Moments In Time Read online

  Kathleen’s wedding party had been invited back to the home of the bride’s parents, along with the entire family, to continue the festivities. Maggie picked slightly at the food arranged buffet style on the dining room table, then joined her cousin Mike at the bar set up in the backyard, where he was drinking away a broken engagement. He made her a gimlet, and they sat and talked for an hour, Mike doing most of the talking, she commiserating the best she could considering she was barely listening. He made them both another drink when Madeline, Mike’s sister, joined them to pour out her personal tale of woe. Mike made another round of gimlets.

  Colleen strolled through the back door, holding the hand of a tall sandy-haired young man. She’s so adorable, Maggie thought as she watched with pride and affection, those strawberry curls, blue eyes, and freckles. She looks so grown-up today, but it’s hard to believe she’s sixteen this year. She watched as the young couple walked to the end of the hedge that marked the property from the yard next door. The young man leaned down and kissed Colleen. Maggie arched an eyebrow. Who was this little varmint kissing her baby sister?

  By the time Mike had set out the fourth round of drinks, Kevin discovered that Maggie was almost incoherent and barely able to stand up. Their mother insisted that Kevin drive her home and accompanied them, hoping to get Maggie into bed before the rest of the family, especially her father—who was having one hell of a good time—got back home.

  It had taken both her mother and her brother to get her into the house. She slumped in a chair in the kitchen, giggling and half crying at the same time.

  “Don’t sit down, Maggie, we’ll never get you back up again. Drat that phone. You just stay there one second, Maggie. Kevin, come in here and make sure your sister doesn’t fall out of her seat… Hello? Yes, she’s here, but I don’t think she can come to the phone right now. Who’s calling, please?… Well, actually, we’ve just come in from a family wedding and I’m afraid my daughter is, well, she’s… she’s intoxicated… Yes… I don’t know, do you think it would help? Well, we’ll try that. Honestly, I’ve never seen Maggie like this and… Yes, we’d best try to get her to bed. Thank you… I will tell her. It was nice speaking with you.”

  Mary Elizabeth hung up the phone and looked down at her disheveled daughter, whose arms and head rested on the kitchen table.

  “Come on, Maggie, try to stand up. Kevin, help me get Maggie on her feet…”

  “Looks like my big sister really tied one on,” he said with a broad grin.

  His mother shot him a look of disapproval and gestured for him to help Maggie up, which was no easy task. She was deadweight. Getting her onto her feet was one thing, getting her up the stairs was another. Halfway up she got giggly and started to sing “Midnight Special,” a raunchy tune J.D. insisted had been penned solely by Rick and that had been included on their last album on a whim. Kevin rolled his eyes toward the heavens as his sister slurred one ribald verse and started into the second.

  “Maggie, where’d you ever hear that song?”

  “Jamey. Sings it,” she confided.

  “Well, whoever Jamey is, I like his taste in music.”

  They were almost at the top of the steps, and she nearly collapsed with laughter.

  “Maggie, what’s so funny?”

  “You do,” she gasped between peals of laughter. “You do. Like his music.” She slipped down a step, and he gripped her arm to keep her from falling all the way down.

  “Sure thing, Maggie. Whatever you say,” he mumbled.

  Having gotten her into her room and flopped onto her bed, Kevin turned his sister over to their mother. “She’s all yours, Mom. Boy, old Maggie’s really ripped.”

  “I’ll thank you not to mention this to your father, Kevin.”

  “What, that I practically had to carry her upstairs, laughing and singing? Just kidding, Mom. My lips are sealed.”

  “Sit up, Maggie. Let me get the back of your dress undone.” Her daughter nearly incapable of cooperating, it took Mary Elizabeth a few minutes to get Maggie undressed. She slid a nightgown over the slender shoulders. “Been many a year since I had to dress you for bed, sweetie. Oh… the aspirin. I’ll be right back.”

  A few minutes later she returned with two white tablets. “Here, Maggie, sit up. Jamey said to make sure you took these.”

  “Jamey,” she murmured. “Miss Jamey…”

  “I’m sure you do, dear.”

  Maggie swallowed the aspirin and lay back on the pillow, eyes closed, crying softly, rambling on and on, unintelligibly. Finally, when the whispering stopped, Mary Elizabeth kissed her daughter’s forehead and turned out the bedroom light.

  Several times during the night, Maggie’d been up and to the bathroom, sicker than she’d ever been in her life. I’ll feel like shit tomorrow, she thought as she tumbled back into her bed for the fourth time.

  Even the lengthy Callahan Sunday breakfast was all but over by the time Maggie managed to struggle out of bed and into her clothes. Her stomach felt terrible, but surprisingly, her head didn’t feel as badly as she’d expected. She said as much to her mother when she ambled downstairs and took a place at the table.

  “Oh, good. Then the aspirin worked.” Mary Elizabeth looked pleased. She met Frank’s questioning gaze and explained, “Aspirin. If you take it at night when you’ve had too much to drink, you’re less likely to have a headache the next morning.”

  “Mary Elizabeth, since when have you been the resident expert on the cure for hangovers?” her husband inquired with a raised eyebrow.

  “Why, Maggie’s friend told me last night when he called,” she explained nonchalantly. “He sounded very nice, Frank, very polite and well spoken.”

  “What friend?” Maggie asked, taking the cup of tea her mother had poured for her.

  “Why, Jamey, he said his name was. You didn’t tell us you were seeing an English fellow, Maggie.” Her mother begin to clear plates and juice glasses from the table. “I always did like a British accent.”

  “Mom, when did you talk to Jamey?” Maggie had gone white.

  “Maggie, don’t you remember? He called last night as soon as we got home from Aunt Peg’s. We had a nice chat.”

  “You did?” Maggie wondered what exactly J.D. had had to say.

  “He asked me to tell you he’d call you this evening at your apartment.” Mary Elizabeth carried the breakfast debris into the kitchen.

  “And he must be cool, because he knows all the words to ‘Midnight Special,’ ” Kevin added.

  “How do you know that?” Maggie asked in a half whisper, wondering what she’d said last night. She rested her elbows on the table, chin in hands and tried frantically to remember.

  “Because you were singing it while I was helping you up the steps last night. And when I asked you how you knew the words, you said Jamey sings it. So, he must be cool.” Following this explanation, Kevin left the room.

  “Maggie, please get your elbows off the table or move them closer together. If your chin gets any lower it’ll be in your teacup,” her mother instructed.

  “Sounds like you had a better time at Kathleen’s wedding than I thought you did,” her father said with a laugh as he pushed himself away from the table. “I’ll be watching the baseball game in the den, Mary Elizabeth.”

  Maggie looked across the table at her mother, who was removing the rest of the breakfast dishes. “Mom, what did I say last night?”

  “Very little that I could understand. You were not very coherent.”

  Thank God.

  “I did get the impression, judging from his concern, that this might be more than a casual relationship.”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Are you serious with this man?”

  Maggie admired her mother’s cool demeanor, knowing she had a lot of questions she would like to ask. Mary Elizabeth could extract secrets from a stone. It was all in her quiet, nonchalant technique.

  “More serious than I’ve ever been in my life, Mom.” Maggie put h
er cup down and met her mother’s eyes.

  “Does that include your former husband, Maggie?”

  “I never felt this way about Mace, Mom.”

  “Then why did you marry him?” Her mother sat down next to her.

  “I guess because I felt I had to,” Maggie replied simply.

  “Why would you have thought that? Didn’t you love him?”

  “Not the way I should have. Not the way that takes you through a lifetime. Not the way I love Jamey. I loved Mace, Mom, but I wasn’t in love with him.” There, it was out now. The truth.

  “Then why did you go through with it?” Her mother took her hands in her own, deep lines of distress creasing her face.

  “Because everyone would have been so disappointed. Everyone thought he was so perfect. And I didn’t want to hurt him. And,” she added, her voice lowering as in a confessional, “because I’d slept with him.”

  Mary Elizabeth silently studied her daughter’s face.

  “I thought it obligated me, Mom. I thought sleeping with him meant I had to marry him. I didn’t know I had a choice… And he and Daddy were so close. And we’d gone together for so long. I didn’t know how to not go through with it.” Earnest tears slid from between her lids, closed against the judgment she feared she’d encounter if she opened her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Maggie.” Mary Elizabeth brushed the hair back tenderly from her daughter’s face. “How could I have not known?”

  “It’s not your fault, Mom. In my heart I knew it wasn’t right, but I went through with it. I don’t blame anyone but myself.”

  “And Jamey? How long have you known him?”

  “A couple of months.” Maggie searched in her pocket for a tissue.

  “And you feel this strongly about him after so short a time?”

  “Right from the start. Mom, he’s all I could ever want in this life.”

  “Why haven’t you brought him home?”

  “Mom, I want to. And he wants so much to meet you. But Dad might find him a bit hard to take. You know, Dad has these prejudices…”

  “Maggie, is he a Protestant?” That could certainly account for her daughter’s reluctance to bring this man home.

  Maggie laughed for the first time that morning. “He might be Protestant, most likely is. I’ve never asked him.”

  “Maggie, you know how your father is about religion. That could be a problem.”

  “That’s not the only thing he’ll have a problem with.” Maggie wiped her wet eyes with a tissue her mother handed her.

  “Is it because of Mace? Because Dad is so keen on Mace?”

  “That’s part of it. I know he always hoped that we’d get back together. I don’t know how to explain to him that it was a mistake. That staying in that marriage would have destroyed me.”

  “I’ll talk to your father about that, Maggie. I feel some of the responsibility was mine.”

  “Mom…” Maggie protested.

  “How could I have been so oblivious to what you were going through?” Mary Elizabeth asked herself softly, her voice apologetic, self-recriminating. “I’ll talk to your father, sweetheart. Maybe he’ll understand. Is there anything else that I should know about this new friend of yours?”

  “Well, actually, Mom, there’s one other thing.” Maggie took a deep breath, grateful that it would all be out in the open and done with, for better or for worse.

  As she opened her mouth to speak, Ellie walked into the room.

  “So, here you are. And how hung over are we today?” she asked, grinning.

  “Not too bad.” Maggie wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that her stomach was in chaos.

  “Missed you at church.” Ellie sat down with her coffee, oblivious to the fact that she had interrupted a conversation that would not be finished while she was present.

  “Maggie was sick last night, Ellie,” Mary Elizabeth told her.

  “No doubt she was. Maggie, you threw back champagne like Uncle Paul throws back shots.”

  Laughing in spite of herself, Maggie replied, “That explains it then. I’ve never been able to drink more than a glass or two. And the way I feel today is a good reminder why I never do.”

  “Topping off the day with gimlets was another good idea,” Ellie noted, then added, “I hope you’re okay.”

  “Thanks, El.” Maggie smiled, touched by her sister’s uncharacteristic concern.

  On impulse, she stood up and kissed the top of Ellie’s head, and Ellie responded by reaching a hand around to touch her sister’s face for the briefest moment. Maggie found herself suddenly wishing it could be this way more often, she free to reach out to Ellie, who had always seemed to be surrounded by an invisible barrier, like an opaque bubble, which made even casual physical contact with her almost unthinkable. Maggie had often wondered how Elliot ever approached her to make love. She thought of Jamey’s loving touch and was swept with a feeling of sadness for Ellie, for lacking that simplest of joys, the caress of a loving hand.

  Mary Elizabeth was clearly startled by the rare display of affection between her oldest children and was moved by it. The moment passed, and Maggie withdrew again to the other side of the boundary. With a wink toward her mother that promised to resume their conversation another time, she went upstairs to pack her things.

  12

  ELLIE HASN’T CHANGED MUCH, MAGGIE THOUGHT SADLY. She even seems to hold her children at a distance. I can’t remember the last time I saw her cuddle with Mary Fran or hug little Danny.

  “…but as far as writing a song is concerned,” Hilary was deep in conversation with J.D., “how do you actually do that? What comes first, the lyrics or the tune?”

  “Sometimes one, sometimes the other,” he told her, keeping his eyes on his wife’s back. She’d been off in her head someplace—he’d recognized the signs and wondered where she’d been, what door within her memory had opened to her, and if what she’d seen when she’d peered inside had been a welcomed reminder of happier days or the stinging recollection of a bygone hurt.

  “Have you any musical talent, Maggie?” Hilary asked.

  “What? Oh, no… none,” she replied flatly.

  “Then it must be fascinating to live with someone who has written so many wonderful songs.”

  “Fascinating,” Maggie agreed with a saccharine smile.

  “Do you write all the parts for every song yourself?” Hilary decided to ignore Maggie’s sarcasm. “All the parts for all the different instruments as well?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you know how to do that?”

  “Training and experience,” he said, grinning. “An unbeatable combination.”

  “No, I mean with all the instruments. The guitars and drums, for example. How can you write for those instruments if you don’t play them?”

  “I do play them,” he told her.

  “What else?” Hilary leaned forward in his direction.

  “Just about anything with keys or strings.”

  “But how do you know where to put the different instruments in the song?”

  He looked at her blankly, as if it were a stupid question. “I just hear it in my head.”

  “You hear the whole thing, a whole song, with all its component parts, in your head?” Hmm, she thought, maybe he’s more than just another pretty face…

  “Pretty much. Sometimes I just hear part of it, then when I write it down, the rest of it just comes,” he explained.

  “Well, I’m impressed,” she said, smiling almost flirtatiously, “but tell me, after having written so many songs, how do you keep coming up with new ones year after year? Where does the inspiration come from?”

  “It comes from everywhere. The news. Everyday events. The people around you. And of course, my wife has been a continuous source of inspiration for me.”

  “Out of all the songs you’ve ever written, which was your favorite?”

  “Absolutely no contest there.” He smiled. “It would have to be ‘Sweet, Sweet
Maggie.’ I’d written it while on the road that spring we’d met. It was a special surprise for her. She was there the first night the band ever performed it in public. In Atlanta.” He turned to her, asking with deliberate emphasis on the name of the city, “You remember that four-day weekend in Atlanta, don’t you, Maggie?”

  It seemed he waited forever for her one-word whispered response.

  “Yes.”

  Remember? My whole life changed in the aftermath of that weekend, she thought. After Atlanta, there was no turning back…

  Maggie hated flying, hated the very idea of being wrapped in the belly of that metal container, strapped in and unable to escape, always dreaded the takeoffs and prayed for the landings. She wished she’d been able to get a nonstop flight. The additional wait in D.C. made her even more anxious.

  She looked at her watch and realized they were due to land in twenty minutes or so. She rose from her seat and went into the bathroom, removed her makeup case from her purse, and sat it on the side of the sink. Might as well fix this face before we land, she thought and added some blush, reapplied some eye shadow, and was about to brush her hair when there was a knock on the door.

  “I’m sorry to rush you,” a woman’s voice said, “but my little girl really needs to use the bathroom.”

  “Oh, sure. No problem.” Maggie stuffed her makeup back into the case, the zipper breaking as she fumbled to close it, then tucked the open case into her purse. In her haste to vacate the room, she dropped it, it’s contents spilling out onto the floor.

  “Oh, damn,” she muttered as she bent down and retrieved her wallet, keys, checkbook, hairbrush, makeup, all of which had scattered.

  “I’m really sorry to hurry you like this, but she’s only three and…”

  Maggie opened the door and smiled sympathetically at the young woman and her small, fidgety daughter as she stepped past them and exited the room.

  She returned to her seat. It was almost time to land. She fastened her belt and leaned back, anticipating the next four days. Four whole days. She couldn’t wait to see him, to touch him, to love him again. He’d been right, two weeks was way too long…