Moments In Time (12 page)

“It’s only for one day, dear,” her mother said in a low voice as she peeled carrots and sliced them into a waiting pot.

“I know, Mom. I don’t mind.”

“That’s big of you, Maggie,” remarked Ellie.

“Eleanor, your sister doesn’t have to like it. She only has to wear it, which she will do. So drop it, please.”

Ellie made herself a cup of coffee in silence and, having appeased her mother by stopping in to see her sister, took the cup and wandered out the back door.

Her mother turned her knife to a mound of potatoes, and it occurred to Maggie, not for the first time, that she could never picture her mother’s hands at rest. Cooking, cleaning, knitting, sewing, soothing a hurt or comforting an unhappy child, her mother’s hands always appeared in motion in Maggie’s childhood memories.

Kevin breezed through and joined them momentarily, dropping a notebook and a pile of record albums on the nearest counter as he headed straight for the cookies. Maggie smiled fondly as she took in h
is tall, gangly eighteen-
year-old form. Kevin had lost some, but not all, of his
adolescent awkwardness. His closely cropped hair was, she suspected, a concession to his father’s wishes. Had he had his way, she felt certain, Kevin’s hair would have well exceeded his collar line.

“So how’s college, baby brother?”

“Great, Mags.” He nodded, stuffing a second cookie into his mouth.

“How are your grades?”

“Great.”

“Are they, Mom?” she asked.

“Actually, yes, they’ve be
en surprisingly good. Whether
he’s motivated by a desire for higher learning or the knowledge that his band is in jeopardy if his marks begin to slip, I’m not certain. But he’s doing very well.”

“If my grades go below a 3.0, I
can’t play the drums with my band,” he explained, leaning back against the counter and brushing into the stack of records he’d slung there.

It was then that she saw it, the flat square of cardboard, purple in color, edged in black, which had slid from the top of the pile. The same album that sat on the table in her apartment. The same one she listened to every night. She casually reached a hand up and tilted it toward her. Monkshood’s
Midnight Fever
album. She smiled inwardly.
This would be a good opportunity to break the ice and tell Mom about Jamey.
She tried to find an opening line.

Kevin noticed her interest and nodded toward the counter. “Great band. We—our band—does a lot of their stuff.”

“Is that right?”
Okay, now is the time for me to say, Did I
mention I met… No, no…
Maybe something like, Oh, yes, they played at the arena some time ago. Did I tell you
I’ve been dating…
No, that sounds hokey
…

Why can’t I bring myself to just tell them,
she asked herself
bleakly, realizing that she
could not so much as utter his
name.
Am I afraid they’ll find him unsuitable or think that I’ve disappointed them again after all that with Mace, whom they thought was so wonderful? That's what Jamey thinks. He thinks I’m embarrassed by what he is, that somehow my
parents will think there’s something trivial or unworthy about what he does for a living and that he won't measure up t
o
Mace. It hurts him to think that what Mom and Dad think is more important to me than what he thinks. Especially after last week when he called his sister from my apartment and made me speak with her. Judith was charming, of course, but I felt odd and shy, trying to make some connection with the faceless voice, not knowing if we'd ever meet and if we did, what she would think of me
…

Colleen skipped in then and draped an arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “We’ve got some time before dinner. Want to walk down to the lake?”

“Great idea.” Maggie felt relieved. The moment to spe
ak was gone. She could put it of
f for now. “Where’d Ellie go?”

“She’s out in the yard, talking with Tim and Marilyn next door. Were you going to ask her to join you?” her mother asked hopefully.

“No,” replied Maggie and Colleen, both laughing.

“Oh, girls, please.” Their mother rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

“Let’s go before she comes in,” Colleen said, grabbing a carrot as she left the room.

M
aggie headed upstairs to her old bedroom on the third floor long after midnight, the evening’s rehearsal for the wedding having turned into a reunion of a dozen or so cousins, most of whom Maggie hadn’t seen since the last family wedding over a year ago. She stripped off the dress she had worn that night and hung it on its hanger, then went into the bathroom across the hall to wash off her makeup. Her reflection in the mirror above the sink startled her, the twenty-eight-year-old face staring back at her, a reminder that she was now a visitor in this house, no longer a youthful occupant. Somehow, unconsciously, she always expected to see herself in this mirror as she had looked those years ago when she had called this house her home. How could she be so different when so little else here had changed since the day she left?

In the dim light from the hall, she could make out the shapes and shadows of her old room. All the treasures of a happy childhood were stored here, the trophies of having
grown up in middle-class America. Tennis rackets, lacrosse sticks, old ice skates. Beloved dolls, some bedraggled, some like new, their condition a silent testament of the love bestowed over the years by the little girl Maggie had been. Shelves spilled over with books, from Peter Rabbit and Golden Books to philosophy, economics, and art history. A large brown bear, presented to her by her father as she’d been wheeled into the operating room as a frightened six-year-old to have her tonsils removed, presided over a chair laden with other assorted stuffed animals. Dink, one of Otto’s predecessors, had chewed off the bear’s nose. Her mother had made her best effort to replace it with a big black button.

Dried corsages from long-ago proms, a gold chain hung over the dressing table mirror, the high school ring still dangling from it, a gift of sorts from a boy she’d met while on summer vacation on Cape Cod as a sixteen-year-old. He’d lived in Colorado, and they’d spent hours sitting on the sand, talking and laughing, hours more walking the long stretches of beaches. Her last night there they’d made out under the lifeguard stand, and he’d given her the ring. It was as close to going steady as she’d ever come.

She could see the outlines of the old photographs framing the mirror on the dresser that once belonged to her grandmother. Old friends, frozen in time, black-and-white images of faces no longer so young. She and Holly, her best friend all through school, tennis rackets raised in victory after winning a doubles tournament at a school match their junior year. Posing on the hood of the 1966 Mustang Holly’s parents had given her when she graduated from junior college.
God, the times we had in that car
, Maggie mused sleepily. Canary yellow, like Holly’s hair, th
e car had been…

Funny,
she thought,
no matter how old I get, I always feel like a child when I’m under this roof. No matter that my next big birthday would be the big three-oh or that I’ve been married and divorced and have my own apartment, a responsible job. When I'm in this house, I’m Frank and Mary Elizabeth’s biggest little girl again.

She pulled the covers up and sought a comfortable position in her old bed, reflecting back on the rehearsal that evening in the church where she’d spent so many hours of her young life. While the priest was instructing the best man on his duties, she had wandered to the right side of the church, sliding into the sixth row, recalling vividly how it had felt to kneel on the hard wooden planks in the row of hard oak pews.

She couldn’t remember ever sitting anyplace in this church but in that row, sixth from the altar, right side, nine a.m. every Sunday and holy day. The church was tiny—by city standards it would be little more than a chapel. Beautiful narrow arches of stained glass illustrated the life of St. Francis of Assisi for whom the church had been named. The small spotless altar, well-polished oak hewn by a local craftsman, the stark white marble statue of the Blessed Mother, the work of another local artisan, the handmade stations of the cross that hung on the walls, all bespoke of the devotion of the small Catholic community in this mostly Protestant town.

Maggie had marked every major milestone of her Catholic life in this church—baptism, her First Communion, confirmation, marriage. She wondered if her own children would be baptized under this roof or if she would be buried from this church.

She grimaced inwardly, knowing that certain members of her family gathered for the wedding the following afternoon would notice that only Maggie, of the entire Callahan clan, lacked the requisite state of grace to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Maggie tried to remember the last time she’d gone to confession. Certainly it had been long before the events of the past few months. She sighed as she turned over once again. Lindy had been right, it was all still within her an
d probably always would be…

The forecast for Saturday was dismal, the morning overcast, threatening rain for the afternoon ceremony. Kathleen was nearly hysterical that a downpour would destroy her gown. The wedding had seemed to drag on forever, the reception endless. Maggie danced with her father; all of her
uncles; the groom; the groom’s father; John, her partner for the wedding; and her brother, Kevin, all the while missing J.D., wishing with all her heart that she could will him to materialize, that she could be dancing with him now, his two left feet notwithstanding.

She thought back to her own wedding, hers and Mace’s, in the same church, the reception at the same club, the cast of characters essentially the same. She hadn’t been a happy bride, she recalled, and glanced across the room at a glowing Kathleen—if she was in fact pregnant, she was hiding it well.
That's how you’re supposed to look on your wedding day,
Maggie told herself.
Why had
n't anyone noticed that I didn’
t?

Finally, the happy couple having departed for their honeymoon, the guests started filtering out. Maggie’d had four glasses of champagne, way past her limit, and was feeling the effects. It was the damn toasts, she thought ruefully. First the best man, then the groom’s brother, then Uncle Paul, then cousin Thomas, then
…
who? She couldn’t recall. Too many toasts and too many memories. More than once she’d felt the tug of strangulation that had choked her that day six years ago, as she and Mace had stood before the priest, the suffocating knowledge that her life was ending and she was too weak to save herself.
Why was everyone so happy,
she had wondered,
when I am drowning?

The opening strains of “The Wedding March” had sounded like a death knell in her head, the smell of lilies gagging her. She’d gotten through it by pretending that she was a mere observer of all that went on, that it had no connection to her. She’d drifted through the reception with blank eyes, watching her life slip away with every passing second, grieving for the happiness she would never have, wistfully recalling how good it had been to feel like she was falling in love, two winters ago, with that basketball player she’d dated at Penn. She had danced on leaden feet with her beaming father, thrown her bouquet to Ellie, perversely wishing her sister the same amount of joy that she had felt at that moment.

Kathleen’s wedding party had been invited back to the
home of the bride’s parents, along with the entire family, to continue the festivities. Maggie picked slightly at the food arranged buffet style on the dining room table, then joined her cousin Mike at the bar set up in the backyard, where he was drinking away a broken engagement. He made her a gimlet, and they sat and talked for an hour, Mike doing most of the talking, she commiserating the best she could considering she was barely listening. He made them both another drink when Madeline, Mike’s sister, joined them to pour out her personal tale of woe. Mike made another round of gimlets.

Colleen strolled through the back door, holding the hand of a tall sandy-haired young man.
She’s so adorable,
Maggie thought as she watched with pride and affection, those strawberry curls, blue eyes, and freckles. She looks so grown-up today, but it’s hard to believe she’s sixteen this year. She watched as the young couple walked to the end of the hedge that marked the property from the yard next door. The young man leaned down and kissed Colleen. Maggie arched an eyebrow. Who was this little varmint kissing her baby sister?

By the time Mike had set out the fourth round of drinks, Kevin discovered that Maggie was almost incoherent and barely able to stand up. Their mother insisted that Kevin drive her home and accompanied them, hoping to get Maggie into bed before the rest of the family, especially her father—who was having one hell of a good time—got back home.

It had taken both her mother and her brother to get her into the house. She slumped in a chair in the kitchen, giggling and half crying at the same time.

“Don’t sit down, Maggie, we’ll never get you back up again. Drat that phone. You just stay there one second, Maggie. Kevin, come in here and make sure your sister d
oesn’t fall out of her seat…
Hello? Yes, she’s here, but I don’t think she can come to the phone right n
ow. Who’s calling, please?…
Well, actually, we’ve just come in from a family wedding and I’m afraid m
y daughter is, well, she’s…
she’s i
ntoxicated… Yes…
I don’t know, do you
think it would help? Well, we’ll try that. Honestly, I’ve nev
er seen Maggie like this and…
Yes, we’d best try
to get her to bed. Thank you…
I will tell her. It was nice speaking with you.”