"Something else?" Maggie looked to the doorway. "Let me guess. Something about Maureen?"
"I wanted, still want, to pay for Maureen to go to some sort of therapy. John's insurance doesn't cover more than three visits, and, well, we all know three visits isn't even going to scratch the surface, don't we?"
Thinking of her own visits to Doctor Bob that were well into their fifth or sixth year now, Maggie only nodded her head.
"Your father didn't think therapy was necessary."
"You needed his permission? Wow."
"I need your father's permission for nothing, Margaret. I wanted his agreement. And, perhaps, I needed him to understand. Because ... because I wanted to go into therapy myself. I wanted us to go into therapy as a family. And maybe even the garbage truck jockey, too," she added, shrugging.
"You wanted to go into therapy?" Maggie was fairly certain her eyes were popping halfway out of her head, and was sure they were when Alex cleared his throat delicately as he kicked her, ever so slightly, beneath the table. "Okay, okay, I'm sorry. I just had this flash. You know, this throwback, to a late-night rerun of that old show, The Odd Couple? Remember that one, Mom? With Felix Unger and Oscar Madison? Well, those were the names of the characters."
She turned to explain to Alex. "Felix was a fussbudget, a neat freak. He and Oscar were roommates. Oscar was a slob, and Felix was always picking up after him, always nagging him, driving him crazy. So Oscar got a stomach ulcer, and Felix—he was a hypochondriac, too—worried that he was going to get a stomach ulcer as well. But the doctor told him, that in the world of stomach ulcers, Felix was what one called a carrier. Get it, Alex? Felix wouldn't get an ulcer—he gave ulcers."
"Very amusing, Maggie," Alex told her. "And you'll now explain the relevance?"
Maggie opened her mouth to do just that, but then realized that she was going to say that her mother didn't go to therapy—she sent others running there. "Nevermind. I guess it was funnier in the episode where Felix Unger kept writing Oscar notes and signing them with his initials, and Oscar couldn't figure out if it was Felix's initials, or an insult. You know—Felix Unger? F for Felix, U for—go on, Mom. Sorry for the interruption."
"I've been watching Dr. Phil," Alicia Kelly said as Maggie did what she was pretty sure was a good Maureen impersonation—lowering her head, looking at her entwined fingers. "Some of it is pure drivel. But not all of it. I'm not blind, Margaret. I know there are problems here, in our family."
"Let me count the ways ..." Maggie muttered under her breath.
"Tate is—well, Tate is becoming a disappointment, after all my high hopes for him. I don't know if Erin is a disappointment, as I haven't seen her in nearly a year. I expect her husband will come down with bubonic plague just in time for her to back out of Easter dinner. Maureen? God, we all see Maureen. In fact, Margaret, you're the only one who seems to be ... normal."
"Me? Surely you jest—and don't call me Shirley," Maggie blurted, and then wished she could kick herself.
"Your mother keeps a scrapbook, Maggie, concerning our exploits," Alex told her, an overload of information, considering all her mother had just said.
Maggie's head was reeling. "A scrapbook. Of me? Wow. That's ... that's so normal."
"You're not perfect, Margaret, so you can stop grinning like an idiot over there. You embarrass us on a depressingly regular basis with your shenanigans. And, of course, those dirty books of yours."
"You've never read any of my books."
"And I never will. A mother must retain some illusions. Maureen, however, destroyed many of them."
"And we're back to Maureen," Maggie said, grateful for the shift. "What happened to her anyway, Mom? The past three or four years she's been—weird. Spacey. Jumpy, too."
Alicia Kelly looked to Alex. "Where was I? Margaret will insist on going off on tangents. She was always like that, if only hoping to prolong the inevitable. But not this time. The inevitable must be said, if you two are to make sure Evan doesn't end up doing hard time as somebody's bitch."
"As somebody's—o-o-o-kay," Maggie said, reaching for her nicotine inhaler. "So tell us, Mom. What do we need to know?"
"I had an affair with Walter Bodkin."
"You really don't have to keep saying that, Mom, we got it," Maggie said, then inhaled deeply on her plastic pacifier, hoping like hell there was still some nicotine joy juice in the cylinder.
"But I told your father I'd had an affair with Walt Hagenbush."
She turned to Alex, a plea in her expression. "I started to say Bodkin, but Evan looked so crushed, and yet so angry, that I couldn't do it, I couldn't say it. So I said Walt Hagenbush instead. Walt was dead. Evan couldn't go beat him up if he was dead, right? And the problem was still the problem. What difference was there in a name?"
"Oh, brother," Maggie said. "Mom, it makes all the difference in the world. Doesn't it, Alex?"
"I don't know, Maggie, as we've yet to be told the details of this problem, remember?"
"It was a quick thing, a stupid thing. Ten years ago. We'd been looking to buy a new condo, and your father was never home to go look at them with me, so I went by myself—with Walter as our Realtor. We were together a lot, had lunch a few times. He was ... he was very smooth. And all those condos. All those bedrooms. It ... it just happened."
Maggie looked quickly from left to right, her knuckles white on the edge of the table as she tried to hold onto her sanity. "Anybody got a barf bag around here anywhere?"
"Maggie, hush."
"But it was over and done, and I tried to forget about it." Alicia Kelly looked to Alex again, and he took her outstretched hand in his, gave it a reassuring squeeze. "And then ... and then, about three years ago, Maureen and John decided they wanted to buy a condo."
"Sweet Jesus in a cherry tree—Maureen? Maureen hopped between the sheets with Walter Bodkin?"
Alicia bit her lips together between her teeth, nodded. "I think she was regretting the garbage man, not that I hadn't warned her. I noticed the change in her during those weeks—the giddiness, the sudden, unexplained smiles—and I was fairly certain I knew why she was giving me excuses not to ask me to come along when she went looking at condos. So I finally confronted her, told her of my affair with Walter, hoping to warn her off before she did something stupid ..."
"But she'd already done something stupid," Maggie said, sighing. "It's like you said, Mom. All those condos. All those bedrooms. Reenie had an affair with her mother's former lover. Two generations of Kellys, in the same sack with the same man. Oh, yuck. Oh, double yuck. No wonder she's popping all those pills. That's sick."
"Perhaps, Maggie, you should leave the room, just until you can compose yourself," Alex suggested quietly.
Maggie squeezed her eyes shut, tried to block the images that seemed determined to lodge forever in her brain. "I'm sorry. You're telling us important stuff, Mom, and I'm being a jerk. So, um, so you fudged this summer, when you went to Dad with your big confession. You told Dad, but you told him Hagenbush, not Bodkin. That wasn't so bad, really, and the problem was still the problem—that you and Maureen had both been—at separate times, separated by whole years, right?—both been seduced by Walt Bodkin."
"I'd hardly say seduced, Margaret," Alicia Kelly said in an aggrieved tone. "That would make us both silly, vulnerable women. I'd like to believe we knew what we were doing. Or at least I did. Although I will admit I stopped taking those hormone pills Donald Helsing insisted I try to be rid of hot flashes. I had some very strange thoughts when I was taking those pills, I tell you."
"Doctor Helsing? He's still practicing?"