Ray cleared his throat. “I’m blessed.”
“You’re hungry,” Tommy said.
“Silence,” Mary snapped. Losing a father was one thing, but a mother—a child! The elder Mrs. Bartlett, Joseph’s mother, had taken her dinner early and retired upstairs. Indeed, she’d fallen asleep at the brunch, upsetting a pot of coffee. That woman knew mourning. She’d been at it for the better part of ten years.
“It is in Your name we pray, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.” Mary crossed herself. “Okay, now.” She paused to yawn. She hadn’t slept well on the easy chair. “Ray, carve the roast.”
Hollister let out a small cheer and rubbed his hands together. Cousin Pete licked his lips. The boy had been living with the family since Mary’s sister died. Mary winked at Helen sitting beside Will. Her daughter’s eyes were devoid of their usual mischief. Tommy sat in the last chair on the right so he could see everyone at the table with his good eye. Dr. Boyle called the condition “hyphema,” the result of head trauma, but the family simply referred to it as “strawberry eye,” the result of a Louisville Slugger. Tommy still bet twice what he had in his pocket. He had long ago given up Boyle’s suggested remedies of bed rest, ice packs, elevated pillows, and—his favorite—not to strain during bowel movements or sex. The latter of which Tommy wished was a problem. Each morning his mother set out a clean, warm cloth to wash away the gunk and puss that collected overnight. If his vision was impaired, Tommy never said, but Helen knew better: she’d been exploiting his blind spots since the accident.
Mary turned to Will. “You can let go of my hand now, sweetie.” The child had an iron grip. She’d set a washcloth out for him these last three mornings. Boxing was barbaric. He might have clobbered that Newton boy, but to look at his swollen face, you’d think he’d lost the fight.
“Sorry, Mrs. Sheehan,” Will mumbled. Helen offered a weak smile and squeezed Will’s hand under the table.
“Pass plates.” Ray clanged the knife off the china platter. Though cursed with lazy eye and a simple disposition, Ray was Mary’s favorite. Her first. The gentle giant. Hands the size of a dinner plate and a jaw as strong as oak. He held up the crusty end cut. “Who wants first?”
Pete raised his plate and shouted, “I do.”
“It’s a monster.” Ray furrowed his brow as he heaved the slice of meat up and down on the fork, exaggerating its heft.
“I can tame it,” Pete said with a laugh.
Ray slapped the meat on Pete’s plate.
Mary said, “Will, honey, pick your face up off the plate.” The boy’s ears turned a shade of red that reminded Mary of tomato slices. Helen scratched his back. The little lamb did care about something.
“I got one for ya,” Helen whispered in Will’s ear. “Why are elephants’ feet flat?”
Ray called, “Who wants second from the end?”
Will pushed his chair back and ran from the room. Everyone froze. Ray hovered the next slice over Tommy’s plate as Will’s feet pattered up the stairs. The family looked up, following the footfalls down the hallway. A beat later the four corners of Tommy’s bed scraped across the floor.
“He’s blubbering,” Hollister said.
“Shut it,” Tommy snapped.
Mary glanced at Hollister licking peach syrup off his fingers. “Not a word when he returns.” Mary pointed at her oldest son. “Ray?”
“What did I do?”
“Who raised you?”
“You did.”
“Watch it.”
“What? You did.”
“Serve your sister first. You know better.” Manners were forgotten when such a spread was prepared. Mary had popped a quart of elderberry wine, two cans of peaches, and some spinach. Helen had baked the potatoes herself and prepared the roast so her mother could take a nap—worn down by nerves, she explained. Cooking was a point of pride for young Helen. The girl had learned to cook the time Mary had traveled to Ireland to tend to her sick, pregnant sister. The swaddled Cousin Pete accompanied her on the crossing back, her sister having died during labor.
“Pass your plate, small fry,” Ray said. “This beast could feed the neighborhood.”
Indeed it could. The money Joseph had sent her to take the boys for a few days covered the roast and more. She’d prepared corned beef, baked chicken with potatoes, and now the roast beef. She wouldn’t allow his boys to let their appetites go like her children had when their father died; the Lord needed his servants strong at times like these. As for the money, she’d long given up trying to convince Joseph that the weekly stipend for his mother was far too high. He knew the price of food and that his mother ate like a bird. The weekly check covered the entire family’s food bills. And with the three children working, and now Ray’s promotion, the family’s income had never been higher; Mary was even considering raising Ray’s weekly allowance so he could spoil a girl. She collected all the checks and doled out the spending money. She knew Tommy hadn’t quit the gambling. His wardrobe alone suggested something fishy. But Helen reported he was more careful since his accident. Besides, he would marry soon and move out; he needed to learn to handle money. With the house coming rent-free, Mary, for the first time in her life, no longer needed to work. Joseph now insisted Cousin Pete should attend college; Helen, normal school. The girl had already passed Mary in formal schooling. Joseph discouraged her from taking jobs, but Helen was hardheaded, like her father. At six she’d told her mother she no longer needed to be tucked in; at ten she was having her tea and toast while reading the first editions before her brothers had even risen from bed. There was already talk of another summer stint ushering at the Savoy. And just last week Her Highness had brought home smoked salmon packaged in a tin—from Oregon, no less. Mary had searched for her daughter’s secret stash. Helen hated parting with her earnings and had told her mother so on many occasions, and weekly called her grown brothers nitwits for turning over their salaries. Mary let her daughter’s opinions pass with the breeze. Helen was thirteen. She didn’t know how good she had it.
Mary passed a plate over her daughter’s head to Tommy. Poor Helen folded her napkin in squares, nibbling her bottom lip. The gravy on her plate congealed around the beef. “Eat,” Mary said.
Helen wound her foot around the leg of Will’s empty chair pulling it toward her.
Tom and his only daughter had been as thick as thieves. The funeral had churned up the past. She’d bitten the priest who dragged her from Tom’s burial. And who could forget drunken Ray rowing far out into the South Watuppa to sob? Mary hoped, and yet didn’t, that Elizabeth’s death might toughen Will’s Highlands skin. She admired his softness. The Bartletts would not suffer the material losses of the Sheehans, but she knew Will would now have a hole in his childhood armor, and that the hole would metastasize unless he devised methods to disguise it. Helen was a master of disguise.
Mary said, “You remember how hard it was.” Helen nodded. “Let’s give him a minute.”
Suddenly Helen burst into tears. Mary caught Tommy’s good eye as she brushed her daughter’s cheek with the back of her hand. She whispered, “I’ll go.” She winked at Tommy as she rose from the table. She spot-checked plates. “Pete, Hollister, eat your vegetables.”
“They will,” Tommy said.
When Mary’s footfalls reached the staircase, Hollister asked Tommy, “So where’s the dance tonight?” He jabbed his fork into the beef and sawed off another block of meat. Chewing, he scratched at the long scab running from his clavicle to his jaw and swallowed in one quick motion. “Any girls gonna be there?”
“Of course, you dummy!” Helen barked, eager to take Hollister down a peg. “It wouldn’t be a dance without girls.”
“You don’t say.”
She shot him one of her “I’m smarter than you and always will be” looks.
Ray said, “Wouldn’t that be something?” He examined the end
of his knife and licked it. “A bunch of fellas dancing together.”
Cousin Pete put his left arm out and his right hand to his chest and swayed.
Ray pointed his knife. “Something like that, yeah.”
Pete fell into a bag of giggles. He had the Bartlett habit of biting his lower lip when he laughed.
“Put those fellas in the loony bin,” Hollister said, his brow furrowed.
“I’ve seen you dance with a boy in the pavilion,” Helen said, leaning forward in her chair. “You seemed to enjoy it.”
“That was a gas, a joke on the dumb music.” Hollister shrugged and popped a wad of bread in his mouth.
“Was not!” she barked, waving her fork at Hollister. “I saw you do it!”
“You saw nothing.”
“Goof.”
“Dingbat.”
Tommy smacked the table. “Enough!”
Ray scratched the back of his head. “I danced with a girl named Paula at the academy once.” Ray’s attendance at dances had dwindled along with his success rate with girls, though his recent promotion to supervisor in the female-dominated spinning room had helped his confidence. “She was like, like . . .”
“Like what?” Pete asked, nearly jumping out of his chair.
Ray dragged the carving knife across the red center of the roast. “Like, like, beautiful.”
Tommy caught Hollister’s eye, and the boy cough-laughed into his napkin. Ray didn’t notice either way. Tommy leaned back in his chair. He’d left his tie, jacket, and hat on the hook by the door so as not to bring attention to his evening plans—it was work, after all. He booked acts, did promotion, and took tickets for Mr. Giles in Tiverton and for Mr. Dubois at the Sandy Beach Pavilion. He’d had the jobs for years, and he couldn’t imagine giving them up. But tonight he hadn’t much of a stomach for the event, the last of the postcentennial dances. Earlier that day he’d stood with Helen near Elizabeth Bartlett’s grave and been one of the first to place a flower on her casket. Mrs. Bartlett had encouraged his writing and helped him latch on at the newspaper. She used to read and correct the short copy he wrote for the community newsletters—pieces about fishing parties on the South Watuppa Pond, inclement weather on the islands, beauty pageants on the Cape, or regatta races in Newport (he loved the races)—filler columns mostly, but she took the time. When his first piece came out in the Globe, she clipped and framed it. It still hung over his bed.
Tommy tossed his napkin on his plate. He looked around the table. They don’t get it, he thought. None of them do, except Helen.
The table chatter turned to roller coasters. “I rode it five times in one day,” Hollister bragged.
“Really?” Pete said.
“The operator is my pal,” Ray said. “Told me to come by anytime. No charge. That’s free.”
“Really?”
“And at Lincoln Park this summer—”
Helen drummed her fork against the side of her plate.
Ray blinked.
“What?” Tommy snapped. She stared at her older brother. He’d been steamed up for weeks. He was figuring something. Something big. But he’d kept his trap shut.
Tommy leaned forward in his chair, his strawberry eye glistening. “You got something to say, twerp?”
She gripped both ends of her fork. Her arms stiffened but it wouldn’t bend. “Damn it!” She heaved it over Hollister’s head into the wall. Ray took a bite of roast; his jaw slowly churning.
“That’s all you got?” Tommy chirped.
Helen jumped up. “Enough. All of you. Chattering like a women’s knitting circle. Nothing will ever be the same. Not never ever. Mrs. Bartlett is dead! Will’s more bruised than the roast! And that fool”—pointing at Hollister—“did something screwy. But you half-wits chatter on about dance halls, baseball, and now, the Lincoln Park coaster. What is it with you pudding heads? Will’s mom croaked!”
“She’s my ma too.”
“Shut up!”
Helen snapped up her knife and raised it above her head. The boys ducked. She had just learned the word “puerile,” reading Pride and Prejudice. The word came to her now.
“Such puerility!” The boys exchanged puzzled glances. “Look it up!” she shouted, hurling the knife into the wall, tearing the rose-colored paper. This was her mother’s doing; this faux normalcy was for the benefit of the Bartlett boys, but Helen knew it would only delay the mad sadness until they were home with their mute father, alone in their rooms with their mother’s ghost.
“You have quite an arm,” Tommy said, breaking the silence. The boys laughed. “Red Sox should have signed you instead of the Kansas Cyclone.”
Helen slumped down in her chair, burying her face in her napkin.
Ray held up the last slice of roast. “Who wants the butt?” Bloody juice and white knots of grease pooled into the recesses of the carving platter. Tommy said to save the charred end for his mother. They all knew one of her guilty pleasures was gnawing on the crusty end. Helen wondered what her mother had done to always get the butt end. She smirked at the thought, then hardened as she remembered the previous night. What was he doing here?
Passing the balustrade on her return from the toilet last night, Helen had heard voices and hid in the shadows. She’d caught a glimpse of her mother embracing Mr. Bartlett. Actually, Mr. Bartlett was kneeling in a puddle of rainwater he’d tracked in, weeping into her mother’s skirt. Helen’s first thought was that he’d come to take the boys home, but given the late hour, she knew that was silly. Her mother had stroked his head and whispered. Suddenly he’d sprung to his feet and hissed something that caused her mother’s face to blanch. His arm shot to the ceiling, knocking the chandelier over the door. The crystals rang out and the light flickered. He’d shown up drunk to make demands of her mother. All men bowed before the bottle. But booze dealt a final blow, and he collapsed into Momma’s arms. She led him into his old study. The door swung back, but the humidity had warped it, and the latch didn’t take. From the balcony, Helen heard the springs on Otis Bartlett’s old leather couch whine. Helen waited for shouts, but none came. Helen knew adults did things in the dark. She wasn’t sure what exactly, but she’d seen the couples at the Savoy touch and coo when the actors got fresh on the screen. When the picture ended, they were all in a big hurry to get home and turn the lights out. And with Mrs. Bartlett barely cold! Helen thought to wake Ray and Tommy to investigate, but what then? Did the household really need another crisis? She decided to man her post; if her mother called, she would be Johnny-on-the-spot.
Helen had woken to the creaky hinges on the front door. She blinked in time to catch Joseph Bartlett’s heels. She waited for her mother to exit the study. Nothing. What had he done? Helen wanted to slide down the banister and burst into the room, but her legs hadn’t woken up yet. She heard rumblings down the hall. No doubt old lady Bartlett was hoisting herself out of bed for one of her frequent trips to the lav. If the old granny saw her, she’d have to lift her from the seat, so Helen tiptoed back to her bedroom. She thought her mother deserved what she got for not fighting back. What kind of spell had he cast on her? No man would ever own her.
She’d lain in bed replaying the scene. There were obstacles to saving her mother. First, who would believe her word over Mr. Bartlett’s? And second, did her mother want saving? She had seen the old gal handle herself fine when Tommy stumbled home drunk. Surely Mr. Bartlett was no match for a woman as stout and cunning. All this guessing had her head spinning.
Tommy tapped her plate. “Eat up, sport.”
Helen glared at her big brother. Feed the damn roast to the dogs. A good biscuit, like the English rounds she’d stolen from the corner grocery, and a cup of Earl Grey were all she required to balance herself.
Tommy poured himself another glass of wine. “You boys go easy on Will,” he said. “Not a word about his black eyes. Remember, he’s a kil
ler.”
“How much you make on the fight?” Ray nudged his brother with his elbow.
The simp didn’t know when to shut up, Tommy thought. If his mother found out he’d wagered on Will’s match, he’d have to forfeit the dough to the church and go visit the Father. The little smoke had battled his heart out. That Damian kid was the odds-on favorite. Tommy wasn’t pleased to hear that Pete Newton wouldn’t let the poor kid back in the house—he’d been living with the family downstairs since the fight—but old Pete was likely to get gassed some night soon and forget the whole thing.
“Yeah, you know.” Tommy shrugged. “Enough to buy new choir books.” He winked at his sister.
“I still can’t figure how the pip-squeak did it,” Hollister said. “Damian would give me trouble.”
“He’d smash you,” Helen said.
“Buzz off.”
“Cretin. Clown. Crud.”
“Watch it.” Hollister raised his fist.
Ray clapped his hands. “More,” he shouted.
“Loon. Lout. Loser.”
“Why you little—” Hollister pushed back his chair.
Ray lunged past Cousin Pete and grabbed Hollister’s chin in his meaty hand. “You’re gonna have a heck of scar.” He squeezed Hollister’s cheeks together a few times as if checking the pressure in a bicycle tire. “How big was that piece of glass?”
“About this long.” Hollister held his hands shoulder-width apart.
“Lucky it didn’t cut your head off,” Helen mused.
“Now sit down,” Tommy said.
“The operator just went nuts, huh?” Ray knocked Hollister’s chin with his fist and hunched over his plate shoveling home mounds of spinach. The man was muscle bound like their father.
“Crazy as a cornered rat.” Hollister rubbed his chin.
When has he ever seen a cornered rat? Helen wondered. What a liar.
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