Invisible Girl

“What’s eatin’ you, Maggie? You look like you lost your best goddamn friend.”

She shrugged. “I just hate seeing the place like this.”

“What? Crowded? Making money hand over fist?”

“You know what I mean,” she snapped at him. His nose was like a road map of crisscrossed blood vessels, and he had a way of curling over his beer, lest someone should steal it.

“So sell.”

“I keep thinking about it. Got another offer this week. Haven’t talked to Danny yet.”

“What’s the old man think?”

She shrugged. “We haven’t heard from him in months.”

“Wanna know what I think?”

“Sure.”

“Sell the fuckin’ place. I don’t know what the hell you’re holding onto it for. Take the money, go retire to friggin’ Florida or something. Get out of the winter. Al Roker said it was minus ten with the windchill this morning. That’s colder than a witch’s tit.”

“Point taken, Charlie.” Maggie noticed how the spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth, and his teeth were stained with tobacco, like the ceiling of the Twilight itself. He was one of the last of the old-timers. They were dying off.

God, despite its patina of hopelessness, she loved the place. In the midst of Hell’s Kitchen, it was her oasis. Her temple and shrine to all that she loved.

They raced into the Twilight.

“Hi Daddy!” Maggie squealed, both her front teeth missing. He picked her up and kissed her nose, depositing her on a bar stool and filling a highball glass with Coke.

“Don’t tell your mother I’m giving you Coke. If she asks, tell her I gave you milk.”

Danny climbed up on the stool next to Maggie. Their father tousled Danny’s hair and poured him a soda, too. Then their father leaned two elbows on the bar and asked them about their day.

A few stools away from Maggie, she noticed a man with prison tattoos on his forearms. She waved at him, and he winked at her.

Danny told their dad about his class’s field trip to the Museum of Natural History. Maggie couldn’t wait to be in third grade and take that trip, too.

“Dad…the elephant had tusks that went up to the ceiling!”

“Did it try to eat you?” their father joked.

“No. It was stuffed.”

“Oh…well, you two better get upstairs to Mom before she stuffs the both of you. Finish your sodas, and no telling.”

Maggie dutifully sucked the last of her Coke through a straw, slid down from the stool, and ran back outside with Danny to the double doors leading to the apartments above the bar. They took the stairs two at a time to apartment 2B.

The door was open before they even got there. “Take your shoes off!” their mother scolded them.

Maggie, in the tartan plaid skirt, blue kneesocks, white blouse and blue blazer of Saint Bernadette’s Catholic School, complied and slipped off her Mary Janes. Danny untied the laces of his shoes. He wore his blazer but had loosened his tie the second the last bell had rung.

Only with shoes off did they run into her arms.

“How was your day?” she asked them. Her accent made her cut the endings off words sharply, slightly. “You have good day?”

They both nodded.

“Come.” She took them each by the hand and led them to the shrine to Buddha in one corner of the living room. A white altar cloth covered the table. A pewter bowl contained fruit, an offering for him. A vase held flowers.

Out of habit, in the ritual they did each day, Maggie and Danny bowed deeply. Then they lit incense. It was Maggie’s turn. She withdrew an incense stick—jasmine-scented—and took a wooden match and lit it.

“Thank you, Buddha, for my good test score in science, and for Mark Callahan getting the chicken pox,” Maggie said.

“Why you thank Buddha for that?” Her mother asked.

“’Cause then he wasn’t in school to pick on me. He pulls my hair.”

“Oh,” her mother said and smiled. “Your turn Danny.”

“Thank you, Buddha, for my trip to the museum. I got to see a woolly mammoth.”

They bowed again with their mother. Maggie loved their Buddha shrine. They had a few statues of him, some solemn and meditative, but one was a big, fat Buddha with a round belly. She liked how happy he looked, like he was laughing.

“Come,” their mother commanded. Next they moved to a small shrine of Jesus and Mary, the Blessed Virgin. “You tell him thank-you. Thank his mama, too.”

So they went through their thank-yous again, this time adding an Our Father and Hail Mary. Maggie didn’t like praying to Jesus as much. Compared to Buddha, he was sad, his statue plastic and in Technicolor, with painted-on red blood dripping from his palms and feet and side. The stations of the cross at St. Bernadette’s were even more graphic—to remind the children of our Lord’s pain and suffering, said Sister Patricia.

Maggie had never told the Carmelite sisters at St. Bernadette’s about Jesus and Buddha being best friends, according to her mother. “Best to cover all your bases,” her mother had said. “Keep you safe.” Somehow, Maggie didn’t think the sisters would approve of covering their bases.

Maggie, Danny and their mother made the sign of the cross. Then it was homework time. Around five, Maggie’s father came up from the bar for his dinner break. That was always her favorite part of the day. Not because she got to see him and spend time with him, although that certainly pleased her. It was the strange thrill she got from watching her father walk through the door and the expression on his face when he saw her mother.

Maggie tried to capture the moment in her mind, but it never was the same as seeing it, being there with them. But Maggie was convinced the earth stopped moving—just for a split second. He opened the door, shut it, took off his shoes, lined them neatly next to Maggie’s and Danny’s. Then he came into the dining area, and when he first caught her mother’s eyes, it was there—you could feel it. Her mother’s breath left her and her father’s heart stopped. Maggie was sure of it.

Her mother was always calmer with Daddy around, certain they would all be safe now. She would serve him supper, but she always made sure to touch his hand, to rub his arm as she put his dinner on his plate. And Maggie’s father would not curse, he wouldn’t raise his voice, not even a tiny bit. He wouldn’t do anything loudly. For that time, that meal, he was under her mother’s spell, and they weren’t in Hell’s Kitchen. They were someplace else. They may have been above the roughest bar on Thirty-ninth Street, but inside was a piece of heaven, watched over by Buddha and his brother, Jesus—because, Maggie’s mother said, someone as wise as God would have a lot of children.

Maggie walked away from Charlie and prepared to break down the bar. It was late; she was tired. The phone rang, and she picked up the extension by the register.

“Angel?”

“Hi Bobby,” she said.

“I’m just getting off work. I caught a case. Some guy killed with a pickax. There’s no end to the creativity in this city.”

“You sound tired.”

“I am. I was thinking of coming by, though. I just need to see you.”

“Sure. I’ll be here.”