Maine (38 page)

She pulled on her robe and went downstairs.

“Mom?” she said to Alice’s back, and Alice and the man swiveled around at once, like two teenagers who had been caught necking.

“Hello, darling,” Alice said, full of pep. She was wearing black capri pants and leather flats and a short-sleeved red sweater that they had purchased together on sale at Eileen Fisher months ago. Her makeup was done to perfection.

“You remember Father Donnelly?”

“Of course,” Ann Marie said, forcing herself to smile. There he stood, all in black, save for his white collar, looking about twelve years old. One of many things that disturbed her about aging was the fact that she could actually be twenty years older than a priest.

“How are you, Father?”

“Very well, thanks. I hope we didn’t wake you.”

“Not at all,” she said, making her way toward the coffeepot.

“I told Alice that I’d come by and take a look at this sink,” he said. “I’m saying Mass at nine, so we figured the earlier, the better.”

“He’s very handy,” Alice beamed.

Ann Marie nodded. “How nice. But Mom, Pat can do all that stuff when he comes in a few days.”

“It’s no trouble,” Father Donnelly said. “It’s the least I can do.”

Ann Marie’s mother used to invite the parish priests over to their house for dinner one Sunday a month. She’d make an enormous roast and mashed potatoes and pineapple cake. Ann Marie had carried on this tradition for years. Her entire life, she had seen women catering to priests, providing them with the sort of warmth a wife would under normal circumstances. Leave it to Alice to turn the tables and put the priest to work for her.

The two of them headed out to church before long. Alice left her car behind. Did Father Donnelly provide chauffeur services too?

After they left, Ann Marie scrubbed down the kitchen counters and mopped the floor. She made a chicken salad from a cold roast chicken she had found in the freezer the night before, with only four or five bites taken out of it. (Alice still cooked for a big family, even though she ate like a bird. Ann Marie did the same, but it was somehow less sad when two people were eating.)

She showered and dressed, and then she set up shop at Alice’s kitchen table, pulling out a large white towel and a slight floss of pale pink ribbon. She got to work, making half a dozen tiny facecloths and bath towels, sewing the ribbon on by hand. Maggie came over and they ate toast and blueberry preserves from a local farm stand for breakfast. Ann Marie told her about the dollhouse competition, and Maggie talked about her new novel. She didn’t say anything about the boyfriend, and Ann Marie didn’t mention him, not wanting to pry. But she thought to herself that by the time she was Maggie’s age, she’d had three children. What would become of her niece?

“You know,” Maggie said, “I don’t think you and I have ever been alone together before.”

Ann Marie thought of that New Year’s Eve at her house when the kids were small. Kathleen and Paul, Clare and some boyfriend, and both of her own sisters and their husbands had come over for Chinese food, as was their tradition. Everyone was trashed, no one more than Kathleen, who had had so much gin that she was passed out on the couch in the den by ten o’clock. Ann Marie wasn’t drinking. She had had maybe two glasses of champagne all night. Around eleven, she heard a thud from upstairs. She ran to Patty’s room, following the sound of Maggie’s cry. They had been roughhousing with the boys, and Maggie, only five years old, had fallen off the top bunk.

“She’s fine,” Paul had said with a laugh. “My daughter is tough as nails.”

Since her parents were both intoxicated, it was Ann Marie who took the child to the hospital. It was Ann Marie who rocked Maggie in her arms, as patients and staff gathered around the nurses’ station to count down to midnight. It was Ann Marie who told her stories over by the window, and tried to shield Maggie’s eyes from the steady stream of drunks who came through the door.

They waited for four hours. In the end, the doctor said she had a severely strained wrist and should ice it as much as possible.

“I think taking her to the hospital was a bit of an overreaction,” Kathleen said teasingly in the morning. Ann Marie wanted to take Maggie and Christopher and never let the woman see them again.

She didn’t tell her niece this now. It was good that Maggie didn’t remember it. She just said, “It’s nice to spend a bit of time with you, sweetheart,” and left it at that.

A while later, Maggie headed to the cottage for a nap. It really hadn’t been that long since she’d gotten out of bed. Ann Marie was worried about her. She said, “Rest up and I’ll come get you when it’s time for sandwiches.”

Maybe she’d try to talk to Maggie in the afternoon about whatever she had on her mind. Perhaps they could take a walk on the beach. Or Ann Marie could drive Maggie to Antiques on Nine and buy her something for her apartment to cheer her up, the way she had done with Patty before she got married.

   Father Donnelly drove Alice home around noon and was quickly persuaded to join them for lunch, even though he had a two o’clock meeting.

“I’ve got it just about ready,” Ann Marie said. “Give me fifteen minutes?”

Alice went out to the front yard to pick some daylilies for the table. Father Donnelly said he wanted to take one more crack at the broken garbage disposal. Ann Marie decided to serve the chicken on croissants she had gotten at the Shop ’n Save two days earlier. She cut all eight of them in half and placed them on a baking sheet in a warm oven.

“You’re too good to us,” she told the priest as she sliced a tomato. “But really, you shouldn’t feel as though you have to do everything around here. Alice isn’t alone, you know.”

“It’s no trouble,” he said. “I enjoy it. And anyway, my helping out is the least I can do, considering.”

Down on all fours, he fiddled under the sink for a bit. She placed the tomato slices on a plate and set to chopping a red onion. She thought his words over, rolled them around in her head. It wasn’t the first time he had said it.

Finally she asked, “Considering what?”

“You don’t know what your family’s generosity means to the church,” he said. “It’s something we can count on, which is a precious gift, especially these days.”

She smiled. She had no idea what he was referring to. Had Alice given St. Michael’s a lot of money? Ann Marie felt uneasy. She wondered if Pat knew. She took a pitcher down from a high shelf in the pantry. There were so many fewer dishes here than she remembered. She felt pleased that Alice had finally taken her advice and decluttered a bit.

Ann Marie cracked a tray of ice cubes, plopping half of them into the pitcher. Then she took the pitcher to the sink.

“Okay if I turn the water on for a sec?” she asked.

“Absolutely.” He climbed to his feet. “I don’t think I have the right part for this anyway. I’ll have to go up to the hardware store in York and see what they’ve got. I can come back after my meeting.”

Three visits to the house in a single day? She said a silent prayer that Alice hadn’t given the grandchildren’s inheritance away.

“Have you always been so handy?” she asked. She filled the pitcher and set it on the table, alongside the tomatoes and onions and the bowl of chicken salad. She removed the croissants from the oven.

“Not until I moved into a rectory where the former guy in charge thought the way to deal with a leaky roof was to buy more pots.”

She forced out a chuckle.

“Needless to say, moving into this house will certainly be an upgrade,” he said.

Ann Marie felt her heart speed up. “I’m sorry?”

The strangest thought went through her head: Was the priest somehow involved with Alice? She wasn’t sure she could take that. Though her mother-in-law had always been flirtatious, she had never once seemed sexual.

His cheeks grew pink. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. Naturally we hope—well, we know—it will be many years. But being included in someone’s estate planning is the best we can ask for. It was beyond kind of your family, that’s all I’m saying. We’re so grateful.”

“Of course,” she said, trying to understand. “So, you mean …”

Had Alice given him their home? She told herself not to look too bewildered, but he must have seen it in her expression.

He raised an eyebrow. “Please tell me this isn’t the first you’re hearing of it.”

Composure
, she thought. Sometimes it helped her to focus on a single word.
Composure
.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m sure that …” But she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“I am so sorry,” he stumbled. “It was Alice’s news to share, not mine. I must have gotten confused. I thought the whole family was in agreement on this.”

She fixed her face with a plastic grin. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “It’s fine.”

Ann Marie felt like she couldn’t breathe. She needed to get away from him. She needed to talk to Pat.

“The chicken salad!” she said, louder than she had meant to. “It needs paprika.”

“Paprika?”

“Yes!” she said. “Just look at it! It’s so bland. I usually add grapes but I didn’t have any. Paprika will do the trick! I’ll have to go over to the cottage and get some. I’m sure there’s some over there. Things like paprika have a way of sticking around forever over there. Okay, well.”

Before he had time to respond, she was out the door, making a beeline for her car, the only place she could get decent cell reception up here.

Her anger surprised her. She thought of the money they had spent to build that huge house and cover all the regular costs, the snowy days when her husband had driven out here to shovel off the flat porch roof, the hours they had both put in, the countless times she had bitten her tongue just to keep the peace. And this was how her mother-in-law planned to repay them?

The Lord never sends us more than we can handle
, she reminded herself. But she felt like she might have a breakdown, right then and there.

She dialed Pat’s cell instead of his work line. She was much too upset to have to make pleasantries with his secretary. When he answered, she told him everything in a rush.

“You must have misunderstood him. This isn’t the sort of thing my mother would do,” Pat said, but Ann Marie could tell that the wheels in her husband’s head were already turning. It was precisely the sort of thing Alice would do, and they both knew it.

“Goddamn it,” he said loudly, giving her a start. “I’ll drive out there after work tonight and we’ll talk some sense into her.”

She nodded. “Good. Oh, but Maggie’s here.”

“So?”

Ann Marie dropped her voice to a whisper, as if anyone could hear her out there in the car. “Is this really something we want to discuss in front of her?”

Maggie would no doubt tell Kathleen, and she didn’t need Pat’s sisters getting involved. It was hairy enough already.

“She’ll be gone in four days and you’ll be here,” Ann Marie said. “Should we wait until then to talk to Alice?”

“Okay,” he said. “Maybe it’s a good idea to sleep on it anyway, and take a few deep breaths. I just wonder if she was in her right mind when she told him. Maybe she hasn’t actually signed anything. I need to talk to Jim Lowenthal about the legality of all this.”

His lawyer. Ann Marie began to cry. She didn’t know how she could physically manage to get through the next few days, let alone lunch with Alice and that horrible priest. Having Maggie there would be a blessing. It would stop her from saying something she might regret.

As if sensing her thoughts, Pat asked, “Do you want to come home and we’ll go back up there together on the first?”

If it weren’t for the fact that her dollhouse was coming any day now, she might have said yes. But Ann Marie would have to stay.

She tried to sound positive. “No, it’ll be all right. It’s just—I don’t understand why your mother would do this to us.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized there was no point wondering why Alice had done it. The Kellehers were crazy people, that was all.

Ann Marie felt crazy herself at the moment. She had the strongest urge to do something wicked. She remembered when her brother was a kid and used to put bags of dog poop on people’s front stairs and set them alight. And the time he chopped the head off every tulip in their neighbor’s front yard.

She wanted to say that this family would be the death of her, but there were Pat’s feelings to consider, too, so she held her tongue for now.

Kathleen

Kathleen stopped at a gas station five miles outside Cape Neddick to buy cigarettes. She had already gone through an entire pack of Marlboro Lights and two Snickers bars on the drive from the airport.

Before yesterday, she hadn’t smoked since eleventh grade, and even then only once or twice. Arlo would be shocked if he found out, but Arlo was home in California, the lucky bastard. He had been smart enough not to have children, so he would never know the peculiar sensation of caring terribly, insanely, for a person over whom you had no control; a person who was your responsibility yet no longer had to answer to you. This made Kathleen irrationally angry at him. She was angry at a lot of people right now. At Maggie, for dropping such a bomb on her in an e-mail. At Arlo, for acting like nothing was wrong. At Gabe, who was no doubt responsible for the whole mess. And most of all, in a vague way, at the Kellehers, who always found some method of drawing her back into the fray, of reminding her that underneath the AA mantras and the California calm, she was just the same old angry, overwhelmed girl she used to be.

Given the circumstances, she figured smoking was the least of many evils.

Kathleen drove slowly, trying to relax, reminding herself that life was messy, conflict inevitable. It didn’t mean you had to fall apart.

When she read Maggie’s e-mail five days earlier, she had sat still in front of her computer for several minutes, unable to move. She worried all the time about her daughter’s safety in New York, about pickpockets and rapists and the diseases that could take young people out so fast. But this she had never feared, never pictured. Maggie had always been so responsible. Christ, Maggie had told
her
to go on the Pill when she was only a freshman in high school and years away from getting on it herself.

Kathleen had called down to Arlo in the den after a while, softly at first, and then louder and louder. She felt hysterical by the time she heard him climbing the stairs. When she showed him the e-mail, he whistled and said, “Oh, man.”

“I have to go to her,” she said.

“It sounds like she wants you to sit with this for a while, let it sink in. She knows you well,” he said with a gentle smile.

“How can you be so goddamn calm about this?” she had snapped. She tried to take a deep breath.

“Because it’s not the end of the world,” he said, rubbing her shoulders. “A baby is good news.”

She shook his hands off.

“I’m going out there to talk sense into her.”

“Meaning what?”

She considered the options, none of them entirely pleasant. Maggie should probably have an abortion, but Kathleen doubted her daughter could go through with that. Adoption might be a better choice for her. Joni Mitchell did it, and she seemed to have recovered okay.
I bore her but I could not raise her
. Wasn’t that how the song went?

But the thought of carrying a baby around inside of you for all those months and then having to say good-bye—she wasn’t sure Maggie could handle that either.

“I don’t know. Jesus. Why did this have to happen?” she said. “What does she expect me to do?”

“I think she just wanted you to know and to be supportive,” Arlo said.

“I’m her mother. I know her better than anyone,” she said.

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s it.”

Arlo frowned. “I wish we had some money to give her, Kath.”

She thought of the twenty thousand she had saved for the worm gin, but that was theirs; they needed it for the business. Even so, Kathleen felt guilty for not wanting to let it go.

They went to an AA meeting that night and a woman with gray-tinged skin and bottle-blond hair told a story about being so out-of-her-mind drunk that she left her kids in the car for hours one afternoon in the middle of August.

“I forgot all about them,” the woman said. “I’m afraid they will hate me someday. I never thought I’d be the type to do something as awful as that.”

Arlo held Kathleen’s hand and she squeezed hard, imagining all the ways that motherhood could change a person, ways that you could simply never imagine for yourself until you were stuck right there in the middle of it. What if Maggie felt so desperate that she went back to Gabe? And if she didn’t go back to him, how could she ever manage all on her own in that cold, unforgiving city? Both possibilities terrified Kathleen. She knew that it was Maggie’s life, Maggie’s decision, but she could not accept it.

When Kathleen had told Paul Doyle that she was pregnant with Maggie, he had seemed flustered at first, but then he said,
We’ll just get married! That was our plan anyway
. She remembered thinking,
Was it?
for a moment, before feeling relieved.

Kathleen thought of how lonely she had felt parenting on her own after the divorce. That had been the hardest part.

An idea crept into her head then: Maggie would have to come live with them. They could give her support, help her look after the baby. The child would have green fields to run in, and a family of caring adults around, and the healthiest food on the planet to eat.

Out in the parking lot after the meeting, she told Arlo what she’d been thinking.

“Would that be okay with you?”

His eyes grew wide, as if he couldn’t believe she had to ask. “Of course!”

Kathleen loved him more than ever in that moment. She began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Our life,” she said. “It’s going to end. No more walking around the house naked, no more privacy. I can’t believe it. Why did this have to happen to me?”

He cocked his head. “You do realize that you’re acting as though one of us is dying. You need to get positive. A baby is coming!”

“Right,” she said. “Right.”

She pushed from her head the fear that maybe he was back on the dope. No, it wasn’t that. He was just a good person. And he didn’t know yet how hard it would be to have an infant in their house, crying at all hours.

She thought of asking Maggie to meet her at a hotel somewhere near the cottage. She could pay for a taxi. That way they could talk, really spend some time together, without Alice there poking her nose into things.

But she had been trying to call Maggie for days, and for days she had gotten voice mail. She responded to Maggie’s e-mail, writing
CALL ME!!
in the subject line. But Maggie didn’t write back. So Kathleen booked an overpriced flight to Boston, rented a car, and drove north without telling her daughter, or for that matter, her mother, that she was coming. And now here she was, driving down Briarwood Road, feeling so anxious that her insides seemed to itch.

It was after noon, which meant Alice was probably home from church and three-quarters of the way through her second bottle of wine. Kathleen hoped that she would see Maggie first and be able to talk to her in private right away.

As she made her way toward the cottage, she saw three cars in the driveway—Alice’s and two others. Driving closer, she recognized the blue Mercedes.

“Shit, shit, shit,” she said to herself. She pulled her car onto the property, and actually considered hitting the gas and plowing straight into it.

Maybe Pat had driven out to fix something. Maybe he’d leave immediately. She could only hope.

Kathleen took the keys from the ignition and sighed long and hard. When she got out, she could smell the ocean air. For a moment she felt almost peaceful. But within seconds, the driver’s-side door of the Mercedes flew open and Ann Marie stepped out. What, had she been spying from the front seat? Was she able to smell the enemy from a hundred yards away?

Her sister-in-law came toward her.

“Kathleen!” she said, sounding forced. “Well, this is a surprise.”

It looked like Ann Marie had been crying.
What the hell was she doing here?

Kathleen had a sinking feeling in her gut.

“Likewise,” she said. “Are you up for the afternoon? Is Pat here too?”

“No, I’m here to care for Alice for a couple of weeks,” Ann Marie replied. “I arrived a few days ago.”

The nerve of her, concocting a schedule for their collective home and then not observing it herself. Of course, the rules wouldn’t apply to the king and queen, only to their minions.

“During my month?” Kathleen said in a joking tone that she hoped Ann Marie knew was no joke. “I don’t remember you consulting me about that.” She smiled. “Just kidding.”

“Well, actually, I did tell you I had concerns about leaving Alice alone up here,” Ann Marie said. “And no one told me Maggie was staying on.”

“God, how is that possible?” Kathleen asked. “Everyone in this family is usually so good at communicating.”

This was a bad way to start things off and she knew it.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. God, grant me the goddamn strength
.

Kathleen tried again. “You look good,” she said. “Have you lost some weight?”

Actually, Ann Marie didn’t look any different at all. If anything, a bit haggard.

“Oh, thanks,” Ann Marie said. “I’m seeing a trainer. I don’t know if it’s making a difference, really, but it feels good to at least try. Pat got me the sessions as a gift a couple years ago, but I’ve started going more regularly lately.”

“How sweet of him,” Kathleen said.

Ann Marie nodded. “Yes. He might have thought to say it with jewelry, but oh well.”

They laughed in earnest. That was a good sign. One of the few things they’d ever bonded over was Pat’s emotional cluelessness, though really his wife didn’t seem any more plugged in than he was.

“Do you know where Maggie is?” Kathleen asked.

“Napping in the cottage, I think,” Ann Marie said. “I was about to head over there to get her for lunch. You’re just in time for chicken salad.”

“Napping?” Kathleen asked. She hoped Maggie wasn’t feeling nauseous or depressed, or some combination of the two. And she absolutely hated that Ann Marie knew anything at all about Maggie that she herself did not. Was it possible Maggie had told her about the pregnancy? Was Ann Marie dangling the information in front of Kathleen now, taunting her with it?

Kathleen needed to be alone with her daughter.

“I’ll go get her,” she said, starting toward the cottage’s screen door. “We’ll meet you over at Alice’s in a bit.”

But Ann Marie didn’t take the hint. She followed close behind, saying, “Actually, I need to get some paprika from the cottage kitchen.”

“I can bring it to you,” Kathleen said.

“No, that’s okay. You don’t know where it is.”

Kathleen sighed. She pictured herself slipping Maggie a note:
Meet me in my rental car and we’ll get the hell out of here
.

She stepped into the screened-in porch, feeling as if she had stepped back in time. It was so much the same as it had been ten years ago, and ten years before that, and ten years before that. It even smelled the same. She hadn’t expected to be here ever again. It felt odd, and she thought of Sonoma Valley—the familiar road that cut through a vineyard and led to their house in Glen Ellen, with dog toys and bags of fertilizer strewn across the front lawn. That was home now.

She walked through the front hall. Her father’s old Red Sox hat had hung on a hook by the door there for as long as she could remember, but it was gone. She wondered where.

Kathleen found Maggie in the living room, reading in the armchair. She still had a baby face, and Kathleen recalled her in this same position as a child—cozy and safe, curled up with a book. She felt that same old urge to protect her at all costs.

“Mags?” she said.

Maggie looked up, registering her presence. “Mom!”

Ann Marie buzzed around behind them. “Yes, your mom’s here. Maggie, you didn’t tell us she was coming!”

Maggie rose and hugged Kathleen hard. “I didn’t know.”

“It was a surprise,” Kathleen said to Ann Marie, trying to sound cheerful, as if she did this sort of thing all the time.

“When did you get here?” Maggie asked.

“I flew into Boston this morning.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I tried. You never have your cell phone turned on.”

“I told you the reception is crummy out here. You should have called on the house line.” Maggie took a step back. “Have you been smoking?”

“What? No.”

Kathleen had thought her daughter would be happier to see her. The usual ease between them was missing. Of course, that was because they both knew why she was standing here, but neither of them could speak freely.

She would have to be direct, but polite. “Ann Marie, could you give us a few minutes?” she asked. The words came out sounding harsher than she’d intended.

“I’d be happy to,” Ann Marie said. “Except Connor’s eating with us and he has to get back to the church for a meeting, so—”

“Connor?” Kathleen asked.

“The priest I told you about,” Maggie said.

Oh. Well, naturally.

Maggie continued, “That’s okay, we’ll come now. We can catch up later.”

Kathleen had to fight off the feeling that her daughter wanted an out.

“Yes, sure,” she agreed. “We’ll eat fast.”

   When they arrived next door, Alice was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking away, and talking to a handsome young guy in jeans.

She gave a dramatic start when she saw Kathleen standing there.

“My God, have you ever heard of a telephone?”

“Nice to see you, too, Mom.”

Her mother’s face changed, her lips curling up into a grin. Maybe she had just remembered that they had company, and male company at that.

“It’s a surprise to see you here again, that’s all. How long has it been since you were here? Five years?”

“Ten.”

She had to know that Kathleen had stayed away since Daniel died, didn’t she?

“This is Father Donnelly,” Alice said. “Meet my older daughter, Kathleen.”

He extended a hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

“Sit, sit,” Alice said, suddenly in hostess mode. “Everybody sit. Ann Marie’s made a gorgeous chicken salad.”

There was a bottle of white wine on the table.
Really?
They needed it at lunch?