by Lian Dolan
“I’m sure she did,” Liza said and then, because she was a planner, she floated an idea she’d been thinking about for hours. “What do you say we have the wake for Dad at my house? Maybe this Sunday, sort of get out ahead of any other public services and have the send-off Dad would have wanted. You know, it’s easy, I have the drill down. Carol, the caterer, knows my ovens. And she does such a great job at the school board meeting annual dinner, I’d like to give her the gig. I can have the whole thing planned by end of day tomorrow.”
Maggie and Tricia waited a beat to speak, exchanging glances that Liza picked up on.
That kind of collusion between the two of them made her crazy. They had no idea how hard it was to plan a big event, from napkin color to menu to cleanup, she thought. Every Thanksgiving, they’d show up with their assigned dishes, Tricia having bought hers from some fancy shop on the Upper East Side because, apparently, roasting and mashing butternut squash was beneath her. Maggie invariably wore a silk blouse because everybody knows you can’t wash the turkey pan in a silk blouse. If it weren’t for Liza, Thanksgiving, their mother’s favorite holiday, would consist of frozen peas, store-bought pie, and some hippie quinoa salad that Maggie conjured up. And here they go again, mocking me because I make things happen. Liza didn’t hold back, absolutely drained from a tough day. “What? What’s wrong with my house? I don’t know why you need to look at each other like that. I know you think I’m a control freak. I’ve heard you whispering in the kitchen at family events. But someone has to think these things through.”
Maggie, only eighteen months younger than Liza and her childhood sparring partner and best friend, held back. She knew that she had the least amount of leverage in this debate. The last thing she wanted was to get stuck with any percent of the catering bill or the flowers or, God knows, the bar bill if all her father’s drinking buddies from the Horseshoe Lounge—called the Shoe by locals—showed up. She was flat broke and if there was any silver lining to today’s news, it was that some financial relief might be coming from the estate. But she knew better than to say any of that, especially to Liza, so instead, she flashed Tricia an encouraging nod.
Tricia took the bait, like any good lawyer. Tricia would argue anything, and being the younger sister by six years had never stopped her. “Liza, there’s no judgment. We appreciate everything you’ve done today and for the last few years. Everything. But Willow Lane is the place that meant something to Dad, to his friends, to us. It’s fitting for the wake to be here. It’s only right. We can do this together. And, yes, by all means hire the caterer you trust. But you don’t have to take everything on. We’re here now. But I do agree that now is better,” Tricia continued, turning the conversation around on a dime, a tactic she used in negotiations, as if point one about location was a settled matter and she could move on to point two, timing. “If we want to be able to control who attends, we should do it sooner than later. I spoke to the head of the English department today and she said they’d certainly like to do something formal in the fall when school is back in session. And, as you mentioned, I’m sure the Pequot Library will do something in his honor. Though they’ll probably want us to donate money to make it happen, but we’ll get to that once Cap takes us through the will. Those will both be well-attended, choreographed functions.” Tricia was winding down and looking for the emotional hook to land Liza. “But yes, we should absolutely do something personal here. This event should be for Dad. And should be fitting of Dad. For family, for his real friends and colleagues. And those guys he lets fish off the dock on Sundays. I do think that’s what Dad would have wanted: a William Sweeney Wake Extravaganza. Remember the celebration we gave Mom? We can top that.”
Liza crumpled at the mention of her mother. She thought of the three of them at the wake, wearing clothes they had found in their mother’s closet, singing “Both Sides Now,” even though Tricia was mortified to perform in front of people. The mourners openly wept. Tricia was right. Of course, the wake should be here at Willow Lane with joy and tears and song and overindulgence, the messiness of memory in its glory. Clearly, she was exhausted, not thinking straight. She was grateful to Tricia for stating the obvious and grateful to Maggie for quelling her usual overreaction and staying silent. If only Whit had come home, but he hadn’t. “Yes, of course. We’ll do it here. It’s been a long day. We can go over the details in the morning.”
They were getting into their cars when Tricia’s phone pinged. She glanced at it because she always glanced at it. “Well, it’s official. Here’s the New York Times alert.” Tricia read aloud to her sisters, “Acclaimed American Writer William Sweeney Dead at Seventy-Four.” She’d read the rest of the obituary later, when she could focus and be alone. She wanted to savor the accolades; it was all she had to say goodbye.
Liza looked at her sisters as she helped Jack and his failing hips into the back of her Volvo. “We can get through this.”
Chapter 5
“I can say without a doubt that Bill Sweeney would have loved to be here tonight.” The Irish brogue of Patrick Kennerly, a chaplain at Yale Divinity, rang out. “To look out on this sea of faces, to raise a glass, to drink to the people he cherished. Yes, William Sweeney would have stayed long into the night, maybe the last to leave if he left at all. And in the morning, he would have slipped quietly out the back door and let you be with your own thoughts. Just like he did, didn’t he?”
Patrick and Bill had been longtime friends, meeting first during the Greenwich Village days, sparring over philosophy and bonding over darts at McSorley’s. The religion scholar and the novelist then found themselves together at Yale years later and renewed the relationship. Tonight, Patrick said goodbye to his friend. “Now, I’m going to say a prayer and you can either bow your head or you can look straight out at the sea, like Bill would do. . . .”
It was a cool, cloudy night. There would be no “red sky tonight,” the promise of the old sailor’s rhyme, but a salty onshore breeze; the sisters had made sure to schedule the wake for high tide. About a hundred or so family, friends, neighbors, fishing buddies, local shopkeepers, and esteemed colleagues sat in folding chairs out on the lawn of Willow Lane to “Celebrate the Life and Words of William Sweeney,” as the invitations said. Unlike a traditional wake, the body of Bill Sweeney was not on the premises, but the spirit surely was. Soon, there would be singing, drinking, dancing, and toasting, but first, there would be crying.
The communal sniffling started when cousin Sean’s band played “Bang the Drum Slowly.” Maggie had picked all the music after talking to Sean, who was a research biologist by day and a pretty decent singer and fiddle player by night.
When Maggie landed back in Connecticut after what she referred to as “the California Experiment,” she lived in her childhood bedroom for sixth months to regroup. Among her accomplishments during The Regrouping was teaching her father how to use an iPod. She created a dozen playlists for his daily walks. The Emmylou Harris song was a favorite of her father’s, and even though the female lead singer was dressed more appropriately for a nineties metal night at the Seagrape than a Southport service, that girl could sing.
Maggie had chosen wisely; the mournful reworking of the classic folk song was an emotional button to Cap Richardson’s moving reminiscence about his and Bill Sweeney’s fifty-year friendship that started at Yale as roommates and became much more than that. Cap was her father’s lawyer, confessor, fixer. Cap was able to boil Bill down to his essential elements: storytelling, laughter, curiosity, and his own brand of humanity tinged with darkness that made him skeptical of the powerful and trusting of the humble. “Not that William Sweeney was the slightest bit humble, but he valued it in others,” Cap said to the laughter of the guests, then added, “The only thing that truly humbled him was fatherhood. He was in awe of his daughters.”
Dear Cap, Tricia thought. We’re the closest things he has to daughters.
Over the years, Cap had watched Bill self-destruct, thanks to booze, women, gambli
ng, and his own mental health demons, and then somehow rebuild his life through writing and solitude. In return, Bill had never made an issue of Cap’s “confirmed bachelor” status, though both of them understood that Anders Hedlund, the charming antiques dealer in town that all the women loved, was more than Cap’s bridge partner. Neither Cap nor Bill ever really talked about it. They never needed to. There was a gay character in Bitter Fruit, Lieutenant Madigan, that Bill had created in honor of Cap. Madigan was the hero of the story. Cap is saying goodbye to his best friend.
Tricia looked down the row at her sisters, sitting as they always did, in age order: Liza, then Maggie, then Tricia. Three redheads in a row, their father had written in My Maeve, his memoir of his wife’s death and his subsequent two-year depression. To the outside world, the book was a brave exploration of depression, a subject few men copped to at the time. It won the National Book Award and reinvigorated his stagnating writing career about twelve years ago. To Tricia and her sisters, it was a look into their father’s inner monologue about a time period they’d rather forget.
“‘Suppress and deny’ should be the family motto,” Maggie had once commented after her father’s birthday dinner when not a single sister had congratulated him on the new book, instead making conversation about current events, the ending of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the upcoming Academy Awards. None of them had ever read My Maeve in its entirety. But here they were today, three redheads in a row.
“A good night for a short sail. Sail on, my old friend,” Cap said in his final words, his voice catching. Polished Cap Richardson had taught working-class Bill Sweeney to sail in college, the gift of a lifetime. The first few notes from Sean’s fiddle were all it took for the crowd to understand that William Sweeney was truly gone.
As the song’s refrain faded out, a frail David Hughes, Bill’s longtime editor at Allegory Publishing stood. He hugged Liza, Maggie, and Tricia before making his way to the microphone. He told the story of reading Never Not Nothing for the first time, saying of the experience, “It was the greatest gift of my publishing career, to spend a weekend alone with those words before the rest of the world would discover William Sweeney, knowing it would change their lives, too.” Maggie, in the middle, squeezed both her sisters’ hands.
It was a perfect night and they had made that happen. Liza had out-Liza’d herself, whipping the Willow Lane house into shape with the help of Julia, who insisted on returning to work despite her own shock and grief. If Liza had another week, she probably would have managed to paint the house and re-landscape. A thorough cleaning, a carload of new towels, pillows, and cheap rugs would have to do to freshen the faded interior. Liza brought in the company who did the Christmas decorations at her house to string hundreds of white lights to camouflage the exterior. Details were her strong suit. She’d even managed to get Jack a bath and a fresh bandana for the occasion.
Tricia had contacted the guests, reaching out to all the people her father truly would have wanted there, like the mechanic who kept his old Mercedes running and the long-retired department secretary from The New Yorker. She excluded the people her father would have called “phony,” like Millie Reeves, the head of the Southport Historical Society who denied her father a special commendation for his seventieth birthday because she didn’t like the language in some of his books. There had been some loose security at the door, one big bouncer from a local bar and two assistants from Liza’s gallery, to distinguish any local wake crashers from fanboy wake crashers. Locals were welcomed without a scene.
Even Maggie, who had a tendency at events to stand on the sidelines and watch rather than work, had poured her energy into making an artistic tribute to her father on the west end of the property where the lawn turned to meadow: an installation of her father’s beloved sails and spinnakers, hung high on C-stands borrowed from a photographer—an old boyfriend who trucked everything in from New York, including a generator and lights.
When David Hughes ended his tribute, Liza, Maggie, and Tricia rose together and made their way to the stage. Liza had wanted Tricia to be “the official spokes-sister,” claiming that Tricia would be “the least emotional” and thus able to get through the eulogy in one piece. Tricia was both flattered and wounded by the statement. It was Maggie who insisted they all speak, saying, “We’re the Sweeney sisters. We’re good at this. Public speaking awards, sixth grade, Mill Hill, Sweeney Sweep. Talking is our thing.”
Tricia agreed. “We should each read something Dad wrote. Something that mattered to each of us.”
And so that was exactly what they did. Liza, being the oldest, spoke first. She gave Vivi and Fitz a hug on her way to the stage. She stood at the microphone and breathed deeply several times. Normally a confident speaker, she made several false starts, trying to get her opening words out without crying. She looked at her sisters and settled into a quiet rhythm with a story about their father’s work ethic. She told the mourners how her father would take them all through his process at the dinner table when he was working out an essay or a scene in a book. “We were his first audience for almost everything. As children, we had no idea what he was talking about most of the time, but we knew we loved listening to him tell stories.”
Then she read a passage from a piece in the Yale Review called “Quitting Time,” about his instinct for knowing when a piece of writing was done, when it was “fully finished, polished to a deep luster, but not so shiny that one doubted its authenticity.” She concluded, “My father lived to the age where he attained a deep luster, but never too shiny that you didn’t believe him for one minute. May we all understand our own quitting time so well.”
Maggie stood next, ascending the stage with poise and hugging Liza deeply. Maggie was in a long black dress with a bright orange-and-pink scarf in her hair and silver hoop earrings. She spoke nervously at first, introducing herself with the nickname her father had given her when she was a teenager. “Some of you know me as Mad Maggie. That’s what my father called me for most of my teenaged years. I have no idea why,” she said, wryly.
Then she recalled the many Christmas Eves they would sit around the fire, after the tree was decorated, listening to their father read aloud the classic Truman Capote story, “A Christmas Memory.” “My father described that piece as ‘everything that matters in life in ten pages,’” she said. “I struggled in college, maybe some of you know that. My mother had just died, I was my usual mess. I couldn’t paint, I couldn’t eat. But I could certainly self-medicate in a variety of ways and lie in bed all day. I was capable of that. And this card arrives with Snoopy on the front.” She held up the card her father had sent her, with the drawing of a beagle lying on top of his doghouse. There are laughs from the audience. “Inside is a twenty-dollar bill and the words, ‘For your Fruitcake Fund.’” Maggie paused, collecting herself, then continued, “And as a P.S., my father added, ‘This moment in time is the greatest test of your strength, my Mad Maggie. Use this pain and make your art sing.’ Use this pain and make your art sing. Thank you, Dad. I did then and I will again now.”
Tricia paused and let Maggie have her moment on stage. Maggie took it and then exited with a small bow and a fist-bump for her sister. Tricia wasn’t the slightest bit nervous. She had worked on her material late into the night, then got up, put on her running shoes, and rehearsed it several times on her run. Tricia went to where everyone in the audience knew she must go—back to the beginning.
“Like some of you, I read Never Not Nothing as a teenager, because it was a coming-of-age novel intended to be read by those coming of age. Honestly, I couldn’t understand all the fuss, maybe because every character in the book seemed so familiar to me. My father as the main character Ethan, of course. Aunt Frannie as the little sister. Dear Cap Richardson as the more sophisticated best friend. I like to think that my mother Maeve was Elspeth, but my mother and father hadn’t met yet when he wrote the book, though I’m guessing that when my father met my mother, he knew he’d found his Elspeth. These were
n’t characters in a novel; these were the people in my life.
“But two summers ago, after a difficult personal situation, I found myself in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village and there was a copy of Never Not Nothing in their lending library, along with spy thrillers and self-help titles. I started to reread it over a latte. When I finished it hours later in one sitting, I realized that I was the same age then as my father was when he wrote it, and the book resonated with me at a whole different level.
“Never Not Nothing is about establishing self-identity and the impossibility of living up to standards that somebody else created. That’s something you learn well past your coming-of-age years, isn’t it? My father needed the distance to write the story and that’s true of all of us. We need to look backward before we can move forward. But more than anything, what I missed the first time I read Never Not Nothing was the longing to belong—to a family, to a friend group, to another person. I already belonged to those characters on the page, or so I thought at sixteen. But by thirty, I had lost that sense of connection. After rereading the book, I understood how essential growing up a Sweeney was to my being. Time and distance and losses made me hunger for belonging again. I think it’s why the book continues to be read and loved, because we’re all a little Ethan, searching for our people, for those essential connections. And look at you all here—you were my father’s people and you made his life complete, even if there were days when he wasn’t completely whole himself. Thank you. Thank you so very much.”
Tricia paused again, this time for her moment, and then said, “Stay for food, drink, and carousing. You know my father would have loved the carousing bit. But first, from Never Not Nothing . . .” Tricia looked up as she spoke the well-known final lines of the book by heart and saw that many in the audience were doing the same, like singing along at a concert. “Ethan knew it would never be the same. The moment, that had blistered the sun, cooled, then burned out. Walk along, young man, walk along.”