Moments In Time (10 page)

They walked down a side street, and Maggie stopped in front of a large property, the house sitting far back from the street, the front yard sadly overgrown with a jungle of shrubs and vines. She leaned on the black wrought-iron fence that surrounded it and announced, “Someday I’m going to buy this house.”

“Have you ever been inside?” he asked, stepping aside to permit a puffing jogger to pass.

“No.”

“How do you know you’ll like it?”

“I just do,” she said, grinning.

“It’s falling apart,” he observed. “It’s old and the outside’s not in good repair. It’s probably a mess inside.”

“Probably,” she agreed, undaunted.

They stood looking over the fence at the large pale pinkish stucco house, its four massive chimneys rising through the roof at various places. A rounded glassed room jutted off the one side, probably a conservatory added during Victorian times. The house seemed to ramble a bit in several directions, as if it had been added onto over the ages, each subsequent owner never quite knowing the course its growth should take.

“What about it appeals to you so?” He studied its angles, noting the stained glass windows staggered across the right side.
Must be the staircase there
.

“I don’t know, Jamey. It just looks like a romantic place to live. A
l
l those windows and gables and curves.”

“I think it looks spooky, all overgrown and secluded and neglected. It’s likely to be haunted,” he teased. “Is it for sale?”

“No. Not now. But someday it will be.”

An elderly couple passed, arm in arm. They nodded a greeting that Maggie returned with a smile.

“Ahh, Maggie, it would be a big job to revive this place.”

“I could handle it.”

“No doubt you could.” He chuckled and put his arm around her shoulder, leading her back to the sidewalk to
resume their stroll. He turned once to look back at the tall, wide rectangular chimneys rising through the trees. “It is a nice property, I’ll give you that. I like the way it slopes down a bit on the side there, and I like the wooded area in the back. Too bad it’s such a
mess
…”
And
he promptly dismissed it from his thoughts.

10

“
W
ELL, IT ALL SOUNDS VERY COZY AND VERY
romantic.” Hilary realized she’d gotten absolutely nowhere with him, had not gained a glimmer of what was going on between them. Perhaps a shift in gears was ca
lled for. Perhaps the wife…
If
,
she thought wryly,
I can get her attention and keep it long enough to have any meaningful conversation with her. She appears to keep slipping off
someplace.
“We’ve heard so little from you this evening, Maggie, and you’ve kept so much in the background all these years. I’d be remiss in my duties to my viewers if we didn’t take this opportunity to get to know you a bit better.”

“And what exactly would you like to know?” she asked stonily.

“Well, let’s start by having you tell us what the wife of an internationally renowned performer does with her time.” Hilary hoped her smile gave her the appearance of one who was truly interested.

“We travel a bit when Jamey has free time.” She shrugged. “Spend our summers here, at his mother’s. The rest of the time I mostly keep up with the children and their activities.” She thought of the many pleasant sunny afternoons spent
at the park or in the yard, watching the children on the swings, the little ones in the sandbox, or sitting in the grass making clover rings to grace a young daughter’s hair. Maggie realized how fortunate she’d been and had never ceased being grateful that she’d been afforded the luxury of being able to enjoy every moment of their childhoods, that they’d been able to hire someone to do all the chores she could never seem to find time for. She wondered if that would change with her leaving him, if she’d have to give up the house.

“Well, I would suppose that’s a full-time job,” Hilary cooed. Why anyone would want to have such a brood was beyond her. “And someone has to keep the home fires burning. Keep up with all those little domestic details of everyday life
…”

“Hilary, Maggie hasn’t a domestic bone in her body,” J.D. interjected, “if by domestic, you mean cleaning and laundry and cooking and that sort of thing.”

“Well, certainly with such a large family, a large home, one would expect a housekeeper.” Hilary thought perhaps if she appeared to come to Maggie’s defense, it would pay off later in the discussion. “One could hardly be expected to raise seven children, keep a home, and cook.”

“Well, we do have a wonderful housekeeper, but I’m the cook in the family, not Maggie,” he announced.

“Now that we’ve covered my shortcomings as a wife,” Maggie said, glaring, “could we move onto something else?”

“Sweetheart, you have no shortcomings as a wife.” He patted her knee, knowing this patronizing gesture would arouse her ire. Any emotion he could incite in her at this point would be better than her stony silence.

“You don’t do all the cooking?” Hilary ventured skeptically.

“Absolutely. Every night when I’m at home,” he assured her. “I taught myself how to cook back in those early days, primarily to keep us from starving on those nights we were too lazy to go out to eat.”

“Well, then, suppose you tell us what’s your specialty.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He pretended to mull i
t over, then
turned to his wife, his eyes twi
nkling, and said, “What’d you
think, Maggie? Maybe that chicken in wine I’ve been doing for years now?”

Maggie started slightly, her nostrils filling suddenly with the aroma of a long-ago unexpected dinner he’d prepared to surprise her. How proud he’d been of himself that night, h
ow pleased with his efforts…

A
s she had arrived home from work one night and opened the front door, the smell of something wonderful cooking filled the air. Max, her upstairs neighbor, must have dinner guests, she thought, and ran up the steps to her apartment.

She walked into the hallway and sniffed. Overcome with curiosity, she followed her nose into the kitchen. J.D. was at the stove and turned to greet her with a wide grin.

“I see my timing was perfect. Everything is just about ready.”

He poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her where she stood riveted with shock and kissed her nonchalantly as if he did this every night, still grinning, still watching her face as she surveyed the scene.

He’d set the table, where two candles waited to be lit. There was no mess—he’d washed everything he’d used. And something smelled incredibly good.

“Jamey, I never expected this,” she exclaimed, then stepped closer to inspect the contents of the pans on the stove. “What are you making?”

“Something with chicken and mushrooms and wine. And rice. And salad.” His casual attitude could not disguise his satisfaction with his accomplishment nor her reaction. “Sit down, Maggie. It’ll be done in two minutes.”

He turned back to her, and seeing the look of disbelief on her face, meeting her eyes, he laughed, and she with him.

“How did you know to do all this?”

“I looked through one of the cookbooks on the shelf—you should dust them once in a while if you’re not going to use them—till I found something I thought we’d both like. And I took the book with me to the food store so I’d know what
to buy—here, give me your plate.” He tried to ignore her still wide-eyed stare. “So. How is it?”

“It’s great. Unbelievable. Jamey, you amaze me.”

“Thank you,” he said smugly. “That good, is it?”

“Yes, it is. I can’t believe you did this all by yourself.”

“That’s a somewhat chauvinistic attitude, I’d say.”

“I’m sorry, Jamey, but this is a completely new experience for me. I’ve never had a man cook dinner for me. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I even know any men who cook.”

“Doesn’t your father ever do the cooking?”

“Frank Callahan?” She pretended to choke at the very thought. “It would never happen. It is simply outside of his role.”

“And what is his role?” J.D. looked amused.

“His role is to be waited on by my mother. And her role is to take care of everyone in the family. Including my father. Especially my father,” she explained.

“Seems reasonable to me,” he deadpanned across the table. “Nothing wrong with a woman knowing her place.”

“If I thought for one second you were serious, I’d bounce you down the steps on your head.”

“Well, then, tell me how two such traditional parents produced so independent a daughter.”

“I’m afraid they’re still asking themselves that question. They’ve tried to figure out for a long time where they went wrong with me.” Her earlier teasing tone faded.

“You’re joking, of course.”

She shook her head. “Not really. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a disappointment to them.”

“Maggie, what could your parents possibly have wanted you to be that you’re not? You’re a bright, charming, sweet, honest, moral, kind—did I leave anything out?—truly good and wonderful person. What do you think—Oh, wait, not that business about your husband?” He made a face.

“Sort of. But it’s not just Mace. It’s the whole inability to fit the mold, you know?” she told him, an uncharacteristic self-consciousness creeping into her voice.

“What mold?”

“The mold all the women in my family came out of. They get married, they have children, and they spend the rest of their lives humoring their husbands and raising their kids. The only acceptable deviation is the sisterhood. They do not have careers, they do not sleep with men the
y are not
married to, they do not get divorced, they do not let anyone know they have brains.”

“Well, I have to admit that now that I think about it, I’ve never met an Irish girl who fan
cied herself an intellectual.”
He tried to interject a lighter tone.

“I don’t fancy myself an intellectual, Jamey, but I am smarter than a lot of the men I’ve met in my life and I can’t see any reason to pretend that I’m not. My mother is an extremely bright woman, but she uses most of her wits finding ways to outsmart my father into thinking he always gets his own way, when in fact it’s she who calls most of the shots. Subtly, of course. Most of her time is spent pampering my father’s ego.” She sighed. “My mother set a wonderful example for us in her own way. There is something noble about a person who can truly be selfless and honestly care more about others than they care about themselves. I just never learned that lesson very well.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If I had, I would have stayed married. I would have stayed in the church,” she told him.

“What’s the church got to do with all this?”

“It has everything to do with it. As far as the church is concerned, one of the main purposes of a woman is to have children. Practicing birth control is frowned upon, and a good Catholic does not ask for a divorce when she realizes she does not love her husband. According to my father anyway.”

“Then what does she do?”

“She offers it up.”

“She what?” he asked blankly.

“Offers it up. You know, makes a sacrifice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. You weren’t raised like I was.”

“Enlighten me.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, curious.

“Whenever something happened that was unpleasant or painful or whenever you had to do something that you didn’t want to do or had some hardship to face, my grandmother always said to offer it up. To see it through and not complain and accept God’s will and offer your suffering to God.”

He sat silently, staring at her for a long time.

“Am I to interpret this to mean that your parents expected you to stay in an unhappy marriage, living a miserable life, having children you didn’t want with a man you didn’t love and that it would somehow make God happy?”

She shrugged. “That’s simplifying things a bit, but you have the general idea.”

“How could your unhappiness make God, or anyone else for that matter, happy? That makes no bloody sense at all.”

“It does if you keep in mind that marriage is a holy sacrament in the Catholic church.”

“Do you honestly believe your parents wanted you to be unhappy.”

“No. They wanted me to stop the foolishness and just be in love with Mace. Except I couldn’t. My father even told me to go back to Mace and have a baby and I’d feel differently about the whole thing. Ironically, the only one who gave me any support at all was my sister F
rankie, the one who’s a nun…
”

“Well, I’m sure they still love you, Maggie, and they want you to be happy.”

“Yes, they love me. That’s why it hurt them that I turned out to be something of the family renegade. Now, my sister Ellie, she’s twenty-six, she’s always done it all by the book, you know? Never given them problems, never stepped out of line in any way. They never felt they had
to make excuses for Ellie…
”

“Do you think they love her more than they love you?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you think she’s a better person than you? Or a happier one?”

“Ellie? She’s a bitch.”

He laughed heartily.

“She is. She’s a miserable person. But she’s done it all as they expected her to. She went to school there in town. Married an assistant professor. Got her degree in teaching, just like Mommy and Daddy thought she should. I’m sure she and Elliot—that’s her husband, is that the cutest thing you ever heard, Ellie and Elliot?—never slept together before they were married. And she cooks dinner every night.” Her good humor was returning, and she grinned.

“Unlike the elder Callahan daughter who prefers to have her men cook for her.”

“Exactly. I really don’t enjoy cooking all that much, to be honest with you, and I have to say that you are a much better cook than I am, at least, based on your effort tonight.”

“Well, I have to admit I surprised even myself. And to tell the truth, I really enjoyed it. If my musical career ever flops, maybe I could open a restaurant.”

“Not a chance of that happening.” She smiled lovingly, then, glancing at the clock above the stove, said, “Criminy, look at the time, Jamey. It’s seven-twenty. Your plane leaves in just about an hour. Are you packed? And I forgot to stop for gas on the way home. There’s barely enough to
get me to the station on the corn
er.”

They’d arrived at the airport with a scant seven minutes to spare before he had to board, hardly enough time to say all the things that needed to be said till next time. She’d watched as the plane had backed up, then walked to the end of the hallway, up the ramp where the solid walls gave way to the glass enclosure that permitted a view of the runways on the left side of the terminal. She leaned against the glass, wondering which side of the plane he was on, if he would look back and see her there. The plane turned slowly, then gathered a bit of speed as it began to taxi down the runway, then lift effortlessly into the sky. She watched until the lights disappeared into the night, wondering if she’d ever get used to his leaving.

It had been a quiet ride home from the airport, and she
hated going back into the silence of her apartment. The scent of spring, fragrant and balmy, held her on the porch for a moment. She looked up into the sky, at the tiny lights, so far overhead, as they moved through the dark night. Another plane taking someone else’s lover awa
y or bringing him back home…