“Maggie, the stepladder’s in place,” Reggie said, as the Volvo turned through the gateposts.
2
Rummage
The assistants began packing up the light stands and other paraphernalia around seven. Nina was gone for the day, Lindy was God knows where, Hooper was down in the Utopia of MTV, she assumed. The prospect of an evening absolutely alone unnerved Maggie.
“Could I induce you to stick around for dinner?” she asked Reggie as he headed out the door.
“Twist my arm.”
She did.
“What’s on the menu?” he asked.
“Oh, I dunno. I’ll have to rummage.”
“Rummage, did you say? My favorite dish!”
So they repaired to the kitchen. Ever alert to thematic menu ideas, Maggie took the idea of rummaging seriously and got under way by shaking up two Bacardi cocktails, which she served in a couple of 1840 pale green Feniger flutes. Among the many and various contents of the fridge she descried a seven-pound free-range stewing hen, which she plunked into her largest Romertopf clay vessel, along with a cup of Meyer’s dark rum, a fistful of hand-ground Jamaican jerk seasonings, a drift of cilantro, a heap of Vidalia onions, and a shag of dried tangerine peel. By the time the ensemble went into the oven it was eight-fifteen, with two hours’ cooking time to go.
They switched to Cuba Libres while the hen stewed, and Maggie constructed a sort of Caribbean tiramisu for two out of sliced mango, overripe figs, day-old orange tea cake, and a simple syrup laced with sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican añejo. Reggie was good company, she mused, a fundamentally decent person, bright but no overweening genius, full of interesting information beyond gossip, obviously talented, respected in his field, and sufficiently solvent to own a 2,500-square-foot loft studio in Tribeca and keep a sporty little Mazda Miata privately garaged. One had to admire any artistic soul who could make a decent living, she reflected. For a certain kind of normal woman, he might even be described as a catch. Why did she never see him with a date? He was always solo. She’d suspected the obvious, but hadn’t Reggie declared himself heterosexual at Maggie’s very table some weeks ago? His production assistants were hardly unattractive—one of them, Rene, had done her share of modeling. Yet there was not the slightest sign of … activity. No sexual joking. No touching. What was Reggie’s problem? she wondered.
They sat at the table with the rum bottle, a six-pack of Diet Cokes, a dish of lime wedges, and a hunk of pork and prune pâté between them, hacking away at the pâté with decreasing decorum as the hen stewed and the hour grew late. For Maggie, this was the point where things grew blurry in recollection. It seemed that Lindy came home, but not through the kitchen. Maggie heard a car, the front door opening, Lindy giggling, and a man’s voice (Javier?); they went directly upstairs without even a howdy-do. Maggie must have expressed some irritation. Reggie had it all coolly analyzed. Lindy, he explained, was treating her the way adolescents treat their parents: Maggie was the enemy. This had never been a feature of their relationship, Maggie insisted, pouring another drink. People change, Reggie said. He was so good to talk to. So wise and reassuring. There was something terrifically appealing—even sexy—about it. She’d never thought about Reggie that way before. His sex appeal was extremely understated, she concluded. She could also probably break him of the habit of wearing V-necked sweaters all the time. They made him appear softer and rounder than necessary. Emotionally, he seemed a tower of strength, especially compared, say, to a basket case like Kenneth or a hothouse flower like Swann. What could be more important between two adults than that sort of emotional and moral strength? she thought, in the rapturous vapors of yet another rum—for, in Reggie, the two seemed one and the same. Surely the hen was done by now. Well, it wasn’t falling off the bone, the way she liked it, but they were just too goddamned ravenous. Besides, the room was beginning to rotate …
3
Things Just Happen
She woke up with a throbbing head, staring at Reggie’s naked spine. She understood at once whose back she was looking at but had no recollection whatever as to how they had gotten from the kitchen table to her bed or what had transpired between them afterward. All that Maggie could discern amid the plangent emotional disorder in her skull was a vague notion that she had done something to further and unnecessarily complicate her existence. Reggie stirred. Maggie suppressed an impulse to bolt. He turned over and, sleepily murmuring a word that may have been darling, enfolded her in his arms, burying his head between her neck and shoulder. There was something both reassuringly familiar and shocking about the heat of his yielding fleshy body and the trace of his cologne.
“I’m afraid I’m going to be sick,” she said, and Reggie opened his arms, liberating her. She flew to the bathroom and proceeded to lose the remaining contents of her stomach. When she was done being sick, she took four aspirins and staggered into the shower, letting the pulse-o-matic showerhead massage her neck and shoulders for such a long time that the water ran tepid—quite a feat considering the size of the heater tank that she and Kenneth had installed during the last renovation. When she could resort to no further delay, she emerged to find Reggie sitting propped up against the pillows looking drained, his eyes glassy and his mouth downturned like a ravaged soul in an Oriental woodcut.
“Aspirin?” she said.
Reggie nodded distantly. She fetched him some with a cup of water, then sat on the edge of the bed in her red-and-black-checked robe, toweling her hair to keep her hands occupied as he swallowed the pills.
“This is terrible,” he said, after draining the glass.
Maggie sighed. In fact, she did not quite understand what he meant. It was regrettable, perhaps, that they’d fallen into bed together— at least this was the point of view she had adopted during the clarifying interlude in the shower—but it need hardly be considered catastrophic. Did it?
“We’re grown-ups,” Maggie said. “We’ll get over it.”
“That’s what I mean,” Reggie said.
“Oh, come on. It’s not so bad.”
“Oh, but it is. I’m hopelessly in love with you, Maggie. Have been for years. Couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
She sighed again.
“Now we’ve had this,” he went on, staring forward as if into some dreadful fate. “Our little moment.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it?” he said, finally turning his gaze on her. It was not an angry look but there was something relentless, almost implacable about it—something she understood would never be satisfied by anything she might possibly say. She began to cry and to hate herself for it, recognizing it as the universal feminine dodge it was.
“My life’s been a little out of control lately, Reggie. Things have been … just happening to me.”
She reached for his hand but he drew it away. Then he climbed out of bed and began to dress, finding his articles of clothing where they’d been strewn.
“I’m going home now,” he said when he had donned his sweater.
She sat as if paralyzed, holding the damp towel while he left the room. For the longest time she remained there, breathlessly, as though she distrusted her very power to move through the world without breaking things.
4
Down by the Borage
She went about her own house now as though it were contested territory rigged with booby traps. Even the carpets seemed mined. The prospect of normality dimmed by the minute as she apprehended that the photo shoot would certainly not continue today. What about tomorrow?—that was the question that tortured her as she took refuge in the sewing room to avoid facing a painfully bright May morning. Even in this refuge of refuges, however, something—perhaps the strong English tea—kept her on the edge of panic and eventually drove her out of the house into the fresh air of the garden, where she determined to dig out and divide the perennials in the sunny bed beside the chicken coop.
She was thus laboring, in a pair of k
haki shorts that displayed her tanned legs to good effect and an old denim shirt (once Kenneth’s) tied by the tails at her midriff, when Walter Fayerwether happened along on his way to the herb garden with a wheelbarrow full of granular lime. The lingering effects of all that rum caused her to startle.
“Excuse me,” he said. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”
She hesitated to catch her breath before saying, “That’s all right. I’m a little jumpy today.”
“Haven’t seen you around much,” he said. The sun hung just above his right shoulder and she had to shield her eyes to see him. He loomed like some heroic proletarian figure in a 1930s WPA mural.
“I’m having a … a somewhat abnormal year,” Maggie said.
“I hope everything’s going all right.”
“Oh, sure, fine.”
“How about out here?” Walter said. “Satisfied with the work I’m doing?”
“Oh. Yes. Uh, well, there were a few things I thought we might discuss.”
“Fire away.”
“Yes, well …”
“I’ve got a few notes of my own. Let’s walk and talk.”
Maggie took half a clump of divided rudbeckia and wrapped the root bundle in wet burlap. Walter offered a hand to help her up. She was not sure whether the gesture was excessively gallant or merely polite. Not knowing the difference anymore rattled her nerves again and made her shudder despite the sunshine. She rubbed her own hands in the lush grass to get the dirt off and reached up to take one of his, which was remarkably soft, warm, and dry.
“You should wear gloves,” he said.
“I forget.”
They strolled awhile in silence past the fenced cutting garden with its trellis of sweet peas straining toward the sun.
“Bob used to get milfoil out of Candlewood Lake from a man up in Sherman. We kept it in a big heap beside the vegetable garden for mulching.”
“That must be why I keep turning up fishing lures with the rototiller.”
“Yes,” Maggie chuckled. “We’ve got quite a collection.”
“I’ll get a load down later in the week.”
They entered the arbor that led through the bosky dell that was Maggie’s shade garden, a recent project only partially complete. The new gardener’s stolid competence impressed her, and his botanical knowledge was encyclopedic. Just along the path they tread, he identified seven varieties of plantain lily by name. He made some diplomatic suggestions about changing things—quite a departure from the way Bob had simply discharged Maggie’s every wish and whim—but he was also willing to follow instructions. He recorded many notes in a little leather-covered minder as they wended back up from a bracken-filled slough along the banks of Kettle Creek to the graveled apron of the herb garden, where two of his laborers were setting out new sage plants to replace the winterkills.
“While we’re at it, let’s yank those spike lavenders for salvia,” Maggie said.
“I was thinking along the same lines.”
“And we must move the lovage. The damn things reached seven and a half feet last year. Shaded out all my marjoram.”
“How about sticking them in the border with the mulleins and hollyhocks?”
“Good idea. You know I’m losing patience with the borage. It’s crowding the fennel horribly.”
“I’d give all the anises their own bed,” he ventured.
“It would make for a nice scent zone.”
She was already beginning to feel better. From there they marched around the drying shed to the poppy beds. The big ragged plants drooped with fuzzy, silver-green flower buds the size of apricots. A few of the buds were beginning to crack open to reveal the vivid and fantastic red-petaled blossoms within.
“When we first came here in ’81 this spot was an automobile graveyard.”
“Hard to believe now.”
“It was hard to believe then. We hauled thirty-eight junkers out. The family that occupied the place had reached, shall we say, a low point in their dynastic fortunes. We called them the pig people—I know it’s elitist and all that, but honestly you’ve never seen such a low form of human life. They had dogs shitting in the house. It was shocking.”
“There are a lot of people out there who aren’t making it these days.”
“Of course. I don’t mean to be flippant. The country’s going to hell, isn’t it?”
“Well, I admire what you’re trying to do here, Mrs. Darling.”
Something like an electrical shock ran through Maggie. She was not sure for an instant whether he was being ironic. The warm air between them seemed positively charged with lucent emotion.
“I’m just trying to keep one little corner of the world in order,” she said
They strolled along the border toward a velvet purple smudge of irises in the distance.
“I suppose I’ll bump into Mr. Darling, one of these days,” Fayerwether said, sending another jolt through Maggie.
“I suppose you don’t read People magazine, Mr. Fayerwether.”
“Once in a while when I’m standing in the supermarket checkout line. Why? Are you in it?”
“You know, it would be awfully nice to have nasturtiums boiling out of these borders right into the path, like at Giverny.”
“I have to pick up a few things tonight at Safeway. Should I have a look?”
“Don’t bother. It was weeks ago. Anyway, to answer your question, Mr. Darling has not been living here for some time now. You won’t be seeing him around.”
“Oh?”
“And is there a Mrs. Fayerwether?”
“That ended some time ago.”
“I see.”
“If there’s nothing else, then maybe I’d better run along, Mrs. Darling. Get a few things done before lunch.”
“Sure,” she said, feeling a little cheated. Then he was gone and she was left in the bright spring sunshine with her ragged nerves and too many unaskable questions.
5
An Old School Hero
She was studying the blossoms on the quince tree beside the house when a woefully familiar German car turned into the lane and barreled toward her, finally pulling up short in a cloud of dust. A little breeze dispersed the dust and the face behind the wheel resolved familiarly, too.
“Maggie,” he greeted her expansively through the open window, all teeth and tan.
“Hello, Kenneth.”
“You’re looking every inch the mistress of the manor.”
“And you the very … lord of the flies.”
“Oh, Maggie, must we start on such a footing?”
“’Mistress of the manor?’”
“I meant it as a compliment.”
“Sorry. I’m a little on edge.”
“Life’s not getting you down, I hope?”
“We all sail on choppy seas, don’t we?”
“You are in a mood.”
“Surely you didn’t come to take my emotional temperature.”
“No, I was in the neighborhood and I simply dropped by to say hello, to let you know that I’m all right—not that I expect you to care— and to let you know that I have decided not to contest the terms of our separation.”
Maggie paused to take this in.
“I’m sorry about my remark,” she eventually said.
“No problem,” he said, smiling relentlessly.
“Of course that’s good news about the separation.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think these past months. I don’t expect to be forgiven, of course. I don’t even expect to be invited in for a Coca-Cola. But we have to get on with life, don’t we? And recriminations just hold us back, don’t they?”
“I suppose they do.”
“Couldn’t help noticing you in People magazine.”
“Oh?” Something alerted Maggie to fortify herself.
“That English warbler? He was on the scene Christmas Eve, wasn’t he?”
“I thought you said no recriminations, Kenneth?”
“Merely a
point of information. Come on, Maggs, I’m setting you up for life, no strings attached. Can’t we be friendly?”
“Probably not in the way you mean. Not pals.”
It was Kenneth’s turn to reflect a moment.
“I see I’m kind of poking at a hornet’s nest with a sharp stick here,” he said. “It’s just my manner. I’m defective that way. I know some things about myself that I didn’t six months ago. My eyes have been opened. What I meant to say in my crude, blundering way was that I was glad to see you went out and had a little fun. Frankly, I wasn’t sure you were capable of it—oops. There I go again. See, I don’t mean to be that way. It’s this obnoxious manner of mine. You know, when you’ve spent forty-eight-odd years being a jerk it takes an effort to be a human being.”
“It takes an effort in any case, whether you’re a jerk or not—not that I’m saying you are.”
“No, I am. I definitely am. Was. Er, let’s say I’m working on becoming an ex-jerk. I’m out of the market, too, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“In the active sense. Throop, Cravath and all that.”
“You can certainly afford to coast for a while.”
“Who’s coasting? I’ve established a foundation over in Ridgefield. The Different Drummer Self-Awareness Center.”
“Really?”
“You betcha.”
“What goes on there? Drumming?”
“Don’t knock drumming. It lowers blood pressure and raises serotonin levels—did you know that?”
“I hear it makes men feel better.”
“But that’s just one part of the program. We’re a holistic wellness center. I’ve signed up a staff. Nutritionists, fitness trainers, hypnotherapist, massage therapist, aroma therapist, a tai chi instructor, a TM counselor, an herbalist. I bought the old Pulsifer estate on Round Pond. I’m having the time of my life and learning incredible things and getting in touch with my own issues and, well, kind of getting my shit together for maybe the first time. It’s a gas.”
Maggie Darling Page 17