by Cathy Kelly
‘She still makes strange with people,’ sighed her mother, Sorcha, scooping her up. ‘Finn would let anybody hold him. Nobody can babysit this little honey except Mom.’
‘Wise child,’ murmured Pat, kissing his wife on the cheek.
Vonnie did her best to remember the names and, eventually, figured them all out. Amy was the youngest and had hair blonder than Vonnie’s, though hers was dyed, she revealed.
‘I’d kill to have hair as blonde as yours,’ Amy muttered darkly. ‘I’m not that dark, but the roots … if you don’t keep up with the roots, you look like trailer trash.’
‘Amy, my own mother lived in a trailer when the house in Mayo burned down,’ Geraldine calmly rebuked her daughter as she handed round roast potatoes. ‘We called it a caravan. Never criticise anyone till you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.’
‘Yeah, and they’re a mile away and you’ve got their shoes,’ laughed Sean.
‘Sorry, Ma,’ he said, after a quelling glance. ‘It is funny.’
Claire was next, eighteen, with red hair that refused all hair dye, as she told Vonnie dramatically.
‘She did try, but it went orange,’ revealed Amy.
‘And you wanted to borrow my Abercrombie jacket when exactly?’ Claire said, a steely glint in her eyes.
‘If I had hair like yours, Claire, I wouldn’t dye it,’ said Vonnie. ‘It’s beautiful, like a wood dryad’s.’
‘You’ve got yourself a woman of learning,’ said Pat admiringly. ‘Joe done good.’
Vonnie went the same bright red colour Chloe had been when she’d begun to cry. Fortunately Pat began carving the turkey, and amid the plates being moved up and down the table and the ensuing arguments over the stuffing and people taking too many roast potatoes, almost nobody noticed.
‘You get used to the non-stop chattering and teasing,’ said Sorcha, with four-year-old Finn beside her, eagerly eating mashed potato and his own mini portion of turkey. ‘Life in the Reilly house can be a shock to the system, though. Marcus,’ she smiled at the slim, olive-skinned man at the other end of the table, a now-contented Chloe on his lap, ‘just kept silent for the first six months he was coming here.’
‘That was because nobody could hear him because you have to shout to be heard,’ said Sean, and then said ‘Ouch’ loudly.
‘No kicking under the table, Joseph,’ Geraldine said, not turning a hair as she delivered roasted squash topped with feta cheese and pine nuts to the table.
‘We’re not that bad,’ Joe said, looking imploringly at Vonnie. ‘I know you’re not used to the whole big family thing.’
Vonnie turned to him, eyes shining, and said: ‘I love it.’
Used to the reserved life of her own family, she found the Reilly clan utterly fascinating and welcoming. They laughed, argued and made up, and no matter what, the whole family would congregate in the kitchen to eat together several times a week.
Geraldine was the centre of it all: wise, funny and gentle, and overseeing her grown-up family with such love and affection.
Geraldine was a nurse, Pat told Vonnie proudly when the dinner dishes were cleared away and Joe, Liam and Sean were making headway with the cleaning up, with much joshing and splashing going on.
‘She works with the local seniors’ organisation in her spare time,’ he added fondly.
‘Ah stop, love, will you?’ said Geraldine, exasperated. ‘He makes me sound like Mother Teresa, and I’m not, honestly, Vonnie. It’s just helping out a little. You have to do something, don’t you?’
‘That’s incredible,’ said Vonnie, thinking of how Violet hadn’t worked since she’d got married. Their house was beautifully kept as a result, and Violet herself was always pretty, but other people’s problems weren’t really on her radar. She might buy the Girl Scout Cookies at the door and was always keen to go to a charity dinner with their friends, but she didn’t actively help anyone.
Vonnie didn’t mean to start comparing, but she couldn’t help it.
Pat was a mechanic. He’d have liked to have joined the police force, like his brother, but he had a bad leg. A fall as a child back home, never quite mended properly.
Geraldine stroked his cheek fondly. ‘I wouldn’t ever sleep a wink if you were a cop, Pat. Always waiting for the knock on the door and the officers holding their hats in their hands.’
By the end of the summer, Vonnie was hopelessly in love with Joe, whose passion for life – and for her – shone out of those incredible stormy-sea-blue eyes.
The following year, she graduated from high school and was accepted at Boston U to study modern languages.
‘It sounds so thrilling.’ Her mother’s tinkling voice could be heard as she held a little tea party. She’d asked if Vonnie wanted to invite her ‘new friends’, as she called Sorcha, Amy and Claire. Violet hadn’t met them, but Vonnie had spoken of them so happily, and Violet was, after all, a lady.
‘No, Ma, it’s fine,’ Vonnie said, unthinkingly.
‘Ma?’ Violet was horrified. ‘Veronica Richardson, I have never been so shocked in my life. I did not raise you to talk to me in such a manner. I know exactly where this language comes from, and don’t tell me I’m wrong. It’s that Joe Reilly. Well, I expect an apology this instant.’
Vonnie stared at her mother, feeling the combination of love and pity she’d come to know so well.
Geraldine Reilly would laugh if one of her kids called her ‘Mother’; she might tease them, then everyone would sit down at the table and talk about their day. Claire would worry a little over her forthcoming exams and her mother would gently unruffle her feathers; Pat would say that a lovely old Camaro had come into the shop today and if he was twenty years younger he’d swear he’d buy it because it was a beautiful ride and in immaculate condition. He and Geraldine would smile at each other across the table, because it was just wishful thinking and the old station wagon was far more suitable to their needs.
Amy would have a story about a kitten she’d seen on the way back from school in the upstairs window of the Evanses’ long-for-sale house, and even though she and Leandra had tried to get in, the door was locked and they’d had to listen to the kitten mewling plaintively for ages. Once, Vonnie and Joe had gone on a perilous rescue mission with her to free eight puppies that somebody had been trying to kill by dumping them on the edge of the freeway off-ramp. ‘The cruelty,’ said Joe, his expression furious …
‘I’m still waiting for my apology, Veronica,’ said Violet, face white with strain.
Vonnie could see how truly shocked and upset her mother was. A woman whose whole world could be rocked by the wrong form of address from her daughter. It was what it was, Vonnie thought sadly.
‘I’m sorry, Mother. It was a mistake.’
She briefly touched her mother’s cool, soft hands.
It was like living in two worlds and slipping between the two; except that the more she saw of one world, the less she could survive in the chilly formality of the other.
Two years passed, with Joe and Vonnie moving into an apartment of their own in Brookline – they’d have loved a district closer to the university but they couldn’t afford it.
Thanks to a part-time summer internship, Joe was on track for a job with the state attorney’s office.
Violet had her first angina attack the night Vonnie told her that she and Joe were moving in together, and an ambulance had to be called.
In the hospital, Vonnie and her father sat drinking horrible coffee as they waited.
‘It’s not your fault, Vonnie,’ her father said. ‘You have to live your own life. It’s hard for her, that’s all. She doesn’t approve.’
Despite her upset and guilt, Vonnie felt a surge of anger. ‘She doesn’t see how amazing Joe is, Dad,’ she said. ‘She can’t see beyond the fact that his parents are Catholics and came to Brookline with nothing. Why does that matter so much to her? This is supposed to be the land of opportunity.’
He looked at her sadly, and she saw a man with
his future long behind him; a man who wore his weariness lightly.
‘Your mother didn’t grow up with the sort of life and opportunities we gave you, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘She wants more for you.’
‘I know, Dad,’ sighed Vonnie.
Granny Lawrence had been a lady, but Grandpa Lawrence had been a vicious drunk. There hadn’t been money for manicures or trips to the hairdresser in that house.
Vonnie got up and hugged her father.
‘For her sake, I wish both Joe and I had gone to Harvard and were off to live in Beacon Hill, but that’s not the real world. I wish she could be happy for me.’
‘She will, darling, I’m sure she will.’
‘I love your eyes,’ Vonnie murmured one night as they lay together in bed in their small studio apartment. Wrapped in sheets, body to body and exhausted after lovemaking, she felt as if she could never be happier. She traced the coal-black eyebrows and the strong planes of his face, still gazing into his eyes. ‘A stormy blue, that’s what they are,’ she said.
‘The same blue as the Atlantic, Ma always says,’ Joe murmured.
‘The Atlantic’s supposed to be cold,’ said Vonnie, her fingers moving down to stroke the strong column of his neck. ‘There’s nothing cold about you or your eyes.’
‘That’s when I’m with you,’ he said, leaning against the pillow and gazing at her with such love. ‘I’m filled with fire. Fire to be with you for ever, fire to marry you and make you happy, to have loads of kids, to be the best public defender this state has ever known.’
‘Marriage?’ she said, pretending surprise for a moment. She knew he was going to ask her and she knew she was going to say yes instantly.
Joe planted a kiss on her forehead and a longer, lingering one on her lips. Then he slipped out of the bed and Vonnie groaned in dismay.
‘You’re not going to do more work? I thought you’d stopped for the night.’
‘Just getting something,’ he replied, rifling through his college sports bag.
When he turned, he was holding a small navy leather box in one hand.
Vonnie sat up, letting the sheet drop. Nakedness never bothered her around Joe; he was so comfortable in his body that any lingering hang-ups she might have had had vanished.
At the side of the bed closest to her, he dropped to his knee and opened the box, holding out a single-diamond ring in a simple round gold setting. It was small, the opposite of the jaw-dropping Tiffany ring her mother would have liked. But Vonnie loved it on sight.
‘Will you marry me, Vonnie?’
No words came out at first. She didn’t have any words, she who’d been a formidable debater, who’d been told she had poise and confidence in school. Instead she reached around his neck and pulled him to her, kissing him.
He held on to the ring.
‘Is that a yes?’
‘It’s a yes, a definite yes,’ she said.
‘Hand,’ he commanded, and he slid the ring on to her long, patrician ring finger.
They both stared at it contentedly. Vonnie didn’t feel any of the dizzy happiness other women talked about. She felt instead the bone-deep joy of everything being just perfect.
‘It looks right there,’ Joe said, angling his head to look at the ring. ‘I wanted something you’d like, something simple and elegant.’
‘Like me?’
‘Yes, like you.’
She leaned forward and kissed him.
‘Can we tell our grandchildren this story?’ she added. ‘That you proposed to me stark naked in a small walk-up apartment in Brookline?’
‘Should I have chosen a fancy restaurant?’ Joe pulled back the covers and slid his long body in beside hers.
‘No,’ whispered Vonnie. ‘Not at all. We’d never have been allowed back if you had. You have to dress for restaurants.’
He laughed.’
‘You did it perfectly, Joe,’ she said. ‘Never change.’
Denise O’Brien stood outside the Golden Vanilla Cake Shop and swept a critical eye over the premises. In keeping with the old-fashioned winding street, the shop window was decorated in mellow golds, with antique-looking glass cases inside which sat elegant cakes of every hue: traditional cakes trimmed with ribbons and pale roses; cakes that looked as if they’d been dipped in watercolours, pale primrose at the top, with the lower tiers deepening to a heady saffron. Flowers, tiny brides and grooms, even a miniature sparkling silver palace decorated them.
Her daughter Eve stood at her side, hands clasped together. ‘Isn’t it beautiful? Like a fairy-tale cake shop.’
Denise allowed herself a snort. Far from fairy tales Eve had been reared. Still, if Eve wanted this nonsense, Denise was prepared to be a little pliable. Just a little.
‘No sparkling silver palaces,’ she said sternly. ‘What would people think?’
What people would think was an important factor in many of Denise’s decisions.
They went inside, Denise ignoring the tinkling bell over the door as more of the fairy palace flummery.
On one side was the straightforward shop part of the business, where cake-making supplies were sold; on the other, where she and Eve were obviously supposed to sit, was a shrine to cakes of every sort, from flower-bedecked bridal ones to birthday cakes shaped like cars. Glass cabinets done up in the distressed cream fashion that Denise hated housed the creations, while in front of an equally distressed cream desk were armchairs with loose covers and faded floral cushions.
Clearly the Golden Vanilla Cake people were into that Californian shabby chic, Denise decided with a disapproving sniff: cream hearts on ribbons dangling from the cabinet handles and a chandelier with coloured glass overhead. What was wrong with nice Irish furniture in place of this distressed rubbish?
Eve had insisted that the Golden Vanilla Cake Shop was the best option because it catered for every allergy possible, and – this had been the clincher – it was always being written up in the press as being the last word in wedding cake elegance because of the innovation and brilliance of its owner.
When Eve had finally got engaged – and it had taken so long, her mother had almost given up hope – Denise had envisaged sourcing everything for the wedding from outside County Waterford. Anyone in the county could have a cake from here. But for an O’Brien wedding – the first proper O’Brien wedding, because Pierce marrying that awful Glenda-Louise in Las Vegas hardly counted – Denise had entertained visions of herself and Eve travelling to Dublin for dress fittings and cake discussions in posh establishments.
She’d been looking forward to discussing all the arrangements at her weekly bridge night; it would be one in the eye for Eleanor Fitzsimons, who’d carried on as if her daughter’s wedding last year was quite the last word in style.
However, it had transpired that Eve’s future mother-in-law was a coeliac and therefore couldn’t eat a proper wedding cake with wheat in it, so this place with its list of cakes that could be made to order without flour, dairy or eggs was the ideal choice. Or so said Eve.
‘It’s so exclusive too, Mum, I thought you’d love that …’
Thwarted in the early stages of the planning, Denise had been determined to let her displeasure be known. And yet she couldn’t fault the owner of the cake company, a tall, pale-skinned woman with what had to be natural blonde hair tied back in a severe plait. Denise patted her own dyed blonde hair in its bouffant curls from the morning blow-dry and felt envious of this elegant creature with her strange colouring and effortless poise.
Vonnie Reilly had greeted them with such cool composure that Denise wasn’t sure it would be wise to snipe about how a local company might not be up to the mark for such a high-class wedding. Besides, it was clear from her accent that Vonnie was American, so perhaps all was not lost. An American: well, that made a difference.
Unusually for her, Denise began to feel overdressed in one of her nicest knit suits with her pearls and the Roger Vivier pumps she kept for special occasions. Vonnie wore slim black trousers
and a grey sweater that made her look like a model from a Scandinavian furniture advert. Her only jewellery was a slender beaten gold wedding ring that emphasised long fingers with short, perfectly clean but unpainted nails. She had to be forty or thereabouts, Denise decided beadily, but as to whether she was rich or poor … there was no sign of it from how she dressed, that was for sure.
Denise liked knowing where people stood on the social scale. Assessing accents no longer worked – people with the most dreadful accents turned out to have giant houses and jewels to beat the band. And the same with dress. But Vonnie Reilly seemed to have that upper-class American thing going on: a cool elegance, politeness, a hint of ancestry going back to the Mayflower.
Not knowing quite where she stood, Denise decided to play it carefully.
‘Mrs O’Brien, Eve, would you like tea or coffee?’ Vonnie asked, sitting behind the desk on which sat a very pretty flower arrangement.
‘Coffee for both of us,’ Denise answered in her faux voice, the one she used for answering the phone. No need to ask her daughter what she wanted: Eve always had what Denise had.
So that was the way it was, Vonnie thought to herself as she phoned through to the kitchen and asked for a cafetière, three cups and the wedding platters to be sent in.
After six years running the business, Vonnie knew that every wedding had a queen bee – a member of the bridal party who had been waiting long years for this opportunity to seize control of arrangements with the zeal of an army general.
Often it was the mother of the bride. Or Momzilla, as Lorraine – one of the younger members of staff – liked to call them.
‘There’s a Momzilla on the phone wondering if anyone else has had the orchid-decorated cake recently, in case they both end up in the society pages and the sense of their wedding being utterly individual is lost.’
‘One day you will forget to press the mute button on the phone and our business will be ruined,’ Vonnie would say, taking the phone from Lorraine’s hand and soothing the mother-of-the-bride in question.