Chapter 47
THEN: MAGGIE
Betrayal. That’s all Maggie could feel these days.
Which, she surmised, made her realize that before today, what she had felt was simply numbness.
She preferred the numbness. It was crazy how familiar that depressing feeling had become, but it was at least familiar. This was everything she’d feared.
“Mags,” Damien started.
“No, we promised! You promised. You promised me.” Maggie could hear the ice in her own voice and relished it.
She felt it, she was livid. How could he do this?
After everything, everything they’d sacrificed, she’d sacrificed.
And then there was Maya, oh god, what were they going to tell Maya?
She was in school and out of the house, but still this was her home they — no, he, was destroying.
What would people say? Think? Where would she go?
Maggie looked back at her husband, and saw that there was real pain in him. Her heart ached because she knew him, she knew this hurt him, knew this request was going to take as much out of him as her, if not more.
“Mags, we were so young, we were—”
“About the same age as our daughter, or have you forgotten?” Maggie said, running her hands through the strands of her light brown hair, though the summer sun had kissed it to more of a dirty blonde.
It was a color that Damien had said he loved, had said made her look alive and happy.
She doubted he saw traces of either in her expression now.
She could feel the heat in her skin and knew she had turned a shade of red.
Knew by the trembling in her hands and the tears in her eyes that she was nothing short of deranged at this point.
Maggie rarely got angry, she rarely got anything at all truthfully, but now that she was she gave into it deeply.
She felt like years of anger had bubbled to the surface. All the flirtations she never reciprocated, all the lingering moments she never got to indulge in. All the times she told herself to grin and bear it.
They were standing in the bedroom of the home they’d spent the last twenty years building.
Every nook and cranny of the place was etched with familial memories.
Maggie looked at the bed they’d shared and realized they never would again.
Then she thought about the house, the home, they wouldn’t share again.
As their deep breathing filled the silence between them with raw emotion, it was like their life together was flashing before her eyes.
They’d been young when they met, seniors in college.
They had met at a party, and under the black light of a frat house and the influence of alcohol, a bit of pot, Maggie admitted, they’d clicked.
More than clicked. When they met it was like they knew each other.
All of the quiet parts of themselves were heard automatically by the other.
An unspoken understanding. And that, Maggie thought, was as good as it was going to get for her.
Damien, she thought, had felt the same way.
Sure, they received some blowback from the idea of a Black man and a white woman dating, but it felt like the type of blowback they could handle. Honorable: fighting for true regular love. They clung to this notion like they clung to each other.
Once they graduated, they’d also gotten engaged as agreed.
There had been a wedding; what for most was a joyous celebration was a painfully awkward one for them, considering their differing families.
Maggie knew it bothered her mother that her daughter was getting everything she had ever told her to get, but was getting it from a Black man.
The mere notion that Damien came from money was enough to keep a scowl on her mother’s face.
Her father drank too much and Damien’s parents had judged them openly, which of course, made her mother scowl more.
It was also at the wedding that Maggie was able to put together the missing pieces of Damien’s history and fully understand his situation.
His family was a very proud family from the American South.
Being able to accumulate wealth in the era of Jim Crow was nearly impossible, and yet the Jacksons had managed to do so.
They’d come a long way, and so while there were hints that the Jackson’s were less than pleased with Maggie’s socio-economic background, Maggie also could almost feel the relief from his mother that Damien was in fact marrying a woman.
Both Damien and Maggie were young, and they had the same secret.
Both were impulsive and easily molded by the society around them, so once they were married and the inquiries about children started from Damien’s family, they’d considered it a natural next step.
Maggie had always wanted to be a mother, and truthfully, they both loved each other, even if they knew deep down it was not romantic, so they had tried a couple times and been lucky.
When they had Maya, it was a relief. They’d finally done it, the thing, and now they wouldn’t have to go beyond the cuddles they both loved. Each other’s place of solace and refuge.
Until now.
“Mags,” Damien began again, his dark brown eyes red-rimmed from the tears he’d shed when he first told her that they needed to divorce.
“Mags, we were so young, yes, the same age as Maya is now. And what would you do, if Maya came home next semester to tell you she was getting married? Can you honestly say that you would feel good about that?”
“If she were in love—”
“Mags—”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Maggie, Margaret, we both know that while we deeply love each other... I always thought that would be enough, but now,” he paused and shook his head, “it’s like I just broke the surface of life without having realized I was underwater the whole time, drowning.”
“Drowning?” Maggie repeated, wounded, not because it wasn’t true, but because she knew it was. She knew because while she had been drowning, it was nice to have had him beside her. Now it was like she was watching him swim towards the surface while she continued on in the murky dark depths alone.
“It’s not you, or me, or us, you know it isn’t like that. But now that I know, I—”
“You can’t go back,” she finished for him.
Because it was also something she knew to be true.
It was all the reasons why she’d worked so hard to remain numb over the years.
Maggie had only known true romantic love once and had abandoned it.
It had left a gaping hole inside of her that Damien, coupled with the intense love she felt for her daughter, managed to fill.
Maya was at school, close, but she would be moving on eventually, on to her own life. And now Damien was leaving her.
“Mags!” Damien shouted her name, but it wasn’t in anger. Maggie recognized the harsh tone for what it was: a plea to see reason. A reason they’d both decided they hadn’t needed until now.
“We deserve to be happy Mags, we deserve to be truly and completely happy. And now, now that I know, Jesus, Mags this is the rest of our lives,” Damien spoke like she hadn’t considered it. Like she hadn’t known what she was signing up for. She realized now that he hadn’t.
“I am —”
“You are not happy Mags, do not lie to me. Do not lie to the man, your husband, your friend, who picked you up off the floor last year thinking they’d lost you, that they were going to have to tell their child that their mother was—gone,” his voice hitched on the last words.
And Maggie was hit with a wave of guilt.
It had been an accident, a terrible accident, but one of her own making. Too much booze and too many pills.
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said quietly, and then because she had to know, “Is that why? Did I? Is that why you decided to leave?” Maggie sat down on the bed and placed her head in her hands.
It felt good to sit and she took a second to let the tension of the conversation redistribute its weight in her body.
“No,” Damien’s voice came out smooth and lovingly. She felt him sit next to her, and then felt him slide an arm around her waist.
After a long moment he said, “To be honest, it was Maya.” Maggie rushed to look up at him, terror gripping her heart. Damien tipped his head back and shook his head slightly, “I mean, she doesn’t know what she did for me that day, when she told us.”
Maggie did; it was a moment when she had been immensely proud of her daughter, but also, shamefully resentful. She knew what it meant to Damien, too.
“So what now, you’re just going to go ahead and live your best gay life?” Maggie asked, allowing Damien to push a lock of her hair over her shoulder, offering up the physical touch as the peace offering she knew he’d understand it to be.
“Things are different now, Mags. Our daughter taught me that being your authentic self is everything, and true love is worth it, so I am going to try.” He leaned in and pressed his full lips to her forehead.
Against her skin he said, “You should too, you should call her,” and she felt the gooseflesh rise on her arms, as if her spirit was being summoned by his uttered truth.