The Season of Us

by Holly Chamberlin

  CHAPTER 3

  At eight that evening, Gincy grit her teeth and called her mother. Mrs. Gannon answered after four rings of the landline.

  “Mom,” Gincy said. “It’s me.”

  “Who?” Mrs. Gannon asked. Her voice sounded weak.

  She’s not being difficult, Gincy realized with some surprise. She really doesn’t know who I am.

  “It’s Gincy, Mom,” she said, a bit more loudly in case her mother simply hadn’t heard her the first time.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Gannon said. “Hello, Virginia. Why are you calling? Has something happened? Is Tamsin all right?”

  Gincy couldn’t miss the note of real anxiety in her mother’s voice. She couldn’t remember ever hearing it before, not even when Tommy was arrested for petty theft back when he was sixteen. “Everything’s okay, Mom,” she said. “Nothing’s happened. We’re all doing well. I just thought I’d call.”

  “Oh.”

  “How are you, Mom?” Gincy asked. “Is everything okay there?”

  “Everything is fine,” Mrs. Gannon said. “Though . . .”

  “Though what, Mom?”

  “The roof could use fixing. I think. At least that’s what your father said, and he handled all of those things.... But I just don’t know.”

  “Is there a leak, Mom?” Gincy asked. “Is water coming through the ceiling anywhere?” Tommy hadn’t said anything about a leaking roof, but maybe he simply didn’t know about it.

  “Has something happened?” Ellen asked again, ignoring Gincy’s question, her voice quavering. “Is Tamsin hurt? Is it Justin?”

  Gincy took a deep breath. Something was definitely, seriously wrong. Tommy had been right to call her. “Everyone is fine, Mom,” she said in what she hoped was a reassuring voice. “I’m sorry to have called so late. Why don’t we talk again tomorrow, all right?”

  “Yes, Virginia, all right. Good-bye.”

  And Ellen Gannon hung up before her daughter could also say a farewell.

  Gincy immediately called Tommy on his cell phone. He answered right away, as if he had been waiting for her call.

  “Gince? What did she say?” Tommy asked.

  “She said exactly what I expected her to say, that everything is fine. Of course, I don’t believe her. Look, I’m coming up tomorrow,” she told him. “But don’t say anything to Mom.”

  “Why not?” Tommy asked.

  “Just don’t, please, Tommy.”

  “Okay.”

  “And Tommy?” she said. “Do you know about any leaks at Mom’s house? She said something about the roof needing repair.”

  “I haven’t seen any leaks,” Tommy said. “But I wasn’t looking for any, I guess.”

  “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, Tommy.”

  “Good night, Gince,” he said. “And thanks again.”

  Rick was already asleep when Gincy climbed into bed next to him some time later, a magazine open on his chest, his reading glasses still on his nose. Carefully, Gincy removed the glasses and put the magazine on her own nightstand. She wished she could talk to her husband about the conversation with her mother and what she was planning, but that would have to wait until morning.

  Gincy leaned back against the pillows. She was nervous about this visit home to Appleville, there was no denying it. And she hoped that Tommy would keep his promise not to tell their mother she was coming. If Ellen Gannon knew that her daughter was planning to visit and why, she might very well refuse to have her; she was famous for having a very wide stubborn streak and a sometimes overly large sense of pride. And even if her mother did agree to a visit, Gincy preferred the advantage of surprise so that she could see what was really going on in the house on Crescent Road.

  She glanced at her bedside clock. It was already closing in on eleven. Time to get some sleep. Gincy leaned down and kissed Rick good night, careful not to wake him. Then she turned out the light on her nightstand and tried to mentally prepare herself for whatever tomorrow would bring.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next morning Gincy packed her overnight bag, iPhone, and laptop and prepared for a trip to Appleville. Although she was reluctant to take unscheduled time off work, she was confident that her excellent assistant could handle things for a few days without her.

  Tamsin, on her Christmas break from school, insisted on coming along, and while Gincy appreciated her daughter’s offer and had no doubt as to its sincerity, she still thought Tamsin was a little bit nuts. What kind of fifteen-year-old girl, and a social and popular one at that, would choose to spend her precious Christmas vacation with her often cantankerous grandmother rather than with her BFFs, ice-skating, shopping for stuff they didn’t need, and going to holiday blockbuster movies?

  A really nice fifteen-year-old girl, Gincy thought. A girl with a big heart. A daughter any parent would be proud of.

  Rick saw them to the door of the loft.

  “Do you have the case for your retainer?” he asked Tamsin.

  “Yup,” she said. “And I even remembered to pack my phone charger!”

  “Let me know if you need me to join you,” Rick said to his wife. “You’re not the only one with a competent assistant and a well-oiled staff. The office can live without me for a day or two.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Gincy said, hoping that would prove to be true. “I can handle my mother.”

  “I promise to let you know if we need your help, Dad,” Tamsin said. “You know how Mom can be around Grandma.”

  Rick frowned. “I know all too well.”

  “I’m right here, you two,” Gincy protested. “I can hear you. And how am I around my mother, anyway?”

  “Impatient,” Tamsin said.

  “Rude,” Rick added. “Argumentative. But only sometimes.”

  He wisely closed the door to the loft, and Gincy’s reply was drowned out by the clanging of the jingle bell.

  * * *

  Gincy glanced over at her daughter. Tamsin was wearing earbuds and listening to who knew what ridiculous music. Today’s pop music culture, what little Gincy felt compelled to know of it in order to keep an eye on what might be influencing her child, left her feeling slightly queasy. Maybe all fifty-year-olds viewed the popular culture of the younger generations with disdain. But seriously, how could you have any respect for lyrics with rhymes as bad as lover and smother, angel and fundamental, heart and die-hard? The real poets would turn in their graves. And songs about girls allowing their underarm hair to grow? What was the world coming to?

  Yikes, Gincy thought. I’ve become my mother. The thought was unsettling for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that she had spent a good deal of her adult life purposely distancing herself from what she saw as every negative personality trait her mother displayed, like her fondness for gossip—to be fair, Ellen was never malicious, and sometimes even Gincy, who claimed to hate gossip, found herself listening excitedly to a colleague’s whispered stories of scandal—or whatever narrow-minded opinion her mother held, like her complete distrust of the Internet and microwaves and any gadget more complicated than the toaster. Though again, to be fair, there were moments when Gincy herself was convinced that the devil was behind the ridiculously unstable WiFi service in her home.

  And she had distanced herself from her mother physically, too. Maybe she should have gone home at least once after her father’s funeral but she hadn’t been invited and there had been no distress calls until Tommy’s call the day before, and without the benefit of getting to spend time with her father, the incentive just wasn’t there.

  Gincy realized that she had sighed aloud. She was still processing the fact that Ed Gannon would pay no more visits to his family in Boston. There would be no more walks through the Public Gardens and no more meals at the Daily Catch, her father’s favorite restaurant in the North End. And there would no more visits to old cemeteries in the city and as far away as Lexington and Concord. Gincy and her father loved old cemeteries. Tamsin thought her mother a
nd grandfather were ghoulish.

  “Everyone there is dead,” she would say. “It’s depressing.”

  To which her grandfather would reply, “Your mother and I aren’t dead. And we go there to acknowledge that those people were once alive. I’m sure it makes them feel good.”

  Tamsin had never been convinced.

  “It’s a break from Mom,” Gincy would tell Rick every time her father visited, which was usually three or four times a year—not that she needed to apologize for his presence or to ask her husband’s permission for him to be there. “The poor guy needs a rest from her constant criticizing, and he badly needs a decent meal. You’ve had my mother’s three bean casserole.”

  To which Rick would grimace and reply, “And barely survived to tell the tale.”

  It was interesting, Gincy thought, that not once in all those years had her father ever engaged in conversation about Tommy. All he would say when she asked what her brother was up to was, “Well, you know how he is,” or “Well, you know Tommy.” Ed Gannon believed that if you didn’t have something nice to say about someone, you should say nothing at all. Not for the first time, Gincy wondered why so often she couldn’t seem to follow that simple rule of behavior.

  Above all, be kind. If those exact words weren’t in the Bible as one of the Commandments, Gincy thought, they should be. Do unto others what you would have them do unto you, and above all, be kind.

  Suddenly, the car in the left lane sped up and darted in front of Gincy’s Volvo. With some effort she refrained from shouting a particularly nasty word. Though plugged in to her music, Tamsin still might be able to hear her mother, and Gincy tried—she really did—to set a good example. She shot another glance at her daughter and thought it likely that Tamsin hadn’t even noticed that they had been cut off by a lunatic in a Mazda. She was mouthing the no doubt silly lyrics of whatever song she was listening to, probably something to do with hookups and breakups, oblivious to the world around her.

  Tamsin would be getting her driver’s permit before long, and Tamsin behind the wheel of a car was not a thought to inspire confidence in her mother. She was a smart kid, just not always the most focused. Rick didn’t share his wife’s fears to anywhere near the same extent. “Learning how to drive is a step toward her eventual independence,” he would say. “We went through it with Justin. The whole point of raising a child is to give them all the tools they need to live successfully on their own. The whole point is to let them go.”

  That well might be, Gincy thought, spotting the reckless driver several cars ahead, but Tamsin was only a sophomore. She had no intention of even thinking about letting Tamsin “go” until she was well out of high school. Maybe college.

  And there was a thought. To this day Gincy didn’t know for sure if her father had graduated from high school. She had assumed he had, but when she was about twelve some family member had hinted that Ed Gannon had not earned a high school diploma. It had mattered once to Gincy, the thought that her father’s education had, for whatever reason, been cut short. What great things might he have done if he had completed his schooling? And then, over time, it had ceased to matter. She had never sought out the truth, and she never would. Not having completed the twelfth grade hadn’t prevented Ed Gannon from being a good father and a good grandfather.

  Justin had certainly taken to him right from the start, and as Rick was admittedly dangerous around power tools, the handy Ed had become for Justin a sort of Mr. Fix It Hero. Justin had learned so much from his grandfather over the years, and not only about woodworking and basic electrical wiring. He had learned the importance of finishing what you started. He had learned how to be generous with his time and attention, a lesson his father had reinforced.

  Tamsin, too, had adored her grandfather, and not only because he spoiled her with a new teddy bear for her collection each time he saw her. They had enjoyed reading storybooks together, and going to the movies, and eating hot dogs at Red Sox games. Gincy couldn’t remember her father ever holding her hand when she was small, though he certainly might have. But he always held Tamsin’s hand when they went out together, even when Tamsin became a teen.

  It was a bit surprising to Gincy that her children cared as much as they did for their grandmother, because they saw her far less often than they did their grandfather; not once in all the years of Ed’s excursions to Boston had she ever accompanied him. She hadn’t even attended her daughter’s wedding in Boston, and though that had hurt Gincy badly, more than her pride had let anyone but Rick know, she had eventually allowed a scar to form over that wound. Her father, she remembered, had been embarrassed by his wife’s absence—“She really would like to be here,” he had told Gincy repeatedly, “but you know how frightened she is of the city,” almost pleading for her to understand and accept this explanation as truth. And it was largely for his sake that she had indeed come to accept—if not to understand—her mother’s behavior. This attitude of acceptance had helped her when Ellen Gannon later failed to visit her granddaughter when she was born or to see her grandson graduate with honors from college.

  Not, of course, that her mother would ever admit to a genuine fear of the city. No, she preferred to explain her absences from important family events as a result of her never having had any use for cities. Those were her words. “I have no use for cities.” In fact, she had boasted to Gincy that she had never stepped foot in any place larger than the neighboring town of Crescentville that had a whopping population of ten thousand. Cities were dirty and dangerous and loud and ugly. It was no good pointing out all the benefits of living in an urban center, like access to museums, and the availability of foods of various cultures, and free concerts in the parks, and great shopping opportunities, and the visual interest of different architectural styles. Ellen Gannon was having none of it.

  Gincy recalled a particularly memorable exchange she had had with her mother many years in the past. It certainly hadn’t qualified as a conversation; there had been no give-and-take of ideas.

  Mrs. Gannon: “I don’t know how you can live in that place. Murderers around every corner, and who knows what else. Rats on the sidewalk, just walking along like they own the place.”

  Gincy: “Mom, I’ve been living in Boston since I was seventeen and I haven’t been murdered yet. Or attacked by a strolling rat.”

  Mrs. Gannon, ominously: “There’s always a first time, Virginia.”

  “Mom,” Tamsin said. She had removed her earbuds. “You’re making a weird face.”

  “I’m thinking of the strolling rats again.”

  “Did Grandma really say that?”

  “The strolling part is mine,” Gincy admitted with a smile.

  “So you really think Uncle Tommy is right, that there’s something wrong with Grandma?”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  Tamsin sighed. “I can’t imagine how sad I’d feel if my husband died. I mean, how many years were they married?”

  “About fifty-five years.”

  “Yikes,” Tamsin said. “I can’t even imagine living that long!”

  “You do know that your father is going to be fifty-seven soon, don’t you?”

  “I know. Ancient!”

  Fifty-five years together . . . You often heard of elderly couples dying within months of each other. The surviving husband or wife simply couldn’t bear to live without the beloved spouse. But that couldn’t be the case here, Gincy thought. Her parents had not had a great marriage. She wasn’t even sure her mother had liked her father, let alone loved him. If Ellen Gannon wasn’t criticizing her husband about the most minor things—“You brought home the wrong-size grapefruit, Ed. I asked for small grapefruits and these are clearly medium”—she was bossing him around. “Ed, the garage needs to be cleaned immediately, and while you’re at it you can get to those weeds that need digging up.”

  For the life of her Gincy couldn’t recall her mother ever doing something really nice for her husband, like the things she di
d for Rick—bringing home a bouquet of his favorite flowers for no other reason than that they were his favorite, or going with him to a hockey game when his buddy couldn’t make it, even though she hated hockey like the plague. It was the little sacrifices that helped make a life lived together worthwhile.

  No, Gincy thought, if curmudgeonly Ellen Gannon was dying of a broken heart, then she, Gincy Gannon-Luongo, was the Queen of Sheba. And that, Gincy thought, glancing down at her L.L.Bean boots, wool peacoat, and old chinos, was highly unlikely.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Welcome to Appleville,” Tamsin read aloud. “Incorporated in 1842. Wow. That’s a long time ago.”

  “Not so long compared to lots of other towns in New England.”

  “Still, it’s cool. History, I mean. It must be fun living in a historic town. You’d probably run into a ghost!”

  “You live in a historic city,” Gincy pointed out. “You can’t beat Boston for historic drama. And I’m sure the place is full of ghosts, if such things exist.”

  And Gincy suddenly recalled another exchange that seemed to have taken place endlessly in the first years she was living in Boston.

  Mrs. Gannon: “I’ll never understand why you had to turn your back on all this and go off to Boston, of all places.”

  Gincy: “What did I turn my back on, Mom? Monster car rallies? Rock-throwing contests? Dog fights?”

  Mrs. Gannon: “Don’t exaggerate, Virginia. There haven’t been dog fights in Appleville in ten years.”

  Okay, maybe her mother had said fifty or even one hundred years, but the point was the same. Ellen Gannon couldn’t understand why her daughter had left Appleville. Gincy Gannon couldn’t understand why her mother had stayed.

  As if reading Gincy’s mind, Tamsin said, “I don’t know why you always talk so negatively about your hometown. Really, Mom, Appleville is so pretty. I mean, there’s a gazebo on the town green and little white churches with bell towers. There’s an old-fashioned ice-cream parlor, which, by the way, I want to go to again. There are chirping birds all over the place, and everybody’s got a cute dog. Well, almost everybody. Who’s that man who lives around the corner from Grandma, the one with the shaggy dog that barks like crazy at everyone? Anyway, Appleville is, like, out of a storybook or a movie. What’s so bad?”