As soon as she heard the shower running, Maggie opened the soiled backpack and dumped out the contents in the middle of the kitchen floor. Maggie’s mother Bonnie wouldn’t have thought the contents were fit for dust rags, but Maggie dumped the clothes in the washer and used hot water with lots of soap powder. A few other things fell out of the backpack, and after she started the washer, she went back to the pile. There was a passport, a journal, a wooden flute, and a prescription bottle. She resisted the temptation to look at the passport or journal, and put them back into the filthy bag. She foresaw a hate/hate relationship with the flute, but carefully placed it in the bag instead of hurling it from her back balcony into the trash dumpster in the alley below. She did however glance at the label on the prescription bottle before she returned it to the bag, and was surprised to see it was for an antidepressant. Combining that information with Caroline’s appearance made Maggie doubly glad she had brought her home instead of abandoning her in the isolated lodge house up on Pine Mountain.
Caroline took a quick shower, to conserve water no doubt, and then appeared in the kitchen before Maggie had the opportunity to find some clothes for her to wear. Maggie found a new toothbrush still in its package in the kitchen’s junk drawer and gave that to her, so Caroline obediently returned to the bathroom to use it. Maggie went into her bedroom and opened some drawers, wondering what she had that wouldn’t hang on her friend’s gaunt frame.
After she’d finished brushing her teeth Caroline came into Maggie’s bedroom and flopped down on the bed, saying, “I had forgotten what a luxury hot water is.”
Maggie pulled out several pairs of pants and sat them to the side, saying, “I have three sizes of clothes in here. I have eights I haven’t worn since high school, tens I haven’t worn in this century, and twelves I am just about to burst out of, but I refuse to buy fourteens.”
Maggie feared her friend was about to lecture her on the negative effects of obesity on the earth’s resources, but Caroline just said, “It doesn’t matter to me what I wear, anything is fine.”
Caroline graciously accepted and obediently put on every article of clothing that Maggie handed her. Her emaciated frame alarmed Maggie, who could see every rib and vertebrae protruding underneath her friend’s skin. The eights were still way too big, but with a belt, the jeans stayed up.
“This must be like dressing a tall skinny doll,” Caroline laughed.
‘Homeless Barbie,’ Maggie thought, and then felt ashamed for even thinking it.
Dressed in jeans, a turtleneck, a fleece pullover, and some warm wool socks, Caroline looked just like a ski resort tourist. She admired each piece of clothing as if it was the nicest thing she’d ever had, and indeed, Maggie thought, although Caroline could afford anything she wanted, she seemed to prefer dressing like the people she helped.
Maggie was dying to use some moisturizer, deodorant, and a chap stick on her friend, but didn’t want to risk offending her. Maggie made her a care package of several size eight outfits, which although they were out of fashion, were still in good shape. She put it all in a laundry basket, which was the closest thing to luggage that Maggie owned. Caroline tried on all Maggie’s snow boots until she found some that were close to her size. Maggie chose a down coat for her next, a ski parka that was too small, not her style, and a gift from her Aunt Alice. It fitted Caroline perfectly.
Caroline submitted to Maggie’s insistence that she dry her hair with a blow dryer, even though it probably increased her carbon footprint by one micron, and she plaited her long hair into one skinny french braid.
Caroline looked in the mirror afterward and said, “I look like an American.”
Maggie laughed until she realized Caroline wasn’t making a joke.
“Do you hate it?” she asked her, worried she had gone too far.
“No,” Caroline said, hugging Maggie with one arm. “It just took less time for me to revert back than I thought it would. Next thing you know, I’ll be buying a gas guzzling SUV to take my spoiled kids to a theme park.”
Maggie’s feelings were a little hurt by that but she let it pass. She took Caroline down to the bookstore, introduced her to the staff, and set her loose among the books, telling Jeanette that anything Caroline wanted went on Maggie’s tab. Then she went back upstairs, took Caroline’s clothes out of the washer and threw them in the dryer, where she willed them to shrink into doll size rags. She knew she shouldn’t want to change Caroline, to make her comply with whatever expectations she or anyone else had for how one should look, dress, or behave, but she argued with herself that she had good intentions.
‘If I went to one of her countries and she tried to change my appearance,’ Maggie reasoned, ‘it would be so that I fit in better with the indigenous people.’ The indigenous people of Rose Hill responded more favorably to people dressed as they did, who didn’t smell bad, so Maggie further rationalized that she was only trying to help Caroline assimilate with the natives.
Maggie was perversely unwilling to let Caroline go out on her own, but she knew that was ridiculous, so she gave her friend the extra keys to the back door and apartment before she took Scott’s Explorer back to him. She gassed it up at her uncle’s service station, and then drove it to Scott’s house with the windows down, hoping to air out the vehicle by the time she arrived, shivering in the frigid winter air.
Scott invited her in, made her some hot tea, and told her Margie was still missing. He also told her about Margie trying to get an insurance policy from Tony, but did not share what Tony had confided to him about the blackmail.
“I’ll ask around about her,” Maggie said. “One thing I forgot to tell you yesterday was that when I ran into her the other night she was dropping letters in the box outside the post office. It looked like a big handful.”
“Thanks,” Scott said, and wrote that down in his notebook. “What was it she said to you that made you so mad?”
“Just mean stuff about my family,” Maggie said, “about Dad and Ava.”
Maggie quickly changed the subject by telling him all about Caroline, including the prescription she found in the backpack.
“Do you think she’s had a nervous breakdown or something?” he asked her when she was through.
Maggie sipped the English Breakfast tea, which was her favorite, and shrugged in response.
“I don’t know how you could tell,” she said. “She’s so relentlessly cheerful and positive that she seems fine, but that may be because of the antidepressant. Her appearance is awful. She looks at least ten years older than her real age.”
“Are you going to talk to her about it?” he asked.
“I feel like I should,” Maggie said. “She doesn’t look healthy.”
“She probably hasn’t been to a doctor or a dentist in a long time,” Scott said. “Maybe you could suggest that as a start she should get a check up from Doc Machalvie.”
“I’ll try,” Maggie said, “but I don’t want to come over too bossy and alienate her completely.”
“You boss me around all the time and I don’t feel alienated,” Scott said, and gave her a sly grin. “In fact I think you’re pretty wonderful.”
“If you’re going to talk to me like that I’ll have no choice but to leave,” Maggie said sternly.
“See what I mean,” Scott said. “I think you’re pretty sexy when you’re irritated.”
“That explains a lot,” Maggie said, then got up and went to the front room to put on her coat.
Scott just laughed and saw her out, saying he’d call her later. Maggie remembered to thank him for letting her use the Explorer, and then walked down the hill toward downtown, and home.
Back in the bookstore, Maggie found Caroline sitting at a cafe table in deep conversation with Dr. Drew Rosen, the new veterinarian in town. This surprised Maggie at first, and then she realized how much the two had in common. Drew was very interested in political causes and animal rights, and lived a very healthy, vegetarian lifestyle.
Dre
w and Maggie had been on a few tentative dates, but Maggie quickly realized that although she liked him quite a bit, and he was a great guy, they were destined to just be good friends. Maggie believed in getting those kinds of conversations over with as soon as possible, and while Drew was gratifyingly disappointed, he was sincere in his intention that they not let a few dates make things weird between them. This was something people often say before they find out how hard it is to do, but Drew had so far been true to his word. Maggie believed any residual awkwardness between them would soon resolve itself. Now that she thought about it, Caroline and Drew would make a really good match. She would have to put Hannah on that project; she was the amateur matchmaker in town.
Neither noticed Maggie, so intent were they on what they were discussing, so she retraced her steps and went to the grocery store across the street to look for something she could feed her vegan friend. Delvecchio’s IGA yielded very few organic choices, plenty of vegetables, but no hummus or pita. Owner Matt Delvecchio was helpful, but although he was used to stocking Italian, Polish, Kosher, and German specialty foods, and every kind of junk food a college student could crave, he did not cater to organic vegans.
“Some of those Amish farms in Garrett County might be organic,” Matt said, “and I’ll ask the folks out at Pumpkin Ridge Farm if they know where we can get the stuff. They raise free range chickens and feed their dairy cows organic grain. They probably have a source.”
“She’ll probably be a good customer for you,” Maggie urged him, “so it would be worth it to try.”
He said if Caroline would stop by he’d see what he could order for her.
Maggie went down to the bakery to get some whole grain bran muffins. Her mother was busy working the counter, so she asked her Aunt Alice if she knew how to make pita. Alice said she didn’t, but said she thought Mrs. Haddad made her own pita bread, and that she would give her a call.
Next Maggie went to Machalvie’s Pharmacy and found some organic, natural toiletries for Caroline. She was shocked by the high prices. Meg Kelly rang up her purchases and told her the tourists and college students bought the majority of the expensive natural products.
“But I like the beeswax lip balm, myself,” she said.
Maggie decided to get one to try out.
“Hey,” Maggie said, remembering she had promised to ask around. “You haven’t seen Margie lately, have you?”
Meg frowned.
“I’ve been trying really hard not to speak ill of others,” Meg said. “Father Stephen says we should not judge lest we be judged.”
“Come on,” Maggie encouraged her. “I won’t tell Father Stephen.”
“He says God sees everything we do,” Meg said. “He says you can’t hide anything from God.”
“Maybe God would want you to help keep Margie from hurting other people,” Maggie said. “Maybe telling me what you know will help someone else.”
“That Margie is just awful,” Meg said, now that she believed she had God’s permission to gossip.
“What’d she do?”
“You know her mother has rheumatoid arthritis,” Meg said. “Doc Machalvie prescribed her a new anti-inflammatory pain medication that is supposed to be great for that. Well, Margie came in to pick it up, and when she saw how much the co-pay was, she refused to pay it. Delores was the pharmacist on duty that day, and she told Margie she was going to report her for elder abuse. Margie bought the medicine, but when Delores left that night her tires had been slashed.”
“Did she tell Scott about that?”
“No,” Meg said. “She didn’t have any proof it was Margie who did it.”
“I have just recently begun to find out how vindictive that woman can be.”
“Ask around,” Meg said. “Almost everyone I know has a Margie story. She got mad at me because she wasn’t invited to my wedding shower, so my wedding invitations somehow went missing for a few weeks after I mailed them. Some people never received theirs.”
“Did you report her?”
“If you can’t prove it what’s the point? She’s wicked but she’s clever.”
As she was leaving Machalvie’s, Maggie ran into her brother Patrick, who was crossing the street from the service station, where he worked all morning, to the Rose and Thorn, where he worked all evening.
“Aren’t you going home for lunch?” she asked him.
“Can’t,” he said. “Ian got held up and I have to open the bar by myself.”
Their Uncle Ian used to be the police chief before he retired at the beginning of the year, and now he drove a school bus and managed the family bar. Maggie headed to her parents’ house to get lunch for her dad, known as Fitz, and her Grandpa Tim.
“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten about us,” her father said gruffly, but Grandpa Tim smiled and blew her a kiss as she passed his recliner. The Irish setter known as Lazy Ass Laddie only stirred from his cozy spot next to the heater long enough to thump his tail at Maggie, then curled it back up and closed his eyes.
Back when Maggie was still in grade school, her father had fallen off a ladder while painting the trim on the house and broke some vertebrae in his back. Her mother often said the only thing that cushioned his fall was the six-pack he consumed before he got on the ladder. After a couple surgeries failed to help relieve his pain, Fitz declared he was done with hospitals, and had since relied more heavily on medication mixed with alcohol to control his pain.
Maggie heated up some leftovers, made Lazy Ass Laddie go out in the backyard to pee, and then served the two men on TV trays in the front room. Maggie washed up their dishes when they’d finished, and her grandfather winked at her as she left. Grandpa Tim was Bonnie’s father, and reportedly started smoking back in Scotland at the tender age of six. He suffered from emphysema and had recently undergone surgery and radiation treatments for throat cancer. He couldn’t talk above a whisper.
Maggie stopped back in at the bakery to tell her mother she’d taken care of lunch, and found her mother resting behind the counter during an unusual lull. She told her mother a bit about Caroline.
“All the money she’s got and you’re buying her toothpaste and groceries,” Bonnie said. “That makes no sense to me.”
“She just got back in the country and doesn’t have any American money yet.”
“There’s a bank not twenty yards from here full of American money, and her the richest woman in the county. That’s how the rich stay rich, daughter. They’re always looking the other way when the bill comes.”
When Maggie returned to the bookstore she found out from Jeanette that Caroline had gone upstairs for a nap. Maggie looked at her tab and saw she had picked out mostly news magazines, some big city newspapers, and chamomile tea. Maggie went upstairs to her apartment and took her purchases to the kitchen, after closing the door to the bedroom, where she could see a Caroline-shaped lump under her quilt. She fired up her computer and looked up some vegan recipes to see if she could make lunch out of anything she had purchased.
Caroline slept through lunch clear until 3:00 p.m., at which time Maggie warmed up the baked sweet potatoes, green beans with garlic and onion, and whole grain muffins she had prepared for lunch. Caroline ate a couple little bites of everything, and pronounced it all delicious, but didn’t actually consume more than a half-cup of food, all told.
She told Maggie about meeting Drew, and already seemed to know more about him than Maggie did. Maggie knew Drew had been in Belize with the Peace Corps for a year between college and vet school, but she didn’t know he’d been back to visit several times.
“He was in the Peace Corps with a person who I know really well,” Caroline said. “It’s such a small world.”
Maggie made her friend some hot chamomile tea, and then gently broached the subject she was determined to discuss.
“Are you feeling okay, Caroline?” she asked her, as she reseated herself across from her friend at the table.
“I’m fine,” Caroline said, but
she was shaking her head as she said it. “I’m just tired.”
“Would you say we have the kind of friendship where complete honesty is acceptable?” Maggie asked her.
“Gosh, I hope so,” Caroline said, sounding surprised.
“You look like you might be ill,” Maggie told her, as gently as she could. “I’m really worried about you.”
“I’m fine, really,” Caroline said, and jumped up to take her plate to the sink. “You made way too much food. Do you think anyone downstairs would want some?”
It never would have occurred to Maggie to offer her staff food from her kitchen. For one thing, she rarely cooked for herself. For another, she kept her private life very separate from her work life. Most of her employees had never even been upstairs in her apartment. Caroline had quickly changed the subject and Maggie sensed that any more questions about her health would be shut down in a similar fashion.
“What are your plans?” Maggie asked her instead.
“Up in the air, really,” Caroline said. “I need to go over the bequest issues with the executor, and probably sign a million papers at my bank trustee’s office, and then I’m just going to relax. I need to take some time to process Theo’s transition, both spiritually and mentally.”
“You mentioned some monks were coming?”
“Oh yeah, they might. There are about twelve of them, and some staff members. Their abbot recently transitioned planes, and their retreat center was destroyed in a wildfire. The lodge is plenty big enough for all of us.”
“What do they do exactly?”
“They’re Zen Buddhists,” Caroline said. “They spend most of their time meditating or chanting, but they also train candidates who are seeking ordination into the order, or who just want to teach meditation.”
Morning Glory Circle Page 6
