The Three Miss Margarets (27 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

L
AUREL WAS LYING ON A PIECE OF FURNITURE
that wasn’t her bed, fully clothed and covered with what appeared to be an itchy white wool blanket. She made herself focus and recognized the couch she was on.

“Denny?” she mumbled.

“She
is
alive after all.” Denny loomed over her. “Coffee?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Lord, I don’t know how you can do that after the night you had.” He headed off to the kitchen of his tiny immaculate apartment.

“Do what?”

“Move your head around like that. I’d have been puking my guts out. There’s a fresh toothbrush in the medicine cabinet,” he called out, as she made her way to the bathroom.

When she came out he had a steaming cup of coffee and two white pills on the saucer waiting for her.

“Caffeine tablets?” she asked hopefully.

“Aspirin. You need me to fill you in on the gory details of your activities last night?”

“Nah. I was pissed off. I came to the bar, had a few beers, you wrestled me for my car keys in the parking lot, and I wound up on your ugly couch with your daddy’s old navy blanket over me. Which itches.”

“You are talking about a proud heirloom.”

“I think it gave me a rash.”

He eyed her in silence for a moment. “So what are you going to do about it, sugar?”

She couldn’t remember if she’d told him about what she’d heard on Miss Li’l Bit’s porch or not. “Do about what?” she asked.

“Whatever pissed you off so bad,” he said.

She hadn’t told him. “They lied, Denny,” she said. “Ma was right.”

“The three Miss Margarets?”

“All those years I spent thinking she was crazy. And being ashamed every time anyone said my daddy’s name.” She swallowed. Denny was staring at her, his face blank. “And then those old ladies sat there on their damn porch last night and told me they were right to do it. ‘We’re terribly sorry, dear Laurel, if we fucked up your life, but we had to do what we thought was best.’ Can you believe that?”

“I can believe they’d do what they thought was right,” he said.

“Do you want to hear what they told me?”

“All right.”

But suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell him. Because she didn’t want to hear a lecture about seeing it from their point of view. More important, she didn’t want to be told that there was nothing she could do about it. Which was what he was going to say, and he’d be right. She could go to the police, but she couldn’t prove any of what she’d heard unless the three Miss Margarets were willing to repeat it. There was no way Hank would print the story, and even if he did, how many people would believe it? All she’d accomplish would be to rake up the old scandals about her father. And she could wait for Josh’s book to come out for that—she stopped herself mid-thought. She knew what she wanted to do.

Denny was watching her. “You want to tell me about it, sugar?”

“No,” she said. “I want you to drive me to the airport.”

She got her ticket through the travel desk at the resort. They booked her on standby so it wouldn’t cost more than three weeks’ worth of groceries.

“Tell Hank I had to leave town,” she said to Denny as they hit I-85. “Say . . . I don’t know what. Make up some excuse.”

“I’ll tell him you had a death in the family,” Denny said. He probably meant to be funny, but neither of them laughed. Then he said, “Laurel Selene, do me a favor. Do whatever you need to do in New York. Just get all this behind you.”

P
EGGY
, M
AGGIE, AND
L
I’L
B
IT
were on the porch. Behind them the sun was setting. Peggy said, “Laurel is taking a trip to New York City. She left this evening. The girls at the travel desk down at the resort were talking about it.”

Li’l Bit said, “Wasn’t she friendly with that writer who was here from New York? The one who was writing a book about Vashti?”

“The way I heard it, she got to know him quite well,” said Maggie.

The breezes that swirled through Li’l Bit’s fruit trees were lovely on warm summer evenings. But in late autumn they were too chilly for comfort. Maggie cuddled deep into the pretty new jacket she’d just gotten from the Land’s End catalog. Li’l Bit pulled a thick old sweater around her, and Peggy poured herself a drink.

L
AUREL HAD CARRIED HER SUITCASE
on board with her, so she walked off the plane straight to the waiting area where Josh was standing and beaming at her. He did a funny little shrug when he saw her and opened his arms wide.

Josh’s apartment was about the same square footage as her house in the woods—without the land around it, of course. By way of compensation, there were two doormen in the lobby of his building who wore uniforms that looked vaguely military and screened all strangers who tried to enter. They also collected packages and messages and what seemed like mountains of dry cleaning for the people who lived there. Josh had purchased all this magnificence for over half a million dollars, and he paid another twelve hundred dollars a month in something called maintenance fees. He felt lucky that he had gotten it all so cheaply.

His kitchen was small but equipped with shiny professional-looking appliances, none of which were ever used. On one pristine counter next to the phone was a basket full of menus from restaurants that delivered. Josh’s idea of eating at home, she learned, was to order his meals from these places. The rest of the time he went out. Every once in a while he picked up something already prepared at his supermarket and heated it. He called this cooking.

On her first night there he ordered something from a Chinese restaurant, but they went to bed and let the food get cold.

I
T WAS THREE DAYS
since Laurel left Charles Valley. At the meeting of Habitat for Humanity, Peggy finished signing a check for four thousand dollars to cover the cost of the roof on a home the group was building for a family.

“Will you be working on the house this weekend?” the president of the work committee asked her, as the meeting broke up and they headed out the door.

“I’ve got my hammer and nails.”

“By the way, my son found a puppy at the dump this morning. The poor little thing was trying to run, but one paw was pretty badly torn up. Buckshot would be my guess. I called over at the shelter but they said they’re full up.”

“Where’s the dog now?”

“I told Tommy he could put it on the back porch until I had a chance to talk to you. There’s no way Big Tommy’s going to let us keep it.”

“I’ll follow you home and pick it up,” said Peggy.

And as she got into her car she thought how life kept on going. Houses needed roofs and stray dogs needed homes. The world didn’t stop because she was waiting to hear what Laurel McCready was going to do next.

“W
E HAVE A PROBLEM
,” said the nun who ran the interdenominational outreach program for all the churches in the area. She’d come into the thrift shop where Li’l Bit worked two afternoons a week. “We need drivers to take the Faranelli child to her chemo treatments in Macon. The other children are home from school for the week, and, frankly, the mother is overwhelmed.”

“I’ll take her,” said Li’l Bit. It would be good to have more to do. It would keep her from thinking about Laurel in New York.

“I’
LL CLEAN UP THIS BURN
for now, but you have to get this child to the hospital. I’ll call ahead for you,” said Maggie, to her last patient of the day. It had been unusually busy, which was all to the good. Otherwise she would have spent the day fussing about what Laurel McCready was doing all this time in New York.

J
OSH’S BUILDING HAD A GARDEN
on the roof that was called a common space. He told her he liked to go up there in the evenings sometimes for a little peace and quiet. Given the fact that there were four other couples up there, peace and quiet seemed to be a relative term. Still it was one of the few places she’d found in Manhattan where you couldn’t hear any noise from the street. Not a lot anyway. She huddled deep into the coat Josh had lent her and looked up at the sky. He said you almost never saw the stars because of the city lights—but the moon was full.

“Well?” he said. He was standing next to her; she saw the little puffs of his frozen breath out of the corner of her eye. She turned to look at him. The bright sky of the city was behind him; his face was shining with the cold. He’d just asked her—again—if she wanted to stay in New York with him.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Stay until you do.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Anything I can do to help you make up your mind?”

He was probably the nicest man she’d ever find. He was sexy and he was already halfway to being in love with her. If she stayed in New York he would see to it that she didn’t have to struggle. She would live in his half-million-dollar apartment. He would even find her a job; he’d already told her that. Josh was the hero her ma had been waiting for, the man who would take care of them. Laurel wondered what it felt like to have someone take care of you.

Down below her on the street a car alarm went off. Dogs started barking. She looked up again and thought it probably wouldn’t be too long before you never even missed seeing the stars.

“You really love this city, don’t you?” she said.

“It’s my home.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to make up your mind right now.”

But she did. She had to make up her mind about a couple of things. “May I read your book about Vashti?” she asked.

“It’s a rough draft.”

“I know. May I?”

“Yes.”

By the time she finished it, he had ordered in some pasta from a Tuscan restaurant.

“Well?” he asked.

“It’s going to be a great book, Josh.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Makes me wish I’d known her.”

“She was an amazing woman.”

She nodded. “I got that. I liked the way you wrote the end. About her going full circle.”

P
EGGY WONDERED IF SHE SHOULD GO INSIDE
and get an afghan for Maggie. Even though the sun was still shining, it was too cold to stay out on the porch. But none of them wanted to go inside yet. Because Laurel had been gone for four days, and somehow it was easier not to be cooped up indoors. Although they weren’t admitting it.

Whatever happens, I can handle it, Peggy thought. But Li’l Bit and Maggie are too old for the humiliation.

I’ll be all right, Maggie thought. At my age, what can they do to me? But Li’l Bit and Peggy are still young enough that they could be hurt.

I’m tough, Li’l Bit thought. But Peggy and Maggie are so breakable.

There was the sound of a car coming down the gravel driveway. Li’l Bit and Peggy got up and moved to the edge of the porch. Maggie made herself take a deep breath.

Laurel got out of her car and started walking across the lawn to the porch. She was carrying a brown paper bag. “I’ve been away for a few days,” she said.

“To New York—we know,” said Li’l Bit.

“Did you have a good time?” asked Peggy.

“I thought there was something I wanted to do there—but there wasn’t.”

“Oh,” said Maggie.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” asked Li’l Bit.

“Actually I brought some beer, if that’s okay.”

“Beer. Why didn’t I think of that?” said Li’l Bit. “Would you like a glass?”

“I can drink it like this,” Laurel said.

She sat on the front step. Li’l Bit sat back in her father’s chair, and Peggy returned to her rocker. Maggie swung gently on her swing.

“Laurel, have you ever thought of adopting a dog?” Peggy asked.

“Tomorrow I’ll get in a supply of beer,” Li’l Bit said, to no one in particular.

PHOTO © BILL MORRIS

L
OUISE
S
HAFFER
, a graduate of Yale Drama School, has written for television and has appeared on Broadway, in TV movies, and in daytime dramas, earning an Emmy for her work on
Ryan’s Hope
. Shaffer and her husband live in the Lower Hudson Valley.

Visit her website at
www.threemissmargarets.com
. Shaffer can be reached at
www.contactshaffer.com
.

T
HE
T
HREE
M
ISS
M
ARGARETS

A Reader’s Guide

LOUISE SHAFFER