Maggie Mae The Glorified

Maggie Mae looked out over the pond and grasped Eric’s arm like a rope in gym class. It was April, and the canopy of blossoms above smelled mostly like heaven but partially like rotten fish, depending on the tree. 

Maggie Mae would have a spring wedding when she wedded. She had explained this to Eric—described the symbolism she found in life starting anew. He had nodded then, politely. 

She pulled him closer to the pond and asked him if he saw the moon in the water, between the streetlights and the distorted apartment windows. He saw it. 

She laughed, said he was quiet, and asked, “Are you nervous?” 

“Just tired.” 

A lie. And she thought of the wild things that must be brewing inside a man to make him so nervous, especially in the presence of a woman as comfortable and laid-back as she was. Her heart leaped as they walked along the shore, his bicep beneath her fingers. 

They found a park bench and he turned, the yellow city light contouring his face, which she found strong and masculine despite its roundness. 

He prefaced his thoughts by saying he had something important to tell her—of course, for tonight, here in the park, between the trees and the reflected moon was not a night for things trivial. 

What he had to say was this: “I’m sorry Maggie Mae, I just haven’t been feeling in love of late.” By in love, Eric meant attracted; attracted meaning physically, to her body and to her face, which were both ugly. 

This nuance of “in love” was missed by Maggie Mae. 

Maggie Mae nodded her head. She sniffed. She said, “I just want you to be happy.” It was all very simple. 

Maggie Mae was now 48 years old. Eric was her third boyfriend (if you counted Ryan Foster, in second grade).

On the way home, Maggie Mae reminded herself that she need not worry. She believed that in romance and in life, God had a plan for them all. A corollary of this belief was that God’s plan included specifically some people getting highly desired romantic partners, some getting moderately-desired ones, and others getting none at all. Also, some getting their legs crushed by heavy machinery, some getting subarachnoid hemorrhages, some not getting kids, and others getting kids they didn’t want. 

A second corollary was that these phenomena were commanded by God to occur at rates in line with standard probabilities, accounting for the subjects and the environs in which they occurred. But whether what happened was good or bad, it was always God, always  

the meaningful consequence of divine intervention; in other words, good after all—provided the sole criterion of goodness was intention. 

This comforted Maggie Mae, for God held her in His hand, and that hand juiced her like an orange. 

She sat on the subway alone. 

Eric would not walk her to her door tonight as he’d done on that first night two months ago, when she’d laughed and said he really didn’t need to. He agreed with her now. 

Maggie Mae reached East Harlem, climbed the stairs to her apartment. When she opened the door, she saw immediately the plastic-rimmed poster of Billy Graham, his head bowed in prayer. Eric respected Billy Graham, though not religious himself. Eric had read the Bible with Maggie Mae early on, and she had sworn she’d seen the Holy Spirit pluck the strings of his heart. 

She went to the kitchen and retrieved the carton of ice cream and the bottle of wine that she kept for occasions such as this. She sat on the couch and turned on the TV. 

Maggie Mae worked at Langston Hughes Elementary where she taught first grade. From her vocation, she derived great purpose and meaning, as well as sufficient strifes and grievances to distract her from greater ones.

She thought little of Eric the next morning because Aaliyah had drawn on the wall and  Caleb had pulled Destiny’s hair. But Mrs. Chambers asked her about him and she said,  “He’s good! In fact, he just got a promotion at work, yes, I’m very proud of him.” 

In the afternoon, Maggie Mae taught the children about George Washington in the French and Indian War. So gallant and brave, a horse shot out from under him, but he was protected because the country needed him. 

Maggie Mae stayed after class to staple twenty-three George Washingtons to the bulletin board, each mounted on a horse of purple or brown or green. 

Four years passed and Maggie Mae went on three dates with one Sam Wells, twice divorced, who lent her a pretty dress for the last date and spent the time turning her like meat over a fire, deciding whether he wanted to sleep with her. 

Maggie Mae secretly imagined the thoughts Sam must be having of her in that dress, scheming for the future, surely, needing to have her for his own. 

Sam was scheming for the present instead. His answer was yes, but no was Maggie Mae’s.“Oh Sam,” she said, “it’s only the third date!” It was also the last date Maggie Mae would go on. 

She called Sam several times over the next weeks and dropped hints to his answering machine about the bit further she’d be willing to take things when he called back. 

She got a call late one night after she’d deleted his number, and the area code made her breathless, but it was just a parent, and the parent was mad, and it was Maggie Mae’s fault. 

Sam ignored her calls, ignored Maggie Mae so thoroughly that he forgot he had wronged her. Besides, he had troubles of his own, like the twenty-five-year-old from the bar who had stopped texting. 

Maggie Mae matured, grew. 

At 10:15 each morning, she cracked open a Cherry Dr. Pepper while the children were at recess. Maggie Mae’s mini fridge was covered with Dr. Pepper magnets, a peccadillo that made her unique and personable. She mentioned her habit to the other teachers and rolled her eyes and laughed, “I’m addicted haha.”

At noon each day, Maggie Mae retrieved her lunch from the fridge—store-bought salad with mango dressing—and sat down and sighed deeply and announced the time to her monitor and to the many empty desks: “Lunchtime.” 

Maggie Mae retired and went on to have a good pension. It was cut only once, and she did not complain much. When Superintendent Brown called to tell her, she said she  understood, and he said, “Thanks Margaret, I knew I could count on you.” 

It was good to be appreciated. 

She grew flowers on her balcony and painted her nails magenta and hoped people at church would notice. 

She brought bread to the ducks in Central Park until she read somewhere that bread was bad for them, then brought rice. 

She prayed each morning for the president of the United States and for all of her students, wherever they might be. 

Maggie Mae moved out of the city to a house near Albany. 

She had a pear tree outside her window whose blossoms smelled bad. She liked to look at it with the window closed. 

In another life, Maggie Mae met a man who found her attractive despite her body and her face, who walked with her in spring and when she mentioned the blossoms, said,  “Yes, Maggie Mae, let’s do it. Let’s get married.” 

It was a beautiful wedding, in another life. 

And Maggie Mae’s husband was a beautiful man, who would have existed if one Evan  Campbell had not forgotten his wallet at the office in July of 1972, and stopped at the elevator and returned to get it, and gotten home and made love to his wife fifty-four seconds later than he would have in a different world where he remembered his wallet and created the husband of Maggie Mae. 

Evan Campbell created nothing instead, and the little piece of what would have been the husband of Maggie Mae swam into the void and lost its way and lost motility and died. And the planet of his other half was ripped to pieces and flushed down the toilet twelve days later.

Indeed, these remnants of what would have been Maggie Mae’s husband were then processed and distributed, and a few molecules were ingested by an infant Maggie Mae and by a million others in the Upper East Side. 

In this other life, Maggie Mae’s husband sat next to her on the couch; they watched the blossoms together and the blossoms were twice as good. 

If she had known about this and about the wallet and the near-miss with the love of her life, Maggie Mae would’ve told herself that she found it all beautiful. She was one to find much beauty in much. 

She developed dementia in her early 70s due to genetics and large intakes of sugar—Maggie Mae’s personality included not just Cherry Dr. Pepper but Kettle Chips and Almond Joys. 

Her sister was her conservator. She put Maggie Mae in a retirement home and made the trip from Cambridge every few weeks with playing cards and pictures of their lives. 

Maggie Mae had difficulty getting out of bed after a while. She woke in the night and it was all strange and she couldn’t remember how she’d gotten to such a place with white ceiling tiles and a humidifier buzzing in the corner. 

The staff came in and massaged her joints, massaged her brain for orienting details—she had been in the nursing home for eight years. 

They brought in music to cheer her and found she would smile at Dolly Parton. Maggie Mae died. 

She had a good life, thoroughly good. 

The pastor eulogized that the goodness of Maggie Mae, though largely unnoticed and unrewarded, would be remembered by her Father in heaven. I hope that’s true.  Superintendent Brown, who had thrice denied her a raise, hoped it was true as well. 

Also in attendance at the funeral were four teachers and six students of the 758 of her career. Maggie Mae’s sister had preceded her in death. 

After the funeral, they went home, and Maggie Mae herself went into the wet spring earth.

And Superintendent Brown, the four teachers, the six students, and all of the boyfriends who would not be boyfriends thought of Maggie Mae sometimes, then not at all. 

The end. 

But of course, this story is bad, a hopelessly bad story, as stories in life are wont to be.  And such a hopelessly bad story, if it is to be improved, must needs invoke the supernatural. 

And so, Maggie Mae, when she had been in her grave a year, when her chemicals had seeped into the groundwater and a small colony of ants had mapped the labyrinth of her hair, said, “Hold on, wait a minute.” 

She tried to sit up but hit her head. Then, with an indignation unseen in the seventy-nine years of her life previous, Maggie Mae pushed open the casket and concrete doors and used her magenta nails to scrape through the dirt above her head. 

She strolled down the country lane, and the night air was rich, and the sprinklers hissed. She took a Greyhound to New York City and paid the bus driver with her pearl necklace, a payment he would have denied had he not seen her face. 

She walked a brownstone street and there was a high ringing sound. She found that it was the maggot in her ear. 

She reached Eric’s stoop and knocked until he answered, his wife at his shoulder. He stared. “Maggie Mae?” 

She walked forward with an uneven gait, left a filthy handprint on his cheek. 

Maggie Mae reached Sam’s building, climbed the fire escape, and crawled through the open window. Sam was in bed. She sprinkled dirt on his face until he woke. He screamed. 

She knocked on the door of Superintendent Brown and handed him a legal pad. The top sheet said, “No, it is not OK that you cut my pension. I want that money.” 

After a time, Maggie Mae found herself on a path in Central Park. 

She could not find all the people who had disregarded her, and anyway, there were so many of them that perhaps she herself was one.

She considered her life. 

Maggie Mae could have been born in a universe that contained her husband, where she was appointed by God to obtain affection after the trying of her faith. She wasn’t. 

She considered herself in this moment—alive! Her gray elephant skin, her jellied innards. 

She looked around. Spring was waning and blossoms fell from the trees and eddied on the asphalt. Her life-giving indignation was waning too, but she knew that ahead there was a pond. She walked to it. 

The pond held an upside-down city; she waded in. She swam to where waterlilies grew and treaded in place until her body began to fail and sink. 

Before she went, Maggie Mae watched the lily nearest. It had a nice flower, and Maggie  Mae knew about flowers. 

In a few hours, the lily would be disturbed by a park ranger’s canoe paddle. In a month,  the underside would hold the slimy clutch of a Jesus bug. In the fall, it would be dead. 

Maggie did not know this. She looked at the lily as it was right now, the both of them alive or nearly so. It drifted away.