Prom Night in Purgatory(38)

“Are you okay, Maggie?” Lizzie said softly, straddling her bike next to Maggie, who sat staring dejectedly at the quiet automotive shop.

“I am in love with someone who doesn’t know I exist,” Maggie tried to laugh at what she’d meant to be an inside joke, but the laughter stuck in her throat.

Lizzie looked at the automotive shop and back at Maggie. Lizzie Honeycutt was many things, but dumb wasn’t one of them. “You’re in love with Billy Kinross? Already?”

“No. I’m not in love with Billy.” Maggie smiled ruefully and turned away from the empty storefront, climbing back onto the seat of her bike and positioning one foot on the ground and one on a pedal.

“Johnny?” Lizzie squeaked, as if Maggie had just confessed her love for the King of England. “You love Johnny Kinross?”

Maggie felt tears prick her eyes. It seemed Johnny was out of her league even in 1958. She started to pedal back down Main Street, Lizzie trying to keep pace behind her. She knew her way home, but the return trip was not as filled with wonder and excitement as the trip to town had been. Maggie felt a sluggishness in her muscles and a fatigue in her weary head that had her fearing her time was closing fast. When they reached the house, she climbed the stairs and fell across Lizzie’s bed, barely able to keep her eyes open.

“Maggie?” Lizzie’s voice was small and scared, and Maggie opened her eyes with great effort. “Are you sick?”

“No, Lizzie. I don’t think so. I just think I might not be able to stay much longer.” Maggie felt Lizzie pull off her shoes and cover her with a light blanket. “Please don’t go yet Maggie. I’ll be right back. Hold on, okay?”

Maggie nodded a little, her head feeling like it weighed eighty pounds. In what could have been only a minute or two, Lizzie was back. She crawled up beside Maggie on the bed and, snuggling close, tucked her hand inside Maggie’s.

“I’ve told Nana that I’m feeling tired; I have been sick after all. I told her I was going to bed. She is waiting for the Mod Squad to come on. I don’t think she’ll move from the sofa for the rest of the night. I am going to hold your hand while you sleep. I’m going to hold your hand so tight that you won’t be able to go.”

“Thank you, Lizzie,” Maggie sighed.

“I was thinking. You have to stay at least one more day. If you’re going to make Johnny Kinross fall in love with you, that is.”

“Hmm?” Maggie was trying desperately to follow the conversation and fading fast.

“How do all the princesses get the princes to fall in love with them? They go to the ball, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So tomorrow is the prom. You go to the prom, ask Johnny to dance, make him fall in love with you. Simple. So you can’t leave yet.”

The problem was that when the clock struck twelve, Maggie might not just turn back into Cinderella; she may disappear altogether. With glass slippers and coaches that became pumpkins dancing through her head, Maggie succumbed to a slumber that would rival the Sleeping Beauty.

***

“Lizzie, how did your mother die?” Maggie looked at the girl beside her. “I don’t think Irene ever told me.” Maggie had awakened in the night to discover that she had not turned back into Cinderella after all. Lizzie had been true to her word, and her hand was tucked into Maggie’s, her other arm wrapped around her elbow. Lizzie had awakened almost immediately, and now they lay in the dark, talking quietly.

“She got sick. She had cancer.”

“I’m sorry, Lizzie.” Maggie wanted to tell her that she understood how it felt to be a motherless child. But telling Lizzie would be wrong. After all, she would be telling her about her own daughter’s death, a death that had occurred after Lizzie herself had succumbed to what had most likely killed Lizzie and Irene’s mother.

“Why, Maggie?”

“Do you ever think about what life would have been like if she hadn’t died, if she was still here?”

Lizzie lay quietly, not answering for several minutes. Only the tightening of her hand relayed that she hadn’t drifted back to sleep. Maggie wondered if the topic was too much for the little girl, and cursed herself for letting her mind wander into the complexities of altering history, and then musing out loud. But when Lizzie finally spoke, her voice was troubled but not full of grief.

“Maybe if Momma were here, she would tell Irene to stay away from Roger. Daddy doesn’t ever say anything. He thinks Roger’s swell.”

Maggie stiffened with the unexpected turn of the conversation. “And you don’t think he’s.....swell?” Maggie had never said the word “swell” in her life.

“No,” Lizzie whispered. Maybe it was the dark room or the silence of the sleeping house, or even the distance she had traveled, but Maggie felt the hair rise on her neck and arms. When Lizzie didn’t offer further explanation, Maggie asked the obvious, almost afraid to know the answer.

“Why, Lizzie?”

“You know how he called me Dizzy Lizzie?” Lizzie’s voice was so hushed that Maggie shifted in the bed until her forehead rested against Lizzie’s.

“Roger?”

“Yes. He and his friends call me Dizzy Lizzie.”

“I just assumed it was because it rhymed -- just a silly nickname.”