by Lian Dolan
“It’s not that stark, but, yes, your father was uncomfortable with Liza’s burgeoning sexuality and he admits that. A double standard for sure, but relatable for many fathers. Although he was not too complimentary about her marriage choice.”
“Maggie can never read this. He flat-out calls her untalented.”
“He blames himself for not cultivating her talent in a broader fashion, going too easy on her discipline-wise, so that she never fully developed her craft. He believed she was gifted, but he also believed she did not work to her highest potential.”
“At least he didn’t mention her overdose in college. That would have been unforgivable.”
“I was relieved about that, too.”
“I like that he identifies all our issues but then fans himself with a mea culpa to let himself off the hook.”
“He writes, let me see here . . .” Cap searched for the passage. “‘I wasn’t generous enough to be a good father. I couldn’t put anything ahead of the work. I take all the blame.’”
“Really, Cap? The work? That was the problem? How about the drink? The women? His giant ego? He found a convenient and time-honored excuse.”
“I warned you it was harsh.”
“I think about everything I’ve been through, like my mother’s death, my father’s depression, my miscarriage two years ago . . .”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It’s not something I’ve told a lot of people about—you’re the third and Raj is the second. I’m saying that the tough stuff we’ve all been through was not caused by our father nor were we rescued by our father. He takes this bizarre credit for our downfalls but gives us no accolades for our resilience.”
“I can see your point about a lack of self-awareness,” Cap said, loyal to his old friend but torn by what he had read, too.
“And dangling the fact that he has another daughter out there, but doesn’t name her or explain the circumstances of her birth, I mean, come on, you have to be disappointed in that, Cap.”
Cap shook his head. “As a lawyer, I’m relieved he didn’t name Serena. She may not want that. It could have been the basis of a lawsuit.”
“Here’s the thing, unless you’re me, Liza, Maggie, or the mystery sister, this is going to look like a brave statement on male inadequacy. That’s what Raj said, and I think he’s right. William Sweeney opening up and admitting his failure as a father and the consequences to his daughters of his inability to connect with them on a meaningful level because he was too focused on great literature. A cautionary tale sort of, because no one will ever believe that William Sweeney, the man who wrote My Maeve and created Elspeth, didn’t worship women. No wonder he wanted to be dead when this came out.”
“Take a breath. Do you need water, coffee?” Tricia nodded. Cap called out to his assistant, “Rose, can you bring us a carafe of coffee and some water, please.”
“The only one who comes out looking good is Julia. At least he gives her credit for imparting some wisdom and humanity to us, saving us from ourselves. Again, a little pat on the back to himself for hiring Julia in our darkest hour.” Tricia didn’t need more stimulants but she accepted the coffee with milk that Rose prepared. Rose looked at Tricia with understanding eyes as she handed her the cup and saucer.
When Rose left the room, Tricia moaned, “Oh my God. That’s the look we’re all going to get for the rest of our lives once this book comes out. The look Rose just gave me with the sad eyes and the ‘poor you’ face. ‘Oh, those Sweeney sisters. They’re all a mess.’ I won’t be able to take that, Cap. I know I have issues. But I own them. That one day in New York in a green wool coat being dragged up Fifth Avenue, then down Madison Avenue didn’t determine the rest of my life.”
“We could always delete the last chapter. No one knows.”
“Except the tech at Copy World where Maggie took the thumb drive. I have no doubt Maggie blurted out the truth about what she was copying as she stood there. Somewhere out there is a file with the complete manuscript. It will all come out at publication and then we’ll look like spoiled women who couldn’t face the truth when it emerges.”
Cap had to agree.
“The real tragedy here is that Liza, Maggie, and I were fine with who he was. Sure, we knew he was no picnic, but our mother taught us to give him a wide berth. I thought we’d had fun together. We’d sail. We’d listen to the Yankees games on the radio down at the dock. He’d show up at my cross-country meets at Yale, wearing his floppy tennis hat. Why would he do this, Cap? You knew him as a person. I guess we really didn’t.”
“Your father was a complicated man. He had his own complicated childhood and he was always looking for answers to questions. I have to guess that Serena’s appearance had something to do with this essay, one last meditation on fatherhood, a subject he really didn’t write too much about. He struggled with the truth on this one.”
“You know, even I’m starting to think William Sweeney wasn’t a very good father. And he was a terrible, terrible husband. What he did to Mom, to her work. How could he do that?”
“I was horrified as well. I had no idea. I thought he respected your mother’s work, even if he didn’t exactly show it. He could have been so much more helpful to her. Instead, she was more helpful to him, managing his life so he could write.”
“But to burn her poems after her death because she was more talented? Out of spite? Couldn’t he have saved them for us, even if he didn’t get them published? It’s killing me.”
“It was a tremendous disappointment to read that in the book.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to tell Liza. How do you explain away behavior like that?”
“Like I said, he was a complicated man.”
“Complicated? Or selfish? Because he always seemed to do right by William Sweeney.”
What an asshole, Serena thought as she flipped over the last page of William Sweeney’s memoir and sat back on the couch with her cup of tea to absorb what she had read. Brilliant, but an asshole. She was not surprised that she was mentioned, in so much as one could count “a daughter born outside of marriage” as a mention, but she was surprised it was a single line of prose without any exposition. Reading the chapter made her think of the conversation she’d had with her father, the man who raised her, Mitch Tucker. It was short without a lot of exposition, too.
“So, I know what happened. Mom told me.”
“She told me, too. Serena, it changes nothing for me.”
“Me, either.”
“Being your father is a . . . a great privilege. It didn’t seem like we would ever have children. And then we had you. It doesn’t matter to me how that happened.”
“Really? It doesn’t matter?”
“Not in the way you think. And not now after all these years. I sold insurance for a long time. I know everyone thinks that’s a deadly boring career, but it meant I could see inside people’s lives. And I have to tell you, some of those lives were pretty complicated, if I interpreted those surprise beneficiaries correctly. I also watched a lot of fine families get torn up over claims and money and valuables. I don’t want that to happen to us.”
“Me, either.”
“You’re my daughter. Nothing will change that. And Birdie is my wife. For better or worse, right?” Her father’s dry sense of humor came through over the phone.
“That’s one way to think about it.”
“Come see us soon.”
“I will.”
And that was it. Mitch Tucker, acknowledging that without Bill Sweeney, he would have no daughter, so he was letting the circumstances of her conception go. It was generous, the sort of generosity that William Sweeney acknowledged he didn’t possess.
Serena felt like she got off lucky in the book. She felt like the momentum of the memoir was building toward some sort of confessional and she had guessed what it might be when she saw the chapter title, What I Got Wrong. First, the bombshell about Maeve’s poems. Then, the dismis
sal of his own daughters. She didn’t anticipate that Liza, Maggie, and Tricia would be collateral damage.
As a writer, Serena found it unnecessary to drag innocent bystanders down into one’s truth.
As a sister, Serena wanted a chance to correct the record.
She thought about the conversation with Tricia the other day, before the gallery opened. About the coverage the sisters gave each other. Even in moments that tested their family bonds, they let the hurt slide. An idea hit Serena, as she sat there drinking her tea, reflecting on the memoir and planning her next steps. She realized she could provide coverage, too.
Chapter 24
Willow Lane was nearly cleared out a week after the gallery opening. Most of the boxes had been distributed either to Goodwill, the Pequot, or the Yale Library. Maggie and Tim managed the last details of the main house. Tim, as it turned out, could really pack a moving box. He had no sentimental attachment to anything in the house, except the signed Aerosmith poster, a relic of some charity auction. Tim thought it was “awesome,” so Maggie promised it to him and he worked efficiently to earn it.
Tim was growing on Maggie. The one-night tri-tip grilling gig had morphed into ten days of Tim and she wasn’t sick of him yet. He was the opposite of Gray, uncomplicated and open and that suited her. Plus, he wasn’t hung up on her sister, so that was a major bonus. She was sure that if not for Tim, she might have crashed after the opening, exhilarated from the sale and guilty from her deception. But his energy, his insistence that they walk to the beach every day for a half hour of vitamin D, his willingness to join in on her sun salutations on the dock, and his nonstop singing of anything by Chris Stapleton kept her on track. Every time she asked him a question, he responded by singing the chorus to “Fire Away,” completely misinterpreting the song. Plus, he really liked her cat.
Tricia and Raj took control of the boathouse, watching the official van from Yale haul the years of work away under Raj’s watchful eye. The school took William Sweeney’s desk and chair, too. “Apparently, donations have come in in his name, so the school will rename a reading room in the library after him,” said Raj. Tricia suspected that Cap had rallied the class of ’68 to pledge the gift. It would please her to see the room during the campus memorial in the fall. Raj was back in New Haven for a few days to oversee the acquisition.
Tricia had thought she would feel deflated, almost like watching a burial rite, as her father’s papers were carried away, but none of the sadness came. After the last few weeks and the revelations in the book, Tricia was relieved that William Sweeney’s work would be stashed away in the sterile, safe archives of a university. Academics could pursue their theories while she absorbed the reality.
She wanted the boathouse for herself for the rest of the summer; well, her and Raj when he had time to get away from his work in New Haven. She felt confident that they were serving her father’s literary legacy in the best manner possible. The personal legacy was another story. “Working on my own timeline,” Tricia responded when Raj would check in with her emotional state.
The sisters decided to leave most of the furniture in the main house in place until the house went on the market in a month or so. Not that any of it was any good, but they needed somewhere to sit. Their realtor Nan Miller was practically begging them to put it on in August because, as she said, “Young families want to be in place before school starts in September.” But the sisters knew it wouldn’t be a young couple with noisy children moving into the house. It would be a developer buying up the place and tearing it down to build a Twenty-first Century Rich Guy Compound. Maggie and Tricia tried not to talk about it and Liza couldn’t even think about it.
Tricia had moved most of her things, including her laptop with dual monitors, into the boathouse so she could work in private. There were details about the estate that she wanted to deal with on her own before informing her sisters. The boathouse offered her the space she needed, both physically and emotionally. Without the clutter of her father’s books and ephemera, the main floor was bright and open, bigger than her Manhattan apartment. I’d paint it a pale blue if I stayed here, Tricia thought.
There was a knock, immediately followed by Maggie bursting through the door. “You’ll never guess what I found in the attic. In that old chest where I found Mom’s skirt. I hadn’t gone through all the drawers, but look! Mom’s notebooks! Six of them. Filled with poems!” She held up notebooks triumphantly. “Tim and I started emptying the attic and there was the chest with a few classic Laura Ashley sundresses and her glorious poetry!”
“Let me see those.” Tricia grabbed the aged black-and-white composition books out of Maggie’s hands. She had to feel it, hold her mother’s work in her hands. “I can’t, I can’t . . .” All the composure that Tricia had willed since the day she’d taken the call from Liza in the stairwell dissolved. She handed the notebooks back to Maggie and started sobbing.
“Trishie?” Maggie had never seen her sister like this. She had no idea what to do. “What’s going on? Do you need water? Deep breathing?”
Tricia held up a finger. She needed a minute to collect herself. “In the last chapter of the memoir . . .” Another deep breath. “. . . Dad admits that he was jealous of Mom’s talent, her gift. And resentful that she could write with such ease, without needing alcohol or angst. That she could sit down and write for hours on end and create little jewels, that’s what he called her poems. ‘Little jewels.’ She gave him a folder of her favorite poems right before she died, asking him to get them published. But in Snap, he admits to getting really drunk and really angry. So angry, in fact, that he burned the poems instead.”
“What a fucking child. He lit her poetry on fire instead of using his influence to publish it after her death?”
“He claims that’s what triggered the depression. The guilt, not the grief. I can’t believe you found Mom’s poems, Maggie. She must have stashed her original notebooks in that chest and given Dad copies.”
“We’re all going to need a lot of therapy to unpack that. Group sessions.”
“I know. This revelation has been doing a number on me since I read it. I was terrified to tell you both.”
“It would have pushed Liza right over the edge,” Maggie agreed. “I always thought Mom had stopped writing, but she hadn’t. She kept writing and we never gave her credit.”
Tricia shook her head. “Why would he do it? Did he think burning the poems made him look like some kind of literary badass?”
Maggie knew. It was the same sort of professional jealousy that had engulfed her in the past. She’d bad-mouthed other artists, acted blasé when she’d really been blown away by someone else’s work. Once in college, she hid the piece of another student, not destroying it, but making sure it wasn’t on the wall next to hers in a show. It was found weeks later in a closet in the English department. She could understand wanting to burn the competition, to literally light another’s work on fire. Maggie did her best work on that edge and she guessed her father did, too. But she didn’t say any of that to her sister, who had played by the rules for her entire life. “You know Dad, he liked the grand gesture. For all we know, he thought it would make a great short story one day. Or he was just really hammered. After Mom died, that was a bad period. For all of us.”
“This is a miracle, Maggie! I feel like I can breathe again,” Tricia admitted while paging through one of the notebooks. “But I still think we’re going to need the group therapy.”
“I don’t think you should tell Liza. You know how she worships him despite everything.”
“I know. I’m deleting that section from the memoir before turning it over to Allegory. I don’t care if it compromises the integrity of the work. What he did, it’s fucked up. And Liza can never know.”
“Make sure Serena knows that Liza can never know.”
“I will,” Tricia said, thinking about how Serena would appreciate the need for discretion. And maybe a tiny bit honored to be taken into the Sweeney circle of
confidence. “Cap will be so relieved. He felt worse than I did, I think. And I felt awful.”
“He always had a thing for Mom. In his way,” Maggie said, picking up one of the notebooks. “Can I keep these? I’ll make copies for everyone. But I feel like I owe something to Mom, to make up for not understanding her. There may be something in these poems I can use. Plus, I found them.”
Maggie resorting to the “finders keepers” legal argument made Tricia smile. “How about we not turn these over to Copies R Us like Snap? When Raj returns, he can scan them properly for posterity. You can have them after, okay? These are special.”
Tricia rubbed her hands gently over the cover of one of the notebooks. It triggered a memory of her mother during the last year of her life, sitting in bed, writing in these familiar black-and-white notebooks, a rose-colored pashmina around her thin shoulders. Why hadn’t any of them recalled that detail about their mother? “Remember the day Dad died and I said that I wished we could all have one more conversation with him? Well, here’s the conversation we all deserved to have with him: ‘What the hell, Dad?’”
“Amen to that.”
“I need to sit a second and read some of this. Like Stop, Drop, and Read,” Maggie said, recalling the game they used to play as children with their mother on rainy days. In the middle of picking up the house or a fight between the sisters, Maeve would call out, “Stop, drop, and read.” The sisters would scramble to find the nearest book or magazine and for the next ten minutes, the house would be quiet.
Moving toward the little galley kitchen that she had recently stocked, Tricia said, “A little tea with your poetry?”
“Oh, yes.”
Tricia opened the cabinet and took out two of the college mugs, Oberlin and Evergreen, and placed them on a tray she’d swiped from the main house. She dropped in apple cinnamon tea bags and poured over the hot water. While the tea steeped, she fixed a plate of gingersnaps. She carried the full tray over to the couch and set it down on the well-worn pine table. I’d get all new furniture, too, she thought. Clean, classic. The two sisters took opposite sides of the couch, each opening a notebook to read the words their mother had written years ago, but now with a deeper sense of compassion, like maybe this was the way the story was meant to unfold after all.