Chapter 4. Maggie
MAGGIE
“This is where you live?” Isabel asked as Maggie pulled past the SLOW GEESE CROSSING sign at one entrance of the Folly’s driveway.
“No, I live in a one-bedroom faculty apartment next door to you,” Maggie said. “This is where I grew up.”
“At East Egg?”
Maggie laughed as she parked her Jeep next to the guest cottage. Just as the chair by the fireplace had always been her designated seat at family meals, this was her spot, inherited from Topher, on the pebbled circular driveway. She pressed Isabel’s hand to her mouth.
“Listen,” she said, “I’ve decided that if my mom’s a jerk, we’re just going to leave.”
Isabel craned her neck to peek out the window, then turned to Maggie. “I have a cousin in Brooklyn,” she said. “We can always go there.” She grabbed the sunflowers they’d bought in town from the back seat and opened the door. “But let’s go find out.”
James burst forth from the front door in his karate uniform and snow boots as Maggie gathered their bags. “Aunt Maggie’s here!” he screamed from the wraparound porch, and ran back into the house.
Isabel hooked a finger through one of Maggie’s belt loops, pulled her closer, and kissed her hard on each cheek.
“I saw two girls kissing today,” James said, reappearing at the door. “In a magazine.”
Maggie pulled away from Isabel’s hold. “Did you?”
“But I’m not supposed to tell Grammy.”
Maggie looked at Isabel and raised her arms in a don’t ask me gesture.
Inside, the house was eerily quiet, and Maggie was surprised it did not smell as she’d expected: like her mother and Alice had been cooking for the past two days.
James kicked off his boots by the coatrack, and Maggie dropped their bags in the foyer at the base of the stairs.
They were headed to the kitchen when her mother called from the dining room.
“Mairéad,” she said, using Maggie’s full name, as she often did in front of guests.
They walked down the long hallway, and Maggie caught her reflection in a mirror, quickly undoing her shaggy ponytail to please her mother, who preferred her hair down.
It had been years since she’d brought a friend back to the Folly, and now she beheld the house through Isabel’s eyes: the worn needlepoint rugs covering the herringbone floors, the pressed-glass chandeliers that had been in the family for decades, and her mother’s landscapes crowding the walls.
They found her mother at the head of the dining room table, folding linen napkins around silverware. Maggie was relieved to see her social graces on full display when she looked up.
“Hello, hello.” She stood with the help of her cane.
Maggie hadn’t visited since the summer, before her mother fell gardening and hurt her knee, and she hadn’t realized Nora was still using her cane.
She was thinner, too, if possible, lost in a periwinkle shawl that brought out the blue in her perpetually wet eyes.
Her silver hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and her reddish eyebrows arched in a look of nervous anticipation when Maggie introduced her to Isabel.
“Thank you so much for having me,” Isabel said, and handed her the sunflowers.
“Oh, splendid,” Nora said. “Perfect for the table tomorrow.”
Nora glanced out the bay window. A flock of geese were making their way up the snowy hill from the beach. At first, Maggie couldn’t make out what was different, but then she saw just beyond the garden that nearly half the fence leading to the beach had collapsed.
“I’m worried about Cait with this weather,” her mother said. “Your father’s tracking her flight and they’ve just landed, but we haven’t heard from them yet.” She turned back to Maggie and Isabel. “It’s grand all the same. You’re here now, and that’s what’s important. Can I make you tea?”
Maggie took the flowers so her mother could use her cane, and they walked into the kitchen to get a vase.
“What’s all this?” Maggie asked of the dozen empty food platters and Bunsen burners covering the center island.
“Cait hired caterers.” Her mother flipped on the electric kettle.
Maggie placed the flowers in a large Ball jar glass. “Why?”
“It’s a big crew this year—”
“Who’s coming?”
Her mother retrieved a sparkling crystal vase from the cabinet.
“All of us, plus Kyle invited his friend Mukesh.” She removed the flowers from the vase Maggie had chosen and plopped them into the new one.
“And Father Kelly, of course,” she added.
Maggie simply nodded. “Which makes thirteen. Cait thought it would be easier with my knee and all. They’re high-end caterers and have a beautiful meal planned. ”
“That’s nice,” Maggie said, though she found the idea of eating catered food on Thanksgiving slightly depressing.
Her mother prepared three cups of Barry’s tea with extra milk and sugar as James entered the kitchen. He stood in front of Isabel and held up his fists. “I’m a green belt,” he declared. “But my mom lost my belt.”
“Show me some of your moves,” Isabel said.
While James exploded in a swirl of “hi-yas” and kicks and punches, Maggie’s father emerged from the basement and gave Isabel a big hug, putting Maggie at ease. Then he turned to Maggie and said, “You’re behaving yourself?”
“Trying,” Maggie said.
“Well, don’t try too hard. There’s no fun in that.”
“And you?”
“Oh, I’m behaving myself,” he said. “It gets easier when you’re old. Too many people watching.” He tilted his head toward her mother.
“Go on,” her mother said, but laughed.
There in the kitchen with her parents, Maggie could admit how much she wanted them not just to accept Isabel but to actually like her.
Everyone seemed to be getting along, and she felt a hint of cautious relief at having pushed through her doubts earlier that morning.
She could almost imagine a future where coming home didn’t make her feel so unbearably lonely.
“I’ll show Isabel around,” she said once her father and James went back downstairs to the trains.
Her mother opened her mouth, seemingly to say something else, but then stopped and turned to admire the flowers. “They really are stunning. Full of joy.”
Maggie considered asking her what was on her mind but decided against it. If Nora had something to say, she’d say it eventually. Besides, there was a good chance Maggie wouldn’t want to hear it.
Maggie closed the door to her bedroom, placed their teas on the desk, and scooped Isabel into her arms as they tumbled onto the bed.
“That went well,” Isabel said, kissing her forehead.
“It did,” Maggie admitted. She kicked off her sneakers.
Isabel stood and walked around the bedroom. “It’s like a museum of your childhood.”
Nora was reluctant to throw anything away. Aside from removing Maggie’s Jeff Buckley and Ani DiFranco posters from the walls, Nora hadn’t changed much in the room since Maggie’s senior year of high school, when she’d last lived in the house.
“Ooh,” Isabel said, stumbling upon Maggie’s old mix CDs stacked next to her decades-old stereo and plastic gold track trophies.
“I’ll need to go through these at some point.
” Next, she studied the shelves covered in books—everything from the book of saints Maggie received on her First Communion to the Jeanette Winterson and Michelle Tea novels she’d buy on trips to the East Village with her high school friends and hide from her mother.
Isabel pulled a beat-up copy of Anna Karenina from the bookcase. “This looks loved. A favorite?”
“Never read it, actually,” Maggie admitted.
“I bought it used on a field trip in ninth grade. Trying to impress my English teacher, Sister Maria. She was from Russia. Must have been, like, twenty-five years old. Definitely gay. I adored her but couldn’t get past all the Russian names, so I read the CliffsNotes instead. Don’t tell my students, though.”
Isabel laughed and pointed the book at Maggie. “‘Anything’s better than lying and deceit,’” she quoted in an awful Russian accent.
Maggie laughed but thought, Indeed . Her mind drifted again to Sarah, and she shuddered as though that might help her physically purge the memory.
Isabel studied the portrait from Maggie’s high school graduation.
Though she was more of a tomboy then, Maggie’s appearance had pretty much stayed the same.
She still wore her brown hair long and parted in the middle, and she could use a round of braces for the slight snaggletooth that her dentist alleged she got from sucking her thumb as a kid but that Isabel claimed to adore and begged her not to correct.
“The lighthouse,” Isabel said, looking out the window. She turned to Maggie. “Like your brother’s drawing in your office.”
Maggie walked to her. The small castle-like tower was nearly hidden in the falling snow.
“It must be hard,” Isabel said. “To see that every time you come home.”
Maggie rested her chin on Isabel’s shoulder. “It used to be,” she said. Then: “I guess sometimes it still is.”
Maggie had known something was wrong when Topher didn’t show up at the dentist’s office, though she told herself she shouldn’t be surprised.
She was twenty and home from college, but when they were younger, and he had to pick her up from piano lessons, he’d always arrive well after the session finished.
But this time, as she sat in the waiting room after having three wisdom teeth extracted, she was in pain.
There was a pulsing numbness in her mouth, and all she wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed and sleep off the anesthesia.
Her parents were in New Jersey visiting a cousin, and Topher was supposed to have been there half an hour ago.
She asked the receptionist to call the house.
“Sorry, hon. Answering machine. I’ll leave a message.”