Maine: A Novel Part 1

Maine : a novel.

by J. Courtney Sullivan.

Alice.

Alice decided to take a break from packing. She lit a cigarette, leaning back in one of the wicker chairs that were always slightly damp from the sea breeze. She glanced around at the cardboard boxes filled with her familyas belongings, each gla.s.s and saltshaker and picture frame wrapped carefully in newspaper. There were at least a couple of boxes in every room of the house. She needed to make sure she had taken them all to Goodwill by the time the children arrived. This had been their summer home for sixty years, and it amazed her how many objects they had acc.u.mulated. She didnat want anyone to be burdened by the mess once she was gone.

She could tell by the heavy clouds that it was about to rain. In Cape Nedd.i.c.k, Maine, that May, you were likely to see a thunderstorm every afternoon. This didnat bother her. She never went down to the beach anymore. After lunch she usually sat out on the screen porch for hours, reading novels that her daughter-in-law, Ann Marie, had lent her during the winter, drinking red wine, and watching the waves crash against the rocks until it was time to make supper. She never felt the urge she once did to put on a swimsuit and take a dip or muss her pedicure by walking in the sand. She preferred to watch it all from a distance, letting the scene pa.s.s through her like a ghost.

Her life here was ruled by routine. Each day, she was up by six to clean the house and tend her garden. She drank a cup of Tetley, leaving the tea bag on a dish in the fridge so she could use it once more before lunch. At nine thirty on the nose, she drove to St. Michaelas by the Sea for ten oaclock Ma.s.s.

The surrounding area had changed so much since their first summer in Maine, all those years ago. Huge houses had gone up along the coast, and the towns were now full of gift shops and fashionable restaurants and gourmet grocery stores. The fishermen were still around, but back in the seventies many of them had started catering to tourists, with their breakfast cruises and their whale watches and such.

Some things remained. Rubyas Market and the pharmacy were still dark by six. Alice still left her keys in the car at all times. She never locked the house eithera"no one up here did. The beach had stayed untouched, and every one of the ma.s.sive pine trees dotting the road from her door to the church looked as if it had been there for centuries.

The church itself was a constant. St. Michaelas was an old-fashioned country chapel made of stone, with red velvet cushions in the pews and brilliant stained-gla.s.s windows that burst with color in the morning sun. It had been built at the top of a hill off Sh.o.r.e Road so that its rooftop cross might be visible to sailors at sea.

Alice always sat in the third row to the right of the altar. She tried to remember the best bits of wisdom from Father Donnellyas sermons to pa.s.s along to the child or grandchild who needed them most, not that they paid her any attention. She listened intently, singing out the familiar hymns, reciting the prayers she had recited since she was a girl. She closed her eyes and asked G.o.d for the same things she had asked for all those years ago: to help her be good, to make her do better. For the most part, she believed He heard.

After Ma.s.s on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, the St. Michaelas Legion of Mary met in the church bas.e.m.e.nt and said the rosary for ailing members of the parish, for the hungry and needy around the world, for the sanct.i.ty of life in all its stages. They recited Hail Holy Queen and drank decaf and chatted. Mary Fallon reminded them whose turn it was to bring m.u.f.fins next time and who would accompany Father Donnelly on his weekly trip to the homes of the infirm, where he prayed for a recovery that usually never came. Though it was terribly sad, watching strangers her own age dying, Alice enjoyed her afternoons with Father Donnelly. He brought such comfort to everyone he visited. He was a young man, only thirty-four, with dark hair and a warm smile that reminded her of crooners from the fifties. He had chosen a vocation from another era, and he was thoughtful in a way she didnat know young people could be anymore.

Alice felt a sense of deep dedication watching him pray over his parishioners. Most priests today didnat make time for house calls. When they were done, Father Donnelly would take her to lunch, which she knew for a fact he did not do with the other gals from the Legion. He had done so much for her. He even helped her around the house now and thena"changing the high-up lightbulb on the porch, hauling away tree branches after a storm. Perhaps this special treatment was only a result of the little arrangement they had made, but she hardly cared.

Father Donnelly and the seven members of the Legion of Mary (no fewer than five of them actually named Mary) were the only people Alice interacted with on a regular basis at this time of year. She was the lone summer person in the group, their foreign exchange student, she called herself as a joke. The year-rounders were suspicious of outsiders. But they had agreed to let her join just for the season after the archdiocese shut down St. Agnes two years back.

St. Agnes was her church at home in Canton, the church where Aliceas children were baptized, where her husband, Daniel, was eulogized, where she had gone to Ma.s.s every day for the past six decades and run both the Sunday school program, when her children were small, and the Legion of Mary once they had grown. She had co-chaired the campaign to save the church with a young mother of four named Abigail Curley, who had translucent skin and a soft, childlike voice. Together, they gathered five hundred signatures; they wrote dozens of letters; they pet.i.tioned the cardinal himself.

At the final Ma.s.s, Alice cried quietly into her handkerchief. These closures were becoming common practice; you read about them all the time. But you never thought theyad impact you. At St. Agnes, Abigail Curley and some of the other congregants refused to leave. Thirty months later they were still occupying the church around the clock, holding vigil even though there was no priest there anymore, no lighting or heat. Alice started going to a new church in Milton, but she felt no connection to the place or the people there. Now her summer church was her main link to her faith and her past. The Legion members seemed to understand as much.

They were mostly widows who had let themselves go. They wore sweat suits and chunky white sneakers, and their hair was a uniform disaster. Alice was the sole one among them who had kept her figure. Only her deep, deep d.a.m.n wrinkles even hinted at the horrifying fact that she was eighty-three. But like the rest of them, she was alone. Sometimes she wondered if they all took their morning prayer sessions so seriously because they each needed someone to bear witness to their presence. Otherwise, one of them might have a stroke at the kitchen table some morning, and simply go unnoticed.

Her husband, Daniel, won the property in 1945, just after the war ended, in a stupid bet with a former shipmate named Ned Barnell. Ned was a drunk, even by the standards of his fellow navy men. He had grown up in a fishing village in Maine, but now spent his time squandering his paychecks in some of Bostonas finest barrooms and underground gambling clubs. He made a fifty-dollar wager with Daniel on some basketball game, which absolutely enraged Alice. They had been married two years then, and she was pregnant with Kathleen. But Daniel said the bet was a sure thing, that he never would have made it otherwise. And he won.

Ned didnat have the money to pay him.

aSurprise, surprise,a Alice said when Daniel came home that night and told her the news.

He had a wild grin on his face. aYouall never guess what he gave me instead.a aA car?a Alice said sarcastically. Their twelve-year-old Ford coupe sputtered and p.o.o.ped out whenever she started it. By then, they were so accustomed to gas rations that they mostly walked everywhere anyway, or took the streetcar. But the war was over now, and another New England winter was coming. Alice had no intention of being one of those mothers on the train, shushing her screaming newborn while others looked on with disapproving stares.

aBetter,a Daniel said.

aBetter than a car?a Alice asked.

aItas land,a Daniel said gleefully. aA whole big plot of land, right on the water in Maine.a She was skeptical. aYou better not be joking, Daniel Kelleher.a aI kid you not, Mrs. Kelleher,a he said, coming toward her. He pressed his face to her stomach.

aYou hear that, jelly bean?a he said to her belt.

aDaniel!a she said, trying to push him away. She hated when he talked directly to the baby, already attached.

He ignored her.

aThis time next summer weall be making sand castles. Daddy got you your own beach.a He straightened up. aNedas grandfather gave all his grandkids some land, but Nedas got no interest in his piece. Itas ours!a aFor a fifty-dollar bet?a Alice asked.

aLetas just say it was the last in a long line of fifty-dollar bets that may or may not have gone unpaid.a aDaniel!a Despite the good news, her blood boiled a bit.

aHoney, donat worry so much, you married a lucky guy,a he said with a wink.

Alice didnat believe in luck, though if it existed she was fairly sure that hers was lousy. In two years of marriage, she had already miscarried three times. Her mother had lost two babies in infancy before the rest of her children came along, though Alice wouldnat dare ask her about it. All her mother ever said on the topic was that she a.s.sumed G.o.d had taken away the things she loved most as some sort of test. Alice wondered if in her case the children simply vanished because they knew they werenat quite wanted or, more to the point, that she was no mother.

She was used to the routinea"no dark spots on her delicates at the usual time of the month, followed by a few weeks of nausea and vomiting and headaches, and then the sight of blood in the white china toilet, another soul gone.

She had overheard a gal in the elevator in her office building whispering to her girlfriend that a doctor in New York had fitted her for a diaphragm.

aSuch a relief!a the girl had said. aLord knows Harryas not doing anything to make sure I donat get knocked up.a aIf the men had to push the babies out, then theyad take the precautions,a her friend said. aCan you imagine Ronald, huffing and puffing?a She closed her mouth and filled her cheeks up with air, squinting her eyes until they both began to giggle.

Alice wished she could say something to them, find out more. But they were strangers to her, and it was a vulgar thing to be talking about in the first place. She didnat know who to ask, so she went to a priest before work one morninga"someone a few parishes away from her own. Everyone acted as though penance was an anonymous process, but you could see the priest before he went into the confessional, and he could just as easily see you. This one was old, with pure white hair. FATHER DELPONTE, it said on a plaque on the outside of the box. Italian, she supposed. Everyone knew Italian girls were fast. She hoped he wouldnat mistake her for one of them. She was married, after all.

In the dim box, she kneeled down, closed her eyes, and crossed herself.

aBless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one month since my last confession,a she began, the same words she had uttered so many times before.

Her cheeks blushed a fiery red as she told him about the babies she had lost.

aI wonder if perhaps now isnat the time for me,a she said. aI wonder if thereas something I might do to hold off. My sister died a couple years back, and Iam still not myself. Iam afraid of being a mother. I donat think I have it in me to love another person enough, at least not yet.a She wanted to say more, but then he asked, aHow old are you?a aTwenty-four.a Alice could swear she saw him make a baffled face through the screen.

aYouare more than old enough, my dear,a he said softly. aG.o.d has a plan for each of us. We have to believe in it, and do nothing to put it off course.a She did not know if he had understood. Perhaps she should have been clearer.

aThere are ways Iave heard of to delay,a she began, fumbling for the words. aI know the Church frowns on it.a aThe Church forbids it,a he said, and that was all.

She cried for a moment in the parking lot and then set off for work. She never told Daniel what she had done.

This pregnancy had lasted six months so far. Alice was terrified. She tiptoed everywhere, afraid to breathe. She had to drink half a gla.s.s of whiskey each night to get to sleep. She smoked twice as many cigarettes as usual and paced around the block in the afternoonsa"she had been reprimanded by her boss three times now for being away from her desk when she wasnat supposed to be. Mr. Kristal was downright wretched to her, probably because he recognized her condition, and knew from experience that shead be giving her notice soon enough.

The Sat.u.r.day after Daniel won the land, they took a ride out to Cape Nedd.i.c.k. Alice didnat know what to expect. She had been to Maine only once before, on a day trip with her brothers and sister when she was a teenager. All six of them were jammed into their fatheras Pontiac, barreling along with the windows rolled down. They ate lunch at a clam shack and then drove east until they found a slip of beach to relax on. The boys skipped rocks into the water, and Alice and Mary sat in the sand, talking. Alice did a sketch of the dunes in her notebook. They didnat know what town they were in, and they didnat linger for long. They couldnat afford to stay overnight, not even at one of the cheap roadside motels that lined the highway.

Only a few years had pa.s.sed since then, but it seemed like another lifetime.

Daniel drove the car through downtown Ogunquit, past a motor inn and a dance hall and Perkins Drugstore, and the Leavitt Theatre, where Anchors Aweigh was playing at two oaclock. They went straight, past the stone library and the Baptist church and a row of grand hotels, until they reached the tip of town, where fishermenas shacks and lobster traps stood on the land, and fishing boats bobbed up and down in the harbor. There was water on three sides: the Atlanticas rocky coastline to the left and in front of them, and to the right a small inlet with a footbridge leading to the other side. Carved into a stone at the base of the bridge were the words PERKINS COVE.

Alice raised an eyebrow. aGosh, is everyone in this town called Perkins?a aJust about,a Daniel said, clearly excited to have a bit of inside information. aAccording to Ned, that family owns half the land around here. Theyare fishermen, like his people. Ned went with one of the Perkins cousins back in high school.a aLucky her,a Alice said.

aNow now,a Daniel said. aHey, Ned even taught me a little poem one of them wrote. You ready to hear it?a Before she could protest, he was reciting it, almost singing, in his best James Cagney voice: A Perkins runs the grocery store A Perkins runs the bank A Perkins puts the gasoline in everybodyas tank.

A Perkins sells you magazines Another sells you fish You have to go to Perkinses for anything you wish.

Youall always find a Perkins has fingers in your purse And when I die, I think that I Will ride a Perkins hea.r.s.e.

Alice rolled her eyes at her husband. aOkay, darling, I catch your drift.a They turned the car around and pulled onto Sh.o.r.e Road. Daniel drove slowly, looking this way and that. Through a long bank of pine trees on the left, you could see the ocean. Here and there, clapboard houses with American flags out front dotted green lawns. Cows grazed in fields of gra.s.s.

aItas somewhere off of this road,a Daniel said.

They had brought a map, which she held unfolded in her lap. Daniel expected Alice to know how to read it, but to her it looked like a mess of veins and muscles she had seen in her high school biology textbook years earlier. She half expected him to snap, aOh, give me that!a But Daniel wasnat the type. He only laughed and said, aI guess weall have to follow our noses, since I clearly chose a daydreamer for a co-pilot.a That was when Alice saw them, a small a.s.sembly of women and men in smocks, sitting up on a hill, painting at easels.

aThereas an artistsa colony here,a Daniel said. aNed told me bohemians are buying up the lobstermenas shacks. I thought youad like that. They have a summer school. Maybe you could take a cla.s.s.a Alice nodded, though she felt her body tighten. She willed herself not to grow dark. But she could already feel her mood shifting. She stared out the window.

Off to the right was a plain wooden saltbox with a sign out front that read RUBYaS MARKET. To the left was a small green building that she might have taken for a house were it not for the word PHARMACY inlaid on a plaque above the porch.

There was no sign for Briarwood Road. Ned had told Daniel to take Sh.o.r.e for two miles, until he came to a fork. Then he was to turn left onto a dirt path, and follow it all the way to the ocean.

aHe says weall think weare driving straight into the woods, but weare not,a Daniel said.

Alice sighed, preparing herself for what was probably a patch of overgrown brush that Ned had decided to call his own.

They pa.s.sed the entrance twice and had to turn around. But on the third try, they turned at what hardly seemed like a fork. Alice gasped. The road was from a fairy tale, a long stretch of sand inside a tunnel of lush pine trees. When they reached the end, there was the ocean, sparkling in the sun, dark blue against a small sandy beach, which was nestled between two long stretches of rocky coast.

aWelcome home,a Daniel said.

aThis is ours?a Alice asked.

aWell, three acres of itas ours,a he said. aThe best three acres, tooa"all this land along the water.a Alice was elated. No one she knew back home had their own beach house. She could not wait to see her best friend Ritaas face when she came here and saw it.

Alice kissed Daniel smack on the lips.

He grinned. aI take it you like the place.a aI already have the curtains picked out.a aGood! Iam glad thatas taken care of. Now we just need a house to hang them in.a On the way back into town, he stopped the car at the fork in the road and carved a shamrock into the soft trunk of a birch tree. He added the letters A.H. and said, aNow weall never miss the turnoff again.a aA.H.?a she asked. aWhoas that?a He pointed at each letter slowly, like a teacher leading a lesson. aAliceas. House.a Daniel and his brothers built the cottage with their own hands, laid every beam, one by one. The five rooms on the first floor made a loop: The narrow stone kitchen leading into the living room with its black piano from J. & C. Fischer New York, and the iron wood-burning stove in the corner, and the dining table that could comfortably seat ten, though they often had sixteen people crammed around it. That led straight into a small bedroom meant for a couple, which led into the sun-yellow bathroom, which led into the next bedroom, which was as big as the rest of the rooms put together, with two single beds and four bunk beds. There was a lofted s.p.a.ce up above it all, the only private spot in the house. Off the kitchen stood a screened-in porch, and off the living room a deck. Beyond that was an outdoor shower full of cobwebs, from which you could gaze at the stars while you washed your hair. That was it. Their little piece of Paradise, where the Kelleher family had spent every summer since.

In the fifties, wealthy out-of-towners started buying up plots of land all around Ogunquit and Cape Nedd.i.c.k. But no one ever built on Briarwood Road, so it felt like the long stretch of glorious trees that led to their home on the beach was all theirs.

They went every June and stayed for as many weeks as possible. If Daniel couldnat get off work at the insurance company, Alice would invite Rita to come. The two of them would poke into antique shops in Kennebunkport, each with a baby slung over her shoulder, and then they would drink Manhattans on the beach in front of the cottage. On rainy days, they went to the movies or for a drive up the coast. Tallulah Bankhead did a four-week stint at the Ogunquit Playhouse, and they saw the show twice, even though it really wasnat any good. The town was a strange blend of fishermen and locals, tourists and actors and painters. Everywhere you went, someone was sketching a seascape, a sunset, a stack of lobster traps arranged just so. Alice avoided the artists when she could. In town one morning, one of them, quite handsome, had asked if he could paint her picture. She smiled, but kept walking as if she hadnat understood.

Some weekends Aliceas and Danielas families visited, and everyone would stay up late, eating and drinking and singing Irish songs while Alice played the piano. After she went to church each morning, Alice and her sisters-in-law might lie out on the sand in a row for hours while the sun beat down against their bare legs. Alice always brought a book along since they werenat the most entertaining gals; they were morally opposed to gossip and clearly jealous of her figure. She wished like crazy that her own sister, Mary, were there. Alice would almost forget about what had pa.s.sed, expecting to see Mary turn the corner at any moment.

Before dinner, the women shucked corn and boiled potatoes in the kitchen with a Dean Martin record playing in the background. Meanwhile, the men gathered outside around the grill, fanning the hot coals as if it took eight of them to get a fire going.

Later came more childrena"Alice and Danielas three, and forty-two nieces and nephews between them. For years there was an army of kids in the cottage, and Alice gave up on even trying to make the place look presentable. By the time the Fourth of July arrived, all the children would be bright red and freckly from the sun, their brown hair ever-so-slightly lightened, especially the girls, who squeezed lemon juice over their heads after breakfast each morning, same as their mothers. On arrival, everyoneas feet were smooth and soft, but after weeks of walking barefoot out on the stone jetties and across the dunes, their soles toughened up. Daniel joked that by summeras end, they could walk over broken gla.s.s without feeling a thing.

In Cape Nedd.i.c.k, Alice was distracted, surrounded by smiling people, all of them grateful for the invitation. The children ran in a pack with their cousins, demanding nothing. She watched the sky over the ocean turn pink in the evening, a reminder that G.o.d created beauty, every bit as much as He created pain. She became a different person there in summertime.

Back home in Ma.s.sachusetts there were so many memories; left alone in the house with the children, she often felt like she was losing hold. Her thoughts took gloomy turns without warning, and she got terrible headaches that forced her into bed all afternoon. Her life there was by its very nature boring, and she could not stand to be bored. She never cottoned to gaily cooking dinners and folding laundry and scrubbing the kitchen floor, as if that were all the world had to offer, no matter how hard she tried. She had been meant for more. Her cottage in Maine was the only thing that set her apart from everyone else, the only unordinary thing about her.

When her older daughter, Kathleen, ever the wet blanket, turned twelve or thirteen, she declared that she hated going to Maine. The air was too buggy, she said, the water too cold. There was no television and nothing to do. From then on, from the moment they arrived each summer until the inevitable morning when they packed up the car to head back to Ma.s.sachusetts, Kathleen would complain: aCan we go now? Can we?a aItas strange,a Daniel had said once.

aOh I donat think so,a Alice replied. aShe must have picked up on how much I love this place and instinctually decided to hate it.a Much latera"it amazed her how time sped up more and more, the older she gota"the grandkids came along. Daniel retired. Her children drove up to Maine whenever they liked, and no one bothered to call ahead. Theyad just bring extra hot dogs and Heinekens, cookies, or a blueberry pie from Rubyas Market. All summer, she and Daniel were the constant. Other bodies piled into the cottage and slept wherever they happened to drop: children under blankets on the hardwood floor in the living room, teenagers on inflatable mattresses up in the loft, her grandson Ryanas playpen wedged into the narrow kitchen.

In the mornings while the rest of them slept, Alice would brew a pot of coffee, toast English m.u.f.fins, and fry up a dozen eggs and bacon. Shead set a basin of warm water out on the porch for the childrenas sandy feet, and later, maybe help Kathleen and Ann Marie slather the kids in SPF 50, which by then they understood was essential for Irish skin. Even so, they got burns. Red, painful, blistering burns that they spent long evenings dousing in Solarcaine. The grandchildren, like the children, mostly resembled Danielas sidea"a half hour in the sun and their faces were six pink little pools, covered in constellations of brown freckles.

A few years before Daniel pa.s.sed, their son, Patrick, had offered them a gift. He was having a house of their own built for them on the property, he said. A real, modern house with high-end appliances and fixtures and a view of the ocean and no kids screaming, next to the cottage, but worlds better. They would have a big-screen TV with a sound system that was somehow wired through the walls. In the cottage there was only a small radio that picked up Red Sox games if you put it on the windowsill at the right angle.

aI think itall be wonderful,a Alice said to her husband after Pat told them his plan. aOur own hideaway, no squirrels in the rafters or mildew smell in the bathroom. No leaky old refrigerator.a aBut thatas what a summer place is,a Daniel said. aIf we wanted to be alone in a souped-up house, wead have stayed home in Canton. Why do I feel like this is a way to get rid of us?a Alice had told him not to be ridiculous, even though she partly agreed. It was extravagant, and seemed a bit beside the point of a family retreat. But Patrick had already had the plans drawn up, and he sounded so pleased when he told them the news. Plus, as he pointed out, adding another house to the property would only increase its value.

aLike in Monopoly,a he had said, a comparison that made Alice laugh, though she could see through Danielas tight smile that he found the comment patronizing.

After the house went up, Patrick had the whole place appraised. When he told her that it was now worth over two million dollars, Alice nearly fainted. Two million dollars for land that had been handed to them for free half a century earlier!

aSee? Our boy is a smart one,a she had said to Daniel then.

He shook his head. aItas dangerous, talking about money this way. Our home is not for sale.a She looked into his sad eyes and gave him a smile. She wanted to hold on to it all every bit as much as he did.

She put a hand on his cheek. aNo one said it was.a Of their three children, Patrick, the youngest, had done the best by far. They sent him to BC High. His last year of high school he dated Sherry Burke, the daughter of the mayor of Cambridge. Sherry was a sweet girl, and her family exposed Pat to the finer things. Alice always thought those years with her might have been what motivated him to make money later on. (She still saw Sherrya"a state senator in her own righta"in the newspaper now and then.) Pat went on to Notre Dame, where he finished sixth in his cla.s.s. He met Ann Marie, who was studying at his sister school, Saint Maryas. They were married the summer they turned twenty-two. They had a strong marriage, and three wonderful childrena"Fiona, Patty, and darling Little Daniel, Aliceas favorite of all her grandkids. Pat was a stockbroker; Ann Marie stayed at home. They lived in an enormous house in Newton, with a swimming pool out back and matching blue Mercedes sedans.

Aliceas daughters called them the Perfects. Well, by comparison, yes. Alice was always quick to point out that Ann Marie was a better daughter to her than either of them was. Ann Marie included her in weekend activities; they got their hair done together at a fancy place in town. They had long lunches and traded recipes and thick hardcover books and fashion magazines. Aliceas own two daughters could barely manage to call her once a week and update her on their lives. Clare made up for it every now and then with nice presents, but Kathleen didnat even bother trying.

Clare was Aliceas middle child, born two years before Patrick. When they were young, Alice had worried the most about her. She had a shock of red hair, the color of autumn leaves; an unfortunately round face; and freckles (Danielas side). She was a tomboy, and she was smart, perhaps too smart for her own good. In high school, Clare acted as serious as a nun, cloistered away in her bedroom, reading her textbooks by the open window, sneaking cigarettes when she thought Alice wasnat looking. She never had many friends, no more than one or two at a time, and never for longer than a few months. Daniel said it wasnat very motherly of her to say so, but Alice feared it was something Clare was doing that kept chasing people off, rather than the opposite.

After graduating from BC, Clare worked with computers, doing something Alice still didnat quite understand. She was completely devoted to her job, and never went on any dates as far as Alice knew. In her late thirties, she met Joe, through work, of course. His family business was a religious goods store in Southie that sold ornate Bibles and prayer books to true believers, and crosses and Infant of Prague statues to children making their First Communion. Joeas father gave him the company when he retired and Clare put the merchandise on the Internet somehow.

They had done well for themselves. They lived in an old Victorian house in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood that they claimed to love for its diversity and public victory gardens. (Those sound like the sort of traits youad use to praise a slum, Alice thought each time they mentioned them, though she knew the house had not come cheap.) Their neighbors on either side were black.

Until she went to work in downtown Boston at the age of nineteen, Alice had hardly ever seen a black person. Today, you couldnat drive down the street she had grown up on in Dorchester without locking the doors and holding your breath and saying ten Hail Marys. There were gang members and prost.i.tutes on the corner where her brothers used to play baseball before dinner. But you werenat allowed to comment on such things. If you did, according to Clare and Joe, you were a bigot.

The two of them were a perfect match, so in step with all that liberal hoo-haw. So in love that Joe didnat even seem to notice that Clare was downright plain and she didnat seem to care that he was embarra.s.singly short. Their son, Ryan, only seventeen, was a student at the Boston Arts Academy. He was a gifted little singer, a real hot ticket. A bit of a brat sometimes, but that was how head been raised. Alice had warned them against having just one child. When Ryan was small, he would ask her to play the piano for him and head belt out aTomorrowa as pitch-perfect as any girl on Broadway. Alice and Daniel had gone to so many school plays over the years that eventually Daniel invested in earplugs so he could nap in the auditoriums. But Alice loved watching those shows. She had saved all the programs. Clare and Joe kept Ryan away from her so often now. They were always too busy with auditions and meetings and travel and life, as if that were any excuse.

Kathleen, her oldest, was the one with Aliceas black hair and blue eyesa"the prettier sister when they were young, though only by default. Kathleenas features were terribly round. When she was a teenager, her full hips and b.r.e.a.s.t.s hinted at the weight she would gain later.

Daniel said that Alice never really took to Kathleen, that she didnat treat her like a mother should. He, on the other hand, spoiled her rotten, making no secret of the fact that she was his favorite. It was true when Kathleen was a little girl, and true when he offered her the cottage during her divorce, even though it wasnat strictly his to offer, and it was true right at the end of his life, a fact that Alice could never forgive.

After Kathleenas divorce, she went to graduate school for social work. Her kids were still young then, they needed her. But Kathleen stayed out late studying and attending AA meetings as if they were handing out bars of gold there. Later, she started working as a school counselor and began to date all sorts of unsuitable men.

Her two kids, Maggie and Christopher, had become the kind of adults one would expect from a broken home: Chris had anger issues. As a teenager, he once punched a hole in the bathroom wall because his mother grounded him for sneaking out. In contrast, Maggie always tried too hard to make everything perfect. She was too polite, too inquisitive. It put Alice on edge.

After Daniel died, Kathleen moved to California with a loafer boyfriend named Arlo, who she had known for all of six months at the time. They had a plan (or rather, he did) to start a company making fertilizer out of worm dung. It was a preposterous choice that still embarra.s.sed Alice nine years later, especially because Kathleen had used Danielas money to finance the whole boneheaded plan. Kathleen had borrowed plenty of money from him before he died too. Alice didnat want to know how much. She had once thought of Danielas money as their money. But if it were hers as well, then she would have had some say in how he spent it, and that was certainly not the case when it came to Kathleen. Each time she made some foolish romantic mistake, there was Daniel, ready to clean it up.

Even as a teenager, Kathleen had always been popular with boys.

aWhy donat you invite your sister to come to the party with you?a Alice would say to her on a Friday night. Or aCanat you find a nice fella for Clare?a But Kathleen would only shrug, as though she couldnat hear her.

Once, they had argued about it, Alice feeling so enraged at her uncharitable offspring that she shouted, aYouare lucky you even have a sister, you wretch. Do you know what I would do if Ia"a aWhat would you do?a Kathleen had interrupted. aWhat? Take her out to some club and then leave her there to die?a Alice was shocked, and instantly livid with Daniel for telling Kathleen. That was the only time in her life that she ever struck one of her children.

Usually, especially when they were young, she left the physical discipline to Daniel, for fear of what she might do out of fury or frustration. They had agreed that he would hit the children with a belt when they needed it, and Alice had never felt bad about this. She and her own siblings had endured much worse.

aWait until your father gets home,a shead tell the kids when they acted up, and their eyes would grow wide with fear.

When he arrived, Daniel always made a big show of dragging the offending youngster to his or her room, and closing the door. Alice would hear him say sternly, aNow, you brought this upon yourself and you know it. Take it like a grown-up.a Next came the sound of his belt lashing against a soft backside, and then the childas dramatic scream. This sort of behavior was highly out of character for her husband, and it always thrilled Alice a little, for the children could be monsters and she felt like he provided the exact buffer she needed to cope.