That little sign-off comes so naturally. Love you. It’s what good friends say. And yet I can’t help but feel that our friendship is suffering. Oh, we talk, but the common experience that fostered this friendship—my being a prisoner, and her being my visitor—has changed, and we haven’t quite figured out the new dynamic. I vow to call less frequently. She’s got a life, and I have to respect that. It isn’t just the changes in my circumstances; she’s moved on, too. Maybe things were fading even as she moved on to her life in the city. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed it.
I hear Tucker’s truck. The dog, Shadow, is on the alert; his ears are pricked forward, and his tail is stiff. As he doesn’t yet have a collar, I have no way to restrain him should he take an aggressive stance with my general contractor. “He’s a friend, Shadow. Be good.” I know from my days of training dogs that if I’m not excited, or afraid, or concerned, if I keep my voice modulated and make no fuss, the dog will take my lead. However, I haven’t trained this dog. This dog is a blank slate. I don’t know what his purpose has been up to this moment. For all I know, he’s a loose guard dog. He woofs. I open the back door. “Hey, Tucker!” I keep my voice bright.
Tucker is still in his truck when the dog paces over to it. The dog is tall, but not quite tall enough to look in the driver’s window—that is, until he puts his feet on the running board and lifts himself to examine Tucker through the open window.
“That’s some dog.”
“Yes, yes he is.”
“The print maker?”
“I believe so.”
“Guess you won’t have to worry about coyotes anymore.”
“I don’t believe I will.”
Tucker pops open the door and the dog stands there.
“Shadow, he’s a friend.” I snap my fingers. “Come.”
In some kind of canine decision making, the dog accepts my command and returns to sit by my side, letting Tucker get out of his truck and be introduced properly. Tucker lets the dog sniff him, puts out the back of his hand and waits patiently while Shadow gets to know him. Satisfied, Shadow’s hooked tail is swinging. Tucker risks a pat on the dog’s head, and suddenly all is well.
“I brought you these.” Tucker hands me a pamphlet and some computer printouts. “They’ll give you a little more info about Dogtown.”
“Thank you. That’s very thoughtful.”
“Now you have a reason to go hiking. Big guy like this is going to need exercise. Can’t think of a better place than the woods.”
“I’ll think about it.” But already I know that I will.
I set aside the novel that Shelley Brown had recommended in favor of studying the material that Tucker has given me. I have a glass of wine in my hand, and nearby the soft light of a lamp I’d found in a thrift store that I’ve set up on the kitchen table. As usual, by this hour, what local traffic there was along my narrow lane has stopped and only the now-familiar slap of a loose shingle inserts itself into the ultraquiet of my solitary evening. Ha, no longer solitary, but certainly quiet.
It is a strange story, the history of Dogtown. As Tucker said, the Commons, as it was originally, was a thriving eighteenth-century village, reduced in the early nineteenth century to a ghost town; in between, it became a place where the outliers of Cape Ann once lived. A place that once was the preferred location of the settlers, safe from the threat of “Barbary pirates,” it had been all but abandoned in favor of a more lucrative livelihood provided by the sea. In the meantime, the place was essentially deforested for firewood. Even the pasturage was inadequate, rocky and, in places, so boggy that it swallowed livestock. By the end of the Revolution, and then the War of 1812, the only people clinging to the Commons were war widows and other outliers. It became inevitable, it seems to me, that those women, essentially indigent, would become known as witches, prostitutes, and, of course, crazies. All that is left are their names recorded in the brief histories of Dogtown: Tammy Younger, Granny Day, Easter Carter. Their names and the cellar holes.
As for the name, Dogtown, I like it. I like the idea of women keeping dogs a lot.
Guess it’s a good place for me. I cannot seem to shed the feeling I do not yet belong in society. I feel like there is some kind of taint about me, a scent of injustice. I am exonerated but not whole.
I’ve promised, and now Shadow is anxious to get his walk started, and he nudges me with his cold black nose. The Homestead is situated a quarter mile or so from an entrance to the trailhead for Dogtown. An easy walk from our funky old house. My dog, Shadow, gambols about, puppyish as he flushes rabbits and an occasional grouse out of the thick roadside underbrush. His exuberance is uplifting, and I find myself flush with a kind of pleasure I haven’t had in years. A momentary cessation of internal hostilities. I am not the child estranged from her family or the newly released prisoner blinking in the sunshine; I am just Rosie, happy to be walking down this country lane, a good dog at my side.
She was a handful of fluff, bright brown eyes in a pure white face. I didn’t want to give her a common name, Molly or Maggie or Munchkin. I called her Matilda, which, of course, devolved into “Tilley” for short. The day I collected my designer dog from the breeder, I went back and forth on whether or not I should let Charles know that I was doing this, going against his express wishes regarding the puppy. I have to admit, the timing was awful, Tilley’s breeder needed her to be picked up during what turned out to be the week before my father’s final crisis. Would Charles have been less annoyed if I’d just waited? But how could I have known that things would go south so quickly? And there was something so comforting about having this little ball of life needing me, needing my full attention; at complete odds with the rest of my life, which had become about death.
I debated what would make Charles angrier—if I told him in advance that I’d bought the puppy or if I stuck to my original plan, which was to present this new family member as a done deal? I wavered, but then I realized that I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to forbid me this indulgence. I knew that the trappings of his favorite meal, a perfectly constructed cocktail chilled and waiting for him, and me in my sexy best outfit might not be the most effective offense, but it wouldn’t hurt. How can you stay angry with someone who’s worked so hard to please you? How could you not fall in love with this little perky puppy face? Only a monster would be impervious to Tilley’s already adorable charms. A monster indeed.
Other than my mother’s telephone number, with a growing accretion of unanswered outgoing calls handily noted beside it, I have only three contacts in my phone, and so far this morning I’ve talked to two of them: a quick call from Meghan to get an update on Shadow, and then one from Pete Bannerman, who’s doing his usual Tuesday-morning check-in. As I reach the entrance to the Dogtown trail system, it rings with the third ID: Tucker Bellingham. I almost feel popular.
“Anybody there this morning?”
“Not so far, but I’ve been out of the house for a while.”
“Rosie, you gotta start making some phone calls. I’ll text you the contact info for the plumber and for the electrician. I don’t have time to ride herd on all of them. That’s kind of your job.”
“Okay, fine. No problem.” I really don’t have a clue what my job is, and Tucker hasn’t been particularly forthcoming. In his view, I should be a project manager, not a project manager in training. He’s right. “I’m happy to do what I can to get things moving.”
“Start with the plumber. He’s the hardest to pin down.”
“You’re telling me.” I’ve got my dirty hair twisted up and I’m contemplating checking into a hotel for the night just to get a shower.
Tucker promises to text me the contact number—again—and lets me know that he’ll be around sometime late this afternoon. Hopefully, I can have some evidence of success for him.
We’ve arrived at the trailhead, where a handy map is posted on a wooden kiosk. A black mailbox holds copies of the Dogtown trail system. The road is crumbly tar, quickly becoming dirt and muddy truck tracks as we pass some kind of sandpit and find the path through the woods. Instantly, civilization fades and it’s as if we’ve entered another century. The silence is deep, punctuated only by the literal Tweet of a persistent bird. If I listen carefully, I can hear a corresponding Tweet deeper in the woods. I won’t lie; there is something creepy about these woods. Maybe it’s knowing the history; more likely, it’s the tangle of underbrush and the way the white oaks and pines creak and clack against one another in the southwest breeze. I tell myself that we don’t have to go far. Certainly not so far as to get lost.
Shadow has his nose to the ground and moves deliberately, focused on whatever it is his nose is telling him. He must be tracking, because his route circles back and then he performs a perfect figure eight. He keeps looking at me, making sure that I am in his sight even as his nose preoccupies him. I keep my map handy, but I find myself trusting the dog to lead me along these, to me, confusing trails. Eventually, we come to a boulder with the word STUDY engraved on it. The Babson Boulders. In the little booklet about Dogtown that Tucker gave me is the story about Roger Babson, a somewhat eccentric quarry owner and founder of the college that bears his name, who, in the Depression, gave out-of-work Finnish stonemasons the job of carving “a sort of book” on the massive boulders that emerge from the woods. I quickly find IDEAS, INDUSTRY, and, on the verso side of a boulder the size of a house, SPIRITUAL POWER. In the deep silence of the woods, the absence of anything else of human origin, it’s almost a little creepy. Text messaging from the grave.
The eastern sun has warmed the side of the massive boulder, and I lean against it as I hit the number for the plumbing company. I put on my best project manager’s voice, lowering it just a little, keeping all hints of millennial uptalk out of my tone. I’m all business. However, there’s no one in the office, so I leave a detailed voice message, with only a little bit of begging leaking through.
Shadow waits, then bounds off into the underbrush, making me think that I’d better see about flea and tick protection if we’re going to make hiking a regular activity. I push off from the rock and troop after him. We don’t stop again until we reach a fork in the trail with a sign identifying the place as Dogtown Square. There is nothing square about it, just a random stop in the trail. I am not able to imagine this area stripped of trees, home to any kind of community. I think that I am ready to turn around and head home. Shadow keeps moving, taking the rightmost trail. I’ll give our outing another few minutes; then we are definitely heading home. I don’t care if there are workmen there.
Ahead of me, Shadow pauses, fixed into immobility, as if some spell has been cast on him and he’s gone from flesh and blood to statuary. His folded ears prick forward like little jack-in-the-pulpits; beneath the bristly eyebrows, his eyes are intent on a pile of rocks. This place is nothing but rocks, but he’s picked out this particular jumble, and I realize that we’ve come to one of the numbered cellar holes of Dogtown. Without the black number posted on a short granite stump, I can’t think that anyone would ever take this sunken rock repository as ever having been someone’s home.
Shadow sits down. He throws me a look that I can only interpret as an invitation to do the same thing. I choose a rock that hasn’t sunk into the ground quite as much as the rest of the pile. If these rocks are from ancient cellars, I can’t imagine that the houses were very big. The sunken areas look only about as big as a coffin. Maybe they weren’t cellars—basements—as we know them, but root cellars. I hear the bird again. Overhead, leaves rustle, a breeze or maybe a squirrel.
As I sit there, the dog does something I think is curious. He moves from his place between two rocks and comes to sit beside me, uncomfortably perched on mine. He heaves a great sigh and then rests his chin on my knees. He’s looking for comfort. I stroke his head, pat his ribs. Rest my head on his. I have not been a comfort to anyone for a very long time.
The branches above me sway and a single bird calls repeatedly, but I can’t pick it out against the dark bark of the trees and branches; the early hint of fall shows in the faded dull look of the leaf canopy. It’s hard to imagine this place naked of trees, the rocks exposed. It’s amazing how thoroughly the forest will recover itself when left alone. In the distance, the sound of the high-speed train on the Boston-to-Gloucester run. Without that so very contemporary sound, it could be two hundred years ago. I keep my phone in my hand, less for convenience than as a totem. I need to keep my feet in this century.
“I called the plumber—is he really called Bob the Plumber? Anyway, we’re on for first thing tomorrow.”
“Good. Great. Once he’s done, we can start on the walls in the bathroom.” Tucker doesn’t make any sort of skeptical remark about the veracity of a plumber’s word, and I take that as a good sign.
“I’ve been upstairs. It’s not pretty.”
“I know. Did Pete say anything about what to do with the junk?”
“I’m supposed to start an inventory.”
“Good start. Then what?”
“See what makes sense to keep and what makes sense to have appraised. My guess, nothing is worth keeping.”
“A place this old, well, you’ve got to find something interesting. Better than two centuries of occupation, it’s got to be like a midden in there—trash that tells a story.”
My general contractor shifts his tool belt and says, “I want to take a hard look at the floor in the front parlor today.”
We go into the house through the back door, the dog staying close behind. Tucker heads into the “best” parlor, squats down to examine the six reclaimed planks that have replaced the rotten ones. Some other builder might have opted for a plywood replacement, with a nice rug over it, but it’s obvious that Tucker has no interest in shortcuts with this house. According to Pete Bannerman, the Trust hasn’t squawked at the added expense of it, so Tucker takes that as a mutual desire to keep the integrity of the house as authentic as possible. He’s begun to share some of his vision for the ancient house, and I find myself getting caught up in his enthusiasm. “I’ve been wanting to get into this house since I was a kid. It’s what got me interested in architecture in the first place.”
“I didn’t know you were an architect.”
Tucker shakes his head. “Actually, I’m not. I wanted to be, but, well, I never finished college.” There is a hint of wistfulness in his tone, and I wonder what it was that kept him from his goal. He doesn’t seem like a quitter.
“But you’ve got a great trade. A good business, right?”
“Good enough. My partner likes the modern stuff, the big additions and kitchen renos, but me, I like this, restoration, not renovation. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of it. Everybody wants an antique house, but not without state-of-the-art fixtures. Can’t fit most of that luxury into low-ceilinged rooms, so they end up teardowns, replaced by repros.”
Shadow moves to stand over Tucker, gently sniffing the back of his neck.
“I think he likes you.”
Tucker, on his knees, pats the dog, “I’m glad he does, because I sure wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”
“I feel a lot safer here, with him.”
“I didn’t know you felt unsafe, Rosie. We can find you someplace to stay if it’s your safety you’re worried about.”
“Not anymore. And, Tucker, who would ever take me in with a dog like that?”
Even the dog-friendliest of motels might not cotton to a pony-size dog.
His knees creak as Tucker gets out of his squat. “Man, hardly seems possible that I ever leapt after baseballs with nary a thought to the condition of these knees.” Tucker goes to the interior wall, which is a cream-colored plasterboard probably installed when they first put a furnace in the house. “You think Pete would go for ripping down this board and exposing the fireplace?”
“Is that what would be considered a change order?”
“You’re beginning to speak Clerk. What if I said no, that it’s part of the plan?”
“It would be a cool thing to have as a focal point in this room. Would it be working?”
“I don’t know. Probably not, but it would be a nice feature.”
I press a palm against the rough surface of the wall. The plasterboard is so old, it bends under my hand. “Even if you didn’t expose the fireplace, assuming there is one, you’d still have to do something about this wall, right?”
“Yup.”
“I think I can make a case to Pete. Why don’t you come up with some numbers and I’ll go over the budget.”
“Rosie, by George, I think you’ve got it.”
“Don’t Henry Higgins me. I’ve been down that path before.” I don’t mean to snap, but I’ve had enough of being someone’s project. I’ve consciously let the down-market Boston accent I was born with creep back into my voice. I’ve had my hair cut to shoulder length and scraped it back into a high, tight ponytail. I’ve gone back to my Levi’s, my cheap sneakers; I cut my fingernails with a clipper. I am slowly reverting to the self I was when I was my father’s daughter.
In some ways, Gloucester reminds me of Bunker Hill, of Charlestown. Not in the architecture necessarily, but in the way the town clings to the hillside. The angle of steepness isn’t quite as dramatic as those streets in my town, but steep enough. There is something, too, in the average Joe kind of guys and gals I encounter now that I’m venturing farther away from my remote, crumbling Homestead. It’s late enough that the crush of summer visitors has leveled off, so the voices I hear, the remarks and complaints, are pure local. I’ve even gotten to the point that I no longer accidentally take the long way around, Route 127A, which skirts the shoreline. Instead, I sometimes choose that route so that I can get a glimpse, believe it or not, of Boston in the distance. I feel worlds away, and yet, there it is, skyline rising out of the sea. If I had a boat, I could sail right to my old haunts. Shadow and I get out of the car at the Bass Rocks parking lot. The air is fresh, damp, familiar. He is obedient, and I catch him before he rolls in whatever the sea has coughed up after a high tide.
Today, I’m on my way to the Sawyer Free Library, which is on Middle Street, near the town hall and up a bit from the YMCA, one street up from Main, where I’ve discovered a really good consignment shop. My wardrobe is limited, and purely functional. I don’t have a winter coat and I’m sure, after my foray to the library, I’ll find what I want at the shop. No one seems to mind that this giant wire-haired dog is sitting out front of the library, and he’s welcomed into the shop. This place certainly seems to illustrate its Dogtown history, at least in the way dogs are welcome. All but in the Italian bakery at the other end of Main Street. Board of Health rules are adhered to in there. Maybe I should declare him my service dog and get him a vest so that he can even go in there.
I want to stay out of the house as much as possible today because the plaster walls in the parlors are coming down. Tucker has decided to do this himself, and I think he really wants me gone while he does it. He made that clear when we talked earlier this morning. “It’s really going to be messy. We don’t know if these walls have asbestos.…”
That’s all he had to say to me. I knew what that meant. “You have a mask?”
“I do.”
“As project manager, should I be here?”
“Not unless you want to use a crowbar.”
“Not so much.”
“Thought so.”
I’d already ordered a construction Dumpster so that all the debris would be contained properly. It sat outside the back door, a big blue metal box with a plastic lid flipped back. Very attractive. Shadow had marked it, claiming its presence in our yard with a degree of disdain in his eyes.
“Hey, Rosie, while you’re out, would you want to stop by the Building Center and get a roll of plastic sheeting?”
This is what has become my purpose, running errands, mostly to the local lumber yard to fetch various things for Tucker. I use his contractor’s account and have begun to feel a little pleased with myself for knowing where to find the circular saw blades and the drill bits. I am considering buying myself a pair of Carhartt coveralls just to look the part.
The Building Center is near the waterfront—dutifully labeled a “working waterfront” on the decorative banners and wayfinders posted along my route, as opposed, I suppose, to recreational waterfront. Indeed, the craft in the harbor aren’t elegant, and neither are the stacks of lobster pots and the ropy, rank materials of the fishing business. I’ve seen the iconic Gloucester Fisherman statue, symbolic of Gloucester’s heritage. I’ve eaten the fish sticks.
I get the sheeting and lock it in my car as Shadow and I continue our errands on foot. It feels good, this being outside, a to-go cup of fresh coffee in my hand and a good dog by my side, a heaven I never dreamed of a mere six weeks ago. It still feels fragile, like at any minute someone is going to grab my elbow and say, “Come with me. There’s been a mistake. You’re going back.” I have those moments all too often, and that’s when I pull my phone out of my pocket and speed-dial Meghan. She’s tolerant of my insecurities. Today, she answers on the first ring. Relieved, I sit on a bench tucked a little bit out of the sea breeze. Shadow decides that it has room for him and he lounges next to me, his great head in my lap.
“Is this a bad time?” I ask out of civility.
“You caught me taking a coffee break.”
“Me, too.”
I don’t tell her about my moment of anxiety; I don’t have to.
“Tell me how the house is coming.” Usually, she shies away from talk of the project, more interested in hearing about the dog, which is good, or my state of mind, which isn’t always good, than the quotidian details of the renovation business. “Walls are coming down today. Tucker thinks there’s treasure to be had behind them.”
“Dividing walls? Like between the kitchen and parlor?” She sounds oddly distressed.
“No. Someone’s idea of winterizing circa 1962.” I tell her about Tucker’s fireplace hopes.
“Interesting. I guess I had no idea of how old the house was. Just that it was old.”
“Is. Is old. And bit by bit, Tucker and his minions are uncovering its origins.”
“That’s exciting.” For the first time, she actually sounds engaged in the topic.
“Come see it. We don’t have to stay there; we can stay in a motel. It would be fun to have you here.”
As always, with this invitation, Meghan hesitates. I know that it’s hard, maybe even impossible to get her here, but I’d love for her to say that she’d like to come, that she might try to figure out a way to get here.
“I’ll come get you. If you can get the time off. You won’t have to worry about how to get here; I’ll fetch you.” I say that, but the idea of driving into New York City does give me the heebie-jeebies. But for Meghan, I’d do it. For Meghan and Shark. To have a chance to see them.
“That’s nice of you Rosie, but…”
Maybe that guy she mentions often enough that my radar is pinging, maybe he’d like to take a trip to Gloucester. I almost say something about that, but better sense takes over. “We should plan something before the weather gets bad.”
I hear her breathing, and I am suddenly concerned that I’ve pushed a fragile friendship a little too hard. Do I sound like a begging child?
“Maybe in the spring. More of the house will be done by then and maybe I’ll even have a car. I’m thinking about that, you know?”
“That would be great. But I’d still want to travel with you.” Now I know I sound like a needy friend, so I shut up.
Shadow shifts his muzzle on my legs. I pull a handful of neck skin gently between my fingers. “I haven’t asked, but how’s the dog park guy?”
“Marley. I’ll send you a picture. Then you can judge for yourself.” There is a playfulness for a second, and then she says, “I just don’t know what to do. How to, I don’t know, proceed.”
I want to be a giver of sage advice, but I’m not. So I fall back on the usual comforting sounds of “You’ll figure it out.” Fortunately, she’s a veteran of that style of advice and just ignores me. “I don’t know if I can.” Silence. “You know.”
Then I get it. “Oh. I see.”
And at that moment, my phone beeps to tell me another call is coming in. I glance at the screen. It’s my mother.
“Meghan, I’ve got to answer this.” I switch to the other call even before she says good-bye. My heart is pounding, literally banging against my ribs so hard that it hurts. Shadow sits up, dismounts the bench, and whines, then drops a massive paw on my leg even as I launch myself to my feet. If my mother is calling me, it can only be bad news.
We were sitting in the chairs that flanked my father’s hospital bed, the one that was now center stage in the middle of the dining room of my parents’ Bunker Hill home. The hospice nurse had just left after making my father as comfortable as she could. The only sound in the room was the pop and burble of the oxygen machine. That and the wet, ugly sound of my father’s breathing. I was there, finally, and, according to my mother, better late than never. One look at my father and I knew that I’d come close to the never. Despite my mother’s call ten days before to say that if I wanted to see my father, I should come, I went to Paris. A business trip for Charles, a shopping trip for me. I’d never been to Paris before.
Almost as soon as we’d gotten home, within hours, I jumped the Acela for Boston. Charles kissed me good-bye and reminded me that his offer still stood. The one that my parents had thoroughly rejected, that he—his company—would cover my father’s medical expenses. This time, he added, “They should know that the offer on the house isn’t going to go up; we’ve made the final offer.” After that, it would be down the legal path of eminent domain. He gripped my elbow hard as he said this. “Make it happen, Rose.”
I could hear Teddy in the kitchen, the occasional thunk of his wheelchair against the table or the counter. The teapot whistled. Even though I didn’t want it, I knew better than to refuse a cup of Barry’s Irish tea. It would have been tantamount to rejecting my heritage. At this point, drinking tea was about all we could do to distract ourselves from the purpose of our vigil without losing sight of it. The eternal jigsaw puzzle was gone, and only because it was playoff season was the television on, the ball game flickering behind me, the sound so low, it was pointless. Every now and then, someone would turn and notice the score and say it out loud: “Ten to five. Sixth inning. Sox up.”
Four of my five brothers were in the house: Paulie, Bobbie, Frankie, and, of course, Teddy. At this point, midafternoon, my three sisters-in-law were absent, but they were expected as soon as the kids got out of school. As he had the best car, Patrick had been sent to fetch the priest. The place felt crowded to me. I wondered how it was that all of us had ever lived here, on top of one another like this, and not noticed. Add the wives and kids and I thought that the very air in here would be sucked out and we’d all suffocate. Plus a priest.
My phone dinged with a text alert—Charles wondering if I’d talked yet with my family about the offer. I thumbed a message back: Not yet. I thought that might be the end of it, but I got another text immediately: Do it.
Another woman would have shut her phone off. A stronger woman would have ignored him, secure in the fact that doing so wouldn’t mean irreparable harm to her relationship with him. On my left hand glittered a two-karat diamond surrounded by another karat’s worth of stones all in a platinum setting, a ring so new that I was still surprised to see it there. A Paris proposal, sophisticated and elegant and, in fact, quite unexpected. Even as he slipped the ring on my finger, I wondered how Cecily Foster would take the news that Charles’s blue-collar fling was going to be her daughter-in-law. I was flattered that he had chosen me over his mother’s hard opinion. That, in effect, he was defying his mother on my behalf. I felt selected, somehow. Valued.
I leaned across the gap between the chairs. “Mom, we need to talk.”
I should have chosen a better time, when she and I were alone. But in that overcrowded house of vigil, there might never be such a moment. So I repeated Charles’s proposal, emphasizing that it would go away and they might find themselves, living in some rental somewhere, if not homeless. We all accepted that housing values were skyrocketing in Charlestown; without fair money for their house, they might not have a hope of staying there. I spoke like a real estate agent, or a developer’s fiancée. “This is a safety net, Mom. Besides, everyone else in the neighborhood has taken advantage of the offer.”
She didn’t look at me, her eyes fixed on the form of my father in front of us. “That’s their business.”
“It is your business. You can’t hold out against progress. It’s not like they’re going to let this house sit in the middle of the project. They’ll go down the path of eminent domain and you’ll get less than what Charles—I mean, what Wright, Melrose & Foster is offering.”
Frankie was standing in the archway between this room and the kitchen. Of all of them, he looked most like my father, and right then he wore a look that transformed him into a surrogate for the dying man. “Jesus, Rosie. This is not the time.”
“It’s got to be said. Do you want Mom to end up in public housing because she acted too late? And what about Teddy?”
“What about me?”
Teddy, a tea tray across his lap, rolled into the dining room. Of all of us, my father’s prolonged dying had been the hardest on him. The others, myself included, had places to escape to, homes and families and other concerns to distract from the worry. Teddy had the constant presence of our mother and her worries about Dad to contend with. No relief of a day job or a kid with strep throat; or a trip to Paris. Of all of us, he looked the most like her and now he wore the same dark circles and paleness of bearing another person’s illness on his face as she did on hers. She had shrunk; he had become bony. Fleetingly, I worried that he might actually have some infection, which he had been prone to as a kid, and that his pinched look was from actual illness and not from exhaustion. I’d always thought of him as being cared for by her, her perpetual child, but I could see that he had grown into the role of caregiver, and if she lost him, what would happen?
“With the offer, Teddy, you and Mom will have all of this medical debt gone and enough to buy a nice place with everything you need to live well.”
My mother reached over and picked up my left hand. She stared at the engagement ring, squinting as if the glare was painful. “You’ve been bought, Mary Rose Collins, pure and simple, and now you’re spouting his evil.”
“It’s not evil. That’s so insulting. What’s evil about it?”
Paulie got into it. “You’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, Rosie. He’s dazzling you with baubles and trips to Paris and you’re doing his dirty work. I bet he dumps you if you don’t talk us into this travesty.”
“That’s so wrong. He only wants the best for you.” But the worm of doubt had been planted in my brain. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the doubts that were there already were given license. Of course Charles wouldn’t dump me if my family snubbed his overly generous offer. He’d still marry me, but there would never be any mutual fondness between them. Of course he’d still want me.
“The best for us would be to leave us alone. Has the man no respect?” My mother stood up, busied herself straightening the sheet over my father. “And I’ll take it as a kindness for you to stop talking about this in front of your father.” We had been told several times, that the last faculty to go is hearing. “You’re upsetting him. I don’t want him to leave us worried.”
I looked at the inert form of my father. Even in the few hours that I had been there, there had been a decline in the number of breaths, the timbre of his coughing. I had been so preoccupied with doing what Charles wanted that I’d lost sight of my reason for being there. “I’m sorry. We can talk about it later.”
My mother left off smoothing the sheet. “There will be no later.”
My text alert dinged. I saw the message:??? Charles, of course. Impatient. His patience was fragile.
“We’re not done with this conversation.” My words were perceived as a threat, and a disloyalty so profound, so ill-timed that it was unforgivable. As a quiet unit, my brothers and mother faced me like a pack of Border collies, herding me away from my father’s beside. No one shouted; no one spoke. My purse was handed to me and I was pointed toward the front door.
I fled, pushing past the priest coming up the steps to give my father last rites.
After breaking the connection with Meghan, I grasp the skin of my dog’s neck and answer the incoming call. “Mom?” There is no one there.