Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [141]
She made three more trips. She hoped none of the neighbors could see her there, wearing her nightgown, lugging her sewing machine and glue gun and scrap basket and tiny cans of paint and brushes across the lawn, bathed in moonlight, the dewy grass cool beneath her feet.
By the time she woke the next morning, Steve had written back: Hey, congrats! You’re a wonder. This calls for a celebratory drink. Say, July 1?
Ten days from now. The day he was coming to Maine with his wife. It wasn’t the most romantic thing he could have said, but then she had written him on his work account. And now a conversation had begun.
You’re a wonder. That was something.
She told herself not to respond, then immediately did so anyway: Really looking forward to it! Heading up to Maine today to help my mother-in-law for the next couple of weeks.
Though she had a lot to do before she left, Ann Marie sat in front of the computer for a long while to see if he might volley a short response her way. She cursed herself for not asking him a question. She had made it seem like there was no need to write back and so he didn’t.
Now she’d just have to be patient, and focus on entertaining Alice, tidying up the cottage, and building her dollhouse. That was all the next two weeks required.
On the drive to Maine, she listened to the oldies station with the windows rolled down. Occasionally, she stretched her left hand out the window, feeling the air fly through her fingers. It was hard for her to let go—to leave her mother and husband and grandkids behind. But Alice was the one who needed her most right now. Alice didn’t have anyone else.
The thought of ending up like Alice or like her own mother, or most old women, terrified Ann Marie. They lived for years after their husbands died. Decades in some cases. She could not imagine living on after Pat. She had never been good at being alone.
So many years spent in the company of children made silence seem unnatural, and when she was driving, Ann Marie always imagined what they might say were they there. (Little Daniel: “Change the station!” Fiona: “Turn around! I think I saw a kitten back there!” Inevitably, it would be a squirrel.)
As she drove along 95, the seat belt digging into her stomach, Ann Marie told herself not to look down. This was one of her rules for self-preservation. She still looked okay in a tennis dress. But the sight of her belly in a seated position, highlighted by a taut piece of fabric, could only cause her pain.
She had last seen her trainer on Saturday evening. When Raul got her on those filthy Nautilus machines three times a week, she’d sweat and huff and puff, and swear that her body was transforming. But then she’d catch a glimpse of her belly and wonder if the workouts even mattered.
Ann Marie straightened up in her seat.
Until three years ago, she had been lucky with her figure. It always bounced back after a pregnancy, and she hadn’t inherited her mother’s tendency to pack on the pounds as she aged. But then came menopause. She and her sister Tricia were two years apart, but they started at the same time. It was nice to have someone to compare notes with, though Ann Marie thought Tricia treated the whole experience in a rather unseemly way. She went on an online message board full of menopausal women and chatted about symptoms and hormones and home remedies all day. She bought the two of them tickets to something called Menopause the Musical. Ann Marie had gone along to be a good sport. The show was funny enough, but she felt as though she ought to be wearing a sign around her neck that said I’M DRIED UP!
Then again, her body had done a good enough job of announcing that to the world already. A few times a week that year, Ann Marie had hot flashes. She might be standing at the register in the drugstore, or kneeling in a church pew beside her husband, and all of a sudden her upper body would feel flushed with intense heat and her face would start to sweat. It was mortifying. Her hair thinned slightly. She found clumps of it in the car and on the bathroom floor.