After Andrew died I bought a beautiful little house in Chestnut Hill. Martin and Siobhan were finally having children and as tradition dictated, they moved into the big house and I moved into a little house. I took my jewelry box, my wardrobe, and my housekeeper, except that everything in my wardrobe I dyed black. Everything else I bought new from the shops of Philadelphia and New York.
Martin insisted I come for Sunday dinner every week after mass. It’s not that I didn’t want to see them, but I disliked those weekly visits. Siobhan attacked my house like the Devil. Gone were my light walls of beige, blue, green, and white, gone were my French provincial divans, chairs, and cherry wood tables, and gone were the French impressionist paintings I’d bought from the gallery. Siobhan replaced everything with dark and heavy: deep red velvet draperies, dark red and blue rugs, heavy mahogany furniture, foreboding paintings of religious figures. Always the Virgin, too, she looked down at us in every room of that house. Dark, dark, dark.
One at a time, I started refusing Martin’s invitations, even if it meant I’d be seeing less of Patrick, less of little baby Agnes. An adorable grandchild, that one. She’s got red hair and green eyes, just like me. One day, I’ll tell her about being born the year of the Great Famine, growing up poor and waking up every morning, not knowing who’d survive the day, not knowing where the food would come from. And then I’ll tell her our secret, what got us here now. Work like the Devil, I say, work like the Devil.
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