Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [66]
They found this amusing now, proof positive, Kathleen thought, that almost anything could be funny given enough distance, time, and therapy. It grated on her, though, the way that no Kelleher could take a relationship seriously if it wasn’t a marriage. She had been with Arlo for almost as long as she was married to Paul, but her family, even Clare, still thought of Paul as the primary partner of her life. Another lesson for Maggie: The most important choice you can make is the person you reproduce with. You’ll be stuck with him forever, even when you haven’t spoken in twenty years.
Clare and Joe had been married by a friend of theirs in a garden outside Harvard Square, with just Kathleen and Maggie and a few friends as witnesses, and then everyone had gone for a big dinner at Casablanca, with chocolate ganache cake for dessert. Neither of them wanted a honeymoon. They only wanted to spend a week together in their apartment, watching movies and cooking big dinners, which they ate in bed, spread out over old issues of The New Yorker. They spent years of Saturdays in that apartment in the same way, drinking coffee all morning, peaceful, satisfied.
Clare had gotten pregnant almost as an afterthought right around their sixth anniversary, the summer Joe’s dad died. They named their only son Ryan after his paternal grandfather. Ryan was a hoot from the time he was a toddler. He sang and danced—Clare often said proudly that he tapped before he crawled.
Joe had wanted a boy’s boy like Chris or Little Daniel. The whole theater thing had never been part of his plan. Still, he was a trouper about it. He even played the sound tracks to Finian’s Rainbow and Brigadoon in the store, proclaiming them “almost like the Chieftains if you shove cotton balls in your ears and don’t think about it too much.”
Kathleen adored her brother-in-law, partly because of how much he disliked Alice. For years, he had gritted his teeth like most of them did every time she said something degrading about Clare. Then one Saturday, he wasn’t there at a family dinner. Clare told Kathleen he had been ranting about Alice that morning and she was afraid he might blow. From then on he was required to be around Alice only on important holidays, when absences were inexcusable.
Clare was a good girl by nature, and inclined to suffer in silence forever. But now, because of Joe, when Alice invited them places, they were more likely to claim they were busy than not. Served her mother right, Kathleen thought. For most people, interactions with Alice were like a goddamn hostage situation, but hardly anyone ever said, “No more.”
Kathleen told Clare to tell Ryan she loved his play idea.
“He’s driving over to the shop now,” Clare said. “I wish he was here so you could say hi. He misses you!”
Kathleen knew what this really meant: Clare missed her. She missed her sister too.
“I can’t believe Ryan can drive,” Kathleen said. “God, that makes me feel old. When I moved away he was in third grade.”
“Tell me about it. It totally terrifies me. How did you cope when your kids started? I’m so scared he’ll drive drunk, or get in the car with someone else who’s been drinking.”
They had all driven drunk in the past, some of them more than others. Their kids were probably far less inclined to do so. Well, Ryan, at least.
“The thought of Chris out on the open road still terrifies me, and he’s been driving for twelve years,” Kathleen said. “Maggie never learned to drive for some reason.”
“Oh, right,” Clare said. “Do you think that might have to do with hearing so many stories about the accident? I remember being freaked out to drive because of that.”
They always referred to it that way, just two words, which they all understood: the accident. Patrick and Alice refused to talk about it, but Alice still had the faint scar running down her face. You could see it if you knew where to look.
It happened the winter Kathleen was eleven years old. Clare was nine then, and Patrick only seven.
It had been snowing on and off for days,