The Three Miss Margarets

by Louise Shaffer

  Vashti seemed to adjust. Her grades were good and she never complained. Nella fussed sometimes because she was too quiet, but all in all it could have been a lot worse, and they breathed a collective sigh of relief when, after the year in Atlanta, Vashti was accepted at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.

  When Maggie and Lottie went to Atlanta to see Vashti and Nella off, it was a shock to see how much Vashti had changed. The bright little girl was gone. In her place was a tight, controlled child who never laughed.

  “We can’t expect her to be like she was before,” Lottie said sadly.

  “She’s got so much bottled up inside,” Nella told them.

  So Maggie took Vashti aside and said, “If you feel troubled, you need to talk about what’s bothering you to your momma. Or you can call your gran or me. Don’t let it stay inside, dear one. Talk about it.” That was all she said. Then Vashti and Nella left for Massachusetts.

  Again, Vashti seemed to do well. Her teachers were pleased with her, though Nella was still fretting that she didn’t seem to be making any friends. The worried women back home told one another she was just adapting to a new place. And, above all, as Lottie said, they couldn’t expect her to be the same child she had been. There had to be scars.

  Then one Saturday morning Nella woke up in their apartment in Massachusetts to find that Vashti was gone. She’d left a note saying she was going home. Nella called Charles Valley, and Lottie hurried to Atlanta to try to intercept Vashti at the bus station. But while Lottie was gone, there was a knock at Maggie’s kitchen door. She opened it to see Vashti standing on her back porch.

  The child looked thin, and of course she was tired. But she had lost the tightness; there was a light in her eyes.

  “Hello, Dr. Maggie,” she said.

  The scolding she’d planned to deliver vanished. Maggie hugged her and brought her into the house. “You scared us half to death, child,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  “I hitchhiked from Atlanta. I had to see you, Dr. Maggie.”

  She had never said doctor before. It had always been just plain Maggie.

  It took a matter of minutes to call the bus station and have Lottie paged. But Vashti didn’t want to speak to her grandmother. “I have to talk to you,” she said.

  Maggie settled her in a chair at her big kitchen table, put a pile of cookies and a glass of milk in front of her, and waited.

  “I want to tell Mr. Dalton what I did,” Vashti said. She hurried on as Maggie started to protest. “I can’t keep it a secret anymore. I think about it all the time. I dream about it at night. You said I should talk about it—”

  “To your mother, or your grandmother, or me.”

  “And I know what you’ll tell me. That I wasn’t to blame. That I’m a good girl and I didn’t deserve to have this happen to me. Momma says it every time I wake up crying. But it doesn’t help.”

  “Going to Dalton won’t help either.”

  “It will if I can make him understand. That’s what the priest said.”

  And then it all came out. Because of what Maggie had said about talking to someone, she’d gone to a Catholic church in Andover and asked to speak to the priest.

  “I didn’t tell him what happened that night, I just said I committed a crime. He said I should make amends to the person I’d injured. That’s Mr. Dalton.” The man probably thought she’d been shoplifting. Maggie loved her church, but it wasn’t the first time she wished the clergy would stick to praying.

  “That priest couldn’t have known how complicated this is.”

  “If Mr. Dalt just understands—”

  “Darling child, he won’t. We all lied, and now his son is in prison. There is no way Dalton will ever understand that. You can’t tell him. For your sake, and your mother’s sake, and your grandmother’s sake.”

  She watched the reality dawn on the little girl. “And for you and Miss Peggy and Miss Li’l Bit,” she added.

  I am a coward, Maggie thought. I should tell her not to worry about us. To just do what is best for her. But instead she nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. “We’d all be in trouble.”

  The light in Vashti’s eyes went out. “I’m afraid,” she said softly. “I was so mad, Dr. Maggie. I remember how mad I was.”

  Maggie took a moment. “When you get back to school, I think we should try to find a psychotherapist for you to talk to.”

  Vashti shook her head. “You just said I can’t tell anyone. It might hurt Gran and Momma and you.”

  “Talking to a doctor is different. They can’t tell anyone what you say.”

  But it was too late to argue with Vashti; she’d already seen the possible repercussions. “I can’t take the chance,” she said. And as much as she hated herself for it, Maggie breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Come outside with me,” she said.

  Her intentions were good, that was some comfort later. All she was trying to do that night was pass along the source of her own strength. She took Vashti out to the pecan tree and told her about young Lottie climbing up high like a queen over all she surveyed. She told the girl about Lottie’s dream of being a doctor and the school that closed so she couldn’t finish high school. She left out the night in the barn, but she told the rest—about Lottie’s husband, who died trying to move his family to a better place, and her son who became a stranger. She told Lottie’s story with all the love she had. And then she said, “You have the chance to make all the dreams come true, for all those people. You can get an education and you can do something wonderful. You can’t throw this chance away. Too many people paid too much for it.”

  Vashti looked at her. “I’m so unhappy,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I know what happiness is,” Maggie said. “It seems to come when you’re not looking for it. It’s not something you can control. But you can control how well you do your work. And working well can bring you joy.”

  She never meant it to be emotional blackmail. At least, that was what she told herself.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to do the trick. Vashti went back to school, and once again her teachers were delighted even if her classmates found her aloof. She excelled in math and science, with an emphasis on biology. But Nella continued to fret. “She doesn’t seem happy,” she said. “All she does is work.”

  Then, when Vashti was sixteen, Grady was killed. And Maggie got a phone call. “You never should have covered for me!” Vashti’s voice screamed into her ear. “You should have told the truth about what I did!”

  “Vashti, darling, we talked about this—”

  “Nothing would have happened to me if you had told the truth.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Bullshit! I was a little girl. They wouldn’t have done anything to me.” She had a clipped northern way of talking. Maggie wondered what she looked like now.

  “Dear one, you haven’t been down here in a long time. You’ve forgotten how it is.”

  “Oh, yes, I know. You and Miss Peggy and Miss Li’l Bit had to take care of the poor little colored child.”

  “That isn’t fair. Your granma and your momma wanted to protect you. We were all afraid for you.”

  “So you lied. And now another man is dead. And my momma and my granma are in it, so I can’t say anything. I just have to live with this for the rest of my life.”

  “Grady Garrison killed your father.”

  “He should have gone to jail for that, not for what I did.”

  “It wasn’t that simple.”

  “Go to hell, Dr. Maggie. You and Miss Peggy and Miss Li’l Bit and my gran can all rot in hell,” she said, and slammed down the receiver.

  The next time Maggie saw her was at Nella’s funeral. When Vashti threw her out and young Laurel McCready overheard it.

  Vashti stayed away from them for years after Nella’s funeral. Even after Lottie’s second stroke, she only came back for one day to see her grandmother installed in the nursing home and then she left. Maggie, Peg
gy, and Li’l Bit got used to the idea that she was gone from their lives. At least they tried to. Then one evening two years ago as Maggie was getting ready for bed, she heard a car come up the drive. By the time she got herself to the kitchen, Vashti was at the back door.

  “Hi,” she said. For a moment Maggie thought her mind was playing tricks on her, because Lottie was standing in front of her: Lottie at her prime, young and strong and beautiful. Except that Lottie had never worn a severe black suit. Or had her hair cropped and styled. “May I come in?” Vashti asked. She had a bag of potato chips.

  Wordlessly, Maggie opened the door.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” Vashti said.

  “No. I’m just so . . . I never expected . . .”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that too. So sorry, Dr. Maggie.”

  “Don’t. There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  “Oh, I have a lot to apologize for.” Then she grinned Lottie’s grin when she stole the fruitcake batter. “But I’m counting on you to forgive me.” The grin vanished. “I had to blame someone, Dr. Maggie. That was the only way I could live with it.”

  “I know. We all knew.”

  She started to say something; then she stopped. “Could we go outside?” she asked.

  They went out and she walked to the pecan tree, with Maggie following. Vashti handed Maggie the potato-chip bag, reached for the lowest branch, and tried to pull herself up on it, but she couldn’t get high enough. “How the hell did Gran ever climb that?” she asked.

  “She wasn’t wearing that skirt or those shoes,” Maggie said.

  “I wish I could get up there, just to know how it felt.”

  “Come with me,” said Maggie.

  They got the ladder out of the shed and Vashti carried it to the tree. She climbed up and perched herself on the lowest branch. “Is this cheating?” she asked.

  “Only a little.”

  “Can you come up here? I think this branch will hold both of us.”

  Maggie climbed up and forced herself not to look down as she sat on the branch. If I break my neck it will be worth it, she thought.

  “I don’t feel very queenly,” Vashti said.

  “We have to climb higher for that,” Maggie said.

  “We should probably quit while we’re ahead.” Vashti began swinging her legs like a child. Maggie let hers swing a little too and waited for the girl who was now no longer a girl to say whatever it was she’d come so far to say. Vashti opened the bag and offered it to her.

  “I guess the way normal people think of it, my life hasn’t been all that hot,” Vashti said at last. “No kids, no man. For a long time, not even a lot of friends. But when I add it up, it’s been pretty amazing. Because of the work and the political stuff. You were right about that. It gave me joy.”

  “You sound like an old lady taking stock. You have years ahead of you.”

  “Well, actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  And they sat in the pecan tree together while Vashti told her she was going to die.

  And after she had choked back the tears that wouldn’t do any good, and asked the questions that Vashti answered with scientific precision, Maggie listened while Vashti told her what she’d come for. “I want all three of the Miss Margarets there with me when I go,” she said.

  “You haven’t wanted to see us for years.”

  “And now I’m coming back to lay this on you. It’s a bitch, I know.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant.”

  “I need you. I won’t be afraid if you’re there. I want three tough broads to see me out.”

  It wasn’t a special night. There was no thunder or lighting, not even a full moon. Just still summer air and crickets making their dry music. She was sitting on a tree branch next to Vashti, who would be coming home to die. And the two of them were swinging their legs like little girls. And eating potato chips.

  MAGGIE GOT TO HER FEET and went outside. She walked to the pecan tree and looked up to the top branches. When they’d talked to Laurel, she realized, what had gotten lost was the reason they did it all. They hadn’t made Laurel understand about Vashti. Laurel should have heard more about her. Not just the things she accomplished, the circle she made in her life. I wish I’d told Laurel about Vashti coming back to Lottie’s pecan tree, Maggie thought.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  LAUREL WAS LYING ON A PIECE OF FURNITURE that wasn’t her bed, fully clothed and covered with what appeared to be an itchy white wool blanket. She made herself focus and recognized the couch she was on.

  “Denny?” she mumbled.

  “She is alive after all.” Denny loomed over her. “Coffee?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Lord, I don’t know how you can do that after the night you had.” He headed off to the kitchen of his tiny immaculate apartment.

  “Do what?”

  “Move your head around like that. I’d have been puking my guts out. There’s a fresh toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” he called out, as she made her way to the bathroom.

  When she came out he had a steaming cup of coffee and two white pills on the saucer waiting for her.

  “Caffeine tablets?” she asked hopefully.

  “Aspirin. You need me to fill you in on the gory details of your activities last night?”

  “Nah. I was pissed off. I came to the bar, had a few beers, you wrestled me for my car keys in the parking lot, and I wound up on your ugly couch with your daddy’s old navy blanket over me. Which itches.”

  “You are talking about a proud heirloom.”

  “I think it gave me a rash.”

  He eyed her in silence for a moment. “So what are you going to do about it, sugar?”

  She couldn’t remember if she’d told him about what she’d heard on Miss Li’l Bit’s porch or not. “Do about what?” she asked.

  “Whatever pissed you off so bad,” he said.

  She hadn’t told him. “They lied, Denny,” she said. “Ma was right.”

  “The three Miss Margarets?”

  “All those years I spent thinking she was crazy. And being ashamed every time anyone said my daddy’s name.” She swallowed. Denny was staring at her, his face blank. “And then those old ladies sat there on their damn porch last night and told me they were right to do it. ‘We’re terribly sorry, dear Laurel, if we fucked up your life, but we had to do what we thought was best.’ Can you believe that?”

  “I can believe they’d do what they thought was right,” he said.

  “Do you want to hear what they told me?”

  “All right.”

  But suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him. Because she didn’t want to hear a lecture about seeing it from their point of view. More important, she didn’t want to be told that there was nothing she could do about it. Which was what he was going to say, and he’d be right. She could go to the police, but she couldn’t prove any of what she’d heard unless the three Miss Margarets were willing to repeat it. There was no way Hank would print the story, and even if he did, how many people would believe it? All she’d accomplish would be to rake up the old scandals about her father. And she could wait for Josh’s book to come out for that—she stopped herself mid-thought. She knew what she wanted to do.

  Denny was watching her. “You want to tell me about it, sugar?”

  “No,” she said. “I want you to drive me to the airport.”

  She got her ticket through the travel desk at the resort. They booked her on standby so it wouldn’t cost more than three weeks’ worth of groceries.

  “Tell Hank I had to leave town,” she said to Denny as they hit I-85. “Say . . . I don’t know what. Make up some excuse.”

  “I’ll tell him you had a death in the family,” Denny said. He probably meant to be funny, but neither of them laughed. Then he said, “Laurel Selene, do me a favor. Do whatever you need to do in New York. Just get all this behind you.”

  PEGGY, MAGGIE, AND LI’L
BIT were on the porch. Behind them the sun was setting. Peggy said, “Laurel is taking a trip to New York City. She left this evening. The girls at the travel desk down at the resort were talking about it.”

  Li’l Bit said, “Wasn’t she friendly with that writer who was here from New York? The one who was writing a book about Vashti?”

  “The way I heard it, she got to know him quite well,” said Maggie.

  The breezes that swirled through Li’l Bit’s fruit trees were lovely on warm summer evenings. But in late autumn they were too chilly for comfort. Maggie cuddled deep into the pretty new jacket she’d just gotten from the Land’s End catalog. Li’l Bit pulled a thick old sweater around her, and Peggy poured herself a drink.

  LAUREL HAD CARRIED HER SUITCASE on board with her, so she walked off the plane straight to the waiting area where Josh was standing and beaming at her. He did a funny little shrug when he saw her and opened his arms wide.

  Josh’s apartment was about the same square footage as her house in the woods—without the land around it, of course. By way of compensation, there were two doormen in the lobby of his building who wore uniforms that looked vaguely military and screened all strangers who tried to enter. They also collected packages and messages and what seemed like mountains of dry cleaning for the people who lived there. Josh had purchased all this magnificence for over half a million dollars, and he paid another twelve hundred dollars a month in something called maintenance fees. He felt lucky that he had gotten it all so cheaply.

  His kitchen was small but equipped with shiny professional-looking appliances, none of which were ever used. On one pristine counter next to the phone was a basket full of menus from restaurants that delivered. Josh’s idea of eating at home, she learned, was to order his meals from these places. The rest of the time he went out. Every once in a while he picked up something already prepared at his supermarket and heated it. He called this cooking.