Maine (39 page)

Ann Marie held up a dusty glass jar full of red powder.

“The paprika,” she said knowingly to the priest. She began shaking it over the chicken as if it were her goal to empty the entire contents of the bottle right then and there.

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?” Alice said, looking to Maggie and raising an eyebrow in the direction of Ann Marie. “This isn’t a curry house, darling.”

Maggie laughed, and Kathleen was right back on that beach in the Bahamas, watching the two of them drinking rum, Alice trying to pull her daughter into all that Kathleen had tried to shield her from.

Alice looked Kathleen over. “You look good. You’re keeping most of the weight off, I see.”

Kathleen gritted her teeth. “Thanks.”

“I’ve already sworn off chowder for the rest of the summer myself,” Alice said, though she had never taken more than two bites of chowder in a sitting in her life. “We should probably all do that. So what on earth made you decide to come out here now? There’s only a few more days in June, you know.”

“I invited her!” Maggie said quickly, and Kathleen understood then that Maggie hadn’t told them about her situation. She felt relief for the first time in days.

Alice poured the wine. When she got to Maggie’s glass, Maggie placed her palm facedown over the top.

“Oh, right,” Alice said, and rolled her eyes. “You know, Father, this used to be a dry town. My daughter and granddaughter here would have fit right in.”

“Really?” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yes! Can you imagine? Until the sixties, when you wanted to go out, you had to go to these silly Oriental tearooms. What a snooze.”

“But you managed,” Kathleen said. She turned to the priest. “She imported her whiskey from the local liquor store in Massachusetts. Until she stopped drinking herself, that is.”

Alice shot her a look, but then said, “Guilty as charged. We never had the money to go out much anyway, in those days.”

Across the table, Ann Marie began scooping the chicken salad onto the croissants. After each scoop, she slammed the heavy metal serving spoon against the china.

“Careful!” Alice said.

Ann Marie didn’t respond.

“Are you feeling all right?” Alice asked her.

“Fine. Why?”

Alice shook her head.

The priest piped up then. “There may be something Ann Marie and I should mention,” he said.

Sweet Jesus, was her sister-in-law sleeping with the priest?

“What is going on around here?” Alice said gaily, as if perhaps this was all part of some elaborate spoof.
Smile! You’re on
Candid Camera
!

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Ann Marie said. “It’s just that I, um—I dropped a few of the croissants on the floor when I was fixing lunch and Connor saw me.”

She sent him a scathing look, as if he had just outed her in front of the pope.

Alice held up her sandwich. “This one?” she asked.

“Oh no, no. The ones that landed on the floor I threw straight into the trash,” Ann Marie said. “It was only a little joke. Ha.”

Kathleen sighed. That would be Ann Marie’s version of a scandalous confession.

They talked about the weather and the crowds at Ogunquit Beach—parking was up to twenty dollars a day there, highway robbery if you asked Alice. They discussed the fact that cicadas were ruining half the birch trees in Wells this summer, and that the monastery in Kennebunk had received a visit from a conference of senior bishops last week. With each new benign topic, Kathleen clenched her fists in her lap, trying to be civil, reminding herself how much worse it would be if the rest of them found out about Maggie.

Alice asked if Kathleen had brought along any of her fertilizer.

“Why would I? Clare says you stockpile it in your basement and then throw it out.”

“That is absolutely not true,” Alice replied. “I’ve been raving about it all summer.”

“Not to me you haven’t,” Kathleen said. She took yet another deep breath. “Sorry, Mom. That was nice of you to say.”

“Of course, now that I have such gorgeous plants, the rabbits have decided to use my garden as their all-you-can-eat buffet,” Alice said. She flitted her eyes at the priest. “The trials of a gardener never cease.”

“You should try putting hair in the dirt,” Kathleen said. “It works surprisingly well.”

“Why hair?” the priest asked.

She opened her mouth to respond, but Alice spoke first: “Oh, I’ve already tried that. It didn’t do a damn thing. And I’ve been spraying cayenne pepper juice all over the place, and they don’t even seem to mind.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Kathleen said, horrified. She was glad Arlo wasn’t there to hear it. “Their stomachs can’t handle it. It tortures them.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, they’re torturing me,” Alice said. “And anyway, my rabbits seem to love their spices. Maybe I should feed them this paprika sandwich as a treat.”

“Sorry if I used too much,” Ann Marie said flatly. “I’m distracted today.”

“Oh, it’s fine, I was only teasing. And besides, I’m not very hungry,” Alice said, putting her sandwich down on her plate and covering it with a napkin. “Father, Ann Marie made delicious oatmeal cookies yesterday. You should take some back to the rectory.”

“Why not!” Ann Marie said, sounding almost shrill.

After a dessert of neon orange sherbet (again, Arlo would rather die), the priest said his good-byes, promising to return later with some new part for the sink.

Then it was just the four of them. Alice refilled her wineglass and Ann Marie’s, emptying the bottle.

“That was an amazing lunch,” Maggie said. “Thanks, Aunt Ann Marie.”

God, all the woman had done was make a few lousy sandwiches.

“Yes, thanks,” Kathleen said.

Ann Marie looked preoccupied, but after a moment, as if she were being fed a forgotten line from somewhere offstage, she said, “It was my pleasure.”

“Well, we’d better be going next door, Maggie,” Kathleen said, giving her a meaningful look. “I’m absolutely exhausted.”

“You go ahead,” Maggie said. “I’ll do the dishes and be over in a while.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Kathleen walked to the cottage, crouching around the corner by the front door while she lit a cigarette, feeling like an eighth-grade girl. She took a few puffs, then quickly stomped it out. She walked inside and sat alone by the window in the dining room, in her father’s favorite old chair. She would give absolutely anything to have him here now.

A half hour passed before Maggie joined her.

Her daughter flashed a great, warm smile. “Alone at last,” she said.

Kathleen rose and hugged her.

She told herself not to rush. There was time enough to say her piece after she got settled. They talked about the farm, and the good writing Maggie had managed to get done here. They joked about Alice and the priest, and about Chris’s new girlfriend, whose entire back was covered in tattoos of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters. All the while, Kathleen thought about the baby.

It was Maggie who finally brought it up. “So, I guess we should talk about—” She paused, looking like an embarrassed adolescent, and then pointed to her stomach. “This?”

Kathleen wanted to be composed, but she could feel the words pushing to get out of her, a flood of anger behind them. Even as she told herself not to, she blurted: “What the hell were you thinking, e-mailing me? You’re pregnant and you send me a goddamn e-mail?”

Maggie looked startled. “That’s what you came here to say?”

“I came here to stop you from making a huge mistake.”

Maggie shook her head. “Look, I know that’s how you see Chris and me, but we’re not in agreement on this one, okay? I actually want this baby. I don’t feel it’s a mistake the way you did with us.”

Kathleen felt like her daughter had just harpooned her with a sharp stick, straight through the heart.

“That’s not true, Maggie,” she said. “You were very much wanted.”

God, she sounded like a robot.
You were very much wanted? How warm and fuzzy, Kathleen; why not go ahead and embroider that sentiment on a sampler?

She tried again. “I can’t picture for a second what my life would have been like without you, Maggie, you know that. And I don’t want to. But you can’t imagine how hard it is, trying to provide for a child all on your own.”

“We were provided for,” Maggie said hotly.

“I meant provided as in putting you to bed each night and giving you your bath before dinner and cooking that dinner and waking you up for school on snowy days when school was the last place you wanted to go. I meant being a single parent. And yes, one of the ways I struggled was financially. I never wanted that for you.”

“You struggled because you always thought you were too good for motherhood in the first place,” Maggie said.

Kathleen blinked. Jesus, that was just the sort of thing she might have said to Alice. Had she really gone so far out of her way to do the dead opposite of everything her mother had done, only to be perceived as the exact same sort of woman?

“How could this even happen?” she demanded. “Aren’t you on the Pill?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Please don’t tell me you did this intentionally.”

“You’re the one who’s always saying the universe works in mysterious ways.”

Kathleen raised an eyebrow.

“I have it under control, okay?” Maggie said. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was just letting you know.”

“Well, thanks so much for that. And I suppose Gabe is on board, all lined up to be a daddy? I suppose that’s under control too.”

Maggie moaned. “Shut up, Mom!”

“Shut up? I didn’t come here to be talked to like that.”

“No one asked you to come.”

They had never spoken to each other this way, not even when Maggie was a teenager.

“I think hanging out with Alice is rubbing off on you,” Kathleen said, trying to make a joke. Why was she being so mean? She had come here to help.

Maggie gave her a faint smile.

“You have to understand how difficult this is for me,” Kathleen said. “I want to be a grandmother someday, but not now.”

That part was a lie. She absolutely did not want to be a grandmother, ever.

Maggie’s face grew stormy. “It’s not about you. God, you’d think you were the one who was pregnant.”

Kathleen sighed. “Nothing’s coming out the way I want it to. Let’s start over. I want you to come live with Arlo and me. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think this will work.”

“No,” Maggie said with a laugh.

Kathleen was surprised. She had thought Maggie would be relieved by the idea.

“Well, wait a second. Hear me out.”

“No offense, but your home is not exactly a safe place for a baby. I’d have to have a tiny pink or blue hazmat suit made.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I’m staying in New York,” Maggie said.

“In case Gabe decides he wants to play house.”

“No!” Maggie said. “But thank you for giving me so much credit. I’m pregnant, okay? That doesn’t automatically make me an idiot. I’m the same person I was before.”

Neither of them had heard the screen door open, but now a voice from behind asked, “You’re pregnant?”

They turned to see Ann Marie standing in the doorway, affecting a look of deep concern.

“I wish you’d have said something,” she said to Maggie. “I could have helped.”

Kathleen tried to suppress a scoff. “That’s why I’m here. I think I know what my own daughter needs.”

The Kellehers prided themselves on coming together when something even vaguely resembling a tragedy occurred—anything from a funeral to a flat tire. Perhaps this was one of the benefits of having a large family, but to Kathleen it always seemed slightly disingenuous, as if they were making up for the horrible ways they had treated one another over the years simply by taking someone’s temperature or making a casserole.

Alice came bounding into the house now, wearing what looked like a beekeeper’s hat, the veil still covering her face.

“What on earth was that all about?” she said sharply to Ann Marie. “You trampled two of my tomato plants!”

“Mom, what are you talking about?” Ann Marie said.

“I saw you! I was on my way out to the garden and I saw you step all over them and then come running in here. Why, Ann Marie? You know the trouble I’ve had with the rabbits.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ann Marie said meekly. “Maybe it was an accident.”

“There’s no way to accidentally step on a tomato plant.” Alice set her gaze on Kathleen. “You always have a way of stirring everything up.”

“Me? What did I do?”

Alice sighed. “I don’t even know, it’s just your way. When you’re around, trouble starts. And Maggie starts acting like a pain in the ass too.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kathleen said.

“I’m going for a walk to clear my head,” Alice said. “I need a break. You’re all behaving like a bunch of Canadians today, and I’m not sure I can take it much longer.”

“Canadians?” Kathleen said.

Maggie shook her head. “Don’t ask.”

Alice walked off and Ann Marie said, “Anyway. Maggie, I had no idea. What can I do to help?”

“You can leave us alone,” Kathleen said. “Don’t you think if she wanted you to know she would have told you?”

“It’s okay. Everyone was bound to find out eventually,” Maggie said agreeably. She was always so damn agreeable. She wasn’t going to be any help when it came to getting rid of Ann Marie. She was too polite for that. Kathleen would have to take a new approach.

“So what happened with the tomato plants?” she asked casually.

Ann Marie blushed. “I’ll be down on the beach if anyone needs me,” she said, and turned on her heels.

   Kathleen had hoped that she and Maggie could go to dinner alone, at the very least. She had read about a place in Portsmouth called the Black Trumpet in one of Arlo’s food magazines. The restaurant was located in an old shipping goods warehouse, and the chef cooked with organic ingredients from local farms.

Kathleen imagined them sitting at a table by the window and finally talking at length. She hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Maggie that she knew exactly how they could arrange the nursery (which was now her home office), or that a farmer friend of Arlo’s down the road had started selling homemade baby food. She had expected some amount of gratitude from her daughter, some acknowledgment that the last thing Kathleen would ever want to do was raise another child—but for Maggie, she would.