by Cathy Kelly
‘This was your moment,’ Leila pointed out.
‘Yeah, but you’re family and so’s your mum. That comes first. Is she badly hurt?’
‘She fractured her hip and they had to operate yesterday evening to put a pin in it. And her poor little face is all black and blue. She looks so old all of a sudden, Katy. So frail. I’m always hearing about how people get infections in hospital, like MRSA, and with Mum looking so weak …’
Finally Leila allowed herself to break down and cry as she hadn’t done on the phone with her sister. ‘She looked so bad in hospital last night. Ten years older at least, and the bruises, Katy. I almost didn’t recognise her. The nurses say she’s doing well, and people get over hip operations fine, but you can’t be sure, and I love her so much, I can’t stand to lose her …’
‘Leila, darling, they do their best to tell you the truth in hospitals. If they say she’s doing well, then that’s the truth. Last night – did they want you to stay?’
‘No, they sent me home. She’d had the operation and she was resting.’
‘OK then, that’s a good sign. When my granny was dying, they told Mum to stay. And when your dad was dying, they told you to stay too, didn’t they? This is different. You have to be positive. Will I ask my mum to come in with you?’
‘No, I’m fine, but perhaps if she could visit Mum another time …?’
‘Of course. Once we’re sorted out here, I’ll come round to see you, right? I’ll text. Is Susie there?’
‘She had to go home to Waterford. I phoned her this morning and she seems to think I can handle it all from now on. You know: she’s done her bit and now it’s my turn.’
‘Oh,’ said Katy, understanding. ‘Well, you can handle it. Listen, I’ll be over later, but text if you hear anything new in the meantime.’
‘OK. And you can text me if you see any sofa material for my dress,’ added Leila.
‘Wedding schmedding,’ said Katy. ‘Your mum comes first.’
With a flurry of fond farewells, they hung up.
‘Was she pleased?’ asked Michael, walking in from the kitchen where he was making lunch before going into work.
‘Thrilled.’ Katy put her arms round her fiancé, saying the word happily to herself in her head: fiancé. ‘But upset. She’s in Bridgeport, about to head off to the hospital – Dolores had a car crash yesterday and she’s had to have surgery for a fractured hip.’
‘Ouch,’ said Michael, wincing. ‘Poor Dolores.’
‘Plus Susie’s having one of her moments. She’s gone home, leaving it all to Leila,’ Katy said, faint irritation marring her face.
‘Hey, kiddo, she has a son to look after. She’s not fancy-free. She’s never had the easiest time of it, even when we were kids,’ Michael said. ‘You and Leila were always more like sisters, and then things worked out so well for you both. You’ve got a great job in the family business and Leila has a fabulous job and the glamorous marriage.’
‘Tynan’s gone, so she hardly has that now,’ Katy said, the tone of her voice showing exactly the regard in which she held Leila’s ex.
‘No, but she did have him for a while and it all looked wonderful,’ Michael went on. ‘Rock star parties, heading off to gigs around the world, a husband who looked like he was in a band himself. It’s got to be hard, seeing your two best friends happy and successful when you’re a broke single mother like Susie, working in a call centre on minimum wage.’
‘But she has Jack,’ protested Katy. ‘He’s adorable.’
‘She’s still on her own,’ Michael pointed out. ‘Nobody to take responsibility for any of it ever. That’s tough. So of course she has to race home to take care of her son – and her mother – because nobody else is doing it.’
Katy sat for a moment regarding the man she was going to marry.
‘That’s what I love about you,’ she said finally. ‘You surprise me all the time. I’d never thought of it that way.’
‘I’ve seen it that way for a long time,’ he replied. ‘I feel sorry for Susie. Always did. She was never as smart in school or as confident as you and Leila, and no matter how gorgeous Jack is, it’s a lot of responsibility and worry being a single mum. Plus, you guys never see her any more. Leila’s too busy to make it back here. You’re able to catch up with her in Dublin, but when was the last time Susie did that?’
Katy nodded. ‘You’re right. We have to do something about Susie. She’s definitely got to be a bridesmaid.’
At that, her new fiancé laughed loudly. ‘This wedding will make all lives better,’ he boomed in an Old Testament voice.
Katy grinned. ‘ ’Course it will. It’s going to be absolutely wonderful. Everyone loves a wedding – and this will be our wedding, so it’ll be doubly wonderful.’
Even saying it, she felt a hint of remorse at how she’d blindly not seen things from Susie’s point of view at all. Jack was always so beautifully dressed and adorable when they met him: Katy had never really thought about the effort that went into taking care of him without a partner to help. And Susie was undoubtedly the person who had to be there for her widowed mother because Leila, heartbroken and miles away, wasn’t.
Katy reached over for Michael’s hand.
‘I love you, you know,’ she said.
‘Hope so,’ he replied. ‘Second-hand diamonds never make much money compared to what you paid in the first place.’
Five
Being someone’s first love may be great, but to be their last is beyond perfect. ANON
Vonnie Reilly crouched down till she was at eye level with the top of the wedding cake and looked at it carefully, moving the icing turntable so she could examine each inch.
Chocolate ganache was chocolate and cream mixed in precisely the correct way to get the glossy, almost mirrored finish her chocolate poppy cake needed. This cake, three round tiers covered in Valrhona chocolate, waiting for the application of wreaths of watermelon-red flowers, was perfect.
‘It’s good?’ said Joan, standing close by, peering at the cake along with her boss.
‘It’s good. Very good,’ Vonnie said, smiling as she straightened. ‘Well done. I wasn’t as good on my third attempt. It’s smooth as silk.’
Joan laughed. ‘You! I have never seen you mess a cake, never.’
‘Never,’ agreed the small all-female team in the Golden Vanilla Cake Shop kitchen.
Vonnie grinned, thinking of her early attempts at cake decoration. Nobody here had ever seen any of those cakes, because by the time she’d opened the cake shop, she’d perfected her technique in every way.
Studying the curve of a rose to get the petals just so, working with food dyes to create exquisite shades seen in nature, coming up with new flavours with lemons, almonds, lavender and raspberries, developing her own delicious dairy-, egg- and gluten-free cakes: these details had been Vonnie’s meditation.
She’d been baking her way through grief, and the one thing she could say with any conviction about grief was that sheer time made it a patient teacher. Years of grief had turned a non-cooking woman in the most agonising pain into a person who could live again simply by virtue of the clear, simple rules of baking and decorating.
Unlike life, you knew where you were with cakes.
It wasn’t just cakes, of course. Shane had kept her heart beating. Trying to be a good mother to a young son and not a woman deranged with loss over the death of her husband had helped her survive. But there was no doubt about it: hours bent over sugarcraft had stilled the anguish inside in a way she’d never have believed possible. The calmness of making her cakes and setting up her business in Bridgeport, the town where she and Joe had been so happy as visitors long ago, had helped her to be a mother again when she was barely surviving as a person.
Running a cake shop in a small town in Ireland had never been in Vonnie Richardson’s life plan. She’d only taken one year of home economics in seventh grade back home in Brookline, Massachusetts, and she’d hated it. There had been lots of b
oring theory about vitamins and food groups, and absolutely no making muffins.
The old home economics teacher used to bake all the time, which had swayed the girls in Vonnie’s grade.
‘Imagine, cookies and doughnuts for lunch,’ they’d drooled happily.
It turned out that the new teacher, Miss Lusak, had a thing for fish. Fish pie, fish chowder, doing inventive things with smoked fish, and even one quahog shell cleaning class, after which Vonnie had begged to give up the subject.
Mother hadn’t minded, as long as she kept up piano.
Vonnie knew she had the long fingers for piano – ‘Like mine, darling,’ her mother would say proudly – but she wasn’t musical.
She was like her mother in many ways: tall, slender, with almost Scandinavian colouring of creamy blonde hair, fair lashes and cool grey eyes. But Violet Richardson was a passive woman, content to let life happen to her, happy with the life she and her husband enjoyed. Having her precious manicures when she could afford them, getting her hair done, watching her figure: all that was enough for her.
Vonnie, despite loving her mother and father hugely, wanted more.
She wasn’t sure what until she was eighteen, met Joe Reilly and fell in love.
She was waitressing for the summer at Wilma’s Family Pancake House. Joe, a couple of years older and working two jobs to finance his second year at Boston U Law, was a short-order cook. At first, his easy line of patter annoyed her.
‘Hey, Blondie, I’ve got pancakes with bacon, one egg, sunny, and two rounds of plain pancakes, maple syrup only.’
After a few days of this sort of chat, she replied coolly: ‘My name’s not Blondie, it’s Vonnie.’ She’d whisked back her flaxen hair, aware that the looks she’d inherited from her mother meant she resembled a classic Boston rich girl and not the well-brought-up poor girl she really was.
‘Vonnie’s short for what?’ said Joe, undeterred.
‘Short for stop wasting your time,’ Vonnie said, whisking the plates off.
‘A bit of chat helps the day slip past,’ Joe remarked, turning back to his hotplate. ‘That’s what my mom says.’
Vonnie went to her tables, delivered the plates, swept away empty glasses, refilled coffee mugs, and headed back to Joe for her next order. He was cute, despite the cook’s hat. Cooks at Wilma’s wore black tees, black pants and white aprons. Joe was tall, with a muscular grace, and the dopey hat couldn’t disguise the coal-black hair curling down underneath it.
He swivelled and saw her looking.
She’d have known he was Irish even without the name: incredible blue eyes, the fabulous bone structure of the darker-skinned Celts, heavy black eyebrows and a mobile mouth made for talking and touching skin …
Vonnie, known for being cool, blushed.
For the first time, Joe’s he-man demeanour failed and he looked hopeful. That hopeful look made Vonnie reconsider. He might be full of blarney, but at that moment he looked just as nervous as she was.
‘And what would your mom say if she saw you distracting the waitresses from their jobs?’ she asked quietly, leaning over the counter.
‘She’d be thrilled. She wants me to settle down with a genuine all-American girl and have so many kids we can’t remember their names.’
Vonnie laughed out loud at such marvellous honesty. ‘That’s not how my mother wants it.’
Her mother’s wishes were way more complicated.
‘Honey?’ A customer behind her smiled and waggled a coffee mug.
‘Coming right up,’ Vonnie said, grabbing the coffee pot, filling the customer’s cup and then doing another expert sweep of her tables. She needed this job but she was drawn back to Joe.
‘What does your mother want?’ Joe said, taking longer than was strictly necessary to get the plates ready.
‘A professional man with a good job,’ said Vonnie, without thinking.
Joe held up his spatula and said in his best Boston-Irish accent: ‘Ah sure, love, amn’t I just the type of man you’re looking for?’
‘Will they like me?’ asked Vonnie anxiously three weeks later, when Joe took her home for Sunday lunch.
She hadn’t been inside many of her dates’ homes, and the only boyfriends she’d brought home were sons of family friends, the sort of men her mother approved of. But Joe’s life seemed to be so involved with family that taking her home was entirely natural to him.
‘They’ll love you,’ he said, kissing her cheek as they stopped in his old Miata at the intersection. ‘I’m presenting them for your approval, not the other way round.’
‘Joe! Stop kidding.’
‘I’m not kidding,’ he said, turning down Riverside Avenue, where a long line of clapboard houses trailed off in front of them. ‘If you’re going to marry me, you’re going to see a lot of the Reillys, all five siblings, in-laws, out-laws, grandkids and Mom and Pop. I need you to like them.’
‘I’m not marrying you,’ she said.
‘Living in sin, then, as my Granny Irwin would say. Whatever suits you. But my mother is going to be keen on the whole Catholic baptism thing when the children arrive, and it’s harder to organise that if you’re not married.’ Joe considered this. ‘Or maybe it’s not? I’m on the black sheep side of the family when it comes to the Church. They might have changed the rules.’
‘They have not,’ hissed Vonnie, whose knowledge of Catholicism was limited to a sweet girl on her street whose parents went to daily Mass and engaged in complicated giving up of sweet foods before Easter. She was slightly afraid that the Reillys, with two Irish parents, would be saying the Rosary every night. How would she fit into that?
He’d told him all about his family, right down to the dog, who had been rescued by his animal-loving sister, and who quivered with fear when anybody new came into the house.
Vonnie hadn’t told him much about hers. By comparison with the Reillys, her family seemed colourless.
Joe’s home was a large grey clapboard house, the front of which told the family’s life story. Two overflowing flower beds quivering under the weight of camellias and scented roses spoke of Joe’s mother’s devotion to the garden, and a home-made rocker on the porch was evidence of his dad’s love of woodwork.
A small tricycle in the front yard said that Joe’s married sister Sorcha was visiting with his niece and nephew. A rusty car smaller than the Miata up on blocks in front of the garage made it plain that his youngest brother, Sean, was hoping to get mechanic help from Joe’s dad. His oldest brother’s Mercedes station wagon was neatly parked close to the sidewalk, declaring that Liam and his pregnant wife Grainne were there.
‘The baby’s not due for another two months, but Liam thought he’d get the station wagon instantly,’ Joe said, eyes twinkling. ‘Being Liam, it had to be a Benz.’ Liam was a corporate lawyer in a blue-chip Boston firm, but Joe was an idealist – he wanted to work for the district attorney’s office. ‘The side of good,’ he liked to say. ‘I like to wind Liam up by saying that. Works every time.’
Inside there was the aromatic scent of roast dinner, sport coming from somewhere and a definite shouting match going on upstairs.
‘Claire, I want my curling tongs back now!’ shrieked a female voice. ‘Face it, your hair’s going to burn off if you curl it any more.’
‘That’s Amy,’ whispered Joe, grinning. ‘Sixteen and a half. Hormones on full alert. It’s like being backstage at a beauty contest with those two fighting over the cosmetics equipment.’
‘You’d want to have heard the row when Claire bought the professional nail kit,’ said a voice. ‘I thought we’d have to call the police to break it up, but your Uncle Charlie was already here. Vonnie, hello. We’ve a full house today – they’re all dying to see you.’
A tall, slim woman in blue jeans wearing a sunflower-yellow blouse that went with her shock of truly Irish red hair was standing there, looking younger than a mother of six adult children should look.
‘I’m Geraldine Reilly, mother to this
man,’ she said, managing to reach up to ruffle Joe’s hair and embrace Vonnie at the same time.
Vonnie smelled baking, floral perfume and a hint of fabric softener. Geraldine had Joe’s incredible eyes but her skin was pale and freckled. Her accent was still Irish, untouched by thirty years living in Brookline.
‘We are so pleased to see you. Joseph doesn’t normally bring ladies home to meet us.’
‘Ma!’ said Joe.
‘Which means you’re special, which means we’re delighted to have you here.’ Geraldine took Vonnie by the arm and led her into a sprawling, well-loved kitchen with a giant oven, an oak table set for lunch, and a large seating area where several men were sitting on two old beige couches screaming at a TV set.
‘I can’t believe he missed that ball!’
‘Told you he should be off the team.’
‘People,’ said Geraldine, not raising her voice, ‘Vonnie’s here. TV volume down, please.’
The sound was turned down and all the men, including a small boy who’d been hidden by the couch, stood up, smiling with genuine pleasure.
Pat Reilly, Joe’s dad, hugged her.
‘We’re delighted to have you here, Vonnie. Dinner’s nearly ready, and no game till it’s over, boys.’
Vonnie beamed back and thought how nobody in her home had ever hugged a guest. Even her grandmother and her mother exchanged cool kisses in the French manner: a hint of a peck on the cheek. Here, great bear hugs seemed to be the order of the day.
Even the trembly dog, a miniature fluffy thing called Sparky, allowed himself to be petted.
‘He loves you! He never does that with anyone and he’s a very good judge of character,’ said Amy, the dog rescuer.
Joe smiled contentedly, as if he didn’t need a dog to tell him anything about Vonnie. He sat beside her at the big table and held her hand under it as though he thought she might run off at any moment.
Vonnie had been given Joe’s little niece Chloe to hold. The baby had stared at her with big solemn eyes for a full minute and then burst into loud, outraged tears.