Prom Night in Purgatory(29)

Hardly daring to breath, Maggie stood and turned to face him. The swing still hung between them, but she leaned through it and wrapped her arms around him, laying her head lightly on his shoulder. Johnny was about as stiff and welcoming as a wooden plank, but she didn’t move or release him. After a moment she felt the tension in his shoulders lessen, and he sighed, the sound broken and regretful. His arms rose and encircled her. When he spoke again, his voice was almost tender.

“That morning in the gym, when I was watching you dance -- for a minute it all felt so familiar, and I could see how loving you might be. I understood how I could have fallen for you.”

Maggie held her breath, burying her face in his shoulder, wishing she could just stop time for a moment, wondering how loving someone could hurt so much. She could feel the hesitation in him and knew he had more to say.

“But none of this feels real. I just want to wake up and have it all be over. If this were 1958, and I was just a guy and you were my girl, it would be different...”

Maggie started, pulling away from him with a gasp. Her head spun, as if time had turned over. He had said the very same words to her the night of the Winter Ball, when it had been just the two of them, dancing to songs nobody ever danced to anymore.

“Maggie?” Johnny stopped mid-sentence when she pulled away, and he looked down at her, questioning. The moon played across one side of his face and left the right side in shadows, making him look more ghostly than he ever did when he’d haunted Honeyville High.

“If I were just a guy, and you were my girl, I would never let you go,” Maggie repeated softly. “You’ve said those words to me before. But it’s never going to happen, is it? You’re not just any guy, and I will never be your girl.”

Johnny stared down at her for several long seconds. She stared back, and above them the wind moaned mournfully through the trees. The sound echoed the longing in Maggie's heart.

“I just want to go home, Maggie,” Johnny’s voice was barely louder than the wind. “I just want to go home.”





~9~

A Time to Weep





It was much, much later when Maggie was awakened by the sounds of bumping and dragging above her. Her room was just a short flight of stairs below the large attic filled with decades of Honeycutt memorabilia. She lay in bed, listening, still too sleepy to be frightened, yet unable to ignore the fact that something or someone was in the attic. When she had dragged herself in from Johnny’s car earlier that night, she had avoided Irene because she didn’t want to share her pain and knew she couldn’t hide it. She had avoided even her own reflection because she knew it was written all over her face. She had crawled into her bed, and Irene had stuck her head in after a while. Irene hadn’t said anything, and Maggie had feigned sleep. Irene had stared for several long moments and then pulled the door shut again, sighing a little as she did.

Now, several hours later, Maggie was pulled from sweet oblivion and felt resentful of the boogie man who had disturbed what little peace she had left. Tossing off the blankets, she grumbled to her bedroom door and wobbled up the stairs to the attic. The stairway was lit, and Maggie could see that the lights in the attic were also blazing.

“Aunt Irene?” Maggie rubbed her bleary eyes and looked at the disorder around her. Just a few months ago she’d organized every inch of the space. Now it was a disaster. Boxes were over turned and dresses pulled out of protective zippered linings. A few hats had been tossed helter skelter, and in the corner, with tears streaming down her face, Irene Honeycutt sat on a faded love seat in a gauzy peach formal, hair done and make-up on. Thoughts of Dickens’ Miss Havisham from freshman year English rose unbidden in Maggie’s head, and she shuddered a bit at the comparison.

The dress was loose at the bust; Irene’s frail shoulders and shrunken chest didn’t fill it out as well as her younger self. The waist was pulled tight, where age had thickened her youthful form, but she had managed to zip it, even still. She looked terribly uncomfortable.

“Irene?” Maggie said again, trying not to overreact at finding the bride of Frankenstein crying in her attic in the middle of the night.

“Hello, dear,” Irene burbled, attempting cheeriness and normalcy, and failing miserably. “I was just wondering if I could fit into this old thing...I was up here looking for Lizzie’s record player. I don’t know what I’ve done with it.”

“You’re all dolled up. Make up and hair at three a.m., Auntie?” Maggie sat down next to Irene on the dusty love seat and reached out to finger the skirt of the peach confection.

“Go ahead, say it, I’m a silly old woman!” Irene tried to smile, but her words ended in a sob, and she mopped at her eyes with an old flannel doll blanket.

Maggie didn’t respond to that. Irene wasn’t silly. She was sad and obviously troubled about something. Maggie wondered if it had anything to do with seeing Johnny Kinross back from the grave, sitting in all his youthful glory in front of her house earlier in the day.

“This is beautiful. Is it the dress you wore to the prom? I think I recognize it from one of the pictures in Roger’s scrapbook.”

“It’s funny...I remember wearing red to the prom. I came up here looking for the dress. I know I have a red dress.”

“So you didn’t come up here looking for the record player?” Maggie poked at her and tried not to smile.