Prom Night in Purgatory (Slow Dance in P)

~5~

A Time to Cast Away





“He wants to see you, Maggie.” Jillian Bailey stood at the door and hunched her shoulders against the March winds that signified the last gasp of winter. April would be here shortly, and soon Honeyville would be awash in spring. Maggie wished it would hurry. She was cold all the time, inside and out. With spring came graduation, and May couldn’t come soon enough. She had no desire to leave Irene, but Honeyville had become a very painful place to be.

Maggie rose and came to the door. She still wore the clothes she had worn to bed. It was still fairly early for a Saturday morning. Jillian Bailey looked tired and thinner than the last time Maggie had seen her. I guess having your brother rise from the dead had that effect. For Lazarus it had only been days….for Johnny it had been decades.

“Did he tell you why?” Maggie asked quietly, looking into the woman’s weary face. Hope was threatening to well up inside her heart.

“No. He just asked me if I knew where to find you.” She hesitated a moment. “He rarely asks for anything….so when he does, I like to help him if I can.” Maggie felt the grip of the guilt and pain she always felt when she thought of Johnny these days.

“If you want to grab your coat…I can take you right now.” Principal Bailey looked so hopeful. But Maggie didn’t want to ride with her. She would see Johnny, but she wanted to be able to leave if and when she needed to, without having to ask for a ride home

“I need to jump in the shower and get dressed…I’ll be there in an hour. You can tell him I’ll see him then.”

Jillian looked as if she wanted to protest but then nodded her head briefly. “All right. Just…please, don’t take too long. The fact that he wants to see you is a good sign, I think. I don’t want him to change his mind before you get there.”

Maggie nodded and shut the door behind Johnny’s careworn sister. She ran for the stairs, pulling her things off as she went. Less than 45 minutes later she was showered, dressed and blow-dried, and grabbing the keys from the rack. She wore the same blue jeans and purple shirt she’d worn that day in the school mechanics shop, the day she and Johnny had shared their first kiss. She hesitated for a moment, an idea popping into her mind. It couldn’t hurt. She raced back up the stairs and wrenched up the lid of her window seat, lifting Roger Carlton’s old scrapbook up and out. It might give Johnny some answers…or some proof of what had happened in the years he had lost.

Jillian Bailey lived in the same house she had been born in. It was a tidy bungalow with a wide front porch and a garage that had been added on in more recent years. The grass was neat, and the flowerbeds had been cleared of winter debris, the dirt turned in preparation for spring flowers. Irene said it had been Clark Bailey’s childhood home as well. He had lived there as a bachelor and then when he’d married Johnny’s mother it had become their home, the home they had raised their daughter in. Maggie wondered if Johnny would find remnants of his mother there and if it would bring him comfort. She hoped so. She slid into the drive. Belle the Caddie had run perfectly since Johnny had given her the tune-up. She wondered if she should tell him about it.

“He’s in the garage,” Jillian Bailey said without preamble as she opened the door to Maggie’s knock. “Walk around to the side and give the door a good rap. He’s got some music on in there….so if he doesn’t hear you, just go in.”

The music was some sort of thrashing metal band from the eighties. Maggie couldn’t name the band. If it wasn’t music she could dance to, she usually wasn’t interested. She wondered why he’d chosen it; it was so different from the music he liked. Johnny didn’t answer when she knocked. She pushed the door open and walked into the dim light of the large garage. A sensible tan Camry sat in the farthest dock with its hood opened wide. Nearest to Maggie sat Johnny’s Bel Air. Maggie gasped and walked around it, marveling at the care that had obviously been taken to keep the car in such good condition.

“It’s your car!” Maggie cried excitedly and looked around for Johnny, glad they would have something to talk about. He unfolded himself from under the hood of Jillian’s Camry. His shirt had a little grease at the hem, where he had probably wiped his hands without thinking. He’d gotten a haircut since she had seen him last. The style was slightly modified from its original 50s look, but it didn’t change his appearance all that much. He wore jeans, and Maggie noticed how he rolled the bottoms in a thick cuff – 50s style. His shirt was a plain blue tee that he’d tucked into the jeans that rode his hips. He was thinner, but he moved effortlessly and seemed completely healed from his ordeal. He nodded at the car and then looked back at her somberly.

“How do you know it’s mine?” Johnny replied softly.

“You told me,” Maggie offered, just as quietly. “An oil man from a couple of counties over forgot to put his brakes on when he went to spy on his wife at the reservoir. It rolled right into the water and sunk like a box of rocks. He told you if you could get it out, it was yours. You, Carter, and Jimbo got it out. You took it apart, cleaned it, and rebuilt it the summer before your senior year.” Maggie ran her hand along the sleek black side and stopped in front of the hood, which was raised just like the Camry. She tried not to look at Johnny, but she couldn’t resist. She tried not to smile at his surprised expression. He grunted but didn’t comment on her obvious knowledge of his history.

The silence in the garage became cloying, and Maggie struggled to find something to say, anything to say.

“What do you get when you offer a blonde a penny for her thoughts?” Maggie asked randomly.

“Huh?” Johnny shot a look at her from under his hood.

“It’s a joke.” What do you get when you offer a blonde a penny for her thoughts?”

“What?”

“Change,” Maggie supplied, waggling her eyebrows. Johnny stared at her for a moment and shook his head. Maggie tried again.

“What do you call a brunette with a blonde on either side?”

Johnny didn’t reply.

“An interpreter,” Maggie answered, a little less cheerfully this time. Johnny didn’t even look up from the car’s engine.

“What did the blonde say when she looked in the box of Cheerios?” she said, her voice subdued. This was her favorite one. It used to be his.

No reply again.

“Oh, look! Donut seeds...” Maggie’s voice faded off.

Johnny slammed the hood and wiped his hands on a nearby rag.

“Did I used to laugh at your jokes?” he asked brusquely.

“Only the blond jokes. I used to tell knock knock jokes but you told me they were terrible.” Maggie smiled at the memory. Johnny had liked the blonde jokes, and Maggie had searched for them, sharing new ones with him every day. She had even started calling them “Johnny jokes” because he was himself a natural blond.

“Let’s hear one.”

Maggie thought for a minute. “Knock, knock.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows impatiently, waiting for her to continue.

“You’re supposed to say, ‘Who’s there?’” Maggie prodded.

“Who’s there?” Johnny parroted.

“Sarah.” She waited. “Say Sarah who.”

“Sarah who?” Johnny droned.

“Sarah reason you’re not lettin’ me in?”

Johnny rolled his eyes, and Maggie giggled a little, relieved he was at least participating somewhat.

“Yeah. That’s pretty bad. But I can’t imagine I liked the blonde ones much better,” he grunted sourly.

Maggie tried not to let his dismissal bother her.

“Why is it so hard to believe that you and I were friends?” Maggie said quietly. She approached him and stopped, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

“I don’t know, Margaret.” He leveled his gaze at her again. His eyes were like blue ice. “Maybe because I was born in 1939, and it’s now 2011, and I still don’t look like I’m a day over nineteen.” Johnny’s voice was laced with sarcasm. He walked toward her, still wiping his hands on the rag. He stopped about a foot in front of her. “Maybe it’s hard because I don’t know where the hell I’ve been for the last fifty odd years and nothing and nobody that I knew is still around to explain it all to me.” His voice had risen considerably, and his face was flushed.

He crossed his arms at his chest and looked her over once, and then again, resting his gaze on the glasses perched on her nose. “And maybe it’s hard to believe because I don’t remember you, not at all…”

“You don’t have to be a jerk,” Maggie shot back, crossing her own arms. “Is that why you wanted to see me? So you could tell me again how forgettable I am?” Maggie pushed her glasses farther up on her nose, though they really hadn’t slipped at all. She felt the tears threaten to spill over, and she rebuked herself silently but firmly. She would not let Johnny Kinross see her cry over him. Not again. She had some pride.

He didn’t deny her accusations or defend himself. He just stared at her mulishly for a second and then spoke again.

“So, Margaret – ”

“Maggie!”

“Maggie. You are the only one who seems to know what I’ve been doing or where I’ve been all this time. And I sure would like to know. I thought maybe you could tell me.” He attempted to sound flip, but there was a layer of strain that underscored his nonchalance. Maggie’s heart softened toward him the smallest degree.

“All I know is what you’ve told me,” she said, somewhat begrudgingly. “I moved here almost a year ago. I started working at the school last summer. I noticed things right from the beginning, but they seemed natural enough…I thought it was Gus.”

“Thought it was Gus doing what?”

“Gus is the janitor…the older man who visited you a couple of times at the hospital?”

Johnny nodded once.

“I thought it was Gus playing the songs from the 50s when I would work alone. One day I actually saw you in the hallway. You scared me. Then another time I fell into the dumbwaiter shaft and you saved me. I didn’t know who you were, but Gus told me that the school had a.....a ghost. He’d seen you in the school off and on for the last fifty years, ever since your disappearance the night your brother died. The first time he saw you he told the police, and they searched the school. It wasn’t until later that Gus realized his mistake. He thought you were dead…..that you were a spirit haunting the school. The problem with that theory was that I had touched you, and I knew you weren’t a ghost. I learned as much as I could about the tragedy and your disappearance, and then I came to the school and I….” Maggie gulped a little, wondering if he would think she was crazy. Probably not, considering his very existence was proof of something seriously bizarre.

“You what?”

“I went to the school and I….started talking to you, calling you. I asked you if it was you who had saved me that night. I ended up in the rotunda…the place where you and Billy...”

“Died?” His tone was caustic, like she had said something incredibly offensive. He wasn’t making this easy.

“Fell,” Maggie retorted sharply. “You were suddenly there. Just...out of nowhere...there. You talked to me for a moment. You were amazed I could see you, and I frankly was amazed as well. I have seen ghosts before…..but never like you. You could see me too; you were aware of me, and you still had a physical body. At least, it felt that way…” Maggie halted again, unsure of where to go next and needing desperately to sit down. There was a folding chair propped against the wall, and Maggie sank into it gratefully. Johnny leaned back against the door of the Camry and stared at her through narrowed eyes.

“I had a body….but no one could see me.” It wasn’t a question, but a recap.

Maggie nodded. “You said that you thought you’d been trapped between Heaven and Earth. You told me after you fell from the balcony you could see Billy lying beside you. You could see that he was gone.” Maggie could feel the grief rising in her again. But this time it wasn’t for her own pain but for his. Her voice shook slightly, but she didn’t let herself stop. He stiffened at the obvious emotion in her voice but didn’t react as she repeated the horror of what he had gone through.

“You said you could feel death’s pull. You knew you were dying. You told me you knew you had to fight it. You didn’t want to leave your mother. You didn’t want her to suffer the loss of two sons, even if you were the son....she was left with. See, you blamed yourself that Billy was dead. You were filled with guilt and pain and you fought...well...death.” It sounded overly dramatic, but there were no other words to describe what Johnny had told her. “You told me you refused to die. Then you felt a...a cracking – and there was a burst of light. The next time you became aware, policemen were there. Eventually, even your mother was there, but nobody could see you or hear you. They took Billy’s body away at some point, and you tried to follow him, but you couldn’t leave the school. It was like there was no world beyond the doors – just black. You said you were trapped there.”

“All this time?” Johnny’s voice was an incredulous whisper. “How can that be? I remember falling. I even remember what you’ve described….the feeling of fighting death. But that’s all. I woke up in the hospital like it had all just happened. I even had the gunshot wound.”

“You had no wounds in Purgatory. That’s what you called it. Purgatory. You didn’t even have a drop of blood on your clothing. Your clothes and body didn’t wear or soil; your hair was always perfectly in place. You weren’t really human – but you weren’t an angel either. You could do some amazing things, with just a thought. You told me energy wasn’t created or destroyed, it was simply redirected. You could harness energy. You could even heal! Here! Look at this.” Maggie stood and, yanking the sleeve of her purple shirt above her elbow, turned her inner arm out for Johnny’s perusal. The scar from her burn was a slightly raised pink half moon against her pale skin. “I burned myself….and you pressed your hand over the burn…and healed it.”

Johnny reached out, running his fingers along the puckered edges of her scar. His touch was light, but Maggie felt it to the tips of her toes. She missed the Johnny who loved her! Oh, what she wouldn’t give to have him back! The longing hit her like a gale-force wind, and she shuddered involuntarily. She pulled her arm away and turned from him. She needed to leave. She couldn’t do this.

“Maggie.” This time Johnny’s voice was soft, and for a moment he sounded like the old Johnny. “What else? What else could I do? How did I spend my time?”

“You said you read a lot. You even read to me, sometimes.”

Johnny raised his eyebrows and snorted in disbelief. “I hate to read. Try again, sweetheart.”

Maggie stiffened and raised her chin slightly, a look Johnny was quickly coming to recognize as her battle stance. “You told me that, too. You also told me you’d read almost everything in the school library. You said it was better than boredom.”

He didn’t respond to that, and Maggie turned, pacing away from him for a moment.

“Have we ever danced?”

She spun around and looked at him, her mouth agape. “Why? Did you remember something?”

“Have we ever danced?” he shot back, repeating the question.

“Yes,” Maggie breathed. “We’ve danced. I love to dance. You said you used to watch me. Then one night you actually danced with me. You’re a good dancer. Do you remember that?”

He turned away and braced his hands on the hood of the Camry. “I had a dream where I was dancing with you….but it wasn’t the way you describe. In the dream it was still 1958. Everything in the dream was true to life – except you. But it hasn’t faded like dreams do. It feels like a memory. But how could that be? Unless you were around in 1958?” He looked at her and raised one eyebrow in question.

She shook her head. “No.” Only in her dreams.

“Yeah. I didn’t think so.” He leaned under the hood and began to scope out the inner workings of the Camry. Maggie watched him for a minute. Maybe, like her, he had heard all he could for the moment.

“I brought something for you,” she offered after several minutes.

He didn’t respond but kept tinkering with this and that.

“It’s a scrapbook from the years you were gone. It belonged to Roger Carlton. He could never come to grips with your disappearance; he was a little obsessed with it.”

“How did you get your hands on it?”

“We found it a while back. He’s been dead over a year now. He was married to my aunt....Irene Honeycutt. I think you knew her.”

“Irene Honeycutt is your aunt?” His voice was incredulous, and he stood up so fast he banged his head on the Camry’s raised hood.

Deja vu slammed into Maggie. They had had this conversation once before, only that time it had involved Irene’s car. The words were almost exact, including Maggie’s next response.

“My great aunt. Her sister was my grandmother.”

“Your great aunt…” Johnny repeated slowly. Maggie remembered how he had tweaked her braid the last time. She guessed that part of the conversation would not repeat itself.

Johnny slowly straightened and walked back to where Maggie held the big book out in front of her. He took it from her gingerly and began to flip through the pages slowly, one by one. He sank into the chair Maggie had vacated, so Maggie rummaged around until she found a bucket she could sit on and pulled it close to him, watching him as he read, following along as he turned the pages of the worn scrapbook.

He stared at the headings and the pictures, shaking his head in disbelief. His breath came faster and faster, and Maggie feared he would hurl the book across the garage. She reached to take it from him when suddenly he flipped to the back where the pictures were inserted in neat little rows.

“Where did he get these?” He traced the picture of himself standing with his mother and Billy at graduation. “I haven’t even seen some of these.”

“He had police reports and all kinds of stuff. Irene hadn’t ever seen the book. We’re not sure where he got them.”

“Look at that….that’s me and Peggy at the Prom.” His voice trailed off as he stared at the picture. “There’s another one – you can see Carter there in the background. He sure had a thing for Peggy. I think that’s your aunt right there.” He pointed at a photo, and Maggie leaned toward him to look. Sure enough, the photographer had captured a group of young people in sports coats, bow ties, and ball gowns sitting around an oval table with a seashell centerpiece. Irene was smiling brightly into the camera; Roger had his arm slung possessively around her shoulders.

“Huh…” Maggie frowned. “She told me her dress was red. I could have sworn she said red. This photo may be black and white, but that dress definitely isn’t red.”

Johnny jerked the book from her hands and stared down at the photo. His eyes widened perceptibly as he drank in the details of the picture of the smiling teens. He sat frozen for several heartbeats and then slammed the book closed and tossed it rudely at Maggie. Jumping up from the chair, he paced back and forth between the two cars with their mawing hoods, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He was a bundle of nervous energy, and everything she said just seemed to make him angry.

“Johnny?” Maggie asked softly. He didn’t respond. After a moment she resumed talking. “I don’t know what to do or say. You saved Shad’s life…Gus told you about that, didn’t he?” Johnny jerked his head in affirmation. “And you saved my life. Something happened that night; somehow you escaped Purgatory. I can’t explain it, but….” Maggie took a deep breath and plunged on. He deserved to know how she felt. “I think you made a choice. You chose life and all the ugly hard things that go with it, even though Heaven would have been easier.”

Johnny had stopped pacing and was facing her, his feet spread, his hands clenching the greasy rag like it was a lifeline. Maggie looked down at her own hands so she wouldn’t have to watch him watching her. She didn’t see him cross toward her, but suddenly he was there, in front of her. He tossed the rag to the floor and reached for her, gripping her by the shoulders and pulling her to her feet. Johnny’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, and for a moment Maggie thought he would break down. His hands were big, and it hurt where his fingers dug into her flesh. He was almost panting as he spat out his next words.

“You think I chose this life?” Maggie stared at him stonily, willing herself not to flinch.

“Did I love you, Maggie?” She didn’t respond.

“Did I love you?!” Johnny cried. She nodded mutely, and shut her eyes against his belligerent gaze.

“Did I kiss you, Maggie?” His voice dropped to a whisper. Maggie’s lips trembled at the mocking in his voice.

“Yes. You did!” Maggie meant to mock back, but her voice betrayed her and broke on the last word, revealing her hurt.

He pulled her close to him then and buried his face in the crook of her neck. He folded her in his arms so tightly she thought she would have to push him away to breathe….and she didn’t want to push him away, though she knew he held her not out of love, but out of desperation. Johnny lifted his head and whispered hoarsely, his eyes on her mouth, his lips only inches from hers.

“If I kiss you now, do you think I’ll remember? Do you think the world will suddenly make sense? That I will remember that choice? That maybe the last fifty years will come back to me?”

Maggie glared at him, willing him to release her, yet wanting him to kiss her, and hating herself for it. Johnny gripped her even tighter in response. Then he dipped his head until his lips brushed hers softly, so softly. Maggie shuddered and he stiffened. She thought surely now he would push her away. Instead, he lowered his mouth again, this time parting her lips with his and holding her face in one of his hands. Johnny’s kiss was warm and insistent, and it was at once familiar and yet completely brand new…his lips on hers, his taste in her mouth, his scent engulfing her. For a moment, she melted into him, letting the fire in her belly burn away the pain, letting him kiss her, and kissing him back. But there was no love in his kiss. And that made him a stranger; it was a stranger’s kiss. The realization hurt her pride, and Maggie fought her way out of Johnny’s arms and pushed him away as angrily as he’d pulled her to him. He let her go, and for several minutes neither of them spoke.

It was Maggie who finally broke the silence and approached him once more, shoving her hands into her pockets, mirroring his stance. “I’m so sorry, Johnny. I know you don’t want to be here. I know none of this makes sense. The craziest part of it all is….you were willing to give your life for me…what was left of it at least. But as much as I want you, I can’t expect you to live your life for me, or to live your life with me. I wanted to be with you so bad. I would have stayed with you in that school, because I was more afraid of losing you than I was of the fire. I thought it was the only way we could be together. But you wouldn’t let me stay.”

Johnny turned away from her, rejecting her, dismissing her appeal. Maggie felt her heart shatter. She finished her plea in a broken whisper.

“But I would have chosen you too; and I haven’t forgotten. Not one second. Not one minute. Not one kiss.” And then, picking up the scrapbook from the concrete floor and setting it in his hands, she turned and walked out of the garage. She walked away from the Johnny who no longer knew her or loved her, out into the grey future to the car that had weathered the decades while Johnny wandered in Purgatory. He didn’t come after her.