The Mulligan Curse

Chapter 1

Mary’s finger cramped as she scrolled down to her birth year on the online form. Numbers zoomed by. The twenty-first century became the twentieth. The 1990s turned to the 1980s. Her vision blurred as she reached the ’70s. Once she’d finally made it to the 1960s, the teenage boy sitting next to her in the dentist’s waiting room bumped her arm, knocking her hand off the tablet’s keyboard. Dang it. She had to start all over again.

She didn’t mind using technology, but she would have preferred to type in her birth date. Honest to goodness, her birth year appeared so far down the list, she felt as if she’d aged a decade while scrolling to reach it.

“Mary?” A dental assistant standing by the reception desk called her name. “Mrs. Amato?” The dark-haired girl smiled and waved. “So nice to see you. I didn’t realize you were a patient here.”

Mary squinted. The girl looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her.

“Lindsey Harrington. I’m a friend of Kendra’s.”

“Of course. Good to see you, Lindsey.” An image from a decade earlier of Lindsey and Mary’s daughter, dancing around the living room and singing Taylor Swift songs, popped into Mary’s head. The two girls had been freshmen in high school then. All that scrolling to reach her birth year had made Mary feel old, but the fact that this girl was all grown up and one of her health care providers made her feel ancient. It also reminded her that Kendra, too, was all grown up and didn’t need her anymore. Mary’s friends used to marvel at how close the two of them were. More like sisters than mother and daughter, but that all changed when Kendra took the job at the ad agency. Now she was too busy to spend time with her mom. In the spring and summer, Mary’s sense of loneliness heightened because her husband, Dean, spent most of his free time on the golf course, leaving her alone almost every weekend. A flash of pain streaked through the back of her mouth. She brought her hand to her face. “My back teeth have been killing me.”

“Let’s find out what’s going on.” Lindsey strode down the hall. Mary trailed behind.

The distinct smell of the dentist’s office—clove oil, formaldehyde, and a disinfectant—filled her nostrils as she walked into the exam room. She imagined she was breathing in tooth dust from the patient before her and coughed. Once settled in the big chair, she stared out the window at a pink flowering dogwood. During spring in Massachusetts, the landscape put on its own fireworks show with an explosion of colors that made suffering through the cold, dingy gray winter almost worth it.

Lindsey adjusted the dental chair. “How long have your teeth been bothering you?”

“Since last Thursday.” Mary remembered the exact moment she’d first felt the pain. She was standing in line at the supermarket checkout when she spotted Liz Collins, her former coworker and nemesis, now the anchor of CBS Evening News , on the cover of People . Above Liz’s smiling face, the headline read, “America’s Most Trusted Broadcaster.”

That should be me. Before Mary could process the thought, a searing pain had streaked through her mouth, causing her knees to buckle.

Here in the dentist’s chair, as she pictured Liz’s face on the cover of that magazine, all her muscles tightened. She was better than Liz. Everyone said so. If only she hadn’t turned down that promotion, she’d be a famous newscaster today instead of a bored housewife whom no one noticed, not even her husband or daughter. When she’d tried to talk to Dean about how seeing Liz on the cover of that magazine had made her feel like she’d wasted her life, he’d dismissed her with an awkward laugh before running out the door for the golf course.

“Relax your jaw,” Lindsey said. As she poked around Mary’s mouth with the mirror and probe, Mary struggled to keep her tongue out of the way. In the room next door, a drill started, and a patient shrieked. Mary’s grip on the armrests tightened.

Lindsey finished her exam and settled on a stool in front of the computer. “So weird. Your wisdom teeth are coming in. We usually see that in younger patients.”

Kendra had had her wisdom teeth removed junior year of high school. Mary had bought her daughter milkshakes every evening for almost a week, and they binge-watched Downton Abbey together until Kendra recovered. Mary smiled at the memory, happy to think about a time when Kendra needed her and giddy that whatever was wrong with her was most commonly associated with younger people. She’d been feeling so old lately. That day at the grocery store when she’d seen the magazine with Liz on the cover, she’d also run into an old classmate, Debbie Berger. Debbie had spotted her from the other side of the frozen food aisle, and Mary wondered who the old woman waving at her was. She wanted to cry when she figured out that the woman was someone she’d grown up with and was actually a few months younger than she was. Of course, Mary had long ago accepted that she was no longer young, but at that moment she’d realized she wasn’t even middle aged anymore, not unless she lived to 108. Her life was getting away from her, with more time behind her than in front of her, and she’d done absolutely nothing with it.

She heard a quick knock on the door, and the dentist entered. “We didn’t have a chance to meet before Dr. Goldberg retired. I’m Dr. Montari.” He shook Mary’s hand. With his boyish face, big brown eyes, and rosy cheeks, he looked more like a model for OshKosh B’Gosh than a dentist, and Mary wondered if he could possibly be as skilled as his predecessor.

He turned his attention to Lindsey. “What’s going on?”

“She’s complaining of pain in the back of her mouth. It looks like her wisdom teeth are coming in.”

Dr. Montari smiled. “Really?” He slid his hands into gloves. “Let me have a look.” The excitement in his voice suggested he expected to see a third row of teeth growing in Mary’s mouth, and she basked in his attention. No one had found anything about her this interesting in years, decades even.

She concentrated on not gagging as his latex-covered finger slid over her gums. “Amazing.” He clicked his tongue as he pulled his hands back and snapped off his gloves. “I’ve read about patients in their fifties whose wisdom teeth suddenly erupt, but it’s so rare that I never imagined I would treat one.”

A blast of heat rushed over Mary. She felt as if she were burning from the inside out. Sweat pooled above her lips and along her clavicles. Not another hot flash. Not here. Not now. She fanned herself with her hand.

Lindsey gave her a paper cup filled with water, and Mary guzzled it down.

“Here’s the issue,” Dr. Montari said, stroking his chin. “Your wisdom teeth are only partially emerged, and they’ve made a pathway for bacteria to get to the gums. Because they’re so hard to reach when brushing, there’s ample opportunity for the bacteria to grow, increasing the likelihood of gum disease and infection. There’s already some inflammation. I recommend taking the teeth out.”

Mary breathed in the odor of the room—which, come to think of it, smelled like pain, not tooth particles—and thought about the patient next door shrieking. Maybe her discomfort would end as suddenly as it had started. “I need to think about it.”

Dr. Montari frowned. “Don’t take too long, and if the pain gets worse, give us a call right away.”

Mary rushed through the parking lot of the restaurant where she was meeting her cousin Darbi for their monthly lunch. Inside, a large group of men crowded the hostess stand, laughing as they waited to be seated. She squeezed her way around them and scanned the dining room.

A loud, piercing whistle came from a high-top near the bar. “Mary, over here.” Darbi waved her arms over her head.

In front of the table, the two women hugged. As usual, Darbi smelled like a combination of tangerine and patchouli from the essential oils she used as perfume to keep calm.

“Where have you been, girl? I had to start without you.” Darbi pointed to the remains of a margarita.

“Stuck in traffic.”

“Well then, you need one of these, pronto.”

“One? After my morning, I need several. In fact, let’s get an IV going.”

“What happened?”

Mary lifted her hand to her mouth. “My wisdom teeth have been killing me. The dentist says they have to come out.”

Darbi’s eyebrows shot up her forehead, and her grin widened. “You must have been sprinkled with Mulligan magic too. Good for you.”

“What are you talking about?”

The server, a woman with streaks of pink in her hair, approached them. “Are you ready to order?”

The menus sat stacked on the corner of the table, untouched. Mary picked one up and handed it to Darbi. “We haven’t even looked yet.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Bring two more of these, please.” Darbi tapped her glass.

“What do you mean by ‘Mulligan magic’?” Mary asked.

Darbi slowly turned her head to the left and right as if she was making sure no one could overhear her. “You’ll have a hard time believing what I’m about to tell you. I didn’t believe Uncle Cillian when he told me. You heard about him, right?”

“My dad always referred to him as his crazy relative in Ireland.”

“That’s what I thought. Until it happened to me.”

Mary leaned across the table toward her cousin. “What happened to you?”

The group of boisterous men who had been waiting by the door passed by, trailing the hostess. She sat them at three long tables pushed together along the back wall.

“How do you think they all know each other?” Darbi asked.

Mary shrugged. “Maybe they work together.”

“Are there no women in the company?”

“Of course there are. Not all women stay home to take care of their kids.” Her words came out harsh, and she realized she was scolding herself for her long-ago decision to give up her career to stay home with Kendra. “Sorry.”

“That was my point,” Darbi said.

“Forget that. Finish what you were saying.”

Darbi opened her menu. “Let’s figure out what we’re eating first.”

The server returned with their drinks and took their order. After she left, Darbi spoke. “Some of us Mulligans have a magical gene that causes our wisdom teeth to erupt when we start having serious regrets about a past decision. The gene can only be passed on from fathers, but they can pass it to their sons and daughters. I have it. Uncle Cillian had it, and you might have it t—”

Mary interrupted. “Almost everyone gets their wisdom teeth, and almost everyone has regrets. The two are not related.” Like subtitles scrolling across the screen during a foreign film, a list of Mary’s regrets flashed through her mind: not taking the job in Iowa, quitting work after Kendra was born, not trying harder to find a job after Kendra left for college, not doing anything special with her life, not leaving her mark on the world. Someone had once told her that at the end of their lives, people regretted the things they hadn’t done, not the things they’d done. Mary definitely believed it was true.

“Let me finish.” Darbi took a big sip of her margarita, her lips twisting as she swallowed. “When we Mulligans with the magical gene have our wisdom teeth removed, we wake up from the procedure the same age we were when we made the choice we regret, and we get to reconsider our decision and choose differently.”

A busboy on the other side of the restaurant dropped a tray of dirty dishes. The group of men at the long tables burst out laughing, and somewhere nearby a baby started to cry. Mary’s mouth fell open, but no words came out. She’d been expecting Darbi to say something about how having her wisdom teeth removed would hurt so badly that she’d forget about her regrets, or she thought Darbi would explain that without wisdom teeth, she’d become the wisest version of herself. She certainly hadn’t thought Darbi would come up with a story as ridiculous as the one she was telling her now.

Darbi rested her elbows on her place mat and perched her chin on the back of her fists. The table tilted toward her. “I was thirty-two when my wisdom teeth came in. Hurt like the dickens. I had them removed and woke up from the procedure as my twenty-five-year-old self.”

Mary tapped Darbi’s margarita glass. “How many of these did you drink before I got here?”

“Like I said, I didn’t believe it until it happened to me.”

Mary bit down on her lip as she stared at Darbi. “You want me to believe that you and I have some kind of magical gene that allows us to time travel?”

Darbi shook her head. “I didn’t say anything about time travel. I woke up on the very same day I had the procedure, only I was seven years younger and everything that had happened during those last seven years had been erased.”

“If you’re saying I can be seven years younger by having my wisdom teeth out, I’ll pull them out right now.” Mary reached toward her mouth.

Darbi laughed. “It’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I got to undo my biggest mistake.”

“What was that?”

“That’s a story for another day. I want to tell you what it will be like for you if you get your teeth out. First ...” She trailed off as the server dropped off the food: a salad for Mary and a crab cake sandwich for Darbi.

After she left, Darbi continued speaking. “People won’t remember you as ...”

“Stop.” Mary held up her fork as if it were a shield that could block out the rest of Darbi’s fabrication. Usually she enjoyed Darbi’s stories about the Mulligan side of her family because Mary’s father had rarely spoken about them, unless to talk about how nuts they were. Mary hadn’t even known she’d had a cousin her age until Darbi had unexpectedly shown up fresh off the plane from Ireland. This story was too bizarre to enjoy, though. Besides, they had more important things to talk about today, like the remodel of Celebrations, the gift shop Darbi’s wife had bought a few months ago and that Darbi worked at three days a week. “Tell me how Jacqui is. Are the renovations at her store finished?”

Darbi bit into her sandwich. Once she’d swallowed, she cleared her throat. “Women your age don’t suddenly develop issues with their wisdom teeth.”

“That’s true,” Mary admitted. “The dentist looked at me as if I were a unicorn.”

“It’s Mulligan magic.” Darbi pointed at Mary. “Admit it. You’ve been second-guessing a past decision.”

Mary shifted on her stool. Her napkin fell from her lap to the ground. She bent under the table to retrieve it because she wanted to get away from Darbi. She didn’t believe a word her cousin had said, but Darbi was right. Ever since Mary had seen Liz on the cover of that blasted magazine, she’d been having second thoughts about her life. No, that wasn’t right; the second thoughts had started years before, when Kendra moved away to college. Without her daughter to take care of, Mary had found herself with nothing to do. She’d tried to get a job as a journalist again, but the only offer she’d received was to be a receptionist at the MetroWest Daily News . She was so bored that she took that job, but nine months later, they downsized her out of a position. For the last five years, she’d been a girl Friday for her husband, doing his laundry, packing his lunch, cooking his dinner, booking his haircut appointments, even shopping for his socks and underwear, for crying out loud. She picked up the napkin and returned to her stool.

“Tell me what your regrets are. You must have a big one,” Darbi insisted.

Mary swallowed hard, uncomfortable that her cousin seemed to know or at least suspect that she was questioning her life choices, regretting her long-ago decision to give up her career in broadcasting. “Well, you know that Liz Collins and I used to work together at Channel 77. What you might not remember is that job in Iowa that launched her career. They offered it to me first, but I said no.” Mary felt the same pang of regret she’d had lately whenever she thought about that decision. A sharp pain streaked through the gums over her wisdom teeth, and she winced.

Darbi chewed on a french fry, appearing to consider Mary’s words. “So is that your regret, not being a newscaster?”

Hearing it said back to her made it sound like it was no big deal, but it was. “I want people to know who I am. When my life is all said and done, I want it to have mattered.”

Darbi drowned a french fry in ketchup. “You don’t have to be on the news or be famous to matter. Of course you matter.”

Mary’s life didn’t matter, not compared to Liz’s. No one outside her immediate circle knew who she was. She had turned down the anchoring job, and Liz had accepted it. Now Liz was a celebrated journalist whom the entire country admired, and Mary was a mild-mannered housewife, doing unimportant things like picking up her husband’s dry cleaning. Even some of the neighbors living on her street had no idea who she was. If only Darbi’s story were true, she’d go back and take that promotion.

“How old were you when you got the job offer?” Darbi asked.

“Twenty-four.”

Darbi sucked in a quick breath and fingered her bracelet. “Oh dear.”

“Yeah, it was a long time ago.”

“You definitely do not want to undo that decision.” A stern tone had replaced the previous playfulness in Darbi’s voice, piquing Mary’s curiosity.

“Why not?”

“If you get your wisdom teeth out, you’ll be twenty-four again when the procedure is over.”

Mary studied her cousin. With her frizzy silver hair styled in cornrows, a gold stud in her nose, and a purple knotted rope bracelet around her wrist, she stood out from all the other women in their fifties whom Mary knew. Darbi’s eccentricities were one of the reasons Mary loved her. Still, carrying on with this ridiculous story was bizarre behavior even for Darbi. Was she trying to play a joke, or was she having some kind of mental breakdown?

“Why didn’t you take the job?” Darbi asked.

Why didn’t I? “I was dating Dean. He made it clear he wasn’t coming with me, and he wasn’t interested in a long-distance relationship. I really liked him, so I stayed.”

“So you chose Dean over your career?”

“I guess I did.” She hadn’t known it at the time, but that was exactly what she’d done. She drained the rest of her margarita.

“And knowing what you know now, would you choose the job or Dean?”

Would she choose a career like Liz’s over Dean? Lord help her, right now she would. She needed her life to have meaning. The tequila was leaving a nasty taste in her mouth. She gulped down water to wash away the harsh flavor. It wasn’t that she didn’t love Dean. She did. Her wedding had been one of the happiest days of her life—the happiest until she’d given birth to Kendra—but she’d never imagined that staying in Massachusetts to date him would limit her career. After she’d turned down the position in Iowa, her boss had assumed she didn’t take her job seriously and started giving her less fulfilling assignments. By the time she left the station for maternity leave, she didn’t have a compelling reason to return.

Darbi tapped her foot against the leg of the table. “Well? Would you choose Dean again?”

Mary squirmed. While she and Dean had once been madly in love, they barely spent time with each other anymore. He was always golfing with his friends while she was stuck puttering around their house by herself. No, I don’t think I would. She couldn’t say those words out loud. She couldn’t admit that to her cousin. She wasn’t even comfortable admitting it to herself. “Of course I would.”

Darbi raised her chin. “Well then, for the love of everything holy, leave your wisdom teeth alone.”