Chapter 4. Maggie #2
Maggie slumped back into her chair and flipped through a Highlights magazine that looked like it had been there since she was a kid.
Everything about the office was familiar.
She remembered coming there with all her siblings, and one by one, they’d go in to have their teeth cleaned while their mother chatted with the receptionist and the rest of them watched cartoons on the TV.
Now the TV was playing the news, talking about school shootings.
Maggie was going into her junior year at Wellesley, and she’d recently started an internship at a summer school program at a local high school.
She wanted to stop watching the terrible images on the screen but felt obligated not to turn away.
Finally, she asked the receptionist to call her a taxi.
The driver seemed vaguely familiar, but they didn’t talk. He smelled like patchouli, only sweeter, and drove slow and steady, which held back the queasy sensation in Maggie’s stomach.
Once home, she started to shout Topher’s name but stopped.
Her mouth felt like an open wound, and she was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.
The house was still. She stood in the kitchen.
The answering machine blinked, probably with the message from the receptionist. Sliced tomatoes and a package of bologna were on the cutting board next to a half-filled glass of milk.
Topher must have been home because his Jeep was in the driveway.
Or was the Jeep hers now?
That morning, while they were sipping coffee on the back porch, Maggie mentioned to him that she needed a car now that she had the internship.
Out of nowhere, Topher said, “Take mine.” He’d been talking about heading to South Korea to teach English for a year, and Maggie was happy for him.
Their parents were thrilled, too. But Maggie wasn’t sure she trusted his plans, let alone his offer.
Her brother had had his Jeep for nearly ten years, and it was home to him, more than any person or place.
Plus, he had a history of making promises then changing his mind or, worse, pretending he hadn’t made them at all.
To settle the soreness in her gums, she grabbed a warm 7UP from the pantry—her mother’s cure for everything, though she insisted it needed to be flat and always stirred it with a spoon to release the bubbles.
Was Maggie supposed to drink through a straw or definitely not drink through a straw?
She had the instructions somewhere in her backpack, but she settled on the latter and cracked open the can as she walked upstairs.
It wasn’t the strangeness of the note itself.
Nor was it the Palmer penmanship, which their mother had learned from the nuns at the orphanage and insisted they practice when they were kids.
What caught Maggie’s attention was the haphazard duct tape securing the note, like a silver gash across the wooden expanse of Topher’s door.
She took a small sip and swallowed the warm, sweet soda.
Still groggy, it took her a second to grasp that the note didn’t make sense as an apology for leaving her at the dentist.
Maggie, don’t come in—call Father Kelly. I’m sorry.
The door was locked, which alarmed Maggie.
“Topher,” she yelled, and her mouth filled with blood.
She grabbed extra gauze from her pocket and fumbled to open the packaging before stuffing the pad into the fleshy wound inside her cheek.
She knocked and pressed her ear to the door to listen and called his name again.
When that didn’t work, she retrieved a butter knife from the kitchen to pick the lock.
The room was empty, but there was a smell that made her check the bottom of her sneakers.
She opened the window and a breeze flapped the curtains and scattered the papers from the desk to the floor.
She picked them up; ink drawings of the lighthouse.
Topher was the only one who’d inherited their mother’s artistic talents.
He dabbled effortlessly and beautifully.
Maggie had always assumed that this—more than Topher’s being the only boy—was what made him their mother’s favorite.
She placed the drawings back on the desk, using a worn copy of a Korean translation book as a paperweight.
Perhaps he was serious about going to South Korea after all.
She opened the window wider to see if he might be sitting on the roof, which he often did as a kid, despite their mother’s warnings. He wasn’t.
Maybe he’s at the beach. Or he went for a bike ride. Does he even have a bike anymore?
She started to leave the room when she noticed something.
There was a tiny den off Topher’s room that her parents used to store holiday decorations and winter clothes.
Maggie had never seen the door open, but now it was slightly ajar.
When she saw the tip of a sneaker jutting out from the opening, she couldn’t make sense of its height or angle.
Until, suddenly, she could.
He was too heavy to hold. The extension cord was tied in an impossible sailor’s knot she wouldn’t be able to undo even if her hands weren’t violently shaking.
Oh, God. Oh, God. She couldn’t move him and was not strong enough to lift him.
She could hear her own breath, hurried and shallow, and her voice screaming Topher’s name.
She kicked the stool he must have used out of the way but couldn’t get past the boxes of ornaments to loosen the knot gripping his bruised neck.
She grabbed the stool again but wasn’t tall enough to reach the high beam on the ceiling from which the cord hung.
Goddamn it! You just ate lunch! You didn’t even clean the fucking dishes! What about South Korea?
A gust from the window slammed the door into her back, knocking her off the stool. Her mouth gushed more blood, and she spit the gauze onto the floor. The lighthouse foghorn sounded, and all at once, she was back in her body with the startlingly clear understanding that she could not save him.
Back in the kitchen, Maggie’s hands shook so much that she could barely press 911 into the phone.
The operator answered. “What’s your emergency?”
Maggie’s mouth tasted like copper, and she could feel her heart beating in her tender gums as she answered. “I think my brother’s dead,” she said. “You have to help him. He’s dead.”
She returned to Topher’s room, sat on the edge of his bed, and stared out the window at the lighthouse. She didn’t want to leave him alone.
Before she heard the front door open, footsteps pounded up the stairs, and an EMT rushed into the room and escorted her out. Someone took her blood pressure. She was the only patient there who needed attending.
“Do you wish you had listened?” the school counselor asked when Maggie returned to Wellesley. “To his note. His warning?”
Maggie answered yes because she could not stop seeing the dazed look in Topher’s eyes and the cord digging into his swollen neck.
The smell of his soiled pants. She had nightmares about frantically trying to untangle knots.
As she sat in class or tried to fall asleep, his face would appear out of nowhere.
The school counselor told her to write down all the ways she’d supported Topher over the years.
She’d been convinced that she must have missed something the morning they spent together before her dentist appointment—something that could have let her see that he needed help.
His body’s still warm , she’d heard an EMT call out when they first arrived.
She would later learn that meant Topher hadn’t been dead very long.
If only she hadn’t wasted time in that stupid waiting room.
She could barely remember the list now, though it comforted her knowing that she’d been one of the few people who hadn’t given him a hard time for not having his life figured out.
She was almost a decade younger, and it had never been her place to question him.
Sure, it upset them all when he disappeared for months, but he was a grown man and free to lead his own life. Or, as it turned out, not.
Still, why had he made it so that she was the one who found him? She must have been picked for some reason, but she had no idea what that was.
Thirteen years had passed since then. The disturbing images no longer leapt out at her unexpectedly.
Therapy and time had helped, even if she still flinched when her students casually said, “I’d rather kill myself than do that,” or when Isabel drew the Hanged Man card from her tarot deck.
Now, days could pass without her even thinking about Topher, but when she was home, the memories were always there, roiling beneath the surface.
She didn’t want her brother’s life replaced by the nightmare of his death, but that took effort.
She turned from the window and sat on the bed.
“Cait wanted my parents to sell the house,” she said.
Isabel lay down and snuggled against her.
“I think that’s why she took the job in London right after he died.
She said it was to be with Bram, but I didn’t believe her.
She couldn’t stand being here. She rarely comes back. ”
“Did your parents consider selling it?”
Maggie shook her head. “Too much history, for better or worse.”
For years, Maggie wondered what it would be like to open Topher’s bedroom door again.
These days, though, she mostly worried about what would happen with all his stuff after her parents were gone.
She remembered when Nora had to clean out the attic after the roof leaked in high school.
They’d found some cool stuff, like her grandfather’s old waders and clam rake, as well as the original plan for the Folly, but it took forever because there were four generations’ worth of clutter that her mother had to sort through.
Nora promised Maggie and her sisters she wouldn’t leave them with the same burden, but while the attic was now a TV room for the grandkids, Topher’s room remained untouched.
There was a knock at the door and Isabel sat up.
“Come in,” Maggie said.
Her mother opened the door a crack and peeked her head through. “Oh,” she said, stepping into the room and noting Maggie and Isabel’s luggage by the desk. “I wanted to let you know we prepared the cottage for Isabel.”
Neither Maggie nor Isabel said a word.
Finally, Maggie said, “Okay.”
Her mother nodded and left.
And there it was. Maggie knew her mother had something to say earlier in the kitchen. Even though there was a bed in the cottage, it was pretty much used as a storage space these days. The single-paned windows allowed a draft that made it chilly even in the summer.
“Fuck that,” she said to Isabel. “You don’t have to sleep in there.”
“Well, it’s her house,” Isabel said. “I’m not going to go against her wishes. Why don’t you try talking to her?”
“I’m too pissed right now,” Maggie said. “I need to calm down.”
She felt a buzz in her back pocket, and when Isabel stood to remove her boots, she checked her phone. She expected the text to be from one of her sisters, but it wasn’t. It was from Sarah.
I’m sorry about Friday night. Can we talk?
Maggie wrote her back quickly and discreetly. Though the timing was abysmal, she needed to know if Sarah’s apology had anything to do with her getting called into Headmaster Cunningham’s office on Monday morning.
Give me a minute. I’ll call you.