Grace
One day—this was a couple of years after Anthony’s demise—Colleen and her mother were drinking ice tea on the patio, an unseasonably warm, pleasant autumn day on Haymarket Hill. Grace Fitzgerald had something on her mind.
“Why’s the sky old?”
“What are you talking about, Mom?”
“Skyline’s all honey-colored, olden, golden, is it beautiful?” She pointed toward the water.
“Where’d you hide your sunglasses?”
“You are wearing them.”
Grace had been confused a while. She was also having these visions. Not religious visions, either, which she would have savored, being devout. No, these were visions of her husband with devil’s horns, visions of the house aflame, visions of olive trees chopped down. So while these were not pleasing visions, she was long-suffering. Till this moment, when she mentioned the disturbing hue of the sky, she had never referenced them to anybody else, and if pressed, she couldn’t have explained why she brought them up now.
“You know, being a little girl, I was going to be a nun. I did not have a religious calling, not like my son, who is a priest, a Catholic priest.”
“Yes, Philip, and I know priests are Catholic, Mom.”
“I prayed for a vocation, but I didn’t hear the calling, which you need to become a nun, and now, here I am remembering being a little girl. I would love some ice tea.”
Colleen would have done anything to oblige her, but there was a glass of ice tea already in her grasp. Her daughter didn’t know what to make of that odd, flat tone in her mother’s voice, which was a new development, along with glossiness to her eyes gazing out into the middle distance, where the sky had evidently turned, so she said, gold.
“I saw Anthony yesterday. Did you see him, too?”
Colleen was divided. Call the doctor or Philip, or roll with it?
“Sit with me, young lady, would you please awhile? I won’t be long.”
This sentiment seemed freighted, mysterious. Colleen decided to roll with it, it was not going to help herself or her mother to convey alarm.
“Have you seen my Anthony? I saw him yesterday. What a lovely man he has become. You know, he’s the exact sort of man I think you would like to meet someday. He used to dance with his little sister through the house when she was cranky and wouldn’t nap, and she would start laughing, and then we’d all start laughing, till she dropped off. A terrible dancer, I shouldn’t tell tales. Like his father, another terrible Irish dancer. Irish tenors sing like songbirds, but the Irish dancing? I don’t care what they say, that is beyond them.” She laughed and continued: “His father has another woman, you know. Anthony’s father. We have stopped fighting about this, men have their needs, needs I don’t feel. He tells me I’m the most beautiful woman in the world and gives me strings of pearls—our tenth wedding anniversary must be coming up.”
Colleen wasn’t going to correct her mother, and she despised her father anew for being the wretch he was.
“There it goes again, the shooting star, so lovely, so lovely. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it? I miss my sad little Matty boy, he never comes to visit.”
He was preoccupied with his wife and with teaching at Holy Family High, Colleen thought, but he should come by, see his mother. She would suitably berate him.
“I hope Matty finds a girl someday. He gets lonely. A lonely boy. I get lonely, too, I’m glad to see somebody, thank you for sitting with me. Look, do you see that eagle landing on the flagpole? Flagpoles are so silly. Tell me, deary, how are you feeling…” She couldn’t finish.
Colleen sensed she had misplaced her name. “Colleen,” she offered.
“Ah, you have the same name as my daughter! You two should have a playdate. Would you like that?”
—
After Colleen left her in Hilda’s care and went home depressed, Philip’s mother wrote him a letter, which the friendly mailman…Fred was his name, she recalled, but no, it was Ed…carried away for her the next day. Her grammar school cursive was compliant and clean, and letters were rounded and precise and lines were level, as if she had employed a ruler for guidance. Her fountain pen ink was navy blue, the paper unlined white parchment, and not a word was crossed out, suggesting to Philip as he read it two days later that she had redrafted her missive at least once, but knowing her, more like three or four times. More than anything he was stunned that she, who had never written a letter to him in his life, or at least one he could recall, took to paper at all.
Pray for me and for dad Philip Dear Philip
Dear Father Philip
My dear son
I could not decide how to begin so here goes anywho.
I am older now I can begin any which way I pretty please.
The time has come to tell you things.
I should tell you I am proud of you.
I wish I had told Anthony.
Old age is full of regrets I almost wrote egrets which would be funny no.
Whatever you do don’t get old full of regrets.
Or egrets either.
Am I worried about you.
Whenever I see you you seem to be carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.
When you were ordained I had my doubts—see?
I grow older, and I should speak my mind now or forever hold my tongue.
As I said I had my doubts.
The world does not take kindly to the spectacle of a man of the cloth especially one handsome and smart as you.
People suspect ulterior motives.
They wonder about your darker side.
People they are fools.
I wonder no such thing.
Fitzgeralds know all about the darker side.
I wonder about your lighter side.
I will tell you a secret.
Promise to tell everyone.
When I was a girl I wanted to be a sister.
But I didn’t have the nun’s calling.
That may be my way of saying that I didn’t have the faith or the courage or the intestinal fortitude.
I have no egrets I have chosen the life I have.
It’s been a good life I could say that.
But it has not been a good life too.
Being a mother.
Four children.
Being a wife.
Your father is not an easy man to live with.
I say something you of all my children would understand.
Anthony also understands.
Your father and I are getting a divorce.
Did he ever tell you.
I would be surprised he did.
I’m not feeling so well these days.
Not myself.
Paddy didn’t want me to tell anybody.
Especially his son the priest.
You.
Don’t you worry it will all be for the best somehow
Somehow
Mom
Love