I didn’t know what had just happened or what was happening right at that moment, but my concern laid mostly on what might happen when my mom came back in. I rested my head against my hand and saw a piece of white paint that had cracked and risen just above the surface of the table. I pinched it between my fingers and peeled it away; it was the first time I vandalized that table.
When my mother came back inside the house, I couldn’t quite understand what her expression signified, but she didn’t seem angry, so I felt relieved. I turned in the chair and faced her.
“Who was that lady, mom?”
She smiled at me as she drew closer. “Her name is Mrs. Maggie. She lives in that house you were in front of — the white one.”
“The one with all the ice?”
“That’s the one.”
“Is she weird?” I asked hesitantly.
“No. She’s… she’s just a little sick, baby.”
“She thought my name was Chris. She kept calling me that over and over again.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart. She’s a nice lady, so be nice back. But when you get off the bus, you just come straight home, okay?”
And that’s exactly what I would do. The strange events of the day I met Mrs. Maggie didn’t trouble me for long, and if I heard her calling for me by that same wrong name, I would just walk a little faster to my house.
About a month later, my cast was removed. Josh and I had talked about swimming in the lake since before the first time he came to my house, but my cast forbid it. I could have tried to protect my arm from the lake water by wearing the latex bag that I used for showers. I considered this; only briefly, though — that bag had failed me before. Once the cast was removed, we took to swimming in the lake immediately, taking advantage of what warm weather remained. I remember how strange and weak my atrophied arm felt as it pushed through the water that first time, and I remember thinking that I’d better not push too hard or it might just snap again.
Josh and I got to know Mrs. Maggie fairly well by swimming in the lake almost every weekend, taking a hiatus only when it became time for Mrs. Maggie’s yard to freeze again. When winter had passed, and Josh and I returned to the lake in the second half of kindergarten, we still wouldn’t accept Mrs. Maggie’s invitations or snacks, but one afternoon she surprised us with a different kind of offer.
We had expected her to invite us inside again, but this time when we looked toward her as she called to us, we saw her throw a small package into the water like one might throw a Frisbee. Hesitantly, but mostly curiously, we swam to it. Josh and I grabbed for it at the same time and wrestled it back and forth, ripping the plastic wrapping as we struggled, and throwing the object into the water.
“What is it?” Josh asked.
“I dunno. I think we have to unfold it…”
And so we did, but even after it was fully expanded, it was still hard to identify. We moved it around in the water — turning it in different ways — when finally Josh found an inflation tube jutting out of the grey and black mass. I heard him breathe deep and watched him pour his lungs into it. When he tired, I took over, and as we tread the water, we passed the gift back and forth until it was completely filled. I folded the stopper into the tube, and we flipped our inflated present over.
It was a float — one shaped and painted like a shark.
We splashed frantically to climb onto it, but each time one of us would make progress, the other would roll the float in an attempt to mount it. As we competed, I glanced at Mrs. Maggie and saw her laughing and clapping her hands. Eventually, we decided to take turns riding it, but the float soon doubled as a mechanical bull as the swimmer would invariably move underneath the shark and push up forcefully in an effort to unbalance the rider. Through all of this, Mrs. Maggie looked on us with a smile shining on her face.
As we paddled toward where we exited the lake, we yelled a “thank you” to Mrs. Maggie, and she said that seeing how much we liked it was thanks enough. She always treated us warmly, but there was a variance in her enthusiasm that we could never anticipate or make sense of. Mrs. Maggie was always at least pleased to see us, but there were times where she was simply overjoyed that we were there, swimming just behind her house. That day was one of those days, and as we pulled ourselves out of the water, carrying the float over our heads, she called to us as she sometimes would when she was excited to see us.
“Chris! John! You’re always welcome here!” There were times when we could still hear her yelling those same words as we walked back into my house; we heard her that day. But we were kids, and despite how truly nice Mrs. Maggie was, her quirks sometimes got the best of us.
As we carried our new gift up the steps to my house, I opened my front door for Josh.
“After you, John.”
“Oh no. Please. After you, Chris,” Josh snickered.
“Oh no. I insist. After you, John,” I rebutted.
“Be my guest, Chris. After you,” he returned with the cadence of some crude mixture of English royalty and American upper-class snobbery.
“Would you like to come in for some snacks, John?”
“Yes I would, Chris!”
We laughed as we walked through the doorway at the same time, leaving the float on the steps behind us. I saw my mother standing in the kitchen staring at us. She moved toward us and stopped in front of us. She spoke sharply and firmly.
“Don’t you ever make fun of her like that again. It’s not funny. Do you understand me?”
Josh and I looked at one another and then back at her and nodded. My mother smiled and went back to what she was doing, and Josh and I put it out of our minds for the remainder of the day. After Josh left with his dad, I told my mom that we weren’t trying to be mean, and we never talked like that in front of Mrs. Maggie. My mom said that didn’t matter; she said that it was rude to make fun of anyone whether they were around or not. When I told her that she was constantly calling us by the wrong names, and we just thought it was funny, my mom seemed to search for what she wanted to say.
“Well, sweetie, you remember how I told you Mrs. Maggie was sick?”
I nodded.
“She… Mrs. Maggie is sick… up here.” She gestured to her own head with her fingers.
“But you remember how, when you had that sore throat earlier this year, sometimes you’d feel okay, but then other times you’d feel really bad? That’s how it is for her too. But when Mrs. Maggie gets really sick, she gets confused. That’s why she messes up you boys’ names sometimes. She doesn’t mean to, but sometimes she just can’t remember. Do you understand?”
I nodded again. “She wants us to come in for snacks sometimes.”
“I know she does, sweetie. She lives in that big house all by herself so it’s okay if you talk to her when you swim in the lake. But when she invites you in, you should keep saying ‘no.’ Be polite, and her feelings won’t get hurt. Okay?”
“But she’ll be less lonely when Tom comes home though? How long until he comes back? It seems like he’s always gone.”
My mom seemed to struggle, and I could see that she had become very upset. Finally, she answered me.
“Honey… Tom’s not going to come home. Tom’s… he’s in heaven. He died years and years ago, but Mrs. Maggie doesn’t remember. She gets confused and forgets, but Tom’s not ever coming home; he’s gone, sweetie.”
I was only six years old when she told me that, and while I didn’t understand it completely, I was still profoundly sad for Mrs. Maggie. I knew what it was like to miss someone — how much it hurt and tore at you. But to miss someone so much while being so sure that he’d return, never knowing or remembering just how impossible that reunion truly was — I struggled to imagine what that must be like. I wouldn’t learn until very recently, however, what Mrs. Maggie’s life had really been like.