Slow Dance in Purgatory(5)

"Are you and Shad coming to dinner tonight, Gus?" Maggie asked as they began their rounds, emptying classroom garbage cans and changing trash bags. Shad was Gus's fourteen-year-old grandson who was currently living with his grandpa. His mother's whereabouts were mostly unknown, and his father's identity was completely unknown, which made Shadrach Jasper Gus's responsibility most of the time. And he was a handful, that one.

"Aunt Irene said she's making lemon meringue pie for desert. She said it was your favorite." Maggie waggled her eyebrows at Gus, and he smiled sheepishly at her.

“We'll be there, Miss Margaret.” Gus nodded his head with his assent. “But we gotta get the floors in the upper halls mopped up tonight, and I’m still workin’ on that gymnasium floor. Shadrach's working on the second floor and the lobby as we speak. I need you to go on up to the third floor and do your best to get those hallways done when we finish up here.”

Maggie stifled a groan and instead cheerfully nodded her head, not wanting to complain. She hated working alone on the upper floors. She always felt as if someone was going to walk around the corner or sneak up behind her and drag her away. The gymnasium was so far away that Gus would never hear her if she screamed. If she were honest with herself, Gus probably wouldn’t hear her if he were in the very next hallway. He was always turning his hearing aid off when he was alone because it whistled and drove him crazy. The halls could be filled with howling banshees, and he wouldn’t know it. She wished she and Shad could work together, but Gus probably knew best. Shad talked non-stop and was always trying to impress Maggie, which made Maggie laugh but didn't make either of them very productive.

Grabbing the mop and bucket from the third floor janitor closet, Maggie filled the bucket with hot water and cleaning solution and made her way down the long hall that stretched from one end of the building to the other. The senior lockers, alternating in black and white, gleamed in parallel rows along each side. If you squinted and tilted your head they looked like the keys on a giant piano. Maggie realized she didn't have to squint at all and remembered she had left her glasses back in the dance room on top of the sound system. She wasn't trekking down there now . She would have to make due with limited vision and hope she didn't miss anything.

About a half hour into her work, the music came on through the sound system, and Maggie had to smile at Gus's selection. Whenever she was alone up here he seemed to get a hankering for some oldies. She had gotten distracted by the music and ended up dancing down the hallways more than once. In fact, it happened almost every night. The songs all sounded like they would be played at a 50s Sock Hop or something.

Maggie wasn't sure when “Great Balls of Fire” came out, but it was definitely decades old. It was still fun to dance too, though. Maggie sashayed and boogie woogie'd down the hall with her mop, going all Tom Cruise in “Risky Business.” Maybe she could convince the dance team to do a throwback number. Not likely. The girls on the dance team mostly ignored her. It was obvious that they thought her janitor job was a little embarrassing and, by association, seemed a little embarrassed that she was on the dance team. Maggie sighed loudly, posing Elvis style to the final refrain of "Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire!"

Maggie was accustomed to being the odd man out. Since her parents had died when she was ten, Maggie had bounced around the foster care system, never staying anywhere for much more than a year. Her Great Aunt Irene was the only family she had, and though Irene had wanted her, Irene's husband, Roger Carlton, had not and had forbidden Irene from bringing the orphaned ten-year-old Maggie to live with them. She had made a few friends along the way, only to leave them behind when her situation changed.

She had learned to steel herself against close relationships and keep her own company. And though she wasn't mean, Maggie had become tough. She still remembered what it had been like to love and be loved, but after seven lonely years, she knew what it felt like to want love and not receive it and to be hungry for affection and never be touched. She knew what it felt like to be somebody's burden and to be somebody else's meal ticket. There were great people in the foster care system, but there were more than a few bad apples who took kids in only to collect the money the state paid in their behalf…or worse.

Since Maggie had come to live with Aunt Irene, life had gotten a lot better. Irene showered her with love and was so genuinely happy to have her young niece with her at last that Maggie couldn't doubt her affection. Maggie's mother, Janice, had been close to her Aunt Irene all through her growing up years; her own mother, Irene's younger sister and Maggie's grandma, had lived right next door to Irene until she passed away from cervical cancer a couple years after Maggie's mother had gone back East for college. Aunt Irene had mourned her sister terribly and begged Janice to come home to stay. But Maggie's mother had met Mickey O'Bannon by that time, and the young Irishman had swept her off her feet. She hadn't wanted to leave him, even for her Aunt Irene.

Maggie smiled mournfully at the thoughts of her parents. They had been wonderful. Her dad could dance without ever seeming to tire. He had jigged and spun her around, feet flying to the music he loved. Janice, her mother, had been less talented but equally exuberant, and the three of them had heartily enjoyed dancing together. Surprised at her melancholy musings, Maggie wiped a stray tear off her cheek and laughed a little to herself. It must be the music that was making her weepy. “Great Balls of Fire” had been followed by “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and Maggie abandoned the mop altogether as she let the music lift her up and out of herself.