Maggie Terry

by Sarah Schulman

  Maggie had a moment of recognition here. How she was emotionally ricocheting between possible interpretations of moments because she was jumping from denial to acceptance and back to denial again. In a way, Florence was right, of course. Everyone, to some degree, had a choice about how to react. Frances might have been lonely and frustrated, she might even have been disappointed or afraid. But she didn’t have to run off with a younger woman.

  “Right.” Florence smiled. Her method was working as she knew it would. “I can heal you by teaching you to be comfortable with difference, with acknowledging hard truths, with receiving love. We will all come together twice a week and listen to the sound of the waterfall, until we have memorized it, emotionally. Then, when someone else’s truth feels unbearable, you substitute the sound of the flowing water.”

  Craig dropped his arm down, in surrender, and one hand splashed in the pool. Even back on the hot summer street his sleeve was still dripping wet.

  “Oh my God,” he said as they headed back to the office. “Two hundred dollars a session for that crap.” He worked his device. “I bet she doesn’t even have a license.”

  “Her doctorate is in Victorian literature,” Maggie answered quietly, thinking.

  “Hold on!” He waved his screen like it was a football after touchdown. “You’re right. Her PhD is in . . . Victorian literature. How did you know that?”

  “I looked on her bookshelf. The closest thing she had to a clinical text was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.”

  “Whatever. What a clown.”

  But Maggie didn’t agree. Jamie Wagner was an actress, after all. She memorized scripts that other people wrote. She did not originate ideas; she interpreted them. The kinds of assignments Florence handed out could work for someone who wanted to be told how to reason and respond. Someone desperate for another way. It could work for Jamie, provide a relief from never being able to figure it out on her own. Maggie imagined Florence instructing Jamie Wagner: The next time your father says something sexual to you, think of the sound of the flowing water.

  It was an avoidance technique. You can’t change other people so stop listening to them. No need to understand, just distract so that you can coexist. Right up Jamie’s dissociated alley. She was internalized anyway. She did not need to be awake, just to act awake. But in Maggie’s case, it was different. She was hyperaware, how could she ever just stop noticing. It was her sensibility and it was her profession. Seeing through other people’s facades was what she did for a paycheck. Except when it came to the mirror. But when she’d punctured Frances’s facade, she’d punctured her heart because Frances needed to be the good guy. And if Maggie had just listened to the water circulating through a beat-up mini waterfall, she could have let it go.

  Now there was no mirror, no badge, no institution of power, no apparatus of enforcement. She was, in all senses, a civilian. She could think of dirty water every time she missed her child. Was it really possible to never pay attention again? As a way of life?

  “What do you say, Craig? Do you think you could give up noticing?”

  But Craig was too busy with his email to even feign a reply.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  11:30 AM

  Maggie’s office was a replica of her apartment. Empty.

  The firm had provided a desk, a chair, and a gorgeous wall of windows for which curtains were only a necessity to the perpetually suicidal. The blank white walls and Spartan desktop were a regular and daily threat to any illusion of progress. What belonged there? Old photographs of Alina?

  The fact was that Alina did not look like that anymore. She’d outgrown those clothes and lost that barrette. She was probably losing her baby teeth and had bangs and some kind of commercial sneakers and a new vocabulary and ran boldly without hiding behind her mother’s legs. She had a lunch box with logos from a pop star or TV show that Maggie had never heard of and could not discuss. She played computer games that Maggie could not bear or understand. She had friends Maggie had never met, and dreams. What was the point of replaying that soft little hand, the way she would lean against Maggie’s body like she owned it, the lack of self-consciousness—it was all probably gone.

  And the questions . . . “Is that your little girl?”

  “It was.”

  No, she couldn’t bear it.

  Yet Maggie could not move every day from one barren crypt to another and back again, with stop offs in dank church basements in between. There was something absurd about being in such an elaborate city only to be surrounded by emptiness. Outside and within.

  She took out that tiny red cell phone and the phone number crushed in her wallet, and started trying to figure out how to enter Rachel into her contacts so that Craig would not be the only one for the police to call if she got hit by a car. Or if she was found with a needle in her arm, moldering underneath a staircase in Middle Village, Queens. Or if the inability to decorate finally seized her mind and she ended up naked on the escalator at Macy’s.

  There was a knock, but it turned out to be symbolic when her office door opened without any pretense of waiting for permission.

  “Maggie?”

  It was Mike of course. That would be his way around here. Facsimile of privacy, when we’re all one big happy family. Well, she did not need more privacy; it would only get her in trouble. What was the difference between privacy and loneliness? A tree without leaves or a dead tree?

  “Great day, isn’t it?”

  She had to look up then and notice the sun, the blue, the clarity, the distinction between cloud and universe.

  “Yes, lovely.”

  Mike’s role was to accentuate the positive. And hers was to try to receive it. He took a thick file of papers off of his lap and threw it on her empty desk. Now there was something on her desk.

  “That oughta mess it up.”

  “Thanks!”

  “It’s the info you requested on Jamie’s father. Guy’s got a massive history of problems. We still xerox around here in case the internet disappears one day, and someone has to be left to sue them. I like the feel of paper, and it’ll give you something to write on. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No, the NYPD was all about paper.”

  “Good. Want you to feel at home.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And it gives you something to put in your brand-spanking new, empty, clean file drawers.”

  Barely a lonely breath after, the door slammed and she stared back out at the world through her window. It was daunting and anxiety provoking. She felt overwhelmed and afraid and so went back to trying to call Rachel. She knew she needed support. Something bad was going to happen, and Maggie needed her sponsor. But before she could make the thing dial, there were three short blasts on her intercom. This was Sandy’s summons for a meeting in Mike’s office that he hadn’t mentioned ten minutes before, and so had probably just decided to call. Mike’s persona, after all, was spur of the moment meets right now!

  “So, everyone, Maggie has just been reading Jamie’s father’s files.”

  “Actually, I haven’t even opened—”

  “Got it!” Craig announced. “Stefan Wagner!”

  The visit to faux couples counseling hadn’t helped their relationship, that was for sure. He was still competitive.

  Craig proudly read off his phone, “Born in Germany. Five involuntary hospitalizations by the police. Diagnosed severe manic-depressive. Lifetime of thought disorders. Electric shock.”

  Enid clapped her hands, helpless. “How in the world can you find out a person’s most intimate tragedies in ten seconds?”

  “Police records. Hospital records.”

  Enid shook her head. “That truly terrifies me. The problem with the world is too much informa—oh, wait. That was the problem with the world before the election. Now the problem is not enough real information. Half the people in this country are out of their minds.”

  “Actually,” Craig droned. “Thirty-six percent.”

  “Is th
at that evil man’s latest approval rating? I blame those Bernie Bros, it’s all their fault. They splintered the Democrats and the crazies voted for a president who is going to take away their own health—”

  “Okay,” Mike said.

  “I know,” Enid whispered.

  “We know.”

  “Anyway.” Craig was back to business. “Stefan Wagner is a real mess.”

  “That,” Maggie recalled, “was exactly how Steven Brinkley described him.” And she realized that Jamie’s father and her boyfriend basically had the same name.

  “And Brinkley was right about Florence Fake-o, too,” Craig interjected. He caught Maggie’s eye. “I know, I know, you liked her.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Well.” Enid took off her jacket. She seemed to be having hot flashes but had not yet said so. Still, everyone who noticed assumed as much, except for the men and those too young to consider such things. In other words, no one in that room but Maggie. “It is criminal,” Enid continued, “that Jamie was never sent for psychopharmacological evaluation. Medication can really make a difference.” She was sweating. “I took them for a short time when my second husband was convicted of embezzlement and they helped me.”

  “Wow.” Craig was always embarrassed by other people.

  Enid gulped down a glass of water. “I don’t need them now.”

  “I am so glad.” Mike patted her arm. “It’s great to see you feeling better.” He gestured around the room with his glasses. “We are all really glad.”

  Enid seemed to get chilled and put her jacket back on, then stared at Maggie, daring her to say the word menopause. “What about you?”

  “I’m not on anything.”

  “But you were involuntarily hospitalized by your former domestic partner. Can you handle working on this case?”

  Bitch.

  “You were?” Craig was so surprised he didn’t even look up, like he didn’t want to be caught in a state of unknowing.

  The pain came from the word former, carefully selected by Enid for maximum infliction, since she also had to live with that ghost.

  “Maggie, we are all so glad that you are feeling better.” Michael glared lovingly at Enid, clearly telegraphing that she had better take her hostility down a few notches. After all, he had been supremely understanding about her varieties of hormonal mood swings and aging-related outbreak/depression cycles.

  “Yes,” Maggie said, although she knew it was a lie. “I can take it.” What was she supposed to say?

  “How is Frances? And your little—”

  “Michael, we aren’t in touch right now.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you.”

  She wasn’t going to explain that Frances did that to her when everything happened with Julio, because frankly it was none of their business and they wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t understand the Code. She knew everyone in America was watching police officers kill black people; it was part of the horror show/reality/entertainment news update. People would watch and rewatch Eddie kill Nelson Ashford for no reason, but Maggie knew there was a reason that none of these people could understand. Yes, it was racism, okay, that was obvious. The police were afraid of black people, and that was a fact, because it was widely believed among police officers that black people hated them. And if any of the cops—brown and black cops especially—were civilians instead, they would hate the police, too. But once they put on that badge, blue became thicker than race. She’d seen it over and over again. Of course, the black cops were also black people, and some of them even got shot by a white officer for no reason when they were plainclothes or out with their kids or at the wrong picnic or something. But when Julio’s son killed that man, Julio took the cop point of view.

  “If Nelson Ashford had just listened to Eddie,” Julio had cried in the car. “If he had just done what Eddie said, instead of stalling and asking questions and playing that I’m protecting my rights television cops-and-robber game, if he had just . . . obeyed, he would be alive today,” Julio mourned. “That man would be alive today.”

  So, while Maggie knew that in the world of people having the right to go home from work without being killed, Nelson Ashford should not have been killed—obedience was not the solution to police violence—she also knew the world of junior, second-generation cops of color, who see everyone else as a threat, who feel the hate. They grew up with their fathers being treated like traitors, but being told that they were heroes. In that reversal world, Eddie Figueroa did what Julio Figueroa would have done. He shot first. And there was proof.

  “It’s driving me crazy, Maggie,” Julio said. His soft brown skin was sagging under the weight of his heavy eyes. “I can’t believe they put Eddie on leave. Charges, man! Charges. Those cowards.”

  “I know.” Maggie coughed. “You’re right.”

  Normally the force and the commissioner were supposed to have the officer’s back. But, what was Eddie doing there anyway? Outside of his beat? He said he was following a lead. He had a bullshit story that couldn’t be confirmed or denied about a civilian waving down his car when he was headed back to the station and pointing him to a disturbance over by some small apartment buildings where some petty criminals lived. Well, every building in New York has criminals. Every New Yorker knows that. Rich or poor they are scamming something, whether it’s Jared Kushner’s slumlording, an old auntie’s illegal dice game, or some young queen’s sex work. Eddie could have had some fishy business of his own.

  “Are you sure you know what he was doing over there?”

  “I gotta believe my son.”

  Maggie understood that now no one would ever know what really happened, because the only witness to whatever Eddie Figueroa was doing where he was not supposed to be, Nelson Ashford, a thirty-six-year-old father, was conveniently dead. But, surprise! Someone else had lived to film the entire sordid undertaking.

  “Who was that cameraman? What was he doing there?” Julio wanted to know.

  The problem was that that night, Maggie was blasted. She had smoked crack and she felt like a ghost. She had been drinking out of a mini bottle, and she knew that Julio had to see it. It was the anxiety, it just never went away, she could not get the hunger under control that day. So she was agitated and fried, like fried up, and her heart was a broken piece of china watching Julio getting all worked up, crying and yelling. He never did that. Never. And Maggie wasn’t together enough to talk him out of it. She just sat there. She could barely keep her head on her neck; the world was so heavy. So when Julio started cursing out the department and getting fiery . . .

  “They aren’t going to investigate,” he insisted. “I know it. They are going to sell Eddie down the river because of Black Lives Matter and all those protestors the mayor wants to have as friends. I never saw a mayor who was so square and yet wanted to be so down-with-the-people as ours. He will let Eddie go down. I see it all happening, right before my eyes. He’s a betrayer, that mayor. My wife, Maggie, you cannot imagine. The shame.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The thing is,” Julio said. “Downtown, the brass. They want to find some Latino police officer to sacrifice, so they can say they were fair. Like that Asian cop in East New York who took the hit. You never see them prosecuting no white officers. Never. Then it’s all loyalty. But when it is one of us! They will let Eddie go down like a sacrificial lamb.”

  And that’s when the idea came up, and Maggie wasn’t sure if she first suggested it, but someone suggested it and it had to be either her or Julio, but they somehow both came to believe that they would have to be the ones to investigate. That they knew what kinds of questions to ask, and they knew who to ask, and most importantly, they had those badges that let them ask.

  Julio had the address of Martin Scott Bond, the guy with the camera phone. And Maggie felt . . . a thrill. She felt some kind of grandiose rush, like yeah, fuck, she and Julio would show the department, and they would rescue
Eddie, or at least get him a fair ride. That was all they wanted, for him to be treated fair. No one thought Ashford should have died, but why the fuck couldn’t he just have cooperated? That’s what they needed to ask Martin Scott Bond. And why was he there? They could blow this whole thing wide open. And she just needed to score a little coke, and then she would be gangbusters, literally. She and Julio agreed to go home after their shifts and eat a good dinner and then meet up later, badges in hand, at the address where Nelson was killed, where Eddie had taken a wrong turn, and go pay a visit to Martin Scott Bond, the fucker. Pay him a visit. The thing about everything is that there comes a point in life when a person can really understand why almost anything could happen.

  But that was a long time ago. Now.

  “Okay, Maggie?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Mike repeated himself. “Does that work for you, Maggie?”

  “Can you just repeat the plan one more time?”

  “Weird,” Craig said to no one in particular.

  “You will read through the files and send around a summary before you leave at the end of the day.”

  “Of course, Mike. No problem.”

  “Okay, everyone?”

  “No problem.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  8:00 PM

  Maggie stayed late at the office, as was expected. She read the files slowly, between cloudy dream times where the world seemed to leave her behind. Finally finished, she gently placed the folder in an empty file-cabinet drawer. If she could fulfill her responsibilities and keep this job, that cabinet might soon be full.

  Sandy had given her a pen, and she placed it on the desk. Then she gathered her meager belongings and left the workroom, starting off for that other room called home. The journey down the elevator was rather unconscious and automatic, which seemed natural. Almost a normal response to a long day. But once out on the street, Maggie felt anxious again and could not imagine what would happen in that apartment this evening. She could see herself pacing and crying, and then what? So, she started wandering a bit. She started crossing streets without thinking, getting lost in the crowd. Maybe there would be someone to talk to. She checked the meeting list Rachel had prepared for her; there wasn’t anything for an hour. She could get there twenty minutes early and set up chairs. But that still left forty dangerous minutes to kill, and so much could go wrong. She could wander and look in shopwindows. But disappearing into the world was even more alienating—and dangerous—than staying out of it.