Maggie (Tales Behind the Veils)

by Violet Howe

  “I paid for this damned apartment and everything in it, and you may be grown, but there’s a lot you don’t know. So, I suggest you lose that damned attitude!”

  I shrank back from the venom in his voice.

  “Bill, calm down. You’re not helping anything,” my mother said, her hand outstretched toward him. She turned back to me, and her expression confused me with its odd mixture of fear, anger, and pity.

  “We’ve talked to Benjamin, dear. He says you haven't been to rehearsals in over a month. He says they’re considering disciplinary action. They may remove you from the company.”

  Panic surged up inside me. “No, that’s not true. Gerry talked to Ernesto, and—”

  “It’s not Gerry’s decision,” my mother said, her voice steely.

  “But, no, Gerry is paying for the season. He gets to say—”

  “You signed a contract, Margaret. You had an obligation.”

  “But Gerry talked to him—”

  “Did you? Did you talk to Ernesto personally? Did you talk to Benjamin? Because they both say they’ve heard nothing from you for weeks! You are in danger of losing everything we’ve worked for your whole life!”

  “Wait, this can’t be true.”

  “Enough!” My father yelled and crossed the floor between us. “This is ridiculous. Tell her, Peggy. You tell her or I will.”

  My mind whirled in its effort to understand what was happening. My mother’s words replayed in my head, jumbled and incoherent. Her tears and the pain on her face as it contorted in response to my father’s voice stabbed at my heart.

  I’d never heard him speak to her that way, never seen the veins in his neck bulging and his face redder than if he’d been in the sun all day.

  “Tell me what?” I heard myself ask, although I was certain I didn’t want to know. Anything that had caused my parents to morph into these unrecognizable versions of themselves couldn’t be good.

  “Honey,” my mother said, her tears flowing anew. “He’s married.”

  I didn’t understand. Nothing made sense. Of course, Ernesto was married. We all knew that. I’d met his wife, Angeline, and so had my parents.

  “What are you talking about? Who’s married?”

  My father’s hands shook and his face turned even redder. He spoke through gritted teeth, and I was shocked to see tears fill his angry eyes.

  “This man you've been traipsing off with. While you were destroying your career and your reputation, his wife was at his home getting ready for their annual Christmas ball.”

  He grabbed a newspaper from my coffee table and thrust it in my hands.

  It was a social publication from a paper in New York, and there on the front page was a picture of Gerry with his arm around a dark-haired woman with harsh features and bright red lips. My hands trembled as my eyes scanned the headline.

  “Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Tucker to Host their Ninth Annual Holiday Charity Gala.”

  My knees buckled and hit the ground as the air rushed from my lungs. The entire room seemed to tilt and everything in my peripheral vision went black as I blinked against the tears that blurred the words on the page.

  “I can’t thank my beautiful wife enough for her hard work this year. I’ve been out of town through most of the planning these past few weeks, so she’s made me promise to take her away to our favorite bungalow in Aruba as soon as this party’s over. She’s outdone herself, though. This will be our best event yet.”

  There were more pictures—one of their mansion in the Hamptons, one of last year’s famous guests with the happy couple, another of the hand-engraved invitations that had been sent months ago—and there were many more painful words, but I didn’t get to read them. I’d collapsed in a heap on the floor, my sobs overwhelming my nervous system to the point of hyperventilation.

  My mother knelt on the floor beside me, her arms around my shoulders as they heaved, her own tears flowing with mine.

  She chanted, “I’m so sorry,” over and over again, but her words were distant background noise to the fevered chaos in my mind.

  How could this be? There had to be some mistake. They were wrong. It couldn’t be him. He couldn’t be married.

  Pain racked my body as though tiny needles were piercing my skin from head to toe, and my stomach jerked in spasms as I retched and tried to crawl to the bathroom. I didn’t make it, and as I emptied what was left of my tropical breakfast on the carpet of my living room, my mother held my hair back and cried with me.

  I had been right in one regard. Tragedy had befallen our family, and someone had died. I just hadn’t known yet it was the girl inside of me.

  26 FATHER KNOWS BEST

  “I don’t understand,” I whispered as I lay with my cheek on the cold tile of the bathroom floor.

  My mother stroked a wet cloth over my forehead and smoothed my hair back with it.

  “I don’t either, sweetheart.”

  “How can this be? How can this be true?” Tears pooled on the tile and my voice cracked and trailed off at the end.

  My father’s footsteps echoed on the wood floor outside the bathroom, and he spoke for the first time since he’d thrown my world in my face with a newspaper.

  “He’s a liar. A con man. He took advantage of you. This is what happens when you trust someone you don’t know. Someone who doesn’t have the decency to even meet your parents.”

  “Bill, please,” my mother whispered.

  “Someone who sabotages your career and everything you’ve worked for.”

  “Bill, enough.”

  “God only knows what could have happened to you in Aruba. What were you thinking?”

  “Bill, I said, enough! She’s white as a sheet. Can’t you see the pain she’s in?”

  “Your mother has been sick with worry. She hasn’t slept in days. Up all night pacing the floor.”

  She rose up on her knees and waved him out the door. “Go! I have never raised my voice to you, William Shaw, not in twenty-eight years of marriage, but so help me God if you don’t leave this girl alone, I can’t be responsible for my actions. She’s been through enough, and she’s in shock. She doesn’t need your condemnation right now.”

  “Condemnation?” His voice was incredulous, but he heeded her plea, and I closed my eyes against the vibrations of his footsteps as he walked away and slammed the front door.

  My mother wet the cloth again and dragged it across my forehead, but I pushed it from me, twisting my face away from the water as it dripped down my cheek.

  “I don’t understand,” I cried. “I don’t understand. This can’t be happening.”

  I covered my face with my hands and drew my knees up under my chin, descending into uncontrollable sobs once more.

  I have no idea how much time passed with my mother sitting by my side on the bathroom floor, but when my stomach was emptied and my eyes held no more tears, I found the space confining. I was desperate to get up and out of there.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as I pushed myself up and ran from the room.

  My entire apartment looked different. Everything was tainted, overlaid with a hue of betrayal and reminders that my love was a lie. Ticket stubs. A shriveled bouquet. Snapshots of the two of us in a carnival booth. A magnet on the fridge holding a love note left on my pillow one morning.

  No matter where I looked, I was stabbed with pain, a physical reaction to an emotional overload that at times would double me over or take my breath away.

  I stumbled over the suitcase by the door, and the sight of my straw hat crushed beneath it was too much to bear. How could my heart have been so filled with utter happiness that morning, only to be stripped and left barely beating in tattered ruins by late afternoon?

  My eyes caught sight of the newspaper where I’d dropped it, not too far from the large stained area of the carpet that still held tiny remnants of paper towels from my father’s feeble attempts to clean up after me.

  I closed my eyes against the picture of Gerry smiling
with his wife, the very word ripping through my brain like a jagged saw.

  “How did you know?” I asked. “How did you find out?”

  My eyes were still closed, but I heard her cross the living room floor and pick up the paper.

  “Your father called Ernesto when you wouldn’t answer your phone or come to the door. He couldn’t believe you’d actually flown away. Ernesto gave him Gerry’s contact information, and your father hired an investigator to find out who he was.”

  I whirled around and glared at her, my anger and pain in dire need of a target. “An investigator? He hired an investigator?”

  “He was out of his mind with worry, sweetheart. We both were. This came out of nowhere. You leaving town with this man. No warning that you were even seeing him until the day before you left. Then when he talked to Benjamin and found out you’d sacrificed your career. It was so out of character for you.”

  I closed my eyes again and shook my head, immediately placing my fingers on my temples to block the pain it caused.

  “I didn’t sacrifice my career. I told you, Gerry talked to Ernesto.”

  “Margaret Ellen, that man has been lying to you. Wake up! He’s a con artist. A liar. Nothing he has said to you has been true.”

  I shook my head again, vehemently this time, ignoring the pain. “No. No. There has to be some mistake. Some reason. You have it wrong. You have it all wrong. I need to talk to Gerry. He’ll explain. He’ll be able to explain.”

  Tears poured down my face as I struggled to convince my brain to ignore what I knew and focus on what I thought I’d known.

  “I have to get out of here,” I said, suddenly panicked and filled with anxiety. “I have to go. I need air.”

  “Okay. Let’s get your things together and when your father comes back, we’ll go home. We’ll get you to a doctor and—”

  “What? Why? I’m not going to a doctor. This is my home. What are you talking about?”

  “Maggie, you have no idea who this man is, and I don’t need any detailed explanations, but I’ll assume you’ve been intimate with him.”

  “Mom!”

  “You need an examination. Who knows how many other women he’s done this to? Or what he might have?”

  The words stung and the reality behind them was like a dagger piercing what was left of my heart.

  “No. No doctor. I can’t do this. I need air. I need to be alone.”

  I ran for the door, but right as my hand touched the knob, the phone rang.

  My body froze. I knew it was him. He was either calling to say he was about to leave the hotel or calling to say he’d been delayed.

  Suddenly, the haze at the edge of my vision cleared, and puzzle pieces clicked into place.

  He had to be at his hotel for regular phone calls. We’d only spent the night there once or twice, and always with the condition that I needed to wake early and leave so he wouldn’t be distracted in doing his business calls. Even when he stayed over at my place, he’d leave at an ungodly early hour in the morning to head back to his room and conduct business.

  It was her.

  The wife.

  He’d been keeping his scheduled conversations with her.

  But he’d introduced me to all his friends. We’d spent countless hours with them. Wouldn’t someone have mentioned his wife? Wouldn’t he have been worried that he’d be betrayed? Or did no one in Miami know about her?

  Not only that, but we’d just spent a week together in Aruba, the memories so fresh in my mind that I still smelled like suntan oil, and I could feel the tenderness between my legs from the time spent engaged in intimacy.

  My stomach roiled at the thought of Gerry in bed with that dark-haired woman. The newspaper had mentioned Aruba. Was it the same resort? The same bungalow? The same bed?

  I turned and sprinted to grab the cordless phone before it stopped ringing, slamming the bedroom door in my mother’s face before she could protest.

  “Hello, sexy,” he said. “I was getting worried when you didn’t answer. Were you in the bath? Without me?”

  His voice invoked another wave of nausea, and I swallowed down the bile that rose.

  “Change of plans, love,” he continued without waiting for a response. “I’m going to send the car for you and I’ll meet you in the lobby here. I’ve been waiting for a call that hasn’t come, and unfortunately, I can’t break away for dinner until it does.”

  I closed my eyes and dug my fingernails so deeply into my palm that they broke the skin.

  “Is it your wife?”

  Gerry paused for a moment. “What?”

  “The call you’re expecting. Is it your wife? Margot, right?”

  He cleared his throat and I could hear him shift the phone receiver to the other ear.

  “What are you talking about? Willow—”

  “Don’t call me that!” I screamed. “Don’t ever call me that again.”

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  I slid off the bed and onto the floor, my hand gripping my abdomen but unable to stop the pains that ripped through me.

  “I think the better question is who have you been talking to, Gerry? You son-of-a-bitch.”

  “Willow, wait—”

  “I told you not to call me that. In fact, don’t call me anything. Don’t call me at all. I never want to hear your voice again.”

  I slammed the cordless phone against my nightstand over and over again until it busted into tiny shards and pieces all over the floor, leaving a jagged scar in the wood.

  My mother opened the door cautiously as I wailed, not even caring that snot flowed from my nose and mixed with my tears and the saliva dripping from my open mouth.

  I cried until there was nothing left in me. No emotion left to feel. No feelings left to process. No tears left unshed.

  “Sweetheart,” my mother whispered when I’d grown quiet, staring at the wall as I absentmindedly pulled at a strand of carpet on my bedroom floor. I didn’t remember her leaving my side, but I’d heard the two of them whispering in the other room. My dad seemed to have calmed down considerably. I guess you can only function at the highest level of frenzied emotion for just so long.

  I turned to look at her as she knelt beside me, her warm brown eyes red-rimmed and swollen from her own tears.

  “We should go,” I said, pushing myself up to standing and flinging my closet doors open. Every outfit carried a memory. The dress I’d worn the first day on the yacht. The jeans he loved because of the way they molded to my butt and thighs. The little black dress that he’d taken off of me in the back of the limousine.

  I closed the closet door and turned to face my mother. “I need new clothes.”

  “Yes, of course.” She stood silent as I walked past her into my bathroom, pausing when I realized the most essential of my toiletries were still packed in the suitcase.

  Could it really have just been hours ago that I’d packed that suitcase? Laughing as Gerry had pulled me down on the bed and threatened to make us miss our flight? If we’d missed that flight, I still wouldn’t know. I’d still think I was the luckiest girl in the world to love and be loved.

  I closed my eyes and flipped off the light in the bathroom.

  “Let’s just go. I don’t need anything from here.”

  I stopped when I came out of my bedroom and saw my father sitting on the sofa. For the first time, I noticed the dark circles under his eyes and the disheveled state of his normally rigid hair. His eyes lifted to meet mine, and I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin, dreading another round of hearing him say I told you so.

  He stood and came to me, placing his hands on my shoulders.

  “I am so sorry, baby girl. It kills me to see you in this pain, and I would give everything I have, everything I own, to take it from you. But I promise you this, Gerry Tucker will never hurt you again. He’ll never get that chance, because I will do everything in my power to make sure of that.”

  He closed his arms around me, and I longed
for easier days when my father’s arms could make me feel safe and secure. Somehow, I knew then, even in my emotional shock and numbness, that I would never again feel that way.

  27 COUNTING BACK

  In everything that happened in the immediate aftermath of Aruba, it never occurred to me that I might not dance again.

  The ramifications at the dance company were crowded out of my mind by betrayal and love lost.

  The thought that my career might be over—that my life of dance, my world as I knew it, might be gone forever—wasn’t even in my realm of possibilities.

  But the universe had not revealed all its cards yet.

  Christmas went by in a nauseating blur. From the day my parents brought me home from the apartment, I did little more than sleep, leaving my room only for necessary bathroom trips or to put out the untouched plates of food my mother insisted on bringing me.

  They canceled their annual New Year’s Eve soiree, concerned that the festivities and the people in the house would be too much for me.

  I doubt I would have known that a party was happening. I was too self-absorbed to even realize the date until it had passed and my mother mentioned it in her daily coax for me to get up and take a shower.

  “It’s a new year, sweetheart. Don’t you think you’d feel better if you showered? Look at it as a fresh start.”

  I pulled the covers over my head and told her to go away. Again.

  Sandy and Alberto both came to visit more than once, but I refused to see them, despite my mother’s threats to let them in my room if I didn’t shower and come downstairs.

  I knew she wouldn’t go through with it. She was too mortified for anyone to see me in that condition.

  I didn’t care how I looked, but there was no way in hell I was ready to face my best friends. I didn’t want to live out the humiliation of my choices. Especially after they’d tried to warn me, and I’d treated them so badly.

  It was ten days into the new year when I finally decided I needed a shower and clean sheets. I opened the window blinds and squinted at the unwelcome rays of sun, furious that the day would dare be bright when my world was still cloaked in darkness.