Page 12 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

Maggie Tucker’s feet ache as she stands outside her front door.

It’s been a long day, but as she’s about to lift her hand to turn the knob, something stops her.

She takes a moment, breathing in the thick muggy air.

It smells of exhaust and engine oil from the chop shop on the corner.

Dean assured her that she’d get used to it, that she’d eventually stop noticing it.

But she’s lived with him on Benton Avenue for nearly three years now, and she still smells it as strongly as ever.

Maggie feels as though she can’t escape it.

The scent of grease and grime that clings to her clothing, following her wherever she goes.

She hates that it’s become a part of her.

That even when she’s working, nannying for the wealthy family on the other side of town—when she’s cooking in their beautiful, pristine kitchen or strolling around the cul-de-sac with their polished, well-mannered children—she feels dirty.

But this is her home, and she knows that she has to go inside eventually.

Maggie pushes open the door and slips off her work shoes, her feet throbbing as she wiggles her stockinged toes against the threadbare carpeting.

Dean is already home. She knows this before she sees him by the stale scent of beer that lingers in the air, by the brown bottles lined up on the tiny kitchen table.

She hates that he’s been drinking so much.

She’s learned to gauge his moods by the number of empty bottles in the garbage can, and lately, they’ve been accumulating more quickly than Maggie would like.

Her husband’s temperament is a mercurial one.

Some days she comes home to find the man she married, that charming smile, his eyes sparkling, so devastatingly handsome as he bounces around the house like a rubber ball, patching a hole in the wall here, fixing a leaking faucet there.

But other days, she’ll find the curtains drawn, the house dark and dank with the tangy odor of sweat, Dean sprawled on the couch, empty bottles lying on their sides, dropped haphazardly on the carpet beside him.

Today seems to be something of a middle ground: She can tell he’s been drinking, but he’s not passed out in the living room, and sunlight is doing its best to stream through the windows, which are clouded with the ever-present dirt that has settled on their lives.

These are the hardest days, she finds, the days where she doesn’t know what to expect.

“Mags?” he calls.

“Yes,” she replies. “In here.”

She can hear his footsteps as he treads down the narrow hallway, and in a moment he appears in their living room. Maggie watches him curiously, trying to read his mood.

Dean stretches, lifting his arms over his head.

His black T-shirt rises with the effort, revealing a strip of his toned stomach, a trail of hair that disappears into the waistband of the jeans that ride low on his hips.

They’re stained with grease from the mechanic shop he works at, as are the tips of his fingers, the beds of his nails.

No matter how hard Dean scrubs, Maggie knows it won’t come off. The black stains are a part of him.

“What’s for dinner?” he asks.

“I thought I’d cut up some of the leftover chicken from last night. Maybe make some pasta to go with it.”

Dean grumbles, but he grabs another beer from the refrigerator without objection and pops the cap off. Maggie watches as it rolls under the table, but Dean makes no effort to retrieve it.

Maggie lifts her sauce pot from the lower cabinet, feeling the waistband of her work pants cutting into the bones of her hips as she bends. She’d like to change, but she knows that she should get Dean’s dinner started first. She fills the pot from the tap.

“How was your day?” she asks, her back to Dean.

“You wouldn’t believe these people, Mags.”

She knows where this is headed. Dean works at an upscale auto shop.

He loved it at first, getting to work on cars he’d otherwise only be able to dream of sitting in.

But he soon started to resent the people who owned them.

He’d once had larger ambitions for himself—owning his own shop, wearing a suit, being the kind of man his customers would see as an equal.

But it was a pipe dream for him, something, Maggie has come to suspect, Dean will never accomplish.

He’s far too foolish with his money, squandering it on booze and gambling.

He’s no closer to being able to afford his own shop now than he was the day she met him.

She sprinkles some salt into the heating water, encouraging it to boil. She’s beginning to get a feel for the turning tides of Dean’s mood, sensing that anything she says today will likely be the wrong thing, and so she says nothing. She watches the pot as she waits for him to continue.

“Who the fuck do they think they are, ya know? Had this one guy today, with his fuckin’ Porsche, telling me he took pictures of it from every angle before he brought it in, and if I so much as look at his car the wrong way, he’s going to know about it.”

Maggie nods as she adds the pasta to the now boiling water.

“Don’t worry, though,” Dean continues. “He got what was coming to him.”

He pauses, and Maggie knows he’s waiting for her to respond, that he wants to know he has her full attention. She turns to face her husband, watching as a serpentine grin snakes its way across his face.

“What did you do?” she asks, because she knows he wants her to.

“Nothing the fucker didn’t deserve. Loosened a spark plug a little. It’ll mess with his engine over time. And since this guy knows fuck-all about his fancy car, he probably won’t figure it out until he needs some pretty expensive repairs.”

“Wow,” Maggie says, though the thought makes her feel uneasy. She doesn’t know when Dean became this person. Vindictive. Mean. When they first met, he’d been so sweet, so charming.

Maggie had been waiting tables at a diner then.

It wasn’t a popular place—a greasy spoon where she always seemed to get the worst shifts, late nights bleeding into early mornings.

The people who came in were mostly vagrants or street kids who wanted something cheap that would keep their stomachs full.

Maggie hardly got any tips, and the pay was abysmal, but it was the only job she’d been able to find.

And then one night, Dean walked in, sat himself in her section.

She still remembers the way her stomach flipped when she saw him: the dark swoop of his hair, his dazzling smile, his black leather jacket pulled over a white T-shirt.

“Hey,” she’d said as she filled his water glass.

“Hey yourself,” he’d replied. His gaze was so intense that it made Maggie blush.

He ordered some eggs and toast, and as Maggie attended to the straggle of other late-night customers, she could feel his eyes on her, following her from table to table.

After she cleared his plate and brought him his bill, he asked what time her shift ended.

“Not until one o’clock,” she said with a sigh, dreading the long, late hours ahead of her.

Dean nodded, dropped a crumpled twenty-dollar bill onto the table, and popped the collar of his jacket as he slid out of the booth.

Maggie watched with disappointment as he pushed open the glass doors of the diner and disappeared into the darkness.

She’d thought that was the last she’d see of him, but when she left the diner that night, he’d been waiting for her in the parking lot, leaning against a vintage-looking motorcycle.

His arms were folded over his chest, a cigarette dangling from his lips, and his long legs, crossed at the ankles, ended in dusty black boots.

In the soft glow of the streetlights, she marveled at how handsome he was, at his dark lashes, the smooth planes of his face that made him look young and sweet despite the tough exterior.

As if he were a boy playing dress-up. Something about it tugged at the strings of Maggie’s heart.

He flicked the cigarette away, the red ember burning bright against the cracked black pavement.

She should have known then that he was bad news, that he was the kind of man who would break her heart, the kind of man every mother warns her daughters about.

Not that it would’ve stopped her. In that moment, she couldn’t believe he was there, choosing her, in her faded pink diner uniform, the scent of fryer grease clinging to her hair.

“Where’s your car?” he’d asked.

“I, uh, I walked here.” Maggie didn’t want to tell him that she didn’t have a car. That she couldn’t afford one. “I don’t live too far.”

Dean nodded as though he understood anyway. He held out a helmet toward her. “Want a lift, then?”

Maggie pulled the helmet over her head as she watched him mount the bike in one swift movement, a jean-clad leg swinging over the seat. She climbed on behind him.

“Hold on,” he said, revving the engine. Maggie slid her arms around his slim waist, and she pressed close to him, feeling the hardness of his body, breathing in the scent of his worn leather jacket against her cheek.

And she knew even then that she was going to fall for him.

That there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Dean was wonderful at first. He brought her bunches of daisies every Friday, opened car doors for her when he picked her up for dinner or a movie.

She remembers thinking that he was such a gentleman, remembers her disbelief that she’d managed to get so lucky.

She wonders now if it was all an act, if he’d ever been that person at all.

Dean is quite good at that, at making people believe he’s something he’s not.

Though it’s always only a matter of time until his true colors shine through.

“Yeah, but shit like that, it’s just not enough,” Dean says now, slamming his beer bottle onto the table. Maggie jumps at the sound. It takes her a moment to remember what he’s talking about. Work. A Porsche. A loosened spark plug.

“The world is fucked these days. Where pricks like that have more money than they know what to do with, and guys like me who work their asses off can hardly keep a roof over their heads.”

Maggie bites her tongue. She says nothing about how much of his money he wastes or how Dean has lost more than one job because he didn’t feel like showing up for a shift.

“I’m sick of working my tail off—and for what?” He throws his arms wide, gesturing at the tiny run-down house around them. “For this? Don’t you think I—we—deserve more?”

Maggie nods. “Maybe, but what can we do about it?”

“I don’t know yet,” Dean replies, slowly shaking his head. “But someday soon, I’m going to find a way to move us up in the world, settle the score with those rich fucks across town. I promise you that.”

Maggie feels a stirring of dread in the pit of her stomach. She doesn’t know what’s coming, but she knows it won’t end well.