Maine

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “I’ll just have toast,” he said.

  “I have some of that yummy Irish soda bread from my mother’s friend Sharon,” she said. “Want that?”

  He shrugged. “Sure.”

  “It’s going to be a gorgeous day,” she said. “It’s supposed to get up to seventy-seven degrees this afternoon.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Your mom said Maggie’s heading north sometime in the next few days,” Ann Marie went on. “Kathleen wouldn’t tell Alice exactly when. Typical. It’s really a shame she doesn’t go along too. But let us not forget how busy she is on the farm.”

  Pat chuckled. “You can’t expect her to leave Farmer Arlo alone with all those animals to take care of,” he said. “Another Woodstock might pop up out there without my sensible big sister around to stop it.”

  Ann Marie rolled her eyes. “Right. A billion worms and a hippie drug addict win out over her own mother and daughter. That makes good sense.”

  “A friend of the devil is a friend of Kath’s,” he said. She frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s from a song. Never mind.” Pat paused, and then he said, “Poor Maggie.”

  “I know! But what’s wrong with your sister? Doesn’t she miss her kids, all the way out there in California? Honestly, Patrick, it hurts me to even think it, but I don’t think she does.”

  Pat didn’t have much of a relationship with his oldest sister, not anymore. When they were all young and Kathleen was still married, they were close. They spent almost every Saturday together. Twenty years had gone by, and Kathleen still blamed Pat for covering for her cheating ex-husband, even though he had done it to protect her. If she only knew how many times Pat had sat that guy down and told him to end his relationship with the other woman, to think about his family. Pat had genuinely believed he could talk sense into Paul, and maybe he might have eventually. They hadn’t known about Paul’s money problems until it was too late, but it wasn’t their fault that Kathleen had been clueless about her own bank account.

  Ann Marie thought Pat had much stronger grounds on which to be furious. With their mother well into her seventies, Kathleen had squandered their father’s hard-earned money and up and moved across the country, leaving Alice in their care. Even back when Kathleen was religious, she was nothing but a Cafeteria Catholic. Maybe this was why she felt no obligation to her family, not one shred of guilt.

  Pat’s other sister, Clare, wasn’t much better, and she lived only a few miles away in Jamaica Plain. Her husband, Joe, couldn’t stand Alice, and Clare had sided with him. She visited her mother once a month or so, and then Ann Marie would have to listen to Alice gush about the fact that Clare had brought her the most beautiful roses, or a bottle of cabernet with the fifty-dollar price tag still on, as if these petty gestures made up for the past four weeks of neglect.

  Clare was always telling Ann Marie that she wished she could do more. She was the sort of person who spent so much time telling you how busy she was that the complaint in itself seemed like a full-time job. Try having three children, Ann Marie wanted to say. Clare had a cleaning lady who came in once a week, and when Ryan was small she had employed a nanny. Ann Marie would never dream of paying someone else to do her job. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because no one could ever care for your children or your home as well as you could, she was certain of that.

  Most of the time, the work of caring for Alice was left to Ann Marie, even though she had her own mother to think about. She had lost her father at twenty-seven and gotten none of the sympathy that the Kellehers seemed to want for their loss, even though they were all in their forties when Big Daniel died. Ann Marie herself was hit hard by it. He was such a good man, so kind to her and to everyone. He had been the one who kept them all together. But it was clear that her in-laws expected her not to react, even as she made the arrangements for the funeral by herself.

  What bothered Ann Marie most about the Kellehers was the way they all leaned on her, yet never quite let her in, or even said thank you. She was certain that her sisters-in-law, to whom she felt superior in many ways, to be honest, still thought of her as the poor white-trash girl who had conned their brother into marriage.

  Pat sympathized, but really this was a woman thing. Though Alice was an ally, sort of, Clare and Kathleen were mostly unkind to her, as if Ann Marie were just a guilt-inducing reminder of how little they did for Alice, for the family overall. On holidays, Clare would bring one side dish—one!—and spend the entire evening griping about how hard it had been to make it, until everyone at the table praised her bland sweet potatoes or her runny green bean casserole.

  Kathleen came empty-handed. According to her, this was because she had to travel. (Did travel preclude a person from picking up a bottle of wine or a box of crackers and some cheese?) Before she moved to California, she would bring her two huge slobbering German shepherds along on Christmas. Ann Marie would be forced to let the dogs stay in her kitchen, where they had once been caught licking the leftover roast.

  Those dogs were ancient now. Alice had told her that a year ago, Kathleen paid something like ten thousand dollars to give one of them chemotherapy. Ann Marie had never heard of such a waste of money in her life. She had cousins in Southie who would have been put to sleep for less.

  Now when Kathleen came home for the holidays, she often tried to educate Ann Marie’s children on the Gospel According to Her. A few months after Patty’s first baby was born, he cried at dinner, and she rose to take him into the bedroom and feed him, as Ann Marie had instructed.

  “Nurse Foster right here at the table,” Kathleen had said. “It’s perfectly natural, honey. Don’t go lurking in the shadows. Don’t be one of those women pumping in the handicap stall at the Olive Garden.”

  Maggie nearly spat out her wine. “Really, Mom? The handicap stall at Olive Garden?”

  Ann Marie responded softly, mortified, “I think Patty feels, as I do, that some people are made uncomfortable when they see a woman’s bare breast. And so it’s really better for everyone, including the baby, to find a nice solitary spot.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Kathleen said.

  If this were her own sister, or if she were a different sort of woman, perhaps Ann Marie might have pointed out that Kathleen had bottle-fed both her kids from the time they were three months old. Instead, she swallowed her reply.

  “I hardly think this is appropriate dinner conversation,” Alice had said, silencing them. Patty went into the bedroom and shut the door.

  There was a long pause. A few years earlier, Daniel Senior would have been there to make a joke, lighten the mood. Ann Marie assumed they were all thinking as much.

  Finally Clare said, “Could someone pass the milk?” and they laughed.

  Three solid hours of storytelling followed, as if for Daniel’s sake.

  The Kellehers allegedly hated one another, but when they got together and things were good, they stayed up all night, laughing and talking. More so when Daniel was alive, but still now from time to time.

  Even after thirty-three years of marriage, Ann Marie sat at every family dinner and listened to them tell the same stories, over and over. She had never met a family so tied up in their own mythology.

  What drove her around the bend most was when Alice would mention Sherry Burke, then put her hand on Ann Marie’s and say proudly, by way of explanation, as if Ann Marie didn’t know, “Patrick used to date her. She was the daughter of the mayor of Cambridge. A beautiful girl. She’s a senator now!”

  “A state senator,” Ann Marie would correct her.

  Her husband had dated Sherry Burke in high school, for goodness’ sake.

  Sitting there on those nights as they drank countless beers and bottles of wine (the next morning she would be the one to pick up all the glasses and load the dishwasher and wipe down the surfaces), she sometimes dreamed of screaming at them: “If you tell that goddamn story one more time, I will tie up the lot of you and duct tape your
big mouths shut.”

  She meant the kids also—the nieces and nephews and even her own three, who were true Kellehers in their way. After letting the thought linger in her head a moment, she’d be overcome with guilt and do something ridiculous, like decide that she should go into the kitchen and whip up some brownies from scratch, then serve them warm with ice cream on top.

  On the way to the dollhouse show, she called Patty from the car. There was no answer on the cell or at home, so she tried the office number.

  “What’s up, Mom?” Patty answered, sounding flustered.

  “It’s a Sunday. What are you doing there?” Ann Marie asked.

  “I’m swamped.”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “I think they went to a sports bar to watch the Sox game.”

  “What?”

  “They’re home with Josh.”

  “Oh. Are they doing okay?”

  “You saw them two days ago,” Patty said with a laugh.

  “I know,” Ann Marie said. “Maisy’s coming over after school tomorrow for our special tea party, right? The teacher knows I’m picking her up?”

  “Yes. Hey, Mom, I’ve got a brief I need to file first thing tomorrow, and I’ve barely made a dent. Can I call you later?”

  “Sure, honey,” Ann Marie said.

  They hung up. Ann Marie felt a bit sad, but couldn’t say why.

  Turning onto Sycamore behind two twenty-somethings in a yellow convertible, she wondered whether Patty knew about Fiona. They had never been particularly close. Patty had always liked her cousin Maggie better. Ann Marie had once washed her mouth out with soap when she came across the child taunting her younger sister: “You’re not really my sister, Maggie is.” Fiona was crying her eyes out, but Patty kept on going.

  Recently, Patty had remarked that she was shocked by how cruel her children could be.

  “Sometimes they’re like animals,” she had said. “I want to lock myself in the bathroom and hide. How did you survive?”

  Ann Marie waited in a short line of cars to turn onto the expressway. She glanced at the clock, even though she knew she was right on time.

  Patty and Fiona seemed to start talking more after they moved out of the house, just as Ann Marie and her own sisters had. At Ann Marie’s urging, her daughters began writing letters to each other from college. (She had sent them the cutest stationery sets and plenty of stamps.) They chatted easily and went out for lunch when they were home for the summer. But then Fiona left for Namibia. Had she been running away? Was that what it was all about? Ann Marie didn’t know anyone with a gay child. Who could she ask?

  She hadn’t spoken to Fiona about it since that first night at dinner. When she wrote to her daughter, she reported on the latest family gossip and the weather and her dollhouse. She could feel herself almost begging Fiona not to bring it up. Fiona, in turn, wrote about her work with children, the beautiful sunset over her village. Ann Marie felt relieved. She had long wanted Fiona to come home, but now, to her great shame, she almost wished she could freeze time: Fiona, caring, generous, far away, like she had always been. Not here, bringing a girlfriend over for Sunday dinner, adopting an African baby and carrying him around Newton in a sling while everyone whispered and stared.

  Pat had said that it felt almost like a death: He was mourning the fact that Fiona would never have a wedding, never meet that charming do-gooder husband they had imagined for her, never have kids. Most painful of all, she could not possibly be a true, accepted Catholic now. If such places did exist, she would not go to Heaven with the rest of them.

  Somehow Ann Marie had managed to raise three children who turned their backs on Catholicism in all sorts of ways. She had taught their CCD classes and taken them to church every Sunday. Pat was a eucharistic minister. She had forced Little Daniel to be an altar boy, and enrolled the girls in the choir. She had done all she could, and for what?

  Patty had married a Jewish man, which was fine. Times had changed; Ann Marie still had to remind herself of that once in a while. She had held out hope for some time that Josh would convert. When he didn’t, she dealt with it. But the fact that they had chosen not to baptize the grandchildren was like a slap in the face.

  For a long time, Ann Marie thought her younger daughter was the one true Catholic among them. Fiona was prone to strep as a child, and once, after several rounds of antibiotics failed to keep it away for long, they took her to get the blessing of Saint Blase, patron saint of throat ailments, as a last resort. The blessing seemed to cure her, which generated Fiona’s lifelong fascination with the saints. She had always been such a good girl. She worked in the service of the poor. But somewhere along the way Ann Marie must have failed her. She didn’t understand how it could have happened.

  She was terrified at the thought of her mother or Alice finding out about Fiona. Or even Kathleen—wouldn’t this development just make her year?

  Women like Kathleen who focused so much on what motherhood had cost them rubbed her entirely the wrong way. She had always thought the whole movement toward “me time” and all that was a bunch of selfish garbage. But now she wondered what exactly she had gained by being selfless. She had gladly been everyone’s chauffeur and cook and maid and advisor. Her children were a mess, even so. But each time she decided that she was done, that from now on she’d be carving out time for herself, something always came up: Alice wanted a ride to the eye doctor, or Patty desperately needed a sitter so she could stay late at the office. Was Ann Marie going to refuse them?

  She turned off the highway at exit 10 and pulled onto a smaller road. After a few minutes she saw the yellow banner hanging on a plain building up ahead: Wellbright Miniatures Fair. She looked down at the seat beside her, where her photos sat in a plain white envelope: the dollhouse from the front, side, and back to show off the Victorian trim, and a shot of each room close up, which looked quite a lot like pages from Better Homes and Gardens.

  Might she actually win? She’d never say as much to anyone, but she thought she had a chance.

  Ann Marie got so excited that she rolled her eyes at herself. She pushed all the nonsense out of her head and pulled into the parking lot.

  Alice

  Alice put her paper plate in the trash and the tuna bowl in the sink. She filled the bowl with soap and hot water, letting it sit a minute before rinsing it out.

  She and Patrick and Ann Marie had driven up to Maine four weeks earlier, at the beginning of May. Pat pulled the boards off the windows and mowed the lawn and fixed the smoke detectors, which were beeping from the far corners of the house in a whiny little chorus. Alice and Ann Marie moved efficiently through first the cottage and then the house, removing the sheets that covered the couches and chairs; unrolling the carpets; plugging the lamps back in; washing down every dusty surface; and vacuuming up the countless dead flies and yellow jackets that somehow managed to find their way inside but could never seem to get out.

  There had been an elaborate spiderweb in the cottage shower. It stretched from wall to wall, probably three feet across. As she sliced through it with the broom and then turned the water on full blast, Alice had felt almost bad for the creatures that had spun it. They had had this tiny kingdom all to themselves for months, and then poof, it was gone.

  She spent the rest of May alone, except for Ann Marie and Pat’s weekend visits. She continued preparing the house and the cottage for the kids, but also clearing things away. As soon as she had signed the papers to give over the property when she died, she realized that it might not be so long. She threw out bags of old sheets and bathing suits and tattered flip-flops that had somehow ended up in the loft. She pulled blankets and clothes from the bedroom dresser drawers and closet. She gathered what seemed like hundreds of shells and pieces of sea glass and the odd sand dollar or starfish, and put them all back on the beach one night at dusk. She gave Daniel’s collection of thrillers and political biographies to the Ogunquit library, their spines stained white by the sun that streamed t
hrough the bedroom window. She boxed up glasses and plates from the big house, but she had to be careful not to remove too much from the cottage too soon. She didn’t want the children asking questions.

  Kathleen’s daughter, Maggie, would be the first family member of the season to arrive, with her photographer boyfriend, Gabe.

  Maggie was the artist of the family. Sometimes Alice thought Maggie was what she herself might have become if only she had been born a generation or two later. Timing was everything when it came to being a woman—the moment you entered the world could seal your fate. Maggie got straight A’s at Kenyon College. At thirty, she had published a book of short stories about love gone awry.

  “Wasn’t it marvelous?” Kathleen kept saying.

  Alice did think the writing was quite polished. She even bragged about it to the librarians at her local branch. But how could she read a work of fiction by her own granddaughter without hunting for glimpses of herself, of Kathleen, and their marriages? Kathleen said Maggie was now at work on a novel. Would she come this summer, wanting to collect stories like a vulture? It always felt that way when she asked questions, as if Alice should be chronicled, each heartache and human connection and childhood memory an artifact in a museum exhibit, to be tagged and displayed, a life lived and finished, ready to be studied.

  Then again, Gabe, the boyfriend, was one of the few summer guests Alice was actually looking forward to hosting. She was even willing to overlook the fact that he and Maggie shared a bed in the cottage. (Ann Marie’s kids had the manners and good sense to sleep in separate rooms if they weren’t married yet, but she knew she couldn’t expect that from Kathleen’s.)

  In the past, when Maggie brought her pampered college friends to Maine, they acted as though Alice were running a bed-and-breakfast, the innkeeper next door. They didn’t bother to invite her to join them, and when Maggie stopped by in the mornings, presumably to do her familial duty, Alice would quickly create a story about all she had to do that day, to keep from looking pathetic.