Chapter 1
...If all the young ladies were blackbirds and thrushes,
Her shaggy hair had been highlighted and styled for tonight’s party; her perfectly manicured nails were reflected in the mirror as she applied her makeup. Taupe and coffee shadows accentuated her brown eyes and red lips complimented her nails. She smiled at her reflection. There was no need to reminisce about the good times or spill out all the hurt. Maggie had confessed enough to Bea, Cindy and Pam already, after knowing them for less than a week. Besides, it had to end eventually, and tonight was as good a time as any to lock up the past and put it all away, to walk straight ahead into the future that was opening up in front of her. Maggie did not want to see the old nightmares again.
Brushing off a stray fleck of mascara, Maggie looked back over the journey that had brought her here to London, a long trip that had begun just after Christmas. She closed her eyes for only a moment, to scan the photo album that was etched forever in her memory. There was Franco sitting in his favorite chair, the remote control locked forever into fingers rigid with rigor mortis. Like snapshots, she flipped through the days and weeks that followed, recalling her bright red toenails, painted to match the crimson lingerie she had selected for the funeral. Her first day at work, her first date as a widow; every image reflected various representations of Maggie Griffith Angiolini stumbling through life until she came to stand in front of an antique mirror, adjusting the collar of her raincoat. It was time to close that book, to put the pictures away and set off on another journey, along a different road.
Maggie stepped into the hallway of the West End hotel, pulling the door shut behind her. She tugged on the knob to check the lock, and then she walked away from her past.
* * * **** * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * *
The closet was empty, pretty much, and Maggie slammed the door shut after ripping her one and only pair of tailored trousers off of a hanger. “I could have used clothes for Christmas,” she grumbled to a ghostly memory. A gift certificate would have been better than what she got that year. “Should have asked the surgeon to sew your mouth shut.”
After a week, her dreams were still full of the funeral and the sad faces of the mourners. Her once neatly ordered life had ended a week ago, and she could not get to morning Mass because she had to catch the train. For years, as their money problems escalated, she had accepted the bumps in the road because that was how life was supposed to be. Today was Monday, Day Eight of the rest of her life, and the road bump felt more like a bone-jarring pothole. Thanking God for small mercies, she declared to the Lord that she was actually very grateful that Tsio Carlo had fired her on the day of the funeral. She was going to be better off, in the long run. Some day. Eventually.
Waking Joey up an hour earlier than usual was decidedly unpleasant, with a teen-age surliness greeting Maggie’s gentle prodding. “If Dad was alive,” Joey began to mumble.
Joey stumbled angrily out of the car when they reached the Burns’ home. Mrs. Burns would be driving him to school every morning while his mother went to work, and the boy resented the adjustment to his life. Even as she sat in the kitchen with Greta, sipping a cup of coffee, she could hear the television vacillate between ESPN and MTV, while Joey grumbled about fate’s cruelty and the unfairness of life. Sooner or later, everyone learned the same thing, but Maggie ached for her son, struggling to cope when he was too young to handle the lesson.
“I had a great idea last night,” Greta said with excitement as she poured out a second cup. “I can take Joey here after school on Fridays and he can spend the night with Rob, so you can have a man over when you start dating again.”
“Excuse me?” Maggie spluttered.
“And I am such a babe that you think I’ll be dating by this Friday,” Maggie said.
“Not this Friday, you’re such a comedian. Eventually, that is all I am suggesting, just know that when you do start dating, Joey has someplace to go.”
“I heard three dates,” Greta said. “Unless the guy is really hot, then the first date is perfectly acceptable.”
“All right, all right, I get it. Start reading Cosmo,” Maggie said. She laughed, smiled, and laughed again, posing as a woman who was recovering from the shock of finding her husband, cold and stiff, sitting in the family room with the television flickering in the early morning darkness. “I better run or I’ll miss the train.”
Traveling on the commuter train from River Oaks to Chicago, Maggie stared vacantly out of the window with her morning newspaper opened on her lap. The time had come to admit that Greta was right, that living with Franco was no bed of roses. If Maggie had faced the whole truth, she would have realized that it had been endless squabbling for at least the past eight years. A separation was looking awfully attractive, but there was Joey to consider, and he was everything to Maggie.
Shifting on the vinyl bench, she let out a quiet laugh as she recalled a phone call to the rectory. Only three days before Franco died, she made an appointment with Father McManus to arrange for marriage counseling, when she realized that she would lose her mind if she did not change her life. Her husband’s death was very nearly a thoughtful gesture on his part, solving a serious crisis by ending the union without the necessity of a divorce. It was the only thoughtful thing Franco had ever done for her.
“Mind if I look at your sports section?” the man next to her asked, waking her from her reverie.
“Oh, no, of course not,” she fumbled with the sections. “Hawks lost again last night.”
“Do you follow hockey?” he asked, and Maggie turned to look at him. She had no idea if it was wise to talk to a stranger, or if it would be rude to ignore him.
“My son does,” she said, trying to think of a suitable answer.
“Not your husband?”
“He’s a die hard Bears fan,” she replied, her answer tumbling out before she could decide if she should be chatting amiably or treating her seatmate like a dangerous pervert. The man began to read, and Maggie shifted on the vinyl cushion. From Dearborn Ridge to Evanston, she tried to determine if she should have said that there was no husband, and from Evanston to the end of the line she contemplated what effect that pronouncement might have had on her companion.
From the train station she moved east, washed on a wave that surged down Washington to LaSalle. It seemed as if only Maggie was looking around at the people who were hunched over, striding along the street and battling against the cold wind that whipped against them. A suggestion of a smile was creeping across her lips as she traveled as one with the throng, battling through the sea of heavy coats and scarves at LaSalle and Washington when she had to leave the pack and turn north, to the offices of Quinlan and Associates. Walking through the Loop made Maggie feel alive, as if she had been marooned on an island and was brought back to civilization after a fifteen-year absence.
Theresa Quinlan had a very successful editing firm, with a strong reputation for quality work. For years, Maggie had been employed on a casual, part-time basis, working at home and earning some much needed cash. Knowing that Franco had not left much behind but debts, Theresa came up to her cousin at the post-burial lunch and told her to be at the office on Monday morning. “Full time, with flexible hours,” she added when Maggie balked.
“How can I work full time with Joey’s schedule?” Maggie protested. “Practice of some kind every night after school, he has to be picked up at three thirty every afternoon.”
“What part of flexible hours don’t you understand?” Theresa said. “Don’t argue with me, Mags. I’ll tell my mother. She’ll talk to your mother.”
“That’s just plain mean,” Maggie said.
“I do what I have to. Look, you already have some regulars.” Leaning closer, Theresa offered a confidence. “Besides, I put out the word that I was expanding and there’s a stack of manuscripts in the office just waiting for you. You need a job and I need your help. See you Monday.”
One of Maggie’s strongest qualities was her ability to be headstrong when it came to revisions, using a gentle approach that put the writers at ease and left them remarkably pliable. Even though Karl Hofmeier, the eminently successful military fiction author, was fully aware that she was a manipulator, he was adamant that Maggie, and only Maggie, could read, red-pencil, or even touch his manuscripts. According to Theresa, the old man made grammatical errors on purpose, just to keep his editor on her toes. He lived for conflict, now that he did not have any wars to fight.
“He’s in his own world,” Theresa said. There was no point in postponing the unpleasant part of their Monday morning meeting, and it was more in her style to start with the bad news and end with the good. “Where that world is, none of us know, but he thinks you do.”
“Yes, and no one else in this office will work with him,” Maggie put in, winking over the steaming cup of coffee that she was using to warm her fingers.
“You cannot imagine what the script supervisor at the BBC said to me about dealing with his tantrums,” Theresa said.
“Don’t tell me, he must have said, at least a dozen times, that one has to eat a lot of shit in this world,” Maggie said.
“Not everyone finds that as amusing as you do,” Theresa remarked with an arched brow. “However, since you know where he’s coming from, you are the one to get things back on track. London’s a fantastic city, you’re going to love every minute of the trip.”
“But I can’t just hop on a plane and fly to England,” Maggie insisted.
“I know, and I explained the whole situation to our buddy. He’s coming back from London, and you can try to work things out here. Just don’t count on it.”
“Look, Theresa, if you really need me to travel,” Maggie offered, feeling a little guilty about making her cousin’s job more difficult. She owed everything to Theresa; after all, her cousin had given her a job when she needed one so badly.
"Now, tell me about this professor from St. Ignatius,” Maggie said as she pulled the next manuscript from the pile on her lap.
“Divorced, not particularly attractive but very bright,” Theresa spoke with a straight face. “Chairman of the History Department, specializing in American history before the Civil War.”
It was Maggie’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Some information I do not need.”
"Only trying to be helpful. It’s non-fiction but not a textbook. His previous book was a history of social customs in the United States before the War of 1812, and Leticia cleaned up that one. However, since Leticia cannot stand the guy, you, oh lucky junior editor, have inherited another client.”
“Next?” Maggie asked as she transferred the manuscript to the bottom of the pile in her lap.
“Historical romance, fiction, Mary Ann Fowler. Brain candy, but I know you’ll enjoy it; she has a light-hearted style.”
So began her first day, enough work to fill twelve hours, with a bundle of phone calls to handle from the time she arrived until she left to catch the 2:23 to River Oaks. With one manuscript stuffed into her canvas tote, she dashed from the office, rushing out of the elevator and bumping into the good-looking lawyer from the tenth floor as he was about to board at ground level. “Pardon me,” she mumbled, completely flustered and red with embarrassment.
If he were not already married, Maggie believed that she would be grinning like a fool to get his attention and goad him into saying the first word. He always checked her out when they rode in the elevator together, and she used to think that it was not so bad to be noticed and admired, even in an overtly sexual sort of way. Now that she had to face that sort of notice without her husband to hide behind, Maggie panicked.
“My pleasure,” he smiled, the face of a man who was not overly concerned with his vow of fidelity. Maggie returned his glance with a quick and nervous smile before fleeing in fear, nearly running down the street to the train station.
Her car was idling in the parking lot of St. Rita’s School when she caught a glimpse of Joey saying good-bye to his friends. “How was your day?” she asked her son as he dropped his backpack onto the floor of the car.
“Fine,” was his usual reply. “How was work?”
“You know, Joey, it was really good,” she said with a smile. “No, better than good, it was great, to go to the city on the train and then get caught up in that chaotic rush of people on the streets. Except I couldn’t get to St. Peter’s for noon Mass, and I feel like I missed something important in the day.”
“So go twice on Sunday,” Joey suggested, mocking his mother’s excessive devotion.
They sat down to a quick dinner because basketball practice was at six o’clock. Freewheeling conversation about their days, about teachers and about writers, flowed warmly across the little table. Back and forth over the chicken parmesan, with a minor skirmish over the consumption of salad, mother and son chattered. Maggie found it peaceful, even fun, without Franco storming about the quality of the meal, or tearing into Joey for no good reason except that Franco was mad at the world because he could not consume a whole chicken for his evening meal anymore. At that instant, Maggie was glad that her husband was gone, and the sensation filled her with guilt and remorse.
* * * * *
As if by some miracle or a slight decline in the testosterone that had recently begun to surge through his body, Joey got himself out of bed on time the next day. To the worried mother, it looked like he had immediately adjusted to his new circumstances. Maggie pondered that as she stood on the platform waiting for her train, always trying to decide if her son was getting on with his life or masking his sorrow. “Am I getting on with my life?” she asked herself. She realized that she was staring into the windows of the coffee shop across the street, watching the couples having intimate chats over breakfast. She had gone there once with Franco, after she was released from the hospital following her last miscarriage. “It was a blessing that you lost it,” Franco had said. “We can’t afford another baby, and you don’t have time to take care of it anyway, with your job.” A gust of bitterly cold wind blew across her face, and Maggie noticed that tears were running down her cheeks.
Her seatmate was mentally dubbed Mr. Accountant as he slid into place at the next stop. Oddly enough, it felt like Sunday Mass at St. Rita’s, where everyone sat in the same pew and saw the same faces, even if no one knew a name. She always talked to the geriatric couple that sat in front of her every week, so Maggie offered the sports section to the gentleman as if he were an old neighbor. All he did was thank her, and that was the extent of their conversation. At the end of the line in the city, Mr. Accountant returned the section, bid a friendly farewell, and that would be Maggie’s morning every day that week.
“He’s back,” the receptionist warbled menacingly to Maggie as she entered the office. Ann Majik was more of a concierge in the truest Parisian sense, the guardian at the gate who knew everyone’s business.
“Mr. Hofmeier’s here?” Maggie asked excitedly.
“He has an appointment at nine with his favorite editor,” Ann put in. “And when I talked to him five minutes ago, I’d say that he is seriously jet-lagged. And crankier than usual.”
Theresa and Maggie held their usual morning meeting, to exchange completed manuscripts for raw material while the pot of coffee was slowly drained. They had grown up surrounded by pots of coffee, as if the beverage was a dark flowing talisman of their families. Every time someone stopped by for a visit the coffee pot was set to perking at once, practically before the visitor’s coat could be removed. Theresa was a Quinlan, and Maggie was a Griffith, but their mothers were the Barletta sisters, a couple of Bridgeport dagos from Chicago’s south side. Coffee and biscotti was a way to say hello to anyone who dropped in, a mark of hospitality that was passed down from mother to daughter.
“I have no idea how things were left in London,” Theresa confessed as they planned ahead. “Maybe I can get them to wait until February.”
“What am I going to tell Joey?” Maggie sighed. “His whole world is upside down, and now I might be flying to England.”
There was no time for an answer, not with the booming voice of Karl Hofmeier echoing down the corridor. He had retired from the United States Marine Corps nearly twenty years ago, but he was still the bristle headed lieutenant colonel and a Green Beret for all time, barking out orders instead of holding a conversation. Maggie loved him because she knew that he was nothing more than a lovable teddy bear, which she discovered by reading his novels. Hofmeier entrusted his works to Maggie’s hands because her father was a south side Irishman, a former corporal in the United States Marine Corps, and a veteran of Iwo Jima. Besides, she was in on his secrets, had become aware of his sensitive nature and enormous capacity for love, and she guarded that secret self as closely as he did.
“I am very sorry about your recent loss, Mrs. Angiolini,” Hofmeier murmured as he stood in the doorway of Theresa’s office. At the age of seventy-eight, he had become depressingly adept at offering condolences, as his long time friends began to drop by the wayside.
Maggie brought him to her office, a cluttered and windowless space that seemed crowded by Hofmeier’s large frame. In the harsh light of the fluorescent fixture, his chiseled features stood out in relief, and his standard issue marine crew cut seemed to sparkle like sterling silver. With large, strong hands, he delicately removed the paper wrapping from a clump of carnations and handed the bouquet to Maggie. It was the sort of arrangement that was available in the local supermarket for a few dollars, but the gesture touched Maggie deeply. Wiping away a tear, she thanked him and cleared her throat, trying to begin like a professional businesswoman. “Did you have a good trip?”
“Horrible trip,” he shook his head sadly. “I hate planes, hate sitting still for eight hours with the same movie playing over and over again. I’m too old for those goddamned long rides, that’s why you’ll have to go for me.”
“First let’s try to take care of this here at home, and then no one has to go anywhere,” she suggested. “I finished the first round of corrections, and this weekend I’ll clean up the scenes that you rewrote in London. If I have to make any changes or corrections, it’ll be to more closely follow your book.”
“See, that’s it, you understand my novel,” Hofmeier nodded strongly, gesticulating with his meaty fist. “Those assholes in London don’t know shit from shinola.”
“They can’t possibly understand that this novel was based on your real experiences,” Maggie explained, calm and soothing. If the man ever were to eliminate swearing from his vocabulary, he would be essentially speechless, a thought that brought a gentle smile to her face. “And they have their own ideas, probably influenced by their parents’ experiences during the blitz.”
“There’s one scene that you have to keep in for me, Mrs. Angiolini,” Hofmeier was agitated. “The soldier discovering his sweetheart, after she was killed in the bombing. That fucking director doesn’t want the soldier to dig in the rubble with his bare hands, too hackneyed he said, the little shit.”
“Take it easy, I know that it really happened,” Maggie said, her voice full of sympathy as she gently touched his hand. She could feel Hofmeier’s sorrow so acutely, as if it were a spark that surged through her fingers. “I’ll make sure it stays as written, and I promise not to tell the director why it has to stay. No other suggestions are acceptable, all right?”
“Go there for me, Mrs. Angiolini,” he said, jumping up so that he could more easily wave his arms about. “Make sure they film the scene the way I wrote it. Don’t let them fuck it up; that director is the biggest asshole in the Western Hemisphere and he can’t be trusted.”
"I’m sure it’ll be done correctly,” she said, catching her lips sliding into a condescending smile.
“Damn straight it’ll be done correctly, because you will be there,” he vowed as he lunged at the phone on Maggie’s desk and dialed a number. “Miss Kolasa? Tell my shit for brains agent to call London. No, my editor’s going there to supervise the script. She goes, or this whole fucking deal is off.”
“Mr. Hofmeier, please, I really can’t go,” Maggie was protesting as the old marine rattled off his instructions to the agent’s secretary. Karl was at full throttle, spitting out obscenities with his orders, and determined to have his way. Maggie could say whatever she wanted; he was not listening and he was not changing his mind. Maggie chased after him as he stormed out of her office. He was remarkably limber and quick for a man his age.
“Miss Quinlan, tell your cousin that she has to go to London,” he bellowed down the hall as he plowed ahead to the office.
“What’s wrong, Mr. Hofmeier?” Ann asked from her post in the center of the suite.
“He wants me to go to London with his screenplay,” Maggie half-whispered.
“I’ll go if you don’t want to,” Ann said gleefully. “Can I go instead, Mr. Hofmeier?”
“Mrs. Angiolini must go, Mrs. Majik. And I can find a new editor pretty damn quick if I have to,” he threatened. That statement was enough to get Theresa off the phone at once, bouncing out of her office with the spring of a jack in the box.
“Of course Maggie will take care of this for you,” Theresa said, clucking and cooing over her very famous client as she slipped her arm through his. “Don’t we always take care of everything for you? Besides, you don’t want to give up Maggie; she red inks your books better than anyone and you know it.”
Watching Theresa escort their most valuable client into the sunny office, Maggie prayed for success. Peaking around the corner of the doorframe, ears wide open, she waited to hear some kind of debate, a give and take that would end in her favor. Hofmeier silenced Theresa with one wave of his hand, grabbed a notepad and wrote with an officer’s strength of command. The only sound was that of a pencil scratching fiercely against the paper, as if Karl meant to engrave his message into the desktop.
“Confidential, Miss Quinlan, destroy it after reading it, for your eyes only,” he barked.
Apparently he was satisfied, because Hofmeier turned around after handing his secret message to Theresa, and he strode briskly out of the office like the ex-Marine that he was, waving a solid farewell to Ann and Maggie. The door was closed with a firm slam while Theresa began to laugh as she read the note, marching orders from an officer whose command of the English language did not include the phrase “I can’t”.
“So, Mags, do you need to update your passport?” Theresa said with a broad smile.
“What about Joey?” she gasped in terror. “How can I go out of town?”
Theresa brushed aside those worries as she returned to her office, leaving Maggie to deal with a very large problem. Two people were on hold for Mrs. Angiolini, giving her no choice but to hurry back to her own office and get to work, temporarily ignoring the issue of business trips. She worked through lunch, never noticing the time until Ann rang the little office and reminded Maggie about her train.
After basketball practice tonight, she would do what she had done all winter; she would take Joey and his friends for pizza. Sitting on the train that was empty so early in the day, she found herself thinking about Franco, about their first few years together when they had been happy. So many Friday nights became impromptu barbecues with their friends, where Franco would make a batch of his famous margaritas and everyone would be laughing and joking. What had happened, she wondered, to turn that jovial man into a jerk, someone who stopped paying compliments and began to throw out cruel jibes and outright insults. She hung on for so long, expecting that jovial man to return when their son was older and she was working full time to ease the financial burden. It was the anticipation of better times that kept her going through the storm, that and the fact that a divorced woman could not receive the sacraments if she remarried. The very idea that she would have to confess to adultery if she started dating again was enough of an embarrassment to goad her into mending their marriage. After all that misery for so many years, she felt that she had struggled for nothing because Franco had died, cheating her out of some obscure reward.
Maggie sat at her usual table at D’Ascenzi’s Pizzeria, a spot that gave a clear view of the video game room that was tucked in a back corner. Joey and his buddies were clustered around one of the games, playing at racing sports cars through Death Valley, while she sat with a slice of pizza growing cold in her plate. “Maggie, I made that with my own hands,” Pete joked as he slid into a chair across from her. “No good?”
“Oh, no, sorry, Pete, it’s fine, I’m just tired from work,” she fabricated a response. The truth was that she could not swallow the food tonight, not when she so clearly remembered the very last time that she had sat there with Franco. They bought a large pizza and she ate one slice while Franco ate the rest, washing it down with a pitcher of beer. She could not stop him in a restaurant, not when he would berate her so loudly and she could not tolerate the humiliation in public. Go ahead and choke on it, she had thought to herself, and then a couple of days later he was dead.
“Everybody been wanting to give you a hand?” Pete asked as he took a large bite from a leftover slice. “But you need anything done around the house, you call me. I still charge only a good plate of spaghetti and a couple meatballs.”
“Thanks, Pete, I will. About all I can afford is a handyman who works for his meals,” she replied.
“You’re the nicest lady I ever met, Maggie, I mean it, and I figure this is a rough spell for you. With Joey, if you need a man to talk to him, straighten him out about girls or something,” Pete offered, looking in Maggie’s eyes in a way that made her squirm. She had been married for so long that she had forgotten how a man looked at a woman he was attracted to, but the image was being dusted off just then in her mind.
Pete sat there chatting, leaving his brother Rocco to tend the counter and take the orders. Pete’s current girlfriend was sitting near the window and glaring at Pete, but he carelessly ignored her as he made his move on Maggie. He was a man who had been married twice already, the kind of guy who never understood why his need to go hunting in Wyoming for three weeks was such a point of friction with his wives and girlfriends. When his first wife complained about the trips to Las Vegas that were men only, and his second wife screamed over the fishing trips that took place nearly every weekend, he dumped them for trying to run his life. He was like Franco in that way, Maggie always felt, a man who lived in his own universe, and he was the center of that universe. A woman had to revolve around him like he was the sun if she wanted a relationship, and sometimes that was just more trouble than it was worth.
“Oh, my, it’s ten o’clock already,” Maggie said as she glanced at her watch. She rounded up the party of Joey, Rob, and Cullen Reardon and headed for home, with Pete’s invitation to breakfast left hanging in the air. He was just another one of Franco’s old friends, someone she had seen so often that she could not remember meeting him for the first time. It was impossible for her to picture the two of them together, because she could not imagine what they could possibly talk about. On top of that was the gnawing she felt, deep in the pit of her stomach, nibbling at her pride. Somewhere a voice was telling her that Pete offered breakfast and expected sex.
His proposition was made because she was a living, breathing, and available female, and Maggie felt that she was entitled to more than that. Every lady on the planet could proclaim that women were now sexually liberated, but Maggie would hear nothing more than a variation on an old theme. Men had always been trying to get women to have sex with them, and for a long time, women had resisted until the situation suited them. Maggie did not see any newfound power in the modern morality, not when women gave up the little control they once had over relationships.
The dating scene had revolved completely around from the old days of chastity and virtuous ladies, to the point that sexual activity was part of the package of dating and courtship. Sex was so expected that Maggie feared for her future, foreseeing a choice of giving in or being left alone. Sooner or later, she would have to decide if male companionship was more valuable than her self-esteem.
Technorati tag: literary fiction
