Looking for Jane (102)
“Go!” the young nun urges, shoving her in the back, and Maggie bursts out of the garden gate just as a girl’s scream from the front hall pierces the quiet dawn.
* * *
Maggie pushes open the iron gate to her brother Jack’s house, vaguely registering the familiar creak of the hinges, then stumbles her way up the gravel path. He never responded to any of her letters and eventually she gave up sending them, but Jack is her only option. If he won’t take her in, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.
She knocks on the front door, then reaches a weak arm out to steady herself against the brown brick. She can already feel her body sinking into itself. For a moment she worries that her brother and his wife aren’t home, and wonders if she’ll have to huddle against the porch railing and wait for them to return. But then Maggie hears her sister-in-law’s high-pitched voice call from inside the house. There’s movement rippling in the glass before a lock slides back and the door opens.
“Maggie! Good Lord!”
“I need a bath,” Maggie says stupidly, leaning more of her weight onto her wobbling arm, her thin skin pressing into the rough surface of the brick.
“Jack! Come quickly!” Lorna screams over her shoulder as Maggie collapses to the ground.
* * *
Maggie closes the bathroom door behind her. Her sister-in-law has draped an assortment of fussy lace doilies over the back of the toilet tank. Several pots of face and hand creams are clustered together on the counter beside the sink. Rolls of fluffy pink hand towels are folded with unnatural neatness on a shelf above the toilet.
Maggie turns the brass key in the lock and hears it slide into place with a satisfying click. She doesn’t want to be disturbed. For months now, she has not had a moment alone. She craves peace and quiet and solitude and an end to the chaos. Her brother told her to go take a bath, then have a nap, and that they would talk once she had rested awhile.
She grips her hands on the edge of the counter now, bracing her weak body as she observes herself in the mirror. The girls were not allowed a mirror at the home, but it’s only now that Maggie truly wonders why they were denied one; she can barely stand to look at her reflection, meet her own eyes, heavy with an indescribable exhaustion she fears she won’t ever recover from. Her complexion is pallid, her features sunken and waxy. Her cheekbones are sharper than she’s ever seen them.
Maggie glances down at the stack of Chatelaine magazines in the rack beside the toilet. A fresh young brunette graces the cover with penciled brows, red lips, and full, rouged cheeks. Pretty and clean and new. She’ll teach you how to make the perfect Bundt cake for Sunday tea and settle a fussy child. How to clean your husband’s shirts to pure white perfection, starched and ironed and ready for him each morning. Maggie wonders if the smiling cover girl can also offer lessons on how to scrub away the sweat and blood of the past, the incriminating stains of transgressions and bad fortune. Lipstick from your husband’s collar in a shade you don’t own.
Maggie leans over the bathtub and turns on the hot water at full blast, barely tempering it with cold. She spent months feeling cold both inside and out, and now she wants her skin to burn. When the tub is full, she begins to take off her clothes, muscles aching as she unties her nightgown and pulls off her underwear. She steps into the water, wincing. The spot where she pulled the glass out of her foot stings in the heat. She settles herself down and lets her body float, her mind drifting along in its wake.
The house is silent, and situated on a quiet side street, but she can hear a muffled hum of traffic down on the main road a block away. A bar of her sister-in-law’s pink flowery soap rests in a seashell-shaped dish on the tub ledge. Maggie brings it to her nose and inhales deeply; the lemony rose perfume reminds her of her mother’s rosebushes, her pride and joy. Every summer her mother would pick fresh pink and white blooms from her garden and prop them in ceramic vases in every room of the house. She closes her eyes and imagines the windows open to welcome in the breeze, and the scratchiness of her Sunday church dress in the heat. Her mother in white gloves and a sun hat. Fresh lemonade and the smell of cut grass.
Maggie senses the tear tracks running down to her jawbone. How had it all gone so wrong? One night, that’s all it took. One event that separated her life into Before and After. One moment that will now define her life completely.
Her parents have disowned her. Her brother is allowing her to stay with him for the time being. But what happens when she wears out her welcome? How long can they keep her presence a secret from their parents? Will the police be coming after her?
Maggie blinks. Her eyes are so tired and scratchy they can hardly focus. She closes them again, but this time, all she can see is black. A black future with nothing in it, no landmark or point of reference to guide her. Just a never-ending expanse of darkness. She feels more exhausted than she has ever felt in her life. There is no way back. And no way forward.
Maggie runs the bar of soap up and down her arms, slowly. She has so little energy to spare. Her gaze slides into the middle distance and lands on the counter next to the sink. Her eyes focus now on the box of razor blades. Maggie stares at it for a while. Her mind is strangely blank. She isn’t even sure what exactly she’s considering. But she feels a pull toward the box.
They have already titled her a Fallen woman. How much farther can she fall? She can use one sin to erase all the others. And then she won’t have to care anymore. Her heart won’t feel like lead in her chest. Her skeletal body won’t need to recover. Her mind can finally be blank. That’s what she wants now. Darkness and silence.