Maggie Brouchard is Crazy

Margie Brouchard is Crazy.

Traveling north, every so often a place name catches my eye, and I stop, take photographs, and look through old newspapers in the local library. I walk around, talk to the residents, and visit cemeteries, trying to find out everything I possibly can about the history of the town.
At night, I book into the cheapest motel I can find and sit on the bed until the small hours making copious notes on my laptop.
My book will be a record of the hundreds of small towns scattered throughout the Midwest. I’m tracing their birth, the halcyon days of the forties and fifties when the American dream was alive and kicking, and now, many of them are in relentless decline.
It will be illustrated with the best of the hundreds of photographs I plan to take, and there is nothing, nothing that will make me quit until it’s done, dusted and for sale in all the best bookshops.

***

And then one day I was an unmarried forty four year old nobody, in a steady, but blindingly boring job transferring figures onto a computer, in a town that takes a mere twenty blinks to pass through rather than ten.
Don’t ask me how it happened. It just did. Whatever: barren described my life, and the only guy I could call a friend was Harvey who sat knee to knee opposite me in the windowless cubicle we called an office.
Harvey lives with his mother and spends all his spare time and also a lot of the company’s, exchanging emails with a German girl. They’ve never met, but it hasn’t put him off saving for an engagement ring and planning their wedding. Secretly I have my doubts, but hey - even though he’s overweight and has a skin problem, at least he can hand on heart say he has someone.
I was such a sad sack I’d taken to telling my troubles to Larry, my landlord’s scruffy Labrador cross.
A stomach on four legs, Larry always managed to be around when I was eating, and as long as I made him wait for my leftovers, the mutt could be depended on to bend a sympathetic ear while I pondered the meaning of life, or, in my case, no life.
Night after night after work I settled ever deeper into my self imposed cocoon. Watching sport, listening to the Eagles on my headphones, I ate like a pig, spooning food into my mouth straight from whatever I’d hotted it up in, because who was there to care if I didn’t use flatware and a plate? There was only Larry, and let’s be honest here; as long as there was food, he couldn’t care less.
But what brings me out in a flood of cold shame was my virgin bedroom. Four years since optimistically moving in, it had never witnessed so much as a chaste kiss, let alone soaked up the vibrations of two sweating, heaving bodies and the leg trembling euphoria following a plain old fashioned screw. At my age it was a disgrace. I was a disgrace.
Becoming increasingly aware that I needed to make a change in my life, one day I was viewing a cunningly designed one room apartment on the edge of town, anticipating all the savings I’d make on rent because I didn’t need a lot of space.
There I was right in the middle of multiplying two hundred and thirty four dollars by twelve and happily anticipating being able to raise the blinds without even getting out of bed, when the tastefully painted walls suddenly lurched one way, my insides tumbled the other and I experienced a vivid flashback to my college days when I lived in just such a single room. Ok it was dire in comparison to the one I was checking out, but one room is one room, no matter how much you pretty it up and hide the bed in the wall.
With the dotted line awaiting my signature, my life was about to turn full circle.

***

It felt good when I resigned from my job and I was on a high as I packed two suitcases and decided to rid myself of everything else I owned by holding a yard sale.
Using the money from the sale, I bought a good quality digital camera. With the few dollars that were left, I went to the pet store and selected a roasted pig’s ear and some rawhide chew sticks for Larry, because even if he didn’t miss our conversations, I would.
Finally, having exchanged email addresses with Harvey and assured him that wherever I happened to be I’d be honored to return and be his best man, I turned the key on my roomy bachelor apartment and began my journey home to Caberry. As the place of my first beginning, it seemed a fitting place to launch my second.

***

Two days later and here I am in Caberry’s only tavern. Too young to know what the inside of it was like when I left town to go to college, I suspect nothing has been changed or replaced. Old fashioned and shabby, it’s only claim to modernization since I left so many years ago, is an asthmatic air conditioner pushing out waves of air only slightly cooler than of that outside.
Faced with sour faced wives and yet another plate of cold cuts because, ‘it’s too hot to stand over that damned stove,’ it’s at Leary’s tavern the men of this dying Midwest town gather after work to snack on salted peanuts, wash the dust from their mouths with glasses of ice cold beer, and, lacking a local newspaper for the last ten years, exchange the latest gossip.
Today Albert Schwartz the mortician is leaning on the bar about to tell us why he reckons Margie Brouchard is crazy.
The town’s only funeral director, Albert may be short and slightly built, but he has presence. I’ve seen old men lower their eyes when he passes and elderly women furtively cross themselves when his back is turned.
With an ageing population business is booming. According to Mrs Burns whose son Kenny is a bank teller in Forrest, Albert is the richest man in the county, and since the towns regular preacher departed to open a charismatic church in Kentucky, he is also the only man in town with a link however tenuous to the hereafter and so commands attention whenever he speaks.
It seems that earlier on, Margie had burst into his office interrupting his delicate negotiations with Joe White.
Joe owns the only hardware store in town. His mother in law has just passed over and Albert was giving his all persuading Joe to settle for a top of the range casket for the late Sadie, who would turn over in her grave and haunt him forever if he allowed her cheapskate son-in-law to go with the imitation oak.
“She’s crazy I tell you,” Albert says again. “You know what she did? She tried out all the caskets. Said she’d come to arrange her father’s funeral and wanted to find the most comfortable one for him. She laid down in them and closed her eyes; crossed her hands on her chest!
I was about to throw her out because she didn’t take her shoes off, and some of the linings aren’t as strong as they look – by the way that’s a trade secret, and I’d be obliged if you didn’t repeat that – and in all the ruckus that skinflint Joe sneaked out without finalizing. But then I pulled myself together. After all I’m a professional. She’d suffered bereavement. People do funny things at a time like that. I could write a book.
Anyway, seeing that she looked pretty damned happy lying in the lead lined, eternal rest module, and there are eight grown kids in the family and they’re all doing well, I figure cost is not going to be a problem and I can catch Joe when he shuts up shop. So I take a deep breath and try not to look at the marks she left on the satin in one of our mid range caskets, but when I open the diary to settle a day for the funeral, she tells me as bright as you please that her pa hasn’t died yet, they’re just getting everything ready to go.
Later on I’m chatting to my wife while she puts the finishing touches to Sadie, who, you’ll be pleased to know, looks a lot better now than she did a week ago, and Anna told me the crazy girl’s father is lying in St Josephs’ in Fairbury with some sort of cancer, although he’s not on the brink yet. Anyway; Margie’s mother Hester - who in my opinion is even crazier than her daughter and has a drink problem besides - has told the doctors if her husband starts to fade over Easter weekend, they should put him on life support and hold him over at least until Monday.
They’re having a family cook out on Saturday and an Easter egg hunt and picnic on Sunday and she doesn’t want to disappoint anyone with a cancellation.”

***

Crazy Margie! It sounds as if she hasn’t changed. I particularly remember a hot afternoon during summer vacation when we were diving off a bridge into the deepest section of the river to keep cool.
She always tagged along after us guys, even though we tried to chase her off and made her life a misery when she wouldn’t take the hint.
We always knew when she was in a mean mood and that morning, she’d had to do extra chores because two of her brothers had sneaked off at dawn to walk five miles to the next town to watch a baseball match. From the look in her eyes we didn’t doubt she’d get her own back as soon as she had the chance, but none of us guessed just how mad she really was.
You know how boys can’t help showing off when girls are around, even though it was only Margie and she didn’t count. Well she was on the bridge sitting on her bike as quiet as a mouse as we got more and more stupid, when suddenly she let out an almighty screech and pedaled straight off the edge and into the river.
I still laugh remembering Joey Burgess who was in the water at the time. She only just missed him. I swear he was so scared he shot out of the river without touching the banks and ran all the way home dripping wet in his swimming trunks and barefoot. His mom was picking the thorns out for a week.
Margie was lucky and got away with a broken leg, although it wrecked her bike. She was in a lot of trouble with her old man over that, although he waited until her leg was out of plaster before he took his belt to her.
“Maybe knowing he’ll be tucked up snug as a bug is helping her to cope with the thought of losing him. Maybe it’s the last thing she’s able to do for him and she wants to get it right,” I suggest, pushing aside the memory of welt marks across her shoulders and the back of her legs.
“And maybe pigs might fly,” comes the rejoinder from some bright spark sitting at the back of the tavern.

***

At the visitation I’m pleasantly shocked to see Margie sedately dressed from head to toe in black, complete with sheer black nylons and high shine patent leather stilettos that throw back the colour of the blood red roses and white lilies arranged around the casket.
I can hardly believe this is the same girl who for a dare ate a dozen live grasshoppers, then puked them up on her mothers freshly mopped kitchen floor.
She is shapelier than when she was sixteen and egged on by a bunch of school friends, myself included, skinny dipped in the water tower at the end of Main Street at midday. It was a memorable moment causing the first and only traffic jam the town has ever had, and gave me such a hard on I had to sit crouched over for half an hour before I could walk home.
As if born to the role of hostess, I watch Margie smoothly take over from Hester who’s been sneaking sips of brandy from her husband’s old hip flask.
Hester walks over to the coffin, leans over, pokes her departed husband in the chest, mutters something that sounds to me like, ‘s*n o* a b***h,’ then walks unsteadily towards the door leading to the basement where Albert carries out the more distasteful side of his profession.
Hester’s brother and sister in law are looking for her. They want to offer their condolences and ask Albert where she is. I catch Albert’s eye, make hand gestures to indicate drinking and point wordlessly towards the basement stairs.
Skilled at thinking on his feet, Albert tells them Hester is taking some time out with Mrs Svenson. She and Hester having been friends for forty years he says they are catching up on all the latest news. He laughs and reminds them how old ladies can gossip.
What Hester’s relatives who are from out of town don’t know, is that Mrs Svenson breathed her last at 3 am and as they speak is lying silently beneath their feet in the basement.
Luckily for Albert, Hester’s brother couldn’t care less if he sees his sister or not because they don’t get on, and having missed lunch because of the long drive to get here, grabs his wife’s arm and they go in search of the buffet.
I notice Albert is beginning to look a mite frayed. Snatching up a plate of cookies from a side table he thrusts them into Mrs Fostermeyer’s hands, although all she is doing is looking for the ladies room, then, after checking no one is looking except me, and he knows I won’t tell, he locks the basement door and slips the key in his pocket.

***

I wander over to the casket to sneak a closer look at Margie’s legs. It’s a struggle to prevent my face mirroring what’s going through my mind as I feast my eyes, while she tells Mrs Jackson who runs the boarding house on Grover Street, that her father had a couple of false starts or should it be ends? Whatever…Twice he stopped breathing and they all thought he’d gone, and twice he hadn’t.
Mrs Palmer makes tutting noises and pats Margie sympathetically on the arm.
“But it was ok,” Margie assures her. “Mom propped a mirror under his nose the third time just to be on the safe side. Twenty four of us were there to see him out,” she adds proudly. “We set a family record.”
Friends and family begin to queue for a final look at her father. While the visitors file past gushing sympathy and saying how well her father looks, I’m rendered speechless by the swell of her breasts pushing against the thin black dress. I swear the more compliments she gets, the more they swell. I lick my lips and can’t help comparing them to two mounds of quivering, sweet tasting Jell-O.
Aroused more than I could believe possible considering I’ve been hanging around a dead body for the last couple of hours, but at the same time feeling queasy from the nauseating mix of lilies and embalming fluid, I wander out to the parking lot and light up a cigarette.
Watching the stream of friends and family passing through the funeral homes doors, I picture all those good folk rushing home and leaving a trail of discarded clothing through the house as they head for the shower and try to get rid of the cloying smell of death.
Swallowing down a lungful of nicotine, I wonder if I can catch Margie when it’s all over. Maybe we can take a walk. Talk about the old days.
I suck some more on the cigarette expecting the rush of calm the little white stick normally brings - but it doesn’t happen. Instead, I experience a sudden violent urge to leave before the town draws me in.
Do I want to end up shuffling between Whites Hardware with its pot bellied stove in winter, and Leary’s air conditioned tavern in the summer? Unfulfilled, dried up, do I want to end my days swapping tall stories with all the other old farts that never left?
The thought sickens me and I cough as bile scorches the back of my throat. I’ve pulled myself out of stagnation; gambled everything on writing this book. It’s my only chance - and besides, Margie is crazy. I’ve seen it for myself. And doesn’t Albert say so?
Overhead, a flock of birds screech crazy, crazy, crazy, as I pull my car key from my pocket. The murmur of voices from the only friends I have, drifts across the parking lot as I slide behind the wheel.
I don’t need to pack. My whole life is in two suitcases in the boot of my car.
The engine screams and drowns everything else out as I stamp down on the accelerator and head blindly towards the highway out of town.

***

It’s late and I need to sleep, but rather than look for a motel as I approach yet another small town that reminds me of home, I put my foot down and risking a speeding ticket, roar through the dusty main street in the blink of an eye, but I can’t outrun images of Margie and as the distance between us grows, so does a miserable awareness of another chance missed: irretrievably lost.