One Year

by Mary McDonough

  She was most proud, however, of the large collection of family photographs taken over the long years of her marriage. The entire Fitzgibbon family was represented, with the notable exception of William Patrick Fitzgibbon. Mary Bernadette and Paddy’s first child had died at the tender age of eighteen months. Photographs of the little boy did exist, but Mary Bernadette kept them in a locked box to which she had the only key. Paddy had never protested this. He had never dared to interfere with his wife’s mourning.

  It would be difficult for a visitor to miss the fact that every photograph had been taken on an official occasion—at a wedding, a christening, on Christmas or Thanksgiving—so that every family member was in his or her Sunday best. This, too, was Mary Bernadette’s doing. She was not the sort of woman to commemorate or celebrate sloppiness. She never left the house without applying powder and lipstick. She saw the habit of people wearing shorts or flip-flops to church as a sign of a larger breakdown of society. What had become of the virtues of modesty and propriety? If it wouldn’t be calling too much attention to herself—and it would be—she would still wear white gloves and a veil to church, as she had been taught to do by her mother.

  “Shall we begin?” Mary Bernadette said, taking her seat again at the table.

  Paddy had set up the board, stacked the Chance and the Community Chest cards, and distributed the game tokens. Mary Bernadette was always the thimble. Jeannette was always the top hat. Danny was the old boot, and Paddy the Scottie. This evening, it was Danny’s turn to be the bank. With a roll of the pair of dice, the game began.

  “I ran into Leonard at the grocery store today,” Jeannette said as she waited her turn. “He said he was passing the Kennington House early this morning and thought he saw a tramp asleep on the front steps.”

  “Nonsense,” Mary Bernadette said, taking a small sip of her sherry. “We don’t have tramps in Oliver’s Well.”

  Jeannette laughed. “You’re right, we don’t. Leonard got out of his car to investigate and found that what he thought was a pile of clothing with a human being inside it was just a big, black garbage bag escaped from someone’s lawn, no doubt in that windstorm we had the other night.”

  “Once an officer of the law, always an officer of the law. I’ve always said that attention to detail and an eye for trouble is what makes Leonard a fine CEO.”

  Leonard DeWitt was the Chief Operating Officer of the Oliver’s Well Historical Association, of which both Mary Bernadette and Jeannette were long-standing members. Over the years Mary Bernadette had advanced to the position of chairman, an honorary post with the exception of the job of official spokesperson. And no one on the board would debate the fact that she was also the heart and soul of the organization. The latest successful project the OWHA had undertaken, under Mary Bernadette’s guidance, was the salvation of the Joseph J. Stoker House. The house, barn, and what few outhouses remained intact had been privately held for generations until the OWHA had been able to buy the property three years earlier. The structures were in a sorry state and had required complete renovation including urgent structural repair. The most important parts of the work were done, though there were still a few interior finishes Mary Bernadette hoped to make in the years to come. Now the OWHA was ready to award the job for restoration of the twelve acres on which the structures stood, including a kitchen garden, flower garden, and small apple orchard. Five landscaping design firms, including Fitzgibbon Landscaping, had submitted bids and were scheduled to give presentations in the following weeks.

  “Come to think of it,” Jeannette said, “I haven’t gotten an e-mail from Neal about the next meeting. He’s never late sending it out.”

  Mary Bernadette frowned. “Machines. There’s probably something wrong with his computer. In the old days we sent a notice through the mail.”

  “Which cost more of the board’s money and took more of the secretary’s time.”

  “Still,” Mary Bernadette said. “Things got done.”

  “Speaking of things getting done, I do wish we had the money to buy the Branley Estate. I drove past earlier today and the main house has lost another window frame. The place will decay entirely if we don’t get busy saving it.”

  “We’ll find the money in time,” Mary Bernadette said. “God willing.”

  Indeed, the Branley Estate represented the last major pie-in-the-sky piece of business for the OWHA to take on. The property had once belonged to a powerful robber baron of the late nineteenth century, a man named Septimus Hastings, who, unlike the majority of his class, had lived in relative simplicity in the original house that had been built in 1743 by one George Branley. Instead, he had used his vast wealth to purchase other buildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, move them fully intact from their original sites to his land, and fill them with furnishings and art from the period. In short, he had built a museum complex of no less than three houses, several barns (stocked with old farm implements and machines), a blacksmith’s workshop, and a mill, complete with a water source and working waterwheel. After his death, several successive generations of the Hastings family proved to be without the financial acumen of their forebear and the estate had gradually fallen into ruin. Sometime in the 1940s it was sold to another family, whose finances had not fared much better than that of the Hastings. Sadly, at this point in time, the estate was almost entirely dilapidated. Much of the art had been sold off; some had been stolen. A fire in the 1950s had virtually destroyed one of the homes and most of the barns. Still, the Branley Estate represented a true prize of historical Oliver’s Well just waiting to be brought back to life—whenever the OWHA could find the money to buy it.

  “Have you seen today’s Lawrenceville Daily?” Paddy asked, finishing his turn around the game board. “They interviewed Mary last week about her long tenure at the OWHA.”

  Jeannette nodded. “It was a wonderful article, very thoughtful and well written,” she said. “And the photo is very flattering.”

  Mary Bernadette waved her hand in dismissal. “If I had known they would be sending a photographer, I would have worn my blue dress. But the possibility never even crossed my mind.”

  “It was what you said that was most impressive,” Danny noted. “I’d babble away if a reporter ever wanted my opinion on anything other than, oh, I don’t know, my favorite television show.”

  “I’ve always said that my Mary should have gone on the stage,” Paddy said. “She’s that good.”

  “Nonsense. I have no interest in acting and never have. I simply answer the questions the reporter puts to me as clearly as I am able. If I produce a quotable quote, then so be it.”

  “She’s too modest,” Paddy teased. “We all know her dazzling smile can light up a room.”

  This time, Mary Bernadette didn’t protest the compliment.

  The doorbell rang then, and Paddy went to answer it. When he retuned, Maureen Kline was with him.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Maureen said. “I just came by to drop off those brochures you asked for. They should explain the changes to your homeowner’s policy Paddy said you’re considering.”

  “Thank you,” Mary Bernadette said. “You’ll stay for a cup of tea.”

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t.” Maureen handed Mary Bernadette a manila envelope. “I’m meeting a friend to see a movie.”

  “I haven’t been to a movie in years,” Mary Bernadette said. “Too much sex and violence.”

  Maureen grinned and was gone as quickly as she had come.

  “I do wish she would meet a nice man and marry again.” Jeannette sighed. “But I don’t think that’s what Maureen wants.”

  Mary Bernadette said only, “Hmm.” There was no need to rehearse aloud the tragedy of Maureen’s brief marriage, or Mary Bernadette’s disappointment that her son Pat had not married the girl. Mary Bernadette had known Barry Long was a bum from the first moment she met him at Maureen’s engagement party. But no one had listened to her warnings, and a few years later Maureen was di
vorced, without even a child to show for her efforts at civilizing the man. Well, Mary Bernadette thought now, there was no use in crying over spilled milk.

  “Shall we continue the game?” she said. “Danny, I believe it’s your turn.”

  As Danny moved the boot around the board, Mary Bernadette turned to Jeannette. “Did I tell you I finally managed to get Marilyn Windsor to donate her great-great-grandfather’s diaries to the OWHA? It took almost three years, but I knew I’d succeed in the end.”

  Jeannette laughed. “You’d have made a great enforcer for some crime syndicate, Mary. Give me your embroidered cushions or I’ll—”

  “Now, that’s enough of that. You know it’s all in the interest of the OWHA.”

  “I do know, and I’m grateful. We all are. What made Marilyn change her mind?”

  “I simply employed a good dose of flattery along with a sprinkling of guilt. I reminded her that the diaries are a vital and uniquely essential part of the history of Oliver’s Well and that depriving the current and future generations of their study would be a travesty as well as an act of extreme selfishness on the part of the Windsor family.”

  Jeannette put her hand to her mouth, and Paddy flinched. Danny shook his head. “What are we going to do with you, Mary?” he said.

  Mary Bernadette assumed a look of wide-eyed innocence. “Why, congratulate me, of course. My thimble has landed on a piece of property not owned by anyone at this table, and I intend to purchase it.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Every other Friday, without fail, Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon had afternoon tea with her friends Katie Keefe and Bonnie Eckman. The women lived three houses down from the Fitzgibbons on Honeysuckle Lane in a small and very charming house built in the late nineteenth century. If possible, Katie and Bonnie were even more meticulous housekeepers than Mary Bernadette; it was one of the things she liked most about them.

  Katie and Bonnie had lived together for forty years, and though it was perfectly plain to those who wanted to see that they were more than “just friends,” Mary Bernadette was not one of those people. Paddy, who fondly referred to Katie and Bonnie as “The Ladies,” found this willful ignorance more amusing than frustrating, and had given up trying to bring his wife around to a more contemporary way of thinking.

  Katie Keefe was seventy-one and recently retired from her job as accountant for several small businesses in Oliver’s Well. She was a tiny woman, and standing or even sitting next to Mary Bernadette, who had often been described as statuesque, she appeared in danger of being physically overwhelmed. Her hair had been snowy white since she turned forty, and she wore it in a perfectly cut bob. Mary Bernadette happened to know that she paid the unheard-of sum of sixty dollars to a stylist in Lawrenceville for her haircuts.

  Bonnie Eckman was seventy-three. She was not much taller than her partner (she would say, her better half) but three times again as round. If you were going to set yourself up as a cook, she was fond of saying, you had better know how to eat. For more than twenty years she had been a personal chef in D.C. and then, when the demands of that job had become too arduous and downright annoying (“Cooking isn’t the problem, fussy clients are”), she and Katie had moved to Oliver’s Well, where Bonnie had opened a small catering business. Though she had shut down the business several years earlier, she still occasionally provided the food for a friend’s party. Mary Bernadette had a particular fondness for Bonnie’s raspberry scones and was pleased to find a platter of them set out on the table, along with a large square of real butter. Mary Bernadette had no tolerance for phony butter—“congealed yellow oil,” she called it—and neither did Bonnie. Mary Bernadette felt sure it was one of the many reasons that Bonnie’s career had been such a success.

  “Did you hear that Bill Harrison has filed for divorce from his wife?” Mary Bernadette asked when the three women were settled at a small, round table in a cozily decorated alcove of the living room.

  Katie put a hand to her heart. “No, I most certainly did not. And three small children!”

  “How did you hear about it, Mary Bernadette?” Bonnie asked.

  “Tara herself told me,” she admitted. “Seems he informed her over dinner one night that he had fallen out of love with her.”

  “What an idiot!” Bonnie exclaimed.

  “Bonnie,” Katie scolded.

  Mary Bernadette agreed with Bonnie’s assessment of Bill Harrison, but she declined to comment. She was often if not always the first to know the local gossip. For some reason people seemed to want to confide in her, either about their own travails or about the travails of others. Mary Bernadette was very careful never to abuse this privilege—she did consider it a privilege—and chose her own audience carefully. Unless, of course, someone had sworn her to secrecy. To hold and keep safe someone’s secret was even more of a privilege and a duty, and Mary Bernadette took her duties very seriously.

  “It’s fine weather we’ve been having, isn’t it?” Katie noted now, reaching for what Mary Bernadette noticed was her second scone. Where she put all the food she ate was anybody’s guess. Mary Bernadette herself had always kept a strict watch over her own diet. Gluttony was one of the Seven Deadly Sins.

  “The best we can expect for winter in our little part of the world, yes,” Mary Bernadette noted. “My garden is flourishing.”

  “Speaking of gardens,” Katie said, “and I don’t mean to be telling tales—I loathe gossip unless it serves some good purpose. Of course, there’s always the case when . . .”

  Mary Bernadette tuned out Katie’s ramblings and wondered what good purpose her sharing the news of the Harrisons’ divorce had served. Well, she decided, it would have been terribly awkward had Katie and Bonnie not known and had run into Tara Harrison in town and had asked an innocent question on the order of, “And how is your lovely husband, Bill?” In fact, by telling, Mary Bernadette had saved her friends a moment of potential social embarrassment.

  “Just tell her what you heard, Katie,” Bonnie instructed. “There’s no need for a lengthy introduction.”

  “Well, all right. It’s just that I was at the garden center in Waterville the other day, you know the one, and I ran into Eve Hennessy. Now, she knows you and I are friends, so I don’t know what possessed her to say what she did—”

  “Don’t you?” Bonnie interrupted. “Human nature, Katie. Lousy human nature.”

  Katie frowned at her partner. “Anyway,” she went on, “she mentioned how your garden and all of your landscaping is always so perfect and how it is unfair of you to enter the annual garden contest, what with your husband being a professional landscaper. She implied that he helped you win last year. I have to tell you, I was shocked, just shocked.”

  Mary Bernadette stiffened. “You know, of course, that Fitzgibbon Landscaping has consistently refused to be one of the sponsors of the contest because of my participation. It would be a conflict of interest, not to mention a breach of ethics. And I would never avail myself of Paddy’s store of gardening supplies. I insist on purchasing my own supplies from my personal household budget.”

  “I know!” Katie shook her head. “You would never do anything unethical. Anybody who knows you knows that. That’s what was so horrible about Eve’s accusation!”

  Bonnie grunted. “There will always be the sort of people who resent another’s happiness and success. I think they’re called ‘haters’ these days. Supposedly they’re all over the Internet. Vile thing. My advice would be to ignore anything negative you hear, especially when it’s about yourself.”

  “Oh,” Mary Bernadette said, “I assure you I will ignore it! As my mother used to say, God rest her soul, an evil tongue is of the Devil; the merciful word is of God.”

  Bonnie nodded. “Amen. Now, let’s change the subject.”

  “Will Pat and Megan be coming home for his birthday?” Katie asked. “It’s the twenty-fifth, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is, and no,” Mary Bernadette said. “They’ve decided to stay in Annapolis
. I’m told the twins are baking a cake.”

  “I hate birthday parties, myself,” Bonnie said. “Probably from having catered so many of them.”

  Mary Bernadette nodded. “Familiarity often breeds contempt.”

  “Now, that’s a harsh sentiment,” Katie said with a frown. “I’d prefer to think that familiarity breeds, well, fondness.”

  Bonnie grinned. “She’s the Pollyanna of the family.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Mary Bernadette said, “that I might bring home a scone for Paddy? Only, of course, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  Katie leaped from her chair. “Of course it’s no trouble,” she said, hurrying off to the kitchen for a piece of plastic wrap. “Anything for you, Mary Bernadette. Anything!”

  CHAPTER 6

  The board’s vote had been unanimous, as Mary Bernadette had believed that it would be. Fitzgibbon Landscaping had been awarded the contract to restore the extensive grounds of the Joseph J. Stoker House. Five companies had competed for the job, one of them a very prestigious firm from D.C., and another a much talked about startup out of Lawrenceville, but in the end Oliver’s Well’s own Fitzgibbon Landscaping had proved once more to be the right company for the job.

  Mary Bernadette took the kettle of steaming water to the kitchen table and poured the contents into her favorite teapot. If she weren’t such a modest woman, she might be tempted to feel a bit smug about the success of her family’s business. But everything they had achieved had been the result of hard work and the grace of God, and there was no good in being smug about either.

  Just then, PJ burst into the kitchen through the back door. His hair looked windblown as if he had been caught in a sudden gust, and he was breathing heavily as if he had run to his grandparents’ house all the way from the office.