Chapter Two
Marc says, “You’ll hem and haw, but we both know you’re going to go.”
He’s right. Again.
Maggie is walking across campus. She’d stayed long enough so it would not appear that anyone had run her off, but as soon as the speeches were done and the mingling began again in earnest, Maggie slipped out.
“So,” Marc continues, “what do you think Doctor Barlow wants?”
“I was hoping you’d have an answer,” Maggie says.
“Hmm, let me do a quick search on him… whoa.”
“What?”
“Did you know Evan Barlow is on the Forbes list of richest doctors?”
Maggie makes a face. “Forbes has a list of richest doctors?”
“Top one hundred, yeah.”
“And Barlow is on it?”
“Number forty-two. Net worth estimated at nearly a billion dollars.”
“He makes that as a doctor?”
“Not really, no. He makes it as, I don’t know, I guess you’d call him a medical entrepreneur. Barlow Cosmetics is a major brand. Plastic surgery is still their mainstay, but they’ve gotten into home remedies and beauty products. Ironic.”
“What?”
“None of the richest doctors made their money seeing patients. It’s either from pharmaceuticals or insurance or patents. A few doing biotech, pushing the bounds of medicine, as their slogan says.”
“So what does Doctor Barlow want with me?”
On the too-small screen, Marc shrugs. “He was your favorite teacher, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your mentor. Close to your family.”
Maggie nods. “He told me tonight that he’d always been in love with my mother.”
“So maybe that’s it. Maybe he just wants to help you out.”
“How?”
“Give you a job at Barlow Cosmetics.”
“But I lost my license. I can’t do surgery.”
“You could still do some other kind of work for him.”
“Like what? I’m only good at one thing.” Maggie sees the smirk on Marc’s face. She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Don’t say it.”
Marc smiles. “What?”
“Just don’t.”
“You mean about you only being good at one thing?”
“Stop.”
“Okay, okay,” he says, raising his hand in mock surrender. “But I still think it’s most likely Barlow knows your situation and wants to help.”
Because her head is down and her eyes are on the screen, Maggie nearly bumps into a group of students walking in the other direction.
One of them mutters something about watching where she’s going, and she offers a sincere apology because, to be fair, she hates when people are walking with their heads down and eyes on the screen.
“What else do you see?” she asks.
“He opened the first Barlow Cosmetic Center seventeen years ago. Supposedly it’s cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.”
“What’s the difference between those?” Maggie asks.
“What?”
“They always say that in ads. ‘Cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.’ Aren’t they the same thing?”
“Cutting edge refers to the most recent and advanced tools or platforms in a particular field. State of the art refers to the best technology or techniques made up of the most modern methods.”
Maggie makes a face. “You just looked that up.”
“I did, yes.”
“He wasn’t a billionaire when we were at Columbia,” she says. “He did cleft lift and palates, burns, reconstructive surgery. Worked almost exclusively with the underserved.”
“Like you,” Marc says.
Maggie shakes her head. “Like us.”
“I never did a cleft—”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, yeah. Either way, all that is probably in his past. My guess is, Barlow does mostly breast augmentation and facelifts now. The details on his practice are pretty secretive.”
“He’s got some famous clients,” she says. “They probably demand discretion.”
“Probably.”
She thinks about it and then figures, Why not? “I saw Sleazy Steve.”
“Did he hit on you?”
“Yes, but he can pull younger tail now.”
“Younger tail?”
“Apparently that’s a thing.” Then she says, “He said he works at Apollo Longevity.” When there’s no reply, she says, “I thought it closed down.”
“It still has its original mission: longevity. Blood spinning, ozone therapies, cell regeneration, stem cell, EBOO therapy.” He grins. “All cutting-edge and state-of-the-art.”
“But WorldCures is out?”
“There is no more WorldCures, Maggie.”
Just like that. Matter-of-fact as can be.
“Right,” she says. “I know.”
“So when are you going up to New York?”
“Tomorrow morning,” she says. “I’m going to call your dad at Vipers, see if he’s around.”
“Have you seen him recently?”
“Not since he and the gang road-tripped through here last month.”
“How’s he doing?”
“You know Porkchop,” she says.
Marc doesn’t say anything, just waits.
“He’s good,” she lies.
Maggie turns the final corner. Up ahead is the saltbox colonial she grew up in and where she now resides with her sister Sharon and nephew Cole.
“Maggie?”
“Yes?”
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
She stops. “About the meeting with Barlow?”
“Yes.”
A cold finger traces down her spine. “What makes you say that?”
“Nothing. I mean, no facts or anything.”
“Just a bad feeling?”
“Yes.”
“Except,” Maggie says, “you don’t work off feelings.”
No reply.
When Maggie sees her nephew step out of the house, she hits the red disconnect icon and drops the phone in her pocket.
Cole pops on a huge smile when he sees his aunt.
It’s been a tough year for the kid—too much death, divorce, and debt for a fifteen-year-old boy—but Cole always manages a smile for his aunt and his mother.
Maggie doesn’t know whether the smiles are authentic or not.
She suspects not. Cole is so damn kind and perceptive, Maggie suspects that he sees the stress his mother and aunt are under and does his utter best not to add to it.
“Hey, Aunt Maggie.”
She gives Cole a hey back. He starts a gangly, endearing trudge toward her. It tweaks her heart, the humanness of his sputtering movements, his youth and vulnerability.
“How’s Mom?” Maggie asks.
His face falls. “She’s at the kitchen table again.”
“It’ll be okay,” Maggie tells him. Then: “She’ll be okay.”
“Your being here, with us—I know it’s not your responsibility—”
“It’s my responsibility,” Maggie says.
Cole nods, forces the smile back onto his face. The honk of a horn draws their attention. A car pulls up with a bunch of teens hanging out the windows. They call to Cole, who looks an apology at her, but Maggie smiles and waves him off.
“Go,” she says.
“You sure?”
“I got this.”
Cole does the gangly trudge toward the car, though this time with more speed. Maggie watches, glad for this bit of normalcy. Her nephew deserves this. The back door opens and swallows him whole.
When the car vanishes down the road, she takes out her phone and calls Vipers. She hears the ringing of the retro black payphone in the corner of the bar with a sign reading OUT OF ORDER so no patrons use it. This is Porkchop’s version of a Batphone. Her father-in-law,
Porkchop—yes, that’s what everyone, even his son, calls him—
redefines old school. He doesn’t own a mobile phone or computer.
For that matter he doesn’t own a house or car or television.
Porkchop once told her, “All I own is a motorcycle and the open road,” and when she made a face, he shrugged and said, “I read that on a matchbook in some biker bar in Sturgis.”
When the phone is picked up, a woman speaks. She sounds somehow both young and like she’s seen it all. “Vipers for Bikers.”
Maggie can hear the customary background racket of the biker bar.
“Bat Out of Hell” is on the jukebox, one of Porkchop’s favorites, Meatloaf right now rocking that when the night is over, he’ll be gone, gone, gone.
Maggie and Marc played the song at their wedding, she and Marc and Porkchop and Sharon standing in a circle on the dance floor, shouting every lyric at the top of their lungs until Marc pulled her close and the world vanished and the song softened for a moment and Marc sang along that she’s the only thing in this whole world that’s pure and good and right.
And then they stared at each other until the song picked back up again and she’s reminded that Meatloaf is really singing about their last night together and the stanza ends with him screaming, “We’ll both be so alone. ”
“Is Porkchop there?”
“No.”
Maggie can see the scene—that jukebox in the corner, the sawdust on the floor, the collection of neon beer signs, the heady smell of worn leather, diesel fuel, and testosterone.
“Can I leave a message for him?”
“Depends. You one of his old ladies?”
“Old ladies,” Maggie repeats. “Did Porkchop tell you to say that?”
“Yeah.”
The man never changes.
“Tell him it’s Maggie.”
The woman doesn’t bother with an “Okay” or “I will.” She just hangs up.
Maggie puts away her phone and enters the house, nearly tripping over a pair of Cole’s sneakers the size of small canoes. “Hello?”
“In the kitchen,” Sharon calls back.
The house is stuck somewhere in the… Maggie wasn’t even sure of the era.
Seventies? Eighties? When you grow up in it, you don’t get how dated your own home is, and of course there is nothing wrong with that.
The green-beige curtains are too heavy with tassels.
The Persian carpets are pattern-complicated and threadbare.
The antique “knickknack cabinet”—that’s what Mom had called it—has dozens of small, silver-framed photographs, most of them black-and-white, along with various cheesy figurines like Hummel children—boy in apple tree, girl with umbrella, that kind of thing.
They had always been there, as far as Maggie knew.
She didn’t remember her parents ever buying or putting one up or moving one or changing any.
None of the knickknacks seemed to hold any particular significance to her parents.
They never talked about where the Hummels came from, but Maggie assumes, knowing her parents, that someone had gifted them or they’d inherited them and their fate was either storage in the basement or placement on the knickknack cabinet.