Something Mary Bernadette’s mother used to say came to her mind then, as she straightened the blotter on her desk. “There’s no heat like the heat of shame.” Mary Grace Lehane had been right.
CHAPTER 38
Megan, Pat, and the twins had come down for the weekend, arriving in Oliver’s Well at six-thirty that evening, setting back Mary Bernadette’s preferred dinnertime by an hour. Megan had expected a reprimand or at least a critical comment, but her mother-in-law had said nothing at all about the matter.
The twins had gone off after dinner to the ice-cream shop in town with instructions not to get double scoops or extra sprinkles on their cones. Now, plates cleared, it was the six adult members of the family around the kitchen table. Megan would be the first to admit that her mother-in-law was an excellent cook, if her repertoire was a bit limited. But tonight the chicken had been dry and the mashed potatoes a bit sticky. She would never dream of pointing out these flaws, of course, and especially not this evening. Clearly, Wynston Meadows’s proposed review of the awarding of the contract for the Joseph J. Stoker House had been a great shock to Mary Bernadette.
Her mother-in-law brought a pot of coffee to the table. She poured a cup for everyone, leaving herself until last. She took one sip and pushed her cup away.
“I simply can’t believe that he’s behaving in such an appalling manner.” Mary Bernadette shook her head. “It’s an outrage.”
Megan hoped that her husband wouldn’t say, “We told you so.” When it came to his mother, he could be unnecessarily combative, even at times childish.
“Well,” Pat said. “I’m not at all surprised.”
“What do you mean?” Mary Bernadette demanded.
“I see the move for what it is—a political action on the part of a man who has to be in control of every little aspect of his life. You didn’t really expect someone like Wynston Meadows to willingly take a backseat to a bunch of midlevel professionals, did you? Shopkeepers, housewives, and a retired police chief?”
“Pat,” Megan said quietly but with an unmistakable note of warning.
“Did anyone even think to interview the man before accepting him to the board?” Pat asked. “Don’t you have an interview procedure in place?”
Mary Bernadette smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle on her dress. “Wynston Meadows is not the sort of man you interview. He and I had a conversation.”
Pat snorted. “Just as I thought.”
Megan shot him a look of warning this time.
“Well,” Paddy said, “what’s done is done. But I do think what the man is implying is an affront to the family’s honor.”
“As do I,” Mary Bernadette added. “He didn’t come right out and accuse us of manipulating the board’s vote, but he implied as much. God knows the man probably thinks we bribed our way to getting the job!”
Megan wasn’t so sure that Wynston Meadows had implied any such thing. Mary Bernadette had been known to exaggerate and to jump to conclusions. “I’d suggest a wait-and-see attitude for the moment,” she said. “And remember, what Meadows is asking for is within his rights as a board member, even if he went about it in a heavy-handed way.”
Mary Bernadette shook her head. “Nonsense.”
“Does he think I don’t know how to run the business?” PJ looked to his grandfather. “Maybe I should confront Meadows man to man,” he said. “See what this is really all about.”
“Bad idea,” Pat said.
“But—”
“Consider your grandmother,” Paddy warned. “She has to work with the man. Just go along with the investigation, or the reconsideration, whatever he’s calling it. After all, you won the job fair and square. You have nothing to hide.”
Megan nodded in agreement, wondered why more people didn’t listen to Paddy Fitzgibbon, and then answered her own question. Because all too often he couldn’t get a word in edgewise, not when his wife was around.
“Of course we have nothing to hide,” PJ said vehemently. “But even the suggestion of possible wrongdoing can infect people’s good opinion of us. It’s that old ‘where there’s smoke there’s fire’ idea. And let’s face it, Grandpa, people want to believe the worst of others. It’s human nature.”
“Where did you get such a grim view of your fellow man?” Pat asked.
“PJ is right,” Mary Bernadette said fiercely. “People love other people’s misery. It’s sad but true.”
“No one will ever look at us in the same way again. It’s like Meadows has infected us. He’s planted a seed of suspicion.”
Mary Bernadette nodded. “Misfortune follows fortune, inch by inch.”
Pat sighed. “No one is going to listen to his nonsense. Everyone in Oliver’s Well knows that the Fitzgibbon family is beyond reproach. Anyway, Mom, are you sure you’re not imagining him accusing you of dastardly deeds? Maybe this reconsideration has nothing at all to do with you personally.”
“I most certainly am not imagining it!” Mary Bernadette shook her head. “A man with loud talk makes truth itself seem folly.”
Pat shared a look with Megan. “I think,” he said, “that the doom and gloom attitude should stop right here.”
“Hey,” PJ said excitedly, as if an idea had just occurred to him. “Meadows can’t start the search over again if I’ve already signed the contract. Right? I’ll go to the lawyers first thing tomorrow morning and demand they get to work.”
Megan looked down at her hands, folded on the table. Pat cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that’s wishful thinking, son,” he said. Wishful and naïve, Megan thought.
“Well, I guess there’s no chance now of Fitzgibbon Landscaping getting Meadows’s personal business,” PJ said bitterly. “He’ll probably hire that sophisticated Blue Sound Landscaping Design.”
Alexis had been silent until then, alternately flipping through a home decorating magazine and a copy of the Oliver’s Well Gazette. Now she looked up and said, “Did anyone see the review in today’s paper about that new movie starring Jude Law? It sounds really great.”
No one answered her question. Megan wasn’t sure if anyone but she had even heard it asked. Within a moment the conversation about Meadows had resumed.
Alexis sighed, got up from the table, and left the kitchen. Again, no one but Megan seemed to notice her absence. It struck her as slightly peculiar that her daughter-in-law hadn’t exhibited any interest in the conversation; in fact, she had seemed entirely unconcerned over what most of the other members of the Fitzgibbon family in the room were considering a crisis.
“So, what do we do now?” PJ asked.
“We forbear,” Mary Bernadette intoned. “We endure the trials set before us.”
Megan raised her eyebrows at her husband in warning.
“What you do now,” Pat said, looking sternly from his mother to his son, “is go along with the reconsideration Meadows suggested like the professional people that you are.”
CHAPTER 39
Mary Bernadette contemplated the arrangement of Sweet Williams on the credenza in the dining room. Her hands were folded before her, almost in an attitude of prayer. Her thoughts were fifty-three years in the past. It was on a bright April morning much like this one that she had discovered that she was pregnant with her first child.
She could still remember leaving the doctor’s office, overcome with a happiness she had never known existed. She had been brimming with laughter (indeed, it had been difficult not to indulge in it) and goodwill and lightheartedness. “I am going to be a mother,” she had whispered to the world, hardly able to believe her good fortune. And then in the front yard of the house adjacent to the doctor’s she had spotted a bunch of Sweet Williams, and in that instant she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the child she was carrying was a boy. Her dreams had been answered. He would be named William after her father and brother. She had rushed home, eager to tell Paddy the good news, though she knew he wouldn’t be home from the factory until evening. When he finally did arrive, she thre
w herself into his arms and with a flood of grateful tears told him that he would soon be a father. His joy had been almost as great as hers.
When Mary Bernadette was seven months pregnant they bought the house on Honeysuckle Lane, and she began her garden by planting Sweet Williams. She read in the seed catalogue that the delicate clusters of flowers in combinations of red and pink and white had long been a symbol of gallantry and fidelity, appropriate she thought to describe the Williams in her life. Later, after her son’s early death, she had no doubt that he would have grown to display those virtues as well as many fine others. Consider the way in which he had so joyfully greeted her each morning when she came into his room, his smile wide and his eyes bright, his arms outstretched in welcome. Consider the way in which he had taken to kissing both of her cheeks each night before bed, first the right and then the left. Consider how very early on he had learned to share his toys with other children. Mary Bernadette put her hand to her heart. After all these years she could still feel the silkiness of his hair. She could still smell the sweetness of his skin after his bath. She could still feel the warm pressure of him asleep against her chest. She could still hear his voice saying “Mama.”
Mary Bernadette moved the vase of flowers to the left a fraction of an inch so that it was in the exact center of the cloth beneath it. Carefully she wiped a drop of water from its side. In and of itself the vase was not worth more than the money she had paid for it. It was the fact that she took it out of her bedroom closet only for this one important occasion—to mark the anniversary of that glorious day when she learned she was with child—that gave it great value. In truth, it was the second vase to display her Sweet Williams. Pat had broken the first one when he was eleven. Mary Bernadette had been so very angry with him and had punished him accordingly. For three weeks he hadn’t been allowed to see his friends after school, or to attend softball practice, or to watch television. She had taken him to see Father Murphy, who had given the boy a stern lecture on the Fifth Commandment. Pat was made to write, “Thou shalt honor thy father and mother” one thousand times and deliver it to Father Murphy the following Sunday.
Pat had been bewildered by his mother’s severe response to the destruction of what he saw only as a “stupid old vase.” But she had told him time and again not to throw his football around in the house. And time and again he had disobeyed her orders. The broken vase was the last straw. Paddy attempted to talk her into lessening the boy’s punishment, but she had walked out of the room even as he was speaking.
To this day Mary Bernadette was ever so slightly embarrassed about the severity of her reaction to her son’s misbehavior. Still, she had never apologized to the boy or, later, to the man. It would have required more courage (yes, she could admit that) than she had been—or was now—able to muster. It would have taken her too close to the subject of William, and she had made a solemn vow never to mention him to either of her surviving children.
With a final glance at the perfectly arranged flowers, Mary Bernadette went up to her bedroom. She opened the bottom drawer of her dresser and looked down at a small wooden box nestled among the neatly folded cotton cardigans.
It had all happened so quickly. One day William had come down with a cough. A week later, his breathing had become labored and a sudden high fever would not break. The family doctor urged Mary Bernadette and Paddy to take the child to the emergency room. They did. William was admitted immediately. And three days later he was dead.
She had been with her son when he died, and even if she lived to be one hundred years old she would never, ever forget the sheer horror that had overtaken her in that stale and murderous place. When the time had come for her to leave William, she had raged. It was the one and only time Mary Bernadette had cried in public or, as her mother would have said, made a scene. Even at the funeral she had been silent, her grief so heavy she could barely stand upright but refusing to lean on Paddy’s arm or to remain seated when the rest of the congregation stood.
In the weeks after the funeral she had wanted to die. She had once prayed to God to release her from this life, even though she knew it was a sin to want your life at an end. Hardest to bear were the sincere condolences she met with the few times she managed to leave the house. It took every ounce of will power not to shout, “Leave me alone!” at the long and pitying faces that seemed to be everywhere, pursuing her.
Jeannette had counseled patience. “Time will ease your suffering, Mary.” Paddy had sworn to do whatever she asked of him that would help console her in her pain. She didn’t hear either of them. While Paddy broke down and wept in Jeannette’s arms—“I am losing my wife. I don’t know what to do.”—Mary Bernadette sat by the bedroom window and stared for hours on end.
And then she had discovered that she was pregnant; it had happened before William passed away. The grief intensified. The pregnancy seemed a cruel thing for God to visit upon her at this dark time. She had gone to Father Murphy in her despair.
“I can’t go through this again,” she told him through the grate of the confessional, her voice as fierce and desperate as her words, her hands clenched. “I can’t.”
“You have no choice, Mary Bernadette,” Father Murphy had told her. “It is God’s will that you bear another child.”
Father Murphy told her that she must find consolation in her faith. He was stern in his admonitions. “This is no time for coddling,” he said. “You have a duty to the God who made you. Think of what Our Lady suffered. Surely your pain is nothing compared to hers.”
Duty. Above all, one did one’s duty.
She was never entirely sure if it was for Paddy’s sake that she had forced herself to rally, or if it was for the sake of the innocent child she was carrying, a child she didn’t want. Or was it her strength of will that ultimately saw her through? Certainly, Father Murphy’s stern counsel had helped her to accept the burden she had been given to bear. Maybe also it was dread of the shame that resulted from failing to keep up appearances. Mary Bernadette wanted the people of Oliver’s Well to respect her and her family, not to whisper behind their hands. “There goes that crazy Mrs. Fitzgibbon. She fell to pieces when her baby died. They had to take the second one away from her. Her husband divorced her and moved away. She’s all alone now, the poor thing.”
But burying her grief and assuming the appearance of normalcy cost Mary Bernadette. It was a slow and arduous process. She had to learn how to live with an ever present and unfathomable loneliness. She had to learn how to distance her innermost self from everyone, even her beloved husband. She had to learn how to be alone. And over the years, through sheer determination, she had succeeded in rising to the position she held now, that of family matriarch and highly regarded citizen of Oliver’s Well. A person who had not been felled by loss. A person who had triumphed over death.
Mary Bernadette lifted the wooden box from the drawer, opened it with the key hidden in the pocket of a cardigan, and took out a small stack of photographs. So few pictures of William; he had died long before the days when parents documented their child’s every move on video and cell phones, long before the days when parents shared their child’s every landmark and accomplishment on the Internet. Here was a photo taken on the day of William’s baptism; his godparents, cousins of Paddy’s who had gone back to Ireland shortly after, stood next to Father Murphy. Here was the infant William on his first Christmas. Here was a photo of William’s first birthday the following December, sitting in Jeannette’s lap, laughing and clutching a ball. William cuddled in Mary Bernadette’s arms on Easter Sunday. William and his father after mass on St. Patrick’s Day.
His smile had been infectious. His cheeks had been plump and rosy. His eyes had been large and blue. No one could ever take his place. Which was why on a day a few months into her second pregnancy, with a fierce determination and without even a moment of hesitation Mary Bernadette had ruthlessly purged the house of William’s things. She could no longer bear the sight of the fuzzy blue blanket and
the plastic fire truck and the canvas sneakers. She couldn’t stand the thought of her second child wearing his brother’s clothing or playing with his brother’s toys. She removed his pictures from their frames and locked them away, hiding the key. Paddy had come home from work that evening to find the crib and stroller dismantled and a stack of boxes, sealed and labeled, waiting to be picked up by a representative of Catholic Charities. He had not protested his wife’s actions. Only Jeannette had voiced a concern that Mary Bernadette’s decision to remove all traces of William from sight was not the best way to mourn. “I’m afraid it will make things worse for you,” she had said. “I wish you would reconsider.” Mary Bernadette had given her friend a choice. Accede to her request not to mention her dead son’s name to anyone ever again or consider the relationship over. Jeannette had reluctantly agreed.
The only personal effect of William’s Mary Bernadette had kept was the cross his godparents had given him at his baptism. She took it out of the box now and kissed it. And then she put everything back into the box, locked it, and put it away.
Later that afternoon Jeannette came by with a banana bread still warm from the oven. “I made two loaves,” she said. “Too much for just Danny and me.”
“Thank you,” Mary Bernadette said.
Jeannette gently touched the blooms in the vase. “So many years.”
“And it still seems like yesterday.”
“I’m sorry for that, Mary.”
“We all have a burden to carry.”
“Yes. And some burdens are heavier than others.”
“My mother and father taught my brother and me that it was wrong to dwell on your troubles. They often told us that we should look to God when trials came upon us and get on with the life He gave us to endure.”
Jeannette sighed. “That’s all well and good as far as it goes, Mary. But I don’t think that God would deny any of his children the comfort of tears.”
Self-indulgence, Mary Bernadette thought. The time for tears had long since passed. She turned away now and cleared her throat. “I got a nice fresh chicken at the farmers’ market this morning,” she said. “I thought I’d roast it for dinner. It’s one of Paddy’s favorites, as you know. We can have the banana bread with it.”
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