“Tough being a fireman. Tough job.”
When he left, Charlie said, “I’ll tell it to you, Margie. Just to you. I need you.”
She reached over and patted his wrist above the bandages. “Okay. But I’m going to tape all the windows. Like in a hurricane.”
He smiled across the table at her, though he tried to hide his gratitude so as not to pressure her. But he did say, “I don’t want to lose you,” because he couldn’t help but be honest. That was his nature.
“I know,” Margie said.
“I’m sorry we haven’t had a normal life.”
And now it was Margie’s turn to remain silent. He waited. He said, “Can we talk at the beach? Can we rent a cottage at the beach for a week?”
“I’d love to.”
“You can read a lot.”
“Yes.”
“We can go make love at the creek.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Why not?”
“A little chilly in October.”
His weary eyes crinkled at the corners. “No mosquitoes, though.”
“There’s those new condos. If people look out the windows and see us screwing in their view of the marsh grass, they might not enjoy their dinner.”
They smirked at one another.
The sand dune was building up again. And besides the condominiums behind the creek, Margie and Charlie found another change—a little metal bridge crossing the creek so that the condo owners could get to the beach. If a small boat wanted to sail up the creek, the sailor had to get out and hand crank the bridge up, like a toy drawbridge. Margie thought the bridge was cute. Charlie wondered how the bridge got by the environmentalists. They tried the bridge and it worked. They cranked it up and down and up and down.
“Convenient, at least,” he said.
“Yeah.”
Before, you could only cross the creek at low tide. As children, Little Pete and Margie used to enter the creek at high tide, holding their crab nets and lines and towels and Margie’s library books above their heads, making believe they were marines crossing leech-infested swamps. Margie remembered the time she dropped A Tree Grows in Brooklyn into the creek, but Little Pete deftly retrieved it with his crab net. Even though Margie had dried it in the sun, the librarian still made Margie pay for it. The woman picked it up with her thumb and forefinger, held it for a dramatic second over her wastebasket, and let it drop. So Margie took out her money, paid the bill, and asked her if she could keep the book. The librarian rolled her eyes, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was liberated for the second time.
On the other side of the bridge, once they’d settled down on their blanket, Margie told Charlie she wanted a separation. He said, “Where do you want to separate to?” He didn’t feign shock at what he’d known was coming. He wasn’t panicked either.
She said, “Radcliffe.”
He smiled sadly. “Then it’s more than a separation you want.”
“Yes. I want to start up again where I stopped.”
“You’ll never want to get back into the horseradish.”
“That’s right.”
He turned on to his side. Margie was on her back. He looked down into her eyes. “But that’s where I’ll be.”
She turned to him, too, face-to-face. “Your choice,” she said.
He said, “I have no choice.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Help me.”
Margie touched him. “Just talk to me, Charlie, the way I talked to you when we were lying right here such a long time ago. Now it’s your turn.”
First he played with a strand of her hair. Then he said, “The alternative to my being out of the horseradish is different than the one you see for yourself.”
“Charlie. Tell me what it is you see for yourself.”
“All I see is losing you. Same as if I stay in the jar. So why make an effort?”
“Oh, great. You cop out.” She ran her fingers against his lips. “Charlie, I don’t have much patience left.”
“I know.”
“Giving up what I need—what I’m telling you I have to have—if I give it up, that won’t help you.”
“I’m not asking for that.”
“I know. But you can’t go around totaling mirrors.”
He sighed. “Why did you pick Radcliffe? Was that the result of a consultation with Martha?”
Margie made a fist and tapped his chin. “You know, I’m getting a little tired of poor Martha taking the blame every time I blink. No, it wasn’t Martha.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, the thing about reading the New York Times every day is that you get these little gossip columns of information on the lives of the rich and intellectual.”
“So what did the Times say about Radcliffe?”
“Radcliffe feels that applicants should all be treated alike. That accepted freshmen should be treated alike. If you’re fifty years old and you get in, you get to room in a dorm like everyone else.”
“A freshman just like all the eighteen-year-olds.”
“That’s right.”
“Will you come home for Thanks giving?”
“I wouldn’t miss your mother’s Thanksgiving dinner for all the tea in Radcliffe.”
Charlie lay back and pulled her onto him. “Margie, if Radcliffe was in Pennsylvania instead of a stone’s throw from Fenway Park, would you still want to go?”
“Nope.”
He pulled her head down against his chest. During that hug Charlie was giving her, Margie made a decision. If he asked whether he could come visit her at Radcliffe, she would divorce him. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t. Margie waited. He didn’t ask. She pulled up from him—her turn to look down into his eyes. His eyelashes fluttered against the sun behind her. Margie said, “I love you.”
He said, “I love you.”
Then he kissed her and then he whispered in her ear, “I want you.”
Margie said, “I want you.”
Badly. Her terms were not subject to compromise anymore, and he knew it. He didn’t ask for one. It was time for all-out comfort, temporary though that comfort would be. As they moved their blanket into the marsh grass, Margie was thinking that sex was the same as what the doctor in “Star Trek” did to injured crew members—touched them where it hurt, creating some kind of orgasm where the injured parts knit themselves back together and everything was okay till the next injury came along.
It was fairly warm for October, Margie thought. And the people in the condominiums be damned.
Chapter Seventeen
Charlie dismantled the war room. He steamed the circus mural off the wall. He donated all his notebooks and tapes to the Hartford Historical Society. Then, because he loved Margie so much, he gave her a room to please her most fanciful daydreams. He took up the carpet and sanded the oak floors and stained them. He bought two small Chinese rugs. He put up some sort of flocked wallpaper imported from England, and mahogany wainscoting he’d found at a house-wrecking company’s yard. Then he went all through the house and collected her books from various shelves in every room: from the coffee table, too; from the end tables; from the bedroom floor on her side of the bed; from under the bed; from her bureau; from the bathroom; from the kitchen counter.
He filled the stained and oiled and polished shelves with all Margie’s books, arranging them alphabetically by title. Margie never connected writers specifically to the books they wrote, so that was okay. He put a print of her favorite painting on the wall, the Fragonard of the woman reading in the sunlight. He had knocked out the little window in the room and put in a bigger one so that Margie could read by sunlight, too, just like the woman in the painting. He even bought a small bench with a tapestry cushion so she could be the woman in the painting. There was a wing chair and a leather sofa, and a brass table from India. The room looked like one big, cozy nook. A personalized library of Margie’s own.
There was a little shelf for the catalogs from Trinity College in Ha
rtford, and Wesleyan down the road in Middletown, and UCONN and the University of Hartford. Margie didn’t really want to go away to college. She’d go to one right nearby and find out what authors try to tell people about human nature.
When it was finished, Margie sat in the leather wing chair and looked around at her present. Charlie had basically adapted the design of the room where Alistair Cooke introduced “Masterpiece Theatre.” Alistair was gone and Public Television had redesigned his room. Fans, Margie thought, would be happy to know that the original still existed.
It was the loveliest present Margie could imagine, and the day that the room was officially unveiled, she found out who set fire to the Barnum & Bailey circus tent on July 6, 1944. He finally confessed, and included details demonstrating that Henry Maxson had told the truth.
The confession came just a few weeks before Charlie’s six-month ultimatum was to expire. It happened right when Margie threw her library-warming party. It was winter then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Margie had tried to re-create Dickens—she served mulled wine and mince pie with hard sauce to all the family milling about the leather furniture and tapestry cushions, all raving about what a beautiful room it was and how Charlie had missed his calling. Someone actually said that: He missed his calling. Margie looked to Martha, who never could fathom how or why her father had missed his whole life. Like her grandfather. Charlie’s cousin Cindy was the last to arrive; she came in just when things were on the verge of breaking up. She was such a contrast to all of them. They had rosy cheeks from the wine and from the toastiness of the room. Cindy’s skin was always pale. She was alone. A pretty girl, everyone had always said, which meant: Why isn’t she married? And since she wasn’t, she was still referred to as a girl.
Martha went right over to her and the two went off and chatted in a corner. In deference to Cindy, the party seemed to just start up again. Margie was glad; she was enjoying herself She was proud of Charlie. He was going to be all right.
People began re-eating. “This stuff on the pie is delicious, Margie,” was what people kept saying.
Then Margie felt Martha’s eyes on her. Margie looked back at her, at her daughter’s wide, wet eyes. Martha’s face was bone white, whiter than Cindy’s. She was standing by Cindy, who was sitting on the tapestry bench under the big window Martha had one of Cindy’s hands enclosed in both of hers, holding it up against her stomach. Margie walked over to them, and when she reached them, Martha said, “Excuse me,” and tried to escape, but Cindy held fast to her. In Charlie’s family of extrasensory perception, everybody seemed to turn toward them at once.
Cindy mumbled something. She mumbled, “Aunt Palma.”
And another tide of just perceptible turning took place and Margie’s mother-in-law’s eyes shifted, searching out the wrath of her husband. Then she remembered she was safe, and stiffened, and shot a look at Cindy, a look Margie had never seen. A dangerous look, a direct physical threat. Martha pulled Cindy’s hand up higher to her chest and gazed down into her eyes, a gesture that served to release Cindy from Palma’s horrible gaze. Now Martha held on to Cindy’s gaze until, slowly, Cindy’s head turned and she looked at Margie. She said, “Margie, my Aunt Palma wouldn’t let me tell. But now it’s over so I will. I did see something at the circus.” Her gaze moved toward Charlie, who was standing on the other side of the room, and everyone else looked to him, too. Margie thought his face seemed wizened, creased with lines that had never been there before. Cindy said to Charlie, her voice awry, “I saw you. I waved, but you didn’t see me. Near where we were going in. You were standing on the other side of the animal chute.” She gave a sad little smile. “I was so glad you’d gotten to go to the circus after all. When we went to your house… after… I told Aunt Palma that I’d seen you there. She said I shouldn’t tell or Uncle Denny would beat you to death. But I already knew that, that’s why I didn’t tell my mother you were there.”
Then Margie watched Charlie shrink. She couldn’t comprehend that he wasn’t actually shrinking, that instead he was sinking to his knees, sinking in slow motion until finally he became the same size he was when he was ten years old. When he set the circus tent on fire.
Palma O’Neill was the only one who had actually recognized that Charlie had set the fire. When Cindy whispered her words to Palma a long time ago she had known. She had put Cindy’s words together with Charlie appearing at the door in such a terrible state—sweaty and in shock. She realized the shock had not come from the fear of having to face his father for not putting out the garbage, which was why his father had taken the ticket away. But as Palma had already tried to explain to Margie, she was of a generation that considered the expression of feelings a weakness and the hiding of those feelings acceptable. She didn’t see where that phenomenon became hiding the truth, became lying, which Margie had euphemized as not being frank. Became betrayal.
And then Margie saw everything—all of it—through Palma’s eyes: Denny isn’t really hurting the children, my brothers would kill him if he were; the children aren’t angry and bitter and resentful; after all, what do kids know? My husband is a bad man, but he’s not so bad that he’d drive my child to put a match to a circus tent full of people, full of other children. Palma was able to believe her own lies.
At the moment of revelation, when Charlie sank to the floor of the library he’d built so painstakingly for Margie, Martha had to desert Cindy and take hold of her mother—hold her back by her shoulders. She held her back that day, and in the days to follow. When she got her put and could trust Margie not to attack whoever might be in her path, she spent her time traveling back and forth across the house, back and forth between her father and mother. Charlie was in his sickbed in the bedroom. “Mental collapse” was how Martha described it to everyone who asked. She told Margie that, too. Margie said to her: “I don’t give a shit.”
Margie slept in Martha’s room with her. Charlie’s family kept coming to visit, one by one. Margie refused to see any of them. Except Cindy.
Cindy and Martha and Margie sat on Margie’s bed like the girls in the dorm at Radcliffe. Cindy said, “Margie, Aunt Palma said if I told, Uncle Denny would beat Charlie to death.” Cindy wanted to be sure Margie knew that those were the exact words. She hadn’t said he’d spank Charlie. She’d said he’d beat him to death. Cindy, at five, knew what a spanking from Denny meant. She’d witnessed them. Poor thing. So it was weak little Cindy who gave Margie the strength to imagine speaking to Charlie, another poor thing. Cindy was the one who got Margie past being too filled with fury to function. Palma had sacrificed her granddaughter to the lie. And Chick, if he suspected, and how could he not, thought he was protecting his nephew from himself. The truth, after all, would eventually disappear. But it hadn’t. Just as it hadn’t for little Bobby Corcoran.
It was Martha who made her mother see that Charlie had wanted one thing from Margie for all the years that they were married—that she read his mind, the mind he couldn’t read himself. But she’d refused. She hadn’t wanted to ruin a good and thrilling book. And now Martha worked and worked to make her mother understand that Charlie never lied to her. That he didn’t know what he’d done. That he really did suppress the memory. Until he was jolted. By Margie’s threatening to leave. That’s what got him to stop after all.
Margie broke. First she said, “Martha, I need your help. You’re giving up on me. You’re resenting me.”
Now Martha could aim her big guns. She’d been waiting for Margie to signal the moment. Her brief was ready and set to go. She spoke the way she was being taught to speak to her future clients; you give them the big speech the moment they first begin to see straight. Before they can start lying to themselves.
“Mom, Daddy is finally able to face what he’d done. He gave up the search that night in the library because somewhere inside him, he knew he’d be able to cope with what really happened. If that wasn’t so, he would have made a joke about what Cindy said at the party. He would have allowed Chick
to change the subject. But he didn’t. I don’t know what you’ve been pounding him with these last few months, but it worked. You did it.”
Before Margie walked down the hall to visit Charlie, she said to Martha, “Who’s going to get poor Cindy back?”
Martha said, “Cindy will get herself back, I’d say. She’s been released, Mom.”
“Released. They were all released.”
“Mom?”
“What honey?”
“Mom, I don’t want you to think I’m not still caring, here, because I am. But I’ve been wanting to tell you something. Can I tell you something about me?”
“Oh, Martha, what’s wrong?”
“No, no, nothing’s wrong. In fact, something’s right, believe it or not.”
“Thank God for that.”
“Remember the guy I told you about? Richard?”
Margie thought, Richard, Richard.
“I miss him. I’m going to get married.”
Martha’s smile was crooked because Martha, who could smile for four people, had gotten out of practice. Margie put her arms out to her. Martha snuggled up to her mother, lay her head on her shoulder. Margie said, “I’m so glad, baby.”
Martha pulled back and her real smile was back. “Guess what else?”
“What, honey?”
“He’s Jewish, Mom. Just like us.”
The first thing Margie said to Charlie after Martha had gone was, “A ten-year-old cannot contain the kind of anger that you had been forced to hold inside. Children aren’t supposed to even know about that kind of anger.” She was standing next to his bed in the darkened room.
He didn’t say anything. She knew he didn’t want pity from her or anyone else. He wanted punishment. He wanted his father to beat him to death. But all the same, he was piteous.
So then Margie said, “Tell me what happened.”
He didn’t say anything.
She sat down on the edge of the bed. She said, “I’ll be you, Charlie, and you be one of the people who comes to see the fireman to tell him what he witnessed at the circus on the day of the fire.” Margie sat up straight. “Okay, now I’m you, and you’re the witness. Here goes.…” She cleared her throat. “What happened on the day you went to the circus?” He said, “Margie.”
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