Chapter 3 #2
Her eyelids fluttered open. Aunt Fran was kneeling down beside the sofa, a mug of coffee in her hands, concern etched on her face. “I hate to wake you, but Maeve just called me, wanting to know if you were here.”
“Gaaah.” Therese sat up slowly and immediately regretted such a rash move. Her head was pounding.
She took the coffee and managed a sip. “Thank you,” she croaked.
Fran sat on the armchair facing the sofa, the vinyl covering crackling as her bony butt settled. She raised one eyebrow.
“What did you tell her?” Therese asked.
“Just that you were so worn out last night, I insisted you stay here with me.”
“I forget. Is that a venial sin or a corporal sin?”
“I’d say it’s an innocent little white fib. Won’t hurt nobody. And it’s partway true. I would have insisted you stay, if I’d seen what all you did here to clean up after hustling me off to bed.”
“You’re the best.” Therese took another sip of coffee, then glanced at her phone, which was sitting on the coffee table. The screen was dark. Out of juice. Like Therese.
“It’s not even nine o’clock,” Fran said. “How about I fix you some breakfast?”
Therese managed to suppress a grimace. The last thing she needed right now was food. “That’s okay. I never eat in the morning.”
“You girls,” her aunt said, shaking her head. “I guess that’s how you both stay so skinny. Me? If I don’t at least eat a piece of toast or some buttered grits or a banana in the morning, I get all kinds of grouchy. Hangry, my grandkids call it.”
“Did Maeve say anything else?” Therese asked.
“She mentioned that your uncle Keith was coming over this morning and had something important to talk about with both of y’all. She said he’d be there by ten, and asked would I let you know.”
“Okay.”
Fran’s brow creased. “I accidentally overheard you and Maeve talking out front yesterday. I sure hate that the two of you are fussing.”
“It’s nothing,” Therese said.
“Didn’t sound like nothing to me. And I know your mama worried about it. It broke her heart that the two of you weren’t close. ‘Frannie,’ she’d say to me, ‘when I’m gone, all they’ll have left is each other.’”
“I wish we were closer, but we’re not,” Therese said. “We’re two completely different people. We want different things. Every little thing I do, she judges.”
“She loves you, Terri, but she doesn’t understand you. Not like your mama did.”
“Mama thought I could do no wrong.”
“She was a lot like you, back when she was young. Full of big dreams. Full of big plans. The life of every party. You know, she used to write these little plays, and even though she was the youngest, she’d boss me and Bernie into acting them out—with her being the star and the director, of course.
We’d put on her plays in the backyard. She’d hang up bedsheets on the clothesline for a curtain, and she’d charge all the neighbors a nickel to come see us. ”
Therese laughed. “I’d give anything to have seen that.”
“I remember all those plays you acted in when you were doing Little Theatre here in Savannah. You were so good as Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. I swear, you sounded just like Audrey Hepburn in the movie.”
“I don’t think Mama ever missed a single performance of that one,” Therese said. “But I’m pretty sure that my Southern version of a Cockney accent was criminally bad.”
“Not to us. And definitely not to Mary Helen.”
“Aunt Frannie? Can I ask you something?”
“Long as it’s not my weight or my age, ask away.” Fran sipped her own coffee.
“You know that oil portrait that Mama has always had hanging over the mantel? Do you know anything about it? Where it came from? Like that?”
Frannie laughed. “You mean Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh of Tarrymore?”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, Nana always had it hanging over the fireplace in her house, and she told us girls it came out of her mama’s house, up in New York. Her mother’s name was Kathleen, and according to Nana, Kathleen brought that painting over on the boat when she came to America from Ireland.”
“Huh. So that story Mama always told about Lady Geraldine being our ancestor really is true?”
“I didn’t say that. I said that was your nana’s story.
I don’t guess you remember her, because you girls were so young when she passed.
But if you want to know where Mary Helen got her storytelling gift from, I’d say it was from our mom.
Good Lord, that woman could tell some whoppers.
Me and Bernie, we knew most of her stories were made up, just like the little people she claimed always knew when any of us girls weren’t telling the truth.
The ‘wee ones’ she said whispered in her ear.
But Mary Helen, she ate all of that stuff up with a spoon. ”
“So … you don’t believe that portrait is the real thing? And that we’re related to Irish aristocracy?”
Frannie rolled her eyes. “Me and Butch went to Ireland for our twenty-fifth anniversary.
And we actually went to the village where Nana said her mother was born.
Bernadette, Big Bernie, we used to call her, was born in New York, which is where Kathleen came to after she left Ireland around nineteen-something.
“You want to talk about a place that was the back of nowhere? Honey, your uncle Butch swore we were lost, it was so remote. I forget the name of the town, but I know we went to this teeny little old church, St. Bonaventure, where all the Connors—that was Nana’s mother’s maiden name, Kathleen Connor—were supposedly christened, married, and buried. ”
“Did you find Kathleen’s information?”
Her aunt shrugged. “We weren’t sure. The name Connor, in that part of Ireland, was like Smith or Jones over here. And the priest wasn’t very helpful. He was sort of a circuit-rider going between three different parishes because that church wasn’t big enough to have its own priest.”
“Oh.”
“I was real disappointed. I’d promised my sisters I’d find out all about Kathleen.
Your aunt Bernie had gotten big into building our family tree back then, so we knew what we thought was her daddy’s name, but we couldn’t find her baptismal records.
The priest suggested we go to the pub—it was right across the road—and ask the bartender about the Connors.
He said Jarvis, that was the pub owner’s name, had lived in this village forever and knew everyone. ”
“And did he know about our family?”
“He claimed he did,” Frannie said. “Jarvis was an old, old, feller, with these long white whiskers and eyebrows so bushy you couldn’t hardly see his eyes.
He told your uncle Butch how to get to where he thought the Connor place was.
So we drove way, way out in the country.
We actually got stuck behind a herd of sheep for about thirty minutes.
I had to get out of the car and shoo them out of the road with a stick. ”
“Did you find the farm?”
“We thought we had. But when I knocked on the door of this little cottage, the owner said that the Connor place had been about a mile away. Her grandmother had known the family, but she said the farmhouse burned down many, many years ago.”
“Bummer,” Therese said.
“The thing is, honey, from what we could see of Tarrymore—that was the name of the village—the Connors were poor dirt farmers. I don’t see how a fancy portrait like the one in Mary Helen’s house could be of anybody we’re related to.”
Therese didn’t bother to hide her disappointment. “But then where would Nana have gotten that painting? Was there really a Lady Geraldine Fitzhugh?”
“I don’t honestly know,” Fran admitted. “But I will tell you, when Kathleen first came to New York from Ireland, she supposedly worked as a maid for some really rich family there. Maybe one of them gave her that painting. Or…” she said, with an impish grin, “maybe she stole it. Word was that Kathleen was a real spitfire. Didn’t take nuthin’ off nobody.
My daddy always used to joke that back in the old days in Ireland, Nana’s family were all horse thieves. ”