Besides the fog, there was the dirty weather, the wind and big seas that would come out of nowhere. The fuller the dory, the more ye had to fight to keep the boat steady. Reid knew many a man had drowned, lost to a watery grave, because the dory had been weighted down with fifteen hundred pounds of fish, the gunnels a few inches above the sea. If the breakers came in the boat then and swamped the dory, ye had little time to clean her out. Ye’d be throwing the fish overboard then as fast as ye could, bailing the boat and praying ye’d get her cleared before the next wave hit.
Reid himself had plenty of scares over the past thirty years. Sometimes ye’d think this is it, the end is coming. I’ll never see me family or me wife again. But ye’d keep bailing, keep praying, and somehow ye’d pull through. And the fear that rose up in yur throat would be gone until the next time—when the wind and waves would rise.
Dory fishing was miserable old work on a good day, Reid thought, but when the weather was foul and the fog thick, it could be a God-fearing experience. It was a darn rough, rough way to make a living, always shivering cold and wet, knowing yur life could be over at any minute. Many years past, an old fisherman told Reid, “Anyone who would go dory fishing for a living would go to hell for a pastime.”
Aye, ’tis nothin’ truer than that, Reid thought as he waited for the clerk at Baird’s to return to the counter.
Outside in the thick morning air, Paddy walked the dirt path along the bay, his mind working over how he’d convince Hanrahan to accompany James on his upcoming journey. A raspy cough disturbed his thoughts and Paddy knew McGettigan couldn’t be far behind. The priest’s perpetual hacking announced his presence long before anyone spied his black robes. Terrified of McGettigan’s booming voice and stern gaze, children ran into the woods as soon as they heard the priest’s cough.
“Morning, Father,” Paddy offered at the sight of the stocky priest coming over the crest of the knoll.
“Morning, Skipper,” McGettigan answered before drawing on his cigarette.
“When ye going to give up those terrible things, Father?”
“As soon as you do, Paddy.”
“Aye, when the Labrador Current warms up like the Florida sea, I’ll give it some thought, Father.”
McGettigan laughed and tossed his cigarette to the ground.
“What are you doing taking a leisurely stroll? I’d have thought you’d be busy barking orders at your crew, getting them ready for the journey.”
“Still gathering the crew. In fact, I was hoping ye’d give a poor ole skipper a ride to Little Bay in your skiff.”
“You may be old, Paddy, but poor you’re not. I could show you some poor people.”
“Save yur preaching for Sunday, Father. Will ye give me the lift or not? I’ve got to have one more talk with Dick Hanrahan. See if he’ll go along with James’s crew.”
McGettigan caught a glimpse of worry in the skipper’s eyes before Paddy looked away. Paddy was proud of his eldest son, James, but McGettigan also knew that the upcoming journey as captain would test the young man. While Paddy had little fear of death or anything else, James did not share his father’s confidence. Though he never voiced his concerns over his son, Paddy had asked McGettigan to say a few extra prayers over Mary Bernice as he blessed her this spring past. The priest remembered the look of concern on Paddy’s face as he sprinkled the holy water on the boat’s bow. McGettigan had heard the older fellers talk about Mary Bernice. “She sits high in the water now doesn’t she? Even when she has a load of fish in her. She’s a’needing more ballast in ’er.”
Still, Paddy had fished off Mary Bernice without a problem. The priest reckoned James could do the same. As the skiff pushed off from McGettigan’s pier, Paddy took in the view of his three-story home on the southern shores of Marystown. With its white picket fence and its thick double front door and twin chimneys, the house stood out among the smaller cottages. First built as the Molloy Hotel, the home rivaled the town’s wealthy merchant houses with its mahogany ceilings, scrolled banisters, and stained-glass windows. Paddy had bought the old hotel for his wife soon after he married Lil, knowing she had admired the grand structure since she was a young girl.
During a recent game of cards, Paddy had confided to McGettigan that the merchants wanted his home to pay off the mounting debt the skipper owed for fishing gear and supplies. As he steered past Paddy’s wharf, McGettigan watched Paddy’s lips tighten as if he wanted to strike something.
“The creditors still after your home, Paddy?”
“The bastards would like to get a hold of it, but they won’t be getting their hands on it. I put the house in Lil’s name. They’ll have to look elsewhere for their damn money. They want to come through my door, they’re going to have to kill me first.”
“Well then, I’d have to bury you and say kind things about you at the altar, and you know how I hate to lie, Paddy.”
Paddy turned to the priest and laughed. Things could be a lot worse for me and me family, he thought. His family wasn’t on the dole like a third of the country, relying on government relief and its paltry six cents a day. And his seven children weren’t eating blackbird soup or begging for vegetables door to door.
The two men fell quiet as the green hills of Little Bay came into view. Paddy always enjoyed the sight of the small village, one of the last outports he saw before venturing out to sea. McGettigan steered toward a small wharf and cut the throttle. Paddy grabbed the rope and tossed it to a young lad standing on the wooden pier.
“Thanks for the lift, Father. Save a bit of yur St. Pierre rum for me when I return from the Cape.”
“Aye, Paddy. I might save a drop for you.”
Paddy nodded and turned toward the hill that led to Richard Hanrahan’s home. Before he made it halfway up the path, Hanrahan stepped out his door and began walking toward the skipper. Paddy noticed the doryman’s gait was slow and unsure, his head bent low as if just he’d lost a battle.
“Morning, Richard.”
“Morning, Capt’n.”
“Give any thought to going along with James?”
The fisherman fell quiet and rubbed the middle finger on his right hand. Paddy knew Hanrahan had broken the finger years ago when a block of ice crushed it in the fish hold. The finger remained crooked and bent, a constant reminder to the doryman of the dangers he faced at sea.
“Aye,” Hanrahan said, lifting his gaze to meet Paddy’s eyes. “I’ll go.”
Paddy shook Hanrahan’s hand and patted his back.
“Lillian will be beside herself with relief.”
“My wife Angela’s not so happy with my decision, Skipper,” Hanrahan said, his voice low and flat. “She doesn’t want me to chance the sea any longer. But our cupboards barely have a crust of bread in ’em, and the children are getting little more than vegetables and broth for dinner.”
Hanrahan turned to the sound of his daughter laughing in the field behind his home. Barefoot, the girl’s spindly legs raced toward her father.
“’Tis no way to raise a family,” Hanrahan said quietly. “Me salt-fishing business isn’t doing as well as I’d liked. There’s no hope of making do except in me dory hauling trawl.”
Paddy took in the sight of Hanrahan’s modest home. Clothes snapped on a rope line, and rows of plants peeked from beneath the black soil. From the kitchen window, a curtain fluttered, and a shadow disappeared beyond the thin cloth.
“I’ll make sure yur treated well on this trip, Richard,” Paddy assured the fisherman. “It’ll be worth ye going. Yur cupboards won’t be bare for long.”
Hanrahan nodded, knowing he had no choice but to believe Paddy’s words. His shoulders bent forward, the doryman turned and headed back up the hill where he knew his angry wife waited.
CHAPTER 8
THE SISTERS GATHER—NEWBURYPORT, MASS., MAY 2003
Deep into the night, after the dinner plates have been cleared and the margarita pitchers emptied, I slip Ambrose’s name into the conversation. At the me
ntion of our grandfather, my sisters fall quiet, the laughter and loud conversation halts. Their faces grow solemn, serious, as if I have informed them of a relative’s sudden death.
“He was a bastard,” my older sister Diane says, her voice flat and factual. “He never gave Dad, Uncle Bill, or Nana a nickel. He abandoned them, and that was it.”
Pragmatic and unflinchingly honest, Diane, or Dede as she is known in our familial circle, is never shy in offering her opinion. The other sisters silently ponder her words. We sit, the six of us, around a dining room table littered with salt-rimmed glasses and bags of pretzels and potato chips. A cold rain lashes the windows, and bells from the nearby Immaculate Conception Church toll multiple times, reminding us that it will soon be midnight. Before I mentioned Ambrose, conversation spilled from three different directions, our voices and laughter drowning out the music from the living room speakers.
Gathered for an overnight at my sister Janice’s Newburyport home in Massachusetts, we are together for what we fondly call “a sistas weekend,” twenty-four hours with no children or husbands. Traveling from our various homes in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, each of us had arrived earlier that afternoon. We feasted on mussels, chicken stir-fry, asparagus, salad, and homemade bread. The evening hours passed like minutes as we swapped stories about husbands, boyfriends, kids, jobs, and our parents. In the past, during other weekends together, we had often gone out for drinks or to dance, but as we’ve grown older, we realized there is no need to leave my sister’s dining room table, where we can laugh and cry and tell each other things we will not or cannot tell anyone else.
Known as the “Walsh girls” in the small town of Pelham, New Hampshire, where we grew up, we were mostly birthed within tidy, two-year intervals with nine years separating the oldest from the youngest. Born in 1966, the twins, Janice and Joan, brought up the tail end of the family; two sisters, Jacqueline and Laura, held up the middle; and my older sister Diane and I (Irish twins born eleven months apart) shaped the older end. The six of us look alike (dark hair, freckled skin) and have similar mannerisms (talking with our hands, hugging often, and punching people as a form of saying hello). Many of our characteristics, we have come to realize, mimic those of our Great-Uncle Paddy and our grandfather, Ambrose. “We can be,” I told one sister, “vicious on a good day.” We have quick tempers, sharp tongues, and are competitive with everyone else and each other, a trait which prompted my twin sisters to brawl on the basketball court during one high school home game and spurred two other sisters to nearly kill themselves trying to beat each other in a local road race.
Our own Irish clan, we are stubborn, fiercely loyal, and protective of one another and our parents. An insult or hurt to one is a wound to all. Family gatherings, birthday parties, holiday dinners are frequent affairs, and there is nothing that makes any one of us happier than to be together, in each other’s company. “Blood is thicker than water,” my father often told us when we were younger, and I felt this so deeply that I was terrified when my sister Jackie announced in 1985, “I’m getting married.” I cried when she told me. I left her multiple notes in her Volkswagen Beetle: “Don’t do it,” I begged. My feelings had nothing to do with her fiancé, whom I liked; it was more that I saw her marriage, the first among the sisters, as an unnatural separation, a fracturing of our family. My irrational fears proved unfounded; decades later, as four out of the six sisters raise their own families, we remain so close, so adamantly faithful, that our friends often remark, “You guys are like the Mafia; you’re lucky to have such a strong family bond.”
So it comes as no surprise on this rainy May evening that the mention of Ambrose stirs a flurry of deep and raw emotions in each of my sisters.
“I don’t care about him,” Jackie says, her eyes focused on the napkin she folds into small squares. “I never knew him. I don’t have any emotion toward him. I don’t want to care about him. He didn’t care about Dad, Nana, or Uncle Bill.”
The resentment in my sister’s voice surprises me. A middle sister, Jackie is often the first to defuse anger, to forgive. It is rare for her to speak ill of anyone; she is the peacemaker, quick to encourage her sisters to “be nice,” to brush off ill-tempered or unintentional slights. Yet, she is not willing to do this for our grandfather.
After listening to my father recount what happened in San Francisco, I have my own strong feelings about Ambrose. I want to ask my grandfather, “Why? How could you leave your family, abandon them twice? How could you live with yourself?” My grandfather has been dead now for thirteen years, succumbing to colon cancer in June of 1990. In the years before his death, his daughters Donnie and Kathy grew closer to him. They came to understand and appreciate their dad despite his flaws. I consider Donnie’s words in her first e-mail to my father, her conflicted feelings about Ambrose: “I know when Dad died he had a lot of regrets, and that’s something he had to work out with himself. Dad was not perfect in any way, a bit spoiled, no, he was downright spoiled. We butted heads a lot as I got older; but I could always call him and he would be there for me; that is what I will remember about him, of the good he did and not what he did in the past.”
Ambrose’s daughters loved their dad unconditionally, like my sisters and I love our father. Throughout their childhood and adult lives, Donnie and Kathy witnessed their father’s loyalty. They had no fear that Ambrose would repeat his past, leaving them as he did his first two sons. There had to have been good in him, I tell myself. He embodied more than his worst mistakes. But his mistakes, his abandonment of his children—my father—were so wrong I cannot see past them. I know my emotions taint my grandfather’s image; I can only see the dark side of his character. Yet, I know there is more to him.
“No one person, no story is ever black and white,” a veteran newspaper editor once told me. “There are always many shades of gray.” It was a lesson I heeded over my thirty years as a reporter. My editor’s words echo in my ears on this cold spring night as I halfheartedly pitch Ambrose’s positive attributes to my sisters, characteristics that I know will not be well received.
“Some people believe Ambrose was a good man,” I offer. “A lot of people, his ship-rigging employees liked and respected him.”
My sisters cut me off before I can continue. A few of them shake their heads in disgust.
“So what if he did some good things, think of what he did to Dad,” Janice says, her voice rising with disbelief and rage. “How could he be so heartless?”
“But he’s our grandfather,” Janice’s twin, Joanie, argues. “He’s our blood, our stock; he is what we’re made of. Dad isn’t just all Nana. Ambrose is a part of who we are. We’re all intuitive, good with people. Dad had the knack to motivate people who worked for him, and that’s from Ambrose.”
Emotions and words arc back and forth between the twins. Tapping her chest, Joanie argues that Ambrose is in each of us, in our “genes.” Janice shakes her head refusing to consider Ambrose’s blood, his DNA that tethers us to him. Like my father, she is repelled by his decisions, his betrayals.
The twins’ voices rise as they argue, their passion drawing raised eyebrows from Laura, who sits between them. Four years older than Janice and Joan, Laura is hesitant to voice her thoughts on Ambrose. Like Jackie, the other “middle sister” Laura is not likely to jump into a conflict or argument, preferring instead to shrug her shoulders and utter “whatever.” On this evening, she sits quietly as her green eyes follow the conversation that escalates around her.
“He was so selfish,” Janice says.
“We don’t know what was in his mind,” Joanie admonishes. “You can’t judge him.”
“After what he did, why the hell shouldn’t we be able to judge him?” Janice hollers back.
Knowing that if the twins continue to argue, they may leap across the table and throttle each other, Dede, the eldest, intercedes. “Joanie’s right,” she agrees, her voice low and calm. “Like it or not, Ambrose is part of our family, our history.
”
“He may be our family,” Janice says, “but we don’t have to forgive what he did.”
After so many years of not knowing, of not thinking of our grandfather, it is odd to hear my sisters debate his morals, his decisions, with such fervor. Derived from the Greek Ambrosios, Ambrose’s name means “immortal, undying,” Strangely, though we have never met our grandfather, his deeds and his decisions live on in each of us.
Regardless of their feelings, my sisters are thrilled with the news that my father has decided to travel to Newfoundland. The conversation shifts toward this less contentious topic and the unlikely trip that he will make in June.
“I can’t believe he is going,” Joanie says.
It was Joanie who had called our parents’ home several weeks ago and told our father, “I want to go to Newfoundland.”
My father did not hesitate in his reply: “Have a nice trip.” He had no desire to visit Marystown, to see Ambrose’s birthplace, or to acquaint himself with relatives he had never met. What was the point? Ambrose had died more than a decade ago.
But Joanie persisted. “I want to know more about where we’re from.”
Knowing Joanie was not going to relent, I agreed to go with her, but I did not care to learn more about Ambrose. I wanted to discover more about my Great-Uncle Paddy Walsh and the August Gale. Chasing a killer storm was easier than trying to figure out my grandfather and his heartless choices. When my father learned we both planned to journey to Marystown, he reluctantly agreed to come along. “Alright,” he sighed. “I’ll go with you.”
As the church bell rings tolling midnight, my sisters and I begin to clear the empty glasses and cocktail napkins from the table. “It’s good he’s going to Newfoundland,” Dede says, before retiring to bed. “It’s good you’re getting him to talk about all this.”
I nod, but I am unsure of whether it’s good or not. Since I have begun asking my father about Ambrose, both of us have lost sleep. My father has lain awake thinking of his childhood, his anger, the hurt his mother endured. I lose sleep wondering: Why am I stirring up bad memories? This is not a newspaper story that I can distance myself from. This is my father’s story, and I am not sure where it will take us. I only know that I do not want to harm my father, to cause him more pain.
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