The Search for Maggie Ward

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I certainly enjoyed it, but it was not a repeat venture into oblivion. She displayed all the movements and made all the noises of satisfaction too, and I’m sure she was not faking it, but it was not ecstasy for her either.

  We had reached our turning point. The great dream had ended in less than twenty-four hours.

  CHAPTER 13

  “THE TOWN WAS CALLED GLOBE BECAUSE THE FOUNDERS discovered a perfectly round ball of silver nine inches in diameter, ninety-nine percent pure silver, valued at twelve thousand dollars. In those days that was a lot of money.”

  “Hmn …”

  “Well, I should receive some credit for catching up on the guidebook, despite my other activities.”

  No response. Yes, the bloom was off. How short its time.

  “The silver ore quickly ran out, so copper became the principal industry.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “About the copper?”

  “No.” She was impatient. “About the silver globe.”

  “Does it have to be true? It’s folklore, not history. Can’t we enjoy it as a good story without it having to be true?”

  “Maybe you should be a folklorist instead of a lawyer.”

  “Can’t I be both?”

  “If you have enough money. And I guess you do.”

  End of conversation.

  The big sky above Queen Creek Canyon had turned from somber gray to angry black, the kind of dark sky you never saw in the Western movies in those days and only occasionally even now, as, for example, when the mayor of Carmel drifts in from the high plains.

  Chief Arnold assured me, when he delivered Roxinante back to us, that they were “… land sakes, only high clouds, not much moisture in them,” and that they did not mean a three-day deluge, as a similar dark sky would promise in the Middle West. Nor did they mean much abatement in the steamy desert heat.

  However, the somber gloom of the high clouds fit the change in my companion’s mood. And her moods were clearly defined as one of those subjects about which we did not talk and concerning which I did not ask questions.

  Tristis post coitus? Well, I thought, maybe. But I don’t feel sad at all. In fact, I’m proud of myself and delighted in her. And it’s just the beginning. However, if she wants to be sad, that’s her business. I’ll be reassuring and patient.

  “How do you go about doing that?” the intelligence officer, back in my brain again, demanded. “You know nothing about the moods of the opposite sex or about how to respond to them. You think that because you screwed her a few times and she seemed to like it, that you’ve become an expert on women?”

  A fair point.

  Our farewells at the Picketpost were comprehensive and cheerful. The staff obviously felt they had been present at and contributed to the turning point in a honeymoon—which they had. They also adored the sparkling “bride,” who had been properly bedded, as they thought, again not without reason, in their hotel. She, in her turn, proved to me, as if I needed any proof, that she could be gracious and charming even when her soul was rushing pell-mell for the nearest melancholy cloud.

  I turned in my second crisp hundred-dollar bill. There were eight left, and enough change to cover us that night at the Dominion in Globe, for which a phone call had already arranged a reservation.

  After promising our frequent return, we climbed back in the refurbished Roxinante for the short ride up Queen Creek Canyon to Globe—I wanted an early-morning start for the Superstitions and Phoenix.

  Her disposition promptly turned doleful. “I’m just a little tired, Jerry,” she pleaded. “Nothing to worry about, please.”

  Which meant, “please leave me alone.”

  A request I had sense enough to honor.

  The gold-and-bronze peaks of the Upper Canyon stirred her temporarily out of her depression.

  “This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been,” she exclaimed.

  “Please sit still. I’m not used to driving on mountains. And stop laughing at me.”

  “How do you know I’m laughing when you don’t even take your eyes off the road to look at me?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Yes, Commander. But I won’t stop laughing at the way CAG One drives in the mountains.”

  “I’m glad I amuse you.”

  The laughter stopped when we reached Miami and the vast stripped copper hills, raw and unnatural without their ground cover, above the highway.

  “I don’t like those dirty brown ponds. What are they for?”

  “They hold waste products.”

  “And I don’t like the smokestacks. They’re ugly. And they smell.”

  “We’ll try to find ways to refine copper without smokestacks and waste, ma’am.”

  “Do that.”

  Between Miami and Globe, above Pinal Creek Canyon where Arizona 88 turns off for the ride down to Theodore Roosevelt Lake, you can look back at the far eastern end of the Superstition Range (distinct from but a continuation of Superstition Mountain itself) and see Sleeping Beauty Mountain, a lovely young woman sound asleep on the top of the mountain peaks.

  “Why are we stopping?” my lovely young woman demanded irritably. “Is this your ball-of-silver town?”

  “We’re looking for Sleeping Beauty Mountain. The guidebook says that there is a mountain which, from this point, looks like a sleeping young woman.”

  I couldn’t find her.

  “There she is,” said my companion, who wasn’t looking for the mountain, mind you. “My, she is lovely.”

  I followed her finger. Sure enough, she was a sleeping beauty.

  “Reminds me of you when you are asleep.”

  “She has prettier breasts.”

  “That is decidedly not true, and I have some expert knowledge on the subject.”

  “Do you?”

  We drove on in the fading light to the center of Globe, a more prosperous town than Miami or Superior, but in the dusk and under the dark clouds in the gloom of Andrea’s mood it seemed a foreboding place, an outpost constructed perhaps on the foothills of purgatory. Its main street was County Seat USA—courthouse, bank, department store, train station, churches, with touches of the frontier still to be seen—a couple of horses and buggies, men in cowboy boots and hats—and the copper mountains all around us.

  I checked us in at the Dominion, a fading relic of post-World-War-I elegance. Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Keenan. I felt a thrill of hope as I signed the register. She was my fair bride, was she not? My first woman, and if all went according to plan, my last? Who could want—or cope with—more than her?

  I will admit that my conscience had returned to his locale in my brain, adjoining that of my intelligence officer. I felt no guilt, not yet, anyway, about our lovemaking. But I wondered whether I had not succumbed to the temptation that I had bitterly denounced (mostly in my head) when I’d seen it in others: to exploit war and its attendant dislocations, dangers, excitements, and opportunities to seduce women into risks that they otherwise would not and should not take.

  A lot of women were badly used during the war. The excuse “I’m going away and I don’t know whether I’ll ever be back”—true in only a limited number of cases—had remarkable power to overcome a woman’s resistance. Not that all of them wanted to resist anyway. War is a powerful aphrodisiac. Andrea King was not the only victim.

  And was she now a victim again? Lonely, broke, frightened, had I not used her to cure my virginity?

  As we were conducted up a dubious cage elevator to our room, I worried more about this possibility. Certainly I had promised, more or less and maybe more less than more, to take care of her, to bring her back to River Forest and Butterfield Country Club, and to cherish her for the rest of my life. Did I really mean to honor that promise? If I did, why did I not try to make plane reservations from Phoenix to Chicago for tomorrow? Why did I buy her a pendant instead of a ring? Why was I hesitating?

  Would I drop her at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Arizona Biltmore tomorrow night and l
et her gradually slip out of my life, in the way a lot of my friends and comrades had done to other women during the war? If I did, was I any different from them?

  And, perhaps most important of all, what was the mystery about her? All the areas of questioning that were off limits? If there were answers for them, would I have bought an Apache good-luck ring and forced it on the third finger of her left hand?

  Maybe.

  Our room was not air-conditioned—such amenities did not exist in Globe in 1946—and it was hardly the bridal suite. It was musty and faded, an opulent room of a quarter century before, which had never been refurnished or redecorated. For ventilation we had an open window, for bathing a rusty tub, and our marital bed, if that’s what it was, was a narrow double bed with a dangerously sagging center.

  Andrea did not complain, indeed hardly seemed to notice.

  “Early supper and long sleep?” I asked as she briskly unpacked her huge and dilapidated suitcase.

  “Definitely.”

  She dressed for supper as I watched, entertained and fascinated.

  “Do you always stare at women dressing?”

  “Never had the opportunity before.”

  “But you find it entertaining?”

  “Immensely.”

  “I’m glad I amuse you.” She pulled the strap of the sundress over her shoulder.

  “Mind you, someone with less natural beauty and grace might not be nearly so diverting.”

  She permitted herself a bare hint of her smile, still enough to illumine the dank, dark room. “You’re irresistibly cute, Jerry. I really am glad you like to watch me.”

  She fussed for a few moments with her hair and then we went off to supper, arm in arm. Still pretending to be the happy honeymoon couple.

  The dining room at the Dominion was similar to that at the Pioneer in Tucson—patterned carpets, mirrors, snowy white tablecloths. But the carpet was worn, the mirrors were tarnished, and the tablecloths, clean and white indeed, were frayed at the edges. Like the rest of the hotel, the dining room was trying to keep up appearances and hoping that there would eventually be enough money for a “postwar” remodeling. However, the food (roast beef and cottage fries tonight) was excellent and the service quick and polite. Everyone doted on my edgy and silent bride—who returned their smiles with smiles of her own, smiles that were never aimed at me.

  She declined wine and played with her meat and potatoes, till I said something about starving children in China. I must have rung a bell of some sort, because, like Pavlov’s dog, she gobbled down the rest of her meal, leaving the plate spanking clean.

  I did not appreciate the thought that I had quoted her aunt.

  We talked about families, mostly mine. And mostly because I could think of nothing else to talk about. And mostly about my family because she was not inclined to share much information about hers.

  “Jeremiah Keenan, my grandfather, was drafted for the Civil War almost as soon as he got off the boat. Well, he wasn’t drafted. He was purchased as a substitution for some rich man who had been drafted. That was the way it was done in those days. You could buy your way out of the military and pay a replacement to die for you. He used the money to bring Maggie, his bride-to-be, over from Ireland. Neither of them could read or write. They were married before the First Illinois left for Vicksburg, where it was wiped out a couple of times over. He didn’t die, much to the surprise, I suppose, of the man whose place he took. He was mustered out in Washington as a captain, walked home from there to Chicago, found the major who had commanded his battalion and had been elected alderman. Somewhere he learned to read and write and pass the bar exam; maybe—no, probably—by bribing someone. Both he and my grandmother were Irish-speaking, though you’d never persuade them to talk it. The kids had to speak English.

  “He made himself a fortune and lost it a couple of times over, not in ways that were always honest. They produced eight kids, of whom four lived. My father was the youngest, born in 1892, when both of them were in their forties. He was the smartest of the lot and was destined for St. Ignatius College (which eventually became Loyola University) and law school from the very beginning. When the First World War began, he enlisted in the First Illinois, 131st Infantry, as it had become, and saw a little bit of combat in France.…”

  “And you had to break the family tradition and become a sailor and a flyer … showing your independence, I suppose.”

  “That’s what Dad said too. He was the only respectable one of the family, I think. Old Granddad Keenan was a hard drinker and I guess my grandmother was too. Piety and respectability never quite got to the Irish-speaking sections of the Old Country till about 1880. Mom’s family—the Slatterys—had less money but more respectability. Her father was a head clerk for the Pullman Company and she’s proud that she graduated from Saint Mary’s High School. Most of her generation only went to high school for two years.”

  “What are their names?”

  “Is this a catechism class?”

  She frowned, not amused. “It’s a civil question. Can’t you give a civil answer?”

  “Sorry. He is Thomas Patrick Keenan, and she is Mary Anne Catherine Slattery. Do you want to know their height and weight and other crucial measurements?”

  “Your father’s fifty-four.” She was still not amused. “How old is your mother?”

  “Forty-six, a lot younger. Dad chose to organize his life pretty well before he married. He was thirty, she was only twenty-two.”

  “A kid.” Was that a smile?

  “She was a knockout as a girl. Still is quite attractive.…”

  “You look like her?” She raised a suspicious eyebrow.

  “People say that I do.”

  “Then I believe she is very attractive.”

  “I think I’ve been complimented.”

  “You have. Don’t let it go to your head.”

  “You did smile.”

  “No, I did NOT.” And now she smiled again. “What do they think of you—your parents, I mean?”

  “They worry. Everyone before me has had to struggle, you see. Dad less than his father, but still, there wasn’t much family wealth left when he graduated from law school, only a big home in Austin—that’s a Chicago neighborhood which used to be a separate town—and a family reputation for generosity. I grew up, like you did, in the Depression, but unlike most others my age, it never touched me. Both Dad and Mom wonder if I can make it in the tough world of work and competition. Servants, trips to Europe, summer home, everything I’ve always wanted.”

  “They’ve tried to give you everything they never had and are worried that it might spoil you?” She shoved aside her plate and was studying me intently, as though I were a complex algebra problem to be solved.

  “Kind of contradictory, huh?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to be considered that gravely.

  “Can you be a success in the big world?”

  “I suppose so. I did all right in the Navy. They wanted me to stay in and learn to fly the new jets. I almost went along. There won’t be any more wars for a long time. I wouldn’t have to worry about a job. On the other hand, I didn’t go to Annapolis or even graduate from college. I’d never make admiral.”

  “And you wanted to?”

  “Sure. They said they’d get me an Annapolis appointment. Can you imagine that? Demoted from a lieutenant commander to a midshipman.”

  “So you told them to forget it. And now you have to prove to yourself and your parents that you can succeed in law just like your father.” She shook her head in response to the waiter’s query about dessert.

  “That’s what they think.”

  “And what do you think when you’re not worried about all those who died in the war?”

  “You really want to know?” I touched her fingers. She did not pull them back, as I half expected she would.

  “Yes.” She was probing at my soul again with those damn all-seeing sapphire eyes. It was even more naked than my body had been earlier in the day.


  “I think my parents need not worry. I can succeed as a political lawyer as easily as I did in the Navy. With a lot of energy and ambition left over. But that won’t be enough to keep me happy.”

  “So instead of or in addition to that, you have to find something else?”

  “Or someone else.”

  “And you’re not sure that you can find either.”

  “I’m more certain now than I was two days ago.”

  She turned her head away at that observation, not liking its implications, though I had intended to flatter her.

  The waiter interrupted to take our coffee orders. I wanted black coffee, she settled for iced tea. And no, she did not care for an after-dinner drink.

  “Your family?”

  She shrugged indifferently. “The opposite of yours, I’m afraid. While the Keenans were on the way up, the … we were on the way down. I don’t know much about us. We were once very wealthy. One of my father’s grandfathers organized the Catholics who protected the churches and the convents when the Know-Nothings tried to burn them down.…

  “More than a hundred years ago. So they came before most of the other Irish.” She paused, pondering her family’s story. “There was a lot of drinking through the years. And gambling. And lost opportunities. TB on my mother’s side. Wasted money and opportunities. Early death. Both my mother and father were supposed to have great promise; shallow and empty, my aunt always said, handsome but without substance. My mother even went to finishing school before she got sick. The first time. I’m all that’s left on either side. A story of failure to match your story of success.”

  She said the last words in a cool, matter-of-fact voice, neither bitter nor sad. She shrugged again and turned to her iced tea.

  “No process which produced you, Andrea King, can be called a failure.”

  “That’s sweet, Commander.” She contemplated my face as though still searching for something. “It isn’t really true, but it’s nice of you to say it.”

  “It is true.” I took her hand in mine.

  She pulled it away. “It is not. I am a worthless little nothing. I have done nothing with my life except cause two persons I loved to die. And I don’t have enough time left to do anything. It’s too late. You want to romanticize me into someone special and great and wonderful. All I really am is your first woman. When you leave me tomorrow night, you will never want to see me again.”