by Lian Dolan
Tricia knew what she had to do. Liza was stretched so thin there in Southport handling the arrangements, a euphemism for all the awful details of death, that she couldn’t handle any of the larger issues that needed to be handled, like informing her father’s colleagues. Maggie, who was usually a minor mess, would be a complete mess for days, if not weeks. Balance and focus were always Tricia’s strengths. She was the one Sweeney sister who could be both the backbone and the emotional core at this juncture and she knew she had to hold the whole operation together.
“I’ll call Cap. Does he know?” A muffled “yes” came back. It didn’t surprise Tricia that Liza had already called Cap, her father’s friend and lawyer. It was the right thing to do. “We’ll have to figure out the press piece. I’ll follow up with Cap. Don’t worry about that. You just do what you need to do there in terms of state procedure.” The rest of the call was brief and clinical, ending with Tricia promising, “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Text me if you want backup on any decisions. We got this.”
Tricia took the stairs back down to her desk. It took her about seventeen minutes to make the calls she needed to make, send the emails that had to be sent, and reschedule the meetings that needed to be rescheduled. She had two brief conversations with fellow associates, imparting information with speed and accuracy. Tricia thought about all those training runs, those miserable, hot steamy miles and hills in August in the Berkshires with the team. Or the frigid early-morning speed workouts in January on the track in New Haven. All this time, she’d thought it was about running, but it was really about preparing her for the last seventeen minutes and the next few hours of pain, when she had to remain focused long enough to leave work, go to her apartment and pack a few things, and then get on the train out to Southport. This was the moment where developing all that endurance and a high pain threshold finally paid off.
“Can I see Don? It’s an emergency,” Tricia asked Danette, the executive assistant to the managing partner she was working for, a new hire named Don Donaldson, a name Tricia and her fellow associates at KMT had already dissected over drinks at P. J. Clarke’s. (How lazy do your parents have to be to not even bother to think up a first name different than your last name? Had they given up on parenting seconds after the birth?) Don had been a “big hire,” lured over from another firm with a giant signing bonus and immediately put on the partner track because of his impressive client list and his overall asshole behavior that seemed to be rewarded at every turn in New York City. Tricia was not a fan, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t worked her hardest for him over the last nine months. Do not cry in front of this guy, she thought to herself as he waved her into his office.
“Don, I’m going to need a few days off. I got a call. My father . . .” Tricia took a deep breath. “My father died this morning. I need to go home.”
“Oh, Sweeney, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you okay?” It was the most personal question he’d ever asked her, except for the time he chest-bumped her at a Legal League softball game and then asked if her breasts were fake. “I mean, you’re so skinny. How could those be real? Am I right?” Don had asked the small crowd, seeking validation for his lax bro behavior.
“It was unexpected,” Tricia responded now.
Don nodded like he cared, but then it was back to business. “So, are you all covered then for your work? I mean, obviously you should be with your family, but you’re covered, right?” He was referring to the class action workplace discrimination suit filed by women at one of the Big Five automakers. Kingsley, Maxwell & Traub represented the automaker. He knew Tricia’s work product was invaluable to the case; plus, it didn’t hurt that she was a woman. “I mean, the class just certified, this is crunch time.”
Prick. “Yes, all set. I’ve cc’d you and Danette on several emails detailing what I was working on. Penny Caruso and Ryan Lee will take over on point on discovery. I’ll keep in touch with them.”
“Great. Well, good luck!” Don said it like Tricia was embarking on a slightly exotic honeymoon to Costa Rica, not a Metro-North train ride to bury her father. Maybe he sensed how cold his send-off sounded because he followed up with something more human. “What did your old man do, Sweeney? Lawyer?”
Never. “My father was a writer.” There it was, the past tense. My father was a writer.
“Oh yeah? Did he write anything I might have heard of?”
Because that’s the mark of a worthwhile career, whether or not Don Donaldson has heard of you, Tricia thought. “My father was William Sweeney.”
The light dawned in his tired eyes. “The William Sweeney? Like Never Not Nothing William Sweeney? And that Vietnam book? What was it called? Um, Bitter Fruit. That William Sweeney?”
There was that Dartmouth education emerging from the swamp of Don Donaldson’s normal workplace interaction. Yes, Don, not only have you heard of William Sweeney, he probably blew your mind during junior year English at Hotchkiss or during Senior Seminar in Hanover. You and millions of other readers like yourself—smart, smug, know-it-all white guys who got your literary comeuppance, courtesy of a William Sweeney classic. You thought you were the hero in your own life, but thanks to William Sweeney, you discovered you were just some average schmuck, grinding out a daily existence that may or may not add up to something in the end and that enlightened you for a semester or, if you were lucky, a lifetime. You probably still have a couple of Sweeney titles on your bookshelves, Don, in your Chelsea loft that you share with your lawyer girlfriend, though you haven’t read a complete novel since that old John Grisham you discovered in your rental house on Block Island two summers ago. “Yes. That William Sweeney.”
The lawyer lowered his head contritely. “I really am sorry. He was . . . brilliant. I read that piece in The New Yorker he wrote a few years ago about Jeter. ‘The Captain.’ I was a fucking mess on the 1 train.”
With that, Tricia felt the tears prick behind her eyes. It was happening all over again, like when her mother died. Tricia could stay composed in public until someone said something nice, something kind, and then she felt the sadness overwhelm her. At the grocery store, the shoe department at Bloomie’s, the deli buying a sandwich. One kind word from a stranger or acquaintance would sneak its way through her armor and hit an emotional bull’s-eye. But not today, not in this guy’s office. Don Donaldson didn’t get to be the first one to see her grieve.
Tricia bit her lip to bring herself back. “Thank you. He was a brilliant writer.” She had turned to leave when a thought struck. “Can I ask you to please keep this confidential? We’d like to make sure the whole family knows before it becomes public and, as you’ve noted, my father was a public figure, so we’re establishing a protocol for releasing the information to the press.”
Confidentiality was one thing lawyers understood, even DD, as Don often called himself in meetings. “Of course, Sweeney.”
In reality, Tricia didn’t want Don Donaldson scooping the New York Times with some post or tweet about how his literary hero had passed away, setting off a press frenzy. Her father deserved better, the dignity of a news alert, or at least, followed by an outpouring from fans on social media.
Tricia smiled, thinking that was exactly what William Sweeney would say about some fellow writer whose career-defining death notice had been undermined by some no-name on the twenty-third floor. She could hear it in his Hamden accent: Poor guy. His lousy lawyer blurted it out online. He didn’t even get an official press release. That’s no way to go out. Her father could make a great story out of nothing. The simplest encounter became an epic. Who would tell those stories now?
“Thanks, Don.” She had no doubt that this story—of keeping William Sweeney’s death a secret—would become one of Don’s go-to anecdotes at happy hour.
As she walked out of the office, Patricia Beckett Sweeney realized that while caring for her father for the past ten years had been no picnic, protecting his legacy would be even more complicated.
Chapter 4
This day feels like it’s been forever, Liza thought. Everything happened so quickly, yet in slow motion. Julia, who’d been so shocked by the death of her employer that it took her hours to recover enough to drive home, had just left, after one last tearful embrace with Liza. Now Liza sat in the kitchen of her childhood home on Willow Lane, drinking a glass of white wine and eating a handful of roasted peanuts, after a long, sad day of comings and goings, the official business of death involving mountains of paperwork and quick decisions, most grim. At one point, Liza was supposed to fax all three Sweeney sisters’ signatures to some state office so her father’s body could be cremated. She didn’t even bother trying to track down her sisters, both of whom were in transit; she signed all three names in decent forgeries, scanned the documents, and emailed them to the proper state agency. Liza knew her sisters would understand.
Her phone pinged. It was a text from Maggie saying that she was waiting at the Southport train station for Tricia. There in ten. Hang in. xoxo.
Out of habit, Liza looked around the dated kitchen and started adding up the cost of a remodel. It was something she did in almost every house she walked into, from her clients’ Greek Revivals to her in-laws’ early American saltbox. Do I want this place? Is the house even worth renovating? Her own home was a few blocks away, an easy walk that she had done a million times since she married Whit and moved into the three-story Victorian on Westway Road. The Peppermint Ice Cream House, they’d called it as kids because it was all sorts of pink and green, but not the charming versions of those colors. When she surprised her family (and maybe even herself) by settling down at age twenty-two with local boy turned investment banker Whitney Jones III, she set her sights on the house, practically willing aged Mrs. Jennings to relocate to an assisted living facility. The house never even went on the market. Whit stepped in and made an offer and Liza set to work reviving the place. Now a traditional white on the outside, but airy and open on the inside, it was the sort of house people drove by when they wanted to impress out-of-towners. Liza loved looking out the front windows and seeing people on the sidewalk holding up their phones and taking pictures.
She’d talked to Whit only briefly today. He was in North Carolina for work when he called between meetings. “I’m sorry, hon. Do you need me to come home right away? Your sisters will be there, right? When’s the funeral?” All valid questions, but she wished Whit had said he was getting on a plane that night to be with her and that he’d do anything she needed. Even though he and her father never really clicked, they tolerated each other. Whit admired William Sweeney’s intellect and convictions and Liza thought her father admired Whit as a good provider and a good father—that is, when he was in town. But she never really knew for sure. The Sweeneys weren’t a family that poured out their emotions unless whiskey was involved. Still, Liza thought Whit could have been more proactive in his response.
Plus, the kids were meant to leave for camp next week, but events like that rarely pierced Whit’s psyche when he was in the middle of a deal. He’d barely been home the last two months. If she didn’t get the two of them on that camp bus, she’d have to drive them to Maine herself. She hoped the twins, Vivi and Fitz, were coping with Whit’s mother, Lolly, who had agreed to take them overnight. She hated not being there with them. They’d been very close to their grandfather, often walking down the lane to bring him dinner, or fish or swim with him off this dock. Like so many men of his generation, Bill Sweeney was a more attentive grandfather than father. This was the first time they’d been through loss of any kind—even their yellow lab, Bear, was still alive, pushing fourteen, a year older than the twins.
Lolly not only took the twins, she volunteered to drop off dinner. “You should be with your sisters.”
There was Lolly’s trademark attribute: graciousness. She never made a false step and always knew exactly what to say in any social circumstance, what to write in the thank-you note and what dish to bring to the book club. Lolly Jones and Bill Sweeney had gotten along like a house on fire. Lolly could tell a wicked dirty joke in private and Bill loved that Lolly had actually read his work and wasn’t afraid to disagree with his essays in the cleverest terms. That was the first of many holes that Liza would identify now that her father was gone: no more family dinners with too much wine and lively discussions about all the subjects you weren’t supposed to talk about in polite society, from politics to sex to religion. Or the intersection of all three, like when her father got started on the Trump administration. Liza had always made her children clear the table to shield them from the nicknames Bill Sweeney had for the Cabinet secretaries. Lolly, who held her own biases, barely blinked at such talk. Now it would just be the Jones family sitting around the table, and Whit’s father, Whitney, was no substitute for her father. Frankly, neither was Whit.
Sometimes Liza wondered if she stayed with Whit because his mother was so lovely and she would hate to offend her in any way.
Finally, Liza heard car wheels on the gravel driveway. They were here, her sisters. Liza wondered, Are you considered an orphan if you’re in your thirties? She didn’t know, but tonight she felt alone in a way that she hadn’t before. She called to her father’s old golden, left behind and bewildered: “Let’s go, Jack. It’s Maggie and Tricia. The sisters. Let’s go say hi.”
The Sweeney Sisters were back on Willow Lane.
“In a million years, did you ever think William Sweeney would die quietly in his sleep?” Tricia asked her sisters while they were standing out at the end of the dock, the boats of Southport Harbor to the left and the open waters of Long Island Sound to the right. Liza had taken them both through all the details of the day, from Julia discovering him in his bedroom midmorning to the call from Cap informing Liza that there was a short paragraph in their father’s will about scattering his ashes at high tide. The details didn’t make the reality any more real. Their father being gone at age seventy-four wasn’t something for which any of them was prepared.
In pairs or all together, they’d had conversations over the years about what to do about Dad, but the implication was always that they needed to work something out for the future, not next week. Nothing seemed imminent. Though no one would accuse Bill Sweeney of taking good care of himself, physically he’d cut back on drinking lately and still walked five miles a day, taking the long way to Southport Beach and back with Jack the golden retriever. His father had always walked and always had a golden. Their mother had been sick for so many years, her death at age forty-five seemed like an inevitability—but he seemed like a guy who would never fade away. And certainly not without fanfare.
“The guy who couldn’t go to the post office without turning it into a piece for Esquire slips off this mortal coil without a word,” Tricia observed.
“I wish we’d had a chance for one more conversation,” Maggie said. It was the tritest of sentiments, but it was true. All the sisters fell silent, thinking about what that conversation might have been for each of them, had they known it was the last. For Liza, maybe her father would have issued an apology for taking out all his anger about Maeve’s illness on her. For Maggie, a declaration of support for her work and her talent would have been the final words to carry her forward. For Tricia, a détente would have served the two of them well, allowing them both to be right for once, especially about their ongoing battles over the law versus social justice and the merits of baseball versus basketball. William Sweeney had been better in print than in person when it came to digging deep and baring his soul, usually through fictional characters. The sisters knew any imagined conversation would be more satisfying than the real thing.
“Do we know it was a heart attack?” Tricia preferred facts to speculation.
“The EMT said it looked to be a heart attack. Why?”
“I was thinking about his years of depression.”
“He was fine. He wouldn’t have hurt himself,” Liza said.
“You know that for sure?”
“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist
,” Liza responded, annoyed by Tricia’s implication that, somehow, she had missed signs that her father was on a downward spiral.
“I know, I’m sorry. I had to ask.”
“I saw him two days ago and we talked about giving Julia some time off this summer so she could go home to Puerto Rico. He had made plans to drive up to the lodge place in Vermont where he’s gone for the last fifteen years. He had reservations in August.”
“I think he met a woman there,” said Maggie, or as Tricia often called her, Queen of Conspiracies.
“Why would you say that?” Tricia asked.
“Because I think it’s true. Remember that visiting professor from Middlebury that he had that thing with? Nadia something, the intense Russian literature teacher who came to Dad’s birthday dinner a million years ago. I think they had a Same Time, Next Year situation happening at that Vermont lodge.”
“Really?” Now Liza was intrigued, forgetting about Tricia’s accusation.
“Yes. When I was living here a few months ago, he told some story about sailing on a lake with Nadia and then he clammed up like he wasn’t supposed to say anything, like he’d broken the code,” Maggie explained. “I’m glad he had someone.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that. Except, I don’t think he took his own life. Is that what you really thought?”
“No. It crossed my mind for a second, only because I never thought he’d go like this. Alone.”
The mosquitos emerged and the sisters headed back to their cars. Liza had decided they would spend the night at her house instead of Willow Lane. “Trust me. It feels like a crime scene. You’ll sleep better at my house. And Lolly dropped off her signature boeuf bourguignon. She freezes it in bulk for such occasions. We can heat that up.”
“Do you think she dropped off that really good coffee and those blueberry-chia parfaits from The Granola Bar?” Maggie asked. She and Liza’s mother-in-law had a special relationship. Lolly gave her food and vintage clothing items from the seventies and Maggie painted her thank-you cards.