CHAPTER 30
Rosie’s in the kitchen hunting for candles while Joe and the rest of the family wait for her. They’re about to break bread at the first O’Brien Sunday supper in the new dining room. Joe’s sitting at the head of an oak picnic-style table from Jordan’s Furniture that seats eight, plenty of room for everyone. The table and the ample elbow room it affords is an improvement, but Rosie’s still not happy. The wall separating the kitchen from the girls’ old bedroom is gutted and gone, destroyed in Joe’s rampage, but he hasn’t gotten around yet to replacing the wall with the promised bar counter. And they’re crowded in a different way from how they were in the kitchen, now by the cardboard boxes of old clothes and holiday crap yet to be stored elsewhere or donated, stacked up against the walls, hovering too close to the backs of everyone’s chairs. And there’s no overhead light in here. The girls had desk lamps when this was their bedroom. At four o’clock on a February afternoon, the room is only partially lit by the bright kitchen and dim hallway.
“Got ’em,” says Rosie, returning to the table, victorious, with a devotional candle in each hand.
The picture on the glass container of the first candle Rosie places on the table is of the Virgin Mary, Undoer of Knots. The second is St. Michael killing the devil with his spear. Rosie lights both candles with a single match, and the room isn’t noticeably brighter.
“How’s that?” she asks.
“Very romantic,” says Meghan.
“Maybe I should get a lamp from the living room,” says Rosie.
“Sit down, Ma. It’s fine,” says Katie.
Rosie acquiesces, delivers a perfunctory grace followed by a mumbled, collective “Amen,” and then supper begins. Joe watches Rosie passing a platter of lamb a bowl of boiled turnips, her movements all business, her hair still damp from a late-afternoon shower, her emerald eyes dull in the shadows cast by the Virgin Mary candle; her presence at the other end of the table feels removed. She probably wouldn’t speak to Joe for a week if she knew he was thinking this, but she looks much older than forty-four.
His HD is already wearing her down—the impending divorce, the episode and obsession with the gun, the holes in the walls, his constant calling and texting to check on her. She’s heartsick about JJ and Meghan and worried to distraction over Patrick, Katie, and baby Joseph. Plus she hasn’t been getting her beauty sleep. She’s been doing night duty three nights a week up at JJ’s, sleeping in their guest bedroom, ready with a bottle or a lullaby for baby Joseph whenever he wakes, giving JJ and Colleen a reprieve from the round-the-clock responsibility of caring for a newborn. On top of everything, she’s working thirty hours a week now, up from twenty, which she says is no big deal, but Joe can see that it’s all starting to take a toll on her.
JJ and Colleen keep disappearing from and reappearing at the table, bending down at the waist and popping back up, fussing over baby Joseph, who is sitting in a reclined, vibrating, oscillating seat on the floor. Neither JJ nor Colleen have eaten a bite of supper.
“He’s fine, you two,” says Rosie.
“I’m just adjusting his head,” says JJ.
Colleen wipes the smallest speck of white spittle from the corner of baby Joseph’s mouth with a blue cloth and then sticks a pacifier in it. He sucks the thing like a pro for a few seconds, but then he stops and the pacifier tumbles to the floor. JJ bends down and snatches the pacifier from under the table and is about to plug baby Joseph’s mouth again, but Colleen stops him with her hand.
“Don’t—it touched the floor. Hold on, I have another in his diaper bag,” says Colleen, taking the contaminated pacifier from JJ and sliding sideways out of her chair.
Meanwhile, baby Joseph seems perfectly content to Joe. The child might actually doze off if JJ and Colleen would leave him the fuck alone. New parents. Each generation has to learn for themselves.
“Where’s Felix?” asks Joe.
“Portland,” says Katie without elaborating.
“I thought he wasn’t going until June,” says Patrick.
Katie says nothing.
“He’s not,” offers Meghan. “He’s just there for the week.”
Katie keeps her eyes downcast, focused on eating her salad. Felix hasn’t missed a Sunday supper since the first time Katie brought him back in November. Joe likes the guy. He’s smart and ambitious, but he doesn’t seem to be a workaholic and doesn’t talk incessantly about his job. He’s still a fan of the Yankees, which is a problem likely to persist, but he’s watched the Bruins in the living room a few times now with Joe, and Joe caught him actually cheering for the Bs at least once, so there’s hope for him. Other than the Yankees, he doesn’t appear to have any objectionable vices. Felix was brought up Protestant, but Joe’s not holding that against him. He’s salt of the earth, not at all the pretentious Toonie Joe expected. He’s got good manners, and he treats Katie well. Joe can tell by the way Katie lights up whenever he’s in the room. Katie doesn’t resemble Rosie much, but something about her looks just like Rosie, especially when Rosie was young, whenever Felix is around.
Joe studies Katie eating her salad, her face drawn and heavy, the opposite of lit up, and a regret seeps through Joe like a poison. He’s basically ordered Katie to break up with this fine young man, a man she obviously loves, to protect Rosie. He looks at Rosie and the sledgehammered holes framing her exhausted face in the hallway wall behind her. He’s not exactly protecting Rosie from a damn thing. Why should Katie have to bear that burden? Life is too short, one of the many lessons HD is ramming down his throat, whether he likes the taste or not.
A moldy hunk of rock-hard potato suddenly lands in the middle of JJ’s plate with a crash that startles everyone.
“Jesus, Pat. Ma asked you to clean off the ceiling last week,” says JJ.
It’s getting increasingly improbable for Joe to transport food from a fork or spoon to his mouth without some HD spaz attack sending it elsewhere. His hand will twitch or his fingers will release the utensil or his arm will fling wildly, causing his food to go sailing onto someone’s face or shirt or the wall or the ceiling. Most of the food that hits the ceiling falls right back down, but Rosie’s mashed potatoes, which Joe has always said resembled glue, stick and stay there. Joe looks up. Globs of hardened mashed potatoes from previous suppers hang like stalactite chandeliers all over the ceiling.
“I forgot,” says Patrick.
“You didn’t fix the holes in the hallway walls either,” says JJ, who patched, sanded, and painted over the holes in the bedroom.
“I’ve been busy. I’m workin’ on it.”
“You’re not that busy, for Chrissake,” says JJ.
“I don’t see you doin’ anything around here to help.”
“I don’t live here for free, moochin’ off Ma and Dad. Least you could do is lift one of your lazy-ass fingers and help them out.”
“You don’t exactly pay real rent, and you have your own place.”
“You know what?” yells JJ, his face now an incensed shade of pink. “I have a wife and a baby, but I’ll do it. I’ll clean the ceiling and fix the rest of the holes, since you’re a totally worthless piece of shit.”
“JJ,” scolds Rosie.
“No, Ma. I’m sick of him not being held accountable for anything. You tell ’em your big news yet, Pat?”
Patrick says nothing, but his eyes are trying to murder JJ from across the table.
“You gonna tell ’em, Patty boy?”
“Shut the fuck up, JJ.”
“Language. JJ, stop it. Pat, what is it?” asks Rosie.
“Nothing, Ma. There’s no news. I’ll clean the ceiling after supper.”
“Oh, there’s news. Pat knocked up this girl he’s been shackin’ up with.”
The room goes heart-stopping silent. Joe stares at St. Michael killing the devil on the candle, and then, gripping his fork like a spear, he lifts his gaze to Pat. His son’s pale, freckled face. Pat’s sullen blue eyes. His slumped shoulders and messy hair the color of lightly steeped tea.
“Tell me that’s not true,” says Joe.
Patrick hesitates, then nods. “Least that’s what she says.”
“Who says, Pat? Who is this girl?” asks Rosie.
“Ashley.”