Saints for All Occasions

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  He knew that his mother was a bigger Red Sox fan than any of the guys he had grown up with, the kind who preferred to watch the games at home alone. When John and Julia threw a party for a Saturday game, Nora would go along, make the pasta salad and the brownies. But she got irritated when people talked over the announcers. She didn’t like anyone to see how much it mattered to her, how she kneaded her hands together until they were red, how she said Hail Marys under her breath. She believed in ridiculous superstitions. Once David Ortiz hit a home run in the eighth inning while Brian was standing in the doorway to the den, saying good-bye to her before he left for work. She commanded him not to move from that spot until the game was over.

  He didn’t need to know any more than that, and he would never go looking.

  “They said on the weather that it might snow in the morning,” John said.

  Brian remembered something, and for once he said it out loud, as a defense of Nora, maybe. He wanted to remind them of what was good in her.

  “Did Mom stay up late with you guys listening to the school cancellations when you were kids?” he said. “I remember sitting right here, and she’d make hot chocolate and the two of us would both pray out loud for the word Hull to get mentioned. When it did, that meant movies on the VCR and pancakes in the morning.”

  Bridget looked at him and then at John, who shook his head, laughing.

  “Sometimes I swear you were raised by another mother than we were,” she said.

  John nodded. “A mother who actually liked you.”

  —

  They ran out of beer by three.

  “There’s Baileys and whiskey and gin in the liquor cabinet,” Brian said.

  Bridget said, “Liquor before beer, you’re in the clear. Beer before liquor, never been sicker. Words of wisdom from the old man. Don’t say he never taught us anything.”

  She was already getting up to retrieve the whiskey.

  “I wish it wasn’t too late to order a pizza,” John said.

  “The fridge is full of food,” Bridget said.

  “I hate all those sympathy casseroles. That Shake ’n Bake shit.”

  “Well, there’s always Julia’s Brie.”

  “I hate that shit even more.”

  Bridget poured them each a drink.

  “He seems to have a little less stick up his ass than usual,” she said to Brian, nodding toward John. “Maybe that’s Patrick working his magic from the other side.”

  “Maybe so,” John said. “Or maybe it’s the forty-seven drinks I’ve had.”

  The other side. Brian wondered in earnest where Patrick was. He knew his mother believed in heaven, thought of it as an actual physical place in the sky.

  “Sláinte,” they said. “To Patrick.”

  The clear, simple sound of their glasses clinking together stirred something in Brian. It was a thread, connecting every wedding and wake and celebration of his life, Patrick there for all of it.

  “I want to say something,” Bridget said, clearing her throat. “Just once. I know neither of you will want to hear it, and I’d never say it to Mom, but—do you think he did it on purpose?”

  “No,” Brian said.

  She went on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Let’s face it. Pat drove better drunk than sober.”

  “Absolutely not,” Brian said, louder this time. He added, “He had tickets to the Beanpot next month,” as if this proved something.

  Bridget wasn’t the first to say it. It had come up at the bar last night. He and Fergie were both quick to shut down even the suggestion. That wasn’t Patrick. It just wasn’t.

  Brian looked over at John. He was crying. He didn’t think he’d ever seen John cry before.

  “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I think I know what happened,” John said. “Do you want to know about it?”

  “Of course,” Bridget said. “Tell us!”

  Brian felt nervous. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to know.

  When someone in the family died, they learned more about that person than they ever had before. It seemed unfair, since the dead were no longer there to answer for what they’d done. He didn’t want to put Patrick in that position.

  “It was my fault,” John said.

  “How could it be your fault?” Bridget said gently. “You can’t blame yourself because you two weren’t getting along. That’s not enough to—”

  “No. Wait. Listen to me. There was this article in the Globe on Sunday.”

  Brian froze. He knew what John was about to say.

  “Rory McClain helped this kid he knew from Dorchester. A total mess, caught up in heroin and all that. The guy went blind in high school. He got attacked. Rory always felt bad for him. So Rory calls me today and he says Patrick is the one who did it. The one who blinded the kid. There was some kind of fight. Do you believe that?”

  “That he blinded someone and we never knew?” Bridget said. “No.”

  “No,” Brian repeated, relieved that that had been her answer. But he was thinking of the way Pat had acted at the bar on Sunday when the article came up.

  “Bridget, it was right before we moved here,” John said. “You remember how strange that all was?”

  He wiped tears from his eyes. “Rory seemed to think the article might have set something off in Pat. And I’m the reason it was there in the first place. I pushed them to run it. I begged. I’m not saying he did it on purpose. But maybe that’s why he drank so much that night. Or maybe he always drank that much, but it had him distracted and he missed something in the road, swerved just a second too late.”

  Bridget shook her head. Brian could tell she was concerned for John now, most of all. She looked to him. “Did Pat say anything about this article?”

  Their eyes were on Brian, John’s so full of hope.

  “No,” Brian said. “He only ever read the Herald.”

  The color came back into John’s face.

  “Thank God,” he said. He put his head on the table.

  Was it true, what Rory McClain had said? Brian didn’t want to believe it. He decided on the spot that he wouldn’t, he didn’t.

  They might never know what happened. They would each go forward, seeing it in their own ways, just as they did with all the other secrets they had chosen to share or not share with one another. He hoped Patrick had just been so drunk that he drifted off to sleep, and that despite what happened, he had somehow managed to never wake up.

  “I’d better go to bed,” John said. “I need to get up early and finish the eulogy.”

  He swallowed his drink and stood, throwing his head back. “I’m drunk,” he said. He sounded genuinely surprised.

  John stumbled out, and then upstairs. Brian and Bridget watched him go.

  Bridget pushed her chair back. “I’m gonna head up too, kiddo. I’ve got to buy something online.”

  “For the shelter?” he said.

  “Nah.” She looked like she was about to say more and then thought better of it.

  “You should come up soon yourself,” she said.

  “I will.”

  She paused in the doorway. “Did you see how the nun touched his hair?” she asked, more to herself than to him.

  Rocco followed her from the room.

  After she had gone, Brian sat alone. His glass was empty, but for a half-moon of brown liquid clinging to the bottom edge. He knew he shouldn’t have any more, that if he did, he’d be unbearably hungover in the morning. But he poured himself one last small glass of Jameson.

  Maybe it wasn’t fair to compare, but he thought he missed Patrick more than his brother and sister did. He and Nora had loved Patrick the most. The other two had families, lives. Bridget would have a baby soon. He wondered if this would make his mother happy.

  Brian had built his life around Patrick. What would he do now, who would he become?

  He downed the whiskey in one swallow, then poured a tiny bit more.

  After the wake, Julia and Maeve had gathered all the framed
photographs and put them in a box. Brian got to his feet and found it in the hall. He took the frame on the top of the pile. Patrick’s school photo. Fifth or sixth grade.

  Brian carried it up to his room.

  He turned on the light, stood in front of the mirror. His reflection looked troublingly normal.

  One of Nora’s favorite sayings was, “What would you have today if you woke up with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?” He wondered now if this had been a warning that he was too foolish to grasp.

  Patrick had said that when he died, he wanted to be cremated, his ashes tossed into Boston Harbor from the back of a sailboat. Nora wouldn’t allow it. She said real Catholics didn’t get cremated. Brian had to stop himself from asking why she thought of Patrick as a real Catholic. But then, he was grateful too, that he would know where to find his brother.

  Patrick would be buried tomorrow in the plot where their father lay. Would Brian visit him, the way his mother visited the dead, as if she were going to meet them for lunch? She swept the gravestones and left flowers and talked to the people lying beneath her feet. He thought he understood this now.

  It was amazing that you did not become your grief entirely, and walk around leaking it everywhere. It could lie dormant inside you for days, weeks, years. You could seem a perfectly whole person to everyone you met. Without warning, grief might poke you in the ribs, punch you in the gut, knock the wind out of you. But even then, you seemed just fine. The world went on and on.

  Part Eight

  2009

  22

  BRIDGET REACHED OUT in the darkness, fumbled for the lamp. Her hand slammed against a wall.

  Objects in the room came into focus. Slowly she remembered that she was home at her mother’s house. They would bury her brother today.

  Natalie was asleep beside her, the pair of them crammed onto a twin mattress.

  Bridget stretched her neck, her lower back. The time spent in her childhood bed had left her sore. The booze hadn’t helped. She felt like she had been hit between the eyes with a hammer. A thick, mossy taste hung in her mouth.

  The sheets were flannel, a red and black plaid, pilled from wear. She had kicked them off in the night. They were too warm. Sheets for the season, which along with all the others in the house, would be replaced by a light cotton set in spring, even without the promise of anyone to fill the beds. Only faith on her mother’s part that something, soon enough, would lead them all back again.

  Bridget looked up at the ceiling and then at the clock. It was just after seven. She had only gone to bed four hours ago.

  She considered going back to sleep, but the dog, hearing her move about, began to whine. She sat up, put her feet on the floor.

  “All right,” she said. “A quick one.”

  She stood and pulled a sweatshirt and jeans from the floor, then her coat, which hung on the top corner of the closet door.

  At first, she didn’t want to wake Natalie. But she was too excited to wait. Bridget kissed her cheek, and when Natalie moaned in protest, she whispered, “I got you a present.”

  Natalie smiled. She extended her hands without opening her eyes.

  “I didn’t wrap it,” Bridget said. “Though in my defense, it’s almost six feet tall. A hundred and seventy-five pounds.”

  Natalie was suddenly wide awake. “You bought the International Archeologist?”

  “The full supply.”

  “So we’re doing this,” Natalie said.

  “We’re doing it.”

  They kissed and they hugged and then Bridget told her to get some sleep. She and Rocco left the room. She closed the door gently behind her.

  —

  After her mother threw everyone out last night, Bridget had followed her upstairs. She knocked at Nora’s bedroom.

  “It’s me,” she said when Nora didn’t respond. “Can I come in?”

  Again, there was only silence.

  She opened the door anyway and found her mother sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at her hands in her lap.

  “Do you want anything?” Bridget said. “A glass of water? A shot of tequila?”

  She meant the last part as a joke, but Nora just looked at her as if trying to recall who she was.

  “Would you get me another box of tissues?” she said finally. “In the linen closet in the hall.”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  Bridget went to it, opened the door. Her mother had seventeen bars of Ivory soap. Ten red boxes of Colgate in two neat stacks. An unopened twelve-pack of toilet paper. When something went on sale, Nora bought ten. Usually when Bridget visited, she would ask right away, Do you need Ziploc bags? Do you need toothpaste? In her entire life, she had never run out of anything. It was an accomplishment.

  Three boxes of Kleenex sat beside a tiny white cube, shrink-wrapped. Bridget recognized it as something Julia had given her mother for Christmas two or three years ago.

  When she unwrapped it, Nora made no expression.

  “That’s great stuff,” Julia had said. “Crème de la Mer. Movie stars swear by it.”

  “Eighty-five bucks for half an ounce,” John said. “I’m pretty sure heroin is cheaper.”

  “It’s a splurge,” Julia said, shooting him a look. “Every woman deserves one of those now and then.”

  Nora held the box out to her. “You should return this. Buy something for yourself.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Julia said. “Enjoy it.”

  “It’s a waste of money. I’ll never use it,” Nora said.

  Apparently she had remained faithful to her word and carried on rubbing Vaseline into her dry cheeks and forehead on principle.

  Bridget returned to her mother’s room. Nora had gotten under the covers, turned off the light.

  Bridget didn’t think she was crying. Her mother wouldn’t, in front of anyone. The request for Kleenex was startling enough.

  “Do you want to talk?”

  “I just want to sleep,” Nora said. She sounded like a terrified child.

  “If you want to talk about any of it, Mom, I’m here. Okay?”

  “All right.”

  Bridget squeezed her hand.

  As she turned to leave, Nora called out her name.

  “Yes?”

  Bridget wondered if this was the moment when her mother would say that she knew, that she loved her. Or maybe Nora wanted her to confess the truth.

  Before she could give it another moment’s thought, Nora said softly, “I can hear them loading the dishwasher down there. Please just make sure they know to clean the good china by hand.”

  —

  The house was still. The only sounds were the sounds of morning beginning outside.

  Bridget went into the hall, surprised to find her mother’s bedroom door shut. Nora was usually up by now; the coffee made, bacon sputtering in a frying pan. Bridget was happy she was still asleep, that she was able to sleep at all.

  On her way to the stairs, she passed John’s old room, the door ajar. John and Maeve and Julia were crowded onto an air mattress that covered the entire floor. The single bed was neatly made, a Larry Bird poster hanging above it, a plain wooden cross on the opposite wall. In the dresser, there were probably socks that had lost their form, and T-shirts, maybe an old pair of jeans. Things John no longer wanted but would never throw away because there was no need to. This house would hold their pasts as long as Nora was in it.

  She had never thought to turn their bedrooms into a study or a guest room but had instead left them perfectly preserved, just as they’d been when they moved away. Their rooms were like the rooms of the dead, monuments to another time.

  Bridget looked into Brian’s room. The smell of cologne hovered in the air, only partly covering the stink of dirty laundry. A dartboard hung on the wall. Grade-school trophies and bobbleheads of Red Sox past lined the windowsills. He had not transformed the space with age, only added to what was already there—a queen-sized bed instead of a single, but with the same
old camouflage comforter. A big-screen TV on the bureau, wedged between a CD player and boxes of baseball cards in plastic sleeves. The room was meant for a child and could barely contain all this. It was as if Brian’s life had unfolded on itself and he was lost in the middle somewhere.

  On the far wall, there was a small Indians pennant, the top corner flopped over in a way that depressed her. Her mother still had Indians-themed potholders in a drawer downstairs, an Indians bottle opener. There was a stack of ten or fifteen ball caps in the cellar, which her parents used to buy and give out to anyone who came over, as if they’d gotten them for free. Our son is on the team, they’d brag to the cable guy, or the man who came to check the gas meter.

  Bridget wondered if it caused Brian pain, having to see these objects again and again. It was so easy to get mired in the past if you didn’t yank yourself out for dear life.

  Nora had liked them best, Bridget thought, when they were children. She imagined Nora, after they had gone, walking up the steep staircase to Patrick’s room in the attic. Facing what remained of him there.

  Bridget went downstairs. She put on a hat, coat, and gloves. Still, when she opened the door, the cold hit her like an object, something solid and hard. There was a sharp, crisp scent to the air. Her mother would have said it smelled like snow.

  Nora’s car wasn’t in the driveway. She wondered where her mother would have gone at this hour. To the church, maybe. Or to O’Dell’s, which wouldn’t be open yet, just to be close to him.

  She led the dog down the hill, past all the familiar houses of her childhood. She followed the curve of the street until she reached the bottom, where the houses sat right on the water. Betty Joyce’s house was dark. At Eileen Delaney’s, just the kitchen light was on.

  As she walked, she thought of her mother, and of the sister Nora had never mentioned before yesterday. Now, at her worst moment, Nora wanted her back. Or some part of her did, anyway. Bridget thought of her family in terms of what they didn’t know about her. She had rarely wondered about the mysteries they harbored. How could you be this close, be a family, and yet be so unknown to one another?