Now and Again

by Charlotte Rogan

  “Nothing official,” said Lyle, which was true as far as it went. He didn’t say anything about what everyone suspected.

  “And how are you doing, honeybun?” was the last thing Maggie always asked before hanging up. Lyle would reply, “I can’t complain,” the way he always replied when anyone asked him how he was. If he had had a life philosophy, it would have involved not complaining and blending in.

  9.7 Dolly

  Dolly had always thought that something astonishing was going to happen to her, something to erase the ordinariness of her life—something, rather, that was the reason for the ordinariness, so that when the time came, she would be free to devote her whole attention to whatever it was. Instead of sitting back and waiting for the thing to happen, she believed in helping the gods or fate or whatever forces were in control of her destiny, so just before Danny came home, she had fixed up the apartment. After that, every time she walked in the door, it was as if she had spent a weekend away and come home unsuspecting, the way it happened on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. And when she looked up one day and saw that the clinic waiting area had undergone a similar transformation, she was as surprised as anyone, even though she herself had done the painting and even though she had scoured the classified ads for secondhand furniture and taken on some hours at the hospital to pay the cost.

  For the walls, she had chosen a color called Quiet Moments 1563. Against it, even the folding metal chairs looked inviting. She had hung sheer panels at the windows and put a rustic table and mismatched armchairs in the center of the room. “Shabby chic,” she said when the doctor cocked his eyebrows at her. But she was proud of her work.

  “Decorating on a budget takes far more skill than your high-dollar projects,” one of her regular patients told her. Another said Dolly definitely had an eye. Someday she’d do the geraniums and the parking lot, but someday had always included Danny, and Dolly didn’t know what she was supposed to think about someday now that Danny had gone off with the members of his old unit.

  “How’s that soldier of yours doing?” asked the doctor one afternoon when Dolly went in to give him his mail.

  When Dolly blinked at him in astonishment, he said, “I keep my ears open. I know a thing or two about what’s going on.”

  “He’s in New Jersey,” said Dolly. “He and some friends are starting something there.”

  The doctor no longer seemed to be listening, but then he said, “I thought you’d be interested to hear that I’ve gotten involved in a study run by some people at the university. Don’t you go telling anyone about it yet—no sense drawing fire before we’re ready—but I thought you’d want to know.” He smiled kindly, which made Dolly want to weep. It made her want to throw her arms around his stooped shoulders and confide all of her worries in him. She wanted to say that she hadn’t told Danny about the tadpole because things were better with him gone, but she didn’t want to burden the doctor with her own troubles when he had troubles of his own. Instead, she wiped her hand across her eyes and said, “This was a good day!”

  And it had been a good day, because all of the appointments had gone smoothly, and because no one had thrown a fit or yelled at her, and because that day all of the husbands and boyfriends had spoken softly to the women and held their hands.

  Why wasn’t Danny there to hold Dolly’s hand? Because Danny was better off with his comrades. He was better off making critical information available to the public than sitting around in the fixed-up apartment with nothing important to do. And, frankly, she was better off too. It was a relief that he was no longer jumping at noises or straightening the silverware or smoothing the coverlet on the bed or roughing it up again to test how much disorder he could stand. The problem was that now she was doing it. Now she was lining up the pencils on the desk and making sure the folding chairs were evenly spaced against the wall and organizing the magazines into separate piles: Better Homes and Gardens next to Family Circle, Oprah and People next to Shape, Road & Track off in a corner by itself.

  The week before, a handsome but careless driver had dented Dolly’s fender and sent her a check for the damage along with a bouquet of flowers. Then, when she called to thank him, he had asked her on a proper date of the kind Danny seemed to have forgotten about. Now she wondered if the tapestry of her life was the same as Danny’s tapestry or if it was just hanging next to it. “Rain check?” the careless driver had asked, and Dolly hadn’t answered yes or no. Whenever she was in a quandary, she liked to open the Bible and point to a passage at random. The last time she tried it, she had pointed to a depressing verse about the land of gloom and chaos. Now she thought of seeking guidance again, but instead of getting the Bible out of her desk drawer, she closed her eyes and picked up a magazine from the table in front of her—who was more likely to give her good advice, Job or Oprah? When she opened her eyes, she was looking at a headline that said: IS YOUR HANDBAG KILLING YOU?

  She tried the November issue: COULD A MAN DRIVE YOU CRAZY? seemed pertinent. October: DO WHAT YOU LOVE! Then she opened Road & Track: My attitude changed within about five minutes behind the wheel of the Azera. From People magazine: After 23 days behind bars, the heiress took back her freedom in a Petro Zillia blazer and jeans from her very own denim line. From a book someone had left on the table: So it goes.

  Out in the driveway, a car door slammed. It was a late patient, rushing to make the five o’clock closing. Dolly could see her hurrying through the mud with her scarf flapping in the wind and her arms around an unwieldy cardboard box. She hoped there wasn’t a stillborn baby in the box because so far, it had been an almost perfect day. “Do we have time for one more?” she asked the doctor.

  “If you’re quick about it. It’s nearly five, and I have dinner plans.”

  The young woman who entered the waiting room stood in the doorway, her scarf pulled up to her chin and her hood pulled down over her ears. She was shuffling her feet in a way that Dolly knew from long experience irritated the doctor. Before he could bark out that he was a busy man, Dolly said, “Please tell the doctor what you’ve come to see him about.”

  The woman glanced nervously from the doctor to Dolly and back again. It was only when she set the box down on the rustic table and took off her jacket and unwound her scarf that Dolly recognized Tula. “Tula!” she cried. “I haven’t seen you in months! Are you all right? Are you here to see the doctor? I hope something isn’t wrong!”

  “No,” said Tula. “I’m here to see you. There’s something in this box that I think you’ll want to see.”

  9.8 Maggie

  Just before Christmas, a FOR SALE sign went up in front of the church, and soon afterward, Maggie returned to find a group of real estate agents inspecting the garden. She lingered on the sidewalk and tried to figure out what they were talking about, but she only caught snatches of their conversation: “nonessential properties,” “abuse scandal,” “not remotely worth what they’re asking.”

  On Saturdays, Maggie took Dino for long walks through the city, always keeping her eyes open for Sandra Day O’Connor. Many of the citizens of Phoenix looked at her suspiciously when she asked about the former justice, and others merely shook their heads. “What business do you have with her?” asked a crossing guard in a disapproving tone of voice.

  “You’ve chosen a funny way to go about finding someone,” said a woman with two small children in tow. “I’m sure Justice O’Connor wouldn’t take kindly to stalkers.”

  “I can hardly stalk someone I’ve never seen!” exclaimed Maggie.

  One time, she tried to explain about the depleted uranium to a nice gentleman who was walking a retriever. He listened politely while the two dogs sniffed each other, and when she had finished, he said, “You shouldn’t speak so loudly. The shadow government might be listening.”

  After that she stopped asking questions, only walked silently around the neighborhoods she had circled on her map with Dino trailing behind her, his long toes tapping on the pavement. And she did see the justi
ce—at least she almost did. Once or twice a day she would spy a face with powdery skin and a halo of soft gray hair, or a small, gracious figure dressed in a smart suit. She would spy the figure from the back, from the side, just going around a corner or through a door. On those occasions, Maggie would call out, “Justice O’Connor!” and rush after her, causing bystanders to stare at her briefly before going about their business as if they had seen it all before—a woman in faded jeans accompanied by a droop-eared dog, searching for something she couldn’t find. On nice days Dino would linger in a patch of sun and look solemnly after her before starting forward again, one paw in front of the other, until one day he stopped in front of a gourmet deli and refused to budge.

  “Justice O’Connor? She was in here just last week,” said the proprietor. “She bought a loaf of seven-grain bread and some of those Greek olives.”

  Maggie couldn’t believe her luck—it was almost as if she had turned a corner to find herself face-to-face with the former justice herself. But past experience had made her cautious. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and see the jovial face before her cloud with misgivings. “How often does she come in?” she asked.

  “Now and then,” said the proprietor. “When she’s in town.”

  “But she’s in town now, isn’t she?”

  “She was last week, but she goes to Washington, DC, a lot. Her clerk said they were headed back there. She didn’t say when they were going, and of course I didn’t pry.”

  “Her clerk?” Maggie had assumed she would find the former justice alone, with no one else to interfere. She had envisioned a kind woman in a long black robe sweeping toward her along the sidewalk or, in an alternate scenario, sitting on a portable dais and answering questions for people who stood in line before her, as if searching for the justice was not only acceptable, but commonplace. She saw herself explaining about the top-secret documents and the Iraqi babies and then about Tomás and George and feeling her burden lift as the ex-justice absorbed the facts in preparation for making a pronouncement about what to do. “Do you happen to know where she lives?” she asked.

  Before the proprietor could answer, a customer came into the shop and mistook Maggie for an employee. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, tapping Maggie on the shoulder. “I need a little help.”

  Maggie had the sensation that the roles had somehow been reversed—that the customer was looking for her the way she was looking for Sandra Day O’Connor and that she would be expected to offer thoughtful suggestions on the basis of a disjointed set of facts.

  “I can’t seem to find that nice olive oil with the white truffle essence,” said the customer.

  “If only my problem were that simple,” said Maggie when the customer had paid for her purchases and left. “If only I just needed a little olive oil.”

  “Try me,” said the proprietor.

  Maggie nearly burst into tears. She knew she would have to tell her story carefully so the proprietor wouldn’t scoff at her or clam up altogether, but even though she took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts before starting, the story came tumbling out of her: the missiles that spewed radiation into the air, the munitions plant that polluted the creek, the policies aimed at providing ever more bodies for ever more prison cells, Tomás and George and all the wrongfully incarcerated. “I don’t know what to do, and I thought Justice O’Connor could advise me.”

  “You got Tomás’s file to an appellate attorney, didn’t you? And someone wrote an article publicizing his case, and the attorney is making progress on the appeal, isn’t he?” The proprietor was looking at her with admiration, as if she had done something out of the ordinary.

  “Yes,” said Maggie. “But even so, nothing’s changed.”

  “Well, unless you plan to go to law school, there’s not much else you can do. Most people wouldn’t have bothered at all.”

  “How could I not have bothered? Once I realized all the terrible things that were happening, that’s all I could think about. It seemed selfish to be concerned with myself or even with Lyle and Will when innocent people were in cages. So I started to look for evidence, thinking that was the way to convince other people of the truth. But I didn’t convince them. They pointed to rules and procedures and only became more firmly entrenched in their positions. Which made me wonder—what if the important thing isn’t reason or evidence at all? What if it’s more to do with imagination? If you can imagine what it’s like for someone else, you still might lock that person up—you might even kill him—but you’d comprehend the tragedy of what you were doing, wouldn’t you?”

  “Hmm,” said the proprietor. “You might be overthinking it…but at least you’re overthinking it at the best little deli in Scottsdale! You might as well take advantage of it. You might as well sit right here at the counter and have a cold drink and my signature eggplant and feta sandwich.”

  The proprietor busied himself behind the counter before turning and presenting her with two thick slabs of bread pinned together with a toothpick and garnished with parsley and a radish. If he had understood anything of what she was saying, he gave no sign of it. “Now,” he said, “I want to hear more about Lyle and Will.”

  Maggie’s heart leapt like it had finally been returned to water after lying helplessly on the bank. She had purposely put her family out of her mind, but now she poured out the story of her life in Red Bud. She told of dinners at the Main Street Diner and how the three of them had squeezed together in the front seat of the truck before she had quit her job at the munitions plant. She told how Lyle had loved turkey and cheese or ham and mayo in his lunch until she had stopped buying turkey because the birds were raised in such tight quarters that part of their beaks and toes had to be removed to prevent them from injuring each other and ham because of how the sows were confined to cramped gestation crates until they were too old to be useful, at which time they were killed. She was surprised to find herself voicing not only what she loved about Lyle, but also the things that irritated her. She described how Lyle would shake his head over a dilemma before declaring, “Who am I to say! There are experts for that sort of thing.” She recalled how she was always sticking up for Lyle, but when was the last time Lyle had stuck up for her?

  “It sounds like you had a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. It sounds like Lyle took advantage of you. No wonder you ran away.”

  “I didn’t run away!” she exclaimed. “And Lyle didn’t take advantage of me at all!” She tore a crust off her sandwich and tossed it to Dino, who was waiting for her by the door. It was disconcerting to be misunderstood. But how did a person tell his or her story exactly the way it was?

  “When the responsibilities of your family became overwhelming, you traded them in for responsibilities of a different kind.”

  “That’s not the way it was at all.”

  Right from the start, Maggie had assumed Lyle needed her more than she had needed him. Even worse, she had let other people think it. Whenever Misty or True said, “I hope Lyle knows how lucky he is,” Maggie had never corrected them or said that she was lucky too. And if Lyle gave Will what she thought was bad advice, she would interrupt and contradict him, right in front of Will. Now she wondered if the proprietor was a little bit right about running away, and if what she was running away from had mostly been her fault.

  9.9 Lyle

  Every evening, the first thing Lyle would see when he walked into the house was the pile of bills on Maggie’s desk. He tried putting a kitchen towel over it, but that only made the pile seem to be taunting him. The Saturday after the phone service was terminated, Lyle got up early and cleared a space on the desk. After setting the checkbook and a blue felt-tip pen in the space, he poured a cup of coffee and sat in Maggie’s chair with his knees bumping up against the underside of the pencil drawer. He hadn’t worked at a desk in over twenty years, and his eyes automatically flew to the door and then to the window. A flock of crows settled on the lawn, their wings black and gleaming. Maggie’s bicycle, wh
ich he guessed now belonged to Will, rusted against the side of the shed, and the mud-spattered truck angled into its parking spot, indicating that Will had been the last to drive it. Lyle hadn’t heard him come in—where was Will going so late at night? He wished he could discuss it with Maggie, but he didn’t want to worry her. He wished he could discuss it with Jimmy Sweets without Jimmy always taking Will’s side and acting as if Lyle didn’t know his own son. When the crows flapped off, Lyle tore his eyes away from the window, half expecting Miss Proctor to slap her ruler against the side of the desk and say, Next time, Lyle, I’m slapping it against your head!

  Each time Lyle wrote out a check, he sealed it in an envelope and fixed one of the self-sticking Liberty Bell stamps into the top right-hand corner. Then he printed his return address on the lines provided and dropped the envelope into a pile at his feet and carefully subtracted the amount from the balance column in the check register, just as Maggie had always done. “Look at this, Will,” he said when Will came into the room rubbing his eyes. He tapped the checkbook with the pen.

  “Good job, Dad.”

  Will’s big hand rested for a moment on Lyle’s shoulder, filling Lyle with something deep and joyful.

  Besides bills, the pile contained credit card applications and mortgage refinance invitations and packets of coupons for things Lyle didn’t use. At the bottom of the pile were two letters on official school stationery—one inviting Will and his family to a meeting at the college counseling office, and the second saying that Will had missed two counseling sessions and also failed to turn in his scholarship application forms. A week later, a third letter arrived suggesting Will consider a trade school course if he didn’t plan to go to college. It included a final counseling date, this one printed in bold red type.

  “What do you want to do?” asked Lyle.