Charlotte Rogan - Now and Again

On Saturdays, Maggie took Dino for long walks through the city, always keeping her eyes open for Sandra Day O’Connor. Many of the citizens of Phoenix looked at her suspiciously when she asked about the former justice, and others merely shook their heads. “What business do you have with her?” asked a crossing guard in a disapproving tone of voice.

“You’ve chosen a funny way to go about finding someone,” said a woman with two small children in tow. “I’m sure Justice O’Connor wouldn’t take kindly to stalkers.”

“I can hardly stalk someone I’ve never seen!” exclaimed Maggie.

One time, she tried to explain about the depleted uranium to a nice gentleman who was walking a retriever. He listened politely while the two dogs sniffed each other, and when she had finished, he said, “You shouldn’t speak so loudly. The shadow government might be listening.”

After that she stopped asking questions, only walked silently around the neighborhoods she had circled on her map with Dino trailing behind her, his long toes tapping on the pavement. And she did see the justice — at least she almost did. Once or twice a day she would spy a face with powdery skin and a halo of soft gray hair, or a small, gracious figure dressed in a smart suit. She would spy the figure from the back, from the side, just going around a corner or through a door. On those occasions, Maggie would call out, “Justice O’Connor!” and rush after her, causing bystanders to stare at her briefly before going about their business as if they had seen it all before — a woman in faded jeans accompanied by a droop-eared dog, searching for something she couldn’t find. On nice days Dino would linger in a patch of sun and look solemnly after her before starting forward again, one paw in front of the other, until one day he stopped in front of a gourmet deli and refused to budge.

“Justice O’Connor? She was in here just last week,” said the proprietor. “She bought a loaf of seven-grain bread and some of those Greek olives.”

Maggie couldn’t believe her luck — it was almost as if she had turned a corner to find herself face-to-face with the former justice herself. But past experience had made her cautious. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing and see the jovial face before her cloud with misgivings. “How often does she come in?” she asked.

“Now and then,” said the proprietor. “When she’s in town.”

“But she’s in town now, isn’t she?”

“She was last week, but she goes to Washington, DC, a lot. Her clerk said they were headed back there. She didn’t say when they were going, and of course I didn’t pry.”

“Her clerk?” Maggie had assumed she would find the former justice alone, with no one else to interfere. She had envisioned a kind woman in a long black robe sweeping toward her along the sidewalk or, in an alternate scenario, sitting on a portable dais and answering questions for people who stood in line before her, as if searching for the justice was not only acceptable, but commonplace. She saw herself explaining about the top-secret documents and the Iraqi babies and then about Tomás and George and feeling her burden lift as the ex-justice absorbed the facts in preparation for making a pronouncement about what to do. “Do you happen to know where she lives?” she asked.

Before the proprietor could answer, a customer came into the shop and mistook Maggie for an employee. “Excuse me, excuse me,” she said, tapping Maggie on the shoulder. “I need a little help.”

Maggie had the sensation that the roles had somehow been reversed — that the customer was looking for her the way she was looking for Sandra Day O’Connor and that she would be expected to offer thoughtful suggestions on the basis of a disjointed set of facts.

“I can’t seem to find that nice olive oil with the white truffle essence,” said the customer.

“If only my problem were that simple,” said Maggie when the customer had paid for her purchases and left. “If only I just needed a little olive oil.”

“Try me,” said the proprietor.

Maggie nearly burst into tears. She knew she would have to tell her story carefully so the proprietor wouldn’t scoff at her or clam up altogether, but even though she took a deep breath and gathered her thoughts before starting, the story came tumbling out of her: the missiles that spewed radiation into the air, the munitions plant that polluted the creek, the policies aimed at providing ever more bodies for ever more prison cells, Tomás and George and all the wrongfully incarcerated. “I don’t know what to do, and I thought Justice O’Connor could advise me.”

“You got Tomás’s file to an appellate attorney, didn’t you? And someone wrote an article publicizing his case, and the attorney is making progress on the appeal, isn’t he?” The proprietor was looking at her with admiration, as if she had done something out of the ordinary.

“Yes,” said Maggie. “But even so, nothing’s changed.”

“Well, unless you plan to go to law school, there’s not much else you can do. Most people wouldn’t have bothered at all.”

“How could I not have bothered? Once I realized all the terrible things that were happening, that’s all I could think about. It seemed selfish to be concerned with myself or even with Lyle and Will when innocent people were in cages. So I started to look for evidence, thinking that was the way to convince other people of the truth. But I didn’t convince them. They pointed to rules and procedures and only became more firmly entrenched in their positions. Which made me wonder — what if the important thing isn’t reason or evidence at all? What if it’s more to do with imagination? If you can imagine what it’s like for someone else, you still might lock that person up — you might even kill him — but you’d comprehend the tragedy of what you were doing, wouldn’t you?”

“Hmm,” said the proprietor. “You might be overthinking it…but at least you’re overthinking it at the best little deli in Scottsdale! You might as well take advantage of it. You might as well sit right here at the counter and have a cold drink and my signature eggplant and feta sandwich.”

The proprietor busied himself behind the counter before turning and presenting her with two thick slabs of bread pinned together with a toothpick and garnished with parsley and a radish. If he had understood anything of what she was saying, he gave no sign of it. “Now,” he said, “I want to hear more about Lyle and Will.”

Maggie’s heart leapt like it had finally been returned to water after lying helplessly on the bank. She had purposely put her family out of her mind, but now she poured out the story of her life in Red Bud. She told of dinners at the Main Street Diner and how the three of them had squeezed together in the front seat of the truck before she had quit her job at the munitions plant. She told how Lyle had loved turkey and cheese or ham and mayo in his lunch until she had stopped buying turkey because the birds were raised in such tight quarters that part of their beaks and toes had to be removed to prevent them from injuring each other and ham because of how the sows were confined to cramped gestation crates until they were too old to be useful, at which time they were killed. She was surprised to find herself voicing not only what she loved about Lyle, but also the things that irritated her. She described how Lyle would shake his head over a dilemma before declaring, “Who am I to say! There are experts for that sort of thing.” She recalled how she was always sticking up for Lyle, but when was the last time Lyle had stuck up for her?

“It sounds like you had a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. It sounds like Lyle took advantage of you. No wonder you ran away.”