Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [125]
She stacked the pictures into a pile and tossed them in a burlap sack for the scrap drive at Town Hall. She threw the rest of the paints in the rubbish and told herself to stop being self-indulgent. She went to confession. She joined the St. Agnes Legion of Mary. She ended her visits to the museum, and took to eating lunch alone at her desk.
When the war ended and Daniel returned from overseas for good, Alice tried to be a model wife: sunny and cheerful and domestic, as she imagined Mary would have been. She managed fine in the kitchen and she took on more and more responsibilities at the church, but she could never quite shake her moods.
On his first Saturday back, as she did the ironing in the living room, listening to the same radio melodrama she had once teased her mother for loving, Daniel sat in an armchair reading the newspaper.
“This is swell,” he said. “This is what I’ve been imagining all these months away from you.”
She had wanted him home, but now tears sprang to her eyes. She quickly pushed them away. She thought of all she had lost.
“Oh gosh, did I say something wrong?” Daniel asked.
“No. I’m sorry. I’m feeling a bit sad today, that’s all.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” he said, getting to his feet, coming toward her and wrapping her in his arms. “Your sister, the pregnancies. It’s all just going to take time. And I’m sure it’s been made all the harder by the fact that your husband was hardly ever here. But the war is over, and it’ll get better now, you’ll see.”
“I know,” she said. It seemed like the easiest thing to say.
Early in their marriage, Daniel’s idea of a big night out was going to a Red Sox game with his brothers and their boring wives, or taking the children on a long car trip, even though Kathleen whined and Clare always got nauseous.
Not that he didn’t try; he did. But even that often caused Alice pain. They might go dancing or to a party, and she would have a wonderful time for a few hours. But afterward she only felt guilty that her sister would never again know such a night.
In Maine one evening when she was eight months pregnant with Patrick, Daniel took her out to dinner while his sister watched the girls back at the cottage. Afterward, he told her he had a surprise, and they drove out to the Cliff Country Club, where an enormous crowd had gathered in the parking lot.
“What on earth is this?” she asked.
“It’s the Artists’ Ball,” he said with a big smile. “Mort and Ruby told me about it. They have it to raise tuition for poor students in the art school. It’s supposed to be a real gas.”
Daniel remembered what she had told him about her dream of becoming an artist, and he mentioned it an embarrassing amount, to strangers and co-workers and friends. He tried every summer to get her to take a class in the Perkins Cove school.
“A ball?” Alice said. “I’m not dressed for that.”
“No, no. It’s a costume party,” he said. “Besides, we don’t go in, we just watch the artists on parade. Apparently they do it every year. I’ve never heard of it before, have you?”
She said no, though in fact she had seen the signs around town and heard that it was near impossible for summer people to get in. She remembered from the posters that tickets cost two dollars and forty cents apiece. Herb Pomeroy’s sextet would perform and cocktails would be served. It sounded like heaven.
“I want to go home,” she said. “I don’t feel well.”
“Honey!” he said. “I