THE MEMORY BOOK

Interview with Mr. Bivins

Colleen held a sepia-toned photo. Gavin and Elizabeth Donohue stood in front of the brick pub holding a baby, less than a year old, wrapped tightly in a blanket, a head full of curls emerging from the folds. Another man, Mr. Bivins, the real estate agent, stood a foot away from Elizabeth wearing a dark suit and a file of papers that he held to the camera. Gavin’s arm was flung over Elizabeth’s shoulders and a grin spread across his face. Elizabeth, with a lacquered bob, held the baby in one arm and had slipped the other around her husband’s waist. She wore a flowered sundress and large Jackie O sunglasses. Gavin wore a dark suit with a crooked green tie. Sunlight fell in long stretches, offering Gavin the appearance of being showered with light. In small script at the bottom of the photo, in the white band framing it, were the words “January 1982.”

Colleen sat at a long dark faux-mahogany table in Mr. Bivins’s realty office, a table where clients signed closing forms and wrote checks for new homes or businesses. The air conditioner was set to arctic and Colleen ran her hands up and down her bare arms. Seated across from her, Mr. Bivins wore a black suit with a pale blue hankie poking from the top left pocket. His tie, also pale blue, had a stain of something resembling ketchup on the bottom corner. His face was earnest and round; rimless spectacles sat atop the red bulb at the end of his nose as he looked down at the photo.

After some chitchat about the weather and the new restaurant downtown, Colleen pointed to the photo. “You see, I’m wondering what day this was about. All of us in front of the pub and you holding those papers?”

“Closing day. We didn’t think it would happen and that’s why I have that silly grin on my face.”

“Closing? I’m confused.”

“Oh, the McNallys weren’t quite ready to sell it, what with its success and all of that. But your dad, he was quite the charmer there, with your mom all smiles and your tiny little self only a couple months old when he bought it.”

Colleen couldn’t quite forge the connection between herself and the small bundle in her mother’s arms. Of course she didn’t remember any of this—but there she was, part of the family history and pub from the get-go. Was this how her dad would one day feel when he looked at these photos and their stories? As though he didn’t know the man in the picture? Colleen cleared her throat. “He bought it before I was born.”

“No. Your mom was at home with you when he finally convinced the McNallys to sell. I remember that quite well. Your dad told ol’ Bud that he’d worked in an ancient pub in a village in County Clare. He had ideas. Big ideas. Living all that time in a small village of thatched cottages, he knew more about real pubs than the McNallys ever could.” Mr. Bivins’s face settled into the wrinkles of his lifelong smile. “And it didn’t hurt that your dad paid over market value. He was determined to own that pub. Nothing would stop him.”

“Nothing usually does.” Colleen paused. “But he moved here because of it, right? He’d already bought it when they arrived. The only pub he’d worked at before that was the one in Ireland.”

“No.” Mr. Bivins stared at the photo. “He spent months convincing Bud to sell. But didn’t it become all he imagined it to be? It’s a community. That’s what he wanted—a community built around a gathering place. And your mother, always so quiet and polite, always holding on to your dad for dear life.”

“But this couldn’t be closing day. He bought it before I was born . . . it’s why they moved here.” She knew she was repeating herself, but maybe he didn’t understand her, didn’t comprehend the details.

“No, Lena. I remember as clearly as yesterday.”

Colleen didn’t want to argue with the older gentleman—there would be no use in that. She knew that stories changed with time, that even her own most vivid memories were unreliable—what time had it been? What day? Facts didn’t matter so much as the overall impression. So if Mr. Bivins’s timeline didn’t match her dad’s, then it was only the intention that mattered, the determination to own and run a pub in a small-town community. That was what was worth recording.