The Girls on Rose Hill (19 page)

Rose

I walked through Peter's sparsely attended wake and then his funeral mass like a zombie. A few of the neighbors who didn't know any better tried to comfort me. They told me what a wonderful man Peter was, how respected the Frohllers were as one of the Centerport's founding families. I overheard one of the neighbors say to the other, "Look at how upset she is. He was such a good man, taking Kitty and Rose in. Treating Rose like his own daughter."

The O'Connor sisters and their families were another matter. They did the right thing, they attended the wake, the funeral, the lunch after. They said, "sorry for your trouble" and shook our hands. But they didn't extol Peter's virtues as one normally would of the dead. They barely mentioned him at all.

The house was calmer, lighter after Peter died. The boys brought their friends around and rough housed on the front lawn without fear of disturbing the invalid. Kitty was her normal, bubbly self. She ran the hardware store, fussed over baby Ellen and attended the Irish American Society's weekly dances. She slept sound at night. Her soft snores echoed through the upstairs hallway and mocked me as I suffered through yet another sleepless night.

Two months after Peter died, Kitty and the boys fired up the ancient charcoal barbecue and cooked burgers and hot dogs. For April it was surprisingly warm, and we ate on the redwood picnic table in the backyard. Paul regaled us with stories of his latest baseball victory. Everyone was relaxed, smiling. We enjoyed the evening together. Like a normal family. Ellen, picked up on the mood and gave us all a toothless grin.

For once the boys cleaned up without me nagging them and got themselves ready for bed without complaint. Ellen went down easily, her belly full of formula. My mother stood at the ancient stove when I walked into the kitchen.

"A cup of tea, love?"

"Sure," I replied.

Kitty, usually the servee rather than the server, bustled about the kitchen and searched for a pair of cups with matching saucers. She carefully scalded the teapot before adding the loose tea leaves and hot water. She arranged a plate full of Italian cookies, as if she expected Barbara Conroy and her cronies rather than her bedraggled daughter. Kitty gave me a dazzling smile, poured me a cup of tea and made it just the way I liked it, light and sweet.

"Now, isn't this lovely. Just the two of us."

"Yes, just the two of us," I said blankly.

"Ah, love, drink your tea. Have a cookie. Cheer up for God's sake."

"Cheer up?"

"Anyone'd think you're the widow and not me," she said, still looking for a smile from me.

I resisted her charms. "I haven't slept in weeks."

Deliberately misunderstanding me, she said, "Well, sure, no young mother sleeps. I don't think I slept a full eight hours until you were two."

"No, Mama. Ellen isn't the one keeping me up."

With a forced laugh, Kitty said, "Don't tell me I'm snoring again. Danny always complains about my snoring but I refuse to believe it."

"It's not the snoring, Mama."

Her good humor now gone, she said, "Ah, I don't know what's got into you. We've had a lovely evening. But then, you always were a sour old thing."

Ignoring the insult, I said with conviction, "I'm going to confession tomorrow morning. I'm confessing to Monsignor O'Brien."

Mama took her half full tea cup to the sink and rinsed it out. "Sure, that's a great idea," she said over the roar of the faucet. "A good confession will set you right up."

With exasperation, I said, "I don't think you understand, Mama. I'm confessing."

"Sure, what else would you do in a confessional?"

I rose from my chair and shouted, "About Peter. About what we did to Peter!"

She spun around. "It was an accident."

In a small voice, I said, "Mama, for once can we not tell the truth? It was no accident."

"'Twas, love. You were so tired from caring for the child, you slept right through it. Isn't that what we told the doctor? He wrote it down on his certificate."

"Mama, please." The tears streamed down my face. "I can't live with this."

She handed me a paper towel for my tears. "There's nothing for you to confess to, Rosie. It was my fault. I should've been watching him but then I was busy in the garden and I couldn't hear him."

"Mama..."

"My fault, love," she said lightly. "My sin, not yours. But sure, accidents happen. Even the doctor said so. He said he sees it everyday. No one blames us, Rosie, no one."

"What about God?"

"The last one who would blame us is God."

In desperation, I cried, "I can't, Mama. I can't live with it."

Her eyes hardened then. "You'll have to, love. You have a child to raise. I have those two boys to educate. We don't have the luxury of indulging guilty consciences."

"I need to confess it."

"Then confess to the roses, confess to the trees, but for God's sake don't involve any priest in our business. Certainly not that fool O'Brien."

"Mama!"

"Ah, Rosie, you take all that religious malarkey too seriously. They're just men. They're not God. They're just men and we both know you can't always trust men, now can you?"

I sank into my chair. "I keep seeing his eyes, Mama. I keep seeing his eyes when I lay down at night."

Mama went to the cabinet and took out a pill box. She handed me a blue tablet. "Take one of these, Rosie, every night after dinner. You'll close your eyes and you won't see nothing, trust me. Take it." I obediently swallowed the pill and chased it down with my lukewarm tea.

"Now, there's my girl." Mama stroked my short hair. "There's my good girl."

For decades I'd confessed my spinster sins to Monsignor O'Brien and his successors at St. Ann's: losing my patience with my mother, my white lies to Lisa during family functions. I never confessed anything real. Not my lies of omission to my daughter. Not my other grave sin.

I finally gathered the courage to defy my mother's edict and asked Sister Elizabeth to arrange my confession with the young African priest. His English was marginal at best so hopefully he wouldn't ask me too many question. Maybe he wouldn't even understand me. Two Hail Mary's and then as my mother would say, "Bob's your uncle." Forty plus years of grief and guilt, poof. Gone.

Father Whats-his-name was a nice young man. His large dark eyes seemed kind. With care he carefully enunciated a prayer before I started my confession. My voice low and husky with emotion, I said, "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been forty-two years since my last confession. My last real confession."

The priest's eyes got larger as I described for him in detail the bulge of Peter's eyes, the sound of my shoes on the old wood floor as I walked away from him.

In his hesitant English, he said, "Miss Murphy, you are confused. Let me get the doctor."

Forty years of anger and frustration poured out of me. "I've waited too long for this. I know what I'm saying. I killed him! I killed my stepfather!"

He tried to shush me, but I wouldn't be quiet. Over and over I shouted, "I killed him. I killed my stepfather!"

The door then flew open. Ellen's mouth moved but I couldn't make out what she said. It was if the world stopped. She came closer to me. She yelled at me. I opened my mouth but no sound came out. Ellen eventually stormed out.

The priest said nothing.

Molly, in tears, sat by my bed. "Why did you say that, Rosie? Why? Kitty told my mother that she's the one that let him choke to death. Not you. It's not your sin to confess."

"It is," I whispered. "It is."

Chapter 21

Ellen

My heels clicked along the tiled hallway, my eyes unseeing, blinded with tears. I plowed into an attendant carrying a tray of food, orange jello soon decorated the hallway and my shirt. I mumbled a sorry and then continued my march down the hallway. I was about to push open the glass doors to the parking lot when I heard a sweet high soprano. I stopped for a moment. Almost against my will, I followed the organ music to a small chapel. The chapel was dark, lit only by a few wavering candles and the weak afternoon sun that fought through the narrow stained glass windows. On the altar Sister Elizabeth sang the mass' entrance hymn, her voice surprisingly strong for a woman her age. A young African priest walked solemnly up the narrow aisle. Sister caught my eye and beckoned me to enter.

I sat among the half dozen members of the congregation and was silent. I didn't even mouth the refrains that, while I hadn't darkened the door of a church since my Granny's funeral, were still emblazoned on my brain. I sat with my tear-streaked face and jello-stained shirt and absorbed the lilting cadence of the priest's familiar words, my knuckles, white, as I held tightly to the well worn pew.

"...look not on our sins but on the faith of our Church..."

Look not on our sins. I wondered how God would look upon my mother's sins in a few weeks, or maybe even a few days, when they will presumably come face to face. Would forty years of manning the annual bake sale and decorating the altar outweigh a murder? What will she say? "Yes, Lord, I did have an illegitimate daughter and I did kill my stepfather, but how about those flower arrangements? What did you think of the lilacs? I grew them myself. Pretty impressive, huh?"

At least my mother had faith and service to counteract her sins. What did I have? What would He say to me? "I tricked my husband into marrying me, abandoned my mother on her deathbed and conducted a hot affair with my neighbor. Oh, but I used to be my daughter's Girl Scout leader." Somehow, I didn't think that would fly.

"For the residents of St. Francis," Sister Elizabeth said from her lectern. "That they find comfort for their pain and can find joy in the prospect of Heaven. Let us pray to the Lord."

"Lord hear our prayer," chanted the middle-aged couple sitting next to me.

"For the families." Sister Elizabeth stared at me. "That they find the strength to forgive, and the strength to love. Let us pray to the Lord."

"Lord, hear our prayer," I whispered.

Sister Elizabeth nodded slightly.

I began to get into the rhythm of the ritual. Sitting, kneeling, responding from some place within me that had been silent for a long time.

"Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.

Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Grant us peace."

Peace? Was peace possible for the likes of me? For the likes of my mother?

The priest lifted the chalice above his head and calmly conducted the almost mundane mystery of transforming the bread and wine. I shook my head when Sister beckoned me up to the altar to receive this sustenance. She walked down from the altar, linked my arm and guided me up to the priest.

"The body of Christ."

"Amen." I opened my mouth.

I returned to me seat, knelt awkwardly, my hands clasped tightly together, my mind a blank. When I was young I always knew what to pray for: an A on a history test, a new dress for a party. To my childish mind, God was like a giant gum-ball machine in the sky. You plugged in the obligatory Our Father or Hail Mary and out came the requested treat. But God hadn't granted me my wishes for quite some time. I remembered sitting in Dahlgren chapel in Georgetown soon after Veronica's Holy Communion, begging Him to save my family. The little family that I worked so hard to create. I pleaded with Him to make my husband love me and honor me as he promised he would in that very chapel. I bargained with Him: I'll be a nicer to my mother, I'll attend mass every Sunday. But, as I found out when I followed Brendan and his blonde whore into the Four Seasons, God doesn't always answer our prayers.

But what should I pray for now? I knew I should ask for help, help in dealing with my constant anger. I knew I should beg for forgiveness for how I've treated my mother. Her sins didn't excuse my own. But, I was tired and I couldn't think. So I sat. Sat and listened to the tinny sound of the small organ and I let the music and the incense ease my frenzied mind.

After mass, Sister Elizabeth walked me to my car, still linking me as she would for one of the elderly residents.

"Allow Him to help you, Ellen. Allow Him to provide you with the strength and grace you need."

"Strength?" I fumbled through my bag searching for my keys.

"The strength to forgive your mother. The grace to forgive yourself."

I nodded mutely and climbed into my ostentatious car.

An hour later, I sat on the dock. My bare feet dangled over the side and skimmed the water. I shivered in the cool, almost autumnal afternoon breeze. Footsteps, hollow against the old dock's boards, roused me from my reverie.

She kicked off her white sandals and groaning slightly sat down next to me. "Damn arthritis."

I said nothing as I stared out into the harbor.

"He beat her," she said. "He beat the hell out of your mother. Your grandmother too."

"Please, Molly. I can't take much more today."