Pete doesn’t panic. Pete frets, stews, mulls, ponders, fusses and fumes, but he doesn’t panic. Not even when Flash ate a canister of film from Pete’s largest-paying-ever shoot. Fortunately, everything, as Pete put it, “came out just fine.”
I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. “Dash, come. Ride.”
He went from comatose to alert in a nanosecond. Ride is one of Dash’s favorite words, right up there with eat and walk. He does fetch, heel and stay without enthusiasm. Roll over insults him, but he does it out of deference to me. He views me as the pleasant but rather unenlightened member of his pack. I am not alpha dog. I may be omega dog in Dash’s eyes.
Dash hopped into the front seat and waited for me to buckle his doggy seat belt. I was on the road within five minutes of Pete’s call.
Pete’s studio is in the area of 50th Street and France Avenue and it took me only a few minutes to get to Images. As I walked from the parking ramp I ignored all the small, tempting shops including a brand-new chocolateria that had just opened in the storefront next to his, although I did take several deep breaths as I went by. Maggie’s Triumph was parallel parked in front of the studio. Pete currently has his black-and-white photography on display in the reception area of the studio. Six-foot-high pictures of body parts—a foot and ankle in a Manolo Blahnik, a wrist draped in charm bracelets and a closed eye lined with kohl and fringed with impossibly long lashes—greeted me. I liked it better when Pete was in his “baby stage” and the walls were lined with cherubic babies wearing nothing but a smile.
Everyone, including Flash and Dash, loves having Pete take their picture. They like it because he keeps them alert and attentive with doggy treats. I have more portraits of Dash in the house than I do of my family. Of course, Dash is the only one actually willing to sit still long enough to make it happen.
The reception area of the studio was empty except for Flash who, upon seeing Dash, wagged from the tip of his tail to the top of his head. I left them to perform their doggy hellos and headed for the break room.
All was quiet. Maggie was seated at Pete’s small retro laminate-topped table holding a mug of coffee in both hands. She stared trancelike out the back window onto the alley at a large Dumpster ready to be emptied.
Pete made pointing motions toward Maggie and a dramatic slitting motion across his neck.
She wants to kill herself? I mouthed.
Pete wagged his head in the negative. Then he began miming himself at a photo shoot, taking pictures.
“She wants to kill you?”
“Of course not!” he blurted aloud. Maggie never even flinched. She simply continued to grip her mug and stare out the window.
“Mags, Quinn is here. We’ll go into the studio and I’ll tell her what’s coming down. We’ll be right back.”
Maggie never acknowledged his words.
“What on earth…”
“I thought you’d never get here,” Pete blurted. “I don’t know what to do. The general manager from the fitness club’s corporate office called me to say that there’d been a ‘change in plans.’ They took another look at the direction of their advertising and decided to move away from images of people in their ads. They’ve developed a new logo and plan to use photos of their facilities in their advertising.”
My stomach fluttered uneasily.
“Now they want me to go to their gyms and do photo shoots of the buildings and a series on the machines. I asked what would happen to the model they’d hired.”
The flutter became a jackhammer in my gut.
“The general manager said, as casually as can be, that she’d been ‘cut loose.’ They’d sent her a registered letter notifying her that she wouldn’t be needed.”
“Maggie…”
“I didn’t know if I should tell her.” Pete shifted restlessly, hands in his pockets, anxiety writen all over his face. “Then I imagined her getting the letter and decided to try to soften the blow.” He nodded toward the break room. “A big help that was. Look at her.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Pretty much what I just told you. I didn’t say she would be ‘cut loose’ as they so crassly put it, but Maggie is good at reading between the lines.” Pete looked so miserable that my heart went out to him. “She usually reads too much into things but this time, she was right on the money.”
“What did she say?”
“‘I’m being replaced by a row of elliptical trainers and rowing machines?’” Pete spread his hands helplessly. “What could I say to that?”
“You could have said ‘yes.’”
Maggie stood in the doorway of the break room. Neither Pete nor I knew how long she’d been there or how much she had heard.
She moved gracefully, like a wraith, across the hardwood floor to us. “It wasn’t your fault. You were trying to protect me.”
“It wasn’t anybody’s fault, especially not yours. In our business these things happen….”
Maggie shook her head emphatically. “I don’t believe that.”
“The company had no business hiring people for a concept they weren’t totally committed to,” I blustered, feeling both furious and frustrated.
“Don’t you see? I’m the one who failed them. If I’d been right—thinner, more attractive, the exact person they wanted on their billboards—they would have been loyal to me.”
“Maggie,” Pete said impatiently, “corporations change their minds all the time about how they want to be perceived. It’s not about a single person and it’s certainly not about you. It was a company decision.”
“Why didn’t they just try me first?” she murmured, more to herself than to us. “I could have been anything they wanted—hip, buff, come-hither. I’d make myself into exactly what they wanted.”
“Make yourself into whatever they wanted?” Pete echoed incredulously. “Why would you do that?”
“To get the job, of course.”
She looked so fragile and lost as she said it that tears came to my eyes.
“Oh, Maggie, I know…”
“You can’t know what it’s like, Quinn. Everyone wants to hire you!”
Pete took up my case. “People who want dark-haired models with exotic features don’t call Quinn. She’s Scandinavian as fish balls in white gravy, lefse and King Harald! No matter what she did, she couldn’t—wouldn’t—look like you.”
“You can talk all you want, but I don’t believe it. If I were different I know I would have kept this job.”
“Do you remodel your house every time your mood changes? Do you paint your car to match your nail polish? Come on, Maggie, get real! You can’t change who you are for others. Be who you are and let the right ones come to you!”
We might as well have been talking to one of Pete’s backdrops. Maggie ignored everything we said.
She didn’t speak when she arrived at home. Nor did she murmur a word when she took the official-looking letter from the fitness club out of the mailbox. She threw it into the garbage, walked into her room, closed the door firmly and locked it.
The finality of her movements told me that, no matter how much I wanted to talk about this, the matter was not up for discussion.
Knowing Maggie was locked in her bedroom grieving made it impossible for me to focus on lesson plans. Ready for a distraction, I was more than a little relieved when my doorbell rang.
The last people I expected to see were Jack and Ben Harmon framed in the doorway. Jack looked embarrassed and uncomfortable, but Ben was obviously elated to be here.
“I told him it wasn’t appropriate to drop in on you.” Jack’s tone was apologetic.
“I knew you wouldn’t mind,” Ben said, beaming at me like a halogen flashlight. Just because you are my teacher doesn’t mean you can’t be my friend, too. Right?”
“He wouldn’t listen….”
“Dad said this was a ‘business arrangement,’ but I’m not a business and you’re not an arrangement,” Ben insisted. “Besides, you are the only one I want to go to the Science Museum with me. They’ve got this really cool show on now. Did you know that Pluto isn’t a planet, anymore? And they have moon rocks and meteorites. My friend Nathan says you know a lot about outer space. Do you really think the dinosaurs died because…” Ben paused to take a breath. “Want to come?”
“She isn’t going to be interested, Ben.” Jack put a comforting hand on his son’s shoulder as if to brace him for a disappointment.
I looked at the closed door that separated Maggie and me. She would probably sleep a long time. A person simply can’t cry as hard and long as she had without becoming exhausted.
“You can’t just drop in on people and assume they have time for you, Ben,” Jack continued.
“Sometimes you can.”
Jack’s head jerked up as if he hadn’t heard me correctly.
“You will?” Ben squealed. “You’ll come?”
I bent to look Ben straight in the baby blues. “Your Dad is right. Call ahead and make plans next time, but today I would like to get out of the house. I was planning to go to that exhibit, anyway, so there’s no time like the present.”
Ben screwed his head around to look triumphantly at his dad. “See? I told you she’d go.”
Jack’s face cleared and his dark eyes lit in his tanned face. It made him look impossibly young and handsome. “And I thought I knew how the world worked.”
“Let me write a note to my roommate so she knows where I’ve gone when she wakes up. I’ll take my car and follow you to St. Paul.”
“That wrecks all the fun!” Ben protested. He turned again to his befuddled father. “We’ll bring her home whenever she wants, won’t we, Dad?”
Jack gave up the battle. “Sure. Why not?”
“You don’t have to…”
Then Jack’s face creased into a smile and I saw where Ben got all that irresistible charm. “But we want to. Please?”
I wrote Maggie a note, grabbed a sweater and followed them to Jack’s van. It looked like a home away from home, with a DVD player, movies, games and books scattered about the backseat, as well as a gym bag, tennis racquet and golf shoes. There was a twelve-pack of soda and a bag of tortilla chips piled on top of undelivered dry cleaning. Yes, indeed, the Harmon vehicle was definitely a man’s domain.
But far be it from me to say I don’t like a little testosterone in the mix. Ben and I sat in the backseat discussing black holes, dinosaurs, volcanoes and the merits of really goopy mud while Jack sat in front and drove. It must have looked like a cozy family scene to passers-by when we emptied out of the van.
Looks can be deceiving.
Ben was so impatient that he bounced and spun on his tiptoes and made impatient noises until we were ready to go inside.
To see the familiar through new eyes, join a small boy with an inquiring mind in a museum.
“Why are rocks colored?”
“Where does wind start?”
“Do snakes have good eyesight?”
“Do fish have taste buds?”
“Do hummingbirds really hum?”
Jack put his hand on my arm and we hung back as Ben raced ahead to examine the towboat in the Mississippi River Gallery.
“Is your head starting to ache? One more question and my eyeballs will start spinning in my head.”
“Lively curiosity, that’s all. I enjoy seeing that in a child.” The feel of his touch on my arm was both tender and caring. I might not have noticed if it weren’t for the fact that Jack is normally so restrained. His son, on the other hand, throws his arms around my waist whenever the impulse strikes him. Missing his mother? I wondered. Craving maternal touch?
I don’t believe Jack is unaffectionate or aloof. Just the opposite, in fact. He is holding his life together with sheer willpower. When Ben wished aloud that his mother could play with him in the experiment gallery, I’d felt Jack’s entire body stiffen, bracing himself against a wave of pain.
Linda had warned me that Jack has no time for relationships with women. It’s no wonder. Lowering his guard against emotional contact might break down the fragile walls that keep him together.
How must it be to have experienced a love like Jack and Emily’s? I can’t imagine it yet, but I’m waiting, holding out for the transcendent love they had.
Ben appeared to approve of his father and I walking together as we strolled through the museum. Each time he looked back to see where we were, he smiled broadly. After nearly two hours, I began to suspect that he was dallying and dragging out this afternoon for reasons of his own.
“I really should be getting home—”
Ben cut me off. “I want to look at the Rapetosaurus again.”
So we trudged off to see the fascinating long-necked sauropod with its long thin teeth, elongated neck and slender tail.
Ben took me by the hand and tugged at it until I bent down so he could look directly into my eyes. His gaze was intent, mesmerizing. “Can we go to the 3-D cinema before we go? I really want to see the show. Nathan hasn’t seen it yet and I want to beat him to it. Okay?”
I hesitated and Jack hastened to say, “It’s totally up to you. You told us you wanted to be home early.”
At that moment my phone rang. It was Pete.
“Just thought you might want to know that Maggie is with me. You don’t have to hurry home.”
“Are you sure?”
“We’re taking a walk to clear our heads. Take your time. Have fun.”
I closed my phone and looked at Ben. “Let’s go.”
He let out an earsplitting whistle, grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the theater.
We scooted into our seats, with Ben between us, but at the last moment Ben wormed his way over his father’s lap, leaving me to move next to Jack. As the theater darkened I was aware of Jack’s firm body next to mine, radiating heat in the large, chilly room.
Ben scuffled and leaned toward his father.
“Dad, why don’t you hold her hand?” he whispered just loud enough so that I couldn’t ignore it. “It’s okay.”
Jack stiffened and pulled his body inward like a black hole caving in on itself.
“Watch the movie, Ben.” His voice was controlled but cracked a little as he added, “I love you, buddy, don’t worry about me.”
I don’t remember a single thing we watched in the cinema. All I could think of was Ben observing and caring for his father, offering him permission to move ahead with his life. And then there was Jack, who understood but simply couldn’t budge from the emotional Antarctica in which he was trapped.