*
In June, Margaret joined Michael at a rented house on Long Island Sound. They were alone for a week and spent the time writing and reading together. They took long swims and longer walks in the rain. They talked about what they wanted in a relationship and how the men in their lives had failed them. That week, they became lovers, and for the first time in her life, Margaret understood why men went to war for women they loved. To Margaret, Michael was a goddess.
That Friday evening, Tweed and his guests arrived for the weekend. Tweed must have noticed the change in the women’s relationship. He most likely knew of Michael’s prior infidelities and saw Margaret as another passing fancy. At dinner that night, the tension among Margaret, Michael, and Tweed was palpable.
Michael’s frustration with her husband was laid out as plainly as the ham on the table. She talked of the life she was planning without him. She raised her voice so that even with his slight hearing impairment he could hear what she said. She described the house where she was going to live and write. She planned to live there alone, she announced loudly.
Tweed had grown used to Michael’s ways. He calmly stood and offered second helpings of the ham to their guests. Putting more ham on Margaret’s plate than she could ever possibly eat, he taunted her for drinking wine instead of scotch. She responded with biting sarcasm. She knew she could hold her own with Tweed. At the end of dinner, everyone rose to retire to the porch, but Tweed bade them good night and went straight to bed.
Until the early hours of the morning, Michael kept the conversation on the porch lively. All the guests watched her, entranced—especially Margaret. Entertaining was where Michael truly shined. She found other people’s lives enthralling and could elicit secrets they never planned on sharing. She studied politics and formed resolute opinions and relished debate. At her table, bishops, actors, and royalty might find themselves engaged in a discussion on the war, predestination, or the history of the theater.
That night, Michael and her guests argued about psychoanalysis. Margaret strongly believed in the benefits of her therapy. She felt that the one hour a week she spent dredging up emotional wounds helped her achieve clarity and settle her internal turmoil. Michael stridently disagreed. In Michael’s opinion, analysis was, at the very least, useless and indulgent. More than that, it brought up a cascade of memories that became a focus of a patient’s life. Margaret stood her ground. Focusing on her problems with her psychiatrist freed her mind the rest of the week. Neither backed down. Alone in her room, Margaret stayed up until the early hours of the morning, writing a long letter to Michael explaining her belief in psychoanalysis.
The next day, Michael and Tweed appeared to be a loving couple once again. It was Margaret’s turn to feel bereft. Maybe Michael was punishing her for defending psychoanalysis, or maybe she didn’t really love her. Margaret knew that Michael also longed for someone who loved you completely, someone who would be by your side when you were sick and who wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Someone who believed in you as an artist and did everything they could to support you.
Margaret went to her room to pack her things. The week had been magical when it was just the two of them, but with the intrusion of the outside world, it had become a disaster. She collapsed on the bed in tears. She tore up the letter. There was nothing she could do to stop how she felt about Michael. She wanted to be more than friends. She was desperately in love.
*
Margaret resigned herself to life without Michael and returned to Sunshine Cottage in Vinalhaven alone. She had had minor surgery to remove a small tumor on her breast and wanted to recuperate in the midst of Maine’s woods and swim in its waters. She believed in the healing properties of that shore and felt parched from having been away from its waters too long. She was not allowed to use her left arm until she was well, so rowing a boat was impossible. Lifting anything heavy was also out, so Bill and his oldest son helped her with chores. The lobsterman’s wife prepared her meals.
As the days passed, she grew grateful for her returning health and was happy in her solitude. She loved it when the fog settled in and blanketed her little house. With the exception of her work on the Heath social studies textbook series for Bank Street, she spent her time reading. She wanted to take life more slowly. Her stay in the hospital had helped her to realize how busy she had been. She needed quiet, time to absorb the sounds around her and the words in front of her.
The Heath series had become an unending nightmare for Lucy Mitchell. As Lucy planned, the series took fictional characters into different worlds where they learned about a subject, and it was Margaret’s idea to open each chapter with a song. But Heath thought the books strayed too far from the standard textbook model. Dozens of pages of written material were tossed aside when Heath decided the series was too liberal and the style too narrative.
Margaret, Lucy, and scores of other writers at Bank Street had devoted countless hours to creating the readers, but after four years of struggle trying to please Heath’s editors, Lucy’s good humor ebbed. Her hope of bringing the Bank Street philosophy to a wider audience now looked unlikely. Margaret was especially disappointed when the songs she had written were rejected as too novel an addition. A compromise on that was reached when it was decided poems would replace songs—a more traditional approach to chapter openings.
Before she had come to Maine, Margaret had promised Lucy she would forge ahead as quickly as possible. Once they got these books behind them, they decided they would get together in New York to celebrate.
As she recuperated in Maine, Margaret wrote a poem with a memorable word pattern to introduce a story in the textbook. In the story, a little girl moves from a country home to a skyscraper in the city and is relieved to see that all her cherished items from her old room are there with her, in her new bedroom. It brought back Margaret’s memory of moving to their new house on Long Island after her boarding school years. She was so comforted to see her childhood furniture and possessions settled into her new room and easily placed herself in this little girl’s world where she found security from her familiar furniture and things. She paired those emotions with her own childhood ritual of saying good night to the things in her room and drafted a poem called “Good Night, Room.” In it, the little girl said good night to all the things in her room she found dear.
Until Margaret was better, she couldn’t use a typewriter, so she sent handwritten versions of her poems to Bank Street by way of the lobster boat that picked up outgoing mail. She told Lucy that if Heath didn’t like any of the works she submitted to just throw them away. She would start over again.