Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [84]
Maggie knew her grandmother’s aversion to her branch of the family had to do with jealousy over how much her grandfather had loved them, especially Kathleen. Which was strange, really. Wouldn’t you want your husband to be devoted to his children and grandchildren? But that wasn’t the way Alice worked.
Right after her grandfather died, Maggie had made a real effort to call Alice two or three times a week. (She hid this fact from her mother, who had vowed never to speak to Alice again after what happened at the funeral.) But Alice didn’t want to talk. She always cut the call short, saying, “Shouldn’t you be working on your writing instead of jabbering on the phone with me?” or citing long-distance charges as if it were 1952. Maggie didn’t call much anymore. She occasionally thought to write a long letter, but she could never think of what to say. Alice didn’t call her very often either, and when she did, it was usually with some odd request. Would Maggie please go to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and light a candle for her cousin Ryan, who had an audition coming up, or for Fiona, who was serving the Lord through her Peace Corps work so far away? Maggie would always say yes, intending to follow through, but then she would forget, or reason her way out of it—the cathedral was all the way uptown, and did the God she didn’t believe in really care that much more about a five-dollar candle, lit among tourists drinking Starbucks coffee in the pews, than he did about a solemn prayer delivered in the diminutive chapel on Cranberry Street, right by her apartment?
Maggie always thought that family gatherings would be fun, great, loving times, but usually they were either boring or tense. The truly enjoyable get-togethers had gotten fewer and farther between since her grandfather died, but the memory of them kept the Kellehers coming back together, trying to re-create the magic. She knew all this, and yet she still craved it.
She especially missed childhood summers when the whole family would go up to Maine together. Alice was the hostess in those days, organizing group dinners and long car rides to new beaches, or instructing her husband to take all the grandkids out digging for clams in Kittery at low tide. They piled into his old Buick. At the shore, they stood in shallow water for hours, thrusting their rakes and their bare feet down deep into the oozing sand, screaming with delight and fear when they hit a clamshell. They filled buckets with the creatures, and by the time the sun set, Daniel would say, “Okay, let’s bring these fellas home so Grandma can cook them up.” Then Maggie and Fiona and Patty would yell out “No!” and the boys would yell “Yes!” while their grandfather stood there laughing. They always returned to the cottage without a single clam.
Every year since her uncle Patrick had created the cottage schedule, Maggie had gone to Cape Neddick for a few days in June, usually with Allegra or a couple of friends from high school, but it wasn’t the same. Her grandmother rarely invited them over or seemed to want to spend time together. She acted like she was entirely too busy, though doing what, Maggie could never be sure. Besides the awkward hello and good-bye, and one or