Until now. With his wife no longer needing his money, Al no longer needed his job. He was old enough to retire, he could afford to cover his own measly expenses on his social security check, and then he could qualify for Medicare.
Unless he opted to finally do the right thing.
It had been too long since he had options.
Dropping onto his sagging sofa, he laid his head back and stared up at the cork board ceiling. He felt a little sick to his stomach.
“I need a beer,” he muttered. The ceiling said nothing to change his mind, so he hauled himself up off the sofa and headed for the kitchen.
The wood-paneled walls sometimes made him claustrophobic, but beer eased the mounting tension in the room. The television, his constant companion, sometimes rasped against his senses like a bickering woman, but beer took the edge of the voices. Silence, if he could no longer stand the television, made him antsy, and beer usually soothed his spirit. Loneliness, when it caught him unawares, made him feel hollow, and beer helped fill in those empty places.
He plucked a cold can off the shelf in the refrigerator, and hooked his thumb and middle finger into the plastic rings of a new six-pack he’d put to chilling in there when he first got home. He took them all back to the sofa.
Maggie was gone. No, Maggie was dead. She’d been gone a long time already, maybe even before she showed up.
Suddenly, without warning, Al began to weep. Giant tears rolled down his cheeks in silence, and he swallowed hard to keep back the groan that tried to escape him. Why was he crying? Why now, after all these years?
Death. The finality of it all hit him like a bullet, leaving a gaping hole in his heart where his locked-away grief—and everything else tangled up with it—was suddenly let loose.
He sat that way for longer than he would ever admit to anyone, eyes pouring, nose running, cold drinks growing warm in his hands, as he let the years of sorrow empty out of him.
~ ~ ~ ~
He first saw her sitting in the waiting area at the barbershop, her finely-shaped legs crossed, one foot swinging to the rhythm of some song she had playing in her head, turning the pages of a ladies magazine. Even as she read, she held her head high, chin thrust forward, posing as though she knew she was being watched. And she was. Glancing around the shop, Al could see he wasn’t the only man appreciating the view and wondering what on earth the pretty little thing was doing at Ol’ Elmer’s.
Turns out she was waiting for a ride, and the barbershop was where she’d been told to wait. And wait, she did. According to Elmer, she’d been there for an hour by the time Al showed up, and she was still there when he was done, all trimmed and shaved. Al watched her out of the corner of his eye and didn’t miss the subtle nervousness beneath her poise: stolen glances at her watch, her eyes darting over the top of the magazine to the large window that looked out into the parking lot, the way she chewed on her bottom lip.
Al paid for his haircut and went home, curiosity about the girl sitting like an uncomfortable weight on his chest. Who was she waiting for? She looked about in her mid-twenties, a good ten-plus years younger than Al, but something about her made her seem old beyond her years, something about her eyes. When he passed her on his way out, she’d looked right at him; bold, steady, but not outright challenging. He paused momentarily, thinking she might speak to him, but when she said nothing, he just nodded his head and left.
When Al returned for his Friday trim four weeks later, he pushed open the barbershop door and stopped dead in his tracks. There she sat, in the exact same chair, one leg crossed prettily over the other, reading her magazine. Their eyes met across the top of the pages in her hand. She acknowledged him, but didn’t smile.
“She’s been here every Friday for a month,” Elmer muttered by way of explanation. “She apologizes for tying up the seat in the waiting room, but I know a good thing when I see one, and she’s bringing in the business for me. I’ve been booked solid every Friday afternoon since she started showing up.”
“Anybody asked who she’s waiting for?” It was Jude Carson from the next chair over. Al was sure the girl could hear the old man’s gravelly voice, but she didn’t appear to be paying any attention to their talk.
“Of course I did,” Elmer grunted. He held up his left hand and pointed at the wide gold band on his ring finger.
“She’s got a husband? She’s not wearing a ring.” Al had made it a point to notice.
“Fiancé.” Elmer spoke the fancy word from the corner of his mouth. “Told her to wait for him here, on Friday afternoon.”
Jude chuckled, and flipped the crisp page of his newspaper, making a racket. “What the Sam-diddly? Did he forget to mention which Friday?”
“Apparently.” Elmer’s bushy brows came together. “Al, you’re about her age. I think she might need someone to talk to.”
Al was taken aback. At thirty-seven, he was still hoping to find a woman to make his wife, but the more time passed, the more he wondered if maybe there just wasn’t any woman out there hoping to find him for a husband. He didn’t understand the female mind, and the longer he stayed single, the more intimidating they became. Oh, he liked women all right. He liked looking at them, he liked thinking about them; but talking to one? Especially a stranger, at that? No thank you.
Just as he pulled open his car door to get in, she spoke from right behind him, startling him. “You’re Al, right?”
“I am.” His voice sounded wary, but she didn’t seem to notice. She wore a pretty blue dress with a red belt and matching red heels, and her hair was carefully styled in that puffy short hairdo all the girls were wearing those days. Every time Al thought about girls’ hair he was grateful to be a man.
“I know you and Elmer and the others were talking about me in there.” She said it like she was going to make some kind of a point, so Al didn’t try to deny it, but waited for her to continue. “Just so you know, I’m waiting for my fiancé. His name is Billy Raven. You heard of him?”
Al didn’t voice the thought that Mr. Raven appeared to have flown the coop without his little dove, but shook his head and said, “No, sorry.” Then before he could change his mind, he did voice the second thought that came to him. “You need a lift somewhere?”
The girl stood there, looking at him in that forward way. Finally, she said, “I could really use a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. Would you like to take me to dinner?”
He should have known she’d be trouble. He should have seen it coming a mile away.
~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 2
They were married six weeks later in a chapel in Vegas; no family, because she had none, and his sister wasn’t able to fly out from Colorado in the middle of a blizzard in March. It was probably the most impulsive thing Al had ever done in his entire life, but Maggie made him feel daring; a little dangerous. And feeling dangerous did something to a man’s insides.
One month later, Maggie lost the baby Al didn’t know she had. She also lost any reason to pretend she loved him, and before he had the chance to settle into married life and all that he’d dreamed it would be, he was longing to get out so he could crawl into a hole and lick his near-fatal wounds.
But Al was raised up to stick to his promises. Maggie was now his wife, and he’d promised to care for her in sickness and in health, so that’s what he intended to do. Once he got over the shock of his new reality, he realized she was ill; no one in their right mind would behave the way she did without being some kind of sick.
For the next year or more, he put up with her self-pity, her anger, her derision. She called him foul names and told him he wasn’t a real man; no real man would have stuck around after he found out she’d only married him because she was having Billy Raven’s baby. And somewhere in his gut, he thought she might be right…except for those rare moments when she’d come to him, usually in the dead of night, great, gasping sobs tearing out of her, and beg him to hold her.
“I’m so sorry, Al. I’m so sorry. You’re too g
ood for me.” She never said the words he wanted to hear from her, but he’d shush her, and tell her things would get better, that he’d see her through this, that he’d always be there for her.
Things didn’t get better. On the eve of their second anniversary, he found her sitting on the edge of the bathtub, a dazed look in her eyes. One hand rested in her lap, the disposable blade from his razor clamped between her bloodied fingers. Her other arm hung at her side, blood dripping into a growing stain on the bathmat.
Al reached for her just as she began to topple backwards into the tub, and lowered her to the floor. Raising her arm so that the cut wrist was above her heart, he wrapped a hand towel around the wound as tight as he could make it. “Don’t you die on me, Maggie Sue,” he ground out. “Don’t you die on me. Neither one of us deserves this.”
She began to moan, then cry softly, but when he told her he needed to take her to the hospital, she clutched at the hem of his shirt. “No, no! Please don’t take me there. They’ll put me away, Al. They’ll take me away from you.”
He peeled her fingers from his clothes, a terrible sadness seeping through him at the sight of the bloody prints she left behind. “They’ll help you, Maggie. They’ll help us. They’re not going to take you away.”
But she begged him, her sobs turning to wails. “No, Al! You don’t know what they do to people like me! They’ll take me away and drug me and do terrible things to me. I know it’s true. Please don’t make me go.”
When he’d freed his shirt from her grip, he’d felt the hard ridge running from the heel of her palm almost four inches up the inside of her forearm, and something in the way she spoke made him believe there was at least an element of truth in her fears about the hospital. He wasn’t about to let them take her away from him.
Instead of seeking professional help, Al gave in and took care of her himself. He stayed by her side for the next two weeks, missing work for the first time in longer than he could remember. He cleaned her wound, he helped her bathe, he even washed her hair for her. When it dried all soft and natural around her pale features, her big eyes following his every move like he was her hero, he thought she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
For a while, there was stillness in their home, if not peace. For a while, Al thought there might be hope for them, that maybe she’d bled out her despair on the bathroom floor that night.
Sure enough, something did bleed out of Maggie, but it wasn’t her despair. She was no longer angry or aggressive, but became fidgety, weepy; easily fixated on minor problems while ignoring things that needed her attention. He’d come home to find her down on all fours, scrubbing the grooves in the kitchen linoleum, her knees raw from kneeling in scouring powder, while the dishes piled high in the sink. And she wouldn’t let him help. The one time he’d washed up after supper while she bathed, she’d been inconsolable, weeping bitterly about not being a good wife, promising to try harder.
She’d go through every item of clothing they owned between them, a pair of tiny scissors in hand, snipping out tags and loose threads, while dirty laundry filled the hamper to overflowing. She’d spend hours organizing their closet, one day by color, the next by the length of each item on its hanger, sometime even by outfit.
Over time, her fixation turned to him. She’d be up at the crack of dawn cooking breakfast, putting together a healthy lunch for him to take to work, making certain he was dressed neatly, every hair in place, his face clean. She’d be waiting for him on the front porch when he got home, a tall glass of lemonade or iced tea in her hand, or coffee on a cold day.
Then she started asking him to stay home from work to be with her. “I’m afraid, Al. The guy next door is home all day, and there’s something wrong with him, I just know it.” There was always a variation of this excuse, but Al knew full well that their neighbor was a single mom who worked while the kids were in school, leaving the apartment empty during the hours he was at the factory.
Every day became worse, to the point where she’d sometimes cling to him, weeping, begging him not to leave her. He’d have to peel her arms from around him and promise her repeatedly that he’d come straight home the moment he clocked out.
One morning, she was up before him as usual. He could hear her opening and closing the drawers in the kitchen, and the smell of garlic and scrambled eggs wafted through the rooms. He got up, dressed in his work jeans and blue shirt, and made his way to the kitchen, realizing at the last minute that the sounds had ceased. Maggie was nowhere to be found.
The memory of finding her in the bathroom came rushing at him like a punch in the gut, nearly doubling him over, and he raced through the small apartment, terrified of what he might stumble upon, but desperate to find her anyway.
He finally discovered her outside in their assigned parking spot under the apartment complex carport, sitting primly in the passenger seat of his car. She held his lunchbox on her lap and a bright smile was plastered on her face. She wore a pair of jeans and one of his shirts; she looked like a caricature of him.
“I’m going to work with you,” she declared. “Isn’t that wonderful?” She leaned over the driver’s seat and tried to open his door for him, but her fingers couldn’t quite reach the handle. “Come on! Get in, Al, honey! We’re going to have so much fun today!”
He’d missed work that day, because she refused to get out of the car, and he wasn’t about to make a scene and drag her out for all to see. He kept his keys hidden away after that.
But his boss wasn’t pleased. “You been missing a lot of work this last year, my friend. You gonna keep this up?” It wasn’t really a question, and Al knew he wasn’t really his boss’ friend, either.
Maggie tried new tactics to keep him home with her. Sometimes it was as trivial as refusing to get out of bed to cook breakfast for him, something he’d never assumed she’d do in the first place. Other times, she went to drastic, if not very effective measures, like when she hid all his jeans and he had to wear his one pair of good slacks to work. Another time, she refused to come out of the bathroom so he could use the toilet. For a week straight, she pretended to have fainting spells, crumpling to the floor in the middle of breakfast. He only fell for that one once.
Al was exhausted all the time. He didn’t sleep well, for fear she’d do something crazy in the middle of the night, and he worried about her all day while he was away. He caught himself dozing at the wheel on the way to and from work more than once, and his patience was worn thin.
He knew he needed help, but he didn’t know where to turn. She had no family, at least none she ever claimed, and all he had was his sister in Denver who’d never even met his wife. Maggie had no friends, and because she consumed his every waking moment, Al didn’t have any either. Even so, the guys he used to play poker with, or bowl with, weren’t really the “help-with-the-crazy-missus” kind of friends. Although she hadn’t tried to harm herself since cutting her wrist, he knew she really wasn’t safe to leave alone anymore.
And then, two weeks before their fourth Christmas together, everything changed.
~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 3
“You can’t go to work today.” She said it so casually, so matter-of-factly, that he got sucked into the conversation without realizing it.
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to let you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Maggie.” Al pushed up from the breakfast table and carried his plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs to the sink. He was no longer hungry.
“Oh, I’m not being ridiculous.” He turned and studied her. She was too calm. He decided to ignore her and headed to the bathroom. It had to be another hair-brained scheme of hers, and he could feel his nerves pull taut like tension wires.
When he stepped out into the little hall, there she stood, blocking the way to the front door. She watched him, eyes wide, bold, like she’d done so many years ago at Ol’ Elmer’s. But this time, oh, this time, that look was all challenge.
�
�What’re you up to, Maggie Sue?” He kept his voice calm, calling her the name he whispered to her in the middle of the night when she came to him for comfort.
“You’re not going to work, Al. I told you. I hate your job. It’s destroying our marriage.”
In the back of his mind, lights flickered and flashed, a warning, telling him to pay attention, to keep his cool, to not let his guard down. But Al was tired of playing this game with her. He was tired of hoping the beautiful girl he married would miraculously reappear. He was tired of this life they were living. He was tired of her. No, he was sick to death of her.
“Go ahead. Do whatever you’re going to do to try and stop me. But know this. That job you hate so much is putting a roof over your head. Granted, it’s not a fancy roof, but it’s a roof none the less. That job feeds you, clothes you, bathes you, sustains you. In fact, that job is what keeps you out of the hospital. If I didn’t have it, we wouldn’t have this apartment, and if we didn’t have this apartment—”
“Shut up!” The words barreled out of her mouth like a freight train, the force of them making him reel backward a little. And then he saw the knife she held above her head as she came at him. “You’re staying here with me! Alive or dead, I don’t care!”
He lowered his shoulder and charged her, his body reacting before he really thought about what he was doing. He rammed into her, taking her down like a bull does a matador, crushing her up against the wall. Her head hit the plaster hard—he heard the solid thunk—and bounced off, her face crashing into his shoulder. The knife went flying, skittering impotently away from them, and he breathed heavy with the strain of holding onto what was left of his self-control.
Elderberry Croft: Volume 3 Page 5