The Three Miss Margarets

by Louise Shaffer

  She went through the kitchen into the living room, where she turned on the gas logs she’d had installed in her fireplace. A real fire might be romantic, but at her age she wasn’t about to mess with kindling and ashes. She collapsed gratefully into her old wingback chair. From her bed on the floor her dog, an aged sheepdog and chow mix, got up and moved over to lie down on Maggie’s feet. Laverne’s litter mates, Patty and Maxine, had gone on to the great front lawn in the sky, and for the first time Peggy wasn’t trying to con her into taking in any more strays. She was probably afraid a young dog would outlive Maggie. The good Lord knew Maggie felt old right now, old and aching with tears she didn’t have the energy to cry. But it was all right. Because she’d seen everything through as Lottie would have wanted her to. Over the years she had failed Lottie, because there were things she couldn’t control. But she hadn’t failed tonight. There was comfort in that.

  JOSH TURNED THE SUV into Laurel’s drive. They passed under the hanging oak branch and he swerved neatly to avoid the huge hole, while Laurel tried to make her mind a blank. A lost cause; it was now full of the cabin and memories of old Lottie.

  IN THE BEGINNING, she had liked Lottie. When her ma was on a bender, lying on her bed too drunk to work, Lottie always seemed to know it. And just about the time that the groceries were running low and Laurel was getting really scared, there would be a knock on the door and Lottie would be standing there with a sack of sweet corn and beans from her garden so there would be something to fix for supper. Sometimes when Sara Jayne took off for a week or two, there would be tomato sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise or biscuits and cornbread wrapped up in a clean napkin.

  “Thought you could use this,” Lottie would say, without smiling, and turn and leave as Laurel called out thank you to her back. Many times the woman just left the food on the back stoop, but Laurel always knew who it was from. She would bring the sack into the house and tear into the sandwiches or the cornbread like a starving thing, which by then she usually was. Even more comforting than the food was the idea that someone had thought to feed her.

  Eventually her ma found out about Lottie’s missions of mercy, and she went crazy. She ranted and raved that she didn’t want Laurel taking anything from that nigger, and if Laurel did it again Sara Jayne would take a switch to her. There wasn’t anything unusual about Sara Jayne exploding like that; her mother’s moods were unpredictable at best. But the intensity of her fury was strange. Sara Jayne was usually a tearful, self-pitying drunk, stroking her misfortunes like pets.

  The mystery was cleared up when Laurel was six. By then she was old enough to understand what it meant to be a bastard and why the other kids called her one. So Sara Jayne told her what had happened at the cabin and why Lottie was to be hated.

  The next time an offering appeared on the back stoop, Laurel carried it back across the highway and up the long dirt road to Lottie’s cabin. Lottie came out and stood in front of her. She was a big woman, with long arms and legs and strong hands. Her dark eyes were impassive as Laurel handed her a basket of newly picked peaches and said, “We don’t need food from you. Don’t bring it again,” and fled.

  That wasn’t the only time she turned down help. Her ma had told her the three Miss Margarets were the enemy, too. So when Miss Peggy offered Laurel a job at the resort she refused. When Miss Li’l Bit said she could help get her a scholarship for college, she said no, thank you. And when Sara Jayne was racking up astronomical medical bills in the long months it took her to finally die, Laurel never let Dr. Maggie treat her for free. Which meant that in addition to being badly educated and without any options for the future she was up to her ass in debt. But she’d been a loyal daughter, her ma’s second-in-command in the dumb, sad war their adversaries hadn’t even known they were fighting.

  THEY PULLED UP in front of her house. Josh looked out his window at the surrounding trees.

  “This it?” he asked.

  “Welcome to my ancestral home,” she said.

  “WHY DO YOU KEEP ON LIVING HERE? You hate this place,” Denny had said once, right after he got sober. He was seeing a therapist in his rehab program, and “confronting issues” was part of the cure. Fortunately, he’d gotten over it.

  “I own it, remember?”

  “You could sell it for a fortune to some rich jerk from Atlanta.”

  “I’ve gotten kinda partial to it.”

  That wasn’t true; she disliked everything about the house. A small rainstorm could wipe out her driveway, making it an impassable trail of red clay muck. A medium-sized rainstorm could knock a tree branch down on her one power line and wipe out essentials like the lights, the well pump, the television, and—God help her in summertime—her precious AC. Squirrels got themselves trapped in the crawl space under her roof and died horribly; mice fried themselves chewing electrical wires, and one day they’d probably burn the place down. And then there were the memories of Sara Jayne, drunk and living or finally sober but dying.

  In spite of all that, she stayed. Because the place was a reminder that being a loser was not necessarily in her DNA. It was a symbol of the one battle her family had won. And living in it was her way of giving the finger to Garrison Gardens, the trust that now ran them, and to the town that sucked up to them.

  JOSH GOT OUT OF THE CAR and looked around at the surrounding trees. “Jesus, it’s quiet!” he said.

  “That’s the point of living in the bosom of Mother Nature.”

  “Don’t you go out of your mind?”

  “I’m a simple country girl. I love it.”

  He shot her a look that said bullshit. Obviously, in spite of all her attempts to put him off, he’d spent at least a few seconds wondering who she was. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. The light sexy mood of the night had long since shattered. She probably should hand back his expensive sports jacket, which now smelled of beer, get rid of him, and find some other way to go to work in the morning. It certainly would be the smart thing to do. So she said, “Why don’t you come on in?”

  BACK IN HER BEDROOM AT LAST, Li’l Bit pulled on a freshly washed nightgown and buttoned it all the way to the neck. Her discarded clothes were in the hamper. Her shoes were on the rack in her closet. The sink in the bathroom had been rinsed, and she’d lined up her toothpaste next to the brush. She walked out of the bathroom and got into bed. It was over. There was nothing more to be done. She closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep. But she couldn’t because she heard the sound of someone sobbing. And when she reached up and felt the wetness on her cheek, she realized she was crying.

  WITH A BOURBON BOTTLE in her hand and a bag of dog biscuits tucked under her arm, Peggy went from room to room turning on all the lights. The dogs followed her in a pack, silent for once, all twenty-four eyes fixed on the treats. Finally, the house was as bright as she could make it. She moved into the den, selected a CD from her stack of golden oldies, and popped it in the player. The sound of Frank Sinatra filled the air. She turned to the dogs. “We’re gonna celebrate,” she told them fiercely. “We’re gonna have a goddamn celebration.”

  THE FIRE WAS HOT, but Maggie wasn’t aware of being warm at last. She was back in a world when the pecans fell like green hailstones so the men below could harvest them, and Mama’s magnolias were always cut back to manicured perfection. Back to the time when Lottie was slender and strong and they were young.

  WHEN IT CAME TO SEX, it was a good rule, Laurel decided, not to put yourself in the position where you had to follow through. Even though the TV talk shows all said a girl had the right to change her mind right up to the last moment, she felt there was a point at which it seemed like bad sportsmanship to back off. Unfortunately, defining this point had always been dicey for her. Tonight she had missed it. Because at the moment when Josh Wolf Eyes began kissing her, her thoughts had been elsewhere—about twenty-five years back in the past, to be precise. Not that Josh was lacking in the kissing department. Her early assessment of that mouth had been right. And
when they finally got naked, he definitely knew how to use his hands. On a scale of one to ten Josh got a nine and a half.

  The half he didn’t get was for not realizing that at that very moment, even as he was suspended over her getting ready to hump his way to glory, she was wishing he was in the next country. And then suddenly it seemed she was going to get her wish. Before she could murmur, “What’s going on, sugar?” Josh had rolled his nice tight body off and was lying next to her.

  “So were those women who freaked you out the three Miss Margarets?” he whispered cozily.

  It took her a second to get her bearings. When she did, she sat bolt upright, a move she would have sworn never happened except in fiction until she did it.

  “Yeah, I thought that would get your attention,” he said smugly.

  “How the . . . how do you know about the three Miss Margarets?”

  “Actually it was a lucky guess. But I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Who are you?”

  For an answer he swung out of bed and padded across the room to get his blue jeans. She got out of bed, started to follow him, and stubbed her toe. He watched for a few seconds as she hopped around in pain, bare boobs bouncing.

  “My, this is romantic,” he remarked.

  “You’re the one who cut off the romance,” she panted. “Damn, shit, damn!”

  “Maybe some ice?” he offered sympathetically.

  “How do you know about the three Miss Margarets?”

  “Could I have a cup of coffee?”

  “You didn’t make a mistake when you turned the wrong way, did you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He finished putting on his jeans and went into the living room. She pulled on her robe and limped after him.

  “That’s got to smart.”

  “Shut up about my damn toe!”

  “Okay. You want to know how I know about the three Miss Margarets.” He paused. “I’m a writer.”

  For a moment she thought he was putting her on. Her job description at the town newspaper was reporter. Her real work was that of handmaiden and periodically just plain maid, but she was foolishly protective of her title. She was about to inform him that she was a writer too when he said, “Most of the time I write celebrity profiles.” And she had the presence of mind to ask, “Where?” before spouting off about the Charles Valley Gazette.

  “For the past few years I’ve been a regular contributor at Vanity Fair. I was on staff at People before that, and I worked for Entertainment Weekly, Us—the usual stuff.”

  And she’d been getting beer smell on the inside of his jacket all night. She sent up a silent thank-you to God for not letting her mention the Gazette and make a total horse’s ass of herself.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’ve been working on a story about Vashti Johnson,” he said.

  That was when she decided to go put some ice on her foot. Because she needed time to get herself together. The night had just officially gotten too strange.

  Chapter Four

  IN A WAY IT MADE SENSE that a writer from New York was writing a story about Vashti Johnson. Vashti was the Valley’s golden girl—golden woman by now. She did something no one could pronounce that had to do with scientific research. Something massively important and esoteric in the field of genetics that only two or three people in the world understood. But that was just the beginning of her accomplishments. She was an advocate for children’s education in the sciences. She had testified in front of Congress twice. There were rumors in Charles Valley that she had missed getting the Nobel Prize by inches. She had written a book, and there was a scholarship fund for minority kids that had her name on it. So even though no one was clear on exactly what it was she did in her laboratory out in northern California, she was as close to a celebrity as the town had. Not that she had ever claimed the town as her own. Not since she and her mother ran from it years ago.

  Vashti was Lottie’s granddaughter. She was also the daughter of the woman who, when the booze was flowing and the listener was sympathetic, Laurel’s ma had cursed in bars up and down most of the major highways of southwest Georgia. Every tragedy that had occurred in Sara Jayne’s life, from the death of her ancient pickup in the parking lot by the Winn Dixie to the time Laurel’s appendix burst, could be laid at the feet of Vashti’s mother, Nella. Any blame Ma had left over went straight to the three Miss Margarets.

  Not that Laurel was planning to mention any of that to Josh Wolf Eyes. She took a deep breath and said, “I’m out of coffee. Do you like tea?”

  “Let me make it. You keep that ice on your toe. Just point me in the right direction for the tea bags.”

  “First shelf, cabinet over the sink.” He began rummaging around. She sat at the kitchen table, trying to seem a lot more together than she felt.

  “So that wrong turn . . . ?”

  “When I was interviewing Vashti, she said something about living on a pie-shaped piece of land in the middle of a forest.”

  “And you thought you’d check it out.”

  “Since I was there, it seemed like a good idea.”

  “And Vashti told you about the three Miss Margarets?”

  “Once. She described them enough so I thought I recognized them tonight. Did I?”

  “Yeah, that was them.” But she wasn’t ready to talk about the three Miss Margarets. “What gave you the idea to write about Vashti?”

  For the first time he didn’t want to answer her. “Do you have any sugar?”

  “Canister next to the stove. Where’d you get the idea?” Two could play the question game.

  Finally he plunged in. “There was this woman. Smart and angry. At me.”

  “Why?”

  “We had a difference of opinion. She thought I was a cheap commercial sellout, I thought I was being responsible and paying the bills. Anyway, one day she asked me if I was going to waste the rest of my life writing about airhead actresses and models or if I had the balls to do a story on a woman who was working on something worthwhile. Vashti had just been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She—the woman, not Vashti—dared me to do the story.”

  “And the woman is?”

  “My wife. At the time. Actually, my second wife. Ex-wife.”

  It made her really mad at herself that for a second Laurel calculated the likelihood of the existence of a third Mrs. Wolf Eyes.

  He went on. “The more I got to know about Vashti, the more I wanted to write about her. She was just a kid when she was elected to the Academy, relatively speaking. She did her post-doc with a team that was working on the Human Genome Project back in the days when it was totally a boys’ club—well, it still is to a great extent. You can count on the fingers of one hand the number of women who are doing research at her level, to say nothing of African Americans.” He paused, then added, “I did some digging and found out what happened here with her mother when she was a kid. How the hell do you get past something like that?”

  Some of us didn’t get past it, Laurel thought. “So you’re writing about Vashti for Vanity Fair?”

  “No. I couldn’t get my editor to go for the piece, and People would only take a thousand words. I wanted to do a lot more on her than that. So I’m taking a year off to write a book. Only now I can’t find her.”

  “What?”

  He started pacing. He had a slight dusting of curly hairs on his back.

  “About six months ago we were supposed to talk on the phone. She’d agreed to answer some questions. But when I called she’d disappeared. She’d closed down her lab, canceled all her speaking engagements, rented out her house, and dropped out of sight. No one knew where she was.” He stopped pacing. “Water’s boiling.”

  He found the milk under her direction, handed her a steaming mug, and slouched into the chair across from her. Even in that slumped position he didn’t have any love handles. No question about it, he worked out somewhere.

  “Then about two weeks a
go the guy who was renting her house in California got a letter from a lawyer in Atlanta. Vashti was offering to sell the house. The lawyer told me he didn’t know where Vashti was, but he’d been dealing with a Dr. Margaret Harris of Charles Valley. So I caught the next flight to Atlanta and came here.” He smiled at her and she smiled back, but small alarms were going off inside her. In spite of herself, she wanted to like him. And not just because he was the closest thing to a star she’d ever met or was likely to meet, she told herself firmly.

  But he’d done some digging. He knew enough about the three Miss Margarets to identify them with a lucky guess. She couldn’t help wondering what else he knew about the three Miss Margarets, and Vashti and Nella. And especially her own mother, Sara Jayne. And if any of that stuff had been on his mind when he tossed his jacket to Sara Jayne’s baby girl in the Sportsman’s Grill.

  “What do you think the three Miss Margarets were doing at that cabin?” he asked.

  “Don’t have a clue.”

  “Why don’t you want to talk about them?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to talk about them—”

  “You didn’t have to. Reading people is what I do for a living.”

  “You read me wrong.”

  There was nothing in his face, nothing in his manner, to say he knew anything about her history with the three Miss Margarets. Laurel’s every instinct told her he was genuinely looking for information. Of course, her instincts usually stank. But just to show him he was wrong, she said, “Dr. Maggie is in her eighties somewhere; Miss Li’l Bit, whose real name is Margaret Banning, is in her seventies; and Miss Peggy is the baby—she’s just in her sixties. Miss Li’l Bit and Dr. Maggie come from fine old families that have been in Charles Valley since before you Yankees came down here to violate our states’ rights with your Civil War. Miss Peggy married into the Garrison family, which around here puts her at the right hand of God.”