“Seana has come to visit us,” Caitlin said.
Their mother spoke to Seana: “Why I once had a daughter named Seana,” she said. “Did you know her?”
“I’m Seana,” Seana said. “I’m your daughter.”
“Well, isn’t that good news,” their mother said. “And you look quite wonderful, I must say, though you’ll have to forgive my not recognizing you. My mind isn’t quite what it was once upon a time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Seana said.
“Well, these things happen, don’t they, and who can know why.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Seana said.
“Oh that He does,” their mother said. “Why just look at me, if you want proof!” She turned to me. “And who are you, young man?” She touched my cheek with her fingertips. “Why you’ve as beautiful and kind a face as Our Saviour Himself must have had.”
I glanced at Seana, thought of saying what I imagined she was thinking: that I was a Jewish boy the way He was, and only three years older than He’d been when He died.
“I’m Charlie Eisner, a friend of Seana’s,” I said. “My father was Seana’s teacher—her mentor.”
“Meant what?” Seana’s mother said. She turned to Seana and, suddenly alarmed, took a step back.
“And who are you, young lady, and when did you get here?” she asked.
“I’m Seana,” Seana said again. “I’m your daughter. I’m Seana Shulamith McGee O’Sullivan.”
“Ah, then you’ve come home at last,” her mother said, after which, with great gentleness, she probed Seana’s face with her fingers the way she’d probed mine. “How I missed you, and how I do love you. You were always the best and the most beautiful. You made my heart glad with happiness, didn’t you?”
“Did I?”
“And with such a lovely name—except for McGee and O’Sullivan, of course.” She spoke to me: “The McGees were cousins on my husband’s side, and they were a sorry lot, you just ask anyone. And about O’Sullivan, who abandoned me and mine, the less said the better. But Shulamith! What a splendid name! So tell me, please, if you would—who gave you such a beautiful name, dear, for it surely wasn’t me.”
“I gave it to myself,” Seana said. “It’s Hebrew—from Solomon, for wisdom, and from ‘shalom,’ for peace.”
“And from Salome,” Caitlin said. “Let us not forget Salome.”
“From Salome,” Seana said.
“For beauty!” their mother exclaimed. “Of course. I can see that, for you are beautiful, with or without your veils, and isn’t our life but a veil of tears, after all?”
“But that’s not the same veil…” Seana began.
“I know that,” her mother said, waving away her words. “Don’t confuse me for one of those demented nursing home ladies, young woman. I was just being clever, but I’ll never leave our home, do you hear? No matter what you say, you can’t drive me out and set me on a slab of ice with a bag of food…”
“You’ll always live here, Mum,” Caitlin said. “We’ve made a vow—all your daughters have—isn’t that so, Seana.”
Seana said nothing.
“Oh I can be quite loveable and clever, as you’ve just seen, even without my memory,” their mother said, and she sat down next to Seana. “And I’m glad of your visit.”
“You smell like lilacs,” Seana said. “The way you did when I was a girl.”
“Talcum powder,” her mother said. “Oh yes. Talcum powder—‘an Irish shower’ we call it. And would you know what young boys call an Irish priest?”
“I don’t,” Seana said. “What do young boys call an Irish priest?”
“A pain in the ass,” her mother said. “Which is the kind of joke he would have made if were he still with us, and you know who I mean.”
She folded her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes.
“Perhaps it’s time for another nap,” Caitlin said, “and afterwards we can show Seana the surprise we prepared for her.”
Their mother opened her eyes, and sat up straight. “No nap while my daughter is with me,” she said. “That would be rude. It’s quite wonderful to have her here with us, you know, for there were times I feared I might die without ever seeing her again.”
“Did you really?” Seana asked.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, my child,” her mother said. “Because, and no offense to your sisters, I did love you most of all. You were the child of my old age—the miracle and gift the Lord had prepared for me. You made me laugh again after he was gone, and I’ve read your books, the two of them, but you used your real name, though my own mother, bless her heart, said that if you’re going to make a fool of yourself, you should do it out of town. So now, please, tell me all about yourself and about what you’ve been up to with this handsome, young man.”
Seana’s mother grinned broadly. Then her eyes closed again, and a moment later she was fast asleep.
“Who is this woman?” Seana asked Caitlin.
“It’s one of the unforeseen benefits I mentioned,” Caitlin said. “With her memory coming and going—going mostly—she’s become all sweetness and light—the happy little girl she must have been before she married him, I’ve come to think, and before we all came along.”
Caitlin said that after their mother woke, she would telephone their sisters, and that they were sure to come by and to bring their children—Seana’s nieces and nephews—with them. Seana asked how they all were, and Caitlin talked about them and what they were up to: Keira, with three teenage girls at Sacred Heart, and two boys in middle school at Saint Francis. Built like little brick shithouses the boys were, Caitlin said, and Keira was selling real estate in Bay Ridge, and she was still married to Bill, though only God knew why, the way he played around with the college girls on his beat down by Brooklyn College.
And Mary, mostly on her own since her husband Mitchell went on permanent disability, was taking good care of her brood—two girls, two boys, and they were growing up just fine. A floor had collapsed under Mitchell during a fire in Red Hook, and he spent most of his days in bed watching television or at the local pub with his old firehouse buddies. And Peggy? Peggy was still vowing to leave her husband Joe—Joe a fireman too, and as much use, pardon her French, as a fart in a sausage factory for all the good he ever did, except to send out for pizza when Peggy had to work the night shift at Maimonides Hospital, where she was now chief nurse in pediatrics.
Her own husband, Hank, retired from the police force for six years and now working as a driver for a wealthy Park Avenue widow who dabbled in antiques, was probably the best of the lot, she said, and their four children were all out of college, three of them married and with their own children, and the baby—Fiona—engaged to a fine young man who’d been a star basketball player at St. John’s. The bad news, though, was that Fiona had been diagnosed with lupus, though the doctors caught it early and believed it would prove manageable, and her young man—John—was standing by her. The wedding was set for June.
“The Lord does try us sometimes,” Caitlin said, “and mostly we prove worthy of His love, and the good news is that we have one another, so we can help out when need be and—what saves the day—complain to each other on a regular basis. For isn’t complaining what that man whose name will not be spoken told us it was—a great indoor sport at which the Irish excel?”
Seana smiled. “I’ll look forward to complaining with you,” she said.
“And what would you have to complain about?” Caitlin said. “You with no husband, no children, all the money in the world, men fainting at the sight of you, and this handsome, young friend doting on you.”
Seana flinched visibly, but said nothing.
Their mother stirred. “Will you be calling the others now?” she asked.
“Soon,” Caitlin said.
“Is it time for the surprise?”
“It’s time.”
“Then take my hand, please,” their mother said to Seana.
Seana took her mother’s hand, and we walked up the stairs, Caitlin going ahead of us. We waited at the second floor landing while Caitlin went into a room at the end of the hallway. She came out a few seconds later, motioned for us to join her.
We entered a small, narrow room. To one side was a bed and dresser, and to the other side was a two-drawer desk and a small three-shelf bookcase.
“This was once my daughter’s room,” their mother said.
Straight ahead, between two windows, the shades drawn, was a table, and on the table between two lit candles, there was a framed picture of a girl in a white dress—Seana’s communion picture, I assumed—and next to it, propped up on display stands, copies of Triangle and Plain Jane.
Caitlin stood to one side of the table, hands clasped as if in prayer. Seana’s mother touched each of the novels, then smiled at us.
“My daughter wrote these books,” she said brightly. “She’s quite the famous writer. Do you know her?”
“I’m your daughter,” Seana said. “I’m Seana O’Sullivan.”
“What excellent news!” Seana’s mother said. “And how wonderful to know that you’re still alive.”
Caitlin put a hand on her mother’s arm, but her mother pushed it away angrily, leaned on the table. “It’s terrible when your memory begins to go,” she said. “It’s really quite terrible.”
I was awake before the sun rose—I’d slept in the room that had been Keira and Mary’s—and I went into Seana’s room, where she was fast asleep, snoring lightly, her arms wrapped around a pillow. I lifted the shade on one of the windows, looked out at the alleyway that ran behind the house. Not far beyond the garbage cans and the litter, perhaps a five or six minute walk along Rogers Avenue, I knew, on Martense Street, was the house in which my father had grown up, and though the rooms in which he ate, slept, and studied would probably be there for a while to come, it occurred to me that the memories he had of those rooms, and of all he’d done and thought and dreamt in them, were now gone forever.
I watched a large brown and white spotted dog burrow into a pile of garbage, and come out with a piece of brown paper. One paw on the paper to hold it in place, the dog licked whatever grease or crumbs were on it, and then moved off. I thought of late fall mornings in Northampton, the leaves on the trees outside the kitchen windows mostly gone, Max at the stove, scrambling eggs for us. All through junior high and high school, despite my protests, he’d insisted on the two of us having breakfast together every morning before I left for school. When I once asked why—why was it so important, especially given that I could fix something for myself, and that he didn’t have to get up (he never taught morning classes)—without looking at me, he answered by saying we were still family even when we were only two, and then asked if I wanted toast with my eggs.
I tried to let the world beyond Seana’s room—the alleyway, the old wooden fence behind it, the backs of buildings behind the fence, the early morning light—have its way with me. I stared out at the stillness, wondered why I saw no cats—weren’t they supposed to be scrounging around at this time of day?—and found myself wishing I could ask Max if he thought the quality of the stillness here—the quiet—was different from the quiet we’d known on mornings in Northampton.
I wasn’t aware that Seana was awake and out of bed until she had her arms around me.
“Good morning, my love,” she said.
“Do you live here?” I asked.
“Literally, or figuratively?”
“Either. Both.”
“Mmmm,” she said, nuzzling my neck.
“You must have been a happy little girl before you began collecting grudges,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said. “I used to love looking out this window, though. I loved it because there was nothing much to see. Sometimes, in the summer, there’d be a few people out on the fire escapes, cooling off. But with nothing to see—nothing new, anyway—I could daydream—I could imagine things.”
“Such as…?”
“Read my books,” she answered.
“Again?”
“Stop it,” she said. “But listen—please?—I did something weird before I went to sleep. Come sit with me.”
We sat on the side of her bed, and she told me that before she went to sleep she’d found herself standing in front of the shrine Caitlin and her mother had made to her and her books.
“I prayed, Charlie—for the first time in nearly thirty years, I prayed—and do you know what I prayed for?”
“My soul.”
“Be serious. Please?”
“Tell me.”
“I prayed for a child—I made a wish—and I had a moment when—it was like emerging from a blackout—I suddenly knew my wish was going to be granted. I just knew.”
“But how…?”
She was squeezing my arm very hard without seeming to realize she was doing so. “I don’t know!” she said. “But I found myself thinking of those organizations that give dying kids their dreams-come-true where they get to meet their favorite rock star or movie star or ballplayer…”
“Make-a-Wish,” I said. “That’s the name of the organization, and it’s also the title of one of the stories Max never wrote, about someone like you coming to live with him. Maybe that’s why…”
“Damn!” she said, and got up from the bed. “I shouldn’t have told you. Damn! Just damn your eyes, O’Sullivan. You are such a child—such a grade-A jerk sometimes! Such a selfish, self-serving total jerk!”
I took her hand, tugged lightly, and she sat next to me again. “Hey—it’s okay—nothing wrong with wishing for things for ourselves—even praying for them.” I laughed. “Max used to tell a story about a guy in synagogue who prayed to God to send him a thousand dollars, and promised that if God did, he’d give half of it to charity… but if somehow God didn’t believe him, he asked God to just send him his half.”
“Stop humoring me and trying to make a joke out of everything,” she said. “Your father did that sometimes, and it drove me nuts.”
“Like father like son?”
“Just stop it, goddamn you! Stop trying to make things right,” she said. “I hate it when people do that. I really do. Let me feel guilty if I want to feel guilty—let me feel embarrassed if I feel embarrassed. Please?”
“Sure.”
She went to the table where her books were, picked up the photo of her in her communion dress. “I was pretty, wasn’t I?”
“Pretty then, beautiful now,” I said.
“So maybe I’m upset because I’m happy to be home again, and it surprises me to be happy here, and—don’t protest or make a joke because if you do I may become violent—I’m happy to be here with you, Charlie.”
At breakfast, Seana’s mother didn’t talk, not even to say ‘good morning,’ but she ate steadily—bread and jam, canned sausages, cookies, cut-up fruit—and stared ahead absently while she chewed.
Then the noise began.
Keira, Mary, and Peggy arrived with their children, and so did Caitlin’s four children and their children. There was lots of hugging, kissing, and weeping. Caitlin pulled more food from the fridge, freezer, and pantry, and she and her sisters set out food on the kitchen table (each of the sisters had brought something), and on a glass-topped coffee table in the living room. The older children came to me one at a time and told me they were sorry my father had died, but otherwise didn’t show much interest in who I was or why I was there.
Seana’s mother sat on the couch, the grandchildren taking turns sitting next to her, telling her about what they were doing in school—the younger ones talked about cartoons they loved: Scooby Doo, Bugs Bunny, Shrek, Road Runner—and thanking her when, from her purse, she rewarded them with coins. “Be gone small change before I spend ye!” she’d say each time. Mary and Peggy had brought shopping bags with copies of Seana’s novels they asked her to sign—for sale at their church bazaars, for their local libraries, for gift-giving—and they were at her with questions about her life—
new books? new homes? travel plans?
They remembered my father from the time they’d met him at Seana’s Brooklyn Public Library reading, and they remembered that he’d grown up a block or two away, and told me they’d enjoyed talking with him about what things had been like in the neighborhood when he was a boy. Peggy recalled him saying that the Holy Cross schoolyard had been his second home, and there were tears in her eyes when she said she knew that it was because of him that Seana had become a writer, and how she couldn’t imagine what it was like to have a father of his quality, and then to lose him. One of Seana’s nieces—Caitlin’s daughter, Alexa, who was in graduate school at Teacher’s College—said that she had written an essay on Plain Jane for her senior honors thesis at Fordham University, comparing it to Jane Eyre, and that she’d wowed her professor with the fact that Seana was her aunt.
They asked me about what I was doing—had I been living with my father before he died?—and I told them that I’d been living and working in Singapore, and that my best friend had died there not long before my father had passed away. Seana, smiling mischievously, told them that I’d written about my experiences in Singapore, and about my friend’s death, which had occurred under mysterious circumstances, and that if she knew anything about matters literary, what I’d written was sure to be published one day soon.
Her sisters congratulated me, asked a few more questions, and then went back to comparing notes on their kids, and complaining about their husbands. They gossiped about relatives and people they’d grown up with—who was getting divorced, who’d come into money, who was dead or dying, who had moved away and to where… and I sat there drinking it all in, and wondering: Was this—or the loss of this—of extended family living near each other and sharing their ongoing lives on what was, for these sisters and their children, a daily basis—what it was all about? And where were the men, and what part of this world was theirs and bore the impress of who they were?
And so it went, into the early afternoon. The women kept setting out food and more food. They washed dishes, gossiped, and looked through photo albums of communions, confirmations, graduations, weddings, and family vacations. They laughed and wiped away tears and traded stories and called their children to them to show them pictures of people and events that had taken place when the children were young, or before the children were born. Seana’s mother took a nap upstairs while the older children worked at their laptop computers, and the younger ones played video games on hand-held gizmos, or watched television—there were DVDs there for them: old Walt Disney movies—Cinderella, Bambi, Dumbo, The Little Mermaid—and as the hours went by, I noticed that Seana was keeping to herself more and more.
The Other Side of the World Page 24
