Maggie
Dean Morton
It was years ago, when I was eighteen and stupid and somehow more aimless then I am today, that I first met Maggie. After four years of going through the motions of public school, I woke up one June morning to the news that I was a high school graduate, and that, according to my mom, I was supposed to be doing something with my life. And so I found myself, in the tradition of eighteen year olds everywhere, a bit lost. And like so many stories of adolescent growth, I guess that’s where this story begins.
At the time, I was working the breakfast shift at a diner, an old local spot that for thirty-five years had been the restaurant of choice for fishermen and early-rising retirees. The owner, a fat old man by the name of Frank, had died the year before and, having not left a will, the diner was put up for auction, where it was bought by another fat old man, also named Frank. This new Frank wasn’t from Joyner Beach. He was from the across the bridge, and had moved to Joyner on the hunch that the salt air would be therapeutic in his old age. The townspeople called this new Frank ‘New Frank’—though most of the town, not wanting anything to do with New Frank or his restaurant, didn’t call him anything at all.
The fall after he bought the diner, New Frank hired Maggie for some part time work. From five to eight she would come in and make biscuits. We didn’t need the help, and I knew that even with the money New Frank had made price-gouging tourists over the summer, he couldn’t afford it.
“It’s charity,” he told me. “Poor thing, she needs something.”
I’d heard of Maggie before. Everyone had. Since I was a kid, she’d been an urban legend of sorts. She lived alone in a little orange hut out behind the school. Her backyard bordered the open field we used for kickball games during recess, a rusty chain fence dividing the two properties. In the spring, the grass on Maggie’s side of the fence was always six inches taller than that of the school. Some invasive vines grew along the fence as well, curling in and out around the links, claiming both sides with its grip. Having originated on Maggie’s property, the school had no legal grounds on which to cut the vines. Two or three times they sent her letters asking for her permission to cut them, but they never got a response. So the vines stayed and they grew.
The story was that Maggie had come up from Louisiana, though some said it was as far down as Mexico. They said she used to have a regular life down there, a husband, two kids. That is, until the day Maggie came home from the grocery store and found those two kids floating face down in their swimming pool. Six and eight, they were. Girls. They pinned the husband for it. A psychotic break, they said. He had a history of mental illness—short temper, paranoia, and had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy years earlier following his diagnosis of a having a schizoid personality. So it goes that Maggie, in her time of grief, spent twenty years wandering around the country. She peddled oranges in Florida, cleaned rooms at a hotel up in Minnesota, lived for a while in a Pueblo village, and so on, and so on, slowly growing older and more reserved, sinking quietly into solitary insanity. It was in Joyner that she—for lack of a better word—retired. Sometime in the 90s she found herself living in that little orange shack behind the school, coming outside only at night, performing witchcraft or snatching stray dogs that wandered too close to her yard. And it was in the little orange shack that she would stay, a lonely, timeless being, mourning the loss of those two girls for eternity.
This was, of course, all bullshit. Even as kids we knew that Maggie wasn’t evil or dangerous, that she never lost two children and never wandered the country in existential grief. For all we knew, she could’ve lived in that shack her entire life and, in her younger years, been an active part of the community, with friends and family and a decent job. But kids see what they want to see, and a bad reputation, as disjointed from reality as it might be, will stick all the same. The fact was that, regardless of Maggie’s history, we’d built up a legend that superseded truth. What we saw was a wiry lady with long wild hair and a crooked back, who never left her home and who never had visitors, who never spoke or even waved if you saw her in the light of day. And so Maggie, whether she realized it or not, rose to mythical prominence as the meanest, loneliness old lady on the island. This was her fate, and she could never live it down.
That first morning Maggie came to work at the diner was the first time I’d seen her in seven years. Every once in a while I’d heard her name thrown around in gossip or casual remembrance, but if you’d have asked me, I’d have probably assumed she was dead. However, the lady that walked through the screen door that day, close to death as she may have been, was still painfully alive. There was life behind the limp of her walk, her paper mâché skin, and her pipe-cleaner arms. She was followed by New Frank, who walked her to where I stood at the prep table and clasped his hand on her shoulder.
“Charlie, this is Maggie,” he said. “Maggie, Charlie.”
“Yeah, we’ve uh—” I said. “I mean… uh—” Finally I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Her voice was hollow and crackly. This tracked with the smell of menthols trailing from her breath. I shook her hand gently, afraid that I would rip her flimsy arm clean off.
“Maggie’s gonna be doing some work us.” New Frank said. “Ain’t that right, Maggie?”
Maggie nodded as she mumbled. “Sure, sure, yes.”
“You don’t have to worry about biscuits anymore,” New Frank said to me. “Maggie’s gonna take care of that.”
“That’s good,” I lied. “I could use the help.”
New Frank smiled a clapped his fat hands together in celebration. He took Maggie’s coat and bag and headed back to the dry storage room to grab her an apron. It just so happened I’d been making biscuits when they walked in, and without a word Maggie took my place at the prep table. I’d just added the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and was mixing the dough. She looked into the bowl with the skepticism of the elderly. After a moment, she lifted a shaky finger and began to gently prod the dough. Eventually, she brought her fingers to her chin, mumbled a string of nonsense, and, with deadpan bluntness, snatched the bowl from the table and emptied it into the trashcan. She gave me a sober glance.
“Too wet,” she said. “I’m starting over.” Mechanically, she re-assembled the ingredients and began to work. There was already flour on her t-shirt when New Frank returned with the apron. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders. Then we both watched Maggie work, shoulders hunched, head down, fueled by muscle memory. There was something hypnotizing about it, like watching a monk do his chores.
Before he left, New Frank pulled me aside and told me to take care of Maggie. He told me to fix her what she wanted to eat, and to keep her drinking water, and to make sure her cigarettes ended up in the ashtray out back. Then he stepped over to Maggie and whispered something to her that I couldn’t hear. He let out a rowdy laugh and clapped her shoulder again in what was intended to be camaraderie. She looked so fragile I thought she would crumble to dust right there.
When New Frank left I returned to my morning routine, which more often than not amounted to simply trying to keep myself busy. I made the grits and the sausage gravy, fried the bacon, fixed some French toast batter, chopped some potatoes. When it was all done, I still had an hour to kill before opening. I treated myself to an extra cup of coffee and a cigarette out back. It was six in the morning, and the sky was still black over the cold ocean. This was my favorite time of day; before for the world had woken up, and for a few brief moments life allowed you to be alone with your thoughts.
After my cigarette, I trudged back through the screen door. On the prep table sat a sheet pan of biscuits, golden-brown and shining. Maggie stood there, painstakingly brushing them with butter. Quietly she looked up, acknowledged me with the slightest of nods, then arranged a biscuit on a saucer and set it on the table in front of me.
“Try,” she said.
It was a monster, about as big as my fist. I thumbed the ridges and felt the crust along the top. I tore it in half and watched the steam rise. Layered and risen, the folds looked like a range of staggering mountains. After it cooled, I dipped it in the sausage gravy and took a slow, careful bite. When I had swallowed, washing it down with coffee, I looked back over to Maggie. She was back at work, making the next batch. The biscuits were perfect, but she’d already known that.
The next few months continued on in this way. Six days a week, we’d come in at five, have a cigarette and a cup of coffee together, then start into our work. Maggie would make the biscuits, and I’d make everything else. I’d be lying if I said my old childhood misconceptions hadn’t left me somewhat skeptical of Maggie—that I wasn’t, at first, always watching her out of the corner of my eye, looking for any cause for suspicion. But over time Maggie proved to be, if not exactly normal, then undeniably human. As she grew more accustomed to speaking, I found that she had interests, preferences, stories, even a sense of humor. When I played music over the Bluetooth speaker, I would gauge her reaction. She was, to my surprise, particularly fond of Amy Winehouse, and on one occasion I could’ve sworn I saw her tapping her foot to The Dead Kennedys’ “Let’s Lynch the Landlord.”
I remember one day Maggie and I were out back smoking. It was a Tuesday morning, and business had been slow. We’d been averaging one smoke break every twenty minutes, and by 7:30 we figured it’d be easier just to stay outside. It was January and a salty wind was blowing off the dunes and assaulting the alley. We were camped on a wooden bench behind the radiator, joined at the shoulders for warmth. Maggie had raised the collar of her coat and was hiding her chin in her scarf. In all her winter clothes, she looked like a kitten poking its head out from a mound of blankets.
She leaned forward and ashed her cigarette in the coffee mug that sat at our feet. “Listen,” she asked me. “What do you think about Alaska?”
I was caught off guard. I wasn’t used to Maggie initiating a conversation. “Like the state?”
“Only Alaska I know of,” she said.
I ashed my cigarette while I thought. “I don’t know. I think it’s cold.”
Maggie nodded in agreement.
“When I think of Alaska,” I said, “I think of white. White on the ground, white on the trees, white on the roofs of the houses. White everywhere you look.”
“Kind of like heaven,” she said.
We both lit new cigarettes and listened to the wind.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you think about Alaska?”
“A lot of places are lonely,” I said.
“I guess so.” She gestured out to the string of hotels that lined the shore. “But places like this are one kind of lonely. The kind where there’s a lot of people around. Just people and buildings and cars. It’s a mess. You can hardly think, it’s so lonely here. But I bet Alaska is its own kind of lonely. To be alone in a cabin in a white forest, with no one to bother you and no one worrying about you or coming around trying to help you all the time… I think that would be really nice.”
A couple of fisherman came down from the pier. As they passed the alley, they glanced over at us and nodded.
“So what, you’re leaving me?” I asked. “Going to Alaska?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why not?”
We sat there for a while, not speaking or really moving. Not until Maggie looked at her watch, then stood up, brushing off her pants. “I guess it’s about that time,” she said. “Mind if I take off?”
She was halfway through the screen door before I could respond. “Go home,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
A minute later she came back outside, holding her purse and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. She stopped beside me, with a look on her face like she was going to say something. Her mouth was twisted and her eyebrows were scrunched tight above her eyes. But she didn’t say anything. Instead she sighed and shook her head and, as if trying to express something that couldn’t be said with words, reached out with a wrinkled hand and tussled my hair. Then she turned around, walking slowly down the windy alley, headed for home.
When I got to work the next morning, I was surprised when I didn’t see Maggie. Nearly every morning since she started she’d been early, waiting and shivering by the screen door. At first I just shrugged it off and started setting up the kitchen. By 5:15, when she still hadn’t shown up, I was annoyed. By 5:30 I was confused, and by 6:00 I was worried. After a few minutes of frantic searching through New Frank’s files, I tracked down the employee contact sheet and called Maggie’s house phone. Seven long rings led me to the dead end of an answering machine.
“Maggie,” I said, trying not to sound too nervous. “It’s Charlie. Call me back. Or come to work or something. Are you ok? Wait, you can’t hear me. I don’t know. Call me back or something. I don’t know.”
I hung up and tried to calm myself down. I told myself I was overthinking. I figured I’d best get back to work, and she’d show up eventually. So I started on the grits and the gravy, only to find myself habitually slipping into distracted worry. After burning three sheets of bacon, and cutting my thumb chopping vegetables, I was overcome by a strange and sickening feeling. I guess it was something like what they call intuition, but at that moment I knew it only as an ominous premonition that sank heavy in my stomach, driving me towards a conclusion that I didn’t want to reach. Driven by instinct, I dropped the knife, turned off the stove and grill, and burst out the screen door. I didn’t even take the time to lock the restaurant up before hopping on my bike and speeding off down the alley.
It should’ve been a ten minute ride to Maggie’s shack, but I made it in five, letting the bike crash onto the gravel. I hopped the chain fence and cut through the brown, unkempt yard and ran to the font door, pounding furiously until I dug my fist into a splinter. I ran around the perimeter, going from window to window, trying to get a clear view inside. I saw trash bags, weathered furniture, a sink full of dirty dishes, and the pale light of a humming 12 inch television, but I didn’t see Maggie. That is, until I reached the final window, around the back side of the shack, bordering on the schoolyard where I had spent those countless childhood afternoons. And it was a strange sensation, looking in the window, through the thin gap between the dusty floral drapes, and seeing that body, which didn’t look much like a body at all, but had already taken on the inanimate qualities of the mountains of kitsch and trash that surrounded her. It was as if, lying flat on her bed, arms poised and folded, head on her pillow looking up past the ceiling and up into the blank white sky that hung above us all, Maggie finally seemed to resemble not an urban legend or a sob-story, but an identity far more honest and accurate: a woman content to collapse into nothing.
After I called 911, I went around front and sat on the ground beneath a window. The adrenaline had faded, and now I felt nothing but an urge to crawl back in bed for a while. I guess I should’ve smashed open the window and burst into the house. I should’ve been in there shaking Maggie, crying and screaming at her to wake up, holding on hope beyond rationality. But truth is, I didn’t see the need. Someone in such peace couldn’t be anything but dead.
Within a few minutes I could hear a distant siren, and before too long an ambulance rounded the corner, joining my bike in the gravel lot. The EMTs jogged up, kicking down the door with a loud, jarring thud. They were in and out for a while, speeding back and forth to the ambulance for supplies, but their movements got slower and slower. Eventually they came out with a stretcher, wheeling away a long, narrow lump wrapped in a white sheet.
I sat there for a long time, on the ground by the shack. The sun had risen, and SUVs began to flow in and out of the school parking lot next door. I listening to the slamming of car doors, the variety of goodbyes called from moms, and the sound of sugar-fueled kids. Their screeches echoed throughout the neighborhood until 7:30, when teachers came outside to shuffle them in, and the final voices faded into silence.
Dean Morton
It was years ago, when I was eighteen and stupid and somehow more aimless then I am today, that I first met Maggie. After four years of going through the motions of public school, I woke up one June morning to the news that I was a high school graduate, and that, according to my mom, I was supposed to be doing something with my life. And so I found myself, in the tradition of eighteen year olds everywhere, a bit lost. And like so many stories of adolescent growth, I guess that’s where this story begins.
At the time, I was working the breakfast shift at a diner, an old local spot that for thirty-five years had been the restaurant of choice for fishermen and early-rising retirees. The owner, a fat old man by the name of Frank, had died the year before and, having not left a will, the diner was put up for auction, where it was bought by another fat old man, also named Frank. This new Frank wasn’t from Joyner Beach. He was from the across the bridge, and had moved to Joyner on the hunch that the salt air would be therapeutic in his old age. The townspeople called this new Frank ‘New Frank’—though most of the town, not wanting anything to do with New Frank or his restaurant, didn’t call him anything at all.
The fall after he bought the diner, New Frank hired Maggie for some part time work. From five to eight she would come in and make biscuits. We didn’t need the help, and I knew that even with the money New Frank had made price-gouging tourists over the summer, he couldn’t afford it.
“It’s charity,” he told me. “Poor thing, she needs something.”
I’d heard of Maggie before. Everyone had. Since I was a kid, she’d been an urban legend of sorts. She lived alone in a little orange hut out behind the school. Her backyard bordered the open field we used for kickball games during recess, a rusty chain fence dividing the two properties. In the spring, the grass on Maggie’s side of the fence was always six inches taller than that of the school. Some invasive vines grew along the fence as well, curling in and out around the links, claiming both sides with its grip. Having originated on Maggie’s property, the school had no legal grounds on which to cut the vines. Two or three times they sent her letters asking for her permission to cut them, but they never got a response. So the vines stayed and they grew.
The story was that Maggie had come up from Louisiana, though some said it was as far down as Mexico. They said she used to have a regular life down there, a husband, two kids. That is, until the day Maggie came home from the grocery store and found those two kids floating face down in their swimming pool. Six and eight, they were. Girls. They pinned the husband for it. A psychotic break, they said. He had a history of mental illness—short temper, paranoia, and had been dishonorably discharged from the Navy years earlier following his diagnosis of a having a schizoid personality. So it goes that Maggie, in her time of grief, spent twenty years wandering around the country. She peddled oranges in Florida, cleaned rooms at a hotel up in Minnesota, lived for a while in a Pueblo village, and so on, and so on, slowly growing older and more reserved, sinking quietly into solitary insanity. It was in Joyner that she—for lack of a better word—retired. Sometime in the 90s she found herself living in that little orange shack behind the school, coming outside only at night, performing witchcraft or snatching stray dogs that wandered too close to her yard. And it was in the little orange shack that she would stay, a lonely, timeless being, mourning the loss of those two girls for eternity.
This was, of course, all bullshit. Even as kids we knew that Maggie wasn’t evil or dangerous, that she never lost two children and never wandered the country in existential grief. For all we knew, she could’ve lived in that shack her entire life and, in her younger years, been an active part of the community, with friends and family and a decent job. But kids see what they want to see, and a bad reputation, as disjointed from reality as it might be, will stick all the same. The fact was that, regardless of Maggie’s history, we’d built up a legend that superseded truth. What we saw was a wiry lady with long wild hair and a crooked back, who never left her home and who never had visitors, who never spoke or even waved if you saw her in the light of day. And so Maggie, whether she realized it or not, rose to mythical prominence as the meanest, loneliness old lady on the island. This was her fate, and she could never live it down.
That first morning Maggie came to work at the diner was the first time I’d seen her in seven years. Every once in a while I’d heard her name thrown around in gossip or casual remembrance, but if you’d have asked me, I’d have probably assumed she was dead. However, the lady that walked through the screen door that day, close to death as she may have been, was still painfully alive. There was life behind the limp of her walk, her paper mâché skin, and her pipe-cleaner arms. She was followed by New Frank, who walked her to where I stood at the prep table and clasped his hand on her shoulder.
“Charlie, this is Maggie,” he said. “Maggie, Charlie.”
“Yeah, we’ve uh—” I said. “I mean… uh—” Finally I extended my hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Her voice was hollow and crackly. This tracked with the smell of menthols trailing from her breath. I shook her hand gently, afraid that I would rip her flimsy arm clean off.
“Maggie’s gonna be doing some work us.” New Frank said. “Ain’t that right, Maggie?”
Maggie nodded as she mumbled. “Sure, sure, yes.”
“You don’t have to worry about biscuits anymore,” New Frank said to me. “Maggie’s gonna take care of that.”
“That’s good,” I lied. “I could use the help.”
New Frank smiled a clapped his fat hands together in celebration. He took Maggie’s coat and bag and headed back to the dry storage room to grab her an apron. It just so happened I’d been making biscuits when they walked in, and without a word Maggie took my place at the prep table. I’d just added the buttermilk to the dry ingredients and was mixing the dough. She looked into the bowl with the skepticism of the elderly. After a moment, she lifted a shaky finger and began to gently prod the dough. Eventually, she brought her fingers to her chin, mumbled a string of nonsense, and, with deadpan bluntness, snatched the bowl from the table and emptied it into the trashcan. She gave me a sober glance.
“Too wet,” she said. “I’m starting over.” Mechanically, she re-assembled the ingredients and began to work. There was already flour on her t-shirt when New Frank returned with the apron. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. I shrugged my shoulders. Then we both watched Maggie work, shoulders hunched, head down, fueled by muscle memory. There was something hypnotizing about it, like watching a monk do his chores.
Before he left, New Frank pulled me aside and told me to take care of Maggie. He told me to fix her what she wanted to eat, and to keep her drinking water, and to make sure her cigarettes ended up in the ashtray out back. Then he stepped over to Maggie and whispered something to her that I couldn’t hear. He let out a rowdy laugh and clapped her shoulder again in what was intended to be camaraderie. She looked so fragile I thought she would crumble to dust right there.
When New Frank left I returned to my morning routine, which more often than not amounted to simply trying to keep myself busy. I made the grits and the sausage gravy, fried the bacon, fixed some French toast batter, chopped some potatoes. When it was all done, I still had an hour to kill before opening. I treated myself to an extra cup of coffee and a cigarette out back. It was six in the morning, and the sky was still black over the cold ocean. This was my favorite time of day; before for the world had woken up, and for a few brief moments life allowed you to be alone with your thoughts.
After my cigarette, I trudged back through the screen door. On the prep table sat a sheet pan of biscuits, golden-brown and shining. Maggie stood there, painstakingly brushing them with butter. Quietly she looked up, acknowledged me with the slightest of nods, then arranged a biscuit on a saucer and set it on the table in front of me.
“Try,” she said.
It was a monster, about as big as my fist. I thumbed the ridges and felt the crust along the top. I tore it in half and watched the steam rise. Layered and risen, the folds looked like a range of staggering mountains. After it cooled, I dipped it in the sausage gravy and took a slow, careful bite. When I had swallowed, washing it down with coffee, I looked back over to Maggie. She was back at work, making the next batch. The biscuits were perfect, but she’d already known that.
The next few months continued on in this way. Six days a week, we’d come in at five, have a cigarette and a cup of coffee together, then start into our work. Maggie would make the biscuits, and I’d make everything else. I’d be lying if I said my old childhood misconceptions hadn’t left me somewhat skeptical of Maggie—that I wasn’t, at first, always watching her out of the corner of my eye, looking for any cause for suspicion. But over time Maggie proved to be, if not exactly normal, then undeniably human. As she grew more accustomed to speaking, I found that she had interests, preferences, stories, even a sense of humor. When I played music over the Bluetooth speaker, I would gauge her reaction. She was, to my surprise, particularly fond of Amy Winehouse, and on one occasion I could’ve sworn I saw her tapping her foot to The Dead Kennedys’ “Let’s Lynch the Landlord.”
I remember one day Maggie and I were out back smoking. It was a Tuesday morning, and business had been slow. We’d been averaging one smoke break every twenty minutes, and by 7:30 we figured it’d be easier just to stay outside. It was January and a salty wind was blowing off the dunes and assaulting the alley. We were camped on a wooden bench behind the radiator, joined at the shoulders for warmth. Maggie had raised the collar of her coat and was hiding her chin in her scarf. In all her winter clothes, she looked like a kitten poking its head out from a mound of blankets.
She leaned forward and ashed her cigarette in the coffee mug that sat at our feet. “Listen,” she asked me. “What do you think about Alaska?”
I was caught off guard. I wasn’t used to Maggie initiating a conversation. “Like the state?”
“Only Alaska I know of,” she said.
I ashed my cigarette while I thought. “I don’t know. I think it’s cold.”
Maggie nodded in agreement.
“When I think of Alaska,” I said, “I think of white. White on the ground, white on the trees, white on the roofs of the houses. White everywhere you look.”
“Kind of like heaven,” she said.
We both lit new cigarettes and listened to the wind.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you think about Alaska?”
“A lot of places are lonely,” I said.
“I guess so.” She gestured out to the string of hotels that lined the shore. “But places like this are one kind of lonely. The kind where there’s a lot of people around. Just people and buildings and cars. It’s a mess. You can hardly think, it’s so lonely here. But I bet Alaska is its own kind of lonely. To be alone in a cabin in a white forest, with no one to bother you and no one worrying about you or coming around trying to help you all the time… I think that would be really nice.”
A couple of fisherman came down from the pier. As they passed the alley, they glanced over at us and nodded.
“So what, you’re leaving me?” I asked. “Going to Alaska?”
“Sure,” she said. “Why not?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why not?”
We sat there for a while, not speaking or really moving. Not until Maggie looked at her watch, then stood up, brushing off her pants. “I guess it’s about that time,” she said. “Mind if I take off?”
She was halfway through the screen door before I could respond. “Go home,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”
A minute later she came back outside, holding her purse and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. She stopped beside me, with a look on her face like she was going to say something. Her mouth was twisted and her eyebrows were scrunched tight above her eyes. But she didn’t say anything. Instead she sighed and shook her head and, as if trying to express something that couldn’t be said with words, reached out with a wrinkled hand and tussled my hair. Then she turned around, walking slowly down the windy alley, headed for home.
When I got to work the next morning, I was surprised when I didn’t see Maggie. Nearly every morning since she started she’d been early, waiting and shivering by the screen door. At first I just shrugged it off and started setting up the kitchen. By 5:15, when she still hadn’t shown up, I was annoyed. By 5:30 I was confused, and by 6:00 I was worried. After a few minutes of frantic searching through New Frank’s files, I tracked down the employee contact sheet and called Maggie’s house phone. Seven long rings led me to the dead end of an answering machine.
“Maggie,” I said, trying not to sound too nervous. “It’s Charlie. Call me back. Or come to work or something. Are you ok? Wait, you can’t hear me. I don’t know. Call me back or something. I don’t know.”
I hung up and tried to calm myself down. I told myself I was overthinking. I figured I’d best get back to work, and she’d show up eventually. So I started on the grits and the gravy, only to find myself habitually slipping into distracted worry. After burning three sheets of bacon, and cutting my thumb chopping vegetables, I was overcome by a strange and sickening feeling. I guess it was something like what they call intuition, but at that moment I knew it only as an ominous premonition that sank heavy in my stomach, driving me towards a conclusion that I didn’t want to reach. Driven by instinct, I dropped the knife, turned off the stove and grill, and burst out the screen door. I didn’t even take the time to lock the restaurant up before hopping on my bike and speeding off down the alley.
It should’ve been a ten minute ride to Maggie’s shack, but I made it in five, letting the bike crash onto the gravel. I hopped the chain fence and cut through the brown, unkempt yard and ran to the font door, pounding furiously until I dug my fist into a splinter. I ran around the perimeter, going from window to window, trying to get a clear view inside. I saw trash bags, weathered furniture, a sink full of dirty dishes, and the pale light of a humming 12 inch television, but I didn’t see Maggie. That is, until I reached the final window, around the back side of the shack, bordering on the schoolyard where I had spent those countless childhood afternoons. And it was a strange sensation, looking in the window, through the thin gap between the dusty floral drapes, and seeing that body, which didn’t look much like a body at all, but had already taken on the inanimate qualities of the mountains of kitsch and trash that surrounded her. It was as if, lying flat on her bed, arms poised and folded, head on her pillow looking up past the ceiling and up into the blank white sky that hung above us all, Maggie finally seemed to resemble not an urban legend or a sob-story, but an identity far more honest and accurate: a woman content to collapse into nothing.
After I called 911, I went around front and sat on the ground beneath a window. The adrenaline had faded, and now I felt nothing but an urge to crawl back in bed for a while. I guess I should’ve smashed open the window and burst into the house. I should’ve been in there shaking Maggie, crying and screaming at her to wake up, holding on hope beyond rationality. But truth is, I didn’t see the need. Someone in such peace couldn’t be anything but dead.
Within a few minutes I could hear a distant siren, and before too long an ambulance rounded the corner, joining my bike in the gravel lot. The EMTs jogged up, kicking down the door with a loud, jarring thud. They were in and out for a while, speeding back and forth to the ambulance for supplies, but their movements got slower and slower. Eventually they came out with a stretcher, wheeling away a long, narrow lump wrapped in a white sheet.
I sat there for a long time, on the ground by the shack. The sun had risen, and SUVs began to flow in and out of the school parking lot next door. I listening to the slamming of car doors, the variety of goodbyes called from moms, and the sound of sugar-fueled kids. Their screeches echoed throughout the neighborhood until 7:30, when teachers came outside to shuffle them in, and the final voices faded into silence.
