“I don’t have money,” she says. “I can’t pay for my keep.” She seems genuinely anxious, as if she might be turned out for want of funds. Surely it can’t be that heartbreaking.
“Don’t worry, stay as long as you like,” Maggie says.
“I’m sorry I left,” says Brid, bursting into tears. “I’m so sorry.” Maggie takes her hand and squeezes it. “God, I’m a disaster. I cried when we crossed the border, did you notice?” Maggie says she didn’t. “I feel terrible about your father.” Brid sniffles and collapses onto the couch. “Poor Pauline. Poor little sweetie. You must think I’m rotten. I’ve left my daughter.”
Maggie sits down beside her. “You just needed a break. She’s being looked after, isn’t she?”
“Sure,” replies Brid without conviction. “God, she’ll never forgive me. I’ve fucked her up for life.”
“She’ll be fine,” says Maggie, thinking that once Pauline is reunited with her mother, she’ll probably forget about what happened. Maybe one day it will come flooding out again in front of some encounter group.
Brid seems to have followed her own unspoken train of thought, because her head is cocked in curiosity. “You’re on the pill now? I saw the package in the medicine cabinet before you emptied it out.” She says it without any clear intimation. Still, Maggie feels herself blush.
“It keeps my period steady.” She thinks of adding that it’s a different brand than before, and that so far this one hasn’t bothered her, but she never told Brid about her troubles with the pill in the first place. Then she thinks ahead to another night of George Ray sneaking down the hall or of her crossing the lawn to the barracks in the darkness. “Also,” she says, “George Ray and I have got involved.”
Brid’s face drops, and Maggie rebukes herself. She hasn’t told anyone; she and George Ray made an agreement. Why start with Brid, the last person who should know? She’ll feel passed over; she’ll make a scene. Maggie tries to think of an amendment to undo her mistake. George Ray and I have got involved—with the Kiwanis Club. No, it’s too late. Brid nods as if the news confirms something long suspected.
“His wife doesn’t know,” Maggie adds. “He’s going home in ten days. You’ll keep it quiet?”
Before Brid can respond, Elliot slinks into the room and makes a beeline for her. When she spots him coming, she looks surprised.
“Isn’t that—” she begins, and Maggie nods.
“Yeah, John-John. We call him Elliot now.” Then she adds, “Don’t tell the Centaurs.”
Brid smiles conspiratorially. It’s the first time since the coffee shop in Syracuse that Maggie has seen her smile, but she seems less pleased when the cat begins to rub itself against her shins.
“I’m not a cat person,” she says.
“Too bad. He likes you.”
“Men,” says Brid. “This is always how it starts.”
As if aware that he’s the subject of their conversation, Elliot amuses them by exploring every cranny of the room, taking fright at a splotch of light on the floor, then attacking the armchair. Finally he perches on the sill above the radiator, sphinx-like, eyes closing by degrees. Maggie’s glad of his presence. Talk of cats is safe and harmless. It’s better than speaking of Brid’s troubles, of George Ray, of the words painted on the wrecking yard wall. It’s better than talking about pretty much anything in their lives.
All that morning, George Ray doesn’t appear in the house, as though he really does resent Brid’s arrival. If he does, Maggie can’t blame him for it. The week in Syracuse took her away from him with less than a month left together. Now the final days have been stolen from them too.
When he turns up for lunch, he smells of woodsmoke and seems congenial enough, even saying hello to Brid at the table like he’s missed her. More surprising still, Brid greets him with an equal warmth. Surely neither of them has forgotten the last night they saw each other. Nevertheless, as Maggie slices bread at the counter, they talk like old friends, Brid asking him about the orchard’s prospects, George Ray quizzing her on Nixon’s re-election. Gradually Maggie realizes they’re doing it for her benefit. They want to make things easier on her. But by the time they have finished the meal, her desire to check on the money is nearly overpowering.
“Why don’t you give Brid a tour of the orchard?” she tells George Ray. “I’ll handle the dishes. Show her what we’ve done since September.”
He gives her a baffled look. It’s true, there isn’t much to show.
“Fed up with me already?” says Brid. Maggie starts to protest, but Brid isn’t listening. “Come on, Georgie Porgie, let’s get out of here.” She starts for the mud room, and hesitantly he follows.
As soon as they’re out the door, Maggie hurries upstairs. At the end of the hall she unfolds a stepladder, climbs it, and pushes aside the trap door to the attic. Hoisting herself with a grunt, she wriggles forward on her belly.
The air is musty under the sloping roof, and there’s little light except what comes through a small window at the far end. Apart from the whistling of air through a crack, it’s still and quiet. No floor up here, just rafters with nothing between them but pink insulation and, beneath it, the plaster ceiling of the second-storey rooms. Standing, she curls her toes around the edge of the beam supporting her. The first time she came up here looking for somewhere to stow the statue, it was like that dream she has sometimes where she’s back in Syracuse and discovers whole new rooms in Gran’s house that she never realized were there. Now the rest of the farmhouse grows faint and distant as she takes in the things abandoned here over the years. A coat rack, a washtub, stacks of yellowed newspapers, jars full of an amber liquid that could be moonshine or maple syrup. There are fishing rods, broken hockey sticks and snow shovels, half-empty cans of motor oil. A tricycle has been propped against the wall with streamers on the handlebars and its front wheel missing. Affixed to a dartboard hanging from the roof is a photograph of Joe McCarthy, his face perforated many times over and barely recognizable. In the corner is one of Maggie’s few additions to the place, the bassinet purchased at the yard sale. It’s been there a month, yet already it has the same dusty, abject countenance as everything else.
The shelf holding the clay statue is next to the window. Maggie makes her way toward it carefully with arms out to balance. One misstep and she’ll go crashing headlong through to the playroom. As she teeters across the rafters, the choice to hide the thing up here seems worse and worse. The little saint seems to taunt her. When she finally picks it up, the statue holds a low heat from sitting in the sunlight. By its weight she thinks the money’s still inside, but repeated shaking brings no confirmation. It was a mistake to have resealed the thing; now she’ll have to smash it again.
Before she can act on the thought, she hears the groan of the stepladder. She turns and sees George Ray’s head pop up through the trap door.
“What happened to the tour?” she asks, quickly setting the statue back in place.
“Brid was worried about you. I agreed to see how you’re doing.”
Heaving himself into the attic, he approaches across the beams, showing none of her fear or caution. When he reaches her, he picks up the statue from the shelf and turns it over, examining the squibs of dried glue that seeped from the cracks when she pressed the thing back together. She resists a desire to snatch it from him.
“When did it break?” he asks, and she says she can’t remember. “Tired of having it downstairs?”
“It—it was painful to see every day.” It’s not a lie, exactly. “We should go back down.”
“Wait. Will you tell me about the graffiti first?”