Page 26 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

Dean paces the length of the living room like a tiger in a cage, and Maggie watches him, her eyes cautiously tracking his movements.

“Fuck that guy!” he shouts for the umpteenth time.

Maggie winces at the rage in his voice.

“Motherfucker got me fired over a damn spark plug! Like he couldn’t afford the repairs, like it wasn’t pocket change to him.

And Ernie just believed him that I’d messed with his car, that I’d fucked up his engine on purpose!

Let me go like that.” Dean snaps his fingers, the pop of it cracking through the silent house.

Maggie sits anxiously on the edge of the couch, not daring to make a sound.

“It’s such bullshit,” he hisses.

Maggie wishes he wouldn’t use that kind of language.

He never did when they first got together, but it feels like everything that comes out of Dean’s mouth lately is foul.

She finds it hard to see the man she loved in him anymore.

She once thought him so beautiful, but now everything about him is hard for Maggie to look at.

It’s like one of those optical illusions she’d seen in a book as a child, an image of two angels that shows the devil in the negative spaces.

And once you see it there, it’s all you can see.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie says, because she doesn’t know what else to say, but she knows that she has to say something, and pointing out that Dean brought this on himself is out of the question.

“You’re sorry,” Dean spits. “Lot of good that does.”

He digs into his pocket, pulls out a small clear bag of white powder, and shakes some out onto the coffee table. Maggie watches as he leans over and inhales it into his nose in one quick motion.

Maggie’s hands quake nervously in her lap as she watches him, the tip of his nose twitching, his pupils dilating as the high hits, a trace of cocaine still dusting his nostrils.

She hadn’t known about the drugs. Not at first. He’d hidden it so well; until he stopped caring what Maggie thought.

“I needed that job,” Dean mutters more to himself than to Maggie.

“It’ll be okay. You’ll find another job. I’m sure of it,” Maggie tells him, even though she’s not certain she believes it. The bills have been piling up in their mailbox, and debt collectors hound them over the phone. Her income alone won’t stretch far enough to keep them afloat.

Dean huffs. “Sure. Let’s say I get another job tomorrow. It’s just going to be the same shit in another place. How the fuck is anyone supposed to get ahead? How is it that people like us—me and you—we’re always in the red?”

Maggie blinks at him, uncertain how to respond. She can’t mention that Dean squanders any money they manage to save, letting it run through his fingers like water. The drinking, the drugs, the gambling.

Dean continues, the words leaping manically off his tongue, without waiting for her response. “I work my ass off and I have nothing to show for it.”

Maggie nods agreeably. Dean gets like this when he’s high, he hyper-fixates on a topic, and Maggie knows there’s nothing she can do but wait it out.

“Meanwhile, that rich prick with his Porsche—”

The doorbell rings and Dean stops his pacing, looks in the direction of the front door. “That’ll be Mike. I asked him to come by.”

Maggie does her best to hide the grimace that edges onto her face.

Evidently, she isn’t successful. “Don’t make that face,” Dean chides her. “I don’t know what you have against Mike, but he’s been my best friend since we were kids. You’re going to have to get over it.”

“Sorry,” Maggie says, her eyes dropping to her shoes.

Dean crosses the tiny living room, pulls open the door.

Mike Salter strides into the house, not bothering to wipe his dirt-coated work boots on the mat Maggie has laid out.

Something about Mike has always made Maggie uneasy.

She’s not sure if it’s the shark-like look of his dark, almond-shaped eyes, the smooth, slippery way he talks, or the fact that her husband seems, inexplicably, to hang on his every word.

Mostly, she suspects, it’s the leering way he looks at her, like he’s imagining what’s under her clothes.

“Hey, Mags,” he says with a nod and a wink that makes Maggie inwardly cringe.

“Hi, Mike.”

“Let’s talk out back,” Dean says. He leads Mike through the kitchen, grabbing a few cold beers from the fridge on the way.

Maggie feels a gust of relief pass over her when she hears the kitchen door close with a metallic clatter.

With a sigh, she takes inventory of the mess in her house—the muddy footprints tracking across the floor, the pile of dishes Dean has left waiting for her in the sink, the food wrappers and crushed cans he let accumulate on the kitchen table while she was at work.

She’d better get a start on straightening up.

Maggie pulls a garbage bag out from under the kitchen sink, shakes it open with a jerk, and begins to stuff the remnants of Dean’s lunch into it.

How did this become my life? How have I let things get this far?

It happened so slowly, Dean taking the reins of her life, that she hadn’t noticed until it was too late, until he was choking her with them.

Maybe it was because she’d been so young when they’d met.

She was only eighteen, so gullible and impressionable.

Dean probably sensed it on her, how eager she was to believe the promise he’d offered of a better life. It had been such a pretty lie.

Maggie risks a glance out the kitchen window, watches the two men standing on the cracked pavement of the driveway drinking long-necked beers from brown glass bottles.

They’re congregated around Dean’s bike, his pride and joy, Mike bending down to inspect the work Dean has done on it.

She wonders if Dean’s told Mike about losing his job, if maybe this time with his friend will improve his mood somewhat.

Maggie had a friend like that once. Someone she could call when life got tough.

It still hurts Maggie to think about Sam, the one friend she had in the before .

(That’s how she’s come to think of her life, divided into Before Dean and After Dean.) They’d been neighbors as children, when Maggie was so painfully shy that she didn’t have any friends her own age.

She still remembers the way she’d sit inside staring out the window of the tiny, ground-level apartment she lived in, watching the other kids run and laugh, watching the world pass her by. Until one day, Sam rang her doorbell.

“Wanna play?” he’d said.

Maggie blinked at him and looked back at her mother, who was hovering in the doorway to the kitchen.

Go on, her mother mouthed, making a shooing motion with the wooden spoon in her hand.

“Come on,” Sam said, taking a wordless Maggie by the hand. “Let’s go to the park.”

They were inseparable after that, Sam-and-Maggie, a package deal. And Maggie found that she liked it, belonging to someone.

Maggie shakes her head. There’s no point in dwelling on it now. Dean drove Sam away a long time ago. He took away the one truly good person in her life.

She collects the cans from the kitchen table, sweeps them into the bag in her hands, and looks out the window.

The atmosphere around the two men seems to have shifted.

Maggie can’t make out what they’re saying, but they’re deep in conversation, stone-faced and serious.

She watches as Mike explains something to Dean, his hands slicing through the air to punctuate his speech.

Dean casts a furtive glance toward the window, and his eyes briefly meet Maggie’s before she turns away.

It’s none of my business, she tells herself, setting down the garbage bag and turning her attention to the dishes.

—

It’s after dusk by the time Dean comes back inside, bringing the earthy smell of the outdoors with him.

“Maggie?” he calls.

She’s just finished cleaning and is stowing the mop away in the tiny broom closet at the front of the house. “In here,” she replies as she nudges the closet door closed.

Dean strolls in, tracking fresh boot prints onto the floor, but Maggie says nothing. He looks different, less intense than he did earlier, and she’s grateful for the change. As much as she dislikes Mike, maybe his coming here tonight really did do Dean some good.

“I’ve found a way to solve all our problems.” He smiles, sharp and cutting.

“What do you mean?” Maggie feels a stirring of dread, like the scent of an impending storm.

“Mike offered me a business opportunity.”

“What kind of business opportunity?” Maggie doesn’t know what Mike does for a living, but she’s always gotten the impression that it’s best if she doesn’t ask—she might not like the answer.

“The kind that’s going to finally move us up in the world. That’s going to have the rich fucks across town kissing up to me for once.”

“Dean,” Maggie manages to say past the lump that’s formed in her throat, the storm drawing nearer. “I’m not sure what this is about, but it sounds like something that could maybe get you into trouble. I don’t think—”

Dean steps forward, grabbing her throat so quickly that Maggie doesn’t have time to react. “That’s right. You don’t think.”

Maggie feels her airway closing as his fingers tighten on her neck.

“I don’t need you second-guessing me. I’ve already thought about it, and this is what I’m going to do. Got it?”

Dean releases her, and Maggie gasps for air. “Okay,” she says, her voice raw and hoarse. “Okay.”