Previously: Maggie's sister Kay has come for a visit, bringing her history professor boyfriend along. One of Maggie's clients, also a history professor, inserts himself into her life by crashing a dinner party and ruining Maggie's evening. She has been backed into a corner by another client who insists that she go to London to resolve a script dispute.
Chapter 4
A fresh bunch of red roses was waiting for Maggie on Monday morning, with a note of apology from Bill Goebel. “Forgive my haste,” he wrote, “and I regret that I upset you.”
“So, what did he do, try to kiss you or something?” Ann asked. She was not the least bit embarrassed about reading the note.
“No, he had a phenomenal climax before I was even close to an orgasm,” Maggie said sadly, using her best blank face look. “Premature ejaculation.”
“You slept with him?” Ann gasped in complete shock.
“Gotcha,” Maggie laughed, winking at the receptionist whose jaw hung open. “It was the most miserable night of my life.”
Ann acknowledged that her snooping had been duly punished, and she tapped a finger on Maggie’s wedding ring. “It will not get better until this is gone.”
“No, Ann, no matter what I’ll always be Franco’s wife.”
“Till death do us part, right? Pick yourself up and move on, make a new start, buy a whole new wardrobe.”
“I just paid the mortgage, I can barely afford a sandwich before next payday.”
“Wait a minute,” Ann said as she went back behind her desk. “This trip to London. Hofmeier sent your tickets and an itinerary. There’s your fresh start. Listen, Maggie, you can do anything you want. Once you go home you’ll never see these people again. Meet some guys, have casual sex, all the things you never did before.”
“Come on, me? I go to church every Sunday, for heaven’s sake.”
“I mean it. How many times have you looked at some cute guy and wondered what it would be like to spend a night with him and then tell him to go home when you were done?”
“Annie, I could have Bill Goebel any time I snap my fingers.”
“Big deal, you don’t want him. I’m talking about someone who makes your heart beat faster, like that lawyer who gets off the elevator at the tenth floor.”
“I can’t do that,” Maggie shook her head in disbelief. “Just jump into bed like some young girl.”
“Sure you can. Aren’t you from the ‘If it feels good, do it” generation?”
“Good Lord, I feel old now. Besides, some young stud would never look twice at me. I’m close to forty years old.”
“Wear a push-up bra and a low cut dress, old lady, and that young stud won’t raise his eyes all the way up to your face. All a man wants from a woman is what she has between her legs and sticking out of her chest, and in the morning he won’t remember what color your eyes are.”
Maggie began to chuckle at the thought, and she kept snickering all day when she imagined herself as an object of lust. In mid-snort, Theresa poked her head into the office on her way to lunch, to drop off a catalog that she was delivering as if it should have been covered in a plain brown wrapper. With a stern command, she practically ordered Maggie to buy a few new things for her trip.
“Oooh, look, Maggie,” Theresa said seductively as she opened the color brochure. “Lejaby imported from France. I know you love Lejaby lingerie as much as your sister.”
“Did Ann put you up to this?” Maggie asked, feeling as if a vast conspiracy was forming.
“No, Kay told me to give it to you. I know what the nuns told us, Mags, but those rules don’t apply to widows. You did that already, okay, you paid your dues and now it’s time to be a woman who enjoys sex because it is one of God’s gifts to womankind. I give you my permission to sleep with at least two different men while you’re in England. Two men in three weeks, not so difficult, great fun.”
“What? It’s two weeks, that’s what the lady from the production company said,” Maggie protested.
“Mr. Hofmeier made the arrangements. Your return flight is three weeks after your arrival. He’s paying for the whole thing, so go enjoy yourself. What is it that the French say about sex?”
“That it’s good for your skin,” Maggie mumbled as she thumbed through the pages of the catalogue, covered with pictures of exquisitely beautiful undergarments. For such lovely bits of nothing that went unseen, Maggie would revise her budget. It was a weakness, something that she and Kay indulged in every time Kay was in town. If anyone ever saw what the Griffith sisters wore under their ratty old jeans and sweatshirts, it would be shocking.
“And they’re right, it is good for the skin. Look at Kay’s complexion these days. Yum, check out that Gossard, gorgeous fabric.”
The two-week trip had been extended, since no visit to London was complete without a day at the Tower, and a tour of Westminster Abbey, and Hofmeier would not listen to one word of argument. It meant that three weeks of work would have to be compressed into the few days that remained before she left, and Maggie worked like a woman possessed. Ann’s suggestion about making a fresh start had settled into Maggie’s brain, and she had run up her credit card tab with an entire collection of outfits, tailored and elegant, to wear in London. And then there were all the goodies that she and Kay had ordered from the catalog, with not one article remotely sensible or dull. By the time that Kay and Fabrizio appeared at the door to begin their exploration of suburban life, Maggie was ready for an adventure.
“Don’t forget the orthodontist on the tenth,” Maggie said as the cab driver piled her luggage into the trunk. “And the tournament was rescheduled, there are three games on Sunday.”
Joey received so many hugs and kisses from his mother that he finally told her to go, leave, have a good trip. “I’ve got it all written down,” Kay assured her sister as she stepped into the cab.
“If anything happens to me, Kay, Joey is yours. I named you as his guardian. I’ll call when I get to my hotel.” Maggie waved out the window as the cab pulled away, drying her eyes with her other hand.
“Today, Joey, we will have donuts for breakfast like real Americans,” Fabrizio offered with a smile, looking lovingly at Kay. “You are so lucky, Kay. Your sister loves you very much.”
“Are you crying too, Aunt Kay?” Joey asked, amused by his mother and aunt with all their emotions and tears of goodbye. They hurried back into the house to get out of the cold, with Fabrizio easing a gentle hug on Kay’s shoulders.
“Of course I’m crying. As soon as your mother leaves, you start eating junk food. What am I supposed to tell her when she comes home and finds you all fat and pimply?” she sniffed.
Every morning, Maggie said a rosary, having begun the habit after her third miscarriage. Catholics were always making deals with God, and that was her agreement with the Lord. Give me a child, she had vowed, and I’ll send you a rosary every day for the rest of my life. Once Joey came along, she could never back out of the bargain, and so she started every day with the long string of prayers. As the car drove up the highway, making for Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, she pulled the beads from her purse and silently began. Houses and new subdivisions were a blur out the window as the car went north, her beads sliding through her fingers as each Hail Mary was said like a chant, the words no longer distinct in her thoughts but turned into one long word. HailMaryfullofgrace; she repeated the prayer ten times until the decade was finished, only to begin it again.
Passing the frozen fields of southern Wisconsin, she paused to look out the window at the white drifts of snow that were marked only by the tracks of snowmobiles that crisscrossed the empty land. She was making a new start with this trip, stepping into a new life that she had not chosen to live, not yet at least, but then it was not her choice to make. “Hail Mary, help me get back on my feet,” she prayed. “Our Father, help me to keep my head on straight, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, show me the path because I don’t know which way to go.”
There was one more prayer, the one that their mother would offer to Kay when she was between romances. St. Anne, send me a man, as fast as you can. It was tempting to add that in, to make it her newest entreaty to the pantheon of saints. After only three weeks of being a widow, Maggie realized that she did not much care to sleep alone. With every passing day she longed for a man’s company, feeling utterly adrift without two strong arms to hold her at the end of the day.
Getting through the baggage check and security at the airport took hours, and once on the plane she was surprised to find that Mr. Hofmeier had put her into the first class cabin. She settled comfortably into her seat, with plenty of room for her legs to be stretched, and continued her prayers. Realizing that the image of a woman praying would be unnerving to her fellow passengers, especially with a rosary adding to the atmosphere of fervent supplication, she wrapped the beads around her hand to be discreet. As the plane began to taxi down the runway, she kissed the crucifix at the end of the chain and crossed herself. Setting her watch set to London time, she began to recalibrate her brain’s clock. By the time she switched planes in New York, Maggie had managed to convince herself that it was close to midnight and she was sleepy, even if her eyes were not ready to close just yet.
Bea Parkhurst scanned the faces in the cabin, searching for Maggie Griffith Angiolini. She had picked up something in Maggie’s tone when they had spoken, a midwestern frankness that convinced Bea that Maggie was the sort of woman that the producer liked to socialize with. She had taken to the widow at once, with Maggie’s intelligence and quick wit, and Bea looked forward to sharing London with the newcomer. Since her divorce a year ago, Bea gravitated to other single women and had cultivated a large group of friends; adding Maggie to the roster would happen naturally. There was a bit of the mother hen in Bea, a businesswoman who knew so well that it was never easy for a woman to travel alone. Her offer to fly together had come out of that motherly concern, but Maggie’s situation had rather intrigued the Englishwoman. Bea and all her friends were either single by choice or divorced, and Maggie was the first woman that Bea would meet who had been abruptly forced to go it alone.
“Maggie, you look like your voice,” Bea said as she shook Maggie’s hand. She settled into her seat on the aisle and fastened the seat belt.
“I was hoping that I would look better,” Maggie joked. She looked at Bea, a glance that asked the age of a woman who projected youth and vitality behind a creamy complexion that had only just begun to yield to gravity’s pull.It was hard to tell if Bea was forty-five or fifty-five, for she exuded the vibrant energy of a young woman even as the skin under her chin began to grow loose. “I’m sorry if I look surprised, but you look so much like my cousin Louisa.”
“Tell me she’s your favorite cousin, please,” Bea said.
“Better than that. She was my role model when I was growing up, since she was a little older and I thought she was so mature and stylish. My aunt came from Bristol, and my cousin looks just like her mother’s sister.”
“Was she a war bride? Oh my, I understand now why you and Mr. Hofmeier are so firm about that scene.”
“It’s more than my aunt’s tales that are set in my mind,” Maggie said. "Bea, please don’t tell anyone, but that scene is purely autobiographical. Hofmeier changed the main character into an English soldier, but the events are real.”
“Why the secrecy?” Bea asked, and as the plane took off she saw Maggie turn flat white. “Are you all right, Maggie?”
“Sorry, I hate flying. If I could swim to England I’d be happier.” There was silence until the plane leveled off, and then Maggie released her grip on the armrests. “The woman who dies in the blitz was going to be the first Mrs. Hofmeier. He never told his current wife, that’s why it’s such a secret.”
“We can’t change the scene at all,” Bea said with a touch of surprise. “I am sorry, I never understood before. Well, of course he would never bare his soul to us. And the main story, about the former soldier who goes to London in search of his son, are you telling me that Hofmeier, well, um.”
“He did find the boy, but the family had moved to Manchester by then. He changed the location to London to keep the story simple. Anyway, his fiancée’s parents had raised the boy as their son, referring to his mother as his sister. Oddly enough, Mr. Hofmeier understood their reasoning. He was going to marry the girl, but her father was a trifle irritated about the baby coming before the wedding, a little scandalous at that time. All those meetings between Hofmeier and his son, everything from the screenplay, that’s all true.”
“So the boy never knew his real father,” Bea observed, interested and deeply saddened by the story. “He always thought that Mr. Hofmeier was just his sister’s friend. But why did Hofmeier insist that the flashbacks show the soldier as a man of fifty?”
“He was that old when his son was killed in a traffic accident. It’s his way of expressing his deepest pain, that fifty-year old man is the one who lives through the previous episodes. Sort of artsy, but Mr. Hofmeier is rather eccentric.”
“But what did he tell his wife when he went to England all those times?”
“Some story about a local family that was kind to him when he was stationed there, kept in touch, that sort of thing. He used to send his son gifts for his birthday, as if he were only spoiling the baby of the family. Oh, God forgive me, I’ve said too much,” Maggie blurted out. “I shouldn’t have had that drink on an empty stomach.”
“No, don’t worry about anything. You have an ally at Argosy Productions, and not a word to anyone. I’ll help you convince them that this scene stays,” Bea squeezed Maggie’s hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Thanks so much, Bea, you’ve saved me from feeling like a blabbering fool. Let’s seal our bargain with another drink so you can catch up to me. I don’t want to be the only single girl stumbling off this plane in a drunken stupor.”
Over cocktails, they talked about London and the actors who were waiting for the final pieces of the script to finish the production. As they both relaxed, Bea asked Maggie some rather personal questions about Franco’s death, and how Maggie felt about being alone. In turn, Bea confessed her deep animosity for her ex-husband, who had been carrying on an affair with a prominent actress before Bea tossed him out of the house. It was very enlightening to the divorcee to discover that Maggie had a deep-seated anger at her dead husband, when she had been expecting deep sadness.
“It’s no different, you see,” Maggie insisted. “My husband left me, just like yours left you. The only distinction I can make is that I’ll never see him again, and our son will never see him again. So, yes, I am pissed off.”
Bea had to laugh at Maggie’s outburst, and that set Maggie off into uncontrollable giggling. “Are we drunk enough now, Maggie?” Bea asked between snickers.
“Bea, my dear, we are officially shit-faced,” Maggie assured her new buddy. “I’m sorry, I never used to swear before.”
“That’s all right, I swear all the time and no one seems to take any notice.”
“Look at the time, it’s four in the morning,” Maggie showed Bea her watch. “Don’t we have a meeting in the afternoon?”
“You’re right, we had best get some rest. I think I will quietly pass out here,” Bea said as her eyes closed.
“Let’s order champagne for breakfast,” Maggie suggested as she dozed off.
Slowly, Bea felt sleep tugging at her eyes. She had her shoes kicked off and her head was resting on an airline pillow, with a thin blanket pulled up to her neck. As she felt herself drifting away, she made a mental note to introduce Maggie to Trevor Harwood, the man who had nearly been socked by Karl Hofmeier. Trevor would make Maggie happy because that was the type of man he was, even if it would only last a few weeks. Bea was trying to imagine how Trevor would be able to say goodbye at the end of those few weeks as she finally dozed off.
Two hours from London, Maggie woke up with her mouth as dry as the cotton balls in her make-up bag. The steward was beginning to serve breakfast as Maggie quietly slipped off to the bathroom to fix her face. She stared in the mirror as she tried to repair her hair, where it had become compressed in one spot. A little make-up and clean teeth made her feel more alive, though her reflection revealed a sleep-deprived fatigue. Gazing in the mirror, she was somewhat surprised to see that the woman who looked back at her was the same person who had boarded a plane in Milwaukee the day before. For some reason, she had been expecting to look different this morning. She washed her hands and stopped to look at the ring on her left hand. After she had tossed the paper towel into the bin, she took another look, and then she stared back at the mirror. She hesitated for only a moment before she pulled the ring from her finger and slipped it into the pocket of her black wool trousers. “I am Margaret Mary Griffith, and I am free to do whatever I want,” she said strongly to her reflection.
“Breakfast is served, Bea,” she whispered, gently shaking her companion from sleep.
“How can you be so damned cheery?” Bea grunted.
“I’m a morning person. By the time we get to our meeting, I will be a bitch on wheels,” Maggie promised.
“Maggie, you are going to be great fun,” Bea grinned. “If I ever write a novel, I want you to be my editor.”
Over a breakfast of airplane mystery food and plenty of coffee, Bea prepared Maggie for that afternoon’s meeting. If the plane landed on time they would have just enough time to shower and change clothes, and the promise of a warm shower was more delicious than the hot coffee. Thanks to Miss Kolasa’s very thorough planning, Maggie would find a car waiting at the airport to take her to her hotel, and another would ferry her from the hotel to the meeting at one o’clock. As Maggie explained all that to her companion, she self-consciously rubbed her bare finger, where a ridge remained even though the gold band had disappeared. Maggie felt as though she had undergone some kind of transformation by taking off just one piece of jewelry.
Chapter 4
A fresh bunch of red roses was waiting for Maggie on Monday morning, with a note of apology from Bill Goebel. “Forgive my haste,” he wrote, “and I regret that I upset you.”
“So, what did he do, try to kiss you or something?” Ann asked. She was not the least bit embarrassed about reading the note.
“No, he had a phenomenal climax before I was even close to an orgasm,” Maggie said sadly, using her best blank face look. “Premature ejaculation.”
“You slept with him?” Ann gasped in complete shock.
“Gotcha,” Maggie laughed, winking at the receptionist whose jaw hung open. “It was the most miserable night of my life.”
Ann acknowledged that her snooping had been duly punished, and she tapped a finger on Maggie’s wedding ring. “It will not get better until this is gone.”
“No, Ann, no matter what I’ll always be Franco’s wife.”
“Till death do us part, right? Pick yourself up and move on, make a new start, buy a whole new wardrobe.”
“I just paid the mortgage, I can barely afford a sandwich before next payday.”
“Wait a minute,” Ann said as she went back behind her desk. “This trip to London. Hofmeier sent your tickets and an itinerary. There’s your fresh start. Listen, Maggie, you can do anything you want. Once you go home you’ll never see these people again. Meet some guys, have casual sex, all the things you never did before.”
“Come on, me? I go to church every Sunday, for heaven’s sake.”
“I mean it. How many times have you looked at some cute guy and wondered what it would be like to spend a night with him and then tell him to go home when you were done?”
“Annie, I could have Bill Goebel any time I snap my fingers.”
“Big deal, you don’t want him. I’m talking about someone who makes your heart beat faster, like that lawyer who gets off the elevator at the tenth floor.”
“I can’t do that,” Maggie shook her head in disbelief. “Just jump into bed like some young girl.”
“Sure you can. Aren’t you from the ‘If it feels good, do it” generation?”
“Good Lord, I feel old now. Besides, some young stud would never look twice at me. I’m close to forty years old.”
“Wear a push-up bra and a low cut dress, old lady, and that young stud won’t raise his eyes all the way up to your face. All a man wants from a woman is what she has between her legs and sticking out of her chest, and in the morning he won’t remember what color your eyes are.”
Maggie began to chuckle at the thought, and she kept snickering all day when she imagined herself as an object of lust. In mid-snort, Theresa poked her head into the office on her way to lunch, to drop off a catalog that she was delivering as if it should have been covered in a plain brown wrapper. With a stern command, she practically ordered Maggie to buy a few new things for her trip.
“Oooh, look, Maggie,” Theresa said seductively as she opened the color brochure. “Lejaby imported from France. I know you love Lejaby lingerie as much as your sister.”
“Did Ann put you up to this?” Maggie asked, feeling as if a vast conspiracy was forming.
“No, Kay told me to give it to you. I know what the nuns told us, Mags, but those rules don’t apply to widows. You did that already, okay, you paid your dues and now it’s time to be a woman who enjoys sex because it is one of God’s gifts to womankind. I give you my permission to sleep with at least two different men while you’re in England. Two men in three weeks, not so difficult, great fun.”
“What? It’s two weeks, that’s what the lady from the production company said,” Maggie protested.
“Mr. Hofmeier made the arrangements. Your return flight is three weeks after your arrival. He’s paying for the whole thing, so go enjoy yourself. What is it that the French say about sex?”
“That it’s good for your skin,” Maggie mumbled as she thumbed through the pages of the catalogue, covered with pictures of exquisitely beautiful undergarments. For such lovely bits of nothing that went unseen, Maggie would revise her budget. It was a weakness, something that she and Kay indulged in every time Kay was in town. If anyone ever saw what the Griffith sisters wore under their ratty old jeans and sweatshirts, it would be shocking.
“And they’re right, it is good for the skin. Look at Kay’s complexion these days. Yum, check out that Gossard, gorgeous fabric.”
The two-week trip had been extended, since no visit to London was complete without a day at the Tower, and a tour of Westminster Abbey, and Hofmeier would not listen to one word of argument. It meant that three weeks of work would have to be compressed into the few days that remained before she left, and Maggie worked like a woman possessed. Ann’s suggestion about making a fresh start had settled into Maggie’s brain, and she had run up her credit card tab with an entire collection of outfits, tailored and elegant, to wear in London. And then there were all the goodies that she and Kay had ordered from the catalog, with not one article remotely sensible or dull. By the time that Kay and Fabrizio appeared at the door to begin their exploration of suburban life, Maggie was ready for an adventure.
“Don’t forget the orthodontist on the tenth,” Maggie said as the cab driver piled her luggage into the trunk. “And the tournament was rescheduled, there are three games on Sunday.”
Joey received so many hugs and kisses from his mother that he finally told her to go, leave, have a good trip. “I’ve got it all written down,” Kay assured her sister as she stepped into the cab.
“If anything happens to me, Kay, Joey is yours. I named you as his guardian. I’ll call when I get to my hotel.” Maggie waved out the window as the cab pulled away, drying her eyes with her other hand.
“Today, Joey, we will have donuts for breakfast like real Americans,” Fabrizio offered with a smile, looking lovingly at Kay. “You are so lucky, Kay. Your sister loves you very much.”
“Are you crying too, Aunt Kay?” Joey asked, amused by his mother and aunt with all their emotions and tears of goodbye. They hurried back into the house to get out of the cold, with Fabrizio easing a gentle hug on Kay’s shoulders.
“Of course I’m crying. As soon as your mother leaves, you start eating junk food. What am I supposed to tell her when she comes home and finds you all fat and pimply?” she sniffed.
Every morning, Maggie said a rosary, having begun the habit after her third miscarriage. Catholics were always making deals with God, and that was her agreement with the Lord. Give me a child, she had vowed, and I’ll send you a rosary every day for the rest of my life. Once Joey came along, she could never back out of the bargain, and so she started every day with the long string of prayers. As the car drove up the highway, making for Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, she pulled the beads from her purse and silently began. Houses and new subdivisions were a blur out the window as the car went north, her beads sliding through her fingers as each Hail Mary was said like a chant, the words no longer distinct in her thoughts but turned into one long word. HailMaryfullofgrace; she repeated the prayer ten times until the decade was finished, only to begin it again.
Passing the frozen fields of southern Wisconsin, she paused to look out the window at the white drifts of snow that were marked only by the tracks of snowmobiles that crisscrossed the empty land. She was making a new start with this trip, stepping into a new life that she had not chosen to live, not yet at least, but then it was not her choice to make. “Hail Mary, help me get back on my feet,” she prayed. “Our Father, help me to keep my head on straight, Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, show me the path because I don’t know which way to go.”
There was one more prayer, the one that their mother would offer to Kay when she was between romances. St. Anne, send me a man, as fast as you can. It was tempting to add that in, to make it her newest entreaty to the pantheon of saints. After only three weeks of being a widow, Maggie realized that she did not much care to sleep alone. With every passing day she longed for a man’s company, feeling utterly adrift without two strong arms to hold her at the end of the day.
Getting through the baggage check and security at the airport took hours, and once on the plane she was surprised to find that Mr. Hofmeier had put her into the first class cabin. She settled comfortably into her seat, with plenty of room for her legs to be stretched, and continued her prayers. Realizing that the image of a woman praying would be unnerving to her fellow passengers, especially with a rosary adding to the atmosphere of fervent supplication, she wrapped the beads around her hand to be discreet. As the plane began to taxi down the runway, she kissed the crucifix at the end of the chain and crossed herself. Setting her watch set to London time, she began to recalibrate her brain’s clock. By the time she switched planes in New York, Maggie had managed to convince herself that it was close to midnight and she was sleepy, even if her eyes were not ready to close just yet.
Bea Parkhurst scanned the faces in the cabin, searching for Maggie Griffith Angiolini. She had picked up something in Maggie’s tone when they had spoken, a midwestern frankness that convinced Bea that Maggie was the sort of woman that the producer liked to socialize with. She had taken to the widow at once, with Maggie’s intelligence and quick wit, and Bea looked forward to sharing London with the newcomer. Since her divorce a year ago, Bea gravitated to other single women and had cultivated a large group of friends; adding Maggie to the roster would happen naturally. There was a bit of the mother hen in Bea, a businesswoman who knew so well that it was never easy for a woman to travel alone. Her offer to fly together had come out of that motherly concern, but Maggie’s situation had rather intrigued the Englishwoman. Bea and all her friends were either single by choice or divorced, and Maggie was the first woman that Bea would meet who had been abruptly forced to go it alone.
“Maggie, you look like your voice,” Bea said as she shook Maggie’s hand. She settled into her seat on the aisle and fastened the seat belt.
“I was hoping that I would look better,” Maggie joked. She looked at Bea, a glance that asked the age of a woman who projected youth and vitality behind a creamy complexion that had only just begun to yield to gravity’s pull.It was hard to tell if Bea was forty-five or fifty-five, for she exuded the vibrant energy of a young woman even as the skin under her chin began to grow loose. “I’m sorry if I look surprised, but you look so much like my cousin Louisa.”
“Tell me she’s your favorite cousin, please,” Bea said.
“Better than that. She was my role model when I was growing up, since she was a little older and I thought she was so mature and stylish. My aunt came from Bristol, and my cousin looks just like her mother’s sister.”
“Was she a war bride? Oh my, I understand now why you and Mr. Hofmeier are so firm about that scene.”
“It’s more than my aunt’s tales that are set in my mind,” Maggie said. "Bea, please don’t tell anyone, but that scene is purely autobiographical. Hofmeier changed the main character into an English soldier, but the events are real.”
“Why the secrecy?” Bea asked, and as the plane took off she saw Maggie turn flat white. “Are you all right, Maggie?”
“Sorry, I hate flying. If I could swim to England I’d be happier.” There was silence until the plane leveled off, and then Maggie released her grip on the armrests. “The woman who dies in the blitz was going to be the first Mrs. Hofmeier. He never told his current wife, that’s why it’s such a secret.”
“We can’t change the scene at all,” Bea said with a touch of surprise. “I am sorry, I never understood before. Well, of course he would never bare his soul to us. And the main story, about the former soldier who goes to London in search of his son, are you telling me that Hofmeier, well, um.”
“He did find the boy, but the family had moved to Manchester by then. He changed the location to London to keep the story simple. Anyway, his fiancée’s parents had raised the boy as their son, referring to his mother as his sister. Oddly enough, Mr. Hofmeier understood their reasoning. He was going to marry the girl, but her father was a trifle irritated about the baby coming before the wedding, a little scandalous at that time. All those meetings between Hofmeier and his son, everything from the screenplay, that’s all true.”
“So the boy never knew his real father,” Bea observed, interested and deeply saddened by the story. “He always thought that Mr. Hofmeier was just his sister’s friend. But why did Hofmeier insist that the flashbacks show the soldier as a man of fifty?”
“He was that old when his son was killed in a traffic accident. It’s his way of expressing his deepest pain, that fifty-year old man is the one who lives through the previous episodes. Sort of artsy, but Mr. Hofmeier is rather eccentric.”
“But what did he tell his wife when he went to England all those times?”
“Some story about a local family that was kind to him when he was stationed there, kept in touch, that sort of thing. He used to send his son gifts for his birthday, as if he were only spoiling the baby of the family. Oh, God forgive me, I’ve said too much,” Maggie blurted out. “I shouldn’t have had that drink on an empty stomach.”
“No, don’t worry about anything. You have an ally at Argosy Productions, and not a word to anyone. I’ll help you convince them that this scene stays,” Bea squeezed Maggie’s hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Thanks so much, Bea, you’ve saved me from feeling like a blabbering fool. Let’s seal our bargain with another drink so you can catch up to me. I don’t want to be the only single girl stumbling off this plane in a drunken stupor.”
Over cocktails, they talked about London and the actors who were waiting for the final pieces of the script to finish the production. As they both relaxed, Bea asked Maggie some rather personal questions about Franco’s death, and how Maggie felt about being alone. In turn, Bea confessed her deep animosity for her ex-husband, who had been carrying on an affair with a prominent actress before Bea tossed him out of the house. It was very enlightening to the divorcee to discover that Maggie had a deep-seated anger at her dead husband, when she had been expecting deep sadness.
“It’s no different, you see,” Maggie insisted. “My husband left me, just like yours left you. The only distinction I can make is that I’ll never see him again, and our son will never see him again. So, yes, I am pissed off.”
Bea had to laugh at Maggie’s outburst, and that set Maggie off into uncontrollable giggling. “Are we drunk enough now, Maggie?” Bea asked between snickers.
“Bea, my dear, we are officially shit-faced,” Maggie assured her new buddy. “I’m sorry, I never used to swear before.”
“That’s all right, I swear all the time and no one seems to take any notice.”
“Look at the time, it’s four in the morning,” Maggie showed Bea her watch. “Don’t we have a meeting in the afternoon?”
“You’re right, we had best get some rest. I think I will quietly pass out here,” Bea said as her eyes closed.
“Let’s order champagne for breakfast,” Maggie suggested as she dozed off.
Slowly, Bea felt sleep tugging at her eyes. She had her shoes kicked off and her head was resting on an airline pillow, with a thin blanket pulled up to her neck. As she felt herself drifting away, she made a mental note to introduce Maggie to Trevor Harwood, the man who had nearly been socked by Karl Hofmeier. Trevor would make Maggie happy because that was the type of man he was, even if it would only last a few weeks. Bea was trying to imagine how Trevor would be able to say goodbye at the end of those few weeks as she finally dozed off.
Two hours from London, Maggie woke up with her mouth as dry as the cotton balls in her make-up bag. The steward was beginning to serve breakfast as Maggie quietly slipped off to the bathroom to fix her face. She stared in the mirror as she tried to repair her hair, where it had become compressed in one spot. A little make-up and clean teeth made her feel more alive, though her reflection revealed a sleep-deprived fatigue. Gazing in the mirror, she was somewhat surprised to see that the woman who looked back at her was the same person who had boarded a plane in Milwaukee the day before. For some reason, she had been expecting to look different this morning. She washed her hands and stopped to look at the ring on her left hand. After she had tossed the paper towel into the bin, she took another look, and then she stared back at the mirror. She hesitated for only a moment before she pulled the ring from her finger and slipped it into the pocket of her black wool trousers. “I am Margaret Mary Griffith, and I am free to do whatever I want,” she said strongly to her reflection.
“Breakfast is served, Bea,” she whispered, gently shaking her companion from sleep.
“How can you be so damned cheery?” Bea grunted.
“I’m a morning person. By the time we get to our meeting, I will be a bitch on wheels,” Maggie promised.
“Maggie, you are going to be great fun,” Bea grinned. “If I ever write a novel, I want you to be my editor.”
Over a breakfast of airplane mystery food and plenty of coffee, Bea prepared Maggie for that afternoon’s meeting. If the plane landed on time they would have just enough time to shower and change clothes, and the promise of a warm shower was more delicious than the hot coffee. Thanks to Miss Kolasa’s very thorough planning, Maggie would find a car waiting at the airport to take her to her hotel, and another would ferry her from the hotel to the meeting at one o’clock. As Maggie explained all that to her companion, she self-consciously rubbed her bare finger, where a ridge remained even though the gold band had disappeared. Maggie felt as though she had undergone some kind of transformation by taking off just one piece of jewelry.
No comments:
Post a Comment