Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [69]
Ann Marie
Around seven o’clock, Pat came into the kitchen in a pair of khaki pants and a polo shirt. He was looking down at his cell phone, typing away.
“Good morning,” he said, kissing her on the cheek without glancing up from the phone. “Were you awake at the crack of dawn preparing for dollhouse-palooza?”
“Yup. Couldn’t sleep. So much to do.”
“You could take a day off, you know,” he said.
“That lamb we had on Friday is in the fridge, thawing out,” she said. “There’s still mint jelly left too. And I’ll make you some potatoes before I go, just in case.”
He frowned. “In case you decide to leave me for a man who makes subway tiles for Barbie dolls?”
“In case you get hungry.”
“I can fend for myself,” he said, though they both knew he hadn’t set foot in a grocery store in years, or prepared a meal, possibly ever.
“I don’t mind. I wrote out directions for you on how to heat the lamb up. They’re on the fridge, under the Celtics magnet.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“I spoke to your mom,” she said. “She wanted me to remind you about the gutters.”
“I’m on it,” he said. “I called Mort up at the market and got a referral. I thought I already told her that. And the railing on the cottage porch is loose too. Did she mention it?”
“Actually, she said her priest is going to fix it.”
“Her priest?”
“You know, Father Donnelly. I think he’s sweet on her.”
“Well, that’s disturbing.”
“Oh, not like that,” Ann Marie said with a laugh. “He’s a nice young man, that’s all.”
“How did she sound otherwise?” Pat asked.
“A bit crabby. She said she doesn’t need any help, and I shouldn’t bother troubling myself to come out there in the middle of June after Maggie leaves. I didn’t have the energy to fight her on it. I’m still going to go, though.”
“You’re an angel,” he said.
“You know you have your doctor’s appointment tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pat said.
He was so cheerful this morning that she felt sorry for what she was about to say.
“Honey, we need to send Little Daniel’s check before I leave,” she said gently.
Usually they sent it by the last of the month, like clockwork. But somehow, in the whirlwind of her June plans changing, she had forgotten to remind Pat. He was a disciplined man, with a memory so sharp he could tell you what he had for breakfast on his first day of kindergarten. But he never seemed to remember this. She imagined that he put it from his head quite consciously, allowing himself to think about it for only that one minute a month when he signed the check and handed it over to her to be addressed and mailed.
Pat was disappointed, she understood that. Ann Marie told him to pray on it, to have faith that it would all work out. He was angry that he’d spent more than two hundred grand for their son’s education, and still, they were sending him money. Ann Marie didn’t see what was so wrong with it—she knew women at the club who had bought houses for their kids. Pat said no one had paid his way. He had figured it out, and he expected his children to do the same.
She had to bite her tongue on that one. Ann Marie had spent every weekend and summer of her teenage years bagging groceries at Angelo’s. Had any of the Kellehers ever had so much as an after-school job? How many times had she heard Kathleen complain that Pat was the only one whose education was taken seriously by their parents, meaning that Alice and Daniel paid for it in full? Yet it had never dawned on Kathleen that some people, including Ann Marie, paid their own tuition, waitressing all the way through college.
She had always warned Pat to be more conservative when it came to giving the kids money, but he had lavished gifts and cash upon them anyway. It seemed that now, right when Little Daniel really needed them, was not the time to draw the line in the sand.
Despite Pat’s protestations, they had been mailing the checks for five months, ever since Little Daniel lost his most recent job. It wasn’t the first time