Maggie Terry

by Sarah Schulman

  Craig beamed.

  “Lucy, I will of course supervise his every move.”

  “What?” Craig could not believe this was happening to him, again.

  “Maggie will be your assist.”

  “Oh, come on!” Craig protested, but then immediately recovered. He already knew that Mike never changed his mind until he had to. Remembering that there was a client present he produced a fake smile. “Okay.”

  “Great.” Michael shifted his chair to indicate the end of the meeting.

  “Lucy,” Enid rose, “I’ll see you to your car.”

  Lucy stood, performing gratitude, confidence, and relief that once again someone else would take care of what had to be handled so that she could take care of herself.

  “Thank you all. And you, dear.”

  “Yes?” Maggie answered, reviewing her notes.

  “Call my assistant and he’ll send you some tickets.”

  “To what?”

  “My show.”

  “What show?”

  The rest of the team froze in horror, midair, at various stages of rising and reaching. No one filled the silence of Maggie’s destroyed opportunity, so Enid and Lucy left the workers behind to take care of details.

  “Sandy,” Mike yelled, grabbing his gym bag. “Run downstairs and get Maggie a copy of The Mere Future.”

  “Okay, is there a bookstore nearby?”

  “There must be, it’s New York City.”

  Craig started googling. “The Strand. Twelfth and Broadway.”

  “Thank you.” Mike didn’t want to be bothered with too many details. “Take two cabs, we don’t have time for Uber.” And he was out the door.

  Craig’s mental gymnastics about how to sideline Maggie were legible in the furrow of his brow. He turned to her, grinned in a blatant display of pure annoyance, and said in the kindest you know I’m kidding, broadest buddy-buddy tone available on the human continuum of veiled threat, “Maggie.” He showed his teeth. “I will watch you like a hawk.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  6:30 PM

  Early evening in Manhattan. Summer. New Yorkers are soft and kind because they live in front of each other and understand the fragility of human complexity. New Yorkers are tough and crusty because they spend half the year sweating in a hotbox of bodies, surrounded by vermin and stinking garbage, and the other half freezing, in boxes without enough heat and rattling windows, waiting for the snowplows to get there. There was that one week, euphemistically known as “spring” when any stranger could naively think: What a delightful place to live. The cherry blossoms fill the trees, the sky is clear and bright, smiles and skin awaken each other. Everyone is sexy, people fall in love, and have great ideas that other people agree to allow to succeed. There is life. It is a remarkable moment of yes, yes, yes. And there is an excitement about living and forgiving and creating new worlds in the midst of this temporary beauty, this illusory restorative clarity, and this rare clean feeling. And then, suddenly, it is hot again. And everything droops: hopes, collars, and wills.

  This summer, Manhattan Cable was tearing up the street because all the landlines in the neighborhood were completely down. The 4 train didn’t run on weekends and the B train was on the D track and the L was going to be shut down for a year and a half. The governor had suggested that people in Williamsburg “use cars” to get to Manhattan, which wasn’t going to happen. What cars? The most frequent existential questions overheard while waiting for the light to change were: Would the Orange One be impeached? Would he bomb a country run by someone as crazy as himself and begin the end of the world? Yes, the disordered were entirely in charge, it was the Borderline Apocalypse, people who couldn’t nuance were making impulsive decisions about everyone else’s fate.

  Maggie knew that she should be sitting in an NA meeting, listening to someone else’s pain, their process, obstructions, and desires. But instead she was hurriedly following Craig Williams, as he remained a half step ahead of her all the way down Eighth Street. One of the promises she had made to herself, and to her sponsor, Rachel, was to make 12 Step meetings as integrated a part of her life as eating breakfast. But both were turning out to be difficult to pull off. She hadn’t expected to be working past six on the first day, but Craig acted like fieldwork was an expected part of the terrain, so she kept this rising anxiety to herself. The staggering quickly took on an observational tone as Maggie became aware of having to watch where she was going, literally, as so much had changed. Greenwich Village was Deadwood. Empty storefront after empty storefront. Where had it all gone? The shoe stores that had once lined both sides of the block were either black spaces or awkward restaurants that would never make it. Why was there a Domino’s Pizza on Eighth Street? Why would anyone in Manhattan need a place to get bad pizza? The oldest head shop in New York was out of business, empty.

  Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue had long been a favorite hangout for junkies. Ghosts hung around the shadow of the old Nedick’s, where dopeheads lived for the mythological hot dog and orangeade next to beat-poet junkies, who were replaced by Warholian junkies, and then the subsequent junkies with no other purpose or cause besides junk. Now it was a former Barnes & Noble, the McDonald’s of bookstores—carnivores, those two: Mr. Barnes and Mr. Ignoble. They had driven out so many independent businesses only to be themselves done in by Amazon, who had just purchased Whole Foods, destroying any illusion of wholeness, replacing it with homogeneity. Across the street was the empty Gray’s Papaya with some letters pulled off of the marquee, and a sign proclaiming it would be replaced by a cold-pressed juice emporium. Every cop in New York City made it to Gray’s Papaya for the “recession special”: two hot dogs with mustard, sauerkraut, and grilled onions, and a powdered papaya drink for five bucks. No cops would buy cold-pressed juice. They didn’t know what it was and couldn’t afford to find out. No beacon from the storm left on the whole street, no place to find someone to talk to, to score from, arrest, or fuck. Just gone.

  Craig stopped dead. Tapped his toe, waiting for her to catch up. “What’s the matter?”

  Maggie wasn’t sure if he was actually asking her this question or was being rhetorical or critically encouraging her to walk faster.

  “I really should be at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting right now.”

  “Holy shit,” he said, first to himself and then to her. “Do not fuck up on my dime.”

  “Okay.”

  Then he looked at her sincerely, and yet practically. “Our appointment with Brinkley is at seven thirty. Where is the nearest meeting?”

  She checked Rachel’s now crumpled list. “Saint Veronica’s Church on Christopher Street. At six thirty.”

  The clock on the Jefferson Court Library tower read quarter to seven.

  “Okay, I’ll give you thirty minutes.”

  While Craig waited outside, biding time amid the empty storefronts of Bleecker Street, Maggie did what people in Program call the Next Best Thing. She slid in late to a meeting that she should have been to on time, and took a seat in a folding chair laid out by someone else doing the service that she, herself, should have done.

  Like most of the places that hosted meetings, Saint Veronica’s was old fashioned, uncool, and a bit decrepit. Sitting in this wobbly folding chair produced the anxiety that Maggie had been repressing all afternoon. Her first day working sober. She realized she couldn’t breathe. It felt like she had a blood clot in her lungs; it felt like there were ten. But really, it was just emotional. Normally she could take a Xanax or five, or four Klonopin and a shot, and later some dope and then another drink. Now, she had nothing except this meeting. The drugs took everything away and then they took the drugs away. Blah, blah, blah.

  Someone was in the process of saying something that could either save her life or make her want to get high. It was a crapshoot, being conscious. Damper or trigger. Kind of like real life. Basements filled with mediocre thinkers, childish narcissists, and whiners, and then suddenly someone might get called on who could
put together five words that would reach her heart and save what remained to keep it beating. She looked around. Faces were starting to feel familiar. But there were always new faces, too. Tonight, for the first time, she saw this masculine young guy, cute, with his hands wrapped around the thigh of a dynamically feminine young woman. They could have been models.

  “My wife,” he was saying. “My wife.”

  Clearly they were hanging on to each other for dear life. She was following him around the world to keep him from picking up and . . . maybe it would work, to be loved that much. Perhaps. They say you can’t control other people, but plenty of people were controlling Maggie. What if the person you loved stuck by you, no matter what? The truth was, she suddenly understood, Maggie would never have left Frances. No matter how much Frances complained, no matter how much blame she laid, Maggie loved her and Maggie was loyal. She loved Alina with all her heart and she was loyal to her as well. She would never abandon them, ever. In the sense of “walking away.” Being emotionally distracted was what family meant. But Maggie would never actually leave. She had to get them back. The fact was that if the tables were turned, and they easily could have been, Maggie would be there sitting next to Frances with her arm around her shoulders while her darling bawled out all the pain of her life. She would have helped.

  “What’s the matter with you? Are you drinking?” Frances asked the very first time she was supposed to be clean. Maggie could still see the surprise and hurt in her lover’s eyes. Frances had not expected it to ever happen again. She actually thought stopping was that easy. Some counseling and a few meetings later and she thought they could get their lives back. “Oh my God, Maggie! Are you drinking?” It was still a real question. And Maggie had to say something. Frances was still waiting back then, waiting for her to promise that it wasn’t true.

  “Calm down, Frances. I had a glass of wine.” Then she laughed. “And a bottle of wine.” Then she really laughed. It was cruel, but it was also so, so sad. It was a joke, after all, the idea that things could be okay. That she wouldn’t be the source of all the trouble. The problem. The problem wasn’t the problem unless everyone else decided that it was. But when she stood in court and watched Frances take her baby away . . . Frances had done drugs too, of course. She’d also done coke, whatever. But Frances could take it or leave it, and Maggie would take it and leave. Did that make Maggie bad and Frances good? It was genes or something, something beyond the self. Maggie knew she deserved to be punished, but this was overkill. What happens when you’re guilty too but are the only one punished? There was no way to appeal it. Overpunishment isn’t one of those things that people know what to do with. You’re supposed to suffer if you take drugs when you’re not supposed to, and Maggie did and then calamity struck. And now this: calamity by the gallon, by the hour.

  “My wife, my wife,” the good-looking drug addict rambled. “Thank you.” And then, narcissist that he was, he forgot to call on the next speaker until his wife whispered in his ear. He picked from the raised hands before him, desperate to be heard. And she felt so good about that. The wife. That she had helped. She was on his side, no matter what.

  It was just like Julio, who couldn’t stand the idea that his son was a bully cop. He couldn’t believe it. The newspapers had his kid, Eddie, taking out Nelson Ashford, a black man in the Bronx, for reaching for his keys. It was all over the news; there were witnesses and there was a rumor of cell phone footage.

  “Fuck those cell phones,” Julio said. “Anyone can shoot something with a cell phone and pretend it’s real.”

  It just broke his heart, to see his son maligned like that. To see his name on the cover of the Daily News.

  OFFICER CHARGED WITH MURDER

  To see the posters carried by Black Lives Matter.

  STOP POLICE VIOLENCE.

  JUSTICE FOR NELSON ASHFORD.

  It crumpled Julio. He couldn’t stand it.

  “We have to be there for each other,” he said, meaning family but also meaning blue brothers, the NYPD. “If there is no respect for the police, then there is chaos.”

  Sitting in the unmarked car that detectives always drove, Maggie watched Julio’s torment. Months passed, days after days of Eddie being placed on leave, and still the Ashford family wanting to press charges. She watched Julio cry, she saw him weep.

  “Let’s all rise for the Serenity Prayer.”

  That again. It always came to that. Standing up and holding hands. Then everyone would start in unison with the word God. But Maggie never said this. She didn’t believe in God, and she didn’t want to start anything that was supposed to be sincere with the word God. So, she would be silent as everyone else shared the first word. After that she would join in.

  Was that her mistake? Not saying God? Was that going to be the ultimate downfall of her Program, a sign of her lack of admission to helplessness? She knew she was helpless, but not to God. She was helpless to Frances and Alina and judges and people who felt they were better than her. But those people existed, for the moment, and God did not. How was she going to get better if she couldn’t get through the third step? “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.” But she did not understand. And there was no Him.

  Suddenly, she was out on the street.

  “What are you doing out so fast?” Craig was cramming what must have been a second slice of pizza into his face. She could tell because he was no longer savoring it, just eating it. He looked at his Apple watch. “You still have three minutes.” He had been counting on them to digest.

  “I couldn’t go there today.”

  “Go where?”

  “The wreck.”

  “Whatever.” He lost interest.

  Nice guy, Maggie realized. And she felt blessed that in his crotchety way he was trying to support her. And then she felt nauseous; it was all sooooo upsetting.

  “Okay then.” He wiped his mouth. “Let’s go pay a visit to . . .”

  “. . . the Stalker.”

  And they both sang the theme of cartoon villains everywhere: Dum, duh, dum, dummm . . .

  This momentary camaraderie earned by Craig’s compassion soon withered after twenty minutes of futilely waiting for Steven Brinkley to show up on the steps of his Perry Street townhouse, down the block from the one used on Sex and the City. Craig kept looking at his phone as Maggie watched legions of young women posing for selfies in front of the house before going off for their collective bonding over cosmos. She wanted one. She wanted two. She wanted that sickly Kool-Aid whiff when they were made badly, and the way a bump of coke fixed all of that. And the illusion of cleansing that came when a cocktail was made well, with fresh ginger and blood orange juice added to the poison, the delight, the fix. The first sip and then the moment it all kicked in. The relief.

  “Where is that dickhead?” Craig was fed up. “Fucking famous people. He’s a half hour late. My daughter needs . . .”

  “What does she need?”

  “She needs me to help her write a report.”

  Broken heart.

  Wanting to show how appreciative . . . wanting to be able to thank . . . wishing for the authority the world had once handed her . . . missing Alina more than everything, of course she now had homework. How could Maggie be so selfish to not have realized that. Alina would soon start first grade. She had friends. She had crushes and fights. She had an entire reality in which Maggie was not a speck of dust.

  “Go home, Craig.” Maggie stepped up to a plate that she could not reach.

  “Right. Not funny!”

  “For real. Go home to your family. You can catch the end of dinnertime. Your kids are waiting. Brinkley may never show and you know it.”

  It was the you know that would let him say yes. Like they were both facing the fact that this meeting wasn’t happening, so he could feel okay about letting her take the weight. That’s what assistants are for, after all. Right?

  “Okay.”

  She knew
that meant thanks.

  “I’ll see you in the office tomorrow at nine.” He was stern, like she needed a warning even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. He looked at his phone. “Oh, shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “The North Koreans tested a ballistic missile.”

  “Wait,” she remembered. “I have an NA meeting at eight.”

  “Okay, I’ll pick you up there at nine.”

  “Great, the Greek Orthodox church on Sixteenth Street between Sixth and Fifth.”

  “Look,” he said, shouldering his bag. “Call me whenever . . . if anything happens.”

  “Will do.” She felt better. Someone was letting her decide something.

  “I mean anything. Even if you think something might be happening but you’re not sure.”

  “Okay.” There was a hot breeze on her neck. She could feel something.

  “I want to know everything you know.”

  “Got it.”

  “And Maggie, if anything comes up on my end I’ll text you. What’s your cell?”

  “I don’t have one. The place came with a landline, but the cables are down. If you call, it goes to voicemail.”

  “How are you going to check your voicemail if you don’t have a phone?”

  She hadn’t considered this. “A pay phone?”

  Of course he didn’t trust her, she didn’t make any sense. “When was the last time you saw a pay phone?” Craig looked at her transparently. She was detrimental to his apparatus. She was a fucking mess.

  “Fix it,” he said with finality because he wanted to go home, not because he believed it was possible.

  “Okay.”

  She watched him walk away and leaned back on Brinkley’s elaborate stoop. She could run away and get drunk. She took out her copy of The Mere Future and started to attempt reading as Craig hurried off to the subway home.

  The first few words of the novel didn’t process. She tried again.

  Before the young woman approached, he had already rejected her.