One Year

by Mary McDonough

  “I have something to tell you, PJ,” she said. “It’s very important.”

  PJ looked at her warily as he hung his jacket on the back of a chair. “What is it?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  For a long moment PJ did not reply. Finally, just when Alexis was about to repeat her announcement, he said, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’ve been to see the doctor. It’s very early days, but I’m definitely pregnant.”

  PJ ran his hand through his hair. “Wow.”

  “I know we wanted to wait a bit,” Alexis said. “But . . . well, I guess God had other plans.”

  PJ smiled and shook his head. “A baby.”

  “You’re not angry?” she asked hopefully.

  “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

  “It was what we wanted. A family.”

  “Yes. A family. But maybe . . .” PJ looked down at the floor. “Maybe we shouldn’t say anything right away. To—to the others.”

  “Right. It’s a first pregnancy, and there’s always a chance I could lose the baby. . . .” Alexis felt tears choking her. This was supposed to be a joyous, shout it from the mountaintop moment. And it wasn’t.

  PJ looked back to her. “We’ll wait until we’re more sure. Until everything is—settled.”

  Until we’re settled. Until our marriage is more sure. Or until our marriage is over.

  PJ reached for her and she went to him. A hug had never made her feel so sad, and she began to sob. When the sobs quieted, they sat together on the couch.

  “How do you feel?” PJ asked. “I mean, physically.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good. Is there anything I can get for you? Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “No,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “But thanks.”

  “We should be toasting the occasion with champagne.”

  “Not me. Sparkling water.”

  PJ reached for her hand and squeezed it gently. “Right. Do you remember how we used to talk for hours about baby names? Sean or James. Fiona or Allison.”

  Alexis rested her head on PJ’s shoulder. “That was fun, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It was. And we used to argue about how many kids we would have.”

  “You said you wanted six.”

  “And you said you wanted five.”

  “How silly we were,” Alexis whispered.

  “No,” PJ said. “Not silly. Hopeful. Happy.”

  “And now?”

  PJ kissed the top of Alexis’s head. “Hopeful,” he said. “And yes, happy.”

  Alexis felt her eyes flood with tears again, but this time they weren’t tears of sadness.

  “Thank you for being my husband,” she said.

  PJ turned to embrace her. “Thank you for being my wife.”

  CHAPTER 95

  Was it a universal truth that every family, no matter how loving, had its drama and its tensions? Was there really no such thing as a truly harmonious family?

  Of course there’s no such thing, Megan reminded herself. Be real.

  Megan was in her home office where she was supposed to be working on a matter for the CPEE. Instead, her mind was lost in thoughts of the family Fitzgibbon. Take Pat’s admission that his apology to PJ had not gone over very well. “I don’t think he believed I was genuinely sorry,” he had told her only the night before. “Well, I can’t say that I blame him. I’ve been harping on PJ about his choice of career for years. I’ll just have to prove to him that I’ve finally accepted his decisions. And that I respect them.”

  Megan shook her head. What a weekend that had been! At dinner Saturday evening Mary Bernadette had acted as if nothing brutal had come out of her mouth only hours earlier, even complimenting Megan on her blouse, while poor Paddy had blushed and stammered his way through the meal. Pat, for his part, had glowered and grimaced.

  Mary Bernadette and Megan had not talked since the morning after “The Incident” (it was what Megan had taken to calling it rather than using Pat’s term, which involved a very graphic vulgarity). She did not feel badly about this, as time apart was often necessary in order for healing to begin. Besides, if they were to talk, what could they possibly say to each other? What topics would be safe enough not to elicit a fresh character assassination? Well, there was always the weather, but with Mary Bernadette behaving more cantankerous than ever, maybe even the weather wasn’t a neutral enough topic.

  Megan glanced at the photograph of her parents that sat to the left of her laptop. In almost every way you could imagine, Mary Bernadette and Kathleen Murphy were in stark contrast. Kathleen was one of the nicest people there was, easy to get along with and never critical or unkind. Left alone for more than fifteen minutes with Mary Bernadette, Kathleen would emerge shaking and chattering like a hiker who had just come face-to-face with a hungry puma on a deserted mountain trail. Megan grinned at her choice of dramatic imagery. Well, maybe that was a bit unfair. After all, the few times the two women had been in each other’s company—for instance, at Megan’s and then at PJ’s wedding—there had been no spilling of blood.

  Next to the photograph of Megan’s parents sat a photograph of her brother Edward and his family. They lived only minutes from the elder Murphys. Edward’s wife, Judy, got along splendidly with her in-laws. Kara and Jason, now teenagers, visited their grandparents without parental prompting. Maybe my brother has succeeded in creating a truly harmonious family, Megan thought now. If so, he’s a better person than I am.

  The truth was that Megan felt guilty that she wasn’t available to her parents in the way her brother was. For better or worse she had chosen to devote her energies to Paddy and Mary Bernadette, though lately she wondered if she was doing a very good job of ensuring their well-being. Anyway, she knew this sort of thing often happened. Familial duties were divided, sometimes with intention and careful planning and at other times—well, at other times things just turned out the way they did.

  On impulse, Megan reached for her cell phone and dialed her parents’ number. (Like Mary Bernadette and Paddy, they had only a landline.) “Mom?”

  “Meggie! It’s so good to hear from you! I just got the latest pictures you sent through the e-mail. Gosh, the twins are getting so big!”

  Megan laughed, happy to hear her mother’s voice. “You should see our food bill!”

  “And how’s everything with PJ? I haven’t heard from him in an age. He must be so busy running that company.”

  Megan grimaced. She hated to lie, but she didn’t want her mother to worry about her oldest grandchild. “He’s fine,” she said. “Everything’s going well.”

  “Good. I sent PJ and Alexis a card for their anniversary. What a lovely wedding that was!”

  “It was lovely, yes.”

  “And how are Pat’s parents?” Kathleen Murphy asked. Megan was beginning to regret this call. “Fine,” she said. “Mary Bernadette’s very busy with the historical society. And Paddy’s enjoying retirement.”

  “Do tell them I was asking for them, won’t you?”

  Megan promised and listened as her mother began a very complicated story of what had happened at the last meeting of the parish council, of which she was a long-standing member. And as she listened she suddenly remembered thinking that she should call Leonard DeWitt about the current state of the OWHA. Or had she finally decided against getting involved in matters probably beyond her control?

  “So,” her mother said, “what do you think of that!”

  Megan scrambled for a suitable reply. “I think,” she said, “that it’s quite—unbelievable.”

  Her mother laughed. “That’s exactly what I thought!”

  CHAPTER 96

  Since the doctor had confirmed that Alexis was pregnant, life, every little bit of it, from the glass of juice she poured PJ in the morning, to the Japanese snowbell tree blooming in the yard, to the ringing of the bell atop the Episcopal church, felt that much more precious. Everything had taken on a glow of impo
rtance. And it was all due to the tiny, nascent bit of life inside her, a life to which she already felt a very strong connection. That tiny bit of life had also opened her to a further compassion for what Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon must have endured when she lost her baby William.

  It was clear what she had to do. She had to apologize to PJ’s grandmother. She knew that she should have done so long before now—she had promised PJ that she would—and she hoped that her apology would still be worth something.

  Alexis found Mary Bernadette in her kitchen, sitting at the table with an untouched cup of tea in front of her. She was impeccably groomed as usual, though Alexis thought she looked tired.

  “Mary Bernadette, may I talk to you?” she asked.

  It took a long moment before PJ’s grandmother looked up at her. “What?” she said. “Oh. Yes. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  She made as if to rise. Always the good hostess, Alexis thought, even to those she dislikes.

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I just want to say that I’m sorry for quitting the Day in the Life project like I did. I shouldn’t have just walked away. You were right. I should have come to you first.”

  “Yes. All right.”

  “I’m sure there’s someone else who wouldn’t mind taking it over.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Maybe a photography student at one of the local colleges,” Alexis suggested. “I could make some calls to the art departments if you’d like.”

  “No,” Mary Bernadette said. “That’s all right.”

  “Well, let me know if I can help find a replacement.”

  Mary Bernadette picked up her spoon and began to stir the tea. When after a moment she didn’t reply, Alexis left the house.

  That was a strange encounter, she thought as she walked to her car. She had never seen Mary Bernadette so distracted. She was usually the most focused person in the room. Her ability to pay close attention to every conversation going on around her—and to interject her own opinion in any one of them—was astounding to witness. Maybe, Alexis thought, as she got behind the wheel, Mary Bernadette wasn’t feeling well. She knew she couldn’t mention this idea to PJ. Relations between them were so delicate she was afraid that anything she said about Mary Bernadette would seem to PJ like an insult. She could, she supposed, call her mother-in-law, but what would she say? She had no proof of Mary Bernadette’s being sick. Anyway, Mary Bernadette was probably just worried about the current state of the situation at the OWHA.

  But what was the current state of the OWHA situation? Alexis realized that she had paid virtually no attention to its doings in the past weeks. She wasn’t even sure that PJ was still in the running for that Stoker project. And that was because she hadn’t bothered to ask her husband.

  It was a painful realization, that her self-absorption had isolated her from the people who were now her family, and for that Alexis felt genuine regret. And she wondered, as she pulled out of the driveway and onto Honeysuckle Lane, just how much of her disaffection had been due to sheer laziness. Loving a person was arduous, day-to-day toil, but it was worth it in the end. Sometimes. Hopefully, most times.

  Alexis sighed. There was much for which she had to make amends.

  CHAPTER 97

  Mary Bernadette had been cleaning the good china for the past half an hour, something she did once every month though the set was used only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Things could get dusty even stored in a cabinet, and wasn’t it more efficient to keep things clean and in order on a regular basis?

  Carefully, she wiped each piece with a damp towel and then with a dry one. Dinner plates. Salad plates. Dessert plates. Dessert bowels. Serving bowls and cups and saucers. A gravy boat with a ladle, and a covered butter dish. There were ten settings, well over a hundred pieces of china in all. She finished drying a cup and set it down on the table with the others. But somehow it did not meet the table. Somehow it fell to the floor and shattered into tiny pieces.

  “Foolish woman,” Mary Bernadette muttered. “You should be more careful.”

  She went to the closet for the broom and dustpan and began to gather up the ruins of the cup. This was the second time in the past two weeks she had been uncharacteristically clumsy. The first was when she had been sweeping the kitchen after breakfast one morning and the broom had simply fallen from her hand. The sudden noise as it hit the floor had caused Banshee to leap to the top of the fridge and Mary Bernadette to flinch.

  She tightened her grip on the broom now, finished sweeping up the remains of the cup, and dumped the shards and slivers into the trash receptacle under the sink. Then she sat at the table where a large portion of the china was still waiting to be cleaned. And now that she was off her feet, she realized that she was tired. She stifled a yawn, as if to give in to it would indicate a loss of moral fiber. Naps were for the very young and the very old. She had always held by that.

  Mary Bernadette comforted herself now with the thought that there had been no witness to her clumsy behavior. She was especially glad that her daughter-in-law hadn’t been visiting. She hadn’t spoken to or seen Megan since the morning after she had “attacked” her. That word was not the one she would have chosen, but her son seemed to think it appropriate. In the past few days she had become aware of a small sense of remorse. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been so—adamant—in expressing her opinions about David’s care and religious upbringing. But what was done was done, and there was little if any purpose in bringing up past incidents and reopening old wounds, even for the sake of an apology. Take, for example, the time when Pat was little and had hid in the linen closet just as the family was about to leave for Sunday mass. She had never apologized to him for her angry reaction to his misbehavior, and she highly doubted he had any recollection of the incident at this late date. So many things were better left unsaid and undisturbed.

  Of course, there were times when a belated apology was welcome. It had been decent of Alexis to apologize for her conduct regarding the OWHA, but it was probably PJ who had encouraged her to do so. Mary Bernadette doubted Alexis cared for anything but her own interests, whatever they were. If only PJ had come to her for advice before proposing to Alexis, she might have convinced him of his folly in choosing someone from such a different background. Again, what was done was done.

  Like Pat’s decision to reject a role in the family business. Like Grace’s decision to work far from Oliver’s Well. Like William’s having died so terribly young. There was nothing she could do about any of it.

  Mary Bernadette thought of the shards of china now in the trash can among the remains of meals and plastic bags of dirty cat litter and empty rolls of toilet paper. It was just a broken cup, and yet she experienced now a terrible pang of loss, as if the cup had value far beyond its practical purpose as a drinking vessel. She put her elbow on the table and her head in her hand. If her son were to walk into the kitchen right then, he would scold her for breaking her own rule. How many times had she punished her children for the offense of an elbow on the table and so many more like it? Too many to count, she thought. And what did any of it matter now? What had any of it ever mattered?

  CHAPTER 98

  The first time Alexis had been at Maureen Kline’s house she had been too distressed to notice much of the décor. Now she took the time to survey the living room. On a long credenza, framed photographs stood in a perfectly straight line. Alexis recognized Jeannette and Danny, and she assumed that the other people in the pictures were Maureen’s sisters, brothers-in-law, and their children. There was a couch with a taupe-colored slipcover slightly too small for it. The coffee table was a glass top on a chrome base, a very 1970s-looking piece. There was a standing lamp similar to one Alexis remembered seeing in the house of a friend’s great-grandmother. The two armchairs had the distinct look of having been bought at a resale shop.

  On the whole, there was very little sense of coherent style. Maybe “things”—beautiful furniture and thick carpets and good art hanging
on the wall—just didn’t rate high on Maureen’s list of what was important in life. Or maybe, Alexis thought, she just didn’t have the money to spend on high-quality furnishings.

  Maureen had set out two cups of steaming tea and a plate of store-bought cookies on the coffee table.

  “Thanks for having me over,” Alexis said.

  “I like having company,” Maureen explained. “Not that I have anyone over all that often. And I like you, Alexis. I know I’m old enough to be your mother, but I’d like to think of us as friends.”

  Alexis smiled. “I’m not sure what I have to offer. It seems I’m always coming to you with a crisis.”

  “I don’t mind. Anyway, by this time in my life I should have accumulated a store of practical knowledge worth sharing. Note I didn’t say that I actually have accumulated such a store. So, tell me what’s going on. Why did you want to see me?”

  Alexis took a deep breath. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “And yes, the baby is PJ’s. There’s no doubt of that.”

  “Thank God. Still, I know this must be so difficult.”

  Alexis laughed unhappily. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  “Are you going to go through with the pregnancy?” Maureen asked gently.

  “Yes, no matter what. My parents would help me if PJ and I—if we break up.”

  “Let’s not even consider that possibility right now.”

  “But why not?” Alexis challenged. “Sometimes I feel so—defeated. The future looks so bleak. I’m trying to imagine something changing for the better, but I can’t. And I’ve always considered myself a creative person. So much for that.”

  “Well, there are options other than divorce.”

  Alexis forced a smile.

  “Look,” Maureen said, “my divorce pretty much had to happen unless I wanted to live the rest of my life as the pitied, neglected wife of a rampant cheater. And I didn’t. Still, divorce is not something I would wish on my most hated enemy, supposing I had one. And even when divorce does seem necessary, I’d still advise anyone who asked to try every other solution before it.”