The Search for Maggie Ward

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Really?” She seemed impressed. “I suppose that terribly good-looking boy is your brother after all.”

  “He’s older than you are.”

  “He’s still a boy,” she sniffed.

  “You didn’t answer my question. What name should I call you?”

  The door opened a little more. She was wearing a heavy, dark-blue chenille robe. “Maggie is my real name. I’ve given up lying.” Guilty pause. “I never used to lie. I’m ashamed of myself for lying to you. Forgive me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your brother is very clever.” Her jaw jutted up as contentiousness returned. “It was only afterward I realized how he had tricked me.”

  “Will you take the money?” I extended my hand to the crack between the door and jamb.

  She considered me dubiously. “I suppose you want to come in.”

  “If I may, but it’s not necessary.”

  “I can’t leave you standing out there in the cold. I suppose I could make you a cup of hot chocolate.”

  “I’m trustworthy, Maggie. Reasonably trustworthy.”

  “No sex.” She opened the door a quarter way. “I’ve given that up too, just like lying.”

  “I don’t have it on the mind at the moment.”

  She opened the door all the way and stepped aside to permit me to enter. “I know that.” She laughed briefly. “I think I might be more flattered if you had it just a little bit on the mind.”

  I’d won the first phase of the battle. Tonight the only goal was a promise that she would come to River Forest for Christmas dinner.

  Poor little girl child—so lovely, so badly hurt, so confused and uncertain. Proceed slowly and gently, Quixote; this is not a windmill to whack with a broadsword.

  Well and good, but still you were a damn fool for not carting her off to River Forest that night.

  Underneath the robe, she was wearing heavy pink pajamas to keep warm in the chilly if bravely cheerful cave in which she lived. It was a single room with a small kitchen alcove, and a tiny bathroom without a shower or a tub. An old-fashioned coal heater, converted to gas, occupied one corner of the room; there was a sealed gaslight fixture on the wall. A bed, a table, a dilapidated mohair chair, and a paperboard wardrobe constituted the furniture underneath a ceiling bulb in another old gaslight fixture. Piles of books lined the walls, and a stack of notebooks rested against the chair.

  My kids would not believe that such an apartment could exist in Chicago outside the slums, but in the middle 1940s there were tens of thousands of such places without central heating and shower or tub. They were modified “cold water” apartments, with a toilet and a washbasin installed in a crudely partitioned little compartment, but the bathtub was in the next apartment or one of the others on the floor. You had to ask permission to use it, and perhaps pay for the hot water. Maggie was more fortunate than most who lived in such places because there was surely a shower for waitresses somewhere in the bowels of the Drake. A mile or two farther south in the Polish neighborhood between Division Street and North Avenue, there were still outdoor privies and buildings without bath facilities whose residents had to use the public bathhouses that the city provided (one of which was made famous in a Saul Bellow novel). Even after the war, many Chicagoans thought themselves fortunate to find such a cave in which to live.

  It was easy for social critics like Pete Seeger a few years later to make fun of the “ticky-tac” suburban houses that were to spring up on the fringes of most of the cities of the country. But Seeger was a rich kid who went to Harvard. He never lived in a cold-water flat. So he never knew the joy of having for the first time your own bathroom and separate bedrooms for the different members of the family.

  Like many other women in such places, or worse places, Maggie had done her best to make it look bright and comfortable. The coverlet on the bed, turned down now, was a bright floral print, the inexpensive throw rug a bright green, a miniature Christmas tree with a single string of lights glowed on the table next to a small crib set. A bright picture of sun and beach was tacked to one wall and Raphael’s Madonna smiled benignly from a print on the other panel of wall space. Crowded, cold, and uncomfortable, the apartment was nonetheless impeccably neat, a stern warning that its occupant would tolerate neither disorder nor nonsense.

  Some women, my wife says, not without contempt, have order in their homes and nothing else.

  “I’ll turn up the heat,” Maggie said as she bent over the stove. “Can’t have you freezing to death.”

  “At least it’s not coal,” I said, leaning against the wall and wondering if I would be asked to sit down.

  “Those poor men.” She leaned against the opposite wall. “It would be impossible to pay someone too much for that kind of work.”

  Aha, a Democrat. One problem resolved.

  We stood motionless and silent, two cautious animals warily waiting for an advantage.

  Maggie seized the initiative. “You’ve returned to the Church?”

  “You can’t leave it, can you?”

  “And you’re writing?” Back firmly erect, hand at the top of her robe, Maggie was playing the Mother Superior role like one trained to it for years.

  “Yes, S’ter.”

  “Hmff,” she sniffed. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  I laid my still unclaimed eight dollars next to her tree. “And you, Maggie Ward, have you got around to admitting that God gives us second chances?”

  The starch went out of her back and Mother Superior was replaced by a novice caught stealing cookies.

  “God keeps giving us second chances as long as we live.” She bowed her head. “A young man taught me that in Arizona.”

  “Well, he did something useful in his life then.”

  “I’ll make you that hot chocolate.…” She turned toward the kitchen alcove. “Sit on any chair you want.”

  I moved aside a copy of Henry Esmond and a notebook and sat on the edge of the chair.

  “I made it with milk,” she said, returning with two steaming cups. “You still look haggard.”

  “And you still look thin, but unbearably beautiful.”

  She flushed, opened her mouth to, I think, thank me, and was interrupted by a ringing telephone.

  She dived behind the chair and pulled out the phone. “Yes? How was the train ride?” Her eyes flicked toward me and then away and then back again. “And your family? Good. Naturally I miss you. No, I really couldn’t come. They need me at the Drake on Christmas morning and I promised. Certainly we will celebrate New Year’s Eve together. No, not scared, just a little tired. We’re shorthanded these days. Yes. Thank you. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Good-bye.”

  A rival, eh? Well, that should make life interesting.

  “Don’t look at me that way.” She stood defiantly next to her bed. “Why shouldn’t I have a boyfriend?”

  “I like competition.”

  “I’m not sleeping with him … it’s … it’s not really serious.”

  “But he calls you from his parents’ home, where he has gone for Christmas vacation, at one o’clock in the morning, on a phone he’s probably paid for?”

  “It’s none of your business!”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Wade McCarron and he’s about thirty and he works at the Board of Trade and he’s from Nashville and he’s a nice man and I’m not sleeping with him.”

  “If your mind reading tells you that I think you are, it needs repair. Stop looking guilty, sit down, and drink your hot chocolate.”

  Anytime a Chicago mick loses to someone from Tennessee, he has quit before the competition started. From the look of sympathy in her enormous blue eyes I was willing to bet that Wade McCarron was one of Maggie’s strays. I could beat any stray, especially one from Nashville, Tennessee. That I might also be a stray was not relevant.

  Obediently Maggie sat on the edge of her bed. “Whom did you talk to?”

  “Well, let me see.” The hot chocolate was deli
cious. I wondered if she would make seconds if I asked politely. “Sister Mary Regina, Sister Marie Neri, Sister Patrice Marie, a guy named Ralph …”

  “Ralph Nolan,” she murmured automatically. “Jean’s Ralph. How is he?”

  “Jean’s trying to shape him up.”

  “She’ll do it too. So you talked to Jean too?”

  “They both love you, Maggie.”

  “I know,” she said sadly. “I let them down. Who else?”

  “Isobel and Howard Quinn, the manager of the Del Coronado, Lieutenant Wayne Manzell, a lovely man, I might note, CPO Fred Weaver and his wife Magda, Gunnery Sergeant Wendel … I guess that’s all.”

  “A real Philip Marlowe.” She stared at the floor. “You missed the manager of the Beverly Hills Hotel, but I guess he doesn’t matter.”

  “My brother Packy is the detective. He’ll tell you I’m not even a very good Watson.”

  “He’s a very attractive young man, looks like your mother. You look like your father.”

  “What!” I put my chocolate cup on the floor.

  “Anyone can ride the Lake Street El to River Forest and walk down Lathrop.”

  “You could have been caught!”

  “Only if you were searching for me. And in Denver you didn’t find me even then. Or,” she added triumphantly, “the other day on Maxwell Street.”

  Lost both those, Commander.

  “I see you everywhere, Maggie,” I said sadly. “I think half the young women on the street might be you.”

  “I’m sorry.” Her eyes glistened and she extended a hand tentatively in my direction. “I know what it’s like. I think I see my father in most of the men his age on the street. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “But you did get caught.” I reached for her hand, but she pulled it back.

  “I didn’t know about postmarks.”

  “You wanted to get caught.” I picked up my nearly empty hot-chocolate cup.

  “That’s what my psychiatrist says … here, let me make you more.”

  “Your what?”

  “My therapist. He says that superficially I came to Chicago because I thought you’d never look for me here, but really because I wanted to be close to you, especially if I needed help, and that deep down I wanted to be caught.” She shrugged wearily. “I guest Dr. Feurst wins that one.”

  “Dr. Feurst?”

  “He’s short and funny and old,” she spat out defiantly, “and has a long white beard and he thinks I’m cute and a little crazy and I don’t sleep with him either. I don’t sleep with anyone. I’m a mess and I have to straighten my life out and get an education. So I work and go to school and study and see Dr. Feurst and date Wade once a week. Okay?”

  “I came here, Maggie, to return eight dollars, not to argue with you. I’m glad you’re seeing a doctor and going to school and I wonder if you are serious about that second cup of hot chocolate?”

  “I’m sorry.” She bounced off the bed. “I’m still being selfish.”

  I joined her in the tiny kitchen, so close that I smelled the faint Lily of the Valley scent she was wearing. If she was reading my mind then, she knew that sex was on my mind, powerfully on my mind.

  Slow down, Commander.

  “Despite my awful lies”—she stirred the powdered Ovaltine into my cup of warm milk with more determination than was necessary—”you know all there is to know about me, don’t you, Commander?”

  “It would take a lifetime to do that, Maggie, and I’d probably only have made a start.”

  She turned abruptly away from me and strode back into the room. “I mean you know about Andrew and the baby …”

  “And your suicide.”

  “Even that? How can you know all those things and give a damn about me?”

  Despite the hot chocolate, I felt a cold shudder run through my body. Was she admitting that she was dead?

  Dead women don’t seek out funny old shrinks with long white beards. Do they?

  Her tears had begun to flow. I could put my arms around her, console her while she cried in my arms, and then make love to her. I stopped myself at the last minute.

  CIC intervened to recommend me for a good-conduct medal.

  “Your daughter died a natural death, your husband fell out a window when he was trying to strangle you. You’re not a murderer, Maggie Ward. I’m sure Doctor Feurst says the same thing.”

  “How do you know?” she demanded, haughtily dabbing at her eyes. “How do you know what I felt when I pushed him? I wanted him dead. I wanted to be free of him. I wanted to start my life over again.”

  “So you tricked him into trying to strangle you?”

  The second hot chocolate was better than the first. Or perhaps I was only enjoying the glow of my good-conduct recommendation. Both my virtue and my tactics were operating according to plan.

  “Of course not,” she said, huddling down into her huge chenille robe.

  “Gunnery Sergeant Wendel said you slipped away at the last minute and he lost his balance and tumbled out the window.”

  Maybe I should try to take her hand again.

  “Don’t you dare,” CIC warned sharply.

  “He didn’t tell the truth exactly. I pushed Andrew, real hard, he lost his balance, and I shoved him again.”

  “Deliberately intending that he fall out the window and land on the concrete?”

  “No, I didn’t think … but I didn’t care. I just wanted him to stop beating me. I wanted to be free from him. Forever. I was glad that he hit his head.” Her voice rose to a near hysterical shriek.

  “And terribly sorry too.”

  “That’s right. I mourn him every day. Poor boy, he meant well and he was nice a lot of the time and he tried.” She was bent over, sobbing into her folded arms. “Doctor Feurst says I must learn to accept my own responsibilities and ambivalences. That’s a good word, isn’t it?” She peeked up at me. “Ambivalences?”

  “Maybe.” I didn’t want to argue with her because that would do no good. “Maybe it was like a dogfight. I didn’t want to kill the poor Japanese fellow. He was not my personal enemy. After it was over, I hoped he had survived, though their planes weren’t built for survival like ours were. I was sorry he was dead, but I was glad I wasn’t dead and glad he wouldn’t get a chance to kill me again that day.”

  “That was war,” she said as she sat up again, “not a family fight.”

  “In both cases, the goal was survival.” I was really knocking out the long line drives. All I had to do was to keep my hands and arms under control. “I agree with Dr. Feurst: I know why you feel bad, and even why you feel guilty, but you are not a killer, Maggie Ward, much less a murderer.”

  “He was not a bad boy, really.” She shook her head sadly. “He tried hard. His parents were such terrible people.…”

  “You tried hard too, Maggie. You did your best to be an appealing and satisfying wife.”

  “And scared him. I thought he’d like a wife who would be … well, kind of a whore in the bedroom. After a while he did like me that way some of the time. And so did I, God help me. Then, when Andrea died, he only enjoyed it if he would hurt me and force me. If she had lived …”

  “They crippled him for life, Maggie, he could never have survived any major crisis; it wasn’t your fault.… Doesn’t Dr. Feurst agree with me?”

  “He keeps asking me whether I think what happened to Andrew was my fault. He won’t tell me what he thinks.”

  “And your answer?” I leaned forward, as if to pray she would say something that suggested she was ready to absolve herself.

  “In my head, I know it was mostly not my fault.” She pointed to her skull. “But here”—she gestured to her chest and her gut—”I’ve not caught up with my head.”

  I was about to applaud her wisdom when the apartment was shaken by what seemed to be a massive Christmas Eve earthquake and a roar that sounded like a hundred Pratt & Whitneys.

  “Don’t be afraid; it’s only the El,” she laughed
. “Your great Chicago institution. I kind of like it. I think it keeps me company.”

  I waited for the rolling apocalypse to pass and returned to my argument.

  “Whatever your lovely chest and belly might say, I didn’t learn anything on my Philip Marlowe quest—and I appreciate the reference to Raymond Chandler. By the way, I do think there’s a bit of the Humphrey Bogart about me.…”

  “You’re sexier,” she insisted, giggling through her tears.

  “If I am, the reason is that I’ve had a good teacher.” Heroically I ignored both the hint in what she had just said and the appealing flame on her face. “As I was saying, all I’ve learned on my tour of windmills makes me admire Maggie Ward more than I did in the bridal suite at Picketpost, if I didn’t know her proper name then.”

  “That’s when I knew for sure that God would give me another chance, that I wasn’t damned. Thank you, Jerry. You’re a sweet man.” She touched my cheek and then pulled away her hand as if I were a hot stove. “Are you sweet enough to understand what I mean when I say I need time to make something out of myself and my life, maybe a long time? Please,” she pleaded, “try to understand.”

  “Sure, I understand what you’re saying.” I emptied my hot-chocolate cup. “I think you need to keep seeing Dr. Feurst. I definitely think you need to go to school and read all these books.” I waved at the piles all around the room. “But I won’t accept the notion that you are not an extraordinary and special young woman right now. I’ll give you time. I’ll even understand that you think you need a long time. But I want you, Maggie Ward, and I intend to have you. Is that clear?”

  Brave talk, huh? From a coward.

  “I need time,” she begged. “Time to be free, to live, to do something with myself and my life.”

  I put my hand over her mouth, taking a leaf from Kate’s book. “Be quiet, woman. As I said, you have your time. I won’t push you or hurt you. But I also won’t stop loving you. And, having found you on this cold Christmas Eve morning, I am not about to let you run away from me again. Your Denver maneuver is no longer acceptable, is that clear?”

  She hesitated and then nodded her head slowly.