Margo. Turn Left. by Megan Pillow Davis
Associate editor Indigo Villanueva on today’s bonus story: You might know about Margo from her appearance in SmokeLong Quarterly. She returns, after the passage of time, in this incantation, chanted by women who want her, and want her to escape. We chant, too, perhaps because we know what it is to give, and give, and give, and never to take—to share others’ pain while hiding, always, our own.
Margo. Turn Left.
Here is the first leaf, its edges bleeding to yellow. Here, the osprey, hunting mice from his perch in the palm tree in the Mastersons’ yard. Here now, the first night of cool, striking sudden and hard as the crack of a bat against a skull as the sun goes down. But we barely notice because we’re watching Margo, sitting alone in her car at the end of the road.
She’s at the stop sign, looking left, right, left, and we can’t see her face, but we see her hand tapping against the window, and we all know what she’s doing. Even from over the fence in Amy’s backyard, we can hear it: the clink of her wedding ring against the glass, the same as she always does at parties, as if she’s getting everyone’s attention for a toast, but Margo never has anything to say. We watch her from our Adirondack chairs at the edge of Amy’s moonlit pool, and we all hear that clink, and it is the sound of summer.
That sound, that sound—we close our eyes in unison and here, again, is Margo, Margo with the high-end haircut and the porcelain teeth, Margo, pouring us all another glass of wine. We hear it, and Margo slides the screen door open and strolls into our backyards and our husbands always follow, barbecue tongs like torches in their hands. We hear it, and Margo strips down to her bikini and slips beneath the surfaces of our pools and our husbands clink their implements and forget to breathe. We hear it, and we wait for Margo’s husband, for every bird in the neighborhood to rise into the sky like burning leaves.
Clink goes Margo’s ring against the glass, clink, clink, clink and Nicki brushes her baby’s hair but all she feels is the warm gold of Margo’s ring against her neck as she pulls her behind the bathroom door for a kiss. Clink and Amy drops a stitch in the scarf she’s knitting because it’s the sound of Margo tapping at her glass door at 3 a.m. again but she never says help me. Clink and Rachel nearly drops the tea she’s drinking because that sound is Margo, still flat-bellied, letting her mug clatter to the floor when Rachel cries and pressing her hand to Rachel’s swelling stomach and saying this, my love, is magic.
Here is Margo, at the stop sign still, and we all know that summer is leaving us. We all know her bag is packed, sitting on the passenger seat like a pledge. We all know that if she goes, the leaves will fall like a curtain and the sun will shutter and the bells that ring on every porch when she walks past will die. And yet here is Margo, not gone yet. Now is the time for the incantation.
Nicki brushes her baby’s hair and smooth as the spreading of foundation over a bruise, she snips a lock of it. Rachel drains her tea and quick as the flip of a deadbolt, she turns the tea leaves into her hand. Amy slides the needles from the yarn and quiet as the slip of a woman out the side door, she taps the metal against the skin of her friends and they upend their palms into the pool. With the tips of the knitting needles, Amy stirs the pool water like a cauldron, and we all whisper the words:
Turn left, Margo.
Margo. Turn left.
Again and again we whisper them, quiet, so our husbands won’t hear us, and before us, the water continues to circle as if something is sucking it down. And while we chant, we think what we cannot say:
Turn left, Margo.
(because if you do, the road will spin out beneath you and the sky will get its color back and you will find a home where the birds don’t remind you of death.)
Margo. Turn left.
(because one day, one day, you will find yourself standing in a sunlit kitchen somewhere, and someone will touch one hand to your cheek out of love alone, and with the other he will feed you a peach.)
Turn left, Margo.
(because you’ve sat in your car at the end of that road for four summers now and you always turn right and take yourself home and this time, it might kill you and this might be the last chance you get.)
Margo. Turn left.
(because you got us all drunk on tequila in your basement once, and you sat us in a circle, and you said to us I have a secret and then you whispered:
To Nicki: I died here once.
To Amy: It’s too late.
To Rachel: I’m still watching MasterChef.
And we didn’t understand, and we didn’t ask, and we didn’t speak those words to anyone, not even to each other. But every night, when we are alone in our beds, here is Margo in that basement again, here is Margo, putting that bottle of Cuervo to her lips, and all we think is regret, regret, regret.)
Here is the leaf, bleeding yellow. Here, the osprey, hunting. Here, the first sudden crack of cool.
And yet.
We watch Margo.
We stir the water.
We chant the words, five and ten and fifteen times:
Turn left, Margo.
Margo.
Turn left.
Megan Pillow Davis is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop in fiction and is currently a doctoral candidate in the University of Kentucky’s English Department. Her work has appeared recently in, among other places, Electric Literature, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart and Paper Darts and is forthcoming in Atticus Review and Waxwing. She has received fellowships from Pen Parentis and the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and a residency from the Ragdale Foundation. She is currently writing her dissertation and a novel. You can find her on Twitter at @megpillow.
