Maine

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  This one was the father—at least she figured he was, since he was the biggest. She was worried about the little babies in this heat. She wished they would take a bowl of water. Father Donnelly told her this was the hottest August in southern Maine on record since 1893. He said it with a sort of awe for how long ago that seemed, as if dinosaurs might have roamed the earth that summer. Alice kept to herself that it was the year her mother was born, and so to her it didn’t seem like such ancient history.

  She still wouldn’t let the rabbits near her garden, but there was hardly anything left there anyway. The strawberries and beans had been harvested. The lilies were wilting and brown. The tomatoes—well, she’d have to replant those next spring.

  Kathleen was finally back in California. She and Maggie had left Cape Neddick so abruptly after the Fourth of July fireworks that Alice assumed she must have offended them somehow. They were both so damn sensitive. But Kathleen assured her she was just ready to leave—she had a lot to help Maggie sort out, she said.

  Yes, like the pesky business of finding a father for her child.

  In the month that had passed since, Maggie had sent Alice one letter a week, like clockwork. Most recently, she reported that she had moved further into Brooklyn, to a nice family-friendly neighborhood. The apartment cost less than her old one and it was twice the size, with a large bedroom and a second, much smaller room, which most people would use as an office, but which she planned to turn into a nursery. She had begun telling friends that she was pregnant, and her boss had agreed to let her work from home three days a week once the baby came. She had not seen Gabe since she got back, but planned to meet him for coffee in the next couple of weeks to sort out logistics. Imagine that. A coffee date with the man who impregnated you. It seemed a bit late for logistics.

  Maggie wrote that she was fifteen weeks pregnant. Her morning sickness hadn’t abated. She had read in her baby books that her child was now growing hair, and wasn’t it strange but wonderful to think of someone sprouting a full head of brown curls inside your belly? Alice squirmed a bit, reading that part. Women had entirely too much information about such things these days. Maggie added at the end of her letter that in five weeks she would find out if she was having a boy or a girl. If the child was a boy, she wanted to call him Brennan, Alice’s maiden name. A baby boy named after our fearless matriarch! she had written, and that at least had made Alice smile.

  She responded to Maggie on small notepaper, so that she wouldn’t have too much room to speak freely. She tucked a Mass card into each envelope. Alice was so worried about the girl—Maggie acted as if hanging a mobile and buying some tiny socks was all it took to raise a child. But Alice held her tongue.

  Ann Marie and Pat’s daughter Patty had been up for two weeks in July with her brood. Watching Patty and her husband, Josh, chase their three rug rats around made Alice think of Maggie and everything she had in store: the sleepless nights, the bad winter colds, the fights with a maddeningly obstinate toddler.

  Patty’s only daughter—Alice’s great-granddaughter—was a four-year-old called Maisy. Who named their child Maisy? It was a name better suited for a beagle than a little girl. Anyway, this summer Maisy couldn’t get enough of Alice. She’d be sitting alone on the porch drinking her morning tea in peace, and she’d hear a nasally voice at the door, “Great-grandma Alice, can I sit with you?” Or she’d be watering her flowers and Maisy would toddle up in her bathing suit and ask to help, plastic shovel in hand.

  “She really loves you,” Patty cooed, and of course Alice couldn’t say anything, because it would be rude to tell her to go away. She was already in hot water with Ann Marie. But God help her, she found that child annoying. She wished Patty would have the good sense to realize that she didn’t feel like being a damn babysitter. After they left, she found the remains of an oatmeal cookie under one of the chairs on the porch, absolutely covered in ants.

  Alice had been alone for ten days straight now, fourteen if you didn’t count Ann Marie’s last visit, which had lasted only two hours. Alice had asked her if she wanted to go somewhere for lunch, but Ann Marie said she had a lot to get back to at home, which Alice assumed was code for “I’m still angry.”

  The silence in the house did not bother her one bit. She felt rather exhausted from the events of the summer as it was, and when Clare had called to say that Ryan was in rehearsals for a play the first three weeks of August, so they wouldn’t be coming up until the twenty-first, Alice had felt almost relieved. Her world grew small again, as it had been before the Kelleher women descended on the place with all their drama and their worries and their strife.

  Now she watched as Papa Bunny ran behind her rhododendron bushes and out of sight, back home to his family.

  “Toodle-oo,” she said out loud, and she felt good for having made amends.

  She looked at the bottle of cabernet on the side table, registering that it was now half full.

  Aha. She had actually thought those words: half full. That meant she was an optimist, didn’t it? Alice smiled. Daniel would have gotten a kick out of that.

  “How do you like that?” she said. “You always said I failed to look on the bright side, but I think I just proved you wrong.”

  She poured herself a bit more wine.

  Right after he died, she had talked to her husband out loud all the time, letting him know what the children were up to, how she was passing her days. At a certain point she had stopped, but lately she found herself doing it again. She had even told him how much she resented having Maisy underfoot, adding, “I only tell you this because I know you can’t respond and scold me for being so awful.”

  Now she said, “I haven’t heard from Patrick and Ann Marie for three days. The nerve of them. They didn’t get their way, so now they’re punishing me. Is that any way to treat your mother?”

  She refused to feel bad about the house, no matter what they did or said. Really, she hadn’t expected them to get so worked up about it. Patrick and Ann Marie were the most noticeably upset, but even Clare had called her in tears when she heard the news. Alice told them all that there was nothing she could do about it now. St. Michael’s was counting on the money.

  Ann Marie had asked how she could do this to them, how she could just go ahead and give their summerhouses to the Church, as if the Church were nothing. The Church was the only constant companion of Alice’s life, the only thing that made sense, always.

  She sipped her wine. Out in the distance, heat lightning flashed across the sky. Alice thought a little rain would help cool the air down, but the rain didn’t come.

  The next day was Sunday the fifteenth, the Feast of the Assumption. Alice was up early to get to the Legion of Mary’s celebration. It was her job to bring the cinnamon rolls, and she had made a special trip to a bakery in Wells.

  She wore a pale violet pantsuit that she had never worn before, and she took special care with her hair and her eye makeup. In a departure from their usual schedule, they were meeting before Mass to honor the Virgin Mother’s assumption into Heaven and to prepare for their role in the offering.

  As she walked to the car, Alice looked out over the ocean and remembered how the Catholic mothers of her generation—her own, and Daniel’s, and Rita’s, and everyone’s—believed there was a blessing in the water on the fifteenth of August that would help any struggling young woman to get pregnant. Early on in her marriage, back when she was having all that trouble, Alice herself had been forced to head to the shores of Nantasket Beach. Before dipping in, she stood back for a moment to behold dozens of pretty young war brides with the same miracle in mind, immersing themselves in the cold New England sea with all the faith and determination of the saints.

  That was a year before Kathleen came along. Daniel had called her their greatest blessing the morning she was born.

  Alice got into the car and headed toward St. Michael’s. The Irish Hit Parade was on the radio, Daniel’s favorite. She left it on, even turning up the volume a bit.
Five minutes later, she pulled into the parking lot and climbed up the front steps. The door was unlocked, and as she opened it, the smell of incense filled her lungs. She stepped inside. The church was vacant, and looked even grander than usual for that. There was still half an hour until her meeting began, and an hour before Mass.

  She chose her usual pew and knelt down on the red velvet kneeler. She found her rosary in her purse, and then looked up at the stained-glass window behind the altar, a depiction of Jesus on the cross.

  Troubling the glass beads between her fingers, Alice prayed for Maggie and Ann Marie, and for all the members of her family, the living and the dead. She prayed for her own soul, and for forgiveness for the things she could never undo. Over and over, she said the words that she had learned so long ago, words that had brought her comfort when nothing else could.

  When she was finished and came to the final bead, she started again from the beginning. She prayed until she heard footsteps behind her, coming slowly down the aisle, a familiar voice softly calling out her name: “Alice? Alice. It’s time.”

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to my fabulous editor, Jenny Jackson, and my incredible agent, Brettne Bloom, for their contributions to this book.

  A million thank-you’s to Hilary Black, Lauren Semino, and Eugene and Joyce Sullivan for reading the manuscript and providing such vital feedback. And to Laura Smith and Joshua Friedman for reading and editing everything else.

  I am grateful to everyone at Knopf, Vintage, and Kneerim and Williams, especially Andrea Robinson, Jill Kneerim, Hope Denekamp, Leslie Kaufmann, Nicholas Latimer, Russell Perreault, Sara Eagle, Kate Runde, and Abby Weintraub.

  The archives of The Boston Globe provided indispensible information about the Cocoanut Grove fire. A visit with the Held-Semino family gave me inspiration for the cottage, and Larry Ravelson gave me access to the very helpful book Ogunquit By-the-Sea by John Bardwell. Dorothy Joyce, M. Patricia Gallagher, and Lawrence and Florence Sitterle were fantastic sources of wisdom when it came to World War II and the 1940s. And Beth Mahon, Noreen Kearney, and Caitlain McCarthy were kind enough to share their recollections of growing up Irish Catholic in Massachusetts.

  Thank you to those who so generously offered me inspiring places to write: Jane Callanan, Amanda Millner-Fairbanks, Sudhir Venkatesh, Karla Adam, and Bennet Morris. You welcomed me into your lovely homes and said not a word when I accidentally killed your houseplants.

  To the many members of my family, who mean the world to me—thank you Mom, Dad, Caroline, Trish, Dot, Jon, Jane, Mark, Mark Jr., Nancy, Michael, Pauline, Michael Jr., Richie, Tracie, Eugene, the Troys, the Joyces, the Gallaghers, the Radfords, and all the rest.

  Finally, thank you Kevin Johannesen, for bringing so much love, laughter, support, and clean laundry into my life. I will never know how I got so lucky.

  ABOUT THIS READING GROUP GUIDE

  The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Maine, J. Courtney Sullivan’s engrossing and entertaining new novel. If you’re not a member of a book club, consider starting one up with your mother or your daughter—Maine is a perfect family read.

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Three generations of women converge on the family beach house in this wickedly funny, emotionally resonant story of love and dysfunction from the author of the best-selling debut novel Commencement (“One of this year’s most inviting summer novels” —The New York Times).

  The Kelleher family has been coming to Maine for sixty years. Their beachfront cottage, won on a barroom bet after the war, is a place where children run in packs, showers are taken outdoors, and threadbare sweaters are shared on chilly nights. It is also a place where cocktail hour follows morning mass, nosy grandchildren snoop in drawers, and ancient grudges simmer below the surface. As Maggie, Kathleen, and Anne Marie descend on Alice and the cottage, each woman brings her own baggage—a secret pregnancy, a terrible crush, and a deeply held resentment for misdeeds of the past.

  By turns uproarious and achingly sad, Maine unveils the sibling rivalry, alcoholism, social climbing, and Catholic guilt at the center of one family, along with the abiding, often irrational love that keeps them coming back every summer to the family house, and to one another.

  QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

  1. The epigraph pairs two quotes; the first is from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poem Aurora Leigh: “Alas, a mother never is afraid, / Of speaking angrily to any child, / Since love, she knows, is justified of love.” The second is from a letter written by F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Just do everything we didn’t do and you will be perfectly safe.” Why did the author put these quotes together? Which characters do you think they refer to?

  2. If you had to choose one word to describe the overriding theme of Maine, what would it be?

  3. Which of the women in the novel would you say is a good mother, and why? Who resents motherhood the most?

  4. Discuss how each of the four main characters—Alice, Kathleen, Maggie, and Ann Marie—approaches religion. Who seems to have the most comfortable relationship with God?

  5. What was Alice’s motivation for changing her will? Why did she wait so long to tell her family?

  6. Speaking of secrets, many of the characters in the novel keep substantial secrets for one reason or another. Whose is the most damaging?

  7. What role does alcohol—and alcoholism—play in the novel? How do the characters use alcohol (or abstain from it)?

  8. “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 has never met a family so tied up in their own mythology.” (this page) What is the mythology of the Kelleher family? Who is helped the most by it? And harmed the most?

  9. What does Ann Marie’s obsession with dollhouses tell us about her character?

  10. After Daniel’s funeral, Alice says to Kathleen, “You killed him, and now you want me dead too, is that it?” (this page) Why does she lash out like this?

  11. Why did Daniel’s death have such an impact on the family?

  12. What did you think of the revelation about Mary’s death? Was Alice right to blame herself?

  13. On this page, Maggie says to Kathleen, “I actually want this baby. I don’t feel it’s a mistake the way you did with us.” Why does Maggie feel this way about her mother? Do you agree with her assessment?

  14. And on this page, Kathleen says to Alice, “News flash, Mom, you really weren’t that talented. None of us stopped you from becoming anything. That was a stupid childish dream like everyone else has.” How does this relate to Maggie’s earlier outburst? How does the notion of sacrifice play into each woman’s story about herself?

  15. How did Ann Marie misread Steve so completely? And why does Kathleen’s witnessing the event change her attitude towards Ann Marie? Why do you think Kathleen reacted the way she did?

  16. What kind of mother do you think Maggie will be? Who will she take after most: Alice, Kathleen, or Ann Marie?

  17. Discuss the last lines of the book: “She prayed until she heard footsteps behind her, coming slowly down the aisle, a familiar voice softly calling out her name: ‘Alice? Alice. It’s time.’ ” Is this Father Donnelly, Daniel, or someone else?

  18. Which of these women would you like to spend more time with? Are there any you’d never want to see again?

  SUGGESTED READING

  Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine by Ann Hood; A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve; Home Safe by Elizabeth Berg; Summer People by Elin Hilderbrand; The Beans of Egypt, Maine by Carolyn Chute.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of the New York Times best-selling novel, Commencement. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, New York, Elle, Glamour, Allure, and Men’s Vogue, among others. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  />   J. Courtney Sullivan, Maine