Maine

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  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.”

&n
bsp; 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?

  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.