Who were these people? They all seemed so happy. And rich. Where were the dark souls with their adventures and their wisdom that had made up the soil of this town? Gone? Were they dead? Everyone was well-dressed, everyone was somewhat ridiculous in their exhibition of expensive duplicates of each other’s expensive things. The way people walked was different. What they discussed. They didn’t emanate the big we that had brought her to this city in the first place. That instant sense of belonging that awaited all the sad and confused and angry types. Shoulder to shoulder, making their own choices toward every possible outcome. Talking. Bizarre. Together.
“From my Facebook feed, you would never know we’re about to have a nuclear war with North Korea,” said a young man to his date.
“Did you see my new phone? It’s awesome.”
The solitude was a shroud. It made her bones brittle and her joints rigid; it was disintegrating. The only thing the world offered her was a bottle of Miller High Life. And then a six-pack. And then a case. She kept walking.
Now Maggie was at Saint Luke’s Church. A decision of some sort was in effect, but when had it taken place?
Sober Dance.
She stood out front for a few minutes. What were her options? She could go to a movie about nothing, be filled with pain, and then leave in the middle, sobbing, go to a restaurant and try to finish her meal, or cry alone at home.
Maggie wandered down a hallway, and again down those ever-present basement steps. AA was always in the basement, always in a crappy room, always on uncomfortable chairs. It had to be or it wouldn’t feel right. It wouldn’t work if it were formal. Or elegant. There had to be zero pretensions or no one would be able to show themselves, they would lie to impress, to compete with the carpet.
One of the guys at the rehab, Danny Bernstein, had been to a spa-like rehab for royalty in Malibu. They didn’t have folding chairs, but in his case, it hadn’t made a difference. The luxury did not make things take. So, he was back again with the rest of them, on those bad chairs. Maybe a person had to be uncomfortable to be uncomfortable, to realize they had to listen to other people’s stories. That was the difference between the world and a meeting. Both could listen and hear without knowing, but knowing is what made it work. Keep coming back, even if you waste your time pretending because the next time you might actually learn something about how to be a person. Listening was not as implicating as most people imagined it to be. It actually saved lives.
Maggie peeked into the dance hall. Folks were having fun. Laughing. Used to being sober, or not. Some were dressed up, some were in work drag, some were just clean. It didn’t matter how they looked; that wasn’t important. What was important was to stay sober so that you could be authentic. The music was what it should be: in the middle and irrelevant. She looked around and finally recognized someone. Omar! From Saint Peter’s basement. He was standing on the side, also looking around. He checked his watch. He was disappointed somehow. Then she saw him look up and see her, and burst into a big smile. Oh no, did he think this was a date? She knew it was the blond hair. Was that racist? Actually, it was. The only thing she had said in that meeting that morning was scared. Not really grounds for a friendship. Unless he was just being . . . egad . . . nice.
Suddenly, she fled.
It took an hour on the Q train to Brooklyn, and then a long walk from the station down Church to Caton and up Westminster toward an address she had long held memorized. It was the kind of neighborhood where inside and outside were parts of the same whole, and some of the apartment buildings, faded in their glory, still did not have functional locks on the front doors. Cars were public furniture, as people talked serious life business with neighbors in folding chairs. Still radios, some iPhones, but still some big old speakers. Bangladeshi families and Jamaican kids spilled out of hot apartments, sitting with plates of food. The sidewalk was the park, was the conference hall, the therapist’s office, the employment center, the spiritual advisor, the banker, the predictor, the illusion, the dream. Maggie was out of place and she knew it. But she had come this far. When she’d first arrived in New York, she’d walk through someone else’s neighborhood with respect and quiet caution. When she worked for the NYPD, she was always in street clothes, but her whiteness laid out a carpet of silence. Now, just a few years later, a white person in Brooklyn was a threat: of eviction, raised rents, irrelevant businesses, and disappearance. She carried the plague.
Maggie was going to fuck up tonight and that was the way it was. Doing the right thing was not going to happen, and the Next Best Thing was also out of the question. This would be dangerous, but better than a cocktail.
She walked past a fried-shrimp place, a liquor store, a boarded-up check-cashing place. There was a yuppie wine shop. Okay, these people were doomed. Whites move in latte first, and the wine shop follows. Next there would be organic food, then a bank. Maggie stopped outside a small private house. Terrified, she lifted the forbidden latch on the garden gate and walked onto the property, turning the house’s corner, and looking in slyly, on the side of the structure. Breaking the law. There it was.
She looked through the window paralyzed with fear, and then with pain, because Maggie Terry, the reject of the world, stared at her former lover Frances, and her new . . . wife, Maritza, in their well-lit living room, where they were watching TV.
Frances had gained some weight. Her hair was long, longer than ever, but thin. Maritza was pretty, wearing a nightgown, sexy. Weirdly, as much as she spent her life thinking about Frances, it was always the old Frances. The former one. That’s what happens when people refuse to talk; they get frozen in time. If Frances would just let them all be friends, things could catch up and they could remember what they loved about each other, and it could all become normal. Where was Alina? Would she come in at any moment? She was six now? Big and talkative in some new outfit? So far, far away. Who was she? If only Frances would let her know, let the longing be fulfilled. Frances had the power to do that. She was getting fat, that Frances. Probably still drinking. Please, Maggie was praying now. Please. She was trembling. It wasn’t to God or the Higher Power, as we understand Him, it was to Frances. Because it was Frances who was actually in control.
Maggie had had this address for over a year. It was written on the documents, and she’d mapped it out plenty of times. But this, an actual in-person appearance, this was really crazy. And she knew it. For months she had been telling herself don’t contact Frances. If she ever wanted to get Alina back, she had to follow the rules. But tonight, somehow the stakes were higher. If she didn’t come and see it for herself, she was going to pick up. It was all that obvious. One connection or the other.
Maritza was not a high-risk girlfriend . . . uh . . . wife. She was not a player, just a nice woman, and a secretary at the Health Department and had ended up on Frances’s floor. Everyone Maritza grew up with had a past, and as far as she was concerned, she lucked out big time with Frances. Frances could be the big one in this relationship, no danger of being overwhelmed by brains or looks or background or self-destruction. The two of them were watching a comedy of some kind. It looked boring. How could they do it? They were laughing, wearing slippers. TV was for people who came home, had dinner, watched a show, and then went to bed. Oh, now they were changing the channel. Rachel Maddow. Even Frances and Maritza were paying attention to politics now. Rachel looked like a swan. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to sit there with them on that nice couch? Maybe Alina could watch too. These people didn’t have big things going on; they didn’t have big things to avoid—or wait a minute, yes, they did. They had to collude on avoiding the pain they were causing Maggie. That was their conspiracy, the one that united them. That was their treaty, their pact. They were normal and if they kept Maggie away from Alina, then Alina would be normal, too. That was the phony deal.
They didn’t have bad habits. They just wanted to snuggle on the couch: everything Maggie had never had, and didn’t know how to have.
Was Alina
reading in bed? Was she dreaming? Was she sassy? Was she nice?
Maggie tried to angle in closer, to check out the layout of the place, to see if she could get a glimpse of Alina’s room. She was so close.
Frances stood up with an empty glass. She had gained a lot of weight, more than Maggie realized. She’d become one of those people who didn’t care what she weighed. It was weird.
Frances picked up Maritza’s teacup and started to the kitchen to get some refills. On the way, she turned to ask her wife something and then looked up, catching a figure in the window. Her hair was really gray. Frances didn’t need to look good to keep Maritza. She was confident; she could let herself go.
Maritza was satisfied, and Maggie had never, ever been satisfied. That was all Frances wanted. To be enough without having to try.
And then Maggie realized that Frances was looking right at her.
It was all so clear. She had wanted to get caught.
And now Frances had caught her.
Frances was staring, openmouthed. She was shocked.
Maggie felt great, even though she knew she was in trouble. She had made Frances look at her, see her. She had reminded Frances that the person she was tearing away from her own child was alive and real. Success.
Frances had thought she could have her way forever. That the status quo was eternal. Maggie saw, in her shock, that Frances had never imagined what Maggie imagined every day and every night: that Frances would eventually change her mind.
What was most important in Maggie’s life was the least important consideration to Frances. Maggie had been waiting for Frances to see that she had been sober for eighteen months and two days. That she had a new job. That she was doing the work she was supposed to be doing.
But the reason Frances didn’t realize this was that Frances had not done any work.
This was not acceptable to Maggie. The permanence of separation.
She had to make it plain that Frances was living a lie. The lie that she had nothing to be accountable for, and that only Maggie was wrong.
Frances said something to Maritza, who snapped her neck and stared at Maggie with hate. Frances took out her phone and called the police, while Maritza lowered the drapes.
This option had not occurred to Maggie: calling the police and lowering the drapes. It was the wrong choice. The right choice was going outside, taking a walk together, and having a cup of coffee. How about some understanding? Some nuance? Some flexibility or rethinking? That is what she had expected, not more punishment. Not that.
Maggie hated Maritza. Lowering the blinds. What was that supposed to do? Pretend that things were not the way they are? It was cruel.
Maggie knew that the police would come. But she was stuck in her spot. Frances was still lazy. When would she do some labor so they could work something out? A child should know all her mothers.
Maggie heard a siren. So fast? Working people called the police more often than rich people. Poor people are used to the police in their lives. They had capitulated to the police as arbiters of their desperation, their relationships. The siren got closer. It probably wasn’t for her. Why would there be a siren? But, then again, who knew what lie Frances had told the police? Maybe she told them Maggie had a gun.
Then Maggie ran. She knew that the police coming would be used as proof that nothing had changed, instead of the recognition that the status quo was unbearable.
Frances could have made things better, but she had decided to make things worse.
Maggie ran and then walked, as if not to be too suspicious, even though no one else looked like her. Wait, there were some gentrifiers; she could blend in. She slowed down even more, almost lackadaisical. Maggie knew it was possible she could be seized, and she made the decision to deny, and then cooperate. As a cop, it was better if someone stuck to their story. If they stuck with it, for years sometimes, sometimes they could get away with it. But she decided to try once, and then, if they brought Frances to ID her, she would just give in. She waited for the car’s flashers to pull up beside her, as she approached the subway. Maybe they weren’t looking for her yet. Maybe Frances was still filing the report.
Maggie almost tiptoed into the station. She was so careful now. She used her MetroCard, without a moment’s hesitation. There was a waiting Q train; she stepped on it, and was gone.
Standing in the empty car, Maggie finally panicked. What had she done? Would they come after her? Fluorescent. A homeless man was sleeping. She looked at him, maybe it was someone she knew. She remembered Frances’s happy family. Her lack of care. The homeless man was clutching a bottle of booze. Maggie reached for it. He moved. She saw her reflection in the subway window, superimposed on the passing neon BAR signs on the street and in her mind, the passing night, the hours, the lights of the city before her and below.
DAY THREE
FRIDAY, JULY 7, 2017
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
7:00 AM
When she walked into Nick’s she knew something was wrong. He was deep in conversation with Joe, who looked gray and shaken.
“Nick, are you okay?”
In the background the television was on, with thousands of German demonstrators throwing tear gas bombs back at the police. They had signs saying G-20 WELCOME TO HELL.
“Yeah, yeah.” Nick waved his troubles away. “The usual?” He tried to find a smile as he made her mint tea and pulled out an unearthly green apple that was hard as a potato.
“You sure?”
Nick pointed to the freezer.
“What do you mean, Nick?”
He reached in, scooped up a cup of cubes. “ICE,” he said.
“Oh, immigration.”
“They’re taking people out,” he mumbled. “All over the place.”
The broadcast cut to Trump, himself, lips pursed in distaste, hair flapping.
“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”
“I’m sorry, Joe.”
“Okay.” Joe was so pale. He disappeared into the dairy case.
Back at Saint Paul’s, Joel M., who had seemed good-looking just the day before, was now sallow and clutching his stomach like he needed to puke, but couldn’t let it happen. Martha L., on the other hand, seemed rested. Either she had done some yoga or someone was being very, very good to her. Or, maybe it was self-acceptance. Maggie looked at Martha’s stand-out, sharp, corporate attire: lilac skirt suit, checked blouse, purple scarf. She looked fantastic. This woman could wear anything beautifully. Why was that? What did she have that made her so put-together, even when she was falling apart? Ramón was growing a mustache. He was envisioning something elaborate that would require upkeep—a hobby. Ronald had a copy of Rilke under his arm. Was it an assignment for class or did he really enjoy the poet of love? Alan walked in late. Charles looked a lot better today. Katrina was crying, sobbing through the meeting, but never raised her hand. She wasn’t able to do service by sharing. Maggie felt a desire to help her out, but held back. Who was she to help anyone? There was Chris, a newcomer, at his first meeting. Yankel, an Orthodox Jew who had had a slip and was back to counting days, instead of months. Suzanne, cringeworthy, another ubiquitous white woman in pain. Marva, a nurse in uniform, young thirties, filled with hope for a better life.
Maggie watched all these people going through their paces. It was her nature to keep track of them. She was observant, an information gatherer. The source of those compulsions was obvious: watching her parents crumple. Childhood was about watching helplessly as people fell apart and took their relationships with them. Her father was so unpredictable; she had had to keep a close eye on him. He’d be merry, then crazy, then angry, then gone. Her mother had seemed to literally fold before her eyes; her knees got weak and she fell inward, as Wolf, Maggie’s father, lived up to his name. When her mother killed herself, there was a silence that Wolf filled with outbursts, grand gestures, big people, large feelings. Maggie’s job was to keep track: Where were they going? Who was
coming? What was the plan here? He’d promise big happiness: an incredible trip to the beach that would turn into a crashed car, a fight, a wrong turn and arriving four hours late. Maggie was a watcher, and she watched Wolf ruin everything. Then when he remarried Julie, he couldn’t keep her drunk enough to hide that he was empty and mean. And one day she was gone, like a puppy who was given away. No goodbyes. Wolf had been impossible and Julie just left. Now Maggie missed Julie, and she had never even liked her. Was that how it worked? Each love holds the love before it? Maggie remembered holding Alina and reading her a book called Everybody Poops. Frances’s mother had brought it over.
“Maggie loves Alina and Alina loves Maggie,” Frances’s mother said.
That was the greatest moment in Maggie’s life. She was part of a family.
Other people, other people, other people, other people.
At 12 Step meetings there were so many different faces and personalities and stories, dreams, details, crises, episodes, frustrations, and expectations coming and going from those rooms. Strangely, for the first time in her life, Maggie felt that she did not want to know everything that was going on. It would have been impossible anyway, unless she’d worn a wire and recorded it all for her files. She had to give up her impulse to try to understand what was happening with every single other person. This meeting was the one family that Maggie didn’t have to maneuver to hold on to. It was always there for her. She didn’t need an invitation, and she couldn’t be excommunicated. She just had to show up.
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