The Girls on Rose Hill (23 page)

The twenty minute ride to St. Charles was a blur. The air conditioning was spotty in the back of the limo and my brow was slick with sweat. Once we reached the cemetery there was hardly any relief. Located smack dab in the middle of the Island, there was no sea breeze to ameliorate the sweltering August heat. Molly looked wilted. Only Brendan, a native Washingtonian, seemed unfazed by the heat and humidity. He took my hand and it was all I could do not to snatch it back. But, my children were there, as was my extended family. Now was not the time to publicly show the deep fissures of my marriage.

My grandmother's grave was open, ready to receive her daughter. No one commented how odd it was that despite having two husbands, Kitty chose to share her grave only with her daughter. The cars lined up as the flushed Irish faces gathered around the gravesite. The funeral home's worker bees wordlessly handed each of us a flower: a daisy, a lily, a blood red rose.

Monsignor Ryan lead us in yet another Hail Mary. An Our Father. A Glory Be. Sweat streamed down my back and all I could think, God help me, was how badly I wanted this to be over. I had no more prayers left in me, and what had initially given me comfort, now only left me numb.

Monsignor Ryan invited me, as Rose's only child, to place my flower on her casket. The casket was raised above the open grave on a pulley. I threw my rose onto the casket, but I must have thrown it too hard because it slid off and fell down into the open grave. Down onto my Granny's casket.

Veronica followed, her lily landed on top of my mother's casket. The twins added their blossoms, and then my uncles, their wives. Soon the casket was covered with flowers, the smell of them, overripe in the heat, slightly dizzying.

Paul invited everyone to the obligatory lunch at an Italian restaurant one mile from St. Charles. Once again, Brendan staked his claim on me by placing his large palm on my sweaty back as we walked to my car. I didn't know why he bothered, really. Billy and Barbara Conroy hadn't followed us to the gravesite. But my children, despite the circumstances, seemed to find comfort in the fact that their parents were in the same place for once and I didn't want to cause any more dissent, so while I didn't overtly acknowledge his touch, I didn't shy away from it either.

Most of the crowd at the gravesite were close relatives, about forty or so, and the trail of cars crawled in the summer traffic to Giamellis Restaurante. The restaurant had arrange the table in a large horseshoe. I sat on the left, next to Auntie Maura. Brendan sat next to me and Lisa was on his right. I looked with disinterest at the prix fix menu that Paul had selected as I sipped the house white wine, so parched I barely registered its metallic aftertaste.

The room hummed as the Irish relatives feasted on antipasto. Auntie Maura, despite herself, was enjoying her time among the family and away from the persistently cheery pastel walls of the Sunny Hills Assisted Living Centre. Her easy patter with Carol's mother, another widow, was soothing and didn't require me to do much more than nod occasionally. On the other hand Brendan's voice boomed across the room. My two sons sat enthralled as their father recounted how he swayed the jury in his clearly guilty client's favor. Having heard many iterations of this story over the years, I was able to smile, somewhat vacantly, and say "uh-huh" and "really" in all the right places without straining my brain too much.

I had my mouth full seafood ravioli when I overheard Brendan said, "Sure. Just send us over the paperwork and we can get it taken care of."

I turned to him. "What paperwork?"

"For the sale."

"Sale?"

As if talking to an invalid, Brendan said slowly, "The sale of your mother's house."

"What are you talking about?"

Lisa piped in. "Ellen, dear, we had three realtors in to appraise the house. We're offering you a very fair price, especially given the house's condition."

"Don't you worry about a thing, sweetheart," Brendan soothed. "I'll take care of everything."

I felt a humming in my head. With effort, I said slowly, "I'm not selling the house."

Brendan rubbed my arm. "But honey, what are you going to do with it?"

"I don't know, but it's my house and I'm not selling it."

"Ellen, be reasonable," Lisa said, her broad face still shiny with sweat. "You could barely take care of it when you were living in it. How will you take care of things from Washington?"

"I don't care. I'm not selling it to you. I'm not selling it to anyone."

"But, we spent over forty thousand dollars on the boat house! We always assumed that Rose would leave the house to Paul and Danny, or at least split it three ways between the three of you. No one expected her to leave it only to you. It's not fair."

"My mother paid a high price for that house." I looked at Molly. Molly nodded.

"But, it's not fair," Lisa said, looking to Paul for support.

"It was my father's house. And my grandfather's. By rights it should belong to me and Danny," Paul said with an uncharacteristic cold fury. "I shouldn't have to pay for my own house, but I'm trying to be fair. I'm trying to do the right thing here and you're being completely unreasonable."

"Too bad, Paul. It's my house now. Rosie's bastard owns your father's house. I hope he's spinning in his grave." The room was quiet now, all eyes on me.

Paul slammed down his glass. Red wine splattered across the table. "Jesus Christ, Ellen. We've all put up with enough of your shit. You waltz in here, play the martyr card. 'Oh feel sorry for me, my mother's dying.' The mother you ignored for years. The tears, the scenes. Meanwhile you're off fucking the neighbor."

Auntie Maura gasped.

"Oh, don't deny it," Paul continued. "We all know. Everyone on Rose Hill knows."

Danny took hold of Paul's arm. "That's enough, Paul. Not in front of the children."

"Nice, Paul, nice. I may not have been a perfect daughter, but I'm nothing compared to you and that fat bitch. My mother's not even cold and you vultures are already circling in for the kill!"

Lisa's face was bright red. "How dare..."

"Shut up, Lisa. Just shut up. And you," I said looking at Brendan. "Get the car and take me home. To my house."

Veronica's eyes were the size of saucers, but I didn't have the energy to comfort her. I didn't have the energy for any of them. Molly told me that she'd make sure the kids got home. I think I nodded at her.

Brendan brought the car around the front and for the first ten minutes in the car he was smart and shut his mouth. But Brendan's a compulsive talker and so he eventually said, "And you complain about my family."

"Brendan..."

"Ellen, what got into you back there? You know you have to sell that house."

"Why?"

"What do you mean why? Because we live in Washington. Because there's no reason to keep the house."

I stared at the traffic on Route 110. The relentless summer sun beat down on the minivans, the mini-malls, a giant big-box outlet store. The road hummed with the banalities of suburban life and I found it somewhat comforting. What I wouldn't do right now to just pull into the store and distract myself with discount toilet paper and garbage bags. While stopped at a red light, I stared at a young mother struggling with a toddler and a bulky ten set roll of paper towels. "It's mine. I don't need a reason to keep it."

"Jesus, Ellen, have you completely lost your mind? You've always hated that house. It's old. It's small."

Without looking at him, I said, "I don't care."

Brendan then adopted a reasonable, resonant tone. One I'm sure he'd used at many settlement meeting to great effect. Its low tone implicitly said trust me, I'll take care of you. I'm sure many of his opponents fell for it. Hell, I'd fallen for it for over twenty years. "Look, honey, Lisa and Paul are offering a very fair price. And he's got a point. It was his family's house. I know that you have some kind of bug up your ass about it, but that's the grief talking. You haven't been yourself these past few weeks. You're doing things, that I know you wouldn't normally do. That you must regret."

I turned to face him. "Are you referring to Billy? Because for your information, I don't regretted one delicious minute that we've spent together."

"Ellen, please. Do you really think this fling will survive the weekend? You could never be happy with a nobody like him. Can you imagine taking him to the club? Or to Parent's Weekend at Duke?"

"Parents' Weekend at Duke? As if you'd know anything about Parents' Weekend at Duke."

He patted my leg reassuringly. "We'll pack you up and get you home and use the money from Paul to buy a weekend home. You always said that you wanted to buy something on the Delaware shore."

"Yeah, and you always said you didn't have the time."

"Well, now I'll make the time. Come on, sweetie, let's just go home and put this all behind us."

"Go home to what."

"To our life. Our life together."

"What life together?"

"Oh, Jesus, not this again. Let's just go home and we'll sort it out there. I've got an early morning meeting anyway, so we'll just pack up and leave tonight."

"I can't go home tonight. You know we have the
toradh do bhean muirneach
."

"The what?"

"It's an O'Connor family tradition. All the women have cake for the deceased."

"Haven't you spent enough time with these people?"

"These people? I thought you said they were fine people. That you couldn't wait to spend more time with them? Didn't you offer to host the next family reunion at our house."

Brendan blew through a red light. A minivan leaned heavily on its horn. "Shit, Ellen, I say a lot of things."

"That you do, Brendan. That you do."

We were silent then, and I closed my eyes and rested until we pulled up the driveway.

"Jesus, Ellen. Who's that?"

I opened my eyes and saw Denis sitting uncomfortably on the front porch.

"It's my brother."

Brendan threw the car into park. "What do you mean, brother?"

"I found my father last month. He had three other children."

"But, what..."

I didn't stop to listen to whatever Brendan had to say. I got out of the car and called out, "Hello, Denis."

Denis stood up awkwardly. "Hello, sister."

I slammed the car door. "So you know? How?"

"It didn't take a detective. You look just like my sister Anne Marie. And you left this on the kitchen table." Denis handed me the photocopy of the photo that had caused so much upheaval these past few weeks.

Brendan walked over to me and holding out his hand to Denis, said hello.

"Denis, this is my husband. He's just packing. Why don't we go down to the boathouse to talk?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. Have I come at a bad time? Is it your mother?"

"We just came back from the funeral."

"Oh, geez. Great timing, huh? Why don't I come back another time?"

"No, it's fine. In fact, I could use the distraction." I took Denis by the arm and turned without saying anything further to Brendan. As we walked across the road, Brendan slammed my mother's front door.

I settled Denis on a deckchair while I rummaged through the boathouse kitchen. I managed to find two cold beers and a bag of peanuts.

"Sorry, this is the best I could do."

"No, this is perfect." Denis took the beer from me. "What a view. This is a beautiful spot. It must have been great growing up here."

"It was, in a way."

"My Dad loves the water. He'd love this view. He spends as much time as he can at Jones Beach. When we were growing up, he'd pack a big cooler and load up the car and we'd spend hours on the beach. He used to get so mad at my mother, who was Italian, because she'd throw on a little oil and tan after one weekend. Poor Dad, he'd burn, peel, freckle, burn again. But it was fun. Of course he'd be half in the bag by noon and passed out by three, but it was still fun."

"It sounds like it."

"Yeah, well, no one's family is perfect, right?"

"I just screamed at my aunt who's trying to steal this house in front of an entire restaurant, so I agree with you there. No family's perfect."

"God, funerals. You should have seen my mother's. What a circus. In fact, I think that's a big part of why my father treated you the way he did. My sister went completely ballistic at the funeral. Told my father he wasn't welcome in her house, you know, the whole nine yards. I'll admit the old man was drunk, but hell, when was he not? And he adored my mother. Maybe he wasn't the best husband in the world, but he loved her and she loved him. And he's been lost without her."

"I'm sorry," I said, not knowing what else to say.

"Well, don't be sorry. It accomplished one good thing, I guess. He got sober and he made up with my sister. But, to tell you the truth, I think he was better off as a drunk. He drank for so long it was part of his personality. And God, was he funny. But now, it's like he doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know who to be without the booze."

We sat for a while in companionable silence. I went and got us two more beers.

"I hope you don't mind, but I told my brother Dominic about you. He'd like to meet you. He lives in Glen Cove with his wife and three kids, so it's not too far from here. He's always been hard on my father, maybe too hard, but Dom's a good guy. A good brother."

"I'd like that," I said simply.

"We haven't told Anne Marie. I don't think she's ready. I don't know when she'll be ready, to tell you the truth."

"I don't want to cause any trouble for your family. For your father."

"I'd like to get to know you. Now that I know you exist, I can't ignore the fact that you're out there. It ain't right. I told my old man that."

"So he knows you're here?"

"He knows. And I think he's glad that I'm here."

"Well, I'm glad too."

We chatted for a while about Denis' job, his recent divorce. We were just getting ready to walk back to the main house when Billy's boat docked. Billy, once again shirtless, easily jumped from the boat carrying his fishing gear. I waved him over.

"There's someone I'd like you to meet, Denis."