On the Verge

Esther Cohen

This story is almost true. It’s the first one I heard when we moved to Middlefield. The first week in fact.

Marguerite O’Connell du Boisette, her name being far more evocative than her being, which was short, even squat, dark, wide and knotty, always felt herself to be on the verge. Almost there. For years, she was on the verge of a discovery: a poem, a painting that would finally make her a painter, a lover who would know how to really, truly love her, a job where her talents, hidden and mysterious, would float to the top every day, an apartment where the sunlight she knew existed would finally stream into the windows, a mother who would love her with the unconditional love she deserved, and a dress, velvet or satin or silk, so flattering her buried hidden beauty would emerge.

Her name was from a father who’d left. Marguerite’s mother, Katherine O’Connell du Boisette, of Queens forever, met a French painter in one of those odd coincidences. They’d both been at Jones Beach buying orange sodas when they were so young their differences didn’t matter. He married her on a whim. Flamboyant, mustachioed, hairy and dark, he was happy and so was she for the year they spent together. Then Marguerite was born. Katherine wanted to call the baby Daisy, but Pierre transformed her Daisy to Marguerite.

When the baby was born, they were happy for a while. They went on picnics, and camped. The baby slept. And smiled. Then one day as quickly as he’d appeared around the lemonade, Pierre just went away. That's all. She kept his picture and he stayed young as she grew tired, grey, and drained from the thought that whatever joy she had with him was simply gone.

Marguerite never thought to look for him, even when she traveled, once, on a Eurail pass through France. She accepted his absence as part of her life, accepted that she’d always be alone. Still, she really believed that one day when she was forty, even fifty or sixty, her picture would change.

Her jobs were dull, her life was dull and then her aunt Anne from Brooklyn died and left them both some money in her will. Marguerite and Katherine were each living separately. Their apartments, small and similar, each smelled like fried eggs though neither woman understood why.

They had dinner together every Thursday night. Marguerite rarely had somewhere else to go on Fridays, but she liked to leave them open just in case. On occasion, several times a year, a man would ask her to dinner. But she’d never see him again. She was sad, reserved and strange, not good at the banter men often required.

Week after week Marguerite and Katherine talked about their money. Never before had anything so consumed them both. With it, they would leave the city, move to the country somewhere and start a business. A bed and breakfast, or even a motel. They bought an old green car from a cousin, and spent months of weekends looking. Marguerite was encouraged by their trips. Her mother, never cheerful, nearly was. They dressed carefully, ate lunch in diners and small kitchens by the road, and enjoyed themselves very often..

Finally, they happened upon the tiny village of Middlefield, and along an old Indian river that ran through the town, they found an old abandoned motel. The rooms were small, but the floors were good and so were the walls and the roof. They could live in separate places if they liked. All the rooms had small refrigerators and stoves, a table and two chairs, and a surprising amount of sunlight. It took them each a week to leave where they’d been for two lifetimes. Marguerite’s boss at the cheese shop shook her head with quiet disapproval, and Katherine’s supervisor at the glove manufacturer downtown where she’d spent nearly 30 years said a perfunctory good-bye. Still they left their jobs happier than either of them felt in years.

By September, they’d moved. They bought every cleaning supply they saw, even bluing to wash old sheets, and they set out to build something for the first time either one could remember. Their moods stayed good for days. Each started to sing. Katherine remembered all the words to You Are My Sunshine, and they did not make her cry. Marguerite, for reasons unknown, began humming, on a regular basis, the words to I’m a Little Tea Pot. Sometimes, washing a floor together, or a bathroom, they’d sing together. Usually, their duet was When the Saints Go Marching In. They’d just start singing, and never questioned why.

At night, they took turns making one another dinners - pork chops, hamburgers, even chicken a la king. And deserts, something neither ever made alone, jello with fruit floating through it like fish, and velvety puddings, and frosted cakes and fresh fruit pies every weekend. They both looked better, pretty and happy, and they weren’t altogether surprised at how much easier they got along.

One day, they decided they were ready for guests, so Marguerite painted a sign. It said Guests Welcome and Wanted at Casa Marguerite. In forty-eight hours, their first family came. They were tired from traveling, and seemed happy with the rooms they saw. Marguerite and Katherine gave them chocolate chip cookies and milk.

More guests came quickly. Two firemen from Staten Island, a man who taught art, two sisters on vacation, and a guidance counselor from Western Pennsylvania. Then came in waves: an aunt and her nephew, two overweight brothers from Winnipeg, a mother and her son. The women were busier than either one had ever been before. They cooked, they cleaned, they put flowers in vases for guests and themselves, they made the strangers comfortable. They even began to practice a show, a mother and daughter singing act with all their favorite songs. Every other Thursday during the summer, if it wasn’t buggy or raining, they invited their guests to sing with them near a big sycamore tree in their yard.

The years went by far more happily than either one could have predicted. The two became friends. They met people who sent them Christmas cards, and came back again. And again. Their singing got better. They sang encores. After a while, they sang rock and roll songs, though nothing very loud. The guests seemed very pleased.

On her 45th birthday, Marguerite told her mother she’d always wanted a child. Her mother, who considered herself psychic, did not laugh at this. She thought it over very seriously before she said that 50 was when the baby would come. Marguerite accepted this. The five years went by quickly. They painted the motel an unexpected red, not barnyard, but nailpolish bright. They learned to make cherry tarts, chocolate truffles, fresh peach soufflés. After a while, they started a small restaurant, Marguerite’s Eats.. The food was often good. Strangers assumed their life had been pleasant for years.

One spring night two months before Marguerite’s 50th birthday, so cold and clear the air seemed frozen still, Katherine and Marguerite took their evening walk. They felt a drop or two of rain. By the time they got home it was pouring, heavy relentless April showers. The drops looked pregnant, and Katherine and Marguerite ran home, laughing at the way their clothes just clung to them. Katherine’s old yellow house dress wrapped around her body like Saran, and Marguerite’s loose purple print which reminded her of Hawaii stuck to her breasts and her stomach as though there was a reason.

“Ominous,” said Katherine, and both of them laughed all the way home.

Then Marguerite turned on the table lamp, and Katherine lit the fire under the tea, and opened the box of shortbread.

“What will happen now?:” Marguerite asked her mother, believing in her clairvoyance.

“Something,” she replied. “Important,” she added, smiling broadly.

Two days later, in another wild torrent, the women were eating pork chops when they heard a knock so light it could have been a bird brushing alongside their door. But then it came again, a dry, sharp urgent rap. Marguerite went to the door. Her hair was off her face, held back by a white silk scarf she’d twisted into a headband. She looked very pretty, even young. A girl, very wet, stood in front of her. She whispered that she wanted to come in.

“Of course,” Marguerite replied, and smiled at her.

“My boyfriend too,” said the girl.

A man stood out from the bushes just then, a big man in a bright blue

rain coat. His hood was on, and he was hard to see.

“We need a room,” said the girl. “For a few days, anyway. Maybe

even longer.”

“Have some tea,” Katherine suggested. “Would your boyfriend like

some too?”

She motioned for him to come in and he did. Older than the girl, he

looked exhausted and uncomfortable. Their names were Barbara and Jim.

She talked, and he nodded. She told the story of their vacation together. They planned on camping in the Adirondacks but first their van broke down, and then their tent developed a mysterious tear. They couldn’t fix it, and were caught in the rain a few nights before. So they’d decided to stay in a room.

Marguerite thought there was something they weren’t saying. She didn’t think they were criminals, but she knew they were in trouble. They had an air of running away. But she didn’t mention this to Katherine, and she went to bed wondering.

The next afternoon, she and Katherine were cleaning out the rooms when they saw Barbara and Jim sitting in chairs on the lawn. Barbara was very pregnant. Her belly stuck up from the chair like a big round animal at rest. How had they missed it? Jim wore a bathing suit along with a T-shirt that said Rude Dog. He looked better in the daylight, a little less worried. Barbara’s hair hung down around her face like a young girl’s. She held onto a very fat book with a beautiful woman on the cover. She stared into the pages intently. Jim just looked out into the trees. He had a newspaper on the side of his chair, half-wrinkled. They kept to themselves. They cooked in their room, and didn’t talk much with the other guests. Only helloes. A week went by, then two. Marguerite wondered how long they’d stay. And what their story was. One night they came in. It was Thursday. The women were eating their usual meal together, homemade rolls, fried chicken, fresh tomatoes and corn. They grew their own tomatoes, and spent every August canning sauce.

Katherine offered the two of them dinner. They both looked tired, not like they’d been on vacation. Everyone sat around the white enamel table with the kind of expectation that comes from sitting down with strangers. Katherine discussed her tomatoes. Jim said something about baseball. Marguerite asked if they liked to sing. Barbara replied that what she liked to do was read.

It seemed like hours went by, though it may have been minutes. Finally, Barbara said, in a voice that was hard to hear, “I’m going to have this baby any day. Jim is married. He says he’s going to get a divorce, but I’m only seventeen. We can’t keep the baby. We just can’t.”

“I see,” said Katherine. Jim stared down into the table as though it were a lake. Barbara talked to the women. Marguerite felt her heart stop. She couldn’t breathe. Could this be her child?

“We want her to be happy,” she continued. “With trees and flowers and a lot of birds. And tomato plants,” she smiled.

“How do you know it’s a girl?” Katherine asked, because she had been told that Marguerite was a boy by everyone who saw her.

“I talk to her,” said Barbara. “I can tell. Jim has two boys anyway, so this one has to be a girl. What do you think, Jim?” She looked over at him but he didn’t seem able to look up. “Jim,” she continued.

“He’s worried,” she explained. “He doesn’t see any way out.”

“We’ll take her,” Marguerite replied. “We’ve been waiting for a baby for a while.”

Barbara and Jim looked at one another, and then at the two women. They all embraced in a circle around the old white table, and then Barbara and Marguerite cried. Katherine offered everyone champagne.

“To Celia,” said Marguerite, who’d planned to use that name for many years.

A few days later, Barbara had a boy. They all named him Cyril. She and Jim left early the following day. As soon as they could, the women taught Cyril to sing.