Eternal Journey (11 page)

She always appreciated this ride up island. If she hadn’t known she was in the United States, she would have sworn, judging
from the scenery, she was in western England on her way to Cornwall, or out on the Dingle peninsula in Ireland. The road lined
with the stone hedges was missing only the sheep farmer strolling with his herd. It was quite deserted this Sunday, with only
a few of the chimneys emitting tiny trails of smoke. Anna decided to take the long way around to the lighthouse once she reached
the fork in the road at the tip of the island.

As she turned the Explorer onto the road paralleling the coast, Anna saw flashes reminiscent of the breathtaking drive along
the Pacific between Monterey and Carmel. She could almost hear the seals barking out on the big rock off the Monterey peninsula.
Always moved by the view, she was mesmerized by its majesty. And today, with just a hint of mist sneaking back over the brown
mounds of sand, the landscape was especially beautiful.

She knew she could pull into any one of the private beach accesses this time of year, but she didn’t. Anna had always been
respectful of people’s privacy, maybe too much so, which was somewhat of an odd trait for one who spent each day probing into
others’ psyches. But that was done, of course, at their request. So she drove the length of the road and pulled into the vacant
lot next to the path leading to the beach. It was strange to see it so empty. Anna could not remember a time when she hadn’t
seen at least a bicycle hidden somewhere. But today it looked as though she was the lone visitor to this hallowed land.

Anna carefully navigated her way down the long narrow path, which was riddled with mud puddles from yesterday’s rain showers.
Once on the boardwalk that would take her to the beach, Anna checked her watch. It was close to ten o’clock. Working backward
from her flight time of two-twenty, she calculated she had about an hour and a half left to collect her thoughts before leaving
the island.

After a day like yesterday, Anna wasn’t sure if she had the capacity for any feeling at all. She wasn’t tired, or sad, or
confused, or relieved, or peaceful. She just
was.
She walked forever, looking out at the water and then down at the sand, occasionally stopping to examine a rock or a shell.
It was during one of those movements from stooping to upright that she caught a glimpse of a figure in the distance. He was
walking toward her from the far side of the huge cliff. She knew instantly it was him.

Neither one of them changed pace or showed recognition. As he came fully into focus, her mouth turned upward into a big smile
and a feeling of joy filled her heart. She knew he felt the same way.

They met at the big flat rock and, without speaking, almost in unison climbed up, sat Indian style, and looked out to the
sea. Her hand reached over and touched his, and she turned and looked into his eyes.

Anna would swear later that they talked for at least an hour. They talked about everything. He told her all about his life,
from his childhood up to when he met Beth. He had been the fourth born of seven boys, and had grown up in the projects in
Newark, New Jersey. John’s father had been a hard-drinking truck driver.

“He probably did whiskey shots and beer seven days a week for fifty years. He never missed a day of work, had an accident,
or even had a fight that I knew of,” John said as he looked out to sea. “You would say he was a functional alcoholic, Annie,
and he was, but back then we just considered it being Irish.”

John’s mother cleaned other people’s houses in addition to her own, of course, never once complaining. She washed, starched,
and ironed all seven boys’ shirts for as long as John could remember.

“What I remember was the rash we all got from too much starch,” he said as he pulled down the top of his turtleneck to show
Anna the permanent etching around his neck. John shrugged his shoulders and said with a smile, “Those collars are probably
why I entered the seminary. My mother told me it was a sign from God, a stigmata of sorts. I figured it was training for the
Roman collar I’d wear as an adult.”

“You miss your mother very much, don’t you, John?” Anna asked softly. She could see it in his eyes.

“Annie, can you imagine how hard that woman worked? Just think about the shirts alone. Seven boys each needing a fresh shirt
each day, five days a week, for close to twenty years, if you figure that all of us were in school for at least that long.
The Duffy boys, A to S, that’s what we were called. Adam, Frances, James, then me, Patrick, Kevin, and Sean. There are two
lawyers, one physician, an architect, a priest, and a college professor.

“Two college professors, actually, if you give me two jobs.” He grinned. “James is a biologist and teaches at Saint John’s
in New York. Quite an accomplishment for two working poor Irish folks, don’t you think, Annie? My father put food on the table,
but my mother put the heart and soul into our home. I will never forget her hands, those raw, red cracked hands that slapped
and soothed each of us into who we are today. She was—no,
is
—a saint.”

He looked at her as he smiled and said, “Now, don’t start with that analysis of yours. I know what you’re thinking. Irish
men and their reverence for their mothers, and all that. She was a wonderful woman.”

Anna smiled back, but she didn’t protest, because that indeed was what she had been thinking.

He told her how he felt the call to be a priest, all about his seminary years, the parishes he had served, and about the academic
post he eventually earned. He had a doctorate, of course, and taught theology at Fairfield University in Connecticut. It was
after his first few years there that he had begun to feel lost.

Anna listened intently as he told her his life story—she calculated he must be in his early fifties.

“I just turned fifty-two last month, Annie,” he said with a smile. “And no, I really don’t think it represented my ‘midlife’
crisis.”

“Will you stop reading my mind!” Anna laughed with him.

He was serious again when he told her about meeting Beth a year ago, and what she came to mean to him. “She reminded me so
much of my mother. Such a quiet strength, such a determined character,” John said, gazing at the blue sky. “She was so much
like the mother I want to remember. She died just three years ago when she was eighty, but her soul had left long before that.”

Puzzled by the remark, Anna slowly turned and looked toward him.

“My mother was never the same, Annie,” he said very softly, “after Kevin was killed.”

There are moments in life when all of nature, every element in our physical surroundings, just stops. There is some piece
of news so shocking, or an experience so intense, usually in its horror and only rarely in its beauty, that we literally freeze
in the moment. A plane falls from the sky, a building is leveled, a beloved leader is mortally wounded. Horrific moments revealed
by a glance at a headline or the flip of a knob. News that shatters dreams, for victim and survivor alike; news that becomes
frozen forever in our collective consciousness.

Each among us, if we live long enough, will experience such pain and shock at least once in our private lives. There will
be some news, event, or experience that sears through our essence to the very core of our being. A phone will ring, a letter
will be delivered, a doctor or nurse will avoid our eyes, and our world will be forever altered in an instant.

Anna had experienced this feeling twice in her life before the moment she sat with Father John Duffy on the top of the flat
rock at Gay Head. The most recent time was when, just a little over eighteen months ago, her gynecologist had told her she
had an ovarian tumor. The other—well, it was when Beth had handed her the letter from Kevin’s mother.

Anna’s heart stopped in her chest; the ocean stood perfectly still and the breeze ceased to flutter. Anna Carroll’s world
came to a complete halt.

Anna would not remember how much time had passed as she stared into his eyes. “How long have you known?” she asked.

“I didn’t really piece it all together until we were walking yesterday morning on Chappaquiddick,” John said, “that’s why
I left you and walked away. The revelation came to me in a flash, and I just had to leave.”

Anna was sure she was sobbing. There were no tears, just a pounding in her chest and in her ears. But she needed to hear what
he had to say.

“Kevin was two years younger than me. He would have been fifty in September. He was the brightest of us all, the heart and
brains of the family, and none of us have really gotten over his death either, Annie.”

John was crying now. He continued, “I am so happy to know about you and him, and, at the same time, I feel terrible that none
of us had any idea about the extent of your relationship. We knew there had been a girlfriend, of course, but Kevin was always
very private about that kind of thing. I guess we should have known by the letter he had left for my mother in case of his
death.”

Anna slowly turned her head, looked down, and took an envelope out of his hand.

“I never saw the letter until Mom died three years ago,” John said. “She had kept it all these years in a small cigar box
by her bed. There were a few other things in there, but it was this letter that moved us the most.”

With trembling hands, Anna touched the paper as if it were made of fragile glass. She held on to it for what seemed an eternity.
He carefully and gently pulled each one of her shaking fingers back, took the letter out of the envelope, and began to read:

Dear Ma,

I know you wouldn’t be reading this unless you needed to, so I know all of you are in a lot of pain right now. First let me
say that I love you all very much. I know this is a difficult time for you, but I hope you can find some comfort in knowing
this is God’s plan for me.

Ma, I need you to do something for me. There is a wonderful girl at school who needs to know what has happened. I’m sorry
now I never told any of you about her, or her about all of you, but—well, you know me, I was never too good at doing the proper
thing. Anyway, her name is Annie and she needs to know. It would mean everything to me if you were the one to tell her I’m
gone.

Between you and me, Ma, I love her like nothing else in the world. I honestly thought I’d be lucky enough to beat this stupid
mess, and we’d be together forever. I thought I’d come home, go to law school, become a successful lawyer, and together Annie
and I would have lots of kids and change the world at the same time.

I’m sorry you never got to meet her, Ma. She is smart and fun to be with, but what I love best about her is that she doesn’t
give a hoot what other people think. Annie has the rest of her life to live, and we’ve only known each other a short time,
so instead of her, I’m telling you. She is the love of my life, Ma, forever and always, I just know it. I’m telling you this,
Ma, because I love you too much to let you go on thinking I hadn’t found her.

Tell all the guys I’ll do what I can for you and them from up here. And tell Pop to stop drinking. That stuff will kill him
one of these days.

Love always.

Your son,

Kevin

Anna would never remember how long it was before she was composed enough to speak. And when she was, John told her the most
wonderful stories of the boy-man she knew so long ago, for so short a time. Kevin had been twenty-two, and Anna only twenty.
She had never let herself think or fantasize about what their future would or could have been together had he not been killed.
She had just pushed all the pain right out of her heart, and tried to get on with her life.

Anna sat with John, looking into the sea, and her eyes filled with tears as she finally allowed herself to see and feel the
wonderful boy with the curly black hair and sparkling blue eyes. She could smell him again and her heart filled with anguish
and joy. Every fiber of her being ached and longed for him in a way she wouldn’t have thought possible after so many years.
For a brief, intense flash, Kevin was alive again in her heart.

Anna looked down at the paper in her hand, and whispered, “I loved him with all my heart, John, and when he died, a large
part of my soul went with him.”

As she said the words aloud for the first and only time in her life, a great sense of joy mixed with indescribable sorrow
filled her soul. And in that moment, she knew, without a doubt, that her life had been what it was because that was the way
it was meant to be.

John and Anna sat on the rock looking out at the ocean for what seemed like a very long time. They spoke to each other from
their hearts. Their tears eventually dried, leaving streaks and stiffness on their cheeks. Anna would look back on that day
and know she would have stayed there forever had John not been the first to go.

“I have to leave now, Annie. It really is time for me to go. Meeting you has helped me make a very difficult decision. Words
cannot express how happy I am to know you. Annie, remember today for the rest of your life, and know that you will be in my
heart for all time. We have forever to sort this all out, but now I really must go.”