Moments In Time Page 11

  She sat across the table from her mother in the alcove, which was flanked with windows framed by blue and cream plaid curtains, chatting about old friends, catching up on local gossip. Mrs. Callahan rose to answer a ringing telephone just as Maggie’s father came through the back door.

  “There’s my baby girl. Come give the old man a big hug. That’s the way.” Frank Callahan entered the room, and his presence filled it. He was a large bear of a man, with a full head of white hair and a muscular build. He looked more like the stereotypical Irish cop than the college history professor that he was. He could not conceal his joy at having his oldest child home again, even if it was only for a few days. He clearly adored Maggie.

  “Hello, Daddy.” She kissed him and let him hold her for a minute.

  “Glad you could finally find some time to join us, Maggie. It’s been so long since you’ve been home. I was starting to worry you’d been kidnapped by one of those gooney Canadians that play hockey in the arena. What have you been up to that’s so important that you don’t have time for your family anymore?”

  “Well, we’ve been real busy at work, a lot of activities, you know…” Maggie shrugged nonchalantly.

  “Sure, sure. I know how hard you work at that place. More likely a busy social schedule.”

  “Sometimes.” She smiled.

  “Well, you just watch out there, Margaret. You get a lot of weirdos coming and going around there. I don’t know why you ever left that job you had with that accounting firm,” he chastised as he shuffled through the morning’s delivery of mail, then tossed the pile back onto the counter.

  “It was boring,” she told him for the ninety-fifth time, hoping that there would not be another discussion regarding her career choice.

  “Accounting is supposed to be boring,” he remarked dryly, disappearing into the refrigerator and emerging with an apple.

  “That was Aunt Peg, dear,” said her mother, reentering the room. “She’s really in a tizzy over this wedding. You’d think she’d be used to it by now. Kathleen’s the last of the group to get married, not the first. If she survived the other five weddings, she shouldn’t be worried about this one. And she’s positively beside herself that you haven’t picked up your dress yet. The shop called her again this morning to tell her that one of the bridesmaid’s dresses was still in the back room.”

  “I’ll run over right after lunch. It’s already been fitted. All I have to do is pick it up and pay for it,” Maggie pointed out. “I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. The wedding’s better than twenty-four hours away.”

  “Everything is a big deal to Peg,” her father reminded her. “Been that way all her life. Everything’s a crisis. I married into a family of hysterics, and that’s the simple truth.”

  “She’s afraid the dress won’t fit right, Frank,” Mary Elizabeth defended her sister, adding, “and truthfully, Maggie does appear to have lost weight.”

  “I haven’t lost weight, and the dress will fit just fine,” Maggie told her mother.

  “Peg ought to be more worried about the fit of Kathleen’s dress,” her father mumbled, then was silenced by a stern look from his wife.

  “I can’t wait till you get married again, Maggie, so I can be in the wedding,” Colleen said, passing through on her way to the backyard, her long red curls bouncing.

  “What makes you think I’ll get married again?” Maggie stabbed a fork full of lettuce.

  “You’re too pretty not to,” Colleen told her as she patted her sister’s head on her way past the table.

  “Thanks, baby,” Maggie said with a wink.

  “Colleen, I’d like to remind you that in the eyes of the church, your sister is still married. To Mason,” her father called after her.

  “Not now, Frank,” chided his wife.

  “Mary Elizabeth, they were married in the church. A civil divorce does not technically relieve them of their vows…”

  “Enough, Frank.” Turning to Maggie, she said, “If you’re finished, you’d better run down and pick up that dress. Did you bring your shoes? Good. Why don’t you see if Colleen wants to drive down with you?”

  “What was that comment about Kathleen’s dress not fitting?” Maggie asked Colleen as they drove into town.

  “Oh, boy,” Colleen told her, grinning with mischief. “Big scandal. Kathleen’s pregnant. Can you believe it? Of course, I’m not supposed to know.”

  “Who told you?” Maggie tried not to register any reaction. There but for the grace of God…

  “Aunt Eleanor,” Colleen giggled.

  “Aunt Eleanor?” Maggie laughed, trying to imagine their eighty-seven-year-old great-aunt delivering such news to a sixteen-year-old.

  “Well, she didn’t exactly tell me. I just sort of overheard her say something to Uncle Paul that they were lucky it hadn’t happened sooner, what with all her running around, and that Kathleen’s twenty-four and it was about time she got married anyway.” Colleen confided the family gossip with a very grown-up air.

  “She said that?” Maggie chuckled. “Well, looks like not too much gets past the old girl. And she’s probably right— Kathleen always had a bit of a wild streak.”

  They walked into the dress shop, and Maggie identified herself to the saleswoman, who went into the back room and returned with the dress, insisting that Maggie try it on. Kathleen, whom Maggie’d always thought to have abominable taste, had chosen baby blue organza gowns for her attendants, scooped neck, puffy-sleeved numbers with huge bows on the side of the dropped waist. Maggie groaned and tried it on. She met Colleen’s gaze as she walked back out of the dressing room.

  “Cute,” said Colleen, nodding with a straight face.

  “And here’s the headpiece,” cooed the saleswoman, pinning a sort of half-cap, which also sported a huge bow, to the side of Maggie’s head.

  “Very cute.” Colleen echoed the saleswoman’s saccharin tone.

  “It’s a little big through the waist and hips.” The saleswoman frowned, her voice fraught with accusation.

  “It’ll be fine,” Maggie assured her as she walked back into the dressing room, anxious to take it off. Thank God Jamey won’t be here to see me in this, she thought.

  Maggie sighed deeply as they pulled back into the Callahan driveway.

  “Oh happy day,” grumbled Maggie, seeing the red car parked out front, “Ellie’s here. My very favorite sibling.”

  “Maggie, good to see you finally found your way home,” said Ellie Callahan Marsh, tucking a stray length of straight blond hair behind one ear and smiling unenthusiastically.

  “Hello, Ellie. How’s it going?” A lukewarm greeting was the best Maggie could muster. For some reason known only to God, the two eldest Callahan children had always been at each other’s throats. It had been a source of pain to their mother through the years.

  “Maggie, how’d you like the dress? Isn’t it out of this world?” Ellie leaned back against the kitchen counter.

  It figures, thought Maggie, that Ellie would like it. “That’s one way of describing it.” She looked at her mother, who’d known instinctively that Maggie would hate it.

  “It’s only for one day, dear,” her mother said in a low voice as she peeled carrots and sliced them into a waiting pot.

  “I know, Mom. I don’t mind.”

  “That’s big of you, Maggie,” remarked Ellie.

  “Eleanor, your sister doesn’t have to like it. She only has to wear it, which she will do. So drop it, please.”

  Ellie made herself a cup of coffee in silence and, having appeased her mother by stopping in to see her sister, took the cup and wandered out the back door.

  Her mother turned her knife to a mound of potatoes, and it occurred to Maggie, not for the first time, that she could never picture her mother’s hands at rest. Cooking, cleaning, knitting, sewing, soothing a hurt or comforting an unhappy child, her mother’s hands always appeared in motion in Maggie’s childhood memories.

  Kevin breezed through an
d joined them momentarily, dropping a notebook and a pile of record albums on the nearest counter as he headed straight for the cookies. Maggie smiled fondly as she took in his tall, gangly eighteen-year-old form. Kevin had lost some, but not all, of his adolescent awkwardness. His closely cropped hair was, she suspected, a concession to his father’s wishes. Had he had his way, she felt certain, Kevin’s hair would have well exceeded his collar line.

  “So how’s college, baby brother?”

  “Great, Mags.” He nodded, stuffing a second cookie into his mouth.

  “How are your grades?”

  “Great.”

  “Are they, Mom?” she asked.

  “Actually, yes, they’ve been surprisingly good. Whether he’s motivated by a desire for higher learning or the knowledge that his band is in jeopardy if his marks begin to slip, I’m not certain. But he’s doing very well.”

  “If my grades go below a 3.0, I can’t play the drums with my band,” he explained, leaning back against the counter and brushing into the stack of records he’d slung there.

  It was then that she saw it, the flat square of cardboard, purple in color, edged in black, which had slid from the top of the pile. The same album that sat on the table in her apartment. The same one she listened to every night. She casually reached a hand up and tilted it toward her. Monkshood’s Midnight Fever album. She smiled inwardly. This would be a good opportunity to break the ice and tell Mom about Jamey. She tried to find an opening line.

  Kevin noticed her interest and nodded toward the counter. “Great band. We—our band—does a lot of their stuff.”

  “Is that right?” Okay, now is the time for me to say, Did I mention I met… No, no… Maybe something like, Oh, yes, they played at the arena some time ago. Did I tell you I’ve been dating… No, that sounds hokey…

  Why can’t I bring myself to just tell them, she asked herself bleakly, realizing that she could not so much as utter his name. Am I afraid they’ll find him unsuitable or think that I’ve disappointed them again after all that with Mace, whom they thought was so wonderful? That's what Jamey thinks. He thinks I’m embarrassed by what he is, that somehow my parents will think there’s something trivial or unworthy about what he does for a living and that he won't measure up to Mace. It hurts him to think that what Mom and Dad think is more important to me than what he thinks. Especially after last week when he called his sister from my apartment and made me speak with her. Judith was charming, of course, but I felt odd and shy, trying to make some connection with the faceless voice, not knowing if we'd ever meet and if we did, what she would think of me…

  Colleen skipped in then and draped an arm around Maggie’s shoulder. “We’ve got some time before dinner. Want to walk down to the lake?”

  “Great idea.” Maggie felt relieved. The moment to speak was gone. She could put it off for now. “Where’d Ellie go?”

  “She’s out in the yard, talking with Tim and Marilyn next door. Were you going to ask her to join you?” her mother asked hopefully.

  “No,” replied Maggie and Colleen, both laughing.

  “Oh, girls, please.” Their mother rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Let’s go before she comes in,” Colleen said, grabbing a carrot as she left the room.

  Maggie headed upstairs to her old bedroom on the third floor long after midnight, the evening’s rehearsal for the wedding having turned into a reunion of a dozen or so cousins, most of whom Maggie hadn’t seen since the last family wedding over a year ago. She stripped off the dress she had worn that night and hung it on its hanger, then went into the bathroom across the hall to wash off her makeup. Her reflection in the mirror above the sink startled her, the twenty-eight-year-old face staring back at her, a reminder that she was now a visitor in this house, no longer a youthful occupant. Somehow, unconsciously, she always expected to see herself in this mirror as she had looked those years ago when she had called this house her home. How could she be so different when so little else here had changed since the day she left?

  In the dim light from the hall, she could make out the shapes and shadows of her old room. All the treasures of a happy childhood were stored here, the trophies of having grown up in middle-class America. Tennis rackets, lacrosse sticks, old ice skates. Beloved dolls, some bedraggled, some like new, their condition a silent testament of the love bestowed over the years by the little girl Maggie had been. Shelves spilled over with books, from Peter Rabbit and Golden Books to philosophy, economics, and art history. A large brown bear, presented to her by her father as she’d been wheeled into the operating room as a frightened six-year-old to have her tonsils removed, presided over a chair laden with other assorted stuffed animals. Dink, one of Otto’s predecessors, had chewed off the bear’s nose. Her mother had made her best effort to replace it with a big black button.

  Dried corsages from long-ago proms, a gold chain hung over the dressing table mirror, the high school ring still dangling from it, a gift of sorts from a boy she’d met while on summer vacation on Cape Cod as a sixteen-year-old. He’d lived in Colorado, and they’d spent hours sitting on the sand, talking and laughing, hours more walking the long stretches of beaches. Her last night there they’d made out under the lifeguard stand, and he’d given her the ring. It was as close to going steady as she’d ever come.

  She could see the outlines of the old photographs framing the mirror on the dresser that once belonged to her grandmother. Old friends, frozen in time, black-and-white images of faces no longer so young. She and Holly, her best friend all through school, tennis rackets raised in victory after winning a doubles tournament at a school match their junior year. Posing on the hood of the 1966 Mustang Holly’s parents had given her when she graduated from junior college. God, the times we had in that car, Maggie mused sleepily. Canary yellow, like Holly’s hair, the car had been…

  Funny, she thought, no matter how old I get, I always feel like a child when I’m under this roof. No matter that my next big birthday would be the big three-oh or that I’ve been married and divorced and have my own apartment, a responsible job. When I'm in this house, I’m Frank and Mary Elizabeth’s biggest little girl again.

  She pulled the covers up and sought a comfortable position in her old bed, reflecting back on the rehearsal that evening in the church where she’d spent so many hours of her young life. While the priest was instructing the best man on his duties, she had wandered to the right side of the church, sliding into the sixth row, recalling vividly how it had felt to kneel on the hard wooden planks in the row of hard oak pews.

  She couldn’t remember ever sitting anyplace in this church but in that row, sixth from the altar, right side, nine a.m. every Sunday and holy day. The church was tiny—by city standards it would be little more than a chapel. Beautiful narrow arches of stained glass illustrated the life of St. Francis of Assisi for whom the church had been named. The small spotless altar, well-polished oak hewn by a local craftsman, the stark white marble statue of the Blessed Mother, the work of another local artisan, the handmade stations of the cross that hung on the walls, all bespoke of the devotion of the small Catholic community in this mostly Protestant town.

  Maggie had marked every major milestone of her Catholic life in this church—baptism, her First Communion, confirmation, marriage. She wondered if her own children would be baptized under this roof or if she would be buried from this church.

  She grimaced inwardly, knowing that certain members of her family gathered for the wedding the following afternoon would notice that only Maggie, of the entire Callahan clan, lacked the requisite state of grace to receive the sacrament of Holy Communion. Maggie tried to remember the last time she’d gone to confession. Certainly it had been long before the events of the past few months. She sighed as she turned over once again. Lindy had been right, it was all still within her and probably always would be…

  The forecast for Saturday was dismal, the morning overcast, threatening rain for the afternoon ceremony. Kathleen was ne
arly hysterical that a downpour would destroy her gown. The wedding had seemed to drag on forever, the reception endless. Maggie danced with her father; all of her uncles; the groom; the groom’s father; John, her partner for the wedding; and her brother, Kevin, all the while missing J.D., wishing with all her heart that she could will him to materialize, that she could be dancing with him now, his two left feet notwithstanding.

  She thought back to her own wedding, hers and Mace’s, in the same church, the reception at the same club, the cast of characters essentially the same. She hadn’t been a happy bride, she recalled, and glanced across the room at a glowing Kathleen—if she was in fact pregnant, she was hiding it well. That's how you’re supposed to look on your wedding day, Maggie told herself. Why hadn't anyone noticed that I didn’t?

  Finally, the happy couple having departed for their honeymoon, the guests started filtering out. Maggie’d had four glasses of champagne, way past her limit, and was feeling the effects. It was the damn toasts, she thought ruefully. First the best man, then the groom’s brother, then Uncle Paul, then cousin Thomas, then… who? She couldn’t recall. Too many toasts and too many memories. More than once she’d felt the tug of strangulation that had choked her that day six years ago, as she and Mace had stood before the priest, the suffocating knowledge that her life was ending and she was too weak to save herself. Why was everyone so happy, she had wondered, when I am drowning?

  The opening strains of “The Wedding March” had sounded like a death knell in her head, the smell of lilies gagging her. She’d gotten through it by pretending that she was a mere observer of all that went on, that it had no connection to her. She’d drifted through the reception with blank eyes, watching her life slip away with every passing second, grieving for the happiness she would never have, wistfully recalling how good it had been to feel like she was falling in love, two winters ago, with that basketball player she’d dated at Penn. She had danced on leaden feet with her beaming father, thrown her bouquet to Ellie, perversely wishing her sister the same amount of joy that she had felt at that moment.