“Well, we do have a wonderful housekeeper, but I’m the cook in the family, not Maggie,” he announced.
“Now that we’ve covered my shortcomings as a wife,” Maggie said, glaring, “could we move onto something else?”
“Sweetheart, you have no shortcomings as a wife.” He patted her knee, knowing this patronizing gesture would arouse her ire. Any emotion he could incite in her at this point would be better than her stony silence.
“You don’t do all the cooking?” Hilary ventured skeptically.
“Absolutely. Every night when I’m at home,” he assured her. “I taught myself how to cook back in those early days, primarily to keep us from starving on those nights we were too lazy to go out to eat.”
“Well, then, suppose you tell us what’s your specialty.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He pretended to mull it over, then turned to his wife, his eyes twinkling, and said, “What’d you think, Maggie? Maybe that chicken in wine I’ve been doing for years now?”
Maggie started slightly, her nostrils filling suddenly with the aroma of a long-ago unexpected dinner he’d prepared to surprise her. How proud he’d been of himself that night, how pleased with his efforts…
As she had arrived home from work one night and opened the front door, the smell of something wonderful cooking filled the air. Max, her upstairs neighbor, must have dinner guests, she thought, and ran up the steps to her apartment.
She walked into the hallway and sniffed. Overcome with curiosity, she followed her nose into the kitchen. J.D. was at the stove and turned to greet her with a wide grin.
“I see my timing was perfect. Everything is just about ready.”
He poured her a glass of wine and handed it to her where she stood riveted with shock and kissed her nonchalantly as if he did this every night, still grinning, still watching her face as she surveyed the scene.
He’d set the table, where two candles waited to be lit. There was no mess—he’d washed everything he’d used. And something smelled incredibly good.
“Jamey, I never expected this,” she exclaimed, then stepped closer to inspect the contents of the pans on the stove. “What are you making?”
“Something with chicken and mushrooms and wine. And rice. And salad.” His casual attitude could not disguise his satisfaction with his accomplishment nor her reaction. “Sit down, Maggie. It’ll be done in two minutes.”
He turned back to her, and seeing the look of disbelief on her face, meeting her eyes, he laughed, and she with him.
“How did you know to do all this?”
“I looked through one of the cookbooks on the shelf—you should dust them once in a while if you’re not going to use them—till I found something I thought we’d both like. And I took the book with me to the food store so I’d know what to buy—here, give me your plate.” He tried to ignore her still wide-eyed stare. “So. How is it?”
“It’s great. Unbelievable. Jamey, you amaze me.”
“Thank you,” he said smugly. “That good, is it?”
“Yes, it is. I can’t believe you did this all by yourself.”
“That’s a somewhat chauvinistic attitude, I’d say.”
“I’m sorry, Jamey, but this is a completely new experience for me. I’ve never had a man cook dinner for me. Come to think of it, I don’t believe I even know any men who cook.”
“Doesn’t your father ever do the cooking?”
“Frank Callahan?” She pretended to choke at the very thought. “It would never happen. It is simply outside of his role.”
“And what is his role?” J.D. looked amused.
“His role is to be waited on by my mother. And her role is to take care of everyone in the family. Including my father. Especially my father,” she explained.
“Seems reasonable to me,” he deadpanned across the table. “Nothing wrong with a woman knowing her place.”
“If I thought for one second you were serious, I’d bounce you down the steps on your head.”
“Well, then, tell me how two such traditional parents produced so independent a daughter.”
“I’m afraid they’re still asking themselves that question. They’ve tried to figure out for a long time where they went wrong with me.” Her earlier teasing tone faded.
“You’re joking, of course.”
She shook her head. “Not really. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit of a disappointment to them.”
“Maggie, what could your parents possibly have wanted you to be that you’re not? You’re a bright, charming, sweet, honest, moral, kind—did I leave anything out?—truly good and wonderful person. What do you think—Oh, wait, not that business about your husband?” He made a face.
“Sort of. But it’s not just Mace. It’s the whole inability to fit the mold, you know?” she told him, an uncharacteristic self-consciousness creeping into her voice.
“What mold?”
“The mold all the women in my family came out of. They get married, they have children, and they spend the rest of their lives humoring their husbands and raising their kids. The only acceptable deviation is the sisterhood. They do not have careers, they do not sleep with men they are not married to, they do not get divorced, they do not let anyone know they have brains.”
“Well, I have to admit that now that I think about it, I’ve never met an Irish girl who fancied herself an intellectual.” He tried to interject a lighter tone.
“I don’t fancy myself an intellectual, Jamey, but I am smarter than a lot of the men I’ve met in my life and I can’t see any reason to pretend that I’m not. My mother is an extremely bright woman, but she uses most of her wits finding ways to outsmart my father into thinking he always gets his own way, when in fact it’s she who calls most of the shots. Subtly, of course. Most of her time is spent pampering my father’s ego.” She sighed. “My mother set a wonderful example for us in her own way. There is something noble about a person who can truly be selfless and honestly care more about others than they care about themselves. I just never learned that lesson very well.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If I had, I would have stayed married. I would have stayed in the church,” she told him.
“What’s the church got to do with all this?”
“It has everything to do with it. As far as the church is concerned, one of the main purposes of a woman is to have children. Practicing birth control is frowned upon, and a good Catholic does not ask for a divorce when she realizes she does not love her husband. According to my father anyway.”
“Then what does she do?”
“She offers it up.”
“She what?” he asked blankly.
“Offers it up. You know, makes a sacrifice.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. You weren’t raised like I was.”
“Enlighten me.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest, curious.
“Whenever something happened that was unpleasant or painful or whenever you had to do something that you didn’t want to do or had some hardship to face, my grandmother always said to offer it up. To see it through and not complain and accept God’s will and offer your suffering to God.”
He sat silently, staring at her for a long time.
“Am I to interpret this to mean that your parents expected you to stay in an unhappy marriage, living a miserable life, having children you didn’t want with a man you didn’t love and that it would somehow make God happy?”
She shrugged. “That’s simplifying things a bit, but you have the general idea.”
“How could your unhappiness make God, or anyone else for that matter, happy? That makes no bloody sense at all.”
“It does if you keep in mind that marriage is a holy sacrament in the Catholic church.”
“Do you honestly believe your parents wanted you to be unhappy.”
“No. They wanted me to stop the foolishness and just be in love with Mace. Except I cou
ldn’t. My father even told me to go back to Mace and have a baby and I’d feel differently about the whole thing. Ironically, the only one who gave me any support at all was my sister Frankie, the one who’s a nun…”
“Well, I’m sure they still love you, Maggie, and they want you to be happy.”
“Yes, they love me. That’s why it hurt them that I turned out to be something of the family renegade. Now, my sister Ellie, she’s twenty-six, she’s always done it all by the book, you know? Never given them problems, never stepped out of line in any way. They never felt they had to make excuses for Ellie…”
“Do you think they love her more than they love you?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think she’s a better person than you? Or a happier one?”
“Ellie? She’s a bitch.”
He laughed heartily.
“She is. She’s a miserable person. But she’s done it all as they expected her to. She went to school there in town. Married an assistant professor. Got her degree in teaching, just like Mommy and Daddy thought she should. I’m sure she and Elliot—that’s her husband, is that the cutest thing you ever heard, Ellie and Elliot?—never slept together before they were married. And she cooks dinner every night.” Her good humor was returning, and she grinned.
“Unlike the elder Callahan daughter who prefers to have her men cook for her.”
“Exactly. I really don’t enjoy cooking all that much, to be honest with you, and I have to say that you are a much better cook than I am, at least, based on your effort tonight.”
“Well, I have to admit I surprised even myself. And to tell the truth, I really enjoyed it. If my musical career ever flops, maybe I could open a restaurant.”
“Not a chance of that happening.” She smiled lovingly, then, glancing at the clock above the stove, said, “Criminy, look at the time, Jamey. It’s seven-twenty. Your plane leaves in just about an hour. Are you packed? And I forgot to stop for gas on the way home. There’s barely enough to get me to the station on the corner.”
They’d arrived at the airport with a scant seven minutes to spare before he had to board, hardly enough time to say all the things that needed to be said till next time. She’d watched as the plane had backed up, then walked to the end of the hallway, up the ramp where the solid walls gave way to the glass enclosure that permitted a view of the runways on the left side of the terminal. She leaned against the glass, wondering which side of the plane he was on, if he would look back and see her there. The plane turned slowly, then gathered a bit of speed as it began to taxi down the runway, then lift effortlessly into the sky. She watched until the lights disappeared into the night, wondering if she’d ever get used to his leaving.
It had been a quiet ride home from the airport, and she hated going back into the silence of her apartment. The scent of spring, fragrant and balmy, held her on the porch for a moment. She looked up into the sky, at the tiny lights, so far overhead, as they moved through the dark night. Another plane taking someone else’s lover away or bringing him back home…
11
HOME. SHE PONDERED THE WORD AND THE IMAGES it called up. Where is my home now? Could it ever again be here, in this house we’ve taken over bit by bit until it’s reflective as much of me as it is of his mother? Can I go back to that house we’ve shared for so long in the States, the house we’d resurrected from ruin and made our own, where we greeted each new child, every one save Jesse and Lucy conceived under its roof? And how could I go back to my hometown, with seven children in tow, no longer the girl from Kelly’s Mills upon whom fortune had bestowed more than anyone could ever have imagined: a storybook romance; a long and happy marriage to a well-known celebrity; beautiful, healthy children.
The irony of it was not lost on her, that she had all but hidden J.D. from her conservative family for so long, fearful her parents—most particularly her father—would have dismissed the man she loved as a witless, shaggy-haired punk who couldn’t find a real job. And now she could not face going into that house and telling them it was over, her marriage had failed, that she was once again headed for divorce court.
Looking back on how she had so closely guarded her relationship with him, she could all but feel that same sense of impotence that had seemed to envelope her and render her mute every time she had tried to mention his name under that roof. A rock-and-roll singer would have been her parents’ dead-last choice as a son-in-law. We are always our parents' children, she sighed, no matter how old we get. We always carry the same expectations within us, theirs as well as our own…
Kelly’s Mills, where Maggie had been born and raised, was a pleasant two-hour ride northwest of Philadelphia. Virtually unchanged since her childhood, it boasted wide boulevards, lined on both sides with tall oaks and maples and pines. The large, comfortable old clapboard houses, built toward the turn of the century or earlier, spoke proudly of its past as a well-to-do college town, made accessible by the railroad, made prosperous by its fabric mills, which were located on the outside of town and still operational. A large town green overlooked a picturesque lake surrounded by playgrounds and picnic areas. A tidy business district where the merchants sold their wares from the old brick buildings, carefully renovated, lined both sides of two blocks on Main Street. She could just as easily be driving into any one of a thousand towns, in Indiana or Massachusetts, Kentucky or Minnesota.
She loved the familiarity of it, loved seeing herself in memory’s mirror skating on the frozen lake as a child, seated in one of the oak booths in the local soda shop after school, riding her bike to the little brick library by the lake, climbing the steps of the old firehouse to attend dances there on Saturday nights as a teenager. She wished she could bring J.D. there, so she could show him who she was and where she’d come from.
She turned off the main road onto her old street, driving slowly, noting all the changes in the neighborhood—a new paint job here, a new fence there—until the large pale yellow three-storied house with the dark blue shutters came into view. She couldn’t wait to see her family. She’d hardly seen them since she’d met J.D., and she was embarrassed that it had taken a major family event—her cousin Kathleen’s wedding—to bring her home again.
Colleen, the youngest Callahan, was watching for her, half seated on the railing around the big front porch, which wrapped clear around to the driveway side of the house. She jumped off as the car pulled into the drive and was at Maggie’s door to open it and pull her sister from the car when the engine was shut off.
“You’re awfully strong for a sixteen-year-old. Where’d those muscles come from?” Maggie hugged her, planting a fond kiss on her forehead. Was it her imagination, or had she had to stretch just a little higher to reach the top of that freckled face? “And why aren’t you in school?”
“Lacrosse. Softball. Tennis. Swimming.” Colleen rattled off her athletic pursuits proudly, then added, “I had my last final yesterday, so I didn’t have to go today.”
“My sister, the jock. Well, they’re all good activities. Keeps you out of trouble. Less time to spend with the boys,” Maggie teased.
“That’s what her father’s hoping for anyway.” Mary Elizabeth Callahan, a tiny dumpling of a woman, walked across the grass to greet her oldest child. “Whether or not it’s true is a different matter. How are you, sweetheart? You look thin. Are you eating?”
“Yes, Mother, I’m eating.” Maggie laughed and hugged the small woman fondly. “What’s this, do I see a few more silver threads among the gold?” She pretended to scrutinize her mother’s hair.
“Yes, more and more each week, or so it seems. I’m starting to feel like old Otto here.” She held the leash of the family dog. He’d been purported to have been half boxer, half spaniel when they’d gotten him fifteen years earlier. Neither breed accounted for his long shaggy gray coat, which now was showing a lot more white than Maggie’d noticed the last time she’d been home. She patted him affectionately.
“Taking Otto on walks these
days, Mom?” Maggie opened the trunk to hoist a basket of laundry onto her hip.
“Well, I hate to let him run loose anymore. His vision isn’t what it used to be, and since they started to build that new housing development out there on what used to be the old Shields farm, we’ve had so much traffic out here that I’m just afraid he’ll wander into the road and get hit one of these days. So I let him out in the back most of the time, since it’s fenced, but he still likes to check on the action out front, so we go for a little walk once or twice each day, depending on the weather. Does us both good.”
Kevin, Maggie’s only brother, pedaled up on his bike, dropping it amidst the jungle of azaleas that flanked the left side of the porch. A stem look from his mother sent him back to stand it up. He gave Maggie a brief but affectionate hug and, on instructions from his mother, removed the travel bags from the backseat of the car and carried them into the house.
“Where’s Dad?” Maggie inquired, setting her purse on the counter in the kitchen and looking around. Even though it had been a year since her mother had redecorated the house, the cream-colored walls and light blue cabinets still came as a surprise to Maggie, whose mind’s eye still saw the old white cabinets and green walls she’d grown up with.
“He should be along any minute now. His last morning class is at ten, so he should be rolling in any time now for lunch, then he has two classes this afternoon.” Her mother removed a container of homemade soup from the refrigerator in anticipation of her husband’s arrival, telling Maggie, “It’s your favorite, chicken vegetable. What would you like with it?”
“Maybe just a small salad if you have some lettuce and cucumbers. I’ll make it, Mom, assuming that you haven’t moved things around too much over the past few months.” Maggie rummaged around in the fridge until she found what she was looking for.
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