Masters of Illusions (23 page)

“I’d love to.”

“You can read a lot.”

“Yes.”

“We can go make love at the creek.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why not?”

“A little chilly in October.”

His weary eyes crinkled at the corners. “No mosquitoes, though.”

“There’s those new condos. If people look out the windows and see us screwing in their view of the marsh grass, they might
not enjoy their dinner.”

They smirked at one another.

The sand dune was building up again. And besides the condominiums behind the creek, Margie and Charlie found another change—a
little metal bridge crossing the creek so that the condo owners could get to the beach. If a small boat wanted to sail up
the creek, the sailor had to get out and hand crank the bridge up, like a toy drawbridge. Margie thought the bridge was cute.
Charlie wondered how the bridge got by the environmentalists. They tried the bridge and it worked. They cranked it up and
down and up and down.

“Convenient, at least,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Before, you could only cross the creek at low tide. As children, Little Pete and Margie used to enter the creek at high tide,
holding their crab nets and lines and towels and Margie’s library books above their heads, making believe they were marines
crossing leech-infested swamps. Margie remembered the time she dropped
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
into the creek, but Little Pete deftly retrieved it with his crab net. Even though Margie had dried it in the sun, the librarian
still made Margie pay for it. The woman picked it up with her thumb and forefinger, held it for a dramatic second over her
wastebasket, and let it drop. So Margie took out her money, paid the bill, and asked her if she could keep the book. The librarian
rolled her eyes, and
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
was liberated for the second time.

On the other side of the bridge, once they’d settled down on their blanket, Margie told Charlie she wanted a separation. He
said, “Where do you want to separate to?” He didn’t feign shock at what he’d known was coming. He wasn’t panicked either.

She said, “Radcliffe.”

He smiled sadly. “Then it’s more than a separation you want.”

“Yes. I want to start up again where I stopped.”

“You’ll never want to get back into the horseradish.”

“That’s right.”

He turned on to his side. Margie was on her back. He looked down into her eyes. “But that’s where I’ll be.”

She turned to him, too, face-to-face. “Your choice,” she said.

He said, “I have no choice.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Help me.”

Margie touched him. “Just talk to me, Charlie, the way I talked to you when we were lying right here such a long time ago.
Now it’s your turn.”

First he played with a strand of her hair. Then he said, “The alternative to my being out of the horseradish is different
than the one you see for yourself.”

“Charlie. Tell me what it is you see for yourself.”

“All I see is losing you. Same as if I stay in the jar. So why make an effort?”

“Oh, great. You cop out.” She ran her fingers against his lips. “Charlie, I don’t have much patience left.”

“I know.”

“Giving up what I need—what I’m telling you I have to have—if I give it up, that won’t help you.”

“I’m not asking for that.”

“I know. But you can’t go around totaling mirrors.”

He sighed. “Why did you pick Radcliffe? Was that the result of a consultation with Martha?”

Margie made a fist and tapped his chin. “You know, I’m getting a little tired of poor Martha taking the blame every time I
blink. No, it wasn’t Martha.”

“Well, then?”

“Well, the thing about reading the
New York Times
every day is that you get these little gossip columns of information on the lives of the rich and intellectual.”

“So what did the
Times
say about Radcliffe?”

“Radcliffe feels that applicants should all be treated alike. That accepted freshmen should be treated alike. If you’re fifty
years old and you get in, you get to room in a dorm like everyone else.”

“A freshman just like all the eighteen-year-olds.”

“That’s right.”

“Will you come home for Thanks giving?”

“I wouldn’t miss your mother’s Thanksgiving dinner for all the tea in Radcliffe.”

Charlie lay back and pulled her onto him. “Margie, if Radcliffe was in Pennsylvania instead of a stone’s throw from Fenway
Park, would you still want to go?”

“Nope.”

He pulled her head down against his chest. During that hug Charlie was giving her, Margie made a decision. If he asked whether
he could come visit her at Radcliffe, she would divorce him. If he didn’t, she wouldn’t. Margie waited. He didn’t ask. She
pulled up from him—her turn to look down into his eyes. His eyelashes fluttered against the sun behind her. Margie said, “I
love you.”

He said, “I love you.”

Then he kissed her and then he whispered in her ear, “I want you.”

Margie said, “I want you.”

Badly. Her terms were not subject to compromise anymore, and he knew it. He didn’t ask for one. It was time for all-out comfort,
temporary though that comfort would be. As they moved their blanket into the marsh grass, Margie was thinking that sex was
the same as what the doctor in “Star Trek” did to injured crew members—touched them where it hurt, creating some kind of orgasm
where the injured parts knit themselves back together and everything was okay till the next injury came along.

It was fairly warm for October, Margie thought. And the people in the condominiums be damned.

C
harlie dismantled the war room. He steamed the circus mural off the wall. He donated all his notebooks and tapes to the Hartford
Historical Society. Then, because he loved Margie so much, he gave her a room to please her most fanciful daydreams. He took
up the carpet and sanded the oak floors and stained them. He bought two small Chinese rugs. He put up some sort of flocked
wallpaper imported from England, and mahogany wainscoting he’d found at a house-wrecking company’s yard. Then he went all
through the house and collected her books from various shelves in every room: from the coffee table, too; from the end tables;
from the bedroom floor on her side of the bed; from under the bed; from her bureau; from the bathroom; from the kitchen counter.

He filled the stained and oiled and polished shelves with all Margie’s books, arranging them alphabetically by title. Margie
never connected writers specifically to the books they wrote, so that was okay. He put a print of her favorite painting on
the wall, the Fragonard of the woman reading in the sunlight. He had knocked out the little window in the room and put in
a bigger one so that Margie could read by sunlight, too, just like the woman in the painting. He even bought a small bench
with a tapestry cushion so she could
be
the woman in the painting. There was a wing chair and a leather sofa, and a brass table from India. The room looked like
one big, cozy nook. A personalized library of Margie’s own.

There was a little shelf for the catalogs from Trinity College in Hartford, and Wesleyan down the road in Middletown, and
UCONN and the University of Hartford. Margie didn’t really want to go away to college. She’d go to one right nearby and find
out what authors try to tell people about human nature.

When it was finished, Margie sat in the leather wing chair and looked around at her present. Charlie had basically adapted
the design of the room where Alistair Cooke introduced “Masterpiece Theatre.” Alistair was gone and Public Television had
redesigned his room. Fans, Margie thought, would be happy to know that the original still existed.

It was the loveliest present Margie could imagine, and the day that the room was officially unveiled, she found out who set
fire to the Barnum & Bailey circus tent on July 6, 1944. He finally confessed, and included details demonstrating that Henry
Maxson had told the truth.

The confession came just a few weeks before Charlie’s six-month ultimatum was to expire. It happened right when Margie threw
her library-warming party. It was winter then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Margie had tried to re-create Dickens—she
served mulled wine and mince pie with hard sauce to all the family milling about the leather furniture and tapestry cushions,
all raving about what a beautiful room it was and how Charlie had missed his calling. Someone actually said that: He missed
his calling. Margie looked to Martha, who never could fathom how or why her father had missed his whole life. Like her grandfather.
Charlie’s cousin Cindy was the last to arrive; she came in just when things were on the verge of breaking up. She was such
a contrast to all of them. They had rosy cheeks from the wine and from the toastiness of the room. Cindy’s skin was always
pale. She was alone. A pretty girl, everyone had always said, which meant: Why isn’t she married? And since she wasn’t, she
was still referred to as a girl.

Martha went right over to her and the two went off and chatted in a corner. In deference to Cindy, the party seemed to just
start up again. Margie was glad; she was enjoying herself She was proud of Charlie. He was going to be all right.

People began re-eating. “This stuff on the pie is delicious, Margie,” was what people kept saying.

Then Margie felt Martha’s eyes on her. Margie looked back at her, at her daughter’s wide, wet eyes. Martha’s face was bone
white, whiter than Cindy’s. She was standing by Cindy, who was sitting on the tapestry bench under the big window Martha had
one of Cindy’s hands enclosed in both of hers, holding it up against her stomach. Margie walked over to them, and when she
reached them, Martha said, “Excuse me,” and tried to escape, but Cindy held fast to her. In Charlie’s family of extrasensory
perception, everybody seemed to turn toward them at once.

Cindy mumbled something. She mumbled, “Aunt Palma.”

And another tide of just perceptible turning took place and Margie’s mother-in-law’s eyes shifted, searching out the wrath
of her husband. Then she remembered she was safe, and stiffened, and shot a look at Cindy, a look Margie had never seen. A
dangerous look, a direct physical threat. Martha pulled Cindy’s hand up higher to her chest and gazed down into her eyes,
a gesture that served to release Cindy from Palma’s horrible gaze. Now Martha held on to Cindy’s gaze until, slowly, Cindy’s
head turned and she looked at Margie. She said, “Margie, my Aunt Palma wouldn’t let me tell. But now it’s over so I will.
I did see something at the circus.” Her gaze moved toward Charlie, who was standing on the other side of the room, and everyone
else looked to him, too. Margie thought his face seemed wizened, creased with lines that had never been there before. Cindy
said to Charlie, her voice awry, “I saw you. I waved, but you didn’t see me. Near where we were going in. You were standing
on the other side of the animal chute.” She gave a sad little smile. “I was so glad you’d gotten to go to the circus after
all. When we went to your house… after… I told Aunt Palma that I’d seen you there. She said I shouldn’t tell or Uncle Denny
would beat you to death. But I already knew that, that’s why I didn’t tell my mother you were there.”

Then Margie watched Charlie shrink. She couldn’t comprehend that he wasn’t actually shrinking, that instead he was sinking
to his knees, sinking in slow motion until finally he became the same size he was when he was ten years old. When he set the
circus tent on fire.

Palma O’Neill was the only one who had actually recognized that Charlie had set the fire. When Cindy whispered her words to
Palma a long time ago she had known. She had put Cindy’s words together with Charlie appearing at the door in such a terrible
state—sweaty and in shock. She realized the shock had not come from the fear of having to face his father for not putting
out the garbage, which was why his father had taken the ticket away. But as Palma had already tried to explain to Margie,
she was of a generation that considered the expression of feelings a weakness and the hiding of those feelings acceptable.
She didn’t see where that phenomenon became hiding the truth, became lying, which Margie had euphemized as not being frank.
Became betrayal.

And then Margie saw everything—all of it—through Palma’s eyes: Denny isn’t really hurting the children, my brothers would
kill him if he were; the children aren’t angry and bitter and resentful; after all, what do kids know? My husband is a bad
man, but he’s not so bad that he’d drive my child to put a match to a circus tent full of people, full of other children.
Palma was able to believe her own lies.

At the moment of revelation, when Charlie sank to the floor of the library he’d built so painstakingly for Margie, Martha
had to desert Cindy and take hold of her mother—hold her back by her shoulders. She held her back that day, and in the days
to follow. When she got her put and could trust Margie not to attack whoever might be in her path, she spent her time traveling
back and forth across the house, back and forth between her father and mother. Charlie was in his sickbed in the bedroom.
“Mental collapse” was how Martha described it to everyone who asked. She told Margie that, too. Margie said to her: “I don’t
give a shit.”

Margie slept in Martha’s room with her. Charlie’s family kept coming to visit, one by one. Margie refused to see any of them.
Except Cindy.

Cindy and Martha and Margie sat on Margie’s bed like the girls in the dorm at Radcliffe. Cindy said, “Margie, Aunt Palma said
if I told, Uncle Denny would beat Charlie to death.” Cindy wanted to be sure Margie knew that those were the exact words.
She hadn’t said he’d spank Charlie. She’d said he’d beat him to death. Cindy, at five, knew what a spanking from Denny meant.
She’d witnessed them. Poor thing. So it was weak little Cindy who gave Margie the strength to imagine speaking to Charlie,
another poor thing. Cindy was the one who got Margie past being too filled with fury to function. Palma had sacrificed her
granddaughter to the lie. And Chick, if he suspected, and how could he not, thought he was protecting his nephew from himself.
The truth, after all, would eventually disappear. But it hadn’t. Just as it hadn’t for little Bobby Corcoran.