It was after-hours; the sun and employees of Sacred Heart had all retired for the night. The room was softly swaddled in the gentle light from a single green-shaded table lamp salvaged from the demolition of a nearby library. The only sound to be heard was the dim din of the addicted chatting in the courtyard.
Mary Pendleton poured hot water into a cup from her tiny brew-pot that lived on the window sill. “Red Zinger or Chamomile? Oh and of course I have Earl Grey.”
Maggie caressed the arm of the loveseat and mused over the word in her head – It’s a seat, of love. The thought amused her. “How about Chamomile?” she decided. Mary dropped a teabag into the steaming water and the old-paper smell of a thousand yellowed books welcomed the appley-musk aroma that arose. “So? First ‘sponsor’ session.”
Mary looked at her and shrugged comically as she returned the little pot back to its home on the sill, “Sorry babe, I don’t make the rules.”
Mary settled into a sturdy wooden office chair and turned about to face Maggie. “So. . .” she began – her two hands cradled a John Lennon mug, relishing in its warmth. “Let the healing begin,” she smirked.
“Listen,” Maggie said, “I think you are really a great person. I mean that sincerely. And I know that this is all part of the program. But you understand that this is an assignment, right – a cover? I appreciate your dedication, but you don’t have to do . . . , “Maggie gestured a connection between them, “this.”
“Oh ok,” Mary said coolly, “I hear you. So, we can just hang out and chat, keep your cover, keep up appearances and all that.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, darlin’,” Mary glowered at her across her mug, “I’m afraid I just don’t work that way.” John crossed his arms judgmentally over his sleeveless New York City
Maggie grinned. She liked people with guts. She liked straight shooters. And maybe that was enough for now. What would it hurt to play along? “Ok, Mary. Whatever you say. Free therapy? Count me in.”
“Well!” Mary said with a melodramatic sigh, “I‘m glad we got that bit of ugliness out of the way.” She studied Maggie’s face and placed her coffee mug on the desk, “Ask me, in one word, how I see the world.”
Maggie wasn’t typically one to be caught off guard, but nevertheless, just to be clear, asked, “Say again?”
“One word: How do I see the world?”
Maggie took a half-second to understand the question, “Ok, got it.” Then, in a measured meter, she presented the question back to the counselor, “Mary, in one word, how do you see the world?”
Mary lit up as like a kid at a carnival. “Jazz!” she declared, and appropriately enough, held up Jazz hands, although the reference was likely not intentional.
“Ok, Mary Pendleton,” Maggie continued to play the cordial interviewer, “Why ‘Jazz’?”
Mary stood up and walked to the window. “First of all we need to agree that Jazz is the greatest musical expression ever conceived of by the human race, especially Jazz from the late 50’s and – mmm, ok, I’ll say early 60’s, too. Agreed? They say that Jazz is America
“So there is this unique, wonderful art form that never existed anywhere in the universe before. And who made it, who invented Jazz?” It was a rhetorical question. “If you follow the pedigree back to its source you will see it was really just a bunch of drunks and junkies and dudes who liked to smack their women around. You see?”
“I’m sure they weren’t all junkies and jerks, Mary?”
Mary whisked the comment away as she leaned back in her rickety office chair, “Oh yeah-yeah, I know. I paint with a broad stroke maybe. But listen: Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Thelonius, oh and let’s throw in Ray Charles for good measure – and the list doesn’t stop there, babe. I mean, it’s not hard to make my case. But here’s the point,” Mary gathered herself, “Out of that ramshackle, motley crew, came this most divine music, the soundtrack to humanity, man.” She smiled a self-indulgent hippy sort of smile. “And it’s the same here, you see, at Sacred Heart – everywhere, of course – but I’m talking about Sacred Heart right now. . . So when I see all of those folks out there, all the tweekers and the tramps,” she motioned affectionately to the people in the square, “. . . it’s easy to see a parade of failure, of people who can’t – stop – hurting – each other,” she punctuated each word with a frustrated slap to her palm, “for the stupidest of reasons, or for no reason at all. But you know, somehow – well, I believe anyway – that there is poetry still in these people, still poetry.” She smiled at Maggie, unembarrassed by her vulnerable tirade.
“So what about you? How ‘bout it?” she put to Maggie, “One word. Hit me, babe!”
“You call that one word?”
“Well,” Mary joked, “I expounded.”
Maggie crossed her arms, fidgeted with a stray yarn. “I don’t think I’m there yet.” She willed herself to meet Mary’s eyes momentarily. Not being the one in charge of a situation was unfamiliar territory.
There was a pregnant pause and Mary allowed the silence between them do its work.
“Ok,” she clapped her hands together, “I want you to ask me to tell you a secret.”
“What kind of secret?”
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, Maggie-Mae, in my line of work, doing what I do, I don’t have a lot of secrets left to tell. But I suppose the simplest definition would be: Ask me to tell you something that I have never told anybody else. Ask me.”
Maggie was nobody’s fool, and she wasn’t 100% comfortable with where things were heading. So she pushed back a bit. “But Mary, why in the world would I want to do such a thing?”
Mary placed her hands on her knees and turned her head to one side, contemplating her next move. Sometimes, she knew, people had to be healed against their will.
But Mary had been doing this for a long time and had an arsenal of tools in her box, she need only to wait for the appropriate instrument to make itself known. Her look fell upon one of the great and disheveled bookshelves, ragged monument that it was. “Ah, here we go.” Mary stood and began to search the shelves for a particular work. “Have you ever read any Nathaniel Hawthorne? (I should really alphabetize this someday.) You know, Maggie, most everyone thinks of their secrets as these dark, horrible things that no one must ever know about, ever! They’re the mutant, inbred offspring locked in the basement, right? The gorier the secret, the deeper the vault. I mean,” she grinned at Maggie, “that’s why their secrets, right?” Mary found the book that she was looking for. A dozen or so placeholders flagged out from between the pages. She turned to one near the middle. “Dig this,” she said. “So this preacher commits this heinous, unforgiveable sin, and he hides it from everyone, and it’s like eating him completely up inside, right? And this one guy is on to him, this bad little man, and the guy is prodding the preacher, ‘Come on, come clean you scumbag! Take your lumps. Pay for your crime!’ But the preacher gives this really beautiful speech. And he says, ‘You’ve got it all wrong, friend, the airing of our dirty secrets isn’t a punishment from God, it’s an inexpressible gift.” Mary quoted from her book, “Ok, here we go: There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried in the human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. – And here’s the point, Mags, this is the part you need to catch - And, I conceive moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of, will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable." Mary folded the cover closed. “So you see, Maggie-Mae, this is why I don’t have a lot of secrets left. Confession is not a punishment, it’s an indescribable gift.”
Maggie seemed to be really drilling in on that yarn. She felt that she had somehow succumbed deeper into the loveseat’s hold than she was 10 minutes ago. “I bet you’re really bummed that you weren’t born a man, because you’ve got this whole priest-confession thing down pat.” It was the kind of joke that could only pass between trusted friends. “Ok Mary,” she surrendered, “tell me . . . a secret.”
The words upon countless aged pages held silently about the two women, and Mary’s chair creaked just so as she leaned closer to Maggie. “Well, I used to foster children. And one summer, I found myself with an empty house. So I said to myself, ‘Mary, you have a great opportunity here. You can pull in a whole gaggle of siblings in this old house.’ So I found this wonderful little gang, the Wessels: just perfect, Maggie, two girls, two boys. So so gorgeous! They would burn your eyes right out of their sockets, sister.” Mary clutched her chest in complete romantic abandon. She took a sip of tea and continued her recollection: “So the State comes in and does their review, like they do, and long-story-short, I can only take three. Three of the kids. I can only take three, Maggie.”
The detective was confused. The gravity of the tale was, to her own surprise, lost upon her. “So, just to be clear, Mary, you’re deep, dark secret is that you wanted to be super-mom to four kids, but only got to be super-mom to three kids. You were only able to revolutionize the destiny of three kids instead of four. Is this – ah, what - compassion greed?”
“Right. It sounds that simple, doesn’t it? But, Maggie-Mae, the reality is so much worse than that. If those kids wanted to come home with me, the family would have to be split up. You see? Brothers and sisters, you know?” Just the hint of a sob quivered at the edges Mary’s voice. “And it tore my heart right out, totally.”
“So what did they do?”
“Well they split up, of course. Kiera was the oldest. She was my soldier - my little woman. And she knew what time it was. She understood that this was best for the others. So she stepped up and did the right thing. I kept up with her the best I could, but without being really in her life, there was only so much I could do.”
“I get that.”
“Maggie . . .” Mary leaned forward and lightly touched her left knee, “it didn’t go well for her.”
Maggie understood full well that she was being a little manipulated; she got Mary’s game: volunteering all of these little revelations. But it was ok, because she sensed that Mary’s agenda was a pure one.
“Ok fine!” Maggie declared, “You don’t have an off switch, do you?” She pulled up a sleeve and touched the blue-black design on her forearm. “This is Hebrew,” she explained.
Mary lit up and became the eccentric beatnik aunt once again. She play-clapped her hands together and bubbled, “Ooh, I love tattoos.” She reached out and caressed the letters as if to read them like Braille.
“It means Protection,” Maggie explained. “Everybody in this world is in need of protection, and that is what some of us are here for, to protect other people. It is what I am here for. One word.”
“Ok,” Mary said, “Ok - Yeah.” She stroked Maggie’s arm tenderly, and then rubbed her shoulder, “Understood.” Maggie wasn’t sure if Mary was being maternal or flirtatious. And she wasn’t sure which she wanted it to be.
“Well,” Maggie concluded, “good, because that’s all you’re getting.” Maggie divorced herself from the seat of love and made for the exit. “Thank you, and good night. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Mary smiled, pulled at her tea. It was growing cool now, but that was ok. “There was a moral to my story, Maggie.”
Maggie was already halfway out the door; white light spilled from the hallway in to the dim, cozy-cramped office. “Yeah?”
Mary paused for effect, “You can’t save ‘em all, Maggie.”
-----
Maggie blinked as she stepped into the unfriendly bleached light of the hall. She pulled the door quietly closed behind her until she heard it gently latch. She walked around a corner and when she felt sure that she was out of Mary's earshot, fell against a wall and began to cry. "Curse that woman and her Jedi mind tricks," she said to nobody. And also, "She is good, I'll give her that." The sounds of her crying bounced emptily about the linoleum floors and concrete block walls. It took Maggie about 90 seconds to subdue the unwelcome outburst. As the last echo of her emotional compromise yielded to Sacred Heart's silence, the detective heard the distinctive chck-zzz sound of a pretend shutter snapping on a digital camera. "Some body just took my picture," Maggie observed to herself, and then out loud, whispered into the quiet, "In-teresting."
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