The Three Miss Margarets (9 page)

“You don’t like me, Mama, and I don’t like you. We’ll both be happier without each other. Go back to Atlanta. I’ll give you an allowance each month. You can rent yourself a house or live with Uncle Lance. You’ll probably find yourself another husband. You’re still pretty enough.”

And in the end, because she did want to get out of Charles Valley and the idea of being back in Atlanta with money was so enticing, Beth agreed. Li’l Bit wished she had known years ago how easy it was to manage her mama.

Beth left in a flurry of suitcases. “I’m giving you all that old junk that was in your father’s family. I wouldn’t have it on a stick,” she said, conveniently forgetting that none of it was hers to give.

At first the town was scandalized at the idea of a seventeen-year-old girl living on her own in the big old house she had inherited from her daddy. But slowly people got used to the idea. In spite of her windfall, Millie elected to go on keeping house for Li’l Bit, so people told themselves the child wasn’t totally alone. And Li’l Bit was so obviously competent that there was no way anyone could worry about her. She drove herself to school every morning in the DeSoto that had belonged to her father. She was always on time. Her grades were excellent, as they always had been.

She graduated at the top of her class, with no family in the audience to see her give her valedictory address. It was just as well, because she tossed away the speech she had prepared with her English teacher and quoted liberally from Eleanor Roosevelt’s column, “My Day.” Since the First Lady was not well liked locally, her performance was not a success.

Everyone assumed that Li’l Bit would go to college. After all, people said, what else was a girl that plain and smart going to do? Most thought she’d go to some fancy school up north like her daddy had. But Li’l Bit had no intention of leaving the newfound quiet in her house. Her life to that point had been dominated by her parents. Now she was alone. No more of Mama trying to make her
normal.
And badly as she missed him, no more of Daddy trying to make her
special
. For the first time in her life she could listen to her own thoughts. She didn’t want to change things.

The day after her graduation she emptied her closet. The print sundresses and little flared skirts were dumped in a heap on the floor, along with the ruffled blouses, pastel sweaters, and silly little hats, the gloves that were too tight, and the shoes that pinched her feet. The pile grew, so that by the time the people from the Rescue Mission came to take everything away there were ten pillowcases full, and she was left with her underwear and the clothes on her back. She went to her mother’s seamstress and had plain shirtwaist dresses with gored skirts sewn up in dark colors. She bought herself several pairs of Natural Bridge oxfords.

She canceled her monthly appointment at the hairdresser’s. Her bushy hair had been cut and marcelled for the last time. She bought hair nets to keep it out of her eyes while it grew long enough to be bundled up in a bun, and found she enjoyed the feeling of her hair on her neck and shoulders when she went to sleep. She purchased one tube of lipstick for dress-up, but she lost it before she had a chance to put it on and didn’t bother to replace it.

When she was done, she studied herself carefully in the mirror. The name Giantess was not only accurate, it was probably kind. But at least now when she saw her reflection, she recognized the person she saw.

People in Charles Valley got used to seeing the solemn young woman going about her business in town, buying her groceries, and dropping in each morning at the post office. They stopped noticing how young her face was under the dowdy bun. Which was exactly the way she wanted it.

S
UNLIGHT WAS STREAMING
through the kitchen windows. Li’l Bit looked down at the black dress she had put on that morning. She seldom made mistakes anymore about what she wanted to wear, but this morning she had. Black was all wrong. She went back to her bedroom to change.

Chapter Ten

M
AGGIE PULLED HER BLACK SUIT
out of the back of the closet, looked at it briefly, and put it back. There was a time when the Catholic Church expected a year of mourning after a death, but that had gone the way of hats to cover the women’s hair and no meat on Friday. It was just as well. She had no intention of wearing black.

It was hard to remember she was an old-timer in the church now. When she’d converted, it had seemed so monumental.

S
HE’D STARTED GOING TO CHURCH
with Catherine when she still lived in Atlanta. She’d been raised as a Methodist, but she’d fallen in love with the mysticism of Catholic ritual. The minor-key chants sung in ancient languages and the statues of saints brooding under high arched ceilings appealed to something in her. She’d gone every Sunday at Catherine’s side until she came back home.

There was a Catholic church in Charles Valley, more like a chapel really, where a visiting priest held one mass on Sunday for the resort guests. She could have asked him about converting, but she didn’t. Her affair with Catherine was a sin according to the church, and that stopped her. Catherine, the cradle Catholic, said what the priests didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. But as an outsider Maggie felt she should play by the rules. So she went to mass as Catherine’s guest when she was in Atlanta, but she avoided church and saw patients on the weekends when she stayed home—which, to the delight of her elderly parents, she was doing more and more.

When she’d come back, she’d known it wasn’t going to be easy to start a practice. It had been bad enough finding patients who would trust a lady doctor in Atlanta, and Charles Valley was a lot less liberal. Friends who had known her family for generations ducked their heads guiltily when she walked into Krasden’s drugstore, because they were sticking with old Doc Brewster even though he was on the verge of retirement.

But soon word got out among the poor and desperate, Negro and white, that the new lady doctor was not only dirt cheap, she was smart and knew what she was doing. Maggie’s practice began to grow, not just in Charles Valley but throughout the entire county. She spent most of her time on the road, usually driving from one crisis situation to another. Her clientele did not send for the doctor easily. Maggie was called in only after home remedies, the laying on of hands, prayer, and, in some cases, witchcraft had failed. Often, by the time she got to the scene, all she could do was stand by helplessly and watch her patient die, knowing the death could have been avoided.

As her workload got heavier, the weekend trek to Atlanta started to seem awfully long. Too often when she got there, Catherine was moody and difficult. Besides, people didn’t stop needing their doctor simply because it was Saturday or Sunday. Babies spiked fevers on the weekends, and women went into labor. On a Friday night when she was supposed to be in Atlanta going to the theater with Catherine, Maggie was sponging down a five-year-old boy whose typhoid fever had reached the critical stage. She canceled a Saturday lunch to stay home and teach new mothers who could not read or write the basics of hygiene.

Neither Maggie nor Catherine would admit what was happening. But it was hard to ignore the relief in Catherine’s voice when Maggie said she thought she’d stay home this weekend and catch up on her sleep, or the relief in Maggie’s voice when she thanked Catherine for being so understanding about it. Maggie hung on to the relationship because for her Catherine was a kind of lifeline. Lord knew why Catherine hung on. Maggie never asked.

M
AGGIE PULLED UP HER KNEE-HIGHS
, hateful things, but pantyhose were much too hard to maneuver into, and she never went bare-legged because of the scar she’d gotten in the barn fire so many years ago. She could still remember how sad the long slow breakup with Catherine had been. There were times when it really was a blessing not to be young. And there were other times when she would have given anything to be back in the thick of even a dying romance.

H
ER FIRST MEETING
with Harrison Banning had taken place about six months before he died. She’d told him she needed his advice, and he asked her to come to his house on Sunday morning after his wife and daughter had gone to church.

“I had three cases of smallpox last month,” she told him, after he’d seated her on his front porch. “Smallpox! In this day and age!”

Harrison had smiled wearily. “I know it’s hard, trying to help when there’s nothing you can do.”

“There’s plenty I could do! But I need a place where I can do it. All I have is a desk in my mother’s parlor; most of the time I work out of my car. I need an office, with equipment and a sterile environment.”

“And two or three more doctors like you,” Harrison had said.

“All I want is one assistant. I’ve worked it out in my head a million times. But I can’t afford it, and I can’t ask my parents. They’re not getting any younger, and sending me to medical school was a big drain on them.

“My patients can’t pay more than a dollar or two a visit, and usually I wind up taking barter. If I get any more chickens I’ll be selling eggs as a sideline. Mama’s already given me my own henhouse. Thank God we have a farm.”

“Selling eggs might make some money for you.”

“More than my practice! It’s so frustrating. Our new drugs can work miracles. But when a mother can’t afford to put food on the table, how can I convince her to spend money on an inoculation for her baby against a disease it doesn’t have? Even if I do let her pay me with a chicken, the vaccine still costs money. My hands are tied.” In another second she was going to start wailing like a little ninny, so she finished quickly. “I need a clinic. I need a financial plan for providing medical care.”

At this point most men would have found a nice way to get rid of her. She was a woman who had chosen an impossible profession and was now complaining because she couldn’t afford to open a clinic to serve poor white trash and Negroes. Most men would have suggested she find herself a nice husband and leave the doctoring to the menfolk—who understood it was a business, not a charity. But Harrison wasn’t most men.

“What kind of financial plan?” he said.

“An arrangement where the people who can afford it pay a monthly fee, and those who can’t, pay what they can. Many places have been experimenting with plans like that to insure against hospitalization costs. In Birmingham they charge sixty cents a month. And for years in Canada, in certain provinces, they’ve had what they call municipal doctors, who are paid by the government. I’m at a disadvantage because I’m a woman, of course. That’s the real problem.”

Harrison studied her for a second. “You know Dalt Garrison got married last year?”

“I don’t think Dalt’s daddy will be sympathetic—” she began.

“And young Dalt hasn’t had an idea that wasn’t his daddy’s since he was born. I know. But I have a feeling his new little wife is another story. My guess is, Miss Myrtis thinks of herself as quite enlightened. I think you and she should get to know each other.”

So Myrtis and Maggie had lunch. And a few days later Myrtis Garrison stood with her reluctant young husband at her side and informed her formidable father-in-law that she would be presenting him with his first grandchild. The baby would be delivered by Dr. Maggie, she announced. If it should be a boy, he would be named Grady after his granddaddy.

As Myrtis went, so went many of the young wives of Charles Valley. Maggie didn’t make a major dent in Dr. Brewster’s practice, but she finally had a few patients who could actually pay for her services. She began to look around for an appropriate place for her clinic.

“I have my eye on the old sweet-potato warehouse,” she told Harrison. “If enough rich women get pregnant in the next six months, I may be able to make a down payment. But I’ll still need money.”

“We’ll work out something,” said Harrison.

But weeks went by and she didn’t hear from him. Then, when she had finally decided he must have given up on her and her clinic, he died and left her fifteen thousand dollars.

M
AGGIE LOOKED HERSELF OVER
in the mirror. Her skirt came down just low enough to hide the loathed knee-highs. She checked her watch and winced at the time. She wasn’t delaying the inevitable, she assured herself. It was just that getting herself together wasn’t a fast process anymore, what with having to put in her dental bridge and the arthritis in her hands. Thank the Lord she didn’t have to fuss with a hearing aid. But she’d had to frost the cake, and then. . . . She stopped herself. The truth was, she
had
been delaying the inevitable. Trying to, anyway. She picked up the slice of cake she’d carefully wrapped, walked out of the house, and got into her ancient Volvo.

These days she tried not to drive any more than she had to, and never after dark, unlike Li’l Bit, who was still making the roads a hazard for man and beast. But today she was going too far to walk.

She nosed the car cautiously out onto the highway, stopping to twist her body so she could look both ways before venturing onto the road. The locals knew her car and watched out for her tricky left side, but tourists could be a hazard. She compensated by driving very slowly, figuring that way they couldn’t miss her. It made people wild, of course—she remembered how she used to hate little old ladies behind the wheel when she was still young enough to zip around the country roads—but she got where she was going in one piece. At least she had so far. She crept along the highway, ignoring the angry drivers starting to honk behind her, and let her mind wander.

A
FTER
H
ARRISON’S DEATH
, Maggie watched in amazement as Li’l Bit transformed herself from a schoolgirl into a dowdy matron. Maggie herself would not have worn Natural Bridge oxfords if her life depended on it. At college she had developed a taste for chic, pretty clothes that would last all her life, and when she was really broke she’d been known to go without lunch to pay for her weekly manicure.

Later, she and Li’l Bit would discover common interests. They would agree on politics and a shared passion for Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries. But what brought her together with Li’l Bit in the early days was the clinic. After Beth Banning left town, Li’l Bit invited Maggie to her home for lunch. They sat on the porch and ate peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Then Li’l Bit blushed bright red and got to the point.

“I’d like to work in your clinic with you,” she said. “I’ll help you any way you need.”

Actually, Maggie had been pondering the problem of an assistant—or, more specifically, the problem of paying for one on her limited budget.

“You won’t have to pay me,” Li’l Bit said, reading her mind. “I don’t need money.”

“I need someone in the office full time. It’s not a job for a volunteer.”

“You can count on me.”

“You’d have to take care of my books, run my schedule, that kind of thing.”

“What I don’t know, I’ll learn. I’m quite intelligent.” Li’l Bit brushed an unruly wisp of hair out of her eyes.

Maggie looked at her, with her old-lady getup and her ridiculous—no, her
atrocious
—shoes, and wondered if she really could trust this strange girl. “There might be times when I’d need you to help me with the patients,” she said.

“I’m sure I could do that.”

“You don’t know what it’s like. These are people who are terrified and in pain. They’ll take it out on you, because they’re too afraid to get angry at me. You’ll see things that will turn your stomach, and you cannot react. You can never let anyone see you’re repelled or frightened. You can never cry.”

For the first time the girl looked a little unsure. Then she rallied. “I’m not a sensitive person,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”

“The hours will be long. And erratic. I may need you to be in the office on evenings or weekends.”

“I won’t be going to parties and dances. I’m not pretty, so I’ll never have a beau.” Maggie must have looked embarrassed, because she hurried on. “Please don’t feel you have to argue with me or tell me I’m handsome in my own way or any of the other euphemisms people use when they’re talking to a plain girl. I can look in a mirror. I know what I see. I’d have preferred to have been beautiful, any girl in her right mind would.” For a brief moment Maggie saw something wistful flicker in her eyes. “But facts are facts. And in a certain sense, once you realize you’ll never be a belle, it’s a relief. You can get on with the things that matter to you.”

“What things matter to you?” Maggie asked faintly.

“Being important. Which means being useful. That’s the standard way for women like us, isn’t it?”

“Women like us? I don’t—”

“Of course you want to be useful,” Li’l Bit broke in impatiently. “There’s no other reason for you to have come home. This is a terrible place for someone like you.”

For a few irrational seconds, paranoia ruled in Maggie’s brain as she wondered exactly what this strange girl knew about her.

“You’re a fun-loving person, that’s obvious,” Li’l Bit went on. Maggie breathed a small sigh of relief. “There’s not a lot of fun to be had here. Particularly not in the profession you’ve chosen.” The blue eyes that were now studying her, she saw, had something of Harrison’s shrewdness in them. “You’ll make your mark on this place,” she continued. “You might even be able to change things for the better. You’ll be very useful. And for whatever reason, that’s what you’ve chosen. Like me.”

Maggie wanted to run. She wanted to shout that she hadn’t come back for something as sad and hopeless—and loveless—as being useful. She hadn’t given up on fun. Or life. Or romance.

She got herself away from Harrison’s bizarre daughter as fast as she could. She called Catherine and went into Atlanta that weekend. She didn’t fight with Catherine once, even when she sulked. They went to a restaurant and a movie, and Maggie spent money she didn’t have. And when she came back home she told herself how much she loved Atlanta and how much she had missed it.