Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [155]
It was Maggie who finally brought it up. “So, I guess we should talk about—” She paused, looking like an embarrassed adolescent, and then pointed to her stomach. “This?”
Kathleen wanted to be composed, but she could feel the words pushing to get out of her, a flood of anger behind them. Even as she told herself not to, she blurted: “What the hell were you thinking, e-mailing me? You’re pregnant and you send me a goddamn e-mail?”
Maggie looked startled. “That’s what you came here to say?”
“I came here to stop you from making a huge mistake.”
Maggie shook her head. “Look, I know that’s how you see Chris and me, but we’re not in agreement on this one, okay? I actually want this baby. I don’t feel it’s a mistake the way you did with us.”
Kathleen felt like her daughter had just harpooned her with a sharp stick, straight through the heart.
“That’s not true, Maggie,” she said. “You were very much wanted.”
God, she sounded like a robot. You were very much wanted? How warm and fuzzy, Kathleen; why not go ahead and embroider that sentiment on a sampler?
She tried again. “I can’t picture for a second what my life would have been like without you, Maggie, you know that. And I don’t want to. But you can’t imagine how hard it is, trying to provide for a child all on your own.”
“We were provided for,” Maggie said hotly.
“I meant provided as in putting you to bed each night and giving you your bath before dinner and cooking that dinner and waking you up for school on snowy days when school was the last place you wanted to go. I meant being a single parent. And yes, one of the ways I struggled was financially. I never wanted that for you.”
“You struggled because you always thought you were too good for motherhood in the first place,” Maggie said.
Kathleen blinked. Jesus, that was just the sort of thing she might have said to Alice. Had she really gone so far out of her way to do the dead opposite of everything her mother had done, only to be perceived as the exact same sort of woman?
“How could this even happen?” she demanded. “Aren’t you on the Pill?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Please don’t tell me you did this intentionally.”
“You’re the one who’s always saying the universe works in mysterious ways.”
Kathleen raised an eyebrow.
“I have it under control, okay?” Maggie said. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was just letting you know.”
“Well, thanks so much for that. And I suppose Gabe is on board, all lined up to be a daddy? I suppose that’s under control too.”
Maggie moaned. “Shut up, Mom!”
“Shut up? I didn’t come here to be talked to like that.”
“No one asked you to come.”
They had never spoken to each other this way, not even when Maggie was a teenager.
“I think hanging out with Alice is rubbing off on you,” Kathleen said, trying to make a joke. Why was she being so mean? She had come here to help.
Maggie gave her a faint smile.
“You have to understand how difficult this is for me,” Kathleen said. “I want to be a grandmother someday, but not now.”
That part was a lie. She absolutely did not want to be a grandmother, ever.
Maggie’s face grew stormy. “It’s not about you. God, you’d think you were the one who was pregnant.”
Kathleen sighed. “Nothing’s coming out the way I want it to. Let’s start over. I want you to come live with Arlo and me. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think this will work.”
“No,” Maggie said with a laugh.
Kathleen was surprised. She had thought Maggie would be relieved by the idea.
“Well, wait a second. Hear me out.”
“No offense, but your home is not exactly a safe place for a baby. I’d have to have a tiny pink or blue hazmat suit made.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m staying in New York,” Maggie said.
“In case Gabe decides he wants to play house.”
“No!” Maggie said. “But thank you for giving me so much credit. I’m pregnant, okay? That doesn’t automatically make me an idiot. I’m the same person I was before.”
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