Miracle Beach (4 page)

Eventually she made her way upstairs. That was where they always were, after all. The pictures. Time spent on the lower floors of estate sales was never about browsing. It simply allowed Magda to work up the gumption to tackle the upper levels.

Once upstairs, Magda headed to the very end of the hallway, guessing that to be the direction of the master bedroom. She was correct. A handmade quilt, priced at fifty dollars, covered the bed. One could buy the entire bedroom set—a brass double bed, bedside table, and dresser with attached mirror, for only three hundred dollars. Magda wasn’t browsing, though. She was after one thing: the pictures that sat atop the dresser, as they almost always did.

There were three picture frames of various sizes: one with a man and woman posed stiffly in wedding garb, wearing thin, nervous smiles; another with the same man and woman in a rowboat, now much older, wearing life vests and each holding an oar, laughing; and the last a faded, reddish-tinted portrait of a serious toddler posed behind a giggling baby, the baby’s arms waving wildly above its head.

“These are beautiful frames, aren’t they?” the perky sales agent gushed to Magda.

Magda could feel her eyes growing wet. Frames? These were someone’s children once. Someone’s photographs. They should be wanted. Remembered.

“How much?” Magda croaked, picking up the picture of the two babies and holding it in one hand outstretched toward the agent.

“Oh, for that one? Are you sure? The other two are much nicer. But for that one, five dollars.”

Five dollars. For an antique frame. For someone’s memories. For a snapshot of their life, left behind.

Magda fished a handful of dollars from her pocket and handed them to the woman.

“Anything else?” the agent asked her. “There’s an absolutely fabulous floor lamp in the next room over. Not to be missed!”

Magda shook her head, holding the frame tight against her. “No,” she said. “Just this.”

 

Magda, still clutching the five-dollar picture frame, peered into the garage window to make sure Jack’s truck was gone. She would do this—this thing he was insisting she do. But she wanted to do it on her own terms. Alone.

In the kitchen, Magda stared at the phone. It hung on the long wall near the kitchen table. That table had always seemed too large with its four chairs, and now it looked more so, even if that third chair with its back to the wall hadn’t been occupied regularly for years.

Maybe Macy wouldn’t be home, Magda thought. It was the middle of the afternoon, after all. She’d be out with her horses or grocery shopping or doing any number of things people did, not sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring. Magda could just leave a message on the answering machine. She could say she tried, she’d apologize for her behavior earlier, and then Jack would be happy.

But what would she say? “Macy? Magda calling. I would like to straighten things out”? No. She didn’t really want to straighten anything out. Jack wanted that. Maybe someday she’d be ready to. Maybe, but not now. Plus, she didn’t want to lie. Ladies didn’t lie—they might tell a little fib now and then, but never blatant lies. How about, “Macy? Magda. Please call. If I don’t hear from you I will try you later on tonight.” That would work, she thought. Nice and businesslike, not too gushy or personal. She could always be busy later tonight.

She dialed the phone number, willing an automated voice to answer and instruct her to leave a message.

“Hello?”

Magda froze. Her answering-machine speech teetered uselessly on the tip of her tongue.

“Hello—o? Anyone there?”

“Macy?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Magda.”

“Oh, Christ.”

“Macy, please. Language?”

Macy let out a loud sigh. “So you rang me up to give me a lecture, is that it, Magda? That’s fantastic. Just the thing I was hoping for, actually.”

“I just don’t, well, I don’t really appreciate when people take the Lord’s name . . .” Magda’s mind went blank and she trailed off. She twirled the phone cord around her finger. The cord made her feel hemmed in. She needed a cordless to pace the kitchen properly in situations like this.

“What?”

“Excuse me, dear?”

“What, Magda? What do you want?”

Magda knew this call was a bad idea. Darn that Jack. “I . . . I . . . I just wanted to talk.”

“I’m not sure now is a good time,” Macy said.

“Oh, well—okay. I just thought we might . . . But perhaps another time would be better, then.”

“I doubt there’s going to be a good time.”

“Well, I just thought I might see how you’re . . .” Magda coughed, finding the words had lodged themselves in her throat. “How you’re hanging in—”

“I’m fine, Magda.”

There was a long pause. Then Macy added, “So?”

“So?” Magda parroted, confused.

“You called me,” Macy said. “Why? What’s going on?”

Magda’s thoughts reeled. Why had she called? Why had she let Jack talk her into this?

“Was this Jack’s idea?” Macy asked. She was laughing, then. Cackling. “It was, wasn’t it?”

Magda sputtered like a car that had run out of gas. Her mind had gone blank. There wasn’t one word in it for her mouth to serve up.

“Oh, Magda,” Macy said, still chuckling. “Well, I actually should get going. You take care.”

After a spell, the dial tone jolted Magda from the trance of staring at the sparkling white tile under her feet. She was surprised to find the picture of two nameless, smiling babies still clutched tight against her breast.

Upstairs, in her sewing room, Magda surveyed the shelf that ran along three walls and held framed pictures of every shape and size that had only two common threads: each was of a baby Magda had never met and would never know, and each had been left behind. Discarded. Unwanted.

She placed the picture of the two smiling babies she had bought that afternoon at the estate sale between one of an African-American toddler with wispy pigtails in her curly hair secured by purple bows, and another black-and-white photo from the early 1900s of a wide-eyed, wide-smiling androgynous baby in a lacy smock and posed on a chair. Jack had once called the collection of photographs “creepy,” so Magda tended to keep the door to her sewing room closed. But it comforted her to see them, to sit surrounded by them as she worked to the steady hum of her sewing machine. It gave her a sense of pride and satisfaction to give them each a place of honor. Some of the babies in the pictures had long ago passed on. Others might still be very much alive. Regardless, there in Magda Allen’s little sewing room, they would have a place. They would be remembered.

 

Magda stared at the cluster of moles on Jack’s back, illuminated by a faint light that filtered in from the street lamps. A small spattering just under his right shoulder blade looked, to her, like the constellation of Ursa Major. She had taken an astronomy course a few years back at the college, just for fun—something to take up a little free time. It turned out to be anything but fun. All the math and formulas and scientific figuring were way more than she had bargained for, but she stuck it out because she would have received only a seventy percent refund by the time she was in over her head. In the end, though, the only thing she took away from the course was the odd ability to pick out the Ursas—and only the Ursas—from a canopy of stars. The Dippers, Big and Little, Orion’s Belt—all the easy ones were lost on her.

Jack’s mini Ursa comforted her, though. It made her feel secure. She knew that if he were ever burned beyond recognition or maimed, and she had to identify his body, they wouldn’t even need to match his dental records. “Just flip him over,” she would tell the coroner, and she’d look for the unique little cluster of brown dots on his upper midback, a little right of center. Her knowledge of them was intimacy that went beyond sex or the twining of psyches. It was primitive, basic, true. The fact that she knew his back so well meant that she had spent years studying Jack as he slept, always turned away from her.

Magda had slowly learned that Jack’s feelings toward her had absolutely nothing to do with his sleeping position, and everything to do with the simple, thoughtful things he did: buying Weidner Center tickets when she had mentioned only in passing a show she wanted to see, even though he would rather sit through an entire evening of infomercials; coming home after a long day at work and mowing the lawn in the growing dark because he knew they were having guests that weekend and Magda wanted things to look nice for them; or making her favorite dinner—rib eye with butter-soaked mushrooms and twice-baked potatoes—at even the inkling of a bad day, and sometimes for no apparent reason at all.

He was a good husband. Great, even. Definitely the best husband out of any of their friends. He had never stayed out all night, had never been a big drinker. And Magda could say with absolute certainty that he never seriously considered taking up with another woman. Once in a while she’d catch him gawking, but that was fine. She’d give him a look, and he’d smile and laugh and say, “I can still look at the menu, Magda.” And she’d wink and say to him, “Just don’t order anything.”

He was solid, practical, dedicated. But even on the best days, it felt to Magda as if she merely had a great roommate, not a husband. Other days, it felt like they hardly knew each other.

Like tonight. Tonight she was obviously upset, and Jack hadn’t said anything even mildly comforting to her. He hadn’t said anything at all, actually, even after she had apologized. He had nodded and kissed her on the cheek before heading to the back deck with a Miller Lite in one hand and a cigar in the other.

Magda ran her fingers back and forth over his shoulder, light enough so she could say she just wanted to touch him, but hard enough so he’d definitely wake up. He brushed her hand off his shoulder. She stopped for a second, and then started up again.

“Magda, knock it off.”

“Are you sleeping?” she whispered.

“Was.”

“Oh.” She started rubbing his shoulder again, harder this time.

“Magda, enough. Go to sleep.”

“I can’t sleep. I’m all wound up, Jack. I need to talk.” Although she was trying to whisper, Magda knew she wasn’t. It was one of those womanly traits God had for some inexplicable reason denied her. It never failed: At brunch after Mass, in the church’s basement, Magda would try to contribute something to the group’s gossip—about how Sally Pierce had once again signed up to bring a dish and failed to do so, or why the Van Antwerps and their six children couldn’t once—just once—be on time for services instead of marching up the aisle right behind the priest—and she’d be promptly shushed by all the other women. Magda had eventually learned to hold her tongue and stay silent, since she sure as Pete couldn’t manage to be quiet about things.

Jack rolled over, sighing. “And
I
need to be up in four hours. Come on, can’t we just do this tomorrow?”

He was patronizing her now. More than anything, Magda hated when Jack talked to her like this, as if she were a child. “Fine,” she said. She rolled away from him and glared at the wall.

“Listen, Magda, you need to knock this shit off.” He rarely ever swore around her. At least she knew she was getting to him.

“Knock what off? I just want to talk.”

“About what? Let me guess. About how you’re having a tough time? About how no one is being supportive enough of you? It’s always about
you
, Magda.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Oh, no? Then tell me, just what is it you so desperately need to talk about at one thirty in the goddamn morning?”

Magda kept staring at the wall. She wasn’t going to help him mock her.

“For Christ’s sake, Magda. You woke me up—now you’re going to lie there and sulk. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Lord’s name, Jack.”

“Oh, for crying out loud. Good night, Magda.”

Magda breathed as loudly as she could, and when that didn’t get Jack’s attention, she started sniffling.

Still no response.

“Jack?”

“What?”

“It’s this thing with Macy.”

She was greeted only by silence from Jack’s side of the bed, but she could feel him listening.

“It didn’t go well this afternoon,” she admitted.

“I know it didn’t, Magda.”

“Well, then, why didn’t you ask me about it?”

“Because I knew.”

Magda felt Jack’s hand on her shoulder, rolling her toward him. He made Magda look him in the eye. “Magda, there’s something that you’ve somehow gotten through life without knowing that you need to learn pretty quickly.”

“What?”

“How to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ ”

“I said I was sorry to you,” she said.

“Any other time, Magda? To anyone else?”

“All the time. What, you want me to list them off for you? Tick them off on my fingers like this?” She held up one hand and flicked the tips of each finger with the other. One of her nails felt like the edge of a saw, and she realized with a start that she hadn’t resumed her regular manicure schedule.

“He was my son, Jack.”

“He was mine, too,” Jack said. “But that’s what you can’t seem to get. He was my son; he was Macy’s husband. And no matter what you think of her, she loved him. They shared a life.” He rolled onto his back and sighed. “Did you even come close to apologizing to her?”

Magda rolled onto her back as well. She and Jack stared upward at the ceiling, its water stain a murky eye above their bed.

“I didn’t have a chance,” Magda said after a span of silence, during which she tried, and failed, to match her breathing to Jack’s. His breaths were too deep, too far apart. “She hung up on me.”

Magda nearly added, “But I don’t think I could have,” but she stopped herself.

As if Jack had heard the words rattling around inside her head, he took a long inhale, as if he were going to say something else. Instead, he exhaled, blowing air out through his nose. They turned onto their sides, then, almost in unison, backs to each other and facing opposite walls.