Johnny Be Good

by Bernadette Walsh

Genres: Marriage & Divorce; Siblings; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

SOMETIMES A MOTHER'S LOVE IS NOT ENOUGH

Peggy Lynch has too many children and too much to do. Unlike the pampered wives in her affluent Long Island suburb, Peggy has to work two jobs to help make ends meet. Maybe if her lazy husband would help around the house, she'd have time to connect with her children and be the type of mother they deserve.
Years have passed since Peggy ruled the house and Veronica is no longer her mother's obedient little girl. Moving into her childhood home with her husband and infant twins, she's starting a new life and should finally be happy. Right? Wrong.

While cleaning out her old bedroom, Veronica finds a letter from her deceased mother. If Veronica were smart she'd burn it and leave her family secrets buried with the dead. But as her mother so often said, Veronica's never been that smart.

Veronica rips open the envelope and proves her mother right...

Release date: July 30, 2019

Print pages: 211

Sample

Prologue After

After my father left, Mama painted the house blue. A bright royal blue, as nice as Dr. Marino’s house down the street and the Feehans next door. Of course on her teacher’s salary my mother couldn’t afford to repaint the house every two years like the Feehans and Dr. Marino. Soon enough the salt air ate away at my mother’s defiant blue, just as my father predicted.

With my four month old twins in their car seats at my feet, I stared at the house. Two years on, the original gray cedar shingles had fought their way through my mother’s folly. The old Victorian looked more like a molting peacock than anything else. A new paint job, a new roof. The hot water heater couldn’t possibly last much longer. If I were smart, I’d have hightailed it to London like my sister Marybeth and left Centerport, Long Island far behind.

But as my mother would say if she were still alive, I’ve never been that smart.

Pretty, yes. A good girl? Sure. “Veronica’s never given me a moment’s trouble,” Mama would tell anyone who’d listen. Quiet as a mouse. As good as gold. No trouble. No trouble at all.

But smart, well... She wouldn’t go that far.

“Veronica likes to be close to home,” Mama told Mrs. Feehan when I’d enrolled in community college and didn’t follow Marybeth and Niall and Conor and even Johnny to universities far from the Long Island Expressway. “A real homebody,” she’d boom across the garden gate.

And now I was home again.

Brian carried the diaper bag from our newly leased minivan and then picked up Fiona and Jack in their matching car seats—Fiona fast asleep, Jack on the edge of it. Brian mouthed, “Do you have the key?”

I thrust my hand through the detritus of my bag, searching for the key I still kept on the orange lanyard I’d made at summer camp. Despite the coolbreeze off Centerport bay, a bead of sweat slid down my neck. “Found it.”

An ancient Lincoln Continental rumbled up Rose Hill Road and pulled into the driveway next door as I turned the key in the lock. “Quick, bring the babies in. The last thing I need today is another interrogation from Mrs. Feehan.”

Brian whispered, “Are we going to spend our lives hiding from Mrs. Feehan?”

I twisted my mouth into what passed for a smile these days. “Not our lives, just this afternoon.”

Brian carried the twins upstairs to their new rooms while I wandered the mostly empty house. My twin brothers, Niall and Conor, had inherited the remnants of my mother’s savings. My sister Marybeth inherited the contents of the house, and by God, she took every stick of furniture, every piece of dented cutlery. “I’m entitled,” she’d said before I could open my mouth to object. Before I could point out that overseas shipping would cost her twice what my mother’s bits and bobs were worth. At the funeral Marybeth’s eyes bulged with bubbling temper. “I’m entitled to everything in the house.” I shrugged and looked away. Marybeth was entitled. When was she not?

My mother’s one valuable asset was this house and the fact that she left it to her most unloved child shocked the whole family, or at least what remained of the family. I was shocked most of all. Although after what happened, no one wanted the house itself. Waterfront houses on this part of Long Island could fetch one million dollars or more. Even with its history and its old roof, 34 Rose Hill Road was worth a lot. More than enough to share the proceeds with my remaining siblings and ensure Thanksgiving dinner invitations into perpetuity. More than enough to buy my new little family a cozy split-level near my dance studio.

My good-natured husband derailed my plans to finally escape this house. He loved my childhood home. The water views. The hidden gems of original molding, just waiting to reemerge from decades of my father’s paint. This house was a dream come true for Brooklyn bred Brian. One he could’ve never attained on his policeman’s salary. Brian never asked for anything from me. He’d held my hand through the seemingly endless wakes and funerals. He’d saved me from the quicksand of my family. Brian wanted this house and despite Marybeth’s hateful eyes and my own misgivings, I gave it to him.

I ran my hand along a patch of rough plaster on the dining room wall. My father used to carefully sand and paint over each crack and fist-sized dent so that the walls were as good as new, all evidence of Johnny’s violent temper erased. The last few months, my mother left the smaller cracks and only carelessly patched over the larger ones. At some point, she couldn’t be bothered covering up anymore.

Brian found me in the kitchen. I opened an empty drawer. “Looks like Marybeth was here.”

He rubbed my back. “It doesn’t matter. When we sell the condo, we’ll buy all new stuff.”

I slammed the drawer shut. “She didn’t stop by to see the twins.”
“I know...”
“I mean, how many birthday presents and Christmas presents have I shipped to her kids?” “I know...”

“Brian, I know that you know. Let me vent, would you?”
He sighed. “I’ll unload the car.”
The babies slept on as I walked through the house and Brian carried our clothes upstairs to my parents’ bedroom upstairs. Or rather, our bedroom. Our bedroom now.

The narrow hallway off the kitchen led to the extension my father had added on once my mother discovered she was pregnant with me. Her little surprise package at age forty-one, just eighteen months after she’d received what she’d thought was her final surprise package, my brother, Johnny. Five children was two too many for the narrow four bedroom house so my father added on two small bedrooms with the help of his County Limerick cronies who my mother only ever allowed into the house if they held a hammer.

Brian wanted to tear down the hastily assembled addition and build in its place a large cedar deck. He had visions of summer backyard barbecues with his fellow policemen. “We’ll tear down the extension, Vee,” he’d said. “That way there won’t be any bad memories.”

If only it were that easy.

I opened the door to Johnny’s room. Marybeth had, of course, left this room and the rest of the addition untouched. Johnny’s clothes were strewn around the room. Clippings about satellites, his last obsession, were thumbtacked to the wall. The bed’s mattress was stripped bare—its rust stains matched those that remained on the rug despite my liberal use of bleach.

Later. I’ll deal with all that later.

I retreated from Johnny’s lair and into my own sanctuary on the other side of the wall. My childhood bedroom, as neat and spare as a nun’s cell, was dark, its one small window overshadowed by a large oak. I snapped on the overhead light. The drawer of my bedside table was slightly ajar and the top of an envelope stuck out. I opened the drawer and took out the envelope. “To Veronica” was scrawled in my mother’s usually neat script.

I sat on the edge of my bed and, despite the sudden roar in my ears, tore open the envelope. I held three lined pages in my shaking hands.

Dear Veronica,
I am sorry. Please forgive me.

CHAPTER ONE-- BEFORE

VERONICA

My first word wasn’t “Mama,” “Dada,” or even “no.” They say my first word was “Johnny.” Not because I loved Johnny so much, although I used to adore my older brother. It was because from the moment John Francis Lynch made his appearance in the already overcrowded house on Rose Hill Road, my mother spent her days shouting his name.

“Come here, Johnny.”
“Sit down, Johnny.”
“Stop hitting your sister, Johnny.”
“Be good now, Johnny.”
Johnny laughed like a mad man as he raced out the front door to his secret hiding place amongst the reeds. At almost sixteen, he was, as Mama said frequently, “too old for this carry-on.” I was tucked into the porch swing. Head in a book, out of the way as usual.

My mother, still in her skirt and heels with her blonde hair captured in a tight bun, stepped onto the front porch. “Where’s Johnny?”

“I dunno,” I mumbled.

Mama snatched the book out of my hand. “What in God’s name are you reading? ‘Her Highland Hero.’ Somehow I doubt this will be on your English test next week, missy. Now, where is your brother?”

“I said I don’t—”
“You do know. Get him before I completely lose my mind.”

I sighed. “What did he do this time?”

“The kitchen’s a mess. There’s some type of black oil all over the new cabinets and I have to go to back to school night in less than an hour and your father’s nowhere to be found.” Mama handed me my paperback. “Veronica, please, don’t ask me any more questions. Find your brother.”

Of course Johnny could be anywhere. Out on the bay in his battered rowboat, catching fish only my father would eat. At the town beach parking lot, spinning wheelies on his skateboard with his best friend, Tim Ryan. But the first place I always checked was the patch of reeds below our next door neighbor’s boathouse and dock.

The top of his blonde head was barely visible from the Murphys’ dock. “Johnny?”

I didn’t know why I bothered calling his name. He never answered. Crap, now I’d have to walk in the muck. I took off my new sandals and prayed I didn’t step on a stray fish hook like last summer. If I hurt my foot before Nationals, I’d kill Johnny.

The tide was in and the water reached my ankles as I made my way to Johnny. Despite it being late September, the air was hot and soupy. I slapped my bare arm. The no-see-ums had already started their nightly swarm.

“... and so we’ll use this special oil on the wheels and we’ll fly.” Johnny was talking fast which was not a good sign.

His faithful sidekick, Tim Ryan, sat on one of the empty paint cans Johnny’d swiped from my father’s shed. “My dad said he’ll buy us new wheels.”

“Cool. Then we’ll—”
“Johnny, Mama wants you.”
The two boys looked at me, surprised, as if I didn’t spend half my life tracking them down. Tim blushed as he always seemed to do whenever I was around lately and pushed his glasses further up on his nose. Although he was a hopeless nerd, Tim Ryan was two years older than me—a junior—so I kind of liked the attention.

Johnny smiled, happy to have another disciple. “Ronnie—”
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
“Okay, okay, Vee-rooooonica, this is so cool. Let me show you.”
For years I’d followed Johnny around like a puppy, happy to see his latest invention. But we were in high school now and his endless excitement about, well, nothing it seemed to me, was annoying. Embarrassing even. Plus I was tired of getting into trouble because of Johnny. “I don’t want to see it. You’re in trouble. Again.”

“We’re building a new, a new, a new skateboard,” Tim stammered. He took a deep breath and then quickly in a single breath said, “Do you want us to make one for you?”

Tim’s hair had grown out from his usual buzz cut and he wasn’t wearing one of those dorky plaid shirts with the stiff collars. He was actually kind of cute. I smiled. “Thanks, Tim, but I can’t risk hurting my foot this close to Nationals.”

“Oh, God,” Johnny moaned. “I’m so tired of hearing about your stupid feet.” In a high voice, he said, “Johnny, I tripped over your shoes again. I can’t twist my ankle this close to Nationals.” He laughed. “I don’t know why you bother. You never win.”

My cheeks burned and I felt like my head was going to explode. Tim looked at the ground. Everyone always thought Johnny was a little odd, but harmless. Unpredictable, sure, but sweet. I was one of the few people who saw this side of him. The side that could always find my weak spot. His cruel side. I reached down, scooped up a handful of wet sand and flung it at his face. “You are such an asshole, Johnny. I hate you and I hope Mama grounds you this time.”

Johnny laughed as I turned around and stomped through the rising water back to the dock. The salty water stained my new dance shorts. Great.

I hope they both drown.

Mama was gone by the time I got back. Daddy’s van was in the back of the house in front of the converted shed that served as his workshop. Last month our new neighbors, the Marinos, called the town to complain about my father’s work van being parked in the front of the house. They said it brought down the tone of the neighborhood. Mama said we got a hundred dollar fine in the mail since apparently there was some town ordinance about vans with commercial plates. Mama also said the Marinos complained about the empty pails of paint my father left out for garbage pickup. Mama was mortified, of course, so she banished my father’s van and any evidence of his painting business to the backyard.

My nose twitched from the combination of furniture varnish and fresh wood shavings. When Daddy wasn’t on one of his painting jobs, he carved custom fireplace mantles. Mama claimed that his hiding out in the workshop was just an excuse not to help with dinner. Three years ago when Mama said she wouldn’t pay for a new Irish dancing costume and tried to make me quit and “give up that nonsense,” Daddy sold three mantelpieces to a rich Wall Street guy with a Hamptons beach house. With that first sale, Daddy was able to pay for the dress, new shoes and plane tickets to Nationals. Mama wasn’t happy about that at all.

“Daddy, did you see what Johnny did?”

Daddy was at the sink with his back to me. The muscles in his thin arms bulged like cords of rope as he scrubbed his paint speckled hands. My father was a small man, no more than five foot six inches tall, but he was strong and wiry. He laughed while he scraped at his hands. “I can tell he was in here messing with my tools and turpentine,” Daddy said in his still strong Irish brogue. “What did he do this time?”

“I dunno. Messed up the kitchen. Mama was—”
“Hopping mad, I’m sure.”
“Yeah, I tried to make him come home and clean it up but—”
“He was off with that waster, Tim Ryan, coming up with one of their blasted inventions. Sure, what else is new?”
“We’d better clean it up before Mama gets home.”
Daddy turned off the water and dried his hands. He took a beer can out of the small fridge and tossed me a can of coke. Mama didn’t believe in soda. Waste of money and bad for children’s teeth. Daddy always kept a few cans stashed for me. “In a minute. How was your math test?”

“Not great.”
“Define not great.”
“I dunno. It’s only the first test of the semester”
“Right, so. Well, we’ll get you a tutor like last year if you don’t do wellon the test. Okay?” I nodded.

Daddy smiled. “And your English test?”
“I aced it.”
“Like always,” Daddy said. “Well done. And how was dance class?” I took a sip of Coke and then replied, “Good but I’m having trouble

with the new set piece. Mrs. O’Shea says my timings off.”
“Which one? Jockey to the Fair?” Daddy tipped the can of Bud to his mouth and swallowed nearly half of it in one long gulp. When he came up for air, I said, “Yeah. If I don’t fix the timing she says I won’t place at Nationals.”

Daddy finished the rest of his beer and then tossed the can into thegarbage can beside the sink. He reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette. “Do you want me to play it for you? I’ll slow it down for you so you can work through the step.”

“I don’t know. What’s the point? I’ll never win.” I looked down at my feet. “I never win. Maybe Mama’s right and I should just focus on school this year. Stop failing math. Maybe join the school newspaper or student council.”

Daddy walked over to me and lifted my chin. “There’s more to life than books and tests. You’ll spend enough of your life working. Do you love dance?”

I nodded.

He smiled. “Then dance. No dancing teacher or judge can take that away from you. Dance for yourself. We’ve weeks to work on the timing. Grab your shoes, love, and I’ll get my fiddle.”

I shoved my calloused feet into the extra set of hard shoes I kept in the shed while Daddy finished his cigarette and got his well worn fiddle from the cabinet. I stood on the small wooden platform Daddy had built after Mama complained about the scuff marks my shoes left on the living room floor and the endless “racket” from my father’s fiddle. Along with painting equipment and cigarettes, Irish dancing and music was also banished to the shed.

Daddy opened the window to allow in the breeze from the bay and then sat on a three legged stood he’d made himself. “Ready?”

I nodded.

“Okay, let me play it first and just listen. Don’t even think about your steps. Let the music—”

“Become a part of me?” I asked, echoing his favorite phrase.

He smiled. “Yes—let it become a part of you. Music and dancing isn’t meant to be torture, love. Don’t let old Mrs. O’Shea make you as miserable as she is.”

I laughed. “Okay, Daddy.”

My father closed his eyes, and the strains of the lively jig burst forth from the wooden fiddle he’d brought with him from Ireland when he’d emigrated. A slight color came into his normally pale face, and after only a few bars, he looked younger. Almost happy.

I closed my eyes as well and allowed my thoughts to wander. I imagined myself in the field besides my grandfather’s farmhouse in Limerick, dancing with my cousins. Instead of hearing Mrs. O’Shea’s scolding voice in my head, I heard my grandmother clapping in time as I kicked my leg high in the air.

My father stopped playing and I opened my eyes.
He smiled. “Now dance.”
As my father played the seven bar introduction, I straightened my

shoulders and pointed my right toe the way I’d been trained since the age of four. The breeze from the window blew back my hair. With the first batter on the thin wooden board, I knew this dance would be different. As I kicked and spun around the small square of wood, I felt my father’s music seep deep into my brain—the part of my brain that didn’t include slights from my dance teacher or insults from my brother. The part of my brain that didn’t wince when Johnny screamed “Ronnie” down the hallways of our high school as the cheerleaders with their lip gloss and expensive shoes laughed.

My father’s music reached the real me. The me that could stand on a stage and feel confident even in front of three stone-faced judges just waiting for me to make a mistake. The me that could fly across a stage and leap into the air. The part of me that danced the jig and the reel with the same fervor, the same joy, my grandmother said she felt at the crossroads when dancing was a way to lose yourself after a day’s long hard labor.

I clicked my heels in the air and landed just as my father’s music stopped. Smack dab on time.

Daddy laughed. “See. I knew you could do it.”
I smiled. “It was good?”
“It was better than good. Dance like that next month and it’ll be on a stage in Ireland you’ll be dancing next.”
“Oh, no, Daddy. We can’t afford it. Mama said—”
My father’s black eyes darkened. “Don’t listen to what your mother said. There’s enough money around here to pay for fancy colleges and books for the rest of them. If you qualify for the All Irelands, Veronica, I promise there will be money for you. Now, move along and go help with dinner before your mother has my head. I’ll be in in a few minutes.”

I nodded and unlaced my shoes without saying another word.

It was almost dark when the flimsy screen door of my father’s shed snapped closed behind me. Someone was leaning against the old oak tree outside my bedroom window.

“Tim? What are you doing back here?”

He walked toward me and held a paint can in one hand and a can of turpentine in the other. “I was waiting for your dad to leave so I could return these.”

“Doing Johnny’s dirty work as usual?”

“Well, um, your mom’s yelling at him in the kitchen, so I, I, I.” Tim’s stutter was much better than it used to be, but to still be in high school and stutter? God only knew what the Centerport High School cheerleaders thought about that.

I took the paint can from his right hand. “It’s okay. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time. I know you’re a good friend. It’s just... I don’t know. It’s like everyone always does everything for Johnny, but what does Johnny do for anyone else?”

Tim shrugged his shoulders.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll put these back.” I reached out to take the can of turpentine from Tim’s left hand. He placed his other hand on my arm. “Veronica, I think you’re a beautiful, a beautiful, a beautiful...”

Tim stamped his foot and then took a deep breath. He stared into my eyes and said in one breath, “I think you’re a beautiful dancer don’t listen to Johnny he’s an idiot sometimes.”

He then kissed me on the cheek. He smelled like peppermint gum and bug spray. Before I could say anything, Tim Ryan spun around and disappeared into the thick fog rolling in off the bay.

PEGGY

I turned off the ignition and the screech of Sean’s fiddle greeted me. Great. Something else for the Marinos to complain about.

Veronica’s black curls bobbed in and out of view through the shed’s small window. The batters and stamps from her slightly flat feet echoed among the pine trees separating our property from the Feehans’ house. Her thin lips were pressed in determination. If only Veronica deployed a tenth of that effort in her schoolwork rather than this useless hobby. The thought of spending yet another year explaining the most basic math concepts to Veronica made me want to drown myself in the Centerport Bay.

Of course whenever I suggested she expand her horizons and try something—anything—else, I was the bad guy. What about cross countryor the school newspaper or student government, I’d suggested only this morning. Colleges want to see well rounded students and freshman year was the time to start. Do you know how many kids I’ve seen scramble to join clubs senior year when it was too late?

Veronica’s face closed in on itself and she went somewhere else in her mind. A place where my voice could not penetrate. Her coal black eyes glazed over as I lectured her about Leslie Feehan from next door who wound up in community college because she didn’t do anything other than smoke pot and watch TV. Still, not a flicker of comprehensive in my daughter’s eyes. Only that endless flat stare.

Well, she was her father’s daughter.

Sean stared out the window, a mug of tea and the bowl of oatmeal he ate every goddamned morning in front of him. Without looking at me, he mumbled, “Aw, Peg, leave her alone. She’s grand.”

Almost against my will, my voice shot up an octave. “Will it be grand when she doesn’t get into college?”

Sean slurped his tea in response.

And now here it was, after eight and nothing done about dinner, Johnny God knows where and the new kitchen cabinets I’d paid for out of my tutoring money probably still covered in muck. But Sean was playing his fiddle and Veronica was stomping around on a plank of wood like an angry pony, the two of them happy as larks. After the scene at breakfast, if I said a word I’d be the bad one. I’d be the nagging, unreasonable, menopausal mother. Well, let them stay out here and annoy all the neighbors. Why the hell should I care?

Johnny was in the kitchen, scrubbing a cabinet with a puddle of water at his feet. The new t-shirt I bought him for school was splattered with water and oil and mud.

He turned and smiled. “Hey, Peg, I’m almost done.”

Johnny had started calling me Peg when he was three and Sean and I thought it was so cute we laughed. Of course after that positive reinforcement Johnny continued to call me Peg and we couldn’t break him of it. He only called me Mama when he was sick or scared. This Peg nonsense annoyed me, but when it came to Johnny, I’d learned early on to pick my battles.

“What in God’s name did you do?”

“Tim had this great idea about how to make our skateboards go faster so I got some grease and turpentine and—”

I held up my hand. “Stop. I don’t think I want to hear any more. Why don’t you ever work on these inventions over at Tim’s house?”

Johnny wiped the last bit of grease off of the lower cabinet. His rag dripped more oily water onto the tile floor. “Because Mrs. Ryan lacks imagination. Not like you, Peggy-poo. She doesn’t understand that what we’re doing is important.”

“Important?”

“Do you know how much money we’ll make once we perfect the formula? Everyone will buy it.” Johnny threw the rag into the sink and then grabbedme around my waist and spun me around in a circle. “We’ll be rich!”

Despite the mess in the kitchen and the uncooked dinner, I threw back my head and laughed. “Rich, huh?”

“Yes, super rich. So rich you could stop teaching and Dad could stop painting houses and I...” Johnny stopped short and I stumbled over his feet. “I...”

I grabbed hold of a chair to steady myself. “You could go away to college like Marybeth and your brothers.”

Johnny looked up at me, his blue eyes focused and, for once, not jumping around his head. “So rich I could be myself and no one could say anything about it.”

I reached over and stroked my son’s cheek. My heart broke for him, as it did at least once a day since he’d entered nursery school and the teacher made him sit in the corner for half the year. Johnny, with my blue eyes and white blonde hair and Sean’s slight build, looked like an angel. But beneath that angelic face was constant turmoil and motion that even high doses of Ritalin could not quell. Johnny had exhausted me from the moment he was born. As a toddler he would endlessly run in circles yelling at the tops of his lungs, knocking over lamps, vases and anything else in his path. I would sometimes lock his bedroom door and escape to the front porch just to avoid his piercing screams. He was better now. Much better. But sometimes it was easier for me to focus on the messes he created and the homework he never completed rather than consider what it was like for Johnny, trapped as he was within the rollercoaster of his overactive mind.

“Johnny, rich or poor, you can always be yourself in this house.”

His eyes narrowed and I was ashamed of my lie. But was it so wrong for me to want my last two children to be as successful as my first three?

I rubbed his shoulder. “I mean it, sweetheart.”

The manic smile leapt back onto his face. He shouted, “Gotta go, Peggy-poo,” and ran out of the kitchen.

Dinner. I should make dinner, I thought, as I poured myself a glass of wine. I looked out the kitchen window towards the shed. Sean’s eyes were closed as he leaned into a high note. He looked so young.

Well, he was young. Twelve years younger that me, and while the different between nineteen and thirty-one once seemed insurmountable, the difference between forty-five and fifty-seven was now a vast gulf I feared we would never cross. Sean, with his slim hips and dark black hair, was mistaken more than once for my son. And me. Well, the hair was still blonde, though coarse from monthly touch ups. And my hips—the childbearing hips all the McBride women shared—were always study and wide. Now they needed their own zip code.

The cheap pinot grigio slid down my throat. I poured myself another glass and finished the bottle. I opened another bottle and then carried the glass and bottle to the front porch. I sat on my Auntie Mary’s old rocker. The full moon overhead lit up the bay and the lights from the bridge twinkled through the fog rolling in from Connecticut. The rocker, carved out of one of the last oaks left on the McBride farm, was smooth from the varnish Sean applied last week. Auntie Mary, with her steel grey bun and sensible shoes, had seemed ancient when I arrived from Albany. Ancient. I swallowed the rest of my wine and poured another glass. The summer I moved in with Mary, she was all of fifty.

Auntie Mary, my godmother and namesake—I was baptized Mary Margaret McBride—was the only McBride before me who’d escaped the twenty mile radius of the McBride dairy farms. Sometime before the First World War the three youngest—and thus landless—McBride brothers left their ramshackle farm in County Cavan and after a few years working the docks in Brooklyn, scrounged up enough money to buy a patch of land outside of Albany. The trip from Cavan to New York seemed to have done something to the McBride brothers and their blonde progeny because none of the family besides myself and Auntie Mary ever left the rollings acres that now made up the McBride dairy farming complex. There was something in the McBride DNA that caused each generation to cling to those verdant hills, as if the weeks spent in the hull of an immigrant ship stamped any bit of wanderlust right out of the McBrides.

Although I had the blonde hair and big bones of the McBrides, I was nothing like my family. On the inside anyway. From the time I was small, I hated the cold and I especially hated cows and everything cows produced. Milk. Cheese. Endless piles of cow shit. When my father took me on my eighth birthday to Centerport to visit Auntie Mary, I’d thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The salt air and the light as it danced across the gentle waves made something in my soul sing. I knew then I’d be back someday.

Once my mother died and my sister Eleanor had another baby and needed my room, I left the farmhouse, found myself a job teaching English at a Catholic boys high school on Long Island and moved in with Auntie Mary. Aside from a few childhood visits, I didn’t know Mary all that well but she’d recognized something of herself in me and welcomed me into the home she’d inherited from one of her spinster patients.

After a long day at Huntington Hospital, Mary was happy enough to kick off her white nurses shoes and sit on the front porch. She’d spend hour on the porch sitting in her special chair as she chatted with her friend from next door, Kitty Murphy and got “merry” on Kitty’s special lemonade and gin concoctions. So enamored by the view was Mary that she didn’t seem to notice the peeling paint and dingy furnishings inside her beloved home. The first thing I did when I moved in was ask Kitty Murphy for the name of a house painter. And the rest, as they say, was history.

Of course when Sean Lynch and his rag tag painting crew showed up at 34 Rose Hill Road, the last thing on my mind was romance. To be honest, the only thing I thought when those Irish boys with their incomprehensible accents clambered through the house was that I might’ve made a mistake. Who in their right mind would hire a painter not much older than a high school student? But Sean and his painting paddies who all reeked of the prior night’s beer were cheap and available so one July morning I waved to the “lads” as Sean called them, drove off to my summer tutoring job and hoped for the best.

The paint fumes had driven Auntie Mary from the house—she and Kitty Murphy took the bus to Atlantic City—so I was alone when Sean knocked on the door one Saturday evening looking for his latest installment. Kitty warned me to only pay Sean weekly. “He’s a Limerick man, Margaret, and if you pay him too much up front, God knows when you’ll see him again.”

Sean smiled when I answered the door. “Sure, I didn’t think I’d find you home on a Saturday night.”

I laughed. “If you didn’t think I’d be home, why did you come?”
“I thought maybe your auntie’d be home.”
“Yes, well, it’s just me. Come in and I’ll get my purse.”
“I don’t want to delay you, like, if you’re on your way out or anything.” I opened the screen door. “You’re not delaying me, Sean.”

Sean had swapped his paint-specked cargo pants for a pair of tight Levis. He sat uncomfortably on my aunt’s sagging couch as if he was in pain. The cologne he’d doused himself with soon filled the living room. God, he was young.

My purse was on the side table just inside the front door. I took out the envelope of cash I’d gotten from the bank earlier that week and then walked over and handed it to him.

“Thanks very much.” He stuffed the envelope in his front pocket. “So, you’ve no plans yourself this evening?”

I smiled. “I have a date with a book I’m reading for my graduate class.”

“But sure, you have to have graduated by now? You’re older than me, aren’t you?”

I laughed. “Yes, I know I’m older than you. I’m a teacher and I am taking some additional courses to get my school administration degree.”

“Ah, right so.”
Sean remained on the couch so I said, “Well, I’m sure you have plans.” “I do, yeah,” he said without moving.
“I don’t want to keep you.”
“Are you really going to stay in and read a book? Pardon for me for saying this but you’re way too pretty to be staying in on a Saturday night.”

“Thank you but I’m perfectly happy.”

He looked around the dingy living room filled with a dead woman’s furniture. “You’re perfectly happy sitting in here tonight?”

I walked to the front door. “Yes, Sean.”

He finally got the hint and rose from the couch and followed me to the front door. “Do you like music?”

“Sure.”
“Myself and a few of the lads are in a band.”
Of course he was in a band. I nodded.“That’s wonderful.”
“Don’t you even want to know what kind of band?”
I stifled a sigh. I needed Sean to do a good job on the house and finish before Auntie Mary came back from Atlantic City. I forced myself to smile. “Sure. What kind of band are you in?”

“An Irish rock band. It’s a blend of traditional Irish music and rock. I play the fiddle.”

I opened the screen door. “That sounds like fun. Well, good night, Sean. See you Monday.”

“We’re playing tonight in a little pub in Huntington. Horgan’s Pub. It’s just up the road.”

“Super. Have a good time.”

“Why don’t you come?” He ran his fingers through thick black hair that had curled with the evening’s humidity. He had nice hair. I hadn’t noticed before.

“I would but I’m pretty busy.”

Sean pointedly looked into the empty living room. “Ah, sure, with your books and all.”

“That’s right,” I said weakly. God, why did I care what this little twerp thought of me?

He smiled and for the first time I noticed how straight and even his teeth were. “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find us.” A car door slammed in the distance and brought me back from that Saturday night so many years earlier. I reached down to pour myself another glass of wine but the bottle was empty. I should go in and make the children something to eat. Tired. I was so tired. I closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of Auntie Mary’s chair. Before I fell asleep, I wondered once again how my life would’ve been different if I hadn’t changed my mind that night.

VERONICA

The spot on my cheek where Tim kissed me still felt damp. I touched it gingerly, as if Tim’s lips would’ve bruised it or something. To think, I received my first kiss in the backyard from Tim Ryan of all people. I didn’t know whether to be happy or disappointed. I touched my cheek again and smiled.

I definitely wasn’t disappointed.

I stepped into the kitchen and slipped, falling on my butt. Black water covered the kitchen floor. I grabbed my left ankle. It was okay, thank God. If Johnny made me to hurt my ankle again, I really would kill him. My new dance shorts were wet and my legs slimy from whatever was in the water. Yuck. I got up and wiped my legs with a kitchen rag. I grabbed a fistful of paper towels and sopped up as much water from the floor as I could. What a mess.

So much for my first kiss. Thanks, Johnny, for even ruining that for me.

I stood up and tossed the dirty paper towels in the garbage pail. My stomach rumbled. I opened the refrigerator and devoured a soggy slice of pizza from last night’s dinner. The clock above the stove said 9:15. Damnit, I still had math homework—homework I had no idea how to do and would probably screw up since I’d failed the first math quiz of the school year. Plus I needed a shower. I looked around the untidy kitchen. I should take myself off to my little cave at the back of the house just like Johnny always did, and let someone else clean up for once.

I opened the dishwasher and loaded the dirty dishes. Daddy walked in and wordlessly passed me the dishes from the kitchen table just as he did almost every night as I loaded. I wiped down the new counters while he mopped up the remainder of the water on the floor. When Daddy was finished, he nodded towards the refrigerator. “Anything left from last night?”

I shrugged. “A slice of pepperoni.”

Without complaint he retrieved the pizza and in a few bites finished it. It wasn’t always like this. When I was younger and before Marybeth and the twins left for college, we would all crowd around the kitchen table at least a few times a week and eat dinner together. Nothing gourmet, but at least there was an occasional vegetable. People at school would think I was crazy for complaining about pizza for dinner, but sometimes I’d kill for a meal that required a knife and fork.

After Marybeth and the boys left for college, everything changed. Not at first, but gradually family dinners went from four times a week to three to two and now, well, I couldn’t remember the last time the four of us sat together. It was as if once Marybeth and the wonder twins left the house, Mama was no longer interested in being a mother.

That wasn’t fair. She worked hard, as Daddy reminded me whenever I dared complain. I don’t know, maybe with all the noise around the table—with Marybeth telling us about her latest victory at mock court or Conor trying to one-up Niall—it wasn’t so obviously what complete losers Johnny and I were. Last week at breakfast when Johnny flipped the salt shaker over and over and over again and Mama shouted, “Stop it, Johnny. I said, stop. You’re too old for this nonsense. Oh, God, give me strength. Cut it out now!” I thought I was going to lose my mind. With her beet red face, Mama looked like she’d already lost hers.

So I didn’t blame her, really. Mama probably wished she’d stopped after her first three perfect children. Then she and Daddy could’ve sold the house for a fortune and move to Florida like a lot of their friends and they wouldn’t have been stuck here with high taxes, cold winters and disappointing me.

“Where’s your mother?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. The usual place. Do you want me to get her?” “No, love. I’ll get her. She probably lost track of time out there.”
Ha. As I didn’t know what “lost track of time” meant. But Daddy looked tired and thinner than usual so I nodded and played along. “Sure, Daddy. Good night.”

Daddy wasn’t the hugging type so he pulled my ponytail and winked. “Good night, Ronnie. And remember. You did good work tonight. Mrs. O’Shea will be pleased with you tomorrow. You’ll see.”

I smiled.

Daddy walked out to the front porch. I crept into the dark living room. The crash of shattered glass shot through the open window.

“Aw, what did you do again, Sean?”
“’Tis nothing. You only knocked over your glass.”
“I knocked over the glass?” Her gravely voice carried across the silent bay. I cringed. What must the neighbors think? Every night. Every night the same old story.

Her voice louder now, she said, “You did. You did. You did, you fucking asshole. You ruin everything!”

My father strained as he pulled my mother up from the low-slung rocker. “Shush now, Peg. It’s all right. You’re all right.”

Mama shook him off. “I’m not all right. Okay? Okay?” I hurried out of the room and escaped to bed.