One Year (22 page)

A
lexis tossed the empty bag of potato chips into the recycling bin under the sink. She had eaten the entire bag in a matter of moments. She did not feel guilty about this. She was sorry there wasn't another bag of chips in the house.

April seventeenth. Holy Thursday. Alexis had not gone to the service that afternoon, though she had told Mary Bernadette that she would. If it was okay for PJ to miss the service so that he could spend time with an old high school friend (imagine his grandmother actually giving PJ, a grown man,
permission
to skip church!), it had to be okay for her to miss it, too.

Tomorrow, though, was another thing. The Good Friday service, commemorating the moment of Jesus's death, was a command performance. Alexis sighed. She wished that PJ's mother would be with them; her presence on Palm Sunday had made participation in the mass bearable, especially when the congregation had been forced to enact the Passion. It had almost made Alexis laugh, the vehemence with which her mild-tempered mother-in-law had uttered the words ‘Crucify him!' as if she were truly a member of that ancient angry mob.

But tomorrow . . . well, she would simply have to endure the somber service as best she could. In the meantime she was glad to be alone at the cottage for a few hours. She hoped Mary Bernadette wouldn't take it into her head to pay a call. She supposed she could simply not answer the door if she knocked. But Mary Bernadette might come in, anyway. She had a key and she did not like to be ignored.

Alexis reached for her cell phone. Her mother loved her, and the love wasn't dependent on her going to church every Sunday morning or using curtains along with blinds or dressing a certain way at the office. Her love was unconditional.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, when her mother answered. “It's me, Alexis.”

“Given the fact that you're my only child,” Olivia Trenouth replied, “you really don't have to identify yourself.”

“Right. It's just something you say, I guess.”

“How's life in little Oliver's Well?”

“Fine,” Alexis said automatically. And then, “Well, not really all that good.”

Her mother laughed lightly. “Why am I not surprised? Okay, what's going on?”

“It's PJ's grandmother. Mary Bernadette.”

“Ah, the matriarch.”

“She thinks she owns me,” Alexis said, the words tumbling out. “Most times I don't feel like a member of the family. I feel like unpaid labor. It's like she sees me as this, this robot, with no interests of my own, just available for whatever little chore needs doing. And then, when I do her bidding, she criticizes the way I've done it. I'm so tired of apologizing to her!”

“Let me guess. She's pressed you into joining that Hysterical Society of hers?”

“It's not only that.” Alexis shot a look toward the front door and lowered her voice. “She has no sense of boundaries. She comes into the cottage whenever she likes. She expects PJ and me to do whatever she asks without question. And PJ doesn't seem to notice that anything is wrong with her behavior. He thinks I'm just being whiney when I try to talk to him about it.”

“I didn't like her at all, you know,” Olivia Trenouth said. “At your wedding she acted like
she
was the rightful center of attention. The way she worked the room like she was a visiting dignitary. And that horrid gown she wore! If it had been a nun's habit she would have shown more skin!”

Alexis didn't reply to that. Honestly, she had found Mary Bernadette's taupe-colored column gown very sophisticated. And in a funny way it had actually complemented her own gown, which Mary Bernadette had chosen.

“Darling,” her mother went on, “you have to stand up to her. Your father and I didn't raise you to have some old woman with a deluded sense of her own importance push you around. And the longer you put off taking a stand, the harder it's going to be.”

Alexis sighed. “I know, but PJ adores her. He really does. And she's not
all
bad. I mean, she does let us live in the cottage almost rent-free.”

“Well,” her mother said, “I've given you my advice. I'm afraid you're on your own, Alexis.”

“I know. Oh, Happy Easter.”

“Is Easter this weekend? Well, good luck with all that.”

“Thanks, Mom. Say hello to Dad for me.”

Alexis plugged her cell phone into its charger and then went over to the desk and took out the manila envelope in which she kept a few informal photos from her wedding. She sorted through and found the one of her parents posing in the lobby of the charming B&B where they had stayed. Olivia and Lester Trenouth were a handsome couple; they looked almost as if they were brother and sister, so well matched were they.

Alexis went into the bedroom and tucked the photograph into the frame of the mirror on her dresser. And suddenly, she was overwhelmed by a wave of nostalgia. She missed the myriad sounds and the bright lights of the big, bustling city where she had been born and raised. She missed the wonderful smells of Philly's famous Italian market, and she missed the long Saturday afternoons she had spent at the Museum of Art with her mother. She missed the marked change of seasons, a true fall and winter following a true spring and summer. She remembered the first time she had gone to see the Liberty Bell at the statehouse. She remembered the fun she had had hanging out with friends in Rittenhouse Square. She remembered a school trip to the Edgar Allan Poe House. Most of all, she missed waking up in her old bed and knowing without a shadow of a doubt that she was loved just for being Alexis. So many happy memories from a time long before her marriage, a time when life was so very easy and innocent.

Alexis rubbed her forehead. She felt unutterably weary. She decided not to wait up for PJ. They would probably only get in a fight if she did. Instead, she went straight to bed and was asleep almost at once.

T
he twentieth of April. Easter Sunday. Another year gone, Megan thought. Another family gathering to mark the passing.

They had been home from church for some time. Megan was sitting in the living room with Alexis, each of them flipping idly through a copy of
Better Homes and Gardens
. Mary Bernadette had retreated to the kitchen, and Paddy, Pat, and PJ had gone off to examine something in the garage. Megan hoped they didn't start fooling around with oil cans or dirty rags while wearing their Sunday best. Pat ruined at least two good dress shirts a year by forgetting that he wasn't wearing a T-shirt.

Megan glanced at her daughter-in-law. She was wearing a very pretty dress that had the look of something from The Sophisticated Lady, and her hair was, as always, meticulously groomed, but there were dark circles under her eyes and lines around her mouth that made Megan hope Alexis hadn't been losing weight. The girl didn't have any to spare.

Suddenly, Danica and David burst into the living room. “Something's wrong, Mom,” Danica said.

“What do you mean?” Megan asked her daughter.

Danica lowered her voice to a loud whisper. “Grandma didn't make us Easter baskets.”

“We
are
kind of too old for Easter baskets,” David said.

“Yeah, maybe. But I don't know, it feels weird not to have one.”

“Are you sure?” Megan asked her children. “I mean, maybe she's just saving them to bring out later.”

Danica shook her head. “No way. She always does things exactly the same, every year. There are no baskets on the sideboard in the dining room. That means there are no baskets anywhere.”

Megan had to admit that her daughter was probably right. “Well, your grandmother has a lot on her mind right now,” she said. “She probably just didn't have the time.” But her words didn't ring true. Mary Bernadette was the sort of woman who
made
the time she needed.

“Or,” Alexis said, “maybe she just forgot.”

Danica laughed. “Grandma never forgets anything!”

“Don't mention the baskets to her, okay?” Megan said.

“Sure.” David frowned. “But I was really looking forward to a Cadbury Creme Egg.”

“Ugh,” Danica said. “I don't know how you can eat those things. They gross me out.”

“Like those Peeps you eat aren't disgusting?”

Megan left Alexis with her battling twins and went into the dining room to confirm what she already knew she would find. No Easter baskets. There were, however, the three white Easter lilies Megan had brought. She had put them in a vase—
not
the vase used for William's flowers, of course. Even if she were cruel enough to want to use that particular vase, she wouldn't know where to find it. Mary Bernadette kept it safely tucked away somewhere, as she kept all things associated with the baby she had lost. The baby no one dared mention in her presence.

Megan would never forget the night Pat had told her his family's deep, dark secret. They had been engaged for a few months, and Megan had already spent enough time with her future mother-in-law to realize that it was going to require a good deal of energy to bear up under Mary Bernadette's formidable personality, as well as to survive her frequent critical comments and sometimes downright insulting remarks. She didn't know what had made Pat tell her about William that particular night, other than perhaps the fact that he had talked to his mother on the phone earlier that day and, in his own words, the conversation had not gone well. Pat had apologized for not having shared the fact of William's life and death before then. “It's just that I'm so used to secrecy,” he had explained. “And now I'm so, so tired of it.” Megan had forgiven him immediately. And she had thanked him for telling her the crucial piece of information that from that time forward had helped her to withstand the gale force that was Mary Bernadette—a woman still grieving for her lost son. It had explained so much. It had allowed Megan to feel a degree of sympathy for her mother-in-law.

Megan wandered back into the living room. It was empty now. Alexis and the twins must have gone off to join the men. Megan took a seat in one of the rather uncomfortable armchairs that stood like sentinels on either side of the rather uncomfortable couch. There was to be no slouching in Mary Bernadette's house. She had seen to that.

All day Megan had been plagued by a sense that something bad was hovering in the air above the family, waiting to swoop down and destroy the already tentative peace of the household. What she felt was what her mother, quoting her mother before her, called a “fairy blast,” a sense of general sadness and impending doom.

Forcefully—if not entirely successfully—Megan shook off the feelings of imminent misery, got up from the armchair once again, and went into the kitchen to ask Mary Bernadette if she could help with the meal. And of course, she thought, Mary Bernadette would say no.

A
lexis sat on the extremely uncomfortable couch in the living room. Paddy, in one of the equally uncomfortable armchairs, was reading the Sunday paper. Her in-laws and the twins were nowhere to be found—it was interesting, Alexis noted, how people seemed to disappear for significant amounts of time while visiting Mary Bernadette—and her husband was in the kitchen with his grandmother.
He
never seemed to need a respite from Mary Bernadette Fitzgibbon.

Alexis sighed. If Paddy heard, he didn't acknowledge that he had. She had been taught that Easter was a joyous occasion, but Mary Bernadette had made it feel like anything
but
. She had made Danica change her dress—a perfectly modest garment in Alexis's opinion—before leaving the house on the pretext that it was too provocative. Alexis wondered if Danica even knew what the word meant. She had chastised Paddy for having forgotten to trim the hedges out front. “But I trimmed them just the other day,” he had protested. “Well, they've grown since then,” Mary Bernadette had snapped. And on the way into church that morning, she had made a comment about the majority of the congregation not having been to mass since the previous Christmas. Pat had frowned and stormed ahead of the rest of the family. Obviously, he had assumed that his mother was criticizing his own rare appearances. Alexis couldn't blame him for being angry. In all the time she had known the Fitzgibbons, not once had she heard Mary Bernadette pay her son a compliment. Half of the time she wasn't even particularly
nice
to him. If William had lived, Alexis wondered, would Mary Bernadette have been any kinder or more pleasant to Pat?

It must be exhausting, Alexis thought, to be a person like Mary Bernadette, always seeing the negative in things. It was so much
easier
to be accepting and uncritical. But if PJ's grandmother was
always
so harsh and unrelenting, why did so many people like her? Why was she so ridiculously popular in Oliver's Well? Was it only with her family that she was—difficult?

Alexis heard the sound of PJ's laughter from the kitchen. Mary Bernadette was making a roast lamb with mint jelly, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls. For dessert, she had made a cake decorated with white icing and a sprinkling of pink sugar. It was the meal she made every Easter Sunday, without fail. Unless, Alexis thought, remembering the missing Easter baskets, the family was in for another unexpected turn.

PJ came into the living room then and perched next to her on the edge of the couch.

“It was a nice service,” Alexis said to him. It was a silly thing to say, but suddenly she felt shy with her husband.

“Why aren't you wearing your claddagh necklace?” he asked quietly. “The one I gave you for our wedding. The one for special occasions.”

Alexis automatically put her hand to her chest, where she felt the distinctive outline of the Cross of St. Brigid. “Because,” she said, “I'm wearing this.”

“Oh.” PJ glanced over at his grandfather, still absorbed in the paper.

“But
you
gave me this, too.” Alexis laughed, not because she found anything amusing but because she felt frustrated and confused. “It's not like I'm wearing a necklace from another man!” she whispered.

The moment the words were out of her mouth she regretted them. It had been a stupid and hurtful thing to say. PJ's expression became as rigid as the couch on which they sat.

“I would hope not,” he said coldly. Then he got up and went back to the kitchen.

Alexis put her hand to her head. All these stupid traditions and superstitions! How were you supposed to keep track of them all? Even the claddagh ring came with instructions on how to wear it, depending on your relationship status. She couldn't believe she had once thought all of this—she looked around the room and spotted the statue of St. Patrick—all of this
nonsense
was attractive and interesting.

Escape. That was what she needed. She got up from the couch. She was about to head for the front door when the twins appeared and announced that dinner was being put onto the table.

Paddy emerged from his newspaper. “Well, then,” he said, “let's not keep your grandmother waiting.”