Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [188]
“And how do you feel about that?” he asked.
She thought this over. “Sad. Scared. Thankful.”
“She’s going to make it,” he said.
“I know.”
“Remember that there’s a gray area between having her live with us and having her all alone,” he said. “You can go back and forth for a while. Maybe she can bring the baby out here for the summer. We’ll figure it out.”
“Yes.”
“You raised a really smart, tough daughter,” he said. “A girl like you.”
Kathleen thought to herself that Maggie was nothing like she had been at that age. It had taken Kathleen so much longer to find herself, because she had spent twenty years trying to be someone else. Maggie had gotten straight to the good stuff—her chosen career, her city, even the men she dated were exactly what she wanted. You had to give them that, though not much else. Kathleen felt proud, even as she knew it might have less to do with her parenting skills and more to do with the time. Maggie had been born at a point when girls were told they could do anything. God knows that hadn’t been the case for Kathleen, never mind Alice. She imagined the world her granddaughter might inherit, incrementally better than the one they lived in now. The thought of it excited her more than she might have expected.
The previous night, she had grudgingly gone along with Maggie to watch the Fourth of July fireworks in Portsmouth after dinner. Within minutes of their arrival, Maggie had to pee, and so they went to the Porta-Potty lines, and got into what looked like the shortest one. They stood there, barely speaking. At the restaurant, Kathleen had once again pleaded her case—Maggie should move to California and live with her. Once again, Maggie had refused. She had been a bit mean about it, really. Kathleen worried that this was Alice’s influence. She had to remind herself about all the hormones that were coursing through her sweet daughter’s body.
“Your place is a pigsty,” Maggie had said, as Kathleen paid the bill. “I can’t imagine a worse house for a baby to crawl around in.”
“Babies don’t exactly come out of the womb crawling,” Kathleen said.
“Fine. I can’t imagine a worse house for a baby to live in, crawling or not. Gabe was afraid to sleep there, for God’s sake.”
A moment later Maggie apologized, but the damage was done.
Her house wasn’t that bad. Was it?
“So sorry to have offended that darling Gabe with my filth,” she said.
They didn’t talk in the car on the way to Portsmouth. But standing there by the portable toilets, Kathleen said, “When my brother was at Notre Dame, he and a few other guys once got suspended for tipping one of these over while a friend of theirs was inside.”
“That’s awful,” Maggie said.
“Yeah. Pat was kind of a bad boy before Ann Marie came along and sucked all the fun out of him.”
“I don’t know if I’d call that fun,” Maggie said.
“Good point,” Kathleen said.
“I can kind of picture Chris doing that,” Maggie said.
“I know. It’s scary, but I know.” She put an arm around Maggie.
Maggie nodded. She held on until it was her turn to go in.
“Don’t you dare tip me over,” she said over her shoulder as she moved toward the stinking plastic enclosure.
“Well, you shouldn’t have called my house messy,” Kathleen said, and stuck out her tongue.
She stood there, watching the crowd for what seemed like ages. Teenage couples kissed, and gaggles of girls ran around giggling. Young parents chased their offspring down the path, and older parents read books on blankets in the grass, eating pizza or submarine sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil while their children texted away on cell phones. A group of high school kids competed to see who could shove the largest number of glow sticks into his or her mouth. Well, that was charming.
Kathleen glanced over at the Porta-Potty Maggie had gone into. What was taking her so long? She wondered if something was wrong. She pictured a gunman lurking behind the flimsy door, covering Maggie’s mouth with a gloved hand.
She shook off the thought.
When her children were small, she’d experience a miniature panic