“Arrah, why would you?” his father had said.
His father told him that in New York City there were bakeries galore and he’d have to take care not to get fat. It was his single piece of advice. They’d not warned him about money or women or drinking or fighting because Francis was a good boy, a sound young man, with a good head on his shoulders. If they were looking down on him now, from heaven, they might not even recognize him. Francis had not seen Joan since that afternoon at the Holiday Inn. He hadn’t returned her calls since Lena’s diagnosis.
It was a Monday morning. Surgery was scheduled for eleven, but Lena had to report to the hospital by nine. It was early still, just after seven, and construction workers passed Joan by, rushing in and out the door that jangled with every swing. She kept her eyes on Francis as he approached. Local cops left their cruisers in the No Parking zone, ran in for coffee. ’Scuse me, ’scuse me, g’morning, they said as they passed, one, two three. He remembered being a cop once, jogging up stairs, steering his vehicle down city streets, the heady pleasure of knowing he was about to stop a bad thing from happening, the crushing disappointment when he arrived just a few minutes too late. On that particular morning, a frigid cold day in late January, Lena whispering her prayers at home, Kate on break from her first year of college, far too young to lose her mother, Francis remembered settling a ten fifty-two in the Two-Six by calling each party into the fifth floor hall of their building one at a time and asking each one if they loved the other, and if so could they please stop throwing things at each other. To please stop waking the neighbors. After that the guys called him Lieutenant Love for a while.
Once, Joan called the house when she thought Lena was at work, but Lena answered. Francis stood outside their bedroom door listening to their conversation with his fists clenched so tight he got a cramp in his forearms.
“Joan Kavanagh,” Lena said when she hung up, a question mark in her tone. “Casey wants Kate’s address at school for something, a reunion of some kind.” And then: “I think she was drunk, to be honest.”
Francis had murmured signs of interest and then stepped into the bathroom. He studied his face in the mirror and saw that the old scar tissue was livid and sore looking.
“I heard about Lena,” Joan said outside the deli that morning when he was close enough to hear her. Hearing Lena’s name in her mouth would be part of his punishment, too, he supposed. She didn’t have the right to say her name, but it was his fault she didn’t see it that way.
“What happens now?” she asked, and looked at him like she deserved an answer.
How to say what he needed to say without making everything worse? So he said nothing at all. He brushed by her like the construction workers had, like the cops had, and he got his cup of coffee, tucked his paper under his arm.
She drove by him, slowly, just a minute or so later and called him all the things he already knew he was: a coward, a cheat, a prick. He could have crossed to the other side of the street, where he wouldn’t be able to hear her as well, but he stayed where he was. Every name she called him was true. She followed him and shouted the words until he turned onto Madison.
* * *
In the hospital, Sara and Natalie wandered in and out of the waiting room. They fetched coffees and sandwiches that none of them ate. They took walks down the long hallways to stretch their legs. Kate stood rooted to her spot next to Francis.
The surgery seemed to go on forever, and different surgeons were coming out to the waiting room to reassure other families.
“Katie,” Francis said, pulling her toward his chest like he hadn’t done since she was little. Kate assured him it was all normal. The surgeon had explained to them what had to be done, and had given them a time frame they were still within. She said his own surgery, which of course he didn’t remember, had gone several hours longer than they’d been told it would, and just like that he saw Lena in his place, himself on the table in the OR, and understood why she’d never managed to let go of that baseline worry.
“Dad,” Kate said. “It’s not the right time, maybe, but I have to tell you something.”
Francis was grateful for the distraction despite a pang of dread. He was relieved to look away from the clock for a moment. If she was about to tell him she was pregnant, he’d be disappointed but he wouldn’t tell her what to do. If she’d flunked out of school, he’d be surprised but it would be okay to have her home again for a little while until she figured herself out. Whatever it was wasn’t the end of the world, and he’d tell her so. All that mattered was getting Lena healthy again.
He studied her, his lovely girl, her hair so shiny under the fluorescent lights.
“I got a letter from Peter,” she said. “It was mailed home. Mom kinda figured who it was from, but she forwarded it to me at school. She said I should tell you but I never found the right moment.”
He removed his arm from around her shoulder. “You got a letter from Peter Stanhope,” he repeated. “Saying what?”
Kate looked off, shrugged. “Just stuff we used to talk about. So I wrote back. Now we email sometimes. He wants to see me. I told Mom already and she said I had to tell you.” Kate hesitated. “He’s doing very well. He got a full scholarship to a college in New Jersey.”
Francis had been standing but now he sat. Sara and Nat would be back any moment.
“I’d like to meet up with him once Mom feels better. We were best friends for so long. I’d just like to see him, see how he is. We’d meet in the city. Just for closure. I promise. You have to understand. Everything happened at once and then all of a sudden he was gone.”
Closure. That was a word she’d learned in college, no doubt. Did he have closure when he left Ireland at her age and never returned?
“Are you going to say something?”
It had been some time by then since he heard from his lawyer that Anne Stanhope had been moved upstate. No one had heard a thing about Brian in a very long time, not even on the job, though he supposed the pension checks must be mailed somewhere. What did Peter want with Kate?
“It’s harmless,” Kate ventured.
“Look at me,” Francis said. “You know what I’d be right now? If Anne Stanhope hadn’t shot me? I’d be a captain. Higher, maybe. No doubt about it. I had a bad feeling about her from the get-go, and I have a bad feeling about him. I should have listened to your mother. I should have let the local cops arrive and I should have let them handle it. I should have sent Peter home to wait on his own porch.”
“Last you saw him he was only fourteen. That’s not fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, Kate. I don’t want you seeing him. Period.”
“You can’t treat me like a kid anymore, Dad.”
It was so absurd that Francis had to laugh, despite the circumstances.
“Oh, Kate,” he said.
* * *
Lena made it through surgery. She made it through chemo and radiation. He cooked for them, and when she was weak he spoon-fed her like he used to feed the girls if Lena was too busy. A few times when she fell asleep on the couch downstairs he lifted her in his arms, her body so light it felt hollow, and brought her up to their room. He didn’t get dizzy. He didn’t wobble. Hour to hour, day to day, he kept his head down and thought about what she might need next. The first time he packed her into the passenger seat of their car and settled in behind the wheel, she’d glanced at him like she might protest but then just decided to let it happen.
She lost every hair on her body, and when it began to grow back she looked like a baby bird. She didn’t bother with a wig or with scarves. When she was chilly she pulled one of the girls’ old hats over her head.
When she felt strong enough to walk outside she leaned on him, and once she had to sit on the curb and wait while he hurried back home to get the car and then drove around the block to pick her up.
* * *
Finally spring came, Lena on the mend, both of them sure they were through the worst, that all that was left was
recovery. Kate would soon be finished with her first year of college.
Francis said to Lena across the silence of the kitchen, “We could go to the nursery today, if you want, see about getting some annuals? We could plant them this weekend?”
Lena was sipping tea at the table. The kettle poured steam from its spout.
“Francis?” Lena said. “Did something happen between you and Joan Kavanagh? Over the winter?” Her expression was so calm, so peaceful, it was as if she were merely curious, as if the answer didn’t matter to her either way. She wore a half smile, as if to reassure him, as if she knew this would be hard for him.
He gripped the counter, closed his eyes. All the blood in his body rushed to his face.
“I thought so,” Lena said.
When he had the courage to look at her, he saw that she was crying with her hand clapped over her mouth.
“The thing is,” she said plainly, matter-of-factly, “in a million years, no matter what, I never ever would have done that to you.”
And Francis knew that was the truth.
* * *
It took him a while to figure it out, and every time he realized he was trying to figure it out, he chastised himself, as if it mattered. The credit card bill, maybe. Maybe they’d been seen. It was reckless to drive Joan’s car through town with her in it, to drive right up to her building.
But it was Casey Kavanagh who told Kate, who told her sisters, who told their mother. Casey had called Kate in a rage, angry on her mother’s behalf, angry at Kate’s perfect little family that the whole town adored just because her busybody father had stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong and got shot.
The word “busybody” attached to her father struck Kate as funny, and it took her a second to comprehend what Casey was yelling into the phone. A busybody was a woman, for a start. A certain type of highly strung advanced-middle-aged woman. Not her near-silent father, who’d only gone next door that night because he was brave, and he was trained, and it was the right thing to do. What was Casey going on about?
Kate didn’t believe it until, at Natalie’s insistence, they spoke to their mother about it, how crazy it was, that this was some strange rumor she might encounter around town and they didn’t want her to be caught up short. Instead of being horrified, instead of being shocked, Lena remembered the odd phone call that one night. And there was that afternoon when she’d called the house from work and let it ring and ring and ring—hoping to tell him to turn on the Crock-Pot, which was filled with ingredients but which she was almost certain she’d forgotten to turn on. Later, when she asked what he’d gotten up to that day, he said he hadn’t done a thing.
“Mom,” Sara said, “you have to kick him out. Don’t stand for it.” Natalie said the same. Kate was angry at the three of them for believing it all so readily. Surely there was an explanation.
“Girls,” Lena said. “It’s between me and your father.”
* * *
The girls came home for Mother’s Day, and Francis planted the flowers before they arrived. Sara and Natalie mostly avoided him, but Kate kept her eyes on him, followed him out to the shed later that afternoon to confront him.
“Did you really do what Casey said?”
He could have lied to her then, and she would have believed it. She was desperate to believe anything that might take the place of the truth.
He hung the hedge clippers on the hook. He threw the little hand rake in the gardening bin.
“It’s between me and Mom,” he said, without looking at her.
“It’s so disgusting it makes me want to throw up,” she said, and took a step toward him like she might shove him.
“How could you? Do you know how she took care of you? How could you hurt her like that?”
“I don’t know.” It was the truth.
“You don’t know?” Her voice was thick with fury. “You don’t know?” she repeated. She turned back to the house and seemed about to walk off, but all of a sudden she turned back.
“I’m seeing Peter. We visited each other at school. I love him. I felt bad about that but now I don’t.”
She studied him to see how that went over. “He would never do that to me. What you did to Mom.”
And suddenly Francis was the one who was furious. He had never hit any of his girls but his hand itched to smack her face.
“Kate. Please. Grow up, will you?”
“And guess what else? Mom knows. Mom doesn’t mind.”
“Sure.”
“It’s true. Ask her. Oh, what’s that? Are you hurt that she kept something from you? That she did something behind your back?”
* * *
The next afternoon, when the girls finally boarded the bus to the city, Francis went up to Kate’s bedroom, where Lena was resting. He didn’t know if she wanted him to come into the room, so he stood awkwardly at the door and told her what Kate had said, and asked whether it was true that she knew.
“It won’t come to anything, probably,” Lena said, not looking at him, running her fingers along the pattern of Kate’s childhood quilt.
“She said she loves him.”
“I warned her. I told her love only helps up to a point. But the more we object the more determined she’ll be.”
Francis felt a shiver of fear pass through him.
“But after all I went through. How could she be so dumb? This kid? Why? She won’t listen to me, so you have to tell her. We never made her feel bad about sneaking out that night.”
Lena looked directly at him then for the first time in several days. “You blame her?”
“No, of course not.”
They were so young still. Maybe it would fizzle out. Lena, he saw, was happy that Kate had someone to love, and that it was Peter was somewhat beside the point. She loved so easily, and so fully, maybe Kate was the same. Lena had told him that she loved him before he said it to her. In those days, that was unusual and had shocked Francis. They were walking along the sidewalk in Bay Ridge and he’d stopped to kiss her, their cold noses brushing up against one another. She wasn’t looking for him to say it back, she was just letting him know that her love was his to keep or to fritter away.
“Lena,” Francis said. He walked up to the edge of the bed having no idea what he wanted to say. “I—”
But Lena was like a fist that could not be pried open. She gathered the covers and drew them up to her throat. She shrank back against the wall. “It’ll all be okay soon, Francis. But not yet.”
fourteen
BY PETER’S SENIOR YEAR at Elliott, the guys on the team came to him instead of going to Coach. Coach was angling for a Division I job in Pennsylvania and was often distracted, so it was Peter who told them where they should be pacing, what distances they should be covering in practice. Peter moved runners around, switching lifelong two-milers to the fifteen hundred meter, holding brief but pointed meetings with them on the bleachers that overlooked the track as if that were his private office. They were awkward kids, mostly, who’d walked onto their high school cross-country or track teams because they’d failed at other sports. Running was straightforward. Going fast for a long time was the hard part, and most of them left that to Peter and the handful of other kids who’d been recruited. One guy who was a middle-distance walk-on took a hurdle for fun after practice one day, and Peter saw that he’d be perfect for steeplechase. He mentioned all these changes to Coach as if they were mere suggestions, and then told Coach to watch, see if he didn’t see what Peter saw. Next meet, the changes would be in the books. The team got better. After every solid race the runner would pick his head up and search the crowd for Peter.
Coach said Peter could spend less time analyzing his teammates, and more time analyzing himself. How could Peter improve if every chance he got he was on the bus to New York to see his girlfriend?
“And another thing, Pete,” Coach said. “Your sweat smells eighty proof, at least. Cool it, maybe, okay?”
* * *
Kate was exact
ly the same and also completely different. When she walked into the bar that night, the first time they met up, she raised her eyebrows just like she did the day their seventh grade teacher announced the first pop quiz of the year, and the floodwaters of their long history together rose quickly around him. Later, she confessed that she’d almost not come. Her mother was about to start chemotherapy, her father had outright forbidden it, plus she was so nervous. She’d changed clothes at least ten times, and in the end borrowed an outfit from her roommate. He was mostly through a pint of beer by the time she got to the bar, and when he stood from the table and walked around to hug her, neither of them had any idea what to say. He’d gotten there a full hour early and after circling the block to kill time, he stopped into a different bar and had two shots of Jameson, one after another, snapping his head back like he used to see his father do, followed by a Jack and Coke he sipped slowly. It didn’t help, at first—his nerves felt like spiders crawling under his skin—but then, back on the sidewalk, heading to their meeting point, he gradually felt steadier, calmer, less worried.
“Peter,” Kate said, standing back from him a little and looking at his face. “I can’t believe it.” The ends of her hair were dyed purple. Her nail polish was black and mostly bitten away. Her long, slender fingers were covered in thick silver rings and she was wearing Doc Martens that laced to her knees. But her face was the same, bright eyes, that impish smirk. He studied her mouth when she spoke.
“I’m glad you wrote,” Kate said once they sat, as if she hadn’t already said that very thing in the dozen letters and emails that had been exchanged between them. It was nearly spring break for both of them. Peter had already taken two midterms and had only two papers to hand in before he headed back to Queens for the week. Kate had her first midterm coming up.
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