“Same here,” Ellen said while Mary Pat opted for iced tea.
They busied themselves with the menus, making occasional comments about the relative caloric content of lasagna as opposed to fettuccine Alfredo until Deirdre put down her menu and said, “Who are we kidding? Let’s order one of everything,” and they shared their first real laugh since they pulled into Mary Pat’s driveway hours ago.
The waitress arrived with their drinks, their breadsticks, and a salad bowl the size of a VW.
“It’s a bottomless salad bowl, right?” Deirdre asked the waitress, then scowled when Ellen and Mary Pat laughed again. “I just wanted to make sure.”
Mary Pat lifted her glass of iced tea. “Slainte!”
“Slainte!” she said.
“Slainte!” Ellen chimed in.
They touched glasses.
“Do you remember the first time Billy took us out to dinner together?” Mary Pat ripped open a blue packet of Equal and emptied the contents into her glass.
“That little Italian restaurant near the Five Corners!” Deirdre started serving up the salad.
“He ordered squid because he thought we all needed to develop more sophisticated palates,” Ellen remembered. “Dee and I ended up racing each other to the ladies’.”
“He was so disappointed,” Mary Pat said as she added another packet of Equal. “He had this vision of driving down to New York to take us to Le Cirque and introduce us to French cuisine.”
That was Billy’s style, all right. Sailing into a fancy restaurant with his three daughters on display. He would have loved every second of the attention. For a man who had the common touch, he was a terrible snob.
“It’s a good thing he never got around to it,” she said. “I don’t think we were ready for escargot.”
“It’s been a long time since the three of us sat down together.” Mary Pat sounded slightly wistful.
“I think it was the year Dee and I graduated high school,” Ellen said. “You nursed Shawna at the table. I thought our waiter was going to need CPR.”
“Oh, God,” said Mary Pat, “I’d forgotten all about that. It took me awhile to master the art of discreet nursing.”
“Put me off milk for months,” Deirdre said, then yelped as Mary Pat smacked her with a breadstick.
They attacked their salads while Dean Martin sang about amore from the wall speakers overhead.
“I used to think that was the way love really is,” Mary Pat said as she snagged an extra black olive from the humongous salad bowl. “Pizza-pie moons, floating down the street on a cloud. Every single silly pop song cliché.”
“You mean it isn’t?” Ellen feigned wide-eyed astonishment.
“At the beginning,” Mary Pat said, “but it changes.”
“For the worse,” Deirdre said. “Like everything.”
“Not for the worse,” Mary Pat said. “It simply changes. You can’t expect to walk on clouds for the next forty years, can you?”
“How would I know,” Deirdre said. “I haven’t been able to make it past the two-year mark.”
“I haven’t even made it that far,” Ellen admitted. “Brian and I were engaged less than six months.” At the best of times, in every important relationship, she had always kept one eye on the exit.
“Are you seeing anybody now?”
She hesitated. She found it difficult to think of Hall in that way. What she felt for him went so much deeper that it terrified her.
“She’s seeing Hall Talbot,” Deirdre said. “The doctor she works with.”
Mary Pat’s eyebrows lifted. “Is that true?”
If she hadn’t eaten the last breadstick, she would’ve hit Deirdre, too. “I don’t know if I’d phrase it quite that way, but I guess you’d say we were seeing each other.” All day, every day, for almost four years.
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Mary Pat asked.
“No,” she said, “but it seems I’m doing it anyway.”
“You should see him,” Deirdre said with a theatrical sigh. “The man is drop-dead gorgeous.”
“I would never go to a gorgeous gynecologist,” Mary Pat said. “Not with these thighs.”
“I went to a gorgeous dentist once,” Deirdre said. “When he said, ‘Open wide for Mr. Thirsty,’ I almost swooned.”
They were collapsed in helpless laughter when their waitress brought their entrees.
“Are you ladies okay?” she asked as she deposited their meals in front of them.
“Never better,” Ellen said, wiping her eyes with the corner of her napkin. “If you’d bring us more wine, we’d be downright perfect.”
Just a second, Markowitz. There’s a small chance you might be pregnant. Is that wine such a great idea?
“You know what?” she said as the waitress turned to leave. “Forget the wine for me. I’ll have an iced tea.”
“You’re not driving,” Mary Pat observed. “Feel free to have a second glass.”
She shook her head. “I’d better stop. One more and I might belt out the score from Chicago.”
“You’re an O’Brien,” Deirdre said. “Singing’s in your blood.”
“Singing might be in my blood, but talent isn’t. I stink.”
“We’ll be the judge of that,” said Mary Pat. “Sing something.”
“I will not.”
“Just a few lines, that’s all, so we can judge.”
Dino had segued into “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime.” She launched herself headfirst into the melody, and before she reached the chorus, her traitorous sisters were throwing wadded-up pieces of paper napkins at her and booing.
“You’re right,” Deirdre said. “You really do stink.”
“I told you so.”
“You enunciate clearly,” Mary Pat said. “That’s always a plus.”
“That’s like saying the food was terrible but there was plenty of it,” Ellen pointed out. Her sisters were honest. You had to give them that.
“I probably couldn’t perform an episiotomy,” Mary Pat said.
“That’s our Mary Pat,” Deirdre said. “Modesty becomes her.”
Deirdre and Mary Pat bickered their way out to the parking lot, but for once it was a comic bickering that had Ellen weak with laughter by the time they reached Mary Pat’s car. Nothing had gone quite the way she had expected it to. She had imagined a working supper, where they tried to iron out certain issues pertaining to Billy’s care, but that hadn’t happened. They had only danced across the surface of anything serious. Instead their fears for Billy and their uneasiness with each other somehow translated into waves of healing laughter.
The laughter, however, quickly faded into memory fifteen minutes later as the three of them approached ICU. The younger nurses averted their eyes. The head nurse looked up from her computer terminal with an expression of such deep compassion that a knot formed in Ellen’s stomach. The curtain around Billy’s area was tightly closed. She heard no familiar whooshes and peeps from the monitoring devices, and in that instant she knew that Billy was gone.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You should be in the living room with your sisters.”
Ellen turned away from the sink where she had been rinsing out her coffee cup and smiled at her brother-in-law. “I thought I’d finish washing up.”
“That’s why we have a dishwasher,” he said, stifling a yawn as he entered the kitchen. “The kids are in there with them. Billy’s death is hitting them all pretty hard.”
It was a few minutes after midnight. At least a hundred years had passed since she and Deirdre rolled up the driveway and saw Mary Pat and Declan waiting for them on the front porch.
When James and Mary Pat married, they had both been starving students on scholarship to B.U. Now James was a tenured professor of anthropology at Harvard while Mary Pat took care of her family and maintained a 4.0 GPA as she pursued the degree she had abandoned years ago when Shawna was born. She had known about James and about Mary Pat’s dedication
to her family, but why hadn’t she known the rest of it? Why hadn’t she thought to ask?
“Come on,” James said, stifling another yawn. “I’ll walk you down the hall.”
This was only the third or fourth time she had met her brother-in-law, but somehow she felt as if she had known him forever. “I need to make some phone calls,” she said. “I’ll be there soon. I promise.”
“I’m going to hold you to it,” he said as she excused herself and dashed upstairs to the guest room she was sharing with Deirdre.
The guest room was as lovely as every other room in the house. The bed was king-size with a padded headboard covered in the same lush fabric as the down comforter that floated above the pillowy mattress. The walls were papered in a watered silk in tones of dusty pink, dove gray, and cream. The crown moldings, baseboards, and windowsills were all enameled in a glossy vanilla that worked wonderfully with the antique armoire that looked like it had been refinished to resemble a white birch tree on a snowy day. Only Mary Pat could make something like that work, but there was no denying the fact that every aspect of the room delighted the eye.
And the other senses as well. The air was faintly scented with freesia. Trees tapped gently against the window screens. The comforter was soft and smooth beneath her fingertips.
You would never guess her father had just died.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and waited to feel something approaching the depth of feeling being expressed downstairs by the family Billy O’Brien left behind. Only a terrible sense of regret seemed worth noting. If only... maybe... what if. The litany of lost chances, mistakes made, opportunities wasted. He had been so happy to see her, so grateful for the memory of her mother that she had restored to him. Why did clarity always seem to appear when it was too late for anyone to benefit from it?
Somewhere in Mary Pat’s beautiful house a clock chimed the quarter hour. They were all gathered together in the living room, taking comfort from the closeness, the shared memories, the stories. Even Deirdre was there with them. The family circle had opened wide enough for her to slip inside and reclaim her place. A place she spent her life fighting against but yearned for just the same.
Ellen didn’t belong there. Now that Billy was gone, the connection between them would grow thinner, more fragile, until it vanished just as if it had never been at all. A fierce longing for home, for Shelter Rock Cove, for Hall settled deep in her chest. She needed to hear his voice, to hear him tell her there was some place in this world where she belonged.
He answered the phone on the first ring. “I was hoping to hear from you, Markowitz,” he said, and that was all it took to open the floodgates.
She spilled her story to him, every last detail. Deirdre. Mary Pat. Declan and the towering joy she had felt when she saw herself reflected in his dark blue eyes. The consultation room with Dr. Loewe. Those last unexpected moments with Billy, as he lay sleeping with his hand in hers. The bitter taste of regret.
He let her talk. Every now and then he would ask a question or offer a viewpoint but mostly he listened with his heart.
“When is the funeral?” he asked when she had finally talked herself out.
“Monday.” Her voice was scratchy, her eyes red from crying.
“Tell me where and what time and I’ll be there.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Hall, but I’d feel better if I knew you were there taking care of our patients.”
“You know Arnstein and Williams would take over for us for a few days.”
She told him about her visit with Patsy Wheeler that morning. “She’s been pushing herself too hard. Doug said he found her sitting at her desk twice this week. She had a little staining which may have put the fear of God into her.”
“She has in-home nursing care, hasn’t she?”
“Absolutely. But Patsy is a strong personality, and she tends to intimidate the nurses. I’d feel better if you popped in on her every day, if possible.”
“You don’t want me there, do you, Markowitz?”
“It isn’t that.” At least not entirely. “I’ll be home late Monday.”
They listened to each other breathe for a few moments. It was almost as good as holding hands.
“How’s Stanley doing?” she asked after a bit. “Is your house still in one piece?”
“We’ve been doing great,” he said. “I locked up the beef jerky, and that seemed to solve most of our problems.” Susan Aldrin had offered to walk Stanley in the afternoon if Hall couldn’t get home to take care of it.
“That was nice of her.”
“You sound angry.”
“I’m not angry at all.”
“You don’t like Susan?”
“I like her very much. I’m just surprised she has time to pull dog-walking duty.”
“She’s watched my kids plenty of times.”
“Forget I said anything.”
“Susan’s crazy about dogs.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Could’ve sworn it was you she was crazy about.”
“Susan? Get out of here.”
“Just an observation.” She didn’t know if it was nothing more than a midlife crush on an old friend or something more intense, but Susan was definitely looking at Hall through new eyes these days.
She could almost see him smiling two hundred miles away. “You’re jealous.”
She was smiling, too. “Don’t be an idiot.”
“Susan and I have never—”
“I know that.”
“Just wanted to make sure.”
They fell into another one of those delicious silences that spoke volumes. Just listening to him breathe made her feel closer to home.
“One hour twenty-two minutes.”
Jill Franzese’s labor. “A boy?”
“Derek Jeter Franzese. Seven pounds, one ounce. The Yankees already have their eye on him.”
Her eyes swam with tears. “Life renewing itself.”
“Always,” he said.
“I should go now.”
“If you change your mind, I could be down there in a couple hours.”
“I know,” she said. “That means a lot to me.” She took a deep breath. “You mean a lot to me.”
She hung up before she could say another word.
* * *
Mary Pat coped by throwing herself into the details of farewell. She called in the obituary to the major newspapers, phoned family and friends, settled on a casket, viewing hours, finalized arrangements for the funeral mass, and made sure the veteran’s cemetery had all the necessary paperwork to receive Billy’s remains.
Ellen made herself useful by making sure everyone was clean and well fed. Friends and neighbors had seen to it that they had a steady supply of casseroles, pots of chili, cakes and cookies and homemade bread. Shawna was due home in time for the funeral. Sean spent much of his time in his room, working on a eulogy to his grandfather. Caitlin and Duffy alternated between teary outbursts and marathon sessions spent in front of the television. Caitlin had asked a few pointed questions of Ellen that had set her back for a while. Who are you? Why didn’t you come see us before? How could Grandpa Billy be your father if Grandma Jeanne isn’t your mother? She was grateful for Declan’s wordless acceptance.
Deirdre was a mess. There was no other way to put it. She had quite literally cried herself sick, dissolving into tears every time someone mentioned Billy’s name. Her heart went out to her younger sister. If only they hadn’t dallied over dessert. Maybe then they might have gotten to the hospital in time for Deirdre to make some sort of peace with Billy. There was no point dwelling on it. Things were the way they were, and she could only pray that the services would help provide the closure Deirdre was searching for. She spent a great deal of time with her lap harp. Mournful notes from long-forgotten songs provided a plaintive soundtrack to the days leading up to the funeral.
The house filled up swiftly with flowers. Mary Pat’s friends sent enormous arrangements complete with mass cards and p
romises of adding prayers for Billy’s immortal soul to their prayer group’s list. Hall sent flowers, as did Janna on behalf of the office staff.
Hall was her touchstone. Their nightly phone calls reminded her that she wasn’t alone in the world, no matter how it might seem at the moment. She tried to explain how it felt to be alone in a house filled with O’Briens. People with whom she shared a bloodline but little else. The sorrows and joys and daily battles that made up their lives were a mystery to her and always would be.
She was clearly the stranger in their midst, the child whose existence had broken apart a family. Nobody was treating her with anything but consideration, yet the sense that she didn’t belong not only lingered, it grew stronger. They didn’t speak the same language. Every family had its own form of shorthand, unintelligible to the outside world. For all of their difficulties with each other, it was clear that when the chips were down, Deirdre and Mary Pat were members of the same clan.
Even their ways of grieving set them apart. Ellen’s mother had been buried within twenty-four hours of her death, then Cy and her aunts sat shiva in the living room for seven days. It was a period of intense mourning and remembrance, designed to bridge the gap between death and the resumption of life. The Irish way was very different. She found the long hours spent at the funeral home greeting mourners and keeping up a cocktail party level of chat to be exhausting.
Billy’s three daughters had been assigned certain roles. Mary Pat was the dutiful daughter. Deirdre was the prodigal daughter. Ellen, however, was the curiosity. She might be one of Billy’s daughters, but she wasn’t one of them. She hadn’t been there for Christmas celebrations. She hadn’t shared Thanksgiving with them or the Fourth of July. Most of the people who trooped through Flanagan’s Funeral Home had only heard about her through the years, seen her face in the scratchy photographs Billy kept with him. They made a beeline to meet her, asking deeply personal questions that would get their faces slapped in any other venue but this one. How Billy O’Brien had managed to sire a Jewish obstetrician—and why this was the first time they had ever met her—was the stuff gossip was made of. Even there in Cambridge.
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