The Search for Maggie Ward

by Andrew M. Greeley

  We were silent for an awkward moment. “Maggie sings.” I rushed in where angels fear to tread. “Maybe she’ll sing with us after supper.”

  “I’m out of practice.”

  My dad raised his glass in semi-toast. “So are we all. Mother plays the piano, Patrick and I do the violin, Joanne breaks the rules by being rather good on the cello, and himself pretends to strum on the bass.”

  “You never told me that!” She turned on me accusingly.

  “When you hear me, you’ll know why.”

  “Grandma Maggie was a fiddler, among other things,” Packy informed her. “So we’re a little bit more cultivated than the other Chicago Irish.”

  “Which is why we don’t live in trees.” My father smiled at her. “At least not when we have guests from Philly.”

  So Maggie joined our Christmas consort, which was not nearly so crude as we pretended. Her light, slender voice soared over our accompaniment, and after “Silent Night” and “Gésu Bambino” she assumed, as if by right, the role of consort director.

  I took some pictures of the rest of the consort with my new flash attachment that night. Maggie stands out, not because she was a good five inches shorter than any of the rest of us, not because she had somehow elbowed her way into the center of the family, not because she looks so young, not even because she was incandescently lovely, but because of all the happy faces, hers is the happiest.

  Only when we played and sang “White Christmas”—the most popular song of the Second World War—did her eyes mist. Too many painful Christmases past.

  But the happy smile in the picture says that she thought the worst was over, that the demons had no more power over her.

  In that she was mistaken.

  At the end of the evening we almost had a fight. I insisted I would drive her to her apartment. She insisted that she would take the El.

  “Maggie Ward”—Dad settled it—”forget you’re an Irishwoman just once and do what you’re told.”

  Her jaw jutted up in preparation for rage. Instead she merely grinned at him. “Yes, Tom.”

  “The day I married my wife, my new father-in-law”—Dad was launched on one of his favorite anecdotes—”took me aside and said that I was marrying a very strong-willed woman but that he had found an absolutely certain method of keeping her under control.”

  “And what is that?” I asked eagerly, wishing he would keep the advice short so that we could depart for our honeymoon hotel.

  “ ‘Always give her whatever she wants.’ ”

  We all laughed dutifully.

  “He doesn’t always.” Mom, who somehow was always flattered by the story, provided her standard reply.

  “Seems sensible advice to me,” my darling said with a perfectly straight face.

  “We’ll see you at the Christmas Dance, dear.” Mom kissed her good-bye as we were leaving.

  “Christmas Dance?”

  “Why, at Butterfield!”

  Is there any other?

  “I haven’t been asked.”

  “You will be,” my father predicted.

  “Well?” I asked as Roxy slithered down Lathrop.

  “Let me cry first,” she said, reaching in her purse for a handkerchief.

  “Be my guest.”

  She pulled out of the tears in a few minutes. More would be shed, I was willing to bet, before the night was over.

  “Thanks for waiting.” She wiped her eyes. “Now about your wonderful family, much too good for you, I was afraid they were going to lock me up in the basement. They must really be convinced that they have an old-fashioned Irish bachelor on their hands.”

  “They like you, Maggie. You were worried that they wouldn’t like you at all and now you’re worried that they like you too much.”

  “I do the mind reading,” she said irritably.

  “Jean Kelly painted me a picture of Maggie Ward, the natural leader and the life of the party. Now I’ve seen it confirmed.”

  “Did you go to bed with Jean Kelly?”

  “You’re changing the subject.” I turned toward Harlem. “And certainly not. Jealous?”

  “She was enthusiastic about you. You thought of going to bed with her?”

  “I’m a healthy adult male. I repeat, are you jealous?”

  “Certainly not. And I’m not going to the dance either.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re dying of curiosity.”

  “I am not … besides, I don’t have a dress.”

  “We’ll buy you one at Marshall Field’s.”

  “You will not! I am not your mistress.”

  “You’re the woman I love.”

  “That doesn’t entitle you to buy me clothes.”

  “It does too. Anyway, I have a precedent. Remember Steinfeld’s?”

  Pause.

  “I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “All right.”

  “I’ll go to the dance at Buttercup …”

  “Butterfield.”

  “And you,” her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper, “you agree not to bother me for the next …” hesitation as she calculated the longest possible time she could demand, “the next six months.”

  “What …?”

  “I need—”

  “Time.”

  “Right.”

  “The competition …”

  “Is not serious. Please …”

  “Can I talk to Dr. Feurst?”

  “Well,” she considered my counterproposal, “I don’t see why not. He’ll tell you I need time too.”

  “Then it’s a deal.”

  “Fine …”

  “What’s the matter?” We turned down Fullerton Avenue, which was almost empty of cars.

  “You agreed too easily.”

  “I’m a reasonable person. I understand that you need time. Besides, have I ever violated a promise to you?”

  “No …”

  “All right.”

  “But there is always a first time, isn’t there, CIC?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  When we turned north on Southport Avenue, Maggie broke the long silence. “I really was okay tonight?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Dr. Feurst will accuse me of not wanting to admit that your family liked me a little. You’re not objective, but you’re probably more objective than I am.”

  “I guess they liked you, but just a little.”

  I felt a light blow to my arm. “Only a little?”

  “Well, maybe a little more.”

  Another blow, imperious this time. “Tell me!”

  “You may quote me to Dr. Feurst as saying what you know full well to be the truth yourself, provoking child. They adored you.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “That’s besides the point. You will, in view of your promise not to lie, quote my exact words to Dr. Feurst: You know full well they adored you.”

  Pause.

  “Well?”

  “All right”—sigh—”I suppose I have to.”

  Poor girl child, still unable to accept your own goodness. Well, we’ll change that, Dr. Feurst and I.

  I turned right on Diversey from Southport and right again on Sheffield and stopped Roxy in front of her apartment building.

  “Can you leave the heater on for a few minutes of conversation?” she asked briskly.

  “Sure.” I took my hand off the ignition key and rolled the window down an inch, so we would not risk carbon-monoxide poisoning. “Do you want to neck?

  She shoved my arm away firmly. “You’ve been so proud of your restraint, you don’t want to ruin your record now, do you?”

  Back to the mind reading.

  “All right.” I sighed with noisy patience. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Why I deserted you in Arizona.”

  “Oh.”

  “You remember that awful wind and the storm and the terrible smell and the thick rain clouds? And how we were both knocked against the car and you hit your
head on the door?”

  “Was that what happened?”

  “I lost consciousness for a few minutes too—the heat and the exhaustion and the emotional strain, I guess. And, more than anything, the shock of discovering I was really still alive and getting another chance whether I wanted it or not.”

  “We didn’t go back to the buildings?”

  “I woke up and it was dark and you were twisting and turning next to me as if you were having terrible dreams. I tried and tried and couldn’t wake you. But finally you settled down into a peaceful sleep, so I thought you were all right and then … well, I panicked and ran. Then,” she turned away, embarrassed and ashamed and lovely, “I thought you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed some money. I promised to pay it back.” She looked up at me, fragile and shy. “And I DID pay it back.”

  “With exorbitant interest.”

  “I wanted to get away from that terrible place and from you and from everything in the past and start again. I know that’s silly because it was you who gave me my new beginning, but I was terrified of you—still am, I suppose—so I had to run.”

  “Did you have any dreams?”

  She thought about the question. “I suppose so. I was so tired I don’t remember them. And I have a harder time remembering dreams than you. Your friends who died and Andrew and the baby were all jumbled up. And I think there were demons coming to get me, but you chased them away and so I woke up and ran away from you.”

  “I did?”

  “You certainly did.” She nodded vigorously. “That’s the most important part of the dream. You and some other nice person saved me.”

  “Only a dream?”

  “No, silly.” She shook her head impatiently. “The dream told me what had already happened. You saved me in the … well, un-dreamworld just like in the dreamworld. So naturally I was afraid of you and had to run away.”

  “I don’t get that part. Why were you afraid of me?”

  “I was afraid that I loved you so much that I would hurt you like I hurt all the others. Maybe even worse than I hurt them.”

  “That was dumb.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said stubbornly. “Anyway, I dragged my suitcase into that town …”

  “Tortilla.”

  “And I told them that there was a man asleep by a car up near Clinton and took the bus to Apache Junction and another bus to Globe and then the train to Bowie and El Paso.”

  “I thought you might do that.”

  “And I worked there to make some money and then took the Denver and Rio Grande to Denver, where you almost caught me, and then the Burlington to Chicago.”

  “I see.”

  “And now I want to apologize for running away from you when you were unconscious and maybe hurt and needed my help.”

  “But you didn’t want to hurt me.”

  “That’s different.”

  “I don’t see how.”

  “Maybe hurting you in the future sometime was what Dr. Feurst calls a neurotic fear. Leaving you by the car was cowardice.”

  I still didn’t understand and I thought she didn’t either.

  “It’s all right, Maggie. You were badly confused. So was I.”

  “I’m so ashamed.” She turned away. “So ashamed.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Don’t be. It’s all right now.…”

  “Do you think that what happened was that the evil or maybe the possibility for evil in both our souls sort of … well, combined for a little while?”

  “Your guilt and my violence?”

  She was silent for some time. “Something like that.”

  “Could be.… By the way, who was the other good person in your dreams?”

  “He was”—she frowned in mystification—”a big blond man in a fancy navy uniform with a gun in his arms and a wild grin on his face. He was on our side. Somehow, as I said”—she seemed to be trying to recall the images—”he and you saved me.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know who he was”—she kissed my cheek—”but I know you did save me.” Her hand touched the happy spot where her lips had rested. “And you are the sweetest man who has ever lived.”

  With that admirable exaggeration she pushed open the door on her side of the car and raced up the steps to the apartment door.

  I did not try to follow her.

  During my return to River Forest, I was less happy than I should have been. I had tracked down Maggie Ward. She had been an immense success with my family. She had provided a reasonable explanation for the war in heaven by the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, combined with Father Donniger’s wisdom it was the best explanation I was ever likely to get—an intense fantasy interlude shared by both of us that reflected a war in heaven which had already taken place. We might not have won the war, but at least we hadn’t lost it.

  And she was convinced that I and my seraph friend had saved her. “Hear that, CIC?”

  No answer. Not working on Christmas in peacetime?

  Or off somewhere singing with the rest of them?

  Why, after this highly successful forty-eight hours, was I uneasy?

  Because she was such a complex and powerful young woman, much more than the pale, fragile girl I had met in July in the railroad station? A strong and still badly confused and troubled refugee from horror and death?

  Because the recovered Dulcinea was both less and more than the girl of my dreams?

  Because I dimly realized that for all the success of my tactics, my strategy was still unfocused, perhaps dangerously so?

  Or because, under the waning Christmas full moon, I was not convinced that the war in heaven was finished or that I would win it?

  Maybe it would never end. Maybe my eternal purgatory would be to be always close to victory and always doomed to have it snatched from my hands at the final moment.

  Grim thoughts at the end of a merry Christmas Day. But as I would find out shortly after the first of the year, prophetic thoughts.

  CHAPTER 38

  “I WILL NOT WEAR THAT DRESS.” SHE POINTED AT IT ACCUSINGLY, an outraged and violated vestal. “It’s too … revealing.”

  “You’ll look lovely in it, dear,” the elderly saleswoman said as she smiled benignly. “You have the perfect figure for it.”

  “Try it on,” I ordered.

  “You make me try all these dresses just so you can ogle me,” she hissed in my ear as she slipped off to the dressing room.

  “You’re the most provoking young woman I’ve ever kept.”

  Her jaw jutted skyward, but her smile illumined half of North State Street. Despite her contentiousness, Maggie was reveling in our shopping expedition to Marshall Field’s two days after Christmas.

  “She is so lovely,” the salesperson gushed. “You’re a lucky young man.”

  “If I don’t mind a lifetime of arguing.”

  “She’s just joking because she’s embarrassed.”

  “I know.”

  “It is too revealing,” Maggie insisted when she returned wearing the dark-red dress with a low neck, white trim, and a white belt, its straps, such as they were, designed for her upper arms and not her shoulders. “I’m almost naked to my waist.”

  “Not quite.”

  “If fits you perfectly, dear. We won’t have to do any alterations. If you need it for tonight …”

  “We’ll take it.” I handed her the charge card.

  “No,” Maggie begged.

  “Yes,” I commanded.

  It was a dialogue we’d been having all morning. I was winning.

  “Are you sure it isn’t too …”

  “Revealing? For someone else, maybe. But it’s perfect for you, Maggie. I wouldn’t risk embarrassing my mother or myself or you at Buttercup, would I?”

  “Butterfield, silly! And I’ll have to buy a new … new foundation garment.”

  “You look fine.”

  She crossed her arms protectively. “I’d be arrested if I appeared in River Forest like this.”

&
nbsp; Women’s fashions in 1946 demanded thin waists and slim, boyish hips. If your well-preserved figure, like my mother’s, happened to be in the classic mode, you were forced to don undergarments which, while not as constraining as the steel-boned, laced-up affairs of the pre-1914 era, nonetheless imposed all kinds of unwanted pressure on your flesh. With the return after the war of off-the-shoulder dresses, especially formais, the corsets encased you from breast to hip in restraints that barely permitted breathing. Even young women with nearly perfect figures like Maggie were still obliged, in the name of a blend of modesty and fashion, to encase themselves like that, especially if they were baring their neck and shoulders.

  “I won’t argue with you about proprieties, Margaret Mary,” I told her as we approached the corset department, “but you looked wonderful in that dress.”

  “I did not.”

  “We bought it.”

  “To keep you happy. Give me the charge card. I don’t want you hanging around the corset department. You might embarrass the women.”

  “And myself.” I gave her the card. “I’ll meet you at the Walnut Room for morning tea.”

  “All right.”

  “What color is it?” I asked as she strode into the tearoom, unloaded her armful of packages on the chair next to me, and collapsed into one across the table.

  “It matches my face when you stare at me that way.”

  “You’d be a lot more angry if I didn’t stare at you.”

  “I’ll be embarrassed all night, Jerry; I’ll be practically naked.”

  “We should be so fortunate to have that happen. Besides, you’ll have a lot more clothes on than you did at Picketpost.”

  She closed her eyes and tilted her head backward in sensuous recollection. “That was so long ago. Did it ever happen? Certainly it did. You saved me then, Commander; you started in the railroad station and you finished by that terrible mine, but Picketpost …” She opened her eyes and smiled at me lovingly. “That’s when my second chance began.”

  “Whenever you want, we can do it again.”

  “I need—”

  “More time.” I was beginning to hate the refrain.

  “I’m sorry.” She touched my hand. “I wish I didn’t.”

  I was not altogether sure I believed her. Maggie now was just frightened of strong emotions.