Reflections - Mary Ann

Mary Ann Mahoney

Mary Ann Mahoney

March 4, 1933 - July 19, 2024

After Mary Ann retired from teaching in Shaker Heights, she helped Bette and me with children needing reading support at Ruffing. Mary Ann would arrive for her afternoon schedule, plop into the chair that I’d covered to resemble the School Bus chair in the Magic School Bus books, and chat while Bette and I finished lunch. Mary Ann said the routine gave structure to her week. 

She had a full life with her second husband Steve, a house in Maine, an apartment in Shaker Heights, sailing, harpsichord playing, their corgi, concerts, and fine dining. Her lips smacked describing the delicious lobster dripped in butter she ate in Maine. She’d been so enthusiastic that when Spence and I went to the Olde Dublin Pub in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island, I ordered lobster to see what I’d missed. I wrote her a postcard all about my experience.

. . .

I stared at the lobster. Its beady eyes stared back. I turned the plate so the eyes stared at Spence and picked up the cracker. It slid off the shell five times before I heard a crunch. I inserted the scissors in the crack and cut the shell. The white meat inside tasted like intensified crab. Squeezing lemon juice, I ate to the end of the abdomen and cut open the thorax. Total green goo.

 

Spence lifted a bite of chicken quesadilla. “Don’t eat the green stuff.”

. . .

 

I filled the bowl our waitress had given me with shells, dipped my lobster-sticky fingers into my water glass, and came to a conclusion. “I’m glad I tried the lobster,” I told Spence, “but, if I’m ever tempted to order it again, remind me I said once was enough.”

When I returned to Ruffing, Mary Ann sat in the School Bus chair and laughed about the postcard so heartily that I expected she’d split open like a lobster—without need of the cracker or scissors.

We are planting a northern blue flag iris by the catchment basin ponds in memory of Mary Ann.

 

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