The Favorite Daughter

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Whatever it was, she’d said, “I like ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’ better.”

  He’d set the glass he’d been washing onto the bar, which smelled like lemon polish, and put both arms around her to pull her close. She’d rested against his flannel shirt, which carried the aroma of salt and sea and whiskey. Her mother had often joked that she could sense him coming home not by the sounds he made but by the scents that preceded him. Colleen had rested into her dad as he whispered, “You’re a chip off the old block, Lena. Someday I’ll take you there, take you to the land of eternal green, and staggering cliffs you can’t imagine even with the best of your imagination, to the land where fairies live in the knots of old oaks and the ocean is always thrashing itself against a land so beautiful there’s not another like it.”

  Colleen stared off with this memory fresh in her mind—so quick and vivid in its entirety—as she answered Beckett, “I think he wanted to bring only me. I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe he told the others, too, at a different time.”

  “Maybe.” She smiled at him as he placed his hand on the brass doorknob. “Or maybe I’m special.”

  “Well, that you are.” Beckett opened the door and together they entered the dimly lit space.

  “I was joking of course.” She shut the door behind them. “Of course I’m not.”

  Beckett stopped so quickly that Colleen bumped into him, their bodies touching. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her in close. “Yes, you are.”

  Colleen blushed, felt the heat in her face and under her ribs, along her arms and thighs. Thank God for the dim light. She kissed his cheek lightly and let go to glance around the room.

  Her dad stood behind the bar talking to a man on its far side, engaged in a conversation that had put serious expressions on both their faces. There were only six patrons, two couples and two women alone, scattered at different tables. It was too early for the crowd to be settling in, but this had always been Colleen’s favorite part of the day, when she could be alone with her dad. He’d tell her an old myth or joke. He was always saving news from the beauty of the day to share with her—a dolphin that had visited the dock with its new calf; a phone call from his sister; a pub patron who had found true love; a sick person healed. He gathered these gems like Hallie had gathered oyster shells to place around their room.

  “He looks so serious,” she said to Beckett.

  Together they approached the bar and Gavin spied them. His smile spread sure as a sunburst across his face. “My Lena!” he called out.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “When did you get here?”

  “Just now.” She pointed at Beckett. “I went to the historical society today. Remember, like we talked about over breakfast?” Then she remembered to quit using the damned word “remember.”

  He nodded in agreement. The man he’d been speaking to, Colleen recognized him—Mr. Dalton, her teacher from junior year algebra. She exchanged a few words with him and then he rejoined one of the women sitting alone at a table.

  “Dad.” Colleen sat on the stool that had just been vacated by Mr. Dalton. She would start over, make sure he understood.

  “Yes?” He smiled at her and nodded at Beckett. It was a vacant word, a preconditioned response.

  “Today I went to the historical society with Beckett here.” Beckett took a bar stool next to her, reached under the bar to squeeze her knee in complicit sympathy. “We found such interesting photos.”

  “Photos?” His eyes lit as if someone had turned something on inside him.

  Beckett pulled out color copies of the originals.

  The door behind the bar swished open and closed, and Shane emerged, preoccupied on his phone. When he glanced up and saw them, he smiled. “Oh, hey. What’s up?”

  “We found these at the historical society.” Colleen spoke softly and tilted her head at her brother in question. “Are you okay?”

  Shane glanced at their dad, a sideways slide of the eyes that only Colleen would notice. “I’m fine. What are these?” He eased his way to the bar, pushing the photos under the domed light above.

  “Dad,” Colleen said, “one is a photo of the pub you used as a model for this pub. It’s some place in Ireland.”

  Gavin slapped his hand on the counter and let out a laugh. “The old O’Shea pub in Clare. How many hours I spent behind that dirty counter, dragging the old kegs and cleaning after the brawls of the locals. Did you know it takes exactly 119 seconds to pour a perfect Guinness?” He looked at Colleen.

  “I did, Dad. I did know that. You taught me.”

  He shook his head and lifted the photo closer to his face. “How long has it been?” His gaze found Colleen’s and there seemed a desperate need for an answer. “How long?”

  “I don’t know exactly when you were there. But before I was born, so at least thirty-five years ago.”

  “Oh, my dear, you’ve always been a part of the pub.”

  “No, Dad. That’s a different pub. That’s not the Lark.”

  Her dad kept his gaze fixed on hers. She understood why he wouldn’t look away; he needed to be grounded in that moment, to find his way back to reality. But it wasn’t happening.

  “Dad, that’s another pub. Did you work there? At that pub in Ireland?”

  “Yes, I did.” He straightened and pushed the photo away. He glanced at the next one. “And this pub I found here.” His smile was sad, a mere lifting of the edges of his lips.

  “Is O’Shea’s where you first heard ‘The Lark in the Clear Air’?” That was Shane asking, his voice quiet so not to scare away the memories if he spoke too loudly. “And that’s why you named this pub . . .”

  “Yes.” Gavin’s smile was real then, reaching into the rivers of wrinkles at his eyes. “And it was my wedding song, indeed it was.”

  With that, he stood, turned quickly and moved to the far end of the bar to greet another patron, whistling his favorite song.

  THE MEMORY BOOK

  Interview with Mr. Bivins

  Colleen held a sepia-toned photo. Gavin and Elizabeth Donohue stood in front of the brick pub holding a baby, less than a year old, wrapped tightly in a blanket, a head full of curls emerging from the folds. Another man, Mr. Bivins, the real estate agent, stood a foot away from Elizabeth wearing a dark suit and a file of papers that he held to the camera. Gavin’s arm was flung over Elizabeth’s shoulders and a grin spread across his face. Elizabeth, with a lacquered bob, held the baby in one arm and had slipped the other around her husband’s waist. She wore a flowered sundress and large Jackie O sunglasses. Gavin wore a dark suit with a crooked green tie. Sunlight fell in long stretches, offering Gavin the appearance of being showered with light. In small script at the bottom of the photo, in the white band framing it, were the words “January 1982.”

  Colleen sat at a long dark faux-mahogany table in Mr. Bivins’s realty office, a table where clients signed closing forms and wrote checks for new homes or businesses. The air conditioner was set to arctic and Colleen ran her hands up and down her bare arms. Seated across from her, Mr. Bivins wore a black suit with a pale blue hankie poking from the top left pocket. His tie, also pale blue, had a stain of something resembling ketchup on the bottom corner. His face was earnest and round; rimless spectacles sat atop the red bulb at the end of his nose as he looked down at the photo.

  After some chitchat about the weather and the new restaurant downtown, Colleen pointed to the photo. “You see, I’m wondering what day this was about. All of us in front of the pub and you holding those papers?”

  “Closing day. We didn’t think it would happen and that’s why I have that silly grin on my face.”

  “Closing? I’m confused.”

  “Oh, the McNallys weren’t quite ready to sell it, what with its success and all of that. But your dad, he was quite the charmer there, with your mom all smiles and your
tiny little self only a couple months old when he bought it.”

  Colleen couldn’t quite forge the connection between herself and the small bundle in her mother’s arms. Of course she didn’t remember any of this—but there she was, part of the family history and pub from the get-go. Was this how her dad would one day feel when he looked at these photos and their stories? As though he didn’t know the man in the picture? Colleen cleared her throat. “He bought it before I was born.”

  “No. Your mom was at home with you when he finally convinced the McNallys to sell. I remember that quite well. Your dad told ol’ Bud that he’d worked in an ancient pub in a village in County Clare. He had ideas. Big ideas. Living all that time in a small village of thatched cottages, he knew more about real pubs than the McNallys ever could.” Mr. Bivins’s face settled into the wrinkles of his lifelong smile. “And it didn’t hurt that your dad paid over market value. He was determined to own that pub. Nothing would stop him.”

  “Nothing usually does.” Colleen paused. “But he moved here because of it, right? He’d already bought it when they arrived. The only pub he’d worked at before that was the one in Ireland.”

  “No.” Mr. Bivins stared at the photo. “He spent months convincing Bud to sell. But didn’t it become all he imagined it to be? It’s a community. That’s what he wanted—a community built around a gathering place. And your mother, always so quiet and polite, always holding on to your dad for dear life.”

  “But this couldn’t be closing day. He bought it before I was born . . . it’s why they moved here.” She knew she was repeating herself, but maybe he didn’t understand her, didn’t comprehend the details.

  “No, Lena. I remember as clearly as yesterday.”

  Colleen didn’t want to argue with the older gentleman—there would be no use in that. She knew that stories changed with time, that even her own most vivid memories were unreliable—what time had it been? What day? Facts didn’t matter so much as the overall impression. So if Mr. Bivins’s timeline didn’t match her dad’s, then it was only the intention that mattered, the determination to own and run a pub in a small-town community. That was what was worth recording.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Memory is an inner temple of feeling and sensibility.

  John O’Donohue, Anam Cara

  EIGHT DAYS UNTIL THE PARTY . . .

  “It’s falling apart.” Hallie spoke to Colleen and into the soft misty morning air and pointed at the tree house.

  They’d just arrived—Hallie and the girls—to find Colleen alone on the back stoop with a mug of coffee. The nieces hugged Colleen, tripping over her and splashing her coffee onto the concrete as they rushed through the back door to find Uncle Shane.

  “What?” Colleen looked at Hallie, wishing she’d had at least ten more minutes alone. She was unaccustomed to starting the day with conversation. Living alone, she’d learned to move more slowly into the world.

  Hallie sat next to Colleen and pointed again. “The tree house. It’s fallen apart just like us.”

  Colleen took in a long breath, inhaling the aroma of the coffee, the warm earth and salty air. “Hallie . . .” She hadn’t seen her sister since the day before yesterday during the scene she’d witnessed between Walter and Hallie from behind the dumpster.

  “It’s true.” Hallie swung her legs sideways to face her sister. “It’s like the tree house couldn’t take the passing years either. Dad once said he’d fix it for Sadie and Rosie, but he never did.”

  “It’s just a tree house,” Colleen said flatly.

  “Maybe.” Hallie brushed her hands through the air, dismissing the notion. “Or maybe it stands for everything.”

  In silence they stared at the crumbling structure. The tree house listed against the tallest branches, clinging to them with the last of its rusted nails. The floor was still intact but slanted, the roof long gone. Several of the board steps that had led to the top, nailed into the tree trunk, were still attached, but the lowest surviving one was too high to step onto, out of reach to gain a foothold.

  “I’m sorry I got so mad the other night.” Hallie stood when she said this, as if she meant to run as soon as the words left her mouth. “It hit me wrong to see Walter being so flirty with you. I was mad at him; at his stupidity.”

  Colleen shrugged, stared at the tree house. How had she not really looked at it since she’d arrived? It posed a danger—it needed to be taken down.

  “I guess that’s the end of that discussion.” Hallie took a step down to the grass. “You’re obviously not listening.”

  “I’m listening. I just don’t know what to say.” Colleen shrugged her shoulders, shifting her gaze past the tree house to the river. “I really don’t. I just think we should never talk about Walter, or the past. I’m so sad about Dad. I have decisions about work I need to make; this party to get through; our memory book to finish. We don’t need to rehash what we already know about us—let’s just focus on Dad’s care.”

  “Rehash it? Seriously?” Hallie slammed her foot into the soft grass, splashing a small spray of soggy dirt onto Colleen’s legs. “Since it’s the reason you haven’t spoken to me or my girls in a decade, I thought it worth at least a few words. You didn’t even meet your own nieces, my girls, until a few days ago.”

  “You told me your story. What else is there to say?”

  “It’s worth talking about no matter how wrong or terrible I was. I get that it’s my fault that you left, that you stayed away. But now is now and you’re here and it’s worth a few words.”

  “Okay then.” Colleen stood. “Here are a few words.” She cleared her throat and stared at her sister. “You broke my heart. You broke my spirit. Most of all, you broke my trust. I ran off, and yes, I chose to run off. I started a new life and avoided the pain the best I knew how. Maybe it was the wrong way to go about it, but I did all I knew to do. But now I’m back because I love our dad. He’s in trouble and needs our help. I don’t know anything more than that, Hallie.” Her voice rose until Hallie stepped back, each sentence a shove, pushing her away. “I don’t know anything else.”

  Hallie shook her head. “I don’t either, Lena.”

  “Please stop calling me Lena.”

  “No.” Hallie turned on her heel and headed into the house. “That’s your name.”

  Colleen exhaled with frustration. It was “family meeting” time and she couldn’t run; she couldn’t leave. They’d told Bob not to come get Dad that day as they were spending the morning with him. Her coffee had grown cold and she tossed it into the grass before entering the house just as Dad’s words filled the kitchen.

  “As long as poetry and myth are in the world, part of my memory will always exist.” Gavin spoke as he held a photo in his hand. He stared at it, his eyes glazed over as he sat at the kitchen table.

  “What, Dad?” Hallie asked from her seat next to him, her hand on his forearm in a protective gesture.

  Gavin glanced to his daughter just as Shane came from the back of the house. “I might forget everything. Already I feel it leaving me. But if there is poetry, and there are stories about me, won’t part of me still exist? I’m trying damn hard here to figure out what of me, aside from my body, will remain with you. If memory is the center of it all, what will be left?”

  Colleen was quiet as she caught Shane’s glance. How could her father be so lucid in one moment and so confused the next? The disease was as baffling as it was vicious.

  The nieces weren’t there to hear this; they were in the living room watching an animated movie about an old man and his house being lifted by balloons.

  “Dad?” Colleen asked gently.

  “Do we make memories or do memories make us?” He asked this paradoxical question as though he were asking what time dinner would be ready.

  “I don’t know,” Colleen said. “Maybe both.”

  “Maybe . . .” S
hane chimed in. “Does it matter? We want to help no matter what it is.”

  “Listen,” Gavin said. “I know why we’re here.” He lifted his head to meet Colleen’s gaze. “To talk about me and my fading memory.” He held the photo he’d been staring at. “But your brother brought this, and I just don’t know why.”

  “Let me see.” She glanced over her dad’s shoulder. It was the faded color photo of Gavin sitting on a stone wall. Sheep, three of them with muddy bellies and bowed heads, stood in the background beside a creek. Boulders and rocks were visible below the water; rich green grass tufted the banks—it looked like every photo of Ireland she’d ever seen. Dad wore a suit and tie knotted so tightly that his neck wrinkled against the collar. A white flower was buttoned to his lapel and his smile was broad, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “When was this taken?” Colleen asked.

  “I don’t know.” He looked at her. “A long time ago.” He paused. “You know I don’t like being this late for the pub. I only trust Hampton so far.”

  “You mean Hank.”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant.” His face was so pained at his mistake that Colleen felt the embarrassment for him.

  Hallie squeezed her dad’s arm. “We love you so much. This isn’t a talk about how you’ve done wrong but how we can help. You’re going to need more care than you’re getting right now. You can’t live alone. And you can’t . . .” Her voice cracked.

  Gavin glanced away from Hallie, directly at Colleen. “You can live here with me.” He clapped his hands together. “Problem solved.” He stood from his chair. “Now I have to be getting on to the pub.”

  Hallie stood. “Dad, Lena lives in New York.”

  “I’m not a complete bumbling idiot. I know where she lives.” His voice held the flint edge of anger not yet ignited. He closed his eyes and tried again. “But she can move back here.” He took two steps toward Colleen, his face twisted with something she’d seen only when her mother died; some vital grief that couldn’t hide behind a mask of any kind.