Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [139]
Her father had been born in that apartment, back when the rent was only thirty dollars a month. He had never lived anywhere else in his life.
After she left, the drive through the old neighborhood warmed her with its familiarity, but it embarrassed her too. The three-story wood houses looked as worn as they had during her youth. She had often brought her children here, and they had loved being so close to the beach, even though some of the rougher types made them nervous. They weren’t built for this environment. Out in front of the L Street Bathhouse, a group of old Irishmen in their scally caps stood around talking and laughing. Each year on New Year’s Day, they plunged into the frigid harbor, and everyone in the neighborhood came down to cheer them on. Ann Marie gave them a wave now, happy to be heading home.
All day she had been designing the new house—the grand prize winner—in her head. She thought it ought to be brick. She had seen some beautiful brick houses at the fair, though they were rare. She’d wire it for electricity herself, as she had learned. She would make sheets and facecloths from the best she had in the hall closet, the high-thread-count linens she reserved for guests. The kitchen should be all white. In the living room, she envisioned a stately family portrait over a fireplace, with maybe a couple of hunting dogs in the foreground. What if she commissioned a local Boston artist to paint it? That had to be worth a few extra points.
She felt so energized that she decided to launder all the bath towels in the house while she made Pat two chicken and broccoli casseroles, a roast beef, mac and cheese, and a ziti bake.
Late that afternoon, she showered for dinner. Afterward, wearing just her terry-cloth robe, Ann Marie decided to have a celebratory glass of wine. She poured until the golden liquid was almost at the rim of the glass. She took a big sip.
She went into the office and sat at the computer. At last. Pat wouldn’t be home for a couple more hours. It was finally her time. She began making her purchases, AmEx in hand. Pat might moan a bit about the bill, but she would simply remind him that they were getting a free trip out of this, so really they were saving money in the long run.
A free trip. She felt terribly proud.
Ann Marie would have to have all the items express mailed to Briarwood Road, since that’s where she would be for the next month. It wasn’t ideal. She’d either have to finish building the house there and have it shipped from Cape Neddick (did she trust the sleepy little UPS Store in York, a few miles from the cottage?) or transport everything back home to Newton in the middle of July. All her tools were here. But there was always a silver lining.
Ann Marie pictured herself on the screen porch of the cottage alone, opening each box, pulling out her treasures. She’d have hours to work in peace these next ten days before Pat and the Brewers arrived in Maine. That was something.
She focused on her shopping.
The house she had had her eye on forever was a three-story Newport brick, with shingles and white trim and a widow’s walk. It had eleven rooms, a floor-to-ceiling height of ten inches, sixteen windows (two of them working bay windows complete with window seats), and a detailed staircase with a molded banister.
The house cost more than a thousand dollars. She thought it was worth it.
She bought gray shingle dye and a little doghouse and border plants for the yard, and then she added an old-fashioned push mower and a rake. She bought a Victorian hat vanity for a hundred dollars. (She had never even heard of a hat vanity before, but now she realized she most definitely needed one.) She bought a love seat and a dining table and a tiny iron and even an electric mixer, no bigger than a silver dollar.
When she looked at the clock on her computer screen, she was shocked to see that an hour had passed. She went to the kitchen for more wine, then came right back into the office.
She chose fabric for the window treatments, but decided to go down to the store in the morning and pick it