Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [169]
All they could see was a pair of legs in brown shorts and hiked-up socks. The rest of him was obscured by an enormous cardboard box. His arms stretched out as far as they would reach.
“A delivery for Ann Marie Kelleher,” he said from behind the box.
Ann Marie scurried toward him, opening the porch door.
“Oh, thank you! Please put it down right here. Gently, please!”
Kathleen rolled her eyes.
Ann Marie signed a piece of paper he held forth, attached to a clipboard.
“Have a nice day, ladies,” he said, and was gone.
The three of them stood there for a moment, staring at the box.
“Is it a pony?” Kathleen asked.
“It’s my dollhouse,” Ann Marie said. She could not hide her joy, even if she wanted to. Maggie thought it was sweet. Her mother was into worms, for God’s sake; couldn’t she understand what it meant to have a silly passion?
“I’ll just run to the kitchen to get a knife,” Ann Marie continued, and then disappeared into the cottage.
“Oh God,” Kathleen said. “A knife? I hope she’s not planning to injure herself, having just realized how pathetic it is to be a grown woman with a dollhouse.”
“Mom—”
“What?”
Ann Marie returned and sliced through the thick brown packing tape before pulling back the box flaps. They all gazed inside, where a miniature brick house was nestled in a sea of green foam peanuts. Maggie held the box down as her aunt slid the house out and rested it on the floor.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” Ann Marie said. “It’s even prettier than the picture.”
It was rather lovely, the kind of thing that could stoke your imagination and make you believe that you belonged on an English hillside somewhere, raising sheep and reading poetry and permanently deleting your e-mail account. Maybe Maggie would get into dollhouses too after the baby came. She and Ann Marie could open a shop in Brooklyn. After all, it was every New Yorker’s dream to own a home and most of them never would—perhaps this was the next best thing.
“I have to take a photo to send to Patty!” Ann Marie said. “My camera’s in the car.”
When she left to retrieve it, Kathleen leaned inquisitively over the dollhouse, tipping her mug until a thin stream of clear yellow tea poured onto the roof.
“Whoops,” she said in a singsongy voice.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Maggie asked. She quickly wiped up the spill with the bottom of her T-shirt.
“Oh, relax, it’s herbal. It won’t stain.”
Maggie shook her head.
“Why are you so mad at me?” Kathleen asked. “Look, I’m sorry for getting us off on the wrong foot yesterday. It’s just that I was worried about you for all those days and I couldn’t get through. As soon as we were alone together, I just went for it.”
There was really no sense in Kathleen apologizing, since she would only do the same thing again and again. There was an elasticity to their bond. Its limits were often stretched beyond comfort, but it always returned, unbroken.
I came here to stop you from making a huge mistake. That’s how she had put it, and the words had crushed Maggie. She was annoyed at herself over the fact that she still wanted to please her mother so much. This had only gotten harder as she became an adult with a totally different set of values from Kathleen’s.
“It’s fine,” Maggie said.
“Why don’t we get away from this toxic environment? We could go to Boston and check into a hotel and have a mother-daughter getaway,” Kathleen said.
“Nah. I need to get some work done. I’m officially back on the clock with Till Death.”
“Oh,” Kathleen said, clearly hurt.
“Not to mention, I have to write an online dating profile for a fairly unattractive woman with two toy poodles, whose interests include manicures, Pilates, and the Bee Gees. And she wants me to work in the fact that she has problems around jealousy.”
She had said it to make Kathleen smile, but her mother said flatly, “Sounds like a real catch.”
“Obviously I need to save my pennies,” Maggie said.
“Right. Unless you take me up on my offer and come to the farm.”
Maggie ignored the comment. “I think I’ll go next door to