Ask Again, Yes

by Mary Beth Keane

  “Which I’m sure they’d understand.”

  “Yes.”

  The kids raced back into the kitchen, armed with books and board games. They dropped everything at his feet.

  “Are you trying to kill me?” he shouted at them as they squealed and giggled and forgot Anne was there.

  * * *

  He had a feeling. Before he saw her. Something Kate said on the phone a few weeks back, about help arriving from surprising directions. And then in the same conversation she told him a story about Frankie, that he’d recently tried to break his remote control airplane rather than share it with their neighbor’s son, that it said something about him that would probably always be true.

  And then she’d asked, “Do you think a parent always knows a child best? Even when that child is an adult?”

  Francis had said, “A mother maybe.” For himself he couldn’t have predicted half of what his daughters had decided in their lives. Kate choosing Peter Stanhope over every other man in the world was a riddle he’d never be able to solve. And then more riddles on top of that main one: that his Kate, his bright girl, chose to pretend what was happening in her house wasn’t happening rather than face it head-on.

  “Leave the kids alone,” Lena said when he tried to discuss it with her. She always said Peter had been a sweet boy, and when you thought about what he’d been through, it was a miracle he was as normal as he was. And he loved Kate. That’s all that mattered to Lena. They’d hurt her when they’d got married like that, without anyone knowing. They were too bold. People didn’t get married that young anymore. They’d come to Gillam and told them together, the four of them seated across a table, Peter’s leg bouncing, so nervous he spilled his glass of water all over the bills Francis and Lena had been going through just before they walked in. There was something pathetic about a young man so tall and strong being that nervous, and Francis had poured him a drink. He thought about that a lot now. How he thought a stiff drink would hit the kid hard but Peter had put it down the hatch like it was no more than a cup of lemonade. He should have known then, Francis thought. There were a lot of things like that. He’d known Anne Stanhope was not right in the head but he hadn’t really known. If someone had asked him if she was capable of shooting a person in the face, he would have said no. Anne, herself, would have said no. Everyone in the world would have said no. After Kate and Peter left that day, after Lena cried a little at the table and said she’d been robbed of seeing her daughter take the biggest step of her life, she’d gone out the next day and bought Kate eight bone china place settings because that’s what she’d have gotten her if she’d had a bridal shower, a wedding. Kate had giggled when she unwrapped the boxes. One gleaming plate after another. Little cups and saucers.

  “We don’t even have a vacuum cleaner,” she’d said.

  “That you can buy for yourself,” Lena had said.

  Natalie and Sara had gotten her something, too, but Francis couldn’t remember what. The point seemed to be not the thing itself—linens, maybe—but a way to tell Kate that they were okay with it, that they understood why they’d been left out. And, that they accepted Peter. That they wouldn’t object just because of who his mother was. They went to Macy’s, and spent too much money on some useless thing, and had come home and wrapped it in silver and white ribbons and presented it to her, as a way to say they’d love him since Kate loved him.

  That’s when Francis knew all three of them were a lot more like Lena than they were like him.

  There was something about seeing Anne Stanhope there, in Kate and Peter’s kitchen, that didn’t surprise him. It was a shock and at the same time it wasn’t. He was never, ever fully rid of her. Seeing her felt like something inevitable had come to pass. Mostly, it made him tired.

  Now she kept stealing glances at him, at her handiwork, no doubt. He wished he’d left the cane at home.

  Frankie appeared in the kitchen with a look on his face like he’d been wronged. “We didn’t get ice cream.” His bottom lip jutted out. Anne’s stomach dropped. She didn’t want her first promise to be a broken promise. But she didn’t know what to do. Would Francis Gleeson come along? Would she drive them all in her car and all of them eat ice cream cones like old friends?

  “I said if they ate their dinner,” Anne explained. “Kate said it was okay.”

  “Frankie,” Francis said, leaning over so that their eyes were on the same level. “It’s pouring rain out there. We’d have to get it to go and that’s not as fun. And look what I brought.” Francis reached into his pocket and took out two Irish candy bars, selected from the stash Lena kept at home.

  Frankie was reluctant to take the deal but the siren song of those Crunchie bars was too strong. “Next time you come here, ice cream,” he said to Anne with warning in his voice.

  When the kids finished their chocolate bars and went up to brush their teeth—step one of a ludicrous multistep bedtime process—Francis thought she might sneak out, but instead she looked at him and spoke.

  “How does a person apologize for what I did? I honestly don’t know.”

  It threw him. It was a good question. He didn’t think she’d come out and say it.

  “That’s why I never tried. I don’t know where to begin.”

  Her brogue had faded over the years. His had, too, he supposed.

  He waited for her to make an excuse. To blame it on Brian, or mental illness, or something else. But she didn’t. The kids came back down. She took Molly up to read books. He took Frankie, who preferred to read aloud to him. They brought water, brought tissues, answered questions. The longer Frankie went on about which would win if a shark battled a killer whale, the more surreal it felt to be under the same roof as Anne Stanhope. He was tempted to sneak down the hall and check whether it was really her. He remembered a tall woman. Strong. She used to pile her hair on top of her head and wear bright colors and was beautiful, really, when he thought about it. But this woman was washed of color, and could fit into Frankie’s clothes, almost. Francis came downstairs first and waited.

  Eventually, he heard her footsteps on the stairs.

  “You know,” he said, once she sat. “I always thought the right thing was to help people who needed help, but after that night I changed my mind. I thought one of you would get hurt over there. But after, I decided I should have let it happen, whatever it was. I should have called the police and waited like a civilian. I should have just kept Peter at my house and let whatever was happening at your house play out. Even if you’d killed Brian or he’d killed you. So if I’d been let back on the job, I would have been a bad cop after that. I would have let people kill each other before I’d go interrupting again.”

  “No, I don’t believe that,” she said.

  They were quiet for a long time.

  “A teacher in Ireland suggested I talk to someone once,” she said. “My mother died unexpectedly and I was having trouble.”

  “And did you?”

  “Well, he suggested a priest. This was the 1960s.”

  “Ah.”

  “So I said thanks but no thanks. It was the same priest who wouldn’t even let my mother be buried in the churchyard. Why should I tell him what I was thinking? There was a wall around the churchyard and they put her just on the other side of it. Unconsecrated ground.”

  Francis remembered a suicide in his own hometown, how the local priest wouldn’t allow a funeral and so the death had gone largely unacknowledged, unspoken. His mother had brought the widow a dozen hot cross buns. He never thought about where the man had been buried.

  “And in America, after I lost that baby, I should have talked to someone. But I didn’t.”

  “Well, it wasn’t done, really.”

  “It was. It was beginning to be done.”

  “By some people. But not by us.”

  “Did you talk to anyone? After what happened?” Anne asked Francis.

  “No. Never even considered it. Wouldn’t even know how to find a doctor like that.
”

  “Did Peter?”

  “I doubt it. Well, the department shrink, but only after this recent business. And anyway, that’s different.”

  “They’ll make him, now. If he’s going to the kind of place I think he’s going.”

  They sat in silence for a while, as the rain lashed against the door and windows.

  “Listen. There were plenty of people who should have talked to someone, and who didn’t, and didn’t end up doing what you did.”

  She looked over at him in a way that asked if he was indicting her or forgiving her. It was impossible to tell.

  “You didn’t know what you were going to do that night any more than I did, I suppose.”

  Forgiving. Anne brought her hands to her face and turned to the wall. Francis considered what Lena would do, but he couldn’t just walk over there and rub her back or make her a cup of tea. Lifting the blame from her a little was enough generosity for one evening. And it had surprised him every bit as much as it surprised her. So he got up and stood by the window to give her privacy.

  There were years when it felt important to hate her, but those years had passed, he realized now. He felt sorry for her, mostly. She had so little. Even knowing nothing about her life, he could sense the loneliness rising up from her skin and filling the space around her. And he had a lot. Three daughters he could visit anytime. Seven grandchildren. Lena. When he fell in the yard at the beginning of the summer, all four of them were there standing over him within the hour, deciding as one whether he should go to the hospital. Who did she have?

  And while he lightened her burden, he felt he’d lightened his, too. It was the truth, what he’d said.

  * * *

  Kate pulled in just after nine o’clock and when she saw her father’s shape through the window, she considered backing right out again. Of course, she thought, and saw exactly how it had happened: Sara had called him despite Kate telling her not to and he’d called a cab right away. Lena had given him hell last time he drove alone to Long Island, and he promised her he’d never do it again if she wasn’t okay with it. He’d kept his promise. Kate considered turning around and calling to say she’d been delayed, that there was a storm that was too heavy to drive through. There really had been a storm. That part wouldn’t be a lie. But then he was at the window, a silhouette against a bright backdrop, his hand cupped to the glass, peering out.

  Where the drive there had been fragile with hope, a crystal ball they handled tenderly as they tried to make out the scenes inside, the drive home was hazed over with sadness, and there were times when her chest felt so heavy that she considered pulling over to catch her breath. When the rain came down too hard for the wipers to keep up, she stopped at a donut shop to get coffee but didn’t have the energy to get out of the car. He’d kept it together through the assessment. He’d answered all their questions honestly and he’d asked that she be allowed to stay. Some of his answers had chilled her, and she didn’t realize she’d started trembling until a counselor took her hand and squeezed. Among the questions: had he ever thought of harming himself? A pause so brief only she, the person who knew him best in the world, would notice. “No,” he said, and they didn’t doubt it, she saw, even as a vast, terrifying crevasse opened up under her ribs. They had Kate and Peter step out for a moment while they discussed his case, and he was calm in the little waiting area, spent from answering so many questions—not just those she’d witnessed, he reminded her, but the questions of that morning, and of the past twelve weeks—that he seemed almost sleepy, but then when they came back out and handed him the paperwork that meant he’d be admitted, he’d turned to her like an animal caught in a snare and she’d almost, almost, taken him by the hand and led him back outside. It seemed like a thing that they could work out together, just the two of them, and now that he was saying all the things she’d wanted him to say—the truth, the details—maybe they really could. Maybe they didn’t need these people at all. She’d take a leave from work and they’d come up with a plan. They’d take out a second mortgage on the house while she locked him in a room with her and they figured the whole thing out.

  “Kate?” he said, his hand poised over the signature line, and next thing she was ushered out, and a woman named Marisol tried to console her by telling her that they wouldn’t take his bullshit there.

  “Don’t talk about him like that,” Kate said. “You don’t know what he’s been through. You have no idea.” She hadn’t read enough about this specific facility. She’d done a quick search, read a little online, but it was the only bed available to them within two hundred miles and partially covered by insurance so she’d jumped. Now she wished she’d paused. He’d never been unkind to anyone in his entire life. He was generous, and fair, and patient, and he didn’t deserve their unkindness now, if that was the approach they were going to take.

  And then she remembered that someone could have gotten killed when he fired his weapon. A fellow officer. An innocent bystander. A child.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Marisol said, rubbing Kate’s arm. “First time? First time is the hardest.”

  First time? So they all assumed there’d be a second time? And they’d just given him a speech about setting up for failure? She wanted to rake her fingers across Marisol’s face. Instead, she turned and pushed through the doors, walked through the rain to her car, and sat there for fifteen minutes looking at the lights of the building to see if a new one would go on that had been previously dark, so she’d know which room was his.

  * * *

  In the hour since the kids had finally fallen asleep, Francis and Anne had talked about Ireland, about the mild winters there compared to New York, the cool summers, St. Stephen’s Day. They sat stiffly at first, Francis in the armchair, Anne on one end of the couch, but then they relaxed into the memories. They’d both dressed up as wren-boys. They’d both traveled to and from Mass in a horse and trap. They both remembered food tasting different there, especially butter, milk, eggs. They were both lonely for Ireland in some ways, or maybe it was loneliness for their own childhoods, before they knew decisions had to be made, before they knew regrets would pile up. Francis could see that same nameless grief in her—not homesickness, exactly, more like a low fury at having to leave in the first place, and with so little money or wisdom, and to be in a place for so many years that was not home, though neither was home still a home, so where did that leave them? Anne was from Dublin, yes, but not Dublin City, as Francis had always assumed. They’d each had a dog named Shep. Neither of them had ever gone back. When Kate walked in they were talking about all the Irish who’d come to America fifty, sixty years ago but chose to be buried there when the time came. Francis remembered his uncle Patsy for the first time in probably a decade, the expense it had taken to ship his body to Connemara.

  “You won’t be buried there,” Anne said. “Will you?” It struck her again how odd it was that they were sitting there together. Thanks to her, he’d almost been buried years ago.

  Kate apologized for being so late. Were they really talking about dying? Being buried? The rain was biblical. There was a bad accident on the turnpike. For part of the drive home she tried to understand how the scariest person from her childhood was at that moment sitting in her living room, waiting for her, and that their worry for Peter, the person they each loved most, bound them, put them in the same boat together, and they could either row hard as one or else drift while he drowned nearby.

  As soon as Kate walked through the door, Anne stood, looked ready to bolt.

  “How’s Peter?” she asked, and Francis looked up with the same question in his face. He saw his girl had the pale, dazed look of someone who’d been through it.

  “They admitted him,” Kate said. “So I guess we’ll see.”

  So it was done, and she could go now, Anne thought. She could leave these people alone. When Peter returned she could return, too. Until then, the house was Gleeson territory, probably Lena would come and the sisters, whatever their name
s were. But then she thought of the children, upstairs sleeping, carrying her whole history in their blood along with Francis Gleeson’s, Lena Gleeson’s, Brian’s. Anne thought of her first nights at the hospital, how strange it had been to sleep with a light on in the hallway as nurses walked through her room at all hours, pulling up her bedsheet sometimes without telling her why, rolling her from one room to another identical room without giving her an explanation. She wondered if they’d give him medication, and if they did, she prayed he’d take it and not hide it under his tongue or in his ear or drop it on the floor and kick it. The ones who did okay were the ones who gave over almost immediately, who showed up to group and participated and tried their best, and when she thought of the earnest young boy Peter had been, she knew he’d be one of these. He’d do everything they told him to and he’d be fine.

  Francis said, “You have options, Kate. Just remember that. You and the kids want to move in with us for a while, we’ll figure it out all together. Don’t forget that. Your sisters have said the same. We all have room.”

  Anne turned on Francis like a whip. You shut your mouth, she wanted to say, and remembered once again what had bothered her so much about these people—their reckless way of talking, and advising, and being in other people’s lives. And what was Peter’s other option? Anne wondered. Me?

  And then the thought she hadn’t seen coming, a cry from so deep within that she felt weak with it, had to sit back down. Don’t leave him, she begged Kate, silently, desperately. Do not leave him. He’s been left too many times already.

  twenty

  ONE MONTH. A PAGE on the calendar.

  When he left, the trees were still green and full. But during that month the leaves turned colors and fell, and the kids gathered piles of them to their chests and, shrieking, flung them into the air. The air turned cold and, overnight, Molly had two lines of chapped skin between her nose and lip. Two Saturdays in a row Kate raked the leaves onto a sheet, dragged the sheet to the curb. Frankie took one corner and lifted it so that the leaves wouldn’t spill out. “Where’s Dad?” he kept asking. And once: “Where’s my father?” His face was pinched with the beginning of grown-up worry.