Where It All Begins

Fifteen years ago Maggy moved to Santa Barbara. I'd moved there six months before, in part to get away from her, but mostly to be with Charlie. When he and I first left Salt Lake we'd lived together four years. Moving to Santa Barbara was moving home for him. For me it was moving to paradise. The climate reminded me of the Italian Riviera. The house sat on eighteen acres of Madrone, Bay, Eucalyptus and Oak forest. It had a view of the jewel that is Santa Barbara directly below with the shoreline's curve south toward Montecitto and north toward Golita. On a good day we could see the Channel Islands. For a couple of blissful months it was perfect. Charlie set about improving the house and landscaping and I got a great job at Robinsons. Then Maggy started dropping in.

She'd call from Salt Lake and say, "Hi, I'm coming to see you. I'll be there next Thursday and I'll stay for a week." I'd be standing there with the phone clutched to my ear and my mouth hanging open, listening to a dial tone, heart thudding as adrenalin flooded my system. I could never beat her to the draw. She'd never been to Santa Barbara. We had room, didn't we? I could pick her up at 7:30 Thursday night. She knew how to entertain herself. She was a grown-up. Whenever I heard words like that from Maggy I could not help but roll my eyes.

Six months later and Maggy has a great job. Charlie and I have separated. Now I have an apartment near Alice Keck Park on Garden St. And Maggy is living in a villa in the hills of the Riviera, looking down on me again.

She got a job as Caroline Franzen's companion. Caroline is a wealthy widow with an estate on the Riviera just above the Mission in old Santa Barbara. Now Maggy knows every art or film luminary living within a hundred miles of Caroline's house. There's a Salon every Wednesday evening. Maggy is in heaven. She has one of the cottages with a view of the pool and a place at the table of a world she has only dreamed about. Maggy was a fine arts major and had been named Designer/Craftsman of the year when she graduated from college. She still wears her Phi Beta Kappa key around her neck on a thin gold chain.

I go to Caroline's estate every few days to keep Maggy from dropping in on me. I seldom run into Caroline, but when I do she's charming, and never fails to invite me to one of her salons or a party at one of her famous friends. I'm always gracious in thanking Caroline, but I know better than to enter what Maggy sees as her turf. Mostly I call Maggy and give her some bogus reason I need to go to her place. I pull into the palm lined circular drive of Caroline's large villa, park behind the carriage house and walk back to Maggy's cottage by the pool.

She's been telling me lately is she wants to organize the photographs she's kept over the years. I've offered to help her put them in books. So on this almost balmy January Saturday afternoon we're sitting at Maggy's round oak table with the light reflecting off the swimming pool and the photographs spread out into decades, starting from her childhood. And seeing her life laid out like that, most of it in black and white, starts me on a shocking trip down memory lane.

She has portraits I've never seen of my grandmother Savage looking like a Mexican Madonna with a young, angular, hawk nosed, serious Gramps standing stiffly next to her looking down on Grandmother as she gazes into the infant face of my Uncle Linton. Without a doubt my grandmother was a woman whose ancestors had been on this continent many centuries longer than the first white explorers even thought about crossing the seas in search of riches. I look from this lovely portrait of a mother, father, and child, to my mother's face across the table from me. She has grown more to resemble her mother than I dare tell her. She looks like a blue eyed, white haired Eskimo. Her nose is flat across the bridge and her nostrils flare broader than mine. I have my father's, uncle's, grandfather's strong nosed face. I share their high cheekbones and sharp jawed angularity, but I have my mothers hairline, mouth, and voice. I'm taller than she is. People often say we look alike, but I think it's that we talk alike. We have deep voices. Maggy still retains the hint of a Texas accent. Mine was lost early in childhood. I have tried very hard to soften the edges of my voice. I'm told by men I have a sultry voice, whatever that means.

Maggy was Grandmother's second child. Then came Lucinda, the real baby, and the only family member I most resemble. Maggy often calls me Lucy. I wish she'd named me Lucy. I liked my aunt. In one picture of the kids Linton looks so slim and earnest at about ten years old, his eyes lowered as if looking at his shoes. Lucy seems distracted by something to the side and off in the distance, but Maggy looks straight at the camera as if taking a dare. She is the fierce one of the Savage Women. You can see it in her unsmiling direct gaze even as an eight-year-old.

Maggy's been telling me stories of hardship and deprivation during the Great Depression all my life, so I expect to see a family in distress in these photos. But instead I see photos of a family that looks well groomed and glossy, if a bit serious. In this particular photo they stand well-dressed in front of a shiny car. Gramps was a Ford salesman. She has been saying things in a voice like someone narrating a film. But the moment she starts talking about her Daddy, my Gramps, her voice grows hard. She says, "I tried to get that stupid bitch to leave him all my life." Her finger stabs at a snapshot of Grandmother as a young women wearing a printed shirt dress that comes just below her shins. Grandmother stares unsmiling into the camera. She's broad shouldered and slender. Her dress has shoulder pads and buttons down the front. Her hair is in a roll at the nape of her neck. She looks very stylish to me. And I never experienced my grandmother as a bitch. Mildly annoying yes, but the very antitheses of my mother's assessment. My experience of Grandmother was of a sweet and generous woman who complained a bit too much. But the last time I saw her I was fifteen.

I stare at the table and realize that much of Maggy's life has been a secret, or rather a mystery to me. She's told stories, but these photos are the illustrations. This is the cast of characters. There's a snapshot of Maggy in a nurses uniform. She points at it and say, " I was eighteen." I look across the table at her and then she says, "I dropped out of Nursing School to marry Chuck. The war was looming. I met him at a dance and I was mad about him. I had brain fever for that man. He had a big house off base in Paris, and the boys seemed like an adventure. You, on the other hand, were a nasty surprise." I feel an electric shock roll through my system at this cruel and offhand comment. But Maggy doesn't notice my stiffening posture or that I'm now holding my breath. She's looking at a portrait photo of Chuck just before she married him and he is indeed a handsome man. He looks a bit like Clark Gable. He has dark hair combed back from his forehead with a straight part on the left side. He has a slight dimple in his chin, a mustache, and dark nicely arched eyebrows and sooty lashes. But there are no wedding photos, there are no snapshots of her pregnant wearing maternity smocks. I ask about this omission and she tells me that it was one of the worst times of her life. She might as well just slap me. Instead she says, "I would have killed anyone who took a picture of me then. Besides, nobody had the money for such luxuries as pictures all the time. There was rationing of everything during the war and for years after."

Then she says, out of the blue, "Chuck was involved with a smuggling ring. He sent me money. Lots of it. I hid it. He was a Supply Sergeant. He could get his hands on anything. I saved the baby dress he sent you. But remember my star sapphire ring?" I do. It's exactly the glacial blue of her eyes. "Chuck sent that to me. I have no idea how he came by it. It's set in platinum. I still have the baby dress he sent you along with your baby book. He sent me perfume too." She seems utterly unaware that she has just contradicted her earlier claim that they didn't have the money for film. Sounds like they had money.

"I had a baby book? Why haven't I ever seen it?"
"Because every time you get your hands on something I never see it again." I know she's projecting here, but decide not to get into it. What she's really saying is that I'm irresponsible. I try to lose interest in the baby book. But just as I move on to another stack of pictures she gets up from the table and goes to her closet. I watch her stretch to a top shelf and she pulls down a box. It's the original box that holds my baby book. She proudly carries it to the table and hands it to me, saying, "You can have it now. What the hell do I need it for?" I open the pristine book. I leaf through the empty pages and tears start to leak from my eyes. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the wail that forms in my chest. Maggy says, "What the hell are you crying about?"

The lovely baby book is entirely devoid of photos or any mention of the “baby”. The only page that has anything written on it is the page about baby’s pets. Two Dobermans, Gin and Vermouth. No pictures, no writing anywhere except that page, just the breed and names of the dogs. I will keep it as evidence.

The next batch of photos is of my first year. For the first time the boys are not just lined up like stair steps. Now there is a baby being held by one or the other. They don't looked pleased to be pressed into service like this. There's one picture of Jim holding me. My youngest half brother is about six and I am probably three months. He has me under the arms and I dangle there, a long thin baby in a sagging diaper, my head turned to the side. His chin is cocked slightly to toward his shoulder. We both look really uncomfortable. And as I'm staring at that picture I have a vision of a swimming pool and a feeling of terror.

"Did the boys take me to a swimming pool?"
"Yes, they took you to the pool on base."
"Just the boys?"
"Yes, why?
"I don't know. How old was JR?"
"Sixteen." Her voice is rising in anger. "He was old enough to babysit you and the other two. Chuck and I needed time alone." Again I feel something like an electric shock run down my spine. The hair at the back of my neck prickles. I recognize panic creeping in on me.

"Here, look at this one." She hands me one of the two of us. "This was your first Christmas. You were six months old." She beams as she hands it to me and in the picture she is lovely, she has the glamourous good looks of a film star. Her hair is black and shiny, pulled back from her face exposing her widow's peak and the high broad planes of her cheek bones. She has the most wonderful smile, with wide curved lips and even white teeth. Maggy was a gorgeous woman. She's still a very handsome woman. In the photograph we're looking at, she has me balanced on her knee, her face above mine and she leans into the light of an elaborately decorated and brightly lit Christmas tree. My eyes are glistening in the light from the tree. My wet lips are parted. She looks from the picture to me and says, "You have me to thank for your good looks."
"Thank you Maggy."
"Too bad you don't have my temperament."
"You'd have been happiest with a clone, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, I think I would have."
"Why did you have me call you Maggy?" I can't believe I haven't asked this before. She hesitates for a moment and then says, "Because the boys called me Maggy and I didn't want you to feel different."
"Do you ever hear from them?"
"No, do you?"
"Not since Jim was arrested."