Chapter 6
I spent the rest of the day in a state of high anxiety, which I blamed on the coffee rather than the fact I was reeling after my contretemps with Milhouse.
So, that evening I caught a cab to my grandmother’s apartment because there was something about Granny Annie’s no-nonsense practicality I was craving.
She had spent her entire life being practical and getting on with things.
She had emigrated from Ireland when she was only nineteen and somehow made her way to Boston.
After moving into a women’s lodging house, she found a job as a receptionist in Daly’s paper mill and, being beautiful and stylish, she caught the eye of the heir to the mill and married him and gave birth to my mother, their only child.
But when Mom was only three, Granny Annie was widowed and brought up my mother all on her own, even managing the paper mill all on her own.
She had enough money to buy a small house at the beach and she and Mom spent every summer there, and then, when Johnny and I were born, Mom would send us off to stay with a by-then-retired Granny Annie.
The beach house was a place where we were all happiest, Granny Annie would sit on her swinging chair on the porch, reading or knitting, always in expensive sunglasses, while we played all day in the sea or on the beach, until the sun began to set, and Granny Annie would appear.
Johnny would look at me, his skinny chest blue with cold, his teeth chattering.
‘I don’t wanna go in,’ he would say. ‘I just want to be in the waves for longer.’
And we’d try to ignore Granny Annie’s waving arms for a while longer, until guilt and duty got the better of us, and in we’d go, knowing we had a full day of the same wave-jumping and splashing ahead of us.
The worst day was the last day of the vacation, and the house was being packed up, our dragging hearts and feet, time was running out and we were drawing closer to the last wave-jump of the summer.
I rang her doorbell, trying to arrange my thoughts and my face. I was getting married, that was all that was going on. Nothing to see here.
Granny Annie always dressed immaculately, her nails and lips painted red, a silk scarf at her throat, her still-dark hair threaded with silver highlights. This evening, she answered her door dressed in her Eileen Fisher slacks, Italian leather loafers, cashmere sweater and a Hermès silk scarf.
‘Kerry-Anne! What a lovely surprise!’ Her Irish accent was still very much evident after all these years and, as she hugged me, I smelled her signature scent of a heady blend of perfume, make-up and soap.
Johnny used to say she smelled like the entire Macy’s beauty hall.
Not that he ever complained, as he was still a sucker for one of Granny Annie’s hugs, nestling in for longer than was necessary, as though starved of affection.
‘Your mother told me your wonderful news.’
I nodded, feeling unable to speak.
Granny Annie studied me for a moment. ‘Kerry-Anne? Is everything all right?’
I nodded, then shook my head, then nodded.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Don’t tell Mom! Or Johnny!’
‘Promise. Come and sit down. We’ll have tea and you can tell me about it.’
Tea was her answer to all life’s moments and I sat at her breakfast bar, a cup of Irish tea with milk in front of me, while I told her all I knew and showed her the social media photographs and the LinkedIn profile.
I didn’t cry, obviously, but was just in need of advice.
I hoped she would tell me that it was good that I knew about Milhouse and that I was entering the marriage with my eyes wide open and it was better to be forewarned and forearmed, and therefore reduce the shocks down the road, and that everything would be okay and that marriages are places of compromise and forgiveness and that what matters is the partnership, that being in business with someone means that you accept them, faults and all, and I would accept his as he would, hopefully, accept mine. Except she didn’t.
‘I’m still going to marry him,’ I said.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes. Because it will be all right. I don’t expect normal romance rules. I am more practical than that.’
‘Are you, Kerry-Anne?’ She spoke softly.
‘Yes, of course I am. And what’s wrong with an open marriage? He wants to continue to have his freedom.’
She let out a snort. ‘Well, he can swing for that.’
‘I think that’s kind of what he wants.’
Granny Annie was silent.
‘I mean, it’s not the end of the world. And isn’t it better to enter something like that with your eyes fully open?’
Another snort. ‘That man would rob the milk from your tea and come back for the sugar. Cheeky so-and-so.’
‘I need to get married. I’m thirty-two and…’ I hesitated. ‘I need a distraction.’
‘You need a holiday. A vacation. Go away and think about if you really want to commit to him.’
‘But I don’t want to go away. I need to get back to work. I’ve let a few things slide and Tara’s been minding everything.’
‘A week then. Go to the beach house. You need a bit of clarity. If you are going to go ahead with this marriage…’ She pursed her lips. ‘Then make sure your head is totally clear. You should be treasured. You deserve nothing less. I’ve been lucky to be loved properly twice in my life.’
‘Twice?’
‘With your grandfather, obviously. He was a wonderful man. And with my first boyfriend, you might say, when I lived in Ireland, back in Trá Beag. We had talked about marriage, but… anyway, life didn’t work out that way and I left for America and left him behind.’
‘You obviously didn’t treasure him enough.’ I smiled at her.
‘Oh, I did. But sometimes life is too big to handle and you have to make it as small as possible so you can survive. And it was all for the best in the end. After all, I wouldn’t have you and Johnny.
’ She smiled at me. ‘You need to be sure of your worth and once you know that, you make fewer mistakes.’
She was right. I knew it.
‘When was the last time you went away?’ she went on.
I couldn’t actually remember. The last few years had been taken up by Caitlin’s illness and everything that followed. A vacation was an impossibility.
‘Go to the beach. Long walks, time away from work.’ Granny Annie’s eyes brightened. ‘Or Europe? Paris?’
I shook my head. ‘Too romantic.’
‘London?’
‘Too busy.’
‘Italy?’
‘Too beautiful. Now, can we just forget about it and I’ll just keep calm and carry on, like you always say.’