“Clare is our guest, Gerard! Your guest, too.”
“Clare is here to visit Mr. Fischer, Gerard—our attorney.”
“Your attorney, too!”
“She drove all the way from Philadelphia, isn’t that impressive? In her car, alone.”
“Because of the will—your dear mother’s will. You remember—”
“She is a beneficiary, too. Your niece Clare.”
“It’s the old farm on Post Road, dear. I’m afraid—yes . . .”
“You know, you might drive Clare out there sometime soon to see the property she has inherited—”
“—an opportunity for you and Clare to become acquainted—”
“—unless—”
“—unless, of course—”
“—you would rather not.”
These words hang provocatively in the air. Rather not.
At this Gerard rises abruptly from the table. Skids his chair along the hardwood floor.
He makes a grunting noise, as of disdain, derision. He bares yellowish teeth in an angry grimace. His eyes swerve in their sockets, but he doesn’t look at Clare—he has not looked at Clare once. With his left, good hand he snatches up his cap and the folded newspaper and noisily exits the room by a rear door.
An ashy odor in his wake, unwashed male body, hair. Not even a sidelong backward glance.
The great-aunts are taken by surprise, wide-eyed with a sort of ostrichlike thrilled alarm. Their mouths make tsking sounds. Clare wonders if they aren’t gratified that their interrogative chatter has driven the scowling man from their presence.
“Oh, dear! We are so, so sorry, Clare—”
“Our nephew Gerard is not usually so—”
“—rude—”
“—shy. He is not at ease with strangers—”
“—even strangers who are relatives—”
“—backward, unsociable—”
“—headstrong, stubborn—”
“—terrible shock—trauma—”
“—he’d once been bright—”
“—as bright as Conor—”
“—no!—not nearly—”
“—indeed yes. When he entered the seminary—”
“—not as bright as Conor—no—”
“—more diligent than Conor, really. More—”
“—devout. Obedient.”
“Well, God looks after him now—”
“—God should! After what God did—”
“—shhh! D’you think that God isn’t listening?”
The great-aunts confide in Clare that her “bachelor uncle,” Gerard Donegal, had once intended to be a Jesuit. He’d been a seminarian at Saint Joseph’s Seminary in Portland, Maine, until he’d had to drop out for “personal, family reasons” and return home to Cardiff to make a home with his parents.
Since his father’s death, he’d been responsible for driving his widowed mother wherever she’d needed to go, in recent years primarily to medical appointments and to mass at St. Cuthbert’s Church. Everyone agreed—Gerard had been a devoted son. He’d helped with the maintenance of the house and the grounds and supported himself now with odd jobs in the neighborhood.
Yet he has continued to pursue his religious pilgrimage on his own, to this day.
Really!—Clare had to wonder. The pained grimace, yellowed teeth, and averted eyes hadn’t signaled, to her, what you’d call a religious disposition.
“Oh, indeed—yes. Gerard is not a very sociable soul—as you have seen!—but he is a very reliable worker. He mows lawns, trims trees, rakes with an actual rake, not one of those terrible leaf blowers—a huge, huge rake of the kind you can’t buy any longer. He will dig, dig, dig wherever you request. He will clear driveways of snow. He will work in the rain—in the snow. He can clear underbrush. He can repair roofs, chimneys. He can replace broken windows. He can paint—as good as any professional, and much more cheaply. Of course, Gerard can use a gun—rifle, shotgun. You can hire him to shoot groundhogs, raccoons—pests that destroy gardens. (Gerard will not shoot a deer—though Cardiff is overrun with white-tailed deer. It is against the law to hunt deer within the city limits, but Gerard will scare them away at your request.) Indeed, there are ladies up and down Acton Avenue who depend upon him—‘What would we do without Gerard Donegal!’ they say. He’d entered the seminary at nineteen, wanting to serve God by becoming a priest, and for a while he was happy there. His mother was so proud of him—we were all so very proud of him—but then . . .”
“Well, you see—nineteen was young—”
“Nineteen was not young. Not for a first-year seminarian.”
“Nineteen was young, for Gerard was young—naïve, some said. Too devout.”
“The strain of working so hard, learning Latin, trying so hard to be worthy of the priesthood—”
“—being so good—”
“—a vessel to be filled with God—”
“—with Jesus—”
“—just too much for poor Gerard—we think . . .”
“And then—our family tragedy . . .”
“Poor Gerard! It all ended so—abruptly . . .”
“Oh, what are you saying? You mean poor Conor?”
“Conor, Gerard—our dear nephews!—God have mercy on us all.”
Clare has been listening closely. She feels like a child in the presence of malicious adults speaking so rapidly in a kind of code. She cannot absorb the meaning. She must listen with every atom of her being. What are the great-aunts telling her?
Clare hears herself stammer weakly: “I guess—then—they are—are not—living? My parents, I mean.”
A startled silence. Elspeth and Morag exchange the most fleeting of glances, but do not reply, as if their naïve young relative has uttered something obscene.
Of course your parents are dead. No one will even speak of them.
What did you think—they’ve been alive all these years, waiting for you?
Clare doesn’t want to look at the great-aunts, to see how they are regarding her—with pity? sympathy? indignation?