Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [129]
Unlike me, you mean, Maggie thought, but she pressed on, reminding herself that in her grandmother’s eyes, Ann Marie and Patrick’s three kids could do no wrong.
“How are Aunt Clare and Uncle Joe?” she asked.
“How should I know?” Alice said. “They never call me. They’ve always kept to themselves, you know, but lately they’ve been worse than ever. Ann Marie told me she’s invited them over twice in the past month, and they haven’t even called her back. So rude!”
Maggie nodded. “Are they coming to Maine this summer?”
“No one tells me a thing,” Alice said grumpily, then, “As far as I know, yes, they’ll be here in August as usual.”
Father Donnelly returned with two miniature paper cups full of tartar sauce.
“Oh, thanks, Father, you’re a doll,” Alice said. She gave him her brightest smile. She always was at her best around good-looking men. Maggie thought of her grandfather: even when he was young, he was never particularly handsome. She had seen old pictures. The women in his family came up thick and freckly. The men were spindly, pale. She wondered why Alice had picked him. Surely someone so vain would have been disappointed by such a plain-looking husband.
“Will you lead us in grace, Father?” Alice asked.
Maggie glanced around at the other patrons in their shorts and sandals and flimsy plastic lobster bibs. Grace? Really?
“I’d be honored,” he said. To Maggie’s horror, he extended his arms. They all joined hands.
Luckily, he spoke fast: “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bountiful hands through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
They dropped hands. He immediately turned to Maggie and said, “So how long will you be visiting?”
She shrugged, glad that was over, at least. “Not sure. A few days, maybe.”
“Is that all?” Alice asked. “I thought it was two weeks.”
“Well, my plans changed, as you know, and I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do.”
“She broke up with her boyfriend,” Alice said happily. “She’s hiding out.”
Maggie laughed, because it was sort of true, and because laughing was really the only alternative to getting pissed off at the comment. Besides, it was nice in a way, to pretend for a moment that the breakup was the worst of her worries.
“I can’t think of a better place for it,” he said. He bit into his lobster roll, leaving a speck of mayo on his bottom lip. To Maggie’s great amazement, Alice reached over and wiped it off.
“Thanks,” he said.
Maggie wished she could stop time then and there, just to be able to call her mother and report on this immediately.
“When do you have to get back to work?” he asked.
“Technically I’m only on vacation these next two weeks, but my boss doesn’t care if we work from home as long as we show our faces in the office, say, once a month.”
Though I do have to be back in New York by July eighth for my next gynecological visit. You see, Father, I’m knocked up.
“That sounds like quite a job,” the priest said.
“It is nice. Though I pretty much always go into the office anyway.”
“What kind of work is it?” he asked.
“Well, it’s a TV show, um, a crime show,” she said. Talking to priests was incredibly weird. Every word you uttered had to be filtered twice through an appropriate censor. You could basically talk safely about Care Bears, Jesus, or the weather, and that was it. “I’m a fiction writer, too, though.”
“Oh, I know; your grandmother’s told me all about it,” he said.
She had? Maggie felt so touched she might cry, and then she was immediately annoyed at herself: Why were her own affections so easily won? It wasn’t really such a grand gesture on Alice’s part.
“I think it’s fascinating you’re a writer,” he said. “I dabble in fiction myself.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I used to write lots of short stories. I still write them once in a while. Though the fact of it is, I’m too thin-skinned for your line of work.”
“Thin-skinned!