Chapter 34
Lex
The Gathering
She doesn’t phrase it as a question.
"All of them, ‘agóri mou.’ The Konstantinos and the O'Briens. Cathleen flew in at six AM. Ronan came in last night. Stavros is bringing the lamb. I am making ‘spanakopita.’ You will bring Maeve and Nora at six PM."
"‘Mitéra…’"
"Six PM, Lex." She hangs up.
I look at the phone.
Maeve is at the kitchen island in jeans and one of my sweaters with her coffee in front of her.
Her frown is the one she gets when she’s thinking about going back to bed for the rest of the day.
The grand jury was yesterday. Maeve has been entitled to going back to bed for the rest of the day.
She’s been entitled to it since approximately one PM yesterday afternoon.
She looks up.
"What did ‘Mitéra’ want."
"Family dinner. Tonight at six. All of them. Cathleen flew in."
Maeve puts her coffee down. "Cathleen flew in."
"Yes."
"From Florida."
"Yes."
"For grand jury."
"For you."
Maeve doesn’t speak for a long beat.
Then she says, very quietly, "Okay."
She gets up. She walks around the island.
She comes to me. She wraps her arms around my waist and puts her face against my chest the way she did in the corridor yesterday, only this morning the holding is for a different reason.
Her mother flew up from Florida for the grand jury without telling her.
Her mother has been at Eleni's apartment since six AM.
Her mother is the woman who has been writing letters to the O'Brien matriarch for six years and is currently, this morning, drinking Greek coffee with my Greek mother in a Brookline kitchen.
Maeve says, into my shirt, "Of course she did."
"Yes."
"And she didn’t tell me."
"No."
"Because she didn’t want me to be worrying about her flying up while I was preparing."
"Yes."
"Cathleen."
"Cathleen."
Maeve laughs. Small. Wet. Real. She says, "Six PM."
"Six PM."
? ? ?
My mother's apartment at 6:14 PM is the apartment I have been seeing in my head since approximately Day fifteen of being married to Maeve, which is the version where the Konstantinos and the O'Brien families are in the same kitchen at the same time, and nobody is staging anything operational, and nobody is talking about Bratva.
Cathleen is at the kitchen island with my mother.
Both in their good dresses. My mother is in the Navy.
Cathleen is in a soft gray cardigan over a cream blouse, pearls at her throat, the Florida-retiree formal that means ‘I have flown up for a thing, and I am committing to the thing.’ They are drinking small cups of Greek coffee from the gold-rimmed set my mother has used since I was a child.
There is an open tin of ‘kourabiedes’ on the counter.
Cathleen has eaten three. She’s, by my mother's count, made encouraging noises about all three.
Stavros is at the stove.
Stavros made the lamb at his apartment in the South End at 4:00 PM, transported it in the cast-iron pan he carries to family dinners, and is reheating it slowly with the unhurried patience of a man who has been making this dish since he was eleven and is not going to be rushed by a kitchen full of in-laws.
Sofia, six months old, is in a highchair Stavros set up beside the kitchen island. She’s eating mashed sweet potato off Siobhan's spoon. She’s the most beautiful baby in the room and she knows it. She watches Cormac across the room with the gravity of a federal prosecutor.
Cormac is on the floor of the living room with Nora and Brontos.
Cormac has the bandage on his forearm. The bandage is a small flesh-colored Band-Aid now, two weeks past the original three stitches, and he’s showing the bandage to Nora with the barely-contained theatricality of a man who has been waiting two weeks to show the scratch to an audience that will appreciate it.
"It is healing," Cormac says.
"Brontos says it was scary," Nora says.
"It was scary, ‘Naoradze.’ It was the bravest day of my year."
"Daddy was brave too."
"Daddy is brave every day. I am brave only when I am cut."
"Brontos is brave in his trunk."
"Brontos is the bravest of all of us."
Stavros, from the stove, says, "Cormac. The scratch story is at six retellings now, by my count. Your audience is depleted."
"My audience is three years old. My audience renews."
"Your audience is going to write a book about you and call you ‘Theíos Scratch.’"
"‘Theíos Scratch’ is the best nickname I have been given in fifteen years."
Nora pronounces, satisfied: "‘Theíos Scratch.’"
Cormac falls back on the rug as if he’s been shot. Nora laughs. Brontos accepts the new nickname into the official record.
? ? ?
Ronan is on the small balcony off the kitchen, smoking.
My mother doesn’t allow smoking inside the apartment.
Ronan flew back from Galway three days ago specifically for this dinner because Cormac told him about grand jury and Ronan, who doesn’t come to American problems, decided that he would come to this one.
Ronan has not been back to Boston since the morning after Andreev.
He’s here for two reasons: grand jury, and to bring something.
I step out onto the balcony.
Ronan offers me a cigarette. I shake my head. Ronan nods.
He says, "My mother sent a letter."
"For Maeve."
"For Maeve. For Cathleen. For Eleni. For all three matriarchs in the building tonight."
He pulls a thick envelope from the inside pocket of his coat. Cream paper. Brigid's neat handwriting on the outside, in pen, addressed simply: ‘To the women I have not yet met.’
Ronan hands it to me.
"She told me to give it to you. She said you would know when to give it to them."
I look at the envelope.
"Now," I say.
"Now," Ronan says.
? ? ?
Dinner is served at 6:47 PM.
My mother's table seats ten in a pinch. We are eleven tonight: my mother, Cathleen, Maeve, me, Stavros, Nico, Siobhan, Sofia in her highchair pulled up to the table, Cormac, Ronan, and Nora on a stack of two telephone books on a kitchen chair. Finn could not come; he’s in New York closing a thing.
Dimitri said he would come but didn’t, which is what he has been doing for seven weeks now, and I will have to address it with him before the wedding.
My mother stands at her end of the table.
She lifts her glass. The room quiets.
She says, in English, for the O'Briens and the half-Greek child: "Tonight we are eating together.
The Konstantinos and the O'Briens. The Greek and the Irish.
We are eating because Maeve walked into a grand jury yesterday and did the work that has been hers to do for eight months.
She walked in for the dead and she walked out for the living.
She came home to her daughter. She came home to my son. She came home to all of us."
My mother pauses.
She looks at Cathleen.
"Cathleen flew up from Florida to be here for her daughter. She didn’t tell her daughter she was coming because Cathleen Callahan is the kind of woman who shows up without making her arrival something the other person has to manage.
I have known Cathleen by letter, through Brigid, since 2019.
I have known her in person since six AM.
She’s welcome in this kitchen for the rest of her life. "
Cathleen's eyes fill. She doesn’t let them spill.
My mother lifts her glass higher.
"To Maeve. To Vincent Marchetti, whose name was said yesterday in a federal courtroom. To the women in this family, by blood and by marriage and by letter and by choosing. ‘Stin ygeiá mas.’ To our health."
The table answers. ‘Stin ygeiá mas.’ Even Nora, who has heard the phrase eight times this evening already, is rendering it as ‘steeneeahmaz.’
We drink.
Then, before anyone has set down their glass, I say, "There is one more thing."
The room turns to me.
I take the envelope from my inside pocket. I hold it up.
"Ronan brought a letter from Galway. From Brigid. To the women in this room. She told Ronan I would know when to give it to them. The time is now."
I cross to my mother. I hand her the envelope.
My mother looks at it. The handwriting on the outside.
The cream paper. She’s been receiving letters in this handwriting for seven years, since Brigid wrote her the first time after the funeral mass for Lex's father, which Brigid didn’t attend but was told about by Cormac, which is how the correspondence between two grandmothers across an ocean began.
My mother opens the envelope.
She unfolds the letter.
She looks at it for a long second. Then she looks at Cathleen. Then she looks at Maeve. Then she looks at me.
She says, "Brigid wrote it in English. She wants me to read it aloud."
"Then read it," Cathleen says.
My mother reads.
? ? ?
"To Eleni, to Cathleen, and to Maeve, the woman my son tells me is the strongest one in any room she walks into."
My mother pauses. Maeve's eyes are already wet.
"By the time you read this letter, my Cormac and your Lex and your Ronan will all have done what they had to do, and Maeve will have spoken her testimony, and the case that has been hanging over you for eight months will be the kind of case that lives in courtrooms now and not in your kitchens.
I am writing because I want to tell you what I know. "
"I have been a Galway woman for seventy-three years. I have buried two men I loved and I have raised five sons and I have outlived more than one war that the world didn’t call a war.
I know what it costs to be a woman in a family like ours.
I know what it costs to raise a daughter in a family like ours.
I know what it costs to keep going when the men in your life are doing the work that brings women like us together by letter across an ocean for years and years before we ever meet. "
"To Eleni: I have known you for seven years. I have not yet held your hand. I will, before I die. I am eighty-one. I am coming to Boston for the wedding."
My mother's voice catches. She looks up. Cathleen is openly crying. Maeve has put her hand over her mouth.
My mother keeps reading.
"To Cathleen: I have known you for six years. The shortbread is perfect every February. Brendan would have loved this letter. He would have loved Maeve. He would have loved Lex. He would have loved Nora most of all."
"To Maeve: I do not know you yet. I will. What I want to say to you tonight, in the kitchen of a Greek matriarch in Brookline, is what I have wanted to say to every woman who has come into this family by way of one of our boys: ‘Welcome home.’ You are in. You are ours. There is no version of the rest of your life that doesn’t include three matriarchs holding it up.
We will not let you fall. We will not let your daughter fall.
We will not let any of you fall. We are ours, and we are yours, and we have been waiting. "
"All my love. ‘Sláinte.’ Brigid."
? ? ?
My mother lowers the letter.
The room is silent.
Maeve is crying. Cathleen is crying. Siobhan is crying with Sofia balanced on her lap. Cormac, who has been quiet since the letter began, is wiping his eyes with the back of his bandaged hand.
Nora, on her telephone-book chair, looks at Cormac. She looks at her mother. She looks at ‘Yia-Yia.’ She looks at her grandmother, Cathleen, whom she’s known for two days and has decided is the second-best grandmother in the building. She lifts her water glass with both hands.
She says, "‘Steeneeahmaz.’"
The table breaks. Cormac laughs first. Then Stavros.
Then Nico. Then my mother, the wet still on her cheeks.
Maeve, beside me, drops her face into her hands and laughs through the tears.
Sofia, in the high chair, claps her small fists, on the principle that everyone else seems happy and she’s going to participate.
We drink again. ‘Stin ygeiá mas.’
Stavros serves the lamb.
The dinner becomes a dinner.
? ? ?
At 8:47 PM, while Maeve is in the kitchen with Cathleen and my mother, doing the quiet work of putting plates in the sink that women do when they need ten minutes alone with the matriarchs, my mother catches my eye across the room.
She’s at the sink. Maeve is drying. Cathleen is putting away.
My mother looks at me.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t nod. She doesn’t gesture.
She just holds my eye for one full second.
And in that second, I understand that my mother is telling me, with the quiet, fierce clarity of a Greek matriarch who has been waiting fifty-eight days to see her son ready, that tonight is the night.
Tonight.
After the family disperses. After Maeve has had her ten minutes with the matriarchs. After Nora is in bed, Eleni keeps ready for her. After the brownstone is dark and the city has gone quiet, and Maeve and I are alone again in the home we have been building since November.
Tonight.
I do not know what I am going to say yet.
I have been writing it in my head for fifty-eight days, and I have not committed to the phrasing because the phrasing has been waiting on the moment, and the moment is going to be tonight, and the phrasing is going to come because the phrasing has always come.
I look at my mother. I nod, once.
She nods back. She turns to the sink and continues washing.
Maeve doesn’t see the exchange.
Maeve, at this moment, is asking Cathleen if she’ll fly back up for the wedding, and Cathleen is saying ‘I am not flying back, Maeve. I am moving back. I have been thinking about it for a year. I am moving back to Boston before the wedding. The Florida apartment is going on the market in March.’
Maeve drops the dish towel.
Cathleen catches her in a hug.
My mother, beside them, puts a hand on each of their shoulders.
The three matriarchs stand at the sink for a long moment, holding each other.
I watch them from across the room, and I think: ‘now. The family is in the room. The blessing is in the air. The ring has been in my coat pocket for forty-six days. Tonight is the night.’