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Authors: Kelly Corrigan

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Personal Memoir, #Retail

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BOOK: Glitter and Glue
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Maybe what I don’t know is that she secretly lives for a good love story.

Maybe, like my dad says, she’s a romantic, something I’ve always dismissed as biased.

My father first laid eyes on her at a wedding. He told me the story on a car ride to Baltimore.

“She was a bridesmaid for Cousin Nancy. I went over there to pick up my grandmother, and the whole gang, huge bridal party, was out back posing for photos in the yard. You should have seen the camera, Lovey. Big as a suitcase, up on that thing—what do they call it?”

“Tripod?”

“Tripod! Boy, you’re quick, Lovey!”

“So, about Mom …”

“Best-looking gal in the bunch.”

I had seen a photo from that day. My mom’s hair was short and swept high off her forehead like Lucille Ball’s in one of the serious episodes. Her skin was creamy, and her dress wrapped around her shoulders and hips like it’d been sewn on her that morning.

“How old was she?”

“Young, Lovey. Too young for me!”

“How old were you?”

“Well, let’s just say I was a little older than I needed to be at that particular moment. So I did something to make her remember me.”

“Like?”

“Oh, a little jig, a soft shoe …”

I gave him a look that said if a boy came to our house and did any sort of dance, that’d be the end of him.

“I knew what I was doing, Lovey.”

“Keep going.”

“During the ceremony, I watched her on the altar, and I could tell she had a BIG-TIME relationship with God.”

I knew what he was talking about. On Sundays after communion, during the time set aside for quiet prayer, she’d cover her whole face with her hands, like a girl who knew well her meekness. She’d stay that way, on her knees, longer than all the rest of the congregation, making me wonder what she was telling God, or if she was waiting for Him to speak to her.

“And she’s smart.”

“How could you tell?”

“You know, that famous Mary Corrigan wit.” Everybody’s everything was famous, according to my dad.

“Mom?” Most of the time, when she cracked a joke, she had to explain to me that she was
being funny
, and I’m pretty sure that if you have to tell someone you’re being funny, you’re not.

“Oh, God, yeah! I’d say she was the funniest girl I’d ever met.”

“So, did you ask her to dance?”

“Every guy there asked her to dance. But I did a number on
her, Lovey. The Green Man did a number on her. I danced with her mother, too.”

“Libby was there?”

“Oh yeah, they all knew each other—my parents, her parents, the whole Catholic mafia.”

“Did you talk to TJ?” There was something scary to me about my mom’s dad; it could have been his FBI-type glasses or sharp nose or severe jawline. Whatever it was, TJ was not the type to pull pennies from behind your ear. He actually spanked me once. It hurt like hell, and I cried my eyes out, but he didn’t care. He thought I was
overindulged
, which was laughable, considering my mother’s opposition to everything from baked goods to sleepovers to pierced ears.

“I did what I could to make a positive impression. I may have even suggested I was a few years younger than I actually was. You know, TJ didn’t want his little girl running around with some old dog.”

“How long before he found out?”

“The next weekend, I asked her to come see my lacrosse game, which she did with a few of her girlfriends, and the Green Man put one in the net for her.” I could have guessed this part of the story, or assumed it. Lacrosse often figured in the seminal moments of my family’s life. “The next day, the Baltimore
Sun
wrote up the game with a big photo of the Green Man, and underneath, in the little caption part, it said
CORRIGAN, AGE 30, SCORES WINNING GOAL
.”

“Whoops.”

He laughed like that was the best reaction anyone could’ve possibly had to his story. “
Whoops
is right, Lovey! Your mother and your aunt Betsy tried to hide the paper when they saw it, but TJ went straight for the sports section, and
whammo!
, the
truth was out.” Dancing, fibbing, hiding a paper. There’s romance there, I guess.

“You just fell in love right off the bat?”

“She was irresistible,” he offers as a matter of fact. After decades of living together, which you would think would dull even the shiniest of starts, my dad’s take was stunningly simple: “Angel on my shoulder that day, Lovey.”

My mother, a godsend. Hard to imagine.

My dad and I have relived the beats of this story many times since, even though my mom doesn’t like him
filling my head with romance
. She thinks his bang-o! version creates unrealistic expectations.
Your father makes it sound like a Gidget movie, Kelly
. Even if she was romantic once, a Baltimore miss who devoured
My Ántonia
and let herself be twirled on a dance floor by a stranger, those girlish days are gone. She was a mother now, my mother, and she didn’t trust the dreamy look in my eye,
not one bit
. Picking a husband was a serious matter best done with a cool head.

 

Well into week two, I learn that Evan has a car, a Volkswagen Scirocco that won’t run. I get the feeling he only rolls it out of the garage when John is away. I suppose, without his mother here, it’s not Evan’s driveway to litter with parts or stain with drops of oil.

“Got the crossword here if you want it,” I say, folding back the puzzle page the way he does.

“Any easy ones?”

“Well, three across is
Authority’s home
.”

“Canberra.”

“Oh, right. Two
R
’s?” I ask, even though I know. He nods, the manual open at his feet. Maybe crosswording could be Our Thing. “So, what’s wrong with your car?”

“Oh, a lot. But the biggest problem is the transmission.”

“You’re fixing your own transmission?” I’ve never known someone who could fix his own transmission.

“I’m trying. I think it’s some kind of torque thing.” I love the way
torque
sounds coming out of his mouth, part James Bond, part MacGyver. “Anyway, it’s worth a try. The shop wants to charge me two hundred and forty quid.”
Quid
.

“Wow,” I say, wishing I knew something about transmissions, like for instance their function. “So—two across is
Favourite suds show
, which has to be a soap opera, and I thought
Santa Barbara
, but it’s only nine letters.”


Neighbors
.” His head is back down under the hood.

“Man, you’re good.” Transmissions
and
daytime dramas.

“My sister’s obsessed with that show.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister. Other than Milly.”

“Yeah, she’s at uni. About an hour out.”

A hundred questions come to mind, toppling out over one another like beach balls falling from a display tower.
What’s your sister’s name? Do she and John get along? Why isn’t she here helping out?
While we’re at it, I’d also like to know how old Evan was when his parents divorced, whether his father remarried, and how far away they live, but before I can ask him anything, he squats down to look closely at the engine diagram, and anyone can read that cue.

“Well, thanks for the
Neighbors
thing. Never would have gotten it.”

He looks up. “Okay if I join you all for dinner?”

“Great, I was thinking spaghetti.”

I’ve wondered what Evan does for dinner. I imagined him back in his room, sitting on a milk crate, warming a can of beans on a Bunsen burner. There’s something so modest about him. His pastimes and low expectations, the unassuming position he takes with me, the kids, John. He’s like a poor kid who belongs to no one, an orphan who doesn’t want to make trouble lest he be sent back out on the streets.

My mother would like Evan for his humility and autonomy. Personally, I aim for more conspicuous targets, guys my dad would get a bang out of, guys who tell jokes or have a signature dance move. But there’s something about Evan, something that pulls at me. I like him. I know because, just now when he asked to have dinner with us, I calculated how long I’d have to wait to see him again.

Six and a half hours later, Evan shows up in the kitchen with
wet hair, wearing a fresh shirt. The kids run to him, crashing into his side.

“You smell like soap!” Martin says.

“I cleaned up for supper. Now, let’s help Kelly,” he says.

“But we already helped you in your room this afternoon!” Martin reminds Evan.

“Ah, yes! Big help, that’s right. Go play, then.” The kids peel away. “We cleaned out my camping stuff,” he explains to me.

“Fair enough,” I say, and hand him a box of pasta. He pours the shells into the boiling water, and I add the last of a bag of macaroni.

“So how easy is it to get to Centennial Park from here?” I float.

“Not hard. You can take the train and then walk.”

While I shred carrots onto lettuce that the kids will pick at, Evan grates cheese into a bowl. He moves more freely when John is away, making me wonder why he still lives here. If it’s so hard for them to coexist, couldn’t Evan move in with his father?

“Going this weekend?” he asks.

“No, next, I think.” I could ask him to come, but Tracy says it’s better to keep it friendly,
Things could get pretty weird pretty fast
, and I’m sure she’s right.

“I’m out of town next weekend,” he says. “Not that—”

Pop shuffles by, out of his room at an unusual time.

“You want some noodles?” Evan calls to him.

“Eh?”

Evan holds up the box as a visual aid. “PASTA?”

“No, no, thank you. You go ahead. I’m good.” Pop moves on.

“He’s something else,” I say. “How long has he lived here?”

“A couple years now,” Evan says, and I tell him I lived with my grandmother and her bachelor brother for a while. He wants
to know about Great-uncle Slug, so I explain that he’s tall and bony and wears the same white button-down and blue wool crew-neck sweater every day, even at the height of summer, except Sundays, when he changes to a jacket and tie. He has huge, soft ears sprouting hair and a big nose with cavernous nostrils. He talks, pretty much interchangeably, about his
morning bowel movement
, the Orioles’
damn fine shortstop
, and
the Japs
, who, he is quick to point out,
are going to mop the floor with America
. He’s been taking the same woman—May—out to dinner at the same place—Johnny Unitas’ Golden Arm—every Thursday night at five
P.M.
for twenty-seven years. Half the time May pays, and half the time Slugger does, though of course he always drives. He loves his Caddy, identifiable around town by a bumper sticker that would have you believe B
ALD IS BEAUTIFUL
! This is where my mom comes from. These people. How could she not be stingy … dogmatic … screwy?

“So how’s Pop?” I ask.

“Doesn’t need much looking after yet.”

I guess that’s partly why Evan is still here, to watch Pop, who is his blood, not John’s.

Dinner is ready. We sit down with the kids, and it feels so close to playing house that I rush us through the meal in about seven minutes.

After dinner, Evan does the dishes, and I watch his shoulders move under his T-shirt. His back is brawny, like the man on the dish-soap label. I have to start exercising. I wonder if they sell Lean Cuisine in Australia.

“I have a brother, too,” Evan says as he closes the dishwasher. “Called Andy. He lives with my dad. He used to live here. We all did.” Thus come the installments of his family story: sudden and short.

“Older or younger?” I wipe the counter next to him.

“Younger. I’m the oldest.” We stay busy when we talk, finding every way not to look at each other.

“I’m the youngest. Two older brothers.”

I tell him about GT and Booker. They love sports and parties, they’re really funny, they never write.
They’d eat you alive
, I think. They don’t do introverts.

“Ev! It’s ocean time!” Martin calls from his room.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Martin likes to talk about the oceans.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, you know, just all the stats. How deep they are, the temperatures and stuff.”

“How deep are they?”

“In the deepest parts, about thirty-two thousand feet.”

“Wow.”

“And eighty-two percent of the ocean is abyssal in depth.” I don’t know that word,
abyssal
. It seems right that I should learn it here.

“Ev!” Martin calls again.

“I’ve got this,” I say.

“Ta. And thanks for dinner.”

Off he goes, on command, to talk with Martin about the deepest, coldest, darkest parts of the ocean. Which is another reason he’s still here.

 
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