One Year (12 page)

“T
his is so exciting,” Jeannette whispered. She was wearing her best dress and had taken extra care with her hair.

“He's just a person like every one of us,” Mary Bernadette whispered back. She was wearing a small diamond stickpin in the lapel of her jacket. “He was perfectly charming at our meeting.”

The two women had been the first to arrive at the Wilson House. Finally, every member of the board was in attendance, even Anne, who had had to close her shop in order to attend the quickly organized meeting, and Joyce, who must have called in sick.
Her students must be relieved
, Mary Bernadette thought, and she wasn't sorry for the sentiment.

“Ah,” Mary Bernadette said, “here he is.”

Wynston Meadows came into the room with a smile and a nod of greeting. Mary Bernadette introduced him to each member of the board in turn. He had a kind or flattering word for each. When everyone had taken seats around the oval table, Mary Bernadette began the meeting.

“As you all know by now,” she intoned, “Mr. Wynston Meadows, Oliver's Well's latest resident, has expressed an interest in becoming a member of the board of the Oliver's Well Historical Association. In your own words, Mr. Meadows, will you share the reasons behind your interest in becoming one of us?”

Wynston Meadows nodded. “I would be delighted,” he said. “Most of you probably don't know that for many years my grandfather managed the county historical society museum in Smithstown. In fact, he lived on the second floor of the museum. When I was a boy I spent many an hour alone there when it was closed to the public, and I developed a love for the history of the region. Grandpa was a history buff, of course, and he'd often take me to visit old houses and historical sites—battlefields and whatnot. I've always looked back on those days as heaven. Now that I have the resources, and now that I'm a local, I feel a duty to help the Oliver's Well Historical Association with its important work.”

Wallace began to clap, and the others joined in. “Commendable,” Neal said. “What a wonderful story,” Anne commented. Mary Bernadette nodded. Her expectations had been fulfilled. Here was a man who honored the important work of his grandfather, much as PJ was honoring the work of his own grandfather.

“Now, lest you think I'm getting in over my head”—and here, Wynston Meadows paused for the expected chuckles—“I'm a donor to several other historically minded missions, and I hold a spot on the D.C. Landmarks Commission. I think I can be of some service to you here in charming Oliver's Well.”

Mary Bernadette looked to Leonard. He nodded. She looked to Neal and to Richard. They, too, were in agreement. A formal vote would not be necessary.

Mary Bernadette cleared her throat. “I speak for every member of the board then when I say welcome, Mr. Meadows, to the Oliver's Well Historical Association. We look forward to many a year of benefiting from your knowledge and experience.”

Wynston Meadows bowed his head in acknowledgment, and there was more applause. When it had died down, he rose from his seat. “I'm very pleased that you have accepted my plea. But now, I'm afraid I have to be off. Relocating is hell, as I'm sure everyone here knows. The moving company damaged my grand piano, and I've got an angry phone call to make.”

“You'll receive an e-mail regarding the time and date of the next meeting,” Neal told him.

“Until then.” Wynston Meadows left the room, which immediately erupted in excited chatter. Wallace thought that the OWHA might now be able to enter one of the nationwide competitions for best restoration and beautification of a historical property. “Meadows's money,” he said, “will finally help us go up against those other bigger and
hitherto
better funded historical societies.”

Joyce had ideas of her own. “I've always thought the OWHA deserved national coverage,” she said. “Why shouldn't one of us appear on a show like
Good Morning America
? Mr. Meadows's money could make that happen. He's bound to know people who could put us in touch with the networks. Maybe he even knows Oprah!”

“With money like his,” Jeannette said, eyes shining, “the sky's the limit!”

“Virtue, not money, is everlasting wealth.”

“What was that, Mary Bernadette?” Neal asked.

Mary Bernadette smiled and waved her hand dismissively.

Joyce turned to Anne. “Isn't he a handsome man?” she whispered. “In the old-fashioned way, not like one of these photoshopped boys you see on-screen today.”

Anne nodded. “His eyes remind me of Richard Burton's. So clear and intense.”

“Now, ladies,” Leonard said. “It doesn't matter what the man looks like as long as he proves a devoted member of the OWHA. And he hasn't made any specific promises of financial support yet. Patience!”

Joyce rolled her eyes at Anne.

“I'll give a welcoming party at my house,” Norma announced. “Say, a week from Saturday? I'll send invitations to all of the important business owners and other noteworthy people in Oliver's Well.”

Mary Bernadette nodded. In truth, she would have liked to have hosted the welcoming party but had to admit that Norma's house was more suited to a large affair than her own. So she would let Norma have the honor of being hostess to Wynston Meadows because she was sure that she, Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon, would be the one to appear on television once the OWHA became well known for its purchase and restoration of the Branley Estate. She
was
the senior member, the chairman, and the board's official spokesperson after all, and she could say without exaggeration that she made a fine appearance. Dignified without being stuffy, with the proper degree of wit and humor. And, she thought, in matters of preservation, age
always
trumped youth.

“Do you remember that about twenty years ago the OWHA produced a short film about the society's founding and early years?” Neal asked then.

Richard nodded. “And it would be wonderful to make another film documenting the time that's passed since the first one was made. Mr. Meadows might fund the cost of production, and we could host a grand premiere showing.”

Mary Bernadette nodded in approval. “I'm sure my grandson's wife would love to direct a film about the OWHA,” she said.

“But does she
know
anything about making a film?” Joyce asked.

Mary Bernadette dismissed the question as irrelevant. If Alexis didn't know, she would learn. “Of course she knows about making a film. Now,” she said, “as long as we're here, do we have any business to discuss other than speculation about our future?”

There was a murmur of laughter and the members of the board got down to immediate, if less exciting, business.

M
ary Bernadette expertly steered her car past a group of workmen repairing a stretch of York Avenue. She enjoyed driving, and the fact that her car was always spotlessly clean and in perfect working order, and the fact that she had never once gotten a ticket, only added to the pleasure.

The meeting, she thought, had gone well. No, more than that, it had gone spectacularly well. She had firm expectations that she and Wynston Meadows would be staunch colleagues. She liked his handshake and the way he looked a person right in the eye as if to say, “I am listening to you, I am hearing what you have to say to me.” His clothing, too, hit the perfect note. Today he had worn a two-button suit that, while clearly expensive—Mary Bernadette knew quality cut and fabric when she saw it—was not in the least showy or faddish. His shirt was brilliantly white and most likely hand-tailored. His tie had a modest stripe. On the whole, Mary Bernadette had approved, though if asked she might have suggested he use a bit less hair gel. But maybe that was the fashion among the power brokers in the big cities these days.

As she drove home through the town she loved so deeply, she imagined her new colleague coming to her for all manner of advice about the town's politics, its more important families, and the OWHA itself. She felt sure she could steer him in the right direction regarding the ways in which certain people attempted to get around the town's zoning laws and build monstrosities completely out of keeping with the atmosphere of Oliver's Well. And she could certainly drop a careful word in his ear regarding whom on the board he might trust as truly devoted to the cause and who was only out for his or her own social enhancement. It was no secret that Wallace was a bit of a glory hound. As for Joyce, well, she would throw her own mother under a truck if it served to elevate her status on the board. And who knew what silliness Norma was capable of perpetrating.

Yes, Mary Bernadette felt very sure of her rightful place of importance in the OWHA as well as in Oliver's Well. She had been the public face of organization for almost her entire tenure with the board and together with her husband had raised a family and grown a successful business within the town's bounds. People looked to the Fitzgibbons as a model of propriety and honest dealing. Their civic responsibility and devotion to the community were undeniable. With her support, Wynston Meadows would achieve his goal of becoming a true part of the community without any trouble at all.

For about a half a second Mary Bernadette wondered if her thoughts had strayed too far into the realm of pride. It could happen. Temptation was never far off. But then she reassured herself. She really was the least prideful person she knew. She made it a point never to brag or to enumerate her various successes on behalf of Oliver's Well. She was the last one to take credit for a triumph even when credit was due. The well-bred, she believed, were recognizable by their modesty and their humility.

Mary Bernadette pulled into the driveway of her home and noted with distaste that her neighbors across the street, the Burrows, still hadn't fixed that hanging window shutter.

The family was a nightmare from start to finish. Mike Burrows, the father, didn't even have a regular source of income. For about a month he had driven a delivery van for the specialty food shop on Main Street. An unfortunate crash (no one was hurt, but the van was demolished) had put an end to that. For a year or so he had worked at an old diner in town as a short-order cook. When the owner died, the diner was closed and Mike was out of another job. And for a while he had set himself up as “maker of furnishings.” From what Paddy had gleaned from a few dissatisfied customers, Burrows was a builder of shoddy tables and chairs. Mary Bernadette dreaded the day when he would come to the Fitzgibbons asking for employment. She saw it as inevitable, as would be their response—a resounding no.

And the wife wasn't much better. When summer came, that dreadful Lucy Burrows would be out on the lawn in nothing but her bathing suit—a two-piece one, at that—sunning herself on a sagging plastic lounge for all the world to see. It wasn't right, a mother of two teenage children, exposing herself in so shameless and, yes, Mary Bernadette would say it, so low class a way.

Well, the character of the parents no doubt had informed the character of the teenage children. The boy, Buddy, didn't seem to be very bright, and he spent far too much time rolling up and down his family's driveway on a skateboard—when he wasn't falling off it. It created a dreadful racket, and no matter how many times Paddy asked him to take the skateboard somewhere else, Buddy, after apologizing and promising, simply showed up in the driveway the very next day.

His sister, Tiffany, whom they called Tiff, if one could believe it, was what PJ had told his grandmother was “a Goth,” which seemed to mean that she found it necessary to wear black lipstick, innumerable piercings, and black rags in lieu of clothing. True, whenever she caught sight of Mary Bernadette she smiled and waved. But Mary Bernadette was not easily fooled by a friendly gesture. For all she knew the girl was practicing some evil form of magic in the family's basement. It didn't bear thinking about.

That their presence on Honeysuckle Lane brought down the property values of the other houses there could be no doubt. Thank God the Fitzgibbons had no plans to sell in the near future ! PJ and Alexis would someday move into the big house and assume ownership, and their children after them would keep the family homestead. By then the Burrows would be long gone. One could only hope.

Mary Bernadette got out of her car and, with one last glance over her shoulder at the eyesore that was the Burrows' house, went into her own well-kept home.

I
t was one o'clock on Saturday afternoon and Megan was at her desk. Pat was out buying something or other at the hardware store. David and Danica were in the backyard, kicking around a soccer ball.

Megan sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. She was ready for a nap. The CPEE had booked a well-respected child psychologist to give a talk in one of the meeting rooms at the library Monday afternoon, but he had canceled just that morning, having come down with a case of laryngitis. His wife had made the call to Megan, claiming he was completely without the power of speech and that she was enjoying the “blessed silence.”

She had scrambled to find another qualified speaker available Monday afternoon, and after three hours of phone calls and e-mails and texts had finally gotten a commitment from another, slightly less well-respected child psychologist, whose fee was slightly higher than what the CPEE was generally comfortable paying. Still, crisis averted.

“You so cheated!” Megan flinched at the sound of her daughter's voice. “I saw you touch the ball with your hand!”

“I so did not!”

Megan rolled her eyes. That David and Danica loved each other there was no doubt, but for some reason they were always accusing one another of foul play. Even before they had the power of speech, one would point to the other in the middle of their play and make a sound that Megan could only call accusatory. A long-buried memory suddenly popped into her head. She and Pat had brought all three children to Oliver's Well for a visit with their grandparents. At one point, Megan and Mary Bernadette had been watching three-year-old David make his way across the living room to retrieve a toy car he had left on the coffee table.

“There but for the grace of God go I,” Mary Bernadette had murmured.

The phrase had always infuriated Megan, and now the assumption that Mary Bernadette had been specially favored by God while her grandson had been ignored or passed over was really too much for her to bear without protest. It had been one of the only times she had ever argued with her mother-in-law, a futile gesture in the end as Mary Bernadette had blandly refused to see her point.

“All the expression implies,” she had said, “is that I'm grateful for my blessings.”

Megan had turned to her favorite prayer then, as she had so many times since. “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. And please don't let me kill my mother-in-law.”

Now that Mary Bernadette was on her mind.... Just that morning Megan had suddenly recalled having read something concerning Wynston Meadows's personal life. She could hardly believe it had slipped her mind. It seemed that a few years back, not long after his divorce, the much younger woman Meadows was dating had gone to the police with the claim that he routinely slapped her around. The charges, however, had been dropped—had the girlfriend been bought off or frightened into silence?—and the press had forgotten the story in a suspiciously short time.

Though the story was disturbing, Megan had decided there was no use in mentioning it to Mary Bernadette. First, no wrongdoing had been proved, and second, Mary Bernadette would reject outright another “word to the wise,” especially one delivered by her daughter-in-law.

“Mom!” Danica roared. “David is cheating again! Tell him to stop!”

“I am not!” David roared back. “She's just jealous that I scored a goal because she stinks as a goalie!”

Megan sighed, walked over to the window, and leaned out. “Work it out yourselves,” she called down. “Or I'm taking the ball away.”

“That's so not fair!” Danica cried.

“Yeah, that's so not fair!” her brother echoed.

Megan shrugged and turned away from the window. Mom's the bad guy. Crisis averted.