The Search for Maggie Ward

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Very quiet people.” She shook her classical head and its tightly braided hair in disapproval. “They don’t say anything. Never have fun.”

  I could hardly decline the second plate of pasta, especially since I had not eaten a decent meal after our last dinner in Globe.

  “You’re too thin,” she said. “Girls think maybe you have TB. You end up bachelor.”

  “Irish bachelor.”

  “Worst kind. Drink some more wine, make you feel good.”

  I left feeling very good indeed, deploring my inability to be instantly in Lake Geneva, my head light with Chianti, explaining to my date—who now had become a mythological beauty—the Navy’s system of classifying airplanes.

  “The F4F, dear” (I’d have my arms around her by now) “is, as I’m sure you understand, the fourth fighter plane produced by Grumman. It was called the Wildcat and was lucky to survive in a fight with a Zero. The F5F was a night-fighter version of the Wildcat, the plane that Butch O’Hare died in.”

  (I couldn’t tell her about O’Hare field because that was Orchard/Douglas Airport in those days.)

  “I flew an F6F Hellcat, our basic fighter, for the last two years of the war. We produced more than twelve thousand of them. It won seventy-five percent of our combat victories. It was not nearly as maneuverable as the Zero, but we liked it because it was sturdy and reliable and kept pilots alive. We had so much armor around us that the Japanese bullets literally bounced off our fuselages.”

  (I wouldn’t tell her that nothing ever bounced off my plane because, medals or not, nothing ever hit my Hellcat.)

  “The last aircraft I flew was the F8F Bearcat, a souped-up job that might have ended the war a year earlier if we’d had it in 1944. Great little plane and the last of the piston Grummans. The F9F is a jet, called the Panther. If I had stayed in, I’d be flying that in another year or two.”

  (And I wouldn’t tell her, because I was not a major prophet, that I would be dodging North Korean and Chinese antiaircraft fire in my Panther.)

  Through this long discussion of aircraft she would have listened with rapt adoration.

  And I would not have realized that she couldn’t care less about navy combat aircraft.

  The woman I did marry finally made herself care; she decorated our first apartment with photographs and paintings of navy aircraft. Then—it served me right—when I lost interest, she was hooked on airplane paintings.

  God, as Packy says, is a comedienne.

  But on that unbearably hot day in Philadelphia, forty years ago next month, I was not laughing.

  I might never find Maggie Ward.

  CHAPTER 23

  I ENTERTAINED MYSELF WITH PLEASANT DISTRACTIONS about my imaginary but pliant lover at Lake Geneva, blended with self-pity because she wasn’t in my arms at that very minute. Thus distracted, I walked the six blocks to the former Quinn row house, at the very outer limits of Saint Dominic’s. I realized that if Andrea/Maggie had walked the shortest route to school, she would have passed the corner at the end of the street on which the Koenigs lived, a stoplight corner, where there would be a crossing guard. He could have waited for her there whether she wanted him to wait or not.

  Saint Dominic’s was a shabby neighborhood; the street on which the Quinns lived seemed the most shabby of all the row streets in the parish, near a suburban railroad track and a truck depot, beyond which there was a block of aging factories and then the docks. The street had slipped irreversibly in the direction of a slum.

  I pushed the doorbell button. I did not hear a bell ring. I waited a moment and then knocked on the door vigorously.

  “What’s the hurry?” the young woman who opened the door demanded. “It’s too hot to hurry.”

  She was tall and slender, with jet-black hair, buttermilk skin, a ridge of freckles over her nose, spectacular legs, and a thin, delicate face—a “black Irish” beauty in white shorts and halter, with an accounting textbook in one hand, a radiant movie queen who transformed her slum setting into a background for hope and laughter.

  I stared with an open mouth. So, I think, did she.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, trying to close my mouth. “I’m Jerry Keenan.”

  “I’m Jean Kelly,” she said and returned my smile. “I’m studying for my summer-school exam at Saint Joe’s. Would you like a glass of lemonade?”

  Both of us had spontaneously turned on our Irish charm.

  “I’ve just finished three glasses of Italian wine. I think some Irish lemonade …”

  “Might make you sick?

  “Might sober me up.”

  “I’ll get it out of the icebox—we still have an icebox—the iceman comes every day. My parents and brothers and sisters aren’t home, by the way.”

  “I still feel reasonably safe.”

  She laughed enthusiastically. “You talk funny.”

  “No, you talk funny.” We both laughed together. I felt suddenly light-headed. I assumed that she did, too.

  “You Navy?”

  We had to talk about something besides our light heads and racing bloodstreams.

  “Flyer.”

  “Helldiver?”

  “I’m still alive, am I not?”

  (The SB2C was a dive bomber, same name as the biplane in the movie with Wallace Beery, but even more dangerous because its tail tended to fall off in dives, a notable problem in a dive bomber. And a disgrace that kids were made to fly them. My wife refuses to permit pictures of the second Helldiver in her collection, just as she interdicts the Douglas Devastator—TBD. These planes were swept from the sky by the Japs at Midway; torpedo eight lost all its men but one in these crates. I’m not sure about her logic, but I agree with her sentiments.)

  “Fighter?”

  “Hellcat; squadron leader eventually, if that doesn’t destroy your faith in the Navy.”

  My children, who lived through the Viet Nam disaster, find it hard to imagine that young people talked about where they were and what they did in the war as casually as they talked about where they were attending college. It was not that we were militarists. Some of us had more reason to hate war than the college protesters twenty years later. Unlike them we had seen our comrades die. But military service was part of our story, one of the episodes in our lives by which we identified and defined ourselves. It was an incident in our lives of which we were not necessarily proud but of which neither were we ashamed.

  “I can believe anything about the Navy. But you look all right.”

  I didn’t know quite what that meant, but I followed her to the kitchen. Sure enough, an old-fashioned brown wooden icebox. We’d left that behind in 1930. However, the house was pin neat and spotlessly clean. That didn’t seem very Irish.

  “I am mostly all right. But not totally all right.”

  That produced a cheerful laugh. Anyway, the girl was certainly not afraid of me.

  A more leisurely inspection revealed long, slender legs, a narrow waist, spherical white breasts which her halter was not designed to obscure, and a smile that invited you to enjoy her loveliness.

  What was that other girl’s name again? The one I’m not searching for anymore?

  “What year are you in?”

  “Pre-freshman. I run an elevator in the Ben Franklin Hotel during the day”—she handed me the lemonade and led me back to the threadbare living room—”and go to school at night. I figure if I have a head start on the courses and get some good marks, they’ll continue my scholarship.”

  Maggie would be the same age. For a moment I imagined she was Maggie. I was a half-inch away from taking her in my arms and smothering her with kisses. Instead I asked a dumb question, which I knew was dumb when I asked it.

  “Why college for a girl, especially a pretty girl?”

  “Everyone goes to college now.” She waved a hand flippantly. “Even girls. And we get the best marks because we’re smarter.”

  “And prettier.”

  “And just generally better.”

  W
e laughed joyously, young and happy with all our lives ahead of us. Then I turned serious.

  “I’m searching for Maggie Ward,” I said simply.

  She put her lemonade on a coaster on the arm of her mohair-covered chair.

  “I hope you find her.” The twinkle had vanished from her deep-blue eyes. “Maggie is a wonderful girl. Are you in love with her?”

  “I think so.”

  She nodded briskly, a possible flirtation turning into a serious business. “You have good taste. She’s astonishing, and against terrible odds.”

  “I guess we’re both members of the fan club. Do you know where she is?”

  “I heard from her when Andrea was born, an instant love affair that was. She adored the kid. Then came a note at Christmas saying that the baby had just died. It was the first time I’d ever heard Maggie sound down. Then another note around Saint Patrick’s Day. Wait, let me get it.” She bounded out of the room, leaving a trail of inexpensive but tasteful lilac scent behind her.

  “It’s a strange letter,” she said as she settled back into her chair, grim and somber. “Maggie was always a little strange, kind of … what’s the word I’m looking for …”

  “Uncanny? Ethereal?”

  “Both words, I guess. She knew things, like she was plugged into another world. Anyway, listen.…

  “Dear Jean,

  “I have more bad news, I’m afraid. Andrew has died too. I’ve lost my daughter and my husband in less than three months. His family did not even want the body. He’s buried here in San Diego. I’m so numb that I cannot even weep. I probably never could love him, as you know, but I had become fond of him. He was changing and improving till everything went wrong for us. Again. I guess I was fighting those awful parents of his every day. I thought I was winning, but you can’t win by yourself.

  “Anyway, I miss him.

  “I’m all alone now, free from Uncle Howard and Aunt Isobel, from my cute little daughter, and free from my husband for whom I tried so hard. Remember when I told you that someday I wanted to be free of all the obligations of the past and the present? Well, that day has finally come. And I discover that without obligations there is no reason to live.

  “I am a very unimportant and useless person whom no one would miss. Maybe we’re all that way. Maybe I just found it out at a younger age than most people.

  “We will not see each other again, Jean. Do well in college, don’t give up on Ralph, he has everything you want and need even if, poor dear sweet man, he doesn’t know how much he’s worth.

  “I love you,

  “Maggie.”

  “Ralph?”

  “A boy. TBF gunner.”

  “Sandy hair, underweight, gentle brown eyes?”

  “You got him.” She blushed. “He’s still kind of shook by the war. Lost a couple of pilots on his plane. He’s going to school with me—because I’m there—but he’s beginning to like it. You met him? He thought Maggie was wonderful too.”

  Poor Ralph. Probably figured he didn’t deserve this intelligent bundle of loveliness. Probably he didn’t, but which of us does deserve the woman who salvages us?

  “So he said.”

  “This sounds like a suicide note, doesn’t it?” The light-pink glow on her face suggested that we’d best not talk about Ralph. “Is she dead?”

  “I don’t think so … what did you do when you received this?”

  “I had a return address from the card about Andrea’s birth. I tried to find a phone number from Information in San Diego. They told me the apartment building at the address had been torn down. There was no listing of either Ward or Koenig which could have been her. I didn’t know what to do, so I did what we Irish Catholics always do. I prayed for her. I still pray for her. Every night.”

  “Don’t stop.… Do you think she might have killed him?”

  “Maggie?” she exploded. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  “Sorry. I had to ask.”

  “She had plenty of reason to kill the bastard.” Jean was not mollified. “But you know her. Is she the killer type?”

  “I think she’s the victim type, the kind of woman that evil people enjoy hurting because she’s so good.”

  “I can’t see her killing anyone.” Jean was not ready to drop her defense of her heroine.

  “I agree.” I shrugged. “Unless she was defending someone else.”

  We paused to consider that possibility. Jean then changed the subject.

  “Are you sure she’s alive?” she pleaded, her eyes misting.

  You were important to these people, Maggie Ward/Andrea King. Did you know that? I wondered.

  “A stubborn, hungry kid when she wanted to be.” Jean Kelly folded the paper and placed it on the floor next to her chair. “He raped her, you know. Andrew Koenig, I mean.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “She was still sixteen, didn’t know anything, her aunt never explained sex to her. The nuns sure didn’t. He came from the Navy, great big Joe War Hero, and wanted to screw her. She didn’t know what it meant. So he showed her. She cried in my arms the next day.”

  “So she hardly could be said to have loved him?” My hands were wet, my throat tight. I wanted to kill him, but he was already dead.

  “She was nice to him, because no one else liked him. When he talked about marrying her after the war, she listened politely but never agreed. I told her that he was a slimy little drudge and she said that she felt sorry for him. Maggie picked up strays—cats, dogs, birds, boys. Her aunt and uncle wouldn’t let her keep the pets so she’d make sure one of her friends would give the poor creature a proper home. She should never have married him, but she felt she had to for the baby’s sake. She even tried to love him, which is what Maggie would do. Poor kid. ‘Scuse me. I gotta get a hankie.”

  My fists were clenched. I wanted to break something. Anything.

  Jean Kelly returned, dabbing at her eyes. No makeup for this natural beauty.

  “The nuns hated her, all except crazy old Patrice Marie, because her family had been famous—society pages of the papers and stuff like that when they were young. Her aunt hated her because her mother was pretty and she was ugly, and I mean ugly; a lot of the other kids hated her because the nuns like you if you hate the same people they hate.… You have nuns in school?”

  “And priests in high school. Most of them weren’t that way.”

  She nodded. “There’s some great young nuns in class with me. Maybe the Church will change. Anyway, some of us got to know Maggie in grammar school and, Jerry Keenan, uncanny and eth—”

  “Ethereal.”

  “Right”—she grinned—”ethereal she may be but she was also magic. Kind, funny, smart, always helping others … hey, are you another one of her strays?”

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way”—it was my turn to feel warm in the face—”but maybe I was. Maybe she felt sorry for me too.”

  Who took pity on whom in the railroad station with Bing Crosby singing “Ole Buttermilk Sky”?

  “Poor Maggie was sort of a confessor for at least a dozen boys. I think it must have been those soft blue eyes. They poured their problems out to her and seemed to feel better afterward. Good thing, because all our real confessors could do was denounce ‘immorality,’ and you know what they meant by that.”

  “She certainly listened sympathetically,” I agreed.

  “You don’t look like a stray.” She evaluated me critically. “Not at all.

  At our age, a little bit of flirtation was not out of order, even if we both had, more or less, other commitments.

  “Do strays always look like strays?”

  “Awful Andrew sure did. You see, the problem was his father. Dull and dumb, but stubborn. He pounded into his kid’s thick skull that if a real man wants something badly enough, he takes it. You put a dope like Andrew in a barracks with guys who give him the business every night about being a virgin and you set up a rape.”

  “If he wasn’t dead, I’d want to ki
ll him.”

  “Calm down, Navy.” Her eyes met mine and held them. “Men get killed in wars. Women get raped. It’s not good, but it’s not new.”

  “Please, God, never again.” Had I invoked a God I did not yet believe in?

  “Amen to that.”

  “Maggie was the leader of your bunch?”

  “Sure was. Made us study and read and keep our noses clean with the nuns. And they never guessed what she was up to. She would have been class president if that old bitch Mary Regina had not gone to school with one of her great-aunts and envied her.”

  “So that’s where it comes from?”

  “The old bitch makes all the other nuns think like she does. You see, the great-aunt was class president when Mary Regina wanted to be. So she got even with Maggie. From day one.”

  “Poor little girl, indeed.”

  “She was a tough one, Jerry Keenan. She took it all, never was mean or nasty back, and never gave in either. Till she got pregnant. To make it worse, she was really sick—all day, every day.”

  “Gallant?”

  “Yeah.” She winked. “Ethereal and gallant. And I hope not dead.”

  “I do too.…”

  “Is she beautiful?” Jean Kelly picked up her lemonade glass and then put it down again. “She was pretty and I kind of thought that she might become a real beauty.”

  “Like yourself?” God forgive me, I couldn’t resist it. Besides, it was true.

  “Thanks.” She smiled ruefully. “But not like me, like someone you’d see in the movies. Maureen O’Hara, you know?”

  “Jeanne Crain?”

  She considered reflectively. “That’s better, a little bit more elfin face and maybe a more intelligent forehead than Jeanne. But just as lovely. Or will be soon, didn’t you think so?”

  I hesitated. “On her way to it maybe, but as my father once told me, some women either become great beauties or wither by the time they’re twenty. Maggie could go either way. Depending.”

  “On what?”

  “On what happens to her.”