Kate Mularkey and Margie Mularkey

Kate Mularkey and Margie Mularkey’s mother-daughter relationship is marked by a familiar adolescent contest over advice and independence, but it is also a durable source of care. Margie pushes Kate toward friendship and risk-taking; Kate bristles at being instructed, yet returns to her mother’s comfort and makes room for Tully Hart in the family. In the later crises surrounding loss and illness, their bond becomes part of a wider network of practical support for the people Kate loves.

Identity and Early Tension

When Kate worries about whether a new family will bring a friend her age, Margie tries to reassure her. Kate recognizes the optimism as a mother’s confidence rather than a realistic account of how difficult junior-high friendships can be. She takes her breakfast into the hallway and eats beneath a portrait of Jesus, seeking quiet; Margie follows but initially says nothing. The small retreat captures the relationship’s recurring pattern: Kate wants space from maternal guidance, while Margie stays close enough to offer it.

After Kate’s friendship with Joannie has ended, Margie approaches the subject more directly. Her appearance suggests a day that has worn her down: her carefully curled hair has fallen, her makeup has faded, and her purple-and-yellow crocheted vest, a Christmas gift from the previous year, is buttoned incorrectly. She asks whether she can speak without Kate attacking her, and apologizes for what happened between Kate and Joannie. The apology is an effort to meet Kate’s hurt before turning to advice.

Advice, Resistance, and Reconciliation

Margie’s counsel comes from a belief that Kate should not wait passively for life to happen. She points out that Kate spends her time reading and doing homework, then asks how people can get to know her if she never reaches out. When Kate assumes the point is simply to make friends, Margie broadens the lesson: Kate’s generation can become what it wants, but taking risks is part of that possibility. Margie’s advice that people regret what they do not do carries a sadness Kate notices in her voice, though Kate cannot imagine what experience lies behind it. At the time, she dismisses the lesson as irrelevant to the social stakes of junior high.

Their disagreement does not make Margie’s affection conditional. She tells Kate that she loves and supports her and would not let anyone hurt her, even while urging her to change her habits. Later, after Kate has been mean to her, Margie smooths the hair from Kate’s forehead in a gesture so familiar that Kate feels five years old again. Margie apologizes for making Kate think she was judging Tully, and asks Kate to acknowledge her own unkindness. Kate smiles and agrees. The exchange joins the ordinary friction of a teenager’s independence to the reassurance of a parent who can apologize and still reach out.

Margie also recognizes the importance of Kate’s new friendship. She invites Kate to bring Tully over for dinner on Friday, confident that she will like her, and kisses Kate’s forehead before leaving. After Tully’s sexual assault, Margie’s response is protective but not rejecting: she tells Kate she is glad she has made a friend, while warning her not to break rules in ways that could put young girls in trouble. Tully’s presence soon changes Kate’s standing at school; other children accept Kate by association with Tully. The friendship Margie had encouraged becomes a concrete source of belonging, even as Margie remains alert to its risks.

Care Through Grief and Crisis

The closeness Margie offers is expressed through small physical gestures as well as advice. She smooths Kate’s hair and asks about the altar on Kate’s dresser, noticing that Kate has not made one since Georgia was receiving chemotherapy. Her question links the family’s present concerns to an earlier experience of illness and prayer without assuming that Kate will welcome another lecture. Margie can laugh at Kate’s groan about her familiar life speeches, then shift into quiet attention.

When Kate tells Tully that her grandmother has died, Tully’s grief arrives in large, breath-catching sobs. Kate holds her and lets her cry without trying to fill the silence. Elsewhere in the family’s later emergencies, Margie is among the people who share information and coordinate care. At the hospital, she tells Tully that only one visitor can enter at a time and goes to bring Bud from Kate’s room. These moments show a family relationship that extends beyond private mother-daughter exchanges: Margie’s presence helps organize support around Kate and those closest to her.

Family Support at the End

When Kate is in her final hospital stay, Tully persuades Johnny to take the children home and takes his place in the other bed in Kate’s room. She pushes the bed across the linoleum until it is almost beside Kate’s and brings a recording of her final television show. The two friends watch it together like eighth-grade girls at a sleepover. Margie is not the focus of this bedside scene, but the family’s wider care is the condition around it: Johnny can leave with the children, and Tully can remain with Kate.

Across Kate’s adolescence and the family’s later losses, Margie’s role is neither that of an always-understood confidante nor merely an authority figure. Her advice can irritate Kate, and Kate sometimes rejects its relevance; nevertheless, Margie apologizes, touches her with familiar tenderness, and makes room for the friend who becomes central to Kate’s life. The relationship’s significance lies in this persistence: disagreements do not cancel the care, and care does not require Margie to stop urging Kate toward a wider life.