by Claire Cook
June, my twenty-two-year-old assistant, was meditating in the middle of the rug. And I’d been the one to choose her out of a large field of applicants. But, I mean, who thinks to ask, Do you spend inordinate amounts of time meditating when you should be scrubbing Play-Doh off tabletops?
I flipped on the lights and June stretched gracefully, sending a wave of blond hair shimmering down her back. That was the other thing about June, she was far too pretty. I must have been feeling temporarily secure to have let that slip by. “Good morning, June,” I said briskly.
“Morning, Sarah. Wow, I heard you had like quite the incestuous date this weekend.”
“Who told you?”
“Uh, let’s see. Um, your father had dinner with my mother’s best friend’s neighbor Saturday night.” I tried to calculate how many people had been involved in this particular branch of the grapevine for the information to circle around and travel back to me.
Parents began escorting their children into the classroom, saving me from thoughts of relocation or even suicide. Jack Kaplan had a new haircut to praise. Amanda McAlpine wouldn’t release a choke hold on her father’s neck and needed to be peeled away from him. After the weekend break in routine, Mondays are tough on preschoolers. Our system was for June to welcome the children while I grabbed the parents, particularly the drop-and-run types. Anything we should know? I would ask.
I’d learned this lesson a couple of years ago when Millie Meehan unceremoniously dumped off little Max, who seemed subdued that day. He perked up a bit at recess, laughing and running around, until he suddenly stopped and said simply, “Ouch.” He clutched his groin area, and stood still, wide-eyed. I picked him up and went inside to call Millie, who’d forgotten to tell us he’d had hernia surgery the day before. “I could have sworn I mentioned it,” she said. “Are you sure you didn’t forget?”
Jenny Browning didn’t look quite right somehow. Her mother, Bev Henley, was wearing an expensive suit and trying to keep Jenny from wrinkling it as she hugged her good-bye. “Pick me up and hug me good,” Jenny said with authority. Bev picked her up, held her several safe inches away and kissed her on the forehead. Deftly, Bev spun her around and pushed her toward me. Jenny vomited. The sharp, sudden smell was tinged with peanut butter, and I felt the damp warmth invade the front of my blouse and trickle between my breasts. Bev looked as if she’d run if she could, but wordlessly took her daughter back, placing her on the ground beside her and walking her to the sink.
June cleaned Jenny up and sent mother and daughter home. I opened the door to the adjoining classroom and, holding my nose while gesturing to my chest, let them know that I was running home for a quick change. Trying not to gag, I told June I’d be back in forty-five minutes tops. She looked at me sympathetically and said, “Take your time. Oh, before I forget, I’m supposed to tell you to tell your dad that my mother’s friend’s neighbor had a very nice time with him.”
*
At the afterschool staff meeting, I found a seat a safe distance away from the other teachers. I knew I should have changed my whole outfit. I’d rifled briefly through the pile of clothes on my bedroom floor, looking for a skirt that could pass for unwrinkled. I gave up, pulled on the avocado turtleneck, which didn’t look any better than it had earlier in the morning. I threw the sullied white blouse into the bathroom sink, rubbed it with a damp bar of Dove, added some water and left it to soak. The denim jumper appeared unscathed so I decided to put it back on.
I’d been regretting that decision ever since. I kept trying to tell myself, as I opened the windows in my classroom, that the sour smell of vomit had simply lodged itself in my nostrils, or maybe in my memory banks.
Lorna, one of the inclusion class teachers, sat down beside me. “Pee yew, is that you?”
“Apparently so.”
“Well, nice talking to you.” Lorna stood up, held her nose, backed away a few steps. “Oh, by the way, you wanna do something tonight?”
“No thanks.”
“Why not?”
“No money, no energy, no ambition.”
“Perfect. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”
Kate Stone cleared her throat pointedly. She was the founding owner of Bayberry Preschool, and she stood now at the front of the all-purpose room, all business. Dangly earrings poked through her thin brown hair, which was streaked with coarser strands of undisguised gray. Kate had started the school when her now-grown children were themselves preschoolers. Rumor had it that one of her daughters was a teacher but had moved across the country to escape the family business.
First, Kate clipped an enormous pad of white paper to a tubular steel display stand. She pulled a red marker from the pocket of her batik print tunic and uncapped it with her teeth. Still using only her teeth, she placed the cap on the marker’s nonwriting end. “Single-word answers,” she said. “What unique qualities do you bring to our team?”
This was my fourth time in as many years going through this particular exercise, so I got a couple of words ready in case I needed them — dedication, enthusiasm — and drifted off until about halfway through the next question. “Give me more,” Kate Stone was saying, working with a blue marker now. “The question is, How do we teach? Sarah, we haven’t heard from you yet. How do we teach?”
“Modeling. We teach through modeling.”
I watched a nodding Kate Stone write my word in big blue letters and then floated away again. I stayed that way, suspended somewhere between asleep and awake, until I heard my name. “And, finally, see Sarah if you have something you’d like to teach for the Afterschool Outreach Program. Forty-dollar stipend per one-hour class, kindergarten through grade three, eight-week session, brochure information due by next Friday.”
Starting an afterschool program at Bayberry was a smart move. There was a huge demand for afterschool
activities in Marshbury, and families liked the idea that even though their children had graduated from Bayberry Preschool, they could still come back to play soccer or learn jewelry-making.
I’d asked to run the program not because I had any particular interest in it but because I needed the money. With Kevin’s half of the house had come the entire mortgage. For two years I’d watched, detached, as my half of our savings dwindled. I knew I should think about finding a roommate, maybe one of the teachers from school, preferably someone who would never be home. Coordinating the afterschool program would save me, at least temporarily, from having to let an outsider into my house.
At some point during the extended blur surrounding the deaths of my mother and my marriage, it was decided that I would keep the house. Neither Kevin nor my father thought to discuss this with me. My father showed up one day a couple of months after Kevin left, which was a couple of months after my mother died, and handed me a bank check. I wondered if the money came from my mother’s life insurance. I didn’t ask.
“What’s that?” I was looking at the check from a safe distance.
“It’s good riddance to bad rubbish,” my father said. Still holding the check, he put one hand on each of my shoulders and kissed me on the forehead. “God love ya, honey. God love ya and keep ya.”
“Dad. I don’t want your money.”
“One day soon it will all be yours anyway. Don’t make me die first to take care of my little girl. Take it, Sarry, with my blessing.” My father smiled bravely, as if one foot had already gone over to the other side. I was always awed by his ability to add or subtract decades to his life as it suited him. At this moment he looked and sounded more like my grandfather than my father.
“No, really,” I said. I mean, I didn’t even like the house that much. Kevin and I had bought the three- bedroom, fifties-style ranch as a starter home, planning to fix it up and move on to something better. Maybe in Kevin’s eyes that was exactly what had happened. He moved on to something better.
I tried again. “Dad, keep your money. Maybe I’ll sell the house. Maybe I’ll even move home for a while.” After all, my father and
I were both alone now. And there was such a nice long history of single Irish- American women taking care of their aging widowed fathers, selflessly putting their own lives on hold, crocheting doilies, inviting priests to dinner.
I glanced up to see my father gaping at me in horror. “That, my darlin’ daughter, is not an option.”
*
It was a relief finally to get out of my denim jumper. I stuffed it into the sink with my blouse, swished them both around, decided to leave them there until some day when I had more energy. It wasn’t until I jumped into the shower that I remembered I’d forgotten to buy shampoo. Again. I twisted the plastic top off the Suave bottle and tried to aim it so that a needle-sized stream of water could find its way inside. Then I covered the top with two fingers and shook hard. The resulting shampoo was watered down and unsatisfying, a perfect accompaniment to the rest of my life.
Lorna was knocking at the door when I came out of the bathroom in jeans and a T-shirt. “Well, at least you smell better,” she said. Lorna smiled, a relentlessly optimistic smile, but a nice smile all the same. I liked Lorna. She was the one person at work who treated me exactly the same after Kevin left, as if it were a detail too unimportant to notice. “Sorry I’m late,” she said now. “Mattress Man was having a meltdown. He’s better now, all tucked in and happily clutching his remote.” Mattress Man was Lorna’s husband. I never quite dared ask her the reason for his nickname, but from what I could gather it had more to do with the time he spent watching TV in bed than with more amorous activities. Nevertheless, Lorna seemed to be crazy about him. “Okay, we can still catch the seven o’clock yoga class at the community center.”
“Do we have to?”
“You have any better ideas?”
I hated yoga. I hated groups of women, or mostly women, trying to improve themselves inside and/or out. I hated having to smile at them, make eye contact, pretend that I was still one of them. “Lorna,” I asked, “do you think we could just go buy some shampoo?”
Chapter 3
I should have guessed fix-up. First of all, my father offered to pick me up for the Brennan Bake, something he’d never done before. Secondly, he mentioned that he had an extra ticket, and asked if I knew someone who might want it. When I said no, thinking I didn’t have enough friends left to risk putting one through the ordeal, he said not to worry; he’d come up with something.
The Brennan Bake was held every year on the second Saturday of October from noon until sunset. The event was a scholarship fund-raiser in memory of the Brennans’ youngest daughter, Lily, who died years ago in a car crash days short of graduating from high school. It took place under a green-and-white-striped tent on Rocky Beach in North Marshbury. The weather was usually crisp and warm, with the sun a shade less harsh than it would have been the month before.
Only once did the Brennan Bake have to be moved a mile down the road to the American Legion Post because of rain, but it worked out fine, since the lobsters, steamers, clam chowder and corn on the cob hadn’t actually been cooked on-site for years. Instead, they were delivered, along with sliced watermelon and fat round loaves of Irish soda bread, by a catering company called Boston Clambake.
Every year my father was handed a stack of tickets to sell, and every year he bought the whole stack and gave them all away. “And let’s have a big round of applause for Mr. Billy Hurlihy and his deep pockets,” the bandleader would say.
My father would feign modesty until the people sitting nearby made him stand. Lily’s parents, Jack and Noreen, would envelop him in a long hug, and he’d wipe tears from his eyes when it ended. He’d offer up a toast “to little Lily Brennan, eternal child of this blessed community, eternal light of her dear parents’ lives. A kinder and sweeter little girl never graced God’s green earth. May her memory live forever.” My father had never even met Lily Brennan, but nobody minded.
The bandleader would wait until the moment of silence ended and my father lifted his head from a solemn bow. He’d take the microphone back and shuffle his notes, announcing something like “Here’s to Bob and Betty Reilly, on their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. Bob and Betty, I want you to stand up now if you can stand up.”
It was understood in our family that if you were living in New England, you either went to the Brennan Bake or you had a damn good excuse. I didn’t, so when my father picked me up, I was ready. Two strangers were in the car with him. The woman in the front seat was wearing a straw hat with a flat top and round brim, with two long tails of red ribbon dangling off the back end. The ribbon matched the trim on her dress, which seemed to be a sort of sailor suit. The collar began in the front as two understated white triangles, only to turn into one big Popeye square in the back. My father introduced her as Marlene. I was relieved when she turned forward again and leaned back against the seat, hiding at least part of her outfit.
Her younger brother’s name was Mark, and I guess I should have been thankful he wasn’t wearing a sailor suit. I had a quick impression of close-set eyes and sprouting nostril hair. “Nicetameetya” he said in a nasally voice I hated immediately. I checked out his tight striped golf shirt, the soft little bulge of his belly. His jeans looked new, with a slight crease traveling down the front of each leg. He wore dark brown socks, shiny penny loafers and a kind of fisherman’s hat. Mark slid his body a little closer to the center of the seat. I glared at him. He slid back. I scowled at my father in the rearview mirror. He winked.
*
“New boyfriend?” Christine asked. I kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “Fuck you,” softly enough that my nieces and nephews wouldn’t hear. I worked my way around the table, quick kisses for Michael, Johnny, Carol and their families. Only Billy Jr. was lucky enough to have escaped the Brennan Bake this year.
I grabbed Sean, my nephew, by the hand because I wanted to dance.
“Me, too,” said my niece Maeve.
“Me, too,” said my niece Sydney. We found a place on the patch of sand that served as the dance floor. The Irish Troubadours were playing a baffling medley of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “The Marine Corps Hymn” and “The Caissons Go Rolling Along.” We all held hands and danced in our own little circle.
Marlene and her brother stayed at their table, but my father joined us just in time for “The Unicorn.” His grandchildren, half a dozen clustered around him by now, imitated him delightedly as he opened and closed his hands for the green alligators and flapped his bent arms for the long-necked geese. By the time he was scratching under his armpits while the singer sang about the chimpanzees, four or five women had joined the circle. Two wore Kelly-green T-shirts that said “Brennan Bake Babe.”
Even though Carol used a calendar-making program on her computer to update the whole family every year, it was still almost impossible to keep everybody’s ages straight. Ian and Trevor, Carol’s middle two, were born the requisite ten months apart to qualify as Irish twins. I was pretty sure they were nine and ten now. They stood together on the edge of the dance floor, not really dancing but not really not dancing. Their just-turned-sixteen sister, Siobhan, slumped nearby in a beach chair, while their two-year-old sister, Maeve, began to dance hand-in-hand with her grandpa and her two-year- old cousin Sydney.
Sydney’s brother, Sean, probably three, possibly already four, which would mean I’d forgotten his birthday, let go of my hands and moved over by Ian and Trevor. He adjusted his dancing, imitating their restrained motion. He grinned at them in unbridled adoration. “Hi, Sean,” Ian said. “What’s your favorite truck?”
“Firefuck,” Sean said. Ian and Trevor giggled loudly.
I tried to get to Ian and Trevor before Christine did. “Wanna ice cream, Sean?” Trevor was asking. “What’s your favorite kind of ice cream, Sean? Vanilla?”
“No. Fockit,” Sean answered just as his mother and I arrived.
“What? What’d we do?” Trevor asked.
“I’ll kill them for you,” I assured Christine as I steered Ian and Trevor away by the b
acks of their necks. Christine, I was sure, would be on her way to tell Carol how badly behaved her boys were. I looked over to see Marlene and Mark getting up from the table and heading our way. “Consider yourself lectured,” I said, “and next time pick on somebody bigger. Maybe even that guy in the funny hat walking toward us.”
I escaped to the rest rooms. The smell of salt air and water only partially masked the odor of urine and damp cement, so I didn’t stay as long as I might have otherwise. I returned just as the band was starting to play a light jig. Michael’s daughters, Annie and Lainie, finished lacing up their ghillies and joined the rest of the Irish step dancers, some also wearing their soft shoes, others barefoot.
I sat down beside Siobhan. “You going up?” I asked. Siobhan was the family’s most talented step dancer, competing at every feis and feile within driving distance for as long as anyone could remember. Carol had turned their den into a shrine, filling the shelves with her trophies and medals.
Siobhan twisted one of the three earrings in her left earlobe. “Oh, puh-lease.”
We watched the dancers perform their rocks and clicks, kicks and leaps. My muscles still knew the steps, still wanted to dance them. Lainie and Annie smiled big winning smiles, and I remembered hanging on to my own smile dance after dance, despite blisters and burning thighs. I remembered dancing with Carol and Christine so clearly, clutching pennies in our fists to keep our hands neat, putting strips of duct tape on the bottom of our ghillies to make them less slippery. And waking up with a stiff neck from sleeping in hard plastic curlers the night before a feis, then combing the hair spray out of each other’s banana curls in the car on the way home. Wide-tooth comb, working from the bottom up, small sections at a time. I could feel the pull on my scalp.
“I still miss it. Isn’t it hard to just sit here?” I asked Siobhan.
“Yeah, right.”