Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [76]
“Wasn’t it marvelous?” Kathleen kept saying.
Alice did think the writing was quite polished. She even bragged about it to the librarians at her local branch. But how could she read a work of fiction by her own granddaughter without hunting for glimpses of herself, of Kathleen, and their marriages? Kathleen said Maggie was now at work on a novel. Would she come this summer, wanting to collect stories like a vulture? It always felt that way when she asked questions, as if Alice should be chronicled, each heartache and human connection and childhood memory an artifact in a museum exhibit, to be tagged and displayed, a life lived and finished, ready to be studied.
Then again, Gabe, the boyfriend, was one of the few summer guests Alice was actually looking forward to hosting. She was even willing to overlook the fact that he and Maggie shared a bed in the cottage. (Ann Marie’s kids had the manners and good sense to sleep in separate rooms if they weren’t married yet, but she knew she couldn’t expect that from Kathleen’s.)
In the past, when Maggie brought her pampered college friends to Maine, they acted as though Alice were running a bed-and-breakfast, the innkeeper next door. They didn’t bother to invite her to join them, and when Maggie stopped by in the mornings, presumably to do her familial duty, Alice would quickly create a story about all she had to do that day, to keep from looking pathetic.
But Gabe! Last summer, he told jokes and thanked her again and again for inviting him, and sang old songs with her late into the night. He reminded her of different times, when her brothers and Daniel’s would come up to the cottage for long weekends, singing and drinking, everyone merry.
And if she was really being honest, she liked him most of all because one night after dinner, while Maggie was in the bathroom and the two of them—Alice and Gabe—had each had about a bottle of cabernet, Gabe took Alice’s hand and said, “You’re beautiful, you know that? I mean, one of the most stunning women I’ve ever seen. I want to photograph you.”
He was flirting with her! No one had flirted with her in years. Her pulse sped up, and she felt a certain degree of regret when she heard the toilet flushing in the other room. She let him take her picture the next afternoon while Maggie was on the beach. He sent her the finished copy, and Alice cried to see how wrinkly she looked, how goddamn old. When he had snapped her in the bright sun, she had felt eighteen again.
Life had been so dreary the past several months. She hoped Gabe might put a spring in her step.
He was a charmer, but still Alice had her doubts about the relationship: generally speaking, Maggie had her mother’s bad taste in men. Kathleen had said once that Maggie was intent on settling down, but Gabe certainly didn’t seem like the marrying type. Kathleen had told Alice that he drank too much, though Kathleen thought everyone drank too much. She had also reported that he and Maggie fought all the time. “He reminds me a lot of Paul,” Kathleen had said, her ex-husband’s name a kind of shorthand for everything that was wrong with men.
Maggie and Gabe would be here any day now, Kathleen said.
“Well, when exactly will they turn up?” Alice had asked her daughter over the phone a few days earlier.
“I think it depends on Gabe’s work schedule. Don’t sweat it, Mom,” Kathleen said, in that faux-calm tone that could make Alice’s blood pressure soar twenty points. “They’ll get there when they get there.”
“I’d like some advance warning so I can get the cottage ready is all,” Alice said.
“Then call Maggie’s cell and tell her that,” Kathleen said.
“She’s your daughter,” Alice said.
“Yeah, well, she’s your granddaughter.”
“Oh Jesus, Kathleen, forget it,” Alice said.
“It’s forgotten,” Kathleen