Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [71]
Eventually, she went downstairs to her crafts room and stared at her dollhouse for a long while, deciding that the armoire in the living room would look better in the entryway. She picked it up and moved it, then carefully wiped down the sides with a Kleenex to get rid of any fingerprints. She thought of Fiona as a child. She had never liked dresses, not the way Patty did. Was that a sign? In high school, she hung around with a boy, David Martin. She always said they were only friends, and raised hell when Ann Marie wouldn’t allow them in her room together with the door closed. Their senior year, when she asked to go camping with David alone and Ann Marie said it was inappropriate, Fiona had said, “Jesus, Mom, he’s clearly gay.” It had never once dawned on her that Fiona might be too.
And what about her son? Ann Marie recalled a time when he was in high school, and she was in his room changing the sheets. Under the pillowcase, she found a copy of Penthouse magazine. Her eyes filled up with tears as she flipped through the pages—all those young, empty-eyed women with their legs spread, their mouths hanging open. He had walked in on her, catching her off guard, and she had shoved the magazine back under the pillow, as if he were the parent and she the guilty child. Ann Marie turned red and asked him how school was. Was that the moment? Could she have said or done something then? She should have told Pat, but even that seemed mortifying, and she reasoned that all teenage boys did a bit of exploring, probably.
At least she still had Patty. Suddenly, she hoped her older daughter might announce soon that she was pregnant again, even though she knew Patty and Josh planned to stop at three.
The following morning, she made Little Daniel pancakes stuffed with walnuts and chocolate chips.
“I’m not helping him,” Pat said after he left.
She didn’t have to speak; she just stared at him in disbelief.
Finally, Pat said, “Fine. But this is the last time.”
That afternoon, she bought a two-foot-tall antique carriage house on eBay for five hundred dollars. It was covered in silk roses and vines and matched the color of her dollhouse perfectly. She imagined escaping there, pressing her face up against the real glass windows and looking out on a rainstorm, safe inside.
At Ann Marie’s urging, her son had softened the story when he told his fiancée what happened. As far as Regina knew, he had lost his job because the company was downsizing and had to cut the staff by a third, that was all.
They hadn’t told the girls, or anyone, what really happened. (They hadn’t told anyone about Fiona either, though she had said, “I would like to come out to the rest of the family in my own time.” Ann Marie hoped that meant never.)
When Pat got on the phone with his mother or his sister Clare, he boasted like crazy, said Little Daniel was bringing in a salary in the high six figures and making them proud. She appreciated her husband’s desire to shield their son from the Kelleher gossip mill, and she went along with it, even when that meant she had to lie right to Alice’s face.
Pat reached into his wallet now and pulled out his checkbook. He made out a check for five thousand dollars and signed his name, ripping the page off with more intensity than seemed necessary. He handed it to her, and Ann Marie had the envelope waiting. She quickly placed the check inside and sealed it.
“Now,” she said. “Let’s get you some breakfast.”
“I’ll just have toast,” he said.
“I have some of that yummy Irish soda bread from my mother’s friend Sharon,” she said. “Want that?”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
“It’s going to be a gorgeous day,” she said. “It’s supposed to get up to seventy-seven degrees this afternoon.”
“That’s good.”
“Your mom said Maggie’s heading north sometime in the next few days,” Ann Marie went on. “Kathleen wouldn’t tell Alice exactly when. Typical. It’s really