I didn’t usually write personal family stuff like that, and I regretted it immediately. A long pause followed. Even Manetti drew the line at making fun of my dad. I finally typed in “Gotta go,” and the session mercifully ended.
Later, I did my duty and walked up to the Acme supermarket. It was about three blocks from our house. The sun really did hurt my eyes. The traffic sounds hurt my ears. The smells in the store hurt my nose. Everything seemed gross and exaggerated to me. Maybe Margaret was right; maybe I was depressed. It was a good thing I lived down in the basement.
The day ended much the way that it began. I went to sleep right after sundown. The phone rang and I answered it, half-awake, half-asleep. It was from the same phone number as before, but a different voice came through the line. “Martin?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Aunt Elizabeth, Martin. Is your mother there?”
“Yeah. I think so.” I waited a moment; then heard the sound of the phone being picked up.
“Hello.”
“Mary? It’s Elizabeth.”
“Elizabeth? Oh no. Is there something wrong?”
“Yes. I’m sorry to say there is. Mother is gone.”
“Oh my God! What happened?”
“She died in her sleep sometime this afternoon. I got a call at the hospital. The home health worker checked on her at four and found her dead. She said she looked very peaceful.”
“Oh my God.”
“It was for the best, though, Mary. She had slipped a lot this month. She had gotten so frail.”
“I know. I know she had. It’s just . . . so hard to believe.”
“It is. But believe me, she is gone.” Aunt Elizabeth then added, assuming I would have no idea what she meant, “This time, she is really gone.”
A TRAIN INTO THE PAST
Nana’s death touched me deeply, though I wouldn’t let anyone know it. I had always felt a mystical connection with her, and I had always sensed that Mom and Aunt Elizabeth disapproved of that connection. The long-term effects of Nana’s death would remain hidden from me for a time, but the short-term effect was clear and immediate. I would have to leave my basement hideout to travel to her funeral with Mom, Margaret, and Dad.
But first we drove out to the eight a.m. Sunday mass at the All Souls Chapel. Mom fussed at Margaret and me all the way there about what clothes to pack for our trip to Brookline. She was concerned that if we looked shabby in front of Aunt Elizabeth, she’d think that Mom was a secretary, which she was, and that we lived in poverty, which we did.
I was still half-awake, and half expecting to find out that Nana’s death was part of a dream. I didn’t come fully to my senses until we sat down in a pew in the Chapel and I saw, to my shock, that Hank Lowery and his family were directly in front of us. I doubt he saw me. The few glances I stole in his direction found him always in the same position—slouching to the left, sound asleep, with his mouth open.
When the mass was over, I led Mom and Margaret out to the parking lot as fast as possible. Once we got inside the car, Margaret did point out, “That Lowery kid’s disgusting. A real slug. Can’t his parents make him close his mouth, at least?”
Mom shook her head disapprovingly.
I said, “It’s Lowery’s school. He can do whatever he wants.”
This roused Mom. “He cannot do whatever he wants, Martin. He has to follow the school rules like everybody else.”
“No. Actually, he
can
do whatever he wants.”
Margaret half turned toward the backseat. “What’s this about?”
“Mom hasn’t told you?”
“Apparently not.”
Mom explained, “There was an incident on the last day of school. It involved Martin and some other boys. They damaged the Heroes’ Walk in front of the library.”
“Really? Martin did that?”
Mom pulled out of the parking lot. “Father Thomas isn’t sure exactly what happened. He is still investigating.”
Margaret looked at me and raised one eyebrow. “Well, let me investigate, then. Martin, what happened?”
I looked out the window just as we passed the scene of the crime. A string of yellow “Caution” tape still blocked off the area. The entrance to the Lowery Library appeared to be finished, though. All the debris had been cleared away; the marble pedestals were set in place; I couldn’t see any chips missing from any of their corners. I finally answered, “I’m not sure. I’d better not say anything until Father Thomas is done checking with the Lowery family to find out what they say happened.”
Mom interjected, “Father Thomas has collected statements from everyone who was involved.”
“Right. I’m sure he’s reading mine very carefully.”
Mom slammed to a halt at the entrance and stared at me in the mirror. “We’re not going to do this now, Martin. We have had a death in the family, and we have a long trip ahead of us today.”
Mom then pulled out with as much acceleration as our little Civic could muster, indicating that the conversation was over. But Margaret looked at me knowingly. She had done her time at All Souls Prep, three years. She knew how things worked there.
Our house was so close to the Princeton Junction train station that we could have walked there, even with suitcases. Mom, however, would have found that far too embarrassing. Instead, we drove our car there and paid ten dollars a day to park in the lot.
My dad had never had a problem with walking. That’s how he got to work. He was a relief manager for a restaurant chain called National Steakhouses. Most National Steakhouses were located in airports, so it was a perfect setup for him. He would walk to the train station, ride north for thirty minutes to Newark, and then fly to any airport that had a National Steakhouse and a hotel. As a result, he had more frequent-flyer miles than he could use in a lifetime. He would arrive at some city and manage the National Steakhouse while the real manager went on vacation, then reverse the travel process and come home. No cars; no driving—which was a good thing because his license had been suspended and he had never renewed it.
Following our less-than-one-minute drive to the station, Mom cruised the parking lot for ten minutes trying to find a space. After we fed thirty dollars into the parking meter, we walked for another two minutes to the office and purchased our tickets. Then Mom and Margaret sat on the long wooden benches in the station while I stepped outside, leaned over the tracks, and looked south, hoping to see the train before anybody else.
I had always liked this part. In fact, I liked everything that was to follow. I had been making this trip for as long as I could remember. Mom and Dad, even when Dad had a driver’s license, always took us by train to see Nana and Grandfather Mehan. We got on the train here and rode up to Back Bay Station, Boston. Then we walked to the MBTA and took the Green Line trolley out to Brookline.
I felt a low rumble and spied the dim outline of a train approaching, so I hurried back to alert Mom and Margaret. The three of us rolled our suitcases down the platform and climbed aboard a car near the center of the long train. I lifted all three suitcases onto the overhead racks, and we settled into the red leather seats. Mom and Margaret sat in one row, while I flopped into the row in front of them.
I always sat on the right side and looked through the window. I never read or listened to music. Instead, I studied people during the few seconds that it took for the train to pass them by. In that time, I would learn all that I could about them. I would observe their lives briefly; then I would never see them again.
An elderly conductor dressed in dark blue with a brimmed cap entered the car. He collected our tickets, then smiled and touched his finger to his cap. He was what my nana would have called “a colored gentleman.” She’d have said that to his face, too, thinking it was a compliment to him. She was very old-fashioned that way. She lived in the past a lot, even when she appeared to be in the present.
After a few stops, I noticed that the taped station announcements were running late. A prerecorded voice would announce that we were about to pull into the station that we had just left. It didn’t bother me, but it caused Mom to make an angry comment every time it happened. She wasn’t really angry at the recording, though. She was really angry at Dad, and she grew angrier as we got closer to his station.
As planned, Dad was standing on the platform at the Newark Airport station. Mom pointed at the door and told me, “Lean out and wave to him, Martin. He’ll never see us.”
I did as I was told, actually stepping out of the car to let a stream of passengers in. I spotted Dad standing there in a black funeral suit, staring casually through the windows of the car behind us. I waited until his stare worked its way up to me. Then I waved.
Dad was a thin man with black, wavy hair and sad blue eyes. He smiled his unhappy smile at me. Then he picked up his suitcase and walked forward. “How are you, Martin?”
“Okay.”
“Are your mother and Margaret inside?”
“Yes.”
He indicated that I should go in first. He followed me into the center of the car, where he made the same polite greetings to Mom and Margaret. No hugs and kisses. No personal greetings. Not in this family.
An elderly woman had taken my seat, so I squeezed in next to Margaret and Mom. Dad stood in the aisle for a moment with his suitcase, looking around. Then he walked to the front of our car and kept on walking, through the sliding doors and out of sight.
Mom spoke through clenched teeth. “He’s going to the lounge car. Great. He’ll be in great shape when we get to Boston.”
Neither Margaret nor I said a thing. We sat there with the assurance, shared by all children of alcoholics, that there was absolutely nothing to say. It had all been said before.
Margaret claims that she can remember many times when Dad was not drinking. I can only remember one. Four years before, we had taken part in a Mehan family reunion in Ireland. As it turned out, it was only a few months before my grandfather Mehan died.
Nana, Grandfather Mehan, and Aunt Elizabeth flew to Ireland out of Boston; Mom, Dad, Margaret, and I flew out of Newark two days later. Mom told her family that we had to wait for Dad to finish a vacation assignment, but the truth was that we couldn’t afford to go on their flight. We had to find a deal where we could use Dad’s frequent-flyer miles.
Eventually we met up with the others in a two-story thatched cottage in County Wexford. Mom and Dad had made an agreement: He would not take a drink for the five days of the family reunion, but when we returned, he would drink his fill.
As I remember it, we had a stiff but pleasant time. Nana seemed especially tuned in to the Irish mystical stuff—fairies and spirits and the like. She talked to me about those things during the trip, probably because no one else would listen. I remember Grandfather Mehan making comments to her in his thin, sarcastic voice, comments about “seeing little leprechauns.”
The grand plan was that we would do one major thing each day. We went to some old churches. We visited Mehans, who didn’t really know us but treated us as family. Everywhere we went, though, those Irish people offered my dad drinks. And every time they did, he refused.
However, after we flew back to the United States, and after we got off the train at Princeton Junction, he fulfilled the other side of his agreement with Mom. He never even went home with us. He walked straight to Pete’s Tavern, a bar between the train station and our house. He drank so much that he was not able to walk home. He slipped down, dead drunk, and he lay there with his legs on the curb and his head in the roadway. The next car driving past would have crushed his head.
Fortunately, a policeman saw him first, turned on his lights, and blocked traffic while an ambulance came to the rescue. Mom got a call at four a.m. to pick him up at the hospital emergency room. This was not an unusual occurrence at our house. The police, and the ambulance drivers, and more eyewitnesses than I would care to name—all knew about Jack Conway’s problem.
Anyway, we finally arrived at Back Bay Station in Boston, stepped off the train, and waited for Dad to do the same. After a tense minute, Mom dispatched me to the lounge car to find him. I started off at a brisk walk, but I stopped still when I spotted him ahead of me. He was swaying slightly on the platform and smiling a silly, wide smile. He called out, too loudly, “Hey, Martin, my boy! There you are! Where’s Mom and Margaret?”
Mom and Margaret brushed past me on the left and continued onward, not even looking at him. He winked at me and intoned “Hello, ladies” to them. Then he and I fell in step behind. Some college kids near us on the platform started to laugh—at his silly grin, I suppose.
I didn’t.
I don’t know why anyone ever laughs at drunks. Especially public ones, with their families cringing nearby.
They’re just not funny.
THE HOLY SHRINE
To my surprise, Mom took a seat next to Dad when we boarded the Green Line to Brookline. She muttered at least a few words to him. I couldn’t hear them, but I’m sure they were about behaving in front of Aunt Elizabeth and other relatives we might encounter. Dad nodded at her very seriously. It was another agreement.
We rolled our luggage a block and a half from the trolley stop to my grandparents’ house, a two-story colonial on a tree-lined street not far from where John F. Kennedy was born. My grandparents had lived in it for over sixty years. The downstairs contained a living room, a formal parlor, a dining room, a kitchen, and my grandparents’ bedroom. The upstairs had “the girls’ bedrooms,” where Mom once slept and Aunt Elizabeth still did, and my grandfather’s study.
Aunt Elizabeth greeted us at the door with “Mary and Margaret, you’ll be in Mary’s old room; Jack and Martin, I’ve put you in Father’s study.” Then she added, “Did you all have a good trip?”
Aunt Elizabeth stepped back to give us room to enter. She is a tall, bony woman, similar to younger pictures of Grandfather Mehan. We all congregated in the living room, where we made small talk, mostly about the schedule of events for the funeral. Nana’s wake was to be the next evening, from five to seven. Her funeral mass and burial were set for Tuesday morning. After that, we would take the train back home.
Neighbors and church members had been stopping by with food platters that Aunt Elizabeth had categorized at three levels: items for the refrigerator; items for the deep freeze; and items for the trash. Aunt Elizabeth offered us ham sandwiches and potato salad from the refrigerator, which we ate in silence.
The rest of the day dragged on. When the sun finally set, Aunt Elizabeth led us all into my grandfather’s study, the room that my dad always referred to as “the holy shrine.”
Martin Mehan’s study had been preserved by Aunt Elizabeth as if it were just as important as John F. Kennedy’s birthplace, around the corner. The room contained a large writing desk, a pair of matching leather couches with end tables, two wing chairs in the Queen Anne style, and two tall, sturdy bookcases containing Martin Mehan’s books, photos, and certificates. All had the smell of the past—old paper, dust, a hint of mildew.
Many of the items dated to the year 1940. That year marked the beginning of my grandfather’s government career, when he worked for Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy in London. Other items were from the years he spent at the Commerce Department in Boston. The most recent photo showed my grandfather on his eightieth birthday, holding a telegram from the White House. To me he looked crazed, like the old man in the Rembrandt painting at All Souls, the one with the long knife.
Aunt Elizabeth began to reminisce aloud about the great Martin Mehan, and his career, and his church work. I could see Dad and Margaret go instantly brain-dead. Even Mom seemed disinterested. Listening to Aunt Elizabeth, I realized how few personal memories I had of my grandfather. Although I had been with him at least once a year for the first nine years of my life, I could honestly say I had no idea what he was really like. After a few minutes, I drifted away from the group and sat on the leather couch that, by tradition, served as my bed.
As soon as I sat down, I noticed a very cool-looking radio on the end table. The radio was made of three different kinds of polished wood. It was about two feet tall and a foot and a half wide; its sides rose upward to a smooth, curved top. The dial was amber, and the control knobs were a deep mahogany. It struck me as one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I turned the radio around slightly and looked into its open back. An assortment of tubes and wires filled the bottom half of the dusty space. At the top, inside the curve, I saw some marks on the wood made in black ink.
Suddenly I realized that Aunt Elizabeth was talking to me. “Do you like that radio, Martin?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess I do.”
“Good. Because it’s yours.”
“What? How’s that?”
“Mother specifically asked that, upon her death, this radio go to you. She was quite adamant about it, too.”
Mom sat next to me and examined the radio. “I’ve never seen this before. Was it Father’s?”
“It was. But he never liked it. He stuck it up in the attic when he came home in 1941, and that’s where it stayed. Then, one day, out of nowhere, Mother asked me to go up and find it.”
“For Martin?”
“No. For herself. She said she wanted to listen to it. She sat in here for hours, tuning in scratchy stations.” She explained to me, “It will only pick up AM stations, and only if they’re close by.”
Mom leaned closer. “It’s a beautiful piece of furniture, though.”
Margaret agreed. “It’s a fine example of Art Deco.” She looked at me. “Art Deco was all the rage in the 1930s.” She looked at Aunt Elizabeth. “Is it American?”
“It is. But Father had it with him at the Embassy. It spent at least a year of its life in London.”
I moved to head her off before we plunged back into the family story. “I wonder why Nana wanted to listen to it. Maybe she was missing the old days?”
Aunt Elizabeth answered warily, “Maybe.”
“Or maybe she was listening for something that was floating in the ether. You know? Nana always had a mystical side to her.”
Mom and Aunt Elizabeth exchanged a look. It was Aunt Elizabeth who answered me. “That’s a nice way to put it, Martin, but I think there’s a more down-to-earth explanation. Mother started doing and saying some crazy things near the end. She did not go out like Father. He was alert and intelligent until the very end.”
I looked past Aunt Elizabeth at the wild-eyed old man holding the eightieth-birthday telegram. I thought,
You couldn’t tell by that photo.
But I didn’t say anything.
On that note, everyone dispersed for their sleeping rooms. It had been an exhausting day for me. I had left the security of my basement, encountered Hank Lowery at mass, traveled for over six hours, and missed my naps. I was soon asleep and dreaming.
It turned out to be a real-place dream. Here is what I remember: I was asleep in the study. I thought I was there alone, but then I heard a noise at the desk. I looked over and saw my grandfather. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes looked weird and blazing. His hands were pawing at the top of the desk, like a blind man’s, until he found what he was looking for. It was a silver letter opener, with a curved blade and an ornate handle. He clutched the handle in his right fist and held the weapon high, its blade flashing a beam of light toward my eyes. He turned his head and looked just to my right, at the dull glow of the radio dial. Just then, I heard a voice. I don’t think it came from the radio, but it might have. It was a faraway version of Nana’s voice, sounding remarkably calm under the circumstances. “Don’t worry about him,” she assured me. “He’s not after you, Martin. He’s after Jimmy.”
“Why Jimmy?” I asked her.
“Because he’s worried.”
“Why?”
“You’ll find out.”
“Tell me who Jimmy is.”
She didn’t answer, and the dream ended there.
I woke up to the sound of Dad’s loud snoring. The sun was already up. I got dressed and started down the hall, but I stopped when I spotted Margaret sitting on her bed, working on her laptop. She looked up and asked, “Did you sleep well in there, Martin?”
I nodded as if I had, but that real-place dream was still on my mind. I just told her, “I’m going down to breakfast.”
“Hold on. I’ll join you.” Margaret logged off. “I’ve been waiting. I didn’t want to sit between Mom and Aunt Elizabeth while they were arguing about silverware and vases and all.”
“Is that what they’re doing?”
“Yeah. It’s stupid. They should let one divide and the other choose. That way, the divider will act fairly. Am I right?”
“Of course you’re right.”
We entered the kitchen just as Aunt Elizabeth was saying, “So we’ll have three categories: things to keep; things to donate to charity; things to throw out. And then we’ll divide the things to keep.”
Mom agreed quietly. “That sounds fair.”
Margaret and I found some small bran muffins. We each took two of them and a glass of orange juice. Aunt Elizabeth and Mom had stopped speaking, so Margaret asked, “How are you going to decide about the things to keep?”
Aunt Elizabeth answered, “I’m sure that won’t be a problem.”
Margaret directed a nearly imperceptible wink at me. “But isn’t that always a problem?”
“It may be a problem if we both want the same thing,” Mom said. “Like the Belleek china.”
Aunt Elizabeth squirmed. “I shall be staying here in the house; keeping it in the family, so to speak. So it makes sense that I keep anything that is part of the house.” She explained, “Like the china collection. It was really chosen to go with this particular dining room. As I recall, you don’t even have a dining room.”
“Would you say the same thing about the silverware?” Mom asked.
“Yes. I would. These things are part of our lives here. They deserve to stay here.”
Margaret took a swig of juice, wiped her mouth, and asked, “Well, what does it say in the will?”
Aunt Elizabeth shot an angry glance at her. “This isn’t a legal matter, Margaret. It’s a family matter.”
“Is it?”
Mom had always been afraid of Aunt Elizabeth, but Margaret had never been. Aunt Elizabeth had once hoped that Margaret would carry on the family tradition of working for the United States government. She had even arranged for an interview for Margaret at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, using my grandfather’s name as a reference, but Margaret hadn’t shown up. To make matters worse, she had bypassed Catholic Georgetown altogether for non-Catholic Princeton. Aunt Elizabeth never forgave her for that.
Aunt Elizabeth took a stab at humor. “Anyway, Margaret, I thought you went to school to study history, not family law.”
“History is full of family squabbles,” Margaret replied. “Sometimes they turn into world wars, depending on the families.”
“Is that so?”
“World War One was fought by two grandsons of Queen Victoria. Over nine million soldiers died; God knows how many civilians died. No one is sure why.”
Aunt Elizabeth had nothing to say to that, so that’s where the exchange ended. We all got up and put our glasses and cups in the sink. Aunt Elizabeth asked Mom to accompany her to the funeral home to check on the arrangements. Mom asked Margaret to come along, too. Mercifully, no one invited me, so I stayed at the house. No mention was made of Dad at all.
I dawdled for a while in the kitchen, eating more little muffins. Then I went back up to the study. Dad was awake. He was standing at the wooden shelves, apparently reading book titles. Suddenly he asked me, “Do you like history, Martin?”
“Sure. Why? Do you?”
“Yes. I always have.” He plucked a title off the shelf and showed it to me. “Remember this?
Martin Mehan’s Memoirs.
He had this published privately. We’ve got a whole box of them somewhere down in the basement.” He handed the leather-bound book to me. “I don’t even think your mother’s read it. Have you?”
“No. I don’t need to. I’ve heard the live version.” I handed the book back, and Dad restored it to its place. That’s when I saw the bottle. Two shelves below the memoirs, right where he was standing, was a bottle of golden brown liquor. I should have known.
I turned away and settled onto the couch. I reached over, instinctively, and stroked the smooth, round top of that Art Deco radio.
“That is a beauty,” Dad said. “I’m glad she gave it to you.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
“She loved listening to the radio. Hated television; loved the radio. She was from a time when women ‘listened to their stories’ on the radio.”
I must have looked puzzled, because he explained. “Soap opera stories. A lot of the big TV soap operas started on radio. But your grandmother wouldn’t watch them on TV. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because of her nasty husband. Old Martin bought a TV, but it was only for the girls to watch cartoons when they were little. Not only wasn’t your grandmother allowed to watch it, she wasn’t even allowed to touch it. He’d get up and turn it off when the girls were done watching. Your grandmother came to hate that TV. If you remember, she never watched TV at all. Never. Not even after he died. She only listened to the radio. For her, it was a matter of principle.”
I had no idea why Dad was talking so much. Then I figured out that he was fixing to steal a drink. Maybe he was talking to me so I wouldn’t tell on him. Still, I encouraged him to go on. “That was a terrible way to treat her.”
“Sure it was. He was a terrible man.”
“He was?”
Dad shrugged. “In my opinion. I never bought into the family story. I guess he went to church a lot, and worked for the government for a long time, and raised two kids, but so what? Lots of people do that. They don’t get shrines made to them. Do they?”
“No.”
He pointed to the photo of Grandfather Mehan with Joseph P. Kennedy. “Your grandmother was a very nice lady. A little loopy sometimes, but nice. She always dreamed about going to London herself. She had a chance to go with a friend of hers, Mrs. Mercier. This lady needed a traveling companion. It was all expenses paid, but old Martin wouldn’t let her go.”
“Why not?”
“Because she had to be here to wait on him, to serve him his supper.”
“God. When was this?”
“When your mom was in high school and your aunt was studying to become Sister Elizabeth. It wasn’t like there were two little babies at home to take care of. He just didn’t want his wife going to London. End of story.”
Dad reached over, pulled out the bottle, and held it up. “Napoleon brandy. A very genteel drink. Your grandmother used to drink this stuff all the time. Sometimes I’d join her. Martin Mehan never drank anything, not even wine at church. He was a total teetotaler. Anyway, whenever Nana got near the bottom, she’d replace the bottle. The old boy never knew. He was clueless about her drinking. He was clueless about a lot of things.”
Dad opened the bottle, sniffed its contents, and took a small sip.