The Naughty List (3 page)

Maggie led Daniel toward the fireplace where he and Carol whispered back and forth while sipping at their wine.

“So will you finally talk my sister into having children?” Carol asked, smiling at Rachel and Jayson, who now had become enamored of the toy train that wound around the Christmas tree.

“She says she doesn’t want kids,” Daniel watched himself say. “I think she means it.”

“Motherhood would be so good for her. She’s just a Type A, always has been. Having a baby would calm her down. All your priorities change when you have children. You want them, don’t you?”

Daniel watched the younger version of himself inhale deeply, saw his eyes soften as he looked at Jayson staring with silent fascination at the toy train.

“I do. Very much.” Daniel knew “very much” had been an understatement. Once the shock of being married to a goddess like Maggie had worn off, all he’d wanted was to have a child with her. A daughter with Maggie’s mind and wit, a son with his love of books… he ached to add to their family of two.

“Talk to Maggie. Maybe she’ll come around.” Carol smiled at him. “Do it soon. She’s running out of time.”

“I’ll talk to her tonight.” The younger Daniel lifted his wine glass to his lips while the older Daniel could only wince.

“I remember that conversation,” Daniel said as Maggie took his hand and led him away from the fireplace, away from the memory. “It didn’t go as I’d hoped.”

“I remember it, too. It went a lot like this.” Maggie bent over and blew out one of the candles. Every light in the room went out but for the ones on the Christmas tree. In the darkness, Daniel heard harsh whispering.

“Keep your voice down,” Younger Daniel ordered. “The kids are sleeping downstairs.”

“Yes, let’s worry about the kids,” Maggie from the memory said. “They matter so much more than we do.”

“I never said that.”

“You don’t have to say that. I told you before we got married I didn’t want children. I have my work. I have my life with you. I have everything I need or want. Asking me to have kids is like asking me to take on a second job. Why would I do that when I love my first one so much?”

“But having kids… it’s not supposed to be a job.”

“What would you call something that involved non-stop manual labor, Daniel?”

“Are you actually angry at me for wanting to have children with you?”

“Yes. Yes, I am. It’s not who I am. It’s not what I want. You’re asking me to be someone and something I don’t want to be. How would you feel if all of a sudden I decided I wanted us to be vanilla? No more kink, no more submitting to you in bed… and elsewhere? No more you being in charge in the bedroom?”

Daniel watched his younger self blanch at the question.

“I’d be furious,” he admitted. “And I’d hate every second of it. But it’s not—”

“It
is
the same thing,” Maggie countered. “Exactly the same thing. Deciding we’re going to be a vanilla couple from now on is just like you asking me to be a mother. It would be a total betrayal of my very self. So either you accept that kids are just not part of our future, or I’m not part of your future. What will it be, Daniel? Your decision.”

And Maggie in the memory had fallen silent. And Daniel watched his younger self fall silent, too. Neither of them spoke.

Not a single word.

“Close your eyes, Daniel,” Maggie whispered and Daniel obeyed readily, wanting to get out of this memory as quickly as possible. When he opened them again, they’d returned to the present, to his living room with his Anya still angry and secluded upstairs in her room.

Daniel could barely meet Maggie’s eyes.

“I hated myself for weeks after that,” Daniel said. “Not for talking to you about having children. But because I didn’t answer when you asked me ‘What will it be?’ I should have answered immediately. I should have said, ‘You, Maggie. No matter what.’ I’m sorry. I’m so, so—”

Maggie stopped his apology with her fingertips on his lips.

“It’s all right. You were upset and hurt and sad. You had dreams, and I had mine, and they weren’t the same dreams. It crushed you.”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to give up your dreams. That’s what I was doing.”

“You were. But I stood my ground. That night and every single time we had the fight about kids.”

“We didn’t fight that—”

Maggie snapped her fingers and before Daniel’s eyes a parade of memories flashed.

We’ve discussed this before. I’m done talking about it.

We can adopt. You don’t even have to—

How many times do I have to tell you—

You would be an amazing mother. Once you had a baby, you would—

What? Be miserable?

And on and on it went… seven years of marriage, heated conversations, subdued fights, resentments waxing and waning between the happier times, the better days…

The ghosts of a hundred arguments past went silent, and Daniel could only press his hand into his forehead to steady himself.

“You know, if I hadn’t gotten my diagnosis,” Maggie said, gently prying Daniel’s hand off his forehead, “we would have gotten divorced in a couple of years.”

Daniel shook his head. “No. That… no.”

“I’m not conjecturing. I know.” She smiled sadly at him. “I know,” she repeated.

“Divorced… you and me?” Daniel reeled from the very thought of it. They’d had such a good marriage. Divorce seemed utterly inconceivable. And yet… so many fights he’d forgotten. Time had erased all those bad memories. The past was sepia-tinged and fuzzy, not the cold black and white of reality.

Maggie sighed. “Divorced. Yes. And the consequences wouldn’t have been pretty.”

“I can’t…” Daniel said. “No. I don’t—”

“But you need to, Darling. You need to see…” Maggie touched his face, closed his eyes for him, and Daniel braced himself.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself standing in Maggie’s office at her Manhattan law firm. She’d been a partner and had made millions in her practice. Her office gleamed with money and success and power.

And yet…

“Maggie… no…” Daniel whispered as his eyes came into focus. She said nothing, only crossed her arms over her chest like she always did when embarrassed or nervous.

Another Maggie sat at her desk. No, not sat. Not really. Slumped over would have been the words Daniel would have used. This Maggie, the divorced-from-Daniel Maggie he’d never met, reeked of alcohol. A dusting of white powder marred the otherwise pristine surface of Maggie’s black desk.

“Jesus, Mags…”

“I never told you that in my late twenties I had a little bit of a drug problem. Manhattan law firm. High-powered. High stress. Me trying to deal with all the pressure. I indulged more often than I should have. Behaved much better in my thirties. But after you and I divorced, I threw myself into my work and all those old bad habits came back.”

Daniel said nothing. He walked around the desk to get a closer look at this Maggie he’d never met before. One tiny drop of blood had leaked from her nose and onto a contract.

“She’s alive.” Maggie nodded at herself. “Physically, at least. Emotionally, spiritually… gone. It’s Christmas Eve and this Maggie is supposed to be auditing a contract. But this Maggie will work herself into an early grave by age fifty. She won’t need cancer to kill her. She’ll do it to herself.”

Daniel knelt by her chair. He started to touch her hair but pulled his hand back.

“She’s not real.” Daniel stood up and walked back to his Maggie. “I refuse to believe she’s real.”

“She’s not. She’s merely a shadow of what could have been. Let me show you another shadow.”

“Whose?”

Maggie exhaled heavily. “Yours.”

With a single blink Daniel disappeared from the penthouse office and discovered he now stood in a cramped and dingy apartment. Glancing out the window, he saw narrow brownstone houses, trash in bags piled high on the street, plastic faded Santa Clauses illuminating the dirty front porches. It appeared to be Queens, or the Bronx maybe.

“Where I am?” Daniel asked. He’d never set foot in this place before.

“Home sweet home. After we divorced you refused a cent of alimony from me. You took the first library job you could get. Small branch in the Bronx. You spent most of your days at work trying to keep homeless people from moving into the bathrooms.”

Daniel shrugged. “At least I’m working in my field. Sort of.”

“You took the first job you could find after our divorce. And married the first woman you dated after our divorce.”

“I did?” Daniel stared at Maggie in shock. She nodded.

“You did. A page at the library named Mara. A couple years younger than you but already with two small children.”

At that Daniel had to smile. “I’m a step-father?”

“You
were
a step-father. The marriage lasted about six months. You bonded with the kids far more than the mother. Mara was jealous that you seemed to love them more than her. And you did. Vanilla woman, wouldn’t even consider any D/s in the bedroom, much less anything kinkier. She left you and took the kids, and this is your Christmas two years after our divorce.”

Daniel heard a key in the door and saw a different version of himself come in. That Daniel looked tired, haggard, older than he had any right to. In his hands he carried a bag of Chinese take-out.

“Your family in Canada invited you back home for Christmas. You had too much pride to tell them you couldn’t afford the airfare this year. You lied and said you had a new girlfriend and wanted to spend Christmas with her. But it’s just you alone with Chinese food. It’ll be the same Christmas after Christmas. You’ll give up on love, on marriage, on your dreams of fatherhood. And this will be you until you die…”

Daniel watched himself sink into a battered arm chair and turn on the television to an American football game. He didn’t even like American football. But it was noise, light, movement… Dozens of women during his life had told him he was sexy, handsome… he’d even gotten
gorgeous
a time or two. But this Daniel had gone soft around the stomach, with a heavily-lined face, and nothing in those blue eyes of his so many women had swooned over. Nothing at all.

“I’m a wreck.”

“Yes, you are. At least you don’t have a nose full of coke and a fridge full of vodka.”

Daniel looked at Maggie.

“You’re telling me that it’s for the best you died of cancer? I can’t… I won’t believe that.”

Maggie gave him a look of deepest compassion.

“I’m telling you that things happen for a reason. Even the bad things. That’s all.”

Daniel turned away from the vision of himself.

“Can’t you show me something good? Something that doesn’t make me feel like throwing up? Please, Mags?”

Maggie took his hands again and kissed his now bare ring finger.

“I can show you something absolutely beautiful if you really want to see it.”

“I do. Please let me see something beautiful. A good Christmas memory. We had as many of those as the bad ones. Didn’t we?”

“We did, my Love. We absolutely did. But I won’t show you a good memory of us. Not yet, anyway.”

“What could be more beautiful than you and I having a good Christmas together?”

Maggie raised her hand, snapped her fingers, and Daniel now stood outside the bedroom where Anya had hidden herself away from him.

“What your Anya is doing right now?”

Maggie pointed at the door and Daniel looked at her in embarrassment.

“She locked me out.”

“Smart girl. You need to be locked out every now and then so you can get your head on straight. But she didn’t lock me out.”

“I hope you’ve got a key, then.”

“Oh, Daniel…” Maggie said, clicking her tongue. “Where I’m from we don’t need keys…”

And with that she took him by the hand and swept them both right through the door.

Daniel’s heart tightened in his chest at the sight that greeted him. Anya had taken the blanket off the bed and wrapped herself in it for warmth. In the corner of the bedroom she huddled on the floor next to the heating vent, a telephone pressed to her ear with her gray furball of a cat, Leonard, curled up at her feet.

“Anya.” Daniel spoke her name softly and stepped toward her. “Sweetheart, I’m so—”

“She can’t hear you, remember?” Maggie took him gently by the wrist. “We’re not really here.”

“She’s got to be cold. Of course she’d pick the coldest room in the house to hide in.”

“Crying women with breaking hearts don’t always make the best decisions, Daniel. Remember when we got into that fight on our fifth anniversary, and I ended up backing the car into a duck pond?”

“That one duck is still in physical therapy because of you.”

Maggie grinned at him. “Exactly. Now shush and listen. I’ll translate if you need me to.”

Back in the old days, Maggie would have gotten The Ouch for telling him to “shush.” The Ouch had been her name for a particularly vicious stare Daniel would give her when either annoyed with her or, even better, pretending to be annoyed with her for the purposes of inflicting erotic punishments. She always called it The Ouch because whenever she saw it, she knew she’d be in pain the next day.

But now Daniel couldn’t take his eyes off Anya long enough to give Maggie The Ouch. His little girl looked miserable… the blanket pulled tight around her, and her beautiful face lined with dried tears. It killed him that he couldn’t gather her in his arms and hold her until she felt warm and safe and loved again.

“It’s okay, my Love,” Maggie whispered to him as she squeezed his arm. “Where I am, there’s no pain, no pettiness, no sorrow or jealousy. It doesn’t hurt me to see you look at her.”

Daniel smiled at Maggie and his heart swelled with his old love for her. It felt comfortable and warm, like his favorite pair of jeans pulled straight from the dryer. His new love for Anya felt completely different. It scared him, exhilarated him, dug into him like fingernails in his back.

Kneeling down next to Anya, Daniel studied her face as he listened to her soft voice speaking into the phone. He’d had to learn French and learn it quickly once he and Anya had gotten together. His Québécoise lover took a little too much pleasure in correcting his errors. She took so much pleasure in it that he started correcting any and all of her mistakes with English. The wooden ruler he kept in his office and her perfect round bottom had gotten very well acquainted.