Jim Wood: What I know about writing

The group assembled on the Four Seasons terrace.

Gracie Honeywalker spoke first. “Mercy, ain’t this a long way from that Kentucky farm.”

“Oh, poo!” Granny Limerick said. “There’s no difference between a farm and a … what do you call this, Jim?”

“This is a condominium building, Annie Kate. I’ve gathered you here to get your feedback on this Daily Rite session.”

Brian Larney adjusted his bow tie and oinked a pig noise. “Didn’t you do that in September?”
“That was the previous session. That time around, I started writing about myself but did such a terrible job, I returned to the world of fiction and all of you.”

“What makes you think we aren’t real?” Monsignor Collin Doherty asked.

“I hate to break this to you, ladies and gentlemen,” Jim said, after a long pause in which he considered the characters – some gentle, some monsters – he’d created. “But you are all figments of my imagination. Even this scene is a figment of my imagination.”

“If I’m not real,” Norman said, “that means this muscular body you’ve given me is purely in your imagination. Everyone, try pinching yourselves. If you’re real, you’ll feel it.”

They all started pinching themselves – but felt nothing.

“Oh, my God!” Victorial Balmoral intoned, “I am fictional. Cornelius, can you feel anything?”

“No!”

“It’s outraged I am, all this time getting upset over Agnes and Norman when it didn’t really happen at all,” Siobhan Limerick said. “Does this mean I didn’t give birth to those four babies who died?”

“None of this really happened … to you. But I took the writer’s license to mix up all sorts of real things that happened to other people, and make them happen to you. Sorry if I gave you too much conflict and tension. But I’m the writer. I get to decide.”

Agnes smiled her devious smile. "Not really, Jim. You created us in a certain way. Your story will only work if you have us doing things in character."

Collin Doherty: Psychic

Collin squeezed his buttocks together and walked sideways like a crab around the table, picking at the crudité, the shrimp dip, and the crackers and cheese.

“Uncle Collin,” Patrick said sotte voce, “how much longer must we stay? I count eighteen people in this cracker box.”

Collin looked around at the motley collection. Too many grays, to be sure, among the Limericks, Balmorals, and friends – all for little Grace’s christening party. Collin looked around him, Agnes speaking with Norman’s father, Norman’s mother holding the baby and talking with Siobhan, Norman speaking with Angelo and Cristina Rosamilia –

Odd, Collin thought, Cristina’s posture while she looked at Norman – and the way Norman held his hands behind his back, Angelo prattling on about Roosevelt’s election victory – as if a coded language existed between Norman and Cristina. As if they had been lovers. Collin looked over to his niece – Agnes smiled and laughed, going from guest to guest, now talking with Cristina’s parents. Just as ignorant of the signals being passed between her husband and her best friend. Odd, indeed.

Agnes Limerick: Write about a ritual

Mrs. Stein came over to Agnes and held her arm, “I’m sorry for your trouble, dear Agnes Limerick.”

Agnes introduced Norman. Mrs. Stein directed her attentions to the baby – “what a beautiful baby, Agnes, she’ll have your red hair when she grows up” – but Agnes kept looking back toward the hallway. A minute later she saw the black shadows of six men carrying Granny’s stiff body across the front hallway into the parlor.

Ten minutes later, Agnes saw the men leave and the women go inside. Fifteen minutes later, they left. Was Granny alone? Forbidden at an Irish wake. You could never leave the body alone. Agnes rushed into the parlor. She saw Mrs. O’Toole sitting on a chair in the distance. “Good, Agnes. I’ll leave you alone with Annie Kate. You can have time with her before we close the front window.”

She stood by the coffin a moment, feeling the cold breeze rush in from the window, and looked at Granny. She was dressed in white lace, red rosary beads with her hands, gold crucifix around her neck – all white, like Granny’s face, except for the red hair. She’d kept her hair red right up to the end. But the face shocked Agnes. Its right half was turned up at an angle, the chin, the mouth, the eyes, her eyebrows, all of it. The hemorrhage must’ve occurred on that side. It pained Agnes to realize friends would see Granny with that frozen expression on her face. She touched Granny’s fingers and pulled them back, guilt washing over her. She should’ve first kneeled to pray for Granny’s soul.

Gracie Honeywalker: This is my strategy

You sure gone to love it, walking by that picket fence yonder, story I’m gone to tell you. Back in ’59 when I was 7 living on that Kentucky mansion working for the man, he done told me, see that store yonder, they done sold bad chickens got ever one sick as dogs. Them white folks, they done stayed in bed three, five, seven days depending on how strong they were. Made life easier for us colored folk, didn’t have to work no hard or hear so much tinny racketing. Get me this you lazy maid, you never done listen to me. Ain’t never heard such nonsense as from the man and his ladies. Talk like they brains gone to the chickens.

They never done known, tell a good chicken from a bad. Seven years old I knew when to turn my nose up and say, No ma’am. Served me good these years up in New York since I ran away fall of ’59. Good riddance to the man, gone to the north soon as I could. I wanted to learn, I wanted to read, I wanted to write.

Victoria Balmoral: Reaching for it

Agnes and the children departed for the train station five minutes ago – and that Brian Larney she’d invited to live here. He went with them. Thank the Lord. Thank the Good Lord in all the heavens they were going to New York City for the weekend. Victoria could have peace and quiet. She could have the house to herself. She didn’t have to clean her bedroom. She didn’t have to wipe up the sink or the stove. She could cry all she wanted.

She walked downstairs to the kitchen and left her bedroom door open – the first time since she’d taken to her room after hearing the news. She prepared herself some blueberry scones with strawberry jam, and a stiff pot of tea. She sat at the kitchen table. The drapes were open and the sun shone in her eyes, but she got up and closed them. It would be a dreary November day for her, even with the sun out.

Victoria rather enjoyed this moment, but she told herself no, she cannot enjoy these moments. She cannot enjoy any moments anymore. Her youngest son was dead. And here she was, living with his wife, their children, and her piano teacher. Why’d she have to invite the piano teacher to live here? All he did was bother Victoria with his bubbly laugh and his limp-wristed girly voice.

Hungry now that no one was at home, Victoria wanted to have some oatmeal and scoured the kitchen. In the last two months since Norman died, Agnes had taken over the kitchen again. She’d moved everything around. Ah, there it is, she told herself, on the top shelf of a cabinet – but Victoria couldn’t reach for it. She needed Brian Larney’s height to get to the oatmeal.

Brian Larney: The violence

“Brian,” Victoria called from the hallway, “dinner will be ready in a half hour. I don’t know where Agnes is, but dinner will be ready.”

“Thank you, I’ll be done before then.” He launched back into his latest project – Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. As always, he’d play it all the way through and then break it apart. The performance wasn’t for three months.

He could smell the roast beef, potatoes, and stewed vegetables all the way in the back music room. What a difference from the one-room apartment at the top of Mrs. O’Toole’s house. He’d been there nearly forty years, ever since Martin Limerick rescued him from the train station attack. And now here he was living in his daughter’s house … and she knew nothing about the incident, long before she was even born.

He heard the door open and shut. Keaton ran out of the piano room and barked at his mistress. Agnes was home, and she peeked in the music room for a look at Brian. Wet as a chicken, red hair matted down onto her head, but smiling cheek to cheek. He had no idea what made her so happy – she hadn’t smiled like that since before Norman had died.

Norman Balmoral: What a loser

Norman sat in the basement of the rectory with Monsignor Collin, Patrick, and their friend Aloysius. He dealt the cards for their poker hand. “Aces high, my deal.”
Collin took another swig of whiskey. “Young man, tell me about yourself. All I know is that you’re a follower of Henry VIII’s church.”

Collin and Patrick laughed, but Norman forced a grimace. Agnes had insisted on this outing, he had to get to know her uncle and her brother. They were willing to spend an evening with him, she said, so he needed to as well. Norman accepted it, but only to keep peace with his new wife.

They played their hand of poker – Norman took it with three jacks and made $0.15 in the process – as he talked about architecture school, Europe, his parents’ ailing pharmacy. He didn’t talk about nailing Agnes in the back office of the pharmacy, but of course they knew. Annie Kate would’ve told them. But they drank and drank with each poker hand – a little whiskey for Uncle Collin, eighty proof beer for Patrick.

Where’d they get the stuff? Even if the amendment was making its way through the statehouses, it was still Prohibition and here they were, drinking like fish. No matter to them that Norman didn’t drink, they were playing poker, and he was winning. Hand over fist, every hand. Winning with a full house in one hand, three sixes in another, a straight from two to six in a third – you name it, Norman won.

He walked out that evening with $1.25 in winnings. He rather liked spending an evening with Uncle Collin and Patrick.

Brian Larney: A song

Brian shut the door to old Mrs. O’Toole’s house and whistled “Shenandoah” down Clinton Street. He loved his new apartment – Martin had done a good job at convincing the old lady to let Brian move in, even when he had no money to pay. At least not now. But he had four piano students lined up, all four from St. Patrick’s Church. That Monsignor Doherty who was Martin’s brother-in-law spooked Brian with his knowing eyes, but he never said anything.

He knocked on the door of the Limerick’s Spruce Street house. “Good afternoon, Mr. Larney,” came a sprightly voice from Annie Kate when she opened the door. “You’re just in time for a spot of tea in the parlor. Martin and Siobhan are inside.”

“And the top of the day to you, Brian,” Martin exclaimed from the parlor. Siobhan sat on the divan and merely glanced up, preoccupied with two-year old Patrick on her knee. “Mother, bring the whiskey for a celebration with the good Mr. Larney. It seems Siobhan is to have another child in eight months’ time.”

A girl – Brian hoped should would be a girl. Girls were more fun than boys.

Cristina Rosamilia: Where I want to go

“Do you think I don’t know that, Norman?”

He was an idiot where women were considered. How did Agnes ever live with him? She was certainly glad they’d never gotten more serious than those three weeks in Florence or that dalliance back in ’40. Cristina counted herself lucky – she married the easy-going Angelo Rosamilia, much better than the tight-assed Norman Balmoral.

But, oh, how she loved wrapping her hands around that tight ass. And the sinews of his arms, chest, and shoulders. And feel the thrusts of his narrow waist into her, Norman hard for an hour … but she was forgetting herself.

“Cristina, you have to stop following me. I promised Agnes I’d never see ‘Mary Holmes’ again and I meant it.”

In spite of herself, Cristina laughed. “I can’t believe you shared our private little joke with her. Does she actually think Mary Holmes was a real person?”

“Yes,” Norman replied, “but it’s not funny. We’ve been lying to her these past years. I want to forget we ever happened. Is that understood?”

“Don’t you boss me around, Norman Balmoral. You might have Agnes fooled, but you haven’t fooled me. I’ll do as I please.”

Victoria Balmoral: That damned phone (Photo #7)

Victoria came downstairs that Thursday morning after bathing and grooming herself for a quiet day at home. Agnes had left for work an hour ago, Grace and Harold had walked off to school with the Collingwood grandchildren at the same time, and Victoria had the house to herself. Mostly, at least. She looked forward to a crisp spring day of knitting and reading while she sipped her morning tea and looked out the window at Spruce Street’s sun-streamed elms.

These mornings alone gave her a sense of peace she hadn’t felt since Norman’s death. She’d finally convinced herself to eat, to come downstairs and join Agnes and the children, even to go walking in Rittenhouse Square. She even –
And then she heard it. Banging Prokofief on the piano. That Brian Larney. Why did Agnes invite him to live here? He played the piano all hours of the day, right when he woke up and right before going to bed in the middle of the night. And those piano students – the little 8-year old boys and girls who trounced into the house and got the floors dirty – and Prokofief! Anything would be better than the heavy chords and depressing music.

“Brian,” she shouted through the hallway, “could you wait a while before playing? I’ve only just settled in for the morning. A half hour, please.”

“All right, Mrs. B. I can wait until Susie comes for her lesson. That’s not for an hour.”

Victoria breathed a sigh of relief and went back to her knitting. Her tea was cold and she had to refill it –

“But Mrs. Collingwood,” Brian’s scratchy tenor screeched into the phone with a laugh and a hiccough, “you told me Susie would be coming …”

That damned telephone. If Brian Larney wasn’t playing the piano, he was talking on the telephone. Somehow the man always had to make noise, one way or the other.

Annie Kate Limerick: An addition

“Andrew, come over here. Bring your satchel.”

Annie Kate cradled the baby under her shawl, but another wave crashed over the ship and doused it yet again. Baby Martin cried a weak little mew into Annie Kate’s breast. Andrew crossed from the other side of the ship. The boat’s rocking from a swell knocked him over. He fell onto the deck and the satchel slid over to Annie Kate. A wet potato cake rolled out next to Annie Kate’s feet. She grabbed it.

A bony six-year old boy with sunken eyes and a bulging stomach jumped and tore it out of Annie Kate’s hands before she could give it to the baby. “Mine,” she cried out, “for my baby!”

Andrew grabbed the boy who’d already swallowed the cake. He shook the boy until he vomited on Andrew. Annie Kate cried. That was the last of their food and New York still lay another two days beyond. She looked at Martin, crying from hunger. Annie Kate didn’t yet have milk. The new baby was only four months along.

Collin Doherty: Brand new

1936 was the year God allowed their church to breathe a little, Monsignor Collin observed. The furnace in the rectory had failed back in ’34 and they had too little money to replace it. Until now, when they raised $325 from sacramental offerings and the diocese gave them an additional $140 to make up the difference. Thank heavens for the fireplaces in the office and in his living room upstairs. He’d moved Mrs. Callahan into his office for the past two years and he’d moved out of his own bedroom into the living room. Now he could finally have some peace – and a good night’s sleep in his own bed.

Of course, they’d only gotten the money for a furnace in March, so they’d missed yet another winter – their third without heat in the rectory. So Collin and Mrs. Callahan would have to wait until next winter to feel the benefit. Alas, at least spring and summer were on their way and they didn’t need to use the furnace at all – never past March 15, never before November 15. Cold is good, Collin told himself and the parishioners who came to the rectory to see him.

He lay in bed on the Ides of March, contemplating God’s wisdom. He had a plan for them all, Collin knew – even for Agnes, who continued to trouble him. She’d yet repented for her sins. It was bad enough she’d committed carnal sins without benefit of marriage, but much, much worse that she’d forsaken the Church when she married that man. God had a plan for Agnes, he believed – but Collin had no idea how he could reveal that plan to her.

Collin felt a drop of water on his nose. And then another on his forehead. A third wet drop hit him in the eye and he sat up in bed. He looked at the ceiling – water coming in from above him. A new roof. God was asking them to get a new roof now.

Cristina Rosamilia: The lines

Cristina rearranged the lines on her face and dabbled with her hair, waiting for Agnes to open the door. What was taking her so long? Finally she did and Cristina heard laughter – the ebullient Mr. Larney was inside. Oh, good. He always brought a smile to my face.

“This wind, Agnes. What’s a girl to do with her hair?”

“It doesn’t look windy to me, Cristina. Come inside.”

“Howdy, Mr. Larney!” Cristina said. He wore a blue jacket and a red bow tie. Always so cheerful, so unlike Norman. Cristina couldn’t imagine Agnes being happy with a dour husband like Norman when she had such a lively friend as Mr. Larney.

“It’s the lovely Cristina Rosamilia, I’ll be bound – a million roses for you, my dear,” Mr. Larney said.

“Mr. Larney and I – Brian, I mean,” Agnes said, “were just finishing up our visit.”

“I have to be on my way, Cristina,” he said, grabbing his coat and hat – a dark green, yet another color for him. “I have an 8-year old piano student to teach. Agnes, I will consider your offer.”

After he left, Cristina said, “What is he talking about?”

They went into the parlor room and sat on the sofa. “I’ve asked him to move in here with us, Cristina.”

Cristina wondered what Norman’s mother would think of the shuffle in the household. Norman had been dead three weeks and buried twenty-four hours, and Agnes was asking another man – even if it was the old “confirmed bachelor” Mr. Larney – to move into the house. Victoria would raise bloody hell.

Siobhan Limerick: In the background

After Collin’s homily Siobhan kneeled to pray to her babies. Collin had spoken of Ruth and Naomi, their abiding friendship, and the power of love. She’d named the first born Ruth, just before she died back in ’01. How many years ago, was that? Almost twenty. She wondered what that baby would be like today, if she’d lived. Same thing with the other three, Andrew, James, and Mary.

Patrick and Agnes didn’t know. Siobhan would never tell them about their older siblings, the ones who didn’t make it. They didn’t need to bear that weight. She leaned back onto the St. Patrick’s pew and looked at her twelve-year old. He liked school but something went wrong with everything he did. It never seemed to be his fault but his projects always went awry. And little Agnes, her nine-year old, a wilted geranium since Martin died last fall. She’d adored her daddy like no child Siobhan had ever seen.

Collin stood at the altar, ready to begin the sacrament. The good Lord might’ve taken Martin away from them, but at least Siobhan’s brother could be a good role model for her children. He began to read the service of Holy Communion and Siobhan crossed herself, feeling a momentary glimpse of peace.

Cristina Rosamilia: I am currently obsessed by ...

Tonight was Angelo’s poker night with the boys from Washington Street, so tonight was Cristina’s golden chance. She sent the boys across the street to Ma and Pop, but on a light dress and headed over to Rittenhouse Square. Agnes said they’d be dining at the top of the Warwick tonight and would have a stroll in Rittenhouse Square after dinner.

A lovely evening, but Cristina didn’t give a whit’s whit about the spring weather. She walked the mile to the square in nothing flat. If she sat on a bench and they walked by, they’d see her, and she didn’t want to be seen. So she just walked around the square on the perimeter. How many times before she saw them walk over from Locust Street, two, three, or four? But finally, there they were – holding hands.

Cristina felt her heart thump. Agnes wore a white and navy blue frock. Her hair flowed freely down her back – she’d always been jealous of that straight red hair. Why’d Cristina have to get her Sicilian mother’s unruly black hair? The two of them were laughing, carrying on, shoulder to shoulder. Agnes stood only a few inches shorter than he – but Cristina barely came up to his shoulder. Why couldn’t she have Agnes’s height?

Norman looked so handsome in his blue suit. He wore clothes well on that muscular frame he exercised every day. But he also wore no clothes well. How well she remembered that month in Florence back in ’29. She didn’t count everything like Agnes did, so she didn’t remember how many times they made love – but she remembered the intensity of his muscles, the bristly hairs on his stomach rubbing against her abdomen.

Seven years had passed quickly. She still didn’t know how they broke up, how they got back to America and worked in the same architecture firm, how she and Agnes became best friends, how Agnes fell in love with him. Norman belonged to Cristina. She found him first.

After a while Agnes got up and walked across the park to Peterson’s. It was time for Cristina to make her move. No one was looking.

Brian Larney: It's behind me now

Brian heard the clickety clacking of hard-soled shoes against the hospital’s white tiles. Dr. Limerick walk into the room and place a hand on Brian’s leg. Like his face, the hand was soft and pink, the fingers long and slender. He would’ve made a knock-out pianist.

“It’s time for you to go home, young man. We stopped the bleeding two days ago and your digestive system has come back to normal.”

“Thank you, Dr. Limerick.” Brian got out of bed and felt a sharp stab in his abdomen. He wondered how long he’d feel the stabs and the punches. He didn’t dare look at his face in the mirror and relive what they’d done to him at the train station.

“Have you read the newspaper, Brian? While you were unconscious San Francisco had a massive earthquake and big fire, killing hundreds.”

Apparently Brian wasn’t the only one who’d been destroyed in the last week. He walked over to the dresser to change out of this hospital gown and into his own clothes, but nothing. “Would you know where my clothes are?”

“No one brought you a change of clothes?”

“No, there’s no one who visited me.”

“Not your family? What about your parents?”

Brian thought back to the altercation over the boy in Pittsburgh that took place before he got on the train. “My father is dead, and my mother – she and I no longer speak.”

“I will get you a change of clothing and ask an orderly to escort you home.”

Brian tried to hold the truth back from the doctor, but something in his expression gave him away.

“You do have a home, Brian,” the doctor asked and, after a pause, said, “in that case, you’ll come with me. My wife and I have a very large house and you can sleep in the upstairs bedroom awhile. Our church will be able to help you back on your feet.”

Dr. Limerick placed his hand on Brian’s shoulder. Brian flinched at the touch – but these hands were soft and pink, not rough and gnarly. Dr. Limerick wouldn’t strike him.

“And you must call me Martin, Brian.”

Agnes Limerick: Thanksgiving dinner

Despite Mama’s recent cost-cutting, this year’s dinner somehow managed to make for an elegant display. The table was set with the artifacts of Grandpa Andrew’s success in the 1880s: Granny’s blue Wedgewood china; a complete set of silverware, trays, and serving dishes, each piece monogrammed with a tall, sloping L; crystal goblets for water and glasses for wine; six tall candlesticks, white candles for illuminating the room; and a fall centerpiece of gourds, cobs, and artificial branches with gold and red leaves collected by Granny from the trees behind Independence Hall.

On the far end of the table sat the turkey on its silver platter, waiting for Uncle Collin to do the carving. The small bird looked a little ridiculous sitting all by itself on the large platter, not even a bowl of gravy to keep it company. On the other end of the table were the mashed potatoes and vegetables with Agnes’s cheese sauce in their own silver serving bowls. In the middle of the table was another serving bowl for the cranberry chutney. A crystal chandelier hung over the table, surrounded by strings of reflective crystals draped from the ceiling to its base, four interior lamps reflecting outward, and twelve exterior lamps on its outer perimeter.

Lighting the candles instead of switching on the chandelier’s light, Mama stepped back to survey the table. Agnes could see Mama’s pride in her Thanksgiving table, reduced though it might be.

By tradition, Mama sat at the end closest to the kitchen while Uncle Collin, titular head of the family, sat at the far end, closest to the turkey and carving knife. Agnes sat on her mother’s left side, Granny on her mother’s right. Patrick sat between Agnes and his uncle. Three dejected and empty chairs had been removed to the far corner of the room. Perhaps next year, Mama could invite her aunts.

Collin Doherty: The holidays

“He’s making me out to be the heavy,” Collin snorted to Norman. “And you’re a tight-assed prick.”

“Go jump in a lake, Doherty. You Irish Catholics should get off your lazes arses and get back to work.”

“Oh, stop spewing out all that workaholic bullshit dialogue he’s making you say. You don’t understand, he’s the reason we fight so much. We don’t really hate each other, do we?”

“I do as my author tells me to do, Doherty – and I’m supposed to be your mortal enemy. Get on board with the program, buddy.”

“You have your own mind, Balmoral. He made you an architect and he gave you a college education. He even gave you a hidden agenda.” Collin smirked at Norman. “I know about Cristina, you sly devil.”

“No one but the author is supposed to know about that. Does Agnes know? And how'd you ever find out?"

“ I’ve heard a rumor that Agnes finds out in Chapter 23. About me, well, a priest always knows who’s screwing whom.”

“Seems like he’s written you a bit too well. But there’s something I don’t get. What happened in the principal’s office with that Balfiglio boy?”

“Nothing. The author was just trying to stew up trouble because every chapter has to have some kind of conflict in it. But he couldn’t come out and say it because it’s the ‘30s, after all, and no one said that out loud. Especially my very own niece.”

“Well, did you do it?”

“Balmoral, I have no idea. You’ll just have to read between the lines.”

“I thought you just said the writer gave you your own mind.”

“Yes, but he didn’t give me my own body. I’d give myself anything to beat off in front of a mirror some time. That Cristina Rosamilia is one hot mama.”

“Doherty, you ain’t bad. Want to split a whiskey?”

“Sure, Balmoral, but let’s keep it from the author. It’s going to be a fun St. Patrick’s Day here in Chicago.”

“But it says here on page 153 that it’s Thanksgiving in Philadelphia.”

“Phooey on that. This is a mutiny, after all. I’m changing the setting.”

Victoria Balmoral: It's raining

Victoria walked down the staircase to rest in the parlor. Thank heavens, she thought, Agnes and the children went to New York for the weekend. Ever since Norman was killed, Agnes had been pestering her to eat more, get out and about, walk, exercise, do something. But Agnes was only Norman’s wife. She was his mother. No one but a mother could ever know what it was like for your youngest child to die.

She walked to the window, a dreary December day. Why couldn’t it be ten degrees colder, then she’d be looking at a winter scene rather than this gray rain? Philadelphia had a strange beauty in the snow, but in the rain it was just an ordinary train town. Victoria tightened the robe about her. She’d sit here in the parlor with a cup of tea and put logs on the fire. That would make it manageable.

Agnes had forgotten to turn off the lights in the kitchen, too bright for Victoria. She turned them off. Why have any light at all? And then she looked in the refrigerator. All disorganized. So Victoria took everything out and reorganized, ended up throwing a lot away. And then she looked in the drawers and the cabinets – everything everywhere, no order to anything these days. So she took everything out of the cabinets, sorted dishes and glasses, spices and staples, and cleaned off the shelves. Put everything back in.

How long had it been? Two months since she’d been in this kitchen? After Norman died Victoria had stopped cooking for Agnes and the children. She loved her daughter-in-law, but this disorganization … she moaned out her exasperation.

She forgot about her tea, putting logs on the fire, sitting in the dark in the parlor. Victoria had to get back to work here.

Siobhan Limerick: On the wall

Siobhan had no idea Washington, D.C. could be so muggy. Three months in the city at Patrick’s new apartment, every day had been worse. And now here they were on the last day of July, Siobhan’s sixtieth birthday. She made breakfast for her son, he left for work at his new job, and she cleaned the dishes in a dress already sticking to her sides.

She felt a sharp itch on her neck and slapped it. A fly few around the kitchen, so she picked up the fly swatter and swatted it dead on the kitchen wall. Good, Siobhan thought. Serves you right, coming into our home like this. Their home, the place they lived. These three small rooms on the third floor of a Massachusetts Avenue house just off Dupont Circle. Who would ever have thought she, Siobhan Limerick, wife of Philadelphia’s finest internist, mistress of the George Taylor estate at Sixth and Pine Streets, just two blocks from Independence Hall – she would be living with her son in a musty apartment that someone else owned?

She should be thankful they had a roof over their heads, Collin had told her. Too many people walked the streets with blank eyes, shaking hands, and empty stomachs. Yes, she did have that – and she had her faith. St. Patrick’s was only two blocks away and Siobhan went every day at noon to mass. She could accept losing her house, her home city, and most of the money – but as much as she tried to will herself to forget about Agnes, she wanted her daughter back.

Victoria Balmoral: The wedding

Her beloved Royal Doultons. Gone and crashed to the floor. How long had she been collecting those blue-green, white, yellow-red figurines of Victorian women in petticoats and parisoles? Did that go back to her mother, the Anna Tasker she’d never known? Had she collected them and Father gave them to her when she married Cornelius? Yes, that’s right – Father had packed them himself in her trunk when she left the house on Park Avenue and come to Philadelphia.

Agnes gasped. “I’m sorry, Victoria, I’m so sorry!”

A mask came over Victoria’s face. Ever since last Wednesday’s sudden wedding they were having a hard time adjusting to her new daughter-in-law. Cornelius wet himself one morning, unable to get to the bathroom in time because Agnes was bathing so long. Norman had a hard time, waiting for three or four hours every morning until she finally woke up at nine in the morning. And now Victoria had her turn: her precious Royal Doultons, gone and crashed to the floor.

“It’s quite all right, my dear. Don’t give it a second’s thought.”

A second’s thought. As if those figurines should occupy more than a second of time in anyone’s head. True, they had each other. She still had her husband and her two sons. Three grandsons from Neil already, and a grandchild on the way from Norman and Agnes. But what of their home? They no longer had that, just this cramped apartment for four adults (and a baby on the way) on top of their general store, their beautiful home across the street, empty – and wearing a “bank foreclosure sale” sign on the front.

Norman Balmoral: I never looked back

He leaned down to kiss Grace on the cheek. “This one is for your birthday, princess. Give Daddy a big kiss. I won’t be here in September when you turn ten.”

“No, Daddy,” she sobbed into the folds of her mother’s skirt. “You don’t have to leave.”

The train whistled its two-minute warning. “Harold,” Norman said, “you must be a fine little boy, just like I had to be when my father went off to fight the Great War.”

“Norman, don’t deceive the boy,” Victoria warned, acid in her voice. “Your father fought in the Spanish-American War long before you were even born.”

“I know, Mother, but the boy doesn’t have to learn that now.”

It was now time to say goodbye to Agnes. She stood eighteen inches in front of him. “Take care of yourself, Agnes, and the children. And good luck.”

An impenetrable distance lay between them. He looked his wife in the eyes, but a glaze had come over Agnes. She spoke in the smooth legato she’d put into her voice since they made their decision. “Good luck to you, Norman.”

The whistle blew its one-minute warning. “I’m off, then.” He went up the steps and looked down the tracks – at the end, just as he’d expected, Cristina stood alone in a corner. He nodded his head and boarded.

The train left 30th Street Station on its way to Washington. Norman sat with his back against the seat and looked ahead. In an hour they’d reach Wilmington, three hours Baltimore, four Washington, and six all the way to Camp Pendleton. England lay beyond that.

Cristina Rosamilia: Out of the blue

Behind the counter, Cristina chopped salami for Mrs. Monteverdi. Why’d she promise Pop she’d fill in for Dorothy when she went on her Atlantic City honeymoon? The marriage wouldn’t last, Cristina knew – she’d married a yutz named Stanley Zbornak who didn’t know his left foot from the right. But Cristina had sexy, sweaty Angelo who knew how to get the eyes rolling in the back of her head.

Donnie and Ronnie were playing a game of Cowboys and Indians at Ma’s this afternoon. Those boys got away with murder when Ma babysat them – if only Ma could discipline them like Angelo’s mother. A few whacks here and there, and they knew what was good for them. Ma was too busy with making marinara and –

“Good morning, Cristina.”

She couldn’t believe her eyes. Norman Balmoral. They hadn’t seen each other since just before he and Agnes went on their honeymoon back in the summer of ’32. What was that, six, seven years? He looked like he was thriving, a crisp haircut and even stubble on his chin. How she remembered the feel of his stubble on her thighs …

Cristina frowned. "Norman Balmoral, I’m not so sure it’s a good morning for either of us. You be gone before I call Pop to throw you out.”

He only laughed. Sometimes he was impossible. No, he was always impossible.

Gracie Honeywalker: Shadow on the stairs

Gracie helped Old Man Lacey up the stairs after they dinner. He’d been getting fat, years recent, ain’t been under two fifty since ’36. But now he’d given up his own place, he never did yard work nor did he help her round here. Just sat in them rocker chairs staring out the sun evenings or so.

“Come on, Old Man, we gone to bed now.”

“Gracie, you’re the old one, not me. You’re close to ninety.”

“What you mean, close, I am ninety, fool.”

They continued this way, bickering like two married folk. Gracie’d been a widow since Honeywalker died back in ’85 and Lacey, his wife died twenty years gone. Couldn’t get married, did they want to. White man couldn’t marry an old negro woman, even in upstate New York. They done waited until Lacey’s daughter died before he moved in. Didn’t matter none. No one ever came out this far.

Gracie woke up next morning and did her chores around the barn, fed the chickens and the goats. Would be harvest time, soon enough, and the grandsons, they’d be coming over in the truck. Gracie went back to the house at eight to wake up Lacey.

“Lacey, you fool, come on down for your coffee.”

No answer, so she started up the stairs. Lacey always came down long before eight.

Brian Larney: A roar

Brian sat on the stool in the New York pub. He'd taken the train for a performance with his summer jazz band. They gave a great performance at the Carlyle and he had his weekend in the city. True, he loved Philadelphia better than anywhere. He'd been born there and his mother was buried in Longwood Cemetery. But New York was always a chance to get away and look at men from Greenwich Village – and those Italian immigrants. Trouble, most men his age didn't do that. Most men in their 50s had wives who cooked pot roast and grown children who breeded grandbabies. But he came to New York prowling for man. He'd go to confession tomorrow, ask for forgiveness and say his Hail Marys, and head back to Philadelphia in time for Fibber Magee and Molly. Tonight, he had to have a man.

He walked into his ritual Christopher Street bar. They asked him for the password and he gave it. He walked down the stairs to the basement and sat at the bar. A man sat next to him, nursing a gin and tonic, bald like a bowling ball, about Brian's age with a spare tire around his waist. Brian ordered whiskey and soda.

"Where you from? I'm from Chicago, but last year I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Did love it there. Also lived in San Francisco, Key West, and Baltimore. My mother grew up in Cleveland and she met my father, who was a traveling salesman for the Roebuck Company, and we all ended up in Chicago. You really have to love Chicago, my friend -- second only to New York, is what I say."

The man droned on, but Brian stopped listening. He eyeballed the gin and tonic, smiled, looked across the corner at another man talking to a friend. The bald man wouldn’t shut up. Some nonsense about the Oldsmobile Motor Company in Detroit. Brian looked at the man on the other side again. Perhaps ten years younger, powerful barrel chest, beard, dark blond hair, chiseled jawline. Brian couldn't take his eyes off him. The bald man shifted topics to talk about the Roosevelts in Washington --- love 'em, he said -- then about the chances for war with Germany -- not a chance, he said. Brian murmured an empty reply but averted his eyes to the bearded man across the way.

The bearded man looked his way, excused himself from his friend, and walked to the exit. The man's backward glance at the exit gave Brian all the invitation he needed. Brian came upstairs and onto the street, looking for him -- nowhere to be found -- but then heard a voice behind him. "Hello," the voice said, "I'd like to visit your hotel."

"Yes," Brian stammered. The man was even better-looking than Brian had thought.

"Good. Ten dollars, please."

Brian didn't have ten dollars, so he went back into the bar and sat on the stool. The bald man resumed his story about a musical he'd written based on the novel "The Good Earth." Brian listened more closely.

Collin Doherty: Enough is enough

Collin stopped sweeping the floor before the altar. He looked out to the pews, empty just like the last Doherty family reunion. Siobhan and Patrick, gone to Washington, had visited him only twice – when Julia died back in ’38 and when the Balmoral man died ten months ago. Now that Agnes’s husband was dead, Siobhan held hope she could visit her daughter without refighting the Battle of the Boyne.

Collin needed to rest before mass began in forty-five minutes. He sat in the back pew and looked at his church, his since ’06. Nearly forty years he’d had this parish and now, it sat silent as a sepulcher. He knew so few of the parishioners any longer. So many had left Philadelphia during the Depression, so few jobs in Pennsylvania and so many in Ohio, Michigan, as far away as California. And the war – he’d lost more than a dozen young boys. Only one of them came back for a funeral, Anthony Balfiglio, the troubled boy who’d planted those seeds in Agnes’s head. Maybe he had intimidated Anthony, who knew what teenaged boys thought?

His heart warmed at the thought of young Agnes, so bright and hopeful when she disobeyed his orders to write with her right hand. He thought of the change in her, the young wartime widow who sat in his front pew only thirty minutes ago and poured her heart out to him. He’d scolded her again, said she’d been a sinner and needed to repent.

He’d had enough of the dead quiet. He wanted his niece again. He called for Father Callahan.

“Thomas,” he said when he met his associate in the sacristy. “I need you to officiate at mass. I must attend to personal business.”

Agnes Limerick: Jumping

Agnes pranced a little minuet down her Spruce Street home’s front steps that first Monday in October 1943. She reveled in the warm glow of Philadelphia’s Indian summer, the satisfaction of Victoria’s breakfast of tea and warm blueberry scones, and the joy of Grace and Harold’s departure for another week of school at Friends. Her light step echoed the weekly routine of delight that a job of her own awaited her, a job she’d held since Norman had gone off to England.

What fun to be going to work, and what a glorious morning to be doing it. She hummed Eine Kleine Nachtmusik to herself as she looked at the crystal blue sky and closed her eyes to breathe in the morning’s oaky scents.

Agnes greeted everyone she passed on the street, every businessman attired in a dark suit with a red, white, and blue tie, every doctor on his way to the hospital, every banker heading for a day of savings and loans, and every lawyer going for a day of courtly bickering. The men bowed and tipped their hats as she passed by. She smiled at every woman. If they were not on their way to work themselves, they were taking crabby children to school or they were walking their dogs around the city squares. Agnes herself walked Keaton around Rittenhouse Square every morning while Victoria prepared their breakfast.

She thought about her new project for Dr. Dixon at the War Department. Bored with her job as secretary to a pencil-thin bean counter who never addressed her by name, Agnes jumped at the chance to take the doctor’s examination. She scored third highest and Dr. Dixon plucked her from the secretarial pool. “Her mind works like a mousetrap,” he noted to Dr. Goldberg, his assistant, on her first day, “I can imagine no better mathematician than this red-headed balabusta.”

She had no idea what a balabusta meant, but the smile on his face reassured her. “Dr. Dixon, anything I know about mathematics comes from Sister Mary James. She drilled differentials and integrals into our heads during my last year at St. Patrick’s.”

The doctor told Agnes that a bespectacled Jewish relic like himself wouldn’t know anything about Catholic drills. “As long as you can solve the problems I give you, I don’t care if your education came from nuns, Buddhist monks, or a sacred Hindu cow.”

Siobhan Limerick: Strangers

She watched Agnes come into the church behind the coffin, a stranger, this daughter she hadn’t seen in eight years. She walked with a steady, erect posture now, not the rambling girl at 6th and Pine. Halfway up the aisle she removed her hat and veil, handing it to someone in a pew, not the girl who shied away from having a sweet sixteen birthday party. Agnes stood out in the crowd of hundreds, the only person wearing white.

And she held the hands of two children, the eleven-year old Grace, Siobhan knew – but the little boy, she’d heard, the little boy Harold born in ’37, a six year old. She’d never met him. The coffin and the procession came closer to their pew in the front – Siobhan recognized Agnes’s mother-in-law, Victoria. Mr. Larney and Cristina were there, plus a group of people Siobhan assumed were Norman’s family. Strangers, every one of them.

“Good morning, Mama,” said Agnes, an alto depth in her voice Siobhan had never heard. Before today.

Victoria Balmoral: It's so simple

A knock on the door in the rhythm of the Westminster Chimes made Victoria jump in a flash of electricity through her body. It must be Mrs. Collingwood, she reasoned, only that busybody across the street would disturb her peace and quiet on a serene Monday when Agnes was working in the War Department and the children were at the Friends’ School. Victoria had looked forward to a day to herself, perhaps an afternoon walk in Rittenhouse Square. October’s leaves were just starting to turn gold.

Especially now. Walking toward the front door, she wanted to be alone, to adjust herself to the letter she’d read. Norman and Agnes planned to separate when he returned from the war in England. She couldn’t believe it – her younger son, a failure in his marriage, an adulterer who’d broken Agnes’s heart. They didn’t know she knew, but a mother always knows when her son misbehaves.

Marriage, so simple, really, just two people becoming one, merging for the greater purpose of love and God. Norman had never become one in his marriage – Agnes had tried, but Norman had never quite made it. And what would she, Victoria Balmoral, do? When Norman returned, she could hardly continue living with his ex-wife. She’d have to move. Yet again, the third time since she’d been widowed.

Victoria opened the door. Father Vernon, holding a piece of yellow paper, his face a wrinkled countryside of sadness. Her mouth went to jelly, her shoulders went slack, and she felt the lining of her stomach seize up. She spoke first in a soprano vibrato.

“Norman is dead.”

Her priest sighed. “I’m so very sorry for your trouble, dear Victoria. The telegram came this morning.”

“Tell me everything.”

He gave her the details, Norman decapitated by one of London’s blitzkriegs – she processed the knowledge, her baby dead, her insides began to convulse but she contained it all, shaking and stopping the shakes, shaking and stopping the shakes. Agnes will have to know, but how?

“Norman left explicit instructions, if anything were to happen, St. Mark’s would be notified first. So that we would tell you, not a yellow telegram.”

Victoria squared her shoulders. “You must go to the War Department now and tell Agnes she’s now a widow. I’ll have Grace and Harold returned from school at once.”

Gracie Honeywalker: Honey

Gracie swept the floor of the barn and the chickens clucked an angry protest. “You be gone, there, back to your seed.” She never liked the chickens, but had to have them on the farm? The goats actually served a purpose she liked. They kept the grass cut out front, otherwise she’d have to pay Old Man Lacey to come cut the lawn. How could she afford that? Goats ate their weight in gold.

Ever since Lucy’d gone off to Jamestown to work for the Balls, she’d fallen behind on her morning chores. Even when the grandsons done come in spring to plant the fields and in fall to harvest the crops, the barn kept getting cluttered, the picket fence kept falling down, the buggy wheel kept falling off. Then there was the tree that fell down in the front yard last year – no money to have it taken away – and the broken leg on the dining room table – no money for a new table.

Gracie gave up on the barn. It was late afternoon, anyways. Time for the rocking chair on the porch, a glass of iced tea, and Honey. No matter what, she had her yellow Labrador. Would be nice, watching the sunset after this day, but looked like a storm was coming – and what was that noise out front? Sounded like a dying cow.

Nope, she peeked out the barn, a car with a man and a woman in it – back tires spinning around to no end. What were they doing way out here, two miles from the main road, visiting an old negro woman on a farm?

Cristina Rosamilia: Painting of the rose

She stopped dead in her tracks, feeling the rough marble stones under her soft shoes.

“Norman, honey,” Cristina said. “Look at this painting.”

Norman continued to stride forward. “This way, Cristina, to the Piazza della Republica. Lunch will be served at the hotel. We don’t want to be late.”

Let him have his promenade, she’d admire the painting in the Duomo – so delicate, a faded red rose and its translucent green leaves, like an angelic cherub about to claim its wings and fly to Heaven. But Cristina looked closer, the pinkish red petals about to fall off, the dark brown leaves surrounding the petals signaling the flower’s demise. Not an angelic cherub at all – rather, a wispy soprano long past her prime.

She turned to look at the marble fresco of the Madonna and child, and thought about the baby she wanted to have, a little girl, when Norman finished at the Politecnico di Torino and he returned to her in Philadelphia – a whirlwind, these four weeks in la bella Firenze. She’d go back in two days. Four months, he told her, and he’d be returning to their home town.

She turned back to the rose. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray, she could swear a petal had fallen, but perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her.

Norman Balmoral: The Competition

“How dare you compare your stupid piano recital to my profession. I went to school five years, plus a year in Italy, to earn my degree. I’m a licensed professional, Agnes, not a housewife dabbling in a hobby with a googley-eyed effete.”

“Not a recital, Norman, a competition. It’s a competition.”

How typical of Agnes, he thought, correcting him on the details when he was making a point. He provided for this family – his wife, Grace, Harold, the house she’d insisted they bought the very minute he acquired a position – despite his urging, they move slowly on a house, a private school for Grace. To be sure, they used Agnes’s inheritance to buy and furnish the house, but he bore all the burden of paying its expenses.

“What does it matter? I’ve requested that you withdraw from the silly event, and you haven’t done it. A man has a right to loyalty from his wife.”

“That’s right, Norman, I’m your wife. Not an indentured servant.”

Loyalty. It’s behavior like this that drove him back to Cristina for a month’s fling. She’d better be more respectful of his position as head of the household, he thought. Otherwise, he’d just have to find another woman to spend his time with. Not Cristina this time – too dangerous, too close to Agnes’s smothering eyes.

Annie Kate Limerick: The salt shaker

Annie Kate went into the kitchen on Tuesday morning and put her hands on her hips like an Irish teacup. She felt the weight of the day’s job on her shoulders and it made her feel tired already. Packing after thirty years, leaving the home she and Andrew had bought back in ’79. After he made his first $1,000 on the City Hall contract, all that marble and stone that bought them George Taylor’s house at 6th and Pine.

What would she take with her? What did she have to leave for Siobhan? She opened the cabinets, she opened the drawers. She had to leave the Limoges, she knew that. The Sterling silver with the sloping L insignia, that too. It was a tradition the English had forced on the Irish – all the fine china and silver passed from father to oldest son. And now Annie Kate found herself, six months after Andrew died, packing up to leave. And to surrender the house to Martin and his wife. That religious fanatic, Siobhan Doherty.

All right, Annie Kate said aloud as she began dividing up her kitchen into Mine and Siobhan piles. Siobhan might be her daughter-in-law and she might’ve given her a happy pink grandson, but she’d lost four babies before then. Four disappointments, and who knew whether she’d carry her current baby to full term? Another three months to go. Hopefully this would be a girl – a healthy baby girl to make the new decade happier than the last.

The Limoges would stay, the Sterling would stay, but what of the periphery? She’d keep the everyday china. That would go with her to Chestnut Hill. She saw the Sterling salt and pepper shakers – they had to stay, she knew it. Or perhaps Siobhan hadn’t even noticed them. Those were gifts from Andrew, back in ’77 before they moved into this house. The first Sterling he bought for her, before he could afford a complete set of monogrammed silver.

She remembered his square-jawed face, the day he gave them to her. Six children running around their two rooms on the third floor of Mrs. O’Toole’s house. How she treasured that square jaw … now gone, six months. Who knew it’d go that fast? She packed the salt and pepper shakers in her box. Siobhan wouldn’t miss them anymore than she missed her father-in-law.

Gracie Honeywalker: My clothes

“Lord a mighty, Miz Agnes, I ain’t seen this dress since my Lucy was a baby. That was going on fifty years, now, I reckon.”

“Gracie, It’s very kind of you to let us use it for Grace.”

“Ain’t no matter. It’s just sitting in the box with all the kids’ things. They done all moved out and on to their own lives. My Lucy – she never got married, so she had no use for these things. And you done named your baby for me, Miz Agnes. Never done had a mother name her baby after me.”
“You did a good job, Gracie. You saved my life.”

“Did nothing of the kind. I’m not gone to take credit. You done it all yourself. Now let’s take this dress and put it on the baby. Go on, do it yourself.”

Little Grace howled a screechy protest at being imprisoned in the pink cotton – her first dress in the two weeks since she opened her eyes.

“Gracie, I’m just getting her all upset.”

“Here, Miz Agnes, you let me help.” Gracie had the baby in the dress in nothing flat – and a few velvety words, the baby’s crying quieted to a murmur.

“How’d you do it, Gracie? She just howls in my lap.”

“That’s why I’m the midwife, Miz Agnes, and you’re the math whiz.”

Cristina Rosamilia: An apology

“Please listen, Agnes, please listen!” Cristina began to cry, holding onto the rickety banister. “Ain’t like that at all!”

“How can you stand there and deny me? We’ve known each other thirteen years.”

“Don’t know what’s happening, Agnes, what’s gotten in to you.”

“Just the truth! I admit I blocked it from my head, but I should’ve figured out you and Norman had an affair, the way the two of you barely spoke. I should’ve recognized the sparks.”

Cristina wondered how she’d found out. “Agnes, you’re wrong! You’re so wrong.”

She looked at her best friend, best at least until now, and figured it out – Florence, 1929. Agnes had found the pictures from her trip with Norman. But that happened two years before Agnes walked into the picture. Surely Agnes didn’t know that she and Norman had resumed their affair back in ’40?

“Quit lying, Cristina! There’s no other way. You’re the woman he was with at that restaurant in ‘40. The only way you would’ve known about his broken gold watch is if you’d been there. Admit it, Cristina, admit the truth!”

The bottom fell out of Cristina’s world. Agnes knew it all. “All right, all right, you have it! It’s all true, so what’s it to you? You had your husband, you had your children, and you had your big house just off Rittenhouse Square. Now get out of my house.”

“You could’ve told me the truth at the beginning, but you didn’t. I would’ve understood before I’d married Norman. But marriage, Cristina, marriage is a sacrament, an oath to God.”

How would she handle Agnes? Cristina had always been able to steer her insane imagination away from the truth in the past, but not this time. Hopefully, Agnes wouldn’t tell her husband. That would be terrible, if Angelo found out.

Collin Doherty: Their voices

The room began to sway and his voice became a tinny, far-off whisper. Siobhan sat at next to Agnes, listening to the rant about Anthony Balfiglio. Collin wasn’t sure, but he heard in Agnes’s Eleanor Roosevelt vibrato an accusation he’d never thought anyone would make – but the damned boy had confided in his niece after all. He pushed his chair back and rose to his feet, circled the table, and looked at each of them around the table.

Norman Balmoral, the heretic Protestant who’d nailed Agnes and got her pregnant. Then made her leave the Church to marry him. He sat at the head of the table, his velvet hypocrisy smirking its way toward Collin. Patrick, the nephew who’d always looked up to him, every statement he was making sounding like a question. He sat across from Agnes, looking at her, looking up at Collin, the tone of voice clearly in his eyes, What is she really saying, Uncle Collin. He’d be ruined if he knew the truth.

Next to Patrick, his own Siobhan. She couldn’t fathom the concept of what had transpired between him and the Balfiglio hellion. His sister wouldn’t understand the needs of men – she’d been a widow eighteen years, after all, and had never had a man other than Martin Limerick – and the importance of punishment for bad little Catholic boys. He looked at Siobhan, and then at Agnes – a younger version of her mother. He looked from one to the other, and he chose. He chose his sister over his niece.

“Siobhan, we’re leaving now. Patrick, you too. Not another word to this woman. From this moment she is dead to us.”

They rose to leave and Siobhan cried as they left the room. “My daughter is lost to me, Collin. Lost.” The moan from the base of Siobhan’s voice pierced his heart.

Brian Larney: The instructions

He sat at the café table just across from the Carlyle, drinking a cup of coffee and having his morning’s bagel. He breathed the early April air that Saturday and watched the pedestrians walk down 76th Street toward Central Park. Waists were lower this year, he noticed on the Gibson girls walking by – and men’s collars were higher. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt had become president, fashion had zoomed forward. But it hardly mattered to a nineteen-year old pianist just finishing up his Carnegie Hall recital.

Last week Mrs. Houlihan sent him up to New York with a long list of instructions and he’d done exactly as she wanted. Stay with my friend, Julia Doherty. Arrive with a bouquet of roses. Take her to dinner at the Carlyle one night. Practice your program at Carnegie Hall an hour each day before the performance. Do not practice your program on the morning of the big day, just do scales and arpeggios. Breathe while you play, roll your shoulders before the performance, don’t think about the audience. The list went on.

This afternoon he’d take the train back to Philadelphia and give Mrs. Houlihan a full report about his recital. He’d show her the review in the Times. He smiled at the review – all good, all full of promise, they’d said about his playing. So he enjoyed the crisp Spring day, nothing to do except wait six hours for the train. And then the man walked by, blond hair, sharp eyebrows, chiseled chin, eyes that penetrated him and made his insides go all squooshy. And then a change came upon him. He didn’t know why. His penis had never gotten hard and ricocheted up his shorts when a man had looked at him. But a man had never looked at him in this way.

Mrs. Houlihan hadn’t given him any instructions for this, but Brian Larney knew exactly what to do. Without actually knowing it.

Siobhan Limerick: Reflections of trees in water

Siobhan acquired a fondness for walking alone. Springtime in Rock Creek Park, especially, allowed her to get away from the cramped apartment she shared with Patrick. After her son left for the Commerce Department, she sat at the kitchen table and looked at the window at Dupont Circle, and finished her tea. The dead quiet always went right to her bones. After tea, she’d go walking, always down to Rock Creek Park.

Halfway, she always sat on a bench in front of a pond. Winters, the pond stared back at her like gray glass. Summers, she saw the reflections of chlorophyll-filled trees and bushes from the other end. Spring and fall were always the hardest. She’d lost Agnes on Mother’s Day, dead to her with that husband in Philadelphia – the refrain kept echoing in her head, my daughter is lost to me – and she’d lost her own husband the day before Thanskgiving, so many years ago. And now she lived with her middle-aged son in a small apartment in a strange city she didn’t know. Except for this bench in this park in front of this pond.

Annie Kate Limerick: Good news!

“Child, I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard, but you’re old enough to hear it now. Maybe it’ll help you decide what to do.”

Annie Kate knew she’d told Agnes this story many times, but this version had a different ending, the story how Annie Kate O’Grady, born 1852, the year the Great Famine ended, had married Andrew Limerick back in Trim on the River Boyne at the foot of Tara Hill. County Meath, Ireland. Escaping poverty and despair in the fall of ‘70 with Andrew and little Martin, sailing from Queensland to the States, Annie Kate already four months into her second pregnancy, shielding Martin from the angry waves on the six week journey to New York, Andrew determined to make a life for them in the New World.

Annie Kate found it difficult to remember that far back – more than sixty years – but she had a purpose in telling Agnes now. Secrets even Agnes’s mother didn’t know.

“When we arrived, we wandered the streets of New York for eight hours in a cold rain. I’d lost five pounds even though I was expecting your Uncle Daniel. Your grandfather thought I would collapse from fatigue, hunger, thirst, but then he met Mr. Adams coming out of the Union League. He asked, did we need help?”

Granny resumed her knitting. She’d never mentioned Mr. Adams before. “I don’t remember how we came about to stay with them. I was quite ill. Young Mrs. Adams nursed me back to health, a good Christian woman she was. They let us stay until your Uncle Daniel was born. Mr. Adams told your grandfather about his brother’s masonry, how their business on the west side of Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River was booming and his brother was looking for men willing to work. That’s when we came to Philadelphia and settled at old Mrs. Toole’s house where you took piano lessons all those years.”

“Adams was a Protestant, Agnes, and he was English. He didn’t care we were Irish Catholics. He only cared that your grandfather was willing to work hard. If it hadn’t been for them, I’d have died on the streets of New York. Your grandfather wouldn’t have had the opportunity to start his own business.

“So when your mother and Uncle Collin vilify Protestants, I think about Mr. and Mrs. Adams. What I most remember about those six months in New York was how much I wanted a home for your father and my babies. That’s all I cared about. I’d have given up anything to be with them. It’s family that counts, not any church, not any job. Everything comes second to family, sweetheart.”

Victoria Balmoral: Halloween

Agnes sat in the parlor with her mother, but Victoria couldn’t bring herself to go downstairs that Halloween afternoon. At least Siobhan Limerick still had all of her children. None of them had been taken away from her. She wanted to go down there and smack the woman silly. After ten years, she still complained that Agnes had left the Catholic Church to marry Norman. Who the hell cares, Victoria fumed. At least Agnes was still alive. Her Norman was not.

She hadn’t left her room since coming back after the funeral yesterday. Agnes had refused to see Norman’s body after the train arrived with the naval guard – straight to the church for the funeral, straight to the cemetery for burial. But Victoria had insisted, and she was the only one who’d seen him, lying in the coffin.

Victoria had prepared herself for the worst, but the Navy’s morticians had done a good job. It was obvious Norman had died in the London bombing raid – they’d covered the top of his head with a brown wig, and he lay in dress grays under a blanket that hid what the bombs had done to his body -- but at least Victoria could recognize his square jaw and his cheekbones. The rest looked unnatural, but Victoria knew that would have been the case. Cornelius had died exactly two years ago and she’d been shocked then by her husband’s immobile face.

She thought about Agnes, a new widow like herself. And Siobhan Limerick. Agnes’s mother sat in the parlor. They hadn’t seen each other for eight years, but Siobhan had come to Norman’s funeral despite their falling out. Good for her, Victoria thought. Life’s too short to bicker over stupid things like religion.

Norman Balmoral: On the table

He patted Agnes’s hand, still clutching the letter, and caressed it. They looked at each other for a long moment. They rose at the same time. He nudged her on the side of her neck. She ran her hands through his hair, stroking his jaw. Whether driven by acceptance of defeat, an instinctive revulsion to being alone, or desperate insanity, he still felt an electric jolt from her fuzzy softness – and wanted her body, against his better judgment.

“Agnes, my lover. This is the only thing we both want from each other.”

He was becoming aroused, feeling that familiar hardness between his legs. Norman placed his hand between her legs and discovered she was aroused, too.

“Norman Balmoral,” Agnes said, giving him a devious look, “stand still.”

She fell to her knees, unclasped his belt, and pulled his pants down. He stood directly in front of her, fully erect. He moaned when she took him inside her mouth. He removed his shirt and began thrusting inside her mouth.

He was going to come too soon. Suddenly he pulled away from her mouth. “Not so fast. You always wanted us to do it on the kitchen table. Now’s your chance.”

When they were finished, their clothes scattered on the floor beside them, they drank a bottle of wine and scavenged through the remains of their dinner. With disregard for the mess in the kitchen, he looked outside of himselfr at the scene in front of them – Agnes and Norman Balmoral, ending their marriage with intercourse on the kitchen table. Was there a better way to end a marriage? Agnes began stroking Norman’s crotch once again. He became engorged. Norman led her upstairs to the bedroom for an intense, uninhibited night. He wanted it to be their last.

Brian Larney: Abandoned storefront

He had a graceful gait to his walk that late evening along Sansom Street, passing storefronts abandoned since the strikes of ’93 despite Teddy Roosevelt’s best efforts. He hadn’t a care in the world – 23 years old, in love with Billy from New York, having just made his debut at Carnegie Hall with a performance of Schubert’s Fantasie. Life couldn’t have been better for Brian Larney, walking home from the 30th Street Terminal Sunday night after his weekend in Manhattan.

The two men had other plans for him that evening. Across the street, they nodded to each other and moved in on Brian. The squirrely one shifted behind Brian and picked up his pace until just six feet behind. The beefy one ran ahead and came from the opposite direction. He stood in front of Brian and flashed a knife in front of his face.

“Give me what you've got."

Brian turned to run but the Squirrel assaulted him head on, pulled his arms behind him, and flung him around to face the Beef. The Beef frisked Brian, tore his blue overcoat, ripped at his pockets, grabbed his wallet.

"Fifteen cents, only enough for a fare to New York. The chintz has no money."

The Squirrel goosed Brian with his knee. The Beef kicked him in the groin, punched his face with his left, stabbed him in the abdomen with his right. The Squirrel twisted Brian’s right arm until they heard the elbow snap, slammed his fist into the back of Brian's head. Brian fell to the ground. The Beef kicked him in his left ribs with all his force. The Squirrel did the same from the other side.

An hour later an ambulance delivered Brian to the Pennsylvania Hospital. Dr. Martin Limerick, the only resident physician on duty that Sunday evening, received the man whose only gruff words were Billy, I want Billy. Brian gasped for air and coughed up blood from his throat. Martin strained to hear what the man had to say.

Victoria Balmoral: What I hear

You didn’t know that I saw everything that happened, even when I wasn’t there. When my son was stabbed and in the newspaper as Philadelphia’s hero, you didn’t know that I knew what you were feeling. I saw it in your stretched lips, your sharp eyes, your tense fingers. I heard it in your tinny voice, and I felt it in the cold palms of your hands.

You did your best to hide it from us all – from my husband, from our grandchildren. But you didn’t hide it from my son. I saw it in him, too, because a mother always knows. When something is wrong. A mother can see when her son is hurting, just as she can she when he’s done something wrong. I saw it in the way he looked at you, how he averted his eyes when you entered the hospital room, the quiet in his voice, how he solicited your approval. My son never did that, unless he’d done something very wrong.

Looking at you, looking at him, I knew exactly what had happened. The same thing that happens to most married people – the only question being when. Some couples, it’s two years. Others, it’s twenty. My husband, he did it the same time my son did it – eight years.

A mother-in-law always knows.

Siobhan Limerick: To my right

Lighting the candles instead of switching on the chandelier’s light, Siobhan stepped back to survey the table. Even in the Depression, she set a magnificent table.

By tradition, Siobhan sat at the end closest to the kitchen while her brother Collin, titular head of the family, sat at the far end, closest to the turkey and carving knife. Patrick sat on her right, Mother Limerick on her left. Agnes sat between Patrick and her uncle. Three empty chairs had been removed to the far corner of the room. Perhaps next year, they could afford to invite her sisters-in-law from the convent.

“Patrick, dear, why don’t you and Agnes switch places? She’s left-handed, you know, and it’s always best for her to sit on the left,” suggested Siobhan.

Her brother rolled his eyes. “Twenty years old and she still writes with her left hand. What did they ever teach you at St. Patrick’s School, Agnes?”

“As you well know, we could never get Agnes to write with her right like everyone else,” Uncle Collin answered. “I personally tutored and she would not budge."

“She’s always been a disobedient child, this one,” Siobhan answered, “but that’s our Agnes. Always has to be different.”

“Mama, please, you know I can’t write with my right hand. You’re embarrassing me, just like when you tell people about me being born with patches of carrot hair. I’m perfectly happy sitting next to Uncle Collin.”

Mother Limerick gave Agnes a wink of encouragement from across the table. “It’s all right, pumpkin, I love you, left or right.”

They started passing the turkey, vegetable platters, and cranberry relishes across the table, volleying conversations on school and religion across the table at the same time. Agnes passed the vegetable dish to her mother.

“Uncle Collin,” said Agnes, winking back at her grandmother during a rare lull in the conversation. “Would you pass the mashed potatoes, please? I’m over here on Mama’s left.”

Collin snorted. “Of course, child, and don’t be impertinent. Mind you don’t eat all of the potatoes. There might be less this year, but we can share what we do have.”

“I didn’t mean to be impertinent, Uncle Collin. I’m just hungry and felt left out.”

What to do with this child, Siobhan asked herself – always has to be different.

Cristina Rosamilia: Italian waiter on the phone

Cristina could hear noise in the background. Salvaterri’s phone hung on the wall near the kitchen door. Cooks and waiters buzzed about him. Peak hours were approaching when the neighborhood would march in, expecting lasagna and chianti. But Angelo took a break and called Cristina at home.

“Angelo, get back to work, they’re going to fire you for talking to me.”

“I just wanted to check on my baby, baby.”

Cristina looked down at the globe on her abdomen. “I’m fine and so’s the baby, baby.”

“What’re you doing, sunshine?”

“I’m helping Ma with dinner. Pop will be home from the market in an hour. I have to get back to the stove. I had a rough day with Agnes today.”

“Why? What’s wrong with Miss Limerick?”

“I can’t say on the phone, but she’s in real trouble. She has to marry Norman.”

“Why does she have to marry that monster?”

“There’s only one answer to that question, Angelo. Now back to work!”

She hung up. Of course, Angelo would call Norman a monster – she’d told him about Florence, being left on the street, no hotel and no money to pay for one, when he ran off to Berlin. Now that she worked in the same office as Norman, she had to be civil – but not polite. More than once she’d thrown daggers at him. And now he’d gotten her new friend pregnant, and she didn’t know any better about the way he operated. Norman Balmoral was a true operator.

Collin Doherty: Something square

Collin tried to pick up the wooden box in his hands. He felt the dull pangs of arthritic fingers and set the box back down on his desk. He let out a deep sigh, looking at the box. How would he get it out to the yard next to the rectory, so he could say a few prayers for Ruby and bury her?

“Monsignor Doherty,” he heard from behind him. He’d forgotten, he left his office door open – which he always did, when school was in session. Anthony Balfiglio stood in front of him. Again. Collin wondered what the little heathen had done now. He glared at the boy, always a challenge to him, especially now when his cat had just died.

“I didn’t do anything wrong, Father Collin. Sister Lucy sent me for twenty notebooks.”

“Anthony,” he said, deciding to give the eleven-year old chance to help. He was tall for his age. “My cat has just died and I need to bury her in the yard behind the rectory. Would you help me carry the box outside?”

“Yes, Monsignor Doherty, but Sister Lucy will be mad if I don’t go right back to class.”

“I shall explain it to her, young man, and she will understand. Is it agreed, then?” Collin thought about Ruby, twenty years of companionship, gone in the flash of a second. “The love of a pet, Anthony, is a very tender thing. I loved my pussy more than anything. Why –“

The boy turned around and ran back to his classroom. “Anthony, come back here, let me clarify –“

The car

Mrs. Honeywalker swept the barn floors when she heard an engine buzzing a whirl of complaints outside. She stopped in mid-sweep and headed out the door. Chickens made a train behind her.

An old Ford sat in the muddy driveway, rear wheels spinning out, man and woman inside – and then they stopped, hobbled into place. Gracie stared at the car, her hair blowing in the wind, and gave them the most belligerent face she could muster, protruding her lower lip, sticking her jaw out, creasing her brows. Colored folks had such an advantage, she thought, making hard faces, especially eighty-year old ladies like her.

Grace marched right over to the car as the man made a final attempt to get it out of the ditch. The man stopped and leaned out the window. Before he could open his mouth to speak –

“Don’t you be kicking up mud in my driveway, young man. You be stopping that car right now,” she ordered and wagged her index finger at them. “What in the devil’s name you doing here anyway? Who’re you all?”

"I’m Balmoral,” the man said. “Woman, we’re lost.”

Gracie squinted. “No one’s ever lost out this far. You done come here for a reason.”

He leaned out even further. “We’re simply driving about. You’ve no place to question us, ma’am.”

“You think I was a fool born yesterday? You done come to steal from me, I know it. I can smell it from here.”

Gracie looked inside the car – couldn’t see the woman too well, but the man, something about his stubborn chin told her, they weren’t leaving any too fast. She’d set them straight, before they got any ideas about her.

“Well, you ain’t getting nothing. I got me a rifle inside the house and I’ll use it if I need to. Your car’s stuck in the mud. You might as well come on out from that contraption. We’ll get old man Lacey’s truck over here --”

“Old man Lacey,” the man echoed as they got out of the car. An updraft blew his loose shirt tails up and the woman’s carrot-top red hair in her face. “He’s the one who sent us.”

Gracie smiled at the mention of Lacey and turned to look at the woman. Her smile widened. “Well, you having a baby for me to deliver. That’s why you done come. Why didn’t you say nothing?”

Collin Doherty: Middle-aged man in a cardigan

Collin swept the marble floors at St. Patrick’s. He used to love Tuesdays. Monsignor Ryan presided at the school those days and he had the day to himself. After morning mass, five or six in the pews, he’d start preparing his homily for Sunday’s mass. He’d eat lunch alone in the rectory. Mrs. Scheidelmaier always prepared his Tuesday favorite, corned beef and sauerkraut.

He’d go back to his desk for reflection on his chosen lessons and, before an hour had passed, he’d have the outline of his first draft completed. As a reward, he’d read a book for pleasure and, more likely than not, he’d fall asleep for twenty minutes. Fifteen years would have fallen by the wayside when he awoke and he’d go for a walk around Rittenhouse Square before returning to the rectory for a light supper, reading, and off to Neverland.

These days, he’d lost interest in his homilies, cycling each year through the same lessons, pontificating the same moral platitudes, reprimanding children and adults alike for committing the same sins. The sins never changed, only the people. When he went for his walks these days, he used a cane and dressed warmer than he used to dress. When it went below fifty, he’d have to wear gloves – but even ten years ago, he’d gone outside without a parka at forty-five.

Collin didn’t see any point to the same routine. His family had deserted him – Siobhan and Patrick had gone to Washington. Julia had retreated to her life of books in Manhattan. And Agnes – the only one who remained in Philadelphia, she lived only five blocks away. Yet he could not see her. She’d have to make the first move.

Norman Balmoral: My love life

If Agnes wanted specific details, he’d give them to her – just not the truth. Mary Holmes never existed, at least not as Norman’s lover. She was this busybody British lady at the Florence pension when he and Cristina had first had sex, back in ’29. Technically he wasn’t lying to Agnes when he said the other woman was Mary Holmes – to be honest, the woman’s name was Cristina Rosamilia, but their sex together, they called it Mary Holmes.

He wished he’d never seen Cristina again. Norman detested her frank observations on his behavior and her literary pretensions – almost as much as he liked having sex with her and being inside her. He’d gone so long without her, it had hurt – almost ten years since she’d married Angelo. He’d really given up on her, until they saw each other that one evening in the square and then, two years later, at the library.

Why’d she have to be Agnes’s best friend? He’d done his best to avoid her since he and Agnes had gotten married. The only time they’d been to Cristina’s house for dinner, Norman manufactured a falling-out, but six years later, found out Agnes had kept up with Cristina. Then she sought him out and they’d ended up in bed, just like in Florence – three times before he confessed to Agnes.

He vowed to himself, and to Agnes, he would never see Mary Holmes again.

Siobhan Limerick: Lost

Siobhan’s heart went icy cold at the horror unfolding at the Mother’s Day table. She had no idea what Agnes was implying about Collin, but he must know – he was turning beat red, his hands were shaking, and he picked at a scab on his neck.

“What could’ve possessed you to say such things to your uncle, Agnes?” Siobhan implored. “You should be ashamed.”

“I’m only asking questions, Mama. These questions have been gnawing at me for years and I still don’t have answers.”

“It is a sin how you’ve disobeyed your mother,” Collin said.

“It is a sin for me to dishonor her, Uncle Collin. The Ten Commandments tell us to honor our parents, not to obey them.”

The chasm opened up and swallowed them – Agnes and Collin, her only daughter and her favorite brother, slashing each other with words they could never retract.

“Agnes, you’ll regret this,” Collin thundered as he retreated to the foyer. “Siobhan, get your coat. You’re not to say another word. Do I make myself clear?”

Siohan wept anew. “I just don’t understand, Agnes. Why have you thrown us into this pit? My daughter is lost to me, Collin. She is gone, gone, gone!”

Collin pushed her out the door and slammed it shut. The quick bang pierced Siobhan to the heart. She still didn’t understand what Agnes had been implying about Collin and the school boys who shivered when they passed his office.

Brian Larney: Admiration

With the peach face, the smooth lips, and the pillow eyes, everything Martin Limerick said to Brian that afternoon at the Pennsylvania Hospital caressed his heart with a glossy sheen and magical sparks. Victoria’s philandering son might’ve been on the British throne and the blustery Rough Rider might’ve been in the White House for five years – but Brian looked into Martin’s eyes and reigned over all things, English, Irish, and American.

“Nurse, we must change these dressings every four hours. Fresh bandages, please,” the good Dr. Limerick said, smiling at his patient, “otherwise infection may set in and we shall lose him. He’s far too kind for such a fate.”

Dr. Limerick triggered a memory in Brian, playing polo with his father at the Wynnewood Lawn Club, at least until Mrs. Wickham-Smith had evicted them, club policy preventing employees from enjoying the amenities, even after hours – he had the same baritone vibrato as his father. True, Brian had been twelve when he’d died, but that was only seven years ago.

“Most unfortunate, nurse, that Mr. Larney sustained these injuries in the attack. Perilous terrible, what some young men must endure, simply for attending a music lecture …” Brian felt stronger hearing the good doctor’s words. How might he repay him for his kindness, if not now, years down the road?

Agnes Limerick Balmoral: On the way to work

October was Agnes’s favorite month. She loved morning walks – and her job at the War Department allowed her to walk fifteen blocks every morning. She didn’t much care for the late afternoon walks home, but at least she had the children and a lovely meal from her mother-in-law to look forward to. But her morning walks! She’d walk down Locust Street to 13th Street, up to Arch Street, and then over to 5th Street into the new building. October days were cool and breezy. She could jump from side to side, crunching golden leaves under her shoes.

She loved her new job, six months she’d had a junior position as clerk to Dr. Dixon at the War Department. She had no idea how solving differential equations could possibly be useful to Dr. Dixon or the war effort, but she did her job to the best of her ability, solved the equations, and he seemed to be happy with her job performance. Thank goodness Norman had volunteered to serve with the Navy in England – otherwise, he’d never have allowed her to work. At least she could have an interesting job, her piano lessons, the children at home. And thank goodness for her mother-in-law – Victoria made life bearable for her.

Agnes wanted Norman to stay in England forever. She hoped the war never ended and he kept on drafting blueprints for Navy buildings in England, Holland, and France. Keep the Germans at bay, yes – but don’t defeat them, she hoped. And then maybe, after fifteen or twenty years, maybe the war could end without too many men dying … and without Norman coming home.

She walked into the War Department and up to her desk. Dr. Dixon had a long series of equations for her to solve that morning. She had no idea what he was up to – but why, she wondered, why was he conferring with a priest in the middle conference room?

Cristina Rosamilia: My hair

Angelo would be returning with the boys in fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. They’d gone over to Ma and Pop for a visit. The three of them would be spending an evening at a Philadelphia Athletics baseball game. As far as Angelo knew, she’d be spending the evening with Mary Holmes, her former coworker at Smith and Weisskopf. But Angelo didn’t know that Mary didn’t really exist, at least not in Philadelphia. Angelo didn’t know that “Mary Holmes” was a code phrase she and Norman had created for their trysts.

Mary Holmes was this nosy English lady who occupied the room across the hall in the Florence pension where they first consummated their relationship – back in ’29, before Cristina had met Angelo, before Agnes had blundered her way into their lives. No one knew about Florence … except Ma and Pop, and they’d never breathe a word to Agnes. Or to Angelo.

She looked in the mirror. Why couldn’t she have straight, silky hair like Agnes? No, she had this black frizzy hair, these crazy curls and caterpillar eyebrows. And why’d she have to be so nearsighted? Glasses so thick, it made her eyes as big as the Jupiter sunspot. Agnes didn’t have to wear glasses, after all. And her figure … already she’d gained too much weight. Having two children did that to her – no longer the supple figure Norman had first caressed in Italy. But Agnes had given Norman two children, too – without gaining any weight.

Cristina put her long coat on. At least it wasn’t so cold that she needed gloves that November 1st. She didn’t have any. Angelo didn’t earn enough money to afford them. But Agnes had several pairs of gloves, at least one for each social occasion Norman took her to. Perhaps Norman wouldn’t notice when they met at the restaurant, and perhaps he wouldn’t notice when they left the hotel room.

Allow me to introduce myself

I multi-tasked before anyone knew the term. I multi-tasked before Facebook, before texting, before smartphones, before Google, before DVDs, before VCRs, before PCs, even before Ronald Reagan. Picture it, Sophia Petrillo – Pittsburgh, 1980. A seventeen-year old Opie with the horny weenie of the Marlboro Man after a photo shoot, the supple lines of a butterfly swimmer who just broke the high school record, and the witty confidence of Bea Arthur after Season 2 of “Maude.”

Uncle Ed Gallagher died in the middle of a heat wave, June of that year. He was seventy-three years old, ancient by my teenaged standard, little more than middle aged, now that I’m pushing fifty. No one knows I was suffering from a terrible case of athlete’s foot, I’d been peeling dead skin between my toes for six months, but most of all – that I enjoyed it. Every time I pulled dead skin from my toes it felt like I was creating a Rembrandt masterpiece.

My toes itched like crazy that Monday afternoon I went to swim practice at the University of Pittsburgh, but I ignored it because I wanted to see my coach, hot and sexy Fred the neurotic Chevrolet Caprice driver. Why’d he drive a Caprice, I wonder. Even then, single men in their thirties wouldn’t be caught dead in a housewife’s car, let alone a muscular Italian with a hairy crotch – no one knows I remember things like that. I remember neurotic Fred’s hairy crotch, too bad I never got to bury my face in it.

I drove home that Monday – believe it was June 23, 1980. Double practice day, we swam three miles that morning followed by ten times around the stadium, up and down those god-damned stairs. But I got to see Fred’s bush in the showers, made it worth it. Then I drove the Datsun B-210 to afternoon practice, swam another two miles, and drove home. Too bad I got the urge to put my watch on while I was driving up Rodi Road, because I did and forgot to look where I was going. Swerved right into a telephone pole and went sideways down the hill. Car was totaled beyond recognition, but I crawled out the passenger window unharmed. Poor Jeff, it was supposed to have been his car. Don’t tell anyone … I’ve always told people I passed out due to the heat wave.

Multi-tasking didn’t work then and it doesn’t work now.

Boisterous Volvo

Elmer ran down the street and screamed at the top of his lungs. The neighbors on Chestnut Street rushed out from their houses to see what the fuss was all about.

Mrs. Winkelputzer shouted out a question from her rocking chair. "What in the name of Jehosephat is Elmer Butterfield carrying on about?"

Mrs. Hemphood scratched his forehead and muttered, "Ain't been the same since his mama done died. Why can't that snarly uncle come on down from Toledo and Elmer away?"

Miss Pringelmeyer let her blonde curls dangle from her hair net. Maybe now Elmer would notice her, all pretty in her Pepto-Bismol pink and golden hair. Especially since Elemer wasn't wearing anything except his dead sister Mabel's ballerina tutu.

"Help!" he said. "That old car is chasing me down the street. Mama's come back from the grave and she's possessed the old Volvo and she's chasing me, just like she always used to do with that ruler."

Mr. Hemphood looked down the corner at the old Butterfield place. The Volvo hardly sported a new life -- it sat dead in the gravel, no boisterous runaway like Elmer screamed about.

"Vehicle outlives vehicle owner!" Elmer repeated the refrain, over and over. "Beware the boisterous Volvo! Vehicle outlives vehicle owner!"

"What the devil do you mean?" Mrs. Winkelputzer asked from her porch.

"Miss Pringelmeyer ran up to her. "He's such a sweet soul, we got to do something for him."

Elmer pranced up to them. "Volvo. It means 'vehicle outlives vehicle owner.' That's what Mama always said. And now it's chasing me down the street. Got to run for help!"

They all looked down the street, fifteen years old, a car with no tires on cinder blocks. But Elmer kept pointing down the street.

"See? It's jumped off the blocks! I'm getting out of here before the Mama car runs me down!"

Off he went. They heard him yelling his refrain down Chestnut Street. He turned the corner onto Main Street. A bus flattened him dead.

"Volvo," Mrs. Winkelputzer cried, "Vehicle outlives second owner, too."

What I know about writing

I walked into my parents’ house Friday evening after the day’s long drive to Hilton Head. Mom had promised me roasted chicken for dinner when I arrived and boy, was I ever hungry!

But when I walked in and called out, “Mom, Dad, I’m here!” I didn’t smell garlic, rosemary, and olive oil, just the scents of the cleaning lady having done her job that day.

Mom and Dad, Gary and Jody, Jeff and Claudia sat in the living room. Jeff approached first.

“Jim,” he said, two deep vertical lines between his eyebrows, “we have to talk to you about this writing nonsense.”

Mom stood up and wagged her index finger at me. “This has got to stop, Jim. You can’t be writing about us and sharing it with those San Francisco liberals. Have you no shame?”
Dad spoke up, shaking his head left to right. “What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to drive a wedge in this family, break this family apart by telling stories about us?”

Mom went back to her vodka on ice and sat down. “You’ve exaggerated every one of our Jimmy stories, sometimes beyond recognition.”

Claudia, always a voice of reason, asked, “Couldn’t you just have changed all the names and tweaked the stories a little more?”

Gary added his consensus-building voice to the fray. “What I’m hearing today is a lot of anger, Jim, and I think it’d be best if you just cooled it for a while.”

The barrage continued. Only Jody didn’t speak up.

“You told the whole world about some of our inner feelings, some of our anxieties. How dare you tell the world all our secrets!”

“And you misquoted me on a number of occasions. I don’t like it.”

“Your little stories always came from your own, selfish point of view. Never one of ours!”

“And then you made up different characters and shifted things around just to suit your purposes.”

“This has to stop, I repeat: this has to stop. We’re doing an intervention here, Jim. Seems to me, if you’re going to write about what you know, you can’t ever write again. So put that poison pen down …”

I loved my family, but I wouldn’t give up my pen. Maybe I just needed to go back to the masquerade that fiction is completely … fictional. Maybe no one would complain then. I couldn’t wait for the next Round Robin session to start.

Man on the river

I loved going to the provincial, mundane ranch house of my father-in-law Ron. He lived on the St. John’s River and had a breathtaking view of Jacksonville’s modest skyline. Our dogs jumped up and down whenever we approached his house – they loved the football-sized backyard. So did the kids. Ron had a treehouse he built for his pet pheasant. But the pheasant got eaten up by an alligator, so now it was for Michael and Brooke.

Captain Ron always had lunch waiting for us – boiled ham, tomato and lettuce salad, Cool Whip for dessert. Invariably he wore short ‘80s shorts and a wild Florida print shirt. He had a deep tan from years of boating. He’d gotten some sort of settlement from Social Security after a work-related accident back in ’78 right when his marriage to Mike’s mother came to an end. Since then there’ve been two more wives. Now, Prospect No. 4 is trying her charms on him.

“What do you think, Jim?”

Ron came over to me in the living room that first afternoon. I was lying on the sofa reading Michael Cunningham and he stood in front of me, his face turned one way, then the other like Carol Merrill showing off a prize on “Let’s Make a Deal.”

I knew what he wanted me to say, so I played stupid.

“Think about what, Ron?” I asked in as innocent a tone as I could muster.

"This." He tossed his jaw one more time to the left, then to the right.

I knew stupid could only go so far. "Oh, of course! How nice."

“How nice” was the kiss-of-death compliment in the Deep South. Luckily Ron came from Detroit so he didn't get it. Perhaps he just chose to ignore it.

Muddy

We’d replaced the chiller system, the emergency generator. We’d gotten new elevators, we’d replaced all the windows and doors in the common areas with hurricane impact-resistant glass. We’d spent the money for a new pool and we’d repaved the driveway. No one in the building had raised so much as a peep.

When we put “repainting the lobby” on the board’s monthly meeting notice, however, all hell done broke loose. We hired a decorator to suggest three colors and loved ‘em all. Three different shades of taupe to go nicely with the black and white marble floors, the cherry wood columns and trim, the off-white marble columns and staircase. A nice change from the yucky canary yellow currently on the walls.

Forty-five red-faced residents attended the meeting that Thursday night. In four years of serving on the board, I’d never seen so many angry owners. This one wanted green, that one wanted white. This one wanted orange, that one wanted cream. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone had a better idea.

“How can this board trash the building like this?”

“Why is the board using an outside decorator when we’ve got plenty of professional decorators right here in the building?”

“I want white!”

“I want a light cream!”

“I want a really, really dark brown!”

Calgon … take me away.

Off again, on again

“Oh, God, no! Don’t tell me they’re back together again.”

“I know, Tim, it’s a sickening spectacle when they keep going back and forth.”

“You’d think they were teenagers running around a hamster track. So what is it this time, Bill?”

Bill made a squishy face at me. It turned out Jonathan didn’t mind Darren sleeping around as much as he minded quiet evenings alone.

“Groan! Last time I heard Jonathan talk about it, you’d have thought Darren was a combination of Attila the Hun and Leona Helmsley. Why can’t he make up his mind? Is there anywhere that train is going but Splitsville?”

“I know, I know, but love is blind, Tim. Love is blind.”

“That’s just the problem, Bill. If love were blind, Jonathan wouldn’t see how gorgeous Darren is and forgive him for every terrible thing he does.”

“A given. So let’s forget about them. What about us? Are we still a couple or not? Huh, what gives?”

A big mistake

Mike and I walked into the Castro Street Gym. Mike swiped his guest membership card, but I scrambled to find mine in the backpack. No dice. “Could you look up my membership? I lost the card.”

The purple-haired tattooed twink with the nose ring gave me a blank stare. “Uh, okay.”

“Mike, you go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“I need the combination lock, honey.”

I fished in the netted compartment and came up empty. “Woops. It’s gone, don’t know where it is. Oh, wait a second. I left it in the car in my suitcase. Anyway, you go on ahead and I’ll run back to the car and get it.”

“Hey, you,” the twink said, “found your membership. Go on in.”

“I’ll be back in ten minutes – gotta run to the car.”

The twink called after me, “don’t forget to swipe your membership card when you come in!”

I couldn’t help but laugh – that twink couldn’t remember a thing. So I turned three blocks and found the rental Prius. The back hatch was empty. Where was our luggage? Gone!

I opened the hatch … unlocked. I opened the side door … unlocked. I hadn’t locked the car when we walked away from it. Just five minutes ago. Now all our luggage was gone. My laptop, with the novel on it … gone. Mike’s work papers, with the company’s payroll on it … gone.

Woops!

Gone

Betty Neale woke up that Saturday morning with the sun. It’d snowed yesterday and looking out the window gave her a big, big headache. “Grandma, Grandma!” she yelled out the room, “It’s a blue sky and sunny!

She ran across the hallway to her grandparents’ room, but the tussled sheets didn’t have any occupants. Grandpa was probably already down at the store and Grandma, making breakfast for her and little Ralph.

Betty went down the stairs to the kitchen – but Grandma sat in the living room chair, crying, and Grandpa stood above her. He never wore a suit this early in the morning! “Betty, sweetheart, come to Grandma,” she whimpered. Something bad has happened to Grandma so Betty ran over and climbed into her lap.

“My precious, precious little girl, oh how I love you.”

“What’s wrong, Grandma?”

But Grandma didn’t say anything for the longest time. Grandpa just paced about, asking, “When will August be home?” Grandma just held Betty close to her, rocking back and forth. Finally little Ralph came down the stairs to play with his blocks on the living room floor.

And then the front door opened and Betty saw her father’s gray face and thick brown stubble. Mr. Smith stood behind him.

Grandma addressed her son directly. “Tell us about Mary, August. What’s happened?”

“She’s gone, Mother. Six-thirty this morning. Betty, Ralph, you must be very, very brave. Your mother’s gone to heaven. I’m going upstairs for a shower and a shave.”