The Sweeney Sisters

by Lian Dolan

  Chapter 13

  Liza walked Serena across the lawn, making conversation. “How’s the guesthouse at the Winthrops’? I think she’s done some work on it recently. She used Mike Costello as the general contractor. He was working for me at the same time doing some upgrades at the gallery, a new mini-kitchen for openings, but Lucy Winthrop had Mike wrapped around her finger, tied up every day. I had to personally appeal to Mrs. Winthrop to let Mike finish up my job before a big opening. She gets wants she wants, Lucy Winthrop.” Liza was desperate to change the subject. “Here we are. Did Tricia mention that there is an archivist here from Yale sorting out the papers? Knock, knock.”

  Liza was relieved to hear Raj’s voice from within: “Come in.”

  “Hi, Raj. Sorry to bother you. We have a visitor who wanted to see my father’s office before everything goes off to New Haven. This is Serena Tucker.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Raj Chaudhry. Tricia said you were a journalist, but she didn’t mention you were a relative.”

  “She is a journalist,” Liza said, irrationally, hoping to throw off the flow of conversation.

  “Pardon?” Serena said.

  “Well, you must be a cousin. You look exactly like Tricia with blond hair.”

  “Yes,” Liza said. “Something like that.”

  Standing in the boathouse, taking in the literary importance of the space, Serena was emotional. This was William Sweeney’s office. This was her father’s office.

  She wished the contents hadn’t been organized, boxed, and labeled. She wished that her father had agreed to meet with her as she had requested. She wished she had had a single moment with him during his lifetime where the two of them could have acknowledged the truth, forgiven the past, and talked about the present, about writing and life. Serena was bitter about her mother withholding the truth, but she was more bitter that she didn’t get any time with her “birth father”—a term she hated because it made no sense. He wasn’t there for her birth and he’d never been a father to her.

  Serena knew in her heart that Mitch Tucker was a decent man, stable to a fault and probably responsible for her steady emotional state. He was and had been a fine father. But William Sweeney was an extraordinary talent, a genius, even. Standing in his office was not enough, but it was something. And that something made her weepy.

  Raj shot Liza an alarmed look. Liza said quietly, “We’ll give you some time here, Serena. Raj, can I speak with you on the dock?”

  Serena was grateful for the time alone. And, she realized, Liza trusted her enough to leave her alone in the boathouse. She was also grateful for that. She watched Liza and Raj walk toward the water, both without looking back. Liza is handling this well, Serena thought. Like someone who’s old enough to withhold judgment. Serena wandered around the office. The mementos were few, a couple of photos from talks, an official portrait with former president Clinton, a photo of Maeve in what looked to be a wedding dress, no veil, only a spray of roses and baby’s breath woven into her hair. There were various medals of honor and honorary degrees in a pile. A framed New Yorker cover signed by the artist. Serena noticed there were only a couple of family photos. One was of Liza’s beautiful children, whom she had seen at the wake. In this picture, the twins were tan and happy, on a sailboat. My niece and nephew, thought Serena for the first time, surprised that she hadn’t connected the family dots beyond the three sisters. I have a niece and nephew and a brother-in-law. As an unmarried only child, those kinds of relationships hadn’t even occurred to Serena. Now, she had an extended family. She studied the photo. The boat’s name was Sunkissed, and that’s exactly the way the children looked: sunkissed.

  The other photo was the sort of family shot that was mandatory in all holiday cards these days: posed and perfect. Serena wasn’t sure when these sorts of cards had become mandatory holiday missives; she didn’t recall the onslaught occurring in her childhood. Certainly, the Tucker family didn’t make the posed portrait an annual event. Maybe at her deb ball there was a photo card, or something from that one perfect ski vacation in Sun Valley, but Birdie Tucker favored cards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that she had engraved and then personalized with a short note. These days, Serena got dozens of cards every year from classmates and colleagues who wanted to advertise their excellent gene pool and tout accomplishments (Starting pre-K at Sidwell! MVP of the soccer squad! Youngest girl on the Robotics Team!). Serena tossed them all in a silver bowl by the front door for a few weeks and then tossed them out on January 2. Serena was sure Liza sent out these trophy cards on expensive stock with gold engraving. Maybe she’d get one next Christmas.

  But this Sweeney formal family picture seemed out of character for free-range Maeve and her daughters. Liza and Maggie were tweens and Tricia was about six. All the Sweeney women posed on the lawn of Willow Lane, as if a picnic were about to break out, snuggled close to each other, hugging and laughing. Maeve was in a white sundress with silver bangles on her arm, her hair up in a loose bun, gold sandals on her feet. God, she was gorgeous. The three sisters were in coordinated blue-and-white flowered dresses, all with their long red hair neatly combed and held back in headbands with tiny purple flowers. Serena did the math and thought about those May Day celebrations. This photo was probably Maeve’s last good year, before the diagnosis and the years of treatment, remission, recurrence, and more treatment. The photographer took the photo from above and all their lovely faces were tilted toward the sun.

  I was probably sitting in my room, five hundred feet away, listening to the laughter, Serena thought. She looked out the window of the boathouse and saw her childhood home. I was there the whole time.

  Enough melancholy. Raj and Liza were at the end of the dock, talking about her, she presumed. Tricia had said she could be on that work call all afternoon. And Maggie had wandered back to the studio, instructing Liza to swing by after the boathouse tour. Serena guessed she had at least a few more minutes.

  She went to the six-drawer file cabinet behind the desk, assuming that’s where the personal papers might be held and opened it. She didn’t know quite what she was looking for, but she was sure she’d know it if she saw it. Her mother had given her one tiny clue in their only conversation: William Sweeney had called her mother Rebecca, her given name. Maybe somewhere in the office there was a file titled “Rebecca,” which held the answer to the only question Serena really had: Did Bill Sweeney know that he was her father all along?

  Liza and Raj walked the length of the dock in silence. The weather was warming up. It would be hot and sticky by the Fourth of July in a few days and then the summer would start in earnest, with American flags flying on every house, lobsters and cocktails on the beach, and fireworks up and down the Connecticut shoreline. If it was a normal year, Liza would be organizing a party at the club for “their crowd,” meaning the couples that passed the test: Does he talk about anything other than work and golf? Does she talk about anything other than the kids? From this bottom line, Liza and Whit had built a group of regulars at parties that included a mix of old Southport, new money art collectors, and a few fun gay couples who summered in town. But not this year. She’d taken the event off her list when her father died, sending out a short email to participants about her decision. With Whit’s departure, Liza realized she might never host another “Festive Fourth,” as floral designer Anthony had called it every year in his beautifully handwritten thank-you note.

  Liza watched a fleet of junior sailors in Bluejays, heading out the mouth of the harbor for a sailing lesson, laughing and shouting boat to boat as their sails picked up more wind in the open water. She imagined Vivi and Fitz at camp, sailing on the pond in Maine. Vivi loved sailing on a lake but was too scared of sharks and sea monsters to sail on the Long Island Sound, like Liza had been when she was young. But the kids out on the boats today had no such fears. Their enthusiasm made Liza smile. Freedom.

  It was Tricia who had been the sailor in the Sweeney family, attracted to the rigor and discipl
ine of the sport. Liza and Maggie were interested in sailing instructors, but not sailing. When they were teenagers, they would sit on the end of the dock in their bikinis and wait for the cute sailing instructors, from Brown or Hobart, to motor by in their Boston Whalers. We wasted a lot of time on boys, Liza thought as she and Raj reached the end of the dock. We should have learned to sail.

  “I know this is none of my business, but that woman had a very strong reaction to your father’s office. Is that normal?”

  “Do you know who that is? Serena Tucker. Is that name familiar?”

  “The name’s not familiar. Should I know her?”

  “She’s a journalist. Washington Post. Slate. Straight Up.”

  “Tricia said that, but she didn’t say ‘cousin.’ Did they have a falling out?”

  “You signed that NDA, right?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, then, here you go.” Liza made the split-second decision to tell Raj. “Yes, she’s a journalist, but not our cousin. Here comes the NDA bit: we recently learned that she’s our half-sister and Tricia is freaked out by it all.”

  That felt so good. Liza had been on the verge of exploding since Whit had packed his bags and headed back to North Carolina with everything he could jam into the back of the Cayenne, from his golf clubs to the top-of-the-line one-touch espresso maker. Telling Raj about Serena put her back in balance. One secret was enough to keep. Two was killing her.

  Raj was the perfect confessor—a sensible neutral party new to the neighborhood, slightly in awe of her father’s legacy and silenced by a nondisclosure agreement. Given enough time and wine, Liza might tell him every secret she’s ever held, from her one truly wild night with the lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls in 2002 to the time last New Year’s Eve when she and Whit stole a bottle of champagne off a room service tray on Necker Island. Liza, who felt like she’d been hiding in her own life for a decade, was now having trouble staying quiet.

  She needed to confide in someone about something, and Raj was standing right next to her, legally barred from repeating anything she said. The perfect stranger. “Our father had an affair in the early 1980s and Serena is the product of that affair. The affair was with the mom next door, which is . . . disappointing. So, Serena grew up across the street from us, but we didn’t know her well because she’s slightly older than me and her parents were super snobby. I’m sure my mother wasn’t good enough for them and I have no doubt that Mr. Tucker thought my father was a drunk, no-talent communist from the way he waved from his driveway but never once attempted conversation with our family. But we learned the truth last week. There is a fourth Sweeney sister.”

  “Whoa.” It was all Raj could think to say, having very little experience being on the receiving end of such confidences. He had friends who were female, but they were usually other people’s girlfriends or wives, secondary acquaintances who might blurt out a few things in the kitchen after a long night of Scrabble and drinking. But he didn’t usually get the good stuff. An illegitimate daughter living next door? This might have huge implications on the interpretation of Sweeney’s work, he thought, then realized that was a purely academic reaction to a very personal revelation. He added, “That’s a lot of information for the three of you to take in during such a difficult time.”

  “Thank you, Raj. It is. And I’m telling you not to burden you but so that you’re informed about everything concerning my father. You may come across something in your work that would be helpful to us in terms of understanding our father’s actions. If you do, we’d appreciate you passing that on.”

  Raj noticed that Liza and Tricia had the same affect of using the word “we” instead of “I” when speaking about anything Sweeney related, as if they represented an organization or a foundation more than a family. “I hope this doesn’t come off wrong, but having an affair and then a child outside of marriage is kind of on-brand for William Sweeney.”

  The comment made Liza laugh. “That is one way to think about it.”

  “Do you understand that this information has value in terms of your father’s work? This is the kind of personal detail that may inspire new interpretations of classic pieces.”

  “We do.” She tried not to sound exasperated with Raj. “It’s all Tricia talks about. We get it and it’s why we’d like to get to know Serena better before we announce it to the world.”

  “And why you are so desperate to find that memoir.”

  “Do we seem desperate?”

  “Yes.” They both laughed. “Does Serena know about the memoir? There could be some true surprises in the book if your father reveals the truth about her.”

  “She hasn’t said anything about the memoir. But she must know. She’s a journalist and Tricia’s convinced that she’s been researching her own book for the last six months since she accidentally discovered the genetic link. Deep background, Tricia keeps saying. Making ominous predictions about how what Serena has told us is only the tip of the iceberg about what she knows.”

  “Why wouldn’t Tricia tell me this?” Raj wondered if Tricia was ashamed of her father. Or jealous of Serena. Or both.

  Liza started to explain, “Tricia’s a lawyer. She has trust issues.” Then she noticed the disappointment in Raj’s face. He likes her. Liza knew she needed to soften the blow, but that wasn’t easy. Tricia’s preferred state of being was firm, bordering on rigid, when it came to opinions, regimens, romance. “She’s protective of my father’s legacy in every way. From the literary interpretations that you mentioned to his personal reputation here in Southport. She sees every issue from every angle. That can make her cautious.”

  “Every collection I’ve ever worked on is filled with unexpected truths.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Case in point, five years ago, I was the primary archivist for the Celia Longley collection that had been donated to Johns Hopkins. Do you know her work?”

  It occurred to Liza to lie, covering up for what she perceived to be a gap in her education, but what was the point, really? She knew art, Raj knew books. They weren’t in competition. “Never heard of her.”

  “She was a contemporary of Emily Dickinson’s. In fact, they were correspondents, exchanging letters and poetry and some pretty hot passages, if you know what I mean. Like Dickinson, Longley didn’t publish much in her lifetime, but her work was discovered afterward by an ardent Dickinson scholar who unearthed the poems while studying Dickinson’s letters.”

  “Where’s this going, Raj? Doesn’t everyone know Dickinson liked the ladies?”

  “It’s a disputed theory. But it was Longley’s personal papers that hid a mountain of really unpleasant information. Sure, she was into Emily and many other married Amherst women, but that’s not career-ending these days. In fact, her work was gaining popularity in LGBTQ academia. But digging into her papers, I discovered that Celia was an anti-Semite, vocally anti-immigrant, and a big believer in castration or sterilization for the disabled and mentally ill. Plus, she practiced the dark arts in her basement, and that included animal sacrifices. The truth about who she was as a person really made people rethink her charming poems about peonies. Her work was dropped by a lot of anthologies and curriculums just as it was starting to be recognized at the same level as Dickinson’s. You never know what lurks in people’s papers.”

  “My father was no saint, but I don’t see him engaging in animal sacrifice.”

  “Probably not. But this happens all the time, new revelations after death. Writers are real people and their lives are messy. But that informs the work.”

  “Any advice?”

  “You will survive the truth.”

  You will survive the truth. That was exactly what Liza needed to hear. “Thank you, Raj. Let’s go back before Serena figures out that my father’s password is the name of his boat. Which will probably take her about twenty seconds.”

  Serena looked up and saw Liza and Raj heading back to the boathouse. She quickly closed the bottom drawer of the fi
le cabinet. What was she thinking? That William Sweeney would keep a big file titled “Rebecca” in his office? Or that Tricia—thorough, methodical Tricia—wouldn’t have already found it? She felt foolish about her actions.

  The door opened and, to Serena’s surprise, it was Tricia. “You’re finished here.” It came out as a command, not a question. “Maggie has requested that I deliver you to her studio. She’s working on a few things she wants to show you. Which never happens—neither the frantic work nor the sharing—so maybe you’re some kind of muse to her now.”

  Was that jealousy in Tricia’s voice? Serena thought so. She grabbed her bag and took a last look around. Maybe if she could get Tricia to trust her, she’d be allowed to come back to the boathouse on her own. To soak it all in.

  Chapter 14

  Maggie looked out across the lawn from the conservatory where she had set up her studio in record time. She saw Serena walking with Liza and Tricia and the two old dogs, Jack and Bear, plodding along beside them. She felt victorious. I am doing a good thing. I’m bringing people together.

  Ever since her return from California by way of the ashram in India, Maggie had struggled to find her place amongst the sisters. There was Liza, so successful, so organized, and goddamn if she still didn’t have that same killer body after two kids. She would always be the gold standard for the Sweeney sisters, even if she wasn’t quite as book smart as Tricia. And Tricia would never know how beautiful she was because she insisted on wearing gender-neutering navy-blue suits and a perennial blunt cut. She could handle anything, despite being the youngest sister. Liza and Tricia were two above-average bookends in the family; Maggie felt like the gooey middle with not much to show for it except a longer list of exes and the best hair.

  Even this artist-in-residence stint was more make-believe than substantive, better on paper than in real life. But here she was, back at Willow Lane, and despite the shock of her father’s death, she was holding it together personally and beyond. The art installation at the wake. Her willingness to meet Serena beyond halfway. The new energy with which she was painting. Like her father had said, use the pain and make her art sing.