Broken for You (8 page)

And so at twelve—the age when Margaret's friends were beginning the social odyssey which would carry them from debutante teas to coming-out balls to engagement parties to weddings—Margaret became the mistress of her father's house. It was she who greeted the partygoers,
sat at the head of the table, accompanied her father to social and civic events. Under Papa O's tutelage, she became completely assured among the society of the middle-aged.

Young men were never invited to the house; it was just as well. Margaret was awkward with boys to begin with, and her years in a Catholic girls' school had done nothing to enhance her confidence. She knew she was plain and wouldn't be sought out in a room as other young women would be. The few older unmarried men she met suffered from inevitable comparisons to her father—none were half as intelligent or charming. So eventually, both the opportunity and the inclination for romance dwindled. Margaret was Papa O's girl, and content to be so. All things pointed to a splendid spinsterhood.

Papa O had planned to take her to Europe as a present after graduation—she had been such a good student, such a good girl, and she had worked so hard at her French—but then the war broke out, and it was not the time to go. The antique business did not suffer, though, and Margaret stayed home and learned everything there was to learn about porcelain. Papa O was so proud. They would go, he promised, as soon as all this nonsense overseas was over. He would take her with him and they would tour the great factories, visit the great cities she had heard about for so long. They would stay for months, maybe even years. He would show her everything.

And then he died, in his sleep. It was 1946. He was sixty-six years old. Margaret was twenty-four and still a stupid, stupid child.

She grew up soon enough. The fairy tale was finally over.

Twelve years later, she met Stephen Hughes.

She still went out of the house in those days; she had not yet exiled herself to the kind of life she would take up after Daniel died, the solitary life of the sacristan, with its grave and lonely responsibility of caring for sacred objects. She had not gone into hiding, not exactly. She kept a small staff at the house, made contributions to worthy causes, supported the arts, went to museums and the cinema, that sort of thing.

And then one day, she walked to the art museum to see the new Kandinsky. She sat down in front of the painting and let herself be tugged into its swirling, singing confection of pinks and greens, and after
some time a young man with a sketchbook sat down next to her, and there they were in the room together, looking at art, and that was how it began. Who knew why he fell in love with her—a spinster! An old maid! That was what a woman like Margaret was called in those days. He wasn't interested in her money or where it came from, so there was no reason to tell him; he simply found the house and its contents beautiful. Even more miraculously, he found Margaret beautiful, and he loved to make her laugh. He would paint, he would teach, they would love each other, all would be well.

A few months later, Stephen proposed, and she accepted. He wanted to pay for the honeymoon himself. Knowing how much Margaret loved France, he took her to a hotel in Seattle where everyone spoke French and the balconies were hung with lavender. When they weren't making love, Stephen drew. He even drew a sketch inside their Gideon Bible, a sketch of Margaret in bed. Stephen thought she had beautiful breasts. Perhaps she did. He sketched her into the pages of the Song of Solomon.

"I have no words, Maggie," Stephen had said when he finished. He handed her the Bible, opened to the chapter titled "The Bridegroom Praises the Bride."

The drawing did not flatter; the face was Margaret's face. And yet it held something else: a radiance that she must have had—or at least, a radiance that Stephen perceived.

Yes,
Margaret would remember,
it was a kind of light I had then. Stephen did too. We were young and we loved each other and we were full of light.

Stephen had drawn a woman who was not beautiful, but who
was
beautiful, and Margaret read the words that her body contained, words that moved in and through and around her, like air, like breath, like water: "A garden locked is my bride. A rock garden locked, a spring sealed up. You are a garden spring, a well of fresh water, and streams flowing from Lebanon. . . ."

It had all been so very sweet.

Slowly, though, something else crept into their lives. Stephen's work as an artist was not well-received. He grew discouraged. He spent less time and passion on his painting. He wanted to contribute, to earn; he chafed at the idea that his wife's wealth supported them, but he hated
teaching art. Money began to matter. He started to ask questions: Why was there so much? Couldn't they sell some of these things? They were questions that Margaret had to answer, of course, and after that, everything began to change.

Stephen went back to school. He painted no more symphonies of color and form. No. He would draw buildings instead. He would embrace straight lines and work with some promise of financial reward.
Money of our own!
he'd shouted.
Don't you understand?
He cared less about making Margaret laugh. He started drinking too much, too often, and Margaret found herself thinking more and more about the hollow-cheeked old man and his curse.

And then came the day she learned she was pregnant. A miracle, surely, a good omen, a sign of blessings for them. She couldn't wait for Stephen to come home from school, so she decided to walk to the university and find him.

After a few blocks, she came upon a neatly dressed man standing on a corner, studying a rumpled city map. Next to him was a little boy of about four or five, wearing short pants and a red blazer. He was holding two half-eaten jelly doughnuts over his head. His face was smeared with powdered sugar and raspberry filling. The doughnuts were engaged in a battle of epic proportions. "Crash! Crash! Crash!!" he shouted as the doughnuts collided against one another.

I'd best get used to that sort of thing,
she thought happily,
especially if the baby's a boy.

As she started to pass them, the man looked up. "Excuse me," he said.

"CRASH!"

"Jack! A bit less noise, please."

The doughnuts dropped in altitude. "Crash," Jack said softly, and took an enormous bite out of one of his aircraft.

"Do you know, are we anywhere near the cemetery?"

Jack looked up at Margaret, chewing in that openmouthed way that children have. The explosion of raspberry jelly inside his mouth made it look as if he were bleeding. It disturbed Margaret for some reason, and she tried to look away.

"There is a cemetery near here, yes."

"My mum's great-aunt is buried there. I promised her if I ever got to the States I'd visit her grave," the man went on.

"We're BRITISH!" Jack bellowed. He smiled expansively. His teeth were bright pink. He began screeching out a melody that resembled— just barely—"God Save the Queen."

"Jack! Quiet!!"

Jack fell silent and bit into his other UFO.

Margaret gave the man directions. The cemetery was not far. They would find it easily.

Her eyes kept wandering back to the child. He was chewing slowly, staring up at her with large, glassy, chestnut-colored eyes, the jam on his face starting to congeal. Margaret began to feel uneasy, nauseous, frightened.

"I'm sorry," she blurted. "I really must go."

She'd turned around and raced back to the house. She could hear Jack's bell-like voice for several more blocks; the air had been so clear that morning.
"CRASH!
CRASH! Crash . . . crash."

She recalled this memory many times after Daniel's death. She should have known then that the curse laid on her, and on anyone she dared to love, was real.

If she could bring herself to speak of it, this is the story Margaret would have told:

Things had grown very bad with her and Stephen. They had not talked of divorce. Like many people of their generation, the word itself—with its lip-biting, sibilant physicality—represented a kind of verbal apocalypse, never to be mentioned lightly. And in those days, of course, warring couples stayed together (they told themselves) for the good of the children.

One day, pining for the verisimilitude of happy family life, Margaret had suggested they venture out of the city for a Saturday outing. Stephen was amenable, Daniel was excited, and after a flurry of planning and packing they set out in Stephen's MG, the top down and the car loaded with a picnic lunch and drawing supplies. They were northwest-bound, for Skagit Valley, where the barley fields were greening and the tulips were in bloom.

On the way, she and Stephen had argued. He brought wine, even though Margaret specifically asked him not to.
Just
for once!
she'd carped
through clenched teeth.
Can't you be with us without feeling the need to get drunk?

I can be with Daniel,
he'd shot back under his breath,
but I cannot be with you, Margaret, if you want to know the absolute truth, no, I cannot be with you.

At the end of this exchange, they shared a panicked look. Had Daniel overheard them? In the small backseat of the sports car, staring at the countryside and drinking his bottle of soda as the March wind rushed past and ruffled his hair, he didn't seem to have heard a thing. Still, out of their desire to shield him from rancor and make the day special, Stephen and Margaret fell silent. There was no more conversation between them after that.

They found a picnic site. Stephen drank wine and drew in his sketchbook. Margaret and Daniel ate lunch and wandered the tulip fields. With the dramatic, shifting sky and the intensity of color, it was like being inside an Impressionist painting. She laughed at the sight of Daniel among the flowers. Wearing a yellow and green striped shirt, his beanpole body just beginning to sprout, he was shorter than an average eight-year-old but exceptionally tall for a tulip.

"I'm going to the convenience store!" Stephen shouted from the picnic table.

"What?" Margaret was furious with him. He'd made no effort to be a part of this day, part
of them.
He wasn't even here.

"I'll be right back!" he called, and then started toward the car.

"I'll come with you, Dad!" Daniel yelled from across the field. "Okay, Mom?"

He so loves his father,
she thought, reminding herself why she and Stephen must never separate. "See you soon, sweetheart!" she called back, but he was already a varicolored blur running toward his father, the tulip heads tossing in his wake as if they were clamoring to speak.

"Bye, Mom!" He waved from the car. "See you soon!"

She strolled the fields for a while, checked her watch—how far away was that convenience store anyway?—and then walked back to the picnic table, where the remains of their lunch had started to attract fruit flies and yellow jackets. She shooed them away and began packing up. Then she noticed Stephen's sketchbook and flipped it open.

He had been drawing Daniel, and her, on page after page. She'd forgotten how masterful he was, how perfectly he could describe something with a few simple lines and shadings. There were quick charcoal sketches—their faces in close-up, Daniel's creased and cast-off tennis shoes, Margaret's hands—and the beginnings of more detailed colored renderings of the two of them, in the field. There was so much love in the way he saw them that day.

She heard sirens, far away—a sound she'd grown inured to in the city, it was notable in this setting. She looked up from Stephen's sketchbook, toward the steady stream of city cars and their passengers as they raced along the highway.

Everyone had the same idea,
she thought.
A weekend in the country.
Children waved to her from backseats as they passed. So many styles of greeting, too: some were shy or impish, some grandly monarchial, others pulled goofy faces, one boy gave a solemn salute. Feeling like the sole spectator at a spontaneous parade, she waved back, trying to match each child in tone and form.

The sirens were coming closer. And then the parade began slowing down, drivers were braking, horns were being honked. The children turned away from her; they reached for the shoulders of their parents and pulled themselves forward in their seats. "What's going on, Daddy?" she imagined them saying. "Why is everyone going so slow?" And then Margaret realized how close the sirens were.

Where are they?
she thought, her heart clenching now, her lungs rent. When the traffic came to a standstill and the crescendo of sirens was unbearable, she dropped Stephen's sketchbook and started running down the highway, toward the nightmare of flashing lights and crumpled metal and blood.

A line of officers blocked her way as if they were overgrown children in that game she'd watched Daniel play.