Now and Again

by Charlotte Rogan

  She had wanted to leave with the five o’clock rush, but without Valerie to do her share of work, it was almost six by the time she reached the exit. Her heart sank to see that no one else was waiting in line for security—only Hugo was there, twiddling his thumbs and grinning at her. “Good evening, Hugo,” said Maggie, hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt.

  “ID, ma’am,” Hugo replied.

  “Oh, Hugo! You know who I am!” exclaimed Maggie.

  “When a guard asks for documentation, the employee must immediately produce it,” said Hugo, reciting from the handbook.

  Maggie opened her purse and fumbled around in it, finally producing both her ID badge and her driver’s license.

  “Employees must wear the ID badge at all times while on prison premises,” recited Hugo.

  At first Maggie had regretted the kiss, but now she wondered if she could use it to her advantage. “Any plans for the weekend?” she asked in an insinuating tone of voice.

  “Maybe I’ll get lucky,” said Hugo.

  “Luck comes in two flavors,” said Maggie. “Good luck and bad.”

  Hugo made a show of starting to open the electronic door, but then he tapped his temple as if he had just remembered something. “I can search you or your bag, ma’am—your choice,” he said with a nasty smile.

  None of the women wanted to be searched, so if Maggie opted for a pat down, it would be obvious she had something to hide and Hugo would search her bag anyway. Sweat was breaking out on her forehead and under her arms, but there didn’t seem to be a good alternative to continuing on the course she had started. As she held the bag open, she said, “You naughty boy,” all the while hoping the scarf and the sweater and the homemaking magazine that were stuffed into the purse would provide ample cover for the pamphlet hidden beneath them. Then she winked and said, “Search away.” But it made her stomach turn to watch Hugo’s beefy hands push the sweater aside and pull carelessly at the delicate scarf.

  “Good Housekeeping,” said Hugo, sliding the magazine out of the bag. “My mother reads that.”

  “Tell her there’s a fabulous recipe for lemon bars in the July issue. I’d tell you the secret ingredient, but then it wouldn’t be secret.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Maggie regretted them. Why had she said the word “secret”? It was almost as if she wanted to get caught.

  Hugo dug out Maggie’s pink pearl lipstick and her baggie of emergency tampons and finally the pamphlet on prisoners and sexually transmitted diseases. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “It’s a pamphlet on STDs,” said Maggie, trying not to look at the zippered compartment where the pamphlet on prison discipline was concealed.

  “I mean, what are you doing with it?”

  “It’s very well written. And as you might or might not know, I have a teenaged son.”

  “Hmph,” said Hugo, leering again as he stuffed the items back into her purse. “So you’re going to talk to him about the birds and the bees, are you? What, exactly, are you going to say?”

  All Maggie could think of was the bee she had killed earlier in the day, so she was late in replying. “Yes, I am. I’m going to tell him that love and sex are two different things and that he should be aware of the risks and take steps to protect himself.”

  “Protect himself from love or from sex?” asked Hugo, belching out a laugh. Then he pushed the purse back at her and let her pass.

  Maggie took her time walking across the baking asphalt to the bus stop, swinging her hips and wishing an evening breeze would break through the unrelenting humidity and cool her burning cheeks. The good news was that she had successfully gotten the two pamphlets out of the prison, even if the bad news was that Hugo had found one of them. But she had learned something, and she had to be happy about that. When she got home, she added the pamphlet on prison discipline to her stash of evidence before making her way to the kitchen, where Will and Lyle were eating the last of a chocolate cake.

  “We’re spoiling our dinner,” said Lyle.

  “I guess I can’t stop you,” said Maggie. Then she put the pamphlet on STDs on the table and said, “I got this up at the prison, Will. You might want to take a look.”

  “That’s really embarrassing, Mom.”

  “You’re going to have to make a lot of decisions for yourself at some point, so you might as well have the facts.”

  “Gosh, Mom. What’s going on?”

  “You’re growing up, that’s all,” said Maggie.

  “She just wants you to be prepared,” said Lyle. “In case she’s abducted by Martians or whisked off to Hollywood to star in a film.”

  7.5 Will

  When the weekend came, Lyle drove Will to Glorietta for the first game of the summer play-offs. If they won, they moved on to the next bracket. If they lost, they were out. The mayor was standing at the entrance to the ballpark, handing out campaign buttons that said CALL ME BUDDY even though his name was Robert Hutchinson and up until then, everybody had called him Hutch.

  “I guess he wants the citizens of Red Bud to think of him as inseparable from the town,” said Will.

  “It’s all about winning friends and influencing people,” Lyle said. “I read about it in a book.”

  “When did you ever read a book?” asked Will.

  “Jimmy gave it to me. It said you have to make people think that whatever you want them to do is actually their idea.”

  “Hmmm,” said Will. “That sounds like something the teachers up at school would do.”

  It seemed that the whole town had driven up for the game. Jimmy charged past, headed toward the stands with Lily De Luca in tow. “Pre-med!” Jimmy called out. “That’s pretty heady stuff!”

  “That’s an example of your theory right there,” said Will, but Lyle only beamed and called back to Jimmy, “Tell me something I don’t know!”

  Mr. Quick waved over the heads of his wife and baby, and Lucas Enright, who had owned the diner for as long as anybody could remember, wished Will and Lyle both luck as if Lyle were on the team too. By the time Will hurried off to find his teammates, he was seething with an unfamiliar rage. When Stucky Place slapped his shoulder and said, “Here comes our secret weapon,” it took him a few seconds to respond, and during the warm-up, it seemed to be pure chance that determined whether he caught the ball or dropped it. Only the sight of Tula sitting in the third row eating a candy bar calmed him. From that distance he couldn’t tell what kind it was, but he could imagine the crinkling sound of the paper as she pulled it back to take a bite and the soft wet sounds as she chewed and swallowed.

  “Rayburn, get your head in the game!” called the coach.

  Will mouthed, “Yes sir,” but all he could think about was Tula. He could almost taste the chocolate and feel the crunch of the peanuts and the pulling of the caramel when it stuck to her molars.

  Ever since breaking his arm, Will had felt that something else in him had broken. Where he had once done things without thinking too much about them, his head was now bursting with all of the advice his coaches had given him over the years: keep your weight back and your head down, square your hips, stay inside the ball, choke up on two strikes, make sure to follow through. And now there were advice and expectations on the academic side of things as well.

  “You’re trying too hard,” said the team captain just as the coach interrupted to say, “Try a little harder, Rayburn. Give it everything you’ve got.”

  “Muscle memory,” said Stucky. “That’s the way to go.”

  Will was thinking about Tula, but also about his life goals, which didn’t seem to fit him right, as if he had put on somebody else’s uniform. The test scores hadn’t helped. Now there were college applications to fill out and essays to write. Mr. Quick had agreed to help him over the summer, but when Will had shown him a draft of his overcoming challenges essay, the effort had been greeted with a frown. “It sounds like the soldier you met at the clinic is the one who is overcoming the challenges,” said Mr. Quick
. “The essay is supposed to be about you.”

  Mr. Quick, who had once insisted learning was the point, started to go on about commitment and excellence and the importance of grades. “If a thing is worth doing,” he said, “it’s worth doing well.” So now Will was adding a paragraph about his broken arm and baseball, but he worried it sounded like he was comparing his injury to a war wound and a baseball game to war. If only something significant had happened to him, but it hadn’t.

  A ball whizzed past Will’s ear. He hadn’t even seen it, but he recovered enough to relay the ball home, where the runner was tagged out. That left a man on second. The next batter grounded to the shortstop, who pitched the ball to third. The ball made a soft thud in the pocket of Will’s glove, but just as he stepped back onto the base and reached out to tag the player who was hurtling toward him, his wrist went limp. The ball fell to the ground, and the umpire shouted, “Safe!”

  “Libby, go in for Will,” called the coach.

  Will’s ears burned as he walked off the field. He didn’t look at the stands where he knew his parents and Tula were sitting and worrying about him. He chewed a piece of Juicy Fruit gum and tried to empty his mind the way it used to be empty. He shrugged his shoulders and tried not to care the way he used to not care. He tried to feel like Derek Jeter coming back from a dislocated shoulder to help his team make it to the World Series. Of course, all of that was in the future for Jeter as he faced Martinez in the eighth inning with his team trailing the Red Sox 5-2, hoping against hope that his shoulder would hold up and not knowing he was about to hit a double that would start an epic rally because no one, not even Jeter, could know what the future would hold.

  7.6 Maggie

  Maggie planned to move the files on the last day of DC’s vacation. While Lyle and Will chattered over breakfast about Stucky Place’s lucky homer and the upcoming championship game, Maggie put on a blouse she had bought for the occasion. It consisted of a sheer shell and a lacy undergarment and was exactly the sort of thing Valerie might wear. Although the day was bound to get hot, she covered the blouse with the bulky birthday sweater and packed two double-thickness grocery bags with magazines and party snacks. “They’re for the team,” she said to Lyle as she loaded them into the back of the truck.

  When they reached the prison parking lot and she went to take them out again, Lyle said, “Why don’t you just leave them in the truck. The game’s not until tomorrow.”

  “No, no,” said Maggie, trying to think of a reason why this wouldn’t work. “Some of the cookies are for the prisoners, and I haven’t sorted out which is which.”

  “Can’t you do that now? No sense having to carry everything home again on the bus.”

  “No, no,” Maggie said again. “If I do that, I’ll be late.”

  “Really, Maggie. It’ll save you…”

  “I said no! I really can’t!” Maggie tried not to look as if she was struggling under the weight of the bags, and after a moment’s hesitation, she added, “You can’t say anything to anyone, Lyle, but I might not be working at the prison much longer. I’ve been offered a job in Phoenix, and I’m considering taking it.”

  “Phoenix!” cried Lyle. “What would you go to Phoenix for?”

  “There’s an attorney there who can help Tomás, but he needs an assistant. It would just be for a little while.”

  “Are you in trouble?” asked Lyle. “Jimmy mentioned something that day at the lake, and MacBride said something too.”

  “Lots of people are in trouble,” said Maggie. “That’s the entire point.”

  She watched from the sidewalk as Lyle slammed the truck into gear and roared off, before making her way up the steps to the employee entrance.

  “That looks good,” said Louis, who was manning the scanner.

  “Snacks for tomorrow’s big game,” said Maggie.

  “Well, save some of those cookies for me.”

  When everyone had left at the end of the day, Maggie made her way to the basement to clear out the two burgeoning fictitious files. She stuffed the folders into the paper grocery bags and covered them up with some of the snacks. She felt like a secret agent as she used a box cutter to remove the pages of a magazine she had bought to use as a false cover for the draft legislation. But first she had to copy it. The copier had already been turned off for the weekend, so she went into the alcove and flipped the switch. Since the machine was slow to warm up, she decided to make one last visit to Tomás. It took her almost no time at all to clear security, so she was already sitting on one of the folding chairs when Tomás shuffled into the visitors’ room.

  “What’s going on?” he cried. “This isn’t your usual day!”

  “I wanted to tell you I won’t be here next week,” said Maggie.

  “Are you going on vacation?”

  “Yes,” said Maggie. “I am.” She had brought a package of cookies with her, and now she held it up. After that, there seemed to be nothing to talk about, partly because there were no math problems to solve and partly because Tomás didn’t launch into his usual litany of complaints. He looked sheepish, almost like a schoolboy in front of a new teacher, causing Maggie to wonder what was up. Soon enough, however, Tomás peered out from under his eyebrows in the wheedling way he had, but instead of wincing as if someone was about to kick his shin or pull his chair out from under him, he seemed to be trying to hide how happy he was.

  “What is it?” asked Maggie. “You seem happy today!”

  “I brought you something. You’re always giving me things, and I wanted to give you something in return.”

  Maggie had noticed that Tomás was sitting with one arm behind his back, and now he swung it around with a flourish. “Ta-da! I made it!” He set a lump of glazed clay on the table between them and grinned expectantly at Maggie. When she only stared at the object in confusion, Tomás carefully took the halves apart to reveal a hollow where some very small keepsake could be hidden. “It’s for your dresser at home,” he said. “I’ll bet Lyle has given you some piece of jewelry you cherish. Now you have a place to keep it!”

  Maggie was not sure what to say, but Tomás was rattling on. “It’s not obvious that this is a container, so if thieves come into your house to steal your valuables, they probably won’t notice and your present from your husband will be safe.”

  Maggie was speechless and a little appalled, but Tomás jabbered on about possible uses for his gift.

  “Or it could hold a lock of a loved one’s hair,” he said. “Who would you choose—Lyle or Will?”

  Maggie didn’t like it when Tomás mentioned her family, and now she interpreted his gift as a means of inserting himself into their home—into her very bedroom—by enveloping a present to her from Lyle with a present of his own.

  “Thank you, Tomás,” she said, but she knew the words didn’t sound heartfelt, and when she dragged her eyes up from the ceramic object to meet his, it took her an extra second to make them sparkle with the delight he was expecting and she wished she could feel. She recalled how she would set the treasures Will brought home from school in a place of honor and how she would tell him they were the most remarkable things she had ever seen. It was clear Tomás was expecting something like that now, and there was an awkward silence while she tried to think of what to say.

  As she was deciding between the words “imaginative” and “unique,” Tomás said, “I like your sweater.”

  “Thank you!”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “My goodness,” said Maggie. “I can’t remember.” The birthday sweater was far too big for her, and she had only worn it because it covered up the sexy blouse she was wearing in order to distract Hugo when she left with the files. But now she felt defensive on her family’s behalf and didn’t want to let on to Tomás that they would buy her something so ill fitting and drab.

  “I wish I had one like it,” said Tomás.

  Tomás was small. The sweater wouldn’t fit him any better than it fit Maggie, and it wa
s rude of him to basically ask for it outright. Still, she knew she wouldn’t be seeing him again, and she would be taking the sweater off in a few minutes anyway in preparation for her confrontation with Hugo. Perhaps it would be a way to buy him off—though exactly why she needed to buy Tomás off, she wasn’t sure. Adding to her guilt was the knowledge that in all these months at the prison, she hadn’t accomplished anything significant—all she had succeeded in doing was to flirt with a security guard and develop the same sense of superiority she had criticized in Valerie. So she unbuttoned the sweater and said as solemnly as she could, “I want you to have it, Tomás. It’s obviously too big for me, but I think it would fit you just fine.”

  Tomás didn’t smile very often, but now it looked as if his cheekbones would pop right through the skin. He hugged the sweater to his chest and beamed at her over the plastic tabletop.

  “I’m glad you like it, but that’s not even your real present,” said Maggie. “The thing I wanted to tell you is that I’ve sent your file to an appellate attorney who is going to review all of the evidence. I can’t promise that anything will come of it—in fact, it probably won’t. But at least we’ve taken the first step. We’ll just have to wait and see where it goes.”

  Tomás fidgeted in his seat, taking her words in. “That’s a pretty big present,” he said. “But you know, don’t you, that if they hadn’t gotten me for running away that day, they would have gotten me for something else.”

  “You might as well give up right now if you’re going to think like that. Promise me you’ll practice being optimistic.”

  “Okay,” said Tomás. “Anything for you.”