Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [160]
Maggie gave her a look, which Kathleen knew meant that she was at least partly to blame. Her daughter still wanted to be a Kelleher. Why?
She thought of her annual pre-Thanksgiving dinner in California. She held the party on the Tuesday before the holiday, for all her AA friends, and she cooked up a feast—two or three big turkeys, mashed potatoes, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, green beans. She bought pies at Kozlowski Farms, and everyone else brought a dish of their own. Maggie had come for the party a few times. They always stayed up telling stories and laughing all night. No one ever said a harsh word. For Kathleen, it was the highlight of the holiday season. Two days later, she’d be sitting in Ann Marie’s living room, surrounded by her relatives, and she’d feel alien there, digging her fingernails into the arm of the sofa, willing herself back to that warm, friendly California house, full of her chosen family members.
The next morning, Kathleen woke early and went outside, barefoot, just as they had always done when they were young. She took note of Alice’s garden, which she had to admit looked damn good. She would have to tell Arlo about it the next time they talked.
It was raining lightly, and she welcomed the rain, walking down to the beach with her face upturned.
She had forgotten that you experienced weather differently here. Rain and clouds were no longer an annoying distraction, but a welcome change in the atmosphere—a chance to curl up with a book and eat a grilled cheese sandwich by the window, and not get out of your pajamas all afternoon. Dampness hung in the air and clung to every surface. The waves lashed at the shoreline, getting frothy white and taller than any man, and everyone would go down to the beach and stand in awe as drops of water fell against their shoulders and the fog rolled in. Umbrellas seemed absurd.
Arlo would love this place. She wondered if it was sheer stubbornness that had made her never once even consider coming back.
In many ways, the past decade had been the happiest of her life, even though ten years earlier, she had lost her father and thought that she could not go on. But before long, she had met Arlo. Falling in love couldn’t make up for what had happened; nothing could. But Arlo was her protector and her confidant, the same way Daniel had been. Sometimes she looked into Arlo’s eyes and would swear she saw something of her father there. She wanted the same kind of love for Maggie.
After meeting Arlo, Kathleen had felt quite certain that her bad marriage and subsequent romantic disappointments had all led her to him. They were her blessings, disguised as burdens. Suppose she had stayed with Paul Doyle. By now, she’d be living on the south shore of Boston with a pickled liver, bickering daily, and probably up to two hundred pounds.
When Paul had an affair all those years ago, she had asked her father whether he thought Paul might somehow transform into a good husband.
“In my experience,” he had said, “people can change, but most people don’t.”
He was right about Paul. But Kathleen had changed. At the age of thirty-nine, she reinvented herself, leaving a bad marriage, getting sober, finding meaningful work. She did it again at forty-nine when she met Arlo. She was fifty-eight now, so who knew what she’d do next? This was a life lesson she wished she had taught Maggie sooner—if you didn’t like yourself, you could just become someone else. Of course, that wasn’t exactly so when you had young children.
She wished Alice would understand this, too, but her mother was too far gone and bitter for life lessons. She’d rather just stew in it. She had certainly never had a suitor since Daniel’s death, which in a way made Kathleen feel relieved.
It was strange to ponder, but Kathleen was fairly certain that her parents had actually been in love, right up until the end. At the top of Briarwood Road, her father had carved the initials A.H. into an old pine tree. (Kathleen had once drunkenly told her children that this tribute