Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [126]
They got out of the car and joined the pathetic mob, looking on as if at a bunch of Hollywood stars. There they were—the real live artists, men and women dressed as pirates and fairies and oversize babies, laughing gaily, soaking in the night, resting in Maine for a spell before going back out into the wide wide world. And there was Alice, with her swollen belly and her two children in bed down the road, waiting with their ears perked up for her to return home.
In the early sixties, they dredged the riverbed in Perkins Cove to allow bigger boats to come through. The dredging brought up gold-rich alluvial gravel, causing a small gold rush in Ogunquit that year. By the time the expansion was done, some of the fishermen’s cottages had been torn down, and a big tar parking lot went up smack in the middle of the Cove. The artists’ colony disbanded then, and though everyone else said it was a pity, Alice was happy enough to see them go.
Maggie
Rhiannon left before seven the next morning.
“I hope I didn’t make the Gabe situation worse,” she whispered to Maggie, who was still lying in bed.
“No, it’s good that you told me,” Maggie lied. She didn’t get up and walk Rhiannon out. She knew she ought to, but she was still feeling injured by what Rhiannon had told her the night before.
Maggie hadn’t slept much. She kept thinking that she was going to be a single mother, the young woman in the doctor’s waiting room with a swollen belly and no wedding ring. Could she afford it? Would Gabe pay child support? Maybe his dad would write her a check for a million dollars in exchange for her going away forever. That would be fine by Maggie. Even scarier than the thought of doing this alone was the thought of some custody split with Gabe, not knowing what he was telling their child.
Note to self: Next time, don’t procreate with an asshole. Perhaps get married first.
He hadn’t responded to her e-mail. It had only been eight hours and she had specifically told him to leave her alone, but still. An hour ago, she had thought of getting up and logging into his e-mail account to see if he’d read it. If not, maybe she should delete the message. Then she decided that that would be going too far—she should not lower herself to that level. And then she did it anyway, but the bastard had changed his password. She knew it was crazy of her to feel this way, but she was actually kind of offended by that.
Maggie didn’t want to return to Brooklyn, afraid to reenter her real life without Gabe in it. Would she stay there? Move to a crappy but cheap rental apartment in the suburbs somewhere?
By the time late morning rolled around, she wanted to spend several hours lying in a ball on the hardwood floor. But she had to get up and puke anyway, so she dragged herself into the shower afterward to ward off the fear that had gripped her during the night.
Maggie remembered standing in that yellow plastic stall with her mother when she was four or five, the two of them peeling off their bathing suits, sand slipping from their bodies and gathering around the drain. They giggled as Kathleen mashed shampoo into Maggie’s scalp.
She missed her mother.
Now she let the water fall warm over her shoulders, and rubbed her palm gently across her stomach. Beneath all the fear there was something unexpected and beautiful, like a crocus bud peeping out of the snow in early spring. She was going to be a mother. Her life was about to change.
She stepped out of the shower and glanced in the bathroom mirror. The skin around her eyes was gray and lined. She really ought to apply some concealer, but she couldn’t be bothered. She decided not to blow-dry, either—she was at the beach and her life was falling apart. Who did she have to impress? She toweled off and slid into a pair of jeans, taking note of the dresses she had pulled from Gabe’s closet a few days earlier. Life could change so quickly; you learned that as you aged. Yet it never ceased to surprise her.
Maggie glanced at the pink alarm clock on the nightstand.