Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [134]
At night, Maggie would grow terrified without her father there. Unlike at home, there were no streetlights to soften the darkness from outside. If you looked out the window, all you could see was a meddlesome sheet of black. Giant white moths flapped against the lamps, somehow sneaking into the house, though she tried to plug up every crack. She could swear she heard footsteps in the loft overhead.
The cottage was freezing after dark. Even wearing long johns under piles of blankets, it was impossible to get warm. In the bedroom where Maggie and Kathleen slept—the one where her grandparents slept in the summertime—her grandmother had placed an Infant of Prague statue on the dresser. The two-foot Jesus stood straight, covered in an elaborate embroidered robe and a golden crown. In the daylight, Maggie thought the statue was funny: she pretended he was the king of whatever town her Barbies lived in. But after dark, he took on a sinister look, and she turned his face to the wall.
In the middle of the night she’d wake to find herself alone. She would creep from her spot in bed and into the living room, where her mother sat at the big oak table with papers everywhere and a bottle of red wine on the floor by her chair.
“Are you okay, Mommy?” Maggie would say. Or “Do you want to talk?”
Her mother would tell her everything: that they were broke, that Maggie’s father was a lowlife, and that he’d been having an affair for a year, an affair that her uncle Patrick had known all about and helped to cover up.
“My own brother,” Kathleen said. “Can you believe that?”
“I can’t believe it,” Maggie said, wrapping her hands in the long sleeves of her nightgown, wishing they could all go home again.
“And even my mother is against me—no surprise there,” Kathleen went on.
“Why is Grandma against you?” Maggie said.
“She thinks I’m not trying hard enough in my marriage,” her mother said, incredulous. “She thinks I’ll go to Hell for refusing to let myself be walked on for fifty years. What kind of example would I be setting for you if I stayed? I’d sooner have us live on the street.”
Maggie wanted to cry. She had heard about Hell in CCD, and her grandparents had spoken of a place called Limbo, where unbaptized babies floated around for eternity on tiny wings, unable to ever see their families again. She didn’t want her mother in Hell. She didn’t want her father to be with someone else. She didn’t want to have to live on the street. She told herself to act like a grown-up. She walked to where her mother sat and threw her arms around her, burying her face in Kathleen’s thick sweater.
“Oh, hey, it’s okay,” Kathleen said. “We’ve got each other, kiddo. And we’ve got Grandpa. He’ll take care of us, always.”
The following autumn, the situation improved. Her father started paying child support, and they were able to move into a small house in Braintree. Her mother joined AA. She apologized to Maggie for asking too much of her, for treating her like an adult when she was only a child.
“You didn’t treat me like an adult,” Maggie said, sensing that this was what Kathleen wanted to hear.
“I did,” her mother said. “Even though you’re my little petunia, I think of you as a friend. But I should have known better than to drink like that around you. I still remember how scary it was when my mom used to drink when I was a kid.”
“When did she stop?” Maggie asked.
“When I was eleven,” her mother said. “About your age. My father threatened to leave her if she didn’t sober up.”
“Why?” Maggie asked.
“She was nasty,” Kathleen said. “If I cried because I’d had a bad dream, she’d shake me really hard and tell me to get to sleep, or else goblins would come and get me. One time she drove me and your auntie Clare and uncle