Because Her Hour Is Come - Mary Ann McGuigan

She’s sure she can’t be dreaming, because she can feel Nora’s hand on hers. The touch is light, barely there, but the cold bracelet is enough to bring her into the morning, back into the colorless room. 

“Aunt Peggy,” Nora whispers. “You’re having a bad dream.” The tips of Nora’s fingers graze her forearm, but she pretends she’s still asleep, because she wants it so badly, this contact. Nora rarely touches her anymore, not lovingly, so Peggy breathes her in, the coffee smell on her breath, the cologne that hints of sage and sea salt. It reminds her of the breeze off that lake near Derry, the one old Aunt Patsy insisted she visit, the one she swore could prevent a breech.  

“Aunt Peggy, wake up,” Nora says, touching her hand again. But Peggy doesn’t have to open her eyes. She already knows what she’ll see—the thick dark hair she thinks she got from her mother, the guarded blue eyes, more inscrutable each day. She’ll be wearing a suit, something too conservative. She was promoted last year, the prize for long hours and hard choices. Sometimes Peggy doesn’t see her for days at a time. 

Nora lets out a sigh, takes her hand away. Peggy suspects she’s losing patience, eager to get Downtown. The whole business—looking after a sickly old woman, untangling the financial red tape—is clearly wearing on her. Visits are getting shorter and shorter, her willingness to listen, to be truly present, almost gone. So Peggy gives in, presses the sleep from her eyes. 

“Your sisters again?” Nora says. 

She nods, and Nora purses her lips as if Peggy brings the dreams on herself. But she’s wrong. Peggy was the youngest, with no rank. Her sisters do as they please. Sometimes they appear in strong bodies, hair thick and dark and braided, shoes shined for a Sunday. Other nights they come in pain, skin loose and crepey on their arms, eyes filmy and defeated. Maureen, the oldest, the one who still has the last word, is always among them, unforgiving. 

Lately her brothers are with them, figures without faces, but she knows it’s them, laughing their brittle laughs, teasing the way they did when they were kids. Close up they smell like drink, like trouble. They talk as if they know where she is, what’s happening to her, as if she’s one of them now.  

“Maybe it was that custard,” Nora says. “You shouldn’t eat right before bed.” She strokes the hair at Peggy’s temple, hesitant, as if she’s touching a cat who might turn on her. 

She’s afraid, Peggy thinks. Or worse, repulsed. She prays it isn’t that, prays Nora remembers she was attractive once, strong. “What a long list of shouldn’ts life is now,” she mutters.

“No, no,” Nora soothes, “everything’s okay.” 

Peggy knows she doesn’t believe that, because she’s taken to stating the obvious—Today is Saturday or You’ve already had your lunch—as if the worst is already here. The sing-song tone makes plain her uncertainty about how much of what she says will get through. She doesn’t share things anymore, come for advice the way she used to, worried about a new staffer or a stubborn client. Peggy always knew how to keep her from giving up on herself, on the way she wanted things to be. She was her role model growing up, her cheerleader when she reached the top. 

The breakfast tray clanks and rattles its way into the room. Peggy doesn’t have to look to know it’s Carol, the one who never bothers to avoid disruption. As usual the toast smells burnt; it will be cold and soggy by the time it’s buttered, the tea lukewarm. She eats very little these days, and hardly a bite when Carol serves. 

Peggy sized her up early on: Less brains than a barnacle, this one, with the loose hems on her uniforms and her rough, stubby fingers. Peggy rarely speaks her name, and she’s sure the woman has no clue why, and not the least concern. A person like Carol wouldn’t have lasted a day on Peggy’s staff. She treats her job the way she treats her appearance—with complete indifference.

Peggy won’t let Carol wash her, not today. She can do it well enough on her own, though they all insist she can’t. Let them insist all they want. She knows her temper can still clear a room. 

Nora helps her sit up. “You’re all right now?” She makes it sound like a question, when it isn’t. Peggy knows there’s only one answer she wants, so she tells her to run along, that she’s fine. She doesn’t mention the lapses anymore, the parts missing from the day. Sometimes she loses more than that. She loses her way altogether. The other day—it must have been early in the evening—she turned off the television and nothing in the room looked familiar. Nothing. Not one piece of the cheap, homogenized furniture, not even her photos. There were strangers in the frames. A woman standing in the doorway spoke her name but she didn’t recognize her either. Someone else, with a voice as deep as a man’s, led her to the bed, made her lie down.   

Sometimes whole days are erased. She’ll watch the rays of the morning sun slant into the room and the next thing she knows it’s evening and Carol’s face appears in the doorway, tinged with satisfaction, as if her suspicions are confirmed. Peggy feels time pushing at her then, poking a finger into her chest, like some uncompromising brute, insisting she give up her pointless attachments, accept that she’s in charge of nothing anymore. The first woman to run a trading desk on Wall Street has no clout here, no purpose. 

Nora steps away from the bed. “I’ll come by tomorrow.” She reaches for her handbag, and Peggy smiles for her. 

“That would be good,” she says. “There’s something I’d like to talk with you about.”

“What is it?” Nora’s mouth tightens, the way it does when she thinks Peggy’s about to intrude. 

Peggy shrugs, as if it’s nothing. “Just something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Nora’s gaze shifts to Carol, then back to Peggy. “Is everything all right here?” They’ve talked about the things that go on in places like this and Nora’s on guard for the slightest misstep.  

“Everything’s fine here,” Peggy says, as if that could ever be true. “It’s just something I’ve had on my mind. For a long while.”

Nora examines her face like a prosecutor, and Peggy wonders if it was a mistake to tell her even this much. 

“It can wait,” she says. “Go on before you’re late.”

“All right then. We’ll talk tomorrow.” 

Peggy wonders if she’ll kiss her cheek. She doesn’t. She heads for the door, not even reluctantly. 

She waits until Nora and Carol are gone before she tries the tea, though it hardly deserves the name. “The color of piss,” her sister Bridget says. Bridget’s voice is often in the room, all their voices, even when Peggy is certain she’s awake. “How dare they call that tea?” Bridget says, ready as ever to fuss and complain. The lack of amenities in this place, no matter how expected—like this pitiful brew—still manages to annoy the hell out of Peggy. She’s comforted that Bridget recognizes the insult, however routine it’s become.

The greater insult is the room itself—boxy, inescapable. The colors of the walls and the chair and the bureau have faded, merged into a dismal, monotonous beige. Intended to be neutral, no doubt, brutally inoffensive. 

She fights the sameness in her own small ways. Sometimes she rearranges the photos Nora hung on the walls, moves them from their assigned places. To the right of the window, there’s an eight-by-ten of Peggy with her Analytics staff at the luncheon for her retirement. Even now she chuckles at how relieved they look. The photo of her parents is above the bureau, black and white, taken in the thirties. They’re standing in front of a tall, iron gate that’s been left ajar, and her father looks nervous, as if he’s afraid he’ll be expected to enter. His suit is dark, her dress gray with a white collar. She wears the same one in Peggy’s dreams, although she invariably appears old, still in pain, ever the martyr, unwilling to accept life, especially everlasting. 

The long wall opposite the bed has framed photos of Peggy with her sisters and brothers—on cruises, at baptisms and graduations—and several of her with the women from the parish, dear friends. She has stopped trying to remember their names. There are no pictures of her with Bill. That would only raise questions. The calendar is on the wall near the door, with May’s sacred heart of Mary glowing in rays of pale blue and gold, but it’s June now. She’s sure of it.

She decides she’ll scramble the photos again today, once she can get herself out of the damn bed. The first time she mixed them up, no one noticed, not even Louisa, whose vigilance is hawkish. Louisa’s a kind bird, a worrier. She bothers to apply lotion after the wash. She speaks Peggy’s name. She thinks she has secrets, but Peggy has guessed them. She’s not supposed to be here. In that, they are alike. The woman is waiting for the authorities to discover this and send her home to a place she can barely remember. But Peggy has already been discovered, judged inept, without rights, banished from the life she knew. It was a shrinking life—she accepted that—but she had a kitchen, a mailbox, neighbors who knew her. 

She’s told Louisa about the dreams, how her sisters and brothers taunt her, curse her for giving up a child. The woman is respectful enough not to suggest medication. “These things . . . maybe better you pay no attention,” she’ll say. “I mean when they make no sense.” It’s the tone you’d use with a little girl who dreams she’ll pitch for the Yankees someday. From the start, Louisa bought into the idea that Peggy had been some virgin boss lady, accomplished but sexless. 

Louisa’s good at her job, and Peggy respects that. She’s unflappable when Peggy loses control. She threw a picture frame across the room last week, barely missing her brother Sean. The son-of-a-bitch had wrecked her nap with his relentless gibes. “Do you hear him, Louisa? He won’t stop!” Peggy couldn’t tell if she did or not, because Louisa remained expressionless. She simply removed the jar of skin cream from Peggy’s grip before she could throw that too, and by the time Louisa got her back into her chair Sean was gone.  

Peggy wonders if Louisa thinks she’s imagining things, especially when she hums into Peggy’s ear: Everything okay, everything okay. It’s not that she’s lying. Peggy knows she means well. But she tends to doddering old fools for a living, so her kindness is hardly a comfort. It only makes Peggy feel as if she’s been relegated to the ranks of the demented. But the woman treats her like she still matters, and that’s comfort enough.

After Sean left, Louisa spoke softly to her. “Your niece, you talk to her? You tell her the dreams?” She was patting her shoulder, something she rarely does, because Peggy’s warned her not to treat her like a child. Then, in that husky whisper of hers, the one Peggy finds so endearing, she said, “Or maybe Bill?”

“And what would be the point in that?” Peggy mumbled. Bill doesn’t talk about anything he can’t prove, likes the world solid, neat. Tell him how you feel and he squirms; tell him your dreams and he rolls his eyes. That’s why they broke up—she’s certain of that now—not the months she spent in Derry without him.

He heard she was living here in this home for the has-beens, so he comes to visit. They don’t talk all that much, at least not about why her sisters and brothers won’t leave her alone. It almost slipped out once, how they torment her about Nora, but he cut her off before she could finish. “You’ll never learn,” he said. “The more you let them bother you, the harder they’ll try. It’s great sport for them.”

His first visit startled her. She hadn’t seen him in more than forty years, not since the day he showed up at her father’s wake. He’d aged so much she had trouble not staring. Yet somehow his face was the same. The lines and creases brought out what must have been there all along, the disappointment, the suspicion. And despite the stoop he seemed just as tall, his skin still tanned. She wondered if he still took those long fishing trips.

“So there you are,” he said, as if he’d tried every door between hers and the elevator. The sound of his voice made her feel like a teenager, when he’d stand at her front door and greet her with the very same words, pretending she was the one who’d shown up late.

She was delighted to see him. The air from the fan lifted wisps of his white hair, and she was relieved that she’d agreed to comb hers that morning. She got to her feet, slid the humiliating walker aside, feeling not exactly graceful but at least mobile. “How did you know I was here?”

He crossed the room toward her, his gait unsteady. She wondered if he would put his arms around her, but he didn’t. “Your sister, of course.”

He meant Mary, the blabber, and Peggy chuckled. “Well, you certainly know how to keep channels open. She’s been dead five years now.”

“I do okay,” he said, winking. 

Peggy suspected his brother Conor must have told him where she was. Conor kept in touch with her, always had, showed her pictures of Bill’s sons when they were born or graduated or got married. She was never sure why he thought she wanted to see those things. It wasn’t easy for her. When Bill’s wife died, Conor shared the news as if some sad chapter in his brother’s life had ended and things could finally be made right. 

It surprised Peggy, after the incident with Sean, when Louisa suggested she talk to Bill, because the woman never bothers with him when he’s here. When Peggy introduced them, she gave him no more than a polite nod. Nora treats him the same way. Not a word. She seems to disapprove of his visits. The last time Peggy told her he’d come by, she cut her off. “He’s gone, Aunt Peggy. Stop this.” So she doesn’t tell her anymore.

At first Peggy wondered if Nora might be holding a grudge. But that can’t be. She knows nothing. Even Bill never knew she was his. Telling him would have changed nothing. The last thing Peggy wanted from him was a sense of obligation. She wanted that even less than she wanted a child.

Her sister Maureen knew that right away. She was ten years older than Peggy, but never inclined to pamper her. She came at her like a prison matron, then took the ratty kitchen towel off the handle of the stove so Peggy could wipe her eyes. “How far along are you?” 

“Maybe five weeks now.”

Maureen’s sigh had no sympathy in it. “Well, you could take care of it the way Annie did.” Annie was their cousin, lived down the block from them on Moffat Street until she left Brooklyn altogether, never came back. She had an abortion because the father was a married man.

“Please don’t ask me to do that,” Peggy said, looking down at the towel in her hands, twisting it until the stripes became a barber pole. 

“I’m not the one asking for anything here.” Maureen slammed down her cooking spoon, splashing dots of sauce on Peggy’s blouse. 

“It’s a lot to ask. I know.” 

“A lot to ask?” Maureen’s voice was sharp, almost shrill. “My Liam is barely two months old! How am I supposed to manage two in diapers?” 

Peggy was afraid to look at her face. 

“And how is Jack going to feel about bringing up this baby? Another man’s child?” 

Peggy moved to the table to get away from her. When she couldn’t stop crying, Maureen came and sat with her. “You need to tell Bill. He’ll do the right thing. He’s a good man.” 

“I don’t want the right thing.” As soon as she said it, she knew she shouldn’t have, and she tried to backtrack. “All I mean is I don’t want to start our life together that way.” 

But that wasn’t the real reason, and Maureen knew it. In a few weeks the semester would be over and Peggy would have her degree. She was at the top of her class. She had job prospects already. 

Maureen stood, wiped her hands down the front of her apron, fingers spread wide. She stared down at her sister for what seemed like forever. “Spare me the nonsense, Peggy. It’s clear as day what you don’t want.” That was the first time Maureen looked at her that way, with such contempt. The first of many. 

Nora arrived in the winter, premature, but Maureen was able to nurse her and she gained fast. She sat up early, walked early. She was strong, just like her mother, with the same boundless energy. Right away they saw what a quick learner she was, devouring books just the way Peggy had. She looked like Maureen, long and lanky with dark hair, freckles—which was a blessing, because Liam never figured it out. They couldn’t keep it from the rest of the family, but the secret took on the strength of an oath. 

But Maureen is gone now and Peggy knows something is not right. Too much is slipping away. She needs to tell Nora. She wants to look at her and say it out loud. There’s no shame anymore. Nora deserves to know who she is. I’m her mother, Peggy says aloud, and that’s that, not just someone she’s always looked up to. She hates when Nora describes her that way. This has to be made right. Nora’s entitled to the truth. We both are. It’s time. 

•

Peggy wouldn’t eat this morning, refused to be washed. Nora, perched on the edge of the bed, has her braced against a wall of pillows, but she’s barely upright. Nora insists she have some tea, but she refuses. The mug is the one Nora brought here last fall after she packed up the apartment. It’s Peggy’s favorite. “Because I chose it,” she told Nora, “not my jailors.” But it’s too heavy for her today so Nora holds it to her lips. 

Peggy gives in, takes a small sip. Nora wipes her lips afterward and for some reason Peggy is reminded of Fr. Redmond and the practiced way he’d wipe his mouth at the altar after tasting the wine. She asks Nora about him. “He’s gone,” Nora tells her, “got transferred several years ago to a parish three states away.”

Nora lifts the mug to her lips again. “Have some more,” she coaxes, but Peggy turns her face away. “Please, Aunt Peggy. Last time you did this, they had to—” 

“There’s something I need to say to you.”

Nora sighs, sounding weary or short of time, and the mug lands rudely on the night table. Peggy wonders if Nora’s afraid she’ll start meddling again, try to dissuade her from traveling to Turkey on her own. “Wait,” she whispers, her heart quickening, “that can’t be right. You showed me photos. On your phone. Photos you took in Istanbul. I remember now.” Nora was wearing a long blue scarf in one of them, the color of the azaleas in Maureen’s yard. They stood here in this room together by the window. That trip is over and done with. Peggy takes a breath to center herself, but these moments, when she understands how things can slip away, leave her shaken. 

Nora shifts her weight, as if she might get up from the bed, and Peggy clears her throat. She must begin, right now, because she wants her within reach when she tells her. “It happened when I was very young,” she says. 

Nora looks somewhat interested, and Peggy wonders if she’s hoping this will be another tale of Irish Catholic oppression. Nora soaks up the family’s immigration stories like a dry sponge, like a child with no roots. Maureen raised her to be American, as if ethnicity was like a bad smell, something you scrub out before it’s detected. Peggy’s mother was the same way. You’re not Irish. You’re American, she’d insist, hoping they’d all pass for WASPs.

Peggy’s lips are parched. Licking them doesn’t do much good. She needs to take it slowly, ease the shock of it. “I was young when it happened.”

“When what happened?”

Peggy wants to be quick, but the words resist her. She has to force them. “I had a child,” she says, but it doesn’t come out right. It sounds formal, yet absurd, as if she’s meeting with her Analytics staff, claiming she’s seen the Easter Bunny.

Nora turns her head away, all but rolling her eyes.

Peggy grips her arm, harder than she intended, desperate to be heard. “A girl,” she says.

“What happened to her then?” Nora says this with a shrug, as if playing along.

“I couldn’t keep her.”

There’s no response, not even a nod, until Nora pats her hand. Peggy jerks away, so angry she can’t speak, can’t even swallow. Does she think I’m a child? A toddler struggling for words I haven’t learned yet?

“I’m sorry. That must have been very difficult,” Nora finally says, but it takes her much too long. Peggy knows she’s just being polite, the way she might hold up her end of a dinner chat. She wants to strike her. How dare she belittle me?

“I was engaged. Engaged to Bill. I’ve told you this.”

“Yes, of course, you did.” Nora’s voice is like syrup. “Of course, you did. I haven’t forgotten.”

“But that wouldn’t have been the right way to start a life. Not with a baby.”

“He didn’t want the baby?” Nora seems mildly curious again.

“I never told him.” The words catch in her throat, because the choice she made seems so much harsher now than it did then, inexcusable. “I went away. For months.”

“Away where?”

“To Aunt Patsy’s, in Derry.”

Nora narrows her eyes, bites her lower lip the way she has since grade school. Peggy knows the look. It’s fear. “So she’s still there, your daughter? In Derry?”

Peggy takes her hand, desperate to make this happen in a way that won’t bring pain. “No, Nora. I gave her away. Gave her to Maureen to raise.”

Nora stiffens, jerks her hand away “What do you mean? What happened to her?” she says. Her voice is thin, childlike. “Was she sick? Did she die?”

“Wait,” Peggy says, shooshing her, because she can hear them out in the hall, Sean and Maureen, arguing, and Mary too, with that cackling of hers. She can’t make out what they’re saying, but they’re coming closer to the room. “No, no,” Peggy whispers, “she’s not dead.” She feels flushed, frightened. She must do this now, right now, because they may barge in, try to stop her from going any further, making any claims.

Nora’s eyes are watery, a rash deepening on her throat. She starts to speak but stops herself, and Peggy worries she’ll lose her temper, the way she did when Maureen died, when the orderlies had to remove her from the emergency room. But Nora lets out a quick, nervous laugh and stands up. She moves stiffly, her limbs resisting her, and it occurs to Peggy—how absurd that she’s forgotten—that her daughter is over sixty now.

Nora lifts the bedrail, snapping it back into place. “You need to get some rest.” Her voice is flat, robotic, and Peggy can’t tell what she really wants to say, but she sees that Nora has made up her mind to protect herself, pretend Peggy is no more than a precocious child, amazing the grownups with outlandish remarks.

“I should have told you,” Peggy says, feeling her chances slip away. “I know that.” Her tongue feels thick, the words stick to each other. “I wanted to. So many times. I didn’t want to give you up,” she pleads. “You’ve got to believe me. I didn’t.”

Nora reaches for her sweater, but her hand is trembling and it slips to the floor.

“I’d never have been hired, Nora, not with a baby at home. You know that as well as I do.” She tries to lift herself off the pillows, but pain shoots through her wrists and she falls back.

Nora bends down for the sweater, wincing as she gets back up, muttering fierce curses under her breath, and Peggy is certain they’re meant for her. “You’re not making sense,” Nora says, then steps away.

“Nora, don’t leave.”

“I’ll stop at the desk on my way out. Maybe Louisa can come in.”

“Nora, talk to me.”

At the door, Nora glares over her shoulder. “You’re not well, Aunt Peggy. Stop this. Please stop it.” She grasps the door handle as if desperate to escape, as if she’s come face to face with the meanest cruelty.

Peggy hears Bill say her name. He’s leaning against the bureau, putting a cigarette out in the tray that holds her rosary beads. He’s wearing the Aran pullover her mother gave him. It fits him well, although the stain from their last Thanksgiving together is still on the sleeve. But how long has he been standing there? Did he hear what she told Nora? “I didn’t see you come in,” she says, struggling again to sit up.

He raises his hand, gesturing for her not to try. “Don’t bother,” he says. “I won’t be staying.” He sounds sullen, angry, and the guilt rises in her chest like acid. She’s done it all wrong again.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. “I was wrong to keep it from you.”

“She’s not thinking straight today,” Nora says. Peggy sees that she’s talking to Louisa, standing in the doorway with her, not to Bill. She acts as if he isn’t there.

“That’s not true, Nora,” Peggy tells her. “I am thinking straight. I know what I need to do. I made a mistake. I know that now.” She grips the bedrails and pulls herself up. “Nora, don’t go,” she says, but Nora doesn’t look at her. Peggy struggles for breath, the pain mean and sharp, but Nora won’t help, doesn’t even turn her way. Peggy reaches for her, arms open wide. She needs to hold her close, help her understand what this can mean for them. “Nora,” she says, but she sees it’s no use. Nora won’t come to her. Instead, she moves into Louisa’s arms, sobbing, her body shaking.

Peggy glances back at Bill, but he’s not at the bureau, not in the chair or near the window. He’s not in the room. Something’s happening, something terrifying.

Peggy looks around, at the window, at the photos. Did someone put them back where they belong? She can’t remember. And why is the television on? She never puts it on this early. But is it still early? The sunlight is strong. Surely too bright for morning. 

She calls to Nora again but gets no response.

“Louisa,” Peggy cries. “Make her listen to me.” But the woman doesn’t seem to hear her, even when she says it again.

She loosens her grip on the bedrail, lets herself sink into the pillows. The pain in her wrists lessens slightly, and she looks down at her hands. The veins are swollen, the skin speckled, the fingers crooked, the same way they’ve been for so long. There. Everything’s all right. The same as it was. Nothing has changed.

But what if it has? she whispers, then glances again at her daughter, at Louisa placing Nora’s sweater gently across her shoulders. What if they can’t see me? What if I’m not here anymore either?

Originally published by Massachusetts Review, Fall 2022

Mary Ann McGuigan’s short fiction has appeared in The Sun, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals. Her collection PIECES includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. THAT VERY PLACE, her new collection, was published in 2025. Her creative nonfiction can be found in SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, The Rumpus, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s young-adult novels as best books for teens, and WHERE YOU BELONG was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com