by Carol Hutton
Anna would swear later that they talked for at least an hour. They talked about everything. He told her all about his life, from his childhood up to when he met Beth. He had been the fourth born of seven boys, and had grown up in the projects in Newark, New Jersey. John’s father had been a hard-drinking truck driver.
“He probably did whiskey shots and beer seven days a week for fifty years. He never missed a day of work, had an accident, or even had a fight that I knew of,” John said as he looked out to sea. “You would say he was a functional alcoholic, Annie, and he was, but back then we just considered it being Irish.”
John’s mother cleaned other people’s houses in addition to her own, of course, never once complaining. She washed, starched, and ironed all seven boys’ shirts for as long as John could remember.
“What I remember was the rash we all got from too much starch,” he said as he pulled down the top of his turtleneck to show Anna the permanent etching around his neck. John shrugged his shoulders and said with a smile, “Those collars are probably why I entered the seminary. My mother told me it was a sign from God, a stigmata of sorts. I figured it was training for the Roman collar I’d wear as an adult.”
“You miss your mother very much, don’t you, John?” Anna asked softly. She could see it in his eyes.
“Annie, can you imagine how hard that woman worked? Just think about the shirts alone. Seven boys each needing a fresh shirt each day, five days a week, for close to twenty years, if you figure that all of us were in school for at least that long. The Duffy boys, A to S, that’s what we were called. Adam, Frances, James, then me, Patrick, Kevin, and Sean. There are two lawyers, one physician, an architect, a priest, and a college professor.
“Two college professors, actually, if you give me two jobs.” He grinned. “James is a biologist and teaches at Saint John’s in New York. Quite an accomplishment for two working poor Irish folks, don’t you think, Annie? My father put food on the table, but my mother put the heart and soul into our home. I will never forget her hands, those raw, red cracked hands that slapped and soothed each of us into who we are today. She was—no, is—a saint.”
He looked at her as he smiled and said, “Now, don’t start with that analysis of yours. I know what you’re thinking. Irish men and their reverence for their mothers, and all that. She was a wonderful woman.”
Anna smiled back, but she didn’t protest, because that indeed was what she had been thinking.
He told her how he felt the call to be a priest, all about his seminary years, the parishes he had served, and about the academic post he eventually earned. He had a doctorate, of course, and taught theology at Fairfield University in Connecticut. It was after his first few years there that he had begun to feel lost.
Anna listened intently as he told her his life story—she calculated he must be in his early fifties.
“I just turned fifty-two last month, Annie,” he said with a smile. “And no, I really don’t think it represented my ‘midlife’ crisis.”
“Will you stop reading my mind!” Anna laughed with him.
He was serious again when he told her about meeting Beth a year ago, and what she came to mean to him. “She reminded me so much of my mother. Such a quiet strength, such a determined character,” John said, gazing at the blue sky. “She was so much like the mother I want to remember. She died just three years ago when she was eighty, but her soul had left long before that.”
Puzzled by the remark, Anna slowly turned and looked toward him.
“My mother was never the same, Annie,” he said very softly, “after Kevin was killed.”
There are moments in life when all of nature, every element in our physical surroundings, just stops. There is some piece of news so shocking, or an experience so intense, usually in its horror and only rarely in its beauty, that we literally freeze in the moment. A plane falls from the sky, a building is leveled, a beloved leader is mortally wounded. Horrific moments revealed by a glance at a headline or the flip of a knob. News that shatters dreams, for victim and survivor alike; news that becomes frozen forever in our collective consciousness.
Each among us, if we live long enough, will experience such pain and shock at least once in our private lives. There will be some news, event, or experience that sears through our essence to the very core of our being. A phone will ring, a letter will be delivered, a doctor or nurse will avoid our eyes, and our world will be forever altered in an instant.
Anna had experienced this feeling twice in her life before the moment she sat with Father John Duffy on the top of the flat rock at Gay Head. The most recent time was when, just a little over eighteen months ago, her gynecologist had told her she had an ovarian tumor. The other—well, it was when Beth had handed her the letter from Kevin’s mother.
Anna’s heart stopped in her chest; the ocean stood perfectly still and the breeze ceased to flutter. Anna Carroll’s world came to a complete halt.
Anna would not remember how much time had passed as she stared into his eyes. “How long have you known?” she asked.
“I didn’t really piece it all together until we were walking yesterday morning on Chappaquiddick,” John said, “that’s why I left you and walked away. The revelation came to me in a flash, and I just had to leave.”
Anna was sure she was sobbing. There were no tears, just a pounding in her chest and in her ears. But she needed to hear what he had to say.
“Kevin was two years younger than me. He would have been fifty in September. He was the brightest of us all, the heart and brains of the family, and none of us have really gotten over his death either, Annie.”
John was crying now. He continued, “I am so happy to know about you and him, and, at the same time, I feel terrible that none of us had any idea about the extent of your relationship. We knew there had been a girlfriend, of course, but Kevin was always very private about that kind of thing. I guess we should have known by the letter he had left for my mother in case of his death.”
Anna slowly turned her head, looked down, and took an envelope out of his hand.
“I never saw the letter until Mom died three years ago,” John said. “She had kept it all these years in a small cigar box by her bed. There were a few other things in there, but it was this letter that moved us the most.”
With trembling hands, Anna touched the paper as if it were made of fragile glass. She held on to it for what seemed an eternity. He carefully and gently pulled each one of her shaking fingers back, took the letter out of the envelope, and began to read:
Dear Ma,
I know you wouldn’t be reading this unless you needed to, so I know all of you are in a lot of pain right now. First let me say that I love you all very much. I know this is a difficult time for you, but I hope you can find some comfort in knowing this is God’s plan for me.
Ma, I need you to do something for me. There is a wonderful girl at school who needs to know what has happened. I’m sorry now I never told any of you about her, or her about all of you, but—well, you know me, I was never too good at doing the proper thing. Anyway, her name is Annie and she needs to know. It would mean everything to me if you were the one to tell her I’m gone.
Between you and me, Ma, I love her like nothing else in the world. I honestly thought I’d be lucky enough to beat this stupid mess, and we’d be together forever. I thought I’d come home, go to law school, become a successful lawyer, and together Annie and I would have lots of kids and change the world at the same time.
I’m sorry you never got to meet her, Ma. She is smart and fun to be with, but what I love best about her is that she doesn’t give a hoot what other people think. Annie has the rest of her life to live, and we’ve only known each other a short time, so instead of her, I’m telling you. She is the love of my life, Ma, forever and always, I just know it. I’m telling you this, Ma, because I love you too much to let you go on thinking I hadn’t found her.
Tell all the guys I’ll do what I can for you and them from up
here. And tell Pop to stop drinking. That stuff will kill him one of these days.
Love always.
Your son,
Kevin
Anna would never remember how long it was before she was composed enough to speak. And when she was, John told her the most wonderful stories of the boy-man she knew so long ago, for so short a time. Kevin had been twenty-two, and Anna only twenty. She had never let herself think or fantasize about what their future would or could have been together had he not been killed. She had just pushed all the pain right out of her heart, and tried to get on with her life.
Anna sat with John, looking into the sea, and her eyes filled with tears as she finally allowed herself to see and feel the wonderful boy with the curly black hair and sparkling blue eyes. She could smell him again and her heart filled with anguish and joy. Every fiber of her being ached and longed for him in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible after so many years. For a brief, intense flash, Kevin was alive again in her heart.
Anna looked down at the paper in her hand, and whispered, “I loved him with all my heart, John, and when he died, a large part of my soul went with him.”
As she said the words aloud for the first and only time in her life, a great sense of joy mixed with indescribable sorrow filled her soul. And in that moment, she knew, without a doubt, that her life had been what it was because that was the way it was meant to be.
John and Anna sat on the rock looking out at the ocean for what seemed like a very long time. They spoke to each other from their hearts. Their tears eventually dried, leaving streaks and stiffness on their cheeks. Anna would look back on that day and know she would have stayed there forever had John not been the first to go.
“I have to leave now, Annie. It really is time for me to go. Meeting you has helped me make a very difficult decision. Words cannot express how happy I am to know you. Annie, remember today for the rest of your life, and know that you will be in my heart for all time. We have forever to sort this all out, but now I really must go.”
Anna, still shaken by the experience, just sat and watched him walk down the beach, around the cliffs, and out of sight. She looked again at Kevin’s letter, reading it another time or two, and became aware of a very gentle breeze softly stirring around her. With the wind kissing her face and ruffling her hair, Anna slowly closed her eyes, feeling and tasting the sea breeze and salt spray. She very carefully folded her letter and slipped it into the pocket of her parka. Taking a deep breath, she got up from the rock and readied herself for the hike back up the beach.
Retracing her steps in the sand, Anna was overcome with emotion. Was it that she felt so alone after the solace of his company? Or was it exhaustion from feeling her pain and her grief?
Anna reached into her pocket for a tissue, and in that same instant, she saw Kevin’s letter fall to the sand. Stunned, she watched it skip along the water’s edge. She quickly ran to grab it, but just as her fingers grasped at its edge, the letter was caught in a gust of wind. The paper soared up into the sunlight.
As if in a trance, Anna felt the muscles in her arm and hand tense as she reached for those words that had so touched, yet pained, her heart. Kevin’s letter rose even higher toward the clouds, far beyond Anna’s grasp.
With a moan of frustration, Anna sank despondently to the sand. She sat there staring at her letter, helplessly watching as it gently drifted to the sea below. The paper first rode the swells, then surrendered to the rhythm of the ocean. Anna stood up and wandered into the water, oblivious to the cold waves pounding at her feet. She watched as Kevin’s words disappeared into the sea.
As the letter slowly faded from her sight, a very strange sensation came over Anna. She felt the wounds that had just reopened in her heart slowly close, then permanently fade away. And, once the raw shock of this revelation had sunk into her awareness, she experienced a peacefulness that made all the pain disappear.
It wasn’t until she was on her way back on the North Road that she realized John had walked toward the lighthouse, not the road.
Anna pinched her arm more than once on that ride back to Tisbury. Exhausted from the experience, she began to focus on all the questions she wished she had asked John. She should have asked about Beth. Of course, she wanted to know a lot more about Kevin. She had questions for Father John Duffy, the priest. Or were they questions for John Duffy, Ph.D., the theologian? Questions for a theologian she could entertain; questions for a priest were too much for her exhausted mind to handle.
She gave herself permission to relax and not think about any of it. She would call Becky in a few days when she had sorted things out, and find out how to reach John. He, too, was going to want to stay in contact with her now—she was certain of that.
Anna checked her watch as she pulled onto State Road. It was close to one o’clock. She’d be cutting it close as usual, barely making her flight, but this time she had an excuse no one would believe. This is a story that is mine and mine alone to keep, she thought, missing Beth more than ever. For a brief, fleeting moment Anna actually wondered if she might be losing her mind. She then looked down at the bruises that were beginning to appear on both arms, examined her reflection in the window, and smiled.
“No, Annie, you are not losing your mind,” she heard Beth say. “This weekend has just been an experience that your mind is having difficulty accepting.”
Grief does strange things to folks, Anna thought, and accepted that feeble explanation so she could focus on getting packed and to the airport in time for her flight.
Pulling back out onto State Road, Anna remembered that she had never checked the answering machine. Well, it was probably Becky or Chris, and if it was important enough, they’d get in touch with her later. She looked at her watch and saw that she had miraculously changed clothes, cleaned her muddy shoes, and packed in time to be on her way by 1:55. She was grateful it was November and not the summer tourist season as she noticed that her Explorer was the only vehicle on the road.
As she drove down the country road toward the little airport, she remembered the stories her mother had told her about women whose lives had changed in an instant. Women who had lost husbands or children, in a time when it was not all that unusual or unexpected to suffer such a loss as part of life. Families were so much bigger then, Anna thought, and certainly much closer in a physical, if not an emotional, sense. Not that that was comfort to the survivors; the losses were still tragic and forever changed people’s lives.
On Anna’s street back in the fifties and early sixties, there had been close to a hundred children of all ages, and all the families had two parents, except for one where the father had died. All the mothers were at home, hanging wash, talking to each other over backyard fences, and creating all sorts of good smells in their shiny white kitchens. The sounds of children filled the long, hilly street from dawn to dusk during the summer, and the block came alive by four-thirty every afternoon during the school year. Everyone knew everyone else.
When school started each September, a little parade of sorts would start about seven-thirty in the morning. Children of all sizes and shapes used to march to the top of the hill in maroon-and-white uniforms. Every once in a while you could see a splash of color, when the kids who were off to the public school joined the parade. The Catholic school kids all walked the three or so miles to school, while the “publics” caught a bus at the top of the hill. If they missed their bus, they would join the parade until they reached the next corner. Smiling, Anna remembered how she and Beth had been in the fifth grade before they realized that being a “public” wasn’t the only other option in life. That was the way her world was back then, “publics” and Catholics, all playing together and living together in the little town outside Baltimore.
As she drove, Anna studied the same barren trees she had barely noticed just forty-eight hours ago when Patrick had been at the wheel. The weekend had resurrected memories that filled her now open and accepting mind. Where to go from here? Anna mu
sed. As she was mulling this question over, Anna adjusted the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of her reflection; she began checking her face and hair. Suddenly Anna recalled the story her mother had told her about Mrs. Dougherty. Over the years, Anna’s mother told many stories as the two would stand side by side in the kitchen doing dinner dishes. But Anna never forgot the story about Mrs. Dougherty and her twins.
Mrs. Dougherty lived at the bottom of the hill with her eight children. She was the nicest lady on the street once, her mother told Anna, a fact that Anna verified with the older kids on the block. There were two sets of twins among the eight children, a very big family for such a young woman. Anna never thought of Mrs. Dougherty as young, and when she asked her mother about the sadness in the woman’s eyes, Anna’s mother told her why it was there.
Mrs. Dougherty had beautiful, shiny black hair that would fly in the wind as she walked with her twins up the hill to the park. One day, the older set, a girl and a boy who had just turned six, took off on their own and went down the hill, and got lost in the woods. There was a creek in the woods where all the little kids were forbidden to go. Someone later vaguely remembered seeing the children walking hand in hand into the woods about midafternoon.
They found the children at dinnertime, facedown in the creek. Their bright blue windbreakers had drifted to the water’s edge and were tangled in the branches of the thick growth lining the riverbank. Mrs. Dougherty was never the same after that. The neighborhood children would whisper nervously as they passed her in the park. There she would sometimes sit, staring with empty eyes and clutching shredded scraps of faded blue fabric, remnants of a happier past.
Anna’s mother had to turn her head and look out the kitchen window. And that, Anna’s mother had said, was why Mrs. Dougherty had white hair at only twenty-eight years of age.
