Page 28 of The Wives of Hawthorne Lane

Maggie

Benton Avenue

Maggie pushes the stroller along the smooth pavement of the sidewalk on Main Street.

From under the sunshade, she hears baby Lila babbling to herself, swatting playfully at the colorful toys that dangle from the awning.

She smiles and looks down at Carter, who trots happily by her side licking at a lollipop, one shoe untied, the laces trailing behind him.

Maggie loves the children she nannies for as fiercely as if they were her own.

They pause outside a café, one Maggie couldn’t even afford a slice of toast in, so that she can attend to Carter’s laces.

She ties them into a tight double knot and then stands, rocks the stroller back and forth as Lila calmly drifts toward sleep inside.

As she does, Maggie gazes longingly through the café window at the fancy mommies clinking fizzing cocktails over a table laden with pastries.

She marvels at how flawless and happy they look, how glamorous their lives are.

All of them made up, designer bags casually draped over the backs of chairs, diamonds glistening at their wrists, twinkling on their manicured fingers.

One of them tilts her head back in laughter, her vivid red, salon-styled hair spilling down her back.

And then, just beside her, Maggie catches her own reflection in the glass, her mousy brown hair, the misshapen sweater she’d bought from a secondhand shop, and she turns away, ashamed that she’d almost been caught staring.

The women hadn’t actually noticed her, of course.

Maggie knows she’s invisible to people like them.

Even pushing a stroller though their town, she can’t pass for one of the mothers.

She’s nothing more than the hired help, part of the seamless backdrop of their lives, one of the silently grinding gears that makes it all possible.

But sometimes she likes to pretend. That Lila is her little girl.

That the UPPABaby stroller, which costs more than her car, belongs to her.

She allows herself to linger on that thought, turning it over in her mind.

She considers the way her heart trills when Carter accidentally calls her Mommy, the longing she feels deep in her belly when he slips his small, warm hand into hers.

She can’t bring children into the home she shares with Dean.

That sad, desperate space is no place for a child.

But that won’t be her life forever. Maggie knows that now.

She doesn’t know what trouble Dean’s new “business venture” with Mike will bring, the details of which he’s spoken very little of these past weeks, but she knows that whatever it is, it will not end well.

She’s had to be careful not to tip him off.

She can’t let Dean know that something has changed in her, that she’s readying herself to leave him.

If he found out…well, Maggie doesn’t even want to think about what he’d do.

But she finds that she likes this, having a secret that is all her own.

She feels a pleasant warmth spreading through her at the thought of the old jam jar hidden behind the shoeboxes in the back corner of her closet that has quickly been filling up with cash.

She’d asked the Sullivans if they could start paying her that way, in cash rather than her weekly check.

It makes it easier for Maggie to skim a few dollars and cents off the top before she has to hand her earnings over to Dean.

She hadn’t explained this to Ms. Sullivan, of course.

She wouldn’t want Ms. Sullivan, in her big house with her nice clothes, to think less of Maggie.

Ms. Sullivan is not the type of woman who would find herself needing to hide dollar bills from her husband in a jam jar.

But it seemed she didn’t have to explain.

Ms. Sullivan had torn up Maggie’s check and reached into her purse without saying a word, the pity in her eyes enough for Maggie to know that she understood.

Maggie had felt so ashamed, but she took the cash anyway, stuffing it into the pocket of her jeans, her eyes on the ground as she mumbled her thanks.

It had been a humiliating experience, but it had to be done. Maggie has to stick to her plan.

“Are we going home now?” Carter asks, pulling Maggie from her thoughts. He looks up at her with wide, innocent eyes.

“Yes,” she replies, turning the stroller in the direction of the safe, quiet cul-de-sac. “Let’s go.”

She looks back at the café one last time. Maybe someday, she thinks.