THE BEGINNING

Chapter Eight

"So tell me about your sons Maggie."

Surely he knows I'm not up to talking today. Where would I even begin? I don't have the words and besides, my tongue would only trip me. Nothing's ever good enough. And I'm tired of failing those poor boys of mine. I think about Ponyboy and have to close my eyes for a moment, work to keep on breathing.

The doctor reminds me that we're still in this room together, still here and tied to the Earth when he starts to speak. And his patience wraps around my shoulders. "Could you tell me what you're thinking about right now Maggie, what you see when you close your eyes?" And I suppose that's not too much to ask.

Even I'm surprised my mouth takes shape to form the answer. My lungs fill up to inflate the syllables that ride the waves of sudden sound. It's been awhile since I've heard my voice, or rather, recognized, felt connected to and claimed it as mine.

"I see...", and my yearning and pride for my babies collide on a whisper, "my little boys." I'm so moved by the mere thought of them my breath draws back in a tiny little hiccup.

His warm smile makes me feel like my answer is right. Like maybe I'm halfway decent. And that sits well inside me. Calms my storm for the moment. And it's in the quiet that I can hear them.

The smallest voices have never stopped calling me back home.

"Darry, I wanna mail this to Aunt Mabel." Soda's shoving a piece of paper in my hand and staring up at me, his tongue flicking at a loose tooth that's barely hanging on. The note's been folded in a half dozen crooked ways and I wonder how I'm getting out of this one.

I wave it in front of his nose. "It needs an envelope and a stamp ya know. And we ain't even got her address." I sound like a know-it-all, but I kinda do in this situation.

"There's stamps and envelopes back behind the coupon can. On the top shelf over the phone and you can reach 'em for me." Of course Soda knows every drawer and cabinet in this house. "But why we gotta get her a dress? I guess we can send her one of Momma's. She prolly wouldn't mind."

I watch him try and think that through, fiddling with his broken belt loop and working on that stubborn tooth. I roll my eyes even while I'm feeling sorry for him. I don't know which is dumber. That he doesn't know what an address is or that he thinks Mom wouldn't throw a hissy fit if he gave one of hers away.

"An address is where somebody lives, idiot," I try and explain but he's already onto something else.

Racing outside to meet the shouts of the neighbor kids who've taken over our tire swing, he yells behind his shoulder, "You'll do that for me Darry, wontcha?"

I want to do that for him, but how do you mail a letter to someone who doesn't exist? I walk to the window and watch him jump aboard the already crowded tire, too full of excitement to wait his turn, too full of life and fun for the others to refuse him. They laugh and hang onto him instead, making room and pulling him closer into their knobby kneed circle. I look down and unfold the letter. He didn't say I couldn't read it.

It's a crayon mess, full of mostly his drawings instead of words that he doesn't know yet how to write. Stick figures, a frowning sun and a flock of flying V's. Most of what's written are letters strung together that don't make no kind of sense. I can make out the dear Aunt Mabel. And I can tell the part he's taken the time to sound out to himself, because that's the only sentence I understand. The only one he cares about.

plez snd mi moma hom

A spark of tangerine trails through periwinkle clouds, and violet bursts of brush strokes are laid out with thought, careful to be wildly haphazard. A shock of gold fading into fiery maroon melts into a pool of indigo.

"My goodness Mrs. Curtis, you sure know how to paint," and I sit back and fully take in my sunset on canvas while Nurse Burns admires the details. I cock my head, one side to the other and decide it's missing something. I click the wooden end of my paintbrush against my teeth and the cheerful nurse heads to the next patient who like me, sits in the hospital's back garden for fresh air and relaxation and if we so choose, artistic expression.

I dip my brush to swirl several deep colors into a vibrant midnight blue, and a few drops of the rich velvety hue are splattered when the weight of a man's hand on my shoulder startles me...

His approach from behind is out of nowhere and he grips my shoulder, my right, the one I've raised to guide my way across a watercolor reverie. The thin brush falls from my clumsy hand, taking a long dive into a splash of seafoam green and I blurt out fast, "I'm sorry Daddy, I'll clean.."

But before I can finish my promise my head is whipped around to face him, forced by his vice-like grip against my sunburned cheeks. "You still seein' that Curtis boy?" His breath is bourbon and his eyes bloodshot. "The Lord doth detests lying lips little girl." His pinching hand gives my face a good hard shake back and forth, like a dog with the bone in his mouth.

"Yes sir," I stammer after his fingers let my jaw go free. "For a few months now, Darrel and me, we've been steady." The truth has escaped my throat and already fled the scene, abandoning me exposed.

I can breathe a little when he heads across the kitchen and starts his usual rant, the warnings of what God thinks about girls who aren't pure. What the devil has in store for the easy ones, the kind of daughter he'd disown if she opened her legs to trouble, unclean.

He's busy lighting the prayer candle beneath the crucifix that might save us, his back to me, but I still slowly bring my legs together at my knees, as if he might somehow be able to catch a glimpse up my skirt and see where Darrel Curtis has already been.

The hand gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze and I'm brought back to my painting of a dying sun. It's Dr. James behind me, praising the brilliant colors of the sky scape I created, before he bends down so I can hear his softer voice. "I'm afraid I have to pull you away Mrs. Curtis. It's time for your therapy."

"You mean I don't gotta come home till the sky gets dark?" I stare at Dad in disbelief, both of my buttery hands still holding my nibbled cob of corn.

Giving me the look, he snaps at me, points at my napkin that I forgot about, and I snatch it up, wipe away all the kernels that still stick to my greasy lips before I lay it across my lap where it belongs. And the deep chuckle before his answer surprises me further. "I said before dark, little man. But yeah Darry, you can stay out till them street lights start flickerin'."

Then his smiling eyes switch back again to stern, but I don't mind at all, and I'm nodding to his every word. "When you see them come on, you best get on this porch real quick, cause you show up a second after the sky's reached pitch, you ain't gonna like what'll be waitin' at home for ya. Understood?"

"Yes sir," is my promise and the deal is set, my excitement barely contained and sending my stomach in flips. I try and eat my meatloaf fast so I can get back to the stickball game down the street. The summer sun isn't near close to sinking even though it's already way into the evening, and I'm so grateful for the extra hours. Grateful that Dad's let up on all those ridiculous rules. So relieved that he's taken off most nights and come home to us, even cooking, sometimes burning supper and taking back the reins of this runaway wagon, righting it and steering us back to a far less scary road. And the best part of it all, he's cut the short and coiled leash that's bound me to the four posts of my mother's bed all summer long.

"Do I get to stay out late too Daddy?" Soda asks, already out of his chair and leaning against Dad's, his skinny arm thrown across my father's sleeveless shoulder and the side of his face pressed against an inked bicep.

Dad swallows his bite, washes it down with his iced tea and tells him, "Long as you stay with your big brother and mind him. Now get on back in your seat and I wanna see you eat every... single... one... of'em green beans," and I'm too happy to even resent Soda, my forever tag-a-long.

Nobody's noticed that Pony's been under the table this whole meal, wrangling Mom's yellow rubber dish gloves onto his feet, until we hear him call out "I'm gonna play late too", loud and demanding.

Dad leans back and to the left, takes a look down at the strangest kid on the planet, pulls him out from underneath and plops him down right into his dusty denim lap, then scoots the both of them closer to his plate.

"'Fraid not Pony," he says and plants a loud smooch of a kiss on top of his auburn waves of hair. "You're gonna stay here and keep Daddy from gettin' lonesome," and I roll my eyes every time Pony picks up Dad's food with his fingers, and wonder how it's fair that he's never having to behave at suppertime like Soda and me.

"You're okay Maggie, it's over," and I don't see but I feel the nurses fluttering around me. Unstrapping, unhooking, peeling off tape and uncuffing. I'm too weak to even lift my eyelids, but I try to, managing to let in a narrow strip of bright light that shines through tangled lashes.

Dr. James appears, looking down at me, smiling. "You did real good Maggie." And just that little bit of praise drips into my veins right along with my IV. The kind doctor's off to another room, another case, his voice now far away but aimed back at me. "Two down, two to go." A countdown of shock treatments. A countdown to well.

xXx

"I'm going to show you a series of black and white paintings. They're called inkblots. I want you to tell me the first thing you see when you look into them Maggie. Whatever comes to mind."

"Ummm, I see a moth...that one looks like a lady's insides...a skull...a pelvic bone.."

He's writing all this down. I know I'm sounding crazy.

"Is there somethin' wrong with what I'm seeing?" I ask softly, my nerves making my scalp tingle.

"There's no right or wrong to this kind of test, Maggie" he assures me and then holds the card up to study it for himself. "But that does look exactly like a pelvic bone."

I smile at him. And I hear myself giggle. And it's been a thousand years.

xXx

"Dr. James tells me you're in here for depression and anxiety, is that right Mrs. Curtis? I'm Dr. Belzier. You'll be meeting with me for a few sessions and together, we're going to come up with some healthier ways to help you cope. How does that sound?"

xXx

Third time's a charm. I go willingly. I hand them my wrist to cuff. I open up wide for the mouthpiece to slide in. I sink back and let the anesthetic take me. I want the shocks. I want whatever this is out of me.

xXx

"Tell me about your childhood, Maggie."

I don't want to go there.

xXx

I miss my boys. I cry for them, and I see them, hold them in vivid dreams.

I miss Darrel. And I lie in bed at night and think of his body and I ache for his touch. I can't help but touch myself.

And it feels like waking up.

I come home to the boys fighting, their shouts reaching me before I even hit the welcome mat. They still haven't seen me. I could always just turn right back around and make a break for it while I still can. Spend the rest of the night in a lonely bar knocking back a few or ten, tell Pauly to keep 'em coming until I can forget about all this. But that's not who I am.

I guide my key into the knob and rattle it back and forth, purposely making a ruckus so they'll hear me, like a warning shot, give these monkeys a chance to pull their act together. Cause I ain't in no kind of mood to walk into a whirlwind of whining about who hit who and all that tattletale bullshit.

"Shhh...y'all Dad's home, no fightin'," comes as a relief through the glass panes and they've settled down by the time I step inside.

"Hey guys," I sigh in a piss poor kind of greeting, scanning a room that's been turned completely upside down, "did y'all find somethin' to eat?"

"Darry made macaroni," Soda, the informer, answers quickly before anyone else has the chance.

"Well ain't that nice of Darry," I grunt when I lower slowly into my chair, feeling the pull of every screaming back muscle. I reach down to untie my laces, talking through the strain, "I'm sure ya'll thanked him for cookin' right?" and I can't hide my wince when I straighten back up.

"Yes sir," is Soda's automatic reply, while Pony's shaking his head no. By the look on Darry's face, I can tell he was thanked by neither brother.

"Thanks Darry," Soda goes ahead and surrenders before I have to make him, his eyes cast down at his wiggling bare feet.

And Pony with a scrunched up freckled nose, in all his honesty and with no kind of filter adds, "Thank you Darry, but it wasn't very good." I don't even have the energy to deal with what that boy just said and the way he said it, but it seems to roll off Darry's back anyway.

I thumb through the mail, then head for a shower. There's no goofing off or wrestling with Papa Bear tonight and all three of them could probably guess that was the case the minute they saw me. "This room better be put back together by the time I come back," I call out, and I leave them to their bossy whispers and all three telling each other what to do and how to do it.

I turn my back against the scalding spray, hoping it'll work out all my kinks, close my eyes and lose myself in the steam invasion. It was a long and grueling day on the roofs but that wasn't the worst part about it. I stopped by the factory to pick up my paycheck. That's when I could see in black and white dwindling numbers, the heavy hit my bottom line took from all my absences. There ain't much of our savings left. I'll be working twice as hard next month to make up for it.

She's been gone three weeks now.

Turning to face the deluge, I squeeze my eyes shut and open my mouth, let the hot water slap against my tongue and fill me up, silence the scream that's sat in my throat for months now, and I can hardly stand her being away. I want her back. I want her well, but if she can't be, I want her any way I can get her, I'll take her any way she comes. Come back to me darlin', I need you Maggie, please baby I want you to try... for me, and anymore I'm in a constant state of internal pleading, as if I can will her home.

I try and block out the knocking on the bathroom door, pretend it doesn't exist, but it grows louder and more forceful until I erupt, "Whoever's knockin' on this door right now had better have a damn good reason." The knocker has silently slinked away and I attack my hair with shampoo hands, rubbing against the grime and desperation.

But through the water blasting around my ears, I hear Darry and I can tell the door's been opened by the cool blast of air that's suddenly swept the foggy room. I twist the knob to shut it down immediately and tell him to give it to me again. "Huh?"

"I said...the phone's for you. Long distance, so I figured you'd wanna know. It's some doctor."

A/N: The Outsiders by SE Hinton

Thanks to all those readers who haven't given up on this story, on me, or on Maggie :)