Chapter Nine
 

Travis was her window. When Marge looked at him, she somehow looked through all the bad that had accumulated inside her. There was a way out, for somebody at least. And maybe that’s why she loved him so much.

His little body was sorting through his sleep, making piles of things he’d seen and heard. She tickled his fisted hand that punched the air. She turned to Garrett and pressed her finger against her lips although Garrett didn’t understand her. He was still in his nighttime outfit: white t-shirt, underoos, and white calf-length socks. It had taken her forever to find the combination that sat right with him, and now it was a day-long journey just to get him to put on pants. She watched Garrett sit and rock on the floor. He liked the way the wood felt beneath him. It was something solid, and she liked it too, especially in the morning when she pressed her naked feet against it getting out of bed.

Her thoughts quaked, and there he was—the man who raped her.

“Come on,” Marge said to no one and squinted hard to wipe her brain clean. She didn’t want to think about him. Instead, she did that trick where she thought about Walt. 

Walt. She pretended he was dead so it was easier. If she scooted out all other possibilities—including his being married, and having a family, and living life, and making decisions that had nothing to do with her—she could peek behind the curtain that shrouded her memories. She could remember his face and his soft, fleshy hands.

She had been in a bad way when they first met. Lenny was already gone. How was that possible? She knew it was because she had seen him sprawled out on the kitchen floor, those horrible streamers tickling her face and touching her shoulders. She knelt down to get things all sorted out. Lenny couldn’t be gone. He just fainted or maybe it was a stroke, the kind people lived to talk about at dinner parties. But there was no breath in him, and she didn’t know CPR. Her body took over as her brain went dull, and she managed to call 911. And that’s when the stark reality had hit her: she wasn’t alone in the kitchen.

Her daughter was so small, she almost missed her. Whitney had been hiding under the kitchen table, letting Marge take over with her big movements and even bigger sobs. And when Marge peered down and looked into her daughter’s eyes, it was like holding the gaze of a frightened animal. But Marge wasn’t sure if Whitney was scared that her father had died or if she was only scared of Marge.

Marge coaxed her out though, and then the ambulance came. And then they were at the hospital where Lenny was pronounced dead, and Marge had signed so much paperwork, her hand hurt.

And when they finally got back home, there were those streamers, none the wiser.

She had told this story a million times in group. It was a small gathering at St. Andrew’s for those struggling with grief. The parameters were pretty general, but the six of them managed to have the same thing in common: they had all lost a spouse.

Walt always sat on her right. And he always got her a cup of coffee at the refreshment table in the church basement where they held their meetings. It was nothing fancy: a circle of metal chairs on a hard concrete floor. But it was the closest thing Marge had had to an extended family in a long time. 

“I’m so sorry,” his face would say when he handed her the cup. The coffee was always watery and bitter but tasted so much better taken from his hand. 

He offered her a job that first night. He owned a bakery two blocks from St. Andrew’s and was always looking for a hard worker. He didn’t even know her, but Marge could already feel how much he loved her.

Walt was nothing like Lenny, so she felt guilty for liking him so much. His face was moon-round whereas Lenny’s was angular, chiseled by an angry hand. Walt looked like the soft bread he baked, and Lenny looked like a thousand years of regret. 

Walt looked her in the eye.

She knew Lenny had loved her, but she often wondered if he loved who he was in their marriage, in their family. She’d ask him to play with Whitney, and he’d lie there like a corpse on the floor, his eyes closed while Whitney would play doctor, beating his knee with a toy hammer. What had he been thinking about? Where had he been in his head?

And she realized she wasn’t mad when he would escape this way or leave to go sell his vacuums nobody wanted. She was jealous.

At the funeral, nobody had come, but it wasn’t like she had put an ad in the paper about it. She called home—a strange hope in her heart that one of her parents would pick up even though they were both already dead—and had to settle for her sister, Mae.

“That’s terrible,” Mae said when Marge told her about Lenny, but Marge remained unconvinced.

“It’ll be at St. Andrew’s, next Saturday at eleven. I hope you all can come.”

“What kind of church is that?”

“Episcopal, I think.” There was a long pause. Marge counted the breaths she didn’t take.

“I’ll tell the others. Take care of yourself, Marge.” Again, Marge remained unconvinced.

None of them had shown. She might as well have had the thing out in the backyard and presided over by a witch’s coven. Her family was Freewill Baptist, a flavor of Christianity for a practiced palate. She couldn’t expect them to switch brands, not even on her account, she supposed. She was the prodigal daughter who had never learned her way back home.

So, it had just been her, and Whitney, and Pastor Luke whose kind face almost made up for everything. And then his wife, Agnes, who held Marge’s hand, even though Marge definitely hadn’t asked her to. When it was over, Luke and Agnes had invited her and Whitney over for lunch. Marge hadn’t felt like eating, but the idea of sitting in her own kitchen was an even worse prospect.

“We have a group,” Agnes said when the strawberry shortcake was served. It looked like hope, and Marge had shamefully hated it. She thought a dark chocolate pudding would have been more appropriate—somber in a gelatinous mound.

“What kind of group?” She tried not to eye her daughter down for taking generous bites, for swinging her legs in sugary delight. She’s just a kid, Marge thought. She doesn’t know how to process this. But then Marge felt just as guilty knowing her disappointment fell more along the lines that she wasn’t a kid and didn’t know how to process this either. But she was still expected to figure it all out.

“Bereavement. It’s for those of us who have lost someone.” Luke reached out and cupped his wife’s hand. She was grasping her spoon that was still in her dessert bowl, so it looked like he was going to steal it from her. She smiled slowly, softly, and Marge was incensed at the line of tears in her eyes. What did this beautiful woman with her beautiful husband understand about loss?

“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” Marge said. She planned on not giving it another thought. 

They thanked Pastor Luke and his wife for lunch, Marge’s still half-eaten on her plate. They were on the receiving end of hugs and final requests to “just show up and see how you like it.” But Marge remained firm in her resolve as she grabbed Whitney’s hand and headed back home.

It’s when they got there that things felt different. She had already taken the streamers down before the funeral, but that wasn’t it. She was conscious enough to make sure Whitney brushed her teeth and put on her night clothes. Marge got ready in the bathroom connected to her bedroom. She tried not looking at Lenny’s toothbrush and his razor on the sink, but she did. She vomited in the toilet. She gripped the porcelain sides, and it reminded her of being pregnant with her daughter, how the morning sickness had plans of its own; she’d spend the whole morning sprawled out on the couch with a bag of frozen peas on her head. And sometimes, Lenny would be there with her, a cautious hand on her back or a delivery boy with a fresh bag of peas.

She tried to cry, but she couldn’t. She figured she’d vomited everything out anyway. She put on her own pajamas and walked into the living room. She walked further, heading into the kitchen, and there she saw her daughter under the table, her cheek to the floor. She realized now that this must have been what Whitney was doing the morning Lenny died before Marge walked in. She must have been eye-to-eye with him—hers searching, his struggling. How perfectly terrible, Marge thought and laid down under the table next to her daughter. She pulled her in close as Whitney’s body whimpered, but Whitney herself stayed silent. Marge knew the feeling. It was growing up and being different than everyone else and not being able to say a word about it. It was marrying a man you loved deeply but also hated on a horribly human level, not so much because of what he was but what you weren’t. It was giving birth to a child way too late so none of it looked like you’d expected and having to swallow down the uncomfortable realization that nothing in this life should be about what you expect.  

So, she held her close, both their bodies gently convulsing with the things they couldn’t say.

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In the parking lot, the night of the first meeting—after they finished their weak coffee and picked at stale Danishes—she told Agnes goodbye, Agnes who led the group but never shared anything, even though she looked like a water balloon on the edge of popping.

“What’s her story?” Marge asked as she and Walt walked into the church parking lot. It was mid-July, some of the side neighborhood streets still littered with the bodies of dead fireworks. It had only been roughly a month since Lenny died, since Marge could feel her daughter’s sadness on the kitchen floor. That’s why Marge had eventually decided to go to the bereavement group at St. Andrew’s. Her daughter was like looking in a mirror.

“Who, Agnes?” Walt rubbed his neck as he walked. He looked like a person who took good care choosing his words. “She’s had a tough time with life.”

Marge snorted then quickly covered her mouth. “I didn’t mean that,” Marge said through closed fingers. She felt lousy and kept her eyes on the hot pavement. She had a problem with women like Agnes, not Agnes herself. The beautiful ones, the ones who were finely drawn with God’s own hand. They made Marge feel overly substantial. They made her feel the weight of her body, of every single one of her issues.

Marge paused at her car, and Walt paused with her. He was looking at her, and she was relieved to look up and only find gentleness there. “She can’t have babies. She wants children. On some level she thinks she’s broken, forever no good. But she knows the truth, logically. Christ died for her. He loves her so much. But she can’t help feeling she let Him down.” Marge felt Walt’s own story in the way he wove his words. He had shared his wife’s cancer, the way he measured her face with his eyes each day for changes. How in the end, losing his best friend was worse than losing himself. How he hated God but learned to love Him again because what was the alternative?

“I don’t believe in God.” She had wanted to say it during the meeting, but her mother had taught her better manners than that.

“I have a feeling He doesn’t really care if you do or not,” Walt said, his delivery like a pillow. She rested on it for a second. She supposed his logic wasn’t that faulty.

“But you believe.” She didn’t ask it but declared it to confirm the chasm between them. She liked him, that being the first evening they had met notwithstanding, but she didn’t know if she could be friends with someone who believed in fairytales. Maybe that’s why she had stayed with Lenny for all those years. At least he had had enough sense to stare down reality.

“I do. Some days more than others. Not to say He ever changes. But my heart does if I’m not careful.”

“You have control of your heart?”

“We all do. We have control of our hearts, our minds. It’s the gift of free will.” Marge stopped looking at Walt’s face. There was an intrusive metallic taste in her mouth now. What choice did she have in the matter of her husband being dead? What choice did she have in all those miscarriages? And Walt didn’t have a choice in his wife’s death, she thought. She had heard him share his suffering. She had heard his wife’s life painted in his words, the care he had for her, even when she was rotting away from cancer, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. So why did he think he had control of anything?

“I like you, Walt. But you really don’t make a lick of sense.”

“I’ve been told worse.” The taste dissipated, and when she looked back into his eyes, Marge saw the care he had voiced earlier in group. She tried hard not to blush.

“Look, I know things are rough for you right now, Marge. And I know what it’s like to lose the love of your life.” Marge didn’t correct him. “But I want to help you and your daughter in some small way. I told you I own a bakery not too far from here. I was thinking maybe you could come work for me.”

Marge touched the trunk of the Lincoln to ground herself. What type of person would offer her a job when they barely even knew her? It was a moment her mother would have seen as miraculous. An answered prayer. But Marge blinked the intrusive thought away and saw this moment for what it was: a lonely guy giving her a chance in return for something he wanted.

“I couldn’t do that, Walt. I have no experience. I’d need childcare...” 

“I’d pay you well enough for you to cover any expenses.” She looked down and noticed his hand lightly grazing the trunk too. “I’m not doing this because I have to, Marge. I just want to give you a gift. Like I said, I know what it feels like going this alone. And if I can ease that burden, then please let me.” 

She had eventually agreed. Who was she to say no to a handout, especially when nobody else was beating down her door to work for them? That night, after driving home and picking up a sleeping Whitney from her neighbor’s house, Marge thought about all her burdens. How nice it would be if there was someone out there who could ease every single one of them.

Walt tried to give her the day shift, but she refused. Marge told him to treat her like he would any other employee, and she knew a new hire—especially an inexperienced one—wouldn’t have the choice in their schedule. He did need an extra baker in the evenings so the goods would be ready for when the shop opened at six. That settled it.

There was a crash course in understanding how the machines worked, how to even make dough in the first place. Walt came diligently to teach her—something she complained about at first, and then stopped when she realized he wanted to be there. His other nighttime employee, Minerva, was a quiet ghost working in circles around them to get the next morning’s goods ready for purchase. 

Marge was a quick learner, and it became apparent after her first week that she wouldn’t need much more than Minerva’s silent example to get the work done. But Walt would still pop in from time to time as the weeks wore on. 

She still thought he lived in a fantasy world with all his talk about God and Jesus. Well, maybe just with God. With Jesus, there seemed to be a concrete thread, something that took that fantasy and placed it squarely in front of her. Marge was always aware of a “which door are you going to choose?” type scenario, seeing the underlying current of all Walt’s stories seemed to be, “Will you choose Jesus too?” Marge was too smart, too well-versed in church-speak to take the bait. She had spent far too many years in a pew to not know when someone was evangelizing at her, even when they didn’t really know it themselves. Her church, growing up, wasn’t particularly bent on welcoming newcomers to service or seeking out the lost, partly due to the fact of how small Helena was. Black or white, you belonged to a church—segregated, of course—unless you were like Hamish Johnson and took to your whiskey more regularly than you ever would a pew. But regardless, Marge could smell what wasn’t being said a mile away. Walt cared for her, but unfortunately, part of that caring was for her soul.

“I’m glad for you, Walt. I’m glad your god was there when Tammy died. I really do mean that,” Marge told him at one of their parking lot rendezvouses after group. It was weeks after their very first, the black top no longer emanating heat but a brisk chill. Marge drew the edges of her sweater together, fighting the secret wish that they were Walt’s arms keeping her warm. She missed Lenny. She was intensely sad Whitney had lost her father. But working and directing daily life on her own terms had given her a sense of accomplishment. And even though life was still hard, it wasn’t impossible. “But I won’t be going to St. Andrew’s with you any time soon. I’m too busy sacrificing at the altar of bills and child rearing to have to sacrifice to another god too.”

Walt snorted. Marge looked and could see nothing but joy. “Who said anything about me inviting you along? Maybe I like spreading out in the pew and not having anyone borrowing my space.” Marge grinned at him and tried to desperately ignore the barrage of butterflies taking flight in her stomach. She noticed him studying his shoe, a white no-nonsense tennis shoe that glowed against the black ground beneath them. “I was wondering, though, if you’d like to have a meal one of these nights after group? Or maybe a lunch date one Sunday? I know it’s hard having to find a babysitter, but I’d like to cover that for you.” The butterflies threatened to fly away, taking Marge with them.

“Sure,” she said, a bit too clipped than she had meant to. “That would be fine.”

“Great,” he said. “Chinese maybe? Mexican?” 

“You choose,” Marge said. Because it didn’t matter where they ended up going. It just mattered that they went.  

They planned for next Saturday, for after they had heard stories of heartache and shared their own with the group. Marge looked forward to it all week. She’d catch herself planning her outfit at the laundromat or deep cleaning their new trailer home because she could no longer afford the mortgage on the house she had shared with Lenny. She told Whitney a little bit about the nice man she knew, the one who got her the good job that provided them food and the clothes Whitney wore to school. Marge was gentle and generous in her description of Walt, but really, maybe she underplayed who Walt really was. He was unlike any man she had ever met, except maybe her father.

The night her life changed forever, she kissed Whitney on her forehead. She hugged her daughter hard, the excitement reaching its crescendo because tonight was Friday evening and merely twenty-four hours later, she’d be with a man she could foresee loving one day, even if it meant re-examining the things she thought she knew.

She left Tabitha’s—the neighbor who lived in the trailer next to theirs—and drove the Lincoln to Brightman’s Bakery off Fourth and South Cross. She pulled up parallel to Brightman’s big storefront windows, the early evening light glowing back into the passenger side of her car. She was there a few minutes early, so she closed her eyes for a second, leaning firmly against the headrest. 

“I’m so sorry.” It snuck out of her. As excited as she was a few miles before, Marge was now desolate. Maybe it was because she could still smell Lenny in the leather seats. It seemed like the stitching had absorbed the Old Spice, the peppermints he chewed with reckless abandon. Marge moved her finger half an inch down the groove of the middle seat and her sadness came unchained. It roamed mercilessly through her, her sobs like a herd of slow-moving elephants stomping from inside her chest to outside her eyes. When she looked up, there was a woman on the sidewalk leaving Brightman’s trying not to stare at her.

It wasn’t about Lenny, and yet, it was only about him. For a man she had known forever, she barely knew him at all.

“Or maybe I did. Maybe that was all there was to know,” she gulped through the tears. It wasn’t fair to Lenny, knowing Walt. They were night and day, two peas in very different pods. When she closed her eyes, there was Lenny’s face, dead and vacant. And when she blinked and shut them again, there was Walt, telling her it would all be okay.

It took a few breaths and a few wipes of her face to look presentable. She didn’t want Minerva to wonder about her. She went inside and set to taking her heartache out on the dough.

Towards the end of their shift, they looked like ghosts. Flour made itself comfortable in their hair, under their nails, in the gaps of their clothes. It was hard for Marge not to laugh at Minerva until the sobering thought of what she herself must look like kept her mouth shut.

There was one thing different that night. Usually, Minerva was the one who took out the day’s trash bags to the alley, a whole affair that began with lugging everything out to the dumpster at the side of the building and then proceeding to lift every bag over its lip. That night, there were too many heavy things: empty glass bottles, a small mountain of crates, cardboard boxes that were cumbersome stacked all together. Minerva—a small woman—had a bad back, but she had refused until now to let Marge do trash duty. “Too hard,” Minerva had told her the first night Marge worked at Brightman’s when she had asked to help her with it; Marge was suspicious she just didn’t want to scrub down the metal tables to remove the flour that always stuck like paste. Minerva immediately turned up her radio station, and that was the last of the conversation. But now, Minerva had to concede defeat, her five-foot-one inch frame no match for the formidable pile of trash near the back door.

Marge took care moving the garbage, trying to catch Minerva’s eye now and again for approval. This job was a lot better than cleaning those tables that Minerva was now attempting to get into shape, working her rag in white circles and humming along to some kind of music she called “mariachi.” 

Marge chased down two loose soda bottles that had been purchased from the old timey Coke machine near the front door. The entrance to Brightman’s was beautifully stuck in time. It had been left the same way his grandfather had designed it, Walt had said, with red and white checkered flooring and bright cream-colored paint reflecting the light streaming through the windows. The bakery reminded Marge of how she sometimes felt: the cover up of something warm and familiar on the outside and the truth lurking behind it: an ever-growing mound of garbage near the dumpster.

She closed the side door leading into the bakery so the cold wouldn’t get in. She started with the bottles first, making sure they landed in their intended spots. She arced them like a basketball player and relished the sound when one landed on another. Next were the crates. She balanced each one over her head and threw them in, the sounds of those not nearly as satisfying as the glass bottles. She had the first bag of trash in her hand when someone spoke behind her.

“Perfect timing.” For a second, she assumed it was Walt, but when she turned around, it wasn’t. It was the exact opposite of Walt.

“Can I help you?” Marge asked, trying to keep her voice calm, friendly. The man looked dirty, probably homeless but not like the usual men she saw on the street corners. Their faces were sad, hopeful maybe. There was no hope in this man’s face.

“Of course, you can.” He smiled too slowly. Her heart felt like it had watching the Munich Olympics in their living room, Lenny in his recliner and Whitney coloring on the floor. Marge couldn’t explain it, but she felt the terror before they even caught wind of it. She knew the outcome before it ever dared to rear its ugly head.

Marge ran to the side door, intending to beat her fists, hoping the music didn’t drown out the sound of her fear, but he was too fast. He grabbed her coat, and she tried to wiggle out of it, but he got her with his other arm. And then she felt something hit her temple, the feel of glass like confetti sprinkle down her shirt; the ground was cold beneath her.

She didn’t wake until she was in the hospital. She figured that was a blessing. From whose god she wasn’t sure because if it was Walt’s then she certainly didn’t want anything to do with him. Why did this happen? Why would God let this happen in his infinite wisdom, his supposed goodness?

She thought her first visitor was Minerva. The lady really did look like a ghost walking through the threshold to Marge’s hospital room. But no flour this time—just a pale, sick look comprehending what had happened just a few hours before. 

“I thought you died,” Minerva said in stilted English. 

“Me too,” Marge said because it had happened that way. One moment, she was looking at something inhuman, a demon maybe like the ones her father would read about, the ones who had relations with God’s people who then gave birth to the men of old, warriors of renown. What a strange story, Marge used to think, the bricks of her unbelief stacking up right there on the hardwood floor of her childhood home. But maybe not as far-fetched as she had once thought.

Minerva left a candle with a lady in a blue robe on it. Her hands were in prayer, a cherub rested beneath her feet and her face was meant to look peaceful, but Marge was afraid her eyes would flash open at any second. Get a good look then, Marge thought for no reason.

She checked with the nurse. Tabitha had been notified. Marge was thankful, and yet her gut still sunk. She didn’t know what to tell Whitney. Her daughter couldn’t see her like this.

“Oh, and your husband—Walt—he said he’d be back later. He waited a long time for you to wake up. Never seen a grown man cry that hard. You guys must love each other a whole lot.” The nurse checked Marge’s IV. She could smell the strong scent of vanilla on her brown skin.

“Did he say when?”

“When what, honey?”

“When he might be back?”

“Oh, I think he was just running back to get a few things to settle in here with you.” Marge allowed the lie to be reality for a moment. Walt loved her. Walt was her doting husband. Walt would hole up in this vile place to be with her. He’d do anything just to be with her.

“Tell him when he gets here to go home, please. I don’t want any more visitors.” The nurse nodded in a short, professional manner, but her face betrayed her. Such sadness, Marge thought. Poor woman’s created a story that could withstand the horrible thing that happened to me, and I have to set everything straight.

Marge felt terrible.

Tabitha took her home. When Whitney crawled into bed with her that first night, Marge didn’t want to be touched, but she allowed it because she knew Whitney needed to be. She shut her eyes and prayed that sleep or death would take her.

A few weeks later, Marge learned she was pregnant. The doctor from the hospital called to let her know the results of the pregnancy test they had her take. She hung up the phone, her back to her daughter playing on the floor.

“You’re cruel,” she whispered out loud to the god she didn’t believe in. 

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She was plucked out of her thoughts and into Garrett’s strange world. Her son was at the edge of the bed, looking at Travis with a stern concentration. Instinctually, she knew she should stop him, but she didn't. She had seen this before—the way Garrett would get close to his nephew and find an unexpected peace in his face. She had thought about taking a photo when he did this, but then the shame melted her heart. How many other photos had she taken of him?

In the gentle twilight where Marge closed her eyes, she lived in the in between—in between Travis sleeping and waking, in between watching the kids and feeding them, in between remembering Walt and not remembering him. So as the seconds slipped from her fingers and the sun slipped through the blinds, she thought of his face and how she had to turn him away.

How she hoped he was happy somewhere, but maybe not too happy.