“How did you end up here?” she asked. She knew Marco was at Rhys on a foreign exchange scholarship awarded to only a handful of the best and brightest art students from Europe.
“A lucky twist of fate,” Marco said. “I was just a kid, stupid, full of ego.” He took a sip of coffee. He drank it black and strong, anytime of the day or night. “The other boys I ran with were tough. We were always fighting, stealing just to see if we could get away with it. I got this when I was fifteen.” He unbuttoned two buttons on his dress shirt and pulled the collar away, showing her a thick, ropey white scar that looped across his left collarbone, collateral damage from a knifing.
He buttoned up his shirt again. “After that my parents despaired of me. They sent me to live with my aunt outside of Naples. There was nothing there, just pigs and wine. I thought my life was over.”
Stuck in a sleepy agrarian community surrounded by bucolic vineyards and small farmsteads, he had been given a choice—apply himself in school or work on the farm with the pigs. He chose the former, and for the first time turned his attention to academics, revealing to everyone’s amazement that he was a bright and talented student. He had a particular aptitude for mathematics. He applied himself for a year, and the next year won a scholarship to a prestigious private boys’ academy. It had been hell, he told her. The son of a Sicilian butcher with metaphoric dirt under his fingernails had rubbed shoulders with the Italian elite, enduring snubs and taunts and flagrant prejudice.
“They would pretend they couldn’t touch me because I was dirty. They’d go out of their way to make sure I knew how different from them I was. Once they threw all my school clothes out back in the garbage with the rotten cabbages and the spoiled meat. It was where I belonged, they said.” He bared his teeth. “But it got me here.” He shrugged. “So I guess in the end it was worth it.” But his eyes were darkened with the memory of that stigma.
“So what now?” Maggie asked.
Marco paused, considering. “So now I will become the best architect in the world. I want them to know my name. All of them. I will be so successful that they have no choice but to respect me.” And though he said it lightly, Maggie knew he meant it.
After that Maggie didn’t feel she had to hide the truth of who she was from Marco. She told him without shame about the little apartment with dingy tan carpet and leaking water pipes, the long hours her mother worked while Maggie studied or stayed in after-school activities as long as she could to avoid going back to their dark and empty home.
“She worked six or seven days a week cleaning rooms at the Marriott, and somehow we made it through each month,” Maggie confessed. “Although I don’t know how we did it.”
She stopped, thinking of all the months they had barely made it, squeaking through till the first Friday of the following month, counting and conserving until Ana’s paycheck arrived. Maggie wore clothes from Goodwill and stood in the lines at the grocery store where food stamps were accepted, feeling the burn of shame as she avoided the looks of the customers who paid with cash or credit cards.
She told him of the good things too—eating tamales on Thanksgiving and cinnamon cookies at Christmas, going house to house with her mother to deliver homemade cookies to elderly neighbors on Christmas Day, a rare day Ana didn’t work. It had always been just the two of them. Ana had no contact with her family in Puerto Rico. They had disowned her after she became pregnant with Maggie. And Maggie had never known her father. Her mother refused to speak of him, saying only that he was not worth the trouble to talk about. Instead, Ana had raised Maggie on her own, and her constant, sometimes tough love had been enough to see her daughter through.
“I discovered photography my freshman year of high school,” Maggie explained. The first time she looked through a viewfinder and took a series of shots, she was hooked. Later, in the darkroom at her high school, staring at the negatives she’d taken, she was amazed by the feeling of power they gave her. When she held a camera in her hands, she could tell a story, she had a voice. Maggie knew it was what she’d been born to do.
She got a job at a local fried chicken joint the next summer, waiting tables nights and weekends to save up for her own camera and equipment. “I spent the entire summer reeking of chicken skin and frying oil, but by September I had enough to buy my first camera. After that I never looked back.”
Her senior year her art teacher contacted his old mentors at Rhys and arranged for her to compete for the Gilbert Scholarship. She had been wary at first, reluctant to accept charity or a handout, but when it became clear that she would be judged on her talent alone, not on income level, she had been more than eager to compete.
She won. In a black pantsuit she’d bought at Goodwill for fifteen dollars, her curls tamed back in a severe French twist, she handled herself with poise and a steely determination that was, as one judge put it later, “verging on the intimidating.” For her portfolio she chose photos from her neighborhood. Her series juxtaposed the elderly residents of her neighborhood, who clung to their Latino roots, with the rising inner-city gangs, youths who had no regard for their ethnic heritage but formed new identities as members of the Latin Kings or La Raza Nation. Although it lacked the finesse of some of the private-school entries, her work was lauded as “a breath of fresh air” and “visceral, evocative, intriguing.” She was awarded the full-tuition Gilbert Scholarship. The judges were unanimous.
“Look at us,” Marco said when she finished telling him her story. He shook his head in chagrin. “We have all the talent but none of their money and connections.” He waved his hand around the crowded cafeteria, indicating the other students engaged in a low buzz of conversation. “You and me, we are like fish out of water.”
Maggie agreed. She was amazed by her good fortune to get to study at Rhys, but she did feel out of her element. No one understood the life she had come from except Marco. She was drawn to him more than she cared to admit. There was an attraction between them to be sure; she would be a fool not to recognize that. But far more than sexual chemistry, there was an affinity for the other, an understanding between them. They recognized each other for what they were and what they were not. They understood what it meant to scrape and want and pull themselves up by their bootstraps, with nothing more than their own determination and talent. They might be fish out of water, but Maggie was comforted to know they at least had each other.
Lena was a different story entirely. She breezed into Maggie’s life like the first day of May. On the Sunday of move-in weekend, she made her appearance late in the afternoon.
“Are you Maggie?” she asked breathlessly, standing in the doorway to the dorm room they were to share. Maggie stared at her in dismay.
She had been mailed a slip of paper stating that her roommate for the year would be Lena Lindstrom from St. Paul, Minnesota. The notice had neglected to mention she would look like a dress model for Macy’s circa 1950. She was wearing white gloves and a pastel blue suit. And she was beautiful. With broad cheekbones, a strong jaw, and wide-set eyes the startling blue of a cornflower, she had the type of beauty that comes not from perfection of feature but from the charms of subtle imperfections. Eyes a little too far apart, mouth a little wide, all blended to a striking whole.
“Well, I will say it is a long way from Minnesota to Vermont!” Lena exclaimed, not seeming to notice Maggie’s consternation. “Now, which bed is mine?”
Lena Lindstrom was the privileged only child of an obstetrician father and a socialite mother. She had been educated in a private girls’ academy and had taken a gap year between high school and college to tour Europe for a cultural music enrichment experience.
“Daddy delivers babies,” Lena told her casually as she unpacked her set of powder-pink luggage.
“And what does your mother do?” Maggie asked, eyeing her new roommate in disbelief.
Lena blinked at her. “Charity work, of course.”
Maggie was initially wary of Lena, expecting snobbery or elitism, on guard for
even a hint of disdain. Had Lena given the slightest indication that she looked down on Maggie for their disparity in class, Maggie would have immediately distanced herself from her roommate, choosing the rest of the school year to coexist with her but not connect. What saved them was that Lena seemed perfectly unaware of any class difference between them. She seemed to take it for granted that it was routine for people to tour Europe after high school or have a baby grand piano in their bedroom in case they took a notion to practice scales in the night. Equally, she seemed unfazed by Maggie’s few careful references to her own, very different background. Lena accepted Maggie without a hint of superiority.
“I wish I could speak another language,” was her only comment. “Lucky you, to speak Spanish so fluently. I only know a little French and Italian I learned at school and traveling abroad. It must be so nice to dream in another language.”
Maggie shook her head, finally concluding that Lena’s naïveté was not put on but entirely genuine. Despite Maggie’s initial chagrin, they settled into a comfortable roommate relationship, though their personalities and habits differed drastically. Lena was a piano performance major in the conservatory attached to Rhys. She filled her time with order and calm. She kept lists neatly tacked to her desk and relished crossing off items as she completed them. Maggie stayed up all hours of the night listening to music and working on her projects, encased in a solitary bubble of artistic process, but Lena was in bed by ten each night. While Maggie slept in as late as she could in the mornings, Lena did gentle stretching exercises in the middle of the room, starting at precisely 7:30 a.m.
Lena was neat as a pin, organizing her drawers by color. Maggie tended to throw her meager wardrobe into a single drawer and fish out clothes when needed. Maggie wore mostly dark colors, with lean lines and rivets and zippers, clothes pared down and angst-ridden. Lena’s wardrobe shimmered with a quiet rainbow of pastels. She looked like a walking Monet.
Maggie marveled at Lena’s smooth adjustment to college. She seemed to sail through, serene and poised. At least Maggie thought so until a month into the fall semester. She came back to their room after lunch to find Lena curled up on her bed, cradling her pillow and sobbing soundlessly into the satin cover. When Lena realized Maggie was there, she sat up, brushing back her hair and attempting a bright smile though her face was slick with tears.
“How was lunch?” Lena asked as though nothing in the world was wrong. Mascara was smeared in dark crescents beneath her eyes.
Maggie just looked at her.
Lena’s lower lip began to tremble. “You know what? I have no friends.”
That evening Maggie took her to meet Marco. As they approached the cafeteria table where he sat, Marco glanced up at them. When he saw Lena, his eyes widened. There was something so privileged and classic about her, the good breeding shining through in every gesture and smile. Marco couldn’t take his eyes off her. Lena dimpled when she introduced herself, and Maggie went cold, suddenly seeing the danger in this meeting, the possibility of attraction between them, the threat of being left out. She tried to quash the sudden dart of fear that she might have written herself out of an equation meant for only two.
“So . . .” Lena sat down across from Marco, folding her hands demurely. “Maggie tells me you’re Italian. I took lessons for almost a year, so don’t try any funny business.”
Maggie and Marco both gaped at her, and then Marco began to laugh.
That was the beginning of their little trio. From that day forward they were inseparable. Maggie soon forgot her fears. The three of them became the center of the universe, everything revolving around them. They were the sun, moon, and stars, orbiting each other, excluding all others, shining so brightly it hurt to look at them, eclipsing all else in the light they shed.
Chapter Three
IN THE HARSH LIGHT OF A SEATAC AIRPORT women’s restroom, Maggie grimaced at her reflection, noting the dark circles under her eyes. She wanted a shower and a bed. The series of flights had been grueling. On such short notice Sanne had only been able to book her on a flight with connections in Panama City and Houston. Maggie had long layovers in each city before arriving in Seattle almost forty hours after leaving Managua.
She was used to long flights, regularly jetting from Chicago to places like Cape Town, Buenos Aires, or Bangkok. She usually didn’t mind the hours in the air. But this time it was different. She wasn’t traveling to a new and exotic location or returning to a country she knew like an old friend. This trip was surreal—the taste of dread and sorrow like lemon bitter on her tongue.
She smoothed her hands through her hair, the long, dark tangle of curls grown obstinate and unruly through the many hours of travel. There was nothing to do but corral them. She rifled through her backpack and finally located the pair of chopsticks she always carried with her. Twisting her hair into a French knot, she secured it with the chopsticks, ignoring the few strands that sprang loose. Her travel outfit—olive-green rock-climbing pants, a brown tank top, and a white buttoned shirt with the sleeves rolled up—looked completely unruffled by hours in the air. The miracle of quick-dry gear, she reflected. Her outfit looked far fresher than she did.
Maggie hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder and grabbed her camera case, exiting the restroom and weaving her way seamlessly through the crowd to baggage claim, dodging children, strollers, and stacks of bags with practiced ease. She had learned years ago how to walk without leaving a wake, to pass quietly amid the hustle and bustle of a market or airport, completely untouched, almost invisible. She collected her suitcase and then headed to the rental car stands to pick up the car Sanne had reserved for her for the next week.
Fifteen minutes later Maggie was out on the highway, speeding north toward Seattle in a bright blue Ford Focus. Through a haze of fatigue, she barely saw the passing evergreen-ridged mountains, the shifting steel gray of water. She skirted the city, driving past the famed Space Needle, which looked like a 1960s B-movie rendering of an alien spaceship, and by Lake Union, crowded with little white sailboats. She continued north through the flatter lands with their miles of tulip fields, lying dormant now that the harvest was over. Finally, almost two hours later, she reached Anacortes, the picturesque seaside town that served as the jump-off point for the ferries to the islands. She bought a ticket and pulled her car into line for the next ferry bound for San Juan Island.
The second largest in a chain of islands that dotted the quiet waters of the Salish Sea, San Juan Island boasted two small, quaint towns, Friday Harbor and Roche Harbor, and a handful of parks. For the past seven years, it had been the summer home of the Firelli family, and a retreat for Maggie as well. She had joined them on the island the first year they took up residence. It was just after her mother’s death, and Marco and Lena had only recently purchased the farmhouse and were fixing it up themselves. The combination of manual labor and their quiet compassion had been a lifesaver for her. She had returned every summer since.
The ferry ride was uneventful. Usually Maggie loved to sit on the front deck or in the long, enclosed cabin space with a cup of clam chowder, watching for seals and whales or observing the other passengers. This time, however, she simply staked a claim on an isolated back booth, ignoring the other passengers who were doing jigsaw puzzles or reading true crime novels, and hunched in a corner, trying to sleep. She roused to return to the car when the ferry reached the island.
Maggie started the Ford Focus and slowly disembarked the ferry, winding through the postcard-perfect town of Friday Harbor. She drove down Spring Street, passing rows of brightly painted clapboard businesses—the Cask and Schooner Pub, the Kings Market grocery store, and the Palace Theater, a misnomer, as the tiny cinema had only three screens.
On the outskirts of town, she made a left turn, then a right, and followed a long stretch of coastal road bordered by tall grass and the sharp, dark outlines of evergreens. Ten minutes later she pulled into the gravel driveway and approached the familiar, sprawling yellow house.
She cut the engine and sat for a moment, surveying the scene. Everything appeared unchanged. Calm and serene, with tidy white trim and long banks of windows on every side, the house looked unmoved by tragedy, as though the bad tidings were simply a dream, nothing more. Here was reality, in the riot of brilliantly colored zinnias blooming in pots along the concrete stoop, in the red tricycle lying upturned on the clipped grass. It was a scene she had come to treasure, the time in the year when she felt as though she could simply exist, relax, and unwind and not have to produce anything of note. Except she was too early. She always came in August when the squash was ripening on Lena’s garden vines and the sun spread warm over the entire island like honey on a homemade biscuit. But it was only June. The garden was a square of brown earth, newly planted and just beginning to sprout little green shoots, and the sun was watery behind a thin scrim of gray clouds, too low in the sky for this time of day. It was wrong in a dozen small ways. Maggie took a deep breath and got out of the car.
A moment later the screen door to the mudroom banged open and three children spilled out, jostling to be first, all clamoring for attention. A golden retriever squeezed out the door behind them, trying to weave in between their legs, tail wagging enthusiastically.
“Aunt Maggie, Aunt Maggie!” Gabriella reached her first, wrapping herself around Maggie’s legs. Maggie bent and hugged her, marveling at the sturdy little body in her arms. She had grown so much in only nine months. There was such a difference between three and four years old. Three was still a pudgy baby in some ways, but four was a little adult. Gabby pulled back, eager to share her news. Beneath a halo of silky brown curls, her eyes were round and earnest as she looked up at Maggie. “Aunt Maggie, I got a ballerina doll for my birthday and I named her Jessica and I want to be a ballerina when I get big and I growed a lot this year and got new shoes that are pink with sparkles and, Aunt Maggie, my daddy went in the water and he didn’t come back,” she said all in one unpunctuated sentence, watching Maggie to see how she would react to the news.
Ascension of Larks Page 3