Even as a teenager, Kathleen had always been popular with boys.
“Why don’t you invite your sister to come to the party with you?” Alice would say to her on a Friday night. Or “Can’t you find a nice fella for Clare?”
But Kathleen would only shrug, as though she couldn’t hear her.
Once, they had argued about it, Alice feeling so enraged at her uncharitable offspring that she shouted, “You’re lucky you even have a sister, you wretch. Do you know what I would do if I—”
“What would you do?” Kathleen had interrupted. “What? Take her out to some club and then leave her there to die?”
Alice was shocked, and instantly livid with Daniel for telling Kathleen. That was the only time in her life that she ever struck one of her children.
Usually, especially when they were young, she left the physical discipline to Daniel, for fear of what she might do out of fury or frustration. They had agreed that he would hit the children with a belt when they needed it, and Alice had never felt bad about this. She and her own siblings had endured much worse.
“Wait until your father gets home,” she’d tell the kids when they acted up, and their eyes would grow wide with fear.
When he arrived, Daniel always made a big show of dragging the offending youngster to his or her room, and closing the door. Alice would hear him say sternly, “Now, you brought this upon yourself and you know it. Take it like a grown-up.”
Next came the sound of his belt lashing against a soft backside, and then the child’s dramatic scream. This sort of behavior was highly out of character for her husband, and it always thrilled Alice a little, for the children could be monsters and she felt like he provided the exact buffer she needed to cope.
After Daniel died, the kids told Alice that in fact he had never once struck them, only taken them upstairs and thwacked his belt against the mattress a few times, instructing them to shout as soon as they heard the sound.
Alice rose from her spot on the porch now, and went to the kitchen. She poured herself a glass of wine. Surveying all the dishes and silverware spread out on the counter, she sighed. She had wanted to get a bit of reading in before dinner, but the contents of her pantry were staring straight at her, begging to be dealt with.
There was a big roll of bubble wrap there, and she began by cutting off several thick sheets. Next, she wrapped the plates, one by one. Newspaper would have been quicker, but it seemed a shame to risk staining the china gray, even if she was giving it away. She had briefly considered asking Clare or Ann Marie if they wanted it, but she knew that would only raise their suspicions, and she didn’t feel like arguing.
Lately, the one thing her three children had in common was a real love of nagging her.
They wanted her to quit smoking, and were forever citing statistics about the bad effects or pointing out that her white ceilings were tinged orange, so imagine how her lungs must look. Last spring she had somehow left a lit cigarette burning on the edge of an ashtray on her kitchen table when she went out shopping with Ann Marie. Her daughter-in-law helped her bring in her bundles afterward, and saw the still-smoldering cigarette, which had rolled onto the tabletop and left an ugly burn. The kids all went crazy over it, even though nothing bad had happened.
They thought she drank too much. Well, honestly, who gave a fig about that? She had abstained for more than thirty years for heaven’s sakes, and only to appease her husband. Patrick had given her a stern lecture at Thanksgiving about driving the car after a few cocktails, which made her laugh. She wanted to say that she had driven a car after more than a few lousy cocktails throughout her twenties; when she was pregnant with him and his two sisters; when they were screaming brats in the backseat of her station wagon; and everything had worked out fine. Alice assumed they were thinking about the accident back when they were kids, even though that was a onetime slipup, ancient history. With all that was painful in the world, she wondered why on earth her children felt a need to focus on unlikely hypothetical disasters that might or might not eventually occur.
They said she wasn’t watching her diet carefully enough, monitoring her salt intake like the doctor said she should. Ann Marie called over and over with cautionary tales about her own mother’s ever-worsening diabetes or an article she had read in USA Today on the subject. Alice had to bite her tongue to keep from saying that though Ann Marie’s mother had once been pretty enough, she now looked a lot like Winston Churchill in a swimsuit, while Alice herself had never weighed an ounce over 119 pounds, other than during her pregnancies.
They said Alice should be smarter with her money, because in the wintertime, cooped up in her house with a Manhattan or a glass of cabernet, she enjoyed buying items off the television every now and then—Time Life music collections, hand blenders that promised perfectly thick soups in minutes, even a replica of Lincoln’s log cabin for her granddaughter Patty’s children. But she never spent much, not more than $19.99. She went to the department stores in the mall after church one Sunday a month, and made herself feel better by trying on silk scarves and lipstick or mascara at the Chanel counter. But she certainly didn’t buy any of it. She just memorized the feel and the look, and then went to Marshalls and bought the closest knockoff. She followed the sales at Macy’s and Filene’s like a hawk. She clipped coupons every morning, and called Ann Marie to let her know about any really good deals.
Still, it was hard to keep much money in the bank just between her pension and Daniel’s. A couple years back, when Patrick looked over her taxes, he frowned and said, “You’re shelling out a heck of a lot more than you’re bringing in. You need to reverse that situation, pronto.”
Her very first thought was that perhaps she ought to sell the property in Maine. It surprised her that she would even consider it, but there it was.
Alice wasn’t particularly attached to the big house, but she still felt sentimental about the cottage, with its familiar details, and stories from their past tucked inside each cupboard and under every bed. On the doorway leading to the kitchen, hundreds of dates and initials had been written in by hand, chronicling the heights of her children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews over the years. This was where Clare had learned to walk, and Patrick had broken his arm one summer, trying to jump off the roof of the screen porch and fly like Superman. Where her grandchildren had first stepped in sand and had their tiny bodies dipped into the ocean. Where she and Daniel had taken countless strolls to look at the stars, hand in hand, not a word spoken.
But those were only memories. The place wasn’t moving forward anymore, not for Alice. In recent years, her children had even created an asinine schedule for the cottage: One month per family each summer. Kathleen and her kids got June; Patrick, Ann Marie, and theirs got July; Clare, Joe, and Ryan got August.
It made Alice nervous, unsettled, to have to see her children one at a time like this. The joy and spontaneity of summers past were gone now. Daniel’s death had ended them as a family. Each had pulled away from the others, and at some point without realizing it, Alice had gone from the matriarch—keeper of the wisdom and the order—to the old lady you had to look in on before the day’s fun could begin.
She got the feeling that none of her children particularly liked one another, or worse, that they had no use for each other. So why keep the old place? And why bother coming up, year after year, when it only made her feel lonely, longing for something she’d already had?
It seemed to Alice that everyone these days was out for themselves. The sort of families she and Daniel had grown up in and tried to carry on no longer existed, not really. Her mother had had eight children, including the two babies that died. Daniel’s mother had had ten. Though she had hated the noise and the chaos and the sacrifice this implied back then, now Alice saw that it gave you something, being part of a family like that. Her own children and their children would never understand it. That was why they were so comfortable splitting up their summer home, or living a few miles apart but only seei
ng one another every couple of weeks. Or, in Kathleen’s case, moving clear across the country for no good reason. Worms, for Christ’s sake.
She gently laid the plates in a cardboard box on the floor. The box already contained the second teapot they had kept around forever, and some old dish towels, and a Kiss Me, I’m Irish coffee mug that had once belonged to her brother Timothy. Alice took the mug out and placed it back in the cabinet.
She missed her brothers more now than she had when they died, years earlier. And lately, she was haunted by memories of her sister; of what might have been had Mary lived. That past winter had marked the sixtieth year since Mary’s death. On the twenty-eighth of November, Alice had thought to go to the grave site. She hadn’t been since she could remember. Her parents were buried there, too, all three names on a single headstone, as well as the names of the two babies who were lost back in the twenties. But Alice knew that if she went, she would hope to feel some part of them floating in the air around her, and she knew just as well that they weren’t there.
She tried to put it from her mind, but when she opened her copy of The Boston Globe that day, she found a full-page story about the anniversary of the fire in the Metro section, complete with photographs. There were recollections of all of the most famous victims: The old Western film star Buck Jones had been taken to a hospital and died minutes before his wife reached his bedside to say good-bye. The body of a young woman was found in the phone booth, where she had tried in vain to call her father to come save her; a couple married that day in Cambridge both died, along with their entire bridal party. And then there was the one they called Maiden Mary, the woman who perished without knowing that her beloved planned to propose the very next day.
Alice had read her sister’s name and, remembering that night, she was gripped with the sort of guilt she had not felt in years. There was no one she could tell. None of her children would understand. Daniel was dead, and if he had been alive, she still probably wouldn’t have dared to say a word.
She willed herself not to think about it, but minutes later she was sobbing uncontrollably at the kitchen sink. Her chest seized up. She wondered if she was having a heart attack.
Alice wished she could go to church—her own church, which had been the comforting backdrop to so much joy and sorrow. The fact that she couldn’t made the pain all the worse. She hadn’t been able to save the place, she knew that. Yet the fact of the closure still surprised her from time to time. Her priest from St. Agnes had been shipped off to a parish in Connecticut, and she had no idea how to reach him. She felt utterly alone.
She thought then of her summer priest, Father Donnelly. She called him with shaking hands, unsure of what she’d say—she had kept the secret for sixty years. She knew that confession meant telling it all, but for now, she told him some version of the truth, the parts that Daniel knew.
He was impossibly kind to her, and said that she needed to forgive herself, the same as her husband had always said.
“Please,” she said over and over. “Give me a penance. Give me some way to fix this.”
She didn’t know how to say to anyone, even a priest, how terrified she was of Hell. But she knew that soon it would be too late.
“Alice, we all need to focus on doing good work with the time we have left,” he said. “There’s no reason to dwell on the past. Just think about what you can do now.”
In Alice’s day, a priest would absolve you of your sins by making you pray or go without. For Lent, you should deprive yourself of candy or perfume or gin, whatever it was that you liked best in life. But nowadays, it seemed that they wanted you to do something good instead: Paint a house, or collect money for UNICEF, or volunteer with troubled children. Something.
After they hung up, she could breathe again. It felt somewhat relieving to say the words out loud. But even so, she poured herself a glass of wine and got into bed before six.
A month later, right after Christmas, Father Donnelly came to Boston to visit friends, and stopped by Alice’s house for lunch. He asked if she was feeling better after their talk, and she said she was, though it wasn’t really true. Thoughts of Mary had been with her ever since, and his words had lingered: Just think about what you can do now. There was nothing she could do to bring her sister back or to redeem herself.
She served the priest a defrosted chicken potpie she had made weeks earlier. They sat in her kitchen and spoke of other things, while outside, snow fell on the rhododendron bushes. At some point the conversation turned to St. Michael’s by the Sea. Alice watched the worry lines that crinkled around Father Donnelly’s eyes as he spoke. Funds were dwindling. The rectory was falling apart. The church roof was in bad shape, and there was mold all over the cellar, which filled up with water every time it rained.
“We’ll be lucky if the place lasts ten more years,” he said. “There just isn’t any money for upkeep.”
Alice couldn’t bear to see it lost like St. Agnes had been. Suddenly, she knew what she ought to do—“Father, it might put you at ease to know that my family and I have decided I should give my property in Maine to St. Michael’s when I die,” she said. “Between the house and the cottage, there’s enough room to sleep probably ten or twelve men comfortably. Or you could sell it. It’s worth over two million dollars.”
Father Donnelly turned red, just as Daniel had when he got embarrassed as a young man.
“Oh Alice,” he said. “I certainly wasn’t asking—”
“I know,” she said. “But really. We had already decided.”
“I can’t impose on your family like that,” he said.
“I’ve been going to St. Michael’s every summer since before you were born,” she said sternly. “It’s given me plenty. It’s only right to give back. Besides, it’s not like my children cherish the place.”
Once she said it she realized that all of the kids, especially Patrick, would be furious with her for not consulting them. But why should she? It was her property, after all. They had certainly never asked her opinion about the cottage schedule. Clare and Patrick didn’t need any of the money. And Kathleen had spent most of Daniel’s savings already. Every time she thought of this, Alice was forced to remember the way she had cast aside her pride and asked Kathleen to help her talk sense into Daniel when he got sick. Kathleen had refused, a fact that Alice could never forgive. Daniel might still be alive today if not for his decision and Kathleen’s willingness to go along with it. But Alice was powerless to change that now.
“You should take some time to think about it,” Father Donnelly had said. “Talk it over with your family. It’s a huge decision, Alice.”
She knew it was as good as made.
“I already spoke to my family about this and we’re all in agreement,” she said.
Later that week, she met with the lawyer and changed her will. The three acres and two houses in Maine would go to St. Michael’s.
She called Father Donnelly to tell him that it was finalized.
“Oh, thank you,” he said, his voice filled with relief. “Please tell your children how incredibly grateful we are.”
“I will,” she lied.
Alice had decided not to tell the kids. They should be able to make their memories the same as always, without feeling the weight of an ending coming on. Plus, she didn’t want to face their reaction if it was bad. They could be angry with her once she was dead and buried.
Maggie
It was the first Sunday in June, the day before she and Gabe were set to leave for Maine. Maggie had taken two weeks off from work. Usually, before her annual trip, she felt that same giddy excitement she’d had as a child, when she watched her father packing up the car to head to Cape Neddick. But today she felt terrified.
Tomorrow they’d be at the beach; tomorrow she would finally tell Gabe the news. She imagined taking his hand and leading him down to the stone jetty. She would start off simply, not a lot of beating around the bush: “Honey, there’s something I have to tell you.”
Soon thereafter, they’d start their real life together—their two-year anniversary, their two-bedroom apartment in the East Village. Or else he’d panic, and none of that would come to pass.
She woke him up with a flurry of kisses all over his face and neck and chest, which she hoped would disguise her nerves.
“Let’s get you packed!” she said.
Beside the bed stood her own stuffed suitcase, the hand-me-down Louis Vuitton her aunt Ann Marie had given her for study abroad over a decade earlier, angering Maggie’s mother but delighting Maggie herself. She had brought it from her apartment the night before. She would be staying with him again tonight, and they would leave around noon the next day, after he wrapped up an early shoot. He wanted to spend two nights in a row with her before the trip—this in itself was a good sign, since Gabe was the type who needed his space. Until recently, she had gotten used to having to lobby for their time together, but maybe that was changing now.
He laughed into his pillow. “Maggie, it’s dawn. We’re not leaving until tomorrow,” he said.
Really it was almost ten, but she decided to leave it, getting up to make coffee. Usually he woke before she did, and often had breakfast ready by the time she got out of bed—Denver omelets and hash browns and sausage and waffles, all served together, as if they were a couple of truckers. She had gained seven pounds since they had started dating two years earlier, though he didn’t seem to notice.
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