The Other Side of the World (34 page)

“Nobody has,” I said.

“What you might do,” her father said, “is to think of me as a refugee from one of those cheerful William Kennedy novels.”

“You wish,” Seana said, and she opened the door.

“Not that I'm unappreciative of the effort—the sacrifice—you've made in coming here and bringing me home,” he said. “As for the trip you so graciously offered, I'm game, of course, and you'll let me know the itinerary when you have it, please, so I can make plans accordingly.”

We entered the house, and walked through the foyer into the
living room. Seana's sisters were there with some of the children. When they saw us, they stopped what they were doing, but none of them stood, and none of them spoke.

Seana's father tipped his cap. “Well, isn't it lovely to be here once again, and to receive your warm welcome.” He looked around, in mock bewilderment. “Oh—am I in the wrong theater? This isn't 10 Downing Street?”

“Hello Dad,” Caitlin said, and she came to him, kissed him on the cheek, and Keira, Mary, and Peggy did the same. Then their mother came forward, smiling brightly, but when she went to embrace him, he recoiled.

“She never gave me sons,” he said, tapping on the floor with his cane to keep her away from him. “A spiteful woman in spite of her seeming charms.” He took off his cap, held it to his chest, inclined his head slightly. “I am Patrick Michael O'Sullivan,” he said.

“Why I once had a husband with that name!” Seana's mother pushed his cane out of the way. “He was a handsome devil, and the ladies loved him too much, you see, which was the bane of my existence, though I have to confess that I could understand why they had an eye for the brute.”

“And not only an eye, my dear,” he said, and then, to Seana. “Oh my—she really has lost it, hasn't she? She was the fairest of them all, you know. She was stunning in her youth—a rare, exquisite beauty.” He pointed his cane at Seana. “Like you, my dear. You got the best of each of us, you know.”

“Say hello to your grandchildren,” Seana said, “and then I'll take you upstairs and show you the surprise.”

Her sisters brought their children and grandchildren to him, one at a time, and the older children remembered him, Caitlin explained to me, since he
had
shown up through the years at ritual occasions: baptisms, communions, confirmations, graduations, weddings, funerals.

“Thank you,” Seana said to me while the children were introducing themselves.

“For what?”

“For your story—what else? It inspired me.”

“But what's this about a trip? You never mentioned anything…”

“Patience, Charlie,” she said. “Patience.”

“Sure. But now that I've met the man, I can't help but wonder: Did he ever…?”

“Never,” Seana said. “He was too clever for that kind of vulgarity. If only he had, though, for it might have made overt what was covert—what was all innuendo and leering and nastiness…”

Her father was holding forth, wiggling his cane in the air. “…so when the man kept insisting that he was a moth—‘
I'm a moth! I'm a moth! I'm a moth!
'—the doctor finally said, ‘Now look, Timothy, you're not a moth, but if you insist on believing you are, then I really think you should see a psychiatrist,' to which Timothy replied, ‘Of course—I was on my way there, but I saw the light on in
your
office.'”

There was a brief moment of silence, and then a few of the children laughed. Seana's father, sitting on the couch, his grandchildren around him and on the floor in front of him, beamed with pleasure.

“Family happiness,” Seana said.

“Makes the eyes sore,” Caitlin said, an arm around Seana.

“I'll say,” Peggy said. “But you did get him here, and I suppose that's something. We
are
family, after all.”

“‘After all' is right,” Seana said. “And what a rich and wondrous phrase that is! Think of what James could do with it…”

“James who?” Peggy asked.

“
Henry
James—the Irishman Henry James, about whom—after all—Charlie's father has written with grace and intelligence,” Seana said.

Seana's mother sat down beside Seana's father. “My husband
had a cane like yours,” she said, “and he could do a marvelous soft shoe number with it. He could have been another Fred Astaire if he hadn't been such a lazy and mean-hearted bastard.”

“Gene Kelly would have been a more ethnically correct fit.”

“In your dreams,” Seana's mother said.

“But let me finish the story I was telling the children,” he said. “And so one night, alone yet again, and in a rage, Molly left their flat and went down to Sheehan's bar, and there she found her husband, drinking with his friends the way he was wont to do, and he embraced her and kept urging her to join with them. She relented finally and took a sip and spat it out. ‘By God, that's awful stuff!' she said, and he responded, ‘And here you've been thinking I'm down here having a good time every night…'”

“Oh that one's so old it has hair on it,” Seana's mother said.

“Well, ‘hair today… gone tomorrow' is what I always say,” Seana's father said.

“Now my own husband worked for the Brooklyn Union Gas Company,” Seana's mother said. “He was a meter reader, which allowed him entry into many homes and many women.”

“As it happens, I too worked for the Brooklyn Union Gas Company,” Seana's father said.

“My husband did theater now and then—a few turns when they tried to revive vaudeville—and he liked to call himself a song-and-gas man,” Seana's mother said. “His name was Patrick Michael O'Sullivan.”

“My name is Patrick Michael O'Sullivan,” Seana's father said.

“What a coincidence,” Seana's mother said.

Keira announced that it was time for tea—milk and cookies too—and for whoever wanted some to come into the kitchen.

“Come with me,” Seana said to her father. “It's time.”

“Quite the autocrat you have here, son,” he said to me. “Always liked to order people around, she did. If she'd been a boy, she would have been a chip off the old block, I dare say.”

We walked up the stairs, and Seana led her father into her bedroom.

“This is what my sisters made for me,” she said.

“Awfully tacky, wouldn't you say?”

“No,” she said. “But you might.”

“Is this the surprise you referred to? I thought you talked about arranging for a trip…” He picked up
Plain Jane
, then set it back on the table, face down. “Well, you have brought us all together, though to what end is unclear. Still, the Lord works in mysterious ways, they say.”

“He may, but I don't,” Seana said. “For I'm more like you than is good for you.”

“I'm glad to hear of it,” he said. “It will get you through many a thorny garden.”

“I hope so,” Seana said. “We'll go back downstairs now.”

When we were at the top of the stairs, Seana asked her father to give her his cane, said he could use the banister for making his way downstairs. Then she called out: “Caitlin, Peggy—you should dial 911—I think there's going to be an accident!”

Her father, looking puzzled, stepped down, and when he did Seana took him by the arm.

“Here—on second thought, you might need the cane for your trip,” she said, and she thrust the cane at him, but below his open hand, so that when he reached for it, and she put her free hand on his back as if to steady him, he tripped on the cane, lost his balance, and tumbled down the staircase.

Seana stood next to me. “We're even now, Charlie,” she said. “But at least
I
had the good sense to keep it in the family.”

Her sisters and some of their children were at the bottom of the stairs, Keira screaming, the children gaping, Caitlin on the phone.

 

When we turned onto my street in Northampton—it was past ten in the evening—I saw that someone was sitting on my
porch, slowly rocking back and forth in a rocking chair the way Max had often done on summer evenings. We parked the car in the driveway by the side of the house, then went to the porch, and the man stood—it was Lorenzo—and without looking at Seana, and without offering his hand to either of us, he began speaking.

“I tried to reach each of you by telephone, but without success,” Lorenzo said, “and so I drove down. I'm staying in town, at the Hotel Northampton, so you needn't worry about observing civilities.”

The scar on his lower lip, in the dim light from the street lamp, looked like a small gray worm. I unlocked the front door, and invited him to come in.

“There is no need,” he said. “My business will be brief.”

We remained standing while he told us that two days earlier, Gabe had jammed all the silverware he could find into a microwave oven, turned it on, and blew up the kitchen. He had waited until Anna and Trish were away—while Trish was taking Anna to a play-date—before he did it. Trish was now in a psych ward at a hospital in Camden, for observation, and for more information it would be best that we talk with Eugenia. She was taking care of the children while Trish was gone, and Gabe, who continued to insist he intended no harm and had been working on an experiment in preparation for the next Fourth of July celebration, had been taken away by people from the local social service agency and was in a safe, secure place, and—he had been given assurances by people he knew—would not face criminal charges. Lorenzo had engaged a lawyer with whom both he and Eugenia had conferred. Having discovered the change Trish had made in her will, they had concluded it would be best if Seana and I took care of the children until Trish was well again.

“
If
she's ever well again,” Seana said.

“Well that's true too, isn't it,” Lorenzo said without looking at
Seana. Then he offered me his sympathy on my father's death, and left.

 

Early the next morning, we headed north. The highways were deserted, and we made it to Ogunquit, where we stopped in a seaside diner for breakfast, in under two hours. After breakfast, we stayed on Old Route 1 as much as we could in order to be near the ocean. Despite Max's death, Nick's death, and Seana's father's fall—Caitlin called at one in the morning to tell us that the doctors at Maimonides hospital said he'd suffered multiple fractures and various internal injuries, but that he would live—and despite what might lie in wait for us in Maine, it felt as if we were setting out on a mini-vacation—a long weekend by the sea—at a time when, the brilliant autumn colors gone, northern New England would be especially peaceful.

We were quiet on the drive, and seemed to have arrived, separately, at the decision not to talk about Seana's father, or Lorenzo, or Trish, or the possibility that we might become Gabe's and Anna's legal guardians—or about the fact that what Seana had prayed for might soon be coming true. When we talked, we talked mostly about Seana's sisters, her nieces and nephews, and her mother.

We arrived at the Falzettis' home shortly before noon. Eugenia invited us in and informed us that Lorenzo had arrived a few hours earlier, and was absenting himself because he didn't want to cause—his words—more fireworks.

“Not funny,” Seana said.

Eugenia brought us coffee, and a snack—ham and cheese sandwiches, cookies, fruit—and filled us in on the current situation: Trish had been transferred to a private residential hospital outside Camden; Gabe was in a facility for developmentally challenged children—further north, near Acadia National Park; a lawyer—Trish's, not Lorenzo's—was eager to talk with us. Lorenzo had told the lawyer of their willingness to take care
of Anna until the guardianship situation was resolved and, if need be, to have Gabe live with them if and when the doctors discharged him.

Eugenia assured us that, thanks to Trish's inheritance from Nick, to excellent insurance policies, and to what she and Lorenzo were prepared to contribute, there would be no problem paying for treatment and care for Trish or for Gabe, even if treatment proved long-term.

Anna, thumb in mouth, came into the room then, dragging her favorite silk-edged blue blanket behind her. Seana got out of her chair, bent down to Anna's level, and spread her arms wide. Anna gave her a hug, then came to me and gave me a hug.

“Why don't we show Uncle Charlie and Aunt Seana your room,” Eugenia said, and Anna took us to the room she was staying in. Her bed was covered with stuffed animals, including the parrot we'd given her. Eugenia walked to a dresser—its top, diapers and lotions to one side, serving as Anna's changing table—and opened the drawers to show us Anna's clothing.

“It's been a help in making her feel at home that she still has her own clothes and toys,” Eugenia said. “That was Gabe's doing. When he ran out of the house, he was mindful enough to take a cell phone with him, and to dial 911. Quite remarkable really. We have an excellent volunteer fire department—they were there in under four minutes—and when they arrived, Gabe was standing outside waiting for them, telling them what had happened, and where the bedrooms were. They were able to keep much of the rear section of the house, including the bedrooms, from being destroyed.”

A few minutes later Lorenzo joined us in the living room. “I assume Eugenia has provided an update on essentials,” he said. “Given our past history, we three, I thought it best if she be the intermediary in these matters. But I give you my word that she and I stand ready to do whatever is necessary to provide for our daughter-in-law, and for our grandchildren. I believe it
was a wise move for Trish to have named you guardians—who knows how much longer we'll be available?—and I believe the children's lives will be better served by a younger couple.”