I keep dreaming about you, and it’s always the same dream. On the phone you said you didn’t want to hear about it, but it’s not dirty like you were probably thinking. In the dream we’re out in the garden behind the farmhouse again, only it’s full of fruit and vines. Then Brid comes looking for us like she really did that day, but this time we run into the orchard and hide from her. It’s a nice dream. The last few nights I’ve fallen asleep hoping I’ll have it again.
A couple more hours at the mission and then I’m going upriver. I know I told you not to come, but I wish you were here. Yeah, that’s right, I want you in this hellhole with me. I’d trade your comfort and well-being for a bit of company. Wouldn’t even hesitate. I told you I’m a bastard. Have you figured that out yet? You understand now the kinds of people there are in the world? Real nice folks who’ll break your arm before they say hello. Assholes who can’t even look in the mirror.
After that there’s a postscript, but it’s been scribbled out, hard enough to poke through the paper.
She checks the envelope again. The postmark is too blurred to discern the date. It must have taken the letter at least a couple of weeks to get here, yet in all that time there was no news about her father from anyone. If what Wale says is true, surely someone must have found out something by now. She has to call Gran and let her know what Wale has written.
Once more she reads the thing. He was probably high when he wrote it. Maybe he’s not even in Laos anymore but in Bangkok or Hong Kong—or Buffalo, for all she knows, sitting in a bar and having a good laugh.
As her outrage grows, she realizes she’s angry not just with Wale but with her father. Didn’t she tell him it wasn’t safe? All along she said that, yet he talked like the only protection he needed was her, like if she didn’t go with him, any worrying she did would be her fault. Now look where it has gotten him.
As she walks back up the driveway and steps onto the porch, the phone starts to ring. It’s Wale, she thinks. It’s the doctor’s office. It’s her father calling to say he’s all right. Rushing through the house, she snatches the receiver just at the dying of the bell and finds it isn’t any of them. It’s Fletcher. Maggie looks at the clock and frowns.
“Where are you?” she asks.
“Still in Boston.”
“What happened? You should be through Albany by now—”
“Something’s come up. We’re having problems with the Brookline voters list.”
If he’s joking, she doesn’t see the humour in it. “I thought you were done with the campaign.”
“I want to be, but I was assigned this thing a while back. I feel like I should get it finished.” He speaks as if everything he says is reasonable and has to be accepted.
“Fletcher, that’s crazy. Let someone else do it. I need you up here.” Then she hears a woman’s voice at the other end of the line. “Who’s that talking?”
“Nobody. Just someone at the campaign office.”
“Fletcher, what’s going on? You’re waiting to hear about the baby, aren’t you?”
“No, of course not.” But he goes silent.
“Fletcher, my dad’s been kidnapped. You hear me? Some drug dealer has taken my father.” Saying it aloud sends her into a panic, and she tries to control her breathing as she waits for his reaction. He doesn’t speak, though. There’s just the woman talking again in the background, then Fletcher replying to her, their voices muffled as if he has covered the receiver with his hand. Still, Maggie can hear his tone, supportive and slightly exasperated at once. She recognizes it well enough. All month on the phone he’s used the same one with her. “Sorry,” he says, his voice returning to full clarity. “Things at the campaign office are a bit hectic. I’ll call you back after lunch, okay?”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” she cries.
“Look, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I love you, baby,” he says. A moment later there’s the click of him hanging up.
The receiver in her hand feels insubstantial. It doesn’t matter, she tells herself. He was just distracted and didn’t hear her. She doesn’t need him anyhow. Maybe she doesn’t even love him. No, that isn’t right. It’s some kind of trespass to think like that. Love might inflate and shrivel, it may be impatient or unkind, but it keeps on going, doesn’t it?
When she calls Gran, the line’s busy. In a few minutes she’ll call again. To distract herself, she turns on the television and flops across the couch. Onscreen, a man in a suit is saying there are only five weeks until the election.
She doesn’t want to hear about the election. She’s sick of waiting, sick of politics, sick of television telling her that everything important is elsewhere, that her only role is to stay tuned and find out what happens next. From the kitchen, she fetches a pair of scissors.
By the time she returns to the living room, it’s as if the deed is already done, and she’s glad. In her mind the future’s no longer a maze of unexplored passages but a safe, well-lit corridor leading through the years to come: her father’s return, her baby a toddler, then growing into a little girl. But it could be a son. Why does she assume it will be a girl?
Crouching behind the silver orb of the TV set, Maggie unplugs it and with one snip of the blades cuts the power cord in two. Immediately she feels the world dwindling. Not for her the Cold War, the hijackings, and the price of oil. Already her life is growing smooth as a stone in a river. Time flows around her. Nothing sticks.
As she stands again, she brushes against the set and her elbow catches the clay statue of Saint Clare perched on top. Before she can do anything, the figure goes tumbling from its place. It lands face up and stares at her accusingly with its black eyes.
“What are you looking at?” Maggie says. She snatches it up and throws it against the wall. Falling to the floor, it cracks in two, the legs neatly separating from the torso.
For a moment it feels like a triumph. Then she thinks the statue could be the last thing her father ever gave her. No, she can’t think like that. She can’t start feeling sorry for herself or him. Probably he sent the statue less as a gift than a provocation, another way to make her feel guilty.
Crossing the room, she bends to retrieve the pieces. When she touches the top half, she feels its cool surface on her skin, then the rough white line of the fracture.
“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Doesn’t mean anything.”
As she picks it up, an object dislodges from inside. It drops through the air, takes a soft bounce on the floor, and comes to rest by the statue’s feet. At first Maggie registers only sheets of paper, greenish-grey, then the rubber band that holds them together. Finally they resolve into a thick wad of bills. She takes them in hand and thumbs through them. They all seem to be hundreds.
The telephone’s ringing from the kitchen. Maggie looks from the cracked torso in one hand to the roll of money in the other. Setting the statue down again, she turns, still holding the bills, and hurries out of the room to answer.
part 3
PATRON SAINT OF TELEVISION
8
Her last night at Gran’s, the night before the funeral, she’s already eager to be back on the farm. The house next door calls to her dolefully, but so far she has managed to avoid it, instead only looking through the boxes carried over by the auction people and choosing a few things to take with her. She doesn’t need physical reminders of him. She isn’t like Gran, who has framed photos of him everywhere now. All week Gran has kept referring to his martyrdom, talking about it like something to celebrate, not bothering to ask Maggie a single question about her life. It makes what Gran says over dessert all the more surprising.