After a while, she felt sleepy and knew she ought to return to the cottage. But she decided to wait a bit, remembering how creepily quiet the house was at night. It was funny how a place could represent both your best and worst memories. The cottage was where she had been happiest as a child, happiest with Gabe. But it also reminded her of the painful months that had led up to her parents’ divorce, spent here between those four walls, praying to the Virgin Mary to keep them all safe.
They lived in the cottage for the entire spring and summer before the divorce, because they’d had to sell their house.
For three months, Maggie and Chris didn’t go to school. They hardly ever took baths or brushed their teeth. Kathleen didn’t seem to notice. Uncle Patrick and Aunt Ann Marie had offered to take Maggie and Chris in through the end of the school year, but Maggie knew her mother wasn’t speaking to them, and she had thrown such a hysterical fit at the prospect of staying with them that Ann Marie seemed terrified she might burn their house down. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to: Maggie loved the thought of sleeping in her cousin Patty’s bunk bed, under flowered sheets that Ann Marie had just pulled from the dryer, and the possibility of waking up to waffles and Hi-C, which her aunt served every morning of the week.
Maggie liked the way Ann Marie kept house and praised normal behavior, rather than constantly trying to stir things up. Kathleen always told her, “Don’t be a sheep.” Maggie hated that phrase. She wanted to be like everyone else.
But Maggie knew, even at ten years old, that her mother couldn’t be alone. And so they went to Maine.
She still vividly recalled that spring, chasing her brother through the rooms of the cottage, which made a perfect circle, a sort of track for them to scuttle through. She remembered running on the beach, making forts in the dunes, dashing into the frigid ocean and right back out in her jean shorts, her lips tinged blue. They kept moving all day long, as if they might outrun the reality of what had passed: Their father had left, seeming not to care what happened to them. Their mother was falling apart.
At night, Maggie would grow terrified without her father there. Unlike at home, there were no streetlights to soften the darkness from outside. If you looked out the window, all you could see was a meddlesome sheet of black. Giant white moths flapped against the lamps, somehow sneaking into the house, though she tried to plug up every crack. She could swear she heard footsteps in the loft overhead.
The cottage was freezing after dark. Even wearing long johns under piles of blankets, it was impossible to get warm. In the bedroom where Maggie and Kathleen slept—the one where her grandparents slept in the summertime—her grandmother had placed an Infant of Prague statue on the dresser. The two-foot Jesus stood straight, covered in an elaborate embroidered robe and a golden crown. In the daylight, Maggie thought the statue was funny: she pretended he was the king of whatever town her Barbies lived in. But after dark, he took on a sinister look, and she turned his face to the wall.
In the middle of the night she’d wake to find herself alone. She would creep from her spot in bed and into the living room, where her mother sat at the big oak table with papers everywhere and a bottle of red wine on the floor by her chair.
“Are you okay, Mommy?” Maggie would say. Or “Do you want to talk?”
Her mother would tell her everything: that they were broke, that Maggie’s father was a lowlife, and that he’d been having an affair for a year, an affair that her uncle Patrick had known all about and helped to cover up.
“My own brother,” Kathleen said. “Can you believe that?”
“I can’t believe it,” Maggie said, wrapping her hands in the long sleeves of her nightgown, wishing they could all go home again.
“And even my mother is against me—no surprise there,” Kathleen went on.
“Why is Grandma against you?” Maggie said.
“She thinks I’m not trying hard enough in my marriage,” her mother said, incredulous. “She thinks I’ll go to Hell for refusing to let myself be walked on for fifty years. What kind of example would I be setting for you if I stayed? I’d sooner have us live on the street.”
Maggie wanted to cry. She had heard about Hell in CCD, and her grandparents had spoken of a place called Limbo, where unbaptized babies floated around for eternity on tiny wings, unable to ever see their families again. She didn’t want her mother in Hell. She didn’t want her father to be with someone else. She didn’t want to have to live on the street. She told herself to act like a grown-up. She walked to where her mother sat and threw her arms around her, burying her face in Kathleen’s thick sweater.
“Oh, hey, it’s okay,” Kathleen said. “We’ve got each other, kiddo. And we’ve got Grandpa. He’ll take care of us, always.”
The following autumn, the situation improved. Her father started paying child support, and they were able to move into a small house in Braintree. Her mother joined AA. She apologized to Maggie for asking too much of her, for treating her like an adult when she was only a child.
“You didn’t treat me like an adult,” Maggie said, sensing that this was what Kathleen wanted to hear.
“I did,” her mother said. “Even though you’re my little petunia, I think of you as a friend. But I should have known better than to drink like that around you. I still remember how scary it was when my mom used to drink when I was a kid.”
“When did she stop?” Maggie asked.
“When I was eleven,” her mother said. “About your age. My father threatened to leave her if she didn’t sober up.”
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“She was nasty,” Kathleen said. “If I cried because I’d had a bad dream, she’d shake me really hard and tell me to get to sleep, or else goblins would come and get me. One time she drove me and your auntie Clare and uncle Patrick right into a tree.”
“Did Grandma join AA too?” Maggie asked.
“No, sweetie,” her mother said. “That’s not exactly her style.”
“Did not drinking anymore make her stop being nasty?” Maggie asked.
“What do you think?” her mother said with a wink.
Two weeks went by without any word from Gabe. She had told him not to reach out, but maybe she hadn’t meant it. Ironic that this was the first request of hers he had ever actually honored.
She passed the time reading and writing and eating the occasional meal with Alice and Father Donnelly—Connor, as he wanted to be called. She went to the beach, though it was still too cold to swim. She called Kathleen and her friend Allegra often from Alice’s phone, just to hear their voices.
Every day, Maggie walked for hours to ensure that she would be exhausted by nightfall. One afternoon, she had traveled along Shore Road, past the Cape Neddick Lobster Pound and Connor’s church, and fishermen casting their lines over the side of a bridge. She walked and walked until she found herself in the middle of York Beach, five miles away, a slightly seedy town bustling with color, full of T-shirts and movie posters and seafood places with red-and-white-checkered plastic on every table. She walked past the tattoo parlors and the chocolate shops and the tarot room, past the coin laundry and the Goldenrod, where a man was making saltwater taffy inside the window. And because it was what the Kellehers always did in York Beach, she made her way, zombielike, into the arcade, and played four rounds of skee-ball. She left the tickets she earned hanging from the machine like a long jagged tongue, for some lucky young kid to come across. She walked home without saying a word to anyone.
Usually the ocean air worked better than the strongest sleeping pill. But now, just like during those months after her parents’ separation, she was up nights, worrying.
She tried to lose herself in work at night—she wrote a few dating profiles; she took on a freelance magazine assignment about how to lose your love handles in ten easy steps; and she had begun to look at the national news online for atrocious murders she could pitch to her boss at Till Death Do Us Part. But at some point, she had become obsessed with reading baby
websites. She knew too much already and she was only two months along. By the third trimester, her baby was supposedly going to move once every other minute. She would feel punches and kicks from within. Her boobs would swell up and she would have stretch marks traversing her pale belly. Her body would never look the same again. When she gave birth, she should expect at least twelve to fourteen hours of excruciating labor.
And that was all while the child was inside her. One night, watching the evening news with Alice, she saw a segment about two million cribs being recalled because they were crushing babies to death. If cribs weren’t even safe, how would she ever manage to go a day without panicking about this child’s well-being?
There were so many questions to be answered once she returned to New York, but Maggie couldn’t face them yet. Maine never changed—the same faces, the same homes, the same blue sea. Here, she felt that she could float, as if in amber. Just stay still.
The next step was telling Kathleen. As the days passed, Maggie composed the letter in her head. She even sat down and started writing it, about seven different times. Finally, one rainy night as she watched a storm far out on the ocean, she sat down and typed.
Dear Mom,
When was the last time I wrote you a letter? Not just a birthday card or a silly note on the fridge, but an actual letter. I think it was that one summer you sent me to sleepaway camp, and I was absolutely miserable without you. I wrote you every day, and you wrote me just as often. I told you I was lonely, no one liked me. You responded that it was scientifically impossible for me to ever be alone, because I had you.
I’ve been thinking of writing you a letter lately, but I’m pretty sure I’d chicken out and never actually put it in a mailbox. E-mail is easier when there’s something you’re struggling to say. You just hit “send” and then give the regret and anxiety ten seconds to kick in.
I’m missing you in Maine. I know we have our phone calls, but as discussed, I barely get cell service here, and each time I call you from the landline in Alice’s house, I know she’s listening to every word I say. It’s been over two weeks since I arrived, and the days are flying. Do you remember the way time moves differently here? A day goes by in an hour, and the nights seem endless. (Here, I find I am still slightly scared of the dark. It never actually gets dark in New York, now that I think about it. Maybe that’s why I like it so much.) I love the simple routine of cottage life—I have twelve more days until I have to clear out, and I’m already dreading saying good-bye. Each morning I get up early and walk the beach alone. I walk up to Ruby’s and buy tea, a paper, and groceries for the day. I have been frequenting Café Amore with alarming regularity. (I am often one bite away from a blueberry French toast overdose.) Then I go home and write for a few hours, maybe have lunch or dinner with Alice. Sometimes we watch TV together at night. It’s nice. She’s still her crazy self, but we have had our moments. Most of the time I am alone, which I like. I’ve had a lot to think about.
There is something I’ve been trying (or, in some cases, trying not) to say each time we’ve talked these past few weeks, but I can’t seem to get the words out, which is strange—I’ve always known that I can come to you with anything and you will support me, help me make it right. I’ve always known that with you I can be my true self, whatever that means.
The thing I’ve wanted to say (Jeez, I can barely manage to write it) is this: I’m pregnant. Needless to say, my emotions lately have run the gamut between terrified, bewildered, and elated, especially given my situation with Gabe. But I’ve decided to settle on the last of these feelings. I am having this baby, and I’m happy. Truly happy. Sitting here in the living room in the cottage, I remember so clearly that spring when we—you, me, and Chris—lived here. You were panicked then, but look what you made of it. I have no doubt that raising a child alone is beyond difficult. I’ve thought through all the challenges. But I know I won’t be alone: I’ll have you.
I thought by writing this instead of saying it over the phone, I’d give you the time to really process it before reacting. I know you might be worried or freaked out or disappointed in me. Please think about it for a while, as I have, before you respond, okay? I’m here in Maine, tucked away safe, and I feel that (for now at least) everything is right with the world.
Love you always,
Maggie
P.S. I think there might be some weird sexual tension between Grandma and her priest.
Ann Marie
When the phone rang, Ann Marie was clipping coupons from the Sunday circular at the kitchen table, same as most Monday mornings, unaware that something big was about to happen. She pressed the cordless receiver between her shoulder and her cheek so she could continue cutting out a three-for-one special on Windex. She’d leave one bottle here at the house and bring the other two with her to Maine the next day.
If they had it to do over again, she would have asked Pat to put less glass on the architectural plans for the big house in Cape Neddick. It got so dirty. Though it did have a gorgeous view of the beach from almost every room. Focus on the positive. That was a motto of hers.
Someday that house would be theirs. Then perhaps she’d make a few changes. The kitchen, for instance, was almost too modern. The cottage had to stay—Pat wouldn’t have it otherwise—but maybe they could do more landscaping, allow for more of a real yard for the grandkids to run around in, and a proper driveway.
“Hello?” she said now.
“I’m calling to speak with Mrs. Ann Marie Kelleher,” said a woman with an English accent.
“This is she.”
“My name is Louise Parnell. I’m calling from the Wellbright Miniatures Fair offices with some wonderful news. Your dollhouse, entry number 2374, has been selected as a finalist in our annual worldwide competition.”
Her heart sped up. Could this really be happening? In some ways, she had almost expected it, but then she’d tell herself not to be silly, that it was just a fantasy. She knew the decisions were being made this week, but she hadn’t thought it would happen on a Monday. (After church on Sunday, while Pat went to get the car, she lit a candle for this very reason, and then felt ridiculous about it.)
“A finalist?” she said softly, as if she might have misheard.
“Yes. You should be very proud. Out of over two thousand contestants, you’ve made the top ten. The finals take place September first in London. All expenses paid for you, plus one guest.”
God help her, she immediately envisioned herself walking hand in hand with Steve Brewer down a cobblestone street.
“That’s wonderful,” she said, and then, almost as a sort of consolation to Pat: “My husband will be so excited. He studied abroad in London one semester during college.”
“I expect you know all the rules and restrictions already, but we’ll be mailing you a packet with the relevant information later today.”
“Oh, I know them,” Ann Marie said. She had practically memorized the competition section of the Wellbright website. The finals required you to submit a brand-new house. You couldn’t have any outside help or even use a preexisting floor plan from one of the trade publications. You had to decorate it from the ground up. The grand prize winner got to have her house featured on the cover of Dollhouse World magazine, a five-thousand-dollar Wellbright gift certificate, and a brief lecture tour of craft fairs in the United Kingdom.
Last year’s winner had been at it for decades—she owned two shops in Canada. And here was Ann Marie, with only a year’s experience under her belt. After she hung up, she went to the dollhouse and actually kissed the front door. Then she removed the canopy bed from the master suite and kissed that too.
“Oh, you beauty,” she said to the house. “Thank you.”
Unsure of what to do next, she squealed like a child and bolted upstairs. Raul, her trainer, would be proud. She hadn’t run this fast since high school.
“Pat!” she called. “Honey!”
He emerged from the bedroom in his suit, straightening hi
s tie.
He chuckled. “Yes?”
“I won! I won! Well, I’m a finalist, anyhow. I just got a call from the Wellbright people.”
“That’s great,” he said.
She tried not to let the fact that he sounded slightly underwhelmed stand in the way of her joy. This wasn’t really his thing, she reminded herself. But she kept pushing.
“Out of two thousand applicants, they only picked ten.”
“That’s fabulous. I’m so proud of you. Why are we standing in the hall?”
“And we both get to go to London, all expenses paid, for the grand prize judging.”
Now he nodded, his eyes widening.
“Look out, world, here comes my wife, the interior designer.”
“Oh, I’d hardly call myself that.”
“So you build it here and they judge it across the pond?”
“Right.”
“Your dollhouse will make one hell of a carry-on,” he said. Of all things.
“You send it ahead, silly,” she said.
“Should we go out to dinner tonight to celebrate?” he asked.
“That would be nice.”
“It’s our last night together before you ship off to Maine,” he said.
“I know. I have so much to do before I can start working on my house.”
“You’re going to start today, huh?” he asked, sounding amused.
“There’s not much time!”
She thought of everything she had to do: She needed to finish packing. She needed to go grocery shopping and pick up her mother’s prescriptions and drop them off to her. Which meant she’d probably end up staying for lunch and helping her mother hang those blinds in the den. She had told Patty that she’d buy bathing suits for the kids at the Filene’s sale. Then she had to come home and cook some meals for Pat to heat up while she was away. Plus maybe go over to Alice’s house in Canton and retrieve whatever her mother-in-law needed from there. She had library books to return. The car was filthy. She should get it washed. She needed to remind the girl next door to water her plants while she was gone.
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