Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [37]
“What does your husband do?” a new neighbor had asked Linda at book club one night.
Linda had responded, “He’s a lawyer.”
“Oh? What kind?”
Linda shrugged. “The kind that works all hours.”
Everyone laughed, but Ann Marie rolled the words around in her head as if they were part of some secret language she shared with Steve—Securities offerings and transactions, that’s what he does. His experience is extensive.
Ann Marie had been looking forward to their annual Cape Neddick trip for months. At some point in the dead of winter, she had written the word MAINE on a Starbucks napkin and stuck it up under the visor in the Mercedes, so that all she had to do was flip the mirror down and there it would be, a reminder of what awaited her.
After Pat announced that the Brewers were coming along, her vision for the trip shifted, and now she was excited in new ways. Nervous too. She had already bought four new Lilly Pulitzer dresses and a white cashmere cardigan, imagining Steve’s face when he saw her in them. She pictured herself and Pat riding caravan-style with Steve and Linda Brewer close behind. The four of them would stop at the Press Room in Portsmouth for a glass of wine and a lobster roll, and then they’d drive on until they reached the cottage, with its familiar old wood beams and the smell of the ocean drifting through the window screens. Later, while Pat and Steve drank a beer and got settled, she and Linda would drive to the gourmet grocery a couple miles up the road in Ogunquit and load the cart with white chocolate cookies, Brie and salami and olives and water crackers, croissants and organic apple juice, raspberries, and a case of champagne. She would make her signature trifle, even though it wasn’t the right season. At the neighborhood Christmas party several months back, Steve had said it tasted like heaven.
They weren’t supposed to go to Cape Neddick until July first, four weeks from now. But a few days earlier, their plans had changed. More to the point, her sisters-in-law had shirked their responsibility and somehow, as usual, Ann Marie was the one who got left holding the bag.
On the previous Friday, Alice called to chat after supper.
“Clare’s ignoring me,” she said.
Ann Marie was sliding plates into the dishwasher. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know! I was watching that Broadway Babies series on PBS and there was a whole piece on the history of gays in the theater. Terribly interesting. Apparently there are lots of them, even that one who wrote West Side Story. So I happened to mention this to Clare—”
Ann Marie poured herself a glass of wine from the open bottle on the table. This was not a topic she wanted to discuss. She didn’t much want to know what Alice thought about having a gay grandchild.
At least she figured that was where her mother-in-law was going. Clare’s son, Ryan, starred in all those musicals. Sitting through a single one of his performances, knowing that Clare usually saw his plays several nights in a row, Ann Marie thanked God that none of her children had gotten the acting bug, but had instead gravitated toward sports (Little Daniel) and Irish step dancing (Patty and Fiona). You could bring your knitting along to a hockey game and not seem rude, and she loved the sound of Irish music; it was a connection to her ancestors that stirred something in her heart.
“Anyway,” Alice went on, “I asked her—joking really, that’s all—I asked if she ever worries about Ryan being exposed to that, and you know, getting it. She snapped at me, ‘Mother,