Maggie Terry

by Sarah Schulman

  “And then?”

  “That was it.” Stefan’s tears would never stop. “The last thing I saw was the flip of her hair and then—my beautiful Jamie—she was gone.”

  Stefan is a liar, Maggie suddenly understood. And the lie is that he was clean. The lie is . . . that he . . . loved his child.

  If Maggie wanted her own life to make sense, she would have to brush away that same lie of innocence. Whoosh.

  And at that moment, she realized something much worse—that maybe Alina was better off without her, without knowing that she was missing. Not whimpering, afraid, not confused, not living with unpredictability, but fine. Absolutely fine with her mom and her new mommy, what’s-her-name, and content and quiet and fingering her own newly clean ears after a bath that someone else had given her. Whatever tiny piece of her heart Maggie Terry could still access while in professional drag got used for showing up to work and showing up to meetings, and basically not much more. Then, that morsel of life that was Alina had to stay deeply buried in her soul, so low it was in her ankle somewhere, that little crumb of feeling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  6:30 PM

  It was early evening. Maggie stepped out of the subway station, exhausted again. It was all too much. There were so many vortexes of struggle and defeat as the pain of the community around Jamie Wagner’s corpse converged with the absence circling Maggie’s dead life.

  She was about to turn down her street when, suddenly, she actually remembered she had to buy tea bags. That was a sign of progress, after all. Every minute was so up and down. Now where should she get them? Maggie noticed the first store in her path was the gourmet snack shop Nick had complained about. What were its treasures laid out before her? Was this the Higher Power she could sign up for? The right store at exactly the moment that she remembered what she was supposed to do. Now, maybe that was the “God” they were all bragging about. Just doing what a person was supposed to do.

  Their tea selection was overwhelmed by extravagant flavors like Afghani spirit, named for the people that the United States just could not stop murdering. Smoky sesame lime, the sum total of a flavor combination that provided no clue to actual taste. Promises of spiritual expansion were offered by soul-widening tea, and then, of course, she could select something that offered escape from having to think or feel: doze tea, meditation green, and sleep tea. She finally bought California peppermint because it was the closest to the generic mint that Deli Nick had gotten her drinking in the mornings.

  Okay, mission accomplished!

  Should she get anything else? What about breakfast? Yogurt? That sounded healthy. She looked at the dairy case: Greek yogurt, Bulgarian yogurt, goat milk yogurt, sheep milk yogurt, almond milk yogurt, tofu yogurt, coconut milk yogurt, and soygurt. She bought Greek and a banana to cut into it. And then she realized that she needed a knife.

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “I can give you a plastic one.”

  “Okay, thanks.” And . . . carefully and cautiously, she picked up a New York Times, scanned the front page. It was very dense and filled with frightening events presented in a casual way, with hysterical undertones, and some sarcasm: “Trump and Putin: Where the Mutual Admiration Began,” “Carl Reiner: Justice Kennedy, Don’t Retire,” “As Elites Switch to Texting, Watchdogs Fear Loss of Transparency.” The stories were so complicated now that it was hard to find headlines to sum them up. The reader had to already know what was going on.

  “Uhhh, can you throw in a late-edition New York Post, please?”

  Something was missing. Oh yeah, flowers. She looked around, there was a man across the street selling them from the front of his shop.

  Maggie paid for her shopping and crossed the avenue, floating directly into the arms of the gorgeous white roses calling out, heads opened and welcoming, and took them to her chest where she buried her face in their goodness. They were so soft. Yes, Rachel was right again, this was what she needed more of in her life.

  “Hey you,” a gruff voice called out. “Get away from those flowers. Buy first, then touch.”

  “FUCK OFF, asshole.” Maggie was shocked by her own rage. “Don’t yell at me.” It wasn’t the best choice of all the available responses, but he was killing her buzz. The happy-to-be-making-progress vibe was finally just starting to creep into her heart and this jack-off was ruining it.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” The guy was not having it. He was mad at the myriad of burdens propelling him, and he just didn’t want another one. “You’d better buy something or I’m calling the cops.”

  Everyone is calling the cops. That’s all people do in this city: threaten to call the police or call the police. How about a little conversation?

  “I am a cop,” Maggie lied.

  “Oh yeah?” He doubted her but wasn’t completely sure. “Where is your badge?”

  “I was a cop. I got kicked out for alcoholism and drug addiction.”

  “Well,” he said, confused. A tinge of empathy, of identification, of objectification, of disdain. “You’d better buy something—one, two, three.”

  Thirty minutes later, safely at home, she stood in the doorway of her apartment, hands behind her back as though in handcuffs. And then—one, two, three—she brought them around to her front and presented herself with a present that no one else could have given her. She had to give it to herself . . . a plant! In fact, a cactus. Something autobiographical. If she forgot to water it for a month, it would still live. Maggie held it forth as an offering to her empty room.

  “For me.”

  Now, where to place it?

  She tried out the windowsill, but it was a bit too narrow and it would be depressing to come home to a fallen cactus.

  She sat it in the middle of the floor, like a beacon under the bar light bulb. And then Maggie realized that someone was actually calling her landline. It must have been repaired.

  “Hello?”

  She started unpacking her groceries, placing the tea on an empty shelf. There was a lot of noise on the other end, the sounds of a loud, busy crowd or . . . drunks. Someone was calling her from a bar. Someone was drunk dialing her. Was it Frances? Finally coming around.

  “Frances?”

  “Hey, babe!”

  Oh my God. There was only one man who called her babe, like she was his stewardess, waitress, escort, piece of ass.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yeah, I am just down the block from your new place.”

  The fear and dread were old reactions that came into being immediately out of habit. That’s what being triggered was, she was learning, responding to the present from a place of the past. Sooner or later she was going to have to deal with this man, this Wolf. She’d known it in the back of her mind but had been pushing it to the side. The problems of Daddy always seemed better off delayed.

  “How did you get my address?”

  “You’re listed.”

  “I’m listed?”

  “Yeah, when I searched the white pages under your name, this address and phone number came up. You must have a landline.”

  Ohhhhhhhhh. The world spun.

  So, Steven Brinkley had not stalked her. He had not followed her on the subway. He had not seen her walk in and out of a bar; he had not noticed her name on her mailbox. He had simply looked her up. And, of course, he couldn’t phone her because the cables were down, and he really wanted to talk. He was trying to talk. He needed . . . he needed . . . some kind of . . . help.

  “Come have a drink.”

  “Dad, you know I don’t drink anymore.” That felt too familiar, explaining the obvious to her dad about herself. Did he know that she was real? Of course not. How come Maggie didn’t already understand this? Is every obvious thing on earth a big fat surprise?

  “Well, then come sit with your dad while I have a drink. I’m lonely.”

  People, Places, and Things. “I don’t want to, Dad.”

  “You’re no fun. Maker’s Mark Manhattan.”

&nb
sp; “What?”

  “Just ordering my drink.”

  Maker’s Mark Manhattan, that was Frances’s drink.

  “I gotta go.”

  “Maggie, you’re no fun. No wonder you’re still a virgin.” Then he laughed.

  “Bye, Dad, call me when you’re sober.”

  She hung up.

  The phone rang.

  Frances?

  “Hello?”

  “I’m sober.” He laughed.

  “Guess what?” she said. “You’re not.” She hung up.

  Why was Maggie so nice to her drunken father, who didn’t have the balls to go to detox and rehab and AA for every second of the rest of his life? And why was she so mean to the flower guy? Projection!

  The phone rang.

  She answered it. “FUCK OFF.”

  “Maggie?”

  “Wait, who is this?”

  “It’s Craig. Is that how you answer your phone?”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  She could hear some kids in the background playing a video game.

  “No, I thought you were my father.”

  “Great.” Craig’s voice returned from heightened, surprised disgust for Maggie to his normal level of general repulsion toward everything about her. “That explains it. Listen, I have been trying to get in touch with you all night. I left you four messages on your cell. Do you still have it?”

  “Hold on.” She found it at the bottom of her bag. ‘Yes, I have it.”

  “Is it on?”

  She looked. “How do I tell?”

  “Jesus Christ, you are unbelievable.”

  “I’m so sorry, Craig.”

  “Well, FIGURE IT OUT. Have you considered pressing the on button?” There was a little girl’s voice in the background. “Honey, hold on. Not you, Maggie. My daughter’s name is Honey.”

  “I can see how that could be confusing at times.”

  “Maggie, hold on. Have you seen the papers? Honey, hold on, I’m coming.”

  She stood still and waited for Craig to fulfill some paternal duty and continued unpacking her grocery bag. Warm yogurt, a bruised banana. One plastic knife. A newspaper. She laid it out flat on the kitchen floor. A typically blaring headline, a standard fuzzy photograph of some perpetrator or victim or both.

  SCRIBE SUICIDES IN MURDER RAP

  “What?”

  “I didn’t say anything. Okay, I’m back. Maggie, did you see the news?”

  “I have it right here in front of me. Steven Brinkley committed suicide.”

  SCRIBE SUICIDES IN MURDER RAP:

  “Her death was my fault,” leaves note.

  The newsprint felt like dust. Everyone was so fragile, humans. News is unreal when it happens to you, and entertainment when it happens to other people. Every single person in the world could self-destruct before their biology beats them to it. Some were trying to make that happen to others.

  The last time she had felt this way was when she was in detox, on an IV, sick as a very sick dog, and two cops from Internal Affairs came to see her while she was still in bed.

  “Maggie Terry?”

  “Ugh.” Every bone was aching. Her throat was so sore, it was on fire.

  “When was the last time you spoke to Officer Figueroa?”

  She thought they meant Eddie.

  “When he graduated from the academy.”

  “This is not a joke.”

  She could barely lift her head from the pillow. “Does this look like a joke?”

  “Your partner, Detective Julio Figueroa, was found shot dead at an apartment complex in the Bronx last week. The same one where his son Eddie allegedly shot a civilian. Do you know what he was doing there?”

  Think fast, she told herself. She was sweating. Her feet were hurting. Her mind was hurting, and now her heart. Her poor, poor Julio. Her beloved, loved friend. She had let him down, and now he was dead. She was in here because she was such a fuckup she couldn’t even make a stand with him, and now he was fucking dead.

  “No, officer,” she said. “I have no idea.”

  And she stuck to that story through three interviews, an official inquiry, the hearings. And even when the brass threatened her with charges for violating the regulation against working under the influence, she stuck to her insistence on ignorance. On innocence. And negotiated down to permanent removal and the loss of her badge.

  Now, here she was again, this time on her kitchen floor, with a warm yogurt and another corpse on her hands. Another weeping, broken man asking her for help. Begging her to be there and she was nothing but a failure, a mess, a garbage-headed addict who couldn’t reach out and help a friend. She remembered Brinkley’s crying face through the elevator window, sobbing, Please, please help me. Why didn’t she help? In Program they told her to ask for help. But when people ask her for help, they end up dead.

  “Well,” Craig said over the phone. “At least we know who did it.”

  She had to stop fucking up. She had to act. She had to act!

  “I’m coming right over.”

  “Whooaa. Do not come over. It’s nighttime. I’m at home with my children.”

  “Sorry, Craig, old habit. Police detectives are like trauma surgeons.”

  “Whatever.”

  She looked at her cactus. Yes, it belonged in the middle of the room until the day she got some furniture. She lay down on the floor. Someday maybe there would be a chair.

  “Okay, Craig, so what do we do now?”

  “We do nothing now.”

  “I mean, tomorrow morning?”

  He had a sharp intake of breath, as preparation for a gasp, wail, screech, or plain derisive laughing. “Duhhh, we close the case.”

  “Close it?”

  “Yeah, read the article. Brinkley left a note saying that he was responsible for Jamie’s death. End of investigation.”

  “He didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Really?” he said with mocking sarcasm flowing out of his aura. “How did he mean it?”

  “He didn’t mean that he actually physically murdered her. He asked me to help him.” She started peeling the banana.

  “He asked you to help him kill her.” Craig would have simultaneously believed and disbelieved everything she said, at this point, since he clearly felt he had a lunatic on his hands who was incompetent and yet capable of anything.

  “No, he was asking me to help him not kill himself.” As soon as she said it, Maggie knew it was true. Someone had asked her for help, thereby asking the wrong person.

  “So, what did you do? Honey, lower that thing. No, sweetheart, we are still a democracy. What are you watching? You are too young to watch the news. Hold on.”

  “Nothing,” Maggie said. “I did nothing.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  11:30 PM

  Crying, pacing, getting out of the house, running, going to an evening meeting, setting out chairs, raising hands, talking, listening to people, ignoring them, watching them, trying to watch a movie but not making it through, buying a television in a twenty-four-hour store with a salesman who helped her learn how to use it, carrying it home in the dark, feeling accomplished and considering that purchase to be a major step forward, and then sitting on the floor, watching that television set, feeling like nothing important had been accomplished, finally taking out those photos of Alina, remembering that time at the beach, taking her into the waves, holding her to her chest, anything, doing anything, being still, moving, breathing, holding her breath. None of the above would fix this or anything.

  It was now too late at night to still be wide awake and stay out of trouble. She could not bear the sound of the TV, it was so noisy, it was so invasive. It was watching her. She paced the room, put on her shoes.

  Don’t do it.

  Maggie stepped out of the elevator, walked up and down her block. If a man smoked crack or meth or whatever it was in that doorway then he bought it in that building, because no one bought crack or meth a
nd then carried it around for an hour before smoking it. Maybe that dealer had some dope. She hovered in front of that building. Where was the action? Where was the action?

  Maggie stared at every passerby. Where was that one going? Which one of them was high? Was anybody nodding? Was anyone smoking a joint? Who was holding? Who was holding? Who was holding?

  A tired man with nowhere to go. Could it be him? He looked like an ex-student, now unemployed, some kind of fuckup. That was her type. Someone who had ruined everything too.

  “Holding?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “What you got?”

  “You mean metaphorically?” He laughed.

  No, not him.

  She hurried away. He could call the cops. That’s what everyone in this city did when they didn’t understand what was going on. That’s why so many people were being punished. No, overpunished. She did not have connections anymore. Too much time had passed. She did not know rich people, and rich people do their drugs in safety. Rich people order in their overpaid high-quality drugs from friendly dealers, who hand deliver. And they do them in the privacy of their expensive homes. And she didn’t know them and didn’t have their address. So, she had to buy from poor people, and they did their drugs in danger. Were there any streets in Chelsea that still had poor people?

  She ended up by the projects on Tenth Avenue, some kind of Colonial Williamsburg of poverty in the middle of organic grass-fed steakhouses and glasses of Armagnac that cost a hundred dollars a shot. She didn’t really know what that kind of wealth actually meant now, with its refined and muted excess. But right next door to Chelsea Market where one could buy Sarabeth sour-cherry preserves, and right next door to Equinox Fitness where movie stars went to do Zumba or whatever, right there was a housing project, which meant too many people in one apartment and unemployment and that meant dangerous drugs, not safe ones.

  She saw him coming half a block away, and it was muscle memory. Of course this was the kid she was looking for. How could she think that other guy had the drugs? He didn’t have them and this one did. What was wrong with her? How could she be so fucking stupid?