He had plans for his rediscovered daughter in which I did not fit. It would be, I thought with some relief, entirely her decision. There was nothing I could do, one way or another, to affect her choice.
So soon out of a woman’s bed was I ready, not without smugness, to be quit of her.
“I’m rebuilding the old family house at Cape May,” he said as he filled my glass again. “Maggie will spend her summer vacations from Bryn Mawr down there. You’ll certainly be welcome to visit us on one of the long weekends next summer, Gerald.”
“Jeremiah. Prophet.”
“Major prophet,” Maggie added as she watched her father’s every move, dagger eyes probing relentlessly. Her reaction to him was unreadable.
“Usually known as Jerry.”
“Sometimes only Commander.”
“It’s been too many years, Maggie.” He put his hand on hers. “But give me time and I promise you I’ll make up for it.”
“That isn’t necessary, Daddy,” she said, face expressionless, “we must be friends in the future and forget about the past.”
“We can do so much more for her back home, Gerald.” He turned to me, not having heard anything that Maggie or I had said. “Schools, social contacts, debutante balls, friends, a renewed family heritage of which she can be proud. Maggie will become one of the great women of the city, as was her mother”—his voice choked—”before her.”
“I imagine we could find a place for her in Chicago, too.”
“Her heritage is not really middle class at all”—he leaned forward and spoke in his favorite tone, an intense whisper—”I don’t want to sound like a snob, and God knows six years riding the rods cured me of any of that, but Maggie’s family is one of the oldest Irish families in the country. That’s a priceless heritage.”
“And we were painting ourselves blue and living in trees.”
Maggie’s lips parted in a small smile.
“I’ve been lucky. I should never have survived the thirties, much less the war. Only three men from my company survived from beginning to end. And it was only luck that I didn’t gamble away the suburban land which has restored our family fortunes. My new wife is a wonderful woman. And now I’ve finally found my daughter. God has given me a second chance. I intend to make the most of it.”
He used the word “luck” but he meant “merit.” By sheer willpower and hard work he had overcome the dirty tricks fate had played on him. Yet he was surely sincere. And, with the help of one of the early AA groups he’d beaten the “creature”; his wartime record was impressive; and his profitable land sales during 1945 and 1946 indicated that he was at least a quick businessman, if not a profound one.
Like many others who were fortunate enough to ride the wave of prosperity in the postwar years, he would take credit for having caused the wave.
“I have very good news for you, Maggie.” He beamed proudly. “You’re about to become a sister. Your stepmother, a young woman as pretty as you but in a different way, will present me with a child in the very near future. I’m sure you’ll love both mother and son.”
“Son?” Maggie flicked an eyebrow.
“Well, I’m hoping for a son to balance the family. But another daughter would be just as sweet a gift.”
Out of one eye Maggie had been watching the Pump Room waiters. She seemed to approve of their professional skills. “I’d like to have a little brother or sister,” she murmured.
Allen had told us about his life since he had vanished in an alcoholic haze from Philadelphia. He had not asked about Maggie’s life. Did he know he had been a grandfather for a couple of months? Probably not, and he probably didn’t care.
He was a pleasant, shallow, self-centered man who had discovered a reincarnation of his adored wife. He would expiate his guilt to the wife by showering the daughter with all that his family had lost—and in the process hardly notice the daughter as a distinct person.
He had earned the right to undo the past, had he not? Who could deny him the pleasures of rebuilding the Ward family world?
Had Maggie forgiven him for abandoning her?
Instantly in her head anyway. “I know what it is like to go mad from loss,” she had whispered in my ear in the plush lobby of the Ambassador East. “He tried. He wasn’t strong enough. He seems much stronger now.”
Whether Allen Ward would survive more tragedy seemed to me to be problematic. However, he might not have to. His run of good luck might continue.
What did Maggie think in her heart? The adjective “major” before “prophet” was a hint. If she made a decision in her heart, I would win. If she went with her head, he would win.
And probably her head would mislead her. But who could say for sure? It was no longer a choice between life and death but between two kinds of life, either one of which might be a mistake.
No longer a war in heaven, but merely an earthly choice.
Or perhaps it was a more subtle phase of the war and hence more dangerous.
“I’ll never forgive myself for deserting Maggie.” He addressed himself to me, but he was talking to her. “But I think I can make it up to her. We’ll both refute the doomsayers who thought the Wards had lost their guts, won’t we, Maggie?”
She dipped a bit of fillet into béarnaise sauce. “I think you’ve done that already, Daddy. But it would be nice to have the world in all those old pictures come to life again.”
“For your mother’s sake.”
“Yes, for Mom’s sake.”
“You look so much like her, almost a twin sister.”
I read in a book the other day that children of alcoholics have to “guess at what is real.” It seemed to me to explain much of Maggie’s problem. At eighteen, almost nineteen, the daughter of an alcoholic, she was still trying to determine what was real.
I showed the passage to my wife. “Surely that was the poor thing’s problem,” she agreed. “Too bad she didn’t understand it then. Your relationship with her might have been quite different.”
“Do you have a family, Gerald?” Allen turned to me.
“Oddly enough, I do. A father, a mother, a brother, and a sister.”
Maggie’s daggers, angry now at my irony, shifted to me.
“And your father works for the city?”
“He’s a lawyer. My mother is a musician. My brother is studying for the priesthood. My sister is still in college. I’m a bum.”
“I’m sure you’re not.” He laughed easily, working hard at impressing Maggie’s young man with his friendliness. “And you were in the service? Or were you too young?”
“I flew an F6F.” He had been told that at least twice before.
“Jeremiah was a commander and received the Navy Cross twice.” Maggie was still watching my reactions instead of her father’s.
“Navy Cross?” He frowned. “Is that like the Bronze Star?”
“DSC,” Maggie said evenly.
“Really? Well, that’s impressive. But don’t you think it would be better for Maggie to come home and attend Bryn Mawr or even Immaculata? They have so much more to offer than the, uh, YMCA College.”
So much for my decorations.
“I think Maggie ought to do what Maggie wants to do.” Damn it, girl, smile at me when I say the right thing. “And make up her own mind where home is. We do have some decent higher educational institutions around here. There’s my alma mater down on the Saint Joe River, which won the National Championship this year, and Saint Mary’s across the road.…”
Maggie’s lips had parted slightly. I did amuse her, but mildly.
“Maggie can attend whatever college she wishes,” he said as he hugged her. “It’s been such a long time, however, I’d like to have her close to home. But money is not a problem anymore, thank God.”
“It’s nice to be able to choose,” she said guardedly.
Her father was, after all, pathetic. If I were in his position, I would want the same thing. Please, God, I would not be so unselfconscious in my ma
nipulations.
“Gerald.” He turned to me, man to man. “Will you tell her that she should quit that terrible job? She no longer has to lower herself. She need not ever work again. And she certainly doesn’t have to wait on tables.”
“Well, Allen”—I pretended to think about it but I had been saving up this line through the whole lunch—”I’ve only known Mag since last July, but I’ve known her as an adult a little longer than you have. I wouldn’t dream of telling her what to do. The Irish genes run true in your daughter. No one tells her to do anything.”
“Not twice.” Maggie seemed to be choking back a laugh.
Point, no, several points, for the Navy.
Should I have been trying to do more than score points?
Impress Allen Ward? He was impressed only by the fervor of his own dream.
Make him look bad to his daughter? Sure, and duck when the tornado hit me.
Argue my case against his, my dream against his dream? To what purpose? Maggie would make up her own mind.
Too easy on myself? Obviously. I could beat up a psychopathic rival with a gun in his hand. But how do you go about routing a slightly pathetic father passionately pleading for a second chance?
Looking back, the only way to have done that would have been to occupy the same bed with Maggie every night of the week. As lover first and then as husband almost at once.
A husband can beat a father, even a sadly hopeful father. For a chaste, and indeed dispassionate lover, it is more difficult.
Anyway, as I told Maggie that night, I couldn’t make her decision. And I wouldn’t.
We were parked in front of her building on Sheffield. Snow was flurrying around Roxy’s reconstructed windshield.
“You think he’s a weak man,” she said and jabbed an accusing finger at me.
“If you’re reading my thoughts again, you’re not reading them accurately.”
“You think he’s a snob.”
“I think he is a man with a desperate dream to undo the mistakes of his past and recreate a lost, lovely world.”
“Would you do the same?”
“I wouldn’t use a daughter in service of my dream.”
“What would you do?” she demanded hotly.
I put my arm around her, tentatively. She did not fight me off, but neither did she relax into my embrace.
“When I have a daughter that age, I hope I listen very carefully and sensitively to what she says she wants. I hope I don’t make the mistake of imposing my dreams on her dreams.”
“That’s a very clever answer.”
“I’m a very clever fellow.” I drew her closer.
“You were laughing up your sleeve at him.”
“So were you, Maggie Ward, only you hid it better. Major prophet, indeed.”
She giggled. “Younger people always laugh at older people.”
“I won’t tell my daughter what to do and I certainly won’t tell her mother what to do.”
“Meaning me?”
“Meaning you.”
“That’s a proposal?”
I stirred uneasily. “No, it’s an assumption.”
“It lacks validity until the proper formality has taken place.”
“I quite agree.”
“Will it take place?”
We were grinning like a pair of idiots.
“Yes. I imagine it will.”
“Oh. When will it take place?”
“In about fifteen seconds if you’ll give me a chance.”
“Take thirty.”
“I propose”—I thought I might do rather well at this even though I hadn’t planned it—”to take off a year from law school now that I’ve passed the first-semester tests, find myself a wife—lovely, passionate, pliant—and wander around the world with her for a year, making love and seeing sights, in that order.…”
“Really?”
“Really. Then I propose to come back home, return to law school, send my wife, presumably pregnant by then, back to whatever school she wants to attend, keep her in it till she graduates, and maybe figure out together with her some purpose in life.”
“Ah. Interesting. You will have to find a woman to whom this is appealing.”
“I’ve found her. So I’m asking her to marry me.”
I took her in my arms and kissed her soundly.
“I’m not surprised,” she murmured contentedly.
“You thought I had it on my mind?”
Neither of us said anything. Maggie drew away from me.
Two damn fools, we both lost our nerve at the same time.
“He needs me, Jerry; poor sad little man.”
“He has a new wife, pretty in her pictures, not much older than you are.”
“If he can’t leave behind his guilt, he may destroy that marriage too.”
“It’s your responsibility to exorcise that guilt?”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t need you the way he does, Mag.” I began to marshal the facts for my closing argument. “My survival is not in doubt now. Maybe it was in Arizona.…”
“Not even then,” she said fervently.
“We’ll stipulate that. I merely want you. I can live without you if I have to, but it will be a dull, gray life by comparison. I won’t plead need. Only passionate desire and powerful love.”
“I don’t doubt either.” She patted my hand. “I guess I have to make a decision, don’t I?”
“You can love us both, darling,” I said. “Each in our proper way.”
“You could come to Philadelphia, couldn’t you? Become part of our world?” She grew angry at me as she thought about it. “Why is it only one way? Why do I have to become part of your world?”
“Do you really think I would fit into your father’s plans?”
“Why not?” Her jaw jabbed upward.
“Think about it.”
She did.
“You’d always be Gerald. ‘My daughter’s husband. Nice man. Plays a good game of golf. Not much substance. From Chicago, you know. But she’s fond of him. I had hoped for someone from a better family.…’ ”
“You’d hit me if I said that.”
“I know.” She laughed sadly. “I don’t have any illusions, Jerry.”
“Is there anything more I can say?”
“No. I guess not. I’ll need some time … not like the last time I needed time, which meant till the day after the Last Judgment. A few days?”
“Take as long as you want.”
“In that, ah, contract you offered me …”
“Yes?”
“You implied a, uh, formalization of our liaison.…” I kissed her again.
“Damn literary woman.”
“In the near future.”
“As soon as the banns can be announced. Sooner, if you want.” I touched her breast protected by coat and sweater. “Is that a problem?”
“The sooner the better.” She moaned softly. “If we do it.”
“I’ll do my best to make you happy, Maggie.”
“I know that. I don’t doubt my happiness.”
“Don’t doubt mine.”
“I’ll try not to.”
I thought I was an odds-on favorite.
I should have either taken her home to River Forest or spent the night in her apartment. Either way I would have had a yes by the next morning.
I thought about it briefly as she huddled in my arms. She would not resist either strategy. But I figured that I ought to be noble. I should permit her to make her choice free of the pressure of intense emotions.
I should not win the battle with her father by proving that I was a more effective lover than he was.
It was a stupid decision.
CHAPTER 46
I TALKED TO HER EVERY DAY. WE FINALLY SAW OPEN CITY together, necked and ate popcorn during the film. She absorbed popcorn and passion in equal amounts. I received my grades, ninth in the class. Maggie earned As in both her courses, much less a surprise, I told her. I did n
ot press her for a decision. I assumed that I had won. I assured her that we could come back to America at various times during our wanderjahre as she called it. A month at Lake Geneva.
I even surreptitiously reserved a date at Saint Luke’s on the Saturday before the beginning of Lent.
I also, being a prudent man, registered for the second semester.
I came home from Loyola on registration day, nervous and frustrated from my encounter with the bureaucracy, still aching from my bumps and bruises, hopelessly in love, and in a black mood because I did not quite fully possess my beloved yet.
Joanne was home on her mid-year vacation. I greeted her churlishly and stomped upstairs.
A quarter-hour later she knocked on my door. “Are you decent?”
I was lying on my bed, disgracefully decent. “What’s up?”
“Maggie called a couple of hours ago. She’s taking the Broadway Limited to Philadelphia. Her stepmother had a little boy. The baptism is Sunday. She wanted to say good-bye. I didn’t know she had a stepmother. Is she going to stay in Philadelphia?”
“Probably.”
“Are you going to live there?”
“In Philly? Certainly not.”
Trust Joanne to delay an important message, I thought, remaining immobile on my bed.
Well, the decision had been reached. I’d lost. Too bad. I felt relieved. Nice girl, but too much, really, when you stopped to think about her rationally.
I wonder what Kate is doing tomorrow night.
I seemed to hear some strange noise. Not exactly flapping wings, but …
Rumors of angels?
“Get off your fucking ass and go get her.”
“For an angel you have a very dirty mouth.”
“You forget that you imagine me as a fleet admiral. So I use salty language … I said go get her.”
“I don’t want her anymore.”
“I told you that we’d put a lot of work into her.”
“So what?”
“We made her a good lay to attract you, moron. She’s special, very special.”
“You could call me asshole. It’s a word senior officers love.”
The Search for Maggie Ward Page 45