Chapter 29. Maggie
MAGGIE
Maggie woke when she heard the front door downstairs open, then close.
She listened to the footsteps cross the foyer and make their way into the kitchen.
In bed next to her, Isabel stirred and curled onto her side.
They’d fallen asleep on top of the comforter, and Maggie wasn’t sure what time it was now.
After a few moments, the door to the kids’ bunk room across the hall opened, before all grew quiet again.
She had a sense of what would follow next, and there it was.
Below the wooden floors of her bedroom, her mother moved about the painting studio.
Maggie could almost smell the turpentine and see Nora perched on her stool immersed in whatever landscape she was currently working on.
She heard the faint Gregorian chants from a CD someone had gifted her years ago.
Nora claimed to have been a lifelong insomniac.
It stemmed, she said, from being frightened at having to go to bed earlier than all the other kids at the orphanage because she was so much younger; she never learned how to settle herself into sleep and was always worried about wetting the bed.
But in Maggie’s memory, her mother only began staying up all night after Daniel died.
It was a crash that finally sent Maggie downstairs.
“Don’t—” her mother said, holding up her hand. Her smock was drenched in water, and she crouched on the floor by the small dresser that held her paints. With a dust broom, she swept the shattered glass onto a sheet of cardboard. “You’re barefoot.”
“And you’re in socks,” Maggie said. “Plus, your knee.”
Maggie slipped into Finn’s old Vans that were by the mudroom and handed her mother a pair of her father’s loafers; then she made two cups of tea in the kitchen, which she brought back to the studio.
She sat in the armchair in the corner and watched her mother arrange tiny blue, black, and white paint droplets onto her glass palette.
Before her, a half-finished painting of a seascape seemed to capture the time of day when it’s not clear where the water ends and the sky begins, one mirroring the other.
Her mother rarely allowed anyone to see her paintings before she finished.
It was beautiful, but Maggie didn’t want to say anything to draw attention to the rare viewing of a work in progress.
When she was a kid, she was jealous of her mother’s paintings and her time in the studio.
As she got older and took a women’s studies class in college, she assumed her mother had sublimated her creative passions for her motherly duties—and she not only felt bad for her for this decision, but she judged her for it.
Sitting there now and looking at the seascape, she appreciated her mother’s longing for selfhood despite her motherly obligations.
Nora gave her the latest update about Finn, then said, “And are things okay with you and Isabel?”
Maggie nodded. “They are,” she said. It was nice to be asked. “We had some things to work out.” Then she said, “I made a mistake, and I had to fix it.”
Nora sipped her tea, her hands slender and fragile-looking. “We all make mistakes,” she said.
“We do.”
“Not all of them can be fixed, though.”
“That’s true.” Maggie started to sip her tea, but it was too hot, so she placed it on the dresser. “I appreciate you asking, though.”
This seemed to resonate, and her mother said, “Can I ask you something else?” She looked tired, older than Maggie could ever remember, her features delicate.
“Sure,” Maggie said.
Nora turned to face her. “Are you happy?”
Maggie didn’t hesitate. “I am,” she said. “Do I not seem happy?”
“No, no, you do,” her mother said. “I just want to make sure.” Then she picked up her brush and studied something on the painting. Maggie could now see a lone figure on the horizon in the background. A man standing on a boat.
Her mother placed the brush on the side of the palette. Facing the painting, she said, “I worried you wouldn’t be happy. That you’d spend your life alone.”
Maggie was caught off guard by her mother’s honesty. She felt that old urge to retreat, the very thing Isabel had accused her of. But that wasn’t what she wanted—not for herself or her mother—and so she said, “There was a time when I did, too.” Then she said, “That’s why I needed you.”
A noise upstairs, maybe someone going to the bathroom, startled them. When it was quiet again, her mother looked at her and nodded as though she understood. Then she reached for her brush again before turning back to the painting.
Maggie cradled her steaming mug of tea in her hands.
She didn’t need or even want her mother to say anything more.
What she’d offered so far was almost too painful to accept, like the ache of cold hands thawing out in the warmth.
She watched her paint. Nora was left-handed, and growing up, the nuns forced her to write with her right hand, and the older girls at the orphanage called her a ciotóg .
Apparently it was an insult used against left-handed people and meant “awkward.” Nora often shared the story of a kind nun who noticed her talent for art and once gifted her a pencil.
She’d had nothing, and this meant the world to her.
Now Nora switched hands naturally, from right to left, as she dipped the brush into the light blue paint splotch on her palette and capped the ripples on the water, bringing the waves to life.
The man on the boat stood with his hands in his pockets, surrounded by the sea and sky.
Maggie didn’t know what would happen when her parents had to sell the house, as surely they would eventually.
Where would they go? What would happen to the generations’ worth of stuff?
She imagined these questions weighed more on her sisters than on her.
She didn’t have Cait’s money to maintain the house and didn’t live down the street like Alice, helping with the day-to-day.
With her tenuous relationship with her mother, she hadn’t considered what role she might be expected to play in their care, but perhaps it was time for that to change.
“You should get some rest,” she said, and stood.
Surprisingly, her mother seemed to listen. She cleaned her brush and covered her canvas. “I’m tired,” she admitted.
“I’ll walk you to your room,” Maggie said as she gathered the teacups.
Her mother tapped her cane on the floor. “What do you girls think I do when you’re not around?”
Maggie walked her to her room anyway, and when she closed the door and turned around, she nearly screamed at the small, ghostlike figure floating toward her down the hallway.
“Where’s my mum?” Poppy said. Red cheeked and sleepy eyed, she held one of Cait’s old teddy bears in a headlock.
They checked the bathroom, which was empty, and Maggie considered looking downstairs but changed her mind because she suspected Cait was still out with Luke. She walked Poppy back to Cait’s room, and said, “Don’t worry. She’ll be back soon.”
“I want to sleep with you.” Poppy’s footie pajamas slapped the wooden floor as she walked out of the room.
“Oh,” Maggie said. “Okay.”
In the moonlight, Maggie made a bed on the floor with extra blankets and pillows, and Poppy closed her eyes and cuddled her teddy bear.
Isabel woke as soon as Maggie sat on the bed. “I can go to the cottage,” she said.
Maggie pulled back the comforter and slipped beneath it. “Stay,” she whispered.
“You sure?”
Maggie kissed Isabel’s shoulder and lowered her onto the pillow.
They were drifting into sleep when Maggie heard a stirring and Poppy appeared on Isabel’s side of the bed.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she declared. “Can you bring me? I’m scared.”
“All right,” Isabel said. She swung her legs off the bed and gathered Poppy into her arms. “But no phone privileges on the toilet. You have a reputation.”
Poppy laughed.
“I love you,” Maggie said, as they walked out of the room.
Isabel peeked her head back through the doorway. “You’d better,” she teased.
When they returned a few minutes later, Isabel sang Poppy a Spanish lullaby until she fell asleep. After, she crawled into the bed and wrapped her arms around Maggie. “And I love you,” she said, pulling her closer.