“Fletcher’s not the only one committed to this place,” she says. “Coming up here was my idea.” And then, lest he should hear some regret in this admission, she adds, “I was right, too.”
“You’re a real visionary, Auntie Maggs.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, a visionary?”
“No—Auntie Maggs.” It’s too late in the night for arguments. This must be payback for filming him; he’s out to lay her open in turn. Well, she won’t have it.
“You really want to live like this?” he asks. “With all the rich kids chasing after satori?”
“If you think they’re such phonies, why are you here with them?”
“Sometimes I wonder the same thing.” There’s a hardness in his voice. She studies his face to see if he’s kidding, then waves him away.
“I almost believe you. The way you treat Pauline—like you couldn’t care less.”
“Pauline,” he replies in a flat voice, “owes her life to a broken rubber.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” Yet immediately she’s sure it’s the truth.
He moves into the circle of light from the lamp beside her, a shadow deepening across one side of his face even as the other gains texture and detail.
“Let me tell you something I’ve learned about myself,” he says. “The heart of me is a lump of selfishness. Concern for other people is just a ribbon tied around it. I wish it were otherwise, Maggie, but at the core I’m this piece of petrified shit. It’s a fact that has kept me alive, at least, and it never goes away. It’ll stick around longer than this place.”
“What do you know about it? You don’t even come to meetings. You’re always playing cards. If you paid more attention, you’d know we’re going to be here for years and years.”
Wale shakes his head. “People have been setting up communes for decades. They all think they’ll work twenty hours a week and live like kings. It never happens. Brook Farm, New Harmony, the Oneida Community—all gone. You know why?”
“Because people have hearts made of shit?”
He chuckles and nods. “But it’s nice you think otherwise.” Then he adds, “In some ways you’re a lot like your father.”
Maggie scowls at him. “How would you know? You’ve never even met him.”
“I met him in Laos.”
At first Maggie assumes it’s a joke, but he isn’t laughing.
“It was in May,” he tells her. “While I was on the lam.”
“You were in Laos?” She doesn’t understand. It’s impossible. He must be lying.
“Hardly any white people over there,” he says. “They tend to run into each other. It’s like in Africa with Livingstone and what’s his name. Your dad and I, we met at Long Chieng, the big CIA airbase. The reds were on the offensive, so half of Laos had hunkered down there. I was on my way back here, and your dad was heading to some refugee camp.”
As he speaks, Maggie feels a growing anger. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“You broke off contact with him, didn’t you? I figured you weren’t interested.”
But she knows that’s bullshit too. He’s been playing with her, waiting for the right moment to spring the news, a time late at night with no one else to interrupt.
“You really talked to him?” She can’t help asking it. “How was he?”
“We only spent a couple of hours over beers, but he seemed happy enough.” Then Wale’s brow knits as if he’s rethinking it. “No, not just happy. Maggie, he was radiant. It freaked me out. I mean, Long Chieng isn’t Disneyland. I figured your dad had to be working an angle.”
“Angle? What angle?” The question carries an energy with it, as though if Wale could give her the answer, it would let her feel better about the situation. But he only shrugs.
“I asked him that, flat out, and he said he was there to make something of his life.”
Her chest tightens. It couldn’t be so simple and piteous. “He went to Laos because he was broke, and because he didn’t have me at home to look after him anymore.”
Wale raises an eyebrow.
“Did he tell you about the things he said to me before he left?” she asks. “Did you even tell him you knew me?”
“Sure I did. Then you were all he wanted to talk about. Whatever happened between you two, he was feeling bad about it.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he had a hard time when you left for college.”
A pain of remembrance shoots through her.
“Hey, I sympathized,” says Wale. “If I had you all to myself and you split, I’d have a hard time too.”
She remembers Wale in Boston, the intensity of his gaze at the bar, the way he seemed to be mapping her inch by inch. He’s looking at her like that now, and it’s no less alarming than it was then. What did she do to merit such attention? He reaches out to clasp her by the elbows. “Don’t,” she says.
“You really see something in that guy?” He’s looking over her shoulder at the editing machine. When she turns to it, she realizes that the image of Fletcher being punched in the gut still glows in the viewer.
“Don’t,” she says again, shaking free of him and flicking off the editor. A low electric hum disappears that she didn’t notice until the moment of its vanishing.
“You haven’t written your dad lately?” says Wale. “You haven’t heard from him?”
“Why do you care?” It’s impossible to stay here; she has to leave. “I’m going to bed. Turn out the lights, will you?”
She starts for the door, wishing there were something she could say to let them speak of more trivial things in the future. Instead, she ends up asking, “Did you really meet my father?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I don’t believe you just ran into him. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“What do you think happened?”
She doesn’t reply because she doesn’t know.
“Good night,” she says, worried he’ll call after her and wake everyone. The trip down the hallway seems to take forever. When she makes it to her room without hearing his voice, it feels like a lucky escape.
In bed, unable to sleep, she remembers the father she once had, the one unwilling or unable to change his life. Gran always thought the solution was for him to marry again. She said a man in his thirties was still young. Besides, she insisted, playing her trump card, Maggie needed a mother. Gran always said this in a patronizing tone Maggie loathed. “I don’t,” Maggie wanted to say. “My father’s all I need.” But she never spoke the words aloud. It wasn’t until she had been accepted for college and was on the verge of freedom that she decided she could say whatever she liked.
“You don’t really want him married,” Maggie told her then. “You’d rather have him to yourself.”
By that point she was too old to be grounded or sent to her room, so Gran’s only response was a hurt silence. Maggie should have felt guilty about it, but after a childhood assuming it was a requirement to love her grandmother, she had realized she didn’t even like her very much. All through Maggie’s years of high school, Gran had taken every opportunity to tell her how to live her life, her favourite topic being the sacred temple of a girl’s body and the dangers of young men. It was ridiculous of her to dwell on it, because Maggie never dated anyone. She knew she needed to win a scholarship if she wanted to attend college, and she told herself she didn’t have time for boys.
For that reason, it surprised her when, in the spring of 1966, Peter Leggat asked her to the senior prom. All year in Latin class she’d sat behind him, admiring the back of his head and growing weak in the knees when he conjugated verbs. They’d barely spoken to each other, though, and she was so startled by his invitation that she wasn’t able to feign indifference. Right away she blurted out a yes.
Afterward, she made up for it by not telling Gran or her father. On her own she bought a pair of pointy blue shoes and a chiffon dress with cape sle
eves and an over-skirt that the saleslady said would twirl nicely in a waltz, leaving Maggie distressed because she had never waltzed in her life. Once she’d snuck the outfit into her closet, it seemed quite natural to say nothing to anyone until the night itself.
That evening, while her father watched television downstairs, she put on the dress and shoes, then crept into his room, never before having entered it on her own. Her mother’s dressing table was against the far wall. Maggie had often peered at it from the hallway when her father wasn’t there, studying her reflection in the mirror. Now, drawing close, she examined the things spread across the table’s surface: the pots of cream, the perfume bottles and lipsticks, a wooden jewellery box embossed with metal hearts. In a small pewter frame was a photograph of her mother at seventeen or eighteen, sitting on a bicycle with her hair pulled back, wearing a long grey coat that hung past her knees, smiling at some secret thought.
Maggie picked up a tube of lipstick from the table and removed the cap. She had already put the stick to her lips when she realized it stank foully, and she fled to the bathroom so she could wipe the stuff off.
Downstairs, she waited by the edge of the living room until her father turned to see why she was lingering. He took in the chiffon dress and the pointy shoes, and suddenly she apprehended just how preposterous she must look.
“Tonight’s the prom,” she told him. “Peter Leggat’s taking me.” She said it with an air of confidence, but it didn’t sound right, even to her.
“Who’s Peter Leggat?”
“Just a boy,” she replied. “I don’t know him very well.” Realizing how that might sound, she added, “He’s Catholic, I think.” But that sounded no better. She waited for her father to tell her she couldn’t go.
“I can see your knees,” was all he said.
“You can’t,” she insisted.
“I can almost see them, then.”
“You want me to put on something else?” It was a stupid thing to say, because she had nothing else to wear. She almost added, “You want me to stay home?” If he said so, she’d do it gladly. Anything was better than the look spreading across his face, one she’d never quite seen before. There had only been a hint of it those times she’d asked him to let her attend a slumber party or an overnight school trip. From those hints alone she’d learned to avoid situations where he might gain the forlorn expression he wore now.
A vision came to her of how it would go if she went. Every dance, Peter Leggat would step on her toes and stick his tongue in her ear, and afterward he’d drive her to Green Lake so he could slide a hand under her dress while they sat on the beach. She’d be so worried about her father that she’d barely perceive the movement of Peter’s fingers, tentative as he waited for her rebuke. She wouldn’t say a word because her mind would be back in the house, imagining how it would have been if she’d stayed behind to watch Gilligan’s Island, and she would barely be paying attention until Peter Leggat reached the wet centre of her.
When he appeared on the doorstep, clutching a pink corsage with his parents’ car running in the drive, Maggie told him her father was ill and she couldn’t go. It was a surprise to her when Peter looked relieved. She should have been glad, but it made her furious, and she almost changed her mind. Had he invited her on a bet? Probably his mother put him up to it. On the spot, Maggie decided that Peter Leggat was a scrawny, pimply, ninety-nine-pound weakling. What had she been thinking?
After he drove away, she stormed into the living room.
“I’m not going,” she declared. “I hope you’re happy.” She couldn’t quite escape upstairs quickly enough to avoid seeing her father’s stunned expression.
In her room, she entertained a fantasy of Peter Leggat driving wildly around Syracuse, overcome by regret, then returning to beg her forgiveness. When a knock came at her door, for a second she believed it was him. But it was her father, head down, staring at the carpet.
“You know, it’s all right for you to date,” he said.
“I know,” she replied, although she didn’t believe he meant it.
“I want you to see the world,” he told her. “I want you to have a career.” It was the first time he’d said any of these things. “Maybe you’ll be a teacher.”
“A teacher?” The idea had never occurred to her.
“You’d be good with children. Also, it would give you the summers to travel.”
She found it strange to hear him talk of travel. He subscribed to National Geographic and liked telling her of the places he read about, but he never talked of visiting them, either by himself or together, and she didn’t mind. The idea of travelling with him didn’t seem right. She wanted to do it by herself one day.
But what she said was, “You’ll come with me.”
“I couldn’t afford it.”
“I’ll pay, then. I won’t leave you by yourself.” She hoped it was what he needed to hear, but he only looked more dejected.
“You’re leaving in the fall,” he said.
She gritted her teeth. So that was why he’d mentioned travel. She should have known.
“Boston isn’t so far,” she said, as if he didn’t know where Boston was. “I’ll come home on weekends.” At this, he only shook his head.
Suddenly his presence in her doorway was too much. She needed him to be downstairs in his easy chair. She wanted to be wearing her normal clothes and sitting on the couch. “I don’t have to go,” she heard herself say. “Maybe I could still get into Syracuse.”
He didn’t look up from the carpet. “You need to see the world. I’ve been a selfish father.”
Did he want her to go or not? When she went to hug him, she felt him shiver. Why was her father shivering? He shook like a little boy who knew a terrible secret.
“I should have sent you off on trips,” he said. “I should have made you get some distance.”
A year later, in Boston, she had a chance encounter with a girl from high school, someone whose name Maggie had already forgotten. The girl told her Peter Leggat had burnt his draft card and moved to San Francisco with flowers in his hair. This bit of gossip was followed by a long, sly look. Not for the first time, Maggie wondered what Peter had told people to explain his inviting her to the prom. Perhaps in San Francisco she still had a walkon role in the stories he related. Maybe, as he told it now, she was the last girl he’d tried before giving up and heading west. Perhaps she played the same sort of crucial, casual role in his personal history that he seemed to play in hers.
Maggie thinks of telling Fletcher about her encounter with Wale in the playroom but decides he already has enough to manage. Each day seems to bring him into conflict with people on the farm. Those on the payroll begrudge the chores he assigns them, while those who aren’t being paid don’t bother with his labour schemes at all and entice the others to movie matinees in St. Catharines or the beach at Port Dalhousie. In bed he complains to her that Dimitri’s the main culprit, setting a bad example with his truant walks in search of John-John. Fletcher complains about the garbage everywhere, the mud on the floors, the noise from record players and car stereos, the shouting and laughing downstairs that make it hard to sleep, until he and Maggie end up arguing over which of them should go tell people to be quiet. In the mornings, there are often bodies asleep in the hall, and many residents of the barracks don’t get up until noon. Fletcher starts going out to the building before breakfast, rapping on the door and hollering hellos, poking people awake.
His shortwave radio goes missing, then his welding torch. She tells him not to take it personally, but it’s no good. At meetings, he battles with Dimitri, who hasn’t lost interest in debating. While Fletcher sits with pens and sheaves of notes laid out on the coffee table like weapons, Dimitri takes equine strides around the room and sweeps the hair from his forehead. He wants a credit system to apportion the work more fairly. Fletcher wants to ban drugs and set a nightly curfew. The number of Fletcher’s supporters shrinks with each meeting, and half-jokingly Dimi
tri takes to calling him Captain Morgan. Brid, whose vote cannot be depended upon by either man, rolls her eyes a lot. It makes for compelling film but is hard on Fletcher’s nerves. He vents his anger watching TV coverage of the Republican convention. One night Maggie catches him before the bathroom mirror speaking to invisible assailants.
“Get lost,” he says. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”
She steps back from the door with a pang, glad nobody else is there to see him. Her period’s a week late, and she has been wanting to tell him about it, but when he’s in such a state it seems unfair to burden him. She’s been late before to no consequence. It would be easier on the pill, except the pill didn’t agree with her, and anyhow they’re so careful—always the diaphragm or a condom. Probably it’s just stress. She hasn’t been eating well.
The next morning, he awakens her, already in the middle of a rant. When she asks him what’s wrong, he flings a piece of paper onto the bed.
“A complaints letter! I found it under our door. They can’t write me a complaints letter—it’s a fucking commune! Dimitri’s behind this, I know it.”
She looks over the page. “Some of these things might be reasonable.”
“Like what?”
“Like not enough vegetarian meals—”
“That’s Rhea. Goddamn Rhea and Dimitri. Why do we have all those meetings if they’re going to bitch behind my back? I swear, they only came here to ruin things. Dimitri’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Cape Cod.”
Maggie thinks of asking him what he knows about Dimitri and speed, but she only rubs his back and tells him it will be fine. She says everyone’s trying to make the farm better. She tells him to focus on the happy things.
And she’s right, too: in some ways it isn’t so bad. The lettuce she planted after the hurricane is flourishing. The pumpkins have begun to spread tendrils beyond the borders of their allotment. On warm evenings after sunset, she and Fletcher walk hand in hand down the orchard’s central lane, and sometimes through the fading dusk they see pairs of bodies lying together under the trees. There’s the luminescence of bare legs, the undulation of a head. At first she’s startled by such sights, even as part of her stirs, but she comes to take them as propitious, signs that together all of them have created something good.
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