Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

No, honey, it’s you I want . That’s how real confession goes. Not in the church with the priest levying penance; not in the network studio with the cameras rolling. It happens in a phone booth by the roadside late at night when you’ve had a few too many, shouting down the line to someone on another continent. It’s a good thing Wale’s ride showed up. Whatever else he had to say, she’s pretty sure she didn’t want to hear it.

She’s also sure she doesn’t want to call Gran. How would she explain her worries without sending the woman into a panic? The barest description of Wale would leave Gran thinking that Maggie has involved herself with degenerates and crooks. Returning to the telephone, she dials the number, unsure of what she’ll say. The phone rings and rings without an answer. At last, a little thankfully, she puts down the receiver and goes back to bed.

It turns out Brid and Pauline are leaving too. There’s no explanation, just one stark sentence during lunch. Maggie nods as if the reasons are obvious. She doesn’t try to argue Brid out of it, only expresses concern about them making the trip to Boston in one day on their own. Even this statement she saves until they’re on the porch with the Toyota loaded and Pauline buckled into her safety seat, her uncombed hair standing up in a bright flaxen frizz. Brid says she’ll be all right, but she looks wan and keeps removing her sunglasses to rub at her eyes. From the car, Pauline’s wailing that she doesn’t want to go; she wants to stay with Auntie Maggs. This is a surprise. When did Pauline ever like her?

“Just so you know,” says Brid, “I’m not clearing out because of the Jamaican. Last night was nothing, okay? I’m going because I’m a mess, and because I know you don’t care whether I stay.”

“That isn’t true,” Maggie protests.

“You’re sweet to say it. Anyhow, good for you, not needing me. You’re tougher than I thought.” She sounds hurt that this should be the case. “I’m sorry, I’m just fed up with it all.” Looking out over the front yard, she dwells on the place as if seeing it for the first time. “Maybe a few years ago we’d have stood a chance, but people got worn down by everything. I thought maybe up here we could relax and try something new. Oh well.”

In her voice there’s at once a lassitude and a confidence, as if she’s been formulating this elegy for some time. Yet something doesn’t sit right. It couldn’t be that simple. There’s a vital element she’s missed, but there’s no time to figure it out: she seems ready to depart.

“What will you do now?” Maggie asks.

“Stay with my brother, I guess. God, I hate him. It’s going to be a train wreck.” She looks over at Maggie with concern. “What about you? You’ll be okay?”

Maggie nods, pretty sure that Brid’s just asking to free herself from obligation. Still, there’s a compulsion to provide some kind of self-defence, to articulate the thoughts she’s been mulling over in her head.

“I couldn’t go back now,” she says. “Anyhow, I prefer it on the farm. You know, working the land—”

“You don’t prefer it, sweetie,” says Brid with an earnestness that surprises her. “You think you do, but you don’t. I’ve watched you. You’ve been so unhappy here.”

The words strike Maggie to the quick. There’s such assurance in them. But if that’s what Brid has been thinking, why didn’t she say anything till now?

“Will you look up Fletcher when you get there?” Maggie asks.

Brid seems unprepared for the question. “You want me to?”

“No.” She says it without hesitating. The idea of them together in Boston while Maggie waits for him here is unbearable.

“Don’t worry,” replies Brid as if she has read her thoughts, “he was never interested in me, even before he met you. Not that I didn’t try.” The comment is made with such nonchalance that Maggie almost doesn’t register it. Before she has a chance to respond, Brid has already moved on. “Hell, forget it. Can’t let the past fuck up your perspective, right?”

Maggie thinks of the kinds of things one is allowed to say just before parting. She wants to share something in return, something to make Brid stay a bit longer. Not Wale’s phone call; she couldn’t bring herself to mention that. Her late period, perhaps. No, to tell Brid would make it too real.

“Goodbye,” says Brid, giving her a squeeze. Into Maggie’s ear she says quietly, “There was a time, I think, when we might have …” But she seems not to know how to finish, and she laughs in a self-defeated way. “Oh, never mind.” She pulls back. “It’s no big deal. Goodbye!” She gives her a kiss on the cheek, then a surprising look of regret.

Maggie didn’t know regret was something Brid could feel. Regret rests on hopes and dreams, an ideal you reach for and fail to find. Regret’s about living in the shadow of an inner gleaming you that Maggie’s never quite found in herself. Until now she hasn’t thought of Brid as someone with a self like that either. People are different from each other, though. It seems like some kind of breakthrough to apprehend this simple fact, but Maggie doesn’t feel much wiser than before. Why that look of regret on Brid’s face just now? It’s too late to ask. She’s ensconced with her daughter in the Toyota, and the two of them are disappearing down the drive.

Monday morning, Maggie tries calling Gran again. Again she gets no answer. One more day, she thinks, and she’ll drive to Syracuse to see what’s going on. To distract herself from the thought, she begins to clean, compelled by the idea that at last everything in the house can go where she wants it. From now on, each speck of dirt will be her dirt, the mess no one’s but her own. She tries to focus on the cobwebs hanging from the ceiling and the scum in the toilet bowl, even while she feels a building anger with Fletcher, with Brid, with all those who have left these tasks for her. Cleaning, always cleaning, since the first day she was here. Her body grows sticky with sweat and dust even as the house becomes pristine.

Just before lunch, there’s a knock at the front door. By the time she gets downstairs, the mailman’s pickup truck is pulling out of the driveway and a parcel sits on the porch, the size of a shoebox and wrapped in brown paper. Even before she identifies her name above the address, she recognizes her father’s handwriting. The paper seems to take forever to remove.

Inside is a cardboard box, and in the box is a letter along with a little statue made out of fired clay. Maggie turns the figure over in wonder. It’s a long-haired woman eight inches tall, muddy brown and unglazed, mounted on a short pedestal of rough cement. The limbs are stubby, the body shaped in such a way as to suggest the woman’s wearing a robe. Thick lips have been painted on her face, and there are black dots for eyes, while a hairline crack runs around her waist. The thing looks crudely made, and Maggie’s surprised that it survived the journey intact. Setting it down, she turns to the letter and begins to read.

August 13, 1972

Dear Maggie,

Enclosed is a gift for you made by a friend of mine, Yia Pao the potter, whom I mentioned the last time I wrote (“Yia” is an honorific given to Hmong men when they become fathers, in keeping with the race’s respect for parenthood). I fear he is at risk of falling in with bad company, so I have taken him under my wing. I like to think it due to my influence that he has begun to fashion the likenesses of saints. I told him Saint Clare was your favorite when you were a girl, because she was the patron saint of television, so he made you a statue of her. I hope she brings you comfort.

I know I was wrong to leave for Laos in anger as I did. I should have seen sooner that you’re no longer a girl but a woman leading her life, and that your life is not with me. Now I am trying to make amends through service. “By their fruits you shall know them,” we are told. We’re all His vessels, sealed up in ourselves and opaque to each other but transparent to Him.