Bitter Sweet (4 page)
‘Thanks, Brookie.’
‘So how are you doing?’
‘Oh. Some days are better than others.’
‘Bad day today?’ Brookie asked.
‘Sort of... yeah. I’ve had worse, but...’ Suddenly Maggie caved in. ‘Oh shit, Brookie.’ She propped an elbow on the desk and covered her eyes. ‘It’s awful. Katy just left for Northwestern in Chicago and a woman in my grief group tried to commit suicide last week and I’m sitting here in this empty house wondering what the hell happened to my charmed life.’
‘Aw, Maggie...’
Sniffing against her knuckles, Maggie said, ‘My psychiatrist said it sometimes helps to talk to old friends... laugh about old times. So here I am, crying on your shoulder just like when we were sophomores with boy troubles.”
‘Oh, Maggie, I should be shot for not getting to you first. When you’ve got as many kids as I do you sometimes forget there’s a world beyond the kitchen and the laundry room. I’m sorry I didn’t call or get in touch with you. I’ve got no excuse at all. Maggie, are you still there?’ Brookie sounded alarmed.
‘Yes,’ Maggie managed.
‘Aw, Maggie... jeez, I wish I were closer.’
‘So do I. Some days I’d g-give anything to be able to sit down with you and just b-bawl my guts out.’
‘Aw, Maggie... gal, don’t cry.’
‘I’m sorry. It seems like that’s all I’ve done for the last year. It’s so damned hard.’
‘I know, honey, I know. I wish I were there.., but you go on and tell me everything. I’ve got all the time in the world.’
Maggie dried her eyes with the heels of her hands and drew in a steadying breath.
‘Well, we had to do this exercise in our grief group this week where we set a person in a chair and said good-bye to him. I put Phillip in the chair and said my good-byes, and I guess it really worked because it’s finally hitting me that he’s gone and he’s not coming back.’ It was so easy to talk to Brookie. The years of separation might never have happened. Maggie told her everything- how happy she’d been with Phillip, how she’d tried to convince him not to go on the gambling junket, how he’d finally talked her into capitulating by promising they’d plan a trip to Florida together for Easter vacation, the shock of hearing that the plane had gone down with fifty-six people aboard, the agony of sending dental records and waiting for the names of the dead to be confirmed, the bizarre sense of phantasm attending a memorial service without a body while television cameras panned her and Katy’s faces.
And of what happened afterward.
‘It’s really strange what happens when you’re widowed. Your best friends treat you as if you have leprosy. You’re............ ,..,.,..uqa, yuu know? The fifth at bridge. The one without a scat belt. Phillip and I belonged to a country club but even there things have changed. Our friends - well, I thought they were our friends until he died and I got propositioned by two of them while their wives teed off less than twenty feet away. After that I gave up golf. Last spring I finally let one of the faculty members talk me into going out on a blind date.’
‘How was it?’
‘Disastrous.’
‘You mean like Frankie Peterson?’
‘Frankie Peterson?’
‘Yeah, you remember Frankie Peterson, don’t you? A finger in every hole?’
Maggie burst out laughing. She laughed to the point of weakness until she was lying back in the chair with the phone caught on her shoulder.
‘Good lord, I’d forgotten about Frankie Peterson.’ ‘How could any girl from Gibraltar High forget Frank the Crank? He stretched out more elastic than the Green Bay Packers?
They laughed some more, and when it ended, Brookie said seriously, ‘So tell me about this guy they lined you up with. Tried to put the shaft in you, did he?’
‘Exactly. At
in the morning. On my doorstep, for pete’s sake. It was horrible. You get out of practice at fighting them off, you know? It was embarrassing, and belittling and.., and.., well, honest to God, Brookie, it made me so angry!’
‘So what’d you do, punch him out, or what?’
‘I slammed the door in his face and came in the house and made meatballs.’
‘M-meatballs?’ Brookie was laughing so hard she could scarcely get the word out.
For the first time Maggie found the humour in the situation that had seemed so insulting at the time. She laughed with Brookie, great shaking laughs that robbed her of breath and left her nursing a sore stomach while she curled low on her spine and grinned at the ceiling.
‘God, it’s good to talk to you, Brookie. I haven’t laughed like this in months.’
‘Well, at least I’m good for something besides spawning.’ Still more laughter before the line grew quiet and Maggie mined serious again. “It’s a real change.’ Slumping comfortably, she rocked on the leather chair, toying with the phone cord. ‘You’re so hard up - not just for sex, but for affection. Then you go out on a date and when he tries to kiss you you stiffen up and make a fool of yourself. I did it again last week.’
‘Another blind date?’
‘Well, not quite blind. A man who works at my supermarket who lost his wife several years ago, too. I’ve known him as a passing acquaintance for years, and I could kind of sense that he liked me. Anyway, my grief group kept after me to ask him to do something, so I finally did. You don’t want to think that doesn’t feel awkward! The last time I dated it was the men who did the asking. Now it’s everybody. So I asked, and he tried to kiss me, and/just... I just froze.’
“Hey, don’t rush it, Mag. They say it takes a while, and that’s only two dates.’
‘Yeah... well...’ Maggie sighed, braced her temple with a finger and admitted, ‘A person gets horny, you know. It clouds the judgement.’
‘Well, listen, you horny old broad, now that you’ve admitted it and I haven’t died of shock, do you feel better?’ ‘Infinitely.’
‘Well, that’s a relief.’
‘Dr Feldstein was right. He said talking with people from the past was healthy, that it takes us back to a time when we didn’t have much to worry about. So I called, and you didn’t let me down.’
7”” ,-aucu any of the others?
Fish? Lisa? Tani? I know they’d love to hear from you.’
‘It’s been so many years since I talked to any of them.’
‘But we were the Senior Scourges, all five of us. I know they’d want to help if they thought they could. I’ll give you their phone numbers.’
‘You mean you have them? All of them?’
‘I’ve been in charge of the class reunion invitations twice already. They pick on me because I still live around here and I’ve got more than half a dozen kids of my own to help me address envelopes. Fish lives in
Brussels
,
Atlanta
; and Tani’s in
Green Bay
. Here, hang on a minute and I’ll give you their numbers.’
While Brookie searched, Maggie pictured their faces:
Lisa, their homecoming queen, who resembled Grace Kelly; Carolyn Fisher, a.k.a. Fish, with a turned-up nose which she’d always hated, and across which she’d written in everyone’s yearbook; Tani, a freckled redhead.
‘Maggie, you there?’
‘I’m here.’
‘You got a pencil?’
‘Go ahead.’
She reeled off the girls’ phone numbers, then added, ‘I’ve got a couple more here. How about Dave Christianson’s?’
‘Dave Christianson?’
‘Well, hell, who says you can’t call the guys? We were all friends, weren’t we? He married a girl from
Green Bay
and runs some kind of ball bearing factory, I think.’
Maggie took down Dave’s number, then those of Kenny Hedlund (married to an underclassman named Cynthia Troy and living in Bowling Green, Kentucky), Barry Breckholdt (from upstate New York, married with two children), and Mark Mobridge (Mark, Brookie said, was a homosexual, lived in Minneapolis, and had married a man named Greg), ‘Are you making this up?’ Maggie demanded, wide-eyed.
‘No, am not making it up! I sent them a wedding’s card. What the hell - live and let live. I had a lot of laughs with Mark on band trips.’
‘You weren’t kidding when you said you kept track of them all.’
‘Here, I’ve got one more for you, Eric Severson.’
Maggie sat up straighter in her chair. The laughter left her face. “Eric?’
‘Yeah, KL5-35oo, same area code as mine.’
After several minutes Maggie declared, ‘I can’t call Eric Severson. ‘
‘Why not?’
‘Well... because.’ Because long ago, when they were seniors in high school, Maggie Pearson and Eric Severson had been lovers. Groping, green, first-rime lovers, terrified of getting caught, or pregnant, lucky on both counts.
‘He lives right here in Fish Creek. Runs a charter boat out of Gills Rock, just like his old man did.’
“Brookie, I said I can’t call Eric.’
‘Why not? Because you used to go all the way with him?’ Maggie’s jaw dropped.
“Brookieee!’
Brookie laughed. “We didn’t tell each other quite everything back, then, did we? And don’t forget, I was on his dad’s boat the day after the prom, too. What else could you two have been doing down in that cabin all that dine? But what does it matter now? Eric’s still around, and he’s just as nice as he ever was, and I know he’d love to hear from you.’ ‘But he’s married, isn’t he?’
‘Yup. He’s got a beautiful wife. A real stunner, and as far as I know they’re very happy.’
‘Well, there.’ Amen.
‘Maggie, for cripe’s sake, grow up. We’re adults now.’
Maggie heard the most surprising words leave her mouth. ‘But what would I say to him?’
‘How about, hi, Eric, how they hangin’?’ Maggie could almost see Brookie flip a hand in the air. “How the hell snoma, know what you’d say to him! I just gave you number along with all the rest. I didn’t think it would such a big deal.’
‘It’s not.’
‘Then don’t make it one.’
‘I...’ On the verge of arguing further, Maggie thought better of it. ‘Listen... thanks, Brookie.
Thanks so much, and that comes straight from the heart. You were exactly what the doctor ordered tonight.’
‘Blow it out your ear, Pearson. You don’t thank a friend for something like this. You gonna be okay now? won’t flush yourself down the john or anything, will you? ‘I feel a hundred per cent better.’
‘You sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Okay, then, I gotta go. I got kids to get to bed. Call me, anytime, okay?’
‘I will, and you do the same.’ ‘I will. See y’, Mag.’ ‘See y’, Brookie.’
After hanging up, Maggie slouched in the chair, smiling lazily for a long time. A montage of pleasant memorie reeled through her mind, of herself and the girls in high school - Fish, Tani, Lisa and Brookie. Especially Brookie, not particularly bright but liked by everyone because she had a terrific sense of humour and treated everyone equitably, never indulging in criticizing or backbiting. How wonderful to know she hadn’t changed, that she wa still there in
Maggie rolled her chair closer to the desk and glanced a the telephone numbers highlighted in the beam of the banker’s lamp. Fish’s, Lisa’s, Tani’s, Dave Christianson’s Kenny Hedlund’s. Eric Severson’s. No, I couldn’t.
She sat back, rocked, thought a little longer. Finally, she rose and searched the bookshelves, selecting a thin, padded volume of cream leather stamped with imitation gold that had long since tarnished.
Gibraltar
, 1965.
She opened the cover and saw her own squarish handwriting, with the parenthetical instruction (Save for Brookie), and Brookie’s abysmal chicken-scratching.
Dear Maggie,
Well, we made it, huh? God, I didn’t think we ever would. I thought Morrie-baby would catch us drinking beer and expel us before we ever graduated. Boy, we sure drank a few, huh? I’ll never forget all the fun we had cheering and dancing and driving thru all those cornfields in Fish’s pand truck with the Senior Scourges. Remember the time we stopped it and took a leak in the middle of
Green Bay
at