have been at the pottery studio right now. My sculpting Maddie Kalmbach felt like a corner turned. After last night, I might have sculpted another child, maybe even eventually Lily.
But not clay, not today.
“Only for fun,” I said, adding quickly, “Makeup is kind of like working with clay. Every application involves a person, so in some ways it’s more rewarding. But it’s demanding. When you work at a resort, weekends are the busiest time. I have someone to help, but I’ll still have to go back and forth today.” I pulled out my cell. Joe Hellinger had done double duty. “Your physical therapist texted while I was showering.” I scrolled to that text. “Her name is Janet Bolan. She’ll be here at eleven. If you don’t like her—”
“She’ll be fine.”
“Liam will be around. Edward will come by. And I’ll come up between appointments.”
“I’ll be fine, Maggie,” she insisted and, with barely a breath said, “I’m sorry you don’t sculpt anymore.”
I resumed eating. “Well, I do sculpt, just not on the same level.” Between bites, I told her about the pottery studio. “I’m sure Kevin will come by, too. He’s dying to meet you.”
“Is he artsy?”
“Very, and gay, which his parents don’t know, so he could use a mother.” I watched for her reaction now, just as I had watched her meeting my friends at the wedding. Those friends had run the gamut when it came to sexual orientation.
She had been neutral then. Now, with quiet insistence, she said, “I was not the homophobic one.”
“Good. Because Kevin is special to me. I don’t want him hurt.”
* * *
My mother could not have been nicer to Kevin, who came with my honey teapot, which, without my knowing, he had bought at the studio store, and a loopy scarf he had made of variegated green yarn, which she promptly put on. And to Joyce, who came with a basket of goodies from the Spa, tales of my pets, and enough praise of me to nauseate anyone other than my mother. Or to the physical therapist, who texted me immediately after their session to say how pleased she was to be working with Margaret.
I raced back to the suite between appointments, though it truly wasn’t necessary. Between those guests, and Edward, who brought lunch and a bag of readables from the bookstore in town, and Liam, who brought purchases from my favorite clothing boutique along with the same argument I had made to him two weeks before, that what worked in Connecticut did not work in Vermont, Margaret was well-tended. She slept; she used her laptop for bakery business, and for personal business, a cane left by the physical therapist; she seemed content. By the time dinner rolled around, wearing her new jeans and sweater, Kevin’s loopy scarf, and a relaxed smile, she was looking like a different woman.
Making up a new persona? Of course. That was what we did in Devon. I had done it. Edward had. Now my mother. And Grace? As the weekend went on, that became more and more evident. After she blocked the first Santa Fe number, other calls came from the same area code. From the same person or a second? She didn’t know. Though she blocked those, too, she figured it was only a matter of time before more came.
She told me these things in short whispers in the locker room, the hallway, the relaxation lounge, then outside the makeup studio just as I arrived Sunday morning. Her hair was pulled back for work, and she wore soothing celadon scrubs, but her eyes were strikingly copper and frantic. In a voice that was higher than her normal high, she told me about her summons from Edward, and yes, she was convinced he was firing her. I told her I had been asked there, too, but she wasn’t mollified.
“He wants you there as a witness in case I go looney and accuse him of something,” she said. “Someone from Santa Fe must have called him—I mean, I knew lots of people there. Maybe I shouldn’t have blocked those calls. Maybe I should have talked and denied it all and been polite and confident, or … or threatened to sue for harassment or something. If Ned finds out, that’s the end, absolutely the end.”
“Hey, guys,” sang another of the massage therapists as he breezed in from the parking lot.
“Hey,” I said with as normal a smile as I could muster, even as Grace urged me into the makeup studio