Free Maggie Sweet by Judith Minthorn Stacy

smoking, and wondering why in the world it had taken me so many years to think of hiding the bell.
    Then it hit me. I’d been raised to be a good woman.
    When my daughters come to me for advice on their wedding day, the one thing I’ll tell them is never be a “good woman.” Over the years, I’ve learned that good women get to carry their own groceries, take the children to the emergency room alone, help shingle the roof, and make due with appliances that haven’t been right since 1976.
    I’ll tell my girls to be delicate. Steven’s mother is delicate. She has enjoyed poor health since Steven’s birth, forty-eight years ago. Delicate women get breakfast trays carried to them every day of their lives by good women. Delicate women get bad news broken to them gently, after the emergency has been handled, by guess who? Good women.
    “Play the role,” I’ll tell my girls. “And play it to the hilt.”
    The day I told Steven I was expecting the twins, he got pale, made me sit down, waited on me hand and foot, and hated himself for being the no-account man who’d got me into that fix in the first place.
    Did I bless his mother, who had paved the way for me to go back to bed with several good books ’til the babies were born? Lord, no. I was a good woman. I told him being pregnant was a normal condition, that I was strong and healthy and he shouldn’t make a fuss.
    He believed every word.
    By the time I saw I wasn’t as strong and healthy as I thought, Steven had decided that plenty of exercise was good for pregnant women. He never made a fuss again.
    “But, Mama,” my daughters might say, “how can you ask us to be so phony, so conniving, so unfair?”
    And I’ll say, “It’s easy, sugars. It’s real, real easy.”
    Tuesday afternoon, I took Mother Presson to Millie’s Percolator Grill. They have the best steak sandwiches in town but she just picked at hers. After lunch we went shopping, which I hate, but I planned to keep her out of the house ’til Amy was home to entertain her.
    My timing was perfect. Amy met us at the door. She could hardly wait to get her grandmother alone. They went to the front room so Amy could read an essay she’d written in English class: “The Person I Admire Most—My Grandmother Presson.”
    While they read this little ditty over and over again, I did some things I enjoyed more, like hosing out the garbage cans and scrubbing the commode.
    For two solid days, Steven and Jill stayed out of the house until dark.
    After supper, Mama Dean called to remind me about her doctor appointment. She’d been busy, she said. Our town flasher had finally come to trial, so she’d been camped on the courthouse steps all week, hoping to get apeek at “Some filthy man getting his.” I told her I wished I’d been with her and meant it.
     
    At the clinic Wednesday morning, the receptionist told us that Dr. Helton, Mama Dean’s regular female doctor, had been called away on an emergency. Dr. Pinckney, a male doctor, would be seeing all of Dr. Helton’s patients. Mama Dean set her jaw, but went off with Patsy Jo, the nurse, when her name was called.
    For the first time in days, I sat back and relaxed. It was wonderful. I flipped through the pages of Mademoiselle and thought about the reunion and Jerry. I wondered what I would wear now that my good beige church dress had gone all to pieces in the washer. Maybe I’d buy a new one—streak my hair, borrow Mary Price’s sunlamp. Maybe there was time to develop a bust.
    Sinking into the Naugahyde couch, I thought back to high school when my future seemed filled with exciting possibilities. I was deep in thought when Patsy Jo came back to the waiting room. “Maggie, we need you in the examining room.”
    While I’d been daydreaming about the reunion and Jerry, something had happened to Mama Dean. I was paying for my sinning in advance. I followed Patsy Jo’s starched back up the hall, my mouth so dry I could barely whisper, “What’s