Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [81]
As a kid, Maggie had been forced to go to church most Sundays, but after the divorce, after AA and an all-out war on tradition on her mother’s part, they never went anymore, except maybe on Christmas and Easter with her grandparents. The Catholic Church, like the family itself, was a strange blend of resentments and confusion and contradictions and love and comfort to her, even now. She was an atheist, and yet the one or two times a year she went to Mass, a familiar song would begin to play and she would find herself singing, caught up in its beauty: Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us, grant us peace.
The previous Christmas, her cousin Patty’s kids had brought the gifts up to the altar, the crystal goblet of wine shaking in poor Foster’s hands. Maggie had a vague memory of being in that exact position at her great-grandmother’s funeral, the feeling of all eyes on you, and what sort of terrible fate might befall you if you spilled Jesus’ blood on your good white shoes.
When the priest blessed the bread and wine, half the congregants genuflected, including Kathleen and Maggie and the other Kellehers. The rest of them stood, and Alice whispered in a superior tone, “Those people don’t go to church.”
The family knew her to be lapsed, but that night Maggie had felt moved to take Communion, and so she followed her cousins to the altar, remembering precisely how to cup her hands, removing the host from the palm of the right with the fingers of the left, instinctively performing the sign of the cross before she headed back to her seat, and then feeling a bit silly about it. She could only imagine what Ann Marie must be thinking.
Later, she remembered why she had stopped taking Communion in the first place—when she was twelve, she had asked her mother why she didn’t rise for Communion like everyone else, and Kathleen had explained that divorcées were forbidden from doing so. After that, Maggie had stayed seated next to her mother in the pew on holidays, in a defiant show of solidarity.
It was pouring when she woke up around seven the next morning. Rain came through the window screens and puddled under the radiators. Somewhere outside, something was burning—tires, maybe. The smell made her stomach turn.
“Great,” Maggie said out loud.
She looked instinctively at her cell phone. He still hadn’t called. But there was a missed call from the house in Maine. Her grandmother hadn’t left a message, never did. When Alice and Daniel had gotten their first answering machine, sometime in the eighties, Daniel recorded the outgoing message, saying, “You’ve reached the Kellehers. Please leave your name, address, and phone number at the tone.”
Everyone made fun of him, and he changed it to a simpler greeting, which was even funnier, because after he said, in his most professional voice, “You’ve reached Daniel and Alice; please leave a message,” there was the fainter sound of him saying nervously, “Was that good? Okay,” before the beep sounded. Alice had never changed the message, and it was sad and somewhat sweet to hear his voice whenever Maggie called her grandmother all these years after his death.
She closed the windows. Outside, people in suits rushed toward the High Street subway stop, a sea of black umbrellas. It was a Monday, and all of New York was heading into work, everyone but her.
Maggie went to the kitchen for a glass of water. She felt dried out, husklike, from all the crying. And then, like a shove from behind, she saw it: the burner she had lit the night before for her macaroni, still on. The pot of water she had set there was now empty and burning all along the bottom. Black metal flakes dusted the stovetop. That smell, the tires.
Childishly, she let herself imagine him receiving the news: “She died in a fire a few hours after leaving your place, Gabe. She was carrying your baby.” He’d crumble to the ground, screaming, “No, no!” He’d never love again.
She took a pot holder from a hook on the wall and put the pan in the sink to cool off. She pushed the