The Sweeney Sisters

by Lian Dolan

  She pulled her car into the parking lot of the Athena Diner on the Post Road, a classic Southport spot and the scene of some of the best days of her life (Sunday mornings drinking terrible coffee with Liza instead of going to math tutoring; late-night French fries with her first real boyfriend, Drew Pearson, after they made out in his Range Rover) and the worst days of her life (the Drew breakup; the post-ER pancake breakfast with her father after she swallowed all those pills; the diet plates she and Liza ate every day for two weeks after their mother died). She pulled her Prius into a spot next to a silver BMW sedan, and quickly checked herself in the mirror. She looked good, she thought. The crying had made her green eyes pop and the grieving diet brought out her cheekbones. She had grabbed one of her father’s sweaters out of his closet and tossed it on over a silk blouse, mainly for effect, but the heather-green color worked on her. She was ready.

  For one second, Maggie felt a twinge of guilt. Then she remembered Liza babbling on about the summer show at the gallery. Sunflowers. How basic. And still, she hadn’t asked Maggie to participate. I have yellow paint. I could do something for your little show. Liza had her own agenda, Maggie told herself as she got out of the car. And I have mine.

  Gray Cunningham was leaning up against his silver truck. He looks even better than the other night, Maggie thought. Sobriety suited him. His blue eyes were clear, his curly dark brown hair was longer than the usual Southport day trader/woodworker (that’s what he called himself, anyway), and his face was tan and slightly chapped from sailing. He’d mentioned yoga as a recovery tool the other day; that must explain the arms. He kissed her on the cheek. “Hey, I’m so glad you could get away. I know you must have a lot going on, but I wanted to see you after the other night. I feel like we have more to say to one another.”

  She nodded. The other night. Her father’s wake. Should she feel awful? Maggie didn’t. “Me, too.”

  “Shall we?” Gray offered his arm like he was a twelve-year-old boy at a cotillion escorting her to the punch table.

  Maggie, who two minutes ago was all about focus and moving forward, took it willingly. She’d had a thing for Gray Cunningham since he was Liza’s secret boyfriend. All through that terrible summer as her mother got sicker, the one bright spot was Gray showing up in the shadows to pick up Liza and take her away from the misery at the house. Liza didn’t want her parents to know anything about him, especially the fact that she was getting on the back of his motorcycle, so Maggie volunteered to be the go-between in order to spend a minute a day alone with him, clearing the coast for Liza or making her excuses if she couldn’t escape. She was better at lying to her parents than Liza. In her brief conversations with Gray, Maggie felt like there was something there with him, but nothing ever happened between them. (Her sister would tease her that she believed every guy was hitting on her.) She had thought about him over the years, the kind of “what-if” that kept her going through rough days and long stretches away from Southport. Even though the timing was terrible, Maggie was ready to make something happen. The what-if was now. After all, Liza was married. She couldn’t possibly object, could she?

  Maggie smiled up at Gray. “We shall.”

  “Hey, I’m home. I got some boxes.” Maggie struggled to carry a stack of boxes, unfolded and unwieldy, as she stumbled into the kitchen where her sisters were eating lunch. She’d been gone three hours. “I think I got enough, but we’ll probably need more.”

  Tricia and Liza looked at each other before responding. Neither got up to help. They knew this was classic Maggie behavior, dodging work, offering vague excuses, if not outright lies, about where she’d been. This had been her pattern since childhood—skipping school to take the train into the city to hang out in the Village or claiming to be at a friend’s house overnight when more than likely she was with a guy. After she dropped out of Rhode Island School of Design, she went to Europe for six months with her mysterious college friend “Dina” who was really a thirty-five-year-old adjunct professor of ceramics named Deon. Liza knew the truth, of course, because there were all kinds of back-channel communications about the breakup on Santorini and the lost passport and the “stolen” wallet. Liza covered for her and wired her cash to get home. It had been nearly twenty years since that European odyssey, but, in many ways, Maggie hadn’t matured an ounce. Here she was with the same tropes. Liza couldn’t even speak.

  Finally, Tricia asked, “Where the hell have you been?”

  “Did you find the manuscript? Does Julia know where it is?”

  “No and no. But you’ve been gone for hours. I could have used the boxes to sort the papers in the boathouse.” Tricia’s annoyance was more pragmatic than personal. She knew Maggie’s relationship with the truth was relative, but she’d never been as involved in the cover-ups as Liza had been. The six-year age gap had spared her the role of coconspirator.

  “Oh, you know,” Maggie responded. “I stopped at Switzer’s Pharmacy and ran into Mrs. Whatshername. She lives at the top of Rose Hill in that huge Victorian with all the hydrangeas. She was mom’s friend, Emmy or something?”

  “Yes. Emmy Nolan. She was, like, Mom’s best friend. That’s who she is. The person Mom liked the most in the whole town,” Liza snapped back. It was all she could do not to scream at her.

  “Sorry. I haven’t lived here in a while, Ms. Town Crier. Anyway, I ran into her and she cornered me for an hour in the adult diaper aisle. She wanted to know the real story about what happened and everything about you two.” Red flag for Liza. She’d run into Emmy Nolan two weeks ago. Emmy, an aging role model with a trim figure and a Pond’s Cold Cream skin care regimen, had come into the gallery. She had found a thank-you note that Maeve had written to her that included a short, beautiful poem about gardens and renewal. Emmy had wanted to share it with Liza. (“Your mother had so much talent, but your father took up so much of her energy,” Emmy observed.) They’d spent an hour talking and catching up. There’s no way Emmy would have forgotten what Maggie and Tricia were up to in that short time. She was as sharp and engaged at seventy as she’d been at forty, which was why Maeve had bonded with her. “Then I went to Spic & Span to get a sandwich and that was a whole ordeal. Condolences, condolences. You know how this town is. The guys at Spic & Span are going to rename the tuna sandwich the Sweeney Special in Dad’s honor. How great is that? Here, I brought you a few sandwiches. Have you eaten?” Maggie knew to cover her tracks. And she had seen that Emmy woman in the parking lot, so that tracked.

  Tricia burst into laughter, nearly choking on her iced tea. “Dad would have loved that.” Even Liza agreed. That was a touching gesture.

  Maggie breathed a little easier as she watched her sisters’ smiles. She was sure she’d dodged a bullet. “Anyway, here are the boxes.”

  Chapter 10

  Tricia stood on the platform at the tiny Southport train station, waiting for the 9:38 to New Haven, like her father had done many Tuesdays and Thursdays for thirty years, heading to his teaching job at Yale. Her father, whose life could be so ad hoc, appreciated the ritual of commuting by rail: the waiting, the ticket taking, the names of the same small towns called out over the inaudible intercom. He rarely drove the half hour to New Haven, preferring to give himself over to the timetable of the MTA. Tricia had taken the train back and forth from New Haven during her college days, but it had been a few years since she’d stood on the platform, studying the commuters, most of whom were on the opposite platform, headed into New York. The bankers, the lawyers, the ad men were long gone, hopping on trains well before seven in the morning for their daily drudgery. The group now was mainly women, theatergoers or museum mavens headed into the city for lunch and a little culture. Only one other person stood on the New Haven side with Tricia, a high schooler with a backpack, maybe skipping school for the day or getting a late start. Tricia felt the weight of missing her father in that moment. Don’t cry, no one will understand.

  She recognized John D’Amato right away. He looked exactly like the portra
it her father had painted with words in an essay about the veteran conductor. He father wrote about him for Esquire last year, an homage to train conductors everywhere. The essay was an insightful piece about the kind of person who works a job that is both repetitive and essential. Clearly, her father had spent years exchanging “How ya doing today, Professor?” with John D’Amato, and the essay was warm, knowing. It was longlisted for a PEN/Faulkner Award, but lost out to a piece about binge-eating that her father described as “slightly better than the diary entry essays my first-years turn in.” (Amongst his many personal failings, William Sweeney hadn’t come to terms with the body awareness movement.) Tricia waited for the conductor to make it to her seat, then she spoke: “Hi, Mr. D’Amato, I’m Tricia Sweeney, Bill’s Sweeney’s daughter. I know he was a fan of yours.”

  John D’Amato was taken by surprise, then he composed himself. “What a loss. What a loss. Your father was a gentleman, a good man. I was lucky to know him and happy to serve him on this train.”

  Tricia didn’t know whether to stand or sit, so she remained seated, but pulled an envelope out of her bag. “I’m glad you’re working today. I wanted you to have this,” she said, handing the wiry, gray-haired conductor the white envelope with the Yale insignia. “It’s the first draft of my father’s essay about you. I found it in his office. You can see where he redlined it, his editing marks in his own hand. I thought you might . . .” Tricia choked up. She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  John took the envelope reverently. “This is an incredible gift.” The conductor himself was overcome. “This is something.”

  “And this is for you as well.” She reached into her bag for the commuter mug her father had taken back and forth to New Haven for years. He had a collection of coffee mugs from colleges all over the country, the end result of years of guest lectures and honorary degrees. He was rarely without a mug of coffee during his working hours and his mug selection became a sort of bellwether for how he was feeling, what the day might bring. The University of Iowa mug if he was literary; the Kenyon mug if he was precious, overthinking. The commuter mug was from Yale, though. He’d carried it back and forth from New Haven for years. Tricia started to explain to John why she was giving him an old coffee cup, but he knew.

  “Your father had hot coffee and the New York Times every Tuesday and Thursday when school was in session. We’d talk about the news, the lousy politicians, the lousy Knicks. Sometimes he’d give me the name of a book I should read. And I read most of them,” John D’Amato said with pride and then he made a gentle bow. “Thank you, darling.”

  Tricia stood and hugged the man who was a constant in her father’s life. He had needed people like John D’Amato to keep him honest, in touch. To make sure he got where he was going. “Thank you, Mr. D’Amato.”

  “We’ll miss him, won’t we?”

  “Yes.” Tricia was beginning to understand how much.

  “Hello?”

  Tricia looked up from her position on the floor. She was cross-legged in her father’s office, where she’d been for the last two hours, sorting through drawers and boxes in search of the memoir. It was slow going, as a few colleagues kept interrupting her, those working over the summer or finishing up department responsibilities before heading off to Maine or the Cape or any writing workshop gig at Sewanee or upstate New York. They popped in uninvited to share recollections of her father and his legendary critiques that left his students in tears. Or to retell a classic story of his ill-fated introduction of visiting writers in the Beineke lecture series or about the late nights at Mory’s. Several mentioned the early morning monthly department meetings that he rarely bothered to attend. Tricia nodded and smiled. Though in a frenzy to find the manuscript, she wanted to hear these stories and remember that here on campus, her flawed father was his best self.

  One professor, Abukar Abdule, a brilliant young writer who’d been born in Somalia and plucked from a refugee camp in Kenya to attend Cambridge before publishing his first literary novel at twenty-five and securing a spot at Yale a few years later, stopped by to say, “Your father and I had nothing in common, but I loved him dearly.”

  That about summed up her father’s relationships with most of the faculty in the Creative Writing Department at Yale. He was a throwback, to the time when being a vaunted American writer meant being male, white, and heterosexual, with a drinking problem, a healthy ego, and a dark childhood. That model of the testosterone-driven man of letters was dying off, fading away like the curriculum it spawned with reading lists of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Styron, Roth, Vonnegut, Cheever, Irving. The academic world was opening up to a diversity of voices and life experiences. William Sweeney, the tail end of the manliest (so they thought) generation, managed to hold on longer than most. (“What does cis mean?” he asked Tricia one day during her time at Yale when they had regular lunches together. “Students keep referring to me as cis.”)

  Maybe he endured because deep down inside, he knew he was a dying breed, lucky to get in on some coattails of other writers who had created the genre, letting him sneak onto the gravy train at the exact right time in literary history. Behind closed doors, when he could turn off his persona and simply be, he had enough humility about his work to make him endearing to the younger generation.

  “Hello?”

  Tricia looked up from her position on the floor at the handsome face in the doorway—dark hair, dark eyes, white teeth—recognizing it from the wake. The sincere librarian who told the story about having the lengthy discussions about the literary merits of The Sopranos, her father arguing pro-Tony and the librarian, anti-Tony. She was taken aback seeing him again so soon. He was tall and lean, in a deep blue button-down shirt with a messenger bag over one shoulder. She liked his glasses. She scrambled to stand. It was an ungainly transition from floor to feet. “Hi?”

  “I’m Raj Chaudhry. We had plans to meet. You’re Patricia. I was at the wake but we never had the chance to speak.”

  “Yes, Raj. Thank you for coming. My apologies. I lost track of time. And probably most of my mind the last few days.” Tricia needed a moment to collect herself. She reached out to shake his hand. His skin was warm. “First, let me say that your recollection of my father was so typical, so perfect. I doubt my father had ever seen an entire episode of The Sopranos, but he was going to die on that hill, wasn’t he? And please, call me Tricia.” She indicated for him to come into the office and wished she had made more of an effort in her personal appearance. I must look awful, she thought. “Sit.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for the other night. He was a special man and he obviously has a special family,” Raj said, never taking his eyes off Tricia. “It was a privilege to be there.”

  “You’re welcome. We’re grateful so many of his friends and colleagues could be there,” Tricia said, clearing off her father’s desk, so they weren’t speaking over a pile of notebooks. “I’m sorry we didn’t get in touch with you sooner.”

  “No apologies necessary,” Raj said, taking a seat. “I understand, grief can be all-consuming. I was surprised to hear from you so quickly.”

  Tricia thought about his comment. “Did you recently lose someone?”

  Raj looked at her, not connecting the dots, so Tricia explained, “You said grief can be all-consuming. Is that from personal experience?”

  “Yes. A good friend,” he responded, shuffling in his seat. “Some days, I’m not myself.”

  “I understand completely.” Tricia did understand, but not for the reasons Raj assumed.

  “Of course. Losing a parent is monumental.”

  “Losing anyone can be monumental.” There was a pause in the conversation that felt more natural than awkward.

  According to his biography on the Sterling Library website, which, of course, Tricia had researched before contacting him and then read aloud to her sisters, Raj Chaudhry was the associate librarian for literature in English. He did his undergraduate work at the College of William & Mary with a deg
ree in comparative literature and his graduate work in Library Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. (It followed that Tricia Googled “Best Ph.D. programs in Library Science” and discovered that UNC was one of them.) He was fluent in German and French and had a grasp of basic Italian and Spanish. Under “special skills,” there was a laundry list of software programs, including SurveyMonkey, which, Tricia observed to Maggie and Liza, didn’t really qualify as a special skill, but the guy did have his doctorate.

  There hadn’t been a picture next to Raj Chaudry’s name, or Maggie would have commented that he looked more like an actor than a librarian, with wavy hair that hung down in his eyes and the right amount of facial hair.

  Tricia collected herself. “As I said in my email, I feel like we could really use your expertise. Obviously, we’d like to get my father’s papers to Yale in the best possible shape and in some kind of order. Are you still interested in working on the project even if my father won’t be part of it?”

  “Very much so. I feel even more responsibility to take on the work. I admire your father’s writing tremendously.”

  “Really?”

  “That surprises you?”

  “A little. My father was a man of a different era.”

  “I learned a lot from him about life. I grew up in suburban Virginia. There wasn’t a lot of guts and glory in my neighborhood. My high school was full of kids of government employees who followed the rules. I choose Never Not Nothing for a book report freshman year. It changed the course of my life.”

  “How so?”

  “I was headed toward a career in computer science like my parents. Both of them are programmers who work for the military. I thought I’d be a programmer. But then I discovered literature, like guy’s literature. And that made a difference. Not that books by women can’t be life-changing.”