Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [191]
Maggie didn’t respond.
Kathleen turned to look at her. She was fast asleep. She brushed a dangling strand of hair behind Maggie’s ear and kept driving.
When they arrived in Brooklyn, there was a huge box blocking the door to Maggie’s apartment. Kathleen’s first thought was that it was from Gabe. She looked at the address label.
“It says it’s from Bugaboo,” she said. “What the hell is Bugaboo?”
Maggie looked embarrassed, and Kathleen pictured a sex swing or something crazy like that.
But Maggie responded, “It’s a gift from Aunt Ann Marie.”
“Tell me she didn’t buy you a dollhouse.”
“No! It’s a stroller.”
“A stroller.”
“Yeah, a really trendy one, I guess. It cost like six hundred bucks.”
“Oh, well that sounds practical. Nice of her to let you know what it cost.”
“She didn’t let me know. I saw it in the catalog.”
Kathleen felt her goodwill toward Ann Marie slipping a bit. She would probably end up telling Clare about the kiss, but that was all. No one else. Clare wouldn’t tell anyone besides Joe.
They heard footsteps on the staircase behind them then, and a moment later a gorgeous young thing with mile-long legs was saying hello.
“Maggie!” she said. “You’re back!”
Kathleen remembered the first time she had visited her daughter at college, how pleased and reassured she had felt to see that Maggie had built her own community there, full of friends Kathleen had never laid eyes on. Now Maggie had done the same here in New York. Her daughter was okay on her own. In fact, she thrived on independence, just like Kathleen herself.
“Rhiannon, hi. This is my mom. Mom, Rhiannon lives next door. She’s the one who drove me up to Maine.”
“Oh,” Kathleen said. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” the girl said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Kathleen wasn’t sure she liked her tone.
“How’s everything been around here?” Maggie asked.
“Same old, same old. I went to Governor’s Island for the first time yesterday.”
“Cool,” Maggie said. “Listen, I should have called you sooner, but I’ve been kind of a mess, as you might imagine.”
It was strange how easily these words came out of her mouth when she was talking to an acquaintance in the hallway. It was something she hadn’t yet said to Kathleen.
“I’m sorry for how I reacted when you told me—”
Rhiannon interrupted. “Oh no, I’m sorry. I never should have said that. I’d just had too much to drink. I didn’t think it through.”
“You probably saved me from begging him to take me back with that piece of information,” Maggie said.
What the hell were they talking about?
The two of them hugged. Rhiannon put a hand on Maggie’s belly.
“Hello there, teensy neighbor,” she said.
So Maggie had told her first. Kathleen tried not to let this bother her.
Inside the apartment, she asked, “What was that about?”
Maggie sighed. “She works in this restaurant, and Gabe and I went one night for dinner. Apparently while I was in the bathroom, he grabbed her butt and tried to kiss her.”
Kathleen nodded. In a way, she wished she still drank, because then she might have downed half a bottle of gin and driven over to that little shit’s apartment, and egged his car, or calmly asked him to come down to the street and then beaten the crap out of him with her purse. Ah, the good old days.
“He pretty much sucks,” Maggie said.
“Yeah,” Kathleen said.
She was somewhat relieved, realizing that Maggie was smart enough not to go back to him. But she felt sad for her daughter too. Through her child, she would be linked with Gabe for the rest of her life. They had so much to sort out, but most of the questions probably wouldn’t even be clear until they were in the midst of it, never mind the answers.
“Can I ask one thing?” Kathleen didn’t wait for Maggie to say yes. “Was this an accident, or did you get pregnant on purpose?”
“Something in between those two,” Maggie said. “I guess you could say I sort of tempted fate. I was stuck. I needed a push, one way or the other. That probably sounds insane.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Kathleen said, maybe more