Shining Sea (6 page)

“Told who what?” Sissy asks.

She taps Sissy's upturned nose. “Aren't you the one with the buzzing ears?” She gives Patty Ann a warning look. Sissy is the kind who hears everything and, even if beyond her comprehension, remembers it.

The white stone of the cemetery shoots sun at her. She slides her sunglasses down over her eyes. “Luke! Do you think I don't see you?”

Luke drags his lanky bell-bottomed legs out of the car.

She turns toward the cemetery path. She's a marshal now. A small female marshal, leading the troops. Such a short time ago she was a twinkly-eyed virgin in a crisp yellow dress, starstruck at the sight of the haggard but gallant veteran just back from the Pacific islands.

How do people get from point A to point B in their lives? When did this happen?

“We're our own Memorial Day parade,” she says to Mike, taking his arm. She doesn't need to; she knows how to make this walk on her own. But Mike likes her to lean on him. When Mike is done with his army service, he'll be a doctor, just like his father before him and his father's father before that. And he'll have done it without paying a penny. The army will take good care of Mike. Patty Ann will see. She was overjoyed when Mike told her he wanted to enlist in the ROTC.
Overjoyed.

“Are we gonna see the real parade after?” Sissy says.

“You hear me talking about parades with your brother? How'd you hear me say that?” She takes Sissy's hand in her other hand. The ears on that girl. “Not this year we won't go, remember? This afternoon we're going to have a special party. For Mommy and Ronnie. And then afterward, we'll all be a big family together.”

Jeanne and Molly walk slowly back toward them. A little boy, three or four, dressed in a mini sailor suit, races in front of them, chased by a tense-looking mother. The woman glances toward her and breaks into a small surprised smile. Canary yellow isn't the norm to wear to the cemetery on Memorial Day, but she's allowed her one little private exchange still with Michael. She can have that much. She smiles back at the woman.

“A lot of people here today,” Jeanne says, stopping in front of them.

Even before she agreed to marry Ronnie, Jeanne wanted to come out to Los Angeles this Memorial Day weekend in honor of the fifth anniversary of Michael's death. So, of course, she had to work out how to package the two events together. It's a long way from Poughkeepsie.

“More than last year,” Mike says somberly, nodding.

“Vietnam,” Luke mutters.

“That's right,” Patty Ann says, shifting Kenny to her other hip, the better to glare at her. “And I'd rather be married to a draft evader than to a body in a box.”

“Shut up, Patty Ann,” Mike says.

All around them families are laying flowers, planting American flags. Some of the mounds look fresh, too fresh; mothers about her age stand beside them, tears rolling freely down their faces.

And so it continues.

Every day alive is a precious day. And she has to live this life for both of them, herself and Michael.

“Come on,” she says. “Let's go find your father.”

No one says much on the way back from the cemetery. She rides with Mike and Jeanne and Sissy in Ronnie's car, Kenny in her lap again. Luke and Molly go in the Dodge with Patty Ann, promising to pick up the wedding cake after they've picked up Lee. The wedding dinner will be at Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills.
We're a small group,
Ronnie said when she protested about the cost.
Only your kids and your son-in-law, and your sister-in-law and her kid, and Patrick and Johnny, and Father O'Malley. And us, of course.

Patrick and Johnny are friends of Ronnie. He didn't invite any of his family.
Not close
is all he's said about them. She didn't pry; Ronnie's a grown man and entitled to his privacy. Her own mother is too poorly to leave the house, much less travel this far outside San Francisco for the first time since Michael's funeral and the second time ever, and her father won't come down without her mother. Fifteen people total. Well, Ronnie is paying the bill. It's his decision to make.

Francis is sitting in the living room when they arrive at the house, already dressed in the dark blue jacket and white button-down shirt she bought for him, bent over that beloved guitar he bought working on the pier with Eugene.

“You should have come to your father's grave,” she tells him, setting Kenny down on the floor beside him.

In his typical maddening way, Francis stares up at her and says nothing. He doesn't apologize or try to explain his behavior. But with his grown-up clothes on, his dark gold hair washed and slicked back, he looks so much like Michael and yet so much himself, such a startlingly handsome young man, it's hard to scold him.

She sighs. “I'm going to go get ready. Watch your nephew.”

“What time do we need to leave for the church?” Jeanne asks, fussing with her handbag, averting her eyes as though approaching a delicate subject. “I mean, just to be sure Molly and I are ready in time. Well, you know what I mean.”

He's a nice man,
her sister-in-law told her last night, after Ronnie had said good night. And then, faltering just a little,
I'm happy for you
.

What does a sister-in-law become when the person who unites them is no longer living? Is Jeanne still her in-law, even?
And you?
she asked cheerfully, skipping right past the unspoken words, the thought that Michael would in some way be replaced this evening. Because he won't. Michael will never be replaced. Just because he died doesn't mean he stopped being her husband. She'll just have two husbands. Barbara the bigamist.
Are there any nice men in Poughkeepsie?

Jeanne looked embarrassed.
Oh, Barbara. You know I
am
still married. I tell Molly I'm like Penelope from
The Odyssey
. When Paul gets back, I'll be waiting
.

Paul—ten years without sending so much as a postcard—is, for all intents and purposes, as gone as Michael is. The nuns taught
The Odyssey
in high school, and she remembers the story; Paul isn't coming back and she's willing to bet there are no suitors banging on Jeanne's door like they were on Penelope's, either. Poor Jeanne! Stuck with a husband who isn't a husband. Probably everyone but Jeanne realized that Paul married her to get a green card—when they came out together to visit that one time, before Paul took off, he as much as told Michael so. He even made eyes at
her,
his own sister-in-law, when no one was looking.

You think he's gone back to Canada?
Although, of course, Paul didn't go back to Canada. Why would he have married Jeanne for a green card and then gone back to Canada?

But Jeanne didn't answer, and she understood suddenly: the way Jeanne deals with the failure of her marriage is not to think about Paul as flesh and blood, walking on earth, his wife and child forgotten. It's easier to make a constellation out of her lost husband, a Greek myth, something abstract.

If that makes it easier for Jeanne, then fine. She's certainly not one to argue with that. It's hard, this life.

“We have an hour before we need to leave,” she says. “When Molly gets back, let her help herself in the kitchen. The ceremony won't take long, but your inner clocks must be out of whack, what with the time difference.”

In the quiet of her bedroom, she gets Sissy's stiff green dress from the closet.

“Don't want to,” Sissy says, sitting on the bed, kicking the bed skirt.

“Oh, come on. You're my flower girl. I want you to look pretty.”

Sissy folds her chubby arms over her chest. “I'll look like Jell-O.”

“Green is lovely with red hair.”

It's the wrong thing to say. Sissy, whose brothers—and probably the kids in the playground, too—have teased her more than once about her ginger crop, scowls. But then her spunky little daughter suddenly relents, lifting her arms up, as though somehow intuiting this is not the moment to give her added trouble. Because it is true—now that the time is getting so near, now that she's back in this bedroom, knowing she'll soon be again sharing it with a husband—her nerves are getting a little raw. She runs her free hand over her stomach, not big but not as flat as it was before giving birth to five children. What will it
be
like with Ronnie? She's into her forties now, long past being the girl she was when she and Michael married.

She won't find out tonight. With Jeanne and Molly occupying the girls' room, Sissy has been sleeping with her.
We could go spend the night in a hotel,
she told Ronnie, laughing, as they made their plans.
The honeymoon suite.

Ronnie laughed, too:
Don't worry about it. I'll wait until after Jeanne and Molly have gone to move in. Maybe that's better. It will be easier for Jeanne.

She was laughing, but in fact she wasn't joking about checking into a hotel. The idea of exploring another man's body for the first time with the kids down the hall—she would have liked to do that someplace private, anonymous. Didn't he want that also? Wasn't he eager to be alone with her?

But Ronnie is always so thoughtful. There can't be many men who would be so considerate—she should be thanking her lucky stars is what she should be doing. Of course, it will be easier for Jeanne not to see her going off for the night with a man other than Michael. One thing at a time; the wedding is already enough.

“Help me, Mommy?” Sissy says, her voice muffled by cloth.

“You need to take the dress you are wearing off first,” she says to Sissy, smiling.

While Sissy wriggles out of her cemetery dress, she slides out of her own clothes. She ordered a light blue suit with a matching pillbox hat for the wedding; with five kids, she wasn't going to act the fool and dress in white, like a virgin. She removes its wrapper now and runs her fingers down the front of it. She'll slip it on in a few minutes, once she's rolled hose up her legs and put on her makeup.

With him in the room or not, when she takes the suit off again tonight, she will no longer be Mrs. Michael Gannon. She'll be Mrs. Ronald McCloskey. That's what is going to happen.

Y
OU AREN'T REALLY GOING
to leave Los Angeles?” Patty Ann says, staring over the kitchen sink into the backyard, where Ronnie is talking with Mike and Mike's girlfriend by the grill.

Ronnie is switching the focus of his company from individual air-conditioning units to central air, and he says it means he needs to switch his office location as well:
People in Southern California are too reliant on the sea breeze
.
The desert is where to get a foothold.

As far as she can tell there's not much sea breeze to be had in LA, certainly not east of the new 405 highway. But she did tell Ronnie before they married,
I'm not moving to a new house in LA. And I'm not going to have the exterior repainted. It's the last thing Michael did, and I like it
. If Ronnie simply doesn't like living in another man's home and this is a way to get her to move, who is to blame him?

“If Ronnie's loan comes through,” she says, “and he decides to go, we're going. And soon, before school starts back up. He's paying the bills, Patty Ann. It's not for me to argue.”

“Just up and leave your home like that?”

“I up and left my home twenty years ago to follow your father.”

“Twenty-three.” Patty Ann points to the hammock draped with Luke's lanky seventeen-year-old body, seemingly asleep despite all the cap rockets going off and the loud music from the neighbors. “Why'd Ronnie put that up in our backyard if he's just planning to make you sell the house?”

Patty Ann has been out of the house for three years, but it's still “our” backyard. It's enough to break her heart. With the house sold, does Patty Ann feel as though her childhood will be once and for all out of reach? There were days after Michael's death when her hands shook so much with rage—this perfect life dropped in her lap only to be snatched up again—that it was hard to zip the younger boys' Windbreakers or attach a barrette in baby Sissy's fine red hair. Maybe the real reason Patty Ann ran off with that good-for-nothing Lee was out of a similar anger, snubbing her nose at fate for what it had done to them.

Where is Lee today? It seems like just Patty Ann and the babies these days.

“You and the boys can always come visit. It's not that far.”

“For Luke? He put the hammock up for Luke?”

“I told Luke last week if he's going to just loaf around, I wish at least he would loaf around at home, where I could keep an eye on him. Luke laughed. But Ronnie came home with the hammock.”

“And Luke has barely left it since.”

“I don't think Luke likes his friends much more than I do.”

“Superman Ronnie.”

“He has a way.”

“Like I said. Superman.”

“I don't know what you have against your stepfather, Patty Ann. Ronnie's been nothing but nice to you. He even tried to help Lee land a job—not that Lee followed him up on it.”

“It wasn't the right fit,” Patty Ann says, looking down at her beer.

“Right. Well. Ronnie tried.”

“He always tries. That's just it. Like he's
too
nice. Like he's hiding something. You never really know
who
he is.”

If he's such a nice guy and loves kids so much, why hasn't he had any of his own? Why hasn't he ever even married?
Patty Ann said after the first time Ronnie joined them for Sunday dinner.
He's a good-looking guy. I mean, for a middle-aged square.

It's a question, like a song she can't shake, that she hears again each night when Ronnie kisses her on her forehead, puts out the light, and turns over onto his side, facing away from her. She's sure he loves her. It was his idea they marry, not hers. It's not like he had anything to gain from it—she'd hardly an extra penny in the bank. And he's an honorable man. He served in World War II, just like Michael did. And yet she could count on two hands the number of times he has turned to her in the dark. Being married to Ronnie is great, but it's not exactly how she imagined it.

But maybe that's how it is with most men. Just because their private life isn't like the one she had with Michael doesn't mean it's not normal. They're neither of them kids anymore, after all.
She's
no longer a kid.

She wouldn't mind if he were to turn to her sometimes, though.

“That's what he is, Patty Ann—
nice.
Some people are.” She picks up the plate of raw steak and heads for the door. “I think the baby has woken up.”

The late afternoon air smells of eucalyptus and car exhaust and barbecue. She sets the plate down by the grill. “Another ten minutes?”

“Fifteen,” Ronnie says. He's wearing the new madras shirt she picked out for him; it makes his hair seem even darker and thicker. He really is a nice-looking man.

“Well, the salads are ready. And the corn on the cob is done.”

“I'm starved,” Eugene says, looking up from a pile of firecrackers. A body would think she didn't have enough children already without Eugene making himself at home here. Then again, Eugene's been an honorary member of the family longer than Ronnie has—it'll be strange leaving him behind if they move to Phoenix. In some ways, she understands him better than she understands Francis, her own son.

Right now, Francis is leaning against the coral tree picking on his guitar, paying no mind to Eugene or the firecrackers. Ronnie must have given the boys the money for them. He's the one who came up with the plan for Francis and Eugene to spend the summer working for Jeanne, helping fix up her rattling old wooden house. When they went East at Thanksgiving, Ronnie saw how badly it needed painting.
The college would pay for it, right?
he said on the plane ride home.
Jeanne just hasn't gotten around to asking them?

Francis and Eugene will be on a bus heading toward New York State this time on Saturday. Ronnie, of course, bought their tickets. The college will let Jeanne hire her nephew, but it's not going to pay for his transportation across the country.

“Me, too,” Kenny says, swaying on his chubby little legs, glancing adoringly at Eugene and Francis. “Hungry.”

Sissy slams her book shut. “Let's play hide-and-seek!”

No one pays her any mind. Francis keeps fiddling with his guitar. Eugene continues fiddling with his firecrackers. Luke might as well be a corpse over there in the hammock.

Sissy puts her hands on her hips. “Come on!”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart. I have to tend the barbecue,” Ronnie says, forgetting again that Sissy doesn't like being called by endearments. He can't help it. Endearments come naturally to him. “Boys, play with your little sister.”

Sissy glares at him, then stalks over to the hammock and pulls up hard on its side, flipping Luke over onto the ground.

“Hey!” Luke says, coming to life, rolling up onto his knees and grabbing for her. Mike puts his beer down, ready to step in.

Sissy jumps back. “Play hide-and-seek. Come on, Luke. Everyone here is so boring.”

Luke wipes his hands on his legs. He laughs. “Okay, squirt.”

Mike picks his beer back up.

“Okay, Sissy. We'll play, too,” Eugene says, punching Francis.

“Yeah, okay,” Francis mumbles, looking up. “What are we doing?”

Sissy sticks her tongue out at him.

“No sticking your tongue out, Sissy,” she says—though as far as she's concerned, Sissy is within her rights. Those
boys
. “That's not ladylike.”

“Hide seek,” little Kenny says.

“You're too small to play,” six-year-old Sissy says.

Kenny's tiny face crumples. He doesn't cry, just looks down at his feet. It rips her in two. “I don't know what you're talking about, Sissy,” she says. “Kenny's going to play with me, and as a team we're going to beat all of you.” She takes Kenny's hand in hers. He looks up at her, his eyes round and shiny.

She gives Francis a look.

“Oh, don't worry,” he mutters. When it comes to hiding, Francis has them all beat when he wants.

“You're it!” Sissy says, tagging Luke.

Luke laughs again and sits back down on the hammock. He covers his eyes. “One… two…”

She scoops Kenny up onto her hip. “Come on. I have a great hiding place for us.” She runs through the grass around the house, carrying him. “Shh,” she says. She tiptoes through the front door and back toward the kitchen.

“Six, seven, eighhhhht…”

She places Kenny on the floor. “We'll crawl under the table and pull the chairs in. He'll never find us.”

Kenny sticks his thumb in his mouth.

“Don't do that, Kenny. It'll give you rabbit teeth.”

He takes his thumb out.

She folds a chocolate chip cookie into a napkin and gets down on her knees beside him. “There are cookies to eat while we wait. Quick.” Together, they crawl under the table. He leans against her shoulder. She kisses the top of his head.

“Ten. Ready or not, hipsters, here I come!”

Luke finds Eugene first. It's easy—something in the garden shed sets Eugene off on a coughing fit. In the last few months, Eugene's asthma seems to have disappeared, but his lungs are still fragile.

“Aw, hell, Luke,” Eugene says.

“Now, no need for that language, Eugene,” Ronnie says. “Come give us a hand with the barbecue.”

Luke next finds Francis, who hasn't bothered to hide at all, just climbed into the backseat of Ronnie's car with his guitar.

Kenny starts to squirm. She hands him the cookie.

“Let me guess where Mom and Kenny are,” Luke says loudly, entering the kitchen. He opens the oven door. “Are they in here?”

Kenny stifles a giggle. He has a dab of chocolate on his upper lip, and she wipes it off while holding a finger in front of her mouth.

Luke opens the fridge. “Are they in here?”

Kenny cries out, “Silly!”

“Aha! Do I hear something?” Luke lifts the top of the cookie jar. “They couldn't have fit in here. Nah, not Kenny. He's much too fat.”

Kenny giggles. She smiles at him.

“Oh, now I definitely hear something.” Luke pulls away one of the chairs and sticks his face under the table.

She waits for Kenny to crawl out first. “How'd you find us so fast?” she says, smoothing her red-and-white skirt. She made it herself, and the side seam isn't hanging quite right. The little blue blouse is nice, though. “Did you peek?”

Luke laughs. “I knew I'd find you in the kitchen, Mom. That wasn't hard. That's where you always go to hide.”

Luke! Maybe if they leave Los Angeles, things will be better for him. All the kids are smart, like their father, but Luke is the smartest. She just has to get him away from that crowd he's running with. In truth, getting Luke away is half the reason she's supported moving to Phoenix.

“Well, it still was a great hiding place, wasn't it, Kenny? Almost everyone else has been found. Plus we got cookies.”

Kenny nods. “Lost.”

“No, buddy. Not lost.” Luke picks him up. “Even when you're not with family, family is still with you. And family
never
loses family.”

And there is her seventeen-year-old son tossing her toddler grandson in the air. Both babies, her babies. She reaches out for Kenny. “Better go find Sissy. I bet the steaks are on the grill now. Ronnie likes them done just right.”

She sets Kenny down on the floor and gets the potato salad out from the fridge, the bean salad, and then the green salad, laying them on a big tray.

“Patty Ann! Come in here and help.”

She picks up the second tray, with all the plates and napkins and silverware, using her hip to open the screen door onto the back patio.

“Hello? Happy Fourth!” Their neighbor Gary O'Connor appears around the house, gripping two six-packs. His wife, June, crowds in behind him with a cake.

“Oh, Barbara,” June says. “I am so sorry we are so late.”

Ronnie turns the last steak on the grill, then frees Gary from the six-packs, claps him on the shoulder. “Perfect timing! I was slow getting the grill going.”

She gives June a peck on the cheek and accepts the cake. “Let me get some glasses,” she says, nodding at the beers. “Where's Meg?”

Meg is the O'Connors' teenage daughter, in the same grade as Francis at school, and usually as fast as a shooting star at finding an excuse to come over. It's embarrassing, really. Girls don't have the pride they used to.

Gary and June look at each other uneasily.

“We had a little trouble with Meg,” Gary says. “That's why we're late.”

“We had to go get her from the police station!” June blurts out.

Gary gives June a look. He says, “She's gotten all involved with these peaceniks. You know we don't support it. We forbade her to go, but—”

“She snuck out.” June looks about ready to cry. “Meg was such a sweet little girl. But lately…”

“We were told a large protest was planned for today up at the school,” Mike says. His girlfriend takes hold of his upper arm.

Gary and June exchange glances.

“We're sorry, Mike.”

“We just can't seem to control her.”

The kitchen screen door slams. In his playpen, baby Sean startles or maybe wakes—it's hard to tell; Patty Ann's second child is such a quiet baby—and throws his hands in the air. Patty Ann lays the tray of salads down hard on the table next to the old white pitcher, then picks Sean up. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. O'Connor.”

June chucks the baby under his chin, nervously. And little wonder—Patty Ann looks ready to bite her. “Isn't he darling?”

The baby shrinks from her touch. Patty Ann shifts him away from June.

“Well,” Ronnie says amiably, “Meg still has to eat.”

June twists her hands. “She…she didn't feel like socializing.”