That night, I lie awake in one of my sister Janice’s spare bedrooms, eyeing the sliver of street light that falls on the comforter. From across the nearby parking lot, the Immaculate Conception Church bell tolls once, and I know that I will hear it several more times as it rings at 2:00, 3:00, and 4:00 in the morning. Across the bed, Dede punches her pillow, unable to fall asleep herself.
“Nana used to tell me stories about Ambrose sometimes,” she tells me.
“What stories?” I want to know.
“She used to talk about how he had another family in California,” she says. “She’d bring him up sometimes when I’d drive her home to Watertown.”
The Boston suburb of Watertown had offered Nana a new start when she returned from San Francisco heartbroken, shamed, and penniless in 1949. Unable to pay rent or buy food, Nana relied on the generosity of her sisters and brothers.
“She was very quiet when she came back,” Nana’s sister Eleanor remembered. “She just felt bad. It was a miserable time for her, and a miserable time for the kids.”
Bounced from one house to the next, my father felt like a gypsy, a beggar. It was then, at the age of fourteen, that his bitterness against Ambrose took seed. “I’m through with him,” he told himself. “I don’t ever want to hear his name mentioned.”
The new kid at Watertown High, Ambrose’s son had two strikes against him. He was from a broken home in 1949—a time when few families dared to even talk about divorce—and he was also poor, living in an affluent town. Angry, he used his fists to quiet anyone who dared tease him.
Without money to buy winter coats, his mother stayed up till dawn knitting her sons sweaters so they would have something warm to wear to school in the morning. She also took the only job she could get, washing dishes in a small restaurant. Her boys ate dinner at the counter for free as they watched their mother in the back kitchen, bent over a sink scrubbing pots and pans. “I hate this,” her eldest son thought as he reluctantly ate his food. “Poor Ma.”
My father’s memories create pictures in my mind as I struggle to sleep in my sister’s Newburyport home. The image of my Nana’s face, her soft white curls, the scent of her perfumed Cote face powder stir fond remembrances. She was my hero, the grandmother who taught me pig Latin and to play penny poker. A storyteller, she told me and my sisters scary tales as we took walks over dark bridges or along dirt roads. Mounds of dirt became castles, tree branches transformed into the fingers of unseen ghosts. When we visited her Watertown home, she tickled us until we cried, fed us as much candy as we liked, and when it came time to leave, she could never bid us good-bye. “See you in the funny sheets,” she’d tell us. Saying good-bye brought back the memory of her mother’s death. She was four as she stood by her mother Bridget’s bed, silent and scared. “Goodbye,” her mother said with her last breath.
After her mother passed, Patricia’s father married a feisty Irish woman from County Galway, a woman who was not afraid of standing up to her husband. The last of seven children born to Tom O’Connell’s first wife, Patricia often retreated to the porch steps as her stepmother and father bickered and hollered.
“She got nervous when they shouted,” Patricia’s sister Eleanor recalled. “She was a soft, soft individual. If you’d ask her for something a second time, she’d give it. If anything went wrong, you could always go to her.”
It also was not Patricia’s nature to complain, and despite the sorrow Ambrose inflicted upon her, she never spoke a bad word about him. Yet a few months after she returned from San Francisco, she confided to Eleanor: “If there is such a place as hell, I hope he ends up there.”
“He’d probably talk his way out of it,” Eleanor quipped.
The two sisters shared a laugh over Ambrose’s ability to talk at length about any given subject.
More than fifty years later, laughter is not on my mind as I think of my grandfather and the pain he wrought on a woman who spent her life caring for others. My older sister’s words spoken hours earlier on this night return to me in the dark.
He was a bastard.
CHAPTER 9
FATHER MCGETTIGAN’S TORMENT—MARYSTOWN, LATE AUGUST 1935
Lizzie Drake started at the slam of the kitchen door.
The young woman kept her eyes focused on the potatoes in the sink as Father McGettigan pushed a chair from his path. Aye, he’s in a fine mood this evening, Lizzie muttered to herself. As the August days waned, she had noticed the priest’s demeanor growing increasingly sour. Just the other night, he’d kicked her bucket of suds over upon his return from counseling a family, parents who had lost their beloved baby to pneumonia. Lizzie had been kneeling there on the kitchen floor, scrubbing his own holy footprints, when he stormed in and upturned the water in front of her. Not a word he said to her then, nor now. Not that twenty-year-old Lizzie wanted the reverend to speak to her; she had little to say to the gruff priest. ’Tis better off there be few words among us, she thought. And with these desperate times, she knew she was lucky enough to have a bed in the parsonage attic and a bit of beef on her plate. The four dollars a month wage she received for her housekeeping and cooking duties was a bonus that she was grateful for.
Still, the priest’s presence kept the maid jittery as a boiling teakettle. She wondered if the absence of McGettigan’s dog, Jocko, had anything to do with the reverend’s foul moods. If he regretted the dog’s passing, he was likely the only one in Marystown to harbor remorse. The creature, big and black, taller than Lizzie herself when it stood on its hind paws, was worse than the devil himself, terrifying everyone that walked past the parsonage. He had attacked the poor and rich alike; tearing the coat off a well-to-do missus from the north side—a coat that the priest later paid a pretty penny to repair. And then there was the unfortunate soul, the fisherman passing by the priest’s home on his horse and cart. Jocko charged the horse, so frightening the large animal that it tumbled in the dirt, tipping the cart and tossing his master to the ground. The fisherman never recovered from his head injuries, his sufferings severe enough to render him a cripple, no longer fit to earn his living by the sea. And the worst incident of all, to be sure, involved poor Tommy Flanagan. Cornered by Jocko as he ambled past the priest’s home, the simpleminded lad grabbed a broken piece of picket fence to defend himself. His teeth bared, Jocko leaped toward Tommy’s face. Terrified, the boy struck the dog with the sharp end of the picket, unintentionally poking the animal’s eye out.
The sight of his bleeding and injured pet had outraged McGettigan, who demanded swift retribution from the local constable. “Give the boy whatever punishment the law can!” he ordered. A few days later, Lizzie and the local women watched from their kitchen windows as the sixteen-year-old youth huddled in the back of the constable’s horse cart, destined, the poor lad, for the nearby jail in Burin town. Lizzie whispered prayers as Tommy shivered in his oilskins, his only shield from the winter wind. Confused and cold, the boy would serve his two-month sentence without a clue of what prompted his confinement.
Aye, Jocko could terrorize whomever he liked, Lizzie knew, until the dog turned on the priest. Not long after Tommy served his jail time, Lizzie remembered McGettigan’s eyes, black with rage, as he dragged Jocko outside and shouted: “I want this dog drowned tonight!” She ran through the woods to fetch the priest’s handyman in the winter cold. Her heart pounding and her breath visible before her, she knocked on Billy Baker’s door. In short gasps, she explained how Jocko had bit McGettigan’s ankle after the priest tried to kick the dog’s bone from its mouth.
A longtime caretaker for the parsonage, Baker knew there was no sense in trying to convince the priest that Jocko’s demise could wait till daylight. When McGettigan made up his mind, no one but the Lord himself could change it. The handyman nodded to Lizzie and turned to grab his coat. From her attic window, Lizzie watched as the priest and Baker motored into the middle of the bay. Jocko, a water dog always eager for a boat ride, sat in the bow with a rope around his neck, the far end of
the line wound around a large rock. McGettigan held Jocko’s bone in his hand and Baker would later recount the priest’s words as the reverend tossed the dog’s treat into the deepest waters of the harbor: “Go fetch it, Jocko!”
No, the unruly animal didn’t terrorize anyone after that night, Lizzie thought. As she continued scrubbing dirt from the sink full of potatoes, the summer sun blazed red in the sky. A fine night it ’twas. Too bad his holiness was not enjoying the brilliant sunset. Himself always talking appreciating the gifts from the Lord, yet the priest was all but blind to the smell of the sea and the glimmer on the harbor bay. Lizzie knew the priest had settled in the parlor to begin his nightly bout of brooding. She heard the consistent creak of the rocking chair, a certain clue as to how the evening would play out. He’s in there alone again with his dark thoughts. Soon he would be pouring himself a glass of rum, and then she knew the night would slip away from him in a haze of liquor and smoke. Perhaps he would write some of his poetry for a bit, or read one of his books penned by that Shakespeare character he rambled on about. Lizzie knew he pined for his high-society crowd, his family, and the friends he had left behind in St. John’s. There were certainly no fine restaurants, bookstores, or high-browed plays for McGettigan to attend in Marystown. The best he could count on were the local school performances and the ceili dances at St. Gabriel’s Hall. Still, the local fishermen had little to say to the priest besides “How ye getting on, Father?” There were few folk educated past sixth grade aside from some of the local merchants, Dr. Harris, and the constable.
Of course, then there was Capt’n Paddy, whom the priest had grown close to. The pair of them got on famously despite Mr. Paddy’s scant years of school learning. But whatever the skipper lacked in books smarts, he made up for with his brawn and fearsome talent at sea. McGettigan dined at Paddy’s grand home many Sundays, but the skipper was often on his schooner more than he was on land, leaving the priest alone to stew in his morose moods. Yet, on those lonesome nights, there had always been Jocko to comfort the reverend. The two of them had sat there before the roaring fire for hours, McGettigan rocking in his chair with a glass of rum by his side and the dog stretched out before him on the rug. Surely the old fellow missed his scoundrel of a dog. Did the reverend feel a twinge of guilt for drowning his loyal companion? Sure now, even if he harbored remorse, the priest could absolve himself for killing the animal. He could offer himself absolution for just about anything now couldn’t he?
Lizzie heard the chair stop rocking and quickly pushed her musings from her mind. She listened closely for more hints to the priest’s intentions. God forbid his holiness’s dinner was late.
In the parlor, McGettigan stood and reached for the glass decanter on the table before him. He poured himself a generous amount of the amber-colored rum and sat back down in his rocker. Taking a sip from his glass, he drew in the scent of the sweet liquor he purchased from the nearby French island of St. Pierre. ’Tis at least one benefit to living in this isolated outport, the priest thought. Rubbing his temples, McGettigan sighed. Dusk had not settled in on the shores outside, yet he could easily retire to bed for the night. Over the last few months, a deepening fatigue had overcome the middle-aged priest, a leaden feeling he could not seem to shake. Was it the summer heat, McGettigan wondered, or thoughts of the long winter ahead? No, the priest knew it was more than the frigid temperatures that froze the bay over into thick sheets of ice. On Sunday mornings, he could hardly bear to look down upon Marystown’s families as he preached from the pulpit. They sat, the men, women, and children, in the wooden benches looking to him for hope, for guidance from God, for a sign that soon things would get better; that they would have something more than turnips and potatoes for dinner, that soon the fish prices would rise again like they had before these miserable times had emptied their cupboards and forced them to live like their ancestors in Ireland: desperate and hungry, with no chance of a future, no belief of a better tomorrow.
Ah, how could he expect anyone to listen to his sermons, about the love of God, the fear of the Almighty, when their stomachs rumbled and ached from the emptiness? He saw it in the fishermen’s eyes, their defiant glares, the anger and resentment of working so hard for so little. Even his good friend Paddy, who was never troubled by anything a’tall, appeared worn down, burdened by his mounting debt. McGettigan had done his best over the past nine years to bolster the spirits of his parish and to grow the community as well as the economics allowed. He had brought in the Sisters of Mercy to better school the children; he had built a new parish hall and a new school. He had counseled and chastened Marystown’s wayward sinners, broken up more fights than he cared to count, married young and naïve couples, and baptized innumerable babies. In return, the village men and women offered him what they could: spare vegetables, an odd chicken or two, a bucket of milk, a few pennies in the collection box. From the start of his appointment at Sacred Heart Church in 1926, McGettigan had admired the determination of Marystown’s men and women, how they made do with so little, how they kept their pride despite their tattered clothes and humble homes. But by the mid-1930s, the will and fortitude of the fishing community slipped away like the tide; despair and death shrouded the outport like the smell of fish that hovered incessantly in the parsonage meadow.
In recent years, he anointed holy oil on the foreheads of far too many of Marystown’s young and old, parents and children, their malnourished bodies succumbing to epidemics of tuberculosis and pneumonia, typhoid and diphtheria; diseases that routed the small village like a blighted crop. McGettigan murmured the prayers of the Extreme Unction over their bodies in their final hours. The scent of the sweet balsam oil and the voices of weeping mothers returned to him now as he uttered the Latin words that had become so familiar to him: “Per istam sanctam unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid deliquisti. Through this Holy Unction and through the great goodness of His mercy, may God pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed.”
There was nothing more horrible than counseling the mothers who lost their babies to the illnesses that killed the tiny souls with swift vengeance. He would rather fend off the Black and Tans, as he did in Dublin during his seminary days at All Hallows, than listen to the wails of the grieving mothers. Their shrieks haunted him at night when he tried to sleep; he tossed and turned, willing himself to forget their screams, to conjure instead the shouts of the Black and Tans, the British auxiliary soldiers who had marched onto the fields surrounding the Irish seminary. Aye, he’d fight a dozen of the Black and Tans again on the soil of Drumconda, rather than meet the eyes of a child who understood he would never grow old.
Across the narrow swath of bay, children’s voices cut through the quiet night air, echoing across the water; their singsong words and joyful cries carried through the meadow and into the open parlor window, pulling the priest from his grim thoughts. McGettigan stood and turned to the thick panes of glass and focused his gaze on Paddy’s wharf. Across the inlet, the skipper’s young sons, Frankie and Jerome, ran toward the deck of Annie Anita. Their small duffle bags dwarfed their thin frames as they climbed on board with their gear. Further along the pier, McGettigan spied Paddy’s broad silhouette as the skipper walked to his sons.
The priest knew the skipper planned to depart not long after midnight this evening. McGettigan took in the sight of Frankie’s slight frame. The boy now stood quietly, perhaps fretting over his seasickness and his fear of the water. Ah, the priest thought, the lad would gladly stay on land for the rest of his life, if it was not for the shame of being a sissy, a lass who could not weather the sea like his father and grandfather before him.
McGettigan watched as Paddy’s eldest son, James, stepped on board the Annie Anita, joining his family on deck. The slender young man squared his shoulders as he looked up to his father’s eyes. Paddy placed an arm around James’s shoulder and drew him close, offering him words, advice the priest figured, guidance about the sea and the fish to be caught
beneath the shoal water. McGettigan knew this journey, James’s first as a captain, would set the course for the young man’s future, and there was no son more eager to prove himself and earn his father’s pride. But what a father to live up to, McGettigan thought. How does a son measure up to a fearsome legend like Paddy? Big boots to fill, my son, McGettigan whispered. Big boots, indeed. May God watch after you all. Fair winds to ye.
From the kitchen table, Lizzie peeked through the parlor door. She glimpsed the priest’s profile in the window, the serious look beneath his spectacles. She could hear Paddy’s laughter across the bay, and she knew that it was the skipper who had captured the priest’s attention. Aye, the captain would soon be off, and then the priest would miss his weekly card game and laughter with Paddy. ’Twould be no one around to distract the reverend from his gloomy thoughts. She’d make herself scarce this week, she would. She didn’t want to have another bucket of suds upturned on her. No, indeed. She’d leave the priest alone with his moods and his fierce temper. No telling what he’d do in the next fortnight if he had to bury more of Marystown’s young and old. No, McGettigan, she knew, could not bear to counsel another woman keening over a dead child or a lost spouse.
Another tragedy, Lizzie reckoned, would drive him mad.
CHAPTER 10
PICTURES OF THE PAST—MAINE, JUNE 2003
I had never seen my grandfather’s eyes. Never glimpsed his face. I had never even considered what Ambrose looked like. Now on this summer morning, I stare at a photograph of my grandfather, mesmerized. For several long minutes, I take in every detail: his tanned skin, thick brows, his dark eyes, broad smile. This is Ambrose. This is my grandfather.
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