‘Andrew? Andrew! …’
‘Jill, listen darling. If you don’t like the idea I’ll turn them down. Can you hear me? Wait there! Don’t move. I’m getting the first flight …’
She listened for a long time to the empty crackling on the line, staring around the room, then at last she hung up. The landlady had withdrawn discreetly and left her alone with the cold smell of the dead wood ash and the chill of the early morning still frosting the windows. But suddenly the room had lost its gloom and as she watched, in the earthenware jug on the windowsill, a bunch of winter jasmine caught the first tentative rays of the sun and turned to gold.
A Woman’s Choice
It had happened after they went back to the States.
‘No, no, no, Dan! It’s just not on!’ Maggie slammed her open hand down on the table in front of her, her eyes wide with anger. ‘I knew you were going to suggest this and I won’t do it. It’s not fair to ask me.’
Dan looked up at her over the cup he held in both hands and gave a sheepish smile. ‘OK, OK, so I’m sorry. I guess I knew it wasn’t on. But hell, I had to suggest it. It might have worked.’ He shrugged. ‘Suzanne is –’ he hesitated imperceptibly, ‘– was my sister, after all. And those two kids are family.’
‘I know and I’m sure that they’re great kids. But Dan, we don’t want kids! We’ve no time, no room for kids, that’s why we didn’t have any of our own, remember?’ There was something like despair in her voice – and guilt.
‘Sure, honey, sure.’ He stood up and pushed his stool back from the table, meticulously folding his newspaper so that it fitted into his briefcase. He stooped and kissed the top of her head lightly. ‘Don’t worry about it. Ma and I will have to do something of course, what with poor old Roger having no family that we ever met – and, I don’t know, I suppose they’ll have to be taken care of back in Carson. Perhaps a neighbour or someone might take them in; I understand they’re with one at the moment.’ He was frowning as he straightened his tie at the mirror next to the kitchen window.
‘Can’t your mother have them, Dan?’ She began to pile up the dishes and refold the foil in the cereal packet.
‘You know she can’t.’ For the first time he snapped. ‘She’s too frail. Not that she wouldn’t want them. She’s always spoiled those two when she got the chance to see them but Carson is so far away. That’s the trouble. Too far to know what to do for the best.’
He opened the door. ‘I’ll call you from the office, Maggie. Bye for now.’
She heard him walk through the hallway and then the front door slammed.
The kitchen was suddenly very empty and quiet. She dumped the cups and plates in the sink and left them so that she would have time to put on some make-up before leaving the apartment. Glancing at her wrist watch she groaned. Late again.
In front of the bathroom mirror she stopped and looked hard at her face in the cold unflattering glare of the strip light. Her skin was sallow and tired from lack of sleep and there were dark hollows beneath her eyes. She grabbed a bottle of moisturizer and began to pat it on with quick impatient strokes of the finger tips, trying to flatten out some of the lines.
Then as she watched she saw her eyes for no reason at all suddenly fill with tears, brim and overflow. ‘Oh hell.’ She groped for a tissue and dabbed at the little creamy rivulets on her cheeks, trying to stem the flow. ‘Oh damn poor Suzanne and Roger; damn their poor bloody kids! Why did it have to happen now?’ She sat on the edge of the bath tub and blew her nose.
It was two days since the midnight phone call from the hospital which told them the news of the car crash; barely thirty-six hours since Sue had died, twelve since hearing that, though Roger might recover consciousness, he would almost certainly have irreversible brain damage. Ever since, she had been haunted by the vision of the two small children waiting with the baby sitter for their Mummy and Daddy to come home. She dabbed at her face again and stood up, sniffing, reaching for the matt foundation she kept for disguising the dark rings. It wasn’t as if she knew the kids. They had been babies of – what? – eighteen months and three months respectively when she and Dan had last gone to Carson on a visit. She shuddered remembering suddenly the horrible baby smell in the house – the buckets of soaking diapers, the sweet clinging scent of regurgitated milk, But what a happy close family they had been, with Roger over the moon with his little son and his pretty daughter and Sue, in her usual dream world but ecstatic over her bouncing babies.
She dabbed again at her make-up and drew an angry red outline round her lips, blocking in the lipstick. It was then, on the way home in the car that Dan had finally agreed with her about no family of their own. ‘You’re right, Maggie,’ he had said, groping for her hand in the dark as they waited at a red light, ‘I don’t think I could face all that hassle and noise in our home. My Cod, those buckets and all those hours feeding them!’
She hadn’t said that many houses were cleaner and more efficient than Sue’s, half out of loyalty to her sister-in-law and half out of relief at his words; instead she had returned the pressure of his fingers and given a quiet sigh of relief. It had bothered her in the past that perhaps Dan really did want kids; that he had said he didn’t just to make her happy and because he knew her career meant so much to her. He had always been so good with children, instinctively good, while she shrank from them, resented them as a threat to her independence.
Her career! She looked back at the mirror with a sigh. She wouldn’t have a career at all if she didn’t hurry up, finish her face and leave the house!
She took a cab downtown to the studios and crept into her office via the coffee machine. Minutes later the phone rang. It was Dan.
‘I’m going up to Carson tomorrow with Ma; I’ve fixed it here so that I can be away for two or three days. You’ll have to make my axcuses to Bet on Thursday.’
Bet, wife of one of the senior producers, and her dinner party, to which so many important TV people would go. Maggie hadn’t given it a thought. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to come with you to Carson?’ she said stirring the coffee aimlessly with the end of her ball point. She didn’t want to go; to see those two small faces, the large eyes. At the thought the blotter on her desk blurred and went out of focus suddenly and she shook her head angrily – ‘Sorry Dan, what did you say?’
‘I say there’s no need for you to come. They know Ma best of any of us, she’s seen them each year at least and she was there only a few months ago; they wouldn’t remember you – or me for that matter.’
Remember her? How could they? She had held each child gingerly, at arm’s length, for a token few seconds before returning it thankfully to its mother’s arms, and that had been how long ago? Five years, which meant that the children were now five and six respectively.
With a sigh she picked up the internal phone. ‘Hi, Bet. I’m afraid we’re going to have to take a rain check for Thursday. Dan’s going to be out of town …’
At lunchtime she ate a yoghurt, then she slipped out to the supermarket for a bag of groceries. The humidity had built up unbearably in the streets as the sun blazed down on the glaring sidewalks. On the corner some kids were splashing round a hydrant; little kids, perhaps five and six. She stopped still and looked at their laughing little faces. Behind her a woman came out with a bag of groceries, saw them and screamed furiously at the children. ‘Sal, Tony, you come out of there!’
Two sheepish faces turned towards her and, tee shirts dripping, they slowly approached her. She set down her carrier on the sidewalk and dragged a handkerchief from her purse to dry them. Then laughing she suddenly hugged them both to her, soaking her thin dress.
Maggie turned away, a lump in her throat and walked blindly back up the street.
Dan was away three days. When he came back he looked pale and strained, his handsome face wretched as he threw his case on the bed and opened it.
‘I saw Roger for a few minutes,’ he said as Maggie sat at the dressing table, pretending to brush
her hair. ‘He’s still in a coma. The little ones are still with the neighbour but she can’t keep them much longer; they’re all in one room with her kids and they keep looking through the fence at their house and saying, when can we go home? …’ His voice broke suddenly and he sat down on the bed, pressing his knuckles into his eyes. ‘Ma wants to move down there, take over the house, keep it as a home for them, but hell, she can’t. She was knocked out by all this. She started getting pains in her chest again.’
Maggie slid the brush to her other hand and went on brushing methodically, her eyes fixed blankly on the mirror.
‘I spoke to Jim Baines at work today,’ she said at last as Dan opened the cupboard, rummaging for a coat hanger. ‘I asked him if I could work half time or at home if I had to. He said there shouldn’t be any problem.’ She went on brushing.
‘So?’ He sounded guarded, but she saw in the mirror that he was looking at her suddenly.
‘So we’ve got a spare room with two beds.’ She flung down the brush and turned on the stool to face him. ‘We can’t let them go, Dan; we can’t let them be separated. I don’t know anything about children; I don’t have the first idea where to begin, but we’ve got to try, haven’t we? We’re the only hope they’ve got.’
The relief he felt at her words was apparent in every line of his body as in two steps he was across the room, his hands on her shoulders.
‘Do you really mean it, Maggie?’
She nodded wordlessly and he drew her gently to him and cradled her head on his chest.
The airport was crowded. Maggie had arrived early to find a place to park and give her time for one last fortifying coffee before the flight arrival was announced. Then they were there. She could see Dan walking towards her, holding in each hand the hand of a child. For one terrible moment she felt a total paralysis take hold of her. What had she done? What about her job, her future, all her plans? What did she know of children and their problems? She didn’t even like children. She had no experience of children – not even of nephews and nieces of her own. And now they were here and Dan had stopped walking and three pairs of eyes were regarding her – all solemn – all waiting for her to speak. Her mouth had gone dry.
‘Hi,’ she said.
Dan grinned. ‘This is Mary-Sue,’ he said, ‘and this is Hal. Say hello to your Auntie Maggie, kids.’
The two pairs of eyes looked sullen and hostile. Neither child said a word.
She had made the new drapes for their bedroom herself and lined the cupboard shelves with pretty paper. On each bed lay a new toy. A doll for Mary-Sue and a truck for Hal. Sure it’s bribery, she had said to herself as she had written out the cheque for them. Sure, but how else can I get them to like me?
Dan brought in the cases and together they unpacked the children’s toys and clothes. The little boy soon forgot some of his reserve in the interest of seeing his toys revealed, arranging them himself in a row under his bed, but Mary-Sue sat on her pillow and watched, her thumb securely in her mouth. She had not said a word.
The first three days weren’t so bad. Dan stayed home from the office to help and Maggie, who had to go to her own office at the studios in the morning for one more week before starting to work from home, found things not at all too bad. In the apartment the children played in their bedroom or sat in front of the TV. They came to the table when they were told and allowed her to put them to bed without protest. Dan took them to the park and bought them ice-creams and took Hal on his knee and told him fairy stories to which the boy listened with enormous round staring eyes.
Dan was a natural with the kids, Maggie saw at once with a little pang of jealousy. He seemed to know what to say to them, what to do and they took to him easily, showing none of the shy reserve they kept for her, instinctively sensing her own.
It was not until Monday that Maggie first had them on her own. Breakfast passed without a hitch. Neither child ate much at any meal, which worried her, but at least at breakfast they could be persuaded to take a bowl of their favourite cereal in milk. Then Dan kissed her goodbye as so often in the past, folding his paper, picking up his case, going to the mirror to check his tie.
‘I’ll call you later,’ he said. ‘See how you’re surviving. ’Bye kids.’ And he had gone.
She swallowed. ‘Right. Hal and Mary-Sue, do you want to go and play while I do the dishes?’ Her voice sounded too brisk, too hearty.
She turned to stack the plates and cups in the sink, ignoring the two small faces which turned to watch her. They were still sitting there when she had finished.
‘Right kids, run and play now. Auntie Maggie wants to do some work.’ And she walked out of the room leaving them still sitting on their stools at the breakfast table.
She had commandeered a table by the window in the living room as a desk. On it she had put the reading lamp and a coffee mug full of pencils and ball points. Briskly she unfastened her case and brought out the pile of scripts she had to read. As she pulled up the chair she heard the door opening quietly behind her.
‘Hi,’ she called, without turning round. ‘Want something?’
There was silence.
She went on sorting the scripts for a few moments, then turned. They were standing in the doorway holding hands.
‘Mary-Sue wants to watch television,’ Hal announced in a piping voice.
With a sigh Maggie glanced at the blank screen in the corner. ‘Must you, darling? Auntie Maggie wants to work just now. Could you go and play, just for a little while? Please. You shall watch it later, I promise.’
The children looked at each other. She waited for the words, ‘Mommie let us watch it,’ but mercifully they never came. Reluctantly the two withdrew in total silence. Maggie turned to her work. Or tried to. She found she read a page – then read it again. But even the second time she could not remember what she had read. Her attention kept wandering to the two little waifs at the other end of the apartment.
She threw down her pen and got to her feet with a sigh.
The children’s room was ominously silent. She pushed open the door and looked in. Mary-Sue was sitting on her pillow her thumb in her mouth, her legs curled up defensively under her, watching Hal who had found one of the suitcases and was industriously stuffing all his toys into it.
Maggie stood watching them for a moment. ‘Well, well, Hal, you’re busy. That’s a nice tidy boy.’
He looked at her solemnly. ‘Me and Mary-Sue want to go home,’ he announced clearly. ‘We don’t like it here,’
‘Dear God, Dan, what was I to do?’ Maggie sobbed that night after the children had gone to bed. “They kept looking at me with those great sad eyes. Children shouldn’t look sad. They should be laughing. I tried to tell them that their home would be here now, but they didn’t understand.’
‘It’s hard, Maggie, I know.’ Dan got up and shook an empty cigarette pack hopefully. ‘Ma told them the whole bit about Mummy going to heaven, and Daddy being too sick to look after them any more, but I don’t think it’s sunk in at all. They cried. Of course they cried, especially Hal, but,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s so difficult knowing what to say: to reassure without raising any false hopes.’
‘I don’t know how to cope with it, Dan. We shouldn’t have said we’d take them. We could do more damage than good,’
He shook his head slowly. ‘I don’t think so. I think unobtrusive love and security are what they need now. We’ve got to give everything we’ve got, Maggie and expect nothing in return. That’s the only way.’
She stood up and went to unplug the percolator. ‘Pretty thankless task that is for me. It’s not you that’s had to give up your job – as good as. No, sorry, Dan. I didn’t mean that. I guess I’m just so mixed up myself about it. I’m sorry for them; I want to cry every time I see them; I want to cuddle them and protect them and make the world go away and yet I don’t dare. I’m not like you. I can’t do it. I know they’ll reject me,’ There was a sob in her voice and she sniffed angrily, as he started to pro
test. ‘Oh yes I do resent them, Dan. I don’t want to. I know I shouldn’t, but because of them I’ve almost certainly lost that producer’s job I was after and they’ve put me on to wading through lousy scripts. And I can’t even do that properly because the kids distract me. They distract me if they’re there and they distract me if they’re not there because I think they’ll start packing again and leave or something.’
She ran her fingers through her hair in agitation, pushing it back from her hot face.
Dan’s blue eyes were very sober. ‘I didn’t realize, honey. I thought you were a hundred per cent behind me in this. Maybe we shouldn’t have done it.’ He got up and took the percolator out of her hands, pouring two mugs of black coffee. ‘It’s not too late, Maggie. We can send them back, honey. It’s not as though they’re settled here yet.’
She shook her head violently. ‘No, no. We must keep them. I want to keep them. I do really.’ Accepting a mug from him she sipped it, quick gasping sips, blowing the steam from the nutty black liquid. ‘I suppose I’m just tired and depressed after the strain of the first day on my own.’ She smiled wanly. ‘I’ll get used to it. We’ve got to win through with them, Dan, somehow. Make it up to them for what’s happened. That’s all that matters now.’
Next day was easier. She worked in the kitchen while they watched TV for half an hour. Then she called them in to help her with the baking. Hal was full of enthusiasm, kneeling up on a stool, one of her aprons tied under his armpits and was soon merrily covered in flour. She glanced at Mary-Sue who was sitting next to him toying listlessly with a spoon. The little girl had great dark circles under her eyes as if she hadn’t slept, although each night when Maggie had looked in at the children both had been lying still, breathing evenly in the little yellow-draped room.