Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [130]
“Sainthood aside, it’s true,” he said. “I submitted two or three stories to The New Yorker and I got these form letters back. They really bummed me out. I knew The New Yorker was a long shot, but all my hard work, and then a form letter? I didn’t write again for months. And I sure as heck never submitted anything.”
“Ah yes, I’m very familiar with the form letters,” Maggie said.
“I could picture myself going crazy, gluing them all over the walls of the rectory, scaring the other priests.”
“I once considered decoupaging a table with mine.”
He laughed, a real, deep belly laugh. His smile was warm. There was something almost old-fashioned about his looks. Or maybe classic was a better word.
Perhaps she’d underestimated him. He seemed friendly and genuine, though she reminded herself that now would be an especially inconvenient time to fall in love with a Catholic priest.
“You write such lovely sermons, though,” Alice said.
“Yes, and not a one has ever been called derivative or stale or not quite plumped up.”
Maggie grimaced. “They said all that, huh?”
“Yup. That was the only non–form letter I got.”
“Never mind those ninnies. What did Gabe do is what I want to know,” Alice said, dragging out the words. She was a champion subject changer and apparently she was bored.
“He made promises he couldn’t keep,” Maggie said.
“He wouldn’t give you a ring!” Alice said proudly, like she had just guessed the correct answer in Double Jeopardy.
“Ha, no,” Maggie said. And though it was by all means the wrong crowd for talk of cohabitation, she continued, “We were supposed to move in together and at the last minute he changed his mind.”
Alice’s face crumpled. She looked genuinely injured. “That little—,” she started, then, looking over at the priest and perhaps deciding to tone down her language, “What a rat.”
“I thought you were going to say we shouldn’t be living together before marriage anyway,” Maggie said.
“Oh, pish posh,” Alice said. “I think it’s essential! You have to get to know a person. And that city is so expensive, why not have a roommate? As long as you’d be sleeping in different bedrooms.”
Had she meant that last part as a joke? Maggie couldn’t be sure.
“A lot of girls in my generation married a man just because he was going off to war,” Alice said. “They hardly knew those fellas to begin with, let alone what they became once they returned. And most of us went straight from our parents’ houses to our husbands’. We never got the chance to live alone until we were decrepit old ladies. Young people are smarter now. Although I think you all get love backward.”
“How so?” Maggie asked.
“You all seem to think that you should marry someone when you feel this intense emotion, which you call love. And then you expect that the love will fade over time, as life gets harder. When what you should do is find yourself a nice enough fellow and let real love develop over years and births and deaths and so on.”
Maggie looked over at Father Donnelly.
“Pretty impressive, isn’t she?” he said, giving Alice’s arm a friendly squeeze. “I keep telling her she should get a TV talk show.”
“Is that what you did, Grandma?” Maggie asked, holding her breath, remembering Alice’s closed-offness at dinner with Rhiannon the night before.
Alice looked thoughtful. “I suppose so, yes, to some extent.” That was all she could give, but that was enough. She switched the topic then, to a news item she had read about the inventor of Silly Putty.
Maggie sat back and listened, feeling more content than she had in weeks. This was exactly what she had come for, one of those Alice interactions that was actually fun, that made her feel welcome. She considered staying longer—the cottage would sit empty for the rest of June otherwise. And perhaps there would be more lunches like this, and time to write and to plan. Her child could grow in the salty sea air, under a roof where generations before had spent their happiest summers.
She looked out over the water.