People Who Knock on the Door (14 page)

She was looking over the partition at the kitchen walls, the ceiling. “Well, I know,” she said in a gentle voice. “I just wanted to set foot here again—somehow. Your father has helped me so much. Me and my sister Louise.—Hello, Robbie.” Her very red lips spread in a smile, showing small teeth.

Robbie stood in the living room doorway, his mouth a little open in surprise. “My father told you not to come here while he’s gone.”

“Yes, but—I’ve just explained—to your brother. He seems nice,” she added, turning her smile on Arthur.

Was she drugged on something, Arthur wondered. She didn’t seem drunk, just odd.

“My name is Irene Langley,” she told Arthur in a straight-forward way. “I live with my sister and my mother—who’s dying at home. So when I talk to your father—he’s very comforting to me.”

“My father said he’d see you when he got back and not to come here,” Robbie said like a soldier passing on orders from a superior. “I heard him.”

“Been here a few times before?” Arthur asked her.

“Oh, yes. Four or five times—in the afternoons.” She swayed or bent a little, gazing past Robbie into the living room.

Robbie frowned. “Well, it’s no use right now; you can see that.”

“Can I write to your father? Or phone him? I don’t think he’d mind that.” She leaned toward Robbie now, and a brown color was visible to Arthur along the left-side part of her hair.

“I think he’d mind it,” Robbie said. “If he didn’t give you his address, that means he doesn’t want you to have it.”

The woman seemed not at all offended by Robbie’s tone. “Dear Robbie, what’s happened to your
leg
?” She bent closer with concern.

“Oh—fishhook. ’S nothing.”

“Can I give any message from you to my father?” Arthur said, wanting to get rid of her, edging toward the door.

“Just tell him I—” She smiled gently and gazed at the living room ceiling. “It’s such a comfort for me to be here for a few minutes, because Richard gives me such courage. Faith, really. And patience, he calls it. He shows me what to read—which helps such a lot.”

Arthur nodded. “You have a job?”

“I’m a waitress. Not regular hours. Sometimes at night. It’s a diner. Well, a couple of diners, run by the same man.”

The powder on her face looked like paste or dried flour. Robbie scowled in the doorway as if on the brink of pushing her out.

“Well, thank you,” she said to Arthur. “It’s done me such good—being here. It’s almost as good as being in a church, because your father has said so many comforting things to me here.”

Arthur moved willingly toward the front door. “What’s your mother dying of?” he asked, curious despite himself.

“Kidney.”

Arthur stood outside on the short porch with the door open. Irene Langley stared into the gathering darkness as if it were some task that she had to face. Behind her, Robbie advanced like a checkerboard piece, ready to oust her.

“G’night, Robbie,” she said, turning as if she had known he was there. Her white high-heeled shoes were worn out, and it crossed Arthur’s mind that she might be giving all her extra money to the church, because people at the church had told her to.

“Night,” said Robbie ungraciously. “I think you better not come here again till my father gets back. What good is it?”

“The aura,” she replied sweetly, smiling at Robbie. “And we all forgive you,” she added gently to Arthur, “and bless you just the same. Don’t be afraid, because the Lord is with you. That’s what your father says.”

Does he, Arthur thought, feeling that he was in the presence of a nut. He walked down the front steps to encourage her departure. She did follow him, slowly.

“Your father thinks he’s failed with you, that you’ve failed with yourself. He told me all about it,” she said with a weak smile that was perhaps meant to be friendly. “But it’s never too late to change. Of course the baby’s gone now, but it’s not too late for you.”

The baby. A seven-week-old fetus. Hardly distinguishable from a pig’s fetus, Arthur reminded himself.

“Do you know,” she began, reaching forth with one hand as she leaned toward Arthur, but he stepped back, “what strength it takes to watch a mother dying day by day? The hospital just won’t keep my mother anymore.” She shook her head for emphasis. “She can get painkillers galore now, but the doctors say she’s happier at home and there’s nothing more they can do for her in the hospital. Do you know what it takes to find the strength to face that—calmly?”

The strength that comes from having gone nuts, Arthur thought, at least in this case. “I can imagine.” He glanced over his shoulder toward Norma’s house, just as her living room light came on palely beyond her curtains. If Norma could hear this, how she’d chuckle!

“You’re nervous, you feel guilty,” she informed Arthur. “But all that can go away, if you give yourself into the care of Jesus. You and your girlfriend. But you must repent, and that means, Richard says, just to say you’re sorry.”

Arthur nodded and led the way down the walk. “Did you come in a car?”

“No, I walked.”

“Where do you live?”

“Haskill and Main.”

A mile away at least. “Your sister has a job, too?”

“No, she stays home and looks after our mother. My sister Louise is fat. Very fat,” said Irene Langley with a laugh that showed more of her small teeth. “Your father says that’s a sin, too—gluttony. But your father smiled when I told him my sister can’t resist a candy box. Your father has a sense of humor, you know? And tolerance—such tolerance! I can talk to him better than I can to Bob Cole, though he’s pretty good and never closed his ear to me, I’ll say that. But your father is warmer—because he’s just discovered God himself. His words are new, as he says.”

“You’re married?” Arthur asked.

“Now why do you ask me that?—No, but I was married unhappily for about two years. I’ve been divorced four years now. And I’m
much
happier.”

Arthur saw Robbie on the front steps, watching, and he walked on toward the sidewalkless street.

Now she seemed to realize that he wanted to get rid of her, and she walked suddenly ahead of him, waving, saying over her shoulder, “Good-bye, Arthur, and bless you!”

Arthur watched her light-colored figure disappear quickly along the edge of the street, under the shadows of the tulip and sycamore trees. He felt a horrible sense of unhappiness suddenly— of her unhappiness. Arthur saw his brother’s figure turn and go into the house. He shoved his hands into his back pockets and leapt the front steps.

“You could’ve been more polite,” Arthur said to Robbie when he had closed the front door. “What’s the idea of talking to a young lady like that? ‘My father told you not to come here.’”

“A young lady?” Robbie replied, gathering himself for combat.

“Yes. Is that the way you treat a friend of Dad’s, not even asking her to sit down?”

“He—Dad has his reasons—why he does things, says things.” Robbie clamped his lips together.

“She comes here in the afternoons?”

“Yeah. Coupla times.” Robbie kept his stern face and looked straight at Arthur.

Arthur had the same sense of being excluded that he had felt at Robbie’s fishing party that morning. “When you were here—she came?”

“Yeah. Once anyway. Sure.”

And when his mother wasn’t here, Arthur thought. Did his mother know about these religious nuts emoting all over the living room, maybe kneeling on the carpet? “What does Dad do? Read the Bible to her?”

Robbie shrugged and started to run away as if he had had enough questions. “No, he asks her—Well, she talks on her own. Then maybe he reads her something or just talks.
She
says it helps her.”

“She’s weird, little brother. And you’re getting—”

“Don’t call me ‘little brother.’”

“You talked to her as if you were her boss. Does Dad talk to her the same way?”

Robbie hesitated. “You have to. She’s dependent, Dad says. At least just now.—She’s not weird now. You should’ve seen her before.”

“Before what?”

“Before a coupla months ago. She was practically a prostitute, Dad told me. She said it, too—to me. Well, she’s not now.”

“She still looks like one, to tell you the truth.”

“She sure isn’t now. She doesn’t drink anymore and she doesn’t even drink coffee, just tea. She has less money now.”

“Oh, I can imagine.”

“But she’s happier, she says.” Robbie looked at Arthur as if victory was plainly on his side and plainly won. “Irene’s like a saint now—Dad says. But she still needs help or she’ll do something crazy. That’s why Dad has to speak to her—sort of firmly, the way I did tonight.”

“I see.” And she’s goddamn stupid, Arthur wanted to say, not only stupid now but stupid before she found God or the church or Richard. Arthur went into the bathroom and washed his face. He scraped his jaw with his safety razor, though as yet he hadn’t much of a beard.

It was at least a quarter past 9, when he got to the Brewsters’ house. Maggie answered his ring. She wore a sleeveless dress of light green and darker green sandals.

“We’re just having coffee. Want some?”

Arthur walked with her into the air-conditioned living room, where her parents sat, and also a middle-aged woman who he supposed was their houseguest, and a young man who looked twenty or a little more.

“Diane—Arthur Alderman,” Maggie said. “Diane Vickers and Charles Lafferty.”

“How d’y’do?” said Charles to Arthur from his chair.

Arthur declined coffee, thinking he and Maggie might escape sooner. He assumed she wanted to go out. But who was this Charles? Not Mrs. Vickers’s son, surely, or they’d have the same name. Charles was the second jolt of the evening. Was he a boyfriend of Maggie’s, maybe one she still liked, and approved by her parents? Arthur assessed Charles’s medium-good looks, his tan cotton slacks, new tennis shoes, and decided that he had a little money. Always an asset.

“. . . working today, Arthur?” asked Maggie’s mother.

“Yes—as usual,” Arthur replied.

A moment later, Charles stood up. “Thank you, Mrs. Brewster—sir.”

“Good night, Charles,” said Diane Vickers warmly, as if she knew him well.

Maggie went with him to the door. Mrs. Vickers was looking him over critically with her large made-up eyes, or so Arthur felt. Maggie came back.

“Want to take a walk, Arthur? Or go somewhere?” Maggie asked, as she might have if they had been alone.

“Whichever you want.”

“See you in a minute.” Maggie went upstairs.

Arthur heard a car starting outside.

“Maggie tells me you’re going to Columbia,” said Diane Vickers.

All the heat of the day seemed to gather and explode in Arthur’s face. “No-no. Things’ve changed. Just in the last days. I can’t go to Columbia. Some other college—but not Columbia.” To attribute this to bad grades or lack of money seemed equally damning. Maggie plainly hadn’t mentioned it to her parents, because both of them were politely listening. And of course it was nothing to Betty and Warren Brewster whether he entered Columbia or not, but Arthur felt that he sank further in their esteem. They would assume he was going to a college of lower caliber or maybe no college at all.

Maggie came downstairs with a handbag. Arthur said good night to the Brewsters and to Diane Vickers whose eyes seemed to be looking right through him.

Then he was alone with Maggie, outside in the darkness.

“Go to the quarry?” Maggie said.

“Why not?”

They got into her car.

Arthur rolled his window down. After a while, he said, “Hey, who’s this Charles?”

“Oh—Charles. He goes to C.U. I had a couple of dates with him—a while back. He just wanted to see me again.”

“So—What did you tell him?”

“About what?—Well!” Maggie laughed. “I told him I had a rather steady relationship now. Words to that effect.”

Arthur smiled in the dark, and rested his head against the seat back, watching Maggie, happy for several seconds until he recalled the conversation with Mrs. Vickers. “Seems you didn’t say anything to your folks about Columbia—being out. Anyway I did, because Mrs. Vickers asked me. I had to say it wasn’t Columbia. Do you think that’s a strike against me—with your folks?”

“No, Arthur. Why should they think all that much about it?”

True, Arthur thought. Was he developing an inferiority complex? Paranoia?

Maggie was concentrating on getting the car up the gritty slope beside the limestone slabs, beside the void that was now on their right. She stopped the car and cut the engine. Then she turned to him.

Arthur seized her and kissed her neck, and in that long instant when his eyes were shut, thoughts ran fast through his head. Maggie’s unsweet and interesting perfume made him think of the sick, off-putting sweetness of Irene Langley’s, which had lingered in the house.
Fight the bastards
, he thought, people like his father, Robbie now, creeps like Irene Langley.

“Ow!”

“Oh! Sorry, Maggie!” He had been squeezing her arm. “W-want to get out and walk?”

“Yes—if you promise not to fall over the edge again.”

Arthur took her hand and was careful not to squeeze it as they climbed the slope toward the beginning of the dark edge. The air was warmer than the last time, heavier with summer; the stars were all out, though Arthur couldn’t see a moon. He felt shaky with a sense of possible failure ahead, failure in every direction. That was just as possible as success, wasn’t it? He gulped and asked, “Diane’s a relative?”

“No, just an old friend of Mom’s. She lives in the same town as my grandma in Pennsylvania. She’s a dietitian in a hospital.”

Arthur half-listened. He was thinking that he couldn’t tell Maggie about Irene Langley’s visit, though he had thought he might. Irene Langley was too depressing to talk about, to try to be funny about.

“Hey, Maggie! Starting Tuesday I’ve got my house free to myself. For us. For a couple of weeks at least. My brother’s taking off for Kansas.”

16

R
obbie was to fly to Kansas City Tuesday morning at 9:30, and Arthur looked forward to his departure. To Arthur, he had become somebody else. If this was growing up, Arthur thought, if his brother was going to become an adult who resembled Robbie at present, then Arthur simply didn’t like him. Robbie no longer said anything spontaneous, original, or funny as he had used to. He went around in a slight daze, yet as if on good behavior, a bit stiff-necked, looking as if he were conscious of whatever he was doing, even something as simple as dropping a couple of eggs into a skillet. It crossed Arthur’s mind that his parents had left Robbie behind for a few days so that Robbie could try to persuade him into the good path, but there had been no speeches from Robbie. In fact, Robbie’s attitude was one of subtle shunning of him.

“You coming to church?” Robbie asked on Sunday morning around 10. He was already dressed in blue trousers and a clean shirt.

“No—thank you. You going on your bike?”

“Guthrie’s picking me up. You ought to come.”

Arthur was on the floor in his room, looking over his books and choosing a few to sell. He wore old Levi’s and no shirt, because it was another hot day. “Thanks, my friend, I’m going over to the DeWitt establishment in a few minutes. Work, you know?”

“Sunday’s supposed to be a day of rest.”

Arthur was suddenly bored, or angry. “Parrot!” He stood up with a couple of old paperbacks and instead of slapping them together as he had an impulse to do, he dropped them into the wastebasket.

“You’re throwing away books?”

“Yeah.—Sex books. You know? How to make love.” The two he had thrown away were starting to get yellow with age.

Was Robbie blushing? Robbie looked at the wastebasket with interest.

“You wouldn’t want to read dirty stuff like that. Sinful.”

A simultaneous knock and a short ring of the doorbell came.

“That’s Guthrie,” Robbie said, and went off.

Arthur returned to his books with a dust rag, and after this, he thought, it might be worth it to take the vacuum cleaner to his carpet. His mother expected him to keep the house reasonably clean, because they hadn’t a regular cleaning woman.

“
Arthur
?” Robbie’s voice had an oddly shrill note. “Come and meet Guthrie.” Robbie stood in the doorway.

“Can you tell him I’m busy—just now?”

But there was Guthrie just behind Robbie in the hall, a blond fellow in his twenties. “Hello, Arthur. Glad to meet you,” said the young man, extending a hand. “Guthrie MacKenzie.”

Arthur extended his hand, hating the feel of the soft moist palm against his. “Howdy.”

“Not coming with us?—Robbie’s told me about you. Like to take you along today, if you’re willing,” Guthrie said with a smile. He wore neat blue cotton trousers, a blue shirt and tie under his cotton jacket.

“Just explained to Robbie, I’m going out to work in a few minutes,” Arthur said, and slowly advanced, so that first Guthrie and then Robbie had to back out of his room. Arthur detested them in his room and was determined to herd them into the living room or the kitchen. Robbie, his
brother
, had probably told this one about Maggie, too!

Guthrie walked backward, turned and entered the living room.

Arthur stalked into the living room barefoot, feeling rather proud of his suntanned torso and muscles.

“We’ll be off in a minute,” said Guthrie MacKenzie. “I know—from what your father and Robbie’ve told me—that you think we’re sort of against you. Or we’re trying to get you into a club you don’t want to join.” He shook his head slowly. “It’s not like that. We have an open attitude. Come to us if you like.” He opened his arms, reminding Arthur of programs he had seen on TV. “I don’t like labels myself. Mind if I smoke?” Guthrie had pulled out cigarettes.

Arthur shrugged. He shook his head when Guthrie extended a pack of Kents.

“Labels give a man a bad name. Give a
church
a bad name, too. I don’t even like the label Baptist,” he continued in a pleasant tone, “though my folks’ve been that for generations. What we’re aiming for is contact, friendliness, happiness. I wanted you to know that you have friends right here, if you want them. You’re among friends.”

His grandmother’s phrase, Arthur remembered uncomfortably. “Thank you,” Arthur said.

Robbie was drinking this in.

“You won’t join us this morning? You don’t have to change your jeans, just put on a shirt. I bet you could come barefoot. Sure! Lots of good men have walked barefoot before.”

Arthur nodded, and hated himself for nodding. “Yes,” he said, bored and polite. “If you’ll excuse me—Got some things to do before I take off.” He went back to his room.

He found three more old paperbacks to chuck. He tried to damp down his temper, lest he throw away more books than he wanted to.

Guthrie stuck his head into Arthur’s room, having suddenly opened the closed door a little, and said a cheery, “Good-bye! Bless you!”

Finally, the front door closed.

Arthur got the vacuum cleaner and pushed it over the floor of his room, and decided to do Robbie’s room, too. Robbie had made his bed in a sloppy way; there were several socks on the floor and a couple of pairs of sneakers, magazines, and cassettes. In the course of clearing the floor of these, Arthur noticed a yellow and blue poster on the wall above Robbie’s table: JESUS SAVES, it said, and below the usual Jesus portrait of a bearded fair-haired man with sad blue eyes and pink lips, a photograph of the backs of a crowd of contemporary children had been superimposed. All the children were reaching their arms up toward Jesus. Arthur thought of doing the floor in his parents’ bedroom while he had the vacuum out, but he disliked going into their room and decided to put the job off.

He rode off toward Mrs. DeWitt’s. She had insisted that he have lunch with her today, since last Sunday’s lunch had been “so sadly interrupted.”

His work that day was a breeze: painting a fence green. He mixed some black and white in the green, so the fence would blend with the color of the grass around it. After lunch he worked till just after 4, the hottest time of the afternoon, then turned the hose on himself in the backyard, and rode off in wet Levi’s. At home, he took a shower and collapsed on his bed to sleep for a while. Robbie was watching TV. Arthur hadn’t a date with Maggie or with anyone that evening, but he had told Robbie he had, because he wanted to get out of the house.

Just after 7, Arthur telephoned Norma Keer, and asked if he could come over. “I know it’s late—the dinner hour.”

“Since when do I keep a definite dinner hour?”

Arthur cut a few roses from the backyard to take to her and went over.

Norma was bringing a big bowl of something to her table, which she had set for two. “Just some Jell-O,” she said. “Too hot to eat anything else. Raspberry with banana and cantaloupe cut up in it. Fix yourself a drink first, Arthur, if you want one. My, you look nice. Got a date somewhere later?”

Arthur laughed. “No.” He made a gin and tonic in the kitchen. Norma already had one.

“And how’s your nice girlfriend—Maggie?”

“Oh, fine, thank you. Taking a course at C.U. this summer to brush up on her math. For Radcliffe.”

As the evening went on, Arthur thought Norma didn’t know anything about Maggie’s stay in the hospital. He was alert for the slightest hint or query.

“More cake, Arthur. Don’t be shy.”

Arthur helped himself. Norma made excellent carrot cakes. “Do you happen to know a woman called Irene Langley? About thirty, dyed blond hair?”

“Langley—” Norma tilted her head back and looked at the ceiling as if she were going through her list of clients at the First National. “Don’t know the name. Who’s she?”

“One of the ones that go to my dad’s church. She knocked on the door Friday night.”

Norma smiled her tiny smile in her round face and looked suddenly merry. “I suppose she wanted to drop off a few pamphlets? She didn’t knock here.”

“No, she wanted to see my dad, but I’m sure she knew he was out of town. She said my dad talks to her—cheers her up. She’s a bit nuts. An ex-prostitute who’s found religion.”

“Oh, my goodness!” Here Norma rolled with laughter, and her bosom shook under her low-cut dress.

Arthur had never before noticed Norma’s breasts, and he thought now that they looked rather comforting, motherly. He was grinning. “And Robbie—he knows her. He was furious and asked her to leave. Took quite a while. It’s the aura she wanted, she said, the aura in the house there.”

Norma shook her head. “What’s so new about Christ I don’t know. When these magazine-peddlers knock on my door and ask me if I know about the Bible, I tell them I read the Bible before they were born!”

Arthur said after a moment, “What worries me a little is my brother.”

“Oh. Always with those older men, you mean.”

“That’s one thing.” Arthur twisted his glass on the table. “Then his bossy attitude toward this woman Irene. I dunno what’s charitable about that. It’s just—strange.” There was still another thing, Robbie treating him now as if he were a sinner, and an unrepentent one, but Arthur couldn’t say this to Norma. “Robbie really doesn’t like me anymore.”

“Oh, between brothers—Moods, Arthur. Temporary attitudes. Robbie’s only fifteen, isn’t he?—It won’t last.”

Arthur said nothing more.

E
DDIE HOWELL TURNED UP
unannounced Monday evening at half past 7. Arthur was especially annoyed, because Maggie was there. He had invited Maggie for dinner. Robbie had told Arthur that morning that his friends Jeff and Bill were giving him a send-off party at the house of one of them and that he wouldn’t be home before midnight. Consequently Arthur had invited Maggie for the first of what he hoped would be several evenings at his house. Then, just as Arthur was opening the fridge to bring forth cold roast beef and potato salad, the twit was on the doorstep.

“Robbie’s out tonight,” Arthur said.

Smiling as ever, Eddie Howell pushed into the hall. “But anyway you’re here and I’d—” He saw Maggie over the partition between hall and kitchen. “Is this your friend?”

“Yes. Maggie—Eddie Howell. Maggie Brewster.”

“A pleasure,” said Eddie. “Excuse me for intruding, but I won’t stay. I wanted to see how Arthur was. I had no idea I’d have the pleasure of meeting you.”

Arthur wondered about that. “We were just—”

“I know about the situation of a week ago,” Eddie said to Maggie. “I’m glad to see you looking so well—because it can be a dangerous thing. And it’s always most depressing.”

Maggie exchanged a glance with Arthur. Her polite smile had gone. “I’m not depressed.”

“Maybe it hasn’t hit you yet.”

“No,” Maggie said with her honest air that Arthur knew well. “It won’t. I know by now.”

Arthur saw her brows tremble with annoyance. “If you don’t mind, Eddie—we were just about to eat.”

“Right, and I’m off in a minute.” Eddie Howell’s eyes blinked rapidly as he glanced from Arthur to Maggie and back to Arthur. “I just came to remind you—both—that though you have gone against God’s will, you are still forgiven—if you acknowledge what you’ve done—admit it—and vow to yourself to walk in the right path in the future.”

Maggie took a sip of her drink and set the glass down on the sideboard, just as she might have done if she and Arthur had been alone.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Eddie Howell asked Maggie, with a smile.

“Yes,” Maggie said.

“Good.” Eddie Howell nodded cheerfully. “May I just leave you something?”

“No,” Arthur said, because Eddie was unzipping his briefcase. “Not tonight, please. Save it for someone else. And while you’re—” He glanced nervously toward the living room, then suddenly remembered that he had cleared the living room of religious magazines in preparation for Maggie’s visit and had put all the stuff in Robbie’s room. “Never mind.”

“I can see that you’re in need of some of the things I have,” Eddie Howell said.

Arthur went to the front door and opened it and stood aside to let Eddie Howell pass him. “Thanks for the visit, Eddie.”

Eddie Howell moved toward the door, holding his briefcase in both hands. “Good night, Maggie—Arthur. God bless!”

Arthur closed the door after him and slid the inside bolt.

“Wow,” Maggie said, laughing. “I thought you were going to throw him out the
door
!”

Arthur spread his arms, then embraced Maggie tightly for a moment. “See what I’m up against here? You see what they’re like?”

“And who’s he?”

“Church friend of my father’s.”

“Take it easy. They’re not worth getting angry about.”

Maggie and her family weren’t living with it. But if Maggie wanted him to calm down, he would. He glanced at the fridge, and thought the roast beef could wait a few more seconds. “And there was one other creep at the door, Irene Langley, Friday night before I saw you. Reformed prostitute.”

“She goes to that church too?”

“Yes! My dad makes friends with these people, talks to them when they’re depressed. The one Friday night looked coked out.” He told Maggie about Robbie’s rude behavior, because it added a comic touch, but he didn’t tell her that Irene Langley had frightened him, as an insane person might. He didn’t want to tell her either that Irene Langley knew about the abortion.

“Next time they come to the door—just keep the door locked. Tell them through the door your father’s out.—Come on, let’s eat.”

Later they sat on the sofa, talking of September and school, while a Mozart string quartet played on Arthur’s cassette. Tomorrow morning Arthur was going to the C.U. office with his grades from Chalmerston High and his letters of admission to Columbia. He was going to find out the costs and apply for admission, whether he could afford it or not when September came. And the Reagan administration was making student loans harder to get. Maggie had decided to major in sociology as soon as she could at Radcliffe, though her father wanted her to take only liberal arts courses in the first two years.

“I don’t mean the social worker house calls kind of thing,” Maggie said. “I mean finding out why things already exist—conditions and problems. I see the world so differently since those days in the hospital. Funny. Everything’s suddenly real, not like a backdrop or a lot of scenery.”