Lisa Unger - Fragile

“She won’t talk to me, Maggie. Not really. She won’t tell me what happened.”

“It’s so hard to talk to our parents sometimes. You remember, don’t you? The relationship is so complicated and loaded; that’s why she needs to talk to someone who can be impartial. Please. Bring her tomorrow, Melody.”

“It’s my fault. In so many different ways, this is my fault. Do you know how much it hurts to know that your best was not even nearly enough? I wasn’t half of what I needed to be as her mother.”

“We all do what we can, Melody. None of us is perfect, and we all make mistakes. You didn’t do this to Charlene. Whatever mistakes you made, you didn’t do this.”

She sat with Melody like that for a long time.

The sound of the doorbell downstairs made her realize that she’d been standing in front of the mirror, zoning out, for too long. She did need to try to get some rest before she saw Charlene later that afternoon. She’d have to be strong and alert.

“Mom,” Ricky called from downstairs. Maggie descended the staircase to find a tall, blond, youngish man in a pair of gray coveralls standing in the foyer. The embroidered patch on his chest read, AAA ANIMAL TRAPPERS, CHARLIE. It took her a second to remember the noises that had had Elizabeth climbing into the attic in the middle of the night.

“Ah,” said Maggie, offering her hand. “You must be the one helping my mother with her rodent problem.”

“Charlie,” he said. His grip was firm and confident. “We’ll get it taken care of. Your son said that Mrs. Monroe fell. Is she all right?” Something about his gentle tone made that urge to weep almost overtake her again.

“She will be,” Maggie said. She stepped aside to let him pass into the house. “Do you know the way upstairs?”

“I do.”

They were almost done with everything by the time Charlie came back downstairs. Elizabeth’s suitcase was by the door. The contents of the refrigerator had been emptied and brought out to the garbage.

In one hand, he held a covered trap, in the other a yellow bucket. The covered trap bucked and pitched in his hand, whatever was inside growling and hissing. Charlie lifted it a bit.

“Raccoon,” he said. “A big one.” He lifted the bucket. “And family.”

Maggie walked to him and leaned over the bucket. Inside, three squeaking baby raccoons huddled together, looking up at her wide-eyed and frightened.

“Oh, poor little guys,” said Maggie, feeling Ricky come up behind her.

“They really burrowed themselves way back. I had to move a lot of stuff around to place the traps and then to find the little guys. Sorry for the mess up there.”

“No problem.” Maggie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been up in the attic. But she remembered it always being a terrible mess.

“What will you do with them?” Ricky asked. The tone of his voice made her think of the baby squirrel he’d tried to save.

“Relocate them together,” said Charlie. “There’s a place I go, just outside of town. It’s a state park. Maybe you know it. Technically, I should go farther, but I’ve never had anything come back from there. And it’s a nice place for animals.”

Maggie knew the place he was talking about; Jones used to go there a lot when he was younger. But neither of them had been there for years.

“One of the little guys didn’t make it. That’s what I smelled the other day. I have to get back up there and clean him out.”

“Oh,” said Maggie. She was silly to feel bad about it. But she did.

“Let me put these guys in the truck and I’ll be right back to clean up.”

• • •

When he was done, they stood in the foyer and, leaning on the small table under the mirror, Maggie wrote him a check. Ricky was already waiting in the car. She’d follow Charlie out and lock the door.

“I heard they found that girl-your son’s friend.”

“Yes,” she said, looking up at him. “How did you-?”

“I’m the one who saw her get into the car and later called about the transmission fluid. Detective Ferrigno said that’s how they found her.”

“Oh,” said Maggie. She looked out and saw Ricky in the car, leaning forward, obviously seeking an acceptable radio station. “Wow.”

He told her about the conversation with Elizabeth and the television news report and how those things had jogged his memory.

“You did a good thing,” she said. He seemed like a nice man, a kind person. She found herself smiling.

“I just wish I’d heard about it sooner. I hope she’s okay.”

“I think it’s going to take time.” She handed him the check and pulled out a ten-dollar bill she happened to have in her back pocket.

“Thanks,” he said. He attached the check to a clipboard and handed her the service receipt, folded the ten, and put it in his pocket.

“Anyway, I’m glad they found her. A girl I knew ran away once. They never found her. It’s the worst thing imaginable, to not know, I think. To always wonder.”

Maybe it was the worst thing, to not know. Maybe it was worse than grief. The mind, the psyche, adjusted better to catastrophe than to uncertainty. She hoped she’d never have to find out either way.

“Oh,” he said. He turned around as he was about to leave. “The attic access door was stuck. I couldn’t get it closed.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll check it. Sometimes when the weather is crazy like this, it gets tricky to close it.”

After she’d shut the door behind him, she went back upstairs and wrestled with the ladder for a few minutes, trying to remember how her mother had shown her to maneuver it up. She considered going out to get Ricky but then wound up, on a whim, climbing the ladder. She hadn’t been up there in so long. She wondered if her father’s paintings would be easily had. She’d been thinking she wanted to get some of them framed, hoping they would inspire her to do some painting of her own.

She sneezed immediately in the dust and the mold, which had no doubt been kicked up by Charlie’s search for the raccoons. She reached up and pulled at the string that turned on the light. Out the window in the back, she could see all of The Hollows stretched before her-the church steeple, the town square, the high school off in the distance. In her current state of gratitude, she felt a wash of affection for the town where she’d grown up and returned to marry Jones and raise their son together. This morning Ricky had told her, out of nowhere-maybe he’d sensed that she needed some good news-that he planned to accept his early admission to Georgetown. DC has a fairly lively music scene , he’d said. That’s great , she’d said. I’m really proud of you. Your dad will be, too . And then, mingled with the pride and joy for her boy, had come an unexpected aching sadness. Motherhood was a widening circle of good-byes.

She ran her eyes over the field of clutter, and toward the back of the attic she saw what looked like a pile of canvases. Maggie made her way past the old sewing machine (Elizabeth never sewed a thing in her life; even her knitting had never amounted to anything but the world’s longest scarf), her old bicycle with flat wheels, a stack of record albums, an old trunk (who even knew what was inside?); even some of Ricky’s baby things (how in the world had those ever made the trip from their house to hers?) sat dusty in a canvas bag. Just before she got to the canvases, she saw a gray plastic bag. This was obviously where the raccoons had made their nest; a little spot covered with hair and dander had been hollowed out. She should clean it; it smelled. Better yet, she’d just empty the bag of its contents, throw it in the trash, and do a better cleaning job when things had settled. But for some reason, as she did this, she felt a tingle on her skin, a trickle of dread down her spine. She knelt and pulled open the zipper.