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.