Maine: A Novel Part 6

Alice thought shead try to get him onto a different topic, and so she said, aHey, Pop, what do you think about the Red Sox? Are they going to make it to the Series this year?a She had no clue about the Red Sox, they all knew that. But it was something to say and she felt the need to protect her sister.

aYou shut up,a he slurred, fully worked up now. aMary, you used to be the good one. Now look at you. Ever since you met that man, youare a different girl. Too big for your britches. And for what? Someone like thata"heas never going to marry a girl like you.a Though Alice had been thinking the same thing a moment earlier, she was livid. Of course he was going to marry her. Henry was going to save them both. Maybe thatas what made their father so mad.

aMy daughter turned down by a cripple,a he said with a cruel laugh, and Alice imagined socking him clear across the jaw.

She looked at her mother, but she just sat there, silent. There was no telling what he might do to her when he got like this, or to any of them for that matter. Their mother had never once come to their defense, even when they were small.

aHe will marry her,a Alice said defiantly. aYou donat know what youare talking about.a He rose from his chair, standing slowly, coming toward her. She vowed not to move, but at the last second, as Mary screeched, Alice got up and ran to the bedroom, with her sister close behind. He chased them up the stairs, grabbing hold of Maryas skirt for an instant before she managed to pull away. Alice slammed the door right in his terrible face and stood holding it closed until she heard him slink off.

aHeas a fool,a she told Mary, who was crying hard now.

aOh, come sit by me.a Her sister sat beside her on the bed, putting her head in Aliceas lap. aIt will all work out, youall see,a Alice said, stroking her brown hair.

She was trying to sound certain, but she couldnat sleep that night for wondering what would happen next. Three weeks later, she would know for sure. But by then Mary was gone.

Alice folded the towels one by one, filling a plastic laundry basket to its brim. She had hoped that coming up to Maine would help her stop thinking about her sister, but she realized now how foolish that had been. Maine was for quiet contemplation, Daniel had always said. Or, in her case, just plain stewing.

She carried the basket on her hip like a toddler, out through the houseas screen porch and over to the cottage. She saw a cardinal swoop down from one of the pine trees and land on a bush by the gra.s.sy patch where they parked the cars, since there was no driveway. Daniel had fancied himself an amateur bird-watcher, and had always given them silly names. She imagined what he might have called this one: Miss Scarlet, maybe.

There was a ceramic plaque on the cottage door that read Cad Mile Filte. aA hundred thousand welcomes.a She and Daniel had gotten it on a trip to Dublin probably thirty-five years earlier. For some time, it had hung on the front door of their house in Canton, and then she tired of it, and so, like many other posessions with which she couldnat quite part, she brought it to Maine.

Alice unlocked the door and took in the familiar musty scent. She went to the bathroom linen closet, piling the towels one on top of the other.

So much of her life had been defined by the loss of her sister. Daniel said it was the reason for her drinking when the kids were small. For her insomnia, her moods. She told him she didnat know if all that was truea"he had never known her before Maryas death, so how could he be so sure?

For years at a time, Alice could go along fine, not dwelling on it, until something came along again to open up the wound. This year it had been that story in The Boston Globe. Two years ago, Alice was sorting through a box that had once contained Patrickas ice skates and was now full of papers and photographs. At the very bottom, she found an envelope. Alice lifted the flap, and flipped through photos of her brothers in uniform; a few of a twenty-six-year-old Daniel on the porch in Maine, with baby Kathleen in his lap; and then a shot of two young women and one man, clad in long khaki shorts and b.u.t.ton-down tops, their hair blowing wildly in the Newport breeze, all of them laughing gaily. On the back, in her sisteras handwriting, were the words, May 28, 1943. Me, Alice, and Henry.

It had been taken six months to the day before Mary died, and just the sight of it had sent Alice into a tizzy. She tore the picture up and threw it in the trash, only to regret doing so an hour later.

There were always small reminders: she still felt a twinge every time she drove by the Liberty Mutual headquarters on Berkeley Street where Mary had worked; or at Easter, remembering the silly rabbit-shaped cake Mary used to bake each year. She often wondered who Mary might have become. What sort of life would have unfurled from out of her youthful dreams, what sort of children she and Henry would have brought into the world. It was strange to think that Alice had turned into a mother of three, while her entirely maternal sister never had the chance to bear a single child.

Daniel had always tried to steer her away from the what-ifs, which he considered only wasteful, morbid thoughts. But now he too was gone. Since seeing that newspaper article so many months earlier, Alice was haunted by memories of her sister even more than usual. Maiden Mary, the newspaper had called hera"anyone who was old enough to remember that night remembered her story.

The part they didnat know was that Alice was to blame. Sometimes she thought that carrying the knowledge of it around was a piece of her penance. Lately, as if G.o.d were emphasizing this, she had become painfully aware of the pairs of old ladies everywhere she went. In church pews and at the beauty parlor, and walking along the sidewalks of Boston, arm in arm. The men didnat lasta"that was something they never told you when you were young and desperately searching for one, thinking head make your life all that it was supposed to be. No, in the end, it was only women; in the end, just sisters. She had her friends, but that was different. Friends kept their distance after a certain age. She couldnat exactly invite Rita OaShea over for a slumber party or call her at midnight with her worries.

If Mary had lived, they might be here in Maine together. If Mary had lived, Aliceas whole life might have been different.

It was almost lunchtime. She thought she might as well stay in the cottage for a while and make herself a sandwich. She went to the kitchena"her old tiny summer kitchen, which she had complained about countless times over the years, yet so preferred to all the marble and stainless steel next door. She opened up a can of tuna, draining the water into the sink. She had cleaned out the fridge a week earlier and filled it with new condiments and pickles and seltzer and Pepsi and a dozen fresh eggs. In the freezer, there were Popsicles and several leftovers from her own kitchen back home, wrapped in tinfoil. On the counter, she had lined up a bag of onions and a stack of paper plates and cups. In the coming weeks, her children and grandchildren would come through, adding their own bits and pieces, so that by the end of the summer there would be four half-eaten boxes of cereal and several almost empty bags of chips in the cupboard; in the freezer, a lone frozen waffle and a gallon of ice cream from Brighamas with one bite left in the bottom of the drum. But the staples came from Alice.

She had once heard her grandson Christopher ask Kathleen how it happened that the cottage was always fully stocked. aMagic,a Kathleen had said, and Alice had interrupted, aActually, thereas nothing magic about it, Chrissy. Itas called your grandmother.a Now she pulled a small onion from the bag and a knife from the block on the counter, part of a set she had bought off the TV a couple winters ago. She began chopping.

She chopped in silence for a minute or so, saying a Hail Mary in her head as she went.

Outside the window, something darted across the lawn, catching her eye. Her chest tightened. Her hand locked tight around the knife. She knew exactly who was out there.

aOh, no you donat,a she said out loud.

She stormed outside, just in time to see the blasted baby rabbit eat a hunk out of one of her beautiful pink roses.

aNo! Out! Out!a she said, stomping toward the creature like a maniac, waving the knife in the air. He perked up his ears, and looked straight at her. The nerve!

Alice rushed toward him, scrunching up her face, pointing the knife. A moment later, he darted under a hedge and into the woods.

aThatas it,a she yelled after him. aThis means war!a Her heart pounded, but she felt a bit silly now, standing alone in the yard with a steak knife, shouting at no one. She straightened up, smoothed her blouse, and went back inside to finish making lunch.

Maggie.

Maggie had been standing in front of Gabeas building like a pathetic crazy person for twenty minutes. A cab came by with its light on and she hailed it, beginning to cry softly, admitting defeat. She told the driver her address and almost said, aIam pregnant,a as a way of explaining her tears, but that seemed a bit much.

She wanted to believe that she was overreacting. She didnat want the problem to be Gabe. Or, if it was Gabe, she wanted him to do something so big she couldnat let it go bya"not just lying about being out with friends or buying drugs, but lying about another woman. Not just grabbing her uncomfortably by the shoulders, but actually slapping her across the face.

She had been waiting and waiting, and now perhaps that thing had come. He didnat want her to move in, and didnat seem to care whether that meant they were over. She was pregnant with his child and she was alone. What a d.i.c.k. What a chronically avoidant, immature a.s.shole. And what kind of freak was she that a tiny part of her was already regretting how shead acted, wishing she had said, aOkay, fine, we wonat live together,a so that they could go to Maine tomorrow and fall in love again. Theyad been trying to make this work for two years, even though it was sometimes hard.

As her mother had put it when Maggie called her crying after one of their fights: aI know you want to be married and settled, but give it up. You canat make chicken soup from chicken s.h.i.t.a Kathleen was forever saying things like that, things that probably made some sense in theory, but were not in the least bit helpful when it came to actually living your life. She kept handwritten AA mantras on Post-it notes stuck to her fridge and printed on coffee mugs and tea towels all around her kitchen: One Day at a Time. Live and Let Live. To Thine Own Self Be True.

In her less charitable moments, Maggie thought that her mother had really just replaced one addiction with another: the pride and the self-righteousness of sobriety instead of the rush and release of alcoholism. But then she would remember moments from childhood: her mother pa.s.sing out on the front lawn after a cousinas wedding; her parents, drunk on margaritas at the cottage in Maine, laughing and singing and then usually fighting until after midnight, letting Maggie stay up (or, more likely, forgetting about her), which thrilled her, and scared her too.

After Kathleen joined AA, she started doing a lot of yoga. She also began concocting herbal remediesa"calendula and witch hazel for Chrisas acne, ground-up nettle leaves and plum oil for Maggieas allergies. Never have two adolescents coveted Noxzema and Benadryl so much.

Kathleen gave Maggie a dream catcher as a sixteenth birthday gift, and it was all Maggie could do not to tell her how stupid and clichd this was. The same year, her cousin Patty got a car for her birthday, and she didnat even have her permit yet. Maggie was jealous, and then immediately guiltya"her mother might have gotten her a Camry, too, if she could afford it. Maggie made herself feel so lousy about the situation that she decided not to get her license that year. Sixteen years later, she still didnat know how to drive.

Now Kathleen was off in California. Maggie knew her mother had her reasons for leaving, but part of her felt like Kathleen had chosen Arloa"a man she hardly knew at the timea"over her own children. It was the same feeling she had as a child when Kathleen would go on dates and leave them with Ann Marie. On those nights, Maggie would sit at the table with her cousins in Ann Marieas bright, open kitchen, wishing she belonged there.

a a a When she got home from Gabeas apartment, she climbed the stairs to her fifth-floor walk-up, sobbing. From the fourth-floor landing, she heard a door above creak open and prayed it was not Mr. Fatelli, the lecherous old guy next door, who always smelled like soup and wanted her to come inside and have a look at his pet lovebirds, Sid and Nancy.

But then she heard Rhiannonas voice: aMaggie?a came the soft Scottish accent.

aYes, itas me,a she said, walking up the last flight, wishing she could get inside and be alone, despite the fact that she genuinely liked Rhiannon.

Her neighbor on the other side was a gorgeous girl from Glasgow. She was not yet thirty, but had already divorced the older American businessman who had brought her here. Now she worked as a hostess at a trendy restaurant in SoHo by night and attended graduate school at NYU three days a week. Rhiannon seemed like a free spirit, maybe because she was a foreigner, and therefore felt adventurous (or maybe it was the reversea"she was bold enough to come here because she was just the adventurous type). She was always going on a boat ride up the Hudson or biking through the Bronx or trying every pizza place in Staten Island in the course of a week. She lived in New York the way everyone imagined living there, but no one actually did.

A few months earlier, at Rhiannonas urging, Maggie and Gabe had gone to the restaurant where she worked for dinner. Rhiannon had worn a tiny tight dress in Lewinsky blue; her muscular arms and legs were everywhere as she led them to their table.

Afterward, she chatted with them for a bit, joking with Gabe about her name: aThis is what happens when Fleetwood Mac fans mate,a she said. aIam thinking of starting a support group with my friend Gypsy.a aSeriously?a he responded, clearly captivated.

aNo, not seriously,a she said.

aAh, you got me,a he said, giving her a wink, which annoyed Maggie ever so slightly. She imagined for an instant how he behaved when she wasnat around.

Out in the street afterward, Gabe said, aSheas pretty hot stuff.a aYouare not really her type, sweetie,a Maggie said. aShe goes for rich, old geezers.a aI meant her att.i.tude,a he said. aSheas s.p.u.n.ky. She must get bored with a gig like that. Why does she do it?a Rhiannon had told Maggie that she had gotten the restaurant job only because she needed dental work. Until then she had done fine without health coverage. Maggie herself wouldnat dare to live without insurance for a single day. That would no doubt be the day that a piano fell from a tenth-story window and landed on her head.

aAre you okay?a Rhiannon asked now, seeing Maggieas tears.

aGabe and I had a fight,a Maggie said.

Rhiannon nodded. aWhy donat we pop downstairs for a drink?a aI just want to go to bed,a Maggie said. aI hope that doesnat sound rude.a Rhiannon laughed. aYeah, G.o.dd.a.m.n your rudeness. You really need to get that in check. Seriously, though, Iam worried about you. Do you want to talk?a Maggie shook her head. aMaybe later?a Rhiannon was her first New York neighbor who had become something like a friend. The two of them werenat all that close, but they had had several long chats out in the hallway, and on the day Rhiannonas divorce was finalized, theyad gone for dinner at a new place on Orange Street, and toasted to freedom, though Maggie wondered whether Rhiannon actually saw it that way.

aIall be here if you need me,a Rhiannon said now.

aI appreciate it,a Maggie said.

Inside the apartment, she left her packed suitcase by the door and crawled into bed. A pair of Gabeas corduroys hung over the arm of a chair. His Yankees hat was on the coffee table.

Maggie cried until she fell asleep. She dreamed of her grandfather at the beach in Maine, dancing on the sh.o.r.e alone, in his old palm-tree-print bathing suit, little curls of white hair on his chest. He was laughing, carefree.

When she woke up, she thought first of him. In a lot of ways, he had been more of a dad to her than her own father ever had. It was her grandpa who used to make her giggle with his ridiculous jokes when some kid at school hurt her feelings; her grandpa who came over and shoveled their driveway after a snowstorm. At the cottage in Maine, head sing lullabies to the grandkids at bedtime, always in an exaggerated, melodramatic voice.

He had been the one to drive Maggie to college, with all of her belongings in the back of his Buick, all the way to Ohio. That road trip was one of her happiest memories: she got to talk to him in a way that she never had before, without her brother and cousins there vying for his attention.

After ten hours in the car, they stopped for dinner at some ramshackle place on the side of the road. Her grandfather drank a pint of Guinness, and told her that when he had first met Alice head been so startled by her beauty that he nearly ran off; every word out of his mouth was utter nonsense. He told her that the day her mother was born was the most amazing one of his life, and that he had left his wife and new baby sleeping in the hospital room and gone straight to morning Ma.s.s at St. Ignatius, where he put a hundred-dollar bill in the collection plate.

aYour grandma and I are so proud of you,a he said. aWe know youare going to be a very bright star, Maggie.a aThank you.a aYouare the first one in our family to go to a non-Catholic school, you know,a he said, and she rolled her eyes because he had been mentioning this all summer. aYouave broken our hearts, but thatas fine.a aGrandpa!a aBe sure not to give up on your faith, okay?a he said. aYouare going to the sort of place where theyare not too keen on religion. But remember where you came from.a The food arrived, and he said with a straight face, aMaggie, my dear, do you know why you shouldnat lend money to a leprechaun?a She sighed. aBecause theyare always a little short.a He nodded approvingly. aWell, will you look at her! All right, how about this: Paddy told Murphy that his wife was driving him to drink. Murphy told Paddy heas a lucky b.a.s.t.a.r.d because his own wife makes him walk.a Maggie groaned but she couldnat stop him from launching into a series of Irish jokes, delivered in a terribly unconvincing brogue, which lasted all the way through dessert.

Maggie was twenty-two when he pa.s.sed away, and even now, ten years later, the thought of it was jarring. She recalled a line from a poem she had memorized in college: No thing that ever flew, not the lark, not you, can die as others do.

But he was gone, and maybe Gabe was gone as well. It was almost ten, and the sky outside had turned pure black. Maggie looked at her phone. No missed calls.

In twelve hours, they were supposed to be leaving for Maine. Should she still go? She wished she were the kind of person who could bury her head under the covers and order pizza from Fascatias every afternoon and ignore reality, without thinking obsessively about him, or showing up at his door like a lunatic.

Maybe theyad make up in a day, or a weekas time, and carry on with their plan. But Gabe was rarely flexible like that, never kind after a battle. And anyway, once you allowed yourself to picture such a scenario, it couldnat happen. That was just the way life went.

She sat up in bed now, and looked around at her place, the whole apartmenta"minus the tiny bathrooma"visible from where she was. Could she really raise a child in a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, alone? She had thought that she was ready to be a mother. But maybe the whole idea was absurd. If it was really over, she wondered how long she could stay here, before the ghosts of them would be too strong to bear. This apartment had brought them together, and every bit of it reminded her of him.

Theirs was one of those meeting stories everybody loved. Friends often asked them to repeat it to strangers at parties, or told them it sounded like the plot of a movie. He had lived in her apartment before she did, and months after she moved in, his mail still flooded the box by the door. At that point, she hadnat published a single story. She kept a small stack of form rejection letters from literary magazines of varying quality, a few with handwritten words of encouragement at the bottom, which thrilled her when she read them, though hours later shead feel mortified by her excitement over being turned down nicely. Meanwhile, dozens of envelopes from Simon & Schuster arrived at her new place, addressed to Gabe, and she wondered what they might containa"fat advance checks, or royalty statements, or invitations to have his book published in foreign countries around the globe. She never opened any of the letters, which she later reminded him when he accused her of having snooping in her DNA. It wasnat biological, she insisted. It was situational. A sensible woman could catch a man in only so many lies before she started to hunt for clues of betrayal. Snoop and ye shall find, head say dismissively. Well, actually, yes, shead think. In your case, yes.

Anyway, she found the letters inspiring: Here was a New York writer who had not only secured a publisher, but was so above it all that he could just walk away without even leaving a forwarding address. In her imagination, he was reclusive, brooding, and brilliant. She felt lucky to have taken over his s.p.a.ce. The thought of him helped her write, helped her keep going, and shead joke about it to friends, how the literary power of her neighborhoodas former tenantsa"Truman Capote, Walt Whitman, Carson McCullers, and Gabe Warner, whose book she could never locate at the librarya"acted as her muse.

When she sold her collection of short stories, she wanted to dedicate it to her mother, but didnat want her father to feel bad. She couldnat very well make it out to both of them. Considering they had not been comfortably in the same room since her fifth grade ballet recital, it seemed cruel to make them live together on the page for all eternity. At the last minute, she decided to dedicate it to him, a perfect stranger: To Gabe Warner, whoever you are. Thanks for making a writeras life seem possible. Her mother was p.i.s.sed, but what could you do?

Gabe had heard about it through a friend who had an advance copy, and so he showed up at her book party looking like the stunning, c.o.c.ky b.a.s.t.a.r.d he was, wearing a suede jacket with elbow patches and jeans, coming right up to her and saying in his clipped prep school voice, aMaggie Doyle, I presume.a It wasnat until later that night, when they were lying in her bedroom, which had once been his bedroom, that she realized what his book had been: a manual for do-it-yourself naked photos called Tasteful Nudes for the At-Home Pro, with tips on how to hide your belly fat and light a room, how to incorporate props, how to destroy the evidence if your relationship went south or you ever wanted to run for public office. Gabe had been approached to do it by a young editor friend, and he said yes, for a laugh. The book was never published, because naturally he hadnat ever gotten around to handing in his final draft. The unopened letters from Simon & Schuster, from which she had drawn so much inspiration, were demands to get the book in, or else head be sued for his advance money.

Gabe had left the apartment and New York to follow a girlfriend to Boulder. But by the time of Maggieas book party he was back in the city, newly dumped, living with Cunningham and working as a part-time stringer at the Daily News. During one of their first dates, he told her with pride about a computer file of stock images he kept for the occasions when theyad ask him to go shoot weather.

aYou wouldnat believe how stupid photo editors are,a he said. aI mean, all these requests to capture kids playing soccer on a sunny day, or snow falling on taxicabs, ora"my absolute favoritea"rainbows. Theyare basically asking me to use and reuse the same s.h.i.t, right?a (Shortly thereafter, he was fired for doing just that. Now he got by on the odd freelance gig and biweekly checks from his father. The handouts embarra.s.sed Maggie, but Gabe seemed to accept them just fine.) Even then, so early on, she had a nagging feeling that she ought to run. This guy wasnat an author, as shead thought, but an overprivileged slacker photographer who had agreed to write a book about homemade p.o.r.n. She told herself to stop being negative and look on the bright side. Perhaps he hadnat finished it because he knew how gross it was. And now shead never have to explain it to her parents.

He taught her how to deal with all the weird nuances of her own apartment: how to flush the toilet so the handle wouldnat come loose, the correct way to screw in the antique gla.s.s light fixtures, his trick of slicing an orange and heating it up gently on the stove to kill the unpredictable mix of smells from the Korean restaurant downstairs. Mr. Fatelli had been there for years (Rhiannon had come along shortly after Gabe moved out), and he was somewhat baffled when he saw Gabe hanging around the place again, eventually seeming to settle on the belief that the two of them had lived there together all along. For some reason, things like this made Maggie feel like they belonged.

And if Gabe was a slacker, at least he was smarta"his new place was filled with books, piled high on every chair and in each corner, mixed in with Cunninghamas ridiculously huge collection of eighties movies on VHS. On Sat.u.r.day mornings they would sit and read on the couch, their bare feet touching, each of them occasionally pointing out a funny pa.s.sage to the other.

Twice, Gabe had come over to trap and kill a mouse after midnight. He had put together her table and chairs from Ikea. On the morning of her thirty-second birthday, he woke her up with a homemade chocolate cake, a ring of glowing candles around the edge, like mothers always baked in movies set in the fifties. In his best moments, he seemed like someone who could take care of her. Though she was thirty when they met and in some ways had been caring for herself since she was a little girl, she found with some surprise that she wanted this, needed it.

Gabe had gone up to Boston with her for Easter the previous spring. He and her brother, Chris, goofed around in a back pew, struggling to be quiet in that way you do when something seems all the more hilarious because you know you cannot laugh out loud. Her aunt Ann Marie had shot them a look, and Maggie caught her eye, making a face that said she too disapproved. But in fact, she felt joyful watching her brother and her boyfriend, side by side. She imagined them being close for years to comea"golfing in Ogunquit each summer, grilling out in the yard between the cottage and her grandparentsa place as their children ran this way and that, and fireflies zipped from tree to tree.

But she couldnat always rely on Gabe. Once, sent out to pick up her prescription when she had strep throat, he got distracted by a friend from work, went for drinks, and ended up telling her to get the medicine herselfa"he was all the way in Manhattan, but if she really wanted, head be happy to pay for the delivery. They argued like crazy, almost from the start. Sometimes Gabe lied, even when the truth would do: Head go out drinking with Cunningham until two a.m. and say he was on a photo a.s.signment. Head have a boozy lunch with an old girlfriend, and only fess up after Maggie unearthed the hundred-dollar receipt in his wallet. He seemed to get off on tricking her, making her wonder whether she was really as controlling as he said, or if he just had some sort of mommy complex, or both.

There were moments when her stomach sank a bit, when she wondered what exactly he was made of, and whether it could really last through the long haul. Like the night, a few months into their relationship, when they went with the Goons to a wedding in Gabeas hometown in Connecticut. The wedding was an over-the-top affair, customary among Gabeas rich friends. But even so, Cunningham and Hayes were behaving likea"well, like Cunningham and Hayes.

Cunningham was one thing: boorish and annoying, but at least he tried to make conversation. Hayes still lived with his parents. He had an entire wing of his childhood home to himself, complete with a housekeeper. Half of what he said took the form of the phrase aSomething this, motherf.u.c.ker.a For example, when Gabe had asked him in the church before the ceremony started whether he had remembered to turn off his phone, Hayes replied, aPhone this, motherf.u.c.ker.a Hayes could hardly hold down a job, and seemed to live only in memory.

aRemember when Gabeas car was stolen after college?a he said over dinner.

Cunningham snorted. aYeah, poor Gabe. Insurance company took good care of you after you claimed the brand-new golf clubs in the trunk and thea"what was it now?a aTwo thousand CDs,a Hayes said.

Cunningham pounded a fist on the table. aThatas right. Two thousand CDs. Big trunk that must have been. He didnat have to work for a year and a half.a aI worked,a Gabe said in a mock defensive tone.

aOh sure, you worked at Mikeas Deli nine hours a week acause those guys were the easiest way to score c.o.ke in town,a Hayes said.

Gabe laughed uproariously. He didnat look at Maggie. She felt her whole body tighten. She knew Gabe drank too much. She was sensitive about it because of her parentsa drinking, so she tried not to be a scold. But he had told her early on that like her, he had never touched drugs.

Hayesas date gave Maggie a worried glance. aWho wants more wine?a she said.

aWine this, motherf.u.c.ker,a Hayes said, and he snorted with laughter.

Maggie pushed her chair away from the table and said she was heading up to their hotel room to bed, even though it was only nine thirty, and the cake hadnat even been cut. The Goons and their matching blond dates looked up with alarm. Gabeas big brown eyes pleaded with her not to make a scene.

He didnat come upstairs until four a.m., reeking of scotch and knocking the suitcase off the dresser. He pulled his shoes and pants and shirt off clumsily, and climbed into bed beside her, where she had been lying awake for hours, watching the red neon minutes click by on the alarm clock. She wanted his arms around her, an apology, but she knew she wouldnat get it, and it was no use fighting with him when he was drunk.

He switched on the TVa"some stupid Adam Sandler movie at top volume. Her heart sped up, with the familiar mix of sadness and exhilaration that preceded a fight. She rolled over and faced him.

aTurn that down, please,a she said coolly.

aItas not that loud,a he said.

aI was sleeping.a aYou made an a.s.s of me tonight,a he said. aWhyad you have to go and do that?a aYou never told me that you used to do cocaine,a she said. aI was kind of in shock.a aI used to do a lot of stuff before I knew you,a he said.

aOh? Like what?a aDonat worry about it.a aYou said youad never tried drugs,a she said, feeling like a nave child in an after-school special.

aWell, I guess I lied. One more thing for you to hate about me.a His tone was so indifferent that she began to cry.

aDo you do it anymore?a she asked.

aJesus Christ, Maggie, lay off,a he said. Then he softened a bit. aI havenat done it in years.a aWhen was the last time?a aG.o.d, I canat even remember,a he said. aCome on. I love you. Why are you being like this?a aAnd what was all that about the golf clubs and the CDs? Did you commit insurance fraud? I donat understand it, because obviously you didnat need the money.a ad.a.m.n it, Maggie, are you a f.u.c.king undercover cop, or what?a he yelled. aDidnat you ever do anything stupid or crazy when you were twenty-two years old?a The answer, as they both knew, was no.

He switched the TV off and threw the clicker to the floor.

aI want you to go in the morning,a he said. aIave had enough. Iall drop you off at the train first thing. Iall get a ride back.a They had been planning to stay two more nights, to visit his parents and older sister, but this was always how he punished hera"pushing her away, telling her to go, because he knew she couldnat bear it.

Tears crept from the corners of her eyes and down to her lips.

aFine,a she said bitterly. And now came the regret, because he had told her he loved her, they had been so close to making up, but she kept pushing.

A moment later, he was asleep. She stayed awake until morning, thinking, thinking. Was it just the childhood imprint of watching her parents go at each other at the breakfast table or at one of her brotheras soccer gamesa"screaming, shouting, storming off, only to make up again a few hours later? Is that why she fought with Gabe the way she did? Had she really been drawn to a hard-drinking, short-tempered man, when these were the exact traits in her parents that scared her the most? Her mother said that alcoholics tended to seek one another out as a way to make themselves feel normal. Maybe that extended to their children as well.

Maggie thought, as she often did at times like this, about her cousin Patty. She had been raised by the even-keeled, forever happy Aunt Ann Marie and Uncle Pat, and she had easily fallen in love with and married Josh, her law school boyfriend who was sweet and kind. It really might be as simple as thata"good model, happiness; bad model, despair.