Love Bears All Things

February 26, 2000

Margaret Mary searched for her car keys under the newspapers on the coffee table; then, behind an easel picture frame that rested on a side table adjacent to the couch; then, inside a vase on the mantle, and various other obscure spots.

She liked to hide them in safe places so her son Dillon wouldn’t impulsively drive off as he had been known to do in his manias.

Margaret Mary’s places were so safe she would often, almost always, forget where she put them.

She wandered in circles, and figure eights, scurrying out of the family room, to the living room, to the dining room, to the kitchen, back to the living room, to her master bedroom in the rear of the house. Repeat as needed.

As she scurried through the maze, Margaret Mary tried to calculate the pills per day multiplied by the number of weeks, yet her exhausted mind couldn’t recall when she picked up the latest prescription.

Dillon’s low voice echoed in her head “Mom, I am out of meds.”

She wanted to trust him. She feared leaving him alone as she ran out to the 24-hour pharmacy.

She took a break from her hunt. In the bathroom, she brushed her teeth and splashed cool water on her face. No clean towels on the rack. Damn it.

In the corner behind the door, two dirty wet towels in a heap taunted her from the tiled floor. In the mirror, she watched water drip from her dimpled chin and thin nose. She noticed how drops of water would find crevices in her furrowed brow and work their way down to her crows feet and smile lines.

The heavy rings underneath her eyes represented decades, not years, each with a different shade. She had neglected make up for quite some time as she tried to recall the last time she even noticed her hair in the mirror. She needed coloring. The gray strands were now widening swatches of white, fortunately not clashing too terribly with her blonde in a bottle.

She had never seen such a tired stranger in the mirror before. She couldn’t look at herself. As she glanced away, in the mirror’s reflection, there on the shelf behind her, she spotted her keys. In her bedroom, she dried her face on a damp towel that hung on her closet door.

“Finally. Found them!”

She walked through the living room to the family room where Dillon sprawled out over the Victorian winged armchair as if he had outgrown the furniture long ago. Four feet from the TV, he compensated with one leg on an antique footstool in front of him and another draped over the naked armrest that his mother had given up trying to cover with three obstreperous little boys.

Dillon methodically munched on microwave popcorn straight from the bag, never taking his eyes from the police crime drama.

“Why don’t you come?”

Margaret Mary tried her best to be nonchalant about her offer.

“We’ll go to CVS and get a movie at Blockbuster?”

She waited in the doorway at the back of the family room by the side entrance.

“No, I’m watching a show,” said Dillon. “I’ll be fine. I love you.”

“Okay. Be right back in twenty. Time me! I love you.”

“Mom.”

He flipped off the TV and turned to face her.

“Yes…”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

He smiled. Although it was a forced, she appreciated the gesture, that reassurance that he was okay enough to make an effort. She saw the real smile earlier that day, and that would suffice, for now. In these rollercoaster years, she learned all of his masks and all of his smiles — and like many other mothers, she thought he could have been, or still could be, a handsome Hollywood actor.

“I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

Margaret Mary closed the door behind her, holding the handle an extra beat: what was she forgetting?

No need for a heavy coat. Dark now for hours, the temperature was still unseasonably warm for late February in Northeast Ohio. Before descending the three steps to the driveway, she paused.

The light from the full moon transformed the peeling gray paint of the clapboard house into luminous egg shells. From the perimeter of the large yard, tall barren trees cast long shadows that yearned to touch her.

She sighed, closing her eyes, hoping to smell spring, instead of winter.

She inhaled as her chorus instructor once told her forty odd years ago, from the bottom of the belly to the back of the ribs, remember, stand tall. Eyes still closed, she exhaled audibly, letting go.

She brought her palms to her cheeks, pressing her fingertips to her eyes. She split her fingers and peeked through to look up at the full, glorious moon that still hovered over the tallest oak trees. With a childlike whisper, she pleaded, “Hi, Nana. Please, watch him. I’ll be right back.”

***

In the decade old white Toyota Corolla, she leaned forward as she drove the winding road along the river through the village to town, chasing the moon on her left. Full moons always made her think of her grandmother — her Nana, her dearest friend in life.

At 90, Nana declared, “Why do you all insist on reminding me how old I am when I still feel like a girl of 18? It’s nothing but a number and a state of mind.”

Margaret Mary remembered the first night some sixteen years ago that she stood in the drive and talked to the full moon, talked to Nana who had recently passed away at age 94.

She listened to the noise emanating from the house. Her three boys, Liam, Dillon, and Casey, were awake past their bedtime watching Monday Night Football with their recently unemployed father, her husband Benjamin Burke.

She had been at work, a job she resented, telemarketing for a bank. As the leaves rustled, she folded her arms across her chest and rounded her shoulders.

“Nana, I miss you.”

The moon glowed. She blinked and thought the moon winked.

“Can you hear me?”

She waited and waited for an answer, gazing at the moon.

“This is not what I imagined…What do I do?”

Margaret Mary was on her own, yet she felt Nana’s presence, and it made her smile.

At the side door, she looked through the bay window like a ghost spying on them. The boys exchanged high fives, or shared curses, pending the plays outcome. They formed a huddle, sitting too close to the TV, in a semicircle of various armchairs dragged across the wood floor while eating chips that led to crumbs everywhere. Football bonded them and brought them together like nothing else. Without sports, they didn’t talk, or so it seemed; men were difficult, reticent and stoic.

After bad business deals, Ben had changed, growing sullen as he drank. His sons were his only respite it seemed.

Margaret Mary had wanted a girl, just one to call her own — that special bond — of giving secret dresses as her mom had.

“Here, hide it under your bed so your father doesn’t see it.”

She wanted to give, to gossip, and to feel appreciated in the way she admired her mother, but she wouldn’t side with dad and the boys over the girls, she would treat them equally, love them the same.

She wondered, could a mother love one child more? Was it wrong to do so?

Perhaps, in the future, she would have granddaughters and she could play Nana.

She remembered her joy when she received a used bike for Christmas (she suspected Nana helped buy it), no more borrowing older brother Chuck’s. She was free to ride to Nana’s whenever she pleased, which pleased Nana plenty to share an afternoon and a plate of animal cracker’s topped with a thin layer of homemade vanilla icing. Margaret Mary would indulge herself in retold stories of Nana’s — for no one could tell stories like Nana with her ability to paint a picture and deliver the line that made her laugh, even if she had heard it twice before.

Most of the tales were family stories of her father and aunt growing up, or her husband Raymond who Nana had shared her own childhood with — her soul mate for life. Many began, “You know Margaret Mary, when your father Charlie was your age…”

Now no denying at age fifty-three, she wished to be a child again in that safe little house, two ladies having tea — iced tea with plenty of sugar.

Nana would say, “No holding back on the sweetness in life.”

Then, as she squeezed a large slice of lemon in her tea, she’d lean forward and peer over her glasses with that wry smile, “Get a lemon, make lemonade.”

Margaret Mary realized that her father had stolen his famous pearls of wisdom from Nana.

***

At the stop light, she turned right onto the main two lane road and watched the moon in her rearview mirror until she hit the hill and began the climb.

She thought of her dad, who became Dada to her boys and the other dozen grandchildren. He, too, had left her too soon. Ten, no, eleven years now, and six more grandchildren, but she still talked to him, felt his presence, especially with the boys.

She could hear his voice, always cheery, “Hi-ya doing, Margaret Mary? Good?”

“Okay, Dad.”

He could always tell when something was wrong.

“Just okay?”

His smile seemed omniscient, mirroring her true feelings. Her boys shared his grin, his broad shoulders, and bulging calves. And Dillon even shared his loud and hearty belly-laugh that made others laugh.

Was that genetic, she wondered? Or patterned? It was something imitative, nurtured in years of visits and Thanksgiving dinner jokes

Dada held the bar high for her husband Ben, but she felt comparing the two men was unfair to Ben who had lost his own father at eighteen.

Nevertheless, she had only begun to fully appreciate how on a shoestring budget Dada raised seven kids. Yet they never felt poor. Healthy and happy, they always felt rich in terms of family. Like local celebrities, they were “The Murphys” and everyone knew at least one Murphy and to know a Murphy was to admire a Murphy. The four brothers, all top of their respective class, starred in basketball and baseball, and the occasional play, plus they all had to take piano and tap. She and her two sisters played piano, sang, danced, and were natural beauties. To this day, Margaret Mary wondered how they did all that they did. All seven graduated from college.

***

Arriving at the large corner shopping plaza, she parked in the desolate parking lot in front of the CVS. Stepping out of the car, she glanced skyward. Not nearly as impressive, the artificial light robbed the moon’s majestic mood.

As she was walking into the store, a young man skipped out with a case of beer, wearing a t-shirt, “Ursinus Football.” He hopped in the car waiting curbside that sped off. Unreal, what are the chances? Not just Ursinus, her father’s small Pennsylvania college, but Ursinus Football where her father had started for four years as a two-way lineman back in the forties; a widely recognized standout in spite of his small college.

A tingle ran down from the nape of her neck to her sore lower back.

“Hi Dad.”

After that night sixteen years earlier, Margaret Mary no longer felt odd talking to herself. It gave her comfort.

“Excuse me. May I help you?” asked the girl with a Russian accent at the checkout counter.

“Oh, no, thank you.” Margaret Mary smiled and headed for the pharmacy.

***

Twenty-three minutes later, as promised or close enough, she pulled into their driveway that needed desperate repair with potholes like moon craters that scraped the muffler if not carefully navigated. Dillon would be impressed by how quick she was or more likely annoyed for she rarely left him alone since the time he took all his meds at once.

He promised — never again — and he made her shred the note, and never share it with anyone.

Margaret Mary knew he was mortified by embarrassment. Dillon confided in her; he never felt so foolish, so stupid. It had been two months and today — his smile — gave her hope that he had turned the corner.

***

As she placed the car in park, right by the side door, and before she removed the key from the ignition, she noted the time, 9:13, and she held her breath, 9:14.

She blessed herself adopting Dillon’s ritual. In her vigil, she noticed the subtle, yet deft motion: right hand from brow, down his nose and lip, to sternum, to left shoulder, to right shoulder. It took witnessing it a number of times before she broke down and asked.

Reluctant at first, he obliged with a terse explanation: whenever he saw the number 14, his playing number, he said a prayer. She probed no further, but found herself following suit.

Will it snow tonight?

She contemplated parking in the two car garage, an independent structure at the far end of the circular turnaround behind the house.

With no prompting, Casey and Dillon had cleaned it out for her birthday so that she could park and not have to wake up to a car covered in ice and six inches of snow. She hated, however, manually lifting the heavy rotting door. The automatic opener, dead so long ago, so low in priority on the overwhelming to-do-list for this century home, a certified village historical landmark, that Margaret Mary had referred to it as The Money Pit.

The garage had become a graveyard for the things that had been intended to be thrown out, a purgatory of sorts as the stuff migrated from the main house and never made it to the junkyard. With both windows broken, the large composite-wood door needed replacing; it was marred with fist-sized divots from rock like lacrosse balls and was imprinted with muddy soccer balls. On the roof, the remains of a basketball backboard looked lonely without a rim, a casualty of Dillon’s ability to dunk in his sophomore year in high school.

In her headlights, she replayed her own home video of Dillon pump faking, eluding Liam’s hip check, and finishing his lay up with a feather-soft touch, high off the backboard.

With today’s surreal weather, Margaret Mary hoped the winter’s brief remission would hold out a little longer. It had been the bleakest of winters even for Cleveland, yet that Saturday the cold and the gray lifted, and an unusual warm front elevated temperatures to near 60 degrees and sunny, almost a record for February.

She figured the other foot would have to fall, which meant snow in May. But she would take any reprieve.

At dinner that evening, the long dining room table felt empty without her oldest son Liam and her husband. Margaret Mary hoped Dillon’s trip to visit Liam in New York on Tuesday would help Dillon relax before his next court date and alter his perspective on Ben’s accident.

On Monday, while taking the bus downtown to work, Ben was thrown when the bus lurched in the snow, and then stopped short — pitching him forward, breaking four ribs, and puncturing his left lung.

***

Although it was just the three of them, Margaret Mary insisted they eat a nice meal together.

Margaret Mary couldn’t have been happier.

Dillon had joked with Casey and actually smiled, then laughed like Dada, nearly rattling the old window casings, forgetting everything for a moment, unconscious of her watching him.

Perhaps when he felt his mother’s eyes, he muted the rolling laugh prematurely and smiled sheepishly at her. To see her boys happy, nothing gave Margaret Mary more hope.

They almost went out to a party together, but Dillon declined Casey’s half-hearted offer.

“I am too old for high school parties.”

“Casey’s a freshman in college, now,” she reminded him.

“They turn into high school parties because no one else is around,” said Dillon.

“Thanks, dude. I want to live at home and go to the local state school,” said Casey with a sneer.

“Well, what do I say? Home for the hearing, sentencing is in two weeks.” Dillon’s cheerful tone and smile was loaded with irony. “Oh, yeah, I went mad, wrecked the student center; no choice, they expelled me.” His face reverted to a hard glare. “No, I am cool here. Have fun.”

It was the most he had said in weeks, at least they were talking.

It wasn’t her natural inclination, to find the silver lining, but in these desperate times…she held on to anything close to hope, any light in the darkness.

With Ben in the hospital indefinitely, she didn’t want to admit that she was thrilled to have Dillon’s company. Margaret Mary still could not comprehend why, but inexplicably, Dillon had deemed Ben’s accident was his fault, citing he brought bad luck to everything he touched.

She argued, she rationalized, but they were all moot points as far as he was concerned. He grew quieter all week, but today he seemed better. He wanted to be left alone, but that was natural.

***

While growing up, she relished being home alone, a rarity in a household of nine people. She would wander from room to room snooping through closets, drawers, and letters. Sometimes, she would merely play her favorite records. Occasionally, she would rehearse her dance lessons in the tall mirror in the living room, imagining Cinderella stories.

Once her nine-year-old brother Chris caught her mid arabesque, leg lifted straight behind in line with her torso parallel to the floor. As she floated out of the position, she jumped to see not a prince but her little brother in the mirror, standing in the doorway, imitating her, balancing briefly only to collapse to the floor in peals of laughter which prompted Bruce, fifteen months younger, to mock pirouette and jump with swinging arms, a brief cabriole of fluttering legs before landing on top of Chris. They laughed in stereo, drowning the Chopin, her moment lost, but she couldn’t help but laugh as they began to wrestle — ah, boys, she should have known her fate was with boys.

Perhaps, the intense rivalry of Chris and Bruce led to their waiting three years between children.

Nevertheless, she remembered the day that little Dillon beat his older brother Liam in hoops just like the day she remembered little Bruce beat Chris; a crowning lifetime achievement for one, the end of assumed dominance for another.

***

Dillon’s staying home also meant another weekend that he wouldn’t be tempted to drink, and finally, maybe give the medication a chance. He seemed contented, at peace as if the medication was working. At last, she thought, her prayers answered, a therapeutic combination that might work.

The dark shadow of depression finally seemed to have lifted like the cold, gray winter. The sun reminded all of them that spring was near.

She pained to see his anguish, especially in Mass, such contrition. She knew the trial and now the sentencing weighed on him heavily. Despite multiple reassurances, all parties agreed — no jail time — two-year probation and ongoing therapy. Another moot point — he assumed the worst, in spite of his faith. Or perhaps, he was still searching for faith.

She assumed they would go to Mass tomorrow. He preferred the 10:30 to the noon Mass, fewer friends and acquaintances to say hello to and force grins that were polite enough. She hoped his spirituality was making inroads like the meds. His devotion renewed hers more than Ben’s heart attack five year’s earlier and even the loss of her father.

Margaret Mary smiled at how adamant he was about being on time. Starting at 9:30, the earliest he awoke all week, he prodded her to get ready.

“Let’s go, let’s go. We’re always late, going to be late. Finish the paper later, it will be here. Let’s go, I showered, have you?”

She loved that he cared. For a month and a half or so — not sure what exactly prompted the fervor, why or when?

But she was happy to join Dillon while Ben refused to go to Mass as did Casey. Liam may have obliged, but he lived in New York City.

At bedtime, he would ask to pray when she tucked him in. It wasn’t a déjà vu. As she had when he was a boy, she’d sing “Hush, Hush! Whisper who dares! Christopher Robin is saying his prayers…”

She gently scratched his massive back; he was twenty-two.

Where had the years gone?

“Mom, will you…”

“Give you a foot massage, of course.”

“Remember you said…”

“I know.”

He was still her little boy who at three had gone missing at the Avalon shore. An hour later, a beach patrol unit found him two miles down Ocean Drive, walking with his blue plastic bucket and little red shovel. She thought she had lost him back then. She asked him for forgiveness; she had been watching the wrong little boy play in the sand.

“I couldn’t find you, so I tried to find the house. I thought you left me,” he cried, rubbing his tired eyes.

“I would never leave you. How can I make it up to you?”

“My feet hurt. Could you give me a foot massage?”

She laughed. Her sister, his aunt Tricia, had just taught him the word that week. She promised him that she would give him foot massages forever.

***

As soon as she walked in the door, she knew.

The television was off and the house was silent.

“Dillon! Where are you?”

She raced in a circle around the first floor, then leaping up the stairs to the second floor and the three bedrooms of the boys. His Bible open on his pillow — no note — only the Gospel of Luke.

“God, no.”

She knew.

Nausea overwhelmed her.

In a flash of burning white light, she was down the stairs, out the back door, across the circle, kicking the stubborn garage door open, standing on the threshold, flicking the light switches up and down to no avail.

She crossed the threshold, eyes adjusting to the moonlight cascading through the four broken windows.

Freshly swept and orderly, the garage seemed foreign to her. And as she approached, she stumbled over something in the shadows, an old lawn chair — she whipped it into the far corner.

His hands were already cool and rigid to the touch. No pulse.

She tried to untie the sheet. On her toes, she could barely reach his face.

His head and neck rest at an unnatural angle. His lips dry, no breath. She tried to lift him, embracing his waist to create some slack. At 220 pounds, there was little she could do, especially with her bad back.

In old daydreams, she had imagined lifting a car to save her children in a moment of crisis, like Superwoman. But he was no longer there to save.

With thrashing fists, she pounded on his barrel chest that always reminded her of her father. A mother losing her most beloved child, she wept.

“No. Please, take me.”

She studied his face in the moonlight, his eyes were closed.

She didn’t want to see his eyes, with fear or panic, or regret — closed meant he was at peace, and she didn’t have the task of closing them forever.

When she hugged him, he did not sway or twist. She leaned on him, but he was gone.

She buried her eyes in his flannel shirt, it smelled like…like her father, the same Old Spice scent that Dillon loved because of Dada.

“This isn’t happening. This isn’t...”

He had fooled her — for the first time in his life.

And she laughed out loud because she couldn’t cry.

“You fooled me, you…”

Nana’s voice echoed in her head, “You fool some of the people, some of the time, but you never fool your mother.”

“No. Please, no. Don’t fool me like this.”

Then she sobbed uncontrollably as she held him.

A thought made her tears subside — she braced herself, spine stiff, ears burning.

“Oh, God. Casey— he’ll be home soon.”

Margaret Mary imagined if Casey, or anyone else, witnessed this scene…

Who else could bear this?

In a daze, she returned to the house. She dialed the police.

She couldn’t look at the pictures that adorned her bedside table. She closed her eyes, and she could see his joy standing in the middle of her favorite family photo where all five of them had sincere smiles at his high school graduation — they all looked so good in ties. Dillon’s arms cast over their shoulder like enveloping wings, mom and dad under his right arm, Liam and Casey under his left. The tallest and most handsome, he held them together as the middle child, the one that empathized with each person, internalizing their pain as his. She didn’t want that photo to change — that family in the photo to change.

With her eyes closed, the room started spinning.

She looked at her feet, at her wrinkled hands.

She inhaled, and she smelled vanilla. But from what?

Next to the phone on the cluttered table, she noticed the large lantern candle that Dillon had given her three days earlier for her birthday. She smiled, it was him. It was a sign. She looked around the room.

“You knew. That’s why you gave me this, and this,” she ran her hand over the new plush pillow, smoothing out the creases.

“You knew. You knew I’d need it.”

She brought it to her chest and hugged it, another wave of heaving sobs, muffled by the pillow.

She heard a distant siren approaching.

She wandered outside to the driveway and nothing — silence, too cold for even crickets.

Only the moon, it was still glorious, still without a cloud in the sky. She waited in the middle of the circle, between Dillon and the house.

The chill of the night air soothed her shock — she welcomed the numbing effect. She hugged her pillow, only now aware she was still holding it to her chest.

“Nana, take care of my baby.” She whispered to the moon.

“Dada, you too. That’s why I thought of you. All night long. You were letting me know. Is he? Is he with you?”

She waited for a sign, but none came.

It didn’t work like that.

Her mind drifted back to that night sixteen years before, standing outside, looking in, and wishing for a girl.

She took back her wish.

She would have nothing different, only what she had.