Maine: A Novel Part 2

Her boss, Mindy, was very relaxed. She didnat care if they worked from home or in the office as long as they got their stuff done. Maggie went in all the same, afraid that too much time at home alone would make her depressed, or that shead watch nine hours of television every day and eat the entire contents of her cabinets by lunch.

Maggie enjoyed the job mostly, but some days when she sat around a table with those other bright, creative people, she thought for a moment or two of how they all dreamed of being somewhere else.

Other than her mother, no one in her family mentioned it when she published a short story in a literary journal, even if she told them about it in advance. But when they saw her name in the credits for Till Death, theyad call her immediately.

Her stepmother had been the last to call, breathless with excitement: aI just saw the one where the woman shoots the husband after she sees his Visa bill, and it turns out he wasnat even cheating. He really was sending all those flowers to her, but the florist got the address wrong. The poor guy! Your father says to tell you that thanks to you heas never buying me roses again.a On the weekends, Maggie worked from home, trying to finish her novel, and occasionally writing other peopleas online dating profiles for extra money. She had written one for a friend as a favor a year earlier, and then that friendas sister had asked her to do one, and then a co-worker of hers.

aYou could actually make some mad cash on this,a Gabe had said to her once, and she had told him to stop being crazy.

But she kept getting offers, and had even been asked by a friend at New York magazine to write a step-by-step guide to the perfect profile. (She had declined, as few things seemed more mortifying than being known as an authority on online dating.) Maggie had briefly joined Match.com before meeting Gabe. She went on four or five dates, but every one of them felt artificial, as if she and the guy were two characters going out to dinner in a play. Maggie could never remember their real names and thought of them exclusively by their screen namesa"they were always WarmLover10 or BookNerdSeeksSame, instead of Alex or Dave. And she quickly tired of translating their profiles: A guy who said he was six foot two was most likely five foot eight. If a guy actually claimed to be five-eight, it meant he was four and a half feet tall.

Now the door to the apartment opened and shut with a slam: the unmistakable sound of Cunningham arriving home. She cringed, wishing she had gone into the bedroom so she wouldnat have to talk to him.

Maggie heard Gabe turning off the water in the shower. She was grateful at least that she wouldnat have to be alone with Cunningham for long.

aHey there,a he said. aWhatas happening, lady?a aJust hanging out,a she said.

aI thought you guys left for Maine already,a he said.

aNope. Tomorrow.a aCool cool. So, whatas the word?a aNot much,a she said, always unsure of how to answer that particular question. aHowas Shauna?a Her reliable fallback.

aSheas okay,a he said. aShe took a new nursing job in Westport.a aBut I thought she was moving here soon. Sheas going to commute to Westport from New York?a He shook his head. aNo maaam, and thank G.o.d for that. Iam not ready to give up our bachelor pad yet.a She started to say more, but Gabe appeared then, wrapped in a towel from the waist down.

aWhat up, my man!a he said, giving Cunningham a high five.

aHoney, Ben says Shauna got a new job in Connecticut,a she said, feeling her words heavy with implication.

aYeah? Good for her.a She tried again. aShaunaas not moving to New York then.a Gabe walked into the bedroom, and she followed behind. She closed the door. Her chest tightening, she said, aGabe, please tell me that youave already told him Iam moving in.a aKeep your voice down,a he whispered.

aYou havenat told him yet,a she said, weighing in her head whether this was simply bad or worse than that.

aI wanted to wait until after Maine to talk to you about this whole living together idea,a he said. aDo you really think weare ready?a She sat down on the bed. Heartburn rumbled up into her throat.

She pulled a couple of Tums from her purse on the floor and chewed them slowly. She wanted to tell him she was pregnant, then and there, but she knew she could say it only once and the moment needed to be perfect. Instead she said, aYou asked me to move in.a aWhoa,a he said. aAll I said was I had been thinking about it, and then you ran with the idea.a She breathed in deeply. aPlease tell me this isnat happening,a she said.

aBabe, chill out. You havenat given your landlord notice yet, right?a aRight. But Jesus, Gabe, I was just about to.a She wished that she already had.

aBut you didnat! So we live apart one more year. Whatas the big deal?a The big deal is that Iave already told everyone I knowa"every person at work, every friend, both my parents. Iave already started redecorating this G.o.dd.a.m.n apartment in my head, and told Allegraas cousin that she can have my place as of August first. The big deal is that in seven months, Iall be giving birth to your child.

aI donat understand,a she said. aWeave been talking about it all the time.a aYouave been talking,a he said. aI didnat want to ruin our vacation, but when I talked to Cunningham about it, he said he wasnat ready to move out yet, and I canat abandon him. Hey, youare always telling me to follow through on my commitments, right?a He could not follow through on finding steady work or taking care of her when she got sick as he had promised, but she was supposed to be dazzled by the fact that he felt compelled to keep living with Ben.

aSo Cunningham knew I wasnat moving in before I knew it,a she said.

Anger filled her, anger that she knew would turn to sadness and fear as soon as Gabe was out of her sight, and for that reason she wanted to fix this, to make some sense of it.

aI have my own place. Maybe you should come live at my apartment. Or we can find a brand-new place, and Cunningham can get a roommate off Craigslist,a she said.

aA total stranger?a Gabe said, as if most everyone in New York didnat live with total strangers. aWhy do you want to live together so bad anyway? Whatas the difference between that and what we have now?a Because Iam thirty-two years old. Because my cousin Patty is the same age and already has three kids and a house. Because I want to know when you come in at night. Because I love you.

aYouare the one who suggested it in the first place,a she said.

aI thought thatas what you wanted.a aIt was!a aBut itas not really what I want. I feel like a big part of the reason you want to live together is just to keep tabs.a She shook her head. Was this really happening?

ad.a.m.n right,a she said. aI thought maybe the possibility of living together meant youad stop being such a liar, but I guess I was wrong.a aGuess so,a he said. aHey, this time you didnat even need to go through my e-mail to find out.a She knew all her snooping was wrong, though it never felt wrong when she did it. It gave her a weird high, looking at his e-mails while he was in the shower or out for a run. Maggie told herself that she only wanted proofa"just oncea"that Gabe wasnat doing anything inappropriate. But shead always find something: acknowledgment that he had lied about where he was, or an overly friendly e-mail exchange with an ex. And then she would be devastated and unable to explain her sudden sorrow to Gabe.

aLike Ronald Reagan said, trust but verify,a she had told Allegra once to explain why she checked up on him this way, and Allegra had widened her eyes: aJesus, weare getting our moral relativism from Reagan now?a He was still wearing the towel. He let it drop to the floor and pulled on a pair of boxers and jeans.

aWeare done,a he said. aIam gonna go watch the game. Come out if you want.a aYouare gonna watch the game,a she said, feeling suddenly hysterical. aYouare going to watch the f.u.c.king game? I donat think so.a aI hate fighting like this,a he said. aI canat stand it.a aWe havenat fought like this in a long time,a she said, getting to her feet.

aYeah, because you got what you wanted,a he said.

aI thought it was what we both wanted.a aLook, you donat trust me,a he said. aThatas what this living together thing is really about. Maybe this needs to be over. Maybe we should take a break.a aA break?a She felt desperate. She wondered if there was someone else. aAre you kidding me?a aNope, starting now. So weare not together at the moment, and Iam gonna go watch the Yankees.a aG.o.d, youare horrible, Gabe. Youare so selfish.a aIf Iam so horrible, why donat you f.u.c.king leave?a he said.

aNo,a she said. aIam not leaving. Jesus. Letas calm down. We need to talk about this.a Sometimes this sort of fighta"the sort where she accused him of lying, and he got all hot and indignant over the accusation, even though he had, in fact, lieda"could fade quickly. But not today: He left the bedroom, and she trailed behind him into the kitchen. He screamed at her to go. She refused, and they were shouting louder and louder, until he actually grabbed her by the shoulders and shoved her toward the door leading to the outside hall.

aGabe, let go of me,a she gasped, her heart pounding. She thought of the baby. She wondered where Cunningham was hiding, that coward. Gabeas hands were too tight on her. She recalled the tender way he had touched her an hour before. Their most brutal fights always came on like this; quick, unexpected, and fierce.

aI donat want you here,a he said.

aToo bad. Thereas something I have to tell you. We need to talk.a aI donat need to do anything. This is my place. Now go.a aGabea"if you wonat talk to me now, then itas over,a she said, terrified.

aItas over,a he said. He let the door close, and she stood alone in the hallway for a moment. Then he reemerged, and her heart soared pathetically until she noticed the suitcase in his hand, her aunt Ann Marieas old Louis Vuitton. She thought of how all of this misery was their own constructiona"there was nothing stopping them from ending it now if they really wanted to, just going back inside and watching some baseball, and being happy, making a family together, making a life. And yet.

aHave a great trip,a he said, putting the suitcase on the ground at her feet and letting the door slam.

An old familiar feeling washed over her, the one shead get every time they had a fight and she walked out of his apartment, slamming the door behind her; or every time she gave him an ultimatum that he brushed aside by telling her to leave. The act of leaving felt empowering.

But then shead stand in the lobby of his building for ten minutes, make circles around his block for twenty, hoping head come after her, feeling the weight of her gesture, her penchant for the proud and the dramatic s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g her as usual.

aYouave got moxie, b.u.t.terfly,a her grandfather used to tell her when she was a teenager.

Yeah, well. In the end, moxie always seemed to come back and bite you in the a.s.s.

Kathleen.

Kathleen woke to the synchronized impact of a fat, speckled tongue running over her nose and a heavy weight pressing down against her right thigh.

aGet off me, you savages,a she said, opening her eyes. They kept at it, the tongue now s...o...b..ring across her chin, leaving behind a trail of drool. Kathleen wiped it away.

aOkay, Iam up.a Mack and Mabel were full-grown German shepherds. He weighed eighty-two pounds, she weighed sixty-eight. But they danced about the bed like a couple of puppies, scratching her bare arms, mussing up the sheets.

aCool it, you two,a she said in a fake stern voice. When it came to business matters she could be tough, but she had never had a knack for discipline, not with Maggie and Chris, and not with her dogs.

They calmed down after a bit, lying side by side in the now empty spot where Arlo slept. It was Sunday, but he had left at the crack of dawn to give an eight oaclock presentation to a townas worth of Junior Girl Scouts in Paradise Pines, two and a half hours north.

Mack and Mabel panted, despite the fact that the room was cool, a swivel fan aimed toward the bed. Kathleen felt momentarily sad. She had rescued them when they were days old, from a litter of pups someone found abandoned on the side of Route 128. What kind of person would do that? To this day, she couldnat fathom it. Now her babies were somehow fourteen years old and completely worn out from a few minutesa worth of play.

She rolled over and burrowed into Mack, who burrowed into Mabel, for a sort of three-way spoon. This was how they had slept every night before she met Arlo. When he came along, he insisted the dogs sleep at the far end of the bed or, preferably, on the floor. Which explained why Mack still snubbed him, even ten years later.

From the time she was a kid, she had had a fondness for strays and lost creatures. How many evenings had she taken home a dog shead found wandering around, only to have Alice say shead have to let the dog go? Kathleen would tell her mother fine, and then she would set him up in the shed out back anyway, with a bowl of water and the contents of her dinner plate and a soft blanket and the big flashlight they kept for hurricanes switched on to its highest setting. The next day, her father would help her post signs around town, and soon enough, someone would come along to claim their Toby or their Duke or their King.

Arlo could take or leave the dogs, but they had a policy of indulging each otheras pa.s.sions, no matter what. Hence the fact that she lived on a worm farm, and had once allowed herself to be filmed having s.e.x while a concert recording of aSugar Magnoliaa played in the background.

Her ex-husband, Paul, was allergic to dogs. That should have been a sign right there. After the divorce, she adopted a retired greyhound named Daisy, who n.o.body liked, poor thing. (aI know how you feel,a Kathleen would tell her when Alice came over and turned up her nose.) She had had at least one doga"more often two or threea"ever since. The dogs were partly responsible for keeping her sane. The relationship she had with them was pure joy. No ulterior motives, no spite, just love and care and kindness, exactly the emotions she wanted to cultivate.

Kathleen rose from her bed now and went into the bathroom to pee. On the other side of the closed door, two wide mouths hung open, eager to start their day. It was almost ten. Arlo always let her sleep as late as she wanted, perhaps for his own well-being more than hers. She was definitely not a morning person. Lately she had been having trouble getting to sleep at night. She was stressed about the farm and all the extra work theyad taken on. And, even more than usual, she was worried about Maggie and the way the Kellehers were treating her.

Maggie and Gabe were driving to Maine to join Alice tomorrow. Kathleen often wondered why her daughter felt such a sense of belonging and trust when it came to their relatives. She herself felt nothing of the sort, especially now that her father was gone. She loved her family, in that way that you have to love your family. But it saddened her to see Maggie let down by them, over and over again. The latest was that obnoxious phone call from Ann Marie. Kathleen couldnat get it out of her head.

She made her way downstairs with the dogs underfoot. In the kitchen, she opened the back door, and they bolted out to begin their daily ritual of eating bluebells and terrorizing innocent b.u.t.terflies. Kathleen stood in the doorway for a moment, as she did most mornings, taking it all ina"the view of the mountains, the border of giant oak trees far off in the distance, their gorgeous flower beds (proof positive that their products really worked), the vegetable patch, and the two red barns separated by a swath of green, green gra.s.s. If you drove for a few minutes, you were in the heart of a vineyard, with grapevines in every direction.

Two dry drunks in wine country! That was how Arlo had described them to the group at their first Sonoma Valley AA meeting. Everyone laughed, since they too were part of that strange contradiction.

They had met ten years back at a meeting in Cambridge. He invited her to go for coffee and she said yes, despite the fact that he wasnat at all her type. Arlo was an aging hippie with s.h.a.ggy silver hair who had spent his early thirties following the Grateful Dead. He had once revealed in a meeting that before he joined AA in 1990, it wasnat uncommon for him to down a bottle of whiskey and smoke three joints in a single day. He had never really had a job, outside of coffee shops and bars. Despite having gone through her own ugly addiction to alcohol, Kathleen was still on some level judgmental of drug addicts. And her father had always hated hippies.

But Arlo had been sober for four years when they first went out. He made her laugh. They both enjoyed meditation, though Kathleen thought he was more indulgent about ita"it was all very let the sun shine in with him, whereas for her it was about staying rational and trying not to turn into her mother. She liked his pa.s.sion for gardening, and the fact that he volunteered at a nursery. He told her he dreamed of running his own composting business one day, comprised of feeding trash to worms and making grade-A fertilizer from their droppings.

Arlo was six foot four and lanky. He was sensitive and mellow and kind, and when he laughed, the sound could shake furniture. People always fell in love with him. Well, people other than her family, but that was no surprise. Kathleen thought (she hoped) that Maggie genuinely liked him, and her sister, Clare, too. The opinions held by the rest of the Kellehers were irrelevant.

When people asked her what she did, Kathleen told them she and Arlo were in the vermiculture composting business and hoped they would not ask her to elaborate. In laymanas terms, they sold live worms and a spray fertilizer known in the trade as worm p.o.o.p tea to small and medium-size nurseries all over California. They always had worms at each stage of the process: worms being born, worms just taking their first infinitesimal bites of banana peel, and worms that had finished composting, leaving them with a magnificent pile of fertilizer to sift through. Their three million worms made three thousand pounds of castings each month.

They had bought the farm ten years earlier, site unseen, six months after they met. The house sat on five acres in Glen Ellen, a tiny farming town outside of Sonoma. They sold both their homes in Ma.s.sachusetts to buy it, and with the addition of the money Kathleen had inherited after her father died, they could almost afford the place. Almost. Maggie had been alarmed when Kathleen first told her about the idea all those years ago, but after considering several hours of conversation and a thick folderas worth of research, even Kathleenas worrywart daughter had agreed that Arloas plan had potential. He needed only the financing to get it off the ground, and someone to believe in him.

This year, the company was thriving. Arloas special orchid tea had been written up in a national magazine about organic living and orders were through the roof. Best of all, they had been profiled in the Los Angeles Times and the Sonoma Index-Tribune that spring, leading to an account with a chain of gardening stores that had operations in three states.

Kathleen had surprised them both with her business savvy. It was her outreach that had earned them all the press. It had been her idea to work with local schools to get the steady supply of garbage necessary to run their company. She was even able to channel the pushy, Alice-like parts of herself into getting nurseries to take more product than they might have, or securing Arlo a better deal on bottling fees.

Her mother and her brother, Pat, made it clear that they still thought the whole endeavor was goofy and extravagant, never mind that Kathleen had turned a profit of more than two hundred thousand last year. She understood how they might have thought the idea was suspect in the beginning, but she wished that just once they could give her credit for her success.

Shead show them this coming year, anyway.

In the early winter, she was taking their business to the next level. The tenth anniversary of the farm was in November, and she planned to present Arlo with a surprise: a worm gin, which would potentially triple their monthly output. The gin cost twenty thousanda"most small farms like theirs couldnat afford that. But she had carefully saved two hundred dollars every month since they had arrived here, no matter what.

She knew Arlo would be overjoyed, and when she pictured his reaction, she felt elated. Kathleen imagined car commercials from the eightiesa"a man gives his wife a Lincoln wrapped up in a big red ribbon for Christmas. Perhaps shead be the first person to ever tie an oversize bow around a machine designed to ma.s.s-produce p.o.o.p.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen for a moment, and then called the office in town where the orders were processed to make sure that a bunch of invoices had been sent out on Friday. She spoke to Jerry, their faithful a.s.sistant, who was there seven mornings a week. When she hung up, she glanced around at the room and sighed. The windows were streaked and the dishes stacked up. The trash was overflowing.

The entire house was a mess. She and Arlo could never manage to get the dirt out from under their fingernails, no matter how much they scrubbed. They left smudges on clothes and walls and book covers. There was dog hair everywhere. The bathroom probably hadnat been cleaned in months. She blamed it on the business, but really she had never been one for housekeeping. In theory shead love a tidy home like Ann Marieas, but when she set that desire against all the other possibilities for what she could be doing if she werenat inside with a mop, well a Kathleen put two pots of water on the stove to boila"a small one for her ginger tea and a large lobster pot for steaming the wormsa food. One of many facts she had learned about worms along the way was that just because they ate garbage didnat mean they werenat discerning. They loathed orange peels, and werenat fond of citrus in general. They preferred their food soft and mushy, so when she had the time she over-steamed banana peels and vegetable sc.r.a.ps and hunks of carrot tops and apple cores before loading them into the worm bins.

She pulled a ginger root from the cupboard and set to peeling it in front of the window. Outside, the dogs were lying side by side in the gra.s.s. She chopped the ginger into cubes and dumped them into the pot, leaving them there to simmer. Then she returned to her spot at the table, soaking in the quiet.

She opened the newspaper, which Arlo had set out for her. She flipped past the front-page news and the Arts section, landing finally on the Sunday circular. She didnat clip coupons, but the women in her family had always been so obsessed with them that she could never shake the habit of looking them over, just in case there was something amazing to be found, though of course there never was. One ad offered free floss with the purchase of five tubes of toothpaste. As if floss had ever broken the bank for anyone. Human beings were strange about free stuff. Her mother was the queen of ita"I got four bottles of ketchup for the price of one, Alice had bragged over the phone a few weeks earlier. Who needed four bottles of ketchup?

Kathleen made a point of speaking to Alice once a week, even though when she did this she often felt as though she had been roughly awakened from an exquisite dream. From this distance, it was easy enough to pretend her mother and the rest of the family didnat exist. Well, all of them except for her children, who she missed every minute.

Kathleen worried about her son, Chris, about what kind of person he really was. He didnat seem to have much ambition or enthusiasm: he drank a lot of beer and got into fights with his girlfriend, after which she ended up in tears and he ended up out at a bar with friends. In short, he was terrifyingly like his father.

She had to admit, at least to herself, that she felt jealous watching Pat and Ann Marie bask in all of Little Danielas professional success. That kid seemed to get a promotion every year, while Chris could barely find work. Maybe if he had had a real father, it would be different. She wished she had seen it sooner, done more for her son. But Kathleenas attention had always been drawn more naturally toward Maggie.

Her daughter had turned out so well, despite Kathleen and Paulas best efforts at completely f.u.c.king up her life.

Kathleen had taught her to be her own person. When Maggie was a kid, wanting desperately to fit in, Kathleen repeated a single phrase to her, over and over: aDonat be a sheep.a She wished someone had said it to her when she was young. She couldnat stand the thought of her remarkable daughter living out some ho-hum life like everyone else. And Maggie had taken this advice. She had made it as a writer in New York City, the sort of big, bold, independent existence Kathleen had realized too late that she herself wanted.

By the time she figured out that she was no Kelleher, not really, that she didnat want to spend her entire life watching college football at Patrick and Ann Marieas every Sat.u.r.day while the kids played outside and the women made pasta salad and talked about laundry detergenta"by then, it was too late. She was married with two children. Discovering that you craved independence when you were a young mother was about as convenient and feasible as shooting a man in cold blood and then deciding you didnat feel like being a murderer after all. So she drank far too much and fought with her husband, and fought with Alice, and was generally an absolute mess. Once, she had stumbled drunk into Chrisas first-grade cla.s.sroom for a parent-teacher conference, scaring his teacher half to death. Most days, she had started drinking at lunchtime. She carried on like this until the spring she took her kids to Maine and really hit rock bottom. She knew now that sometimes a person needed to sink that low to be able to get up again, and she didnat regret it. She had changed after all that, and somehow become a woman she actually liked.

She got through the rest of her childrenas years at home by telling herself that once they were off at college shead be free, and that had proven more or less true. In the meantime, she had focused on staying sober; she planted an organic garden in the backyard. She learned that yoga and long walks could help her relieve stress better than chardonnay, and that there was real value to knowing about herbs and vegetables and ways to heal oneself that didnat come in tiny plastic vials. Her father lent her the money to go to night school and get her masteras degree, after which she worked as a guidance counselor in a private high school full of self-loathing overprivileged girls with eating disorders. She went on lots of dates, which Ann Marie and Alice thought made her the wh.o.r.e of Babylon. A mother shouldnat be s.e.xual, G.o.d forbid. She should have her v.a.g.i.n.a sealed over with plaster and declare herself closed for business, no matter if she was thirty-nine years old and only beginning to realize who she was.

No one had told Kathleen about the dark parts of motherhood. You gave birth and people brought over the sweetest little shoes and pale pink swaddling blankets. But then you were alone, your body trying to heal itself while your mind went numb. There was a mix of joy and the purest love, coupled with real boredom and occasional rage. It got easier as the kids got older, but it never got easy.

aAfter I had you, I understood for the first time why people shake their babies to death,a she had told Maggie on one of her long trips to New York.

aThanks a lot,a Maggie had said.

aOh no, thatas not what I meant,a Kathleen said. aIt wasnat youa"you were the best baby I ever saw. Itas motherhood in general that makes a woman nuts. All those hormones rushing around inside you. You canat sleep. You canat reason with this little beast. Before I had kids, I thought those people who shook babies were monsters, with some sort of inorganic urge. Then I realized that the violent urge is totally natural. Itas the stopping yourself part thatas inorganic, that takes real work.a She wanted her daughter to know this, to have all the information up front. If she herself could have had that, so much of life might have been easier.

Kathleenas mother had never understood the value of sharing oneas pain. Not for her own good, or for anyone elseas. If Alice hadnat covered up her drinking, but had talked about it insteada"the way it consumed her, the fact that it had caused her to drive them straight into a tree when they were kidsa"perhaps Kathleen never would have gotten into the same mess years later.

Kathleen and Maggie had a completely open relationship; she had made sure of that. They were best friends. It had just about killed her when Maggie went off to college in Ohio, and she was an adult then, a mother. And it was still torturous now, each time she went to New York for a visit and then had to say good-bye. Kathleen told her daughter everything and Maggie in turn could confide in her. Kathleen took great pride in this, though she knew Alice saw it as a failing.

Her phone vibrated on the counter. A text from Arlo: A success! Heading home!

He was always revved up after one of his presentations. He liked the school-aged kids the best, since there was no other segment of the population who appreciated conversation about feces and slimy worms quite so much. They called him Mister Worm p.o.o.p. On the occasions when Kathleen went with him, head introduce her to the crowd as Ms. Worm p.o.o.p. Arlo usually brought a couple thousand worms along each time he spoke to a crowd, which sounded like a lot, but amounted to only two poundsa worth. The children screeched with delight as, one by one, they got to dig their hands into the bins full of slithering creatures.

Kathleen was terribly proud of him. How many people had a vision and actually saw it through? The business was the perfect reflection of their relationship. Arlo was a dreamer, an optimist, a big-picture guy. And Kathleen was a realista"she told it like it was. Together, they just worked.

She smiled now, and thought briefly of changing out of her drawstring pajama pants and Trinity T-shirt into something sort of s.e.xy to surprise him, but what was the point? He had seen her naked a thousand times and she had seen him. She was pushing sixty, and he had pa.s.sed it four years ago. The jig was up. That was what she appreciated about her s.e.x life with Arloa"the refreshing feeling of not giving a d.a.m.n. Not out of apathy but out of comfort. He was the easiest man shead ever been with, s.e.xually speaking. She knew it had lots to do with his warmth and kindness, but another part of it was a function of age. You stopped caring so much about every last lump and b.u.mp at some point, you just flat-out refused to suck in your gut while you were trying to have an o.r.g.a.s.m. At least she did.

She had spent years worrying about what men thought of the way she looked. These days the only person whose opinion on the matter really touched her was her mother. Alice had a pathological need to discuss everyoneas weight.

Kathleen had last seen her at Christmas, five months earlier.

aYouare looking good, youave lost a few,a Alice had said then.

Kathleen hated the fact that she felt pleased by this. aWeave been taking a lot of hikes in the mountains. Our place backs right onto the foothills. Remember those pictures I sent you?a It irked her that her mother had never visited. The only ones who had were Maggie and Clare.

aThatas good,a Alice had replied. aMake sure to keep it up now. Winter always makes everyone want to stay inside and get fat.a aI live in California,a Kathleen said.

aSo? They donat have winter there?a aNo, not really.a aAnyway, keep hiking.a It was a special kind of curse, having a beautiful mother, when you yourself were just average. Alice had gotten a reputation in the neighborhood when Kathleen and Pat and Clare were kids for being rather odd because she ran around the block several times every morning in a tennis dress and trench coat. Twenty years later, this would be called jogging. Alice was still careful about her figure, and she never let Kathleen forget those thirty pounds shead gained after her own two kids. She had gotten more active when she met Arlo, but her love of sweets and cheeses kept her plump.

aYou have such a pretty face,a Alice would say. Or, before Arlo came along, aI can say this because Iam your mother. You might find it easier to meet a nice fella without that enormous gut.a Kathleen had felt tremendous amounts of guilt for leaving Ma.s.sachusetts, but most of the time she was glad to be free. Here, no one based their knowledge of her on what she had done thirty years ago. No one made her feel guilty for missing a family party, or tried to tell her that by declaring herself an alcoholic she was only looking for attention. People in the organic gardening world and at AA treated her with such respect and even admiration that she almost felt like an imposter.

Kathleen didnat like the person she became when she was around the Kellehers. She reverted to that weaker version of herself, the bitter woman she had been in the past. She grew short-tempered and easily angry; she lashed out at the slightest provocation. There were things she was deeply ashamed of and they would not let her forget.

Arlo believed that life was short and you should interact only with people you enjoyed. He also believed that loyalty was earneda"sharing a bloodline didnat mean you had to be close. He saw his father and brother every few years, when one of them happened to pa.s.s through the town where another one lived. When Kathleen asked him, he said he felt no remorse about seeing them so rarely. aWe have nothing in common,a he said. His brother was an accountant with three kids who had moved to Des Moines when he met his wife, a former Iowa beauty queen.