One Year

by Mary McDonough

  “I thought you were taping the games,” Megan noted, with a glance at her husband’s perfect profile.

  “It’s not the same,” he grumbled.

  Pat Fitzgibbon, Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s older child, was tall like his mother and slim like his father. His eyes were a bright greenish blue. By the time he was thirty, his hair had turned an attractive steely gray. During the week he wore conservative dark suits with a white shirt and a red or blue tie, suitable attire for his job as a corporate attorney. On the weekends, he lived in jeans and T-shirts. On holidays, like this one, in deference to his mother, he wore a navy blazer, charcoal gray slacks, and a pale blue shirt. Mary Bernadette did not think jeans and T-shirts appropriate for grown men.

  Megan wasn’t entirely unsympathetic to her husband’s complaints. They had gotten an invitation to a party at the home of friends, a couple with three children around the twins’ age and a reputation for serving the finest wines. No doubt the Taylors would have had their big flat-screen TV tuned to the football games. The only reason the Fitzgibbons had turned down the enticing invitation was to make what Pat rightly called a command performance at his mother’s house in Oliver’s Well.

  “I am sorry,” Megan told her husband. “Let’s make a pact that next New Year’s Day we stay home.”

  “I’m holding you to that, Meg.”

  Megan, Pat’s wife of over twenty-five years, was also a lawyer. Her light brown hair was cut into a sleek bob and she wore very little makeup. Her one personal indulgence was her collection of stylish eyeglasses. Today, she was wearing Prada frames. She would never tell her mother-in-law how much they had cost. Mary Bernadette did not entirely approve of personal spending. And she was the sort of woman who was always ready to tell you her opinion of your supposed faults or flaws. Formidable did not come near to describing the woman who was her mother-in-law. True, she had been duly forewarned that she would find Mary Bernadette—difficult. Megan remembered the first time Pat had brought her home to Oliver’s Well to meet his parents. She had noted the horseshoe hung over the front door of number 19. Why a horseshoe, Megan had asked Pat. “It’s for good luck,” he had explained. “There was a horse in the stable the night Jesus was born.”

  “Was there? I thought it was a donkey Mary rode to Bethlehem. So why not a donkey’s shoe?”

  Pat had frowned. “Maybe that works just as well, but I don’t want to be the one to suggest that my mother try something new or that she change her mind. And believe me, you don’t want to be the one, either. She’ll just take it as an insult.”

  No truer words had ever been spoken.

  “Mom?” Danica had unplugged herself from her iPhone. “Are we almost there?”

  Megan smiled over her shoulder at her daughter. “Every time we make this trip you ask me the same question at exactly this point. And the answer is always yes.”

  Danica nodded and went off into her electronic world again. She and David had turned twelve years old the previous October. Danica, older than her brother by five minutes (something she never let him forget), was also taller than David, who had been born with cerebral palsy, by a good two inches. The twins shared the same light brown hair and their father’s bright greenish blue eyes, though David’s were partly obscured by his glasses, which he had worn since he was small. He occasionally used crutches or a walker to aid his mobility, but more often than not Megan found them abandoned in unlikely places, like under the dining room table or behind the rosebushes.

  “I hope my mother doesn’t have my father running around all day fixing things,” Pat blurted, his bad mood clearly unmoved. “The man is closing in on eighty, but she treats him like he’s still a man of forty, ready to climb up a ladder or . . .” Pat clamped his mouth shut.

  Megan spoke carefully. “You know you’re exaggerating, Pat. Besides, your father is hardly an invalid. He enjoys being useful around the house.” And, Megan thought, he enjoys dancing attendance on his wife, though most times Mary Bernadette didn’t seem to notice his efforts. That, or after so many years of marriage she simply took her husband’s attentions for granted.

  “It will be good to see PJ and Alexis,” Megan said. “I feel I’m not getting to know my daughter-in-law as well as I might. It’s the distance between Annapolis and Oliver’s Well, I suppose.”

  “She’s a nice young woman,” Pat said, “that’s for sure. PJ is lucky.”

  Pat turned the car onto Honeysuckle Lane. Megan put her hand to her hair though she knew it was in place and straightened her skirt though it didn’t need straightening. Mary Bernadette had that effect on people.

  “If she tries to pull any of that sappy ‘God bless us, every one’ nonsense,” Pat grumbled, “I’ll . . .”

  “You’ll raise your glass like the rest of us and chime in.”

  “Hmm.”

  Pat pulled into the drive of number 19. He had barely shut off the engine before David and Danica were tumbling out of the backseat and making their way toward a house where they knew they would find two doting grandparents; plenty of candy; and, if they were really lucky, their grandmother’s awesome cookies. Megan and her husband followed more slowly, arm in arm.

  CHAPTER 3

  “How do I look?” Alexis twirled before her husband so that her red circle skirt flared out like a bell.

  PJ smiled and held out his hands. “Lovely as always.”

  Alexis went to him and allowed PJ to hold her close. She wished they didn’t have to go to Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s house, not just yet. As if he were reading her mind, PJ released her with a sigh.

  “We’d better get a move on,” he said. “My parents and the twins should be pulling up any minute. Grandmother will be eager to put dinner on the table.”

  “I just have to do my makeup,” Alexis told him. “I won’t be long.”

  “I’m going to check that I’ve set up everything correctly to record the games.”

  “Why is your grandmother so strict about not watching TV when the family is together?” Alexis asked.

  PJ smiled over his shoulder as he left the bedroom. “You know what she’s like,” he said.

  Alexis was certainly finding out what Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon was like, and more so every day. She went into the bathroom, where the light was best, and carefully began to apply her makeup. And while she smoothed on moisturizer and then foundation, she remembered a recent conversation with PJ. They had been at his grandparents’ house, of course.

  “Look,” she had whispered. “That’s the third ornament Banshee’s deliberately knocked off the Christmas tree!”

  PJ had whispered in return. “And you’ll notice she hasn’t broken one of them.”

  “Why does your grandmother get upset when Mercy accidentally knocks an ornament off the tree with her tail but looks the other way when Banshee does it on purpose?”

  “Because Banshee is hers, and Mercy is not.”

  “Oh. Has your grandmother always had a cat?”

  “No. Not while my father and my aunt were growing up. Not while I was growing up, either. She has this superstition about cats sucking the breath out of small children while they sleep.”

  Alexis had laughed. “How medieval! But wasn’t she concerned with Banshee being around David and Danica when they were little?”

  “I can’t explain my grandmother, Ali,” PJ had said with a shrug. “I mean, to other people her ideas might seem odd or inconsistent, but to her they make perfect sense.”

  Odd or inconsistent was right, but the last thing Alexis had a desire to do was to question or defy her husband’s grandmother, the matriarch of the family. Still, there was the blanket of Angel Hair under that beautiful old crèche in Mary Bernadette’s living room....

  “Isn’t that incongruous?” Alexis had whispered to her husband, not long after the Banshee exchange. “I don’t think the ancient Middle East got much snow.”

  PJ had grinned. “Grandmother likes to think otherwise.”

  “Well, it does l
ook pretty. I suppose it can’t hurt to suspend our disbelief.”

  “There’s the spirit!”

  Alexis Trenouth and PJ Fitzgibbon had married the previous March, after her graduation from college at the end of the fall term. Alexis was tall and willowy with large blue eyes and long blond hair. She had grown up in Philadelphia and loved the vibrancy of urban life, but she had fallen so very much in love with PJ that she had agreed to settle down with him in Oliver’s Well. So far, living in the cottage on Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s property, working as the office manager for Fitzgibbon Landscaping, and being PJ’s wife was proving to be very satisfying indeed.

  Alexis smiled as she heard PJ cry out, “Yes!” No doubt he was snatching a few minutes of a football game live while he could. PJ—Patrick Joseph—was a few inches over six feet, well built, with a classically handsome face. His eyes were even bluer than his wife’s and were framed by long, dark lashes. His hair was almost black and naturally flopped over his left eye. He had a boyish, charismatic charm; a genuinely warm smile; and a sexiness that had nothing to do with pretense. He was, in the words of his beloved grandmother, “a real Irish charmer.”

  A moment later Alexis joined him in the living room. “I’m ready,” she said.

  PJ clicked off the TV and turned to her. “Thank you for being my wife,” he said.

  Alexis smiled. “What brought that on?”

  “The fact that I love and adore you.”

  “Oh, is that all. . . .”

  Hand in hand the pair made their way across the backyard to Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s house.

  “You’re late,” Mary Bernadette pronounced as they came through the back door and into the kitchen. “I was hoping to see you here before now.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary Bernadette,” Alexis said automatically.

  PJ hugged his grandmother and kissed her cheek. “Everything smells fantastic,” he said. “I can’t wait for dinner.”

  “Well,” she said, disengaging herself, “you’ll have to wait a bit longer. I slowed everything down when your father wasn’t here by three as he promised.”

  PJ smiled at Alexis over his grandmother’s head and then, taking his wife’s hand, they went into the living room to greet the others. There was the usual chaos of hellos and how-are-yous, accented by Mercy’s excited barking, and all followed by a warm hug for both PJ and Alexis from Megan. Alexis thought her in-laws were pretty wonderful people; they had made her feel welcome in the family right from the start, even before she and PJ had become engaged.

  “Look at my cool new bracelet,” Danica demanded, yanking on her sister-in-law’s arm. “I made it myself from this kit I got for Christmas.”

  “It’s awesome,” Alexis said, which seemed exactly what Danica wanted to hear. The girl grinned and loped off toward a bowl of candy.

  “Hey.” David looked up at Alexis. “Do you want to hear this cool new song I downloaded?” He handed her his iPhone and earbuds, and Alexis pretended to like the cacophony screaming into her ears.

  “That’s . . . cool,” she said, handing it all back to David. He, too, seemed to be satisfied, because he went off in the direction his sister had taken, toward the coffee table.

  In spite of having known David for several years, Alexis still occasionally had to resist an impulse to “help” him. It was remarkable how well he managed for himself. She was impressed by his abilities as much as by his personality, but she had decided that it would probably sound condescending if she told him as much. No one else in the family made a big deal—or any deal at all—of David’s having CP, so Alexis had learned to treat it matter-of-factly as well.

  Mary Bernadette emerged from the kitchen and asked PJ to sharpen the carving knife. “And be sure to put the sharpening steel back in the drawer when you’re done,” she instructed, ushering him into the kitchen.

  Paddy handed Megan and Alexis a glass of wine and gave his son a beer. “You both look lovely,” Paddy said.

  “What about me, Dad?”

  Paddy pretended to grimace. “Now, Pat. Lovely isn’t the word.”

  “David,” Megan called to her son. “How many chocolates have you had?”

  David chewed vigorously, swallowed, and assumed a look of complete innocence. “Two?” he called back.

  Megan raised an eyebrow. “Just be sure you save room for dinner, please.” And then she turned to Alexis. “What a ridiculous thing to say to a twelve-year-old. They always have room for more food.”

  Alexis laughed.

  “It’s time for dinner,” Danica called from the door of the dining room. “Grandma says to come quickly so it won’t get cold.”

  The Fitzgibbon family took their usual places at the table—Mary Bernadette at one end and her husband at the other—and Paddy led them in a traditional grace: “Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen.”

  “So, what’s your New Year’s resolution, Grandpa?” PJ asked, taking a roll and passing the basket to his wife.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t decided on one yet,” Paddy admitted.

  “You need to make a resolution to make a resolution,” David suggested. “Pass the gravy, please.”

  “I think that one should make a resolution every single day of the year, not just on the first of January. And keep it, of course,” Mary Bernadette said.

  “What sort of resolution, Grandma?” Danica asked, dropping a large pat of butter onto her mashed potatoes.

  “To be productive,” Mary Bernadette told her. “To avoid physical as well as spiritual laziness. Sloth is a sin.”

  Pat grinned. “I thought a sloth was a four-legged tree-dwelling animal from South America.”

  His mother gave him a look that Alexis thought could wither a freshly bloomed rose on its stalk. “Sin is nothing to joke about, Pat,” Mary Bernadette said.

  Pat looked like he was about to utter a retort, when David unwittingly—or not, Alexis wondered—intervened. “My New Year’s resolution is to eat an entire gallon of ice cream at one time.”

  “Just don’t come to me when you’ve got a stomachache afterward,” Megan told her son.

  When the pie, cookies, and coffee had been brought to the table with some fanfare, Mary Bernadette took her seat again. “I think,” she said, “that it’s time for a toast to the year ahead.”

  Everyone raised his or her glass.

  “To the Fitzgibbons,” Mary Bernadette said, with her famously dazzling smile. “May the new year bring us peace and prosperity.”

  “To the Fitzgibbons!”

  Alexis saw Pat lean into his wife and whisper something.

  “Do you have something you want to share with us all, Pat?” Mary Bernadette asked, eyebrows raised and glass still in the air.

  Alexis bit her lip. Next to her PJ could barely hide a grin. Megan, too, looked ready to laugh.

  “No, Mom,” Pat replied. “Nothing at all.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Jeannette and Danny Kline were at the Fitzgibbon house for their weekly dinner of pot roast, glazed carrots, and roasted potatoes, followed by a game of Monopoly. Banshee watched the proceedings from atop the fridge. Every so often Mercy would trot into the kitchen and with a swish of her tail knock any unattended game tokens or silverware off the table. Then Paddy would bring her into the living room with strict instructions for her to stay there. And before long she was back in the kitchen, tongue lolling. “That dog,” Mary Bernadette would say. To which Paddy would murmur, “Now, Mary.” The Fitzgibbons and the Klines had met at the Church of the Immaculate Conception more than fifty years before, when Father Murphy was in charge of the parish. The Klines had three daughters. The two older girls, Margaret and Kathleen, had long since moved out of state and married. Between them they had five children whom, unfortunately, Jeannette and Danny rarely got to see. Mary Bernadette might have felt pity for her friends if it were not for the fact that the Kline’s youngest daughter, Maureen, still lived
in Oliver’s Well—she was a senior agent at Wharton Insurance on Main Street—and spent a good deal of time with her parents.

  “It was a wonderful meal, Mary,” Jeannette said, folding her napkin next to her empty plate. “Your pot roast is always a treat.”

  Jeanette was a pretty woman, with eyes that were remarkably green. She was almost as tall as Mary Bernadette, but a case of scoliosis that hadn’t been diagnosed until she was fifty had left her slightly hunched and crooked. Though Jeannette never complained, Mary Bernadette knew her friend well enough to know that she was in constant pain. You could see the evidence in the lines of tension in her face, particularly when she had been sitting or standing for any length of time. Although in some ways the women were quite different, in this way they were alike. Each suffered quietly and with dignity.

  “Excellent whiskey, Paddy,” Danny said, after a first appreciative sip. “It almost makes a man feel young again.” Years of physical labor in the contracting business in all sorts of weather conditions had finally caught up with Danny. He had lost weight over the past year, and his walk was missing some of its usual bounce. Mary Bernadette didn’t like to notice signs of aging in her friends; they reminded her of her own process of decline, a process she was determined to ignore.

  “I see, Mary, that there’s a new Lenox curio box on the coffee table,” Jeannette said, as she helped bring the dinner plates to the sink for rinsing.

  “Yes, I found it at the thrift shop when I was dropping off a few of Paddy’s old shirts. It’s a fine piece, isn’t it? I can’t imagine why anyone would have let it go.”

  In spite of her frugality, Mary Bernadette was not a believer in the “less is more” aesthetic, and the thought of downsizing appalled her. She owned a complete set of Waterford crystal glasses in a pattern long since discontinued. There wasn’t so much as a chip in one of them. Her Belleek tea set had pride of place on the credenza in the dining room. She had amassed no fewer than thirty-three Byers’ collectibles figurines, which she kept entirely dust free, no easy task what with the intricate folds of cloth and the finely spun hair. Antique embroidered samplers, some stitched by her mother and her mother before her. Lacy doilies and fine linen table runners. Capodimonte porcelain flowers. There seemed no end to Mary Bernadette’s “items of interest.”