The Meaning of Maggie (2 page)

I wasn't just Maggie Mayfield, the girl, anymore. I was Maggie Mayfield, member of a carbonated dynasty! It no longer mattered that Mom never allowed me to drink it, now I owned it! I bet you get to drink all the Coke you want at the annual shareholders' meeting!

Dad took the certificate from my excited hands. “I'll put this away for safekeeping, okay?”

“Wait! Let me show Mom first!” I dashed into the kitchen past the sink overflowing with dishes, past the empty cinnamon roll pan, and past the almost bad bananas.

“Mother,” I announced. “I'm rich.”

“I'm glad one of us is.” She grabbed the coffeepot and we joined Dad back in the dining room.

He was thumbing through the paper. “Remember Mags, buy low, sell high.”

Mom laughed. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Of course I do. I read it in a Far Side cartoon.”

“Don't worry, folks. I'm in a dividend reinvestment plan. I'm making money as we speak.” I took the last swig of OJ and pushed my empty mug toward Mom with a wink.

“No coffee, Maggie.”

“Come on! I'm a Wall Street tycoon! I need caffeine!”

“Nice try, but no. Now go get ready. It's almost time to go.”

Mom had something pretty huge planned for my big day and that huge thing was a tour of the local newspaper. It was just the kind of behind-the-scenes action I needed to get in with the press before my presidential election. Even if my presidential election was a couple decades away.

But first things first. I needed my lucky red scarf. Sure we were in the hot and humid thick of July, but I had to have it. I never did any big deal things without it. What if all the reporters kept the newsroom below freezing so the ink wouldn't melt? What if a top-notch editor wanted me to be his girl Friday and we were off to a frozen place to cover some big deal story about a
Russian king or a Dairy Queen? I couldn't leave my lucky scarf behind.

I had saved it from the pit of Mom's closet last November while on a mission to uncover my Halloween candy stash.
⁶
I never found the candy, but I discovered the scarf and it was definitely meant for me. And my neck.

I double-wrapped the scarf and reached for my notebook and my glasses, which were another great find from Mom's closet. They were a pair of Dad's old glasses that Mom never let me wear because she said they made me look like a cereal killer, which I didn't really understand because I loved cereal too much to kill it. I tucked the glasses into my front pocket just in case I needed to get up close and personal with some facts. And then it was “off to the presses.”

We waltzed into the newsroom and I felt immediately at home among the desks and pencils and doughnuts. We met an old-school reporter named Hank who smelled like dust and deodorant. I asked him a bazillion questions like, “Are the facts cold and hard when you find them or do they need an incubation period?” and, “Should I start drinking coffee now or wait until it can't stunt my growth?” But he didn't really have any answers or maybe he did but he kept them secret because that's
what reporters do: They keep secrets right up until the big story breaks.

I took notes while he told us all about the beat. Busting local political corruption. Uncovering scandals plaguing Little League baseball. Announcing births and deaths ON THE SAME DAY. And promoting Atlanta businesses like my personal favorite: the Highland Bakery in the Old Fourth Ward. They have cinnamon rolls bigger than my head. And I have a really big head.

I tried to pay attention to his every word, but I couldn't keep my eyes from wandering over to his desk. No magnifying glass? No trench coat? Weird. They were probably in his car with his wiretapping kit.

At the loading dock, reporters and editors buzzed around us chatting up big deal stories while drinking big deal cups of joe.
⁷
None of them were wearing news caps like I had imagined but they were talking really fast about really smart things and I thought, Note to self: Find Dad's old stopwatch and try to increase my word count per minute. I was going to have to think and speak a lot faster if I was going to keep up with the fast-paced world of facts.

Hank apologized for having to rush us out the door but as a parting gift, he let me have the first paper off the
presses at NO CHARGE. It was still warm and smelled new even though I knew the news was already old. The ink stuck to my fingers and at that moment, my life was PERFECT.

After we left, my cheeks actually hurt from smiling so much, which hadn't happened since my last birthday when Mom took me to see
Les Miserables
, which was LES AWESOME. We zoomed up the driveway and I rushed inside, but I didn't wash my hands right away. I wanted to keep the smudged facts on my hands. I wanted to keep the perfect.

I ran over to Dad's chair to show him the headlines on my hands and I found two things I didn't expect.

1) He was sitting with his legs crossed like a pretzel.
⁸

2) He looked super sad.

How had he gotten this way? Both super sad and pretzel-like? And why was the stereo cranked all the way up? It was so loud it felt like an actual zeppelin was crashing through the roof. But it wasn't. It was just the band Led Zeppelin going on and on about heartbreak or Middle Earth or some other nonsense. When we'd left earlier, Dad had been all smiles and had told us to hurry back because he wanted cake, which I understood because I always wanted cake.

Then it hit me.

I'd missed the biggest scoop of the day. I'd been so overwhelmed that morning I hadn't noticed something so different about Dad: He was home. Every other birthday wish from him had been a phone call from work. But he wasn't at work. Not today.

I turned the stereo down and bellied up to his chair. “Hey Dad, why aren't you at work? Is everything okay?”

He blinked a long blink. “Hey Mags, how was the newspaper? Did you love it? What was your favorite part?”

I got really serious. “Every part was my favorite part.”

“That's really great. Hey, will you get your sisters for me? I'm calling a little family meeting.”

A family meeting? On my birthday? But what about cake and presents and everyone giving speeches about how great I was? What kind of inauguration into being eleven was this?

“But what about my birthday?”

“It'll just take a minute. And then we'll have cake. Promise.”

I took promises really seriously. Pinky-swear promises and spit-shake promises and especially promises to have cake. So I called Tiffany and Layla and they opened their doors at the same time because they're pretty much the same person. With the same brain. And the same bra size.

“What's up?” Layla asked.

“Dad wants to talk to us.”

Tiffany glanced down at her hands. “Tell him I'll be there when my nails are dry.”

“You better come now,” I said. “It sounds important.”

They followed me into the living room where Mom was now sitting next to Dad. They looked serious, really serious.

Dad cleared his throat. “Girls, your mother got a job. We should be really proud of her. She's going to be working at a big fancy hotel downtown.”

This didn't make any sense.

“Why would you do that? Who's going to take care of us?” I panicked. “We'll starve to death!”

Dad answered before Mom could.

“I'm going to take care of us.” He took a giant breath like it might be his last.

“I quit my job.”

He said it again but this time he said it differently.

This time he said it like he was saying it to himself.

“I quit my job.”

My brain was freaking out but my mouth didn't say a thing. I had a million questions but I didn't know which to ask first.

“Is this because you fell at work?” Layla asked.

Okay, now I had a million and one questions. “You fell at work?! Was it in the lunchroom? I did that once and it was terrible. Chocolate milk went EVERYWHERE.”

Dad took Mom's hand and squeezed it. “I took a tumble in the bathroom a couple weeks ago. It was no big deal, really. But my boss and I decided it was time to think about what's next for me.”

There was a long silence until Mom finally said something. “Your dad's worked so hard for so long at the airport. You know, he started out as a baggage handler and he worked his way up to gate agent. They're really going to miss him. They'll never find anyone as good to replace him.”

“Then why is he leaving?” Tiffany asked.

“Because it's time,” Dad said.

“Time for what?”

“Time for a new chapter,” Mom answered.

Tiffany glared at Dad. “So you're going to be here, like, all the time?”

“Yep.” Dad smiled.

“Great. That's just
great
.” Tiffany stormed down the hall and I followed her because I liked when she got upset because her face got all weird and splotchy. She collapsed onto her bed and smooshed her face under her pillow.

“What's your deal?” I asked.

She threw the pillow on the floor.

“My life. Is. Over.”

“What? Why?” I offered her an Oreo from the bag I kept under my bed.

She shooed it away. “He's going to be here like twenty- five
⁹
hours a day. Watching our every move.”

“I don't care. All of my moves are 100% legal.”

Tiffany buried her face in another pillow and then Mom knocked on our door and said it was time to eat.

No one really talked at dinner, which was unusual because someone always had a story or a joke or at
the very least we would watch
Jeopardy!
and guess the answers. Well, some of us guessed. Some of us
¹⁰
just knew the answers.

But tonight Mom turned the TV off before we sat down so there was mostly silence. And the silence made my tummy feel weird so I didn't really eat, which was a super bummer because it was my special birthday dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
¹¹

After everyone was done, Layla and Tiffany helped Mom with the dishes and I pushed Dad into the living room and locked his wheels so we could talk man to girl. Something had been bothering me and I had to know the answer.

“Were you scared when you fell? It sounds scary.”

He kissed me on the forehead. “How about you fix your dear old dad a cocktail?”

I didn't push him to answer. It didn't feel right. So I headed for the fridge and stood on my tiptoes to reach the freezer. I almost had the ice when a freckled arm beat me to it.

“Can I help?” Mom asked.

“Dad wants a cocktail. Stat.”

“Good. So does Mom.”

Mom broke ice cubes into two glasses and mixed the formula parents love:
³
/
₄
bad stuff and
¹
/
₄
Coca-Cola. She
carried the concoctions into the living room and then Dad started time traveling.

Dad loved telling all kinds of stories from his past, which supposedly Abraham Lincoln did a lot too. But Dad's stories weren't about history or bravery or progress. Mostly they were just about hippies and protests and details lost in crowded rock shows two thousand years ago when he was a teenager and lived downtown and raised all kinds of you-know-what.
¹²

Twenty minutes in, Dad asked Mom to get “the photo album” and she disappeared down the hall and came back with a photo album covered in red and blue and green flowers. I'd never seen this album before and I could tell Layla and Tiffany hadn't either. I think we expected it to be filled with baby pictures of us or of Layla's recitals or my spelling bees, but it wasn't. When I opened the cover, a picture of Mom and Dad fell out. A really young Mom and Dad.

Mom grabbed it and yelled, “Look! Prom!”

In the picture Mom was wearing a white lace dress and Dad was wearing a tuxedo with ruffles in the ugliest shade of blue I'd ever seen.

“Ew, Dad!” Layla screeched. “What's growing on your face?”

Dad laughed. “Oh man. Those are chops. Don't they look cool?”

And for the first time in the history of time, my sisters and I agreed on something. The chops DID NOT look cool.

From what I could piece together from the photo album, this was the story of a boy with ugly chops and a girl with a million freckles. They saved all kinds of ticket stubs and flowers and matchbooks. They threw peace signs at the camera and wore shirts that were too tight and pants that were too big at the bottom. And a funny-looking leaf got its own page, which made my sisters giggle. I pretended to know why because I was eleven and when you're eleven you get inside jokes but I'd only been eleven for less than a day so it was okay that I didn't get this one just yet.

I asked Dad to tell me about it but he refused.

“I'll tell you in ten years,” he promised.

I hated when he said that and he said it often. The worst part was it was always ten years no matter how old I was. Which meant instead of getting one year closer every year, I was always the same years away from ever knowing the grown-up stuff Dad didn't want me to know.

It was always infuriating and it wasn't fair and it wasn't nice and it wasn't right to keep things from your children. Unless they were really scary things like matches or poison or beets because beets tasted like
dirt. I would always beg Dad to tell me things and he always swore that he would—in ten years.

Then Mom jumped on the time machine and did something she never did. She started telling us EVERYTHING. And Mom never tells us ANYTHING.

This is what she told us: She went on something called a “magical mystery tour” which was some kind of hippie spring break that lasted more than a week. It included, but was not limited to:

1. Hitchhiking across the country, which you should never do because you will get killed, but Mom didn't because it was a “different time.”
   
2. Screaming into the Grand Canyon to hear her ECHO,
   ECHO
   , echo.
   
3. Wearing flowers in her hair in San Francisco.
   
4. And almost getting a tattoo in Chicago.