by Lilian Darcy
‘Yes. There are,’ Mom cut in vigorously. ‘And don’t you think that after nearly thirty years with your father, I learned how to pick them? Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned him until there was a chance for you to meet!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Maggie apologised again. ‘I’m sure he’s a terrific guy.’
‘No, you’re not sure! You’re not sure at all!’ She glared at Maggie, then softened suddenly and added in a far more gentle tone, ‘And maybe I can’t blame you for that, after what you had to put up with as a child.’
Maggie met her halfway. ‘I can tell he’s making you happy. You couldn’t look this good if you weren’t, Mom. Will I meet him next time you and I see each other?’
‘You could have met him this time, only he had business meetings and couldn’t get away. Don’t worry about me, Maggie. I can take care of myself these days.’
She seized her suitcase from the carousel at that moment, as if to prove her point, and they drove to Picnic Point, talking about easier things.
On Saturday night, as promised, Maggie held a small, casual dinner for her mother, Will and Daniel, and several friends. There were two older couples she’d met through Mark, and two more who were her own age, with a pair of children each, to keep little Daniel entertained. Her friend Simone taught English literature at the local college, while Caroline had taken time out from her career as a pharmacist in order to care for her young children.
She regarded both women as good friends, and yet she hadn’t seen much of them over the past month or so. Since Will had officially joined the practice, in fact. There had only been a couple of casual phone calls and, when she thought about it, she knew it wasn’t an accident.
Women had the reputation of spilling their souls to their female friends, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, when something was too important, or too hard to put into words, the last thing Maggie wanted was to pull it apart with a caring friend. Women were sometimes too sympathetic, and too inclined to encourage each other in obsessing over every detail.
A couple of curious questions and comments whispered in her ear by Simone and Caroline over the course of the evening confirmed Maggie’s instinct that she’d protected herself by keeping quiet about her turmoil over Will.
‘You said he’s divorced, Maggie,’ Caroline said. ‘But a man like that isn’t going to stay single for long. Have you thought about whether a dreamboat dating doctor will disrupt your practice?’
And Simone came in slyly, ‘There’s an answer to that, Carrie. She can go out with him herself.’
Definitely, Maggie decided, she had been right not to confide in them!
Sometimes, however, that kind of precaution wasn’t good enough. A mother’s eye was more watchful…or maybe a mother’s imagination offered more fertile soil for suspicion to sprout in! Every time Maggie spoke to Will—which wasn’t often, as she consciously tried to avoid any time alone with him—she would feel Dolly’s gaze darting in her direction from across the room.
With kids getting bored and ready for bed, Caroline and Simone and their families left at around nine-thirty, and this turned into a general signal that the evening was over. Will quickly disappeared with Daniel, and Mark’s older friends lingered only long enough to finish their coffee.
It wasn’t until everyone had gone that Maggie discovered the striped and padded carrybag she recognised as Daniel’s. He wasn’t yet potty-trained, and the bag contained diapers and wet wipes, a change of clothing, a toddler’s lidded cup and several precious toys.
‘That doesn’t look like something Dr Braggett will want to live without for long,’ her mother commented.
‘No,’ Maggie agreed. ‘I’ll have to drop it over to his place now, I think.’
‘It could have waited until morning,’ Will told her when she held it out to him at his front door.
‘I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe he wouldn’t go to sleep without the plush animals.’
‘Normally, yes, Poddy is pretty essential to the process, but he was too tired tonight. He was snoozing on the change table while I put on his pyjamas. Come in.’
He appended the casual invitation to the end of his previous sentence without a pause, and she was very tempted to accept. Managed, finally, to shake her head.
‘My mother’s still up. She’s alone in the house. She’ll worry if I don’t show up. I told her I wouldn’t be long.’
There was a beat of silence, then he answered, ‘I’ll see you on Monday, then.’
His pager began to vibrate at that moment as he was on call, which probably meant that Sonia was sleeping in the downstairs spare room. That confirmed Maggie’s decision to leave, and she drove back home, trying not to think about him.
‘Oh, good heavens, you gave me a fright!’ her mother said, whirling around on the upper landing as Maggie reached the top of the stairs. ‘I didn’t hear you come in, and I wasn’t expecting you home again so soon.’
‘Oh, weren’t you?’ Maggie said blankly.
‘I thought you might stay at Will’s for a few hours. I hope you didn’t come back just for my sake?’
‘I—No, I didn’t. There’s nothing going on between us, Mom, if that’s what you’re wondering.’
‘It seemed to me tonight that there should be something going on, judging from the way you looked at each other.’
‘Should be?’ Maggie echoed.
She sat down with a bump on the top step of the hardwood stairs.
Her mother eased herself down beside her, and then completely changed the subject. ‘I like having your old room,’ she said, ‘with those big windows looking over the lake. I thought you might have moved back there after Mark died.’
‘There was no reason to,’ Maggie hedged. Mom was circling like an unusually well-intentioned shark, but what was she circling around? ‘I was happy in the spare room.’
‘But you were happy with Mark, weren’t you? You loved him?’
‘Yes, very much. We had a friendship as well as a marriage.’
‘Because I’ve felt, lately, that I was wrong in what I told you once. That you and he had compatible needs. Physical needs. Oh, darn, why can’t I just say it? We’re both grown women. Sexual needs, Maggie. I encouraged you to think it was a positive thing in your marriage, that it was about friendship rather than physical passion. I was wrong about that. You need both. You deserve both, and when I saw the way you and Will looked at each other…’ She trailed off and looked with eager hope into Maggie’s face. It was horrible to have to disappoint her.
‘That’s not the problem, Mom,’ Maggie said slowly. ‘The physical part of it is not the part that I don’t have. It’s the rest of it, the sharing, that Will can’t give me, and without that, in the end, the physical part isn’t enough.’ Seeing the way her mother was preparing to get angry on her behalf, she added quickly, ‘It’s not his fault. I know exactly why he can’t give any more. He’s come out of a terrible marriage break-up. He’s so protective of his little boy. He just can’t let anyone else in.’
‘Go back to him tonight?’ Mom suggested. ‘Take what he can give, even if it’s not all you want. Take it slowly, and let him have all the time he needs? Eventually…’
Maggie shook her head. ‘He’s not talking about eventually, he’s saying maybe never, and I don’t think I’m brave enough to wait for something that might never happen. Sometimes waiting requires more courage than taking action.’
‘Sometimes it doesn’t. I was wrong to stay with your father for so long. Taking action was the best thing I ever did. When Will is ready for action, ready to take the right step, shouldn’t he know that you’re still there? A lot of people find they’re wrong when they use the word “never”. Give him more of a chance, Maggie.’
‘I—I’ll think about it.’
And she did, during a sleepless night and an unsettled November Sunday. From first light, snow threatened and there were some flurries just after breakfast, before the sky settled once again into a leaden grey. It was very col
d.
Maggie’s mother went for a short walk in the morning, made some soup for lunch and then curled up in a chair with hot tea and a thick paperback. Maggie did laundry and went to one of the big supermarkets down in Wayans Falls to stock up on groceries. Her mind wasn’t on the task and she forgot three items, although they were plainly written on her list.
After the savoury lentil soup and hot rolls, she asked her mother, ‘Do you mind if I go for a long walk? Don’t worry if I’m not back until late. I’m not going to see Will,’ she hastened to add, noting the gleam of speculation in her mother’s eyes.
Her feet somehow took her in that direction, however, in a crooked ramble along the lake-edge, past the deserted docks of the summer homes and the tarpaulin-covered firewood stacks of the people who wintered over. Passing his house, she craved—this was ridiculous—some kind of sign. His appearance, directly in her path. Or Daniel running to her with his arms stretched out for a hug.
But she didn’t even see them. Maybe they’d gone grocery shopping, too. A single working parent had to fit all that stuff in on weekends. She went on for another rambling mile or two then turned back, retracing her steps.
More snow flurries started, but she was well-dressed and warm in her hat and coat. The lowered sky diminished the already fading daylight, and she saw that Will’s front windows were now lit up as she passed his house once more. A curtain moved, and she caught sight of Daniel playing with some toy cars on the window-sill.
Maybe she did have the courage to give Will more time…
That’s Maggie out there, Will realised.
He’d come to the window to check that the banging noise Daniel was making with his toys didn’t signal the destruction of something. It didn’t. Daniel had his moments, but he wasn’t a destructive two-year-old, on the whole.
Now that Maggie’s solitary figure had caught Will’s attention, however, he couldn’t immediately tear himself away. She was walking briskly, with a dark winter hat pulled low on her head and hands pushed down into the pockets of her coat. She looked unapproachable, almost forbidding, and lost miles deep in thought.
He wanted to see her.
The forbidding, unapproachable part of her didn’t put him off. He’d seen through all that—long ago, it now seemed—to the warm, true-hearted woman beneath, and he wanted her here with him in his house, right now. He wanted to help her take off her coat and make her a hot drink and settle her in his living-room by a freshly lit fire.
What a perfect way to round off his day!
He got as far as the little porch by the side door. She was still visible, her neat, strong back bobbing a little as she strode along. He curved his hands around his mouth to help his voice carry when he called her name, took a deep breath—
Then stopped.
It wasn’t the forbidding part or the unapproachable part, it was the fact that she seemed to be thinking so deeply. How could he justify interrupting her for something as trivial as the offer of coffee? What, exactly, would he be promising?
Not much.
Not enough.
He knew that.
Slowly, he lowered his hands. It was odd and irritating, he decided, that at this point in his life, being in love with someone was no longer the only thing that counted. He was nuts about Maggie, but she’d told him straight out that he wasn’t giving her what she wanted.
A lot more than a cup of coffee on a cold afternoon.
The selfish part of him wanted to believe that a woman like Maggie would wait. She was strong enough, courageous enough. He, on the other hand, was still so deeply wearied after the battle with Alison that he wasn’t yet ready to do the work involved in successfully slotting a third person into the small domestic partnership of himself and Daniel. Under the circumstances, wasn’t it OK to be selfish?
Maggie was almost out of sight. Will blew a sigh between his lips and turned back into the house, restless and dissatisfied.
Approaching home, Maggie saw a boat heading towards the public dock about fifty yards from her own. She recognised Curtis Bailey at the helm.
He reached the end of the dock, looped a couple of ropes over the upright wooden posts and climbed awkwardly out. Then he turned back to the boat, and seemed to be frozen in thought. She was just about to call out a greeting, a little concerned that he’d made the boat trip on his own, when he appeared to stumble, and in the blink of an eye he was in the water.
From where she stood, Maggie couldn’t see him. The end of the dock got in the way of her view of his head, but she knew the water was six or seven feet deep at that point and the bottom was soft with mud. It was also freezing cold. In the shallower reaches, ice had begun to form on the lake on frosty nights. In another month or so, it could be frozen feet thick all the way across.
She began to run at once. His muscle control was poor. Somehow he’d fallen, and she didn’t know how long he would be able to support himself, let alone whether he could climb out.
‘Curtis!’ she called. ‘Curtis, it’s all right!’
Reaching the end of the dock, she found him gasping and clinging to one of the dock’s wooden support posts. His head had been under water, and he was already breathless with effort. ‘I saw you go in,’ she said.
‘It was an accident, I swear,’ he answered her urgently. ‘Tell them that. Tell Laura.’
For a moment, she didn’t understand, then light dawned. ‘Oh, Curtis, I know it was an accident. I saw it. You lost co-ordination and you tripped.’
‘They mustn’t think I meant to do it.’
‘Tell them that yourself.’
‘If I can get out in time. It’s so cold. I can’t hold my grip…’ The wood was damp and slippery.
And he was shaking with cold. It seemed impossible to think that this was a life-threatening situation since he was so close to the shore, but as soon as Maggie tried to help him, she realised the danger. He was a big man, handicapped by his illness, by the cold and by the heavy clothing he wore. Even as she stretched out her hand, he lost his hold on the dock and sank back into the water, out of her reach.
‘Try for the rope,’ she said. ‘Or the boat.’
He struggled for a few moments, wasting precious time, and then shook his head. ‘I can’t move. It’s all I can do…to breathe.’
She pulled off her coat, held it by the hem and tried to throw the sleeve end out to him. There was a clatter as her cellphone fell out of her pocket and landed on the edge of the planking. She ignored it. Curtis made a weak upward lunge and grabbed for the coat sleeves but just missed, and as she tried to hold it out even farther—just another few inches was all he needed—she lost her balance and went into the water as well. The cold shrank her skin against her scalp and punched the breath from her lungs. But at least she could reach him.
‘Help!’ she yelled as loud as she could, several times, with no great hope that anyone would hear. The snow had begun to fall more quickly, muffling sound, and everyone was snug indoors.
Desperately, she tested the depth of the water. If by some miracle it wasn’t as deep as she’d thought…
But it was. She couldn’t touch bottom. Instead, she struggled to remember a lifesaving hold she’d learned more than twenty years ago in swimming classes and told Curtis, ‘If you can relax and try to float. Do you know the chin carry?’
‘I can’t. Muscles won’t work. My boots are too heavy.’
As were her own running shoes and thick socks. The cold was already making her limbs stiff and hard to move. Ice had formed on Curtis’s hair.
‘Swim,’ he urged her. ‘While you still can. Leave me. I’m too heavy.’
‘No. We’ll manage. If I can pull you back to the dock, we can work our way along, holding onto the supports.’
Pointing back, she saw her cellphone lying with one corner hanging over the edge of the wooden planking. If she could reach that, just stretch her arm up to it, and key in Will’s pager number. She had it on speed dial, just had to press a single button
. Her phone number would show on his pager screen. He’d call her back, and if she didn’t answer he might realise that something was wrong.
But he wouldn’t know what, or where she was. How would he find her and Curtis in time?
Hopeless.
I refuse to think that word.
Clinging to the upright post, she searched for the right button with numb and clumsy fingers. She managed to press the vital digit, then accidentally knocked the cell-phone into the water.
‘Hey, don’t wriggle, Dan, or it takes three times as long.’
Changing his son about ten minutes after failing to invite Maggie in for a very vital cup of coffee, Will was confronted with another thing he didn’t yet feel ready for. Potty-training. Daniel himself wasn’t very motivated yet, and Will didn’t have a schedule which would easily incorporate hopeful visits to the bathroom every twenty minutes.
The pager in his pocket began to vibrate against his thigh and he told it, ‘Not now.’
He snapped the fastening on Daniel’s pants with one hand, dragged the pager out of his pocket with the other and checked the number on the screen. He expected it to be his medical answering service, reporting a call, but instead he recognised Maggie’s cellphone number.
Odd.
Why hadn’t she called his home phone line first? Hadn’t she seen the lights on in his house on her way past just now? She’d had time to reach home. Or just about, anyway. How long was it, exactly, since he’d seen her passing? Frowning, he put on Daniel’s socks and shoes then called her back, but received only a recorded message to the effect that the phone was switched off or out of range.
A sense of foreboding made his scalp prickle. He didn’t wait to work out whether it was based on logic or just on his growing regret that he hadn’t taken that huge, terrifying and momentous step of asking her in for coffee. Instead, he grabbed Daniel and raced for his car, while the regret focused in his mind and started to make sense.
Maggie had already dealt with a difficult childhood, the loss of her husband, a state of childlessness that she’d never wanted. Will had little doubt that she’d survive his own holding back, but what gave him the right to ask her to make all the compromises? What gave him the right, loving a woman like Maggie, to do anything but ignore the risks and offer her his heart on a plate?