Mister Tender's Girl

by Carter Wilson

  It’s dark, not just from the sheer lack of any natural light, but from Maggie’s use of as few lightbulbs as necessary to keep the bar operational. Maybe it’s a cost-saving decision, though I suspect it’s more of an effort to smooth the wrinkles of time. Darkness is Maggie’s makeup, though even with it, I can see she’s old, tired, and long set in her ways.

  Everything in here is wooden: tables, chairs, floor, bar. I can smell the unmistakable aroma of moisture mixed with the wood, and there’s a sense of boarding an old sailing vessel, the planks solid but squeaky beneath my weight.

  There are a total of three other people in here, two of whom have their backs to me. Day drinkers (actually, late-morning drinkers), both men, sitting on rickety barstools. Their spines seem permanently curved toward and over their drinks, and they sit in silence, a stool between them, not bothering to turn as the heavy door closes behind me. Old warthogs at the watering hole.

  The third person is a woman who stands behind the bar, and it doesn’t take me any time to know this is the person I’ve come to see. This is Margaret Glassin, proprietor of Maggie’s, mother of twin monsters. The memory I have most of her is from the trial, where she sat and watched every minute from the gallery. This is the same woman, though her long, kinked brown hair is now streaked with gray. She looks thinner than I remember, and tougher, with the kind of strength not found in a gym rat, but from a woman who has to fight for everything she gets. Even in the dim light, I can see the crow’s-feet around her eyes and the veins in her lean, sinewy arms.

  “What’re you havin’?”

  Her voice stops me dead. It’s the same voice that pleaded mercy for her girls directly before sentencing. No apology for what happened to me, just a beg for leniency for her little psychos.

  I take a step forward, and her eyes narrow in a focused gaze before widening with recognition. The same experience I had with Charles.

  “Well, fuck me,” she says.

  “I guess you go by Maggie now,” I say.

  She recovers quickly, probably used to dealing with surprises in this dark basement of a bar. “When I moved here,” she says. “Fresh start and all that.”

  “I understand that,” I say. “I went from Alice Hill to Alice Gray.” I scan the bottles behind her. “Gin and tonic.”

  She reaches behind her and grabs a bottle of Tanqueray, but I tell her to use Hendrick’s.

  “Two dollars more,” she says.

  “I think you can buy me a drink,” I reply.

  She thinks about that for a moment, then shrugs. As she mixes my drink, she says, “I heard you moved to the States. Boston, is that right?”

  “Close enough.”

  “And I don’t suppose you just happened upon my pub here by accident.”

  “No. No accident at all.” She slides the drink to me, and I take a sip. It’s stronger than it needs to be, and I wonder if she’s just a generous pour or is hoping to dull me enough to leave me vulnerable. Just like Mister Tender would.

  “Is there a place we can talk in private?” I ask.

  She points to the day drinkers. “Need to stay here for my customers, dear.” She says it coostomahs, the same as my mother would. “We can talk in front of them—no secrets in Maggie’s. ’Sides, Pete and Mikey can’t spread gossip because they’re always here.”

  I look at both men and know Maggie is likely right. These men are here just waiting for death, which they’re bringing about one dirty shot glass at a time. One of them raises his empty glass and gives it a little shake, to which Maggie responds with a double pour of whiskey. No words are exchanged.

  “Okay,” I say.

  She leans her elbows on the counter and looks at me with something bordering on excitement. There’s no pain on her face, no sense of regret as there was with Charles. I wonder if she feels sorry for what happened, but I know I won’t ask her. That’s not why I’m here.

  “Well, then, Alice Gray. Tell me, what’s so important you came all this way to search out the likes of me?”

  And so I tell her, and in the process, I also indirectly tell Pete and Mikey. I’ve gotten good at this story, this past of mine I assumed would always be locked away deep inside me. Once again, it feels oddly good to tell it, as if I can place just a small piece of my burden on someone else for a little while. It takes some time, and I don’t stop, though at one point I notice one of the men looking over at me, head cocked, gaze drilled on me. I pause just for a moment, and then he nods, beckoning me to continue. So I do. I leave out the parts about Freddy Starks and Jimmy, but otherwise I tell these three people the tale of the last two weeks of my life, and I would expect that, even for a bar that has likely been host to thousands of intriguing tales, mine is one to remember.

  When I finish, Maggie pours me another gin and tonic and then asks me, “So, how do they look? The girls, I mean. How do they look?”

  “That’s what you want to ask?”

  “Well, they are my girls, after all. ’Suppose I still have an attachment, loose as it may be.”

  I’m on a stool at this point, and I straighten to soothe the muscles in my back. “Well, Melinda is put together enough to be passable,” I tell her. “But glassy-eyed, in a brainwashed kind of way. But Sylvia looks like a feral cat. She’d seem right at home gnawing fish bones out of garbage cans.”

  Maggie nods at me and gives me a little squint, and I wonder if she’s hurt by my words. I kind of hope so.

  “I don’t believe you.” The man—who is either Pete or Mikey—looks at me with an empty gaze. This man could be in his sixties, but more likely he’s a very hard-earned fifty.

  “Excuse me?” I say.

  “I don’t believe a word of your story.”

  “I don’t care what you believe,” I tell him.

  “Oh, shush you’self, Mikey,” Maggie tells him. “And not that it’s your business, but her story is all true. At least about what happened to her years ago. I was there.”

  Mikey looks me over, and then his face breaks into something close to a smile. “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” he says. “Show me a scar then, will ya? Never seen a stabbing scar before. Lift your shirt a little. Ha!” His fetid breath washes over me. “You can even show me more if you want. Looks like you got a nice pair under there.”

  I’ve practiced for fourteen years ignoring people, disappearing into my own world, walking away from comments designed to provoke me. I’m good at it, and it would be very easy to ignore this old piece of crust. But I’ve recently learned the joy of taking control, making the other person blink.

  So I get off my stool, grab the back of Mikey’s unwashed, clumpy hair, and press his face deep into the glossy bar top. He instinctively reaches out with his left arm, which I easily twist behind his back with my free hand. God help him if he has brittle bones, because some of them will soon shatter, especially if he puts up a struggle.

  “Goddamn it!” he grunts. “Get off me, bitch.”

  I pull his head back just a few inches off the bar, then slam it down. Hard. The sound of his skull connecting with lacquered oak is immensely satisfying.

  “Try that again,” I say. “This time, ask nicely.”

  Mikey squeezes his eyes shut as a few bubbles of spit form on his cracked lips. “Get off me…please.”

  I let go, and Mikey nearly tumbles off his barstool, just managing to catch himself before he spills to the floor.

  “You have any other comments for me?” I say.

  “You’re fuckin’ crazy,” he mumbles.

  I move for him, but he immediately leans back and puts his hands up in surrender.

  “I thought so,” I say.

  Mikey peels himself off the stool and wobbles a bit before collecting himself. “Maggie, you’ve let this place go to shit,” he says, then turns and staggers out the door.

  Maggie yells out after him. “Ne
ed to settle your tab before another drop!” All I can see are Mikey’s legs as he wobbles up the concrete steps to the world above.

  She turns to me and says, “Well, aren’t you full of piss?”

  “I didn’t come here to chitchat with drunks,” I say. I look over to the man who must be Pete, but he hasn’t moved. He’s a Madame Tussauds wax figure of an aging alcoholic, eternally posed over his bottomless glass.

  “No, you certainly didn’t,” Maggie says. She lets out a laugh that’s just shy of being pleasant. “But you did come here for some reason, more than just bringing me up to date with a past I moved here to forget. So what is it, dear? What do you want with me?”

  “I want to know who’s stalking me,” I say.

  “I would think you would. But I certainly couldn’t tell you that.”

  “But I think you do know something. Something about when you and Charles and my parents used to get together. Before I was born. Both my mother and your ex-husband told me you used to be social.”

  “Is that what they said?”

  “Yes.”

  “That all?”

  The way she asks makes me nervous. “More or less. Said you and my mother didn’t always get along. I got the impression you all went out together a handful of times, and that’s it.” I lock onto her. “But there’s something more, isn’t there? Charles and my mother…they both quickly dismissed the subject. As if there was more to say but they didn’t want to talk about it.”

  “Aye,” she nods. “There’s good reason your mum didn’t want to talk about it. And Charles? Well, he’s just too British to say anything.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but whatever she knows, it’s big.

  “And you, Maggie? Are you too British? Or are you going to tell me what you know?”

  She places each hand on the edge of the bar and leans in.

  “So your mum never told you? All this time. Imagine that.”

  “Maggie, I’m losing my patience here. What is it I don’t know?”

  Maggie seems immensely pleased with herself, and she takes her time drawing the words out.

  “Yeah, all right then. Your folks and us, we used to go out, and more than just a few times. Charles and me had just moved into the area, lived just a few houses down from your parents at the time, not across the park back then. Didn’t have kids. Young. We all got on. Sort of, that is. Never did quite take with her, actually. Always thought she was a bit of a highness. But the four of us together could keep ourselves entertained. Your father…brilliant, I’d say, imagination and charm. Circles around my Charles, anyhow.”

  Maggie leans closer, just an inch. Perfume heavy, cloaking the aroma of spilled beer. “Used to go ’round to a pub, the Tender Arms it was called. Go there maybe once a week, ’round a Saturday night more often than not. Have a few pints. Gossip a bit.” She winked at me. “Flirt a bit with your father, if I’m being honest with you. He’d flirt right back. But real subtle-like. I think just enough to poke your mother a bit. Just for fun, right?

  “But the main reason we went to the Tender Arms was the barman,” she continued. “Lord Jesus, what a charmer, as dashing as they come. Beautiful head of black hair. Deep, olive skin. Green eyes, devilish the way they’d look at you. A smile that’d melt any woman’s heart, and intimidate most men’s. His name was Jack.”

  She stops and holds her gaze on me, waiting for something to sink in. It doesn’t.

  “Jack,” she says, “was all about mischief, you see. He’d listen all day to his customers, and he was a good listener. They’d complain about an unfaithful wife, or an ’orrible boss. Maybe a spoiled brat or a shitty love life. And he’d look at them and say, ‘Now then, if all that could be fixed, what would you be willing to do?’ It was his game, understand. He wanted to know what a person would be willing to do to make their lives better. What a person’s price was for happiness, or fame and fortune.”

  This is it.

  Mister Tender didn’t come from my father’s imagination at all. By the time Mister Tender made his debut in the stories of Chancellor’s Kingdom, he’d been around for quite some time.

  “Mister Tender was a real person,” I say.

  “Well, now, not real real. But based on a real person, that’s for sure.”

  “How did I not know this?”

  Maggie shrugs. “Why would you know?”

  “But it was never brought up at the trial.”

  “No reason for it. Jack didn’t do those things to you.”

  But he’s real, I think. He inspired my father to create the character that made us comfortably rich and desperately sad.

  “That can’t be all,” I say. “I mean, I had no idea, but you’re not telling me this as some big secret, just that this Jack person was a loose inspiration for Mister Tender.”

  She reaches for a clean glass and wipes it with a dirty rag.

  “No, Alice, dear. That’s not all.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  She stops polishing the glass. “Good lord. You really don’t know, do you?”

  I begin to rise from my stool. I’m coiled, ready to spring.

  “Tell me.”

  It’s the moment she seems to have been wanting for years, because the excitement in her eyes is that of a little girl seeing a shooting star for the first time.

  “Well, dear, it seems Jack fucked your mum.”

  Forty-One

  Maggie holds up a hand of innocence. “Of course, that’s what people say. Hard to know for sure. But they changed, your parents. Something happened. Didn’t want to go to the Tender Arms anymore, then didn’t want to see the likes of us. It’s not like they told us so, exactly, but they just stopped comin’ round. Ignored our calls.” Maggie seems desperately trying to sound casual. “And then, suddenly, your mum was pregnant.”

  This last sentence is a finishing blow. I knew it was coming, and all I could do was sit helplessly and watch the fist arc toward my jaw. It smashes the life out of me.

  There is a reality here I don’t want to believe. An answer that perfectly fits the question, a question I’m now wishing I’d never asked. And it all explains one thing about me, a feature that people remark on from time to time, always in a complimentary way. A feature I didn’t inherit from my mom or dad, though I was told a grandparent on my mother’s side had it. A trait singular, in my immediate family, only to me.

  My green eyes.

  “What year?” I ask. “What year was that?”

  She looks at the ceiling, as if she didn’t know the exact year already. “Oh, who can say for sure? Late eighties or so, I suspect.”

  Right around when I was born.

  I can’t talk, so she does.

  “You wanted to know, Alice. Like I said, all I know is rumors and innuendo. I can’t tell you what’s fact and what isn’t.”

  “Jack,” I finally whisper. “What became of Jack?”

  Maggie shrugs. “He was just a bartender, dear. Disposable, like the rest of us. Probably moved on to different bars until settling down to grow old and lonely.” Her eyes lit up once again. “But that smile. I will never forget that smile.” She stares vacantly past me, into a long-ago time. “If I’m being truthful, I think I was a little jealous of your mum. I was attracted to Jack. Might have even had a go at him myself. But he never seemed to be interested in me. Much more enchanted with your mother.”

  “You knew,” I said. “This whole time, you knew.”

  “Like I said, Alice. Just rumors and innuendo. I never knew anything for certain.”

  Is this true? Is my father really not my father?

  It’s too much.

  How can any of this make sense? I try to think it through, to fit the pieces, but everything moves too fast and frantically in my brain.

  “But my father didn’t create Mister Te
nder until a decade later.”

  “So?”

  I struggle to speak, to find logic when my mind spins out of control. Maggie sees this and, in a moment of pity, pours me another drink. I sip, then slowly say, “Do you know anything else?”

  Maggie crosses her arms, and in this pose, I can see her strength, muscles pressing out against the taut skin of her arms.

  “There’s nothing else.”

  “You never asked my parents directly about it? Talked to Jack?”

  “No, Alice. I got pregnant myself with the twins near then and stopped going to bars. Stopped socializing with your parents. We all went into our own little suburban cocoons.”

  “But he kept track of you,” I say. “He must have. He knew your girls followed Mister Tender. He wrote them letters, telling them to stab me.”

  She takes a deep breath that seems to take all her energy to hold, then lets it out. “There was one time,” she said. “One other time I saw Jack. After your father’s books had come out. The most random thing, really. I was out with a friend at a bar in London, and there he was, barely looking a day older, working the bar just as before. I recognized him immediately, as he did me. Even remembered my name. Put me at ease immediately, which is what that man can do. Even my girlfriend lit up at the sight of him.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “For a few minutes,” she says, “though I could have gone the whole night listening to him. Chitchat mostly, but he was keen on asking about our kids. Specifically about you, but I told him we fell out of touch with your parents. Then he asked about Charles and me, and I told him we had twin girls. Twin girls who, in fact, were more than obsessed with your father’s books.”

  “So he didn’t know about the novels?”

  “No, I don’t believe so, or at least didn’t seem to know. I even told him the plot of the books, and that, in fact, they were perhaps based on Jack himself. He got real quiet after that.”

  Picturing this conversation is all too easy to do.