MAGGIE
She hopes she did okay on her art history essay and on the statistics final, and she hopes she finishes her education classes with decent grades.
She likes that she’s getting to know her professors.
A few days ago, as a way of relieving some of her stress, she started sketching a book about a lost brown cow finding its way home, and she imagines a kid reading it one day, over and over, the way Chip loved The Velveteen Rabbit.
She stands by her car now, and looks at her books and backpack inside, all her clothes and toiletries she has packed to go home for the summer. It feels anticlimactic or something. She thought she’d feel relieved to be finished. But she feels like something is missing.
She keeps her hands on the wheel, but as she drives she still feels something isn’t right. She looks at all her clothes and shoes and boxes in the back and imagines Chip yelling at her for messing up his car. “I have a system,” she’d say, and he’d say, “Yeah, a junkyard system.”
She sees the mountains in the distance, and they look blue and purple in the sun.
If she looks closely enough, she can see the evergreens.
It will be good to be home, Birdy Girl’s tail thumping against the floor.
Maybe she will call Cat Ayers, who has sent her letters during the year to see how her classes are.
Maybe she can tell her about the cow book and they can go somewhere and catch up.
She sees the sign for Bradley Falls then, next exit.
She has been so close this year, but she only visited twice this past winter.
Without a moment’s thought, she jerks the car to the right and gets off the highway.
Her heart feels good all of a sudden, like something in a perfectly fitting container.
Before long, she is turning down the lane, and she can’t believe the transformation.
She never knew the trees bordering the path at the bottom were cherry blossoms. They must have bloomed late because of the March and April storms, but there is still a hint of pink.
They were always just green when she saw them in the summer, and bare when she came to Rhonda’s holiday open house in December, where Phil’s maroon blazer matched Bridget’s dress and everyone called them the king and queen of the party.
The trees were snow-covered when she came in January when she met up with Nancy and Elliot and a handful of new employees to go skiing. That was the last time she’d been back.
And now, she drives slowly and sees all this faded pink, the branches reaching to the center of the lane almost joining. She feels like she’s under a safe wave of flowers.
A few of the petals drop on the car as she drives toward the main building.
She sees the sun through the screen of pink, and she wonders if, like the ants rebuilding, she has been too focused on what’s ahead to look back.
She wonders if like the moth she never saw again, we are all just passing through a certain place until we no longer are.
The other day, she saw Jackie Onassis on the news, attending an event in a black dress, clutching a sparkly bag. Maggie and her roommate, Michelle, had been watching TV in the lounge. “That woman,” Michelle said, “just radiates strength.”
Maggie wants people to say that about her, to feel that about herself.
As she turns into the main parking lot, she hears a note from the music box her grandmother gave her as it jostles among her other stuff.
She knows if someone took it apart, they could probably show the place it was damaged when she dropped it.
But every time it plays, the tune is still a lovely one.
She gets out of her car and looks up at the second floor and sees Rhonda’s surprised face behind her office window.
She waves in a delighted way, and Maggie feels something so familiar and good.
Rhonda is on the phone, and she holds up a finger to show she’ll be right down.
Maggie knows she’ll go home later tonight, but on this perfect spring day, the warm sun on her face, the ducks settling on the big lake, the golfers laughing as they swing their clubs, one lone person out in the paddock on horseback, Maggie’s glad to be back.
She has to wait by the front door as Bridget holds it open for a family dressed in cocktail party attire.
“Look at you!” Bridget says to her, and they hug.
Maggie is surprised to see people in the gift shop, and there is laughter coming from the Wooden Duck upstairs where someone, maybe Nancy, is speaking into a microphone asking trivia questions.
“This place is booming,” Maggie says to Bridget, who now lives with Phil in Tannersville, as she guides the family toward a festive birthday party in the dining room.
Amy in reception looks exhausted from answering the ringing phones, and two elderly couples wait to speak with her by the front desk.
Maggie looks around and pours herself a cup of water from the dispenser.
Upstairs, the trivia crowd groans and laughs.
On the big table with the floral arrangement, tulips and roses mostly, Maggie sees a fresh pile of brochures.
They don’t look like the one Chip had in his room.
She looks at the cover and it says: Red Maple Inn: Your Memories Await.
She sees a photo of the lake and the gazebo, the dining room with the tables set and morning light.
She recognizes Bridget in one photo and Phil showing a couple to their room.
There are scenes from every season, and her favorites are the pool and ice cream shop in summer and the cherry blossoms guarding the lane in spring.
She flips the brochure now, and she gasps when she sees him. Her brother. Tanned and smiling, standing in front of a bingo wheel cage, holding one of the small white balls, that playful look in his eyes.
She wonders who took the photo. You would never know there was anything wrong with him.
She shakes her head and looks at him again.
He looks like he believes he’ll live forever. Maggie feels her necklace with her name on it, and she stares down at his perfect face. How many people have looked at this photo and had no idea how much he meant?
But there he is. He is persistent or something. Alive in a moment that extends. Art is always happening, Cat Ayers told her once. That’s why we refer to it in the present tense.
She’s forgotten he used to be this guy. That’s the problem.
She holds the brochure and looks at it again, and she makes a little wish, like how she saw newlyweds toss pennies into the wishing well by the lake, that he’ll keep returning to her in this way.
Shaggy hair, sunburned nose. She knows he just made someone laugh in that moment.
She knows in that moment he believed, despite all facts to the contrary, that he’d be okay.
“Surprise,” Rhonda says, stepping down from the final step, Taffy behind her. Maggie rushes over and hugs her. Her eyes burn, and she feels herself collapse, an ant who has carried too much.
“Sweet girl,” Rhonda says and pats her back.
“You made him real,” Maggie says.
Later, after promising Rhonda she’d come back soon, maybe to teach a watercolor class with Cat Ayers this summer, maybe to work some shifts, she makes her way to her car.
She sees the garden her mother helped Rhonda plant last month, with Vanessa’s and Janie’s names on the fence around it.
There is rosemary and basil and so many beginnings of things: carrots and lettuce and broccoli.
She looks at the orchard, and it’s hard to believe fruit will come from these trees soon.
She decides to make one more stop, a quick walk up the embankment to Proposal Point.
Top of the world, Rhonda always calls it.
From there she sees everything in bloom on the property, so much green, and she’s quiet.
She holds her car key, and for some reason, she feels him so clearly up here.
“Leave it to you to find this place,” she says.
She imagines all the creatures that must come here at night or in the morning, and she thinks of the golden deer he bought for Vicky and how it practically glowed on her shelf.
A bumblebee flies lazily by, and she is just in awe.
In the distance below, she sees someone, a man walking hand in hand with a child.
Her eyes adjust, and it’s Elliot and Baxter.
The boy has gotten so big (walking already!), and he toddles away from Elliot.
Elliot laughs and catches up to him. He doesn’t notice Maggie so high up and away, and he takes Baxter and swings him in his arms. She hears his voice echo.
“You’re a goofy little silly goose,” he says, and Baxter laughs and says “Again.”
“Again?” Elliot says, and he swings him around. She can’t see his eyes, but she hears Baxter squeal. She can tell Elliot’s caught up in this moment.
Maggie stands by the small dock, looks at the cattails along the edge of the pond, and keeps watching. She wants to wave, to call out, but the scene is too beautiful to interrupt. Baxter holds a small pail, and he chooses a few rocks to put in it.
“And then what will we do?” Elliot says, his words loud, like he’s as excited as the boy.
Baxter says something, and Maggie can’t understand his baby talk. Elliot ruffles his hair.
“The creek! Then let’s go, buddy.”
She has stayed in touch with him, letter after letter, where he tells her some terrible things that are difficult to forget. She has told him how hard some days are, how forgetting is the biggest challenge for her, too, because she also wants to remember.
Once in a while he signs the notes Love, Elliot, but she doesn’t read too much into it.
Now, seeing him, she feels something so strong, and realizes this is why she needed to come here today.
To check on him. He is the one she can’t forget.
She could go down right now and surprise him.
Maybe he would hug her, maybe they could catch up.
He’s a beautiful person who met something terrible.
She loves to see him clawing his way back to happiness.
The last letter he wrote her, he said he might get a dog.
Boss says it’s okay as long as it plays nicely with Taffy.
She watches his back, and Baxter’s back, as they walk toward the woods, their shadows looking content. She imagines catching up to them. “It’s you,” Elliot would say, and Baxter might show her his rocks or try to tell her something in his sweet toddler way.
She could leave now, and he wouldn’t know she was ever here. She would just be seeing him from this distance and not bothering him.
Or she could hurry down and call his name.
She thinks of the choices they’ve each made to be here. She thinks of how every life is a medley of happy and tragic, broken and fixed, known and unknown paths. She thinks of how she jumped in that pool and he told her to follow him to the drain. For luck. She believed him.
She looks at those pink trees lining the lane to go home. She feels relieved as she stands here, the world still alive, still blooming, despite what we all go through.
And Maggie makes her decision.