by Juliette Fay
He stood when Sean approached, chest up, shoulders broad, as if Sean were the captain of the SS IHOP and his father one of the crew. His eyelids flickered nervously, and he thrust out his hand for Sean to shake. Sean looked down at it. There was a thick scar across the first knuckle that Sean had never noticed before. Must be new, he thought. In the last thirty years, anyway.
He reached out and took his father’s hand for a quick shake, but it was long enough to become reacquainted with the worn-leather feel of it. The only difference was that his own hand was no longer dwarfed in size. He looked up and saw the older man’s relief. A handshake. As good a start as any.
“Sean.” He studied his son’s face as if he might catalogue every freckle.
“Da.” Sean looked away and sat down.
The waitress bustled quickly over with a plastic jug of coffee.
“I’d prefer tea, if you don’t mind,” said Da.
“Orange juice, please,” said Sean.
After she left, Sean took a closer look at his father. Tiny capillaries had broken under the skin of his cheeks, like hairsbreadth red spiders scattering into the crevices of his wrinkles.
“So,” said Da. “A bit of a quandary knowing where to start.”
Well, don’t look at me, thought Sean.
“I want to know all about you and Hugh and Deirdre, everything I missed. But the fault is mine that I missed it in the first place, so I know I’ve no right to it.”
He straightened the knife and fork on his napkin. Right angles. A compulsive habit Sean remembered from childhood. “I’ve no desire to talk about myself,” Da went on. “I’m guessing you might not care all that much. But please let me begin to apologize.” His gaze went hard into Sean. “Words may mean nothing at this point, but Sean Patrick, I’m sorry. I never should have stayed away as I did. It was weak and shameful, and even if the three of you find it in your hearts to forgive me someday, I shall never forgive myself.”
A painful ache started behind Sean’s eyes, and his throat tightened like a clamp. If he had known what to say, he wouldn’t have been able to say it.
The waitress returned with the tea and orange juice. “Have you decided?”
“I don’t believe we have,” said Da. “Give us a quick minute, will you?” When she left, Da asked, “Can you eat?” Sean shook his head. “Shall I talk or shall I shut up and let you talk?”
Sean could feel tears like a pinhole leak threatening to burst, and he tightened his molars against it. His words came out in a guttural surge. “Where’ve you been?”
Da wrapped his thick hands around his mug of tea. The steam curled into the air-conditioned air between them. “At sea mostly,” he said. “Container ships. I tried to spend as little time on land as possible. I fell into the bottle between runs.” He took a sip of his tea. “Shame and loneliness,” he said. “A man’s best drinking mates.
“Aboard,” he went on, “your mind is always busy, doing things proper, avoiding trouble. The danger is a blessing.” He was quiet for a moment, and it seemed he was waiting for Sean to comment. “I had a little flat in Tacoma, Washington, for a bit. Good place for a mariner. Lots of ships. But then my hand got smashed—a chain snapped and flew out like a cobra. Nearly took off my arm.” He turned the wrist of the scarred hand, and Sean could see that the knuckles were slightly misaligned. “If it had hit me in the head, I’d have gone to my reward.” Da gave a mirthless little snort. “Such as it may be.”
The waitress circled back, pad in hand. “Two short stacks, please,” said Da. When she left he turned back to Sean. “I didn’t want to disappoint her. You don’t have to eat it.”
The interruption helped Sean settle down a little. “You were working until a couple of years ago?” he asked. This was hard to believe. The man was over seventy.
Da nodded. “An able-bodied seaman can sail as long as he’s able-bodied. I was known to be a hard worker. It kept the demons away.” He flexed the hand and then clenched it. The index and middle fingers didn’t curl as tightly as the others did, Sean noticed. Someone had done a very patchy job on those tendons, but there was clearly some nerve damage, too.
“No more runs,” said Da, “no more hiding from the demons.” In a drunken haze one night he’d left his hot plate on, he told Sean. A dish towel caught fire and then the curtains. He might have killed everyone in the building if a couple of passing skateboarders hadn’t seen the flames and called the fire department. “The neighborhood pests,” Da said. “Always whizzing by and giving you a heart attack. These were my saviors.”
The landlord evicted him, and he drank himself into a stupor of undetermined duration—he didn’t remember much other than getting kicked repeatedly when he slept behind a Dumpster down at the port. He wandered into a place called Nativity House that offers services and meals to the homeless. “At first it was just a warm place to be during the day. The staff were kind, some of them young people, just out of university. One of them—his name was Declan Kelly—he reminded me of you and Hugh. A funny, freckled boy who played backgammon with me and annoyed me to no end with his talk of detox and the AA. That’s Alcoholics Anonymous.” The young man had slowly chipped away at Martin’s resolve to drink himself to death, found a treatment program for him and a halfway house after that.
The pancakes arrived, and with his good hand Da slowly slathered his with butter and jam. Sean’s stomach was in no mood for visitors, and his pancakes remained untouched.
“It was the AA that got me thinking of finding you,” said Da. “They have a program with twelve steps. One of the steps is making amends to those you’ve hurt or wronged.”
Sean’s anger surged. Apparently this was just an item to check off on some drunkard list. “So that’s what you’re doing,” he said drily. “Making amends.”
Martin laid his knife on the side of his plate. “No. As I told my sponsor, there’s no such thing when the wrong is as wrong as this. I came for two things only. To tell you face-to-face how sorry I am; and to give you a chance to scream or yell or punch me in the nose, if you’ve a mind to. You must be carrying quite a burden of anger, the three of you, and the least I can do is provide an opportunity to vent it a little.”
The old man picked up the knife again and resumed his careful spreading of butter and jam, as if it were an art project of some kind, or possibly occupational therapy for his remaining good hand. Sean considered his offer. He had no urge to punch his father, or to scream and yell. He knew the story, understood the series of events. There was just one thing he wanted to say.
“You left us with Aunt Vivvy.”
The knife went still. “Aye,” he murmured.
“She didn’t want us.”
Da let out a sigh. “That woman is a cold bit of mackerel, and don’t think it didn’t trouble me greatly. But she did want you. It was me she didn’t want.”
“She said she told you to take us and leave.”
“Which she did. But you’re Lila’s children, and she loved her sister. She loved you, in her bloody arctic way. And she was a damn sight better at caring for you than I was at the time. I was drinking and dreadful depressed. I was out of control, Sean. Vivvy’s no Mary Poppins, but she was better than me. ’Tisn’t the leaving I regret. It’s the not coming back.”
* * *
Da ate a bite or two of his pancakes and asked the waitress for more tea. He wanted to know about Sean’s life, and Sean gave him an overview, albeit brief. “This is the longest I’ve been back in twenty years,” he said.
“And you never married?”
“No.”
Da nodded thoughtfully. “Didn’t want to do to your own family what was done to you.”
“Right.”
“And Deirdre? I’ll bet she’s married. That girl was as fanciful and romantic as any I’ve seen.”
“
No, she isn’t, either. But she’s an actress now. Well, trying to be. She’s in a play out in Worcester, and planning to give it a go in New York if things go well.”
“Ha!” Da chortled. “Of course she is. Brilliant!”
It was startling to see his Da grin so broadly. Sean wasn’t sure if he remembered ever seeing such a look on his father’s face. It had always had a slightly stony composition, as if anger, worry, and grief had been part of its skeletal structure.
“And Hugh?” Da asked, still smiling. “Don’t tell me—he never married, the rascal. He’s probably a ski bum. Or a skydiver.”
“No, he never married.”
“And what’s his line of work?”
Help me, Hugh.
“Unemployed?” asked Da. “Well, that’s all right. It’s a down economy.”
“No, uh . . .”
Da waited, but Sean couldn’t find the words. He knew this was why he was here—to tell Da about Hugh. But it seemed cruel, and Sean wondered if it would drive him back to the bottle.
The older man became concerned. “Jail?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Sean took a breath. “He passed, Da.”
The scarred hand went up to his face. “Oh, Jesus, no.”
“Six years ago.”
“Was it the Huntington’s?”
“Pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?”
“I wasn’t here. I don’t know much more than that.” Sean shook his head. “I guess Kevin had it, and Hugh picked it up but didn’t get it treated in time.”
Da’s face went from grief to confusion. “Who’s Kevin?”
“Hugh had a son,” Sean explained. “He’s eleven now.”
“A son.” Da’s eyes filled. “A son with no da.” Tears spilled down the wrinkled, spider-veined cheeks. “Jesussufferingchrist,” he whispered. “I should have been here.”
Sean waited for the old man to collect himself, but there was no sign of it, and Sean began to get worried. The irony was not lost on either of them. So many fatherless sons. Generations of loss. Da’s tears continued to flow.
Toss him in the air a few times, came the words in Sean’s mind. Works like a charm.
His hand slid out across the table and into his father’s battered one. He squeezed it, and his father squeezed back. Sean could feel the slackness in the index and middle fingers, and he felt sympathy for his da—for the ruined hand, and the weakness that kept him so far from his family, and for the heartbreak of losing his wife. The shame and the loneliness.
Da’s crying quieted then. “Thank you,” he said.
CHAPTER 35
They talked a while longer, the melted butter on Da’s pancakes congealing into the jam. Sean was exhausted. He felt as if he’d been through Hugh’s funeral all over again. He wanted to go home and get back into bed. And from bed he would call Rebecca and report that he had done it. He had told Da in person about his son’s death and the existence of his grandson.
“So when do you go back to Tacoma?” he asked Da, politely trying to wrap up the breakfast.
“I’ve no plans to go back there,” said Da.
Sean felt the hairs go up on the back of his neck. “No?” he said.
“There’s nothing for me there.”
“What about Declan Kelly?” Sean was grasping at straws, but panic was setting in.
“He’s gone to California. Law school.”
“Oh.”
“Actually,” Da offered hesitantly, “I’d like to move to Ireland.”
“Wow. Do you still know anyone there?” Sean felt as if he’d dodged a familial bullet.
“None I’ve kept up with. But you know, it’s not people I want to see. It’s the island.”
“Blasket? But there’s nothing there anymore, is there? Everyone moved to the mainland.”
“Yes, well, some went more happily than others.” He tipped his head, a little self-scoffing gesture. “It’s silly, really. But I need to. I have to get back there while I’ve still time.”
“Well, I hope you have a great trip.”
“Yes,” he said, digging a wallet out of his pocket. “So do I.” He tossed a twenty on the table. Sean went for his own wallet, but Da’s stronger hand went out. “Wouldn’t hear of it,” he said, and Sean didn’t have the energy to disagree.
They walked out to the parking lot—his father to a nondescript compact rental car. Sean put his hand out to shake, and Da took it in both of his own. “God bless and keep you, lad,” he said. “And thank you.”
* * *
Sean sat in the Caprice and watched his father pull out onto the roadway. When the small car disappeared from view, Sean had the strange feeling that maybe the breakfast hadn’t happened at all, that it was some sort of fever dream, and when his temperature came down he’d see that it hadn’t been real. In fact, at the moment none of it—IHOP, Belham, his prolonged stay in the States—seemed entirely plausible. A Talking Heads song from his high school days started to play in his brain. Something about suddenly being in another part of the world . . . driving a large automobile . . . You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?
Holy shit, he thought. How did I get here?
Going back to Aunt Vivvy’s felt entirely wrong—like it would compound his disorientation. The Tree of Life Spa was just down the road. Sean drove over to see if he could catch Rebecca between clients. He just wanted to see someone real.
Cleopatra sat on her ergonomic throne behind the reception desk. When she saw him, a look came over her face as if someone had just passed some particularly bad gas.
“Just tell me where she is,” said Sean.
“Uh, this is a spa? So she’s, like, giving a spa treatment?”
“I’ll leave her a note.”
Cleopatra pushed a pen and piece of paper toward him. He scribbled on it and handed it back. She pinched it between her finger and thumb, dropping it onto the desk like a used tissue.
Sean got back in the Caprice and started driving east down Route 9, for no other reason than that Tree of Life Spa was on the eastbound side, and it was illegal to make a left turn and go west. The road took him through Natick and into Wellesley. His mother had gone to Wellesley College, though she’d told him once that it hadn’t been her first choice. She would have preferred to go to a co-ed school in a city. Wellesley had been her parents’ first choice for just the opposite reasons: close to home, no boys.
Route 9 took Sean through Newton and into Chestnut Hill, not far from Boston College. His mother had often visited a high school friend who’d gone to BC. At the same time, his father had lived in Brighton with a guy who also went there. Martin had joined the merchant marine by then, but didn’t miss the chance to go to college parties between runs. That’s how they met.
The BC Mods were townhouse-style apartments with small adjoining yards that created the perfect venue for multiunit bashes. Martin and Lila had each come with their friends and gotten separated from them in the happy, raucous confusion of the party. Lila was standing next to the keg on the patio, knowing her friend would eventually turn up there, when Martin thrust his plastic cup at her for a refill. She had never used a keg tap before and ended up dousing a boy standing next to her, who was inebriated enough to consider this a kindness.
“Your poor mother was mortified,” Martin had told Sean when he was a boy. “I fell in love with her on the spot.”
Sean veered off Route 9 onto Hammond Street toward BC. He circled down past lower campus and pulled over where he could glimpse the Mods behind the newer high-rise dorms.
That’s where it started, he thought. This whole godforsaken mess.
His anger surged at a God who would set in motion such a series of heartbreaks—a God Sean barely believed in anymore, yet who was still real enough to be furious
with. He slammed the gearshift into drive and pulled out, coming quickly to Commonwealth Avenue. If he turned left, it would eventually take him directly into Belham.
Hell no, he thought, and turned right.
Comm Ave had plenty of traffic lights, giving Sean ample time to stare out the window, stewing on his family history. A domino effect of misfortune had been set up on the day his parents met, one tile toppling into another over the course of the next forty-five years.
The Caprice seemed to make its way down Comm Ave of its own accord. In Allston the graffiti on the side of a building said, GOD IS LOVE.
“You idiot,” Sean told the graffiti. “God is a cruel son of a bitch with a twisted sense of humor. And by the way, you defaced a fucking building with that crap.” His vitriol surprised even him. For so many years, God had been the loving parent he’d so desperately wanted and missed, a guide and protector through all that was sad and frightening about his life.
And now he saw it differently: God had tricked him into doing the hardest kind of work, in sort of a protracted practical joke. It was embarrassing to realize he’d been gullible enough to fall for it. Pranked by God.
Wanting to get off the city streets and drive hard and fast, Sean pulled onto the Massachusetts Turnpike at the Allston tolls. He got confused at the point where it goes into the tunnel toward the airport and several other exit ramps spin off in various directions. Somehow he ended up in South Boston. And then he was headed up Broadway out toward the ocean.
Castle Island is the easternmost point in South Boston, and his mother had loved the place. She’d taken her children there often, especially when Da was at sea. Jutting out into Boston Harbor, it was a gorgeous vantage point for both the ocean and the airport across the water in East Boston. “Look,” she’d say as they stood along the fence that ringed the promontory, “we’re as close to Da as we can get right now. And when his run is over, he’ll either be sailing back into this harbor, or landing right over there at the airport.”
