Kindle Edition
Amazon
Jeanine Collins Malarsky, Author
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Amazon/KDP
ISBN-10: 1076183220
Type: Fiction
Pages: 286
Copyright: July 8, 2019
ISBN-13: 9781076183224
Price: $7.99 (eBook)
Hiding a vital secret and climbing the social ladder is no small task for the poor daughter of a railroad man. But no one escapes life's lessons, not even Maggie.
Born to a poor Catholic family near Boston, Maggie Kearney rises from rags to riches, using those who can help, and discarding all who cannot. Eager to bury her poverty-stricken past with its shameful secret, she lets nothing stand in her way, not family, not love, and certainly not honesty. Loving her too much is her husband Harry Logan who struggles to adhere to his grandmother's teachings of honesty and integrity while raising a family and climbing the corporate ladder. Against the background of the stock market’s frenzied rise through the 1990s, Maggie and Harry share their passion while coping with family tragedy and financial crisis. As the millennium ushers in a new century, loyalties falter and the bonds of love are tested. When faced with the cost of winning, are Harry and Maggie willing to pay the price?
Excerpt
Chapter 3
In Dubious Battle
Maggie was completing her ritual evening activities: arranging a plate of imported cheese and crackers, draining a giant green olive for Harry’s martini and setting out a plump maraschino cherry for her Manhattan. She placed a fan of cocktail napkins on the tray with a flourish as Harry came into the back hall.
“How was your day?” Maggie asked as she went to greet him. She rose up on tiptoe to give him a kiss. He turned away to hang up his coat and wash up for dinner.
Unruffled by his rejection, Maggie headed into the living room. Guess he needs a few minutes to sweeten up, she said to herself. Let’s see. What will it be? She scanned the CD rack. Maybe Charlotte Church will put him in a better mood. She slipped the CD into the player. What a vibrant little girl, Maggie thought, as she closed the CD case and placed it on the shelf below. She needs to find a better designer for her clothes, though. That beaded thing is god-awful.
Maggie turned around and studied her living room, decorated five years earlier following a vacation to Aspen. What once had seemed like a grand interpretation of the Colorado Rockies in spring, now brought a frown to her face. The room had lost its luster. It was dated. It needed redecorating. But…No. Let the next owners do it. She was going to decorate a newer, bigger house with grander schemes. But that was for tomorrow. Tonight she had a husband who needed to cheer up and get on board with her dreams.
“Bad day at work?” Maggie asked, reentering the kitchen.
Harry walked past her to get ice cubes for their drinks. He looked tired and drawn.
“James called from school today,” Maggie said. She removed two bottles of liquor from a lower cabinet. “He said he’d be ready early tomorrow afternoon. I can drive up and get him.”
Harry filled the chrome drink shakers with ice and measured out the liquor.
“When’s Cassie arriving?” he asked, pouring a tad of vermouth into the gin and a more generous portion into the Southern Comfort. “Weather’s closing in from the north this weekend, so the radio says.”
“She hasn’t called yet.” Maggie retrieved two chilled glasses from the freezer and set them on the tray next to Harry. “Christmas break is the 22nd through January 4th. Classes resume on the 5th.” Maybe we can keep talking about Cassie, she thought. She’s his favorite by far and perhaps he’ll lighten up a bit.
Maggie grabbed a bowl of marinated mushrooms and followed Harry into the living room. She curled up in her favorite place on the couch and patted the cushion next to her, an invitation for Harry to sit in his usual place. He set the tray on the coffee table, finished pouring the drinks.
“Do you want any workout shirts from the Cornell store?” Maggie asked. “I can call Cassie and ask her to pick up a few.”
Harry handed Maggie her drink and took a seat in a nearby chair.
“I don’t need any shirts from Cornell,” he said. “And we don’t need a new house.”
Maggie looked up at Harry, her cheese and cracker halted halfway to her mouth.
“I wouldn’t put them on the same decision scale. One costs more than the other.”
“Maggie,” Harry began after sipping his martini and setting it back on the coffee table. “I’ve been struggling to understand why you have no emotional fidelity to this partnership and why you acknowledge no limits when it comes to getting what you want.” Maggie stared at him and slowly ate her cracker. “Your announcement about a new house at dinner the other night was either thoughtless or calculated to humiliate me, to manipulate me, to force me to give in to you. Which?”
“I would never try to humiliate you,” Maggie cried. “I love you too much.” She changed her tone, trying to keep the conversation light. “It’s Christmas. I was all excited about shopping, decorations and the new house and I tripped over my tongue. You know how I am, sweetheart.” She blew him a kiss.
“Yes, Maggie, I do,” Harry said. “I am absolutely terrified when I think back over the years and recall how you’ve used your cunning to get me to go along with every demand you’ve made.” He waved her into silence. “I know, you tell me everything you ask for is for me, for the children, to create a lovely home, to care for your family’s needs.” He studied the irregular mold pattern in the blue cheese on his cracker. “Every time you bamboozle me into giving in, you promise it’s the last time you’ll pressure me, the last time you’ll pull your tricks, the last time you’ll manipulate me.”
“Honey.” Maggie leaned toward Harry. “I love you so much. All I’ve ever done, the homes I decorated, our children’s private schools, clothes, furniture, social activities, the clubs, everything I’ve ever pushed you for, I’ve done because I love you.” She paused and looked him in the eye. “And I do think the word manipulate is unkind. I don’t understand how you can say that about someone you love.”
Harry sat rigid and withdrawn, staring coldly into Maggie’s earnest green eyes where tears pooled slowly. Maggie leaned back against the couch, dabbing at her tears with her cocktail napkin. “I’ve never done anything just for myself; it’s always been for you and the children.”
Harry dropped his head in dismay and responded, “I know that is what you tell yourself, and I know that’s the game you play with me. But it isn’t true. It just isn’t true.” He raised his head and looked at her. “Something inside you demands more and more, bigger, better, more impressive. I wish I could know how much you want for the benefit of your family and how much you need to impress your friends. But it has to stop, Maggie. We can’t afford a bigger house and we don’t need one.”
“What do you mean we don’t need one?” Maggie cried, animated now by his direct challenge. “Look at that dining room! When we had dinner the other night, I was practically sitting in the foyer. Three leaves in that table and we punch through the walls.” She stopped for breath and a fortifying sip of her Manhattan. “Jesus Christ, don’t you get tired of that crappy TV set with its lousy speakers when you could relax in your own media room and enjoy great video and vibrant acoustics? The Bransons are moving to Westwood. The Trombleys are going to put their house on the market after the holidays. I don’t even ask for a second home, a house at the Cape or up at Lake Winnipesaukee. I’ve been perfectly content to live right here in Winchester. I’ve been perfectly content to make do with one home. But I want that one home to reflect our true socioeconomic level. I want to live as well as we can and enjoy our life together. We’re not getting any younger.”
Maggie paused and lowered her voice to a pathetic whine. “I made do all my childhood with seconds, leftovers, other people’s castoffs. I was the original Second Hand Rose. And let me tell you, I didn’t go to college because I wanted to work at minimum wage for the rest of my life, struggling to put food on the table, raising a brood of unkempt children, dreaming of homes I could never have, cars I could never drive, clothes I could never wear.” Maggie stopped and speared a mushroom. “When I married you I didn’t think I’d have to spend the rest of my life pinching pennies. When you gave me Chanel No. 5 for our first Christmas, the real perfume, I knew my dreams would come true. I’d watched my school friends swoon over department store counters filled with Emeraude and Arpege while they stunk of Evening in Paris from the dime store. Not for me. When I said ‘I do’ to you, I vowed I’d never wear cheap cologne again.” Maggie paused for a quick breath. “When I married you, I fully intended to bury those miserable memories with my insufferable childhood and forget where I’d dug the grave.”
Maggie’s childish ranting hung in the air between them, a scrim of misunderstanding growing more opaque with each passing moment.
Suddenly Maggie sat up. Like a Chihuahua facing a Great Dane, she thrust her chin forward and said, “You’re a skinflint, Harry. Everybody’s getting rich, that is, everybody but us.”
“Listen, Maggie,” Harry began in a calm, patient tone. “I know that’s what you believe. I know that’s what all your friends at the country club say.”
Maggie cut him off. “Steve Enwright’s filthy rich. He’s doubling and tripling his money in stocks every day. But you never listen to him.”
“Steve is rich.” Harry looked at Maggie, then studied the brass surround of the fireplace. “Steve started out rich and will always be rich. But I do not choose to emulate Steve Enwright, neither in his business practices nor in his personal life.”
“Why don’t you like Steve?” Maggie asked.
“I’ve never said I don’t like Steve. You know Steve and I go way back. I’m not going to dissect our friendship tonight.”
Harry took slow sips of his martini and returned to his original subject.
“I know it sounds crazy when I tell you, I’m scared. Not scared for us because I’ve invested wisely and our company’s services are in great demand, boom or bust. But I’m scared that all this craziness has made people spend money they don’t have. It’s called the wealth effect. It’s only profit on paper, monthly brokerage account statements. It isn’t real. If all the people tried selling all their stocks for today’s prices, the market would collapse, like it did in ’29.” Portents of doom tinged his voice. “People forget that every bull market is followed by a bear market and sooner or later all these insane valuations have to return to earth. This is the worst time to buy a bigger house.”
His intense expression begged to know if Maggie had understood a word he’d said. She sat quietly chewing on some mushrooms, studying her fresh manicure.
“You’ve never been able to forget you’re not back in Medusa, Pennsylvania, living in a coal-miner’s house with no indoor facilities and no future,” Maggie began calmly. “I talk to people about the stock market too. I listen to the radio and read the newspapers. I watch CNBC every morning. There are stocks that have gone up hundreds of times, thousands of times. But do you invest in them? No. Everybody else does.” Maggie turned her bracelet so the clasp hung underneath. “I talk to our neighbors. I talk to the parents at James’s school. I talk to our friends at the country club. They’re all worth twice, three times more than they were five years ago. For Christ’s sake, you act like you’re living in the Great Depression. Though you’ve told me your grandmother wasn’t your biological grandmother, her penurious blood runs in your veins.” Maggie sat more erectly and looked Harry straight in the eye. “All I want is to buy that house before someone else grabs it. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted. It will be our last house. I’ll never ask for another; I promise.”
“We aren’t buying that house.” The taut muscles in Harry’s square jaw stood out in ropey ridges.
“Yes, we are.” The dead calm of Maggie’s words jarred Harry.
He looked at her, stood up and slowly walked to the fireplace where he reached up and grasped Maggie’s cherished Murano vase from the mantel.
“Do you see this?” he asked Maggie, holding the vase out toward her as he began to tremble.
“I see it, Harry,” Maggie said. “We brought it back from Venice last year.”
“This is what you are doing to us,” he yelled as he lifted the deep purple and gold vase high in the air and crashed it into the empty fireplace. “You are shattering our lives!”
Maggie screamed, jumped up and ran over to the hearth. “You broke my lovely vase!” she cried, falling to her knees and gathering up shards from the bricks and carpet. “You’ve destroyed my beautiful vase,” she whimpered as she knelt forward and bowed her head into her hands. Like a supplicant bent in prayer, she leaned toward the floor and sobbed.
Silence hung over the room broken only by the sweet tremolo of Charlotte Church’s voice singing the last phrase of “Pie Jesu”.
Harry stood, bent slightly forward, his body vibrating, his face a mask of shock and disbelief.
At his feet, Maggie wept.
“I won’t ask for the house again,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’m sorry I made you so angry.” She rose to her feet on wobbly legs and returned to the coffee table for napkins to wipe her eyes and nose. Standing apart from Harry, her small figure made more diminutive by her unaccustomed humility, she looked at him and said, “I’m really sorry.”
He turned toward her. She felt his intense gaze as though he’d never truly seen her before. She dabbed at her mascara, smearing streaks of it down her petal pink cheeks. She followed his eyes as they passed from her quivering lips to her heaving breasts, over the soft curve of her hips and below to her shaky legs.
With the faintest trace of a smile, Harry stepped closer to Maggie and folded her into his arms. The powdery scent of her perfume, blended with the warmth of her freshly showered body, filled his nostrils like an aphrodisiac. Resting his chin on her tousled blond hair, he held her tightly, barely breathing, as though if he let her go, his life would end. She released one last sob and clung to him murmuring over and over, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
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