oh, Christ . . I don’t know.’
Silence returned and with it came a peculiar intimacy.
“Maggie, I never talked to anyone about this before,’ he admitted.
‘Neither have I. Except in my group.’
‘My timing stinks - I’m sorry. You were so happy and excited before I started turning over stones.’
“Oh, Eric, don’t be silly. What are friends for? And I’m still happy and excited.., underneath.’
‘Good.’
In unison they turned and followed the beam of light toward the kitchen verandah door where they paused while Maggie flashed the light around the room once more.
‘I like your house, Maggie.’
‘So do I.’
‘I’d like to see it when it’s all done, sometime.’
In an effort to buoy their deflated mood, she said, ‘I’ll make sure I have you in for high tea in the parlour.’
They stepped out onto the back verandah and Maggie locked the door. On their way to the truck Eric asked, ‘Will you be here tomorrow?’
‘And the next day, and the next. I’ve started painting the upstairs woodwork and after that it’s wallpapering and curtains. ‘
‘I’ll sound the air horn when I go by in the boat.’
‘And I’ll wave from the belvedere ill hear you.’
‘It’s a deal.’
They rode the short distance to her parents’ house in silence, aware that a subtle change had taken place during the course of the evening. The attraction was back. Curbed, but back. They told themselves it did not matter because tonight was an isolated dot of time which would not be repeated. She would go about the opening of her business and he about the continuation of his own, and if they occasionally met on the street they would pass each other with a friendly hello, and neither would admit how good it had felt being together one October night, how close they had felt celebrating her victory outside a courthouse. They would forget that he had unwittingly called her Maggie M’girl, and admitted things could be better ‘with his marriage.
At her parents’ house he pulled to the kerb and shifted into neutral. The sea shimmied beneath them. Maggie sat as far away from him as possible, her right hip touching the door. In the living room the draperies were closed but the light was on.
‘Thank you so much, Eric.’
‘My pleasure,’ he said softly.
They studied each other in the meagre light from the dashboard, she with a portfolio against her side, he with his hands draped over the wheel.
She thought, it would be so easy.
He thought, get out, Maggie, quick.
‘Good-bye,’ she said.
‘Good-bye... and good luck.’
She looked down, found the door handle and pulled, but the door stuck as it always did. He leaned across her lap and for that one brief moment while he opened the door, his shoulder grazed her breast.
The door swung open and Eric pushed himself upright.
‘There you go.’
‘Thanks again.., goodnight,’ she said, clambering out, slamming the door before he could reply.
The truck changed gears and rolled away without delay, and she walked up the porch steps touching her hot face, thinking, Mother will know! Mother will know! She’ll be waiting on the other side of this door.
She was.
‘Well?’ was all Vera said.
‘I’ll tell you in a minute, Mother. I have to go up to the bathroom first.”
Maggie hurried upstairs, closed the bathroom door and leaned against it with her eyes closed. She walked to the medicine chest and studied her reflection in the mirror. It remained remarkably normal and unflushed, considering the charged emotions that had filled the truck only moments ago.
He’s married, Maggie.
I know.
So that’s the end of it.
I know.
You’ll stay away from him.
I’ll stay away.
But even as she made the promise she realized it should not have been necessary.
Chapter 7
The air horn of the Mary Deare sounded the following afternoon, a great resonating bellow worthy of an antebellum riverboat.
Awoooooooozhhhhhh!
Even from a distance, it made the floors and windows vibrate.
Maggie’s head came up. She sat back on her heels with a paintbrush in her hand, alert and tingling. It sounded again and she scrambled to her feet and ran along the upstairs hall, through the southwest bedroom and out onto the belvedere. But her view of the water was obstructed by the maples, still in full leaf. She stood in the thick shade, her hips pressed against the railing as her pulse slowed and disappointment settled in.
What are You doing, Maggie?
She backed up a step, composing herself.
What are you doing, running at the sound of his boat whistle?
As if someone had scolded her aloud, she turned sedately and went back inside.
After that, once each day, the air horn beckoned, always startling her, making her stop what she was doing and glance towards the front of the house. But she never ran again, as she had that first day. She told herself her fixation with Eric was simply a reaction to being back on familiar ground again. He was part of her past,
Chasers, her mother had called them.
‘That Sally Bruer is a chaser,’ Vera had said years ago of a young woman Maggie remembered as red-haired and blowzy, a chatterbox who worked behind the ice cream counter at the corner store. She had always been particularly nice to the kids, though, giving them extra big scoops.
When Maggie was seven years old she overheard her mother talking with some ladies from her sewing circle about Sally Bruer. ‘That’s what you get when you chase,’
Vera had said. ‘Pee-gee. And no telling whose baby it is because she runs with every Tom, Dick and Harry in the county. But they’re saying it’s Curve Rooney’s.’ Curve Rooney was the town’s baseball pitcher whose nickname was derived from his wicked curveball. Curve’s pretty young wife came to every home game with their three apple-cheeked children and Maggie had seen them many dines when she’d gone to games with her father. Sometimes she played with the oldest Rooney boy under the bleachers.
Not until Maggie was twelve did she learn what pee-gee meant, and ever after she felt sorry for Curveball Rooney’s children and for his pretty wife.
No, Maggie did not want to be a chaser. But the boat whistle called her every day, and she felt a pang of guilt at her reaction to it.
In mid-October she got away for two days. She drove to
Chicago
to choose furnishings for the house. At the Old House Store she bought a pedestal sink, dawfoot tub and brass hardware for the new bathroom. At Heritage Antiques she found a magnificent hand-carved oak bed for one of the bedrooms, and at Bell, Book and Candle, a mahogany marble-topped table and a pair of high-button shoes as unmarked as the day they’d been made, which she bought on a whim - period flavour for one of the guest rooms, she thought, picturing them side by side on the floor beside a cheval glass.
That evening, she took Katy out to dinner. Katy chose the spot - a small pub down on Asbury, frequented by the college crowd - and acted remote all the way there. When they were seated across the booth from one another she immediately immersed herself in the menu.
Maggie said, ‘Could we talk about it, Katy?’
Katy looked up, her brows sharply arched. ‘Talk about what?’
‘My leaving
Seattle
. I take it that’s what’s kept you silent ever since I picked you up.’ I’d rather not, Mother.’
‘You’re still angry.’
‘Wouldn’t you be?’
The discussion started antagonistically on Katy’s part, and resolved nothing. When the meal ended Maggie’s emotion were a mixture of guilt and repressed exasperation at Katy’s refusal to give her blessings to Maggie’s move to
“Home?’ Katy repeated sardonically.
‘Yes. Home.’
Katy glanced away. ‘I guess so. Where else would I go?’
‘I’ll make sure I have a room ready for you by then.’
‘Thanks.’ There was no warmth in the word as Katy reached for the door handle.
‘Don’t I get a hug?’
It was perfunctory, at best, perhaps even reluctant, and when they said good-bye Maggie headed away experiencing again an obscure guilt that she knew perfectly well she should not be feeling.
She returned to
Seattle
house had sold. There was a message to call Elliot Tipton immediately. Dialling him, she expected to hear the news that there would be another delay while the buyers waited for their loan to be approved.
Instead he told her the buyers had cash and were living out of a rented motel room, having undergone a company transfer From Omaha. They wanted to close as soon as possible.
She flew to
Seattle
within the week.
Leaving the
Seattle
house proved as unemotional as she had predicted, largely because it happened so fast. Upon her arrival she worked in the house for two frantic days, throwing away half-filled ketchup and mayonnaise bottles from the refrigerator, disposing of the turpentine and other combustibles the movers could not transport, dumping dirt and dead houseplants out of planters, giving away several pieces of furniture and cursorily sorting castoffs for the Salvation Army. On the third day the movers came and began packing. On the fourth, Maggie signed her name twenty-four times and turned over her house keys to the new owners. On the fifth she flew back to
The exterior painting was finished, the scaffolding gone. In its new coat of original Victorian colours, Harding House dazzled. Maggie set her suitcase on the back sidewalk and walked clear around it, smiling, sometimes touching her mouth, wishing someone were with her to share her excitement. She looked up at the belvedere, down at the window ledges, up at the gingerbread gables, back down at the wide front porch. The painters had been forced to cut down the bridal-wreath bushes to get at the foundation, revealing the latticework wrapping the base of the porch. She imagined a cat slipping under there to sleep on the cool dirt on a hot summer day. She retreated to the lakeshore to view the house through the half-denuded maples whose brilliant orange leaves littered the lawn in a rustling .carpet. She completed the circle and entered via the kitchen where the sheet rocking was finished, the walls smooth, white and empty, waiting for cabinets.