Maggie
She watches as Nancy leaves, Elliot still holding the baby, now in a football-type grip.
He walks slowly and she hears him say, “Who’s our happy boy?
” She wishes Paige would come out so she could ask her about this.
She leans over the railing, and Elliot and the baby are walking out the side door, probably to his camper.
She looks down to see if Bridget is there, but the lobby is quiet.
“Paige sent me to help out in here for a bit,” she says.
“Nifty.” Phil smiles, and for a second, she gets the strangest feeling. She looks at Phil, who’s sorting a pile of receipts, and he looks up at her.
“Did you know my brother, Chip?”
He puts the receipts down, and his eyes change. He looks at her in disbelief, then smiles and shakes his head. “Know him? I’m the one who drove him home.”
She rests her arm on the bar and feels like it’s finally real.
Yes, Rhonda and Paige knew Chip, but they haven’t told her much, and Bridget said she and Chip only overlapped for a little bit.
But now Phil, in this down-to-earth, humble way, is rubbing his sideburns and nodding.
His roommate! “That kid. I loved him, Maggie.” He pours himself a beer from the tap and raises his eyebrows, asking her if she wants one, too.
“No thanks.” She picks up a cocktail napkin.
“Did you know he was sick?” Now that the words are out, she wishes she did have something to drink.
Her throat is dry. A young couple studies a chessboard in the corner, and the couple with the gin and tonics hold hands as they talk.
Maggie looks at the big, empty fireplace and imagines it in autumn with a crackling fire.
“No idea at first.” He looks around, but everyone’s drinks seem okay, and there are no tables to clear.
“I mean, the kid looked like some all-American movie star. Who would think he was dying?” He wipes his forehead.
“I mean, I guess there were clues. He just looked bone-tired sometimes, and he asked me to take him to the hospital once, and dumb me, I believed him when he said it was for insulin or whatever.” He rolls his eyes.
“More serious than that, I’d say.” He sighs.
“But what a guy. Smart. Fun. Respectful. I felt so shitty, like in my depths, when I pulled away from your house that day.” He clears his throat.
“We had some other roommate issues before that which he used his politician magic to fix, but that’s another story. ”
She is curious but decides to stay on the topic of Chip. “So you think he was happy here?”
“Shit, I know he was.” He crosses his arms and leans back on the balls of his feet.
“At the end of last summer, he said he’d better get going.
” He pauses like he has more to say but seems to decide against it.
“By that point, most of us had figured it out, and he had told some people and whatnot.” He sucks air through his teeth.
“I always get weird at the end of summer. I think it’s like that back-to-school nervous crap that stays with you even when you’re older.
” He looks at her, and his hazel eyes are so earnest. “But I don’t remember another end of summer that hurt me so bad as when he left, Maggie. ”
She nods. “So he was a piece of the puzzle.”
“Like a brother to us.”
She wonders who else is included in “us,” but before she can ask, his eyes light up.
“Have you spoken to Nancy yet?”
“Oh, I just met Nancy. Did she know him, too?” Maggie starts to shred her napkin.
He raises his eyebrows at her. “Nancy more than knew him.”
She glances down the hallway, and Rhonda’s door is still closed, so she rushes off to look for Nancy.
Bridget tells her Nancy has a small office tucked behind the main desk.
Maggie finds her door, and it’s closed. She knocks.
One of the guys from Facilities walks by and looks at her.
“I think she’s setting up in the event barn,” he says. “Some kind of game show.” He shrugs.
“Oh, thanks.” She hurries out, Bridget looking at her in a concerned way, and jogs across the field.
She sees a few people in the pool, and two older ladies getting ice cream and sitting at the umbrella-shaded tables.
She sees the woman who organizes athletic events hoist herself onto one of the horses and trot around the gated area.
She looks for Nancy in the big converted barn, and she sees two tables set up and some kind of board with trivia questions on it.
She sees a microphone and speaker and a set of cymbals.
“Nancy!” she calls, not knowing what she’ll say when she sees her.
But Phil said they were an item, together for a while, and she wants to know everything.
She doesn’t feel protective over Chip the way she used to when one of her friends would say he was cute and ask her if there was any chance Chip would take them to homecoming or prom.
She feels half excited, half puzzled. Why didn’t Nancy or anyone from Red Maple come to his funeral?
Why didn’t she come see him in the hospital?
Apparently, Chip kept them all at bay, and when it was time to go, he made a clean break.
“Nancy?” she calls again, but no one answers. She sees the crew lodge in the distance and Elliot’s camper, and wonders if maybe Nancy is there. They seem to like to play house, Maggie thinks, remembering Nancy handing him the baby. Is it their baby? Why has no one mentioned a baby before?
She could knock on Elliot’s door to see if Nancy is there. But she doesn’t want to talk to them if they’re together. She plays with her hair and gets lost in her thoughts for a second, thinking she really needs to get back to the office to see if Rhonda’s free yet.
But then she hears a sound from Elliot’s camper that splits her body in half. Moaning. Absolute pain.
“I’m sorry,” he yells, and his screams almost shake the walls.
She sprints to the door but stands back for a second when she reaches it. She realizes how stupid she is to be there alone. What if he’s being attacked? What happened to the baby? Is Nancy in there with him? Maggie has nothing but her concern. What use will she be?
But he is crying, and she can’t stop moving toward the sound.
She peers through his window, and her heart knocks like an impatient visitor.
She can see him and no one else. He’s sitting on the floor, his back against a small sofa, his head in his hands.
She waits for someone to jump out, to grab her, or to see another person inside, but there’s nothing. Nothing.
Is the baby okay?
“I didn’t know!” he says, loud and broken and angry, and it occurs to her that he is alone.
She wants to back up, to leave, to never mention it to anyone, but he is so hurt, so lost, that all she can do is call to him.
“Goddamn it,” he grumbles when he opens the door, seeming so much taller than she is. He wipes his face and groans. “What’s up, Maggie?”
“What on earth is going on?” She tries to look inside.
“Ghosts.” He leaves the door open, so she follows as he plops on the couch. “Damn ghosts. I tried to take a quick nap, and I just saw it all over again.”
She sits next to him. “You’re okay. You’re away from all that now. It can’t hurt you anymore.”
He clenches his fists. “It’s never gone,” and he looks at her, his eyes stripped down and bare. “You have no idea. I can’t erase it. It’s like I ate something awful, and nothing will make the taste go away. I’m sick of it. It’s eating me alive. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
He is digging his fingers into his legs now, and she doesn’t know how to help him, but she starts by taking his hands in hers. “Stop.” She touches his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything that makes it better or worse?”
“My dreams make it worse. They’re so vivid, and I wake up sweating and scared shitless, which is what just happened.
” He gets up, then walks over to a mini refrigerator and pulls out a beer, pops off the top, and chugs it.
“Want one?” He pauses for a second. “Sorry, I don’t have Shirley Temple ingredients here. ”
“I’ll take a beer,” she says, even though it’s still early in the day and she’s supposed to be working. He tosses her a bottle and she catches it. The beer is cold and perfect, and she sinks back into the sofa. “Thanks.”
He takes another pull and wipes his brow. “So why are you here?”
“I heard screams and thought someone was being hurt.”
“Pretty brave of you.”
“I’m sure you’d do the same.”
He puts his hands behind his head and shrugs.
She sets her bottle down. “What else makes it worse?”
“Lots of stuff. When I hear a branch snap. Thunder. When someone dumps out a bag of stuff near me. Heat and humidity. A certain smell in the air.”
She nods and watches him and just tries to listen.
Mrs. Ayers told her once that listening is a gift to another person, that it can take some of their load away.
Mrs. Ayers’s husband was also in Vietnam, and she said sometimes she’d just sit there and listen to him and let him say all that he felt about it.
Maggie straightens and tries to pretend she can be as helpful as Cat Ayers.
Elliot rubs his beard. “One time, a customer had had a few too many drinks, and he tossed a ball on the pool table, and it made a loud, cracking noise when it hit the other balls. I jumped down and covered my head, and everyone laughed.” He shakes his head. “They thought I was fucking joking.”
“Oh, Elliot.” She looks around. His small bed is like a shelf on the wall, and he has a tiny table by the kitchenette with two chairs.
All kinds of books are piled in the corner and there’s a small brown radio.
But she can see why he prefers this over the dorm.
It’s all his. She rests her chin in her hand.
“I think we can get you used to those sounds, you just need some counterconditioning. I think there was an experiment with a boy named Peter and a rabbit where he was afraid of them but learned to be okay with rabbits after a while.”
“Good lord,” he says. “I wish I was only scared of a bunny.”
She sips some more beer and is getting used to the taste. “We’re imprisoned by many things, and they don’t always make sense.”
He looks around and stretches. “Don’t you want to know what makes me better?” he says and raises an eyebrow.
“I’m not sure that I do?”
“Funny. What helps is if I can sleep. A good, deep sleep seems to drown out the weird visions, but it’s hard to come by.”
“Well, what helps you sleep?” She looks at his bed, the dark green blanket over white sheets.
“I can sleep if I know someone is watching over things. That’s when I feel better.
Like sometimes I go to my grandparents’ house for a weekend, and just knowing they are home, my grandma chopping vegetables and baking cakes.
I hear the noises and feel comfortable and sleep.
My grandpa even takes the phone off the hook for a while. ”
She pauses. “Do you work tonight?”
“Off, thank God.”
“Then I’ll come by and I’ll watch over things so you can sleep.” She thinks for a minute about the baby. He was just holding it earlier. Whose is it? Where did it go? She keeps feeling like she’s imagining it, like no one else is seeing it. She can’t bring herself to ask him.
He looks at her, and his eyes are bright. “For real?”
“Yes.”
“What’ll you do?”
“Sit up and watch out for you.” She looks around. “I’ll read some of your books or bring my own.”
“You sure?” He makes that face again like when he was in the pool.
“Positive.”
“It’s a date, then. I’ll see you tonight.”
She glares at him. “It’s not a date.”
“Regardless,” he says, “I’ll be in bed.”