Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [72]
Pat chuckled. “You can’t expect her to leave Farmer Arlo alone with all those animals to take care of,” he said. “Another Woodstock might pop up out there without my sensible big sister around to stop it.”
Ann Marie rolled her eyes. “Right. A billion worms and a hippie drug addict win out over her own mother and daughter. That makes good sense.”
“A friend of the devil is a friend of Kath’s,” he said. She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It’s from a song. Never mind.” Pat paused, and then he said, “Poor Maggie.”
“I know! But what’s wrong with your sister? Doesn’t she miss her kids, all the way out there in California? Honestly, Patrick, it hurts me to even think it, but I don’t think she does.”
Pat didn’t have much of a relationship with his oldest sister, not anymore. When they were all young and Kathleen was still married, they were close. They spent almost every Saturday together. Twenty years had gone by, and Kathleen still blamed Pat for covering for her cheating ex-husband, even though he had done it to protect her. If she only knew how many times Pat had sat that guy down and told him to end his relationship with the other woman, to think about his family. Pat had genuinely believed he could talk sense into Paul, and maybe he might have eventually. They hadn’t known about Paul’s money problems until it was too late, but it wasn’t their fault that Kathleen had been clueless about her own bank account.
Ann Marie thought Pat had much stronger grounds on which to be furious. With their mother well into her seventies, Kathleen had squandered their father’s hard-earned money and up and moved across the country, leaving Alice in their care. Even back when Kathleen was religious, she was nothing but a Cafeteria Catholic. Maybe this was why she felt no obligation to her family, not one shred of guilt.
Pat’s other sister, Clare, wasn’t much better, and she lived only a few miles away in Jamaica Plain. Her husband, Joe, couldn’t stand Alice, and Clare had sided with him. She visited her mother once a month or so, and then Ann Marie would have to listen to Alice gush about the fact that Clare had brought her the most beautiful roses, or a bottle of cabernet with the fifty-dollar price tag still on, as if these petty gestures made up for the past four weeks of neglect.
Clare was always telling Ann Marie that she wished she could do more. She was the sort of person who spent so much time telling you how busy she was that the complaint in itself seemed like a full-time job. Try having three children, Ann Marie wanted to say. Clare had a cleaning lady who came in once a week, and when Ryan was small she had employed a nanny. Ann Marie would never dream of paying someone else to do her job. Not because they couldn’t afford it, but because no one could ever care for your children or your home as well as you could, she was certain of that.
Most of the time, the work of caring for Alice was left to Ann Marie, even though she had her own mother to think about. She had lost her father at twenty-seven and gotten none of the sympathy that the Kellehers seemed to want for their loss, even though they were all in their forties when Big Daniel died. Ann Marie herself was hit hard by it. He was such a good man, so kind to her and to everyone. He had been the one who kept them all together. But it was clear that her in-laws expected her not to react, even as she made the arrangements for the funeral by herself.
What bothered Ann Marie most about the Kellehers was the way they all leaned on her, yet never quite let her in, or even said thank you. She was certain that her sisters-in-law, to whom she felt superior in many ways, to be honest, still thought of her as the poor white-trash girl who had conned their brother into marriage.
Pat sympathized, but really this was a woman thing. Though Alice was an ally, sort of, Clare and Kathleen were mostly unkind to her, as if Ann Marie were just a guilt-inducing reminder of how little they did for Alice, for