Margaret from Maine (9781101602690) (8 page)

Chapter Nine

I
t was very early when Margaret entered St. Patrick's Church. The sun had not quite cleared the city buildings and the short walk from the hotel had felt quiet and lonely and peaceful. The clerk at the hotel had outlined the directions, sketching a primitive map on the back of a receipt pad. She wondered in passing what he had thought of this woman, awake in the first hours of the day, asking for a church. A sinner, probably, she concluded. That's what he must have thought. But she had taken the map and found the church without error, her only companion a newspaper truck that stopped while the driver jammed copies of the day's edition into news boxes. The truck had leapfrogged with her as she went down the three blocks from the hotel, the driver hopping out and nodding at her the last time their paths crossed. When the truck finally pulled away, grinding its gears and letting the noise climb the building walls, Margaret watched a scatter of pigeons fly up and then sheer down and circle around a discarded pretzel.

But now the church opened before her, quiet and empty, the red votive candles guttering at the wind the door created as it swung shut behind her. Instantly she felt herself transported to Our Lady of Lourdes, the church of her childhood. The smells—candle wax and flame, polish and shoe dirt—might have been borrowed from the little church in Maine and brought without a molecule lost to this church in Washington, D.C. She wondered if the Vatican did not have a recipe for air, a mixture it promoted so that Catholics, however old, could not escape the compelling atmosphere of their first church.

To the right of the center nave she saw someone move, a person kneeling and praying, so she went to the left, walking slowly in the comparative darkness, her steps loud on the floor. It was a magnificent church, far grander than she had anticipated. Someone coughed back and to the right, and she turned and spotted a man stretched out on one of the pews. Homeless, probably. She kept walking, her eyes up at the vaulted ceiling. The hotel clerk had told her the church had been erected for the European stonemasons who built the White House. Whatever the origin of the building, it felt calm and beautiful. She walked slowly, observing the details of the building, letting her mind adjust to the stillness.

Twenty rows from the altar, she paused and took her bearings. She felt herself compelled to genuflect, to cross herself as she had been taught, but she resisted. Instead she slid into the pew and sat for a moment, concentrating on her breath moving in and out of her lungs. It felt good to be in the church, she admitted, but she could not say for certain what had brought her there. Was it guilt? Was it her hope to remember Thomas clearly and perfectly for one instant before the ceremony? She couldn't say with any certainty. Her mind felt jumbled and confused and it wanted to rush toward a contemplation of Charlie, of the night they had spent together, of his kisses and his body and his gentleness, and yet she felt herself betraying Thomas by doing so. She was here, after all, for her husband. It pained her to think that she had been so ready to be with another man on this of all weekends. It demonstrated a lack of character, she felt, and she placed her face in her hands and leaned forward to kneel.

“Forgive me,” she whispered, but whether she prayed to Thomas or to God, or simply to the universe, she couldn't say. She could not even say for certain if she
did
feel guilt. A merciful God, she believed, would understand that she was not made of wood or stone. A knowing God would comprehend the scalding loneliness she had experienced these past six years.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered into her hands.

Her breathing caught and she began to cry. She cried a long time, her face trapped in her hands, her knees braced on the edge of the kneeler. Twice she heard the homeless man cough a long, spastic series of explosions, and she kept her face in her hands.

Was it wrong what she had done? she asked herself. Had she betrayed Thomas in any real sense, or was it only the vestige of old, worn-out thinking? Thomas could not know and therefore could never be hurt by her actions, but she had sworn a vow to him and now she had forsaken it. Truthfully, she had never been tempted before, had never even seriously considered the possibility. Where would she have gone to indulge such feelings? To the Ramada Inn bar over in Bangor? Would she have parked herself on a bar stool and waited for a local man to make an overture? Followed him upstairs to a motel room? The thought was hideous. But had she simply jumped at the first viable occasion, letting herself yield to Charlie because she could console herself that distance and the specialness of the occasion had given her license? It made her sick to think so. No, she wouldn't believe that.

After a time she looked up and took a tissue out of her coat pocket.
Oh, my goodness,
she thought. It was almost comical, she understood, to end up in a Catholic church the morning after she had slept with a new man. How true to type she was, she realized. More light came into the church through the stained glass windows, and a single barb fell on a statue close to the altar. It took her a moment to recognize St. Sebastian, his body pierced by arrows. Like Thomas, she thought. Like my dear husband whom I love, and always will love, but who is now gone except for his flesh. Except for his spirit, which resides in my son's body and mind, and I will be true to that, to that portion of Thomas, on pain of death, on pain of torture, on pain of my immortal soul.

She sat a while longer, waiting to see if she had any new impulse, any new understanding of her behavior. She still felt mixed up inside. Charlie had not been a fling. She would not believe that. But what was he? And why had he been so interested in a woman with a child from Maine? Had she misjudged him? She didn't think she had, but women often believed what they wanted to believe when it came to men. Women wanted a connection to exist, and she realized she needed to rationalize the night in her head. It could not have been simply about sex. She avoided that possibility. But in the course of a night she had ended up with a man, and what kind of woman did that?

She put her head on her hands for a moment, took a deep breath, then crossed herself and slid slowly out of the pew. The homeless man coughed again and the church echoed and let in the morning light.
Let it go,
she thought, though she knew it would haunt her. She pushed out the door and saw the sun had found the church and washed the steps in light.

* * *

Blake Welsh watched her son, Phillip, run after the soccer ball on a bright Saturday morning in Maine. A medium-size Dunkin' Donuts coffee steamed in her hand. She felt a little guilty about the Dunkin' Donuts coffee, because the West Bangor Little League mothers ran a refreshment booth out near the parking lot—hot dogs, bottled waters, orange soda, and coffee—but she could not abide bad coffee and the mothers' huge coffee urn notoriously produced rancid dreck.
Oh, well,
she thought,
let them hate me
. She had never felt particularly at home with the West Bangor Little League mothers, and she supposed the coffee would drive another nail in her coffin of ex-urban ostracism. So be it, she figured. At least she had good coffee.

She held the coffee flat and smooth as she raised her voice when she saw Phillip gallop close to the opponent's goal. The children ran like iron filings after a magnet, she'd often thought, chasing the ball wherever it went, abandoning any sense of scheme or strategy that Barney Rudd, the coach, tried to instill in them. Or like fish, she amended now, her eyes still fixed on Phillip. Like tiny reef fish darting in synchronicity to escape a predator. Instead of swimming away, these little fish swam to the compelling object, but in every other way the metaphor suited the situation. She pictured them as a school of bright, shimmering fish, skittering back and forth, back and forth, in unison with the rocking ocean.

She took a sip of coffee and before she removed the cup from her lips, her cell phone rang. It was Donny, her husband, and she answered it on the second ring and turned a little away from the game for privacy. He was already at work, cutting the grass on the twelve-acre cemetery in Millinocket. Mowing the dead, Donny called it, but only to her. He thought it was funny, and she was never quite sure.

“How's he doing?” Donny asked.

Blake heard mowers running behind his voice. She pictured him taking a break in his truck, the phone pinned to his ear.

“Oh,” she said, “he's chasing the ball around the field with about twenty other kids.”

“Any score?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, tell him to give me a call when he finishes. Tell him I'm sorry I can't be there.”

“You
can
be here,” she said, then felt both annoyed with him and disappointed in herself for having revisited his perpetual absence from family events so quickly in the conversation. She had meant not to do that.

“Whatever, Blake. It's called making a living.”

“It's called raising a son.”

He hung up. Just like that. She sipped her coffee, slid her phone back into her pocket, and watched the children chasing after the ball. She spotted Phillip for a second before he disappeared in a swarm of green jerseys and bare legs. She felt her eyes glaze over, and for a moment or two she thought of Margaret. Margaret had called early—mother early, she had named those early hours—and she had recounted the night with Charlie, the ball, the kissing. How strange, Blake thought now, that Margaret, the one woman in their circle with an infirm husband, with what many might have said was a lonely life, had been swept away by passion and romance and a charming man. How out of the blue. And because Blake was a decent person and a devoted friend, she smiled and nodded slightly in honor of her friend's good fortune. It could not have happened to anyone more deserving, more kind, more human. Yet—and it horrified Blake to understand it, to grasp it fully—she felt a tiny bit jealous, a tiny bit envious that Margaret had experienced this marvelous night.
I am a bad person,
Blake told herself
, a horrible, miserable human being
. To rectify it, she closed her eyes and sent out a beam of good thoughts to her friend Margaret, sent her hope and love and joy.
Any simple joy, for my friend Margaret. Give her gladness in her heart,
she prayed, the coffee like a warm handshake sealing the deal.

* * *

Standing behind the president, Margaret thought about Thomas. She felt light-headed and empty. Charlie stood beside her, his dress uniform sharp and surprisingly vivid among so many civilians, but she would not let her mind go to him. Now was Thomas's time, and she focused her thoughts on him. Thomas, her husband. Thomas who'd stood and opened his arms to protect his fellow soldier. Thomas whose simple goodness was the most remarkable thing about him.

I see you, Thomas,
she whispered to herself.
I remember you.

She felt, just for an instant, his warm presence. She pictured him walking toward the barn, his body upright, his neck brown from the sun, his large boots clotted with mustaches of hay and manure. She pictured him sitting at the kitchen table, a yellow foolscap pad of paper in front of him, a calculator, a beaver lodge of pencils, a coffee cup whose rings scattered across the evening sports page. Doing the books, he called it, and she sat with him, helping to calculate the numbers that did not calculate, the sound of the Red Sox in the television room, the baby, Gordon, at rest in her womb.

“And so, today . . . in honor of those who serve . . . ,” she heard President Obama say, but she could not follow his speech. Lights flashed. A person stood beside President Obama with a cluster of pens. She kept her arms at her sides.

Slowly, her eyes filled. They filled for Thomas, whose life had been spent before it had started. Whose empty form rested in a Bangor hospital, whose son would grow up without a father. What had it been about, after all? Surely Thomas had no enmity toward the Afghans. He hardly listened to political talk and never engaged in it. It had been a job, nothing more, and as she'd known he would, he did it without question, without thought of his own safety. For an instant she nearly made a sound, called to President Obama to stop, to hold on, because she wanted to tell the world who her husband had been. She wanted her son to know how proud he should be of his father, this kind man who brought her lilacs in the spring and asters in the fall, who did not raise his voice, did not scold or argue, who met people with gentle directness, whose happiest moments revolved around his house, his family, his livestock.

Thomas Eugene Kennedy,
she whispered each time the president's voice paused.
Thomas Eugene Kennedy
. When people clapped she whispered his name louder.

“Your daddy,” she whispered to Gordon, though her son was not there. “Your daddy is a good, good man.”

* * *

“Did you see it?” Margaret asked.

She sat on her bed in the hotel room. Her body and eyes felt dry and cried out. She wore no shoes. Her feet hurt from the morning in heels. Her hand trembled a little as it held her cell phone. A headache had begun in her forehead, pressing and pulling at her. She had swallowed two aspirins before calling and the taste of the pills felt like sand in her throat.

“Yes,” Grandpa Ben said, “and a reporter from the Bangor paper called for a quote. I told him we were proud of Thomas, that's all. I didn't really know what else there was to say. But yes, it showed up bright and center . . . and we could see you behind President Obama. Blake said it's on YouTube so you can watch it yourself when you get home.”

“I'm glad you saw it, Ben. I was very proud of Thomas at the signing. Did Gordon understand what was going on?”

“Not so much. He didn't understand what the signing meant. He thought President Obama was signing autographs.”

“Well, in a way he was. Is he nearby? I'd like to say hello if he is.”