Shining Sea (23 page)

Francis's new bride seems to notice them for the first time. There's something curiously disconnected about the girl—and
girl
is really the word for her. Younger than Sissy, willowy, with straight blond hair and a fragile face. Very pretty, of course. “I told Francis we had to if I was going to move to the United States with him,” Georgina says with a laugh that sounds like running water.

“Well, that's quite the news!” she says. “Welcome, Georgina! Welcome to America!” She doesn't know whether to embrace her new daughter-in-law; something tells her no. She shakes her hand instead, then sits down at the table, watching everyone else do the same. And then, because she doesn't even know where to start, she turns to what sparks hope in her heart. “So you are moving home?”

Francis frowns. “It depends on what you mean by ‘home.' We're going to try out living in America, yes. But not California. Not the West.”

Patty Ann shoots her a warning look—has she already been too intrusive?—before exclaiming, “All these years, all these brothers and all these sons, I always had only one sister. Now I have
two
. This is a reason to celebrate!”

“Oh, isn't that sweet.” Georgina's smooth English accent makes it hard to tell whether the words are meant to be sincere or sarcastic.

“What about Mike's wife?” she says. All she did was ask whether he was moving back. He brought it up first. Or, really, his surprise
bride
did.

“Ha!” Patty Ann says. “Right.
Holly
.”

“Holly is Mike's wife,” she says to Francis and Georgina. It's hard to know what Francis is up to date on. He may have resurfaced, but it's not like he's suddenly become anyone's pen pal, and this is—at least as far as she knows—his first visit back to the United States. Although maybe he has been back without telling her. He stopped in New York City on the way here, but even that much she only knows from Jeanne, who heard it from Molly. Molly apparently neglected to mention he brought along a wife. They always were thick as thieves, Francis and Molly.

Patty Ann drinks from her wineglass. “Holly is
very
enthusiastic.”

“I've met Holly,” Francis says, looking uncomfortable, as though it's cost him to say it. And then she remembers. Holly was with Mike in Paris when Mike caught and then lost Francis. Mike blamed himself so terribly for that, afterward.
I should have known better than to let him out of my sight. I mean, this was Francis.

She waves her hand. “Well, congratulations.”

“We didn't want to make a fuss,” Francis says. “It was very last-minute. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to tell you.”

Apologizing seems to be part of the new Francis. Please, God, don't let him be in a twelve-step program. One in the family is more than enough.

“Shall we order a bottle of Champagne?” Ronnie says.

Again, that silvery laugh. “Always,” says Georgina.

Patty Ann raises her glass. “We should go out after dinner to some places I know, Georgina. I'll show you Los Angeles.”

“No,” Francis says swiftly.

Patty Ann takes a slug of her wine and sets it down heavily on the table. “What do you mean ‘no'? I wasn't talking to you, Francis, anyhow. I was talking to your bride. My new
sister
.”

“No,” Francis says again, quietly. He puts his arm around Georgina. “Hello, Sean. You've become a man since I last saw you.”

“What do you mean,
no?
” Patty Ann stands up and throws her napkin down on the table. “I'm going out for a smoke.”

“She's excited to see you,” Glenn says to Francis, shrugging. “She's excited to have you here in Los Angeles. Family is everything to Patty Ann.”

“Waiter?” Ronnie says, lifting a hand, looking around to find one.

“Never mind us,” she tells Georgina. “We're all mixed up because of the earthquake this morning. I'm sorry you had to experience that.”

Georgina claps her slim pale hands together. Yes, there's the wedding band. A single band, but studded with diamonds. Where would Francis get the money for something like that? He couldn't have gotten it from the record company; he's signing a contract this visit. In Ireland, he said he was supporting himself by working in construction. “The earthquake? Oh, that was so fabulous!”

“Georgina, some people died,” Francis says. “There was a lot of damage.”

“Oh, darling. Of course, it's awful people were hurt. But it's good to be reminded about the power of the earth, isn't it?”

“That's what sunrises and sunsets are for.”

“No, darling, that's the power of the
sun
.”

“Okay. Then gravity.”

“Speaking of
which,
” Georgina says, frowning. “
Someone
is acting a little heavy.”

“Speaking of which,” Glenn says, setting his glass of Coca-Cola down. “The David fell over again.”

She and Ronnie look at him, grateful. “Who's that?” Ronnie asks.

“The
David
in Forest Lawn cemetery. The replica of Michelangelo's statue. It fell over during the 1971 earthquake also, smashed to pieces. Or maybe that was in a different Forest Lawn cemetery. Anyhow, this one fell on grass, which cushioned the fall, so just a few pieces. It's made from Carrara marble, brought from Italy.”

“Glenn is training to be a stonemason,” she tells Francis and Georgina.

“I'm a sculptor,” Glenn says, smiling.

“And he's a sculptor,” she says.

“This quake wasn't like other ones, you know? It felt like being on a boat in a terrible storm,” Glenn says. “I used to go out fishing with my
abuelo
in Tecuala? It felt like that. Not a rocking back and forth, like most earthquakes. More like a bouncing up and down.”

Patty Ann apparently hasn't told Glenn much about Francis, or else Glenn has forgotten. One night during her and Patty Ann's stay in Dublin, a bunch of locals in a pub started singing a sea ballad, and Francis said something about writing a few of his own, about an experience he had had on the sea between Ireland and Scotland. There was something in his face when he said it, something that stuck with her. After she got back to Scottsdale, she searched through the news microfilm at the central library and found the whole terrible story.

“Oh,” she says quickly, “let's—”

“Yes,” Francis says evenly. “It felt like that.”

Ronnie lays his hand on hers under the table. “Did you know,” he says, “some biblical scholars argue that David wasn't really the one who slew Goliath? I read all about it in
National Geographic
. Or maybe it was
USA Today
.”

“David now?” Patty Ann says, plopping down in her seat again, bringing the scent of cigarette smoke to the table. “Can't we have any heroes?”

“That doesn't take any hero away. It just means we called one by the wrong name. And anyhow, David was still a hero. You know what for first?” Ronnie smiles. He's looking better since their walk this afternoon. “As a musician.”

“I thought he was a shepherd. Remember catechism class?” Patty Ann says, turning to Francis. “What was that awful woman's name? I'm sure you had her also.
Everyone
had her.”

Francis makes a face. “I remember.”

“Mrs. Dawson,” Patty Ann says. “Her name was Mrs. Dawson.”

“David could soothe King Saul with his lyre,” Ronnie says. “That's how he got his start. It was an important talent.”

“Well, here's to all of us,” she says, lifting her glass, trying not to watch Patty Ann refilling hers again. “Musicians and not. Here's to being together. My cup runneth over.”

Everyone looks at her. Georgina starts to laugh, that tinkling laugh, then Patty Ann starts to laugh, and then they all are laughing.

“Good grief,” she says. “Let's order.”

After their food comes, things improve. It turns out Georgina is funny and, despite the accent, not nearly as snobby as first impressions suggested. And it's nice to see how comfortable Francis is with her. It's hard to remember Francis ever seeming so at ease with anyone outside the family or even in the family, other than maybe Molly. Anyone, of course, other than Eugene.

And then it hits her. There's something about Georgina that reminds her of Eugene. Not just the way Georgina doesn't seem in thrall to Francis's beauty. Georgina has the same odd combination of optimism and cynicism as that funny, wiry kid always had.

She won't say so, though. Eugene might belong on the list of topics that can't be mentioned, and things are going so well—she doesn't want to say or do anything that might scare Francis away again. After dinner, he even agrees to come over to Patty Ann's house to meet Lucas, who, Patty Ann says, should be home now.

“Plus you can tell Mom to stop worrying that the house might fall down around my ears,” Patty Ann says to Francis once they're all outside the restaurant. “You worked in construction, right? You can tell us whether it's solid.”

Francis laughs. “Am I getting in between something?”

Patty Ann makes an innocent face. “Not at all, not at all…”

“You kids,” she says, and for a second it almost feels like years ago.

“Want to come with me, Georgina?” Ronnie jangles the keys to his car. “Let Francis go with his mother?”

Georgina slips her arm into his. “Delighted.”

Francis's rental car is parked a block away, a yellow convertible with the top rolled down. “She's nice. Your Georgina,” she says, sliding into the passenger seat.

Francis fits the key in the ignition. “Do you want me to put the top up? Georgina saw it in the rental lot. She insisted.”

“No. I'm all right.”

They pull onto the street. The evening air feels warm and thick. It's odd sitting next to her youngest son while he drives—last time they sat like this he was still a kid, probably not even twenty-one. Now he's a man. His cheekbones are sharper now, his skin no longer so fine. His blond hair has darkened. He still looks like his father, but mostly he looks like himself.

“Did you have your meeting after all? About the record?”

“We did.”

She cups her hand over her hair against the wind, looks out over the streets of Santa Monica. “You always loved that guitar of yours. I remember when you went out and bought it with Eugene.” When he doesn't say anything, she adds. “Well, I think it's great. Good for you, Francis.”

Francis is silent. They drive several more blocks, the dark running through her hair. She can't smell the sea, but she can feel it is close. They come to a crossroads, and Francis slows to a stop.

He turns to look at her.

“I was a disappointment,” he says. “Mike was strong and steady. Luke was smart and funny. Patty Ann was…like an arrow. And Sissy was
Sissy
. I was just, you know, pretty. I could never live up to any of you.”

It takes her breath away. “Is that how you think?”

Francis just looks at her. Even in the night, his eyes are so clear and blue—even more Michael's eyes now than they were when he was still a boy. Her youngest son has seen things. Like Michael, he has stories he may never tell.

“You are so stupid, Francis,” she says.

He laughs softly. “That doesn't help.”

“That's not how it is when you have children. To me, each and every one of you was—
is
—perfect. Even Patty Ann, who has given me a headache for, well, basically since the day your father died, is still utterly perfect to me. You were, all of you, the
best
kids in the entire world. That's what it means to be a mother. You'll see when you and your girl start having children.”

Behind them, a car honks.

“I may be perfect, but I don't think I can ever be a mother,” Francis says, putting the convertible back in motion.

“You know what I mean. You were all perfect to your father also. We didn't say this one is
a
and that one is
b
. We said this one
wants
that and that one
wants
this. That's how parents think about their children. You'll see.”

They drive again in silence until they reach Patty Ann's desolate street. Shadows have fallen over the overgrown trees, the yard, the boarded-up houses around it. The Pacific whispers gently in the viscous night air. Ronnie has taken the space behind Patty Ann's in the driveway. Francis pulls up next to the sidewalk.

“I don't know about having children,” Francis says.

“Oh, you'll have kids,” she says. “Georgina is too pretty not to have a child.
You're
too pretty not to have a child.”

He looks at her. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. They both laugh.

“I'm proud of you, Francis,” she says. “Always proud of you.”

“Hey, you two! Are you coming in?” Patty Ann calls from the porch.

Another aftershock hits, bouncing the convertible just a little. They wait to be sure it's not the big one, then walk toward the porch together. She slips her hand through his arm. It feels like something she's been waiting to do since forever.

E
VERYONE'S ELBOWING SOMEONE FOR
something in New York City. Two women in skintight jogging clothes, pushing three-wheeled strollers down West 81st Street, practically knock her over. A cluster of fat-bodied pigeons fights over a scrap of pizza. And there's that woman standing on the same corner as yesterday evening: missing one of her front teeth, sticking her dirty hand out into the path of every person who passes.

Twelve hours since she arrived at Kennedy Airport. In another three days, she'll be back on a plane again, heading home to Phoenix. The backyard immaculately landscaped, the small clean pool—everything spotless, even more so now that she's the only one living in the town house in Scottsdale.
Are you going to move back to California?
the kids asked after Ronnie's funeral. But move to where? Southern California, where back in the 1960s, she lost the first of her husbands? Northern California, where half a century ago she left behind the unmarried version of herself? What did the kids think the twenty years she'd spent in Arizona had been? An extended visit?

All
of life is an extended visit. There's no visiting within the visit.

She reaches the corner. She might have returned to Southern California had Patty Ann really needed her. She might even have moved into that big house in Venice with her and Glenn, helping out with the two younger boys. But even if Isaiah hadn't joined his father, living in that canyon, he still would have grown up. Lucas would have grown up, too. And where would that have left her? An old lady living with her middle-aged daughter, nothing to do, no one to do it for?

The beggar woman is muttering something, moving toward her. A yellow car beams up Amsterdam Avenue—a taxi. She thrusts a hand out, like she's seen on television and in the movies. The taxi swerves dangerously to the left, cutting off other traffic, screeching to a stop beside her. She opens the door and slides in before the begging woman can get any closer.

“Broadway and One Hundred and Sixteenth Street,” she says. “And try to drive less like a crazy person, please.”

The driver—a dark-skinned man with a turban wrapped around his head—turns to look at her. “Okay, lady.” He peels back into traffic. She takes hold of her armrest as they dart uptown along the streets of New York City.

At least she won't be late for Kenny's graduation ceremony. They all offered to come fetch her: Kenny, his girlfriend—although she hasn't met her yet—and even Molly, in her own fashion.
I can't get free before noon myself, Aunt Barbara, but I can have a car waiting right in front of your hotel.
I'll give instructions to the driver.
Sweet of them, of course, but she can get there on time and in one piece by herself.

Don't worry about me, dear,
she told Molly.
I made it to seventy years old
.
I can make it two miles north in New York City.

The cab veers wildly to the curb and jerks to a stop in front of Columbia University's tall main gates. The sidewalk teems with people. She pays the cabdriver, tipping him what she hopes is a correct amount, and picks her way through the gaggles of girls, tippy in high-heeled sandals beneath graduation robes, and anxious parents. Everyone graduating from Columbia's undergraduate and graduate schools is part of this morning ceremony. There will be a second, private ceremony for the medical school this afternoon.

Dr. Kennedy Gannon Rosetti.

Just thinking those four words makes her heart leap. She's come two miles uptown and a lot further than that to get her grandson here today.

She parts friend from friend, husband from wife, making her way toward a campus guard, her entrance ticket safely tucked inside the navy blue purse she bought special for this occasion. It's been years since she had a flock of kids following her, but, like living through earthquakes, the physical memory of those decades never leaves her. How much easier it is to move through crowds as just one person! A warm hand lands on her shoulder.

“Grandma!”

Kenny's face is flushed and happy. In his free hand, he wields an outlandishly oversize latex glove, some sort of totem for the graduation ceremony.

“Kenny! How in the world did you find me in this mess of people?” His light blue gown with black trim, the emerald green sash around his neck, and the velvety black mortarboard set off his clear eyes. The robe accentuates his height—the one physical attribute he clearly got from his Gannon genes. But he inherited something still more important from them. She has to catch her breath. Four generations of doctors, starting with Michael's father. She straightens his cap. “My, my, don't you look like a swell!”

A tall girl with close-set blue eyes and olive skin homes in on them. “It's kismet!” the girl says, revealing a set of showily perfect teeth.

“Grandma,” Kenny says, “This is Jennifer Cohen. Jennifer, this is my grandma.”

She takes Jennifer's hand. So this is the girl her grandson likes.

Jennifer has thick dark hair that hangs almost to her waist. Her flowery, thin-strapped sundress does nothing to minimize a massive bosom. There's something different about her, something unlike girls back in Arizona. Not uncomely, just different. Kenny's been in New York seven years now, studying in Columbia's joint MD-PhD program.

“I am very happy to meet you, Jennifer,” she says. A group of students brushes past, jostling her new purse. Not only does it go with her trim peach-colored pantsuit, it also has a secure closure so no unwanted hands can slip into it. Nonetheless, she tucks it in under her arm.

“And I you, Mrs. McCloskey. You're just how Kenny described you, except even prettier!”

She laughs. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me, dear. Kenny, shouldn't you be in there already? With your classmates? Lord, look at all these people! What a mess. How am I ever going to get a seat?”

“Stay cool, Grandma. Jennifer will take care of you. Did you bring binoculars like I told you?”

“Don't tell me to stay cool,” she says. “You may be a doctor now, but I am still your boss.”

Kenny laughs. He bends down and kisses her cheek.

She and Jennifer have to walk around the block and enter the campus via the gates on West 114th Street, pressing their way through the hordes of people.

“Did you sleep all right? Is your room okay?” Jennifer asks.

Her room is nice enough, with a view of the steep blue-green rooftops of the American Museum of Natural History and a cushion of leafy trees. But so small! No wonder New Yorkers are always busting their personalities out all over, living in such small spaces. “It's dandy,” she says, skirting around two girls tearfully hugging, then skipping a little to keep from falling over a stroller. “Everything is dandy.”

Inside the 114th Street gates, the campus stretches as long as a football field. A podium has been set up on the stone steps in front of a beige-colored dome-topped library, and rows of folding chairs line the lawns and walks facing it. There seem to be thousands of them.

“You have one more year, Jennifer?” she says.

“Yes! One more year and, fingers crossed, I'll be here wearing my own cap and gown.”

“In social work? You'll be a doctor of social work?”

Jennifer nods. “A PhD from the School of Social Work.”

They've walked up to the middle of the sea of chairs now, toward the division between visitor seating and the seating for the day's graduates. The world around them is a flurry of excitement. People taking seats, taking pictures, taking stock of where they are on this May morning in 1996 that means so much to them.

“Kenny told me you met working with some of the same patients. But social work—you're not a medical doctor. I didn't quite understand that.”

“We were both volunteers at the Gay Health Advocacy Project. I also want to focus on AIDS work. So no, not a medical doctor, but I do work with medical patients.” Jennifer pauses, then adds, “I'm particularly interested in working with the families of HIV-positive patients, though.”

Well. Kenny never told her that.

“That's nice,” she says and turns away before Jennifer can say anything further. This is a great day, a happy day! Nothing can spoil it. There are two side-by-side chairs toward the very front of the visitor seating that seem to be empty. She points. “Come on.”

When Kenny called to say he'd be returning to Arizona for his residency, she almost jumped for joy. When he specified that the residency would be in infectious diseases down at U of A in Tucson, and that he was going to pursue clinical AIDS research, it was like the wind being knocked out of her. Tucson, not Phoenix? And after all these years of study, after earning both an MD and a PhD, he wasn't going to be a medical doctor, like his grandfather, his great-grandfather, his uncle? Instead, HIV research? Of all medical ailments, did he have to choose that one?
That's nice,
she said.
There's that nice outdoor museum in Tucson
. She's avoided the subject since.

“I don't believe those are free,” Jennifer says. “You see those—”

She pushes her way forward again. New Yorkers aren't the only ones who know how to hustle. “Oh, thank heavens!” she says to the middle-aged man seated beside the two empty seats. There's a little sweater on one and a doll on the other. “I was just about giving up on catching so much as a glimpse of my grandson's graduation.”

“I'm sorry,” he says. He gestures to a third empty chair on the other side of him. “My wife is just letting the girls run around a bit until the ceremony begins.”

“Lucky you!” she says, “Getting to sit back and relax while your wife does all the running after the children. Well!” She picks up the tiny sweater. “They must be little, too. Two years? Three years?”

“Olivia's going to be three in July,” he says. “And—”

“Three in July! So she didn't have a ticket.” She hands him the sweater and sits down, reaching next for the doll. “Don't worry. They'll be happier on your laps anyhow. They'll see better and squirm less. I know. I raised five of them. Six, if you count my grandson.” She places the doll in his arms. “He's the one graduating today.”

By the time the wife is back, she and the guy are regular old friends. Small and sharp-faced, with a sleek dark ponytail, the wife looks set to kick up a fuss, but the husband stops her: “Dina, this is Barbara. She's flown all the way here from Arizona on her own—”

“Twice widowed,” she says, shaking her head.

“—to see her grandson graduate from the medical school.”

“His mother couldn't come,” she explains. “No one else in the family could come. One of my sons is with the army, and another has a farm and couldn't leave it. My third son—or, actually my second son—isn't with us anymore.”

“I'm sorry,” the woman says, looking suspicious, as though something more is about to be asked from her than is possible to give.

“I miss him every day,” she says. Because what else is there to say? “And then my youngest daughter is over somewhere in Africa. Working. So she couldn't come, either. My grandson has a few younger brothers, but he didn't grow up with them—because he grew up with me, see. And his brothers couldn't come all the way from California, anyhow. That's where they live. Which means I'm on my own. But I wouldn't have missed this day for anything.”

“Well, congratulations.” Looking overwhelmed by all this information, the woman takes one of the kids onto her lap and extracts a box of cinnamon Teddy Grahams from her bag. The other kid clambers around her knees until the man thinks to pick her up also.

“Second wife,” she whispers to Jennifer. “Kid from first wife graduating today.” Not all stepparents show the kind of love and interest Ronnie did for her children. It was a blessing, and she's aware of it. In a way, Kenny was the kid they had together. Whatever people may now want to say about her and Ronnie, they can't say he wasn't a good stepfather and step-grandfather.

“Here's the program, Mrs. McCloskey,” Jennifer says, handing her a thick piece of white paper.

The crowd is beginning to still. She settles in her seat. The ivy-covered stone buildings rise up around them, so handsome, so stately, so solid. Here she is at an Ivy League graduation—could her parents have ever imagined this? And Michael! A fourth Gannon doctor. How would it be if, instead of Jennifer, Michael were here beside her? White-haired, but still tall and blue-eyed and handsome? Because Michael would have never stopped being handsome—the first thing she thought the first time she lay eyes on him was he was the handsomest man she'd ever seen, even propped up in his hospital bed and so underweight, his skin yellow from the jaundice, spotted with red dry patches from the malnutrition.

Will you come back again tomorrow?

You bet. I'll come back to see you as often as you'd like me to
.

But if Michael hadn't died, if he could be here, she wouldn't be. Because everything would have been different. Patty Ann would never have married a loser at eighteen to keep him from being drafted and then dived into a second marriage with that monster. Michael would never have let any of that happen. Patty Ann would have gone to Vassar, and then who knows? Maybe Patty Ann, always so bright, would have gotten her own medical degree right here at Columbia.

And Kenny—apple of her eye—would never have been born.

The thing about life is it is so damned confusing. Such a web, each piece of it dependent on something else, something that can be as tiny as a smile from a stranger or as huge as heart disease. The good all tangled up with the bad.

Bells toll. The crowd quiets. Horns play, followed by orchestra music. Grouped by school, the graduates begin to file down the stone steps flanking the library to their respective places before the podium. Extracting the binoculars from her purse, she scans the beaming faces coming in waves, the unending flow of blue cloth. One cluster of kids carries foreign flags; another brandishes newspapers. And there they are, the medical school students, with their oversize latex gloves!