Maine (36 page)

She watched the page load for Puck’s Teeny Tinies, where she bought a little tin of coronation biscuits, a glass milk bottle, a dozen eggs the size of baby aspirin, a burlap sack of flour, a basket of ceramic vegetables, and a miniature box of chocolates, the top slid halfway open, a green ribbon cascading downward. Reginald would bring them home to Evelyn for their anniversary.

A thrilling wave washed over Ann Marie as she imagined how beautiful the house would be. It was silly, but she somehow felt more beautiful because of it. She wanted to share this with someone, someone who would understand. She sat back in her chair and got butterflies in her stomach, knowing what she was about to do. She typed in the familiar address for the Weiss, Black, and Abrams website, and as she so often did, she clicked on Steve Brewer’s name. Then she did something she had never done before. She clicked on the
E-mail Stephen Brewer
link.

A message window popped up, and she wrote:

Hi there! Had to let you know … I think the
Life
magazine you sent was a good luck charm. I’ve just found out that I won the most important dollhouse competition there is. There are over 5,000 competitors, and I won it! So thanks, old chum. xo

Pat walked in at six thirty. It had been an hour since she had hit
SEND
and Steve Brewer still hadn’t replied.

Ann Marie was frantic. Had she seemed like a braggart? He could simply be busy. In a meeting, maybe. But why did she have to go and exaggerate like that? And, oh Jesus, that
xo
? What was she thinking? She blamed the
xo
on the chardonnay. She blamed the whole thing on the chardonnay.

They drove to dinner and Pat said she wasn’t very talkative, and then he said he had run into Ralph Quinn, the father of one of Fiona’s childhood friends, Melody Quinn, at the post office. Ralph had told Pat that Melody was engaged, and now Pat told Ann Marie as much. Her mood grew even more sour, but she tried to smile and act pleasant throughout the meal. It was sweet of her husband to take her to dinner.

She drank more wine, ordered a steak. While Pat talked about his business, she said a hundred silent Hail Marys, praying that Steve Brewer would have written her back by the time she got home.

He hadn’t.

Ann Marie couldn’t think straight. The wine made her a bit dizzy. She imagined his wife, Linda, reading the e-mail, figuring it all out. Linda might call Pat—or she might act like nothing had happened and then slap Ann Marie silly in front of the entire neighborhood at their next book club meeting. They’d have to move.

She thought of sending another e-mail to explain the first, but what could she say?
I was drinking at five o’clock in the afternoon and thought I ought to contact you?
Oh yes, that would make her look much better.

What on earth was happening to her lately?

She had trouble sleeping that night. Through the walls, she could make out the sound of Pat snoring down the hall, and she almost wanted to go to him for comfort. Instead, she decided to put her nerves to good use. There was no sense just lying there. She went to her craft room and switched on the light. Quietly, she began to pack what she’d need for Maine, transporting everything out to the trunk of her car: she carried towels and sheets and ribbons and stuffing in two giant beach bags. Silly, considering that she’d need only a tiny piece of each, but better to be safe than sorry.

Next, she brought out a stack of dollhouse magazines for inspiration.

She made three more trips. She hoped none of the neighbors could see her there, wearing her nightgown, lugging her sewing machine and glue gun and scrap basket and tiny cans of paint and brushes across the lawn, bathed in moonlight, the dewy grass cool beneath her feet.

   By the time she woke the next morning, Steve had written back:
Hey, congrats! You’re a wonder. This calls for a celebratory drink. Say, July 1?

Ten days from now. The day he was coming to Maine with his wife. It wasn’t the most romantic thing he could have said, but then she had written him on his work account. And now a conversation had begun.

You’re a wonder
. That was something.

She told herself not to respond, then immediately did so anyway:
Really looking forward to it! Heading up to Maine today to help my mother-in-law for the next couple of weeks
.

Though she had a lot to do before she left, Ann Marie sat in front of the computer for a long while to see if he might volley a short response her way. She cursed herself for not asking him a question. She had made it seem like there was no need to write back and so he didn’t.

Now she’d just have to be patient, and focus on entertaining Alice, tidying up the cottage, and building her dollhouse. That was all the next two weeks required.

   On the drive to Maine, she listened to the oldies station with the windows rolled down. Occasionally, she stretched her left hand out the window, feeling the air fly through her fingers. It was hard for her to let go—to leave her mother and husband and grandkids behind. But Alice was the one who needed her most right now. Alice didn’t have anyone else.

The thought of ending up like Alice or like her own mother, or most old women, terrified Ann Marie. They lived for years after their husbands died. Decades in some cases. She could not imagine living on after Pat. She had never been good at being alone.

So many years spent in the company of children made silence seem unnatural, and when she was driving, Ann Marie always imagined what they might say were they there. (Little Daniel: “Change the station!” Fiona: “Turn around! I think I saw a kitten back there!” Inevitably, it would be a squirrel.)

As she drove along 95, the seat belt digging into her stomach, Ann Marie told herself not to look down. This was one of her rules for self-preservation. She still looked okay in a tennis dress. But the sight of her belly in a seated position, highlighted by a taut piece of fabric, could only cause her pain.

She had last seen her trainer on Saturday evening. When Raul got her on those filthy Nautilus machines three times a week, she’d sweat and huff and puff, and swear that her body was transforming. But then she’d catch a glimpse of her belly and wonder if the workouts even mattered.

Ann Marie straightened up in her seat.

Until three years ago, she had been lucky with her figure. It always bounced back after a pregnancy, and she hadn’t inherited her mother’s tendency to pack on the pounds as she aged. But then came menopause. She and her sister Tricia were two years apart, but they started at the same time. It was nice to have someone to compare notes with, though Ann Marie thought Tricia treated the whole experience in a rather unseemly way. She went on an online message board full of menopausal women and chatted about symptoms and hormones and home remedies all day. She bought the two of them tickets to something called
Menopause the Musical
. Ann Marie had gone along to be a good sport. The show was funny enough, but she felt as though she ought to be wearing a sign around her neck that said
I’M DRIED UP!

Then again, her body had done a good enough job of announcing that to the world already. A few times a week that year, Ann Marie had hot flashes. She might be standing at the register in the drugstore, or kneeling in a church pew beside her husband, and all of a sudden her upper body would feel flushed with intense heat and her face would start to sweat. It was mortifying. Her hair thinned slightly. She found clumps of it in the car and on the bathroom floor. Her body was betraying her in a million ways, none more awful than the fact that her belly swelled up and her breasts seemed to shrivel.

For Mother’s Day that year, Pat gave her the sessions with Raul, and for a moment she had wanted to cry or stamp her feet—what kind of gift was this? A reminder of how horrid she looked was supposed to make her smile? But then she did smile. Because she knew Pat’s intentions were good. And those sessions with Raul, which Pat had renewed every Mother’s Day since, were a godsend, really. Who could say how lousy she’d look without them?

The hardest part of menopause for Ann Marie was knowing that she’d never have another child. She attempted to explain this to Tricia, but her sister just laughed and said, “I didn’t realize you were trying.”

She knew it was irrational. She was a grandmother, for goodness’ sake. But it seemed so final.

Every day since Little Daniel had been born, the first thing she thought of when she woke up was her children, and they were still the last thing she thought about before she fell asleep at night. Parenthood by its very nature was the only job she knew of in which being successful meant rendering yourself useless. Who was she, if not the mother of Daniel, Patty, and Fiona Kelleher? That was something she thought about a lot lately.

She drove the speed limit, taking note of the staties parked on the shoulder, just chomping at the bit to catch some sucker with out-of-state plates going eighty. Her cousins were always willing to help get her out of parking tickets, but Ann Marie thought speeding was a different issue. She didn’t want to set a bad example for the kids.

While she sat in traffic at the New Hampshire tolls, she called Little Daniel at home.

“How you doing, honey?” she said cheerfully.

“Okay,” he said.

“Applied for any jobs this week?”

“Nope.”

“Well, it’s only Tuesday, right?”

“Yup.”

“How’s Regina, good?”

“She’s good. We went to Nantasket Beach on Sunday. We rode the carousel.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Yeah. Regina had never been before. And we went to Castleman’s for lobster afterward.”

That sounds expensive
, she thought. But she only said, “Good for you. Did you go to Mass at St. Mary’s while you were there?”

He chuckled. “Mom.”

“It’s a beautiful church, that’s all. I don’t think you’ve ever been. Which means you would have gotten three wishes.”

She had no idea who had decided that a person got to make three wishes whenever he entered a new church. Probably some desperate mother whose child was throwing a fit in a church parking lot. It had always worked well on Ann Marie’s children.

“I’m on my way to Maine now,” she said. “Going to head to the Cliff House at some point this week to do the food tasting so I can report back to Regina on what I like best. I’ll just try to narrow it down for her to save her some time.”

“Cool. Tell Grandma I say hi, and we’re excited to see her in July.”

“Will do. When are you coming?”

“Not sure yet.”

She pulled the Mercedes through the tollbooth and sped up. It wasn’t safe to be on the phone when you were accelerating. She hoped none of her kids would ever do it.

“I’ve got to go, honey,” she said. “But one last thing. Maybe you should invite Daddy to have dinner with you some night this week. I’m sure he’d like that. He’ll be lonely.”

“I would, but I’m totally strapped for cash.”

She thought about his lobster dinner the night before.

“You could go to our house. I made your favorite.”

“Ziti bake?”

“Yes. And there’s strawberry shortcake in the fridge, left over from Sunday. And plenty of wine. You could bring a bottle or two home if you want. Bring Regina too. I left those bridal magazines I told her about on my desk in the office.”

“Okay, I’ll stop by.”

She hung up. The guy in the car beside her looked a bit like Steve Brewer—that sharp chin and brown shaggy hair.

For the next forty minutes, she ran over their e-mail exchange in her head.

You’re a wonder
, he had written.
This calls for a celebratory drink
.

She wished it could be just the two of them, and then she could tell him how she was feeling. She imagined him nodding along, telling her he understood completely, telling her she had done a great job—with the kids, her figure, the housekeeping, the dollhouse, everything.

   As she crossed the Piscataqua River Bridge, which connected New Hampshire and Maine, she thought of Pat’s favorite road trip game: whoever spotted the bridge first would get a quarter. When her kids were small, you’d think that quarter was a hundred-dollar bill, the way they hooted and hollered and fought and accused one another of cheating. (
There’s no way you saw the bridge yet—we’re still in Boston!
)

When Pat tried the game on the grandchildren the previous summer, Foster said, “What do we win if we see it?”

“A quarter!” Pat had said excitedly.

Ann Marie glanced into the rearview mirror, to see her six-year-old grandson reaching down to the floor. “But I just found two quarters right here under the mat,” he said. Then he and Maisy started playing their handheld video games and didn’t say a word until they reached Cape Neddick. Ann Marie knew she should be thankful for the peace and quiet, but she almost wanted to grab their faces and tilt them upward, holding them in place. Were kids these days too busy to look out a car window and daydream?

She turned off the highway and onto Route 1, where you still saw gas stations and the big Shop ’n Save and traffic lights every quarter of a mile. But after five minutes, she was in Ogunquit, where the streets were lined with gift shops and cafés. She followed the road to Cape Neddick, and within a couple of minutes she passed all the familiar houses and the big dilapidated barn at the end of Whipple Road. She looked out over the water, at the sailboats glistening white in the sun, under a cloudless blue sky. She had never loved a place as much.

When she arrived at Briarwood Road, she pressed harder on the gas. It was nearly ten. Alice would just be arriving at church. That gave Ann Marie a couple of hours to get settled in at the cottage and make them some lunch, and maybe she’d have a bit of extra time to get to work on her dollhouse curtains.

Her car zipped down the sandy street, pine trees blocking out the daylight. And then she had arrived, the sight of the cottage like seeing an old friend. Beside it stood the big house, and down below was their beach, empty, ready for her. She felt a giddy rush as she got out of the Mercedes.