Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [78]
If Daniel had stayed out of it, Kathleen might have found a way to forgive Paul and move forward. Paul Doyle was an excellent son-in-law: he adored Alice. Maybe that’s what bothered Kathleen most about him. He made a decent father and a good provider, and he was a hell of a lot more fun than the AA guys Kathleen brought around later.
The drinking was something else her daughter blamed her for, the most preposterous of all her allegations over the years. Kathleen had become an alcoholic, she said, because of what she had internalized from watching Alice drink.
This made Alice laugh. From the time Kathleen was eleven years old until the day Daniel died thirty-three years later, Alice hadn’t had a single sip of alcohol, even in the moments when she wanted one so badly she could have burst, when she felt herself coming undone and thought perhaps it would be worth it to lose Daniel and the kids just for one measly sip of whiskey. In fact, it was quite possible that she had made it through her first decade of motherhood without killing them all thanks only to Canadian Club.
After a church trip to County Kerry when the children were young, Daniel became obsessed with the idea of ancestry and getting back in touch with their roots. Neither his parents nor Alice’s had ever been attached to Ireland—her mother had once said that her own mother died trying to flee the place, so she didn’t see much purpose in ever going back. But sometime in the mid-fifties, couples they knew from St. Agnes and the children’s school began making noise about returning to the homeland. And so the parish organized a trip, and they all flew to Shannon and helped build a Catholic orphanage and toured the lush countryside in a rented bus. They photographed ruins and streets that were overrun with sheep. They ate boiled dinners and sang old songs in damp, dark pubs.
When they arrived back in Boston, Daniel bought a book of Irish names and meanings, and cracked it open over dinner.
“We are Kellehers,” he said proudly. “And that means—hold on here—wait a minute, I know you’re all on the edge of your seats.”
He flipped to the page, pretending to consult it with amazement until Alice said, “Oh Jesus, get on with it.”
“Kelleher,” he read, “is the Anglicized form of the Gaelic Ó Céileachair, ‘son of Céileachair,’ a personal name meaning ‘companion dear,’ i.e., ‘lover of company.’ Hey, does that sound like your dad or what?”
“Do more!” Clare shouted, for she too was excited by ghosts of the past. “Do Mom’s maiden name,” she said. “Do Brennan.”
Daniel tapped her on the head with the book. “One step ahead of you, little lady. I’ve got it right here. Brennan!” he said loudly, then, reading it over, “One of Ireland’s most common surnames, Brennan derives from one of three Irish personal names: Ó Braonáin, from braon, probably meaning ‘sorrow,’ and Mac Branáin and Ó Branáin, both from bran, meaning ‘raven.’ ”
“So Mom is a sorrowful raven?” Clare asked. “A sad bird?”
Daniel smiled. “Precisely,” he said. “Mom is my lovely sad bird. What do you think of that, sad bird?”
Alice hated him in that moment. She looked at her three children sitting there, staring and demanding more—more food from the icebox, more time, more love—as if they owned her. She added an extra dash of whiskey to her drink and took a long sip.
“It’s time for your baths,” she said, to a chorus of groans that made Daniel chuckle.
“You head upstairs,” she told the kids. “I will be there in a minute.”
She went out to the back porch, glass in hand. She drank down what remained, hoping to soothe her nerves. It wasn’t working tonight. Alice sat on the top step and put her fist in her mouth, biting down so hard that a few minutes later, when she bent to shampoo Clare’s hair in the bathroom, her daughter balked and said, “Mommy, your fingers are bleeding.”
Alice