Maggie Sweet

by Judith Minthorn Stacy

  Oh, Lord. What we did to the people we loved for their own good.

  That afternoon, when Jill went out to the garage workshop, I drove to the pay phone at Dixie Burger. “I’m sorry about today, honey. Jill’s been home all day. I’m calling from a pay phone.”

  “Sick?”

  “Not exactly. I don’t want you to think bad of her…but she got this tattoo….”

  “Tattoo?”

  “An eagle tattoo on her…well…I couldn’t leave. It was awful. She thought it was infected and got all torn up. Then I got torn up. She says she’s not going to college no matter what. Steven’ll have a hissy when everything hits the fan.”

  “Slow down, honey. Did you say a tattoo?”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore. You didn’t cook, did you?”

  “I marinated steaks all night.”

  Jerry always cooked for us, marinated steaks, blackened fish, key-lime pie; foods I’d never heard of. Then he served them all man-style, right from the pan.

  “I’m sorry. Seem’s all I ever say is ‘sorry.’”

  “Don’t worry, honey. The steak’ll keep. And don’t worry about Jill. From everything you’ve said, I like her. She just had a dumb-ass attack. Seems to go with the territory. So many attacks per teen. Did I ever tell you about the dumbest thing I did in my teens?”

  “Does it have anything to do with me?”

  “It has everything to do with you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Chapter 18

  There was either a full moon, or Mama Dean was right, the world was going downhill in a handbasket.

  I was driving down East Main Street, on my way to the farmhouse, when I saw a FOR SALE sign in front of the Curl & Swirl. I like to have crashed my car through Shirley’s plate-glass window when I saw it.

  I parked the car and went inside. Shirley was at her appointment desk, under a set of wind chimes, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex. When she saw me, she gave me a quivering grin and said, “Lord, Maggie. I didn’t plan to get caught like this. The realtor just left and I’m having a squalling spell. I’m almost through. It’s only a mini-squall.”

  “Oh, Shirley, I didn’t know,” I said, close to having a spell of my own.

  “I’ve decided to sell the place, get a condo at the beach. Quit while my legs are still good enough for a bathing suit.” She hiked up her pant leg to show off a muscular calf in orange support hose. Then she picked up a mirror and scrubbed at the smudged mascara under her eyes. “Lordymercy, I’m a mess. Reckon I better fix up this face or go down to the pound and apply for a dog license.”

  I knew she expected me to laugh, but her trying to joke at a time like this only made me feel worse. I ached to hug her. There were a thousand things I wanted to say. But she was making it clear that the last thing she wanted was a fuss. She wanted me and everyone else to think she was shrugging off the Curl & Swirl with a wink and a wisecrack as if it wasn’t breaking her heart. I gathered myself. If I said the wrong thing, made one false move, she’d go all to pieces and embarrass herself to death.

  While she concentrated on her makeup, I thought about making an excuse and slipping out the door to give her time to pull herself together. Then I heard another set of wind chimes and Mrs. Mabes, Shirley’s mother, came out of the back room carrying a coffee pot.

  “Hey, Maggie,” she said.

  “Hey, Mrs. Mabes.”

  Mrs. Mabes handed us Styrofoam cups of coffee, gave the wind chimes a look that should have frozen them into silence forever, then glared at Shirley. “Maggie Sweet, I want you to talk some sense into Shirley. She’s letting them aliens run her out of town.”

  Shirley set down the mirror. “Mama calls the people at the Beauty Box ‘aliens.’ She calls everyone who wasn’t born in Poplar Grove aliens. But they’re not running me off. Retiring to the beach isn’t exactly a punishment from God, Mama.”

  “Why, I wouldn’t go to the beach to see Jimmy Carter himself,” Mrs. Mabes said, snorting.

  Shirley stirred her coffee and sighed. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to be discussing this for the millionth time this week. Mama thinks I’m giving up, not retiring. She thinks I ought to go out kicking and screaming.”

  Mrs. Mabes looked at me. “I tell you kicking and screaming’s the only way to go. Before I’d let them aliens run me out of town, I’d advertise more, run more specials, load the seniors from the Methodist home on a bus and drive them down here myself if I had to. We was here first. I sure as the world wouldn’t roll over and play dead for no aliens.”

  “I’m not playing dead, Mama. We’ve had a good run. Now it’s over.”

  “We could give door prizes, put in a tanning bed, give bikini waxes….” Mrs. Mabes went on, talking right over Shirley.

  Shirley shook her head. “Hope springs eternal for Mama. ’Course she also believes that big hair and beehives are making a comeback.”

  “It could happen. Stranger things than that have happened,” Mrs. Mabes said.

  “Lord, Mama, you’re just being stubborn. We’ve hung on too long as it is. From the minute the Beauty Box moved into the mall, it was meant to be. Our fate was sealed. It was in the stars. Part of some universal plan. Now it’s time to quit, to let it go,” Shirley said, twirling her crystal pendant absentmindedly.

  “Bullshit and applesauce! That’s universal hogwash and you know it. I didn’t raise my daughter to be no quitter.”

  “You didn’t raise me to be a fool, either, Mama. Now let’s stop this fussing. Maggie didn’t come here to listen to us fuss.”

  “Well, pardon me for speaking. I’m just as universally sorry as I can be.” Mrs. Mabes pulled herself up stiffly, gave the wind chimes a jerk, and hobbled to the back room.

  After she left, we sat there awhile, not saying anything.

  Finally Shirley said, “Lord, Maggie, I’m sorry you had to witness this mess.”

  “She’s just upset.”

  “Don’t I know it. We’ve been fussing like this for weeks. I know it’s hurt Mama—hurt her to the core. But I didn’t plan to go out like this either. I’ve done all I know to do and more. But I swanee, I’m still eat up with guilt like a dog’s eat up with mange.”

  I thought about Shirley and Mrs. Mabes, how the Curl & Swirl had been passed down from mother to daughter like farmland being passed down from father to son. Mrs. Mabes had started it before World War II with money borrowed from her mother. In the late fifties Shirley had taken it over and turned it into the busiest shop in town. Now after all these years, Shirley was the one to lose it. No wonder she felt awful.

  “There’s got to be another way,” I said.

  “We’ve been dead as a hammer for two years.”

  “What would it take to turn things around?” I asked.

  “Vidal Sassoon…an accident at the Beauty Box involving kerosene and a match. Any way you slice, it’d take a miracle.”

  “There’s got to be something…”

  “I’ve turned it over and over in my mind for months,” she said.

  “Maybe you could find some young stylist in Charlotte. Bring her here. Offer that cute apartment in the back…you know, a package deal. Why, anyone starting out would be lucky to have—”

  “I’ve tried that. I’ve gone as far away as Atlanta. But they’d take one look at our big-hair, tight-perm clients and say, ‘Sorry, Shirley, I’m gone.’ Times have changed, Maggie. Use to, a young stylist would be thrilled to have a setup like this. But nowadays they don’t see it as a place to start. They see it as a career move—a bad career move. They figure if they’re seen in my shop, their reputation as an up-and-coming stylist would be ruined before it got started. Next thing I know they’ve signed on at the Beauty Box or they’ve caught the first bus back to Atlanta.”

  “Why don’t you take some classes? They’re bound to have refresher courses now that short dos have made a comeback,” I said.

 
“I tried. I can cut hair ’til the cows come home, but these precision cuts are tricky. I just can’t seem to get the hang of ’em. Guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I need to face it, I’m precision-cut illiterate.”

  “Lord, Shirley, I wish there was something I could do.”

  “I wish that husband of yours had let you work here. You’d have a big following by now. We could’ve given the Beauty Box a real run for its money. But there’s no use crying over spilt Dippity-Do.”

  I thought about my plan to leave Steven. I’d need a job, a place to live. It would be perfect.

  “What if I said I could come to work now? That I want to work,” I said, my voice rising. I’d daydreamed about this moment for years.

  Shirley didn’t even look up. She sipped her coffee and stared off into space. Finally she said, “Law me, I’d love to have you here, just for the company. But there’s no use breaking up your happy home over a lost cause. Besides, even if you started this very day, it’s too late. No one comes to the Curl & Swirl looking for modern cuts. You’d just be standing around, wasting your time. I’ve already had to cut Dixie and Lurleen’s hours to the bone. But thanks, Maggie. I appreciate the offer.”

  We sat there drinking coffee, not speaking. Shirley didn’t believe I wanted to work. She thought I was just being nice, saying the right thing to cheer her up. I considered telling her I’d be needing a job, that she’d be doing me the favor. But it didn’t seem right since I hadn’t told my family I was leaving.

  Now I wondered what I’d do. I’d taken for granted the Curl & Swirl would be waiting for me when I got ready. Now that I was ready it was too late.

  Cutting hair was the only thing I was qualified to do. The only thing I wanted to do. I wouldn’t work at the Beauty Box out of loyalty to Shirley, and the next nearest shop was thirty miles away, too far for my old car to travel on a daily basis.

  I saw myself working in the Zippy Mart, wearing a blue smock with the name Maggie emblazoned on the pocket. I’d emboss credit cards, turn hot dogs on a rotisserie, pour syrup into a Slurpee machine, say “Y’all come back,” a thousand times a day from behind my bulletproof shield. Oh, no!

  I thought about the Methodist home. They were always giving nurse’s aide courses. I’d pass dinner trays and bedpans, learn to give back rubs, move on to bed baths and Fleet enemas. Oh, Lord!

  We sat there for a long time, lost in our own thoughts. I didn’t leave ’til the wind chimes announced the first customers: ninety-something Mrs. Gentry and her sister, Mrs. Lovelace. Mrs. Gentry wore a blue-rinsed tight perm and Mrs. Lovelace’s hair was so thin, you could set it all in one pincurl.

  When I said good-bye, Shirley shrugged and gave me a tired I-told-you-so wink.

  All the way to the farmhouse, I thought about the generations of women who’d come through Shirley’s doors—regulars with weekly standing appointments, women who came for only the most special events of their lives like weddings and graduations. I’d spent my teens there—taken for granted I’d spend my grown-up years there, too. Now any hope of that was gone. It was the end of an era, the end of a dream.

  As I drove down Chatham Road toward the farmhouse, I saw Jerry riding his John Deere, an acre away. I waved, pulled my car behind an outbuilding, and let myself into the house.

  Going through to the kitchen, I was in such a fog, I barely noticed the newspapers strewn on the front room couch, the cups on the coffee table where we’d left them two days before.

  I rinsed out the coffee pot, measured coffee into a filter, almost bumping into a ladder that had been left in the middle of the room. Dirty dishes were stacked in the sink. I washed two mugs, half saw the empty Miller Draft six-pack on the counter. If I hadn’t been so dazed, I’d have noticed that the whole house was messy and cluttered, very unlike everything-in-its-place Jerry. But with my mind on the Curl & Swirl, the house barely registered.

  By the time Jerry came in, the coffee was brewing. He gave me a quick, sweaty kiss, said, “I’ll be back as soon as I shower.” Then he disappeared down the hall to the bathroom.

  Somewhere in the back of the house, a radio played Willie Nelson’s “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.”

  Deep in thought, I sat on the couch, drank coffee, and waited.

  A few minutes later, he was back, smelling of soap and shampoo, dressed in clean jeans and a white T, his feet bare, his wet hair slicked back. He went to the kitchen, then carried his coffee mug to a chair six feet away.

  “I’d have been here earlier, but I stopped at Shirley’s. You’ll never guess—” I started.

  “I’ve got to go to Florida for a few days,” he said.

  “What?” With all that was on my mind, I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.

  “I’ve got to go to Jacksonville. I’m flying out this afternoon.”

  “I thought the date for your final decree wasn’t ’til next week.”

  “Yeah…that’s another thing.” He looked past me, out the window. For the first time I noticed how tired he looked.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Trey’s in a mess, had one of his dumb-ass attacks.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around,” I said, watching his face, keeping my voice steady.

  “Yeah. But this one landed him in the brig.”

  “Oh, no, what happened?”

  “He got knee-walking drunk, was late getting back from leave, got his ear pierced—”

  “Oh, Lord!” I thought about all the messes Jill got into, how her worst punishment was being grounded for a week. “Couldn’t they talk to him, give him a warning? I mean, the brig, my Lord!”

  He stiffened. “Look, Maggie, Trey’s in the Navy, not some Sunday school sleep-away camp. He deliberately broke regulations.”

  When had my outlaw got so righteous, so rule-abiding? He’d spent his teens breaking rules. We were breaking all the rules just being together.

  “How can you say that? When did rules and regulations ever make a damn to you?” I flared.

  He turned, his eyes blazing. “My son makes a damn to me! I didn’t make the rules and regulations—the Navy did. Trey had choices, but he chose the Navy. Now they own his butt for the next four years. Like it or not, he can go along quietly, maybe learn something, or he can fight every rule that comes down the pike and make it four years of misery.”

  He stopped talking. Silence fell between us. I’d never seen him like this before. For the first time ever, it hit me: for twenty years we’d had completely separate lives. He’d talked about his son, his almost-ex-wife, but, I’d never seen them as real people. I’d never thought of Jerry’s life apart from me as real, never imagined his years of struggle, arguing with his wife, following Navy regulations, raising his son to have an easier life than his. Somehow I’d seen him looking out a window or reading a book (daydreaming about me?) while his life happened around him.

  Now I saw his life had been as tangled as mine with worry and duty and trying to do the right thing. Except in my daydreams that other life had nothing to do with me.

  My face burned with shame. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think….”

  We drank coffee, stared past each other; close at hand, just out of reach.

  Then I remembered. “You said there was another thing?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you…but Brenda’s been calling.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I thought so, too. Then all this mess with Trey—she called me again last night.”

  “Will you have to see her?”

  “God, Maggie, our son’s in the brig. She’s a wreck.”

  “There’s more, isn’t there?” I breathed in and out, shut my eyes and opened them. All the air seemed to have left the room.

  “Yeah. She’s having second thoughts.”

  “About you?”

  “Yeah. The single life isn’t what she thought it’d be; she probably wants more money or something. She laid this whole guilt trip on me, said Trey never had any prob
lems until we split…said it wasn’t too late…our divorce isn’t final.”

  Oh Lord.

  He stopped pacing, stared out the window awhile, then flopped back into the chair. “God, this has thrown me completely. I thought this part was settled, but she sounded so desperate. She was crying.”

  I bit my lip. For the second time that morning, I was close to crying myself. “The girls graduate next week. I’d planned to tell everyone. What do you want me to do?”

  “You better hold off awhile. I don’t know what I’ll find when I get down there.”

  “Will you call me?”

  “If I can.”

  “What do you mean ‘if’?” He still hadn’t looked at me. I was trying not to feel deep down hurt.

  “If I can,” he said, exasperated.

  I crossed the room, sat on the arm of his chair. He didn’t reach for me, didn’t even see me. Emmylou Harris was singing “Making Believe that You Still Love Me.” We sat there for what seemed like hours. We’d been six feet apart, now we were miles apart. Emmylou’s plans for the future would never come true, making believe was all she could do. Tears gathered behind my eyes. I stood and picked up my purse. He didn’t try to stop me.

  “If I don’t hear from you, give Brenda my best, and have a good life,” I said.

  He looked stunned. “Dammit, Maggie, that’s not fair.”

  I stumbled to my car. We were still on the same wavelength. Not fair was exactly what I was thinking.

  My stomach lurched as I barreled down the driveway, then onto Chatham Road, past Belews Pond. I was scared to death. It didn’t help that Elvis, out of all the songs he knew, picked just then to sing “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” I clicked off the radio. What if he didn’t want me? What if he wanted to put “The End” to the Maggie-Jerry story, stay in Jacksonville, go back to them? Oh, God! It’d be just like him. He’d see the pain in Brenda’s eyes, his son’s confusion; he’d decide he owed it to them to stay. I loved him because his feelings ran so deep, because he wasn’t afraid to look into someone’s eyes and see the pain and confusion there. Now the thing I loved about him most was the very thing that was taking him away from me.