From Mother’s Day

Margaret sits in an ancient rocking chair on her deck. God is in his heaven, and all is right with the world. She can’t stop herself from grinning. Who cares if the old woman is grinning?

Nobody can see her.

The table beside her holds a gin and tonic. On a cold day, it would be a hot rum toddy.

Today is a glorious spring day with a sun that is warm enough to bead the glass. Also on the table is a calendar with “In” and “Out” marked beside names like Bryden and John Angus and Buddy. The local weekly paper, the Chronicle, is open to the police report.

She’s on the highest deck in town, built off the second floor of her two-story house. The only way out to the deck is through her bedroom. Nobody gets to come here, not her friends and certainly not her overly protective adult kids. They would want to raise the railing another few feet and put a harness on her.

Beside her house is the Court House adjoined by the small jail, and behind that is a fenced-in exercise yard. From her vantage point, she can see over the 8-foot fence topped with barbed wire. Every day, between 3 and 4 pm in every kind of weather, the prisoners are turned out.

It’s almost three, and Margaret rocks in happy anticipation. She inherited the rocking chair from her mother, a nursing chair the perfect height for a mother’s arms to cradle a baby’s head. With her first infant, John Charles, Margaret had moved the chair to the window to alleviate the tedium of the daily feedings. One day as he suckled greedily, Margaret’s glazed eyes suddenly focused on the prisoners being released into the yard. Who were these men? What crimes had they committed? Why had she never paid attention before? From then on, she nursed the baby, whichever baby, in the chair by the window. When the prisoners took their exercise, she’d be there to watch. She’d even wake a sleeping infant to feed it during the exercise hour. What mother would disturb a baby’s sleep in those early months of life? Was she that bored, that lonely? Apparently yes.

Gazing down on the prisoners, she’d felt comradeship. The endless demands from pre-verbal humans were her ball and chain. Her big house was her prison.

Poor Walter. In his world, the office at the City Hall, he had control. In marriage, he was often ambushed by Margaret’s obsessions. She told him she needed a deck, not on the front but on the back of the house, not on the ground level but on the second floor. She claimed it was to watch the children in the yard. From the back door she couldn’t see what they were up to, but from a high deck, she could do the mending and watch that the children didn’t kill each other.

They were up to dangerous games now. Hadn’t Randall tied little Grace to the tree at the far end of the yard when they played Cowboys and Indians? Wasn’t it hours before Margaret found the poor girl?

Walter did the household accounts. When he listed their expenses, a deck did not appear among them. He picked up his briefcase and went to work.

Margaret packed a small suitcase. She planned to take the train to her mother’s, but she had no money. Walter doled out cash as it was needed, and only the amount she needed. Groceries were purchased on credit: an account in the name of Mr. Walter MacSween. Also, she couldn’t just walk out because the three youngest weren’t old enough for school yet. She wouldn’t let a disagreement between parents make the children suffer. She waited on the sofa, hands folded. The older kids arrived for lunch. They sensed something was strange, so they gathered the little ones and all sat quietly at the kitchen table, waiting to be fed. When Walter came home for lunch, Margaret went to the door, put on her coat, and picked up suitcase. She asked for money for the train. She watched his familiar face scrunch up with disbelief. Then she saw hurt, replaced by fear. In all their years of marriage, through all the insecurities and the illnesses and even the two miscarriages, she had never seen him this vulnerable. He took the suitcase from her hand and led her up the stairs. In their bedroom, she spread her arms wide to describe where the wall would be cut open for the door to the new deck.