by Gina Kincade
It was surreal. It was horrific. It was the eclipse of the brightest star in her sky. Her father, by any name, was her hero. He had seared his place of value deep in her soul long before his death, for loving her enough no matter what.
THE CASKETS WERE CLOSED at the front of the church, one larger and one smaller, but identical in every other aspect. Just like the two of them in life, they went to ground looking the same. Some said it was shock. Others said it was coldness in her heart that prevented Maggie from shedding a tear that day, or for many that followed. Perhaps it was a sign of things to come as she learned to compartmentalize her feelings and shield away her emotions from the eyes of those who only saw the exterior and had no time to learn the depth of her. Whatever it was, she learned the lesson well to bury things deep and not let the truth of her pain see the light of day.
She refused to be a victim of her emotions, a skill that would come to serve her well, but not for many years down the road. Her mother could have used the lesson. For all intents and purposes, her mother was every bit the basket case the description belies for the day of the funeral and many that followed. Maggie did not make her escape from Ottumwa as planned. She would eventually go, but as she was not as cold and heartless as some chose to believe, she could not leave her mother during her worst hours.
Whatever else was true, Maggie’s mother lost a big part of her soul that day. She and her father were opposite sides of the same person, each filling out the best in the other. Maggie often wondered if there was someone like that for everyone. Her mother lost her hero, her heart, her provider, and the love of her life all in one bright flash of fire, and that was before she remembered that they had lost Jacob too.
Reality seldom does what you want it to. It seldom cares either if it disrupts the plans you have made. Maggie’s plans for the future got tanked before they had a chance, but tucking them away carefully, she would pull them back out again one day. Not today. Today, everyone’s goin' down...
‘She was just seventeen...’
Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Not sometimes, all times. Only in retrospect, could Maggie see the spiral that had eluded her and her mother until they were at the tail end of the vortex looking back at the decimation of the storm. They kept the farm going for several years after her father and Jacob’s fire-y deaths, though neither of them worked the land. They couldn’t bring themselves to go near a tractor.
Men were hired to farm the field and handle the livestock, to work the auger and take the cattle to slaughter. Everything was for hire, no job without its price or payment. Her mother maintained the books and stayed in the black for a time, little by little giving over control to a foreman whose interests were more self-involved than farm focused. They learned that lesson too late.
At the end, it became a matter of sell, or lose everything to the bank, so they sold. At a public auction in a time when the economy was not on the upswing, someone got the Donald farm for about sixty cents on the dollar and the remaining Donald’s walked away. Four generations had been born, lived, and died on that land. Now Maggie was to have been the last. There was a distinct sadness to that thought, but also a rightness to think that no other Donald could claim it going forward. Maggie was torn in her thinking, but not nearly as much as her mother. Her mother’s parents were long since dead, and her brothers and sister married with families of their own; she was no more likely to let them see her down than to ask for a handout. They packed and made their way east to the city.
The first stop was Chicago. It was interesting and busy. Maggie loved it. Her mother hated it; too much noise, too many people, too much commotion...too much everything, and far too far away from any sign of the country and starry skies. Work was readily available there though so she could find a job, which was a good thing.
They stayed in the suburbs and took the El places to save wear on the well-worn, twenty-year-old pick up that was the only other transportation. Maintenance was costly now that her father wasn’t around to do it so they used the vehicle with care trying to make it last. Housing in the city was cheaper, but her mother wouldn’t live inside all the chaos of the traffic. She ‘couldn’t sleep soul deep in the push and shove of urbanization’ she had said. The suburbs were going to test her as it was.
Her mother found work at a small clinic doing bookwork and filing. It wasn’t much, but it paid the rent plus some. Maggie went to work for someone else the first time, a small dry cleaner a short ride into the city away. Nothing fancy, it put change in her pocket and allowed her to help out a little with some to save. Saving was going to be mission critical as she revised her plans for escape. Even though Chicago in her mind was already a big step up from Ottumwa, it wasn’t where she wanted to land. For now, her plans remained on hold.
Saturday mornings were her salvation at the dry cleaners as the delivery drivers didn’t work late, it was just pick-ups and drop offs after the trucks rolled in. Oh, and Maggie. She worked with a partner for the first part of her shift, but solo the afternoons as it was a small matter to tag and sort for the runs on Monday morning. It was also usually quiet. If she had a half dozen customers in as many hours Saturday after lunchtime, it was considered busy. She didn’t mind.
She liked the quiet. Walking in one Saturday she noticed that the Friday runs had not been tagged or sorted and cringed to see Mr. Markley’s bag in the pile. Just her luck, Jade had called in too. Mr. Markley dry cleaned everything...Every. Thing. His bag was notably unpleasant every time. Yay me, she thought she had missed out on it this week, not. Gearing up in the store version of a makeshift hazmat suit, she pulled his bag from the pile and dumped it on the sorting table. There are some things that you don’t need your other senses to know they are foul. Seeing is more than enough.
Finishing his bag, she sprayed the stainless counter down with bleach, then Lysol just to make sure she didn’t damage the next person’s clothes. Sure, they were all dirty at this stage, but there was a part of her that sincerely believed that something from that bag could, would, and did have legs to acquire and contaminate the next batch. She had seen enough in the movies to know sometimes you are just waiting for the fallout, knowing one day it will come.
Removing the clothespin from her nose and the scarf from her face before tossing them into the trash bin, she added the rubber gloves after taking them off with the precision of a practiced surgeon. She absently noticed a bag she hadn’t seen before, G. Eldeiress. Shrugging, she started to open it thinking it must be a new customer after breathing deeply the bleach scented decontaminated air. She should have stepped out the back door and gotten some fresh too, the bleach fumes were making her giddy and light headed. Or, maybe that was what she saw next.
‘On the catwalk...’
There are several moments from her life that Maggie would remember clearly...vividly...without effort, as though time stood still in those moments and etched themselves on her grey matter. The day her father and Jacob died was one. Opening the bag of Gweneviere Eldeiress was another. Upon first glance she didn’t notice anything, until she noticed everything. Instinctively, she clamped the bag closed in her hands feeling caught. She looked around the store, through the plate glass window, and then out the front door to make sure that no one else had seen what she had seen. She instantly felt like a voyeur into a secret world and that somehow the magic doorway was in her hands, buried amid the shocking array of items in the buckled laundry bag.
Her hands twitched in a cold sweat. The rest of her was overwarm. She had read about these things in books, what girl her age hadn’t? She had even snuck into one of those stores with the blacked out high windows on a renegade trip into the heart of the city that her mother still didn’t know about. She had been too embarrassed to stay, never mind actually touch anything. Now it was here, in her store, and she would have to touch them. It? Them.
Maggie fumbled the blinds that covered the front window, leaving them open just enough to be able to see traffic out in front of the store without the
re being much ability to see in, unless one was really looking in. Even though the driers were off, it seemed like the temperature had shot up about twenty degrees. She felt the bead of sweat that pooled and ran down her spine, while another ran between her breasts and made her bra damp. She secured the buckle again and went into the bathroom to wash her hands before plucking up her courage and beginning again. Was this some Candid Camera episode? She spied the corners for hidden or disguised video equipment, but found none. She took a deep breath letting it out slowly. She repeated one more time on the breathing thing as she marched herself back to the sorting table with the tag gun, and the ticket she had started for G. Eldeiress and her bag of wonder.
Unlike Mr. Markely’s bag, which was better to dump out all at once and try to dissipate the smell, she unloaded this bag item by item, trying not to look too closely, or get too lost in the nuances of each piece as she held it, fearful she’d be caught any second by the show host or worst yet, another customer. She felt like she was handling hot merchandise and the ’fuzz’ were gonna bust through the door and apprehend her any minute.
Miles of sheer fabrics in different arrangements came out, along with strips of silk that didn’t make much sense at first. Halfway through the bag an odd leather contraption with dog collar like straps, buckles and a rubber ball in the middle came out. At first she was worried about how she was supposed to clean it. A minute later she still couldn’t figure out how to tag it. That was before she figured out what it was and how it was used, then she really worried about how she was supposed to tag and clean it. Lots more leather came next. His and hers ensembles that Maggie was ashamed to think too much about were stuck together. As she looked at them, she couldn’t fathom the point as the parts she would have expected to be covered notoriously weren’t.
She was certainly not dense, nor naïve. She was however, at that point in her life, rather unworldly. Maggie’s orientation into things not talked about in polite circles started as a conversation with herself over the sorting table at Wenstry’s Dry Cleaners and the bag of one Ms. G. Eldeiress. Her imagination went wild.
There seemed to be endless leather in the bag, but the piece that got her attention like none of the others reminded her of Cat woman’s body suit from Batman, but with better seams and lines. The other difference, this one was red, fire engine red, bright shiny blood red, looking like fresh wet paint on a hotrod. In her mind it screamed high octane power. Maggie immediately wanted it. She wanted it bad. She was not a thief, but had she been less schooled in the moralities of not taking what is not yours, and if she was honest with herself, she was tempted to grab it and run. If it would fit was not even a thought in the math.
The suit was soft and supple, yet firm and foreboding all at the same time. The mask she found underneath it in the bag was made from the same leather and had been worked by a master leather smith for sure. There was no doubt. Years of seeing tanned hides on the farm flashed her mind and she was sure she had never encountered anything like this before. It was exquisite. How do you get measured for something like this?, she couldn’t help but wonder. It surely wasn’t mail-order. She spied the corners for surveillance equipment again before holding it up in front of herself in the far mirror.
As she stood there after the bag was empty, Maggie knew she was hooked. She wanted to know more. She needed to know what else there was. She wanted to own it, use it and feel it against her skin. She wanted it like she needed to breathe air. She wanted to feel the power of that suit on her skin and see the reverence reflected back at her from the eyes of anyone who saw her as she was seeing herself now just holding the simple suit.
Standing there, still holding the bag, looking at the mad array of items on the sorting table waiting to be loaded out for cleaning, she added a few of them to her list of plans. Things that she would attain some day when she would stand on her own where she desperately wanted to be, these things would be in her arsenal. It would happen.
The plans to leave had only been shared with one other so far. Not that she would blab or anything, Maggie didn’t think Jade was ready to hear about this part of her plans. Sometimes, things happen for a reason. Mama said things always happen for a reason, though not always for the reason, or the thing happening that you want or expect at the moment. If the explosion hadn’t happened, if she had left Ottumwa as planned, if she hadn’t stayed on with her mother...if, if if. You can’t always get what you want, but sometimes you get more than you knew you would need.
‘Riding the storm out...’
Days bled to weeks and calendar pages turned. A new calendar had gone up too. Maggie had on again-off again luck when it came to the now infamous bag of G. Eldeiress. Sometimes weeks would pass between when she got to handle it and other times the contents were just not that engaging at all, but rather almost normal. As of yet, the day had not come when she had been around for its owner’s appearance to retrieve it and she was beginning to believe she never would be. Sadly, she had not so graciously been spared Mr. Markley’s bag nearly as often.
A late Saturday afternoon, deep into Midwest winter, once again, everything changed. The building furnace was doing its best dying routine and the manager was hog-tied waiting for the owner to send someone. Assuming it would be Monday, as not to pay the higher weekend rate, Maggie’s mother started the pickup to make a run for a small space heater to get by. The nearly ancient vehicle coughed and spluttered but eventually cried uncle and roared to life. The trains were convenient but not for cargo. Her mother headed for the box home store bouncing in the rumbly truck through the blowing and drifting snow.
When Maggie got home, the apartment was empty and the parking spot for the old Ford was bare. Her mother was shopping, had to be for the truck to be gone. She hated having too many parcels on the trains, it made her less able to be aware of her surroundings if she had to watch stuff too, she had said more than once. Whatever the logic, it was what it was.
The drafty rooms seemed colder than usual. Her mother’s note explained the problem with the furnace. Maggie absently thought through how much longer she was planning to stay, with only a small pang of guilt at leaving her mother here solo. Likely, her mother would head back to Iowa anyway. They had spoken of a new car, but her mother insisted on waiting. ‘No sense tempting a wreck with new 'til the weather is better and less of an influence’ she had insisted. So they were waiting for spring for more reasons than the thaw.
Flipping channels on the television, she must have dozed off during the Star Trek rerun. Maggie was no more aware she had fallen asleep than that she had been so for hours until the loud pounding on the door startled her awake. It was well past dark outside she saw through the window as she came to. Still groggy, she was not alarmed, only confused to see the building manager through the peep hole with a police officer. She shook off the chill that ran her spine, realizing belatedly that it had nothing to do with being cold.
The words and details could not penetrate the addled fog of her mind. She caught enough to latch on to disbelief at some point, but the chronology of the events would not make sense for a long stretch of days, and multiple readings of the report later. Her mother was dead.
Initially, she was taken to Cook County Hospital to get through the shock. Family were a state away and with no one close, Officer Flaharty signed her in for an overnight watch so she would not be alone. She could not recall much of the stay, save the peeling seam of wallpaper that she had stared at for most of it. The allegories spun wildly through her mind at the small spot that would one day fell the whole sheet from the wall and how it was an apt metaphor for several events in her life, this most recent being only one.
Eyewitness accounts said that her mother likely never saw the train that day. Maggie knew she probably couldn’t have heard it either over the pop and crank of the old Ford engine. The guard rails had not come down to bar the tracks near an intersection just south of the last switching station before Union and the Illini run had just gotten up to speed a
s her mother crossed its path. Blinded by the blowing flurry of white, the slow motion inevitability of the events had played out before multiple onlookers who could do nothing but watch. The events were likely lost on her mother judging by the accounts.
Maggie did not know the details of the individual accounts as she sat in the hospital room alone that night. Those would come later. Her inner monologue was one of internal debate if her parents were now reunited or if that would only come after her mother was laid to rest. Her thoughts were interrupted often by staff that checked in and tried to get her to eat or drink something, but their efforts bore no fruit as she was lost to her memories for a long stretch before reality charged forward to once again gain a foothold.
Travis walked in first, followed by Aunt June and her handfuls of Kleenex. Maggie noticed them but didn’t shift her focus from the peel of curling paper on the far wall beside the television that was mounted and bolted through the stud. Of all her mother’s siblings, June would not have been Maggie’s choice to deal with first, but they were the closest, so they arrived ahead of the others.
Awkward family reunions were a specialty for the Mason clan, but Travis and June seemed to have a knack for it. Neither spoke a word. June sat snuffling in the corner, filling a bin with used tissues as Travis cleared his throat repeatedly, stopping short of anything more. They stepped out to confer with the nurse but did not immediately return. Instead, next in was Jordy, her mother’s youngest brother, who wrapped her up and began his ministry. Uncle Jordy was married to God and church, which meant she couldn’t talk to him right now either and continued her stare down with the wall, willing the paper to shift.
Before long the room was filled with all five of her mother’s siblings and their respective spouses. Jordy of course had his go to book in hand. It was cramped, loud and just the catalyst to pull Maggie from her focus. She closed her eyes for the first time in hours listening to them debate who was going to take her where, and what would become of the apartment and her mother’s things. That, and the obligatory discussion of services and the arrangements to be made. It was too much all at once.