Authors: Kate Rockland
Shoshana realized with a start he had extended his arm and was offering her a drink.
“Just like me wife,” he said, smiling that crinkly grin again. “Always lost in thought, daydreaming about the world.”
“No, thank you,” she said, putting her hand up as if to ward off the offered drink. “I’m kind of an after-the-sun-goes-down sort of girl.”
“Suit yerself,” he said jovially, sliding it back into the smooth dark silk lining of his inside pocket. “Hair of the dog, and all.” He winked at Patrick O’Leary, who wagged his tail and let out a single bark.
“Joe Murphy,” he said, sticking out his hand. When she grasped it she felt sandpaper slide across her palm.
“Shoshana Weiner.”
“Well.” His mouth hitched up on one side, a smile. “Tell yer the basics on me, sure. Born in Killarney and moved here to Chester back in ta fifties, my farm is just over those hills there.”
She liked him immediately. There was something different about his reaction to her; usually when people encountered Shoshana for the first time their eyes did a sweep of her body, from head to toe, and then back up again, taking in her size. It was almost an unconscious thing, and they would smile at her after doing so, as she had such a warm, inviting face, but the body-sweep thing was so obvious that for someone
not
to care how big she was felt like a relief.
He bent suddenly and ripped a large dandelion weed out of the ground, the dirt falling from it like chunky chocolate chips. His gnarled fingers curled around the dark green stalks. “Been over ’ere ripping these things out for Mimi,” he said. Shoshana looked around the front entrance to the house; there were thousands of dandelions, their yellow faces turned toward the sun, spread among the snapdragons.
Joe Murphy bent down and ripped another one out, holding it with a trembling hand and giving it a great big sniff.
Back among the trees lay many other types of growth, some snaking their way up trunks like gnarled fingers, others pushing through the dirt in a frenzy of knots. The brush was thick, and it would be a hell of a job for whoever cleared it. He startled her by talking. The day had such a hush to it; the woods were thick with muted beauty. “Your great-aunt was really a fine broad. Got a kick out of her. Could drink like a fish.”
“I remember her just a little from when she was still healthy,” Shoshana said. “Um, would you like to come in?” She didn’t normally invite strange men inside, but she figured he looked a hundred and ten, so if he tried anything weird she could probably knock him over with one finger.
“Sure! Used ta come over here all the time for afternoon tea, before Mimi … well, you know. She wasn’t all there in the end, damn near broke my ’art.” He took out his flask, tipped it at the sky in homage to Mimi, and had a deep sip. He again offered Shoshana a swig. She shrugged. What the hell? This was turning into one of the strangest days of her life, and he seemed so comically pleased to share his whiskey with her that she giggled out loud and took the bottle from him as they walked inside. Joe Murphy and Patrick O’Leary followed her, the sound of the dog’s nails on the dry wood floor sounding like tap-dancing.
“Now, you must be the older sister, right? The one who went off ta Princeton?” He pointed, and he was standing close enough to her that the smell of alcohol hit her like a slap. “Mimi always talked about ya girls,” Joe said, leaning a little against the moth-eaten couch. He looked frail in the afternoon light. “She told me the older sister had auburn hair, like hers.” It was true. Shoshana had seen pictures of Mimi when she was young, and she’d had the same long, fire-spun hair as her own. Emily’s hair had been such a myriad of colors for so long she wasn’t sure of its natural color anymore, but as a child it had been blond.
“Did you know my dad?” Shoshana asked.
“Course I knew Bob. Knew ’im since he was this high.” He put a shaky arm out to demonstrate. “My wife and I used to watch ye girls running around here, chasing each other. Ye’d play hide-and-seek in my apple orchard, just like yer dad when he was a little boy,” he said, smiling. “He ever tell you ’bout the time he fell out of one of your aunt’s trees and broke three ribs?”
“No, he never said anything about that,” Shoshana said, surprised. Her father had been a man of very few words, happy instead to listen to his wife and daughters chat. He was shy in many ways. He only spoke when he had something important to say.
“The poor chap. Must have been all of fourteen. Was trying to impress his mates, some boys who grew up down the road. Said he could pick an apple from one of Mimi’s twenty-foot trees blindfolded.”
“Really?” Shoshana exclaimed. She couldn’t imagine her serious father
ever
showing off.
“Heard ’im screaming all the way from my house. Fockin’ banjaxed. Mimi took him to the hospital, smacking him the whole way for being so reckless.” He chuckled, then coughed, his face turning red. “Don’t think he ever climbed ’em trees anymore, used a pick ’en pole rest of the time during harvesting season.”
“What’s a pick ’en pole?” Shoshana asked, walking back to the kitchen to hunt for a bowl to give the dogs some water. She also wanted to ask what “banjaxed” meant, but perhaps she didn’t want to know. She found a large red ceramic bowl covered in dust that she rinsed under the faucet, using her finger to push out the cobwebs.
“Nifty little tool. It’s a big long wooden stick, got a grabber for the high apples, little wee basket underneath to catch ’em, holds about five or six. Mimi’s got some out in that shed, I believe.” He indicated the white structure at the back of the house that was leaning to the right and had long strips of white paint peeling off it, with some flakes sprinkled on the ground like confetti.
“So you knew my dad most of his life, then?” Shoshana asked, leaning over to set the bowl on the floor. Patrick O’Leary gave her an enthusiastic lick on her hand, then began to drink. Sinatra was curled up on the couch, not sure how he felt about his new surroundings and visitors. Every once in a while he’d blow air out of his snout, sending the pouf of hair above his eyebrows straight up.
“When he was older, your old man would come over sometimes for a beer. Great guy. I was sad to hear he’d passed,” Joe said, bowing his head respectfully.
His voice lulled her into memory:
Summer. Pressing her chubby little white hands against the smooth bark of an apple tree, she and Emily in matching white cotton dresses, the feel of tall grass swishing against her thighs as she ran, the feeling of roller-coaster excitement bubbling inside her as her father counted, “One, two, three, four, five, ready or not, here I come!” Pressing her small body as close to the tree as she possibly could to hide herself, the joy in her father finding her and throwing her onto his shoulders, going to look for Emily, who was always hidden in the long, seaweedlike grass, apples strewn around her body like red balls.
“I remember!” Shoshana said now, delighted, her voice sounding loud to her own ears in the soft hush inside this house that was hers but not. “I remember running over that hill and into your fields. You have a huge mansion, right?”
He laughed. “Well, some folks might see it that way. I built it just like Georgina—that’s my wife, see—just as she liked it. Fockin’ saint, she was. She always saw herself living like the Queen of England, I think.” By the way his eyes shone Shoshana could tell it was an inside joke, something he’d teased his wife about many times.
“I remember her,” said Shoshana. “She used to bring us apple pies. Is she … is she still alive?”
“No, oh, no.” He coughed a little, and took out a stiff white handkerchief to wipe his mouth. Shoshana fought the urge to clap him on the back. “Georgina died five years ago. She’s buried right at the base of her favorite tree, ta first apple tree we ever planted,” he said.
“Oh.” Shoshana peered at him.
“Have you been through the house yet?” he asked her, shaking her out of her thoughts. “Mimi was real proud to be able to leave it to one of ye girls, you know. Meant a lot to her.”
“Er, no, I haven’t been through the house, not yet. I guess I should.” She turned to sort through the cupboards, took out two chipped water glasses, and filled them from the tap. A small red beetle made its way lazily over the kitchen’s blue floor tiles. The sun had come back out and it was hitting the green glass in the bottom half of the window, spilling the color onto the sink and counter. She handed a cool glass to Joe, and took a sip herself. The water felt wonderful rushing down her throat. She realized suddenly that she was starving.
“Can’t beat good ol’ Jar-sey tapwater,” Joe said. “Best thing next to Jack, ain’t that the lord’s truth.” Shoshana smiled; Joe Murphy seemed to ask questions and be perfectly content to respond to them himself.
“Cheers.” And they clinked their glasses together.
“That’s just the thing,” she said tentatively. “I was kind of surprised that Aunt Mimi left the house to me. I mean … I loved her, we all did, but I hadn’t been to see her in several years, when she started to … when the Alzheimer’s … when she, um…” She wasn’t sure how to phrase it. Here was a man Mimi’s own age, who might very well be suffering from dementia himself, although she doubted it from the gleam of intelligence in his eyes when he threw back his head and laughed. It was a young man’s laugh. Shoshana heard birds signaling to one another in the back of the house.
“When she was one card short of a full deck?” he asked. “It happens to the best of us. Fock! I’ve been batty for years. It’s a damn shame, a woman as sharp as your aunt Mimi to lose her screws. Sad. The last few years, it’s just been me and her. Thank god for that business, ye know, FreshDirect? Yer mom found out about them and had them deliver food to Mimi when she couldn’t come by. Amazing little company. Crafty idea. Good for us old beans.”
Shoshana sat down at the small wooden table in the kitchen. The top was made up of blue, white, and yellow tiles. She felt overwhelmed. She wished Mimi had never left her this house. What did she know about owning property? It was such a mess, too. She took off her sunglasses and took a deep breath, blowing it out of her mouth like a raspberry. Patrick O’Leary settled down at her feet, crossing one paw over the other. She felt his long, soft fur like a blanket over her ankles. She reached down to scratch him behind one ear, and then smiled when he rolled over, paws up, for her to rub his soft belly, which was spotted with light pink blots. Sinatra made a whining sound. “Oh, be quiet, you little jealous boy,” Shoshana called over to him.
“Can I ask why you named him Patrick O’Leary?” she asked Joe, sitting down next to the dog cross-legged. She felt the floorboards shift beneath her weight. “Isn’t it a mouthful for a dog’s name?”
“Eh! My wife Georgina used to say the same thing. Patrick O’Leary was a skinny lad, lived down the lane from me back in the Aran Islands. Good lad he was, Patrick O’Leary. So skinny ye could see right through ’im. Then we became teenagers, and we would get into little bits of trouble ’ere and there. Patrick O’Leary was arrested, for trying to rob the gas station down the street. Wore his mother’s dress and a wig, took his father’s gun. Wouldn’t ye know it, the lad never had used a gun before, and accidentally shot himself in a place that’s not nice to talk about in front of a lady.” He raised an eyebrow. “We called him ‘Lefty’ afta’ that.”
“And the dog?” Shoshana asked, cupping the animal’s paw in her hand, feeling the roughness of the black pads beneath, dark like tar.
Then, looking down between the dog’s legs, she got it. “Oh. I see. He’s a ‘lefty’ as well.”
“Pound had no idea how that happened, but he’s just as much a man as he could be intact, ain’t that the truth, Patrick O’Leary?”
The dog wagged his tail, his panting mouth open and showing his pink gums, as though he were smiling.
Shoshana burst out laughing. It felt good to laugh. The uncertainty of the day had been pressing at her. “My father would have liked your story,” she said. “He loved dumb robber tales. He used to find them in the paper and cut them out.”
Joe smiled, and took another swig from his flask. “Would ye like me ta help you go through the house? I can tell ye where everything is, I’ve been coming over here so long. And then, an early dinner? I don’t know what ye like, but Greta can fix you anything ye want, she’s our cook, although I’ve recently been informed she don’t want ta be called that anymore.”
Shoshana was struck by two things: One, that this man still referred to Greta as “our,” as in his and his wife Georgina’s, even though Georgina was dead. It was sweet. And two, that he could afford a private cook.
He rolled his eyes. “Women’s lib, and all that. Bunch of cockamamie nonsense, if you ask me.”
Shoshana laughed again. His misogyny was obvious, and thus harmless. “What does she want to be called, then?”
“Master chef, or some such nonsense. Can’t get that woman off me back. Tried to fire her a hundred times over the years, but she wo’t have it.”
Shoshana got the distinct impression Joe was probably very reliant on Greta but didn’t want to admit it. The name sounded familiar, like Shoshana had met her before, when she was young.
He kicked at some crispy leaves lining the floor. “We’ll get some brooms and cleaning things, too. Place will be shinier than a baby’s arse in no time.”
“Um, sure. That sounds great,” she said. She stood, and brought her glass over to the sink. Joe set his water down and she noticed he hadn’t taken a sip.
“I don’t want to bother you,” she said as they walked toward the staircase. Patrick O’Leary, replenished, bounded up ahead of them. Sinatra reluctantly followed, eyeing the other dog and his master suspiciously.
Joe was struck with a sudden bout of coughing. Shoshana reached out and slapped him on the back. “Thanks, lass. Believe me, I ain’t got much to do these days. You showing up is just about the highlight of my year. I’d much rather be around a young person than sit in my armchair and wait for death.”
“Oh.” She was touched, and she kind of liked his macabre sense of humor. She started up the stairs, glancing at the photographs lining the staircase, all black-and-white and tastefully framed. She saw Mimi young again. She was very curvaceous in a neat-looking swing coat, leaning over Marilyn Monroe on the set of
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
to adjust a small pill hat atop Monroe’s head.