She looked at herself, reflected in the empty glass, untouched tea in one hand, apple in the other. She didn’t want a cigarette and she didn’t want a five-dollar cookie. So, something must be getting better. And then, this idea came into her heart, like a drill through the ear, or an endoscopic camera sent down to photograph her gut, or a punch in the jaw, or a terrible pain, or a failure, like a storm, or a false accusation, or a mistake that never should have happened, or the bullet through . . . an idea, that’s all. The kind of thought that can only occur when a person is no longer stoned entered into her vocabulary of herself. Maggie realized that she didn’t want to go to law school because everyone in that world of rules and domination and justifying systems and order would see who she really was. Right away. She would be familiar. Her disaster would be like their mother’s breakdown or their neighbors teetering around the country club. She wanted privacy for her disaster, so she put herself in a world where no one could read her blatant code. That was the real reason that she’d wanted to join the police force. To hide. And Mike Fitzgerald was the only voice out there telling her to “give it a try.”
She liked the culture of the cops, that was the truth. There was a weird vulnerability that came from being afraid of everyone, having contempt for them, and trying to help them while also controlling them and wanting their love. It worked for her. She hid her shame in the bullying lack of pretension, and she wouldn’t have to compete. She came onto the force with her advanced degrees, and loved being one of the guys and how forgiving they were . . . to each other. Okay, it could not have gone worse in the end, but for a while it was a fair ride. It did destroy her life, but she still had one. Now Mike was giving her a second, second chance, this time at surviving. He wasn’t blaming her and he wasn’t blaming himself. That was his miracle. And this time, survival had to take.
CHAPTER TWO
9:00 AM
Maggie made it to the lobby of Mike’s office building with this new information buoying some kind of . . . could it be actual optimism? Too bad her entire awareness of herself had to be retrospective. It would have been easier to learn as you go, not after it’s all over. But, here she was. The Program tells us to be in the present, but Maggie’s past was still at the wheel. She was supposed to create a new “now” to replace the old one, and starting this job was a step in . . . well, a start.
Advice comes from surprising corners, and Nick had told her to do Pilates. She didn’t know what Pilates was, exactly, but the word aerobics came out of some ancient memory, helping her eschew the crowded elevators, opting to jog . . . or something up the stairs. It was all part of the new start! Okay, let’s go.
Maggie had always been what the world considered a good-looker, a WASP queen who’d gotten too many bonus points for being blond and leggy. She had a great body and didn’t need to live in a gym. But lots of pretty, blond girls are miserable. No one feels sorry for them, and why should they? Only 2 percent of the world is actually blond. The rest are reaching for a mask or a crown. When Maggie’s mother killed herself, the housekeeper made her put on her prettiest dress for the funeral, and everyone told her how beautiful she looked. What a stupid thing to say to a little girl whose mother had left her behind: “You’re so pretty.” All that really meant was “Let’s not talk about anything because you have the right color hair.” So, nobody cared when her father let her have a highball. And that’s why she got away with so much at work because the New York City Police Department is filled with brunettes. Even the most racist of the old-school, grandfathered-in, third-generation officers are darker than they want to admit. And as sick to death as people are of that white monster, blond has the power of the Abominable Snowman. The whiteness staggers from a distance and tramples cities with its roar.
Now exhausted, only at the second floor, slumped in her phony gesture toward exercise and a better life, Maggie was confused. She supposedly could pull it together and pull it off, so why wasn’t she? There were tricks to hide behind: hair, face, lips. These were effective masks, but she wanted to be real. Right? To be . . . what did they call it? Herself.
Then, in the ultimate failure of this new tiny moment of opportunity, she sloshed tea onto her clean shirt. Stunned in the stairwell, looking down at the stain spreading across her breasts, she quickly abandoned all of the hopes and expectations Rachel’s preparations had offered: that, for once, Maggie might both act and look appropriate. She gave up at the third landing and stopped to wait for the elevator panting and stained. She had made a spectacle of herself already. And nothing had even happened.
The elevator arrived, and there, confronting Maggie’s entry into the fluorescent box, was a small child, the same cruel glory of other people that stood around every bend and its apex of assault. She tried to look away, staring instead at her own reflection in the metallic door. Sick of her endless problems, she finally let her eyes land, ravenously, on the seven-year-old girl holding her mother’s hand. She knew the pleasure in that—when Alina was so small, and that tiny, wrinkle-free, fat little paw reached for her own, naturally, wanting to touch her. Expecting Maggie’s love just by being there. It was magic, those moments. The assumptions.
This breech is what set Maggie apart from humanity and put her in the animal category, the state’s disavowal of her acquired feelings of motherhood. No, wrong. Animals are not kept from their children. Perhaps maggots don’t watch their offspring grow up, or bedbugs. But cockroaches are dutiful mothers; they nurture their young by self-destructing, not like Maggie, who’d never nurtured. She’d seen cockroach mothers’ bodies dissolve into crackly shells as the tiny new black ones scattered, so small, their heads not yet protruding. Sure, she’d started out awful, but pretty quickly she liked, loved, and then adored Alina. She wanted her. She wanted her friendship; Frances knew that. And yes, Maggie was getting high in the bathroom before work. Everyone understands that now. But disease doesn’t cancel out bonds. Her heart was breaking, right there in the elevator. Longing. The absence of Alina was her scarlet letter, and it was scrawled in the desire she felt whenever custodial parents paraded in the streets, flaunting their indifference and their privileged right to not celebrate daily for their good fortune. Anyway, luck had a lot to do with it. They don’t say that in Program but everyone knows it’s a fact. One person dies and the other lives to recover. The lucky ones live.
“She’s beautiful,” Maggie finally cooed strategically to the elevator mother, though she wanted to sweep the small one in her arms and bury her nose in the child’s sweaty little neck and tell her the truth, that she was beautiful. But it is not permitted to open one’s heart to someone else’s child. “I have a little girl, too.”
And then, having paid the penance, it was finally reasonable to face the pretty one directly, look into those unknowing eyes.
“Just your age.”
Maggie had been sober for eighteen months. That should mean something to Frances. It should.
The elevator surprised her by stopping at six and the mother and child stepped off. Again, the absence was palpable, and underlying that, Maggie had only noticed her own destination, not theirs, because she was still selfish, after all. Still so self-involved with her pain that she had no room for anyone else’s. It was all about her. It was all about her spacey inability to focus, her head filled with cotton, her lack of recognition of what was before her and within her. Me, me, me. Her whining, her self-blame that obscured every other living thing, the mirror that she thought was a window. It was all about poor, poor Maggie, who finally chomped down on the apple and ate it through. Stepping out of the elevators to face the office door of FITZGERALD & ROBBINS, ATTORNEYS AT LAW. There was no place to throw the core so she ate that too. And only then did she ring the bell.
“Good morning,” the intercom sang. Someone was cheery.
“Hi, it’s Maggie Terry. I’m here for my first day.”
Overshare.
There was a slightly discernable commotion on the other end, and a bit of hes
itation behind the door, just enough to unnerve her. And then it opened, unveiling the entire staff of Fitzgerald & Robbins, standing nervously beneath a banner screaming WELCOME MAGGIE, which was pure Michael—all good intentions. But the sign was as droopy as their enthusiasm, like a highly paid magician at the birthday party of a girl who knows that no one loves her.
“Welcome,” they recited discordantly.
Michael wheeled himself before the hesitant staff and made a show of warmly taking her hand.
“Welcome, Maggie. We are so glad that you are here.”
He’s the same. She’d barely noticed his charismatic will when he’d come to see her in rehab. It was so embarrassing that it had come to institutionalization. And all the trouble he’d gone through to make the visit. Her primary response to his kindness was to be upset with herself and swat away the concern, eyes down, not even knowing how to fake it. But here she was, better, pulled together except for a big greenish stain on her blouse, but able to look him in the eye and act—as they say in Program as if—as if it were all somehow okay. He was still handsome, much grayer since the shooting, but in tip-top shape due to personal training and suits impeccably tailored for a man in a wheelchair. No bunches at the crotch, no sloppy shoulders, that too-large gold wedding band still bragging from his tanned left hand.
“Thank you.” She tried to be confident but it came out like a whimper. “I’m so happy . . . I mean . . .” She was sweating. She wiped her forehead on her sleeve.
Michael survived his life by being obliviously joyful at the most opportune moments. It was his strength and his downfall. He was doing the right thing and he was happy with himself, and since he was happy with himself, he was doing the right thing. Again.
“I’ve told the staff all about you.” He beamed, waved back his magic wand of a hand, and revealed the molted faces of unease that constituted Mike’s trusted team. These were the people she had to befriend and then join in with, heart and soul.
Maggie saw the worry on their faces, how they imagined the worst. How many other cockamamie schemes had Michael subjected them to over the years? All with equal insistence and oom-pa-pa. Would she be his next disaster? They were taking bets. These folks had been made gun-shy by all the failed experiments and high-risk recklessness in the life of someone who always believed others could do what he could. Recover. Well, they couldn’t. Mike may have been Teflon, but his beleaguered staff was certainly scratched.
“I bragged about you.” He was still smiling. How can he still be smiling? Doesn’t he realize that this is obviously all a terrible mistake? “Just yesterday, about the brilliant thesis you wrote under my supervision at Columbia.” He was still holding her hand, like Santa. “About solving crimes without technology. Relying on compassion!” His gray eyes watered; he was so moved by her compassion, her brilliance, her human flaw, and the inevitable redemption in which he would be a key player. “Maggie dear, you understand the desperate mind.”
“It takes one to know one.”
Mike laughed. Like she was funny. Like she was warm, charming, on the ball. Like she was him instead of herself.
“Ahem.”
Maggie looked up and saw Enid Robbins, Michael’s junior partner, scowling; she was so good at it, maybe that was just her role. Maybe she didn’t hate Maggie at first sight, maybe. Enid just couldn’t help herself. It was a wish, that everything would straighten itself out and the warm embrace of an understanding world would manifest before her, this very first day of . . . the rest of the day. But no, unfortunately Enid was clearing her throat to exhibit protest of the most vehement sort. Maggie dropped her fantasizing and took in the real message immediately: Enid didn’t like this arrangement one bit. Enid wanted it to be clear that she was being forced to go along with a rescue mission that seemed pointless and time-consuming. At least fifty-five, Maggie estimated, and Enid could not believe she was still doing things that she did not want to do. Why? The whole room watched her ask herself. Why? Why? It screamed disbelief that full autonomy had still not arrived in her life of always wanting just that. What went wrong?
“And the tough courageous way,” Michael continued, unstoppable. “That you, Maggie, tried to save the life of my son.” He turned away from her to face his staff with the hard facts. “This woman has guts.”
“Michael.” Enid practiced no restraint. “That was not your fault.”
Ah! So now Maggie understood the terms. Three years before, she’d woken up from a nod in a shithole and, instead of just rolling over, had found the strength to take a cab to Michael’s apartment, making him come downstairs and pay the fare. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Looking like the hell in which she had been dying and indifferently smelling like neglect, she’d explained carefully to Michael that his oldest boy, Alex, was copping dope.
“I can’t tell you how I know,” she said. “But it’s true.”
“That’s impossible.”
Michael didn’t feel there was enough evidence. He doubted this report.
“I know he’s a bit . . . immature . . . but, he’ll grow out of it on his own time. And I am here for him for as long as it takes.”
“What does here for him mean, Michael?” She was angry. “Doing nothing?”
Michael was insulted in his hubris. No one talks to him like that. “I love my son and I am letting him find his way.”
“He has a disease,” she cried. It was all about herself. She wasn’t going out of her way to prostrate herself for someone else’s kid—it was for her own soul. Please, please help me. If he would help his own son, maybe he could help her, too. “You are his father!”
Where was her father? Why was he standing by and letting her destroy her second family the way he had destroyed her first? Why wasn’t her father racing over in a cab to swoop her up in his arms and apologize so that she could stop getting high and love Frances and Alina? Why wasn’t her father sitting down with Frances and planning the intervention that would show, finally, that someone loved her? Why was she so alone in this?
“Mike, you have to do something. You have to act!”
There was a viciousness then, never before surfaced, that crawled over Mike’s very white teeth and gripped control of his face, filling it with the startling rage of being defended. The venom of self-righteous denial.
“Don’t tell me how to be a father. I love my son no matter what.”
“Then do something.” Love is an action, not a feeling, she wanted to add but suddenly felt exhausted. She needed to take a shower and get ready for work at the station and she was wasting her time telling Mike the truth, and he was blaming the telling instead of the horrible facts themselves.
“You’re a mess,” he said. “You’re disorganized.”
“So what, I’m still helping you.”
That was why getting sober had seemed so impossible. The truth was supposed to be a gift, but nobody wanted to hold it. Being high was a lie, but there was only one replacement, a reality that no one else wanted to share. Frances was the same way. She claimed she wanted Maggie to stop using but they both knew that, for a long time, this wasn’t true. An equal is a mirror after all. So, with two years of infant care under their belts, and the joy of a real child with a point of view, Frances found a cute young girl who was willing to let her run the ship. Keeping Maggie sick made it all easier and excusable. There was someone to blame, and so the disease served everyone’s needs. And that dirty, sad morning it had handed Mike his life’s biggest excuse.
Now, clean, standing in his office, squeezed by Mike’s big fat welcome of regret, Maggie remembered his face when he had dismissed her stinking news about the demise of his son. Was it simply because he didn’t have the guts to be the hero he’d always pretended to be? To face facts? Of course that was why. He loved his self-conception more than he loved anyone else. And if his son was a fuckup, a depressed, life-wasting drug addict, then Mike wasn’t perfect and that could never, ever be. Now, years and tragedies later, his son was dead
. And some substitute had to be redeemed.
And so, Maggie now stood, miraculously employed. Now, she was the hero and Mike was to blame. Everyone has to have a hero.
“Maggie has guts,” Mike repeated. “She had the guts to approach me, and I didn’t have the gumption to listen.”
Still holding her hand, Mike wheeled himself to Enid, taking hers as well, and linking the women through his own human chain.
“Enid has a great talent, Maggie, like yours. She is a fighter. She was on the board of Hillary’s campaign in New York State. She was there, in the hotel ballroom, when Hillary had to—”
“Concede to the Orange Monster.” Enid was still mad.
“Yes, thank you. Enid knows how to fight, and she knows how to survive. And she is raising money for Democrats as we speak because she never gives up. Isn’t that right, Enid?”
“I won’t be happy until I see them all led away in handcuffs.”
Maggie Terry Page 2