I’ve got you now.
But Meggy sounds casual, not intimidated, when she speaks. “Oh, so you finally heard. I was wondering if Gracie would tell you about our chat.”
“Of course she told me.” I hold on to the back of the chair with my hand. “Of course she did. You need to leave her alone.”
“Like you do?”
Her words ring in my ear. Meggy and I have never gotten along. At the age of three she started speaking and immediately rubbed me the wrong way. She was and is relentless and bossy. She was able to mold the others, even Pat, to her will, but never me. Several times when we were young, even though she is five years my junior, we came to blows. I can imagine her now standing in her ugly orange kitchen, which hasn’t seen a fresh coat of paint or a new appliance since the seventies. She needs to have the split ends trimmed on her long, flat hair. She is tapping one badly shod foot on the linoleum floor. Tap, talk, tap, talk.
“Maybe if Gracie had more support from her parents, she wouldn’t need my help, but she does. Have you even noticed what a complete mess she is? She’s fallen apart since Mother fell, and she wasn’t that stable to begin with. Angel would be a better mother to that baby, and that’s a fact.”
“That baby,” I say, almost choking, “is my grandchild.”
“Technically,” Meggy says. “Technically. But you’re a practical woman, Kelly. Think about what’s best for your daughter. Mother is getting too weak to pull all the strings in this family like she used to. We’re going to have to start looking out for each other, or we’re going to drift apart when she dies. I’ve been thinking about this.”
I hear myself say, “How can you bear to?”
“I’m strong,” she says. “I know how to get in people’s faces. Daddy told me that when I was fourteen, and he was right. It’s my gift. I think we all need to play our strengths now. I can see that this family is in a crisis, even if no one else can. And I am trying to do something about it.”
I pace across the kitchen, my forward motion stopped only by the pull of the telephone cord. I know that no matter how this conversation ends I will be upset for days. Only another McLaughlin can get to me like this. Untruths are mixed with truths in such a dizzying combination that the two can’t be disentangled, and I am left straining and shattered at the end of the phone cord.
“I have been taking care of this family single-handedly since Daddy died,” I tell her. “I am the one Mother calls when she needs something. I have been the one to make sure Ryan is all right, that his needs are met. I am the one who lent you money so your daughter could go to a better school. Don’t tell me that I have to do something for this family. I gave up taking care of myself years ago to take care of all of you.”
I pant for breath, caught up in the power of having given so much. Having been so much.
Meggy makes a disparaging noise in the back of her throat. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
I cannot believe that after all I have said she can still condescend to me. I make my voice icy cold. “What don’t I get?”
“This is a different kind of crisis, Kelly. You can’t solve this one with money or carefully placed phone calls. Our family is about to change shape in a big way. I for one don’t want to wake up a year from now and find Mother gone and none of us in touch and Gracie and her child on welfare. And you know that could all happen if we don’t do something.”
I am worn out. It is an effort to hold on to the phone. “You worry about your daughter, and I’ll worry about mine.”
“I am so deeply into Dina’s business that she tells me at least once a week that she hates me.”
The corners of my mouth lift into a smile. “Neither of my girls has ever said anything like that to me. We have a civilized relationship.”
“Is that what you call it?” Meggy asks. “Congratulations, then. Good for you.”
WHEN I hang up the phone I grab my purse and run for the door. I will meet Louis and Ryan at