The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [37]
Another drink and she was blaming her great-great-grandfather who sired a family here on the island and kept secret his other family across the ocean. And her own daddy, who got rich off a shipment of whiskey that washed up on Sheep Island during Prohibition and spent the rest of his days drunk off what he did not sell. She liked to think—she enjoyed thinking—that what Whaley called her sorry streak came directly from this side of the family, with their ruddy Irish coloring and their love of singing even though not one of them had ever been known to read a note.
Wherever it came from, it had needed to be got out of her system. She could get it out by herself, but it would go a lot quicker if she had some company. She went back up the road to Locker-man’s. The party had moved from the root cellar to the backyard. Harvey’s wife and his wife’s sister had joined the men but were sipping instead of slashing, and when Maggie came striding up the lawn, her steps deliberate and counted out so as not to let on how drunk she was already, the women traded glances Maggie could decipher even through her fog. When she took a seat, they slipped off inside the house.
It was late afternoon before it was even lunchtime and then it was dusk and the mosquitoes blew up from the marsh and had at her bare arms until she was nearly welted. A boy she knew from school, a Railey who had moved off island but was over visiting Harvey, told her he had something inside the house would help soothe those bites.
She knew what that something was but followed him inside anyway, filed right past the women who were listening to the radio in the kitchen and stopped talking to stare her out as she stumbled on the threshhold.
She pushed him away after he’d kissed her down to the floor of the front porch. She said, “I’m hungry, I’m going home.” Of course he followed her halfway up to the house, trying to talk her into some more of his bug-bite remedies. She treated him like she treated the bugs who maybe because of the liquor were on her like they’d never been before, swarming her, bleeding her leechlike.
Whaley was off somewhere, thank God. Maggie went to the kitchen and started making some oatmeal, about the only thing she could find that did not require a lot of knifing. She was slurping it up at the kitchen table when Whaley came in from the store. She could tell from the way Whaley did not look at her that she knew at least some of it.
Whaley made a noisy fuss of putting up groceries. Then she leaned against the counter, her arms tightly crossed, and said, “Least you waited till your boy was off island.”
“He drinks himself, so what?”
“I’m not talking about the drinking, though God knows you ought to leave it alone too.”
Maggie decided to ignore the “too.” “When was the last time you saw me drunk?”
“I don’t keep count of your actions, but if you want credit for acting like you ought to act, you’ll not get it from me.”
“That’s a simple way of seeing it,” said Maggie. “And a god-damn self-righteous way too.”
Whaley said, “You know I’m right.”
Maggie said, “Oh do I. You always are.”
Whaley unfolded her arms, wet a rag, and swiped furiously at the countertop. “I don’t have to listen to this mess.”
“Did it ever occur to you that some people don’t feel the same things you do? You think something awful’s got to happen for somebody to feel sad. Somebody’s got to die, or lose a child, or there’s got to be a fire or a flood. Even then you don’t hardly let somebody grieve before you claim they’re wallowing. Well, guess what? It don’t work like that. Some people can’t control how they feel. They just feel bad for no reason and they deal with it best they can and it would be mighty Christian of you to show some support.